The Nation 1927 : Vol 125

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'7 0.0 1 TOP I Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2013 http://archive.org/details/nation125julnewy

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JW The Natiotf A WEEKLY JOURNAL DEVOTED TO POLITICS, LITERATURE, SCIENCE DRAMA, MUSIC, ART INDUSTRY FOUNDED 1865 MS VOLUME CXXV JULY 6, 1927, TO DECEMBER 28. 1927 THE NATION, Inc. 20 VESEY STREET, NEW YORK

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4302 1 INDEX TO VOLUME CXXV JULY 6, 1927, TO DECEMBER 28, 1927 (Nos. 3235-3260) The following letters are used to indicate the type of article: A Art C Correspondence Ct Cartoons D Drama Dt Driftway E Editorial Article EP Editorial Paragraph I International Relations, Documents IP International Relations, Foreign Press IS International Relations, Signed Article M Music P Poetry S Signed Article Book reviews and reviewers are indexed separately in the Book Review Section. A Abele. Trescott T. Farmers and Pullman porters; C 513 Adams, John Haslup. Obituary ; EP 465 Adams, Mildred Ruth Hanna McCormick ; S 449 Adams, Thomas L. ; EP 124 Advertising Honesty in advertising. R. Fuller; S 202 Adler, Lawrence Korngold's "Violanta" ; M 664 Adler, Mortimer J. The outlining of knowledge ; S 380 Advertising Modern advertising methods; EP 351 Selling Jesus ; E 725 Aeronautics Byrd's effort to reach Paris ; EP 29 Fights and flights in the newspapers. S. Bent; S 473 Loss of Spirit of Dallas ; EP 189 Mob-murdered aviators ; E 276 Still far from transatlantic air service; EP 189 Well, then, a short cheer ; E 442 Africa Is Africa going white, black, or brown ? W. D. Hubbard: S 249 Agriculture Business men's commission on agriculture ; E 690 The tariff, agriculture, and the president; E 590 Alabama Alabama's super government. C. N. Feidel- son ; S 311 Attorney general McCall's good work in fight with Ku Klux Klan ; EP 668 Floggings not to go unpunished; EP 439 Grand-jury report on kidnapping and flog- ging of citizens ; EP 218 A la carte. Rosalie Stewart ; D 295 Albania Martial rumblings in the Balkans: EP... 616 Aldington, Richard Pedants on pedestals ; C 87 Alekhine, Alexander 674 Allen, Devere Andrew Carnegie said ; C 339 Allen, Florence E. Florence E. Allen. E. N. Blair ; S 628 AJlen, Robert S. The Northwest stands pat; S 104 American association for old-age security Christmas in old age. E. Gilman ; C 736 American bar association The social bar. L. G. Brooks : C 87 What is a bar association? L. P. Miller; C 684 American federation of labor Grows increasingly cautious vear after year • EP ' 438 Sets forth terrible conditions in coal indus- try; EP 588 American legion Hamilton Fish, jr.'s, resolution submitted at Paris convention ; EP 299 Have we forgotten Centralia? ,1. A. Gahan ; C 511 Holiday in Paris ; EP 299 Is the American legion liberal? J. D. Kenderdine, A. B. Lewis, F. Bailey, J. B. Milgram ; C 313 Is this America? I. Treat ; S , . 421 The reactionary Edward E. Spafford elected head of organization ; EP 323 The real American legion. S. Cook; S... 224 Americans we like Alexander Meiklejohn. L. Price; S 541 Daniel Willard : a selfish man. D. Kirk- ley ; S 307 Florence E. Allen. E. N. Blair; S 628 Georgia O'Keeffe. F. O'Brien; S 361 Justice Brandeis : apostle of freedom. N. Hapgood ; S 330 Mr. Babbitt, meet Sinclair Lewis. W. Mc- Nally ; S 278 Norris of Nebraska. F. Babcock ; S 705 Ruth Hanna McCormick. M. Adams; S. 449 Ames, Frank Chaloner Honor is a tradition of the sea ; S 37 Amoskeag manufacturing company Reduces wages 10 per cent, to go in effect December 24 ; EP 721 Anderson, Charles Life at Elbow Lake Lookout ; Dt 86 Anderson, Paul Y. Time out for corruption ! ; S 566 Andrews, John B. Rock dusting in mines ; C 255 And so to bed; D 612 An enemy of the people. H. Ibsen; D 430 Anna Taken from colored foster parents but later restored to them; EP 219, 273 Anthony, Beatrice O. ; E 241 Anti-Semitism Henry Ford's anti-Semitism; EP 47 Students in Rumania attack Jewish com- rades ; EP 722 Anthropology Is Africa going white, black, or brown? W. D. Hubbard ; S 249 Arc, Joan of ; EP 124 Archaeology Agora of Athens on way to sunlight; EP 465 The Glozel war ; E 5yi Where Genghis died ; E 493 Architecture Guy Lowell. T. F. Hamlin ; S 178 Armenian massacres ; Dt 338 Armour packing company The Armours betray the farmers. F. Boselly ; S 196 Art Compo8ograph of the dance. K. Niles. A. Niles : S 552 Jacob Epstein. R. Lee; S 716 Modern art in Palestine. F. O'Brien : S. 484 Puzzling questions raised by Brancusi's The bird : EP 465 Re*urn to America of the sculptor, Jacob Epstein; EP 411 The inoffensive art ; E 496 Artibonite valley (Haiti) concession to William A. Rodenberg : E 51 Artzybasheff. Mikhail Petrovich Lovers and enemies. Criticism. J. W. Krutch ; D 407 Asia America and Asia outstrip Europe; E.... 4 Asquith. Herbert Henry Stricken with "physical immobility"; EP. 95 Atheism Pious unbelief ; E 328 Atkinson. Navarre Publishes sensational report of uprising in the Ukraine in Times; EP 669 Austin. Mary Boulder dam and Arizona culture; C .... 737 The Colorado river controversy ; S 510 The forward turn ; S 57 Australia Price-fixing in Queensland. M. A. Hall- gren ; IS 140 The Australian labor situation. C. II. Grattan : IS 432 Austria Austria wavers toward reaction. G. E. R. Gedye; S 474 July insurrection in Vienna ; EP 7"> The Viennese shambles. G. E. R. Gedye; S 128 Babcock. Frederic Norris of Nebraska ; S 705 Baby cyclone. G. M. Cohan: D 320 Background, cashing in on ; Dt 132 Bagley, Commander Censors dispatches sent to Lindbergh on the Memphis ; EP 2 Bailey. Forrest Is the American legion liberal?; C 313 Baldwin, Roger N. Liberty under the Soviets : S 505 "Liberty under the Soviets" ; C 634 Baldwin, Roger N 565 Ballinger, "The bondage of Ballinger" ; C... Ill Bankers Obtain hold in Nicaragua; E 98 Barnhill, John Basil Justice in hell ; C 513 Barrows, D. P. The new pacifism. P. Guldbrandsen ; C. 602 Barry, Philip John. Criticism. J. W. Krutch; D 582 Baruch, Bernard Doubts Germany's ability to meet demands of Dawes plan ; EP 237 Basshe, Em Jo The centuries. Criticism. J. W. Krutch ; D 718 Beal, Fred E. Brutal treatment by police during Sacco- Vanzetti funeral; EP 239 Beard, Charles A. Agriculture in the nation's economy; S.. 150 Beauchamp, Earl The necessity of free trade; IS 24 Beck, Adolf ; E 275, 620 Behold this dreamer ; D 654 Belgium Quarrel over inscription on restored Lou- vain library ; EP 409 Belloc, Hilaire Warrior Wells and battling Belloc; E.... 194 Belt ; D 554 Bent, Silas Fights and flights in the newspapers; S. 473 Reparations for robbers ; C 543 Bigelow, F. H. Is Boston reforming ? ; C 603 Birnbaum, Silas J. Should music teachers be licensed?; C... 160 Bitterbaum, Chas. Hail. Heywood Broun ; C 287 Black, Ruhy A. "Al" Smith in Texas; S 14 Blacksmith — his importance ; Dt 286 Blackwell, Alice Stone Sissified sex literature ; C 63 Blair, Emily Newell Florence E. Allen ; S 628 Blake, Aldrich Oklahoma goes Rosicrucian ; S 246 Blake, William William Blake. 1827-1927 ; E 221 Blankenhorn, Heber Labor's league of nations explodes; IS.. 460 Blood money. G. Middleton ; D 295 Bogan, Louise Late; P 230 Tears in sleep : P 230 Bondage. L. Knight; C Ill Book publishing Have you a little MS? J. Smertenko : S. 108 Merger of Doran company with Doubleday, Page and company ; EP 325 Borah, William Edgar Invited to discuss prohibition in connection with constitution ; E 466 Senator Borah scores again; E 562 Vacillating strain ; EP . : 189 Borchard, Edwin M. The citizen abroad ; IS 365 Borders, Karl A bit of Russian patchwork ; S 60 Borghi. Armando ; EP 124 Borough. Rube Law and order in Ix>s Angeles; S 12 Bosch Magneto The Bosch Magneto case comes to court. P. Musgrave ; C 677 Boselly, Frederick The Armours betray the farmers: S 196 The role of the farm bureau federation : C. 314 Boswell, James Important literary remains brought to light; EP 325 Boulder canyon project Boulder dam and Arizona culture. P. M. Entenman, M. Austin; S 736. 737 Colorado ■ iver controversy. M. Austin; S.. 510 Boyden, Aug. J. A note of discord ; C 228 Brace. Charles Loring ; EP 697 Brailsford, Henry Noel Welcome to the United States: EP 723 Brancusi. Constantin ; EP 465 Bratianu. Jon Obituary ; EP 617 Rumania free from the lion's paw. G. E. R. Gedye : S 732 Brenner, Anita Weeping the bone ; S 540 Brigham. Johnson Why Harlan dismissed Walt Whitman ; C. 685 Bristol. Mark L. Admiral Bristol. LL.D. E. H. Fisk : C. 64 Transference from Turkey to command of Asiatic fleet ; EP 3 Brittany and Quimperle; Dt 313 Britton, Nan 329

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Vol. cxxv] Index [July-Dec, 1927 Broccoli become fashionable ; I)t 478 Bromfield, Louis House ill" women. Criticism. .). W. Krutch ; D 458 Brooks, Lawrence G. The social bar ; C 87 Brotherhood of sleeping car porti Continues light for honest wages; EP.... 272 Broun, Heywood Appointed contributing editor of Nation; El' 217 Hail, Heywood Broun. C. Bitterbaum ; C. 2.S7 Broun, Heywood It seems to Heywood Broun. .. .243, 27T. 305, 329, 358, 410, 111, 469, 198, 530, 565, 594, 622, 674, 702. 728 A little biology is a dangerous thing 536 Bright side of drinking 358 Concerning football Damn Santa Claus Defeat at chess of Capablanca by Alekhine Dominating saintlincss of women 169 Gene Tunney and Upton Sinclair on pessi- mism 622 Insulting the Irish 44 1 Mencken on the artistic achievement of the Negro 416 Muckraker tactics ; S 375 Prize-fighting and prize-fighters 305 Resolutions on turning thirty-nine 702 Roger Baldwin on soviet Russia 505 Roy L. Gray, an average man "The President's Daughter'' 329 "The Problem of Thor Bridge" 277 There is no deadline for truth 243 Brown, W. Norman A Buddhist source for Christian legend?; C 339 Browne, Herbert Janvrin From the long-range weather prophet; C. 112 The wisdom of Herbert Brown : E 33 Budenz, Louis Francis Indiana's anti-saloon league goes to jail ; S. 177 Scandals of 1927— Indiana ; S 332 There's mud on Indiana's white robes; S. 81 Buisson, Ferdinand; EP 697 Burlesque. G. M. Watters and A. Hopkins ; D. 295 Burnet, Dana, and G. Abbott Four walls. Criticism. J. W. Krutch ; D. 343 Burns. William J. The history of William J. Burns; E 561 Burt. Struthers Vrai bon ? ; C 288 Butler, Hilton How "Al" Smith fared in Mississippi; S. 244 Butler. Nicholas Murray Demands political candidates define their position; E 466 Byington, Steven T. Teachers — and teachers ; C 16 Bynner, Witter With the gods ; P 182 Byrd, Richard Evelyn ; EP 29 C. A. S. Sacco-Vanzetti ; C 206 Calas, Jean The case of Jean Calas. H. H. Horwitz; C 206 Calder, Margaret To Chicago readers of The Nation; C . . Ml California Controversy between San Francisco and Navy department ; EP 76 Governor Young's pardon of Charlotte Anita Whitney; EP 49 Project of bridge across San Francisco bay ; EP 70 Callizo. Jean Cheating at solitaire; E 275 Calvert, E. Roy Capital punishment in the twentieth cen- tury ; E 210 Canada Canada's jubilee. J. A. Stevens: S 13 Smuggled liquor does not all travel south : EP 272 Canossa The truth about Canossa. II. C. Engel- brecht ; C ... 160 Capablanca. Jose Raul 671 Capital punishment A survival of barbarism ; E 2 10 A twentieth amendment. M. Fruchter ; C. 151 Capital punishment in Germany. M. Tucker; C Executions: the new sport. E. Stevenson; S ..676 Invoke against it general loathing for pub- lic executioner ; EP 192 Warden Lawes thinks it worse than futil EP 464 Capps, Edward Given fund to proceed with excavations in Athens ; EP Carillo, Donato ; EP Carillo-Grecco case A frame-up ; EP For Grecco and Carillo. N. Thomas: ( Carnegie. Andrew ; C 339 Carpenter. George Albert; EP ; ; Carr, Horace, and Nettie Burton Issue Sacco-Vanzetti poster in Cleveland: EP 239 Cartoons Apply taritf common sense to international sport. H. W. van Loon 357 Blow your own horn! H. van Loon 7 Building a new Russia. H. W. van Loon. 497 Galeries Lafayette, we are here! H. W. van Loon 115 Geneva. H. W. van Loon 101 In the presidential year. H. W. van Loon. 4 13 Loot. H. \V. van Loon 621 Massachusetts. H. W. van !>on 22:! Prosperity — 1927. II. W. van Loon Rhythms of the ages. H. W. van Loon.. 727 The angel of peace in modern dress. H. W. van Loon 701 The optimist. H. W. van Loon 504 The world does change— 1077-1927. H. \V. van Loon 80 Torture up to date. H. W. van Loon. What the European public wants. H. W. van Loon 593 Catt, Carrie Chapman Defends Jane Addams and Florence Kelley against attack by D. A. R. ; E 50 Censorship Abolition of peace-time censorship urged by international press experts in Geneva ; EP 238 Centuries. E. J. Basshe ; D 718 Charity organization society Who are the poor? H. I. Fisk ; C 685 Chase. Robert S. What history says ; C 227 Chemical foundation A marvel of chemistry : E 669 Cheyney. Ralph, and Lucia Trent Contemporary verse: C 113 Poets' last chance ; C 25 4 Chez Columbia Among the teachers ; C 287 Chicago Chicago's mayors. U. S. Schwartz; C... 39 Three pure historians ; EP 491 Child labor Present state of and outlook for improve- ment ; EP 411 Children The plague of juveniles. R. Drucker : S. . . 545 What >ooks shall my small child read? R. Hourwich : S 546 Children's aid soci No*able service of the Charles Loring Braces : EP 697 Chiang Kai-shek The courtship of Chiang ; E 355 China Carrying on with normal supply of civil wars; EP 560 Chiang Kai-shek passes on ; E 194 China — seen from Moscow. L. Fischer : IS. 613 China tests our religion. H. F. Ward: S. 2S3 Commendable style of C. C. Wu ; EP 190 Fake pictures from China. F. Hough: C 178 Japanese troops reoccupy Shantung; EP.. 76 Madame Sun's withdrawal : IP 29S More Chinese atrocities. J. G. Sayre ; S.. 129 Nationalists break off relations with soviet Russia: EP 722 Realignment of Chinese generals; EP 3 The white terror in China. S. Nearing ; S 734 What is happening in China; E ill What is happening in China's kuomintang. R. Cort : IS Chinese seamen's institute Acts in behalf of wronged Chinese sen- men : E 99 e. Mario; EP 124 Christmas "Holidays" here once more: EP 721 Christy. Howard Chandler ; EP 589 Churchill. Winston Explains how to reduce naval expendi- ture: E 33 Clapper. Raymond tlair and Fall on trial; S 445 Edith Trying to be modern : S 153 Cleanliiv ite : Dt lfi Cleghorn. Sarah X. Only do'.'s : C 513 Cleveland. Ohio Like other cities, without machinery to feed unemployed : E 495 Clifford. Mrs. Delia; EP 76 Coal industry A challenge to Mr. Rockefeller. M. L. Ernst: S 733 Continuing unsettled conditions: EP 721 Terrible conditions set forth by A. F. L. president ; EP " 5S8 i. G. M. Baby cyclone. Criticism. J. W. Krutch ; D 320 Cohen. Morris R. Given testimonial dinner : EP 439 ido river conference The Colorado river controversy. M. Austin : , s : 510 War in Colorado. F. L. Palmer; S 623 College students Some students write well; E 6 Colleges Begging for women's colleges ; E 490 Even a college student has some rights ; E. 241 Faculty dismissals ; EP 239 If teaching is good, college is good; EP.. 533 West Virginia and College of the City of New York officially favor R.O.T.C. ; EP. 589 Cook, Sylvanus The real American legion ; S 224 Coolidge, Calvin Cowboys give cerise silk shirt; EP 49 Eulogizes the Mellons in Pittsburgh ; EP Gems from president's speech; EP 5S7 Is Coolidge coming or going?; E 14s Moves to clear up American foreign rela- tions ; EP 30 Oddly worded refusal to run again; EP.. 125 Praises Rear Admiral Bristol for services as high commissioner to Turkey: EP.. 3 Press disapproval of cowboy stunts; EP.. 95 Speaks on lost art of thinking; E Tells country' bedtime stories of industrial condition ; EP 464 The language of the president ; E 697 Time to make known naval policy; EP.. . Coolidge. John Accompanied by secret-service man in col- lege; EP Cooper, Hugh L. ; C Crawford, Ruth The anger of South America [re Sacco- Vanzetti] ; S Creative work ; Dt Crim. John W. H. Testifies to graft and corruption in United States: EP 301 Crothers, Samuel McChord. Obituary; EP... Cuba Impressive American delegation to attend sixth Pan-American conference; EP 532 Collins, Joseph Half-confessed ; S 10 Command to love. R. Lothar and F. Gottwald ; D 407 Commerce The movement of world wealth. S. Near- ing : IS 234 Trade honesty a boast of western capital- ism ; EP 272 Competition for federal summer capital; Dt. 38 Connecticut Yankee ; D Coquette ; D Corning, Howard McKinley Warm stone woman ; P 8S Correction "God's trombones." H. A. Potamkin ; C. 133 Cort. Roy What is happening in Chinese kuomintang ; IS 636 Cory, Bill, typifying the west; Dt 255 Covering Washington. The Unofficial Spokes- man 729 Coward, Noel Fallen angels. Criticism. J. W. Krutch ; D The marquise. Criticism. J. W. Krutch; D 090 Cowling, Ellis Compulsion at De Pauw ; S 59 Cuckoschay. Joseph Paul ; EP 96 Cuthbert. Clifton Bookworm ; P 480 D D.. H. Hippolytus temporizes ; B 382 Dabney, Thomas L. A Negro looks at Sacco's America; C... 287 Danziger. Samuel Another view of Brandeis ; C 513 Darrow. Clarence Had Darrow been a journalist. One Who Is; S 131 Daudet. Leon ; EP 29 Davenport. Frances Gardner. Obituary; EP.. 589 Dawes. Charles Gates Frank talk at opening of peace bridge connecting the United States and Canada . EP 143 Opinions as to equipment of diplomatic representatives; E 5 Dawes plan Is Germany extravagant? F. Kuh : S. . . . 682 Parker Gilbert sends warning note to Ger- man government : EP 532 Trade relations between France and Ger- many favor modification ; EP 238 Davis. E. Ten per cent. Criticism. J. W. Krutch ; D 341 Davis. James John Calls conference to consider coal situation : EP 721 Day. Joseph B. Massachusetts — -there she stands; C 113 Dell, Floyd Explaining (some) men ; C 86 Dell. Robert A year after Thoiry ; S 282 Demonstrations Some mass demonstrations [In Berlin. Vienna, Heiligenblut]. F. Kirchwey ; S 337 Denton. Nixson That six-eylindered airman ; C 17

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Nos. 3235-3260] Index [Vol. cxxv Deterding, Sir Henri ; EP 126, 190 Dillon, John. Obituary ; EP 170 Disarmament Disarmament and the British Labor party. R. Smith; IS 584 From Geneva to Honolulu ; E 78 The disgrace at Geneva; E 127 To disarm, disarm ; E 99 Dobsevage, I. George Modern saints : C 254 Dole. Charles F. Obituary; EP 617 Dombeys," "The gay ; EP 125 Dooley, Henry W. Honor in Languedoc ; G 363 Dos Passos, John An open letter to President Lowell; C.... 176 Dowd, Harrison Diplomatic sonnet ; P 248 Doyle. Conan 277 Dracula. B. Stoker ; D 458 Drew, John John Drew. Obituary ; E 52 Drucker, Rebecca The plague of juveniles ; S 545 Drujilovski, Serge A forger of soviet "documents." L. T. ; IS 213 Dryden, John The art of translation; E 56:5 Du Bois, W. E. Burghardt The Hampton strike; S 471 Duncan, Isadora Isadora Duncan is dead. M. Eastman ; S. 309 Dunsany, Plunkett If. Criticism. J. W. Krutch ; D r>r> I E E., G. Have faith in Calvan T. Fullidge ! ; C 228 Eastman, Max Isadora Duncan ; P 309 Isadora Duncan is dead ; S 309 Economic conference Ineffectiveness of economic and other kinds of conferences ; EP 48 Edgerton, Charles E. California sterilization ; C 16 Education Are Rhodes scholars failures?; EP 49 Comment on new experimental college of University of Wisconsin ; EP 171 Compulsion at De Pauw ; S 59 Dismissal from Des Moines university of Norman MacDowell Grier ; EP 76 Higher education in Chicago. L. Martin ; S 538 Political science. W. Pater; C 634 Superior, Wisconsin, school situation once more normal ; EP 272 Teachers — and teachers. S. T. Byington ; C 16 The negligible graduate student ; E 619 Education — Private vs. public schools Private school teachers. J. M. Hayes; C. 64 Edward, Harry F. V. Through sports to peace? ; C 632 Eisenstein, Serge Mikhailovich Mass movies ; S 507 Elder, Ruth Breaks down taciturnity of President Coo- lidge ; EP 589 Ruth Elder's revolt. R. Owen ; S 569 Elder, Ruth; S 473 Elder, Ruth ; C 632 Elgin marbles ; E 79 Eliot, Charles W. President Eliot's letters. H. James; (' 160 Eloesaer, Arthur German literature today ; S 572 Elsworth, Louise A. Sacco-Vanzetti ; C 206 Enemy, The An enemy worth having ; E 535 Engelbrecht, H. C. The truth about Canossa ; C 160 Entenman, Paul M. Boulder dam and Arizona culture; C 736 Epstein, Jacob Enlightens a judge in a problem of art ; EP 465 Returns after absence of twenty-eight years ; EP Ill Ernst, Morris L. A challenge to Mr. Rockefeller ; S 73:'. Mr. Hughes and Michael Karolyi ; C 179 Errata A correction. G. L. Winslow ; C 179 Escape. J. Galsworthy ; D 553 Estcourt, R. The American woman ; C 229 Europe America and Asia outstrip Europe ; E 1 Spirit of Locarno hibernating; EP 492 Evans, Elizabeth Glendower ; EP 219 F Fadiman, Clifton P. On contemporary American fiction; S.... 612 Fall-Sinclair ease Status of oil scandals litigation; EP 75 The history of William J. Burns; E 561 Time out for corruption ! P. Y. Anderson ; S 566 Fallen angels. N. Coward ; D 718 Fame Cheating lo secure it; E 275 Famous Players-Lasky corporation Ordered not to purchase or operate theaters for purpose of coercing exhibitors; EP.. 49 Fanatics ; D 582 Farmers Farmers and Pullman porters. T. T. Abele ; C 513 The Armours betray the farmers. F. Boselly; S 196 The farmer's future. F. Wertgen ; C 207 The role of the farm bureau federation. H. R. Kibler. F. Boselly; C 314 Fascism Anti-fascist propaganda leads to persecu- tion and deportation ; EP 124 Fascist culture ; IP 215 Murder by "persons unknown." G. Sal- vemini : S 34 The fascist state ; IP 322 Feidelson, Charles N. Alabama's super t overnment ; S 311 Ferril, Thomas Hornsby Ocean : P 604 Fetzer, William R. Talks to persons alleged to have created "disturbances" ; EP 273 Field. Sara Bard Quaker pagan ; P 315 Finance — France Seeking $100,000,000 loan from United States ; EP 237 Finance — Germany Difficulty in meeting reparations in fourth year of Dawes plan ; EP 237 Finance — Great Britain British finance and the Labor party. J. R. MacDonald ; S 537 Finance — United States Secretary Mellon fails in judging the money market : EP 30 The federal reserve fight. E. M. Fried- mann ; S 359 Finger, Charles J. Sex literature continued ; C 133 Fischer, Louis China — seen from Moscow : IS 613 On the road to socialism ; S 199 The passing of Trotzky ; S 703 Fisher. Irving Publishes figures indicating distribution of national income ; EP 668 Fishermen's cup races ; Dt 735 Fisk, E. H. Admiral Bristol. LL.D. ; C • I Fisk. Helen I. Who are the poor ? ; C 685 Five o'clock girl ; D 158 Fletcher, John Gould ; EP 31 Fletcher, John Gould Second advent ; P 646 The unfamiliar house ; P 130 Flood National flood control ; E 467 Feilen. Charles; EP 219 Ford. Henry Hendrik van Loon and Rosika Schwimmer. H. W. van Loon ; C 571 How explain his anti-Semitism ; EP 17 "Strut. Miss Lizzie!": E The king is dead. M. Marshall : S 678 Fosdiek, Harry Emerson : EP. . . ... 31 Foss. Horatio G. ; Dt Foster. L. H. School wants old Nations: C 160 Four walls. D. Burnet and G. Abbott : D Fox. R. M. Free state and republican Ireland ; TS 186 France Franco-German trade treaty: EP 190 French literature today. L. Lewisohn : S. 572 is this America? T. Treat; S 121 Mare Sanpnier heads Italian refugees re- lief committee : EP Offends American manufacturers by high- tariff legislation: EP 271 Prison escapes of MM. Daudet and EP 29 i American products to previous tariff rates : EP 491 The Catholic "renaissance" in France; S . 55 The Glozel war : E 591 The perils of Paris. V. O'Sullivan ; C 632 The tariff reckoning begins; K . 302 Trial of Sehwartzbard for murder of Pet- lura: EP 493 France— Finance. See Finance Frank. Eva A. The Mexican "just won't work"; S 155 Frankfurter. Felix : EP 219 Frazier, E. Franklin The Negro in the industrial South; S... 83 Free press Fight for "open door" in news dissemina- tion at Geneva ; EP 170 Fit to print ["Venus and Adonis" J. M. C. Underwood; C 62 Imprisonment of Haitian editors by Presi- dent Borno ; E 51 Scarsdale prohibits sale of "hot dogs"; EP 124 Survivals of old-fashioned journalistic cour- age; EP 123 Friedman, Herbert J. Charles Evans Hughes ; C 543 Friedmann, Elisha M. The federal reserve fight ; S 359 Fruchter, Max A twentieth amendment ; C 451 Fuller, Alvan T. A conference with Governor Fuller. A. G. Hays; S 285 Found no dissatisfaction wiih Americans in Europe on account of Sacco-Vanzetti execution ; EP 695 Misquoted in report of a congressional speech; EP 410 Prejudice revealed in congressional speech ; EP 143 Writing decision in Sacco-Vanzetti case; EP 123 Fuller, Raymond Honesty in advertising ; S 202 Fuller, Walter. Obituary ; EP 353 G Gahan, John A. Have we forgotten Centralia? ; C 644 Galsworthy, John Escape. Criticism. J. W. Krutch; D 553 Gandhi, Mohandas Karamchand "Drain inspector's report" [Miss Mayo's "Mother India"]; IP 488 Gannett, Lewis S. "Norris for president" ; S 470 Garden of Eden. A. Hapgood ; D 431 Garvan, F'rancis P. Sneers at European competition in foreign markets ; E 669 Gary, Elbert H. Mr. Gary and his times; E 221 Obituary ; EP 170 Gassner, John Waldhorn To the impatient revolutionist; P 514 Gedye, G. E. R. Austria wavers toward reaction; S 474 Rumania free from the lion's paw; S 732 The Viennese shambles ; S 128 Genghis Khan Where Genghis died ; E 493 George, Stefan Receives Goethe prize of 10.000 marks; EP 353 Georgia Crusade against mob floggings in South ; EP 218 Geography Rediscovering the Pacific ocean. E. H. Hume; S 17!) Germany Capita] punishment in Germany. M. Tucker; C 571 Formation of Liga miramundum ; EP 191 Franco-German trade treaty: EP 190 German literature today. A. Eloesser ; S. 573 Hindenburg has a birthday. D. Thompson ; S 447 Is Germany extravagant? F. Kuh ; S 6S2 Police discover plot to ruin soviet Rus- sia ; EP Some mass demonstrations. F. Kirchwey; S.337 Gilbert. Parker Sends warning note to German govern- ment; EP 532 Third report as agent general of repara- tions an optimistic document: EP 723 Gilbert. William Schwenck, and Sir Arthur Sulli- van Mikado. Criticism. J. W. Krutch; D 344 Gilman, Elisabeth Christmas in old age ; (" 736 Glass. Carter; EP 437 Gleason, James The Shannons of Broadway. Criticism. J. W. Krutch ; D 431 Glenny, P.. and M. A. Hecht Such is life. Criticism. J. W. Krutch; D. 320 Glozel ; E 591 Gluck, Alma A letter from Mme Zimbalist ; C 7 12 Glucklich. Vilma V ilma Glucklich. R. Schwimmer : C 339 Golden. A. A. That fifteenth amendment ; C 630 Good Hope. H. Heijerman ; D 485 Goodenough, Caroline L. For president: Jane Addams : C 451 Grand Rapids, Michigan Reading "Land of the Pilgrim's Pride" by high-school pupils leads to uproar in com- munity; EP Ill Grattan, C. Hartley The Australian labor situation : IS 132 Graves. Robert Story of interview between T. E. Law- rence and King George ; E 591 Gray, Roy L 498

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Vol. cxxv] Index [July-Dec, 1927 Great Britain British finance and the Labor party. J. R. MacDonalci ; S 537 British trades union congress satisfies r Baldwin nor Stalin ; EP -71 British women in politics. .1. Stephen; S. 245 Criticized for hypocritical policies by min- ister to Egypt. J. M. Howell ; EP 18 Curzon weeps ; E 591 Disarmament and the Labor party. K. Smith ; IS 581 England's economic plight. .1. A. Hobson ; S Humanitarians appeal for support of Italian refugees . EP 272 Lord Wemyss wants Declaration of Paris of 1856 denounced : EP 12N.770 British subjects sign Arthur Pon- sonby's peace letter ; EP 695 Reform of House of Lords ; EP 1 Significance of Labor party gains; EP.... 532 The Elgin marbles ; E 79 Women invade Oxford; EP 1 Great Britain — Foreign policy Britain's folly toward Russia. J. R. Mac- Donald : S 102 Grea' Britain — India he naivete of the English ; E Great Britain — Navy Cut in naval building program comes op- portunely ; EP 587 Great Britain- --Parliament Parliament solemn and sober ; EP lit Great Britain — Politics and government England too bitter to compromise? F. Kirchwey ; S 103 St'-'ly continuance of reactionary drift: EP 144 The necessity of free trade. Earl Beau- champ ; IS 24 The uses of a king ; EP 29 Trade-unions bill o.->sed .hird reading in Commons ; EP 1 Grecco. Calogero : EP 531 Grecco-Ca'illo case For Grecco and Carillo. N. Thomas ; C. . . . 634 Gregy. A. W. Authors" royalties not "earned income" ; E. 149 Green, William; EP 615 Grier, Norman MacDowell ; EP 76 Grubb. W. I. Hands down injunction against Journey- men stone cutters' association of North America : EP 353 Gruening. Ernest H 684, 710 Guldbrandsen, Peter The new pacifism ; C 602 Gurley, Boyd ; EP 124 H Haggin, B. H. Music and its re-creation : M 105 The tail wags the dog ; M 261 Haiti A voice from a Haitian jail; IP Ids Crushing Haiti. P. Thoby ; C 16 Injustices unchecked by United States; EP. 143 Poor Haiti I; E 51 The press in Haiti. C. Martins; IS 166 Haig, field marshal Douglas; EP 30 Haines, Lynn Sire of the Eagle ; S 730 Hall, John ; EP 96 Hallgren, Mauritz A. Price-fixing in Queensland; IS 1 in The patriotic radio trust; S Hamblin, Chas. L. From a native of the state; C.. Hamilton. Cosmo, and Frank C. Reilly Pickwick. Criticism. J. W. Krutch : D. . 320 Hamlin, Talbot Faulkner Guy Lowell. Obituary ; S 17S Hammond, John Hays Deprecates uninformed vote: EP Hanson, Earl Iceland and industry ; S - ! Hapgood, Norman A hero of the Jews ; S 645 Brandeis. Holmes. Sacco, and Vanzetti; I Justice Brandeis: apostle of freedom : S. . . . 330 Hapgood, Powers Boston jury sets Hapgood free : EP Correction of error ; EP 27:3 In a Boston insane asylum ; S. . When the fan stops, get out : C Hard. William Our passion for arbitration ; C . ^03 Harden, Maximilian. Obituary; EP... 193 Hardin. Edward E. Restores Russell Tremaine to his parents : EP Harding. T. Swann Serving two masters ; S 310 Harland, Henry Henry Harland's letters. D. A. Roberts : C 479 Harrison, Charles Yale, and Norman Hapgood Brandeis, Holmes, Sacco, and Vanzetti: C. 424 Harvard university The Harvard war memorial ; E Haves, Carlton; EP 438 Hayes. J. M. Private school teachers ; C 64 Hays, Arthur Garfield A conference with Governor Fuller: S Hays. Will Declares there are too many national trade barriers ; EP 145 Hawkridge, Emma L. A warning : P ■ 738 llealy. James P. The pope's position ; C .175 Hearst, William Randolph Publishes documents branding Calles and Mexico ; EP The forgery as to The Nation; E "The sewer system of American journal- ism" ; E 724 . Edison; EP 164 Heijerman, Hermann The Good Hope. Criticism. J. W. Krutch ; D Heindel, Mrs. Max Rosierucianism ; C 425 Henry Street settlement Has instituted remarkable nursing service in New York city ; EP 164 Herrmann, John ; EP Ill Herzl, Theodore A hero of the Jews. N. Hapgood; S .... 645 Heyward. Du Bose Porgy. Criticism. J. W. Krutch; D 156 Hidden. W. Hurlbut ; D 458 High gear ; D 45S Hill. Creighton Describes police invasion of Sacco-Vanzetti funeral procession : EP 23S Hindenburg. Paul Celebrates eightieth birthday; EP 353 Hindenburg. Paul von : S 447 Hinkle. Beatrice M. Why feminism ?;S S Historicus Another view of war guilt ; C 133 Hoboken takes a joke ; E 99 Hobson. John A. England's economic plight : S 567 Hoffecker, G. S. Who plants bombs ? : C 2S7 Hoffmann. Mix von. Obituary; E 79 Holland tunnel Formal ceremonies at opening of tunnel under the Hudson river ; EP Holmes. Harry' N., defends gas warfare: EP.. 4S Holmes, John Haynes. Harry F. Ward The Gandhi relief fund ; C 426 Holmes, John Haynes The outlining of knowledge; S 379 Holly. William H. The American woman ; C 229 Hopwood. A. Garden of Eden. Criticism. J. W. Krutch : D 431 Horwitz, H. H. Sacco-Vanzetti : C 206 Hough. Benson W. injunction setting illegal limits to picketing: EP 273 Hough, Frederick Fake pictures from China; C 478 Houghton, Alanson B. Blames governments for war; E 32 One-hundred-year peace pact : E 127 Hourwich, Rebecca What books shall my small child read ; S. 546 of women. L. Bromfield : D 45S Howell. Joseph Morton : EP 4S Hubbard, Wynant Davis Is Africa going white, black, or brown'.': S 249 Hughes, Charles Evans Charles Evans Hughes. H. J. Friedman ; C Charles Evans Hughes. O. G. Villard : S. 117 Mr. Hughes and Michael Karolvi. M. L. Ems: ; (' 179 Hume. Edward H. Rediscovering the Pacific ocean: S IT'.1 Humor in Bi liament ; EP . . i:1 Humor Is there a Western typo of humor?: Dl 205 Hunter, Stanley A. Wayne B. Wheeler ; C Huntington, Ellsworth Why the American woman is unique; S [05 Hurlbut. W. Hidden. Criticism. J. W. Krutch : D 15$ Hygiene Wiping out yellow fever : EP I Ibsen. Henrik An enemy of the people. Criticism. J. W. Krutch : 11 . 430 Iceland Iceland and industry. E. Hanson; S 84 He do France : E 31 Immigration Humanity and immigration laws. B. M. Woodbridge : C 571 India "Drain inspector's report" ["Mother India" by Katherine Mayo]; IP Promulgation in Kashmir of law against child marriage: EP 324 The begum of Bhopal inaugurates India- wide drive for Islam ; EP 325 The Gandhi relief fund. J. H. Holmes ; H. F. Ward; C 426 The naivete of the English : E 562 Indiana Breaking loose from the Ku Klux klan ; El Forced retirement of Republican state chairman; EP 587 From the executive chamber into jaii ; EP 271 Indiana's anti-saloon league goes to jail. L. F. Budenz; S. . 177 Rotten politics ; EP 323 Scandals of 1927 — Indiana. L. F. Budenz: S 332 There's mud on Indiana's white robes. L. F. Budenz; S 81 Industrial exploration Charting the world's commodity flow. B. Mackaye : IS 70 Charting the world's requirements. B. Mackaye; IS Charting the world's resources. B. Mac- kaye; IS 119 Industry Big business is very happv. P. Musgrave ; S 225 Our waning prosperity ; E 495 Reasons for exchanging great cities for the country of various trades; EP 301 Satisfactory results follow establishment of S-hour day in steel industry; EP 273 Shortsighted tactics of leaders of motion- picture industry ; EP 301 What business wants from congress. L. Todd; S 626 Ingersoll, Robert G. Colonel Ingersoll's letters. E. I. Swasev ; C 603 Institute of Pacific relations Rediscovering the Pacific ocean. E. H. Hume : S 179 Interference. R. Pertwee and H. Dearden ; D.. 486 International conference of press experts Favors abolition of peace-time censorship ; EP 238 International mercantile marine company Proposed reduction of capital; EP 191 Irish sensitiveness On Irish films. A. J. Reilly; C 602 Ireland Assassination of Kevin O'Higgins ; EP.... 48 Clouds have not rolled away; EP 170 Death of Countess Markievicz : EP 77 Free state and republican Ireland. R. M. Fox : IS President Cosgrave continues to hold his place; EP 190 Iron Trade Review Testifies to good results from shorter day in steel industry ; EP 273 Italy An episode of fascism. G. Salvemini ; IS. 556 Extraordinary new code of laws promul- gated by Mussolini ; EP 21S Fascist culture: IP 21' Murder by "persons unknown." G. Salve- mini : S 3 1 Mussolini censors reedit Shaw's apologia for their chief ; EP 533 The fascist state : IP 322 The significance of suffrage under fascism ; EP 559 J.. H. M. Sacco- Vanzetti ; C . 206 Jackson, Ed Indicted on charge of conspiracy to com- mit a felony; EP 271 James. Henry- President Eliot's letters ; C 160 James, Louise Cushing -Vanzetti : C 206 Japan Disquieting increase of population : EP. ... 96 Labor elects twenty-six of its; candidates to the prefecture! councils ; EP 532 Mr. Lamont's duty ; E 671 Plots to control Manchuria and through it China : EP . . 300 Jennings. Leslie Nelson The gulls know best : P Jesus Selling Jesus : E 725 John. P. Barry; D Johnson. Albert Demands deportation for foreign-born sym- pathizers of Sacco and Vanzetti; EP... 169 Johnston. H. S. : EP 696 Johnston. Sir Harry. Obituary: EP 124 Jonas. Barukha Mr. Jonas wants to yelp : C 64 Jones. Leonora H. ; EP 218 Judicial hysteria Cases of: EP 273 Justesen. Viggo ; EP 723 Justice Case of Mrs. Brennan of Detroit: EP... 464 Debts of justice : unpaid : E 275

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Nos. 3235-3260] Index [Vol. cxxv K Kane, John Painter of houses and pictures; E 496 Kanner, Heinrich Another view of war guilt; C 86 Kansas Revolt against lawlessness of Wichita police force ; EP 96 Kaye. F. B. Pope manuscripts ; C 64 Keezer, D. M. An anti-trust law fiasco ; S 422 Kellogg, Frank B. Gross mismanagement in foreign service ; EP 123 Kenderdine, John D. Is the American legion liberal?; C 313 Kennedy, William Sloane Sacco-Vanzetti ; C 206 Kerr, John Leeds Sex literature continued further; C 159 Keynes, John Maynard Doubts Germany's ability to meet demands of Dawes plan ; EP 237 Kibler, H. R. The role of the farm bureau federation: C. 311 King, Carol Weiss Our rights in New York ; C 479 King, W. L. MacKenzie Originator of company-union plan; E.. 534 Kirchwey, Freda England — too bitter to compromise?; S... 103 Some mass demonstrations [in Berlin, Vienna, Heiligenblut] ; S 337 The docile American business man; C... 112 Kirchwey, George W. Opinion on victims of California criminal- syndicalism law ; EP 49 Kirkley, Donald Daniel Willard : a selfish man; S 307 Knight, L. Bondage ; C Ill Knight, M. M. In an Algerian looking glass ; C 64 Knox, Judge John Clark Refuses to hear "experts" on the literary value of "What Happens"; EP 411 Kreymborg, Alfred Epitaphs; P 65 Krupskaya, N. Soviet achievements in public education ; S 501 Krutch, Joseph Wood A fiasco; D 582 Black ecstasy ; D 456 Dutch interior ; D 485 Hare and hounds ; D 553 Holiday suggestions ; D 743 Ibsen Again ; D 430 Oyez, oyez, oyez ; D 406 Papa Shaw ; D 690 Paul Valery and the intelleclualist critics ; S 377 Pauline Lord ; D 610 Petruchio in modern dress ; D 521 Pickwick redivivus ; D 320 Plastic and temporal in art ; S 643 Poet laureate ; D 718 Stone walls do not ; D 343 The curtain rises ; D 295 The genius of Reinhardt ; D 666 Ku Klux klan Alabama's super government. C. N. Feidel- son; S f 311 Crusade against mob floggings in South ; EP 218 Has neat system of mulcting the gullible : EP 352 The new South ; E 173 There's mud on Indiana's white robes. L. F. Budenz ; S 81 Kuh, Frederick Is Germany extravagant ? : S 682 I, L., H. A call for organization ; C Labadie, Joseph A. A new labor library ; E 222 Labor Amoskeag manufacturing company orders a 10 per cent reduction in wages ; EP... . 721 Herbert Hoover vs. Irving Fisher in evalu- ating worker's status ; EP 668 Labor's league of nations explodes. H. Blankenhorn ; IS 460 "Mother Metropolitan." G. F. Willison ; S. 599 Statistics showing United States is workers' paradise; EP 110 The Australian labor situation. C. H. Grattan ; IS 132 Labor banks Optimism expressed at their inception not realized ; EP 3 Lamont, Thomas W. Mr. Lamont's duty [with regard to South Manchurian loan] ; E 671 Langdon-Davis, John 536 Lansbury, George ; EP 532 Law courts A Saeco revolver expert revealed. A. Warner ; S (jo.") To err is human ; E 620 Law, international The citizen abroad. E. M. Borchard ; IS. 365 Lawes, Warden Asserts capital punishment is worse than futile; EP n; | Lawrence, Susan ; EP 532 Lawrence, T. E. ; E 591 Lawrence, Thomas L. From the other Boston ; C 2K7 Lawrence, William A Christian bishop. A. N. Meyer; C 125 Lawson, John Howard Mobilizing public opinion ; C 22X Lawyers Attorneys for oil magnates not treated like country lawyers ; EP 461 League of nations A year after Thoiry. R. Dell ; S 282 Attitude of powers to Russia's participating in disarmament conference ; EP 616 Fight for "open door" in news dissemina- tion ; EP 170 First week of naval disarmament confer- ence at Geneva ; EP 2 Geneva and neutrality ; E 241 Is war planned in Geneva between England and the United States?; EP 47 Our passion for arbitration. W. Hard; C. 603 Peace or war ? ; E 618 Poland and Lithuania declare for peace ; EP 69f> Russia leads the world [with proposal of disarmament] ; E 670 The revolt at Geneva ; E 274 The scandal at Geneva ; E 33 Vilna and the League. M. Spence ; IS... 719 World articles indicate tampering with re- port on white-slave traffic ; EP 668 Leary, Zoe On leaving newspapers ; C 339 Leavens, Robert F. Another son of Massachusetts; C 126 Lee, Rose Jacob Epstein; A 716 Lehmann, Lilli ; E 726 Lenin Quotation from last "testament"; EP.. 533 Letter, The. W. S. Maugham; D 131 Levermore, Charles H. Obituary ; EP 465 Levine, Charles A., honored on return; E.... 442 Lewis, Alfred Baker Is the American legion liberal? ; C 313 Radio censorship ; C 39 Lewis, Frederick W. ; EP 272 Lewis, John L. ; EP 615 Lewis, Wyndham An enemy worth having ; E 535 Lewisohn, Ludwig French literature today ; S 572 Liberia The police of Monrovia. F. O'Brien : C 5 11 Lieberman, Elias Black magic ; P 738 Liga miramundum League for international friendship formed in Germany; EP 191 Lindbergh. Charles August ; C 632 Lindbergh, Charles A. Censorship on the Memphis ; EP 2 Lindbergh's own story ; E 125 Lindbergh. Sr., Charles Augustus Sire of the Eagle. L. Haines : S 739 Lippmann, Walter Walter Lippmann, connoisseur of public life. B. Stolberg ; S 639 Literary criticism A Buddhist source' for Christian legend'? W. N. Brown ; C 339 The author complains. A. Rutledge ; C.. 311 Vrai bon ' S. Burt ; C . . . 288 Literature A selected list of the season's translations. 57 1 A survey of the season's books. M. Van Doren : S 376 Hold adultery and wilful murder; E 5 Caterpillars on the state; E 119 French literature today. I/. Lewisohn ; S. 572 German literature today. A. Eloesser ; S Have you a little MS? J. Smertonko : S. 10S Literature and tradition: E 355 Muckrakor tactics. H. Broun: S On contemporary American fiction. C. P. Fadiman ; S 6 12 Paid Valerv and the intelleotualist critics. J. W. Krutch : S 377 Pedants on pedestals. R. Aldington: C.. ^7 Plastic and temporal in art. J. W. Krutch; S 643 Sex literature continued. C. J. Finger. M. Marini. M. R. Sanford : C 13:', Sex literature continued further. J. L. Kerr: C 159 Sissified sex literature. A. S. Blackwell ; W. McFee: C 63 That six-cylindered airman. N. Denton. D. P. Spencer : C 17 The art of translation ; E The charm of the Victorian : E 393 The noble art of mystery ; E 242 The stock of Boswell continues to soar ; EP 325 Warrior Wells and battling Belloe : E 191 William Blake. 1827-1927; E 221 Lithuania Vilna and the Leagrue. M. Spence; IS 719 Litvinov, M. ; E g7Q Long, Haniel Letter after a visit ; P 1 g Los Angeles High-school sophomore wisdom; Dt 229 Law and order in Los Angeles. R. Bor- ough; S 12 President of Better America federation in a scrape; EP 30 Lothar, R., and F. Gottwald Command to love. Criticism. J. W. Krutch ; D ,107 Lovejoy, Owen ; EP 697 Lovers and enemies. M. P. Artzybasheff ; D 407 Loving, Pierre Legend of the brazier man ; P 257 Lowell, Guy Guy Lowell. T. F. Hamlin; obituary; S.. 178 Lucky strike cigarettes advertising; EP 351 Lynn, Marshall Frenzied railroad finance; S 35 M M., W. Morituri te salutant ; C 181 McAdoo, William Gibbs Decides not to run for presidency ; EP . 299 McAndrew, William; S r>38 MacClinchy, Russell The reform movement in Michigan; C. 39 McCormick, Ruth Hanna Asks for support in order to smash corrupt politician ; EP 351 Nation readers criticize her; EP 438 Ruth Hanna McCormick. M. Adams; S. . 449 MacDonald, James Ramsay Britain's folly toward Russia; S 102 British finance and the Labor party : S . 537 McFee, William Sissified sex literature; C 63 Mackaye, Benton Charting the world's commodity flow; IS.. 70 Charting the world's requirements; IS.... 92 Charting the world's resources; IS.... 119 McKnight, Floyd A legend ; P 1 61 Macmahon, Benjamin The mark of Cain ; C 175 McNab, Tansy The soviet invasion of America; S 528 McNally, William Mr. Babbitt, meet Sinclair Lewis; S 278 Mafalda, the principessa ; Dt 612 Magruder, Thomas Pickett Consideration of charges against navy de- partment ; E 354 Detached from command of Philadelphia navy yard ; EP 491 Maine Maine's water-power fight. E. Sparling ; S 710 Retains primary by large majority; EP. . 463 Maltzan, Ago von. Obituary ; EP 325 Manchuria. See Japan Manning, William Thomas; EP 31 Marckwardt, Albert Dismissed from high school for asking class in English to review "Land of the Pil- grim's Pride"; El> Ill Marini, Myra Sex literature continued ; C 133 Markievicz, Constance Georgine. Obituary ; EP 77 Marquis, Donald Robert Perry Out of the sea. Criticism. J. W. Krutch ; D 71S Marquise. N. Coward ; D 690 Marshall college President Shawkey dismisses two professors : EP 239 Marshall. Margaret The king is dead ; S 67* Martin, Lawrence Chicago's symphony orchestra; S 404 Higher education in Chicago ; S 538 Martins. Carlos The press in Haiti: S 166 Massachusetts Arbitrary dismissal of Mrs. Clitford from Lynn schools ; EP 76 Boston recovering from hysteria of Sacco- Vanzetti days ; KB 667 Maugham. W. Somerset The IeUer. Criticism. J. W. Krutch ; D. 431 Meacham, Frank T. In defense of missions ; C 451 Meiklejohn, Alexander Alexander Meiklejohn. L. Price; S 541 Mellett, Don R; EP 123 Mellon, Andrew J. ; EP 30 Memorials The Harvard war memorial ; E 535 Men Save-the-men movement. M. H. Speer ; C. 736 Should men be protected? L. Pruette ; S. 200 Mencken, H. L. Has become a national fashion ; EP 273 Mennonites Granted generous concessions by Paraguay ; EP 410 Menuhin, Yehudi A letter from Mme Zimbalist. A. Gluck ; C. 742

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Vol. cxxv] Index [July-Dec, 1927 Meteorology From the long-range weather prophet. H. J. Browne ; C 1 12 The wisdom of Herbert Brown; E 33 Metropolitan life insurance company "Mother Metropolitan." G. F. Willison ; S. 599 Mexico Contemplated good-will airplane trip from Texas; EP Gomez ami Serrano — conspi ainsl I he government ; E 4 12 In an Algerian looking glass. M. M. Knight; C HI Mexico's election; E 112 The Mexican "just won't work." E. A. Frank ; S Mexico — Folk-lore Weeping the bone. A. Brenner; S ."> U> Meyer, Annie Nathan A Christian bishop ; C 126 Michigan A new labor library ; E 222 The reform movement in Michigan. R. MacClinchy ; C Middleton, George Blood money. Criticism. J. W. Krutch ; D 295 Mikado. W. S. Gilbert and A. Sullivan; D . . 3 I 1 Milazzo. Frank ; S 625 Miley, Cora The Seminole oil field ; S 151 Milgram, Joseph B. Is the American legion liberal?; (' 313 Military training Compulsion at De Pauw. E. Cowling; S. 59 Must be no letdown in militarizing youth- ful minds ; El' 97 Subtle tactics employed to win students ; EP 352 Mill island in Baffin bay. mapping of; EP.... 1-1 Millay, Kathleen Wake. Dirge. Elegy ; P 310 Miller. Alice Duer The springboard. Criticism. J. W. Krutch ; D 486 Miller, Kelley Gallinipper wisdom ; C 478 Miller. Leon P. What is a bar association ; C Miller, Nathan ; EP 464 Mills, Florence. Obituary; EP 533 Mines Rock dusting >c mines. J. 13. Andrews; C. 255 Missions, Christian In defense of missions. F. T. Meacham ; C 451 Mississippi flood Discouraging condition of water-logged lands ; EP 76 Stricken states expected to bear part of cost of future Hood control; EP 723 Moon, Thomas Parker ; EP 438 Morals Issue between Bishop Manning and Harry Emerson Fosdick ; EP 31 Morocco Kidr ipping in Al-Moghreb Al-Oksa ; Dt. . 543 Morris, Homer Captain Proctor's testimony ; C 175 Morrow. Dwight From Morgan's up ; E 327 Promoting friendship between United States and Mexico ; EP 695 Morton, David Eavesdropper ; P 427 Most interesting commencement ; Dt ,;1 "Mother India" by Katherine Mayo: IP Mullins, Helene Anxiety in solitude : P Municipal government Need of national society for reform of police; EP Munro. William B. Not afraid of slacker vote; EP 58" Musgrave, Percy Big business is very happy ; S. . . The Bosch Magneto case comes to court ; S Music Beethoven festival at Bonn. 11. Straus; Chicago's symphony orchestra. L. Martin . S Korngold's "Violanta." L. Adler 664 Lower Rhine festival in Aachen. 11. Straus; S 211 Music and its re-creation. B. H. Haggin ; S Should music teachers be licensed? S. J. Birnbaum ; C Some German operatic impressions. H. Straus ; S 23 The tail wags the dog. B. H. Haggin ; S Women and artists ; E Yehudi Menuhin. O. G. Villard ; S Mussolini, Benito No merry Christmas and happy new year for him : EP Praises Howard Chandler Christy; EP Promulgates new code of laws ; EP 21S Muzzey, David Saville Sues abusers of textbook for libel; EP.. 463 My Maryland ; D 341 N Nathan, George Jean; EP 411 Nation, The Mayllowering. A. S. 1'. : C 479 Morituri te salutant. W. M. ; C 1S1 School wants old Nations. L. H. Foster ; C 160 Testimonial letters The forgery as to Tlie Nation; E 699 To Chicago readers of The Nation. M. Calder; C 364 National association of manufacturers Comes out with program for protection of employed children ; EP '. 1 '. National child labor committee Hails new program of National association of manufacturers ; EP 411 National City bank Cancels advertising contract with China Weekly Review; EP 96 Nearing, Scott The movement of world wealth; IS -34 The white terror in China ; S 734 Negroes Case of Anna in Milwaukee; EP 219 Prejudice tracks race from Virginia to New- Jersey : EP 96 Strike of white pupils in Gary high school in protest against presence of Negro students ; EP 352 Target of criminal policemen; EP 324 The Negro in the industrial South. E. F. Frazier ; S S3 The Negro peril. W. Pickens; C 112 The social bar. L. G. Brooks ; C What is a bar association? L. P. Miller; C 684 Newspapers Boston Herald merits booby prize; EP.... 219 Fake pictures from China. F. Hough; C. 47> Fights and flights in the newspapers. S. Bent; S 473 New Haven papers ignore labor news ; EP On leaving newspapers. Z. Leary ; C... 339 The vanishing American daily; E 127 What is news ? ; EP 409 Newspapers, foreign World opinion on Sacco and Vanzetti 174 New York (city) Americanism of the Government club: EP. 409 Are you a New Yorker 7 ; E 51 Darker ; spects of "Al" Smith's impressive state-wide victory ; EP 559 Hearings on the relations between the city and the I.R.T and the B.-M.T. ; EP 2 "L" service infuriating "angry passengers" ; EP 77 Our rights in New York. C. W. King; C. 179 Police held accountable when they turn criminal ; EP 492 Reckless shooting by police; EP 191 Tammany hall; Dt 711 Tragic-comic police conduct ; EP New York (state) Theodore Roosevelt, jr., attacks Governor Smith: EP 137 Westchester county distinguishes itself for intelligent voting ; EP 560 Nicaragua Engagements and casualties in civil war: EP 463 Humiliating spectacle in Nicaragua and Washington ; EP 109 Murder is the fit word ; EP 75 Nicaragua's new bondage ; E The American plan. D. Y. Thomas: C ... 543 Who are the "bandits" whom United States marines kill ? ; EP 237 Nightstick; D 612 Niles. Katherine and Abbe Niles Composograph of the dance : A 552 Nobel peace prize Awarded to Ludwig Quidde and Ferdinand Buisson : EP 697 Norrie, Mrs. Gordon. Obituary: EP 171 Norris, George W. Nebraska. F. Babcock ; S 705 "Norris for president." L. S. Gannett; S North Carolina Notable strike of Henderson mill-work' EP North Dak Nye's platform for progressives : EP Charles I The Norton centenary ; F. 0 Frances gia O'Keeffe : S 361 Modern art in Palestine: \ ... 184 O'Brien. Frederick The C 544 • and the stars. Criticism. J. W. Krutch: D 718 ir, William Douglas "The good gray poet" : E 468 O'Dwyev, Brendan Catholic schools : C 112 O'Higgins. Kevin. Obituary : FP IS O'Sullivan. Vincent The perils of Paris ; C 632 Odams. John ; EP 219 Odhner. Madefrey Silly .Marten; P 246 Oil. See Petroleum Oklahoma Dogfight stopped for Christmas holidavs ; EP "... 722 Has one of her periodic civil wars; EP.. 696 Oklahoma goes Rosicrucian. A, Blake; S.. 247 The Seminole oil field. C. Milev ; S 151 One Who Is Had Darrow been a journalist ; S 131 Only another scheme of efficiency experts? Dt. . 180 Osborn. William Church Appraises the work of Mr. Brace in behalf of the children of New York ; EP 697 Our wonderful language. L. N. Sperling; C... 314 Out of the sea. Don Marquis ; D 718 Owen, Russell Ruth Elder's revolt ; S 569 Owens, John W. Succeeds John Haslup Adams as editor of Baltimore Sun ; EP 465 Owens, Mrs. George E. ; EP 409 Oyoma. Ikuo ; EP 532 P P.. A. S. Mayflowering ; C 479 Pacific countries Conference of institute of Pacific relations in Honolulu : E Packers consent decree An anti-trust law fiasco. D. M. Keezer ; S. . 422 Page, Kirby ; EP 589 Palmer, Frank L. War in Colorado ; S 623 Panama Genesis and present status ; EP 300 Secretary Kellogg blames western Europe for Panama's failure to ratify treaty with the United States ; EP 217 Pan-American conference To be attended by an impressive American delegation ; EP 532 Pan-American labor congress Latin Americans charge United States with thirty-five invasions ; EP 97 Panken, Judge Jacob Republicans and Democrats unite to defeat Socialist candidate ; EP 411, 559 Paraguay Grants generous concessions to Mennonites : EP 410 Parker, Dorothy Interior ; P 598 Parker, Walter : Dt 450 Parri, Ferruccio ; IS 556 Passports The passport nuisance. E. Pound; S 600 Pater. William Political science ; C 634 Peabody, George Foster A rare citizen ; E 100 Peace Through sport to peace? : E 303 Through sports to peace? H. F. V. Ed- ward : C 632 Peirce. Harold Sacco- Vanzetti ; C 206 Penology California sterilization. C. E. Edgerton : C. 16 Governor Smith — penologist ; E 598 Perdicaris, Don ; Dt 543 Perfect. T. Guy ; EP 587 Pertwee, Roland, and Harold Dearden Interference. Criticism. J. W. Krutch ; D. 486 Petroleum Clash between Roval Dutch-Shell and Stand- ard Oil of New York : EP 190 Differences between Standard Oil and Royal Dutch-Shell : EP 617 Russian oil — lubricant and irritant; E 126 The Seminole oil field. C. Miley : S 151 Philadelphia Enlightenment in Philadelphia. H. E. Wildes; C 113 Philadelphia sesquicentennial exhibition Exhibitions and expositions: E 441 Philippine islands Henry L. Stimson appointed to succeed Leonard Wood as governor general; EP. . 722 Leonard Wood fights for continuance of his policy: EP 2 Phillips. Wendell; EP 219 Pickens. William The Negro peril : C 112 Pickwick. C. Hamilton and F. C. Reilly ; D... 320 Pindar, George A. Symphony in the South : C 684 Plow and the stars. S. O'Casey ; D 718 Plunkett. Charles P. Upheld in encounter with Red Cross: EP.. 492

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Nos. 3235-3260] Index [Vol. cxxv Poems A legend. F. McKnight 161 A warning. E. L. Hawkridge 738 Advice to a mendicant. L. Kiggs 472 Aesthete. H. A. Potamkin 134 Anxiety in solitude. H. Mullins 678 Before winter. Lynn Kiggs 686 Black magic. E. Lieberman 738 Bookworm. C. Cuthbert 480 Contemporary verse. R. Cheney, L. Trent; C 113 Diplomatic sonnet. H. Dowd 218 Eavesdropper. D. Morton 427 Interior. I). Parker 698 Introduction. C. A. Wagner 713 Epitaphs. A. Kreymborg 6f> Isadora Duncan. M. Eastman 30'J Late. L. Bogan 230 Legend of the brazier man. P. Loving.... 257 Letter after a visit. H. Long 18 November corn field. W. Snow 333 Ocean. T. H. Ferril 604 Poem. C. P. Smith 453 Quaker pagan. S. B. Field 315 Second advent. J. G. Fletcher 646 Silly Marten. M. Odhner 246 Song. M. de L. Welch 378 Tears in sleep. L. Bogan 230 The gulls know best. L. N. Jennings 20s The subway. A. Tate 44S The unfamiliar house. J. G. Fletcher 130 This rock. H. S. White 114 To the impatient revolutionist. J. W. Gassner 514 Vigil. A.Tate 18 Wake. Dirge. Elegy. K. Millay 340 Warm stone woman. H. M. Corning 88 With the gods. W. Bynner 182 Poetry Shall poets become extinct?; EP 31 Poindexter, Miles Reports South America alive with fear of the United States ; EP 532 Poland Polish-Lithuanian entanglement; EP 61C Police Revolt against increasing lawlessness of police forces ;EP 96 Tragic-comic mistake ; EP 169 Ponsonby, Arthur 128.770 British subjects sign peace letter ; EP 695 Pope, Alexander Pope manuscripts. F. B. Kaye ; C 64 Popescu, Aureliu Jon Parties and politics in Rumania; IS 744 Popper, Marion Z. To teachers ; C 685 Porgy. D. Heyward ; D 456 Portland. Maine ; Dt 683 Potamkin, Harry Alan Aesthete ; P 134 "God's trombones" ; C 133 Pound, Ezra Pound for president; C 684 The passport nuisance ; S 600 Powell, John Benjamin Punished for opposing military intervention in China ; EP 96 Presidential possibilities Alfred E. Smith. O. G. Villard ; S 595 Charles Evans Hughes. O. G. Villard; S. . 417 Hoover to the fore. O. G. Villard; S 700 Price, Lucien Alexander Meiklejohn ; S 541 Prohibition Indiana's anti-saloon league goes to jail. L. F. Budenz; S 177 Lapse of son of head of Virginia anti-saloon league; EP 145 Some survive without wine. J. N. Wash- burne ; C 451 Prohme, Rayna. Obituary ; EP 617 Property, sequestrated Foregoing theft ; E 303 Pruette, Lorine Should men be protected? ; S 200 Pullman company Porters continue fight for honest wages ; EP 272 Pullman porters Farmers and Pullman porters ; C 513 Putnam, David Luckiest boy in world ; EP 124 Q Quidde, Ludwig ; EP 6(17 R Racket ; D 690 Radio Censor cancels talk on the President and fishing methods ; EP 77 Radio censorship. A. B. Lewis: C 39 The patriotic radio trust. M. A. Hallgren ; S 53 Raffaele, Thomas Obtains verdict against New York city de- tective ; EP 492 Railroads B. & O. celebrates first century of existence ; E 441 Evils of private management; EP 144 Frenzied railroad finance. M. Lynn; S.... 35 Momentous decision in the St. Louis and O'Fallon railroad case ; EP 696 Railroading or stockjobbing ; E 725 Raisuli ; Dt 543 Rakovsky, Alexandra Modern women in soviet Russia; S 509 Ratcliffe. K. M. A visit to the men's [Sacco-Vanzetti] home towns ; S 335 Rawson, Philip N., and Gertrude K. Rawson There's room for freedom in Texas ; C 363 Raymond. Frank M. Al Smith ; C 712 Red Cross Must not solicit subscriptions from small- salaried civil employees ; EP 492 Red peril Gallinipper wisdom. K. Miller; C 478 Red rooster of Russia ; Dt 600 Reilly, A. J. On Irish films ; C 602 Rein, G. A. Deplores anti-German movies in United States : EP 170 Reinhardt, Max A midsummer night's dream. Criticism. J. W. Krutch ; D 666 "Revelry" ; S 375 Revelry. M. Watkins ; D 344 Rhodes scholars ; EP 49 Riggs, Lynn Advice to a mendicant ; P 472 Before winter ; P 686 Riis, Roger William Twenty-three ! ; C 571 Robbing American tourists in Europe; Dt 424 Roberts, Donald A. Henry Harland's letters ; C 479 Rochester, Anna Boston's state of mind ; C 176 Rock dust When the fan stops, get out. P. Hapgood ; C 363 Rodenberg, William A. ; E 51 Rolland, Romain Message to America on Massachusetts tragedy ; S 306 Roman Catholicism Catholic "renaissance" in France. I. Treat ; S 55 Catholic schools. B. O'Dwyer : C 112 The truth about Canossa. H. C. Engel- brecht; C 1B0 Romancing 'round ; D 431 Romanov, Panteleimon The actress : S 157 Roosevelt, Theodore, Jr. Unlucky at game of politics; EP 352. 437 Rosicrucianism Rosicrucianism. Mrs. M. Heindel ; C 425 Rosicrucian. See Oklahoma goes Rosicrucian Rosselli. Carlo ; IS 556 Rotarians Questionable antics in foreign countries ; EP 3 Rubin. Daniel Women go on forever. Criticism. J. W. Krutch ; D 320 Rumania Kines mere figureheads : EP 95 Muddled situation following Bratianu's death; EP 617 Parties and politics in Rumania. A. J. Popescu : IS 711 Rumania free from the lion's paw. G. E. R. Gedye: S 732 The Eastern edge of Europe. L. E. Van Norman : IS 44 Things not going well ; EP 559 Russia A bit of Russian patchwork. K. Borders : S 60 A forger of soviet "documents." L. T. : IS 213 All over the soviet land. A. R. Williams: S 503 British pin-pricking causes exciting sum- mer: EP 29 Chronological record of the Russian revo- lution ; TRS 523 Disarmament proposals and Litvinov's reso- lution ; 1 692 English testimony in behalf of satisfactory Russian business dealings : EP 272 Expulsion of Trotzky and other members of the opposition from the Communist party: KP 532. 588 Liberty under the Soviets. R. N. Baldwin: S 505 "Liberty under the Soviets." R. Baldwin : C ...' 634 Mass movies. S. M. Eisenstein ; S 507 Mr. Jonas wants to yelp. B. Jonas; C. 64 Modern women in soviet Rvissia. A. Ra- kovsky: S 509 "Mother, mav I look at the bolsheviks?": EP 77 On the road to socialism. L. Fischer ; S. 499 Progress under the Soviets; statistics 716 Russian oil —lubricant and irritant: E 126 Sensational news of uprising in Ukraine : EP Something new in the world : E 49 ! Soviet achievements in public education. N. Krupskaya : S 501 Soviet courts. M. Zaslaw : IS 267 Soviet-Persia trade treaty irritates Eng- land : EP 190 The passing of Trotzky. L. Fischer ; S The patient. M. Zoshchenko. Trans!, by M. Eastman : S 508 The soviet invasion of America. T. Mc- Nab; S 528 The soviet opposition ; 1 266 Trotzky answers some questions; IP 346 Rutledge, Archibald The author complains ; C 314 Ryo Yc-i ma i'ii ; Dt 570 S Sacco. Rosina From Mrs. Sacco ; C 630 Sacco- Vanzetti case A call for organization. H. L. ; C 228 A conference with Governor Fuller. A. G. Hays ; S 285 "A decent respect to the opinions of man- kind"; E 172 A humane warden. G. B. Sutherland; C. 228 io looks at Sacco's America. T. L. Dabney ; C 287 A note of discord. A. J. Boyden ; C 228 A Sacco revolver expert i evealed. A. Warner ; S 625 A visit to the men's home towns. K. M. Ratcliffe ; S 335 American professor's opinion; EP 169 Among the teachers. Chez Columbia; C. 287 Andrew Carnegie said. D. Allen ; C 339 Another son of Massachusetts. R. F. Leavens ; C 426 Another view of Brandeis. S. Danziger ; C. 513 Booby prize for poltroonery goes to Boston Herald ; EP 219 Borah's disappointing letter to Jane Ad- dams ; EP 189 Brandeis, Holmes, Sacco, and Vanzetti. C. Y. Harrison ; C 424 British opinion on the Sacco-Vanzetti exe- cution ; IP 321 From Mrs. Sacco. R. Sacco ; C 630 From the other Boston. T. L. Lawrence ; C 287 Governor Fuller writing decision; EP 123 Gratitude due to Elizabeth Glendower Evans and Felix Frankfurter; EP 219 Handsome Carr posters ; EP 239 Have faith in Calvan T. Fullidge ! G. E. ; C 228 "Have faith in Massachusetts"? Letters from Nation readers 253 Honor in Languedoc. H. W. Dooley ; C. 363 Hopeful augury in behalf of prisoners ; EP. 97 Hostility of Albert Johnson; EP 169 In a Boston insane asylum. P. Hapgood ; S 226 Is Boston reforming? F. H. Bigelow ; C. 603 Justice in hell. J. B. Barnhill ; C 513 Justice underfoot ; E 146 Lenora H. Jones loses job for talking in favor of Sacco and Vanzetti ; EP 218 Massachusetts judicial council recommends revision of appeal system ; EP 695 Massachusetts the murderer ; E 192 Massachusetts — there she stands. J. B. Day; C 113 May flowering. A. S. P.; C 479 Message to America on Massachusetts tragedy. R. Rolland ; S 306 Mr. Jonas wants to yelp. B. Jonas; C... 64 Mobilizing public opinion. J. H. Lawson ; C 228 Most outrageous happening in entire trial ; EP 143 Nation readers on Sacco and Vanzetti.... 175 New York magistrates punish men for dis- tributing Sacco-Vanzetti circulars; EP. . 218 On reading the Sunday newspapers: 1927. E. Scott ; C 287 Our rights in New York. C. W. King ; C. 479 Police invasion of funeral procession ; EP 238. 239 Press comment on the Sacco-Vanzetti exe- cution 252 Sacco-Vanzetti. A. S. C. ; H. H. Horwitz: H. M. J. ; H. Peirce ; L. A. Elsworth ; L. C. James; W. S. Kennedy; W. T. Scofield; C 206 Sacco-Vanzetti — next steps; E 220 Shortsighted tactics of leaders of motion- picture industry: EP 301 Thank you. S. G. Shapleigh ; C 311 The anger of South America. R. Craw- ford; S 334 The Lugano spirit. J. Zed; C 478 Twenty-three! R. W. Riis; C 571 Violence bad policy; EP 189 What happened August 2?; E 171 What history says. R. S. Chase; C 227 Who'll help ? B. Watson : C Who plants bombs? G. S. HofTecker; C. 2S7 World opinion on Sacco and Vanzetti [newspaper excerpts | 174 Y. M. C. A. letter and Nation's reply; E. 238 Salvemini, Gaetano An episode of fascism ; IS 556 Murder by "persons unknown"; S 34 Sandburg, Carl Did Mrs. Stowe make shoes?; C 62 Sandino, Augusto ; EP 75 Sanford, Mary R. Sex literature continued ; C 133 Sarni. Giovanni; Dt 629 Sassenbach, Joh. Who helped the British miners?; C 63 Sayre, J. G. More Chinese atrocities ; S 129

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Vol. cxxv] Ind ex [July-Dec, 1927 Scarsdale Prohibits sale of "hot dogs" on street ; EP 121 Schumunn-Heink, Ernestine; E T2t> Schwimmer, Rosika Denied final citizenship papers; EP.... 437 Hendrik van Loon and Rosika Schwim- mer. II. W. van Loon ; 431 Shapleigh, Serma G. Thank you ; C 314 Shaw, Fred B. ; EP 77 Shaw, George Bernard ; EP 145 Shaw, George Bernard The doctor's dilemma. Criticism. J. W. Krutch; D Shipler, Guy Emery The Los Angeles Times; C 25 1 Shipping East Atlantic liner.- . E 356 Honor is a tradition of the sea. F. C. Ames ; S ST Proposed reorganization of International mercantile marine company : EP 191 United States line earned operating protit ; EP 1 45 When is a ship not a ship? ; E 31 Sigman, M. Mr. Sigman on the garment strike; C ... 17 Sinclair-Fall case Calling men by their right names; E .. . 440 Money warping the law ; EP 531 Sinclair and Fall on trial. R. Clapper ; S. 445 Sinclair, Upton Would indict Massachusetts : C 175 Sinclair. Upton 622 Sirovich, William Irving Al Smith; C 712 Slacker vote "Bawling at the voters" ; EP 5S7 Compulsory voting no remedy ; EP 72S Viggo Justesen proposes remedy; EP 72:! Slater, Oscar ; E Slowacki, Julius Return of body to Poland ; EP 77 Smerten' o, Johan Have you a little MS ? : S 108 Smith. Alfred Emanuel Al Smith. F. M. Raymond. N. Thomas. W. I. Sirovich ; C 712 "Al" Smith in Texas. R. A. Black; S. . 14 Alfred E. Smith. O. G. Villard : S. Defines position on prohibition ; EP 667 Governor Smith penologist; E How "Al" Smith fared in Mississippi. H. Rutler ; S 214 Profits by Mr. McAdoo's withdrawal from presidential race; EP Smith, ("hard Powers Poem 153 Smith. Rennie Disarmament and the Labor party; IS 584 Smutney, Joseph ; Dt 629 Snow, Wilberl November corn field ; P. . . . South, the Symphony in the South. G. A. Pindar; C. 684 The new South; E ...173 South Africa Hot discussion around new flag; EP. Souvenirs and drifting among Oriental bazaars ; Dt Spain First assembling of National A since establishment of Prime de Rivera's dictatorship ; EP Sparling, Earl Maine's water-power fight; S 710 Speer, Margaret H. Save-the-men movement : C 73 ■• Spence, Matilda Vilna and the League ; IS 719 Spencer, D. P. That six-cylindered airman ; C 17 Sperling. L. N. Our wonderful language: C "11 Sport Amusing jargon of the prize ring: EP.... 96 Executions : the new sport. E. Stevenson : S 676 Presidential fishing ; EP 77 Text: the world's series ; E 4 IS Through sport to peace? : E 303 Through sports to peace? H. F. V. Edward; C 632 Springboard. A. D. Miller; D 486 Stefano, Ettorede; Dt 62'.' Steichen, Edward ; EP 465 Stephen. Jessie British women in politics ; S Stephenson, D. C. ; EP 48 Stevenson. Edward Executions : the new sport : S 676 Stevenson, J. A. Canada's jubilee; S 13 Stewart, Rosalie A la carte. Criticism. J. W. Krutch; D. 295 Stimson. Henry L. Succeeds Leonard Wood as governor gen- eral of the Philippine islands ; EP 722 Stoker. Bram Dracula. Criticism. J. W. Krutch: D. . 458 Stolberg, Benjamin Walter Lippmann. connoisseur of public life: S Story of stowaways ; Dt 629 Stowe. Harriet Beecher Did Mrs. Stowe make shoes'.' C. Sand- burg ; C 62 Strachey, John St. Loe. Obituary; EP 219 Straus. Henrietta Some German operatic impressions: M.... 23 The Beethoven festival at Bonn; M 118 The lower Rhine festival in Aachen; M.. 211 Strikes — Great Britain Who helped the British miners? J. Sassen- bach; C 63 Strikes — United States Bloody Colorado ; E 534 Coal miners in Illinois and Iowa win strike lasting since April 1; EP 410 Green and Lewis submit miners' grievance to President Coolidge ; EP 615 In the bituminous coal fields ; EP 77 Miners discriminated against by hospitals and relief agencies ; EP 722 Miners in Ohio and Pennsylvania still on strike; EP 410 Miners' predicament in coal region result of laissez faire ; EP 144 Mr. Sigman on the garment strike. M. Sigman; C 17 Notable strike of Henderson mill-workers ; EP 324 Rioting in Ohio and Pennsylvania coal region ; EP 144 Settlement of Superior. Wis., school strike; EP 272 The Hampton strike. W. E. Burghardt Du Bois; S 471 War in Colorado. F. L. Palmer; S 623 Such is life. P. Glenny and M. A. Hecht ; D.. 320 Sun Yat-sen, madam ; IP 29S Supreme court of the United States Brands Fall and Sinclair in Teapot Dome trial; E 440 Sutherland, Geo. B. A humane warden ; C 22S Swasey, Eva Ingersoll Colonel Ingersoll's letters ; C 603 Syracuse university Even a student has some rights; E ...241 T T., L. A forger of soviet "documents" ; IS 21" Take my advice ; D 582 Take the air : D Taming of the shrew. W. Shakespeart . I1 521 Tariff. See Unite, I States— Tariff Tate. Allen The subway ; P 448 Vigil; P .is Taxa 1 1 tax Abolishing the death duties; E 337 Teachers' union eachers. M. '/.. Popper: C 6S5 Dome S. Bent . C 543 Facts and figures about labor: EP. Ten per cent. E. Davis: D Texas Business men plan good-will airplane trip to Mexico; EP 191 Fee-snatching rs. judicial system: EP.. - 14 1 There's room for freedom in Texas. P. N. Rawson. G. K. Rawson : C Theater iloid ["The Prodigal Son"]; E 414 Civic Repertory Theater a remarkable the- atrical enterprise : EP Down with the critics ! ; E 671 German prol ■plores anti-German movies: EP no Great ovation at bier of Florence Mills: EP 533 Joan of Arc with a duenna; EP 124 Methods of selling theater tickets as re- vealing typical New Yorker : E 51 The actress. P. Romanov : S . 157 The end of "Abie's Irish Rose"; E 467 Thoby, Perceval Crushing Hai:: : C 16 Thomas, David Y. The American plan ; C Thomas, Norman Al Smith ; C 712 For Grecco and Carillo ; C Thompson, Dorothy Hindenburg has a birthday: S 417 Thompson, W:illiam Hale Clash of words between mayor and public- library directors : EP Thompson, William Hale ; S Time, sphericality of ; Dt Ill Times ( New York ) Corrects sensational report with regard to uprising in the Ukraine: EP Todd. Laurence What business wants from congress : S ... 626 Toth, Andrew ; E Trade unions — Great Britain Trade-unions bill passed third reading in Commons ; EP i Translations A selected list of the season's translations 574 Treat, Ida Is this America?; S 421 The Catholic "renaissance" in France: S. 55 Tremaine, Russell Court order restores him to his parents ; EP 667 Trent. Lucia Contemporary verse : C 118 Trial of Mary Dugan. B. Veiller ; D 406 Trotter. Frank Butler Bans peace lecture at University of West Virginia ; EP 589 Trotzky. Leon ; EP 532 Trotzky, Leon The passing of Trotzky. L. Fischer; S.... 703 Tucker, Marguerite Capital punishment in Germany; C 571 Tunney, Gene 622 Turati. Filippo : IS 556 Two tragedies on the high seas ; Dt 570 U Underwood, Marius Charles Fit to print ; C 62 United States — Administration of justice Justice underfoot ; E 146 United States — Agriculture Agriculture in the nation's economy. C. A. Beard; S 150 United Spates — Army Director of budget moves to reduce num- ber of reserve officers ; EP 300 United States — Board of tax appeals Matter of interest to students of the psy- chology of patriotism : EP 696 United States — Commerce America and Asia outstrip Europe; E... 4 United States — Corruption Testimony to graft and corruption: EP.. 301 United States — Department of justice Calling men by their right names; E.... 440 United States — Department of state Carter Glass attacks policy of supervising private loans to foreign governments : EP 437 Foreign theft [in dealing with sequestrated property]: E 303 Gross mismanagement in foreign service: EP 123 The docile American business man. F. Kirchwey : C 112 United States — Federal trade commission An anti-trust law fiasco. D. M. Kcezer ; S. 422 Useless and useful kinds of attack on big corporations illustrated by order against Famous Players-Lasky corporation; EP. . 49 United States — Foreign relal Temporary solution of tariff difficulty with France; EP 491 United States — Industrial strife Anti-labor injunctions issued by federal judges ; EP 352 United States — Industry Big business is very happv. P. Musgrave : S 225 Our waning prosperity : E 495 United States — Intellectual life Patriots and patrioteers ; E 50 The outlining of knowledge. J. H. Holmes. M. J. Adler; S 379. 380 United States — Interstate commerce commission Criticizes Erie management : EP 14) Railroading or stockjobbing? : E 725 United States — Judiciary Impertinence of naturalization courts : EP. 437 United States — Navy A billion dollars for the navy ; EP 695 Admiral Magruder's charges of inefficiency and extravagance : EP 323 S-4 disaster; EP 721 The navy and army waste ; E 354 Time to make known naval policy; EP.. 169 United States — Panama Genesis and present status of canal zone republic ; EP 300

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Nos. 3235-3260] Index [Vol. cxxv United States — Politics and government Bills aimed against aliens introduced in Congress; EP 668 Career diplomats — and others ; E 5 Congress grappling with Senators Vare and Smith ; EP 007 Congress opens for short session; EP.... 615 Congress to relieve business of its tax bur- dens ; EP on; Covering Washington. The Unofficial Spokesman 675, 729 For president: Jane Addams. C. L. (lood- enough ; C 451 Is Coolidge coming or going '.' ; E 148 Politicians and issues ; E 466 Primaries reveal apathy of voters; EP.. 351 Senator Borah scores ana in ; E 562 Speculating on presidential candidates ; EP. 217 That fifteenth amendment. A. A. Golden ; C 630 The Northwest stands pat. R. S. Allen; S. 101 Wanted: leadership ; E 326 What business wants from congress. L. Todd: S 626 United States steel corporation Waning prosperity ; E 495 United States — Supreme court Brands Fall and Sinclair ; E 440 Reparations for robbers. S. Bent; C... 54:! United States — Tariff Provocative note to France on tariff en- tanglement ; EP 323 Steady rise of protests against interna- tional trade harriers ; EP 145 Tariff tangles; EP 413 The tariff, agriculture, and the president ; E 590 The tariff reckoning begins ; E 302 United S.aies — Taxation Abolishing the death duties; E 327 Utica [Mississippi] norma) and industrial in- stitute; Dt 61 Van Doren, Mark A survey of the season's books; S 376 First glance; S 382, 427, 646, 686, 713 van Loon, Hendrik Willem Apply tariff common sense to interna- tional sport; Ct 357 Blow your own horn I ; Ct 7 Building a new Russia ; Ct 497 Galeries Lafayette, we are here!; Ct 415 Geneva ; Ct 101 Hendrik van Loon and Rosika Schwimmer. H. W. van Loon ; C 571 In the presidential year; Ct 443 Loot; Ct 621 Massachusetts ; Ct 223 Prosperity — 1927 ; Ct 673 Rhythms of the ages ; Ct 727 The angel of peace in modern dress ; Ct. 701 The optimist ; Ct 564 The world does change — 1077-1927; Ct 80 Torture up to date ; Ct 195 What the European public wants; Ct.... 593 Van Norman, Louis E. The Eastern edge of Europe; IS 44 Van Sweringen, O. P. ; S 35 "Variety." By Paul Valery ; S 377 Vasaar Journal of Undergraduate Studies Display of solemnity by undergraduates copied from their elders ; EP 3 Veiller, Bayard Trial of Mary Dugan. Criticism. J. W. Krutch; D 406 Veterans of foreign wars Attack Professors Hayes and Moon's "Mod- ern History" as pro-British; EP 438 Viereck, George Sylvester ; EP 145 Villard, Oswald Garrison Alfred E. Smith; S Charles Evans Hughes ; S Hoover to the fore ; S Yehudi Menuhin ; M Vivisection Only dogs. S. N. Cleghorn : C Voltaire Quotation from pamphlet on Toleration ; C 363 595 117 700 742 513 W Wagenknecht, Edward Those maddening pacifists ; C 253 Wagner, Charles A. Introduction; P 713 Walb, Clyde ; EP 587 Wald, Lillian ; EP 464 Walker, Christine : E 328 War Ambassador Houghton tells some more truths: E 32 Is war planned in Geneva between England and the United States?; EP 47 Senator Borah versus President Coolidge ; E 618 Voices of European statesmen and generals : E 618 War — Gas warfare Gas warfare not devilish ; EP 48 War guilt Another view of war guilt. Historicus ; C. 133 Another view of war guilt. II. Kanner ; C. 86 Ward, Harry P. China tests our religion ; S 283 Warner, Arthur A Sacco revolver expert revealed; S 625 Washburne, John N. Some survive without wine ; C 151 Wasp's nest ; 1) 522 Watson, Blanche Who'll help?; C 425 Watson, John B. The weakness of women; S 9 Watkins. M. Revelry. Criticism. J. W. Krutch; D 344 Watters. G. M.. and A. Hopkins Burlesque. Criticism. J. W. Krutch ; D. . 295 "We." By Charles A. Lindbergh; E 125 Wealth Concentrated control. H. G. Wexler ; C. 513 Weather clear, track fast ; D 522 Welch, Marie de I.. Song; P 378 Wells. H. G. Warrior Wells and battling Belloc ; E 191 Wertgen, F. The farmer's future ; C 207 Westinghouse electrical company What can one do with new mechanical man?; EP 43'.) Wexler, Harry G. Concentrated control; C 513 Wheeler, Wayne B. Wavne B. Wheeler. S. A. Hunter; C 339 Wheeler. Wayne B. Obituary; EP 239 White, Hal Saunders This rock ; P 114 Whitman, Walt "The good gray poet" ; E 468 Whv Harlan dismissed Walt Whitman. J. Brigham : C 685 White-slave traffic; EP 668 Whitney, Charlotte Anita: EP 49 Wilbur, Curtis D. Disciplines Rear Admiral Magruder.. EP. 491 Slights progressive organizations; E 50 Wildes. Harry Emerson Enlightenment in Philadelphia ; C 113 Wilkins, Ernest Hatch Observations in regard to research among teachers ; EP 533 Wilkinson, Ellen ; E 104 Williams, Albert Rhys All over the soviet land ; S 503 Willison. G. Findley "Mother Metropolitan" ; S 599 Winkler. Max Tables regarding American loans to foreign countries ; E 1 Winnipeg, Manitoba Joke of the year ; EP 66!) Winslow, Gertrude L. A correction ; C 479 Wisconsin Staff of new experimental college of State university: EP 171 Woman's national committee for law enforce- ment Senator Borah scores again : E 562 Women Rritish women in politics. J. Stephen: S. 2lr> Explaining r»ome| men. F. Dell; C ... Half-confessed. J. Collins: S 10 Making headway at Oxford. England ; EP. 1 The American woman. R. Esteourt : C The American woman. W. H. Holly; C. 229 The forward turn. M. Austin : S 57 The weakness of women. J. B. Watson : S. 9 Trving to be modern. E. Clark: S 153 Why feminism? B. M. Hinkle; S R Why the American woman is unique. E. Huntington ; S 105 Women and artists ; E 726 Women go on former. D. Rubin ; D 320 Wood. Charles Erskine Scott Neither sense nor pity ; C Wood, Leonard Fights for continuance of his policy in Philippine islands ; El' Leonard Wood. Obituary ; E It'.' Woodbridge. Benjamin M. Humanity and immigration laws: C 571 Woodbridge, Frederic J. E. Dismisses most graduate students as "ni gible" ; E f>19 Workmen's compensation Inadequate provision for children; EP. , 97 World war Field Marshal Haig declares America's ser- vices were not needed ; EP 30 Lack of religion cause of war ; EP 1 15 Wuh. C. C. : EP 190 Y. M. C. A. Student leaders win notable victory over conservatives ; EP 301 Yorkell, Ernest J. ; S 625 Young workers' communist league Victim of police czarism in New Jersey ; El' 560 V, Z., A. As seen from the South ; C 251 Zaghlul Pasha. Saad. Obituary; EP 217 Zaslaw, M. Soviet courts ; IS 267 Zed. John The Lugano spirit : C 478 Zinoviev, Gregory ; EP 532 Zoslu-henko, Michael The patient ; S 508 BOOK REVIEWS Books are indexed under author and title, ar d in some cases under subject. The following expl anatory letters are used in the index : B Book review AN Brief annotation R Reviewer A Absolute at large. K. Capek ; B 164 Adam and Eve. J. Erskine ; AN 690 Adams, E. C. L. Congaree sketches ; AN 291 Adams, H. C. Travellers' tales. A book of marvels ; AN. 404 Adams, Samuel Hopkins Revelry ; B 375 Adventures in Arabia. W. B. Seabrook ; B 394 Aide de camp of Lee. Sir F. Maurice, editor; B 606 Aiken, Conrad Blue voyage ; B 257 Akhnaton. D. S. Merezhkovsky ; B 316 Alexander, Ruth S. ; R 89, 210 Allen, James Turney Stage antiquities of the Greeks and Romans and their influence ; AN 582 America. H. van Loon ; B 388 American caravan. Van Wyck Brooks, A. Kreymborg, L. Mumford, and P. Rosen- feld, editors ; B 386 American civil war. D. Knowles ; AN 318 American labor and American democracy. W. E. Walling; B 42 American opinion of France. E. B. White ; AN 69 American people. T. J. Wertenbaker ; AN... 212 American poetry, 1927. A miscellany; AN... 456 American policy in Nicaragua. H. L. Stim- son ; B 711 American songbag. C. Sandburg; B 646 American spirit in art. F. J. Mather, Jr.. C. R. Morey, and W. J. Henderson; AN.. 402 American year book. A. R. Hart and W. M. Schuyler, editors ; AN 165 Analysis of matter. B. Russell ; B 604 Ancient cities and modern tribes. T. Gann ; AN Anderson, R. Gordon Those quarrelsome Bonnpartes; AN 712 Andrassy, count Julius Bismarck, Andrassy, and their successi B 311 Anet. Claude End of the world ; AN 181 Angell, Norman Public mind. Its disorders ; its exploita- tions ; li 136 Animal stories the Indians told. E. B. John- son ; AN 550 Anonymous Wine, women, and war; a diary of dis- illusionment : AN 21) t Architect in history. M. S. Itriggs ; AN 664 Armstrong, Martin Sir Pompey and madame Juno and other tales ; AN 610 Arthur Eloesser German literature today : I! 573 Artistic ideals. D. G. Mason; B 91 Art of history. J. B. Black; AN 343 \ii : •yhashoff, Boris. A. Kreymbo Funnybone alley ; AN 550 Asquith, Lady Cynthia Sails of geld. New prose and verse; AN. 552 Atkinson. J. Brooks Henry Thoreau : the cosmic Yankee; B.... 650 Austin. Mary Lands of the sun ; B 686 Autobiography of an ex-colored man. J. W. Johnson ; AN 456 Ayres, C. E. Science, the false Messiah ; B 232 B Bacon, Peggy Lion-hearted kitten : AN 552 Balbus, or the future of architecture. C. Bar- man ; AN 22 Balch, Emily Greene, editor Occupied Haiti : B 315 Ballads for sale. A. Lowell ; B 382 Ball. V., translator Travels in India ; B 136 Bang, Herman Denied a country ; B 184

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Vol. cxxv] Index [July-Dec, 1927 AN. . 111. llil. 208, . 1 L G, 181, [iarman, Christian Balbus, or the future of architecture; AN. Barnes, Harry Elmer, and .1. Davis, editors Barnes, Harry Elmer; R..18, Hates, Ernesl Sutherland ; R. . . Urals. Carleton ; K Michael Collins and the making of a new B Ca I, .1. M. Clark, W. i Spii i ■ ',' Henry Waid. P. Hibben ; H II. 1'rimer ol Lai in ; AN Paul music ; H Bekker, W. (I. Historical and critical review of Samuel v works ; AN Bell, Gei of. Lady Bell, editor ; i; . . Benedi4 de Gourmont, Remy. L. Galantiere, translator Dream of a woman ; AN 663 de Haas, Jacob Theodore Herzl, a biographical study; B.. 645 de Ibarra, Francisco, and Nueva Vizcaya. L. Mecham ; B 184 Delaisi, Francis Political myths and economic realities; B.. 575 De Lange, P. J. Samuel Butler — critic and philosopher; AN. 742 Delectable mountains. S. Burt ; B 67 Dell. Floyd An unmarried father; B 652 Upton Sinclair: a study in social protest; B 392 Delteil. Joseph. J. Leclercq, translator Poilus ; AN 43 de Montherlant, Henry Bullfighters : AN 663 Denied a country. H. Bang; B 184 Dennis, Geoffrey Declaration of love ; AN 484 Dent. Edward J. Terpander. or music and the future; B.. 21 Der tolle professor. H. Sudermann; B 660 De Sade. marquis. S. Putnam, translator Dialogue between a priest and a dying man ; AN 5S2 Development of the theater; A. Nicoll ; AN.. 582 Dialogue between a priest and a dying man. De Sade. S. Putnam, translator: AN.. 582 Dialogues. P. Diderot, F. Birrell, translator; AN 137 Dialogues of Plato. B. Jowett. translator, W. C. Greene, editor ; AN 43 Diary of a country parson. J. Beresford, edi- tor: AN 403 Dibble. R. F. : R 401 . 650 Dickman. Major General Joseph Theodore. J. J. Pershing, foreword Great crusade: B 182 Dictionary of Canadian biography. W. S. Wal- lace, compiler : AN 137 Diderot. Denis. F. Birrell, translator Dialogues ; AN 137 Diplomatic episodes in Mexico. Belgium, and Chile. H. L. Wilson ; B 116 Dobie, J. Frank; R 41, 429 Valentine Your cuckoo sings by kind: B 115 Dodd. Lee Wilson Golden complex: defense of inferiority; AN. 21 Dodd. William E.. C. Becker. J. M. Clark Spirit of '76 and other essays ; AN 319 Does prohibition work? M. B. Bruere: AN... 21 Dole. Charles F. My eighty years : B 652 Domestic manners of the Americans. F. Trol- lope: AN 403 Don Quixote. See Life of Don Quixote and Sancho Doolin. Paul R.. translator Since Victor Hugo. B. Fay : B 608 Dorsenne, Jean La vie sentimentale de Paul Gauguin : B. 688 Dorsey, George A. Evolution of Charles Darwin; AN 138 Douglas. Donald Black Douglas : B 429 Down stream, and other works. J. K. Huys- mans. S. Putman, translator: AN 582 Dream of a woman. R. de Gourmont. L. Ga- lantiere. translator ; AN 663 Drifting home. E. R. Groves: AN 91 Drucker, Rebecca Plague of juveniles : B 545 Drums of panic. M. Feinstein ; B 211 Ducros. Louis French society in the eighteenth century ; AN 185

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Nos. 3235-3260] Index [Vol. cxxv Dunne, J. W. Experiment with time; AN 233 Durant, William Transition ; B 427 Dusty answer. R. Lehmann ; B 575 Dziewicki, M. H., translator Promised land. L. Reymont ; B 715 E Earle, Homer P., translator Life of Don Quixote and Sancho. Accord- ing to Miguel Cervantes de Saavedra. M. de Unamuno ; B 578 Eastman, Max Venture ; B 7 10 Economic and social conditions in France during the eighteenth century. H. See, E. H. Zeydel, translator ; AN 185 Eddy, Sherwood, and K. Page Makers of freedom ; AN 212 Edge, William Main stem ; B 429 Edman, Irwin ; R 232, 262 Education of India. A. Mayhew ; B 480 Eight bells. Sailors' snug harbor yarns and bal- lads. F. Waters ; AN 138 Eliot, Clara Farmer's campaign for credit; AN 117 Elliott, W. Y ; R 453 End of the world. C. Anet ; AN 484 Engels, Friedrich Peasant war in Germany; B 290 Employment statistics for the United States. R. G. Hurlin and W. A. Berridge, edi- tors ; AN 264 Erasmus, Desiderius of Rotterdam. J. Mangan ; B 137 Ernst, Morris L. ; R 134 Erskine, John Adam and Eve ; AN 690 Essary, J. Frederick Covering Washington ; B 135 Europa year book, 1927. M. Farbman, R. Muir, and H. F. Spender, editors; AN 343 Evans, Ernestine; R 430, 687 Evergreen tree. K. Millay ; B 716 Evolution of Charles Darwin. G. A. Dorsey ; AN 138 Exile. M. Johnson ; AN . 663 Experiment with time. J. W. Dunne; AN... 233 F Fadiman, Clifton P.; R..396. 454, 515, 575, 608, 687, 738 Fadiman, Clifton P. On contemporary American fiction; B.... 642 Fall of Robespierre and other essays. A. Mathiez ; AN 294 Farbman, Michael, R. Muir, and H. F. Spender, editors Europa year book, 1927 ; AN 343 Farm income and farm life. A symposium on the relation of the social and economic factors in rural progress ; AN 688 Farmer's campaign for credit. C. Eliot; AN.. 117 Fascist dictatorship in Italy. G. Salvemini ; B. 453 Fay, Bernard, P. R. Doolin, translator Since Victor Hugo ; B 608 Feinstein, Martin Drums of panic; B 211 Ferguson, W. K. ; R 137 Fergusson, Harvey Wolf song ; AN 263 Field, Rachel Magic pawnshop ; AN 550 Field, Robert. H. Piers ; B 318 Field. Sara Bard Pale woman ; B 715 Figner, Vera Memoirs of a revolutionist ; B 208 Fischer, Louis ; R 90, 511 Five Weeks: the surge of public opinion on the eve of the great war. J. F. Scott ; B. . IS Fletcher, John Gould Branches of Adam ; B 518 Flower show. D. Mackail ; AN 481 Flowering quince. D. Van Doren ; B 430 Foreshore of England, or under the red ensign. H. M. Tomlinson ; B 516 Fraenkel, Michael; R Francke, Kuno German after-war problems : B Ill French literature today. L. Lewisohn ; B... 572 French society in the eighteenth century. I.. Ducros; AN 185 From Bismarck to the world war. E. Branden- burg ; B 43 From Gallegher to the deserter. R. H. Davis ; AN 184 From man to man. O. Schreiner ; B 210 Funnybone alley. A. Kreymborg. B. Art/.y- basheff, illustrator ; AN 550 Further dialogues of the Buddha. Lord Chal- mers ; AN 2:::; G Galantiere, Lewis ; R 658, 739 Galantiere, Lewis, translator Dream of a woman. R. de Gourmont ; AN. 663 Gale, Zona Yellow gentians and blue ; B 738 Gallions reach. H. M. Tomlinson; B 516 Gann, Thomas Ancient cities and modern tribes: explora- tion and adventure in Maya lands ; AN. 22 Gannett, Lewis S. ; R 315, 741 Gard, Wayne Book reviewing; AN 212 Garnett, Mrs. R. S. Samuel Butler and his family relations; AN. 741 Gateway of lite. F. Thiess ; B 575 Gauguin, Paul, la vie sentimentale de. J. Dorsenue ; B 688 Gautier and the romantics. J. G. Palache ; AN . 292 Gay-neck. D. G. Mukorji ; AN 552 General theory of value. R. li. Perry ; AN . . 22 Genghis Khan. H. Lamb; B 401 Genzmer. George; R 182, 209 German after-war problems. K. Francke; B.. 114 German literature today. A. Eloesser ; B 573 German world policy. O. Hammann ; B 43 Gershoy, Leo : R 135 Giants in the earth. O. E. Rolvang ; B 41 Gide, Andre Counterfeiters ; B 454 Si le grain ne meurt; B 739 Giese, William V. Victor Hugo: the man and the poet; AN.. 292 Gillespie, Frances Elmar Labor and politics in England, 1850-1867 ; AN 520 Girl from Rector's. G. Rector; AN 69 Gissing, George Victim of circumstances ; B 716 Give the people their own war power. T. H. Shastid ; B 608 God got one vote. F. H. Brennan ; AN 484 Goebel, Dorothy Burne William Henry Harrison ; a political biog- raphy ; AN 164 Golden complex : defense of inferiority. L. W. Dodd; AN 21 Gooch, G. P. Recent revelations of European diplomacy ; B 114 Gooch, G. P., and H. Temperley, editors British documents on the origins of the war : the outbreak of the war, June 28- August 4, 1914 ; B 161 Good woman. L. Bromfield ; B 258 Gorman, Herbert; R 386, 518 Gorman, Herbert S. Hawthorne: a study in solitude; B 482 Place called Dagon ; B 608 Gotama the Buddha, life of. E. H. Brewster, compiler ; B 230 Gottschalk, Louis R. Jean Paul Marat, a study in radicalism ; B 135 Grandmothers. G. Wescott ; B 396 Great crusade. J. T. Dickman, J. J. Pershing, foreword ; B 182 Great poems of the English language. A. Briggs, compiler ; AN 456 Green rising. W. B. Bizzell ; AN 117 Greene, William Chase, editor Dialogues of Plato ; AN 43 Greville diary. P. W. Wilson, editor; B 654 Griffith, Ernest S. Modern development of city government in the United Kingdom and the United States ; AN 741 Groves, Ernest R. Drifting home: AN 91 Gruen. William ; R 604 Guedalla, Philip Palmerston : AN 117 Guiney, Louise Imogen Happy ending ; B 715 H Haggin, B. II. ; R 21 Hamlin, Talbot Faulkner ; R 455 Hammann. O. German world policy ; B 43 Handbuch der altarabischen altertumskunde. Fr. Homme] unci N. Rhodokanakis ; li . . 311 Hapgood, Norman ; R 615 Hapgood, Norman, and II. Moskowitz Up from the city streets: Alfred E. Smith; B 548 Hapgood, Norman, editor Professional patriots ; B 66 Happy ending. L. I. Guiney; B 715 Harper's literary museum. O. E. Winslow, compiler; AN 402 Harrison, William Henry. D. B. Goebel; AN. 164 Harsha. R. Mooker ji ; AN 318 Hart, Albert ISushnell, and W. M. Schuyler, editors American year book. A record of events and progress for the year 1926; AN.... 165 Hastings, George Everett Life and wmks of Francis Hopkinson : B. 1^2 Hawthorn. Horace Boies Sociology of rural life ; AN 1 1 7 Hawthorne. H. Gorman; B 482 Hearnshaw, F. J. C. , editor Social and political ideas of some great thinkers of the Renaissance and the Reformation ; B 662 Hemingway, Ernest Men without women ; B 548 Henderson, William James, F. J. Mather, jr., and C. R. Morey American spirit in art; AN 402 Herford, C. H.. and P. Simpson, editors Works of Ben Jonson ; AN 518 Herold, A. Ferdinand, P. C. Blum, translator Life of Buddha, according to the legends of ancient India ; B 342 Herskovits, Melville J. ; R 292 Herzl, Theodore. J. de Haas ; B 645 Hibben, Paxton Henry Ward Beecher: an American por- trait; B 648 Hippolytus temporizes. "H. D." ; B 382 Hirst, Francis W. Safeguarding and protection in Great Brit- ain and the United States ; B 230 Historical life of Christ. J. Warschauer, F. C. Burkitt, preface ; AN 185 History of Anthony Waring. M. Sinclair; B. 481 History of England. G. M. Trevelyan ; B 262 History of Hebrew civilization. A. Bertholet ; AN 117 History of prostitution. P. La Croix, S. Put- nam, translator ; AN 69 History of socialist thought. H. W. Laidler ; B. 20 History of the American drama. A. H. Quinn ; B 713 History of the ancient world. M. Rostovtzeff ; B 390 History of the Cuban republic. C. R. Chap- man ; AN 404 History of the people of the United States during Lincoln's administration. J. B. McMaster ; B 289 Hobson, J. A. ; R 575, 648 Holmes, John Haynes ; R 455, 608, 652 Hommel, geheimrat Fr., und N. Rhodokanakis Handbuch der altarabischen altertums- kunde ; B 340 Hopkinson, Francis, life and works of. G. E. Hastings ; B 182 Hose. Charles Natural man: a record from Borneo; AN. 165 Hourwich, Rebecca What books shall my small child read?; B. 516 Hourwich, Rebecca ; R 134 House of lost identity. D. Corley ; B 483 How red is America? W. Irwin; AN 343 Hugo, Victor. W. F. Giese ; AN 292 Hull, Helen Islanders ; B 89 Human body. L. Clendening ; B 427 Hurlin, Ralph G., and W. A. Berridge, editors Employment statistics for the United States ; AN 264 Hutchison, Keith ; R 42, 654 Huysmans, J. K., S. Putnam, translator Down stream, and other works; AN 582 I know a secret. C. Morley ; AN 552 In China, 1920-21. A. Bonnard : AN 22 India in 1925-26. J. Coatman ; B 480 Indians of North America. E. Kenton, editor ; AN 403 India's past. A. A. Macdonnell ; AN 520 Ingersoll, Colonel Bob. C. Rogers: B 90 Insurance trusts. C. A. Scully: AN 343 International problems. T. Tittoni ; AN 263 Introduction to social psychology. L. L. Ber- nard : B 342 Introduction to sociology. J. Davis and H. E. Barnes, editors ; AN 319 Irwin, Margaret Knock four times ; AN 403 Irwin, Will How red is America?; AN 848 Islanders. H. Hull ; B 89 Italian primitives at Yale university. R. Off- ner : AN 664 I think I remember. M. King-Hall; AN 456 J Jacobs. Alctta. memoirs of. J. Oppenheim, in- troduction by; B 57S Jacques Coeur. A. B. Kerr: AN 4(14 Jalna. M. de la Roche: B .r,r,o Jastrow, Joseph; R 342, 481. 662 Jean-Aubry, (,. Joseph Conrad: life and letters; B 384 Jeffers, Robinson Women at Point Sur ; B 88 Jefferson and embargo. I,. M. Sears; AN.... 238 Jesus: a new biography. S. J. Case; B. Jewish daily bulletin index. A I ey to temporary Jewish history. Vol. I No. 1. January 1-December 31, 1925; AN Joad. C. E. M. Samuel Butler : AN 742 Joffe. Judah A., translator Modern Russian composers. I,. Sabaneyeff : AN 520 Johnson. Elizabeth Bishop Animal stories the Indians told; AN 550 Johnson. James Weldon Autobiography of an ex-colored man; AN.. 456 Johnson. Mary Exile: AN 663 Johnstone. G. H. Prospi r Merimee: a mask and a face: AN 164 Jonson. Ben, works of. C. H. Herford and P. Simpson, editors; AN 518 Jowett. Benjamin, translator, W. C. Greene, editor Dialogues of Plato ; AN 43 Joyce. James Pomes penyeach ; AN 403 Judaism in the first centuries of the Christian era. G. F. Moore ; B 183

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Vol. cxxv] Index [July-Dec, 1927 K Karlgren. Anion Bolshevist Russia : I! 90 Kautsky, Karl Thomas More and his Utopia; H 290 Kenton, Edna, editor Indians of North America. Selections from the Jesuit relations :innginus" : on the sublime IV- metrius : on style. W. H. Fyfe and W. R. Roberts, translators ; AN 456 Locomotive god. W. E. Leonard : B 428 Ixigic of modern physics. P. E. Bridgman ; B. 115 Lord Grey und der weltkrieg. H. Lutz ; B .... 6S Love child. E. Olivier: B 341 Lowell, Amy Ballads for sale ; B Lowie, R. II . Origin of the state ; B 656 Luhrs, Marie; R 341, 550 Lutz, Hermann Lord Grey und der weltkrieg; B 68 Lynch, Denis Tilden "Boss'' Tweed ; B 604 Lyons, Eugene Life and death of Sacco and Vanzetti ; B. 6S7 M McBain, Howard Lee Living constitution ; B 116 MacDonald. William; R 230, . Macdonnell. A. A. India's past. A survey of her literatures, religions, languages, and antiquities ; AN. 520 Mackail, Denis Flower show ; AN 4S4 lie, Agnes Mure Playgoer's handbook to the English renais- sance drama ; AN 664 McKeon, Richard; R 317 McMaster, John Bach History of the people of the United States during Lincoln's administration; B 289 Macy, John ; R 398 Magic of herbs. Mrs. C. F. Leyel; AN 138 Magic pawnshop. R. Field; AN 550 Main stem. W. Edge; B 429 Makers of freedom. K. Page and S. Eddy ; AN 212 Man who saw through heaven and other stories. W. D. Steele ; B 738 Mangan, Joseph Life, character, and influence of Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam ; B 137 Manly. John Matthews Some new light on Chaucer ; B Manning, Clarence A., translator Prince of outlaws. A. K. Tolstoy; B 514 Mansfield. Katherine, journal of; AN 716 Marat. J. Paul. L. R. Gottschalk ; B 135 Marshall, Lenore G. ; R 715 Mason, Daniel Gregory Artistic ideals ; B 91 Mather. Frank Jewett. jr., C. R. Morey. and W. J. Henderson American spirit in art; AN 402 Mathiez, Albert Fall of Robespierre and other essays: AN. 294 Mattock. J. Stevens ; AN 43 Maude, Aylt ler, editor Private diary of Leo Tolstoy. 1853-1857 ; AN 430 Maurice. Sir Frederick, editor Aide de camp of Lee. Being papers of colonel Charles Marshall, military secre- tary: B 606 Mayhew, Arthur Education of India: B 4S0 Mayo. Katherine Mother India ; B 40 Meade. Norah ; R 232, 661 Meanwhile (the picture of a lady). H. G. Wells; B 231 Mecham, Lloyd Francisco de Ibarra and Nueva Vizcaya ; B. 181 Megroz, R. I.. Three Sitwells ; AN 402 Memoirs of a revolutionist. V. Figner ; B . 208 Mencken. H. L. ; R 384, 427 Men of destiny. \V. Lippmann ; B 639 Men without women. E. Hemingway; B.. Mende, Elsie Porter, H. G. Pearson, collaborator American soldier and diplomat: Horace Por- ter; B 764 Merezhkovsky, Dimitri S. Birth of the gods : B 316 Akhnaton ; B 316 Merimee, Prosper. G. H. Johnson; AN 164 Millay. Kathleen Evergreen t ree : B 715 Millin. Sarah Gertrude South Africans ; B Mirrors of the year. G. Overton, editor: AN. 165 Modern development of city government in the United Kingdom and the United States. E. S. Griffith ; B 7 11 Modern Russian composers. L. Sabaneyeff, J. A. Joffe, translator : AN Montague. C. E. Right off the map : B . . 515 i. Radhakumud Harsha: AX 318 Moon. H. D. Thoreau : B 650 Moon's birthday. D. Rowe : AN 'i.in Moor fires. E. H. Young ; AN 663 Moore. George Celibate lives ; AN 456 Moore, George F Judaism in the first centuries of the Chris- tian era: the ace of the Tannaim: B More. Thomas, and his Utopia. K. Kautsky : B .290 Morey. Charles Rufus. F. J. Mather, jr., and W, J. Henderson American spirit in art : AN 402 Morley, Christopher I know a secret : AN Mornings in Mexico. D. H. Lawrence: B. 25 7 Morrison. C. C. Outlawry of war : B 396 Moskowitz. Harry, and N. Hapgood Up from city streets: Alfred E. Smith: B 548 Mother India. K. Mayo: B ....40 Mott, Martha ; R 211, 290 Mountsier, Mabel Singing youth, an anthology of poems by children ; B 210 Muir, Ramsay. M. Farbman, and H. F. Spen- der, editors Europa year book, 1927 ; AN 343 Mukerji, Dhan Gopal Gay-neck ; AN 552 Mullin. Glen; R 740 Mumford, Lewis. Van W. Brooks, A. Kreym- borg. P. Rosenfeld. editors American caravan : a yearbook of American literature : B 386 Muret, Maurice Twilight of the white races : AN 319 My eighty years. C. F. Dole ; B 652 My heart and my flesh. E. M. Roberts; B 606 Mystic rose. A. E. Crawley, T. Besterman, reviser ; AN 185 N National history of France. F. Brentano ; AN. 582 Natural man. C. Hose; AN 165 Navigator; the story of Nathaniel Bowditch. A. Stanford ; B 398 Negro in the reconstruction of Virginia. A. A. Taylor ; AN 484 New backgrounds for a new age. E. A. Park ; B 455 Newbigin, Marion I. Canada. The great river, the lands, and the men: AN 185 Newcomb, Re.xford Spanish house for America ; AN 185 Next age of man. A. E. Wiggam ; B 580 Nicoll, Allardyce Development of the theater ; AN 582 Nicolson. Harold Some people ; B 739 Niles, Abbe; R 19 Norris, Charles G. Zelda Marsh ; AN 484 O O rare Ben Jonson. B. Steel ; AN 402 Oakes. Edwin Stacey Law of organized labor and industrial con- flicts ; B 481 O'Brien, Edward J. Best short stories of 1927; B 738 Best British short stories of 1927; B 738 Occupied Haiti. E. G. Balch, editor; B 315 Ocean tramps. E. Williams, editor; AN 212 Ockham. William of, the de imperatorum et pontificum potestate of. C. K. Bramp- ton, editor; B 317 Offner, Richard Studies in Florentine painting: fourteenth century : AN 91 Italian primitives at Yale university. Com- ments and revisions ; AN 664 Ogg. Frederic Austin Builders of the republic: AN 402 Olivier. Edith Love child : B 341 On contemporary American fiction. C. P. Fadiman ; B 642 On the steppes. J. N. Rosenberg; AN 664 O'Neil. George White rooster ; B 262 Opponheim. J., introduction by Memoirs of Aletta Jacobs ; B 578 Orcutt, William Dana Kingdom of books ; AN 484 Ordeal of civilization. J. H. Robinson; AN.. 212 Oriental encounters. M. Pickthall ; B 394 Origin of the state. R. H. Lowie; B 656 Other doors. A Linington ; AN 466 Our times. M. Sullivan : B 656 Outlawry of war. C. C. Morrison: B 396 Overton. Grant, editor Mirrors of the year. A national review of outstanding figures, trends, and events of 1926-27; AN 165 Owen. Robert Latham Russian imperial conspiracy : B 208 Oxford edition of standard authors Edgar Allan Poe. Tales of mystery. Poems and miscellanies : AN 456 P Packard. Sidney R. ; R 262 Page, Kirby, and S. Eddy- Makers of freedom : AN 212 P.-ieeant of America, vols. VIII and XII; AN.. 402 Pageant of India. A. Waley : AN 520 Paine. Thomas. M. A. Best : B 65 Paish. Sir George. G. E. Roberts, foreword Road to prosperity : B 163 Palache. John Garber Gautier and the romantics ; AN 292 Pale woman. S. B. Field : R 715 Palmerston. P. Guedalla ; AN 117 Park. Edwin Avery New backgrounds for a new age : B 455 Parrington. Vernon I^ouis ; R 482 Parsons, Alice Beal : R 258, 483 Passaic textile strike. M. H. Vorse ; AN 212 Patriots off their nedestaK P Wils^nch ; AN.. 716 Pearson. Henry Greenleaf, collaborator American ="ld>«»r -<nd diploma' : Horace Porter. E. P. Mende: B 714

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Nos. 3235-3260] Index [Vol. cxxv Peasant war in Germany. F. Engels ; B 290 Peck, Walter Edwin Shelley: his life and works; AN 664 Perry, Ralph llarton General theory of value ; AN 22 Pershing, General John J., foreword Great crusade. J. T. Dickman ; B 182 Phelps, Edith M. Civil liberty ; AN 484 Phillips, Marion Women and the miners' lock-out; AN 404 Physiology of taste. J. A. Brillat-Savarin ; AN. 43 Pickthall, Marmaduke Oriental encounters ; B 394 Pierre-Quint, Leon Marcel Proust. His life and work; AN.. 69 Piers, Harry Robert Field ; B 318 Place called Dagon. H. S. Gorman; li 608 Plague in Shakespeare's London. F. P. Wil- son ; AN 610 Plague of juveniles. R. Drucker ; B 545 Platonism and the spiritual life. G. Santayana ; B 316 Playgoer's handbook to the English renaissance drama. A. M. Mackenzie ; AN 664 Poe, Edgar Allan. Oxford edition of standard authors ; AN 456 Poilus. J. Delteil, J. Leclercq, translator; AN. 43 Political myths and economic realities. F. Delaisi; B 575 Pomes penyeach. J. Joyce ; AN 403 Porter, Horace. E. P. Mende. H. G. Pearson, collaborator ; B 714 Potamkin. Harry Alan ; R 91, 210 Powys, Llewelyn ; R 115 Primer of medieval Latin. C. H. Beeson ; AN. 212 Primitive hearths in the Pyrenees. R. O. Saw- telle and I. Treat ; B 291 Primitive man as philosopher. I'. Radin ; B.. 662 Prince of outlaws. A. K. Tolstoy, C. A. Man- ning, translator ; B 514 Pringle, Henry F. Alfred E. Smith. A critical study; B 384 Problems in Shakespeare's penmanship. S. A. Tannenbaum; AN 318 Profane earth. H. Cahill ; AN 484 Professional patriots. N. Hapgood, editor; B. 66 Promised land. L. Reymont, M. H. Dziewicki, translator; B 715 Proust, Marcel. L. Pierre-Quint ; AN 69 Psychology : a simplification. L. R. Coleman and S. Commins ; AN 22 Public mind. N. Angell ; B 136 Putnam, Samuel, translator History of prostitution. P. La Croix; AN. 69 Down stream, and other works; AN 582 Dialogue between a priest and a dying man : AN 582 Pyramid. S. Vines ; B 518 Q Quinn, Arthur Hobson History of the American drama. From the civil war to the present day ; B 713 K Radin, Paul Primitive man as philosopher ; B 662 Ramondt-Hirschmann, C. ; R 578 Rebel earl and other papers. W. Roughcad ; AN 404 Recent revelations of European diplomacy. G. P. Gooch; B 114 Rector, George Girl from Rector's : AN 69 Red Crow's brother. J. W. Schultz ; AN 5.r>2 Red damask. E. Sachs ; AN 69 Red flag. L. Ridge ; B 19 Religion called behaviorism. L. Berman ; AN.. 430 Requiem. H. Wolfe ; AN 104 Revelry. S. H. Adams ; B 375 Reymont, Ladislas, M. H. Dziewicki, translator Promised land ; B 715 Rhodokanakis, prof. Nik., und Fr. Hommel Handbuch der altarabischen altertumskunde ; B 340 Riata and spurs. C. A. Siringo ; B 41 Ridge, Lola Red flag ; B 19 Right off the map. C. E. Montague ; B 515 Right to be happy. Mrs. B. Russell: B 580 River, W. L. Death of a young man : B 211 Road to prosperity. Sir G. Paish, G. E. Rob- erts, fo.eword ; B 163 Roberts, Elizabeth Madox My heart and my flesh : B 606 Roberts, George E. Road to prosperity. G. Paish; B 163 Robinson, James Harvey Ordeal of civilization ; AN 212 Robinson, Luther E. ; R 656 Roche, Mazo de la Jalna ; B 550 Rockow, Lewis ; R 136 Rogers, Cameron Colonel Bob Ingersoll ; B 90 Rolvang, O. E. Giants in the earth ; B 41 Romance of Villon. F. Carco ; AN 402 Root, Robert Kilburn, editor Rook of Troilus and Criseyde; AN 212 Rorty, James ; R 686 Rosenberg, James N. On the steppes ; AN 664 Rosenfeld, Paul, Van W. Brooks, A. Kreym- borg, L. Mumford, editors American caravan : a yearbook of American literature ; B 386 Ross, Mary ; R 07 Rostovtzeff, Michael History of the ancient world; B 390 Roughead, William Rebel earl and other papers ; AN 404 Rowe, Dorothy Moon's birthday ; AN 550 Rozanov, V. V., S. S. Koteliansky, translator Sblitaria, together with matter from the apocalypse of our time ; B 515 Russell, Bertrand Analysis of matter ; B 604 Selected papers of Bertrand Russell ; AN . . 664 Russell, Mrs. Bertrand Right to be happy ; B 580 Russian imperial conspiracy. R. L. Owen ; Ii. 208 Rustic elegies. E. Sitwell ; B 382 Ryner, Han, J. H. Lewis, translator Ingenious hidalgo Miguel Cervantes; B.... 20 S Sabaneyeff, Leonid, J. A. Joffe, translator Modern Russian composers; AN 520 Sacco and Vanzelti, life and death of. E. Lyons ; B 687 Sachs, Emanie Red damask ; AN 69 Safeguarding and protection in Great Britain and the United States. F. W. Hirst ; B. 230 Sails of gold. C. Asquith, editor ; AN 552 Saki (H. H. Munro) Unbearable Bassington ; AN 663 Chronicles of Clovis ; AN 663 Salvemini, Gaetano Fascist dictatorship in Italy ; B 453 Samples : a collection of stories ; B 738 Sandburg, Carl American songbag ; B 646 Santayana, George Platonism and the spiritual life; B 316 Sawtell, Ruth Otis, and I. Treat Primitive hearths in the Pyrenees. The story of a summer's expedition in the haunts of prehistoric man ; B 291 Sawyer, Joseph Dillaway Washington ; B 317 Schelling, Felix E. Shakespeare and demi-science; AN 664 Schlink, F. J., and S. Chase Your money's worth. A study in the waste of the consumer's dollar ; B 134 Schmidt, Nathaniel; R 340 Schreiner, Olive From man to man ; B 210 Schultz, James Willard Red Crow's brother ; AN 552 Schuyler, William M., and A. B. Hart, editors American year book. A record of events and progress for the year 1926; AN.... 165 Science and method of politics. G. E. G. Cat- lin ; B 136 Science, the false Messiah. C. E. Ay res ; B 232 Scott. Jonathan French Five weeks: the surge of public opinion on the eve of the great war : B 18 Scully, C. Alison Insurance trusts. A manual for attorneys and life underwriters ; AN 343 Seabrook, W. B. Adventures in Arabia : B 391 Seagle, William : R 394 Sear-h for Atlantis. E. Bjorkman ; AN 402 Sears, Louis Martin Jefferson and embargo ; AN 233 See, Henry, E. H. Zeydel, translator Economic and social conditions in France during the eighteenth century; AN 185 Seham, Max and Grete Tired child ; AN 138 Sentimental journey. L. Sterne, W. I-. Cross. editor : AN 43 Servant of the mightiest. Mrs. A. Wingate ; B. 101 Shakespeare and demi-science. F. E. Schelling : AN 664 Shakespeare studies. K. E. Stoll ; B 209 Shastid. Thomas Hall Give the people their own war power: B . 60S Shelley. W. E. Peck ; AN 664 Shepard, O.I. II Heart of Thoreau's journals ; B 650 Should we be vaccinated? B. J. Stern: B.... 292 Si le grain ne meurt. A. Gide : B 739 Simpson, Percy, and C. H. Herford, editors Works of Ben Jonson ; AN r>18 Since Victor Hugo. B. Fay, P. R. Doolin. translator ; B 608 Sinclair. May History of Anthony Waring : B 481 Sinclair. Upton ; a studv in social protest. F. Dell ; B 392 Singing youth. M. Mountsier ; B 210 Siringo. Charles A. Rinta and spurs ; B 11 Sir Pompey and ma. lame Juno and other tales. M. Armstrong ; AN 610 Sitwell. Edith Rustic elegies : B 382 Skinner. Constance Lindsay Tiger who walks alone ; AN 552 Smertenko, Johan ; R 89, 183, 231, 514 Smith, Alt red E. H. F. Pringle; B 384 Snider. Charles Lee ; R 580 Social and political ideas of some great thinkers of the Renaissance and the Reformation. F. J. C. Hearnshaw, editor; B 662 Social factors in medical progress, li. J. Stern; U 292 Sociology of rural life. H. B. Hawthorn; AN. 117 Solitaria, together with matter from the apoca- lypse of our time. V. V. Rozanov, S. S. Koteliansky, translator; B 515 Solow, Herbert ; R 43 Some new light on Chaucer. J. M. Manly ; B. 289 Some people. H. Nicolson; B 739 Something about Eve: a comedy of tig-leaves. J . 11. Cabell ; B 386 South Africans. S. G. Millin ; B 88 Southern Albania: or northern Epirus in Euro- pean international affairs. E. P. Stick- ney ; AN 518 Spaeth, Sigmund Weep some more, my lady ; B G46 Spanish house for America. R. Newcomb ; AN. 185 Spender, Hugh F., M. Farbman, and R. Muir, editors Europa year book, 1927 ; AN 343 Spender, J. A. Life, journalism, and politics; B 648 Spinoza, oldest biography of. A. Wolf, editor ; AN 582 Spirit of '76 and other essays. C. Becker, J. M. Clark, W. E. Dodd ; AN 319 Stage antiquities of the Greeks and Romans and their influence. J. T. Allen; AN.... 582 Stage costuming. A. B. Young ; AN 404 Stanford, Alfred Navigator: the story of Nathaniel Bow- ditch ; B 398 Steel, Byron O rare Ben Jonson ; AN 402 Steele, Wilbur Daniel Man who saw through heaven and other stories ; B 738 Stern, Bernard J. Social factors in medical progress; B 292 Should we be vaccinated ? ; B 292 Sterne, Laurence, W. L. Cross, editor Sentimental journey through France and Italy, with selections from the journals, sermons, and correspondence of Laurence Sterne ; AN 43 Sterne, Laurence, W. L. Cross, introduction by Life and opinions of Tristram Shandy ; AN 43 Stevens, James Mattock ; AN 43 Stewart, Bryce M. Canadian labor laws and the treaty; AN.. 117 Stickney, Edith Pierpont Southern Albania: or northern Epirus in European international affairs, 1912-1923; AN 518 Stimson, H. L. American policy in Nicaragua; B 741 Stolberg. Benjamin ; R 639 Stoll, Elmer Edgar Shakespeare studies ; B 209 Story of a wonder man. R. Lardner ; AN... 69 Story of civil liberty in the United States. L. Whipple; B 66 Story of music. P. Bekker ;B 21 Strange woman. E. Davis; AN 484 Studies in Florentine painting. R. Offner ; AN. 91 Sudermann, Hermann. K. Busse ; B 660 Sudermann. Hermann Der tolle professor. Ein roman aus der Bismarckzeit ; B 660 Sullivan. Mark Our times. Vol. I. Turn of the century. Vol. II. America finding itself; B 656 T Tannenbaum, Samuel A. Problems in Shakespeare's penmanship; AN 318 Tavernier, Jean-Baptiste, V. Ball, translator Travels in India ; B 136 Taylor. A. A. Negro in the reconstruction of Virginia : AN 484 Temperley, Harold, and G. P. Gooch, editors British documents on the origins of the war; the outbreak of the war. June 28- August 4. 1911; B 161 Terpander, or music and the future. E. J. Dent : B 21 Terry's guide to Cuba. T. P. Terry; AN 138 Terry. T. Philip Terry's guide to Cuba : AN 138 That man Heine. L. Browne; B 661 Thiess, Frank Gateway of life ; B 675 Thomas, Edward J. Buddha, life of, as legend and history ; B. 230 Thomas. Norman ; R 66, 396 Thoreau, Henry D. Moon ; B 650 Thoreau. Henry. J. B. Atkinson; B 650 Thoreau's journals. O. Shepard, editor; B.... 650 Those quarrelsome Bonapartes. R. G. Ander- son ; AN 712 Three Sitwells. R. L. Megroz ; AN 402 Tiger who walks alone. C. L. Skinner: AN.. 552 Time and western man. W. Lewis ; B 643 Tired child. M. and G. Seham; AN 138

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Vol. cxxv] Index [July-Dec, 1927 Tittoni, Tomma International problems ; AN 263 Tolstoy, count Alexia K., C. A. Manning, trans- lator Prince of outlaws ; B 514 Tolstoy, Leo, private diary of. A. Maude, editor; AN 130 Tomlinson, H. M. Foreshore of England, or under the red it;n ; ii 516 Gallions reach ; IS .r>lfi To the lighthouse. V. Woolf ; B 67 Trader Horn. E. Lewis, editor; B 134 Transition. \V. Durant ; B 427 Travellers' tales. H. C. Adams; AN 401 Travels in India. J. B. Tavernier, V". Ball. translator ; B 136 Travels of Marco Polo. M. Komroff, introduc- tion; AN 43 Treat, Ida, and R. O. Sawtell Primitive hearths in the Pyrenees. The slory of a summer's expedition in the haunts of prehistoric man ; B 291 Trees at night. A. Younu; B 740 Trevelvan. George Macaulay History of England ; B 262 Trollope, Frances Domestic manners of the Americans; AN.. 403 Tully. Jim Circus parade ; B 429 Tupper, Frederick ; R 289 Tweed, William M. See "Boss" Tweed Twilight of the white races. M. Muret : AN. 319 U Unamuno, Miguel de, H. P. Earle, translator Life of Don Quixote and Sancho. Accord- ing to Miguel Cervantes de Saavedra ; B. 578 Unbearable Bassington. "Saki"(H. H. Munro) ; AN 663 Unmarried father. F. Dell ; B 652 Up from the city streets. N. Hapgood and H. Moskowitz ; B 548 USSR (union of soviet socialist republics I . I. L. Lee ; B 511 V Valery, Paul Variety ; B 377 Van Doren, Carl ; R 386 Van Doren, Dorothy Flowering quince ; B 4"0 Van Doren, Dorothy Graffe : R 606 Van Doren, Mark; R 88. 3S2. 127, 646, 686, 713 Vanguard. A. Bennett ; AN 690 van Loon, Hendrik America ; B 388 Variety. P. Valery : B 377 Venture. M. Eastman ; B 740 Vers une alchimie Iyrique. R. Lalou ; B :>7r, Victim of circumstances. G. Gissing ; B 716 Villard. Oswald Garrison; R. .114, 135, 163, 182, 384, 548, 606 Villon, •eiuncois, complete poems of. J. H. Lep- I>er, translator ; AN 43 Vines, Sheiard Pyramid ; B 51S Vivas, Eliseo; R 20, 316, 578 Vogdes, Walter; R 41, 184 Vorse, Mary Heaton Passaic textile strike ; AN 212 Voyage to the south seas in his majesty's ship Wager in the years 1740-1741. J. Bulke- ley and J. Cummins ; AN 212 W Walden. E. F. Daglish, illustrator of; B 650 Waley, Adolf Pageant of India ; AN 520 Walker, Charles Rumford Bread and fire ; B 19 Wallace, W. Stewart, compiler Dictionary of Canadian biography; AN... 137 Walling, William English American labor and American democracy : B 42 Warschauer, J., F. C. Burkitt, preface Historical life of Christ ; AN 1S5 Washington, George. M. Weems ; AN Washington. J. D. Sawyer; B 317 Waters, Frank Eight bells. Sailors' snug harbor yarns and ballads ; AN 138 Wedding. M. P. Levy ; B 18" Weems, Mason History of the life and death, virtues and exploits of general George Washington ; AN 688 Weep some more, my lady. S. Spaeth; B.... 646 Weiss, Paul: R 115 Wells, H. G. Meanwhile (the picture of a lady) ; B... 231 Wertenbaker, Thomas Jefferson American people: a history; AN 212 Wescott, Glenway Grandmothers ; B 396 Westcrmann, William Linn; R 390 What books shall ray small child read? R. Hourwich : B 546 Whipple. Vr on Story o: civil liberty in the United States; B 66 White. Edward Lucas Why Rome fell : AN 661 White. Elizabeth B. American opinion of France ; AN 69 White rooster. G. O'Neil : B 262 Why Rome fell. E. L. White ; AN 664 Whyte, Frederick China and foreign powers : an historical review of their relations ; AN 343 Wiggam, Albert Edward Next age of man ; B Wilder, Thornton Bridge of San Luis Rey ; B Williams, Edgar, editor Ocean tramps ; AN Wilson, David Alec Carlyle at his zenith (1S48-1853) ; AN.. . Wilson, F. P. Plague in Shakespeare's London ; AN Wilson, Henry Lane Diplomatic episodes in Mexico, Belgium, and Chile; B Wilson, Philip Wrhitwell Greville diary. Including passages hitherto withheld from publication ; B 654 Wilstach, Paul Patriots off their pedestals; AN Wine, women, and war. Anonymous ; AN Wingate, Mrs. Alfred Servant of the mightiest ; B . . Winslow, Ola Elizabeth, compiler Harper's literary museum. A mirror of American manners and morals from Poca- hontas to the days of Dolly Madison ; AN. 402 Wolf. A., editor Oldest biography of Spinoza ; AN Wolfe, Humbert Lampoons ; AN Requiem ; AN Wolf song. H. Ferguson ; AN Wolfson, Theresa : R 42, Women and the miners' lock-out. M. Phillips; AN 404 Women at Point Sur. R. Jeffers ; B 88 580 687 212 716 610 116 716 264 401 582 404 404 263 208 R 66, 392, 604, 648 .'.7 Woodward, W. E. Woolf, Virginia To the lighthouse ; B Woolrich, Cornell Children of the Ritz ; B 550 Worker looks at government. A. Calhoun ; B. 42 World in the making. Count H. Keyserling ; B. 260 Yellow gentians and blue. Z. Gale; B... Young, Agnes Brooks Stage costuming ; AN Young, Art Trees at night; B 740 Young, E. H. Moor fires ; AN Your cuckoo sings by kind. V. Dobree : B.... Your money's worth. S. Chase and F. J. Schlink ; B 134 738 404 663 115 Zelda Marsh. C. G. Norris ; AN 484 Zeydel, Edwin H., translator Economic and social conditions in France during the eighteenth century. H. See ; AN 185

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The Nation FOUNDED 1865 Vol. CXXV NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, JULY 6, 1927 No. 3235 Contents EDITORIAL PARAGRAPHS 1 EDITORIALS: America and Asia Outstrip Europe ■! Career Diplomats — and Others 5 Bold Adultery and Wilful Murder 5 Some Students Write Well 6 BLOW YOUR OWN HORN ! By Hendrik van Loon 7 EXPLAINING WOMEN: Why Feminism? By Beatrice M. Hinkle 8 The Weakness of Women. By John B. Watson 9 Half-Confessed. By Joseph Collins 10 LAW AND ORDER IN LOS ANGELES. By Rube Borough 12 CANADA'S JUBILEE. By J. A. Stevenson 13 "AL" SMITH IN TEXAS. By Ruby A. Black 14 IN THE DRIFTWAY. By the Drifter 16 CORRESPONDENCE 16 BOOKS AND MUSIC: Vigil. By Allen Tate 18 Letter After a Visit. By Haniel Long 18 Did the Newspapers Make the World War? By Harry Elmer Barnes 18 Concordance to Poetry. By Alter Brody 19 Antaeus. By Abbe Niles 19 An Outline of Socialism. By Stuart Chase 20 Toward a Revaluation. By Eliseo Vivas 20 Darkening Our Lightness. By B. H. Haggin 21 Books in Brief 21 Musie : Some German Operatic Impressions. By Henrietta Straus.. 23 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS SECTION: The Necessity of Free Trade. By Earl Beauchamp 24 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, $(i.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 NATION is on file in most public and college libraries and is indexed in the Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature. rpHE BRITISH HOUSE OF LORDS is one of the $. strangest menageries of great-grandsons of distin- guished public servants, modern beer millionaires, friends of Mr. Lloyd George or of Mr. Asquith or of Mr. Baldwin, warranted-genuine descendants of the Norman freebooters, newspaper publishers, selected admirals and genera's, bish- ops and archbishops which was ever gathered together under one roof. The English, who have strange tastes, rather like it; it is to them one of those precious symbols, like a Chi- nese ancestor's grave, or the American Constitution, about which people wax eloquent but which they seldom squarely face. In 1911, when the dear old thing had threatened to be a bit obstreperous, a bold Liberal government clipped the wings of its power — took away its veto power over appro- priation bills and gave the Commons authority, by affirma- tive action at three successive sessions, to pass any bill over the peers' veto. The consent of the Lords to this shearing was obtained by the threat of having the King— another precious symbol — create a thousand new Peers, guaranteed to vote for their own destruction. Since then there has been intermittent talk of further "reform." And now Mr. Baldwin has brought forth the Tory program of "reform." Some of the efficiency gentlemen in his Cabinet obviously prepared it for him. It would reduce the Lords to manage- able size, and provides for election of the bulk of the House by the hereditary peers themselves. This, it will be noted, would prevent any repetition of the Liberal threat of 1911, and assure an eternal Tory majority. Which, doubtless, is what Mr. Baldwin's friends want. But don't they know that symbols are valuable only when dust-covered, and that by polishing up the House of Lords and making it modern and efficient they risk its total destruction? THERE SEEMS TO BE nothing to do about women ex- cept to tolerate them. No effort to bar them ever lasts. Oxford University's decision to establish a female quota of one in four is no more likely to stand the test of time than the earlier efforts to keep them out altogether. It is only seven years since women were first allowed to take the Ox- ford examinations; and it may be less before they take another trench. As Principal Margery Fry suggests, the real opposition to them is in itself a confession of defeat. "Women are such beastly grinds," one Oxford undergradu- ate is reported as saying, "that the standards of examina- tion are going up." It may even happen that the influx of women will change the emphasis of Oxford to such a revo- lutionary degree that the cables will carry other Oxford news than that of undergraduate styles in trousers. ENGLAND'S TRADE-UNIONS BILL, following the time-schedule set by the Government, has passed its third reading in the House of Commons. The present amended form of the bill is essentially the same as the original draft. A few phrases have been added and one or two deleted, but the underlying principle remains: the bill strikes squarely at the trade unions. The most palpable hit is scored by clause one, which, in its amended interpre- tation, prohibits not only general strikes but also sympa- thetic strikes of any importance. The London Nation makes this clear in these words: The legality or illegality of a sympathetic strike, in the opinion of Sir Douglas Hogg, depends upon its effects. If it inflicts such hardship as to coerce the Government it will be illegal under this bill. If it does not. it will be legal. The key word, "hardship," is not defined. By such ambiguity this first clause paralyzes the very spirit of the trade-union movement, based on working-class solidarity. A second de- cisive blow is administered by clause three and its amend- ments. Ilert the conduct of a picket is so severely circum- scribed that even the "legal" strikes must be conducted along innocuously polite lines. If a picket causes "in the mind of a person a reasonable apprehension of injury" ("and the expression 'injury' includes injury otlu>r than physical or material") he is liable to arrest. Thus blacklegs are pro- tected from such inopportune smiles or untoward smirks as might appear on a careless picket's physiognomy. We have selected only two points from the bill, but there are many similar ambiguous and anomalous phrases. It is throughout a piece of bitter class legislation, oppressive where it is definite and still more dangerous where it is not. Complete repeal of the bill, which the Labor Party promises at its first opportunity, seems the only proper treatment for such a Die-hard delusion. pueuc

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The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3235 THE FIRST WEEK of the naval disarmament confer- ence at Geneva resulted merely in the laying of the Japanese, American, and British cards on the table. As we go to press, the outlook is for a deadlock. An enormous number of words has been cabled across the ocean de- nouncing, denying, explaining, declaring, contradicting, re- tracting, and if the average reader has any clear idea of what is taking place he is a smarter man than the editors of The Nation. We cannot, however, see anything diaboli- cal or underhand in the British proposals nor behold in them any effort to trick us into a grave naval inferiority. But we should not care if that turned out to be the case. The United States has always been in a state of naval in- feriority to Great Britain and has remained free and, usu- ally, happy. We are not interested in balancing navies. We want to see them heavily reduced as a step toward com- pletely doing away with them. The whole institution is a curse to all concerned, an endless economic waste of national resources, a powerful incentive to wars. So, for the mo- ment, we are compelled to get what satisfaction we can out of the coming of Ambassador Herrick with a "Locarno pact" with France in his pocket, and the reports that, as a result of the naval conference, England and Japan are quite ready to sign similar agreements with us for one hundred years of peace. That would be a long step forward and would help to demonstrate the futility of keeping up large navies. IN THE HEARINGS being held in New York into the relations of the city and the two great companies the Interborough and the Brooklyn-Manhattan Transit, which control the transportation situation in New York, Samuel Untermyer's masterly cross-examination has brought out some extremely interesting facts. For instance, the Inter- borough has paid since 1919 $212,954.19 to Ivy Lee for acting as publicity agent — a sum charged to operating ex- penses, which eventually comes out of the taxpayers under ity's contract with the company. Moreover, a part of this sum was paid from 1919 to 1922 for the company's propaganda efforts to obtain a higher than the five-cent fare. Finding the public wholly opposed, Mr. Lee finally advised a discontinuance of this campaign. Again, it has appeared that the Brooklyn-Manhattan Transit Company has bought 19,G50 shares of its rival company's stock; and that Albert H. Wiggin, chairman of the B.-M. T. and also chairman of the board of directors of the Chase National Bank, and T. L. Chadbourne and G. M. Dahl, also of the B.-M. T., have respectively purchased 3,G00, 9,800, and 6,600 shares of the Interborough which have not paid a dividend in eight years and cannot for twenty years unless there is an increase in fares. Mr. Wiggin freely stated that he and his two associates were gambling on this fare in- crease to make fortunes — at the public's expense. It is not surprising that Mayor Walker and the other municipal authorities are now reported ready to have the city go ahead and take over the whole traction system. It should, of course, have done so years ago. SINCE THE APPEARANCE in our last issue of the editor's article on Lindbergh and the Army and Navy we have been informed that a complete censorship of all dispatches was established on the Memphis, which brought Lindbergh back from Europe, by Commander Bagley, chief of staff of Vice-Admiral Burrage, whose flagship the Mem- phis is. No dispatch about Lindbergh was passed without Commander Bagley's editing it. Even bulletins bore his initials. The flier was not consulted about the changes; the navy simply assumed the right to decide what the American people should or should not know about the hero of the hour, and the press associations, with their usual cowardice in dealing with governmental agencies, failed to protest at the first official censorship established since the war. As Wil- liam Hillman, who made the voyage on the Memphis, says in the Editor and Publisher: The naval censorship was but a continuation of that strange isolation of Lindbergh from the world which began when Ambassador Herrick took Lindbergh in charge in Paris and, standing by his side at the press conference, nodded approval or shook his head as Lindbergh answered questions put by newspapermen. Naturally Charles Lindbergh, young and inexperienced as he was, fell a victim. According to a New York Times dis- patch, Ambassador Houghton labored the best part of a night to persuade him to give up his plan to fly back via Asia and the Pacific in order that Mr. Coolidge could offi- cially receive him and not delay his vacation by a single day. Lindbergh finally asked: "Then you order me back across the Atlantic?" To which, according to the corre- spondent, Ambassador Houghton replied that it was not an order but "the wish of Washington." So the son of a Con- gressman who opposed our entering the World War was victimized and exploited for the political aggrandizement of the President and the ballyhoo ends of the army and the navy. LEONARD WOOD has returned from the Philippines, physically a broken man, to fight for the privilege of carrying on as Governor General of the islands. There is something superb in his determination to continue, how- ever one may disagree with the general's policies. Politics still beckoned to him seven years ago, when he returned to the East ; undoubtedly he hoped, by a demonstration of administrative competence, to maneuver himself into the strategic position for the 1924 elections. But Calvin Coolidge inherited a position he had done nothing to earn; and General Wood struggled on with a growingly difficult task in the Oriental tropics. Today he has no political hopes left and little physical strength; but he wants to finish his job, and he stands in the shadow of defeat. A quarter century ago Wood might have ranked as one of the world's great colonial governors; today, in an Asia which also includes Gandhi's India and Nationalist China, any white general wielding supreme authority is an anachro- nism. Even so, Leonard Wood may be a more useful pub- lic servant than the Ohio politician who seems slated to replace him. For Carmi Thompson is a fixer; he would be glad to exchange an appearance of greater political inde- pendence for the reality of more American control of the rich rubber lands of the South Philippine Islands; and Governor Wood, however untactful he and his cavalry cabi- net may be with Filipino politicians, is more interested in administration than in exploitation. PRESIDENT COOLIDGE told the simple truth when he declared that Rear Admiral Mark L. Bristol's eight years' service as High Commissioner to Turkey "has been notable in the annals of American diplomacy." For these vears Rear Admiral Bristol has been ambassador in all but

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July 6, 1927] The Nation 3 name, but his failure to be a regularly assigned plenipo- tentiary has made it impossible for him to deal directly with the head of the nation within whose border he was representing the United States. This in itself created a delicate situation; when one adds that the Admiral was sent to Turkey almost immediately after the close of the war, recalls that we still have no treaty with Turkey, and remembers the dramatic and difficult events that followed upon the Turkish Revolution, it will be seen that his was a task calling for a superman. This the Admiral has really been among diplomats; he demonstrates the correctness of Mr. Dawes's assertion, which we discuss in another column, that the President should have the right to pick any par- , ticularly competent man for any given diplomatic position. No word of criticism — only admiration for his achievements — has come to our ears. Now he goes to the Asiatic Fleet, as commander-in-chief, and we believe that it is a most excellent omen for our future relations with China. For Admiral Bristol has an extraordinary ability to understand and to sympathize with the national aspirations of any peo- ple to which he may be sent. No repetition of the Nanking incident is likely to take place under his command of the Asiatic Fleet. We have only one regret: that he is not to be minister in Peking, as well as the commanding admiral in China. WITH A GREAT HULLABALOO the North China war chiefs who were allied with each other have become re-allied, and Chang Tso-lin, who has the best army, has acquired a new title which is said to be a hybrid between President, Generalissimo, and Chief Executive. The mili- tary and political situation, however, remains unchanged. The winds of Nationalism still blow strong, and they dis- turb the peace of Chang's lieutenants, who are earnestly de- termined to be on the winning side. If the Nationalists were not as humanly divided among themselves they could topple Chang and win Peking at a stroke; but the mysteri- ous process of negotiation continues. Feng Yu-hsiang, the "Christian General," has met his moderate Nationalist rival, Chiang Kai-shek, and has issued a magnificently confusing pronunciamento. He says that the Communists within the Kuomintang must accept party discipline, but implies that they remain; he urges Borodin, the Russian civilian adviser of the Hankow Government, to return to Russia but implies that General Gallen and the other military advisers may continue. On this basis the three Nationalist groups may be able to cooperate. Chinese armies have an extraordinary and civilized capacity for sitting still while public opinion wins bloodless battles for them. L United States," a Harvard professor titled his book two years ago, and for data he relied in large part upon the invasion of Wall Street's functions by the labor banks. The Nation, too, expressed a generous optimism. Union after union founded banks; labor was to control its own capital; within the shell of the old society a new was rising. Grand- father of them all was the noble chain of labor banks estab- lished by the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers. The brotherhood bought into control of a New York trust com- pany; it owned coal mines; it was developing a seaside city in Florida. Utopia seemed at hand. And now — officers of the brotherhood have been negotiating with Thomas E. Mitten, famous for his street railways and taxicab com- panies (where "outride unions" are not permitted), to take over its banks and relieve it of its seaside city. The rank and file of the union was openly hostile, and Mr. Mitten withdrew his offer. But the fact remains that the most expansive of the unions is attempting to withdraw from business; the hope of invading Wall Street has faded. A score or more of lesser union banks continue to do a normal commercial business; some, like the Amalgamated Bank of New York, which has almost a monopoly of certain lines of Russian-American business, and others which have a strong political position, prosper. But the bright bubble has burst. Professor Carver will have to put on his spectacles again and hunt for other proof of the new American revolution. 1>HE SINGING ROTARIANS who startled Windsor Cas- tle last week by gathering around Queen Victoria's statue and rendering "We are strong for Toledo," could not, of course, see anything amiss in their actions. "Singing is our 100 per cent hobby," explained their leader; they sang in Paris streets until they stopped the traffic, they grew melodious in restaurants and other public places. If this causes a shudder to travel down the spine of any reader, let him stop and consider. The untutored savage shuns the limelight, slinks through the jungle under cover, avoids bright lights, large groups of persons (particularly strange ones), the inquiring eye of the camera, and the voice of the explorer. He is afraid of so many things; there is so much he does not know. The simple Rotarian suffers from no such handicaps. He has had an education; and, being an honest, God-fearing, upstanding citizen of the community, he can not only look every man in the eye — he can also shout in his ear. Nor do blushes rise to his cheek when his shouts bring an audience. His motto is Be Hearty, and hearty he is, whether he stands under the shadow of the pyramids or by the tomb of kings or in the wildernesses of winding Paris streets. He is a stranger to reverence and to awe — or perhaps psychologists would twist his brashness to mean that he is really scared to death and that his mighty voice alone bears up his trembling knees. IF YOU WANT A SUMMARY of the literature of the oxi- dation of paraffins, or a bibliography (488 items) of the applications to bacteriology of the determination of hydro- gen in concentration, go not to the Chemical Journal or anything like that but to the Vassar Journal of Under- graduate Studies, the second volume of which extremely learned work has just come under our eye. You will also find there a comparison of Lucretius's theory of the atom with the modern theory of Rutherford, Millikan, and Bohr; a study of the Legal Obligations Subsisting Between China and Great Britain; essays dealing with "aspects of" or "moot questions in the criticisms of" Hardy, Wordsworth, Ruskin, and Francesco Redi; and an article on Conditions Underlying the Spread of Religions. In the last-named you will find the conclusion arrived at that "the methods of obtaining conversion to a religion are the same as those of the commercial advertiser" — a touch which somewhat re- lieves the whole Journal of the solemnity which lies else- where upon it. We wish we could say that this solemnity is per se an undergraduate thing; unfortunately our Vassar authors have copied their elders, the writers of articles for the incredible learned journals of professorial America, very well. Their accomplishment is indeed impressive, and we suppose without parallel. But it is a bit depressing.

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The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3235 America and Asia Outstrip Europe THE sun is 93,000,000 miles away, and a fair-sized body; but Betelgeux in Orion is 30,000,000 times as big as the sun, and although light travels at the rate of 11,000,000 miles a minute it takes light 190 years to get from Betel- geux to this miserable little earth. So, at least, the astrono- mers assure us; but the economists are beginning to plague us with figures almost as huge and as incomprehensible. Max Winkler, former head of the foreign bond depart- ment of Moody's Investors' Service, has compiled for the Information Service of the Foreign Policy Association a set of tables and figures regarding American loans to foreign countries. One of the greatest economic revolutions of his- tory— that of the United States in the last decade and a half — is mirrored in his figures; but the sums are so vast and their present and potential significance so enormous that it seems almost easier to let one's mind play with the light rays dancing earthward from Betelgeux. In 1914 the United States was still a field for foreign investment. Foreign countries had some five billion dollars of their surplus capital invested in this country; and Ameri- can investments abroad were only about half that sum. Then came the war, and a process for which we had been ripe was enormously accelerated. In the three years 1915- 1917, according to Dr. Winkler's reckonings, foreign capi- tal flotations in the United States totaled $3,316 362,000— more than the total amount which we had invested abroad in all the previous years and decades of our national his- tory. The scales turned. In the next three years, 1918- 1920, we were so deeply engaged in our own war industries that we lent a mere bagatelle of $1,717,555,300; but in 1921- 1923 we had $2,039,451,764 spare cash to invest abroad; and in 1924-1926 our foreign investments reached the stagger- ing total of $5,687,113,411. In these last three years we have put a billion dollars into Germany — in loans to cities, states, banks, churches. tramways, automobile companies, housing corporations, steel mills, electric companies, dye works, cig; companies, harvester companies, water-power, film companies — every- thing. There is hardly a country in the League of Nations which has not borrowed money in Wall Street in this period. Argentina, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Chile, Colom- bia, Costa Rica, Czecho-Slovakia, Denmark, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Finland, Germany, Greece, Honduras. Hungary, Italy, Japan, Jugoslavia, Liberia, Mexico, Nor- way, Panama, Peru, Poland, Salvador, directly or through their states and municipalities, came to America for money in 1926 alone, and got it — and one might add another dozen countries to the list by going back to 1924 and 1925. And these are governments alone. Dr. Winkler's lists of Ameri- can investments also include oil corporations in Cuba, Mexico, Canada, Venezuela, Peru, British Guiana, Persia, and Trinidad; Norwegian aluminum, Russian gold mines, French perfume and silk, Finnish cooperatives, automo factories in a dozen countries and railways even-where, Italian shipping, Belgian and Sp; nish telephones, Brazilian coffee and African rubber plantations, Caribbean sugar fields, Central American fruit, Caucasian manganese, Ural platinum — a little of everything and a great deal of some. Along with this, of course, has gone an enormous increase in our foreign trade— and a significant change in its nature and direction. In the years before the war al- most two-thirds of our exports went to Europe; in 1926 less than half. Before the war almost exactly one-half of our imports came from Europe; in 1926 less than a third. In dollar values, to be sure, we sell to Europe more than twice as much as we sold her before the war, and we also buy two and one-half times as much; but Europe's relative importance has declined for us — as for the rest of the earth. Asia and Latin America as well as the United States are coming up in the world, while the old continent of Europe is losing its primacy. From Asia we actually imported in 1925 and 1926 a few hundred million dollars' worth of goods more than we imported from Europe — a fact of unrealized historic significance. Silk and rubber — women's clothes and automobile tires — have made Asia a greater department store for us than all the countries of tired Europe. And Latin America, if present trends continue, will soon put Europe into third place. Before the war Great Britain and German}- met us on fairly equal terms in the South. In 1913 the Latin-Ameri- can republics purchased goods valued at $323,S32,000 from the United States, at $270,223,000 from the United King- dom, at $185,197,000 from Germany. In 1926 the corre- sponding figures were $836,592,000, $295,965,000, and $189,965,000. We have outdistanced our competitors — both as exporters and importers we dominate Latin-American trade. Nearly 40 per cent of all Latin America's exports come to the United States; indeed, Mexico, the West In- dies, and the Central American countries send us nearly 70 per cent of all that they ship abroad. What this eco- nomic dominance will come to mean in political terms can only be guessed. And while our proportion of Asiatic trade is still relatively slight, it is significant that silk and silk goods account for almost half of Japan's total exports, and that the United States takes over 60 per cent of the world's silk, and a still larger proportion of Japan's. One of the documents issued by the recent Interna- tional Economic Conference at Geneva gave in dull statisti- cal terms a number of flashes upon our new world. For instance, Japan and the United States between them are consuming today nearly two million more bales of cotton each year than they did before the war; and Europe nearly two million bales less. Lancashire's cotton mills will never again hum with the old activity; during the war Japan and India learned to weave their own cotton instead of sending it raw on the long journey to England and having it re- shipped as cloth. China will learn, too, in time, and then Japan's mills will drowse. The world is learning the pri- mary economic lesson: to produce near the sources of raw materials. That explains much of the present prosperity of the United States, the new significance of Asia, and the depression of Europe. Europe will never again be the world's factory as she was before 1914. These Geneva fig- ures tell a tale of her decline: Percentage of World Production Europe Pig iron Steel Coal Cotton varus. 1913 56 51 47 46 47 4 1 North America 1913 1925 41 49 43 52 43 44 26 27 Asia 1913 19245 1 3 0.5 2 4.5 6.6 20 27

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July 6, 1927] The Nation The economic basis of Europe's political empire is plainly crumbling and decayed, and the political house has begun to tumble on top of it. What America's new eco- nomic empire will mean we do not yet know, or how dan- gerous proportions it will reach before other continents follow our lead in asserting both political and economic independence. Career Diplomats — and Others WITH the diplomatic service it has been out of the frying-pan into the fire. For years civil-service re- formers, nonpartisan journals like The Nation, and students of our foreign policy urged the creation of a permanent diplomatic and consular service to put an end to the sale of offices, from ambassador down, and the appointment of grossly unfit politicians to positions abroad in which they misrepresented and often disgraced the United States. Finally, the reform was achieved — only two years ago ; the career diplomat arrived by act of Congress; and behold, there is already growing dissatisfaction with the profes- sionalizing of the service. Within its ranks there is a bit- ter feud between the careerists and those who have been directly appointed. Whenever a vacancy occurs now in an important post, as in Mexico or in Argentina, the State De- partment seethes with the effort of the permanent staff to induce the President to appoint a career official to the vacancy. Their arguments are not unimpressive; if there are to be promotions all along the line there must be top places for those to fill who have risen from the bottom. But ex- perience shows the career diplomat too often dull and rou- tinized, or tradition-bound and limited in vision, as witness our minister to China, Mr. MacMurray, who, for all his technical equipment, has been a sad misfit. He has been repeatedly overruled by Washington — if we may trust the daily press — but, being a permanent official, he does not resign. By contrast, there is Ambassador Sheffield, who has just returned from his post in Mexico City; the gossips have it that he has done so because he has not been in accord with the State Department. We have disagreed em- phatically with Mr. Sheffield's views; but we like his manli- ness in resigning rather than cooperating in what he be- lieves bad policy. If the diplomatic service were entirely officialized a situation might grow up in which some future President would be unable to appoint a minister adaptable to his purposes or sufficiently in sympathy with his policies to carry on with the necessary enthusiasm. It is obvious, therefore, that some strategic places should be kept free for the President to bestow. It is an open secret that Mr. Wilson would have been happy, indeed, if he could have filled the embassies in Vienna, Berlin, and London with new men early in 1915. Gerard, Page, and Penfield were picked in 1912 — two for their campaign contributions — without, of course, Mr. Wilson or anybody else having the faintest prevision how important these positions would become. When the emergency came Mr. Wilson could not bring him- self to ask for resignations abroad or, for that matter, at home. When he had appointed a man he stuck to him rather than admit an error. As Vice-President Dawes has just put it, the war "demonstrated the incalculable damage which may be done at critical times by small men in high places." In his address to the graduating class at Washington University on June 7, from which we take the above quo- tation, Mr. Dawes also declared that "war lessons should make us distrustful of too great extension of the policy on the part of any government of educating and using career men for diplomacy." They may do well in peace time, he said, but their psychology "is often fatal to diplo- matic competency in important emergencies." He is afraid that the right of promotion by seniority, which ruins, he thinks, the effectiveness of an army in peace time, will have "its dire result on the future of American diplomacy." To the career man, he explains, diplomatic convention often seems of supreme importance. So in China, he might have added, it seems as if convention, an inclination to act with the other ambassadors, and a total failure to understand the new psychology of Chinese Nationalism have controlled the acts of our ambassador. It is so rarely that we find ourselves in hearty accord with the Vice-President that we cannot forbear from quot- ing this passage from his address : This is a time when our diplomatic negotiations must be carried on with courage, forbearance, and patience, with sympathy for the suffering, without arrogance resulting from the thought of our national wealth and power, and with a humility of mind which shrinks from the quick preconception of solutions prior to thorough familiarity with the facts with which solutions must deal. Our diplo- matic representatives should be strong enough, no matter how embarrassing the circumstances, to stand firmly for American rights and against their infraction. But again they should be strong enough to urge upon those at home a policy consistent with these rights which is also just to other countries. Of course the classic example is the appointment of James Bryce to the ambassadorship in Washington. No career diplomat from the Court of St. James's could pos- sibly have approached the usefulness and the completeness of Mr. Bryce in this country. He was a specialist in Amer- ica; a citizen of our world as of the European. His under- standing was beyond cavil, whereas the career diplomat who may have served in a dozen countries before reaching high rank remains a specialist in none of them and is usually too wrapped up in procedure and convention to be able to understand the psychology, the history, and the peculiar problems of, let us say, the Balkan peoples or the Latin Americans. We are one with General Dawes in dreading the giving over of the diplomatic service to career men. Bold Adultery and Wilful Murder JN a recent number of the magazine Books Mr. William McFee writes an amusing letter and raises again a perennial question. In a previous issue of the same maga- zine Mr. Hugh Walpole had had occasion to discriminate between those contemporary novels which are "important" and those which are not, and Mr. McFee was aware of cer- tain elements which appeared to have had an unconscious influence upon the choice which was made. Accordingly he arose to protest, though he is anxious that the nature of the protest should not be misunderstood. He is not, he says, arguing that Zane Grey and Harold Bell Wright are "im- portant." Neither is he wishing to convey the impression that his own impulses or actions are purer than most. But

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6 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3235 in downright, sailor-like language he rises to ask a ques- tion. "Why is it," he demands, "that 'important' novels always treat of some fresh variation of adultery, 'moral re- volt,' or other sex upheavals?" Why indeed? The question is not an easy one to an- swer even if one happens to feel that Mr. McFee's case is not quite as strong as it seems. It is simpler to fall back upon history and suggest that at least he is wrong in the implied assumption that he has caught the moderns in a depravity peculiar to them alone; for the fact is that the "important" novels of every age have exhibited a similar preoccupation with adultery. It is in Fielding and Smol- lett, Thackeray and George Eliot; even the domestic Rich- ardson concerned himself with a seduction that did not come off instead of one that did; and if the French are not to be dismissed as too notoriously evil-minded to be ad- i lifted into the argument, one may well ask where Balzac and Stendhal and Flaubert would be if the marriage vow were inviolate in fiction. Indeed one might leave the novel aside and, without indulging too much exaggeration, assert that almost all great literature has been about adultery. Without it Homer would have lacked a theme, the story of King Arthur and his Knights would have been deprived of its catastrophe, and the other of the three greatest stories in the world — the stcry of Tristram — could not have existed at all. We are not, it is true, told anything about the sex life of Beowulf, and the Song of Roland has no bedroom scenes, but these are exceptions drawn from barbarous ages and adultery and civilization go hand in hand. Nor is Mr. McFee's protest by any means new. It has arisen to em- barrass the humanist since time immemorial, and the down- rightness of Mr. McFee's manner calls directly to mind the challenge of Roger Ascham, who, in the sixteenth century, denounced the "Morte D'Arthur" as no more than "bold adultery and wilful murder. As to the reason for this lamentable state of affairs the cynic might argue that people always enjoy in fiction an account of those exploits which they do not themselves dare to perform, and that adultery is popular in novels because it is hedged about with unpleasant consequences in life. But there is another explanation which does not involve as a corollary the assumption that the major part of the popu- lation has adulterous itchings. If we are willing to grant that love is the most interesting of all subjects, then it will follow that of all the varieties of love the most interesting sort is that which is illegitimate in one way or another. In the first place, the annals of the virtuous, like the annals of the happy, are brief. And in the second place, love is most intense when it meets an impediment. It must be great to sweep over barriers which society has set up, and as it pauses before them it gathers strength and volume like a stream that has been dammed. Illegitimate love is, more- over, the kind which produces the greatest upheaval in the lives of those affected by it, and if adulterous attachments have been most treated by novelists it is chiefly because they are the sort which produce the greatest consequences. If many modern "sex" novels are dull it is not because they deal with infractions of the marital vow but because in the society which they treat that infraction is repress as one which has ceased to be senous and which does not either constitute a very imposing barrier or entail very far- reaching consequences. What these modern novelists need is a new sin — something which will give their characters pause and involve them in really formidable difficulties. Some Students Write Well WE have been reading here and there in the under- graduate press of the country, and we have come to the conclusion that American students today are outrage- ously defamed. The current notion is that the rah-rah boy of twenty years ago has been succeeded by a creature with smooth hair who, to be sure, is crude no longer but who could actually afford to take on a little crudeness — could venture, for instance, to develop an enthusiastic inter- est in the affairs of the world. The current notion of the undergraduate is that he has brains but is too bored to use them. Having scanned the editorial pages of the Coe College Cosmos, the Yale News, the Duke University Chronicle, the University of Georgia Red and Black, the Rice Institute Thresher, and other student papers, we demur. "Nourished on a steady diet of platitudes," the Coe College Cosmos assures it readers, "the student is fortunate if he possesses any mind at all." It is much to have recog- nized that most of what one hears, in college or out, is meaningless. The editors of the Cosmos have gone further than this, however; they have informed themselves, and they have thought about things until these things had meaning. They have taken the trouble to find out what is really going on in China. They have asked why Mr. Cool- idge should send marines to Nicaragua, in the interest of order, and should not send them to Chicago. And they write: Let us have done with this chatter about making war more pleasant, more humane. Let no effort be spared to make it as deadly and ghastly as possible. Doubtless many college papers still fill all their space with nice nothings about local crises in social and athletic relations. But it is refreshing to see a number of dailies spreading over their front pages intelligent news articles about American foreign relations, the censorship of books, race prejudice, preparedness, the politics of Chicago, and recent developments in the world of science and of art. The Yale News, among all of the papers we have ex- amined, goes farthest in the direction of grown-up journal- ism. Some of its contemporaries have as intelligent and critical an editorial page, but only a few can rival it for volume of significant news. And its editorials, which hap- pen to be of a distinctly liberal cast, often have to be answered from off the campus. One of its pronouncements on the Allied debt, for example, drew letters on the same day from Secretary Mellon and the Wall Street Journal. An instructor in Rice Institute, Texas, walked into class the other day, wrote on the board the three words "Sacco and Vanzetti," and asked his students what they meant. After one or two highly incorrect definitions had been supplied the instructor compromised with the informa- tion that: "It's the name of a Spanish dish that is some- what similar to spaghetti. Literally, Sacco means cheese and Vanzetti crackers. Haven't any of you ever eaten or heard of it?" Two girls, reports the Thresher, remem- bered having seen the thing on menus, and one boy shyly admitted having tasted it. Not one member of the class had heard of the two Massachusetts men whose names have been going round the world for seven years. The Thresher viewed the affair partly with derision and partly with alarm; and rightly, though the thing might have happened in dozens of other colleges. Where college journalism can offset ignorance like this it renders a vast service.

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July 6, 1927] The Nation For the benefit of 7,486,356 of our young literary enthusiasts "And you, my young friend, what might you be doing?" "I am trying to learn to play like Mr. Mencken, sir." "And do you really believe that sort of thing can be learned?' >*,ll( UXUo— *>!>•' Blow Your Own Horn!

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8 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3235 Explaining Women [Three well-known psychologists here analyze tht anonymous articles by distinguished modem women pub- lished by The Nation in recent months.*] Why Feminism? By BEATRICE M. HINKLE THE women who pictured their early backgrounds for The Nation in an effort to explain their later "femi- nist" behavior attempted the impossible. The incidents and general conditions of the environment that one consciously remembers, the external aspect of life, are but a part, in- deed the smaller part, of one's background. Silently and quite apart from the will and knowledge of the child a rious alchemy takes place between the inherited re- action-trends, the dominant psychological functions of the particular individual, and the environmental influences which play upon them. Out of this welter arise the marked characteristics and attitudes which become organized in the mature personality. We know that biologically two marked reactions to the same stimulus among living beings are always possible. For instance, fear produces the familiar fight-or-flight re- action; frequently, both reactions occur in the same indi- vidual, one following the other. Different individjal organ- isms will react differently and unpredictably to the same condition or environment. Among human beings there are many choices of reaction to a specific stimulus or environ- mental situation but it is safe to say that the specific at- titude taken is the only one possible to the individual at the time his general direction is being formed. The ii ; of attempang to explain the particular destiny of an individual solely by some special type of en- virenment is amply attested by these women's stories. The tendency they show to consider their own lives as the direct result of their external environment is natural and common to most persons. However, what they most clearly reveal in varying degrees is the particularly personal character of their opinions and attitudes. For example, in the first story we have the statement of the writer that she, "the most timid of created beings," was nevertheless an active participant in one fight after another and a feminist of the militant type. From the account of the family background it is evident that there was an atmosphere in the home of free discussion and a liberal attitude toward women's aspirations. There were women members of the household whose attitude was ap- parently distinctly modern, and therefore she imbibed dur- ing her youth the special nutriment which stimulated the individualistic aspect of her personality. Her exultation over the "first brick thrown" in the militant suffrage cause was a joyous release to action through the psychological mech- anism of identification with the thrower, for she was thus enabled to overcome her personal timidity through a col- lective action. Even though these stories are inadequate for an analy- sis of the writers, due to their marked concern with family conditions and the obvious repression of any clear picture * Back numbers may be had at 15 cents, or $1.S5 for a set of fourteen. Article* on women will run alternate weeks durinu the summer. of the individual in the family, they do present conditions which inevitably play an important role in affecting the general attitude of the developing child. The failure to present clear-cut individual personali- ties makes it necessary to consider these women as simi- lar types because of their "feminist" opinions and a so- called modern attitude toward children, marriage, and ji Of course this is not true, for although th< "S share a "modern" point of view they have no general, com- mon attitude. For instance, the woman who has not mar- ried and wh s that she regards marriage as a com- promise is a very different person from the one who finds herself comfortably married with the feeling that it is good, and that neither economic dependence or independence makes much difference. Nevertheless, when attempting to consider a group of different personalities, nothing more than a collective survey can be made. Two distinct types of family environment are described in these histories and are highly important in their influence on the children. In one group there is a distinctly feminist and free attitude on the part of the parents and close rela- tives. There are play of ideas, free discussion, and equality between the boys and girls in the family. The children were surrounded by this atmosphere from birth, and ac- cordingly their intellectual espousal of the feminist cause was a natural development, an acceptance of the family attitude, and not something born out of personal revolt. Such a case is the one described as Mother-Worship. Here the girl had a constant example before her in the har- monious attitude of both parents toward sex equality and in their freedom from ordinary conventions, besides the actual experience of the mother's unusual life activities. To be sure this same condition might have produced an op- posite reaction in another type of child, but not where so strong an admiration and love for the mother existed, coupled with mother-identification. There is no evidence that this woman's modern attitude was born of revolt or included a protest at all. It was a natural, an easy (per- haps too easy, as she herself comments), acceptance of the general family attitude and thought. The same can be said of the writers of the stories. Staying Free and Lightning Speed Through Life. Their efforts in the world cannot be said to be of a different nature than those of any man who wishes to achieve the fulfilment of his ideas, and strug- gles to carry on his activities on that basis. In other words, the feminism of these women was not born out of a sense of injustice and bitterness, but developed as a natural growth from their own personality in contact with the special family environment. On the other hand, this same environment might well be conceived to be the cause of a violent revolt when the young women went into the world and found themselves hampered by the existing inequalities and traditional attitudes toward women. Quite different is the second group. Here there are family conditions in which grinding poverty, conservative ideas, heavily burdened, unhappy mothers, and a serious responsible childhood prevail. The opinions and attitudes of these women are largely conditioned by revolt against the trying circumstances which they experienced. A fight reaction manifested itself in their protests against and overthrow of the conditions prevailing in their families.

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July 6, 1927] The Nation 9 Like the first group, they were undoubtedly aided by the lessening of the social restriction of women still strong during the early life of their mothers. All this represents one half of the problem. The other half is the type of the individual upon whom these influ- ences fell. For we know that the same family conditions need not produce the same effect upon another type of child, and in these very families there are probably sisters who did not react as these writers did. The problem narrows down to this: What is the real inner cause of the revolt in the souls of these women? Adler would probably account for their attitude by calling them victims of the masculine protest, and see their revolt as an expression of an organically determined in- feriority complex which compensates itself by the espousal of the cause of women as a class, and by a refusal to accept the traditional submissive role. The Freudian analyst would diagnose them as suffer- ing from a castration complex and explain their revolt as an abnormal manifestation of an inner protest that they were not men; in other words, as a refusal to accept their own sex and live the love life of women. There does not appear to be much distinction between these two concep- tions except as regards terminology and emphasis. Each authority postulates his thesis on the traditional concep- tions of woman's psychology and position. My own point of view is that, given their particular psychological organism with its need and capacity for change and development, together with the special family conditions and the comparatively free outer environment, their attitude is a normal protest against external collec- tive restrictions. In the economic struggle women have been notoriously exploited and misused, and there is a definite analogy between their attitude of revolt and that of subject peoples and exploited workers of the male sex. It is significant that in not one of these cases is the feminism of the women based on principle but in each instance it was born directly from the necessities of their personal life. The most common experience among these women is that of their later education and final goal. All but two were college-trained; all of necessity were self-supporting. A striking revelation in these "backgrounds" is the overwhelming part played by the mother in the family and, in the majority of cases, in the lives of the daughters. It was the mother on whom many of the families depended for their economic existence and for the education of the children; it was the mother on whom the affection and respect of the daughters were focused. Even though in some of the mother-dominated families the father made an effort to assume economic responsibility, the mother con- tinuously contributed her share to the exchequer. In the cases where the father is especially mentioned with love and preference by the daughter, the mother still remained the gallant figure in the economic life of the family. These mothers are largely of the pioneer type and they present unmistakably the basis for the external freedom and un- usual position of importance possessed by women in general in this country. Although our group of feminist women appear from their statements to have achieved some kind of fulfilment, it is obvious in spite of their concealments that they have not achieved an inner freedom, or a real solution of their personal problems. They are weak on the side of their woman's nature. Several of them are married, but children are few ; and taking them as a group, the general deduction to be drawn is that the love life is meager and that little enrichment of the personalities through the love experience has been gained. Men might say that their unsatisfied sex impulses produce a vicarious activity manifesting itself in "unwomanly" feminist ideas. We can without difficulty agree that the sexual energy provides a driving power for this type of interest as it does for every form of creative activity. But no woman who has lived through such an ex- perience will admit that bearing large families, exhausting energy in the painful economic struggle to support children, as did the mothers of these women, offers to the individual woman or to the race a more satisfactory way of life. These modern women are engaged in a real creative effort even though it may not be realized, for behind their stridency and revolt lies the great inner meaning of woman's struggle with the forces of convention and inertia. This is nothing less than the psychological development of themselves as individuals, in contradistinction to the collective destiny that has exclusively dominated their lives. In spite of their individual failure to achieve their full destiny — and who fulfils it to his complete satisfaction, whether man or woman?— their attitude is part of a great rolling tide which is bringing to birth a new woman. This new woman will possess an individuality which will enable her to stand by the side of man, strong and secure within herself. From her a new race will be born for whom feminism or masculine antagonism will be but an echo of a dark age long past. The Weakness of Women By JOHN B. WATSON HOW much truth are the women telling in their biog- raphies? At best biographies reveal mainly super- ficialities. It is curious that human beings know so little about themselves. We almost never tear ourselves apai*t to see how the parts work together. It is so much easier to tear other people apart. We learn from infancy to lay blame for failure upon parents, home life, associates, early economic conditions. If we win through it must be because of some innate, instinctive virtue in us that will not be downed by adversity. This all comes out in the biographies. One is struck by the failure on the part of almost all of the women to pay tribute to the very adversities of the en- vironment. Nearly all of them actually quarreled with it — magnified its hardships. "What rot," says the behaviorist who believes that all individuals are made, not born, "the very sorrows and tribulations these women passed through were the conditioning stimuli which forced them on their way." Probably under what they would have considered a favorable environment most of them would have reached the age of fatness and forty and never been heard of — I speak freely, since I know none of the ladies. The second thing that strikes one about these brief life histories is that the women were all restless — seeking something. What were they striving for — happiness? No, happiness apparently has gone out of fashion, it is not a present-day desideratum. We ask people today how many cars they have, whether they live in the town or the coun- try or both, whether they play golf, tennis, or bridge, but we never ask whether they are happy or not. i doubt if

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10 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3235 very many children or adults today would understand what you meant if you did ask them, and I insist that happiness can be defined objectively in behavior terms, that it is a mode of behavior. These women were too modern to seek happiness; they sought what? Freedom. So many hun- dreds of women I have talked to have sought freedom. I have tried to find out diplomatically but behavioristically what they mean. Is it to wear trousers? Is it to vote- to hold offic< — to work at men's trades— to take men's jobs away from them— to get men's salaries? Does their demand for this mystical thing called freedom imply a re- sentment against child-bearing— a resentment against the fact that men's sex behavior is different from women's (but not so much any more) ? I rarely arrive at a reasonable answer. The analysts claim that they can by psychoanalysis get at the truth about women. I make no such rash claim. I can read women only after making careful observations of their behavior over long periods of time. Then I put two and two together like any other scientist. When a woman is a militant suffragist the chances are, shall we say, a hundred to one that her sex life is not well adjusted? Marriage as such brings adjustment in only approximately 20 per cent of all cases, so poorly have men and women been taught about sex. Among the 20 per cent who find adjust- ment I find no militant women, I find no women shouting about their rights to some fanciful career that men— the brutes— have robbed them of. They work— they work like a man (than which nothing better can be said about work) they often quietly achieve careers. Most of the terrible women one must meet, women with the blatant views and voices, women who have to be noticed, who shoulder one about, who can't take life quietly, belong to this large per- centage of women who have never made a sex adjustment. The biographies as a whole strikingly confirm the view that militancy passes as soon as the woman, by the trial- and-error process, finds sex adjustment. Then they cease to hunt for freedom, they lose themselves in their work. Surely the only freedom worth striving for is complete engross- ment in activity, be that activity writing a play, washing infant's clothes, or losing oneself in the sway of passion. The great weakness of women (who seek careers) is that they have never been trained to work like men. I mean trained so from infancy. Men are brought up in the tradition that men must work. They get it in their youth in gang activities and later in sports. They learn from boyhood that they must support their families and that to do so they must establish technique for work — habits of work — and that they must endure fatigue to harden their muscles; they must learn to do everything well enough to compete. They are trained in their infancy in habits of manipulation — women are not. They used to be in the fine art of needlework — only look at the samplers of the eight to twelve-year-olds. They were trained to weave and spin and cook and make their own dresses. Then the fashion changed — women had to be ladies — pretty orna- ments. Their sphere was in the home. Now the picture is changing again. Mothers are beginning to train their girls in habits of manipulation. Women's customs have changed so rapidly that work traditions have never had a chance to soak in. Hence few women hi \e achieved greatness. I have never believed that there were any insuperable difficulties which keep women from succeeding. They have strength enough to paint, yet there has never been a great woman painter. They have strength enough to play the violin and yet there has never been a great woman violin- ist. They have endurance and strength enough to become great scientists and yet one can count on fewer than the fingers of one hand the women scientists who have achieved real greatness. During the past thirty years thousands of women have taken the degree of Ph.D. and yet scarcely a dozen have come to the front. Not being trained from infancy to the tradition of incessant manipulative work they drop out of the race as soon as they get comfortable. Marriage is usually the shady spot that causes them to lie down and rest. And when they fail in that, as 80 per cent do, restlessness again sets in, but now it is too late to go back and take up the threads of the old career. Most women who had aspira- tions for a career have tried to eat their cake and have it too. A career is a jealous all-consuming taskmastei-. Marriage as such should be no barrier to a career. Apartment hotels, which can be found in every town where a woman could have a career, have freed married women without children almost completely. The having of chil- dren is almost an insuperable barrier to a career. The rearing of children and the running of a home for them is a profession second to none in its demands for technique. The behavioristic moral — and we must have morals — is: Women do not like to work (neither do men). There is no natural "instinct" to work. Biologically speaking the hungry animal reaches up and pulls down a banana, reaches out and grasps his female (or vice versa) ; his hunger adjusted, he rests and sleeps. Work habits are the result of civilization and competition. If you want your children to have careers, be they boys or girls, teach them from infancy habits of manipulation, skilful technique, endurance. Work must become "first nature" — "second nature" is not enough. And along with it teach them (or have them taught if you are a Puritan) what to expect in the realm of sex. Half-Confessed By JOSEPH COLLINS ARTICULATE confession is better for the soul than scriptural. It is likewise better for the confessor seeking illumination of sin, sanity, or sanctity. The women who have been telling through The Nation why and how they rebelled against some of the conventions to which they were born and reared can scarcely have had the ex- quisite feeling of purity and spiritual lightness that comes from frank and full confession. They have kept back a lot, and no experienced confessor like myself will give them absolution. The writers are all revolutionists; that is, they are all feminists. There are many varieties of feminists but they all have one thing in common: enmity to privilege. Feminists want to do something in the world and to do it themselves. Privilege has always precipitated revolutions. Privi- leges that man arrogated to himself precipitated feminism. Had it not been for Paul, Luther, and Loyola women would have had their rights hundreds of years ago. Now that they have them in part, and soon are to have them in full meas- ure, it behooves women to use them properly. I can see no sign that they are seeking or getting instruction in that direction. I have no doubt many echo the sentiment of the woman who wrote in The Nation series :

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July 6, 1927] The Nation 11 I feel no need for more freedom, but I want a world in which the freedom I now have can be used. The indus- trial and political world is in hands like mine today. Are we, while I live, going to get courage and wisdom to match our freedom? I am hopeful that we shall, but I suspect that I shall be disappointed. The question that woman must answer is Why am I here? not Where am I at? Woman has one purpose: to help God run the world. In every respect save populating it, He would seem to be wholly beyond the need of assis- tance from His image. Until man began to sin, God had only one command: "Be fruitful and multiply; replenish the earth and subdue it." Woman is chiefly concerned with the first part of the command, man with the second. Inci- dentally, she may express herself, strive to be happy, and help make life livable for others. Those are privileges, not duties. Woman is becoming more and more loath to do her duty; man more and more eager to obey God's com- mand. Flying over the Atlantic without stop, telephoning from London to San Francisco qualify under "subdue the earth." The woman who is willing to have ten to twenty children is almost extinct. There are many good reasons why the majority of women should not have ten to twenty children, but there are many more and better reasons why they should have from five to ten. Women arrogate to themselves the freedom to say how many children they shall have and when they shall have them. One thing we know: the "best" stock is showing the smallest reproduction. Propagation and its entailments may not be essential to the health of woman, but they promote it enormously, and their absence engenders mental and emotional dis- equilibrium. There would be small call for specialists of my sort if men and women married early and successfully. Every diagnostician has "hunches." I have a hunch that the sex-coefficient of many of these writers is low. The women who wrote the articles under discussion have all achieved a measure of success in varied careers. Yet they say little of their duty toward the race. Most of them mention men only as they have observed them in youth, particularly in their fathers, and they maintain a deep silence about child-bearing. Nine of the group do not even mention it, still less do they imply that they have given it a thought. Two were so terrified at the idea that they decided never to procreate; one wanted children, though without marriage, and in the end had neither. One is a confirmed celibate and satisfied with it as she is with every- thing she has done, and one "lives in sin" and is childless. This alone is a terrifying discovery. If these women are so steeped in their desire for social freedom and economic rights that they disregard entirely their first prerogative, what will become of the race they claim to uphold? Despite the celibate's self-complacency, her life is incomplete. To pretend that she has handled the marriage problem by avoid- ing love in or out of marriage is fatuous. One of the writers with a sense of humor has decided that her feminism and convictions about self-support are not powerful enough to destroy the happiness she feels at being supported by her husband. One preaches need of financial independence for women as a self-respecting basis for love and marriage (why love?) while another declares it has nothing to do with them: "It is the spirit of coopera- tion that counts and enables two people to make adjust- ments." A third has discovered that marriage is "the only profound human experience," and another consented to it after thirty-odd years of celibacy as the only way in which "one can give expression to love without interference." I am disappointed that I find no discussion of the rela- tion of pleasure to work. One admits that she hates work and sees no necessity for it even if it is needed to uphold feminist doctrines. To be sure, the five writers or journal- ists agree that they like the economic independence their work gives them, but they possess some of the sacred fire that makes for efficient work. The four teachers are en- grossed with the ideal aspect of their careers, and the one social worker renounced it when she felt the discrepancy between her ideals and practise ; she is the most ardent and militant feminist of the group. Has station in life anything to do with feminism, or is it by sheer coincidence that, with one exception, these women were born to poverty? It would be interesting to have a series of articles on the same subject by women born to riches. If it would not affect their views on marriage and children, it might on feminism. The woman who, in her struggle for existence, hurts the wings of her ideals against hard walls erected by man is likely to overstress the necessity for independence of every kind. Few of the writers, obviously, are under forty, and many of them are much older. Their efforts were made at a time when the struggle was real; now they take on the aspect of pioneer work. These women have "arrived" by their own means and their stories should be illuminating. They would have been so had the writers taken full advan- tage of their anonymity to reveal the soul in conflict between love and the principles and practice of feminism. Were I seeking examples to illustrate that temperament and talent are inherited and not acquired, I could ask for no better ones than this series of articles furnishes. Nearly every one of the writers had at least one parent entitled to be called intellectual, with a desire for books and knowledge, and a determination that his or her offspring should have an education. It is interesting, too, that ten of these women had energetic, determined, dominating mothers, the kind that often shapes docile, dependent daughters and has sons with a flair for the easiest way. On rereading these articles I fell into meditation. Which of these women should I have liked to companion? There were two with whom I should have been willing to attempt it. One had strong, lusty desires and she wished more than anything else to have "swift feet that she might run after them." Another who interests me wrote the twelfth instalment. She seems to have neither ambition nor determination to administer the world, and she knows how to laugh and be joyous. She thinks the earth a lovely place to live and her only reason for being a feminist is dictated not by affect but by intellect. If her buoyant spirit has not made her over-affable I think she would be my first choice. Turning to the corollary of this meditation, I won- dered which of these women would be my last choice. Again it simmered down to two : The second and the fourth. The former had a childish sense of guilt. The grief and gloom of her parents was that they had brought her into the world, and she has a passionate desire to be no trouble to her hus- band. The fourth says that "no living person can give me the excitement I got at eight years old when my father took me on his knees and popularized the theories of Darwin for me." I should hesitate to enter as a contestant with father!

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12 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3235 Law and Order in Los Angeles By RUBE BOROUGH LAW and order suppressing "radicals" and other social disreputables is confident, belligerently verbose, forth- right in action. Law and order suppressing "respectables" is stricken with qualms of "conscience," talks not so long nor so loud, and cautiously tests the ground before it moves. Law and order in Los Angeles today faces the "re- spectables." Fifty-live of the city's most eminent bank- ers and business men have been indicted for looting the Julian Petroleum Corporation of from $12,000,000 to $18,- 000,000 in usurious interest charges and flooding the market v ith 4,250,000 worthless "overissued" shares of stock. Among the indicted are Harry M. Haldeman, president of the Better America Federation, that super-virtuous radi- cal-baiting guardian of California's patriotism; Charles F. Stern, president of the Pacific Southwest Trust and Sav- ings Bank, and three vice-presidents of the same bank, th« chairman of whose board of directors is Henry M. Robin- son, of Dawes Plan fame; Louis B. Mayer, general mana- ger of the Goldv.yn-Mayer Production Corporation; William Rhodes Hervery, a former superior-court judge. About three years ago C. C. Julian, whose spectacular oil-stock-promotion methods had brought him into conflict with the California State corporation commissioner, was forced out of the presidency of the Julian Petroleum Com- pany ; a reorganization followed in which that company was merged with the California Eastern Oil Company. The merged concern took for its new president one S. C. Lewis, from the South, Middle West, and East, a man with a long "oil" history. Substantial business and banking interests backed Lewis. Now Julian has been making speeches from his own radio station in which he charges that Lewis is "a big boob," that he let the "banker crowd" get him and permitted the looting of "Julian Pete." Julian has "named names" over the radio and as a result is in danger of losing his federal radio license. All of Julian's story may not be printed yet. But one may safely report the charge that H. M. Haldeman, as a member of "Pool No. 1," lent $20,000 to "Julian Pete" through its agent, A. C. Wagy and Company, a brokerage house, owned by S. C. Lewis, and that he received usurious interest in excess of $7,000. Hal- deman, upon his arraignment in the local municipal court, indicated that he would try to show his transaction was not a "loan" but a stock purchase. It is the contention of the prosecution that all of the transactions by which "Julian Pete" was mulcted, whatever attempt may be made to rep- resent them as "contracts of sale," were in essence loans with the stock involved held by the lenders as security only. It is furthermore asserted that the transactions were car- ried on the books of the brokerage house as "loans." One of the money-lenders, according to the complaints. made five loans for thirty-day periods totaling $254,200, for which he received $26,920 interest ; another made twenty- one loans for thirty-day periods totaling $424,800, and col- lected $41,180 interest; and the third made thirteen loans for thirty-day periods totaling $1,939,750, and collected $204,250 interest. California's usury law, it should be said, prohibits interest charges in excess of 1 per cent a month. !ity Prosecutor E. J. Lickley, a Progressive in local and State polities, was prosecuting the usury cases, the county grand jury was hearing testimony to fix responsibil- ity for the "over-issue" of 4,250,000 shares of stock. The in- dictment, on June 26, of Lewis alone would mean little to the man on the street, or to the 40,000 shareholders of "Julian Pete" who have seen their stock with a book value of $50 drop in a few weeks from $15 to nothing. Many regard Lewis as in part a victim. As to his usurious interest pay- ments, they believe he acted under duress of circumstances; and, as to the enormous stock over-issue, that it could not have taken place without prominent financiers having had knowledge of it. Moreover, Lewis has been talking freely both to the grand jury and the city prosecutor. Sharehold- ers and the public want to see the big culprits punished. While the city prosecutor and the county grand jury occupy the center of the picture, Receivers Joseph Scott and H. L. Carnahan, appointed by Federal Judge McCormick (who deprived Doheny of his Elk Hills oil lease), are trying to save Julian Petroleum from complete wreckage. Part of their strategy is to "encourage" the usury collectors to "put back" their gains into the company treasury and put them back "without strings." Less than half a million dollars of the $12,000,000 to $18,000,000 collected has so far been "put back." Some of the gentlemen offered to "put back" in return for receivers' certificates but the receivers would not agree. Haldeman, of the Better America Federation, "put back" his $7,000 but after a few days changed his mind and took it out again. "Big lawyers" had told him and others implicated that they had done no "legal or moral wrong." The city prosecutor answered with a warrant for arrest. The receivers' job is not an easy one even if the "resti- tution" is made in full. The authorized stock of Julian Petroleum numbered 1,200,000 shares. The receivers have had some recent successes in bringing in new wells. But if they can build value into the full 5,250,000 shares now out- standing they will be wizards of finance. Of course, the fate of those 4,250,000 shares issued without permission from the State corporation commissioner is as yet uncertain, but auditors in the investigation have thrown up their hands at the problem of distinguishing between the authorized and the unauthorized shares. One more figure and the picture for the time must stand as complete: Major Waiter K. Tuller, big-business attorney and head of former Governor Richardson's "crime commission," is one of the half-dozen impeccable lawyers who are advising respectable citizens that they did no wrong in collecting what Receiver Scott calls "dirty money." As chairman of the crime commission he has urged upon the people and the legislature "reforms" of the criminal procedure which would have made possible convictions by a three-fourths jury verdict, given a trial judge the right to comment on the evidence as well as the law in a criminal case, reduced the defendant's number of peremptory chal- lenges, and otherwise invaded the constitutional rights of American citizens. Democracy is up against a real test in California.

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July 6, 1927] The Nation 13 Canada's Jubilee By J. A. STEVENSON Ottawa, ,/ a great stimulus to industrial development. The story of rfIHE Canadian people will begin on July 1 a solemn the material expansion which the Dominion has enjoyed is i celebration of the sixtieth anniversary of the birth of most simply told in the following figures: their Dominion. Attending the ceremonies will be a small 1867 1926 band of men and women who witnessed the jubilations of .^.^ ^^ <Milli°n ™*£ 1867, and it is they who must possess the truest perspec- Federal Revenues 19 395 tive of the immense changes wrought in the Dominion by Foreign Trade 149 2,242 the intervening sixty years. Confederation found Canada Assets of Chartered Banks 50 2,300 a country where three-fourths of its population of 3,300,000 Produce of Field Crops 100 1,121 souls were still engaged in a stern daily battle with the Produce of Dairies 15 241 primeval wilderness. There were only two cities with over Produce of Mines 4 240 50 000 inhabitants, and even these were trading centers Produce of Forests* 32 327 with a sprinkling of struggling factories. Life was almost Manufacturing Production 221 2,948 Arcadian in its simplicity, the tone of society was sober Today Canada leads the world as an exporter of wheat, and equalitarian, and the political temper fiercely demo- newsprint, nickel, and asbestos and her command of raw cratic. Five thousand dollars per annum was a princely materials and water-power resources, which can cheapen income and great fortunes were unknown. Industry and the costs of the manufacturing processes, insures her economy were the sovereign virtues and the grim battle steady industrial expansion. Her huge northern hinterland with nature had left little time for culture and the ele- may be incapable of profitable cultivation, but evidence ac- gancies of life. But the qualities of enterprise and self- cumulates that its mineral resources have only been reliance had been highly developed, and once Confederation scratched and that it may yet prove the Dominion's rich- halted the racial and political feuds which had paralyzed est fountain of wealth. Individual enterprise, as in the the country for nearly forty years, the planning of economic United States, has been responsible for much of this amaz- developments which promised a larger measure of pros- ing economic development, but the Canadian people have perity and opened the way for the amenities of civilization never shared the fear of collectivist enterprises which pre- became possible. vails so strongly south of the Forty-ninth Parallel. Today Immense sums of public money were spent in provid- the great state-owned system of the Canadian National ing transportation links like the Intercolonial and the Ca- Railways is providing the Canadian Pacific Railway with nadian Pacific Railway, and in equipping the newer terri- formidable competition; the Hydro-Electric Commission of tories with the physical machinery of civilization, but for Ontario, a child of Conservative politicians, has achieved a thirty years after Confederation the growth of the Do- wonderful success in providing cheap light and power to minion was disappointingly slow. The census of 1891 almost one-third of the country's population; and the co- showed a population of only 4,833,329 which meant that operative wheat pools of the West are working a veritable the country, despite a regular inflow of immigrants, had revolution in the marketing of grain. A people whose core scarcely retained its natural increase and the West had consists of yeomen landholders could not fail to be funda- a meager sprinkling of population. Its settlement had to mentally conservative in its outlook, but it is the conserva- wait until the free homestead land of the United States had ism of progress and not of stagnation, been exhausted, and this event coincided with the advent But parallel with the material advancement has come to power in 1896 of the Laurier Government, which adopted a great improvement in standards of life and a widespread a vigorous immigration policy. Immediately the pace of appreciation of the civilizing influences of education. Pov- development began to quicken, and despite the setback erty and hardship are by no means unknown, but there is caused by the Great War, Canada's growth and general a widespread diffusion of comfort and well-being, and onjy progress during the last thirty years have fully justified in the United States do the working classes enjoy the same the dreams of the architects of Confederation. material comforts and range of pleasures. At the time of It is true that the growth of Canada's population, Confederation 20 per cent <■ ipulation were illiterate, which is today estimated at nine and one-half million souls. but the proportion has now than 5 per cent, has fallen short of expectations, but this slow increase There were only two univer standing in 1867, makes all the more impressive Canada's economic achieve- but today there are at least a dozen, and Toronto Univer- ment. The American people did not face half the obstacles sity has more students on its rolls than any university in in providing the physical machinery for their part of the the British Empire. A distinctive native school of art, continent that the Canadian people have successfully sur- whose quality is recognized by foreign critics, is now flour- mounted in a parallel task. The 2,278 miles of railway in ishing in Toronto and elsewhere, and a new stirring of lit- 1867 have now been expanded to 40,352, and no country erary impulses is evidenced by the emergence of an authors' in the world has as large railway mileage per capita. A association with branches in every important city, string of fine, modern cities, with broad streets and every Equally momentous have been the changes in the po- modern convenience, constitutes the nerve centers of the litical field. The British North America Act endowed Dominion and the harnessing of the vast water-powers — i i •! • ,-z. , ,i ii r j . • ,-j. i • * Manufacturing and Forestry production figures are for 1925, but were has both simplified the problems of domestic life and given exceeded last year.

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14 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3235 Canada with complete autonomy in domestic affairs, but the mother country still acted as guardian trustee in the field of international relations. However, bit by bit as the years rolled on, the responsibilities of this trusteeship have been whittled down as Canada grew in strength and confi- dence, and the Great War made inevitable the final emanci- pation from tutelage which was ratified by the constitu- tional report of the last Imperial Conference. Today, al- though certain legal limitations destined to be obliterated at no distant date still bar the claim to untrammeled sov- ereignty, Canada is for all practical purposes an ind dent self-governing nation ; the Crown and the authority of the Imperial Privy Council survive as formal links, but the real binding ties with the motherland are the common heritage of political ideals and the common literature and traditions. The Dominion is now responsible for her own s: stems of defense, she has begun to create her own diplo- matic service, and she sends in her own right representa- tives to the Assembly of the League of Nations. In domestic politics the racial solidarity of the French- Canadian people, the most conservative element in the com- munity, on the Liberal side has completely upset the old equilibrium and is responsible for many anomalies and con- fusions. Since the war, moreover, there has been a serious retrogression in political morality and no further evidence of it need be sought than in the sorrowful story of the cus- toms and revenue scandals, still being investigated, which the Toronto Globe, a Liberal paper, describes as "the black- est chapter in the country's history." But the younger generation is in a questioning mood about the existing political dispensation and the presence of a group of thirty independent members in the House of Commons indicates that a substantial element of the population can no longer be herded within the corrals of the two historic parties. Relations with the United States were never more cor- dial, and there has been no more notable change in the last sixty years than the relegation to limited circles of the inveterate distrust of the Republic which the United Em- pire Loyalists implanted in the Canadian mind. But few Canadians are yet persuaded that the maintenance on this great continent of two distinct political systems which af- ford valuable opportunities for comparison of their experiments and results is not a distinct benefit to its inhabitants. "Al" Smith in Texas By RUBY A. BLACK THE village doctor, the village good-for-nothing, the vil- lage banker, the village editor, the former village mayor, who is now the county's representative in the Texas Legislature, have all come out for the nomination of "Al" Smith for President in 1928. The rest of the 733 inhabitants of Thornton, Texas, over twenty-one years old holding poll-tax receipts will vote for the New York Governor if he is nominated. Governor Dan Moody even journeyed to New York this week with a delegation of 2U0 Texans, a committee of whom paid a call on New York's Governor. This is significant news. Texas— and the rest of the South— is largely made up of towns like Thornton— towns that are Dry and Fundamentalist. The fact that leaders in such towns, several of which I have visited recently, are going over to the "Al" Smith camp is probably more sig- nificant than the recent switch of Albert Sidney Burleson and Thomas Watt Gregory, members of the last Democratic Cabinet, from McAdoo to Smith. It is easy to believe that Gregory and Burleson and other Southern politicians are now for "Al" Smith j u cause they think he could and the Demo, endowed with patronage once more. But not so Thornton and the hundreds of villages of which it is a symbol. They have nothing much to gain politically one way or another. A Democrat instead of a Republican would be appointed postmaster, and that is about the only political gravy they could even smell. Furthermore, the Southern "Republican" postmaster is usually a special brand of Republican — a "post- master Republican." The town does not hold his politics against him if he is a good postmaster. These people in Thornton are Dry and Anti-Catholic. One of the elders of a Thornton church says he does not like Catholics because they do not believe in Christ. That is typical of the knowledge the Anti-Catholics here have of the church to which Governor Smith belongs. Most of them here have been — or are — members of the Ku Klux Klan. G. W. Black, the ex-mayor, now a member of the Texas Legislature, while never a Klansman, has always been anti- Catholic. He always read the Menace and Tom Watson's diatribes against the Catholics. He did not tell me this. I have known it a long time. He is my father. Now Repre- sentative Black is for "Al" Smith for President. When I last visited my native State two years ago no- body spoke a kind word for "Al" Smith except a lone anti- prohibitionist, who was always a thorn in the side of the respectable citizens of the village he inhabited. Down in Austin it is the same way. The Wilson Post- master General, Albert Sidney Burleson, now retired from politics and satisfactorily occupied with seeing the money roll in from oil royalties, is busy converting his Austin friends to "Al" Smith, arguing against religious prejudice, pointing out that Woodrow Wilson himself was opposed to the Volstead Act, so much opposed that he vetoed it — a fact which Dry Democrats seem to have forgotten until a few weeks ago. Professors at the State university, newspapermen, cot- ton brokers, a city commissioner, the husband of a W.C.T.U. leader, all told me they had "begun to favor 'Al' Smith." The women are a little vague about it, but they seem ready to accept Smith, in spite of the doubts of Dry editorial writ- ers who declare that women who fought for prohibition could not be induced to vote for a Wet candidate. ver in the Capitol the youthful Governor, Dan Moody, is still troubled about "Al" Smith's wetness. He thinks, however, that the New York Governor's religion will not stand in his way. "Texas repudiated religious prejudice when it twice in succession elected governors who had fought the Ku Klux Klan," he points out. Dan. as the whole State calls him, is not prepared to

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July 6, 1927] The Nation 15 say whom he will support for the nomination. He says quickly enough that he, and the rest of Texas, will vote for "Al" Smith, once he is nominated. In fact, the politicians are so sure of the staunchness of the Solid South that they are not even considering a South- ern man for the Vice-Presidential nomination. They do not think such a sop need be thrown to the South to get it to support Governor Smith. Ohio or Indiana, they say down here, will name the running-mate for Smith. Or, perhaps, some Western State. The Texas delegation to the Democratic National Con- vention will go instructed for Dan Moody for President. They all agree on that. Leading politicians declare that William Gibbs McAdoo has not the slightest chance of cap- turing the delegation this trip. The line-up at the last con- vention, controlled by Klansmen, cannot be duplicated at this convention, they assure you. McAdoo is just out of it. Ritchie of Maryland and Donahey of Ohio they know little about, and they are not even curious. They dismiss Senator Carter Glass as too advanced in years, although he is Dry enough and loyal enough to Woodrow Wilson to suit them. Cordell Hull of Tennessee is mentioned, but rather fleetingly. Besides, Texas politicians do not believe any Southerner has a chance at the White House. Senator James A. Reed of Missouri is not even consid- ered here. Nobody ever voluntarily brings his name into the conversation. When it is mentioned by a newspaper reporter seeking opinions they all dismiss him with scant attention, with even less attention than they give McAdoo. Of course, he is as Wet as "Al" Smith. But what looms large in Texas minds is "Jim" Reed's behavior during — and following — the Wilson Administration. In fact, Texans hardly remember to point to Reed's wetness as a factor against him, although they mention it in the case of Smith. They remember only that "Jim" Reed did not do as Wood- row Wilson wanted him to do. They cannot forgive him for going against their President. This state of mind seems to indicate that Texans are Democrats before they are Protestants or Prohibitionists. If they are Democrats first, and Protestant Prohibitionists second, they are probably subconsciously, if not consciously, preparing their minds to pick somebody who can be elected, regardless of prohibition or religion. Their talk sounds like it. " 'Al' Smith is the only Democrat with a ghost of a show." "Nobody but 'Al' Smith could get a run for his money." "Does look like out of a hundred million Protestants, we might find some good man who could be elected Presi- dent, but if we can't, why, we'll have to go for 'Al' Smith." "I rather think 'Al' Smith would be the most available man. He is progressive, and a good executive. He might be elected, and I don't know of any other Democrat who could be." These are typical quotations from Texas politicians, and from Texas merchants, farmers, druggists, lawyers, cot- ton men, newspapermen, oil men, university professors, real- tors, and doctors, most of them prohibitionists, all of them Protestants. This is reminiscent of the state of mind which elected Dan Moody governor. Texas wanted somebody to defeat the Fergusons. The word began to go around, "Dan's the man." On that slogan, the fighting and smiling young Attorney General polled the highest vote in the Texas pri- mary, and that left him and "Ma" Ferguson to fight it out in the run-off primary. Many people who wanted to vote for other candidates went out in the first primary and voted for Dan Moody, simply because they were convinced that he was the man who could run the Fergusons out of Texas politics. The question is, Will Texas act in exactly the same way in the Democratic convention? Will it line up under the slogan, "Al can beat Cai"? And will the rest of the South? Emily Newell Blair of Missouri, vice-chairman of the Demo- cratic National Committee, says the Democrats have been out of power long enough to stop fighting among themselves and pick a winner. Texas politicians are not on the whole so honestly practical. They have a tendency to say that the Democratic Party would rather be right than in power. But they are certainly busy thinking in practical terms, as their conversation reveals. "The people of this part of the country," says the Governor, "are convinced that prohibition is right, and they are not going to help nominate anybody who will try to repeal or nullify the Eighteenth Amendment." On the other hand, many politicians and ordinary Tex- ans with whom I have talked recently have drawled, "Well, I used to be for prohibition, but now I don't know." And while they are in that state of mind, some Smith man comes around and points out that "Al" Smith, while opposed to prohibition, is in favor of enforcing laws as long as they are on the statute books, and that New York has never had a better executive than Governor Smith. Such talk may prove to be seed cast on very fertile ground. It is everyday conversation in Austin and Dallas, Thornton and Mexia. Governor Smith's letter on the relation of his religion to his politics was greeted joyously in Texas by those who were anxiously seeking some excuse for overcoming their religious prejudice and hopping on the Smith bandwagon. There is much talk in Texas these days about Thomas Jef- ferson and religious freedom, about Jefferson Davis and the New York Catholic lawyer who offered to defend him against a threatened charge of treason, about Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, a Catholic, and his loyalty to States' Rights, about the staunchness of the New York Catholic Democrats in the dark days following the Civil War. Texas seems to feel that it is about time some New York Catholic Democrat was rewarded for the service Tammany performed for the party when it seemed that the party might die with the death of the Confederacy. Then they sit around and count votes in the Electoral College — even while engaging in their "rather-be-right-than- President" talk. They count on the Dry West to be won by a water-power program — if Smith is the nominee. The Re- publicans have done nothing about Boulder Dam, they re- mind one another. Smith has a water-power record that could win the West, they believe. They will almost count Ohio or Indiana on the provision that a Dry from one of these States is nominated for Vice-President — to run with "Al" Smith. They do not hesitate for one minute to count the whole South, and the industrial East. They count Massachusetts, still mindful of David Walsh's defeat of William Butler, Coolidge's own candidate in Coolidge's own State. They get enthusiastic and count some other New England State. Somehow, they cannot seem to count enough votes to put a Democrat in the White House, except when they are count- ing "Al" Smith votes.

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16 The Nation [Vol. 125. No. 3235 In the Driftway ALL the Drifter's sympathy is with the small boys who, if the proposal of Clifford Goldsmith is accepl Cleanliness Institute, will be lured into bathtubs cruelly renamed "The Spirit of Charles Lindbergh." There is no (•million more devout than a child's hero-worship, and par- ents should respect it. Instead, with deadly surem which one suspects a trace of jealousy, they drag the hero down to a plane of humdrum personal habits. Little hears every day about the hour when Napoleon is th by Bertie's parents to have gone to bed, and knows more about the great Bonaparte's clean collars than his own valet probably did. Gradually the reverence turns under such treatment to bitter disillusion. There must be some small to whom Lindbergh is still a god bathed in heroic radiance; bait how can this vision survive the installation of the Lindbergh tub? As for the special girls' bathtub which is to be called "The Beauty Parlor of Mary Piekford," it is another form of the burnt-crust propaganda which the Drifter himself passed on to his nieces before they were old enough to protect themselves. If they ate burnt crusts their hair would curl; if they take enough baths they will look like Mary Pitkford. THE Drifter is not unqualifiedly for Cleanliness Institute anyway. His pride has not recovered from a devastat- ing blast against American crudity by a British phPosopher of note. This critic, after quoting Mencken, Sinclair Lewis, and no doubt The Nation itself about the sadder aspects of American self-expression, pictured contemptuously the slav- ish Yankee materialists who have nothing better to live for than a religion of exaggerated cleanliness. He could never bring himself to visit this preposterous country, Mr. Joad admitted proudly, but he had it on good authority that every American householder on showing visitors his home takes them first to the bathroom as a sort of shrine. When this outburst was shown him by a tolerant Englishman in a second-class railway carriage, the Drifter assured him of its falsity. To an Italian or even a Frenchman the Drifter would have made the best of it and tried to defend his country; but how could he face the scoured pink cheeks of an Englishman and say that Americans were cleaner and proud of it? He denied the slander. Now comes Cleanli- ness Institute to spoil the Drifter's reputation for even a fair degree of truthfulness. CLEANLINESS INSTITUTE is a new public welfare or- ganization of national scope. The chairman of the Board of Directors has the appropriately cleanly name of Colgate. As for Clifford Goldsmith, who proposed the Lind- bergh and Piekford bathtubs, he is described as an author of health epigrams. Like the heroine of the ballad burn- ing to know "who writes the lovely mottoes that you find in cracker boxes," the Drifter always likes to pierce the veil that hides modest authors whose words are as famous as their names are obscure. Can he have found in Mr. Goldsmith the gifted author of "Four out of five" and "Leaves no telltale odor" and "Cleanliness is next to " But no. Mr. Goldsmith could hardly be old enough for that. The Drifter Correspondence Crushing Haiti To the Editor of The Nation : SIR: President Borno has been "reforming" our constitu- tion. Twelve articles have been modified and thirteen sup- pressed, which amounts to the suppression of the constitution itself. All the principles on which moderr . tient is based have are no more constitutional guar- anties for the freedom of the press, the jury, and popular elec- tion. Everything is left to the executive power, who. through the dome Council of State, now can enact all sorts of laws, without ar that the Supreme Court will rule them unconstitutio: e Supreme Court itself has also been do- mesticated. The chief justice and the judges will be appointed by the President for five years instead of for life. Mr. Borno will be the only judge in the Republic of Haiti, the Supreme Court losing the right to declare a law contrary to the consti- tution. All the city councils are abolished, thus municipal life will be extinct in Haiti. The most interesting feature of Borno's constitutional re- form is that he can be reelected for a six-year third term. Thus he expects to remain fourteen years in power. And General Rus- sell is returning to Haiti in September to organize the farcical plebiscite by which the Haitian people must ratify the constitu- tional reform of his pupil, Louis Borno. Port ice, June 14 P. Thoby, Administrateur Delegue, Union patriotique d'Halti Teachers — and Teachers To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: There are two sides to this matter of restrictions on teachers. In the good old days when an anarchist movement existed, I mentioned to a friend that being an anarchist was a hindrance to my getting the more attractive position in the teach- ing field. She exclaimed against it as an outrage. I asked her, "Would yen be willing to send your daughter to a convent to be educated?" She hesitated a second or two, and then said squarely, "Xo, I wouldn't." "Well, then," said I. "why should a parent who disbelieves in anarchism not object to putting his child under anarchist influences?" If you think it outrageous that the habit of smoking to- bacco should be an obstacle to a teacher's getting a job, are you sure that if you yourself had to select a teacher you would not be influenced by the knowledge that she was a persistent and incorrigible gum-chewer? The evils of restrictions on teachers are undeniable, but it is also pretty steep to demand that a man should send his child to a teacher whose teaching he thinks is bad for the child, and pay the teacher real money for it. Neither will the problem be satisfactorily settled by saying that a teacher may have all the beliefs and habits he likes as long as he keeps them quiet. Had I a child to send to school, I would sooner send him to a man who would vigorously teach positive error — say John Roach Straton — than to a man who i"efrained from advocating his beliefs. Vale, Mass., May SI Steven T. Byington California Sterilization To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: You say: "It is reported that in California alone 635 insane people have been sterilized." Up to January 1, 1927, 3,951 sterilizations had been performed in the State hos- pitals of California. See the Jouriml of Social Hygiene, May, 1927, page 258. Ithaca, New York, June 4 Charles E. Edgerton

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July 6, 1927] The Nation 17 Mr. Sigman on the Garment Strike To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: The fascinating communications in your issue of June 15, one from representatives of a Committee on Democracy in Trade Unions and the other from Mr. Louis Hyman, Left-Wing leader of the defunct Communist Joint Board of cloak, skirt, dress and reefer makers' unions, both vigorously dissenting from Mr. Stolberg's resume of the situation, lead me to make a few observations. To the "impartial" experts of the committee on ' democracy I will not reply except to say that they lack Mr. Stol- berg's ten years' familiarity with our organization, as well as his singular detachedness. They might have mentioned that I was among the first in our union to fight for propoi'tional repre- sentation and have remarked that within this last year we had the disastrous general strike in New York, lasting six months, and that the remaining six months have been spent in rebuild- ing our New York organization after the Communist junket, which cost the union $3,500,000 and the workers a loss in wages of $30,000,000. Why, it was upon the motion of the Communists themselves in our General Executive Board that a referendum on proportional representation was postponed during the strike! I can best reply to Mr. Hyman's statements by listing them and giving my version of them. To responsible readers of The Nation I am ready to throw open all official records of our union as witness to my statements. Mr. Hyman says: The membership voted to strike for the demands in that year (1924). Instead of carrying out the order to strike, President Sigman presented the demands to a commis- sion named by Governor Smith. / say: The general strike order, like all strike orders within our International, instructed officials of the union to call the strike if, in the officials' discretion, all amicable means had previously been exhausted. Mr. Hyman says: When the commission reported, after two years, its terms were such as could not be accepted by the union, as President Sigman pointed out in many speeches and inter- views. . . . Mr. Sigman has since reversed himself, in his efforts to find some excuse for getting rid of the opposition to his ad- ministration by the time-honored method of expulsion. / say: Before the strike, in April, 1926, I expressed the opinion before the General Executive Board and the New York Joint Board, that an unfavorable industrial condition existed and that the internal strength of the union was such as forbade a fight against all the elements of the industry at one time. But my recommendations were rejected, because to deal with the bosses on the basis of the Governor's commission's report would be "class collaboration," and this was distinctly against the orders received by the Communist leaders of our New York Joint Board from William Z. Foster's Trade Union Educational League, affili- ated with the Communist Party. The general strike was called. As against my recommendations made in the inner councils of our organization in April, 1926, Mr. Hyman quotes from an affidavit made by me in September, 1926, in a court document to fight an injunction obtained by the employers against us during the strike. Mr. Hyman has the ill grace to use against me a statement made by me during time of strike and against the common enemy! Why, when the Communists proved obdurate and insisted upon a strike, like all loyal trade unionists, I threw my lot in with them, and so did every union man, anti-Com- munists among them ! Mr. Hyman says: Mr. Stolberg's statement that "never in the history of American labor has a strike been more incompe- tently, irresponsibly, and wastefully managed" is both ridicu- lous and untrue. / say: Mr. Stolberg's figures are the most accurate obtainable since the Communists, to date, have given no audit, detailed or otherwise, of their expenditures. Mr. Hyman says: Four of the most important of the eight (strike) committees were placed in the hands of the Right- Wing leaders. These were the finance, settlement, law, and out-of- town committees. / say: Mr. Abraham Baroff resigned in the first week of the seventeen-week strike as chairman of the finance committee because of ill health; Mr. Hyman signed all checks of this committee. The settlement committee was a rub- ber-stamp committee, being forced to settle on instructions from the organization committee, headed by a Communist. The law committee, while nominally headed by a non-Communist, had all expenditures approved by Mr. Hyman. All vouchers for ex- penditures by the out-of-town committee were forced to have the counter-signature of Joseph Levine of the Communist Party. I may add: The mismanagement of the general strike be- gan to be evident in the very first weeks of the strike, when the political interests of the Communist Party, rather than the eco- nomic welfare of the strikers and their families, were seen to be paramount. Only shop chairmen who were Communists were included in the General Strike Committee; union men acquainted with the city and the outlying districts were denied the privilege of serving; I was defeated as chairman of the General Strike Committee and, later, when scabbing became notoriously wide- spread and I offered to head the picket committee, I was turned down. Non-union production was never properly supervised and the strike soon settled down, not against the jobbers who were admittedly the evil of the industry, but against the small group of Industrial Council manufacturers. The details of the Communists' amazing incompetency, failure to realize almost ele- mentary strategy in the conduct of a strike, their maneuver in sending back 16,000 workers to contractors' shops which worked only for jobbers against whom the strike was being conducted, their refusal to obtain a good early settlement of the strike, all these would take too much space to report. We have, till now, scrupulously refrained from answering any of the nonsense emanating from the Communist camp. We have rested content with the certitude that the rank and file of our unions, as well as the broad masses of the labor movement, were well acquainted with the criminal fanaticism of the Com- munists and their faculty for destroying that which has been laboriously built up by the sacrifice of countless immigrant men and women. We make this single exception because we know there are many fine men and women among the readers of The Nation, sympathetic to labor, but perhaps unacquainted realis- tically with its struggles. New York, June 16 M. Sigman, President International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union [In addition to Mr. Sigman's letter The Nation has received communications from both camps of the fur workers, from the cap-makers' union, and from various interested individuals. In- ling and important as many of these communications are, The Nation's space is limited and its field is wide; further letters on the subject cannot be printed. — Editor The Nation.] That Six-Cylindered Airman To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: In The Nation for June 8 Abbe Niles quotes the verse concerning the dying airman, with the remark that, so far as known, it had never seen print before. As The Dying Aviator it is included in an anthology of humorous verse called "The Comic Muse," compiled by J. C. Squire, and published in Lon- don by William Collins Sons & Co., Ltd. Mr. Squire, in his anthology, includes several additional lines not given by your reviewer. The author of the verse is anonymous. Detroit, June 7 D. P. Spencer To the Editor of The Nation : Sir: I have read The Nation for years. But this is the first time I have ever scored a scoop on you. I printed the same variant, a trifle more variable, perhaps, of The Dying Airman in my column in the Cincinnati Times-Star on May 20. Cincinnati, June 10 NlXSON DENTON See Pages 27, 28, and iii

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Books and Music Vigil By ALLEN TATE When you are dead and the frosty iron of laughter Stupendously settles its pride upon your lips, I will gather up the whispers you came after When we first met, of immutable dissimulation. If you are dead when the wind cries again Over the bleak gables of an expected hour, I will build a chapel out of the astonished pain And wait for bells ringing in an empty tower. Letter After a Visit By HANIEL LONG We walked along the leafless avenue And you looped your arm through mine, and sang, and laughed, And to avoid the cold, damp, sunless side of people's houses, Led me across the street and into the sun, And when that side grew cold, back again into the sun, With a dance step and a funny story. I held your arm tighter, understanding you at last, Delighted to zigzag, zigzagging with the sun. Did the Newspapers Make the World War? Five Weeks: The Surge of Public Opinion on the Eve of the Great War. By Jonathan French Scott. The John Day Company. $2.50. AMONG the few courageous writers who have dared to as- sault that most menacing of contemporary fetishes, obsessed nationalism and super-patriotism, Professor Scott must be assigned a leading place. In his "Patriots in the Making" (1916) and his "Menace of Nationalism in Education" (1926) he has provided us with highly illuminating surveys of the per- nicious influence of patriotic education in the schools of Europe, giving special attention to the teaching of history. In the vol- ume under review he has extended his researches to include an analysis of the influence of nationalism as it emerged through the newspaper opinion of Europe in the crucial days from June 28 to August 5, 1914. Few topics connected with war responsibility offer poten- tially richer rewards to the investigator than a study of the influence of European journalism upon public opinion and offi- cial policies in the period from 1870 to 1914. We have consid- erable information with respect to the bribery of the French press between 1912 and 1914, thanks to the Bolshevik publica- tions and the courage of I'Humanite, but this is only a speck in the ocean of corruption and incitement which existed in politi- cal journalism throughout the Western world. While we should like to have a monumental treatise on the part played by the press in bringing about the conditions which made the World War likely in 1914, we may be grateful for the labors of Pro- fessor Scott, who has made a careful and interesting summary of European press opinion during the crisis of 1914. He takes up the attitudes of the European papers during this period country by country — Austria, Germany, Russia, France, and England. In general he has performed the task in a conscien- tious, interesting, and informing manner. The book is a valuable and original contribution to the Kriegsschutdfrage. As Professor Scott's book is in itself little more than a brief summary of newspaper opinion, it is obvious that we can- not in the space available present any adequate statement of the alignment of the European papers during this critical time. The essential facts seem to be the following: (1) The Ser- bian press was from the first preponderantly bellicose and arrogant, glorifying the assassination and emphasizing alleged Austrian oppression of the Serbs. (2) In Austria the press, with the notable exception of a few liberal papers, laid down an appropriate publicity barrage for the determination of the ministers to invade and punish Serbia, the assaults upon Serbia becoming much more intense after the sending of the Austrian ultimatum. (3) The German press was from the beginning inclined to hold Serbia responsible for the assassination of the Archduke, and to approve strong Austrian action against Serbia. There was, however, little or no sentiment for a general European war, the dominant hope being for the localization of the Austro-Serbian conflict. A strong minority favored de- serting Austria rather than risking a general war. (4) The Russian press was vigorously and almost unanimously for in- tervention against Austria from the moment when the Rus- sians received news of the nature of the Austrian ultimatum. (5) The French press, including many socialistic papers, was firm for standing resolutely with Russia in the crisis, though recognizing that it meant a European war. (6) In England there was much sympathy in papers of every complexion for Austria and equally decisive condemnation of Serbia. The ma- jority of the Liberal Party organs, notably the Manchester Guai-dian and the London Daily News, were strong for neu- trality until the end, but the Northcliffe papers clamored for intervention, particularly after the Austrian declaration of war on Serbia on July 28. While fully recognizing the debt of gratitude under which Professor Scott has placed all students of war responsibility in this work, we must unqualifiedly reject his main thesis, which is that "In the surge of public opinion in the various coun- tries, and not in the orders and telegrams of statesmen and diplomats, lies the fundamental explanation of the disastrous outcome of the crisis." In none of the European countries did the newspapers as a group take a more bellicose attitude than the governments. Nor did the newspapers advocate war-like measures in advance of the governmental determination upon such measures. There is no evidence whatever that any Euro- pean government in 1914 based its fundamental decisions upon the state of press opinion, or, indeed, was in any important wray influenced by newspaper articles or editorials. In Eng- land Grey, Crowe, and Nicolson threw their country into the war against the almost unanimous opposition of their party organs. No more eloquent or convincing argument for neu- trality was written in 1914 than the famous editorial of A. G. Gardiner in the London Daily News for August 1. In France the government has been convicted of having, as in 1870, semi- officially stimulated bellicose and incendiary falsifications in the press, designed to incite the French public. This was notable as early as July 25, when Berthelot, Poincare's hench- man in the Foreign Office, caused a gravely distorted account of the pacific conversations between Bienvenu-Martin and Baron Schoen to be published in the Echo de Paris and the Matin. Professor Scott could hardly have taken the attitude he has toward the French press if he had read of the almost in- credible distortions of facts and news sponsored by the gov- ernment in 1914 and revealed with remarkable logic, fearless- ness, lucidity, and factual accuracy in Demartial's "L'fivan- gile du Quai d'Orsai." And nothing could be more unlikely than that the Russian autocrats were swayed by the Russian papers in 1914. The government controlled most of the im- portant papers; the majority of the Russians could not read; and many of them did not even know of the existence of Serbia. There is no longer any case for the absolute inevitability

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July 6, 1927] The Nation 19 of the war in 1914. If instead of Pachich, Sazonov, Poincare, Berchtold, and Grey there had been in their offices Bogitsche- vitch, Kokovtsov, Caillaux, Tisza, and Morley, it is completely unthinkable that there could have been any European war after the murder of the Archduke on June 28, even granting that newspaper opinion had been exactly what it was in 1914. We may safely assume, however, that with pacifically inclined men in office the newspaper expressions would have been very different from what they were. Finally, before any dogmatic conclusions could be reached as to the influence of the news- papers in producing the war, it would be necessary to make a comparative study of newspaper opinion in those pi-evious crises when war did not follow: in particular, the two Morocco crises and the Bosnian crisis of 1908. Professor Scott would be ranked as a "moderate revision- ist" in his views on war guilt, and his general attitude toward war responsibility is a civilized one. Yet there are a number of statements which should he corrected in a new edition. The Austrian declaration of war on Serbia did not "entail" the Russian mobilization unless one admits Russia's full right to aggression to defend her prestige. Sazonov's attitude on July 7, befoi*e the visit of Poincare, cannot be taken as indica- tive of his orientation after July 20 or 24. It is incorrect to say that we have no proof that Grey's words and acts in 1914 had a decisive influence on Russian military measures. Nor is it true any longer to say that we do not have positive knowledge that the Serbian civil government was aware of the assassination plot before its execution and failed to warn Austria. These critical observations do not, however, detract seriously from a substantial, honest, and illuminating book which should be read sympathetically by every person interested in the great calamity of July, 1914. Harry Elmer Barnes Concordance to Poetry, 1927 Red Flag. By Lola Ridge. The Viking Press. $1.50. HHHERE is something in the lashing power and sweep of Miss *■ Ridge's verse that sounds pathetically out of key in the contemporary poetic scene. It is as if someone were chatting in a parlor in a tone adapted to an outdoor Socialist rally. Un- der such circumstances, genuine power is apt to reecho rhetori- cally, and a voice crying in the wilderness may seem like much ado about nothing. Yet the fault obviously does not lie with Miss Ridge. It simply indicates that our poetry, which spoke in discreetly modulated minor accents before the vers libre up- heaval, has again assumed its earlier voice, and Miss Ridge — like many another of our poets — is not yet aware of it. It is a fact, nevertheless, and is being increasingly acknowledged in practice if not in theory; and since contemporary poetry is largely colored by it, poetic criticism would do well to take cog- nizance of it. That it has not yet done so is due to a funda- mental misconception of a bit of recent literary history. When the tide of modern realism — which forcefully right- about-faced European literature from romancing over the past to an active participation in the present — belatedly reached these shores, it burst through the most vulnerable (because least commercialized) section of our literature, poetry. The humble Muse, which was then serving in a minor capacity as magazine filler-in, having little to lose, welcomed the invasion, and before long found itself hailed by default as "the major American art." To its credit it responded nobly, and, shouldering the burden of a standpat fiction and drama on its slender back, launched into a vigorous campaign for the new order. Which was all too successful. For fiction and drama soon saw the light, and with the zeal of fresh converts rushed to the front and brushed poetry respectfully aside. This was to be expected. Poetry is no longer as living a language as it was when the world's thought and emotion chose it as a favorite channel. In no con- temporary modern literature has poetry remained dominant in the face of a vigorous drama or fiction, and when American drama and fiction woke up, American poetry likewise gave ground. Thereafter a delicate minor note crept into our poetry, which, despite its superior polish and sophistication, was actu- ally an unconscious adaptation to a smaller, more intimate audience. There are, of course, a few who can afford to ignore the contemporary drift — poets who are already so classic that their work is not subject to current standards. But it is a mistake to confuse the universal respect with which their work is re- ceived with the dynamic interest aroused by their prose con- temporaries or their own earlier, timelier collections. If Miss Ridge's remarkable first volume, "The Ghetto," had appeared just a few years earlier, she might have been among those for- tunate ones. As it is, she has to go to school with the new- comers and learn to walk softly and carry a small but prying stick. That this can be a fascinating occupation much of recent poetry attests. On the wayside, off the main-traveled literary highways, the poet may uncover secrets unnoticed otherwise, and catch fleeting glimpses of shy wild truths. This is a thesis which can be proved from Miss Ridge's latest volume, in which her most ambitious attempts fail to lift her from the ground; whereas almost every line of her more fragmentary notations is the take-off of a beautiful and agile fancy. Alter Brody Antaeus Bread and Fire. By Charles Rumford Walker. Houghton Mif- flin Company. $2.50. THE larger and more successful portion of this unusual first novel seems to consist of a record of things seen inside two related but contrasting spheres of human activity; first in that of preparation for political action, of theory straining to be- come tangible fact; and then in that of present reality, of the struggle for individual existence in which theories find their roots. Specifically, the hero, Harris Burnham, finds himself serving as managing editor of a statistical weekly supported by a tiny ambitious radical party, and is gradually drawn into the latter's councils. With the disillusionment of its collapse he parachutes to earth again, the earth of first principles, the earth of which it was said that "out of it cometh bread, and under it is turned up as it were fire"; to that individual struggle which has been mentioned, as it manifests itself in a great copper mill. In the end Antaeus is ready once more to rise; for just what new campaigns one is not told. The great war has been won and the peace duly appointed, yet things about and under the world are arranging and disar- ranging themselves with apparent obliviousness or indifference to these facts. To the young, intelligent, and eternally curious Burnham, watching the papers and seeking solid ground some- where, it occurs suddenly that there is none; that For a few years the world will contain a molten charge like a steel furnace. . . . Anything can be done to the mix- ture by adding carbon or manganese or sulphur. But in five years at the outside it will be poured off into new molds. Such a discovery calls naturally for such action as is open to him while time remains; it motivates the extension of his in- terest from his immediate job on the Economic Weekly to ear- nest participation in the activities of the Social Policy Group. This episode, in view of its denouement, is remarkable for the self-control with which the author sticks to facts and falls neither to partisan ranting on the one hand nor to disappointed ridicule or denunciation on the other. The group, it transpires, is as mad as such groups run: a centrifugal conglomeration of assorted obsessions. An anarchist who would save one law, "prohibition"; a communist, expelled from the party for a paci- fism which logically rejects The Revolution itself; another paci- fist who takes pride in his war service; a Catholic advocate and

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20 The Nation [Vol. 125. No. 3235 practitioner of free love; an actual worker who knows what he wants and intends to have it, in contrast with the majority of intellectuals who, typically, can argue without excessive heat or consciousness of absurdity on the question who is the most radical. The madness is in the conjunction of cross-purposes; a group craziness, since, whatever may come of the beliefs of any unit, the group as such must surely disintegrate. That it does, and Burnham, whose young inquisitiveness, enthusiasm, and hero-worship have drawn him into it, passes no judgments as ho sees the signs of dissolution, but sadly seeks the factory. There, among the raw materials of unease, one feels the writer less and what he sees about him more; because, perhaps, ho feels things here are more important than the impression they have made on any observer. At the same time, whenever Mr. Walker's unpretentious prose touches unregarded human be- ings in their fight against odds, and equally when it treats of engines, of furnaces, and of hard physical labor as something done and felt, not merely watched or valued in terms of pro- di :tion, it takes on special power and color. The laborers and the officials in the mill stand out as do no other characters in the book. The heroine, despite the thought that went to making her portrait, is a shadow beside the charcoal sketches of Halsey, Kreck, and Kenwick. Nothing in these pages is so momentous as the instant when the imminent and long-preparing strike dies unborn, as a single yellow slip tells the pay-day line that un- employment has set in. Nothing in the book is so moving as the incidents that fo^ow — in particular, the story, a brief master- piece, of the hooker, Rakhofsky. There is a love story, not a perfunctory one, and yet one whose ratio decidendi the reviewer confessedly finds obscure, and which he feels as a recurring distraction from the business on hand. Taking this love story to be a work of creative imagi- nation rather than of ruminative memory, I believe, not that the author would best take to reporting, but that the humani- tarian observer and messenger in him on the one hand and the energetic and adventurous physical man on the other have in him the advantage over the closeted romancer. It is difficult to pre- dict the exact nature of Mr. Walker's future. He is interested in politics, in economics, in social theory, in work, and in the living people whom he meets, and, instinctively, walks around and studies. He is more interested in these than in the fabrica- tion of a plot. Between them his choice may not yet have been made. He has, and will increasingly acquire, under the spur of curiosity and concern, practical knowledge on subjects which are names only to the average novelist; he will wish to act on that knowledge, and to impart it. Too much in this country active men of affairs take up the pen only in time for the valedictory reminiscences and scholars write only to inform each other, while novelists, save for occasional sallies forth in conscious search of material, sit in a vacuum and work their heads. It is probable that Mr. Walker will continue both to do and to write, and the prospect this offers is a pleasant one. He has balance, tolerance, and imagination, and he exhibits the uncommon combination of a tough mind and a tender heart. Abbe Niles An Outline of Socialism A Histonj of Socialist Thought. By Harry W. Laidler. Thomas Y. Crowell Company. $3.50. rpO the outlines of history, science, and religion Dr. Laidler * adds the outline of socialism; starting with Isaiah and end- ing with Zinoviev. It is a careful, thorough, and withal a dra- matic outline. Before us passes the great procession of the world's idealists and dreamers — the d'vine fools of the ages, and some of the wisest men that ever lived. What a galaxy it is of those who have glimpsed the Kingdom of Heaven upon earth — Plato, Savonarola, Sir Thomas More, Bacon, Campa- nella, Andreae, Saint Simon, Fourier, Proudhon, Coleridge, Rob- ert Owen, Emerson. Bellamy, William Morris, Wells. Against the flaming dreams of the Utopians is set the relent- less logic of Marx and Engels, the Communist Manifesto, ani the revolutions of '48. Here the spirit of Utopia seeks to find practical expression in a world of behaving men and women, with results dire, terrible, and beautiful. The clash of whal with what might be is set forth in all its absurdity and splendor. We go on to the super-logic of the Fabians, with the biggest lump of victual in that stew — the rotund figure of Sidney Webb. And so to Bernstein and the revisionists in Germany; to syndi- calism, philosophic anarchism, guild socialism, and at last to the stark realities of the Russian revolution and the living, breath- ing dictatorship of the proletariat over 150 millions of human beings. Dr. Laidler has no ax to grind. He is the scholar, not the propagandist. On a broad canvas he has given us the history of one of the most poignant dreams which ever have beset man- kind. And whether that dream shall ever come permanently to earth only the gods may tell. But to those gods all who care beyond tomorrow's porridge and tomorrow's rent must pray. Stuart Chase Toward a Revaluation The Ingenious Hidalgo Miguel Cervantes. By Han Ryner. Translated by J. H. Lewis. Harcourt, Brace and Com- pany. $2.75. 'T'HE spectacle of Cervantes — a man trying to lift himself * above the mediocrity and suicidal limitations of his day and people — has the fascination of the deepest tragedy. Looked at from the position of intellectual and moral freedom we enjoy today, it may be hard to understand. One must dig a little into that unfortunate period which the Spaniards call their Golden Age; one must realize fully the incubus which then held genius to the mat, before one begins to gain an inkling into its real meaning. Compare the physical struggle of Cervantes for sur- vival with the smug complacency of Lope de Vega and his fol- lowers and their supine surrender to popular values and taste; Lope belonged to that peculiar kind of talented mediocrity which finds ambient circumstances always good enough. Compare it even with the partial maladjustment of Quevedo, who was at bottom a conformist. Only through such comparisons will we arrive at an understanding of the meaning of Cervantes's tragedy. It is only recently, thanks to Americo Castro's book on Cer- vantes, that we are beginning to realize the full reach of his powers, the thoroughly protestant grain of his temper. Enough has been unearthed already to enable one to hazard the opinion — for which we are not yet fully prepared, perhaps — that, viewed in the light of these discoveries, Cervantes was a gloriously frus- trated genius. He never quite dared to express himself openly, as one may suppose he would have wanted to. The subterfuges he had to make use of in no small way prevented a full develop- ment of his talents. And he was also frustrated, because the drama which Lope made popular — as Mr. Ryner suggests — blocked the way for the development of a tragic drama, capable of competing with the Elizabethan, which Cervantes could have perhaps created. That Cervantes was a great enough dramatic artist to do for Spain as much as Marlowe did for England; that Lope or any of his followers could not equal Cervantes in intellectual depth or artistic skill, however much Lope may have surpassed him in lyric power, Tirso in wit and verve, and Calderon in fantasy, one may easily find out not only from a study of his great works but even from a glance into his minor work, his entremeces. The question is, of course, much more complicated than one can indicate in a short space. Before we can attempt a just evaluation of Cervantes a great deal of traditional cant and prejudice must be cleared off. As long as scholars persist in finding in Lope the summa of all excellence, and critics continue — in the main, for one should remember the Azorin of pre-aca-

Page 42

July 6, 1927] The Nation 21 demic days — to repeat the old platitudes, little will be gained, not only toward a just evaluation of Cervantes but also toward an evaluation of the whole literature of his day. Meanwhile, books like the present are exceedingly useful because they help in the preliminary work of clearing the ground. As a Actionized biography Mr. Ryner's book has also intrinsic merit. Happily devoid of the pedantry of erudition, yet containing valuable in- formation, it introduces to a wide public the figure of one of the world's geniuses, as little known as he is badly understood. Although a little overdone in certain respects — for one may doubt whether Cervantes was a conscious hater of the Catholic church, as well as altogether free from the jingoism of his day — the beautifully tragic figure of old Cervantes, protesting ironi- cally and serenely in spite of untoward circumstances, when he could have easily arrived at prosperity through boot-licking, as everybody else did in his day, emerges vividly from these pages. Eliseo Vivas Darkening Our Lightness The Story of Music. By Paul Bekker. W. W. Norton. $3.50. Terpander, or Music and the Future. By Edward J. Dent. E. P. Dutton and Company. $1. OEKKER'S purpose is to acquaint the layman with the D changes in music and their causes. But I must repeat that the layman can only misunderstand a verbal account. For the connotation of a word — a word that refers to this procedure in music or to that characteristic of some composer's music — is as wide as its denotation, as the examples of the procedure or quality which the reader knows. To the layman, then, the word conveys no meaning, or an incorrect one; and to learn its cor- rect meaning he must hear its examples. But having heard these, he need not do anything more. For one can be satisfied with the what of an art and ignore the why; one can enjoy the final artistic products and not worry about what produced them. And if one wants to know their relations to one another — including causal relations, if any — one does best, again, merely to listen. For the final musical products contain within themselves both that which distinguishes them from one another and whatever relates them, and do not contain what does not belong. All this to explain and justify my belief that Bekker should have given a series of concerts. Instead, he has chosen the spoken and written word, one source of confusion; and to tins he adds a passion for causes where often no cause exists, and an insistence that these causes be conditions imposed by human life and thought. We get, then, to account for the series of musical products, a series of external causes; and the two inter- act somewhat as follows: the causes, as the muSiC sprawls about, become tortuous, obscure (hence at first glance impressive), and improbable when not downright absurd; and the music, in order that it be governed by the causes, is conceived of in such a way as often to be unrecognizable, even to one who is familiar with it, leave alone one who is not. Thus do obvious sensitiveness and intellectual power defeat themselves and each other. What Bekker wants to establish above all is the falseness of the idea of improvement in the forms of art, as distinguished from mere change. It is not merely that we cannot judge what we are accustomed to regarding as primitive forms of music because we do not know what they sounded like; but that music is a product of human creative energy, and that "men have been men at all times, at least as clever, at least as talented and as inventive as ourselves"; hence that the product must at all times have been equal in value to our own. And "since the constructive forces always remain the same, since nothing can be added or lost, it follows that the total value of the result must always remain the same, too." Strictly spoken, and. strictly speaking, true; but for practical purposes most of us will continue to do with less than strictness. Mr. Dent, for example, is also concerned over the fact that peoples who we know were highly susceptible to the power of sound and "at the same time consummately accomplished in the other arts should have left behind them an art of music which we can only regard as crude and primitive." Much of it has, he concedes, disappeared into silence; but suppose it had been preserved, then the question arises — "Is a work of art a com- plete and finite thing, beautiful when it left its maker's hand, beautiful now and for ever; or is it frankly transitory, a mo- mentary expression of a momentary experience, speaking as a rule only to those who belong to the same generation?" What I take to be Mr. Dent's answer — "Music is of all the arts the most subject to change ... the most transitory" — I interpret as an acceptance of the second alternative. I am not sure, because Mr. Dent's unordered, unintegrated prose does not indicate clearly the patterns of his ideas. I can, then, testify to the shrewdness and discernment of many individual statements; but I can only surmise that collectively they outline changes in the past of a changing art in order to reconcile us to further changes which must perplex when they do not outrage us. B. H. Haggin Book in Brief Does Prohibition Work? By Martha Bensley Bruere. Harper and Brothers. $1.50. Mrs. Bruere's determination to keep her study free from the underbrush of figures is easy to understand. But there are some for whom a morass of conflicting opinions makes even more difficult going and for whom an occasional dry plank in the way of actual figures would be a cause for gratitude. "Does prohibition work?" Yes and no, comes the answer from the 193 reports submitted by social workers from all over the country. Here and there it works, and that depends. Mrs. Bruere con- cludes that it does work "wherever there is a Nordic-American population which for several generations has not been in close contact with the newer immigrations or the cosmopolitanism of the great cities." She holds that factors of importance to the problem are our great national prosperity and the new work of women. The final paragraph of the book appears to imply a tentative affirmative to the title. Reading the book reinforces the inclination of this reviewer toward a tentative no. The Golden Complex: A Defense of Inferiority. By Lee Wilson Dodd. The John Day Company. $1. As Mr. Dodd launches his essay in literary psychology in a mood of pleasantry, his thesis need not be taken too seriously, either as stimulation or as conclusion. But for all his banter, he has a thesis; and still better, a wholesome perspective which a sense of humor commonly confers. He wisiies to save the complex from the stain of inferiority and move it to the place of advantage. It isn't a leaden drag but a golden spur. He centers the discussion about the case of Byron, whose lame foot was the stimulus to make him a courageous athlete — "a master horseman, a dead shot, the best swimmer in England" — and, with the assurance thus gained, to make him speak and act notably as a lover, poet, and patriot. And he is only one of many who has converted a handicap into a ladder. The "com- plex" is a Freudian term, but the "inferiority" comes from Adler, who makes it the corner-stone of an entire psychology, and regards its removal as the first step toward normality. Mr. Dodd's suggestive and altogether agreeable contribution is a welcome correction of Dr. Adler's doctrine in its extreme form, as well as a skit about Freudianism that should induce a more rational attitude toward it than commonly prevails. Whether a handicap produces a sense of inferiority and induces a com- plex, or conduces to a heroic resolve to achievement despite it, de- pends upon the type of nervous constitution upon which it hap- pens to be grafted. Adler makes it the keystone of character. It is far more likely that it is just one of many units that to- gether make a human mosaic — the design often vague and the

Page 43

20 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3235 practitioner of free love; an actual worker who knows what he wants and intends to have it, in contrast with the majority of intellectuals who, typically, can argue without excessive heat or consciousness of absurdity on the question who is the most radical. The madness is in the conjunction of cross-purposes; a group craziness, since, whatever may come of the beliefs of any unit, the group as such must surely disintegrate. That it does, and Burnham, whose young inquisitiveness, enthusiasm, and hero-worship have drawn him into it, passes no judgments as he sees the signs of dissolution, but sadly seeks the factory. There, among the raw materials of unease, one feels the writer less and what he sees about him more; because, perhaps, he feels things here are more important than the impression they have made on any observer. At the same time, whenever Mr. Walker's unpretentious prose touches unregarded human be- ings in their fight against odds, and equally when it treats of engines, of furnaces, and of hard physical labor as something d me and felt, not merely watched or valued in terms of pro- duction, it takes on special power and color. The laborers and the officials in the mill stand out as do no other characters in the book. The heroine, despite the thought that went to making her portrait, is a shadow beside the charcoal sketches of Halsey, Kreck, and Kenwick. Nothing in these pages is so momentous as the instant when the imminent and long-preparing strike dies unborn, as a single yellow slip tells the pay-day line that un- employment has set in. Nothing in the book is so moving as the incidents that follow — in particular, the story, a brief master- piece, of the hooker, Rakhofsky. There is a love story, not a perfunctory one, and yet one whose ratio decidendi the reviewer confessedly finds obscure, and which he feels as a recurring distraction from the business on hand. Taking this love story to be a work of creative imagi- nation rather than of ruminative memory, I believe, not that the author would best take to reporting, but that the humani- tarian observer and messenger in him on the one hand and the energetic and adventurous physical man on the other have in him the advantage over the closeted romancer. It is difficult to pre- dict the exact nature of Mr. Walker's future. He is interested in politics, in economics, in social theory, in work, and in the living people whom he meets, and, instinctively, walks around and studies. He is more interested in these than in the fabrica- tion of a plot. Between them his choice may not yet have been made. He has, and will increasingly acquire, under the spur of curiosity and concern, practical knowledge on subjects which are names only to the average novelist; he will wish to act on that knowledge, and to impart it. Too much in this country active men of affairs take up the pen only in time for the valedictory reminiscences and scholars write only to inform each other, while novelists, save for occasional sallies forth in conscious search of material, sit in a vacuum and work their heads. It is probable that Mr. Walker will continue both to do and to write, and the prospect this offers is a pleasant one. Ho has balance, tolerance, and imagination, and he exhibits the uncommon combination of a tough mind and a tender heart. Abbe Niles An Outline of Socialism A History of Socialist Thought. By Harry W. Laidler. Thomas Y. Crowell Company. $3.50. rT,0 the outlines of history, science, and religion Dr. Laidler *■ adds the outline of socialism; starting with Isaiah and end- ing with Zinoviev. It is a careful, thorough, and withal a dra- matic outline. Before us passes the great procession of the world's idealists and dreamers — the divine fools of the ages. and some of the wisest men that ever lived. What a galaxy it is of those who have glimpsed the Kingdom of Heaven upon earth — Plato, Savonarola, Sir Thomas More, Bacon, Campa- nella, Andreae, Saint Simon, Fourier, Proudhon, Coleridge, Rob- ert Owen, Emerson. Bellamy, William Morris, Wells. Against the flaming dreams of the Utopians is set the relent- less logic of Marx and Engels, the Communist Manifesto, and the revolutions of '48. Here the spirit of Utopia seeks to find practical expression in a world of behaving men and women, with results dire, terrible, and beautiful. The clash of whal with what might be is set forth in all its absurdity and splendor. We go on to the super-logic of the Fabians, with the bigge.-t lump of victual in that stew — the rotund figure of Sidney Webb. And so to Bernstein and the revisionists in Germany; to syndi- calism, philosophic anarchism, guild socialism, and at last to the stark realities of the Russian revolution and the living, brea ing dictatorship of the proletariat over 150 millions of human beings. Dr. Laidler has no ax to grind. He is the scholar, not the propagandist. On a broad canvas he has given us the history of one of the most poignant dreams which ever have beset man- kind. And whether that dream shall ever come permanently to earth only the gods may tell. But to those gods all who care beyond tomorrow's porridge and tomorrow's rent must pray. Stuart Chase Toward a Revaluation The Ingenious Hidalgo Miguel Cervantes. By Han Ryner. Translated by J. H. Lewis. Harcourt, Brace and Com- pany. $2.75. rPHE spectacle of Cervantes — a man trying to lift himself * above the mediocrity and suicidal limitations of his day and people — has the fascination of the deepest tragedy. Looked at from the position of intellectual and moral freedom we enjoy today, it may be hard to understand. One must dig a little into that unfortunate period which the Spaniards call their Golden Age; one must realize fully the incubus which then held genius to the mat, before one begins to gain an inkling into its i-eal meaning. Compare the physical struggle of Cervantes for sur- vival with the smug complacency of Lope de Vega and his fol- lowers and their supine surrender to popular values and taste; Lope belonged to that peculiar kind of talented mediocrity which finds ambient circumstances always good enough. Compare it even with the partial maladjustment of Quevedo, who was at bottom a conformist. Only through such comparisons will we arrive at an understanding of the meaning of Cervantes's tragedy. It is only recently, thanks to Americo Casti-o's book on Cer- vantes, that we are beginning to realize the full reach of his powers, the thoroughly protestant grain of his temper. Enough has been unearthed already to enable one to hazard the opinion — for which we are not yet fully prepared, perhaps — that, viewed in the light of these discoveries, Cervantes was a gloriously frus- trated genius. He never quite dared to express himself openly, as one may suppose he would have wanted to. The subterfuges he had to make use of in no small way prevented a full develop- ment of his talents. And he was also frustrated, because the drama which Lope made popular — as Mr. Ryner suggests — blocked the way for the development of a tragic drama, capable of competing with the Elizabethan, which Cervantes could have perhaps created. That Cervantes was a great enough dramatic artist to do for Spain as much as Marlowe did for England; that Lope or any of his followers could not equal Cervantes in intellectual depth or artistic skill, however much Lope may have surpassed him in lyric power, Tirso in wit and verve, and Calderon in fantasy, one may easily find out not only from a study of his great works but even from a glance into his minor work, his entremeces. The question is, of course, much more complicated than one can indicate in a short space. Before we can attempt a just evaluation of Cervantes a great deal of traditional cant and prejudice must be cleared off. As long as scholars persist in finding in Lope the summa of all excellence, and critics continue — in the main, for one should remember the Azorin of pre-aca-

Page 44

July 6, 1927] The Nation 21 the layman with the But I must repeat that demic days — to repeat the old platitudes, little will be gained, not only toward a just evaluation of Cervantes but also toward an evaluation of the whole literature of his day. Meanwhile, books like the present are exceedingly useful because they help in the preliminary work of clearing the ground. As a Actionized biogi-aphy Mr. Ryner's book has also intrinsic merit. Happily devoid of the pedantry of erudition, yet containing valuable in- formation, it introduces to a wide public the figure of one of the world's geniuses, as little known as he is badly understood. Although a little overdone in certain respects — for one may doubt whether Cervantes was a conscious hater of the Catholic church, as well as altogether free from the jingoism of his day — the beautifully tragic figure of old Cervantes, protesting ironi- cally and serenely in spite of untoward circumstances, when he could have easily arrived at prosperity through boot-licking, as everybody else did in his day, emerges vividly from these pages. Eliseo Vivas Darkening Our Lightness The Story of Music. By Paul Bekker. W. W. Norton. $3.50. Terpander, or Music and the Future. By Edward J. Dent. E. P. Dutton and Company. $1. DEKKER'S purpose is to acquaint •"-* changes in music and their causes, the layman can only misunderstand a verbal account. For the connotation of a word — a word that refers to this procedure in music or to that characteristic of some composer's music — is as wide as its denotation, as the examples of the procedure or quality which the reader knows. To the layman, then, the word conveys no meaning, or an incorrect one; and to learn its cor- rect meaning he must hear its examples. But having heard these, he need not do anything more. For one can be satisfied with the what of an art and ignore the why; one can enjoy the final artistic products and not worry about what produced them. And if one wants to know their relations to one another — including causal relations, if any — one does best, again, merely to listen. For the final musical products contain within themselves both that which distinguishes them from one another and whatever relates them, and do not contain what does not belong. All this to explain and justify my belief that Bekker should have given a series of concerts. Instead, he has chosen the spoken and written word, one source of confusion; and to this he adds a passion for causes where often no cause exists, and an insistence that these causes be conditions imposed by human life and thought. We get, then, to account for the series of musical products, a series of external causes; and the two inter- act somewhat as follows: the causes, as the music sprawls about, become tortuous, obscure (hence at first glance impressive), and improbable when not downright absurd; and the music, in order that it be governed by the causes, is conceived of in such a way as often to be unrecognizable, even to one who is familiar with it, leave alone one who is not. Thus do obvious sensitiveness and intellectual power defeat themselves and each other. What Bekker wants to establish above all is the falseness of the idea of improvement in the forms of art, as distinguished from mere change. It is not merely that we cannot judge what we are accustomed to regarding as primitive forms of music because we do not know what they sounded like; but that music is a product of human creative energy, and that "men have been men at all times, at least as clever, at least as talented and as inventive as ourselves"; hence that the product must at all times have been equal in value to our own. And "since the constructive forces always remain the same, since nothing can be added or lost, it follows that the total value of the result must always remain the same, too." Strictly spoken, and, strictly speaking, true; but for practical purposes most of us will continue to do with less than strictness. Mr. Dent, for example, is also concerned over the fact that peoples who we know were highly susceptible to the power of sound and "at the same time consummately accomplished in the other arts should have left behind them an art of music which we can only regard as crude and primitive." Much of it has, he concedes, disappeared into silence; but suppose it had been preserved, then the question arises— "Is a work of art a com- plete and finite thing, beautiful when it left its maker's hand, beautiful now and for ever; or is it frankly transitory, a mo- mentary expression of a momentary experience, speaking as a rule only to those who belong to the same generation?" What I take to be Mr. Dent's answer— "Music is of all the arts the most subject to change ... the most transitory"— I interpret as an acceptance of the second alternative. I am not sure, because Mr. Dent's unordered, unintegrated prose does not indicate clearly the patterns of his ideas. I can, then, testify to the shrewdness and discernment of many individual statements; but I can only surmise that collectively they outline changes in the past of a changing art in order to reconcile us to further changes which must perplex when they do not outrage us. B. H. Haggin Book in Brief Does Prohibition Work? By Martha Bensley Bruere. Harper and Brothers. $1.50. Mrs. Bruere's determination to keep her study free from the underbrush of figures is easy to understand. But there are some for whom a morass of conflicting opinions makes even more difficult going and for whom an occasional dry plank in the way of actual figures would be a cause for gratitude. "Does prohibition work?" Yes and no, comes the answer from the 193 reports submitted by social workers from all over the country. Here and there it works, and that depends. Mrs. Bruere con- cludes that it does work "wherever there is a Nordic-American population which for several generations has not been in close contact with the newer immigrations or the cosmopolitanism of the great cities." She holds that factors of importance to the problem are our great national prosperity and the new work of women. The final paragraph of the book appears to imply a tentative affirmative to the title. Reading the book reinforces the inclination of this reviewer toward a tentative no. The Golden Complex: A Defense of Inferiority. By Lee Wilson Dodd. The John Day Company. $1.75. As Mr. Dodd launches his essay in literary psychology in a mood of pleasantry, his thesis need not be taken too seriously, either as stimulation or as conclusion. But for all his banter, he has a thesis; and still better, a wholesome perspective which a sense of humor commonly confers. He wishes to save the complex from the stain of inferiority and move it to the place of advantage. It isn't a leaden drag but a golden spur. He centers the discussion about the case of Byron, whose lame foot was the stimulus to make him a courageous athlete — "a master horseman, a dead shot, the best swimmer in England" — and, with the assurance thus gained, to make him speak and act notably as a lover, poet, and patriot. And he is only one of many who has converted a handicap into a ladder. The "com- plex" is a Freudian term, but the "inferiority" comes from Adler, who makes it the corner-stone of an entire psychology, and regards its removal as the first step toward normality. Mr. Dodd's suggestive and altogether agreeable contribution is a welcome correction of Dr. Adler's doctrine in its extreme form, as well as a skit about Freudianism that should induce a more rational attitude toward it than commonly prevails. Whether a handicap pi'oduces a sense of inferiority and induces a com- plex, or conduces to a heroic resolve to achievement despite it, de- pends upon the type of nervous constitution upon which it hap- pens to be grafted. Adler makes it the keystone of character. It is far more likely that it is just one of many units that to- gether make a human mosaic — the design often vague and the

Page 45

22 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3235 color-scheme dull. Mr. Dodd cites a saying of Oscar Wilde that summarizes the matter: "The more one analyzes people, the more all reasons for analysis disappear. Sooner or later, one comes to that dreadful universal thing called human nature." Balbus, or the Future of Architecture. By Christian Barman. E. P. Dutton and Company. $1. To deny a part either to technique or to material in devel- oping architectural form, as Mr. Barman does, and to discover as the chief cause of cube building the emancipation of woman and the consequent rise of the department store is a tour de force of no mean order; but it is not sound criticism. But Mr. Barman's analysis of traffic and its development of towns, and, eventually, of zoning for height, is clear and dynamic. Agree- able and stimulating it is, also, to have public attention called to essential changes in architectural thinking and the losses entailed when one builds, as one is forced today, for inclosed cubic feet alone instead of piece by piece for separate functions that thus find expression in the resultant form. An amusing book, but a book whose correct conclusions are dimmed rather than enforced by a mist of smart flippancy. A General Theory of Value. By Ralph Barton Perry. Long- mans, Green and Company. $6. A theory which makes value the function of interest and analyzes interest ;n tenns of the current jargon of the beha- vioristic psychology. This volume of 700 pages is an elaborate formulation of a simple assumption, intricately expanded by the device of a speciously specific nomenclature which confuses rather than clarifies. As a compilation and detailed report of psychological hypotheses and phenomena relevant to the stated thesis, and as an examination of alternative ethics, Professor Perry's ample exposition may have value for those who are in- terested in the by-products of a behavioristic approach to a general theory of the moral judgment. Psychology: A Simplification. By Lloyd Ring Coleman and Saxe Commins. Boni and Liveright. $3. The authors have tried to give a bird's-eye view of psychol- ogy and psychopathology within the limits of a duodecimo of 300 pages and on the whole have succeeded fairly well. They have reversed the usual method by beginning with the abnor- mal and working gradually back through borderline states to normal psychology. They have read widely and abstracted with skill, producing a book that is all meat. — - By Abel Bonnard. E. P. Dutton and C( In China, 1920-21. pany. $5. Mr. Bonnard wandered through China seven years ago oppressed by its fetid odor of decay. A sensitive French Catho- lic with a nostalgia for the Middle Ages, he felt the charm of its mass mind, fingered old porcelain, and marveled that every miserable dreamer crouching under the blazing canopy of that blue sky seemed to feel himself a part of an harmonious uni- verse. He was depressed by China's political chaos and the hordes of ragged robber-soldiers, and his own of remote alienness deepened every impression. His book, perhaps partly because of its nationalist bias— for France and French missions —stands out as a novelty in a flood of Anglo-Saxon literature on China. Ancient Cities and Modern Tribes: Exploration and Adventure in Maya Lands. By Thomas Gann. Charles Scribner's Sons. $5. A third popular book by Thomas Gann gives evidence of the size of the public interested in what is surely one of the most romantically stimulating centers of present-day archaeo- logical activity, the peninsula of Yucatan. Like its predecessors the volume is journalistic in tone and substance and embel- lished with numerous and stimulating photographs. For the 5^g-0*^35^ ^ ^Sg-5^ 3£g^l The Proof of Permanence THE PEASANTS By Ladislas Rexmont Original edition: 4 vols. The neic Cracoic edition: {Autumn , Winter. The 4 vols. Spring. Summer , printed in one. boxed, $10.01) ^/.00 B3 9 = "Something as old a9 the song of Caedmon, but new to us be- cause we have so long lost the flavor of the old and the real. " Charles Phillips, in The Commonweal Other Thin -Paper Editions of CONTINENTAL CLASSICS GROWTH OF THE SOIL By Knut Hamsun The original ttco volumes, boxed, $5.00 The Pocket Edition in one volume, $2.50 THE NEW Lofoten EDITION IN ONE VOLUME, $2.50 ** A in o mi the verv greatest novels 1 have ever read/'H". Q. TFelts THE PHILOSOPHER'S STONE By J. Anker Larsen The original volume, $3.00 THE NEW Talisman EDITION. $2.50 ** A (.reat achievement. " Knut Hamsun KRISTIN LAVRANSDATTER (The Hridal Wreath, The Mistress of Ilusaby, the Cross.) By Sigrid Undset The original three volumes, $9.00 THE NEW Lillehammer EDITION Three Thin Volumes Boxed Together, $6.00 "' The very height! of Norse epic power. Car] Cransen, in The Commnmoeal AT ALL BOOKSHOPS Publisher Alfred A. Knopf iVeic York In C ■ anada, Ltd. I, Martin's House, Toronto i&afe&gfe&g When writing to advertisers please v\ention The Nation

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July 6, 1927] The Nation 23 person who wishes to keep in touch with what is going on in Yucatan — and every year the work progresses — Mr. Gann's annual is the up-to-date and accessible source of information. Musi c Some German Operatic Impressions IF a cat may look at a king, surely a music critic may look at a Theater Exhibition. And certainly the one just opened at Magdeburg — the most complete of its kind ever attempted — drives home a few homely truths about operatic production. For instance, one follows the German theater from its birth in the medieval church to its present-day return; and sees its develop- ment from the crude naivete of the first to the sophisticated simplicity of the second. On the way one passes the mass of detail that gradually accumulated with the invention of scenic devices, only to be again discarded as lighting takes the place of literal fact. Then while one is still marveling at this evolution from bare boards to bare boards, one comes to models for Wag- ner's "Ring." They are models of the most approved settings as used in Bayreuth, and they are dated 1895. In every respect they could be models of those used everywhere in 1927. Only from Basel does a protest come. There, for the last few years, it seems, "The Ring" has been given on a stage conspicuous for the absence of Valkyrie rocks, and distinguished mainly by what it suggests through line and lighting. But this protest has been followed by no others, and seems to have created no great stir. For thirty-two years, then, Wagnerian production has re- mained static. Even the acting has resolved into postures and meaningless gestures. And all this has come about, not because Wagner willed it so but because music critics use their ears but not their eyes. The result is that not only Wagner but all opera has suffered from it. The Staatsoper in Berlin, for instance, has revived "La Forza del Destino" after forty years, and is giving some fine musical performances of it under Leo Blech. One could not ask for a more golden quality of voice than the barytone of Heinrich Schlusnus, or a finer musical artistry than that of Gertrud Bindernagel, who has a superb dramatic so- prano as true as her art. But of stagecraft, on the part either of singers or of producer, there was little. The world over, opera houses are spending thousands of dollars annually for elaborate and unnecessary scenery, while the press devotes col- umns of praise to its elaborateness and expensiveness, and ig- nores, for instance, the helpless wanderings of the chorus. Opera, we are told by impresarios, is a show; and yet most music critics never get beyond the musical half. Small wonder, then, that the other side has gone to pot! There are, of course, exceptions to this kind of production. One of these is at the Leipzig Opera, where the stage director, Walther Briigmann, not only can design and stage a new opera like Krenek's "Johnny Spielt's Auf," which requires many scenes, for fifteen thousand marks (between three and four thousand dollars) but can make actors out of his singers. Where Ravel's last opera, "L'Enfant et les Sortileges," received the most fan- tastic yet simple settings, Synge's "Riders to the Sea," which Rabaud has set to music, was played with a poignancy of feel- ing and economy of gesture so sincere and so technically sure that one forgot Rabaud's bad music in the tragedy of the text. As for the audience, it paid the best tribute by remaining silent for several seconds after the curtain fell. Perhaps the secret of Walter Briigmann's remarkable re- sults is that he was once an actor himself. Also, out of theater hours he offers instruction in the technic of acting to principals and choruses alike, and free of charge. All, needless to say, respond. Nevertheless, such a director is an exception in our opera houses. If one does not believe this, one has only to go to Magdeburg to prove it. Henrietta Straus D THEATER □ GILBERT MILLER Presents ETHEL BARRYMORE in The Constant Wife By W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM AT MAXINE ELLIOTT'S THEATRE Mats. Tues., Wed. & Thurs. No performances Saturday. Published by George H. Doran GILBERT MILLER and A. H. WOODS present JEANNE EAGELS in "Her Cardboard Lover" By JACQUES DEVAL Adapted by Valerie Wyngate and P. G. Wodehouss jtmptptt B'way & 40th St., Eves., 8:30 fcMr-lK*, Mats. Wed. & Sat., 2:30 ■The Theatre Guild Acting Company in- THE SECOND MAN GUILD THEATRE w • 52nd st- Eves Mats. Thurs. and Sat. 2:30 THE SILVER CORD TOHN GOLDEN Thea- 58thi E- of B'way- Circle 5678 Eves. 8:30. Mats. Thurs. & Sat. 2:30 Little Theatre THE GRAND STREET 44th Street West of Broadway Evgs. 8:30. Mats. lues, and Thurs. at popular prices. "One cannot find anywhere in New York more clever ideas, more fresk satire or more verve." — Joseph Wood Krutch in The Nation. FOLLIES JANE COWL in "The Road to Rome" Dl »* »t1-* at** E- of B'way. Eves. 8:30 riaynOUSC Matinees Wed. & Sat, 2:30 Tel. Chicfcering 51G1 chanin's BILTMORE wHjn?tRhEs, CHARLES L. WAGNER (In Association with Edgar Selwyn) presents The BARKER By KENYON NICHOLSON with WALTER HUSTON Mats. Wed. & Sat., 2:30. Eves, at 8:30. When writing to advertisers please mention The Nation

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International Relations Section The Necessity of Free Trade By EARL BEAUCHAMP London, Junt FEW Englishmen can pretend to .say anything upon the fiscal controversy in the United States which can be Of real value to the people of America. The best that we can hope to do is to expound the position of Great Britain, explain the reasons why in our opinion conditions here make the policy of free trade vital for our prosperity, and apply those conditions, in so far as they can be made to apply. to the United States. The dominant fact here is the denseness of our popu- lation, which makes it impossible for us to produce food necessary for the daily sustenance of more than a fraction of our people. We must buy it elsewhere, and the only way in which we can save ourselves from starvation is by selling our manufactures abroad to pay for it. In die face of fierce competition the best hope for our success lies in the production of goods not only better bin cheaper than those of our trade rivals. Into the element of cost enters naturally that of the workman, and the more that we can reduce the cost of his living the better satisfied he will be. Any tariff upon the foodstuffs and other goods coming into this country must raise their price. That is indeed its avowed object, and we are bound, therefore, in order to reduce the cost of living, to abolish, or to reduce to their very lowest, these tariffs which would raise the price of goods to the consumer. Many of us envy often enough the happier conditions of other countries, such as the United States, which are able to produce within their own borders everything — or nearly everything — they require both for home consump- tion and also as raw material for their industries. In this last respect we are in the same position as we are in with regard to food. With the exception of coal, of which we are at e to export considerable quantities, there is no sur- plus raw material which we can send to other countries; and we are thrown back of necessity upon the importation of other materials, either raw or partly manufactured, which, after we have passed them through our fac we are able b ,v ma- terial. Here is the basis of free-trade theory. But there are many arguments coming to us from pro- tectionists which we have to meet, t country are not paid for by gold, but by the export of goods. The more, therefore, that we import, the more em- ployment there must be for the people of this country. Other nations do not send us goods for nothing. TI have to be paid for and high imports, therefore, normally coincide with low figures of unemployment. This is our answer to those who speak of the economic necessity of buying British goods. By all means let us buy British goods if they are cheap and of high quality. None the less, the purchase of foreign goods involves the employmen British labor to make the goods which are exported to pay for the foreign articles we buy; and the working clas therefore, benefit indirectly by the imports of foreign go Here lies the answer to those who clamor in this coun- try for a duty upon dumped goods. Our answer is three- fold : In the first place, to keep them out would not prevent these goods from going into other countries. They would still be made, and we should find them still competing with British goods in other parts of the world. In the second place, these goods generally come from countries which suffer from a high protective system, and where the wages of the workman are so low as to compare unfavorably with those in Great Britain. This fact is hardly likely to en- courage our people to adopt a similar system. In the third place, whether dumped or no, these goods do demand a return of equal value, thus giving employment to our own people. If indeed it is ever found that there is a determined attempt on the part of some country to kill some particular trade by a progress of dumping, there is always a remedy open to us. It has, however, never yet been proved that there has ever been anything of the kind, and the dumping which has taken place has always been in the ordinary course of business. Least of all does it lie with us, who are the biggest dumpers in the world, to take measures to alter this particular method of trading. At past elections, whenever protection has been the main issue, the electorate of Great Britain has unhesitat- ingly given its verdict for free trade. A large part of the decisive victory of the Liberal Party in 1906 was due to the tariff-reform campaign of Mr. Chamberlain, and in 1913, when Mr. Baldwin went to the country to ask permis- sion to use protection as a cure for unemployment, he met with an answer as decisive. Free traders have hitherto been able to rely upon the experience of this country dur- ing the hungry forties, and there are men and women still alive who have heard of those days from their fathers and mothers. This influence, however, has passed away, and the theoretical argument has somewhat lost its effect. We ara obliged to rely now rather upon practical arguments against protection, and to point out how little the various measures upon which we have already embarked have really benefited this country. Beaten once and again in frontal attack upon free trade, the Conservative Party has introduced several other measures by which flank attacks have had some suc- cess in breaking down our free-trade defense. Imperial preference, safeguarding duties, key industries duties, and McKenna duties have all of them secured some measure of support, rather on political than on economic grounds. Spasmodic attempts have indeed been made at dif- ut periods to reintroduce the system of protection abol- ished by us in 1846. Lord Randolph Churchill in 1885 talked much about free trade as the antithesis to fair trade. However, this like many other attempts broke down upon a difficulty generally recognized by politicians, that an urban population, which in this country is of supreme importance, will never tolerate any measure of protection which can possibly increase the price of its food. The agri- cultural community, on the other hand, naturally refuses to indorse a system which by protecting important manu- factures will increase the price of the goods which they have to buy, while the price of the goods which they have to sell remains the same. It is a dilemma from which there is no escape. Imperial preference has many followers, including those who would wish to see a British Zollverein. The advocates of such a system, however, exist only in Great Britain. In the self-governing Dominions there never has been any response to suggestions of this kind. The fiscal systems in Canada and Australia (to name only two) are

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July 6, 1927] The Nation 25 S& V. .his old man walked up to her door! One day Mrs. Ethelreda Lewis was sitting on the porch of her South African home. Outofthequi&tdaya strange old man walked up to her. He bore the strangest story of romanticad venture, of dangerous exploration, that has ever burst upon a hungry world. The story of a Rip Van Winkle who awoke from a sleep in Africa and told a tale more mar- velous than Marco Polo's. V V V John Galsworthy says oE "Trader Horn": "Thisisagorgeous book, full ot more sheer stingo than any you are likely to run across in a day's march among the book shops of wherever you happen to be." WSJSiam McFee in Herald-Tribune "Boo&s" "Mr. Galsworthy claims that it will tickle the appetite of the most jaded 1 He understates the facts. After no fewer than four excited perusals of this as- tounding narrative, I am pur- posing to go back to it again". Trader Horn Being the life and woris of Alfred Aloysius Horn an "Old Visitor". .. the words written by himself at the age of seventy-three. Edited by Ethelreda Lewis. JJ4.00 Simon and Schuster PUBLISHERS, NEW YORK Hotels! Camps! Resorts! There are between thirty and forty thousand Nation readers and their families, many of whom may be interested in spending their summer or a part of it at your place. If you did not advertise in The Nation last year, try The Nation this year. Rates on request. Dept. S. K., The Nation. s* 11 The Best of M the %ew Books %j 111 THE RISE OF AMERICAN CIVILIZATION By Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard Third Large Printing This enthralling story of America's making has been unanimously acclaimed as the "ideal history for the layman." William Allen White calls it "a history that any citizen can read without bore- dom— the kind of history that sensible, practical men can read." Wars and politics of the usual history are displaced by a balanced account of our national growth and culture. No one who wants to understand his age can afford to miss this book, which is not so much a history as it is a piquantly fresh interpretation. 2 vols., illustrated, $12.50 A New Poem by Edivin Arlington Robinson Tristram Fifth Large Printing "The greatest poem that has yet been written in America" has, through its sheer quality and beauty, won an immediate place on every important best- seller list in America. You'll find no more satisfying reading in the bookstalls. $1.50 Islanders A Netv Novel by Helen Hull Fourth Large Printing "A deeply significant cross sec- tion of lite . . . Islanders is one of the highly notable novels of 1927. It would take that rank in any year." — Philadelphia Inquirer. $2.50 Dear OSd Tessafjletora A New Novel by Alice Brown "A novel of worth and sub- stance. There is beauty in its conception and rare charm in its execution. One of the most charmingly written, the sound- est and most worthwhile novels of many seasons." — Boston Herald. $2.50 The Li/e of the Author of "The American Commonwealth" James Bryce By the Rt. Hon. H. A. L. Fisher "Admirable biography . . . The work is exceedingly well done, many pages are deep withcharm . . . All throw a white light on the author of The American Commonwealth." — Claude G. Bowers in the 'New York World. 2 vols. $8.00 Asitelblograplaies By William Butler Yeats The story of Yeats' life which "offers such a variety of riches that I can hardly see how any- one could fail to enjoy it. This is a book to own, to read, and read again." — New York Even- ing Post. $3.50 Yaws' Mosaey 's W©rtEa By Stuart Chase and F. J Schlink The amazing revelations of this hook take you behind t lie scenes of Big Business and Advei and show you why you rarely get value for what you pay. It is recommended by Dr. Henry Seidel Canby, DorothyCanfield and other noted critics. To Be Published July 5. $2.00 This Believing W©r: By Lewis Browne Eight!* Large Fyzntiag The story of the great religions of mankind presents "the entire procession of the world's faiths upon one canvas, i with order and clarity." Will Durant, George A. Dorsey and other noted authors and critics have recommended this as one of the most fascinating and valuable books ever written. The Mactnillan Company New Marx's CAPITAL The most epoch-making of all works on economics: a critical analy- sis of the processc3 of capitalist production and distribution. Marx has done for social science what Darwin did for biology. Cloth. S volumes, 2,586 pages, $7.50 postpaid. Charles H. Kerr & Company, :i47 East Ohio St., Chicago When writing to adx-erlisers please mention The Nation

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26 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3235 highly protective; and though in many cases the duties against British goods are slightly lower than those which are paid on goods coming from other countries, they have been sufficiently high to prevent rivalry of equal terms be- tween the goods produced inside and outside the barrier. When analyzed, the figures become ridiculous from any pref- erential point of view. Thus the average duty collected on British goods going into Canada in 1925 was 18.2 per cent, while the average duty upon United States goods was 13 per cent, and on all foreign goods was 15.1 per cent. Im- perial preference in fact is little better than a sham and a pretense, rejected in practice by the self-governing Do- minions whose assent to any policy of the kind is essential. In India even, which annually imports £90,000,000 worth of British goods, the same tendency can be seen. Under the greater measure of self-government which India now e: joys it is imposing higher and higher duties on British goods. Our Government has abstained from entering any objection to these tariffs. For the moment the safeguarding of industries has occupied more attention than any other of these various measures. Free traders have never denied the possibility of benefiting one particular trade by protecting it, but we have always pointed out the difficulties of stopping speed on the slippery olope. There is a story of a convalescent hospital which illustrates the point. A Scotchman alone of all the other patients in the ward seemed to get no bet- ter, and a kindly doctor bethought himself of a possible cure. He suggested to Donald that the sights and sounds of his native land might help to restore his spirits and help his recovery. Donald agreed, and arrangements were made for a Highlander in kilts and with bagpipes complete to spend the afternoon in the ward playing the national airs. Next day the doctor, making inquiries after Donald, found that he indeed was better but that all the other patients in the hospital were dead. So may the safeguarding of one industry hurt many others. Thus the protection of leather may help manufacturers of leather, but it will injure those who make up leather into leather goods. The protection of motor buses may help manufacturers of motor buses, but it will have its effect upon the price of the tickets paid for by those who use the cars. So also will duties upon articles of domestic consumption raise the cost of living to the consumer, even though they assist the manufacturer. Protection for the key industries, i.e., the industries which make goods held to be necessary to national security, is in our opinion equally difficult to justify. A hundred years ago the manufacture of sails and black gunpowder may have been key industries; but as time goes on the connotation of the term key industries changes, and it would be difficult to think that in the unfortunate event of another war we should not once more find that goods, im- portant to some branch of our fighting services, could not be obtained abroad. However much our free-trade system has been broken into in these respects, the people of this country remain at heart firmly convinced of its merits. Manufacturers who are slack naturally rely upon a tariff to make good their own deficiencies, but the principles of the trade unions of this country remain sound upon this question; though the Socialist Party, which follows to a logical conclusion socialist theories of manufacture and dis- tribution, is naturally to be found to some extent supporting a system of protection. In regard to the McKenna duties, there is little to say. although free traders are sore about them. They were in- troduced during the war with the object of economizing space in our merchant ships — or that at any rate was the reason given for their imposition. The political leaders of both wings of the coalition assured the country that they were merely temporary duties and that they would be re- moved at the conclusion < ar. In spite of this prom- ise they have been maintained and even added to, with the exception of twelve months during which they were abol- ished by Mr. Snowden. It is very difficult to see how the duty of 33 1 3 per cent upon Swiss clocks and watches can be justified today by arguments which were used in 1916. Our free-trade system, which it must be remembered was instituted after we had tried protection and found it a hindrance to our advance in prosperity, has as its object the securing of the maximum trade possible by refusing to encourage the establishment of economic barriers to im- ports; the result is facilities to cheap production, con- ducing to the maintenance of a large export trade to pay for those imports. So far I have only dealt with economic and fiscal con- ditions peculiar to our country; but the question has a far wider aspect than the purely national one. This has been well pointed out in the most important plea issued last year [printed in the International Relations Section of The Nation, November 3, 1926], and signed by many prominent bankers and industrialists not only in Europe but in the United States. The object of this plea is merely to restate and reinforce the truism that we are all members one of another. The document said in part: Trade is not war, but a process of exchange; in time of peace our neighbors are our customers. If we check their dealings, their power to pay their debts diminishes, and their power to purchase our goods is reduced. Re- stricted imports involve restricted exports, and no nation can afford to lose its export trade. The plea recorded the conviction of its signatories that "the establishment of economic freedom is the best hope of re- storing the commerce and the credit of the world," and that "the breaking down of economic barriers is the surest remedy for the stagnation that exists." It has been sug- gested that the American signatories signed it under the impression that the economic truths it contained applied exclusively to European conditions. I cannot believe that the contention is seriously maintained that economic law which is sound when applied to Europe does not equally apply to American conditions. Surely the law, for it is a law, that the diminution of imports by tariff and other re- strictions must result in diminished exports obtains in the case of the United States just as unerringly as it does all over the rest of the world. Indeed it was in obedience to that law that America, having tried the policy of inter-State restriction and found it a costly failure, instituted State federation, and so secured the greatest free-trading area in the whole world. The problems of maintaining and increasing international trade and commerce, of paying and receiving international debts, which are now receiving so much attention in America, are the very same problems which are agitating us here in Europe, and for which the plea suggests the "surest" solution. If, as its signatories maintain, the proposed solution is economically sound as re- gards our European side of these problems, how can it be maintained that its principles have no application to the complementary problems of the United States?

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July 6, 1927] The Nation 27 Contributors to This Issue Beatrice M. Hinkle is the author of "Recreating of the Individual" and a specialist in psychoanalysis. John B. Watson is a well-known psychologist and author of "Psychology from the Standpoint of a Behaviorist." Joseph Collins is a neurologist whose latest book is "The Doctor Looks at Love and Life." Rube Borough is a reporter on the Los Angeles Record. J. A. Stevenson is a Canadian who frequently writes for The Nation. Ruby A. Black is a Texan, Washington correspondent for a group of newspapers in the East. Allen Tate has often appeared in The Nation as poet and critic. Haniel Long is author of several volumes of verse. Harry Elmer Barnes is author of "The Genesis of the World War." Alter Brody is a New York writer who devotes much attention to contemporary literature. Abbe Niles has made a special study of popular music and poetry. Stuart Chase is coauthor of "Getting Your Money's Worth." Eliseo Vivas was the Zona Gale Scholar at the University of Wisconsin this year. B. H. Haggin has been writing a series of articles on music criticism for The Nation. Henrietta Straus is attending the European festivals. William Lygon, seventh Earl Beauchamp, is president of the English free-trade association. NEW YORK- LENINGRAD —MOSCOW The achievements of young Russia — the historic beauties of old Russia — all the thrill of discovery and the joy of a new adventure await you in the SIX WEEKS TRIP TO RUSSIA Starting July 14 by steamer direct to Leningrad ; then by rail to Moscow, visiting all nearby places of interest and the museums, factories, art galleries, nurseries, schools, and other sights of both citiosely Limited to a Congenial Group of i0 Bungalows and Main House Excellent facilities and equipment modern in every respect. for all camp sports ; also golf. Rate $27 per week. Round Trip Fare to Riverside, N. Y., $13.27. MORRIS harkavy N. Y. Office, 55 West 42nd St. Esther R. KAPLAN Pennsylvania 7663 5CDPIJ5 THRU -MILK I SPLEN 1) 1 1) ACCOM MODATIO N S SUPERIOR CUISINE. DIETARY LAWS 11 Y Fare. Round Trip. $12.28 Write for Unique Booklet SCOPUS 135 Remsen St., Bklyn Main 5243 An Adult Lamp of Distinction in the Adirondack^ P. 0.: Lake George, N. Y. SUMMER PLACES — Continued on next page When writing to advertisers please mention The Nation

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28 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3235 □ SUMMER PLACES ECHO SLAKE: y/ Crimp for A/"'f . ADIRONDACK* Ideal of Small Camps Capacity strictly limited — Inspiring Adi- rondack setting. Every desirable fa- cility for sports. Excellent living quarters. Unusual social programs. From every angle the camp for the discriminating vacationist. RATES, $30 PER WEEK FARE ROUND TRIP TO LAKE GEORGE $12.28 Address ECHO LAKE TAVERN 1410 Broadway — Longaere 5432 Warrensburg mob nudell New York rebecca nudell BAILIN'S MAPLEDALE HOTEL ROSCOE, N. Y. STATION on the N. Y., O. & W. Line (Telephone Roscoe 3Y2) H A resort of health, beauty and splendor in the most enchanting heights of the Catskills. fl 1,750 feet above sea level, ff All conveniences; all camp activities; all recreational treats. Excellent Jewish meals. Fine atmosphere, ft Prices $25.00 and up per week. \For information and booklet address B. BAILIN, 3 New St., Coney Island, N. Y. A PERFECT VACATION RESORT Come and enjoy a glorious Fourth of July week- end and all year round vacation at SCHILD- KRAUT'S magnificent Pine Terrace Park Hotel and Camp, on the picturesque Hudson, Highland Falls. N. Y., between Hoar Mountain and West Point. Wonderful open-air sleeping roof gardens and bungalows, a •! accommodations wi'li private baths and >orts for health, recreation and pleasure. (or u happy vacation. SCHILDKRAUT'S THE LLOYD, Beilport, L. I. | REAT SOITTE COOS. ( CHARMING j AM. SPOR For regular guests an, Address The Lloyd, Beilport, J Tel. Beilport 17 (Owners, D. J. & K. \1. Me3erole) SPECIAL* NOTICE Lena Barish and Sam Garlen Former owners of Echo Lake Tavern, ARK NOW CONDUCTING GREEN MANSIONS ECHO LAKE J/± ^ : NSBURG.N.Y. Swimming Pishing Canoeing Rowing Dancing Baseball Tennis Basketball Handball Horseback A Camp for Adults in the Adirondack Mts. $30 per week $5 per day Look for the Indian Head 4th of July Week-End $12.00, which includes free transportation from Albany to Camp and back. Take the Albany Night boat on July 1st and meet our sight-seeing bus on the morning of July 2nd at the Albany pier for a trip through the Adirondack Mountains, passing through Schenectady, Saratoga, Glens Falls, Lake George and Warrensburg. Otherwise, N. Y. Central to Lake George, where our cars will meet you. Write for Camp Booklet N. Y. Address— R. Helfant, 885 Brook Avenue. Bronx. N. Y. Tel. Melrose 1821 TROUT LAKE CAMP AND HOTEL in the Adirondacks on Lake George, N. Y. 3rd Season on the Crystal Springs, Trout Lake July 4th weekend, Special $9 for 3 days Free Auto service from Lake George All land and water sports. Jewish Cooking. Fare N. Y., round trip §12.28— Rates S25 per week. Make reservations now. New Yo-k Offices, 9 W. 47th St., 805 Freeman St. Telephones: Bryant S135 — Kilpatrick 4379. P. 0. Diamond Point, N.Y. Telephone Bolton 60 F 21 MAYFAIR HOUSE INVITES YOU A modern house of unusual charm, close to the beach and boardwalk. Delicious, home-cooked food. Real hospitality. Reasonable rates. Boolcing for season and vacations. "17 West Penn St., Long Beach, X. Y. Tel. Long Beach 1059 TDEAL VACATION. Private family, modern L home, mountail County. Beautiful lo- cation, fishing. I food. Make arrange- ments now. Mrs. A. Kaplan, North Branch. N. Y. THE LESTER HOUSE, ROSCOE. N. Y. highest point of Sullivan County. Pavilion .or Sun Baths provided. Good food; Rates: S25 per , "HESTNUT HILL FARM on the Merrimac River ^— will or the summer. Beautiful . beach ; swimming ; ten- rips arranged through mntains ms for riding instruction. for rainy .'.ays. Large, or cabin articulars upon request. Chestnut Hill Farm. West Newbury, Mass. •("\~RITERS and thinkers can find a congenial > > atmosphere in iences. Beautiful sur- roundings, stone fireplaces, tennis, garage. Easy commuting. I Pox S31, '', Tht Nation. J av I I received two res] id\ ertisement in Xa ich materialized and is more than re: lor my invest- ment. Very truly yours S. B. L. ©KEEJ On Private Tripp Lake In the heart of the Adirondacks. 12 miles north of Lake George. 8 clay tennis courts and abun- facilities for every other sport. Commodious community buildings. Modern sanitation in each log cabin. All this limited to 150 campers. Special summer train rates. New York-Lake George, round trip, $12.28. RA TE $35 A WEEK. Address GREEX MANSIONS Warrensburg. X. Y. City Office, 33 W. 42nd St. Long. 4682 LENA BARISH SAM GARLEN Directors Founders of the '"Small Camp Ideal." PIOXEER LODGE A Summer Camp for Adults NEAR THOUSAND ISLANDS Limited to Fifty — Has All Conveniences in Lodge ind Bungalows — All Sports — Tennis. Boating on Large Lake— Golf Within 15 Minutes Walk — Rate S25.00 per Week. Accessible over night by N. Y. Central City Officb 140 W. 42nd Street Wisconsin 2165 Stab Lake, N. Y. r. Lawrence County RIVERSIDE ON DELAWARE Bushkill. Pike County, Pa. A modern hotel with camp activities. Excellent a cuisine, i • Bros. Tel. Strouds- burg 1R5. SUBURBAN BOARD MIMING LINDEN HALL— Ar. axceptionai \_^ I me with Solarium — midst spacious - elderly women, convalescents — stressing home atmosphere, diet, kindly care, attend- ance. Dr. Sophie Kler.k, 3S1S Baytide. MANHATTAN BEACH HOTEL. N. Y. \ ashore. Modern; fireproof. Homelike • v : . Outdoor sports : surf bathing. 37 Sq. via B.M.T. Now open for •vations. Rates moderate. D R. ELIZABETH M. BAER announces the open- of her home to any one interested in Eye education. 367 Bay Ave., Patchogue, L. I. APARTMENT SUBLET SUMMER f\ UT of town readers of The Nation, in New York to visit or study or attend courses, will probably be looking for apartments for the summer months. This is the right time to advertise your apartment in THE NATION. Rates on Request. Dept. S. A., The Nation.

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The Nation FOUNDED 1866 Vol. CXXV NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, JULY 13, 1927 No. 3236 Contents EDITORIAL PARAGRAPHS 29 EDITORIALS: When Is a Ship Not a Ship? 31 Ambassador Houghton Tells Some More Truths 32 The Scandal at Geneva 33 The Wisdom of Herbert Brown 33 MURDER BY "PERSONS UNKNOWN." By Gaetano Salvemini 34 FRENZIED RAILROAD FINANCE. By Marshall Lynn 35 HONOR IS A TRADITION OF THE SEA. By Frank Chaloner Ames.. 37 •IN THE DRIFTWAY. By the Drifter 38 CORRESPONDENCE 39 BOOKS: Carbolic Acid for India. By W. Norman Brown 40 "Old Charlie." By J. Frank Dobie 41 Hamsun's Rival. By Walter Vogdes 41 Government for Workers. By Theresa Wolfson 42 Fifty Years Behind. By Keith Hutchison 42 Before the War. By Herbert Solow 43 Books in Brief 43 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS SECTION: The Eastern Edge of Europe. By Louis E. Van Norman 44 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. THE NATION is on file in most public and college libraries and is indexed in the Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature. C GALLANT ALL THE WAY THROUGH was Byrd's T effort to reach Paris — just as gallant as was to be ex- pected of the man who flew over the North Pole and has been so modest and unassuming about it all. The whole country thrilled when the news came that he and his asso- ciates were safe after that fearful night of flying all over northern France in search of a haven. To those who lis- tened to the radio and got the press cables from Le Bourget that episode must surely remain unforgetable. Talk about Jules Verne or Victor Hugo or Dumas or Wells or any other writer! Here was an epic situation indeed: Four men aloft in a terrific storm, over their destination but unable to see or find it. Then their wireless getting fainter and fainter and finally disappearing altogether while the storms grew worse and the darkness blacker than ever. Finally complete silence ordered upon the spirits of the air, all radio and wireless talk stopped while one station clicked its despair- ing WTW, WTW call for the ship missing in the ether, missing and fighting the evilest elements, missing, missing, silent — vanished, until the word suddenly comes that back on the coast in the English Channel it has dropped to the water, and that Byrd and his crew are safe. What must have been the sensation of those four men as they watched the gasoline grow less and less? For them those precious iisappearing drops were the sands of life running out. "Byrd has three more hours of gasoline" — "two more hours of gasoline" — "one more hour of gasoline" — safe! Who can measure the joy that flash gave to millions of his and his associates' happy countrymen? BETWEEN AIR RECEPTIONS Paris celebrates prison escapes. Recently, it will be recalled, the Government, in its impartial way, decided to send a Communist and a royalist to jail. As royalist it selected Leon Daudet, leader of the royalist rowdies known as the camelots de roi. These gentlemen love street fights but they also have Mr. Upton Sinclair's passion for making a monkey of the law. They studied telephone switchboards with that end in view; in particular they studied the switchboard of the French Ministry of Justice. Then they telephoned instructions to the prison to release M. Semard and M. Daudet, and so crossed the wires that a return call from the prison, in- stead of reaching the Ministry, reached one of their own agents. Yes, the royalist telephone operator assured the prison warden, the instructions were genuine; and M. Daudet and M. Semard were accordingly released. M. Semard remained to constitute a problem; he had been offi- cially released, and how could he be rearrested? M. Daudet gloriously disappeared. He has been reported in Spain, in Switzerland, and cruising in the English Channel; wherever he is, he is doubtless enjoying life and cursing when Com- mander Byrd absorbs the newspaper space on which for two weeks he has had a mortgage. The Government has sought to retrieve its dignity by arresting a royalist tele- phone operator — which really does not get it very far. What with Lindbergh and Daudet and Byrd, Paris bids fair to exhaust its capacity for excitement before the American Legion arrives in September. What a pity that would be! EVEN A KING HAS USES now and then. The Die- hard effort to "reform" the British House of Lords by copper-riveting its Tory majority forever stirred up such a storm of protest even among some of the younger Tory peers (who seem to have caught up with the eighteenth century at least), that the elders of the party looked about for avenues of escape. It clearly would not do to have Tory lords on the war-path against the Tory program for revis- ing the Lords. But Viscount Cave had offered the proposal in the name of the Government. Clearly, it was a difficult situation. Then someone remembered the King. Ah, yes, the King. The Cave proposal took away the royal preroga- tive of naming new peers by the hundred if he (or the party in power which dictates his actions) wanted to. Sud- denly the Tories were filled with solicitude for the royal prerogatives. The powers of the King must not be limited, not even to reform the House of Lords. And so the House of Lords stands unreformed — not, according to the official version, because the proposed "reform" was violently out of temper with the twentieth century, but because it clipped the privileges of the King. It was a beautiful example of the British talent for graceful self-deception — and equally graceful retreats. RUSSIA IS HAVING A HOT and exciting summer. War specters rise to haunt her from every angle. The raid on the Soviet Legation in Peking; the high jinks in London and the official break with Great Britain; the murder of Russia's envoy to Poland, and the consequent war scares, with the revelation of tense nerves exhibited in the

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30 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3236 execution of a score of "counter-revolutionaries" charged with being in Britain's secret spy service — these have been followed by a sensational statement made by the Communist Party of Poland, which declares that the Polish war fac- tories are working night shifts and that the reservists are being hastily trained for the coming war with Russia. Moscow is, not unnaturally, worried. There is no doubt that Tory Britain, faced with the real threat to her Asiatic empire caused by Russia's moral — and occasionally more than moral — support of Nationalist movements in that con- tinent, is angry; and an angry Britain is dangerous. We do not for a moment suppose that Britain contemplates a new war with Russia; but it is obvious that she has launched upon a policy of pin-pricking Russia wherever opportunity offers, and the result cannot be anything but a constant war psychology. WHAT IS THIS "CIVILIAN ADMINISTRATION" which Mr. Coolidge foresees for the Philippines? If it means doing away with the cavalry kitchen cabinet which has surrounded General Wood, that will be an ad- vance in the right direction ; but if it points toward reduc- ing the Philippines to the status of a sort of territory or territory-to-be, it would be no gain at all. We have prom- ised the Philippines independence — indeed, a nation with our American tradition could not do otherwise; we will be in constant hot water until we redeem our pledges — and even after that, we may find the consequences of our adven- ture in imperialism dogging our national trail. There are signs that Mr. Coolidge, who dislikes trouble, is moving to clear up some of the worst spots in our foreign relations. The New York Times reports him inclined to recognize the Nationalists in China and to assume the lead in positive friendly action toward that country. Furthermore, the President is reported to be willing to accept a quiet resig- nation from Mr. Sheffield, United States Ambassador to Mexico. Mr. Sheffield is one of those civilian envoys who thinks an American diplomat in Latin America should act like in army officer training a squad of raw rookies. WE CONFESS TO A BIT OF UNHOLY GLEE at the demonstration in Los Angeles that patriotism is still the last refuge of some scoundrels. The Better America Federation of California has been one of the very worst of the 100-per-cent-patriotic organizations bent on pur- suing all radicals, yes, even mild liberals, in fact any one who did not agree with them at all points. They had their share in enacting the infamous Syndicalism Law under which men were liable and some were sent to jail for four- teen years merely for membership in the I. W. W. or the Communist Party. The "Better America" in the fed- eration's name spelt a tyranny by this organization over workers and workers' organizations, teachers, and dissen- ters of every variety, avowedly for the improvement of the country, but in reality for increasing the stranglehold of big business upon the community life and — in the interest of the open shop — of the poisonous molding of the entire life of Southern California under pretense of protecting everybody from Bolshevism. It is p11 wondei-fully portrayed in that extraordinary new novel of Upton Sinclair's, "Oil." But not even so great a novelist as he could have imagined that no less exalted a personage than the President of the Better America Federation himself should be indicted for usury in connection with a company that issued illegally 1,000,000 shares of stock and defrauded several hundred thousand innocent investors. Among the indicted are three leading bank officials, two of them vice-presidents of the First National Bank, charged with taking jointly §100,000 for obtaining a loan of §385,000 from one of their banks, and with embezzlement on other counts. How zealously these patriots have labored to better America — and their bank accounts! FOR ONCE SECRETARY MELLON'S SKILL in judg- ing the money market has failed him and for the first time a refunding operation of his has fallen flat. He of- fered an issue of Treasury bonds redeemable in 1943-1947 at 3% per cent to help finance the calling of the Second Liberty Loan on November 15 next. Only $250,000,000 acceptable cash subscriptions were received prior to the clos- ing of the books. Of the $3,104,000,000 Second Liberty Bonds outstanding on February 27 last but $1,603,000,000 came in for exchange and of these $243,000,000 were ex- changed for the new 33s's. Of the remainder, $1,360,000,- 000 went for the three-to-five year B1^ per cent Treasury notes while $225,000,000 were purchased by the Treasury for retirement. That still leaves $1,276,000,000 which must be taken up by Mr. Mellon prior to November 15. Instead, therefore, of being closed now, the transaction will drag on through the summer. The fiscal year has, however, ended brilliantly, with a surplus of approximately $635,000,- 000 and a reduction in the public debt of $1,131,309,383. Undoubtedly this extremely favorable showing was due in part to the failure of a filibustering Congress to pass the Second Deficiency Bill, as a result of which some large ex- penditures will go over into the new fiscal year. Nonethe- less, the surplus is so large that the politicians and the cor- I porations will jointly demand a heavy tax reduction when the new session begins. AMERICA WAS NOT NEEDED in the World War, didn't win it, and if this country had not come in the war would have been won by the Allies without its aid. Who says this? Some "spineless pacifist"? A Representa- tive or Senator who voted against the war? No, indeed. No one less than Field Marshal Lord Haig himself, in an address to the British Empire Service League — an organi- zation of war veterans. And this is what he said : If America had not come in, we might not perhaps have forced the enemy to surrender in 1918, for without the American reserves in existence it would have been un- wise for us to risk throwing the whole force of the British army in France and Flanders into the tremendous series of battles which brought the war to a sudden, and by many politicians unexpected, end. But we should have won in the end all the same. (Cheers) ... In the course of the greatest war in history the British peoples mobilized, equipped, and trained, and put into the field the finest fight- ing force the world has yet seen. (Cheers). The discipline and quality of its rank and file, the leadership and initia- tive of its regimental officers, the organization of its sup- ply and medical services, the competence and reliability of its staff and intelligence, all alike were unsurpassed. This flag-waving British general sounds like some of our American officers. One of them, Major General Joseph T. Dickman, commanding the Third American Army, has just written as follows : "After accomplishing the defeat of the Kaiser's armies, the young American soldiers very natur- ally desired to return to their homes at an early date."

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July 13, 1927] The Nation 31 Again, he says: "In the autumn of 1918 there were no troops in Europe beside the Americans who could have forced their way through the fortified fastnesses of the Argonne Forest. . . . The battle of November 1 and 2, 1918 . . . will forever be recognized as the final blow that drove the hosts of Germany to the very verge of collapse and ended the war." MORAL INDIGNATION, according to Bishop Manning, is the quality most necessary and most wanting in modern times. Moral indignation, the bishop continues, which is not afraid to call a spade a spade — and prefers to call it a manure-spreader. Thus Dr. Manning, in criticiz- ing a "prominent preacher" in New York City — who turns out to be the Rev. Harry Emerson Fosdick — for being in favor of dropping some old ideas of right and wrong, and substituting "beautiful" and "ugly" in their stead, remarks : Which means, I suppose, that there is no longer any law of God which is binding upon us and that our only standard is our own taste or preference. If this is true, if there is no law of God which must be obeyed, we need not wonder if our young people adopt "companionate marriage" or any other suggestion. Dr. Fosdick's indignant repudiation of this muddying of his remarks was hardly necessary. What he said to the graduating class of Smith College was, in part: You are going out into a generation which is witnessing the breaking down of the old well-defined codes of right and wrong by which your fathers lived. . . . There is plenty that is rotten in the old codes concerning love and the rela- tionship of the sexes. . . . Whatever debases personality is wrong and ugly; whatever elevates personality is right and beautiful. . . . When a generation discovers that the old codes cannot be used and set up for themselves high stand- ards of their own, they have much firmer ground on which to proceed. Other ministers have spoken equally soundly and intelli- gently. And to all of them the outraged Bishop of New York makes the same sort of reply, full of moral indigna- tion and little else. Sin is sin, insists the Bishop; it always has been and it always will be. And ostriches have always buried their heads in the sand and the world has turned by them unperceived. "QHALL POETS BECOME EXTINCT?" That highly 1^ rhetorical question is asked and answered by John Gould Fletcher, the American poet now living in England, in the current issue of the Modern World. His answer, of course, is No. But his proposal for making the lot of the poet a little easier than it happens to be is so unusual and so practical that the attention of millionaires should be called to it. Mr. Fletcher's very sensible idea is not that poets shall be subsidized for work they have still to do but that their volumes, once written and passed upon by a board of famous poets appointed for the purpose, shall be pub- lished for them in limited editions, "in good style and at a high price." If the small audience to which good poetry is and always has been addressed is there to buy the limited edition, well enough; at any rate the edition will exist. If a larger audience wants it, the volume can be taken over by a commercial publisher who will give it the distribu- tion its author desires. The scheme has the merit of prom- ising to bring much good poetry into print without agony to any publisher. Mr. Fletcher is certain that the jury of famous poets can be found; what about the millionaire? When Is a Ship Not a Ship? ANSWER : When she comes up the harbor of New York not a steamer but a Ritz-Carlton hotel and the ship- reporters busy themselves not with her sea-going quality or her speed, or the latest improvements embodied in her ma- chinery, but with the vast sums lavished upon her decora- tions. Let seagoing sailormen listen to this and writhe: Deciding on the newest school of decoration, the execu- tion of the plan was placed entirely in the hands of the foremost modernists in art and decoration in France. Using thirty-six kinds of wood, a subtle and lavish harmony of color has been produced from the natural shades of these woods. The grand salon is done in lacquer and gold. Around its walls are forty columns, each sixteen feet high, surrounding a dance floor of a thousand square feet. In this room are four statues, nine feet tall, in gold. . . . The dining room seating six hundred people, and the largest on any ship in the world, is decorated in three harmonizing shades of gray marble. Luminous stripes of gold again present the effect of a warm, bright sun, although the room is several decks below. Another new feature on the He de France is a permanent chapel two decks in height . . . a shooting gallery . . . and the largest gymnasium ever constructed aboard a ship. Also a bar which measures nearly thirty feet in length. Yes, and dress-shops and barber-shops and a swimming pool and a special gymnasium for children and a travel bureau and a bank and safe-deposit vaults and a florist shop and heaven knows what else. And this is called going to sea! We confess that we have not yet seen these marvelous decorations of the salons. We cannot judge therefore whether they are, as some say, the latest in fine arts or, as others assert, merely early North German Lloyd. To the art critics we leave the decision. We merely protest once more that a floating hotel is no ship. It doesn't make any difference how graceful her lines or how beautiful her model — and all the great French liners are graceful and beautiful — this sort of thing is an insult to Father Neptune. It is more than that, a conspiracy against popular taste, an ex- tension of the jazz age to the ocean ; another bit of that terrible lurch into conformity which would make luxurious "lounge-lizards" of us all ; which leads the younger genera- tion to believe that there is no other way to spend one's life than on dancing floors a thousand feet square amid columns sixteen feet high and walls glittering with gilt, or in baroque with fat neo-Rubens nudes interspersed. As for us, we'd rather go back to the old ways. If this is modernity then The Nation begs to be counted, at sea at least, among the conservative and the reactionary. Our mind goes back to a lovely old P. and 0. Egypt-bound, on a glorious dark and starry night in the Mediterranean. There were yards and sails on all her three beautiful masts. There was only a dingy smoke-room, and a little dingier ladies' cabin. The main salon was flanked on both sides by state- rooms; there one ate one's meals and often heard untoward sounds from within. There were no baths and no running water. What matter? It was something different; it was a life apart; it had nothing in common with Broadway. That queen of the sea had no shops, and no chapel, no orchestra and no dance-floor, no columns and no nudes — it was just a plain, beautiful ship — one of the greatest works of man if not of God. Anyone may have the He de France who wants her. When we go to sea we want to go to sea, not to float across the ocean in a gilded barroom.

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32 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3236 Ambassador Houghton Tells Some More Truths ALANSON B. HOUGHTON is an anachronism in our diplomatic service. He is not afraid to speak out in meeting, and when he speaks he has something to say— which is certainly unusual among those who belong to the statesman class. Our readers will recall the sensation Mr. Houghton made in the spring of 1926 when he returned from England and told the truth about the European situa- tion with such frankness and vigor that chancelleries and press alike were horrified at his "calculated indiscretion." Now he has appeared before the Harvard Alumni Associa- tion on Commencement Day, after accepting the LL.D. which his alma mater justly and wisely bestowed upon him, and has dared to suggest that the war-making powers of governments should be taken away from them and vested in the people. Other forms and processes of government have been democratized; why not this? The one thing that remains unaffected is the question of war and the power to make it. Mr. Houghton's real treason to the present order lies in the fact that he, a diplomat of years in Berlin and Lon- don, an observer at close hand of governmental machines, speaks slightingly of governments as "little groups of men" who are engaged in maneuvering the masses they represent into dangerous or fatal positions because these "little groups," as he puts it, "seek constantly and naturally to gain supposed advantages of one sort and another for their own nations." When they have succeeded in placing the peoples in a position from which it appears impossible to recede they next order under arms "those great masses of men and women roused by every power of organized appeal and propaganda . . . and war follows." He might well have added that the governing men behave thus because no penalty attaches to their own acts; they are held account- able by no one; they drape themselves in the flag and call themselves "the people" and "the country" when in ninety- nine cases out of a hundred they are nothing but a set of temporary officials elected to office, with no mandate for war whatever. Identifying themselves with their nations, however, they call upon their deluded fellow-citizens — easily deluded because, as in both the Allied and the Central Euro- pean countries, the diplomats suppress, garble, and mis- quote the documents which lead up to the impasse — to pro- tect the virtue of their women, the safety of their homes, the sanctity of their national boundaries. The sacred honor of the flag is at stake. Who shall care that the scoundrels or incompetents who involved the flag are hiding behind it and carefully protecting their own rascally skins by staying in the seats of the mighty? This language is, of course, ours and not the Ambassa- dor's. But the implications are all there in his speech. He refuses to accept the theory that war is inevitable because human nature is what it is. That, he says, simply begs the question. War is not necessarily the "result of a process of necessity" ; nor does it follow that the fighters would choose to fight under the conditions into \ hich they are plunged. Especially, he says, "we have no reason to admit that a similar result would follow if the power to declare war were in the hands of the populations. That is precisely what we do not know. The experiment has never been tried. And there are considerations which, apparently, point the other way." Of these he cites four. First, the great self- governing peoples have shown themselves competent to manage their own domestic affairs, and "foreign affairs are merely an extension of their domestic affairs." This vet- eran diplomat dares to add that there is nothing mysterious about foreign affairs and that they are "not a sort of arcana, wherein the laws of common morality are excluded, and in which only cynical gentlemen of bilingual attainments are competent to play a role. They are in the main simply the natural and beneficial outcome of a desire to trade." The Ambassador's second point is that war has so steadily increased its demands that no one can make any profit out of it ; indeed, it threatens to wreck civilization itself, "for the wars of the civilized mean the breakdown of civilization." Thirdly, he points out that as long as the relations between peoples are based on force and every nation arms for defense, each "thus becomes potentially more able to attack and so more dangerous as a neigh- bor." Fourthly, and most important, the Ambassador asserts that, "the power to declare war stands on a different plane from all other powers of government. It is all-em- bracing and all-consuming." It is the one power which a people ought logically to reserve to itself, "since it puts in jeopardy their collective lives and property. And yet, strangely enough, it is the one power they do not possess." Under this head Mr. Houghton brings out the point so often made by The Nation that governments are never elected on the precise issue of peace or war; that, chosen for domestic reasons, they may not be at all representative when sud- denly confronted by a decision as to war or peace. Theo- retically, he points out, self-governing peoples control their relations with other peoples, but practically, by giving the power to make war to their governments, they have divested themselves of this control. He himself is whole-heartedly in favor of returning it to the people to whom it belongs. Our governments, he declares, have shown themselves un- able to protect us against war. They continue to act along the well-defined grooves of the past and to misrepresent the people, whereas the great self-governing peoples are entirely ready to trust each other. And finally, he states the opinion of all the critics of the Versailles Treaty that "a durable peace cannot be based on force. It must, if it exists at all, be based upon good-will." Only a tradition "inherited from an outgrown system of autocratic government prevents our recognition of that great and beneficent fact. We are caught in a process of our own making. And we must unmake it." These are profoundly wise and noble words, as great as they are constructive. We hail them with the greatest satisfaction. Yet what do we see? The speech utterly ignored by all the newspapers of the metropolis save only the World and the Telegram, and apparently ignored by the great press associations. Yet it is a message which ought to be broadcast over this continent and Europe, for its logic is unanswerable, its wisdom beyond successful dispute. Al- ready men are arising to say it can't be done, and that if it could the peoples would vote for war. We deny that. But if it were true, we should still second this plea for the demo- cratization of the greatest power for evil which conductors of government now have in their hands.

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July 13, 1927] The Nation 33 The Scandal at Geneva THE Disarmament Conference at Geneva is degenerat- ing into a sorry spectacle. The assembled admirals and generals, and the few civilians scattered among them, show no desire to give the world a hearty shove along the path of peace; they have no slightest thought of really dis- arming; they are haggling and bargaining like a lot of Grand Street peddlers, each seeking to work out a "ratio" which will give his country some advantage in some class of warships. Britain is deaf to suggestions of reducing the number of light cruisers— a class in which she far outranks the United States and Japan; the United States is eager for limitations which strike Britain, but regards proposals to reduce the big ships beyond the scales of the Washington Conference as violations of "sacred treaty rights." Mr. Hugh Gibson, chairman of our delegation, was even quoted as mouthing this jingo sentiment: "The United States will insist upon equality with Britain in all categories of ships unless forced into a situation where she might regard equal- ity as insufficient" ! In that bullyragging spirit peace is not made. That is the spirit which has aroused dislike of America in Europe; if continued it will make the conference the starting-point of a new international naval rivalry. Possibly it is just as well that the officers and technical experts should thus early display their uselessness as leaders of a conference for the reduction of armaments. They do not want to disarm; at most they want to balance arms. They shudder at the thought of scrapping any of their lovely naval toys in the interest of economy and peace. They want to keep all they have, but to prevent the other fellow from building more. It would seem incongruous, of course, to introduce women, or labor leaders, or ministers of the gos- pel into such a conference. But if governments wanted to disarm, they would send such messengers ; and the technical experts, the generals and admirals, instead of dictating policy would be the servants of policy. If the governments had even been sincere in their protestations of economy, they would have included in their delegations representa- tives of the suffering treasuries. The treasury men know that the new naval race is pinching as much as the inter-Allied debts. Winston Churchill openly struggled against the British Admiralty when preparing his budget two years ago, but he was beaten, and Britain accepted the fifteen-cruiser program which is today one of the horrid specters of Geneva. It was the admirals, not the civilians, at Washington in 1921 who deliberately left the loophole for cruisers which is causing such ill feeling today. Mr. Churchill, who has been a jingo in his day but is a realist as Chancellor of the Exchequer, declared two months ago: There are only three great Powers able to keep a battle fleet in existence. An agreement between these three great naval Powers to abate the rate of their construction, or to limit the size of their ships, or some other agreement of that kind — in that lies the greatest hope of contraction in naval expenditure. And of peace. Those three Powers are meeting at Geneva today — and they are throwing away their opportunity, gam- bling with the hopes of the world. Will the civilian govern- ments who appointed these reckless admirals recall them or give them vigorous instructions before it is too late, or will they let the conference end in agreement upon meaningless nothings, pointing the way to new rivalries and opening new vistas of war? The Wisdom of Herbert Brown I forecast in the United States a crop season which will be marked by destructive cold waves in the fruit and early vegetable sections bordering upon the Gulf of Mexico; late and destructive spring frosts affecting Eastern fruit and threatening the corn crop in its early stages through the Northern portion of the Corn Belt, particularly north of the Ohio and Potomac and east of the Mississippi. I predict that killing frosts will come in June and into July over this section, that frosts will occur again in August and in September. It will be only in the areas south of the Potomac and the Ohio and well down the lower middle Mis- sissippi Valley where crops will be fairly safe from de- structive cold waves. HERBERT BROWN, who addressed these words to a group of business men meeting in Boston last Sep- tember, has become a legend on the lips of the Middle West. For several years he issued unofficial weather forecasts from Washington, D. C, without attracting more attention than usually is paid to prophets in their own country. Here and there, however, individual readers of his words began to say that Herbert Brown was proving right; farmers asked each other who this man was anyway, and how he knew these things; the Department of Agriculture was re- ported to be impressed by his methods, or at least by his results; and editors of agricultural papers quietly kept tab on him until the time for expressing editorial opinion should come. Now thousands will tell you that Herbert Brown last fall predicted the Mississippi floods in precisely their re- cent dimensions; that he foretold the tornadoes which ac- companied them with such superfluous fury; and that today, when the corn is either rotting in the cold fields of Illinois or standing but knee high to a grasshopper, the wisdom of Herbert Brown is in process of demonstration. The Prairie Farmer, assuring its subscribers that a conservative policy has always kept it from dabbling in the sensational, decides that Herbert Brown can no longer be ignored in view of his uncanny accuracy. A Middle Western newspaper devotes a column on its front page to the July frosts soon to be ex- pected if Brown is right; and the implication is that he must be right. The worst crop prospect in years is — no, not attributed to him (that stage in the legend is still to be reached), but at any rate referred back to his warning that 1927 would be a "year without a summer." Brown is not exactly "scientific," they admit; he goes by sun-spots and ocean currents instead of cyclones and anti-cyclones; but blessed if he doesn't seem to be hitting it. We know next to nothing :ibout Herbert Brown and certainly are in no position to judge the science, if any, that he employs. He may be wiser than all of the heads of all the weather bureaus in the world put together under one medicine hat — though we do understand that there is no agreement among astronomers and meteorologists concern- ing the effect of sun-spots and ocean currents. What inter- ests us is the readiness of the Middle West, in these years of rain and cold and depression, to make a myth out of a weatherman. What more natural? And what more gravely indicative of its general state of mind?

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34 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3236 Murder by "Persons Unknown' ' By GAETANO SALVEMINI THE Italian papers have published between April 29 and May 17 of this year summary and fragmentary, often incomprehensible, notices of a trial which was taking place at the Court of Assizes at Chieti — the same court at which was conducted, a year ago, the mockery of a trial for the murder of Giacomo Matteotti. Several English and Ameri- can papers have published the fact that all the accused have been acquitted. This acquittal is one of the most recent acts in a juri- dical farce which has lasted for a year and a half, and which is now approaching an end. It is a farce that follows upon a tragedy of blood and death. On the night of Friday, September 25, 1925, the Fas- cists of Florence inaugurated a "man-hunt" against the Freemasons. Bludgeonings took place on a large scale for three days and went on sporadically during the following days. On October 3 a squad of Fascists went to the house of the Freemason Bandinelli, who the previous day had been beaten by the black-snirts. An altercation took place. An- other Freemason, named Becciolini, drew his revolver and fired on the Fascists, killing one and wounding another. He was at once thrashed, flung into a motor-car, taken to the premises of the Fascist Provincial Federation, brought back again half dead to the scene of the murder, and 'here rid- dled with bullets. Bandinelli's house was sacked. Two hours afterward further reprisals on a large scale were set on foot against persons entirely unconnected with the original incident. The offices of thirteen lawyers and one accountant, a tailoring business, and seven shops were wrecked — nearly all in the center of the town, in the vicinity of the prefecture, the police headquarters, and the barracks of the carabineers. Three private houses were sacked. A squac* of Fascists appeared before the house of a tramway- man named Ademaro Cozzi, and summoned him to come out. The moment he did so, one of the band fired at him at close range with his revolver, and then fled with his companions. The bullet burned Cozzi's coat, but was stopped by his pocket-book. Having completed this operation, the band engaged two taxis, drove to the house of the lawyer Gustavo Consolo, beat in his door, and killed him in the presence of his wife and two children, eight and two years old. Mean- while another squad of Fascists silently surrounded the house of Signor Pilati, a former Socialist member of Par- liament. Pilati and his family, knowing nothing of what was happening in Florence that night, were asleep with the windows open on account of the heat. Silently placing a ladder against the sill, two Fascists climbed into the bed- room through the window and ordered the light to be turned om One of them emptied his revolver point-blank into Pilati's body. Wounded in the leg. the groin, the stomach, and the shoulder, Pilati died after three days' of suffering. In the suburbs of Florence (Ponte a Mensola, Tres- piano, Legnaia, Badia a Ripoli, and Zavarnelle) and in other communes (San Baronto, Anghiari, Arezzo, Prato, Monte- murlo) acts of violence took place similar to those of Flor- ence although less ferocious than those of which Pilati and Consolo were victims. The sacking continued in Florence on October 4, and shops owned by the brothers Breschi, the brothers Fini, by the tailor Rossi, together with the house of the accountant Carrer, were wrecked. The police were conspicuous by their absence from all these acts of violence. Not one of the guilty was arrested on the spot. But this "Saint Bartholomew" of Florence aroused intense indignation wherever the facts became known. Florence is a cosmopolitan city. In early October it is full of foreigners. These had eyes to see, ears to hear, and tongues to speak. The Fascist Government felt it necessary to show that it was in no way responsible for what had happened at Florence. To do this there was only one course open to it; the guilty must be arrested, tried, and of course condemned. Now we come to the farce. A week after the crimes had been committed the police bestirred themselves and began ostentatiously to make arrests. A first trial took place from November 21 to 24, 1925, before the Florentine courts. It was concerned with the activities of the band of fifteen Fascists who had sacked the shops of the Breschis and Finis and Carrer's house on the morning of October 4. Another trial on December 11, 1925, dealt with the looting of a pastry-cook's premises. Both trials resulted in ludicrous sentences, which were trumpeted abroad as the result of Fascist justice. During these same days fourteen persons accused of having, on October 3, taken part in the wrecking of a phar- macy at Legnaia were provisionally set at liberty; and twenty-seven Fascists of Prato, against whom warrants of arrest had been issued for robbery and violence, were sim- ply bound over. On March 8, 1926, eight men charged with attacking and looting the villa Baldi on the night of October 3, 1925, received glaringly inadequate sentences; the most severe was binding over for five months {Corriere delta Sera, March 9, 1926). On March 20 seven men accused of looting a shop belonging to Enrico Ricci, a second-hand dealer, were discharged (Stampa, March 21). In May, 1926, twenty-four Fascists received negligible sentences for having broken into ard sacked private houses. On June 17 the court acquitted the editor of the Battaglie Fasciste, to- gether with other heads of the Fascio, who had led squads in the outbreaks between September 25 and 29, and who had publicly assumed responsibility for them. On June 30, 1926, the Fascist Gino Lecci was acquitted on the charge of hav- ing taken part in the outrages of October 4. On October 27 six Fascists, accused of acts of violence at Badia a Ripoli, were acquitted as not having been involved in the affair, or on grounds of insufficient evidence (Avanti, Octo- ber 25) . On November 19 eight Fascists were acquitted of the murder of Becciolini on the grounds of insufficient evi- dence; two only remained under trial for this murder, but they were declared by the judges to be guilty of "inflicting serious injuries," not of murder (Nazione, November 20). Thus Becciolini was not murdered, but only seriously in- jured! On December 1 five other Fascists were acquitted. The trial at Chieti of April, 1927, is the most monstrous of all. The Fascist jury, in its verdict delivered on May 16, "affirmed the existence of the facts"; that is, they ad-

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July 13, 1927] The Nation 35 mitted that Pilati and Consolo were killed, that Cozzi's life was saved only by the bullet being stopped, that the offices of the lawyers Corazzini, Citi, Targetti, and the shops of Cardoro and Soli were sacked on the night of October 3, 1925. But they acquitted all the accused. These crimes were committed by "persons unknown." This is the rule in Italy today for political crimes com- mitted by Fascists. A "person unknown" in the dictionary of the "new era" is a Fascist who kills an anti-Fascist, and whose name is known by all except the judge. Under the Fascist regime the trains arrive on time, but justice lags behind. The propagandist of the Fascist Government in Eng- land, Signor Luigi Villari, in the Review of Reviews (April- May, 1926), in reference to what happened in Florence, wrote : The persons responsible for the Florence incidents (!) of last October were all arrested within a few days, and while those indicted for murder are in prison awaiting trial before the assizes, the minor offenders have all been tried and condemned, and quite recently their appeals to the higher court have been rejected. Some weeks later he was assailed by certain doubts as to his assertion that "all" those responsible had been ar- rested, but on the whole he found that it was not helpful to the cause to confess that the guilty had been arrested only within a few days of his statement. He therefore wrote in his book, "The Fascist Experiment" (p. 90) : Nearly all the guilty were at once arrested. The per- sons responsible for the wrecking of the shops and offices were tried within a few weeks of the affair and condemned to varying terms of imprisonment, and the authors of the murders are awaiting trial. It will be interesting to see in what way the propagand- ist will demonstrate that justice has been meted out for the "incidents" of Florence. Pointing with pride to a prompt and improved railway schedule ought not to be sufficient explanation. Frenzied Railroad Finance By MARSHALL LYNN LOOKING toward a fourth great rail system in the East — comparable to the Pennsylvania, Baltimore & Ohio, and New York Central systems — the Van Sweringen pro- posal for the Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad to acquire the Erie and Pere Marquette systems has caught the public mind. Recent legislation, and President Coolidge's outspoken ad- vocacy, had prepared the way ; and the C. & 0. plan with its parent proposal, the recently disapproved Nickel Plate con- solidation, have leaped into the headlines. And when, in the recent hearings before the Interstate Commerce Commission, 0. P. Van Sweringen, chairman of the board of directors of the C. & 0., informed the commis- sion that he and his associates would be willing to give up a profit of $10,000,000 on their holdings of Erie stock in order to obtain the approval of the commission for the C. & O. application, a new interest was created. How had he maneuvered himself into that ten-million-dollar profit any- way? And were there other hidden ten millions? The Chesapeake & Ohio Railway Company is asking authority to acquire control by stock ownership of the Erie Railroad and the Pere Marquette Railroad, and to issue $59,000,000 of common stock to finance this acquisition. This plan was devised by a special committee of the board of directors of the C. & O. after the Commerce Commission, on March 2, 1926, had refused to authorize the previous Van Sweringen plan to unify the three roads involved with the Nickel Plate and Hocking Valley roads. Avowedly it was a step toward eventual unification of the three roads. The roads involved in the new plan are, with the exception of the Nickel Plate, the same as before. The proponents of this plan claim that the commission, while denying authori- zation to the earlier Nickel Plate consolidation, had in sub- stance commended it from the physical and transportation standpoints, basing the adverse decision on the financial features. The Van Sweringens and their friends say that the C. & O., although serving some of the richest coal-produc- ing districts in the country (hauling in 1926 more coal originating on its own lines than any of the three pre- eminent systems of the East except the Pennsylvania), is in danger of being stifled and reduced to the status of a purely local carrier unless it can extend its primary system to the North- and Middle West; that union with the Erie would give the C. & O. facilities for competing in the Mid- dle Western area on an approximately equal footing with other carriers in that territory, and provide an adequate traffic artery from Cincinnati to Chicago for the C. & O.'s westbound traffic at a cost of but $42,000,000, or only $8,000,000 more than would be necessary to render the present Chicago division of the C. & O. adequate for that purpose ; that the inclusion of the Pere Marquette would give direct access to the thriving industrial territory sur- rounding Detroit and a through route to Milwaukee and the gateway to the Northwest without diversion through Chi- cago; and finally that by virtue of the C. & O.'s access to Hampton Roads and the Erie's to New York these two greatest ports of the Atlantic seaboard would have direct connection in a single system with the centers of the North- west and the Great Lakes. They estimate an anticipated saving of some $2,500,000 annually in the operation of the combined roads, and predict large increases in business. But minority stockholders of the C. & O., through whose efforts the Nickel Plate merger was defeated, and who (with some defections, it is true) are as staunchly in oppo- sition to the C. & O. plan, are little impressed with these alluring prospects. In their view the C. & O. owes its pres- ent secure and profitable position in great measure to the very fact that it is independent. Formation of any such entangling alliance as that proposed with the Pere Mar- quette and the Erie, they insist, would involve immediate enmity with the Pennsylvania, Baltimore & Ohio, and oth- ers, and the withdrawal of a considerable portion of the business which the C. & O. has in the past enjoyed from those roads. Also they assert — and W. J. Harahan, presi- dent of the road, was forced to admit this at the recent hearings — that the most vital concern of the C. & O. at

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36 The Nation [Vol. 125. No. 3236 present is to obtain control of the Virginian, another impor- tant coal road paralleling the C. & 0. from the West Vir- ginia coal fields to Hampton Roads. This, they say, will provide ample use for all possible funds available to the C. & 0. Mr. Harahan himself testified that unless control of the Virginian were acquired by the C. & 0. his road would be compelled to expend some $32,000,000 for double tracking, new piers at Hampton Roads, and new cars. The objection of the C. & O. minority, however, is essentially financial. On this feature the heaviest guns of minority counsel were trained at the hearings, and the high point of their fight was reached— and won— when Mr. Van Sweringen was compelled to take the stand on behalf of his own plan and disclose his own operations and those of his associates in the stocks of the roads involved. It was in the course of this testimony that he made his sensational oFer to waive a ten-million-dollar profit. This ten-million-dollar profit represents the difference between the present market value of the Erie Railroad stock now owned by the Van Sweringen interests (which, it is proposed, the C. & O. shall purchase) and the price at which this stock is optioned to the C. & 0. Since the options held by the C. & 0. on this stock were binding only until July 1. 1927, Mr. Van Sweringen's promise that he would extend the options for such dme as might be necessary for the commission to reach its decision and keep the price at the original figure was in effect a renunciation of the appre- ciation in value of this stock since September, 1926, as of which time the price of this stock was fixed. For a better understanding of this feature, the following figures may be noted. The present capitalization of the Erie consists of 1,124,- 819 shares of common stock, 479,044 shares of first pre- ferred, and 160,000 shares of second preferred. When the C. & 0. filed its application for authority to buy control, it had already acquired some 350,000 shares of the common, 137,000 shares of first preferred, and 50,000 of second pre- ferred. These shares were bought in the open market, and the average price paid was $38.58 per share for the com- mon, ij.47.21 for first preferred, and $44.94 for second pre- ferred. As to the remainder of the stock necessary to ma- jority ownership, the C. & O. holds options on some 476,000 shares of common at a price of $34.50, plus interest at 6 per cent from September 29, 1926; 24,000 first preferred at $45,875, with the same interest; and 25,000 second pre- ferred at $43.75, with interest. Of the shares under option 345,000 shares of the common, 23,000 first preferred, and 22,000 second preferred are at present in the ownership of the Van Sweringen interests. The option prices were fixed by a special committee of C. & O. directors and in comparison with the prices paid in the market for the stock already bought by the railroad seem eminently fair. In fact, the minority stockholders ad- mit that the profits of the Van Sweringens on this stock, if any, will be negligible. But cross-questioning of Oris Van Sweringen eventually elicited the information that up to the date of presentation of the C. & O. application, the Vaness Company, which is used by Oris and his brother for a considerable portion of their private tradings, had sold 77,0'0 shares of Erie first preferred for which they had originally paid approximately $29 per share, 400 shares of second preferred fo/ which their average payments had been $21 per share, and 19.900 shares of common which had cost them an average of $16 per share, for an aggregate profit of something more than $1,500,000. This Vaness Company is the successor of the Nickel Plate Securities Corporation, with which the Van Sweringens made their debut into railroad circles about 1913. Eighty per cent of its stock is held by the Van Swer- ingen brothers, and the remainder by two of their fellow directors on the C. & O. and Nickel Plate roads. With regard to the Pere Marquette stock, the C. & O. was in control of 1,900 out of a total issue of 450,460 shares of common, 2,100 out of 112,000 prior preference, and 12,600 out of 124,290 preferred, the average prices paid having been $117.17, $93.65, and $90.72 per share respectively. Op- tions were held on 261,400 shares additional of the common stock, at an average price of $110,004 per share. Of these, 36,500 are owned by the Van Sweringen interests, 50,000 by other individuals, and the remainder, or 174,000 shares, by the Nickel Plate Railroad. Statistics as to the dealings of the Van Sweringens in the Pere Marquette stock showed no great profits; but, it was claimed, Mr. Van Sweringen em- phatically declined to promise that the Nickel Plate would agree to extend the options on this stock, which also expire on July 1. It must be borne in mind that some 54 per cent of the voting stock of the latter road is owned by the Vaness Company. Opponents of the C. & O. plan insist that these facts point strongly to the conclusion that the Van Sweringen plan to turn the Erie and Pere Marquette over to the C. & O. does not arise solely out of concern for the interests of that road. The Erie they regard as the weak sister of the Eastern rails, control of which at the proposed prices would only dilute the present large earnings of the C. & O. With the Pere Marquette the C. & O. already has physical connection and traffic agreements, under which the former is taking all the business which the C. & O. can turn over to it. The story of the Van Sweringen brothers' rise to their present position in the railroad world, partially brought to light in these cases, presents an amazing picture of the pos~ sibilities of modern finance, and seems to show that the devices of financiers have kept pace with the long strides made in the way of governmental regulation of transporta- tion facilities. Starting in 1913, with the acquisition of the old Nickel Plate road at an ultimate net investment of scarcely more than $500,000; adding the Clover Leaf, the Lake Erie & Western, the Chicago and State Line, and the Fort Wayne, Cincinnati & Louisville to make the pres- ent Nickel Plate system; financing the whole by means of bond issues, non-voting preferred stock, and sale of small portions of common stock so that the Van Sweringens re- mained in the end in full voting control of the system by a total net investment of some $3,750,000; finally buying up virtual control of the C. & O., Hocking Valley, Erie, and Pere Marquette they have furnished in the railroad world a complete demonstration of the possibilities of pyramiding holding companies one upon another. What their net invest- ment in their present holdings has been probably no one knows; but in the history of their building up of the Nickel Plate is ground for suspicion that their newer plans may tend in the same direction. Almost from the first the Van Sweringens have been assisted by some of the leading financial houses of the coun- try, notably J. P. Morgan and Company and the First Na- tional Bank of New York. When they acquired control of the C. & O. one of the first changes of policy was to transfer the bulk of the road's deposits from the local banks in its

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July 13, 1927] The Nation 37 own territory to these New York institutions. The change was not relished by the smaller stockholders of the C. & 0. — nor, it may be imagined, by the banks from which the de- posits were taken. Disclosures such as those made in the C. & 0. case demonstrate that the Interstate Commerce Commission must be given greater control over transactions in the stock of railroads and over the control of railroads by holding com- panies. Otherwise we can never have a really systematic unification of the present carriers, and what unification we get will not be determined by considerations of advantage to the public welfare. Honor Is a Tradition of the Sea By FRANK CHALONER AMES ON the night of Wednesday, March 2, 1927, tropical stars tried with scant success to dispel the inky dark- ness. A fresh wind blew and the sea ran choppily. A mil- lion-dollar freighter with a million-dollar cargo steamed forth from Cebu for Masbate. On her bridge stood the third mate and a pilot. At the wheel was a young Nor- wegian seaman. On watch, a German sailor strained his eyes for the safety of the ship. For these are dangerous waters. Ding ding! Two bells. Nine o'clock. The German sailor sighted a light dead ahead. As is customary he noti- fied the bridge. What had taken possession of the third mate's dull Scandinavian brain no one can tell. He called the man off watch and sent him after ice water for the pilot! The young Norwegian had also sighted the light, but with- out orders he could not alter the course. At 9:11 p.m. the freighter struck and sank the Perlas Filipinas, a small balandra bound for Cebu with sugar, six Visayan seamen, and their month's wages. The engines stopped in answer to wild signals from the bridge. Excited yells rose fearfully on the night air. The flicker beam of the searchlight frantically swept the sea for signs of life. Did someone see a human hand emerge from the water and clutch hopelessly at nothing? If so, it was quickly gone. While men's hearts stood still the work boat was lowered for the rescue. For two hours the little craft bobbed up and down upon the choppy sea, hitting and being hit by bits of wreckage. It returned with five dazed natives from the sunken craft. The sixth could not be found. At eleven o'clock the freighter was once more under way. The terrified, shivering survivors stood huddled near the fidly. In a hot torrent of Spanish a mestizo custom's officer was cursing them for being so careless. They were idiots! Did they not see the freighter? Why had they no lights? He himself saw none. Proof conclusive that they had none. They should be put in prison. If he had his way he would place them in Corregidor! To all this invective and insult the five pitiable fellows returned not a word. No speak Inglis, no sabbe Espanol. The captain, mate, and pilot tried in every way to brow- beat information from them, an admission that they carried no lights. No effect was apparent other than a tighter re- solve on their part to say nothing. They were turned over to the steward's department for safe-keeping. Messboys led them aft and gave them hot coffee to drink, attended to one or two superficial wounds they had suffered, and supplied them with blankets, mattresses, and a place to sleep in the rope locker. There was little sleep that night. The million-dollar freighter with its million-dollar cargo anchored at Masbate. For five days white men wondered at the strength of the obreros trotting the length of a long wharf, up a steep gangway, over blistering steel decks, with anywhere from one hundred to two hundred pounds of copra on their stooping backs. At the end of five torrid days the now very friendly survivors were put aboard the inter-island steamer for Cebu, their home port. The captain of the freighter in a strange effort to appear generous presented each of them with two small tins of cheap smoking tobacco! They came aft in wonder not untinged with sadness. How were they to buy food without money? Their families at home could not consume tobacco in lieu of bread. Men of the crew gave them what they could spare. With some fifteen pesos to divide among them the Visayans left the ship and in the clear dawn of a lovely tropical morning the freighter weighed anchor and pointed her bow in the direction of Manila. Cavite with its great wireless masts loomed up. Shortly afterward the freighter arrived in Manila, the largest city and first seaport of the islands. Here the court of inquiry was to sit. Undoubtedly there would be justice done. Prob- ably the ship would be held until the owners of the Perlas Filipinas could appear in court. It was certain that the Visayan crew would come with their employers and give testimony. Yes, that was most likely what was going to happen. So the crew of the freighter worked unmindful of the case, each man at his appointed task. The captain was satisfied with the German sailor. He would be "safe." He was not dismissed, so he stood near the door of the captain's office while the young Norwegian was being questioned. Would the young fellow also be sensi- ble enough to do as he was told? A moment's conversation disclosed the almost staggering fact that he would not. He would tell the truth. In court one was supposed to tell the truth and nothing but the truth. To lie in such a place and manner was to make one's self unfit to become an American citizen. And he had his first papers. "Well, I'll be ," thundered the captain. Then to the German sailor: "What do you think of that; is that right?" Didn't he [_the German sailorj think the lowest thing a man could do was to squeal on a shipmate? Whatever he thought, he nodded his head and disci-eetly acquiesced in the captain's judgment. He was given the day off. Without any more ado he promptly went ashore, visited such places of alcoholic refreshment as seemed suited to his taste, and returned early next day unfit for court duty. For this unseemly conduct he was neither logged nor otherwise punished. The captain proceeded to threaten the Norwegian.

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38 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3236 Among other things he told him to watch his step on the way home if he so much as breathed a word in court. He went aft with tears in his eyes. Tears of disgust and anger. The court sat. The outcome was awaited with eager- ness. Some of the crew desired a longer stay in Manila. But by this time the outcome was guessed most uncannily by some cynics aboard the ship. The million-dollar freighter would be absolved, they said, and would sail tomorrow. At nine o'clock the next morning newsboys cried forth the august decision of the court. The cynics had it. Among other things mentioned was the fact that no witnesses for the defense had appeared. But what differ- ence does that make when a million-dollar ship with a mil- lion-dollar cargo tugs impatiently at the dock? What dif- ference does it make whether one or one thousand native seamen lose their inconsequential lives so long as a careless mate and a careless pilot save their jobs? The freighter headed east for San Francisco. At nine knots an hour it cut through that vast expanse of water ill named the Pacific. The ship must be painted before the Golden Gate loomed up. She must look as lovely as a maid just out of boarding school. And so men were busy in the fresh, stinging wind, with black, yellow, white, and red paint, with chipping hammers and wire brushes. On the homeward trip ;tll ermity is forgotten among the members of the crew. Usually. The young Norwegian was working hard: at particu- larly hateful tasks, too. That was noted by the cynics. He spilled some paint. The mate espied this from the corner of his alert eye. He came up and cursed the seaman and ordered him to go forward and paint on a winch. His fists were clenched, but other members of the crew were near. He followed his prey. On the forward deck, out of sight of all except those on the bridge he struck at the Norwegian but missed as the latter turned and avoided the blow. In- terruption in the form of other sailors prevented any further assault. At least so it seemed to the cynics. The ship was half way home. The Norwegian was tak- ing his afternoon smoke just after coming off wheel and before going on deck. The mate burst into the mess-room where he sat with other members of the crew off duty, splut- tering forth some almost unintelligible words to the effect that the young Norwegian had better get out on deck or he would be logged. Inasmuch as all the other seamen were allowed ten minutes' smoking time both morning and after- noon there was no reason why he should not be entitled to the same. He was advised by some of the crew to go on duty at once. He did. At suppertime the men discussed the extraordinary log- ging of the Norwegian seaman for being late on duty ! The cynics kept silence. The freighter neared San Francisco. The Norwegian seaman was standing four-hour watches at the wheel. The usual watch was two hours. He was on the second mate's watch. He was tired. He leaned back on the bulkhead which separated the wheel-house from the chart-room. He held the wheel in a manner which displeased the second mate. The ship was right on its course; no one had during the previous months taken exception to the way in which he held the wheel. The second mate entered the wheel-house. In an in- stant the Norwegian seaman was clouted a terrific blow on the ear. His head rang, he felt warm blood trickle down the side of his neck. Tears of rage filled his eyes. He did not dare to strike back. Why? Mutiny! Irons, bread and water, imprisonment on shore. Perhaps worse right on the ship. Anything could be done in "self-defense." The mess-table talk was wild and pointless. But a light was beginning to dawn upon the most unenlightened. The cynics said little. They suggested an attitude of resigna- tion until San Francisco should be reached. There the ship- ping commissioners might look into it. On this they were divided. San Francisco was reached and the left wing of the cynical party triumphed. The only thing the Norwegian seaman could do was quit the ship. If he had made a pro- test he would have been framed and more than likely de- ported. Besides he had no witnesses. Honor remains a tradition of the sea ! In the Driftway WHEN it became known that President Coolidge was looking for a likely place to spend the summer months, many State legislatures sought to lure him to their respective States with resolutions of invitation. The bare chance of securing the Presidential presence inspired the legislators to the sublimest flights. The legislatures are dilatory in publishing their cohected works, but the Minne- sota, New Mexico, and South Dakota resolutions have come to the Drifter's hand, and they are worth scanning. * * * * * AS a prose poem the Minnesota resolution, despite some undoubted merits, deserves, the Drifter thinks, to rank lowest. It states what it has to offer the President in almost a matter-of-fact tone. The New Mexico legislature's resolution has a certain lilt to it: Whereas, The tonic atmosphere of New Mexico is tired nature's sweet restorer and its civilization as old as yes- terday and as young as tomorrow and its history crammed with antiquity and artistic interest as well as with grandeur of natural scenery, of mountain, and plain, and, Whereas, Its capital city of Santa Fe is the aesthetic capital of America, therefore, Be and it is hereby Resolved, That President Coolidge be and he is hereby invited to visit New Mexico for such vacation and to establish the federal summer capital in this ancient city. In spite of these lyric flights, it is easy to see why the President is not in New Mexico today. The Drifter does not imagine that Mr. Coolidge would be attracted to any place because it is the aesthetic capital of America. It might be distinctly uncomfortable to be thrown with the bolsheviks and artists who live in Santa Fe. In the sum- mer time one wants to relax. BUT, as the world now knows, the South Dakota legisla- ture won the prize with its resolution. It is composed of pithy little sentences describing the attractions of the Black Hills. For instance: Their summer climate is ideal, healthful, and invigor- ating; the temperature moderate in the daytime and in- variably cool at night. These mountains are sublime in lofty peaks, sheer

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July 13, 1927] The Nation 39 precipices, towering spires, domes, crags, and formations not elsewhere found. They abound in beautiful flora of an infinite variety. Fine streams of purest water run through the defiles. Fishing is excellent. Black brook, lochlavan, and rain- bow trout are abundant. The man who wrote that last sentence knew "Cal's" public weakness. But this one must have been irresistible: The population in and about these mountains is intelli- gent and moral with whom neighborly relations are safe and pleasurable. The Drifter Correspondence The Reform Movement in Michigan To the Editor of The Nation : Sir: You and your readers may be interested to know that the Michigan Chapter of the Sons of the American Revo- lution has appointed its committees for the coming year, and that on the Committee on Public Welfare and Defense are Tru- man H. Newberry and Edwin Denby, and on the Committee on Americanization and Patriotic Education is Charles Beecher Warren. Detroit, June 24 Russell MacClinchy Chicago's Mayors To the Editor of The Nation : Sir: You publish a letter charging that ex-Mayor Dever was elected mayor of Chicago on a platform of immediate municipal ownership and within six months thereafter repudiated his promise. I was chairman of the Local Transportation Committee of the City Council prior to and during the Dever administration and know the facts. Dever made no promise of immediate municipal ownership either in a formal platform or in public utterance. During his term Mr. Dever by the exertion of tre- mendous effort and the full power of his office procured the passage by the City Council and submitted to a referendum the only municipal-ownership ordinance ever presented to the peo- ple of Chicago. This ordinance provided for the acquisition of title to all transportation utilities by the city, eliminated all excess profit in financing, and provided for operation by a board of which the mayor controlled six out of nine members. It was based on a plan which I had submitted to the City Council prior to the Dever administration, whereby in lieu of corporate bonds, which the city could not issue because of the limitations of the State constitution, certificates payable solely out of the earnings of the utilities were to be used to finance their acquisition by the city. The ordinance as finally adopted by the City Council was partly prepared and in all respects was approved by William H. Holly, at that time a law partner of Clarence Darrow, and an avowed advocate of municipal ownership. The only alternative to the ordinance suggested by its oppo- nents was a plan involving an amendment to the State consti- tution. For a quarter of a century efforts have been made to procure such an amendment without avail. To procure it would require control of the legislature, the cooperation of the gov- ernor, the carrying of elections in city and State, and finally negotiations for the acquisition of the utilities or a suit to condemn. Some municipal-ownership advocates opposed the ordinance on the ground that the heads of the companies were favorable to the plan. Samuel Insull stayed abroad until shortly before the election and then stated publicly that he was opposed to the municipal-ownership basis of the ordinance but would not oppose the city administration. Privately he stated that he could not afford, because of his vast utility interests, to see any extension of municipal ownership such as this ordinance implied. The ordinance was defeated by more than 100,000 votes and it is my conviction that in large part this was due to the fact that it was regarded as a municipal-ownership ordinance. In any event there never was a public official who more honestly strove to solve the traction problem in the public inter- est than did Mr. Dever. Since your correspondent's letter was published the Insull traction bills, paving the way for a perpetual franchise, have been prepared and passed through the Illinois Senate, with the approval of Mayor Thompson. To my mind the story points its own moral for the liberal citizen who is ready to desert an honest public official because he has not conformed to 100 per cent of his creed. Chicago, June 18 Ulysses S. Schwartz Radio Censorship To the Editor of The Nation : Sir: The instance of radio censorship to which you called attention in one of your issues, when a speaker at a dinner of the All Nations Association was cut off for an incidental praise of pacifism, is not by any means the only recent case of radio censorship. Two broadcasting stations recently refused to permit a broadcast of the play "Spread Eagle," and in ad- dition Victor Berger was cut off after he had been speaking for only a few minutes. Each week that passes renders it more than ever apparent that the labor, Socialist, and pacifist forces of this country must get a broadcasting station of their own. The proposed station WDEBS, which a committee of Socialists, progressive labor leaders, and peace advocates are trying to obtain, would fill the bill in every way. Norman Thomas, the chairman of the com- mittee to raise funds for it, states that the obvious difficulty about securing a license and a wave length can be avoided by buying a station which already has had a wave length as- signed to it. Cambridge, Mass., June 15 ALFRED BAKER LEWIS Contributors to This Issue Gaetano Salvemini is author of "The Fascist Dictator- ship in Italy." Marshall Lynn is Washington correspondent for the Richmond News Leader and the Wilmington (Del.) Every Evening. Frank Chaloner Ames has just returned from a five months' voyage on an American freighter as a member of the crew. W. Norman Brown is professor of Sanskrit at the Uni- versity of Pennsylvania and has been professor of English in the Prince of Wales College, Jammu, India. J. Frank Dobie is the author of "Texas Legends." Walter Vogdes is a California novelist and newspaper- man now living in New York. Theresa Wolfson is author of "The Woman Worker and the Trade Unions." Keith Hutchison is associated with the British Library of Information in New York. Herbert Solow was history editor of the Literary Re- view of the New York Evening Post. Louis E. Van Norman has been commercial attache at the American Legation in Bucharest.

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Books Carbolic Acid for India Mother India. By Katherine Mayo. Harcourt, Brace and Company. $3.75. IT is entirely doubtful what effect this book will have. Miss Mayo went to India to find social evils, and she found them; "Mother India" is an outburst of passionate indignation that such things should be, that the British should have suffered them, that the Nationalists, who are wresting the control of the country from foreign hands, should take no more than an aca- demic interest, that the most that exists in the way of reform should be mere talk. With her gift for quick, effective descrip- tion, and an instinct to ferret out the most noisome details, she paints a revolting picture of a diseased and loathsome country, ana, moved in every cell of her being, she lashes alike all who seem to her contributors to the failure to apply the obvious remedies, not sparing even Tagore and Gandhi. The horrors she relates are of the same sort that the mis- sionaries have for generations been repeating in the West, but her book, in its completeness and devastating effectiveness, is as much more thorough than theirs as carbolic acid is for a disinfectant than distilled water. The only book that can ap- proach hers is one from which she quotes frequently, Abbe Dubois's "Hindu Manners, Customs, and Ceremonies," first pub- lished in 1816. Both authors have a brilliant command of the pictographic and both are shocked at India. Often they are shocked by the same things, but in general their sense of val- ues differs, in which respect a student of the history of ideas would find them interesting and contrasting representatives of their respective generations. Dubois looks for moral and re- ligious depravity, accounting social and economic phenomena as secondary; Miss Mayo ignores Indian religions, philosophy, literature, and art — about all of which she seems vastly unin- formed— except in so far as she thinks them connected with lapses in hygiene, sanitation, medicine, agricultural methods, stock-breeding, and other concrete social and economic failures. From the Western point of view her book constitutes an impressive indictment of Indian society; there is no element that is spared. If in regard to enforced widowhood she speaks more favorably of the Sikhs or the Mohammedans than she does of the Hindus, it is only elsewhere to boil over regarding other social abuses of which these portions of the population are guilty, although she may not accuse them specifically. But the chief object of her indignation is the Hindu branch, the follow- ers of the religion Hinduism, comprising roughly about three- fourths of India's 315 millions. They are in the majority and they are practitioners of the greatest number of the social evils she is attacking. Approximately half her book deals with the woman question in India, the details of which are much more elementary than the phrase suggests in the West. There is child marriage, often involving cohabitation before puberty and child-birth at the earliest possible moment, sometimes at the age of eight. The effects on the mothers and the children are inevitable. As if this were not bad enough, there is added the unbelievable way of the native midwives, whose methods, for sheer filth and be- nightedness, could not be excelled — yet even educated Indians allow them to be practiced upon their own families. Along with these go enforced widowhood among the Hindus and seclusion of women among Mohammedans and to a lesser degree among Hindus. The chief cause for these evils, she makes her readers feel, is the sensuality of the men, especially the Hindu men; the next important cause the ignorance of the older generation of women, the comparatively few who have sur/ived the treatment and therefore have confidence in it. In the rest of her book she deals with such problems as the sanctity of animal life, above all of the "mother" cow. who, by her immunity to death, deprives the country of a meat supply and literally eats herself out of pasturage and into yielding a thin trickle of milk, becoming in the end a liability to the country. The most gruesome thing in her history is her old age, uncared for and unfed. And instead of being bettered it is made worse if she is unlucky enough to get into a pinjra pol (animal haven), a "standing and starving ground," the refuge wealthy and pious Hindus found to save the sacred animal from quick death in a Mohammedan slaughter-house. She also reports on the condition of the sixty million "untouchables," whose social status is in some respects even worse than she describes; so too with the hoarding of precious metals, the full economic implications of which she does not develop. We cannot say that this book reveals itself as the product of a reflective mind. Miss Mayo made of herself a kind of journeying camera through India, selecting for preservation the most horrible and striking scenes that are quickly recordable. But she never gets under the surface to seek for causes in order that suitable remedies may be prescribed. The malignancy of nature, the depressing and debilitating effect of the climate, the economic misery it has brought to the country, the famines, the thousands of years of foreign invasion and internal war- fare, the very fierceness of the struggle for life, the range >f disease, the threat of sudden and violent death from unappre- hendable sources as well as from wild animals and other ob- vious agents — these as factors in the development of spiritual, mental, and social life are apparently no more to her than mere words. She accepts the easy conclusion that it is India's pe- culiar religious notions, in especial the doctrine of Karma (Re- birth and Retribution), that are responsible for the apathy in social matters, without apparently realizing that these notions are quite as much effect as they are cause. Her attitude in this respect is much like that of the old-style missionary, whose cause, however, she is always careful never to adopt. Coming from a country barely three centuries old, she cannot visualize the weight of five millennia of tradition in creating the social inertia she attacks, still less the situation responsible for the rise of the tradition. It is perhaps due to this lack of reflective power that Miss Mayo sees no way out. or at least argues for none, although she implies a kind of faith in laws. The logical conclusion of her diatribe of disgust and despair would seem to be extermina- tion, at least of the Hindu males. Mr. Wells, if the matter should ever receive his attention, would doubtless counsel "edu- cation," as did Raja Ram Mohun Roy, the Rev. Mr. Duff, Macaulay, and other reformers or missionaries a century ago when Western education was adopted in the government col- leges instead of Oriental. Certainly "education," meaning the imparting of ideas, has done and is doing something to alleviate the miseries of India; so too are economic improve- ments, such as railroads, irrigation, scientific stock-breeding, and agricultural experimentation. Cooperative societies are freeing the peasant from the money-lender. Western medicine has made some headway. Above all the example of other peoples influences the conduct of the best-educated Indians. Miss Mayo must be a little patient, must take a somewhat longer view. Indians, no more than Westerners, are without a humanitarian spirit; we have historical records to show it has been there for 2.500 years. But first they must learn that things could be different; as they slowly do so, the spirit will be extended to a wider application. Until they do so, even the sufferers will reject the remedies, as her own book abundantly testifies. The answer Miss Mayo would make to these criticisms is perhaps that it is not her business either to search for causes, which might be utilized by Indian apologists as excuses for do- ing nothing, or to prescribe remedies, which might be shown impracticable. She is a goad to chastise the errant, but it is the Indians themselves who must discover the difficult road to

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July 13, 1927] The Nation 43 including the Clayton Act, the Immigration Acts, and the Sea- man's Act. He mentions large numbers of Congressmen in re- cent congresses who have been pledged to support labor policies and oppose anti-labor legislation. One is duly impressed until one remembers that in spite of these victories the right to strike, the elementary objective of a trade-union movement, is hedged about by endless legal restrictions. This is a matter on which Mr. Walling does not choose to dwell. There are others. One scarcely realizes, after reading this book, that the A. F. of L. is still largely an aristocracy of skilled workers whose importance is rapidly declining in these later stages of the industrial revolution. He does not mention the millions of workers, in the most flourishing industries in America, whom the A. F. of L. has hardly attempted to organ- ize. Nor does he make any reference to the several strong unions, some of which have made remarkable progress, outside the orbit of the A. F. of L. An apt comparison, though one Mr. Walling would resent, might be made between the American trade unions today and the British movement of the 1860's. The latter was composed almost entirely of skilled mechanics organized on a craft basis; its energies were devoted to obtaining an assured legal status for trade unions; and it was beginning to experiment with political action, working chiefly through the Liberal Party. The suggestion that the A. F. of L. is fifty years or so behind the times is thus not without foundation. The American worker, trade unionist or otherwise, has one tremendous advantage, however, over his more highly organized European comrade. His real wages are very much higher. This advantage leading lights of the A. F. of L. complacently credit to the superior industrial and political methods of their own organization. And, while prosperity lasts, there is nothing to prevent them from sitting tight and inactive upon their comfortable pedestals, sleepily applauding the energies of Mr. Walling in exhibiting them to the world as monuments of American idealism. Keith Hutchison Before the War From Bismarck to the World War. By Erich Brandenburg. Oxford University Press. $7. German World Policy. By 0. Hammann. Alfred A. Knopf. $4. TN Germany the situation must be peculiarly painful for the * writers of history. At one and the same time there exist the duty of absolving Germany from the war guilt and the desire to condemn one or another pre-war authority — party or indi- vidual— for Germany's part in bringing on the conflict. Otto Hammann, who thinks Germany was "encircled" by her enemies, is almost impatient with the blunders of the Kaiser, who lost that friendship which Bismarck had successfully cultivated in England. Mr. Hammann did long service in the Press Bureau of the Wilhelmstrasse. He knew the Iron Chancellor, Caprivi, Biilow, as well as the more recent architects of German grosse Politik. He has an intimate acquaintance with the diplomatic correspondence of many decades. Erich Brandenburg, whose volume is among the best accounts of German pre-war diplo- macy, is somewhat more acidulous than Mr. Hammann in de- nouncing the Dummheit of German diplomats. His volume, like many another of its type, is sound and careful and based on a wide knowledge of the documentary evidence. However painlessly Mr. Brandenburg guides the reader through an intricate jungle of diplomatic remains, he rarely brings him forth into the sunlight of sound conclusions. Even those who regard favorably demands for Austro-German uni- fication will deny the connection between the causes of the World War and the righteousness of unification sentiment. "Na- tionality" is hardly the word in which to epitomize the funda- mental causes. In this contribution to the inquest Mr. Bran- denburg denounces as the arch-fiends of 1914 Izvolski and Poin- care. Here he will meet readier agreement than in his harsh- ness toward the blundering Grey. And the revisionists will chorus with delight (they did immediately on the appearance of the German edition of the book) on reading the following: Our policy was, in fact, too anxious and peace-loving. . . . The French wished to recover Alsace-Lorraine. . . . The Russians wished to open the way to the Straits and to the control of the Balkans. ... It was they, not Germany, who wished for conquests. . . . Unfortunately we possessed no statesman who was competent to deal with these clever and unscrupulous diplomatists. Austria's rashness and Germany's timid consideration for her last ally gave them the opportunity they wanted. . . . Some day we shall realize that whoever killed the bird of peace, the funeral had begun forty-four years before the mur- der. Then the coroners will go back to history. Herbert Solow Books in Brief A Sentimental 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. The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy. By Laurence Sterne. Introduction by Wilbur L. Cross. The Travels of Marco Polo. Revised from Marsden's Translation and edited with Introduction by Manuel Komroff. The Dialogues of Plato. Selections from the Translation of Benjamin Jowett. Edited with an Introduction by William Chase Greene. The Physi- ology of Taste. By Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin. Fore- word by Frank Crowninshield. The Complete Poems of Francois Villon. Translated by John Heron Lepper. In- cluding the texts of John Tayne and others. Boni and Liveright. The Black and Gold Library. $3.50 each. Six volumes of a beautiful and useful series which is to include translations of Apuleius, Saint Augustine, Brantome, Castiglione, Machiavelli, Terence, the Greek Romances, Aristo- phanes, Catullus, and others. The octavo size of the volumes will permit the presentation of more material than is usually to be found in the items of a popular series; and the glossy black and gold binding will provide a permanently desirable shelf for scholars and lovers of good books. Few publishing enterprises have been more worthy of praise. Brother Saul. By Donn Byrne. The Century Company. $2.50. The pace and color and vigor of the early chapters of this novel are exceptional; the author has taken a familiar story and recreated an era. After Saul's memorable conversion, the drama falls inevitably into a more subdued key and the second half of the story suffers by comparison with what has gone before. Conceding that, however, it still remains a richly wrought and satisfying performance. Mattock. By James Stevens. Alfred A. Knopf. $2.50. Mr. Stevens adroitly lays bare the mind and emotions of a soldier, but the clinic is not unqualifiedly rewarding to the reader. One feels that the same results could have been se- cured by more imaginative means. The recital occasionally crosses the borderline into the tedious, so that one is tempted to suggest — in place of "Mattock" — a rereading of Ralph Hale Mottram's "Spanish Farm" trilogy. The Poilus. By Joseph Delteil. Translated from the French by Jacques Leclercq. Minton, Balch and Company. $3. The author attempts to present the World War through a series of the experiences and impressions of an ordinary sol- dier. His success is indifferent, because in spite of occasional telling description, his obvious effort to express himself origi- nally results not in more vivid pictures but merely in fantastic prose. Nor does he add to our knowledge of the life or mind of the French peasant, who, in 1914-1918, returned to the most primitive savagery under compulsion of the most modern ideals.

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International Relations Section The Eastern Edge of Europe By LOUIS E. VAN NORMAN TO understand what is happening in Rumania just now it is necessary to get a picture of general reconstruc- tion politics in Southeastern Europe. This does not mean party politics in Rumania alone. All of the new independ- ent units horn of the World War face the same general problems, with only local modifying factors. The under- lying factors with which political leaders must deal are the same in each case. Cultural, political, and economic levels, languages, legal codes, and religious creeds, not to forget lailroad systems, each one differing in purpose and struc- ture from all of the others, must be made uniform and effi- cient to serve a new modern state. Cutting across these are differing financial and commercial systems to be realigned. Finally there have been all sorts of administrative back- grounds and widely differing methods of official procedure to be welded into one. There is a serious lack of trained public servants for the work to be done. But the most prolific source of trouble in all of these new nations is yet to be mentioned. It is the belief that the oldest unit in Rumania is the rightful center of the new combination and that it must absorb the new additions rather than acknowledge that a new unit has been born. As for these new lands, they argue that they shou'd be con- sulted in the formulation of the reconstituted fatherland. We came into the new union, they say, by voluntary acts of our own and we demand our rightful share in the building of the Rumania of the future. There you have the whole story of intransigence in Transylvania and Bessarabia. The Rumanian peasant, on the whole, is satisfied. He has the land and there is practically no danger of bolshe- vism with him. "I believe in private property because I've got some" — is his political, economic, and social philosophy. The partitioning of the land was of course an act of justice, but it was also a policy of insurance against bolshevism. The political parties in Rumania in opposition to the Liberals have all been built up on what have been largely sectional ideas. The Transylvanians were so long in oppo- sition to the government (alien and hostile for nearly a thousand years) that they found it difficult to accustom themselves to an agreement with a government of their own race. Moreover, in spite of their sufferings and the war, the peoples of Transylvania and Bessarabia do remem- ber and are still under the impress, to a certain extent, of the old German-Austrian and Russian ideas, and they have not found it easy to accept the French influence which has always been so dominant in the old Rumanian kingdom. Since the Bratianus stepped aside from power in March, 1926, Italian influence has been growing in Ru- mania. General Averescu, Premier until a few weeks ago. is married to an Italian wife, and the increasing popularity of Italian ideas during his premiership was remarkable. Italy loaned money to Rumania. The press of Bucharest applauded "Rumanian solidarity With Italian policy." We have Italy's difference with Jugoslavia over the Albanian puzzle, and there are those not only in Berlin, but in Bucha- rest and Belgrade and Rome, who claim that the replacing of France by Italy in the thoughts and policies of the South- east of Europe has seriously impaired the Little Entente. Correctly or not, these observers believe that, if Rumania is detached from her partnership with Jugoslavia and Czecho-Slovakia, the former will not only lose a valuable partner, but Italy's influence will be greatly strengthened in dealings with Bulgaria. Greece, and Turkey. Averescu's premiership lasted just a few days more than fourteen months — from the middle of March. 1926. to the end of May, 1927. Powerful political party influence at home and lack of success in obtaining foreign loans were probably the chief causes of the fall of his government. The illness of King Ferdinand (which would now seem to be about to terminate fatally) has apparently convinced the real rulers of the kingdom that it would be well to attempt to harmonize the opposition parties and instal at Bucharest a coalition government in which the principal elements of the opposition would be represented. On June 7, therefore, King Ferdinand called upon Prince Stirbey, to form a gov- ernment, a brother-in-law of the Bratianus. and a friend of Queen Marie. But Stirbey was unable to gain the coopera- tion of the powerful Peasant Party, and on June 21 King Ferdinand called back Bratianu to the premiership as the only man able to form a stable government, at least until the coming elections. This large political situation has a greater part to play than is easily apparent in what seems like only a rather melodramatic clash of personalities which the newspapers are now reporting daily to us from Rumania. Bessarabia is probably the new Rumania's most difficult problem. Even to many Rumanians of the old kingdom this fertile, fas- cinating land is merely a name. It is about the size of our own state of South Carolina and its population numbers ap- proximately three and a half million. Very few Rumanians and scarcely any foreigners at all ever visit Bessarabia. When I proposed to take an auto- mobile trip through that mysterious land I was strongly urged against such an expedition. There were no railroads, and as for motor roads my well-wishers assured me that such things did not exist. However, in the month of May. accompanied by an English-speaking Rumanian friend, I made a three weeks' tour. Bessarabia has amazingly fertile soil. Its fruit orch- ards have been famous for more than a century. Its grain, fish, and caviar are known far and wide. It is literally a sun-burned land, however, and the agonizing dust in sum- mer and appalling mud in winter make travel very difficult. In spite of the dryness we were much impressed by the beautiful gardens and orchards of all sorts of fruit in pro- fusion: prunes, apples, cherries, pears, apricots, and peaches of a most excellent flavor, although not large. The fruit of the province has always been famous. For nearly a century Bessarabia was the fruit orchard of the Russian Empire. We could also see that the walnut groves, for which Bessa- rabia is famous, were flourishing. Everywhere the need for water was evident. Such little irrigation as is practiced is by windmills — or buckets carried by hand. Apparently there is no fuel in Bessarabia — wood, coal, or oil. Because of this lack the industrial possibilities of the country are limited. There are a few mills and factories making leather, soap, paper, and pottery, and we saw one beet-sugar plant in operation. But grain everywhere (particularly corn and wheat), in spite of the heat, was flourishing. For almost unnumbered centuries the Bessarabian

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July 13, 1927] The Nation 45 steppe, known as the Bugeac, was the battleground of the Aryan and Turanian races. All of the invaders of Europe crossed here. Now all is changed, and on both sides of the river Dniester the famous Black Earth region is no longer the home of fighting men or nomads, but of peaceful, hard- working farmers. Of Bessarabia's 3,500,000 people, more than 2,500,000 are Rumanian, but besides these there is a medley of races, tongues, and religions. Imagine a har- monious family made up of Rumanians, Russians, Poles, Serbians, Bulgarians, Germans, English, Swedes, Swiss, French, Greeks, Americans, Tartars, Jews, Gipsies, Turks, and a number of uncouth racial mixtures. Among the faiths represented are Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholics, Angli- cans, Mennonites, Separatists, Georgians, Lutherans, Cal- vinists, Pietists, and Mohammedans. Chisinau (known to the Russian as Kishineff), the capital, is connected with Bucharest by a fairly good sleep- ing-car service. In 1812 when the Russians took over Bes- sarabia, Chisinau was a mud village of some 5,000 inhabit- ants. Today it has a population nearly sixty times as great, more than half being of the Jewish race. It is an uneven, dingy, sprawly city, very dirty in spots and very clean in others, with plenty of shade trees, and only one wide street — the Alexandrovskaya. Chisinau has deteriorated sadly since the days when the old landed proprietors came there to do their banking. It was then a rather lively and bril- liant town. Since the parceling-out of the land, however, the peasant farmers have built up little trading centers of their own all over the province, and they do not go to Chisi- nau any more. It still smacks of Russia — the Alexandrov- skaya, the long time spent at meals, the heavy eating, the samovar, the everlasting tea-drinking and cigarette smok- ing, the turning of night into day. But the mass of the population gossips in the Moldavian — or Rumanian — tongue. As we motored over the execrable roads along the Dniester, which separates Bessarabia from the Russian provinces that make up the Ukraine, we could see the Bol- shevik sentinels on the other side. We also noted the fact that, even at that early part of the season, the grain was in a sad way from the drought. From Chisinau to Tighina (known to the Russians as Bender) we made our trip in a gasoline-driven hand-car, reaching the latter place just in time to witness the "normalizing" of the last stretch of Russian wide-gauge railroad track. Over a distance of some forty miles, three thousand soldiers and eight hundred workmen lifted up one rail and replaced it nine centimeters (approximately three inches) nearer to the other, while an Orthodox priest blessed each kilometer of the road as it was completed. The Rumanians are reconstructing all of the Bessarabian lines as well as they can, with limited capital. The Rumanians in Bessarabia are intensely patriotic. They have had to fight for their Rumanianism so long that it has become almost a religion with them. On the second morning of our stay in Tighina I was awakened very early by childish voices singing. Presently there was a knock and in response to my invitation two children in the Rumanian national costume — a boy and a girl, each about eight years old — marched into my room. The boy bowed with much dignity. "Octavianu," he announced, introducing himself. The girl curtsied and presented herself as "Florica." Then they stood at military "attention," and sang in mellow- treble, for my delectation, several stirring patriotic songs. "We always begin the day this way," was the boy's explana- tion, "and we thought you might like to hear us." i^iS^>K^S^K&^JH^S^C^S^C " Tremendous, like the mountain on which its little people creep about" CLYDE BECK, in The Detroit News. THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN By Thomas Mann Translated by H. T. Lowe-Porter IT STILL TOWERS Second large printing. Two volumes, boxed, $6.00 Some sets are still procurable of the special large-paper edition of 200 numbered copies, printed on all-rag paper, bound in parchment with imported paper sides, with photogravure frontispieces (a [portrait of Thomas Mann and a facsimile of the last two manuscript pages of The Magic Mountain) \ the first volume of each set signed [by the author., /I lir' two volumes, boxed, $25.00 AT ALL Alfred A. Knopf, In Canada, from The Macmillan Company of Canada, Ltd., BOOK Publisher >8&%fi2#S£: SHOPS New York St. Martin's House, Toronto *3*£&>ftt>>igS,>K Last month Arabia. Today India holds the Stage! MOTHER INDIA By Katherine Mayo Appalling as the facts on hygiene, sanitation, the position of women, child marriages, etc., etc., in Miss Mayo's book appear, they bear the stamp of truth; and the book is as fasci- nating as the Arabian Nights. 2nd Printing. "If this book and Dante's Inferno were ever entered in a competition for the imaginative realization of human suffering, Dante would lose the prize." — Chicago Evening Post. Illustrated $3.75 Harcourt, Brace & Company, 38.5 Madison Ave. New York . When writing to advertisers please mention The Nation

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46 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3236 □ SUMMER PLACES CAMP TAMIMENT (Camp for Adults) FOREST PARK, PA. Nature's Wonder Spot in the Blue Mountains of Pennsyl- vania. 20 miles from Delaware Water Gap. All outdoor sports. 14 splendid tennis courts. 6 cement handball courts. Delightful bathing. Excellent food. Danc- ing and entertainment in glorious hall on shore of lake. Daily lecture on Art, Literature, Science et cetera. Rates moderate. Make early reservations. New York Office, 7 East 15th St., Phone Stuyvesant 3094 MRS. BERTHA H. MAILLY, Director. Subject: "' Sea Bathing, Golf A Seashore Vacation with Writers, Editors, Dramatists, Scientists, Philosophers. SUMMER SCHOOL SPEAKERS: Everett D. Martin, Bruce Bliven, Herbert Adams Gibbons, Floyd Dell, Ernest Boyd, Prof. E. L. Haker, H. M. Kallen, Harry E. Barnes, Crystal Eastman, Professor Mortimer T. Adler. 1HE WORLD WE LIVE IN" Tennis, Saddle Horses. References. RIVERLAKE LODGE A Camp Superb FOR ADULTS OUTSrXW KINGSTON, N. Y., ON TH1 HUDSON RIVES AND LAKE ESOTOS A beautiful place with wonderful viewi of the Hudson River and mountains, where intelligent people will meet congenial company. Bathing, Boating, Fishing, Tennis, Hand Ball, Dancing and other amusement*. Excellent Food. Terms : 135.00 weekly, ST. 00 a day. Camp sites and Furnished Rooms or Bungalows by the season. Write for camp booklet. RIVERLAKE 70 West 40th St., New York City. Tel. Longacre S693. HARRY WEINBERGER Directors LODGE Ulster Park, Ulster County, N. Y. Tel Kingston 2810. HARRY KELLY TIMBERLAND IN THE HEART OF THE ADIRONDACKS POTTERSVILLE, N. Y. The Camp Purposely Limited to a Congenial Group of iO Bungalows and Main House Excellent facilities and equipment modern in every respect. for all camp sports ; also golf. Rate $27 per week. Round Trip Fare to Riverside, N. Y., $13.27. MORRIS HARKAVY ESTHER R. KAPLAN N. Y. Office, 65 West 42nd St. Pennsylvania 7663 :i^f\D Vk ECHO LAKE WARRENSBURG. N.Y. 0* ^A Swimming Fishing Canoeing Stowing Dancing A Camp for Adults in the Adirondack Hits. Baseball Tennis Basketball Handball Horseback $30 per week $5 per day Look for the Indian Head Take Albany Night Boat on any Saturday night and meet our sight seeing bus at the Albany pier on Sunday morning for a trip through the Adirondack Mountains, passing through Schenectady, Saratoga, Glens Falls. Lai e George and Warrensburgh, without any extra charge. Otherwise N. Y. Central to Lake George, where our cars will meet you. Write for Camp Booklet N. Y. Address— R. Helfant. 885 Brook Avenue. Bronx, N. Y. Tel. Melrose 1821 TROUT LAKE CAMP AND HOTEL in the Adirondacks on Lake George. N. Y. 3rd Season on the Crystal Springs, Trout Lake Free Auto service from Lake George All land and water sports. Jewish cooking. Fare N. Y., round trip $12.28 — Rates $25 per week. Make reservations now. New York Offices. 9 W. 47th St., 805 Freeman St. Telephones: Bryant 8135— Kilpatrick 4379. P. 0. Diamond Point, N. Y. Telephone Bolton 60 F 21 THE LLOYD, Bellport, L. I. ON THE OREAT SOUTH BAY COOL COMFORTABLE CMARMENG ALL SPORTS For regular guests and week-end parties Address The Lloyd, Bellport, L. L Tel. Bellport 17 (Owners, D. J. & K. M. Meserole) Lena Barish and Sam Garlen Former owners of Echo Lake Tavern, ARK NOW CONDUCTING GREEN MANSIONS BAILIN'S MAPLEDALE HOTEL ROSCOE, N. Y. STATION on the N. Y., O. & W. Line (Telephone Roscoe 3Y2) II A resort of health, beauty and splendor in the most enchanting heights of the Catskills. fl 1,750 feet above sea level fl All conveniences ; all camp activities ; all recreational treats. Excellent Jewish meals. Fine atmosphere, fi Prices $25.00 and up per week, fl For information and booklet address B. BAILIN, 3 New St, Coney Island, N. Y. IDEAL CAMPING GROUND at (he Scenic Blue Mountain Lake, only an hour's ride from N. Y., also Hotel Accommodations Refer to AS-ER Campus, Furnace Wood Road, Peekskill, N. Y., or to New York Office. 891 East 149th Street. Melrose 1961. AN ADVERTISER WRITES " . . . ar d I would like to add that I have hac numerous responses to my ad in The Nation, and am developing a clientele who are very pleasant to deal with." Sincerely yours. Ann Seley, Antiques. — Rock-Lake Country Club — Formerly CAMP GREATER UTOPIA Narror¥sburg,N.Y. Phone Narrowsburg 47-J ON BEAUTIFUL ROCK LAKE A vacation playground for young folks. All water sports, tennis, basketball, handball. En- tertainments arranged, social programs differ- ent daily. Dancing, everything informal. Meals unrivaled (dietary laws strictly ob- served). Rates and full information on request. H. GELBAUM, Manager PIOXEKR LODGE A Summer Camp for Adults NEAR THOUSAND ISLAND* Limited to Fifty — Has All Conveniences in Lodge and Bungalows — All Sport* — Tennis. Boating on Large Lake — Golf Within 15 Minutes Walk- Rate $25.00 per Week. Accessible over night by N. Y. Central c xt it Crnf Officb Stab Lakh, N. Y. 14e w 42ni) Street St. Lawrence County Wisconsin 2165 BERKSHIRE HILLS: THE HOWLAND HOUSE, at Kent. Conn., offers a clean, quiet, restful place for vacation : airy rooms, large porches, beautiful country. All conveniences. Rate $25 per week. Booklet on request. SUBURBAN BOARD CHARMLNG LINDEN HALL— An exceptional Colonial Home with Solarium — midst spacious grounds, for elderly women, convalescents — stressing quiet, home atmosphere, diet, kindly care, attend- ance. Dr. Sophie Klenk, S818 Bayside. MANHATTAN BEACH HOTEL, N. Y. AT the seashore. Modern ; fireproof. Homelike comforts. Outdoor sports : surf bathing. 37 minutes to Times Sq. via B.M.T. Now open for Spring and Summer reservations. Rates moderate. Phone Sheepshead 3000. -pvR ELIZABETH M. BAER announces the open- x-^ ing of her home to any one interested in Eye Re-education. 367 Bay Ave., Patchogue, L. I. When, urriting to advertisers please mention The Nation

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The Nation FOUNDED 186B Vol. CXXV NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, JULY 20, 1927 No. 3237 Contents EDITORIAL PARAGRAPHS 47 EDITORIALS : ,„ Patriots and Patrioteers j?" Poor Haiti ! ' Are You a New Yorker ? ° * John Drew • ■ • •• • ■ " THE PATRIOTIC RADIO TRUST. By Mauritz A. Hallgren 5.1 IS FRENCH CATHOLICISM GAINING GROUND? By Ida Treat 55 THE FORWARD TURN. By Mary Austin ■•"• COMPULSION AT DePAUW. By Ellis Cowling r.'.i A BIT OF RUSSIAN PATCHWORK. By Karl Borders GO IN THE DRIFTWAY. By the Drifter 61 CORRESPONDENCE 62 BOOKS: „ . K, Epitaphs. By Alfred Kreymborg. . . . . .. . . ... ••••••• °° That "Filthy Little Atheist." By W. E. Woodward 65 The Story of Intolerance. By Norman Thomas Rh Alloy. By Joseph Wood Krutch 67 Done in the Round. By Mary Ross 68 A German View of Grey. By William L. Langer hx Books in Brief 69 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS SECTIONS: Industrial Exploration: I. Charting the Worlds Commodity Flow. By Benton Mackaye '" 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. THE NATION is on file in most public and coHege libraries and is indexed in the Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature. HENRY FORD? He is an enigma still. Did he make his sudden apology to the Jewish race as a means of settling the libel suits that were piling up against him? Or in the hope of propping up an overgrown business ? Or must one take at face value the amazing statement that he had just learned that the anti-Semitic campaigns of his Dear- born Independent had aroused resentment among the Jews ? In any other man such naivete would be impossible. But, recalling the almost incredible simple-mindedness displayed by this billionaire on the witness-stand in the Chicago Tri- bune suit ten years ago, one hesitates. He has before this trusted himself and his fortune to lieutenants who proved ill-chosen, has stood by them far too long and then dropped them in cruel and impetuous disgust. The man is so remote from all accidental contact with ordinary human beings, and from the miscellaneous associations which come to literate persons through their casual reading, that it is conceivable that he did not realize to what length of race prejudice his magazine had gone or what universal disgust its blind Judeo- phobia had inspired. But even if one accept his plea at its face value, what is one to say? Has even an absentee owner of a magazine no responsibility whatever for its contents? That, certainly, would be carrying the doctrine of editorial freedom to lengths which even The Nation would hardly indorse. The United States courts recently condemned the editor and business manager of the New York Daily Worker to jail terms because that paper had published a poem which they, as it happened, had never seen. The Worker's puerile "poem" could not conceivably have harmed any one; the Dearborn Independent's long and reckless sowing of race bitterness has spread its poison to millions. Yet Mr. Ford, who is a billionaire, will not go to jail; and the Communist officials of the Daily Worker are serving their terms. IS ENGLAND PLANNING A WAR against the United States? Or the United States a war against England? If not, there is no sense in the haggling at Geneva. The admirals, technical experts, and professional diplomats there assembled need to be taken by the coat collars and shaken like small boys. That might give them a new perspective. As it is, they are talking arrant nonsense which happens also to be most perniciously dangerous international dyna- mite. The background of the story is this : At Washington, in 1922, cruisers were limited in size to 10,000 tons and in armament to 8-inch guns, but their number was left un- limited. And, naturally, a new naval competition began. Today Great Britain has 387,410 tons of cruisers built, building, or authorized — on 304,290 of which work has begun. The United States has about 155,000 tons built, building, or authorized. Jingoes in Congress have repeat- edly demanded that we match Britain's building program; and unless something is accomplished at Geneva they will repeat their demand with new ammunition. At Geneva the United States proposed that cruiser tonnage be limited to 300,000 tons, but objected to further limitation of the size of individual cruisers. Great Britain was ready for limita- tion in size, but not in number. Indeed, her representatives were reported to desire a "limitation" to 500,000 or 600,000 tons! • WHY? DOES GREAT BRITAIN think that she needs this vast tonnage to guard herself against Ger- many's unarmed merchant marine? Against France, today a third-rate naval power? Against remote Japan? Of course not; the only Power against which she could use so colossal a fleet would be the United States. It is futile to contend that she needs this armada because of her long trade routes. Holland has a long sea route to her East Indies, and gets along very well without a fraction of Britain's absurd half million tons; the United States has a world trade, too, and, exaggerated as have been our own suggestions, we demand no such quota. As naval men argue, Britain needs a vast fleet because we have a big fleet; and our own admirals will follow the same logic inevitably. Every argument advanced by Mr. Bridgeman and the British admirals at Geneva will have its echo in the American Congress next winter. We will "need" ships to match every ship they can build. And in the course of the argument American jingoes will denounce British arro- gance; and British chauvinists will sing that Britannia rules the waves, and always has and always must; and Anglo-American friendship will be jarred a little more. The whole business is arrant nonsense. Geneva is proving not a conference to reduce armaments, but a conference to increase navies and to build up international hate. The admirals need harnessing.

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48 The Nation [Vol. 125. No. 3237 KEVIN O'HIGGINS, shot down on his way to mass, was the "strong man" of the Irish Free State. For the Free State he had the ruthless passion which other Irish- men had felt for the Republic. To him it summed up Ire- land, and no sacrifice could he too great for it. During his regime as Minister of Justice seventy-seven Republicans paid with their lives for opposition to it; and when his closest friend, Rory O'Connor, leader of the Four Courts rebellion, was sentenced to death, O'Higgins refused to let friendship soften his iron rule. Rory O'Connor died; O'Higgins sat up all night awaiting the execution, and col- lapsed at the last; and when O'Connor's will was opened it was found that he had left all to the man who had signed his death warrant. It was O'Higgins who fought the Gov- ernment's battle in the recent Free State elections. He poke everywhere, with the wild passion of his Irish soul, convinced that the Free State's course was right. "Mur- derer," one listener yelled at him, with reference to the seventy-seven executions. "If necessary," he hurled back, "we will execute seventy-seven more!" He spoke for au- thority in Ireland, defending the oath of allegiance and the British treaty; but when he went to Geneva as Ireland's representative he was staunch in his refusal to let the Lon- don delegates speak for Ireland except as Ireland author- ized. The government which he served as Vice President, and as Minister of Justice and of External Affairs, will find it hard to replace him; but his death may make it easier for De Valera's Republicans to find a basis for cooperation with the government parties. INDIANA IS BREAKING LOOSE at last. D. C. Stephen- son, former Grand Dragon of the Indiana Ku Klux Klan and political boss of the State, who, apparently, has been trying to blackmail his way out of prison, has begun to publish savory bits of evidence. Not his political associa- tions, but an injudicious murder, got him into jail. He has begun with a canceled check indorsed by the present Gov- ernor of, Indiana — part of $10,000 which he says the Klan contributed to help that gentleman into office; he follows with a statement supposedly signed by the chief of Indian- apolis's detective force, promising to do certain things if and when appointed to office. Other documents are said to be forthcoming which involve Indiana's junior United States Senator. The fact that Stephenson has now allied himself with the Indianapolis Times, a Scripps-Howard paper. suggests that this time the lid may really come off. HARRY DAUGHERTY did the country one good turn at least. We presume he was responsible for Presi- dent Harding's appointment of Dr. Joseph Morton Howell as United States Minister to Egypt. At any rate, the fact that Dr. Howell began his medical practice in Harry Daugherty's home town of Washington Court House. Ohio, is the only clue to his sudden elevation to the diplomatic service in 1921. And since 1921 Dr. Howell has been con- tinuously proving that he belonged to the shirt-sleeve rather than to the tea-cup tradition in diplomacy. He does not like the way in which Britain runs things in "independent" Egypt, and on occasion he says so. Dr. Howell is leaving the diplomatic service, and the Egyptian Temperance As-* sociation recently gave him a farewell tea. At this tea Dr. Howell devoted himself to praising prohibition in Amer- ica, and concluded with a reference to "the poisons now being sold to your people." The matter of forcing opium and whiskey [he added] down the throats of the people unable to protect them- selves by reason of treaties and legal obligations to which they are really in no wise parties, and from which they are unable, militarily or otherwise, to protect themselves, is nothing short of a crime. Such imperialism deserves the worse censure both by God and man. One must admit that such language is undiplomatic. But it happens to be true, and we are accordingly grateful to Harry Daugherty of Washington Court House, Ohio. T HE BELIEF THAT GAS WARFARE is devilish should be abolished," Harry N. Holmes, professor of chemistry in Oberlin College, is reported to have stated to the Institute of Chemistry. Not gas warfare is to be abol- ished, but the belief that it is essentially wrong and in- human. In order to bring that about, Professor Holmes said, "it would be well worth while to drop tear gas, obnoxi- ous but not dangerous, on a civilian population which had been given about as much warning as they would get in warfare." A city of 10,000 people should, he thinks, be pro- vided with gas masks and instruction in how to close doors and windows for self-protection, but the actual attack should be made by our army without warning. "The protection," he adds, "might possibly be extended to horses, although this is less important." The result, he is sure, would be "a thoroughly tested [sic] conclusion as to the real merits of gas warfare." Well, we are for the test. What town of 10,000 will be first to apply for the honor and privilege of serving the flag and our beloved country and aiding the campaign for preparedness by being gassed ad lib by the Chemical Warfare Service of the army? But why stop there? Why not protect our country by first-class maneu- vers along all military and naval lines? Give the artillery the right to shoot up a town of 10,000 with its huge guns, and the Naval Aviation Corps the privilege of dropping ex- plosive bombs on a passenger liner of battleship size. How can this country be safe from attack without "thoroughly tested conclusions"? NATIONAL TRADE BARRIERS have been denounced again, first by the Economic Conference at Geneva and then by the International Chamber of Commerce meeting at Stockholm. Just what effect all of this denouncing will have is difficult to foretell. At present it seems that economic conferences are very similar to other kinds of conferences. The same spiritual effluvia that prompt the Los Angeles Friday Morning Breakfast Association or the Illinois Un- dertakers Convention to pass resolutions favoring the ad- vance of civilization seems to be at work among the eco- nomic experts. Beautiful sentiments urging tariff reduc- tions (intended mostly for other countries) are embodied in impressive agreements. And then? Well, it is explained by the expert economic delegates that of course their own nations should not act too rapidly on the resolutions that they passed at Geneva or Stockholm. For the time being, they concede, we must be governed by practical considera- tions. And so, for example, in almost the same paper that announces the victory for tariff reductions at Stockholm, comes the cynical contradiction that the German tariff bill raising the duties on sugar 150 per cent, on potatoes 100 per cent. etc.. has been passed; and the American tariff wall will, we suspect, continue to protect Mr. Mellon. Yet cumulatively these conferences and their resolutions must

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July 20, 1927] The Nation 49 set to work on public opinion a yeast which in the end will overcome sectionalism and narrow interests. THE EFFORT TO DECENTRALIZE INDUSTRY through the application of anti-trust laws is commonly illusory, resulting only in the creation of a string of com- panies with interlocking directors at added cost to the pub- lic. And when successful, "trust-busting" is likely to prove an impediment to the development of an industry along eco- nomical and progressive lines. At the same time there are certain monopolistic practices which can with great benefit to the public be attacked under our statutes against re- straint of trade. The order of the Federal Trade Commis- sion against the Famous Players-Lasky Corporation illus- trates both the useless and the useful kinds of attack upon big combinations. We doubt if the ruling that these pro- ducers of motion pictures must hereafter refrain from the purchase or operation of theaters for the purpose of coer- cing exhibitors will have any effect. The corporation is not required to dispose of its present extensive chain of theaters and it will be exceedingly difficult to prove that any specific addition is for the purpose of coercion. On the other hand, the order which requires that the Famous Players-Lasky Corporation cease the practice of requiring exhibitors to engage films in blocks, or get none at all, is enforceable and eminently sound. The practice, probably unknown to the public previous to the order of the Federal Trade Commis- sion, is a bit of unmitigated and outrageous gall, which obviously makes it impossible for the owner of a motion- picture house to cater to the demands of his patrons or to permit the latter to exercise any kind of influence in regard to the pictures put before them. There ought to be no diffi- culty in ending this impertinence, and we hope the order of the Federal Trade Commission will do it. THE COWBOYS, or the circus men, took the hint. We suggested some weeks ago that some aspiring Senator or postmaster give the President a pair of old khaki trous- ers and a soft shirt in order to make his photographed fish- ing more verisimilitudinous. Thus far we have not read of a soft shirt or a pair of old pants upon the Presidential donation-list. But the cowboys — or the circus men — did better. They gave him a cerise silk shirt, and a green silk scarf, and a pair of chaps with magnificent fn'nged flanges embroidered with the sacred letters CAL. It was such an outfit as no one had ever seen less than 1,500 miles from South Dakota. (Hollywood is some 1,500 miles away.) It was good enough to be photographed all by itself; but Calvin did better — he put it on, and walked up and down, leading a horse, for an hour before the hard-working photographers. He didn't ride the horse — electric steeds still suffice him — but all dressed up and afoot he certainly added to the local color of the Black Hills. We have only one suggestion left: that next year the President make Hollywood the summer capital. WHEN GOVERNOR YOUNG of California granted Charlotte Anita Whitney an unconditional pardon we warmly applauded his decision. We hoped that this ac- tion would be the first step toward killing the criminal- syndicalism law and similar hysterical post-war legislation. Five men are still serving penitentiary sentences in Cali- fornia under that law. Governor Young, by some sort of mental gymnastics, hurdled over these five men in prison and made a special case of Miss Whitney's conviction that does not seem at all reasonable. The convictions of the five men and that of Miss Whitney were part of a total of 164, all obtained in the same wave of wholesale prosecu- tion. After studying the enforcement of this law, George W. Kirchwey, former dean of the Columbia University Law School, remarked "that the accused were, without exception, inoffensive persons; that in not a single instance were they as individuals shown to be a menace to the peace and order of the community. The defendants were scape-goats, chosen, as in the case of Miss Whitney, because of their excellent character and their purity of purpose, to expiate the sins of the people." If, as Governor Young has well said, it would be "unthinkable" to put Miss Whitney in a cell, is it not deplorable that these five men, convicted under like circumstances, should still be in the penitentiary? ARE RHODES SCHOLARS FAILURES because they are not "running the country," but instead affect Eng- lish accents and mannerisms, thus making the home folks doubtful of the merits of a foreign education? According to J. C. Beatty, holder of an Albert Kahn traveling fellow- ship, the Hon. A. L. Fisher of Oxford thinks that few Rhodes scholars ever become "prominent" Americans and that President Frank Aydelotte of Swarthmore is the only one who has achieved an international reputation. While an improvement in the method of selecting Rhodes men is suggested — that of apportioning scholarships according to population instead of assigning two to each State — one can- not be certain that this will insure an increased ratio of national eminence. Should the American scholar strive to balance his Oxford education and "English manner" with a hundred-per-cent American Rotary club handshake? Few Rhodes scholars are yet past forty, and Mr. Fisher might find still other reasons why they are not developing into cabinet members, heads of big business, Geneva Conference representatives, or even college presidents with interna- tional reputations. So long as the gulf between higher academic training and the approved ideal of a successful politician is what it is in America, Mr. Rhodes's dream of "Rhodes scholars running the country" remains a dream. PARLIAMENT SOLEMN AND SOBER? Dip into Han- sard and read the report of a Friday when private members introduce bills which have not received the sanc- tion of the government. On a recent Friday afternoon Mr. Lougher brought up a bill dealing with rear lights on vehicles. This, he said, was an important subject which had "occupied the attention of successive governments for the last half century, and very properly so." Another mem- ber agreed, recalling that he had seen a van plunge into "a flock of touring cyclists," and still another extended Mr. Lougher's proposal. Sir Park Goff, however, asserted that horses, cattle, and sheep did not need rear lights tied to their tails, because these animals do not travel by night. A Mr. Lee violently challenged this statement; but Sir Park refused to budge; "they generally lie down at night with the gates shut," he shouted. The bill, one member suggested, should include rear lights for baby carriages as well as bicycles, and should be tied to the coats or skirts of pedestrians. But one proposal which would undoubtedly receive the unanimous approval of all motorists was not brought up — that the man who walked on highroads, espe- cially at night, should be fined for walking instead of riding.

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50 The Nation [Vol. 125. No. 3237 Patriots and Patrioteers "|T is obvious," Mr. Wilbur, Secretary of the Navy, 1 wrote to Benjamin C. Marsh, secretary of the People's Reconstruction League, "that the purpose of this meeting [a conference on How Civil Rights Have Been Suppressed to Further American Imperialism] is to promote hostility to the United States Government, and I have no desire to participate in such a conference." And there you have in a nutshell the coward-mind of Calvin Coolidge's America. Don't criticize; don't denounce evils; be silent and let things go from bad to worse — that's patriotism, according to the Secretary of the Navy. And I e is not alone. We have millions of people in this country who honestly believe that it is somehow sinful to criticize the President of the United States or the policies of his cabinet officials, and who have persuaded themselves that the men who exposed the oil scandals in President Hard- ing's Cabinet were in some mysterious manner less patriotic than the men, like Charles Evans Hughes and Calvin Cool- idge, who sat silently in the Cabinet with the scoundrels who looted and bribed, finding no occasion to express indignation. No wonder men sneer at "politics," no wonder the word "patriotism" seems to lose its meaning, when the Michigan chapter of the Sons of the American Revolution can appoint to its Committee of Public Welfare and Defense Truman H. Newberry, who bought his way into the United States Senate in so foul-smelling a manner that he dared not keep his seat, and Edwin Denby, who as Secretary of the Navy acted as errand-boy for Messrs. Doheny and Sinclair in their oil-steals; and when the Daughters of the American Revolution, without an iota of understanding of the Spirit of '76, devotes itself to persecuting and libeling those who keep alive the tradition of these degenerate women's ancestors ! Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, honorary president of the League of Women Voters, has done a public service in is- suing an open letter to the Daughters of the American Revolution charging that organization with acting as an active distributor of slander and with making "mendacious, brutal attacks upon thousands of Americans who never saw a Bolshevik in their lives." In the Woman Citizen Mrs. Catt takes up the scurrilous charges made by some of these so-called patriotic organizations against those two noble women, Jane Addams and Florence Kelley, and re- futes them in detail. It is sad to think that a point-by- point refutation of such libel was necessary. Here are, perhaps, America's greatest women — and people have been found who thought it patriotic to drag their names in the mud. The D. A. R. pamphlets do not frankly state that Miss Addams and Mrs. Kelley are Bolsheviks; but they suggest and insinuate it, as do the publications of the Scabbard and Blade, that reserve officers' association which makes a profession of defaming men and women who seek to better these United States, and of other similarly de- famatory "patriotic" organizations It is only occasionally that these organizations cross the boundaries of the law of libel, though they approach them by every pathway of in- sinuation. More often, it is the newspapers which use their charges as texts which slip across the legal limits. The Boston Transcript has more than once found itself compelled to make amends for false charges; and a former managing editor of The Nation two years ago compelled the Chicago Tribune to make a substantial financial settle- ment for false and libelous statements which it had made about his activities in Mexico. It is perhaps unfortunate that so few leaders of social reform in the United States have cared to prosecute in the courts the men and women who, under a misguided mantle of patriotism, libel and denounce them. But perhaps, on the other hand, they are right in believing that the courts can settle nothing. Back of the courts is public opinion; and what is necessary is rather a new sanification of the public mind than a punitive process against a few misled individuals. America is still haunted, in the mass, by war- time specters; conformity is still regarded as a virtue and dissent as ground for suspicion; and until this fundamen- tal condition, which vitiates the basis of democratic gov- ernment, is changed, a few libel suits against individuals will not get us far. New and amazing outbreaks of the mob mind slip into the newspapers every week. When before in the country's history, for instance, would it have been possible for a group of veterans to protest against a war memorial which quoted the prophet Isaiah's hope that some day "Nation shall not lift sword against nation; neither shall they learn war any more," as in Plainfield, New Jersey, in recent months? Was it always possible for a sodden manufacturer to hound out of town universally liked Y. W. C. A. secre- taries, as in Fort Wayne, Indiana, recently, apparently be- cause they included discussion of hours of labor on their programs? Despite scores of such discouraging outbreaks of bigotry and mob-mindedness, however, there are as potent signs of an awakening to common sense. Plainfield did not yield to the Legion; Fort Wayne has been through an unprecedented campaign of public education; and Den- ver. Colorado, whose first citizen has finally been driven from his juvenile court, is awakening to a realization that Judge Lindsey is its greatest municipal asset. It is sig- nificant that Mrs. Catt. representing a relatively conserva- tive group of women, should have been moved to her de- nunciation of the D. A. R.'s campaign of vilification, and that the president general of the D. A. R., instead of de- veloping its loose charges, retired from the battlefield with the watery statement that "Mrs. Catt is just as much entitled to her opinion as I am to mine." The Xation would, to be sure, go further even than Mrs. Catt. She contents herself with proving that Miss Addams and Mrs. Kelley are not Bolsheviks, and that the epithet "Red Rose of Anarchy," applied to Miss Rose Schneiderman of the Women's Trade Union League, was a gross misnomer. That is true enough; but what of it? Behind that argument might lie the assumption that they would have no right to speak if they were socialists, anarch- ists, or communists. We would maintain, with Thomas Jefferson, that there is no safety for the republic unless every honest complaint and every honest hope for change can freely be voiced. William Z. Foster, the Communist leader, seems to us far closer to the tradition of the found- ing fathers than H. M. Haldeman, president of the Better America Federation of California, who has just been in-

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July 20, 1927] The Nation 51 dieted for usury. Mr. Foster is really trying to better America — according to his lights, which are not our lights — not to line his own pockets ; and his course seems to us more patriotic than hushing up sordid oil or banking scan- dals. The way to maintain pride in the republic is con- stantly to hold it up to what are too lightly mouthed as the national ideals. Those who cast aspersions upon such efforts seem to us the real traitors to the spirit of the American republic. Poor Haiti! MESSRS. JOLIBOIS, Chauvet, Pressoir, Moravia, Liau- taud, Ricourt, and Fouche, patriotic editors of Haitian newspapers, are in jail today because they dared speak out against the shackling of their country. They protested when Archbishop Caruana told newspaper reporters in Havana that President Borno, America's puppet-president, was a public-spirited citizen; and Mr. Borno gave point to their protests by promptly clapping them into jail, boldly asserting that "never in our national life was the press as free as it is today, but I will not stand for my country to be insulted in foreign lands. These men will remain in prison until I think of them again." Under the benign protection of the United States Marine Corps, President Borno can play the Mussolini role to his heart's content. The fact is that Haiti has never known a stricter cen- sorship than today, and with reason. For the United States is engaged in mopping up, and President Borno is supposed to do the dirty work of keeping things dark. When Frank- lin Roosevelt wrote a constitution for Haiti in 1916 he still suffered a bit from pre-war inhibitions. He left several loopholes. Among other things, he left the judiciary inde- pendent and in Haitian hands. Doubtless the petty Haitian judiciary is, in its way, corrupt, but it is also patriotic. When a big American landowner goes into a Haitian court today, and faces a poverty-stricken Haitian nobody, the nobody nevertheless is likely to have the best of it. And, as American land holdings in Haiti are increasing, it seems obviously desirable to change such a state of things. So the constitution is being amended. The new constitution makes at least three important changes. Instead of guaranteeing liberty of the press — a guaranty which Mr. Borno has honored chiefly in the bn — it limits the guaranty to conditions "determined by law." Instead of providing for trial by jury in all criminal cases it limits jury trial to cases prescribed by law, and leaves interpretation of laws to the Legislature. (Since no legisla- tive elections have been held since Smedley Butler, pistol in hand, dissolved the Haitian Senate more than ten years ago, legislative functions meanwhile being exercised by presi- dential appointees, this should leave Mr. Borno very com- fortable.) A further constitutional change provides that the President shall appoint all judges except justices of the peace, and that he may remove even his own appointees for cause. This provision is important in its effect upon land titles, particularly American-held titles, which hitherto have suffered in the Haitian courts and now seem assured of due respect. Since Haiti has had only the most irregular system of title registration, this system of presidentially appointed judges to pass upon all land claims should achieve marvel- lous results. Still another constitutional change extends the normal presidential term from four to six years, and pro- vides that a president may not be reelected after ten years in office. Mr. Borno's term expires in 1930, but, as he will then have served only eight years, this permits him to re- tain the office until 1936. Behind all this constitutional patchwork lies the shadow of the sixty-year concession in the Artibonite valley granted to former United States Representative Rodenberg of Illi- nois. Supposedly it is for the development of water power; and there has been talk of rubber plantations there ; but rumors are current in Haiti that it also includes oil lands. It is of no value unless a large number of land claims can be adjudicated satisfactorily to the American conces- sionaires. One of the newspapers whose editor is now in jail has claimed that the "annulment of titles which will be made by order of the American Occupation will convey the lands of the peasants to the National Board of Survey and then the Occupation will give them to Mr. Rodenberg." Here lies the explanation of the mass imprisonment of Port-au-Prince's editors, and of President Borno's cava- lier declaration that they shall stay in jail until he hap- pens to think of them again. At root, as in all Haiti's recent misery, the interests of United States capitalists are responsible. Was it for such dirty business that the Marines were brought back from Nicaragua to their old quarters in Haiti? Has the American conscience been so deadened by marine- corps publicity that there will be no stout protest against such bullyragging of a helpless little nation? Is there no voice in America, save those of Haiti's old-times friends like Senators King and Borah, to demand that these things shall stop? Here, rather than in Europe, America's good name is most vitally at stake. Are You a New Yorker? BEFORE answering this question the reader is entitled to ask another: What is a New Yorker? There are as many answers to that as people in the metropolis, but there has never been a belter one than in the testimony which has been brought out by Charles il. Tuttle, United States Attorney, in his inquiry into the methods of selling- theater tickets. The typical New Yorker is there revealed, the person who makes the city what it is, who accepts it as it is, who leads its life and reflects its attitude, in distinction from stray individuals who live in the city more or less indefinitely without ever belonging to it — or wanting to. For the typical New Yorker is a theater-goer. He plays at least as hard as he works, and among all his pleas- ures one of the most popular and strenuous is play-going. New York, as everybody knows, is the country's theatrical heart. More and more it is coming to be pretty nearly the country's complete theatrical circulatory system as far as the drama — as distinguished from motion pictures and vaudeville — goes. Yet the theaters presenting the talked- of plays are always crowded. Unlike the situation else- where in this country or in Europe, it is rarely possible to go to a theater just before a performance and obtain satis- factory— or even any — seats. Prudent persons don't try to. They know they must make arrangements in advance. But how? The privilege of reserving seats by telephone, to be paid for before the performance, was cut off several years

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52 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3237 ago. Even when one spends from one to two hours' time, some days in advance, in a personal visit to the theater box-office he often finds poor picking. Ciuery: Who has the seats? Answer: The theater ticket agencies. These establishments handle tickets for most of tiie important theaters. They rose to power a few years ago as a means of supplanting the old nuisance of the sidewalk ticket scalper with whom the theaters had formerly worked hand in glove. The new ticket broker was sup- posed to usher in a reform. Theater-goers were no longer to be gouged ad lib by irresponsible parties. The ticket agents were to charge a uniform fee of fifty cents above the box-office price on each ticket. It was an exorbitant commission— about 20 per cent — but for the typical New Yorker, who thinks he must see every show touted by the press or his friends in its first two weeks, it was better than scrambling for oneself. Yet it appears that even an exorbitant commission has not been enough for the ticket agencies. The irresponsible sidewalk ticket scalper, who gouged the public in hit-and- miss fashion, has been dispossessed by a responsible, estab- lished, experienced blackjacker and stick-up man who has raised banditry on the Rialto to occupy the place of a tine art. It seems that a party of Washington officials while on a visit last winter to New York were charged what they regarded as excessive prices for some theater tickets. They wondered if the theater ticket agents were paying income taxes on all this velvet, and Mr. Tuttle was induced to make an inquiry. The inquiry has answered the question of the Washington officials in the negative. But it has done far more. It has proved again the dictum of 0. Henry that New York City is the world's best market for the sale of gold bricks; it has shown that the whole process of distrib- uting theater tickets is, in the words of Mr. Tuttle, "honey- combed with lying graft"; it has laid bare a cross-section of the spine of the typical New Yorker and revealed it to be as devoid of bone as a cockroach. In his absurd hallucination that he must see every play touted by the press or his friends within the first two weeks, and only from a front seat in the orchestra, the typical New Yorker has made possible victimization to an almost incredible extent. The facts brought out by Mr. Tuttle disclose that the first fourteen rows of the orchestra go en masse to the ticket agents and that the latter not only graft off the public but in turn are grafted upon by the men in the box offices. A representative of the Erlanger organization testified that in addition to a salary of $300 a week he averaged about $350 from ticket agents for see- ing that they got good seats. In other words the public is paying one inconsequential cog in the theatrical world about $35,000 a year for the privilege of having its pockets picked. And there are scores of others. What, then, is a New Yorker? One concludes that he is a person who delights to pay through the nose not only for favors but for ordinary rights; who puts his pleasures before his principles (if any) ; who can be mulcted without retaliation or even protest. Away from home the New Yorker boasts glibly of the wonders of his city. Within its walls he is a supine invertebrate who is bossed and bul- lied, hounded and herded, humbugged and sandbagged by anyone with a uniform, a flashy tie, or a loud voice: and his utmost repercussion is to go home and scold his wife or kick the dog. John Drew THE death of John Drew removes one of the most popu- lar actors from the American s1 .':d closes a long career which had entertained several generations of play- goers. Though he was born to the stage he did not play his first part until, at the age of twenty, he appeared with his parents in Philadelphia in 1873. Tardy as this debut was for one raised in the profession, it did not prevent him from spanning with his career more than one epoch of dra- matic history. His earliest role was in one of the old-fashioned farcical after-pieces ; some twenty years later he passed on to Daly's famous company when it was making its first suc- cesses with translations from the German ; he helped to popularize Pinero and Sutro; and he achieved the last of his important successes in one of the ultra-sophisticated come- dies of Maugham. But the length of his career is even more strikingly illustrated by the fact that three generations fur- nished him with leading women. In the days of his earliest successes he played opposite Ada Rehan, later opposite Maude Adams in Louis N. Parker's "Rosemary," and in "My Wife" he helped Billie Burke to fame. Long after Ada Rehan was dead and after the other two had retired, he was still concealing his age under a suavity and grace of manner that made him seem always young. Drew had, of course, his limitation, and the roles he played were always light. His Petruccio was famous. But it was in modern high comedy that his talents shone most brightly and he was at his best in plays that required chiefly a fashionable ease of manner. The oft-quoted witticism which credited him with "behaving" upon the stage instead of acting had a certain truth, and he made no attempt to portray the passions. Booth Tarkington once said of him that he would make Simon Legree into a misunderstood gen- tleman and certainly gentlemen, misunderstood or not, wTere his metier. No one entered a drawing-room or handled a tea-cup better than he. Urbanity radiated from him, and wit, particularly of the sort which is characterized by a gentle worldliness, seemed to receive an added polish as it passed through his lips. In one respect he was not entirely fortunate. It so happened that, during the latter part of his career at least, the greatest plays were not of the drawing-room sort; and he was not identified with any of the classics of the modern theater. An age which found its truest expression in social comedy would have provided more opportunities to display his talents at their best and yet, even as it was. he man- aged to make certain minor pieces more delightful than they otherwise would have been. Thanks in part to him, such plays as, for example, Haddon Chambers's "The Tyranny of Tears" were wholly delightful and he kept alive a tradi- tion of comedy, polite and yet edged, which no one else could interpret so well. In them his style was the exact antithesis of that which is commonly referred to as of "the old school." His manner was conversational to the last degree and he carried to its uttermost possible limits the ideal of naturalistic acting. No one ever made art seem less artificial. He seemed always to enter the stage as though he were entering a private room and one always had the impression that one was merely overhearing by acci- dent what he was saying to his friends. Certainly no actor has spanned more successive generations of friends than John Drew, or will be more generally missed.

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July 20, 1927] The Nation 53 The Patriotic Radio Trust By MAURITZ A. HALLGREN I WHO Shall Control the Air? asked Morris L. Ernst in The Nation for April 21, 1926. The only intelligi- ble answer thus far has come in the form of a hearty guf- faw from the Radio Trust; why speak of controlling the air when / own the air? Why speak of governmental su- pervision of broadcasting (.to protect your sacred free speech) when / have a complete monopoly on the manufac- ture and sale of broadcasting apparatus in this country and when / am on the verge of getting a stranglehold on the manufacture of receiving sets? Wny worry about broad- casting permits when no one can set up a broadcasting sta- tion without first buying equipment from me and at my terms? I developed wireless broadcasting (as a patriotic duty, by the way) ; it is mine and 1 intend to keep it. The Radio Trust climbed to its glory in a simple man- ner. It rounded up and pooled all but an insignificant hand- ful of the 800 American wireless patents, including fifteen or sixteen basic patents upon which are founded all send- ing and receiving devices now manufactured. These pat- ents were made available to the members of the trust under what has become known as the cross-licensing system. Rights in almost all British, German, French, Dutch, and other European patents were acquired at the same time. Further maneuvers gave the trust a virtual monopoly on the radio-engineering talent of the country so that today the individual members operate mammoth research labora- tories, spend millions of dollars annually, employ hundreds of engineers, the fruits of whose labors, by means of another pooling arrangement, become the property of the trust as a whole. This gigantic research machine is devoted primarily to the task of keeping outsiders from penetrating the mo- nopoly with revolutionary inventions. Occasionally the ma- chine makes really worthwhile contributions to the radio art, but for the most part it turns out inventions which are duly patented but rarely used except when it becomes neces- sary to sue an unsuspecting outsider for infringing upon a patent he never knew existed. Small wonder, then, Lhat the Radio Trust controls broadcasting and, with the Brit- ish Marconi Company, transoceanic wireless communica- tions. In its regulation-hampered way the Federal Trade Com- mission is at present unearthing ripe and pertinent facts concerning the radio combination, but even as it does so the trust bowls heedlessly along. The strongest of the inde- pendents, the Atwater Kent Company of Philadelphia, still defies the trust and at last reports was arming itself for a life and death struggle in the courts. The Radio Corporation of America, nucleus of the trust, was incorporated October 17, 1919, for the purpose of engaging in public radio-communication service on land and sea and in the business of buying and selling radio apparatus. Five days later the General Electric Company, parent of the Radio Corporation, brought the first patents into the fold by purchasing the assets of the Marconi Wire- less Telegraph Company of America. These assets included rights in all present and future British Marconi patents. The purchase price was 2,000,000 shares each oi the com- mon and preferred stock of the Radio Corporation, which went to the British Marconi, owner of the American Mar- coni Company. Thus British Marconi entered the Radio Trust. The General Electric received as its compensation 135,174 shares of the preferred Radio Corporation stock and 2,000,000 common shares. The following month the Radio Corporation entered into an agreement with British Marconi for the conduct of transoceanic radio traffic. On the same day, November 20, the General Electric brought its own patents into the pool, granting the Radio Corpora- tion a license to use and sell apparatus for radio purposes under all patents, present and future, owned or controlled by the General Electric. In return the General Electric was licensed to make such apparatus as the Radio Corpora- tion's patents might cover. An agreement dated July 1, 1920, provided for the ex- change of patent rights between the General Electric and the American Telephone and Telegraph Company. In gen- eral terms, the telephone company was to make and sell broadcasting equipment and the General Electric receiving apparatus for non-commercial purposes. A second agree- ment of the same date tied up these two concerns with the Radio Corporation and the telephone company's subsidiary, the Western Electric Company. Then, on March 7, 1921, while the trust was angling for the Westinghouse patents, another though minor link was forged in the radio chain. This was the United Fruit Company, which, through the Tropical Radio Telegraph Company, had been operating a wireless system of its own down on the Caribbean. The Wireless Specialty Apparatus Company, a protege of United Fruit was, with its patents, brought in at the same time. The Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Com- pany acquired control of the patents and assets of the In- ternational Radio Telegraph Company when the latter was reorganized May 22, 1920. Thirteen months later, June 13, 1921, the Westinghouse extended its rights under the Arm- strong-Pupin patents to the General Electric. On June 30 there was a general exchange by the Westinghouse of pat- ent rights with other members of the combination and the same day saw the sale to the Radio Corporation of all patents, licenses under patents, as well as other assets, of the International Radio Company in return for a million shares each of common and preferred Radio Corporation stock. After this the trust busied itself with picking up loose ends. In September, 1922, the Radio Corporation or- ganized the Federal Telegraph Company of Delaware for the purpose of taking over the agreement which the Fed- eral Telegraph Company of California had reached with the then existing Chinese Government for the erection of several broadcasting stations. The deal also provided for an exchange of patent rights between the California com- pany and the trust-owned Delaware company. The last important group of patents, those of the Radio Engineering Company of New York, came in on March 14, 1923, although several others have since been acquired. Besides arranging for the cross-licensing of patents, these and other agreements provide for the exchange of technic: . and research information between the various

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54 The Nation [Vol. 125. No. 3237 members of the trust, and to make it increasingly difficult for outsiders or "non-licensees" to intrude upon the mo- nopoly still other agreements place severe restrictions on the uses to which trust products may be put. The Radio Corporation apparatus, for example, may be sold to com- peting companies for shore-to-ship or ship-to-shore com- munication, but must not be resold or used for tolls and, other things being equal, the Radio Corporation must be given preference in routing business transmitted by such apparatus. The principal members of the combination, except the telephone company, have been continuously represented on the Radio Corporation's board of directors. II Although it has already gathered several thick volumes of testimony on the radio question, the Federal Trade Com- mission is still struggling with the problem, and indica- tions are that it will not be ready to conclude its hearings, which were started in October, 1925, before the end of another year. Then, if the commission finds that the Radio Trust has been engaging in unfair methods of competition, the battle will in all likelihood be transferred to the courts, there to drag on for many years. The hearings thus far have brought out the contention by representatives, and witnesses for the combination that the Radio Corporation of America, the heart of the trust, was organized purely as a patriotic venture. The Radio Corporation itself asserted that it "was created primarily with a motive of carrying on, and it has since carried on, a patriotic service of mak- ing a world-wide communication system of radio in which the most important influence rests in the United States of America and with American citizens." The General Elec- tric unburdened itself of the declaration that "the Radio Corporation of America was created in order to carry out the expressed desires and wishes of the United States, communicated by its officers and servants." During the war with Germany, according to the pic- ture witnesses for both sides have sketched, the Navy De- partment controlled almost all the wireless facilities in the United States. Under Navy direction a wide-tiling system of radio communication was developed, some research work carried on, and many wireless patents collected. At the close of the war the Navy was required to dispose of the radio property it had acquired or developed and to abandon a great part of its communication system. Most of the patents found their way into the Radio Trust pool and the communication system was turned over to the Radio Cor- poration, which, according to a patent lawyer on the stand for the trust, was organized for that purpose; indeed, it "was practically the order of the Navy Department" that the step be taken. The Navy went even further by lend- ing Rear Admiral W. H. G. Bullard, director of naval com- munications, to the corporation, and he sat in as a member of its board of directors throughout its first years. The patriotic touch is suggested in other places in the testimony. It was necessary, for example, to have the control of transoceanic radio traf:c in American hands to save valued messages of the United States from the "pos- sible espionage" of foreign countries, most of the cable systems being under alien domination. Moreover, some of the foreign cable companies had knowingly held up Ameri- can commercial orders to give business houses in their own countries the opportunity of making more favorable bids for these orders; this could be remedied by an American- controlled radio system. The prize testimony was that revealing the existence of a radio Monroe Doctrine for South America. The four big radio companies of the world, the American Radio Cor- poration, British Marconi, German Telefunken, and French T. S. F., it was related by Albert G. Davis of the General Electric staff, created a separate company to handle all wireless communications with South America. These firms invested equal amounts of capital in the new company and each was given two places on its board, but a ninth direc- tor, to act as chairman, was to be named by the Radio Cor- poration. This mnth director, Davis said, was given the power of veto over any action taken by the board "and . . . no affirmative action hvas] to be taken over the veto of this American, it being the idea that the Monroe Doctrine was a negative doctrine rather than a positive one and that it was the carrying out of that doctrine if we had an Ameri- can who had power to prevent thi>igs bdng done in South America." Later he explained that because of this ar- rangement "no foreign group is in a position to use wire- less facilities in South America to promote its selfish na- tional interests." In South America, as in China, the Radio Corporation has appeared on the scene as an alien invader, a bit of exploitation to which neither the Chinese nor the South Americans could resort in the United States. The Radio Act of 1927 specifically provides that no broadcasting sta- tion license shall be granted to any organization or com- pany which has an alien on its board of directors or in any of its executive positions or to any company "of which more than one-fifth of the capital stock may be voted by aliens." Great Britain, Japan, and Denmark protested against the Radio Corporation's invasion of China, but so far as public records reveal no one in South America has objected to its intrusion there. Further evidence of the Government's godfatherly at- titude toward the trust is found in the testimony of Emil J. Simon, prominent radio engineer of Cleveland, Ohio, and erstwhile associate of Lee De Forest. He declared that although his company had supplied the Navy with wireless apparatus before the war, since then, or rather since the formation of the Radio Corporation, it had not been awarded one contract. "In the majority of cases my bid was lower," he said, and yet the contracts went to his competitors. General Electric. Westinghouse, and Western Electric. "The reason given," he continued, "was that Gov- ernment officials considered the apparatus of the other companies to be superior . . . although in each case I had agreed to supply apparatus that fully met the specifications of the Government." Other testimony by this witness weakened another of the trust's props. The trust contends that the Radio Cor- poration was entirely responsible for the development of broadcasting, in fact, that broadcasting was unknown be- fore it entered the field. Simon, however, asserted that in 1910, a decade before the trust came into being, De Forest broadcast from the stage of the Metropolitan Opera House in New York the operas "Pagliacci" and "Cavalleria Rusti- cana" and that he, Simon, was aboard a Royal Mail liner sea and heard the operas. He added that "the reception was excellent." Incidentally, in a public address on April 30, Admiral Bullard said that "the Navy Department was really the first practical broadcaster in this country."

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July 20, 1927] The Nation 55 in What can be done about the Radio Trust? It can be allowed, of course, to drift along as at present on its good behavior, though mo4ern-day combinations have shown no greater regard for the public welfare than the trusts of yesterday. Certainly the combination, by pooling its en- gineering talent, has not contributed enough to science or even to its own industry to outweigh the disadvantages im- posed upon the public in the way of stifled competition, control of an important class of communications, and pos- session of arbitrary power to increase prices on its goods. The technical and scientific advance made by the trust has been one of volume rather than quality, more than half of the existing basic radio patents having resulted from individual efforts made before the trust was created. Piecemeal supervision of the radio industry might serve to keep the trust in check. Separate laws could be passed to break up the system of cross-licensing of patents, to require patent holders either to put their patents to definite and practical use or surrender them to the Govern- ment, and to abolish the restrictions now placed by the trusts on the uses of its products. The Federal Trade Commission could prevent unreasonable price boosting by breaking up the monopoly on the manufacture and sale of radio equipment. The commission could also insist upon an open and unrestricted market for the purchase of broad- casting apparatus. The Federal Radio Commission could act to divorce the trust from its connections with telephone and telegraph companies as required by the radio act. The Interstate Commerce Commission could prevent the com- bination from making unjust discriminations. These things and more could be done, but at best they would be lacking in co-ordination and definite direction. The only other apparent solution is to place the entire industry and radio system under unified control. The Navy Department did a pretty good job of con- trolling wireless during the World War, both in giving efficient service and in promoting the science of radio com- munication. The radio act provides that the President may take over the entire radio system in case of another war. If the Government is deemed competent to operate the radio system in the confusing circumstances which attend all wars, why could ft not do as well in time of peace? More- over, even now the Navy is transmitting press and com- mercial messages in certain sections of the world for Ameri- can organizations and citizens. Perhaps the Navy Depart- ment would not, for various reasons, be the department to which public radio communications should be entrusted. Other technicalities might prevent the Post Office Depart- ment from extending its present jurisdiction over certain classes of communications to include wireless. The impor- tance of the radio question loomed large enough before Congress, however, to inspire the creation of the Federal Radio Commission. This body is essentially concerned only with the broadcasting situation. But having made this start, why not go the whole hog by extending the com- mission's authority to embrace supervision of wireless patents, regulation of the manufacture and sale of broad- casting and receiving equipment, and absolute control of radio communications, wireless telephony, and the broad- casting of electric power? The Catholic 'Renaissance' in France By IDA TREAT Paris, June 9 THERE is considerable talk today about the "Renais- sance" of Catholicism in France. The discussion is by no means confined to the ranks of the faithful who yearn for the repentant return of the "elder daughter of the Church" after a century of exile among the liotous husks of anti-clericalism. Even the dyed-in-the-wool Radicals, the time-honored mangeuis de cures, murmur with anxiety and alarm that anti-clericalism itself, the principal plank in the Radical Party platform, shows signs of becoming worm- eaten and threatens to collapse. Catholicism, in any event, stands today in the lime- light. The unprejudiced layman — and the fact that such exist in increasing numbers is in itself a sign of the times — sees on every hand evidence that the tension between Catholics and non-Catholics has temporarily relaxed, a phe- nomenon without precedent since the "laic laws" were voted a quarter of a century ago. It may be argued with a show of truth that the present cessation of hostilities represents a temporary truce based entirely on political considerations, and that its longevity depends on the fortunes of the Poincare-Briand Government and the fluctuations of the foreign policy of the Quai d'Orsay. But, judging by the present, there is no lack of -proof in many quarters that the "freres ennemis" have for the time being laid down their arms. To those who are acquainted with the old spirit of intol- erance on the part of anti-clerical France for anything that remotely resembled Catholic propaganda, the utilization of the radio for Catholic broadcasting represents an astonish- ing concession. Nowadays the non-churchgoers have their Sunday lunch hour enlivened by seimions delivered by promi- nent Jesuit fathers against a charming background of Bach and Palestrina, broadcast from the station of the Tour Eiffel. The innovation did bring forth a mild protest from the non-Catholic press, coupled with the suggestion that if Catholic sermons are to be tolerated, they should at least be supplemented by those of Jewish rabbis and Protestant pastors — a suggestion which apparently fell on deaf ears, for the Catholic fathers continue to enjoy a monopoly of the radio and throughout Lent, in addition to the customary Sunday morning service, the vesper sermons of the eloquent Pere Sanson were broadcast from Notre Dame. At the same time, the subject appears to have invaded the field of letters. The discussion over the nature of "pure poetry" has brought into special prominence the figure of the Abbe Bremond, former Jesuit and member of the French Academy. That learned body, by choosing Monseigneur Baudrillart, rector of the Universite Catholique, as its representative to America, gave recent proof that anti- clericalism does not thrive beneath the dome of the Immor- tals. The return to Catholicism of the former group of the

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56 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3237 Nouvcllc Revue Francaise — Jacques Copeau and the late Jacques Riviere— is already history. Jacques Maritain and the neo-Thomistes have recruited certain elements of the older-young literature, with Jean Cocteau and his friends, whose somewhat spectacular conversion was cele- brated last year by the publication of two volumes of "Let- ters" in appropriately rose-pink covers. The political activity of the various Catholic organiza- tions, and particularly the Federation Nationale Catholique under the direction of that staunch patriot, General de Cas- telnau, began to take definite shape in the years that fol- lowed the War. In France, as in other countries, the na- tionalizing of Cod and the Church during war-time had placed French Catholicism in strict alliance with the nation- alistic parties— the Right and the Extreme Right. The role played by the "fighting cures" during the conflict intensi- fied this position and at the same time gained for the Church and its representatives a certain degree of popular favor. When the Viviani Government voted in 1914 to sus- pend temporarily all measures concerning the enforcement of the "lois laiques" it paved the way for the return of the exiled religious orders, many of which came quietly and un- officially back to France, from Belgium and from the Near East, during the years that followed. When hostilities ended, the Catholic Right felt that the moment had come for a direct attack on the obnoxious laic laws and in fact on the whole religious policy of the government. The renewal of diplomatic relations with the Vatican constituted the first important step in this direction — a vic- tory easily won, it being an open secret that th elections of both Deschanel and Millerand to the presidency had been assured by Catholic elements rallied by the promise of a papal ambassador. Encouraged by this first success, the Catholic organizations with the Federation Nationale and the D.R.A.C. — Ligue pour le Droit des Religieux Anciens Combattants— in the lead, staged all over France and par- ticularly in Brittany and the Vendee immense popular dem- onstrations against the "infamous laic laws;" they placarded the "ountry with posters demanding the return of the reli- gious orders "whose loyalty to France was proved during the war," proclaiming that "la liberte se prend" and that "unjust laws should not be obeyed." Catholic bishops openly encouraged local priests to brave expulsion by refusing to pay rent; others threatened to excommunicate the purchas- ers of former Church property. Propaganda sheets from the dispossessed orders insisted that their former holdings be restored and demanded the repeal of the 1904 law which robbed them of the opportunity to teach. The problem of applying the laic laws to Alsace-Lorraine where the religious orders had enjoyed a privileged situation under German rule furnished a fresh source of agitation. In March. 1925, the assembly of French bishops and cardinals gave out a statement which represented a veritable declaration of war against the laws of separation. Never since 1904 had the antagonism between the French Church and the French Government appeared more apparent. But this is an age of Internationals. At the moment when the tension between the Catholic Nationalists and the cartel government seemed strained to the breaking ] Rome made its first spectacular intervention in French h affairs. The papal nuncio, Monseigneur Cerretti, disavowed publicly at Notre Dame and in the name of the Holy See the inopportune declaration of the French bishops. The Briand Government had found a new ally. This brusque substitu- tion of papal diplomacy for the warlike tactics of the Catho- lic Nationalists inserted an entering wedge between the Church and its Nationalist supporters, particularly those of the Extreme Right who had hoped to utilize the anti-clerical question as a means for furthering their own political ends. To those who have followed the development of the international policy of the Vatican since the war there is nothing surprising or paradoxical in the recent manifesta- tions of this policy in France. Even before the papal en- cyclical of 1922 had claimed for the international action of the Church the "imposing consecration of centuries" and had aroused the wrath of French conservatives by the much-disputed phrase concerning the "artificial peace," it was evident that the Vatican had learned the lesson of the war: that nationalism in its strictest sense is the enemy of the Church international. When the newly appointed nuncio, Monseigneur Maglione, celebrated his arrival in Paris last winter by an official declaration in favor of Locarno, there was no longer any doubt that the Church had decided to link its destinies in France, as in Germany, with the elements composing the Center — the "anti-clerical" government of the Man of Locarno, Aristide Briand. This meant, of course, a split with the Extreme Right. It came in the form of the condemnation of the Royalists of V Action Francaise — the extremists of the extreme — os- tensibly for sins "against morality and the faith." Both League and newspaper were placed under the ban. That this was a political offensive has escaped no one, least of all I' Action Francaise, today the most "anti-clerical" paper in France. Docile in appearance at first, the Royalists are now resisting with all their might; and there is a certain humor in the sight of these former champions of the Church attacking the chiefs of Catholicism at home and abroad and denouncing with their habitual virulence the unwarranted intrusion of a "foreign power" (sic) in home affairs! But Rome is no mean adversary. After the Index the Holy Penitentiary has come into action. No absolution for the unrepentant Ligueurs; no admission to the sacra- ments; exclusion from Catholic organizations. In a word, excommunication awaits all those who refuse to abandon the Royalist group. And these are not empty threats, for some weeks ago the Archbishop of Rouen refused to sit on the same platform with an ex-admiral and prominent Royal- ist during the dedication of a war memorial. The Bishop of Bordeaux has suspended a Gironde priest — former Car- thusian monk and war veteran with many medals — because of his political opinions. Three young Royalists who sold copies of V Action Francaise one Sunday after mass in the square of the Cathedral at Meaux were startled by the sud- den appearance of the Archbishop himself in pomp and vestments, who proceeded to excommunicate the "public sinners." On the surface the Royalists still appear to be holding their own. But there is little doubt that a large per cent of their sympathizers who have no taste for martyrdom will end by giving in to Rome. In the meantime the old ene- mies of I'Action Francaise, anti-clericals and moderate Catholics alike, "boivent du lait," as they say in France. The Poincare-Briand Government also has reasons for satis- faction; the opposition at the Right is temporarily disposed of. And at what price.' Here it may be well to quote Cardinal Gasparri. "Thus — by suppressing I'Action Fran- caise— " states the eminent churchman in an open letter to

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July 20, 1927] The Nation 57 the Archbishop of Aix, "we will obtain the union of all true Catholics. And thanks to this union we may hope if not for the repeal at least for the amendment of the impious laic laws which are working the desolation of France." A "union of all true Catholics" — that is to say, the regrouping of French Catholics in a unified political body which will join forces with the Radicals of the defunct Cartel Left to create a new Bloc d'Union Nationale at the Center in view of the 1928 elections. This union of Catholics and anti-clericals, in a strong political Center, with a platform of mutual concessions and a common home and foreign policy — stabilization and Locarno — carries with it the elimination of the parties of opposition. The Church having disposed of V Action Francaise, the Communists are now the object of a vigorous governmental offensive, launched a few weeks ago by Sarraut, Minister of the Interior, in an address at Constantine. In the meantime, Marc Sagnier and the Catholic demo- crats have come into their own. Their congress in April at Bierville grouped anti-clericals and Catholics, French- men, Germans, and other foreign representatives in the in- terests of international peace. In a recent meeting in Paris, organized by the Committee of Action for the Society of Na- tions and presided over jointly by Professor Aulard, his- torian and anti-clerical, and Monseigneur Julian, Bishop of Arras, an impressive number of priests and laymen cele- brated the ideals of "peace and democracy" in an atmosphere of concord and reconciliation which found its most striking expression in the speech of M. Aulard. "A great force has risen in the world," said this time-honored foe of the Church, "a force for peace, a moral force . . . the Catholic Church." The Church in France has the wind in its sails. Po- litically speaking, its position is more favorable than it has been for years. That it has already attracted a certain intellectual elite cannot be disputed, nor that it continues to draw upon certain categories of the youth of the middle class. At a time when temporal power appears to totter and the old forms of society show signs of disintegration, it is normal that the more conservative elements through fear of revolution or loss of faith in social progress, who often appear to confuse religion and political order, turn to the Church, its organization and traditions, as toward a factor of stability. The Church in France, thanks to the policy of Rome, is today in a situation that should prove fertile for religious propaganda. But until the effects of that propaganda are visible in the mass of French citizens — indifferent as yet if not frankly hostile — there can be no definite or durable "Renaissance" of Catholicism. The Forward Turn By MARY AUSTIN Though ye have lien among the pots, yet shall ye be as the wings of a dove covered with silver, arid her feathers with yellow gold. — Ps. 68:13. EVERY accentuation of a great social movement such as came to a crisis in the granting of votes to women will have its characterizing trait. In this case, the notation of the advanced-woman movement has been sex antagonism. Without visible ancestry, the cry of votes for women, toward the last quarter of the last century, became tinged with acrimony, a feeling of resistance to and rasped resentment against the prevailing attitude of men toward women. No such color can be discovered in the recorded words of the great women leaders, Susan B. Anthony, Frances Willard, Anna Howard Shaw; maiden ladies all, and according to a popular myth of the period, more susceptible than not to such antagonisms. What actually animated these women was a conviction of human injustice in the part allotted to women in the social scheme, a conviction of social inutility. To discover why there sprang up among the hosts of their adherents a sense of being ranked against men as men, of being pitched for battle, we shall have to go back of the leaders of organized propaganda to the obscure beginnings of whatever it was in the deeps of American womankind to make them suffragists at all. Too much has been made of the long rankling injustice of woman's position in the nineteenth century and earlier. Too little of that injustice was intended as such or can be historically traced to male initiative, to have become legiti- mately the source of widespread resentment. What every honest feminist now knows is that they simply seized upon existing injustices, sought them out, and flourished them as so many excuses for entitling them to what they so ardently wanted, a working partnership in social affairs. The true root of nineteenth-century feminism is to be found at the source of the feminine appetite for large-scale social par- ticipation and the new-found conviction of American women that they were abundantly equal to the execution of their growing aspiration. It is to be found in the two hundred years' history of the democratization of women. In the beginning of the American experiment females were ranked as either women or ladies, according to the economic standing of their nearest male relatives. But in the United States, where every man was theoretically as good as every other, every wife found herself morally obliged to become a lady as speedily as possible. And since, under pioneer conditions, she had also to perform all the traditional tasks of womankind, largely with her own hands, the situation called forth and extended to the uttermost all the stored energies of the female line. She was a poor creature indeed who by the middle of the century could not scrub and bake and spin and rear her young and be ready on occasion also to present herself as the lady of the house. This immense stimulation of organizing and execu- tive ability among American women, which had received a sharp fillip in the exigencies of the Civil War, in which women played an unprecedented part, whetted both the ap- petite and the conviction of competence, for which women as a class suddenly demanded satisfaction. And women when they want a thing, far exceed men in the immediacy of their demand and the cogency of their reasons for it. There was a time, between the end of the Civil War and the appearance of a definitely popular suffrage party, when the forward turn might have taken almost any character. That the various springs of advanced movement coalesced in the effort to secure the vote for women was, in a large measure, due to the fact that Americans had not yet con-

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58 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3237 vinced themselves of the futility of political action as a means of realizing some of their dearest aims, so that the vote remained for women, as it had been at the founding for men, a covering symbol of the coveted equality of oppor- tunity. From the literature of that time it is easy to dis- cover that women wanted, and men feared to concede, many things other than the right to participate in general elec- tions and office-holding. Frances Willard wanted so many things that her work as a suffrage leader has been obscured by the struggle for the abolition of strong drink which she precipitated. As one brought up in her train, and taking from her many unconscious lines of direction, I know that prohibition was oidy the most immediate of her partisan- ships, and not the all-saving measure it later became to her disciples. Frances Willard was one of those virgins who, by the clean excision of all personal sex persuasions, were i deased to its larger, socialized aspects in a vision so wide and filled with light that it passed almost entirely beyond the perception of her monumental following. It was not until one was brought into direct contact with the "ad- vanced" sex attitude of pre-war radicalism that one dis- covered it to be mere muddled groping, compared to what Frances Willard had so intuitively known and intelligently clarified about the time when H. G. Wells and G. B. Shaw were occupied with the contents of nursing bottles. Miss Willard not only knew what she was about but she was past mistress of the art of setting other feet in the way to it, even though they knew not at all whither it led. For women who, like our mothers, feared to tread where they longed, she had a little sacred charm — no other than the t^xt I have set at the head of this essay — weighted with all the power of secret longing and the authority of Holy Writ. I recall as though it were yesterday when my mother's turn came to be shown this mystery, after which it was a foregone con- clusion that if my mother's daughter did not cover her own feathers with fine gold, she at least would not lie among the pots. Miss Willard taught her followers by the hundred thou- sand to work for suffrage as a means to the larger ends ; and there is strong presumptive evidence that the quarrel between the radical and conservative wings of the organized suffrage groups, as to which of them really called the turn to victory, will eventually be settled in favor of the mem- bers of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union ; those deeply convinced, unadvertised small-town womei! who, more than any group of women in the world, were able to consolidate the consent of their suns and husbands in favor of votes for women. One wonders, however, if the women who served on sanitary commissions and belonged to the first Prohibition Party would have agreed on suffrage as the main issue had they realized that among their daughters would develop the sex antagonism that sharpened the conflict to its conclu- sions, and among their granddaughters the sex revolt which nas given rise to the exasperated speculation as to whether a».y younger generation was ever so abandoned as this one. But such a sequence was both logical and predictable, for the advanced thought on the related sex problems of that period was not only of incredible boldness, it was of an innocence so incorrigible that its final implications were missed even by its own prophets. No mistake that our intelligentsia has made in inter- preting our immediate American past has contributed so much to their own obfuscation as that of imputing studied hypocrisy to the sex conventions of the period in which our present revolt from those conventions took its rise. Except of course as hypocrisy plays its part in all social conventions, American women, at the period of which I write, in their progressive conquest of the material environment of mar- riage, had mastered every one of its implications except the one which involved them in the ever-recurrent, hopelessly inescapable expectancy of maternity. Marriage, for them, still meant children and the demanding, unremitting mater- nal care unrealizable by the present age of nickel-plated sanitation, prophylactics, and anti-toxins. As for the medi- cal science of that time, it served rather to enlarge the bor- ders of apprehension. Literature of the day makes it plain that women were awake to the pitiful implications of a second child crowding on the nursling years of the first, of the tragic possibilities involved in bearing children to dis- eased or dissolute husbands, of continuing a defective strain the very existence of which was concealed from the young parents under taboos imposed by the terrible innocent igno- rance of the Victorian years, and all this before there wras any admitted discussion of possible relief. So overshadowed was marriage in that age by the certainty of children that those of us who attained to college educations did so too often under the maternal admonition: " But, of course, I shall expect that you won't throw it all away on some man!" And in the use of the word man in that connection lay the determining implication. In those late nineteenth-century decades all the disabili- ties of excessive child-bearing were charged up to the hor- rid appetites of the husband. Not only did the current phrases of birth control and contraceptives not come into use until the women of the pioneer suffrage generations were past being interested in them, but nobody, positively nobody, had yet suggested that women are passionately endowed even as men are ; not good women ! That sexual desire was something to which God in His inscrutable wisdom had sac- rificed all women, was so certainly believed by my mother's generation that it was never even successfully camouflaged by preachers and teachers with blague about the sanctity of motherhood. But my own generation still lacked even a vocabulary by which measures of escape could be intelli- gently discussed. As for the convenient and illuminating terminology of "sex psychology" with which modern youth mitigates its own confusion, everyone knows that it was still some twenty years ahead. And if our fathers were also beginning to hedge the situation in their thoughts, they were, if less innocent than the mothers, no less ignorant and even more disposed to leave the subject as they found it shrouded by its cloud of incommunicability. Out of this situation, shot through with intimations of knowledge without wisdom, women of my generation came to a half-formulated certainty that the chief obstacle to all they most wished for was to be found in the maleness of men. It was a notion that, once entertained, found plenty to feed upon. There was, of course, a measure of masculine opposition to women's advance, which did so take its rise. For men are not only so intrigued with the mystery of sex that they habitually pretend to more mystery than really exists, they are temperamentally disinclined to the readjustments of the personal life called for by an alteration of feminine values. Also, men were already ensconced in all the professional, financial, and political situations which women were begin- ning to covet, unable to yield them easily. All the rhythms

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July 20, 1927] The Nation 59 of politics and trade were set to their tunes. Women who had attempted these things on their own account were dis- posed to interpret the natural resistance of competition that they encountered, in terms of sex prejudice. Equally they failed to attribute to themselves a widespread lack of pro- fessional technique; and they had not yet made the devas- tating discovery that women have little professional talent. By talent I mean the particular aptitudes developed by age-long specialization in particular modes of expression, such as the talent for painting which is just beginning to appear among women, or the talent for musical composition which has not appeared at all. It is probable that this very recent discovery is largely responsible for the retardation of woman's progress which has so visibly set in even among women who honestly believed that a membership in the Woman's Party or the Lucy Stone League and an unremit- ting habit of industry were all they needed to place them equally among men. But fifteen years ago, if such a lack were admitted — and it was not admitted in many quarters — it was invariably attributed to man's deliberate oppres- sion of woman. Did not all our intelligentsia combine to prove it to us out of history, folk-lore, anthropology, and whatever went by the name of science at that time? Is there any sociological thesis which cannot be so proved by the science of the age which produces it? At any rate, if there were, here and there, a suffragist who suspected that the vote might not mean all to women that they anticipated, she kept it to herself, out of loyalty to the cause or out of realization that there was no one prepared to receive it. It is possible that the legend of male oppression flat- tered the male susceptibility, since there was little opposi- tion to it, other than the contention of the antis that if men had never oppressed women it was because women had been so natively inferior as not to need it. Whatever the argu- ment, it all contributed to give to the forward turn of twen- tieth-century feminism the aspect of a duel between the sexes ; woman against man, and the woman's star in the ascendent. Now that the turn is accomplished, and nothing start- lingly political or professional seems to be determined by it, what does stand out in the nature of an achievement is the escape not of one sex from the other but of both from a social complex unwholesomely driven and informed by sex distinctions. Now that political and professional prefer- ment are redistributing themselves along lines that, though not obviously determined by sex tradition, still leave men enormously in the lead, women are beginning to see that the adversary was not the man, not the mate, not even institu- tionalized marriage, but hopelessly uncontrolled multiplica- tion. What she really fought, that advanced woman of forty years ago, was not so much a manifestation of male domi- nance as of sexual overemphasis from which there is no true escape except as the man and woman escape together. For Bernard Shaw was right inasmuch as he saw and never failed to point out that woman, even when she seemed to flee at her most furious, was, as much as ever man was, entangled in the moral futilities, the spiritual ecstasies, the utilitarianism, the humiliations of our common sexual life. In this, her latest flight, symbolized but not perfected by political suffrage, she has drawn after her all society, with her wings only slightly silvered by achievement, but still definitely away from the company of the pots and the ser- vice of the sacred kitchen stove under which obscured sym- bol man once saw in her the perpetual breast, the all-sus- taining mother. This, I take it, is the meaning of the for- ward turn of my generation, not any particular quality of achievement but a new front set squarely to a new progress in which the play of the reproductive function will be re- duced to more practicable proportions. Practicable, I mean, in the sense of being better adapted to a higher type of social realization. For what could we have done with a society bound blindly upon the wheel of its own increase? All that votes for women seems to mean at the moment is a marker for the turn at which the redistribution of sex emphasis begins. As one who fought the good fight, I shall be satisfied if only the next turn is not called by men in revolt against the too exigent femininity of women. Compulsion at DePauw By ELLIS COWLING T seemed that everything was ready for their coming; the freshmen had after weeks of drill learned almost perfectly the manual of arms, the sophomores seemed thor- oughly imbued with "the spirit of the bayonet" and versatile in the fine art of thrust and jab. That afternoon was to come the big parade and inspection, and there were whisper- ings that DePauw University might again win the star of "distinguished college" among the Reserve Officers' Training Corps units of its area. But the president had been out of town and the assistant had his wires crossed in planning chapel for that day. When the austere colonels from the United States army were seated on the front seats of the chapel platform and the students had taken their places, everyone expected to hear a message from one of the guests telling of the pressing need for "preparedness, a better na- tional defense, an adequate preparation for a national emer- gency"— not that any one wanted war, of course. Instead of this, two students were called upon to give a report of the Methodist Student Conference recently held in Louis- ville. Evidently they had heard something of militarism, for in no uncertain terms they condemned the system repre- sented by the "honored guests" of the occasion. The students were surprised, shocked, amused, indig- nant, depending on individual temperament, and a few left chapel more sober-faced than usual. The events of the half hour had started some questioning in their minds as to whether DePauw, a supposedly Christian institution at Greencastle, Indiana, was justified in making two years' preparation for wholesale killing a prerequisite tor gradua- tion. That questioning crystallized into opinions, and opin- ions into expressed convictions. Little groups met here and there, on the way to class, at the dinner table, in their rooms, asking if there was no way to rid DePauw ot* militarism. Two years passed and another president replaced the one who went to China as a Methodist Bishop. The Metho- dist General Conference had in the meantime passed a reso- lution which electrified Christian America: War is the supreme enemy of mankind. Its futility is beyond question. Its continuance is the suicide of civiliza- tion. We are determined to outlaw the whole war system. . . . Our nation and our church can do now what it may never be able to do again. We set ourselves to create the will to peace. . . . Through its educational program our church must mold the present youth of all nations into a peace-loving generation. Things came to a head in the autumn of 1925. Those

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60 The Nation [Vol. 125. No. 3237 who felt the deep wrong of the situation met in order to plan some definite action under the leadership of a senior who had been a soldier, who knew the hell of the battle-field, whose eyes were a bit haunting as he remembered the anguish of it. A resolution was prepared and submitted to the president pleading in the name of Christianity, of the Methodist church, of the principles of democracy, and of humanity that DePauw no longer force her sons to be a part of the war system. A petition, bearing the names of scores of students, which asked that the resolution be made a policy, was also taken to the administrative office. But those who took these documents to the president met unex- pected rebuff. They were informed of their inexperience, their shortness of life and immaturity of judgment as com- pared with those who had lived a little longer. They were told that nothing calling for any such action had been meant by the resolution passed by the General Conference. Since the president had helped formulate it, he knew what had been meant. The president then called on an influential faculty com- mittee, composed of seven members including an R. 0. T. C. officer, to investigate the military problem and make a rec- ommendation. The committee recommended that military training be made op+ional. The president rejected the re- port of the committee and hand-picked another whose mem- bers were more favorable to the situation as it stood. This committee recommended that the compulsory feature be retained. It was. One concession, however, was with some difficulty se- cured. It was granted that "conscientious objectors" might be excused from taking military training provided they took double the usual amount of work required in physical educa- tion. No academic credit toward graduation was given for this extra work, which meant that the student must also take four extra academic hours in order to secure the neces- sary one hundred and twenty for graduation. Academic credit had always been given for military training. Then almost immediately the number of hours of military train- ing required for graduation was increased by one half. The student leaders smiled a bit grimly. During the college year 1926-27 the Educational Policy Committee of the Faculty, composed of Vice-President Long- den, Deans Post and Sweet, and eight professors, voted four times to request the president to bring to the faculty a report asking for the elimination of the compulsory feature of drill. The final vote of this committee was 8 to 2, with one not voting. At last, on May 10, 1927, the faculty was allowed to vote on the issue, and out of a total of sixty vot- ing members the vote stood 19 to 12 to make military train- ing optional. The charter of the University states that the faculty shall determine all requirements for graduation, so everybody supposed that this vote settled the matter. Presi- dent Murlin himself wrote letters to a number of people, including one to Professor George A. Coe, chairman of the Committee on Militarism in Education, in which he said: "At the meeting of our faculty on May 10 it was voted that military drill, hitherto required of all freshmen and sophomores, be made optional for next year. This may be released if you so desire." But supporters of the military were not downed. They appealed to President Murlin again, and he chose to over- rule the faculty decision and call for a new vote — a secret vote — on the part of the faculty by mail. The result of this secret mail ballot was 28 to 22 in favor of optional instead of compulsory military training. Three army officers voted in this second count, who had not voted in the open meeting. Having failed now with the Faculty Committee on Edu- cational Policy, which had voted four times against compul- sion, and having failed with the faculty as a whole, which had voted twice, the president bethought him that perhaps the students would be more pliable. He called a special meeting of this year's and next year's student councils and asked them to vote on the question. Of the twenty-seven members but fourteen were present. The vote was 8 to 6 in favor of required military training. Of the eight votes in favor, four were cast by members of Scabbard and Blade, an honorary military fraternity, and two by girl sponsors of military companies, leaving but two who might be ex- pected to be unbiased. Then the advanced military student officers, while the freshmen and sophomores were lined up in military forma- tion, passed petitions through the ranks asking the faculty and the president to make military drill required for next year. To complete the petitions, they were later passed around by a thorough canvass of the campus. A very large per cent of the men in the sophomore, freshmen, and junior classes, the only ones approached, signed the petitions. Some students signed them jokingly, not believing they had any significance. Others signed because they feared an unfavorable effect on their grades, others wished incom- ing freshmen to get the same dose of military compulsion which had been theirs, and some, of course, signed sincerely. But whatever the reasons for this student petition, it gave the president the chance he had been seeking to ask for another secret faculty vote. This time he requested the faculty to allow him permission to continue the compulsory requirement for the next college year. President Murlin's resignation, already accepted, takes effect next June. Many of the faculty refused to vote on this military question ad infinitum, but thirty-four members voted, and the vote was 28 to 6 for letting the president continue compulsory drill. There remains, however, this question: Does military training have to rest not only on the compulsion of students but on the compulsion of a university faculty as well? A Bit of Russian Patchwork By KARL BORDERS MOTHER VOLGA was at the highest tide in fifty years when we went aboard the steamer Kalenin at Nizhni Novgorod. The buildings of the famous fair across the river were half submerged. Boats of all descriptions were plying the lower streets where a few days before droshkies rumbled over the cobbles. Swarms of stevedores came and went like ants, rustling bags and boxes onto the crowded lower deck. Between their ranks heavily laden peasants crowded their way aboard, bearing half the family posses- sions on their backs — huge baskets, chickens, goats, babies, and teapots. You will be told that classes on the trains and boats have been eliminated, that it is a question of whether you wish to pay for more or less elegant and comfortable quar- ters. As for us, we went second. The cabin was clean and comfortable enough and had the advantage of privacy. There were no sheets or blankets because a party of visiting

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July 20, 1927] The Nation 61 Americans, traveling first, had been given the entire ship's stock. But we had come down third class from Moscow and, after even one night on a shelf, any kind of bed with springs is a blessing. As for blankets, we were prepared, for no one who has once traveled in Russia will be caught a second time without his blanket and his tea pot. But if there are still classes in the transportation sys- tem, the classes often get most strangely mixed. The med- ley of forms and faces in the corridor and the dining-room began to take on individuality as we picked our way among the tree-tops down the swollen stream. Most striking and most garrulous was the old Bolshevik, a dark man with flashing eye and enormous mustaches. His revolutionary activities dated from the time of the Japanese war, as he was proud to relate. He had revolted from the inhuman discipline of the army, deserted and fled in a box car through Siberia. After that the usual story of prisons, secret activities, war, revolution. But behold him now, a man of importance, a member of the Soviet of the City of Kazan, bristling with documents — a member of the ruling party, off to a sanatorium in the Caucasus, there to drink the famous Narzan waters and even to bathe in their miraculous flow. His were stories of fighting on many fronts, of famine and of wolves, stories to thrill the heart of the romancer and the movie-scenario writer. Once in the forests of the North he and his two companions, bearing a message of im- portance, were waylaid by a large band of bandits. His comrades mounted the horses and made for safety with the papers, leaving him to cope with the bandits and to guard the remainder of their belongings in the sleigh. He quickly dropped three of his assailants with his rifle. The others made off. Then out of the twilight came worse than bandits — wolves. Again his trusty rifle, first as a long range weapon, then as a club. Toward morning, he struggled in to the nearest cabin, half dead. With this and many like stories, he regaled us. The conversation turned to priests and religion. At this a quiet young Jew, while protesting his freedom from reli- gious taint, rose to the defense of his people and set our merchant right on some of his religious information. "Well, not all priests are bad," remarked a young offi- cial from the Ukraine. "I remember one very gratefully. Our regiment had cleared a certain village of Wrangel's Whites and were billeted for the night in the homes of the villagers. I lodged with the village priest. I was tired and sleepy but I am always fond of an argument, and finding the old man an interesting conversationalist, we talked and argued religion until long past midnight. Then I lay down and slept like one dead. When I awoke the first sight that greeted me made my heart come into my mouth. The room was full of White officers gathered around the samovar. Our regiment had been driven out by an unexpected force of Whites in the early morning. I felt certain that the end was near. Then I noticed that my uniform was gone and that in its place was a suit of ordinary clothing. But before I had time to speak, the old priest noticed that I was awake and much to my surprise introduced me as his son. I fell into the part, meantime remaining in bed and waiting for the priest to make the next move. The officers wished to know why I was not in the White army, to which the priest replied that he had another son in that army, which was true, and that I had also been in the army but was now unwell and had been furloughed home. Any suspicions the officers may have had were stilled and I lay back on the pillow much relieved in mind. That same day the Whites moved on, my regiment reoccupied the town, and I joined my surprised companions who had thought me dead or taken prisoner. When I thanked the old priest for the kindness he had done me, he replied simply that he, too, had a son. I learned from the villagers that he was an honest man and devoted to the welfare of his people." Besides the merchant Astrakhan-bound, there were oth- ers who drifted in and out of the scene. One man had shifting eyes ; his only contribution to the conversation was a comment on river travel in the good old days when it was difficult to get a cabin and when there was hilarious life in the dining-rooms. He told, too, of how he had once won fifty thousand rubles at a gaming table in Moscow. The other was a well-fed merchant, also of the old school, who with little change of costume might have stepped out of the times of Boris Godunov. With his beard and blouse and the good leather belt that accentuated his girth, he was still a romantic figure. Formerly a wealthy grain dealer, he was now employed by the government grain trust and was buy- ing grain in the rich lower Volga valley. He was openly religious. He sipped tea and opened a bottle of wine with a white-haired old priest and his son in the dining-room, and when we talked in private, made light of any hope on the future of Russia under the present regime. The impression of Russia one gets from such experi- ences is one of scrambled incongruity. These' few short years since the Great War have mixed centuries, periods, and ages so unceremoniously that the effect is often as bewildering as a passage from Alice in Wonderland. Priests and Communists, camels and tractors, peasants and princes travel side by side along the same road. One interesting and reassuring fact emerges. Russia is growing reminis- cent of her revolution. The time has not yet come when Reds and Whites arrange joint reunions, and no longer than a month ago twenty men were tried and three condemned to death for murder and rapine committed during that same civil war here in our county in the North Caucasus. Yet when men begin to pluck tales of kindness out of the recol- lections of horror and hate, and tinge their memories with humor, it is a sign that the wounds of war are healing. Through all these strange and apparently irreconcilable contradictions you will find purpose and order. Over all the Soviet Government rules supreme with little visible effort, binding this colorful moving mass into a new organism. In the Driftway COMMENCEMENT time has passed again and the Drifter is reminded of the strangest and most interest- ing commencement exercises he ever saw. They took place at the Utica Normal and Industrial Institute, located in the southern section — the black belt — of Mississippi. The school has made itself the center of a farming section which is becoming more prosperous every year. And these farmers, parents of students in the school or neighbors who had been helped by visiting teachers, composed the audience for the program of the day. In a valley which formed almost a perfect amphitheater was the waiting audience. There was a small platform in the center, on which stood seventy- three young people ready to receive their certificates. Close

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62 The Nation [Vol. 125. Xo. 3237 by were two pens of cattle, Holstein and Jersey; a string of Durock Jersey pigs; a neatly constructed henhouse and brooding outfit filled with chickens from one-day-old chicks to full-grown cocks and hens; an improvised garage and workshop, a carpenter shop, kitchen, laundry, and so on through the twenty-six industries taught at the school. ->:- * *- •* INSTEAD of a salutatory, full of noble and courageous promises, the audience heard a work bell, and at the sound each of the graduates began to work at one or an- other of the industries. Many of those who were to re- ceive diplomas were working at their machines in overalls. Some kneaded dough, some prepared a meal, others worked in a miniature truck garden with vegetables actually grow- ing in it. An anvil rang, shoes were put on horses, a Ford car running across the stage had a mysterious blow- tut; swiftly it was repaired by the students in the auto- mechanics department. A laundry machine washed clothes which students later ironed, and, most miraculous of all, in the sewing division a girl measured another girl for a dress, made it, and put it on the girl in twenty-six minutes, and for all the Drifter could tell to the contrary it was a perfect fit. * * * * * ABOVE the ring of the anvil, the hum of the machinery, and the voices of those who explained their demon- strations as they went on, another farm demonstration was being conducted. It consisted of a Ford tractor draw- ing a disk plow and circling the entire audience at fifteen miles an hour, turning up the land seven inches leep. This tractor was followed by a haryester tractor pulling two sets of cultivators, one behind the other. The Drifter was not the only one who watched these activities with absorp- tion. The farmer audience sat enthralled by the proceed- ings. Their sons and daughters were performing opera- tions which indicated that they had actually learned some- thing while at school, and, more than that, these were operations which touched their parents as closely as the children. For once the school was not an island in the midst of life. It was life itself. The Drifter Contributors to This Issue Mauritz Hallgren is on the Washington staff of the International News Service. Ida Treat is co-author with Ruth Sawtell of "Primitive Hearths in the Pyrenees," just published. Mary Austin, poet, novelist, and critic, has been a leader of American women for two decades. Ellis Cowling is a graduate of DePauw University. Karl Borders is with the Russian Reconstruction Farms. Alfred Kreymborg is the author of "Puppet Plays." W. E. Woodward is the author of "Bunk" and "Lottery." Norman Thomas is a director of the League for Indus- trial Democracy. Mary Ross is an associate editor of the Surrey. William L. Langer is professor of history at Clark University. Benton MACKAYE is a forester, regional planner, and social dreamer. Keith Hutchison, who contributed the review of "Ameri- can Labor and American Politics" to The Xotiou of July 13, is no longer associated, as was there stated. with the British Library of Information in New York. Correspondence Fit to Print To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: Touching the cases of Upton Sinclair and "Pure Bos- ton," and of David Gordon and purer New York, one may recall the encouragement extended to a young hopeful from the prov- inces by Church and State of Old England. Shakespeare was lucky enough to have had his first authentic work certified as fit for publication by the Archbishop of Canterbury, who, by the way, happened to have been Francis Bacon's first tutor. The imprimatur, from the third man in the state and the sec- ond in the church, was impressed upon no less an effort than "Venus and Adonis": Reverting to Boston, however, may I cull for the Athens of America. Cradle of Liberty, the last line of Sonnet xciv, which last line, peculiarly enough, is also to be found verbatim in an anonymous Elizabethan drama, "Richard III" — "Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds." New York, June 27 Marius Charles Underwood Did Mrs. Stowe Make Shoes? To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: My source of information as to Harriet Beecher Stcwe doing shoemaking and tailoring for her family was the biography of Mrs. Stowe by Martha Foote Crowe and conversa- tions with Mrs. Crowe. It is difficult to enter into a controversy with a man living in the year 1927 who disputes allegations about his mother and her craftsmanship in the year 1847 when he was a babe in arms or unborn. Mr. Stowe believes he is a veracious man. He wishes accuracy of statement regarding his mother. Let him refresh his recollections and write a memoir of how his beloved and lovable mother kept house in Walnut Hills, Cincinnati, whether she called in dressmakers to make her dresses, whether the family footwear was factory-made or done by a journeyman shoemaker, and what was the monthly stipend of her husband, a professor of Biblical exegesis in a struggling Western theological seminary. "I was married to a man rich in Greek and Hebrew, Latin and Arabic, and alas ! in nothing else," she wrote to Mrs. Follen in London. (I am quoting from Constance Mayfield Rourke's "Trumpets of Jubilee.") "I had married into poverty and with- out a dowry . . . my husband had only a large library of books and a great deal of learning." On arrival of the Stowe family in Brunswick, Maine, Mrs. Rourke informs the world in her just published book, "Mrs. Stowe was obliged to begin the work of the pioneer all over again. She papered the walls of her house, and painted and varnished the floors and the woodwork, and laid carpets and made barrel-chairs and recovered sofas and decorated them with gimp, and rehabilitated pillows and bolsters and bedspreads. ... In the midst of her labors came a low- spirited letter from Professor Stowe, announcing that he was sick in bed, inquiring what his wife would do in case she was left a widow, as she almost certainly would be, warning her that she would have a mere pittance to live on, and so must not be extravagant. . . . The following spring a clergyman from Harpswell happened to be loitering near the wharf late one afternoon, and saw the entire Stowe family seated on casks, apparently in silence. Tired and worn, unkempt and even dilapidated, with holes as large as silver dollars showing at the heels of her low shoes, Mrs. Stowe made an oblivious center of the group." With each increase of evidence we are led to believe that in her material poverty Harriet Beecher Stowe was a good deal of a working-woman, having not merely mother wit but deft manual cleverness. Her memory does not require the guardian- ship of a ninety-year-old son who considers it impoi'tant that

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July 20, 1927] The Nation 63 she must not be recorded as having made shoes, of a sort, for her family, and tailored, in a way, for her husband. Chicago, June 15 Carl Sandbuug Sissified Sex Literature To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: Your editorial comment upon my letter in Books gets somewhat off the track. I am grateful for the illustrations drawn from the past, however. They help me to show, even more clearly, what I was trying to express in my criticism of "important" novels. I am not such a fool as to find fault with a writer for using the facts and follies of humanity as the themes of a novel. I am perfectly well aware of the novels of Fielding, Smollett, Thackeray, and George Eliot. I have read the"Morte d'Arthur." I have also read the other books of those periods. Roger Ascham, who has supplied you with an excellent title to your remarks, I would remind you was living in a period of transi- tion, as we are now. He is as good a witness for the sixteenth century as Bishop Manning is for the present day. He was naturally prejudiced against the work of Sir Thomas Mallory by his intense absorption in Latin and Greek ancient literature. He was the tutor of aristocratic young ladies, and he lived in an age ill-fitted to perceive the significance of the legends of King Arthur's court. But all this, you will pardon me for pointing out, is imma- terial to my original contention. It is the spirit behind the modern sexy novel which I am after. It is the preoccupation with ordure for the sake of rolling in the ordure which I am trying to fetch out from behind all these fine words and phrases about "Importance" and "Art." I did not labor the point in my letter very heavily, although two of my correspondents have seized upon it for their own uses. It is this: that literature is becoming emasculated by being writ- ten mainly for women and largely by women. The majority of men in this country, having been co-educated by women-teachers, are unaware of this directly, but become vaguely impressed that something is the matter later in life. I call it the sissification of literature and life. The point of view of the modern "impor- tant" novel like "Ulysses" is feminine in its preoccupation with the nastiness of sex. You allude to the older novelists as deal- ing with sex. Of course they did. They used it in its place. They did not make it the god in the temple. They treated it as I treat a table when I buy it or make it. They accepted it as a useful thing to have in the house, to take or leave alone, to use and forget. The modern "important" novelist seems to regard sex as the modern woman regards antique furniture — not to use but to worship, to discuss, and to go mad about. You mention Flaubert, Balzac, and Stendhal. In my opin- ion the last named does not come in the class of the other two. In any case he is a rather special writer who has something to offer very shrewd and interesting. That, however, is the mod- ern way. Just now Stendhal with his highly seasoned "The Red and the Black" is being discussed as "important," when any mate or engineer of my day at sea really knew more about seduction than Stendhal ever heard of. Some of his technique- is distinctly fustian. "Love," you say, "is most intense when it meets an impedi- ment." Very likely; but who was talking about love? There is precious little love in the modern "important" novels. If the novelist thinks he is going to get away with frustrated love affairs he is mistaken. The young women are out for the whole fetid business, and you can ask any bookseller if you don't believe me. Only the other day an enthusiastic lady told me that the love of the young woman in "The Sun Also Rises" was a beautiful unsullied emotion. Either I am blind or she is crazy. Katherine Mayo's splendid book about India of today tells us how, when a Hindu is to be "purified" from contact and mutilation by a stranger, he has his eyes, ears, nose and mouth filled by a Brahmin with soft cow-dung. There seems to me to be a parable in this. We have a few potential Hindus right here in our intellectual and literary midst. All those allusions in your editorial to the great books of the past are red herrings across the trail. I happen to have read those authors. They were huge successes in their day, many of them. But are you trying to suggest that the young ladies who waited for the next chapters of "Vanity Fair" or "Barchester Towers" were ani- mated by the same spirit as those who, after one dizzy sniff at "The Sun Also Rises," rush off to buy a copy of the book for themselves? Are you trying to kid me into agreeing that Homer's poem was conceived in the same spirit as Joyce's "Ulysses"? I will make a prediction — that the tide is on the turn even now, that the trend of accepted fiction will shortly be away from the pornographic, to call things by their right names. Don't misunderstand me, however. Dirt is all right, in the right place, and so long as you don't try to call it art. I like a dirty story as well as the next man. I can tell better ones than the average American, I find. But I don't like to kid myself that it is "important." It isn't. I can do without it. I prefer to leave such stuff unread. It is not necessary to write it. It should be handed on by word of mouth, like the ancient tales of the Druid days. The fashionable craze for highly seasoned sex stories will pass and we shall have something else. Better, I hope. It couldn't be worse. Westport, Conn., July U William McFee To the Editor of The Nation : Sir: It is surprising to read that "the 'important' novels of every age have exhibited a preoccupation with adultery." It was not so with Sir Walter Scott, who was for many years the world's favorite novelist. Adultery was not the main theme in the works of Thackeray, Dickens, George Eliot or Victor Hugo. Many others might be named. A modern playwright was asked why he never chose a vir- tuous woman for the heroine of any of his dramas. He answered that he could not make a virtuous woman interesting. Shake- speare could, and did. Dorchester, Mass., July 5 Alice Stone BLACKWELL Who Helped the British Miners? To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: In your issue of March 10 you print a letter giving figures of the different amounts contributed for the relief of the British miners by various bodies. We should feel greatly indebted to you if you would, for the sake of justice to the continental workers, add these figures to those given by your correspondent: Amounts Received in Aid of the British Mine Workers uy the International, Federation of Trade Unions Countries ! ti ceived by the 1. I<\ T. (;. Dutch Guilders Belgium 13,483.80 ( '.mail. Denmark 149,100.90 Germany 421,023.15 Prance Holland 216,025.00 Austria 96,978.19 Sweden 70,8! Switzerland 56,818.71 Spain 2,980.34 Czecho-Slovakia Ki.7it7.ss Australia United states New Zealand British India Mexico Norway South Africa Miscellaneous 5.3r<n.os 1). G. 1,043,464.95 = $417,386 Received by Miners' 1 nterna tional Dutch Guilders 56,698.26 I lireet to British T, U. C. Dutch Guilders 13.043.4fi L50.0 8,366.50 3,136.95 1 ,287.90 45,600.00 13,200.00 7 1-1.00 D. G. 435.577.37 = $174,231 1,228.70 327.57 6!), 379. 80 7,860.00 7,392.20 38,146.50 6,000.00 1. 211. 00 D. G. 131,545.77 - $52,618

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64 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3237 We should like to call special attention to the large amount which, relatively speaking, was contributed by Holland, which is a small country, with only some 200,000 trade unionists affili- ated with us. Holland's trade-union members affiliated with us gave 118.3 Dutch cents per capita; Denmark's 67.8; Switzer- land's 39; Sweden's IX; and Czecho-Slovakia, Germany, Bel- gium, Austria, Palestine, Spain, Rumania, Canada, Hungary, Poland, France, and Latvia followed. Amsterdam, April 29 Joh. Sassenbach, International Federation of Trade Unions Mr. Jonas Wants to Yelp To the Editor of The Nation : Sir: I want to add my "yelp" to the chorus of the "blood- hounds" who demand the extermination of the "Moscow murderers." Delenda est! The Moscow so-called communists, who have disgraced communism, have indeed "shown themselves to be the mad dogs of the world." Their extermination is indeed a neces- sity for the sake of the very cause which they have brought into disrepute. Here, in this capitalistic hell, Sacco and Vanzetti have been struggling for seven long years for their lives and will finally go free. But how long would two revolutionists of their type have lasted in Russia? Not seven weeks. Not even seven days. Here freedom is in chains, but there it is dead. Here justice is violated, but there its very existence is denied. West Orange, New Jersey, July J, BARUKH JONAS In an Algerian Looking Glass To the Editor of The Nation : Sir: Washington preaches naval disarmament, but main- tains the most formidable Meet on earth; Washington preaches world peace, but adheres neither to the League of Nations nor to the Hague Court, and rejects every arbitration proposal in advance. London does about the same thing, with a little more decency and formality. In general, the two great Anglo-Saxon Powers, without any appearance of worrying about the wild contradictions they subscribe to, are giving a fine demonstration of their yearnings for hegemony and of the complete inanity of the disarmament propositions which emanate from them. This is quoted from an editorial entitled The Polic the United States in this morning's Depeche Algerienne, oc- casioned by a cablegram reporting President Coolidge's speech at the United Press dinner. French writers insist upon brack- eting the two cases of Mexico and Nicaragua. My ar. was called years ago, when a law clerk in southern Go- to the fact that Mexican law is based rather on the Code Napoleon than on American jurisprudence. For this reason Mexican legislation and procedure have always been al us, though better understood by Europeans than ours, the World War much European legislation looking to the de- mocratization of land holding and the curtailment of foreign ownership has been based upon them. To a Frenchman the Mexican attempts along these lines since 1917 are merely symp- toms of enlightenment, in accordance with the s] times. The American attitude seems backward and imperialistic. Our annexation of Texas seems fairly remote to an Ameri- can, but the period 183G-1S4S is not so long ago to a Europe:'.::. accustomed to more historical background. From our spoliation of Mexico to our more re cut policy of "godfal hood" (as the Spanish-speaking populations call it — padri in the Caribbean is to him only a step. Nicaragua r.nd Mexico are in the foreground. Between this and the historical back- ground, as a European views it, lie the angling tor the Panama Canal Zone, a Spanish war which netted us Porto Rio special rights in Cuba, and other military interventions in Haiti and Santo Domingo. I attended a series of lectures in Paris last December, in one of which the French geographer Brunhes made the remark: "The Americans accuse us of imperialism. As a matter of fact they have laid their hands on more terri- tory during the past thirty years than any other Power on earth." The obvious American retort to Professor Brunhes would be that France drew two million men out of Africa alone between 1914 and 1918 to help decide a European squabble, and that we have never attempted to use Latin-American man- power for our own ends. Frenchmen to whom I have sug- gested this fact have made no answer at all. They might justly remark, however, that if we have not made this draft it is perhaps because we have never needed to. Private Ameri- can business makes plenty of money out of cheap labor and cheap lands bordering on the warm water south of us. Algiers, Africa, May 27 M. M. KNIGHT Private School Teachers To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: I have been teaching in private school for six years, and have often compared notes with public-school teachers. I found their conditions far superior to those of the system in which I worked. Private schools employ as many foreigners, beginners, and non-professional people as they can get. Con- tracts are seldom given, leaving the authorities free to dismiss the teacher when zero weather comes. Salaries are lower than in the public schools, equipment not nearly so good, but they do have a super-abundance of unbearable potentates. My next move will be into the public schools. I am glad The Nation has taken up the cause of the teachers, and I hope soon to see an organization of teachers as strong as that of the bricklayers. Chicago, May 24 J. M. Hayes Admiral Bristol, LL.D. To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: Your hearty appraisal of the services of Rear Ad- miral Mark L. Bristol, recently named Commander-in-chief of the Asiatic fleet, calls for the supplementary information that at the 1927 commencement exercises of Oberlin College, at which President Henry Churchill King presided for the last time be- fore his retirement, Admiral Bristol was awarded the honorary degree of LL.D. by the man who worked with him in the Near East in the years following the war. Oberlin, Ohio, July 5 ERNEST H. FlSK Pope Manuscripts To the Editor of The Nation : Sir: Professor A. E. Case of Yale University and I are at- tempting a critical edition of Pope's "Essay on Man" and of his "Moral Essays." We are naturally anxious to discover all relevant extant manuscript material, whether in Pope's hand- writing or in that of Jonathan Richardson, Jr., and also copies of the poems annotated by either of these men. Thus far we have discovered two manuscripts of the "Essay on Man," one in the Morgan Library. New York, and one in the possession of Mr. Jerome Kern; the annotated copy mentioned in the Grolier Club catalogue (1911); and a small fragment in the British Museum. We have also found certain manuscripts of the "Moral Essay.-" and certain copies of them annotated by Pope in the Henry E. Huntington Library. Should any reader know of other manuscripts or annotated copies — and there must be some — we should be grateful if they would communicate with us. We are also anxious to trace the original drawing in red chalk made by Pope for the frontispiece to the "Essay on Man," which was once owned by William Mason. Evansti n, Illinois, July 10 F. B. Kaye

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Books Epitaphs By ALFRED KREYMBORG DERBY AND CROWN This man dreamed beneath a derby ere the dream turned him down and laid him near the man he envied — wearing a grassgrown crown. THEOLOGY Whether he was Gentile or just an outcast Jew (the priest who prayed to Heaven to save your soul for you) no psalm can help now your body below nor sermon determine what the earth should do. CAKE ON SUNDAY Here are some who died in battle: Bring on Fame and let it prattle the pretty speeches children make when you give each one a cake on a Sunday 'stead of bread : Fame is Sunday for the dead. That "Filthy Little Atheist" Thomas Paine, Prophet and Martyr of Democracy. By Mary Agnes Best. Harcourt, Brace and Company. $3.50. HP HE popular tendency to remember complex personalities by *■ labels which are usually misleading was never better illus- trated than it is in the case of Thomas Paine. Ask any well- dressed, respectable American citizen who Thomas Paine was, and the chances are about ten to one that he will inform you that Paine was a celebrated atheist who lived around Washing- ton's time. If he has a puritanical streak he will probably use the term "filthy little atheist" — a characterization which origi- nated in Roosevelt's indignation at Paine and all his works. Miss Best, in her admirable life of Paine, does much to put him in his proper historical setting, and to show what manner of man he was. In the first place, he was not filthy. There is abundant evidence to prove that he was cleanly, abstemious, and possessed of good manners. He was a friend of Washington, of Jefferson, of Benjamin Franklin, of James Madison — and it is hardly likely that these befrilled and silky gentlemen would have been on terms of social amity with a "filthy" person. He was not "little" physically; he was even larger than Roosevelt himself. But perhaps our distinguished Rough Rider meant to imply that Paine was "little" mentally. If so, he was still in error, for Paine wrote books of such breadth and power that they sent a wave of seismic convulsions through the social struc- ture of the eighteenth century. One may not agree with Paine, but one cannot say truthfully that the effect of his writings was anything less than titanic. Paine was a Deist, and on the very first page of his "Age of Reason" he says that he believes in God, and hopes for a life after death. The "Age of Reason" was actually written to com- bat the growing spirit of atheism that followed the French Revolution. That it has become, after all, a symbol, in the minds of the unknowing, of Paine's atheism and a proof of his profligacy, is one of those curiously discouraging facts that cause one to think less of the mentality of the human race. Paine's life, and the outlines of his bold conceptions, are well described by Miss Best. She writes vividly, almost too breathlessly. Her knowledge of her subject, and of her period, is evidently large and penetrating. She knows a great deal; and her fault — if it be a fault — is in trying to tell it all at once, like a fast talker. She has a novelist's sense of drama; and this quality fits in well with a life as colorful and as astonishing as that of Paine. He began his career as a corset-maker — strangest of trades for a man who was destined to set the world in contro- versy. His acquaintance with Franklin began, apparently, when Paine brought some invention to the notice of our great philoso- pher. Franklin at that time represented some of the Ameri- can colonies in London. Paine came to America in 1774, with letters of introduction from Franklin, and he was soon plunged head and ears in the American Revolution. He wrote "Common Sense" in the spring of 1776. A slender pamphlet of a few pages — one may read it in an hour — it had a larger sale in proportion to the American population of that day than any book has ever had since. This best-seller gave Paine a world- wide celebrity. He was an idealist, a doctrinaire of the first water, a rebel by instinct. But his mind had a clarity and a directness that does not ordinarily go hand in hand with high ideals. He was a thinker of power and perception. For instance, he never admitted that taxation by England was the primary cause of the American Revolution; and this at a time when it was po- litical heresy to say anything else. His idea was that the colonies were grown-up children; that they wanted a govern- ment of their own, regardless of what the English intended to do about taxation — and in this he was entirely correct. Paine went as straight toward revolutions as a moth flies toward a light. If he had lived in our generation we would have heard of him in Russia among the Bolsheviks, writing this and declaiming that, risking his head, and passing through extraordinary adventures. He went to France during the French Revolution and, although he could not speak French, was elected a member of the revolutionary assembly. Next we hear of him in the Luxembourg prison, in imminent danger of the guillotine. But he escaped finally, returned to America, and died peacefully in his bed. The curious adventures and flights that filled his stirring career pursued him beyond the grave. William Cobbett, the noted English publicist, became a great admirer of Paine's work and decided to carry his body to England for a grand funeral. So Cobbett proceeded to America, had Paine's body dug up suri-eptitiously, and transported it to England. Before the funeral, which Cobbett promised to embellish with "twenty wagonloads of flowers," Cobbett himself died. The body of Paine was left to Cobbett's son, who became forthwith a bank- rupt, and the body was seized by a creditor who wanted to sell it at auction. Soon afterward the creditor fell into bankruptcy in his turn — financial misfortune seems to have been rather common — and the body of Paine passed into unknown hands. Nobody knows where it is today, though it has been long rumored that Paine's skull adorns a bookshelf in the study of a Church of England clergyman. W. E. Woodward

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66 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3237 The Story of Intolerance The Story of Civil Liberty in the United States. By Leon Whipple. The Vanguard Press. .r)0 cents. Professional Patriots. Edited by Norman Hapgood. Albert and Charles Boni. $1.50. MR. WHIPPLE'S fine piece of historical research proves that civil liberties in the United States aren't what they used to be and never were. There is no golden age of freedom from which we Americans have conspicuously fallen. Whether or not we are worse than our fathers, we are not so utterly differ- ent but that Mr. Hapgood's sorry troop of Professional Pa- triots can find in American history plenty of precedent for the substance if not the form of their intolerance. Various generations of Americans have mobbed Abolition- ists, fiendishly lynched Negroes, harried Chinese and other aliens, established a postal censorship, deported men for politi- cal opinion, denied to citizens the right of habeas corpus, and nullified for striking workers the "constitutional" rights of assemblage, free speech, and a free press. What has not been done under cover of law has been done by the mob. To the observer from another land, or at any rate from another planet, the astounding fact would be not that such things could happen when passions ran high but that they could happen in almost every case without violating the bills of rights in the federal and many State constitutions which would seem to a layman specifically to guarantee the liberties thus flouted. (But, the visitor might conclude, for the lawyers thus to square our legal practice with our professions of freedom is after all a com- paratively simple task in a country where our preachers have squared our every-day ethics with the teachings of Jesus to the general satisfaction of their hearers.) In this long and melancholy case record no man or group of men appears as the uncompromising defender of liberty in time of power as in time of weakness. In 1855, remarks Mr. Whipple, "we have the interesting paradox of the native Prot- estant Know-Nothing Party mobbing Irish Catholics in the East and in California Irish Know-Nothings mobbing the 'heathen Chinee' for stealing their country and their jobs." The poor have been the special victims of their own weakness, yet mobs of poor men in the name of a dreadful perversion of de- mocracy have been among the worst and most characteristically American offenders not only against liberty but against hu- manity. Labor's own bitter experiences at the hands of a mas- ter class which when it had power made any bill of rights almost meaningless have very imperfectly taught labor to de- fend the rights of its colored brothers and sisters. Indeed the chapters dealing with the treatment of the Negroes before and after their emancipation are incomparably the most tragic in the book. If ever a nation might justly be doomed by some stern prophet of the wrath of God it would be our own for the crimes against the blacks which this book sets forth with austere brevity. Perhaps it is part of our doom that our treatment of the Negro has dulled our very capacity to understand or create for ourselves the freedom we love to prate about. Such heroes of liberty as Jefferson and Lincoln do not emerge from this record quite untarnished. Jefferson and his party did an immense service against the Alien and Sedition Acts, but Jefferson sought power from Congress to deny the writ of habeas corpus at the time of Burr's alleged insurrec- tion, and one of the great advances for freedom of the i was won by his great rival Hamilton in the Crosswell case wherein a Federalist printer was indicted for vilifying President Jefferson. As for Lincoln, in spite of his occasional reluctance, his government went very far in rui.ng even in the North by military law without the writ of habeas corpus. A good many Ph.D.'s may yet be won by treatises contrasting violations of liberty under Lincoln and under Wilson. Eor such theses this book does not give adequate informa- tion. It stops, according to plan, with the year 1917 and deals only incidentally with events since that time. It is understood that the struggle for civil liberty in these later crowded years will be dealt with by Roger Baldwin, who has been part of the struggle as no other man has been in America. Mr. Whipple makes only one generalization: "whoever has power has civil liberty." The record makes him skeptical of the efficacy of any legal or constitutional guaranties. Nevertheless he speaks of the advance of liberty "by progress in education, by extensions of democracy, by the increase of scientific knowl- edge, by the growth of religious tolerance, by the advances of labor and women, and by the general diffusion of social toler- ance." How great, I wonder, dees Mr. Whipple consider that progress, and how far would it have gone if it had not tried to embody itself in law? The very inclusiveness of Mr. Whipple's book and the mag- nitude of his task almost necessarily lay him open to two charges: fir^t, that he has been obliged in many cases rather uncritically to use partisan statements of fact, and second, that he has included some cases which are doubtful examples of unjust violation of civil liberty. This is particularly true of his cursory and inadequate account of quarrals among the radi- cals themselves. In such quarrels radicals of all shades have often lost sight of the meaning and importance of freedom, although, as Mr. Whipple admits, in many cases they have worked together in defense of civil liberty. I have no first- hand information concerning the particular cases of Socialist intolerance which he cites, but I have enough general knowledge of these and other similar occurrences to question w-hether any anarchist criticism tells the whole truth. Even on the record as he gives it, does civil liberty include the right to disturb meetings? The question suggests the need of a new philosophy of freedom. Our theoretical notions of civil liberty were greatly stimulated by, if they were not born out of, a laissez-faire con- ception of the state and of the relation of the individual to society. That conception is quite incompatible with present- day facts. No responsible official not a candidate for an insane asylum would uphold the right of some religious fanatic to disregard certain hygienic rules at proved peril to the public health. This, as Mr. Whipple indicates, is an extreme instance. We have no such objective standards to apply for the protec- tion of public opinion. Heresy is of demonstrated advantage to society, and any social order is intolerable which is con- tinually engaged in the conscious effort to deny "the right to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience." Nevertheless the defender of civil liberty must support this right in terms of the good of society as well as of the indi- vidual. If what we call Jeffersonian democracy is dependent upon the conception of the state which Jefferson preached but did not always practice it is in a bad way. "Professional Patriots" might serve as a footnote to this history of civil liberty. The professional patriots whom Mr. Hapgood describes on the basis of material assembled by Sid- ney Howard and John Hearley are in a sense the lunatic fringe of Rotarian America. Some of them are honest neurasthenics who get the shivers, delightful or otherwise, at the word revo- lution or the color red. Some of them are press agents and glorified detectives who get an easy living by preying on the fears of moneyed morons. Taken by themselves, as on the whole the record shows, these professional patriots from the almost forgotten Archie Stevenson down to Fred Marvin are more exasperating than successful. Yet the very existence of this lunatic fringe is an evidence of the extent and direction of an underlying movement toward imperialism. The infrac- tions of civil liberty for which they are responsible and the arguments to which they appeal are characteristic of our epoch as were the anti-abolitionist activities of an earlier time. Mr. Hapgood's book is to be commended for its sober and careful statements of fact. It is to be regretted that it does

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July 20, 1927] The Nation 67 not give a somewhat better chronological picture of the total situation, which changes from year to year. There are facts, not all of which were known at the time of the publication of this book, which point to the existence of an informal alliance between unscrupulous patrioteers like Freddie Marvin and a variety of military organizations, reserve officers' associations, important sections of the American Legion, and probably high officials of the War Department itself which is a menace to even the most rudimentary conceptions of freedom and to the basic ideas of political discussion. Fortunately these gentry are going to such lengths that they are likely to defeat them- selves. Their accepted technique would prove that the Pope is a heretic because he has shaken hands with Protestants. Of this general type of folly "Professional Patriots" gives many illustrations. Norman Thomas Alloy The Delectable Mountains. By Struthers Burt. Scribners. $2.00. '"T^E DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS" is one of those novels * vhich are the despair of the reviewer because they leave him with feelings inextricably mixed. Not only is it too compe- tently written to be dismissed and yet far too mixed in its style to be conscientiously praised, but its very defects are of a sort which the author has carefully cultivated and which, if he values his popularity, he will certainly not wish to correct. It requires no very great critical discrimination to see that for all the apparent sophistication of his ideas and all the smartness of his style, he manages somehow never to wander far in plot or sentiments from tested formulae, and it is equally easy to per- ceive that in spite of the superficial brightness and originality of which he is a master there is something tawdry about the brightness and something deceptive about the apparent original- ity. Yet to be able to adhere more closely to formula than one seems to be doing is one of the secrets of success, and the power to write continuously in sentences that fizzle harmlessly like a succession of squibs is the one most valued by the better-paying magazines. Mr. Burt has other qualities which would enable him to write more impressive fiction, but if he developed them he would displease at least half his readers, and he would be compelled to curb his exuberances to such an extent that he would seem to many not half so clever as they now think him to be. Reduce the plot of the present novel to an outline and it is commonplace to the last degree. The story of a young man of good family who marries a chorus girl, fails to make a go of the marriage, and finally rejoins her in time for a "came-the- dawn" fade-out against a background of mountains — this has been made the basis of more plays, novels and movies than one cares to remember. Perhaps the plains or the sea have been used more often than the mountains to symbolize nature in these stories, and the illegitimate baby which Mr. Burt introduces just to show that both he and his hero are broadminded is usually omitted from the nai'ver versions of the story, but neither of these things is important and neither is responsible for the fact that "The Delectable Mountains" is better than such a description would imply. Two things redeem it from mere triviality. In the first place, Mr. Burt is capable of character- ization more substantial than the merely popular novelist usually finds necessary, and, in the second place, there are many shrewd and witty remarks. He can give a certain solidity to his social backgrounds, and lie is capable in addition of tersely revealing sentences like those which conclude the scene between the hero and the mother whom he has just told of his approach- ing marriage: "Mrs. Londreth had kissed Stephen good-night with an unwonted lingering tenderness that would have touched him had he not realized that it was a final argument against Mercedes. The Wilmerding silences, and the Wilmerding kisses, were premeditated." But the trouble is that Mr. Burt insists upon being swift when he most needs to be searching and upon being witty more continuously than is either necessary or, for him at least, possible. If you believe him, Mr. Burt is master- ful; if you do not, he is merely glib. Events move rapidly, and so do explanations. He can describe a society in a page and explain a character in an epigram. Submit yourself to him and he makes everything perfectly clear; pause a moment to ques- tion and you wonder if all that he has told is as probable as he maintains. He does all your thinking for you, and he has an air which suggests that he would rather you left it to him. Without demanding anything of the reader, the book gives him the impression that a great many important things have been settled. The essence of morals, good manners, and practical sociology has all been distilled. A story that must be interest- ing for the simple reason that it always has been is made the vehicle for all sorts of painless instruction. The society of Philadelphia is contrasted with that of Bohemian New York as well as with the simple West. Why girls leave home is made clear, along with the reasons for supposing that chastity is after all a sort of virtue. There is a touch of spice supplied by an artist's studio and a bi'eath of fresh air brought in by a cowboy. Moreover, the morality is sound without being prud- ish, and there is a perfectly happy ending upon a sententious, indisputable truism: "Men stumble — so do women." Best of all, the book seems short in spite of the fact that it is nearly five hundred pages in length, because there is never any neces- sity of reading anything between the lines. The author, one is led to feel, is so extremely competent that he will explain everything for you, and so clever that he will make it amusing. Undoubtedly, this is good literature and yet, strangely enough, it is not a bore. This sort of thing is much in demand, but in it the vrai bon is inextricably mingled with the faux bon, and, though I am not cei'tain that the capac- ity to do genuine things well is any rarer than the capacity to compound such popular and deceptive alloys, I am perfectly cer- tain that it is more valuable. Joseph Wood Krutch Done in the Round To the Lightliouse. By Virginia Woolf. Harcourt, Brace and Company. $2.50. SOME writers can etch a character in a few sharp lines against white space; others unroll a whole life in flat, bright patterns like a tapestry. Virginia Woolf has a unique manner of washing away the unessential, as the sea sculptures a bit of broken glass, till the spirit emerges as simple, trans- lucent, yet individual in the dignity of the loneliness which encompasses all consciousness. Her people are done in the round — they emerge until the reader becomes intensely aware of the essence which lies behind the apparent complexities and contradictions of civilized human beings; and they would fade away like the lost Eurydice before any attempt to ticket or classify them or brand them with a label. "To the Lighthouse" is the quiet story of an English family who are spending the summer in the Hebrides. There is Mrs. Ramsay, about whom the story pivots, as did their life; Mr. Ramsay, who wrote one good book when he was young and ever after was corroded by anxiety lest he should do no more to carve his name in eternity; their eight children; and their guests: Tansley, the conscientious atheist; Augustus Carmichael, poet and student of the Orient; Lily Briscoe, who tries to paint; William Bankes, a meticulous widower; young Minta Doyle, with a hole in the heel of her stocking; and Paul Rayley, who is to marry her before the book is over. If the day is fine they are to go to the lighthouse in the morning. The first half of the story is the reverie of Mrs. Ramsay as she sits in the late afternoon, with James, the youngest, be- side her, soothing his anxiety about the weather as she soothes

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68 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3237 the petulance of her husband. One by one the others impinge upon her consciousness and find rest there without disturbing her own serene depths. It seems impossible that this family, these people, could live except through her. ii an interval — Time Passes — suggests the years that are rolling on as the old house stands untenanted save by the little winds of summer and the great winter gusts. Here are twenty-live pages of as clear and beautiful high prose as are likely to distinguish many a publishing season. Bracketed sentences tell of the events which mark time with the family. One night Mrs. Ramsay died, quite suddenly. True, eldest and loveliest of the children, is dead with her baby; Andrew is killed in battle. And so it was years later, and with an eternity of di dire, that the trip to the lighthouse finally happened. Mr. Ramsay came back with Nancy and Cam and James, who had been the little boy who wanted it so badly; and commonplace, faithful Lily Briscoe was there again, and old Augustus Car- mic'nael. Much of this second part of the book is the r of Lily, looking backward and still trying futilely to gra present. They all have gone on; they have gone their separate and self-charted ways, as Mrs. Ramsay went hers, lacking her consciousness, her integration, yet impelled by the common need to run their course. "Mrs. Ualloway," the preceding novel by Virginia Woolf, is a similar study of one woman, done with unity of time and place and person. The somewhat freer method of this late. adds richness without dimming the peculiar quality of lumi- nous insight which characterizes all Mrs. Woolf's novels. She has the rare ability to distil an inner life in patience and repose unclouded by prejudice; to write, in exquisite prose cadences, the poetry of the mind. Mary Ross A German View of Grey Lord Grey und der Weltkricg. Von Hermann Lutz. Berlin: Deutsche Verlagsgesellschaft fur Politik und Geschichte. Mark 16. IT ERE is a truly remarkable study of the famous English *• *■ statesman — remarkable as a classic example of German thoroughness, but even more remarkable for its breadth of view its generosity, and its good faith. Mr. Lutz is one of the leading German students of the origins of the war and has devoted more of his effort to the problem of English policy than perhaps any of his compatriots. In this really monu- mental work he has presented the results of years of painstak- ing research, and it may be said without hesitation that his volume is the most exhaustive as well as the most scholarly treatise on English pre-war policy that is now available. The author's fundamental idea was apparently to subject Viscount Grey's own apologia to a rigorous scrutiny and to examine his account in the light of what we know from other sources concerning the English policy. In a sense this was unfortunate, for the l'esult is a rather awkward arrangement of the material — first a study of Grey's outlook and political faith prior to his assumption of office, then a detailed ai of the so-called "free hand," followed by a more sysl survey of European politics and the English attitude from 1906 to 1914, and finally, an exceedingly technical review- July crisis. The arrangement alone would be difficult for the layman to follow-, but he would find it an even more ard task to keep up with the author's scholarly apparatus. This entially a scholar's book; there is no hope that it will ever compete in the public favor wi^h Grey's own "T five Years." Mr. Lutz is far above the petty devices of the propagan- dist. There is no mudslinging. Indeed it can be said that in almost every case the author gives Grey of the doubt. He is quite ready to Grey's g and subjective honesty. He seems almost reluctant when he shows that on one or two occasions Grey was guilty of telling an untruth, and in several passages he gives a very searching psychological appreciation of the motives actuating Grey's policy. On the other hand, it should be pointed out that he is quite as ready to condemn the policy of the Central Powers as he is that of the Allies. But, in brief, Mr. Lutz takes the sensible view that none of the great Powers pursued a syste- matic policy consciously hostile to each other. The term " circlement" as applied to English policy toward Germany seems to him "too dramatic" and he refuses to take the activity of King Edward too seriously. Of course the book is concerned primarily with Grey's policy, and it must be confessed that when he finishes his analy- sis there is almost nothing left of Grey's reputation as a great statesman. Lutz positively demolishes it, and shows that, though Grey may have meant well and though he may still believe that he followed the only possible course, he actually was swayed by unreasoning prejudice and suspicion and man- aged to entangle himself so completely that in the great hour of need he was quite unable to exploit England's pivotal posi- tion in the interests of peace. From the very beginning, in 1906, he went further in his relations to France than his col- leagues in the Cabinet would have approved. After that he became more and more secretive, and, consumed by an incor- rigible distrust of Germany, had allowed himself to become so deeply involved that in 1914 the English "freedom of ac- tion" was nothing more than a myth. Of course there was nothing on paper that could be construed as a binding obligation, but, by adducing every scrap of evidence, Lutz in a brilliant chapter shows conclusively that the moral obligation was so clear that no gentleman and no government could deny it. In support of his argument Lutz adduces the opinions of many Englishmen, statesmen and historians alike. It was the same distrust of Germany and almost naive faith in the good intentions of France and Russia that de- termined Grey's attitude in 1914. He did nothing to restrain his friends, as anyone can see by reading the British Docu- ments. But according to Mr. Lutz he went further than this purely negative policy. On July 25 he actually encouraged the Russians to carry out a partial mobilization in order to intimi- date the Central Powers. The argument at this point is rather unorthodox and very involved. Most revisionist writers would say that even had Grey acted otherwise the net result would have been the same, for the Russians were determined to act and France was unwavering in her support of Russia. Mr. Lutz, however, insists that Sazonov was pacifically .inclined until July 28, when Austria declared war on Serbia without giving satisfactory assurances of her readiness to respect the integrity and sovereignty of her opponent. He even holds Ger- many in part responsible for the Austrian declaration of war, and one is almost tempted to argue from this that Austria was primarily and Germany secondarily to blame for the Rus- sian mobilization. But Mr. Lutz replies that Russia would not have mobilized in any case without a reasonable assurance of French and English support. Had Grey restrained Russia after July 2S the war would have been avoided or at least would nave been avoidable. If Grey had told the Russians that, according to his information, the Austrians would not be in a position to act before August 5 time might have been gained for negotiation. In brief, while making out a very serious ease against both Austria and Russia, Mr. Lutz draws up an indictment of English policy more impressive than any yet advanced. The reviewer is not prepared to subscribe to this theory without reservation. There is no question that Sazonov put much store by the attitude of England, but it cannot be shown that Russian action was absolutely conditional on English sup- port. From the very first moment the Russian Government made it perfectly clear that it would not allow Austria to crush

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July 20, 1927] The Nation 69 Serbia, wrote Buchanan. And, after all, the Russian Govern- ment mobilized before there was any certainty as to English participation. Surely acquiescence in the Russian mobiliza- tion could not be taken as a promise of English support. Eng- land may have been morally obligated to France from the very beginning, but there is no getting around the fact that the Cabinet would not have approved a statement of England's position earlier in the crisis, and there is no denying that prior to August 2 there was no knowing with certainty what course the English Government would choose. Cambon, at least, spent some anxious hours and it was not until the English promise to protect the French coasts was given that he felt the game had been won. William L. Langer Books in Brief The Girl from Rector's. By George Rector. Doubleday, Page and Company. $3. Rector's is no more, but its glittering career has been re- called by the son of its founder in an intensely absorbing nar- rative. Mr. Rector modestly asserts that although Rector's might not have been the center of population at the beginning of this century, at least it was the center of all the population that was worth knowing. Through its revolving doors — the first in New York — came such personages as Berry Wall, Dia- mond Jim Brady, Lillian Russell, Oscar Hammerstein, George Cohan, Eugene Field, Stephen Crane, O. Henry, and countless others. While delightful for its anecdotes of a past generation, Mr. Rector's book is especially valuable because it hands down some of the famous recipes that gave the house its name. History of Prostitution. By Paul LaCroix. Translated by Samuel Putnam. Published for subscribers only. Three volumes. Chicago: Pascal Covici. This history was originally published during the years 1851-1852 under the name of Pierre Dufour, and though it was never acknowledged it has always been attributed to the volumi- nous journalist and bibliophile Paul LaCroix, now chiefly remem- bered for the valuable collection of pictures gathered in the five volumes of his "Le Moyen Age et la Renaissance." LaCroix was the author of over twenty historical romances as well as several works of sober history, and the present volumes are, like most of the other products of his enormous industry, re- markable rather for their curious miscellaneous information than for any systematic thoroughness. His anecdotal "history" covers the period from the remotest antiquity to the seven- teenth century, and far from confining itself to prostitution as any modern sociologist would define that phenomenon it deals not only with every form of illicit sexual intercourse concerning which the author has been able to uncover a bit of information but with erotic literature as well. LaCroix wrote before the beginning of the modern period of scientific sociological inves- tigation, and though he makes a certain parade of grave moral concern his chief interest is that of the antiquarian, but unsci- entific as he is, he is still sometimes cited for his facts, and he is not unentertaining reading. There is something remi- niscent of Brantome and a faint anticipation of Havelock Ellis. American Opinion of France. By Elizabeth B. White. Alfred A. Knopf. $4. Miss White tells the story of cis-Atlantic views on French political and international policy from 1812 to the present. There is nothing in the report she makes after an examination of the press, literature, public addresses, and correspondence of political and other leaders which will upset our notions of the changing status of relations between France and America. She deals unsatisfactorily with cis-Atlantic views of French moral- ity, and even in the political field sins in the direction of over- emphasizing pro-French sentiment in the first year of the war. The Story of a Wonder Man. By Ring Lardner. Charles Scrib- ner's Sons. $1.75. In this hilarious piece of tomfoolery Mr. Lardner quite outdoes himself. It should be made compulsory reading for all who are about to undertake an autobiography; after reading it, no one could possibly take himself seriously. Red Damask. By Emanie Sachs. Harper and Brothers. $2. A brilliant study of a family of prosperous German Jews in America. The book gets its title from the material which covers nearly everything in the household and which is sym- bolic of the formalities of family life. Marcel Proust. His Life and Work. By Leon Pierre-Quint. Alfred A. Knopf. This important study of Proust, reviewed in The Nation of May 12, 1926, is now available to English readers in a com- plete and adequate translation. D THEATER □ GILBERT MILLER Presents ETHEL BARRYMORE in The Constant Wife By W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM AT MAXINE ELLIOTT'S THEATRE Mats. Tues., Wed. & Thurs. No performances Saturday. Published by George H. Doran GILBERT MILLER and A. H. WOODS present JEANNE EAGELS in "Her Cardboard Lover*' By JACQUES DEVAL Adapted by Valerie Wyngate and P. G. Wodehouge irMPTPTi' B'way & 40th St., Eves., 8:30 mriKlL Mats. Wed. & Sat., 2:30 Little Theatre THE GRAND STREET FOLLIES 44th Street West of Broadway Evgs. 8 :30. Mats. Tues. and Thurs. at popular prices. "One cannot find anywhere in New York more clever ideas, more fresh satire or more verve." — Joseph Wood Krutch in The Nation. JANE COWL in "The Road to Rome** w-fcl l_ _ _ _ _ _ 48th St., E. of B'way. Eves. 8:30 rlaynOUSe Matinees Wed. & Sat., 2:30 chanin's BILTMORE w^T^s, ™ c^Iing CHARLES L. WAGNEB (.In Association with Edgar Solwyn) presents The BARKER By KENYON NICHOLSON with WALTER HUSTON Mats. Wed. & Sat., 2:30. Eves, at 8:30. When writing to advertisers please mention The Nation

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International Relations Section Industrial Exploration By BENTON MACKAYE [This series of three articles presents a new approach to world industrial questions. It is the approach not of the economist or the reformer but the explorer. The writer draws an analogy between the labyrinth of modern industrialism and that of the unexplored river system. Each is a wilderness. To the movement of waters within the river system he compares the movement of commodi- ties within the industrial system. Each is a flow. He inquires whether commodity floiu and industry can be charted and controlled, as river flow has been charted and controlled. In order to illustrate this neiv approach the writer has made some tiiumb-nail estimates of populations arid resources. These arc the result of a cursory study and are presented as assumptions rather than establislicd facts. Such- estimates should serve as a preliminary sketch for the complete chart demanded by industrial exploratio>i.] I. Charting the World's Commodity Flow THE explorer Amundsen has inaugurated "a new epoch in world communication." So says the explorer Ste- fansson. This is the result of the recent "Magellan voyage" of the airship Norge across the North Pole. Magellan and Columbus were twin voyagers. Each sought the glorious East. Columbus to get east would sail west. He failed. He never reached there; he bumped into America instead. Magellan completed the job. He sailed around America. The world is far less vast than in Magellan's day, but it is far more complex. A wilderness has been reduced — and conquered. But another wilderness has risen. There are two kinds of wilderness. The dictionary defines bolh. One kind is "an area of land inhabited only by wild beasts." This is the vast but comparatively simple wilder- ness which terrestrial exploration has unraveled. The other kind is "a confused mass, heap, or collection." This is the vast and complex wilderness which awaits to be unrav. the labyrinth of world-wide industry. This industrial wilderness is the terra incognita of the present day. It is vast, and it is infinitely complex. It is a jungle greater and in some ways more terrible than the our fathers faced. Go to the Woolworth tower and look it over. What do you make of it? Why this jumbl wers and chasms; these belching chimneys ; that floating cargo of freight cars; that battleship waiting in the harbor? What is the purpose of this great mass? "Why," you exclaim, "to give us food and clothing and life!" Verily, but how? — at what cost? — what manner of liv- ing during the process? — what sort of environment as the result? You can show us how a single factory is run; you can produce the blueprints and show us a sample of the ultimate shirt for which the factory has its being. But can you produce a blueprint for industry in toto? Can you show us a sample, in terms of human life, of the ultimate result which industry is seeking? In a new way we are pre-Columbian. The industrial wilderness is for us today what the terrestrial wilderness was for the men of 1492. We are up against a new world of mystery — a new kind of geography. It requires a new type of exploration. This is industrial exploration — the charting and unraveling (geographically and technically) of the vast and complex labyrinth of world-wide industry. "Commodity flow" is to the industrial wilderness what river flow is to the terrestrial wilderness. The river stream, starting at its sources around Itasca Lake (or in the Ozarks or the Alleghenies), flows along the channel and over the waterfall; it emerges finally at one mouth or another of the Mississippi delta. The commodity stream, starting at its sources in some Dakota wheat farm (or a Louisiana cotton field, or an Allegheny forest), flows along the rail- way and through the factory; it emerges finally in the form of flour (or else of shirts or of shingles) at one "mouth" or another of the industrial system (a corner grocery in New Orleans, a department store in Philadelphia, or a lum- ber yard in Jersey). As La Salle and the early French explorers had to unravel the intricate network of river streams making up the Mississippi system, so the industrial explorer of today must unravel the intricate network of commodity streams which forms the industrial system. Each stream is a line of "flow," whether of water or commodity. Lines of commodity flow are illustrated in the accom- panying charts: Chart 1 shows some main lines of world communi- cation: those in the Northern Hemisphere. It shows the chief rail and ocean lines which encircle the globe. It shows also the possible aerial routes uniting important cen- ters across the Arctic zone. Chart 2 is a sample chart of commodity flow. Each line shown is a "commodity stream." It is a stream consisting of 1 per cent of the total tonnage of commodities exported from the United States during 1923. But only a part of the stream is shown: the part which lies upon the ocean. Another part of the stream lies upon the land, along some railroad route. The tonnage leaving Atlantic ports is first, of course, hauled by rail from some point within the United States. Thus the commodity stream is a line of transport, whether by land or water. But it is more than this. The commodity stream involves more than the industry of transportation. It involves every other industry as well — farming, min- ing, lumbering, the various forms of manufacturing. These portions of the commodity stream cannot be shown on Chart 2. But they could if the chart were large enough. Chart 3 shows some major lines of commodity flow. These consist of the chief freight routes (rail and ocean — actual or possible) through which the commodity streams are likely to keep on flowing.

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July 20, 1927] The Nation 71 SOME NEWSPAPERS AND NEWSPAPERMEN By Oswald Garrison V illard EDITOR OF THE NATION Of the first edition of this book, Robert Morss Lovett wrote: "Mr. Villard is unusually well fitted for his task. He inherited the ownership of a great newspa- per. No one ever questioned his journalistic ability or his high view of the responsibilities of the profession, to which he was willing to sacrifice material suecess. . . . Undoubtedly the chief interest in Mr. Villard's book is in the narratives of successful struggle and the vivid portraits which lend to his subjects the interest of drama and character. He shows how practically all the great newspapers of his country owe their origin to some dominating individual, the New York Times to Ochs, the World to Pulitzer, the Herald to Bennett, the Chicago Tribune to Medill, the Louisville Courier- Journal to Watterson, the Kansas City Star to Nelson." Mr. Villard belongs to a family that "has had the privilege of serving journalistic ideals for one hundred and five years." He himself has belonged to the profession for thirty years. New Edition. $3.»« ALFRED A. KNOPF Is there something you want that you can't quite afford— A nexp tennis racquet, a kodak, one or in»o of the latest books, some extravagant trifle for Vour summer wardrobe ? Many Nation readers have found that they can earn extra money for extra pleasures by taking advantage of our exceptional offer to reader- agents. Why not try it yourself? Dept. 1 1 THE NATION 20 Vesey Street, New York What is your exceptional offer to reader-agents? Name Address •^ $$$$$$$$$$$$ jj£ $ YOUR $ MONEY'S I WORTH s s s s $ $ A Study in the Waste oE the Consumer's Dollar By Stuart Chase and F. J. Schlink '/HIS amazing hook lifts the curtain on all -*■ the side shows of Main Street and lets you s.'c precisely how The New Salesmanship and High-Pressure Advertising are separating you painlessly from your money. Much of (he fan- tastic hokum, deliberate falsehood, misrepresenta- tion and quackery of the Wonderland of Adver- tising is exposed — the hook names cases, offend- ers and products by the score. If you are tired playing Alice in a Wonderland of hypnotic words and empty values, read this hook. It should enable you to get more for your money than you ever have before. Dr. Henry Seidel Canby, Dorothy Canfield and other noted critics have endorsed it. Facts are made as entertaining as a detective story, or a magician's performance. This is one book that will tickle your funnybone as well as your bankroll. Just Published At all bookstores— '$2.00 The Macanillan Co. - New York $ $ $ $ s s s $ s $ s $ THE SPIRIT AND PRACTICE of the NEW EDUCATION Twenty interesting articles summarizing the work of the modern schools. The July issue of PROGRESSIVE EDUCATION, a distinguished magazine published quar- terly for educators and the general reader. Sixty Cents a single issue. Two Dollars per year. Creative Expression Through Music Ten valuable articles, one hundred illustrations, showing the latest methods in children's music. Thirty-five Cents a copy. The Environment for Creative Education Ten articles and one hun Ired pictures, showing children at work and at play in ideal surroundings. Thirty-five Cents a coj MID-SUMMER SPECIAL OFFER PROGRESSIVE EDUCATION for one year, "Creative Expression Through Music." and "The Environment for Creative Education*— ALL FOR TWO DOLLARS. Published by the most effective agency working for liberal procedure in the schools. THE PROGRESSIVE EDUCATION ASSOCIATION 10 JACKSON PLACE WASHINGTON, D. C. When writing to advertisers please mention '

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72 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3237 River stream or commodity stream, each is a "flow" from source to destination; each seems to be an inevitable flow, and yet one which — within limits — can be guided. The charting of this flow, as a basis for guidance within natural limits — this is the job of industrial exploration. The immediate problems concerning the lines of com- modity flow seem to relate to their entanglements. There are physical entanglements and political ones. Physical entanglements may be illustrated by the "bot- tle-neck." Note the choking and bubbling process which takes place when you try quickly to empty fluid from a bottle. That is what happens in New York City. All roads lead there. They pour in their commodities — over the New York Central, the Pennsylvania, and a dozen other railway lines. The flow pours out again — through the harbor, or else back over the New York Central and the other lines. One-fifth of the export tonnage How of the United States squeezes out through the port of New York. But this is on'y a small fraction of the tonnage which comes in to this city and goes out again, or else re- mains to be consumed. (Export tonnage is only a small fraction of total tonnage moved.) The more commodity flow moving toward a center, the more people needed to take care of it; the more people, the more flow needed to take care of them. Look at Chart 3. Each seaport or termi- nal shown (each little black dot) is a focusing center in world-wide commodity flow. Each, in greater or less de- gree, is a "New York." Political entangle- ments also may be spied upon Chart 3. These result not from the flow itself (as in the "bottle-neck") but in its proprietorship. They are illustrated most aptly by cases of parallel (and competing) lines of commodity flow. The story is told out in the Rocky Mountains of the "war" which once took place between the surveying parlies engaged respectively in locating two parellel lines of rail- way. Not content with pulling ir each other's stakes, they had several encounters in which they "hove rocks" at one another. Each surveying party represented a separate group of railway interests. Chart 3 shows (among others) a certain pair of parallel OCEAN LINE RAIL LINE POSSIBLE AERIAL LINE 1. I. INKS OF WORLD COMMUNICATION (NORTHERN HEMISPHERE) and potentially competing lines running from Western Europe to India. One of these lines consists of the ocean- trade route from England through Gibraltar, Suez, and the Red Sea. The other consists of the railway from Germany through Constantinople into Mesopotamia, extended by the potential ocean route through the Persian Gulf. Each line at one time represented a separate group of interests. Each group did business under a separate national flag. The interests of the groups somehow became entangled — and no way was found of straightening them. Other groups became involved and other tangles. There were four years of "rock heaving" before the affair was quieted. To fathom the wilderness of the industrial system we must study some of the methods used to fathom the wilder- ness of the American continent. One way was by following the rivers. The river stream was the unerring guide. This was because it al- ways flowed one way — from a definite source to a definite destina- tion. That is how we charted the once un- comprehended Missis- sippi River system. The commodity stream also flows al- ways one way — from a definite source to a definite d e s t i n ation. Natural resources form the source; human re- quirements determine the destination. It is a matter of following back to the sources and following out to the destination. This requires an exploration — a survey. The ultimate result would be an atlas. The United States Geologi- cal Survey has made a "World Atlas of Com- mercial Geology." There should be a "World Atlas of Com- modity Flow." It would consist of three parts: (1) A survey of world requirements: (2) a survey of world resources; (3) a survey of the lines of flow, one by one, from source to destination. The deep-down question of industry is not merely whether it is technically efficient or inefficient; nor whether it exploits. But is it running wild? What lies behind the wildly accelerating industrial congestions in the world's big ports and cities? What lies behind our modern wars? Com- merce perhaps, but what is "commerce"? Is the labyrinth which industry has spun becoming entangled beyond our power to control?

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July 20, 1927] The Nation 73 2. A CHART OF COMMODITY FLOW Export Tonnage Flow of All Commodities from U.S.Atlantic & Pacific Ports, 1923 (Flows ifom Great Lakes and Gulf Ports are Omitted) Q Destination Of Ten Percent oi Total U.S. Export Tonnaoe o Destination Of One »» "' " " '" " ° > Line o^ Flow Of One " " " " " " Flow 3. MAJOR LINES OF COMMODITY FLOW £>0 Vf;M OCEAN LINE OF COMMODITY FLOW RAIL m ii >» " POSSIBLE RAIL CONNECTION SEAPORT OR RAIL TERMINAL

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74 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3237 OPEN SHELF & GOOD CHEER. COMRADES! Want to buy, sell, or swap books, bronzes, old china, clock*, curios, etchings, lamps, paintings, prints, oriental rugs" Bus, or stroll to Daca's, 63 Washington Sq. So., N. Y. C. Books always 20 to 80% off. Open eves. BOOKS All books (except text) sent post free anywhere at 15% discount from publishers' prices. List on request. ISRAEL SOIFER 1244 Clay Avenue Now York City EmCATIONAL HESSIAN HILLS SCHOOL (FORMERLY MT. AIRY SCHOOL) A Little School in the country where boys and girls from Z-\2 years may live and learn in a world not only of text books. Elizabeth Moos Croton-on-Hudson, director N. Y. SPECIALTY" SHOPS PAN YOU COME to see me? I have lovely hand- ^-' made Russian and Rumanian dresses and tunics that I'd like to show you. They are smart, cool, comfortable, and quite reasonably priced. MARITZA. 49 Christopher Street, New York. FOR SALE ATTRACTIVE little R .ssian Dress and Gift Shop of unique character conveniently located in Greenwich Village, for a very reasonable figure on account of owner's ill health. Phone Spring 7578 from 12 to 6, or write Box 834, % The Nation. MISCELLANEOUS Use long distance calis to save trips, to get things done. You'U be surprised how little they cost, BELL LONG DISTANCE SERVICE HOUSE FOR SALE T?OR SALE — Four story, old Brooklyn Heights F brick-and-frame house. On lower Bridge end of Heights where new subway will raise values. Com- pletely remodeled in 4 separate studio apartments, each with modern bathroom. Steam heat, open fire- places, electricity, gas. Enclosed South porch ; deep backyard with trees and shrubbery. $15,000; first mortgage $7,500, second to be arranged. Write to L. S. G., 61 Poplar St., Brooklyn, or phone Main 9496 evenings. ( ' N N ECTION WANTED FOREIGN representative. Teacher, University graduate, 28, perfect command French and Spanish, going to Paris in August, year's stay, wishes to represent N. Y. firm or institution. Ex- perience European travels, publishing, translating, social work, music. Best references. Box 832, <"< The Nation. POSITIONS WANTED H IGH-CALIBRED man, intensive personnel ex- perience, writer on industrial problems, seeks connection requiring tact, judgment, and undf ing of human nature. Box S2S. c, The Nation. 11 'OMAN, several years' experience, editorial, sec- VV retarial and executive work, wants afternoon employment in connection with any profession. New York City. Box S35, % The Nation, or phone Butterfield 7529. SECRETARY-Stenographer, six years' diversified experience in office detail, desires position. Would consider traveling. Box 836. '', The Nation. TWENTY-ONE year old college student, slightly crippled, desires a summer position. Any- where, or anything suitable. Martin Green, 328 Hamilton Avenue, Paterson, N. J. interested litera- S PORTS Writer, 26. more ture than sports, desires position as assistant to editor of literary publication. University gradu- ate; well-read; cultured. Box 833. % The Nat FURNISHED ROOM T7URNISHED room for rent in a colonial house V in Greenwich Village. Quaint — quiet- S45. Write Box No. 762 or phone Whitehall 7730. FRENCH SCHOOL A Church School for American Boys preparing for American Colleges. Wholesome country life organized in a historic feudal castle. American standards of hygiene and diet; yearly tuition SI. 200. Full sports program, including crew. The Rt. Rev. Charles H. Brent, Bishop of American Churches in Europe, Chairman of Board of Trustees. Address: Dr. Conrad Chapman, Head Master, Chateau-Neuvie, Neuvic-sur-I'Isle, Pordogne. France □ BOOKS The Great French Revolution By PETER KROPOTKIN In most accepted histories of the French Revolution, you merely see heroes and villains strutting the stage in their turn. In Kropotkin's great work of that momentous epoch you go behind the scenes and participate directly in that tremendous drama. The revolution springs into life. You are among real people — plain p imon people. You feel their struggles against increasing oppression turning into an irresistible current of action. You see tins mighty stream meet and combine with the current of revolutionary idess released by the enlightened members of the mi see and understand the stupendous climax of the eighteenth century. Two Volumes, clothbound, SI. 00 At all Booksellers, or $1.10 by mail direct from pu VANGUARD PRESS, 80 Fifth Ave., New York Marx's CAPITAL The most epoch-making of all works on economics : a critical analy- sis of the processes of capitalist productior. and distribution. Marx hat done for social science what Darwin did for biology. Cloth, 3 volumes, 1,586 pages, S7.S0 postpaid. Charles H. Kerr & Company, 347 East Ohio St., Chicago SUMMER PLACES £CHO *LAKI TAVERN AD1ROMDACKS IDEAL of SMALL CAMPS! Capacity limited to 150 — Inspiring Adirondack setting. Every desirable facility for sports, with seven real clay tennis courts. Excellent living quar- ters. Unusual social programs. From every angle the camp for the discrim- inating vacationist. Rate $30 Per Week Address ECHO LAKE TAVERN Warrensburg, New York Warrensburg 55 — Longacre 5432 MOE NlTiELL REBECCA KUDELL "Rock-Lake Country Club" Formerly CAMP GREATER UTOPIA Narrowsburg, N.Y. Phone Narrowsburg 89-R ll ON BEAUTIFUL ROCK LAKE A vacation playground for young folks. All water sports, tennis, basketball, handball. En- tertainments arranged, social programs varied daily. Dancing ; everything informal. Meals unrivaled (dietary laws observed). Rates and full information on request. H. GELBAUM, Manager WHY NOT A CAMP with every convenience and comfort, situated in a rustic woodland border- ing an 11 mile lake. All water and land sports, including tennis, golf and horseback riding. Excellent food. At the very reasonable rate of ?25. per week. ~ ^^^^^~ Pioneer Lodge will be limited to 50 people and will appeal to those who seek a complete change of environ- ment with none of the bustle and noise of either the city or the usual crowded summer camp. It is in the Northwestern Adirondacks, near Thou- sand Islands. PIONEER LODGE, Star Lake, N. Y. Accessible overnight by N. Y. Central city office 140 West 42np Street Phone Wisconsin 2165 directors Herman Blanc Bill Stern THE LLOYD, Bellport, L. I. ON TH! GREAT SOUTH BAY COOL COMFORTABLE CHARMING ALL SPORTS For regular guests and week-end parties Address The Lloyd, Bellport, L. I. Tel. Bellport 17 (Owners, D. J. & K. M. MeseTole) Lena Barish and Sam. Garlen Former owners of Echo Lake Tavern, ARE NOW CONDUCTING GREEN MANSIONS When writing to advertisers please mention The Nation

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The Nation FOUNDED 1865 Vol. CXXV NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, JULY 27, 1927 No. 3238 Contents EDITORIAL PARAGRAPHS 75 : EDITORIALS: From Geneva to Honolulu 78 General von Hoffmann 79 The Elgin Marbles 79 THE WORLD DOES CHANGE. By Hendrik Willem van Loon 80 THERE'S MUD ON INDIANA'S WHITE ROBES. By Louis Francis Budenz 81 THE NEGRO IN THE INDUSTRIAL SOUTH. By E. Franklin Frazier 83 ICELAND AND INDUSTRY. By Earl Hanson 84 IN THE DRIFTWAY. By the Drifter 8G CORRESPONDENCE 86 BOOKS : Warm Stone Woman. By Howard McKinley Corning 88 First Glance. By Mark Van Doren 88 Exclusive Tour — Personally Conducted. By Ruth S. Alexander s8 The Woman Question. By Johan Smertenko 89 The People's Book. By Gerald Carson 90 If This Were So. By Louis Fischer 90 Guidance. By Harry Alan Potamkin 91 Books in Brief 91 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS SECTION: Industrial Exploration: II. Charting the World's Requirements. By Benton MacKaye 92 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 Manacer 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. THE NATION is on file in most public and college libraries and is indexed in the Readers1 Guide to Periodit al Literature. MURDER IS THE FIT WORD to describe the action of the United States marines in Nicaragua. The United States created the anarchy which it is now attempt- ing to suppress. When the Liberals had substantially re- conquered the country American marines retook it for the Conservatives, and today they are doing police work for a government which would collapse in sixty seconds if the American forces retired. When President Coolidge's per- sonal envoy, Henry L. Stimson, threatened forcibly to dis- arm the Liberal troops in May, one Nicaraguan general, Sandino, retired to the hills and kept up the fight. Un- doubtedly he has maintained himself by preying on the country; undoubtedly, too, he has the sympathy of the vast majority of his countrymen. And a general who, at the head of 500 barefoot Nicaraguans, defies the United States commands our respect. General Sandino even attacked an outpost of United States marines at Otocal. Heavily out- numbered, but better armed and trained, the marines put up a brilliant resistance. They might, however, have lost but for the arrival of five American bombing planes which swept Sandino's ranks with machine guns — 4,000 rounds — and dropped twenty-seven bombs. They left 300 dead Nicaraguans (some, apparently, civilians) for the vultures to feed on, and no one knows how many wounded. The Americans lost one killed and two seriously wounded. And when William Green, president of the American Federation of Labor, protested to Secretary Kellogg, that official re- plied that Sandino's men were "outlaws." What law ex- cuses the use of American marines on Nicaraguan battle- fields or of American bombing planes for mass murder? UNDERNEATH THE SMOOTH SURFACE of life in Europe as the tourist sees it simmers a black caul- dron of class bitterness and hate. It boiled over in Vienna in that bloody July week when the workmen of Vienna set out to protest against the acquittal of fascist gunmen and met a murderous police force. The fascists were guilty enough; they had killed workmen marching in a previous parade; but because they were safely anti-radical a reac- tionary court set them free. Such political acquittals are not uncommon in Europe; and they are fit matter for protest. But Vienna, while it has a Socialist municipal administra- tion, has a police force subject to the Clerical federal gov- ernment, and the workmen of Vienna had old grudges against that police force before this new outbreak. The police fired into the crowd; the crowd attacked the police — there were gruesome acts on both sides of the barricades — and for two days Vienna was in the throes of a sponta- neous revolution which no one, apparently, had planned and no one led. The Palace of Justice was burned, and its papers thrown into the wet streets; police posts were sacked; eighty men met death and hundreds of wounded flooded the Viennese hospitals. For three days the capi- tals of Europe trembled at successive rumors of new in- surrections and of threatened interventions; then the bub- ble of revolution broke, and the Clerical Government called on the Socialists to help clean up the mess. A few tourists, however, had seen Europe more honestly than Cook's tours ever planned. IT IS HARD for the public to follow the labyrinth of technicalities that grow up in the courts about some of our most important legal controversies. This is es- pecially true of the oil scandals of the Harding regime, in regard to which most of the legal questions are still in abeyance long after people have all but forgotten the original circumstances. Hence the New York World is performing a public service in its careful reporting of each new development and its frequent summaries of the status of proceedings. Of the two civil suits the one against E. L. Doheny for the recovery of Elk Hills has been won finally by the Government through a decision of the Supreme Court. The same court is now considering the Government's claim for the Teapot Dome tract held by Harry F. Sinclair. Fall and Doheny were acquitted last December when tried for criminally conspiring to defraud the Government, but they are still to be tried for bribery, a charge on which it should be easier to convict. De- murrers to the indictments have just been overruled in this case, but it is not expected that it will come to trial be- fore next year. There also remains for trial the bribery charge against Fall and Sinclair, and final adjudication of the latter's jail sentence for contempt in refusing to answer questions put by the Senate's investigating com- mittee. Justice is slow — we wish we could add that it is sure. Mt

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76 The Nation [Vol. 125. Xo. 3238 DESTITUTION, MISERY, DESOLATION, ruin. This is the picture that L. C. Speers sends back to the New York Times from the water-logged land of the Missis- sippi. In one zone, he reports, 200,000 people face actual .starvation. This, he says, is the opinion "of every man who can speak with authority." They have no chance to harvest a crop, and their homes, their possessions, and their credit are gone. About two-thirds of the inundated area may perhaps produce a crop of some kind. Meanwhile we hopefully scan the statements of President Coolidge in South Dakota. But we read of no sympathy with or plans for rehabilitating the flood sufferers. There is time for Mr. Coolidge to talk of worms and horses and cowboys. birthday cakes and cerise shirts, but of the flood sufferers. S"» far as we have observed, there has been no mention. On this problem of national concern the Summer White House has maintained the studied silence of deliberate in- difference. It is about time, says the New York World: to characterize as it deserves to be characterized the policy of an administration which turned its back on the Lower Mississippi Valley and dodged the responsibility of a re- habilitation program simply because it was afraid of call- ing Congress. That policy was the result of a second- rate, politically minded caution whose one controlling aim was to avoid anything that might "embarrass" the Ad- ministration or be "bad politics" for a super-cautious President whose chief worries were in the corn belt, not the South. JAPANESE TROOPS have reoccupied the province of Shantung, which, even before Confucius was born there some two and a half millenniums ago. was China's holy province. Not only has Japan occupied the port city of Tsingtao, which she took from Germany in 1914 — Ger- many in turn having forced its cession as compensation for the death of two missionaries in the interior — but she has sent her troops inland along the railway to the pro- vincial capital, Tsinanfu — which happens also to be a stra- tegic junction along the northward line of Chiang Kai-shek's projected advance on Peking. Nor are these troops mere defenders of life and property — they include a complete staff of railway operators, with engineers, telegraphers, and sta- tion agents. This is the historic form of land imperialism. Japan, which since the Washington Conference had shown a notable vision of her future as a leader of Asia, lias reverted to a futile imitation of Western imperialism. For the moment she has checked Chiang's northward move- ment; but she has started against herself the economic boy- cott— the powerful weapon of Chinese Nationalism which sapped the roots of British prestig while the various wings of the Nationalists seem to be drawing nearer. The Hankow regime is dropping some of its Communist allies; the Nanking Government, des- perate in its efforts to scrape together money, is readier to cooperate; and as usual the "Christian general." Feng Yu- hsiang, is waiting to see how the wind blows. And while the foreign marines idly watch, all the Chinese govern- ments are raising tariff rates and jettisoning treaties at a rate which two years ago would .iave provoked angry ulti- matums and threats of armed force. w rE HAVE BEEN TREATED with the utmost courtesy by the admirals of the Navy Department, but the controlling viewpoint of these gentlemen is purely that of the professional militarist" — thus the supervisors of the City of San Francisco summed up their argument with the Navy Department over the question of a bridge across San Francisco Bay. It is a matter of tremendous import to the city and the steadily increasing number of commuters who live across the bay that a bridge shall take the place of the ferries at a place above Hunter's Point. But the navy flatly vetoes this great and greatly needed peace-time improvement because in time of war "it might be necessary to make sorties out of the bay in fleet forma- tion"! The supervisors have offered to build a bridge so high that all but the very largest battleships can steam under it. The navy wants to anchor its battleships in a place south of Yerba Buena Island. They cannot deny that they could also anchor them north of that island and* so be above the bridge, but they prefer the lower anchorage and that is all there is to it. The needs of a great American city and its populous environs are to be subordinated to the chance that some day we might get into a war with somebody and the fleet might be at anchor below Yerba Buena and might have to make a sortie and might have to make that sortie in fleet formation! Had anybody sug- gested such a thing in 1900 he would have been termed a lunatic. Naturally, San Francisco is appealing over the heads of the admirals to the Secretaries of War and the Navy and to the President. The Secretaries will not help, we are sure; Mr. Coolidge may. THE MAYOR OF LYNN, Massachusetts, last summer offered a prize to the city employee who should submit the best plan for reducing the tax rate and increasing the efficiency of the city government. The city treasurer, the city clerk, and the city auditor, acting as judges, awarded a prize to Mrs. Delia Clifford, a teacher in the Lynn schools, who submitted a plan for reorganization of the naturaliza- tion program. The Board of Education invited Mrs. Clifford to read her prize-winning essay at its meeting on February 8. Immediately thereafter the board went into executive session and voted to announce its intention of dismissing Mrs. Clifford, which it did on March 29. No charges against Mrs. Clifford's work or conduct have been made nor have any been found in the records covering her sixteen years of service in the Lynn schools. There are no charges in the record of the meeting of February 8. In fact, one of the members of the board has issued a signed statement to the effect that no charges were brought against her at that time. Apparently the explanation of Mrs. Clifford's dis- missal must be sought in the facts that she is politically opposed to the present mayor, who is chairman ex-officio of the Board of Education, that she ran against him on the Labor ticket, and that she is otherwise active in her support of the cause oi organized labor. IF YOU ARE AN HONEST PROFESSOR of biology in some institution that is in danger of going into the hands of receivers, beware of the Baptist Bible Union. When "truth" and religion clash, contracts and other rights of instructors suffer. Last June Des Moines Uni- versity experienced a financial crisis and was bought at a discount by the Baptist Bible Union of North America. The first official procedure of the new trustees was to hold an inquisition: Did every faculty member believe the en- tire Bible literally? Naturally some had stumbled into

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July 27, 1927] The Nation 77 symbolic interpretations; and this resulted in the exodus of twenty faculty members, some of their own accord and the rest by request. Every position in science was vacated, and Norman MacDowell Grier, professor of biology, was asked to leave despite a two-year contract which specified freedom to teach evolution. If the dismissed teachers are willing to wait a year or two, the American Association of University Professors will conduct an investigation and then very likely write letters informing them that their dismissals were quite unjust. In the meantime the instruc- tors can join the army of ousted teachers, and meditate on what is wrong with our educational system. IN THE BITUMINOUS COAL FIELDS of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and western Pennsylvania, almost 170,000 miners have been on strike since April 1. Their troubles, however, like the flood news, have been confined to the limbo of short public memory. The public has had little to worry about. Plenty of cheap coal is all it wants from the coal industry, and it has been getting that. But the weekly production of the 400,000 non-union coal miners is falling off, while the 90,000,000 tons of surplus coal that was in reserve at the beginning of the strike is be- coming depleted. The public may yet join the coal miners and their families in paying the price of laissez-faire pro- duction and its resultant cut-throat competition. FISHING HAS USUALLY BEEN REGARDED as the most harmless and tranquilizing of occupations. The majority of those addicted to the rod vote the straight ticket of the party they were born to, and history does not record a single conspiracy ever hatched beside a trout-stream. Yet the sharp eye of the radio censor can discover a sinister side in any attempt to discuss too searchingly the principles of even the angler's gentle art and accordingly he has just can- celed the talk which Mr. Fred B. Shaw was to deliver from station WABC on "Our Trout, Our President, and Our Fish- ing Methods." We are inclined to suspect that Mr. Shaw is right when he assumes that his proposed references to His Majesty the President, rather than those to either fish or worms, were the cause of the decree of silence issued against him, but inasmuch as his purpose was to defend rather than attack the methods employed by the first of these the affair baffles our editorial sagacity. Is it merely another example of the lengths to which the broadcasting stations will go in their efforts to protect their hearers from any opinions more controversial than those held by Peter Rabbit, or has the apotheosis of Mr. Coolidge reached the point where even to assume that he needs defense is a sort of sacrilege? AN "ANGRY PASSENGER," so the newspapers say, caused a collision on the elevated railroad in Brook- lyn the other day. The doors of the car in which he was riding had failed to open at two successive stations, and the "angry passenger," seizing the cord of the emergency brake, brought the train to a grinding stop just beyond a curve in the road. The curve and a tree cut off the vision of the motorman of a train behind, and he ran into the stalled cars. A number of persons were slightly hurt. Doubtless there will be many moralists to point to the accident as a judgment upon the "angry passenger" and a warning not to give way to impatience. We see no such moral. On the contrary we propose three rousing cheers for the "angry passenger." Fundamentally the accident was not his fault. The operating methods of the road were more to blame, not to speak of the supineness of the transit authorities in allowing the companies to reduce the guards in the subways and on the elevated railways to on. for every two cars, so that passengers are often helpless prisoners when doors fail to work. What New York Ci..' needs is not fewer, but more angry passengers. A roiled . nd pugnacious passenger in every car of the subway and "L" would improve transit conditions 50 per cent in three months. We indorse the movement, and as every campaign must have a slogan, we propose : An angry man in every car Will soon bring service up to par. The New York Times condemns the American Trade- Union Delegation to Russia. "Outside of Russia," it says, "plenty of material exists for a dispassionate survey of Soviet conditions. . . . Unfortunately observation and con- tact have hitherto been productive of more error than enlightenment." "T\/T OTHER, may I look at the Bolsheviks?" ..'1 "Yes, my little gusher; "But 'ware of Soviet parlor tricks "And don't go near to Russia. "Wash your hands if you touch their tracts; "Stop your ears when they speak; "Dispassionately survey the facts "From afar; but, child, don't peek! "Nervous Nellie will show you how — "Borrow Nellie's glasses; "Listen to Winston's bow-wow-wow — "But hide if a Russian passes." THE BODY OF JULIUS SLOWACKI, the "Shelley of Poland," has just been brought back to his native land and his remains consigned to the vaults of the Polish kings on the Wawel Hill at Cracow. This signal honor of repatriation has been given seventy-eight years after his death to a brilliant dreamer who in his lifetime suffered a tempestuous career of exile and desperate poverty. Born in Krzemieniec on August 23, 1809, Slowacki received his education at the University of Vilna. In 1830 his too daring conceptions of freedom forced him to leave the country, and it was during his foreign wanderings that he gave vent to the remarkable spirit of poetry which has placed him with Mickiewicz and Krasinski in the divine trio of Polish poetry. A dramatist of power, his intense nationalism poured forth against his country's oppression. The return of Slowacki's remains to the soil lie loved, to the posterity his songs have helped weld together, is one of the happy expressions of Europe's post-war nationalism. SOMETHING OF THE FIRE OF IRELAND went out when the Countess Markievicz died. Although she married a Polish nobleman she was Irish to the core, and a flame of idealism wherever she went. Born to ease, she began as a Lady Bountiful in Dublin's slums, and there won the sympathies that bound her close to Irish hearts to the end. England condemned her to death after the Easter uprising in 1916, but set her free in time to be the first woman elected to the British Parliament. She never took her seat; she would not swear allegiance to the King. To the end she remained an irreconcilable Republican.

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78 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3238 From Geneva to Honolulu WHILE the Geneva Disarmament Conference is spout- ing hot lava and suspicion, a less noisy but far more genuine disarmament conference is meeting at Honolulu. The Institute of Pacific Relations is drawing together for the second time a group of unofficial delegates of most of the great Pacific countries. We say "most" advisedly, because this Honolulu conference follows the tradition by omitting from its sessions representatives of Soviet Russia. It was, for Europe, a great thing when Frenchmen and Ger- mans learned to drink beer together and meet as friends, but Europe will not settle down until the same atmosphere of friendly confidence extends to sessions with Russians. It is a great stride forward for Americans and Japanese to light each other's cigarettes while discussing California's immigration laws, and for Englishmen and Chinese to con- sider over their teacups the future of Shanghai ; but there are dangerous reserves to any meeting which first excludes and then elaborately ignores its exclusion of representatives of any great country. And Russia is, indisputably and some- times menacingly, one of the great Pacific Powers. When statesmen admit that they disagree, the fact somehow contrives to seem disastrous. Every European diplomatic pow-wow since the war, however violent its pri- vate disagreements, has concluded with a solemn assertion of complete agreement. This Honolulu session is franker. It meets avowedly to discuss the points of friction between East and West, "with the hope that an honest attempt to state these differences may lead to a way to reconcile them." It certainly has the courage of its hopes. As a preliminary to its sessions, data have been assembled upon some of the most prickly problems. Professor Eliot Mears of Leland Stanford University has collated American laws affecting Orientals. The Australians have made similar studies; the Japanese have tabulated their laws dealing with foreigners. A ; least something is gained by the discovery that none of the countries facing the Pacific cares to give aliens the same privileges which it allows its own citizens. Sir Frederick Whyte, first president of the Indian Legislative Assembly, who heads the British delegation, has prepared a monograph on "China and the Foreign Powers" which reveals the pain- fully honest effort of a born proconsul of empire to under- stand the raucous language of young Asia. One must not expect immediate effects from such a conference. No treaties will emerge from it; no battleships will be scrapped as a result of it and no colonies will be relinquished. But it may go far to establish the habit of joint discussion of international problems which is, after all. more important than courts or treaties or battleships. And the habit of joint discussion, shallowly rooted even in Eu- rope, is a growingly important matter in the Pacific. Far as we have progressed since the days of the Boxer expedi- tions and indemnities we are still in the ultimatum-stage of manners when it comes to China. No foreign Power has been willing to accept the Chinese suggestions of a joint investigation of responsibility fnr the Nanking affair. The foreigners have assembled the testimony of their own na- tionals, and have thought that enough. As Benton MacKaye says elsewhere in this issue of The Nation, there was a time when we had a planet but not a world. There were several worlds. Today the Panama and Suez canals, the Trans-Siberian railway, the ocean-bridging airplanes are knitting the world's civilizations into one fab- ric. China and India, with half the earth's man-power, are no longer to be remote, romantic countries, nor can we af- ford to treat them as pariahs. They buy our mineral oil and weave our silk and grow the beans that yield other oils for our industries. Their civil wars climb onto the front pages of our newspapers ; perforce we begin to distinguish between Chang and Chiang. America, more or less unconsciously, is accepting their new importance. The Pacific Coast thinks New York provincial because it pays so much more atten- tion to its Lindberghs, Chamberlins, and Byrds than to the Pacific-flying Maitlands, Hegenbergers, and Smiths. San Francisco-to-Hongkong interests it more than New York-to- Paris — and it is thinking in more contemporaneous terms than are we of the Atlantic Coast. It is not without signifi- cance that the first five Presidents of the Nineteenth Cen- tury had all seen European service; and that from Andrew Jackson's day to Roosevelt's only one President had seen Europe before he entered the White House. We began as an Atlantic colony of Europe, dependent upon Europe for ideas, for literature, for industrial resources. Then we turned our back upon the Eastern ocean and molded an inland nation. Today that nation faces two seas. Already one President of the United States has seen service in Asia before taking the country's helm; others are sure to fol- low. We will no longer be dominated in our outlook by the traditions of a single ocean ; we are, as a nation, a bridge between two civilizations. In our day a Londoner can reach Shanghai more rapidly by passing through the United States than by following the ancient route through the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean. Such facts mold history. But East is East, we have been saying, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet. Poet never composed a more dangerous lie. The twain do meet. They meet in the public schools of California, in the treaty ports like Shanghai — and, fortunately, in the Institute of Pacific Re- lations at Honolulu. They meet, and they modify each other. One of the preliminary studies for the Honolulu meetings was a rather tragic investigation of the second-generation Oriental in America. Boys and girls, put through the mill of the American public-school system, become, psychologi- cally, completely Americanized. They refuse to speak their parents' tongues; they lose all understanding of the land of their origin — but retain the physical stigmata which bar them from most channels of advance in this race-conscious country. One homesick son of Los Angeles who had visited the cherry-blossom country of his fathers, wrote in ecstacy when he returned to familiar sights : "It takes a Hearst paper to make me feel at home." Ridiculous as these ex- tremes sound, they are evidence of the fundamental human kinship. There is no barrier to understanding and sym- pathy in brain and blood cells. We can meet, we can talk together, we can understand. The college presidents and professors, the ministers, labor leaders, and social workers from both sides of the Pacific who are meeting today in ing against mutual suspicions which are potentially far more dangerous to the human race than those which have flared so vividly at Geneva.

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July 27, 1927] The Nation 79 General von Hoffmann GENERAL Max von Hoffmann, whose death in Germany has been reported, played an extraordinary role in the World War. He was the officer who conducted Lenin and his revolutionary associates in a closed and guarded car from Switzerland to the territory in Russia occupied by the Germans, and there set them loose to undermine the Czar. When that work was successfully accomplished, to a far greater degree than this German general desired, it was again General von Hoffmann who had to meet the emis- saries of Lenin to formulate in March, 1918, what was truly the infamous treaty of Brest-Litovsk. For that treaty Gen- eral von Hoffmann always maintained that he was unjustly blamed ; he was, he said, merely carrying out instructions — and that was doubtless true. But he did it in the manner characteristic of the German militarists — a vigorous and extremely unpleasant imitation of Bismarck's method of dealing with his conquered foes. It gave a tremendous chance to the Allies, and they and their propagandists leaped to the opportunity. "See," they said, "what is hap- pening at Brest-Litovsk. This von Hoffmann is just like all the other German leaders; he is despoiling beaten Russia of the entire Ukraine, with its thirty million people; he is demanding and getting one-third of all the Russian in- dustries, one-quarter of her arable land, and about a quar- ter of her people. This confirms all that we have said as to the character and purposes of the war Germany is wag- ing. She will do the same to us if she wins." And these assertions carried conviction far and wide. Beyond question the Brest-Litovsk Treaty was one of the worst defeats the Germans sustained — one of the very worst of the war. General von Hoffmann was not willing to admit that, but he did admit grimly that he and his gov- ernment reckoned without their host in loosing Lenin and his party, whose identity he so carefully guarded on their journey across Europe. He admitted this when he was hiding in a Munich hotel during the fighting which went on after the assassination of President Eisner — hiding and reviling those who were following the teachings of Lenin in the Bavarian capital, and knowing full well that if they should hear of his presence he would immediately be arrested. He still insisted that there was notning to do at Brest-Litovsk but to strip the Bolsheviks of as much territory and power as possible, felt that the Allies should have been grateful to him, and declared that Germany and the Allies should at once wage a holy war to oust his erst- while protege Lenin and take over the entire Russian Em- pire for joint administration. Doubtless the British die- hards of today would sympathize with him. For the rest, General von Hoffmann was a brilliant chief of staff, first to Ludendorff and then to Hindenburg, in all the battles which drove the Russians out of Prussia and into the Masurian Lakes. But the greatest of his ser- vices, so far as the outside world is concerned, was the writing of his book, "The War of Lost Opportunities," in which he relentlessly dwelt upon the failure of German military leadership — even violently criticizing his old chief, Ludendorff, for his dreadful blundering on the west front in 1918. The Verdun attack similarly came in for his criticism, as well as the original error in withdrawing two army corps from the movement through Belgium and France to the Marne. The Kaiser and the western front military leaders had tried to excuse this on the ground that these army corps were need by Hindenburg; von Hoff- mann was the first to prove that the great victories on the Russian frontier were won without the aid of a single German soldier from the west front. The Elgin Marbles THOUGH the conscience of the British empire is not notoriously tender it is now mildly troubled by the fact that Greece has just entered a polite request that the Elgin Marbles be returned to her. Even when, in 1816, Lord Elgin sold to the government the treasures he had stripped from the Acropolis at Athens there were those who thought that they belonged by right to the nation which had created them and who argued that the permission he had from the Turkish authorities to cart them away gave him little moral justification for despoiling a subjected people. And though a century of possession has a tendency to make any theft seem legitimate there is actually less reason now than ever why London should hold what belongs by every right to Athens. Greece is today her own mistress ; she could place the sculptures in their proper setting; and there is no longer the danger, actually present in Lord Elgin's time, that they might be destroyed in the course of military operations. England is naturally loath to give up one of the greatest treasures of the British Museum, but she has had them for more than a hundred years and possession has amply repaid her for her guardianship. It is true, however, that no one could maintain that this was the most flagrant of similar thefts. Visitors to the mu- seum shortly after the war, when so much was being said about the vandalism of the Germans, did not always see the humor of the inscription there upon a certain important monument which was declared to have been "acquired" at the capitulation of Alexandria, and many famous works of art have been "acquired" by means equally dubious. If our memory serves us the French, in a burst of generosity, once returned to their new allies, the Italians, some of the paintings that had happened to catch Napoleon's eye, and by the Treaty of St. Germain the Austrians were com- pelled to send back some of the treasures which they, also, had carried away from Italy; but in the latter case restora- tion was largely the result of an application of the princi- ple that to the victor belongs the spoils even though it hap- pen that they were his in the first place, and if any general restoration of works of art to their natural owners should take place there would be many whose history would be as long as that of the famous bronze horses of Venice which were dragged back and forth over Europe by one ravisher after another. The truth of the matter is that even today public morality lags in this respect, as in all others, far behind private principles. Generals who prided themselves on the discipline of their forces which permitted no looting and who would certainly have been above any temptation to rob their victims for their own benefit, have seen nothing im- proper when it came to "acquiring" things for their gov- ernment. Yet loot is loot whatever its nature, and should the British Government see fit to return the Elgin Marbles it would be making, for a government, a magnificent ges- ture. It would, that is to say, be acting like a decent individual.

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80 The Nation [Vol. 125. No. 3238 \j u t 0 But today when Henry the Ford goes to Canossa h-e receives a different reception. The World Does Change 1077-1 927

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July 27, 1927] The Nation 81 There's Mud on Indiana's White Robes By LOUIS FRANCIS BUDENZ THESE torrid July days of the Mississippi Valley are feverishly heated in more ways than one in my native Indiana. The white robes of Klandom, which stalked through the corn-fields into the Hoosier State House and the city halls, are undergoing a chemical analysis in the political laboratory. Smut and slime, deep-embedded, are found in their fabric. The hooded Governor of the State is under fire. The mayor of the capital city is awaiting trial for perjury and campaign irregularities. Many an- other good man and true in public esteem is quaking in his job-holding boots. Inch by inch the "Old Man" is lifting the lid of his little black box. The history of the rise and fall of the "Old Man" is the history of the metamorphosis of Indiana. Less than a generation ago the spirit of tolerance was abroad. The liberal traditions of Robert Owen and his New Harmony experiment were mildly kept alive in the person of his son. Robert Dale Owen played a modest but respected role in public affairs. James Whitcomb Riley, the Hoosier poet, could still sing of his love and reverence for the radical agitator "Gene" Debs of Terre Haute. Father Francis H. Gavisk, pastor of St. John's Catholic Church in Indianapolis and one-time chairman of the National Conference for Social Work, was generally respected and admired. Local intellectual life was likewise alert and progressive. Literary heroes of the hour rose from its cross-roads and hay-ricks to conquer the publishers and readers of metropolitan cities. Beneath this superficial surface of broad-mindedness and near-culture there lived a population largely crude and ingrown. Literate but ignorant, Anglo-Saxon but decadent, colorless in imagination and vocabulary but much given to the tinseled pomp of fraternal organizations — these worthy brethren of the Tennessee anti-evolutionists were merely awaiting the whispered message of the Klan. It was upon this post-war wave of Pecksniffery and prejudice that the "Old Man" rode into overlordship. He made the Invisible Realm of Indiana supreme over the State of Indiana. He became a white-robed Warwick, electing and deposing Republican chairmen, controlling cities and counties, dictating the Republican choice for Governor — with his eyes on the Presidency of the United States as a possible future prize. With ix*ony enough, his first contact with the Klan was due to accident and a Democrat. It was just before the United States entered the war that a blonde, cherubic, immaculately dressed man — D. C. Stephenson by name — set himself up without warning in the city of Evans- ville. He established a rather elaborate suite of offices there, presumably entering upon the business of securing coal-land leases. Rumor had it — set on foot by himself — that he was wealthy by reason of an oil well or two in Texas. It was not long until he had plunged into politics as a Democrat and in an incredibly short time announced him- self as a candidate for Congress. The local organization, disturbed, drafted a leading lawyer of the city for his pri- mary opponent. Whereupon "Steve" magnanimously rushed into print in favor of his rival, and ingratiated himself with the organization by his "generous" action. About this time, murmurings of the Klan could be heard in southern Indiana. Benjamin Bosse, Democratic mayor of Evansville and State chairman of his party, looked upon it with some favor as a possible means of curbing the growing Negro vote in his district and as a possible stepping-stone to the Governorship. He dispatched the busy Stephenson to Atlanta to look into the prospects of the Invisible Empire. "Steve" went, saw, and conquered — for he returned not as Bosse's agent but as an important unit in the national Klan machine. He moved to India- napolis, to direct the high-pressure drive for $10 fees, where he blossomed forth as Grand Dragon of the Realm. Events thereupon followed each other in rapid succes- sion. The individual $10 rolled in by the hundreds of thousands. In his historic letter to the present Governor "Steve" mentions "300,000 grateful and honest Hoosiers" who had written him letters congratulating him on his cru- sade. The letters were accompanied by cash. Cash and the grateful and honest Hoosiers backing him paved his way to power. Senator James E. Watson, staunch defender of Newberryism and apt pupil of "Joe" Cannon, courted "Steve's" favor and allied himself with the Klan. After a bitter battle the important Marion County committee of the Republican Party capitulated to Stephenson and elected his man, George O. Coffin, as chairman. Money talked there as elsewhere. "Steve" has so far produced one $500 check paid to the committee men, but it is known that there was much more that went the same way. By the campaign of 1924 he had named Clyde Walb as Republican State chair- man and Ed Jackson, Secretary of State, as Republican gubernatorial candidate. Jackson, the present Governor, is a mediocre man with far from mediocre ambitions. Brimming over with good health, his resultant physical composure is sometimes taken for the repose of genius. A politician all his life, his adhe- sion to the Klan was purely pragmatic. The Stephenson yoke galled his shoulders, and he undoubtedly sighed in relief when "Steve" was found guilty of rape upon Madge Oberholtzer, thus causing her death. The bizarre claim of a frame-up, put forward by Stephenson's high-priced attor- neys, failed to impress the jury. The dying statement of the victim and the uncontestable medical testimony on the fatal results of the sadistic lacerations on her body were too eloquent to admit of any other verdict than "Guilty." He was sent to the State prison at Michigan City for life, and it was not until this present month that his voice was to reach effectively outside his prison walls and drag the Governor's name into the mire with his own. Before these things had come to pass, the Klan-con- trolled Legislature of 1925 had mot and passed into history. "Romanism" was the particular black beast of the Indiana organization. Jews, Negroes, and radicals were thrown into the basket of hatreds and prejudices for good measure. Shortly after Stephenson's conviction for murder, late in 1925, his friend John L. Duvall was elected mayor of Indianapolis. This was the outcome of the capture of Marion County control by "Steve" and Coffin sometime be- fore. During the campaign the inevitable clothes-pin ticket appeared mysteriously on every front porch on election day morning. It proclaimed Duvall and the Republican ticket to be "100 per cent American" and pledged to "white Prot-

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82 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3238 estant Gentile supremacy." Ex-Judge Charles Orbison, Democrat and State prohibition director under Woodrow Wilson, campaigned secretly in various evangelical Protest- ant churches for Duvall's election. A school-board ticket, appearing frankly as the "Protestant" slate on the ballot, was swept into office with the new mayor. The "Protestant" school board was in large part the handiwork of Clarence C. Shipp, industrious manufacturer of ventilators for public buildings. The principles of Puri- tanism are foreign to Mr. Shipp's philosophy and mode of living, but the making and vending of ventilators has be- come a passion with him as well as a means of profit. Speci- fications adopted by the board for new school buildings make it difficult for any but the Shippian ventilators to win the awards. This fact has led to repeated clashes with the State Tax Commission, which has the duty of passing upon all local bond issues of school cities. Zealous Klansmen are frankly impatient with the board-members for not having pitched out of the schools all teachers of the Catholic and Jewish persuasions long ere this. They have been some- what appeased by the summary dismissal of the Superin- tendent of Schools, E. U. Graff, an honorable gentleman and able educator. The Duvall administration, on its part, has been the most inefficient in Indianapolis. Even the preceding rule of the auctioneer-vaudeville artist, Lew Shank, shines in comparison with it. Four city engineers followed each other in kaleidoscopic succession in the course of a year and a half. The city purchasing agent is under indictment for bribery and is about to go to trial. The city market mas- ter, who retired under a barrage of charges of corruption, is in a similar predicament. The mayor faces the possi- bility of a sojourn behind the bars for alleged concealment of campaign contributions. His brother-in-law, the city controller, is linked with him in this charge. The re- sultant disgust of the citizenry was reflected in the city- manager campaign of this year, which was successful by a five-to-one vote in the special election. Meanwhile, Stephenson began to grow restive. Repos- ing in the State prison while his appeal is under advise- ment in the Supreme Court, he viewed with some misgiving the inaction of his friends in his behalf. They who were in the seats of power through his money and activity were beginning to ignore him. The "Old Man" — that name which he had signed to orders to many of them — was evi- dently the "Old Man" no longer. Arthur R. Robinson, his friend and one-time legal adviser, had been elevated to Sen- ator Ralston's seat in the United States Senate, presumably through "Steve's" influence. Claude Worley, his confidant, had been named Indianapolis inspector of detectives. through what "Steve" alleges was a written agreement with the Duvall-Coffin forces. Governor Jackson's campaign fund had been enriched by at least $73,000, it now appears from Stephenson's Klan-lined pocketbook. Suddenly, last year, the ex-Grand Dragon announced that he was "tired of being double-crossed" and would tell all. A photostatic copy of a check from "Steve" to the Gov- ernor was circulating freely through the State. There were open charges that at least another $5,000 had been accepted directly by Jackson from the deposed Klan leader. The In- dianapolis Times collected a mass of witnesses and evidence apparently corroborating Stephenson's accusations of wide- spread corruption throughout the State. These were sub- mitted to the Marion County grand jury, in the fall. "Steve" had no faith in that body as then constituted, how- ever, and refused to testify before it when the opportunity finally came. So well did his underground information service still function that he predicted the exact poll of the grand jury on the corruption question, and it is said that his prediction was verified. Although the Governor was openly involved in the accusations going about, the unusual procedure was followed of reimbursing the assistant prose- cutor, Ralph Kane, and the special prosecutor, Fred C. Gause, out of the Governor's personal contingent fund. They each received $5,500 for their services in connection with the grand jury investigation. Gause, an ex-judge, now appears as personal adviser to the Governor in his present difficulties. The grand jury reported that "under the pecu- liar circumstances" hedging it about, it could only exoner- ate the State officials, but that local officials were undoubt- edly involved in some way. Finally the Times got its hands on some of those Ste- phenson checks which are now being exposed to the vision of the country. I had the privilege of gazing upon the $2,500 check to Jackson, with the Governor's vertical and precise signature on its back. This is a part of the $10,000 which Stephenson alleges was given to Jackson for cam- paign purposes but never reported as such by him. The Governor says it was for a horse, but that has been greeted by loud laughter through the State. The difficulties confronting the Times in its efforts to get at the facts are themselves damning evidence of some- thing rotten in Indiana. The grand jury of this year was dismissed, because one of its members alleged that an at- tempt had been made to bribe him to exonerate public offi- cials. The 1927 Legislature defeated a resolution to inves- tigate the corruption, by a straight party vote. The Re- publicans went into caucus and made the investigation a party matter. The Klan judge, Clarence Dearth of Muncie, escaped impeachment by a much narrower margin — that of two votes. He had been sanctimoniously irregular in empan- eling juries from kindred souls with himself, and had sup- pressed liberty of the press by imprisoning newsboys who sold the anti-Klan Muncie Post-Democrat; he confiscated copies of the paper attacking his lordship. A registered com- munication from an agent of the United States Department of Justice to the Times, returning incriminating documents, was opened by a clerk in the Indianapolis post office and read at the window to someone there. Nothing was ever done about this, either by local postal authorities or Post- master General New, himself from Indiana. Aid came to the Times last year in the person of Thomas H. Adams, for thirty years editor and publisher of the Vincennes Commercial. Taking his Republicanism seri- ously, "Tom" Adams brought the details he had of his party's bad odor to the Republican editors' convention. At first he got a ready hearing, but later his colleagues with- drew from the fight and some attacked his motives. Stephenson, having released damaging checks and cor- respondence for publication, now says he will release no more until his case has been passed upon by the Supreme Court. That there is probably "much more" can be gauged from his statement at one time that he had spent $300,000 for the election of candidates and that he has already re- vealed alleged written agreements with a congressman and city officials for the granting of public offices to his follow- ers in return for this cash.

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July 27, 1927] The Nation 83 The Negro in the Industrial South By E. FRANKLIN FRAZIER pHE sentiment in this country which has favored indus- trial education for the Negro has been built upon a rationalization of prejudice rather than an intelligent ap- praisal of the facts of Negro life. In the South industrial education was regarded as the kind of education which would maintain the proper relationship between the two races. The highly industrialized North looked upon indus- trial education as the proper education for the masses. It has turned out that the majority of the graduates of the so- called industrial schools of the South have gone out as teachers and community leaders ; while the wealthy indus- trialists of the North, who have given generously to the industrial education of the Negro in the South, have seldom given him an opportunity to use his education in their plants. Therefore it is necessary to make clear the fact that industrial education — so far as the Negro is concerned — was never designed to fit him into the industrial organization of the North or the growing industrialism of the South. It should also be made clear that the name, industrial, as ap- plied to most Negro schools in the South, is used chiefly to placate Southern prejudice. The industrial work in the ele- mentary schools is often an obstruction to real teaching; and North Carolina, with its enlightened attitude towards Negro education, is abolishing most of the farce. On the other hand the "industrial departments" in Negro schools are maintained often as exhibits for white visitors in order to insure appropriations. A further limitation upon the specific social function of these schools is the fact that while they give some training in a few trades, they are not equipped except in two or three cases to instruct in the technical processes of mass production. In many cases time is wasted in learning trades which no longer exist and in cumbrously making by hand articles which are now manu- factured more economically and more efficiently by machines. The most effective part of the industrial program serving a specific economic function has been the instruction in scien- tific methods of agriculture. This has been due not so much to the fact that the graduates of the schools have become farmers as that they as farm demonstrators and in other capacities as community leaders have become teachers for the masses of Negro farmers. But industrial education so far has not been especially designed, as it is generally sup- posed, to fit the Negro into the industrial organization of the South. The South is undergoing today an unprecedented indus- trial development. Not only is the development evidenced by the movement south of the textile industry of New Eng- land; but capital is finding a rich harvest wherever it plants the seeds of industry. While the South offers many natural advantages, its strongest inducement is an unlimited supply of labor. In fact, the South advertises to the country her vast reserves of docile native white labor that has not been contaminated by foreign agitators. It is well known how this lack of organization and working-class consciousness has made it easy for capital to exploit labor. Along with the urbanization of the white population has gone the city- ward movement of the Negroes. Although this latter phe- nomenon has been less dramatic in the South than in the North, it is a fact of important consequences for the Negro. One of the most important aspects of the inter-racial prob- lem is the relationship between white and black labor in the industrial South. The caste system of race relations affects the labor situ- ation as it affects all race relations. The white workers have swallowed the tradition of the vanished slave-holding aristocracy. This has made them easy tools in the hands of political demagogues subservient to the will of organized wealth. In the present industrial development where white labor has become organized it is attempting to secure itself against the exploitation of capital and maintain the sub- ordination of Negro labor. The antipathy of white labor towards the Negro dates from before the Civil War. There was first the hatred of the slave on the part of the poor white class, from whom the industrial laboring force comes. Then there was the opposition of white workmen to both slave and free Negro artisans which was expressed in com- plaints against the industrial education of freemen, pro- posed by the abolitionists, and the competition of Negro workers. Historically, the Negro has been on the side of capital. In the South he has received his education through the philanthropy of Northern capitalists. Even in the South, the white employing class, which has become accommodated to the mass of Negroes in domestic service, has not shown the antagonism of the poor whites. It is also true that the culture of the wealthy has restrained them from the bar- barous acts of the lower working classes. But there are those who see that Negro labor ultimately must seek cooperation with white labor. These same ob- servers have criticized the tactics of the interracial move- ment because it has sought the cooperation of white em- ployers and white and black intellectuals rather than the workers of the two races. The action of the Atlanta Cham- ber of Commerce in securing an injunction restraining the city council from enforcing the bill restricting Negro bar- bers to colored patronage might have been due partly to sentimental attachment to the Negro barber, but it was pri- marily aimed at the growing power of organized labor which was responsible for the passage of the bill. The action of the Chamber of Commerce cannot be taken — as we shall see — as an indication that the economic improvement of the Negro depends upon an alignment with capital in the South. The attiLude of capital toward Negro labor is well illus- trated by the two cases which follow. When an industrial plant was projected in a large Southern city, the Chamber of Commerce sought to make it a non-union job, but failed because the technical skill which was required was too well organized. The unskilled Negro workers who were at first to be paid fifty cents an hour by the outside contractors were forced to accept twenty-five cents an hour through the action of the Chamber of Commerce. In another Southern city when a municipal contract was let to a construction company the city council passed a ruling restricting the wages to be paid Negro labor. The Negro worker does not fare any better at the hands of organized or unorganized

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84 The Nation [Vol. 125. No. 3238 white labor. The barbers' union was directly responsible for the passage of the law against Negro barbers. In the first case cited above the white unionists piously washed their hands of the whole affair and made no attempt to organize the black workers. A union official justified this indifference on the ground that the Negroes were not organ- ized ! The attempt on the part of a union official to excuse organized labor on the ground that the Atlanta Federation of Labor refused to endorse the action of the barbers' union does not exonerate white labor. White labor is responsible for statutory restrictions in the South affecting the em- ployment and wages of black laborers, such as the Atlanta law making $100 a month the minimum wage for all "white" skilled and semi-skilled city employees, and other laws auto- matically barring Negro workmen from following certain lines of employment. The white Columbia (S. C.) State, in opposing the recent law passed by the State Senate restrict- ing Negro barbers of the State to colored people, warned the whites that such legislation would cause Negroes and Northern whites to test the constitutionality of all statutory restrictions on the economic activities of Negroes. The decline of craftsmanship and loss of the monopoly of certain trades by Negroes since the Civil War, which have often been attributed to their following the false light of higher education, have been due largely to statutory restrictions. The present caste system in the South places the Negro in the growing industrialism of the South at the mercy of both capital and white labor. Some leaders of organized labor in the South endeavor to place the blame for the antagonism of white labor on the Negroes. Their chief argument is that the Negro workers are hostile to white labor because their leaders, especially the ministers who wield the greatest influence, are con- stantly the recipients of doles from the white employers. This is undoubtedly true to some extent; but it is also true with the white religious leaders who accept donations from wealthy men. White labor leaders, as a rule, have not ap- proached the Negro laboring group as fellow workers in attempting to organize them; but have attempted to organ- ize them as an alien subordinate group to be used for their own advancement. Where white labor has honestly under- taken the organization of Negro labor and has been loyal to the black worker, the response has equalled their efforts. An example of honest cooperation is afforded by the follow- ing case : In a Southern city the white employers, in letting a large printing contract, attempted to force white unionists to accept ten cents less per hour than the union scale by the threat that they would employ black workers. When the white unionists refused to yield, they used the same ruse to force the black unionists to accept wages beneath the union scale. The black workers proved equally good unionists and the work was divided between the two races at the regular union scale. But generally we do not find such intelligent and far- sighted cooperation between the two groups. The writer knows of a case in which a white union official obtained the charter of a colored local which was in financial trouble, and chartered a white local. Although the colored local was restored to good standing, the white local has secured a monopoly on the work in that field. The action of the white brick-layers union in Memphis in insisting that bricklaying be taken out of the Negro industrial high school shows that even industrial education for the Negro is not favored when it gives the Negro economic equality with the white worker. The white employers have not failed to keep white and black workers apart by keeping alive in the former the idea of white supremacy. As the industrialization of the South grows, the white working class will become class-conscious and resist through organization the present unchallenged supremacy of capital. Faced with this situation, white capi- tal will not hesitate to turn to the black worker, as it has always turned in such situations to an unorganized group of workers. The unions will, therefore, be forced to recognize the Negro as they have done — in self-defense — in the North. In the meanwhile the masses of Negroes who are forced into menial and domestic services will be held down to the pov- erty level by capital and labor. Even the superstructure of Negro business which is being hailed as a significant eco- nomic development will rest upon an insecure basis in the absence of an industrial class. Neither the sentimental phil- anthropy which still lingers in the South nor the growth of scientific social work can eradicate the effects of this eco- nomic subordination of the Negro. Iceland and Industry By EARL HANSON A FRIEND in Washington writes: "I hear a Norwegian company has acquired concessions for large-scale water- power developments in Iceland. I hope it's not true. It would be the beginning of the end. With industry comes wealth, and wealth means also poverty. Industry means labor troubles." The generalizations are true, their application difficult. Should a nation forget its ambitions in order to remain a human and historical curiosity, a playground for romantic tourists and salmon-fishing sportsmen? The beginning of the end set in some time ago. Fifty years ago there was little poverty in Iceland because there was little concentrated wealth. At the time of my first visit, in 1920, the country hardly knew the meaning of the phrase labor trouble. A month ago I witnessed the May Day demonstration in Reykjavik. Four hundred men and women marched down the street carrying red flags and communistic banners, not a single national flag, singing the "Internationale." A well-organized socialistic party, organized labor with some years of practice in striking, is ready, awaiting the introduction of industry. What are they fighting for? I interviewed one of the labor leaders. In the end they want nationalization of fishing, of agriculture, and other industry. At present they want changes in the nation's election laws, higher wages for fishermen and laborers, and eight hours' sleep on the traw- lers. Eight hours' sleep, sixteen hours' work, eat when they can. The old, peaceful, picturesque Iceland is disappearing. Progress has come. Industry means further progress. Shall a nation stop progressing in order to remain picturesque? Even the friend in Washington likes to travel in automo- biles and Pullman cars. Diversified industry must come to Iceland. There has been too much dependence upon fishing. Thirty years ago Iceland had not a single steam trawler. Today it has thirty- five. There is over-production, helped along by enormous competition from Norway and the Faroe Islands. The price of fish goes down and everybody in Iceland is hard up.

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July 27, 1927] The Nation 85 These are hard times. Shall a nation be at the mercy of the fish merchants of Spain? When Spain gets too much salted codfish money becomes scarce in Iceland. The ex- change goes down, business suffers, credit suffers. One cannot remedy the condition with the means at hand — by catching more codfish. Newfoundland was once helped out of a similar predic- ament through water power and paper mills. Iceland must be helped through water power, nitrates, aluminum. Eventually the country will be helped through the de- velopment of agriculture. Iceland's soil is fertile. Its hay is rich and fine. Its mutton is good. Its wool is good. Both mutton and wool can be sold in England. Icelanders say their mutton is cheaper and better than that from New Zealand. But it will be some years before agricultural exports can make themselves felt in the finances of the country. Iceland's population is 100,000. Agriculture supports 40,000. The average density of population is 2.5 per square mile. That of the United States is 36 ; of the United King- dom, 469. Agriculture in Iceland could support close to half a million persons. When that figure is reached the island's agricultural exports will go a long way toward feeding England. Iceland's fisheries could support another half-million — if the fish can be sold. Living, as it does today, on fishing and agriculture, the country can support a million inhabi- tants. But its finances will be unstable — perhaps even more unstable than they are today. American farmers can tell us that those who depend for their living on the production of humanity's prime necessity, food, lead a precarious ex- istence. A nation like Iceland needs other industry to stabilize its existence. Today the nation is underpopulated. So is Canada. Canada welcomes immigrants. Iceland does not. Immi- grants mean race problems. Iceland has a pure population, growing at the rate of over one per cent a year. In seventy years it will be doubled. The country must be held open and made ready for those future inhabitants. It must be complete and effective, producing both materials and food. Iceland has few natural resources as we commonly think of them. It has no coal, no timber, no known metal deposits that are commercially exploitable. But it has power, unlimited power — more water power per inhabitant than any other country in Europe. And numberless hot springs and geysers can be used for power, as they are at Lardarello, Tuscany. Skeptics may want to know what good the power is when there are no raw materials. Skep- tics would better look around. England weaves millions of yards of cotton and doesn't grow one pound of it. Where power is cheap, it pays to import raw materials. And Ice- land, like Norway, can make nitrate fertilizers out of thin air. Of course industry means labor trouble — until such time as we discover what great stupidity of ours makes it mean that. But industry also means progress. Progress is a shifty word, open to many definitions. As an engineer I can define and measui'e it — in terms of horse power de- veloped, of automobiles per inhabitant, of miles of telephone wire strung up on poles, of the number of engineers em- ployed. As a doctor I would define and measure it in an entirely different manner. As a financier or a socialist — oh, well, we hide behind our labels and each looks at the world through the glasses of his particular color. I am glad I have a label. If I were merely a human being, I would have to discover some ultimate reason for human existence before I would dare to talk about progress. The friend in Washington says that industry would mean the beginning of the end for Iceland. The beginning of the end came a hundred years ago when the Icelanders emerged from their condition of near-extermination. The population curve proves the point. Up to 1800 the popula- tion curve swung violently up and down, from fifty thou- sand to forty thousand, back to fifty thousand and down to thirty-seven. Famine, pestilence, and volcanic disturbances harassed the people. The Icelanders could not help themselves. They were under the iron rule of Danish kings. Den- mark enforced a rigid trade monopoly, as rigid as that in Greenland today. Only the state could trade in Iceland. The state didn't make much money at it and wasn't enthusi- astic about trading. Icelanders needed trade. Lacking tim- ber, lacking cereals, lacking iron of their own, they needed them from abroad. Lacking commerce and communication, they died by the thousands. The trade monopoly was partially lifted in 1787. Ice- land was thrown open to all Danes. The population curve immediately improved. Slowly and fitfully it began to climb upward. It passed the fifty-thousand mark and climbed — climbed. In 1854 the country was opened to all nationalities. Twenty years later Icelanders gained home rule and freedom in the management of their economic affairs. With the memories of their darkest days only a century old they went energetically to work. Production, communication, and commerce, these were needed for the welfare of the country. They built a telegraph line, they laid cables, they bought motor boats and steam trawlers, they improved their agricultural methods, they built roads and bought automo- biles. Today they need manufacturing. They will get it. Where is the man who can say at what point progress shall stop because it brings its evils? Since 1890 the population curve has climbed rapidly upward, steadily, healthily. In 1918 Iceland became an independent nation, connected with Denmark only by a personal union, through the circumstance of having the same king. Americans, unused to royalty and its functions, find it hard to understand that a country can be an inde- pendent sovereign state while paying a salary to the king of another nation. But many Americans are presidents of two or more commercial and industrial companies that are entirely independent of one another. As an engineer I am becoming intimately acquainted with the problems of industry in Iceland. Next year I will begin a study of horse power available, of dollars needed for construction, of returns to be expected. I can calculate the effects my projects will have on the national life of Iceland — on the country's economic condition, on the move- ment of population, on the danger of a serious unemploy- ment problem. Can I calculate their effects on the content- ment and happiness of the Icelanders? If the New Yorker's arrogant pride in Hell Gate Bridge and the proposed Larkin Tower has anything to do with contentment, if my aunt's delight in her new electric wash- ing machine has anything to do with happiness, then the answer is easy. The trouble is, they haven't.

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86 The Nation [Vol. 125. No. 3238 In the Driftway YESTERDAY the Drifter sent Charlie Anderson a plug of tobacco. His mind is easier now, for the promise of that plug should have been kept long before this. And the Drifter got the reward of his virtue for he had to look up Charlie's address, and that was almost as good as a vaca- tion. Charles Anderson, Elbow Lake Lookout, Swan River Valley, Montana. LONESOME? No. He likes people but he thinks they ought to live alone most of the time. Once a year he goes to town but he can't stand it more than a few days. He'd like to take a trip around the world once, and then "come back and roam the hills the rest of my life." * * * * * CHARLES ANDERSON, self-sufficient, impatient of cities, a lover of trees ; Elbow Lake Lookout, Swan River, Montana. The Drifter FOR most of a month the Drifter had camped by a lake in Glacier Basin. He had climbed over the snowfields that cling to the high quietness of peaks, followed through still forests the winding trails used only by animals, fished in deep pools of clear green glacial water. Not a human sound — only the occasional crash of a startled deer, some- times the thunder of a bull elk's hoofs in the night, always the roar of water over rocks, now loud, now soft, enormous music played with the stops of the wind. Then, two days before the Drifter struck camp, Charlie Anderson came quietly out of the woods — a slight gray man with a Swedish accent. He was cutting out the trail to Lagoon Lake, he explained — and went on. Returning in late afternoon, he invited the Drifter to spend the night with him on his way out. He lived on a mountain top about five miles down the trail. IT was sunset two days later when the Drifter dropped himself and his heavy pack on the yellow windworn grass before the Lookout Man's door. To the east, across the great valley, hazy with the smokes of a dry season, the Swan range lifted thin blue edges; to the west lay the mountains the Drifter had just left, the broad high range of the Mis- sions, shouldered in ice, pearl-shadowed now with the sun's going. Charlie Anderson celebrated his coming by prepar- ing for his guest the most elaborate supper he could conjure out of cans on a mountain 100 miles from a town. After supper Charlie fed the left-over biscuits to a dozen gophers that came running when he called. He'd never figured out, he said, where they got water. It worried him a little. He had to carry it for himself from the spring down in the ravine. Evening closed in, and the Lookout Man. as if by appointment, went to the edge of his mountain and stood still. Very soon a night-jar, with noisy wings, swooped perilously close to his head and flew away. Again and again this happened. The old man was delighted. "They do it just for fun," he said. FAR into the night the Drifter and his host talked. Charlie came to the valley twenty-two years ago. At first he made a living trapping silver-tips and muskrat and mink. Then he decided that was too cruel, so he took up a homestead down by Holland Lake. Late years he'd been working for the forest service in the summer. He lives in the valley in winter but in May or June he packs up to the mountain above Elbow Lake. H~ has a fine shelter there that he built himself. Until the fall rains come, he searches out with trained eye the flashes of fire in the valley below. "Most fires, you know," he said, "are started by lightning. It strikes a tree and goes down in the roots and won't show up maybe for three or four weeks." Correspondence Explaining (Some) Men To the Editor of The Nation: SIR: It was presumably as a behaviorist that Dr. John B. Watson undertook to "explain" The Nation's series of anony- mous confessions by women ; and presumably as a neurologist that Dr. Joseph Collins did the same. Science stooped from the empyrean — with these results (it doesn't make much difference which gent said which) : "Among the 20 per cent who find adjustment, I find no mili- tant women, I find no women shouting about their rights to some fanciful career that men — the brutes — have robbed them of. Most of the terrible women one must meet, women with blatant views and voices, who shoulder one about, who can't take life quietly, belong to this large percentage of women who have never made a sex adjustment." Thus speaks Science. It sounds remarkably like a dis- gruntled male. Poor fellow ! To think of the way Mr. Science has been shouted at, and shouldered about, by these awful mod- ern women. One could just cry to think of it ! And again, speaking through its other mouthpiece, Science says : "On re-reading these articles I fell into meditation. Which of these women should I have liked to companion?" [It sounds like a parody of George Moore, but remember, girls, this is Sci- ence speaking!] "There are two with whom I should have been willing to attempt it. One had strong lusty desires. . . . An- other who interests me wrote the twelfth instalment. She seems to have neither ambition nor determination to rule the world. ..." Won't those two be pleased ! And isn't it sweet of old Sci- ence to consider their — er — companionable qualities so thought- fully. Perhaps if details had been furnished of color of eyes and hair, height, weight, etc., the scientific pronouncement might have been even more profound. Anyway, Science has spoken. It is remarkable to see Be- haviorism and Neurology in such perfect agreement, not only with each other but with the poolroom (that last masculine refuge, now that the polling-place and the barber-shop have been invaded). And now you know your places, girls. Back to the bedroom! Croton-on-Hudson, X. Y., July 1 Floyd Dell Another View of War Guilt To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: Alfred von Wegerer, in your issue of April 27, sug- gests that the fifteen members of the Allied Commission on War Guilt which was appointed in January, 1919, before the con- clusion of the Versailles Treaty, be called together again. He feels sure that it would change its verdict, but his discussion is grossly incomplete. He points out that the Russian Orange Book and the French Yellow Book and the British Blue Book issued in 1914 were falsified and incomplete. That's true, but the German White Book was even more so and the Austrian

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July 27, 1927] The Nation 87 was a close rival. Mr. von Wegerer is shocked because the old English Blue Book included only a quarter of the documents printed in the revised volume; the German White Book of 1914 included 27 documents, about one-fortieth of the 914 included in the revised edition. The Austrian Red Book included 69 out of 352. Furthermore, the memoirs of the former Austrian Field Marshal Conrad von Hotzendorff show that there are still further documents of importance not printed in the official volumes. The new documents, like the old, show that the Entente Powers prepared for war with their opponents — but for a de- fensive war. The whole question of war guilt hangs on that word defensive. Von Wegerer and his friends simply drop the decisive adjective and so prove to their own satisfaction that, since all the Powers were preparing for war, they were all equally guilty. The whole enormous literature of war guilt rests upon this single logical trick, this failure to distinguish be- tween offensive and defensive wars. Today it is even clearer than in 1919 that the Central Pow- ers were the attackers. The corpus delicti lies before us — the secret military convention signed between Germany and Austria- Hungary in 1909, which added to the terms of the Alliance of 1879 a new offensive casus foederis. Austria-Hungary was de- termined to fight Serbia sometime and both the allies foresaw that Russia would regard such an attempt upon Serbia as a provocation, thus bringing about a general European war. For all these eventualities Germany declared herself ready to sup- port Austria-Hungary with her entire armed force. These agreements are the basis of the war of 1914; this document proves that the Central Powers were not only the attackers of the World War but had planned their attacks since 1909. Von Wegerer is right; there is more and better material on the war-guilt question available than in 1919. But if the mem- bers of the old commission were to restudy the new material and if in selecting and interpreting this material they were not bound by the logical limitations of the von Wegerer group, they would not need to change their old verdict but instead would repeat it with stronger arguments than were then at hand. Vienna, Austria, May 15 Heinrich Kanner Pedants on Pedestals To the Editor of The Nation: SIR: Since you have commented upon Professor Bern- baum's remarks about the editing of reprints and translations, perhaps you will allow one of the persons he attacked to add his own comment. It is a delusion of the professor to suppose that only Ph.D.'s are acquainted with European literature and with the re- searches of modern scholarship. An enormous amount of work has been done by patient workers in all countries to elucidate literary problems. Unluckily, the form in which this work is communicated to the world is frightfully dull (as a rule) and scares the plain man into hatred of what he thinks is boring and highbrow. Now, even from the point of view of a pedant, is it not a good thing that rather more popular writers should try conscientiously to put these results before the public in such a manner that the public will read them? (I may say that I refuse to accept the view that "culture" should be con- fined to a little minority of supercilious universitaires ; if de- mocracy is not a sham, we all have a right to know what is known.) Does anyone think that it is better to have a labori- ously dull introduction instead of a better-written one conveying the same information? Professor Bernbaum thinks my "Fifteen Joys of Marriage" "amateurish." If it is, the fault lies with the learned authori- ties I consulted, which included Modern Philology, by the way. How can Professor Bernbaum tell how much or how little I know of French literature? It sounds horribly boasting to say this, but in the past eight years I have written over three hundred articles on topics of French literature from the Chan- son de Roland onwards, for a well-known English literary peri- odical. How does that differ from giving a course of lectures to students, except that I must never repeat myself, must try to be interesting as well as accurate, and am liable to be cor- rected by correspondents all over the world if I make a mistake, whereas a small audience of undergraduates could hardly be expected to pick up a professor's errors? The professor's complaint rather looks like an attempt to claim all literary criticism for the professors. But the "expert" note can be overdone. The "experts" have pretty well killed the classics of Greece and Rome by their "expert" comments. Literature is created by literary artists, not by professors. Perhaps those who have at least attempted original composition may see certain things which escape the laborious researcher. For a popular edition (and perhaps for others) it is quite as important to stimulate interest and to refrain from boring the reader as it is to give a precise and complete account of the "latest scholarship." But are these learned authorities always free from error? By no means. I have found even Professor Saintsbury advancing the enormity that the medieval farce of "Maitre Pathelin" was the work of Antoine de la Sale ! I could add numerous other instances. At this moment there lies on my table a book on Corneille by an American scholar; it is so preposterously dull that I simply cannot read it and the book positively makes me hate Corneille. When all literary criticism is limited to that sort of thing, Professor Bernbaum may rejoice. Richard Aldington North Reading, Berks, England, June 11 The Social Bar To the Editor of The Nation : SIR: From your recent editorial assertion that the Ameri- can Bar Association "has no social aspects," I suspect that you are not in touch with all of its activities. As a matter of fact, Negro membership in the association is discouraged because of the distinctly social aspect of the annual meeting, at which lead- ers of the Southern bar, with their wives, are occasionally hosts and always guests. The American Bar Association has had the choice of con- fining its activities to purely professional channels or enliven- ing them with a touch of social life. So far the social urge has carried the day — with the inevitable result. Boston, Massachusetts, June IS Lawrence G. BROOKS Contributors to This Issue Louis Francis Budenz, managing editor of Labor Age, was formerly a resident of Indianapolis. E. Franklin Frazier is the director of the Atlanta School of Social Work. Earl Hanson was born in Berlin of Danish and Ameri- can parents and later attended the University of Wisconsin. Ruth S. Alexander writes for The Nation from South Africa. Johan Smertenko is a frequent contributor to The Nation. Gerald Carson is a literary critic. Louis Fischer is The Nation's correspondent in Russia. Harry Alan Potamkin is the director of the Children's Play Village of Philadelphia. Howard McKinley Corning is the author of a book of poems called "These People." Benton MacKaye is a regional planner.

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Books Warm Stone Woman By HOWARD McKINLEY CORNING Stones that reach from water Are warmed by kindly sun That has swift hands for reaching Where waters run. But stones that under water Are not cooled all day through Leave alone, my brother, And come not back thereto. Like women who are taken With unrest not their own The warm stone is uncooling Stone of mother stone. Leave stones alone, my brother, And contemplate the pools If hands of woman taken No breast of water cools. First Glance GREATER attention has been paid, I fan y, to the astounding manner of Robinson Jeffers's poetry than to its still more astounding matter. It was, of course, nat- ural that the critics of "Tamar" and "The Tower Beyond Tragedy" should speak chiefly of those long lines which on first inspection might seem to be the work of a loose writer yet which proved to be so tightly packed with explosive that only disciplined and courageous readers ever under- stood them all. But it is time, now that Mr. Jeffers has published a third long poem, "The Women at Point Sur" (Boni and Liveright: $2.50), to consider what it is he is saying. Floyd Dell did with some disgust consider the bear- ings of "The Tower Beyond Tragedy" in an issue of the Modem Quarterly — leaving, however, the last thing unsaid. Mr. Dell found Mr. Jeffers to be a hater of humanity, and charged the generation of readers which likes him with shell-shock. There is nothing social in Mr. Jeffers, said Mr. Dell. But there is, if society be taken to mean the com- pany of all things that live — stones, worms, lightning, mountains, the Pacific Ocean, as well as men and women. And it is worth while to ask why Mr. Jeffers handles his men and women as he does. He sees them not in themselves — which he says would be madness and which Mr. Dell implies would be the only sanity — but in their relation to the whole conscious uni- verse. And this is how they strike him: . . . The old rock under the house, the hills with their hard roots and the ocean hearted With sacred quietness from here to Asia Make me ashamed to speak of the active little bodies, the coupling bodies, the misty brah.fuls Of perplexed passion. Humanity is needless. Humanity, says Mr. Jeffers both in his last book and in this one, is "something to break away from." It is the start- ing-point of discoveries, something to make a bonfire of in the hope that something hard and perfect will be found in the ashes. I say that if the mind centers on humanity And is not dulled, but remains powerful enough to feel its own and the others, the mind will go mad. ... I will show you the face of God. He is like a man that has an orchard, all the boughs from the river to the hill bending with abundance, Apples like globes of sunset, apples like burnt gold from the broken mountain: . . . the man is a madman. He has found a worm in one of the apples: he has turned from all the living orchard to love the white worm That pricks one apple. I tell you . . . that God has gone mad ... he has turned to love men. No wonder, then, that the hero of the present poem, Dr. Barclay, runs crying from his pulpit to wander in the wil- derness of the mountains and call upon mankind to burn, break, annihilate mankind. . . . Annihilation, the beautiful Word, the black crystal structure, prisms of black crystal Arranged the one behind the other in the word To catch a ray not of this world. And no wonder that he can look with the disinterested eyes of a madman upon the perplexed passions of those about him — passions which lead to murder, incest, suicide, sad- ism, infanticide, adultery, lesbianism, and rape. All of these things Dr. Barclay sees with something like glory in his face — they are the bonfire; and all of them Mr. Jeffers shows us with a satisfaction that Mr. Dell would certainly call unsocial. But there is no need of thundering against Mr. Jef- fers. For in the first place he is a powerful poet and hears thunder naturaDy— thunder that we could not make if we tried. And in the second place his ideas carry their own death. If it is madness to consider humanity in itself, as doubtless it is, it is also madness to consider humanity out of itself. Mr. Jeffers thus far has found no way of resolving the great paradox. That he feels it so strongly is evidence of his quality as an artist. That he cannot get round it is evidence that he may, if he keeps on, give us poems we cannot bear to read. "The Women at Point Sur" is unbearable enough. I have read it with thrills of pleas- ure at its power and beauty, and I shall read everything else Mr. Jeffers writes. But I may be brought to wonder whether there is need of his trying further in this direction. He seems to be knocking his head to pieces against the niSht- Mark Van Doren Exclusive Tour— Personally Conducted Boni and The South Africans. By Sarah Gertrude Millin. Liveright. $3.50. "< HE large, handsome, illustrated American edition of Mrs. Millin's book is more imposing than the English edi- tion, which is half its size and without photographs. Yet the latter, perhaps because of its very unobtrusiveness of outer as- pect, left a better taste in one's mouth. So much was honest, unprejudiced, even courageous in Mrs. Millin's presentation of her facts, and she wrote with such spirit and lucidity that one's admiration for a task well done was only momentarily inter- rupted by facile and superficial generalization. One disagreed with certain statements and questioned others, yet commended the brisk, even brusque, competence of the whole, and took the book no more seriously than it deserved.

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July 27, 1927] The Nation 89 On rereading the book in its transatlantic dress, however, one feels compelled, for more reasons than one, to treat it with greater seriousness, and in proportion as one does so one finds the pleasure to be gained from the book lessened and the annoy- ance increased. In the first place, those unlucky illustrations, a set of -photographs included by the courtesy of the Publicity De- partment of the South African Railways and Harbors, and for the most part exactly as conventional and unrevealing as one would expect, harmonize fatally with the general tone of the book. They are guide-book photographs, which they need not have been, even from remote South Africa, and "The South Africans," as it stands, with its chatty diction, its breezy de- scriptions of the principal towns, people, political parties, social problems, and racial conflicts of the country, is an admirable guide-book. Dependable within guide-book limits, full of tidbits of information, it even details the extraordinarily cheap rail- road trips possible within the Union. That in this capacity it would be most valuable either to an intending visitor or to any stay-at-home who wished to be able, with the minimum of effort, to talk intelligently on South Africa at dinner is indisputable. For that matter, it does contain information as well as enter- tainment for any reader. It is Mrs. Millin's exclusive, person- ally conducted tour through South Africa, with a short excur- sion into Rhodesia, and it is as well done as is to be expected of anything Mrs. Millin undertakes. Now, since there must be guide-books, there should be good ones. And about "The South Africans," for all its flair and attractiveness, there is something fundamentally superficial, im- penitently trivial, which forbids its criticism except on that level. Mrs. Millin's knowledge of three-fourths of South Africa is that of the well-to-do tourist; her knowledge of the South African natives, Asiatics, and colored people is that of the average European in South Africa who has never come into social con- tact with any of them save as employer. Any deeper knowledge would have led to the excision from these pages of a score of bright, untenable certainties. Thus, for instance, Mrs. Millin allows herself to write : "There are no idle rich in South Africa. There are no leisured classes. There are no upper classes. There are no lower classes." The statement is unsound and half true, and should not have been made. Mrs. Millin is writ- ing, of course, of white South Africa, and in a country the whole of the white population of which could be housed in a fifth part of New York the classes are small numerically. But though they are small, the concentric circles of them, which through the generations scarcely are aware of each other, are as well-fenced and as proud of their impenetrability as need be. Our idle rich, it is true, tend to go where glory and the shinier cabarets await them. But the old Dutch families keep them- selves to themselves with quiet conviction, and so do the old or less new English ones, and if they admit an outsider do so with a very definite condescension and equally definite mental reser- vations. "The mixture as before," in fact. How, given as a basis the two most deeply, quietly, universally conservative na- tions in all Europe, should it not be so? A pioneer does not put off his prejudices with his citified clothes. Again, Mrs. Millin says: "The South African who has gone overseas with romantic ideas about finding there a culture denied him in his own coun- try returns home feeling that, after all, a human being is a hu- man being, and may be met, kind for kind, if not so frequently in South Africa, not less than in Europe or America." Here the sweeping statement is even less than half true, though there is a difficulty, even something of an absurdity, in the rebuttal of it in so many words. How does one feel culture in a country or define it? The fact that there is one sculptor in Cape Town and a number of them in London or Paris or Berlin is not merely a numerical fact; nor is its significance for Cape Town as a whole to be measured numerically. The South African who returns from overseas with the comfortable but fallacious conviction just quoted has surely missed, or at least left out of account, certain aspects of culture that have their importance for the human spirit. And again, Mrs. Millin, in that section of her book which is the least satisfactory, since it is the most important, says, in her summing up of the position of the na- tives: "But in the end, of course, they will do as they are told to do." This simply is not true. There was a time when it was so, but it came to an end some years ago. From the passing of the Native Land Act in 1913 the native ceased to trust the white man's good intentions with regard to himself; during the Great War he learned that his respect for the power and wisdom of the white man had been exaggerated. Since the Act of Union one piece of harsh legislation after another has forced him into race-consciousness and into an embittered, determined indepen- dence. During the coming year Kadalie, a native from Uganda who has organized the natives into trade unions and made of them a large and powerful organization, is to lecture in America, as well as in England. Those who hear him will have an oppor- tunity to realize for themselves how little likely, from now on, the natives of South Africa are to do as they are told — unless, of course, they are told with machine-guns. Ruth S. Alexander The Woman Question Islanders. By Helen Hull. The Macmillan Company. $2.50. IV/flSS HULL has taken the contemporary woman question as ■*■ •*• the underlying theme for her fiction. In "Labyrinth" she gave us one of the most intelligent studies of the problems which face the modern, educated, capable, and married woman. She portrayed the struggle and the pain which accompany the divided duties of wife and mother and independent worker. "Islanders" continues the discussion by projecting another phase of this thesis; and yet, in a sense, this novel goes back to the more fundamental question of the status of woman in the mind of man as well as in his social organism. The stirring plot that combines the elements of historical narrative and the novel of manners serves to indicate the cruel contradictions in our conception of woman's position. Miss Hull shows that the chivalrous view of woman, which sees her as a frail being to be protected from peril and kept from the onerous tasks of life, is the illusion of a secure and affluent society. Actually, when the family is in difficulties its women are, primi- tive fashion, forced to bear most of the ignoble drudgery and the dangerous hardships of the struggle for existence — all the while facing the mirage of our double standard. Ellen, the heroine, like her mother before her, experiences in a protracted lifetime all the sorrows that are the lot of American women. Her father leaves her to wrest a living from the soil while he goes to seek his fortune in the gold rush of '48; her fiance, also an argonaut, dooms her to a barren and soured existence because, as a man, he thinks more lightly of his plight- ed troth than she; her brother, under the guise of protecting her interests, squanders the little fortune that comes to her — and yet, throughout the laborious years, in the eyes of the world she is a beggar and a recipient of favors. Ellen struggles constantly against this situation, but helplessly, because at first she does not recognize its causes or its cure. When she finally realizes that her soul suffering and her physical discomforts are due to the inconsistencies of the false dual standard, it is too late to rearrange her own life. Then she determines that her grand- niece must profit by her experience. Ever since I thought about it's being an island women get stuck on all their lives, I said, "Anne must get off." And I want to live to see you. It's been as good as getting off myself, thinking about you. I couldn't get off, poor Aliee never could, but it's different now. . . . There's more to the world than a few feelings in you. . . . Folks think a girl can just sit around, shriveling up, till some man's ready to marry her. Why, you can't even know how to love, that way.

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90 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3233 Anne has the spirit of the Dacey women in her and, despite the temptations which her own beauty and wealth throw in her way, she carries out the ambitions of her great-aunt. She estab- lishes herself independently. Incidentally, she finds a husband and the passionate attentions that her flirtatious nature craves. This is the weakest part of Miss Hull's work. She not merely utilizes a hack trick to bring about her happy ending, she de- feats the purpose of her own thesis by begging the question. In other respects, "Islanders" is not as fine a work as "Labyrinth." It lacks the latter's dramatic organization of plot; it insists on its thesis to the point of redundancy; and it suffers from an over-emphasis on the emotions of its characters. JOHAN SMERTENKO The People's Book Colonel Bob Ingersoll. By Cameron Rogers. Doubleday, Page and Company. $3. ROBERT G. INGERSOLL had to wait twenty-eight years for a dispassionate biographer. This circumstance affords a good measure of the man. A polemic figure of tremendous size in his own generation, Ingersoll had the faculty of provoking people to be themselves with such candor and violence that he has always before been approached in the spirit of embattled partisanship. Mr. Rogers, whose book on Whitman doubtless led him to examine the career of Whitman's friend Ingersoll, has taken up the pleasant biographical task of rescuing Ingersoll from — pre- cisely from what? The intellectual battles of today are being fought upon such distant terrain that it is hard to endow the statement with due weight and emphasis that Mr. Rogers's task is to rescue Colonel Ingersoll from the opprobrium of being an agnostic. And yet his freethinking is precisely the important aspect of Ingersoll. If one were writing a history of American thought it would be infinitely more interesting and important to record that Ingersoll brought rationalism to the people than that he was an eminent lawyer, or that he was a colonel in the Civil War, or that he brought a golden voice to the service of the Republican Party. If the present reviewer has any remonstrance to address to Mr. Rogers it is on the score that he has not separated out these values in a sufficiently positive spirit. His book runs along in cheerful narrative style, the "story" of a life wherein Ingersoll's part in the Civil War and the politics of his day, and his reputa- tion as a silver tongue, occupy an equal position with his extraor- dinary influence upon popular feeling about the dogmas of ortho- dox evangelical Christianity. Ingersoll brought the idea of the free mind to the people. He was the people's book. If one were to construct a shelf for collateral reading it would include a diverse company — say, Ethan Allen, Franklin, Jefferson, the Comte de Volney, Ambrose Bierce, W. C. Brann, E. W. Howe, and Upton Sinclair — all of whom, like Ingersoll, have been read by the American people and all of whom repre- sent a shift of thought and feeling which began and spread through society some two hundred years ago. To bring a large matter into brief compass, that shift was from faith to reason, from miracle to common sense, from an anthropomorphic God to the vague benevolence of "natural religion," from metaphysics to science. After a thousand years of dreaming about another world men became enamored of this one and of those faculties which helped them to subdue and abide in it. It was a somewhat large and incautious remark, then, that the writer of the jacket for Mr. Rogers's book made when he wrote that Ingersoll was "the first of those hard-hitting, sham- hating Americans whose banner is now borne by H. L. Mencken, Clarence Darrow, and Sinclair Lewis." That is warmly said; but it is too generous. It would be easy to collect a double handful of iconoclastic, hard-bitten paragraphs from Allen, Franklin, Paine, Thoreau, or Margaret Fuller to show that while Mr. Mencken and Mr. Darrow may have built their own style, they assuredly did not originate the skeptical temper of which they happen to represent a contemporary aspect. And, too, it is mispraise of Ingersoll not to give proper weight to the fact that he worked in a definite tradition. Colonel Ingersoll made his appeal for freedom of mind in terms of hope and love and kindliness; Mr. Mencken his in terms of a perverse and rough-neck jargon about urbanity and what he calls "civiliza- tion." Each is real. Each represents something peculiar to the genius of his times; one cannot think of Ingersoll patronizing his constituency, or of Mr. Mencken willingly appearing at the grave of a little child. I have tried to indicate that Mr. Rogers is a little disap- pointing in interpretation and in his general ideas about his subject. He did not always command his material; his own background was not always rich enough to give him the help which he required of it. Though still a young man — this biog- rapher of Whitman and Ingersoll was born in 1900 — Mr. Rogers does not adhere to the young philosophy of nil adyniraru He has regarded Colonel Ingersoll from a most sympathetic point of view and committed to paper a portrait of a warm-hearted, bluff, comradely son of the early West, which, I suspect, would not be quite recognizable either to Ingersoll's rationalist friends or to his clerical enemies. Gerald Carson If This Were So Bolshevist Russia. By Anton Karlgren. The Macmillan Com- pany. S3. 50. '"pHIS is a bitter book, written by a bigot. Professor Karlgren has foolishly painted the picture of Soviet Russia so black that nobody can accept it as the truth. For if what he says were a fact the Bolshevik regime would long ago have crumbled or would now be on the verge of collapse. His method is characterized by the legend under the full- page frontispiece. It reads : "A Bolshevist Village-Meeting — An Artisan Preaching Communism to a Number of Interested Children. The Grown-ups Stay at Home." Standing in the foreground of the picture is a tall workingman, and beside him, as chairgirl of the meeting, is a child of about twelve, dressed in the bloomers, white blouse, and tie of the Pioneers or Soviet Scouts. In her left arm she holds a banner on which is in- scribed the Russian word for pioneers. All around are children, many of them wearing the Pioneer uniform. This is obviously a children's Pioneer gathering being lectured by a worker. Grown-ups have no special business here, yet in the background there appear very clearly a number of men and women whom curiosity has brought to the scene. When Dr. Karlgren wrote "The grown-ups stay at home" he was trying to convey the im- pression that the peasants boycott Communist gatherings and are anti-Bolshevik. But his words actually tell a double lie which is all the more unethical because it presumes on the ig- norance of persons unable to read the Russian on the banner and unacquainted with the dress of the Pioneers. Throughout my marginal notes on this book occur: "Exag- geration," "Misstatement," "False." "Bunk," "Bosh." On page 64, for instance, the author declares that in March, 1921, Lenin put through the New Economic Policy (NEP1, "without having consulted the innermost party circles." Well, if the learned scholar consults volumes 17 and 18 of Lenin's collected works, as published by the Gosisdat, Moscow, he will find scores of pages devoted to a discussion of the problem which were written or spoken before the introduction of the NEP, and if Dr. Karlgren knew anything about Communist Party affairs he would be aware that the question of the NEP was threshed out in inner-party circles for months before it was proclaimed. This is one of many naked misstatements. There are dozens of contradictions. On page 142 the author treats of government stores and cooperatives, always interchanging the terms, and

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July 27, 1927] The Nation 91 says : "The level of prices in the government stores was far and away higher than that of private traders." In the very same paragraph he cites the results of an inquiry which proved that in the Ukraine, Ural, and a number of other districts prices in cooperative agencies were from "8 to 10 per cent below those of the private traders," and then adds: "The state, therefore, takes, at any rate very nearly, the same shameless price as the private traders." Very nearly the same price is not far and away a higher price. Here is a typical bit of presentation. Production, the author explains elaborately, has not increased. Then he shows that the increase in the quantity of industrial production has been at- tained at the expense of its quality. Finally he points out that higher output has done the Bolsheviks no good anyway, because they are guilty of the great crime of returning to the working- man in the form of wages what they have managed to get out of him in the form of increased productivity. Some of Dr. Karlgren's stories about his visits to rural dis- tricts are too ridiculous to be creditable. His picture of the in- habitants of a village who "lay trembling in their huts behind bolted doors" because young Communists were singing the "In- ternational" and yelling on the Red Main Street is grotesque. The author himself presents sufficient evidence to show that the mujiks are outspoken and articulate, and that far from dread- ing the Bolsheviks they sometimes kill off too obnoxious specimens. Of course the good doctor occasionally slips and is forced to admit in hurried sentences that, for instance, wages have risen to 100 per cent of the pre-war norm plus 32 per cent more in social benefits. To be sure, "the authorities have been compelled to give workmen [these wage increases] in order to keep up their spirits," but this single statement destroys a whole chap- ter built up on laboriously distorted facts. The peasants, too, have more land than formerly they had. Nevertheless, every- body hates the Bolsheviks, and their collapse is imminent, espe- cially since the Jews run the whole show. Apart from his own jaundiced observations during "some months in 1924," the author's sources are the Soviet newspapers and Communist officials. From these he quotes copiously. Every- one knows that the Russian dailies are filled with self-criticism. You can get your best anti-Bolshevik arguments from the Bol- sheviks, simply because they admit their own weaknesses as the first step toward the elimination of those weaknesses. But to quote only what they say in condemnation of their errors and to omit every mention of what they say in praise of their accom- plishments is not the whole truth, and therefore no truth. If the situation were as distressing as Dr. Karlgren's citations from Bolshevik pronouncements make it appear to be, then Stalin, Kalinin, et al. could hang their caps on the Kremlin bat- tlements and jump into the Moskva. A man in his senses will not paint Soviet Russia a paradise, yet when you essay to make it out a hell no one with an ounce of critical cray matter can take you seriously. Louis Fischf" Guidance Artistic Ideals. By Daniel Gregory Mason. W. W. Norton and Company. $2.50. "IVyfR. MASON has intended his present volume as a source- ■*■•'• and guide-book in idealism for young artists. Accordingly he has dealt with the generalities of conduct rather than with the details of method. His own words are leads for the many quotations which serve more to repeat than to develop. To guide the young artist to a salutary philosophy of conduct more is needed than the restatement of a general, and often sentimental, view. It is well, for instance, to warn him against seeking popu- lar approval. But this warning must be stringently qualified by the further warning that the popular is often an excellent source if not a criterion. It was this general contempt for "the public" that withheld the American artist from an interest in American forms. The young artist begins with an inclination to withdraw. One should be wary of offering any advice that might intensify this inclination or justify it in the lives of earlier artists. If any pressure is to be brought upon the young artist, it should be a pressure toward participation. This is all the more urgent today in an environment which tends of itself to force the sensitive artist farther and farther away from it. The great problem of the artist today is, how shall he turn the pressure upon the environment? To sustain and increase the pressure upon the artist away from the environment is to insure an inverted art. Independence, spontaneity, workmanship, originality, uni- versality, fellowship are good chapter-headings, but they are in themselves deceptive. Mr. Mason has not related them to the actual details of the artist's immediate task. He has used the wrong, if the more usual, method. Had he concerned himself with the demands of the task he might have achieved definitions of artistic ideals which are more positive and less dangerous. As it is, the advice he offers separates itself into general terms — sentimentalized caricatures rather than a comprehensive por- trait of idealism. The book is not saved by the quotations, for they are more interesting as expression than as idea. More- over, Mr. Mason is not discriminate in his selection of sources. Huneker is hardly the man to offer to young artists as an au- thority on arduous integrity. And if Edwin Markham, why not Edgar Guest? Nor is Van Wyck Brooks, to whom the book is dedicated, a safe source. Mr. Mason's account of Jack London's failure is typical of his personification of a single motive and a disregard for congenital inabilities. Jack London failed more because of his inherent incapacity than from the "passion to beat the enemy at his own game." Happily, this is the usual elimination; the task itself is the test and the judgment. And, happily again, the worthy artist learns from his own contacts how much of the world to accept and how to conduct himself. Precept and example can teach him no moral attitude to his art. They can, however, teach him much to help him toward an aesthetic attitude. And of this Mr. Mason has said little; wherever it appears in the book, he sees it through moral spectacles. Harry Alan Potamkin Books in Brief The Drifting Home. By Ernest R. Groves. Houghton Mifflin Company. "There are three kinds of American homes," Mr. Groves de- clares, " the good, bad, and bewildered." It is to the parents of the last grouping that "The Drifting Home" is addressed. The book's good sound sense, its testing of scientific technique by human values, and its thoughtful attack on current problems should win it a wide public. Studies in Florentine Painting: The Fourteenth Century. By Richard Offner. Frederic Fairchild Sherman. $25. Ten brief technical studies devoted, for the most part, to the consideration of little-known masters are included in this pro- fusely and handsomely illustrated volume. The author is chiefly concerned with the problem of attribution, but attribution, as he truly remarks in one of the essays, has more than antiquarian significance, since it is, in effect, "a diffei-entiation of aesthetic experience." His method — the minute study of catalogable de- tails— is objective. He reproduces details to substantiate his contentions, and his .cautious temper gives additional weight to his contentions. In so far as he has a general thesis it is that the tendency to consider all Florentine paintings of the four- teenth century as the work of Giotto and his followers ignores the existence of a group of painters whose style is the result of a "sentimental empiricism" diametrically opposed to the for- malized drama of the giottesque.

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International Relations Section Industrial Exploration By BENTON MACKAYE [This is the second of three articles, the first of which appeared last week. The concluding article will be published next week.] II. Charting the World's Requirements THERE was a time when we had a planet but not a world. There were several worlds. One was on the Mediterranean. A second was in India. Columbus found a third. There were still others. Now there is but one — mechanically. And it is becoming more contracted every day. Not only contracted but crystallized. Along with steam and wire and gasoline there seems to be forthcoming, for good or ill, an unconscious and inevitable effort toward world crystallization. This shows itself especially in indus- try. A number of world-scale industrial enterprises have been achieved, or projected — the Panama and Suez canals; the Trans-Siberian and the Cape-to-Cairo railways; conti- nental systems of giant power; industrialization of agricul- ture. These things sug- gest an unconscious groping toward a con- trolled integration of world industry. Whether this will kill or make us depends apparently on whether or not we can control it. To control a thing we first must see it. It must be visualized. That is the point of in- dustrial exploration: to visualize, to unfold what now exists — po- tentially. That is the province of the "World Atlas of Commodity Flow," suggested in my first article. It would visualize and chart for us, on the basis of un- derlying physical facts and forces, an unseen integrated industrial system, just as the ex- plorer charts for us an unseen river system. The potential in- dustrial system sought would possess certain attributes : It would avoid entanglements — physical and human. It would avoid waste — physical and human. It O EASTERN ,# WESTERN ® TROPICAL PRUSSIAN ©JAPANESE SIZE OF CIRCLE SHOWS PROPORTIONATE .POPULATION OF COUNTRY NAMED 4. WORLD CIVILIZATIONS (NORTHERN HEMISPHERE) would comprise the most direct flow from source to destina- tion of industrial commodities. The most direct flow, other things being equal, is the shortest. But it is more than this. It is the one which eliminates not only waste of mileage but waste of motion generally ; not merely waste in transportation but in manu- facture and in every step of industry between resource and consumer. What are the ends or objects of industry? Food and clothing and life — and nothing else. Not pecuniary profit. Profit is nothing except as a means to something else. Where profit is a motive for good industrial service — well and good; otherwise it has no function. Human require- ments— whether bread, shirts, houses, books, or pictures — are the things ultimately desired to be forthcoming at the destination of the commodity stream. What are the means of industry? Human energy and effort. Also solar energy, whether coming through coal beds or waterfalls or oil pools. Also stuff to work upon — plants and animals and wood and iron. The ultimate means of industry consist in nature's gifts — the ma- terial resources and the energy resources of the world. All humans have certain basic needs : food, clothing, and some degree of shelter. On these they can exist. But they require more in order truly to live. Combinations o f peoples and climates and natural resources result in what we call "civilizations." Each civilization seems to have its own require- ments. What are the civilizations of the world, and what are their requirements? This is the basic ques- tion of industrial ex- ploration. All we can do here is to list in a crude and arbitrary fashion the civilizations of the world, and note the fact that each of them has its own path in the eternal pursuit of human happiness. Here, then, is a rough-and-ready list of present world civiliza-

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July 27, 1927] The Nation 93 "acinic • America tions. Their locations and proportion- ate populations are shown on Charts 4 and 5. The East: China, chiefly within the temperate zone; India, mostly in the torrid zone; and their associated countries. Two distinct races : Mongo- lian and Aryan. Both so-called "col- ored." Both with an outlook on the universe and life distinctly different from that of the West. Some one has said that China has developed the deep- est notion of the relation of man to man; India, of man to God; and the West, of man to nature. The Chinese and Indians together constitute nearly half the population of the earth. The West: Western Europe and its transplants in the Americas, Africa, and Oceania, where the aboriginal civ- ilizations have been annihilated or else "benevolently assimilated." An iron civilization in contrast with the non- iron civilization of the East. The Western peoples (outside the Tropics) form nearly a third of the earth's population. The Tropics: The remnants of aboriginal civilizations and the beginnings of western civilization along the coasts and up the rivers of Equatorial South America and Africa ; and in the East Indian islands. Spanish and Portuguese influence in South America; French in Africa; British and Dutch in the Indies. About 7 per cent of the earth's total people. The Russians: A land people and a northern people: a bridge between East and West across Siberia. A combina- tion of Slav, Jew, and Nordic. A people whose ideas and traditions of social integration have come to the surface as in no other country. About 6 per cent of the earth's total. The Japanese: An island people. Mongolian. East of the East, suddenly vaccinated with the West. A non-iron civilization pierced by an iron one. About 4 per cent of the earth's total. Such are the world's people. What are their require- ments ? They all need food, clothes, and roofs. Almost all of them eat wheat for breakfast; most of the Eastern people also eat rice. Beef and meat are relished by the Westerners especially. Cotton forms a universal garment. Woolens are naturally added for those living outside the torrid zone. Wood is the almost universal house maker — inside if not out. The need of iron is a complicated story. It is not required basically to keep out the cold; its need depends upon the extent to which a particular civilization is an "iron" one. There is one more class of wants that is usually omitted in the lists. It is not, strictly speaking, a material want at all. The artist might call it "beauty." The man of science might call it "environment." We insist upon some measure — however meager — of household order, of interior harmony, of desirable setting for hours of leisure and of living. We think we demand it in our civilization. We like to ponder on the colorful background and setting of America: Atlantic America Tropical America Argent i rva O EASTERN * WESTERN ©TROPICAL PRUSSIAN SIZE OF CIRCLE SHOWS PROPORTIONATE POPULATION OF COUNTRY NAMED 5. WORLD CIVILIZATIONS ( MERCATOR'S PROJECTION) the colonial mansions; the early New England community; the Virginia plantation; the march of the covered wagon. We go further. We borrow from other civilizations. We picture the Parthenon and the Athenian Acropolis; Venice; the English lake country. We picture more vaguely but not less luringly the elusive image of the Far East — even as Columbus and Magellan did. "That romantic Eastern civilization, the pursuit of which had brought them around the world." These, crudely, are the people's varying needs: what are their wants? They want "things" to put in their houses. Some things satisfy more basic wants than others : a bed, a table, and for the "iron" folks a stove. The more iron things they have the more paper things they think they need to keep track of all the rest. They want personal service: medical care; some man- ner of police and fire protection ; legal protection usually ; mails and transportation; educational facilities; often they want help with the household chores. No attempt is made to classify the things and the services which various peoples need or want. This must vary with the civilization — the climate and resources, the thoughts and yearnings of the people themselves. A survey of world requirements is basic in industrial exploration. What is the prospective population of each country? What are its per capita requirements as to food and clothing and "things"? What are its per family re- quirements in the matter of houses and furnishings and services? It is a matter of budgeting and (like any other esti- mating) of making the best guesses that we can. What are real requirements and what are fake requirements? What is for weal and what for woe? What is wealth and what is "illth"? Such a charting of world requirements would form one of the chapters of any "World Atlas of Commodity Flow." Another charting would be needed at the other end of the commodity stream : a charting of the world's natural resources.

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94 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3238 S3 OPEN SHELF GOOD CHEER, COMRADES 1 Want to buy, sell, or swap books, bronzes, old china, clocks, curios, etchings, lamps, paintings, prints, oriental rugst Bus, or stroll to Daca's. 63 Washington Sq. So., N. Y. C. Books always 20 to 80% off. Open eves. BOOKS All books (except text) sent post free anywhere at 15% discount from publishers' prices. List on request. ISRAEL SOI FEU 124 1 Clay Avenue Now York City HOISES FOR SALE FOR SALE : ten room house in most beautiful residential part of New Rochelle. Lawn, trees, shrubs, garden. Near station and bathing beach. A home that will be appreciated by people of good taste. Little cash required. Winer. 79 Pintard Ave. Phone New Rochelle 7410. FOR SALE: Six-room house, furnished attic re- treat, sun parlor, garage, latest oil burner, metal weather stripped throughout. Grounds 40 by 100. Normal Hill section. Jamaica. Ideal for any pro- fessional. Telephone Republic 4983. 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Vol. cxxv The Nation FOUNDED 1866 NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 3, 1927 No. 3239 Contents EDITORIAL PARAGRAPHS 95 EDITORIALS : Nicaragua's New Bondage 98 To Disarm. Disarm 99 Hoboken Takes a Joke 99 A Rare Citizen 100 GENEVA. By Hendrik Willem van Loon 101 BRITAIN'S FOLLY TOWARD RUSSIA. By J. Ramsay MacDonald 102 ENGLAND— TOO BITTER TO COMPROMISE? By Freda Kirchwey.... 103 THE NORTHWEST STANDS PAT. By Robert S. Allen 104 WHY THE MODERN WOMAN IS UNIQUE. By Ellsworth Huntington. 105 HAVE YOU A LITTLE MS. ? By Johan Smertenko 108 IN THE DRIFTWAY. By the Drifter Ill CORRESPONDENCE 112 BOOKS AND MUSIC This Rock. By Hal Saunders White Ill The Great German Puzzle. By Oswald Garrison Villard 114 Equal Responsibility. By Harry Elmer Barnes 114 Fiction, Not Literature. By Llewelyn Powys 115 A Critique of Science. By Paul Weiss 115 The Constitution Today. By Jane Perry Clark i 1 .'. Finis Coronat Opus. By Carlcton Beals 1 1 G Books in Brief 117 The Beethoven Festival at Bonn. By Henrietta Straus 118 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS SECTION : Industrial Exploration : III. Charting the World's Resources. By Benton MacKaye 119 OSWALD GARRISON VILLARD, Editor Associate Editors LEWIS S. GANNETT DOROTHY GRAFFE VAN DOREN ARTHUR WARNER JOSEPH WOOD KRUTCH Managing Editor Literary Edito;: 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 Unit?d States and Mexico ; to Canada, $5.50 ; and to foreign countries of the Postal Union, $G.0C. 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 NATION is on file in most public and college libraries and is ind in the Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature. PRESIDENT COOLIDGE, it seems to us, descends to lower and lower levels in his Western antics. Now lie has been photographed and filmed as a placer-miner washing for gold in a stream to which years ago there was a wild rush of fortune-seekers, and as a fishermar (without worms). To show how his publicity technique has grown, the dispatches report that when he fouled his line on a bush he called to the camera men to cut that out. Even some of his greatest admirers admit that he has not been upholding the dignity of his high office since he went to the Black Hills and began his circus performances in the hope that he could charm the Western farmers into forgetting their woes. The press, too, continues quite outspoken. Thus, the New York Evening Post, a mouthpiece of Cyrus II. K. Curtis of Saturday Evening Post fame, declares that nei East nor West "really liked or approved the cowboy stunt." this after quoting with approval some sarcastic remarks by the Racine Journal-News. It then adds, "there ought to be a warning signal hoisted in the Black Hills when East and West are at one in declaring that they do not at all like the particular brand of publicity being used there." We cannot, however, feel any real surprise at the President's perform- ances. From the day when he stole the credit for stopping the Boston police strike he has known that you can put any- thing over on the American public of today. Why should he stop at public play-acting, not to say buffoonery? We notice with interest, however, that a Washington news service en- tirely devoted to him has sent out the tip that official Wash- ington is now not so sure after all that Mr. Coolidge will be renominated. THE EARL OF OXFORD, whom the world will continue to recognize more easily as H. H. Asquith, recently excused himself from attendance at a summer assembly of English Liberals on the plea of "physical immobility." This was in effect an announcement of the final withdrawal from public activity of one who had filled a prominent place in England for a full generation : the man who as head of the Government in 1914 carried the British Empire into the war, the last of the Gladstonian Liberals. At 75 years of age Lord Oxford lies stricken. Paralysis has broken a con- stitution which was the envy of his contemporaries in Par- liament; and the man whose boast it was that for thirty years he never missed a public engagement on account of ill health will not again appear on the platform or speak from his place in the House of Lords. His retirement is not an event of any political consequence, for Lord Oxford had clearly hung on as party leader too long, and in his last encounter with Lloyd George, after the general strike of 1926, he was out-maneuvered by his younger rival and humiliated through the pettiness of his immediate associ- ates. Since the great constitutional battle over the House of Peers sixteen years ago English Liberalism has owed him little. The Asquith mind was the mind of 1880, or 1850, indescribably remote from the issues, the movements, and the interests of today. Moreover, we cannot forget that it was Asquith who gave way over Ireland, over conscrip- tion, and over post-war free trade (in the Paris resolutions of 1915), so that in a just accounting Liberals must admit that the capitulation in respect of their vital principles was made by their own nominal champion. There is, however, this to be said, with emphasis and respect. The last of the old Liberal prime ministers belongs to the great parlia- mentary line, in that he has cherished a fine ideal of national service, has wielded an impressive weapon of eloquence, and was never known to be guilty of a word or a personal action which his opponents could object to as tending to the cheap- ening of political life. L ET'S GO HOME. MAMMA; I'M HUNGRY." said five-year-old Michael, Rumania's new king imme- diately after his inauguration. If he reigns as long as Queen Victoria he will never make a more appropriate speech. Kings don't; they can't. They belong by defini- tion to a tinselled picture-world, and it was only an acci- dent that a palace guard overheard and repeated the tired little king's human plea. Rumania is not ruled by kings; it never was. It is ruled by its landed gentry, relics of feudal Europe, and kings and queens and princesses are mere paid puppets. Their speeches are written for them — sometimes in tongues they barely know. Michael speaks French, German, and English, the reports say — there is no hint that he speaks the tongue of the Rumanians. His great-uncle, Rumania's first king, was a poverty-stricken

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96 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3239 Hohenzollern prince before the Rumanian nobles hired him to head their state. Michael's grandfather Ferdinand never had real power. He was not even allowed to marry the woman he loved — though Carmen Sylva, the old queen, supported his plea — but was forced to mate with Queen Marie, whom, according to most accounts, he hated to the end. Marie's eldest son Carol had more than a streak of his father's humanness. During the war he left the front to marry the daughter of a commoner. His employers forced the dissolution of that marriage and paired him with a Greek princess, Michael's mother, but Carol escaped the country and refused to return. He refused to be bribed back to the dull life of royalty. So his son is king, and behind the scenes — a little more visibly than when King Ferdinand was alive — Premier Bratiano, millionaire land- Dwner, continues to pull the strings. had only 16 millions; they have 47 millions today — and it is the industrial revolution which has made this three-fold increase possible. Japan's population has not doubled in two centuries — and her industrial revolution has hardly begun. If industrialization continues she will become more and more dependent on foreign foodstuffs. "Overpopula- tion" is a much-abused term. In modern times "overpopu- lation" is usually a symptom of industrial prosperity. Rhode Island is more densely populated than any part of Japan; the most crowded part of China is the prosperous Canton delta. It is, however, distressing that the human race, faced with the possibility of greater ease and leisure, unconcernedly breeds itself back into a misery approach- ing that of the past. A high birth rate is no sign of wis- dom. Surely the French are in that respect the most civilized people on earth. JB. POWELL, American editor of the China Weekly . Review of Shanghai, continues to be punished for his opposition to military intervention in China. The British- American Tobacco Company withdrew its advertising, then the National City Bank. The biggest American bank now advertises in Shanghai only in the violently interventionist British organ, the North China Daily News. The Nation, inquiring whether such matters of policy were determined in Shanghai or in New York, received in reply this master- piece of verbose evasion, signed by Lee E. Olwell, vice- president of the National City Bank: Answering your question, in the operation ( f our for- eign branches, the problem of local advertising is decided, as far as certain cities are concerned, by Head Office, and in the case of other branches, by the branch manager on the ground, or, more often, when the managers are at Head Office for conference. We have no hard-and-fast rule as to whether Head Office or Local Office should exercise control. Head Office is sometimes completely guided by the local manager's advice, and sometimes only partly. We at Head Office f.nd it impossible to keep thoroughly au courant with chang- ing conditions in regard to publications and advertising problems in the cities throughout the world, and look to our managers for information and cooperation in this respect. The letter sounded as if "Head Office" had something to conceal. And it did. We learn that the letter cancelling the National City Bank's advertising contract with the China Weekly Review came from New York. It is the Wall Street head office of the bank which is putting the screws upon an American editor who dares stand for Amer- icanism in China despite the local clamor of Briticized Shanghailanders. JAPAN'S POPULATION is increasing at the rate of nearly 900,000 a year. Since the production of rice and barley, Japan's staple foods, does not keep pace, the Government has appointed a huge commission of fifty-odd members to investigate the food and population problems. Its product can be foretold. It will recommend further encouragement to settlers in the thinly populated districts of Hokkaido, Korea, and Formosa, where no one wants to go, and the cultivation at home of waste — and economi- cally ineffective — lands. The problem will continue: for it is fundamentally a part of Japan's delayed industrial revolution. As long ago as 1732 Japan supported a popu- lation of 30 millions. Great Britain and Ireland in 1801 JOSEPH PAUL CUCKOSCHAY was defeated the other evening by William Harrison Dempsey, or if you pre- fer to give them their ring names, Jack Sharkey was knocked out by Jack Dempsey. That is clear enough. But behold how the sporting world talks of this : "The Manassa Mauler showered blows upon the Garrulous Gob's body"; this was resented by the "Loquacious Lithuanian and he countered to Jack's head." "The Tiger landed several lefts to the Sailor's midriff and a sharp exchange followed," etc., etc. Forty-five seconds of the seventh round had passed when the "Manassa Mauler landed the deciding blow, a solid left to Jack's jaw," which sent the "bold blustering, trom- bone-tooting Boston Bucko into oblivion." At this point we thought that this must refer to two other men, but our sport-dialect interpreter declares that it was really Mr. Dempsey and Mr. Sharkey who were fighting all the time. MOST NORTHERN NEGROES stay "in their place." Yet even such perfect behavior is not enough to sat- isfy the American citizens of Seabright, New Jersey. In Seabright Negroes, decorous or indecorous, are simply not wanted, and if they do not realize this, well, we have a John Hall story. About three months ago Hall opposed a Klan lynching of another Negro near his home in Smithfield, Vir- ginia. Following this he moved north to Seabright, hoping that he would be able to live peaceably. The Virginia Klan, however, determined that his "crime" should follow him and they forwarded his Virginia "anti-lynching record" to the Seabright Klan officials. Hall then received a threat telling him to leave town ; he stayed and received more threats. Gradually this duress made him morose and melancholy and, finally, violently insane. The New Jersey State Hospital, however, refused to admit Hall because he was not a "legal" resident. Since the residents of Seabright did not want an insane man running wild in the community, there was only one thing left: John Hall's relatives must take him back to Smithfield. This they were induced to do, and now, having ousted Hall, the Jersey Klan is happy. And why not? It has discovered a new technique for getting rid of intelligent and outspoken and, therefore, undesirable Negroes. AT LAST there is a sign of revolt against the increasing lawlessness of our police forces. From Wichita, Kan- sas, comes the good news that thirty-seven of the leading members of the bar of that city have organized to "de-Rus- sianize the Police Department." Whether that slur on Russia is justified or not, these lawyers have been stirred

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kug. 3, 1927] The Nation 97 ,o action not only by the "third degree" but by the constant nolation of every right of the citizen and of the person inder arrest. People are arrested right and left on merest suspicion, then finger-printed and photographed before any :harge has been filed against them. In many cases, the law- yers say, the persons arrested are promptly discharged be- :ause of total lack of evidence but their photographs and inger-prints remain in the Rogue's Gallery. Attorneys are onstantly denied their right to see prisoners who are ille- gally held incomunicado. One case cited is that of a labor- ng man who was kept incomunicado for three days. Mean- vhile his family was frantic at his disappearance, but he vas not allowed to communicate with them until the police admitted that they had no evidence and released him. This ,ort of thing would bring about a revolution in England vhere they know and value their rights. In Wichita the lew organization announces that it will teach its fellow- :itizens what their rights are. Probably there is not a sin- gle large police force in America which does not daily vio- ate the laws and the Constitution it is sworn to enforce. THERE MUST BE NO LETDOWN IN the militarizing of the youthful minds of America, even in the summer ;ime. This is the dictum of the United States Army and ^avy "intelligence" departments. Of course, the fact that ;he regulations requiring compulsory attendance at mili- ary drill in many colleges cannot be used for these camps s for the present a handicap. So military drill is inted with swimming and boating, tennis and track, base- mil for some and polo for others; in fact, there are sports md recreation to suit every individual taste — a vacation- st's Utopia with all expenses paid by the good old U. S. ^.rmy. If time permits, there may be some incidental ■ifle practice and also a little private contact between the ;traw dummy's stomach and the bayonet (just as in real var) ; then, to top the delightful summer sports program, here are a few psychology lectures on the proper attitude >f a true patriot in time of war. In other words, say the nilitarists, we may have to coax the students to the Citi- ;ens Military Training Camps by camouflaging military Irill under vacation programs, but we do get the f undamen- als put across! And no one can gainsay them. GOVERNOR FULLER of Massachusetts has been mak- ing an industrious, personal study of the Sacco- /anzetti case in addition to the inquiry which his commit- ee has been conducting, and it is unthinkable that out of hese efforts — if intelligence and a desire to do justice have irevailed — there will come any decision but to set the pris- mers free. There is a tendency after a lapse of seven years ince the crime to emphasize unduly new phases and possi- lilities in regard to it. It seems to us that the already- :nown and undisputed facts are overwhelming in their brce. Sacco and Vanzetti, as John Lawrence Hurley of he Suffolk Law School said six years ago, were convicted ipon atmosphere, not evidence. The case against them con- isted mainly of the testimony of identification witnesses ,nd revolver experts. To us the testimony of the eye wit- lesses is practically valueless. They all saw the crime from actory windows or a considerable distance away, and when iullets began to fly were undoubtedly more concerned with heir own safety than in trying to fix in memory the faces f the bandits, largely concealed by slouch hats. Not one >f the identifying witnesses pretended to have known Sacco or Vanzetti before — the only circumstance that could give weight to such testimony. As to the revolver experts, the State's best witness, as it has since come out, was induced by the prosecuting attorney to make a statement which if not a deliberate falsehood was at least obviously misleading to the jury. Sacco and Vanzetti are not guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, as the law requires for their death. Thousands of persons entertain many doubts, both reason- able and sincere, in their behalf. The state of Massachu- setts cannot ignore these doubts without making its reputa- tion for justice a byword and a hissing in the civilized world. HOW MUCH LOVE do the States have for their chil- dren? Not very much, if we judge by their legislation concerning children's compensation. Five States, the Na- tional Consumers League points out, make no provision for injured minors, while 17 States exclude illegally em- ployed minors from compensation. In the remaining States, the study shows, compensation laws are "unequal, insufficient, and unjust. In 18 States the injured minor who is permanently totally disabled receives compensation for less than ten years" — he thus becomes an object of charity before he reaches the age of 30. "In 21 States," the report continues, "if he is permanently partially disabled, and his earning power has permanently de- creased, his compensation ceases before he reaches the age of 25." "The intelligence that created mass production can make it safe," the authors of the report conclude. "When will it make work safe for the minors throughout this country? Mississippi and South Carolina, which have no compensation law, can enact one next year. Louisiana and Rhode Island, which exclude illegally employed minors from compensation, can amend their laws in 1928. What will they do?" AS SURELY AS CHICKENS come home to roost, so cer- tain is our Latin American policy to be attacked in future in any gathering in which persons from south of the Rio Grande are present, if any degree of freedom of ex- pression prevails. Thus it is natural that the recent Pan- American Labor Congress, although meeting in Washing- ton in the shadow of the Department of State, should have gone on record as against the Monroe Doctrine as inter- preted in recent years. The original resolution, introduced by delegates representing Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Santo Domingo, charged the United States with thirty-five in- vasions in Latin America since 1898. The resolution was slightly toned down in committee, but as passed by the congress it attacked the use of the Monroe Doctrine to protect investments by citizens of the United States in Latin America. As worded presumably by Luis Morones, Secretary of Commerce, Labor, and Industry in Mexico, the resolution took issue with the recent assumption in Washington that "the person and property of a citizen of the United States are a part of the general domain of the United States as a nation, even when abroad." William Green, president of the American Federation of Labor, made a fatuous attempt to uphold the Monroe Doctrine as intended to defend Latin American republics against Euro- pean invasion. In practice it is used to justify the United States in policing and bossing her southern neighbors on the ground that otherwise some European nation would in- tervene. The assumption is not true, and if it were, would not justify our aggression.

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98 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 323 Nicaragua's New Bondage I^HEY are now engaged in proving that the 300 Nica- raguans whom American marines and bombing planes murdered on July 17 were "bandits." That is the imme- morial habit of imperialist usurpers— the British called the Boers bandits and the Irish republicans mere gunmen; the French called the heroic Riffians bandits and doubtless the ancient Egyptians applied similar names to the armies they defeated. It does not alter the fact that American marines ought not to be doing police duty in Nicaragua, and that Latin American hearts from Cape Horn to the Rio Grande beat in sympathy with any Latin who fights the Yankee in- vasion of a Latin country. If, however, the authorities in Washington are sin- cerely interested in tracing down large-sc; ' i. we suggest that they turn their attention to a document signed more or less at their own suggestion on March 31 last — between Dr. Zavala, financial agent for the American-aided Diaz regime in Nicaragua, and representatives of the Guar- anty Trust Company and of J. and W. Seligman and Com- pany of New York. It compares favorably, to be sure, with the usurious loans recently made in Los Angeles by leaders of the Better American Federation and the best local bank- ing circles ; but as government financing we have never seen anything to equal it. This extraordinary contract, to begin with, opens a 6 per cent credit of $1,000,000 for a period of cue year, which may under certain conditions be extended for another six months. Of course no one would ask a bank to lend the money that belongs to its depositors without securing good collateral. In this case one may feel sure that no depositor will complain — the bankers have taken all Nicaragua has — serape, sombrero, sandals, and shirts. Two months before the negotiation of this loan the Nicaraguan Congress had voted certain emergency taxes — an export tax on all coffee up to 65 cents per 100 pounds; a 50 per cent increase in customs duties on tobacco, wines, and liquors; a 12 '; in- crease in other import duties. All these were mortgaged to the bankers as collateral for this credit. But this was not all. As further collateral the bankers put a mortgage on 50 per cent of the surplus of the national treasury revenues. (.Fifty per cent had similarly been mortgaged to New York bankers in 1917.) And. since Mr. Diaz, even with American marines to do his police work for him, is unlikely to have a surplus, the bankers went further still. They put a mo, on aii the ca] National Bank of Nicaragua, an American corporation with a paid-in capital of $3t)0,0uu and a worth of twice that, and on all its dividends. They went still further. They added a mortgage on the entire capital stock of the Pacific Rail- ways of Nicaragua, which, efficiently managed J. G. White Corporation, associated with the Seligmans, is worth more than the total amount of the credit extended by the bankers! According to the former Nicaraguan Consul General in New York City, the bankers vere not satisfied with The deposits of the bank and the railroad in Canadian and other banks, said to total more than $400,000, were trans- ferred to New York City, for the benefit of the credit-givers. (One wonders whether the money which the bankers lent to Nicaragua was actually the Nicaraguan money which they had transferred from other coffers to their own.) An then they capped the climax. They included in the contrac an agreement which substantially said that they would ncj only mortgage half Nicaragua for their million-dollar loai but would furthermore spend the money for Nicaragua They explained frankly that the money would be used pr.j, marily to equip, arm, and maintain the Diaz soldiers (thuJ some one may have hoped, eventually making it unnecessarl for American marines to uphold that tottering regimej Money for other purposes will be released only upon slA proval by a special committee of three, two of whom arl Americans ! One of these Americans is the American man ager of the National Bank of Nicaragua; the other is thj American High Commissioner. Now the office of Hig Commissioner was instituted, we understand, in connectioj with the financial plan of 1920 — drawn up by the Nicara guan Government with another consortium of New Yor bankers. As then, the Secretary of State . States appoints the High Commissioner, who, nevertheless] (possibly in order to avoid difficulties with the law) is no considered an official of the Department of State. The De partment of State insists upon this fine-drawn distinction between appointee and official; but in any case, the ne result is that the bankers use a government appointee a, their agent and representative in Nicaragua. The contract is long, and contains more serfdom fo Nicaragua. Among other things it provides that for fiv years the two New York banking houses have an option o; all new Nicaraguan financing. Here, we submit, is an interesting case study for am government official seriously interested in the problem o oppression in Nicaragua, it would be an excellent thing indeed, if the Department of State would give this matte its serious attention, and inform the public upon the resul of its cogitations. For this kind of oppression concerns th American people as a whole far more profoundly than th effort of a barefooted army to support itself on a jungl countryside where an American planter happens to have , small property_ It was. we take it. to this loan that Mr Hoover referred when, last spring, he made the unwelcom remark about loans for unproductive purposes which Mr Kellogg so bitterly resented. Such loans, which, made witl State Department approval, involve the utilization by bank ers of State Department designees, involve us in a constan risk of bloody intervention. Suppose Nicaragua should seel to nuance herself from other banks, violating its agreemen with tlie New York bankers; suppose it should seek to spen< some of its amply secured credit in ways of which the Hig] Commissioner, named by the State Department, did no approve — what then? More work for the marines! plained that they are unjustl; accused of shaping State Department policy. Sometimes they say, the State Department begs them to make loan, to help its previously determined policies. By an incredibl series of blunders the State Department is now committee to maintaining Adolfo Diaz in office as its puppet presidem of Nicaragua. Surely no sane business man would want t( risk money on so feeble a character as Don Adolfo. Is th< State Department of the United States itself primarilj -onsible for this shoddy pawnbroking?

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bug. 3, 1927] The Nation 99 To Disarm, Disarm WRITING in the London Nation on the eve of the Geneva Disarmament Conference, Commander Ken- vorthy, M. P., himself a distinguished naval officer, ex- pressed the fervent hope that whatever else the British Gov- ernment might do it would not send high naval officers to >arry on the negotiations. But that is just what Mr. Bald- win did. He chose the civilian First Lord of the Admiralty, surrounded him by admirals and captains, and added for rood measure Robert Cecil who, knowing better, can always >e counted on to compromise with wrong. Mr. Coolidge did ;he same thing. He picked as the only civilian delegate, Hugh Gibson, a delightful personality, a promising but still second-rate diplomat, and then added a lot of naval officers ;he chief of whom, Admiral Hilary P. Jones, is of the type )f mind which thinks it absolute treason to criticize any iction of the Navy Department or of the United States jovernment. The Japanese were craftier; nevertheless ;heir delegation comprises almost the same mixture of liplomats and naval officers. So what has happened at Geneva is merely what was to ae expected — the navy men have dominated and we have seen a disarmament conference on the verge of disruption )r of becoming a conference for the increase instead of decrease of fleets. Experts these naval men are called and is such widely regarded. Yet they have actually expected sensible people to believe that they can plot and plan exact ratios of battleships, cruisers, submarines, and all the rest —as if they could foresee proportions and situations ten or ;wenty years hence. They, of course, did not foresee in the ast war that they would need a fleet of mine-layers and lave to build monitors and endless patrol boats; nor did any laval officer, least of all in Berlin, suspect the power and -ange of the submarine, or the uselessness of battleships, >r the necessity for aircraft-carriers. No one has ever been ible to prophecy what a war by sea or land will bring forth ; t cannot be done. But if it could be, the very last persons vho should be called into a naval disarmament conference ire the navy men. One might just as well ask medical men o take part in an assembly to decide how much work should )e taken away from them and handed over to the osteo- )aths. It is demanding too much of human nature These )fficers have been trained to consider themselves essential to ;he life of a nation; they are convinced of the absurdity hat nations only exist if they have "adequate" armaments (which "adequate" no naval or military officer has yet lefined since wars began) and, therefore, they are bound ;o resent, consciously or subconsciously, the demand that ;hey help to do away with their profession. So would a fundamentalist minister feel if he were invited to take pail n a conference to reduce his kind by one half. So Mr. Coolidge — whatever may yet come out of Geneva —blundered frightfully in not picking a strong body of :ivilians committed to disarmament and told to achieve it >r to come home on their shields. The practical men and TOmen of this world are not always the experts by any neans, least of all experts who have a direct personal stake n their own findings. Mr. Coolidge had the example of VLr. Hughes at the Washington Conference before him and i proposal was worked out for Geneva, but it lacked either is powerful a personality or as dramatic a setting, and in Washington civilians dominated. It ought to be plain now that the way to obtain disarmament is not to ask it of men who make their living out of the war business, but of men and women — yes, women — who really believe in peace so much that they will gladly take risks and if necessary surfer for their beliefs. Dyed-in-the-wool peace-lovers and not fighting men are the ones to achieve peace, as long as our practical business men and so-called statesmen refuse to see that war impoverishes everybody taking part and actually threatens the existence of civilization itself. The way to disarm is to disarm. A truly Christian, peace-loving nation would do so without regard to the policies of others. The United States did so from 1820 to 1860 and had no fleet worthy of the name from 1870 to 1898. Nobody ever attacked us, nobody ever exploited us, yet several nations could have helped themselves to all our Atlantic seaports had they so desired. They respected us far more then than now when we have joined the imperial- istic, big-armament game. Yet we actually have, among the many other childish moves at Geneva, a revival of President Wilson's stupid and wicked threat that if the others do not do as we wish we shall build the greatest fleet in the world and show them how vast our resources are. Well, fortu- nately, there is Congress to be reckoned with, and Senator Borah has already let it be known that so far as his influ- ence goes we shall do nothing of the sort. In that direction lies that same naval madness which brought Gei-many and England into conflict. If on the other hand President Cool- idge really desires to give proof to the world of our pacific intentions as a nation, he will decrease armaments of his own accord without fear of the nations to whom we swore eternal fealty ten years ago and against whom we ought never to be plotting and arming. There are no naval rivals other than Japan, France, and England. Hoboken Takes a Joke T'S a rare vaudeville show that doesn't have its little joke about Hoboken. The "Mile Square City," as its boosters affectionately refer to it, has probably served as the butt of more professional jesting than any other city in the country. Indeed, if the jokes about the city were laid end to end, they would probably encompass the globe and find a tragic terminus in — Hoboken. It might have been an aimless thrust in the beginning but ridicule, like brickbats, eventually leaves its mark, and in the American credo of 1927 Hoboken is a place to laugh at unless one is soberly in search of good beer. Long ago Hoboken stopped protesting against the ridicule. Slowly, its sensitiveness dulled and finally it accepted the comic myth and saw itself as others see it, a toy Germany. At intervals an incident or event uproots the city's sense of isolation. The latest of these events concerns eighty-four Chinese seamen. The eighty-four Chinese were hired to work as mem- bers of the crew of the steamship Rotterdam of the Hol- land-America Line at the home port. The white stokers and others of the crew had called a strike. When hired, the Chinese were not told they were replacing strikers but somewhere in mid-ocean they became aware of this fact and it surprised them. As seamen, the law permits them sixty days ashore in which to search for another ship, and when the Rotterdam docked at Hoboken on June 28 they attempted to exercise this right. Company guards

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100 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3239 warned them to remain on the ship. One of the vseamen knew enough English and law to quote their rights. The guards were unimpressed. The Chinese thereupon walked off the ship. Three of the company guards clubbed the nearest of them. The others began to run. A call was sent to Police Headquarters for a riot squad and within two minutes a wagonload of policemen with drawn clubs and blackjacks descended on the Chinese and began a ruth- less assault. The Chinese were unarmed. They were clubbed, blackjacked, and beaten with fists until ten of them required hospital treatment A number escaped in the confusion. Fifty-four were seized and taken to the Hoboken police jail. A local newspaper reporter, who is little more than a press agent for the hermetically sealed political ring, sent the first account to New York through a news agency. He described the episode as a "mutinous attempt by armed Chinamen to obtain shore leave." The following day New- York reporters went to Hoboken. It was learned that the Chinese were being held in jail without any charge having been lodged against them; that they were denied the legal right of a hearing within twenty-four hours; that they were being held inco?nunicado "at the request of the Holland-America Line"; and that counsel retained by the Chinese Seamen's Institute of New York to defend them was not permitted to see or interview any of them. Of some bearing on the case, it may be added that steam- ship companies are liable to a $1,000 fine for every Asiatic that they permit to obtain illegal entry into the United States. Meanwhile some of the facts in the case managed to squeeze between columns of aviation in the New York papers. New York reporters came to headquarters and asked questions. The police became apprehensive. After three days in jail the prisoners were taken in groups of three or four in patrol wagons guarded by twice as many policemen back to the steamship Rotterdam and there transferred to a tug and removed to Ellis Island. Hoboken offered no reason for the transfer. Commis- sioner Uhl at Ellis Island simply stated that the men were being held at the request of the Holland-America Line. Mr. Uhl added that the interest of immigration authori- ties in the jailing of the fifty-four seamen was "purely a friendly one." The reporters forgot to ask Commissioner Uhl what expression his enmity would take. Several days later, Chung Lum, the secretary of the Chinese Seamens' Institute of New York, received a tele- gram, apparently smuggled through from one of the imprisoned men urging his immediate aid. Chung Lum re- tained a lawyer, Hugo Pollock, to see what could be about safeguarding the interests of the prisoners. Pollock visited Ellis Island and identified himself as coun- sel for the jailed seamen. A. W. Brough, inspector in charge of the Chinese Division, refused permission to Mr. Pollock to interview his clients. Meanwhile the Holland-America Line discontinued its request for the detention of sixteen of the fifty-four men. The sixteen were taken back to Holland on another of the line's ships. The remaining thirty-eight at this writing are still at Ellis Island "awaiting the convenience of the Holland-America Line." Mr. Pollock, however, has i: ested Senator Copeland and Representative La Guardia, both of whom have asked the Washington immigration officials to investigate. A Rare Citizen GEORGE FOSTER PEABODY'S seventy-fifth birthday | has deservedly called forjh widespread congratula- tions and generous recognition of the public services ,of a singularly useful and modest man. Known to the political world because of his connection as national treasurer of the second Wilson campaign and for a similar association with many reform movements in the city and State of New- York, he is none the less, because of his lack of an itch for publicity, not as well known to the public as he deserves to be. Take, for instance, his services as chairman of the State of New York Reservation Commission at Saratoga Springs during the years from 1910 to 1915. If the State of New York bestowed medals of honor for public service of great worth, Governor Smith must long since have pinned one upon Mr. Peabody. When the State decided to under- take the venture in public ownership of acquiring the mineral-springs reservation, Mr. Peabody found a dread- fully run-down resort chiefly known for gambling and horse racing and general dissipation during race weeks. Mr. Peabody was one of the first to see the necessity for rescu- ing the place from the private and local management under which it had gone far downhill and raising it to the level of the great European spas. This has been done, thanks to his vision and the devotion which led him to remove his home to Saratoga Springs and to give himself unsparingly to this great task. It is now a place to be proud of, to which people of limited means may go and obtain relief. But this is only one of Mr. Peabody's many public ser- vices. A Georgian by birth, he retired from banking and railroading years ago as soon as he had amassed a compe- tence, in order to be free to give all his time to public work. Naturally he was profoundly drawm to the educa- tional problems of the South. For that section his labors have been invaluable not only as trustee of such institutions as Hampton Institute, Penn Normal, the Fort Valley In- dustrial School, and the University of Georgia, of all of which he is a trustee, but as a member of the Southern Education Board and one of the moving spirits of the edu- cational pilgrimages and conferences in the South out of which grew both the Southern Education and the General Education boards. To Robert C. Ogden fell the leadership in these undertakings, but to them Mr. Peabody brought wisdom, judgment, and a rare knowledge of both whites and blacks and of public sentiment North and South. Entirely free from racial prejudice, he has been one of those South- ern men who have realized that the lasting progress of the South depends upon the complete cooperation of both races and education for white and colored peoples alike. To a deeply religious nature — religious in the best sense — he has added a devotion to democracy which knows no com- promise of the principles of human brotherhood. To us Mr. Peabody's career means most because he eschewed mere money-making in order to enter the noblest of professions, the ranks of those who freely give their abilities and talents to the general welfare without thought either of personal aggrandisement or popularity. Men and women such as he prove every day that the profit motive is not necessary to bring out the noblest traits in the human being. Incidentally, they find out for themselves that their profession brings in the richest dividends in precious friendships, ennobling experiences, and heart's content. i

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Aug. 3, 1927] The Nation 101 Geneva It is nice that the children seem to be having such a good time. Bi^ that is not exactly what we sent them there for.

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102 The Nation [Vol. 125.. No. 3239 Britain's Folly Toward Russia By J. RAMSAY London, July 0 EVERYONE with an eye to see below the surface of things must be disquieted by the position of affairs in Europe. There is peace in the sense that there is no fighting, and every trouble that comes up is either suc- cessfully shelved for the time being or is patched up tem- porarily. But there is no settlement and no removal of the causes of unsettlement. That old fever morass of the Balkans is undrained; the great Powers live on a footing of hand-to-mouth cooperation which is rather between in- dividuals than between national policies. The condition of the atmosphere is not one whit changed from what it was before 1914, although the clouds charged with lightning may be different. And we are settling down to that state of affairs. The League of Nations — its agendas, its dis- cussions, the influence to which it responds — is steadily be- ing made to fit into the old world of diplomacy. A new mind coming into authority in 1924 found difficulties in specific problems; coming into authority now it would find difficulties in established habits. The latter presents a far more formidable task than the former. There is one major specific point, however, that re- quires bold and well-considered treatment. 1 refer to the position of Russia. Until this is put on a satisfactory footing there will be no security for Europe, but that will not be done so long as foreign secretaries are pos- sessed of the childish idea that they are dressed in nice starched muslin frocks and should associate only with well- brought-up lambs of their own flock. Moral reflections about Moscow are really beside the mark except in so far as they are caused by events which arise out of political policy. Russia has been in revolution and still is intermit- tently. Thanks to the reaction of the czarist regime, the revolution was cruel and bitter; thanks to the interfering follies of neighboring nations (and particularly of our own when we were blessed with the Coalition Government with a Liberal at its head), the revolutionary mind has been kept long alive. The latest outburst of revolutionary cution which shocked the feelings of every decent human being was the natural result of our breaking off relations with Moscow and the slackness of other governments in controlling the activities of the White Russians to whom they were giving asylum. Those horrible crimes have again given an opportunity to gushing journalists — the very last people who are entitled to do this — to work upon public feeling and to darken counsel regarding the Russian prob- lem. The perpetration of horrors and the doing of inj is so well distributed among the nations of the world that they ought to be chary in how they judge these cases. Two things have been the main contributors to the unfortunate attitude of this country tc Moscow. The first. and far and away the mo >ortant, has been the fact that the Red scares have been of profit to the Tory Party. On a Red scare they came into office; on Red scares they hope to remain in office. The second is an instinctive re- pulsion on the part of the class which our present Gov- ernment represents to the class in control in Moscow. There is a third reason, as an explanation for the action MacDONALD of this Government, a very minor one, moreover, and that is the equivocal position of the Russian Government itself regarding propaganda. As the result of its raid on Arcos, our Government found nothing. Not a scrap of paper picked from private pockets or seized from safes contained information that was new to any well-informed private person or government department. Not a transaction, either proper or improper, of which we were not previously well aware was revealed by the Government's raid. The fuss having been made, however, its consequences had to be swallowed, and the Russian representatives had to be told to quit. So we are exactly where we were in 1920, when, having spent over £100,000,000 trying in vain to overthrow the Soviet Government, we decided to back out and let things take their course. Revolutionary propaganda from Moscow and by organ- izations like the Third International (the official status of which the Moscow Government dares not repudiate if the point is pushed) cannot be tolerated. But it was the Labor Government — the subject of Red scares — that came to closest grips with this. and. had its policy been pursued, the danger undoubtedly would have been removed by now. The position today is that Moscow has some reason for believing that certain European governments are trying to form a hostile combination against it, and this affords a justification for an intensification of revolutionary propa- ganda. If it is outlawed for building up, it has as a recom- pense an open world for its propaganda of unsettlement. We cannot have it both ways. We can either recognize Russia and insist upon its doing team work, or decline to recognize it and allow it to follow whatever course seems best to it. Great Britain's Russian policy is dictated by the minds that conceived the Trade Union Bill and the pro- posals to put reaction in permanent control of our con- stitutional machinery by gerrymandering the House of Lords. The right policy is so simple. We have to help Russia over its revolution. Russia at this moment is (or, had it been properly handled, would be) in the throes of "the morning after." Those who still dream of a world revolu- tion are bound to come up against those who wish to estab- lish the Russia of the revolution amongst world states. Those charged with the tasks of government know that Russia must make its peace with the world and must ac- cept the obligations of a state to neighbors properly jeal- ous of their sovereign independence. Russia is anxious to do this, but it is not allowed. The revolution which on the inside dies down into normal conditions, is galvanized into an unnaturally prolonged life by the policy of foreign states. External propaganda, which those in responsible positions know to be an impossible policy, is kept alive by the conduct of foreign Powers, and the political elements in Russia are weakened and the revolutionary high priest- hood strengthened in consequence. Moscow can be induced to do many things — even to pay its debts as honestly as some other European states, and from a more exhausted exchequer; it can be forced to do nothing except keep its spirit of revolutionary menace alive.

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Aug. 3, 1927] The Nation 103 England — Too Bitter to Compromise? By FREDA KIRCHWEY London, July 11 A SOBER study of the situation in England today would doubtless discover innumerable contradictions ind cross-currents. Nothing is simple — least of all the leavy, complicated, yet strangely powerful machinery that noves the British Government. Yet something simple lies )ehind the events of the past weeks, something that the n,ost casual intruder must feel. Listening through several iftei'noons and evenings to the debate in the Commons >n the trade-disputes bill and in the Lords on the reform )ill, I had a sharp sense of grim, bitter enmity, too real ind too unappeasable to be hidden by the forms of Parlia- nentary politeness or by the swift irony that so often took ;he place of blunt attack. Labor and the Government are it war. The Government, stronger for the moment, is ising its temporary control to throw up barricades against :he growing power of Labor. It is hiding its purpose )ehind phrases — "individual liberty," "the right of every Englishman" — phrases it hopes the country will swallow. '.t is fighting cleverly. It is suave and dignified; it en- oys, one feels, goading the Opposition into ill-tempered, inmannerly rebuttal. But it is fighting no less tensely or all that. If the Prime Minister ever cared to be fair, is some of his opponents believe, he does so no longer, rhe Government is afraid, and it is showing its fear as :overnments always do. One of the most clear-headed abor sympathizers I know said: "I think England has lost he art of compromise." The trade-disputes bill needs no new analysis. The lovernment claims that it is aimed only to prevent ex- reme revolutionary action in the form of a general strike. Jut everyone else admits, and the Government cannot ffectively deny, that the bill is so worded as to be ap- licable to any great strike. It would, for instance, make [legal a miners' strike which included among its demands return to the statutory seven-hour day, won by a strike n 1911 and lost in last year's lockout. The bill even bor- ows the useful American labor injunction to make its ffect more swift and telling. It makes peaceful picket- ig practically illegal by prohibiting any act which may cause in the mind of a person a reasonable apprehension f injury . . . and the expression 'injury' includes injury ther than physical or material injury." It even attempts y its limitations on the political levy (the device by rhich trade-union members are taxed to support the Labor arty) to choke off the sources of financial strength of rival party which cannot fill its chest by the sale of onors to industrial leaders. The bill is constructed to lock Labor's advance both industrially and politically. It i the act of a terrified giant. The attempted Lords' "reform" is more fantastic and ir more fundamental. Introduced directly in the upper ouse without consulting the Commons or the electorate. has aroused such indignant opposition that its withdrawal iems certain.1 The proposals to fix the membership of the [ouse of Lords at a definite number — never to be raised 1 It has since been withdrawn. — Editor, The Nation. by King or Commons— to insure a permanent majority of hereditary peers, and to give such a chamber joint power with the Commons to determine what is a money bill, was too distasteful a dose for the Liberals; and even a group of younger Conservatives— genially referred to by the Daily Herald as the "Y.M.C.A.'s"— choked over it. It hardly re- quired Ramsay MacDonald's smashing attack to bring the Government to a point of retreat; it was wobbling before he began. But for all that the danger is not over. If it can do so without alienating the country, the Government will certainly attempt to barricade the House of Lords against Labor. England is still a country where the lower classes ex- pect little and give much. From housemaids to railway conductors— everywhere one meets a polite subservience that must astonish and impress any American. By con- trast, the behavior of Labor's representatives in Parliament takes on particular significance. The Conservative and Liberal members have, for the most part, an easy air of humor and educated poise. The Labor members vary from professional men and seasoned politicians to provincial workers fresh from factory and union hall. Their accents and manners cover a range equally wide. But every one of them— the rough and untutored as well as the suave and learned— speaks his mind with aggressive self-confidence. Left-wing critics charge that the conservative Labor members are always ready to compromise; that only the pressure of the rank and file and the threat of loss of funds stiffened them to oppose the trade-disputes bill. Con- servatives insist that there is no real working-class feeling against the bill and that the Opposition in Parliament is merely making empty and insincere gestures of disapproval. These views may, with all their contradictions, contain fragments of the truth. The Labor members doubtless represent as many shades of opinion and probity as any group. But the general effect they create is one of cour- age and honest, outspoken attack. Their weapons are weak —mere words, fiung at empty benches belonging to men who, when the time for division comes, will wander in from the lobbies and vote "no" on amendments and "yes" on the Government's proposals. But while those words are heard with smiling complaisance by the Government, they may fall with more effect outside the ancient walls of the Houses of Parliament. That is what Labor hopes when it speaks, directly and unpleasantly, to the indifferent benches opposite. I heard Ellen Wilkinson attack the picketing clause of the trade-disputes bill. Her speech showed plainly the gulf that opens between the Government and its opponents when labor is discussed. "There seems to be an extraordi- nary impression," she said, "that workmen like strikes and that they strike for the fun of the thing." She described the effect of a strike on the lives of the men and women who leave their jobs, and discussed their feeling toward fellow-workers who refuse to join in a war "with an even more ruthless enemy than that faced on the battlefield." She went on, crisply addressing the previous speaker:

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104 The Nation [Vol. 125. No. 3239 Members of the honorable gentleman's class who are brought up with a regard for esprit de corps, whose schools and colleges teach them that they have to stand by their fellows, regard what is a point of honor for themselves as a crime when it is done by the working classes of Eng- land, and they produce clauses like this in order to empha- size to the workers of this country that such fine sentiments are not for working people but are merely reserved for gentlemen. And she inquired why it was that the "blackleg" alone should be carefully protected by the Government from forms of persuasion that might injure his "self-respect." Ellen Wilkinson is small and lean, but she is eloquent. She bent forward as she ended and shook her dark red hair at the men across the gangway. I can conceive of nothing cleverer than this attempt to get into the minds of the working people the understanding that they had better put up with any conditions, however unjust, because they do not know what is waiting for them if they object. We congratulate the Attorney General be- cause nature gave him the face of one of the Cheeryble Brothers, but I say this quite firmly, that behind the face of Mr. Pickwick or the Cheeryble cherub who comes here and smiles upon us, he has the mind and heart of a Mephis- topheles. On the Government bench, side by side like two well- fed schoolboys, Winston Churchill, the Attorney General, and Joynson-Hicks, the Home Secretary, sat and smiled. Then Joynson-Hicks rose and addressed the House and his opponent with ironical gallantry : I apologize to the House [he said] for r.sing before having quite digested the compliment which the honorable lady has paid to my right honorable and learned friend the Attorney General. But does not the speech of the honor- able lady bring home to the House the kind of thing with which the non-striker has to put up? Fancy the honorable lady being let loose in a mining area during a strike and firing off a speech of that kind in regard to the unfortunate men whom she terms, with all the withering irony of which she is capable, "blacklegs." . . . The honorable lady oppo- site will not think me uncomplimentary when I say that, when I listen to her, I sometimes am reminded of Madame Defarge, and the tumbrils on their way to the guillotine. I think the honorable lady would go on with her knitting if the Home Secretary rode in one of the tumbrils. I do not in the least dispute the power and authority of the honor- able lady, but it is quite clear that her mind is warped. Her mind is the mind of the trade-union leaders, and they will not see any right or fairness in the minds of the men who do not go on strike, and who are called by them the opprobrious epithet of "blackleg." The blackleg is the man who desires to continue his work for the sake of hi< wife and family. Those two fragments show well enough the temper of the present Parliament: Labor, stubborn and resentful, flinging itself against a smooth wall of bland, assured con- servatism, helpless to win from its opponents understand- ing of something which, after all, cannot be understood but must be felt; the Government, polite, almost playful, ap- pearing to listen and weigh and reason, and then at the end falling back on the unimpeachable argument of its huge majority. Has England lost the art of compromise'1 Or is she facing issues on which no compromise is possible? Labor leaders say that the trade-disputes bill checked a visible tendency toward conciliation and cooperation in industry. But even the most conservative trade unionists base their willingness to cooperate on a determination ultimately to take control of the Government and of industry as well. Can conservatism compromise with that purpose? One has a feeling in watching the sharp engagements of the last few weeks that they are incidents in a struggle which canno; in the long run be ended by England's historic genius either for compromise or for muddling through. The Northwest Stands Pat By ROBERT S. ALLEN THERE are two shows going on in the Northwest this summer. One has all the trappings, big star, favor- able press, skilful staging, unlimited props and equipment of the kind designed to make a popular appeal, such as cowboy chaps, birthday cakes, Indian ceremonies, and the like. The other is back stage — in fact so far back stage that only now and again, and mostly inadvertently, can be heard the murmurs and the deep tones of the lines that characterize its significant scenes. Mr. Coolidge and his stage managers may be cordially received as guests and hospitably entertained — though the gross exaggerations that have characterized everything about the trip also hold good on this score — but the em- battled farmers will not be soft-soaped. A few years ago the farmer was more or less alone in his demand for eco- nomic adjustment. Today this cry is heard from all sides in the Northwest country : bankers, business men, labor, the professions. "The lawyer or the doctor or the business man may have all the work he can handle," said a leading lawyer of the region, speaking before the Minnesota bar associa- tion in St. Paul, "but if his clients are bankrupt he is no better off than they are. And that is exactly the condition we and the farmers of this section are in today." Throughout the Northwest the antics of the President, the blurbs of his yes-men, and the yammer of the syco- phantic press leave the farmers cold. In Minnesota, in Wisconsin, in Iowa, in Idaho, in North Dakota and South Dakota, meetings are being held and the Administration and its four horsemen, Coolidge, Mellon, Jardine, and Hoover, are being discussed in no uncertain terms. The farmers, awaiting the approaching harvests that begin in a few weeks, are holding their picnics and gatherings, and at these meetings are listening to their leaders detail the story of their betrayal and looting by the Administration and the interests it represents. These speeches are invari- ably followed by questions from the eager listeners and open discussions. The observations that one may hear leave no doubt as to how the great mass of farmers feel about the veto of the McNary-Haugen bill, or their atti- tude toward a compromise sop. The Northwest country wants neither sop nor soap. It wants — presidential approval or no presidential approval — legislation that it feels will count for something in giving relief. Government-subsidized cooperatives don't mean a thing to these bankrupt farmers and merchants. Right or wrong, they want their share of tariff protection. Too long, they say, have they stood by and seen industry walk away with the swag. If there is going to be tariff protec- tion for some, then the Northwest country demands its share.

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Aug. 3, 1927] The Nation 105 "Any legislative plan, to be acceptable to farmers, must in a clear and effective way make provision for full tariff protection for at least the key branches of the agri- cultural industry. Anything else will be rejected as a mere legislative gesture," said Frank W. Murphy, chairman of the Board of the American Council of Agriculture and chairman of the Legislative Committee of the Corn Belt Federation of farm organizations, at the farm-relief-legis- lation conference held recently in St. Paul. Mr. Coolidge undoubtedly had his agents at this St. Paul gathering and received a comprehensive report of what took place. But it was really too bad that he did not avail himself of the invitation to be present. His impres- sions of the Northwest country, and the attitude of the embattled farmers, would without doubt have experienced some painful jolts. No bouquets were cast in his direc- tion— although there were many things tossed his way — at this meeting, attended by half a score of United States Senators who will be the balance of power in the Senate at the next session of Congress, twice as many Representa- tives, and delegations from organizations from fifteen agri- cultural States. The bitterness and resentment of these delegates was held in leash by the leaders. Watched by a carping and hostile press, every effort was made to main- tain a dignified restraint. Yet every criticism and denun- ciation of Coolidge and his Cabinet that was uttered was greeted with cheers and vigorous applause. These people were not Reds, or radicals. Most came from States that had rejected the La Follette presidential bid. They are Republicans and have no hesitancy in say- ing so. Some of their leaders fought the so-called radi- cal Nonpartisan League a few years back. Yet today they are filled with ire and hostility, and no worm-fishing or cowboy-chaps show that Mr. Coolidge can stage will satisfy them. Their pocket books are empty, their mortgages are increasing, and they want an end to that sort of thing. "Two years ago when I was running for re-election," Representative Dickinson related in his speech before the St. Paul conference, "a merchant in my town told me he was going to vote against me because I was too radical. He opposed my support of the McNary-Haugen bill. The other day I was talking to him and he told me he was going to vote against me because I wasn't radical enough." And although the leaders urged conciliation in the pub- lic pronouncement of the conferences, they could not pre- vent this blunt declaration, unanimously approved in the resolutions adopted by the large crowd present: The veto of this measure, after its passage by a bi- partisan majority of both houses of Congress, clearly re- pudiates the Republican platform on which President Cool- idge was elected. The veto message which seeks to defend the President's act consists from the beginning to the end of indefensible and conflicting arguments which had been answered to the satisfaction of Congress during months of debate on the measure. These are the real sentiments of the farmers. The Northwest country stands pat and means business. Why the American Woman Is Unique By ELLSWORTH HUNTINGTON MANY Europeans think that Americans are boisterous, bustling, active, and conceited, but not very deep. We ourselves say that we have tremendous energy, am- bition, and power of achievement. Our women, especially, are said to be bolder, less domestic, more ambitious, and more dominating than those of the Old World; or braver, more progressive, more adaptable, less submissive, and more competent, if you prefer another set of adjectives. All this seems to mean that so far as there is any genuine deep-seated difference between the people of the United States and of other countries, it is largely a matter of temperament. But is there really any such temperamental difference, and if there is, do women show it more strongly than men? It seems to me that the differences thus roughly de- fined are real, and that their main causes are, first, natural selection arising through migration; second, geographic conditions; and third, a peculiarly stimulative social en- vironment. The stimulating quality of the social environ- ment seems to owe much of its character to the two other causes, which are biological on the one hand and geographi- cal on the other. Much of our thought regarding the peculiarities of America is clogged by the fact that the natural selection arising from migration has never been adequately analyzed. All the inhabitants of the United States, aside from the Indians, are either immigrants from the Old World or the descendants of such immigrants. Even if our ancestors came in the Mayflower, we are separated from them by only eight or nine generations. In these facts, perhaps, may lie certain important reasons for the peculiarly optimistic and buoyant spirit of America and for the position of American women as pioneers in feminine progress. When the question of going to a new land arises, one of the first problems is health. People in poor health, as a rule, have little or no thought of migrating; they do not dare. The health of the women has more to do with the matter than that of the men. Many a man might go alone to a new land, but will not take his wife if she has any physical weakness. The more difficult the migration, the greater is the selection on account of health. How real this is may be judged from the experience of the Pilgrims who came over in the Mayflower. By the end of the first winter after their arrival in America, forty-four of the 102 original passengers had died ; by the end of a year, half had succumbed. That means an extremely rigorous selection, for those who were less strong in one way or another must have been the first to succumb. One of the most noteworthy and typical facts about the experience of the Pilgrims was that the selection was more severe among women than among men. Of the eighteen married women who came in that first shipload, practically all of them being relatively young, thirteen died during the first sad year. Of course this is an extreme case, but it illus- trates a great principle. All through the pioneer period, a similar though less severe selection took place. Prac-

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106 The Nation [Vol. 125. No. 3239 tically none save those with strong and vigorous constitu- tions came to America, and among those who came the hard- ships of the first few years still further weeded out the less vigorous, especially among the women and children. Migration imposes not only a physical selection but a temperamental selection which may be still more impor- tant. Suppose that your community becomes interested in Australia. Many people begin to talk about migrating there. When it comes to the crucial point, who will go? Certainly not the families in which both the husband and wife are of a timid disposition. The chances are that a certain number of men who are of an optimistic, adven- turous disposition will want to go. When they talk the matter over with their wives or sweethearts, a good many will promptly be dissuaded because the woman in the case does not happen to have the pioneer spirit. Since women are naturally more conservative than men, a relatively higher degree of the adventurous, optimistic, adaptable spirit is required to make them pull up stakes and go to a far country than is required of the men. The result is that not only does any hard migration cause a selection on the basis of what we may call the pioneer spirit but the selection is more radical among women than among men. After migrants once reach a new land, many become discouraged and go back. Generally the ones who do this are less optimistic, less adaptable, less courageous, or otherwise less fitted for a new land than are their com- rades. Thus those who finally compose the new population at the end of every migration tend to be of unusually strong physique and of an unusually buoyant and adaptable spirit. Moreover, the fact that migration is almost always harder for women than for men makes the difference between the women in the new land and the old greater than botw en the men. The ordinary laws of heredity tend to perpetuate the conditions which thus arise. Among the earlier immi- grants to a new land there is little chance to marry anyone who does not possess pioneer traits. Of course there are exceptions to all rules. Some timid and unadaptable peo- ple undoubtedly came to America even in the early days, and a great many later, but wTe are talking of averages. The average immigrant to the United States almost cer- tainly exhibited the pioneer temperament to a greater de- gree than did the people who stayed in the Old World. Adventurous or optimistic parents tend to have adventurous or optimistic children, especially when both parents have the same quality. Moreover, biologists have found many quali- ties which are inherited more or less separately by the two sexes. Professor Roland B. Dixon of Harvard has shown this kind of inheritance pertains to the shape of the skull. Thus distinct types of head-form are transmitted for gen- eration after generation among the men and the women of the same group. P'or example, if the men of a long-headed race should all take broad-headed wives, their male and female descendants would apparently differ in the form of their heads. Many generations later the percentage of long heads would be relatively high among the men and low among the Avomen, while the women would show relatively more broad heads and few long ones. If such sex-linked inheritance should be verified so far as the external form of the head is concerned, there is no reason why it should not also be true of traits of temperament. Thus, although the final demonstration still remains to be made, many bits of evidence suggest that migration, natural selection, and biologic. itance may form a chain of conditions whereby one sex may advance along a different line or along the same line to a different degree from the other. During the colonial era of what is now the United States the women may have taken such a step wit: suit that their a\ - age temperament approached the typical adventurous masculine temperament more nearly than is the case with their sisters in the Old World. It is as if the men who came to America were relatively long-headed compared with those who remained behind, while the women were rela- tively still more long-headed. In that case the relatively long-headed quality of the women might persist indefinitely. If the preceding reasoning is well grounded, it indi- cates a genuine biological basis for the difference which we seem to see between the average woman of America, Australia, or Canada and the average woman in the Old World. Of course, as time goes on, selection becomes less strenuous. When the agents of steamship companies cir- culate among all sorts of people and make it easy for almost anyone to go to a new land, as they did in the days before the Great War, the selection becomes relatively unimpor- tant. But even in our day, the difficulties of migration across the Atlantic seem to be great enough to cause at least a slight temperamental difference between the aver- age person who comes to America and those of the same class who stay at home. Now, too, as in the past, the selection among women is probably more severe than it is among men. Geography, as well as biology, appears to take a hand in making Americans different from other people. The rich new land, the mineral resources, the forests, and the other material sources of wealth in America are often set forth as the main cause of American activity. We are told that the presence of such wealth stimulates people in a most extraordinary fashion. Undoubtedly the chance to get gold for the mere work of digging, rich land for the mere labor of filing a claim, and fabulous wealth by merely putting meager savings into good investments has stimu- lated many a lethargic man to unwonted action. All this may help to explain why the American people, both men and women, are temperamentally different from those of Europe. But unfortunately for this argument, the very people who use it are likely in the next breath to say that the ease of life in the tropics is the reason why tropical people are temperamentally sluggish. This is obviously the exact reverse of the argument as to the effect of nat- ural wealth in making the people of the United States active. For this reason, and for others. I have gradually come to the conclusion that the material resources of America have had far more effect upon the American temperament through the indirect means of natural selection than through their direct effects. They have acted as a magnet to draw from the Old World many enterprising, money- loving people. By attracting one type of people more strongly than another, they have probably been one of the main determinants of the American temperament. Another geographical condition — climate — seems much like natural resources in its effect on the people of Amer- ica. In this case, however, the direct effects are perhaps as important as the indirect, while women may be in- fluenced somewhat more than men. To begin with the in- direct or selective effect, many tales of the rigors of the New England climate went back to England from the early Puritans. Although no exact investigation has been

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Aug. 3, 1927] The Nation 107 made, it seems only reasonable to believe that for a long time those tales had a good deal to do with deterring all but the more adventurous and more hardy type of people from coming to the Northern colonies. In later days a similar effect was produced by the widespread idea that the region west of the Mississippi River was a worthless desert. An analysis of the sections of the United States toward which immigrants from different countries have gravi- tated shows clearly that people who cross the ocean tend to settle in climates as much like their own as possible. Of course the majority of immigrants come to New York and the neighboring cities, but when they spread out from there, the Italians, for example, are more likely to go south than are the Swedes and Norwegians. Whether the selective effect of climate is greater upon women that upon men is not evident. A more important effect of climate is its influence upon health and especially upon the nerves. During the past decade or two we have found that variations in health from day to day, week to week, season to season, and year to year depend upon the weather far more than upon any other factor. It needs no demonstration to show that health and temperament are closely connected. People doubtless have permanent temperaments which they acquire by in- heritance or by long training, but they also have tempo- rary temperaments which make them grouchy and pessi- mistic today and cheery and optimistic tomorrow. A long, monotonous, rainy spell tends to produce the pessimistic stage; whereas the snappiness of a clear day in October makes people optimistic. All of us have experienced the temperamental ups and downs of the weather. We know how the end of the winter often finds us nervously played out, while in autumn we are active and energetic. Perhaps the most important feature of the climate of the Northeastern United States compared with that of the rest of the world is the high degree of variability. This quarter of the United States is the stormiest inhabited part of the world. This does not mean the rainiest or the coldest, but the part where ordinary storms follow one another most frequently, and bring the most rapid changes of weather. These changes are highly stimulating. Of course they may be too extreme, but when they are of reasonable magnitude, and when people have become accus- tomed to them, the change from rain to sunshine, from warm south winds to cool northwest winds, and from a score of other conditions to their opposites has a bracing effect. Such changes not only promote health but stimu- late physical and mental activity. In fact, the stimulation is often so great as to be nervously harmful. The extreme contrasts between winter and summer often produce a simi- lar effect. Thus we are stimulated to excessive activity and often feel that we must be doing something before we have thoroughly thought out its consequences. Recent climatic studies suggest that women are more sensitive to climate than are men. For example, some years ago I compared the weather with the daily work of hundreds of men and women in several Connecticut fac- tories. In every case the same seasonal trend appeared — poor work in midwinter; good work in the spring, culmi- nating in June; a drop during the summer in warm years, but not in other years; greatest efficiency in the late fall. When the amount of work was compared with the temperature, humidity, and variability of individual days, certain highly systematic relationships were found. In general, men and women responded to the weather in the same way, but the women were more sensitive. Similar evidence of sensitiveness is found in the fact that when women go from one climate to another the periodic physio- logical functions are affected, becoming more regular and comfortable in some climates and irregular and pain- ful in others, such as that of India. Tf further investiga- tion should confirm these results, we should expect the typi- cal American woman not only to have the optimistic, ad- venturous, pioneer spirit as the result of natural selection but also to possess a high degree of nervous energy. It is often assumed that the feeling of nervous ten- sion is due largely to our highly stimulating sociological environment. Almost no one, for example, can go to New York City without experiencing a thrill of energy, an im- pulse to get busy somehow or other and keep pace with the crowd. This is unquestionably the direct result of contact with a great city where high standards of activity and achievement prevail. Women, by reason of their more sensi- tive nervous organization, presumably feel the thrill of New York, Chicago, and other great American cities even more than men. Thus sociological conditions are a factor in making American women alert and progressive. But how have the sociological conditions of the United States become so stimulating? Are they the cause of the character of the people or are the people themselves the cause of their own sociological environment? It seems to me that our social organization owes a great deal of its character to the fact that our people still possess a large share of the pioneer spirit arising through natural selec- tion, and are kept keyed up through the stimulus of our variable climate. These conditions almost inevitably pro- duce an active, stimulating environment. Such an environ- ment in turn stimulates still greater activity. This then, as I see it, is the cycle by which the American people have been brought to their present degree of activity and prog- ress. Since women are more influenced than men at vari- ous points in the cycle, they surpass the men in the degree to which they differ from their sisters elsewhere. Thus far the picture that we have drawn has much on which we may congratulate ourselves. Undoubtedly, we Americans as a people, and our women in particular, are over-stimulated. Nevertheless our inheritance, our re- sources, and our climate do help us to achieve. But there is one very disquieting element. The women of the most active types are the ones who have the fewest children. It is known that the graduates of women's colleges on an average have only one to one and a half children apiece. As a group, they come nowhere near replacing themselves; their type is dying out. The same thing seems to be true of practically every group of women who stand out as lead- ers in social and cultural activities. Of course, there are exceptions, but we are talking about averages which in- clude the unmarried women, the married women who are childless, and the married women who have children. On an average, the highly selected, energetic, pioneer type of woman, and the type which responds most readily to the nervous stimulus of our climate, are the very ones whose other useful activities so fill their lives that only a small place is left for children. If this condition should con- tinue to increase at its present rate, a few more genera- tions would apparently see the elimination of the special qualities which today place the world's leadership in the hands of the American woman.

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108 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3239 Have You a Little MS? or The Most Tragicall Historie of Charley Blot, Author By JOHAN SMERTENKO ANOTHER academic friend of mine has just received that thrilling letter from the center of Puritan probity which fulfills the dream of every novice in authorship. Be- neath the large letter-head, advertising that the epistle came from none other than the Boston firm of Bliedem and Bliedem, Publishers, the magic words read as follows: Dear Professor Burrow: I was struck by your interesting contribution on "Lost Teeth in Literature" which appeared in the last issue of the Littlered Quarterly. If you are planning to expand the essay into a book, enlarging it to about 30,000 words, I shall be glad to consider the manuscript for early publication. Trusting that you will let us hear about "Lost Teeth in Literature" immediately and that you will permit us to examine any other manuscripts you may have with a view to immediate publication, I remain Yours sincerely, I. Verily Bliedem, Pres., Bliedem & Bliedem, Publishers Now the shrewdness and the strength of appeal in this letter may be partially estimated by the following facts: Item Adam Burrow is the most careful and precise Yankee on our English faculty. Item Adam received this letter in the late morning mail. Item He showed it to me at the club that noon as he was gulping his lunch, with the words: "Wrote and promised the manuscript by spring. Must be rushing off to the library to get to work on it." This by way of excuse for interrupting a five years' ritual consist- ing of a leisurely, gossipy luncheon which was invariably followed by a game of chess. Again, Item He had not noticed that the number of words requested for this book was about half that contained in an average volume. Item He ignored that he had never heard of Bliedem and Bliedem, Publishers before and that in his own well-stocked library there was not a single work bearing the imprint of this firm. These signs that my self-imposed task of disillusioning Burrow would be neither welcome nor easy were further emphasized by Adam's well-bred triumph in showing me his letter. After all, his gesture seemed to say, what are your successes in the public prints as compared with this overture to consider my unborn book? Here is the great I. Verily Bliedem himself practically accepting a volume on lost teeth from the foretaste I have given him in my essay. Such is human frailty that I doubt not the practical Burrow had a vision of fame and fortune to come as he walked down the campus to post his letter. And it seemed cruel to break in on his dream with the facts that I had in my possession. The crude but unavoidable truth was that Bliedem and Bliedem, Publishers are one of the dozen dishonest printing concerns in America which ply a sort of confidence game on the outskirts of the publishing held. Most of them, sig- nificantly enough, are located in Boston, for the former seat of American culture still imparts an air of literary sanctity and quality even to its least worthy products, and also be- cause the typical New Englander would rather write a book than inherit a farm. Nowadays, however, a large share of their business comes to these publishers from the would- be authors of the South and the Middle West. The greatest number of their victims is derived from the academic class, including both students and teachers, although clergymen, social workers, and contributors to the evanescent poetry magazines also fall readily into their clutches. As editor of a Middle-Western magazine which sought to develop and give expression to native talent I came to know a great many of the victims. They would shyly offer me their forlorn-looking books, apologizing for the imprint, in order to show me the specimens of their work which these contained. Without encouragement would come the story of their deception, identical in each case, since the imposters base their methods on that human constant, vanity, and need neither great cunning nor overmuch origi- nality for their confidence game. Carefully watching the undergraduate, alumni, mis- sionary, and other specialized periodicals, these birds of prey swoop down on the contributors with an invitation to present a manuscript for their perusal and possible publi- cation. The lovelorn sophomore who sweats out that inevi- table lyric in spring, the aged raconteur whose trivial anec- dotes of pioneer days have bored two generations, the aca- demic seeker-out of inconsequential information for unread bulletins, the prosy preacher with his barrel full of sermons — all these and many others are approached and hooked even as Adam Burrow was tempted. With joy and eagerness the invitation is accepted, the manuscript promised; with toil and trepidation the one commits an additional twenty poems, the other shakes musty memory for the plums of gossip, the researcher delves for further useless statistics, the moralizer compiles his wisest saws and instances! Fortunately, thinks each author as he struggles, these kindest of publishers have seen fit to ask for only half the quantity that goes to make the average book; otherwise, not even this fecund brain could accomplish the task. Such is the conclusion if the luckless wight stops to think at all. Adam Burrow had not yet come to this stage when I called his attention to the easy require- ment in Bliedem's letter as a tactful beginning to my dis- closures. But Adam airily dismissed the hint. He did not desire to discuss the letter at all. He was anxious to get started on the monumental task of expanding the field of knowledge about lost teeth. I persisted; we argued; we quarreled. Only as a last resort did I inform him of the experiences of our colleague whose identity I shall disguise through the personage of Charles Blot. Charles Blot, successful football coach, had received just such an invitation to contribute a manuscript to the firm of Bliedem and had sent precisely the same reply as friend Burrow. The fact that no one suspected Charley Blot of harboring literary ambitions simply served to in- crease the secrecy of these negotiations, for Charley was

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Aug. 3, 1927] The Nation 109 naturally extremely sensitive of his more imposing title, Professor of Physical Education. When Bliedem and Bliedem, Publishers, wrote him concerning his sketchy arti- cle in our alumni journal on "Common Faults in Football Training," he grasped the opportunity to enter on a plane of intellectual equality with the other academicians of our college. He, too, promised the manuscript for spring. No Dante will ever imagine or describe the painful and prodigious task which was thus readily undertaken ; but the same character which brings to our football teams their annual championships finally brought forth a volume which was duly dispatched to Boston. I. Verily Bliedem himself immediately acknowledged its arrival and promised quick perusal and an early report. A month passed and Charley began to doubt. Six weeks; Charley despaired. Then one day this letter over- whelmed Coach Blot with the joy that knows no peer : My dear Professor Blot: It gives me great pleasure to report that our editorial department has found your manuscript satisfactory and suitable for immediate publication. Heartiest Congratulations ! I personally believe that "Football Faults," as we have decided to entitle the book, will make a great volume and a successful one. If the conditions of the inclosed contract meet with your approval, will you please sign it that we may proceed with the publication of your work. Cordially yours, I. Verily Bliedem, Pres. Bliedem and Bliedem, Publishers With a singing heart and misty eyes, Charley Blot, the hardened and shrewd tactician of the gridiron examined his contract. Here was riches. The book would be sold at three dollars. The author was to receive a 15 per cent royalty on the first edition and 20 per cent on all succeed- ing editions. Other clauses promised him free copies, gen- erous discounts on personal purchases, protection in foreign countries, profits on translations and moving picture sales — in brief, all those advantages and privileges that come to an author who is lucky enough to have the Bliedems as his publishers. Toward the end of the contract, however, there was a clause that Charley read twice — and yet again. WHEREAS, the aforesaid book, FOOTBALL FAULTS, is necessarily limited in its appeal, the party of the second part agrees to pay and herewith pays unto the party of the first part the sum of EIGHT HUNDRED ($800.00) DOLLARS to defray in part the expenses of printing ONE THOUSAND (1,000) copies of the aforesaid book, FOOTBALL FAULTS. And underneath this, in typewriting: This sum may be paid in three instalments, namely: 1. An initial payment of four hundred ($400.00) dollars at the time of entering into the above contract; 2. A second payment of two hundred ($200.00) dollars upon receipt of galley proofs; 3. A final payment of two hun- dred ($200.00) dollars upon receipt of page proofs. The contract was already signed by I. Verily Bliedem, Pres- ident, and Will I. Bliedem, treasurer. There remained an inviting space for the author's name. Charles turned to Betty Blot for advice. Betty, whose reputation as a thrifty housewife almost equalled her hus- band's fame as a football mentor, did not hesitate long. Charles Blot, author, was worth $800 even at a time when football coaches drew only professional salaries and dollars were regarded with wholesome respect. Days passed; proofs came and went; checks were en- dorsed and cashed. Great stress was laid by Bliedem on haste in all these negotiations. But after $800 was paid there was a long lapse in correspondence and activity. Finally, just as Blot was about to investigate the causes of delay, he received this letter. Dear Professor: It occurs to me just as we go to press with our next "best seller," FOOTBALL FAULTS, that since the book will undoubtedly be put to constant and heavy use, it would be advisable to bring out this edition at least in durable cloth covers instead of the paper binding we had planned for the volume. The additional cost will be more than made up by the increased appeal of the book. What do you think? Let us know immediately your own opinion on the matter. With best wishes, I. Verily Bliedem, Pres. Bliedem and Bliedem, Publishers. "A paper book," said Betty Blot when Charles showed her the letter, "why that's no book at all !" Charley wired Bliedem: "Agree with you cloth cover preferable." Evidently this carefully worded message forced the astute Bliedem into the open. For his telegram read: "Bindery estimates your share of increased expense $150. Authorize expenditure and send check. Presses await your reply." "I guess he's caught us in punt formation," said Charley as he handed the telegram to his helpmate. Feel- ing that a too-ready acquiescence would encourage further demands, Blot wrote his publishers a frank but dignified letter objecting to this additional charge and indicating that it bordered on extortion. In a few days he had his answer : My dear Professor: You probably did not realize that your tardy reply was putting us to great expense in holding up the presses with the forms of your book. Please bear in mind that many other volumes are awaiting publication until your work is disposed of and try to avoid any unnecessary delay in the future. I am personally very much surprised that you did not know it is the invariable practise in the publishing field to decide with each individual author the character of binding to be used and that naturally some bindings are more expensive than others. In all such cases as yours, where the author bears a small part of the publishing costs, he is charged propor- tionately for the binding he chooses. Some of our poets ask for specially stamped boards; other rare works are bound in morocco. Surely you will agree with our policy of charging each one according to his demands. Our pi-esident, I. Verily Bliedem, joins me in urging you to send your check immediately that we may bring out your very valuable work at the most propitious time and go on to the numerous other books on our heavy list. Sincerely yours, Will I. Bliedem, Treas. Bliedem and Bliedem, Publishers. It was at this point that Charley took me into his con- fidence. I urged the services of a lawyer and we three went into consultation. After examining the contract the attorney informed us that Bliedem had managed to con- form to all the technicalities of the law in his confidence game. On the other hand, in his letters he had drawn

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110 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3239 the string too taut. In this last, for instance, he was pro- gressively more vulnerable in each of his statements. Thus it is anything but the practice of reputable publishers to request payment from authors for bringing out their works; in America it is assumed that a book will have some durable binding; and finally, it was outright decep- tion on his part to assert that the presses waited on the reply, for printing is a separate process from binding. Over the lawyer's signature we sent an answer point- ing out these facts, refusing the requested payment, and threatening suit if the book was not properly published. There was no acknowledgment of this letter. When the silence had lasted for more than a month the lawyer wrote again, demanding that Bliedem and Bliedem, Publishers, live up to their contract or return the manuscript and money. He gave them a fortnight to fulfill their obligations. About a week later Charles received six copies of his book. Our worst expectations of its appearance were ex- ceeded by the reality. Between ill-fitting covers and on the cheapest kind of paper appeared one of the most in- competent printing jobs I have ever seen. The form w have disgraced any contents, no matter how bad. To add to his discomfiture Blot learned that the college bookstore had been sent a consignment of twenty-five copies of his work. It took all o^ our influence and eloquence to per- suade the merchant not to place these on sale. Were it not for the inspired idea which came to his attorney, Charles Blot would have suffered a total loss of his money as well as the indignity of having so ill- favored a book circulated among football men. But, calcu- lating that the swindlers would greedily try to make every possible cent of Blot's money, the lawyer came to the con- clusion that they would not print the entire edition of one thousand copies which their contract called for. He com- municated with a Boston detective agency and an investiga- tion proved his suspicions well founded. Some job printer was persuaded to turn over Bliedem's written order that 100 copies of "Football Faults" be printed and the type distributed. With this evidence in his possession Blot's lawyer sent an ultimatum to the publishers. They were to refund the money or stand both civil and criminal trial. Knowing the author would dislike the publicity of these proceedings al- most as much as they did, our publishers were neither polite nor penitent in reply. Nevertheless they offered to return $500 for a full settlement of the case. Much against his inclination both as a public-spirited citizen and a duped author, Charles Blot accepted the proposal with a proviso that all of the books printed should be turned over to him for destruction. Soon afterward we went through the tragi-comic ceremony of burning these volumes, and only a carbon copy of the manuscript remains as the testimony to Charley Blot, author. Adam Burrow heard me in silence. When I was through, he put his hand on my shoulder and said, "I think there is just time enough for a quick game of chess." Lest the reader consider that the "tragicall historic" here presented is a venture into imaginative literature. I hasten to add in all seriousness tha+ it is no farther from the actual truth than a superficial disguise of the main characters and, furthermore, that it is one of thousands of cases which have occurred in America during the past fifteen years. The disguise is made necessary by the nat- ural aversion of the victims to the publicity which is in- curred in a specific expose. But even more conducive to this indirect treatment is the fact that, though obviously guilty of deceit and knavery, these swindlers are, in the main, legally invulnerable. It would therefore be considered libelous to disclose the identity of the bogus publishers who annually find more than 300 victims for their confi- dence game despite their manifest dishonesty. Even the United States Department of Justice, which for years sought to prosecute them on one of the many complaints that are constantly made, confesses itself baffled. In fact, to date, legal action has succeeded in driving only two concerns out of business. Both were emboldened to overstep the bounds of legal security by the ease with which they had previously evaded all prosecution. The first fell as a result of a situation similar to that depicted in the experiences of Charley Blot. The second firm made its misstep in assuring one author the sale of a specified number of copies and thereby became liable to the charge of false representation. The victim, who had paid $1,650 as "her share of the publishing expenses" and given an additional sum of $350 as a personal loan to "expedite the printing of the work," forced her publishers into bank- ruptcy when she won her suit; but it is doubtful whether she recovered one-third of her money — and the company is again operating. These cases and another faker, now under investigation by the Department of Justice, who has been particularly active recently among the feminine poets of the renascent South, are exceptional. The other firms are content to keep within the limits permitted them by law under the contracts which they make with their authors. These contracts are so cleverly drawn that the apparent advantages offered to the writer are really dis- abilities, whereas the inconspicuous modifications of one clause or another actually negate all promises and invali- date all the claims that the author may have against the publishers who are thus pledged to a minimum of expen- diture and gain a maximum of profit. When the bogus publisher "accepts" a manuscript to be brought out at the writer's expense, he swindles the author by failing to render all of the important service that the reputable firms are able to perform, despite the fact that his charges are from two to ten times greater than an ordinary printer's would be for the same work. The faker has no salesmen visiting bookstores in an effort to place his stock before the public; he knows that the experienced bookseller will have none of it. Piling injury upon injury, he turns this inability to distribute the books to profit by charging for storage. He does no advertis- ing; he seldom publishes a catalogue; and he hardly ever sends the books out for review through fear that some un- diplomatic critic will disclose that it is more injurious to the reputation of a novice to appear under the imprint of this publisher than to admit the possession of an univer- sally rejected manuscript. Whatever circulation such books receive is generally achieved by the writer himself who sends out as many autographed complimentary copies as he can afford to pay for. One victim, now a respected author with several legitimately published works to his credit, recently informed me that in addition to the $600 paid for bringing out his 48-page book of verse, he spent $300 in distributing half the edition and would now pay twenty times as much to retrieve the horrid witnesses of his ineptitude and vanity.

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Aug. 3, 1927] The Nation 111 In the Driftway THE DRIFTER has a friend who has a friend who has a friend — how many friends removed the Drifter is uncertain. But the ultimate friend who interests the Drifter so much that he wishes he knew him intimately is a Chinese philosopher. In his spare time, and being Chinese he has hardly anything else, he thinks about the Sphericality of Time. How time can be both spare and spherical is confusing to the Drifter. He will, however, spell Time with a capital T to indicate the philosophy of this Chinese, and ask the reader to ignore all the other times he may write as many times as they occur. * * * * * TO an American, the Drifter supposes, Time is linear and is measured off into hours and minutes that have no more width than the feet and inches on a yardstick. This endless line is forever unwinding itself like ticker tape, and the great game of life is to see how much you can write on the tape as it goes by. If you can crowd it so full of words that they cannot be read, you have a fair chance of winning the game. You are allowed as many secretaries as you can afford to help fill up your strip of tape; you train them not to waste a second. If an Ameri- can could be found who cared about the Sphericality of Time, he probably would not allow himself to think of anything so useless. Spherical or not, he would feel that it must not be wasted. TO a European, however, Time would have at least two dimensions. It would cover the surface of life with an ample cloth on which there would always be room to spread an abundant dinner, in five or more courses, with wine. To a Russian, who is less and more than a Euro- pean, it would be thick and solid, with sharp corners, like a block of wood that might be burned or buried, but could never be filled. And to a true Oriental, it appears, Time can be spherical; full and graceful, with the symmetry of independent things, existing in its own right like a planet, to be studied and admired but not touched. The Drifter would like to hear and if possible he would like also to understand the theory of the Sphericality of Time. His interest is such that he even promises to read a translation of any volume that his friend's friend's friend may have published on the subject. But he feels that so wise a man would not need to confide his discoveries to print. A man to whom time is spherical would not be bitten by the ser- pent of words. He would be content to know the truth in his own mind; or (if a scientist is too modest to claim knowledge) he would be content to suppose. "r I THE serpent of words;" the Drifter hopes his reader JL or readers noticed that striking phrase. He does not pretend to have originated it, but he cannot remember to which of half a dozen aesthetic reviews of the young intellectuals to credit it. Words are coming in for a large share of abuse from writers who say they are unable to be as original as their talent would otherwise make them, be- cause the language is so old. Words are "worn counters" that have lost their freshness and meaning. Yet if the Drifter is not mistaken, those who rail most loudly against them use them most profusely. They express their protest by using them in strange combinations, misspelled, or de- capitalized; but to the Drifters' surprise they have made little or no attempt to invent new words. ***** THE DRIFTER would like to see the neo-primitives dis- card entirely these obstacles to their originality and revert to picture writing, which they should find fresh, vivid, and difficult enough to suit their jaded palates. Our cave-dwelling ancestors must have had a great thrill of creative pride when they sent a picture of a man entering a dwelling from which arose the smoke of a cooking-fire, with three suns going down behind it, by way of inviting a neighbor to dinner three days in advance; and if the Drifter's possible readers object that hospitality had not reached so refined a stage in the days of caves, he con- tributes the suggestion for their own summer entertaining. He himself can never think of picture writing without re- gretting the simplified Chinese alphabet. The reform, while leaving the language at a degree of difficulty which para- lyzes the imagination, would surely strip it of its most charming associations. The one character for whose loss the Drifter could not be consoled stands for the Chinese word meaning gossip. It is a simple and tasteful picture of three women. The Drifter Correspondence Bondage To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: Years ago Rose Field, a brother of the immortal Gene, wrote a book called "The Bondage of Ballinger." Ballinger's bondage was books. One night when he brought home a new bock his wife, a patient and long-suffering victim of this bondage, said: "Bal- linger, I understand the affection you have for your bondage ; it gives you great joy, I know. But there is one thing that is absolutely certain — it will have to be curbed or it will not last; it cannot subsist upon an empty larder." Ballinger, unlike most slaves, and perhaps most people, could see a point, even if it was directed against himself. He said he would try and do his best to curb it; that as a starter he would take back the book he had brought home and get the money for it. When he returned at night, however, he had Fox's "History of the Martyrs," for which he had exchanged the other book, paying one dollar and fifty cents to boot. The plight of the Ballingers became a town topic. A wealthy gentleman who wanted to do Ballinger a good turn, and reap a little glory himself, proposed to Ballinger that he should found a town library, buy Ballinger's books, and put them in it, and call them "the Ballinger Collection." Bal- linger, with a lump in his throat, a tear in his eye, and a quaver in his voice, said: "Would you sell your children?" The wealthy gentleman said, "No, of course not." "Then why do you ask me to? These are my only children," replied Ballinger. A month or to ago, the partner of my many sorrows and few joys (I was 7!) i day) and 1 were trying to do what Briand and other European i. anciers have been trying to do since the war, balance the budget. In discussing ways and means for the accomplishment of that result, the Madame said: "Why not quit buying The Nation? Fifteen cents a week, sixty cents a month, seven dollars and twenty cents a year — that would buy you a pair of shoes, or go quite a way in buying you a pair of pants, both of which you sadly need."

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112 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3239 "Quit buying The Nation?" I said in astonishment. "My friend, counsellor and guide, which I have been following for half a century! Impossible! The shoes can be patched so that they will not show much, and the pants, too, and the patch won't show when I put on my top coat." I thought of the bondage of Ballinger, and I mentioned it to her. With a far-away look she said: "I see, I see, I understand, I understand." I am still buying The Nation. Lombard, III, July 5 L. Knight The Docile American Business Man To the Editor of The Nation : Sir: The Stockholm conference of the International Cham- ber of Commerce has dissolved and the members of the Amer- ican delegation have spread over the face of Europe. Some are looking from the rails of steamers at the mountains and black waters of Norwegian fjords; some are headed for Paris or London or Rome; but none, as far as I know, are going toward Moscow. A group of them intended to go. Aboard the George Washington, on their way to Stockholm, they listened to a few facts about Russia and the opportunities there for American business men from Colonel Hugh L. Cooper. Several dele- gates determined to see for themselves, and then to report to their associates, wh; t the workers' republic looked like. They even thought their opinion might be valuable to the Government. Some doubt was expressed, however, concerning the pos- sible attitude of the Department of State toward such a junket; so the delegates, "unwilling," as one of them expressed it, "to embarrass Secretary Kellogg in any way," decided to make the necessary inquiries through the American Embassy at Stockholm. They discovered, to their mild surprise, that Secretary Kellogg would not countenance any such plan. Promptly and without protest they abandoned the trip ; delegates from American chambers of commerce do not, it seems, question why. But, as an extremely unofficial observer, it occurred to me that this was an amazing stand for even our timorous Department of State to take. Have we reached the point where independent groups of American business men may not on their own initiative visit Russia? Or is it assumed by Secetary Kellogg that business men would naturally be mis- taken for official representatives of the United States Govern- ment and that Russia might consider herself recognized? I assume that this bit of State Department gossip did not get into the American press. Oslo, Norway, July U Freda Klrchwey The Negro Peril To the Editor of The Nation : SiR: More than a tenth part of the American population are Negro people, but not even a twentieth part, perhaps not one-fiftieth, of American Communists are Negroes. A New York newspaper has just "discovered" the names and ad- dresses of a few of these colored Communists with a resultant alarm and cry of "Help! murder! Congress must do some- thing about it!"; yet a much smaller proportion of Negroes than of whites have heeded the call of Convuunism, in spite of the relatively much more unfavorable situation of the Negro population. In order to make this Russian m ,iace sound still more alarming, one newspaper, speaking f Negro students that have gone to be educated in the Eas ern University at Moscow, says: "From 50 to 100 of these instruments of propaganda have been shipped out of the United States." In fact only five American Negro students could, after a long campaign, be induced to take advantage of the Soviet Government's world- wide offer for people to come and study under free scholarships in their university at Moscow — but more than 1,200 other students of other colors accepted: white, yellow, eastern and western — American white people, English white people, Ger- man white people, French white people, and many people from Asia. Only one Negro from Africa accepted. One of the five American Negro students died, so that the remaining "peril" is: one African, four live American Negroes and one dead one! I suspect that the reason why so much noise is made when- ever anybody is reported to be trying to "arouse" American Negroes, is that most American whites feel, deep down in their souls, that the Negroes ought to be aroused. We fear those whom we oppress: we are afraid that they may do what we think they ought to do. Not a single newspaper (with the exception, strange to relate, of one newspaper of Richmond, Virginia, which commented on the radical leanings of the Negro Labor Congress two years ago) has emphasized this point: that the way, and the only way, to prevent Moscow or some- body else from ultimately arousing the American Negro is to treat the Negro with more justice. A people treated as Negroes are treated in America, is certainly (as is stated by a Cin- cinnati paper, but in a different spirit) "the weakest place in the American armor." If the American Negro proves, ulti- mately, to be more open to "foreign" intrigue than are other elements of the population, it will be the failure of America rather than of the Negro. More can be done in one year by defending the Negro against being burned alive in Mississippi and Missouri and from jim-crowism and insult in Cincinnati than could ever be done in a generation of "acts of Congress" and activities of the Department of Justice. New York, July 10 William Pickens Catholic Schools To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: As a graduate of a Catholic high school and a reader of your weekly for many years, I am surprised that any reader of The Nation could advance the arguments used by Mr. Swift against the Catholic schools. Such ideas belong in the official organ of the Ku Klux Klan, not in a liberal journal. Surely the record of public achievement of graduates of Catholic schools is sufficient to dispel the idea that the church seeks to discipline or mold their minds to agree with its own political aspirations, even supposing the impossible situation of the church having political aspirations. We are not living in the Middle Ages. Since the foundation of our republic, has there ever been a Catholic disloyal to the principles of Americanism? I need only point to the records of men like Taney, White, Sherman, Meade, Sheridan, and our own Al Smith. The Catholic schools are here to stay. They are pro- tected by the Constitution. Furthermore, this country will eventually elect a Catholic President, casting aside the shackles of religious bigotry. It. will then remain for a Jew to be elected to the highest office in the land, and we shall have a realization of the true principles of Americanism, the principles of Thomas Jefferson. Philadelphia, July 10 Brendan O'Dwyer From the Long- Range Weather Prophet To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: I wish to thank you for your editorial of July 13. It is about the best treatment of the matter of long-range weather forecasting which has come to my attention. When it is realized that the atmospheric meteorologists who control the governmental monopoly of weather bureaus as well as the chairs of meteorology in the universities, have failed to make any progress whatever in the direction of long-range

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Aug. 3, 1927] The Nation 113 weather forecasting, have in fact never been able to divorce themselves from the empirical methods which characterize all governmental forecasting of weather, it comes with ill grace for them to attack the fundamental proposition which I have advanced and on which my entire work is based — that long- range weather forecasting is a series of problems in thermal engineering in which the solutions of the great technicians of steam and internal combustion can be successfully applied. Beyond this statement lies the discovery that the "lags" in the massing effects of the great ocean currents are as meas- urable as the time it takes for the crest of the Mississippi flood to pass from St. Louis to the Gulf. The longer the oceanic current, the greater the "lag." Since the curve of solar radia- tion is the primary cause of the oceanic changes, the measure- ment of the "lag" is the measurement of the time in advance for which the general terms of forecasts can be made. I have no secrets. As rapidly as research has developed new material in this most interesting field, and tests have sus- tained the soundness of the deductions, I have made the in- formation public. I still have a year of research material un- dergoing this rigid test. If any one thing is to be assigned to my credit, it is that I have taken the mystery out of long- range weather forecasting and have established it on the soundest lines of advanced engineering practice. Washington, D. C, July 9 Herbert Janvrin Browne Contemporary Verse To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: Please permit us as editors of a poetry magazine to compliment you on your editorial Has Poetry Retired? The several score poems submitted to us daily prove there is no dearth of poetic expression. That more poems are not pub- lished is the fault of publishers and editors. The blame for the fact that more thoughtful "major" poems are not pub- lished must be laid chiefly at the same door. Our experience and that of other editors with whom we have matched notes prove that the few editors who prefer significant poems to pretty pictures and pleasing melodies find no difficulty in securing them. Poetry that deals vigorously with contemporary Ameri- can themes has simply ceased to be a novelty, become less "newsy" — largely because so much more of it is written. Our more mentally alert and aggressive poets, however, are writing for the most part poems that are more difficult to understand. Poetry's victories of about a decade ago were for the most part rather cheap. A very simple novelty of theme or treatment was enough to win attention for poems. The better poets now are more analytical, pioneering on the fron- tiers of consciousness, endeavoring with the psychologists to capture for man the new world of man's making. Not all, however, of the trend is, as you state, "so completely pessimis- tic, or rather, so deeply skeptical." Many, such as Lola Ridge and G. Merrill Root, who have each given us an important book in the past months, have found a faith in the labor movement. Norwalk, Conn., June 25 Ralph Cheyney Lucia Trent Editors, Contemporary ]'erse Enlighten ment in Philadelphia To the Editor of The Nation : Sir: Strange things are happening in Philadelphia. Wit- ness the recent accusation by Lieutenant Colonel Thomas J. Dickinson that school history texts are unfair and incorrect toward Germany. And witness the remarkable resourcefulness displayed by James M. Beck. Mr. Beck presided at a session of the American Academy of Social and Political Science. The topics under discussion were American relations with the Carib- bean countries and Mexico. At the close of the meetings, after a dozen men had delivered formal papers, Mr. Beck was struck by a great light. "I am sorry that no Mexicans have been invited to present their views," said he. "If there are Mexicans present, we should be glad to have them speak. But in their absence, I will ask the consul from Panama to explain Central America's atti- tude toward our policies." Thirdly, both Victor Cutter, president of the United Fruit Company, and Guy Stevens of the oil producers' interest in Mexico have disclaimed any desire for armed intervention by this country. No one asked them, unfortunately, whether they personally would be willing to urge the fruit and oil men to sign a manifesto, similar to that of the missionaries in China, opposing the use of force by the United States to maintain the fruit and oil concessions. Philadelphia, April 2U Harry Emerson Wildes Massachusetts — There She Stands To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: Two years ago the very best citizens of Massachusetts held up Southern provincialism for contempt and ridicule be- cause the local prosecutor in the Scopes case referred to Mr. Darrow and his associates as "foreigners." Now Mr. John C. Hull, Speaker of the Massachusetts House of Representatives, in addressing a meeting of best citizens, voices what he says is the State's demand of all outsiders interested in the fate of Sacco and Vanzetti: "We would respectfully ask you to mind your own business." Whereupon, gentlemen in this neck of the woods are informed and believe, seven hundred and fifty best citizens leaped to their feet and cheered Mr. Hull to the raft- ers. Is it possible that the very best citizens of Massachusetts are as narrow as "common" folks in the South? Alexandria, Virginia, July 15 Joseph B. Day Give the People Their Own War Power By THOMAS HALL SHASTID, M. D., LL. B., etc. ALMOST the whole world is filled, now-a-days, with questions ami discussions on peace and war. Especially, How can the world attain, if at all, to per- manent peace? Yet not one person in ten thousand understands that, in no country on the globe, have the people themselves any vote, or legal say-so of any sort or kind, on war. What would happen if, in the four or live dominant nations of the world, the war-making power were removed from the hands of just a few politicians and placed in the hands of the people gen- erally? To answer that question Dr. Shastid has writ- ten this book. A volume that no one can read without a profound modifica- tion of all his peace-and-zvar vieivs. A peace book, yet a IV AHR book. Price, postpaid, $2.00 GEORGE WAHR, Publisher ANN ARBOR, MICH. When writing to advertisers please mention The Nation

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Books and Music This Rock By HAL SAUNDERS WHITE I tell you strangeness, the mystery older than love, Inhabits this rock So solidly angled, so legibly written upon by the sea. Neither comfort of calm while the tides gather Nor sea-weed's uninvited caress and dependence Could give it pride of resolute standing. Nothing in all the accomplished ages Has tempted this rock to battle the sea; Or to retreat. No voice has whispered within it That kindness transcendent Has stationed it, stanchioned and braced, To buttress this passive land. Never, out of its virtue, Has it opposed any wave's triumph. . . . It has never willed to remain. The Great German Puzzle Gentian After-War Problems. By Kuno Francke. Harvard University Press, 1927. $1.50. THE veteran Harvard professor and head of the Germanic Museum has brought together in this little volume four essays which are the result of his visits to Germany in 1924, 1925, and 1926. They deal with intellectual currents in con- temporary Germany, with the voice of hope of Count Keyser- ling, with German character in connection with the German- American, and with the German after-the-war imagination. Three of these essays appeared in the Atlantic Monthly; all four are worthy of more permanent, or better, separate form. That they are written in the best of spirit, with rare under- standing and knowledge of both countries, and in attractive style, goes without saying. That they are genuinely critical adds to their worth. Na'urally one turns to the essay on German character first. Tomes have been written about it; no explanation of the extraordinary contradictions within it is satisfactory. Pro- fessor Francke realizes that the Germans are "non-political" and considers this not "a title of honor but an unfortunate limitation." The Germans have been unable to do that "sober persistent work in building up a free, national commonwealth such as the English people has engaged in for centuries"; only in rare moments has tiie whole German nation been united in common action. The unification of Germany Professor Francke considers a remarkable Bismarckian achievement but lacking "true political wisdom." So was, of course, his taking of Alsace-Lorraine, and his persecution of the Social Demo- crats and of all true liberals. Professor Francke falls back on the "depth of the individual personality" as the "peculiar virtue" of the German. He cites Luther, Bach, Schiller, Gd Kant, von Kleist, Wagner — all the long roll of German great men to prove that "politically sterile Germany has brought forth cultural values which benefit all striving men in all countries. . . ." To this he adds German respect for scholar- ship, intellectual training, etc., and the constructive power of the spirit. I confess I do not find the explanat'on convincing. Other countries have had their great men and have placed great value upon cultural training, and yet have not failed either in politi- cal life, or in their relations with other countries. Of what does it avail a country to worship the professorial career and ac- claim the spirit, and then to bow down before a political charlatan and poseur like the Kaiser ;. im ruin its standing? We Americans, at least, while we worship our in- credibly dull and banal Coolidge, lay no claim to exalting the intellect above the successful flyer, prize-fighter, or golf cham- pion. We sincerely do our best to put America L'eber Alles, if we put the thought to music we frankly7 jazz it. No, the explanation of those extraordinarily irritating cross- currents in the German character and of his usually bad international manners is still to seek. Who can really explain it? Mr. Francke's book is a mastei ? printing and reflects at credit upon the Harvard University Press. Oswald Garrison Villard Equal Responsibility r? !::tions of European Diplomacy. By G. P. Gooch. Longmans, Green and Company7. S3. rT'HE author of this useful volume is one of the ablest of living * Englishmen. He has done distinguished work as a historian of modern historiography, as a keen expositor of early modern English political thought, as the author of the best history7 of contemporary European diplomacy, as the biographer of Lord Courtney, and as the editor of the papers of Lord John Russell, the Cambridge Histoi-y of British Foreign Policy, and the re- cently7 published British Documents on the crisis of 1914. More- over, he has been prominent in English political life and has studied extensively abroad, so that his knowledge of European statesmen, history, and politics furnishes an illuminating con- trast to the ignorance of Viscount Grey on these same subjects. A book by such a man on the outbreak of the World War is an international event. The book is the outgrowth and expansion of a brochure of the same title published in 1922. In successive chapters the author lists and characterizes, country7 by country, the diplo- matic documents, memoirs, diaries, and monographs published since 1918 which bear upon the problem of responsibility for the World War. A concluding chapter sets forth Dr. Gooch's conclusions as to the matter of responsibility for the World War, and it is worthy of careful and respectful analysis. It rep- resents the contemporary verdict of the moderate and informed English opinion intermediate between the slashing assault on the Entente Epic by Morel and his group on the one hand and the pitiable apologetics of "die-hards" and "straw- clutchers" of the stripe of Headlam-Morley and Seton-Watson on the other. In the first place one will be struck with the fact that the conclusions in the present volume are almost word for word identical with those expressed in Dr. Gooch's pamphlet of 1922 and in his "History of Modern Europe" written the same year. Yet there has been as much progress in the way of demolishing Entente mythology between 1922 and 1927 as there was be- .n 1918 and 1922. At the same time Dr. Gooch thoroughly repudiates the war-time version of unique Austro-German re- sponsibility and comes out four-square as an exponent of di- vided or equal responsibility in the literal sense of that term. Now this conclusion is sweet, amiable, and comforting, and bet- ter adapted than any other to serve as the basis for the wiping away of war-time prejudices. It is also as destructive of all the foundations of the Treaties of Versailles, St. Germain, and the Trianon as the position of the most pro-German extremists. Yet do not believe that the facts as to war responsibility, as we now know them, warrant stopping at the thesis of di- vided or equal responsibility, much as one might wish to do so from strategic and pedagogical considerations. In the light of what we now know about Serbian plots and

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Aug. 3, 1927] The Nation 115 intrigues, it is doubtful if the Austrian determination to attack Serbia in 1914 was as "short-sighted" as Dr. Gooch contends. Nor is it accurate to represent Russia as a consistent and solicitous protector of "brave and innocent little Serbia" in the light of 1908, and of the Russo-Turkish negotiations of 1911. France, says Dr. Gooch, "had no desire for war and took no step to precipitate it." We should like to ask Dr. Gooch to suggest how any country could have given more evidence of a desire for a war at the proper time than did France from March, 1912, to August, 1914, or how Poincare could have acted more decisively than he did to precipitate war in 1914. But the proof of the bankruptcy of the case for equal re- sponsibility is most clearly revealed when Dr. Gooch admits that it cannot be sustained except upon the hypothesis that it is as defensible to slay for purposes of robbery as to shoot in self- defense. "It is true that while Austria fought under the ban- ner of self-preservation, Russia, whom nobody threatened to attack, marched out to battle in the name of prestige; but in the accepted scale of national values, safety, honor, and prestige are motive-forces of approximately the same weight." Dr. Gooch's work may veritably be regarded as the requiem of the thesis of equal responsibility. This hypothesis could not have a more learned, persuasive, reasonable, and conciliatory exponent; but even he can sustain it only on the basis of considerations and evaluations which he would indignantly repudiate with respect to any other subject under the sun. • Harry Elmer Barnes Fiction, Not Literature Your Cuckoo Sings by Kind. By Valentine Dobree. Alfred A. Knopf. $2.50. NOW that every year, every month, sees so many novels pub- lished it is more than ever necessary clearly to understand what it is that separates ordinary story-telling from the gift of producing fiction which may be judged as literature. At every chance there are to be found popular critics ready to applaud as lasting works of art volumes that are in their essence limited and banal. It is not sufficient for a novel to describe some aspect of life in an interesting way. If it is to take its place among those precious volumes which some in- scrutable instinct of the human race is diligent to preserve, it must reveal in its treatment that passionate intensity, that passionate consciousness, belonging alone to genius. The admirable title of this book, and the sympathetic tone in which it is written, might well persuade many people to re- gard it as a work of lasting merit. This it is not. Mr. Dobree has tenderness, moral indignation, a knowledge of psychology, but he lacks the deep imaginative insight that can pierce through the surface of existence. He can portray with pre- cision ordinary events and experiences, but never once does he, or do his characters, reveal themselves as capable of that in- spired vision which in really great writing does so much to illumine the uncertain wayfaring of our race. Once again it is shown that the whole matter depends upon style. Tins ambiguous word can always be made the test of the temper of an author. Read a page from any great writer and in a few sentences there will be revealed a certain clear tone or ring, like the clash of a sword on iron, which is different enough from the confused murmur arising from what is ordinary and undistinguished. Marcel Proust has it, Thomas Mann has it, and sometimes even Mr. James Joyce, but it is not to be found in "The Constant Nymph," nor in "Elmer Gantry," no, not even in "A Passage to India." Books of this kind, in spite of the universal applause that greets them, are essentially books of a period and they will not bide. I write this because I wish to make quite clear what I mean when I say that I consider "Your Cuckoo Sings by Kind" as a work that has little more virtue in it than many another good up-to-date work of fiction. Per- haps it is best to regard it in the light of propaganda favoring a more sensitive and enlightened attitude in the direction and management of young children, an attitude that would never create monstrous images of sin out of childish misdemeanors. Mr. Dobree has presented a most horrible woman in his Mrs. Harris, but she is so ordinary, so exactly like the kind of person one has continually to be avoiding in actual life, that from the first it is evident that no new thing is to be re- vealed through her. Also, possibly, the author shows himself more clearly on the side of the angels than is justified in a world of "cold art." The bedroom scene describing the arrival of Sir William's letter demanding the release of his children is, to say the least of it, grim. An evil and domesticated woman spreading herself about on a double bed thinking of pickled eggs and the prospect of cutting her big toe nails. It has power, but not power enough to reconcile us to our deep disgust. Maybe it would be clearer and fairer if I selected certain sentences as illustrations of what I mean when I assert that Mr. Dobree has not as yet an appreciation of what style means. "An absurd little photograph, taken by a village photographer, reached him out in India. It was as far from the truth as a faked mist which some city photographers wilfully create about their clients, only at the other extreme, producing a tabloid, constipated race of beings." Or again, "Still, none of them could quite understand how it was Mrs. Dean came to be their particular friend and equally to be at home with Mrs. Thing- ummy-bob." Or again, "She learned the pleasures of the indulgence of the imagination, the easy, inconsequent, lie-in-a- hammock kind." To conclude, I am inclined to think that Mr. Dobree's own imagination is of the "lie-in-a-hammock kind"; and yet there are occasions when he writes with simple dignity — for example, when the unfortunate Christina, clinging to Mrs. Dean's hands, exclaims: "There is virtue in your hands, Aunt Frances, like cold water when one is thirsty." Llewelyn Powys A Critique of Science The Logic of Modern Physics. By P. W. Bridgman. The Mac- millan Company. $2.50. THE cataclysmic reformulations and somewhat paradoxical discoveries of recent years have made necessary a reinterpre- tation of the fundamentals of science. Mr. Bridgman has made this searching analysis for physics. Only his long training in the laboratory could have made possible the knowledge, insight, and accuracy with which he has clarified its basic notions. He has tried to purge this science of all unnecessary (because experimentally useless) concepts, and to eliminate from them all those implications which have no value, functionally speak- ing. Here science is reduced to its essentials; it is at its fight- ing weight, using only those ideas which have experimental efficacy. The broadest principle of physics is that of "connectivity . . . that it is possible to correlate any of the phenomena of nature with other phenomena"; while "the mere statement of a correlation between phenomena" is the essence of scientific explanation. He holds that the past history of events is vital to their present behavior, and that isolation is impossible because "phenomena in any system are effected by motion in respect to the entire universe"; that reference systems describe the "same event if the discontinuous boun- daries of the event are the same, irrespective of the appear- ance of the event in the two systems"; that the concepts of energy, heat current, and electromagnetic field are practically sterile, and that "light means nothing more than things lighted," so that "it is meaningless or trivial to ascribe physical reality to light in intermediate space, and light as a thing traveling must be recognized to be a pure invention." Physics, for him, no longer points to a closed, simple,

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116 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3239 geometrical universe, where apriori mathematicians usurp the place of the Omniscient. Different levels of experience require different concepts. As the imperceptible is approached, those concepts which before were obviously independent yield no ex- perimental (inferences and thus have no separate physical sig- nificance. It is the functional independence and applicability, not the number or simplicity of the concepts, that is now seen to be important. Simplicity may be a great stimulus for investi- gation, but the world is proving to be more complex than was expected; not everything seems capable of analysis into simpler components, nor are all relations capable of statement in terms of elementary mathematical equations. To conquer the new, additional concepts must often be forged. What surety is there that these are capable of generalization or reduction? This urge toward the limitation of meaning to verifiable properties impels Mr. Bridgman to question the contentions of the modern Pythagoreans. Because mathematics presupposes a descriptive background before it can be applied, and because if seems to make statements regarding properties (such as the character of the inside of an electron), in places where physical concepts have no experimental value, he considers their view of physics to be erroneous. This is to be parsimonious with a vengeance. Mathematics, like all theoretical sciences, must be applied with discretion and must always take a universe for granted, which, of course, does not deny that all functional properties may be described in terms of it. Some day, perhaps, a Kant will arise who will deal not only with the independence and meaning of the concepts but with their internal and mutual consistency and their possible completeness. He will describe the boundaries, assumptions, and methodology of science and will limit its pretensions and disclose its presuppositions, and not until then will physics be correctly and thoroughly understood. Part of the task has now been attempted, but in a work which is difficult and much too short. "The Logic of Physics" is a hard book; it demands much knowledge and patience with a not always felicitous style. Vital concepts such as space, force, and mass get scant attention, while the theoretical and practical methodology of physics is almost entirely ignored. Yet the book is as impor- tant as it is difficult and as enlightening as it is brief; the functional meanings have been so ably treated that an important part of the prolegomena is already completed. Paul Weiss The Constitution Today The Living Constitution. By Howard Lee McBain. The Work- ers Education Bureau Press. $1.50. '"PHE Constitution of the United States has long suffered from a plethora of encomium and invective, so that a new book on the subject appears at first a somewhat dubious hazard. It is a relief, then, to find in the first of the series of books to be published by the Workers' Education Bureau at its own press no mere handbook from which the hundred percenter may glean a few more platitudes to show that the American Constitution is the nostrum of all the ills of mankind, nor yet another at- tempt to furnish ammunition for those who would hurl mis- prision at that much-berated document. Instead, it is a reasoned discussion of the actualities of the system of government under which we live, and furnishes meat for the serious student of political science as well as for the tyro in the field. Professor McBain is essentially a realist in his political thinking, for he envisages politics and government as they are, not only as they might be. To him the Constitution is far from a static document, but is alive in the sease that all life implies ever-continuing change. Judicial interpretation, political party influence, custom, and the action or inaction of Congiess and the President have instituted a never-ending process of variation from the hoary document drafted in 1TS7. It is the task of Professor McBain to show wherein some of these changes lie, and in the attempt he often walks in where angels might fear to tread. For example, in the general introductory chapter on written constitutions which gives a background of theory for the practical considerations to follow, he shows that, contrary to general opinion, the British constitution is not as flexible as it seems and the American written document, on the other hand, is more so. Brief and filled with solid material as the book is, it is per- vaded by a genial good humor which but rarely deserts the author. Often he writes with his tongue in his cheek at the obvious absurdities of the situation. Only now and then does he forget to stand aside and smile from his wide perspective, as when he calls Senator Borah "our arch-isolationist, trouble- making, diplomacy-bungling chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations." Professor McBain, with an unfailing charm of style, has shown in the compass of less than three hundred pages that "the Constitution of the United States was not handed down on Mount Sinai by the Lord God of Hosts," but that it is a human instrument, lacking in perfection and per- fectibility, yet good withal. He has also shown that political science may be .accurate and painstaking and yet be literature. Jane Perry Clark Finis Coronat Opus Diplomatic Episodes in Mexico, Belgium, and Chile. By Henry Lane Wilson. Doubleday, Page and Company. §4. OOME of the interest that induces kitchen-maids to read ^ Snippy Stot-ies to learn of the grand manners and peccadillos of duchesses attaches to these Chilean and Belgian episodes, told in the best, therefore sometimes boring, form of diplomatic memoirs. Mr. Wilson walks with lofty superiority, exhaling the aroma of the true hand-on-the-breast diplomat, an aroma easily sniffed by admiring yokel editors still imbued with the Old Guard patriotism of the nineties whose highest manifestation of humor is heresy-hunting. Other diplomats may wither under the blaz- ing tropic sun; Mr. Wilson proceeds composed and unflushed as September Morn. The mental qualities of Francisco Madero, President of Mexico, may develop into a "homicidal, dangerous form of lunacy," but Mr. Wilson, through every tragic occur- rence, retains such calm judgment that he puts a lily-white wreath of innocence upon the head of Victoriano Huerta, the most brutal President since Santa Ana. Add to anecdotes de- scriptions of mountain scenery, stylistically inferior to Baedeker or Terry, quote tinsel poetry before old castles, inform the reader that the commercial possibilities of Panama "leap beyond the bounds of imagination," thrill to the "drum beats of England en- circling the world," pat everyone on the back who has pleasant manners, remind the reader that somebody's death was "a shock to all," accuse the high-bred lady of being "withal an excellent mother and wife and a model of virtue," remember the exact number of courses served by Leopold and other nonentities, have all services close "impressively," in short, keep to the social column gush, and in the years to come backwoods school-teachers will be able to hold up another model son of the patria for emulation. Mr. Wilson's analysis of the Diaz regime is exceedingly superficial, and though he remarks that fully 80 per cent of the population "was without an abiding-place except by sufferance," he shows no sympathy for the struggles of that 80 per cent for liberation; nor does he for one moment feel, let alone understand, the great forces sweeping Mexico; nor does he at any point mention, let alone grasp, the magnitude of the problems repre- sented by the destructive conflict between modern industrialism represented by American capital and the semi-feudal system south of the Rio Grande. Neither does he, in the midst of his bombastic concern for American property, reveal the scanda- lous manner in which many of the American concessions were

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Aug. 3, 1927] The Nation 117 illegally or unjustly acquired, or make known the exaggerated and questionable character of some of the claims he pressed, not diplomatically but irritably and angrily. Certainly, Mr. Wilson could not be expected to reveal his backdoor connections, via his brother, with the associates of the Guggenheims (smelter com- petitors of the Madero family), or tell of the clique of surviving Cientifico grafters with whom he hobnobbed, or give the true composition of the adulatory Committee of the American Col- ony which whitewashed him. Mr. Wilson's strongest alibi is the subsequent blundering of Woodrow Wilson and Bryan. Mr. Wilson wishes, above all, to exonerate himself and Huerta of the oft-repeated charge of not having taken proper steps to safeguard Madero's life. The officer of the guard, when Madero was shot down, was promptly promoted; Huerta perpe- trated other savage assassinations. As for Mr. Wilson, in a most trying moment of Madero's career the ambassador seized upon a doubtful rumor that the Government intended to arrest and execute ex-President Francisco de la Barra, and insultingly sent a hostile note of warning. De la Barra's safety was none of Wilson's official business; but in the case of Madero, Wilson had direct and grave responsibility, since he had, through the Spanish minister, asked the President to resign and so became sponsor for Huerta's treason. But in a crucial hour a note requesting that Madero's life be respected, a note scribbled by Wilson's wife on a visiting card, sufficed — so much confidence did Wilson have in the drunken assassin newly at the helm and in ladies' visiting cards! Wilson, at the tearful importunity of Madero's wife, whom he told that Madero was "a very wicked man," later made two lukewarm efforts, and while he easily saved the lives of associates of Madero, the latter — shortly after Wilson received Huerta and his brummagem crew under the American Embassy roof in a blaze of festive lights and Stars and Stripes to determine the personnel of the new cabinet — went down to a vilely treacherous death. Mr. Wilson might have made a good engraved-card ambassador to Diaz; as poison-cup ambassador to Madero he helped spill years of bloodshed across Mexican history. Carleton Beals Books in Brief The Green Rising. By W. B. Bizzell. The Macmillan Company. $2. A former president of an agricultural college, now head of the university of a rural State, Oklahoma, Dr. Bizzell has the background necessary for an adequate interpretation of the present agrarian movement. His book is clear, accurate, and tolerant — the best introduction so far published to contempo- rary agricultural problems. After tracing the history of agra- rianism, the author shows that the present tendencies in the field are world wide, although taking on somewhat different aspects in various countries. He discusses conditions in the United States in detail and gives the arguments for and against pro- posed solutions of the agrarian problem. His own view favors tariff adjustment, scientific classification and utilization of land, balanced production, adequate credit for productive purposes, and the development of cooperative marketing. Palmerston. By Philip Guedalla. G. P. Putnam's Sons. $">. In Lord Palmerston Mr. Guedalla has a fine subject for his vivid phrasing and swift allusiveness. For this statesman car- ried the dignity and audacities of the aristocratic life of the eighteenth century more than halfway through the nineteenth. "A Regency beau, he spoke in debate when Pitt and Mr. Fox had not long fallen silent, and he was Secretary at War against Napoleon." He was a Minister at 25, and held high office, with some intervals of opposition, until his death at 81. The wicked Crimean War was in large part his doing, and he was the pro- mulgator of the great doctrine, "Civis Romanus Sum," which has led England into trouble and conquest in all parts of the earth. He had some admirable qualities with the familiar de- fects of his age and caste. But to say, as Mr. Guedalla does, that "The life of Palmerston was the life of England and, to a large extent, of Europe in the last sixteen years of the eighteenth and the first sixty-five of the nineteenth centuries" is a wild exaggeration of the importance of "high politics." A History of Hebrew Civilization. By Alfred Bertholet. Trans- lated by A. K. Dallas. Brentano's. $4.50. This book is an attempt to narrate the life-story of the an- cient Hebrews along broader lines than those followed in the usual works on either the history or the religion of Israel. "Civilization" is here employed in the sense of the original term (Kulturgeschichte) as the sum total of a people's experiences, customs, activities, and thinking. The period of history under review extends from the beginnings of Hebrew settlement in Palestine until the end of Old Testament times. A proper set- ting for the understanding of the origins of Israelitish culture is provided by a preliminary description of the civilization which the Hebrews gradually supplanted and absorbed. After the Israelites had fully possessed themselves of the land the dis- tinctive characteristics of their own civilization are exhibited in their family and domestic life, in the trades and callings that were followed, in the forms of their social intercourse, in their political institutions, in their jurisprudence, education, and artis- tic interests, and in their religion. So wide a survey, if it were to preserve due proportion in the treatment of its several parts and to maintain uniform accuracy in details, could be made only by a competent scholar like Professor Bertholet. Canadian Labor Laws and the Treaty. By Bryce M. Stewart. Columbia University Press. $6. The chief purpose of Mr. Stewart's book is to put, side by side, the ideals for labor of the International Labor Bureau of the League of Nations and the measure of conformity to these achieved by Canada. The successive chapters deal with work- ing hours, provision for a weekly day of rest, restriction on child labor, a living wage, and so on. While, in some respects, labor legislation in Canada follows English precedents, organized la- bor is weak as a political force. In both the federal and the provincial parliaments the labor members are few and the labor unions lack the privileges of the English unions. Legislation as to conditions of labor is often in advance of enforcement, while federal and provincial powers sometimes seem to overlap. Can- ada, already the sixth industrial country in the League of Na- tions, is developing a vast mining industry, especially in the precious metals, and this will bring increased attention to laws respecting labor. The Sociology of Rural Life. By Horace Boies Hawthorn. The Century Company. $3.75. That socialization of rural life offers a guaranty against peasantry and a promise of individual satisfaction for the farm dweller is the thesis of this book. The author deals at length with economic and other factors involved in his theory and dis- cusses various agencies of socialization, such as the church, the farm organization, the lyceum, and the country newspaper. The standard of measurement employed is chiefly "vital and con- structive social contacts," which doubtless will appeal to the "men of vision upon our social watch-towers." The Farmer's Campaign for Credit. By Clara Eliot. D. Apple- ton Company. $3. Here is a scholarly and useful summary of the efforts, chiefly during the last decade, to provide a credit system ade- quate to the needs of agriculture in a highly organized society. Special attention is given to the agricultural depression, which the author rightly attributes largely "to matters of war finance and of ovcrstimulatod agricultural production." Membership in the Federal Reserve System by eligible banks generally, and the

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118 The Nation [Vol. 125. No. 3239 existence of an intermediate credit system — which did not come into being until 1923 — would, the author believes, have done much to mitigate the severity of the crisis. Her suggestions for the future are chiefly in the way of warning with reference to experiments favoring "commodity paper," to attempts to utilize credit to maintain the prices of specific commodities, and to the view that banks have no responsibility for price movements. Both bankers and farm leaders will be benefited by reading this book on a subject on which neither class as a whole is any too well informed. Music The Beethoven Festival at Bonn BEGINNING and ending with the Missa Solemnis, Bonn has just concluded her annual tribute to her greatest son, Ladwig van Beethoven. This year the tribute became a rite, for this year marks the centenary of his passing. It is not surprising, therefore, that the five concerts were sold out long in advance, or that, to satisfy public demand, they had to be immediately repeated, thus prolonging the Festival. And so for ten clays hundreds of visitors have been crowding the nar- row, winding streets of this famous old university town on the Rhine, while hundreds of flags of all colors have braved wind and rain to welcome th-m. Among these gaily colored banners, however, were a few in black and white — an unconvincing re- minder that Ludwig van Beethoven had died. Nor did the memorial services preceding the Festival and the wreaths around Beethoven's statue add to this conviction. Never, in- deed, could the great master have seemed more alive when he walked the cobble-stones of his native town in the ..esh than he did at this moment. The shop windows were fairly plas- tered with his photographs, with his music, and with the nu- merous books that had been written about him. Posters bear- ing his picture greeted one at every turn of the street. His name was on everyone's lips, on concert hall and public build- ing, on even the boats that plow up and down the Rhine; while the crowds bore witness to the living place he still holds. On the evening of Sunday, May 22, came the first concert — the Missa Solemnis, given by the local chorus and orchestra of Bonn under the city's musical director, F. Max Anton, with guest soloists from Vienna, Munich, and other cities. The pro- gram of the second evening presented the First and Third Symphonies, under Siegmund von Hausegger of Munich, and the piano concerto, Op. 72, No. 5, played by Elly Ney; the program of the third evening, two string quartets by the Wen- dling Quartet from Stuttgart, and the Trio for piano, clarinet, and 'cello, Op. 11, with Mme. Ney assisting; that of the fourth evening, the Ninth Symphony with the local chorus (Fritz Busch of Dresden conducting), preceded by the violin concerto in D, Op. 61, played by Adolph Busch, brother of the conduc- tor; while the fifth concert took place the next morning, ending the series with the piano sonata in C minor, Op. Ill, played by Edwin Fischer of Berlin, the song cycle, An die Feme Geliebte, sung by Karl Erb, tenor of the Munich Opera, and, last of all, the Septet in E, Op. 20. From a purely virtuoso standpoint, the climax of the Festival was achieved by Adolph Busch in his playing violin concerto. Purity of tone and musicianship, technical finish, and a refreshing simplicity of manner distinguish performance throughout. His colleagues of the Festival might well have learned from him, for mannerisms clouded his bi er's reading of the Ninth Symphony, and superficiality Di\ von Hausegger's readings of the First and Third; v. soloists were lacking in much of the musical and tec qualities above noted. One could not but regret that Bonn had not called upon Germany's t artists for occasion. However, the audience was deeply appreciative of all that it heard. Elly Ney, herself born in Bonn, received a rousing welcome from her townspeople; and each succeeding artist had a like ovation. To this writer the Mass and the chorus in the Ninth Symphony sounded painfully high — their intentions obscured by the Master's physical affliction. On the other hand, I was reminded in the earlier works, such as the Trio, with its biirgerliche themes and fresh humor, how much the young Beethoven belonged to this gay and singing province where "folly grows on the banks of the Rhine." And it was this spirit of the youthful Beethoven, as yet in harmony with its surroundings, that marked this Festival at Bonn from other festivals in his honor, just as the humble little house in the Bonnergasse. where it was first manifested, marks Bonn itself from all other cities. Henrietta Straus THEATER GILBERT MILLER Presents ETHEL BARRYMORE in The Constant Wife By W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM AT MAXINE ELLIOTT'S THEATRE Matinees Wed. & Sat. 2:30. GILBERT MILLER and A. H. WOODS present JEANNE EAGELS In "Her Cardboard Lover" By JACQUES DEVAL Adapted by Valerie Wyngate and P. G. Wodehouse nipIBT? B'wav & 40th St., Eves.. 8:30 h.-.iJrlA^ Matg_ Wed_ & g 2.30 Little THE GRAND Theatre 44th Street West of Broadway Evgs. 8:30. Mats. Tues. and Thurs. at popular prices. "One cannot find anywhere in New York satire or more verve." — Joseph Wood Krutch STREET FOLLIES more clever ideas, in T7ie -Nation. more fresh CHAXIX'S RII TMOR^ THEATRE Tel. Chickering DiL, I IViWIAJ—, West -STth St. 5161 CHARLES L. WAGNER (In Association with Edgar Selwyn presents The BARKER By KENYON NICHOLSON with WALTER HUSTON Mats. Wed. & Sat. 2 :30. Eve?, at 8:30. MOTION PICTURE □ 2ND BIG WEEK AMERICAN PKEMIER TOLSTOY'S "POWER OF DARKNESS" EXACTED BY MOSCOW ART PLAYERS .. WlENE, Dr. Caligari" C CONTINUOUS PERFORMANCE DAILY— 2 TO 11:30 P. M. Popular Price: 50c. until 6 P. M. anil Trie, thereafter. >;it. and Sun. 75c. rM clay. th Street, Phone Just En>: of 7th Ave. Circle 0129 55th STREET CINEMA The Nation

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International Relations Section Industrial Exploration By BENTON MacKAYE [This ?"s the concluding article in a series of three appearing in successive issues.] III. Charting the World's Resources NATURAL resources form the source; human require- ments determine the destination — the source and des- tination of the commodity stream. Industrial exploration consists in charting the com- modity stream, and the system of such streams constitut- ing the system of industry. The commodity stream has three parts: source, destination, and "flow" between. We have considered the flow, and also the destination: now for the source. Water, soil, forests, ores. These supply the matter of life. Chart 6 shows the major world centers of the primary staples: foods, textiles, and building requisites. The size of each circle shows the proportionate potential supply in each country of the staple named. Wheat and rice form the principal cereals. About 97 per cent of the world's rice crop is located in the Far East- ern countries which also produce and consume a large quan- tity of wheat. Outside of these countries the largest center of wheat production is Western Europe. This region, how- ever, consumes more wheat than it produces and so draws upon the supplies of North America, Argentina, India, and Australia. Three-fifths of the world's cotton is grown in the United States from Virginia to Texas ; India and China to- gether supply another fifth. The rest comes from Egypt, Turkestan, Brazil, and elsewhere. A third of the world's wool is supplied from the far southern countries of Argen- tina, Australia, and South Africa, which again contribute to make up the deficiency of Western Europe. The bottom map of Chart 6 (building requisites) pre- sents a rough measure of the forest and mineral resources of each country. The proportions indicated by the circles showing the wood supply are based on estimates of the potential forest growth in each country- The proportions for iron and for coal are based on the estimated iron ore and coal reserves in each country. Coal obviously is not a building material, but neither is iron until it has been smelted by coal (i.e. coke). Coal and iron ore are in effect the "ingredients" of metallic iron. They are basic requi- sites both for buildings and for "things." The United States of America stands out, potentially, as the prime world region in the iron ingredients. Add Cuba and Newfoundland and the strength would be doubled. North America potentially far outstrips Europe as an iron power. Brazil is supposed to contain the largest iron ore deposits in the world, but South America as a wholi tains almost no coal. China's coal supply is huge; it equals that of Atlantic America, but the amount of iron in sight is comparatively meager. Therefore the United States and Europe stand out as the natural seats of "iron civilization." The outstanding regions of surplus wood and timber appear to be Siberia and Russia, the Pacific coast of North America, and (for tropical woods) Brazil. Ultimately, when timber culture replaces timber mining, there will be relocations. Rubber (with gasoline and automobiles) is vital in iron civilization. The world crop at present comes almost wholly from India and the East Indies. The sun's energy comes to us through different chan- nels. Energy possessed by human beings comes through wheat and corn and foods, which come in turn through the sun's rays and sun-drawn waters. But aside from humans (and animals) the sun's energy comes to us, for the most part, through coal and falling water and petroleum. The proportionate potential horse-power from these three com- bined is shown, for each country, in Chart 7. Again the United States stands out. She has more than a fourth of the world's total potential horse-power, the bulk of it to be derived from the energy stored in coal. Eu- rope in toto possesses about a sixth of the world's horse- power; China a fifth: in each case coming principally from coal. But China's coal again is largely impotent. For the iron is not there to work upon — neither to smelt nor fashion into "things." China is a future cotton factory perhaps, but not, as discoveries show thus far, a first-class iron civi- lization. Water-power outshines coal only in Africa and in South America. Practically all the energy in Africa is water- power: 28 per cent of the world's water-power is in the Congo region alone. South America's power, chiefly from water, forms but a meager proportion of the world's total energy _ Petroleum does not count heavily in the world's total potential energy. But it has a virtue which the other giants do not have — mobility. And it may become more immediately spectacular than both the other forms of horse- power put together. Natural resources, like human requirements, vary with climate, with country, with civilization. What resources go with the various civilizations of the world? We have al- ready roughly charted them (Charts G and 7). These re- sults have been combined so as to show, in a crude and off- hand fashion, the potential strength of each country in terms of a percentage of the planet's aggregate resources. In making this estimate, agricultural resources (as meas- ured by the production of foods and textiles) have been reckoned as a third of the planet's total; timber growth and "iron ingredients" as a third; and total horse-power as a third. The results are shown on Chart 8. The size of each circle shows the estimated percentage in each country of the planet's aggregate resour* es. What do the charts tell us about the various countries and civilizations? The East: China and India. These countries (accord- ing to the estimate) contain nearly a fifth of the world's total resources (chiefly foods, cotton, and wood). India's resources are well balanced but China's are somewhat lop- sided on account of the superfluity of coal. These countries contain but a handful of iron as compared with the West- ern countries. They are the last stronghold of the non-iron civilization.

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120 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3239 SHE OF CIRCLE 5H0W5 PROPORTIONATE POTENTIAL 5UPPLY OF INDICATED STAPLE IN EACH COUNTRY O WHEAT OR RICE FOODS BEEF O COTTON TEXTILE 5 WOOL ° CP 'JILDING REQU15ITES O WOOD OlRON ©COAL 6. MATERIAL RESOURCES OF THE WORLD. The West: Western Europe and its transplants. The transplant in North America contains the lion's share of world resources (nearly a third). There is a good balance of the main staples plus tremendous surpluses of cotton, iron, and coal. Britain and Western Europe together contain less than a sixth of the world's total resources. Their supplies of iron nearly equal those of North America but they are deficient in foods, textiles, and wood. These are supplied mainly from the United States and Canada, and from the three southern satellites of the West (.Argentina, South Africa, and Australia). The Tropics: Northern South America, Equatorial Africa, and the East Indies contain about a tenth of the earth's resources (chiefly hard wood in the Amazon and water-power in the Congo and rubber in the East Indies). The Russians: Russia, Siberia, and Turkestan. Less than a tenth of the earth's resources. A balanced but very meager supply of iron and coal in Rus- sia, and a little coal (unbalanced with iron) in Siberia. A surplus of wood in both countries. The Russians promise to be largely self-sufficient, though they must exchange their surplus wheat and wood for iron products made by their Western neighbors. The Japanese: Japan is a head without a body. Her resources, figured on a world scale, are almost non-exist- ent. She must depend on China and the mainland. Such is our estimate of world re- sources: a putting together of the best official guesses that could readily be found. It presents a crude comparison of the East and West. Each has its requirements and its resources. China and India represent the East; America and Europe, the West. The Russians are both; so are the Japanese but in a different way. The tropical and far southern countries have come to be ad- juncts of the West. The countries of theNorthern Hem- isphere make the bulk of the world — nine-tenths of the population, five-sixths of the resources. They present some interesting contrasts. The East is top- heavy in population: China and India contain about 45 per cent of the earth's people but less than 20 per cent of its resources. America is top-heavy in re- sources; 32 per cent of the resources but only 7 per cent of the population. Western Europe (with Britain) is not

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Aug. 3, 1927] The Nation 121 top-heavy either way, though propor- tionate population somewhat exceeds proportionate resources. How does all this affect our explor- ation? How does it affect commodity flow? Will the present flow into West- ern Europe of surplus foods and tex- tiles from America and India and the South go on indefinitely? — or will Eu- rope's surplus population itself begin to "flow" sufficiently to equalize the situa- tion? Will the surplus populations of the Eastern countries also get to flow- ing; or will they equalize matters with- in their own realm? Is there a "yellow peril" to America from the flow of Ori- ental population? Will a surplus flow of steel from America and Europe smother an Oriental civilization by an iron one? Is there also a "white peril"? These are a few of the questions about commodity flow which are un- earthed by the crudest sort of charting. And another point is brought out: Commodity flow lies at the bottom of population flow. Development of potential commodities creates employment, and population ever fol- lows the prospective job. The situation here described brings matters straight home. Here in the eastern half of the United States (with our Dakota wheat, Iowa beef, Mississippi cotton, Ohio wool, Messaba and Birmingham iron, West Virginia coal, and all that goes between) we probably have the biggest single col- lection of life's sources that exists upon the planet. But we have, compared with other lands, only a handful of people. How about the prospective industrial development of this world region? Will the prospective flow of commodi- ties and population run wild and overwhelm us in one great industrial and metropolitan flood? — or will the flow some- how be controlled? SIZE OF POTENTIAL CIRCLE SHOWS PROPORTIONATE HORSEPOWER IN EACH COUNTRY O EASTERN • WESTERN ® TROPICAL SIZE OF CIRCLE PROPORTIONATE RESOURCES © RUSSIAN SHOWS OF COUNTRY RESOURCE STRENGTH OF CIVILIZATIONS. 7. ENERGY RESOURCES OF THE WORLD. What sort of place to live in is America going to be? Can the forces of iron industrial civilization be controlled so as to effect, without undue waste of man-power, a plenty or a sufficiency of food and clothes and homes, and at the same time develop the fullest and best in the true American environment? This is one and the same question which confronts the Chinese in Shanghai. Can the forces of this same iron industrialism, issuing out of America and the West, be con- trolled, in China, so as to effect plenty for the average Chi- nese human being without impairing the fullest and best in the Oriental environment? This question has its counter- part in every land where industrial civilization is going on its way. Will this Western iron civilization, as Oswald Spengler suggests, harden and crumble away. Will it, as others predict, collapse in a series of convul- sions? Or can it somehow save itself; can a mold be found on which a coming industry may be built? There is, in the mountain pass, a "most serviceable" line or grade on which to build a rail- way. But to find it takes the eye of the engineer explorer. It takes the same eye, only with more potent vision, to find and visualize a new mold for in- dustry. The traffic in the streets of New York City and the traffic in the streets of Shanghai are parts of one great flow. Wherever it appears (as at the corner of Broadway and 42nd Street) its problems belong not to the particu- lar city, not to the state, not even to the nation, but to the world. The trac- ing and charting of this flow — each stream from source to destination — constitutes the field of a coming quest: not terrestrial but industrial explora- tion. ©JAPANESE NAMED

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122 The Nation [Vol. 125. No. 3239 Contributors to This Issue J. Ramsay MacDonald is the leader of the Labor Party in the British Parliament and former Premier of Great Britain. Freda Kirchwey, managing editor of The Nation, is in Europe for the summer. Robert S. Allen was at the Northwestern Agricultural ( onference in St. Paul for the Christian SciPUS 135 Remsen St, Bklyn. An Adult Lamp of DistiNv TIMBERLAND IN THE HEART OF THE ADIRONDACKS Tilt Main House Excel • equip- in every ; mei I .-27 per week. Trip Fare to Riverside, X. Y., - $13.27. morris harkavy X. Y. Office, 55 West 42nd St. ESTHER R. KAPLAN Pennsylvania Mail your reservations to POTTERSVILLE. V. Y. FRENCH SCHOOL -\ Church School for American Boys preparing ..:ican - • country life organized in s historic feudal castle. and diet: : ion $1,200. ram. including crew. The Rt. Rev. Charles H. Brent, Bishop of American Churches in Europe, Chairman of Board of Trustees. Address: Dr. Courad Chapman, Head Master. Chateau-Xeuvic, Xeuvie-sur-l'Isle. Dordogne, France MISCELLANEOUS REAL KARRIS HOMESPUNS ™rSL£S&£Z>l Makers Price Suit Lengths Cut to Order. pric2 S2.20 per Yard. Postage Pai NEWALL. 150 Stornoway, Scotland. Write for patterns staling shados de Is there something you want that you can't quite afford— A neH' tennis racquet, a I{odal(, one or two of ihe latest te extravagant trifle for vow summer wardrobe? Many Nation readers have found that they can cam extra money for extra pleasure? by taking advantage of our exceptional offer to reader- agents. \X hv not try it yourself ? Dept. 1 1 THE NATION 20 Vesey Street, New ^1 oik What if vour exceptional offer lo reader-agents? Name Address '

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The Nation FOUNDED 1865 Vol. CXXV NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 10, 1927 No. 3240 Contents EDITORIAL PARAGRAPHS lir> EDITORIALS: Lindbergh's Story ]■_>-, Russian Oil — Lubricant and Irritant 12t; The Disgrace at Geneva 1^7 The Vanishing American Daily i •-■ THE VIENNESE SHAMBLES. By G. E. R. Gedye MORE CHINESE ATROCITIES! By J. G. Sayre li THE UNFAMILIAR HOUSE. By John Gould Fletcher 130 HAD DARROW BEEN A JOURNALIST. By One Who Is. . 1 :, IN THE DRIFTWAY. By the Drifter CORRESPONDENCE BOOKS: Adulterations and Quackeries. By Morris L. Ernst ;;; 1 An African Pioneer. By Rebecca Hourwich I :, 1 A Journalist Looks Backward. By Oswald Garrison Villa . .. 1 : ■-, Marat the Radical. By Leo Gershoy The Great Illusion. By Scott Buchanan In the Time of Aurangzeb. By W. Norman Brown ] •;; Pragmatic Politics. By Lewis Rockow 1;,.; The Biography of a Character. By W. K. Ferguson 1ST Books in Brief l:iS INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS SECTION: Price-Fixing in Queensland. By Mauritz A. Hallgren 1.(0 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, Advrrttsing 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. THE NATION is on file in most public and college libraries and in the Headers' Guide to Periodical Literature. C^ OVERNOR Fuller, as we go to press, is writing his T decision in the case of Sacco and Vanzetti. No more important state document has been penned in this coun- try in years; it is hard to recall any act of a Governor of an American State which has had any such international effect as Governor Fuller's decision is bound to have. Mil- lions upon millions the world over will have their opinion of the United States definitely formed by it. As it goes, so they will decide whether justice is dead in America. whether it can be as ruthlessly trampled under foot here as liberty has been in Italy, Spain, Hungary, Turkey, and all the other despotically governed countries, or whether it still lives. It is a decision which will as surely bo heard around the world as was the shot at Concord. It is a pleasure to say that Governor Fuller has recognized its importance; that he has made as painstaking and care- ful an inquiry as anyone could possibly ask. He has gone to the scene and tested for himself the distance of the identifying witnesses from the place of the shooting. He has interviewed judge, jurors, and counsel, and has twice called upon Sacco and Vanzetti in jail. We have high hopes that he will see justice done, and if he does he will k acclaimed the world over as one of America's great men. BITTER, INDEED, for Secretary Kellogg must be the confession he has just had to make to the House For- eign Affairs Committee that there has been gross misman- agement of the Foreign Service in the interest of diplo- matic "career men" as against the men of the consular branch of the service who are entitled to promotion. One would think that a Secretary of State would know what was happening in his department without having to discover it because of a resolution of Congress. But in response to a resolution of inquiry, Mr. Kellogg finds that whereas there arc 1 10 persons in the diplomatic service and 380 in the consular, actually 76 diplomats have been promoted since 1924 (70 per cent of those in the service), as against 138 consuls, approximately only 36 per cent of the consular ap- pointees. More than that, these promotions were made by a personnel board of six members ; four of these insiders have promoted themselves; three "career men," Joseph C. Grew, J. Wright Butler, and Hugh R. Wilson, have been sent as ambassador or minister to Turkey, Hungary, and Switzer- land, respectively. William Dawson, the single consular representative, has been promoted from grade two to grade one. MR. KELLOGG has to admit that this result of the pro- motion policy has been "different from that which had been expected," but he holds that there has been "unin- tentional injustice," as a result of which there are forty- four cases in which "officers of the diplomatic branch have been advanced over their consular colleagues." To rectify this he has ordered the immediate promotion of forty-four more men in the consular branch of the service, but this will hardly cure the situation. As we have before this pointed out, the diplomatic "career men" are trying to control the service, to get the best plums for themselves, and to prevent any outside appointments from civil life to high posts. This spirit cannot be met merely by balancing promotions in the two branches of the corps. It must be ruthlessly frowned upon by the President and Secretary of State, or the new- permanent diplomatic service will be a curse to the country and create an unbearably bureaucratic and priggish group of representatives of the United States abroad. WRITING in the Atlantic Monthly. Willis Sharp agrees that the current criticism of the supineness, cow- ardice, and loss of critical faculty of the daily press is cor- rect. Fortunately there are some offsets; there are still examples in the smaller cities of old-fashioned journalistic courage and devotion to the public service, not yet rendered impossible by the economic destruction of the editor's lib- erty and independence. The other day in Canton, Ohio, a handsome new building to house the Canton Daily Neics was dedicated to the memory of Don R. Mellett, its editor, who paid with his life for his fearless attacks upon the criminals of Canton and their allies, the police of the city. About the same time the former chief of police of Canton was sentenced to death for his share in the cowardly assas- sination of Mr. Mellet, who deserves a public memorial as well as the private one now dedicated. And when we read every day of the fresh revelations of the wholesale political corruption in Indiana now being exposed by D. C. Stephen- son, the Grand Dragon of the Indiana Ku Klux Klan, who is in jail for life, we cannot fail to recall that this exposure

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124 The Nation [Vol. 125, Xo. 3240 is due to two unpurchasable editors, Boyd Gurley of the Indianapolis Times, a Scripps-H'oward daily, and Thomas L. Adams of the Vincennes Commercial. Mr. Adams started the fight; Mr. Gurley helped to carry it on. Both risked a good deal; both deserve medals of honor from their State; both merit the acclaim of all good journalists. Incident- ally, with one Governor of Indiana in the penitentiary, these editors have been able to call upon the present Governor Jackson either to explain his connection with Stephenson or to resign. It will not be the fault of these editors if there is not a political uprising in Indiana. FOUND GUILTY of Anti-Fascist propaganda in America, Mario Chiossone, deported from Boston at the request of Italian authorities, has just been sentenced to twelve years in prison. Cases like this amply justify the fears of another anti-Fascist, Armando Borghi, who still enjoys sanctuary in the United States, but who is scheduled for deportation. According to the American Civil Liberties Union, which is appealing to the Department of Labor on Borghi's behalf, he is an Italian citizen, an anti-Fascist editor who entered this country as a temporary visitor on November 9, 1926. He is held for deportation on charges that he remained in the United States beyond the four months allowed him and that he is an anarchist, here in vio- lation of the immigration act. Borghi has stated that after consulting counsel, he believed his visa was good for one year. When he attempted to have his passport extended the Italian Consul at Boston took it away instead, stating that he was "not qualified to be an Italian citizen" because of his anti-Fascist views. He is a philosophical anarchist, opposed to violence. Borghi's house in Italy was burned by the Fas- cists; his son is not allowed to leave the country, held as hostage for his father's return. Deportation for Borghi may mean death — for the crime of lese majeste against the Most High Mussolini. Certainly it will mean a long prison sentence. There was a time when the United States offered asylum for political refugees, and their record in this coun- try is a long and honorable one. The Civil Liberties Union (100 Fifth Avenue, New York City), in soliciting funds for Borghi's defense, is only attempting to uphold this time- honored custom. JOAN OF ARC with a duenna is the decree of a Paris judge. A seventeen-year-old girl, cast for the part of Joan in the film, "The Marvelous Life of Joan of Arc." has been permitted to take the part, over the objections of her guardian, provided a governess be in constant attendance on her while she is acting the role. This is certainly rewrit- ing history. As we recollect, Joan as a child cared for her flocks alone, except for the mysterious voices in the sky. went unaccompanied to the Governor of Vaucouleurs to bee him to take her to the Dauphin, and was so importunate that at last not alone but — Heavens! — in the company of six men-at-arms she went to the future king of France. Alone, except for an army of 5,000 men. she set out for Orleans; at the head of her troops she entered the city: and after the Dauphin had been crowned at Rheims— when Joan alone stood by his side — sh-> stood alone at the stake and suffered the flames that consumed her. In all this dra- matic story there is no mention of a duenna, a chaperon. a governess, a keeper. Joan at all times was surrounded by rough and doubtless unscrupulous soldiers. Yet the legend most emphatically has it that not a hair of her head was harmed — until the English burned her at the stake. She was protected at all times by the pure fire of passionate ; endeavor; which is one of the things that distinguishes' Joan the Maid from the movie reproduction of her life. NEW YORK CITY ought to pass on some of its pressing municipal problems to its suburban neighbor, Scars- *, dale. For the "city fathers" of Scarsdale have too little to ' do. They have so much of too little to do that they are occupying themselves with nonsense — and probably illegal ; nonsense at that. On the advice of a Mrs. Somebody-or- Other, a so-called "health expert," the village officers have if passed an ordinance prohibiting the sale of "hot dogs" on the streets. The ordinance is, in fact, directed against a . single individual who has been doing a thriving business in i frankfurter rolls in front of the high school. No epidemic ! has swept away great numbers of the students in conse- 1 quence; for all anybody knows the students' health may || have been the better for their "hot dogs." But this is an I age of fads, and a "health expert" has to interfere with public habits about once in so often to prove she is one. | Fortunately the "hot dog" vendor has not been compliant. He has a State license as a peddler, and has appealed to the courts. We think he will win. If not. it seems likely that i "city lathers" and village grandmothers from Dan to Dan- bury will shortly issue prohibitions ruling out of our diet anything and everything from pig's knuckles to milk toast. 1 WHO IS THE LUCKIEST BOY in the world? We nominate David Putnam, and do not expect anybody to contradict us. Does David spend half his waking hours in the school room, laboriously poring over the map of Haiti or Greenland or Baffins Bay? Does he, with infinite tongue- twisting and soul-sweating, learn the "Products" of any of these countries or of half a dozen others? Not David. He wakes up early and interviews a pirate chief; he breakfasts on polar-bear sandwiches and a cup of bread-fruit juice; he spends the morning looking for buried treasure and the afternoon inspecting extinct salamanders. In between times, when bright and strange sights pall a little, he may snatch a look at an arithmetic or composition book. But for geogra- phies he has no use whatever. He goes to the distant places of the earth where geographies are being made. Just at present he is a member of the Putnam expedition to the Arctic, engaged in helping with the work of mapping Mill Island in Baffins Bay and conducting archeological inspec- tions of interesting Eskimo ruins of one thousand years ago. On July 30 members of the expedition, in the midst of a thick fog. killed and dragged to the ship an 800-pound polar bear which was subsequently skinned and the great skel- eton was prepared for taking back home. David did not shoot the bear, but it is safe to assume that while the work on the carcass was going on he was not far away. That is his particular good fortune — to be in the center of adven- tures which other boys can only read about. A PICTURESQUE FIGURE in the world of exploration, science, art. and letters is removed in the death of Sir Harry Johnston. Thirty books stand to his credit; his paintings were frequently hung in the Royal Academy; he was the inventor of the slogan, "The Cape to Cairo," and the master of eleven modern languages, several ancient tongues, and various African dialects. For twenty years he explored in Africa or held positions in the British con-

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Aug. 10, 1927] The Nation 125 sular service until ill-health compelled his retirement. Dur- ing that time he crossed Angola with the Earl of Mayo's expedition into the unknown southern Congo basin; visited, in the next year, Stanley in the Congo; made the first thorough exploration of the "birth of the Nile"; helped to found the British Central Africa Protectorate ; and made many important discoveries of African fauna and flora. From 1899 to 1901 he was Commander-in-Chief of the Uganda Protectorate. That would seem to record a full enough life for any one man, but in addition to his scientific labors and writing, he gave much time to biological re- search and music! As for his books, they by no means all bore on his African adventures. In 1910 he made a thought- ful and useful study of the American Negro — not as valu- able as those of Sir Sydney, now Baron Olivier, but none the less worth while as the viewpoint of an extraordinarily well-informed foreign observer. By all odds his most inter- esting books were his novels, the first of which, "The Gay Dombeys," was an immediate success. Then came "Mrs. Warren's Daughter," a narrative continuation of Shaw's "Mrs. Warren's Profession," and "The Veneerings" — all written after his sixtieth birthday. "The Gay Dombeys" were presented as descendants of the characters in "Nich- olas Nickleby" and "Dombey and Son." It is a glowing and vivid picture of life in the last quarter of the nineteenth century and a most admirable protest against the ruthless imperialistic exploitation of backward peoples. THE PROLIFIC AND POPULAR Italian novelist, Matilde Serao, died in Naples on July 15, after a writ- ing career of half a century during which she produced thirty volumes (including twenty novels) and made herself one of the most influential of Italian journalists. Many of her novels, dealing for the most part with life in Rome and Naples, were translated into English, French, and other European languages, and though her great public was found among the middle classes, who were not repelled by her rapid, journalistic style, she won general recognition for her vivid, natural descriptions of life and character. As a journalist she introduced into Italy syndicated columns of "advice to correspondents" and in various ways made her name familiar to the Italian people. WE STOP THE PRESS to record Mr. Coolidge's oddly worded refusal to run again. If it is final, it is a most praiseworthy and patriotic act thus to uphold the third term tradition, as to which we shall speak at length next week. Lindbergh's Story I was born in Detroit, Michigan, on February 4, 1902. My father was practicing law in Little Falls, Minnesota, at the time. When I was less than two months old my par- ents took me to their farm, on the western banks of the Mississippi River, two miles south of Little Falls. THIS is the opening paragraph of Lindbergh's story.* It is typical of the rest — a plain, straightforward nar- rative with no effort at ornamentation or effect. The pub- lishers say that — unlike most such books — Lindbergh wrote the entire account himself. There is no reason to doubt it. Had anybody else attempted the task he would have tried to make the story "vivid," "colorful," "dramatic," "pictur- * "We." By Charles A. Lindbergh. G. P. Putnam's Sons. $2.50. esque." Lindbergh's is a plain tale plainly told, and though one might wish for some insight into the man's emotions and psychology, that is the last thing which Lindbergh could give us, and it is comforting that he didn't try to. Lindbergh left the University of Wisconsin in the mid- dle of his sophomore year to become a flying student of the Nebraska Aircraft Corporation. That was in 1922, when he was twenty years of age. His aeronautical education was mostly picked up as an assistant to other men, going about the country giving exhibitions at country fairs. Lind- bergh bought his first plane the following spring when for $500 he picked up a "Jenny" from the Government that had cost nearly twenty times that to build. The next year he spent "barnstorming" on his own account, and then put in twelve months in the army aviation schools in Texas, from which he was graduated as a second lieutenant in the Air Service Reserve Corps. Next Lindbergh went into the air-mail service, where he was just previous to setting out on his transatlantic flight. Of that flight his written account is brief and con- tains little not already known, although it corrects some versions of the exploit. It was not true, for instance, that Lindbergh took off with practically no food. He says : In addition to food for the actual flight, I carried five tins of concentrated army rations, each of which contained one day's food and which could be made to last much longer if necessary. I carried two canteens of water; one contain- ing a quart for use during the actual flight and the other containing a gallon for emergency. In addition to this water, I had an Armbust cup, which is a device for con- densing the moisture from human breath into drinking water. The cup is cloth covered and contains a series of baffle plates through which the breath is blown. The cup is immersed in water and then removed and blown through. The evaporation of the water on the outside cools the cup walls and baffle plates on which the breath moisture collects and runs down to the bottom of the cup. Perhaps the most revealing pages of the book are a couple in which the resourcefulness and perseverance of the young man appear in his account of the trial trips of the Spirit of St. Louis previous to the transatlantic flight: I decided to run one more test before landing, and had it about half-way completed when I allowed the data board to come too close to the window where a gust of air carried it out of the cockpit. I was flying over mesquite, over five miles from Camp Kearney, at about 1,200-foot altitude at the time, and could only spiral around and watch the board flutter down into the top of a mesquite bush. There was a small clearing about 200 yards from the bush, in which it was possible to land a slow ship. I landed at Camp Kear- ney and sent for one of the cabin Hisso Standards used by the Ryan Airlines for their passenger service between San Diego and Los Angeles. When the Standard arrived I flew over and landed in the clearing near the lost board which was clearly visible from the air; but, after a fifteen minute search, I was unable to locate it from the ground in the thick mesquite. So I took off my coat and spread it over the top of another bush, then took the air again with the Standard to locate the board in relation to the coat. I had no difficulty in locating them both and found them to be about fifty yards apart. I landed again but could not locate the board, so moved my coat to the spot where I thought it should be and took off again. This time I had placed the coat within twenty feet of the data board, but it required several minutes' search in the thick mesquite to finally locate it.

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126 The Nation [Vol. 125, Xo. 3240 Russian Oil — Lubricant and Irritant BEFORE the Soviet nationalization act of 1918 Russian oil was a lubricant of high quality and eminent re- spectability. Today it finds itself playing the part of an international irritant, causing hot friction between the Brit- ish-owned Royal Dutch-Shell group and portions of the Standard Oil group. And its character, alas, is tainted. Russian petroleum, according to Sir Henri Deterding, man- aging director of the Royal Dutch-Shell group, is "stolen property" and anyone purchasing it, as part of the Standard Oil is now successfully doing, is acting against "the inter- ests of humanity and general trade honesty." Yet despite this righteous crusade of Sir Henri, despite his appeal to the "ethics" of the oil trade, despite the sup- posed slump in the "moral" qualities of Soviet petroleum, it gushes forth unconcerned in greater and greater quanti- ties each succeeding year. In 1926-1927 there were pro- duced 10,461,000 metric tons, which is more than twice the 1922 production of 5,000,000 tons. Likewise Russian oil exports have shown a steady increase. In 1913 Russia ex- ported 57,800,000 poods of oil; in 1925, 81,000,000 poods. England, strange to say, is Russia's best customer, taking 34,000,000 of the 81,000,000 poods. Even more interesting and incongruous is the fact that the Bolshevik Naphtha Syndicate now supplies oil for the navies of four capitalistic Powers: Great Britain, France, Italy, and Greece. At present, it seems, the Standard Oil of New York and the Vacuum Oil are the favored agents for distribution. For this privilege the United States companies hold them- selves ready to lend to the Soviet Government from $50,000,- 000 to $75,000,000. But what they get in return is even more important. Their contracts give them exclusive sell- ing rights to Russian fuel oil to compete directly with Deterding's Anglo-Persian Oil Company from Trebizond to Port Said and Aden to Colombo. No wonder, therefore, that Sir Henri Deterding becomes agitated over morality and the "interests of humanity." This Anglo-American rivalry for Russian oil is, of course, not new. And the story, as it shows the relation- ship between oil imperialism and the international policies of foreign offices, is most significant. To begin with it should be remembered that a major part of the "stolen property" belonged to the Royal Dutch before the Russian Revolution. Sir Henri was well on his way to being the "Napoleon of Petroleum," the sole master of the great oil wealth of the Caucasus, when the Soviet Government na- tionalized his holdings. Sir Henri's chief titor at that time in Caucasian oil claims was the Standard Oil of New Jersey, through its interests in Nobel and Company which then controlled about 40 per cent of tl nction of Baku. In 1920 the Standard of New Jersey, hardlj sidering the Soviet Government seriously, purchased the Nobel holdings in Baku outright. Since this was two years after the nationalization act, the Standard's rights were never recognized by the Bolsheviks, W. C. Teagle, president of the Standard, has been much more sober in his attitude toward Soviet laws since then. With their lands thus taken away, both the Standard Oil and the Royal Dutch brought pressure to bear on the State Department and Foreign Office in the United States and England respectively. Tin's was particularly evident in the United States since the property of American organizations other than the Standard Oil was never nationalized. When Secretary Hughes, therefore, demanded denationalization of appropriated properties in Soviet Russia he could have been acting only for the Standard Oil, whose legal adviser he was before he entered the State Department. England, too, refused then to recognize Russia. Sir Henri Deterding, however, was not quite so harsh ; he did not exactly adhere to the Standard's banner bearing the device "Hands off Red Oil." In June, 1922. the world suddenly learned that Sir Henri was on the verge of obtaining a monopoly con- cession on all Soviet oil lands. It took quick work to head off this sly trick. The State Department graciously loaned Ambassador Child to the Standard Oil at the Genoa Confer- ence. Secretary Hughes, speaking for the Standard through Child, then said that the United States would never consent to any scheme unless it took account of the principle of the open door for all and recognized equal rights for all. The Belgian and French delegates rallied to the "open door" policy and Sir Henri lost his chance to get a monopoly hold on the Soviet lands. One month later at the Hague Conference the influence of the State Depart- ment was used to carry a resolution which prohibited any single nation from accepting a monopoly concession in the Soviet oil fields. Three times Secretary Hughes came to the Standard's aid and three times he was successful — but it is interesting to conjecture the number of marines it would have been necessary to use in the event that the other oil trusts had not been willing to agree to his proposals. Since the Hague Conference, increased Russian ef- ficiency and industry have made Baku petroleum more than ever appealing. Simply stated, Soviet oil is cheaper and more conveniently located with respect to European markets than any other oil supply. And the appeal has been grow- ing stronger since 1922; each year finds another company head dealing in the besmirched oil. They are probably men of simple faith, incapable of weighing the subtle meta- physical distinctions between "stolen" and "honest" prop- — the lubricating qualities are so nearly alike. The French Minister of Marine has already declared that he does not sympathize with the attitude of the Royal Dutch; that future transactions will be continued in the previous style: that the only criterion will remain the lowest price. 1 ndard Oil of New Jersey, however, has as yet been unable to accept any of the liberal Russian con- cessions. although it did bid for the Emba field last year. . unfortunately, linked to the Royal Dutch by a co- operating price agreement — they both sell in the same European countries and by a price regulation avoid cut- thro; tition. Sir Henri Deterding thus has a weapon to hold over the New Jersey company. The situation is not without an. of humor, with part of the Rockefeller companies supporting Sir Henri and part opposed to him. It reveals. S ials say, a new usefulness of the divided trust — divided under our anti-trust laws. This division and rancor among the capitalist oil com- panies naturally pleases Stalin and the Central Executive Committee in Moscow: they are for once holding the upper hand. If they can force a crisis, they will. With blunder- ing diplomats representing the great oil interests, they may.

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Aug. 10, 1927] The Nation 127 The Disgrace at Geneva IN one of his most self-satisfied moods President Woodrow Wilson, who was then leading the country to prepared- ness and into the war, declared that tiie trouble with the pacifists was that they did not know how lo get what they wanted, whereas he and his school knew exactly what they wanted and just how they were going to get it. To that boast fate returned the answer in our loss of all our war objectives, save one, and the disaster of Versailles. He died broken and defeated. We recall this incident now because the collapse of the Geneva naval disarmament illustrates again how little the men who believe that national safety lies only in the sword know where they are going and how they are going to get peace. They boast that they are the practical men and the pacifists mere theorists. There were i fists at Geneva, just practical statesman and practical naval men, and they have not only not disarmed, they have fanned anew the embers of international hostility and ill- vill. The situation appears worse than when they met ; they nave even jeopardized a renewal of the battleship agreement ;vhen it expires in 1930. If the conference breaks up it will je with ill-will on our side; on the side of the English the ±arge is made that one of our admirals from the first primed the American correspondents with attacks upon the British. The New York World reports from Washington that there is no concealing the fact that official circles blame the Washington battleship lobby for part of the failure. In England Austen Chamberlain has officially stated that the British position was entirely misrepresented over here. It would seem as if this fiasco — and it will be a fiasco wen if some compromise is patched up — of the one inde- pendent and bold excursion into international affairs by President Coolidge ought finally to open the eyes of some )f his adorers to the grave danger of having a pitifully weak and inept man in the Presidency. From the begin- ning his conduct of our foreign affairs has been futile to a degree. He insured the disaster at Geneva by the composi- ;ion of the delegation he sent there. Having aroused Latin- America against us to a pitch of enmity never before known, he now makes us the laughing stock of Europe and has seriously endangered the relations of the :wo great English-speaking nations. We recognize the joint guilt of the jingo Conservative Government of England. But talk about good intentions and inefficiency! What could be worse? With as able an ambassador as Mr. Houghton in London, Mr. Coolidge could certainly have discovered in advance the exact prospects of success for such a conference. All of which brings us back to Ambassador Houghton's admirable plea at the Harvard commencement for a hun- dred-year peace pact between ourselves and the three lead- ing nations of Europe. If there could be a Locarno between England, France, Belgium, and Germany why not one be- tween the United States, England, and France, to say noth- ing of Germany? What has become of our hundred per cent patriot warriors of ten years ago? They were then for arresting any one who dared to criticize our British ally. Now they are with the admirals for a new armament rivalry with that same beloved ally ! As we write the Navy Depart- ment announces the award of contracts for five more cruis- ers. They can only be used in a real war against France, England, or Japan— our allies of 1917-18, those who helped lis to make the world so safe for democracy ! The Vanishing American Daily THE number of daily newspapers of general circulation published in this country in the English language con- tinues to decrease at a remarkable rate. In Pittsburgh the number of dailies has just been reduced from five to three — only one morning daily remaining for a city of 637,000 people. Writing in the Editor and Publisher, Arthur Robb notes the fact that in the first six months of this year the number has decreased from 2,001 to 1,952, the largest de- crease for six months recorded by that journal in the nine years in which it has been watching this striking new de- velopment in the American press. Of the forty-nine dailies that have disappeared six were morning and forty-three evening newspapers; in addition, fourteen Sunday news- papers have come to their end. Mr. Robb points out that fewer than a dozen of these suspensions were due to failure ; the rest were entirely the product of that trend toward consolidation which, in our judgment, has only just begun to make itself felt. The modern publisher of a daily is caught in a vicious circle. He must meet steadily rising costs, which means winning more readers in order to gain more advertising and to raise his rates on what he gets. Soon he finds that his territory cannot, or will not, supply sufficient advertising to support richly all the dailies within it, so he sells to a rival sheet or buys it. Where this does not take place we see an effort to meet the situation by the creation of chains of newspapers for the familiar purpose of cutting down the overhead. A most striking example of this has just been afforded by the purchase of the Atlanta Constitution by ex- Senator Luke Lea of Tennessee, who owns three other newspapers. Another interesting fact brought out by Mr. Robb is that the evening newspapers of the country had on March 31, last, a combined circulation of 23,422,792 copies a day, a gain of 1,660,817 over the figures for October 1, 192o, as contrasted with a combined morning-daily circulation of 13,607,486 copies. The morning journals gained only 271,- 690 copies in the same period. When one considers the rise of the tabloid it would appear that there had been a loss of circulation by the old-line daily morning newspapers during this time. Turning to advertising, Mr. Robb finds that the average rate charged by the evening newspapers has not increased but decreased. In this respect the morning papers are ahead of their evening rivals, for they show an average rise in advertising rate during the last six months of ten cents per million agate lines. It is impossible to believe that this rate of decrease of the dailies is anything else than exceptional. If there were to be 100 disappearances during the present year, the situa- tion would be alarming. But we cannot today believe that the daily newspapers of the country are going to be wiped out in twenty years. It is altogether probable also that if there should be many disappearances new dailies would be started, only to be confronted, however, with those same economic tendencies which are bringing about the present consolidations and suspensions. None the less, Mr. Robb's figures are of great importance, for they foreshadow greater and greater concentration of the news-disseminat- ing power in the hands of fewer and fewer and richer and richer men — not a pleasant fact for a democracy to con- template.

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128 The Nation [Vol. 125. No. 3240 The Viennese Shambles By G. E. R. GEDYE Vienna, July IS nnHE Ringstras.se in Vienna is always a temptation. No 1 city in the world but Vienna has the Bummel— beside the true Bummeler the flaneur is perpetual motion itself —and the Ringstrasse calls aloud to idlers to idle. Never more so, of course, than in summer, when the shady trees become a standing menace to industry. On July 15— Bloody Friday— I listened to my hurt to the call of the Ringstrasse, not for the first time. On this day the street had a different call for a few hundred thousand people. The night before, three national- ists from the Burgenland, which is still suspected of pro- Hungarian tendencies, had been found guiltless of all crime though they had fired on a procession of workers after pro- vocation, but not in self-defense, and killed a war invalid and a little boy. The Socialist papers had for days been opening their mouths as loudly as is the custom with all Vienna papers, crying out that "class justice" was about to be administered. The verdict confirmed its jeremiads and spontaneously the workers left the factories as soon as they entered them to indulge in what is more or less the recognized way in Vienna of showing the workers' dis- pleasure— a "solemn Protest" Bummel on the Ringstrasse ending up with a march round the (temporarily deserted) Parliament House and prolonged "boos" for the reaktio- nare Government. That explains why I found my morning Bummel last Friday disturbed by solemn-faced, pathetically earnest workers. How to explain why, within half an hour, bullets were whistling between the trees, showers of stones rattling on the macadam and, before sundown, hundreds of human beings with ghastly, torn bodies crowding the hos- pitals till new arrivals were turned away, is far harder. Certainly sonorous Viennese cries of "Pfui" rang through the air for over half an hour while imperturbable policemen took it as part of their lot to be screeched at by pretty factory girls and haggard-faced workmen because one more Viennese jury had helped to earn Vienna the title of "the murderer's paradise" by declaring killing no crime. Certainly a squad of mounted police— always the red rag to an angry but non-violent mob— rode through the march- ing men and women with their sabers drawn without any obvious necessity, giving rise to the frenzied cry. "They're riding us down," and shortly afterwards to a shower of brickbats. These things I saw. But, in a side street close by, a shot had already fallen— the police say from a com- munist revolver, the Socialists declare from a nervous policeman— and wilder cries of "the police are shooting down the workers" had arisen. I walked towards the place where the shot had come from, and found myself in a differ- ent milieu— among an army of typical Continental roughs. all with huge stones, heavy sticks, and pieces of planking in their hands, screaming "Revenge! Revenge! They're kill- ing the comrades." Among them all the time were working men of the best type, and young girls rather enjoying the excitement. Then simultaneously began the ridiculously childish pop of police pistols, the hum of stones flying to greet them, and the battle had begun. The rest of the story everyone knows— the burning of the Palace of Justice and the newspaper offices, the issue of carbines to the police and the afternoon of fearful volleys, the night of sniping, the motor cars filled with shooting police, and the outlying battles of next day. There are a few things upon which everyone is agreed. The violence was the last thing which the Austrian Social Democratic Party — the best organized, best disciplined, and incomparably the best led labor party of the world — desired. Its foremost leaders and its rank and file, at the continued risk of their lives, tried to stop the holocaust, in vain. Yet no one who regularly reads the bitter articles of the Left Press of Vienna (countered, it is true, by the equally savage and senseless articles of the Right) can acquit them of creating an atmosphere in which the workers were obliged to suspect the real aim of the authorities to be treachery and violence, the crushing of workers, and the destruction of their hardly won freedom. I have never seen any police in the world except the British deal as a general thing so tactfully with crowds and demonstrations as those of Vienna — but there is a widespread feeling that there was some error of tact and tactics in the employment, quite foreign to the Vienna practice, of mounted police at the start. Even distinctly anti-Socialist papers have expressed criticism. Given the Continental custom of meeting mob violence with pistol shots, there is little to be said in criticism of the pistol shooting. Nor, considering the terrible incendiarism, can objection well be raised — again, given Continental standards — to the issue of rifles at midday. There does seem to be some ground for taking seriously the vehement Socialist accusations of unnecessary and savagely revenge- ful employment of these carbines by men whose blood was up. and of the accusation that soft-nosed, partially uncased bullets intended only for target practice — quantities of which I have seen at Social Democratic headquarters — were employed by the police. All these matters will have to be dealt with by an inquiry before anything approaching judgment may be pronounced by a layman. There are also allegations that one or two individuals of the "Republican Protection Guard" — the Republikanische Schutzwehr — made use of arms which they are not supposed to possess. Without implying any accusation for which there would be, in fact, no sort of basis, it can be said that neither of the sworn enemies of the Social Democrats — the Commun- ists and the Fascists — could have wished for anything better than what has occurred. The work of men like Fritz Adler, Otto Bauer, Seitz the Mayor, and all the giants of the Sec- ond International, whose fortress and spiritual home, in an alien, steadily more reactionary Europe, is Vienna, is threatened with ruin and is bound to have been seriously impaired. The Austrian Socialist Party is doctrinaire — the gospel according to Karl Marx is still an article of faith — and its very strength sometimes leads it to adopt a dicta- torial tone in ex cathedra pronouncements. Yet in its es- sence it is democratic — a strange, new. raw democracy it looks to Americans and Englishmen. The days of proscrip- tion are still too recent, the victory too hardly won, perhaps, for much tolerance to be exhibited. Yet surely a little less personal abuse, a shade of something approaching dignity

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Aug. 10, 1927] The Nation 129 in political controversy might be attempted in this city of so old and so rich a culture. If the Social Democrats could dare to take the lead in maturing the palate of their fol- lowers, they would render an enormous service to the won- derful city to which they are devoted. Austrian Social Democracy is threatened with many dangers always. It has been struck by one which it never foresaw, though it might well have done so. If one of the few remaining centers of resistance to reaction and dicta- torship under the leadership of a party whose permanent municipal majority has enabled it to establish in Vienna social institutions which are a model to the world, should be dangerously weakened as the result of this disaster of a July morning, the immediate advantage will be reaped by the Communists — who are of less importance in Austria than anywhere in Central Europe — and the ultimate by reaction. The Party is going to survive the blow, but with a serious loss of prestige. More Chinese Atrocities! By J. G. SAYRE [Within recent montlis (he world has heard much of Chinese atrocities — aggressions upon American lives and property by orientals. But attacks have not alzvays been by Chinese upon Americans. Americans have attacked Chi- nese. The article below is a review of that side of the story.'] FROM the Shasta [California] Republican of December 18, 1856: Hundreds of Chinamen have been slaughtered in cold blood in the last five years by the desperadoes that infest our State. The murder of Chinamen was almost of daily occurrence; yet in all this time we have heard of but two or three cases where guilty parties were brought to justice and punishd according to law. Many persons have avowed themselves opposed to the execution of white men for the murder of Chinamen. California in the seventies made a record for herself in handling the Chinese problem. In Los Angeles on October 24, 1871, a police officer was shot when interfering in a quarrel between two Chinese. A hundred armed whites laid siege to the Chinese quarter, hanged fifteen Chinese, and killed two more for good measure. The sheriff and civil authorities gave up trying to restrain the mob. On Febru- ary 6, 1872, thirty-two whites were indicted for murder in this affair. Two days later one man was found guilty of manslaughter and the rest were acquitted. Four days after the riot of October 24 a mob broke into the Chinese ware- houses, ripped open bales, and beat up all the Chinese in the vicinity. A newspaper account said: "The floors were strewn with sugar, rice, and refuse, and sprinkled with gore." Damages were estimated at $10,000 to $12,000. There were no arrests. There were anti-Chinese riots for the next three years in Los Angeles. On May 28, 1873, two sportive citizens, Brannen and Manning, murdered a Chinese, Ah Tuck. Newspaper accounts said that the murder was committed without motive. Brannen was pronounced insane. On July 9, 1873, a rancher near Los Angeles missed $400 and tried to get a confession of theft from his Chinese servant by beating him and hanging him to a tree several times until he was nearly choked to death. The Chinese was stubborn and the rancher dragged him to a police station. When the magistrate heard the facts he was immediately convinced of the innocence of the Chinese and fined the rancher $20 for assault. On the 21st of August, 1873, a gang of boys stoned a Chinese who was working in a garden. This seemed too tame, so one of the boys shot and killed him. The boy received two years in prison. On December 13, 1874, an Italian who had murdered a Chinese was given seven years and recommended to mercy. The San Francisco Bulletin on September 29, 1876, said: "We ask why it is that these people (the Chinese) are beaten and maltreated at high noon on our streets and 'no arrests' invariably recorded." Eleven outrages com- mitted between 1873 and 1876, at which no arrests were made, are cited. From 1877 to 1879 in San Francisco the Sand Lot orator, Denis Kearney, roared his slogan "The Chinese must go!" and incited mobs to murder and destruc- tion. On September 2, 1885, occurred the most horrible and bloody outrage in the disgraceful history of all our dealings with the oriental in our midst. At Rock Springs, Wyoming, twenty-eight Chinese were murdered, fifteen wounded, and several hundred driven from their homes. Property valued at $150,000 was destroyed or appropriated. The report of Francis E. Warren, Governor of the State at that time, is contained in U. S. Documents, series No. 2379, p. 1227: Nearly a score of dead bodies of Chinamen (or the dis- membered parts of bodies enough to make up that number) had been picked up where shot on the plains, or had been exhumed from the ashes and from the earth that had fallen in from the dirt roofs, where they had been roasted to death in their own homes; and the opinion prevailed that fully as many more were as yet under the ruins. Not a living Chinese, man, woman, or child, was left in the town where 700 to 900 had lived the day before, and not a single house, shanty, or structure that had ever been inhabited by a Chinaman was left unburned. The smell of burning human flesh was sickening and almost unendurable and was plainly discernible for more than a mile along the railroad both east and west. A small number only of Chinese had re- ceived a few moments' notice in which to leave town, but the larger number had none whatever and no time to pack up or secure their household effects and clothing, nor, in fact, their money. A great number were attacked at the mouths of the several mines as they came out — half-naked as coal miners sometimes work — and they were obliged to run for their lives into the sand hills surrounding the town, some being killed as they ran. The Chinese quarters and their persons had been robbed during and subsequent to the trouble. The sheriff arrived in the evening and could not raise a posse to preserve law and order. The rioting began because Chinese working in the mines had refused to join the white miners on strike. The rioting in Rock Springs had been done in broad daylight. The coroner testified to the coroner's jury a few days later: "Eleven persons, unknown, have been burned

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130 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3240 to death and five persons, unknown, have been shot by per- sons unknown." Several arrests were made. Bail was fixed at $500. The coroner and the justice were the same person. There were no convictions. Only the arrival of the militia on the morning of Sep- tember 5 prevented a similar massacre in Evanston, Wyom- ing. A threat of punishment to all Chinese who remained in Cheyenne after October 1 was made by workmen on Sep- tember 26. Anti-Chinese demonstrations were held in nearly every town in Wyoming during September. On September 7, 1885, at Squak Valley, Washington, a camp of thirty-seven Chinese hop-pickers was attacked by five whites and three Indians. Three Chinese were killed and three wounded; the rest fled. The perpetrators of this act were tried and convicted. Four days later at the Coal Creek mines, not far away, one Chinese was choked to di ath and the clothes of forty-nine were burned. On September 9 the Black Diamond miners drove out the Chinese miners from their midst, injuring nine. The arrival of Federal troops prevented similar outbreaks in Seattle on November 4. Meanwhile anti-Chinese agitation in Tacoma, more or- ganized than elsewhere, was inflaming the white population. The papers printed hot editorials; numerous public meet- ings were held at which speeches were made inciting people to violence; bitter resolutions were passed. The Chinese population intimidated by the reports of attacks in other places dwindled in a few days from 700 to about 250. On November 3 the goods of these people were thrown onto wagons and they were driven out of the city to the prairie at Lake View. The day was cold and rainy. Peveral were sick and two died of exposure. The next day they were loaded into box cars and shipped to Portland. On November 6 Chinatown in Tacoma was burned. The U. S. Marshal arrested the mayor of Tacoma and twenty-six others on charges of conspiring to insurrection and riot; depriving Chinese subjects of equal protection under the law; and de- stroying property. These men were never tried. At Orofino, Idaho, in September, 1885, a merchant of Pierce City was murdered under mysterious circumstances. To procure a confession a Chinese was hung by the neck until he confessed facts implicating five. On the way to the trial they were attacked by a mob, disguised as Nez Perces Indians, and were surrendered by the sheriff and deputies. One Chinese offered $5,000 to the daughter of the dead man and $10,000 to the mob to be let off; but all were lynched. On August 6, 1886, an outrage was perpetrated against Chinese on Douglas Island in the vicinity of Juneau. Alaska. Nearly a hundred were attacked by a body of armed ruffians and ordered to leave. When they refused they were driven to the seashore, put on a small schooner, and set adrift. They landed on a barren coast, but were rescued and re- turned to their places of employment. Their lives were threatened. Neither the United States authorities nor their employers could furnish sufficient protection, so they were forced to leave once more. Losses in money and property were placed at $13,762.65. At Log Cabin Bar, Oregon, in the latter part of May. 1887, a camp of Chinese miners on Snake River was at- tacked. There was direct proof t f the murder of two and indirect proof of the murder of several others. The camp was robbed and between $5,000 and $10,000 worth of gold dust stolen. Indictments were found against six men. They were never tried. In 1887, after over thirty years of outrage against thel Chinese people in our country, the United S aid the Chinese Government 8276.619.75 indemnity. The greater part of the persecution of the Chinese has never been re- corded. The examples given here are of course only the out- standing ones. Between 1^72 and 1886 in nine outrages in which sixty-two Chinese were killed, three persons were found guilty of manslaughter; one was declared insane: and' in five cases no one was ever brought to trial. In these J cases alone there was almost $200,000 worth of damages. I The Chinese Government, which during all this time had often made reparation to the United £ or injuries j suffered by American citizens in China, was truly patient ) to endure the persecution of its subjects so long, and in the I end to accept a mere S276.619.75 for full indemnity. But we won't wait till they finish their civil war to exact our dues. It all depends on whose ox does the goring. The Unfamiliar House By JOHN GOULD FLETCHER To an unfamiliar house once more these feet have wandered, That set forth on the road so many years gone by. And once again as stranger have I pondered On the serene blue depths of an unfamiliar sky. Here where a dead youth passed, unspent yet shattered, i walk my roads neglected once again. And whether that strange past or the nearer past much mattered I do not know. Here I am loosed from pain. Between me and the boy that held forlornly to his vision Now stands a lofty shining unsurmountable wall; I stare at it in vain — neither sympathy nor derision Alters its mass at all. The oak-trees stand as they have stood, unchanging, The dumb stretch of the dusky sun-browned earth Still breathes in brooding harmony with all my hopes, far ranging, As on that ever-vanished day when time first brought me birth. And people come. They still have kept their places In which they stood a dozen years ago; But when I grasp their hands and stare into their faces They seem more strange than once of old; I know That time and the years sift wrinkles: now I wonder What lasts between us, changing day on day. Once and for all my fate was this, to live though torn asunder From all I might have shared — there is no other way. And when I pass, from a dark hearthstone going, Blue in the rosy dusk the hickory-smoke will glide: But I will be borne from it on the flowing Drift of a darker tide. No more than smoke can I blur still these blue skies' chang- less splendor, No more than a faint blue cloud of smoke within these hearts I last. The mirror fronts me, frozen, cold, untender. There are no ghosts left now; the past is but the past.

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Aug. 10, 1927] The Nation 131 _ '."■ " ■ ■ Had Darrow Been a Journalist By ONE WHO IS The author of this article is the editorial lucid of a newspaper generally regarded as among the ten or a dozen most important in the United States. SOME weeks ago The Net ion published a sketch of the intellectual development of Clarence Darrow [April 20]. While the enthusiasm of the writer left me somewhat cold, for many of Mr. Darrow's present-day preoccupations either repel or do not interest me, I was impressed by the distin- guished lawyer's successful demonstration of his intent to be "captain of his soul" — if he admits the existence of a soul, which is perhaps doubtful. At any rate he has a very acute mind which he has successfully held free from domi- nation, economic or otherwise, by any other force than his own convictions. Speaking of the moment when Darrow turned from the easy and profitable practice of corporation law to defend Eugene V. Debs after the Pullman strike, the author of the article said: "With one stroke he cut himself off from all hope of a conventional success at the bar and threw himself into the task of defending Debs." True enough. The greater rewards of the law have been denied Darrow, as he undoubtedly foresaw when he took his stand. Not for him have been the private cars of railroad solicitors or the spacious offices and innumerable associate counsel of the legal advisers to powerful corpora- tions. We read of no such firm names as "Darrow, Darrow, Plumb, Hays and Darrow." Yet he has pursued his chosen pathway without being overtaken by destitution, poverty, or disgrace. At least the courts are open to him. No judge has refused to recognize his appearance as an attorney on the plea that the views held by him were out of harmony with those of the great majority of the members of the bar. His pleadings in court are not suppressed with the curt ob- jection : "We can't afford to have a fellow of Darrow's views appear on this court record." Because an attorney is an officer of the court it has not yet been suggested that his personal and professional opinions must coincide with those of the bench on pain of being stricken from the rolls. He has never been subjected to the ignominy of having to repu- diate his innermost convictions at the behest of some board of directors or to sacrifice his livelihood. If blacklisted by the corporations, as he doubtless is, he is still able to find clients among the common people. And the courts in which he earns his daily bread are open as freely to him as, let us say, to Elihu Root, his most perfect antithesis. But suppose Darrow had been a journalist? He says himself that he embarked on the profession of the law without any particular ideals. He saw in it mainly an easy way for one with a talent for controversy to earn a living. Idealism was awakened in him later, when he saw- justice thwarted and prejudice enthroned by the subservi- ence of the bar to the dominance of wealth and privilege. Debs, left defenseless in the city which had just hanged the anarchists and ostracized their counsel, appealed to his sense of fair play. His former easy conception of the real ethics of the law was shattered. He accepted the duty which fate placed before him, and has never been known to bewail the effect that decision had upon his later career. Had he been a journalist he would not have long bewailed the results of his righteous decision for the very simple reason that either he would have reversed it or starved. For a quarter of a century after the Debs strike there were in Chicago newspaper men to whom all hope of advancement had been denied because they had defended Debs in their newspapers as Darrow did in the courts. At that time there were four or five morning papers in the city. Today there are but two. The gag can be, and is, applied even more effectively today to the young writer who thinks that he will find in journalism the opportunity to express the convictions within him and to defend the causes which he believes to be just. Woe unto him if the convictions clash with those of Main Street or the causes are looked upon as revolutionary by Rotary or the Union League Club! For some years past American newspapers have periodi- cally expressed earnest devotion to the cause of academic freedom in our colleges. Educators like Dr. Meiklejohn who came under the ban of boards of trustees or subserv- ient faculties are sure of a sympathetic hearing and a large measure of defense in the press. But the very papers that uphold the right to freedom of expression in the col- leges discourage and even suppress it among members of their editorial staffs. They not only refuse to the writer, be he editor or reporter, the privilege of expressing his views in their columns. That is entirely within the pro- prietor's rights, for he can no more be expected to maintain a newspaper for the expression of other people's opinions than the Mayo brothers should be expected to supply their patients with Christian Science tracts. But today the public expression — outside his office or the columns of his paper — of opinions antagonistic to those which the average news- paper editor holds to be safe and sane seriously affects the prospects of the newspaper man unfortunate enough to have convictions and rash enough to express them. I know, for example, a young man, at the very begin- ning of a career which I am confident will be brilliant, though not in daily journalism, who is under a serious cloud because he made a first-hand study of conditions in Russia and reported truthfully what he had seen. In no sense a partisan of the Soviet Government, and without a particle of sympathy for communism in theory or in prac- tice as exemplified in Russia, he was at once termed "bolshe- vist" and timid editors closed their columns to him. The nation-saving societies, whose secretaries see red whenever Russia is named, have him on their lists, and it is easy to foresee a closed market for his literary wares unless he shall go through a painful purgatory of recantation. In the editorial sanctums of the organs of prosperity he is about as welcome as one who should bring a defense of Sacco and Vanzetti to the Boston Transcript. Some weekly papers, notably The Nation, offer a me- dium of expression to many of these to whom the columns of the dailies are closed. But I wonder whether either their editors or their contributors know to how great an extent those who write for their columns are suspect in the daily sanctums? I have personally heard the suggestion that a well-known writer should undertake a series for which he

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132 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3240 is admirably equipped put aside because he was publicly associated with the New Republic. And the pity of it was that the editor who professed the objection is himself no narrow reactionary. He merely recognized the attitude of those to whom he was responsible. Perhaps they had never clearly defined that attitude. All the worse. For in such event the timorous editor — and most of us are that — goes further in the direction of conservatism even than he need. If his employers disapprove of red he will take no chances on even the palest pink. The youth who is planning to adopt daily journalism for his life's work should do so only with a clear under- standing that the chances are strongly against his ever being able to use his calling as a means of impressing his own convictions on even a small section of public opinion. if he shall come to own his own paper he can do so to his heart's content — provided the responsibilities and profits of proprietorship do not incline him to adopt the views of the business community as his own. Or he may be fortunate enough to secure a connection with a newspaper the policies of which accord with his own opinions — against this the chances are as infinity to one unless his own opinions are those of Babbitt. The prudent course, measured by worldly standards, is for him to accept at the outset the fact that he accepts employment — as a lawyer accepts a retainer — to defend not his own views but those of his employers, how- ever repugnant the latter may be to him. But more. On issues not pertinent to his client's case the lawyer usually may speak or write as he will. The editor of a Republican paper who should make speeches for a Democratic candi- date, or even serve inconspicuously on a campaign commit- tee of that pernicious party, would speedily find his editorial chair untenable. There have been exceptions. I recall that at one time a New York paper was supporting Van Wyck for Mayor, but its chief editorial writer was given a leave of absence to conduct the opposition campaign of Henry George. But that occurred under the ownership of Hearst, of whom anything out of the ordinary may be expected. As has been pointed out, a Darrow, viewed askance by one class of clients, is at liberty to find and serve others. The newspaper man in such case is in much the position a lawyer would be in if he were disbarred. The great work- shops of presses, types, telegraphs, circulation systems, and other features of the organization that go to make up a newspaper are closed to him. He may write, but how can he publish? More important, he may write, but how can he sell his stuff and thereby live? I who write this am an editor whose period of active service coincides almost exactly with that of Darrow. At one time — and that the crucial moment in his career — our political and social convictions were almost identical. He has grown more radical and could easily afford to; I have grown more conservative — I admit it ruefully to myself — under the persistent economic pressure of journalistic con- ditions. Among my fellows on the press I am looked upon as one whose lot has been easy, whose career has been in- fluential, whose expressions have been radical, and whose present status is that of success. But when I look back on a life-time of repression I wonder that some American Freud has not turned his attention to the effect of system- atic repression of honest thought upon what should be a great, liberal, and influential profession. Surely it is not only the suppressed libido that distorts and tortures the maturer years of man. In the Driftway THE season has come when the new college graduate goes forth and brandishes his diploma in search of a job. The Drifter is particularly interested in the case of a young friend who went to a city editor for reporting work. The editor was far from encouraging. He said: "You young college graduates think you have something to sell when you get out of college. You haven't. All you have is a darn good background that you can cash in on later." ***** NOW the Drifter thinks there is a great future in back- grounds. He himself believes that he has not cashed in on his own to the limit. For instance, he remembers having seen a. picture in a magazine, advertising some com- prehensive book of wisdom. A number of admiring men and women in evening clothes cluster around one earnest hero who has mastered the advertised book. The caption reads: "Listen to him! He is quoting Shelley now!" The Drifter, too, can quote Shelley when he is in the mood for cashing in. But the catch word in the caption is the word "now." The Drifter cannot quote in a hurry. He remem- bers a dinner where the conversation turned on burial urns, and he did not get launched on his favorite passage from the "Hydriotaphia" until the talk had wandered to im- migration. However, perhaps it was just as well, as he found that he had forgotten the passage anyway. ***** BUT it may be that the Drifter misunderstands the city editor. Perhaps the man meant by "background" something more elusive than the ability to quote Shelley; even more elusive than the ability to quote Shelley now. Perhaps a very much younger friend of the Drifter's cashed in on her background when she misquoted those lines of Joyce Kilmer's: Poems are made by fools like me, But only God can make a tree. On the young lady's lips the lines became: Poems are made by fools like me, But God can only make a tree. ***** AS a rule the Drifter discounts the boasting prophecies of our captains of industry. Mostly they are mere self-advertising or a lot of fiddle-faddle. But the words of the president of the Remington Arms Company the other day upon buying a slot-machine plant deserves more than passing notice. It was not improbable, he said, that a time would come when stores would be operated without a single clerk. The Remington company purposes to capitalize that ibility by making devices for the mechanical merchan- dising of various products. To the Drifter it looks like a good bet even if the company doesn't look forward precisely to beating its rifles into slot machines. Mechanical merchandising is now limited chiefly to the sale of chew- ing gum, bits of chocolate, and mouthfuls of peanuts at one cent. But why should it be? If small articles can be sold from slot machines at one cent, why not larger pack- ages for a nickel, ten cents, and a quarter? At present slot machines are confined largely to railway stations and other quasi-public places, but there is no reason why they should not be introduced into stores. Automatic restaurants are considerably more complicated ; yet they are apparently sue-

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Aug. 10, 1927] The Nation 133 cessful. The Drifter thinks the time is near when ho will do much of his shopping in stores where there will be no employees unless possibly a money changer — establishments so dignified that chewing gum will be considered beneath exploitation except between the jaws of (he aforesaid maker of change. The Drifter Correspondence Sex Literature Continued To the Editor of The Nation : Sir: I want to take a hand in this game because my friend McFee has lost his bearings. He is off his course. Says he: "The fashionable craze for highly seasoned sex stories will pass and we shall have something else." My contention is that it is no craze, and men (women too) always have had a taste for what I want to call the erotic pate de foie gras. And this taste has run side by side with the honest roast beef of adventure and romance and rascality literature. Only, by an illusion, the erotic stuff seems to be with us now as a new thing because it is advertised on the menu, whereas formerly every man with an appetite knew that it might be had and a wink sufficed to bring it to him. True that Jane Austen and Dickens and Hawthorne and Thackeray did, in greater or less degree, ignore the more tumul- tuous passions in their books, but meanwhile there was a very lively call for Zola and Dumas Jr., and Paul de Kock in trans- lations, to say nothing of the underground stuff. So there were two streams. The stream of rascal literature also flowed in lively manner, as witness Lytton with his seducers and coiners and highwaymen and murderers of the Eugene Aram type. Or what of Ainsworth with his high-spirited and splendid scoundrels? True, the rascal literature has nothing to do with the case, but I adduce it by way of showing that as popular taste is today, so it always was, and always shall be, world without end. Coming down to more recent times, to a day when men read Ouida and Miss Braddon and Edward Bellamy and Howells and Henry James, none of whom produced very much of a thrill, we had Grant Allen who fluttered the dove-cotes somewhat, and still our Zola and de Maupassant. But there were other things for those tired of a prosaic world — the free- love propagandist sheet called the Word, the prosecution of a man named Moses Harmon, the very scandalous details of such trials as the Oscar Wilde case, the Dilke divorce suit, the Parnell-O'Shea affair, Stead's "Maiden Tribute of Mod- ern Babylon," the neo-Malthusians, and much more for the perverted imagination. Or reach back. Sir Thomas Browne and Isaac Walton, so full of temperate refinement and charm of workmanship, did not crowd Aphra Behn off the literary stage. John Wil- mot, second Earl of Rochester, also flourished in or about the same time. Turn the whole thing another way so that you see the rough and tumble coarseness of Beaumont, and Massinger and Ford, and Fletcher, and the rest of the dramatic staggerers. "The coarseness of the Elizabethans" is how the professors of literature in little colleges apologize for all that robustious- ness. But they and many others quite overlook the fact that at the same time there were Surrey and Wyatt and Spenser, and many others, whose sonnets and songs were full of chiv- alric gallantry and highminded felicity. Finale: man's a creature of many tastes and at certain pe- riods of life certain tastes predominate. His appetites have always made demands, and with the demand supply has come. The whole question under discussion is wrapped up in that. It is not a capricious public, but a many-minded, many-sided public that buys books. If the demand for erotic literature exceeds the demand for better stuff, it is because the number of readers who are of an age to enjoy the highly seasoned outnumber those who have ceased to be interested in that kind of thing. But the persistence of the sex novel is no new phenomenon. Neither is it symptomatic of an age of degenerate sons of worthier sires. Charles J. Finger Gayeta Lodge, near Fayctteville, Arkansas, July 23 To the Editor of The Nation : Sir: Most distinctions of masculine and feminine are ir- ritatingly meaningless, and Mr. McFee's assertions that "the point of view of the modern 'important' novel like 'Ulysses' is feminine in its preoccupation with the nastiness of sex" is no exception. Even if it is true (and I can't see it) that "literature is becoming emasculated by being written mainly for women and largely by women," this truth does not apply to the sort of novel under discussion. The very sophisticated or decadent novels are being written mainly by men, and are written for a comparatively small group of "advanced" people, both male and female. To an admirer of Mr. McFee's novels, one who has read them with great pleasure, and quite frankly gave up "Ulysses" in despair, this is a little too much. I had thought of Mr. McFee merely as a person, but I see that he is one of those He-men after all. Wouldn't it be just too lovely if we could forget all this feminine this and masculine that, and find a couple of other terms when we want to point out a difference! New York, July 20 Myra Marini To the Editor of The Nation : Sir: I was very glad to see the letter of William McFee in your issue of July 20. It seemed to me a perfectly justified rebuke. It has been disappointing to one of your well-wishers to find vulgar matter in your columns and advertisements from time to time. And to have you resent criticism of the stupid coarseness of recent novels is not worthy of the high purpose of The Nation. Old Bennington, Vermont, July 19 Mary R. Sanford Another View of War Guilt To the Editor of The Nation : SIR: In connection with Heinrich Kanner's letter, "An- other View of War Guilt," in your issue of July 27, mention- ing further documentary material on this question and calling attention to the corpus delicti — "the secret military convention signed between Germany and Austria-Hungary in 1909" — some of your readers may be interested in the further discussion of the subject by Dr. Kanner and Professor Fay in the Ameri- can Historical Review (January 1927, pp. 317 ff; July, pp. 942 ff). Boston, Massachusetts, July 23 Historicus "God's Trombones" To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: I have just been able to see The Nation for June 29 containing my review of James Weldon Johnson's "God's Trom- bones." Since I am advised that my review was run before the corrected proof reached your offices, I should like a note of errors and omission brought to your readers' attention. "Jamine" should be "jasmine" and "climacteric" should be "cli- mactic." A brief paragraph should be inserted between the two present paragraphs to do Mr. Johnson justice: "The nativity of the poems has not been revealed by the external and bor- rowed device of dialect presented through typography. The diction is more structural, it is rhythmic. And rhythm, accord- ing to William Carlos Williams, is the poem. Again, this is an evidence of complete fusion." Jamison, Pennsylvania, July 17 Harry Alan Potamkin

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Books Aesthete By HARRY ALAN P0TAMK1N lie is poised a deft absir. On slender blades of grass, His toes are a nimble dancer's Holding the body's mass. Yet he may touch his fingers On the most transient wind, Touch as intangible a murmur As may disturb the mind. And, though logic will debar him, He can transform his curse Into a lens whose power Can glare the universe. Adulterations and Quackeries ) ivr Money's Worth A Study in the Waste of the Consumer's Dollar. By Stuart Chase and F. J. Schlink. The Mac- millan Company. $2. BIG BUSINESS is organized. Have you heard of the Ameri- can Shovel Institute? The plebeian National Kraut Pack- ers' Association? And the mellifluous Minced Razor Clam Packers? These are not fictional names. You wbl find them all in "Your Money's Worth," which tells a little of the life, work, ideals, and cooperative efforts of men bound together by a common understanding created by shovels, clams, or kraut. But, above all, do you know that pink salmon is sometimes white salmon artificially colored pink; that the discovered frauds on short measures of gasoline in Illinois in one year totaled 600,000; that 2M> cents worth of wheat at wholesale expands into puffed wheat selling for 68 cents retail; that the Society of Automotive Engineers have found a lubricator at 20 ' ?nts a gallon as good as that we buy for $1.35? My over- coats last about four years; in this book I learn of navy over- coats, built according to specifications, costing $75, and lasting ten years. If you ever buy a door-hinge remember that there is one made with a life of fifty years beyond the same-priced competitive article. The evidence is irritating. I find that my office like many others pays $3.20 a gallon for material for mimeograph stencils and that the government standard tests describe an equally good material for five cents a gallon. Such exasperating evi- dence continues to pile up. I just threw away an old tile — ana then read in this book that second-hand files resharpened are 40 per cent better than new ones. To top it all, there is a special bit of information for the President of the United States — fish are color-blind! — and the colored flies displayed in sport- ing-goods stores every spring arc sheer bunk. No wonder the producers fool the public right and left. This thrilling volume of popular modern economics has no diffi- culty in proving the extent and ease of consumer deception. But the frauds are carried on not only by fly-by-night vendors and stores selling to transients. Here we read of the Ameri- can Druggists Syndicate, Amory Browne and Company, the Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company, the Royal Baking Powder Company, and other leaders in their lines, all accused by government agencies of unfair competition arising out of deception in descriptions of merchandise. Does "Woolnap" contain any wool? Is "99 44 100 per cent pure" a guaranty or a slogan? How much cotton is on a The tale frauds, even omitting the well-known medi- cal quack. ri< aj. You feel meek when you finish eac ckers we all are! "Your Money's Worth" s beyond much possibility of contradiction the fact that the public has no ( it-hand standards fcr te uality, utility, or in many cas • ty of what it buys. Adulterai ries, ibatics are the res thesis i available pub- lic will c . s. They do not feel that any danger exists in ovt , finally, . "for more standards in certain tit;; may be less stam i general living." 1 I st effec- tively the case for more and better publii ards; but I doubt if they have proved all of this last proposition. We read that the government has actually over 11,000 detailed specifications for the articles it purchases, that the Federal Bureau of Standards saves the government no less than $100,000,000 a year. The General Motors Company does not buy trade names, we read, but only goods made up to their own specifications, tests, standards. Private laboratories are testing on a great scale for private companies. One State — that of North Dakota — is singled out for praise. It does not keep secret, as does, regrettably, the Bureau of Standards in Washington, the results of its work. The consumer can — and does — become informed through its service. The authors feel that a long time must pass before the information as to ingredients and uses of articles, even of neces- sities, can be placed in the hands of consumers. Impartial laboratories may help; mail-order houses may in time be driven to the use of complete and honest descriptions in place of vague catch-alls; consumers may even be organized to protect the expenditure of their incomes. But as a member of the bar I have one qualm: I doubt if the authors realize the laggard state of the law. The courts for ages upheld the principle of caveat emptor, "let the buyer beware." as a decent principle of decent trading. Today this is considered disgraceful. The next development was evidenced in the passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act — "What you tell about an article for sale must be truthful." But even this act applies only to the bottle or package on sale. The advertisement can still be fraudulent and be safe from prosecution under the act. The period on which we are entering and for which the authors contend, is the one in which, if you describe part of the ingredients or characteristics of an article, you must tell all. This last stage of full disclosure is being delayed by nearly all merchants and opposed by nearly all judges and lawyers. Messrs. Chase and Schlink have written a very enjoyable book, gathered an accumulation of winning evidence, and no doubt stirred up national thought so that even the courts — the last resort of musty thinking — may in time be influenced to protect consumers from false representations and to force sellers to sell by standards and truth rather than by trade names and slogans. Morris L. Ernst An African Pioneer Trade, Hvn:, Being the Life and Works of Alfred Aloysius Horn. Edited by Ethelreda Lewis, with a foreword by John Galsworthy. Simon and Schuster. $4.00. |N Maine, in remote island villages where American maritime * supremacy lingers undimmed in memory, one still finds old and gnarled men with the sea spirit and look, essentially like Trader Horn in Africa. Struggle with the elements and wan- dering in quest of world trade have marked these men with a wisdom and philosophy born of first-hand experience, sifted out of surface adventure. It is as if physical courage that

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Aug. 10, 1927] The Nation 135 faced and overcame naked danger fostered and nurtured in them the courage necessary to an untrammeled, straight -tk ink- ing mind. "The Trades were the imperial breed," says Horn of the old Africa gone forever, and agreement, i : imperative. In jumbled, incoherent, rambling bits he recreates the rubber, ivory, and ebony trail through once unknown territory. Ba- boons, leopards, elephants, their haunts and hunts, arc mine vivid than the oft-told tales of contemporary big game nun out they are just so much filling for the book. So is the drawn- out love theme of the eerie Goddess Nina. The value and beauty of the book lie in the innumerable true flashes of native lore, custom, and history, as in the tragic, meager portion about the Gold Coast slave trade; in the love and knowledge of nature, as in the pages devoted to the won- drous herb cures of the medicine men; and in the philosophy of Trader Horn himself. For the latter especial credit is due Ethelreda Lewis, the unobtrusive editor of Trader Horn's reminiscences, for she has given us the man intact, his quaint personal flavor un- touched. There is a rhythm and classical turn to his language, gently, haltingly paced, like a garrulous old man painfully digging down into an oid store of memories. Some of it is tedious repetition, as an old man would repeat himself. All of it is simple and natural, and free of the slightest taint of literary self-consciousness. Trader Horn is unique in that after half a century of trading in Africa he has not succumbed to a worship of White Man's Africa, as kings and lesser slaves of commerce have, but still holds to him his first unprejudiced respect for Black Africa. "Africa, ma'am, as nature moulded it. And believe me, when man has destroyed nature, then it is his turn to go. Sure. The barren world will swallow him up. 'Tis a lucky thing the cannibal tribes have kept the elephants safe so long from these so-called big-game hunters. An equatorial gang of cut-throats, wasting wild life to make what they call a bag. While the cannibals are there, there'll be no lack of elephants. They never kill wanton. Only to eat. They'd never be so childish as these dukes and colonels who have to count the head they kill same as we counted our marbles in Lancashire. The cannibal lives as nature taught him — kill only to eat, keep your women moral, hold no man as slave, be content with your side o' the river, and cast no eyes across the river." Trader Horn is an invaluable contribution not only to Africana, but to the field of illuminating biography. Rebecca Hourwich A Journalist Looks Backward Covering Washington. By J. Frederick Essary. Houghton Mifflin Company. $3. MR. ESSARY, the veteran correspondent in Washington of the Baltimore Sun, has given a misleading title to his eminently readable if discursive volume. It is really a book of personal recollections, coupled with many interesting historical facts. But it lacks form and a clear-cut conception of what the author intended to achieve. So we have all thrown together delightful anecdotes of public men; considerable information as to the way news is collected and relayed to the daily press; a compact history of the Supreme Court; a long and vigorous defense of President Wilson's attendance at the Peace Con- ference; an account of the author's long journeys with several Presidents; a chapter on the relation of the press to Congress, and then, in conclusion, a chapter devoted to the Gridiron Club, that amusing but exclusive newspaper club which excludes Jewish correspondents, limits itself to fifty members in a corps of more than five hundred, and devotes itself to elaborate dinner entertainments of public men. To those in or out of the newspaper profession who are not familiar with life in Washington this volume will unques- tionably be serviceable. But it is impossible to withhold a regret that so honest, able, and experienced a Washington cor- respondent, as Mr. Essary should not have paid some attention to the vital problems involved in the Washington news situation. The relations of the press to our government are becoming yearly of greater and greater importance; we have seen there since the war a cowardly abasement of the press to authority and authority steadily seeking to control the press, — Mr. Cool- idge, for example, through his fictitious "official spokesman" and his demand that all "loyal and patriotic" American newspapers shall support him in his foreign policies at all times — a pre- posterous and an utterly un-American position. No lay reader of Mr. Essary's book could guess that the Washington cor- respondent faces the gravest kind of problems of vital impor- tance to every citizen. Plainly he did not intend to touch upon controversial matters, though he does make some valid criticisms of Congress. The more's the pity, for somebody must and he is well equipped in knowledge and experience to do so. Meanwhile it is only possible to repeat that the book is thoroughly entertaining, often instructive, and a worthwhile first reader in some of the things that go on in the nation's capital and capitol. Oswald Garrison Villard Marat the Radical Jean Paul Marat, a Study in Radicalism. By Louis R. Gott- schalk. Greenberg, Publisher. $3. "DASSIONS have so long clouded the study of Marat that it *■ becomes a pleasant duty to record the exception to the rule in this suggestive work by Professor Gottschalk. In a short preface he states the goal of his endeavors — to treat Marat "without insistence upon abnormalities," "nitllo discrimine and without undue emphasis" upon either his weak or his strong points. He suggests that success will have crowned his labors "if the reader finds, upon perusal of the following pages, that he cannot decide whether to admire or despise Marat." Now, prefaces have their use, especially for the reviewer. But I must confess that I found myself, long before I came to the last page, lost in intense admiration of Marat. Since the author never swerves from his scholarly objectivity, the fault must lie with Marat. Suspicious by nature of everybody who disagreed with him. reserving honesty for his exclusive person, Marat was racked on the eve of the revolution by a mad resentment of his rivals, whose jealousy, he stoutly affirmed, had shut all doors to his scientific advancement. From his persecut'on complex he never recovers. He discovers Montesquieu, is raised to ecstatic heights by the natural-rights doctrines of Rousseau, and throws him- self passionately into the revolutionary turmoil to retrieve his ebbing glory and to succor the people whom henceforth he will protect against their oppressors. The moderate bourgeois lead- ers plunge him into despair; he sees in them the agents of the counter-revolution. Not only in them, in Mirabeau also, in Bar- nave, in the King, in the Girondins. The accomplishments of the national assemblies are not revolutionary enough for him, the revolution is lost, the people are betrayed. He raves; tongue in cheek, he cries for the blood of a million traitors. He is con- demned to prison, dives underground to escape, flees to England, returns with fresh hope, like a Bedouin chieftain organizes "raz- zias," and sighs for new suspects to convert to his revolutionary fervor. His mania grows upon him, and he cultivates his violent gestures and speech, his uncouth attire, his threats and his prophecies; for the people are not slow to appreciate his honest fury and he himself does not scruple over the choice of his weapons. At last, Reason be praised, the Girondins are crushed; and Marat breathes more easily in his tub, where, like an itch- ing Diogenes, he sits now night and day. After Charlotte Cor-

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136 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3240 day's dagger, his apotheosis. The lowly, whom in his furious way he had loved and mistrusted, mourn for him and keep his memory green — for two years. Professor Gottschalk's conception of Marat is fresh and arresting, and it is heartily welcome, despite its awkward phraseology, after the wearisome distortions of former biog- raphers. One regrets that he has chosen to stagger under the traditional restrictions of erudite writing and carry his learn- ing into every passage. One feels that he has made out a str-ong case for a distinction which apparently does not occur to him — that Marat was fundamentally at odds with them in his convic- tions and singularly unconcerned with the major premises of their democratic doctrine; that he was tending toward an ill- defined philosophical anarchism, precisely because the suspi- cious nature and the restless, popular sympathies of the Friend of the People made him distrust and fear every organization of the political means of seeking liberty and the pursuit of happi- less. Hence his frantic palliatives of a dictatorship, a commit- tee of government, a supreme administrative court, and a net- work of fraternal societies. Hence the mysterious solace that his gospel brings in each new generation to radicals of every hue. Leo Gershoy The Great Illusion The Public Mind. Its Disorders : Its Exploitation. By Norman Angell. E. P. Button and Company. $3. THE first part of this book is a selection from Mr. Angell's well-filled notebook of historical instances of the gross mis- use of ideas. For our purposes they can be dated by reference to the World War and atrocities, the Venezuelan triuble under President Cleveland and Anglophobia, the Boer War, and the Crimean War. In retrospect they certainly are grotesque, and Mr. Angell points at them vigoi'ously as examples of what not to do with ideas. The second part calls attention to stereo- types of more recent popularity: order, security, and revolution. Mexico and China are unfortunately omitted, probably because the book went to press before they were headlined; the idea is the same. The last part poses the old problem of democracy in the new dilemma of dictatorship or decay. Good intentions alone will not solve this. We must apply intelligence: research intel- ligence through fact-finding organizations, critical intelligence through logic. Education must be aimed in this direction, and then we shall know how to use political ideas. This has been stated and criticized many times before. I should like to propose another development and function for political ideas, one suggested by the influence of Godwin's famous book, "Political Justice." It immediately inspired two great poets, Wordsworth and Shelley, to write good poetry. Some years later Gladstone, Disraeli, and Asquith read the poetry, and, having imagination, governed well. Of course there may be no connection — but, on the other hand, there may be. It may be that the butcher, the baker, the barber, and the Babbitt, who, according to Mr. Angell, are our present rulers in their spare time, would profit as Prime Ministers and Presidents have done on occasion from a non-moral love of unverified political ideas. This suggests that there is another dimension of political ideas in the direction of imagination and speculation. In short, political ideas have an intellectual function in understanding and appreciation, and the ordinary member of society may have more use for ideas in seeing things straight than in setting them straight. Mr. Angell is thinking in this direction when he insists on intelligence, but he might go farther. If he did, the first thing he would have to do is to question the validity of his assumptions about the function of the Public Mind and the effi- ciencies of ideas. It might turn out that the Public Mind is itself the Great Illusion which he has be. so many years. Discovering this, he might \vi than this one. SCOTT BUCHANAN In the Time of Aurangzeb Travels in India. By Jean-Baptiste Tavernier, Baron of Au- bonne. Translated by V. Ball. Second edition, edited by W. Crooke. Oxford University Press. Two volumes. $6. INURING the time of the Moguls, a number of Frenchmen -*— ' traveled through India, visited the princes, observed acutely, and on their return home published their observations. Of these, the best known are the physician Bernier and the jew- eler Tavernier (dates probably 1605-16S9), whose achievements won him the rank of "baron."' Bernier, the better educated and more philosophical, has given us the more important account, Tavernier the more gossipy. Both are classics, and the Oxford Press was justified in reissuing the first a few years ago and the second now. Tavernier was a man of little learning; it has even been questioned that he could write; but Dr. Ball's opinion is that he could and did, some of the observations having been composed shortly after the events they describe. But the memoirs as a whole were unwillingly arranged and edited by the contemporary historian and dramatist Chappuzeau at the command of the King, and to his own " 'mortification if not martyrdom' for the space of a year, while exposed to the rough humor of Tavernier and the ridicule of his wife." This Tavernier was a man of considerable courage yet prudence. He would stand by his price for his jewels with the Indian potentates ; he defied the Dutch in Batavia when they endeavored to take advantage of him. With a fine taste in wine, he always had it, even in the wildest spots when his followers in fear deserted him, and he used it to good result with petty princes and officers. But the book is more than the revelation of an interesting personality; it is also a compendium of observations in India from about 1640 to 1667. Tavernier writes of commercial prod- ucts and methods, social manners, political intrigue, the quarrels of individuals and of states, the rivalry between the European trade agencies. The high point is reached in November, 1665, when he was at the court of Aurangzeb and by command of the Emperor was allowed to see the royal jewels, including the cele- brated Koh-i-Xur, which he weighed, sketched, and appraised. This jewel forms the subject of an interesting essay by Dr. Ball, who endeavors to trace its checkered history in India, Persia, and Afghanistan from that time until 1S49, when, on the annex- ation of the Punjab, "the diamond was formally handed to the new Board of Governors at one of its earliest meetings — and it was then personally intrusted by his colleagues to the care of John Lawrence, afterward Lord Lawrence, who, on receiving it, placed the small tin box containing it in his waistcoat pocket, and then forgot all about it till he was called upon to produce it six weeks later, in order that it might be sent to Her Majesty the Queen." The jewel is smaller now than it was in Aurang- zeb's day, and Dr. Ball discusses this fact minutely. W. Norman Brown Pragmatic Politics The Science and Method of Politics. By G. E. G. Catlin. Alfred A. Knopf. $3.50. /CONTEMPORARY history, says Professor Catlin, of the kind ^ found in blue-books and technical investigations, and such earlier history as is pertinent to present-day problems, are the data of social science. Economics deals with the problems result- ing from the relationship between men and things and from hu- man relations arising therefrom. Political science deals with the problems of human relations resulting from the mastery of wills over, or collaboration with, other wills. The field of poli- tics is concerned with the relationship of mastery and submis- sion. Economics deals with the desire for wealth; political science, with the desire for power. Economics for the purpose

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Aug. 10, 1927] The Nation 137 of study has created the abstraction of the "economic man"; political science can likewise create the abstraction of the "political man." Just as economics has in the past century by abstraction, classification, and deduction become a science able to predict social phenomena, so by the same methods can political science become a science. As a pure science, political science is not concerned with purpose. The realm of ends belongs to ethics. In its method and moral neutrality political science is like engineering. It is obvious that Professor Catlin's book is a treatise on the theory of method. It is, in intention, a novum organum of political science. The basic ideas are, as the author realizes, not novel. The idea that political science deals with the quest for power has been indicated by Machiavelli, Hobbes, and Spinoza, while the proposal for the application of the scientific method to politics is indeed a present-day commonplace. Yet the pro- posal of the desire for power as the basis of scientific politics, the comprehensive manner with which this suggestion is elab- orated, and the acute comparison between the methods of poli' tics and those of economics make Professor Catlin's book a stimulating work. However, a recognition of the basic merits of the book does not involve an agreement with the views offered. Indeed, in certain respects, Professor Catlin's views are questionable. Again Professor Catlin's thesis is particularly inadequate be- cause he fails to appreciate the role of purpose in social activity. The investigator in physics may be expected to be less decidedly biased than the student of economics and political science, "Nihil humani nobis alienum." Hence only on simple, matter-of-fact, and relatively technical questions may the judgment of the expert be objective. Thus, for example, Professor Catlin is not correct when he considers the classical economics as the model of objective science, for its conclusions, as Hobson and Veblen pointed out, assumed the unscientific notion that they are in accord with a beneficent ordre naturel. A host of writers from Hall, Gray, Thompson, and Hodgkin to Sidney Webb and R. H. Tawney have refused to accept them, for they questioned their presuppositions — private ownership of the means of production, profit-making as the motive, and competition and autocracy as the method. In fact, the classical economics was not objective science, but, in the ultimate, an apology for a class. To take more concrete instances, the findings of experts as to why voters do not vote will be more objective than their findings as to the methods of making voters vote intelligently. Investigation of the means of safeguarding dangerous machinery will be more subject to objective analysis than an examination of copartner- ship as a solution of industrial discontent, for the very existence of copartnership between owners and workers may be in itself an issue. On the more complex question we get not science but pragmatism, not idle curiosity but a conflict of purposes. Lewis Rockow The Biography of a Character The Life, Character, and Influence of Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam. By Joseph Mangan. The Macmillan pany. Two volumes. $10. ' ' A GREAT scholar but a weak character" — such has been ^*-« the traditional judgment of Erasmus by both Catholic and Protestant historians, from Peter Canisius down to relatively modern times. Such, too, is the verdict of his latest biographer, expressed with an uncompromising force hitherto almost un- equaled. It is certainly not a new interpretation of his character, nor have Dr. Mangan's researches brought to light any new points that will be of interest to the Erasmian scholar. Erasmus's fate at the hands of a biased posterity has been as hard as undeserved. He was neither Protestant nor, in the stricter sense, Catholic, though leaving himself open to the charge of supporting and betraying both sides. In an age of religious partisans he strove for a reasonable Christianity, a position which few contemporary or later writers could under- stand. He was inspired by the pathetic faith in human reason characteristic of an age of awakening knowledge, and he hoped for reform by the peaceful agency of enlightenment. The reform he sought was to be undogmatic, at once spiritual and ethical — and, above all, reasonable. The first step in such a reform, he believed, must be the revival of the wisdom of the ancient world, both pagan and Christian. With this in mind, he dedicated his life to the restoration and careful study of the classical and scriptural texts and the works of those fathers, especially Jerome, whose comments on the New Testament were most valuable. At the same time, he directed the full force of his sane and piercing satire against those abuses in church and state that obstructed the practical growth of spiritual reform. In so doing, he undoubtedly prepared the way for the Lutheran Reformation. Moreover, he gave encouragement to the early stages of that vigorous friar's protests against manifest abuses and did everything in his power to protect him from their mutual enemies. Soon, however, he perceived that Luther was as dogmatic as his opponents. He realized that the reformer's action was breaking up the unity of the Christian church, which he regarded as essential to the fulfilment of his own plans. By diplomatic appeals to the leaders of both sides he strove to bring about a reconciliation that would restore the status quo, but the current of passion was too strong for him to stem. He remained within the Catholic church because, with all its faults, it was still the nearest approach to his ideal of a universal church. Dr. Mangan has missed completely this predominating pur- pose in the life and thought of Erasmus. Lacking the key to the great humanist's program, he has returned to the traditional interpretation. This interpretation is understandable enough. Erasmus attacked first the Catholic church, then Luther. He encouraged Luther, then deserted him. The obvious answer to the problem raised by this course of action is weakness of character and moral cowardice and Dr. Mangan's whole book is a persistent effort to show these traits in his subject. Dr. Mangan's work would possess more validity were it not for his almost total lack of historical perspective, his very evi- dent bias, and his neglect of the more modern scholarly work on the subject, the use of which would have saved him from error in more than one instance. W. K. Ferguson Books in Brief The Dictionary of Canadian Biography. Compiled by W. Stew- art Wallace. Toronto: The Macmillan Company of Can- ada. $12.50. Mr. Wallace's book is in brief form on the lines of the "Dictionary of National Biography." It does not include living persons. The notices are necessarily short, but they have the valuable feature of reference to detailed sources of information. Canadian biography carries us back to France as well as to England, to Richelieu and Montcalm as well as to Charles I and Wolfe. This work is indispensable for anyone interested in Canada. Dialogues. By Denis Diderot. Translated by Francis Bin Brentano's. $4. This first handsomely printed volume of the Broadway Library of Eighteenth-Century French Literature promises well for the series. Sir Edmund Gosse contributes a general intro- duction and Francis Birrell, the translator, a particular one to the life and works of Diderot. To select from the eighteen vol- umes of Diderot's writings 196 pages to give to the general reader "some idea of Diderot's attitude toward life" really pre- sents less difficulty than may be imagined. For his writings have about as much philosophical variety as a syllogism. If you like

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138 The Nation [Vol. 125. No. 3240 D'Alembert's "Dream" you will also relish "On Woman." The "Supplement to the Voyage of Bougainville," "Regrets for an Old Dressing-Gown," and "Conversations of a Philosopher With the Marechale de " complete this volume. D'Alembert's "Dream" holds most interest to the student of eighteenth-century thought; the four oilier selections will appeal strongly to the lover of good writing. Mr. Birrell has amply redeemed his primary pur- pose in making these translations, viz., "to give pleasure," for he has indeed carried over into them the intimacy and the frank- ness as well as the wit and the robustness of the originals. The Civil War and Readjustment in Kentucky. By Ellis Mer- ton Coulter. The University of North Carolina Press. $3.60. Professor Coulter has contrived to give to his book an inter- est and readableness rare in historical monographs. For the former quality he has, of course, mainly the subject itself to thank. Kentucky had a unique experience in the decade or more that began with 1861. It had embraced without reservation the doctrine of State rights, sincerely believing that the right of independent judgment which it claimed for a State could be exercised without impinging upon the sovereign rights of the Union. In conformity with its faith, it refused Lincoln's call for troops, but its position between the North and the South bound it economically to both, and for a time it essayed the impossible role of a neutral. Neither side, however, respected its neutrality, and after a brief period of struggle the Suite passed under Union control. How thin a veneer its unionism really was appeared in the vote of the State for McClellan in L864, in the failure of the draft, and in the rejection of Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery. Thereafter, the process of readjustment was a dismal story cf federal incom- petence and irritation, and of the effort of the peop'e to recover control of their political life. Professor Coulter's narrative, needless to say, is thoroughly documented, and there are some valuable maps. The Magic of Herbs: A Modern Book of Secret*. By Mrs. C. F. Leyel. Harcourt, Br-ace and Company. $•">. The Four Greater Cold Seeds of the seventeenth century were cucumbers, gourds, melons, and cittals: and the Four Lesse, Cold Seeds were endive, succory, purslane, and lettuce — which would seem to indicate that if our great-grandparents had never heard of vitamins A and B, they knew almost as much of the virtue of green vegetables as we. We may have done well to neglect frogs and to give up the flesh of vipers (which Mine de Sevigne thought so healthful), but we have lost by passing from herbs to coal-oil cosmetics, and the belles of Venice were as particular in their perfume as any modern aesthete. Perhaps they needed them more. At any rate, Mrs. Leyel has garnered from Rome, Greece, China, Arabia, France, and old England a set of old recipes for cough cures, perfumes. poisons, cordials, opiates, embalming fluids, and love philters to fascinate any experimental mind. Might Bells. Sailors' Snug Harbor Yarns and Ballads. By Frank Waters. D. Appleton and Company. $2. This is the kind of yarns that old salts like to tell and do tell when half a dozen of them get together on a cold night in a well-warmed room, make the air murky with the breath from their corncob pipes, and begin to reminisce. Such stories are usually of the amusing and more or less true exploits of some shipmate, embellished with the art of a raconteur suffi- ciently skilled in dialect and intonation to give them verisimili- tude. Generally they cannot be transferred to the formal and impersonal printed page without serious loss to the flavor of the cargo. In this case the fact that the author's narrative has been printed apparently with all the original slips in gram- mar and eccentricities in capitalization seems to assist in pre- serving the illusion. At least the volume is an authentic con- tribution to a kind of sea lore which there will soon be no more shellbacks to pass on. The Evolution of Charles Dariein. By George A. Dcrsey. Doub- ieday, Page and Company. $2. A sympathetic and highly laudatory life. The title chosen by Dr. Dorsey is a catchy one, but unfortunately means noth- ing. He has only recorded the obvious biographical facts. The most interesting features of Darwin's life remain for a future historian. What role did his father play in his life? What was the neurosis which made him a valetudinarian for forty years? Surely, a gigantic genius such as Darwin would repay the efforts of the in; tive biographer. The Tired Child. By Max Seham and Crete Seham. J. B. Lip- pincott Company. S2. Fatigue is of necessity not a lively subject. But a book dealing with the tired child and t :ric weariness should be valuable. Unfortunately the authors, dyed-in-the- wool academicians, thorough, painstaking, and possessed of sub- ject matter that is a genuine contribution to child psychology, hold forth in their best class-room manner. Terry's G Cuba. By T. Philip Terry. Houghton Mifflin Company. $o.-30. New that Havana has become the winter capita! of anti- Volsteadiana, we want to know how to get there, where to live there, what to see there, and— some day, maybe — how to get away from there. It's all in this little red book, got up exactly like a Baedeker and containing as much information as "Ask Me Another." THE A E R Little Theatre THE GRAND STREET I4th Stress. v\es; oi Broadway Evg». 8:30. Mat*. Tues. and 1'hurs. at popular price*. "Oru cannot find anywhere in New York more clever idea* satire or more verve." — Joseph Wood Krutch in The Nation. FOLLIES trash GILBERT MILLER Presents ETHEL BARRYMORE in The Constant Wife By W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM AT MAXINE ELLIOTT'S THEATRE Matinees V. ed. & Sat. 2:30. ANNOUNCEMENT □ XEXT WEEK Trying to Be Modern Bv a Small- town Woman When uritit'.a to advertisers please mention The Nation

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Aug. 10, 1927] The Nation 139 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 Nation will pay. Write for rates to Dept. R., The Nation. IT'S THE YOUNGER CROWD THAT SETS THE STANDARD! O to the younger crowd if you want the right word on what to wear or drive or smoke. And notice, please, that the particular cigarette they call their own today is one that you've known very well for a very long time. F Am,M A >». f^44 What a whale of a difference just a feiv cents make! Eli FRENCH SCHOOL A Church School for American Boys preparing for American Colleges. Wholesome country life organized in a historic feudal American standards of hygiene and diet; yearly tuition $1,200. Fuli sports program, including crew, ['he Rt. Rev. Charles H. Brent, Bishop of American Churches in Europe, Chairman of Board of Trustees. Address: Dr. Conrad Chapman, Head Master, Chateau-Neuvic, Neuvic-sur-1'Isle, Dordofjne, France Let advertisers know you saw it in THE NATION MISCELLANEOUS REAL HARRIS HOMESPUNS STfiLSSShS^^S Suit Lengths Cut to Order. Price $2.20 per Yard. Postage Paid NEWALL, 150 Stornoway, Scotland. Write for patterns staling shades desired MT. AIRY COMMXTNITY When yon are tired of subways, skyscrapers, Bab- bitts and machine made civilization generally, come and look at MT. AIRY (Croton-on-Hudson). It is a beautiful place and conveniently located. A fine social life can be created there. One thing to remem- ber, however, is that the people are liberals, radicals, artists and 'dunking people. Do you belong ? Enquire Harrv Kellv, 70 Fifth Ave.. Tel. Chelsea 0432. BOOKS THE EVOLUTION OF MAN, byWilhelmBoelsche A clear, strong, simple summary not only of Darwin's theory but of the work of a generation of scientists along the lines Darwin opened up. Just what a busy man wants to give him a bird's-eye view of Evolution. Cloth, illustrated, 60 cents by mail. Catalog free. Charles H. Kerr & Co., 347 East Ohio St., Chicago, 111. When ndrcr mrntirm The Nation

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International Relations Section Price-Fixing in Queensland By MAURITZ A. HALLGREN WHATEVER overwhelming disaster they may hold in store for Ihe people oi' the United States, public ownership and price-fixing have been more than ordinarily successful in bringing prosperity, equality, and general happiness to the people of the State of Queensland, Aus- tralia. Never before has individual prosperity, as opposed to class prosperity, been so widespread; never before have wages been so high ; never before have wages so far out- distanced the cost of living; never before have the people of ^his Australian State participated to such a great extent in the affairs of their government. it was just twelve years ago that Queensland, after many years of conservative, if not reactionary, rule by the Nationalist (.Tory) Party, turned to the left by accepting a Labor Government with its untested schemes for State ownership and control of public utilities and essential indus- tries and its program of price- and wage-fixing. The Labor people frankly admitted that their platform was based al- most wholly on theoretical principles. The Tories, on the other hand, were almost frantic in predicting that dire calamity would befall Queensland if it accepted Labor rule, that the wheels of industry would cease to revolve, that grass would grow over the streets, and that Queensland would become a deserted State. Yet Queensland chose Labor, and so successful has that party's program been that Labor has been retained in power ever since, while people's ownership and price-fixing have emerged from the experi- mental stage and now appear to be permanently established. These more or less socialistic principles, according to John C. Valentine, member of the Queensland Parliament, who recently came to the United States on an industrial- survey mission, have been productive of none of the disas- ter and calamity so gloomily pictured by the Tories. In- deed, quite to the contrary, they have increased bank as- sets, bank deposits, bank investments, dairying production, agricultural production, the output of industry, total wealth, individual income and population; they have given Queens- land an increasingly favorable trade balance; they have created an unprecedented building boom; they have reduced unemployment as well as the number of bankruptcies. Profiteering, exploitation of the people for the benefit of a limited class, as well as combinations in restraint of trade, have been the principal targets of the Labor Gov- ernment, Mr. Valentine has stated. Wherever these have been found the State has stepped in, either by setting up competing organizations within the industries or by taking over the industries themselves. Following this program the State now operates railways, the water system, the educa- tional system, governmental fire, accident, life and workers' compensation insurance, produce agencies, cattle and sheep stations, coal mines, sawmills, canneries, railroad-station re- freshment rooms, sugar-mills, a hotel in the sugar-produc- ing district, fisheries and retail fish markets, butcher shops, wireless broadcasting stations, and is engaged in numerous other, though minor, activities. The State also operates a Public Curator's Office, where citizens may receive free legal advice, have their wills and similar papers of impor- tance drawn up, have their estates managed, and be pro- vided with counsel when charged with criminal offences. Under this program the total annual wealth in the State increased from £38,342,000 in 1914 to £66,945,000 in 1924, the last year for which authentic figures are avail- able, or more than 75 per cent, in the same period general bank deposits climbed 70 per cent and savings bank de- posits almost 90 per cent. Savings bank deposits for the last ten years of Tory rule totaled £68,916,000 and for the first ten years of Labor rule £179,802,000. At the same time the number of savings-bank depositors grew from 229,000 in 1914 to 397,000 in 1925, so that now virtually half of Queensland's 880,000 of population have savings accounts. The value of the principal crops jumped more than 250 per cent, being £5,679,000 in 1914 and £13,992,000 in 1924. Dairy products doubled in value and the income of the wool- growers increased two and a half times. At the same time the capital value of farm lands increased from £44,482,000 to £51,858,000. Other industries were by no means slighted in the distribution of this prosperity. Their output was measured at £25.491.000 twelve years ago and at £38,867,000 in 1924. The value of the capital invested in machinery, buildings and land and the salaries and wages paid showed a proportionate gain, while the value of the output per em- ployee jumped from £589 to £865. Meanwhile unemploy- ment in all classes of industry fell off from 17.7 per cent of the available labor in 1914 to 6.55 per cent in 1925. These latter figures appear even more remarkable when it is noted that there is a constant stream of unemployed workers pouring into Queensland from neighboring and less favored States. But the brightest spot in the entire situation is the improvement in the condition of the workers. A living wage is virtually guaranteed under the Industrial Arbitra- tion Act. which is administered in conjunction with the office of the Price-Fixing Commissioner. First, the Price- Fixing Commissioner, being empowered to examine into all costs of production, sets the maximum prices at which all foods, some staples, and some articles of clothing may be sold in various sections of the State. Very stiff penalties attend violations of his rulings. With this data at hand, the administrators of the Industrial Arbitration Act are able to determine the monetary requirements of the work- ers and fix wages accordingly. Not only has unemployment been cut down in Queensland, but under this system wages for men have been increased in the last twelve years from 53 shillings to 99. and wages for women from 27 to 52.* The hours of labor have also been reduced under this law so that now the men average 43.88 hours weekly and the fe- male workers 44 hours. But more important, perhaps, has been the elimination or reduction of lost time through the peaceful settlement of labor disputes under the Industrial Arbitration Act. In Queensland, for example, only 485,171 working days were lost in the six years from 1920 to 1925 as opposed to 1,225.262 days in Victoria and 3,858,433 in New South Wales. The working people have benefited in other ways un- der the Labor Government. In the last ten years of rule * In all the fipures here given it is to be recalled that during the period under review both wages and prices increased greatly throughout the world. — Editor. The Nation.

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Aug. 10, 1927] The Nation 141 by the Tories only £4,652,000 was expended on public-school education, while in the first decade under Labor rule the schools received £11,784,000. The number of scholarships in the higher institutions available for the children of the workers has been increased from 1,488 in 1914 to 13,611 today. The State also provides free textbooks and £4 an- nually for the incidental expenses of each school-child whose family has an average income. These families likewise may purchase State-built homes by paying a 5 per cent deposit •on the building cost. They are allowed twenty-five years to pay off the balance. Moreover, the State retail shops have enabled the ordinary people to buy fish, meats, and produce at reduced prices, it being estimated that the State butch- eries alone have saved the people £3,500,000 in the last ten years. The Labor leaders, Davey Bowman, T. J. Ryan, E. J. Theodore, and now Premier McCormick, have toiled long and hard to keep their party free from corruption so that it may continue to devote itself to the best interests of the people who have put and are keeping it in power. All Labor Party candidates are carefully investigated, not only as to their party fealty, but also as to their personal charac- ter and technical fitness for office, and those found wanting are barred. The Labor leaders likewise have sought po- litical reforms which would preserve for the people the right to control their government, the most prominent re- form in this direction being the abolition of the upper house of parliament, which they consider a vestige of the days when the existence of a ruling class was recognized. Now that equality has been established only one legislative body is needed. Contributors to This Issue G. E. R. Gedye is a correspondent of The Nation in Cen- tral Europe, whose contributions on political topics fre- quently appear in our columns. J. G. Sayre is a student of contemporary political and in- dustrial affairs. John Gould Fletcher is an American poet now living in England. He is the author of "The Tree of Life," "Parables," and a just-published volume entitled "Branches of Adam." Harry Alan Potamkin is a poet and literary critic. Morris L. Ernst is a member of the firm of Greenbaum, Wolff, and Ernst, New York attorneys. Rebecca Hourwich has lived in Africa. Leo Gershoy has been engaged in historical research at Cornell University. W. Norman Brown is in the Department of Sanskrit at the University of Pennsylvania. Lewis Rockow is the author of "Contemporary Political Thought in England." W. K. Ferguson is in the Department of History at Cor- nell University. ^^^S I Reality*^ but with a halo MORNINGS IN MEXICO By D. H. Lawrence Mexico and Mr. Lawrence are a subject and an author created for each other. These eight informal pictures of life in Mexico are as contrasted and as entertaining as the promise in two of their titles: "Dance of the Sprout- ing Corn" and "A Little Moonshine with Lemon." $2.50 ORIENTAL ENCOUNTERS By Marmaduke Pickthall The thrills and the humors of everyday life in Arabia, reported by an Englishman who lived among the Arabs as one of them. He is remembered by many readers as the distinguished author of Sa'id the Fisherman. In the future he will also be remembered as the author of Ori- ental Encounters. j., ,.. The SEARCH FOR ATLANTIS By Fdivin Bjorkman What had Nausicaa, of the Odyssey, to do with Atlantis? Mr. Bjorkman has constructed a new and ingenious theory of the lost continent — a subject eternally romantic to the imaginations of men. $2.00 MEMOIRS of CATHERINE The GREAT Translated by Katharine Anthony Author of "CATHERINE THE GREAT" The self-told, long suppressed story of Catherine the Great's girlhood and unconsummated marriage, "in which all that goes under the name of romance would seem to lie found," according to The Boston Evening Transcript. Illustrated. $5.00 BALZAC By Rene Benjamin "The story of a passionate, prodigious life. . . . The picture drawn by M. Benjamin is admirably balanced." — The AViy York limes. Illustrated. $5.00 STRUGGLES AND TRIUMPHS, OR, THE LIFE OF P. T. BARNUM Written Bv Himself Edited , ivith an Introduction, by George S. Bryan ("G. S. B.") "Mr. Bryan's Barnum in two elephantine volumes has issed more of our time than we could well afford during the last couple of weeks. The editor has done a tirst-rate job in synthesizing the various Barnum gospels." So wrote Keith Preston (Chicago Daily News) in one of the last articles to come from his pen. Two volumes boxed, $10.00 Alfred A. Knopf Publisher New York In Canada, from The Macmillan Company of Canada. Ltd St. Martin's House, Bond Street Toronto. Ontario £ When writing to advertisers please mention The Na'ion

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142 The Nation [Vol. 125. No. 3240 All for One An Advertisement of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company A sleet storm descends, carrying down trees and wires. A wind turns out- law and blows down a pole line. Or some swollen river rampages through a circuit of destruction. But wherever angry nature attacks the Bell Telephone Sys- tem there are repairmen trained to meet the emergency, and everywhere trained in the same schools to the use of the same efficient tools. Supplies of sur- plus equipment and materials are kept at strategic points whence they may be rushed by train or truck to the devastated area. Throughout the Bell System, all construction and prac- tice are standard, so that men and supplies, when necessary, may be sent from one state or company to another. There are twenty-five Bell Companies, but only one Bell System — and but one Bell aim and ideal; stated by President Walter S. Gifford as: "A telephone service for this nation, so far as humanly pos- sible free from imperfect errors and delays, and ena anyone anywhere at any time to pick up a telephone and talk to anyone else anywhere else in this country, clearly, quickly and at a reasonable cost." TWO PAMPHLETS OX THE SACCO-VANZETTI CAS!: By Dr. MICHAEL A. COHN. Brooklyn, N. Y. SOME QUESTIONS AND AN APPEAL Thirty-two Questions exposing the unfairn the trial of Sacco and Vanzetti, together an appeal for their immediate Price Ten Cents. TWO WORLDS An imaginary speech delivered bef Webster Thayer by Bartolomeo Vanzetti : sentence of death should not be pronounced upon him and Sacco. Price Fifty Cents. Send orders 1m INDEPEN DENT SACCO-VANZETTI COMMITTEE 18 Canal Street. X- w York City. OPES SHELF GOOD CHEER. COMRADES! Want to buy. tell, or swap books, hronzes, old china, clocks, curios, etchings, lamps, paintings, prints, oriental r".g-3? Bus, or stroll to Baca's. S3 Wajhinirton Sq. So.. Nr. Y. C. Books always 20 1 0 BOOKS sent post discount from on request. [SR \: i. son i 1244 (lay Avenue New York ( itv EDI CATION AL SELECT A SUBURB WHICH HAS A PROGRESSIVE SCHOOL Srnnkiitiie grljnnl 224 (£rangr gioai) iflmttrlmr, N. 31. Nursery group to eighth grade for boys and girls. Cooperative organization. Hot lunch- eons. School bus. Write for Booklet Miss Anna J. Gannett. Director SPECIALTY SHOP MY Summer Sale has started. Everything Rus- sian— Dresses, skirts, blouses, aprons, children's ses, cooper at half former price. Dresses from ST. 50. MARITZA. 19 Christopher . ( Near 6th St. & 8th Ave. ) HOUSE FOK SALE \T-HITE MOUNTAINS, cottaere and two acres. » ' opposite Mts. Adams and Madison. Climbing and tramping center. Fine views. Large living room with fireplace and dining alcove, five bed- rooms, two sleeping porches, two baths, screened breakfast porch and two other porches, large work- rooms with five windows, small cellar, ice and tool house. ST. 500. Photographs and plans on request. Box 23, Randolph. New Hampshire. APARTMENTS FOR RENT - I ST STREET. EAST— Completely furnished, an- «■ L tiques. unusual, handsome, 7 rooms, 3 baths, - room, elevators, newest exclusive location — - -dishes. One year. Plaza 2TTT. or Box 851, 9e The Nation. ROOMS TO RENT \ RTISTS and thinkers can find a congenial home -A. j71 lovely old-fashioned house. Modern conven- iences. Commuting distance. Fireplaces, tennis court. Marvelous view. Huge veranda. Use of house. Only 4 guests accommodated. Box S50. r , The Nation. APARTMENTS WANTED — lit furnished COUPLE desire 3 rooms, kitchenette, or four- room apartment. Preferably in Manhattan. Reasonable rental. Will take lease. Give rates in tter. E The Nation. Do you want to mahe extra money? Address Dept. 1 1 THE NATION 20 Vesev St. New York HOGS FOR SALE »-pHE SAMOYEDE DOG— Reindeer herdsman's I s tic Siberia ■ dog of Nansen. Shackleton. Fiala. Loyal, happy. ate. Fine specimens. Booklet. Laika Ken- nels iRe.".

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The Nation FOUNDED 1865 Vol. CXXV NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 17, 1927 No. 3241 Contents EDITORIAL PARAGRAPHS 11?, EDITORIALS : Justice Underfoot 146 Is Coolidge Coming or Going ? 148 Leonard Wood 149 Caterpillars on the State 149 AGRICULTURE IN THE NATIONS ECONOMY. By Charles A. Heard 150 THE SEMINOLE OIL FIELD. By Cora Miley 151 TRYING TO BE MODERN. By Edith Clark 153 THE MEXICAN "JUST WON'T WORK." By Eva A. Frank 155 THE ACTRESS. By Panteleimon Romanov 157 IN THE DRIFTWAY. By the Drifter 159 CORRESPONDENCE 159 BOOKS : A Legend. By Floyd McKnight 161 England Arraigns Herself. By Harry Elmer Barnes 161 A Tract for Free Trade. By Oswald Garrison Villard 163 Capek's Divine Comedy. By Alter Brody 164 Books in Brief 164 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS SECTION : The Press in Haiti 166 A Voice From a Haitian Jail ItiS OSWALD GARRISON VILLARD. Editok 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. THE NATION is on file in most public and college libraries and is indexed in the Renders' Guide to Periodical Literature. IN THE ENTIRE SACCO-VANZETTI case there is surely no more outrageous happening than that the final motion should have had to be made to Judge Webster Thayer. With other judges available, with the Lowell com- mittee's criticism of his indiscretion on record, how can the rest of the world be persuaded that there is other than a foul conspiracy against justice? Over the plea of the de- fendants' counsel, who urged that another magistrate have the opportunity to examine the latest motion for a new trial, it was Judge Thayer who, like an avenging Nemesis, ruled on the motion, and denied it. If this had been intended as a cruel witticism, a dreadful and bloody jest, it might have some point. But it was doubtless the result of an honest man's conviction, which somehow makes it more dreadful and more meaningless. Government has taken up arms against Sacco and Vanzetti. Thus we are not surprised that a meeting on Boston Common on Sunday, August 7. was broken up by police because "speakers assailed the courts of the Commonwealth and criticized the testimony of State witnesses at the trial of the two radicals." Lose majeste has become a crime in America. And one of the last pages of this pitiful story of two Italian workingmen was written when the Holland-America Line refused to per- mit Luigia Vanzetti, sister of the condemned man, to take ship for America on the melancholy errand of seeing her brother once before he died. Her passport was in good order, and approved by the American consul, she had pur- chased a return ticket and thus was not in danger of becom- ing a burden to the steamship company in case of deporta- tion. Nevertheless she was not allowed to go on board ship. It seems an inoffensive enough reason for coming to America. But government is up in arms; and its arms are long and far-reaching. WHEN WE SPEAK ELSEWHERE about our dis- appointment at Governor Fuller's inability to rise above class and political prejudice, we had in mind, among other things, his point of view when he was in Congress. He was a Representative from Massachusetts on November 19, 1919, when the issue before the House was the expul- sion of Congressman Victor L. Berger of Wisconsin. In a speech filling thirteen pages of the Congressional Record, Governor Fuller called for "the execution of the whole Red scum and brood of anarchists, Bolsheviks, I. W. W.'s, and revolutionaries." He also showed his feelings in these words : The expulsion of Berger may be the crucifixion which he characterized it, but it is the same sort of crucifixion which sent Debs and big Bill Haywood behind the bars, which suppressed Berkman and Emma Goldman and which has brought the hand of the law down upon a host of Reds who have plotted the destruction of the Government of the United States in the hope of substituting the rule of anarchy. What a cruel irony of fate that the same Fuller should have become the final arbiter in this case that has stirred the entire world! T IS REFRESHING on public occasions, when the usual polite platitudes are being passed back and forth by the speakers of the day, to have somebody get up and say some- thing. Thus Vice-President Dawes, at the opening of the International Peace Bridge connecting the United States and Canada, was the only speaker at the celebration who spoke frankly of what must have been in the minds of everyone present, the failure of the Geneva disarmament conference due to the disagreement between the United States and Great Britain. The peace bridge is a fitting memorial to a century of amicable relations between two great nations; yet a hundred years of peace, and an unguarded frontier between this country and Canada but point the way to what our relations should be with England. War with that coun- try, we are told, is "unthinkable," and so certainly it should be. But we have plenty of evidence that a number of per- sons on both sides of the ocean spend all their time and energy thinking about it and many are planning for it. The quibble over cruisers is all the proof necessary that this is the case. Two countries with an honest desire to disarm and a determination never to go to war with each other do not spend their time worrying over how many and how big are to be the battleships of either. Vice-President Dawes said or implied as much in his speech. But Secretary Kel- logg and the Prince of Wales and even Governor Smith con- tented themselves with the usual empty courtesies. THE SUBJUGATION OF HAITI goes on from month to month with the busy public of the United States ignorant of or indifferent to the injustices and brutalities

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144 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3241 of an occupation which is not only illegal in itself but has got nowhere in the direction of reconciling the natives to it. In our International Relations Section this week we print a translation of a powerful address before the International Congress Against Colonial Oppression and Imperialism in Brussels, in which are detailed some of the outrages against freedom of the press in Haiti. We also publish a letter received by The Nation from the penitentiary in Port-au- Prince, signed by seven editors and two others under deten- tion. Although arrested on June 24, two of the prisoners had not yet been arraigned when the letter was written a month later. Neither American nor Haitian law seem to have any standing with our new conquistador es. They are in Haiti to make it safe for American investment and exploitation — and law and justice do not in the least matter. THE IDYLLIC CONDITIONS that now prevail in the management of our railroads as contrasted with the evils which many think would attend government ownership are constantly being held up before our admiring gaze. Only once in a while are we allowed to see that there is another side to the picture. Just now it is the Interstate Commerce Commission itself which has lifted the lid. It has castigated the management of the Erie Railroad for violations of the Clayton Anti-Trust Act and for the actions of the president's son, Russell S. Underwood, who as presi- dent of several companies, had lucrative contracts with the Erie and other railroads which resulted in their being asked to pay excessive prices for services rendered. The com- mission, speaking through Commissioner McManamy, declares : We cannot disregard transactions such as those which, made under the circumstances and conditions herein de- scribed, are not only in conflict with "honest, efficient, and economical management and reasonable expenditures for maintenance," but are repugnant to sound business methods and in some cases at least repugnant to good conscience. Under Section 10 of the Clayton Act a common carrier is forbidden to have contracts beyond $50,000 with another corporation when the carrier has among its officers anyone identified with the railroad. R. S. Underwood became asso- ciated with the Hudson Shipbuilding and Repair Company as superintendent, although wholly without practical experi- ence; he later became a director of the Chicago and Erie Railroad, a subsidiary of the Erie. The commission finds itself unable to estimate the exact amount of which the Erie was mulcted by the three subsidiaries with which R. S. Underwood was connected. It emphatically voices its regret. however, that the statute of limitations has run and that therefore no criminal proceeding can be brought against those responsible. In view of the fact that the Erie Rail- road finds it so hard to get along, it would seem as if it were time for the stockholders to do a little investigating and acting on their own account. THE BITUMINOUS COAL STRIKE is again brought to public attention by the reports of rioting in Ohio and Pennsylvania, the burning of tipples, and the wounding of guards and strikers. The determination of certain oper- ators to break the four-months* strike and force the miners to accept the wholly inadequate 1917 wage scale, if pressed. will probably result in martial law in important sections. From the viewpoint of the 200.000 miners on "vacation" since April 1, the whole situation is very discouraging, for no signs of any permanent settlement are in sight. Their predicament, as everyone recognizes, is the result of the laissez-faire over-production in the bituminous coal mines. This enables the miners to produce 700,000,000 or more tons while the nation requires only approximately 500,000,000. The miner pays by unemployment through strikes or lack of work. Actually, since 1920, the average soft-coal miner has worked only about 167 days per year. Furthermore, the necessity of his being subject to call has prevented him from finding employment elsewhere. Confronted with the same facts in 1914, the Illinois Coal Operators' Association and the Indiana Bituminous Coal Operators' Association re- ported to the President: "Only the nation can reverse this tendency and provide against it." And similarly, the same disorganization was revealed by the recent Hammond Com- mission whose report and suggested remedies the present Administration entirely ignored. The coal situation remains like that of the farmers, and of the flood refugees, one of those problems about which the Government refuses to do anything except investigate — and then raise the tariff on iron, steel, aluminum, and other favored products. Mean- while, we learn. 90,000 miners and their hungry families in Illinois will shortly have to be fed and supported by the public. FEE SNATCHING IN TEXAS is not at all the mean trade that one might suspect it to be. Quite the con- trary, it has the complete sanction of the Texas judicial system. In fact, it is the Texas judicial system. Justice in that noble frontier State is administered on a clever piece-work basis, whereby every officer who is even re- motely connected with the preparation of papers or the trying of a case in a justice or country court gets a "fee" if the defendant is found guilty and fined for some alleged violation of the law. Therefore, two convictions plus two convictions make four fees, while two convictions plus two acquittals make only two fees. Does the reader grasp the concept? The law-enforcing officers of Texas do too. Con- sequently, it is charged in Texas that a steady stream of ignorant Negroes and poor whites are corralled and forced to plead "guilty" to charges often manufactured in order to afford fat fees for the men of the courts. A fair and im- partial trial under such circumstances — where all interested officers are financially concerned in the outcome of the case — is rendered highly improbable. But nevertheless the process is quite simple, say Texan officials; and "cheap" add the voting citizens, who have just defeated five to one a State amendment which would have abolished this fee system and placed all officers on a salary basis. So we can imagine a certain poet speaking (with a few of our own interpretations) thus: Judge "Hal." Where shall we take a fee tomorrow, Jack? Attorney Falstaff. Zounds! where thou will, lad, I'll make one, an' I do not, call me a villain. Judge "Hal." I see a good amendment of life in thee; from praying to purse-taking. Attorney Falstaff. Why. Hal, 'tis my vocation, Hal; 'tis no sin for a man to labor in his vocation. ENGLAND'S REACTIONARY MARCH continues, slowly and quietly now. but nevertheless steadily. The gro- tesque proposal for the permanent supremacy of the Tory

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Aug. 17, 1927] The Nation 145 House of Lords, which it was assumed had been dropped by the Government some time ago (and was so reported in The Nation), according to the latest news, is not at all dead. It is indeed very much on both legs. Lord Salisbury states that the Government may allow a few concessions, if they are "as moderate as possible." The fundamentals of the bill, however, must not be changed; the uniform-wearing Tories, if the Government has its say, will be saddled upon the Empire for good. The reactionary drift continued when the Alien (restriction) Bill passed its third reading. An attempt was made to amend this in order to permit those aliens to enter who were seeking admittance solely to avoid persecution or punishment on religious grounds, but this failed. Then, to make reaction's triumph complete, the im- possible Trade Unions Bill passed its third reading. The bitter feeling that these measures have engendered is ominous. They are so extreme that even many Conserva- tives are fearful of the opposition that will result with their enforcement. THE TIDE OF PROTESTS against international tariffs rises steadily. Following the Geneva Economic Con- ference the Fourth Congress of the International Chamber of Commerce was in large degree concerned with the re- moval of the tariff barriers that hem the business of the world. Many leading bankers are similarly on record and still nothing concrete happens. There is no organized move- ment to lower tariffs in this country, although it is ad- mitted that this is essential to payment of the debts due us by foreign nations and that the high tariffs are correctly believed by the farmers to be a stumbling-block to the solu- tion of their troubles. Individuals upon whom the high tariff aura has rested are beginning to speak out. Thus, no less a person than Will Hays has forsaken the movies for a moment to inveigh against tariffs. The dailies see in his remarks a lance-thrust for free trade. We do not, for we notice that he was tilting chiefly at "exaggerated tariff bar- riers," but he did say correctly that "there are too many national trade barriers to be overcome without infliction of other hindrances by laws which upset and throttle fair com- petition." It is astounding how many American business men begin to see this and how few dare to speak out like Mr. Hays. THE SUPREME IMPORTANCE of home training in the moral education of the youth of this country was again strikingly illustrated when Carroll Hepburn, the twenty-three-year-old son of the superintendent of the Vir- ginia Anti-Saloon League, wrecked an automobile and was forthwith arrested upon the double charge of transporting whisky and driving a car while intoxicated. If we were inclined to muck-rake we should hint darkly our suspicion of a conspiracy on the part of the father to further the profession of the son, but the truth is that we are much more inclined to guess, first, that the elder Hepburn is entirely sincere; second, that he has lectured his son upon the evils of rum ever since the latter left the cradle; and, third, that he was just as surprised to learn of the charges brought as the village minister usually is when he discovers one of his offspring in some mischief wholly unbefitting a Sunday-school scholar. A goodly proportion of the world's drunkards come from families that never permitted brandy in the Christmas mince pie, and many an ardent temperance worker had the town sot for a father. So instead of attempting any conclusions concerning the efficacy of edu- cation we shall add a picturesque detail to the Hepburn saga: The car which the young man was using for the transportation of contraband was the property of the Vir- ginia Anti-Saloon League. FOR THE FIRST TIME in its history the United States Line has earned an operating profit. Without writing off anything for the depreciation of its vessels it made a profit of $371,000 in the fiscal year 1926-27, a gain of $1,285,000 as compared with the previous twelve months. The growing popularity of these government-owned ships with American travelers because of the good service fur- nished is mainly responsible for this improved showing. But while the Shipping Board's passenger services are al- most self-sustaining, its freighters are still being run at a loss. According to the latest figures, these losses averaged $1.48 per ton of cargo carried and $9,000 on each completed voyage. Three years ago the operating losses were nearly $27,000 per voyage. Higher ocean freight rates and more fully laden ships account for this favorable turn in operat- ing results. As the shipping situation is slowly improv- ing— there were fewer than 4,000,000 tons of idle ships at the beginning of this year as contrasted with 11,000,000 tons at the same time in 1922 — the Shipping Board's ac- tive-vessel fleet of 350 ships may before long cease to be a drain on the public treasury. But owing to the Merchant Fleet Corporation's policy of keeping down freight rates by putting additional ships in service whenever tonnage is in demand, it is not likely that our government-owned merchant marine will ever show any worthwhile profits or earn much toward the cost of replacement. THE CAUSE OF THE WAR was Europe's lack of religion. Shakespeare laid down his wand at forty-six because, being without religion, he had no more to say. So says Bernard Shaw to George Sylvester Viereck in an inter- view featured by the current issue of Liberty. It would be interesting to know what the popular audience here reached by Mr. Shaw understands him to mean by religion. He cannot mean Fundamentalism, because he takes a crack at "that impressive intellectual vacuum, the late Mr. Bryan." And he cannot mean science in any casual sense, because he declares with disgust that the twentieth century "does not know science from patent-medicine advertisements." He does mean, however, Creative Evolution. And we wonder what Liberty's millions will make of that. The preface to "Back to Methuselah," says Mr. Shaw, is his magnum opus; there the reader will find a gospel which is both religion and science — and any religion must have science in it, he adds, if it is to survive today. Mr. Shaw, of course, is to be envied for having found a faith which even his great intel- ligence cannot destroy within himself. We who are less passionate, and for that matter less intelligent, shall proba- bly not fare so well. But we shall not be as badly off as Mr. Shaw would have been had he not found his faith. Re- ligions are discovered by heroic men whose unhappiness over the ways of mankind would drive them mad if they had no theory by which to confound them. The rest of us accept what we call the inevitable, and pay for this by remaining — as perhaps Mr. Shaw would say — among the insignificant.

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146 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3241 Justice Underfoot ONE of the most momentous decisions in the history of American jurisprudence has been rendered — and Sacco and Vanzetti are condemned to death. Around the earth the news has winged its way as fast as light and wherever the tidings have reached millions of workers now believe that justice does not exist in America, that two innocent men are going to their doom in order that a social system may be upheld, a tottering social order may triumph. As we write no one can foretell the consequences of Governor Fuller's astounding decision, but from remote quarters there already comes the news of protest meetings, of protest strikes, of the windows of the American Consulate in Buenos Aires smashed, of a sense of horror-struck outrage in one country after another. Talk about the solidarity of the human race! When has there been a more striking example of the solidarity of great masses of people than this? Ten years ago people were reading of thirty thou- sand, forty thousand, fifty thousand men done to death in a single day in the war that statesmen, with horrible sacri- lege, had falsely dedicated to democracy and to civilization. Those useless massacres nowhere stirred the neutral world as has the fate of these two Italian workers, who have dared to say that they were anarchists, but innocent of the mur- der with which they are charged. Wherever the American flag flies in foreign lands today, it has to be guarded; it appears the symbol of a monstrous wrong. Men may yet die by the dozen because of Governor Fuller's decision. Rightly or wrongly, we repeat, uncountable multitudes today believe that in America justice is dead. For ourselves, we are shaken to the core. We had not believed such a decision possible. We do not retract one word from our praise of the industry Governor Fuller has shown, his painstaking examination of the topography of the scene of the crime, of witnesses and jurors, judge and prisoners. We recognize again his honesty of purpose ; we acquit him of any charge of political maneuvering; we admit the superficial ability of his opinion. Yet we cannot for one instant accept this verdict in the face of facts known to us for years as they have been known to multitudes of others. It seems to us that he has missed all the important points in the case and that his decision reveals his complete inability to rise above the point of view of his surroundings, his class, and the setting in which great wealth has placed him. Nor are we convinced by the facile report of the Governor's committee of three eminent and conventional gentlemen, two chosen from the highest Boston social cir- cles, all of one type of mind and not one of them represent- ing the vast groups that have felt from the first that they had a vital stake in the fate of these men. After a brief investigation, partaking of the nature of a star-chamber in hearing Judge Thayer and his attorney without at- tendance of the defense's counsel, they have upheld the court. As for Governor Fuller's judgment of the case, it no more closes it than the hanging of John Brown ended the Harper's Ferry raid and condemned him to execration and oblivion. More than half the people of this country refused to consider John Brown a traitor or a murderer, though his guilt was unquestionable and was openly confessed, whereas the masses believe Sacco and Vanzetti legally innocent and entitled to have their innocence determined by law and not by prejudice. The people saw behind John Brown issues of far-reaching moment that soon thereafter tore this coun- try apart and for four long years drenched it in blood. They knew at once that the questions at stake were not settled on that Charlestown scaffold and could not be ; that the lives and liberties of millions were involved, and the issue was whether or not the South should be ruled by a despotic eco- nomic oligarchy, whether poor whites and blacks alike should be masters of their bodies as well as their souls. Rightly or wrongly, the case of Sacco and Vanzetti has become identi- fied with efforts to reconstruct the social order, just as the Dreyfus case came to mean infinitely more important things for France and the world than the fate of one Jewish major. Absurd and unjustified, this interpretation of the Sacco- Vanzetti case seems to all conservatives. But it is there, and not Massachusetts alone, but the whole of the United States will have it to reckon with. Governor Fuller's opin- ion will never upset this belief. For the fact, the great and unanswerable fact, stands out that here is an instance of a headlong collision of certain viewpoints which are and must be hopelessly antagonistic. The liberals and the workers who are championing the cause of these men may also have their blind eyes. The truth remains that the question of the guilt of these men has been subordinated to the clash of these two vital currents of human thought, and the world at large knows that Sacco and Vanzetti have been judged and will have been executed by the representatives of one of these viewpoints alone. And still another fact, a great and unanswerable fact, stands out that in its essence the guilt or innocence of these men has been passed upon by only one judge; that what is forbidden in New York and is impossi- ble in other States of the Union has come to pass in Massa- chusetts: the evidence — not the technical legal procedure — has been ruled upon only by the trial judge, he who, if a tithe of the charges against him by reputable witnesses is true, ought to be impeached and disgraced — even the Lowell committee admits what it kindly calls his "indiscretion." Is it any wonder that M. Herriot, who has repeatedly, as Prime Minister of France and as the present Minister of Education, given proof of his friendship for America, has cried out in protest, against not only this final act of barbarity but what has gone on before. "To the depths of my soul," he declares, "I am against this punishment that has lasted seven years. I am sorry to be unable to make my voice heard, but I belong to the Government and my words might pledge the whole cabinet. Personally, I never varied my opinion. Sacco and Vanzetti ought to be released. They have earned such a measure of clemency." This is what affects the European opinion more than Americans can possibly realize — that these men have been in jeopardy of their lives for seven long years. We are informed on high authority that a group of the foremost London jurists, after devoting an entire evening to a discussion of the Sacco and Vanzetti trial, was unanimously of the opinion that they ought to be freed now. whether guilty or innocent, since even the crime of murder does not merit the cruel and un- usual punishment of keeping men in such torture for seven years. Governor Fuller smugly condemns the defense for the delay — would he be as quick to denounce Messrs. Sin- clair and Doheny and Fall and Daugherty for dragging out

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Aug. 17, 1927] The Nation 147 their trials for five years? — but the hideous circumstance is there. It is impossible in any other civilized country for men to be tortured as have been these. The London Times itself features bitter criticism of verdict and procedure. Even the New York Times is compelled to write thus: Yet it remains true that thousands of good citizens, while submitting to this grievously delayed working of the machinery of justice, will feel that there is something shock- ing in an execution so long after trial. We speak not of the "perverted zeal of clamorous agitators," though that will now doubtless flame afresh. Far more serious is the hurt to humane feeling and the doubt which will persist in candid minds whether the ends of justice could not better have been attained in some other way. A just and pious wish! But, the world over, it is a demand by an outraged humanity. Even if Governor Fuller felt that he must uphold the decision, could not justice have been tempered with mercy? Yield to foreign or American threats of course he could not. But the hands of millions have been outstretched to him for pardon or commutation of sentence. A great executive would justly have taken note of that, would have strengthened justice by recognizing an unparalleled demand for clemency ; might even have weighed the cost to his country of making martyrs of these men; could have upheld the majesty of the law far, far better by exercising forbearance than by a brutal insistence upon an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a life for a life. As for Governor Fuller's opinion, he sweeps away the testimony as to the bias of Judge Thayer by affirming that the judge had a right to be biased after the testimony was in, whereas the affidavits of reputable men and women affirm that that bias was evident from the earliest stages of the trial. We pass over aghast his tribute to the "clear-eyed" and "courageous" witnesses — some of whom are of doubtful reputation, contradicted themselves, and testified to the im- possible. Nor would we stress today the old question of the identifications or the fact that the deadly bullet was never proved to have been from Sacco's revolver; nor dwell upon the Governor's describing in one hundred words the Bridge- water hold-up which had nothing to do with the question of a fair trial in the Braintree case. As for the latter, the Governor is quite satisfied that Judge Thayer was right in denying all the seven motions for a new trial. He is not willing that the men should be given the benefit of a doubt, nor will he appeal to the legislature to start the machinery for a new trial in a different atmosphere under a different judge. Would that have rocked the foundations of Massa- chusetts justice? It might have inflamed the Back Bay clubs, but it would have meant joy and satisfaction wherever newspapers appear. And not merely to radicals. It is not the radicals alone who fought for Sacco and Vanzetti. Noble souls have given years of their lives and their money to this cause who are neither Reds nor foreign-born Americans; nor have they belonged to those holding the anarchist views of the condemned. If there are finer types of our citizenship, or men and women of older American lineage, we should like to have them pointed out to us. They, too, have read every word of the testimony; they have examined the new witnesses; they, too, have studied the motions for a new trial and perused Judge Thayer's denials of them; they have read the affidavits against the judge and they are as good lawyers as the Governor himself. They are as eager as he for the good repute of Massachusetts and its courts, yet they are unconvinced. To them an incredible tragedy is being finished before their eyes; a judicial murder is being committed. Does not the passionate belief of these unselfish supporters of the right merit consideration, if not assent? As for Sacco and Vanzetti, sometimes we have asked ourselves whether it was not intended that they should die, and whether it is not best for the cause of human progress that they should perish. In his wonderful address to the court — made to Judge Thayer, who did not once dare to look at the prisoners as he condemned them to the chair — Van- zetti voiced this in amazing exaltation of spirit : If it had not been for these thing, I might have live out my life, talking at street corners to scorning men. I might have die, unmarked, unknown, a failure. Now we are not a failure. This is our career and our triumph. Never in our full life can we hope to do such work for tolerance, for joostice, for man's onderstanding of man, as now we do by an accident. Our words — our lives — our pains — nothing! The taking of our lives — lives of a good shoemaker and a poor fish-peddler — all! That last moment belong to us — that agony is our triumph! This, we believe, will be the verdict of history. Certain it is that if the precedents of history hold true, monuments are likely to be erected to Sacco and Vanzetti and the names of their prosecutors will fade out of history. There is one other word from these men that we wish we might record from their lips before they step over into eternity. That is an appeal to all their fellow-workers of the world to refuse to be goaded by their deaths into any violence whatever. If we have any influence at all with those working-men whose cause we have so often sought to champion, we would make it count now if never again. Any violent reprisals can only do the cause of progress infinite harm. The life of every one brought into this case must be sacred. He who strikes at one of them strikes a blow at lib- erty and progress and justice and hope for a better world comparable to this execution of innocence. Should there be lawless violence, then reaction everywhere will not only retaliate in kind, but will seize upon it as proof of the neces- sity of maintaining itself by any means whatsoever. That way lie only madness and destruction. It is the American way to accept such a defeat in peace, however bitter the spirit, and then, by time-honored methods, seek to make a recurrence impossible. As for those Tories who in their clubs and the marts of trade will rejoice that, innocent or guilty, Sacco and Vanzetti are going to their graves, we would delve into the past once more. The orator is Wendell Phillips: Men walked Boston streets, when night fell on Bunker's Hill, and pitied Warren, saying, "Foolish man! Thrown away his life! Why didn't he measure his means better?" Now we see him standing colossal on that blood-stained sod, and severing that day the tie which bound Boston to Great Britain. That night George III ceased to r^e in New Eng- land. History will date Virginia Emancipation from Har- per's Ferry. True, the slave is still there. So, when the tempest uproots a pine on your hills, it looks green for months — a year or two. Still, it is timber, not a tree. John Brown has loosened the roots of the slave system; it only breathes — it does not live — hereafter. Let those who would uphold the present system by force be- ware lest it look green for a while, yet still prove timber and not a tree. Let them beware lest August 10, 1927, be forever recorded as the day of a great American change.

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148 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3241 Is Coolidge Coming or Going? MOST Americans — including practically all editors — seem to know exactly what Calvin Coolidge meant by his brief announcement of August 2: "I do not choose to run for President in nineteen twenty-eight." We are not so fortunate. We do not think we know what the President meant; we are not even sure that he knows. But it ought to be said at the outset that the statement itself is not cryptic or ambiguous, although to many persons it may sound so. In his "I do not choose" the President is not intentionally resorting to tricky phraseology in order that later — if he wishes to — he can say that his meaning was misunderstood, as did Roosevelt in his famous argument in regard to a third cup of coffee. Mr. Coolidge — who seems to have written his message without any advice or assist- ance— merely slipped into the vernacular of his native Ver- mont, where "I do not choose" is equivalent to "I do not want." His message may be translated into the direct and definite declaration: "I do not want to run for President in nineteen twenty-eight." Thus translated, it is plain enough what Mr. Coolidge says. Yet the question remains, What does he mean? There seem to be at least three possible states of mind. Mr. Coolidge may have decided definitely to lay down the Presi- dency and to be so determined in that decision that subse- quent events cannot shake him; or he may sincerely have concluded to quit and still be so minded that he would reconsider if sufficiently pressed; or he may have made the announcement merely as a political move, with the idea that it would lead to a crystallized demand which would sweep him into office or, failing that, permit him to retire grace- fully without having to put up a fight and possibly going down in defeat. Any one of these theories is consistent with Mr. Coolidge's character as we know it, and so makes anything possible in the circumstances. Newspaper com- ment on the subject is obviously dictated more by partisan strategy than by conviction. Thus pro-Coolidge Republican newspapers insist that the President is expressing only a temporary, personal preference and that he may and must be drafted for the good of the party. Democratic editors. on the other hand, declare that the announcement must be accepted as final, in order to make it as hard as possible for Mr. Coolidge to change his mind and to put them in the best possible position to assail him if he does. For our part we think that current discussion lays too little stress on the probability that Mr. Coolidge for purely personal reasons wants to quit. He is not in any sense, we must remember, a statesman. Unlike Wilson and Roose- velt, he has no policies in the back of his head which he wants to bring to fruition. There is no evidence that he has any back to his head. He is a small-town politician who in ordinary circumstances would have got no further than the lieutenant-governorship of Massachusetts. The peculiar usefulness to Senator Murray Crane's State ma- chine of a man of Mr. Coolidge's docility and colorlessness advanced him to the governorship, after which the myth that he broke the Boston police strike made him, in a year of hysteria, perfect Vice-Presidential timber and a pure acci- dent later seated him in the White House. Why should he go on? By the spring of 1929 he will have been President for almost six years. He has had all the honor and all the fun there is in the job — if perchance he has found any of the latter at all. There is nothing he wants or knows how to do for the country except keep up the routine of the office to the best of his ability in the interest of himself and his party. With his well-known thrift he has probably . saved enough money to retire in modest comfort for the rest of his days, and as a lawyer he has the chance for a seat on the bench of the Supreme Court. Calvin Coolidge is not a fighter. He "does not choose" to enter a struggle for a third term. Even if it were handed to him on a plat- • ter it would mean only four more years of work and worry, j with a fair chance that some blunder would send him out l of office under a cloud. Poor Calvin Coolidge — why should he go on? On the other hand, if he wants to go on he could hardly have made a cleverer move. He has put the country and his party on the defensive. If they want him suffi- ciently to break the tradition against a third term they will have to demonstrate it in advance of the election and the Republican convention. "Cautious Cal" is not taking any risks. If the American people will deliver the goods at his door upon approval, he will look them over — and possibly take them. Otherwise he will retire to his farm with enough in the savings bank so that he will never have to wear chaps or put on overalls and pitch hay again. He will be one farmer in the United States who is contented with his lot — with or without the McNary-Haugen bill. What the feeling of the country is in regard to a third term we have no means yet of telling. Neither do we know what Mr. Coolidge's attitude on that subject is. His brief announcement states merely that he does not wish to run for the Presidency in 1928 ; it does not give the reasons. If Mr. Coolidge is eliminating himself for patriotic reasons — because he believes that from the standpoint of the coun- try's welfare it is unwise and dangerous that one individual should be President of the United States for as long as three terms — then he is, as we have before suggested, entitled to the greatest credit. If, on the other hand, he wishes to lay down the reins for purely personal reasons, or because he is fearful that if he ran the feeling of the public against a third term would beat him, he is obviously not acting from motives of public service. Only two men so far, Grant and Roosevelt, have sought a third term and both of them failed. Grant was defeated by vote of the Republican National Convention. When Roosevelt found himself balked in the convention he bolted it and organized the Progressive Party with himself at the head. He failed of election, but so split the Republican Party as to beat Taft. Five Presidents previous to Coolidge have refused a third term. The precedent, set by George Washington, was followed by Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, and Jackson. Jef- ferson believed that there should be a provision in the Con- stitution against a third term. Of course if Coolidge were to seek to run again his friends would insist that it would not be a third term but only a second, since his first admin- istration was not for a full four years but only for the un- expired period of the Harding regime. This same fact was true in the case of Roosevelt, however, and yet the public at large seemed to take the position that another term for him would, in fact, be a third.

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Aug. 17, 1927] The Nation 149 Leonard Wood WHEN the United States took its plunge into imperial- ism in Cuba and the Philippines in the years from 1898 to 1901, the defenders of the imperialistic policy were certain that we should at once produce a corps of colonial administrators who would surpass the Milners and Crom- ers and other great British administrators. So they eagerly acclaimed Leonard Wood when he appeared upon the hori- zon. Was he not amazingly successful? Had he not brains, ability, and understanding? Did he not win the regard of the Cubans? Was he himself not extraordinarily winning and attractive? Thus his career was rapid. From Gover- nor of Santiago he twice became Governor General of Cuba and later went to the Philippines where he ruled longer than any other American proconsul in those islands, though always in hot water with the natives. In between came two unhappy episodes — his candidacy for the Presi- dency in 1920 and the refusal of General Pershing — long wrongfully credited to Woodrow Wilson — to allow General Wood to take a command in France. The General's tre- mendous popular following, especially among Harvard men, protested mightily but in vain. Mr. Wilson and Secretary Baker had given their word to General Pershing that he should choose his own subordinates. At this hour we have no desire to enter again into the controversies which marked General Wood's rise at every stage of his career — those interested may find them set forth in our issue of May 29, 1920. It is, however, un- deniable that here was a blindly ambitious man with the ability to take marked advantage of national and inter- national happenings. He, like Theodore Roosevelt, saw in the Spanish War his opportunity and made the most of it; it is related of them, doubtless apocryphally, that over a camp-fire they divided not merely the United States, but the world. The friendship between the two men was, how- ever, not always unbroken, though at times Roosevelt cov- ered General Wood with praise. When it came to appointing his successor in the White House, Colonel Roosevelt be- stowed his mantle upon Mr. Taft rather than his former comrade in arms. Both were doomed to military disap- pointments when the World War came on. While General Pershing feared the intriguing which invariably marked General Wood's career, Woodrow Wilson himself told the ex-President that the exigencies of modern warfare made it impossible to place at the head of a special division one whose total military service was not much over 100 days. In the Philippines General Wood worked hard and knew the islands as few knew them. If he brought with him the governmental and business conceptions of the Re- publican Party, it is undeniable that he loved the islands and had their interests at heart. His last public act was an appeal for the Philippine lepers; sadly he pointed out that half the receipts of the last prize-fight was all that he asked. Undeniably a great administrator, he was not a great educator nor could he win the love of the natives. At the end he was a rather pathetic figure; he had lost hope of further advancement for himself and was deeply disappointed. Harassed by ill-health and family misfortune, he stuck grimly to his job, magnificent in his dogged de- termination to go on. Death perhaps saved him from a final blow of fate, for it has been clear that President Coolidge was hoping to have some one else take his place. Caterpillars on the State A BURST of bitterly ironic laughter arose in the neigh- borhood of Greenwich Village, was taken up in a num- ber of the less stately mansions scattered across the conti- nent, and finally died despairingly away along the Cali- fornia coast when A. W. Gregg, general counsel for the Internal Revenue Bureau, announced that author's royalties could not be considered "earned income." At the same time Carlyle, Flaubert, and various other writers of the past who had taken their jobs very hard, turned in their graves. Upton Sinclair and Thorstein Veblen were all but reduced to suicide when they learned that they had belonged all along to the class of idle rich, and two of our more success- ful poets (who had just received checks for $9.76 and $5.43 respectively in payment of the annual royalties on their Collected Works), passed quietly away. But Mr. Gregg is evidently a philosopher and he goes Plato one better. In his eyes not only poets but prose writers as well are mere caterpillars on the commonwealth. In a formal opinion Mr. Gregg explains that to the legal mind there are authors and authors. Those who write on salary for a newspaper or magazine, or those who sell their product outright to a publisher, earn their money, but those who lease it in return for a percentage of the gross sales do not. But the learned counsellor is not en- tirely clear. In one place he says: "The question whether an author sells, leases, or rents his intellectual product to a publisher depends upon the terms of their contract. The contract may provide for the transfer of both the tangible and intangible property rights of the author in his product, for which the publisher agrees to copyright, advertise, pub- lish and market the intellectual product and to compensate the author in the form of royalties for his property rights. When the royalties received by an author are derived from the sale, leasing, or renting of the intellectual product, it is the opinion of this office that they are not paid for 'per- sonal services actually rendered' and do not come within the meaning of the term 'earned income.' " But in the next paragraph he concedes that where a publisher enters into a contract with an author to write a series of articles or a book upon a certain subject and where, though the pub- lisher copyrights the book, he agrees to pay either a stipu- lated amount of cash or such a stipulated amount plus a percentage of the income derived from other publishers who may use the work, then "there exists the relationship of employer and employee and the consideration paid to the author is for personal services." Yet the commonest arrangement entered into between a publisher and an author is that by which the former advances the latter a sum of money for the rights to a work either written or not yet written, such sum to be deducted from royalties later accrued under the terms fur- ther agreed upon. But it is just this commonest case upon which the opinion of Mr. Gregg does not touch. Does the fact that the original cash received by the author is gen- erally spoken of as an advance on royalties make it un- earned, or does the further fact that none of it is returned by him in case the book does not earn an equal amount constitute it the consideration of a sale? And what, further- more, is the difference (referred to in the quotation above) whether royalties earned after a cash payment has been made are derived from the original or a second publisher?

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150 The Nation [Vol. 125. No. 3241 Agriculture in the Nation's Economy By CHARLES A. BEARD I BEGIN by confessing a prejudice for the land of my birth and for the ideals that were professed before we began, under the thoughtful patronage of our mother, Eng- land, to acquire dependencies, protectorates, moral obli- gations, and mandates in the interest of humanity, to administer water-cure and Krag-rifle medicines, to shoot, bayonet, gas, bomb, and eviscerate backward peoples in the name of the higher good and profitable investments. . . . Proceeding from this prejudice, I conjure up in my mind the kind of a land that I would have my country be- come. We have here the most magnificent material endow- ment ever given to any people, with diversities of climate, soil, and vegetation sufficient to make us in the main self- contained. By developing our economy intelligently with reference to that independence, we can escape the huge burdens of military and naval expenditures necessary to defend trade and investments in all parts of the globe. At a relatively slight cost we can protect our own shores effec- tively against all foreign foes. Relying upon an economy primarily self-supporting, we cannot be shaken by the dis- asters of war or the coming revolt of the subject people of the earth against the arrogance of imperialists. Freed from the dangers and follies of childish adventures in imperial- ism— an old, worn-out game appropriate to the youth of the race — we can develop on this continent a nation dedicated to great humane purposes, the improvement of the common life, the advancement of science and the arts, transforming our cities from industrial slum wastes into gardens of beauty, redeeming the countryside from poverty, disease, and superstition, calling upon our dreamers of imagination to conceive, plan, and execute magnificent municipal, rural, State, and national designs, and inviting our men of war to prepare their scheme of national defense upon the assump- tions of such a policy. Such is the prejudice from which I start. Evidently therefore agriculture lies at the base of the scheme of economy which, given my prejudices, I deem noblest and worthiest for America. Now this concept is founded on no sentimental delu- sions about the farmer as such. It has been the fashion in some quarters to exalt the tiller of the soil as the noblest work of God. More than two thousand years ago, Aristotle declared that farmers afforded the best social substance for a stable state — largely, it seems, because they were busy with their herds and crops and could not interfere with the politicians who ran things in the home town of Athens. . . . More recently, Oswald Spengler, in plotting the trajectory of Western civilization, ascribes the decline of that culture to the substitution of the meglapolitan city dweller for the stalwart workers on the land. But I subscribe to no such general thesis. The farmer is not automatically intelligent and his pathway is strewn with folly and delusion; even though all the urban civilizations of the past that have fallen into decay have been renev 3d from the country. On a recent survey of improvements in American government. I was forced to the conclusion that, judged in the light of science and humanism, the rural regions had shown the least advance in every department. Compared with the court house rings of the country districts the municipal govern- ments of our worst cities show immense gains in every- thing that is creditable to the intelligence of mankind. I should rather trust the health, education, and welfare of my children to Tammany Hall than to any county ring which I know in any part of the United States. Nor do I think that the farmer is an inborn economist any more than the business man. The amount of money wasted by farmers in the purchase of farm machinery in excess of their requirements and the amount wasted by allowing machinery to stand out in the fields and barn lots to rust during the past fifty years would, I dare say, discharge the entire agricultural debt of the country. A part of their folly in this relation is doubtless due to the high power salesmanship of implement manufacturers, the mania of in- stallment buying, and the easy credit system of a benevo- lent government — a government that lends the farmer money at a low rate so that he can buy manufactured goods at a high rate, one of the neatest endless chain schemes ever devised for raising mankind by its boot tops. So let it be understood frankly that there is to be expounded here none of the fustian nonsense about the superior wisdom and vir- tue of the farmer. Still he differs in one fundamental respect from most city dwellers; he knows that it takes labor to produce wealth; and he does not expect to grow rich by some kind of a windfall, by skinning the public lawfully under the guise of service. . . . Until about 1850 the value of the land and improve- ments in the United States exceeded the value of the indus- trial and urban property. About 1850 the balance tipped the other way. Since that time the proportion of capital invested in industrial and urban enterprises has steadily increased while that of agriculture has diminished. After economics, politics. Until near the Civil War, the country was ruled, save for brief intervals, by farmers and planters. From the Civil War until near the end of the century it was ruled by farmers and industrialists. Who rules it now, I leave to your understanding and imagination. There are signs at hand that the old union may be again renewed under a broader social philosophy and more competent lead- ership. Personally I hope that the new confederation may be effected and may command talents equal to the occasion. Once American capitalists found an outlet for prac- tically all their activities in the development of American resources. Now they are engaged in trying to make the backward races of the earth use telephones, cigarettes, kero- sene, phonographs. . . . and are employing all the engines of the federal government to assist them in the operation— all the while grumbling because the army and navy are not used with sufficient vigor. Agriculture sinks in the scale of economic importance. Industrialism draws to its orbit the trained talents of the country. . . . For any design that promises increased industrial profits advisory intelli- gence can furnish blue prints, political support, economic justification, moral approbation, missionary vindication, military defense, and on occasion congressional whitewash- ing. Capital and labor are organized to do business and 'This is the stenographic report of an address delivered by Professor Beard at the Institute of Politics at Williamstown on Autrust 2. The author h.is no; had an opportunity to examine the article as herein published.

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Aug, 17, 1927] The Nation 151 can buy the brains necessary to develop their jurisprudence. The farmers are unorganized, without great centralized economic power, and handicapped in all the arts of plan- ning, executing, and defending, realistic and moral. If this keeps up for another hundred years at the present rate, we shall pass the point now reached by England. More than nine-tenths of our people will live in industrial cities, will depend upon the caprices and fluctuations of foreign trade for their livelihood, while the cultivation of the soil will pass mainly into the hands of colored races and white tenants. . . . But quite a number of people, especially the farmers, are alarmed by the prospect. In my opinion then- alarm is justified. They are proposing various plans for averting what appears to be fate. Of their possible efficacy I cannot speak with any authority whatever. All that I really have to say may be summed up in a single sentence: The coordination of agriculture and machine industry in the interests of a balance economy, related to the task of maintaining the essential economic independence of Amer- ica, is the supreme task of the contemporary statesmen. On consulting the writing of those who propose to go to the root of this problem, I find prominently set forth a bill of specifications somewhat in the following form: 1. Increase, not diminish the income and inheritance taxes, using the proceeds in the construction of roads, im- provement of schools, the erection of electric power plants for rural regions, and a hundred other improvements that add to the wealth, power, beauty, and happiness of the people. Every dollar taken away from the surplus of the plutocracy, divei'ted from investments in foreign countries to be lost in the next war for democracy (unless our sol- diers and marines can bring it home on the point of a bayonet), and devoted to the extension and enlargement of our domestic economy is a gain to America and in reality a gain to the foreign countries that are encouraged to borrow instead of save. . . . 2. Announce and adhere to the policy that any Amer- ican who is not content with 4 or 5 per cent at home but is bent on making 10 or 15 per cent in some dangerous place cannot look to the American people to assure his in- terest and principal and fetch it home on a silver platter. In an exalted strain of morals, our genial Secretary of the Navy recently declared in effect that the American empire extended to any point in the world where there was an American dollar invested and that the armed might of the country must be strong enough to defend the said dollar. If we teach and practice that creed, then we must calculate the cost. 3. Push as rapidly as possible the organization of the farmers for the cooperative determination of crop areas to be planted, the cooperative disposal of the surplus, and the cooperative distribution of costs and benefits. Couple with this the encouragement of a greater diversification of crops to increase the independence of the individual farmer, freeing him from the one-crop mania so ruinous to his finances and his spirit. In the development of this coopera- tive policy, the farmers are entitled to use the federal and State governments, just as other economic interests use those agencies. On the inherent merits of the McNary-Haugen bill, I do not undertake to pass judgment. Frankly I do not pre- tend to have any idea how it would work out if adopted. But most of the arguments against it seem to me to apply also to the economic and juristic devices of capitalism. To call it paternalistic and then turn around and supply a merchant marine to shippers, a protective tariff to manu- facturers, and military and naval protection to anybody who tries to make money in China, Haiti, or Nicaragua is to dissolve the show in comedy. . . . The McNary-Haugen bill might do little to improve the lot of the farmer, but in any case it might help as much as wearing cowboy breeches and fishing with worms in Western waters. After all, the whole burden of my argument is to the effect that we need to develop a new science which, for want of a better name, we may call nation-planning, snrmlpm^nt- ing the budding science of city and regional planning, invit- ing all classes and interests to put away self-deception, as far as it is humanly possible, and devote their imagination and executive powers to organizing and maintaining a fairly balanced system of national economy. . . . The Seminole Oil Field By CORA MILEY THE town of Seminole is in Oklahoma. Until a short time ago it was like any other of the small country towns up and down the Rock Island railroad lines in the Indian country. On dry days it was dusty, on wet days muddy. Men spat where they pleased. Waste paper lay in the gutter until the wind moved it on. Vacant lots grew up in weeds or served as dumping grounds for old machinery and worn-out automobiles. The town was an island surrounded, just outside the city limits, by a sea of old tin cans. The soda-jerker in the drug store wiped his fountain with a filthy rag and served "cokes" on a dusty table. The dry-goods merchant sold dresses by the yard only. On Saturdays the streets were filled with Indians, Negroes, and "freedmen," a sea of them, milling back and forth, drifting into the stores, stopping to talk, blocking the sidewalk. The most interesting of these was the Semi- nole Indian, with his soft gentle voice, his tragic back- ground, and his colorful dress, the men wearing broad white hats, bright shirts, and a bit of decoration here and there; the women the dress of the 90's, tight waist, long full skirt, wide white apron, small shawl around the shoul- ders, hair parted in the middle and brought smoothly to the coil in the back. Fashions do not often change with these people. The Indian imitates the white man no more than necessity demands. The Negro on the streets of Seminole at that time was a small town man — the kind that does odd jobs, that shuf- fles along and depends on his wife, cooking for the "white folks," for board and keep. He had not reached the status of his city brother who can maintain himself, in some measure, by dealing solely with those of his own color. The "freedmen" are like no other in the whole world. These sons and daughters of the original slaves to the

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152 The Nation [Vol. 125, Xo. 3241 Indians are as black, as shiny, as the ace of spades to which members of the African race have so long been compared. No learning is theirs; they can neither read nor write; their ignorance is profound. They believe in "han'ts," in "conjurin'," in voodooism of all kinds. Down in the bot- toms of Little River they make their homes, separate and apart from either white man or Indian. They dress as their fancy dictates: rooster feathers in a fur cap on a summer's day ; a red shirt, a beaded belt, high boots, silver spurs; anything— everything— that will satisfy their crude sense of the decorative. There is confidence in their mien, swagger in their gait. No idea of law and order has pene- trated their consciousness. They will steal if they deem it expedient; being expert marksmen, they will shoot a foe at the slightest provocation, seemingly without realization of the legal consequences. Upon these the merchants of Seminole depended most for trade and prosperity. But Seminole is no longer as it was. A feverish rest- lessness is everywhere. Men, excitement in their faces, are hurrying up and down the streets, talking rapidly with others they meet, cranking up muddy little cars and rush- ing hither and thither, pell-mell, away, somewhere. The soda-jerker no longer wipes the fountain with his soiled cloth; he leaves it wet. No dust is on the table; it has adhered to the sleeves of the men who figure and scheme as they drink draughts there — stronger than "coke." Among this crowd are still others, men with strong jaws and keen eyes, the successful men, men of big money, come to size up the situation. Long, expensive cars as well as flivvers are in the melee of congested traffic. Hawkers, barkers, "con men," hamburger and hot-dog venders cry their wares on every street corner. No longer do the mer- chants depend on the men of color for trade. These lowly ones are pushed aside for greater gain. And gain there is. Six millions of dollars have been deposited in the banks by citizens of this little town in the last few months. Thou- sands of dollars pour in each day. Seminole is in the center of an oil field, so rich that it is called, among the other rich fields, the wonder of the Mississippi Valley. The Cushing oil field at one time bore the title of the world's richest. About 1903 the Dawes Commission came to the Indian Territory to allot the lands, hitherto held in common by each of the Five Civilized Tribes, to the individual Indians. Through a series of manipulations, maneuvers, chicaneries. on the part of the white man, these tribes were giving up their governments and were about to become citizens of the United States. It was the business of the commission to distribute the lands as equally and as impartially as possible. The Indians as a whole were not satisfied with the plan. Some of them took their allotments without comment, mak- ing the best of a bad situation ; others grumbled openly but took the land nevertheless; the remainder refused to abide by the decision of those in authority. They would not take their allotments; they declined to deal further with the white man; they took their families and withdrew to the fastness of the hills. Their determination was to live there as best they could on roots and b rries and what wild life they could secure. It would not be a full life, they said, but it would be a free one. They gave as the reason for their acts that all contacts with their white brother had been disastrous for them. He had deceived them, betrayed them, persecuted them. They were through with him. This band, consisting of Indians from each of the Five Civilized Tribes, was called the Snakes. Chitto Harjo was the leader. At length the work of the Dawes Commission was almost finished. Only a worthless tract of land, entirely unfit for cultivation, was left. All the Indians had their shares but the Snakes. The members of the commission were anxious to finish the work correctly and satisfactorily. Again and again they sent for the Snakes to come and file for their portion of the lands. The Indians paid not the slightest heed to the call. At last, realizing the futility of further effort with the Snakes, the commission secured what names it could of this rebellious band, put them on the rolls as owners of the bare rocky tract, packed up bag and bag- gage, and went back to Washington. Those worthless acres became the Cushing oil field. The joke was on the white man. Indian after Indian became a millionaire while the white brother gnashed his teeth impotently. If he had only known, he would have grafted the land from the Indian and would have been the millionaire himself! So much for that. The Seminole Indian came from Florida. He had lived there for many years, even as far back as Spanish owner- ship. He has always been a peaceable fellow, fighting only in defense of his property and his loved ones. Even so he has had his troubles. It is the same old story of the per- sistent encroachment of the white man. Farther and farther the Seminole was pushed back into Florida until his home was deep in the swamps. And even from this almost im- penetrable place the long arm of the white man dragged him forth. Early in the nineteenth century he was forced to move to the Indian Territory, to enter into an alliance with his old enemy the Creeks, to adjust himself to a new climate and to a new soil, to make a home in a wilderness. Disaster after disaster followed. Misfortune after misfortune befell him. The war between the States razed his improvements to the ground ; he was driven from the reservation ; his return there later entailed new difficulties. The latest disaster that has befallen him has been the worst. In the period following the allotting of the lands and especially after the discovery of oil, dark deeds were done to dispossess the Indian. The government had restricted the sale of his lands, and protected him in every way possible, but every law seems to have its loophole. Deeds were forged, were signed under false representations; Indians "touched the pen" to sign one thing and found later that they had signed something else. Heirs to land were made intoxicated and made to sign away their all ; they were sometimes spirited away until deeds could be forced from them; in some instances stubborn heirs, who would not sell, disappeared mysteriously. Lands were bought for a very little. Sometimes I think that this was the worst of all. Men of standing, of so-called character, leaders in State affairs, hired other men, not so particular about their standing, to buy lands cheaply from the Indians. Cheap meant $10 this month, $5 the next month, and a kick and a curse the next. All the Indian lands which could be sold have been sold. The Indian has been left with a pittance, a hut in the woods, an acre or so of worthless land, with the lease on that gone, a mere remnant of his former holdings, to keep him from being a public charge. These holdings with their rich de- posits, now flowing outward like black gold, belong for the most part to the vultures, the beasts of prey of humanity,

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Aug. 17, 1927] The Nation 153 the men who have robbed him. It is the whites who ride in purring motors, who build palatial homes, who have their photographs in the newspapers as the "State's new million- aires," who watch their bank accounts grow, who strut and swagger in the consciousness of new-born power, who gloat over the things that money can buy. Meanwhile the Indian stands on the corner and wonders at the restless throng in that throbbing little city; he leans against a post and leisurely watches the crowd go by; he gos- sips gaily with the squaws on the corner; he wanders down the street with an eager child by the hand and counts the few coins in his purse to see if he can satisfy the request of his little one for the shining bauble in the window; at nightfall he gathers his little brood into the rattling old flivver and goes back to his cabin in the woods under the gleaming and silent stars. The Seminole is no poor fool! He knows that he has been robbed. But he frets not at all about the matter. His store of resentment against the white man was exhausted long ago. He fights back no more. He would not change places with those who have wronged him. Perhaps he has a sense of values. Trying to Be Modern By EDITH CLARK 1AM happily and, I hope, permanently married. I have no great creative urge but do have a direct antipathy to housework and a slight facility in other directions. I have no time or disposition for complexes, fixations, or inhibi- tions. And I live in a small town. It is simple, conventional souls like myself who must face the difficulties of "being modern." The rural and small town woman presents a unique problem. Our social organization is simple and primitive. Woman's work is as definitely fixed as is a squaw's and she does it as unquestioningly. There are no parasites. For example, I am the only woman in our small Illinois town who keeps a maid, year in and year out. There is no pro- vision made for the non-domestic matron: no pre-school groups, no trained cooks or nursemaids, and very few jobs. I closed my senior year at college ten years ago as president of the Feminist Forum, with an address entitled "Why I Am a Feminist." At the time I was considered in our little group a Queer One, and a Dangerous Radical. Any one of you, nowadays, could sketch the outline of my talk. "It is not necessary for a woman to give up her out- side work when she is married, any more than it is for a man to give up his profession. So many of the former activities of the home have been taken over by factory pro- duction that a woman who is content to be a homemaker alone, is stultifying herself and lapsing into the role of parasite. If children are borne (I can remember how I hesitated, just ten short years ago, to introduce this rather breath-taking possibility) the mother need not devote her- self exclusively to the physical care of these children. They will admire her mental alertness the more if she uses her intellectual powers to the full and does not lapse into a mere Household Drudge. A competent nursemaid can give baths and supervise naps and meals, and a woman who sur- renders a Career to Home and Motherhood, is making an unnecessary sacrifice to the shibboleths of conventional society." It sounded so simple — then. Just the other day I told my present "competent nurse- maid" to put the baby outdoors for her sun-bath. I stepped out the door to feel the direction of the wind, and indicated the exact niche where the blanket and pen were to be put — a sheltered spot in the bright sun being often forty degrees warmer than an exposed spot. I dashed upstairs to pound the typewriter in pursuit of my extra-home job. After half an hour my sixth sense, which Competent Nursemaids have developed to an uncanny acuteness, led me to go down stairs and see the sun-bather. I found her shivering with cold, penned up, in the exact spot where the wind whistled its gustiest around the corner of the house. Our elder daugh- ter, aged five, still rolls her black eyes with a gruesome fascination toward the water tower every time we go past, since months ago she was told by a C. N. that it was there the C. N.'s father had been drowned. The full details of attempted rescue and resuscitation accompanied the tale. But to go back to seven years ago. I was a social worker in New York City. I was making $125 a month. My fiance had left a well-established business in this little Illinois town to make Democracy safe. When that ideal had been brought to its thrilling consummation his business awaited him. I surely couldn't support him on $125 a month. He could support me. His capital and ambition were both invested right here. The reason we were married was because we found joy in each other's companionship. I gave up my job. How was I to "go right on with my work," and live in the same town with my husband? We have a population of 1,308. When winter comes a kindly old lady, a Seventh Day Adventist, comes to our door carefully holding a news- paper which she spreads down and on which she stands, "so's not to dirty your floor." She collects all the old clothes we have for the three poor families in town and leaves us tracts which explain the "Menace of Spiritualism" or warn us to "Prepare for the Bridegroom." What need have we for a paid social worker? So, jobless, I prepared to lead the parasite's existence. Since the factory had taken away all my traditional occupa- tions, I would just loaf and keep house. If my daughters will let me, I hope I may help them to escape the agonizing exhaustion of my first year's experience as a housekeeper. To cook three meals a day, wash the dishes, and keep our small house only moderately clean was to me desperately hard work. I tried to organize, 10 "use my well-trained mind to solve my domestic problems," but the endless minutiae, the sheer physical labor involved in sweeping, mopping, ironing can't be organized out of existence. Let no one deceive you, theoretical feminists. Housekeeping for the homemakers who do not employ domestic servants — 90 per cent of the total — is a full-sized job, even in this en- lightened factory age. But my neighbors convinced me that I had started too late in life to learn their profession. They do their own washing and ironing, and buy perhaps one "good" dress a season. The rest of the family sewing they

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154 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3241 do themselves. And they do it all with an ease, with a pride of competent achievement that leaves me sincerely envious. For 1 loathe every plui.se of housekeeping- except cooking. Hence, 1 got a job. Not because I aspire to a career. (One of the bitter steps from youth to maturity is when one discovers that career material is lacking in one's makeup, that one's work is to hold down jobs.) I simply wanted to escape as far as could be from the exacting pro- fession of housekeeping. I do newspaper feature writing for a small city newspaper. Because my father chanted the Iliad in Greek to us as a lullaby when we were infants, and because we attended the German Lutheran summer school in vacations in order to learn idiomatic German, we were known to the editor of the paper as a family of "culture," and on that basis he gave me a chance to run my depart- ment by long distance from our little town. I do not be- lieve that every uprooted young wife would be equally for- tunate. Part-time jobs for educated women may be develop- ing in cities. They are few and far between in rural and small-town America. A short while after achieving my job, small but precious to me, I became pregnant. According to the theorists, I should have given up my job for two years when I discov- ered my condition, or else have been such a thoroughly normal woman that the natural function of motherhood would cause me no physical discomfort. Neither of these things happened. If I gave up my job, just after having made a place for it in my life, 1 should lose it forever. Furthermore, I suffer considerable discomfort during the early months of pregnancy. Hence I would sit ,,t my type- writer and pound the keys until a wave of nausea laid me low. Then I would stretch out on the bed and read the books from which I gathered my newspaper material until I caught my breath again, and then back to the typewriter. I managed to hold down my job and have the baby, and now, when I see her fat legs trotting around on endless weighty errands, I am sentimentally glad that nature tri- umphed over science. But a job at what price! I have become of necessity a bovine creature who has foregone completely the joy of having nerves or temperament. There is not fifteen minutes of any morning when I work at my typewriter without an interruption. Our small son is going through the difficult transition from babyhood to boyhood. His present title in the family circle is The Prince of Wails or his elder sister's polysyllabic epithet, CryBabyCryStickYour- FingerlnYourEye. Bumps and hurt feelings have to be kissed away a dozen times a day. Our daughter in kinder- garten daily brings home slips of paper with the informa- tion "The cat ran to the tree" repeated in wobbling charac- ters over and over on a manilla sheet. This herculean effort must be enthusiastically praised and cautiously criticized the minute she enters the house. 1 have yet to find the mythical nursemaid who regards sieved carrots for the baby as a different article from carrots mashed into hunks with. a fork, or a sterile bottle as one to which a few flakes of milk curd may not adhere, or a teaspoonful of cod liver oil as anything but sheerest nonsense. And after I have writ- ten down in black and white the dav's menus and have done the ordering, the morning is blessed and unique when a plaintive, nasal voice does not call at least five times up the stairs messages running from, "Say, I fergot t'tell you. we was outa laundry soap," to a conversational comment, "Say. it sure is a swell day, ain't it?" Since I am the only woman in the knowledge of most of our neighbors who attempts to "hire her work done and write instead," as one of them neatly phrased it, my efforts are regarded by our towns- people as a mere pastime. When I started, I tried with as little pomposity as possible to let it be known that I reserved the morning hours for my newspaper work. A few blessed kindly souls still respect those hours, but the rest, now that the novelty has worn off, tnink. nothing of running in for "just a minute" to get reading material for a study club lesson on Ralph Connor, the Preacner-Xovelist, or telephon- ing to know whether I want to bring two apple pies or stewed chicken and noodles to the Fireman's Benefit. I have learned to switch placidly from reading "The Sun Also Rises" for my newspaper job, to looking up It Takes a Heap of Livin' in a Place to Call It Home for Mrs. Krumbelbine to read at the Woman's Culture Society guest day program. I left college with a strong sense of community respon- sibility. This was fostered by my years of social work after college. An opportunity for disinterested, intelligent community work assails my eyes on every side. I visit my little girl in the kindergarten room. One child sits dully in his little red chair with mouth ajar and eyes half closed. His condition calls aloud for tonsil and adenoid operation. Another little girl each time complains that her stomach aches or her legs hurt. She is pot-bellied and round shoul- dered—a perfect example of malnutrition. A Parent Teacher Association would bring a school nurse and sup- plementary food. I go down town in the afternoon or evening. Arm in arm, up and down the main block of Main Street walk the high school girls, in the doorways lounge the boys. Dances are frowned upon by the school authori- ties. The gymnasium equipment is woefully inadequate. There is not another thing in the world for the young peo- ple to do but lounge and flirt in the gossiping eye of Main Street. Recreational facilities for the boys and girls of our community are a crying need. Every week or so two or three middle-aged men get together and saw away on violins. A crowd gathers on the sidewalk to listen to the old-time fiddling. It is the only music except for church choirs that the town affords. A grown-up singing school would be a joy-bringer. Three Protestant churches strug- gle along on a pitifully small budget. A united Community Church would bring to us here a well-educated young min- ister, and a well-equipped church plant. Yet when these matters are brought up for discussion among the town's intelligentsia I withdraw into a frigid little zone of silence. I have neither the time nor the physi- cal energy to undertake the role of booster for the most worthwhile thing in the world. By bitter experience I have learned that I cannot coach plays for the benefit of the library fund or solicit members for the Community Club, and at the same time write a decent article or be decently calm as a household administrator. I shut my eyes to the books on the importance of the early years of a child's life. Aside from guarding zeal- ously the physical well-being of my children (I can con- scientiously feel that I am vigilant in that respect), I do not give them the companionship that a thoroughly single- track mother might give. (But I cannot see that the chil- dren of thoroughly domestic mothers receive much more direction.) My children do not know what directed play is. The words "Montessori system" have in their very context a syllable of reproach. I wilfully blind myself to the chance for rich and full development which the newer systems of

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Aug. 17, 1927] The Nation 155 pre-school work might hold for my infants if I were willing to take hours of every day as teacher. But in spite of hesitations, doubts, and questionings, I hang on like grim death to my newspaper job. My reasons are simple and selfish. My monthly pay check is a welcome addition to the family budget, and a degree of financial independence is heart-warming to one who has tried the sentimental role of partner-homemaker with its uneconomic "allowance" dole. Housework as a life job bores and enrages me. Writing, even such hack work as I do, lights up win- dows for my soul. The idea of eventually learning to keep a clean house and bake good pastry does not inspire me with enthusiasm, whereas the thought of achieving even mod- erate success as a writer sends shivers up and down my spine. And last, through the outlet of the reading and writ- ing that my job entails I am able to endure the lack of stimulating association of small-town life. As for the children, time alone can tell the story. They have fresh air in abundance, the companionship of other children, good food, regular hours. Whether or not they will suffer from the repeated injunction, "Now run away and play. Mother must pound the typewriter," remains to be seen. I like to believe with Samuel Butler that perhaps they will benefit by it. The Mexican 'Just Won't Work' By EVA A. FRANK \\ THENEVER you meet an American business man in V V Mexico the conversation, no matter how diversely it begins, always ends in a most irritated pronouncement against the congenital laziness of the Indian. "He just won't work," says almost every Yankee. "He'd rather sit around all day doing nothing than earn enough to buy himself a decent house. In the tierra cali- ente, even if you double the wages, you can't obtain steady labor. The Indian works a while and then quits. You ask him why he lays off. He answers that he has enough money at present." The American is irritated and puzzled. He cannot understand why all the incentives which urge men to action in the United States should fail to produce results in Mexico. The desire to better one's economic position seems to lose its force in the upside-down world south of the Rio Grande. Most of the Indians — and they, together with the mestizos, form 84 per cent of the population — are content to cultivate the tiny plot about their own adobe huts, to raise a few chickens and perhaps a pig, to catch enough fish for their own needs, and to make pottery or serapes or whatever their village is famed for, as a commodity of exchange. Not that every Indian owns a farm and works nowhere else. Many thousands of them labor on large haciendas, their little huts crowded against the ancient walls. But it is every Indian's dream to possess a plot of ground for growing the bit of maize that will supply him with sufficient tortillas; just as it is a part of every Ameri- can's program to own an automobile. But while the tra- ditions of American government render it neutral about the fulfillment of our desires, the social revolution in Mexico has compelled its bureaucracy to respect the peons' urge for land, and the Mexican government is distributing it in the form of ejidos (village communal lands) as fast as funds permit. "The Indian has no ambition," growls the American. The real difficulty is that he has ambition for a leisurely life too firmly intrenched. He enjoys squatting in the mar- ket-place behind his petates, bargaining, selling, refusing a price, but mostly just squatting. And he holds fast to this mode of living. The first time the average American observes the many women in the market each with her few eggs or her few cakes, he is annoyed in his efficiency nerve at such a ridiculous waste of time. Why not depute one person to sell the eggs or the cakes while the others stay at home working? The Indian's answer is as simple as it is confounding. None of these women wishes to labor con- stantly at home, and none of them wishes to stay at all times in the market. The Indian enjoys savoring life, the American enjoys crowding it. One would imagine that it would be possible for the two cultural ideals to exist placidly side by side, each race following its own conception of worth-while living. Let us turn again to the American business man. With genuine feeling, he tells of the burning of the banana plan- tations in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec during the revolu- tion. "I should like to be fair," he predicates. "If the natives wanted to fight and kill the foreigners who had come down to their wilderness and made them work, I wouldn't say anything. But why did the fools burn up the banana plants? Why didn't they take possession of the plantations and run them? Instead they destroyed the work of years in a few months, and today the country is just the way it was before the Americans came — the same clus- ters of thatched houses with little patches of cultivation beside them, the same primitive dugouts full of flowers and vegetables, paddled leisurely to Puerto Mexico." "But they look happy," I ventured. "They are repose- ful, contented." "Happy?" he snaps back. "Of course they're happy, and that's the worst of it. What becomes of progress if you're happy with what you've got? And that earth," he groans, "is so fertile that I could make a fortune there without half trying." Ah ! Something more than irritation in that last sen- tence, something more than inability to understand another people's psychology. "I could make a fortune there, if . . ." Frustration is there, inability to function, a sense of being tied by something beyond reach, while at the same time the mind is stimulated to grab by extraordinary fertility of soil, untouched mines, and all the riches which make eyes glisten and brains work in the United States. Here are thousands of acres of productive soil to be had for very little cash. The American promoter wants to form com- panies, to issue prospectuses, to plough and to plant. Every- thing is marvelous except the human material that would have to do the actual work. It cannot be molded into the proper shape. It will not labor consistently, regularly. If you ask the average Indian what he wants, he will say: "Land, to grow things on." The average American

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156 The Nation [Vol. 125. No. 3241 reply to the same question would be : "Money, to buy things with." And until the Indian wants the things that money can buy more than he wants his mastery over time, the American cannot, except by force, function in Mexico. The economic motive has driven the American over the border to make money, to get rich quick. For this he must have labor, cheap labor, a necessity which undoubtedly lends force to the cry of rage against the Indian's laziness. But even without the economic urge, the rage would be there just the same. For the Indian's savoring of life day by day, his complete disregard of the basic need of work, is entirely alien to the American temperament. "It's a great life if you don't weaken" — under its strain — bespeaks the enormous pressure under which we work and play. And although we often complain of the burden of this pressure and say that we wish we could go free of it, we have so rationalized it into a moral good, we are so geared to this speed of thought and action, that when we observe the Indian sitting — taking joy in the sun and the wind — we jeer at him and his useless existence. The Indian cannot understand the American point of view at all. He has not yet felt the thrill of power over matter which speed gives to the average American, whether he be a soda-fountain clerk hectically flopping glasses, or a social worker crowding five extra visits into the day's toil. Closer to the early stage of culture, the Indian retains the Garden of Eden as his ideal, while we Americans, banished from that delightful existence long ago, have twisted work, the punishment for disobedience, into an ideal of living, have shoved mere busyness into the importance of an end in itself. We consign to Satan all the idle hands while God presumably looks down with enjoyment upon the busy bee improving each of His shining hours. The culture of the Mexicans of Spanish descent who form the upper 15 per cent of the population is just as alien to the characteristic American disposition as the civiliza- tion of the Indians. The rich Spanish-Mexicans have beautiful homes in Mexico City, Guadalajara, or Puebla and leave all the management of their estates to agents. The very wealthy among them live in Madrid or in Paris, and simply draw revenue from their country. None of them works. They never have worked. Hardly one of them opens a factory, though the crying need for Mexico is manu- factured goods. Is that patriotism? The selling of cloth is practically in the hands of the Syrians, while the drug trade is managed by the Germans. Outside of government clerks, no middle class exists in Mexico. As soon as a man gets a fair amount of money together, he doesn't set him- self up in business and make more; he buys a house in the country and retires to ride horseback and enjoy life for the rest of his days. All of which astounds and annoys the American, and makes him look with impatient, irritated superiority at the whole nation. If they would only follow in our footsteps, if they would only strive after our ideals in our fashion, he would be so eager to help them along. We run to nerves — and are proud of it. It is part and parcel of the pressure idea. There is so much for us to do and so little time in which to do it. The Mexican shrinks from such an ideal. It gives him not a sense of importance but a feeling of bondage. The fe v^er things he must do. the more free he feels from the tyranny of environment, the more he can follow the dictates of his own likes and dislikes. In all the discussions of the constant friction between the two countries, no one, as far as I know, has pointed out that these misunderstandings might well have their origins in the profound cultural disparity indicated. Yet this seems to me a natural conclusion, especially if one con- siders the social backgrounds of the settlers who made these two neighboring lands such totally different countries. Everett Dean Martin holds that the destiny and ideals of the United States are greatly influenced by the fact that it was settled by the lower middle classes. Whatever you may think of this theory, there can be no doubt that the ideals of the present-day Mexican have been shaped by the ideals of his ancestors, whether Indian warriors or Spanish aristocrats. Mexico was torn up (you can hardly call it settled) by Spanish soldiers of fortune. The rapacious gold-seekers, swashbuckling adventurers who wrenched the land from Montezuma, were not shopkeepers with thrifty slogans of "a penny saved is a penny earned." They were sons of Spain's great feudal families who saw life in terms of danger mastered, in riches accumulated without work. Even the priest was of noble family. They brought with them ideals of courtesy, of chivalry, joy in the hunt, in fighting, a large disregard for the common people, a haughty superiority to trade. This conquering nobility never thought of shoving the Indian back, enclosing him and his primitive culture on reservations, and doing the work them- selves. With warlike zeal, they enslaved the native, earning the bitter hatred which has so frequently burst through the crust of Spanish dominance in devastating revolution. The ancient Indian culture, though differing greatly from the Spaniard's in many respects, was alike in this — it placed the fighter in the very highest rank of the puebla, while the worker assumed the very lowest. Every tribe attempted to capture its neighbor, seize all the possessions, and enslave the population. Like the Spaniards, the In- dians had a nobility, dependent on war and looking on work as demeaning. With this traditional background, it is easy to see why the present-day Mexican does not believe in the sacredness of work, but regards it as an evil. In Mexico nobody goes around spouting about the dignity of labor unless he wants to be accounted a comedian. The magazine Success would have as small a sale in Mexico as the Dial has in the United States. Nobody but foreigners would be interested in sto- ries about the rise of messenger boys to presidents by energetic sweeping out of offices, diligent clerking, and pro- digious working night and day. They wouldn't believe the stories for one thing, and besides most of them would find the retailing of so much work very fatiguing. Perhaps Palm Beach, better than any other community in the United States, would be understandable to all classes of Mexicans. The happy lounging on the sand beneath the warming sun, the dancing under the trees, would appear very delightful. And the peon, if he could see it, would probably point to Palm Beach and say: "It was in order to have that life, which only your rich posssss, that I burned the banana plantations on the River Coazcoalcos and the vast fields of sugar-cane on the outskirts of Cuernavaca." Of course Mexico will change. It will have to. Even now it is in process of emerging from a feudal state into the beginnings of modern industrialism. Its ideals must alter with the transformation; but they must not neces- sarily take on our individualistic, mechanistic slant. I be- lieve that some of those who wish for United States inter- vention in Mexico, vaguely are urged in that desire by the

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Aug. 17, 1927] The Nation 157 hope that the germs of progress as we see it will cling to the uniforms of our marines, and somehow or other Mexi- cans of all classes will be injected with our incentives. But Mexico, if she is to remain free, must build its progress up- on the foundations of the Aztec-Spanish heritage of its inhabitants — Indian customs, communal, closely connected with their agricultural life; Spanish traditions, feudal, aristocratic. Any reforms which North Americans may wish to in- troduce will have to be conducive to the attainment of Mexican ideals, not ours. We shall have to show the peon that by our methods he will gain more leisure, or more money with an equal or less amount of work. The coopera- tive at Tlahuac uses a motor-driven thresher and baling machine, and the Indians tell you with great glee how much money it has earned for them, at the same time re- ducing their labor. They are most enthusiastic about American farm machinery — when they own it themselves. Something of the possibility of change from feudal cul- ture to a modern life, based upon the cooperative use of machines, Diego Rivera, the painter, has indicated in the frescoes at the Agricultural College at Chapingo. On one wall he has painted the Exploitation of Man, with rich generals shooting peons, agents passing bags of money to absentee landlords, gunboats flying the American flag in the harbor; on the opposite side, he has pictured the Exploita- tion of the Land, featuring tractors and derricks and reap- ing machines. Between the two he has inscribed in large letters: "Here we teach the exploitation of the land, not the exploitation of man." That expresses an ideal worth working for, and possibly the energy which went into fighting men may be transformed into fighting the environ- ment, and the idols of Mexico change from generals to scientists. The struggle that is going on in Mexico today is basic- ally a clash between the Latin-Indian and the American culture ideals. Under the surface there is the constant tugging between the two culture patterns, the American vivid, powerful, the Mexican in mortal fear of submergence. These social forces are behind the return of the communal land to the Indian and in back of the plea for intervention. In times of great stress, they become almost visible, and the impartial spectator can fairly see them galvanizing in- dividuals to speech or action. Then the struggle is intensi- fied into a "problem" — the century-old problem of Mexican- American relations. The Actress By PANTELEIMON ROMANOV IN the labor districts the revolutionary actress, Anna Reinhardt, had become popular mainly because of her anti-religious performances. Each performance of her new pantomime, "Revolt," stirred her workingmen's audience to the greatest enthusiasm. The small, golden-haired woman was their own actress because of the astounding sincerity and conviction of her acting. Not long ago she owned large estates in the country and a sumptuous house in the city. During the revolution nothing had been left her. The graciousness that made her so charming a hostess and that so enchanted the people of her former set was her only gift. This gift she now meant to use to earn her daily bread. She was forced to, because she was on the verge of starvation. But she could not even gain admission to a theatrical agency, and so was obliged, for two or three rubles a night, to accept singing and dancing engagements in cheap cabarets. There were times when she appeared three times in one evening, and having no dressing-room she had to stand in the filthy corridor awaiting her turn. She was, moreover, at a loss how to defend her dignity among these lawless characters, who long since had lost all sense of decency, and to whom it was all the same how they earned a living. Sometimes she earned no more than two rubles a week, and eventually she was reduced to such extremities that she shrank from going out because she feared meeting acquaint- ances, and also because she could not bear the sight of the loaves of good white bread so glaringly displayed in the bakeshops. Then came a day when her face powder gave out, and in her shame she used tooth powder instead. As she had no means of getting her linen washed at the laun- dry, she locked herself up in her room and washed her chemises in the soup tureen. When she had but one chemise left, she took her pillow-case, cut out the corners for her arms, and made a hole in the middle for her head. But having to use tooth powder instead of face powder caused her acuter suffering than the want of linen, or the pangs of hunger. She herself did not know why. During this period of privation religion was her only solace. When she was told that her old life would never come back and that she would have to adapt herself to the new, she was filled with dread. What did it mean, adapt herself to the new life? It meant not to believe in God, to spit on the floor, to have dirty finger-nails, to take away other people's houses; death were better! But suddenly there came an unexpected change. Life became almost bearable. She again had linen, powder, and even perfume. Some black, hairy man staged a pantomime for her, calling it: "Revolt." From that time success smiled on her. She herself could never explain the reason for her success, nor did she ever understand why she was received with such enthusiasm. She acted her part simply and naively, as she lived. She could not have done other- wise. But at each appearance a hush fell on her audience. Was it because she expressed her emotions not in words but by gestures, by movements? Was it because this little woman with her frail slender body, had the eyes of an innocent child whose extraordinarily touching expression of sincerity so moved her rough workingmen's audience? It may have been all this together, but there it was, the irre- sistible effect of her acting upon these people. They no doubt felt the strong appeal to their feelings by one who had deeply lived through and suffered what she was portraying. A labor audience is very sensitive to the truthfulness of acting. It readily detects falsities, artificialities, such as when an actor, wishing to speak the language of the people, does so in a trained, cultivated accent, instead of in the tones of everyday life. But a labor audience is a

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158 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3241 very indulgent one. It applauds and laughs generously, even at dubious performances. "After all, it's only play- acting! What's the use of taking it seriously? These things don't happen in real life. And they are doing their best for us." And that is why they never withhold some encouragement from even the poorest performer. But for him who gives a real thing the applause is very different. All those who have not yet been to the new show are crowding into the public hall to see how this little woman is going to represent the spirit of revolt in her pantomime. One would think it required masses to give adequate expression to the idea of revolt. The curtain rises. The performance begins. At first singers appear dressed in peasant costumes and new bast shoes. They sing, using their arms freely, and dance the Russian peasant dance. Among them a red-headed country lout, clad in an unnaturally clean shirt and also wearing new bast shoes, has a patch of black showing under the red wig at the back of his head. The fact that he is bliss- fully unaware of this makes it all the funnier. And his ardor is so great, he is so zealous to please, that he arouses in the audience a good natured wish to encourage his ef- forts. Now follows the next number on the program : Another man dressed as a peasant, also in a red wig and in bast shoes, who tells folk stories and flavors his discourse by mispronouncing words as the uneducated are supposed to. Although this might be supposed to give offense to the common people, he too elicits good natured applause. The curtain falls. Out comes the manager in ordinary street clothes to announce the number so impatiently awaited: Anna Reinhardt in her new number, "Revolt." A sudden silence. Presently low muffled music is heard, as it were from behind thick walls. The curtain rises quickly and noiselessly. The scene represents a prison ; in one corner is a gray lime-streaked wall. On the ground a bundle of straw. At the back a small square window with iron bars. In the other corner stands an altar covered with a red cloth, a wooden cross and a New Testament on it. All eyes are fixed on the open prison door from which can be seen a flight of stone steps leading upwards. "What is coming through that door?" A sudden shrill discord from the music as though from a broken string. Then a fragile woman's body is thrust down the stone steps as if by the brutal hand of the jailer. The audience is breathless. "There she is." The little body lies in a heap on the stone floor, all crumpled up in a helpless mass. Only her thin back and trailing gold hair can be seen. Slowly she raises her head, and rises on her knees, an expression of pain still on her face. Her gaze, in naive and childlike terror, slowly wanders around the prison, dwelling first on the bundle of straw. then on the iron-barred window. Her eyes do not express exaggerated pain or terror as is usually done on the stage. Her face is that of a little child, with the undried tears of pain still on it. but already attracted by the novelty of her surroundings. But these surroundings are dreadful — a bundle of straw and a barred window. She understands all and the realization of her imprisonment turns her cold with horror. She jumps up. rushes to the door, and cling? to the heavy handle in shaking despair. In a paroxysm of an- guish she bites her hands. For her the audience does not exist; for her there is no crowd sitting in the hall. She is alone before that door forever closed to her. She can only beat her head against its heavy panelling and bite her poor little hands to deaden the pain of the knowl- edge of her fate. And behind her is the desire of hun- dreds to push open that door with the force of strong work- ingmen's shoulders. A sudden change comes over the face of the terror- stricken woman. Her gaze has fallen on the red altar with the cross on it. This red cloth is the symbol of her blood that will be shed tomorrow — perhaps today. Her eyes are wide open, full of mute horror. Then that look passes and gives place to an expression of religious trans- port, of resigned submission. With outstretched arms, the tears streaming down her face, she crawis to the altar on her knees, and there lies crushed in self-abasement. Presently she raises her head, as if struck by a new thought. Her gaze is riveted on the altar. She approaches it, and as with newly awakened consciousness, takes first the New Testament, then the cross in her hand, gazes at them with a sort of curious intensity, and after putting them back on the altar, she turns and slowly passes her hand over her eyes. An intense hush has fallen over the hall. Only the repressed breathing of hundreds of people can be heard. All of a sudden, she pricks her ears; she has heard a sound behind the scenes. She is tense. Again taking the cross, she moves to the door. The sounds behind the scene come nearer; one can distinguish a revolutionary melody, then the tramp of hundreds of feet. Victory ! Her glance travels from the door to the window, and in a moment her face is radiant with joy which, uncon- sciously, is reflected on the faces of the audience below. The unhappy enslaved creature is no more. As she straightens herself she seems to grow in stature, her eyes become large and sparkling. With quick action she breaks the cross in two, throws it on the ground, and tramples it underfoot ; she tears the red cloth from the altar and wav- ing it like a banner of victory she runs to the heavy prison door which now opens before her, allowing her saviors to enter with wild shouts of victory. The hall is rent with yells, with the thunder of stamp- ing feet. Hands, even chairs are waved at her. But she again has changed into the helpless little woman and appears before her audience with hands outstretched like those of a child, bowing and smiling a quiet bright smile. The performance is over. She removes the make-up from her face with a bit of cotton, closes her suitcase, and having received her ten rubles, she leaves her dressing- room. She goes home to her room. A large antique bed, two portraits of her ancestors in general's uniform, and up against the wall a table on which is a coffee pot — this forms the furniture of her room. But she can now have caviar on her bread, and milk with her coffee. It is late. She undresses and in her nightdress and with hi bare she stands on her little rug and is lost in deep and silent prayer before the crucifix over her bed. Pressing her slender fingers to her forehead very tightly, she bends lower and lower, finally dropping in a heap to the floor, where she lies crouched for a long time. She implores God to understand and forgive her if he can. The sacrilege is only acted on the stage; in her heart she is faithful and believing as of old. But she no longer has the strength to use tooth powder instead of face powder.

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Aug. 17, 1927] The Nation 159 In the Driftway HE was lettering a huge bill board and doing it so rapidly and yet neatly that the Drifter paused to admire, then mustered courage to speak. "How many years does it take to do it as fast as that?" "I'm not very fast. I've only been at it twenty years." He smiled and dug for a cigarette. "It depends on the man, how long he's an apprentice. I was three an' a half years, but I was anxious to learn. Most of them are six or seven. You know, now- adays at the scale they get — how much do you think a helper gets? He gets fifty dollars a week. Well, lots of 'em are satisfied an' don't want to get further. Now me, I wanted to go up, not just for the more money but for the honor of it. w AS our increase handed to us on a platter? Hell, no! We fought for it. Ten weeks we was out. Strike benefit came in mighty good then. Either a five- day week or higher scale we asked for. Now we got it, and no lay-offs in the middle of the week. Fourteen dol- lars a day for a man doing this work; ten for the helper. Union makes pretty good conditions. Why, you know what they used to do in the old days? Used to send a man out to paint in the swamps all alone. Of course they furnished hip boots. Had to carry tackle with a rope almost as big as this, paints, brushes, everything. Then probably pull off a piece of the signboard to stand on. And they'd tell you : 'Do this sign — bigger'n this it would be — today.' An' if you said 'Well, I don't know for sure whether I can finish,' they'd say 'Don't go out then.' Yeh, it's pretty good now. ' '"\TE11, an' I'm not satisfied even now. No. I've been X trying to paint. Been to school winters for the last five or six years. Grand Central. Portraiture an' life classes — nudes, you know, and action sketches. I'm doing four portraits right now. . . Yeh, and in Pennsylvania I took several summers off. Did landscape work. 'Bout thirty-five miles from Philadelphia. Been to Cape Cod two summers. Studied with Hawthorne there. . . You know those men that are really finished — Well, I s'pose you wouldn't call them exactly finished ever — it's too big a field. But you know. Men with a national, I might even say an international reputation I've known, they pretty near go hungry sometimes. These rich people get their pictures painted by about everybody that's big; then they don't want any more. And these men, they'd rather go hungry or anyway be poor than do a cheap portrait. And there's lots of people who could give $250 for a portrait and would probably like it. ***** "^/TES sir! That's it! That's just it! There's nothing •*■ better in life than creative work. I don't get any money out of these portraits I'm doing now. It's kind of, well, I haven't any studio, and, well, it's kind of embarrass- ing to have a model — you and your wife — and it's em- barrassing for the model too. The wife, she gets tired posing. So these people they are friends of ours and they come in, and during the rest period we have a little tea and something to eat maybe, and talk. . . You're right. Yes, sir. If everybody gets interested in art — if those people who could pay $250 or so would think of having their portraits done ... a great market and it would — stimulate. ... Oh yes, quite a few. There's George Green, and a fellow name of Hendrickson, and a fellow — Bill Watts. They're all good painters. Bill Watts is really clever. I mean he's unusual, but he can't get work. Drinks. . . . Glad you stopped, it's good to talk to some one that's interested in things." * * * * * MAY it ever be that several hundred millions of people (oh yes, there must be a limit some time) may have leisure, time free from the production of the necessities of existence? The Drifter Correspondence Sex Literature Continued Further To the Editor of The Nation : Sir: It seems surprising that a man of such attainments as Mr. McFee seems to possess should speak of "Ulysses" in the same breath as "The Sun Also Rises." I agree with the writer of the letter headed, "Sissified Sex Literature" about the modern sexy story which portends to be art, or as he calls it, "important." It is fairly obvious that Brett herself called the turn by dubbing herself unmistakably canine, which she un- doubtedly was, and yet why should this novel even be men- tioned with such a masterpiece as "Ulysses." Any person who wades through 735 pages of "Ulysses" can- not be accused of pruriency, and any human individual who approaches the work without apology will never feel the need of extenuation for reading a book that Mr. McFee calls "femi- nine in its preoccupation with the nastiness of sex." The book is certainly not milk for babes; neither is real literature. Fin- ishing "Ulysses" for the first time you may call it the "mad- dest, muddiest, most loathsome book issued in our own or any other time . . . inartistic, incoherent, unquotably nasty," as the Sphere reviewed it, or you may agree with the Police Gazette of England, the Sporting News (the Pink 'Un), that the main contents of the book are enough to make a Hottentot sick, "not alone sordidly pornographic but intensely dull." These reviews may summarize Mr. McFee's opinion of sex and the writer's preoccupation with it in "Ulysses," but at the risk of opprobrium many writers have stated that it is a great work and will have more influence on literature and writers than any book of the last two hundred years. Ford Madox Ford says: "One feels admiration that is almost reverence for the incredible labors of this incredible genius. . . . No writer after today will be able to neglect 'Ulysses' ... an adult, a European work . . . austere and composed — a book of profound knowledge and profound renderings of humanity." Undoubtedly "Ulysses" is more obscene than most pro- fessedly pornographic books, but it is too big to call either in- decent or either moral or unmoral. This great Rabelaisian work with its portentous display of Irish mythology, folklore, and history; its accumulation of thousands of references to ancient philosophy and symbolism; its vast store of knowledge extending and embracing every known form of education will never be forgotten by the erudite who regard literature as some- thing more than ice cream. Mr. Gilbert Seldes remarked in a review appearing in The Nation that Joyce was "among the veiw great writers of whom only two could be named as compared to him in regard to the long devotion to their work and for the triumphant conclusion — Flaubert and Henry James." Mr. Seldes goes on to say in one of the finest criticisms of "Ulysses" that "The galvanic fury in which the 'Walpm-gisnacht' episode is played, is, one feels certain, not equalled in literature." "Ulysses" is certainly not "feminine in its preoccupation

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160 The Nation [Vol. 125. No. 3241 with the nastiness of sex." It is too big a work to be called dirt, or labeled or pigeon-holed in some convenient nook as any- thing. "Ulysses" is not dirt and being creative it is art. Mr. McFee is perfectly justified in rebelling at the hundreds of decidedly cheap and florid works that are being passed off as works of art. Why, though, class "Ulysses" with anything so innocuous as Boyle's "Le Rouge et Le Noir" or as unimportant as "The Sun Also Rises"? Homer's poem may not have been conceived in the same spirit as "Ulysses" but as a record or chronicle it follows the blind poet faithfully. If all Mr. McFee can see in "Ulysses" is the so-called "dirt" and "smut" he had better re-read the book with patience (and anyone needs it). Rabelais has never been dirt for Pullman smoking cars and I doubt if the average trav- eling man has ever heard of James Joyce. Seattle, Washington, July 26 John Leeds Kerr The Truth About Canossa To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: Just as I was beginning to hope that the old legend of Lambert of Hersfeld in regard to Henry IV was dead The Nation helps to revive it. Forty years ago German scholars showed that the story of "three days and three nights in the snow" was ridiculous and historically without foundation. The letter of Gregory VII covering the case already disproves that. Scholarship had gone so far that every recent text on the Middle Ages has embodied the new and sound interpretation. And now The Nation cartoons the legend and gives it a new lease of life! Will you not please tell your readers that Henry IV was not ordered to Canossa, that all efforts were made to prevent his going, that his "penitence" was a shrewd political move by which the pope was wholly outwitted, that he did not stand for three days and three nights in the snow barefooted (even Pope Gregory's letter mentions his woolens). In short that Canossa was in every sense of the term a victory of the unscrupulous king over the politician pope. New York, July JS H. C. Engelbrecht Should Music Teachers Be Licensed? To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: "It is not their numbers which are to be watched, but their quality and the character of their instruction." This sentence quoted from your editorial Musicians and Their Jobs. June 29, sounds a challenge to music teachers and a warning to their pupils. A pointed query, "Who is to do the watching?" Those fortunate ones who attend an endowed conservatory or a college need have little fear about the quality of their instruction. As a rule competent and well-equipped instructors are employed. It is in the field of private instruction — and a very large field — that supervision is sadly neglected and needed. When fond parents look for a music teacher, the im- portant consideration is "What's his price?" A few do want to know the ability and knowledge of the prospective instructor. Today any one may hang out a shingle. "Violin Studio," "Piano Studio," or "Saxaphone, Banjo and Ragtime-Piano Playing Taught — Guaranteed — 6 Lessons — New Methods — Quick Results." The louder the noise, the larger the sign, the more quackery will you find. This type of instructor is in- terested in selling an instrument — at an enormous profit — and doesn't care about the quality of his nstruction or the welfare of his pupil. The situation here seems to be very much akin to the one which existed in the medical, legal and public-school fields be- fore the licensing of doctors, dentists, lawyers, and teachers. Some incompetents do slip through — but the great majority are equipped to practice their profession. The state seeks to safe- guard its citizens by setting up definite qualifications and stan- dards. This licensing of individuals is being extended in many directions. Is it not time to include music teaching so that the watching will not be done in a haphazard fashion but by some board of examiners who know what music teaching requires. New York, July 5 Silas J. Birnbaum President Eliot's Letters To the Editor of The Nation : Sir: The family of the late Charles W. Eliot and I are desirous of obtaining as many as possible of his letters to correspondents both at home and abroad, for use or reference in connection with a biography or biographical collection of letters which I have agreed to prepare for publication. Mr. Eliot's life covered such a long span and his correspondence was so wide that we are trying to take every means of reach- ing what may be interesting. Letters may be sent to me at 10 East 10th Street, New York City, or if sent to the Eliot family they will be forwarded to me. Oakdalc, Long Island, July 16 Henry James School Wants Old Nations To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: The Virginia Normal and Industrial Institute wishes to complete its file of The Nation. As the boat carrying our first shipment of magazines to the bindery was lost, our files date back only to 1920. Will you please ask through your columns if any one has any copies of The Nation which he would care to dispose of. L. H. Foster, Treasurer-Business Manager, Virginia Normal and Industrial Instutute. Petersburg. Virginia, July 28 Contributors to This Issue Charles A. Beard is the author of important volumes on the economic background of American history. Edith Clark is a pseudonym. Eva Frank has just returned from a trip to Mexico. Cora Miley is a resident of Oklahoma. Panteleimon Romanov is a Russian writer. Floyd McKnight is a New York poet and novelist. Harry Elmer Barxes is author of "The Genesis of the World War." Alter Brody is a New York poet, dramatist, and critic. Onh 44 copies left Who Is Calvin Coolidge? A stenographic account of the answer to the Coolidge Riddle by William Hard, Frank R. Kent, Carter Field and Oswald Garrison Viliard. Mimeographed and bound. $ 1 . THE NATION 20 Vesey Street, New York

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Books A Legend By FLOYD McKNIGHT Small talk had occupied their lives for years — Gossip and books — until each learned the might Within the other's flesh one tiresome night. Clinging in dark embrace, they knew no fears; He touched her softly, whispered to her ears, Attained a pinnacle of strange delight; He built a dream that lingered with him, bright As only an imagining appears. The same small talk again. She would have said How their two minds had flown too far away; His fingers would have cherished her. Instead The small talk trickled. Gone was an old boldness ; Invisible to all but them that day Between those two there crept a little coldness. II Slowly he wandered down a darkened street, Peered upward at a shining window-pane, Remembering a warmth where they had lain. He climbed a staircase leading to her suite, But at the door he grew afraid to meet His dreaming face to face, so fled again Downstairs, out of the house and through the rain Into a place to drink and think and eat. Within her room a girl longed quietly For his return. Frightened, she locked the door, And watched the log-flame leaping like a dancer, Scattering golden shadows over the floor. She sat, holding a book upon her knee, Listening for a knock she would not answer. England Arraigns Herself British Documents on the Origins of the War: The Outbreak of the War, June 28-August h, 19H. Edited by G. P. Gooch and Harold Temperley. His Majesty's Stationery Office. 10s. 6d. THE British Government has issued the most important col- lection of documents bearing on the responsibility for the World War which has been published since the appearance of the German, Austrian, and Russian documents shortly after the close of the great conflict. It is unique in being the only com- plete publication of the documents on the crisis of 1914 made voluntarily by a government consisting of the same groups and classes that ruled a country before and during the World War. The German, Austrian, and Russian publications were executed by radical governments eager to discredit the capitalistic regimes in their respective countries. The volume under review constitutes the last volume of a projected eleven-volume series designed to cover the period from 1898 to 1914. The editors of the complete work are to be the well-known British historians, George Peabody Gooch and Harold Temperley. The rather unusual procedure of pub- lishing the last volume in a chronological sequence as the first of the set is due to the fact that Messrs. Gooch and Temperley found that Mr. J. W. Headlam-Morley had already prepared an edition of the documents on the period from June to August, 1914, and it was decided to use this immediately because of the great importance of these documents in the study of war guilt. Therefore the real editor of this volume is Mr. Headlam-Morley. Messrs. Gooch and Temperley have merely compared these docu- ments with the originals in the Foreign Office. Mr. Headlam-Morley was one of the leading British propa- gandists during the World War, and he has recently given evidence of still holding firmly to an extreme version of the war-time mythology and of being willing to stoop to misrepre- sentation of facts (see London Observer, October 3, 1926; Quar- terly Review, January, 1927). As far as the external me- chanics of the editing are concerned, he has done an admirable piece of work, his cross-references and comparisons with the original British Blue Book being most helpful. On the other hand, his historical introduction and his notes are often mis- leading and disingenuous, as a result of his efforts to explain away facts damaging to the Entente epic and to the reputations of those in the British Foreign Office in 1914. For example, on page xii of his introduction he dismisses as of no importance the statement made by Poincare on the morning of July 30 that he regarded war as inevitable. Even more open to chal- lenge is his explanation of the British deceptions of 1914 in regard to the French enclosures in Document 319. The number of documents printed greatly exceed, of course, those published in the Blue Book of 1914, there being 161 in the Blue Book and 677 in the present volume. The interesting ques- tion at once arises as to the nature of the documents omitted from or paraphrased in the original Blue Book. For the most part, such official editing in the Blue Book appears to have been done to save the reputation of England's allies, France and Russia. The great majority of the important documents omitted or paraphrased were more damaging to France and Russia than to England. To be sure, in so far as such docu- ments reveal an inflexible determination upon war on the part of Russia and France, they are indirectly damaging to the English pretensions of having joined in the conflict to aid her fellow-members of the Entente in a defensive war. A consid- erable number of documents were also omitted or paraphrased in 1914 because they embodied facts too favorable to the view that Germany and Austria did not desire war in 1914. In regard to the Austro-Serbian crisis one learns from the British documents that the British Ambassador in Vienna, Sir Maurice de Bunsen, while not aware of the Serbian complicity in the assassination plot, fully informed Grey of the desperate plight of Austria in the face of the murder and the Serbian nationalistic intrigues. He indicated the atrocious attitude of the Serbian press in regard to the assassination, and made it clear that Austria could scarcely afford to allow the crisis to pass without decisive action in the Serbian issue. Even Du- maine, the French Ambassador in Vienna, admitted that Austria had the alternative of dealing severely with Serbia or losing the southern Slav provinces. Before the final formulation of her ultimatum or any conclusive decision as to what she would do in regard to the Serbian menace, Austria, on July 16, sent out two definite preliminary "feelers" to discover, if possible, what attitude England would take in the event of a severe Austrian policy toward Serbia. The result was an apparent indication of British indifference, which even the Russians regarded as British encouragement of a strong Austrian stand in the mat- ter. Austria thus not only delayed her ultimatum until Poin- care had left St. Petersburg, but also received reasonable as- surance of probable British neutrality in the event of compli- cations. Nothing could be better proof of the Austrian desire to avoid a European war and of her efforts to be fairly sure of being able to localize the possible struggle with Serbia. At the beginning of the crisis, indeed, the great majority of the British not only believed that the Austro-Serbian affair should be localized but that it could be localized. Even Bienvenu- Martin, French acting Foreign Minister, told Lord Bertie in

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162 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3241 Paris that he did not believe that French opinion would sanc- tion intervention on so inadequate a ground as the protection of Serbia from Austria. The fact is that the British authori- ties were at the outset sympathetic with Austria rather than with Serbia, and were not in any sense brought to their stand with Russia and France by the Austrian attack upon Serbia. They took an interest in the Austro-Serbian impasse only be- cause it became apparent that Russia and France were deter- mined to seize this crisis as an opportunity to test out the strength of the Triple Entente as against that of the Triple Alliance. "Brave and innocent little Serbia" became a potent phrase in England only after Sir Edward had surrendered to the war-makers. In regard to Germany the British documents show that the British were completely aware that Germany did not take the initiative in urging Austria to deal severely with Serbia. Grey was quite conscious that Germany ardently wished to see the Austro-Serbian clash localized, and that she desired peace in 1914. While rejecting a conference of Powers, because it was to be called under conditions which would have been manifestly unfair to Austria, Germany cooperated enthusiastically with Grey in the diplomatic efforts to avert a general European war. Indeed, in the place of the rejected conference, Germany sub- stituted Grey's original diplomatic proposal — direct conversa- tions between St. Petersburg and Vienna — which Grey enthusi- astically described — in 1914 — as "the most preferable plan of all." Still more, Germany agreed to put pressure on Austria to modify her Serbian program even when threatened by Russian mobilization, a concession which Grey himself admitted to be acquiesence of a most difficult and unusual sort. Germany also promised not to mobilize if Russia mobilized solely against Austria, an agreement which involved grave military danger for Germany. England, of course, later refused to promise her neutrality if Germany refrained from attacking France. The British authorities were fully informed to the effect that the Russian mobilization preceded both the German and the Aus- trian mobilizations, and that the German mobilization was pro- voked by and was an answer to the Russian. They also knew that the French military preparations for war were much fur- ther advanced by July 31 than the German. Perhaps most sig- nificant of all is the letter of Sir Edward Goschen, British Am- bassador in Berlin, to Sir Arthur Nicolson, permanent Under Secretary of Foreign Affairs at London. Written at the height of tLe crisis on July 30, it expresses a definite conviction that both the German Government and the German people were strong for peace: I have a stronger conviction than Cambon that both the Chancellor and Jagow would like to avoid a general war — whatever may be the opinion of the hot-headed divi- sion and the General Staff. This is not only my opinion but the opinion of most diplomatists and many Germans. ... I hear in fact from all sides that the financial and in- dustrial classes are dead against a war in any shape — but particularly against a war which in its origin does not touch German interests. In reality the only case which Great Britain had against Ger- many in July, 1914, was Germany's growing industrial, com- mercial, and naval power. That was a weighty case, to be sure, but it was not one which had its roots in excessive militarism or aggressive diplomacy on the part of Germany. On the other hand, the British documents show that from July 24 onward Nicolson and Crowe, convinced that England should make com- mon cause with Russia and France, instituted a most malicious campaign against German acts and intentions in their notations on the relevant dispatches, hoping thereby to overcome the cau- tion and hesitancy of their chief, Gv, y. Their distortions are at times almost incredible and often make the Kaiser's digs at England in his marginal notes seem a penetrating anJ convinc- ing analysis by comparison. The British documents make it absolutely certain that France and Russia were determined to force the Central Powers to accept diplomatic humiliation or the test of arms. The British documents show that whatever Russia may have promised Serbia before the assassination of the Archduke, it is certain that by July 18 she gave Serbia assurance that she would protect her against any Austrian attack — this being long before the submission of the Austrian ultimatum to Serbia. Not only did Poincare encourage the Russian militarists on his visit to St. Petersburg from July 20 to 23, but he also laid the basis for Franco-Russian solidarity in the crisis by reaffirming the Alliance and its obligations in the impending crisis, as well as by vetoing Grey's plan to avert difficulty by direct conversa- tions between St. Petersburg and Vienna. The precipitate Russian military measures which made the war inevitable are fully revealed in the British documents, indi- cating that the British Foreign Office was promptly and minutely informed as to the date and extent of all these military moves, from the preliminary plan of July 24 and 25 to the general mobilization order of July 30. It was also aware that Izvolski was asserting that war was inevitable as early as July 27, before the Austrian attack on Serbia. The British were fully informed in 1914 to the effect that the Russian mobilization came before the Austrian and the German, and that the Russian mobilization forced the German in answer and self-defense. Grey admitted this fact in a telegram to Bertie on July 31. The British even knew that the Russian mobilization was de- cided upon approximately twenty-fours before the German decla- ration of a state of imminent war, but concealed this fact from the English public for twelve years. The clue to British policy toward Russia throughout the crisis is to be found in the note of Nicolson on Buchanan's tele- gram of July 24: "Our attitude during the crisis will be regarded by Russia as a test and we must be careful not to alienate her." Not only did Britain fail to exert any restrain- ing influence on Russian policies which were recognized as lead- ing to war; she actually encouraged such policies and acts. On July 25 Grey telegraphed Buchanan, implying that he believed the Austrian ultimatum might warrant Russian mobilization, that Germany would not mobilize if Russia mobilized solely against Austria, and that Germany would press Austria for moderation even if the latter was threatened by Russian mobili- zation. These telegrams were very important in encouraging the Russians to take their preliminary mobilization measures. The information sent by Grey to Russia on July 27, to the effect that the British fleet was being held in battle formation and that this should be taken by Russia as an evidence of Eng- lish adherence to the Entente, appears to have been more influ- ential than anything else in leading the Russians to risk the final step of general mobilization. The almost criminally inciting nature of Grey's well-meant vacillation and indecision is well illustrated by his attitude toward Russia and Austria on July 27. He told the Austrians that they might well proceed to make war upon Serbia, but that they should be careful not to bring Russia into the fray. On the same day he informed the Russians that the above-mentioned mobilization of the British fleet might be taken by Russia as assurance that Great Britain would not stand aside if Russia made war on behalf of Serbia. An attitude better designed to promote extreme policies on both sides could scarcely be imagined. The implicit indictment of France in the British documents is not less overwhelming. The British Foreign Office was en- tirely aware as to the inciting nature of Poincare's visit to St. Petersburg, as to his blocking of Grey's first diplomatic pro- posals, as to his reaffirmation of the most extreme version and application of the Franco-Russian Alliance, and as to his insist- ence that the Russians must be kept firm in the crisis. The pathetically weak case of France in standing by Russia in her bellicose policy was clearly pointed out by Lord Bertie, the Brit- ish Ambassador in Paris. He pronounced the Russian proposal

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Aug. 17, 1927] The Nation 163 to protect Serbia "an absurd and obsolete attitude," and stated that he could scarcely believe that France and England would make war in behalf of so preposterous a cause. And it must be remembered that Bertie was vigorously anti-German and had cooperated with Poincare in frustrating the Haldane negotia- tions in 1912. Bertie also telegraphed Grey that even Bienvenu- Martin, the French acting Foreign Minister, had admitted to him personally that he did not believe that France could be induced to go to war in support of so discreditable a cause as the Russian protection of Serbia. In short, Bertie's communica- tions make it clear that neither the French authorities nor the French public were for war before Poincare's return from Rus- sia on July 29, in spite of Paul Cambon's hasty secret trip to Paris, July 25-27, and the press falsifications of German policy, initiated by the Echo de Paris. The British documents contain a full and illuminating ac- count of how Poincare turned the tide for war as soon as he returned home, how he invented various diplomatic subterfuges to deceive the French, British, and Italian publics and to aid Grey in bringing England into the war, and how fully aware the British authorities were in July, 1914, concerning the dis- honesty and hypocrisy in these French acts. Bertie reported that after Poincare's arrival the French Government was be- ginning to suppress anti-militaristic meetings, that the French press was becoming more belligerent in tone, and that on the morning of July 30 Poincare had announced that he believed war inevitable. That was the day when England and Germany united in diplomatic efforts to preserve peace, which might have succeeded but for the Russian mobilization which the French had encouraged and approved. The British were under no illu- sions as to the bellicose attitude and the diplomatic hypocrisy and evasiveness of their partners in the Entente. The docu- ments even show that Cambon openly admitted to Grey in 1914 that the notorious ten kilometer withdrawal order was issued "for the sake of public opinion in England." Bertie had also warned Grey that Poincare's appeal for a British declaration of solidarity with France and Russia was only a hypocritical subterfuge designed to make war that much more certain. Grey possessed the information which proved the atrocious French falsifications of the dates of the mobilizations and of alleged German aggression. By August 3 — the day of his famous speech in behalf of France — Grey was in possession of enough information to compile a more spirited indictment of France and Russia than that contained in Judge Bausman's "Let France Explain." The British did not desire a European war in the abstract, but they were determined to enter if France and Russia did, however bad the case of these allies. The great indictment of Great Britain in the crisis is that she did next to nothing to prevent France and Russia from exploiting the Austro-Serbian crisis as a mode of testing once and for all the strength of the two sets of alliances. The dominating leaders of the policy of unhesitating intervention were, in the order named, Sir Eyre Crowe and Sir Arthur Nicolson (Under Secretaries in the For- eign Office). Their arguments are to be found especially in the notes attached to Documents Number 101 and 369. They took the position that Great Britain would better go to war than take any chances on either straining the Entente or risking a Ger- man victory. As Crowe wrote on July 30 (Document 318) : What must weigh with His Majesty's Government is the consideration that they should not by a declaration of unconditional solidarity with France and Russia induce and determine these two Powers to choose the path of war. If and when, however, it is certain that Prance and Russia cannot avoid war, and are going into it, my opinion, for what it is worth, is that in that case our intervention should be immediate and decided. Grey hesitated because he did not want to incite France and Russia, because he did not wish to admit what he had denied, namely, secret English understandings with France, and be- cause he feared an adverse vote in the Cabinet and the House of Commons if he were too hasty. He was muddle-headed only in his apparent failure to see that war could be avoided only by a British declaration of neutrality or by restraint of France and Russia. Churchill is revealed in the documents as "rearing to go." The British documents furnish the final proof that the inva- sion of Belgium had no relation whatever to the British policy of 1914. That policy was decided upon, with the grounds for it, on July 25, three days before Moltke drew up his secret ulti- matum to Belgium. Nothing whatever was said about Belgium. Further, unpublished French documents used by Bourgeois and Pages show that Grey informed Cambon of his conversion to intervention on July 31, before he had received any answer from either France or Germany as to what stand they would take in regard to Belgium. If one concedes that it was to the interest of Great Britain to encourage and enter a fight in behalf of the Entente, then these documents prove that Grey and his associates played their cards with great skill. But if Grey really desired to avoid a European war, then he behaved with the utmost — even crimi- nal— stupidity. Had he put the same pressure on Russia that Germany put on Austria, or declared for British neutrality in the event of Russian aggression, there is little probability that there would have been any European war. Harry Elmer Barnes A Tract for Free Trade The Road to Prosperity. By Sir George Paish with a Fore- word by George E. Roberts. G. P. Putnam's Sons. $2.00. rP HIS is a short book, somewhat padded and distinctly repe- * titious. But Sir George Paish's fundamental principles are invariably sound and the thesis he develops, that Europe is still in a critical and gravely dangerous condition, no one can gainsay. The one solution he sees is the rapid expansion of the buying power of all European countries, and to that end he would remove every possible hindrance from the path of unlimited international trade. Tariffs, of course, must go first of all; reparations must be settled, confidence restored, and an economic and financial peace established. He calls earnestly for the rehabilitation of Russia by loans from the United States and Great Britain — now further off because of the ruptured diplomatic relations between Great Britain and Russia — and generally demands a financial Locarno. In effect it is all a plea for international free trade. As such everyone must welcome it who is not blinded by the protective theory. The book will, however, fail to wield the influence the sub- ject and the high standing of its author warrant because of the stylistic faults already referred to and because Sir George has become known as a pessimist with the l-osult that his writ- ings are often discounted in the very financial and economic quarters in which they should most be taken to heart. In this volume it seems, too, as if Sir George shrank from stating his case in baldest form. Yet it is a tract which ought to be in the hands of every American financier and of such of our business men as know something of economies and trade and can use their brains to reason with. Sir George lays the best remedies before the world; the question is whether his advice and that of the great group of bankers who have demanded a wiping out of tariff barriers will be heeded. Mr. George E. Roberts of the National City Bank con- tributes a lengthy foreword. His comprehension of the ques- tion may be exemplified by his solemn upholding of President Coolidge's veto of the McNary-IIaugen Farm Bill on the ground that it is "contrary to the principles of the Constitution to extend special favors, which have to be paid for by the citi- zens as a whole, to a small percentage of these citizens. The President's position in this matter is practically in line with that of the publicists of Europe in regard to the undesirability

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164 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3241 of legislation that interferes with freedom of exchange and that maintains privileged classes." But what else does the tariff do? Has not the United States for generations ex- tended special favors to manufacturers, which have to be paid for by the citizens as a whole to aid a small percentage of these citizens? Despite his respect for Sir George Paish, Mr. Rob- erts trembles for our protective system lest the attacks upon it involve our general prosperity and he urges all good citizens to concentrate their attention upon industries like the automo- bile business which are so rooted in national economic advantage as to be beyond foreign competition. Oswald Garrison Villard Capek's Divine Comedy The Absolute at Large. By Karel Capek. The Macmillan Com- pany. $2.50. T)LAYING with ideas instead of characters need not neces- *■ sarily be a didactic occupation for a novelist — providing he plays with them. The difference between the artist and the moralist is that when the artist releases an idea it is a free agent to him, an unknown quantity with limitless possibilities; whereas the moralist enslaves it from the outset to some ulterior purpose. There are those who would confine art to a diet of emotion — preferably raw — and there are those who look down upon such a diet as infantile, and would have art function cere- brally only. Both theories will rebound harmlessly when they hit an artist. What is essentially aesthetic is neither the ideas nor the emotion but the orchestration of them. Keeping this in mind, a piece of intellectual by-play by Shaw on British Im- perialism may present a truer aesthetic pattern than the most "powerful" situation in Dreiser; and by the same token Karel Capek, for all his perilous consanguinity with H. G. Wells, re- mains an artist — to whom ideas are means rather than end. Getting his cue from the latest adventure of modern sci- ence— the attempt to split the atom — Capek hits on the spiritual counterpart of it. Just as Science professes itself to be dis- mayed at the infinite physical energy which its success would unleash, Capek speculates on an equally terrific inundation of spiritual energy, which he cleverly links with the splitting of the atom and the consequent release of the Cosmic Mind immi- nent in all Matter. Of this he weaves a fascinating meta- physical detective story which manages to be as thrilling as a Sherlock Holmes mystery, without doing undue damage to a profound premise. In fact one could easily take Capek seriously, if one chose to. Though he has found the splitting of the atom a conveni- ent propulsion for his imagination the situation that he conjures up is within the bounds of conceivability. Not literally, but as a psychological phenomenon. With the unflagging aggressive- ness of Science and the breakdown of the ritualized limitations that Man has erected in his mind against the Unknown, the Infinite, the Absolute, it becomes a question whether the aver- age psyche will be able to balance itself without its accustomed supports, unless some substitute is discovered for Religion. It is a truism of comparative theology that Religion, among both civilized and primitive peoples, serves as insulator as well as conductor of the Divine. It is a conductor of the Divine largely in the sense that a lightning rod is a conductor — to attract and divert the highly dangerous divine or demonic forces into a re- stricted channel and prevent them from interfering with the orderly processes of society. Speaking of the innumerable taboos that hedge about divine or semi-divine representatives among primitive peoples, Frazer says: These taboos act, so to say, as electric insulators to preserve the spiritual force with which these persons are Charged from suffering or inflicting harm by contact with the outer world. Precisely what the Catholic bishop of Capek's novel says to the rash scientists who have broken into the cosmic Holy of Holies — the Atom: "Gentlemen, in the name of Heaven, do not imagine that the Church brings God into the world. The Church merely confines and controls Him. And you two unbe- lievers are loosing Him upon the earth like a flood. The ship of Peter will survive even this deluge; like the Ark of Xoah it will ride out this inundation of the Absolute — but your modern society," cried the Bishop with a mighty voice, "that will pay the price!" Food for thought! Many a Polynesian race has been annihi- lated through the forcible break-up of its protective taboos by western "civilizers." We ourselves have fared well so far, be- cause the dissolution of our taboos is proceeding much more gradually. Nevertheless modern science is accumulating, how- ever gradually, a serious problem for the psychiatry of the future. But Capek has wisely chosen to be a jester rather than a prophet. Which makes his Absolute at Large all the more deadly. Unharnessed to any program, bound for no particular destination, it runs amok among our contemporary institutions — which turn topsy-turvy at its transvaluating touch. The re- sult is a grand cosmic comedy in which the Lord Himself is one of the funniest actors. For Capek is impartial. If our human foibles are a spectacle for visiting Gods, equally ludic- rous are the efforts of the Lord at running the machinery of modern industry in the same incontinent fashion in which He runs Nature. Satire from such an original starting point may seem so easy that one is tempted to feel that Capek has not suffi- ciently exploited all its possibilities. But one can hardly blame him for not having rung all the changes on such a rich theme. Alter Brody Books in Brief Prosper Merimie: A Mask and a Face. By G. H. Johnstone. E. P. Dutton and Company. $4. A vivid and well-written account of a writer too little known in English. The general disrepute into which the French romantic period has fallen has intended to obscure the fact, made abundantly clear by Mr. Johnstone, that Merimee, for the most part, merely aped the romantic fashions of his time and that, like Stendhal, with whom he has much in common, his soul was really in the eighteenth century. It is too bad that Merimee should be known by generations of school children as the author of "Colomba" and "Carmen" and as the fashioner of a factitious local color when his early satires, his short stories, and the dur- able and disillusioned quality of his mind offer to the modern reader a store of riches for the most part unsuspected. Mr. Johnstone's careful and enthusiastic study should attract many readers to the consideration of this fascinating figure, whose motto was "beware of believing." William Heriry Harrison; a Political Biography. By Dorothy Burne Goebel. Indiana Historical Collections, Vol. XIV. Indianapolis: Historical Bureau of the Indiana Library and Historical Department. Curious that we have been forced to wait to this late day for a satisfactory biography of William Henry Harrison. He was not a great man, but he was identified with the Ohio Valley from its earliest pioneer days until, grown wealthy and populous, it began manufacturing favorite sons for the Presidency. Miss Goebel has succeeded in writing a scholarly biography which will repay perusal by any reader who is interested in the career of an ordinary American official of a region as it was passing from the frontier period to a state of semi-civilization. Possibly the author may be criti- cized for not sufficiently identifying her hero with the changing environment about him. Harrison was not, however, a product

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Aug. 17, 1927] The Nation 165 of the frontier. His most impressionable years were spent among the F.F.V.'s, and the prejudices and culture of the Old Dominion clung to him throughout life. The author has con- stantly been confronted with the direct issue raised by conflict- ing claims of rival partisans. The evidence is not always suffi- cient to determine the truth. Miss Goebel sometimes appears too favorable to Harrison, but not often. She recognizes propa- ganda such as Harrison's friends and enemies employed, and escapes generally its traps. After reading this volume, one is convinced that the taunt of "land-grabber" so often used in connection with Harrison should be softened. The policy he pursued concerning Indian lands was evidently manufactured in Washington. He obeyed orders, as other politicians of the Ohio Valley have generally done. The American Year Book. A Record of Events and Progress for the Year 1926. Edited by Albert Bushnell Hart and William M. Schuyler. The Macmillan Company. $7.50. Mirrors of the Year. A National Review of Oustanding Fig- ures, Trends, and Events of 1926-7. Edited by Grant Overton. The Frederick A. Stokes Company. $4. After annual publication from 1910 to 1919, inclusive, "The American Year Book" was dropped until last year, when it reap- peared. The second volume of the new series is now at hand, containing more than a thousand pages of useful information assembled by a staff of specialists. A new feature is the addi- tion, in connection with each general subject, of a list of socie- ties whose activities relate to it. "Mirrors of the Year" is less a record of events than a series of monographs by American writers giving a personal interpretation of certain aspects which to them seem worth setting down. Natural Man: A Record from Borneo. By Charles Hose. Lon- don: Macmillan and Company. 30 shillings. We learn here of an early English visitor to Borneo, Charles Brooke, who accomplished an interesting variation of the usual British imperialistic practices. In 1841 he took command of the troops of one warring faction of the natives of Sarawak on condition that if he quieted the country he should become its Rajah. So to this day the Rajahs of Sarawak have been Eng- lishmen, and the whole of northwest Borneo is now British. Mr. Hose gives a competent but uninspired record of the lives of two of the aboriginal peoples who live in the jungles, the Kayans and the Kenyahs — their tribal and village life, their ceremonials, their festivals, their arts and crafts, their religious beliefs, and their medical practices — and there is a final chapter on Morals and Mentality, where we learn the fact, not too startling, that in neither respect are these people identical with the inhabitants of Western Europe. MtUUUUHHUVU\UUUtV\UUUUViUHUWlH«mVi D T H E A T E R D Little Theatre THE GRAND STREET mux COME on in. See the circus from below. See the faded wanton women, see the Monday men, the thieves, the liars and the embryo yeggs. Hear the tales that are told. You never saw a circus like this — from the inside. If you have read Beggars of Life, you know what to expect. — Illustrated, $2.50 OIL! A Novel by UPTON SINCLAIR 44th Street West of Broadway Evgs. 8:30. Mat*. Tues. and Thurs. at popular prices. "One cannot find anywhere in New York •atire or more verve." — Joaepb Wood Krutch A best seller everywhere. "Story telling with an edge on it." — Wm. McFee "One of the most remarkable books I have ever perused and one of the most readable." — Oswald Garrison Villard $2.50 THEME'S NOT A BATHING SUIT IN RUSSIA and Other Bare Facts by Will Rogers "It is a fine achievement to succeed simultaneously in two such difficult and mutually exclusive fields as humor and politics." - N. Y. Times. Illus. $1.75 MHWM«MWWVHWHWm*W«M«VW«VW«V»V«W Albert & Charles Boni - 66 Fifth Ave., N. Y. THE EVOLUTION OF MAN, by WilhelmBoelsche A clear, strong, simple summary not only of Darwin's theory but of the work of a generation of scientists along the lines Darwin opened up. Just what a busy man wants to give him a bird's-eye view of Evolution. Cloth, illustrated, 60 cents by mail. Catalog free. ■ — iyr^. i i * i — , ^ involution. L.ioTn, inusiratea, do cents ov man. catalog nee. r ULLltb Charles H. Kerr & Co., 347 Eest Ohio St., Chicago, 111. more clever ideas, in The Nation. more fruh THE NATION'S INDEX to Volume CXXIV January-June, 1927 is now ready. One copy will be sent to each library on the subscrip- tion list of The Nation. Other subscribers who wish a copy should send their request to the Subscription Department. THE NATION 20 Vesey Street New York City Do you want to make extra Address Dept. 11 THE NATION money? 20 Vesey Street New York When writing to advertisers please mention The Nation

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International Relations Section The Press in Haiti THE oppression of Haitian editors under the American occupation was discussed by a Haitian, Carlos Martins, at the International Congress against Colonial Oppression and Imperialism, held recently in Brussels. Excerpts from his address follow. After the American occupation of Haiti was established and in the proclamation launched by M. Louis Borno to an- nounce his election to the presidency under guard of American marines, he had menaced the press with the thunders of martial law. A short time afterward, because of an article by Maitre S. Villard, notary, published in the N&uvelliste of Port-au-Prince, President Borno sent the author and the two editors, M. Ernest G. Chauvet and M. Fred. Duvigneaud, before the American court martial, which condemned the three journalists to impris- onment for six months, and to a fine of $300 each. This proceeding made more noise in the United States than in Haiti. An order arrived from Washington to set them free. Then the High Commissioner cooked up with his marionette-president the most iniquitous of laws against the freedom of the press, which the Council of State ratified. And with the complicity of the examining magistrates, corruptly appointed by M. Louis Borno, "preventive imprisonment" has become the most formida- ble weapon in the hands of the American occupation against the newspaper men. Let us examine these laws briefly: Under these press laws, which might be more justly termed "ukases against the press," every offense that may be committed by the press is a flagrant offense; that is to say, the government prosecutor can send a journalist to prison arbitrarily, without considering the time which may have elapsed since the publication of the incriminat- ing article. The government's legal representative in the courts may order a summons issued against a newspaper man at any time he sees fit; and, after a pretended examination of the offending article may convert that summons into an order for imprisonment! The manager and the editor of a newspaper are imprisoned with the writer of the article, as in the recent proceedings against M. Charles Moravia and M. Maurice Debi-osse, editor- proprietor and manager of the Temps. In 1924 they also im- prisoned the pressman of the Poste's printing establishment, as an accomplice in a pretended offense against the press laws. In 1925 they went still further, and locked up all the compositors of the Cmirrier Haitien, while, under the direction of an Ameri- can officer, gendarmes brought coffee sacks and piled into them all the type in the composing room, which they took in a truck to the record office of the civil tribunal. . . . It should be remembered not only that these ukases against the press are the work of the American occupation, but the agents who execute these orders are American officers. The chief of police and his deputy, the chief and the under-chief of the gendarmerie, and all the officers of public authority belong to the United States Marine Corps. It is unnecessary to say that the director of the penitentiary where they confine news- paper men is an American drawn from the Expeditionary Corps, assisted by two officers of the same origin. What happens to a newspaper man thus arbitrarily cast into prison? He stays there, without examination by a magistrate, without the judg- ment of a court. And if an American philanthropic society, knowing of the case, makes an appeal to the State Department at Washington, the invariable response is: "It is the native government which has acted, and we are powerless to interfere in the domestic affairs of Haiti, especially as we know from the reports of our High Commissioner that the Haitian government has proceeded by virtue of the powers conferred upon it by the national press laws, duly enacted and promulgated." . . . More than that, the Haitian penal code provides that any one detained in a house of arrest has a right to an examination within twenty-four hours, but the examining magistrate named by the phantom-president, in agreement with the High Commis- sioner, as always, permits weeks to go by without calling the prisoner to his office to question him as to his identity and on the subject of the accusation. In general those who are so dis- posed may obtain the "favor" of being called before the exam- ining magistrate on presenting a request for provisory liberty under caution (release on bail). But that request became use- less with the ukase of 1923, which stipulated that provisory liberty could not be accorded to a newspaper man unless the magistrate's conclusions were in accord with the views of the government prosecutor. That is to say, the official casting a man into prison had the sole power to release his victim! However, M. Pouget, editor of the Paste, when he was ac- cused of an offense against the press laws and refused pro- visory liberty, denounced the unconstitutionality of this ruling to the Court of Cassation, on the ground that by virtue of the principle of the separation of powers, written in the constitu- tion, the agent of the executive power might draw7 his conclu- sions as to the pai*ty to an action but could not deliver sentences, and that the judge alone possessed this high power. The com- plete bench of the Court of Cassation declared, in effect, that the law was unconstitutional, and consequently inoperative. Very promptly when this decree had been pronounced, the High Commissioner and his president caused a new law to be registered by their Council of State to replace that declared un- constitutional by the Supreme Court. Under this new law it was no longer necessary that the examining magistrate's deci- sion should be in conformity with the views of the prosecuting officer, but worse than that, neither the magistrate nor any other court was permitted to accord provisory freedom, with or with- out bail, to newspaper men undergoing preventive imprison- ment. . . . Recourse was had anew to the Court of Cassation, and again the law was decreed to be unconstitutional. But during all these proceedings, the newspaper men remained in prison, which was the object of the reigning dictatorship. After these two reversals by Haitian justice, a third law was imposed. This time, in conformity with ordinary law, the right of provisory liberty was admitted, but the bail for each succeeding accusation by the prosecuting officer, and for each co-author or accomplice in the offense named by the court was fixed at $2,000 in cash; neither realty deeds nor the bonds of the Haitian Republic can be substituted for this purpose. But, you ask, how can the editor of a newspaper, locked up in jail, be implicated in a new offense against the press laws, since he is no longer writing? That is the unbelievable paradox of a military dictatorship. Under the regulations of the peni- tentiary, enforced by an American officer, an imprisoned news- paper man cannot write. If a scrap of writing is found in a cell, the penalty is transfer to a dungeon, on bread and water. But if a new offense against the press laws is committed by his substitute, the editor is taken from prison to court to receive a new order of imprisonment as an accomplice. At the same time the author and the new manager may be sent to join him in the penitentiary. For a newspaper to be able to free its editor, its manager, and their collaborators would require a large liquid fortune. . . . M. Louis-Eduard Pouget was arrested on December 26, 1024, because of an article on Charles XII, king of Sweden, who was killed in the year 1718. M. Louis Borno considered this to be "provocation for his assassination," and his master, General John H. Russell, a "recommendation for the assassination of functionarits." After five days of preventive imprisonment, M

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Aug. 17, 1927] The Nation 167 {Remember "^loradora "? Shanley's Restaurant — 'The Merry Widow" — "Twenty-three, Skiddool" — champagne — bustles and balloon sleeves "Mile. Modiite"- "The Red Mill". . . ? They come to life again, the passing fancies that held sway in the Gay Nineties and the Naughty Hundreds, in the swift progress of Zelda Marsh's story. Here is the glamour of the stage — and the heart- breaks. Zelda with her flaming, un- forgettable beauty, is the eternal symbol of woman's soul in travail, told in terms of grease-paint, of acety- lene flares and hoarse-lunged barkers. ELD/1 CHARLES G. NORRIS Author of Brats, Bread, Salt, Pig Iron DUTTON'S NEW YORK IP *ff» Ijl ifr AN ADVERTISER WRITES "... and I would like to add that I have had numerous responses to my ad in The Nation, and am developing a clientele who are very pleasant to deal with." Sincerely yours, Ann Seley, Antiques. A WORD TO THE YOUNG Do you propose to educate your son? How ridiculous that query seems! Of course you do! Yet, there are thousands of school boys who will not return to their classes next month and whose fathers were equally positive a year ago that they would go on through the university. Why? Because these parents have un- expectedly been taken away and no provision had been made by them for the education of their boys in the event of such an emergency. You are a young man. See to it now, by acquiring an Educational Endowment policy, that the toddler of today will be educated whatever happens to you. Ask your Prudential man or make inquiry direct of the Home Office THE PRUDENTIAL INSURANCE COMPANY of AMERICA EDWARD D. DUFFIELD, President Home Office, HEW ARK, K ]■ When writing to advertisers please mention The Nation

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168 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3241 Pouget was taken from his cell to receive a new order of im- prisonment as "the artisan of a plot to bring about the assassi- nation of President Louis Borno." He demanded a hearing be- fore an examining magistrate on this accusation. The only response was to confine him to a secret cell, day and night. He went on a hunger strike, in order to compel the attendance of a magistrate. After eight days, in the course of which he was much weakened, an examining magistrate appeared at the peni- tentiary to question him. He was permitted to quit his cell, but was not released from prison until seven months later, July 31, 1925; and from that day to this, no legal document has ever set forth whether such a plot existed or not. However, during that period, an individual who did not know M. Pouget, and whom M. Pouget did not know, was taken before the prosecut- ing officer who threatened to send him to prison if he did not agree to make a declaration that the editor of the Poste had offered him money to assassinate M. Borno. He refused to agree and was locked up, but upon provisory liberation, he went to the editorial rooms of the Poste and made this revelation which was published. No one would have dared to lie about so grave a matter. The government contented itself with ordering the magistrate to docket the case, and replied to the inquiries of M. Pouget's lawyer, "the examination is proceeding nor- mally. . . . The comedy of "reelection" was played on April 12, 1926. On March 26, they arrested the editor of the Poste, who had pub- lished the official documents proving the constitutional ineligi- bility of M. Borno, who was born in 1865, son of a foreigner naturalized as a Haitian nine years later; but M. Pouget's arrest was under an accusation of publishing "false news," be- cause he demanded that the government "make an official decla- ration" to reassure the people regarding a report that a terri- torial concession had been sold to the United States for the establishment of a naval base. The government prosecutor held that this rumor was not true, and that consequently the journal had published false information. Two days later a fresh order of imprisonment was issued against M. Pouget as an accom- plice of M. Latortue. Maitre Lys Latortue, an attorney of the Gonaives bar, had announced in the Poste that the Americans no longer permitted the Haitians to go bathing in Lapierre, a bathing beach near Gonaives, during the time that Americans were bathing. M. Latortue asked these gentlemen in khaki if they had taken these beaches as their own property, their naval base. Naval base! This offense of "giving false news of a nature to disturb the public peace," occasioned the imprisonment of Latortue as its author, and the second order of imprisonment against M. Pouget as his accomplice. On April 16, American bayonets having again precipitated M. Borno into the presidency, two American officers came to release M. Latortue, M. Pouget, and his manager from the peni- tentiary. M. Pouget had not been called before an examining magistrate in this second affair. He related the incident in his newspaper, with this comment: "One does not know by whose order, that of the dictator or the under-dictator, he was set at liberty, but it certainly was not by the court, for he had never been interrogated by the examining magistrate. But the Ameri- can High Commissioner was moved. When he gave the order to free his prisoners, he did not know the state of the case. . . ." To correct this mistake, on June 16, 1926, the examining magistrate called the editor of the Poste before him for examf- nation on the March offense and informed him that he himself had ordered that the editor be restored to liberty. This gives a correct idea of the insolence of the Yankee dictatorship in Haiti. The epilogue is grotesque. Toward the end of 1926, the High Commissioner caused a decree of amnesty to be issued through M. Borno, couched in generc us terms, in favor of the newspaper men who had not been brought to trial, and includ- ing all accusations made by the government prosejutor. and those which had been brought without authority, not to mention those which were based on the phantom plot of 1924! A Voice From a Haitian Jail rjlHE NATION has received a letter dated July 26, 1927 J. from the penitentiary at Port-au-Prince, Haiti, read- ing as follows : The undersigned make it their duty to express to you their deep appreciation of the editorial printed in your issue of July 20 concerning their arrest and confinement. We are still in jail and forbidden to have ink, paper and pencil m our possession; that is why we are address- ing you in such an informal way. Please accept our best thanks" and continue to help us in your most esteemed paper, using all your influence in our favor. We are, dear sir, Yours very sincerely, The Editor of the Temps, Charles Moravia The Editor of the Nouvelliste, Em. G. Chauvet The Editor of the Courrier Haitien, Jolibois Fils The Editor of the Haitien, Jean Charles Pressoir The Editor of the Varietcs, Clamart Ricourt The Editor of the Petit Capois, Edmond Liautand The Editor of Stella, Luc E. Fouche The President of L'Union Patriotique and of L' Association Fraternelle des Travailleurs, P. Thoby The Secretary-General of L'Union Patriotique. Victor Cauvin The communication from the penitentiary in Port-au- Prince then goes on to tell of the difficulties with the cable company as follows: 1. We were arrested on June 24 and are still in jail. 2. Only seven of us have been interrogated by the judge 3. On the 16th of July Mr. Petit, secretary of L'Associa- tion Fraternelle des Travailleurs of which Mr. P. Thoby is the president, wrote a cablegram to Mr. William Green, presi- dent of the Pan-American Federation of Labor in order to in- form him that Mr. Thoby was going to sail for New York in order to attend the 5th congress, when he was arrested, and that Haiti therefore would not be represented at said congress. The cablegram was received by All America Cable, Inc., and paid for, on the 16th, but the company returned it to the sender on the 21st of July with a letter saying that the Haitian Gov- ernment had forbidden the sending of the cable. That's the gag! And Haiti is so prevented from being heard in the States. On the 22nd of July we asked one of our friends outside, the same Mr. Petit, to cable to Mr. Green. The cablegram read as follows: "Read editorial The Nation of Julv 20th. Take action in favor of jailed members." All America Cable accepted the cablegram, but asked the sender to write "Take defense," instead of "Take action." I wish you might investigate the case, asking All America Cable. Inc., (New York Office) what they know about that thing and urging them to explain if there was any state of war that justifies such a censorship not only against us but against such a personage as Green, who has a right, I suppose to be notified as to the reasons why a delegate to the congress he is presiding over cannot attend thereto. What means the changing of words and what if the cable- gram was coded? The censorship is against you, The Nation, against any American paper and organization, and that is an unbelievable thing. Please communicate the fact to an American daily that may take up the matter with All America Cable and let the American public know how the Haitian people is forbidden to cry when it is being crushed.

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The Nation FOUNDED 1865 Vol. CXXV NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 24, 1927 No. 3242 Contents EDITORIAL PARAGRAPHS 169 EDITORIALS: What Happened Autrust 2 ? ■ J; \ •'A Decent Reaped to the Opinions of Mankind IU The New South 17;! WORLD OPINION ON SACCO AND VANZETTI 171 NATION READERS ON SACCO AND VANZETTI 17r> INDIANA'S ANTI-SALOON LEAGUE GOES TO JAIL. By Louis Francis Budenz 1 '" GUY LOWELL. By Talbot Faulkner Hamlin 178 RE-DISCOVERING THE PACIFIC OCEAN. By Edward H. Hume.... 179 IN THE DRIFTWAY. By the Drifter 180 ' CORRESPONDENCE isl BOOKS: With the Gods. By Witter Bynner 1*- General Dickman Views the War. By Oswald Garrison Villard.... 182 A Dapper Little Man. By George Genzmer 182 Healthy Sensuousness. By Johan Smertenko 18:! Justice to the Pharisees. By Shirley Jackson Case 183 A Man Without a Country. By Walter Vogdes 181 Builder of the Empire. By Carleton Beals 184 Books in Brief 1So INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS SECTION: Free State and Republican Ireland. By R. M. Fox 18(> 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. THE NATION is on file in most public and college libraries and is indexed in the Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature. WE HEREBY AWARD the gold cup for the most im- pudent public utterance for the current month to Representative Albert Johnson of Washington. He won all three legs to the trophy by his bullyragging lecture to aliens threatening them with refusal of citizenship and even deportation for demonstrations in favor of Sacco and Vanzetti. Mr. Johnson has long been known as an extreme immigration restrictionist. He is entitled to his opinions in that regard, but he is not entitled to instruct aliens in this country how to conduct themselves, especially when he distorts law and fact in so doing. An alien has the same right of criticism as a citizen, and is likely to make a poor American unless he exercises it. A peaceable pro- test whether by strike or otherwise, in behalf of the lives of two fellow humans whom he believes to be innocent, does not make an alien liable to deportation, Mr. Johnson to the contrary notwithstanding, nor is it what the latter describes as an "anti-government demonstration." Mr. Johnson is also wrong when he says that had Sacco and Vanzetti been murdered by Americans our government, would have had to pay Italy large damages. Did he ever hear of the New Orleans lynchings for which we paid Italy exactly nothing? Finally he says he hopes for legis- lation shortly making citizenship revocable. Maybe. The possibility for fool laws is always pretty near unlimited, but we doubt if a majority in Congress can be obtained for any such welching shell game for all of Mr. Johnson's will- ing and expert assistance. FROM A PROFESSOR in a Southern university, whose forbears were American through and through, comes the following illuminating letter: I wish to say also that some of us here are much be- wildered by the turn of events in Massachusetts. I, for one, dislike extremely to be forced definitely to doubt the honesty of public officials and college presidents, but unless I dis- credit my reason and the only near-complete and straight- forward statement of the case which has been available, namely, Frankfurter's "Case of Sacco and Vanzetti," I am forced to believe that there is something extremely rotten in the State of Massachusetts. The frequency of mob and legal murders in the South has not dulled my interest in such affairs. It is a great pity that the Governor of Massachusetts has not sense enough to see that, in a case where there is real doubt, the line of action which he has taken is provoking honest people seriously to doubt the pos- sibility of justice from our government under its present organization. This from a man in cloistered shades who has nothing of the "red" about him. He is, we are sure, but typical of untold Americans who will feel similarly if vengeance has its ruthless way in Massachusetts. ONE TRAGI-COMIC INCIDENT marked the tenseness of the week which saw armed policemen at every turn in New York on the look-out for bomb-throwers. Two of them saw a man running with a revolver in his hand. At once they suspected a dangerous "red." They ran him down, leaped upon him, knocked him out, and beat him up in most approved police style, fracturing his skull with neatness and dispatch, before the man could give any account of himself, or explain what he was about. Then, having rendered him senseless, they proceeded to search him and found — not anarchist literature but a police shield pinned to his vest! He was a plain-clothes policeman who was himself chasing a man who, he thought, was acting sus- piciously. The case is highly illuminating of American police methods. Beat your man up first and examine him afterward. Well, this time the police got a taste of it them- selves and not as usual some citizen in full exercise of his rights of peaceful picketing, or striking, or of peaceable assembly. We wish with all our hearts that the unnecessary suffering of their comrade might bring about in the police of the metropolis a new method and a wiser one of dealing with "suspicious" men. NOW IS rHE TIME for President Coolidge to make clear, emphatically and decisively, the views of the Administration on our naval policy. With the sad failure at Geneva still fresh in mind, the policy adopted by the United States will be of utmost significance and far-reaching effect with respect to future naval competition. So far, however, news reports from Rapid City have been anything but reas- suring. Certain reports, it is true, give the impression that Mr. Coolidge is not in favor of a cruiser building race with Great Britain. But other despatches, since the arrival of Secretary Wilbur and Senator Fess at the summer White House, say that before Congress convenes a program will be announced that will contemplate the building of twelve cruisers of the 10,000-ton type, mounting eight-inch guns.

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170 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3242 in addition to the eight already authorized, or twenty in all. Such a program would be nothing less than a bold challenge to Great Britain and Japan. Even at the Geneva Confer- ence we asked for only twelve of these big fighters— although the blustering Admiral Jones, in a wild, flag-wav- ing speech, threatened to build twenty if no agreement was reached. Is his absurd proposal to be adopted by the Ad- ministration? Are the admirals to be conceded this victory? If not, now is the time for President Coolidge to prove his consistency and thwart this propaganda for a "big navy." Regardless of who was to blame for the Geneva fiasco, Great Britain and Japan should be reassured not only of our sin- cerity in proposing a limitation of naval armaments but also of our refusal to adopt the big-navy men's policy of "rounding out our fleet" to meet what they consider an over- expanded British Navy. Now is the time to show that if ,he admirals would not be held in check at Geneva, they may at least be made to listen to reason at home. ELBERT H. GARY, of whose career we shall write at length later, was something more than a person— he was a symbol. The uncrowned king of big business, and the chief apostle of business optimism, he never made a speech without assuring his listeners that good times pre- vailed and better ones were just at hand; he had the faith of a Coue and the power to make himself believe of a Chris- tian Scientist, rolled into one. No evil thought, much less a discouraging one, ever entered his head — or left it. So his annual addresses to the Iron and Steel Institute were always the rosy barometers of a happy trade. If business went bad, contrary to his prophecy, why look ahead, be cheerful. don't knock, be a Gold Dust Twin, and all will come out right. It invariably did— for the Steel Trust, while Mr. Gary was its able and revered head. Wall Street and big business everywhere looked up to him as to a demigod, espe- cially after he beat the steel workers' strike and when he announced that a twelve-hour day and a seven-day week for workers were part of God's holy alliance and indispensa- ble to the safety and prosperity of the greatest American corporation. Later he lost his long day and his seven-day week, but his reputation and the Steel Trust still survived. So did to the end the pontifical character of .Mr. Gary's utterances and their joy-giving qualities to all who toil for great wealth in the marts of trade. IRELAND'S POLITICAL CLOUDS have by no means rolled away. We print in our International Relations Section this week an article showing why the Free State Government has become increasingly unpopular. Directly in line with this comes the news that in spite of their opposi- tion to the oath of allegiance De Valera and his Republican associates have taken their seats in the Dail— at the same time taking the oath— as the quickest way of turning the present Government out, and presumably repealing the measure which makes the oath imperative. A coalition between the De Valera party, the Laborites. and the Na- tional League group headed by Captain Redmond will result in enough votes to throw out the Government, and install Tom Johnson, the Labor Leader, as President. There re- mains outside the parliament only the extreme Sinn Fein Party, with five members, and since they have had to witness the spectacle of the De Valeraites taking the oath of allegi- ance to King George, their hostility will doubtless be directed henceforth not only at the Free State but at the Fianna Fail. Only if De Valera succeeds in severing Repub- lican Ireland from Great Britain will those at the extreme left be satisfied. ' A NOBLE GHOST from the past though happily he is a*, to this day in the flesh still noble though a ghost — " thus Henry W. Nevinson, writing in 1925 about John Dillon. If he was a ghost then, he was still more of a ghost when he died the other day. But he was a great and con- spicuous figure in the times of Parnell and Gladstone, when a single slashing attack of his could wreck a bill in Com- mons, and his voice carried far in the United States which he often visited in order to arouse public opinion on Ire- land's wrongs. He knew what it was to be called a liar and to pass the lie in public debate, to be present when men were ruthlessly shot down by British police, and how it felt to be arrested and imprisoned. For a long time he stood with Parnell and then he broke with him. During the Boer War he was unqualifiedly against his country and cheerfully risked mob violence to declare his sympathy with the Boers and his reprobation of England's conduct of the struggle. On the whole, Nevinson was right when he declared of Dillon that "no one has played a finer part in upholding the cause of Irish freedom — and of freedom for other countries than Ireland — in the past." But the tide of events long ago left John Dillon high and dry. a rather pathetic figure. If he lived to see a freedom for Ireland neither he nor Parnell in their prime could hope for. the Fenianism which he led is merely a memory, as much so as the Phenix Park murders and those great fights for the little home rule for which Gladstone battled and for which the Great Commoner was shunned and hated. It is to be hoped, however, that the Ireland of today will cherish John Dillon's memory as it should. A FIGHT FOR the "open door" in news dissemination is to be made at the International Press Conference opening at Geneva under the League of Nations on August 24. The meeting will be attended by representatives from both independent and "official" news agencies, from gov- ernment propaganda bureaus, and from individual news- papers. At a conference at Geneva last year of representa- tives of news agencies Roy W. Howard, in behalf of the United Press, obtained the passage of a resolution oppos- ing the granting of special or exclusive privileges in connection with the receipt or transmission of government news. It is understood that an effort will be made at the present meeting, where the opponents of the "open door" predominate, to make a contrary or modifying declaration. In this connection it is important to recall that since last year the Associated Press has lined up with the "official" news agencies such as Reuter's, Havas, and Wolff. At a secret meeting of these agencies in Warsaw recently, as noted in our issue of June 15 (page 656), the Associated Press applied for and was received into membership. In these days of doctored news and official propaganda it is of the utmost importance that American newspapers shall not be dependent upon news-gathering organizations which receive government favors and thus are obligated to or controlled by such powers. WRITING ON THE RELATIONS of the United States and Germany in the Haniburger Nachrichtcr, after a visit to this country. Professor G. A. Rein of the University

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Aug. 24, 1927] The Nation 171 of Hamburg describes with great feeling the hostile anti- German movies he everywhere encountered here. They still portray the Germans as the essence of "cowardice, treachery, lying, brutality, coarseness, dishonor, and criminality." As long as this propaganda lasts, he thinks, there can be no talk of any real peace between the two countries. Indeed, Professor Rein declares that the embers of hatred between Germany and her former enemies still smoulder everywhere and are kept alive by this revival of war-hatreds portrayed in the films. He admits that the idea of reprisals persists with him and that he thinks it would only be just and conse- quential if the Germans should put on films savagely por- traying American weaknesses. Only in this way, he feels. can public attention in America be aroused to the injustices of the American movies. We doubt if he is right. Much as we deplore the movies which he denounces, we believe that reprisals would only increase the ill-will on both sides. Hate, unfortunately, only creates more hate. But what pictures of us hostile producers could make! IF TEACHERS can ever be envied, envy must go to Paul Rauschenbush, John M. Gaus, Laurence J. Saunders, and others recently appointed to positions on the staff of the new- Experimental College of the University of Wisconsin. We have already commented on this institution, designed by Alexander Meiklejohn and now to be headed by him, but we are once more excited by a statement of its aims given by Glenn Frank, president of the University of Wisconsin. There is to be very little lecturing and reciting; the groups will be small and informal; the procedure will be largely by discussion in which both instructors and students take part. And there will be no "subjects" to "take." That is to say, instead of studying the various sciences, economics, history, literature, psychology, and the like as if they were separate and distinct things the students will, figuratively speaking, put coherent episodes of civilization upon the table, dissect them, see what forces animated them. ... In this process the students will reach out into all the separate fields of subject-matter usually taught in colleges for whatever light they need to have thrown upon the episode in question in order to understand it. This will be fun, though it will also be hard, and the temp- tations to talk rather than think will be always in the way. THE DEATH OF MRS. GORDON NORRIE removes one of the most public-spirited and progressive women in New York City. Of high social position and liberal means, her heart was attuned to every call from those who believe that the battle for liberty today is a struggle for the retention of the rights for which the founders of the republic stood. Her house, her means, her time were most generously given to all liberal causes. But two movements, those of the Progressive Party and the prohibitionists, ap- pealed to her most. Were all prohibitionists of Mrs. Norrie's sincerity and principle, the cause of temperance would stand very differently in this country. As for the organization of Progressive Women in New York City, Mrs. Norrie was the moving spirit in it from the inception of the La Follette campaign to the final relinquishing of the work. Her judgment, her sanity, her wisdom, made her leadership of profound value to the campaign. For The Nation Mrs. Norrie's death is a severe blow because she was a highly valued and beloved member of its board of directors. What Happened August 2? BY what is perhaps merely an extraordinary coinci- dence it now appears that there may have been some connection between President Coolidge's announcement of his unwillingness to run again for President and Gov- ernor Fuller's decision in regard to Sacco and Vanzetti. We shall let the great New York dailies tell the story. On August 3 the Times had this to say : Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti will not die in the electric chair on the date set. Neither will they be pardoned. Further reprieve pending steps by the Massa- chusetts legislature looking to a new trial was indicated at the State House today as the solution of the historic case of the Italian radicals, which Governor Fuller will place before the Executive Council when it meets to- morrow. Netv and overwhelming eleventh-hour evidence is the only factor likely to change the plan for a further re- prieve and an appeal to the legislature for a new trial. [The italics are ours.] The New York Times had not been a strong champion of the two Italian radicals in their fight for life. Neither — to put it mildly — had the Herald Tribune; yet the lat- ter printed substantially the same prediction on August 3, and added: The Governor's decision is already made, and he seemed to be in a comfortable frame of mind at the executive offices this afternoon. This encouraged sup- porters of Sacco and Vanzetti, who argued that it would be difficult for a man to smile who had just decided to send two men to their death. The New York World published the same sort of account. No one connected with the case will ever forget the dreadful hours of Wednesday, August 3. With a prophecy that the Governor would order a reprieve or a pardon before their eyes, anxious watchers saw the hours go by with no word from His Excellency. And at 11:30 at night, when the word finally came, with what sinking of the heart was it heard and pondered. The papers of August 4 carried it in streamers along the front page: "Sacco and Vanzetti Doomed to Die" — "Sacco and Van- zetti Must Die, Says Fuller" — "Sacco and Vanzetti Guilty, Says Fuller, and Must Die" — thus the Herald Tribune, the World, the Times. And on August 5, the Times added an interesting item to the record: The decision, announced late last night, stirred certain important men in Boston to private discussion of the case. These men, it may be stated on excellent authority, were taken into the Governor's confidence. They are declaring emphatically tonight that the Governor gave them every indication that he would pardon Sacco and Vanzetti or extend clemency to them. One of these men is a former high State officer. . . . The apparent last-minute finding of Governor Fuller came as a shock to those who thought they were aware of his intentions. They put the change in the Governor's decision as apparently made between 3 P. M. Tuesday and that midnight. Between 3 P. M. and midnight Tuesday President Coolidge uttered the memorable words : "I do not choose to run for President in nineteen twenty-eight." Could it be that Governor Fuller changed his mind upon learning the President's decision? We hesitate to believe anything so dreadful could be so, but the public is entitled to know the curious coincidence in regard to the two sets of facts.

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172 The Nation [Vol. 125, Xo. 3242 "A Decent Respect to the Opinions of Mankind" EVERY day that has passed since Governor Fuller's deci- sion and the report of the Lowell committee has a tremendous outpouring of protests from all the world, demanding that Sacco and Vanzetti be not executed. As we pointed out last week, nothing like it has ever come out of the rive continents, and it does not wane but waxes. More than that, every shade of public opinion is represented. Ramsay MacDonald as the spokesman for all of British Labor has publicly said: "All friends of America pray that there will be no execution." At the other extreme the con- servative London Times declares that the reprieve "again must intensify feeling widely prevalent all over the world, whether the condemned men are guilty or not, that the pro- longed suffering which they have undergone during seven years under the sentence of death makes them fit objects for pity." Nothing more astounding than the unanimity of the ultra-reactionary Paris press on behalf of this pair of anarchists has come to our knowledge in the last thirty years. Elsewhere we print a collection of excerpts from the European press. If it was ever true that contemporary foreign opinion is often the opinion of history in the land affected this would seem to promise a case in point. Why should not Governor Fuller pay "a decent respect to the opinions of mankind" and commute or pardon these men? We ourselves do not waver in our belief in the exist- ence of so reasonable a doubt as to their guilt as to make their proposed execution itself partake of the nature of a monstrous crime. But for the sake of the argument we shall assume that they are guilty of a particularly cold- blooded highway robbery accompanied by cowardly and wicked murder. We still feel that Governor Fuller should give heed to those at home and abroad who declare that these men have already paid more than an adequate price in the torture to which they and their families have been sub- jec .ed. We are aware, of course, of the ignorant and thoughtless multitudes of well-to-do citizens all around us who are saying: "Let those damned foreigners pay atten- tion to their own affairs. We can take care of our criminals and will be thankful if the press of Europe will kindly mind its own business." Unfortunately for those who speak thus, appeals for justice refuse to stay within the boundaries of any one nation. We are quite aware that justice is some- times blind in England, and there are doubtless grave mis- carriages in the courts of France. We know that the places of exile and the prisons of Italy are full of innocent men. punished solely for their opinions, by the very despot who has appealed for Sacco and Vanzetti. We are aware that every nation is eager to see the motes in the eyes of others and to overlook its own beams. None the less we still ask for a "decent respect" to this unparalleled outpouring of foreign sentiment. Americans should be the last to protest against foreign opinions upon a domestic affair. What country was it that sent a warship to bring to this country Louis Kossuth, the man who was trying to overthrow the government of his native land by force of arms? vVhat country was it that welcomed Garibaldi? If it be declared that these are not similar cases because those were political revolutionists, in what country was there a tremendous outpouring of public opinion in the Dreyfus case? Was not the American press united in demanding a new trial for Dreyfus? Then there is an American citizen who still lives in the city of W. ington, John Hays Hammond. He was legally condemned to death for his efforts to overthrow the government of the Transvaal. Was it not an outpouring of American. English and Continental sentiment which made possible the release from prison of this reprehensible American who set out to make private war upon a friendly country? — he, by the way, was one of the first to congratulate Governor Fuller on his decision against Sacco and Vanzetti ! We could pile up cases, but these will suffice. The truth is that no nation is strong enough or righteous enough to defy an aroused inter- national public sentiment. The whole world knows that, whatever the guilt of Sacco and Vanzetti, the judicial system of MassachiiM has been irrevocably found guilty. It is guilty of a pro- cedure that is a disgrace to a civilized state — that has made it possible for these men to live in jeopardy of the electric chair when only a single judge, and he accused by the Lowell committee of grave indiscretions, has passed upon the evidence in the case. But the indictment of the judicial system of Massachusetts carries further than that. No one can deny that these men have lain under the shadow of death for seven years. It makes no difference what per- centage of the responsibility for those delays is due to the defense and what to the prosecution. The damning fact is there ; everybody who has read of the case knows it. Every intelligent European is aware, moreover, that this could happen in no civilized country save the United States. More than that, in Europe they can read as well as in America, They read, for instance, that a paper like the Springfield Republican, not an anarchist sheet but a journal esteemed for generations because of its liberalism and its ability, is urging the Governor of Massachusetts to com- mute the sentence of Sacco and Vanzetti to life imprison- ment, not because it believes that they are innocent, but in order "that the discovery of new evidence later on might find the defendants still above ground and in a position to profit by a turn of events conceivably favorable to them." It dwells upon the "grave breach of official decorum" of which the Lowell committee found Judge Thayer guilty, and it declares that the accused men "should not be put to death unless the official conduct of the judge who presided at their trial was beyond rebuke, above reproach." It returns to the question of the bullet testimony and finds that Judge Thayer's charge gave a misleading color to that testimony and that the Lowell committee in no wise cleared up this point. "One familiar with the testimony in this case," it concludes, "could raise point after point in the advisory committee's report, around which controversy might range. The committee has by no means quieted all doubts." When this editorial is read in Europe we venture to say overseas commentators will declare that the Springfield Republican furnishes conclusive evidence that the men should have a new trial before a new judge in a different atmosphere in order that no man may question hereafter the fairness of the procedure. To Europeans accustomed to high standards in their judicial life, it seems incredible that there should be any judge worthy of the name who could consider it judicial decorum to talk to his club associates about what

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Aug. 24, 1927] The Nation 173 he had done and was going to to to the "anarchist bastards" — his words — who were on trial in his court. Blindest of all are those citizens of that once-honored Bay State who say that these men must die to uphold the prestige and power of the courts. Those who are pressing for the death of these criminals must not delude themselves. The courts will not be exalted but degraded if these men are executed while a single reasonable doubt exists, as long as multitudes remain unconvinced that justice has been done. It will be everywhere believed that these men have been sacrificed to bolster up an indefensible legal procedure; that the State is not big enough and generous enough to admit that it has done wrong; that it is covering up its tracks by sacrificing a couple of penniless radical workmen. It will be held that its defiance of the world is the defiance of a conscious wrong-doing. Least of all will execution end the case. Everywhere in Boston clubs they are crying out: "Let us have it over with!" But the last thing that will end the case will be an act which seems to millions judicial murder. Done with it? Nothing in the world will so keep it alive as the execution of these two men. If Sacco and Vanzetti are executed, not only will execrations be heaped upon Massachusetts, but as long as any member of the present generation lives there will be voices to cry out against what people everywhere consider not merely an attack upon two men but upon a class. Clemency after the findings of the court are upheld would have a tremendously soothing effect upon great masses of people. We are aware, of course, that the ex- tremists are claiming that the reprieve was achieved by their agitation, and that they will take credit for any act of clemency to which Governor Fuller may be moved. But the bulk of the people would know perfectly well there was no truth in that. The Governor himself could make it per- fectly clear in any memorandum which he might write. That risk is slight. Our domestic peace and good will are at stake — the prestige of America all over the world and the question whether the faith of multitudes in American courts and American governments shall or shall not be shaken. Is justice ever injured when it is tempered with mercy? "Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord." States everywhere arrogate to themselves the right to do the very act of killing for which they condemn others, and they call it not venge- ance but just retribution, a fair warning, a deterrent, an example. For no other purpose has this power been placed in the hands of the State by the people from whom alone the governors of any nation can obtain it. When that power is misused as, for instance, in those nations where it is being utilized to maintain a government in power, it becomes the grossest breach of trust and invariably leads to the undoing of those responsible. Let the Ameri- can people believe that this power is being abused for the support of one class or group and there will be an immediate upheaval. Massachusetts today stands accused by millions of seeking vengeance, a bitter, vindictive ven- geance; of using the force which it possesses to defy everywhere a public opinion never before equalled. Let it beware. Vengeance has taken its toll of humble men be- fore this and they have lived eternally. So we appeal once more to the Governor of Massachusetts to grant that clemency which ministers and public men all over Europe are asking. No one can question that such an act would exalt the American name and American righteousness wherever the news could travel. The New South IS the South turning away from violence — from mob pun- ishment with the shotgun and the rope to the law? There are hopeful signs that it is in spite of the contrary influence of the Ku Klux Klan. For the first six months of this year, according to the records of the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute, there was not a single lynching in Virginia, the Carolinas, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Tennes- see, or Kentucky. There were but nine lynchings in the entire South. The records of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People differ slightly, attribut- ing one lynching each to Florida and Tennessee, but the National Association agrees on a total of nine for the first six months of 1927 against its figure of thirty for the entire year 1926. The record is especially encouraging in regard to Georgia, South Carolina, and Tennessee, for the National Association recorded three lynchings each in Georgia and South Carolina in 1926 and two in Tennessee. It is true that one must set against this decline in lynchings the outbreak in some parts of the South of another kind of violence — floggings. These are almost en- tirely the work of the Klan and are directed against a dif- ferent kind of victim from that sought by lynching mobs. In recent years lynching in the South has been largely directed against Negro men for alleged offenses such as murder and rape. The Klan flogging mobs, on the other hand, have drawn no color line and have whipped women and youths as well as grown men. The reason has com- monly been some comparatively slight offense, such as vio- lation of the prohibition laws. But floggings are not going unpunished either. Gov- ernor Hardman, of Georgia, let it be known when he took office a couple of months ago that he would not tolerate the Klan's lawless efforts to discipline its neighbors, and the State has proceeded so vigorously against floggers as to halt that pastime. In Alabama the outlook until lately seemed less hopeful, as the political grip of the Klan there is tight. Governor Graves is the grand cyclops of the Klan in Mont- gomery and Attorney General McCall is the kloncillor of the klavern. When, therefore, action was begun against the mob that whipped Mrs. Bertha A. Slay, knowing ones winked slyly and assumed the proceedings to be a bit of hypocritical window-dressing intended to placate the anti- flogging sentiment, and destined to end without punish- ment of the floggers. But thanks in no small degree to the vigorous campaign of Victor Hanson's Birmingham News and Age-Hi raid and his Montgomery Advertiser, a strong sentiment has been aroused in the State against flogging which the Governor and the Attorney General have either come to share or to which they have had to bow. The case against Mrs. Slay's attackers was pressed with vigor and ended in the punishment of three men and two women by fines of from $100 to $25. This, though light punishment, was a vindication of the law, and it was followed by far more drastic action against the floggers of a nineteen-year- old orphan, Jeff Calloway. Two of his attackers have been sentenced to jail terms of eight to ten years while five others have been fined and sent to prison for six months. From time to time The Nation has had to use harsh words in regard to mob violence in the South. It takes extra pleasure, therefore, in pointing to signs of a better public sentiment.

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174 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3242 World Opinion on Sacco and Vanzetti NO MORE striking evidence of the international charac- ter of the Sacco and Vanzetti case can be presented than appears in the editorial columns of foreign news- papers and periodicals. Conservative and liberal journals alike unite in featuring the news of the case. By actual count twelve leading Paris, newspapers on August 5 de- voted four times as much space to the Sacco and Vanzetti case as to the break-up of the Geneva Conference. And the ..editorials show a remarkable unanimity of opinion: that something is radically wrong with United States jus- tice. We quote below the more significant statements. The London Times (August 11) : A postponement once again must intensify feeling widely prevalent all over the world, whether the condemned men are guilty or not, that the prolonged suffering which they have undergone during seven years under the sentence of death makes them fit objects of pity. The London Spectator, a conservative weekly, (August 13), waiving the question of the men's guilt, hopes that they will be reprieved because that would be best, not only for peace but for the credit of the United States. Certain facts make us feel that justice in the strict sense of the word would be truly served either by the release of the prisoners or by a further term of imprisonment, the greater part of which might be taken as having been already satisfied by the six years under which the prisonors have lain under sen- tence of death. The London Outlook, mildly liberal, (August 13) comments: In themselves Sacco and Vanzetti are obscure and without any political importance. But they have become a symbol to millions of people throughout the world as victims of the "capitalist" system of justice, which has cae law for the poor and another for the rich. The case has intensified class antagonism throughout the world. It is difficult to judge the case on its merits, but there is no question that there is something radically wrong with American administration of law. The London Daily News, (August 11) : No one whatever ought to be treated as these men, whatever they have done. Surely there must be some one in America, President Coolidge or another, capable of quietly making effective this obvious truth. The question now is whether that is enough or whether patriotic Americans can suffer longer a criminal system so rigid and stiff in its pedantry and in its tender mercies worse than the excesses of barbarism. The Liverpool Post in an editorial said (August 9) : "'The original trial from start to finish was a travesty of judicial procedure. It was so understood among most of the European peoples and we can readily believe it was so understood in America as a whole." The Paris Journal des Debats (conservative) August 4: The decision of Governor Fuller has caused profound surprise and real regret in France. We still believe that there is strong reason to consider these two men innocent of the crime with which they are charged and for which they have already suffered such cruel punishment. Our opinion is shared by men and newspapers of very different sympathies and parties. Even if reasons of equity did not exist, we had hoped that the sentiment of pity would at least inspire the man who held in his hands the fate of these two condemned men. One can say only that it is with astonishment that we learned his decision, and that in making it he has assumed a heavy moral responsibility. The same paper on August 11 : If this was not a serious matter one would be tempted to describe it as cinematographic justice. Right to the end it has shown an extraordinary mixture of melodrama such as would have been accounted all but impossible if recounted in fiction. But the matter is serious from many points of view. One must be entirely without heart not to be moved by the torture of constant uncertainty inflicted upon these two men. Even if Sacco and Vanzetti are guilty, they cannot now be executed without the suspicion persisting of a great injustice having been done. In every country all over the world it is the hope and wish of all men of ordinary humanity that they should now be spared. The Temps, (conservative), Paris (August 7): We wish to see the lives of these men spared, whether they are innocent or guilty, because we think that they have suffered enough in these seven years of nightmare. But we do not wish to go further than that. Human life should always be respected, but so also should the justice of a free people. We do not wish that today's manifestations should be otherwise interpreted by the American people than as being perfectly respectful to American justice. Liberte, Paris (Nationalist), August 11: The burial of this deplorable business would be cer- tainly better from every point of view than the burial of the two victims. The symbolic torch which the Statue of Liberty carries in her hand must not be replaced by two half-scorched scarecrows. The Quotidien (Herriot's paper) says the execution would be a crime against humanity. "If Sacco and Vanzetti are executed with them will be buried American justice. We still hope for pity, for humaneness.'* The Berlin Montagspost publishes a symposium of the views of about a dozen prominent judges and criminal lawyers, to all of whom the seven-year delay in the case seems an inexplicable flaw in American judicial methods. All ex- press the belief that the execution ought not be carried out, and it is pointed out that during the last four years 85 per cent of the death sentences in Germany have been commuted. Dr. Eberhardt Schmidt, professor of criminal law at Kiel University, writes: "I am opposed to the death penalty on principle, but apart from that I consider that Sacco and Vanzetti should be pardoned because the death sentence is seven years old." — New York World, August 9.

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Aug. 24, 1927] The Nation 175 Nation Readers on Sacco and Vanzetti The Mark of Cain To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: With millions throughout the world this morning, I thank whatever gods there be that I have not, for the time br- ing, the mark of Cain on my forehead. But to escape that dis- honor all who believe either in the innocence of Sacco and Vanzetti or in the fact that, innocent or guilty, they are today symbols of freedom of speech and of political and economic agitation, must not relax their efforts to have them freed. It is this fact that raises, or should raise, the matter above all legal quibbles and sophistries. The case does not concern Massachusetts alone, It is the United States that will have to bear the odium throughout the world of having put men to death for being agitators along political and industrial lines. No one, least of all those who believe in the existing order, can afford to have this growing world-wide belief confirmed by the execution of these men. In themselves they are insignificant and in their opinions absurd or quixotic. It is the principle involved that has made the case significant, and that makes the ultimate decision momentous. Neiv York, August 11 Benjamin Macmahon Would Indict Massachusetts [By Telegraph] To the Editor of The Nation: IF SACCO VANZETTI EXECUTED I URGE BOSTON COMMITTEE SUMMON GRAND JURY OF LIBERAL CITIZENS BRING FORMAL INDICTMENT AGAINST COMMONWEALTH OF MASSACHUSETTS FOR FIRST DEGREE MURDER JUDGES SHOULD BE APPOINTED JURY IMPANELLED IN REGULAR FORM COMPLETE TRIAL HELD SUMMONING ALL WITNESSES OF BOTH DEFENSE AND PROSECUTION INCLUDING JUDGE THAYER AND GOVERNOR FULLER THOSE WHO FAIL TO ATTEND SHOULD BE REPRESENTED BY PROXY EVEN MORE IMPORTANT THAN SAVING LIVES OF TWO RADICALS IS NECESSITY OF EDUCATING AMERICAN PEOPLE TO NATURE OF THE FRAMEUP NOW AN ESTABLISHED FEATURE OF AMERICAN POLICE SYSTEM I BELIEVE THIS PROPOSED TRIAL WOULD BE WIDELY REPORTED. Long Beach, California, August 12 Upton Sinclair Captain Proctor's Testimony To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: The testimony of Captain Proctor as Commonwealth's expert was brought before the Supreme Court for review upon the fifth supplementary motion for new trial on the ground of newly discovered evidence, which motion had first to be passed upon by Judge Thayer and the granting of which was discre- tionary with him. The Supreme Court thus had an extremely restricted question submitted to them. This was error on the part of defense's attorneys — or rather mistake of tactics. The proper ground on which to base the motion on that ground was mistake of law important enough to be prejudicial in the origi- nal admission of Proctor's opinion at all. The reasoning is as follows : Proctor stated he had an opinion and that it was "consistent with" the conclusion that the bullet in evidence had come through Sacco's Colt automatic — i.e., that it might have come through it, to use common talk. Such an answer would have been inadmissible if given by an non-expert witness. It was only admissible from Proctor because he was an expert and his expert opinion was supposed to be a fact, while an ordinary man's conclusion is excluded because it is the duty and province of the jury to draw their own conclusions and not adopt others'. But an expert's opinion that a result might have occurred or a thing might have happened is not an expert opinion (legally considered) except as it be taken as signifying that some signs or items of evidence, factors, and elements for a basis of posi- tive judgment, one way or the other, were present in his mind when testifying, and considered by him as affording some ground for belief however faint that the bullet had actually so tra- versed the pistol of Sacco. Otherwise, for a witness to say that a 32-caliber bullet might have been shot from a 32-caliber re- volver is nothing but a statement of obvious fact and has noth- ing expert about it. The fact that an important expert wit- ness so testifies necessarily implies as much; just as when an important medical diagnostician says "The man may be suffer- ing from cancer" it means naturally that to him there is at least a faint ground for positive belief that he is actually so diseased, while the same remark from a layman would mean only a guess or an obvious fact. But Proctor's subsequent affidavit clearly establishes the fact that there were no such signs observable to him whatever. It therefore transpires that there was no expert "opinion" at all, nor were there any grounds for it, as his detailed affidavit expressly denies all of them. So his answer was inadmissible as matter of law and the admission was clearly a mistake of law which only transpired by the affidavit. Was it a material error? I don't know without reading the whole record, but in view of Proctor's office as police head and his function as State expert, I should think it was a material and very prejudicial error. Was the defense bound by failing to object and except at the trial to this evidence? I think not, because the expert had a right to say he had an opinion and then to state it, which he did. Defense could have scrutinized and developed his grounds or absence of them for that opinion, but that is a matter of tac- tics, and they were not obliged to risk doing so. Therefore they are not now precluded from taking advantage of this mis- take of law, which only transpired through the later affidavit of Captain Proctor. Minneapolis, August 11 Homer Morris The Pope's Position To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: The Pope's refusal to consider the plea relative to the renowned Sacco-Vanzetti case, will unquestionably instigate con- siderable controversy, not only in religious circles but among the general public as well. While the Pope might "not see how any appeal was pos- sible since the men had already been condemned," nevertheless it is obvious that he does not feel disposed to interfere. True, he might not be able to render material aid, but if any state- ment was forthcoming, would it not have been wiser if the Vatican had issued a statement deploring its inability to aid Sacco and Vanzetti — a statement that would clarify the futility of capital punishment as seen through the eyes of Rome, instead of this terse and very unsympathetic message. I am a Catholic myself, and I know that I am expressing the sentiments of many more, irrespective of their creed, in disapproving of the statement which very recently emanated from Rome. We are all entitled to our personal convictions and mine is: Since the Pope is the mortal representative of Christ, why does he not try to do what Christ would do? New York, August 11 James P. Healy

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176 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3242 An Open Letter to President Lowell To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: I am asking the courtesy of your columns for the enclosed open letter to President Lowell of Harvard that no publication in Boston seems willing to publish. Boston, August 9 JOHN DOS Passos As a graduate of Harvard University I feel that I have the right to protest against the participation of the presi- dent of that university in the report on the Sacco-Vanzetti case presented to Governor Fuller by his advisory commit- tee. I feel that you have put your name and indirectly the name of the university you represent to an infamous document. This is no time for mincing words. You have made yourself a party to a judicial murder that will call down on its perpetrators the execration of the civilized world. What it means is that you are allowing a Massa- chusetts politician to use the name of Harvard to cover his own bias and to whitewash all the dirty business of the arrest of these men at the time of the anarchist raids and their subsequent slow torture by the spiteful and soulless mechanism of the law. They have probably told you that this was a mere local decision on a Boston murder case. but to any man with enough intelligence to read the daily papers it must be clear that somehow it has ceased being iston murder case. Sacco and Vanzetti starving in their cells in the death house and the authorities of the State of Massachusetts building the electric chair in which to burn them to death have become huge symbols on the stage of the world. The part into wrhich you have forced Harvard University will make many a man ashamed of being one of its graduates. Many of us who have watched the case for years felt that your appointment as a member of the committee assured at least a modicum of fair play and oi historical perspective in the conduct of the investigation. This hope was pretty well shattered when it was announced that the investigation was to be carried on behind closed doors. If there was nothing to hide, why the secrecy? Since when have star chamber proceedings been part of the American judicial system? The published report has confirmed our worst fore- bodings. With inconceivable levity you counsel the electro- cution of two men because it "seems" to you that the enormous mass of evidence piled up by the defense in seven years' heartbreaking work should lie dismissed, like the rent in the lining of the cap that you wrongly assert lifted Sacco. as so trifling a matter in the evidence of the case that it seems to the committee by no means a ground for a new trial. Did the committee feel that the prosecu- tion's case was so weak that they had to bolster it by fresh deductions and surmises of their own? The report in its entirety is an apology for the con- duet of the trial rather than an impartial investigation. Reading it, the suspicion grows paragraph by paragraph that its aim was not to review but to make respectable the proceedings of Judge Thayer and the District At- torney's office. Not in a single phrase is there an inkling of a sense on your part or on that of your colleagii' the importance of the social and racial backgrounds of the trial. Your loose use of the words "socialistic" and "communistic" prove that you are ignorant or careless of the differences in mentality involved in partisanship in the various schools of revolutionary thought. This is a matter of life and death, not only for Sacco and Vanzetti but for the civilization that Harvard Univer- sity is supposed to represent. The Saeeo-Yanzetti has become part of the world struggle between the capital- ist class and the working class, between those who have power and those who are struggling to get it. In a in high office ignorance of the new sprouting forces that are remaking society, whether he is with them or against them, is little short of criminal. It is inconceivable that intelligent reading men can be ignorant in this day of the outlines of .anarchist philosophy. Instead of crying igno- rance it would be franker to admit that as anarchists and agitators you hate these men and disapprove of their ideas and methods. But are you going to sacrifice the integrity of the legal system to that feeling? Are you going to prove by a bloody reprisal that the radical contention that a man holding unpopular ideas cannot get a free trial in our courts is true? I cannot feel that either you or your colleagues have understood the full purport of your decision. If you had you would certainly have made out a more careful case for yourselves, one less full of loopholes and contradic- tions. It is upon men of your class and position that will rest the inevitable decision as to whether the coming struggle for the reorganization of society shall be bloodless and fertile or inconceivably bloody and destructive. It is high time that you realized the full extent of the responsi- bility on your shoulders. As a Harvard man I want to protest most solemnly against your smirching the university of which you are an officer with the foul crime against humanity and civiliza- tion to which you have made yourself accessory. John Dos Passos, '16 Boston's State of Mind To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: Summoning the bomb squad, the State police, and the fullest emergency strength of her police force, Boston prepared to defend herself against the defenders of Sacco and Vanzetti. Public meetings and demonstrations of whatever sort were forbidden. Even so, merchants and property owners near the Common took out thousands of dollars worth of fresh insurance against riot and robbery. And those Boston citi- zens who had to face the perils of their city during the past week could relax their nervous strain only after Wednesday night was safely passed. Think of their escapes in those few days! Six Italians arrived in an automobile, armed with leaflets demanding that Sacco and Vanzetti be released. But the stalwart police arrested them before the leaflets could be exploded. A package containing the menace of one hundred seidlitz powders was intercepted, as the messenger dared to walk through the streets in broad daylight. The package was opened and examined ; then the messenger was allowed to proceed. Two men with a foreign accent said something in a pub- lic elevator about bombs and bombing. Within a few hours plain-clothes men had traced them to their union headquarters, arrested them during a conference with an employers' com- mittee and finger-printed and quizzed them with no inefficient delay for the formalities of a warrant. Perhaps bravest of all were the heroic employers who dis- charged at once workers who endangered the safety of the Commonwealth by carrying before the State House — in defiance of the police — placards declaring the innocence of Sacco and Vanzetti. Of course in Massachusetts there is a certain lese majeste in such an inscription as this: "President Lowell called Sacco's alibi witnesses liars. They proved him wrong. Now he kills Sacco. Governor Fuller asked for proof of Vanzetti's eel-selling alibi. He got it. Now he kills Vanzetti." Boston, suffering a grave relapse in its fever of prejudice, sets up an almost impenetrable wall of respectable authority. Court, commission, and Governor, contemptuous of workers and radicals, defend sacred institutions against the "mob rule" of popular protest. Even liberals who had in the past signed petitions for a new trial stand by the men of their own class and, as Bishop Lawrence wrote the other day from Bar Harbor, "feel that with the Governor's decision the matter is closed." But the case is clearly rooted in the joint persecution of radicals by federal and State authorities. Its implications touch every citizen of the United States. If Massachusetts continues too paralyzed by prejudice to save our fair name, can we not compel an investigation of the Federal Depart- ment of Justice before it is too late? Boston, August 12 Anna Rochester

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Aug. 24, 1927] The Nation 177 Indiana's Anti-Saloon League Goes to Jail By LOUIS FRANCIS BUDENZ Indianapolis, August 8 THIS is Saturday, August 6, and the honorable Supreme Court of the State of Indiana is now in session. The case of the State vs. Edward S. Shumaker is before us. It is no ordinary proceeding which has brought the five justices in funereal file onto the bench this midsummer morning. One autocracy is locked in wrathful grip with another. Shortly the name of Rev. E. S. Shumaker, D.D., head of the Indiana Anti-Saloon League, will glare at us from the front pages of the nation's newspapers, a close publicity rival to that of his fellow Hoosier celebrity, ex-Grand Dragon D. C. Stephenson. Late on the afternoon immediately preceding our pres- ent solemn session the honorable court had announced to the world that the defendant Shumaker was guilty of con- tempt. We are now met to pass sentence upon him. The spacious chamber in the State capitol is crowded, extra seats having been provided for the emergency. The faithful dowagers of the W. C. T. U. are there in force, sad-eyed but resolute, some of them weeping silently at this out- rage to a valiant leader of the "cause." Reporters from distant parts are standing as close to the bench as they dare venture, the journalistic world having awakened to the fact that Indiana is becoming a source of bizarre news. Over to the left sits the defendant — a rotund, soft- voiced, bespectacled individual, looking for all the world like Mr. Pickwick. The suave smile which usually lights up his homely features has given way to a strained air of concern. To the right is the man who has brought him to this pass — Attorney General Arthur L. Gilliom, stocky, olive-skinned, a Swiss-American hailing from the Swiss- American town of Berne, near South Bend. The viewpoint of that northern section of the State is colored more by the ideals of gay and alcoholic Chicago than by those of drab and puritanic Indianapolis. Mr. Gilliom, taking his cue therefrom, is a sworn enemy of Ku Klux Klan and Anti-Saloon League alike. Determined to grasp the scepter of the Republican Party for himself and the "liberal ele- ment," he is inclined to no halfway measures and will prob- ably go too far. The ladies of the W. C. T. U. already prophesy that this action will "cause an upheaval in In- diana," and they are a power not to be laughed to scorn. Even in the court room they carry on their missionary work; they flutter about the reporters, urging those con- firmed cynics "to be sure to vote right." Short shrift is made of the case, nevertheless. The injured court affixes a fine of $250 and sixty days at the State Farm as the penalty for Dr. Shumaker's offense. August 18 is set as the day when his attorneys may argue any motions that may be on their minds. Pending such ai-gument, he is released on $1,000 bail, quickly provided. Thus does the dictator of the second worldly-spiritual clique which has ruled Indiana with rods of iron, find himself in the hands of what is commonly called the law. That he should have come to this sad state is the oc- casion for grave surprise from Lake Michigan to the Ohio River. To be sure, incarceration of public officials and public-spirited citizens in penal institutions is a common practice in that territory. Public office has become a likely stepping-stone to the penitentiary. It is not so many years since the then mayor of Terre Haute was so confined, at about the same time that the chief of police of Indianapolis was in a similarly bad way. Warren T. McCray, immediate predecessor of the present Governor, left his office prema- turely to sojourn in the Federal penitentiary at Atlanta, where he still is. The present Marion county grand jury may take action which would speed Mr. McCray's successor along a parallel pathway, provided the statute of limita- tions does not intervene. In addition to the Stephenson charges, the Indianapolis Times now accuses Governor Jack- son (while Secretary of State) of having attempted to bribe McCray to appoint a prosecutor in Marion County favorable to the Klan, in return for a "gift" of $10,000 for McCray's defense. Though the fate of these men startles no one, with Shumaker it is different. His domination of the State has been as great as that of Stephenson, and much more firmly rooted. He has been no slack workman in the factory of the Lord. A minister of the Methodist Episcopal Church, he has devoted fully half of his sixty years of life to the bat- tle against alcoholic beverages. For twenty of these years he has occupied his present position as superintendent of the Indiana Anti-Saloon League, all of which time he has been a power in State politics. His quiet, shrewd person- ality has pervaded every line of that long series of legisla- tive acts which have made Indiana, by statute, the driest of our commonwealths. The crowning achievement of his career was the pas- sage of the so-called Wright bone-dry bill. Alcoholic bev- erages in all forms, even for medicinal purposes, came under the ban of the law. The prosecutor's fee in liquor cases was put at $25, in contrast to the $5 required for that purpose in all other actions. Common drunkenness carries with it, as a consequence, a fine of at least $40 for each offense. And "drunkenness," in practice, became a very elastic and all-embracing term. Doubtful breath odors alone have been and are possible causes for convic- tion. Searching and seizing went beyond all conceivable bounds. Doughty workers of the Women's Christian Tem- perance Union systematically intimidated the courts. Prac- tically every liquor trial in Indianapolis is still attended by an army of soldierly matrons, who troop into the court room in military formation and occupy the larger part of the space reserved for the public. In cases where the prose- cuting attorney of any county is unable or unwilling to enforce the law, the Attorney General may appoint special assistants to enforce the law in that county. They are allowed the $25 fee in case of conviction, and if the defend- ant cannot pay it within ninety days the county must pay it. Under this section of the law, the prosecuting attorney of Marion County had three young lawyers appointed, and for a time, these dynamic young men collected as high as $1,500 a month apiece out of this lucrative employment. Thirsting for further triumphs, E. S. Shumaker, D.D., this Anthony Comstock of beverages, sought an amendment to the dry law declaring the mere possession of liquor to be

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178 The Nation [Vol. 125. No. 3242 a crime. A frightened legislature obediently carried out his mandate. Through one of those defects to which even geniuses are addicted, the law as thus amended failed to include this addition in its title. Upon reaching the Su- preme Court on a test case, that body held the omission to be fatal to the act's validity. Judge Benjamin Willoughby, a determined and vindictive old man, wrote that opinion. Although this particular decision seems to follow out the practice of the State and the rulings of previous courts, this and other acts of Willoughby were made the occasion for a State-wide campaign against him, when he came up for reelection in 1924. Attacked jointly by Anti-Saloon League and Klan, he was apparently defeated by his Demo- cratic opponent, ex-Congressman Denton, of Evansville. by over 900 votes. The election authorities, however, found that he had been successful by the grand total of one vote. The Supreme Court, by divided decisions, continued to clip the talons of the anti-liquor forces. The blanket war- rant, unsworn to, which had been a prominent feature of early prohibition days here, was declared to be a violation of the Constitution. In the famous Beech Grove case and other cases, it was held that the warrant must be specific in its description of the premises to be searched. This was. necessarily, a serious restriction upon the spectacular methods employed ^y the enforcement agents and their volunteer aids up to that time. It had been the custom of these irrepressible sleuths to draw a warrant covering a whole district, which might include blocks of houses, indus- trial establishments, and small businesses. Armed with such sanction, these mighty arms of the law might roam about, searching and seizing at will. The court's heretical differences with the forces of righteousness produced the inevitable reverberation. In his 1925 report to his league, Shumaker not only took Attorney General Gilliom to task for lack of zeal in liquor prosecu- tions but also paid his compliments to the judges, includ- ing Willoughby in particular. He ended with the hope that the next election "will give us a court which will be dry and not wet." The Attorney General, however, was not prepared to eat humble pie. He was the only candidate on the Re- publican ticket of 1924 (chosen by the Stephenson- Walb- Watson coalition) who paid open court, in the campaign and after, to the anti-Klan and "liberal" groups. Securing the Shumaker report by accident, he instituted the proceedings against the Anti-Saloon leaguer for contempt. Two at- torneys for the league were included in the Attorney General's action. The Supreme Court judges, or at least some of them, jumped at the chance to smite their foe. Six lawyers were chosen as friends of the court to look into the charges. After various delays, these gentlemen reported that the league's attorneys had purged themselves of contempt by showing that they were not guilty of the report's author- ship. Shumaker was held to have injured the court's dig- nity and respect, and therefore to have made himself liable to punishment. By a three to two vote, the court affirmed this judgment in regard to Shumaker, but likewise decided that one of his attorneys, Jess E. Martin, was equally involved and therefore equally guilty. To crush Shumaker's dictatorship, the court has gone far toward setting up one of its own. Answering Shu- maker's statement, from the report, that "our courts are the servants, not the masters of the people," the majority opinion declares that "courts in this country are subservient to the Constitution of the United States, the constitution of this State, and to the established law of the land only, and to no other earthly power." This strange and Musso- lini-like doctrine takes on an even more threatening aspect when it is known that the contempt in this instance con- sisted in "veiled threats" to defeat judges for reelection. To instruct the bewildered electorate on whom they should center their choice for elective judicial offices thereby be- comes a crime. The court's remedy appears to be worse than the disease. The rising sentiment against the Klan has probably emboldened the court to take this rash position. With meticulous care. Shumaker has kept the two organizations organically apart. In the public mind, however, they are often confused and thought to be allied. In raiding expedi- tions and other ventures, subdivisions of the two powers have frequently cooperated. Relying on an old statute which allows the Governor to swear in men as horse-thief detectives, the Klan had thousands of its members given this unusual authority. At the zenith of its strength they used this indiscriminately to suppress anything from "pet- ting parties" to suspected liquor dealers. Rum, anti-Catholi- cism, anti-Semitism, "nigger hating." and radical baiting are lumped in the mind of the man in the street as one. The Supreme Court has met the suppression of one set of liberties by the suppression of others — and Indiana is beset on all sides by intolerance. Guy Lowell Bv TALBOT FAULKNER HAMLIN PURITANISM is not the only mark of New England tra- dition; the early insistence upon education laid firmly the foundations of a respect for a culture much broader than the original ideals it was supposed to support. This movement did not die with Emerson or Thoreau; it still flowers in our own time. Guy Lowell, who died some months ago, was a remarkable example of this flowering; he represents completely both the advantages and the disadvantages such a background may bring to one who seeks creative outlet in the arts. Guy Lowell, cousin of the president of Harvard, cousin of Amy Lowell, could not help being scholarly. To him refinement of taste was no affectation; it was part and parcel of his entire being. Classicism was for such a one inevitable. It shows in every one of his works; perhaps best in the colonnade of the Fenway side of the Boston Museum, whose ranked white columns seen over the ponds and the greenery of the park have a haunting beauty, seem- ing to give pause to the smoking factory chimneys in the distance which ring Brahmin Boston with a circle of ana- chronistic noise and steel. From these white columns comes a protest passionate and beautiful against today. It is a

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Aug. 24, 1927] The Nation 179 beauty half akin to nostalgia; the incarnate longing for a less chaotic time; it embodies, probably unconsciously, that turning backward, which an intellectual culture, unattached to the present by any economic need, often produces. The same beauty shows in all his work. Its quality does not come from mere copying; for this spirit is not the spirit of the style revivalists of the early nineteenth century. The quality comes from the attempt, intense and sometimes fruitless, to create today in a language much loved but dying or dead; a language that is without a vital appeal to the mass of the beholders. This quality is not dependent upon the use of an "ancient" style, for Guy Lowell was no mere stylist. In the little library at Boscawen, New Hampshire, he produced a building in an exceedingly free Georgian or Colonial manner. It is in no sense archeological or academic; yet even here one feels the touch of a refinement, a balance, more classic than the most meticulous copy. So, too, in the white marble house at Eighty-sixth Street and Fifth Avenue in New York, there is incarnate the same delicacy of feeling, the same quality of a beauty nostalgic, slightly forced, almost decadent, impossibly aristocratic. Like the fame of its designer, it survives, a thing a little distant, haughty rather than cold, distinguished and aloof. Guy Lowell's present fame is due more to the New York Court House, so recently completed and opened. The solution embodied in the competitive drawings was mag- nificent; clear, logical, characterized by the mind of a scholar, instinct with the large simplicity of that Roman work Lowell so loved. In the change from circular to polygonal the design lost some of its quality. This was typical of the tragic side of such a temperament. For the clear unity of the circle is not in tone with modern me- chanical methods : its cost proved excessive ; before the implacable necessity of modernism, the circle hardened into a hexagon; the quality of Lowell's dream was dimmed to a compromise, inevitable in such an unequal struggle. A mind like Lowell's necessarily seeks Europe. There lay the seed of the culture he loved and expressed. During tlic war his sympathy turned at once to the Italy that was still the symbol of the classic past. No mere expression of sympathy satisfied him; he must throw into the strug- gle his whole self, and in the Red Cross on the Austrian front, he found work that satisfied and thrilled him; it was almost as if at last for the first time he found his cultural classic emotionalism and the passion of a great people wholeheartedly at one. A scholar, as well as a designer, Guy Lowell inevitably produced books. His contribution to American architec- tural literature was immensely important, though in ways he could not always have expected. Again it was love of Italy that determined his choice; and in the two volumes of Italian villas and farmhouses which he published, full of photographs thrillingly picturesque and sketches of his own of characteristic delicacy, he introduced American architects to a new vernacular. To the growing love of stucco and tile of the Spanish renaissance already existent, these books gave new life. The restraint of the Italian work was a desirable antidote to too great a baroque license, and to Lowell's books is due not a little of the skill which characterizes much of the best work in that type. Guy Lowell, perhaps, has affected American architec- ture more deeply and widely in his books than through his buildings, just as Amy Lowell may be longer remem- bered for her study of Keats — another modern in love with a classic past — than for her poetry. Like her, he had that loneliness that comes from membership in a passing ari- stocracy ; but aristocrat his every work has proved him, and his death among the stucco walls and sunny hills of a distant tropical island seems strangely symbolic; it took away the spirit of one in love with a beauty that was of another time; a fruitless love whose passion drove him further and further away from the country where he was born, the industrialism that supported him, and the clash of a vital modern world. Re-discovering the Pacific Ocean By EDWARD H. HUME Honolulu, July .10 BALBOA brought the existence of the Pacific Ocean to the attention of the Western world. William H. Seward, with vision that has proved prophetic, foresaw its importance in the century ahead as compared with the Atlantic. The Institute of Pacific Relations, which has just held its second biennial conference at Honolulu, may be said to have re-discovered the Pacific. It exists for the very purpose of facing squarely the major factors already evi- dent in that area, factors which may bring good or ill to our world according to the way they are met. Of some of the issues in that area we, as a nation, are as yet scarcely aware; others, such as immigration, Americans are inclined to believe the United States has disposed of. All of these questions are coming to the front again and must be faced. For the members who journeyed to the Institute con- ference—and let it be recalled that there were no represen- tatives present delegated by this or that national or re- gional body; those who attended were selected individuals, chosen for their knowledge or influence in some field of Pacific interest — the experience was a voyage of discovery. They came to attend, and found that they had dis- covered. The first discovery was in the realm of human rela- tions. As an Australian member put it, "It was a liberation of my mental vision to come in contact with Messrs. Koo and Yui of China, and with some of the Japanese members. I had no idea of their caliber. They impressed me tremen- dously by their use of English, their power in debate, and their ability to adjust themselves to situations that arose. Men and women from two sides of the Pacific, who had known nothing of each other, met, spoke together with the utmost frankness, and developed personal relationships that were remarkable, quite apart from reference to issues de- bated. They found, as they debated, that wherever they first appeared to differ, the areas of agreement soon proved larger than they had expected and that differences, while clear-cut, were not numerous. They found that the eco-

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180 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3242 nomic inter-dependence of the several nations in the Pacific area was amazingly real. The second discovery had to do with the nations lying west of the Pacific. China was found, as the chairman aptly said, to have "discovered the fountain of youth." The old indifference and traditionalism had disappeared and in its place was seen an aroused China, determined and confident. Every Chinese member was a living evidence of this fact. Japan was found to be almost staggering under an eco- nomic burden of the most perplexing sort. The Japanese members demonstrated beyond dispute that while popula- tion was increasing, there was no commensurate growth in the supply of raw materials and markets. Her island do- main will not expand either in size or productivity and it was soon found that this problem was not Japan's alone. Soviet Russia had been invited to send members but none were present. On many sides the hope was expressed that their viewpoint would be presented at subsequent gather- ings. Manchuria was shown, over and over again, to be a region of real and growing friction, involving all three of these nations. Russia and Japan look at each other in no great friendliness as their issues clash here; China and Japan differ widely as to the validity of the treaties signed in 1915 after the presentation of the Twenty-One Demands. Other sharp points of difference are found, for instance, in the highly developed system of law which Westerners who reside in China are accustomed to for themselves, in con- trast to the much less highly developed legal codes of the Chinese; or again, in the determination of the Chinese to recover the jurisdiction they have lost, in tariff adminis- tration, in law courts, and in foreign settlements — a de- termination which is met by the insistence of the Westerner on definiteness and safety. The very recognition of these differences led to increased determination to discover and remove the factors standing in the way of adjustment. The third discovery was of immediate and pressing needs. Here lies a vast ocean, whose distances can be crossed with increasing rapidity for the purposes of pas- senger and freight traffic, but whose scanty supply of pos- sible naval bases makes it evident at once that Pacific problems cannot be solved with the same war technique that has prevailed, hitherto, in the regions of the Atlantic. It was found that there was scarcely any international machinery for use in major Pacific issues involving seri- ous conflict. While inventions forge ahead and science daily suggests new methods for devastating warfare, the Wash- ington Conference adjourned in 1922 without providing for any further assembling of the Powers concerned, and even the League of Nations has but one small standing sub-committee to deal with friction in the Pacific. Here is an ocean crossed by migrations, some of which are checked by legislation while other streams are still active. How can these race contacts be wisely regulated? Here is a vast area in which old races are disappearing, flora and fauna changing constantly, where industrialization is rapidly al- tering old economic balances. How can the era of assump- tions and speculations in such vital matters be left behind and an era of objective research be quickly entered? These were some of the questions faced squarely at the Institute. The fourth discovery was that of the strangely re- juvenating influence of the Pacific on those who now line its shores. The United States and Canada are still young and their strength is growing. Australia and New Zealand are young, too, and feel the tingle of youth in their blood. But China, too, is revived. As a motto on a recent Chinese publication says, "The time of negation is at an end. High purposes are at hand." Near Young China stands a new Japan, increasingly liberal, increasingly conscious that in the spirit of youth she must forge forward to work out her destiny. Even the British members felt the impulse of the Pacific. They went to the round tables like schoolboys, met the Orientals squarely, faced without flinching the criti- cisms of both China and Japan and sat down with groups from each of these countries to study out how to deal with ] existing situations. At the end of the Institute conference one of the strongest of the British members asserted that outside of governmental agencies he knew of no body so significant in the field of Pacific problems nor of any that had so frankly tackled the major issues of that area. Members of the Institute leave the conference, not speaking of any success attained nor satisfied with per- sonnel and procedure in any merely optimistic spirit; but rather, deeply impressed with the magnitude of the Pacific arena and with the need for a mechanism and a spirit that shall make possible the solution of issues within that arena on a plane wholly different from any that has been known in the Old World. They believe the Institute affords at least a sane approach to the study of those issues and they look forward to a more intelligent understanding of their nature on the part of citizens in each of the Pacific coun- tries. To them the Pacific Ocean represents, not a barrier that separates, but a highway for the travel of the spirit — the spirit that shall bring fuller knowledge and the ultimate elimination of war. In the Driftway AS the Drifter has traveled about the country he has of late observed a tendency to glorify the American employee in the lower ranks of labor. No matter how un- skilled the laborer, the employers are resolving that he shall not work in obscurity. The star system has struck American labor, and no longer mute and inglorious, the humblest employee sings as he works. THE Pennsylvania Railroad, for instance, has begun to feature its shop employees on its dining car menu cards. As one sits down to dine and takes up the card, one is confronted with a nice picture on the outside with a caption underneath stating that this is J. Montague Smith, the father of four children, who lives in Altaloosa, and has worked in the shops of the Pennsylvania Railroad for thirty-seven years. These little biographies are changed off now and then, and thus a great many employees are given their day in the sun. The dining-car porter is be- ginning to emerge from obscurity, too. One now finds his name on the bottom of the menu card. "You are being served." one reads, "by Mr. Lionel Johnson." It is the same with the hotels. Approach the desk to register in Boston, Atlanta. Des Moines, or Seattle, and everywhere the name of the hotel clerk confronts you. The Drifter learned now that Mr. George Brown, and again that Mr. Frank Thomas, and yet again that Mr. Paul Lawrence was ready to serve him. Once in a hotel in Atlanta when the Drifter plunged into the basement of his hotel for a shave he discovered the legend in front of him: "This chair is

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Aug. 24, 1927] The Nation 181 attended by Mr. Albero Benventuri." Although the Drifter is shy and has a strong aversion to having his finger-nails manicured by strange girls in strange places, he logically decided that it would be safe now to patronize the manicure girl. There would now be no embarrassment about introductions. For would he not be informed that "This chair is attended by Miss Violet Summers?" But, alas, at this point the system had broken down! The poor girl wasn't featured at all. * * * * * FOR all the Drifter knows this "super-service" may be all to the good. If the movement has arisen from a belated realization of the brotherhood of man and the dignity of labor, he will perforce be patient. But if, on the other hand, it is only another scheme of the efficiency experts, he must lament. It may keep the slaves contented but it is not in order to rejoice. The Drifter can only warn the experts in the solemn words of the author of the "Elegy": "Let not ambition mock their useful toil." He wonders if, after all, our humble servants will be happy in all the glare of this publicity. He wonders, too, if patrons do not prefer to be served anonymously. He comfortably re- frains from talking to a barber or a waiter, name unknown. But it seems boorish to refuse to say a few words to a fellow-man who has been as good as introduced. He will be forced to make conversation in the future whether he likes it or not, and there is already far too much footless conversation in America. The Drifter Correspondence Morituri Te Salutant To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: With regrets I must ask you to drop me from your mailing list for the present. I give The Nation many thanks and have a sort of per- sonal affection for it. It has been friend, teacher, and guide on and off these many years. To it I am more indebted for a wider, truer outlook than to all else I have read in current litera- ture. Ambrosia, nectar, and manna in the Methbapterian wilderness it has been — a torch in the darkness of Coolidge- anity and a gas mask in the barrage of "big business." Excepting its articles on the drama and music, yes, and its pictorial art, which are for the most part beyond my ken, and always the mysterious ravings of your cacophonous "poets," it has been a feast indeed; but a feast to be consumed in the closet with the door closed lest I be crucified on a fiery cross. I am a teacher by occupation, and no teacher in this be- nighted South where I have spent my entire life dare acclaim The Nation and its ideals — its just ideals — and hope to live by teaching. It just isn't done. The mob would be on his neck. Dark look the days ahead for my country when all liberal, enlightened opinion is stifled by the inquisitorial parsons and their political dupes. The enlightened are in a viler than Babylonian captivity and in the thumbscrews of a merciless Torquemadian "Holy Office." I wonder what The Nation would think to see in a school textbook on literature the name of Robert E. Lee as a literary man and no mention of Thomas Paine whatever. Come to Texas and you shall see it. Fare thee well, 0 wise and gentle Drifter! And ye, too, ye trenchant essayists and reviewers. Keep up the brave fight, if ye still have hope and vision of a better day. I cannot descry a star in the Stygian sky. But my eyes have become old. Somewhere in Texas, July 27 W. M. Contributors to This Issue Louis Francis Budenz, managing editor of Labor Age, was formerly a resident of Indianapolis. Edward H. Hume has for twenty-two years served Yale- in-China at Changsha, Hunan Province, and is its presi- dent. Talbot Faulkner Hamlin is a New York architect and author of "The American Spirit of Architecture." Witter Bynner, author of many volumes of poetry, is liv- ing in New Mexico. George Genzmer is on the staff of the Dictionary of American Biography. Johan Smertenko is a New York critic and student of the history of criticism. Shirley Jackson Case is professor of the early history of Christianity at the University of Chicago. Walter Vogdes is a California novelist and newspaper man now living in New York. Carleton Beals, a frequent Nation contributor, is teach- ing in Mexico. R. M. Fox is a resident of Dublin. THEATER □ Little Theatre THE GRAND STREET 44th Street West of Broadway Evg». 8:30. MaU. Tues. and Thura. at poimlar prices. "One cannot find anywhere in New York mora clever idea*, more frask •atlre or more verve." — Joseph Wood Krutcb In The Nation. FOLLIES □ BOOKS A memorable novel, re- vealing the subtleties, the strengths, the fires of a wo- man's mind. Distinguished in workman- ship, powerful in story, it will win a place in the foremost ranks of American fiction. By the Author of STRANGERS JUST READY $2.50 Flowering Quince [■■■■■■■Iret^Vft:'*:.^ When writing to advertisers please mention The Nation

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Books With the Gods By WITTER BYNNER I am at home with the gods of many people, And therefore with the people of the gods. My house is a temple fitted for their worship With crosses, candles, feather-wands, tripods. The Salt-Water Chief is my intimate at midnight, Buddha smiles for me with his lotus-brow, Out of a grave rises a Mexican image Quiet for centuries and quiet now, Korean dogs guard me from evil spirits, Hopi Katchinas crowd my room with corn. The Babylonian Moon-God lights my window, I lend my bed for Jesus to be born, I dare to have a difference with Jehovah- Glad of a guest with whom to be at odds — ■ And when the cups are poured, I know that laughter Makes people indistinguishable from gods. General Dickman Views the War The Great Crusade. By Major General Joseph Theodore Dick- man with a foreword by General John J. Pershing. D. Appleton and Company, New York, 1927. $2.50. /"^VUR World War generals are doubtless excellent fighters ■ * but as writers they are behind the Civil War generation. Not one of them has produced a book to rank wit : the me- moirs of Grant, Sherman, Sheridan, Wilson, J. D. Cox and others. General Dickman, who commanded the Third American Army, has added little to the history of the great struggle. He writes with justified pride in the American troops, in their extraordinary bravery and adaptability, and in the re- fusal of their leaders to permit them either to be distributed among the Allied troops or to be condemned to trench war- fare. The Americans, he says, made up their minds to change the warfare back to the historic open methods and they did so. His book is chiefly valuable for its revelation of the con- stant friction between the Americans and the French troops and the severe criticisms of French strategy at Belleau Wood. As to the latter, he says that every one of the 1,862 Americans killed and 9,412 wounded was sacrificed needlessly at the behest of French generals. Belleau Wood was, General Dickman says, "of no strategical importance whatever"; the Wood was of no special value to us as part of a general line of defense"; "it was magnificent fighting, but not modern war"; "Belleau Wood was a glorious but unnecessary sacrifice." Had this battle never been fought, the success at Soissons a few- weeks later would have compelled the Germans to leave the Wood without its costing an American casualty. As for the French, General Dickman writes "they did not come up to our expectations of cordiality, frankness and co- operation in the pursuit of the ideals of our people." He tells of their overcharging the Americans, of near-riots in Trier after the armistice and other conflicts between American and French troops; of French officers sent away from the Ameri- can forces because of brutality to German civilians; of the constant misbehavior of the French native troops; of the fail- ure of the French to include a single American in the fes- tivities headed by the President of France, over the release of St. Mihiel from German domination by American troops, etc. etc. The whole original idea of the Allies was plainly to use the Americans as labor troops or to draft them individually as replacements for British and French regiments. They, apparently, had no more belief in the fighting qualities of the Americans under their own leaders than had the Germans — until they learned otherwise. General Dickman waives any intention to assert that the Americans won the war; but he lets it be pretty well under- stood that he knows who did. There were no troops in Europe, he insists, who could have forced their way through the forti- fied fastnesses of the Argonne Forest except the Americans. The writer of this review, having seen those fastnesses not so long after the fighting ceased, agrees with him that it took incredible courage, daring, enterprise and determination — so great no one could have expected it of green troops in the most horrible of warfare, in the most difficult of terrains. But Gen- eral Dickman, especially in dealing with St. Mihiel, fails to touch on the exhausted and demoralized condition of the Ger- man troops in 1918. If the Allies, as he says, "had lost such a percentage of their best men" as to render it doubtful whether they could have forced the Argonne, the same wras true of the enemy. They, too. were bled white and exhausted. When the Germans had to meet the American attack they were with- out adequate reserves, they, too. were deficient in vitality and morale. Everybody testifies that if the Americans had attacked St. Mihiel in 1915 or 1916 the reception they would have received would have been entirely different. It is cer- tainly open to question whether the Americans could have forced the warfare into the open if the Germans had not been spiritually and morally and physically at a low ebb. That does not detract from the wonderful American achievements; but when General Dickman fails to state it, he does not give his readers a true picture of the war. The American battle of November 1 and 2, 1918, he considers "the greatest feat of arms ever performed by an American Army." If that is the fact it has not yet penetrated American consciousness. Oswald Garrison Yiixard A Dapper Little Man The Life and Works of Francis H By George Everett Hastings. The University of Chicago Press. 84. A MORE debonair man than Francis Hopkinson did not sign ■** the Declaration of Independence. Over that historic trans- action, otherwise solemn and desperate in spite of pealing bells and waving banners, the blithe little gentleman must have dif- fused an air of confident gentility. Luck and a cheerful tem- perament were his throughout life. The son of an affluent and highly respected lawyer in Philadelphia, he grew up in the pleas- antest town in colonial America, received a good education at Franklin's new college, traveled in England, where he met the nicest kind of people, dallied for a few years with music, paint- ing, and versifying, married the beauteous and wealthy Ann Borden of Bordentown. New Jersey, and settled down to prac- ticing law. managing his wife's estates, and holding various political appointments. A man of letters by avocation, he imi- tated Gay and Prior in verse and Addison and Arbuthnot in prose, tinkered with several inventions, sat in the Continental Congress, contributed sprightly satires to the Revolutionary cause and later to the propaganda for the Constitution, enjoyed the friendship of Franklin, Washington, and Jefferson, was Judge of the Admiralty, and died respectably of gout and apo- plexy in his fifty-third year. He was a dapper little man, whose head, according to John Adams, was no bigger than a large apple and whose whole personal appearance was the most amus- ing thing that Adams had ever met in natural history. In his own day he was regarded as a prodigy, and he had in fact that versatility which to contemporaries seems like genius but to posterity, unacquainted with the charm of the man, like frivo- lous mediocrity. Even his reputation as a jurist has waned He is remembered now, so far as he is remembered at all, as the first person to receive a diploma from the College of Phila-

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Aug. 24, 1927] The Nation 183 delphia, the first American poet-composer, the probable de- signer of the American flag, and the third best patriot satirist of the American Revolution. Dr. Hastings's book is equally illuminating as an example of how to prosecute an historical investigation and as an exam- ple of how not to write a biography. His research has been conducted with thoroughness and discretion. It is unlikely that he has overlooked any document that would shed light on Hopkinson's career or failed to consult any person who might furnish information or made any mistake in his assessment of the evidence. Such work is not easy; so it is a pleasure to find the work done so well. Unfortunately, Dr. Hastings has not taken the same care with his writing. He does not discrimi- nate between the pertinent and the irrelevant; he drags into his exposition what should have remained in the footnotes or been passed by in silence, and he makes no attempt to relate Hop- kinson to the picturesque society in which he lived. Even an indurated historian, accustomed to reading public documents by the cubic foot, will murmur against the author's unnecessary tediousness. A single example is worth looking at. Chapter II begins thus: Some confusion has arisen about the date of Francis Hopkinson's birth. Lossing, with a minuteness of detail that invites belief, states that he was born "at almost mid- night on the third of September, 1738." The sketch in the National Portrait Gallery, which has been attributed to his son, Judge Joseph Hopkinson, says merely that he was born in 1738. Sanderson is equally vague, but changes the year to 1737. Delaplaine agrees with Sanderson as to the year, and adds September as the month of his birth. And finally, two of the most careful of his more recent biogra- phers, Mr. Sonneck and Professor Tyler, have given the dates September 21, 1737, and October 2, 1737, respectively. Fortunately, the way out of this labyrinth is easy: The record in the family Bible states that Francis Hopkinson was born on September 21, 1737, at seven o'clock in the morning. Moreover, the discrepancy between the dates given by Mr. Sonneek and Professor Tyler is only appar- ent, as September 21, old style, is the same as October 2, according to the modern calendar. And to this paragraph eight footnotes are attached, yet the whole thing, so far as anyone interested in Francis Hopkinson is concerned, simmers down to a single sentence and its foot- note. The rest should have been strictly between Mr. Hastings and his seminar professor at Harvard. To let such material remain in the completed book is like retaining the scaffolding on a building as proof that the bricklayers have been at work. Such writing serves no purpose except to bring scholarship into disrepute. George Genzmer Healthy Sensuousness Wedding. By Melvin P. Levy. Unicorn Press. $2. T^HIS is an erotic book, containing the most carnal-minded *■ writing I know of in American literature excepting only Whitman. But it is not bawdy. It has nothing in common with the obscenity of Rabelais nor the ribaldry of Shakespeare nor the defiant pornography and furtive pruriency which are the polar attitudes of contemporary writers. Mr. Levy goes farther back, back to the naive voluptuousness of Greek and the healthy sensuousness of Hebrew literature. And he is not unworthy of his masters, for his libidinous story is written in chaste and beautiful prose. Both this style, at once passionate and precious, and the emphasis given to the sheer cerebral reactions of the characters will serve as a deterrent to the merely salacious. "Wedding" is clearly and consciously not written for those who, while they accept the moralistic dogmas and inhibitions of the prude, seek lascivious titillation in the actions of the hedonist. Its treat- ment of sex is as thoroughly and as honestly sublimated as the prayer of a Shakti priest. Its consideration of carnal phenomena is full as a biologist's and, hence, wholly lacking in suggestiveness. For Mr. Levy has somehow made vital his rediscovery of the elementals of our physical experience. Of descending a flight of stairs in an ordinary apartment house he can write con- vincingly: "The stairs were before him, an immeasurable down- ward distance to be traversed. He could not see their end, could not imagine it. For a moment he paused before them undecided: then one foot dropped downward. With the skill which man has made the custom of the staircase, he caught his falling weight. Down, down, down he went unpausing." And as with this sensation, so with washing, so with amorous advances, so with the writing of poetry! Moreover, the inani- mate and social manifestations of our civilization are treated with the same fullness. The subway, the child's game, and the auction market no less than a strange girl and a lustful acquaintance engross and stimulate the hero to philosophical resolution of the mysteries of living. Those who know the author through "Matrix" will be amazed at the change and growth revealed in this book. The turgid, derivative style of that first novel has been strained and purified until it is crystal-clear and remarkably individual- ized; the autobiographical irrelevancies which so insistently de- mand expression from every young writer and which cluttered the pages of the earlier work are almost wholly eliminated here; and, most important of all, the hesitant and unconvincing development of action, which in "Matrix" was due to incerti- tude concerning emotional values and a groping for spiritual motives, is now replaced by a pointed and inevitable movement born of intellectual and artistic surety, a calm assurance which inserts with subtle understanding and vulgar beauty a story of the Crucifixion into this most contemporary of scenes, and a confident craftsmanship which despite all the numerous digres- sions gives the novel compactness and intensity. JOHAN SMERTENKO Justice to the Pharisees Judaism in the First Centuries of the Christian Era: The Age of the Tannaim. By George Foot Moore. Harvard Univer- sity Press. Two volumes. $10. T T is a unique experience for the modern reading public to *■ be presented with an elaborate two-volume work on the religion of the Jews during the first two centuries of the Chris- tian era. There is to be still a third volume containing notes and excursuses. These books are without a rival in their chosen field. They offer the only extended discussion of the subject available in the English language. Probably they con- stitute the most detailed description of Judaism in early Christian times that has even been attempted. The undertaking called for courage. Serious obstacles stood in the author's pathway. Any general sympathy with his theme was hardly to be expected beforehand, particularly in view of his determination to share none of Christendom's tra- ditional hostilities toward the Jewish race. Although not a Jew himself, he chose for study just that period of history when Jews are popularly thought to have displayed most glaringly their heinous character by their rejection of Jesus and the early Christian preachers. A second difficulty involved the question of obtaining dependable information. Everybody is acquainted with the radical criticisms that Jesus is supposed to have pronounced upon the scribes and Pharisees of His day. Also Paul's remarks about the desperate situation of one who tried to live worthily under the instruction furnished by the Mosaic law are familiar. But estimates of Judaism made by ardent champions of the rival Christian movement are in the nature of the case partisan documents. Not until speakers for the other side have been heard is one in a position to judge of the facts. But such information is not readily accessible. Even those Christian writers who would assent to this judicial

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184 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3242 principle have as a rule been inadequately acquainted with the pertinent documents and consequently have been liable to draw hasty conclusions. They have not expended the time and labor necessary to insure familiarity with the Talmud and kindred Jewish literature; while Jewish scholars themselves have been none too active in making the contents of these religious books more generally available. It is an astonishing fact that, not- withstanding the large numbers of Jews scattered over the English-speaking world, there is no reliable English rendering of the whole Talmud or even of its most elemental part, the complete Mishnah. Professor Moore has taken great pains to make himself at home in his sources of information, and his interpretation shows not the faintest trace of anti-Semitism. The publishers have accurately denned his aim in the words of the historian Ranke; he seeks to ascertain "what the thing is — what are the facts — and how it came to be." These volumes are particularly strong on the side of the "what." First there is a lengthy in- troduction in two chapters, one surveying the political career of the Jews down to about 200 a. d., and the other giving a detailed account of the various sources of information for the present study. The main body of the discussion falls into seven parts, with approximately a hundred pages allotted to each.. The principal captions are Revealed Religion, The Idea of God, Man, Sin, Atonement, Observances, Morals, Piety, The Here- after. The whole is elaborately indexed with respect to subject- matter, proper names, and passages and authorities cited. This feature adds much to the value of the books as works of refer- ence, a use for which they are especially well adapted. To accept our author's conclusions will involve a complete revision of the picture of Pharisaism as it has commonly been drawn by Christians. The alleged insincerities, hollow for- malities, and barren legalism charged against scribes and Phari- sees in the first century ai*e found to have been nc ; at all the characteristics of them as a class and must be set aside as slanders of their enemies. It is recognized that Judaism was a thorough-going legalism based on revealed instructions con- tained in Scripture. But the assumption that the principle of legalism was incompatible with the virtues of sincerity and genuine spirituality is stoutly contested. Indeed, Jesus and His immediate followers were "entirely orthodox" in their atti- tude toward the Jewish ceremonial law. On the other hand, the usual Christian claim that Jesus was the first to stress the conception of God as father, and the first to insist on the primacy of good motives in religious living, is emphatically denied. To call God "Father" was, we are told, not at all original with Jesus, but was characteristic of the type of piety in which He and His disciples had been reared. Similarly, the "wage-theory" of righteousness is not to be set down as the fundamental principle of Pharisaic religion. On the contrary, love toward God and conformity to the divine will were as basal for the contemporaries of Jesus as for Jesus Himself. Such findings should go a long way toward the rehabilitation of the much-abused Pharisees. Here they are in the presence of a fair-minded judge — or is he sometimes their zealous advocate! Shirley Jackson Cask A Man Without a Country Denied a Country. By Herman Bang. Alfred A. Knopf. S2.50. HERMAN BANG, Danish critic, journalist, novelist, and wanderer, died in America in 1912 while on a reading tour. We can see through his penetrating novel a man brilliant, dis- satisfied, ironic, but at times sentimental and arbitrarily obscure. His chief figure, Joan Ujhazy, is the son of a nobleman whose family for generations had occupied an island in a river that divided several countries. Rumanians, Hungarians, Serbs lived nearby, but the Ujhazy family had no country. Joan's mother was Danish. Bang adroitly establishes his theme by a description of the teasing and maltreatment which Joan under- goes as a child at the hands of the boys on the mainland. They jeeringly call him "prince of No-Country." The theme is brought in again when he is a student of music in Paris. He becomes a famous violinist and we next see him on a train. In the dining car are members of the European nobility and musical virtuosi, but Joan, the nobleman who happens to be a musician, feels aloof from both groups. In the last and best part of the book he arrives in a Danish frontier town for a concert and meets Gerda Johansen. He is the great and traveled artist, she the bright-eyed, romantic, and mysterious maiden. A new spirit possesses the tale at once; it becomes fresh and young, poetic and lovely. Joan and Gerda walk to the mountain top, they return to a dinner party which is to precede a concert. After the concert the guests return to the Johansen house. The joy given them by Joan's superb playing passes, they bicker among themselves, and the subject of patriot- ism brings on a harsh argument. Joan is made to feel apart from them, his mother's people. And, as the spirit of the gathering changes, so the romantic mood of Joan and Gerda fades. They cannot reach each other, really, and the end is frustration. Parts of this novel are finer than the whole. The attack on petty patriotism is intelligent, but the author is so obsessed by his theme that the brooding, the self-pity, and the final col- lapse of Joan are unconvincing. Joan and Gerda live beauti- fully for an evening, but we have the feeling that if they could have escaped from their creator they would have given a better account of themselves. Walter Vogdes Builder of the Empire Francisco cle Ibarra and Xueva Ykcaya. By Lloyd Mecham. Duke University Press. $3.50. THHE sixteenth century in New Spain, or Mexico, was a *■ period of glamorous, reckless empire-building. Beyond the furthest outpost were still new regions to explore, new possi- bilities of hazardous adventure and quick spoil. The lurid imaginations of the early Spaniards filled the void of their geo- graphical ignorance with legendary treasure cities; and the most vicious frontiersman, often an escaped criminal or one wanted at home for marital support, felt a quickening of religious instincts and a desire to convert the dusky hordes to faith in Nuestra Senora as the hand of the law reached further into the wilderness and the chances for speedy enrichment faded with the coming of royal favorites and more systematic settlers. Yet the spectacular original conquest of Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital, by Cortes has, perhaps forever, dimmed the lustre of succeeding conquistadores and has cast a shadow over the bold administrative daring of such viceroys as Mendoza and Velasco. Thus the cruelty, greed, and adventurous instability of the Span- iards have stood out in clearer relief than many of their later constructive colonizing efforts. Bourne in his "Spain in Amer- ica" gave the picture more canvas; but there has always re- mained, especially in New Spain, a great gap at the end of the sixteenth century and, in spite of Bancroft's wholesale output, much historical ignorance concerning the subduing and colon- izing of the northwest. Priestly in his recent volume, "The Mexican Nation," devotes major attention to the colonial period; Bolton has consistently deepened the current of border history. The present volume further illuminates an obscure corner: it is a specialized monograph on the exploration and the establish- ment of Nueva Vizcaya, that imperial province extending north and west from what is today Zacatecas and Jalisco, a region of almost impassable mountains, of desert and jungle, in many places still as wild and inaccessible as when Francisco de Ibarra first traversed it. Here is the region of Mexico which I myself know most intimately and which I have crossed on a dozen trails. The author has based his study largely on research in the archives of Seville; he has mulled over an enormous mass of

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Aug. 24, 1927] The Nation 185 primary and secondary material. Yet the fact that his is spe- cialized super-accurate historical research bars it as fireside romance of far times and far places. Even so the bare-bone facts add another jewel to the crown of hardy Basque explora- tion in the New World. Also, as biographical reconstruction the book is not over-convincing; the dramatic possibilities are lost in subsidiary detail and too rigid adherence to the direct docu- mentary material. The author has cut out an impressive geo- metric solid, but has not breathed the clay of his material into life. Francisco de Ibarra, who conquered this vast harsh area of Nueva Vizcaya, most of it before he was thirty, at no place strikes the eye warmly as a functioning character. This is in part due to the meagerness of the original previously untilled material and the failure of the author to go imaginatively far enough afield into parallel chronicles for that intimate narra- tive-stamped portrayal which enlivens certain episodes of the conquest. Mr. Mecham, while deserving unstinted credit for sailing uncharted seas, has vacillated between biography and a study of the adding of a new province to the empire. He tells the story of the second thing creditably if prosaically, because his forte lies in resetting historical bones patiently. If the interested reader will anticipate Mr. Mecham's book by the story of Lumholtz's explorations over much of the same area, he will gain a vivid picture of the region and its inhabitants three cen- turies after Francisco de Ibarra, a picture rich with concrete detail and intimate reality; and then, from the skeleton of Mr. Mecham's honest facts, he can perhaps recreate emotionally the epic figure who strode across so vast a stage in the twilight of the earlier period. Carleton Beals Books in Brief Canada. The Great River, the Lands, and the Men. By Marion I. Newbigin. Harcourt, Brace and Company. $4. This interesting book has a too comprehensive title. It is really limited to the history of French Canada down to the British Conquest. The author is interested in geography, as becomes one who is the editor of the Scottish Geographical Re- view, and the really original feature of the book is the relation of the history of Canada to its geography. The author thinks that Frontenac misread geography when he tried to make the trade of the West flow to Montreal and that La Salle was equally mistaken about the possibilities of the Mississippi. Of course, the railway of a later age altered the conditions, but Montreal remains the greatest seaport in North America, after New York, and proposals for deepening canals on the St. Lawrence may well increase its importance. Di, Newbigin, relying chiefly on Parkman and a few monographs, tells the story of French Canada in a coherent and interesting style; the maps are excellent and original in form, and the photographic illustrations are good. The Historical Life of Christ. By J. Warschauer. With a Preface by F. C. Burkitt. The Macmillan Company. $5. This is a type of "Life of Christ" that has come more and more into vogue during the last quarter-century. The author is a modernist, but not an extremist in his treatment of the New Testament documents. In the main he discards the Gospel of John and reconstructs his story of Jesus's career from the less supernatural features in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Much is made of Jesus's supposed classification of himself as a Messiah in the so-called "apocalyptic" sense. He believed himself des- tined in the near future to return to earth in triumph after the pattern of the heavenly deliverer pictured in later Jewish proph- ecies. In this hope he was, it proved, quite mistaken, yet in pursuing the delusion he displayed a devotion to the divine will and moral sincerity that have since established him as the inaugurator of the true Kingdom of God for his disciples. In respect to critical method, one must say that our author simply rethreshes old straw, but he wields the flail with fascinating vigor, and one who is not already familiar with this type of book will find it stimulating reading. The Mystic Rose. By A. E. Crawley. Revised and greatly en- larged by Theodore Besterman. Boni and Liveright. Two volumes. $10. The new edition of this well-known classic of anthropology shows enlarged bulk, but it is unfortunate that the quality of the additions made by Mr. Besterman are such as to convince the critical reader that he knows extremely little about the data of ethnology gathered in the twenty-five years since Crawley pub- lished the first edition. The "new" references rarely date later than 1905, and the old trick of quoting in full the title of every work each time it is referred to is used to pad the citations and make them impressive. Mr. Besterman adds a few so-called "refutations" to objections made when the first edition appeared, while for the most part the additions themselves take the form of reprints of Crawley's contributions to the periodical litera- ture of anthropology. These too often appear to have been placed in the new edition rather for the sake of having them included than for the purpose of adding anything to the argu- ment in hand. The work itself needs little comment; it is a study of "primitive" sex life and thought in the old evolutionary tradition that has been so thoroughly discredited by modern an- thropologists. Its two worst faults are the assumption that primitive and modern thinking processes are essentially differ- ent and the dizzying tendency to pull ethnographic facts from their cultural contexts to make a point in the argument. Economic and Social Conditions in France During the Eighteenth Century. By Henry See. Translated from the French by Edwin H. Zeydel. Alfred A. Knopf. $3. A distinguished French scholar popularizes the most recent researches on economic and social conditions in France in the Old Regime. Done in the best traditions of French vulgarisa- tion— readable, balanced, above all, accurate. Realistic in treatment, with a pronounced leaning toward economic inter- pretations of social changes. An invaluable handbook for the student. Also an eye-opener for the average reader on this side of the Atlantic, who explains the Revolution through an idealiza- tion of his democratic prejudices and the myth of a starving peasantry reading Voltaire and Rousseau and forthwith rush- rushing on against the Bastille. French Society in the Eighteenth Century. By Louis Ducros. G. P. Putnam's Sons. $5. This book possesses unity of plan and execution. The au- thor's open-mindedness and his vast command of the sources compel respect. His picture of the various strata of society can in no instance be called distorted. For all that, it fails in the essential purpose for which it was written. It does not give an imaginative reconstruction of the past. It is difficult to state why. The figures of society move on its pages. Their words are repeated most copiously. Their surroundings are de- scribed, their bodies draped, their minds bared. In the process, however, reality dies a thousand deaths. The Spanish House for America. By Rexford Newcomb. The J. B. Lippincott Company. $3.50. A small book packed with interesting material. Its illustra- tions are remarkably well chosen, and the text is carefully ar- ranged and clear. Whatever one may think of the propriety of juch a style revival in modern America, particularly in places where the tradition of Spanish work does not exist, one must welcome works like this which give it background, sanity, and taste.

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International Relations Section Free State and Republican Ireland By R. M. FOX Dublin, July 22 TWO big funerals took place in Dublin recently — those of Kevin O'Higgins and the Countess Markievicz. Both were buried in the same week and the death of both had a political significance. It could hardly be otherwise. Kevin O'Higgins was the strong man of the Free State while Countess Markievicz, who was sentenced to death as a leader in the 1916 Irish Rebellion, has ever since taken a prominent part in Republican activities. The assassination of Kevin O'Higgins was a great shock to everyone for, contrary to popular belief, the Irish do not take assassination as a matter of course. General sympathy was expressed for the widow and there was some foreboding as to the future. But to represent the public as being stricken with grief is quite untrue. In the eyes of the people O'Higgins was responsible for many ter- rible things, and on occasion was heard to boast of them. When a woman asked about the "75 executions" he leaned forward and said, "Pardon me, madam, 77!" "I am the hero of the Flogging Bill!" I heard him cry at a meeting in O'Connell Street. What has remained in the public memory is the execution of the leaders in the Four Courts' struggle. The four leaders had surrendered and had been in prison for some time. Suddenly they were taken out and shot. Rory O'Connor was the close friend of O'Higgins, who signed his death warrant. When his will was read it was found he had left everything to Kevin O'Higgins. The newspapers in Dublin and elsewhere stated that there was not a dry eye at the funeral. I was present. It was a military display led by the Free State ministers. Soldiers with bared bayonets marched in columns like an invading army through a conquered city. The rest was made up by policemen, fire-engines, bored-looking civil ser- vants who marched under compulsion, British ex-service men with rows of medals, and a contingent of Italian Fascisti. People stood and gazed with whispered com- ments. The name of Rory O'Connor was frequently on their lips. I do not say that the people were not reverent. All heads were bared as the coffin went by. It is a pro- nounced Irish characteristic to respect death. If, at a meet- ing, a dead man's name is mentioned caps and hats are al- ways raised in memory. Only the well-dressed civilian marchers showed lack of respect. Some were obviously bored and laughed and talked as they straggled along. The funeral of the Countess Markievicz contained all the elements which the other lacked. It was no cold offi- cial ceremony. Dublin rose in its thousands. Dockers who remembered her self-sacrifice in the great lock-out of 1913, marched from work on Friday night to the chapel. Flower girls and street traders gave beautiful wreaths and asked if they might walk in the funeral procession. All through the night on Saturday while the Countess was ly- ing in state, an endless stream of people of all classes filed past the Fianna boys (National Boy Scouts) who formed the guard of honor. On the morrow the people marched. Dublin papers had treated the event as of no account. The news concerning her death was tucked away inconspicu- ously. But Dublin shook to the tread of thousands of men, women, and children who marched through the city to Glasnevin. Everyone in the procession came voluntarily. And there was no laughing, talking, or falling out of step. One young man after marching nearly two hours in the scorching sun lit a cigarette surreptitiously behind his hand. There was a roar from the ranks : "Put that cigarette out !" The Free State which refused the use of the Mansion House for the lying in state of a 1916 leader (whose work made the Free State possible) sent lorry loads of soldiers and police to the cemetery to hamper the proceedings as much as they could. They failed. A more generous body of men would have given the Mansion House and taken part in the ceremony. Even from the lowest tactical motives, it would have been wise to have annexed some of the 1916 tradition for the new state. Instead they emphasized the breach and put another barrier between themselves and nationalist Ireland. Contrast this with the generous mes- sage of sympathy immediately issued on the death of Kevin O'Higgins by De Valera, the Republican leader. The contrast of the funerals throws a withering light on the position of the Free State Government in Ireland. At the very time when Dublin papers were doing their best to hide the intensity of Irish feeling, an English newspaper in pursuit of Irish readers brought out a striking article on the career of the Countess. The funeral was featured in English newspapers while Dublin papers published golf results! It is time the world faced the truth about Ireland. The recent elections should have made it plain. Republicans secured 51 seats as against the Government's 47 and this in spite of the fact that electors knew from experience that their representatives would be barred out. Does that mean that the Anglo-Irish treaty must go? The Irish alone can decide this. But it does mean that further concessions must be made to Irish national feeling. When I first went to Ireland — at the time of the 1922 truce — I met many leaders on both sides, some of whom have since been killed in the fighting. Discussing the question with them the con- clusion I came to was that the dry bones of logic were not enough. The treaty I believed would have to be given an Irish interpretation if it was to be worked at all. Logically it may give Ireland power to work out her economic and political salvation. But we have to consider logic as tem- pered by tradition. The upholders of the treaty are being more and more forced into the position of enemies of the Irish tradition. They are relying to an increasing extent upon the bitter ex-Unionist element. But they cannot build on that. To placate Irish feeling they have declared for compulsory Irish in the schools. This makes the ex-Union- ists furious because they know that a separate language means a separate nationality. The Free State is in a di- lemma because it is breeding Republicans to effect its undoing. Yet while national sentiment grows under its rule, it sets itself to repress adult expression of this senti- ment. At elections. Ministers take with them a horde of "stewards" whose duty it is to throw out questioners. In the last election at a meeting in Rathmines Town Hall, a woman who asked a question was so severely handled that a few days later she wrote from a hospital where she had recovered consciousness, protesting against her treatment. Raids are frequent. Not long ago I was staying at Washington Lodge, Rathfarnham, near Dublin. A Republi-

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Aug. 24, 1927] The Nation 187 44 HELL! Save that Whoop-la — to get us votes in the next campaign It won't sell no books!" THIS book is the story of Boss Van Hoos, a politician in a Middle Western town — an ignorant ,sent imental , tough, big-hearted, big-bodied Irishman who makes his entry into political life as the result of a saloon brawl the night be- fore the McKinley- Bryan election and ultimately be- comes one of the most powerful po- litical bosses in the country — and it traces his material, social and moral development. A more startlingly gen- uine character has rarely been por- trayed in recent fiction. TheBook-of-the-Month Club News, in reporting on the book for its sub- scribers, says: "Boss Van Hoos stays honest, personally honest, and the curious moral world which he inhabits — where corruption in politics seems — says Boss Van Hoos, the hero of "God Got One Vote," a novel acclaimed by William Allen White as "a real book with- out being nasty . . . its saving grace of essentia I idealism never softens into mush." right and natural as long as you keep faith with your friends, where the men who govern have no in- terest in government except as a business, have never even heard of political theory except as a catchword — is a real achievement. This, in short, is the faithful and sometimes exciting picture of a ward politician. The title is accurate. When it was all over, the boss had done something for righteousness and humanity, where the reformers had failed or been hypocrites. God got one vote anyway." Published August 19th On sale at all bookstores — $2.50 GOD GOT ONE VOTE A novel by Frederick Hazlitt Brennan Simon and Schuster, inc., 37 w. S7>» st., new york NEXT WEEK in The Nation Should Men Be Protected? by Lorine Pruette c5^NNOUNCEMENT of the FRANCIS BACON AWARD Sponsored by The Forum Magazine and Simon and Schuster, Inc. Seven Thousand Five Hundred Dollars for the outstanding work of non-fiction in the coming year which, in the famous phrase of Pro- fessor James Harvey Robinson, best "carries on the conscious adventure of humanizing knowledge." ONE of the most significant trends in lit- erature, of recent years, has been thee ver- vvidening audience that has arisen for dis- tinguished and authentic works of science, history, sociology, philosophy, psychology and biography. Curiosity about the world in which we live is, apparently, deeper and keener than ever before. There has been evident an insistent demand from the pub- lic for the humanization and clarification of specialized knowledge. The Francis Bacon Award has been instituted to fos- ter this clearly valuable tendency. The selection each year of such a work will unquestionably be an event of the first importance in the world of let- ters. In addition to the money a ward of seven thousand five hundred dollars, an emblematic medal will be struck off each year and pre- sented to the winning author. The Jury of Award will include: Dr. Will Durant Author of "Thi Story of Philosophy" Dr. Edwin E. Slosson Author of "Creative Chemistry" Dr. George A. Dorsby Author "Why We Behave Like Human Beings" Dr. Henry Goddard Leach Editor of "Thl Forum" Dr. Henorii; Willbm Van Loon Author of "Thl Story of Mankind" The Council of Specialists will include Dr. James Hfnry Brbastbd of thi I University of Chicago Dr. Edward Grant Conkiin of Princeton University Professor John Dbwby of Columbia University Dr. Vernon Lyman Kellogg Dirictor National Research Council Dr. Henry Fairchild Gnrorn President Amrtcan Museum of Natural History Dr. Harlow Shaplby of Harvard Unlvirsity Frank Jbwett Mather of Prtnciton University For details about the method of procedure to be followed by contestants, address the Francis Bacon Award, c/o Simon and Schuster, Inc., Publishers, }7 West 57th Street, New York City, or c/o The Forum, 441 Lexington Avenue, New York City. OPEN SHELF *OOD CHEER, COMRADES! Want to boy. Mil, OT or swap books, bronzes, old china, clocks, enrioa, Lchings, lamps, paintings, prints, oriental rujrsT 3us, or atroll to Daca's, 68 Washington Sq. So., N. Y. C. Books always 20 to 80% off. Open evas. 0-f\.f\^rQ All books (except text) sent post ljlll_lly»j free anywhere at 16% discount from *^^^^^*»»» publishers' prices. List on request. ISRAEL. SOIFER 1244 Clay Avenue New York City When ivriting to advertisers please mention The Nation

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188 The Nation [Vol. 125. No. 3242' can family lives here and it was a common thing for a lorry to rumble up in the middle of the night while with a great racket seven or eight men would rush in, carrying re- volvers and electric torches. These raids took place for the most trivial reasons. For example, one night it was alleged that Mr. Cosgrave's mother's windows had been broken, so a young man of the Republican family was arrested and taken to the police barracks for about an hour. Although I had taken no part in Irish politics my room was invaded with- out ceremony. I sat up in bed and interviewed the raiders in the dark. No warrants were produced; papers, letters, and belongings were tossed about and the raiders went without any apology. After the shooting of Kevin O'Hig- gins two young men of the family were arrested and charged with others for conspiracy to murder. They have been remanded twice without any evidence. The charge is absurd and no one believes it. The parish priest, not a Republican, has testified to seeing them at church the morn- ing of the murder and the whole village is indignant. Republicans have always accepted responsibility for their activities and they repudiate any connection with the crime. On July 21, a public meeting called to protest against these imprisonments was proclaimed. Hundreds of police were scattered in groups along O'Connell Street and to reinforce them, several lorry loads of burly men in plain clothes stood by the roadside. This policy of irritation and suppression pursued by the Government indicates weakness and com- plete lack of confidence in the people. On certain "neutral" measures like the Shannon elec- tricity scheme, the grading of dairy produce, improved cattle breeding, and general industrial efficiency, where na- tional tradition is not directly involved, the Government has done good work, though even here it has set itself to reduce wage standards. Besides this it has replaced many elected local bodies by paid commissioners who also carry out the policy of low wages and scanty relief rates. This is in line with the Government policy of reducing Old Age Pensions by a shilling and cutting down unemployment and sickness insurance benefits. It is hard to prophecy as to the future. I have heard it said that there is no treaty party in Ireland: only one party opposed to the treaty and another that has betrayed it! However this may be, the point on which national senti- ment is now focussed is the removal of the oath of al- legiance. The feeling of the country is clear on this. Only the Government nominees and a few Independents stand firm for the oath. The Labor Party (22) has opposed it. The National League and the Farmers' Party are luke- warm. But the Government, though in a hopeless mi- nority on the question, declines to remove it. They have even introduced a bill abolishing the provision in the con- stitution for a referendum in order to checkmate the grow- ing agitation against the oath. They have succeeded in getting through a bill which declares that no one may stand for election unless he declares his willingness to take the oath beforehand. The Government is getting more and more out of sym- pathy with the strong national tradition. They dance on the razor edge between ex-Unio] ists and Nationalists and when their toes get sore they vent their spite on opponents by repressive acts. The sensible thing would be to make such concessions as would placate national feeling and en- able Ireland to develop on national lines. SUMMER PLACES RIVERLAKE LODGE A Camp Superb FOR ADULTS OUTSIDE KINGSTON, N. Y., ON THE HUDSON RIVEB AND LAKE ESOPUS A beautiful place with wonderful views of the Hudson River and mountains, where intelligent people will meet congenial company. Bathing, Boating, Fishing, Tennis, Hand Ball, Dancing and other amusements. Golf course in vicinity. Excellent Food. Terms : $35.00 weekly, ST. 00 a day. Write for camp booklet. Special 3-Day Labor Day ueek'end — $20. RIVERLAKE LODGE 70 West 40th St. Ulster Park, New York City Ulster County, N. Y. Tel. Longacre 3693. Tel. Kingston 2810. HARRY WEINBERGER HARRY KELLY Directors TIMBERLAND IN THE HEART OF THE AD1RONDACKS The Camp Purposely Limited to a Congenial Group of 40 Bungalows and Main House Excellent facilities and equip- modern in every respect. ment for all camp sports ; Rate $27 per week. also golf. Round Trip Fare to Riverside, N. Y., station, $13.27. morris harkavy N. Y. Office, 55 West 42n ESTHER R. KAPLAN Pennsylvania 7663 Mail your reservations to POTTERSVILLE, N. Y. SCHOOLS IX FRAXCE tfbffleait&eiroicjScbQQl A Church School for American tioys preparing for American Colleges. Wholesome country life organized in a historic feudal castle. American standards of hygiene and diet : yearly tuition $1,200. Full sports program, including crew. The Rt. Rev. Charles H. Brent, Bishop of American Churches in Europe, Chairman of Board of Trustees. Address: Dr. Conrad Chapman, Head Master, Chateau-Neuvic, Neuvlc-sur-l'Isle, Dordogne, France BOOKS THE EVOLUTION OF MAN, by WilhelmBoelsche A clear, strong, simple summary not only of Darwin's theory but of the work of a generation of scientists along the lines Darwin opened up. Just what a busy man wants to give him a bird's-eye view of Evolution. Cloth, illustrated. 60 cents by mail. Catalog free Charles H. Kerr & Co., 347 East Ohio St., Chicago, 111. MISCELLANEOUS REAL HARRIS HOMESPUNS "rfc^S^-?^ Suit Lengths Cut to Order. Postage Paid NEWALL, 150 Stornoway, Scotland. Write for patterns staling shades desired J Do you want to make extra Address Dept. 11 THE NATION money? 20 Vesey Street New York Your Fall Problems If you want to rent a house or an apartment for the coming winter, or if you have one to rent — or sell, advertise in the n of The Nation, read by desirable landlords and tenants. Rates on application. Special three-time rate. Dept. Y. \Y. P., The Xa When u-riting to advertisers pleas: mention The Nation

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The Nation FOUNDED 1865 * Vol. CXXV NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 31, 1927 No. 3243 Contents EDITORIAL PARAGRAPHS 189 i] EDITORIALS: Massachusetts the Murderer 192 Chiang Kai-shek Passes On 191 Warrior Wells and Battling Belloc 194 TORTURE UP TO DATE. By Hendrik Willem van Loon 195 THE ARMOURS BETRAY THE FARMERS. By Frederick Boselly 196 HANKOW SWINGS TO THE RIGHT. By Paul Blanshard 198 SHOULD MEN BE PROTECTED? By Lorine Pruette 200 HONESTY IN ADVERTISING. By Raymond Fuller 202 CHICAGO'S SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA. By Lawrence Martin 204 IN THE DRIFTWAY. By the Drifter 205 "CORRESPONDENCE 206 BOOKS AND MUSIC: The Gulls Know Best. By Leslie Nelson Jennings 208 Vera Figner. By Theresa Wolfson 208 Senator Owen on the War. By Harry Elmer Barnes 208 Shakespeare and His Audience. By George Genzmer 209 The Real Olive Schreiner. By R. S. Alexander 210 Catching Pegasus Young. By Harry Alan Potamkin 210 Intensity. By Martha Mott 211 The Lower Rhine Festival in Aachen. By Henrietta Straus 211 Book in Brief 212 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS SECTION: A Forger of Soviet "Documents." By L. T 213 Fascist Culture 215 OSWALD GARRISON VILLARD, Emtor 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. THE NATION is on file in most public and college libraries and is indexed in the Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature. THE MAN WHO BOMBED the house of Mr. McHardy, the Sacco-Vanzetti juror, struck a terrible blow at the prisoners and stiffened the backs of all who might have had something to say as to a commutation of sentence. More than that, it again identified the cause of these men with bomb-throwers in the minds of multitudes who read only the headlines. The very thing that hundreds of men and women who fought for the lives of these two men tried to get out of the case — the question of their political opin- ions— was thus reinjected. So we can only devoutly hope that the execution will bring no further outrages with it. We must again repeat what we have already said that the cause of progress and true liberty is enormously retarded by any act of violence, which is invariably seized upon by every reactionary as the excuse for reprisals and the sup- pression of free speech, free assembly, and the right to j demonstrate which marked the closing hours of the tragedy in Boston. Two wrongs never yet made a right — -violence cures and helps nothing. The capital of Massachusetts trembled both in fear of bombs and of words. One could not carry legends as to the "judicial murder" of Sacco and Vanzetti without being arrested. And this on Boston Com- mon of all places, where once even the boys of Boston fought a successful battle against other "reds," or red-coats, to be exact. Those who turn to violence to vent their feelings will only injure gravely the cause they seek to aid. WHAT AN EXTRAORDINARY and often how dis- appointing a public man is William E. Borah! Here is a great figure in our political life, the chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Senate, sending the following words to Jane Addams in response to her appeal to him to aid in his official capacity in the saving of Sacco and Vanzetti because of the tremendous feeling in Europe: But it would be a national humiliation, a shameless, cowardly compromise of national courage, to pay the slightest attention to foreign protests or mob protests at home. We all know your fine devotion to humanity, but neither humanity nor peace can be served by deferring to foreign interference, which is an impudent and wilful challenge to our sense of decency and dignity and ought to be dealt with accordingly. Any petty agent of the National Security League might have penned these lines, the mistaken character of which ought to be clear to Senator Borah when he finds that it has led to his commendation editorially by the Boston Transcript and other dailies which ordinarily are ready to criticize his every utterance. The discouraging tone of this despatch lies less in its attitude toward the particular cause for which his help was asked than in the revelation of the Senator's mental slant. Fortunately he has his dif- ferent moods. Two days later he swung round and offered his services to the Sacco-Vanzetti Defense Committee to aid in getting justice done! This is characteristic. Where once he breathed fire and slaughter against the Mexicans, he has of late been a tower of strength and wisdom in deal- ing with the situation. We notice that Mr. Borah has also appealed to the nations of Europe to devote themselves now to furthering democracy at home. That is excellent; but it is no foundation for democracy in America to put to death men as to whose guilt literally millions have well- based doubts. T HE TRAGEDIES in connection with the trans-Pacific flight, the failure of the German livers, and the weeks of delays which those who are waiting good weather before taking off from France and England have had to face are clear enough proof how far we still are from any regular transatlantic air service. It is well to pioneer and for that reason risks must be run to establish the first contacts. But it is obvious that there must be a tremendous advance in the safety of airplanes and a radical change in the type manufactured for overseas night before there can be any talk of passenger or mail service. It is a grave question, too, whether it would not be well to discourage transoceanic contests until we are much further along — as we write the Dole contest seems to have cost five airplanes and ten lives, enough in all conscience to put an end to any further racing. Particularly pathetic is the loss of Captain Erwin with his Spirit of Dallas; he so bravely set forth to zigzag to Hawaii in the hope of aiding the others who were down. Never before, we presume, has any radio message come from an airplane that it was in a tailspin and dropping. What iron nerve and fortitude the sending of such a message must have called for!

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190 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3243 WE COMMEND to the statesmen of all subject people the diplomatic style of C. C. Wu, Minister of For- eign Affairs of the dying Nationalist government of Nan- king. He does not waste breath in assurances of high consideration. On August 16 a British military airplane flying over Chinese territory near Shanghai was forced to land. The Chinese have repeatedly protested against the practice of foreign airplanes flying over Chinese territory, and on this occasion a detachment of Chinese troops seized the airplane's wings. Dr. Wu announced: The British are criminals in the eyes of the Chinese and international law as regards their aviation policy in China. We intend to use this incident to force a showdown in the matter of flights in China. We intend to hold the wings. We have not the force to meet British imperialism but we intend to let the world know what they are doing. The British under Major General Sir John Duncan promptly tore up a section of the Shanghai-Hangchow-Ningpo rail- way as a reprisal, and the Chinese were forced to give back the airplane wings. Dr. Wu's defiance of Great Britain was bad military strategy but first-class advertising. It re- minded the world of the extent of British occupation of China. But how much better is America's position? Six amphibian airplanes intended for Guam have just been sent to China instead These, upon their arrival, will" make twenty-one American military airplanes in China, increas- ing the potential danger of abuse and violation of Chinese rights. THE WORLD OIL WAR which Sir Henri Deterding of the Royal Dutch-Shell promised to instigate against the Standard Oil of New York when that company entered into an agreement with the Russian naptha company for the purchase of Russian oil is assuming daily more significant proportions. At the start of the Anglo-American conflict, it will be remembered, Sir Henri directed his highly virtuous crusade against the Standard Oil of New York ; it was only this company of the Standard group that had fallen so low as to purchase the Soviet's "stolen oil" (i. e., expropriated fiom Sir Henri's company under the nationalization act of 1918). With the Standard Oil of New Jersey Sir Henri intended to continue friendly and cooperative trade agree- ments. This state of grace for the New Jersey company, however, did not last long — it made the mistake of entering into the "Heidelberg agreement" with the German dye trust. This German-American alliance gives the Standard exclu- sive selling and exploiting rights in the new crude oil and oil patents of the German company — thereby freezing Sir Henri out completely. But the agreement — and this is prob- ably more despicable from Sir Henri Deterding's viewpoint — also links the New Jersey Standard with Russia, since the German dye trust has important branches and concessions in the Soviet Republic. At any rate the Dutch-Shell has denounced its compact with the Standard to cooperate in the exploitation of the Persian oil fields. This action is interpreted as Sir Henri's way of reprisal, and it makes the break between the two oil groups now seem complete. The likelihood of a peaceful settlement or compromise has virtu- ally disappeared. WITH THE PRECEDING reprisals and counter- reprisals in mind, the recent Soviet Persia trade treaty assumes added importance. It is in Persia that British policy has been constantly in opposition to Russia — even before the World War its main object was to keep Persia as a buffer state between Russia and India. One can easily imagine how this desire has grown with England's deadly fear of Soviet propaganda. The weakening of this barrier, therefore, coupled with the American concessions in the rich Caucasian oil fields, has obviously not lessened British antagonism toward the Soviet system in general and in the Persian region in particular. Nor has Great Britain's apprehension decreased. Already it has been proposed to place the Indian army under the direct control of the War Office instead of the Viceroy. Under the War Office the Indian troops could be directed to any point of need. Thus would be overcome the Indian Government's opposition to the use of Indian troops for other than strictly defensive I purposes within India. Great Britain maintains, of course, that this proposed army reorganization, which also involves concentrating the main British military strength in India, is simply for protection against a threatened Russian inva- sion through Afghanistan. While it may be conceded that Afghanistan is a weak point on the Indian border, it is open to conjecture whether the attractive petroliferous lands of northern Persia and Caucasia have not had a strong influ- ence in reforming British "defensive" tactics. In the past it has certainly not been unknown for the desires of the Foreign Office and those of the great petroleum interests to show a striking similarity of purpose. "Meanwhile," asks a New York Herald Tribune correspondent, "is there any possibility of an actual clash in the near future? Men following the situation . . . say that next spring may wit- ness the first moves." ONE OF THE MOST STRIKING and hopeful events in Europe since the armistice is the trade treaty just concluded between France and Germany. The close of the World War found a well-organized propaganda and a firm intention in France never again to buy merchandise from Germany, while the occupation of the Ruhr left Ger- mans with a greater bitterness toward the French than the war itself. Yet now, only eight years after the dissension- breeding Treaty of Versailles, the traditional foes, France and Germany, come together in an accord which is calcu- lated not only to benefit both economically but to improve gradually their political and social relations. In general each country grants the other tariff concessions on articles which its nationals do not produce. Germany has also agreed to practical exclusion of her citizens from Morocco. Her steamship lines may enter Moroccan ports but the agencies there may not be conducted by Germans. No bet- ter proof than this treaty could be adduced to prove the old adage that misfortune makes brothers of us all. Ger- many, with the necessity of carrying a huge indemnity and recreating her foreign trade, realizes the need of French markets, while France, staggering under a huge burden of debt and a depressed currency, has to keep her industrial wheels turning or perish. Thus business has again made peace while politicians merely talked it. WE PREDICTED in last week's Nation that an Irish coalition might force out President Cosgrave and install the Labor leader, Tom Johnson, or Colonel Redmond in his place. Nothing of the sort happened. President Cos- crrave held his place by one vote; the Labor and De Valera supporters lost by a count of 70 to 71, the missing vote being the property of one John Jinks, a Redmond supporter

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Aug. 31, 1927] The Nation 191 unfortunately absent from the chamber when the roll-call was taken. At first it was rumored that Mr. Jinks had been kidnapped, but no such romantic explanation was forthcom- ing. At the last moment he had changed his mind. As a result the Government will remain in power until October, anyway, when the House meets again. By that time Mr. Jinks may have been persuaded, or another coalition, not so precarious, may have been formed. Meanwhile the Govern- ment's attempts to place the murder of Kevin O'Higgins at the door of the Oe Valera party has been without result. A POLICEMAN WITH A GUN is a dangerous animal: five persons killed and eleven wounded in New York City this year by chance shots from a policeman's pistol bear eloquent witness to the fact. During the last ten days a nine-year-old girl was killed by a policeman, a twelve- year-old-boy shot in the leg, a man at the wheel of his car commandeered by a policeman to chase a stolen automobile dropped dead from a policeman's bullet, an Italian was shot in the abdomen by a policeman and died, and two other Italians, a man and a woman, were slightly wounded. It is well that as a result of this shocking state of affairs Police Commissioner Warren, in some embarrassment, should call for an inquiry into the cavalier pursuit of suspected crimi- nals by officers of the law armed with revolvers. But what does the commissioner propose to do about the situation? Why, to be sure, he has directed that patrolmen report for target practice four times a year instead of twice as is the custom at present. But, according to the New York World, no general warning has been issued warning patrolmen against using revolvers in the streets, especially in crowded ones. Evidently, besides "investigating" the shootings that have just taken place — and doubtless establishing the fact that actually the unfortunate person was alive and is now dead or wounded, as the case may be — the commissioner has thought of nothing except to give the police more lessons in how to shoot straight, when it is obvious that they need the most elementary instruction in how not to shoot at all. SUBJECT TO THE APPROVAL of shareholders the capital of the International Mercantile Marine Com- pany is to be materially reduced. In place of $101,596,800 preferred and common stock now outstanding, the corpora- tion is to issue approximately 720,000 shares of no par value about five-sixths of which will be common and the balance cumulative preferred stock retirable at $100. This drastic recapitalization is the outcome of the sale some six months ago of the White Star Line, the Mercantile Marine's principal asset. When this first of the great shipping trusts was formed twenty-five years ago its vessel fleet was ac- quired at the abnormally high prices for tonnage then pre- vailing in consequence of the British Government having requisitioned a vast amount of shipping for carrying on the Boer War. The book value of its passenger and cargo car- riers was $160 a ton, or nearly three times that of the vessels of competing lines. From its very inception there- fore the International Mercantile Marine was overcapital- ized. It was never able to pay a dividend on its common stock, while only for a few years from 1917 on, when ship- ping made unprecedented profits as a result of the World War, did it declare any dividends on its preferred stock. In a highly competitive business open to all comers like the ocean carrying trade, an enterprise with an inflated capital cannot possibly be made to pay appreciable returns to share- holders. This initial mistake of its promoters the officials of the International Mercantile Marine now propose to rec- tify by writing off $45,000,000 from its good-will account and by changing its present stock into a lessened number of no-par shares. A GOOD WILL TRIP to Mexico in an airplane was the plan of leading business men of Houston, Texas. Nothing else, they thought, would do quite so much to cultivate friendly relations between Mexico and the United States. It was a "metropolitan" idea, too, in these days when Lindberghs and Chamberlains were being hailed as unofficial ambassadors of good will across the Atlantic. In order to make the trip sound more important T. L. Evans, chairman of the Chamber of Commerce, telegraphed to President Calles of Mexico asking permission to enter the republic. President Calles replied in a courteous tele- gram that he would be glad to welcome the flyers, would waive all customs regulations in order that they might cross the border without landing, and would arrange to have an air field lighted so that, if necessary, the plane might land at night. The plan to create reciprocal brotherly love between Houston and the country below the Rio Grande seemed well on its way to success. Then Mr. Evans telegraphed to our Secretary of State, Frank B. Kellogg, from whom came the following reply: Your telegram of August 5 was considered with every disposition to grant your request if this could be done with- out jeopardizing other matters affecting very vitally the policy of this government and the enforcement of our arms embargo. ... I regret very much the necessity of inform- ing you that having in mind the larger interests of the government, it is not possible to grant your request. What a delightful flight of the fancy "Nervous Nellie" must have had to imagine that an airplane load of singing Rotarians would be violating the arms embargo! And this so soon after Lindbergh had been greeted in France as a messenger of peace. It all goes to show that, according to the new Kelloggian hypothesis, the character of an air- plane is relative to its orientation: when it flies eastward it is a dove of peace; but if it should change its course and fly southerly it becomes contraband of war. The cul- tivation of "good will" with Mexico must proceed in the usual Kelloggian way — under the guidance and escort of United States marines. WHERE MORE THAN IN GERMANY today would a thing like the Liga Miramundum be likely to start? Recently, it is reported, 500 citizens of Berlin met to organize a league for international friendships. The Ger- man people know what it means to be misunderstood, and at least 500 of them have decided to make the world as inti- mate a place as possible. They say that the world will be held together, if at all, not by ships and airships — which at a moment's notice are capable of becoming instruments of death and separation — but by an inter-tangle of personal acquaintanceships. To this end groups will be formed over Germany and it is hoped over other countries of the two hemispheres, which can assemble whenever desirable for the purpose of conversation with travellers arrived from foreign lands. The success of the enterprise will depend wholly upon the size it achieves. A few international friend- ships will never prevent nations from misunderstanding one another. But any such motive is to be praised.

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192 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3243 Massachusetts the Murderer MASSACHUSETTS has taken two lives with a vin- dictiveness and brutality unsurpassed in our history. It has blotted out the fishmonger and the cobbler whose names are now known around the world, men who in the minds of multitudes will take for the moment their places with the Carpenter. In the face of a world-wide protest of never-equalled dimensions, in the face of appeals from law- yers and judges of the highest standing, and from the heads of foreign governments — with complete contempt for the earnest pleas of the entire European press and some of the leading American daily newspapers that the guilt of the two men was not established beyond doubt — Governor Fuller and his council have sent Sacco and Vanzetti to their deaths. Henceforth the world over, when men wish to describe what is worst in any judicial system, they will declare that it is akin to Massachusetts justice; they will speak for years to come with horror of a State in which two men could be executed after seven years of monstrous torture, in the face of world-wide appeals for mercy ; when the bar itself was divided as to the righteousness of the procedure; when the evidence was reviewed by only one judge and he was con- demned for grave impropriety of conduct in connection with the case. Massachusetts, said Daniel Webster, "there she is." There she is today, a target for the opprobrium of mankind. Her constituted authorities have used their con- stitutional powers as cold-bloodedly as ever a Roman cen- turion had his legal way. We cannot deny that Governor Fuller and his advisers believe that they have done their simple duty, that they were thoroughly convinced of the guilt of these two men, that they were consciously and conscientiously virtuous in repelling foreign criticism and foreign pleas. They believe that no one else has so mastered the case; that no one else has seen so many persons connected with the crime, and no one else has heard as much testimony. They feel that the deiays of years were of the prisoners' own choosing, and not the fault of the judicial system — as if anyone could be blamed for taking advantage of any loophole to escape from a single prejudiced judge! They are sure that they have possession of important facts never brought out in court; that the bulk of Massachusetts opinion is on their side and that the foreign excitement was due to the Defense Com- mittee and its propaganda. They could not, they said, yield to threats; they could not yield to the demands of foreign ignorance deliberately misinformed. Least of all could they yield in the face of the bombing of a juror's house. It was their duty to see the law through; their duty to uphold law and order; theirs to take the pound of flesh. They did so, clothed in the righteousness of men in whose minds no single doubt as to the correctness of their procedure, or the wisdom of their decision, could come to rest. They did so and they outraged the opinion of the for- eign world, voiced thus by Ramsay MacDonald. the former Prime Minister, in England: "This whole affair is too ter- rible; I hope the reputation of the United States will be saved the horror of this execution." They did so, and they struck at the reputation of the whole nation. They did so and everywhere strengthened the hands of violence and of all those persons who believe that the world can be reformed only by bombs and bloodshed. Everywhen have made peaceful men and women despair that progress may be achieved without force. They have enforced law and order and created disorder. They have upheld the majesty of the law only to bring it into contempt. They have destroyed the deterrent power of the death penalty in this case, if it ever had any. And to them this has seemed good Americanism and good statesmanship! They must have heard, as have we. of the profound concern in the Departments at Washington as to the effect of this happen- ing upon our foreign relations; they must have heard that there they think our international relations will be clouded for twenty years by the shadow of this tragic event. At this Governor Fuller has shrugged his shoulders; the men were guilty in his eyes; the delay was no fault of his and the sentence must be carried out immediately. After seven years he was not willing to wait even a couple of months longer in the hope that those doubts, raised and re-raised by such powerful journals as the New York Times and World and the Springfield Republican, might be resolved. He could not wait a minute, although every hour that passed after the publication of the Lowell committee's findings and his own, only increased the feeling of doubt as to the correct- ness of those decisions. Individuals and newspapers that said at first : "Well, we must accept the Lowell report and the Governor's findings," swung around the more they studied these documents and demanded further study and further explanation. With every hour the contradictions of the two viewpoints became more plain and the disagree- ment as to facts. But the Governor could see no occasion for mercy— rather every reason for getting the case out of the way and ending the public excitement and confusion. So, as we said last week, he has made it necessary to guard the American flag wherever it flies over an American public building outside of the confines of the United States. That is perhaps the greatest tragedy of all, that the men responsible have taken this course believing in their righteousness, their justice, yet utterly unable to see that the case of the accused had long since transcended the indi- viduals concerned and become part of the lives and causes oi great classes of our citizens. They, too, require forgive- ness. "They know not what they do." They have had their eyes upon the Mosaic Law. No doubt Governor Fuller could not see a single just reason why he should commute or abate the sentence. "The Governor means well." wrote to The Nation last week one of the noblest persons connected with the cause of these men. who has sacrificed health and means to save the good name of the State of Massachusetts. "The trouble is," the writer added, "he cannot see." There lies the crux of the whole matter. He could not see that there are times when mercy is greater than justice and exalts justice. He could not feel the horror of this execu- tion. He could not see that a wise statesman does not use to the fullest extent the power that is his when by staying the hand of the state he can soothe great masses of the pub- lic with an opportunity further to unwind the tangled skeins of evidence, so differently interpreted by those who have come into the case. He could not see that commutation would make possible the doing of complete justice should later facts demand. So Massachusetts has legally mur- dered the fishmonger and the cobbler, vindictively and

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Aug. 31, 1927] The Nation 193 brutally, for all the righteousness of its Governor who can- not see. How crass, how degrading it all is! In the year 1927 of our Christian faith a great State electrocutes two men and thinks that thereby it increases its might, its majesty, and its righteousness. It uses violence to avenge the vio- lence with which it charged them. It convicts them of mur- der and then commits murder. It mumbles: "Thou shalt not kill," and then, being merely an aggregation of the individuals of whom it demands the sacredness of human life, itself flouts the very sacredness for which it pretends to stand. Thereby the Alvan T. Fullers believe that they suppress or control crime, or at least, increase the safety of human life. In all the history of jurisprudence there is no record where murder has been ended by murder, however legalized, or public respect for authority increased by the State's use of its force. "It has been shown," declared as far back as 1841 a committee of the Assembly of the State of New York, "that it is a total fallacy to regard the fear of death as constituting any very powerful or effectual restraint upon the indulgence of the motives which impel men to great crimes; that it is seen to be entirely inopera- tive in influencing men's conduct . . ." For any one who is today deterred from future crimes by the scene in Charlestown jail, there are hundreds of thousands of hearts wrenched into bitterness and rage by this brutality of a State and by the ineradicable belief that the grossest injus- tice has been done. Can they ever regard the State as highly again? Can they ever believe again that it stands for justice and fair play to all men? It avails not to say that errors occur in the administra- tion of justice in every land. This case has gone home to people because they are tortured with doubts about the jus- tice of the sentence of two humble men with whom they have had no personal contact whatever, whose political views they in no wise share; because the human heart is not yet so corroded that it can read of the extinction of these two men without a shock to the very roots of its belief in justice and humanity. Perhaps it was precisely for the purpose of cre- ating this sense of moral outrage in multitudes that Alvan T. Fuller occupies the Governorship of Massachusetts. Per- haps fate intended that to millions should be brought home the utter folly of capital punishment, if only because of the terrible finality of it in a case in which new evidence has repeatedly appeared during these seven long years. Tomor- row the other three men charged with the killing who were never traced or identified may turn up; the stolen money not one cent of which was ever connected with Sacco and Vanzetti, may be discovered, and with it the solution of the crime. What then? Where then would be the Thayers and the Fullers? Convicted murderers in their turn. Who knows? It was only the other day a young girl in Kentucky cleared up her own "murder" for which Cole Dabney was then completing the seventh month of life imprison- ment. That is but one case of many. The point we make is that Governor Fuller has failed utterly to satisfy editors, lawyers, doctors, college presidents and professors, judges, and men of high standing everywhere, that the case was clear, the guilt beyond dispute. When a State takes the irrevocable step under conditions like these it is idle to talk of a deterrent. It is the State that has harmed itself, that has dealt a blow to law and order. It has roused a dreadful doubt which will never be dissipated, unless by the discov- ery of new evidence on one side or the other, during the life- time of multitudes now living. Rightly or wrongly, the case of Sacco and Vanzetti goes down to history with the witch hunting in Salem and, in modern times, with the execution of the anarchists in Chicago in 1886. As for Sacco and Vanzetti, for whom life's fitful fever has now run its course, why grieve for them? Their long agony is over and they were philosophers and students of history enough to know that their sacrifice was worth more to the rationalizing of human life than would have been their release and their return to comparative obscurity. John Brown wrote just before his execution that he was "worth infinitely more to hang than for any other purpose." He spoke more truly than a Tory Southern colonel who, standing at the foot of the scaffold, looked at Brown's dangling body and said: "So perish all such enemies of Vir- ginia! All such enemies of the Union! All such foes of the human race!" — two years later he was doing his best to destroy the Union. The very act which blots out the lives of Sacco and Vanzetti insures their eternity in any social history of the United States. The mere threat of their deaths produced an amazing international solidarity. When before have multitudes awaited with grief and rage in the Argentine, Japan, Jugoslavia, Italy, all over the world, news of the execution of two American "highway- men"? When before did the second largest political party in Great Britain officially throw itself into the breach in an endeavor to save the lives of two "criminals"? Whatever else may be said of Sacco and Vanzetti there can be no doubt that the souls of these two men grew and broadened and gained in knowledge and strength while they were behind the bars. When men face death many things are made clear to them; many scales drop from their eyes. We defy anyone to read Vanzetti's address to the court or Sacco's farewell to his son, and say that these were written by bloodstained hands. Alvan T. Fuller to save his life could pen no words like these. But assuming they were guilty then here in all truth is complete proof of the possi- bility of the uplifting and redemption of the vilest wrong- doers. Vanzetti's extraordinary utterances have led many besides Heywood Broun to characterize him as one of the great men of the day. In the circle of those close to Gov- ernor Fuller we have heard words of profound admiration for Sacco, for his courage, and his consistency, and the wish that he could be known better and his mind enjoyed. And these men the world is asked to believe were cowardly assassins and robbers, these men who led blameless lives until they are said to have appeared with three confed- erates— never traced — in a Buick car — never traced — to steal $16,000 — never traced — in what police officials declared to be the manner of professional criminals. No, they may swallow this who will. To it we cannot bring our minds or our consciences. But innocent or guilty these men made their mark. Their bearing in the face of death, their shining courage, their resignation, the range of their spirits — these are deathless things, and somehow or other the memory of them goes on in the hearts of men. No one can say what it all means or foretell where this case will end. But this is clear: This legal murder in Boston will profoundly and adversely affect the international rela- tions of the United States, and its moral standing through- out the world for at least a decade to come. Massachusetts has triumphantly killed an Italian fishmonger and an Italian cobbler, but she has blackened the name of the United States across all the seas.

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194 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3243 Chiang Kai-shek Passes On WE greet the retirement of Chiang Kai-shek after four months as head of his Nanking Nationalist govern- ment. Chiang was probably better than most Chinese mili- tary leaders in that he did not loot the countryside occupied by his troops and he paid his soldiers most of the time. It is probable also that he went into retirement a relatively poor man although he had unusual opportunities to make a personal fortune. For all these things Chiang Kai-shek will receive due credit at the hands of historians, but for the time being we cannot forget that he destroyed the unity of the Chinese Nationalist movement at the most critical moment of its advance toward Peking. Chiang won the support of a large part of the foreign press because he seemed the lesser of two evils. His attack on the Hankow regime as Communist was accepted without analysis as true by most of the enemies of Chinese Nation- alism and by a great many loyal members of the Kuomin- tang. He convinced a large part of the world that he was the rightful heir to the Kuomintang authority and that the Hankow regime represented a few disgruntled and violent Communists. How false that charge was can be seen by a checking up of the men who actually supported the Nanking government. Chiang Kai-shek, even at the height of his authority, did not have the allegiance of one-third of the Central Executive Committee of the Kuomintang elected in 1925. This committee is the only legally elected comr nttee which had authority in the Nationalist movement and Chiang recognized it until he chose to break with Hankow last spring. Of the thirty-six members of that committee not more than ten supported Chiang while the rest were more or less loyal to Hankow. Among the group supporting Hankow were most of the popular Kuomintang leaders who had survived in the Canton regime, including Wang Ching- wei, Eugene Chen, Sun Fo, and Mrs. Sun Yat-sen. The fall of Chiang Kai-shek was due partly to military reverses at the hands of Sun Chuan-fang, partly to the opposition of Shanghai business men to his taxation pro- gram, and partly to the constant propaganda against him within his own ranks. We are inclined to believe that propaganda played the most important part because Chiang's own subordinates deserted him before the end had come. The teaching of the Kuomintang against government by military dictators made inroads into Chiang's armies during the summer in spite of his strenuous efforts to divert atten- tion by shouting "Down with Communists." Shanghai, bled white by the financial demands of Sun Chuan-fang before his retirement, did not yield to Chiang Kai-shek the revenue that he had hoped for. Even his reorganized labor unions in Shanghai which smacked of Fascist ideology would not stay put. Chiang's removal, with the simultaneous withdrawal of the Communists from the Hankow government, makes pos- sible the reunion of the two wings of Chines? Nationalism. If that reunion occurs it will undoubtedly be the Hankow regime which will emerge with the most authority. The immediate result of the collapse of the Nanking regime has been the strengthening of the northern forces in their at- tack upon Shanghai and Nanking, but the ultimate unifi- cation of the Nationalist forces will probably more than outbalance that temporary loss of ground. Warrior Wells and Battling Belloc IT is not often in these days of literary* good manners — when, if one author hates another, he keeps that hatred to himself or expresses it darkly to his friends — it is not often that we are treated to the blazing spectacle of a prize ring wherein two champions slug it out. In older days, when the literary world was smaller than it is now and when readers could be counted on for knowledge of both the contestants in a quarrel, and there were no libel laws, the thing happened pretty frequently. Ben Jonson had his Marston, Milton his Salmasius, Dryden his Shad- well, Pope his Tibbald, Byron his Southey, and for that matter Butler his Darwin. But nowadays we have to get along with examples of polite dismissal or pale sarcasm ; most of us, doubtless, suppose that the age of enmity is over and that authors, generally speaking, love one another. It is not so. Look at Hilaire Belloc and H. G. Wells, who have been battering each other in public ever since Mr. Wells published last year his illustrated, revised edition of "The Outline of History." Mr. Belloc, who presumably had been lying in wait, rushed forward with "A Companion to H. G. Wells's 'Outline of History' " (it can be procured, along with the other documents in the case, from the Eccle- siastical Supply Association in San Francisco), in which he designed to "point out the principal popular errors, most of them now out of date, which its author has repeated." The "Outline," said Mr. Belloc, was of course "ephemeral," "necessarily short-lived," and "a thing of passing fashion." But it had widely disseminated certain fundamental errors, and "to check erroneous statement is always worth while." So he proceeded, after a dissection of Mr. Wells which revealed him as a busy little provincial of the London suburbs who hadn't a ghost of a notion how to treat sub- jects he had never heard his neighbors discuss, to show that the "Outline" erred ridiculously in relegating the Catholic Church to a minor role in the story of the hemispheres — "for," said Mr. Belloc, "the foundation and career of the Catholic Church is the chief event in the history of man- kind." Mr. Wells had slighted Christian doctrine whenever possible; he had used Buddhism as a stick to beat the Chris- tian ; he had insulted the priesthood, the doctrines of the creation, the fall, and the incarnation, and the very origins of religion itself by dragging in a lot of very old-fashioned biological and geological evidence. Mr. Belloc insisted many times that Mr. Wells's science was really not up to the minute — though why that mattered he did not say. Mr. Wells, countering with a pamphlet called "Mr. Belloc Objects to 'The Outline of History,' " took the best possible line in his preface. He was not a controversialist, he said. "For years I have failed to respond to Mr. Henry Arthur Jones, who long ago invented a set of opinions for me and invited me to defend them with an enviable persist- ence and vigor." But Mr. Belloc had been so offensive that he must be answered. And so Mr. Wells, beginning calmly enough, went on to call his adversary "densely igno- rant." "an adept in stale gossip," "a stout fellow in a funk," and a pretender to scholarship. Why! — "he is no more a scholar than I am." Nothing has been proved except that both men are hard hitters. Pacifists though we are, we enjoy the fight.

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Aug. 3: L, 1927] The Nation 195 insiH " i % & &, •> :■■■>*« 3 at-' ¥S/ Shade of Borgia (reading Sacco- Vanzetti Case) : And I never thought of that! rv Drawn bv Hendrik Willem van La Torture Up to Date

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196 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3243 The Armours Betray the Farmers By FREDERICK BOSELLY FIFTEEN years ago a new Messiah appeared on the agri- cultural horizon in the person of Aaron Sapiro, a young Chicago lawyer who had made a study of cooperative market- ing. He visited western Canada and was instrumental in organizing the Canadian cooperative wheat producers, the largest grain-marketing organization in the world. Sapiro had one idea — that the producer, instead of wail- ing at his helplessness in the grip of the wholesaler, should organize, abandon the practise of "dumping" the whole crop on the market within a few weeks, and, by scientific coopera- tive marketing, obtain the full value of his products. Sapiro is a man of intense personal magnetism. He is an orator. He is a Jew. He is after money for himself as well as his client, the farmer. His weak point was that he had no political possibilities. He asked for no government intervention. No agrarian vote-getter could ride to the title of a statesman on Sapiro's plans. So Sapiro has been con- sistently attacked. Because he is an orator he has been called a demagogue. Because he is a Jew he has been at- tacked by anti-Semitic papers, notably Henry Ford's Dear- born Independent * Because he sought compensation for himself he has been called a fishy-blooded money-grabber out to exploit the farmer. Five years ago Sapiro appeared as a menace to the grain interests in Chicago. He had been scoring consistent successes in the Middle Western States, and the grain men were worried. At one time he was in negotiation with the American Farm Bureau Federation, which is the closest to a national organization possessed by the farmers. A rift appeared, and Sapiro and the Farm Bureau Federation parted company. But the idea had been sown and the farm- ers continued to cry for cooperative marketing. At the same time the terminal-elevator, or wholesale- grain business, was in rather poor shape. The biggest com- pany in the Chicago area was the Armour Grain Company, 871,- per cent of which was owned by the same money which controlled the Armour Packing Company, despite the virtu- ous statements recently made by the packing concern that it had nothing to do with the grain company. There were also E. F. Rosenbaum and Brothers and the Shaffer Grain Com- pany, the latter owned by John C. Shaffer, publisher of the Chicago Evening Post and several Indiana newspapers. According to men in the grain business, the officers of the Armour and Rosenbaum grain concerns saw eventual ruin in the rising tide of cooperative marketing, for the Sapiro plans included terminal elevators owned and con- trolled by the farmers. So they got together and someone, supposedly E. F. ("Manny") Rosenbaum, mapped out a plan which went something like this: "The farmers have got the cooperative bug. It's going to break us. Why not organize a farmers' cooperative mar- keting concern, and sell to the farmers our elevators before they build warehouses of their own. We know that the farmers will never pay large enough salaries to get the brains necessary to handle such a monstrous corporation and * Sapiro brought suit against Ford for $1,000,000, but after the automobile maker's change of front in regard to the Jews it was announced that the action would be dropped. — Editor, The Nation. eventually the company will fail. The cooperative idea will die, and we'll get our elevators back." In December, 1925, it became known that three monster grain corporations, always bent toward "service," had heard the cry of the farmer and were ready to sell their terminal elevators and marketing organizations to a cooperative com- pany, to be organized by the American Farm Bureau Fed- eration, for approximately §20,000,000. So generous had the grain men become that the farmers were not even to be forced to finance the undertaking. They would be placed in charge and would be allowed several years in which to pay gradually for the elevators. Meanwhile the grain men would remain in an advisory capacity as a board of management while the farm representatives learned the business and while the American Farm Bureau Federation, through its local organization, sold $5,000,000 in stock to its members. The Grain Marketing Company became a reality. By the end of 1925 it was working. The elevators had been formally appraised and turned over to the farmers. At last it appeared that cooperative marketing on a giant scale had established itself. The press was enthusiastic in approval of the far-sighted farm leaders, and the unselfish grain men who had helped them toward the realization of their dream. Only the elevators of the Armour Grain Company and the Rosenbaums were taken over. Mr. Shaffer had dropped out. Then came tales that the stock in the Grain Marketing Corporation was not being subscribed to by the farmers. Gray Silver, tall, forceful, a former president of the Na- tional Farm Bureau Federation and now their representa- tive at Washington, had been chosen president of the Grain Marketing Company. He called committee meetings. He listened to threats of the vendors of the elevators and tried to thrash his organization into action before the whole scheme should fall and the farmers' great chance should be past. On the witness-stand at the legislative investigation he told his story and almost broke down and wept as he described how the farmers had been offered what he re- garded as the chance of a century and had ignored it. "I don't know," was his stock answer when he was asked details of the management which he should have known— but the truth of his reply was never doubted by anyone who looked at Silver's puzzled face and eyes. Then came more conferences and an unexplained deci- sion that the Grain Marketing Company had failed, and was to be disbanded. The decision was strictly within the agree- ment. The farmers had failed to sell the required amount of stock in the agreed time, but no extension was sought or offered. The board of managers, composed of the vendors, knew a reason for parting company, for they could not agree among themselves, but this was not made public then. Following the demise of the Grain Marketing Company and the return of the terminal elevators to the Armour Grain Company and the Rosenbaums it became known that these two companies were involved in litigation. Eight months ago the financial district of Chicago was startled to learn that Frederick K. Brown, who had been appointed arbitrator, had awarded to E. F. Rosenbaum and Brothers a judgment of SI. 300,000 against the Armour Grain Company.

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Aug. 31, 1927] The Nation 197 Rumors were heard that the judgment was largely because of falsely graded grain — fake wheat — which had been turned over to the Grain Marketing Company by the Armours. The rumors grew, and after months of agitation, Gov- ernor Small of Illinois appointed a legislative committee headed by Representative Thomas Curran of Chicago to in- vestigate. Curran, a former saloon keeper, is chairman of the House Finance Committee and is considered the gov- ernor's right-hand man in his faction of the party. At the investigation George Thompson, former elevator superintendent for the Armour Grain Company, admitted that, after conferring with George E. Marcy, president of the company, he had instructed men at the Armour's North- western Elevator to raise the grades on nearly one million bushels of almost worthless "feed wheat" and label it as high-grade milling wheat, worth approximately $1 a bushel more. The work of changing the grades was carried out by Frank Cromby, superintendent of the elevator, and Thomp- son, who changed the boards at night without the knowledge of the other employees. This changing of grades was done just before the Armour elevator and its contents were ap- praised and turned over to the Grain Marketing Company. It was so brazenly done that Thompson admitted that he had been accused of taking damaged grains from the sampling boxes of the Chicago Board of Trade samplers. Thus feed wheat, worth about twenty cents a bushel, was shipped by the Grain Marketing Company to Buffalo as milling wheat worth $1.50, and was refused when it was delivered. The Grain Marketing Company had been dis- banded before the claims were adjusted, and no attempt was made to saddle the losses on the farmers who had invested in the company. Every dollar paid in for stock was re- funded, and the necessary adjustment was made between the Armours and the Rosenbaums. But the crooked wheat deal is conceded by grain men to have brought about the quick ending of the farmers' dream company. Shortly after the legislative investigation the Armour Grain Company was suspended from the Chicago Board of Trade, and members of the Armour packing family, denying any knowledge of the actions of their subordinates, an- nounced that the grain company was to be disbanded. And the result of the investigation? For a time it looked as if a sincere attempt was to be made to clear up dishonest practises at the Chicago Board of Trade. The committee itself said that was its intention, and its efforts became even more serious when State Senator Harold E. Kessinger, the Arthur Capper of Illinois, paid a hurried visit to Springfield and demanded that he be allowed to sit as the farmer's representative on an investigation that pri- marily affected the agriculturalists. Kessinger sat on the inquiry board. By his questions he aimed to get to the bottom of the cooperative marketing situation. Arthur Cutten, the nation's most spectacular grain speculator, was called and testified that the present regulation which allows elevators to trade in the market was vicious and did not give the buyer of grain a fair deal. But it was the same Kessinger who prevented any real action from coming of the investigation. Anxious to make a name for himself, he rushed down to the State Senate and introduced his own grain-futures-trading-regulation bill be- fore the Curran investigating committee had been given a chance to bring its findings before the General Assembly. The result of Kessinger's bill was pandemonium on the Board of Trade. Officials claimed that its provision, which would have forced the daily reporting of all deals, would ruin futures-trading, and the bill was abandoned until July 1 when it and the Curran bills were tabled for lack of time. Then came the cry that Congress should introduce a federal measure to regulate futures-trading and nullify the boast of the grain operators that they would merely move to another State if the Kessinger bill were passed. That possibility alone remains out of all the investigation, and even if Congress did act, grain trading could be carried on in Winnipeg and Liverpool by American speculators. A feature of the grain investigation had been the testi- mony of Emanuel Rosenbaum. All through a long grilling he had affirmed his belief in cooperative marketing and de- clared that he had traveled the whole world over, including Russia, and had decided it was the only salvation for the American farmer. He said that, whatever the sacrifice, he would be willing to offer his elevators again to the farmers. His testimony was received with approval by the officials of the American Farm Bureau Federation. Now the Rosenbaums have acquired the elevators of the defunct Armour Grain Company ; the wreckage of the Grain Marketing Company has been cleared away. Emanuel Ros- enbaum has announced that his new company will deal directly with the farmers. The stage is set for the next act.

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198 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3243 Hankow Swings to the Right By PAUL BLANSHARD Hankow, July 13 HANKOW is an island of civil power in a sea of mili- tarism. The government which has been established here by the Kuomintang is completely surrounded by hostile and semi-hostile forces. Along the river front by the Bund are the twenty-three war ships of the United States, Great Britain, France, Italy, and Japan. To the west in Szech- wan, Yang Sen and his bandit troops are temporarily driven back but not pacified. To the east Chiang Kai-shek * holds Shanghai, Nanking, and much of Anhwei and Chekiang provinces. To the south Canton, cradle of the revolution, gives nominal allegiance to Chiang Kai-shek. To the north is Feng Yu-hsiang, the world's most doubtful friend — and beyond him Chang Tso-lin. Most ominous of all is the rising tide of military con- trol within the Hankow government. Two weeks ago there was every indication that the civil government here was firmly in the saddle, but every day has increased the evi- dence that the military chieftains who serve the Hankow regime are taking power into their own hands. Borodin who receives us in his rooms across from the Foreign Office is pessimistic. He is a stately, magnetic man with a deep, vibrant voice, one of the most impressive fig- ures in Far Eastern politics. He speaks of the Chinese revolution sadly ; no enemy of Hankow could be r. .ore gloomy as to the prospects of any approach to Communism in China in the near future. "Will the Hankow government resist the encroaching waves of military control?" we ask. "I thought so a while ago. That is not to say I think so," he replies. The militarism which he fears is within and not without the Hankow regime. Neither Feng Yu- hsiang nor Chiang Kai-shek, he thinks, can afford to attack Hankow directly while so many popular leaders of the Kuomintang are still here. Since the split in the Nationalist movement on April 12, when Chiang Kai-shek definitely denounced Hankow, the officers of this government have been fighting a desper- ate battle to maintain themselves first as a military power and second as a civil government true to the principles of the Kuomintang. They hoped to continue the drive to Pek- ing, patching up a temporary peace with Chiang Kai-shek until the goal of their ambitions had been realized and turning over to a Peking congress of the party the whole question of future control. Then came the great disaster in Hunan. The complete story of Hunan cannot yet be told because it is still impossible for foreign journalists to penetrate into the back country around and to the south of Changsha. where the struggle was staged between revolutionary peas- ants and returned soldiers. But the main outline of the story is apparent. Hunan, the great agricultural province in central China lying south of Hankow, has come under Communist influ- ence more than any other section of China. The Hunanese have the reputation of being quick-tempered and hot- blooded; they welcomed the northward advance of the Can- * This article was, of course, written before the resignation of Chiang Kai- shek, referred to in the editorial in this week's issue.- — Editor. The Nation. tonese and the most extreme parts of the Kuomintang program. They established peasant unions and fought the "bad gentry." The program of the peasant unions under the Kuomintang does not call for nationalization or gen- eral seizure of the land, but it allows the union to seize the land of reactionary officials who oppose the Nationalist movement and to use the land for the benefit of the union. The power is not clearly defined. It might apply to the land of rich peasants who opposed the peasant's union. It proved to be a most dangerous weapon in the hands of men not trained to leadership. No sooner had the Nationalist army with large sec- tions of Hunanese troops swept northward than guerilla warfare broke out in many Hunan villages between the gentry and more conservative peasants on the one hand and the revolutionary peasants' unions. Bandits and scoun- drels took possession of the unions in a number of places and used their power for theft and personal revenge. The unions had the very bad taste to seize the land of a number of officers in the revolutionary army who belonged to the gentry class. The reaction was immediate. The reports of seizures of soldiers' land soon found their way to the army. A unit was rushed from Hunan and a general massacre of the leaders of the peasants' unions took place in many villages. General Tang Sheng-chi, who after the defection of Chiang Kai-shek was the most important military leader of the Hankow regime, came back from Hunan and took personal command of the Hunan situation. His report to the Han- kow government approved with a few minor reprimands the attacks upon the radical peasants. The peasant unions were disbanded and told to reorganize. The Hankow lead- ers saw their most advanced section pass from civil to mili- tary control. They approved the new policy by official vote and the Communist Minister of Agriculture took an in- definite leave of absence on account of "ill health." It was charged that the excesses committed by the peasants' union in Hunan were part of a deliberate plot by Communists to exceed the limits of the Kuomintang land program. General Tang Sheng-chi, commander of Hunan, does not accuse the Communists of bad faith. "The Changsha incident, "he says, "was entirely due to the lack of able leaders in the peasant and labor movements." Wang Ching-wei assured us that there was definite proof that Communists in Hunan tried to carry out a Communist program in addition to the Kuomintang program in viola- tion of their pledge to stay within the limits set by the party. Wang Ching-wei is the real head of the Hankow government, the chairman of the Central Executive Com- mittee of the Kuomintang, and a man whose close associa- tion with the Communists gives his criticism double weight. Borodin admits that there were many peasant excesses in Hunan, but he emphasizes the fact that the soldiers and officers of the gentry class turned upon the revolution be- cause they were unwilling to lose the special privileges belonging to their families. Whatever may be the proportion of Communist betrayal and military reaction in the Hunan debacle it appears that the Hankow regime cannot count upon the loyalty of its

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Aug. 31, 1927] The Nation 199 revolutionary armies when the economic interests of those armies are injured. The army of the Chinese Nationalists differs from the workers' and peasants' army of the Russian revolution in solidarity and social outlook. "It is clear," says Wang Ching-wei, "that the revolutionary troops do not necessarily come from the revolutionary masses. This has resulted in a situation in which when the commander is revolutionary his troops will also be revolutionary, and when the commander turns against the revolution, his troops will do likewise." Many of the Nationalist troops have passed from this stage of personal loyalty to strong party allegiance under the powerful campaign of education in Kuomintang ideals carried on in the army by the political department, but enough of the army remains subject to personal domination to make the future of the Hankow government most uncertain. The foreign press has consistently described the Han- kow regime as "Communist" because of three factors: its retention of Russian Communist advisers, the Communist leadership of the labor unions, and the activities of the peasants' union in Hunan. We have already indicated that the campaign of the peasants' unions in Hunan was repudi- ated by the Hankow government. The evidence available here seems to indicate that the Hankow government is no more Communistic than the Na- tionalist movement was before the split with Chiang Kai- shek; in fact there is every indication that government and labor policy has moved steadily to the right for the last three months. The split with Chiang Kai-shek has given an opportunity to isolate Hankow as a target of vitu- peration and to blame upon its "Communist influence" all the excesses which are inevitable in civil war or revolution. The Kuomintang has consistently and openly cooperated with Soviet Russia and the Communists since 1924, when Dr. Sun Yat-sen advocated such cooperation, but it was specified from the beginning of the party's relationship to the Communists that the Communists must pledge their allegiance to the Kuomintang program and work within the limits of that program as long as they were in associa- tion with the party. Outside of Hunan there does not seem to be proof that the Communists violated their pledge. Borodin has continued to hold large personal power as adviser to the Hankow government because of his grasp of the situation, but he has no vote in party decisions and the Kuomintang is under no obligation to accept his opin- ions. Not more than six of the twenty-five living members of the Central Executive Committee of the Kuomintang elected at the last official election who are loyal to the Han- kow regime are members of the Communist Party. Prob- ably by the time this is in print Borodin and his advisers will have left Hankow and the Kuomintang will have broken definitely with the Communist Party of China. All signs point in that direction. In the conduct of the labor unions the Communists have taken a leading role, placing many Communist leaders in strategic positions and securing a Communist as Minister of Labor. At the Pan-Pacific Labor Conference here they imported every glittering and explosive phrase of left- wing vituperation, including the familiar denunciations of right-wing labor and Socialist leaders of Europe and Amer- ica. They particularly warned the Chinese workers against any suggestions of help from foreign labor movements that were not of the approved color. The influence of the Communists is also apparent in many of the practices and policies of the local unions. The literature and posters show the mark of Russian advice. But the actual policies of these unions in the past three months have been far from Communistic. They do not advocate the socialization of all or even of most industry. After the first flurry of bitter opposition to British and Japanese employers and to the former henchmen of Wu Pei Fu they settled down to a policy of improving their conditions within the capitalist structure. Their increases of wages, while nominally large, have been more than can- celled by the increase in the cost of living and by the fluc- tuations in local currency. They have not accomplished a revolution and their program does not call for a Com- munist revolution. The Kuomintang economic program follows the vague Third Principle of Peoples' Livelihood advanced by Sun Yat-sen. It is interpreted as meaning a tax on unearned increment of the land and government land banks, as far as the peasants are concerned. It might be interpreted as something more revolutionary, although everyone knows that Dr. Sun was not a Communist. For a time last spring the Hankow government considered seriously a thorough- going redistribution of the land under a new law, but the project was voted down by the Central Executive Commit- tee. Since the Hunan debacle the leaders are positive in declaring for a conservative land policy. For many weeks the labor pickets of Hankow and vicin- ity were armed and carried out the instructions of the unions without benefit of police. They were regarded by the government as a kind of special police and when in the last week of June objections to their activities arose among military leaders the pickets voluntarily surrendered their arms and declared their satisfaction with ordinary police protection for the labor movement. One by one the Communist leaders have been slipping out of town during the last week. Sou Cheu-ging, Com- munist Minister of Labor, has resigned. Teng Yen-tat, di- rector of the political department of the army, said in resigning: "If the Kuomintang has no intention of recog- nizing the peasant and labor policy and the question of the distribution of the land, the result will be that the party will be deprived of all its revolutionary significance. The consequence will be that the revolution will be a failure as it was in 1911." The leader of the Houseboys' Union came in great fright to a friend yesterday and asked for help in getting out of town on a British steamer. He feared a massacre of radical leaders if some section of the troops should turn upon "the Communists." The British would not allow him to leave on their ships because he was already blacklisted as undesirable. Last night the Amah's Union, formerly many hundred strong, met in a nervous little meeting of twenty-five. There was almost a panic when the lights went out for a moment. Although a coup d'etat is possible at any moment the government manages to avoid the appearance of panic. It is manned by stout-hearted veterans of Chinese revolution who were well aware of the risks when they undertook the northern campaign. In spite of the almost insuperable obstacles they have achieved the nearest approach to a re- sponsible and progressive government that China has had. Their offices and ministries are well ordered; their leaders inspire profound respect. Their defeat would be a serious blow at the future of the labor movement and of civil gov- ernment in China.

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200 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3243 Should Men Be Protected? By LORINE PRUETTE WHEN Galatea grew weary of the fatuous and some- what repetitious adoration of Pygmalion she stepped gravely and determinedly down off the pedestal on which he had placed her. In stepping down, with a certain malicious inadvertence she collided with the sculptor so that he fell down a long flight of stairs. Then with the bland determination to erect a new statue upon the deserted pedestal, Galatea took up the chisel. She thought she might make it a glorification of Galatea, with several orphan children clinging to her skirts and an angelic light shining upon her brow, which should be chiseled very smooth for the purpose of reflecting this angelic light. If she left this glorification behind to represent her she thought she might be able to slip down into the world of men and be as vulgar as she liked. By and by she thought she might turn her attention to Pygmalion, still nursing his broken head on the lowest step; she felt she could make quite an entertaining statue to represent him, but as this seemed not at all pressing she went away on business of her own, forgetting even to inquire about his wounds. She did not know that by stepping off the pedestal she had already made a different and indeed pathetic creature of the great Pygmalion. This is the correct version of what happened between Pygmalion and Galatea, and any other account is to be regarded with suspicion if not actual disrespect. If it is true that man once shaped woman to be the creature of his desires and needs, then it is true that woman is now remodeling man. If it is true that this was once a man-made world, then it is a certain fact that the world is now fast becoming woman-made. But of course the world is neither man- nor woman-made. In every inti- mate relation there is constantly going on an exchange which we must call mental, psychic, or emotional because we do not know how to classify it in physiological — or chemical — terms. A psychology is growing up which puts the emphasis upon the interaction between two bodies, rather than on the nature of either body. Certain it is that for social psychology we have to recognize that no individual is a man unto himself, that the isolated human being is an impossibility, and that we are all of us products of each other. Looking at men and women in this light it becomes absurd to speak of this man-made world, ridiculous to say that women are what men have made them, and a childish superstition to hold that the two sexes are concrete en- tities, one of which is capable of kicking the other about like a football. We may be sure that whenever men were influencing women, women were likewise shaping men. The joint life of men and women does not illustrate ''linear social behavior" but "circular social behavior." However, while from the strictly scientific viewpoint men never de- termined the personality of women, there have been periods when one or the other sex has appeared to wield a pre- dominant influence. For some time now women in this country have been wielding such an influence. The much derided American husband is the result. American women under fiftv mav be divided into three groups: (1) those who struggled for independence of ac- tion, who have against legal and social disqualifications fought their way into positions of importance, who bore the brunt of the fight begun before their day and who will never quite lose their bitterness toward men; (2) a younger group which know less bitterness because it has known less of the struggle, and (3) a still younger group that is quite frankly amazed at all the feministic pother and likely to be quickly bored when the subject comes up. The col- lege students of today belong of course in the third group, as almost any teacher from groups one and two will un- willingly testify. For these feminism can never be a burn- ing issue; very likely their daughters will come to discuss the serious problem of masculinism and the enslavement of men and will hold heated debates over the question. "Should Men Be Protected?" In "The Fabulous Forties" a quotation appears from a writer of that period: "Home is the palace of the husband and the father. He is the monarch of that little empire, wearing a crown that is the gift of Heaven, swaying a scepter put into his hands by the Father of all, acknowledg- ing no superior, fearing no rival, and dreading no usurper." That is a pathetic utterance, when we look at the American husband and father of today, a humble creature, bluster- ing occasionally but knowing in his heart that power has departed from him. It is not merely that he eats the food his wife thinks is good for him, it is not simply that the clothes he wears are picked out or at least definitely supervised by a woman, it is not only that his recreations are largely chosen for him. or that he gets his religion and his culture second-hand, or even that very soon he may be taking his politics also by way of the wifely ver- dict ; none of these quite accounts for the shorn lamb. The true enemy is within. The man has glimpsed his own amazing insignificance in the cosmic scheme. All modern industrial life is calculated to reduce a man's sense of his own importance and the home, which once served as a citadel of protection, an asylum and a refuge, a feather- bed for aching limbs and an opiate for bruised self-esteem, is, with the change in women's activities and interests, simply ceasing to function. More than this, the new attitude of aggression and initiative on the part of the women means that they are much more critical and much less soothing when husband comes home with a story of trouble at the office. Some men openly declare that they want an empty-headed wife who will restore their self-esteem by the mere circumstance of being inferior. The town-drunkard usually keeps a dog for the same purpose. But even empty-headed wives may be critical rather than admiring. Fashions in wives have changed. The "yes-woman" has gone out of the home. The husband may be, and often is, the most important single interest in his wife's life, but he is by no means the only one. If what psychoanalysis has to show about the importance of early influences is correct, this decline in the husband's position is particularly serious. The small boy is the object of at least one woman's devoted solicitude and service and he grows into maturity secure

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Aug. 31, 1927] The Nation 201 in the confidence that he is supremely important to his mother. The wife who is an active business or professional woman simply has not the time to fill the maternal role; in many cases she undoubtedly lacks the desire to do so, and the social pattern no longer constrains her to act the part. Using general terms which have very little meaning psychologically, the wife is becoming less "altruistic" and more "selfish." She has her own life to live and she has won certain rights which still further diminish the im- portance of the husband's position. Old theories of the sexual needs of man, the sexual coldness of woman, led to an attitude that the husband had certain rights and powers which could not be denied by any good wife. Sexual relations were thus much simpli- fied and in the practically unlimited exercise of these func- tions, as she saw fit, the most insignificant husband gained for a moment power and dominance, the memory of which could help to bolster up his self-esteem on other less gratifying occasions. Further, the man could regulate his sexual life according to his individual needs with beneficent effects on his physical and mental health. Now that the old superstitions about women are breaking down and women are being recognized as equal partners in all marital relations, the situation is immensely complicated. It is entirely probable that there are definite differences, both by sex and by individual, in the rhythms of sexual activity and inactivity. In France the wife's duty toward the hus- band in this respect is still quite clearly recognized; in America the modern wife is likely to laugh at the idea. In addition to losing his sexual dominance the modern man has lost financial dominance as well. Both of these losses turn not so much on the concrete situation as upon the attitude that has insidiously taken possession of the man himself. At the same time that he knows his dominion is going the woman has begun most vigorously to assert her rights to his earnings. Wages for wives is an entirely respectable idea, when applied to wives who work enough to justify wages, but this slogan is just as likely to be taken up most vigorously by the woman who does nothing in return. Wives who have no interest in the responsibility and obligation of feminism adopt with suspicious ease the patter about rights. The man is often made to feel that he has no right to expect any form of service from his wife — that would be degrading to a free woman, — but that somehow, mysteriously, he is responsible for her still ham- pered condition and that he can never give her enough to make up for it. The thousands of women enjoying imag- inary diseases help to keep the husband in his place. He may be slightly bewildered by the logic of the whole thing, but he plods on determinedly. He is caught between the millstones of the old and the new mores. He has to live up to the old conception of the husband as provider and head of the family; he has also to live with an exponent of the view that women should be free. And if there is a child! Well, of course it is his fault that nature has not provided a better way of populating the globe. The "mother of two children" has husband down on the floor, not even daring to beg for mercy. The theory is that he can never do enough to make it up to her for what she has gone through. In proportion as the man is sensitive to the problems of others he is most easily betrayed into the clutches of this sort of woman. A further cause for the decline of the male is the fact that his wife is so important. As wage-earners and citi- zens all women are still young and they have the insolence of youth. They are proud of themselves, proud of what they have won, sure of the importance of what they are doing or are going to do. They have not been in the in- dustrial organization long enough to realize how remorse- less is the system; particularly in politics women are like children, playing dolls with an absorbed futility. The young person in any position is apt to be cock-sure and valiant until difficulties threaten; then when he makes a mess of things he probably feels he should be let off the punishment. Youth believes it "will get away with it"; women still believe they can get away with it, and they still do, even with murder. The preferential treatment that belonged to the old order is still theirs, and this gives them courage. Scarcely any young girl or married woman is under the same tight pressure to earn a living as is the average man. Employers speak feelingly of the impossibility of disciplining the married woman worker. Of course there are women who have every difficulty and every burden; women who have set up homes and have many persons dependent upon them; but these women are the exception. The modern woman, the very young mod- ern woman who crowds the subways each day on her way to work, is secure because she can still claim the security of the old system, gay because the novelty of the new assures her that she is doing something rather remarkable. She can do everything Pygmalion can, and more. For she can bear children. And children have to have a mother. Every new emphasis upon the importance of child-bearing and child-rearing increases the importance of the woman. There is nothing in modern civilization that does not work to her aggrandizement and that does not work against the man. Of course I am speaking of psy- chological values. Men still hold the big jobs and get the big rewards, but their confidence is going and for the most intelligent ones it is already gone. This self-distrust- ful male is going to be dominated more and more by the rising womanhood. His consciousness of his own defects is an encouragement to the woman to note her own abili- ties. Back and forth the ceaseless pendulum moves. Men must worship now and then, and they cannot worship men, while women have long been skilled in wor- shipping themselves. They are greedy, these modern young women, and cruel, but who can blame them? Theirs is the power. If they crush out the individuality of their husbands, if they drink the sacred fount completely dry, they may only be avenging their grandmothers unaware. It is not to be expected that women will be any more chiv- alrous or more generous than men have been when they were in the saddle. Tyrants are made by blindness and lack of imagination. As long as Pygmalion sits dull and unprotesting on the bottom step the new owners of the world will not think much about his situation. But when his feeling of inferiority becomes so great that he must cry out, when the inevitable psychoneurotic tendencies manifest themselves in definite disorders, women will be compelled to pause and think a little. Men lost their power when they began to consider the disadvantages of being a woman; they were betrayed by their imaginations. Even- tually it is to be supposed that women will follow this same cycle. When this happens Galatea may go and sit rather humbly upon the bottom step beside Pygmalion, or she may even submit to being a statue again and wait for the quickening breath of life, because Pygmalion needs it so.

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202 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3243 Honesty in Advertising By RAYMOND FULLER WHEN President Coolidge extolled the virtues of American advertising some months ago, his words were received with general applause. Thirty national ad- vertisers, contributing to a symposium on the subject in the Literary Digest, enthusiastically approved the President's economic wisdom and his understanding of the true pur- poses of their profession. Here are a few passages from that address: There can be no permanent basis for advertising ex- cept representation of the exact truth. Advertising (rather than competition) is the life of trade. The basic function of advertising is education ... it informs its readers of the existence and nature of com- modities by explaining the advantages to be derived from their use. . . . Advertising ministers to the spiritual side of trade.* The gratitude of the advertisers is not unnatural, espe- cially in the light of another statement published not long before. Mr. W. E. Humphrey, Federal Trade Commissioner, speaking in New York, had said: The publication of fraudulent advertising in magazines and newspapers costs the American public about $500,000,- 000 annually. I can produce today magazines that in a single issue carry not less than fifty vile, dishonest, or indecent advertisements. I determined to look further into the educative, spir- itual, and exact-truth aspects of advertising. A current copy of one of the largest women's magazines, carefully checked, showed, after careful investigation, that out of 7,757 column-inches of advertising, 2,157 (or 28 per cent) were sold to advertisers making explicit or implied misstate- ment of fact. These advertisements represented 26 per cent of the advertisers in the issue. Another monthly (running over two million circulation) had forty-six such untruthful advertisements; another, thirty-two; another, forty. These were "the best advertising mediums" in America. Individual notions of truth and falsity are always de- batable. But if advertising were mainly designed to put forth undeniable "advantages to be derived" by the public, advertisers should be able and willing to answer any doubts about their statements. Letters were sent to thirty-five national advertisers, selected at random, asking them to give some unbiased scientific authority on which their slogans and claims were based. Five advertisers failed to reply even to second letters, although they had been requested to substantiate such broad and obviously questionable statements as these : Adjusto Ray is wonderful for relieving rheumatism, neuritis, neuralgia, lumbago, headaches, nervousness, and many other ailments. Its sunlike rays quickly soothe the affected parts, penetrating to the seat of the trouble, ease pain, and help to remove the cause. Armored Cord construction applies an engineering fact to the building of stronger sturdit. Cooper Tires. . . . This revolutionary new construction multiplies by many times the resistant strength of the carcass ... it thwarts the • The italics throughout are the author's. deadly elements that heretofore sent most good tires to the scrap-heap . . . [it] eliminates interior friction. (We asked if laboratory tests had been made which would compare these tires with those of competitors — such tests as the United States Bureau of Standards makes annually before the government departments buy tires.) Smith Brothers' Cough Drops safely protect and gently medicate the throat tissues. . . . The cheapest health in- surance in the world. Consolidated Clean Coal . . . invariably lowers produc- tion costs where it is used. Rich in heat-content. . . . Liquid Albolene, claiming special value as a laxative mineral oil, sells at eight to ten times more than mineral oil is purchasable at wholesale. We inquired its special value. McKesson and Robbins did not reply. (The Ameri- can Medical Association's experiments have led to the con- clusion that all mineral oils are of substantially equal merit.) Other manufacturers, however, did reply with inter- esting results: Wildroot Company claimed that their hair tonic "does remove dandruff . . . dandruff soon disappears under regu- lar treatment . . . removes the very unhealthy condition of dandruff, and thus prevents the loss of hair sure to follow dandruff . . . renews the luster and beauty." Asked to back this by medical authority, they wrote, "If you will use it you will find it to be just what we claim." The Bureau of Investigations of the American Medical Association had reported, however, specifically with regard to Wildroot: "It would seem obvious that no drug with the poisonous poten- tialities of arsenic should be put in a mixture and indis- criminately sold to the public." The same bureau had pre- viously declared that Wildroot had no root or herb product in it. The Amplion Corporation of America asserts that its cone speaker "reproduces the entire vocal and musical range with every precision and purity." The chief engineer, how- ever, admitted that the word "apparently" should have been inserted before "reproduce." Asked if his department had seen to it that some such change be made, he replied that "correspondence had been sent to the sales department." The Edison Phonograph manufacturers advertised "Music just as it emanates from the throat of the singer or instrument is captured and recreated with absolute fidelity. There is no distortion." Published tests of talking machines by engineers show that exact reproduction of music has yei to be attained. In answer to requests for the proof of their claims the company said, "Beauty of music is perceived through the sense of hearing and not through an inanimate device showing the relation of acoustic input to output." Forhan was asked to show proof that "Four out of five get pyorrhoea." "Kindly call at our office and we shall be glad to let you refer to this data." I thought it unnecessary, however, to do so after examining an official tabulation made of 17,000 policy holders of the Metropolitan Life In- surance Company. It utterly confutes the slogan, as do other examinations recorded by the Life Extension In- stitute. Instead of four out of five, one out of twenty is shown to be nearer the truth.

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Aug. 31, 1927] The Nation 203 Do Perfect Piston Circles "seldom fail to give a thou- sand or more miles to the gallon of oil and add 10,000 miles to the life of cylinders, pistons, and rings?" I wanted to know what disinterested engineers said. "We have no dis- interested engineers. ... If your interest has behind it an opportunity for us to secure additional business, we will be only too glad to go into this matter in detail." I asked "How can you justify the statement that 'The Aero B Amplopower makes possible on your radio the exact reproduction of every note of every instrument?' " Answer: "For business reasons we are unable to make public all engineering data which cost us so much to secure . . . the Amplopower must speak for itself." It does. But that all radios, despite their claims, are still far from attaining exact reproduction of every note has been proved by labora- tory tests. Asked to send the report on "Minute Brew" by Dean Sayre, director of the Kansas State Laboratory, showing that the Battle Creek Food Company has "eliminated these empyreumatic products which were known to do the harm" in caffeinless coffees, the company wrote, "The tests made by Dean Sayre proved Minute Brew to be the least acid of cereal beverages. . . . He requested, however, that the fig- ures on this be confidential." But this company had de- clared in print: "His results are at the disposal of anyone who cares for them." The makers of the Prophylactic Tooth Brush answered a statement by Dr. W. M. Gardner in Hygeia that their brush was not as well-shaped as they claimed, by asserting: "We have nothing of a scientific character to confute Dr. Gardner. The only data we have is commonsense data which is so obvious and so simple that it refutes without any argument." Yet this company has stressed the "scien- tific" qualities of its brush for years. In advertising it announces: "These features (the ones questioned by Dr. Gardner are there because Science says they should be." Ivory Soap, "99 44/100 per cent pure," was admitted to contain a necessary 30 per cent water content; "99 44/100 per cent is a slogan, not a guarantee." I asked the Three-in-One Oil company to substantiate claims that such a light oil was a practical rust-preventive. I asked about an obvious acidity corrosive to copper, brass, silver, etc. I asked other leading questions to discover (1) why it was so expensive, (2) why other common oils or greases were not just as good for the purpose? mentioned. The answer was simple: "If Three-in-One was just being placed on the market and had not stood the test of a third of a century we might feel that a certified laboratory sheet was essential, but when millions of men, women . . ." "Army and navy small-arms manuals recommend it," the company advertises. But a letter from an officer in the War Depart- ment, Ordnance Division, says: "The army small-arms manuals do not recommend Three-in-One oil. The United States Army does not purchase it. Our own investigations show that Three-in-One oil has an acid reaction . . . which forms verdigris in presence of copper. ... It is so thin it runs from surfaces and leaves spots unprotected. . . . For lubrication of small arms this department for many years has been using sperm oil." Neither the official "Blue Jacket's Manual," nor "Small Arms Firing Regulations, U. S. Navy" mention it, although recommending suitable oiling treatments. A huge display advertisement of "Dona Castile Soap" manufactured by Armour and Company in the Middle West led me to inquire how much olive oil was in it and why "nothing else but castile soap has been found so beneficial for the skin of a woman." The company replied : "We can think of no better answer to your questions than for you to try this exquisite soap, and we are sending you . . ." The Federal Trade Commission has ordered the manufacturers to desist from using the word "castile," alleging that the company "has misled and deceived the public into believing that said soap is and has been genuine castile soap, made exclusively of olive oil . . . but which on the contrary has included vegetable oils other than olive . . . and animal fats such as tallow, in a substantial amount. . . ." Listerine's makers, questioned about its dandruff claims, responded: "It is recommended for removal of loose dandruff." The following came from the American Medical Association Bureau of Investigation: "The Lis- terine advertising on the dandruff feature is of the same kind as the Listerine advertising for halitosis and body odors — largely buncombe." The Sanka Coffee Corporation says its caffein-free cof- fee can be given freely to children. "If there are children in your family, you should use Sanka by all means. It can't hurt them; it is as harmless as milk." Literature sent in response to inquiry contained a reprint from the Medical Journal Record, contending that coffee should never be given to children but not saying that Sanka could with safety. Nowhere in other literature sent is there authority for the statements quoted above; but on the other hand a letter to me from the American Medical Association Bureau reads: "Children should have no coffee even though the caffein has been largely removed. In addition to caffein, there are certain empyreumatic oils which give coffee its aroma and flavor, and there is some evidence to indicate they affect digestion unfavorably, and therefore it is a good thing to keep off the dietary of children." Other advertisers written to did not see fit to substan- tiate claims made publicly to sell their products. B. T. Bab- bitt was addressed about Bab-O. "You say that Bab-0 is a preparation distinctly out of the class of scouring powders . . . different from anything else. Why is this true? Please give scientific reasons." The quite inconsequential answer was: "Because it contains other ingredients besides soap powder, volcanic ash, and moisture." The J. B. Williams Company replied to a request for facts showing its products were the best: "A vast accumulation of scientific data, im- bedded in which are most flattering findings in connection with Williams' creams and soaps, are not available to the public." Ever-Ready Razor Blades are claimed to be "the perfect blade." I wrote for laboratory tests to prove this. "We regret exceedingly we cannot supply you with the in- formation you require. We do not make public the records of our laboratory." Of the remaining advertisers not quoted for lack of space, four have backed their printed sales-talk with proba- ble fact; the others made no serious attempt to do so. I submit the above survey as a fair test of the ethics and purpose of this modern art. It omits the wild exaggera- tions of cigarette, automobile, and cosmetic advertising; it does not go down into the lower depths of the tabloids, the snappy-story magazines, the billboards, or into direct mail advertising, almanacs, or drug store windows. It is a brief cross-section of so-called national advertising in our better- class popular magazines, and contains, it seems to me, an appalling indictment of American business honesty.

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204 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3243 Chicago's Symphony Orchestra By LAWRENCE MARTIN THE Chicago Symphony Orchestra, founded thirty-seven years ago by Theodore Thomas, is a cultural land- mark not only of the Bandit City but of the nation. Never- theless it stands disbanded as the upshot of an "industrial" dispute, and only heroic efforts will bring it back to life. Meantime in Chicago the strange spectacle presents itself of a Rajah of Jazz offering $10,000 (through his publicity agent) towards saving the orchestra, which the Orchestral Association, comprised of the pillars of local business and society, turns down, preferring rather to junk the orchestra than to give way an inch before the musicians' union or its czar. Trouble began some three months ago when the Musi- cians' Federation, through its president, James C. Petrillo, demanded a 25 per cent increase in the basic salary of $80. This the Orchestral Association turned down flat. Petrillo alleged that the players were poorly paid as com- pared, on the one hand, to grand opera, theater, and jazz musicians, and on the other hand to players in other sym- phony orchestras. Figures were cited to show that the average salary of grand opera musicians was $150 a week, of theater musicians $125, and of jazz melodists $110 to $175. To this the association officials answered that the Chi- cago Symphony was the best-paid orchestra in the world, and offered as proof the fact that its basic rate was $10 higher than the basic rate of either the New York or Phila- delphia orchestras. The union now retorts that in these orchestras only about half a dozen men are receiving the minimum, while in the Chicago Symphony half the men are being paid at the lowest rate. Thus the arguments have gone back and forth, and only an expert accountant with the payrolls of the orchestras concerned before him could expect to reach the truth. In the course of negotiations, about July 15 the union cut its demands in half, asking only a ten-dollar increase in the minimum rate. The answer of the association to this attempt at compromise was that no contracts would be con- sidered except at the salaries in force. Local newspapers in their editorials stressed the fact that there had been two similar disputes in the past, that the association was in no mood for union dictation, and that the present situation was regarded as a show-down. The orchestra was dis- banded for the summer, and apparently for all time. The newspapers, as might be expected, had not been giving the musicians' federation a fair chance. The Chica- goan, a new sophisticated magazine of the boulevard type. an imitation of the New Yorker, devoted two articles in its first number to attacking the union. But with the orchestra all but killed, the dailies began to take notice. Some public- spirited citizens and music lovers made themselves heard. The feeling began to grow that the pillars of the associa- tion had been behaving like Tory diehards, and that under the shadow of fighting for a principle they were conducting a more or less personal war against the union chief? and the union idea. Agitation developed for a public fund with which to meet the salary increase of approximately $30,000. A piano company expressed a desire to contribute: Paul Ash, Balaban and Katz's jazz demon, offered to pay $10,000 into a fund; and the Daily News, practically the only news- paper to concern itself with saving the orchestra, offered to donate "a substantial sum." But President Hamill and Vice-President Oakley refused to entertain the idea of ac- cepting such contributions. They would take no offers with strings tied to them; any contributions must be made with the understanding that the association might use the funds as it saw fit; and the association would not go beyond last year's contracts. It was this irreconcilable attitude that swung the newspapers, and consequently public opinion, away from their anti-union bias. The Orchestral Associa- tion had accepted donations for special purposes, notably for pensions and scholarships. Why, therefore, should it not accept special donations for wage increases? This naturally gives rise to the pertinent question, What is the Orchestral Association? Is it a private, closed corporation, or a civic organization? Who elects the mem- bers, and on what basis, and to whom are they responsible for their conduct of orchestral affairs? "The affairs of the orchestra," one reads in a leaflet issued by the association, "are controlled by a governing body of forty men, known as the Orchestral Association. Appointment to that body is for life, and membership is considered an honorable distinction. Membership carries with it no financial obligations of any nature. The or- chestra always has been distinctly a 'community affair' in Chicago, the financial burdens of its earlier years being distributed among many people, its financial support never having been regarded as the 'pet hobby' of any one rich man." The orchestra has a deficit of about $85,000 yearly, which is met by income from three main sources: rental of the six-story building in which the hall is housed, rental of the hall, and cash endowment. The hall, situated on Michigan Avenue, Chicago's proudest thoroughfare, was built in 1904 by popular subscription, 8.500 persons con- tributing in amounts from 10 cents to $25,000. But for the fact that the orchestra owns its own home and draws substantial revenue therefrom, it would not be able to sup- port itself without patronage of one sort or another. "... the financial burdens of its earlier years being distributed among many people." But the control of the orchestra is in the hands of respectable, solid, and sub- stantial men who have made their mark in business and civic affairs. Among the members are three McCormicks, a couple of Ryersons, a Sprague. and Frank Lowden. These gentlemen have made many pronouncements in their time, but probably none which was expressly favorable to unionism. In short, the Orchestral Association is a name for a class organization comprised of forty "pillars," electing each other for life, self-perpetuating, and responsible to no one but themselves. These gentlemen do not like unions; in particular they dislike the musicians' union; and in espe- cial they detest Mr. Petrillo, the president. They started out to make this a matter of principle, a sort of vital issue between capital and labor, whether or not it led to wreck- ing the orchestra. On the other hand, President Petrillo is not the most

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Aug. 31, 1927] The Nation 205 tactful man in the world. He does well in a dispute between a movie-house manager and a temperamental organist, but he is out of his element with the Gold Coast crowd. Be- tween these two the symphony orchestra is beset from all directions. Press reports attempt to make something of the fact that this is a war of social strata as well as of economic principle. The newspapers have also made capital of the allega- tion that the union "czar" hurled his demands out of the blue sky, and that the symphony musicians themselves were never consulted. Business Manager Voegeli of the Orchestral Association is authority for the statement that several men of the orchestra have told him so. They may have had reasons. For the purpose of this article five men were interviewed before the concert at Ravinia Park, the Gold Coast's playground. They talked when assured that no names were wanted. All said that while no direct vote was taken, the union had made inquiries among the musi- cians before taking the matter up. All were satisfied with the union's course. At this writing it is not possible to prophecy with any confidence how the squabble will end. Rumor, with news- paper sanction, has it that if the association does not bend, the union will reorganize the orchestra and go ahead with- out the forty pillars. Substantial obstacles make this course dubious. Some days ago President Hamill made a trip to New York where he supposedly called on President Weber of the musicians' national organization — apparently with no results. Meantime the daily press has taken to the pri- vate subscription idea, and has suggested a compromise which would at the same time give the musicians what they want, and save the dignity of the life-members. The pro- posal is that, in the face of the association's refusal to accept donations to apply on the salary increase, a public and exterior fund be created, out of which the players will be paid. This would constitute a sort of supplementary wage ladled out to the musicians. Officially, the gentlemen of the association would know nothing about it. Techni- cally, they will have won, for the old scale around which they rallied will remain intact. The latest report is that the association has accepted this arrangement. Thus, while the materialistic demands of practitioners of the most spiritual art will be satisfied, the dignity of the association will not be compromised — except for persons with an ap- preciation of the grotesque. In the Driftway THE Drifter has often wondered if there is such a thing as a distinctly Western type of humor. He thinks there is. There is the old, old story of the cowboy who returned to town alone a day after he had started with his bride for his ranch 100 miles away. On being questioned he explained sadly that fifty miles out she had been thrown from her horse and broken a leg; and so he had to shoot her. That is typically Western. -X- * # * # ANOTHER example the Drifter found in the newspapers a while ago when he read of a Western State Senator and rancher who was always reelected, despite the fact that he was a Democrat in a Republican camp, merely be- cause of the stories he told. One of these stories was of how a newly appointed county agent came to his ranch one day and suggested that the senator raise hogs. The senator agreed. A few months later the agent made an- other visit. He was dismayed at the skinny proportions of the hogs. "Well," said the rancher, "they have the run of 10,000 acres. I'll bet they're the fastest hogs in Melett County." "They need protein," said the county agent pro- fessionally. So the rancher killed a horse and fed it to them. Pretty soon he was relieved of this duty, however, because they got so they killed their own horses, and when next the agent came he found fat sleek hogs racing over the place. "Now, why don't you sell them?" he asked. "Well," came the answer, "if I ever catch 'em in town, I will." A S exhibit three the Drifter offers a story that many Western youngsters have no doubt been lulled to sleep with. It is always told as the experience of the pioneer grandfather of the child listener. "Once your grandfather and your Uncle Joe went up in the hills to get wood. In them days, you know, they made harness out of calfskin, and calfskin stretches. Well, they got up in the hills and filled their wagon and started back. Just as they started the rain came down in sheets — and that harness began to stretch. The wagon wouldn't move an inch. So your grand- father and Uncle Joe got on the horses and rode 'em home and unhitched the horses and then tied the harness to the hitchin' post right out here in front of the house. It rained all night. But the next morning the sun come out hot. Then of course that harness started shrinkin'. And about noon here come that load of wood down the road. . . . Yes, sir, that was when your grandfather first come here. Now what do you think of that?" What, indeed? -:.- * * * * GIVING young hitch hikers a lift, says a warning, has added materially to juvenile delinquency. "It is diffi- cult to refuse a ride to some smiling boy or girl," it goes on, "but it is far better to disappoint a child than to become a factor in carrying it to some distant city and causing paren- tal worry." The Drifter doubts that denying rides to young- sters would make much of a dent in Parental Worry. He agrees with the opinion of most of the younger generation that parents will have their Worry even if they have to bootleg it. But while the air is full of warnings against giving lifts the Drifter would like to add one of his own: Beware of warnings. A friend of the Drifter was driving along a lonely road one evening in a heavy rainstorm. Sud- denly, ahead of him he saw a hiker evidently very wet and very tired. The driver had taken the warnings against hikers so seriously that he had added a revolver to his equip- ment, so he felt safe in offering the foot traveler a lift. They rode along in silence for several miles. Then the driver reached into his vest pocket for his watch. It was not there. Quickly his hand slid to his hip pocket. He stuck the revolver against his passenger's ribs. "Put that watch in my pocket," he commanded, "and get out of here." The man put the watch in his host s pocket and stepped out once more into the rain. The saddened Samaritan arrived at home much upset. But he was even more upset when he discovered his own watch on the dresser where he had left it that morning. The Drifter doesn't know what he did about it. Advertising would seem the only way out. If the man who lost his watch on the evening of June 10 while riding in my automobile will call at my office I will return his timepiece. No questions answered. The Drifter

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206 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3243 Correspondence Sacco-Vanzetti To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: If I have ever said a word against the old Nation of 1880-1890 I will not repeat it of the paper of this day. The issues of the last three weeks put it at the head of critical journals in the whole world, and the editorial Justice Underfoot (August 17) is the finest areopagitic utterance for justice since Garrison. William Sloane Kennedy West Yarmouth, Massachusetts, August 15 To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: I wish to tell you of my deep appreciation of your article Justice Underfoot in the last issue of The Nation. It exactly expressed what I believe, and I am very grateful to have it all so well said. Louisa Cushing James Cotuit, Massachusetts, August 14 To the Editor of The Nation : Sir: I want to express to you my personal gratitude for your article on the Sacco-Vanzetti case in The Nation of the 17th. It means so much to those of us who feel so helpless in a situation of this kind to have such a ringing expression of it all put before the world. I am in a continual state of gratitude for The Nation. Penn Yan, New York, August 18 Louise A. Elsworth To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: Concede that a Massachusetts gentleman, temporarily his Excellency, with an election impending, gave a sincere, un- biased judgment. It is unnecessary to question the integrity of the man whose blank, courteous face briefly decorated the front pages. Fuller's decision was instinctive and inevitable. The evidence was circumstantial and irrelevant. Whether Sacco and Vanzetti were innocent was a point, but not the point in question. The issue was prominent, and the alterna- tives were neat: Sacco and Vanzetti killed Berardelli and Par- menter in Braintree, in 1920. Or, if they did not, if they were innocent, their judge was dangerously incompetent; the pros- ecution, with federal assistance, was unscrupulous and vicious; the jury all good men and moral imbeciles; and the Lowell com. littee guilty of unpardonable stupidity, if nothing more. And the Massachusetts legal system was a rotted, uninspiring wreck. Which is obviously inconceivable. No, indisputably, this illiterate fish peddlar and his com- panion were guilty. Vanzetti sold eels, and Sacco did not be- lieve in war. Judge Thayer was a gentleman, if sadly garru- lous. And it was a most brutal murder. The Governor decides that they shall die, and leaves for Rye Beach. The most sinister aspect of this affair is not the death of two men presumably innocent. Nor radical mass meetings in Union Square which demand editorial squeals of virtuous resentment. It is the high proportion of congratulatory tele- grams sent to Governor Fuller. Apparently the death of two foreigners should gratify patriotic natives.. The Governor might have saved these dangei'ous men; but he heroically de- clined, and is forthwith urged to run for the Presidency. It is a damning commentary on this nation. Wilmington, Delaware, August 21 H. M. J. To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: The editorial Justice Underfoot might be excusable if published in almost any foreign country. But sympathy such as yours for the two convicted murderers, after a pains- taking review of the crime and the trial which convicted them, by men of the character of Governor Fuller and Presidents Lowell and Stratton, and a unanimous opinion of their guilt and brutality, is indefensible in any true American publication. The Nation's championship of the reputable weak against the oppression of the oligarchy of "big business" is always admir- able. A plea for clemency, because of Judge Thayer's reported shocking indiscretions, or on account of the circumstantial nature of the evidence, which is never absolutely sure, is com- mendable on the part of any journal. But a strong champion- ship of the cause of these men, such at The Nation is capable of delivering, only incites weak and reckless minds to violence and is most disappointing to those of your readers who are not anai-chistic in thought. Burlington, Vermont, August 12 W. T. Scofield To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: Having read and re-read, not once but many times, your editorial Justice Underfoot, I must tell you at once that sel- dom or never have I been so moved by any writing whatever; it frightens me. Rochester, N. Y. August 1U A. S. C. To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: I have just read your article entitled Justice Underfoot and also an article from the Springfield Republican sent out by the Sacco-Vanzetti Defense Committee, and have been struck with the great contrast. To a man who comes with unprejudiced mind, the Spring- field Republican article would lead him to a leniency and com- passion toward Sacco and Vanzetti while your article starting out in such an absolutely false way cannot help antagonizing him. You state they are innocent. Now there are but few people who know absolutely whether or not they are innocent, and I for one would rather depend upon what the courts and jury find regarding them than upon people who write in such a cock- sure manner as you do. New York, August 17 Harold PEIRCE To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: History teaches us that there have always been Sacco- Vanzetti cases; whether in the days before autocracies mas- queraded under the guise of popular democracies or whether in the days, when, content to appear what they are, the same state and church, even in dissension, were as one. Having found an interesting parallel in Voltaire's day, I hasten to communi- cate it to your readers' attention, for this specific case, even if it were specious (it isn't), would contain an edifying moral or two. Brandes tells that: Jean Calas was a merchant of Toulouse, aged sixty-eight, a Protestant. His youngest son had become converted to Catholicism, and was completely estranged from his family. The eldest son, a wild, dissolute young man, committed suicide. The Catholic clergy spread a rumor among the people that the father had strangled his son out of hatred for the Romish faith, which the latter, it was said, had intended to embrace on the following day. The whole family was imprisoned. The suicide's corpse lay in state, and performed one miracle after another. The bi-centenary of the massacre of St. Bartholomew in Toulouse occurred at the time of the trial, and in their fanatical excitement thirteen judges, despite all proofs of inno- cence, and without a shadow of evidence of his guilt, condemned Calas to be broken on the wheel. The sentence was carried out, the old man protesting his innocence to the last. His children, under the pretext of a reprieve, were shut up in a monastery and forced to adopt the Catholic faith. Then Vol- taire at Ferney wrote his celebrated treatise on tolerance, and moved heaven and earth to get the case tried over again. He appealed to the public opinion of the whole of Europe. He compelled the Council of State in Paris to demand the minutes of the trial from the Parliament of Toulouse. They were re- fused; there were delays of every kind; but in the end, after three years of unwearied fighting, Voltaire gained his point. The Toulouse sentence was declared unjust, the dead man's honor was cleared, and an indemnification paid his family. Philadelphia, August 9 H. H. Horwitz

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Aug. 31, 1927] The Nation 207 The Farmer's Future To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: Will you allow a farmer to voice his protest against the conclusions drawn by Professor Tugwell in his article "What Will Become of the Farmer?" in your issue of June 15. Professor Tugwell states that it is inevitable that funda- mental changes must in the long run take place in agricul- ture, and he suggests two possibilities: thorough cooperation — of which however, he does not think the farmer capable; or the changing of agriculture from its independent position to one supplementary to industry with the extension of the mod- ern industrial method of production into agriculture, so as to increase the efficiency of agricultural production. As to the first suggestion, it seems to me that the reason why the American farmer does not succeed better in establish- ing cooperatives is mainly to be found in the fact that the banking trust does not want it, and that the farmer is con- sequently kept down to such a low level of subsistence that he has not enough strength left, political and economical, to get out of the mire. And this state of affairs will exist as long as our currency is controlled by the banking trust. As to the other alternative, the history of agriculture shows abundantly that latifundia, for such industrialised farms would ultimately be, are never as productive as are the small freeholds and that they are very much less efficient. Besides, what does "efficiency" mean? Most business men and many of the professors of economics understand efficiency to mean low cost of production. But does efficiency really mean that? An efficient economic system is to my mind a system which will allow each member of the community to have a safe existence, forestall famines, and grant sufficient leisure for the enjoyment of the higher pursuits of life. A glance at our industrial system shows clearly that not even our boasted industrial efficiency guarAitees these three essen- tials of life. Quite the contrary. A system which throws on the scrap-heap men in their prime, and therefore beclouds the horizon of most men and women past their thirtieth year, is not efficient, no matter what the cost of production. But in agriculture the case would be even aggravated. If a thous- and acres of wheat land could be operated with the help of modern machinery by five men working two months a year, producing 30,000 bushels of wheat, we might say indeed that the cost of production is low. If we assume that on these 1,000 acres 200 families could live happily and free of care, the picture changes completely. If the 200 families had been living on the land first, but had been driven off because they could not find a market for their surplus products and therefore fell into debt, and their credi- tor, having levelled their homes, had established a wheat ranch, we would then have 200 families in want who would not be able to buy even the wheat produced on their former land, but who would live in penury without any hope of a better future. For where shall they go? Industry cannot take them, being oversupplied with men on account of the daily increase in the invention of labor-saving machinery, an ever-growing evil. The 200 families then would be a public charge living on doles with all the attending evils. As they could not be satisfied, their needs would not give employment to another set of work- men as they would if these families lived on their farms in comfort. The "low cost of production," therefore, would not only result in impoverishing the farmer; indirectly it would throw out of employment other sets of workers, because the market for goods would be restricted by that much. Where now is your efficiency? As far as I am able to see, the main reason for the con- fusion of thought in the heads of our professors of economics and especially our business men lies in the fact that they do not seem to realize that however much money we may have, the world at large has never yet gotten away from the economy of exchange. There is no such a thing as a money economy. We do not buy and sell. All we do is to exchange goods by means of money. If that money is withheld, and consequently the exchange cannot take place, there is, as we have today, penury and want in the midst of plenty. All professors of eco- nomics learn at college that money has two characteristics, i. e. that it is the means of exchange and the measure of value. But they apparently do not understand, that money in itself is valueless; that what matters is not the price but the proper exchange of goods. They do not see that the gold standard is a humbug, merely designed to secure the private control of the currency, that it is a superstition kept alive in the minds of the people to enable the banker to keep his grip on the currency. Low efficiency, then, is the direct re- sult of unsatisfied needs as a consequence of artificially re- stricted money circulation. But we do not live by wheat alone. We need vegetables and fruit. Now is the large-production system for agricul- ture the most efficient? I believe the late Prince Kropotkin among others has given the answer to that question. And in this country it was decided decades ago, when the slave sys- tem was found unprofitable. The hired man can never replace the free farmer; neither can, for instance, large orchards or truck gardens compete in productivity with the small orchards or tracts of land of the individual owner. The reason is that a system of hired help precludes improvement. Where a hun- dred small owners work toward better results, a hundred minds are at work to invent new and better tools and to find out improved methods of cultivation and fertilization. But where one manager is set over an equal number of hired men, these hired men have to conform to the method in use. They have to do as they are told to; they are not interested in results but merely in wages. These facts have been proved to be true numberless times throughout the course of history, but the class system always falls back on the wage system. To look at the farming situation without at the same time looking at the industrial situation, not only in this country but in other countries also, can lead only to false conclusions. The logical inference from industry to agriculture may be made, but psychologically the case is different. An industrialized farm system will, as we have seen, merely aggravate the indus- trial evil of unemployment and continue the vicious circle downward at an ever-increasing rate of speed. Industry in its own interest, therefore, had better help the farmer to stay where he is and what he is. Parkdale, Oregon, June 23 F. Wertgen Contributors to This Issue Frederick Boselly is a pseudonym. Paul Blanshard who is connected with the League for Industrial Democracy has just returned from China. Lorine Pruette is the author of "Women and Leisure: A Study in Social Waste." Raymond Fuller is the author of "Child Labor and the Constitution." Lawrence Martin is a resident of Chicago. Leslie Nelson Jennings is a New York poet and journalist. Theresa Wolfson is author of "The Woman Worker and the Trade Unions." Harry Elmer Barnes is author of "The Genesis of the World War. George Genzmer is on the staff of the Dictionary of American Biography. R. S. Alexander is a South African journalist who knew Olive Schreiner. Harry Alan Potamkin is director of the Children's Play Village of Philadelphia. Henrietta Straus, The Nation's music critic, is making a tour of the European music festivals.

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Books and Music The Gulls Know Best By LESLIE NELSON JENNINGS They overhung our diligence until The tide began to push us back, and then The beach was theirs, freely to take their fill Of what we would not give the sea again. It was a curious thing to note how well Necessity had fitted them to wrest The savory morsel from the stubborn shell ; And as I watched I thought: The gulls know best. They are the shrewder salvagers who let Our spade precede them, who despise our shift Of building driftwood fires. Their beaks are sec On quicker feasts, whetted on wiser thrift. These broken shells dropped where the surf heaves in Among the rocks tell where the gulls have been. Vera Figner The Memoirs of a Revolutionist. By Vera Figner. Interna- tional Publishers. §3. HPHIS is an age of memoirs and though the market is flooded *■ with uninteresting autobiographies, occasionally a soul rises out of the mediocrity, a beautiful, clear, many-faceted soul born out of the chaos and the turbulence of a social movement. Such a soul was Vera Figner — such a movement was the ter- rorist movement of Russia in 1870, cf which she was a leading spirit. Coming to the political movement at the age of twenty- three, Vera Figner was already equipped with a medical educa- tion. She became a member of the Will of the People, a revolu- tionary Socialist organization carrying on educational and po- litical propaganda among the peasants. In accordance with their policy she was sent "to the people." Turgenev has im- mortalized those thousands of young men and women who gave up their middle-class homes, their intellectual lives, and buried themselves in isolated, lonely Russian villages for the sake of educating peasants. The young Vera's description of her life among the peasants, their increasing confidence in her, and the growing antagonism of the village priests and police, is given with exquisite simplicity and naivete. As she weaves her story, the book becomes a remarkable document concerning the psychological and social background which made possible the Russian revolution ten years ago. The political evolution of the country proceeded from the pe- culiar social and spiritual forces let loose by the thousands of men and women eager to overthrow the despotic monarchy and finding in their revolutionary activities the highest type of self- expression. Life was cheap. Hosts of Russia's intellectuals marched to the gallows or certain death in prison with a song or a challenge upon their lips. It wras the era of the individual. The terrorist movement had a socialist philosophy but it func- tioned through the annihilation of individuals. There wras no political mass movement, no general strike of protest. The leaders of the Will of the People could only hope to startle the apathetic masses in Russia and the mildly concerned world outside by throwing bombs or shooting Czars. When the masses were awakened then they hoped to ^arry on the constructive plans for the new social order. In a highly integrated and self- conscious country, or even in an industrial country such ac- tivities would be doomed to failure. Vera Figner, doubting the results of the terrorist activities of her comrades and herself, nevertheless could see no other course of action for Russian revolutionists at that stage of their country's development. The stories of these activities are as pathetic in their vic- tories as in their failures. There is the incident of the two revolutionists who opened a cheese shop en a main thoroughfare in Petrograd from which they laboriously dug a tunnel to the middle of the street on which the Czar was wont to pass. It was their plan to blow him up. After a year of tiring and heartrending digging, the bomb failed to explode at the ap- pointed time. The revolutionists were caught and shot. There is another story of Solovyev who was appointed to fire at the Czar as he passed from the station, in an. effort to secure some special privileges for the peasants. His elbow was acci- dently pushed by a bowing peasant in the crowd. The bullet went astray and Solovyev was caught and hung. There is the story of Vera Figner's twenty years in prison — an extraordinary tale of one who entered prison a young woman, together with seme sixty other comrades. As the years dragged by her fellow prisoners committed suicide, went in- sane, or died from tuberculosis. She lived on, weaving for her- self and her friends a new life out of the gossamer threads of prison privileges. They lived through a thousand spiritual deaths and resurrections. Life came to them anew when the first prison code of tapping was evolved; when the first foot of land in the prison yard was given to them to cultivate; when a youth joined their diminished number after fifteen years of isolation from the world, and they learned for the first time that their seeds of political activity had not been sown in vain. Life makes some individuals bitter; life has made of Vera Figner, who is seventy-five years old and still lives in Russia, a crystal clear and beautiful character. Theresa Wolfson Senator Owen on the War The Russian Imperial Cojispiracy. By Robert Latham Owen. Albert and Charles Boni. $2. /^AXDID scholars in all countries throughout the Western ^-/ World are in essential agreement concerning the necessity of repudiating the war-guilt lie embodied in Article 231 of the Treaty of Versailles. Only William Stearns Davis believes Germany uniquely guilty. Very few reputable authorities be- lieve Germany more guilty than the Entente states, while an ever greater number are coming to rank Germany with Eng- land and Italy as one of the three countries that did not desire any type of war in Europe after July 26, 1914. There have actually been more historians and publicists in the Entente countries than in the Central Powers who have demolished the war-time fictions regarding war responsibility. There have, however, been very few statesmen in the Entente lands who have had the courage to come out squarely against the verdict of Versailles. Lloyd George has timidly suggested that no state or group of states deliberately plotted the war, but rather all "stumbled" into it. Caillaux, while awaiting trial, composed a devastating critique of Poincare and his diplomacy, but since his return to French politics he has not lifted up his voice. Signor Nitti has been the only one to proclaim with power and thoroughness the hypocrisies of the "peace-makers." Senator Robert L. Owen occupies an equally unique position in the United States. He may with complete propriety be called the Nitti of America. His great speech of December IS, 1923, in the United States Senate will, in time, come to be ranked as one of the most notable historical and political orations of the ages. In it a staunch Wilsonian of the war period cast to the winds all of the facile Wood- rovian rhetoric which has so subtly and effectively beguiled us into accepting the Entente version of the Great Crusade. Owen has secured few or no avowed disciples on Capitol Hill, but

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Aug. 31, 1927] The Nation 209 historians have already vindicated the essential accuracy of his contentions. It is fortunate that it has been Senator Owen rather than an equally high-minded statesman with a "bad" war record, like the late Senator LaFollette, upon whom has fallen the task of the public exposure of the mythology born of war prop- aganda. No man in the United States had a better record from 1914 to 1918. As a member of the Wilson party in Con- gress he was, more than any other person, responsible for the passage of the Federal Reserve Act, the special pet of Amer- ican financial interests. He warmly and comprehensively sup- ported Wilson's policy of intervention and all of the war-time legislation designed to further an Entente victory. Nor need he fear to match his ancestry with such representatives of old American stock as Solomon S. Menken or Joseph Cashman of the National Security League, to say nothing of Henry Cabot Lodge or Theodore Roosevelt. There is on him or his record no trace whatever of the brand of the Hun or of Moscow. He ip simply an honest man who, more or less accidentally, came into contact with some of the chief monographs and collections of documents concerning the outbreak of the war, realized his errors of the war period, and proceeded to place his political future in jeopardy in the interest of truth, justice and humanity. The Senator has now brought together his views on war responsibility in a trenchant little book of some 200 pages. It is more in the form of a dignified legal brief than a consecu- tive history of European diplomacy from January, 1912, to August, 1914. It formulates in forceful fashion the case against the Entente and states the more cogent arguments in behalf of the Central Powers. There is a long concluding section which deals with the development of the revisionist position and the French and British protests against the Treaty of Versailles. Senator Owen holds Russia to be the chief cul- prit, though willingly abetted by France. When the reviewer first read the work in rough draft a year ago he felt that this position could not be sustained, but recent research in the Rus- sian material assembled in the so-called "Red Archives," edited by Professor Adamov, has led some careful scholars to adopt this same view, and to hold that Poincare was converted to the war program only upon the event of his visit to St. Peters- burg in the summer of 1912. Here he became convinced that the extent of the Russian plans and intrigues rendered it neces- sary for France to jump in wholeheartedly if she hoped to make any substantial gains as a result of the Franco-Russian Alliance. Microscopic pedants will detect minor errors and deride the book, but it presents a view of the crisis of 1914 which is certainly close to the truth. It should render an invaluable service to that large reading public which is without the time or training requisite to the mastery of the detailed manuals. And it is for just this group that Senator Owen has prepared his work. It was inspired by a noble purpose and it will serve an excellent cause. Harry Elmer Barnes Shakespeare and His Audience Shakespeare Studies. By Elmer Edgar Stoll. The Macmillan Company. $4. COME books are already old and established on the very day ^ they are published. Such a book, for example, was Fred- erick J. Turner's "Frontier in American History"; and such a book, in another field, is "Shakespeare Studies." For over twenty years Professor Stoll has been a diligent student of the Elizabethan drama and particularly of Shakespeare. With his monographs on "Hamlet" and "Othello" and with his numer- ous shorter articles he has already made his mark on American Shakespeare criticism, although this is his first book to be addressed to the general reader. A member of the group of scholars who have applied the objective methods of the historian to the study of the Elizabethan drama, Mr. Stoll is distinguished alike for his learning and for his zestful literary style, but more especially for the unflinching rigor with which he applies the historical and comparative method to the study of Shakes- peare's characters. While his colleagues have been content to show how actors and audience, sources and stage-craft, have variously affected Shakespeare's work, Mr. Stoll has gone fur- ther. Regarding Shakespeare as himself an Elizabethan in blood and marrow, thoroughly in sympathy with his audience and with his business associates, sharing to the full their ideas, tastes, and prejudices, a popular playwright unaware that his woi-k would have a life beyond the boards of his own theater, Professor Stoll has raised a protest against the practice of psychologizing, subtilizing, sentimentalizing, and anachronizing Shakespeare. He has endeavored to put Shakespeare back into his Elizabethan environment, to see Shylock, Othello, Falstaff, Hamlet, the procession of ghosts and criminals, and all the other personae dramatis as the spectators at the Globe and the Blackfriars saw them, and as romantic critics, irregardful or unaware of ascertainable fact, have declined to see them. His work has been heeded. At this date it is no longer neces- sary to defend his method or to explain his main contentions. But it is desirable to point out one of the defects of that method. Mr. Stoll's purpose, like that of every responsible critic, is to discover the intention of his author. This he attempts to do, with the minimum of subjective theorizing, by studying the general scope and conception of the characters, by treating them strictly as "dramatic" rather than as "historical" per- sonages, by weighing the effect of stage conventions and the physical limitations of Shakespeare's theatre, by keeping within the bounds of Elizabethan ideas, and by observing the prac- tice of other dramatists, both Elizabethan and modern. For many of his illustrations he turns to Moliere and to the work of recent Moliere scholars. Special emphasis he lays on the restrictions that a popular audience imposes on a dramatist, and he recognizes the mistake of attaching dispi-oportionate significance to isolated single passages. With a mediocre writer, such as Dekker or Middleton, this procedure would be practically unexceptionable. With Shakes- peare, however, it seems inadequate. All that the historical and comparative method can do is to show to what extent he was like other Elizabethan dramatists and thus to guard the critic against obvious misinterpretations; what keeps Shakespeare green while his fellows gather dust upon the book- shelves it illumines imperfectly or not at all. The fact that Shakespeare was a popular dramatist does not mean that his every line and his every nuance of characterization must have been comprehended by his audience; that notion rests on the silent assumption that Elizabethan dramatic technique was in- variably as facilely adroit and as calculatedly vulgar as that of a Broadway play-carpenter today. Though in connection with his plays, as Mr. Stoll believes, Shakespeare may never have thought of himself as a poet, he undoubtedly had the inner experience of a poet and knew when he had done a good piece of work. He may also have known that the crowd that trouped into the Globe Theater after weighing the rival attrac- tions of the bear pit and the bawdy houses around the corner would not comprehend how good a play they were listening to. But what of that? They would comprehend enough to make the thing pay; the rest was his own affair. If the sixteenth- century audience took Shylock for a villain and a butt and laughed heartily over his undoing, that was what Shakespeare intended; if that audience missed "the happily human lineaments of his make-up" and "the splendor of poetry, shed like the rain and the light from heaven, on the just and the unjust," the poet did not. If the full flavor of Falstaff's dissertation on honor escaped the apprentices shuffling and yawning in the pit, we need not believe that it escaped the man who wrote it. Mr. Stoll, of course, knows all this as well as anyone, but in this collection of somewhat technical and argumentative essays the knowledge seems at times to elude him. As a matter

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210 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3243 of fact his understanding of the poet is as sensitive as it is sane. "All that play of their imagination in excess of what is expected or appreciated by the public or required for the task," he says of the great artists in general, "is their gift to mankind, their precious but spontaneous tribute to creation, which comes or goes unnoticed." In this book Shakespeare's tribute to creation does not go unnoticed, for it opens with a movingly eloquent address On the Anniversary of the Fh*st Folio and closes with a capital Hazlittian essay on Falstaff. Though he occasionally rides his theories too hard, Mr. Stoll has written one of the indispensable commentaries on Shakes- peare's art. George Genzmer The Real Olive Schreiner From. Man to Man. By Olive Schreiner. Harper and Brothers. $2.50. THE publication of her unfinished novel, "From Man to Man," will set the hearts of Olive Schreiner's friends at rest. Here in this incomplete story, which she herself, as she was writing it, felt would be "quite different from any other book that ever was written," the real Olive Schreiner lives for all time. "Rebekah is me; I don't know which is which any more," she wrote to Havelock Ellis in 1888, and the book is so much the book of Rebekah that even Baby Bertie, her beloved and hapless sister, is somewhat shadowy beside that intensely living figure. To read "From Man to Man" is to know the inner life and deepest thoughts of Rebekah as one rarely knows those of a very dear friend; but to read of Rebekah is also, for her friends, to hear and see Olive Schreiner mov- ing and talking with a vividness almost too poignant. Even the physical gestures that she gives to Rebekah, the tricks of behavior in moments of excitement or of happiness, i,re her own. And the nobility, the loving kindness, the courage, the divine tenderness of Rebekah — these too are Olive Schreiner's. Those who would know her as she was, those who would understand why those who knew her so greatly loved her, trusted her, honored her, and mourn her, have only to read "From Man to Man." This is not to say that the book is a perfect work of art as such. The long prelude, called "A Child's Day," is indeed a flawless and exquisite piece. In a letter to her friend, Mrs Francis Smith, she describes how, sitting at her desk in Alassio, working at something quite different, the whole of it flashed on her complete, and she sat down and wrote it out And as it stands, this record of the doings and the thoughts of a five-year-old during one hot summer's day, the day on which her baby sister was born, and no one on the farm, ac- cordingly, had thought or time to spare for her, is of so even a texture, so poetic a conception, that the rhythmic, beautiful prose and the deep, beautiful emotion of it fuse into one for the reader as they do only in the greatest of the world's literature. If Olive Schreiner had written nothing but this prelude, which together with the "Thoughts on South Africa" comprised the whole of her unpublished writings for the publication of which she left instructions in her will, her position as a writer of the first order would still stand secure. There is no lovelier short piece in the whole range of English literature. Yet the novel for which it sets the key, of which, according to the complete list of proposed chapters given by her husband in his introduction, only a little more than half is extant, would never, if completed, have taken a similar place to the prelude as a work of art. The characters, though too sketchily indicated in comparison with Rebekah to fall into focus, are yet alive — all but the two bad respectable women, Veronica and Mrs. Drummond. The cat among women, to which species they both belong, was so feared as well as hated by Olive Schreiner herself that the detachment necessary to see them as human beings was not possible for her. Their sterile cruelty, their cold unlovingness filled her with a horror as of something both obscene and deadly. "It is so terrible to have to realize them and grapple with them," she wrote. But the book that is "quite different from any other book that ever was written," though it may not be a great novel, is unquestionably a great book, and one of unique importance and interest. It is not only the revelation of the mind and soul of a noble woman, but it is the statement for all time of what the true woman desires to give to and to receive from the man she loves. In half-humorous despair she wrrote of it to Havelock Ellis: "The worst of this book of mine is that it's so womanly. I think it's the most womanly book that ever was written. . . ." But she came to love the book more than any of her others, more than she loved any person, as she worked on it, because "I know it gives a voice to that wrhich exists in the hearts of many women and some men." And in the midst of awful pain and weakness she finds support in the thought of it, in the fact that " 'From Man to Man' will help other people, for it will help to make men more tender to women, because they will understand them better; it will make some women more tender to others; it will comfort some women by showing them that others have felt as they do." She was justified of her comfort. There will be women, and men, too, the world over, lonely of heart for the most part, who as they read this book will feel, with a yearning joy, that certain bleak solitarinesses of the spirit are no longer possible for them. And they will take up their lives with a new strength, saying within themselves, as she said, "Somewhere, sometime . . ." R. S. Alexander Catching Pegasus Young Singing Youth, an Anthology of Poems by Children. Edited by Mabel Mountsier. Harper and Brothers. $2.50. T TAVIXG gathered numerous examples of the child's expres- * * sion, I opened the present volume with curiosity. I was eager to know what the editor had deduced from her extensive examination of children's work. Miss Mountsier is not very informative upon this subject. Her concern, evidently, was more for "quality" than for significance. By significance I mean the psychological implications. She does say in her intro- duction that "humor, scarce enough as it is among older writers, is still more rare among children, who seem to grow serious when they set to work to put their ideas on paper." This observation astounds me. It has been my intimate ex- perience, and that of numerous other educators, that mischief is very active in the literary life of children, as it is active in their physical life. Seriousness and humor are not antithetical. The little girl in my young group of writers who wrote I give my body Pies and cakes. And the thanks I get Are tummy-aches wras serious about her business of recording her experience, but she caught the irony of it, too. There are some superlative examples of the child's writing in Miss Mountsier's collection. But the volume does not "help us to see the beauty of the world." It does not need to. As poetry and as verse-structure, most children's work is doggerel and inconsequential. This includes the wyork of even Miss Xathalia Crane, whom happily Miss Mountsier has omitted. The importance of the child's expression is as a child's expres- sion, not as "it reveals the soul that has not yet felt 'her earthly freight.'" Writing is of major importance in the de- velopment of the child. But viewed comparatively, most of the writing by children is either a trite imagism or, in the older child, a sententiousness which is about all most verse-writers seem to get from Whitman. The work of the youngest child is usually the most pleasing, as well as the most "significant." The elimination of details and the seeming separation of ideas are indicative of a mental process which is more interesting

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Aug. 31, 1927] The Nation 211 than the mechanics of the verse. The mental process is inter- esting both as the mental process of the child and in its rela- tion to the mental process of the adult attempting the con- struction of ideas in writing. I think Miss Mountsier would have recognized that the proper viewpoint for a collection of children's writings is psychological, had she not decided upon verse only. One cannot get the full import of the child's ex- pression in a volume of "selected" verse. What is the attitude of the child toward prose, as distinguished from his attitude toward verse? Does every child understand poetry as a dis- tinct presentation, as did the tot at the Ferrer Modern School who said, "In a poem you don't tell evei-ything"? When ex- perienced educators and psychologists study the "fine arts" of the child, they are as much interested in the average as they are in the exceptional. I refer the reader to "Children's Draw- ings," edited by Stella Agnes McCarty, and to "Der Genius im Kinde," by G. F. Hartlaub. As a matter of fact, it is a study of the average which explains the exceptional. And I am certain a collection of the child's work on the basis of the child's expression, rather than on the basis of the adult's pleasure, would prove no less pleasing to the adult. Even the best work in "Singing Youth" is made enjoyable to a reader familiar with the best poetry only by the knowledge that it is a child's work. Harry Alan Potamkin Intensity The Drums of Panic. By Martin Feinstein. Macy-Masius. $2. Death of a Young Man. By W. L. River. Simon and Schuster. $2. IF conversation is written to amuse, it has a right to be arti- ficial. But if it is set down as a serious transcript of the way people talk, the mot juste is out of place. In "The Drums of Panic" Mr. Feinstein makes this mistake. He tells a con- ventional story with the devastating intensity of a short lyric, an intensity which cannot be sustained throughout a novel un- less the characters are under some terrific strain. Yet, except for the shattered nerves of the returned soldier who is one of the central figures, nothing has occurred out of the ordinary, nothing to warrant the displaying of these people in conver- sations charged and epigrammatic to the last degree. One closes the book with a sense, indeed, of having read a clear, poetic prose; but also with a sense of having wandered among people who are sadly and unreasonably distant from our life. In "Death of a Young Man," on the other hand, Mr. River has written a novel full of burning conversation, and yet it is not unreal because there is a reason for its intensity. The book is a diary kept by a young man, David Bloch, who has been told by his doctor that he has only a year to live. He is desperately anxious to crowd a lifetime of experience into this one year, and the result is a tangle of impressions too bright and fleeting for his eager consciousness. Gradually his sanity gives way as he thinks and dreams of nothing but death and murder. The diary goes on for six months, and then ends abruptly on a new-found note of stoical serenity. This novel has what Mr. Feinstein's novel lacks — the cas- ual irrelevance of real life, the long stretches of unimportant cross-purposes and misunderstandings which swallow up our flashes of poetry. Yet all the time there is the ironic under- current of strain, the knowledge of imminent death. These qualities raise interesting questions. One wonders how David Bloch died. But even more one wonders how he lived on if the doctor was proved wrong. For six months he threw his whole being into every sensation, however trivial, that came his way. If the pressure were taken off, what would be the result? Would he recover the everyday balance between the casual and the intense, or would he live out his life without the merciful power of accepting the irrelevant and dismissing it as such? Perhaps David Bloch wondered about this too, but he did not wait to see. Martha Mott Music The Lower Rhine Festival in Aachen TO the average foreigner the music festivals of Germany are usually summed up by the one word: Bayreuth. To the average German, Bayreuth is only one festival out of many. Community music-making has been natural to this music-loving people ever since the thirteenth century, when Landgrave Her- mann of Thuringia held that famous competition festival on the Wartburg in which Tannhauser and Wolfram von Eschen- bach took part. It is not surprising, therefore, that when Elberfeld, in 1817, held a big community festival, the idea spread rapidly to other towns in the Rhineland, so that when Aachen, or Aix-la-Chapelle as we call it, joined forces in 1825 with Elberfeld in this annual Lower Rhine Festival, Diissel- dorf and Cologne had already preceded her. The quality and importance of these festivals may be gauged by this first one held in Aachen, when Franz Ries, the pupil and friend of Beethoven, conducted the Ninth Symphony, then still in manu- script. And the far-reaching effect these festivals had upon the musical development of western Germany can be imagined when one realizes that they were directed for many years by Mendelssohn, who, more than any other conductor, preached the gospel of Johann Sebastien Bach by giving Bach's great choral works. Another element of great value in these festivals has been their long-adhered-to policy of encouraging local composers — one notes such names as those of Schumann and Brahms. It was this policy, therefore, one had to keep in mind when judging the Lower Rhine Festival of 1927. From long tradition, the festival took place at Whitsuntide, lasting three days in all. And from this same tradition, many of the works offered were by local musicians and were receiving their first hearing. The "Grosse Messe" in G minor, by Walter Braunfels, which comprised the first day's program, came, for instance, under this category; so, too, did a "Sinfonia Brevis" by Phillip Jar- nach, an "Intermezzo and Rondo" by Rudolph Beck for piano and orchestra, a posthumous work for piano and orchestra by Liszt entitled "Malediction," which occupied part of the second day's program, and the "Heiliges Lied," by Josef V. von Woss, which closed the third and last concert. It cannot be said that anything great or significant was revealed by these newly heard works. The "Mass" was long- winded and ugly, belonging to that decadent post-Wagner, post- Strauss period which directly preceded the World War. Its only excuse for being given must have been the fact that its composer and conductor, Walter Braunfels, is director of the Hochschule fur Musik in Cologne. The same might be said for Jarnach, a professor in this same school, whose "Sinfonia Brevis," written in 1919, was a depressing example of that dark period of hopelessness and despair through which the German composer took his rudderless course just after the war. On the other hand, Beck's little work, especially the "Rondo," was fresh and delightful in spirit, if not particularly original in content. Little is known about the composer other than that he early turned from music to religion and became a missionary. On the whole the festival was interesting rather than inspiring. The local orchestra was ragged, the local chorus was like the average "Oratorio Society," the local conductor, Dr. Peter Raabe, was merely "well routined," and the local pianist, Eduard Erdmann, was more of a musician than a vir- tuoso. The soprano soloist, Amalie Merz-Tunner, who also took part in the Bonn Festival, was what is usually termed "reliable." None of these things, however, detracted from the real value of the festival, which lay in the spirit and purpose already mentioned. After all, a Schumann or a Brahms is not to be found every day. The main thing is that when they are found they have a ready and sympathetic hearing. This is the lesson that America can learn from the Lower Rhine Festivals. Henrietta Straus

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212 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3243 Books in Brief The Conquest of Civilization. By James H. Breasted. The Ordeal of Civilization. By James Harvey Robinson. Harper and Brothers. $10. These volumes, to which the publishers, apparently for advertising purposes only, have given the comprehensive title "The Human Adventure," are in substance a reissue, in revised and somewhat enlarged form, of Professor Breasted's "Ancient Times" and Professor Robinson's "Mediaeval and Modern Times," two well-known textbooks brought out some ten years ago by another publisher and still in print. Fortunately for the rather novel enterprise, the originals are themselves con- spicuously readable, while the transformation has been further aided by the omission of such pedagogical apparatus as section captions, marginal headings, and assorted questions at the end of the chapters. A comparison of the two texts shows a good many minor changes and some rewriting, such variations being especially frequent in Professor Breasted's volume, where care- ful use appears to have been made of the results of recent exploration and study of the ancient world. Professor Rob- inson, in turn, has added a chapter on the course of events since the World War, and another which essays a general fore- cast of the historical trend. To the generations of students who have known the original books as textbooks, the present edition will not offer much that is new, but to others the vol- umes may be commanded as, on the whole, the most useful brief survey of world history available. Makers of Freedom. By Kirby Page and Sherwood Eddy. George H. Doran and Company. $1.50. This freedom which we have today differs unquestionably from the sort prevailing centuries ago, but som mow, after reading a truthful but depressing account of the results of industrial feudalism, machine civilization, and the possibilities of modern warfare, we wonder how the sum totals would com- pare. Whatever we possess has been well paid for, as the brief biographies of these eight "makers" show. Messrs. Eddy and Page have picked William Lloyd Garrison, Booker T. Wash- ington, Francis of Assisi, Martin Luther, John Wesley, J. Kier Hardie, Susan B. Anthony, and Woodrow Wilson as pioneers in social, religious, and spiritual progress. A Primer of Medieval Latin. By Charles H. Beeson. Scott, Foresman and Co. $2. All textbooks ought to be like this one. Prepared by a first-rate scholar in consultation with dozen of others, it pre- sents 113 selections from medieval literature, from Cassiodorus to Roger Bacon, as an introduction to medieval Latin. At the same time it is a small anthology of medieval prose and poetry, valuable to any student of literature or civilization. This fas- cinating little volume is also a challenge to the classical Latin- ists. If they can put together as valuable a primer for clas- sical Latin — and given the wealth of materials, why should they not? — students may yet be convinced that they ought : i "take" Latin as well as sociology. The American People: A History. By Thomas Jefferson Wer- tenbaker. Charles Scribner's Sons. $5. Professor Wertenbaker thinks that American history, as commonly written, is not interesting, and that it ought to be made so. He has, accordingly, joined the ranks of those who "are making a conscious and determined effort to reinvest the story of America with the charm which naturally and right- fully belongs to it," and who, without sacrificing truth or his- torical perspective, or committing themselves "to any form of propaganda," have made it their sole desire "to tell the story with as much of the interest and glamor as may be possible to the imagination of the writer." As far as a lively style and a relative wealth of personal or local incidents are elements of success, he has achieved a considerable measure of success with his highly provocative program. To the reader, on the other hand, who cares more for a we'1-balanced summary of events or movements most worth knowing than for incidents or epi- sodes which "the mannsr of the novelist" can make vivid or picturesque, the book will prove a disappointment. It is sadly disproportioned, as witness the 365 pages, out of a total of 471 of text, that are given to bringing the narrative down to the end of the Civil War; and what is offered, even in the scanty remainder of space, regarding the past sixty eventful years is the merest sketch. Perhaps there was need of the kind of book that Professor Wertenbaker apparently set out to write, but what he has written fills no gap. .•i Voyage to the South Seas in His Majesty's Ship Wager in the Years 1740-1741. By John Bulkeley and John Cum- mins. With an introduction by Arthur D. Howden Smith. Robert M. McBride and Company. S3. This is a reproduction, the second in the Argonaut Series edited by Arthur D. Howden Smith, of the narrative of the gunner and carpenter of the Wager, which was lost on an island off the southwest coast of Chile on Anson's famous voyage around the world. Most of the crew, tired of the arrogance and inadequacy of the captain, defied his authority, fitted out the long-boat, and sailed it to Brazil under the leadership of Bulke- ley and Cummins, who published their story in 1743 upon get- ting back to England. The Book of Troilus and Criseyde. By Geoffrey Chaucer. Edited from all the Known Manuscripts by Robert Kilburn Root. Princeton University Press. $6. One of the best of all poems is at last given not only a definitive text — one established after long labor by an accredited Chaucer scholar — but an acceptable format. The stranger to Chaucer will be attracted to this large type en these tall pages; the student will have all he wants in the way of introduction, textual notes, explanatory notes, and glossary; and the adven- turer in literature will be sent on his way through an intricate masterpiece of psychological narrative. Mr. Root's introduction is least satisfactory in its purely critical portions. Ocean Tramps. By Themselves. Edited by Edgar Williams. The Norman Remington Company. $2.50. In 1919 the unsalted and unseasoned United States Ship- ping Board revived the long obsolete office of supercargo, putting a business representative aboard each of its vessels. The inno- vation was hotly resented by the regular officers, with whose duties and privileges, to some extent, it interfered, and it was abolished after a couple of years. Some of the appointees, mostly young ex-service men, had the tact to make the best of a bad job; others didn't. Both kinds are revealed in these sketches, written by some thirty of the supercargoes. The Passaic Textile Strike. By Mary Heaton Vorse. The General Relief Committee of Textile Strikers. $.35. Here is a splendid account of the historic struggle in Passaic. "This pamphlet," says the author, "aims only to show the workers passing through the many phases of the strike and overcoming the successive difficulties and disappointments stand- ing between them and a final victory." 2?ooA- Reviewing. By Wayne Gard. (Borzoi Handbooks of Journalism.) Alfred A. Knopf. $2. Written "for freelance reviewers and for classes in re- viewing," this work will serve its purpose very well among those who do not care to take criticism as seriously as the best reviewers take it. It is in fact a useful compendium of in- formation for the "craft."

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International Relations Section A Forger of Soviet ' 'Documents' By L. T. THE case of Serge Drujilovski which was tried in the Supreme Court of the Soviet Union, July 8-11, received only scant attention in the American press, notwithstanding; the fact that it contained all the elements of an inter- national sensation involving the American press along with the governments of several European countries. Drujilovski first came into prominence in the summer of 1925 when he was twice arrested by the Berlin police on charges of forgery. At that time a large number of blanks of the Communist International, various rubber stamps of Soviet institutions, and other tools and materials used in forgeries were discovered in his possession. This discovery confirmed the belief that Drujilovski was one of those engaged in the manufacture of forged Soviet and Communist International documents which have been widely circulated and used as material for anti-Soviet and anti-Communist campaigns in a number of countries. After both his arrests Drujilovski, as was disclosed at the trial, was supported by the Bulgarian Berlin legation which in- tervened in his behalf. The first time he was under arrest only a few days. After that he was deported from Ger- many and went to Latvia and Esthonia. In the summer of 1926 he attempted to cross into the Soviet Union but was arrested at the border by the Soviet authorities. An investigation of his activities followed and he was then brought to trial. Some of the important details of Drujilovski's activities and his trial as recorded in the Moscow press follow. The two main points of the indictment were: (1) That after the end of the civil war and the rout of the Judenich army Drujilovski was employed in the second division of the Polish General Staff and was engaged until 1926 as a spy against the Soviet Union. . . (2) That during the year 1925 and part of 1926 he, in executing the requests of agents of the secret-service organs of foreign govern- ments, produced for their use forged documents, allegedly emanating from the Soviet Government and the Communist International, which were to be utilized for the purpose of bringing about rupture of agreements and diplomatic re- lations with the Soviet Union, and to be the occasion for armed intervention in the internal affairs of tl. ? Soviet Union and other hostile acts. Drujilovski pleaded guilty to both charges and asked for mercy on the ground that he was ignorant of the effects his activities were to produce. His activities as forger of Soviet documents, as estab- lished by his own story and the investigation of the prosecu- tion, began late in 1924 after a variegated career first as officer in the Czar's army, then in the Red army which he deserted in 1919 when he fled to Finland and thence to Esthonia where he joined the anti-Soviet forces under the command of General Judenich, then as journalist working for anti-Soviet publications in Riga and Reval, and as spy and agent of the second (secret) division of the General Staff of the Polish army, later as collaborator in various "press bureaus" furnishing "information" on the Soviet Union. In 1924 he settled in Berlin where were many of his emigre friends engaged in activities designed to dis- credit the Soviet Government. Among others he worked for Herald Sievert, former officer of the Russian army, who had entered the employ of the German army during the occupation of Riga by the latter. Herald Sievert main- tained an information agency in Berlin, known as the "Deutsche Ost Press Bureau" which had been furnishing information on the Soviet Union to a number of foreign governments. The first forged document manufactured by Drujilovski was the one concerning alleged Soviet and Communist ac- tivities in the United States. Drujilovski as that time was in the pay of the Polish legation where he worked as a spy on the Soviet Union and on Communist activities, re- ceiving a monthly wage of 300 gold marks. According to Drujilovski, the Berlin representative of the second division of the Polish General Staff, Mr. Pacierkowski, suggested that he get some documents relating to Soviet activities. Drujilovski consulted his friend Gavrilov-Tkachenko who had had experience in the manufacture of various docu- ments in Vienna. Gavrilov furnished him with a blank letterhead on which was the printed emblem of the USSR. Drujilovski used the letterhead to produce a document pur- porting to be "Instructions on the Order of Elections to the Executive Committee of the Communist International in the United States of America." The "instructions" were signed by the names "Kolarov" and "Stuart" and they con- tained references to sums of money allegedly advanced by the Communist International at Moscow for the activi- ties of the Workers' (Communist) Party in the United States. According to this document "Comrade Rutberg" received from Moscow $40,000 at one time and the Work- er's Party was to receive in further payments $25,000 a month to carry on its activities. At the suggestion of Pacierkowski, Drujilovski took the document to the American consulate in Berlin. Here he got in touch with the Berlin correspondent of the Chicago Tribune who, he thought, was likely to be inter- ested in a document of this sort. Mr. Seldes of the Chicago Tribune found the document interesting and instructive, but he pointed out that the name of the secretary of the Worker's Party was Ruthenberg and not "Rutberg" as it was spelled in the document. Drujilovski, however, easily overcame this difficulty by producing another document, this time on a letterhead of the Berlin office of the Mos- cow Izvcstia which he obtained from the manager of a private detective bureau, A. P. Konrad. This new docu- ment purported to confirm that the money for Communist activities in the United States was being forwarded by the Communist International to the address of "Rutberg- Ruthenberg." As a further explanation Drujilovski printed at the bottom of the document the information that the Berlin office of the Izvestia was a branch of the executive committee of the Communist International. Mr. Seldes cabled the documents to the Chicago Tribune and the New York Times where they were prominently published on February 15, 1925. In his explanatory remarks Mr. Seldes declared that he was perfectly satisfied as to the authen- ticity of these documents. These and further forgeries of documents relating to alleged activities of Soviet agents in the United States and other countries proved a great success, and were much in demand by official and press agencies of the various

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214 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3242 countries. Drujilovski organized his business on a large scale and he had even had an advertisement running in the Russian emigre journal Rul in Berlin. The advertise- ment read as follows : Russian Information Agency "Russino," Ansbacher- strasse 8-9, Gartenhaus, Greistock. Registered by the Ger- man authorities. Accepts orders for information on the activities of the Comintern all over the world [literal translation: on a world-wide scale]. Correspondence and information on the state of affairs in Russia. Correspon- dents wanted. Remuneration by agreement. Hours: from 5:30 to 7:30 P.M. Director S. M. Drujilovski. Secretary G. P. Kipp. Beside the "Rutberg-Ruthenberg" document Drujilov- ski was the author of a number of other documents re- vealing "subversive activities" of Soviet agents in the United States. Among these was a letter supposedly ad- dressed to the "Plenipotentiary Representative of the Com- intern" and containing an expression of the appreciation of the Council of People's Commissars of the activities of said "Plenipotentiary Representative" in the United States. It also contained references to money allegedly sent for these activities, it mentioned Senator Borah, and there were references made to poison which was to be used in assassin- ating "Attorney General Warren," etc. Another document purported to reveal certain transactions of the Communist International in disposing of diamonds in the United States. However, the chief customer for Drujilovski's docu- ments was the Bulgarian legation at Berlin. According to Drujilovski, he was responsible among others for the following documents: A letter from the Communist International to the Com- munist Party of Bulgaria with detailed instructions on the steps to be taken in strengthening the activities of the party; a document purporting to confirm the forwarding of a large sum of money by the Communist International to Pastermagiev ; a circular letter of the Communist Inter- national ordering a general uprising in Bulgaria to take place on April 16, 1925; an "order" addressed to the "chief of the Balkan Operative center": by this order the Bul- garian Communist Dmitriev was appointed chief of the operative center and M. Krassovski was appointed chief of the General Staff. These and a number of other documents were used by the Zankov government in connection with the explosion in the Cathedral at Sophia which occurred on April 15, 1925, to lay the blame for the explosion on Moscow and to justify the reign of terror which followed and during which the Communist Party and most of the radical peasant leaders were virtually annihilated. These documents were also used by the Zankov Government in pleading before the Council of Ambassadors for permission to increase the Bulgarian army from 33,000 to 40,000, and on the strength of these documents this increase was allowed. According to Drujilovski, negotiations over the manu- facture and sale of the incriminating documents were con- ducted on behalf of the Bulgarian legation by a man who introduced himself as Angelov but who later turned out to be the Bulgarian minister, Popov, himself. Angelov- Popov suggested the nature of the documents desired and Drujilovski did the rest. The most significant of these documents was the one containing the alleged order of the Communist International for a violent uprising to take place on April 16, 1925. This document was subsequently given the widest publicity in the press all over the world. WORLD-FAMOUS WRITERS PRAISE BEST SELLING NOVEL IN AMERICA* OIL! By UPTON SINCLAIR JOHAN BOJKR: "This novel is created by a great poet, a great artist, and a great heart. Since Emile Zola I can't remember a similar work." OSWALD GARRISON VII. LARD: "One of the most remarkable books that I have ever pe- rused and one of the most readable." WILLIAM McFEE: "Story-telling with an edge on it. A marvelous pano- rama of Southern California life." FLOYD DELL: "Tremendously absorbing. I love the book for all the rich- ness of life that has gone into it, the immense range of its interest, the eagle- swooping vistas of American life." WILLIAM KLLERY LEONARD: "Great fiction and great thinking. It has vision and power." MAY SINCLAIR: "It is a very fine novel. A good big Theme, splendidly treated." CLARENCE D ARROW: "Few novels have impressed me as much as 'Oil !' " HAVELOCK ELLIS: "I place this book higher than any earlier novel of yours both as regards ma- turity of outlook and artistic grasp of varied aspects of life." JOHN" MASEFIELD: "I read 'Oil !' with interest and pleasure." ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE: "I was amazed at the power of the book." •First on the list of one leading wholesale distributor. Second on the list of the other. At all bookstores, $2.56 ALBERT & CHARLES BONI : NEW YORK CITY SCHOOLS IN FRANCE A Church Schooi lor American Boys preparing for American Colleges. Wholesome country life organized in a historic feudal castle. American standards of hygiene and diet ; yearly tuition $1,200. Full sports program, including crew. The Rt- Rev. Charles H. Brent, Bishop of Ameriean Churches in Europe, Chairman of Board of Trustees. Address: Dr. Conrad Chapman, Head Master, Chateau-Neuvic, Neuvic-sur-risle, Dordogne, France BOOKS THE EVOLUTION OF MAN, byWilhelmBoelsche A clear, strong, simple summary not only of Darwin's theory but of :he work of a generation of scientists along the lines Darwin opened up. Just what a busy man wants to give him a bird's-eye view of Evolution. Cloth, illustrated, 60 cents by mail. Catalog free. Charles H. Kerr & Co., 347 East Ohio St., Chicago, 111. THEATER Little Theatre THE GRAND STREET 44th Street West of Broadway - v ;30. Mats. Tues. and Thurs. at popular prices. "One cannot find anywhere in New York mort or mori Jos< oh Wood Kiiitch in The Nation. FOLLIES ideas, more fresh satire When writing to a d ■■ ert i-sers please mention The Nation

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Aug. 31, 1927] The Nation 215 and was accepted as proving beyond further doubt that the Sophia explosion had been directly engineered by the Communist International at Moscow. The document, ac- cording to Drujilovski, had been manufactured by him early in March 1925, i.e. before the explosion took place. The coincidence of the date of the explosion with the date set for the uprising in the Drujilovski forgery led the prosecutor at the Moscow trial to express the belief that the explosion was one incident in a chain of provocations carefully prepared by the Bulgarian government with the aim of finding sufficient justification for wiping out the Communist and radical agrarian elements. The prosecutor found further confirmation for this belief in the story told by Drujilovski to the court of a conversation which he had overheard once while in the anteroom of the Bulgarian legation in Berlin. According to this story, the conversa- tion was between the Bulgarian Minister, M. Popov and a man who, he later found out, was the British Colonel Hoist who had just arrived from Sophia. Drujilovski heard the voice of M. Popov who asked excitedly: "But how could you admit an explosion, Colonel?" The prosecutor of the Supreme Court said in summary : The inference which is naturally to be drawn from Drujilovski 's testimony is that the same hand prepared and executed the explosion in the Sophia Cathedral (apparently there was to be only an attempt at an explosion; the explo- sion itself was the result of a miscalculation) that directed the manufacture of the forgery concerning the armed upris- ing in Bulgaria. We know whose hand that was: It was the hand of the Bulgarian Minister, Popov. And this hand was supported and directed by the British Secret Service in the person of Colonel Hoist, the same Hoist who, according to the evidence disclosed at the trial, had been meeting the Bulgarian Prime-Minister Zankov himself at the secret headquarters in Sophia maintained by an English spy. It may be noted that the forgeries produced by Drujilovski were on the whole done rather poorly. They revealed the political illiteracy of their author and his utter ignorance of actual relations. They were produced mostly in the style of the sensational detective stories which Drujilovski had been engaged in publishing during the first period of his sojourn in Reval after the defeat suffered by the forces of General Judenich. Drujilovski explained at the trial that this was done by him purposely out of sympathy with the Soviet cause. He believed that because of their ineptitude the forgeries would be easily detected and would fail of their purpose. Fascist Culture The article published below was taken from the Liberie, an anti-Fascist paper published in Paris; it appeared on Jun 26, 1927, under the title Cultural Grayness. The Rome correspondent of the Echo dc Paris has just announced as "a great event of the day" the appearance of a novel by Sibilla Aleramo, adding: "In the grayness of the present output this book shines by its own light." A melancholy fact! The grayness has persisted since the Fascist regime commenced to rage, and it extends to all Italian arts though it has hit literature the hardest. Fascism has reduced to silence or intimidated our best pens; those to whom it has given courage either write like hacks or are reduced to making themselves Mussolini's bootblacks. The finest example of bootlicking was offered last year by Margherita Sarfatti with the publication of A Magazine of Prose IN connection with a course on Style and Form in American Prose by Gorham B. Munson, The New School for Social Research will publish a thirty-two page magazine made up exclusively of prose contributions from the members of the class. The Magazine will be edited and controlled by a member of the class, designated as Fellow Editor, assisted by two or more scholar editors. Those chosen as fel- low and scholars will receive free tuition in the course. A rare opportunity for young writers to gain actual editorial experience. Applications should be addressed to Alvin John- son, Director. They should present a record of literary activities. Clippings of published articles are desired. For further information, ivrite for catalogue to The New School for Social Research 465 West 23d St., New York City. Now on Sale The First Number of Me BCDKMAN Edited by^^-^ BURTON RASCOE With the September issue, The Bookman demon- strates how interesting and stimulating a Revue of Life and Letters can be made. Here is a new maga- zine, from cover to cover. Dreiser, Cabell, Upton Sinclair are in it. So are Dorothy Parker. Arthur Maurice, John Farrar. There is the late Keith Pres- ton's last essay — and other contributors, new depart- ments, ingenious features that give The New Book- man a sparkle and a mellowness seldom encountered in such abundance. 50c at your newsdealer To insure receiving every number of the new Bookman, use the blank below. Important Note- The price of The Book- man under the new ownership ivill be increased o)i January i from $4 to $5. Subscribe now and get the advantage of the old rate. . (N. 8-25 ) THE BOOKMAN 452 Fifth Avenue New Yo k City enter my subscription to The Bookman for one year, to start with the September (or October) issue. I enclose $1.00 (money order ck) ; or. send me bill. ($6 brings the magazine for two years.) Name Add ress Canadian postage 50c. a year extra; foreign, $1.00 extra. When writinu to advertisers please mention The Nation

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216 The Nation [Vol. 125. No. 3243 "Dux"; for our contemporary literature that was also, alas, an event. But no other book of interest to the book- sellers has appeared either before or since. D'Annunzio is now in his dotage; to amuse himself in the Vittoriale "prison" he has a cannon fired now and then from the ship "Puglia"; and in order to let him have some more rolls of banknotes Mussolini has authorized Gioacch- ino Forzano to give a performance of the "Figlia di Jorio" at the poet's villa in September, selling tickets at 1,000 lire. So D'Annunzio can no longer be counted on. Fascism placed considerable hope in Guido da Verona, but he in his "La Lettera alia Sartine d'ltalia" has shown such ?ign« of softness that not even the address which he gave, he says, in the name of all Italian writers, in a square of Milan to exalt the book fair, was sufficient to restore him to his former prominence. Other writers are silent. Sem Benelli, after humiliating himself with conciliatory state- ments to obtain Fascist permission for the performance of his tragedies, has since given nothing to the theatre. Roberto Bracco, persecuted, insulted, wrathful, exasperated. allows his pen to grow rusty. Papini, in order not to get into legal difficulties or compromise himself, remains im- mersed in aceticism. Only the mediocrities, or sly foxes like Trilussa, pretend to acknowledge Fascism in order to be allowed to live on. In journalism it is still worse. Not one fascinating writer. Not one dynamic writer on controversial subjects. Not one who shines by his own originality. The Scarfog- lios are hunted, the Malagodis are discouraged, the Sacchis outraged! There remained only Giovanni Ansaldo. His articles were a terrible indictment, especially when in the vein of ironical literary ramblings. To silence him the regime first shut him in a cell and then deported him to the islands of despair. There is the same humiliating catastrophe in all the arts. The genuises, the personalities which were an honor to the country, have either been taken into custody or. if arrived at the extreme limit of decrepitude and imbecility. like Gemito, have sought patronage by some loudly pro- claimed act of approval. The highest positions in connection with the art- have naturally gone to Fascists. The insignificant composer of he music of "Giovinezza" has been catapulted in1 position of commissary general for the musical institutes of Piedmont. Another figurehead, whose name is entirely unknown, holds the post of director of the Bologna Lj formerly occupied by Martucci. Conclusion: from the Fascist generations only donkeys issue. Not one poet, novelist, painter, sculptor, comedian, musician or architect. Only nonentities. And this is self-explanatory. The Fascist regime instills into the boys a passion for arms (formerly the crossbow. now the revolver), rather than a love of books. Youth is becoming pugnacious, instead of studious. Unconsciously they imitate Mussolini, who once boasted of never having visited a museum. In former times the schoolmasters made their pupils read Manzoni; the professors explained Cicero and Dante. Now the poor schoolboys have read to them, with ments, Mussolini's discourses. That explains i (signed) S. SUMMER PLACES In a forthcoming THE MOVEMENT OF WORLD WEALTH by Scott Xcariny RIVERLAKE LODGE A Camp Superb FOR ADULTS OUTSItE KINGSTON, N. Y.. ON THE HlT>SON RIYFR AND LAKE ESOPUB A beautiful place with wonderful views of the Hudson River and mountains, where intelligent reople will meet congenial company. Bathing, Boating, Fishing. Tennis, Hand Ball, Dancing and other amusements. Golf course in vicinity. Excellent Food. Terms: $35.00 weekly, J7.00 a day. Write for camp booklet. Special 3'Day Labor Day ueek'end—$20. RIVERLAKE LODGE 70 West 40th St. Ulster Park, New York City Ulster County. N. Y. Tel. Longacre 3693. Tel. Kingston 2S10. HARRY WEINBERGER HARRY KELLY Directors TIMBERLAND IN THE HEART OF THE AD1RONDACKS The Camp Purposely Limited to a Congenial Group of 40 Bungalows and Main House Excellent facilities and equip- modern in every respect. ment for all camp sports; Rate $27 per week. also golf. Round Trip Fare to Riverside. N. Y., station, $13.27. open until N. Y. Office. 55 West 42nd St OCTOBER 1st Pennsylvania 7663 Mail your reservations to POTTERSVILLE, N. Y. Lovers of the Out-Of -Doors A Treat for the Labor Day Week End THE C. J. I. CAMPS at PORT JERVIS, N. Y. Swimming, Boating, Canoeing, Fishing, Ten- nis, Entertainment, Athletic Field Games, Horseback Riding Wholesome Kosher Food Conducted by Central Jewish Institute CITY OFFICE:— 125 East 85th Street Rates on a non-profit basts For ib? Labor Day Week f nd $12 Phone Now! For information and reservations, Butterheld 2956 MISCELLANEOUS REAL HARRIS HOMESPUNS ™tfj3Zt£z.uM&Z Suit Lengths Cut to Order. Postage Paid NEWALL, 150 Stornoway, Scotland. Write for patterns stating shades desired Your Fall Problems If you want to rent a house or an apartment for the coming winter, or it you have one to rent — or sell, advertise in the n oi The Xation, read by desirable landlords Hants. Rates on application. Special three-time rate. Y. \V. P., Do you w ant to make extra money? Address Dept. 11 The Nation 20 Vesey Street New York When tcriting to adiertisers please mention The Nation

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The Nation FOUNDED 1865 Vol. CXXV NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 7, 1927 No. 3244 Contents EDITORIAL PARAGRAPHS 2n EDITORIALS : „„. Sacco-Vanzetti— Next Steps --<' Mr. Gary and His Times 221 William Blake, 1827-1927 221 A New Labor Library --- A CARTOON by Boardman Robinson 22o THE REAL AMERICAN LEGION. By Sylvanus Cook 224 BIG BUSINESS IS VERY HAPPY. By Percy Musgrave 225 IN A BOSTON INSANE ASYLUM. By Powers Hapgood 226 MASSACHUSETTS— WHERE DOES SHE STAND? Letters from Our Readers " ' IN THE DRIFTWAY. By the Drifter 229 CORRESPONDENCE 229 BOOKS: Poems. By Louise Bogan 230 The British and American Tariff. By William MacDonald 230 The Biography of Buddha. By William Norman Brown 230 Really a Novel. By Johan Smertenko 231 Mumbo-Jumbo. By Irwin Edman 232 The "Makings" of Michael Collins. By Norah Meade 232 Books in Brief 233 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS SECTION: The Movement of World Wealth. By Scott N earing 234 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. THE NATION is on file in most public and college libraries and is indexed in the Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature. rjlHE NATION TAKES PLEASURE in announcing the A appointment to its staff of Heywood Broun as con- tributing editor. He will write for every issue a page entitled "It Seems to Heywood Broun." In appointing him The Nation has assured to Mr. Broun complete freedom of utterance whether his opinions do or do not agree with those of its editorial pages. His first article will appear in an early issue. NOW THAT THE POLITICIANS have decided that "I do not choose" means I will not, everybody is trying to find out upon whom the robes of royalty will fall. There are wiseacres who insist that months ago the President picked Charles E. Hughes and that Wall Street, more than satisfied with the choice, is not disturbed by the fact that Mr. Hughes is sixty-five years old. There is another school that is for Mr. Hoover, and there is no doubt that Mr. Hoover emphatically belongs to this group. The Presiden- tial bee has never ceased to buzz in his bonnet; he has been watching for a favorable break for eight years, and hn will continue to do so as long as there is any chance at all. But there is strong political opposition to him, which is at least partly to his credit, and it is an open secret that interests hostile to him have recently had agents in China investigating Mr. Hoover's early career. We do not be- lieve that anything very damaging to him will be dug up in China, but we do know that there will not be much enthusi- asm in the Cabinet for Mr. Hoover. At one time it was reported that no less than six of his colleagues had com- plained to the President that Mr. Hoover was trying to run their departments besides his own, and it must not be for- gotten how emphatically Mr. Coolidge himself denied the report that Mr. Hoover might become Secretary of State. When Mr. Hoover and Mr. Coolidge met recently at Rapid City the newspaper correspondents were amazed at the de- liberate coolness shown by the President. It will take a genuine public demand, such as we cannot feel will be forth- coming, to put Mr. Hoover across with the gentlemen who will manipulate the Republican Convention. SECRETARY KELLOGG has officially placed the blame for the failure of Panama to ratify the new treaty between the United States and that country. To our in- tense surprise it seems that it was western Europe and not Russia that kept the Panama Congress from approving this treaty "of alliance and friendship" under which Pan- ama would automatically have to go to war whenever the United States became involved in hostilities. We were willing to bet our best hat that when Mr. Kellogg's ex- planation appeared it would prove the Bolsheviks guilty. It was a good bet because, so far as we can recall, this is the only time that Moscow has not been accused of block- ing the Secretary's plans when they went awry. But it was the European press this time which was so unkind as to point out that the proposed treaty robbed Panama of the last vestige of her independence and was in conflict with Article 12 of the Covenant of the League of Nations. Mr. Kellogg knows better and does not hesitate to say so, but the Panamanians have clearly shown their intellectual inferiority by refusing to take the Secretary's word for it and by declining to start fresh negotiations in spite of strong hints that it would be wise for them to do so. Let them take warning by Haiti. There the marines adjourned the parliament by force when it refused to do General Smedley Butler's bidding. And as we created the Republic of Panama by a revolution cooked up in the State Depart- ment, it would, of course, be easy to start another. Mean- while, we have an easier suggestion for Mr. Kellogg. His chief, President Coolidge, last spring ordered the Amer- ican press to cease from criticism of his foreign policy. Let him now go a step further and notify the European press that it is forbidden to speak other than favorably of anything Mr. Kellogg does in the Caribbean under pen- alty of being adjudged guilty of violating the Monroe Doctrine. IT IS A FAR CRY from the days of 1914 when England reached out a hand over Turkey's head and drew Egypt into the "protection" of the British fist. Egypt protested then, and continued to protest at regular intervals until the day the British Protectorate was abandoned, beginning with a formal list of proposals presented two days after the signing of the armistice in 1918. And in every one of these periodical jerks against the British rein, Zughlul Pasha, once Egyptian Prime Minister, was the guiding spirit. Now Zaghlul is dead and his death leaves a gap

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218 The Nation [Vol. 125. No. 3244 that will not be easily filled. King Fuad is a figure-head; Zaghlul was not only the leader of his party, the first and fiercest champion of Egyptian independence, but the ac- knowledged strong man of the country as a whole. His resignation as Premier came after the intemperate demands of Great Britain made on Egypt when Sir Lee Stack was assassinated. But if he was not in office, Zaghlul was in power. His nephew, now Minister of Agriculture, is thought to be a possible choice for leader of the Wafd Party, but it is not likely that he will measure up to his uncle. It is by no means impossible that the Wafd will disappear as it is now constituted, and Egypt's nationalists arise later in some other form. THE LONG ARM OF MUSSOLINI reaches across oceans and around the corners of mountains; if you are sitting on the top of Mt. Everest, comfortably libelling the Fascist Government and all its works, beware! If you are engaged while secluded in the recesses of India, your mother country, in manufacturing a bomb to blow up your brother-in-law. who happens to be an Italian — but all this is confused and doubtless hypothetical. The point is that Mussolini has drafted a new code of laws, among the ex- traordinary provisions of which is the following (italics ours) : Article 6. Any citizen or foreigner who commits on foreign territory one of the following lists of crimes is punishable according to the Italian law: First, crimes against the personality of the state; second, crime in coun- terfeiting the seal of the state; third, the falsification of money legally used in the territory of the state or any stamp of Italian public credit; fourth, crimes committed with explosives or materials which produce blindness or as- phyxiating gases against Italian citizens; fifth, crimes against individual Italian persons; . . . eighth, every other crime committed on foreign territory by a citizen or eigner wherefore special dispositions of the law or inter- national convention have been established in applicability of the Italian penal law. Penalties for these offenses range from confiscation of all property and imprisonment for one year to life imprison- ment and death. How the Fascist Government proposes to enforce these drastic provisions remains to be seen; it would seem that a more than human eye might be required, a longer than human arm. a super-human wisdom and strength. More than once words have been uttered by Italy's premier which indicated that he possessed something of the sort. This is to be the acid test. THE CRUSADE in the South against mob (loggings con- tinues, a court in Georgia having just sentenced Ray- mond Lee to three to five years in prison for taking part in the beating of II. M. Flanders, editor of the Soperton News. Lee has moved for a new trial and is at liberty under a $3,000 bond. Meanwhile the Ku Klux Klan. whose member? are believed to be the instigators of most of this lawless- ness, is trying to strike back. In Alabama, where as noted in our issue of August 24 (page 173) a few couraj newspapers have been spurring public officials floggers. an attempt is on foot t stifle criticism. The cial committee of the House has reported favorably a bill which gives any city or incorporated town, any county, or ate itself, the power to prosecute any newspa] which "libelous matter" is published against such locality. The newspaper may be prosecuted in any county in the State in which it circulates and it may be fined up to $25,- 000 or condemned to pay damages by a jury, the amount of which no other court "shall have any authority to mitigate or reduce." The proposed law is made retroactive for a period of one year. The bill failed to come to a vote in the session of the legislature which has just adjourned, but it is thought that it will be pressed at the next opportunity if the bitterness between the Klan and its opponents continues. SOMETHING OF THE CHARACTER of the fight and the conditions which form its background is evident from the report of a special grand jury just made in Wedo- wee, Randolph County : The grand jury has diligently, deeply and earnestly investigated the alleged kidnapping and flogging of citizens of this county. The investigation reveals most intolerable conditions. Evidence developed disclosed that seventeen persons have been whipped. In each case the victims of these criminal activities have been whipped in the late hours of the night by organ- ized mobs of men wearing white robes and white masks over their faces, who travelled in automobiles with tags covered. Most of them were lashed on the naked skin with instruments of torture that in some cases left wounds, scars and bruises that the victims will apparently carry through life. It is the unanimous conclusion of the grand jury that the kidnapping and lashing of these victims has been done by lawless members of an organization known and called Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, who have bound themselves to secrecy with reference thereto. The grand jury recommended that the legislature pass laws against the wearing of masks and the concealment of auto- mobile license tags on the public highways. NOT ONLY IN BOSTON but elsewhere, with less ex- cuse, law and decency were trampled upon in the hysteria preceding the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti. According to a United Press dispatch. Mrs. Lenora H. Jones, a fifty-nine-year-old Quaker, lost her job as a tourist guide in the Capitol at Washington because she was so agitated over what she conceived to be the injustice of the proceeding that she couldn't keep still about it. "She has been indefinitely suspended." said J. J. McGrain, Deputy Sergeant-at-Arms of the Senate, "because she talked too much. We did not think she should be filling tourists with Saeeo-Vanzetti talk while we have to place extra guards on the Capitol to prevent radical demonstration." Mrs. Jones said: not know Sacco and Vanzetti, but all my life I worked in the interests of peace. I saw in the execu- tion of these men a great possible harm to the United States because of the belief that these men are not guilty. I want to prevent the international hate which carrying out of this sentence would create. If my little life could prevent the harm that might come from such a wave of hatred I would gladly go to the electric chair in the place of Sacco and Vanzetti. IN NEW YORK CITY Magistrate Ewald sent to the work- house for sixty days a man who was arrested while distributing Sacco-Vanzctti circulars in front of the court building. According to press accounts the magistrate said: There is too much of this going on in New York. There is no room for you Reds here. The time is here when the laws must be obeyed, and I'm going to do my part

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Sept. 7, 1927] The Nation 219 to see that they are. I am only sorry that I cannot give you more time, but I understand the workhouse is con- gested. It is no crime in New York to be a Red — whatever that is. There is a city ordinance — intended to prevent litter — against distributing circulars in the street, but it is never enforced unless as a subterfuge for some other reason. In another court Magistrate Simpson fined a man $5 for dis- playing signs from his automobile expressive of sympathy with Sacco and Vanzetti and thus, it was alleged, obstruct- ing traffic. There may have been some unreported circum- stances in these cases justifying the action taken, but as recorded in the press both magistrates seem to have re- sorted to laws designed for another purpose in order to suppress legitimate personal expression, thus holding up the courts before the public not to honor but to contempt. WHEN THE HISTORY of public sentiment in regard to Sacco and Vanzetti in Massachusetts is written much will have to be attributed to the poltroonery of the Boston newspapers, with the booby prize going to the Herald. For a time that journal made a forthright demand for a retrial of the case, and the writer of a plea for such a course was awarded the Pulitzer prize for the best editorial of last year. But pressure from Big Business and Back Bay led to a face-about, and the depth of pusillanimity was attained in an editorial after the execution entitled "Back to Normalcy" : The asperities which have attended the Sacco-Vanzetti case in its long and tedious journey through the courts are greatly to be regretted, and should be forgotten as promptly as possible. Let us get back to business and to the ordinary concerns of life, in the confident belief that the agencies of law have performed their duties with fairness as well as justice. We hope that the large number of our readers whose letters we have been unable to print — letters that we now find it too late to print — will recognize that what we have printed have been representative of the two sides of the case, and so have been as liberal to one view as to the other. It has been a famous case. It has attracted the at- tention of the world to an extent quite without recent precedent. It has presented phases which no serious stu- dent of our public affairs could fail to regret. But the time for all such discussion is over. The chapter is closed. The die is cast. The arrow has flown. Now let us go forward to the duties and responsibilities of the common day with a renewed determination to maintain our present system of government and our existing social order. The italics in which the last four words are printed are >urs. TO ELIZABETH GLENDOWER EVANS of Boston, and her noble associates in the fight to save Sacco and /anzetti go our deepest sympathy and our profound admira- ion. We do not know of anything finer than their gallant ight against public opinion on behalf of these two despised oreign anarchists. No sacrifice has been too great for Mrs. Evans to make, and to the end she kept her spirit erene. That the world today must seem to her a very dark md hopeless place there can be little doubt. But she and hose who fought with her must console themselves with the :nowledge that they have the gratitude of all the people of renerous and humanitarian minds who are determined to ight for justice in America no matter how often defeated. ;he and her co-workers were the ones who stood for the good name of Massachusetts and her judiciary, and their gallantry and self-sacrifice will be held in grateful memory as long as those who fought with them survive. We must also commemorate the superb services of Professor Felix Frankfurter of Harvard, who threw himself into the fight for Sacco and Vanzetti without a thought as to the cost, and without seeking the slightest recompense. Yet the old lie that he has been a paid attorney came right out of the State House during the last few days of the fight. The Gov- ernor knows better ; at least the facts were put in his hands months ago. But the lie is still current. Mr. Frankfurter was not asked by the Governor or Mr. Lowell for his facts or his opinions, and he has been the target of the bitterest abuse. That this is what historically happens to a Harvard professor who espouses an unpopular cause is witnessed by the case of Professor Charles Follen, who lost his professor- ship because of his espousal of the abolition of Negro slav- ery— and the name of Wendell Phillips, the greatest orator of his day, appears on the list of Harvard graduates with- out a distinction from his recreant Alma Mater. Yet it is the Frankfurters and Follens that keep the best that is in Harvard alive. WHEN ANNA WAS FIVE months old her mother gave her away to John Odams, colored. Anna, twelve now, has lived with the Odams family ever since. The other day, in Milwaukee, where she lives, the police picked her up while she was following a carnival company along the street. Then it was discovered that Anna was — white! In her short life Anna has learned to despise white people. She says they're mean. "I'm a colored girl," she insisted, "and I'll always be a colored girl." Her colored foster father wants to keep her and she wants to stay. But the city officials, realizing at once their great and solemn duty, performed it. Promptly and courageously they removed this dangerous menace to the color line — removed her to the Home for Dependent Children "pending investigation of the ability of the Odams family to care for her." (They have supported her for twelve years.) It is confidently ex- pected that within a year, with the proper training, Anna will become a normal, healthy white girl, with all the nor- mal, healthy prejudices that are her inalienable birthright. JOHN ST. LOE STRACHEY was a fine type of the con- servative British editor, the exact opposite in his views of the world from the lamented H. W. Massingham who for so long made the London Nation one of the greatest liberal publications. Mr. Strachey, whose death has just been reported, kept the London Spectator to a very high standard both in its book reviews and its editorials; in consequence it achieved the largest following of any Brit- ish journal of its type. One thing ought always to be remem- bered about Mr. Strachey besides his learning and geni- ality; he was a warm and devoted friend of the United States and labored unceasingly for that friendship between the two countries which has just been put in jeopardy by stupid admirals at the disarmament parley at Geneva. Since Mr. Strachey retired several years ago from the active di- rection of the Spectator his death will not affect that his- toric paper. It is striking evidence, however, of the pass- ing of that England for which Strachey labored all his life that a gifted daughter and son of this conservative im- perialist editor are Socialists playing an earnest part in the development of the British Labor Party.

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220 The Nation [Vol. 125. No. 3244 Sacco-Vanzetti — Next Steps WE are glad to record that a new Sacco-Vanzetti com- mittee on a national basis is in process of organ- ization to clear up the record in the case and deal fittingly with the memory of the two men whose guilt many believe was not established beyond the reasonable doubt which, ac- cording to the law, required an acquittal. To establish the innocence of these men may be an impossible' undertaking. but it is worth devoted and long-continued effort. In the meanwhile it is not impossible to clarify and set forth the record, and that is one of the immediate tasks before the new Sacco-Vanzetti organization. A detailed and scientific analysis of the Lowell report ought to be made by men whose names will carry weight. It was this report which swung the scales against the prisoners, and there is a great deal about it which remains provocative and unex- plained both in the text and in the manner in which the inquiry was conducted. The Governor and his advisors did not content themselves with examining the court records in the case, as most persons supposed they would do. They reexamined the original witnesses and called new ones with- out the safeguards of legal procedure. The new witnesses apparently were an influence in leading to the commit- tee's decision, and yet it held that this fresh testimony was not of enough importance to warrant another trial. It is an open secret that there are a number of federal judges who question the whole procedure. The custom of their profes- sion made it impossible for them to speak out before the execution; it would be an honor to their calling if they would now join in an impartial study of the facts. How did it happen, we should like to ask here, that al- though President Lowell was named first in the appoint- ment of the committee, and was therefore assumed to be its chairman — how did it happen that Robert Grant was the first signer of the report and so presumably the man who drafted it? Mr. Grant was one member of the committee who from the outset was recognized as reactionary in his political and industrial views. So far as the files of the Department of Justice are con- cerned, we believe there is not one chance in a thousand that they contain anything which establishes the innocence of Sacco or Vanzetti. Probably, though, they contain consid- erable extra evidence in regard to the terroristic methods of .Mr. Palmer's "red raids" of 1920-1921. certain major aspects of which were halted by the federal courts at the time as illegal, while the whole proceeding was investigated later by a committee of nationally distinguished lawyers and condemned in the strongest language. That the "red raids," as well as numerous bandit activities in Massachu- setts in 1920-1921. established a sentiment of fear and hate in the community which must have been prejudicial — how- ever unconsciously — to Sacco and Vanzetti is too obvious to disinterested persons to require emphasis. In their declara- tion to the contrary Governor Fuller and the Lowell com- mittee have merely confessed themselves to be still in the grip of that prejudice. From the standpoint of the nation at large, even more than from that of the reputations of Sacco and Vanzetti, we think the material in the archives of the Department of Justice ought to be mad- the subject of a Congressional investigation. Beyond these things a record of the case from the point of view of the protestants should carefully be made. This should include a study of the psychology of the State of Massachusetts. That State thought it necessary to arrest and inquire into the sanity of Powers Hapgood (as he describes on another page). Perhaps it is time now that somebody inquired into the sanity of Massachusetts. Espe- cially important is the attitude and influence of the Boston newspapers. Since the prostitution of the Pittsburgh press during the coal strike of 1919 we do not recall any episode in recent times so dishonoring to journalism. The action of the Boston Hi raid (set forth in an editorial paragraph on the preceding page) was especially discreditable. In con- trast we are glad to point to the tolerant and intelligent attitude of the best newspapers of New York City along with such journals as the Pittsburgh Press, the Waterbury (Connecticut) Republican and American, the Springfield Republican, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the Milwaukee Leader, and the Baltimore Sun. There ought to be an in- vestigation also of the tip given from the State House in Boston early in August that the Governor would not send Sacco and Vanzetti to the chair, in regard to which the testimony of the staff correspondents in Boston at the time of the New York Times, New York Herald Tribune, and New York World would be valuable. The suppression in Boston of constitutional guaran- ties in regard to the right of individual persons to carry placards in the streets ought to be taken, if need be, to the highest courts. Xor must the more personal side be forgotten. There should be adequate provision for the support of Mrs. Sacco and the education of the children, while another fund might be raised for some fitting memorial to the two dead Italians. It is to be hoped that this will take some unique and creative form — possibly a scholarship or prize in a labor college. (Or the endowment of a chair of equity in Har- vard University.) One contribution toward keeping alive the memories and worth of the two men occurs to us at once. We would suggest the publication of a selection of the letters and speeches of Vanzetti and Sacco. In no other way can the character and courage of the men be so well preserved for posterity. This volume ought to be a pam- phlet, or at least be accompanied by a paper edition in order that wide distribution be obtained by means of a low price. Possibly also a pamphlet might be compiled of articles and editorials on the case since its beginning. Finally, we would direct attention to two lines of con- structive effort of a sort that would better be undertaken under wider auspices than that of any Sacco-Vanzetti or- ganization. The first is a movement for the reform of the Massachusetts judicial procedure, bringing it in line with that of New York and other States, so that the judge at the original trial may not remain as the sole arbiter of whether that proceeding was a fair one from the standpoint of the defendants. Such a reform would best be initiated, we think, by the bar of Massachusetts. Another impres- sive opportunity for constructive effort lies in a general campaign for the abolition of capital punishment, the bar- barism and unreason of which the Sacco-Vanzetti case has strongly emphasized. To this we shall return at greater length in a forthcoming issue.

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Sept. 7, 1927] The Nation 221 Mr. Gary and His Times THOSE dailies who make a practice of worshipping the rich and prosperous have been, it strikes us, a bit labored in their eulogies of the late Elbert H. Gary. They stressed, of course, his rise from a poor boy to the head of our greatest trust; it is the usual heroic picture which is held up to us all as final proof that every American child carries in his knapsack the baton of a field marshal of in- • dustry — to what higher place in life could one aspire? They have dwelt upon his unfailing optimism, his ability to pre- serve the peace in the iron and steel industry, and, above all, his ability to keep public and political opinion friendly to his great corporation. But when they have termed him a statesman — Mark Sullivan declares Mr. Gary "deserved more than any other man of his generation to be called a leader in economic statesmanship"— they are quite unable to cite any acts or any teachings which warrant the be- stowal of such a title. It is quite true that he poured oil on the troubled busi- ness waters of our country during and after the first years of the present century. It is correct that he claimed to pay higher wages than some union scales. It is also true that he refused to blot out all his business competitors as he could have done and that he modestly contented himself with less than 60 per cent of the industry. It is also un- questionably true that he could have gouged the public by charging more for his products than he did. But one may still be allowed to ask whether such self-restraint as the last two assertions indicate was really statesmanship or merely the result of a deliberate intention not to come into conflict with the government and invite further public hostility. As for Mr. Gary's kindly treatment of labor, in defense of which that amazing writer, Ida Tarbell, is once more cited in his behalf, why, he fought unions to the last, fomented those hermaphrodite affairs, company unions, where he could, and beneficently bestowed bread and cir- cuses in the shape of welfare work, the right to buy stock, hospitals, etc., etc. But Mr. Sullivan, like the other adula- tors, fails to recall how long our greatest economic states- man persisted in the twelve-hour day and the seven-day week and how often he is on record as declaring that the trust could not survive without them. It was public opin- ion, unceasing press attacks, and, finally, a direct onslaught by the conscience of the churches which compelled him to change his opinion. Perhaps that is his surest claim to statesmanship — he yielded to the larger battalions, like most political statesmen, even after he had conquered the bitter strike of his ungrateful laborers in 1919 when they tried their best to achieve a position where they could have some say as to their labor, their hours, and their wages. It is well, indeed, to throw the curtain of forgetfulness over these things and then to cite Miss Tarbell's rare conviction that Mr. Gary "introduced a new code of business ethics ... he was a very good friend of labor. He kept wages high. He instituted one of the best plans for employee ownership that there is in the country. The United States Steel Corporation built good industrial villages." Why dis- turb those who do not know that there is such a thing as democracy in industry, or that industrial paternalism is not a virtue but a survival? It is much, much better to fall back on the different status of the steel corporation before the public. But here we are confronted by the fact that the change in its posi- tion is no different from that of all others, no more remark- able than that of the Standard Oil, for example. The muck- raking period has passed — not because of the wonderful powers of exorcism of Mr. Gary but because of political and economic changes in considerable measure due to the World War. That was a life-saver for the trusts, and we are quite willing to admit that Mr. Gary and other states- men of industry realized its possibilities. They were no more pleased with Woodrow Wilson, author of "The New Freedom," in the Presidency, who refused to receive Mr. Gary or any other business chief in the White House and demanded that there be a new revolution in America, than they had been with Mr. Roosevelt. But the war came and went, absorbed and then smashed Mr. Wilson, and all inter- est in the crusade against big business vanished — big busi- ness itself was then in the saddle. Since then it has chosen two Presidents and elected them. Aided by unprecedented prosperity it has drugged the public and by means of stock- selling in small quantities in all sections, after the manner of the sale of the Liberty Bonds, has rallied to its banner thousands upon thousands who now look upon the trusts not as mulctors or cheats or enemies but as somxes of profit. Mr. Gary profited by his times ; he did not mould them, though he made his contribution to their fashioning. But he is bold, indeed, who credits him with a powerful intellect, or great vision, or true economic leadership. We grant that he represented in these latter days the spirit of the hour, precisely as does Mr. Coolidge in the White House. But we deny, in spite of Mr. Sullivan and the big-business press, that the present attitude of the public toward the trusts, and their complete domination of us and our economic and political life, represents an advance for the United States. William Blake, 1827-1927 ONE of Blake's friends and disciples recorded how, long after the death of his master, he remembered him at an exhibition in the Royal Academy— "Blake in his plain black suit and rather broad-brimmed, but not Quakerish, hat, standing so quietly among all the dressed-up, rustling, swelling people, and myself thinking: 'How little do you know who is among you.' ' There is less excuse, now that a hundred years have passed since the great poet and painter died in comparative obscurity, for failing to know who is among us. He always had his admirers; his last years were spent in a house which worshippers called the House of the Interpreter; and the nineteenth century was not without scholars capable of rendering a fair account of the man. But the past thirty years in particular have witnessed a zeal in expounding him and a passion in prais- ing him which might have amazed Blake himself, and which certainly leave it settled that he is a very famous artist whom anyone willing to make the effort may know about. The work of Ellis and Yeats, Sloss and Wallis, Geoffrey Keynes, John Sampson, Darrell Figgis, Laurence Binyon, Paul Berger, and Foster Damon is almost without parallel in the literature of its kind. Few authors guilty of words as wild as Blake's have been paid the compliment of a dis- ciplined search through all these words for meaning and cross-meaning.

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222 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3244 That Blake is still difficult or impossible to understand is no fault of his interpreters, who from Yeats to Damon have labored lovingly with his symbols in an attempt to make his sentences cohere. The difficulty is in Blake him- self, who after thirty fed his imagination wholly upon apo- calyptic writing and who, in a desire to achieve one more apocalypse which should outblaze its predecessors, wandered into a symbolism and a nomenclature so strange that only the initiate now can read him with continuous pleasure. The prophetic books are gorgeous and impressive, and lines of a demoniac beauty gleam here and there as one goes through them; but it is doubtful whether any but a member of the cult will ever care very much what states of mind were represented by Beulah, Albion, Tiriel, Myratana. Heuxos, Yuva, Ilela, Ijim, Mnetha, Heva, Oothoon, Theo- tormon, Knitharmon, Los, Ore, and Har— to name only a few of Blake's metaphysical creatures. He undoubtedly had his own wonderful way of seeing the universe, and one may well believe that there was no simpler way than he found of communicating the vision. One can only regret that the vision grew less and less sim- ple as Blake advanced in years, and that a certain fiery contempt for the commonplace, combined with an imperfect education, prevented him from trusting the language that is spoken by men. He saw God when he was four years old; while still a child he met the prophet Ezekiel under a tree; his father came near whipping him for saying that he had seen a tree filled with angels; and he witnessed a procession of angelic forms among the haymakers one fine summer morning. We like to believe this, and can manage to do so. The trouble with the prophetic book, is that we do not know what they are calling upon us to believe. With so much said for his obscurity, it remains to be said that Blake is one of the precious spirits whom we could not do without. It is doubtful if there was ever an illustrator equal to this illustrator of Virgil, Dante, Chaucer, Job, and his own books. His paintings and en- gravings are among the weird miracles of the earth; and one of the reasons is given by Blake himself in a note on hi rendering of Gray's poem "The Bard": "A spirit and a vision are not, as modern philosophy supposes, a cloudy vapor or a nothing; they are organized and minutely arti- culated beyond all that the mortal and perishing eye can produce. He who does not imagine in stronger and better lineaments, and in stronger and better light, than his per- ishing and mortal eye can see, does not imagine at all." If his elaborated doctrines are often obscure and weari- some, his instinctive ideas are as bright as the words he finds for them, and valuable beyond the power of criticism to explain. He was romantic, of course, to the core. He hated imitation, discipline, prudence ("a rich, ugly old maid courted by incapacity"), order, and reason. And he was such a Christian as could say: "No virtue can exist without breaking the ten commandments. Jesus was all virtue, and acted from impulse, not from rules." H the most extravagantly romantic man conceivable: and as such has his value. Finally, the author of "Tiger. Tiger." "A Poison Tree," "The Sick Rose." "Ah! Si \" and "Piping down the valleys wild" was a lyrii unique and lovely order. He who bends to himself a Joy Does the winged life destroy; But he who kisses the Joy as it flies Lives in Eternity's sunrise. A New Labor Library A LABOR library of national importance, built along somewhat different lines from the collection at the University of Wisconsin, is being created at the University of Michigan. The r. he collection at the Univer- sity of Michigan was given by Joseph Labadie, veteran Detroit trade unionist and anarchk-t. He was the first president of the Michigan Federation of Labor, organized in 1888, and was also the first Detroit organizer of the Knights of Labor. Labadie, a printer by trade, is now sev- enty-seven years old and no longer works in a printing shop. But he maintains his old contacts with the labor movement and is justifiably proud to have his name given to the labor library at the University of Michigan. When the university librarian accepted Labadie's col- lection as a permanent possession of the institution, taking responsibility for its maintenance, it proved a formidable job to move the shelves of pamphlets, newspapers and maga- zine files, documents bearing on the development of the labor movement locally and nationally, clippings and books. And since that time, through the efforts of Labadie and his friends, bookcases and old trunks in many parts of the country have been ransacked for supplementary material. The collection is particularly strong on the subject of the eight-hour day movement up to the time of the Chicago Haymarket tragedy. If the labor library- at the University of Wisconsin is deficient in material after 1905, the Labadie Collection is not. It contains an abundance of material up to 1921, bear- ing on the major phases of the labor and liberal movements. It includes, for example, files of hidustrial Solidarity, the Detroit Labor Xlics, and the Liberator. A complete file of The Nation is in the library. Although the Detroit Labor News is intended to serve only the Detroit industrial dis- trict, it carries the Federated Press and International Labor News services. The Federated Press service is also carried by Industrial Solidarity. Among the most interesting and valuable of the com- plete newspaper files in the Labadie Collection is that of the publication known during its strenuous lifetime as John Swinton's Paper. It was published in New York during the most militant days of the eight-hour day struggle, up to the Haymarket affair, but it attempted to cover the nation. For example, an item in the issue of April 15, 1886, announces that the Detroit Free Press has entered into a contract with the Detroit Typographical Union after being for nineteen years an open shop. "We take great pleasure in announc- ing that the Detroit Free Press is now a union office after having been closed to union printers for nineteen years," the account says. It is signed by the president of the De- troit local and is run under a Detroit date line. Another account from Michigan tells of conditions in the lumber camps. It is dated Bay City, December 23, 1884. "The mills are all closed." this account says in part. "Fire- men and cart drivers are getting $1 a day for twelve hours. Men are asking to be sent to jail." As the years pass the Labadie Collection will grow larger and more valuable. The housing of the material at the University of Michigan instead of in a workers' school may be regrettable from certain points of view. But it has equally obvious advantages in the circumstances under which the Labadie Collection has been assembled.

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224 The Nation [Vol. 125, Ne. 3244 The Real American Legion Bv SYLVANUS COOK EIGHTEEN thousand American veterans are either on French soil or preparing to set foot there to attend the ninth annual national convention of the American Legion. The number falls far short of the 30,000 "pilgrims" whom the optimists of the organization originally antici- pated for the trip, but even so a noteworthy group has responded. That part of the American public which is at all interested in the event is divided into two camps, one of which subscribes to the idea that the expedition is a '•sacred pilgrimage" while the other nurses the notion that it is more of an extraterritorial spree entered into by an army of hoodlums. As a matter of fact, its true signifi- cance probably lies somewhere in between. To characterize it as a spree is to do gross injustice to hundreds of men who have taken the trip in a serious mood; men whose brothers, either in blood or in spirit, went to death in Fiance and perhaps are now buried in its soil. On the other hand, it should not be supposed that there are no hoodlums among those 18,000 Legionnaires. But it should not be forgotten that a half-dozen hoodlums can bring an atmosphere of carousal to a group of decently behaved men who far out- number them. Therein lies the misfortune of the American Legion. It is an organization of war veterans which re- quires no other qualifications for membership than an honorable discharge from military service in the period between the entry of the United States into the World War and the armistice; and as such it is inevitably infested by a crowd of roughnecks and spread-eagle patriots who have brought upon it the charges of rowdyism and chauvinism. Adverse critics of the Legion are given to generaliza- tion. Recently, a ridiculous ass in the War Department assumed Legion authority in an attempt to oust from the school system of Washington a teacher who had written a definition of socialism in a magazine contest; a post in Pennsylvania was misled by a stormy idiot in Philadelphia — not a Legionnaire — to bring charges of sedition against several instructors in the State normal school; an ill-advised commander in Illinois engaged in a tirade against Miss -lane Addams, and the result is a wholesale indictment of the entire organization of 700,000 men by the American Civil Liberties Union and various liberal leaders. Let us put the shoe on the other foot for a moment. On August 5, two New York subway stations were bombed. This was only one of several outrages committed within a few days, supposedly by sympathizers of Sacco and Vanzetti. Does the American Civil Liberties Union or any sane lib- eral leader suggest that these crimes had the sanction of the many thousands of law-abiding citizens who have raised their voices in protest against Massachusetts justice? The cases are exactly parallel. I enjoy the peculiar privilege of being in the con- fidence of both Legion and liberal leaders. I do not find any wide divergence of opinion between them. Al- most without exception, the na lonal and State officials of the Legion are liberals themselves. There was almost as much indignation in the Legion over the aciion o eral Fries in attacking Professor Flury as there was .. the readers of Tin Nation. The Genera! just missed a public reprimand. Similar comment may be made on the West Chester Normal dispute, the attack of Commander Watkins on Jane Addams, or any of the other occasional displays of nationalistic bigotry and intolerance which are accredited to the Legion. It is natural to inquire why the temperate element in the Legion permits itself to be advertised by die-hard ex- tremists of the Fries-Watkins type without objecting. The reason is twofold. First, temperateness is seldom contro- versial. The temperate Legionnaire may feel totally out of sympathy with an act or pronouncement masquerading under Legion authority, but because he is temperate, be will say nothing about it save to his more intimate asso- ciates. Second, absurd as it may seem, the Legion as a whole is rather fearful of its swashbuckling minority. This is particularly true of its officers. Of the eleven or twelve men who hold positions of real responsibility at its national headquarters, seven of them at least — the most responsible seven — are advanced liberals in spirit. If they were to speak their minds, they would undoubtedly be branded as dangerous radicals by the superpatriots both in and out of the organization. Therefore they keep still, for the Legion affords them their bread and butter. The re- maining four or five officials are either too colorless to classify, or too weak to voice a private opinion, but not one of them is of the superpatriotic type. From top to bottom, however, they cringe before the potential wrath of the superpatriotic minority, for the minority presents a united front while the temperate or liberal majority, which ought to back them, is no support whatsoever. The thing for the Legion critic to keep in mind when he opens a broadside on the organization, is that the majority — a very large majority — of the Legion itself is virtually as antagonistic to the evils which he denounces as he is himself. His denunciation is not supported from within the Legion because of the fear of those who would like to support it. Their fear coerces them into neutrality. To charge the present staff of national headquarters with sanctioning any suppression of civil liberty is to speak either from misinformation or from a deliberate desire to falsify the facts. The staff has remained almost intact for the last three years, and what changes have been made in it have not changed its complexion. State headquarters are more changeable, but practically all of them are liberal in tendency. Intolerant nationalism is almost invariably a local phenomenon, and a remarkably infrequent phenome- non, too, when one considers the Legion's vast and hetero- geneous membership. It is impossible to do more than broadly indicate the hundreds of diverse useful activities in which a large pro- portion of the 11,000 Legion posts are engaged. Eleven ^ thousand posts, and in the course of a year perhaps a half- dozen of them fall under unwise counsel! The report of the American Civil Liberties Union for 1926 records that the Legion post in Atlanta, Georgia, succeeded in cancell- ! ing a speaking engagement of Mrs. Lucia Ames Mead. The report for 1927 will doubtless record several similar ac- I tions. Will it also record that the Legionnaires of

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Sept. 7, 1927] The Nation 225 Emporia, Kansas, defended the right of a militant pacifist to speak in their midst? The Emporia incident is not unique, but it gained attention because it was witnessed by a well-known publicist, William Allen White. The greatest of all the Legion's work has been con- ducted in behalf of disabled service men. In recent years it has given assistance to more than 35,000 unfortunates. Now it has expanded its work of mercy by establishing a $5,000,000 fund for orphans of men who gave their lives. Another great work has been its service in time of disaster. During flood or fire, earthquake or tornado, ex- plosion or mine catastrophe, the emergency units of the Legion have swiftly gone into action. When the Mississippi river broke its levees and laid waste the homes of 300,000 persons, the Legion mobilized immediately to support the Red Cross in its relief work. It sent out rescue crews, built rafts, guarded dikes, organized refugee camps, set up field kitchens. Legionnaires worked day and night in every phase of the Herculean task. The American Red Cross considers the Legion its chief aid in every disaster. Legion posts have established fire departments, ambu- lance units, hospitals, public libraries, playgrounds, avia- tion fields, scores of material things of benefit to their communities. Across the entire expanse of the Southern United States from coast to coast, there is an excellent highway which owes its origin and maintenance to the Legion. Legion posts have organized municipal concerts, art exhibitions, harvest festivals, a hundred activities to im- prove community spirit and to add to the joy of living. President Harding effusively declared that the destiny of America in the next half century was in the Legion's hands, and added that he thought it was in good hands. Thousands of Legionnaires believe that he spoke the truth. Another legend, which is supposed to have come from the same source, is that the honor of being National Commander of the American Legion is second only to that of being President of the United States. What is the real American Legion? It is an organiza- tion of three-quarters of a million men who had some place in the military forces of the United States during the World War. It is made up of every creed, political and religious, of every type of character and mentality, from every social and occupational plane. It is a cross-section of America. In some communities it has been captured by hoodlums and irresponsibles and in those communities it rightfully holds an unsavory reputation. In other com- munities it enrolls the best of the citizenry. The Legion is not unaware of its rotten spots. It should cut them out. If a split resulted the Legion which continued would profit greatly even though reduced in numbers, and one wonders if it would not quickly repopulate its ranks with a better class of veterans who now hold aloof from it. Big Business Is Very Happy By PERCY MUSGRAVE BIG business is very happy. It says so, and so there can be no doubt about it. If anybody questions it, let him look at the continued boom in the stock market, the unpre- cedented speculation which is filling the pockets of bankers, brokers, and the general public in a way to alarm even Wall Street itself. Look at General Motors' earnings ; see how well on the whole the Steel Corporation has come through this summer, and read how confident Republican politicians are that agricultural prices will go up this fall. Yes, our prosperity is at high tide and it has not been affected by the choosing of President Coolidge to get out of the White House while the going is good. Prosperity has risen above its — well, not its creator, but its patron saint and safeguarder in the White House, the President, who. like his predecessor, was sworn to take the government out of business, to break up all relationship between business and government — except when and where business was in trouble and needed to unload upon Uncle Sam. Yes, Big Business says it has been very, very happy. And yet as I have been turning over the pages of the daily newspapers and of a financial news service I have been struck by the number of sweet business bells that somehow are jangling out of tune. Somehow cogs seem to have slipped in this matter of cutting loose the government from business. What does Mr. Coolidge's Government mean, for example, by letting its Department of Justice institute proceedings against the Standard Oil Company of Indiana and fifty-one other oil companies, charging them with being a monopoly in re- straint of trade? Why is it that Mr. Coolidge didn't call off the Federal Trade Commission before it issued an anti- trust order directed against Adolph Zukor, Jesse L. Lasky, and the Famous Players-Lasky Corporation? Was it play- ing the game to let them be cited for conspiracy to "monop- olize or attempting to monopolize the motion picture indus- try"? Was it playing the game with Big Business for the Department of Justice to bring action against the potash monopoly and the sisal sales trust, to charge them with violation of the Sherman Anti-Trust Law, and to have the Kodak trust punished by the Supreme Court? Was it ac- cording to Hoyle for Mr. Coolidge to allow his Secretary of Labor to make a "socialistic*' speech charging that the coal industry is "fifty years behind the times," that it is subject to cut-throat competition that "keeps the country in constant suspense and slows up all the other industries we have"? And what has Secretary Work meant by choosing one of these happy days to make a speech on the oil industry, declaring that it is in a state of chaos, that the competi- tion which we have hitherto believed to be the life of trade is ruining the industry, that there is a grave overproduc- tion, that the (iovernment is willing to do anything about it — to pass new laws or anything else which the industry may want if the industry will only say what it wants? If this isn't mixing up government and Big Business and encour- aging those who want government ownership, what could be? And is it helping to say this just when 200,000 men have been out on a strike since April 1 in the soft coal industry, which none the less has produced 4,500,000 tons above the 1926 mark up to July first? Is it tactful to say this when the president of the Standard Oil and the head of the American Petrolum Institute have both been rushing

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226 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3244 to Calvin himself to demand that the Government come to the rescue of the chaotic oil industry and control it for the next few years, when other practical oil men have urged a Government czar to do the same thing, when the Seminole Oil Field has been controlled by a czar, R. H. Collins, ap- pointed by the corporations in that field themselves? Speaking of czars in these happy days, one is struck by the readiness with which our flexible Big Business re- sorts to this delightful new device — -whenever it gets into trouble. Besides the proposed national czar for oil, the great Northwestern railroads have come together and asked for the appointment of a rate czar to demand of the Inter- state Commerce Commission a new railway tariff for all their region. This czar business has gone like the craze for overseas flights; it is proposed that there shall be a czar of the building trades and the building industry in New York City and even a czar for the taxi business there. As for the railroads, in these happy, happy days they are at each other's throats like a pack of wolf-hounds. They are hourly quarreling over the proposed mergers. Every day gives us news about the four-system fight in the East against the five-system, the rows between Loree and the Southwestern railroads, the Commerce Commission's oppo- sition to the proposed New York Central merger with six other lines, the howls from several railroads as to the low valuations of their property as of 1916 by the same Com- merce Commission and its attack upon the criminal waste of money through nepotism in the Erie Railroad. Yes, these are very happy days indeed for the railroads. If you don't believe it, look into the Van Sweringen fight for the Chesapeake and Ohio and the other railroads whose merger the Commerce Commission has so far failed to approve. Yes, these are happy days for us all, especially the farmers, since the Department of Agriculture has announced that there was a decrease of 20 per cent in their net income for the year ending June 30, which gives them a magnificent average income per farm operator of $853 in that year. It is a particularly happy period for the 200,000 coal miners who are out of work and for the cattle men who have come to the President begging for help so they can make a little money through a Government cattle stock-selling bureau — they say they have not made a cent of profit in six years. And the big packers are equally unhappy, and banks are continuing to fail — in Kansas City and Milwaukee two Gov- ernment joint-stock land banks — and there has been a heavy drop in cotton and the Massachusetts textile industry is down and out ; and the big oil-stock bubble in California has burst, revealing the swindling operations of some of the biggest business men in Los Angeles; and the American tariff is getting knocked all over the United States and at every conference at Europe though everybody knows that it is the basis of our prosperity; and the French are put- ting through a high tariff against us and the Germans are dumping stuff upon us and the European trusts are becom- ing international — why yes, these are happy days for Big Business. Very, very happy days. In a Boston Insane Asylum By POWERS HAPGOOD Boston, August 24 THE following is an account of the facts leading up to my being imprisoned for twenty-four hours in the Psychopathic Hospital in Boston and what happened while I was there: On Sunday, August 14, 1927, I attempted to address a mass meeting in Boston Common on the Sacco-Vanzetti case. After speaking about five minutes the police arrested me, broke up the crowd, and took me to the police station. An hour or so later I was bailed out on $50 bail for appear- ance at court the following day. At the trial I was found guilty of "speaking without a permit" and sentenced to pay a $20 fine. Rather than submit to a verdict of guilty when I felt I was right in speaking. I appealed the case superior court in September, announcing as I did so my intention of lighting for free speech. Five hours later, while 1 was working in the offici the Sacco-Vanzetti Defense Committee, at 256 Hanover Street, three police officers rearrested me because of the Sunday meeting, this time on a charge o( "inciting to riot." My friends bailed me for $500 and the next day at the trial 1 was found guilty of '"inciting to riot" and sentenced months in the House of Correction. Arthur Garfield Hays. who defended me, made a splendid fight, bringing out the fact that there was no truth in the arresting officers' testi- mony that I called to the crowd to re; ue me and to "fight the police and that the said Hapgood did unlawfully, riot- ously, and raucously beat, wound, and ill-treat, and other wrongs to the said MeTierman (the sergeant who arrested me and filed the above complaint)." I appealed from this sentence and am now under $1,000 bail awaiting trial in September on the charge. Saturday, August 20, I was again arrested, this time in company with about twenty others on a charge of "saunter- ing and loitering" for picketing the State House. At the trial the following Monday we were given the choice be- tween pleading guilty and paying a fine of $15 for each man and $5 for each woman or pleading not guilty and appealing the case. We were told, however, that if we pleaded not guilty and appealed, an additional charge of "rioting" would be made against us. Four of us, John Dos Passos, Paxton Hibben, George Krasko, and I appealed and are now await- ing trial, the case having been continued until Friday. Monday afternoon. August 22, I was again arrested for picketing the State House, this time in company with about ten others, including Dos Passos, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Lola Ridge, and Margaret Hatfield. While we were waiting for bail in our cells, three plain clothes men who are members of the State Police force took me out and rushed me, without giving me a chance to tell anyone, into an automobile and drove me to the Psychopathic Hospital. It was not until I was in the office of the hospital that I got a chance to examine the commitment papers; they were signed by Captain Bligh of the State Police, and offered as reason for my commitment the statement that I was in a "state of unusual excitement." I was then told to undress, take a bath, and get into a bed in the ward which the attendants told me was "the same bed that Sacco had had when he was here four years ago." I insisted that the hospital authorities let me use the

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Sept. 7, 1927] The Nation 227 telephone to let my friends know where I was, but they refused to allow me to do it or to do it themselves. Fortu- nately my friends on the outside found out about it and immediately attempted to have me released. About 10 o'clock that night, just two hours before Sacco and Vanzetti were to die, one of the doctors asked me to come into his office and from then until 11:30 examined my mentality. He asked me how much seven times seven and eight times eight were, to substract seven from one hundred, to repeat in my own words a story he told me. He also wanted to know all the characteristics of my father and mother, their parents, and family. I was also asked whether I thought God asked me to do what I am doing, whether I had received a "call," and when I laughed at that I was asked at length about my social and economic ideas. At 11:30 I went to bed. I stayed awake until 1 o'clock, asking now and then for news about Sacco and Vanzetti, but I could not get any. At 5 o'clock they woke me out of a sound sleep and then I could not get to sleep again. With me in the ward were seven or eight patients, most of them out of their minds but not very noisy. After breakfast I was called into the office again and given another complete physical and mental examination. In addition to the usual eye, heart, and lung tests, the doc- tors scratched my chest with a needle to see if I gave a normal reaction, tickled the soles of my feet, and gave me other tests to see if my reactions were normal or insane. Then I was again asked to repeat numbers, answer ques- tions of multiplication, etc. After about an hour I went back to bed, but when I wanted to lie down I was told by an attendant it was against the rules to stay in bed in the daytime. I immediately went to the office, protested at this rule, said that as long as I was confined I wanted to make use of the time for resting, and eventually got special permission to stay in bed while the other poor patients had to either stand or sit up. After being in bed for about half an hour I was called out into the office where a psychologist gave me more tests. About 1 o'clock I was asked to go upstairs, where a staff meeting with about forty people present was going on. Because my bathrobe had a low neck in front and I was to face the audience, the attendants insisted that I wear my bathrobe backwards, so that the collar did come up around my throat but so that the buttons were down the back. Sitting beside the chairman on the platform, I was asked questions for some time about my economic and political views, why I felt the present situation unjust, whether I believed in force, whether I had ever been ar- rested before I came to Boston, the details of my being arrested in the coal fields, what I thought about the Sacco- Vanzetti case, what I thought about the recent bombing of the juror's home, and many other things. After the meet- ing I was privately questioned by two other alienists, who said they would report that my condition was normal. About 3 o'clock word came that I was to be released and I was given my clothes. The hospital officials all assured me that never had a patient gotten out so quickly, the rule being that no one could be released in less than ten days. When I went down stairs I found Arthur Garfield Hays and other friends waiting for me. Mr. Hays had obtained a writ of habeas corpus for me but it was not necessary for him to use it because the authorities, after this unusual pressure had been brought to bear on them, released me. I was freed about 4 o'clock, the last picketing charge against me having been dropped, and I am now waiting trial for the other two cases. My friends expect to bring legal action against the State Police Captain to make an issue of such use of a psychopathic institution. It is interesting to add that while I was detained at the hospital Mr. Hays, as my counsel, tried to see me and was not permitted to, nor were doctors who accompanied him for the purpose of examining me. Massachusetts — Where Does She Stand? LETTERS FROM OUR READERS What History Says To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: In studying the history of Massachusetts we are com- pelled to conclude that she has, "legally" and by the position of her "best minds," in every stage of her history stood on the wrong social side; and that what we now try to acclaim in her as her integrity toward the historical right has been gained for her only by the few radicals who dared to stand against her till they were justified by the might of facts and so by popular approval. The settlement: She enters the picture with an injustice to the original inhabitants of the land which has been dismissed without a conscience — for in that instance there was no protest strong enough to have weight. It was "Good night" for the poor Indian! The colony: Her stand throughout the founding period was similar to that of any element trying to acquire dominance: i.e., an intolerance which stopped at neither exile nor death for those holding different opinions. In the case of the hysteria over witchcraft (with a differ- ence, but like the present hysteria of the extremists — the Boston Transcripts, the Ralph Easleys, the Margaret Robinsons, etc.), to read the recantation of Chief Justice Sewall is to understand where Massachusetts stood in that issue, and it is not a pleasant prospect. In tlie period leading to the political revolution, after some front put up against England for purely selfish purposes (by the merchants), with the Stamp Act repealed and no apparent grievance against England. Massachusetts was quite ready to go on as before, blind to the great social forces under way, viz., the change from feudal to commercial (democratic) determina- tion. Almost alone Samuel Adams stood against Massachusetts till men of ability, John Adams, Josiah Quincy. and others again came to the front and gradually public opinion rallied to the radical against the conservative. In the abolition movement : Massachusetts dragged William Lloyd Garrison through the streets with a rope around his neck. Only such radicals as Garrison, R. H. Dana, Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, R. W. Emerson, Thoreau, Thomas W. Higginson, and the few other brave and intelligent men and women set up the front against the legal and moral position of Massa- chusetts. In the Great War: The less said the better; we are so near it. But perhaps we can take the Boston Transcript as the

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228 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3244 mouthpiece of where Massachusetts stood— and trust to history. In the present issue: (a) The Sacco-Vanzetti case is in itself a question of the fair trial of two radical foreigners, (b) It has also given us a sign of the times. A great social change is in motion. Is the mass, hitherto neglected in his- tory, coming into a place which means its domination as the social factor? Are life and the comforts of civilization to be for all or for the few? Is there something no longer adequate in the social form of capitalism? Can we say again, as James Russell Lowell said: Massachusetts, Cod forgive her, She's akneelin' with the rest. She tin-! ough' to ha' clung forever hi her grand old eagle-nest ; She thet ough' to stand so fearless Wile (ho wracks are round her hurled. Holdin' up a beacon peerless To the oppressed of all the world. We believe history shows Massachusetts, in all her stand, up and including the present issue, in so far as her vested interests appear, to have been and to be impervious to social thought; and her integrity in this respect to have been saved only by those radicals who had and have social courage and intelligence enough to stand up till supported by historic facts. Boston, August 21 Robert S. Chase Have Faith in Calvan T. Fullidge! To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: Well, the incredible has happened — but perhaps, after all, it is the credible, and it is we who are naively incredulous. It is barely possible that the innocence of Saccc and Van- zetti will some day come to light, with the confessi. n of some of the five participants in the South Braintree crime. But it is unlikely. The entire machinery of government is set to vindi- cate the majesty and infallibility of its procedure, to suppress all possible evidence of a miscarriage of justice, and to keep truth crushed to earth. In respectable Boston there is wide-spread, solid satisfac- tion. "We can again lift up our heads," writes Mrs. Amory Wigglesworth, to Governor Fuller. "You have restored our waning faith in American institutions," writes Mr. Larz Ander- son >f Brookline. I find strangely applicable, though written seventy-five years ago, the words of one of the literary geniuses that flour- ished here before bicycle repair men became Governors under the Sacred Codfish: Old Matthew Maule, m a word, was executed for the crime of witchcraft. Me was one of the martyrs to that terrible delusion, which should teach us, among its other morals, that the influential classes, and those who take themselves to he the leaders of the peo fully liable to all the passionate error tint ever ehai Idi si mole Have faith in Massachusetts: Have faith in Calvan T. Fullidge! Boston, August .'.>' G. E. Mobilizing Public Opinion To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: To say that the cast' simply shows the slovenly condi- tion of the Massachusetts criminal code — a condition so obvious- ly improper that it has already been remedied in the matter of civil cases because suits involving mi icy strike home to the Xew England consciousness more directly than cases involving life — all this is useful propaganda but it does not bear directly on the issue for which Sacco and Vanzetti have been seven-year martyrs. It is obvious to any thinking person that the flippancy with which the State Supreme Court dismisses the fact of Judge Thayer's prejudice is an outrage to common sense and decency, however well it may be covered up in apparently legal citations. One gets the impression that these gentlemen find it humorous that neither Judge Thayer nor any of his colleagues had a right to decide on his prejudice. The public has a right to form its own opinion on this mat- ter, although that opinion cannot stay the electric current that kills the two men. If hope is lost, if the two must die. they will not have died in vain if a portion of public opinion is mobilized and stays mobilized. The fact that the State Supreme Court will not act is part of a chain of evidence, not legal but moral. The fact that the nation's Supreme Court cannot act. the fact that President Coolidge cannot intervene, the fact that the Depart- ment of Justice riles cannot be opened, all these are links in a chain of evidence. Let people wake up to the fact that this im- potence is our much advertised American justice. Both due process of law and the rights of free speech are more liberally interpreted in the majority of foreign countries than in our United States — so much so that the conservative opinion of all Europe is immeasurably shocked. Sacco and Vanzetti cry to us to mobilize for change. Boston, August 21 John Howard Lawson A Humane Warden To the Editor of The Nation: Sir : I feel sure that all your subscribers owe you a debt of gratitude for your clear and clean-cut articles on the Sacco- Vanzetti case. I herewith tender mine. The action of W'arden Hendry in allowing Vanzetti to greet his sister deserves to be commended — an act of common hu- manity we do not look for in a state prison. I hope The Nation will see fit to make mention of it. I have written the warden expressing my personal feelings. In closing, would say, I hope to read The Nation while life lasts. Maiden, Massachusetts, August 21 Geo. B. Sutherland A Call for Organization To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: The will of those in power has been done and the lives of two men snuffed out, while those who believe in decency stood by and felt the shame of their impotence. The tragedy is closed as far as the victims are concerned; they have paid the price for the apathy and weakness of those who call themselves progressive. Is there nothing in these United States which can bind together into some sort of organization those men and women who stand for progress. Are we really so overwhelmed by the cynicism and indifference of our neighbors and the ruthlessness of our rulers that we must allow those impulses to perish which, in a previous, more hopeful time, we felt would give those who come after us a freer, fuller life. Xeic York, August J.-! H. L. A Note of Discord To the Editor of The Nation : Sir: Now that your field for agitation has been to some ex- tent curtailed by the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti, I would suggest a certain new field as an outlet for your restless edi- tors. Why not start an investigation to determine what amount of money has been spent during the last few years in the organized effort to nullify the procedure of the Massachusetts courts. In doing this don't forget to figure in the cost of the bomb that was exploded under the home of one of the jurors. Boston, August 23 Aug. J. Boyden

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Sept. 7, 1927] The Nation 229 In the Driftway HIGH school students have been exploited before for the purpose of reducing their elders if not necessarily their betters to ribald laughter. Ordinarily the Drifter does not approve of such practices; he feels too keenly his lack of knowledge on all sorts of subjects, on some of which a high school student would be expert. But when a docu- ment like that printed below comes to his desk, he cannot resist it. As he understands these extracts they are a compendium of wisdom culled from the papers of a Los Angeles sophomore history class, after being exposed for a semester to James Harvey Robinson's "Medieval and Modern Times." With apologies to all high school students, therefore — If Christ had not preached we would know nothing about Christianity but would be pagonists. He was a great healor but didn't have an education so he was help- less. Up to this time the people had been worshipping the Roman gods but they saw no sense in it and went through the motions because their fathers did. By the time of Boniface they wasn't any pagons left to blot out. It was Leo's idea to have popes therefore he was the first pope. Charlemagne was the first emporor crowned by the pope and therefore started that habit. The church was arranged with the priest in front and the quire on the sides, leaving the people to sit in the back. This seating was inconvenient because not every- body could see what was going on around them. The monastic system was when people lived in mon- asteries. It trained them to be real men and women and not those tough people that just hang around. Every- body went to church but the heretics. Heretics are people that harp on something all the time and don't believe in God. They were torchered by the inquisition. Being burned at the steak was the most severe punishment a person could get. The medieval universities taught Aristotle, but he dif- fered from the Christian religion. After his death it was found he had left many helpful hints to students. Roger Bacon didn't know or have any idea where the soul went after it left the body. He thought a great deal of Aris- totle's books but his being a Christian and Aristotle's be- ing a pagon didn't go over so big. He became famous for his fault-finding about Aristotle. The church started a system called chivalry to make people more polite and religious. We need chivalry today. By chivalry I mean a man should always be polite to the weaker sex. They should not merely tolerate them but the little courtesies are what counts. If a lady gets into trouble and there is a gentilman involved and he can get out of it but not help her, in most cases he tries to save his own neck. It was important when Gregory VII was pope. He was the pope that had the corruption with Henry IV. Henry was forced to humiliate himself by going round the pope's house for three days in his bear feet. The Babylonian Captivity was when the popes moved their offices over into Avignon instead of having them in Rome. Charles VIII led an army from France into Naples and brought back the Renaissance. When he was in Florence the people hooted at him because he was so ugly. This shows they were drifting from the church to the art of the Greeks. The Protestant Reformation was when the Protestants broke away from the Catholic church and began to forgive their own sins. Luther said the whole Catholic Church was a fake but Erasmus was just in favor of a good cleaning, but most of the people were beginning to think they could go to God without the pope's help. Some of the clergy revolted with Luther. They were on the inside and saw and heard about the dirty work. When Luther nailed the ninety five theses he hit the church hard! The Drifter Correspondence The American Woman To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: In The Nation of August 3 Professor Huntington ad- vanced an interesting theory to account for the seeming dif- ference between the average woman of America and the average woman in the old world — that the early settlers of America, both men and women, were adventurous pioneers and, perhaps, this adventurous spirit in the women was a sex-linked trait which passed on to their female descendants. It is an interest- ing theory, but I wonder if facts can be found to support it. Undoubtedly there were some adventurous spirits among the early settlers in New England, but is it certain that such was the case generally? A large proportion of the folks who came to America in colonial times, as I understand it, were indentured servants, and it seems hardly probable that they were adventurous spirits. Then there were the convicts that came to escape jail or the gallows — but probably they were adventurous. And suppose the men among the New England colonists had the spirit of adventure strong in them, how much did the wives of these men have to say about whether they should stay in England or go to America? From my slight reading I do not get the impression that the Puritan woman was the head of the house. If it is this inherited trait that today makes the difference between the American woman and the European, how does it happen that it did not operate in the South? The wife of the slave owner certainly did not exhibit any particular spirit of independence or desire to do for herself; neither did the wife of the poor white. As a boy in central Illinois, I saw the people in the cov- ered wagons travelling to cheaper farm lands in the West, but as I recall it they were rather slatternly looking as a rule, not at all adventurous in appearance. Some from our own community went. West, but they were not the best we had. The strong men and women fought it out where they were. It may be, of course, that Professor Huntington's theory is sound, but I wonder. Chicago, August 1 William H. Holly To the Editor of The Nation: SIR: Professor Huntington says that our women are said to be bolder, less domestic, more ambitious, more dominating or less submissive, and more competent than those of the Old World. Unquestionably they are unique. He attributes these qualities to temperament. The description is probably apposite and his deduction is correct — so far as it goes. But it omits the major premise, which is that for three centuries the women of this continent have been a minority sex, a condition that is reversed everywhere in the Old World. A unique condition has produced a unique result. My experience points to the conclusion that the differ- ence between our women and others is mainly psychological. They have always been in a position to pick and choose among the males. If four or five of the surplus millions of women now in the Old World could be dumped down in the United States the temperament of the female sex in this country would probably be changed in a generation. University of California, August .9 R. Estcourt

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Books Poems By LOUISE BOGAN Late The cormorant still screams Over cave and promontory — Stony wings and bleak glory Battle in your dreams. Now sullen and deranged, Not clearly, as a child, You look upon the earth And find it harrowed and wild. Now only to mock At the sterile cliff laid bare, At the cold pure sky unchanged, You look upon the rock, You look upon the air. Tears in Sleep All night the cocks crew, under a moon like day, And I, in the cage of sleep, on a stranger breast, Shed tears, like a task not to be put away — In the false light, false grief in my happy bed, A labor of tears, held against joy's undoing. I would not wake at your word. I had tears to say. I caught at the bars of the dream, and they were said, And pain's derisive hand had given me rest From the night giving off flames, and the dark renewing. The British and American Tariff Safeguarding and Protection in Great Britain and the United States. By Francis W. Hirst. London: Richard Cobden- San(' irson. 1%/f R. Hirst has been moved by the course of the Baldwin *■ *■ Government to frame, for British and American readers, a statement and criticism of the modern theory and practise of protection as illustrated by the scheme of "safeguarding" duties in England and the Fordney-McCumber tariif in this country. The story, as far as Great Britain is concerned, is one that may well be pondered by all who have been taught to believe that a parliamentary system insures a ministerial program corresponding to the views of that portion of the electorate by which a legislative majority is returned, or that a ministry which turns away from a popular mandate and follows one of its own devising is likely soon to go out of office. In 1'.>2.'5 Mr. Baldwin, "encouraged by the trade repression, .... came boldly into the open with a protective and preferen- tial tariff as a cure for unemployment," and on that issue the Conservatives were emphatically rebuffed. In 1024, notwith- standing that the main issue in the election was opposition to ism and Communism, Mr. Baldwin's majority turned out to be composed mainly of p . and with that advan- tage the principle of "safeguarding" duties, first brought for- ward in the Safeguarding of Indus t of August. 1921, imposing protective duties on certain "Key" industries pro- fessedly making war materials, and prohibiting dumping, "has been resurrected for the purpose of concealing from the public eye a new series of protective and preferential duties." There was this difference, however, between the earlier policy and the later one. The original Safeguarding of Industries Act, as Mr. Churchill explained to the House of Commons on June 25, 1925, "proposed the safeguarding of industries by duties imposed from time to time against exceptional competition of particular countries," while the later policy although retain- ing the anti-dumping provisions, "proposed to give effect to the safeguarding policy by duties of a general character." The Baldwin Government, in other words, by speciously substitut- ing safeguarding for protection, has contrived, without either political or moral mandate, to undermine free trade piecemeal. Mr. Hirst does not stop with examining in detail the history of this new camouflaged protectionism. He goes on to point out that "every protectionist success since 1914 has been won with the assistance of war, waste or public extrava- gance," and that it is by this "unholy alliance" that British tariff reformers (a term which in England means the reverse of what it usually means here) hope to overthrow the histori- cal free trade system. Having installed protection, Mr. Bald- win went further and on June 29, 1925, committed himself to the policy of bounties or subsidies, intended to give "that stimu- lus and lift in the region of those industries which seem at the moment beaten down into a position of hopelessness." How completely the combined policies of protection and subsidies have failed to make good the promise of economy appears in an increase of proposed expenditure from £790,000,000 in the budget of 1924 to £826,000,000 in that of 1926, "in spite of automatic savings in war pensions and the service of the debt, and in spite of the efforts of the committee appointed to effect economies in other services." Actually, as Mr. Hirst shows, the expenditure has been much greater. "In the financial year ending March 31, 1926, Mr. Churchill spent 26 millions more than his estimates, and his first budget showed a deficit of 14 millions. The estimated expenditure for his second budget (April 26, 1926) was 30 millions above the actual expenditure of Mr. Snowden's two years earlier." The book is completed with chapters on the tariff situa- tion in the United States, the effect of the American tariff on the payment of the war debts, and the tariff walls of Europe at which, last October, the international bankers directed their manifesto. Mr. Hirst is opposed to the principle of "capacity to pay" upon which the war debt settlements with the United States have been adjusted, as well as to the maintenance by the United States of high tariff taxes on the goods in which the debts must ultimately be paid. The book is a small arsenal of destructive ammunition against the protec- tionist stand-patters, and a forcible indictment of a tariff system which merits to the full the condemnation which the bankers pronounced upon it. William MacDonald The Biography of Buddha The Life of Gotama the Buddha. Compiled exclusively from the Pali Canon. By E. H. Brewster. E. P. Dutton and Company. £4. The Life of Buddha as Legend and History. By Edward J. Thomas. Alfred A. Knopf. (The History of Civilization Series). $5. rPHE life of the Buddha, like that of Jesus, is preserved for *■ us only in legend that cannot be substantiated by contem- porary historical testimony. At the best, therefore, when we mention details in his history we must recognize that we are speaking of probabilities, not mathematically demonstrable cer- tainties. Attempts have even been made, as again with Jesus, to show that he is only a myth, and, while these are now dis- credited, they are significant of the nature of the evidence we have concerning his existence. Most lives of the Buddha, there- fore, are frankly compilations of legends, and the compilations vary according to the compiler's design, which may be to pre-

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Sept. 7, 1927] The Nation 231 sent either all the stories that have been credited in Buddhist communities concerning his personality or only those accepted at a certain period and place. Mr. Brewster's aim is the more limited. His line of rea- soning is somewhat as follows. The oldest source books we have for Buddhism are those of the Pali canon, dating from about 250 B. C, but containing materials which in many cases come from the 6th century B. Q. ; in them we find the oldest legends of the Buddha; and these are therefore the legends most worthy of our consideration. Hence his excerpts are en- tirely from that version of the canon. Almost every proposi- tion in his argument is open to dispute. It is true that the Pali canon is our oldest literary record of Buddhism, but it is not at all certain that it was "arranged" about 250 B. C. While this point may be one of not much interest to popular readers of books on the Buddha, they will certainly be con- cerned with the fact that there are legends not found in the Pali canon which, from the evidence of non-canonical works and sculpture, may reasonably be thought to have attained standing in the Buddhist community as early as did some of those appearing in the canon, and have been equally important in Buddhist hagiography. Mr. Brewster's book therefore gives an incomplete account of beliefs concerning the Buddha even for the period which it affects to cover. With this reservation the book is to be recommended. The selections, which are pre- sented without commentary or apology, are with only a few exceptions happily rendered by our best translators and re- veal the character of early Buddhist feeling for the great Teacher. Mr. Thomas's book is of an entirely different sort, his method being critical, his aims apparently mixed. As the title itself indicates, he wishes to sift the historical from the legend- ary, and his efforts in this direction are probably about as suc- cessful as could be asked. In the second place he sifts and compares the legendary material, using both Pali texts and the Sanskrit and Tibetan, referring to non-canonical literature as well as the canonical. We could wish that his pen had been gifted with more facility of expression, for the net result of his labored discussions over points that are often minute and unimportant is frequently tedium and lack of clarity that will prevent the book from giving the lay public the intelligible account of the Buddha that should have been the object of a contributor to the History of Civilization Series. The fault is not merely one of diction or style. For example, Mr. Thomas frequently attaches much importance to the difference between "early" and "late" sources. In view of that fact we should have been given at the outset a statement of the different strata of Buddhist literature, even though the statement were not attended with discussion. We must sympathize with Mr. Thomas for avoiding the task, which would have carried him into uncharted seas, particularly with regard to the Vinaya and Sutta Pitakas of the Pali canon, yet without it much of his work is rudderless, and his conclusions can often hardly appear as more than the vagaries of subjective speculation. A less clearly enunciated purpose seems to have been to dis- credit the theory of Christian Gospel borrowings from Buddhist sources. The theory gets frequent, sometimes irrelevant, men- tion in the earlier parts of the book, and toward the end a whole chapter with a corresponding section in the bibliography. It is obviously a theory of repugnance to Mr. Thomas, which he condemns roundly. Yet he does not seem to have given it the scientific consideration that it deserves from a responsible scholar. In his treatment of some of the parallels he seems, at least to this reviewer, to employ very dubious methods to refute the notion of a genetic relationship. To escape the possible conclusion that the Buddhist legend is the source of the Christian, Mr. Thomas goes to much effort to show it "late" — one version of it surely is not — and by referring to details in which variants disagree to make it appear no parallel at all. The book remains in the final analysis lacking in inspira- tion, adding little, if anything, to our knowledge, never giving a living picture of its subject, marred by subjectivity. In spite of occasional footnote references to works published since 1917, large sections of the book might have been written before that date. Let us hope other great religious teachers may get more adequate treatment in the series. William Norman Brown Really a Novel Meanwhile. (The Picture of a Lady.) By H. G. Wells. George H. Doran Company. $2.50. l\/f ILADY, the Genteel Reader, sits down in her library to * *■ read a book. On the walls around her are shelved well- bound sets of unread classics — and near-classics: Voltaire and O. Henry, Balzac, Tolstoy, and Kipling, "The Memoirs of Royal Mistresses and Favorites," and Emerson and Henry van Dyke. With a proud glance at this well-bound cultural back- ground Milady picks up a novel from the books on her table. Does she read: "The disposition of the human mind to apprehend, to assent and then to disregard, to understand and yet flag and fail, before the bare thought of a translation into action . . . "or "This new world cult would have an infinitude of parts and aspects but it must never lose itself in its parts. It must be held together by a common confession and common repudiation. Its common basis must be firstly . . ." She does not! Milady does not read, does not even buy the books of Mr. Wells because her guide and gossip of the Sunday Supple- ment has informed her with just a shade of querulous con- descension that the old, readable Wells, the pre-historic, pop- ular Wells is no more. And Milady feels there is a limit some- where. She will even buy fashionable histories of philosophy and religion, but not tracts. One must draw the line at tracts. Mr. Wells is not an isolated phenomenon but an outstand- ing one. Others have deserted the field of fashionable fiction for the realm of ideas and have been roundly damned by im- patient reviewers; but the amazing element in the position of Mr. Wells is that he should have so roused the ire of the lovers of house-maid literature while he has retained so much of the conventional novel. After all, the Lady Catherine in trying to supplement one illicit relationship with another affair does perch "on a lump of rock so high that her legs extended straight in front of her"; does it matter that Sempack declared "I am disposed to make myself relevant to the truth" when in the end "he drew her into a standing position and kissed her very seriously and thoroughly on the mouth"? Is the hero's fall from grace less typical of society romances because it is followed by an original idyl of married life in which the spon- taneous biological attraction of two adolescents ripens into ap- preciative affection and intellectual comradery. The caviling criticism which would deny to Mr. Wells the quality of a novelist is as unfounded as it is unfair. He is still, in fact, producing "popular" fiction. There lies his virtue and his failing. He is still drawing active characters rather than living ones, still creating incidents rather than reporting devel- opments, still achieving representative studies of contemporary life rather than rendering that life through the medium of art. That he is more concerned with the adventures born of conflict- ing ideas than with those brought about by clashing desires does not change his status at all. To say that he differs from the run of novelists is the height of irreflective absurdity. It is pre- cisely in his likeness to authors whose superior he is as a thinker and an artist that Mr. Wells falls short of greatness. "Meanwhile" is an interesting story, less the picture of a lady than the panorama of a period. It stands midway in the uneven achievements of the author but is immeasurably superior to the dull and inconsequential average of English fiction. In the problem of the Rylands Mr. Wells offers the challenge direct to the aristocracy of capitalism. Will they live as befits an aristocrat or will they continue living "like a suburban clerk in the seventh heaven of suburbanism"? And the question is

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232 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3244 put without snobbery, without cant; there is no nonsense about "service" and noblesse oblige. The problem is wholly a matter of personal happiness and individual self-expression. In clarifying this problem Mr. Wells interprets his time. It has been his peculiar virtue in the past to lean heavily on the staddle of observation as he tramped through the slough of human stupidity. In "Meanwhile," where the militant idiocies of our own day attack his intelligence, he does not hesitate to turn the stick into that stout English weapon, the quarter-staff, and lay about him vigorously. Fascism and "kosher liberalism." the neurotic patriotism of anglicized Armenians and the jejune religiosity of converted Roman Catholics, the voracious greed of capitalists and the docility of labor are all thoroughly whacked and many another foible is cracked by his incidental blows until contemporary civilization lies dizzy and bleeding at our feet. But the bugle does not sound taps. Mr. Wells, the optimistic evolutionist and popular novelist, permits no dies irae; he can- not see the utter defeat of Progress. Instead, a son is born, a program proclaimed. Milady, the Genteel Reader, can retain her faith in the future. JOHAN Smertenko Mumbo-Jumbo Science, the False Messiah. By C. E. Ayres. Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company. $3. MR. Ayres has gone sunerstition-hunting at home. He knows very well that primitive ideas can be found more prox- imately than in Central Africa, and among neighbors closer in time than the age of paleolithic man. He has undertaken to explore the dominant current folklore, Science, to indicate its perilous powers, map its foolish pretensions, and expose the unsalubrious illusions upon which its priests and votaries have taught us to feed. The result is a brilliant and essentially sound if sometimes petulant and extravagant book. At the very least it may be said that this volume of less than three hundred large-type pages contains a greater number of germin- ative ideas than far more pretentious tomes that have hastily been called revolutionary. In some ways it is the most re- freshing piece of intellectual emancipation since William Jones took philosophy out of the classroom and gave it a long breath of fresh air. Mr. ^.yres makes it easy for the reviewer and the reader by summarizing the essential content of his book in twenty- three "theses to be nailed to the laboratory door." The reader who merely turns to the back of the book to peruse these theses will miss a deal of wit and edge and erudition that have gone into their making. He will miss, too, a considerable number of petulant but entertaining grudges that Mr. Ayres voices against the following: scientists, pseudo-scientists, uni- versities, university presidents, research foundations, suburban realtors, pious chemists, and weasel-wording philosophers. Both for entertainment and edification the book ought to be read through. (Mr. Ayres can popularize salutary heresies as vividly as others have of late vulgarized platitudes.) The guess is here submitted that it will be read by a large number. It is to be hoped, however, that that large number will not be blinded by the dazzle of Mr. Ayre's sardonic paradoxes and prevented from noting the ideas of cardinal importance to which he is giving voice. The first of these is that science, except for a very small group of professionals, has become a current folklore, a magical and saving faith that rivals and threatens completely to anachronize the otiose Hebraic-Chris- tian tradition to which many, including scientists, still pay lip service. The second idea in order of importance is tha iLUist Science which has become for the current secular believer the repository of noble Truth is the product of machines and machine technology, not the reverse. Scientific ideas arise out of mechanical inventions, mechanical conditions, and mechanical demands, and rind their only verification in mechanical meas- urement and the machine. The character of our era and the direction of our destiny are not in the deliberate hands of omnipotent Science, but in the ible course of a machine- involved civilization. With these two ideas Mr. Ayres makes serious havoc of those tom-tom enthusiasms with which H. G. Wells and a thou- sand littler optimists of the current folklore look to the future. The supposed freedom which science gives us is in fact "the loosening of the bonds of order and belief by the Industrial Revolution." The old social and religious matrix of our lives is passing not because of what Newton and Darwin said but because of what machines are doing to the conditions of life. The factory, the tenement and the rive-room bungalow on a suburban subdivision are killing Christianity far faster than the theory of evolution or the quantum theory in physics. Mr. Ayres continues with gusto his examination of the havoc machines have brought upon the older ideological and social order, and threaten to bring still further. He notes with accurate contempt the endeavors socially conservative scientists have made to buttress a falling citadel of belief by a disingen- uous use of the new language of science. He is convincingly scornful of the tidy little Utopians who think by "intelligent control" of the laws of nature they can provide a new and secular salvation. This book will alarm another kind of Fundamentalist. It will offend the priesthood of the new Messianism of science which is growing among us. It will offend those scientific administrators who, Mr. Ayres plausibly suggests, in this age of experts may become controllers of society as inquisitorial and obnoxious as any sacerdotal caste in the past. This book is recommended to anyone who thinks because he believes in "molecules and electrons, matter of heaven and earth and electrical energy its only form" that he is intelligent and free. Mr. Ayres wittily demonstrates that most of us intelligentlemen are talking Mumbo-Jumbo. If we keep it up, it may cease to be a joke. Irwin Edman Th« Makings of Michael Collins Michael Collins and the Making of a Xciv Ireland. By Piaras Beaslai. Hai-per and Brothers. Two volumes. $10. ^HE author has himself said the best and the worst of this * book when he declai-es with damning candor in the preface: "I aimed not at summing up my impressions in a vivid pen- picture, but at giving the greatest possible number of data for the reader to judge by." Those who look to it then for a living presentment of the human meteor that was Michael Collins will find but a collection of dry bones which Piaras Beaslai lacks the skill — or is it the courage? — to compose into a skeleton. Certainly he has not the genius to infuse them with life. The value of the book lies in the information it gives con- cerning the Irish war that terminated in the victory of the Free State, and here Mr. Beaslai has kept the promise made to his readers. Those with imagination and some knowledge of the background are given the raw stuff from which to re-create the man who was soldier, statesman, financier, efficient office manager, and what might be called expert in individual friendship. "Mick." says Dan Breen," was the only member of G. H. Q. who stood by us consistently." "Us" included warders in English pay in Irish jails, spies similarly supported in Irish detective bureaus, shipping clerks in Europe and America, stokers on liners, farmers, fighters — every form of patriot, in short. Collins was as thorough an expert on every job as the most exacting captain of industry could require. He was as daring an adventurer as any writer of fiction could hope to conceive; as satisfactory an epoch-maker as any historian may ever hope to portray. He was the kind of a friend to have with one at one's death-bed. It is Mr. Beaslai's failure

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Sept. 7, 1927] The Nation 233 that one has to see all this by inference, by the light of one's own burning desire to see. An untried quantity in the Easter Week rising, Collins attained importance only after his release from Frongoch prison, where he reaped the reward of his revolutionary activi- ties. We see him later arming, organizing, and strengthening the Volunteers or so-called I. R. A. He was once Commander- in-chief, Quartermaster, and Director of Intelligence. He broke down in a year a spy system by which the British had held Ireland subject for centuries, penetrating at midnight into the headquarters of the famous "G" Division to read the secret dossiers and laughing over his own. "He comes," it began, "of a brainy Cork family." He was Minister of Home Affairs and Minister of Finance, and collected in Ireland over three hundred thousand pounds, though his advertising was killed, his leaflets removed from the letter boxes, his agents and his subscribers jailed. The only time he lost heart and objected to a job was when they sent him to London to help negotiate the Treaty. He thought De Valera should have gone, and said he went simply as a soldier taking orders he did not approve from a superior officer. The one note of bitterness from Collins that we hear is struck a propos of this. "The captain of a ship," said he, quoting De Valera's defensive description of himself, "who sent his crew to sea and tried to direct them from dry land." Those interested in Free State politics now, and in the attitude which De Valera as head of Fianna Fail takes in regard to the oath of allegiance to the king, should read the instructions which as "Captain" or "President" he issued to the men he insisted on calling plenipotentiaries. Collins stood for "Bloody Sunday" because he had the moral courage and intelligence to decide on the only form of war- fare that would get Ireland what it needed. And those who have benefited by this courage would like to see him "placed" properly in the long line of soldiers and statesmen who championed but failed to win the Irish case. One hopes that Mr. Beaslai's book will give, indeed, the data for someone capable of showing Collins as he must have been. Beaslai, his friend, must know much more than he has set down. Norah Meade Books in Brief An Experiment with Time. By J. W. Dunne. The Macmillan Company. $2.50. It would be quite impossible for even the author to reduce his thesis to a simple statement. It is the daring speculation of a scientific mind, an expert in aeronautics who gets out of range of ordinary terrestrial comprehension. He begins with certain striking premonitions that occur to him in dreams; they con- vince him that what first he dreams he later experiences — yet rarely. To this chance he adds experiment, and anticipates the future in waking states, even guessing (now and then) what is in a book before he reads it. (The most remarkable of these previsions was spoiled by the after-memory that he had read the book before.) But Mr. Dunne is not disposed to accept the super-normal theories of "psychic researchers." On the con- trary, he finds support in Einstein and relativity, making touch with H. G. Wells and Bergson on the way. His experience sug- gests a new theory of the universe called "serialisni." Our separation of time into future and past, with a crossing at the present, is a limited way of conceiving what is; once transcend- ing it, the possibility of seeing or dreaming things before they happen is within range. Occasionally, we can read time back- ward, take it literally by the forelock. It is all intricate, mys- terious, but not mystic; it may be a vast illusion, this attempt to explain a psychic event (which perhaps isn't so at all and is really something else) by way of a reshaping of our views of time and space. It seems a strange approach, but it takes a strong as well as strange intellect to make the proposal. It will hardly affect our relations to our space-bound and time-tyran- nized existence, nor yet convince the skeptical that our psychic functions may give proof of a fourth or other foreign dimension. Jefferson and the Embargo. By Louis Martin Sears. Duke University Press. $4. The Jeffersonian policy of embargo has always fared badly at the hands of historians and economists. New England's com- merce was destroyed by a Southern President, the nineteenth century's system of economic philosophy was flouted by a the- orist. Enough said! The embargo was a criminal blunder; Jefferson was an irresponsible crank. The present author ap- proaches the subject with an open mind, determined to weigh all the elements of the problem on the sensitive balances of scien- tific scholarship. He finds that the policy was a logical outcome of Jefferson's own thinking, that, outside of New England, where the commercial classes and politicians united to defeat him, the President was generously supported, that the develop- ment of manufacture in the States afforded some compensation for the losses entailed, that the opening of the South American trade to the English merchants introduced an unanticipated ele- ment in the experiment, and, finally, that the policy was not maintained long enough to prove either its inutility or its effi- ciency. The author is of the opinion, however, that Jefferson made in the embargo an important contribution to the cause of international peace and that, if it had been persisted in, war with Great Britain might have been prevented at a cost much less than resulted from the appeal to arms. But in that case how compensate our writers of school histories for the loss of the glories of the War of 1812? Farther Dialogues of the Buddha. Translated from the Pali of the Majjhima Nikaya by Lord Chalmers. Oxford Uni- versity Press. Two volumes (Sacred Books of the Bud- dhists, vols. 5 and 6). $4.25 per volume. Lord Chalmers, like Lord Ronaldshay, is one of those rare administrators in India who have united to executive ability an appreciation of Indian culture and the power to express it by literary means. Well might he be fascinated by the lore of the people he was ruling, for the Pali scriptures hold a delight that is at once the beauty of religious idea, the revelation of human feeling, and the gift of narrative. These two volumes are a translation of that portion of the Pali canon known as the Majjhima Nikaya, or collection of discourses (by the Bud- dha) of medium length. That the Buddha could not possibly have uttered all that is ascribed to him is a matter we need not pause over; there is a higher criticism of Buddhist sacred texts, as of Christian. What we have consists both of teachings by the Buddha and of accretions by his followers; how to unscram- ble the two is still a mystery too deep for scholars. It is suffi- cient that we find here in sermon form the ideas that are the heart of Buddhism — the Four Noble Truths, the Chain of Causa- tion, the questions which tend not to edify, and many others. In this day, when the Buddhist scriptures are becoming increas- ingly available in adequate translations, there is no longer rea- son why anyone should speak of that faith without understand- ing and sympathy. The Jewish Dully Bulletin Itult.r. A Key to Contemporary Jew- ish History. Vol. 1, No. 1, January 1-December 31, 1925. The Jewish Daily Bulletin. The Jewish Daily Bulletin daily sends out bulletins com- prising cabled reports of Jewish events the world over. This index is the first effort on the part of a Jewish newspaper to make available a inference book on current Jewish events. It should be of value to students and editors, and seems to U3 to have been well done.

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International Relations Section The Movement of World Wealth By SCOTT NEARING PROFOUND changes have recently taken place in the relative economic positions of Europe, America, and Asia. The nature of these changes is suggested by the shift in the volume of wealth and of production. When the modern imperial struggle was launched about 1870, there were four nations whose wealth was practically equal: Britain, with $40,000,000,000; Germany, with $38,- 000,000,000; France, with $33,000,000,000, and the United States, with $30,000,000,000. Next in order came Russia witn $13,000,000,000 and Spain with $10,000,000,000. For most countries, no wealth data are available, but the four countries that headed the list were well in the lead as far as wealth was concerned, and were bunched rather closely to- gether, with Britain at the head and the United States at the bottom of the list. (These figures appeared in the Bul- letin of the National City Bank for December, 1924.) Twenty years later, in 1890, the four wealth leaders of 1870 were still far in advance of the other nations, but they had changed places. At the head of the list was the United States, with $65,000,000,000; Britain followed with $53,000,- 000,000; then came Germany with $49,000,00,000, and Frence was fourth, with $43,000,000,000. The four were still bunched together, but the United States had moved from fourth to first place in twenty years. Another twenty years passed. By 1912 the list had altered in two important respects. First, the four leaders in the wealth race were no longer alone. Russia had joined them with national wealth estimated at $50,000,000,000 as compared with $57,000,000,000 for France. Italy and Spain had both forged ahead, each with more than $20,000,000,000. The wealth of India was estimated at $20,000,000,000. Japan, Canada, and the Argentine had appeared on the hori- zon, each with wealth estimated at $11,000,000,000. Austra- lia had a wealth of $8,000,000,000. The other important alteration in the wealth position of the leading nations had to do with the relative status of the leaders. In 1890, the wealth of the United States, which stood number one, was only a little greater than that of Britain, which stood number two. But in 1912 the United Slates reported estimated wealth of $186,000,000,000, while the wealth of Britain, $79,000,000,000, was less than half that of the United States. The third nation, Germany, reported wealth of $77,000,' wealth of the United States, in 1912, was equal to n the wealth of the two other wealthiest nations in the world combined. The wealth of the modern world was d in Europe in 1870. With the exception of the Unit no other country could compare with the leading European wealth centers of that date, and even the Unit es was a poor fourth among the four wealthiest nations. Twenty years later the United States headed the list. A: twenty years and the United Sta1 ar in f Other American countries, such as Canada and Argentine, had appeared as important figures in the wealth list. Furthermore, many of the Asiatic countries listed well up among the third-class wealth nations, while Russia had joined the first-rate nations. These changes had already taken place before 1914. They mark the economic shift from Europe as the wealth center of the world to the Americas and Asia as wealth centers, one of them far outrivaling any of the European empires; the other challenging their undisputed supremacy. The war of 1914 speeded up these changes. War losses were largely confined to Europe. Almost all of the fighting was done there. Other portions of the world turned out record quantities of supplies, sold them to Eu- rope at record prices and thus profiteered on the European war crisis. While the European empires were burning up wealth — and each other — on eastern and western fronts, Americans and Asiatics were busily converting their war profits into capital — building blast furnaces and railroads, opening factories, and drilling oil wells. In a very real sense, the Americas and Asia provided the European empires with the materials for their own destruction, and the European empires paid fancy prices to America and Asia for the suicide tools. When the war was over, and the immediate losses were counted, Europe had ceased to be the world's wealth center. America had taken her place, and some of the leading Asiatic countries had made phenomenal gains in their wealth positions. In 1922 — at the end of the war — there was one first- rate wealth nation in the world; four second-class nations; seven third-class nations, and six or more fourth-class nations. Here are some of the figures : First Class United States $321,000,000,000 Second Class Britain 89,000,000,000 France 68,000,000,000 Germany 65,000,000,000 Russia 55,000,000,000 Third Class Spain 29,000,000,000 Italy 26,000,000,000 Poland 17,000,000,000 China 25,000,000,000 India 25,000,000,000 Japan 20,000,000,000 Canada 22,000,000,000 Fourth Class Brazil 13,000,000,000 Argentine 13,000,000,000 Cuba 8,000,000,000 Mexico 8,000,000,000 Australia 10,000,000,000 Netherlands 8,000,000,000 The wealth of the one first-class nation, the United States, was equal in 1922 to that of ail of the second-class nations combined, with a comfortable margin besides. The wealth of the United States was equal to that of all the third- and fourth-class nations combined, and half as much again. Thus by the end of the war one nation had become the unquestioned wealth leader of the world. Further changes had occurred in the geographic dis- tribution of the wealth leaders. Among the second-class nations all were European but one was Soviet and bidding for position in Asia. Of the third-class nations three were European, three were Asiatic, and one was American. Here is a basic- geographic shift from the wealth supremacy of Europe which was so overwhelming in 1870. By 1922 this

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Sept. 7, 1927] The Nation 235 European supremacy had disappeared. America had taken her place as the wealth center of the world, and in the East had appeared the rapidly rising wealth power of Asia. This shift in wealth power follows, as a matter of course, the changes in production. In 1870, Asia, largely in a stage of village economy, produced meagerly and almost exclusively for use. The United States will still predomi- nantly agricultural. Only in Europe had industrialization made notable headway. During the next half century, how- ever, industrialization spread across the United States and invaded China, India, Mexico, Argentina, Canada. Take, as an example, the production of coal, which is the major fuel of industry. In 1890 Great Britain and the United States were the leading coal producers of the world. Great Britain led with 184,000,000 tons; the United States followed with 143,000,000 tons; German production was 70,- 000,000 tons; French, 25,000,000 tons. Russia produced 6,000,000 tons of coal. Japan produced 2,600,000 tons. (Statistical Abstract, London, 1914, pp. 489-91.) Between 1890 and 1913 coal production increased 75 per cent in Britain; 301 per cent in the United States; 483 per cent in Russia, and 823 per cent in Japan. At the out- break of the war of 1914, the United States stood first in coal production; Britain stood second, and Germany third, but there was a great deal of production taking place in Asia. Average coal production for the years 1909-1913 was 576,000,000 tons for the whole of Europe, 478,000,000 tons for America, and 49,000,000 for Asia. The figures for 1925 show 578,000,000 tons for Europe; 543,000,000 tons for America, and 80,000,000 tons for Asia. Europe had stood still in coal production ; America had gone ahead by a small amount; production in Asia had increased by two-thirds. (Monthly Circular, Labor Research Dept., June, 1927.) Similar changes have occurred in the production of pig iron. European production was less in 1926 than it was in the years immediately preceding the war. American pro- duction increased by 40 per cent. Asiatic iron production was seven times as great in 1926 as it was in the pre-war years 1909-1913. Textile production provides another illustration of this shift in production power. The total of Europe's cotton spinning spindles was 99,500,000 in 1913. In 1925 the total was 102,900,000. In America the total was 34,300,000 spin- dles in 1913 and 42,100,000 in 1925. Thus Europe remained practically stationary, while America showed a gain of more than 20 per cent in her cotton spindles. But the spindles in Asia were 8,400,000 in 1913 and 17,500,000 in 1925. Here the increase was slightly more than 100 per cent (Ibid., p. 133). Here, in a few summary figures, is the economic back- ground of those far-reaching changes that are now taking place in the centers of world wealth power. Fifty years have witnessed a complete transformation in world wealth relations. The wealth and production of Europe are rela- tively very much less important. The Americas are the world wealth center for the time being. But the movement across the Atlantic promises to continue across the Pacific as well, making that ocean the principal scene of world eco- nomic activity. On the Pacific live the vast majority of the world's people. Around the Pacific the struggle of the next economic and social epoch will evidently be waged. The Atlantic was the center of major world activity during the nineteenth century. In the opening years of the twentieth century the scene is rapidly shifting to the Pacific. Contributors to This Issue Sylvanus Cook is a pseudonym. Powers Hapgood has worked in mines in the United States, Wales, France, Germany, and Russia. Percy Musgrave is the pseudonym of a New York journalist. Louise Bogan is an American poet. William MacDonald is a regular contributor of histori- cal and political reviews to The Nation. William Norman Brown is professor of Sanskrit at the University of Pennsylvania and has been professor of English in the Prince of Wales College, Jammu, India. Johan Smertenko is a New York critic and student of the history of criticism. Irwin Edman is assistant professor of philosophy at Columbia. Norah Meade is a student of Irish literature. Scott Nearing, author of "Educational Frontiers," is an economist and teacher. EXECUTION OF THE CHICACO ANARCHISTS Do you want to know about the Haymarket Riot, the police frameup on those innocent Labor Organizers? Read their SPEECHES, delivered in court, when sentence of death was passed upon them. LIFE OF ALBERT R. PARSONS, containing Gov. John P. Altgeld's scathing arraignment of the authorities for sentencing eight innocent men to the gallows. Five were Judicially murdered. Three he released from prison. Read his "Reasons" in THE LIFE OF ALBERT R. PARSONS, published by his widow. LIFE OF PARSONS $3.25. FAMOUS SPEECHES $0.65. LUCY E. PARSONS, 3130 N. Troy Street, Chicago, III. Why Travel for a LIBERAL EDUCATION! From the middle ages onward the value of travel in foreign countries has been recognized as adding the final touch to a liberal education. The broadening of one's views accomplished by travel can also be effected by coming in contact with the fresh view- point on world affairs ami the unbiased ideas on men, letters and things presented in 31jr iHanrlrratrr (guardian WEEKLY 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 de- pend on The Manchester Guardian Weekly to keep them furnished with reliable information on all important world happenings and to keep their viewpoint on vital affairs clear and unprejudiced. MAIL COUPON BELOW The Manchester Guardian Weekly, 220 West -12nd Street, Xew York City. 1 enclose three dollars for a year's subscription to THE MANCHESTER GUARDIAN WEEKLY. Name Address When writing to advertisers please mention The Nation

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236 SUMMER PLACES EZHV LAKE: TAVERN St Cnmp for shluiti ■ ,'., It. ADIRONDACK* FKW RESERVATIONS LEFT FOH SUMMER. SPEND SEP- TEMBER, INDIAN SUMMER IN THE PINE-CLAD ADIRON DACKS. AN IDEAL TIMB FOR REST AND RECREATION RATE $30 WEEKLY ECHO LAKE TAVERN WARRENSBURG. N. Y Tel. Warrensburg 56. MOK N UDELL REBECCA B. NUDELL V & \&* HEAD 0* on ECHO LAKE WARKENSBUKG.N.T. *Ii A camp for Adults in the Adirondack Mountains Swimming Fishing Canoeing Rom i m. Dancing Baseball Tennis Basketball k fiTi'^'af ^" S30. par week Handball ™ " Horseback *5. per day I^abor Day week-end, $17.50. which includes free transportation from Albany to Camp and back. Take Albany Night Boat on Friday. September 2nd and meet our sightseeing bus at the Albany pier on Saturday, September 3rd, which will carry you to camp through the Adirondack Mountains, passin.'r thro -gh Schenectady, Sara- toga. Glens Falls, Lake George and Warrens- burg. Otherwise, N. Y. Central to Lake George wheie our cars will meet you. Make reserva- tions by mailing $5 deposit as accommodations are limited. Write for Camp Booklet direct to Camp or to R. Helfant, 885 Brook Avenue, Bronx, N. Y. Tel. Melrose 1821 CUMMER RESTFULNESS forty miles from O New York. In the least frequented part of Westchester County, where chance has preserved some of the wildness of the Adirondacks. a roomy old manor house, with its orchards, wood- land and vegetable garden, receives guests for week-ends or longer periods. R. UNDERHILL, Amawalk, N. Y. Telephone Yorktown 140. The Nation [Vol. 125. No. 3244 POSITIONS WANTED PH.D. and graduate fellow in philosophy, ousted from professorship because of liberalism, seeks temporary or permanent position. Consult Box 837, e/c The Nation, for highest scholastic and executive references. TEACHER-PSYCHOLOGIST, experienced in mod- ern educational techniques, seeks opening in private family caring for child 3-7 years ; will han- dle all behavior problems. Training in self-reliance, initiative thru work and play. Box 859, ANTIQUES BOOKS EARLY AMERICAN FURNITURE at 5 Christopher St. ANN-SELEY S Sprit New York City RUSSIAN SHOP TF you are interested in things Russian — dresses, -*- blouses, smocks, etc.. I would like to see you. During my Summer Sale, everything is at half price. MARITZA. 49 Christopher St. (near s:h St. & 6th Ave. I . M3SCEXJLANEOUS PATENTED Cultivator for sale or to be manu- factured. Plans and specifications on demand. Owner E. G. Hillers. 640 W. Cedar St., Compton, Calif. SCHOOLS =MNivERsrri= IJlAp^/y school STATE BANK BXDO • FIFTH AVENUE AT !I5 STREET Telephone UNIversity 5149 REGENTS : :( OIXEGE ENTRANCE COMMERCIAL Pre-eminent in faculty — Strong in Equipment — A keen school for those who want good teaching — Co-Ed. Moderate Tuition Fees DAY and EVENING SESSIONS Catalogue upon request. TIMBERLAND IN THE HEART OF THE ADIRONDACKS The Camp Purposely Limited to a Congenial Group of 40 Bungalows and Mam House Excellent facilities and equip- modern in every respect. ment for all camp sports . Kate $27 per* week. also golf. Round Trip Fare to Riverside, N. Y., station, $13.27, open until I N. Y. Office, 55 West 42nd St October 1st. Pennsylvania 7663 Mail your reservations to POTTERSVJLLE, N. Y. Lovers of the Out-Of-Dnors A Treat for the Labor Day Week End THE C. J. !. CAMPS at PORT JERVIS, N. Y. Swimming, Boating. Canoeing, Fishing. Ten- nis, Entertainment, Athletic Field Games, Horseback Riding Wholesome Kosher Food Conducted by Central Jewish Institute CITY OFFICE: 125 East S5th Street R.-.t For es on a non-profit basis the Labor Day Week 1 nd $12 Phone Now! For information and reservations. Butterf'ield 2956 MISCELLAXE IS REAL HARRIS HOMESPUNS Sft&.te**: ."#£ Suit Lengths Cut to Order. NEWALL, 150 Stornoway, Scotland. Postage Paid Write for patterns stating shades desired THE LITTLE WHITE SCHOOLHOUSE Valley Cottage. X. Y. \ N informal school in the country one hour from New York for -*■ *■ children from five to seven. Boarding pupils limited to six in number. AGNES PE Lima, director Tel. Nyack 675 W Valley Cottage, N. Y. SCHOOLS IX 1 RAN CI •fbaieau'i »i li.w ,-t, A, "Safe £Ji. V tt. V> . <"»aj V:. la/WV/B A Church School for American Boys preparing for American Colleges. Wholesome country life organised in a historic feudal castle. American standards of hygiene and diet: yearly tuition $1,200. F-:ll sports program, including crew. rh« Rt. Rev. Charles H. Brent, Bishop of American Church** in Europe, Chairman of Board of Trustees. Address: Dr. Conrad Chapman, Head Master, Ohateau-Neuvic, Xeuvlc-sur-l'Isle, Dordogrne, France HATEAU DE BURES par-Villennes Seine-et-Oise France f gl Preparation for Collepre amid Cultural Advantages. Non-sectarian : ^■^L^^scientific thoroughness ; modern progressive methods ; American and ^HjB^ Foreign masters. Beautiful grounds, thirty acres, thirty miles from Paris. New dormitories with outdoor sleeping porches and indoor private studies. New gymnasium. All sports. Own Earm. Address: Thomas C. Burton, Head Master, 47 Ciaremont Ave., New York City An American School for Boys in the Old World Whei ise mention The Nation

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The Nation FOUNDED 1865 Vol. CXXV NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 1927 No. 3245 Contents EDITORIAL PARAGRAPHS 237 EDITORIALS: A Survival of Barbarism 210 Geneva and Neutrality 241 Even a Student Has Some Rights 241 The Noble Art of Mystery 212 IT SEEMS TO HEYWOOD BROUN 213 HOW "AL" SMITH FARED IN MISSISSIPPI. By Hilton Butler 244 BRITISH WOMEN IN POLITICS. By Jessie Stephen 245 SILLY MARTEN. Bv Madefrey Odhner 246 OKLAHOMA GOES ROSICRUCIAN. By Aldrich Blake 247 DIPLOMATIC SONNET. By Harrison Dowd 248 IS AFRICA GOING WHITE. BLACK, OR BROWN? By Wynant Davis Hubbard 24!) PRE^S COMMENT ON THE SACCO-VANZETTI EXECUTION 252 "HAVE FAITH IN MASSACHUSETTS"? Letters from Our Readers.. 253 IN THE DRIFTWAY. By the Drifter 255 CORRESPONDENCE 255 BOOKS AND MUSIC: Legend of the Brazier Mn.n. Bv Pierre Loving 257 Voyaging on the Unconscious. By Alter Rrody 257 Acknowledge the Wonder. Pv Carleton Ben's 257 The Se^se of T'-ngie Life. Bv A'iee Beil Parsons 258 The A B C of Communism. By George E. G. Catlin A Major Prophet. By Ernest Sutherland Bates 260 A Lyrical Mind. Bv Irwin Edman 262 Superior History. By Sidney R. Packard 262 Books in Brief 263 Music : The Tail Wags the Dog. Bv R. H. Haggin 264 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS SECTION: The Soviet Opposition 266 Soviet Courts 267 OSWALD GARRISON VILLARD, Editor Associate Editors LEWIS S. GANNETT DOROTHY GRAFFE VAN DOREN ARTHUR WARNER JOSEPH V/OOD KRUTCH Managing Editor Lttr-'Ary Editor FREDA KIRCHWEY MARK VAN DOREN Contributing Editors JOHN A. HOBSON LUDWTG LEWISOHN H. L. MENCKEN NORMAN THOMAS HEYWOOD BROUN CARL VAN DOREN DAVID BOEHM. Advertising Manager Subscription Rates: Five dollars per annum postpaid in the United : and Mexico ; to Canada. $5.50 ; and to foreign countries of the Pos I S6.00. THE NATION, No. 20 Vesey Street. New York City. Cable Address: Nation, New York. British Agent of Subscriptions and Advertising : M ■"■ rtrude M. Cross, 13, Woburn Square, London. W. C. 1, England. THE NATION is on file in most public and college libraries and is indexed in the Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature. WORD COMES FROM WASHINGTON that Franco is probably to get a 6 per cent loan of $100,000,000 from this country with which she will refund some of her bond issues bearing a higher rate of interest. A special dispatch to the New York Times predicts that a banking syndicate will be permitted soon to float a refunding issue in this country for the French Govern- ment, so that France may be able to take advantage of her improved financial position and call in issues on which she is now paying as high as 8 per cent. Because of failure by France to ratify the Mellon- Berenger agreement for the repayment of the French war- time indebtedness the American money market has been closed to that Government, so far as public offerings of bonds and other securities arc concerned. But the feeling here is now reported to be that, de- snite the continued inaction by France on the war debt, the ban should be lifted if a purely refunding loan is pro- posed, as this would simply result in permitting France to replace bonds already existing with others on which she would make a very material saving in interest rates. We doubt if the purpose to which the loan is to be de- voted has melted Washington's stonv heart: rather, we im- agine, the improved financial position of France has suggested that if Americans do not make the loan some- body else will, and we shall thus lose control. What interests us especially, though, is the wording of the dispatch so as to imply that there has been a legal embargo on loans to France. Of course the administration has no such author- ity. There has been merely a "gentleman's agreement" with the chief powers of Wall Street, resting on mutual interests and fears. Just to show our sporting blood we hereby offer to float a non-callable loan of $1 for France, without security, without interest, and without permission of Washington. WE SEE BY THE PAPERS that the members of the United States Marine Corps now resident in Nica- ragua have killed two "bandits" in the northern jungles. It is hard to keep track of the precise purpose of "our boys" in the Central American republic, because for several weeks last winter our mission varied with every successive utter- ance from Washington. We do recall, though, that we sent the marines back to Nicaragua a year ago with the an- nouncement that they were there solely to protect the lives and interests of our citizens and would maintain "strict neutrality" in the internal political quarrel. From that we have gone on to setting up a puppet president and finally to clearing the northern jungles of "bandits." But as this latest news issues from Washington we are led to suspect that it may not be quite frank, and as we read on into the heart of the dispatch we find: "The incident occurred in a region where General Sandino, Nicaraguan guerrilla, had been operating, but he is now believed to have left the coun- try." In other words the "bandits" would be better known south of the Rio Grande as the remnants of the Liberal army which has been opposing the made-in-America President Diaz. What a pity George III did not have the services of our propaganda experts in Washington, who know that more battles are won by calling names than by firing bullets! The history of the American Revolution might have been written so as to read that the British were attacked by sneak thieves at Lexington. Burgoyne was am- bushed by gunmen at Saratoga, and Cornwallis had to sur- render his sword at Yorktown to a pickpocket named George Washington. HOW GEPwMANY WILL MEET the rapidly increasing reparations called for under the fourth year of the Dawes Plan is the perplexing question economists are ask- ing themselves. This fourth year (which began on Septem- ber 1) of the experts' scheme is viewed as the critical period. The opinion of such men as Bernard Baruch and John Maynard Keynes is that the joint burden of repara- tions payments and interest payments on foreign loans is too great and that, as the latter put it, "the Dawes plan will break down according to schedule." The statistics sup- porting this fear seem even more convincingly to presage a crisis. In the first three years of the Dawes payments the annuities were moderate and rose slowly, while Germany was helped considerably to meet them by foreign loans. The first annuity of $250,000,000 in 1924-1025, for example, was largely paid from the Dawes loan. The second aimurtv PL

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238 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3245 (1925-1926) was $305,000,000, and the third (1926-1927), $375,000,000. Then they jump rapidly from the $437,000,- 000 of the fourth (1927-1928) to the $625,000,000 of the fifth (1928-1929). Germany's burden is further increased by the $60,000,000 interest payment on foreign loans. The contributions of the German budget are expected to increase from $125,000,000 (1927-1928) to $312,000,000 (1928-1929). But the discouraging fact here is that the budget has al- ready had a deficit for the last two years. Even with drastic budget reform it is difficult to see how the future payments are to be covered from this source. THE OUTLOOK FOR SUCCESSFUL payment of the Dawes annuities from the other remaining source— the balance of international payments — is even more seri- ous. Out of surplus exports over imports Germany is ex- pected to finance her tremendous payments abroad. But up to the present the German trade balance has contributed nothing to the payment of reparations. For the two and one-half years ending April 30, 1927, her net excess of im- ports was $795,000,000, and, moreover, the excess of imports over exports has been rising steadily. To make her export surplus pay for the 1928-1929 annuity, it is pointed out, would require an increase of between 40 and 50 per cent. Furthermore, this would have to be chiefly in coal, iron. steel, and textiles. Obviously, this expansion in Germany's export trade would probably drive England and France out of their own markets! It does not take a vivid imagination to vision how Stanley Baldwin or Raymond Poinrare would welcome such a prospect. In connection with the approach- ing crisis we note the conclusion of Mr. Keynes that "it is probable that the authors of the Dawes Plan did not expect their scheme to work." It was their plan, he con- tinues, to gain time, and "so to arrange that, when the breakdown came, it would come as something inevitable and involuntary." This would allow a sane and reasoned revision of the reparations problem. With the present tendency tow rd amicable trade relations between France and Ger- many, the possibility for this working out of the Dawes Plan grows more likely. THE ABOLITION of governmental censorship of the press during peace time was the most important v lution urged by the International Conference of Press Ex- perts, which met in Geneva the last week in August. Rep- resentatives of the Italian press, at present among the chief sufferers in this sort of surveillance, supported the motion. A resolution was also passed asking that no journalist be expelled from a country for professional reasons without consultation with a committee of journalists; and in this matter also foreign journalists writing from Italy have a grievance. It is interesting to record that while discus- sion of the no-censorship motion was going on. Senor Asturias, editor of the Imparcial of Guatamala. declared that in some Latin American countries an official censor- ship was exercised by the United States Government, which extended not only to the national interests of this country but "to the North American companies established" in South .American regions. The piessure is applied by our diplomatic representatives; when a j. takes an atti- tude regarded as objectionable from the standpoint o interests, the editor receives an intimation that a cl would be advisable. In other words, the United States not only prepared to send mar' irotect our investments in out-of-the-way-places, but is ready and willing to biuepencil Latin American papers which print statements possibly derogatory to American investors. The conference went on record also as in favor of the "open door" principle in regard to information — that there should be no discrimination on the part of government as between official and independent news agenc A LETTER has come to us from the secretary of the Boston Young Men's Christian Union, 48 Boylston Street, which reads in part : As chairman of the Library Committee of the Boston Young Men's Christian Union, I have cancelled their sub- scription to your paper as I cannot have such propaganda circulated amongst the young men of this community. We have an able and fearless Governor who has done his duty in spite cf the insidious propaganda that he has been sub- ject to. Its citizens are behind him. . . . Gcd reigns, and the government at Washington still lives. Our reply, in part, follows: Has it occurred to you that you are taking a good deal of responsibility in deciding what facts and opinions the young men of your community shall or shall not read? How are you so sure that you are right and those who disagree with you wrong? Is it not rather the work of the library to present readers with material from all sides, encouraging them to think for themselves and reach their own conclusions? A course of action with which one agrees is always "able and fearless," and the chief actor seems invariably to have "done his duty." Any opinion to the contrary is always "insidious propaganda." The church of Luther's day regarded his theses as "insidious propaganda." The church of an earlier day took the same position in regard to the teachings of Christ. "God reigns," you say. We do not know what God you have enthroned in Boylston Street, but if the God of justice and mercy of the Scriptures looks down on Massachusetts today, we feel that He must cover His eyes in sadness and discouragement. Or is it that Massachusetts has set up a god of its own, whose indifference equals that of Pontius Pilate, whose hardness surpasses that of Plymouth Rock? THE BOSTON POLICE did not cease their illegal ac- tivities with the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti. Their invasion of the funeral procession is described by Creighton Hill of Wellesley Hills as follows: Acting for weeks without consideration for the funda- mental rights of the living, the police yesterday violated the decencies which any civilized society owes to the dead. They broke up an orderly funeral procession, assaulting and clubbing defenseless men and women who were guilty of no crime but that of following in an orderly manner the bodies of Sacco and Vanzetti. I was in that solemn funeral procession and I can testify that not one inflammatory movement was made or intended by that crowd. Sincere, poignant grief and the dignity of deep sorrow brought those thousands together. Nothing else. And what happened? Instead of offering the testimony of one who might be accused of sympathetically exaggerating the facts, may I quote briefly from the press this morning: "One officer was to be seen beating a woman in the face with his list. A girl was standing near the coal com- pany office, her face buried in her hands with a split chin. ... A policeman stuck his pistol at the window of a taxi-

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Sept. 14, 1927] The Nation 239 cab, then turned suddenly, went to another car, dragged a man out to kick him toward Boston. Persons who were rid- ing on running boards of autos and taxicabs were dragged off and beaten or booted in the direction of Boston. By this time the main body was in flight toward Boston, pursued by a line of policemen who still used their clubs. Women were given no mercy in the panic. . . . While one man was being beaten by a sergeant with an umbrella, his hat was knocked off and, stooping to pick it up, he was booted by a patrolman. He went down and the pati-olman kicked the hat high in the air." FURTHER TESTIMONY is given by Fred E. Beal of Lawrence, a letter from whom, we are glad to say, was printed by the Boston Herald. Mr. Beal, a veteran of the World War, says in part: At this time we were all arrested and brought to the Charlestown station in City Square. On the way along one of the policemen said: "The crowd didn't beat you up, but, O boy, wait until you get to the station." After being booked at the station I was taken in hand by four husky brutes. After closing the cell-room door one of the brutes said: "So you're an American, eh?" and delivered a right to my jaw. The others used unprintable words and con- tinued punching me in the jaw and the stomach. Not satisfied with this, two of them held my hands while a third gave me a dozen slaps in the face. And then they threw me with force into the cell. The next victim was treated much worse and the last one was kicked and punched so that he was unconscious for 15 minutes. Beside such conduct the minor infractions of the law of which the police were guilty in connection with the sale of The Nation were trivial, but are worth putting in the record. Fourteen boys who were selling copies of The Nation containing the editorial Massachusetts the Murderer were arrested in various parts of the city on charges running from loitering and selling without a license to attempting to incite a riot. Our agent in Boston got in touch with the Superintendent of Police, who agreed that the arrests were unjustified and the charges were dropped in court. WE HAVE RECEIVED from the printing press of Horace and Nettie Burton Carr in Cleveland, some posters two by three feet in size. In handsome black type on a cream-colored paper appears the following inscription : On the twenty-third of August, 1917 NICOLA SACCO and BARTOLOMEO VANZETTI workingmen and dreamers of the Brotherhood of Man, who thought to find it in America, after seven tortured years in prison were done to a cruel death by the children of those Pilgrims who, long ago, fled to this land — for Freedom. They are at peace; but their voices are gone into all the earth, and they will be remembered with gratitude and tears when the names of those who murdered them — Statesmen — Judges — Scholars — have gone down into ever- lasting shame. We have put this poster up where we and others can see it; we think we shall appreciate rereading it after a good many other comments on the Massachusetts tragedy — including' some of our own — have grown stale. IN THE DISMISSAL of two of his professors, President Shawkey of Marshall College, in Huntington, West Vir- ginia, used what is known in military circles as a "smoke screen." When Watson Selvage, head of the department of philosophy, was asked to resign last March, a vague min- isterial protest was given as the reason for the president's action. At the hearing on August 25 before the State Board of Education it developed that this religious issue was raised by Mr. Shawkey to cover more embarrassing reasons (whether to him or to the dismissed professors he did not specify). The "real" reasons were finally elicited from the president: That there had always been a question about Professor Selvage's ability to adapt himself to the situation at Marshall. That for this reason the instructor had been employed only on a temporary basis. That he was careless or indifferent as to his financial obligations. That he had many impractical ideas about business affairs. That he was "unnecessarily offensive toward those who differ from him in their thinking." Yet this same Mr. Shawkey sent Professor Selvage (upon his resignation last March) a warm letter in which he highly praised the professor, admitting that the latter had "rendered a valuable service" to the college throughout his stay, commending his "splendid loyalty" to the institution, and, finally, expressing regret at his departure from Mar- shall. At this time Dr. Arthur S. White of the chair of economics leaped to the defense of his colleague. Result: he too was dismissed, with the following "smoke screen" from Mr. Shawkey : "He has always been something of a problem. He is always active, but not always ethical in his actions. In four years of my association with him I have never heard him speak enthusiastically about either Marshall College, the State of West Virginia, or the Amer- ican Government." WAYNE B. WHEELER was still in his fifties when he died, and he had served the Anti-Saloon League for more than a third of a century. He was working his way through Oberlin College as assistant to a janitor when the Ohio branch of the league, then hoping for a spread of local-option territory, discovered in him a young man accustomed to work the long hours of a farm hand and devoted to its cause. He was one of those little men who are raised to greatness by a fanatic absorption in a single cause. The prohibition movement, growing out of its ado- lescence as a temperance movement, was his whole life; his bitterest enemy never suspected him of anything but pas- sionate sincerity. He never saw two sides to a case. He saw Right, and Wrong, and crusaded without a shadow of the doubts which might have tormented a broader mind. In large measure he was personally responsible for making the Anti-Saloon League the most effective nonpartisan po- litical organization in the United States, and for the final victory of the National Prohibition Amendment and the Volstead Act. Wayne Wheeler never lost his intemperate faith that all that was necessary was to browbeat his op- ponents into obedience to his law. To his mind any means was justified that helped the good end — poison, sharp poli- tics, perhaps even near-bribery. He preferred a drunken congressman who would vote Dry to an honest tippler who voted as he acted. And in that preference lies one ex- planation, among others, of the moral failure of national prohibition.

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240 The Nation [Vol. 125. Xo. 3245 A Survival of Barbarism 1 shall ask for the abolition of capital punishment until I have Hie infallibility of human judgment demonstrated to The Marquis of Lafayette. OR, as the writer of a just-published volume'- puts it, an "irrevocable punishment" can be safely imposed only by an "infallible tribunal." The idea has been in the minds of many in connection with the execution of Sacco and Van- zetti. Supposing new evidence comes to light later? they ask. Supposing the innocence of these men is one day irre- futably established? That the state cannot give life, nor restore it in case of a mistake, has always been a sound leason against the death penalty, but it has been only one of the many emphasized by the tragedy in Massachusetts, the culminating effect of which, we hope, will be a public revulsion against capital punishment and a strong move- ment for its abolition in those States of the Union where this survival of barbarism still exists. In origin the death sentence for murder is, of course, merely a relic of private vengeance; it is the job of "getting even" transferud Lorn the individual to the state. But there are few who defend it on that ground today. What maintains it in modern society is chiefly a false belief in its value as a deterrent to crime, although history indicates that it has had a contrary effect. In the days when picking pockets was a capital crime in England the artists in this particular kind of thievery used to recognize the occasion of a hanging as one of exceptional opportunity and gathered in unusual strength to ply their trade. Nor has the aboli- tion of capital punishment resulted in the sometimes-pre- dicted "crime wave" where it has been tried. Take, for instance, the eight States of the Union that have abolished capital punishment even for murder — Michigan, Rhode Island, Wisconsin, Maine, Kansas, Minnesota, North Dakota, and South Dakota. If we glance at the figures on homicide for the eight years 1912-1919, in the twenty-six States of the Union for which statistics exist, we discover that the eight States having the lowest rate include five of the States in which the death penalty has been abolished. The State having the lowest homicide rate in the entire list is Maine, where capital punishment has not been in existence for forty years. The only way to decrease murder is to make human life more sacred, and this principle is violated every time a human being is sent to the scaffold or the electric chair far more dangerously than when an individual kills. For in the first case the killing is an acceptedly righteous act carried out by the will and theoretically supported by the conscience of the whole community. As the author of the book already alluded to says of experience in his own country, England : Anyone who vents of the last cen- tury must realize h iding a spectacle en execution inevitably must be. It was ■ this reason that public executions were al leath penalty were. as its advocates contend.. ive and salutary deterrent, it follows that the more who witnessed it the greater would be its wholesome effect; the y proved true. Each succeeding public execution became the excuse for an in- creasing debauch in brutality which tally con; the authorities to abandon the pr * Capital Punishment in the Twentieth Centu P. Putnam's Sons. $2.50. ry. By E. t. g. For the more enlightened methods which are being in- troduced into our prisons today we need to call out the de- votion of the best men and women of the community. We certainly shall not obtain men of the high standard re- quired if we ask them to participate in such a degrading operation as an execution must be. . . . Public officials always act as our agents. It is on our behalf that they execute a condemned man. Few — even the stoutest up- holders of capital punishment — would be willing to carry it out. We have no right to ask the paid officials of our elected representatives to perform on our behalf what we should have a moral objection to doing ourselves. A serious objection to capital punishment nowadays is the aversion of most decent people to finding a prisoner guilty of a crime which will send him to his death. This objection is strong unconsciously even when not admitted or not realized. In a case like that of Sacco and Vanzetti, tried in a time of hysteria, it was overcome all too easily by fear and hate of the defendants. But ordinarily it works for the acquittal of the guilty. This unwillingness on the part of juries to send another another human being to his death was recognized in an interesting way in England as long ago as 1830 when public sentiment in support of the sacredness of life was behind what it is today. At that date, when forgery was punish- able by death, more than 1,000 bankers from 214 towms sent a petition to the House of Commons, saying: That your petitioners as bankers are deeply interested in the protection of property from forgery and in the con- viction and punishment of persons guilty of that crime. That your petitioners find by experience that the infliction of death, or even the possibility of the infliction of death, prevents the prosecution, conviction, and the punishment of the criminal, and thus endangers the property which it is intended to protect. That your petitioners, therefore, earn- estly pray that your honorable House will not withold from them that protection to their property which they could derive from a more lenient law. Admittedly one of the most degrading aspects of capi- tal punishment in these days is the increasing tendency of the press to turn murder trials into public hippodromes for the gratification of their readers. To quote Mr. Calvert once more: That the press publicity given to the details of murder trials would continue on its present scale were the death penalty abolished is most unlikely. There is only one other kind of legal proceeding which — until recently prohibited by law — received anything like the same degree of publicity, viz.: the divorce case, and this was almost entirely due to an unfortunate public demand for sordid details concerning private sex relationships. With this one exception, there is no parallel to the publicity which a murder trial receives, though many a trial for a lesser offense, such as attempted murder or robbery, may have circumstances connected with it quite as dramatic. In a murder trial it is the fact that the accused person is fighting for his life which creates the wide-spread excitement and morbid interest; and this feature would at once be removed by the abolition of capital punishment. We agree with Lord Buckmaster when he says : "But to me the only hope of the human race lies in increasing the feeling of sanctity for human life. Without this realization we shall never get rid of slums, of poverty, or of crime."

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Sept. 14, 1927] The Nation 241 Geneva and Neutrality OUR contemporary, the New Republic, seems to be cor- rect in pointing out that the lamentable breakdown of the disarmament conference in Geneva was due to Brit- ish insistence not merely on "protecting" her trade routes but on preventing neutrals from trading with Britain's enemies, according to the time-honored legal right of neu- trals. That is, having illegally set aside all those restric- tions on belligerent rights which international law had developed for the benefit of neutrals, and having justified this lawlessness during the war on the ground of "neces- sity," Britain now finds it desirable to enforce a similar policy in the future. Our contemporary, in acquiescing in such violations on the theory that nothing can be done about it until the United States joins some future association of nations which shall outlaw war and prevent lawlessness, is in the same position as those who supported the late catastrophe as a "war against war" and thus postponed the end in view to the accomplishment of the means. This is as profitable and useful as chasing a rainbow. No one can look at the Europe of today, politically dis- organized by as unwise and cynical a treaty as has ever disgraced European history, without realizing that the danger of war is at all times considerable. If possible future conflagrations, instead of being confined to small areas by keeping as many nations as possible neutral and by pro- tecting the time-honored rights of neutrals, are to become general wars because it is now a "disgrace" to be neutral and because there are no rules to protect the rights of neu- trals, the world faces chaos. The League of Nations pro- scription of neutrality was fantastic. In part, the proscrip- tion of war itself by the type of men who drafted the Treaty of Versailles raises the suspicion that they thus hoped rather to forestall any future challenge to their, ill- advised political arrangements and to their ill-gotten gains and hypocritical and irresponsible conduct of international affairs. It won't work and the British Government knows it. Instead, therefore, of permitting, as after past wars, the restoration of rules of law with their assurance of some degree of certainty and security, the British Government has refused, by arbitration of violated neutral rights or otherwise, to permit any challenge to her conduct of the war at sea; and by insisting on an enlarged navy she implicitly indicates her intention to act similarly in the future. Nat- urally, American admirals know that too. Hence the re- ciprocal struggle, one to maintain British supremacy in a European or Asiatic war, regardless of law, the other to maintain American neutral rights — now ostensibly cast into confusion — by force if necessary. Both parties are wrong. But by intentionally leaving the law in doubt and uncertainty, war is invited, not dis- couraged. Instead of postponing the clarification of the law until we join some future association of nations — a distant day — we prefer to insist now on such clarification. British opposition could only be explained on the theory that Britain figures herself as a future belligerent rather than a neutral, that she prefers a British-manufactured un- certainty to law and order, and that she relies on force to make British policy prevail at any given time and place, regardless of the legal rights of others. It is a dangerous position, dangerous to Great Britain and to the world. The Geneva conference disclosed a fundamental con- flict of naval policy. Before the difference progresses to a point of irretrievability, we invite either learned societies, if governments are not yet ready, or such governments as are ready (as occurred in 1780, 1800, 1856, and 1908) to meet in conference and to redefine the law of neutrality at sea. That elaborate structure, which had been moulded and shaped during a century and a half by the combined efforts of all nations interested in working out a fair and satis- factory compromise between the otherwise irreconcilable claims of the belligerent to prevent all trade with his enemy and of the neutral freely to continue such trade, is now threatened with destruction by the British Government. No single government can thus be permitted to destroy established institutions. The result would be to bring back, in a highly integrated and delicately balanced world, that chaos which prevailed in the days before Grotius and in- duced the armed neutralities of 1780 and 1800. Such a condition can hardly in the long run benefit the possessing nations, including Great Britain herself. The breakdown at Geneva is the first public manifestation of the serious- ness of the situation. The sooner active steps are taken to frame a revised Declaration of London, in which neutrals shall be adequately represented, the better for the welfare of all peoples. Even a Student Has Some Rights SYRACUSE University learned recently from Supreme Court Justice Edward N. Smith that even universities must observe some semblance of common civility in their relations with students. This unusual happening in which the authorities were given a little instruction in the fair treatment of students occurred when Justice Smith ordered a dismissed student reinstated. The student. Miss Beatrice O. Anthony, was dropped last October, but the university officials gave only the vaguest reasons for their action. It was intimated that Miss Anthony had violated "the moral atmosphere," the "ideals of scholarship," and that — the unpardonable sin! — "she was not the Syracuse type." Quite properly, the court would not uphold a dismissal based on such flimsy evidence. Furthermore, the Justice said, dismissal of a student without giving adequate rea- sons, "may spell ruination of a life," and that the university could not have the right to inflict. The university, of course, looked at the matter quite dif- ferently. One of the rules of registration at Syracuse states that attendance after tuition is paid is "a privilege and not a right." It is a most convenient arrangement, where- by Syracuse takes the student's money and then denies him any rights in exchange for it. "This rule," commented Justice Smith, "is repugnant in its very terms." In ac- cepting the tuition fee, he explained, the university en- tered into a contract with the student, yet the clause objected to was a deliberate attempt to evade obligations under that contract. In other words, by inserting the clause, the university placed itself outside the contract laws- The injustices inherent in such rules are apparent enough and we quite agree with Justice Smith that "No such sit- uation can be tolerated." But it is tolerated to an amazing degree. In ninety- nine cases out of a hundred, a dismissed student will have

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242 The Nation [Vol. 125. No. 3245 neither the courage nor resources to fight, regardless of whether his dismissal was justified or not (we are, of course, considering only dismissals for other than strictly scholastic reasons). The men who run the colleges often feel that "firing" is the best thing for a student who threatens to disturb the conventional complacency of the campus. Innocuous conformity is too generally the aca- demic ideal. The campus conformity, naturally, does not grow of itself. Many students, and even some professors, find it difficult to bend themselves to the proper pattern. To aid these misplaced scholars, therefore, the universities pro- vide numberless petty rules prescribed by the pedagogues for the daily footsteps of those likely to err. The rules need have nothing to do with learning. The moral and religious aspects of the student's life are often as much the university's concern as his mental achievement. Even at Yale a student's degree depends as much on the proper balancing and proportioning of sick absences against ex- cused and unexcused absences as upon his scholastic work. He must be single — since it is probably considered il- logical to grant a bachelor's degree to a Benedict— and he must be celibate, since ties without benefit of clergy are frowned upon. And those who think differently, either among the faculty or students, are asked to move on, with the suggestion that after all, it is perhaps for their own good, and that it will help general university relations. It is only necessary to recall the constantly recurring cases of dismissed professors, to v rify this. Students obviously fare much worse. The decision of Justice Smith gives us the hope that possibly the in loco parentis policy of the pedagogues may be changed. It is disturbing to see students forced to lead an educational life circumscribed by numberless rules which, good or bad, are none of a university's business. The issue should be faced: can the spirit be free, can thought be vital, while colleges and universities are clot led in the crepe of formalism? The Noble Art of Mystery LEGEND has it that great minds — the minds of en- gineers, educators, business men. and statesmen — like to relax by reading cheap fiction. This is a monstrous error which any mind that was no more than merely good could demolish with a gesture. Persons with minds never find relaxation in inferior books. They find them, indeed. impossible to read at all, or at least very difficult. Books which are not interesting are surely not relaxing, and we take it that by a cheap novel is meant a poor one. But an even profounder error is entertained by those who suppose that great men. casting about for dull litera- ture with which to forget the duller world, satisfy their hunger with mystery stories. Now it is true that a cer- tain hunger can be so satisfied. But it does not follow. as legend would have it follow, that mystery stories are cheap or light or inferior. They may be all those things. as books in any class may be. To say. however, that they are necessarily any of those things is to insult one of the major traditions in literature, and to accuse great men of wasting their time. The modern mystery story, as Michael Sadleir points out in a recent letter to the London Times, is a direct descendant of the "Gothic" romance of the late eighteenth century. Times have changed since Gregory Lewis and Mrs. Radcliffe conducted their heroines through gloomy underground passages resounding with the groans of tor- tured innocents. We are not regaled any more with ap- paritions of headless horsemen, armless gloves, and mys- teriously nodding helmets. It is not for nothing that fic- tion has undergone its attack of naturalism. So the heirs of Mrs. Radcliffe have to work their spells in the real, average world we all are supposed to know about. But they do work them ; they do serve the tradition which runs back from them farther, much farther, than the eighteenth century. And who is to say that it is not a noble tradition? Who would sniff at the literature of terror? Who does not like to be made afraid of the very world which he thought yesterday to be all too safe, and which. more"s the pity, he will think similarly safe tomorrow? The writer of a mystery story begins, of course, with a murder. It is only in the finding of a body struck down by hands unknown that his reader can be presumed to take the appropriate kind of interest. And we shall not deny that this is so. If life has lost many of its terrors since science and invention made going about in it both freer and more monotonous, death still is strange ; and sudden, inexplicable death is stranger yet. From this situation, then, the mystery writer starts. And he goes on as ef- fectively as he may under what would be disadvantages for the novelist, but for him are the very rules of his art. The writer of mystery stories is not a novelist and should not be judged as one, or compared with one, or declared inferior to one because he does something else. The novelist, for instance, would find it a disadvantage to be dealing with the death of a worthless person. There can be no tragedy in that, he would say, and he would be right; only the writer of mystery stories is not working with tragedy. He is working with terror, which is an- other thing from terror purged as Aristotle said tragedy purges it. No, the person murdered must be regretted by no one; otherwise how could we hang about the scene of the crime so long and so lovingly, and how could we give ourselves so completely to the task of ferreting out the clues? We must think for three hundred pages of noth- ing but a stabbed or strangled body. The novelist again would suffer under the rule which obtains in mystery fiction against characterization. It is situation which counts, and complication; the true devotee of murder literature is impatient at the intrusion of love, or humor, or wisdom, or pathos, or "psychology." Sher- lock Holmes is what he is because he is a set of faculties merely. H. C. Bailey and G. K. Chesterton in England have endowed Mr. Fortune and Father Brown with inter- esting qualities, but in doing so they have run a grave risk; and in "The Canary Murder Case," one of the best of recent American murder stories. Mr. Van Dine has ac- tually handicapped himself by making Philo Vance some- thing of a person. Mystery stories have their own rules, and they have their own rewards. It is their business to freeze out of the world all but a certain set of actions and emotions, and within the narrow limits thus imposed to give the reader's mind the exercise it needs. All of the arts have their boundaries. It is suggested that someone pay mys- tery artists the compliment of discovering just what it is they do not do, and what it is they do.

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Sept. 14, 1927] The Nation 243 It Seems to Heywood Broun WHEN the whistle blows at the end of the annual foot- ball game between Yale and Harvard all strife and rancor cease. The men in crimson huddle and give a lusty cheer for the wearers of the blue. Yale returns the com- pliment. This is a practice known as sportsmanship and no doubt the custom has its graces. But I am shocked to find those who would extend these undergraduate rites to conflicts more serious and weighty. Sacco and Vanzetti be- ing dead, there are liberal journals which would have us all forget and love our neighbors without discrimination. The World asks that we honor the patriotic service of Lowell and of Stratton. And adds that equal praise should go to Frankfurter and to Thompson. The Boston Herald boasts that it has been "as liberal to one view as to the other." Here in America the word "liberal" has lost its savor. Many have come to think of a liberal as a good-humored fellow with some sense of sportsmanship. He strides into a dispute and sagely ventures: "There is much to be said on both sides. The truth lies somewhere between the two." And that's a silly thing to say because it does not indicate just where truth sits in the uncharted field lying be- tween the left and right. Liberalism deserves decay if it has nothing more to offer than the worship of Mrs. Winslow. Sportsmanship is a useful commodity in so far as it affords full and free discussion for both sides in any controversy, but there is no reason to respect the man who keeps his mind so open after the storm has broken that he cannot temper the wind to any shorn lamb. A neutral casts no shadow. All of which brings me around to the condition of journalism in the United States. I used to be a newspaper man once myself, and the habits of that job are still strong enough to mar me for other work. I begin here apologet- ically. It might be said if Broun does only one piece a week he should write better than in the days when he did seven. I'm afraid it isn't so. One gets set into a rhythm. The cuckoo in a clock would crow no more sweetly if absolved from all responsibility for the hours and held accountable only for the announcement of each week's be- ginning. As a reformed columnist I will readily admit that any man who turns out a daily stint must shyly proffer much which is dry and dusty. However, I can be equally dull after a week's hard cogitation. Perhaps in time I shall find grace and even style, but during my ap- prenticeship I ask indulgence. Kind friends have said: "You are a fool. Newspaper work's your own line. Why don't you go back to the World, which is ready to forgive and to forget?" Others have passed the epithet "idealist." But I'm not altogether a fool and I haven't earned the other classification either. By following the line of least resistance I came to be a personal journalist. Some years ago I discovered that it was easier to write about myself than any other subject. Less home work was required. I might still write about myself and be happy enough on some paper or other if only I were sufficiently fertile in humorous notions. Editors might be bored, but they were never angry if I wrote about my fish, my child, or even my fingernails. But when something burns inside and that comes out, the situation's very different. Newspapers don't like their men to get mad about things. I think that journalism has probably grown much more fair than it was twenty or thirty years ago. It seems to me that many papers which are called reactionary were scrupulous in their news treatment of the case of Sacco and Vanzetti. And still I pine for the exciting indignation which is fading away. Newspapers grow bigger and more courteous. Most of them reflect the opinion of no single man, but of a group. When many take counsel moderation may be expected and possibly wisdom, but not much fire. Upon the paper which I know best, important editorial policies depended upon debates in which several men par- ticipated. When there was sharp difference of opinion a compromise was inevitable. The view expressed often repre- sented the opinion of no single member, but merely a policy for which all could summon a grudging assent. A com- posite opinion, like a composite photograph, is apt to be a little vague and misty round the jowls. In order to pursue the pleasant calling of personal journalism it becomes almost necessary for a writer to be owner and contributor as well. Indeed even this is not an infallible way. Many a proprietor treads softly. The feeling grows that newspapers prosper by carefully refraining from annoying any considerable group of people. "Oh, I don't think the Catholics would like that," is a phrase not unknown in conferences, and the Methodists and the Irish are always with us. It may be that men who have large fortunes tied up in journalistic enter- prises know their business, but I am by no means sure of that. I think the harmfulness, from a strictly business point of view, of irritating readers is vastly exaggerated. Subscribers, I believe, are willing to forgive a newspaper for doing almost anything but boring them. In fact I should add my personal testimony that great patience is exercised by the public even toward those who must have been on many occasions tiresome. Unfortunately the rule about avoiding subjects likely to give offense shuts the newspaper commentator off from many of the most inter- esting themes. Although the churches play a smaller part in the life of the average New Yorker than was the case a generation ago, religion, and also theology, are subjects vitally entertaining to vast numbers of people, but any- one who tries to deal with such things for a daily paper, save in an entirely impersonal way, will soon find that there is panic in the counting house. And one other explanation I might make to justify desertion of my trade. A newspaper feels that its con- cern lies almost wholly with the parade which is passing at the moment. It suffers from Lot's inhibition and will not look back. I always did like the wife of that man better. Things do not end when they are done. The liberal Boston Herald said when Sacco and Vanzetti were completely dead that the time for all discussion of that case was now over. "The chapter is closed. The die is cast. The arrow has flown." It is not true. I won't agree. For truth there is no deadline. And so maybe in my heart I never was a newspaper man at all. Heywood Broun

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244 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3245 How "Al" Smith Fared in Mississippi By HILTON BUTLER HERE is little political comfort for "Al" Smith in the that less than 2 per cent of Mississippi is Catholic. You fact that no man ever fought harder to free himself know further that the State is dry politically, and fairly so from a rattlesnake— or even a skunk— than Theodore G. personally; and that it has not yet ceased to boast of being Bilbo, Governor-elect of Mississippi, struggled to rid him- the first State in the union to ratify the Eighteenth Amend- self of a charge in the campaign ending August 23 that he ment to the United States Constitution. Perhaps you can was in sympathy with the Presidential ambitions of the New see very clearly that "Al" Smith represents, in the Missis- York Governor sippian's mind, these two "evils." To be linked with either Dennis Murphree, Bilbo's opponent in the second of them is political death in the State. primary, brought the name of "Al" Smith into the race Hence Bilbo jumped to his own defense against the and a roaring answer came to a few questions that pol- Smith charge exactly as I described it — just like a man iticians have asked with reference to how a Catholic-Wet- fighting to free himself from a rattlesnake or a skunk. He Democrat would fare in the South. denied, counter-charged, and cried against the "eleventh In the first primary Bilbo, regaining his strength, swept hour canard." His followers saw his mythical 75,000 the whole State and nearly knocked three opponents in- majority sink out of sight over-night — weighted down to the stead of two out of the ring in the opening round. He gave briny deep with the insignia of Alfred Smith. The anti- Mississippi its first landslide thrill since the olden days of Bilbo press went wild. Only a week of second primary the magnificent Vardaman, "the people's choice," — now a campaigning was left when the Smith issue came up and feeble, completely shattered old man pining away in an Murphree followers saw their chance. They plastered full Alabama hospital. The Smith issue did not break into the page advertisements in the newspapers, distributed Myers' first primary. There were sufficient local issues — brick letter over the State and were well started on a romping roads, state printing plants, income tax, and pardoning change of defeat into victory. powers. Lined up against Bilbo were Murphree, who became Bilbo countered bravely — but the thing that saved him Governor last March when Henry L. Whitfield died from a was the fact that 82 per cent of Mississippi voting strength leg amputation; Mike Conner, a tremendous campaigner is rural and the Smith charge simply could not penetrate and highly capable young man of thirty-four without, far enough in the given time. The few daily newspapers it happens, an American Legion button; and Albert in the State gave considerable space to the charge — but Anderson, a weekly newspaper editor and State legislator. Bilbo has made it a political gesture in all his campaigning Here was the first primary result — before the name of Al to tell the "metropolitan subsidized press" where to go, Smith had been flung into the race: much to the delight of the rural elements. His strength gILB0 135,065 nas always been with the 8° per cent, gained largely by Murphri 71,836 ridicule and abuse of the i jan 18 per cent. In the few Conner 57,402 days remaining in the sec .d primary campaign Murphree Anderson 23,528 simply could not get the news of Bilbo's alleged apostasy The rest looked so easy for Bilbo that the Jackson into ^ rural re^ions- But an enormous amount of damage Daily News, his bitterest newspaper enemy and the biggest ™s f°f ^ that- B^'* expected 75,000 majority crump- daily in the State, admitted that "it looks like Theodore hn^ to Iess than l0-000' the ?econd Pnmary vote being: is going to be our next Governor and we might as well BILBO 135,783 make the best of the evil." Bilbo's headquarters claimed MURPHREE 126,398 that he would win the second primary by 75,000 majority. The two Bilbo figures indicate that he almost exactly The Murphree headquarters put in a weak claim for a stood his ground. But his loss was in his failure to make 10,000 majority over Bilbo, but many of the strongest inroads into the Conner vote of 57,000 and the Anderson Murphree adherents admitted freely that they thought vote of 23.000. Conner had fought Murphree and Mur- Bilbo would be elected with anywhere from 20,000 to phree had fought Conner so bitterly that in fighting each 75,000 majority. other they almost forgot Bilbo. The Bilbo crowd expected Then came the bombshell. Murphree charged that to profit by the Conner vote to the tune of no less than Bilbo had received a letter from the secretary to Governor 50,000. The Anderson vote was expected to turn almost Smith praising him for his splendid race in the first pri- solidly for Bilbo. mary. Murphree went further — and his supporters took Bilbo's drop in popularity is laid to nothing else than heart. He charged that Bilbo was in favor of a Presiden- the Murphree coup in charging him with favoring — or even tial delegation from Mississippi instructed for "Al" Smith. tolerating — "Al" Smith. Murphree's defeat is laid solely To give strength to these charges, a high Masonic official, to the fact that he didn't have time to get the Smith-Bilbo George C. Myers, clerk of the State Supreme Court, sent story to the 82 per cent. out a letter "To the Master and Secretary of Every The thing made Bilbo mad. Deeper rumblings of Masonic Lodge in Mississippi" charging that Bilbo was in trouble in the State, as a direct result of "Al" Smith, are league with Smith's ambitions. heard. Bilbo has his heart set upon going to the United You who know Mississippi know that the word Catholic States Senate in 1930 when Senator Pat Harrison comes up brings up a vision to the average Mississippian of a dark- for re-election. What the Smith rumor did to Bilbo is fresh faced man, shrouded in black robes, hiding a shiny stiletto: in his mind, and the blunt question that the Mississippi

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Sept. 14, 1927] The Nation 245 Ku Klux Klan Grand Dragon, Fred E. Wankan of Jackson, asked Senator Harrison a few days ago in an open letter is significant. The Klan requested the Senator to say whether or not he favored a delegation instructed for "Al" Smith for the Democratic nomination for President. Harrison answered that he favored an uninstructed delegation. But the grape-vine telegraph — so commonly used in Mississippi politics — is pushing along the suggestion that perhaps the Mississippi Senator is not wholly unreceptive to the place as Vice-Presidential nominee on the ticket with "Al" Smith. And Governor-elect Bilbo sits back, breathing a little easier now but still hotly, and tells his friends that if Senator Harrison gets mixed up with "Al" Smith, the 1930 Sena- torial race will be a simple matter. There will be suffi- cient time, notes Bilbo, to get the word back to the 82 per cent. British Women in Politics By JESSIE STEPHEN THERE was a time when it was sufficient for man to mutter, "Woman's place is the home" to send every poor female creature who harbored secret thoughts of woman having other useful spheres of influence scurrying to the burrow from which she should never have had the temerity to emerge. To challenge man's supremacy, espe- cially in the field of politics, was regarded as rank treason and simply proved that the poor deluded suffragist had lost every attribute of womanliness. Fortunately times have changed. That is not to say that there do not still remain diehards who regard woman's ever-widening interests as an interference with man's rights, but their number is on the decline. In Britain this was an attitude of mind which persisted until the beginning of the Great War. Even now British women are not fully enfranchised. While a mere boy twenty-one years of age without ties or property qualifica- tions may cast his vote for Parliamentary candidates, a woman is not allowed to exercise this privilege of demo- cratic citizenship until she is thirty and then only on the basis of a property qualification. Despite this unfair discrimination women are showing an increasing enthusiasm in the field of politics and have belied all the gloomy prognostications of the politicians who maintained that it was a waste of time to extend the franchise to them. Nowadays every political party is madly scrambling to get the lion's share of the women's vote which is making its influence felt to a considerable degree. Not only is the proportion of women who use their votes higher than that of men, but greater and greater numbers of women are offering themselves as candidates for the various local governing bodies like the city councils and Poor Law Guardians, not to mention those who are ambitious enough to stand as candidates for Parliament. Already the number of women who have been elected to these local governing bodies runs into thousands while the number of women M.P.'s will be considerably augmented at the next general election. Those who predicted that women would never make a successful appeal to the electors find themselves all wrong in their calculations. Actually the average of votes cast for the forty-odd women candidates who stood for Parlia- ment in 1924 was not less than 8,000. It is therefore some- what surprising to find in the United States, where women have had the franchise longer and on more democratic terms, that politics as a career has not made a greater appeal. The idea of lobbying for legislation, which seems to be the commonest method of approach, is out of date and does not frighten the legislators to the same extent that women organized as units in political parties would do. Of course we have non-partisan groups of women in Britain, but they do not function very effectively. Their influence is so negligible that few politicians would worry at any threats they might make. When even the Conserva- tive Party, which bitterly opposed the granting of votes to women, is politically sagacious enough to enrol nearly a million women in their Women Unionist's Association, this is easy enough to understand. Add to this the fact that both the Labor Party and the Liberals have strong sections of women organized along party lines and it becomes clear why so much progressive legislation affecting women has been passed since 1918, the year when British women were first enfranchised. Almost the first result was the setting up of maternity and child welfare centers in every town and village through- out the land. Fifty per cent of the funds needed for this work is furnished by the Government and the rest by the local taxpayers. The value of this work is incalculable. I find in my own district, where I served on the Borough Council for six years, that the death rate among babies under the age of twelve months has fallen from 149 per thousand to below 70 since 1920. Not every one of these centers has an pre-natal clinic but a goodly number have, and wherever this work has been attempted it has resulted in a heartening drop in the figures for mortality among mothers in childbirth. There are few cities which do not possess a dental clinic where mothers and children under the age of five years are attended free of charge. In the case of a mother who is too poor to afford to buy dentures, these are also supplied without charge. Maternity hostels are run so efficiently and cheaply that even middle-class women are using them nowadays rather than the more exclusive and expensive private nursing homes to which they were for- merly wont to go. Many of the more progressive councils have even gone so far as to provide vacation homes for poor overworked mothers. The council on which I served was the first to set up a municipal solarium to which hundreds of children and grown-ups come for the artificial sunlight treatment. In addition they send six tuberculous patients to Leysen in Switzerland for a year to take the treatment. This part of the work has proved most interesting, many of the pa- tients coming back fit to start work again. None supposes that the present Government in Eng- land would have introduced such a radical measure as the Widows' and Orphans' Pensions Act if they had not been well prodded by the Women's Unionist Association who

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246 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3245 had brought this proposal before the party conferences from time to time. Since the women are proving more active campaigners than the men and are prepared to take on more and more of that drudgery, door-to-door canvass- ing, the candidates and M.P.'s cannot aiford to incur the displeasure of their most ardent supporters and workers. There is not the slightest doubt that the act which gave parents equal guardianship over the children was the product of a united demand made by women of all parties. No party dared to oppose its passage in the House of Com- mons although there were a few diehards with safe seats who made their ineffectual protest. In the matter of legis- lation for children British politicians dare not hedge or offer factious opposition such as I observe politicians are offering in the United States. It is either yea or nay. No straddling the fence will be excused. Each time I see a boy selling newspapers in the early hours of the morning as I travel about New York and other big American cities I ask myself how it is possible that American women should allow this disgrace to exist in their midst. Housing conditions in Britain have been a standing disgrace for many years, but since women came into politics this scandal is being cleared up. Slums are disappearing so swiftly, especially i*i places like London, that one won- ders why these things were not attempted years and years ago. It is true that protests were made constantly prior to the war and some legislative action demanded, but of what avail were the protests since the people who suf- fered most, the housewives, had no means of making their wishes become realities. The average politician is a coward at the best, and nothing moves him more quickly and effec- tively than the threat to jeopardize his seat. The humanization of the poor law has proceeded apace in recent years, due chiefly to the discovery by women members of the various boards of guardians that abuses such as they had never suspected existed in every poor law union in the country. It was a common occurrence at one time for poor harassed widows to be told that they must t,ell the best part of their furniture before they came seeking poor relief, and even when they had obeyed these orders they were given such inadequate relief as to compel them to enter the competitive labor market and become a real menace to other women so far as reducing wages was concerned. Now, if they have children, they are paid enough to keep them at home. The Widows' and Orphans' Pensions Act has somewhat mitigated the widow's economic distress too. Food prices have so engaged the attention of women in all parties that a food council, though without other than advisory powers, has been appointed by the present Govern- ment and has been instrumental in preventing the worst abuses. Their reports are given so much publicity that no woman, however humble, need be ignorant as to the proper price which should be paid for the articles she buys. To show even more clearly how political parties must bow to the will of the women, let me quote the experience of the women in the British Labor Party. At four different annual conferences of the women's sections they had passed almost unanimously a resolution calling upon the party to use its influence in the House of Commons to get the Min- istry of Health to advise the maternity and child welfare centers that wherever a woman asked for advice on methods of birth control it must be supplied. At the general party conference this was turned down by the men who felt that it might affect their position in the ballot at general elec- tions. This excuse was not good enough for the women members of the party, and in 1926 they made it so clear that this shilly-shallying must cease that the resolution was carried by a large majority. Only the quiet persistence of the women made this victory possible. Incidentally one notices that no woman Parliamentary candidate has ever opposed the motion despite the suggestion that advocacy of the right of any married woman to have this advice would automatically seal her fate at election time. Harsh clauses which discriminated unfavorably against unfortunate women in the last Contagious Diseases Act which was passed by the British House of Commons were only eliminated when a united protest was made by politi- cally organized women. Therefore, while non-partisan groups may have their uses, half a million women organ- ized as a wing of some political party will get more results and get them more quickly. Of course there are groups of women who absolutely refuse to agitate for special legislation to improve the gen- eral status of women or her working conditions. For in- stance the demand by large bodies of women in England that night work should be abolished for women is met with the objection that this discriminates unfairly as between men and women. These ultra-feminists then would have women continue working under conditions which are un- suitable merely because men are doing the same. Their influence is so small, however, that no one pays a great deal of attention to them for the simple reason that the majority of them are women who have no experience of factory life at all and therefore are not entitled to speak for vast bodies of women who want such conditions altered. It seems to me as a friendly outsider that American women should not be content merely to work in campaigns for the particular candidates they favor but should help in some large measure to decide what the policy of the party shall be when it gets to power. Then it will be impossible for Congress to vote a miserly million or so dollars to ma- ternity and child welfare work, a sum not to be available after 1929. This fact in itself shows whether or not the men politicians are taking their women seriously. I should like to see any of the political groups in Britain attempting anything similar. The first to do it would find itself out of a job at the following election. Silly Marten By MADEFREY ODHNER He galloped nightly with the cavalcade On the brown mare that foaled the filly moon. Of starry stallions in the long parade He rode as master — he the iron dragoon Of ordered squadrons wheeling in the skies. An ether swifter than sidereal light Told Silly Marten when a planet dies And when the grazing stars stampede in fright Of some gigantic sun. So Marten thought Who thought that thoughts are true. He had no words. The words are mine and they are dearly bought, Since having them, I think that thoughts are curds In the digestion of an endless error. His mare threw Marten and he died of terror.

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Sept. 14, 1927] The Nation 247 Oklahoma Goes Rosicrucian By ALDRICH BLAKE FOLLOWING the Jack Walton upheaval and impeach- ment in 1923 and the brief interval of rest which came as the necessary aftermath of those hectic days, Oklahoma's political prophets were busy. And not a single one of them was right. Oklahoma did not go Klan, as many of them predicted, or anti-Klan, or conservative or progressive or radical, or wet or dry. It did not even get excited about evolution and fundamentalism and modernism, as might have been ex- pected in this tumultous young commonwealth. Without blare, and hardly conscious of the mighty new forces that were forming, it simply went Rosicrucian. And there it promises to remain, at least until fall, when, ac- cording to those who claim to be able to read the political zodiac, another impeachment trial, unparalleled in history on account of the weird and peculiar issues involved, is in the offing. Not that any of Governor Henry S. Johnston's enemies seek his removal merely because he has adopted this ancient philosophy and religion, originating in India, and which is supposed, according to Webster's dictionary, to enable the believer "to transmute metals, prolong life, know what is passing in distant places, and discover the most hidden things by the application of the Cabala and the science of numbers." Not that the Governor's enemies seek his re- moval because his confidential secretary, Mrs. 0. 0. Ham- monds, is supposed to be able to send her spirit through space to investigate the character and ability of applicants for public office while her physical body is busy at a desk in the executive office; not because the Governor's principal unofficial adviser, James R. Armstrong, an uncle of Mrs. Hammonds, and an Oklahoma City lawyer of note, is a disciple of Super Akasha Yogi Oussan of Punjab, India, who recently slipped into Oklahoma in all his oriental gran- deur as a sort of mystic pope of the quiet sect of Yogi, philosophers and healers, and whose method of "intuned "breathing" is supposed to have brought health and vigor to the failing Mr. Armstrong. So far as the people of Oklahoma are concerned, the Governor may consult the stars and consort with the spirit to his heart's content, provided only that affairs of state are left to earthly creatures, and are conducted in a half- way efficient manner. It is because the present dictatorship of the spirits seems to be leading to governmental chaos that members of the legislature, who may, under the Okla- homa law, convene themselves in special session, are quietly discussing plans for a mass attack on the Governor's Rosi- crucian legions in the next few months. In short, while the people are mildly amused and intensely curious about the Governor's religious views and do not object to the Gover- nor's occult tendencies, as such, they are nevertheless alarmed at what they consider to be a new threat to orderly government. Accustomed heretofore to bloody political combat among mortals, they are naturally aghast at the prospect of a war with spooks and spirits. In the early days when Governor Johnston was a mem- ber of Oklahoma's constitutional convention, he was known as a "good fellow" among his friends. He courageously led the losing fight on behalf of the liquor interests to keep prohibition out of the Constitution. Later he reformed and became a teetotaler, joined the church, and swallowed the Bible whole. The Rosicrucian philosophy, so he claims privately, is merely a higher phase of Christianity toward which all Christians are evolving and which is to be used during the coming Acquarian Age. As a lecturer for the Masonic order, he became steeped in ritualism and afterwards fell an easy victim to the Ku Klux Klan craze. Of late, the spirits seem to have been unusually diligent in recommending and insisting on Klan appointees, in part, it is suspected, because Mrs. Hammonds, a leader in the Kamelia, and the Governor's constant com- panion, establishes frequent contact with the Klansmen in the other world. In his race last year for the Democratic nomination, Governor Johnston was first in a field of seven, receiving barely one-third of the total vote. His election in the fall occurred when 150,000 Democrats, rather than scratch a ticket, stayed home, while many thousands of Klan Republi- cans were deserting their own nominee. In both campaigns, Johnston appealed secretly to the remnant of the Klan or- ganization and publicly to the churches, for support. Scarcely a Sunday passed when he did not find it convenient to be in some small town where he addressed the Bible class, expounding in mysterious phrases the science of num- bers and predicting the millenium in 1936. The good ehurch people, enchanted by the possibilities of the new magic and touched by the sentimental flow of words and endless stream of ritualistic phrases, hustled to the polls to vote for Johnston, Christ, and the Millenium. It was only after the inauguration and the convening of the legislature that a gentle stir in the political air could be noticed. When one day the Governor delicately suggested that he would like to sign the Crippled Children's Hospital Bill between 11:26 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. because the zodiacal signs were said to be favorable, the newspapers promptly notified the public and books on astrology were soon selling at a premium. The legislature, however, re- fused to budge and the bill did not reach the Governor's desk until several days later. Thus the lawmakers were successful in their first skirmish with the stars. But, unfortunately, the Governor did not stop with as- trology. Mere heavenly signs and prophesies, it seems, were not sufficient to guide the ship of state safely into port. It was necessary to consult the dead. For this important task — according to the Governor's erstwhile political managers and friends, now in full re- treat before the Rosicrucian gnomes, nymphs, sylphs and salamanders — he enlisted the services of Mrs. Hammonds, by some regarded as a sort of reincarnated Catherine de Medici, by others likened to Mary Queen of Scots, except that Henry's head probably will go on the block instead of hers. At any rate, it is this rather attractive little woman, with her flashing black eyes, quick gait, torrid, coarse con- versation, and painfully limited experience, who is supposed to possess what the Rosicrucians call the "sixth sense" and who is indisputably the power of the realm in Oklahoma

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248 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3245 today, exercising what some of the capital scribes say is a "continuous hypnotic spell" over his Excellency, the Governor. To appreciate the significance of the Rosicrucian "sixth sense" it is best to consult the official Rosicrucian pro- nouncement. "This extraordinary faculty," according to the Rosicrucians, "compensates for distance in a manner far superior to that of the best telescope and for lack of size to a degree impossible to the most powerful microscope. It penetrates where the X-ray cannot. A wall or a dozen walls are no denser to the spiritual sight than crystal to ordinary vision." Or, as another of the Rosicrucian Fellowship tracts says: "This sense enables its possessor to perceive and investigate the superphysical realms, where those live whom we call dead." Alas, members of the legislature, victorious in their battle with the stars, found themselves baffled by the strange woman who guarded the executive sanctum. Party leaders soon fled in dismay, balked in their plans by the simple gestures of the mere female they usually found sitting by the Governor's side, and whose soul, they now- suspect, was in the habit of flitting through the key hole, perhaps to some distant county to investigate the character of some applicant for public office, returning in the twink- ling of an eye to whisper "no" in the Governor's ear. Even undamentalists, bent upon the passage of an anti-evo- lution law, found themselves in humiliating retreat as a re- sult of the Governor's unexpected announcement that he favored Darwin, or at least the Rosicrucian interpretation of the Darwinian belief. Exasperated, the Senate passed the Governor's highway bill during an unfavorable sign of the zodiac, refused to confirm his impossible appointees and otherwise defied the Rosicrucian gods. The Governor, meanwhile, seized the highway department, the contractors tied up all contracts by injunction suits, the national government threatened to withdraw federal aid and as a result of the mess not a mile of paved highway has been built in Oklahoma this year ex- held a secret caucus to which the Governor was invited, and where he was politely told his impeachment was imminent unless he surrendered. The House won a fleeting victory, and soon adjourned. It was at this critical legislative juncture that "Uncle Jimmy" Armstrong and the Yogi priest entered the picture. No one seems to know just what the relationship is between the Yogi philosophy and the Western Wisdom Teaching of the Rosicrucians. Bu ahoma knows who "Uncle Jimmy" is, and that by virtue of his political acu- men (the practical Oklahoma type), the Governor has been temporarily saved and Uncle Jimmy's law practice enormously enhanced — without, it should be added, any sinister reflection upon his ethics as a lawyer. It may be, of course, that Uncle Jim will prevent an explosion in the fall, but the earthly signs do not indicate it. Nearly enough signatures already have been procured to convene the legislature and the dog days of July and August give promise that the political pot, now simmer- ing, will soon boil over. Public opinion, still confused by the whisperings of those who visit the Governor, and by veiled references in the press about strange happenings at the capital, nevertheless is rapidly reaching the conclusion that regardless of the exact nature of the Governor's beliefs, they make him the dupe of designing plotters who are able to impose upon his cred- ulity and therefore render him incompetent to serve as chief executive. And incompetency is a constitutional ground for impeachment in Oklahoma. Not the least interesting aspect of the Governor's af- fairs is his own reaction to the forces which threaten to de- stroy him. Apparently either indifferent to. or ignorant of, the gathering clouds, he clings to Mrs. Hammonds, boasts of his "achievements," and warns the people against the "interests," which seems to be a word he uses to describe all who oppose him. Newspaper men who have access to his office report that he will neither affirm nor deny in a clear-cut manner his al- leged belief in Rosicrucianism. When the press first began to chide him about his faith in astrology, he gave the rather lame excuse that he wanted to sign the hospital bill at a par- ticular hour to "please a friend." On the other hand, dur- ing his campaign for Governor, he often elaborated at length on astrological signs in his Sunday sermons. He ad- mits that he is a vegetarian, and vegetarianism like astrol- ogy is a part of the Rosicrucian philosophy. A Fundamen- talist, he still insists he believes in evolution, another phase of Rosicrucianism. Before Bible classes he seldom loses an opportunity to expound the mystery of numbers; and the Science of Numbers is a part of the Rosicrucian creed. Even his lifelong and exceedingly intense interest in the Masonic Order is not without significance, for Mystic Masonry is one of the courses taught by the Rosicrucian Fellowship at its school, Mt. Ecc! ide, California. And that Mrs. Hammonds, his chief confidential adviser, through some sort of alleged mystical or occult power, either hyp- notizes him or appeals to him as a co-believer, is the con- viction of every intelligent observer in the State. While there are some who look forward to another open season on Governors in Oklahoma with all the zest of a good sportsman, there are others who regret that Oklahoma, after twenty years of Statehood, is still in difficulties. It is. indeed, a bit sad that just after conquering a horde of Dragons, Titans, Goblins, and Cyclops, we people of the great Southwest, where John Cowper Powys recently said he had found much that is finest in American civilization, should be bound and gagged by a swarm of spirits, and compelled once more to battle with the Great Unseen. Diplomatic Sonnet By HARRISON DOWD I'd not attempt to name the moon again; The moon is like too many things. Take care, There is a certain circle in the brain: Madness, to which we frequently compare The moon. I knew a man who used to make So many handsome titles for the thing That he began to stammer and to shake Like any cuckold at a christening. At last one night this foolish fellow said, "The moon is like," and stopped, because he had Forgotten every name inside his head, So that he soon went quite completely mad And sang to nobody, crazy as a loon, "It's like a moon, exactly like a moon!"

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Sept. 14, 1927] The Nation 249 Is Africa Going White, Black, or Brown? i By WYNANT DAVIS HUBBARD AFRICA to be appreciated must be pictured not as just a jumbled collection of unrelated crown colonies and dominions, but rather as a homogeneous continent con- nected, wanderingly it is true, but nevertheless connected, by railroads, telegraph lines, river boats, and in some parts telephones and automobiles. Fifty years ago Africa was the Dark Continent. Today it is "Brightest Africa"; Africa developing and unfolding; an enormous continent with a magnificent future. Where formerly only a few of the more adventurous hunters, missionaries, and traders penetrated, there now stand fine hotels with electric lights and ice-making plants. Tourist parties ride up to the Vic- toria Falls in comfortable trains. Under the guidance of agents large parties even go from Capetown to Cairo by a combination of trains, lake boats, motor cars, and river steamers. "Darkest Africa" has gone. In its place has come an entirely new country. The gold reefs of Johannesburg were discovered about 1886. Sixteen years before Kimberley and its unique dia- mond-bearing deposits had been brought to the notice of the world. Thus, although South Africa has been settled for a long period and many treks and wars have been made and fought, her real development is only some fifty years old. This youthfulness must be remembered when judging Africa. Twenty-five years ago native wars ceased through the intervention of the white man. Traders made their ap- pearance everywhere. Ranches were taken up, mines dis- covered, the railroad from Johannesburg to the Congo was being laid. The Congo was pretty well known in general. East Africa was opening up and the possibilities of the west coast were being intensively prospected. Today Africa is known. There are localities which have never been mapped in detail and even some which no white man has ever penetrated, but as a whole Africa has yielded up her major mysteries. A compilation and study of the results show some amazing things. Undoubtedly the most important single event which has taken place in Africa is the cessation of cattle, wife, and slave raiding. While this was prevalent only the most warlike of the tribes were sufficiently powerful to protect herds of cattle and large grain fields. The villages of the smaller tribes had to be mobile. Each village had its gar- dens of grain, pumpkins, and cassava. But these were hidden away in hard-to-get-at spots. Grain only barely sufficient for the actual needs of the village inhabitants was grown. As a result of this, drought years or years when an extra heavy rainy season brought floods worked havoc through starvation. The native population increased very slowly. The odds against them were almost too heavy. Now that wars have been stopped all that has changed. Within limits natives graze their flocks and herds where they please. Each village is surrounded with acres and acres of kaffir corn, various small 'grains similar to millet, melons, tomatoes, pumpkins, cassava or bananas. There is no need for concealment. Herds can increase, no longer are raiding parties imminent nor do the flocks of goats have to be kept down to mobile units which can be rushed off and hidden at a moment's notice. On the high, healthy central African plateau prosperous villages are to be found on an average within ten miles in any direction from any given point. II Over this vast continent, which is as large as Europe and North America combined, are distributed approxi- mately 180,000,000 Negroes of many different tribes, sects, and beliefs. There are so-called Christians, Mohammedans, and an almost infinite variety of native beliefs. To con- trol them there are not 5,000,000 whites, 1,000,000 of these being concentrated in South Africa. This handful of whites have done much in the short time they have roamed over Africa. Starting at Capetown, in Natal, at Walfish Bay, Zanzibar, Egypt, and the mouths of the Congo, Niger, and Senegal rivers, they penetrated Africa from all directions. The slave raiders, ivory hunt- ers, and explorers went first. Many of them were ruthless and cruel. They caught natives and forced them to work without pay. They trapped them wholesale and shipped them off in fast raked-mast vessels as slaves. Elephant hunters of iron determination like Neuman settled among savage tribes and tamed them single handed. Courageous, far-sighted men of the type of Livingstone, Stanley, Moffat, Pasha and MacKenzie traveled over the face of the plateau. The reports which they brought out stimulated interest. Settlers came in. Governments were set up. As a result slave raiding was abolished, settlers could develop farms and ranches, railroads were dreamed of, mines were located, and the real development of Africa was begun. Among the basic raw materials which are considered essential to our civilization cotton, copper, coal, wool, chrome, gold, sisal, and oil stand near the top in importance. Africa has an abundance of all save oil. Johannesburg alone produces more than three-eighths of the gold of the entire world. In the heart of the Congo copper is mined and smelted. The resulting ingots are shipped out over a long winding railroad to a port in Portuguese East Africa. Here they are lightered aboard a steamer. Yet even with the cost such transportation means, this copper can be landed in New York and sold at a profit for a lower price than domestic copper mined in Montana. As a wool grower Africa is prominent. She is a coal exporter and her in- terior countries are loaded with this valuable necessity. With New Caledonia she shares the chrome monopoly of the world. Cotton can be grown over vast areas. In Nyasa- land a variety is produced which is classed as the best in the world. Sisal, tea, tobacco, fruit, grain, coffee, pea- nuts, wattle bark, rubber, and sugar are produced in quan- tities. From the west coast come palm oil, tin, mahogany, piassava, ginger, cocoa, and pepper. From the east come cloves, high-grade coffee, cotton, beeswax, sisal, grain, and bunker coal. From the north are exported dates, cotton, lead, zinc, phosphates, and gum arabic. Youthful as the country is, railroads are being con- structed. One has already reached the Congo. Others are being rushed to completion from either side. In other

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250 The Nation [Vol. 125. No. 3245 parts the rails are pushing deeper and deeper. They are climbing up to the plateau, carrying with them traders and settlers, modern machinery, and blooded cattle. Before many years have passed this movement will have been reversed. Instead of pushing up onto the plateau their will be the beginning of a downward deluge. Even today this has started. In Uganda so much cotton is raised and baled that the railroad cannot move it all. When the day comes on which transportation becomes adequate to the needs of the country, streams of cotton, grain, sugar, meat and coal, copper, zinc, and other ma- terials will pour down off the plateau. The ports will be even busier than they are now. Where today there stand twenty to fifty electric cranes, there will be sixty or per- haps a hundred. The towns will hum and double-track rail- ways will have to be constructed. No one who studies the climate and geology of Africa can fail to appreciate her enormous economic resources. Africa's position in this respect is second to none. Her available water power alone totals more than a third of the total potential water power of the entire world. Rich in gold, in land, with all types of climate from temperate to tropical, with railroads and motor cars, office buildings and fine hotels, great mines and the beginnings of an export- produce trade, what of the future? To whom will Africa eventually belong when all this wealth is exploited? Today Africa contains 180,000,000 blacks. It is im- possible to estimate how many cattle, goats, sheep, and hogs they own. From observation in the Rhodesias and Portu- guese East I would guess that there is at least oi e domes- tic animal for each native. Cultivated acres are in about the same proportion. If this is true Africa has about the same number of domestic animals as the United States, 60,000,000 more of population and about half as much cul- tivated land. But there is one difference. The United States is white. The figures which I have quoted are for the Negroes of Africa. At present the produce output of the Negroes is only sligh'ly in excess of their requirements. In a good year each village throughout the plateau produces a certain num- ber of goats, sheep, cattle, fowls, eggs, pumpkins, corn, kaffir corn, beans, peanuts, yams, tomatoes, melons, and bananas which are sold. Not every village produces all of these products, but it is the exceptional one which will not have at hast nine of them. Not one of these products is the equal in quality of those which a white farmer or rancher will raise. But neither is the price the same. In proportion to quality the produce of the native is the cheaper. The natives are increasing. Just how fast they are multiplying it is impossible to say, but that they are multi- plying is beyond doubt. If the rate of increase merely kept pace with the increase in production of food stuffs all would go well. But it has not to date. The increase in pi tion has been greatly in excess of the increase in popula- tion. This will probably continue to be true. What then? If it were merely a question o\' grain the problem would be comparatively simple. The native grains would be used locally for mines, etc., and the grain of the whites would be exported. This is true today in a small way. But the native is improving his produce. In southern Rho- desia the government is supplying blooded bulls to raise the standard among native cattle. In Uganda the Negroes have received cotton seed and been instructed Low to plant it and collect the cotton. All over Africa the natives work- ing for farmers have stolen or received as gifts seed corn and other seeds of a better grade than their own. In Portu- guese East natives raise sugar, cotton, onions, and fruit to sell as well as grain. This higher standard will probably mean competition for the white man. Undoubtedly as the native increases and produces more and more produce this produce will grad- ually become better and better. A certain quantity will find its way into markets formerly opened only to white produce. For this produce the native receives money or the equivalent of money. It is here that the danger lies. The whites in Africa are dependent on the blacks for labor. In the majority of countries where whites rule a hut tax varying from five to ten shillings a year has been imposed on all male natives. While this produces revenue, the idea is to force the native to work. The tax must be paid in cash, not kind. It was thought that by imposing a cash tax the native would have to work. But if he can sell grain, live stock, cotton, tobacco, sugar or some other product, the native will not have to work, at least for a white man. Further he will tend to become fianancially independent of the whites or at least indifferent. Natives today can be found working as farm laborers, in railroad gangs, as miners and as cattle herders. But there are a great number working as brick layers, storekeepers, stenographers, farm foremen, cooks, carpen- ters, gardeners, locomotive firemen, police, court interpre- ters, and nurses. These are far from unintelligent. Indeed it is my belief, after handling well over a thousand natives from a dozen different tribes, that the average native African is as intelligent as the average white man. He has not the knowledge the white man has nor has he the background. But he is decidedly intelligent. In British East Africa and Uganda native labor is already becoming difficult to obtain. The Negroes there are becoming independent of work as a means of securing cash for their hut taxes. The raising of profitable crops such as cotton or tobacco and the ready sale they obtain for fowls, eggs, and other produce account for this. Ill There is another factor which enters into the competi- tion, present and future, between blacks and whites, and that is the missions. Missions can be divided into three classes: industrial, medical, and religious. For the first two I have a great deal of respect. They are really helping the Negro. For the religious missions I have no respect whatever nor can 1 see that they help the Negro in any way. At an industrial mission Negroes learn to make bricks, to build a wall, saw, carpenter, garden, wash, cook, and to become nurse boys. Such occupations or trades enable the Negroes to earn more money than they would as gen- eral laborers. They have easier hours and are not subject to the rigorous attentions of the capitao or native fore- man. With their money they can have more clothes, beads, wives, food, or cattle than their associates and conse- quently go up in the world a step. At industrial missions the Negroes also learn to read and write both their own language and English. They learn to figure a bit and they come to understand the use and advantages of some of the white man's tools and implements. In all ways they pro- gress and. what is more, they keep their self-respect. The medical missions do much to alleviate pain and stop possible epidemics. They are in intimate touch with the medical side of native life and are in a position to be

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Sept. 14, 1927] The Nation 251 of great value to both whites and blacks and also to the government. But the religious missions! They tear down the belief of centuries and build nothing in its place. They condemn many native customs and practices. Where possible they forbid them. The result of this is that religious missions break down the homogeneity of a tribe, they confuse and bewilder and instead of being constructive are utterly de- structive. A religious mission-trained native is one to avoid. In the compound they are fomenters of trouble. They are whiners, men who have lost their self-respect. In contrast to the upstanding courageous kraal native, or the native who has a trade, a religious native is an abomi- nation, a total loss, a washout. More often than not he is a thief and braggart, shiftless and lazy. Once I was camped in the village of N'kala in the Kafue River district of Northern Rhodesia. While I was there a missionary came to preach. He preached to a large gathering in the native language which I understood. I listened dumbfounded to a recitation, with embellishments, of how God regarded the whites and blacks as equals both on earth and in Heaven, of how the Negroes when they died would fly to Heaven and sit at ease in golden chairs mingling on a basis of equality with whites. I have the greatest respect for Negroes. I like them personally and collectively. One or two of my old hunters and nurse boys I love as much as I ever loved any white man. But I recognize that the Negro in Africa occupies at present a very distinct place. And most certainly that place is not a place of equality on earth with the white man I do not know about Heaven. But I do know that I have never seen a missionary eating with an African Negro, sleeping or bathing with one, or doing anything except order him around most imperiously. I have, however, seen missionaries kick Negroes, beat them with bullock straps, and hammer them with canes. Once I saw one force a balky Negro to chew up a mouthful of dry quinine and epsom salts. But to go on with the story. After the sermon was over I invited the preaching missionary over for some tea under my wagon. I had not seen a white man for two months and wanted to talk. We had been sitting for ten minutes or so when N'kala came over. He is an old man and very dignified. After the proper greetings he squatted down ten feet away and began a conversation. "N'kos," he addressed me, "I wish to ask the Bwana a question." One must be familiar with Africa to appreciate N'kala's choice of language. N'kos means chief. Bwana is the term used for any white man. By addressing me as N'kos he was showing respect. But what did he intend when he referred to the missionary as Bwana and, further, why should he have asked me to ask the Bwana a question when he knew perfectly well that the Bwana could speak and understand his language as well if not better than I? "Yes, N'kala," I answered him, "what is your question?" "N'kos," he began, "I would ask the Bwana this: When he spoke to us the Bwana told us that we were the equal of the white Bwanas. He said that when we died we would go to the same place that white Bwanas go. The Bwana told us that his God had told him this. Will the Bwana then tell me why his God did not tell me that? Why was it necessary for his God to tell the Bwana to tell me that I am his equal?" 1 passed that on to the missionary without adding any embellishments of my own. When he understood what the question was he poured forth a line of eloquence 1 have never heard equalled. What the point of it all was I never quite understood. He piled up quotation on quotation from the Bible and talked at length about Christ and his teach- ings, but he did not answer N'kala's question. He could not because there is no answer. When he finally subsided N'kala, who had been listen- ing intently, turned to me and said: "N'kos, please tell the Bwana that what he says may be true." He got up, then shrugging his shoulders, continued: "It is a pretty story. But it is a story for children. We old men . . ." He walked away very dignified and erect, his dirty skin blanket flapping around his skinny legs. The results of missionary teaching are these: A native told that he is the equal of the white man leaves his village and goes out to work. If he balks at any particular job he is either fined, dismissed, or given a hiding, most prob- ably the latter. He finds out that even though in spirit he may be the equal of the white man practically he is not. The result is that missionaries in particular and white men in general go down several notches in the natives' estima- tion. Industrial and medical missions tend to raise this esti- mation again. But the general opinion among natives is that all white men are mad. From the evidence which natives see, who is to say that they are so far wrong? IV A phenomenally rich country is Africa, a young coun- try but yet an old country. A continent with a population already large, yet increasing steadily; a population black as to skin, but composed of men and women who are as a whole very courteous, kind, understanding, hard-work- ing and intelligent. They are backward and primitive, they wear few clothes, but their chiefs and leaders are men of wisdom and wealth. The tropical climate suits them, they are indigenous. Ruling this country and competing against the herds and flocks of the natives, their grain and produce, their increase and labor, stand a handful of whites. What will be the outcome? Will the whites surrender their large concessions in response to demands for land by the natives? Or will they try to segregate the blacks and hold them in reservations? Can they do that? The whites have developed cotton, rubber, and cocoa plantations; mines, railways, and irrigation projects in which huge sums of money have been invested. Will they surrender these? Will whites allow natives a voice in government and thus afford them an entering wedge? I cannot answer any of these questions. I feel that there are three possibilities: first, that Africa will event- ually be a black country; second, that the whites will wipe out the blacks; third, that whites and blacks will interbreed and produce a new brown race which will control the wealth of Africa. I believe in the inevitable eventuality of a black Africa. I am not sure but that I would like to see it. The whites, after all is said and done, have not progressed so far beyond the Negroes in the one commodity of life which means much — happiness. In this, in spite of our telephones, subways, electricity, etc., the natives of Africa far excel the vaunted civilized white men. And is not happiness the ultimate aim of our own existence whether we be white, yellow, brown, or black?

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252 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3245 Press Comment on the Sacco -Vanzetti Execution TO the everlasting credit of their editors, the newspapers that we quote below maintained steadfastly that grave doubts concerning the guilt of Sacco and Vanzetti ex- isted—grave doubts that would not down. The execution, as the following editorials of the morning after reflect, served only to intensify the fear of many that possibly an irrevocable mistake had been made. Waterbury (Connecticut) Republican Millions of people all over the world believe that two in- nocent men have been legally murdered, and there is at least a fair possibility that they are right. Millions of others who have no decided opinions as to the guilt of the men, regret then- execution after seven years of imprisonment as an unfortunate misuse of the death penalty. Only a very small proportion of intelligent people, it is safe to say, heartily approves the out- come of this case. ... The majesty of the law is upheld when it proves itself inflexible against the winds of passion and pre- judice, but not when it proves itself impregnable to the crit- icism of the public conscience. The law waxes in power when it withstands the shouting of the mob, but it wanes in authority when it will not heed the sober reasoning of good and wise men everywhere. The damage has been done, and the State of Mass- achusetts and the United States will not soon recover from it. Waterbury (Connecticut) American The indisputable fact is that suspicion exists, and not only among radicals but among thousands of thoughtful conserva- tives as well. Surely it cannot be considered insidious or ir- responsible levity to maintain that a recurrence of such doubt and suspicion ought to be prevented if possible by a revision of criminal practice in the courts of Massachusetts, calculated to anticipate the objections and delays which have made of the Sacco-Vanzetti case an international scandal. St. Louis Post Dispatch Recalling the martyrdom of Socrates, John Huss, Joan of An*. Savonarola, Giordano Bruno, and John Brown, the Post Dispatch adds the names of Sacco and Vanzetti to the impressive list of those who have died to live again in the imagination of millions: Like many of these others, Sacco and Vanzetti were of the lowly of this earth. We do not know if they were guilty or not. They did not die like it. Neither does Massachusetts know. If she had, she would not have waited seven years to kill them. We do, however, know that they long ago entered that great domain of human psychology in which time at last evaluates all things truly, making the calendar of intolerance and in- justice complete from 399 B. C. to 1927 A. D. New York World It is with a sick feeling indeed that one realizes that and Vanzetti have at last been executed. One's passionate de- sire is to have faith in the American scheme of things. convinced that by the irrevocable step we took last night, we are the authors of a just punishment and not a ghastly fiasco. In ping toward that faith one fine1-- all the argumen can: one reviews the evidence, and tries to see it as conclusive: one reflects that justice should not be subservi iopular clamor; one tries to believe that after all this investigation we omehow have got the right men. Yet. try as one wil cannot a haunting doubt that here we may have wit- 1 a great mi carriage Baltimore Sun Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti went to their ex- ecution with dignity; unafraid. There was nothing in the man- ner of their death to shake the belief of many persons that they were innocent of the crime for expiation of which their lives are taken. Humble in calling and alien in thought were these two men. Yet in the seven years and more of their im- prisonment, in the quiet courage with which they faced an end unmitigated by religious faith, they proved themselves of sturdy mold. . . . Over common sense, reason and mental honesty prevails the widely held conviction that in this case Massachusetts has blundered terribly. The world-wide cry of protest is based on something more substantial than sentiment or propaganda. It is in large part the voice of a humanity which, whatever its country, is deeply stirred by any seeming trespass on the high cause of simple justice. Pittsburgh Press There lies before the people of America the duty of seeing that never again shall such an exhibition of judicial ineptitude mark the course of American justice. . . . Seemingly these two accused men have had the benefit of every legal protection. There have been writs of every kind, petitions, motions and ap- peals and every move has been met, so it appeared, by a readi- ness of the courts to listen. Yet the fact has been this : So far as the courts were con- cerned, the fate of Sacco and Vanzetti has rested from the very day that Judge Thayer pronounced sentence on them, solely in Judge Thayer's hands. There never has been a time that any other or higher court could intervene in their behalf unless Judge Thayer was prepared to admit formally that he had erred. Understand what that means. Unless Judge Thayer could bring himself to say that he, through personal prejudice, had caused these men to receive unfair treatment in court, no court in the land had the power to step in and set his judg- ment aside. . . . The work now to be done is to bring about a careful, calm, impartial inquiry into the Massachusetts judicial system. Good can be wrought out of this present mistake — for we cannot re- cede from our conviction that this execution was a tragic mis- take— if through this mistake the courts of justice in America can be protected against such mistakes in the future. Toronto Mail and Empire That millions of Americans will be shocked at the news that Sacco and Vanzetti have actually been put to death is the one unanswerable comment upon the tragic business in Massa- chusetts. A month ago it seemed incredible that the supi-eme penalty would be inflicted upon them. It seemed almost impos- sible that the three distinguished citizens whom Governor Fuller appointed to assist him in reviewing the case would arise from that task with their minds purged of doubt. But that he did make mistakes in the course of his handling of the case is not to be denied. He made a cardinal error in the personnel of his commission, which should not have been composed wholly of members of the class against which Sacco and Vanzetti and their like had carried on their puny warfare. The committee itself stands convicted of at least one grave mis- , take in assuming that a certain cap found near the scene of the crime had been identified as belonging to Sacco. There was no identification. On this point at least the committee showed a misconception of the evidence submitted. Other evidence was ignored, particularly the notes, only recently available, of the Pinkerton operatives who had investigated the crime almost im-

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Sept. 14, 1927] The Nation 253 mediately after its commission, and which are strongly favorable to the accused men. But as we have said, the whole case from beginning to end deals almost exclusively with probabilities. New York Times There remains visible a body of intelligent and disinter- ested opinion which became stirred by the Sacco-Vanzetti case purely out of an unselfish fear that a wrong might have been done, that men accused of murder might not have had every op- portunity to establish their innocence, and that there was danger lest American criminal procedure should have a stain affixed to it in the eyes of the whole world. Say, if you please, that all this was founded upon a mistake, and was too much of the nature of mere sentiment. But, in any case, it was a creditable and noble sentiment. Milwaukee Leader Perhaps we shall never know whether or not these men had any connection with the payroll holdup, but we know that wit- nesses swore that they were elsewhere, and that these same wit- nesses, like honest men, recently demanded that they be put on trial for perjury so that they could prove that they told the truth. We know also that even the Governor's committee stated that the trial judge was guilty of a "grave breach of official decorum," which is enough in itself to invalidate the trial in the eyes of fair-minded men. And we know that they had to make their motion for a new trial before the same judge, and had only his decision to appeal from to the higher courts. This judicial procedure is incredibly unjust. In the face of such a travesty, the men must be presumed to have been innocent. Let there be no reprisals in kind. The working class must prove itself higher and better and nobler than the ruling class. But let this terrible injustice increase the determination of the workers of the world to change' this hate-producing social sys- tem into a brotherly one. Brooklyn Daily Eagle Controversy over this case will not soon die out. It will continue to be clouded and exacerbated by extravagances of statement on both sides. There will never be agreement unless new facts affecting the guilt or innocence of the dead are dis- covered and proclaimed. But it would be well if agreement could be brought about regarding the need for reform in the judicial procedure of Massachusetts in cases of capital crime. . . . There has been no review of the evidence in this case by the Massachusetts Supreme Court. That court was concerned only with the legal power of Judge Thayer to rule as he did. Moreover, it was made possible for Judge Thayer to be the arbiter in proceedings challenging his own impartiality — a judge sitting in judgment upon himself. These facts affecting the judicial system of Massachusetts have provoked widespread criticism from men who speak with authority on judicial pro- cesses. New York Telegram We may pass by the frantic threats of anarchists and communists. We may ignore their efforts to terrorize officials of the law. We may pay no heed to their foolish charges that capitalism was back of an effort to kill these men, guilty or in- nocent. For we do not sympathize with their views concerning government and law. But we do have great respect for the decent opinion of mankind, and while we had no strong conviction as to the guilt or innocence of Sacco and Vanzetti, the Telegram, in the in- terest of justice, strongly favored a new and fair trial to the end that mankind might form an intelligent opinion based on a full and impartial presentation of the facts. 44 Have Faith in Massachusetts"? LETTERS FROM OUR READERS Neither Sense Nor Pity To the Editor of the Nation: Sir: I want to pay my tribute to John Dos Passos for his magnificent letter to President Lowell published in The Nation of August 24. Again we see the wonderful wisdom in Death which will continue to remove the old. And again we see it is not the proletariat who brings on bloody revolutions but the oppressing class that never has either sense or pity. Either quality would have prevented the Sacco- Vanzetti executions. There Avas world doubt as to their guilt, and this doubt I as a lawyer of nearly forty years practice share, but in any case seven years has gone by — the men have suffered much. Society would not be benefited by killing them, but now they have been made martyrs. I share John Dos Passos's view of the stupidity of the Lowell report and a certain class callousness in it, and I think Governor Fuller has been more vindictive than law itself, and more stupid than a politician ought to be. Charles Erskine Scott Wood Los Gatos, California, August 22 Those Maddening Pacifists To the Editor of the Nation: Sir: Now that the burnings in Boston are over and the real trying of the Sacco-Vanzetti case but fairly begun, I am not sure but that the most penetrating word that has yet been spoken is that of the "professor in a Southern university" who writes in your issue of August 24 of his fear that the execution will cause honest Americans "seriously to doubt the possibility of justice from our government under its present organization." It is amazing that the reactionaries have not been able to per- ceive that here, at a single stroke, they have done more to fur- ther the cause of radicalism in the United States than every- thing that either real or fancied Red propaganda has been able to achieve in ten years. In sheer desperation, if not otherwise, hundreds of Americans must now drive into the radical camp. Of Sacco and Vanzetti, as of others, history will record that they accomplished more for their faith by dying for it than they could possibly have secured through continued life. Personally 1 cannot claim to share, in any definite way. many of the specific beliefs, such as they were, of Sacco and Vanzetti. But the pacifism of the two men is exceedingly sug- gestive in its bearing on the larger outlines of the case. It was fitting and proper that these who refused to slay should themselves be slain — slain under the monstrous and horrible pretense that they themselves were slayers. Among all the be- liefs which those of us who are liberals share in common, none gives greater offense to our rulers than our spineless, recreant pacifism. They may forgive us for everything else: they will never forgive us for refusing to believe that it is the human creature's happy privilege to slay for his ideals! Here again, it seems to me, is a lovely example of the blindness of the reac- tionaries. Let them thank God that the liberals of the world arc pacifists! It will be a sad day for them if they ever suc- ceed in converting us to their ghastly faith. Gentle, tolerant human beings have marked the cross of blood on their oppres-

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254 The Nation [Vol. 125. No. 3245 sors before this: they may be driven to do so again. If liberal- ism is ever forced into the shambles again, it is hard to say who will be slain, but one may be very confident that it will not be helpless conscripted men of other nations, with whom we have no quarrel. God save us all from such a reckoning! And God give cowards and bigots the grace to see that they are even now doing their very utmost to bring mankind to such an imbroglio! Seattle, Washington, August 25 Edward Wagenknecht From a Native of the State To the Editor of the Nation: Sir: As a native of Massachusetts I wish to extend to you my sincere thanks, and assure you of deep feelings of gratitude because of your masterful article, Massachusetts the Murderer. And the sound principle of building better without destroy- ing the good we now have, of eliminating the undesirable by education rather than by violence — this will meet with the ap- proval of all well-meaning people. And most people are well- meaning; they only need to be shown the way. And I wonder if one good way is not by learning to think for ourselves as we read and listen, and not too readily accept as proper the actions and statements of some of the officials elected to maintain justice? Chas. L. Hamblin Marstons Mills, Massachusetts, August 29 the Times indulges in misrepresentation may be gathered from the following, which I quote from Mr. Carr's column in today*s Times: Exi cutions of murdei lly hold . . io!y but negative value for the public. Tl Vanzetti h t sad but positive value. It has brought into the revealing light an amazing number of vicious fools who have been, until now. nemies of the United States. As usual, the outcry over this murder ease con from three classes of people — parlor Socialists of the Green- wich Village variety, who are .-•.king cheap excitement; dang, rous Reds, who a; - rybody on the general principles of a m - and small-bore writers. All of these vermin would be making trouble about something else if Saeeo and Vanzetti had never existed. During the same period the Times has continued its cam- paign of vilification and misrepresentation against the Bureau of Power and Light of the city of Los Angeles, representing one of the most successful public ownership enterprises in Amer- ica. The explanation lies in the fact that the ownership of the Times is heavily interested financially in the Southern California Edison Company, the private competitor of the Bu- reau of Power and Light. The municipal group has no news- paper through which to reach the taxpayers in order to offset the campaign of the Times, and is forced to resort to eircular- ization by mail. Los Angeles, August 26 GUY Emery Shipler Editor, the (New York) Churchman Poets' Last Chance To the Editor of the Nation: Sir: Please permit us to compliment you on your stirring editorials on the crucifixion of Sacco and Vanzetti; and to issue through your columns a last-minute call to poets to contribute to the anthology of poems of protest against the murder of these two martyrs which we plan to publish in book form this October. We shall issue it as a tribute to the enduring memory of these heroes and as a contribution toward making impossible the repetition of such an offense against civilization as their frame-up. Dr. John Haynes Holmes has kindly consented to write he introduction; and many leading poets have contributed — assuring a dignified memorial. Ralph Cheyney, Lucia Trent, Publishers of Contemporary Versi !'. (). Her J,G, Netv Haven, Connecticut, Ant; The Los Angeles Times To the Editor of the Nation : Sir: Readers of 77i< X at ion need no enlightenment as to the reactionary caliber of the Los Angeles Times. I doubt, however, if one can fully sense the social menace of such a newspaper until one has been forced to depend upon it for one's immediate news source during the progress of such an impor- tant story as that of the Sacco-Vanzetti case, as has chanced to be my misfortune for several weeks. During that time press service and special story to the Times dealing with the Sacco-Vanzetti case has been so edited as to exclude the name of almost every person of note who has been enlisted in of the two victims of Massachusetts justice, whether American or foreign. In editorials, news and feature articles, and through the skilful manipulation of headlines, the distinct impi was created that only Reds were offering any opposition to the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti. The Times carries each day a prominently displayed column called "The Lancer." written by Harry Carr. Something of the quality of his thinking and something of the manner in which As Seen from the South To the Editor of The Nation : SIR: I am doubtful about human progress being helped along by the case of Sacco and Vanzetti. The groups which forced and conducted the trials and convictions of Socrates and Jesus Christ, for instance, were at least honest and direct in their accusations. Now, from the evidence available, it seems that the conviction of Sacco and Vanzetti is secured or. the basis of prejudices obviously existing but concealed under the charge of murder. This looks worse to me than a mere miscarriage of justice, without any particular prejudice causing it as some- times happens in our courts; instead of any sign of progress, I see here a clear case of degeneracy. In all history I do not know of any apparently worse cases of outraged justice under the cloak of clear, impartial justice. Heretofore you might be burned at the stake or have your bones broken on the wheel for being a heretic; but usually, if my history is right, you were charged with being a heretic if you were put to death for being one; or at any rate those who put your lights out tried to keep up no illusions as to the nature of their government. I would much prefer to live under the sway of a Machiavellian prince, who would at least be enlightened, and honest if pos- sible— but always enlightened in his dishonesty or cruelty — than to live under a government which is so unskilful in its hypocrisy, or criminally dull. Raleigh, .V. ('.. August Id A. Z. Modern Saints To the Editor ok the Nation : Sir: I am pasting the portraits of Sacco and Vanzetti in an illustrated Bible I possess, so that others looking at it may count them among the saints who have enriched life with their Christ-like utterances. And that Bishop of the Church of the Prince of Peace who was in the "four-to-one" group to congratulate Fuller upon his act of loving kindness and righteousness, was it not of him that Anatole France wrote when he described Judas as being the first Bishop of the Church but not the last to betray Christ? Xew York, August 25 I. GEORGE DOBSEVAGE

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Sept. 14, 1927] The Nation 255 In the Driftway FROM the moment the Drifter and his cowboy friend entered a restaurant in the small Western town he was exploring, he had been interested in a man at the next table. Six and a half feet of raw-boned lankiness was slung over an inadequate chair. A tall narrow head, with a tight ring of sweat around it to show where a hat had rested; a leather-colored face; hair a gray yellow, parted in the middle; eyes small but twinkling, set in the wrinkles that come from living out of doors in a sunny country. He wore an ordinary suit, but his trouser legs were stuffed into high-heeled cowboy boots and a ten gallon hat hung on a peg above his head. To the Drifter at least he typified the Old West and he was making the best of an opportunity to study at close range a passing phenomenon when his friend's voice broke in upon him. "See that old desperado over there?" He indicated the man with the tall head, and went on. "That's old Bill Cory. A slick one if there ever was one. He came from Texas, but he landed in this valley in the early days. They say he was run out of Utah and Colo- rado and I don't know where else before he settled down here." He lowered his voice. "Do you remember that big train robbery that Geraghty pulled on the Great Northern years ago? Well, Bill Cory never tells nothin' on himself, but he did say one day that Geraghty rode his (Bill's) white horse that night. WELL, as I was saying, he came here years ago. He didn't have a cent when he got here, but in three years he had 500 head of cattle — and he never bought a cow in his life. You see, it was this way. The biggest cattle outfit in the country in the old days had a brand like this. . . ." He drew on the tablecloth a bar and the num- ber three ( — 3). "Well, Bill's brand was a cross and the number eight (+8). See how he got 500 head of cattle? But he never stole from his friends. T |E still lives over on Raft River. He's got a little ■■- ■■-shack down in the willows. You can't see it until you're right onto it. One night on the waj home from a roundup I tied my horse and sneaked up to the door and opened it by surprise. Say, he had me covered before you could say Jack Robinson. He laughed when he saw who it was, but he said, 'You'd better not do that again. This might go off accidentally, before I knew it was you.' He always carries a gun. He's got one right now under his left arm inside his coat, where it's easy to reach. Come on over, I'll introduce you." The man from Texas rose to his lean height and the most genial of smiles lighted his brown face, as he extended an enormous hand. "Stranger here? . . . Yes, I've been here a good while now. But it ain't like it used to be. There's nothin' here now but dry farmers and their damn fences. An' you can buy a cow and calf for $15!" r j^HE old West is passing. There is no place for Bill *■ Cory in a generation of law and order. But the Drifter cannot help regretting the breezy virtues and the large-handed sinning of the frontier. Tin: Drifter Correspondence Rock Dusting in Mines To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: In your issue of June 22 appears a review by Powers Hapgood of a book on "The Rock Dust Remedy" written by Harry Phythyon, a Pennsylvania mine inspector. Mr. Hap- good holds Mr. Phythyon up to praise for "having the courage" to stand as "one against a thousand" in his opposition to rock- dusting bituminous mines as a means of preventing mine dis- asters due to coal-dust explosions. Mr. Hapgood would have it appear that the rock-dust remedy for coal dust explosions was "a mistaken theory" which the United States Department of Mines is trying "in a brilliant advertising campaign" to "put over" on the public. As a matter of fact, the rock-dust preventive of coal-dust explosions is not a mere "theory" but a demonstrable fact. This discovery of modern engineering science has been rein- forced by ample and convincing practical experience in both American and British mines. Also as a matter of fact, which Mr. Hapgood could easily have ascertained, the nation-wide campaign for state legislation to require coal companies to safeguard the mines against coal-dust explosions by the use of rock dust was initiated five years ago — and is being continued with encouraging results by the American Association for Labor Legislation. When this association in December. 1922, opened its pres- ent campaign against needless coal-mine accidents it pointed out that about 15 per cent of the fatalities in bituminous mines were caused by coal-mine explosions; that coal-dust entered into practically all "major" explosions, and that for this class of accidents there is a simple, inexpensive, and effective remedy — rock dusting. The effectiveness of rock dusting had been demonstrated by engineers of the Bureau of Mines, but this scientific information had been buried in government reports. Six States have already enacted provisions for rock dusting. Indiana's new rock-dusting law, adopted this year, is based on the "Standard Bill" prepared as an aid to uniform State legis- lation. This bill embodies the "standard practices" recommen- dation of the American Engineering Standards Committee. These recommended standards for applying the rock-dust safe- guard in the mines were thus formulated after the most pains- taking consideration by representatives of the following organi- zations: American Institute of Electrical Engineers, American Institute of Mining and Metallurgical Engineers, American Mining Congress, Associated Companies, National Safety Coun- cil, United States Bureau of Mines, and United States Depart- ment of Labor. Already hundreds of lives have been saved by rock dust in American mines. Seven hundred miners owe their lives to this safety device in the most recent coal-mine explosions in Pennsylvania. A similarly spectacular saving of human lives occurred in the New Orient mine at West Frankfort, Illinois, in January. 1926. Foreign experience is also impressive, and this, too, is ignored by Mr. Hapgood. In Croat Britain rock dusting has been required by law since January 1, 1921, and it has success- fully eliminated disasters due to coal-dust explosions. For the past ten years rock dusting has been required in the gassy and dusty coal mines in France, and no explosion disasters have occurred in the French mines during this period. After a quarter century of requiring water sprinkling as a safeguard against coal-dust explosions, Germany has now completely abandoned sprinkling and adopted the modern and effective remedy of rock dusting. Germany's new law, which is the re- sult of long study and careful tests by the mining authorities and coal operators, thus recognizes the superiority of rock dust- ing over watering as a means of explosion prevention. New York, August 15 John B. Andrews, Secretary, American Association for Labor Legislation.

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256 The Nation [Vol. 125. No. 3245 The fteal i\rabianNic|his t^ss&sas^s&i5&s&&se^s& i 1" V( )U had sat at the Sultan's feet, on the satin cushions of the haremlik, as Scheharazade wove the pattern of these wondrous tales into a many lined oriental tapestry oi words, you would have enjoyed "The Arabian Nights" no more than you will this sumptuous, illustrated lim- ited editii in. For years the translation of Rich- ard Burton has been the last word. I hit it is no longer. Dr. J. C. Mardrus translated the exotic East- ern tales into French, treating the unblushing, original Arabian text with the deft and delicate touch of a great French artist. From this complete, unexpurgated version. E. Powys Mathers has given us "The Arabian Nights" in English, more complete, mere beautiful, more scintillant than it has ever been before. Privately Printed for Subscribers Publication of this most complete and authentic edition of the epic of the East brought the highest praise f-om the British press. "In the 'Thousand and One Nights' the tale after all is the thing, and the tale is better told by Mardrus than by Burton. But let not those who are jealous of every wore" suppose he has attained this result by the method of a sub- editor. For artistic 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 Times. LIMITED EDITION— NOW NEARLY EXHAUSTED A very few sets of the edition remain unsold. No plates of this work exist. When the few remaining sets are no more will be available. Your opportunity to own these honks is limited to a very short time. Superbly printed. Frontispieces in four colors from Per- sian illuminations. Bound in 8 volumes on rag paper or in 4 volumes on thin bond paper. Four thousand pages of text. the eoup riptivc brochure. DINGWALL-ROCK, Ltd., Dept. 19A 45 West 45th Street New York City DINGWALL-ROCK, Ltd., Dept. 19A 45 West 45th Street, New York City Gentlemen: Without information in detail about "The Real Aral Lives of the Past — the Living Present O Rare Ben Jonson By BYRON STEEL Who, if not youth, should comprehend immortality? A young American's enchanted pen has rescued the great Elizabethan from academic death and restored him to us as a picturesque, profane, and vivid contemporary. S3.00 The Romance of Villon By FRANCIS CARCO Translated from the French by Hamish Miles The Villon of history, extricated from the prettified figure of popular legend — and in the process made actually more romantic. Illustrated. S5.00 The Promised Land By LADISLAS REYMONT The Peasants won Revmont the Nobel Prize for Literature; and that great work is now received as a classic in most modern languages. The Promised Ljh.I — a great panorama of the peasant uprooted and exploited in industry — is the other half of Reymont's original conception. Two volumes boxed. > Selected Prejudices By H. L. MENCKEN The first five volumes of Prejudices represented in a one-volume selection painstakingly made by the author himself, the choicest of his aversions and prepossessions. $1.50 Land of the Pilgrims' Pride By GEORGE JEAN NATHAN A critic of life and letters make^ a penetrating examination of recent salient changes in our code of sex morality and related subjects, v On the Steppes: A Russian Diary By JAMES N. ROSENBERG A vivid account of present-day conditions in agricultural Russia as the author saw them in 1916. $2.-50 Life and the Student Roadside Notes on Human Nature, Society, and Letters Z?> CHARLES HORTON COPLEY Here is a book which the publisher issues with pride and as- surance, not because of its author's emtnence, but because we believe it contains .is much lasting wisdom, expressed with as much dignity and trenchancy, as any American volume what- ever— and we do not torget Emerson and Thoreau. Si .50 At All Bookshops a da, from The MacmiUan Company .1 . St. Martin's House. Toronto Alfred A. Knopf Publistwr \eiv York The Nation

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Books and Music Legend of the Brazier Man By PIERRE LOVING He touched the flesh once of a newborn Child: deviltry mocked his wandered blood, And when his hand had cooled at last he stood As one bewildered, fawn-eyed, sucking grass As though the splashed green blade — but he, alas, By this had stumbled through a mile of absent corn. He stumbled through pale thickets of his days. His hand grew thin And what it was possessed It to turn palimpsest He never knew until it moaned, began to flicker, Flanged up, proclaimed itself a brazier Spring Had kindled leaves with in old times. His blood poured quicker Now whenever at her increment The green year, between her flowers and stars and ministering, Like a running girl half-spent, Would let him kiss her hair or bind her latchet. Out of a cloud dropped weather of strange music. "Wind- hover, Windhover, snare me in your flight design. To match it," He cried, "swiftbird and gull and plover, You must consider speed's not wing At all, wing clatter is not beauty." Spring's over, Yet he is on his knees to Spring. Voyaging on the Unconscious Blue Voyage. By Conrad Aiken. Charles Scribnor's Sons. $2.50. HPHE new fiction like the new poetry has been attacked and * championed chiefly on the basis of its form. In their anxiety to prove that its novel technique was or wasn't a rational medium, few critics have considered asking it more pertinent questions, and thus it has escaped a perilous account- ing by the oixlinary standards of fiction. It is time that attention is shifted, as it eventually must be, beyond this initial stage. For though in the mixed multitude that followed and preceded Joyce there were many who used the modernist motley to hide their nakedness, the outstanding: figures are all able artists who have deliberately chosen the cut and color scheme because it suited their purpose. They have modern psychology and the recorded evolution of literary form over- whelmingly on their side, and instead of doubting the validity of their instrument there are more reasons for inquiring: Why, with all this specially invented machinery, have they so signally failed in their peculiar purpose? This does not reflect upon the form. Its advantages are obvious, and any athletic mind can accustom itself to it as readily as to the various literary conventions which habit has naturalized. And if to a devotee of Addisonian prose "Ulysses" seem like the product of a linotyper in the last stages of delirium tremens, think of what a jungle Addison is besides the simple declara- tive of the Bible. Even the crude asides of a melodrama vil- lain is an attempt to render, on a double plane, complexities of mind unintelligible because unconscious in primitive litera- ture. But granting the necessity of an amphibian form to track the amphibian modern mind to its sub-conscious recesses, the question still remains: why, with all its profound sound- ings and patient dragging of the unconscious, has it failed to bring up monsters out of the deep? Not mere data con- cerning them, however detailed, nor recollected nightmares, but creditable tangible beings such as swim about in the pages of Dostoevsky, Hardy, and Wasserman, caught with the hook, line, and sinker of ordinary narration. In his first novel, which is in many respects the most successful exploitation of the new method, Conrad Aiken re- phrases the same situation. If he breaks through the pro- creative impotence of some of his fellow craftsmen and comes nearer to achieving individuals, it is because he stops his "stream of consciousness" long enough to incorporate in it pas- sages of thinly disguised description. All of which seems to point to the fact that swimming the "stream of consciousness' is as yet in the nature of an aesthetic stunt, and not thoroughly dependable for all the purposes of fiction. A terribly waste- ful feature of it is that the chief protagonist and owner of the stream of consciousness on which the work is built is so psychologically eviscerated in the process of extracting it from him as to be unrecognizable. William Demarest, the hero of Aiken's novel, is a young writer voyaging to England in the hope of meeting his Belle Dame sans Merci, a snobbish Englishwoman of quality aptly called Cynthia, who floats un- attainably in his fancies like the moon over a love-sick tom-cat. On the trip, those of his fellow passengers who impinge on his consciousness are made to live for us — some of them un- forgettably. But of William Demarest himself we know very little. Or perhaps too much. At least all that he pours forth about himself fails to coagulate into an individual. It may be argued that — thanks to psychoanalysis — we know too much about individuality to think it individual; that the contents of the unconscious, which the line of individuality follows, re- veals itself under analysis as monotonously the same within certain limited classifications. Perhaps — but there is also the lility that our eyes are not yet accustomed enough to the new psychological landscape to see its peculiarities. Mr. Aiken's style in "Blue Voyage" is opportunistic. It switches from free association to methodical self-analysis according to the exigencies of the occasion; and sometimes clue and solution follow each other rather more obviously and more inevitably than either science or art would justify. As such it is less consistent but more readable than Joyce. Some day, when the symbolic language of the unconscious has been sufficiently assimilated into our con s, we will be able to employ it freely in literature. After all, everyday speech itself is nothing but a collection of worn-out symbols. In the unconscious we have a ready mint where the defaced coinage of modern speech can be perpetually restored to meaningful- ness. Therein lies the literary value of such a test trip as "Blue Voyage." ALTER Brody Acknowledge the Wonder Mornings in Mexico. By D. H. Lawrence. Alfred A. Knopf. $2.50. A/TR. LAWRENCE continues to shoot skyrockets over Indian *■ *• villages. In the quick-shot glow and long glimmer of sparks, he sees distorted shadows, whirling jade knives, plumed serpents, throbbing terrors, and now and then a clear-etched glimpse carving out the pulsating core of an alien people. But, in general, he pictures shining leprosy on a background of darkness. He holds up a warped plank full of holes where bent soul-nails have driven out other nails — come d'asse si trae chiodo con chiodo. Remarkable poetry, the sweeping dance and turn of prose attuned to elemental tides — but he hushes reality better to hear his own celestial symphony. He makes a shrouded ghost out of a healthy brown-skinned animal, and then, like a fever-stricken Lady Macbeth, washes out the blood-

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258 The Nation [Vol. 125. No. 3245 stains in a phantasmagoric record of fretful fear and hate, grim inquisitional geniality, fire-lit with dreams that burn lu- ridly over the ramparts of his sick but ambitious soul. I speak of "The Plumed Serpent" as much as of the present slender volume of eight cactus-thorn essays. Unfortunately the record, in both the volumes named, is not so stark as the foregoing would suggest; to achieve intense apperception of the dithyrambic communal quality of Indian mass-life, Mr. Lawrence has burned mystery incense before many humble understandable things. With a drawn face he peers at the Indian village through trembling cloudy fingers — an inverse sentimentalism not unlike that of uneducated women in villas, and indeed Mr. Lawrence's coign of vantage is a sort of Mexican mud villa with parrots, a dog, a "dumb-bell" serv- ant; and he writes on an onyx table. To use Mexico as a flail to excitate one's soul is one thing; to approach it scientifically or with poetic reality is another. Tl 3 counter-poise to Mr. Lawrence is such a writer as the great old chronicler, Bernardino Sahagiin; or the graceful ease of Flandreau's "Viva Mexico!" or if we turn elsewhere, Bor- row's "The Bible in Spain" — all the sinuous, muscular, non- sentimental records of men who went abroad to work, to con- quer, to live, to understand, to build. Mr. Lawrence declares Mexican myths hold "no grace, no charm, no poetry." Bunk! His own half-told myth of the goddess giving birth to a "razor-edged blackish-green flint" il- lustrates the contrary. Since when did poetry agree to be ten- der? And what is more lovely and tragic than the departure of Quetzalcoatl, the Evening Star, from Tula, to embark on his raft of snakes over a distant sea? How about the legends of the Nahuatl heavens? Of the trip to Aztlan? Mr. Lawrence states that the goddess of love is a "goddess of dirt and pros- titution, a dirt-eater, a horror." Undoubtedly he .efers to Tlaclquani (Eater of Unclean Things), the Goddess of Car- nality; but how about the real Goddess of Love, the spring- clear beauty of Xochiquetzal (Precious Flower) , or of Chicomex- ochitl (Seven Flowers)? Lawrence would like to be a free pagan, wear the Tol- stoian mujik caftan, would like to be a hale Walt Whitman. "using pornography for chaste ends"; would like to be able to exclaim with Pinel, "What a magnificent cancer!" But natural- ism creates in him constant fascination and shuddering recoil, and out of this shuttle flares the lightning-cleft of insight de- nied lesser writers. The English puritanical queasiness clings; fundamentally he hates the grape-heavy southland; all normal animal functions become distorted. He loves to mess in the mud with one ginger toe, then gets conniption fits at the sight of his soiled digit. The fortunate result of this arte d'essere infelice is just such glorious prose that wreathes so many of the pages of "Mornings in Mexico." Vet this recoil, ending in stubborn isolation, this semi- hatred of others, though it incapacitates Lawrence to know the homely joys of Mexican life, nevertheless accentuates his appreciation of differences, of contrast, of bold color, of surging race purpose. He grasps the strong flowing-on of Mexican communal life and psychology; the semi-animistic approach to the forces of nature; the indigenous Bergsonian concept of the time-stream as opposed to the white man's painful piece- meal exactitude; the reckoning of distance in subjective terms of beauty or physical freshness. He notes the truer, flexible thinking of the Indian in curves, not the white man's straight lines "hacked out against the will of the world." Faithful, too, is the author's sensitivity to the creative surge welling up in the corn dances, the snake dances: the dancer, "slightly bend- ing forward, a black gourd rattle in *-he right hand, a small green bough in the left, ... the eternal drooping leaf that brings life down, down, down from the mind, down from the broad, beautiful shaking breast, down to the powerful pivot of the knees, then to the ankles, and plunges deep from the ball of the foot into the earth, toward the earth's red center where these men belong, as is signified by the red earth with which they are smeared." But in general Lawrence's approach to the Indian is that of wonder, wonder tinged with sentimentalism, with forebod- ing, with anxiety over the fate of the white monkeys when the present Fifth Sun shatters — and since this wonder is exactly the Indian's own approach to the universe, it betrays that Lawrence, though quite outside indigenous intimacies, lacking intellectual rapprochement, is emotionally coalescent with the whole mainstream of Indian life-consciousness. Says the Indian and says Lawrence, "Thou shalt acknowledge the wonder." Carletox Beals The Sense of Tragic Life A Good Woman. By Louis Bromfield. Frederick A. Stokes Company. $2.50. XT OT unlike that God whom his hero Philip Downes created x^ in his own image after years of unbelief, Mr. Bromfield is concerned with the "whole glowing tragic spectacle of living." His interest even includes Jason, the mocking sensual dudish little runaway husband of the Good Woman, and Naomi, the white-faced sloppy ecstatic missionary, and the Reverend Cas- tor, who has listened to the troubles of his women parishioners and lived with a hellion for fifteen years. As in the other novels he is preeminently interested in Lily Shane, who has escaped the Town, but whose beauty and gaiety and sinfulness are still a legend in it; and in the play of character on char- acter and of the community on the individual. He is interested in the gathering social conflict, and has a keen sense of the changes that have taken place in the Town as the old pleasant feudal system of living, based on agriculture and trade, has given way to the new, grimy, flamboyant, breathless, but still feudal system, based on manufacturing. He sees the Town growing bigger and dirtier and harder and faster and more poignant and inarticulate in its tragedy. He sees the necessity for that escape which is the theme of his four panels of Amer- ican life that are concluded with this novel, pressing more in- sistently on those uncomfortable individuals who cannot accept its Gods or its aesthetics or its morals or its system of eco- nomic distribution. He sees, though not so poignantly, for his sense of life is chiefly that of human life, the splendors of the Jungle and the mist on the Flats in the moonlight. Unfortunately the fascination with which he tries to sur- round the figure of Lily Shane is never quite satisfactorily accounted for in her actual presence; it even seems sometimes to rest rather heavily on her ability to live luxuriously on a wealth that is indirectly piled up by those same new industries whose encroachments, grime, and rapacity she and her mother so generously resent. The forces that destroy Philip are still chiefly foi-ces outside himself — his mother's encroachments on his will and personality — instead of those more subtle and alarming forces that operate equally to destroy men whose life is lived in a freer spiritual atmosphere than that of the Town. Instead of arising out of the conflicting impulses of human nature, the hazards of the story are supplied by the pet indig- nations of a clear-eyed young man who can put a firm finger on all the weak spots in his environment and say, if the church were not so besotted, if the capitalist system were not so un- just, men might be free. In short, this novel, that starts out with an interest in the whole tragic spectacle of living, loses itself sometimes in the literature of protest. This is not to deprecate Mr. Bromfield's interest in that gathering social conflict to which most of our competent novelists are strangely blind ; nor foolishly to suggest that that conflict is in itself other than supremely important. But the fundamental traits of human nature are less affected by the particular economic theories a man may hold than the ardent advocate of a new system is prone to believe; and it is fallacious to represent the

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Sept. 14, 1927] The Nation 259 ei*%**v**%%%v*v*%*\%%%vvvv**vvvvv*v**%**vv**v**%^v*v*v**\v*v*v\%%v*vvv*V"^^ WORLD - FAMOUS WRITERS PRAISE BEST SELLING NOVEL IN AMERICA* By UPTON SINCLAIR OSWALD GARRISON VILLARD CLARENCE DARROW "One of the most remarkable books that I have ever pe- rused and one of the most readable." "Few novels have impressed me as much as 'Oil!'" JOHAN BOJER: "This novel is created by a great poet, a great artist, and a great heart. Since Emile Zola I can't remember a similar work." * First on the list of one leading wholesale distributor. Second on the list of the other. At all bookstores, $2.50 THERE'S NOT A BATHING SUIT IN RUSSIA And Other Bare Facts by WILL ROGERS "It is a fine achievement to succeed simultaneously in two such difficult and mu- tually exclusive fields as humor and politics." — N. Y. Times. Illus. $1.75 THE JOURNAL OF WILLIAM MACLAY With an introduction by CHARLES A. BEARD "One of the most precious human documents for the study of American manners, morals, and intelligence, political and general. It deals with the period which witnessed the inauguration of the federal government under the Consti- tution. Through the burning glare of its spot light stalk, amble or drift all the distinguished personalities of the age, from George Washington to Fisher Ames. Anyone who wants to discover the spirit that lay behind Jeffersonian democracy simply must read, nay study, this JOURNAL; and anyone who loves rich old lore, like wine in dusty bottles, must make it a familiar companion." — From the introduction by Professor Beard. $4.00 GEORGE JEAN NATHAN "The best achievement in a portrayal of the mean sphere it deals with that I have encountered since the mean tales of Gorki. Tully has got the rawness of life as few American writers have been able to get it, and, with it, a share of poetry and of very shrewd penertation." WILLIAM ALLEN WHITE — in the Emporia, Kans., Gazette "Realism is here — hard, ter- rible realism that will shock the life out of unsophisti- cated readers. . . . For straightaway descriptio n s of unpleasant scenes and primitive peoples this book has no equal in the season's offerings." JAMES STEVENS "This is what Dante would have written if he had travelled with a circus in- stead of through hell. Hel- lishly magnificent." HARRY HANSEN— in the New York World "Jim Tully came to grips with life a long time ago and hung on by his teeth. He has written 'Circus Parade' and it is a wallop. And it's my tip to you that if you want the small-town circus as it was, in a straight-hit- ting fashion, you should get 'Circus Parade.' " iOME on in. See the circus from below. See the faded wanton women, see the Monday men, the thieves, the liars, and the embryo yeggs. Hear the tales that are told. You never saw a circus like this — from the inside. If you have read Beggars of Life, you know what to expect. Illustrated, $2.50 FE OF BUDDHA By A. FERDINAND HEROLD GLEANED from the epics, the poems and the legends of India, this LIFE OF BUDDHA retains all the exquisite beauty of that ancient literature. The author has invented nothing; the life as he traces it from the miraculous birth of the infant Siddhartha to the legendary death of Buddha, is taken from the original texts; but he has used a poet's discretion in the choice of incidents, and while pre- serving color, the atmosphere and the imagery of the original, he has contributed a beauty of form and a poetry of language that is his own. Illustrated, $3.00 Albert & Charles Boni 66 Fifth Avenu *~9 ew York When writing to advertisers please mention The Nation

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260 The Nation [Vol. 125. No. 3245 defendants of the present order as necessarily gross, and the advocates of the new as necessarily idealistic. Mr. Bromfield's equal interest in the individual and in the social scene against which the individual moves is evidence that he has in him the makings of a major novelist. But so far, and the fact is especially marked in this, perhaps the best of his four novels, the two interests work antagonistically, since in his desire to paint a passing social scene of immense significance he makes his characters symbols of the various aspects he wishes to dramatize, destroying them as individuals in order to stand them up against a wall as tendencies and shoot at them. But no sooner does he invade their individuali- ties than they cry out to him that after all they are real people. And because he is a real novelist, he sets them walking on their own feet again for a page or two. The style, which has always been more flowing and rhyth- mical than individual or exact or poignant, has gained con- siderably in this book. And we could ill afford to exchange Mr. B rem field's wide canvas, his verve and his sense of life, for a half-dozen happy phrases. It remains to be seen whether his seeming contentment with the casual or approximate word and his rather hasty and inadequate presentation of many scenes marks a real artistic limitation, or is a natural defect in a man whose characteristic it is to be more interested in a scene as a whole than in its details. For though Blake's dictum that "to generalize is to be an idiot, to particularize is the great distinction of merit" is devastatingly true, it is also true that a great talent gets itself fully into control more slowly than a small precise one; and there is no question in my mind that Mr. Bromfield has great talent as a novelist. Alice Beal Parsons The A B C of Communism Communism. By H. J. Laski. Home University Library. Henry Holt and Company. $1. T N the important series of monographs in the Home University * Library such writers as Lord Hugh Cecil, Professor Hob- house, and Mr. Macdonald have contributed expositions of Con- servatism, Liberalism, and Socialism. Professor Laski, who has already written on Karl Marx, completes this series on politic. 1 parties with distinction by the present volume on Communism. It has been said that to understand a movement one must first sympathize with it, and the earlier books in the series have been written by outstanding members of the parties concerned. It is a high compliment to Professor Laski's ability that, while writing as an avowed critic, he has yet suc- ceeded in leaving no impression that the strength of the Com- munist argument has been understated. For ten years Con- servative journals have been consph-ing with Labor newspapers to advertise the name of Communism; it is fortunate that somebody should be found to expound in a book of brilliant lucidity what the name means. Modern Communism, Professor Laski recognizes, is Marx writ laree; it is the gosnel of Marx and the acts of Lenin. Hence Mr. Laski's treatment of what Engels, in contrast to "scientific Socialism," termed "utopian Socialism" is of the briefest. As a consequence, the book reads as the history not of a dream but of a nrotest. The paradox of Marx is that he was an indi- vidualist by temperament, as much as Plato was an aristocrat. It is the conservative monk who is the practicing Communist. The iron had entered into the soul of this exile, Marx, and it is as a bitter individualist that he took over the smugly individ- ualist assumptions of the classical economists. As a result, his Labor theory of value is better as a demolition of the individu- alistic economy, with its assumption of natural equality of bar- gaining power between men and its further assumption that each man is paid what he is worth, than as a constructive docu- ment. Negatively, it effectively contrasts the optimistic theory with the facts of capitalist society in the middle of the last century. But, positively, its economic theory is as mistaken as Marx's proof that the proletarian revolution would come first in the most highly industrialized countries. Professor Laski has not fallen into the trap which has caught many of the critics of Marx, has not attacked the words of an indifferent economist and allowed the ideas of a prophet less endearing but more important than Mazzini to go unscathed. Similarly negative and uncommunal is Marx's political doc- trine. The facts which confronted Marx were those of the industrial revolution and the fruits of lucre, self-help, and free competition. It was the kind of age when most men would have been in agreement with Sir Ernest Benn. Principles of Eternal Justice, proclaimed by Godwin and Sismondi, were ghostly stuff to turn back the clock of invention which had recorded the passage from an agricultural into an industrial civilization. The distinction is perhaps scarcely clear in Pro- fessor Laski's book between the interpretation of history in terms of the material instruments of civilization and the more ephemeral and rationalistic interpretation, typical of Marx's times, in terms of the psychology of acquisition. But the book lucidly states the doctrine of human bondage to physical needs, and of that competition for the alleviation which wealth can give between those cities of "haves" and "have-nots" into which Lord Beaconsfield divided the contemporary world. Professor Laski endorses Marx's premise of the existence of the conflict of class interests, but he declines to draw Marx's conclusion that the competition must inevitably become fiercer and develop into class-war which, the Leninist wing not illogically maintain, carries the corrollary of violence. The weakness of the constructive and community side of Marxian Communism is shown by the vagueness of the New Age. This, for Marx and Lenin, is to follow when the state, instrument of conventional order and of class oppression, after having been turned by the proletariat against their enemies, the obstinate opulent or the undisciplined anarchist, has accom- plished its last work of destruction and is itself destroyed. Such suggestions as have been made by Trotski — of the first interest in their discussion of such topics as the place of the expert — seem to look forward to an age of American efficiency. Slav self-abnegation, and control by the Russian mujik and town- laborer. The trouble with scientific Communism is that, in its Russian example, it has little chance to be scientific. And, against Bolshevik political strategy, Professor Laski protests with Mr. Bertrand Russell that the intelligent cooperation of Communism is not to be encouraged by engendering the class hate and contest for power of Leninism. Professor Laski has the happy gift of writing important books, and the present is no exception to his practice. By sol- emnly warning us that, unless we give due weight to what is just in the Marxian diagnosis of social ills, we are contribut- ing our little mite to promoting the trial of the drastic Marxian cure, Professor Laski deserves the thanks of all those who are pressing for social research as preliminary to sound diag- nosis and for scientific social reform "in our time" — and in time. George E. G. Catlin A Major Prophet The World in the Making. By Count Hermann Keyserling. New York. Harcourt, Brace and Company. $2.50. T T will be recalled that Count Keyserling, the contemporary * pilgrim of eternity, after satiating his soul with Oriental mysticism, at the end of "The Travel Diary" renounced his allegiance to the East in favor of the Western world of action. "We are the hands of God," he assured us. In the present work he casts his eyes over the creation of these hands and with a far glance down the future pronounces it ultimately good. While his view of culture as the outward expression

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Sept. 14, 1927] The Nation 261 o* m m m. •o ^*> sZ> T(») m m m m [O c:~ -T' (») (») (^ (») («) cap When writing to advertisers please mention The Nation

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262 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3245 of an inner spirit is identical with Spengler's and while he agrees with this arch-pessimist that culture today is everywhere dead or dying, he believes that he can see clearly the phoenix egg of a new birth. Whereas former national and racial organizations wore developed around particularistic religious sanctions of emotional and untransferable character, modern civilization, based upon applied science, is daily proven to be essentially transferable. Relatively independent of tradition, it can be picked up almost over night, as in the case of Japan. This means that a world unity is actually in the making before our eyes. The spirit induced by modern industrialism is world wide. "Since the decline of antiquity no revolution has been equally cataclysmic," and again "The technical is grasped by a larger percentage of all people than any cultural achievement since the Stone Age." This means the triumph of the generally human over the particularistic, over race and nation. The perfervid nationalisms of the present day are doomed in the nature of things. Already since the war super-national blocs of nitherto unheard-of proportions have arisen: the Anglo- Saxon, revolving about London and New York, the Pan-Islamic, the Russian Oriental. The ultimate goal, centuries ahead, is the ecumenic state embracing the whole world. But Keyserling has no fear that this world will remain mechanized. The abstract intellect, which has attained such priority over other activities of the human spirit, is after all only a part of it. The spirit in its essence is irrational, its religious and aesthetic demands per- ennial. In the long run, wearied of its mechanical toys, its external organization stabilized, it will return to a cultivation of itself and a new culture will arise. But this will be a world-culture, the expression of a new type, the world-man. Readers of "The Travel Diary" do not need to be told that such an outline does no justice to the wealth of suggestive and original ideas which Keyserling drops lavishly on every page he writes, or that it overlooks the numerous inconsistencies which are a part of his fertility of thought. But the chief value of this new work lies in its pertinence. Here is a philosopher who has something to say not only about the Abso- lute but about his own generation. Here is a man who in the midst of the greatest revolution in history has some curiosity as to its significance. Whether his specific prophecies be cor- rect or incorrect depends upon how far he himself is the type of the future — for he himself is just this man of the world whose far-off coming he prophecies. Ernest Sutherland Bates A Lyrical Mind The White Rooster. By George O'Neil. Boni and Liveright. $2. HP HE poetry of George O'Neil exhibits a union of two * qualities rarely fused in any epoch and more rarely still in our own. There is enough aseptic and unillusioned intelligence about him to enable him to tread the path of T. S. Eliot if lie wants to. There is enough immediate magic of melody and image to put him in a common realm with Yeats. It is peril- ously easy for a poet to become a mind and cease to be a musician. It is a peril that E. A. Robinson himself has not always avoided. And poets with a gift for singing and for pictures often lack the detachment of the equipment for thought. "The White Rooster" seems to me a notable volume, first of all because it sings with a vital and insistent music. But its song is song with a substance and its substance is that of a questioning and unmitigated inter'gence. I think most readers will be struck by the song and the energy before they are arrested by the mind. The title poem is an evocation of that positive color of life which is the peculiar domain of poetry : Ah God: to have a breast like that To throw at day, Thrust for the hands of dawn To quiver and flare upon. With a bloody flag sewn in your head, And a hook of gold to end you. And all yourself an arch. And your soul a white cascade. Ah God! stab upward with your Tear at the sky! With his spine a tilted flame. And tht- day gone molten down his throat What singer could not make one song As tine as Are? But if they are careful, they will discover a significant crackling in the flame. It is the sound of a modern and skeptical mind, singing instead of sobbing, and remaining, though skeptical, upon a major and vital note. There is an almost brazen stab and hurt of beauty in the lines and in the consciousness of this poet, who can also write: Silence shall rim the darkness that descends To wander blindly over ruined land. Where no word falters between thwarted friends And no pathetic lover lifts his hand. ''Events" is a kind of inverse ironic history written by an unfooled observer who sees the toad on Napoleon's path, the raindrop that falls on Cleopatra, and the thrush that sings while Tristan and Isolde sleep. Mr. O'Neil keeps his eyes clearly on the edged and vivid surfaces of things, he keeps his voice limpid and his mind clear. A poet who can do that demands attention. A poet who can do that should not permit himself ever, as Mr. O'Neil does on a few occasions, to be obscure. Irwin Edman Superior History History of Eyiglaiid. By George Macaulay Trevelyan. Long- mans, Green and Company. $4.25. HTHIS book will never be a rival of the other one-volume textbooks of English history on the market, since it con- fesses to a series of Lowell Lectures as a point of departure and is written by one of the few men now alive who not only can but invariably do write history which is also literature. The author presupposes, it is true, both information and inter- est which the American student probably lacks, but there is more than adequate compensation for this in the superior workmanship of the volume as a whole and in its charming style. It is an understanding book. The era of Celt, Saxon and Dane is like Macbeth's bat- tle on the blasted heath. Prophecy hovers around. Horns are heard blowing in the mist, and a confused uproar of savage tumult and outrage. We catch glimpses of giant figures— mostly warriors at strife. But there are plough- men, too. it seems, breaking the primeval clod, and we hear the sound of forests crashing to the axe. Around all is the lap of waves and the cry of seamen beaching their ships. It is a book of enthusiasms. The zest of the author for his task is patent in his accounts of the Vikings and of the Normans; lie warms to his subject visibly in his brief but penetrating sketches of Wyclif, Cromwell, Marlborough, the great Whigs, Wilberforce, and in his quiet estimate of Victoria. Moreover, it is a fair-minded book, well informed, always intelligent, very frequently stimulating. The author knows his Chaucer and his Shakespeare as well as he knows Parliamentary statutes and the latest monographs, and uses them as freely.

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Sept. 14, 1927] The Nation 263 He stubbornly clings to his earlier view that the Lollard move- ment persisted until the sixteenth century. He is equally at home in the corporate life of the Middle Ages, in the towns and villages of the seventeenth century, and in the England of the Industrial Revolution. The chapters devoted to the Stuarts are perhaps the best in the book, as might be expected, but those dealing with the Tudors and with the earlier Hano- verians are not less brilliant. Finally, it is a sustained book (it is hardly the author's fault that the nineteenth century is something of an anticlimax in English history), and it is a teachable book, by reason both of its intelligent organization accompanied by very skilful subordination of detail and because of its numerous and excellent maps. A few quotations, though selected at random, will suffice to give the flavor of the book. "If Alfred's lot was cast in narrower geographical limits than the Napoleonic area of Charlemagne's activities, his work has lasted longer." "Green earth forgets — when the school-master and the historian are not on the scene." "Our constitution was the child of Feudalism married to the Common Law." "Pym and Cromwell had to tread the path of revolution to procure the armed force which the Parliamentarians of the Middle Ages normally and legally possessed." "Her [Elizabeth's] bold decisions are few and can be numbered, but each of them began an epoch." "English king worship was the secret of a family and the spirit of an age." "The riddle of Oliver must be read not in his mutable opinions but in his constant character." "Nelson is the best- loved name in English ears." "In the earlier scene, man's impotence to contend with nature made his life brutish and brief. Today his very command over nature, so admirably and marvelously won, has become his greatest peril. Of the future the historian can see no more than others. He can only point like a showman to the things of the past, with their manifold and mysterious message." Sidney R. Packard Books in Brief International Problems. By Tommaso Tittoni. London: Simp- kin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent. 10/6. The President of the Italian Senate has been making official and political speeches during a long and honorable career. Those conserved in this volume no doubt served an excellent purpose at the opening of various sessions of the Italian Senate and on other official occasions. Reprinted, they serve to show how impeccable sentiments may be expressed in the finest oratory and merely fall on the air. On economic subjects Signor Tittoni is as correct as on all others. Only in one, strangely companioned with its bedfellows, does a human being break through when discarding form Signor Tittoni makes a long speech full of gossipy interest about Stendhal on the occasion of unveiling a memorial to him. The book is avowedly published to help to an understanding of Fascism. It does show that a great European Liberal could go on mak- ing the same speeches before Mussolini seized power and after. But an air of correct ineffectiveness that pervades it hints at a cause for the exasperation which helped to make Mussolini what he is. Wolf Song. By Harvey Fergusson. Alfred A. Knopf. $2.50. "Wolf Song" begins with Sam Lash and two other mountain men riding from their winter beaver trapping into Taos — riding to "white liquor," "brown, willing women," and "fat eating and store fixings." It ends with Sam Lash in primordial embrace with Lola Salazar, daughter of Castilian grandees. "Antagonists who could neither triumph, they struggled in a grip neither could break." Wolf songs are always about women, and this one the reader has no desire to break away from. It shivers to the marrow and throbs to the sky. On the one hand it depicts the struggle between "You Must Have Years on Shorthand" No; I Learned it in 6 WEEKS!" TTER employer laughed aloud. ks! You're joking. Miss *-•*■ Baker. No one could learn shorthand in six weeks. You have been with us about a month and you are by far the most compe- tent secretary I ever had. Surely you don't expect me to believe that you gained your present speed and accuracy in only six weeks! W hy— a great many of our stenographers have studied shorthand for ten months or a year or more and still they make a great many errors." "That isn't their fault. Mr. Chapman. Old fashioned shorthand requires month of hard study and practice and even when it is mastered it is difficult to read. But Speedwriting is very easv I—" "Speedwriting? What's that?" For answer the girl handed the big business man her notebook "Why, this is remarkable, Miss Baker. It's in simple A. B C.'s"' "Yes. surely. That's how I learned it so quickly. Anyone can learn Speedwriting. There are only a few easv rules. There are no hooks or curves; every 'character' you use is a letter vou already know — one that your hand needs no special training to make " "Well, that's the most remarkable thing I ever heard of. I could use that myself at board meetings and a dozen other places You can write it rapidly too "One boy I know who studied Speedwriting in his own home took court testimony at the rate of 106 words a minute after only 15 hours of study." "Miss Baker, where can I rature en Speedwriting? I really believe I'll take it up myself!" Two months later Mr. Chapman and all his stenographers were Speedwriti 'Snee^wrJ, ~* *r/ie^fuRAL%HORtHAND Tens of thousands have been freed from of the old- fashioned methi rning and writing shorthand by this mar- velous new system, which may be written with a pencil or on a typewriter; can be 1. Mined in a third the tii ter anv other system; is mon written with amazing rapidity. .Mail the oupon tonight. It will bring you an illustrated book full of examples and stories of successful Speedwriters all over the world. No matter what your need for shorthand may be -vou can fill that 1 writing. BRIEF ENGLISH SYSTEMS, Inc. 200 Madison Ave., Dept. 152J Also Of" 1415 Royal Bank Building Toronto. O) New York City - - ■tiith Square England Brief English Systems, Inr. 200 Madison Ave., Dept. 152J, New York City. I do want to know wore about Speedwriting. You may send me the free book without obliyatii>n on my part. Name Address City When writing to advertisers please mention The Nation

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264 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3245 mountain men and relentless nature; on the other hand, be- tween Anglo-Saxon frontiersman and Spanish pride and breed- ing— the theme Mr. Harvey Fergusson worked out so w0. When Wesley Mitchell contributed his. volume on "Bus ed the sm i Big Business in respectable statistical terms. Since 1 economists have busied themselves in gathering stantiate or disprove his principles. It may be said that his challeri ted the demand for accurate st; . This volume is a:: atteni] p a technique for ,ur and presen the facts of employment. The study ods by which such em ed, the necessity of checking up such statistics with va- as trade unions and employment offices, and hi, ally the nee presenting the results n a form avail- '>usin ss man, social worker, and is an excellent outline for any government secure accurate data on tnent. Wine, Women, and War; a Diary of Disillusionment. Anony- mous. J. H. Sears and Company. $2. Too had that it is not as illegal to mislabel a bo 'k as a bottle of catsup, Stripped of lurid title and misleading jacket, this volume would have a much better chance to reach its proper audience. Its contents will disa] lekers for sensation and ho want exciting and colorful nar where; into Hervey Allen's splendid "Toward the Flami But veterans who are not y by its ,i here what they hav 1; an unedited and unexpurgated diary of life in the American S. 0. S. in France. T with ji aining, saw various service and had unusual n. The reviewer, whose experience points, can vouch for the au- of certain incidents and of the initials which e rs and p es. Here in.i Main I I the A. E. F., at the rear wl. others. Pet yances and "1 rumors mingle with penetrating nation- :,1 politics; war h French interpn ers Y. M C. I and the temptations of wine and women vary a life that is for the such materials the historian must form his unbiased es1 of the American military effort. M US1C The Tail Wags the Dog COME of the music performed today, the music of B k" notably, is old enough to have been written for ii that are now no longer used. Of necessity this mu formed with modern instruments which produce a ferent from the original. Again, some of this o supers from limitations imposed by instruments v. since lost many of these limitations. Thus, we find in the score of :: '■•'" symphony a theme played by all of a number of instruments in unison except the horn which, re- aOHE^JEEBESnOE We like THE NATION We like HEYWOOD MOUN So of course ive are mightily pleased at the announcement of A Broun Page Every Week in The Nation Now THE NATION readers and Mr. Hrounwill be mightily pleased with the aew biography bhn Paul Jones c^: cy ^D Man qf<iActio?7 : by Phillips Russell G-Xoi- i-o wing his book "Benjamin Franklin: qJ The First Civilized American", the author has chosen as his new subject a famous figure entirely opposite in temperament to the philos- opher and sage. This new biography contains surprising material of a romantic nature and corrects many errors into which previous biographers have fallen. Naval and diplomatic archives in America, France, and Russia furnished the new material on which this swift narrative is based. It deals particularly with the influence of cele- brated women of Europe and America on John Patil Jones' career and reveals a phase of his lite which has hitherto been obscure. Written with all the flavor and charm of the Franklin biography, with even more intimate revelations of a truly great ■^^ American character, it is far more fyl fascinating than any fiction. rated with reproductions from lino- ngravings b\ Leon Underwood. j At .ill bookstores $5.00] ■^ ft Whtn - ii.. \ andbkVuAVdittftigar.'jgAi

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Sept. 14, 1927] The Nation 265 iterates a single note; and it is obvious that Beethoven is bowing to the limitations of the horn of his day. Therefore, since today the horn can play the theme, it does. Occasionally, however, the difficulty is created by the com- poser's inability to make use of even such resources as are available. Schumann, for example, has been criticized for ob- scuring important themes, or dulling what should be brilliant sonorities, by poor combinations of instrumental timbres. This is not so obvious as one might suppose from the criticism, be- cause the noticeably bad places must be comparatively few, and because the works are played by fine-sounding orchestras under skilful conductors who improve passages by adjusting the loudness of the various instruments or even by altering the orchestration. It was almost inevitable that someone should suggest doing a complete job. "Such fine, noble themes, good workmanship, and yet such abominably poor orchestration," Theodore Thomas said to Frederick Stock (says Mr. Stock) after a performance of the third or Rhenish symphony. "All of Schumann's four symphonies should be re-scored, but espe- cially this one." And this one was indeed finally re-scored by Mr. Stock, who introduced the new version to his Chicago audience in 1921. Critical comment was favorable: I recall that Mr. Aldrich approved mildly in the New York Times. I recall, moreover, being struck, in Mr. Aldrich's report, by the fact that Mr. Stock had not merely re-distributed the notes of Schumann's music among different instruments, but had actually changed and added to the musical substance. Why, when Schumann's workmanship had been praised and only his use of orchestral timbres criticized? Mr. Stock's ver- sion, now that I have heard it at a Stadium concert in New York, does not constitute an answer; the changes in musical substance are unnecessary or positively objectionable. One is aware that Mr. Stock "has not omitted to avail himself of such opportunities as arise for contrapuntal embellishment in the various orchestral voices, these, however, growing out of the material which Schumann originated." This is absurd, ob- viously: it is for Schumann to decide, as he may be presumed to have done, not only what material to use, but just how it should be used. And this applies even more to the coda which Mr. Stock substitutes for Schumann's own, using Schumann's material. At the close Mr. Stock introduces the main theme of the first movement, which Schumann seems quite able to do for himself, since just previously he has introduced the theme of the penultimate movement. And at the beginning of this movement — in accordance with his astonishing practice of add- ing "a measure here and there in order to give greater clarity to Schumann's thought" — Mr. Stock places an introductory measure, "so that the enunciation of the theme of the move- ment, somewhat clouded in Schumann's version, may be made more apparent to the ear." Again, the possibility can hardly have failed to suggest itself to Schumann, and his decision to begin abruptly should stand. For Mr. Stock does not make the theme clearer with his introductory measure ; he only weakens it. He also weakens the climax of the passage by splitting an introductory quarter-note into two eighth-notes. And throughout one catches similar alterations of rhythm, dis- placements of accents and other types of what one can call nothing better than unnecessary petty meddling. Now, therefore, even more than when I read his account, I am struck by the approval of Mr. Aldrich, who ordinarily reveals acute distress over even a literal transcription of a Bach organ fugue by Mr. Stokowski. I am struck, that is. by another example of our critics' preoccupation with everything except the musical result that alone concerns them. For Mr. Stokowski is the bad boy among conductors, while Mr. Stock is a good boy. There appears, then, to be an important dis- tinction between a man who draws attention to himself with a spotlight and one who does it by meddling with a com- poser's music. The distinction may be hard to make, but it must be there, for Mr. Aldrich and his colleagues are guided by it. B. H. Haggin mes 14,250 pages — Exactly dupli- cating the contents of the fa- mous St. Hubert Guild Edition which sold for as much as $2500! FOR years there has been no adequate edition of the Complete Works of Voltaire in Eng- lish. Voltaire lovers have been forced to pay high prices for used sets of the St. Hubert Guild Edition or to be content with incomplete or abridged translations of a few of his best known titles. Now for the first time since that edition was ex- hausted— you can own every word Voltaire ever wrote. His romances, poems, Philosophical Dic- tionary, criticism, essays, and dramas in a beautiful new edition. Strictly Limited Edition Sumptuous format; printed on clear spring laid antique paper; bold, easily read type; photogravure illustration. THE AROUET EDITION of the Complete Works of Voltaire is limited to 500 numbered sets for subscribers only. .Already the orders are pouring in. To be sure of your set quick action is necessary. Mail the coupon at once for lull description of this magnificent Voltaire and Special Pre-publication price. DINGWALL-ROCK, LTD. 45 West45th Street, Dept. 19, New York City DINGWALL-ROCK, LTD. 45 West 45th Street, Drpt. 19 New York City Please send me, without obligation, the circular describing the Arouet Edition of Voltaire and particulars of the Special Pre-publica- tion Offer! Name , Address City ...... State.. When writing to advertisers please mention The Nation

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International Relations Section The Soviet Opposition 11 HE plenary session of the Central Committee and the Central Control Committee of the Soviet Union Com- munist Party on August 9 adopted a resolution dealing with the situation created in the party by the activities of the opposition groups under the leadership of Trotsky and Zmo- viev. The resolution and a declaration submitted to the session by the loading members of the opposition was pub- lished in the Moscow press on August 10. The resolution, after recounting the story of the oppo- sition and its factional activities, which are declared to have constituted a violation of the party discipline, reads in par* : The combined plenum of the Central Committee and the Central Control Committee draws the attention of the party to the fact that the opposition, due to its factional activities against the party, has become objectively the center for rallying anti-party and anti-Soviet forces and that its disorganizing activities are counted upon by the internal and external counter- revolution. The party, in the course of a number of years, has dis- played the greatest tolerance and patience, having repeatedly warned the opposition in an effort to induce its leaders to submit to party discipline. However, the recent acts of Trotsky and Zinoviev show that, after having exhausted all means of warning, the party has not succeeded in inducing the leaders of the opposition to submit to the will of the party; that the opposition leaders have flagrantly and systematically violated the very bases of party adherence and party discipline which are obligatory for each party member, no matter who he may be; that the opposi- tion, led by the opposition members of the Central Committee, is carrying on factional activities undermining the unity of the party and leading toward a split. The resolution on the unity of the party adopted at the Tenth Congress makes it obligatory for the plenum of the Central Committee and the Central Control Committee to put the qutition not only of expelling the frank disrupters and disorganizes of the party and of the Comintern from the Cen- tral Committee, but of expelling them from the party as well. Nevertheless, the praesidium of the Central Control Commit- tee, in its desire to give the leaders of the opposition an oppor- tunity to correct their errors and to renounce their offenses against the party, proposed only the expulsion of the Comrades Trotsky and Zinoviev from the Central Committee. Moreover, the praesidium of the Central Control Commit- tee and the combined plenum of the Central Committee and the Central Control Committee, in their desire to give the opposi- tion leaders the opportunity to find a way out of the blind alley whither their policies had driven them and to facilitate the cause of peace in the party, have made a last attempt to pre- serve Comrades Trotsky and Zinoviev in the Central Coir. and offered them a number of elementary conditions which are absolutely obligatory upon members of the Bolshevist Party and indispensable for the maintenance of peace in the party. . . . However, notwithstanding the attitude of compromise adopted by the plenum of the C.C. and the C.C.C., and the mildness of the conditions, the leaders osition de- clined to adopt these conditions. Only when the combined plenum of *-he C.C. and the C.C.C. were compelled by this refusal to adopt in principle the resolu- tion on the expulsion of Comrades Trotsky and Zinoviev from the Central Committee of the party, did the opposition con- sent to retract, renounce a number of errors, and agree in though with reservations, to the proposal of the plenum of the C.C. and C.C.C. and to make the corresponding declaration. In view of this, the combined plenum of the Central Com- mittee and Central Control Committee have decided to table the question of the expulsion of Comrades Zinoviev and Trotsky from the Central Committee and to reprimand them with a stern warning. The combined plenum of the C.C. and C.C.C. expects that this may prove a step forward toward establishing peace in the party. However, the plenum of the C.C. and C.C.C. is far from considering the "declaration" of the opposition an act sufficient to secure the necessary peace in the party. The plenum of the C.C. and C.C.C. demands that the op- position immediately dissolve their faction and it calls upon all organizations and all members of the party to adopt all measures for the liquidation of factions, factional groups, and factional activities. The Declaration of the Opposition The declaration submitted by the opposition follows in part : Without entering into the polemic form in which the ques- tions have been put, we are substantially answering them. To the first question: We are unconditionally and with- out reservation for the defense of our Socialist country against imperialism. Of course, we are unconditionally and without reservation for the defense of the USSR with the present Central Committee and the present Executive Com- mittee of the Comintern in power. If that particular part of Trotsky's letter wherein he refers to Clemenceau might have given any cause for an incorrect interpretation as meaning a struggle for power through mak- ing use of war difficulties, we categorically decline such in- terpretation. At the same time we maintain our conviction that, in time of war, the party cannot renounce criticism and refrain from amending the policy of the Central Committee should it prove incorrect. . . . On the question of termidorianism [a movement toward the right] we declare : There are elements of termidorianism growing up in this country with a fairly firm foundation. We do not doubt that the party and the proletariat will overcome these forces by following the lines of Lenin and through the inner-party democracy. What we demand is that the party leadership should more firmly and systematically oppose these tendencies and their influence upon certain links within our party. We in no sense declare that our Bolshevist party, or its C.C. and C.C.C. have become termidorian. To the second question: We acknowledge that there is a danger of a split and the creation of two parties in the Communist movement in Germany. While submitting to the decision of the Comintern and agreeing that it is not permis- sible to maintain organizational bonds with the expelled Urbans Maslow group, we at the same time propose, and we shall in- sist in the Comintern, that the decision on the expulsion be revised in view of the fact that there are among the expelled hundreds of old revolutionary workers closely connected with the working masses, devoted to the cause of Lenin and sincere in their readiness to defend the USSR to the end To the third question: We categorically condemn every attempt to create a new party. We consider the road toward the creation of a second party in the USSR as absolutely de- structive to the revolution. We shall oppose with all our force and in every way every tendency toward two parties. We con- demn just as absolutely and categorically the policy of a split. We will carry out all the decisions of the Ail-Union Com- munist Party and its Central Committee. We are prepared to do everything to avoid all the elements of factions which have been created through the fact that, under conditions where the

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Sept. 14, 1927] The Nation 267 inner-party regime has been perverted, we have been compelled to fight to bring to the attention of the party our actual views, and these views have been incorrectly represented in the press of the country as a whole. (Signed) Avdeev, Bakaev, Evdokimov, Zinoviev, Kam- enev, llzdin, muralov, peterson, platakov, Rakovsky, Smilga, Soloviov, Trotsky. August 8, 1927. Soviet Courts THE following account of the workings of the courts in the Soviet Union is taken from a longer compilation assembled by Myron Zaslaw after a recent visit to the USSR: The people's court consists of one judge appointed for one year, but practically for good behavior. The purpose of the courts is to strengthen the gains of the revolution, to defend the working class against the onsets of conscious and uncon- scious enemies, and to inculcate respect for revolutionary laws. They are frankly and avowedly class courts. They are mild and sympathetic toward offenders from the peasants' and labor- ing classes so long as the crimes are due to social causes, in- heritances of the long sad past of oppression, ignorance, bigotry, poverty, weakness, and disease. They are stern with criminals who ought to know better, especially if the crimes can tx? even remotely construed as directed against the dictatorship. In adjudicating civil cases or cases of assault and battery and the like, they are very fair and tolerant. But in law-suits involv- ing merchants or individual entrepreneurs versus workingmen or against public enterprises, the judges show scant sympathy for the former and seldom indeed decide in their favor. Every- one is free to employ a lawyer or many lawyers and in case of grave charges free legal counsel is given the accused. The judges are workingmen, usually Communists. Most of them are not only honest and conscientious, but are very studious and, after a few years' service, display remarkable sagacity and knowledge of law. The word "illegitimacy" has been dropped from the Russian lexicon. All children, born in or out of wedlock alike, have the rights and duties in and the claims upon society and family. Both parents must contribute to their support. But the diffi- culty of maintaining the child if repudiated by the father and the stigma still attaching to an unmarried mother in con- servative circles have been the causes of many infants killed. It seems best to give three illustrations culled from the news- papers. A girl of nineteen, loving and loved by a young man, marries him and confesses being pregnant from an earlier lover. The husband pardons her and decides to adopt the baby. The pair quarrel often and the unfortunate bride, unable to bear his reproaches and vituperation, rejoins her parents. They are too poor to support her and the baby, and the young woman returns to her husband only to resume the terrible squabbles and bickerings. At the end of her wits, she decides to slay the baby and do away with herself. She forces prussic acid into the baby's mouth. Horrified at the infant's agony, the wretch runs with it to a hospital where it dies within two days. She is tried, confesses all, and tells the story of her sufferings to the court, which imposes a sentence of eight years without loss of her legal rights, as provided by law for infanticide. But considering the punishment too severe as a social measure. the judge on the spot commutes it to one month, which is re- deemed by her preliminary imprisonment before the trial. She is free. An intelligent woman of twenty-five kills her baby six weeks old because its father was infected with syphilis and she dreads the consequences to the innocent being. The judge sen- tences her to eight years, but commutes it to three years with strict isolation. The appellate division annuls the penalty as Li THEATERS □ THEATRE GUILD ACTING CO. £ SECOND MAN r^TTTT n Thea., W. 52d St. Evs. 8:40. UUIL/L' Mats. Thu is. & Sat., 2:40. 34th WEEK THE ACTORS' THEATRE. Inc. Guthrie McClintic, Director presents Maxwell Anderson's Comedy SATURDAY'S CHILDREN "Best American play of the vear." — Gabriel, Sun. DHATU Thea., W. 45 St. Eves.. 8:30". DW 1 fl Matinees Wed. & Sat., 2:30. THE GRAND STREET 44th Street West of Broadway H C j!,], I HyO Evgs. 8:30. Matinees Thurs. & Sat. ^^ "Owe cannot find anywhere in New York more clever ideas, more fresh satire or more verve."— Joseph Wood Krittch in Tho Nation. Little Theatre □ TRAVEL □ "See Russia for your self." See SOVIET RUSSIA Second Tour Eight Weeks October 14 to December 15, 1927 LONDO N - HELSINGFORS - LENINGRAD - MOSCOW An oi portunity to celebrations witness of thtt (du- ll,id I. Visiting delegates expected from all countries limit our number to one hundred. APPLY IMMEDIATELY FOR RESERVATIONS WORLD TOURISTS, Inc 69 Fifth Avenue New York City Algonquin 6900 When writing to advertisers please mention Thi> Nation

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268 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3245 socially unnecessary. The supreme court sustains the court of appeals and the girl is once more a free citizen. A high school student of nineteen, herself an illegitimate daughter, become pregnant, but completes her studies, and then gives birth to the baby, whom she registers in the name of its father. The latter, however, repudiates them both, and, unable to earn a living for the two, the girl strangles the child. The verdict is guilty, but the sentence of eight years is commuted by the trial judge to nine months in view of the father's cal- lousness and the general prejudice against unmarried mothers. The court of appeals recommends a suspended sentence of three years and is confirmed by the highest court. The murderess is set free. The following case we were so fortunate as to hear in a typical small town on the Volga. Two high school boy-, of peasants, seventeen and seventeen and a half years, respec- tively, are accused of wilful swindle. In a strange town, far frm their pauper parents who cannot give them any support, and at the end of their resources, they concoct a scheme to get money. The older of the two boys — shifty, sly eyes, weak chin — is the brain of the concern. He manages to steal a stamp of the cashier of a large cooperative store and the younger, a good mechanic, makes a copy of it. The stamp is then returned to the store. One day the two enter the store, buy SO rubles' worth of textiles, stamp and initial the sales slip, receive the goods, and dispose of them to a "fence." Elated at their suc- cess, they return to the shop to repeat the operation the next day. They are apprehended and brought before the judge. They are paroled and ordered to appear for trial in three months. The younger, a nice but weak lad, continues to go to school and keeps his word, but the older one fails to put in an ap- pearance. The trial is- postponed for three months and still he fugi- tive boy is absent. He is arrested in another town, kept in prison for two months and liberated again, but must report to the police regularly. Finally, for the third time, the trial is fixed for September and both defendants are present. The only outsiders are ourselves and a half-dozen schoolmates of the accused. The trial lasted about half an hour. The charge was read to the accused. They were asked their ages, social status, details of their lives. Our sympathy was with the younger boy. He shed tears and was really repentant. He told of a poor mother with small children and a ne'er-do-well father, of harrowing poverty, of hunger, of unpaid rent which was only a few cents a month. The judge suggested that he should have confided in his teachers, who certainly would have helped him. He pointed out what a bad thing swindle was for a youth. The younger boy had in the meantime finished high school and taken the entrance examinations to the poly- technicum, but, harassed by the thought of the coming trial, he failed. He begged the judge to forgive him, not ti him to jail, he promised to be honest. The older boy was far more hardened, but he, too, feigned tears and p After fifteen minutes' consultation, most of which must have been taken up in writing out the verdict in long hand, irt re- turned and announci en men. year, which he immediately reduced to nine months and five months, respectively, on account of the you Further considering that it was their first oil'. t they repented, and that the older boy had been confined for two months, the judge declared the sentences suspended for years. This means, as the judge explains, that the accused are set free, but if within three years they an another crime they will have to serve the above sentence in addition to whatever other penalty they may incur. An immense number of people in Russia have prison walls in the last five years. We met dozens who had violated the innumerable and continually laws against private commerce, speculation, and the like who had suffered penalties. Although the c Just Published Walter Llppmaric's New Book Men o£ Destiny Illustrated by Rollin Xirby NEW view of the Ameri e by the editor d artist who make the editorial page of the /f NE AV-;- V > ' World one of the most piquant and ill in America. Al Smith, H. L. Mencken, Calvin Coolidge. Sinclair Lewis. il'rah, Bryan, Wilson and House a - in new perspectives in Mr. Lippmai racter etchings. Incisive issues of the next president1::! campaign are presented with illuminating clarity in several chapters. The whole hook is one that will apt ntly to intelligent men who make any effort t" keep informed on the main currents of our national lite. The scene above from Mencken's well-known cyclone foundry i- typical of Mr. Kirby's illustrations. Regular edition $2. SO Autographed edition $5.00 The MacmiKlan Company New York New Vanguard Titles Full Size, Well Printed, Clothbound Daughterof the Revolution, and other Stories. John Reed. Introduction by Floyd Dell. i, passionate love and re- bellious lite, found on the streets of New York, among camp followers of Balkan soldiers, in Mex- ico, in the underworld cafes of Paris, form the rial of these it. tensely human stories. The A B C of Art. John Haldane Blackie. Art need net be the exclusive privilege of the in- ntsia. In clear and simple language, devoid of t.e: irgon, the author of this book ex- plains the rudiments of aesthetic understanding and appreciation. Company Unions. Robert W. Dunn. Intro- duction by Louis F. Budcnz. the literature of the labor move idy of this newest de- and shows why f.i\ or it. Kropotkin's Revolutionary Pamphlets. Peter Kropotkin. Edited, with Introduction, by Roger N. B a Idic in. A rare and lection of the powerful writ- : kin which have exerted a tie: " »m social and political life, first time in book form. 50c Each— At all Booksellers By Mail 55c each, including free catalogue VANGUARD PRESS, 80 Fifth Ave., New York The Nation

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Sept. 14, 1927] The Nation 269 same crime or misdemeanor, everything from suspended sen- tence to the extreme punishment, i.e., death, depending upon the attendant circumstances, age, and character of the defendant, his social status and antecedents, as a rule penalties are very- light, as indeed they have always been in Russia, even under the czars. If the judges find extenuating circumstances, the punishments are the minimum permitted. Trustworthy first offenders often leave the prison and attend to affairs in town during the day, returning to confinement at night. Sometimes, after reporting to the keepers, they may even sleep outside. The prison term thus becomes nominal; it is reduced one-third or one-half for good behavior, while amnesties, especially on November 7, the anniversary of the October revolution, sets hosts of prisoners free. The utmost simplicity and dignity pervade the shabby court rooms with their uncarpeted floors, wooden benches, and uncurtained windows that are seldom used for ventilation. The doors are open and anybody may come in, quietly. Accused, witnesses, and the general public sometimes come in ragged, dirty, unshaven, barefoot. They do not have to remove their headgear, but they are not allowed to smoke or talk. The court sits behind a plain table on a rude, low platform without bars. Contributors to This Issue Heywood Broun, formerly writer of the column It Seems to Me in the New York World, is the author of several books. The latest, a collaboration with Marga- ret Leech, is "Anthony Comstock, Roundsman of the Lord." Hilton Butler is the Washington correspondent of the Jackson (Mississippi) Daily News. Jessie Stephen is known for her interest in the advance- ment of women. Madefrey Odhner is a California poet. Aldrich Blake, a resident of Oklahoma City, was execu- tive counsellor to ex-governor Walton. Harrison Dowd is a young American poet. Wynant Davis Hubbard is a resident of Rhodesia, Africa. Pierre Loving is an American poet and journalist living in Paris. Alter Brody is a New York poet, critic, and playwright. Carleton Beals is the author of "Brimstone and Chili." Alice Beal Parsons frequently reviews novels for The Nation. George E. G. Catlin is the author of "The Science and Method of Politics." Irwin Edman is assistant professor of philosophy at Columbia University and author of several volumes. Ernest Sutherland Bates is on the staff of the Dic- tionary of American Biography. B. H. Haggin is a New York musician and critic of music. Do you w ant to make extra money ? • Address Dept. 1! i The Nation 20 Vesey Street New York DON'T MISS IT! WORTH READING AMERICA COMES OF AGE $ (Reg. $3.00) _ Post ■ Paid THE NEXT AGE OF MAN S^ 59 (Reg. $3.00) Post Paid WHY WE BEHAVE LIKE HUMAN BEINGS (Reg. $3.50) BOUQUET (Illustrated) (Reg. $3.50) REVOLT OF MODERN YOUTH (Reg. $3.00) MOTHER INDIA (Reg. $3.75) ALL $2.50 FICTION— $(.98 Post Paid ALL $2.00 FICTION— $1.59 Post Paid STE3ETE' Handsomely bound, illustrated copy of "firnold Bennett", ■ B»tfc an intimate biography by his wife, will be included gratis with each order for six or more books. Send your order today. Small additional charge on C. O. D.'s 10c additional West of Mississippi Ask for our new catalog BOOK -LOVERS LEAGUE Dept. N9I5 405 LEXINGTON AVENUE NEW YORK, N. Y. <~pHE Background of the SACCO and VANZETTI case can best be under- -*- stood when one is familiar with the hysteria prevailing at the time of their arrest. The best story of that period is THE DEPORTATIONS DELIRIUM OF 1920 By Louis F. Tost, Assistant Secretary of Labor of the U. S. from 1913 to 1921. $1.50 postpaid. CHARLES H. KERR &. CO., 317 East Ohio Street, Chicago Buy Books Where Libraries Buy — Save Money Our business is primarily with Public Libraries, but thousand of individuals also buy from us. No order too small. Tear this out as a reminder to send for our 60-page catalogue listing hundreds of splendid titles on all subjects, nearly all at discounts of 60%. Delivered by mail new and \ crisp. We pay transportation. Learn a new way to buy books. CAMPBELL & LEUNIG, INC. Formerly The R.aail Co. Dept. 35S', 4 East 12th Street, New York MISCELLANEOUS REAL HARRIS HOMESPUNS ^iJ^. Suit Lengths Cut to Order. NEWALL, 150 Stornoway, Scotland. Makers Price Postage Paid Write for patterns stalmK shades desired When writing to advertisers please mention The Nation

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270 The Nation [Vol. 125. No. 3241 SCHOOLS THE LITTLE WHITE SCHOOLHOUSE Valley Cottage, N. Y. AN informal school in the country one hour from New York for children from five to seven. Boarding pupils limited to six in number. Aunes DE Lima, director Tel. Nyack 675 W Valley Cottage, N. Y. tf feiiita i# tuMcSc bm 4 Church School for American Hoy preparing for American Colleges. Wholesome country life organized in a historic feudal c American standards of hygiene and diet; yearly tuition *1.20c • "ll! sports prog! b ■ . inclu' The ftt Rev. Charles H. Brent, l<;shop of American Church-'- io Europ* i- of Board of Trust* Address: Mr. Courad Chapman, Head Master, eau-Neuvic, Neuvic-sur-1'Isle, Dordogrne, Franc- Prepamtonf SCHOOL STATE DANKBlDt; • HFTH AVENUE IT :■'- STREET Telephone UNlveraity 614'J REGENTS ::COLLEGE ENTRANCE COMMERCIAL! Pre-eminent in faculty — Strong in Equipment — A keen school for those who want good teaching — Co-Ed. Moderate Tuitioyi Fees DAY and EVENING SESSIONS Catalogue upon request. HESSLXN HILLS SCHOOL I Formerly Mt. Airy Scliool) A Little School in the country where boys and girls from 2-12 years may live and grow in a world not only of text books. Elizabeth Moos director Croton-on-Hudson. N. Y. PERSONAL Diogenes with a lantern! A freelance with a style and a vision, of whom another said, "I would sell my soul to be able to write as you can." is looking for a publisher or per- son of independent means who could see any fun in hiring him (at about half of what a good me- chanic gets ) to give his entire time to producing along the lines of his own bent: said backer to take lion's share of such credits and profits as may ensue. Address, WRITER, Box 86, Verdugo City, Calif. Throw A.way Your Glasses And Better Your Sight Every wearer of Glasses Should read this book "Perfect Sight Without Glasses" By W. H. BATES, M.D. The author of this book presents evidence that all errors of re- fraction are caused by strain — and cured by rest and relaxation. A complete method of treatment is described so clearly that the reader can u -aid his glasses and improve his vision. Sold at leading bookstores. Price S . The Central Fixation Publ. Co. Dept. 5, 383 Madison Avenue, New York ' Without Glasses." ] -. arrires. If I am not convini urn the book and jo'i will refund ruy p.. Same CAMP BUSINESS OPPORTUNITY Investor and Executive Wanted ol the stork of attractive 1 in New York which has been cause my time was taken up wii come investor with $5,000 willii full time and share executive resp Will three important things to ensure ill cancel $5,000 of my own investmei not to burden the business with addi- tion : second will submit a plan of i m experience that will bring immed suits, provided this advertisement man or woman and m< all other particulars on app ^7(;, <-, The Nal PERSONAL HOI SE FOR RENT pHILOSOPHY student please reply. I am en- coring to organize a small philosophical cir- cle of live or si\ sincere lovers of the "dear d are a reader of philosophical literature and • metaphysical discussion, write to box 787, TIMBERLAND LV THE HEART OF THE ADIRONDACKS The Camp Purposely Limited to a Congenial Group of 4C Bungalows and Main House Excellent facilities and equip- modern in every respect. ment for all camp sports; Raie $27 per week. also golf. Round Trip Fare to Riverside, N. Y.. station, $1327. OPEN UNTIL I N. Y. Office, 55 West 42nd S: OCTOBER 1st. I Pennsylvania 7663 Mail vour reservations to POTTERSVILLE, N. Y. Your Fall Problems if you want to rent a house or an apartment for the coming winter, or if you have one to rent — or sell, advertise in the classified section of The Nation, read by desirable landlords and tenants. Rates on application. Special three-time rate. Dept. Y. W. P., The Nation. GERMAN THAYE1. r)R- LOUIS N ROBINSON. Swarthmore, Pa., gratefully recommends Munich home with highly i liberal family with whom his young son ast winter. Fran Kommerzienrat Engelhorn, asse 10. NATION "ADS" are seen. read, and respond< The Nation l^OR RENT. Small furnished house ::-. for week-ends. Fireplace. Attractive, Thirty miles out West Shore. $20 Bryant 7S57. Fred Murray. APARTMENT FOR RENT \ N attractive apartment in Greenwich Village, * ~Y ideally arranged for two or three people. En- tire floor, three rooms, kitchenette, and bath. Elec- tric light and steam heat. Open fireplaces. Un- furnished 5100. Write Box 857, % The Nation, or phone Whitehall 7730. REENWICH VILLAGE, 38 Perry Street. Large Studio room, private house. All modern im- provements. Steam heat. Large fireplace. Attrae- For lease October 1st. Call Watkins 1670, gs. Oxhandler.

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The Nation FOUNDED 1865 Vol. CXXV NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 1927 No. 3246 Contents EDITORIAL PARAGRAPHS 271 EDITORIALS : The Revolt at Geneva 274 Debts of Justice : Unpaid 275 Cheating at Solitaire 275 Mob-Murdered Aviators 276 IT SEEMS TO HEYWOOD BROUN 277 MR. BABBITT. MEET SINCLAIR LEWIS. By William J. McNally. . . . 278 A YEAR AFTER THOIRY. By Robert Dell 282 CHINA TESTS OUR RELIGION. By Harry F. Ward 283 A CONFERENCE WITH GOVERNOR FULLER. By Arthur Garfield Hays 285 IN THE DRIFTWAY. By the Drifter 286 CORRESPONDENCE 287 BOOKS AND PLAYS: Professor McMaster Continues. By William MacDonald 289 Chaucer and Sherlock. By Frederick Tupper 289 Credible Macabre. By Martha Mott 290 Marxian History. By V. F. Calverton 290 In the Caves of Ariege. By Ruth Benedict 291 A Note on Progress. By Melville J. Herskovits 292 Books in Brief 292 Drama : The Curtain Rises. By Joseph Wood Krutch 294 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS SECTION: Madame Sun's Withdrawal 296 OSWALD GARRISON VILLARD, Editok Associate Editors LEWIS S. GANNETT DOROTHY GRAFFE VAN DOREN ARTHUR WARNER JOSEPH WOOD KRUTCH Manaoing Editor Literary Editor FREDA KIRCHWEY MARK VAN DOREN Contributing Editors JOHN A. HOBSON LUDWIG LEWISOHN H. L. MENCKEN NORMAN THOMAS HEYWOOD BROUN CARL VAN DOREN DAVID BOEHM, Advertising Manager Subscription Rates: Five dollars per annum postpaid in the United Stat s 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. THE NATION is on file in most public and college libraries and is indexed in the Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature. WE ARE DELIGHTED that France has put on so high a tariff against the United States that our manufacturers are setting up an almighty howl. They are particularly dismayed that whereas Germany, because of her recent trade agreement with France, receives favorable rates, the maximum possible ones are being levied against the United States. We should like to see the same treatment meted out to us by Italy and Germany, and by every other country in Europe. That would perhaps bring our tariff maniacs to their senses. It might at least induce some of them to do a little examination of political economy and to abandon their attitude that the United States can do precisely as it pleases in tariff matters, while all the other nations must obediently come to heel. If the highest possible tariff walls were built against us Americans might suddenly perceive that the world which would then result would be preposterous, and themselves take the lead in pulling down our own tariff walls as a first step toward sanity and free trade between the nations of the earth. Meanwhile our tariff boosters have the joy of pondering upon the fact that, unless a new trade treaty is negotiated with France, American products will be taxed four times as much as German goods, so that in a short time Germany should win away most of America's business with France. Some of the rates on American products are extremely in- teresting. Thus, American electrical equipment for auto- mobiles is to be taxed between 800 and 1,300 per cent. Incredibly funny is the protest of the injured American manufacturers that this tariff will penalize the French motoring public by protecting French industry which can- not produce as economically as that in the United States! What, in heaven's name, does our tariff do? NEITHER STANLEY BALDWIN nor Joseph Stalin can get much satisfaction from the resolutions of the British Trades Union Congress recently in session at Edinburgh. When Mr. Hicks, president of the congress, came out for some sort of cooperation between employers and employees it looked like a gesture of agreement with Mr. Baldwin's appeal for industrial peace. But a few days later the congress adopted a resolution blasting Mr. Bald- win, his Government, and his trade-union bill; accusing him of being the chief stumbling-block in the way of peace, and challenging him to bring his policy before the country in a new general election. The congress has ended its relations with the All-Russian Council of Trade Unions, and decided against recognition of "minority" or left-wing unions in the British movement. But if anyone assumes, from these acts, that the British trade unions are support- ing the Russian policy of the Baldwin Government he will meet with another surprise. British labor may be anti- Russian and anti-Communist itself, but it won't, if it can help it, allow the British Government to be. The resolu- tions adopted at Edinburgh are characteristic of a move- ment which proceeds according to no apparent logic or plan, which is consistent with nothing — except itself. FROM THE EXECUTIVE CHAMBER of the capitol into jail — that appears to be the regular procedure in Indiana. A couple of weeks ago former Governor War- ren T. McCray was released on parole from the Atlanta penitentiary; last week they indicted Governor Ed Jackson and are going to try him on October 3 on the charge of conspiracy to commit a felony. It seems that Mr. Jackson went to Governor McCray, when that official was under in- dictment and about to face trial in the criminal court, and offered him $10,000 if he would appoint a certain James E. McDonald as prosecuting attorney in Indianapolis, in which ease the charges against the Governor would be dropped. Indicted with the Governor were Mayor John L. Duvall of Indianapolis, George Y. Coffin, the Republican city and county chairman of Indianapolis, and Robert I. Marsh. Governor Jackson's law partner, a prominent figure in the Ku Klux Klan of Indiana and its counsel. This is a good beginning, but it is only a beginning. Governor Jack- son's relationship with D. C. Stephenson, formerly Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan, who presented him with a horse and is said to have contributed large sums of money to his campaign fund, is still to be investigated by the grand jury. In this case we have proof of the way the Ku Klux Klan corrupted about everything that it touched. Meanwhile, Mayor Duvall has already gone to trial. But how much simpler it would be, if the voters of Indiana con- tinue to elect men of this type to office, to ask the latter to sign a pledge in advance of their election that thev will

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272 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3246 voluntarily go to jail a year after they are inducted into office, thus saving the State the expense of their trials. TRADE HONESTY is a boast of Western capitalism, and a general assumption is that Russia's Communist rulers are not to be trusted. Frederick W. Lewis, head of the Furness-Withy Lines, has had experience. Some years ago shareholders and associates of the Furness-Withy Lines subscribed half the stock of the Russo-British Grain Export Company, the other half being controlled by Russian inter- ests. Each year this English shareholding group has ad- vanced considerable sums of money to the grain company. which the latter in turn has lent to the Russian Govern- ment to finance the marketing of Russia's grain crop. Now Mr. Lewis reports that this business has been conducted in a perfectly normal and satisfactory manner, and that in- terest has been paid at a rate commensurate with the se- curity offered. Nor have any losses been incurred by any of the British manufacturing firms extending credits to the Russian state trading concerns. Russia needs vast credits for super-electric power stations, the development of its mineral resources, and the enlargement of its manufacturing plants, and the Soviet Republic is England's best potential customer — in 1913, 4,822,000 tons of goods were shipped from Great Britain to Russia, as compared with 231,000 tons in the fiscal year l!>25-26. But the Baldwin Govern- ment, by breaking off diplomatic relations with Moscow, has made British vessels trading at Russian ports subject to higher taxation than ships of nations enjoying the benefits of a trade agreement with Russia, and has comoelled repre- sentatives of English firms, desirous of doing business in that country, to go to other capitals for the necessary visa. "If politics and business could only be completely sepa- rated," remarks Sir Frederick, "the pathway of business relations between the two nations now at diplomatic logger- heads would be made infinitely smoother." FROM ACROSS THE OCEAN comes an appeal of the non-political Italian Refugees Relief Committee whose chairman is Lady S!esser. and of which Mrs. Helena Swan- wick of Fore inn Affairs, Wickham Steed, Delisle Burns. Lord Olivier, and Lady Mary Murray are also members. This group of humanitarians has come together to afford help to those Italians who are compelled to leave their country be- cause of tiie Fascist regime. Anti-Fascists who have pri- vate means and keep quiet can stay in Italy, but those who have to earn their living are so boycotted and discriminated against in every way as to be compelled to leave Italy or starve. A writer in the London Nation last April declared that considerably more than a thousand persons had then been deported to the private Siberia which Mussolini has established on a few of the Mediterranean islands. These men have been senten cial local committees who do not even interrogate the accused. Those who flee to escape this fate include doctors, lawyers, school teachers, journalists, and shopkeepers. They are ss and in great need. Contrary to the historic policj : Britain, these refugees are net allowed to enter England; it is France that upholds the great prii :al asylum. which America, toe. has abandored. A French relief mittee is headed by Marc Sangnier. We urg< of our readers who desire to do so to send ti- the British committee in care of tl tary, Mr. W. S. Kennedy. 3 Harcourt Buildings. Temple, E. C. 4. Loir MUCH TO THE SURPRISE of the American officials at their recent conference with the Royal Canadian Commission, it was revealed that smuggled liquor does not all travel south. American denatured alcohol, it seems, is in considerable demand in Canada, and bootleggers oblig- ingly carry it northward across the Canadian border. The explanation is elementary: the denatured alcohol is recooked in this country and then placed in the hands of distributors in Canada at about $1.25 a gallon. As the Canadian Gov- ernment imposes a tax of $10 a gallon on real liquors, it can easily be seen why the distributors prefer the Amer- ican product. The only difficulty seems to be that the Canadian Government, while it sanctions the drinking of the good, wholesome Canadian liquors, is opposed to seeing its citizens die from alcohol poisoned in the United States for the special use of American citizens. PEACE AND QUIET prevail once more in Superior, Wisconsin. The school strike which set that com- munity by the ears last May has been settled and the 1,000 students who were on strike for a month are again satisfied. It is the newly elected school board that has restored equanimity to the Superior school situation. The first act of the board was to reinstate the two teachers, Lulu J. Dickinson and C. G. Wade, whose dismissal led to the student strike. The board went even further and dis- missed Paul R. Spencer, the former superintendent of schools, who had dismissed them. The "loyalty contracts" of the Central High School teachers were rescinded and replaced by ordinary contracts. These "loyalty contracts" were curious documents by means of which the school board attempted to force every teacher in Superior to work against the elective school officials and for the appointed members. The charges and counter-charges that have flown back and forth between the old appointed board and the newly elected body have somewhat befogged the issues, but the outcome proves that even teachers are not entirely helpless where the community is interested in their treat- ment. W'lTH COMMENDABLE PERSEVERANCE the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters continues to fight for a payment of honest wages to Pullman porters. They meet, however, very stubborn opposition from the Pullman Company. For a long time they were unable to gain even recognition of their union. This achieved, the way seemed open for mediation of the dispute. But the efforts of the United States Mediation Board were unsuc- ul. The next step, ordinarily, would have been sub- mission of the dispute to the Arbitration Board. This the Pullman Company refused to permit, although its action was a clear violation of the Railway Labor Act. So the porter's union has been forced to carry its fight to the Emergency Board of the Interstate Commerce Commission. Before this board the Brotherhood hopes to win its de- mands for minimum wages of $150 a month instead of the pitiful S72.50 now in effect. It would then be possible, they point out, to abolish the system which compels the porters to rely for their wages on the hazard of tips, which average only $56 per month. The union also asks a month's service of 240 hours instead of nearly 400 hours, which would equalize it with the Pullman conductor's month. These demands are not unreasonable. The porters Id surely be entitled to a "living wage" sufficient to

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Sept. 21, 1927] The Nation 273 do away with the tipping system, even though such a pro- vision might mean a reduction of the Pullman Company's dividend. THE PESSIMISTIC PROPHECIES about the dire re- sults that would follow the introduction of the eight- hour day in the steel industry seem to have been just a little too hasty. We now learn from the Iron Trade Review that after four years of experience with the shorter day the producers have been convinced of its economic advan- tages. Since its introduction four years ago, the trend of iron and steel prices has been downward — despite the fact that Judge Gary produced voluminous figures to show that prices would increase as a result. And then again there has been the alleviation, "to a marked extent," of the prob- lem of labor turnover — despite Mr. Gary's theory that the men would become more restless with four extra hours on their hands. The men, it seems, are more satisfied: Steel-mill executives hold that with the eight-hour day has come greater employee efficiency. Whether this can be measured in dollars and cents, of course, is not clear. . . . It is certain, however, that the increased efficiency of em- ployees and the apparent added contentment in the ranks of steel organizations have resulted in economies in opera- tions in many lines. And through it all the United States Steel Corporation has managed to maintain its prosperity. This turn of events, at least, shows that even the great, far-seeing captains of industry make errors once in a while — that is to say, it is only once in a while that they are caught making them. But we must concede that in these uncertain times it does take a special sort of skill to predict so many things none of which actually come true. EVERY MAN, whether citizen or alien, is equal before the law in this country — unless he is a coal miner on strike in eastern Ohio. There Benson W. Hough, judge of the United States District Court in Steubenville, has re- molded the law nearer to his heart's desire. In issuing an injunction setting limits to picketing he has ruled, accord- ing to an Associated Press dispatch, that "No man can serve as a union picket under the terms of the order unless he is an American citizen and knows the English language." This illegal discrimination between aliens and citizens re- calls a tirade delivered by a Chicago judge, a certain Wil- liam R. Fetzer, during the judicial hysteria previous to the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti. As recorded in a special dispatch to the Los Angeles Times, Judge Fetzer said to a group of persons alleged to have created "disturbances": You people might as well understand right now that you cannot run Chicago or this country. Organizations. associations, or affiliations cannot and must not attempt to interfere with what courts of another State, or this State, do. Judges and prosecutors are competent and will do their duty. Those of you who do not like the way this country is conducted can get out and return to your own lands. It is none of your business what is done by the courts of Massa- chusetts or any other part of this country. We hope this report is somewhat distorted. It seems in- credible that any one occupying even the most inconsequen- tial bench (we don't know Judge Fetzer's court) should spout such bull-dozing balderdash. "Judges and prosecu- tors are competent and will do their duty," says Sir Oracle. Since when? For as far back in history as it is possible to trace the workings of government, in order to get even a shadow of justice and effectiveness out of it for the com- mon man, it has been necessary to keep the closest kind of watch on all public employees. And just now it seems advisable to double the guard on judges. MR. MENCKEN SHOULD BE WORRIED. If imita- tion is flattery it is also death to iconoclasm. And the abundance of imitations of Mr. Mencken and his American Mercury is evidence that he has become one of the new American demigods. The young college generation speaks a degenerate Menckenese; and the new magazines ape his program and the typography with which Mr. Knopf has generously clothed him. He has become in his turn a na- tional fashion. An unknown publisher announces an effort to outmencken Mencken with Mr. G. D. Eaton as editor of Plain Talk; and the Reflex, which began in July as a monthly panorama of Jewish life in America, shows in typography and thought how closely its editors, while sus- picious of assimilation in general, have assimilated Menck- enism at least. It is not an unhealthy phenomenon. Ameri- can Jewry has earned its right to be proud of its contribu- tion to America and its shepherding of its race throughout the world; but its pride, like all patriotisms, needs oc- casionally to be taken off the shelf and scrubbed with Mencken's analytic soap. WE HAVE FURTHER NEWS of twelve-year-old Anna, about whom we wrote in our issue of Sep- tember 7 [page 219]. When she was five years old Anna was given by her mother to a Negro family in Milwaukee. Anna lived with them until recently, when the police took charge of her while she was following a carnival company in the street. In court it appeared that Anna was white, and— although she wanted to stay with her foster parents and they wanted to keep her— it was decided that that wouldn't do. Anna was sent to the Home for Dependent Children "pending investigation" of the ability of her foster parents to support her. To those acquainted with the ways of officialdom that sounded like an indeterminate sentence. But it has not turned out so. J. P. Schroeter, one of our readers in Milwaukee, sends us an item from the Leader of that city which tells that later on Anna's mother came from Georgia and testified that she herself had Negro blood. So Anna was restored to her foster parents. Our correspondent writes: "You probably know that our mayor and nearly one-half of our aldermen are Socialists; therefore you may be sure that any such mat- ters will always find a fair solution." He asks that we print a note "cleaning the name of our city." We are glad to do so; but we still wonder what the outcome would have been if Anna's mother had said the child was white. INTO POWERS HAPGOOD'S account of the action of the Boston police in committing him to a psychopathic ward in order to keep him away from Sacco and Vanzetti pro- tests, printed in our issue of September 7, slipped a last- minute error for which Mr. Hapgood was in no way re- sponsible and which he asks us to correct. The article as printed stated that "While I was detained at the hospital Mr. Hays, as my counsel, tried to see me and was not per- mitted to, nor were doctors who accompanied him for the purpose of examining me." Mr. Hays did see Mr. Hapgood; the accompanying physicians were not permitted to.

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274 The Nation [Vol. 125. No. 3246 The Revolt at Geneva AT last there are stirrings within the League of Na- tions. The smaller nations have taken their courage in both hands and flung down the gauntlet to the Great Powers, who, from the very beginning, have acted as if they considered the League their private property. In 1923, Hjalmar Branting, the former Prime Minister and representative of Sweden, was so outraged by the League's spinelessness in the face of Mussolini's attack upon Corfu that he talked of taking the smaller Powers out of the League. Four years have elapsed. Nobody seems to have organized the revolt, but it has come. Latvia, Finland, Sweden, Norway, Lithuania, Belgium, Holland, and Poland ed the way. The Foreign Minister of Sweden, M. Lofgren, Branting's successor, openly attacked Sir Austen Chamber- lain for his lack of faith in the League that he pretends to support, and the Prime Minister of Latvia denounced him for sabotaging the security protocol of FJ24. In the face of the Englishman's open disapproval Poland brought forward its plan of outlawing war, and Holland, without going hat in hand to Sir Austen for the latter's kind per- mission, most unexpectedly raised the question of disarma- ment. All of which is nothing short of lese majeste. Also it is the healthiest and most hopeful sign that has come out of Geneva since the League was started. For frank speaking and straight-from-the-shoulder hitting there has been nothing like it. It has already achieved one result ; it has at least made Sir Austen, the now pinchbeck hero of Locarno, bend his knee and alter his tone. it is a fact that when Sir Austen undertook to head off the Polish plan for outlawing war, which provides for general security and non-aggression agreements, supple- mental to and not replacing regional agreements, and in effect guarantees existing frontiers, he found that he had undertaken a good deal more than he could achieve. After a two-hour conference with the French Foreign Minister and one of an hour with Dr. Stresemann he turned a com- plete somersault and was compelled to sit by while the Polish representative, M. Sokol, introduced a modihed reso- lution declaring that all wars of aggression are interna- tional crimes and are forbidden, that every pacific means should be employed to regulate disputes, and that members of the League should consider it an obligation to conform to these principles. These would seem to be the very ideas for which the League was founded; that any statesman could be found in PJ27, eight years after its birth, seeking lo prevent a mere expression of opinion like this, is the clearest proof of the way the League has failed heretofore to live up to its opportunities and of the necessity for a revolt. Sir Austen is quoted in effect as denying thai there is an inner council within the Council of the League and that that inner council settled in advance what the League should do. He also declared that other nations discussed coming events in advance. But the very fact that he undertook offhand to tell Poland what it should or should not do in this matter of outlawing war is the clear- est proof that he has an entirely "nistaken idea of the role which he ought to play. He is in a sense hardly to be blamed. From the be- ginning England and France have considered themselves the midwives to supervise the arrival and the early care of the League; any other nurses they have relegated to the outer chamber and they have declined to admit that anybody else stood on a parity with them. Now we hope that a new era has begun, but whether the revolt will go beyond expressions of opinion is yet to appear. Certainly Sir Austen could not deny what Premier Cielens of Latvia said, that since PJ24 disarmament hopes have been sinking lower and lower; that Europe's military budget, with Ger- many almost eliminated, is $1. 443, 000. 000. about the same as in 191 J, while the standing armies of Europe total today 3,145,000, despite the disarming of the beaten powers. "We are living," he added, "in the condition of armed peace which preceded the World War." Next the all-wise Tory statesman had to sit by and see the moral victory of the meeting go to Germany. Dr. Stresemann has repeatedly given proof of the pacific inten- tions of the modern Germany — we have heard a foremost American diplomat declare that the German proposals which originated the Locarno agreements will be recog- nized a hundred years hence as one of the greatest moral advances, and one of the greatest acts of self-abnegation in the history of modern nations. Now Dr. Stresemann has pledged Germany to accept before the end of the month "the optional clause of the Hague Court statute pro- viding for compulsory arbitration of disputes with other nations which have accepted it," which ought to be final evidence of the purpose of Germany to abandon once and for all the use of force in the settlement of international disputes. "We are most anxious," he said, "to be pioneers in achieving general peace, which is the ideal of the League" — the latter phrase, doubtless, for the benefit of Sir Austen. The optional clause he accepted reads as fol- lows: "On behalf of [Germany] I recognize, in relation to any other member or state which accepts the same obli- gation, that is to say, on the sole condition of reciprocity, jurisdiction of the Court as compulsory ipso facto and without special convention." With whom will Germany enter into these contractual relations for compulsory arbitration in all possible dis- putes? Why, Austria, Belgium, Abyssinia, Brazil, Bul- garia, China, Denmark, Esthonia, Finland, Norway, Holland. Portugal, Sweden, Switzerland, Uraguay, Haiti, and Lithu- ania. Does one find on this list the names of Great Britain and France? Emphatically one does not. M. Briand spoke magnificently for extension of the non-aggression pacts. said that Dr. Stresemann's "noble discourse came as a ray of light to dissipate the mist," and pledged France to "dedicate her every energy to perpetuate the Franco-Ger- man friendship and world peace." But he failed to pledge France to accept compulsory arbitration. Sir Austen? He informed the League that there were certain limits beyond which England would not go in accepting arbitration; that England placed the alliance of nations, known as the Brit- ish Empire, above and beyond the League and that he would not further extend the Empire's commitments in de- fending smaller European states against aggression, which led the London Daily News to declare that his speech was "so singularly infelicitous that it seems to have alienated the good will of nearly every delegate in the conference." He did not aid matters by adding that in his belief no

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Sept. 21, 1927] The Nation 275 country can today possibly withstand an adverse moral judgment by the League against any of its policies. That is again merely playing cat and mouse with the League. The smaller nations are right in declaring that the League is disgraced by the failure to outlaw war, and their stand is worthy of the highest commendation. They deserve the praise of every adherent of the League for their fine course and for their effort to make the League a real parliament of the nations. Debts of Justice: Unpaid CITIZENS of average mental development are aware that courts of justice are not infallible, and that we have, inevitably, many innocent victims of erroneous convictions or detentions in criminal cases. The outstanding grievance, however, is not that such injustices are committed (and more or less subconsciously recognized), but that America, with the exception of two States, has manifested an utter disregard for the plight of the victims. Professor Borchard of Yale University, points out that only California and Wisconsin have provided laws to indemnify the unfortunate victims of mistakes in the ad- ministration of criminal law. In other words, the state enjoys a virtual immunity from its own wrongdoings and blunders in criminal procedure. Time and again innocent citizens are wronged by the state. Probably the most frequent abuse occurs through the activities of the police, whose arrests inevitably en- snare a high proportion of innocent people. Of most of these we hear nothing; it is only occasionally that we have such dramatic spectacles as the arrest of hundreds of citi- zens for displaying sympathy for Sacco and Vanzetti in Boston and other cities of the republic, and of Powers Hapgood imprisoned for forty-eight hours in a Boston psychopathic ward — as revealed later— with no justification whatever. But these flagrant wrongs pale when compared with the experiences of people who have been erroneously con- victed and condemned for crime. A decade ago the country stood aghast at the case of Andrew Toth, who was con- victed of murder in Pennsylvania, sentenced to life im- prisonment, and after having served twenty years was found absolutely innocent. It was left to the generosity of a private citizen, Andrew Carnegie, to do something for Toth, since the law of Pennsylvania made no provision for his relief and the State legislature refused to provide compensation. England, too, witnessed a similar miscarriage of jus- tice in the case of Adolph Beck, who was convicted for the crime of another man and imprisoned for seven years. Parliament, however, granted Beck a gratuity of 5,000 pounds; a further result was the establishment in that country of a Court of Criminal Appeal. Is it not time that America move to compensate such helpless sufferers? Hitherto American public law has taken the position that the safeguarding of society by the prosecution of crimes against it is an attribute inherent in all govern- ment, and that the state cannot be held liable for errors made in exercising this sovereign power. As Professor Borchard explains, "whether the injury to the individual is accidental or intentional on the part of the state or on the part of the judge (except one of most inferior juris- diction) the injured person is left without redress." Our own government sanctions compensation to the in- dividual when a special sacrifice is required of him for the public good. Where a citizen's property is condemned for public use our fundamental law prescribes that just com- pensation must be paid. We protect the citizen against the invasion of his property rights by eminent domain, but not against invasion of his personal rights by the administra- tion of criminal law. The only difference seems to be that according to our prevailing political philosophy the prop- erty rights are regarded as more sacred. Those owning property have had more power and have spoken more convincingly for proper compensation. We do not plead that the officers of the law be less active in their efforts to punish criminals; all duly ac- cused persons must be prosecuted. But inevitably a pro- portion will be found innocent; some will be called upon for sacrifices — the loss of personal liberty, the loss of in- come, the loss of reputation. These sacrifices are imposed upon the citizens for the public good and, as Dean Wigmore says, "The public good has gained quite as much as it would have done when commerce was served by a railroad placed on land taken by force from that same man." Why should not the sacrifice be compensated? Most European countries recognize the principle that society, rather than the individual, should bear the risk of error in the administration of criminal justice by statutes that provide for compensation of unjustly convicted per- sons. Nothing would do more to create respect for the courts than thus to make decent their treatment of the individual's personal rights. Cheating at Solitaire JEAN CALLIZO, an aviator of mixed French and Al- gerian parentage, who had been officially proclaimed as holder of the world's altitude record, forgot that gasoline motors do not function properly in very rarefied atmosphere unless they have been especially adapted to meet the un- usual condition. Certain engineers connected with the com- pany manufacturing the motor he used did, however, re- member the fact, and they grew suspicious of his alleged feat. When he accepted their suggestion that he try to break the record again they hid a second barograph in the tail of his machine, and when he had descended it was discovered that there was a vast discrepancy between the instrument which he carried in the cockpit and the one of whose existence he had been unaware. Summoned before a jury impaneled by the Aero Club, lie confessed to syste- matic and i dy prepared faking. Not only had he drawn a line in invisible ink on the barograph sheet, which he developed while in flight, but he had even gone so far as to take so much of a poison, intended to counterfeit the effects of exhaustion, that he barely escaped wrecking his plane when he descended. It is difficult to imagine the mental process which would lead a man to the perpetration of such a fraud from which he could hope to gain nothing except a renown which he would know to be meaningless. It is exactly like cheat- ing at solitaire. And yet Callizo is not the only man who has ever been guilty of a similar madness. The ever-famous Dr. Cook aside, there is the recent case of the Viennese biologist Kammerer whose suicide was attributed to the fact that either he or one of his assistants had been proved guilty of faking the records of a scientific experiment which

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276 The Nation [Vol. 125. No. 3246 he made public, and there is also the more ancient one of John Payne Collier, a distinguished scholar, who forged additions to genuine documents relating to Shakespeare and thus threw into great confusion the very problems which he himself had striven to elucidate. In none of these cases was the guilty man merely a fraud. Even Dr. Cook had more than the average man's intrepidity as a traveler; even Callizo was at least a skilful pilot; and Collier had done scholarly work so sound that his forgeries could not wholly deprive him of renown. Kammerer, too, was a man of gen- uine attainments. In each case we have to do with a man who became gradually so obsessed with the idea of fame that he could, in a sort of dream, betray the very things to which he had devoted his life. Callizo, so the reports say, only escaped a beating at the hands of his infuriated fellow aviators by slipping out a side door after he had made his confession, but it is diffi- cult not to feel for him a sort of pity. With his records expunged, his pilot's license taken away, and himself ex- pelled from the Aero Club, he presents the spectacle of a man who cared more for reputation than for anything else and who has had that reputation irrevocably destroyed. There is no possible explanation, no possible excuse, which will be accepted as affording the slightest palliation. "I'm finished," he said, and there are few men of whom that could be said in a sense more nearly absolute and eternal. Mob-Murdered Aviators IN their bloody and uncivilized day the ancient Romans gathered to watch human gladiators stab each other to death in the public arena. In our refined and en- lightened scientific age millions of newspaper readers get their excitement by watching aviators plunge to death in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Since the World War, with the possible exception of the suspense of watching the clock move toward two doomed men's execution-hour, the newspaper public has had no more engrossing and delicious thrill. It loves it. There is heroism in it. There is courage. But physi- cal bravery is one of the cheapest of commodities in a nation molded by the iron code of sportsmanship; and there is not even bravery in buying editions to find out whether brave men have been found and saved. If men, of their own initiative, and for their own souls, wish to risk death in a lonely ocean, it seems to us their right to take that risk. To urge a law to ban stunt flights is one of the most ridiculous excrescences of a law-ridden age. But the twenty-five men and two women who have met death in connection with transoceanic flights this summer did not die simply because of a spontaneous upwelling within them of a determination to fly across the sea. They succumbed to a mass hysteria, to a newspaper bally- hoo, which made it almost impossible for a man. once he had announced his intention, to heed the dictates of common sense. Givon, the French aviator, headed out toward the open Atlantic when the winds blew strong and the fog- banks closed in on him. He had he decent common sense to give up, for that time at least, an impossible attempt. He turned back — and the bloodthirsty mobs neaily lynched him. For his common sense ho was branded a coward. Nungesser and Coli are heroes to the mob — and the stories are forgotten that government officials, wishing France to win the aviation honors first, sent them out with a false weather report. After all, the officials acted from "patri- otic" motives ; and why should not peace as well as war be permitted its quota of patriotic murders? Byrd took the responsibility of waiting, and finally made his flight successfully; but it is not for his long wait that the public applauds him. Had he taken a wilder chance and been lost with his companions in the ocean that holds the secrets of Nungesser, of Redfern, of the Princess Lowenstein-Wertheim, of Bertaud and Hill and Payne and the rest, he would still be acclaimed as a hero. He is honored because he took the risk of death — and the public which adored the war in these lesser days finds its thrill, regardless of reasonableness, in the gladiatorial combat with the sea. Poor Charles Levine by this time probably wishes that he had never planned to make an- other record flight; but he knows the jibes that await him if he does not. If he should finally take passage on a sound, safe steamship the act would prove more real courage than his much vaunted adventure in taking his seat beside Clarence Chamberlin. And the Dole flight. Of all examples of public readi- ness to send good men — and women — to death this was surely the most flagrant. An Hawaiian pineapple-planter offered a prize for a flight from California toward his pineapple fields. Everyone knew that the planes which started were unequipped with pontoons, and even that some of them showed engine defects before they started. But the ballyhoo was on. The public roared ; impatient as it had been while Lindbergh and Chamberlin and Byrd waited for favoring winds, it was still more exigent in the Pacific. Despite the demand of aviation experts for delay it was announced that the flyers must start on a certain day. Pedlar and Knope and Frost and Scott, and Miss Doran, paid with their lives for that mad act; and Erwin and Eichwaldt died in a hopeless effort to search the seas by retracing in another plane the route that had killed those five. The United States Navy burned up 4,055,050 gallons of gasoline steaming back and forth across the silent Pacific hunting for at least an oil-spot to tell the story of their death. (There is a certain sar- donic humor in the spectacle of the great ocean bulldogs, equipped with the last devices for killing men by thou- sands, weaving their way across the ocean in the hope of saving one or two of these five. Probably the funds of the navy were never better spent.) Now in a sudden fit of revulsion, this same mob- public is demanding an end to stunt flights. At least, says one stalwart friend of humanity, women must not be allowed to take such risks. Why not? If there is to be ballyhoo, why should not Thea Rasche, and Mildred Doran. and the sixty-two-year-old princess who stepped into fame as she mounted into her death-plane have their share of mob-glory? Women, who have won their right to votes and jobs, now demand an equal right to death, and they should have it. If we are going to set in upon a wave of revulsion against unnecessary death, let us not confine it to one sex, or, indeed, to transoceanic flights. There is such a thing as a sense of proportion. Twenty- seven people have died in transoceanic flying this summer; the Great War cost ten million lives. But it is probably too much to hope that a little of the revulsion against stunt flights should be turned toward disarmament.

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Sept. 21, 1927] The Nation 277 It ^/wvo I SAID to her that if I could marry her I would, but that it was out of my power. I said that money was no object and that all I could do to make her happy and comfortable would be done.' " 'Very generous, I am sure,' said Holmes with a sneer." I was pained to learn that Sherlock sneered. The quo- tation is from "The Problem of Thor Bridge," in the latest collection of detective tales by Conan Doyle. Some few years ago Mr. Doyle killed his detective and it is a pity that second thoughts roused him from eternal slumber. At last his creator has consigned the famous character to a fate worse than death. Sherlock Holmes has turned moral. He is ruined by reincarnation. To be sure, even in the old days Holmes was invariably stalwart against the forces of crime. Short shrift he gave to murderers, bank robbers, and blackmailers. Yet he was, within reason, the disciple of personal liberty. Not all his own habits were good. Tobacco he used, and still uses, to excess, but the old familiar rallying cry of a master mind in periods of boredom has departed, and no longer shall we hear the imperative command: "Quick, Watson, the needle." When preachers complain of the new licentiousness which they think they find in fiction I shall remember back to the days of a rowdy Holmes, and I do regret the pressure of the modern magazine which has made it necessary for Conan Doyle to reform him. It was entirely wrong for Neil Gibson, the Gold Kino, to suggest a relationship somewhat short of matrimony to Miss Grace Dunbar, the lady chiefly distressed by the prob- lem of Thor Bridge. And it was most unwise for Mr. Holmes to employ narcotics at such times as he lacked the stimulation of a current mystery. However, it was very necessary that the great detective should possess a weak- ness, and among his virtues tolerance should loom up above all other peaks of rectitude. In my own youth, and to others in their formative years, Sherlock Holmes was a god. The best gods have imperfections, for in perfection there is no kindliness. No character in modern English fiction has attained as wide a fame as Sherlock Holmes, and it seems inevitable that his name must be known to Dr. Freud and all the Freudians of Vienna. How strange, then, is the fact that none of the textbooks analyze the curious case of Conan Doyle. Of the author's early upbringing I know nothing, which is on the whole a help rather than a handicap, since it permits the amateur psychiatrist to speak freely. Ac- cordingly, it is my guess that Sir Arthur did not like his father much and set about in later years to create one closer to the heart's desire. Sherlock Holmes is superbly the father image. His equipment consists of all wisdom, all courage, and all strength. No problem ever defied the wit of the big man in Baker Street. Men and women, heavy laden with perplexities, called at his door and found comfort. Even when death hissed all about them, Holmes needed no more than a few cigar ashes and, perhaps, some dry, caked mud, to find a pathway out of peril. Conan Doyle is him- self a ruddy giant, and even so I hazard the opinion that he has found much in life to give him pause and panic. For his own purposes of relief he conjured up the helpful Holmes and it was a public benefaction to give this char- acter to the world. Toward all of us who quaked and shiv- ered when stairways creaked and strong winds blew, Holmes served as anti-bogey. There is a tragic incompleteness in graven images. The ancient prohibition against these likenesses to be found in heaven, earth, and water still holds true. Anybody with a fair degree of imagination can make a god for himself and one eminently satisfactory for short hauls. But it is hard to cherish home-brew idols. So in those early days when Conan Doyle was fashioning the hero Holmes, the writer of detective fiction was already moving upon the first stage of a longer pilgrimage. If we had been wise enough we might have known that Sir Arthur was on his way to God. Most logically a belief in spiritism grows out of a faith and fondness for Sherlock Holmes. There is a wisdom in the psychology of that church which gives its members saints and martyrs as Indian clubs by means of which one may acquire a muscular Christianity capable of sustaining more weighty dogma. I have no patience with those who sneer at Conan Doyle's preoccupation with mediums and ectoplasm. Once 1 heard him talk about his experiences with psychic phe- nomena and I was singularly unconvinced by his testimony. All I accepted was his sincerity. Still, it is no part of Sir Arthur's job to find a philosophy in which I may find peace and comfort. Since he has gained ease of mind for him- self, and very likely for others, he would be a fool to drop the matter because of jibes from the side lines. Only one thing I hold against Conan Doyle. It is no kindly service which he performs in publicly exhibiting the bones of Shei-lock Holmes. A gulf has been set up between the de- tective and his creator. Doyle has averted his face from the rooms in Baker Street. His mind is now engrossed with other themes which may be more important. In this last work, "The Case Book of Sherlock Holmes," the famous deductor is no better than the muddlers from Scotland Yard. Feebly he moves to solve petty mysteries which would hardly perplex a precocious child. Again and again in these later chronicles I found myself at least two or three jumps ahead of Holmes and waiting for the poor old wheezer to keep pace with me. Save only in the prob- lem concerning the murder at Thor Bridge did it seem to me that a spark of the old ingenuity remained. When Holmes at last discovered that the dead woman had actually murdered herself I was disposed to say: "Excellent, my dear Sherlock," for I had arrived at that same decision not more than half an hour previously. If Conan Doyle continues to put a decrepit detective through his paces something should be done about it. Sher- lock Holmes deserves a comfortable old age. Why not a pension? Those of us who love him are so numerous that we could readily afford to set him out to pasture. Possibly he might not be happy in rural quietude, and so we might agree to let him have a murder once a year just for his birthday. Heywood Broun

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278 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3246 Americans We Like Mr. Babbitt, Meet Sinclair Lewis By WILLIAM J. McNALLY T YKLLO. George, you darned old T h e f i r s t son-of-a-gun ! So y o u ' r e 0 j p c r s 0 n a [ Myra's husband, eh? Well, well! How are you, anyway? And how's Myra?" "By golly, if it ain't Red Lewis himself in person! Put her there, ole timer. I've been wanting to know you ever since the little woman got that knock-down to you at that 'louse party up in the north end of the State. Say, she talked a lot about you. Nuthin' else but. Gosh, say but I'm glad you ain't one of them long-haired literary guys. You know you look enough like a human being to be a brother Elk. Don't happen to be, do you? No? Well, anyway you're my kind. Yes, sir-ree. Put her there again, ole sorrel top, and have one on me." It is in the foregoing not precisely austere or ascetic fashion that Sinclair Lewis and George F. Babbitt are wont to meet. On any number of occasions I have seen them thus come together. Sinclair Lewis spent a good deal of 1D26 back in his own Middle West. He was collecting material for a preacher novel as yet untitled, but destined to be known as "Elmer Gantry/' and lie was picking up his detail on the ground. After a spring sojourn in Kansas City, he came north to his home State, Minnesota, where, at Big Pelican Lake, he literally pitched tent for the summer. The sum- mer place which he took was hidden away in the woods and, no doubt, appealed to him because of its seclusio.x. The seclusion which he enjoyed, however, was mostly theoretical. It so happened that: one of the smart summer hotels of the Northwest was situated on the other end of the lake. The gregarious Lewis could not, of course, do other than drop over to the hotel frequently, and, as a re- sult, he was constantly coming in contact with the Twin City crowds which thronged it. That the Babbitts con- stituted a generous percentage of these crowds might all too readily be inferred. That they would know better than to disappoint Lewis by returning to the city without motoring over to call on him might also be regarded as too obviously inevitable to be worth the chronicling. Con- sequently there was no hour of day or night when he was safe from their irruptions. Their devotion to their lam- pooner was such that at times Lewis's literary headquar- ters might well have been described as "The Babbitts" Retreat." I chanced to be up at Lewis's headquarters during a portion of the summer, and hence saw a good deal of him in his social relations with Babbitt. I must say that I was surprised to note how well they got on. It was not that Lewis sought Babbitt out; on the contrary, he had Babbitt thrust upon him. But, as soon : ; they got together, they appeared to team up spontaneously and heartily, on sions even uproariously. In Lewis's nature there is the same broad streak of friendliness that there is in Bab- bitt's; or, to put the case differently, aloofness is as for- eign to Lewis as it is to Babbitt. Both Lewis and Babbitt / // a ,v c r i c' 8 are alike in refusing to have any- / / ii 1) 0 V t r a i t S. thing to do with the formal "Mister." ' and Lewis is not one whit tardier in referring to Babbitt as "George" than Babbitt is in referring to Lewis as "Red." At bottom Lewis no more dislikes the Babbitt of life than he dislikes the Babbitt of his own creation. True. Babbitt's gabble sometimes infuriates him, but mostly it amuses him. Lewis and Babbitt have too much in common to be genuine enemies. Poles asunder though they be in outlook on life, in temperament they are blood brother?. Both are voluble and companionable; both are overflowing with cordiality; both are ready, on a second's notice, to "lead the gang" in a song or a cheer; both despise Green- wich Village, "arty" people, and effeminate men; both hate affectation, grand manners, and intellectual pretensions; both have a basic, instinctive, and thoroughly American dis- trust of foreigners; both are high-spirited, plain-spoken, impulsive, quick on the trigger, riotous, hilarious, and gay. Lewis, of course, is not wholly comfortable with Babbitt, particularly if ] to take him in long stretches. But they do get along famously during limited encounters; and. at any and all times, Lewis is far less uncomfortable with Babbitt than with the pale young man who confesses to a volume of privately printed verse and keeps the con- versation exclusively confined to James Joyce, Carl Van Vechten, and George Meredith. In his innermost soul Lewis feels a real and unconquerable detestation for the latter; but there is no detestation in his soul for Babbitt. II With the Main Streeter, the situation is different. I chanced to be witness to at least one encounter between Main Street and the author of "Main Street," an adequate description of which would require nothing less than the trained talent of the newspaper sporting editor. The time was July. 1926. the locale the summer hotel already referred to. A group of guests had gathered round the hotel piano. Lewis, tall, lean, in knickers, and red-headed, was, characteristically, master of ceremonies. Characteristically, too, he was having the group sing hymns. His repertory of hymns is inexhaustible, and he sings and leads them with a derisive gusto which is likely to keep the casual spectator continuously convulsed. When he had wearied of the hymns, he turned to the pianist, and asked him to play the Opus 39, Number 15, Brahms waltz. i Lewis is. or was at the time, devoted to this composition.) Lewis, the caricaturist, vanished the moment the opening bars were heard; and a new character, Lewis the rapt dis- ciple of music, appeared in his stead. At this point a late diner left his table and made himself a part of the group. He fixed his eye on Lewis, and freely confided that he was from Crosby, Minnesota. Winning no response from the man intent on Brahms, he moved a step closer and added the more intimate informa- tion that he had once been in Sauk Center. Lewis, still

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Sept. 21, 1927] The Nation 279 "Red" exactly engrossed, paid no attention to these geographical and auto- biographical gratuities. The dauntless citizen from Crosby, however, was not to be ignored. Advancing directly to Lewis, he said: "Hey! Just because you wrote 'Main Street' you needn't think you're so damn much. I'm as good as you are any day." And by the way of giving a subdued and modest em- phasis to his subdued and modest statement, he caught Lewis with a powerful and well-directed left hook to the jaw. In a second Lewis was on his feet. Brahms was for- gotten. Literature was forgotten. Civilization was for- gotten. What followed was strictly a personal affair be- tween the red-head from Sauk Center and the tow-head from Crosby. Main Street and the author of "Main Street" were meeting — and without gloves. Lewis went after his assailant with a natural fighting vocabulary and a natural pair of fighting fists ; the Manassa Mauler could not have waded into an opponent with a less complicated determina- tion to kill than the red-head now waded into the tow-head. Ill Above all else, Lewis is a character, expresses him. Beside him, Gene Tun- ney would seem academic. Lewis should have been an Elizabethan; he and Kit Marlowe would have had a congenial time of it in the swashbuckling tavern days when rowdies were illiterate and arguments were brawls. Lewis is so much of an anachronism to the twentieth century that his routine doings have be- come front-page copy. The belief has been fostered in certain quarters that he is a deliberate publicity seeker. This is very far from the truth. He happens to be the possessor of a vehement and erup- tive temperament which he would like very much to control, but which he can- not control. I once asked him why he didn't give up his wanderings and settle down per- manently in Minnesota. His reply was illuminating. "Oh," he said ruefully, "the city is just small enough, or village-minded enough, so that I'd be having outbreaks from time to time and offending everybody. And I'm tired of scrapping. All I want is peace and a few civilized companions and a quiet fireside." And there one authentic side of the true Lewis spoke. Paradoxical as it may seem, he hates brawls, yet cannot keep out of them. And again, paradoxical as it may seem, with an unmatched talent for making enemies, he is the friendliest animal in the world. With his talent for making enemies one would suppose that there would co-exist, inevitably, some capacity for sustained hatred. But nothing of the sort is to be found in him. There is little in life that he takes seriously, least of all, certainly, his feuds. It is impossible to understand Lewis without under- standing his grin. He always comes back to his grin. And that grin is the key to much of him. It is the grin of the small boy, and Lewis remains essentially, the small boy. He knows nothing, and never will know anything, about the language of diplomacy. He has to speak his mind out, whether that means ruffling susceptibilities, provoking riots and getting himself into pickles or not. He is like the small boy in his extraordinary naivete and candor. Every mother has lived in dread of her ingenuous young son who, if he is having a poor time at a party, informs his hostess suc- cinctly that her party is "rotten." And, when she subse- quently takes him to task for his remark, he never makes matters easy for her. "But it's the truth, mother," he in- sists. "It tvas a rotten party. Everybody thought so." This is the explanation of Lewis's talent for making enemies. He has never outgrown his habit of blurting the truth out as he sees it. In sheer simplicity Lewis greatly resembles a certain well-known American whom he differs from in just about every other known respect, namely, Henry Ford. Both are alike in that they were born with stern inhibitions against being anything but themselves. That is the secret of both their incomparable publicity tem- peraments. IV I have spoken of Lewis as a friendly animal. That, too, exactly expresses him. He is as naturally friendly as a puppy. He has an exceptional capacity for liking people; and he warms up to them at once. His capacity for liking people far outruns his capacity for ad- miring them; and one constantly finds him liking people he has decided doubts about. Indeed it is difficult for him not to like people even when he knows that they are knaves, rascals, frauds, and bores. He likes them just as he likes his Babbitts and Gantrys. Now and then one hears of the author who can enjoy putting into a novel only charac- ters he would admit to his drawing room. The oddity of Lewis is that he would open his doors to all his characters as readily as he opens his pages to them. He is as incapable of intellectual snob- bery as he is of social, and as incapable of moral snobbery as he is of intellectual. At heart he is, and always will be, a vagabond. Main Street is firm in its conviction that Lewis suffers from megalomania. Only Main Street does not phrase it that way. It insists tersely that he has "the swelled head." The rural press of Minnesota is full of such accusations. I must confess that I have never been able to understand precisely what was meant by "the swelled head"; but, if it means anything, I sup- pose it means entertaining an exaggerated notion of one's achievements and capabilities. I have met many individ- uals about whom this comment might, with justice, be made; yet Sinclair Lewis is certainly not one of them. Except when he has his war paint on, he is a person of infinite intellec- tual humility. I have never found that discussing his own success with him differed in the least from discussing it with any other keen-minded observer. He surveys his suc- cess with the utmost objectivity. He attributes the vogue of "Main Street" partly to fortunate "timing" (the period of disillusionment following the war being ideal for the appearance of a novel of disillusionment), partly to per- sistent newspaper columnist agitation, and partly to the

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280 The Nation [Vol. 125. No. 3246 provocative and bellicose mood in which it was written. He once remarked to me that if "Main Street" had been written with more poise and less temper it probably would never have been read outside the intellectual circles at all. He does not, of his own initiative, refer to his books. He will talk about them freely, and even critically, if they are brought up by an understanding outsider; but he ap- pears to prefer talking about books turned out by other hands. I do not believe that he has ever allowed himself to form any precise opinions as to the merits of his various novels. I think he distrusts his judgment when applied to his own works. I have the feeling that somebody whose judgment he respects — Mencken, for example — might easily persuade him that a given novel of his was either excel- lent or poor. Summer before last, for example, when the reviews of "Mantrap" were coming in, I could not form any conclusion as to what Lewis himself thought about the book. One morning he tossed across the breakfast table a sheaf of reviews which had just come in from England. He vouch- safed no remark, and shortly sauntered off to the tent where he wrote. The reviews, I discovered, were uniformly favor- able. Throughout that day it seemed to me that Lewis was rather warm on "Mantrap." Several days later there came in a copy of the American Mercury, with Mencken's review of "Mantrap" a part of its contents. Mencken did not care for "Mantrap." I may have been mistaken, but it seemed to me that, in Lewis's mind, the stock of "Man- trap" suffered a sharp and immediate slump. Of this, how- ever, I am sure: "Mantrap" was no pot-boiler. Lewis would not know how to put his tongue in his cheek and write solely for money. He might write from mistaken enthusiasm; he could not but write from enthusiasm. "Arrowsmith," apparently, is his favorite among his own works. In the entire body of his writings the only passage I ever heard him admit to a shy weakness for was that description of the beginnings of the influenza plague which appeared in Chapter XXXI, which ran as follows: vrom Yunnian in China, from the clattering bright bazaars, crept something invisible in the sun and vigilant by dark, creeping, sinister, ceaseless; creeping across the Himalayas down through walled market-places, across a desert, along hot yellow rivers, into an American missionary compound — creep- ing, silent, sure; and here and there on its way a man was black and stilled with plague. In Bombay a new dock-guard, unaware of things, spoke boisterously over his family rice of a strange new custom of the rats. The princes of the sewer, swift to dart and turn, had gone mad. They came out on the warehouse floor, ignoring the guard, springing up as though ( the guard said merrily) they were trying to fly, and straightway falling dead. He had poked at them, but they did not move. Three days later that dock-guard died of the plague. V The name of Sinclair Lewis, the novelist, is associated by every critic in the country with at least two outstand- ing qualities, gusto and unique powers of mimicry. And no less are these qualities associated with Sinclair Lewis the individual by every friend of his who knows him at all in- timately. He runs to mimicry as spontaneously as a mon- key. The most frequent object of his mimicry is our old acquaintance, Babbitt. "Now my idea of them radical literary fellows is this," he will begin with a positive air. "As I was savin' just the other day — " And with that he is on the loose. Having become Bab- bitt, one never knows how long he will stay Babbitt. He could, if need be, remain in character for hours. I re- member a certain evening when, having transformed him- self into Babbitt, he told us of having gone down to Wash- ington to shake the President's hand. The particular Bab- bitt he had become had, it seems, once been a school-mate of "Cal's," and wished to renew the ancient acquaintance. The aimless and inconsecutive flow of dreadful platitudes, thick-witted observations, and ungrammatical philosophiz- ings proved to be as diverting as it was torrential. The conclusion of the interminable narrative found Babbitt proudly displaying the hand which had shaken the hand of the man who had once shaken hands with "Cal" — it de- veloped that Babbitt had never got to "Cal" himself at all — and informing his auditors that he had never had a more inspirational and educational trip. The sketch, which Lewis improvised as he went along, would have made a very re- spectable companion-piece to any of Ruth Draper's satirical sketches. It was characterized by the same voluminous detail and the same high spirits that one encounters in the Lewis novels. When Lewis begins Babbitudinizing, his dif- ficulty is never that of finding words, but of preventing them from flooding him. He literally showers Babbitudes. He is less a rain than a downpour. Though he mimics Babbitt best, his mimicry is not confined to Babbitt. He mimics anybody; indeed. I do not know that I have ever met anyone who does a verbal cartoon more tellingly and with less effort. In an earlier day, I used to wonder why Lewis did not prefer a quieter satirical method in his novels. When he is seen at close range, the answer is obvious enough. His temperament is such that he cannot travel other than "in high"; and he has no brakes. His embarrassment begins when he recalls that he is under the necessity of checking his furious pace and slowing down. He does not know how to slow down. Sheer momentum continues to sweep him forward long after he has reached the logical place to halt. What makes him formidable in the literature of attack is this uncontrolled and uncontrollable drive. When he undertakes to attack something in his novels, one gets the impression of ocean waves piling up without stint or limit, inexhaustibly. Long after the rock has been washed away, the waves continue lashing, lashing, lashing — ap- parently unable to subside at all. This is Lewis himself in conversation. Naturally irre- pressible, he is simply unable to subside. Put him in a group, and he is likely not only to do most of the talking, but also to be the last survivor. In the long evenings up at Big Pelican Lake Lewis was regularly fresh, unwearied, and voluble after everyone else had gone reeling to bed. His vitality is astonishing. There is no wearing him down. Up at the lake he was not merely the last to turn in, but the first to appear at breakfast the following morning. Then, at the breakfast table, one was always sure to find him sparkling with energy and good humor and conversing at white heat throughout the remainder of the meal and, more frequently than not, throughout the remainder of the morning as well. "Elmer Gantry," at the time but a stack of sheets next the typewriter in the tent, had to submit to complete neglect every other day or so. Its author was

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Sept. 21, 1927] The Nation 281 regularly forsaking it for one of his long-distance conver- sations. Though busy with "Elmer Gantry," Lewis did not talk about it much. Once in a while he would give Elmer's "Hallelujah" yell, an exercise which was always congenial to him (he has the natural temperament of the cheer leader), and now and then he would drop a remark about Sharon, who was just beginning to take on form and out- line, and who had suddenly captivated him. His prevailing mood during the composition of "Gantry" was clearly that of an anti-evangelical evangelist; but when he reached Sharon it seemed as if the novelist had leaped at him from the rear and pinioned him, catching him, in a sense, una- ware. Lewis, instead of being displeased with this turn, was delighted. The novelist in him, after all, is a force to be reckoned with. He recognized the danger that the evan- gelist in him might swamp the novelist altogether; and he was anxious that the novelist unseat the evangelist, seize the pen, and write as much of the book as possible. One reason why he was so ardently on the side of the novelist, 1 think, was because he felt that in this book the novelist was in unusual peril of being the under dog. Certainly he had enough "religion" in his system and in his household to satisfy anybody. The Reverend Mr. Birkhead and Mrs. Birkhead, a charming couple from Kan- sas City, were living in the cottage, while Lewis himself was living in the tent a couple of hundred yards away. Both the cottage and the tent were littered with heavy, hu- morless religious tomes. Religious periodicals were coming in all the time. The only items in the newspapers which interested Lewis were stories relating to clergymen. The table conversation was filled with references to various Kan- sas City clergymen, Earl Blackmore, "Bill" Stidger, and so on, all of whom, of course, Lewis liked. One evening Father John, a Catholic priest from Sauk Center, came over to visit Lewis. Father John was one of Lewis's pet enthusi- asms. On another evening Lewis motored over to Brainerd to hear Minnesota's leading fundamentalist and anti-evolu- tionist, the Reverend Dr. Riley, deliver a lecture. He had a chat with Dr. Riley afterwards and, needless to say, came back liking him extremely. Contradictory Lewis unquestionably is. It is his con- tradictoriness, in no small measure, which makes him inter- esting as a character. Why should it infuriate him, for example, to hear the English gravely praise "Babbitt" as a perfect portrayal of American customs and manners? Yet infuriate him it does. He resents that pronouncement (when it comes from the other side of the water) as hotly as Babbitt himself. He resents it as hotly as he resents the antithetical pronouncement when it comes from this side of the water. And there you are. Find the consistency if you can. Ask Lewis to explain the inconsistency, and a boyish grin will lighten his countenance, and he will tell you to go to the devil. The answer naturally is that he is American to the core. It is quite all right for Amer- icans to tell Americans of their faults ; but he will take no censure of America, even by implication, from foreign sources. There is still another respect in which Lewis is con- tradictory. In his belligerent moments he is quixotic; in his contemplative moments he has no admiration whatsoever for chivalry, which he considers futile. In his belligerent moments he is full of certainties; in his contemplative mo- ments he has none at all. In his belligerent moments he cannot but be hortatory and evangelical; in his contempla- tive moments his contempt for evangelism knows no bounds. Catch him in his contemplative moments, and you are struck by the sensitiveness of his taste, the breadth of his outlook, and the razor-like sharpness of his intelligence. Catch him in his belligerent or sentimental moments, and you are amazed at his utter primitiveness. He is enthusiastically devoted to his few friends, and makes of friendship a lyric thing; yet his concept of friendship is essentially that of a tribal chieftain's. Loyalty overshadows all else for Lewis; he could no more be heterodox in his view of Judas than Babbitt. He not only places a high evaluation upon loyalty, but upon militant loyalty. He likes the type of friend who is ready to avenge an insult to him with his fists. It is not enough to take loyalty for granted; he enjoys seeing it demon- strated spectacularly, even melodramatically. I suppose it is sufficient to say that he enjoys receiving the sort of friendship he is ready to give. Lewis himself belongs to the breed willing to submit to any inconvenience or to go to any lengths, no matter how extravagant, for his friends. He enters upon a friendship with the same abandon, the same gusto, and the same heartiness that he enters upon a novel. With his friends he is much more like the doughboy with his "buddies" than the citizen of the world with his companions. Yet, for all that, in his contemplative mo- ments he is the poised philosopher, the citizen of the world complete. These contradictions are simply not to be ex- plained ; they are inherent in Lewis himself. Lewis, in fine, is a distinctively American phenomenon. He is American in the sense that the flavor of him is un- mistakably, unabashedly, inevitably, and inimitably Amer- ican. Like Abraham Lincoln, Mark Twain, Walt Whitman, and P. T. Barnum, he is simply not to be conceived of as a European. Prairie influences molded his personality; the tang of the prairie is to be felt in him still. Encounter him merely as a red-headed stranger in any international gathering, and he would be the first man in the group whose nationality you would feel certain about. "Mid-west Amer- ica!" would be your immediate ejaculation. In this cosmo- politan nomad there is even a trace of the back-home Amer- ican. To my surprise. I discovered in him a good deal of sentiment for his home State. He has abused it and been abused by it; yet withal he retains a real affection for it. I doubt if it would be prudent for any Bostonian or Phila- delphian to speak slightingly or superciliously of Minne- sota in his presence; Lewis would as likely burst into a sheet of flame as not. Sensitive as a poet and rough as a lum- berjack, ready to fight at the drop of the hat and yet quite as ready to give you the hat, part Gopher Prairieite and part cosmopolite, part boy and part seer, prankish, playful, outspoken, inconsistent, sentimental, militant, quixotic, and dynamic, a bundle of quivering nerves, a personality elec- tric with interest in life, a bond-buying vagabond and a flag-hating flag-waver, a primitive ultra-modern, a pugilistic aesthete, and a crusader against crusading, even his enemies would have to admit that he was at least an unforgetable experience and an unsurpassable companion. Nature as a novelist was never in a more opulent or paradoxical creative mood than when she invented the torrid, rich, and varie- gated character of Sinclair Lewis, proletarian plutocrat, bourgeois gypsy, patriotic expatriate, unmannerly critic of manners, and loud-speaking champion of the subdued voice.

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282 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3246 A Year After Thoiry By ROBERT DELL Paris, August 19 NEARLY ;t year has passed since M. Briand's famous speech in the Assembly of the League of Nations after the admission of Germany into the League and his subsequent meeting with Dr. Stresemann at Thoiry. When one compares the hopes that were aroused a year ago with the distressing reality of the present situation, one is almost driven to despair. Not only has nothing been done during the last twelve months to realize the provisional age sement made at Thoiry, but there has been a distinct set-back to the policy inaugurated at Locarno— the policy of friendly cooperation between England, France, and Ger- many, on which the peace of Europe depends. Yet the hopes of September, 1926, should not have been illusory, for they were based on solid grounds of reason. M. Briand returned from Geneva last year in tri- umph, confident of his ability to carry through the Thoiry policy, and his coi.Iidei.ee seemed to be justified. He had the greater part both of the press and of the public in franco on his side. The Quotidien declared that his policy must go through, even if it involved the downfall of the Poincare Cabinet, and papers such as the Petit Parisien and the Petit .Jf the session ami M. Poincare agreed to a debate but, when M. Briand, who was in the country for his health, returned to Paris for the express purpose of replying to the interpellation, the Socialists withdrew it! Such has been the conduct of those on whose support M. Briand might naturally have counted. Meanwhile M. Poincare began at Bar-le-Duc a series of Sunday afternoon speeches on the wickedness of the Germans, raking up Ger- man "atrocities" and even pre-war incidents, and complain- ing that the German Government had not changed the name of an ancient warship called the Elsass. The worst was the speech at Luneville, which led Dr. Stresemann to ask whether France was for the policy of the Ruhr or the policy of Locarno. His question remains to this day un- answered. Perhaps M. Briand might have answered it, had not the Socialists prevented him from speaking, as I have mentioned. The press of the Right began a campaign on the menace of German armaments and the imminent danger o( a German attack, obviously inspired by the Gen- eral Staff to prevent the evacuation of the Rhineland or even a reduction of the occupying forces. The campaign culminated in a three-column article in the Echo de Penis on August Hi in which the occupation of the Rhineland was declared to be the only guarantee of French security, which

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Sept. 21, 1927] The Nation 283 implies that it must be permanent, Germany was repre- sented as being on the point of attacking France, any re- duction of the occupying forces was opposed, and Sir Austen Chamberlain was accused of having sent a note on the ques- tion of reduction so offensive in tone that M. Briand dared not read it to the Cabinet. The net result of all this is that M. Briand goes to Geneva a year after Thoiry discredited and without au- thority or prestige. It amazes me that he has the face to go at all and it would not surprise me if he resigned when he came back. It would be the course most con- sistent with his dignity. M. Henry de Jouvenel of the Sen- ate and the Matin has given him a parting kick. There is considerable force in the official reason that M. de Jouvenel gave for resigning from the French delegation. It is true, as he says, that the most important questions concerning European peace, beginning with the Corfu affair, have been withheld from the League of Nations. Because it is true, M. Briand's reply was very weak, but he was justified in remarking that M. de Jouvenel had taken a long time to find out that the League was being set aside, for he was already a member of the French delegation at the time of the Corfu affair of four years ago. In his explanatory ar- ticle in the Matin, however, M. de Jouvenel let the black cat out of the bag. He wants France once more to be the center of the "little nations," that is, he is for the military alliances with Poland and the rest against the policy of Locarno. Two months ago M. de Jouvenel declared in an interview given to the Vossische Zeitung that the Pact of Locarno was insufficient and further guarantees were re- quired. He suggested that the Powers should return to Locarno to make a new pact, which should include "at least" a British guarantee of the present Polish frontiers. It is sometimes said that M. Poincare is not really op- posed to the Thoiry policy — that is, to the evacuation of the Rhineland — that he is merely waiting until America is willing to buy the German railway securities, and that depends on the ratification by France of the debt agree- ment, which in its turn depends on stabilization. In that case, why does not M. Poincare stabilize, as both the finan- cial and the industrial interests in France now desire? It is a more probable hypothesis that one of his reasons for postponing legal stabilization is a desire to postpone the consequences mentioned. But the realization of the Ger- man railway securities was not an essential part of the Thoiry policy. It was probably suggested merely because M. Briand wished to have some quid pro quo to induce his colleagues to agree to the evacuation of the Rhineland. The essence of the Thoiry policy was the recognition of the evacuation as the logical consequence of Locarno, which morally bound the occupying Powers to withdraw. M. Poincare proposes to continue it as a guarantee of reparations, that is, of the fulfilment of Germany's obliga- tions under the Dawes Plan. He foresees that the Dawes Plan will break down, either because it will be found im- possible to transfer the payments, or because Germany de- faults, and in either case he intends to use the occupation of the Rhineland as a means of bringing pressure on Ger- many to make a new arrangement. That this is his policy is certain, and he will never agree to evacuation before the fate of the Dawes Plan is known, which is to say that he is opposed to the Thoiry policy. China Tests Our Religion By HARRY F. WARD MOST of the current discussion concerning the nature and worth of our religion has about it an air of un- reality. It is of the same pattern as the Moscow talk about the condition and survival value of capitalism before the Communist dialecticians became realistic enough to appraise the economic phenomena of Europe, and so to recognize a period of stabilization for the system whose collapse they expect to hasten. In the case of religion the most signifi- cant body of data for determining its place and part in the future life of man is to be found from now on in Asia and in Russia. In this vast human laboratory, China is for the moment the most vital spot. It has suddenly become a great test tube in which the religion of the West, like its statecraft and its economics, is being subjected to an analy- sis the like of which it has never before undergone. This process is now being hastened by the lighting of the fires of persecution, and in their lambent heat the various elements of our religion, and their comparative vitality, begin to appear. The Nanking affair, and a few similar minor incidents, brought to completion the revealing work of the anti-Christian movement. Here was the first touch of persecution felt by Western Christianity since the Boxer uprising ; for its officials, under lay influence, declined the challenge of the anti-religious movement in Russia and of the Soviet laws against religious education. In that case it was inevitable that economic fear should outvote re- ligious courage. When a religion has reached the pruden- tial stage, when its conserving tendencies have outgrown its creative capacity, it naturally looks for its growth more to the money of the millionaires than to the blood of the martyrs, and one need not go to China for a germination test of that variety of seed. Its capacity for developing religion can be seen in plenty of cases nearer home, where it has not been mixed, as it has abroad, with the more vital sacrificial gifts of those of small income. In the China test, the reaction of the mission boards at home, whose main task is financing the enterprise, is of course to be distinguished from that of missionaries in the field. The headquarters attitude necessarily expresses the institutionalist stage and type of religion when the ad- venturous spirit of the early days of poverty has given place to the sober judgments of vested interests. To these, already strained by lessening contributions, anti-foreignism in China is a calamitous burden, not a joyous test. It means that evacuated missionaries must be transported and main- tained, that property must be replaced or restored, that the question of indemnity must be faced — shall it be accepted officially, for property if not for life; shall individuals be forbidden, encouraged, or left free to claim it? Manifestly, in this stage of an organization, we cannot expect the sing- ing courage with which the I. W. W. leave the courtrooms of California on their way to jail, or the joyous abandon of

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284 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3246 Left Wingers on the picket line at Passaic, any more than we can find these things at A. F. of L. headquarters. It is the perennial problem of human organization — how to prevent the hardening of the arteries that aj also to institutions, how to preserve the virility of the dog- matic propagandist without his intolerant gyrations. Will it in the end be done through the discipline of the experi- mental attitude developed by science, or is there also needed that indefinable element of passion for the universal and continuing welfare of humanity that links man with the infinite? Among the missionaries in China there appear two diverse reactions to the loss of possessions and the danger of death. One is the historic spirit of the martyr, soberly rejoicing in persecution as a test of faith, forgiving the persecutors with tolerant goodwill. This attitude is real enorgh to impress tough-minded, twentieth-century news- paper men with its value for the adjustment of distorted human relationships, even as long ago it made its dent on hardened Roman centurions. Another group shows the opposite reaction. Here one finds the spirit of retaliation, conventionally cloaked in the demand for justice. Pun- ishment of wrongdoers is necessary to prevent repetition. Mad dogs are a common menace and must be destroyed — the old bromides ! Naturally this group became the tool of the commercial interventionists of Shanghai, who desper- ately needed missionary support for their program, and whose journalistic mouthpieces gleefully cabled home long interviews from the few they could find and get to talk on the theme that missions must be reinstated and tem- porarily protected by armed force. The clear consequence of this attitude reveals its na- ture. Denying the essential and universal elements in its own gospel it could not propagate itself. But those who by nature and training had failed to see and understand these elements could not be expected to perceive that their posi- tion was playing into the hands of the anti-Christian move- ment, whose chief charge was the association of Western religion with the spirit and methods of imperialism. Nor could they see the effect of their attitude upon their Chinese converts and colleagues. "Their talk," said a very influen- tial Christian Chinese, "makes some of us wonder if wre have not made a mistake in accepting Christianity from the hands of Western Christians." The more serious thing is that the attitude of such missionaries is indistinguish- able from that of the commercial interventionists. They talk the same language, except that the men of the cloth draw back from the logic of their position and persuade themselves that to smash Hankow would not mean inter- vention. This sort of religion is thus revealed as a special inter- est, requiring the same methods as other special interests for its protection, and as the price therefore providing them with its emotional dynamic and its rationalizing justifica- tion. In the end, then, it must take a subordinate place to nationalism and money-making, which are left in supreme command of the energies of man. Instead of supplying these forces with ethical guidance, this type of religion takes its ethics from them. It even blesses their union, whose offspring is competitive econc \iic imperialism, and so becomes accomplice in the mutual destruction of man- kind. How much of what we call Christianity is :>f this sort, and how much of it is the indestructible spirit of goodwill getting itself organized in all human affairs. China is helping us to find out. And the outcome is not only per- tinent to the rationalist and his quarrel with religion, it is also very vital to the future of mankind, for one of these varieties of religion can make alliance with science for the transformation of human life, the other cannot. Further light is thrown on this question by the atti- tude of missionaries toward evacuation. In most cases they went or stayed by the word of consuls rather than the judgment of missionary administrators. The tendency of religious executives, since the World War, is to let the state take command. Submission has become a habit. Democracy, having freed the state from the domination of the church, is now apparently on the way to harness the church to the triumphal chariot of the state. Some time since, when some missionaries in China informed our min- ister that they desired no protection from our government, they were answered officially that they would get it whether or no. And the mission boards took this lying down, though most of the missionaries are beyond the reach of protective measures and the value of the principle to the government is obviously elsewhere. In the present emergency, not a few missionaries put the authority of their staying where they had found the call of their going, in the needs of the Chi- nese. This for them, voiced by the Chinese themselves, was the expression of the God they must obey rather than men. For the others, more conventionally minded, in localities where the consul guessed wrong and no danger developed, what propagating power wall their religion now have, or what solidarity with their Chinese colleagues? When a religious journal spoke of a gold-star list for those missionaries who ignored both consular "advice" and ecclesiastical instructions to leave their posts, some who had left protested another consideration than endangering their Chinese fellow-Christians. They were not willing to provoke a situation in which some of their fellow-citizens might be called to risk life in their behalf. Here they voiced the common human interest against the claims of that enslaving mechanism we call the state. For the man in the street refused to get excited over the danger of missionaries in China. He assumed that which his govern- ment denied, that they had gone at their own risk and did not expect him to do anything about it. Hence it is clear that if missionary organizations will follow the lead of their front-line forces, if they will formally reject the protection of the state and ignore its orders, if they will deny its specious claim to protect missionaries against their will, they will thereby help to save other citizens from be- ing disposed of by the state in behalf of certain underlying interests. Thereby they would demonstrate a more vital religion than either nationalism or money-making. The answer that China is writing to the current ques- tions concerning the nature and vitality of our religion can only be recognized if we remember that what we call Christianity is a conglomerate of various and often irrecon- cilable elements, running all the way from Holy Rollers to Unitarian Brahmins, from Aimee McPherson to Bishop Manning. Crossing all these divisions of sects — which ex- press the externalities and eccentricities of religion — there are also differences of type that express its various essen- tial elements. Of these types, two classifications have re- cently been suggested. One divides our current religious organizations into the imperialistic and the democratic — the former depending upon and developing authority, the other resting on and encouraging the process of mutual

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Sept. 21, 1927] The Nation 285 consent. The other classification finds three types of reli- gion among us: the dogmatic, emphasizing doctrine and creed; the institutional, busying itself with religious ma- chinery and good works; the experimental, whose approach is scientific, whose expression is ethical. These types co- exist in various proportions in the big middle-class Amer- ican denominations, and they probably always will, for people belong to them by temperament as well as by train- ing. The proportion, however, can be changed by cultiva- tion, and if this is to be done it must needs be on the basis of the universal and permanent values present or lacking in each type. Here again China is testing, for we have done more missionary work there than anywhere else, and more than has been done in any other one country by anybody else. Also this testing has some bearing upon the future of Judaism, since the differences between Orthodox, Reformed and Ethical Culture Jews correspond roughly to the differ- ences between certain types of Christians. Obviously the imperialistic and democratic types of missionaries in China reacted to persecution and orders to evacuate according to their name and nature. Those whose motive and method had been to impose something on or hand something down to the Chinese, who had resisted or reluctantly accepted the transfer of authority in their in- stitutions to Chinese colleagues, who had opposed or mis- understood the Nationalist movement because it challenged their own governments, inevitably revealed in the crisis that their religion belonged to an earlier period than the spirit of goodwill in whose name they were commissioned. They reacted in the spirit of force. With them were most of the dogmatists, though some of these stayed at their posts from the sheer power of long-continued human asso- ciations, and for the same reason showed no bitterness or resentment. The institutionalists split more evenly, depend- ing upon their degree of social passion and upon whether or not they were pacifists. The experimentalists and the democrats, seeking with the Chinese a mutual discovery as well as a sharing of the nature and meaning of religion, naturally manifested the spirit of goodwill in the emer- gency. They were solidly against intervention, partly on the ground of ethical principle, which possesses for them religious value and authority; partly on the ground of an intelligent provision of consequences. On both counts they were on common ground with the Chinese. Thus it is more true than most mission executives know when they say it that China now represents the end of an era in the expansion of our religion. For them it means that Christianity in China is to become autonomous and to incorporate indigenous elements. But this means certain changes in its nature, which are also in process elsewhere. The imperialistic type henceforth can hold but a minority position. The dogmatic type goes the same way. China and the rest of Asia will finish what science has begun. As one of her leaders, himself a Christian, said: "We Chinese sim- ply cannot understand the furore in your country over such questions as the Virgin Birth." For a time China is likely, because of her practical turn, to cultivate the institutionalist type of religion too heavily. In the stress of present cii-cumstance it will be strongly nationalistic, thus repeating a lot of history. But once free from the West, China will have to face the same test it has put to the West, the test of whether religion is only what it has mostly been — a sanction for local, partic- ular, and private interests, or whether it possesses values that are indispensable to the common development. The answer to this question lies not in the field of dialectic. It will be demonstrated, one way or the other, by the experi- mental type of religionist, and for this type the Chinese have affinity. To it they will add the test of their deep- seated rationalism, their long-established ethical bent. A Conference with Governor Fuller By ARTHUR GARFIELD HAYS FRANK WALSH, Francis Fisher Kane, and I attended at the Executive Chamber. Mr. Sullivan, His Excel- lency's hard-boiled secretary, was apparently not greatly cheered by our visit, but after a time we were ushered into the presence of Governor Fuller, clothed on that day, Au- gust 22, 1927, with the power of a god — the power of life and death. We explained our mission — that we were for the mo- ment interested in just the one phase of the case of Sacco and Vanzetti — that relating to the government files, which the federal officials had offered to open. Disclaiming any contention that the files showed a frame-up or improper collusion between departments of government, we pointed out that on the basis of affidavits of former government agents, the evidence therein contained was material to the case. We appealed that the men should not be put to death while these files remained secret. What answer would there be to a large and sincere public opinion which felt that this secrecy in itself was evidence of connivance by the federal government? "Do you think these men are innocent?" inquired the Governor. "We wouldn't be here if we didn't." "Have you interviewed the witnesses? I have. Pre- sumably I know more about the case than you do." We refrained from pointing out that he had believed one set of witnesses rather than another, and that in view of his background and his attitude expressed in Congress toward radicals, his choice of where to place his confidence was natural. Instead we answered that the report of the Lowell committee appointed by him had effectively con- tributed to the "doubts" and, in admitting the "grave breach of official decorum" and the "indiscretions" of Judge Thayer, had made clear that the trial had not been before an "impartial" judge as guaranteed by the Massachusetts Bill of Rights. Later, Frank Walsh made the query: Did the Lowell committee believe the witnesses who testified that Judge Thayer had called these men "anarchist bas- tards" and other vile names; did Thayer confess, or on the other hand had he denied the accusations, the committee regarding his denials as lies? An important question, for one or the other must have happened in view of the com- mittee's report! Did Judge Thayer confess or did he lie? The Governor ignored the question. "If the Lowell committee report made the strongest possible case againsi n," we continued, "it is not surprising that there should be doubt?" "Who said it made the strongest case?" said the Gov- ernor. "They owed it to the public to state all the facts that led to their conclusion, so presumably they did."

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'236 The Nation [Vol. 125. No. 3246 "Do you know why Vanzetti failed to take the stand in the Plymouth case?" Apparently this had great significance to the Governor. He had referred to it in his report, and in view of his con- stant reference it seemed a controlling circumstance, for the question, so I am informed, was put to many who con- ferred with him that day. What was at the bottom of it? "Presumably he was advised not to take the stand." "Perhaps he refused to take the stand." (Did the Gov- ernor have private information of conferences of Vanzetti with his former counsel? If so, where did he get it? We knew merely that Vanzetti had for years claimed that coun- sel in the Plymouth case had betrayed his interests at the trial and had advised him not to testify.) "Isn't it your experience that an innocent man insists upon taking the stand?" "There may be many reasons, Governor, why a man should not. Advice against it is often sound, particularly with the defendant a foreigner and holding unpopular views. See what happened to them in the other case when they did. They seem to be damned if they do and damned if they don't." The philosophy of protecting a defendant who fails to testify is so apparent that, under the law, no man is re- quired to take the stand, and the jury is instructed that failure to testify may not even be considered as an indi- cation of guilt. "But, Governor, we are entitled to rely on the Lowell report. We wish to refer to just one statement in that report. One of the alleged facts on which the committee came to its conclusion was that the cap found at ;he scene of the murder fitted Sacco. The Defense Committee denies this. On this point there were three witnesses at the trial. First, Sacco, who testified it was not his cap. When it was tried on it was apparently far too small, sitting on the back of his head, as is shown by newspaper cartoons at the time. Secondly, Mrs. Sacco, who said it was not her hus- band's cap, and then the superintendent of the factory, who said he thought it was of the color of Sacco's cap, but re- fused to identify it. Governor, this question can be fac- tually determined. Before you kill Sacco. try on the cap! What answer can there be to this? Have you read the editorial of the New York World, analyzing the report and quoting the evidence on this?" "Who wrote that editorial?" asked the Governor. We gave our opinion that presumably the writer was Walter Lippmann, but we knew that the Governor attributed it to Felix Frankfurter, though we wondered why this should affect the soundness of the argument. Contempt for former officials who would relate "se- crets" in the files of the government; an assurance that the United States government, even in the days of the notorious Mitchell Palmer, could do no wrong; reliance upon the fail- ure of Vanzetti to take the stand as an indication of guilt, leaving an inference that there was a sinister attack of innuendo by Vanzetti's former lawyer; and animus toward Felix Frankfurter, as one whose fight for these men in his book on Sacco and Vanzetti had caused the public ex- citement, were apparently working in the Governor's sub- conscious. The point of our conference had been diverted but as we left we again made our appeal that the government files be opened. Then our last thought to the Governor: "Only an infallible judge should fix an immutable sentence."' In the Driftwciv THE Drifter had for years had a completely erroneous impression that the blacksmith was obsolete. But he found one the other day, and he was very much alive. More- over, he went straight to the heart of the matter by asking the Drifter if he knew that there were a lot of people in the world — especially garage keepers — who couldn't get along very well without a blacksmith. "He's just as important now as he was when King Solomon built his temple. After that temple was built old Solomon held a contest to find out which worker was the most instrumental in building it. At first there were thousands of contestants but gradually all of them were eliminated except the blacksmith and the tailor. That tailor was so glad over the result that he jumped up and down for joy — and his scissors fell out of his pocket and broke. Then he was mad. because he had to go to the blacksmith to get them fixed and that eliminated him from the race. He got madder and madder, so when he got his scissors back from the blacksmith he just stooped down and snipped that blacksmith's apron right up the middle. And that's why every blacksmith's apron since then is split up the middle. You never saw one that wasn't, now did you?" THE Drifter admitted he hadn't and the irrepressible blacksmith told him another. "You know that finding a horseshoe is lucky, don't you? But do you know why it's lucky? No? . . . Once upon a time, so the legend says, a horse walked into the shop of an old German blacksmith and said he wanted shoes on all four feet. Now the old German had never heard a horse talk before and he was scared to death, and kind of suspicious. He said he wouldn't do it. 'All right,' said the horse, 'I'll kick down your shop.' He had a mean look in his eye and the blacksmith thought he meant what he said, so he finally consented to make shoes for him. When he lifted the forefoot, he found that all his suspicions were right. It had a cloven hoof. And so did all the other feet. It was the devil all right, and the old German knew it. He decided to fix that devil good and proper. He put the shoes on hot, turned the nails the wrong way and drove them into the hoof. He finished his job and the horse, or rather, the devil, paid him and walked out. Then the horse had trouble. His feet hurt him some- thing awful. At last he couldn't stand it any longer so he took them off and left them in the road. Well, the devil has never liked horsehoes since then and whenever he sees one he'll go a long way off his course to keep from getting any- where near it." * * -:;- ■* * FALL came in the day after Labor Day. The Drifter met it on an early morning walk along the Hudson. The sun had not quite penetrated the autumn haze. The river was shrouded in mist and the blue hills beyond seemed hardly more substantial. The concrete road was still wet with dew and quietness lay about like sleeping children. Raucous signs put out to catch summer traffic were no longer offensive, for now7 their days were numbered. "Try our coffee with hot franks," "Rooms for tourists with running water." "Sanitary rest rooms ahead," — only tired summer resorts murmuring in their sleep. . . . Thin sun- light on brown grass, dusk on an autumn river, and the Drifter feels school starting, and turns up his coat collar. The Drifter

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Sept. 21, 1927] The Nation 287 Correspondence Hail, Heywood Broun ! To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: I hail with pleasure your announcement that begin- ning some time in September Mr. Heywood Broun will con- tribute a page in The Nation every week. Indeed, for a writer of Mr. Broun's known liberal tendencies the logical place was always in the columns of the fearless Nation. With the as- surance of complete freedom of expression, I hope Mr. Broun will continue to write in the vein of his last article in the World — I mean the one which sent such a cold shudder down the back of Mr. Ralph Pulitzer. New York, September 5 Chas. Bitterbaum From the Other Boston To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: You rose to the height of a great argument in your leader on the dreadful deed. You wrote truly, adequately to the occasion. This is not the time for detailed observation, but one thing is sure that after we have picked ourselves together we must pertinaciously, each in his own way, carry out the duty on behalf of the ancient claims of freedom and justice and reason which this happening lays upon us. Boston, August 31 Thomas L. Lawrence Who Plants Bombs? To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: In 1885 in Coffeyville, Kansas, a bomb was exploded with baneful result. The machine officials (Republicans) charged it to the newly organized Farmer's Alliance, claiming it was a terroristic organization, etc. Later it was found the bomb had been sent by express by a member of the Republican machine. A year later there was a similar happening near Lincoln, Nebraska. Traced, it gave a similar result. Then came the Haymarket hanging in Chicago. In the early nineties a bomb was found planted under the front porch of William J. Strange, Paterson, N. J. Mr. Strange was president of the Silk Manufacturing Association and was trying to defeat the silk workers then on strike. It later developed that the police- man who found the bomb was the man who placed it there. I believe the bombing of the juror's home did have a very bad effect upon the Sacco and Vanzetti case, but do not believe it was the work of any radical. I believe it was done precisely for this evil effect. Fairhope, Ala., September 5 G. S. Hoffeckkk On Reading the Sunday Newspapers: 1927 To thb Editor of The Nation: Sir: Sacco's face, with its husks of nostrils, hollowed by a febrile wind of sorrow, is a thin mask of bitterness: the mold of a creature very young, who was killed (but for a dramatic gesture left) seven years ago. Vanzetti's gaze has more substantial bulk. (Man was never made to think.) Yet he, also, deep in that hardy aversion to despair, peering, wondering mildly, saw a little of that final thing. Maybe he even guessed that Judge Thayer, older, held the last dry remnants of life's fading splendor very preciously. In the churches, Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians pray cautiously for that small comfort which endures between the involuntary, naked hour of birth and avaricious moments of the dying. Fear justifies all. (Death, to the gods, is insignificant.) Fathers, mothers, children pray around the lamp on Sunday, praying no bomb ever will shatter this wall, and the new vic- trola and Mabel's radio. (In the last war, Germans finished Molly's husband — left her destitute.) None are afraid enough. Not one believes in the six feet of darkness already marked for each. Not one believes that the slow, glittering sunshine will spin blank days, weeks, and cen- turies where none recall how Judge Thayer once convicted two Italian laborers on evidence that many counted insufficient. Even that "gentle rain from heaven" will rain with but indifferent quality on wastes where every vanity has scattered, and breeds rank corn to feed some savage who, not puffed up with the conceit of justice, slays his bolder victims boldly: convinced, utterly, that all he says and does is right. New York, August 31 Evelyn Scott A Negro Looks at Sacco's America To the Editor of The Nation: SIR: Your splendid article, Massachusetts the Murderer, is a stinging and manly rebuke to the powers that be who are responsible for the murder of Sacco and Vanzetti. Every sentence will help to destroy the naive idea which many Ameri- cans have that this is the "land of the free and the home of the brave." Of course this is no new thing; Negroes have been lynched, burned, and murdered both North and South ever since the Civil War. America is a land of oppression, murder, lynching, and crude civilization. Nowhere, so far as I know, are police so ignorant, arrogant, crude, and uncivil as in America. For my own part I have long since lost faith in America to lead the world in anything except mob rule, murder, race prejudice, and oppression. New York, Sept. 1 Thomas L. Dabney, Organizer, American Negro Labor Congress Among the Teachers To the Editor of The Nation : SlR: What indifference among the summer-school teachers concerning the Sacco-Vanzetti tragedy! I refer especially to the historians. They tell their classes about the Dreyfus case — how an innocent man was hounded for years despite the protest of millions, and if they know post-war revelations, they add that the French Minister of Foreign Affairs, Gabriel Hano- taux, received a protest from Count Muenster, the German ambassador, completely exonerating Dreyfus, but Hanotaux put that in the files of the Foreign Office without breathing a word of it. The American teacher of history lias learned to;) much from the war. He (or she) believes that the authorities must be supported. How often did I not hear: "Well, Fuller and his committee know more about this than I. So I'll stand bv Fuller." Aside from that there seemed to be complete ignorance and indifference. What superb detachment these historians have achieved! They wax eloquent denouncing the persecution of the Christians or the cruelties of the Inquisition; they never tire of pointing out the devious paths trod by Bismarck, Cavour, and perhaps Hanotaux. But the Sacco-Vanzetti case has not yet reached the textbooks. So they need not worry about "mon- strous injustice" or "secret files of the government." After all, they teach history. They refuse to help make it. What seems to be a live issue among the historians is the fight on your valued reviewer, Hairy Elmer Barnes. The tories of the American Historical Association never will forgive him. In their magazine, the American Historical Review, Barnes is spanked again and again. Well, the naughty boy deserves it! Why can't he let pedants be pedants? A splendid example of the tory attitude came to my atten-

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288 The Nation fVol.125.No 3246 tion this .summer. The class was one in modern history and the instructor an old member of the A. H. A. When he got to the war he stopped to excommunicate Barnes. "Mr. Barnes has no standing at all in the historical world. He's a sociolo- gist. Besides, as a friend of mine says, Mr. Barnes writes history so fast that I cannot keep up with him." Well, what should the class read? Oh, to be sure, read Hazen (here I gasped involuntarily, which brought the addition: even if he is a bit biased). Then there is Gooch (an excellent book in its day, but now surely much out of date), and Poincare, Hal- dane, Loreburn, Grey, Lord Fisher, Asquith, Bernadotte Schmitt (whose "England and Germany" was published during the war and is much behind the revelations of the last decade) and Sidney Fay's articles in the A. H. R. of 1920 and 1921. I think I begin to see the light. Barnes is excommunicated because so many "cannot keep up with him." New York. August 21 Chez Columbia Vrai Bon To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: When Mr. Krutch, the reviewer of my novel "The Delectable Mountains," says "there is never any necessity for reading between the lines" and refers to an "illegitimate" baby, I am forced to winder if, as so often is the case in a reviewed book, he did not also fail to read the lines themselves? The baby was legitimatized by bell, book, and candle and the first three hundred pages or so of the book were devoted princi- pally to that legitimatizing. And what does Mr. Krutch mean by "a commonplace plot," and what has that got to do with the value of a no el? Was there ever a first class novel the plot of which wasn't common- place? I am not implying that "The Delectable Mountains" comes in this category, I am asking a generic question. According to my humble opinion the moment a writer tries to attract attention by so-called newness, of which in this world there is no such thing, he immediately takes his mind off the only two things that make a novel important: characterization and comment. As for myself, I have never read an important novel in which its creator did not treat almost with contempt this r ewness and this commonplaceness. He hasn't time to bring babies into the world in some curious and gymnastic way. Also he accepts the fact that having babies has been a com- monplace practice of humanity for a long while, none the less frequently earth-shaking to the individuals concerned even if it is an ancient rite and even if the motion pictures have dis- covered that it happens. I think that just at present American criticism is almost invalidated by the idea that the vrai bem, as Mr. Krutch calls it, consists entirely of being so original on the surface that what's inside of you isn't original at all. I put this down to the fact that so many books are published that the reactions of the average reviewer are numbed. But I am surprised where Mr. Krutch concerned. I call his atten- tion to a great many books, recently published, where this strange belief that a hand-spring is also a heart-beat is evi- dent in the accruing criticism. I have just finished one such book in which the whole action takes place in twenty-four hours. Up to that fact — the initial fact — the book is amusing. but beyond that fact it isn't, because what takes place in that twenty-four hours, as I see it, is neither true nor interesting. The vrai bon is trying to get at the truth; the faux bon is deliberately evading it. If I try to get at it in what Mr. Krutch considers a commonplace way that is because what seems to him commonplace does not seem so to me. But to speak of an honest man as having written a "popular and de- ceptive alloy" is to enter upon a moral field in which, if I may say so, Mr. Krutch knows enough neither about myself nor about my work to pass a judgment. Struthers Burt Moose, Jackson's Hole, Wyoming, August 12 Are you young: := capable and energetic: interested in world affairs? anxious to devote yourself to their study and to the prac- tical utilization of your ideas? willing to associate yourself with a small group of men similarly minded: and have you an independent income? If your answers to the above questions are "Yes," you might find it worth while to communicate with Gordon A. Olds, 420 LexingtonAve., N.Y.C. He will give your letter to the people who are paying for this advertisement in the hope of reaching three or four men having like interests and desires. *ln the twenties or early thirties . Why Travel for a LIBERAL EDUCATION! From the middle ages onward the value of travel in foreign countries has been recognized as adding the final touch to a liberal education. The broadening of one's views accomplished by travel can also be effected by coming in contact with the fresh view- point on world affairs and the unbiased ideas on men. letters and things presented in Sbr iRmtrbrstrr (BttariUan WEEKLY 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 de- pend on The Manchester Guardian Weekly to keep them furnished with reliable information on all important world happenings and to keep their viewpoint on vital affairs clear and unprejudiced. MAIL COUPON BELOW The Manchester Guardian Weeklv, 222 West 42nd Street, Xew York City. I enclose three dollars for a year's subscription to THE MANCHESTER GUARDIAN WEEKLY. Name . , Address When writing to advertisers please mention The Nation

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Books and Plays Professor McMaster Continues A History of the People of the United States During Lincoln's Administration. By John Bach McMaster. D. Appleton and Company. $5. 'T'HE eight volumes of Professor McMaster's "History of the *■ People of the United States" stop at the eve of the Civil War. The present volume, although announced as an inde- pendent work, continues the story through the Lincoln admin- istration and into that of Johnson, and may in fact be regarded as the final instalment of the great undertaking to which Professor McMaster has devoted his life. To any one who knows Professor McMaster's method and literary style, this account of the Civil War period will offer no novelty. The same wealth of illustrative, if not always typical, fact drawn particularly from newspapers, the same reliance upon a few documentary sources (in this case, nat- urally, the Official Records of the war) and infrequent mention of secondary works, the same skill in piecing together a story, the same generous assumption that the reader will know at once the full names of persons who appear in the text only as Governor This or General That, and the same placid refusal to be stirred by anybody or anything, that characterized the previous volumes are equally in evidence here. Seldom, if ever, has so elaborate a historical narrative embodied such a mass of well-arranged incident, or given so clearly the impression that all that really happened was just one thing after another. It cannot be said, however, that for the Civil War years the method, admirable beyond question in its way, works out as well as it did for much of the preceding period. The Civil War was an episode of many sides — sectional, partisan, con- stitutional, military, economic, humanitarian, diplomatic, re- ligious. The stage upon which the play was set was large, the actors many, the plot sometimes obscure and always com- plicated. Less than ever was it possible for any one news- paper to reflect a general opinion even in its own locality, and the monumental documents of the federal government are far from containing the whole story of what the government knew or did. Amusing or informing sidelights we get, of course, as when the Rev. Stephen H. Tyng told his audience at the Madison Avenue Baptist Church in this city that the first Bull Run battle "was fought on Sunday and that was reason enough for defeat," or when Henry Ward Beecher, replying in the New York Independent to Lincoln's famous letter of August 22, 1862, to Greeley, assured his readers that while Lincoln "means well, and tasks himself to do well for the country," "he is an overmatched man" and "cannot carry the government in its great emergency." Given the method and the point of view, Professor McMaster has done, perhaps, as well as it was possible to do, but although he pilots us safely through the forest, it is somewhat disturbing to find him at least equally interested in the trees. Nevertheless, the book is a great achievement. Its strong points are its exposition of the diplomatic relations between the United States and Great Britain and France, its excep- tionally full presentation of political opinion and maneuvering within the Confederacy, and its summary views of economic conditions in the North and the South during the war. To these noteworthy features are to be added the passages in which he describes such minor episodes as the first movements of troops for the defense of Washington, the suspension of the habeas corpus privilege, and the draft riots in New York. Taken as a whole, the book is analytical rather than de- scriptive. Doubtless the historian, if he is to be scientific, must hold himself to his sources and let facts tell the story. Professor McMaster's unemotional temper, however, leads him to pass lightly over episodes which, at the time, caught the imagination of the North or the South. The brilliance or trag- edy of battles and sieges, the play of personal motives in soldiers and statesmen, the thrill and pathos of Lee's surren- der or of Lincoln's death — such things as these stir but slightly his annalistic calm. One who had never before read a 650-page history of the Civil War would certainly close this book with a distinct impression that there had been a great conflict, and that in its course the nation had been thrown into vast disarray. He would be a more than ordinarily reflective reader if he gathered an equally clear impression of a national existence imperiled, or of a culmination of seventy-five years of national history which made war inevitable and determined the manner in which the war should be fought. William MacDonald Chaucer and Sherlock Some New Light on Cfiaucer. Lectures delivered at the Lowell Institute. By John Matthews Manly. Henry Holt and Company. $2.50. HPHE central theme, the "spire of meaning," about which Pro- A fessor Manly leisurely organizes his interesting lectures on the Canterbury Pilgrims is fitly forecast by the suggestion that the original of his frontispiece, the Seddon portrait of the poet, "may well have been painted from life." The picture, thus de- rived, not only aptly anticipates but strikingly symbolizes the lecturer's repeated contention that Chaucer's own sketches of fourteenth-century men and women are drawn directly from living models. The energy and efficiency of a master of in- vestigation and of the skilful inspectors of his staff never wane nor weaken in the rigid determination to identify the Pilgrims with this or that lawyer or franklin or shipman that trod fourteenth-century English earth, for to these ingenious de- tectives the success of Chaucer's art seems to hang upon the ability of his contemporary audience to recognize straightway the originals of his portraits, their features and their foibles. Unhappily for Professor Manly's symbol, careful compari- son of the Harvard painting with the manuscript presentments of Chaucer compels the conviction, shared by its present aca- demic owners, that it is merely one of the many modifications of the famous little sketch by Occleve drawn from memory after the death of its subject. Unluckily for the thesis, so sturdily championed, three large considerations run directly counter to the claim that the poet's persons are accurate repro- ductions of actuality. Such is not the method of the literary craftsman in any age; such surely cannot be the way of the medieval satirist of classes, whose readers reveled in generali- zation; nor does such a design seem at all in accord with Chaucer's oft-demonstrated love of individualized conventions. A word or two for each of these objections. The observer of the habits of many men "describes not men but manners, not an individual but a species." And every journeyman of the guild heavily underscores this patent dis- tinction between the real and the actual. The imagination, fed upon reality manifest in many persons, fashions its figments, each an artistic composite, a significant blending of several simples; and we recognize with delight not a chance acquaint- ance but a common humanity. Such implications of a universal likeness even in marked unlikeness survives and appeals when the artist and his world are dust. On the other hand the fleeting humor of topical "digs and grinds and hits" that Pro- fessor Manly finds alike in Chaucer and the Christmas Revue (a parallel fatal to his argument) is meaningless when the individual victims are unknown or forgotten. Moreover, the me- dieval mind is less interested in the particular than in the gen- eral, in the exceptional than in the normal. Medieval literature cherishes the type, the standard, and is concerned with cate- gories and characteristics. The numerous social satires of the time are invariably directed against conventional and

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290 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3246 traditional weaknesses of orders and classes rather than against personal error. As a man of his age, Chaucer is primarily concerned with the typical attributes of each occupation, mer- chant, doctor, ploughman. Though he may individualize the representative of a class or calling by circumstantial touches of time or place, the great expositor makes general features, collective qualities, the foundation of his sketches. Hence the eager hue and cry after personal identification seems trebly mistaken and misleading— and (alas!) provocative of far-re- sounding strife with rival sleuthhounds from other agencies, trailing other originals. For example, it may be reasonably argued by the opposition that the prototype of the "Good Wife of beside Bath" is to be sought in the initial theme of her pro- logue, the five-husbanded woman of Samaria "beside the well" (fons is the common gloss of "bath" and "well"), and not in a contemporary Dame Alice resident in St. Michael's Parish. Whatever be the source of Chaucer's figures, the rich material in Professor Manly's book amply vindicates the modest claim of its title. Some new light, surely, has been shed on Chaucer's man and women by these full-length portraits of prominent members of the various professions, and even the most obstinate heretic will heartily welcome such revelations of fourteenth-century actuality. We know the Man of Law, the Franklin, the Shipman better for having met under com- petent guidance Thomas Pynchbek, John Bussy, and John Haw- ley. The deduction from hearsay evidence no longer extant ("And this they wrote that another man wrote of a carl in Norroway") that Chaucer studied law in the Inner Temple is a 1 'ast in accord with his role on many diplomatic missions. And the inferences regarding the wealth and importance of those good burgesses, the poet's forbears, seem fully warranted by (lie evidence. The attempt to advance the date of Chaucer's birth from 1340 to 1345 is far less fortunate, as the age of twenty, that of his young Squire, is far better fitted to his services in France (1360) than the most mature fifteen. By the way, why should the most daring of scholars repeatedly describe Thomas Chaucer as "the supposed son" of Geoffrey, inasmuch as that filial relationship is established far more firmly than any contention in the present volume? Frederick T upper Credible Macabre The Dark Chamber. By Leonard Cline. The Viking Press. $2. TT is a rare quality, that which Mr. Cline displays when he * brings the fantastic and the macabre to such a high pitch of reality that the most prosaic strap hanger must believe in it as he reads. This quality lies not in the tale itself, the tale of Richard Pride, a curious, relentless man exploring his past and coming gradually to feel that all the experience of the race lies buried somewhere deep in his own consciousness. As he withdraws further and further into himself on his endless quest after this history his wife struggles vainly to bring him back from "the dark chamber" of his mind, and his daughter flees away from the morbid whirlpool of his investigations. The mechanism is clumsy at times, for the story is told in the first person by the young musician who comes to help Pride and to play for him the music of his past. The musician is a shadowy figure, sensitive and quick, but never rounded out by his own remarks, or by the actions of others towards him. Also, the setting of the story reeks somewhat too obviously of the sinister — the huge, decaying house; the great polii who does not look at Pride's daughter, but past her; the wife who practices black magic; and Richai 1 Pride's gray stone study above the Hudson, a building which looks like a "peering monster" among the trees and hills. Yet, out of this mixture of the obvious and :arre Mr. Cline has evolved a tale which is gruesomelj le. His characters, inanimate and animate, move on the canvas, and are something new before one has time to size them up and call them only the trappings of a ghost story. Mr. Cline un- derstands to the full the effectiveness of the verb as against the adjective, and there are no worn-out phrases as he carries on his time-honored task of describing the macabre. For in- stance, the shadows cast on the wall by candlelight "hunched and reared and panted," and, later, a winter wind coming in through a hole in the window "stumbled and rolled on the floor clawing at scraps of paper and rugs." This method can be carried too far, but Mr. Cline has unusual literary tact. His story moves to its bleak conclusion with a foreboding speed which is restless and alive without being too nervously abrupt. Martha Mott Marxian History Peasant War m Germany. By Friedrich Engels. International Publishers. $1.50. Thomas More and His Utopia. By Karl Kautsky. International Publishers. $2.25. "OOTH of these books have the same outlook. Both are rad- *-* ical in the interpretation of their material. Both repre- sent the revolutionary approach of the Marxist. In these days when the influence of Marx is felt in the protest and revolt of oppressed peoples in all parts of the globe; when a revolution has been effected in his name; and when almost every phase and activity of life has been examined in the light of his theory, it is of importance that Marxian clas- sics be translated and reprinted so that the social philosophy embodied in this doctrine can be fully understood and appre- ciated. Marxism is more than economic dogma. It is a philos- ophy of life. It studies the whole of life in terms of its under- lying economic formulas. Its approach to every subject, there- fore, is different from that which prevails in most of our in- tellectual world. Engels, for example, in the preface to the second edition of "The Peasant War in Germany," while de- scribing the method of the book, states the Marxian position very clearly: I [aimed] to prove that the political and religious theories were not the causes [of the peasant war], but th# result of that stage in the development of agriculture, in- dustry, land and waterways, commerce and finance, which then existed in Germany. While Engel's work in "The Peasant War in Germany" is confined to Germany, and Kautsky's work in "Thomas More and His Utopia" is confined to England, the very fact that both books are concerned with the beginnings of that revolt against feudalism, which was to lead to the individualism of our pres- ent era, makes their kinship the more conspicuous. The rise of Protestantism was once treated as a profound revolution. It was once viewed as the triumph of the modern conception. In the historical analysis of both Engels and Kautsky, however, we discover Protestantism to be but part of that great move- ment of individualism that had begun to sweep over the entire face of the European world. The Renaissance had been a cul- tural outgrowth of the commercial revolution which had first transformed Italy from the remnant of a decadent empire into a distorted confusion of struggling republics, each in aggres- sive competition and conflict with the other. The Hanseatic League in the Baltic was a northern expression of this same revolution. With the compass, the discovery of America, and the development of trans-oceanic traffic, these inland-sea civil- izations surrendered to the oceanic ones. England, holding the key position in the new avenues of trans-oceanic commerce, be- came the dominant power. With all of this change, however, had come the growth of modern civilization, the downfall of medieval culture, the rise of a competitive economy, the decline of communal attitudes, and the protrusion of individualistic Individualism became the ethical criterion of the new i Individual values were exalted over social. Luther in his cry for the right of the individual to interpret the Bible

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in his own way, and his desire to afford the individual the op- portunity of reading- the Scriptures in his own language, ex- pressed this economic motivation. Protestantism was not a cause but an effect. It was not Protestantism that changed the old world into something new; Protestantism was part, an el' feet, of the underlying economic change which did achieve this great revolution in values. Unity was replaced by diversity, order by chaos, the; social by the individualistic. The inter nationalism of the Roman Catholic Church was replaced by the nationalism of rising economic centers and groups. It is out of this rapidly changing background that the peasant wars, which Kautsky described as "the last convul- sions of a dyine.- community," developed and spread. Engels describes this background in vivid and flashing detail. His ac- count of the conflict between Luther and Muenzer is in itself a clean-cut and illuminating analysis. The contrast between Luther, that, "easy living flesh of Wittenberg," who attacked the peasants as "plundering hordes," and Muenzer, the "man with a hammer," who in his eager defense of the peasants erected, in his own words, "a wall of iron against the kings, princes, [and] priests," is ( phenomena. V. I RTON In the Gives of Arie^ Primitive Hearths in the Pyrenees. The Story of a Summer's Expedition in flu- Haunts of Prehistoric Mod. By Ruth Otis Sawtell and Ma Treat. With Illustrations by Paul Vaillant-Couturier. D. Appleton and Company. $:s. A MONO the uncounted books on prehistoric European archae- -**■ ology that have been published in the past dozen years, here is one that fills a niche of its own. Reading volume after volume of neatly catalogued reference surveys of type stations, or elaborate synopses that seem to have no other aim than to equip us to arrange a museum exhibit of chipped (lints, who has not longed to recommend rather a book that sorts the end- less detail into big and little, that is authoritative and yet, doe not conceal like the plague the romance and mystery of the paleolithic caves, their almost melodramatic appeal? But no one had written such a book. It was a happy chance that gave to three persons — for the artist must be reckoned as one — the enthusiasm, the training, and the powers of description to make the caves of southern A New Kotniun i- hv America's Most Distinguished Wrilvi SOMETHING ABOUT EVE A Comedy of Fig lew ■ By JAMES, BR AN( 1 1 CABEL1 The sloiy ol how < iVl 'I.I M UK grave, ;i v ! : Il< ' " '<" "''' man, journeyed low iiril I lie goal of all the I'o.l ., .mil ol how he, too, bci :un< ;i nod I hei r ih ii si i on;' suppoi tiny 'i,i ol nol wholly uiil.ionli.il i li.it in in. in eluding < lod and the Kmpcroi Nero and Kin}'. Solomon and Mi- 1 It ri .uid ih<- Sphinx a n d Francois Villon and somewhat prceniinenlh l.vr. Net, $2.50 I Apply to your boolcRcller for Information concern- ' II in« the new Storisende Edition ol thi com of JAMES BRANCH CABELL, limited to 1,500 numbered » i , in,, I by the author. -U STRANGE WOMAN /Jv ELMER DAVIS Author o) "Friends o) Mr. Sweeney," etc. I he stun, ol ,i woman of forty whose job is done. Her children no longer present a problem. Her hus hand safely launched on his career. She is faced with boredom. What next? A keen studj of .American life that will interest women, and men, too, of every age Net, $2.00 COMMODORE VANDERBILT By ARTHUR D. HOWDEN SMITH Hen- is the unshaven, shaggy truth about a titan of « man, Corneel Vanderbilt of the horny lists. While unfolding the life span of Vanderbilt, the author has written, in tangy dialogue and racy anecdote, the saga of our country's growth from a handful of squabbling colonies to the greatest power of the modem world. Illustrated. Net, $5.00 GENGHIS KHAN The Emperor of All Men By HAROLD LAMB The life stor\ of the brilliant con- queror who rose from simple herd boy to rule an empire far greater than Alexander's. The first au- thentic biography in English of that amazing leader of whom everyone has heard but nobody knows. Illustrated. Net, $3.50 ROBERT M. McBRIDE & COMPANY 7 West 16th Street New York When writing to advertisers please mention The Nation

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292 The Nation [Vol. 125. X©. 3246 France something more than museum specimens. Whether it is the lucky traveller who is planning to include the caves of or Dordogne, or a class in prehistory that has missed the living background of the spirited art of Cro-Magnon man, or only someone who has always nursed a secret wish to see for himself these earliest of man's triumphs, they will find this book written to their desires. There are excellent chapters which tell with sufficient fullness and complete accuracy the story of prehistory in Europe as it is known today, and, having p.one the tour of the caves, thrown your acetylene torches overhead, beyond the water- filled galleries and stalactite-closed caverns, up to the bold engraved bisons and wild horses that prehistoric man drew there in bold sweeps without a faltering line, you know more of the man of the Quaternary than from any mere recital of the flint industries. Of course any book on prehistory would be incomplete withe it the reproduction of certain unforgetable masterpieces of Cro-Magnon art, but in the present volume there are some delightful unhackneyed reproductions also, drawn off by the artist with a sure eye for the significant. Especially the draw- ings from Niaux are admirably selected. The book is important, however, as a record of things done, not only of things seen. The authors were primarily inter- ested in the excavating: of a cave of their own, and uncovered one of the most important of recent finds, the only yet-discov- ered skeleton of Azilian Man who inhabited Europe during the prehistoric Dark Ages, the hiatus between the Old and the New Stone Age. They have written a book which stands as the most delightful of introductions to prehistory. Ruth Benedict A Note on Progress Social Factors i)i Medical Piogress. By Bernhard J. Stern. Columbia University Press. $2.25. Should We Be Vaccinated ? By Bernhard J. Stern. Harper and Brothers. $1.50. rT,HE thesis that a civilization runs on much in its own way, * and that its development is conditioned only by what it itself has developed during its own past, is one which has been the subje t of much debate among students who are interested in the mechanisms of cultural development. Professor Ogburn has perhaps given the most uncompromising statement of this position, and he has been bitterly attacked, most naturally, by- certain psychologists and such biologists as are of the eugenist persuasion in their social thinking, who feel that history is essentially a matter of the great man and where he happens to be found to make whatever inventions may be needed at any given moment. What have been needed in all this discussion, more than anything else, are data. Is it true that the great man swings the course of his civilization as he wills? Were Edison and Chaka and Napoleon and George Washington and Pasteur re- sponsible for what seems to have happened because they lived and behaved as they did? Or are theyr merely expressions of the manners and times in which they lived and the historical development behind those times? Discussion has gone on and on, but, aside from Professor Kroeber's analysis of the rise and fall of the length of women's dresses with the years, and Professor Ogburn's and Dr. Thomas's list of simultaneous in- dependent inventions, there have been few facts made available. These two books by Dr. Stern, however, are directed toward throwing light on the problem which is presented, and they provide no little food for thought. The first takes up several outstanding phases of the development of medical practice and theory, while the second is an intensive discussion of one phase of that development, namely, the vaccination controversy. It is usually thought, by those who have not gone into the ma- terial, that the scientist has but to announce a discovery, publish his method and results, and submit to careful verifica- tion, in order to meet with acceptance as a matter of course. This would seem to be essential to the scientific method, and certainly would be expected in the field of human medicine. But Dr. Stern, going through the history of medicine, tells a vastly different story. There are vested interests at work to prevent the diffusion and acceptance of new methods and prac- tices, vested interests not only of the economic variety, but also those of "status, reputation, and prestige." There is the power of tradition — the resistance to change on the part of the conservative. There is the reverence that is felt toward the authority exercised by those who do things in the tradi- tionally sanctioned manner. Text-books must be rewritten, ap- paratus must be altered, plants go into the discard when a new discovery changes technique and theory. Yet in spite of this the new discoveries go on, and sometimes prevail. But the most interesting point about it all is that, when our culture reaches a stage where it is ready for a discovery, that dis- covery seems to be made. Probably the most significant con- tribution in these two books is the table at the end of the first one, detailing multiple discoveries that have been made in medicine. Here are data to the point, and for one item after another of accepted medical practice and belief we are given the names of discoverers and the dates and places of twTo, three, four, and even five independent discoveries. They range the field of theory and practice of both curative and preventive medicine and surgery. It is an impressive list, and it is the sort of thing that must be done more and more if we are to have adequate light thrown on the problem of cultural change and its control. One word may be said about the special discussion of vac- cination. In spite of its title, it is not a controversial book. It is rather a historical presentation of the controversy that has raged about vaccination itself. And it should be of interest not only to the medical man who vaccinates but to the student of social processes who can see here, so to speak, social change put under the microscope. Melville J. Herskovits Books in Brief Victor Hugo: The Man and the Poet. By William F. Giese. The Dial Press. $4. Gautier and the Romantics. By John Garber Palache. The Viking Press. $3. This would seem to be the open season for Frenchmen; the air is full of moralistic arrows. Coincident with Barry Cerf's Mid-Western diatribe against the unfortunate Anatole France comes Professor Giese's irate philippic against Victor Hugo. Professor Giese goes about his indictment of Hugo as a bar- barian with a ruthlessness that is almost, savage. The erudi- displayed is overwhelming; but the urbanity, the surgical intelligence that distinguished Babbitt's demolition of Rous- seau are not reflected in the work of the disciple. Repetition, Ciceronian sentences, rhetorical inflation, and bludgeon-like sat- ire are some of the unclassical weapons that Professor Giese loys to destroy a figure whose reputation has been on the wane for fifty years, and who is now veryT little more than a forlorn god in a poetic Pantheon that nobody visits. The puer- ile romanticism which Hugo represents is at this date so ob- viously non grata that one questions the necessity of these 300 pages of moral and aesthetic indignation. The trouble with the professor is that he does not know when the other fellow is down. He not only breaks his opponent's neck but continues, with an admirable obstinacy, to kick him in the stomach. It is bad enough to overwork a theory; but to ride a plain fact to death is sheer inhumanity to man. Mr. Palache's first book on Diderot, Laclos, Restif, and Crebillon had the advantage of covering fairly virgin ground. His second, carelessly written and filled with a superabundance of quotation, merely repeats the regulation anecdotes, from Gautier's rose waistcoat to Bau-

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Sept. 21, 1927] The Nation 293 KEEPING THE NAME BEFORE THE PUBLIC If he keeps at it long enough, will the "cumulative effect" make me run to get the scarlet fever? THE TWINS— BIG BUSINESS AND BIG BOOSTING But which of the Big Brothers is the father and which is the son ? OLD SOX ASKS "WHO? WHO PAYS FOR THE TRUMPETING?"— Answer No. 1 : "Athens."— Answer No. 2: "The Vendors." — Answer No. 3 : "Nobody Pays." BIG BUSINESS AND BIG BOOSTING have grown enormously since the war. Never in the history of the world have we seen such tor- nados of tooting as now. One billion two hundred and fifty ($1,260,000,000) is the estimate of our annual advertising as against perhaps four to five hun- dred million a few years ago. And meanwhile business is con- centrating more than ever. Fewer factories. Fewer enter- prises. Almost no new brands put before the public. And sin- gle advertising appropriations lifted from $100,000 to $600,000 to $2,000,000 to $5,000,000 and even more. What next? IN POLITICS Publicity stunts are being prac- ticed beyond any dreams of the past masters. During the war publicity bureaus were estab- lished in numerous departments ; and the managers did not al- ways resign after the armistice. If they did the bureaus, divi- sions and even individual cab- inet officers, who had had a taste of expert guidance on the way to brighten the limelight, built up new publicity machines. What is the answer ? Is Advertising "Economic Waste"? How much of it is Science 7 How much of it is "Bunk"? WE have published a most un- usual book, a burlesque of modern business methods as related to publicity; every page a comedy, and yet every single comical situa- tion designed to stir the reader, to make him think and analyze and to force him to answer the author's un- answered questions on modern busi- ness problems. This book is all the more unusual because it is a satire on selling schemes, advertising and trade prac- tices written by the active head of one of the well known national adver- tising agencies, who for twenty-five years past has handled many millions of dollars of advertising. His most widely known publicity work came in connection with the war when he was editor-in-chief of the 4-Minute-Men, writing the bulletins and speeches ; thereafter associate direc- tor general of Labor propaganda in charge of the newspaper releases, speakers' bureau, war industries committees, motion pictures, and division of posters; and after the armistice in Europe, as chairman of the labor commission. (Note his ironical reference to his own war activities in his book.) Later he handled for some years the extensive advertising of the United States Shipping Board. Among his clients are men and firms of national and inter- national reputation. In attacking the "bunk" part of his own profession, the author handles his subject with the most refreshing frankness ! TAUROS and Bullem of the mighty Tauros Trumpeting Agency are about to sign up Zeus- ikin, the merchant prince of Athens, on a trumpeting contract based on a "bunk" plan for selling olive oil. Then Old Sox, a street corner loafer, "butts in," followed later by his two disciples, Platon and Aristoteles. Old Sox asks so many questions, that the tragedy ends where it began — on the rock of faith amid an atmosphere of misty mysteriousness. Here are some of the questions : 1. Is commerce Rood and beautiful? If so. when and how ? 2. Is tooting a necessary evil of commerce' If so, is it not good and beautiful, even when ugly? — lint when and where and how is that tooting necessary? 3. Who pays for the tooting? — What! Athens? And can that be good and beautiful? 4. About those twins, Big Business and Big Boosting (see cartoon above; also ca above on "cumulative effect.") 5. Is tlie Art-Ful-Ness of expensive pictures, music and high-priced poetry necessary in order to make the ait of trumpetini Art-Ful? 6. What is "quality"? What is high class people? Ave they (he rich people or the philosophers ? — ( And he might have added. "An- the readers of a 1,000,000 circulation the "qualit ! or arc (he readi "The Nation"?) Tn trade, in politics and even in religion. the man who kn v.s how to turn on the limelight in the righl way becomes the leader. Does this make for merit in leader- ship? Or for bunkem and trickery?' The solution and the only solution seems to lie in a different attitude of the business men who advertise ami of the public at lame. When writing to a 8 pleaxi- mention The Nation Are you interested in the ways men "work" each other to make money ? And how then jointly they "work" the public? "Old Sox on Trumpeting" is outwardly a pure comedy, a farcical story of busi- ness. One critic said "If the author has a purpose, he's written no book for the Bab- bitts; the Babbitts will get only the jokes." The author's purpose evidently is directed to the man who can rc<j</ between the lines. That is why we are advertising this hook to readers of "The Nation." Clip ( THE COUPON Send No Money— No C.O.D.— Book Shipped tOn Approval $2.00 To CONSOLIDATED HOOK PUBLISHERS, Inc., 2242 Grove St., Chicago. 111. Please send on approval (he book. "Old Sox on Trumpeting," by E. T. Gundlach. 362 paces. t:i illustrations by Farkas, a bur- lesque on Big Business and Big Boosting. If hook is satisfactory in my judgment, I will send $2 ; otherwise I will return it in 10 days. A'« m e Finn name Address Offer by mail is introductory, so kindly ap- pend name of your booksti

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294 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3246 delaire's j^recn hair. Unlike Professor Giese, Mr. Palache has nothing particularly to say about romanticism. His exposition of the romantic theory is a tame summary of the usual text- hook generalizations. It is clear that his volume was written simply to serve as a convenient vehicle for a number of literary anecdotes. It is an occasionally amusing joke-book; but, in Mr. Saintsbury's phrase, its only unity was given it by the binder. The Full of Robespierre and Other Essays. By Albert Mathiez. Alfred A. Knopf. $4. Regardless of what may be said of Professor Mathiez's manner — a certain verbosity, a mixture of the trivial with the significant, a Latin penchant for controversy, an obvious par- tiality that sometimes lays him open to the charge of special pleading (though it would be hard to challenge his defiant claim never to have made any assertions without valid proof) — his work is the most important for the interpretation of the French Revolution that has been done since Aulard; in so far as it cor- rects many misinterpretations of the latter, it is indeed even more important than his. This is the first translation of any of the numerous writings of Professor Mathiez into English. The choice is not altogether a happy one, for Professor Mathiez has done much that is more important and better written. It is to be feared that the general reader, wearied by documents quoted in full and by details regarding minor characters of the revolution, will close the book in disgust before he finishes. If he perseveres, however, he will find two essays, at least, that will repay his ef- forts. The one on Robespierre and the Cult of the Supreme Be- ing shows that Robespierre did not invent this deistic religion and then proceed to foist it upon an unwilling convention and re- public, as is generally believed, but that it was an effort, de- manded by the convention and supported by the people, to codify the conflicting religious laws and practices that had arisen since the Apostolic Church had been proscribed. The other, on Robespierre at the Commune on the uth Thermidor, will show that Robespierre, instead of being the timid legalist hesitating to appeal to insurrectionary arms on the day of his outlawry and capture that all accounts have hitherto portrayed him, acted the part, at first, of an astute politician and then, having decided on action, of a vigorous popular leader. Oovyure. Sketches. By E. C. L. Adams. University of North Carolina Press. $2. With this volume the University of North Carolina Press makes another addition to its notable series of books dealing with the Negro. This time the volume pretends to be fiction. but there is little in Dr. Adams's work that suggests an artist consciously manipulating his material. The author appears to have effaced himself almost completely from his book; except in one brief passage the Negroes do all the talking, and it is talk unrestrained by the presence of a white man. All of the fifty-four brief dialogues, folk tales, anecdotes, and verses are interesting, and a few— of which "01c Man Tonga's Chile" is probably the best — have the concentration, simplicity, and power of enduring literature. Drama The Curtain Rises CURIOUSLY enough the theatrical business conducts itself without the slightest regard to the laws of the (Iran c though a season has its beginning and ;*s end it I mences with anything likely to capture the attention of the spectator and never ends upon anything hut a dis, essing anti- climax. During the last, days of August certain di farces begin to appear upon stages left dark by the lingering d-\v YOUNG WRITER'S GROUPS COMMUNITY CHURC1 12 1' New York City FIVE COURSES in writing short stories, timely articles, children's s, scenarios, novels. Register now. Ashland 3180. GERTRUDE BREVOORT TUCKER, Director. When writing to advertisers please meiitiov The Nation

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Sept. 21, 1927] The Nation 295 late spi-ing when the managers — with empty theaters on their hands — bring out the plays which not even their professional optimism thinks well of. As a result the public does not even know when to come or when to go home. A few of its most eager members wander hopefully in around the first of Septem- ber; a few of the most hardy are not driven away until the increasing dulness of the dramas makes even the seasonless moTies seem either profound or entertaining; and thus the audience, which had straggled slowly in before the play had really begun, melts gradually away after all that matters has been finished. Perhaps the individual American playwright is too much addicted to the "snappy" beginning and the epi- grammatic curtain line, but the institution which supports him could profit much by learning a little of his technique. If only the curtain would rise promptly when the play is ready to begin and descend with dramatic finality when it is clone! This year Mr. Arthur Hopkins, generally one of the most interesting and intrepid of our managers, rings up his curtain at the Plymouth Theater with a highly sentimental comedy- drama of back-stage life which tells the not very fresh story of a low comedian who went wrong when he reached Broadway but who was redeemed by the love of his faithful wife. "Bur- lesque," as the play is called, struggles hard to achieve a pic- turesque effect sufficient to veil the banality of its theme, and it is sprinkled with cynical wisecracks intended to give a bitter coating to what is in reality a sugar pill, but though the latter are frequently pungent with a typically American wit they cannot disguise the fact the play itself is feebly and stalely sentimental. One of the characters says of a certain tank-town snooper that she is the kind who would ask if Klaw and Erlanger were ever really married, and the soubrette, re- turned from a rather difficult party staged by some town folks, remarks: "Girls like us shouldn't mix with really nice people — they're too rough." But though these lines are good enough, they lie upon the surface of a play keyed to an entirely dif- ferent mood, and they are uttered by characters so sweetly correct in all their actions as to make the second of the two seem less satiric than merely platitudinous. Salty dialogue may often be the result of a flash of insight or of a momentary grip upon the essentials of a situation and it may be written by a man who is not, yet at least, capable of the sustained steadiness of vision necessary to present an interpretation of life in any form whose main outlines are not conventional. Hence it is that there are a dozen American playwrights who can put into the mouths of their characters genuinely witty comments for one who can conceive and work out a play in which the thesis and the characterization are one-tenth as pungent, as searching, or as original as the best bits of his dialogue. Perhaps these bits represent his real self, but he is unable to detach it from the complex mass of conventional ideas and sentiments in which it is entangled. The wise-crack may be the beginning of wisdom, but it is no more than that, and "Burlesque" is but a dreary expanse of conventional sentiment illuminated by a few epigrams which carry a snap in their tails. Mr. Hopkins is not usually content to follow in the foot- steps of his competitors, but upon this occasion he has brought the odium of comparison upon himself. Since he probably had "Broadway" in mind when he decided to produce "Burlesque" he can hardly complain if the spectators have it in mind too, and in the bottom of his heart he probably knows that it is not cis good. Nor is its inferiority due solely to the fact that the earlier play took the first bloom of novelty off the back-stage setting. For all its factitiousness "Broadway" had a rapidity, a verve, and a vulgar energy which the new piece, in spite of all the smooth production and good acting which have been granted it, fails to achieve. Its lines are quite as good and there is one scene, that at the end of the second act, where the intoxicated ex-husband unexpectedly meets the man who is to marry his former wife and expresses his feelings by falling into a hysterical jazz-wedding dance reminiscent of some Burlesque "specialty," in which it comes nearer to the real thing than any scene in "Broadway" did; but the play as a whole is less fast, less melodramatically tense, and altogether less remarkable as a tour de force than that from which it is more or less frankly imitated. As popular plays go, it is bet- ter than the average and is by general consent the best play and the first hit of the new season, but that speaks more for the season than for it. It is trembling upon the edge of a great success, but whether or not it achieves it will probably depend in a great measure upon whether or not any one of the five or six other plays which deal with life behind the scenes are quick enough and good enough to steal the thunder which even in the case of "Burlesque" is at least borrowed. Rosalie Stewart's revue, "A La Carte" (Martin Beck The- ater), begins the season very brightly for the species of per- formance it represents. "Blood Money," a melodrama by George Middleton (Hudson Theater), is pretty certain to run long. The mystery is fresh and interesting, though the element of love, introduced toward the end through Phyllis Povah, is handled more tritely than it needed to be. Joseph Wood Krutch □ THEATERS D Little Theatre THE GRAND STREET FOLLIES 44th Street West of Broadway Evgs. 8:30. Matinees Thurs. & Sat. "One cannot find anywhere in New York more clever ideas, more fresh satire or more verve." — Joseph Wood Krutch in The Nation. THEATRE GUILD ACTING CO. a SECOND MAN fTTTT Fi Thea., W. 62d St. Eva. 8:40. KJU 1ULJ mats. Thurs. & Sat., 2:40. 35th WEEK THE ACTORS THEATRE. Inc. Guthrie McClintie, Director presents Maxwell Anderson's Comedy SATURDAY'S CHILDREN "Hest American play of the year." — Gabriel, Sun. RHHTH Then., W. 15 St Eves., 8:30. DV/W 1 n Matinees Wed. & Sat.. 2 :S0. □ BOOKS □ THE EVOLUTION OF MAN, by WtlhelmBoeische A clear, strong, simple summary not only of Darwin's theory but of the work of a (feneration of scientists along the Sines Darwin opened up. .lust what a busy man wants to give him a bird's-eye view of Evolution. Cloth, illustrated, 60 cents by mail. Catalog free Charles H. Kerr & Co., 347 East Ohio St., Chicago, III. BACK FROM ABROAD with thousands of choice Etchings :: Lithographs :: Drawings j-^ i it > t> 1 •• at a fraction of Color Prints :: Reproductions „„tow„ prices International Hook & Art Shop, 3 Christopher St., N. V. ^JMnilMMMMaMiiilli Hill IHIIM«HMattigfflM^l«MBB«HM When writing to advertisers please mention The Nation

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International Relations Section Madame Sun's Withdrawal WE reprint from the China Weekly Review of July 30 the statement made by Madame Sun Yat-sen (Sun Soong Ching-ling) at Hankow, July 14, three days before her complete withdrawal from active political work in the Kuomintang : [ feel that it is necessary at this time to explain as a mem- ber of the Central Executive Committee of the Kuomintang that we have reached the point where definition is necessary and where seme members of the party executive are so de- fining the principles and policies of Dr. Sun Yat Sen that they seem to me to do violence to Dr. Sun's ideas and ideals. Feeling thus I must disassociate myself from active participa- tion in the carrying out of these new policies of the party. Today we face a crisis and we must probe searchingly into fundamental questions for fundamental answers. We must answer the question of the nature of the revolution in general, of the Chinese revolution in particular, whether it is to be a mere political or a social revolution, and what changes are involved. In the last analysis, all revolution must be social revolu- tion, based upon fundamental changes in society; otherwise it is not a revolution, but merely a change of government. To guide us in the Chinese revolution, Dr. Sun has given us his Three Principles and his Three Policies. It is the Third Principle, that of the livelihood of the people, that is at stake at the present time, the principle that answers the questions of fundamental social changes in China. The Thirp Principle The Third Principle was held by Dr. Sun to be basic in our revolution. In this principle we find his analysis of social values and the place of the labor and peasant classes defined. These classes become the basis of our strength in our struggle to overthrow imperialism, and cancel the unequal treaties that enslave us, and effectively unify the country. They are the new pillars for the building of a new, free China. Without their support, the Kuomintang, as a revolutionary party, be- comes weak, chaotic, and illogical in its social platform; without their support, political issues are vague. If we adopt any policy that weakens these supports, we shake the very foun- dations of our party, betray the masses, and are falsely loyal to our leader. day there is much talk of policy. Dr. Sun de Three Policies, which he decided were the only means by which his Three Principles could be carried out. But today it is being said that policies must be changed to fit the needs of the time. There is some truth in this statement, but change of policy ver be carried to the point where it beco reversal, so that a revolutionary party ceases to be revolution- ary and becomes merely an organ, operating under the banner of revolution, but actually working in support of structure which the party was founded to alter. Differences in the Party At the moment we face critical issues. Theoretical and erences have arisen between various elements of arty. Drastic solutions are suggested. It is because I feel that the carrying out of some of these suggested solutions the strength of the party and delay the of the revolution, that I must speak. These solutions seem to me a part < f a policy which would alie. ate and suppre : upon which our strength largely depends and for which Tlu' n Fought. Such a policy, I feel, is d to fail This new policy is proposed as a corrective to mistakes that have been made. But the corrective seems to me more serious than the mistakes. It is time for honesty and courage. There have been mistakes, but the fact that some of us are unwilling to face is that we are at least as responsible for many of these mistakes as those whom we would now hold completely at fault. If we look back honestly at the past months in Wuhan, examine our words and decisions unflinchingly, we cannot evade this ■ risibility. Speeches, statements are recorded in the history of the party. But now we would shirk the responsibility, shift it to other shoulders. Yes. There have been mistakes, but we must face the fact that they are not only others' mistakes; they are our own as well. We have helped to make them; we must correct them. Moreover, for revolutionary mistakes, revolutionary solutions must be found. We must not betray the people. We have built up in them a great hope. They have placed in us a great faith. To that faith, we owe our final allegiance. Dr. Sun came from the people. He has told me a great deal about his early days. He came from the peasantry. His father was a farmer and the people in his district were farmers. Dr. Sun was poor. Not until he was fifteen years old did he have shoes for his feet, and he lived in a hilly region where it is not easy to be a barefoot boy. His family, until he and his brothers were grown, lived almost from hand to mouth, in a hut. As a child he ate the cheapest food — not rice, for rice was too dear. His main nourishment was sweet potatoes. A Revolutionary from Youth Many times Dr. Sun has told me that it was in those early days, as a poor son of a poor peasant family, that he became a revolutionary. He was determined that the lot of the Chinese peasant should not continue to be so wretched, that little boys in China should have shoes to wear and rice to eat. For this ideal, he gave forty years of his life. Yet today the lot of the Chinese peasant is even more wretched than in those days when Dr. Sun was driven by his great sense of human wrongs into a life of revolution. And today men, who profess to follow his banner, talk of classes, think in terms of "revolution" that would virtually disregard the sufferings of those millions of poverty-stricken peasants of China. Today also we hear condemnation of the peasant and labor movement as a recent, alien product. This is false. Twenty, thirty years ago, Dr. Sun was thinking and speaking in terms of a revolution that would change the status of the Chinese peasant. In his early twenties, he wrote to Li Hung- chang, petitioning for social and economic reforms. In 1911, he wrote an article on the agrarian question in China, printed in Geneva in The Socialist, in which he said that the basis of social and economic transformations in China is an agrarian revelation. All his life, this was one of the big goals he had in mind. Everything he planned he saw as means to the better- ment of the life of the Chinese masses. In 1915, when we were in Japan, he urged Liao Chung-kai to study more deeply into the peasant and labor problems. It is only in the past few years, after four decades of struggle, that these plans for a revolution of the people have begun to bear fruit. I remember clearly the first All-Kwang- Peasants Conference, in Canton, in July, 1924. Then for the first time, we saw the people of China, who must be her new strength, coming to participate in the revolution. From all the districts of Kwangtung, the peasants came, many of them walking miles and miles, barefooted, to Canton. They were ragged, tattered. Some carried baskets and poles. I remember I was deeply moved.

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Sept. 21, 1927] The Nation 297 Alfred Aloysius Horn Will Durant a Durant ^Jrfljse9' j/xdventurers Both! Thf:re are two outstanding cur- rent books of which it can be literally said: "More exciting than fiction — and selling faster." They are Trader Horn (in its 40th thou- sand) and The Story of Philosophy (in its 172nd thousand). The unprecedented popularity of both is a tribute to the wide- ranging intellectual curiosity of Americans, for Trader Horn records stark bodily ad venture in the early days of African exploration — while The Story of Philosophy "humanizes" the world's great lovers of wisdom — an adventure for the mind. Trader Horn, a best seller in both America and England. At all bookstores. $4.00. The Story of Phil- osophy—The lives otthe philosphce. from Socrates ana. At jII book- tlortt. $500. SIMON and SCHUSTER, Inc. 37 West 57th Street New York ~u*i •*■ l||> ••* ■»* ■»»—*»r-»«»—^»""l GERMAN TRAVEL T\R. LOUIS N. ROBINSON, Swarthmore, Pa.. gratefully recommends Munich home with highly educated liberal family with whom his young son spent last winter. Frau Kommerfcienrat Engelhorn, Hohenstrauffenstrasse 10. SIRIUBArV ROARXt MANHATTAN BEACH HOTEL, N. Y. r 1VE in a modern, fireproof hotel by the sea- J-j shore, for less than in the crowded city. $12 per week for two; homelike- comforts; outdoor sports ; maid, valet and telephone service ; 37 min- utes from Times Sq., BUT. Phone Sheepshead 3000. ROOMS FOR RENT "T~v ESI R AISLE living quarters for responsible busi- -'--' ness men. Beautiful, open, central location. Attractive, modern living bedrooms; outside single, double. Subway, elevated, bus one block. 68 Cen- tral Park West— 4 N— Trafalgar 9689. T^URNISHED rooms in high class year-round ■*• home foi inal or business men. Three minutes from station. All conveniences. Phone Bayside 22tu. ! furnished room ; with big, wood-burning fireplace, and semi-private bath, for rent, October first. Box KS0. % The Nation. SHARE APARTMENT r ADY to share three-room apartment with con- nial lady. 635 West 171st St. evenings. Apt. 6. Call SPECIALTY SHOPS "T^vEAR FOLKS: My summer half price sale will -L^ last only a few weeks longer. Russian hand- embroidered linen smocks, dresses, shawls and blouses. Also copper wear, rugs, and many other novelties. MARITZA, 49 Christopher St., N. Y. EARLY AMERICAN FURNITURE at 5 Christopher St. ANN-SELEY'S Spring 2H 10 New York City COOPERATIVE APARTMENTS A Own Your Apartment! NUMBER of cultured families are build- ing a cooperative apartment house in one of the choicest sections of the Bronx. A few apartments still available. For information write to I. MUNVES, 3280 Reservoir Oval, Bronx, N. Y. HOJ'SE I OR SALE EAST 70'S — Italian interior, 4 master rooms, 4 bath3, studio room, excellent closets, good rear, architect's house. Practicable' for conversion into apartments. Asking $7.r>,000. Atwater 5743. HOUSES FOR RENT UNIQUE cottage, charmingly furnished, at Mor- ristown, N. J., 7 minutes' walk from Lacka- wanna station, one hour from New York. On plot 110 by 125. Very quiet and secluded among tall poplars and pines. Studio living-room 15 by 25, large fireplace, 2 small bedrooms, pipeless furnace, gas, electricity. To lease for one year or longer. Owner leaving town. $75 monthly. Write 51 Ford Avenue, or phone Morristown 1719-W. FOR RENT — Beautiful country house in Scars- dale. Unusual studio living room, five master bedrooms, artistically furnished. Two dens, tennis court, chickens. All electrical equip- ment. Owner going abroad. Occupancy October May or June. Help remaining if desired. Reason- able rental to suitable party. 58 Park Road. Call ale, New York, 1773. FURNISHINGS FOR RENT T7OR RENT — complete furnishings for 2 or 3 room apartment, including Ami antiques, china, linen and silver. Available Oct. 1st. Box 879, ' ington Square section, one or two loom at- tractively furnished apartment. Desire un large living-room with fireplace, kitchenette, and bath with shower. If possible, tiny bed dition. Excellent care and references. Kent $100 or under. Box 881, ', The Nation. VOCATIONAL SERVICE GERTRUDE R. STEIN, INC. is East 41st St.. N. Y. A PROFESSIONAL and Commercial Employment Bureau interested in unusual people and un- usual jobs. No job, however, too small to be done well. POSITION WANTED \rOUNG man (23) graduate, student, com and tutoring experience, seeks par! -time work. Box KTK. r' novel speak for itself. l4j4Au"I«t reading Death of a ) an ng Man, a distinguished novelist raphed The Inner Sanctum for information about the author. \\ e finally v\ rung from him permission to dispatch litis night letter hi replj : lln ek is twenty-four. ( iradunte Univer- Deeoly interested biology music. Spent rigorous bier nry apprenticeship on Si alon Island. Fol- lowed l>> six mouths work on transatlan- tic freighter. 1 1 is special interests among modern writers are SCHNITZLER and lA1lA1LA)" Friday, September 30, Will Durant returns from Europe, and we shall celebrate the event by publishing on that date his new book, Transition, A Menial Autobiography. ) Transition is "a remembrance of things past," set down con amore, a chronicle of changing faiths, an inti- mate "tot til petsp. ctive" in which this historian and lo\ er of wisdom looks at life and h;\ e. Transilionis so frank, so mo\ ingly written, so charged with the personality of W ill Di rant, that The Inner Sanctum cannot, take a detached critical view of it. -Essandess

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298 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3246 Dr. Sun was moved also. When we reached home, he said to me: "This is the beginning of the success of the revolution," and he told me again the part the oppressed people of China must play in their own salvation. All these years, his purpose was clear. But today we talk of recent foreign influence. Was Sun Yat-sen — the leader who was voicing the agrarian revolution for China when Russia was still under the heel of the Czar — was he the tool of foreign scheming? Not True Followers of Dr. Sun Dr. Sun's policies are clear. If certain leaders of the party do not carry them out consistently, then they are no longer Dr. Sun's true followers, and the party is no longer a revolutionary party, but merely a tool in the hands of this or that militarist. It will have ceased to be a living force working for the future welfare of the Chinese people, and will have become a machine, the agent of oppression, a parasite fi ttening on the present enslaving system. We face a serious crisis. But it is more of a crisis for us as individuals than for China as a country. Whether the present Kuomintang at this moment rises to the height of its ideals and courageously finds a revolutionary corrective for its mistakes, or whether it slumps into the shamefulness of reaction and compromise, the Three Principles of Dr. Sun Yat-sen will conquer in the end. Revolution in China is inevitable. At the moment I xeel that we are turning aside from the Tsungli's policy of leading and strengthening the people. Therefore I must withdraw until wiser policies prevail. There is no despair in my heart for the revolution. My disheartenment is only for the path into which some of those who had been leading the revolution have strayed. Contributors to This Issue William J. McNallv is a Minneapolis newspaper man. Robert Dell, author of "My Second Country (France)" is a veteran of the Paris correspondents' corps. Harry F. Ward is the author of several books on re- ligion, and is the general secretary of the Methodist Federation of Social Service. Arthur Garfield Hays is a New York lawyer. William MacDonald, the author of numerous volumes on American history, was formerly an associate editor of The Nation. Frederick TUPPER is professor of English at the Univer- sity of Vermont. V. F. Calverton is editor of the Modem Quarterly. Ruth Benedict is in the Department of Anthropology at Columbia University. Melville Herskovits is in the Department of Anthro- pology at Northwestern University. REAL HARRIS HOMESPUNS aDt^anfu7™ j£..MPkrE Postage Paid Write (or patterns stating shades desired Suit Lengths Cut to Order. NEWALL. ISO Stornoway, Scotland. J Your Fall Problems if you want to rent a house or an apartment for the coming winter, or if you have one to rent — or sell, advertise in the classified section of The Nation, read by desirable landlords • n<l tenants. Rates on application. Special three-time rate. Dept. Y. W. P., The Nation. "See Russia for your- self." An Unusual Opportunity To See Soviet Russia A Tour to the land of amazing achievements EIGHT WONDERFUL WEEKS Oct. 14th to Dec. 15th. 1927 LONDON LENINGRAD — MOSCOW Our tour will be arranged to include the extensive pageants and GALA FESTIVALS that will mark the Tenth Anniversary of the Russian Revolution Party Limited to One Hundred Apply Immediately to WORLD TOURISTS, Inc. 69 Fifth Avenue New York City Algonquin 6900 QJ OPEN SHELF 'The greatest Achievement n History." GOOD CHEER. COMRADES ! Want to buy. sell, or swap books, bronies, old china, clocks, curios, etchings, lamps, paintings, prints, oriental rugs? Bus. or stroll to Daca's, 63 Washington Sq. So.. N. Y. C Books alwavs 20 to 80% off. Open eves. BOOKS AU books (except text) sent post free anywhere at 15% discount from publishers' prices. List on request. ISRAEL SOIFER 1244 Clay Avenue New York City PHANTOM— Gerhart Hauptmann ($2.00) $.85; Red Dawn — Baroja ($2.50) $.70; Pushcart at the Curb — Dos Passos (S2.00) $.75: Others for 1919 — Kreymborg ($2,001 $.70; Man and Woman— Havelock Ellis $4.50 : Arthur Symons, A Critical Study— Welby ($3.00) $1.25; Erasmus. A Study of His Life— Preserved Smith, Ph.D. ($4.00) $1.75; The Gambler — Dostoevsky ($2.50) $1.10. Write for catalogue of interesting book bargains. HERMES LIBRARY SERVICE. SI Nassau Street. New York. •pOR SALE — "A New English Dictionary." Ox- ford ; in perfect condition. 23 vols., complete to U. Oxford bound, fine % morocco. Offers. L. C. G.. 271 E. Broadway. Salem. New Jersey. Do you want to make extra money? Address Dept. 11 The Nation 20 Vesey Street New York When writing to advertisers please mention The Nation

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The Nation FOUND fc.0 inb Vol. CXXV NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 28, 1927 No. 3247 Contents EDITORIAL PARAGRAPHS EDITORIALS: The Tariff Reckoning Begins Foregoing Theft Th rough Sport to Peace ? The Charm of the Victorian IT SEEMS TO HEYWOOD BROUN ROMA1N ROLLAND TESTIFIES AMERICANS WE LIKE: DANIEL WILLARD. A SELFISH MAN. Donald Kirkley ISADORA DUNCAN IS DEAD. By Max Eastman SERVING TWO MASTERS. By T. Swann Hardin:,' ALABAMA'S SUPER GOVERNMENT. By Charles N. Feidelson.. IN THE DRIFTWAY. By the Drifter CORRESPONDENCE BOOKS AND PLAYS: Quaker Pagan. By Sara Bard Field In Haiti. By Lewis S. Gannett A Philosophy of Renunciation. By Eliseo Vivas Merezhovsky. By Joshua Kunitz Washington in Pictures. By Claude G. Bowers Bad Editing. By Richard McKeon A Gifted Portraitist. By Oral Sumner Cond Books in Brief Drama: Pickwick Redivivus. By Joseph Wood Krutch INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS SECTION: B'-itish 0'iinion on the Sacco-Vanzetti Execution The Fascist State By 299 30 'J 303 303 304 305 306 307 309 310 311 312 313 3 1 5 3 1 6 316 ?, i r. 3 1 7 317 3 1 8 318 320 321 3 22 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 HEYWOOD BROUN CARL VAN DOREN DAVID BOEHM, Advertising Manager Subscription Rates: Five dollars per annum postpaid in the United Slates and Mexico ; to Canada, $5.50 ; and to foreign countries of the Postal Union, $(i.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 NATION is on file in most public and college libraries and is indexed in the Readers' Gvide to Periodical Literature. ONE LEGIONNAIRE led a duck by a string down the Champs Elysees; Oklahoma's delegation included feathered Indians in full war paint, and the Texans ap- peared as cowboys in ten-gallon hats — while the French movie fans shouted "Tom Mix" from the sidewalks. The girls carried guns, and marched abreast the boys; children born long after the war carried flags; a six-foot-six drum major from Illinois, wearing a twelve-inch shako, tossed his baton high in the air to the delight of the Parisians: the Iowans carried corn-stalks, and the Michiganders wore baggy zouave trousers. A dozen gorgeously attired bi bands, such as Paris never saw before in peace or war, blared out "Madelon," "Tipperary," "Hail, hail, the gang's all here," and "Over There" with the indiscriminate en- thusiasm of a Rotary convention. The little band of French wounded who marched solemnly between the uproarious State delegations must have wondered a bit at its football air, but the American Legion parade in Paris was undoubt- edly a good show and it expressed the light-hearted spirit with which America went to war. The Legionnaires, for the moment at least, forgot the dirt and blood, the sweat of the long, dusty roads, the endless lines of ambulances, and the steady ratatat of machine-guns. They remembered, primarily, or so it seemed, the year that they had been released from the ordinary responsibilities of civilian life. THE OVERFLOWING GOOD HUMOR of the Legion- naires won Paris in 1927, just as the doughboys won Paris and a thousand villages in 1917 and 1918. "They are just kids," the French said then, and doubtless they repeat it today, though the kids have thinner hair and are thicker in the middle. There are, however, even in Paris, signs of a sobering recognition of the awful meaning of the war. Rupert Hughes's article, There's Only One Kind of Ameri- canism, printed in the Legion Monthly for July, marked an official discouragement of the excesses which have dis- graced many Legion posts. And the resolution sponsored by Representative Hamilton Fish, Jr., which seems destined to pass the Legion convention, also marks a new and maturer sense of responsibility. "Resolved," it reads, that the Commission on World Peace and Foreign Relations of the American Legion recommend to the national conven- tion in Paris the acceptance in principle by the United States of the offer made by the French Foreign Minister "to renounce war as an instrument of policy until all known means of diplomacy, arbitration, and judicial set- tlement have been exhausted," and with adequate reserva- tions safeguarding our adherence to the Monroe Doctrine and other essential commitments. SO MR. McADOO also chooses not to be a candidate for the Presidency? Well, nothing in his political career has pleased us more than the manner of his leaving it. He was, of course, completely out of the race long before he made this gesture, but he should have all the praise ac- cruing to him for it. Yet to us from the beginning it has seemed that nobody so closely associated with the moral wreck of the Wilson Administration would, or should, be nominated for the highest office in the land. While Mr. McAdoo's relations with the railway brotherhoods gave evi- dence of liberalism and he was one of the warmest support- ers of Mr. Wilson's "radical" doctrines in 1912, he was a party in war time to the crushing of free speech and to the harassing of individuals who dared to think for them- selves. Nor has he ever found voice to denounce our ras- cally treatment of alien property. Indubitably an able man, and a shrewd and extraordinarily ambitious politician, be has now placed himself in a position to influence his party far more than he could have done as a pretender for the nomination. FOR GOVERNOR SMITH Mr. McAdoo's withdrawal in the interest, as he says, of principles, progress, and policies instead of men, clears the road to the Democratic nomination in a remarkable way. There will, of course, be plenty like Senator Harris of Georgia to demand that the Governor follow Mr. McAdoo's example and eliminate him- self also, so that a united party can pick another certain loser like ex-Governor Cox or John W. Davis. But we ex- pect "Al" to do nothing of the kind. The plum seems to be so certain to fall into his lap that it is almost impossible to conceive of his quitting now. The opposition to him faces the dreadful handicap that there is not a single other outstanding personality in the Democratic Party upon which it could unite. The drys do not want him and neither do the bigots who still think that to elc York's

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300 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3247 Governor is really to send the Pope to the White House. But who is their candidate? To such depths has the Demo- cratic Party fallen that the only other men who can be suggested are former-Secretary of Agriculture Meredith, ex-Governor Silzer of New Jersey, and Governor Donahey of Ohio, second-rank men who are known only because of their offices. There is no dry Democrat in the Senate who stands out by his ability. So the Democracy faces the dilemma of having to choose "Al" Smith or some relatively unknown person. In the years since the last convention not a single new figure has appeared in its ranks with evi- dence of the qualities of leadership. What a commentary upon our politics that simple statement is. HOME-MADE REPUBLICS do not always stay tied to mother's apron-strings. There's the case of ungrate- ful Panama. It was Theodore Roosevelt's enthusiastic and protective and immediate recognition of the Panaman revo- lutionaries in 1903 which established the former Colum- bian province of Panama as a sovereign, independent na- tion, entitled, later, to membership in the League of Na- tions. The purpose of its "sovereignty" was to transfer to the United States control of the Canal Zone. The pur- pose of the "independence" was to camouflage the fact that the United States was grabbing territory for which it did not want to pay Columbia's price. It was one of the first of our adventures in the new technique of im- perialism. In the rude, old days imperialist nations openly seized territory and ran up their own national flags. The new technique evades such open evidence of subjugation. It leaves the shell of national independence, while control- ling the revenues and the gendarmerie. In Panama we sub- sidize a group of sectarians, at the rate of $250,000 a year, to maintain a docile republic in the neighborhood of our Canal Zone. BUT PANAMA REFUSES to stay docile. It wants its toys to work; it wants real sovereignty and real inde- pendence. The canal treaty is a peculiar instrument : by it Panama grants to the United States all the rights, powers, and authority which the United States would possess if it were sovereign in the territory, to the entire exclusion of the e by Panama of such sovereign rights, power, and authority. A strange phrasing, indeed. Mr. Taft, who composed it, once explained that Anglo-Saxon mind a titular sovereignty is like what Governor Allen of Ohio once characterized as a "bar- ren ideality," but to the Spanish or Latin mind, poetic and sentimental, enjoying the intellectual refinements and dwelling much on names and forms, it is by no means unim- portant. In recognition of which he agreed to use Panama stamps. surcharged "Canal Zone" in the territory wherein the United States was to act as it' sovereign but not to be sov- ereign, and laid the basis for a series of disputes which still continue. Eusebio Morales, farmer Foreign Mi of Panama, revived the issue this year and aggravated it when he referred to the dispute before the League of Na- tions, and suggested it as fit subject for arbitration. Sec- retary Kellogg, ostrich-like, immediately announced that there was no dispute; and. after a period sufficient for a thorough-going exchange of telegrams, Panama's G ment agreed that there was no dispute. Of course, there was and is a dispute — several disputes — about Panama's right to levy taxes and apply all sorts of legislation in the Canal Zone. The treaty which Mr. Kellogg sought to ne- gotiate with Panama last year was withdrawn before it came to a vote in the Panama Parliament ; it was too un- popular, because it made Panama too frankly subservient to the United States. The new technique of imperialism, like the old, has its drawbacks. Phrases meaningless at birth acquire reality in the eyes of later generations. There is no wholly safe way of empire. THERE WILL BE MORE about Manchuria in the news- papers, and Japan will need a steady hand at the helm if she is to emerge without serious bloodshed. For there is hardly anything on her islands more important to Japan today than the South Manchurian Railway, the great artery through which she controls the northeastern prov- inces of China. It brings her food — wheat and millet and soy beans; it brings her coal, and even some iron; it yields financial revenue, and gives Japan her dominant position in Northern Asia. It is at once her buttress against Russia and her wedge into China. The Tanaka Government has pursued a wavering course regarding China. It came into power in April demanding strong action, but it won Chinese favor by refusing to join Britain in bullying; then it veered again, and landed troops in the sacred province of Shantung; in August it announced their imminent with- drawal. But always all Japanese governments have clung to domination of Manchuria. Recently Japan reiterated certain of the infamous Twenty-One Demands of 1916 to reinforce her control of that region. She has demanded the right to open more consulates in remote and sparsely settled parts of Manchuria, and seeks to veto Chinese pro- jects to build railways roughly paralleling the South Man- churian. But this is not 1916; the tide of Nationalist feel- ing has swept far in advance of the Nationalist armies. There were anti-Japanese riots in Mukden, and anti-Japa- nese posters appeared overnight on the mud walls of scores of Manchurian villages. For the present the outbreaks appear sporadic, but the volcanic forces beneath them are likely to break into more serious eruptions. IT IS GOOD NEWS that as a result of the activities of the director of the budget there is likely to be a reduc- tion in the number of reserve officers from 103,000 to 70,- 000. With the director it is merely a question of finance. For all who do not desire to see the United States become thoroughly militarized anything which will cut down the number of army propagandists is to be greeted with ac- claim. Before the war to end war, there was hardly a reserve officer; at 103.000 the officers' reserve corps is about five times the size of the entire regular army from 1870 to 1900, and only a little smaller than the regular army of today. The War Department seems to have sought to make these reserve officers the foci of military, disguised as patriotic propaganda, as the Kaiser did in the old Ger- many. From the point of view even of the regular officers the experiment has had some unsatisfactory features. Ac- cording to press reports the reserve officei-s' camps this summer have been anything but encouraging, there being a great desire to play and none too much to work. More than that, in the reserve officers' associations has grown up a new military machine with great political power,

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Sept. 28, 1927] The Nation 301 since its members are in civilian life and free to lobby or pull the political strings at home, which is beginning to menace the supremacy of the regulars, who have also been having some difficulty with the National Guard machine. Congress at its next session would do well to limit the War Department to a still smaller figure of reserve officers and to lop off at least 2,500 regular officers for whom it has difficulty in finding work, so over-officered is the army. F EDERAL, STATE, COUNTY AND CITY govern- ment in spots in America during the past decade has been as corrupt and unrepresentative as that under the Czar of Russia!" This is no pesky uplifter speaking; it is John W. H. Crim, former Assistant Attorney General of the United States. "Who would have believed," he asks, "that the time would have come in this country when fed- eral, State, county, and city employees would graft from the liquor and allied traffics to the extent of $25,000,000 a day?" One answer is A. Bruce Bielaski, retired chief of the "undercover" service, who discovered, among other things, that there were "flagrant cases of local authorities cooperating not with us but with the bootleggers." A sec- ond answer would be Major Chester P. Mills, until re- cently Federal Administrator of the New York district. Prohibition as he described it a few days ago is a new "party spoils system" in which the government agents were so dishonest that even his own office harbored many of the chief violators of the law. Another man who might agree with John W. H. Crim is Seymour W. Lowman, ultra-dry, Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in charge of prohi- bition enforcement. He has found so many "incompetent and crooked men in the service" that some days his "arm gets tired signing orders of dismissal." In the same tenor is the report of the New York World from Washington that "upward of 1,000 prohibition agents have been dismissed from the federal service since the enactment of prohibi- tion." General Andrews compiled the total of dismissals between 1919 and February, 1926, for bribery, extortion, collusion, conspiracy, embezzlement, perjury, or suborna- tion of perjury, false pretenses, and other serious offenses— 875 in that period. A PLEASANT AND EASY FAITH is growing up in some quarters that the improvement in communica- tions and the growth in the use of the super-power will curb congestion in great cities and scatter industry into smaller towns and cities. Organized labor in many trades is skeptical of this garden-city Utopia. It knows by ex- perience that smaller towns and cities are harder to organ- ize and keep organized than the larger centers. When printing establishments and various branches of the needle trades leave New York. Chicago, and other greal they go not to seek the aesthetic advantages of green fields and visible skies but open-shop conditions and low wages. A movement of industry out of the big cities must in the long run be in the interest of both employers and workers, but it presents immediate problems that require study. NECKWEAR-MAKING is the latest industry to try to escape union standards by flight. In New York City this is an industry which has been saved by organization from sweatshop conditions. Lately the growth of home- work has threatened what the workers had won. After long negotiations the union made an agreement with the association providing for a transfer of all home work to factories — a transfer to be completed in eighteen months. Promptly four firms resigned from the association and moved to New Haven and Glens Falls, where the union is carrying on a strike against them. Troy, New York, wants more of these runaway shops and one of its big manufac- turers has written to New York celebrating the advantages of that open-shop city with plenty of cheap labor and police protection. Not the least interesting part of the story is that one of the runaway manufacturers is conspicuous for his support of Jewish charities. Charity is one of those things which it is more blessed to give than to receive. At least it often looks cheaper and more satisfactory to the giver than justice. But the history of some of these runaway industries has proved that the attempt to operate under open-shop conditions is not always as profitable as it appears in advance. Nevertheless the task of organizing the small towns and cities is one of the biggest jobs before the unions and we wish them luck. STUDENT LEADERS of the collegiate Young Men's Christian Association have won a striking victory for youth and youth's dreams. As a protest against the sub- ordination of the college organization to the sedentary Home Division of the national Y. M. C. A. the entire na- tional student committee, with its secretaries, resigned. Fearing secession and facing the prospect of an independent college movement, the older men on the General Board of the Y. M. C. A. have surrendered to the rebels on every major point. The surrender has still to be confirmed by the National Council of the organization, but there is little prospect of a veto. In the future the students will have their own department of the Y. M. C. A., elect their own paid representatives, and h:ive the power to add any items they desire to the budget of college work. It means more life, more freedom, more variety in college work. The Nation pointed out last year that the control of college Y. M. C. A.s by the conservative business men who domi- nate the city Y. M. C. A. was deadening and incongruous. The autonomous college associations are now free to show whether their gospel stil' has power in this jazz \< become a living force on the American campus. THE MOTION-PICTURE INDUSTRY, like the Boston Herald, thinks that the Sacco-Vanzetti case is "closed." It so informed theater-owners in a bulletin recently sent out which said: "The ease is closed on the screen, voluntarily. fives of the news-reel companies were unanimous in their decision to eliminate all reference to the matter in their releases. . . . Films in the vault will be burned." This is what one would expect of the film peddlers; they deal only in treacle and tripe. Nothing that could possibly o(T< nd "authority" or "respectability" can pass their cen- sorship. True, they will crawl on their bellies to spread "preparedness" pap for the war and navy departments, but when it comes to a trifling matter like justice for indi- viduals they shut up like clams. It happens not to be in the power of either the Boston Herald or the motion-picture industry to "close" the Sacco-Vanzetti case. As Romain Holland says in an impressive letter printed on another page, the issue now belongs to the world — and to history. And history has a habit of reopening just those issues which contemporary tyranny and cowardice are most anxious to "close."

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302 The Nation [Vol. 125. No. 3247 The Tariff Reckoning Begins 1MIE tariff war now looming between the United States and France comes as a shock, we suppose, to the bulk of our business men. They, like most of our country- men, have long fancied themselves above and beyond all other countries, especially since the World War. The greatest, richest, and most powerful nation could do just what it pleased— let the devil take the hindmost. So we have persistently built a Chinese wall around our country and calmly assured the rest of the world that it would have to buy our goods but that we would take from it only such as could climb over the customs barriers and find a paying market here. Our effrontery has not stopped there. We have demanded of our late allies that they pay the debts they owe us for advances made during the war, and when they have asked us how they could do this if we excluded them from our markets by means of the high tariff, we have simply thumbed our noses at them, told them that was their lookout, and that nonetheless we should exact the last far- thing of the settlements that we had arrived at. Even this is not the heij our impudence. We have deliberately sent a flock of agents abroad to pry into the secrets of foreign manufacturers in order to judge from their books just what their costs are and then calmly planned to raise the tariff in certain cases in order to make sure of excluding their goods. This ve did by deliberately deluding the foreign manufacturers and mak- ing them think that if they only opened their books to our governmental spies we might lower the tariff. To an amaz- ing degree foreigners have permitted our agents to do this — often the spies were incompetent, sometimes, it is said, corrupt, and always their manners were to seek. Were any foreign countries to send similar spies into this coun- try they would be held up at Ellis Island and sent back by the next steamer. We cannot conceive of an American manufacturer allowing agents of the French or German his trade secrets. Naturally our procedure has roused bitter antagonism. Now, however, the Argentine Republic, already outraged by the Sacco-Vanzetti case, and by our tariff upon her frozen meats, has sent word that the tariff investigators whom the United States proposed to dispatch to look into the costs of raising corn and flaxseed in the Argentine will not be welcome and had better stay at home. They do not propose to put up with this impertinence, and are not deluded by the prospect of selling more corn than usual to the United States this year because of our limited corn crop. They know what the European countries have now learned, that a visit from these American spies is apt to mean higher, not lower American tariffs. So our best possible customer in South America is again offended. There has been an informal boycott in the Argentine against our products for months past which has already cost American manufacturers millions of dollars. What more natural than that it should join Sweden and Switzerland in refusing to permit American ai ents to pry into the af- fairs of their manufacturers or farmers? On top of all this comes now the levying by France of maximum duties upon American goods, and the wails from our manufacturers and our State Department are posi- tively comic. Where is our boasted sportsmanship? Are we not good enough sports to quaff from the chalice we so roughly commend to the lips of others? No, indeed. Our government hastens to explain that what is really back of France's attitude is merely another insidious effort to com- pel us to reduce still further the debt that France owes to us. So Washington threatens in return that if France does not yield we shall immediately increase all duties upon French goods by 50 per cent, using for that purpose a hitherto unused section of the tariff act, whose character is sufficiently indicated by the fact that it is called the "re- taliatory section." What France offers is to reduce the maximum rates under the new tariff by 50 per cent. pending a definite agreement, thus giving America a rate only twice as high as that given to Germany under the new treaty just negotiated by France. Several years ago the French gave us a temporary intermediate schedule in the hope that while that lasted Washington would listen to reason and show that it wished to encourage French exports to the United States by lowering the tariffs which block the entrance of French goods. How sublimely naive! The United States had no such idea. It seeks to keep out French exports, not to welcome them. What France would like is a commercial treaty with strong reciprocity clauses, but if we granted special favors to France then all the other countries which have treaties with us containing most-favored-nation clauses would be in a position to demand similar low rates, and then we should find ourselves reducing the tariff all along the line! So the State Department points out that France asks a reduction of the tariff, which Congress alone can sanction. Anyone who thinks that the Republicans will consider opening up the tariff question on the eve of a Presidential campaign, in which they expect to purchase the election as so often heretofore by contributions fried out of the tariff bene- ficiaries, has surely taken leave of his senses. Sentimen- talists may say that this is a pretty shabby way to treat our beloved Gallic ally for whom we were shedding blood so freely only nine years ago. But what is that eternal friendship we swore upon two hundred thousand altars and forums, when it comes to lining the pockets of the business men who say that they could not stay in business, let alone pay campaign subscriptions, if the government did not use the law-making machinery to insure them the profits they consider adequate? Of course, it is embarrassing to let the wicked Germans, whom we were so anxious to ex- terminate nine years ago, walk off with all our business with France, that is where the shoe pinches and why the Administration is so angry at France. Men whose export business to France is wiped out will not feel like shelling out campaign funds. Is it surprising that Washington points out that this same "retaliatory section" goes so far as to give the President the right to "issue a further pro- clamation that such articles of said country [in this case. France] as he shall deem the public interest may require shall be excluded from importation into the United States?" That. Washington officialdom evidently feels, should make France behave — although it will certainly not make Amer- ica— or American goods liked.

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Sept. 28, 1927] The Nation 303 We have dwelt at length upon this episode because it affords so perfect an example of the way that tariffs make for ill-will and even actual hostilities among nations. Who can tell, if Washington does not come to its senses and find a way out, how Par this breach with France may not take us? The present governmental policies of the United States are planned as if determined to make us the most hated and despised nation in the world. We are antagon- izing one country after another by our purse-proud arro- gance and our assumption that we are the chosen of the earth and can impose our will upon all others as we see fit. And we are doing it at a moment when, as Romain Holland points out in another column of this issue of The. Nation, we have forfeited through the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti what remaining moral authority we had. If we continue in the same manner for a few years more we shall occupy the place in the dislike of the world which Germany was made to hold during the war years. Foregoing Theft THE British and American governments have recently concluded an agreement for the reciprocal release by each to the citizens of the other of part of the sequestrated property held since war days. We have urged the release of all such property, because we do not favor theft, public or private. But the agreement itself, however commend- able the object, will in practice benefit British subjects alone, and not American citizens. This seems to be the only type of agreement our present administration of the State Department seems capable of concluding with Great Britain. The subject-matter itself, dealing with stolen property, is repulsive to right-thinking people, and that may explain the desire to dispose of it, even in part. In the partial and hesitant release of sequestrated prop- erty, many technical rules have developed. For example, an American woman — like a British woman — who married a German, Austrian, or Hungarian, acquired thereby enemy nationality and had her property sequestrated — in the United States, if she resided abroad; in England, wherever she resided. Under certain circumstances, the property of American-born women has been released by the United States. England has not been co "generous." She has, with minor exceptions, confiscated — euphemistically called "liquidated" or "charged" — all property belonging to Ger- man married women regardless of their original nationality. Under the present agreement, in return for the United States undertaking to release the property of British-bom women who had married Germans, or other ex-enemies, and reacquired their British nationality prior to June 2, 1926, Great Britain — not the dominions or colonies— agrees to return the property of American-born women married to Germans, who reacquired their American nationality prior to June 2, 1926. Not only does this cover very few Amer- ican women, but the agreement expressly provides that it shall not apply to property which the British Government has already "liquidated." Inasmuch as there is very little "unliquidated" property left, American-born women will derive practically no benefit from the agreement. In this respect we note the same adroit hand that negotiated the agreement practically throwing overboard the Ameri- can neutrality claims against Great Britain, and with it the rights of neutrals everywhere, which must result necessarily in a new increase in naval armament. The rest of the enemy-property agreement merely states the respective positions of the two governments on recognition of debt claims, certificates of stock, and corpo- rate property owned by non-"enemies." It promises no further releases. When it is realized that the British Gov- ernment confiscated outright, after the armistice, all shares of stock in British corporations owned by persons who were Germans, Austrians, Hungarians, or Bulgarians prior to January 10, 1920, regardless of who may subsequently have come into possession of the shares — including the property of servant girls, of holders of British consols, even of "enemy"-owned certificates of stock in American corpora- tions when deposited in British banks — the revolutionary attack on the institution of private property and the folly of foreigners who invest in British securities or British territories will be appreciated. Yet, strangely, it is Great Britain which is shocked and belligerent because of the Russian confiscation of foreign-owned property in violation of international law, and on the other hand seeks to in- fluence the United States to confiscate ex-"enemy" private property in order to put us into the same precarious boat with herself and thus prevent us from reaping those ad- vantages which accrue from financial integrity and decency. In Great Britain and France it is the conservatives who have most ardently supported confiscation of other people's private property, yet thunder against "radicals" who chal- lenge their wisdom. That confiscation is a two-edged sword, undermining law and security everywhere, these alleged statesmen do not appear to know. And our incompetent State Department does not yet seem to realize the British policy with respect to our seque- strated property, though, fortunately, the Treasury Depart- ment does. It will be interesting to observe what further agreements the State Department may conclude with Great Britain for the surrender of American rights and of world interests. Through Sport to Peace ? COMPETITIVE games, particularly in the international field, have been hailed now and again as a great "moral equivalent" for war. Whenever an American meets an Englishman, Frenchman, or a loyal citizen of some other country, in some difficult game of skill like tennis, polo, or peanut-pushing, it is the occasion for peo- ple to start talking about cementing the bonds of inter- national friendship. Discounting the extreme weakness of such bonds at vital moments in past history, it would still be interesting to know how much truth there is in this hypothesis today. There is a corollary to this nice theory which maintains that if nations and peoples play games long enough, they will gradually become accustomed to the standards of fair play and sportsmanship in their treat- ment of their opponents and will then carry these ideals over to their diplomatic relations. It is thus only necessary to have a sufficient number of international contests to set two hemispheres well on the way to world peace. If this be true considerable progress should have been made toward friendship between the United States and France at the recent Davis Cup tennis matches — which the French won — and Anglo-American relations should have been improved noticeably by the international polo cup com-

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304 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 324' petition, in which the American team was victorious. Thou- sands witnessed these contests and the newspapers were generous with publicity. Even the polo games were trum- peted on the front page of the newspapers — the staid old New York Times leading the way. Yet, we suspect that a great many of the spectators agreed with "F. P. A.," who said in his column in the New York World: "It is the gen- eral feeling among us American sports that those British polo players are ambassadors of good will, cementing the bonds, etc.; and that Lacoste and Cochet play too well for any use." Whether or not this was the crowd's sentiment we hesi- tate to say. It is, at least, the conclusion to which an un- informed person might have been led by the carefully placed applause. A week later, in the national singles matches, when French, Spanish, Japanese, and American players were again in competition, the applause was as ju- diciously administered. In the Hennessey-Cochet match, which unexpectedly turned into a nip-and-tuck affair, with. Indiana's Mr. Hennessey winning, the sympathy of the audience was quite apparent — even to Cochet. Thunderous applause greeted each point gained by the American youth, while his every error prompted an ominous gasp from the spectators; Cochet's brilliant plays received a scattered and perfunctory hand-clapping. Yet tennis is the gentleman's game par excellence and the people who watch it supposedly share its gallantry. To say that the audience was ma- licious would hardly be fair; they were only acting nat- urally— as naturally as did the French spectators a few years ago when they booed, jeered, and abused a victorious American rugby team at Colombes. Both episodes were simply manifestations of nationalism — the same national- ism, if you please, that reached its peak in war time. Just as it is treason for a Yale man to cheer a perfectly executed Harvard forward pass, so is it unpatriotic to ap- plaud too vociferously (if, indeed, at all) a foreign player. The war psychology has really become a part of athletics. The 'ame "win or die for dear old Oshkosh" spirit that pre- dominates in American sport is prevalent in the interna- tional competition. Spectacle games are played not for the fun there is in them but for the serious business of winning — anything less is disgraceful. Sports have ac- quired a war vocabulary of "attack," "defense." and "strat- egy." More than one military gentleman has lauded foot- ball because it is fine training for army officers. It is difficult to see how an amelioration of nationalistic feelings or prejudices can come about through the development of this sport-incentive on an international scale. From the psychologists we get even less 'nope in this matter. They hold that results of a discipline in one field of endeavor are not transferable to the problems in an- other. So even if one did develop a strong feeling for fair play in international tennis, it would not necessarily indi- cate that this quality would become a part of one's philos- ophy in politics. While Governor Fuller, for example, was pondering over the Sacco-Vanzetti case, he was photo- graphed in the newspapers playing football at his summer home, and there is no reason for thinking that th< ernor did not observe every rule ot sportsmanship. Some time ago we read about an imaginary ba: game between the Ku Klux Klan and the Knights of Co- lumbus for the benefit of Jewish, orphans— umpired by a Negro. When that game is played we shall have more hope of the effect of athletics on international affairs. The Charm of the Victorian SIGNS are numerous that we are once more about to turn our faces with respect toward that time, so long and so broad, when Queen Victoria is supposed to have ruled the taste of the English-speaking peoples on all the continents of the earth. Or if not with respect, then with that degree of affection which amounts to respect. The immemorial process is under way. First we shied away from the middle nineteenth century with all the disgust to be expected of a generation just emerging from the prison house of habituated thought and feeling. Then came a brief period of indifference, when the very thought of things Victorian was of something so stuffy that it could not and should not be mentioned. More recently still the age was satirized by minds so keen that they succeeded. even while they made us smile, in awakening our sympathy and our understanding — it is a curious paradox, for in- stance, that Lytton Strachey aroused on the whole the ten- derest of emotions towards the late Queen of Balmoral and Buckingham. And now it looks as if we were entering a time when the doings and the sayings of seventy-five years ago will seem to have positive charm. We shall condescend in the proper degree. It was not our way, our life. W7e order things more sensibly now. But our grandfathers and grandmothers were certainly quaint old folks, and you would be surprised to see how readable their books are. even if their chairs are still not to be sat in without pain. Who would insist that the chairs themselves, and the sofas, and the beds, and the tables could not possibly come back into favor and be bought up with the same relish which we now show for seventeenth- and eighteenth-cen- tury objects? It seems unlikely, but it may happen. Cer- tainly it has happened that we now forget the loathing we once felt for the heroes, not to speak of the heroines, in the novels read by our grandfathers. An anonymous re- viewer in the Saturday Review recently spoke with favor of the "nineteenth-century flavor" he had found among the pages of "Uncle Silas," a masterpiece by Le Fanu, a now almost forgotten Victor' iller. We too have read "Uncle Silas." ana we know what the reviewer meant. The heroine of the tale is swathed in those very robes of del- icacy which we not long ago hated with all the hatred bred in us by the Nineties. But she is charming nevertheless, and the story, incidentally, is one that no inferior novelist could achieve in any age. Will there be a revival of Le Fanu? We hope so. G. K. Chesterton revived Dickens early in the present century — restored him. that is, to the critical position he had been denied by a fastidious gene-ration afraid of his sentiment. The revolution in taste of which we have been speaking will involve, of course, a reconstruction of our notions concerning sentiment. As Mr. Chesterton said somewhere the other day. we shall have to learn to listen to things which we have heard before and which we have always felt to be true though the rules of a sophisticated society prevent us from acknowledging this truth. We shall have to make peace with wholesomeness, kind-heart- edness, obedience, and faith, even if it be only a peace of condescension. We not only can do this but are doing it. There is Anthony Trollope, for instance, another great Victorian novelist who is coming back and is filling shelves of the "World's Classics." And there will be more.

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Sept. 28, 1927] The Nation 305 s ■£.£/>-vv/o 0 A COUNTRY largely devoted to talk of ideals and ideal- ism has need of vices. Prize-fighting caters to a num- ber of instincts not altogether pretty and accordingly it deserves a place in the life of the nation. Man does not thrive on sweetness and light alone. But this business of blood and blows has all but lost its tonic quality by becom- ing an industry. In the public mind no enterprise involv- ing more than a million dollars can be anything but re- spectable. A little vicarious cruelty is by no means a bad prescription for us, but surely we in America are in no need of an additional dose of hypocrisy. Under present-day conditions a big boxing match lets loose a flood of treacle. In the first place the public is only slightly interested in boxing, though it enjoys a fight. If the crowds were truly eager to see displays of speed and skill, the various battles of the century would enlist the services of little men. The flyweights, the bantams, and the feathers do furnish sword-play and the quick flash of thrust and parry, but there are thousands who attend the heavyweight encounters for every one who goes to see a bout in any of the lesser classes. This phrase, "the manly art," is built upon two lies, because prize-fighting for the title has in it little of aesthetic value and bears no discern- ible relation to virility. Women have won the right to at- tend big bouts and the game has gone coeducational. I won't deny that certain fights have furnished me with thrills, but I doubt if I came away cleansed and purified by the spectacle. If prize-fighting were accepted as a savage rite occasion- ally necessary for all descendants of the fallen Adam there would be no complaint from me. My protest goes against the propaganda which would find splendor and moral les- sons in jabs and uppercuts. It has been said that but for boxing this nation would soon lose all capacity for tri- umphant warfare. Waiving the fact that I am pacifist, I believe a misconstruction has been put upon Wellington's remark about Waterloo and playing fields. Certainly he hardly meant to suggest that Napoleon was routed by soldiers who had prepared for conflict by sitting in the right-field bleachers and shouting "Go on in, Jack. He can't hurt you." Dempsey moves like a cat and Tunney has square shoulders, but I have never taken off a single pound from necessary areas by watching these young men, no matter how attentively. A red-blooded American ought to be able to defend himself with his fists, but I have seen the greatest of the boxers and still remain vulnerable to anyone who swings at me, no matter how ineptly. I know there is no law compelling anybody to pay $40 for a seat strangely aloof from the center of activity. Mr. Rickard is a showman, which means that he has the abil- ity to thwart an adage and bring burnt children back to the fire. This is very clever of him, but I do not under- stand just why he should be hailed as a public benefactor. I resent the manner in which he has grown rich upon American snobbery. He has found that it is sufficient to print "ringside" upon a ticket, and that each one of the forty thousand in these exclusive sections will be satisfied merely by the pleasant sound of the word, no matter how t\ urwcv 13 A <r\\^s* poor the spot to which he finds himself conducted. The only wonder is that Mr. Rickard has never yet issued a special limited edition of tickets in limp leather or, better still, a privately printed issue bearing the signatures of both the fighters. This would be feasible, for all our mod- ern gladiators are writing men. But the entrepreneur is not the only responsible party. In recent years championship bouts have been in some measure civic enterprises. Cities and States have lent what was practically official sanction to Mr. Rickard's meth- ods. One Governor all but abdicated his office in order to bring a big bout within his borders. It is not good that servants of the people should suddenly appear in new and shining raiment whenever a promoter comes to town and wants a permit. Nor do I believe that the eagerness of every sporting writer to boost a battle rests wholly upon the itching of his nose for news. Of course, I do not think that every boxing reporter who fills his columns with hyperbole is either a crook or a press agent. The capacity of the public for news of fights and fighters is vast, but even so I am ashamed of the manner in which newspapers lose every vestige of the sense of proportion when a cham- pionship bout is on the ways. The most devoted partisan of boxing can hardly wade through the immense amount of stuff which is printed while the principals are engaged in training. Of course, if the sporting commentator devotes himself to Tunney's taste in literature I'll grant you that he has a story. And why, I wonder, is so little attention paid to Dempsey's literary preferences? Some years ago I found him in a training camp completely surrounded by his books. It is true that they were not his own but came with the furnished cottage which he rented. Still he had browsed a bit and he was not much pleased with the selection which the shelves afforded. Zane Grey and other chroniclers of cowboy life were largely represented. "I don't like that stuff," said Dempsey. "It's all fake. I've been a cowboy." Pressed to name his favorite in the selection, he spoke with enthusiasm of a novel called "The Czar's Spy" which concerned the adventures of a grand duke among the Bol- sheviki. "If you had been a grand duke," protested a reporter who doubled in boxing and book reviews, "you'd probably think 'The Czar's Spy' was a fake." "I never was a grand duke," said Dempsey, and with this simple but profound remark it seemed to me he justi- fied the entire romantic movement. I have not understood why Tunney has seemed to some the more interesting figure of the two. He is a pleasant young man with agreeable manners, but I rather suspect him of having boned up on Elbert Hubbard's Scrapbook. There is an occasional chink in his erudition. "And were you never worried for a moment?" asked a young woman after the Fighting Marine's triumph in Philadelphia. "Oh, yes, my confidence was seriously impaired in the fourth round when he had me laying on the ropes," replied Tunney. Heywood Broun

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306 The Nation [Vol. 125. No. 3247 Romain Rolland Testifies A MESSAGE TO AMERICA ON THE MASSACHUSETTS TRAGEDY [Following is a translation of a letter written by the author of "Jam Christophe" to Lucien Price of Boston upon receipt in Sioitzerland of the news that Sacco and Vanzetti had been executed. Permission to publish the letter has been obtained by cable.] Villeneuve, August 23, 1927 My Dear Friend: I am writing to you under the crushing burden of the impression produced by the judicial murder of Sacco and Vanzetti. I have no doubt that you and M share my sentiments; but I wish to express them to you because it may be of some use if you can manage to make them known in your country. My testimony will perhaps have a certain value, because it is that of a man who has long held himself aloof from political parties; who has acquired the habit of looking and thinking "au dessus des siecles" and beyond the passions of the day; and, I may add, of a man who is by certain traits of race as well as of temperament more akin to the Anglo-Saxon than to the Mediterranean. That which seems to me to be the most terrible side of the tragedy of last evening is not the frightful fate of the two unhappy men, whom death has delivered, finaliy, from the long torture which drained them of their blood, drop by drop, at the hands of their judicial murderers. (The names of two of these latter — Judge Thayer and Governor Fuller — wiil be inscribed imperishably among the reprobated of his- tory.) No. It is not their fate. It is rather the abyss which this offense has now dug between the United States and the rest of the peoples of the world. You don't suspect that, perhaps, in your country. You cannot have any idea either of its depth or of its causes. The question of the guilt of Sacco and Vanzetti had become secondary — although, if now their innocence should ever be demonstrated, the revelation would mean the moral crumt ing of all official prestige of the representative the United States, and of their country with them, for cen- turies. Guilty or not, one no longer saw in them anything but two unfortunate men, subjected for years to a r ment of cruelty such as the most barbarous in our world today. Bolshevik, Balkan, or Fascist, would have th too cowardly, too inhuman. One simple solution was de- manded: mercy. And it was this that I cabled to Governor Fuller on the 20th of August: "A friend of America en- treats you to spare Sacco and Vanzetti. Even if g humanity would demand it." For in any case they had he final limits of human endurance. One must have a sava.ee soul i not to have been satisfied before snatching away the last breath of these wretched, palpitating human frag: But I am not at all astonished that these bloodthi exist. We knew similar ones in our Dreyfus affair. The great judges, lay or military, are both of the same spi And the great judges, after passing judgment, would have let the whole world crumble rather than admit that they had made a mistake. This pride, monstrously mere cruel than cruelty itself, implacable and stupid, remained obsti- nate in its error, with jaws clenched. If there exists a Hell, the place of honor in it is reserved for such pride as that. But the crime of such men involves only themselves. It does not involve their nation and community. And it is the duty of these latter to dissociate themselves from it. Thus did the better France in the Dreyfus affair. The better France, after years of struggle and suffering, snatched the victim from the torturers. It was this that the Defense Committee for Sacco and Vanzetti tried to do — without success — for the United States. And the most overwhelming and heartbreaking event of all this drama, this disaster in the eyes of the world, is this: not one of the notable official personages who represent the Government of the United States intervened to give audible expression to the voice of humanity. Coolidge found the hour propitious for his annual vacation (perish the thought of disturbing him!) while they were assassinating Sacco and Vanzetti. Taft didn't find it worth the trouble to return from Canada for two men — more or less — who were merely being killed. Borah — and this is bitterest of all — said (if the words are correctly reported here) that it was merely a question of facing down the insolent clamor from abroad, rather than a question of doing justice as far as these two men were concerned. Thus the most vulgar sentiment of amour propre, of national pride, tramples humanity under foot! We know well that it is not pleasant for a nation to receive the objurgations of foreigners. We also have known (and we deplore it) that in too many cases the indignation and grief of the multitude are translated abroad into acts of violence, threats, and insult. So, naturally, communists and anarchists have tried to fish in troubled waters. But you know well, all of you in America, that those most overwhelmed by the judicial crime of America have not been the violent in Europe. They have been the moder- ates. They have been the liberals, the Christians — all the saner and better balanced elements of Europe. And the majority of the protests which have come to you came from sincere friends of the United States, who, like myself, were heartbroken when they saw such a crime soil the honor of the great nation they love, and destroy the ideal image which they had made of it. rong nation possesses imagination. It takes thought. Yours should have done so. For your nation owes to itself and to the world to scorn the threats made against it; but not the supplications of its friends, not enlightened counsel. Of itself it should have taken the initiative in some exceptional measure which would have given the un- fortunate men mercy or, at least, reduced their sentences to life imprisonment. Thus at least it would have fortified itself in advance against the rigors of a mistake which would be nothing less than a national calamity. The pitiless hardness of heart of all the leading public officials in America, their absolute insensibility toward the question, have produced a most sinister impression through- out the entire world. It was a question not of justice, but a question rather of simple, humble, divine humanity. Not one of you in America can have an idea of that corrosive thought which has now been given vitality abroad by this act. During almost a decade there has been spreading

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Sept. 28, 1927] The Nation 307 throughout the world the idea that such was, indeed, the new mentality emergent in the United States; and a deep hostility has been stirring in the hearts of all other peoples. We struggled against this current. We knew that there were, with you as with us all, two natures, two Americas, like the two Frances of "Jean Christophe": the France of "La Foire sur La Place," and the France of "Dans La Maison." And we live in the better one. And now, here is this world tragedy (no more Ameri- can than the Dreyfus affair was French alone), this calam- ity, which has shown the crushing supremacy — from afar one might almost say the unanimity — of this frightful America whose heart is stone, of this America for whom humanity does not exist, for whom there exists only legal- ism, of this America which insists on having condemned men rejudged by the same judges who have already con- demned them, this scandalous derision of all real justice which allies justice with hypocrisy! What is to be done? The abyss yawns. I know too well the peoples of Europe, and the travail that is going on within them, not to perceive that from this day on a state of moral warfare exists between them and the United States. And, should it be six years, or twenty, or fifty, or a century, this state of moral warfare will be realized one day indeed. For the conscience of the world has received a blow. And, alas! a blow received Ln history is always sooner or later given back. The brilliant result of the satanic tenacity of Judge Thayer and Governor Fuller in crushing out these two vic- tims is that, henceforth, these poor Italian immigrants take their places in the pantheon of the martyrs of the civilized world. There, for centuries, one will still speak of Sacco and Vanzetti as one speaks still of Jean Galas. But Sacco and Vanzetti have not found in America their Voltaire! I am not an American; but I love America. And I accuse of high treason against America the men who have soiled her with this judicial crime before the eyes of the world. Their abominable parody on justice has destroyed the most sacred rights of all humanity. ROMAIN ROLLAND Americans IV e Like Daniel Willard: A Selfish Man By DONALD KIRKLEY DANIEL WILLARD, stern The second and benevolent overlord of 0 4 nersonali the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, has won an amazingly widespread reputation for fair dealing by steady pursuit of a wholly selfish plan of action. He is generally called a just man, and he is a just man. Thousands of men and women, whole families and communities, are richer and happier because their sustenance comes from the great railroad system built up and guided by Daniel Willard. Yet Daniel Willard's first duty, as he sees it, is to safeguard and increase the value of the property given into his care. No other industrial overlord, it is probable, is trusted, liked, and respected by so many thousands of persons in so many widely different walks of life. The lesser barons of the B. and 0. and their respective retinues of white-collar men and women look on Mr. Willard with a veneration that is close to worship. They say: "We love him." Seasoned railroaders out on the line, more dignified and disinterested, give "Old Dan" their hearty respect. They say: "He's one square guy." The newer battalions remember that the president started as a track walker. They say: "He used to be one of us." Labor leaders, natural foes of the posi- tion, make allowance for the man in it, and give him credit as magnanimously as possible for doing the best he can according to his lig's. As one labor leader outside the railroad unions put it: "Willard's got a conscience and uses it, and that's a damn sight more than you can say about a lot of those birds." Certain of Mr. Willard's peers, moreover, men as great as he, measured in terms of the property they control or manage, regard the head of the B. and 0. with much admiration tempered with a very small amount of suspicion. As one Bourbon of business remarked: "Willard's too easy on the sons of guns," mean- i n a series m&> of course, the men who oper- ty portraits ate the railroad. But in the railroad world and out of it Daniel Willard's word is as good as another man's bond. His private life has been clean and wholesome. In his adopted city, Baltimore, his ad- vice is respected and sometimes followed in the fields of art and higher education. Those who know of his achievements as a railroad statesman in the days when he was chairman of the Council of National Defense and the War Industries Board, in the post-war struggles between the railroad em- ployees and the railroad owners, and in the never-ending maneuvers of the railroad magnates in their campaigns against each other, and those who know of him only by his standing as a citizen, are quick to agree that his outstand- ing quality is fairness. How has Mr. Willard won the trust of his employees? How can he live up to his reputation for fairness and still be consciously selfish? Born in a respectable, fairly well-to-do Vermont farm- house, young Dan decided to become a scientific farmer. Astigmatism, not so easily corrected in those days, drove him from agricultural college at nineteen. Needing to work with his hands for a time, he thought he'd try railroading. He went to work laying ties and sprinkling ballast on the Central Vermont, although the foreman rather believed the student was not strong enough for the work. A year later, when he resigned to take a job as fireman on another road, the foreman remarked that Willard was the only man he'd ever had who couldn't be replaced. Fighting the handicap of astigmatism and building up a strong body, Willard was soon at the throttle of an engine. He migrated to the Northwest and went up the line by the usual steps. Once he was laid off on account of a slump in business. He

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308 The Nation [Vol. 125. No. 3247 had found meanwhile that he was born to the railroad pur- ple. He loved railroading passionately, finding, as do many railroaders, high romance in the vital business of moving the crops and products of this vast country and of linking together its widely different peoples. He left his engine finally (he had ridden always with a book or two under the seat) with deep, sharp regret, for he loved the personal con- tact with the mighty machine, and the thundering, breath- taking daily drive down the line. This love explains in part why young Dan climbed from one department to the next higher with such rapidity and ease. lie was no genius; he never did his job, whatever it was, better than it had been done before. But he drove himself harder than his fellows, he studied constantly, he bent every ounce of energy to the problems of railroading as an art. His work was his chief recreation and, next to his home life, his greatest joy. Furthermore, his mind was eyactly fitted to the task in hand. He had a remarkable memory and an easy grasp of figures. Whenever he came up with a subject of which he knew nothing, whether it was Renaissance sculpture or the manufacture of axles, he went to his books and got a mindful. In his conversation he fre- quently fishes up odd details and remote ramifications on astonishingly diverse matters. By the time Willard came to the B. and 0. he had worked out a pra^tica1 philosophy for himself. It was not very original. He had picked a precept here and a maxim there and fitted them together until the whole served as an excellent guide for a railroad president. He took over the tumbledown and disreputable B. and 0. chiefly because he saw a chance to put his ideas into full operation for the first time. His imagination took fire at the thouglt of get- ting his fingers on a potentially great system and remolding it nearer to his heart's desire. The new president came to Baltimore in 1910, almost unknown in the East. The B. and 0. was then the butt of vaudeville jokes and the target of local newspaper attacks. Some of the men in the central offices were open to reproach as to their private habits and public practices. Today Balti- more is proud of the railroad and of the men who run it. The i.ewspapers praise it and them. The Fair of the Iron Horse (September 24-October 8), in celebration of its one hundredth anniversary, finds the B. and 0. prosperous too. Mr. Willard has been the biggest single force behind the change, and every Baltimorean who thought about the mat- ter at all was much gratified when the president of the B. and 0. was installed recently as chairman of the board of trustees of Johns Hopkins University. That honor was keenly appreciated by Mr. Willard, not because it came to him as an individual — he is very modest — but because it formed a concrete symbol of public recognition of that re- generation to which he has given a great part of his life. It was no easy matter to refashion the old B. and 0. into the splendid system of today. It cost $400,000,000, and Daniel Willard had the spending of the money. He was responsible to the owners, and the owners have never had cause to complain. But he believed that the best way to serve the owners was to please the public, to be scrupulously honest and frank in his business dealings, and to see to it that the men and women in his employ were satisfied and cheerful. With this in mind he began putting his policies into effect. One of his first acts was to stop all advertising until such time as the passenger service of the railroad had been brought to a point where it deserved to be advertised. In dealing with business it was his policy to put his cards on the table. "You'll get trimmed sometimes," he said, "but in the long run it pays." His policies were seldom original. There was the "Safety above everything else" slogan, with which Mr. Willard led the safety movement in the East; the "will to please" slogan, which has become a watchword among B. and O. employees; the "good neighbor" policy, un- der which any local superintendent is authorized to bring all the resources of the railroad to bear for the relief of any emergency of fire or flood, without waiting for orders from above. There was the plan for encouraging shopmen to make suggestions for betterment of the service, a plan which resulted in 18,000 suggestions in four years. Of these, 70 per cent were put in effect, with a saving estimated at $3,000,000. Half that sum was returned to the employees in the form of increased wages. Mr. Willard has put one of his beliefs into the following words: "I am anxious that Baltimore and Ohio employees should at all times be courteous in their relations with the public and with each other, and that they should make every reasonable effort to operate the trains safely and on time. I would like also to have their constant and helpful coopera- tion toward improving the operation of the property in such ways as may be possible — not, however, because they feel obliged to do so, but just because they want to do so." There he has given the formula for his own success, with the exception of one ingredient — the mind quality which gives him his tremendous knowledge of all questions having to do with the many phases of railroading. The formula, which is known to every employee, puts every one on his mettle and has resulted in a strikingly strong morale all down the line. The president has set a hard pace and a high standard for his employees; he is a stern taskmaster to the slothful and negligent; and he lives up to the pace himself. When facing a problem which involves his relations with an employee, the president invariably asks himself: "How would I feel if I were in his place?" There is no cant about this, no sentimentality. Naturally benevolent and warm-hearted, Mr. Willard puts duty first ; and he could not bring himself to do a kindness that would interfere with his duty to the shareholders. But since he is con- vinced that kindness to employees pays dividends, he has much latitude. And he does remember how he felt when he was a trackman, a fireman, an engineman, a trainmaster, a superintendent. He remembers the conditions under which each man in the system works, he has a vast store of facts regarding the operation of the 5,000 miles of track, he is in intimate touch with the details of every depart- ment. And he has the knack of marshalling facts to meet the problem of the moment, whether it is big or small. Every trainman with a just grievance knows he can come in and talk it over with the president. Trainmen often come to the Old Man in trouble and they seldom go away empty. He has been known to relieve distress more than once with money from his own pocket, and he hates to have that known. His sympathy is broad and deep, his temper steadfast and calm. He never makes a disparaging remark about friend or enemy. In his personal contacts he is genial and courteous to all men; but he never drops for a moment a certain dignity which, one suspects, he believes he owes it to his office to maintain. Is that dignity the insignia of office only? Once the

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Sept. 28, 1927] The Nation 309 president left strict orders, on a road trip, for Jim, the porter on his private car, to call him at five in the morning. Jim, the story goes, awoke to find Mr. Willard standing by with a smile, saying: "Jim, it's five o'clock." On most Sunday mornings, too, a gray-haired gentle- man of sixty-six, soberly dressed, with much fun in the kind eyes behind gold-rimmed glasses, walks through the deserted corridors of the B. and 0. Building, with two fine lads by his side. He looks in at his offices, taking, one imagines, vast pleasure in this leisurely contact with the place he loves next best to his home. Meanwhile his grand- children romp and frolic about with post-church enthusi- asm. This Sunday half-hour is almost a rite, and it is hard to say whether it is enjoyed most by the boys or by their grandfather. For the rest, Daniel Willard fits into conventional molds, in his life away from the road. He is a thorough- going American with a firm respect for things as they are. He plays golf and patronizes grand opera. He serves on committees and takes a respectable interest in civic affairs. He is a Unitarian, and he does a good deal for charity with- out talking about it. He is happy with his wife and chil- dren and grandchildren; he belongs to clubs and goes to dinners and finds it easy to live an orderly, decent life. There are other men who have used the phrase "en- lightened selfishness" to describe their actions. But Mr. Willard is one of the very few who put their principles into constant daily practice, almost as a matter of course. It is perhaps a pity that the first cause of his fair dealing is his solicitude for the shareholders, his conviction that happy, well-paid men make more money for the railroad. Some may say that workers deserve happiness whether or not their happiness contributes to the welfare of the property owners. Still, call it selfishness or what you please, quibble as much as you like, the fact remains that Mr. Willard's way has made him a useful man in his chosen field, a valu- able public servant, a loved man. He has won happiness for himself because, those who know him believe, this happiness has been reflected in the lives of others. His life thus far illustrates the tremendously important fact that the surest way to find spiritual and financial profit is to work hard for the welfare of many people. Isadora Duncan Is Dead By MAX EASTMAN ISADORA DUNCAN was the last friend I saw when I left Europe this spring. She stood in the little crowd on the platform at the Gare Saint Lazare. She had been saying goodbye to Ruth Mitchell near the front of the train, and my car passed her as the train pulled out of the station. I was standing at the open window, laugh- ing and half-crying at the sadly funny excitement of people parting with their friends, and suddenly I heard her voice calling my name and "Goodbye!" She raised her hand when I caught sight of her, and stood still with it raised in the air and moving slowly in a serene and strong bene- diction. A great beam of that energetic and perfectly ideal- istic light shone out of her eyes to me. She looked very great. She looked like a statue of real liberty. It made me sad for a long time, because greatness in this little world is sad. Great- ness coming to an unhappy end is almost unendurable, and I had felt that Isadora was coming to an unhappy end. I felt it underneath all the delightful bubbling of her mirth when I saw her during the winter in Cannes. It was at the house of our friend, Lucien Monod, a Com- munist and an artist. She had just received a cablegram that money would be for- warded for her memoirs, and she was full of laughing joy — that wild, reckless, witty joy that all her friends remem- Isadora Duncan You bring the fire and terror of the wars Of infidels in thunder-running hordes. With spears like sun-rays, shields, and wheeling Flame shape, death shape, and shaped like scimii With crimson eagles and blue pennantry, And teeth and armor flashing, and white, eyes Of battle horses, and the silver cries Of trumpets unto storm and victory. Who is this naked-footed lovely girl Of summer nuadoies dancing on the grass ? So young and tenderly her footsteps pass. So dreamy-limbed and lightly icild and wa Their bugles murmur and their banners furl, And they are lost and vanished like a storm. Max East From "Colors of Life" ber. Isadora could sprinkle the whole world with her wit and make it shine. A lot of stupid Americans — indeed al- most all of stupid America — imagine that they laughed at Isadora. They are completely mistaken. Isadora laughed at them. She laughed as Rabelais would laugh at them, or Montaigne, or Shakespeare, or Aristophanes. Any great man or woman would laugh at them. And Isa- dora Duncan was one of the great men and women — more indubitably so, I think, than any other artist who has lived in our time. They speak of Duse and Sarah Bernhardt and Isadora as a trio of groat women, but Isadora was incomparably above the other two. She was not only a perfectly supreme ar- tist as they were — endowed by nature with momentous power and the exquisite gift of restraining it — but she was also a mind and a moral force. She used her momentous power, as the giants of man- kind have always done, not only to entertain the world, but to move it. And she did move it. It is needless to tell how she changed the art of dancing in our time. She was a revolu- tion in that art, and so to some extent in the whole art of the theater. All the civil- ized world acclaimed her, and recognized in that young brave girl's beautiful body, running barefoot and half- naked, running and bending and pausing and floating in a

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310 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3247 stream of music, as though the music had formed out of its own passion a visible spirit to live for a moment and die when it died — all the world recognized in that an artistic revolution, an apparition of creative genius, and not merely an achievement in the established art of the dance. But I think few people realized how far beyond the realm of art — how far out and how deep into the moral and social life of our times the influence of Isadora Duncan's dancing extended. All the bare-legged girls, and the poised and natural girls with strong muscles, and strong free steps wherever they go — the girls that redeem America and make it worth while to have founded a new world, no matter how badly it was done — they all owe more to Isadora Duncan than to any other person. And the boys too that hive a chance to be unafraid of beauty, to be unafraid of the natural life and free aspiration of an intelligent animal walking on the earth — all who have in any measure es- caped from the rigidity and ritual of our national religion of negation, all of them owe an immeasurable debt to Isadora Duncan's dancing. She did not only go back into the past to Athens to find that voluntary restraint in freedom that made her dancing an event in the history of art. She went forward into the future — farther, I sup- pose, than Athens — to a time when man shall be cured alto- gether of civilization, and return, with immunity to that disease if with few other blessings, to his natural home outdoors on the green surface of the earth. That made her dancing an event in the history of life. Isadora was exiled— banished by more than an accident of the marriage law — from America. It was inevitable that she should be. America had never seen a woman genius before, and could not think of anything else to do with her. But nevertheless Isadora was very American. The great big way in which she conceived things, and un- dertook them, and the way she succeeded with them, was American. Even her faults were American — her passion for pulling off stunts — "gestures" is the refined way to say it — was American. She made a grand sport of her public position and character. She played with publicity like a humorous Barnum. Even her extravagant and really bad irresponsibility, which went almost to the point of madness in late years, was in the reverse sense an American trait. It was an exaggerated reaction against America's "right- eousness." Wrongtiousness is what it was. And there will be a lot more of it here, if the righteous go much far- ther the way they are going. America fighting the battle against Americanism — that was Isadora. From that battle incomparable things are to come — things ttiat will startle and teach the world. And Isadora led the way into the fight all alone, with her naked and strong body and her bold character, beautiful as an Amazon. If America triumphs over itself — over its cheap greed and prudery, its intellectual and moral cowardice, its prurient puerile senility— if America triumphs over that. Isadora Duncan will be sculptured in bronze at the gate of the Temple of Man in the new day that will dawn. She will stand there, poised in terrible 'mpatience, knee raised and arms tensely extended as in the Marche Militaire or the Scythian warrior's dance — beautiful — a militant and mighty woman, the symbol and the veritable leader of those who put on their courage like armor and fought for the affirmation of life in America. Serving Two Masters By T. SWANN HARDING 1 SPOKE today with the scientific director of a large corporation. I could honestly use the stereotyped phrase, "You would know the name in an instant if I men- tioned it." You probably would. This was a big man, in business, and he belonged in the intellectual strata, again speaking in a strictly business sense. He was safe and sound of course. By that I mean that he honestly believed Coolidge should be drafted for the Presidency in perpetuity and that Sacco and Vanzetti got their just deserts. He also knew that we were right now in a business depression which he was sure would grow vastly worse before it got any better. Indeed he had had a little firing to do and he diverted me somewhat as he perfunctorily endeavored to have me believe that it had torn his heart and bled his undershirt when he approached the difficult problem of deciding who should stay and who should go. For one is taken and the other left, in times of depression — to pilfer a Biblical phrase. And the corporation of course works on the common principle — I now purloin the racy idiom of a worker — of working hell out of employees in rush times and dropping them summarily in slack times. Big men of course remain big men at all times, and draw $10,000 annually and dividends. Being a pale creature of academic vintage I frankly confessed that four years' experience in industry had failed to endear it to me. The director plainly felt wounded and asked me why I entertained such sentiments. I remembered and was cautious. I remembered resigning from an in- dustrial position once and saying, when the president asked me why, that I preferred a seven- to a nine-hour day. I remembered his choler — his denunciation of me as lazy and unambitious: his repugnance to such weakling ideas. I remembered that he, the president, worked five hours a day. But now I amplified my grievances for safety. As industrial liabilities I listed, besides long hours, the chronic state of nervous suspense the worker is made to entertain for fear of being deprived of his job, and also the fact that most of the time I could never count absolutely on an evening, a Sunday, or a holiday without interruption by an emergency telephone call. This at once agitated him and lie whipped out: "Well, what do you want out of life anyway?" Feeling naive and candid I ventured: "I want as- sured leisure outside work hours." "For what? To perfect yourself further for the main business of life?" "Exactly," I said, deliberately mistaking his meaning. "I want leisure in which to read and write and invite my soul so that I may really live. Indirectly, of course, the acquired breadth of vision will make me a better worker in my profession." He was stunned momentarily and I had taken an unfair advantage. I had detoured him from his customary mental roadbed and the scenery was now entirely unfamiliar to him. Finally he said, with a look of dawning understand- ing: "Oh, I see! You work merely for a living. You actually live in your hobbies — the reading and writing part of vour life?"

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Sept. 28, 1927] The Nation 311 "Not at all. I want a living, to be sure. But I also love my professional work, take a pleasure in it, and live there too. You see I enjoy both my professional work and my hobbies. One balances and rounds out the other. It is my good fortune to be thus admirably situated in life." It was now apparent that I had produced just the same effect I should have produced had I been gifted to state my sentiments in Bulgarian or in ancient Hebrew. This absurd concept entirely eluded him and he tactfully turned the conversation to more profitable matters. He said he distrusted Japanese. It sometimes seems that odd features of the soi disant Christian philosophy have become inbedded in our folkways and actually mold thought and action among people who are manifestly unchristian in every ordinary sense of the word. One attitude Christianity seems to have imposed very successfully among all strata of Americans is that im- plied in such statements as "No man can serve two masters," or "He that is not for me is against me." The scientific director would have been startled in the very same way had I told him that I belonged both to the Moose and the Elks and devotedly loved each of them. Or that I passionately loved two or more women at the same time, none of them being my wife. Or that I liked both the New Masses and the Atlantic Monthly, burlesque shows and symphony orchestras, which would have been a fact. This specialization to which we are addicted was not invented in Ford factories. It existed much before industry harnessed it to the practical matter of dollar production. It was innate in our very attitude towards life; it is a natural part of our everyday philosophy in America. What- ever we may have said or done superficially, the majority of us always regarded a really sound and useful man as one who stuck to one woman, to one journal, to one sect, to one party, to one attitude, to one profession. Diversity of interests has been regarded as an indecency bordering on breadth of culture. A man is, therefore, supposed to devote his entire creative urge specifically to his profession or work in order to be considered any good at it. The advantage of a broadening of interests in pro- ducing a better worker by indirection is entirely ignored. The idea that a man must have a single major interest is predominant. It is also ridiculous. There is no reason for the confinement of an intellect strictly within the rigid limitations of this or that petty segment of life provided it is big enough to attend other segments. Time and time again men have been amply pro- ficient, have even excelled, in this or that profession while simultaneously being intensely interested in other matters quite divergent. We do not have to go back to Goethe. Ignatius Singer, British physicist, and Jose Echegary, Spanish mathematician-dramatist-novelist and what not — neither long dead — will serve as examples. Samuel i managed to do some creditable work in three arts. I). H. Lawrence and Max Beerbohm happily combine two. S. Weir Mitchell and Jacques Loeb come to mind as authentic scientists who were also men of broad cultural interests. Dr. C. A. Browne, the noted American sugar chemist and chief of the now reorganized United States Bureau of Chemistry, is a living example of a truly learned man greatly interested and proficient in history, Greek, and the classics, yet a specialist second to none in his line in America. Moreover, the very successful president of the quite successful Cutter Electrical and Manufacturing Com- pany of Philadelphia demonstrates that a money-making business man may also be an essayist of charm and a book collector of distinction. Reference is of course to A. Ed- ward Newton. Finally, 1 myself knew a perfectly efficient scientific director once who excelled as an amateur violinist and knew the Bab Ballads all by heart. But this scientific director left me with the plain as- sumption that I was simply another of those asses. I was all right, you know, but lackadaisical, unfit for a business career, deficient in high resolve, loyalty, and intense appli- cation— probably a bit of a Bolshevik. I did need a haircut. He also left me wondering, in my turn, what atrophy of natural human curiosity (the embryo of scientific prog- ress) has taken place when so many persist in selecting some great, hurried, much traveled road through life, to pursue it with eyes straight ahead and without ever once stopping to investigate the intricate byways, the thrilling woods, the inviting, open meadows some kind fate has strewn everywhere about for those who care to invite their souls and really live. The maturity of the human mind is characterized by an independent interest in knowledge for its own sake and a realization that breadth of knowledge has a personal value of its own which cannot always be resolved into practical interests. La Rochefoucauld errs in defining only two kinds of curiosity in his maxim CLXXIII — i.e., that spring- ing from a desire to know what may be useful to us and that springing from a desire to know something of which others are ignorant. There is a third type of curiosity, the most natural and sane of all — the persistent desire to know for the sake of knowledge itself, and this leads always to more abundant life than our scientific director ever dreamed of. Also, curiously enough, it leads by painful but certain indirection to material progress, for all industry rests upon science which, in its purest form, is a direct descendent of robust, natural curiosity. Alabama's Super Government By CHARLES N. FEIDELSON TO say that Alabama is the most completely Klan-con- trolled State in the Union is to put the matter cor- rectly, although the sweeping statement needs some explanation. It is not equivalent to saying that all the people or even a majority of them belong to or are respon- sive to the Klan. It is not equivalent to saying that Jews or Roman Catholics, or even Negroes, are being actively molested because of creed or color. But it does amount to the declaration that the Klan is so well entrenched po- litically, that so many judges, solicitors, sheriffs, jury com- missioners are members of the Klan or submissive to it, that State and county governments are so thoroughly be- holden to the Klan, that Alabama is a veritable Eden to the Knights — or was, until the apple of discord in the shape of the Calloway case appeared. One night late in June, Jeff Calloway, a lad in his early twenties, stood in front of the Antioch Methodist Church, near Oneonta, which is some thirty miles from Birmingham. An illiterate orphan, who had somehow grown up in that neighborhood, he was on this particular evening armed with a bottle which he had drawn upon

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312 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3247 fairly liberally. A body of masked men, who had been uplifted by a discourse from one of themselves, emerged from the church, seized this young devil, carried him some distance away, and whipped him mercilessly. He man- aged to find his way to a nearby house for the night, and the next day his wounds were dressed by a doctor at Oneonta. Word reached the newspapers, which played up the happening. The early reports described Calloway as four- teen or fifteen years old. Then came a concerted demand from the Montgomery Advertiser, the Birmingham News, and the Birmingham Age-Herald— the Hanson group— that Governor Bibb Graves should take charge of the situation and bring the floggers to justice. Governor Graves re- sponded with the declaration that floggings must cease in Alabama, and gave orders to Attorney-General McCall and the law-enforcement department to spare no effort in finding the culprits. Why Governor Graves took this course remains a mys- tery. As an avowed Klansman, elected under Alabama's extraordinary primary arrangement as a Klan candidate and through Klan strength, he could not have been eager to hurt the organization. This was the first time the issue had been presented to him. The Hanson newspapers had delivered some sharp thrusts. The Governor probably thought this would be a nice gesture and nothing more. These are some of the explanations offered for his bold reaction. To be sure he had no reason to believe, if past experience counted for anything, that the floggers would be identified, indicted, and found guilty. Even if matters went this far, the Klan as an organization would not be involved — so he must have thought. If his mind could have envisaged the truly bitter consequences of his command, he would never have issued the order for a sweeping investigation. At the trials of seven men, charged with kidnapping and flogging Jeff Calloway, two defendants were found guilty and the others entered pleas of guilt. But, during the he. rings, the undisputed testimony of three witnesses, themselves Klansmen, was that the whipping of Calloway was a Klan affair, under official Klan orders, in the regular course of Klan functioning — in short, for perhaps the first time since Colonel Simmons launched his organization, it was caught red-handed. Someone had blundered. The At- torney-General, himself a Klansman, was perhaps satisfy- ing a private grudge against James Esdale, Grand Dragon of Alabama; the Governor had failed to tell his enforce- ment officers where to stop; a brave judge was on the bench; the citizens of the vicinity revolted against the masked tyranny they had long suffered from; a stupid Klansman had let the cat out of the bag — ail these facts, or some <.'f them, helped to make the conviction of the first Kluxer so epochal an event in the life of Alabama that the Age-Herald could compare it to the fall of the Bastille. Then, repenting of what they had done, the Stat; thorities withdrew from active participation in Klan prose- cutions. Announcements of new floggings and old flog] — two score or more in number — became the order of the day. But the Attorney-General b;!-'e the solicitors sheriffs do their duty. And the Governor became incomuni- cado on the score of masked lawlessness. He had other fish to fry. He had to put through the General Assembly one of the most extraordinary revenue bills ever struck off bv the hands of lesser tribunes of the people. He had to stave off the passage of a measure providing for a double primary instead of the preferential system which had served to elect him, the first choice of about thirty per cent of the voters. He had to prevent the adoption of an anti-masking bill, making it a felony to wear the mask except under obviously innocent conditions. Finally, stung to the quick by the direct charge of the Birmingham News that in his opposition to this proposal he preferred his loyalty to the Klan to his allegiance to the State, the Governor tried to force through the House of Representatives one of the most oppressive measures con- ceivable to strangle the press by enlarging beyond all just or decent bounds the scope of the libel law. In this latter attempt the Governor failed, through the direct intervention of a just providence or a happy strategic stroke in the upper house by a handful of level-headed men, but not before he had revealed the extent to which he speaks for the Klan and his conception of office as a means for venting his private spleen. Where, then, does this leave Alabama? By no means out of the woods. The State faces the prospect of three years and more of such a Governor and such an administra- tion. Some progress has been indubitably made to rid Ala- bama of masked lawlessness and the sinister spirit behind it. But most of the fight has yet to be fought. In the Driftway IF Charles Augustus Lindbergh only knew it, one of the most charming honors that came his way was the one which Quimperle, quaint city of Brittany, conferred upon him when it named one of its crooked cobbled streets Lind- bergh. And if he is looking for a rest after his strenuous continental tour in the interest of aviation, let him take boat for Brittany and Quimperle. There let him change his airplane for a bicycle and explore the indescribable peace of the Breton countryside. Within a week he will come to doubt that such a thing as an airplane exists in this world. * ■* * * * THERE are fine things in Brittany for a tired man: quaint costumes and customs; stone cottages with cool dirt floors where one may buy red wine and watch the chickens scratching on the great hearth; ruined churches in the depths of green forests, where the unimaginable age of the earth becomes a tangible thing under one's feet; saintly statues worn by the weather of seven centuries until they are hardly more than pieces of stone; stormy headlands of black rock rising from a blue sea that goes white at the edges; wistful beauty of black pine trees outlined on a cloudv hill. T HERE are wood roads in Brittany where even Lind- bergh has not been heard of. The Drifter ventured down one of these one sunny afternoon and found strange things. First there was stillness so intense that it seemed as if there never had been and never would be a sound in the world. Then he saw a barn in the distance and took courage. As he approached, a white peasant cap with eyes beneath it appeared around the corner of the barn. Then another, and another. He walked on, hoping for conver- sation to break the weird silence. But when he reached the

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Sept. 28, 1927] The Nation 313 barn the caps and eyes had disappeared. He found two houses and some chickens scratching, but neither sound nor sight of human beings. He went on into the forest. After a time he came to a great stone arch which was the entry to what had once been a monastery. He passed under it into the courtyard. It was covered with yellow straw which glistened in the sunshine. Here too a few chickens were scratching, but again there was no sign of human life, although the dormitories of the monks, which stood along one side of the court, apparently had been taken over as peasant dwellings. The Drifter looked furtively into doorways and windows, hoping to catch a glimpse of one of these mysterious inhabitants, but to no purpose. Through a gate he saw the ruins of the church he had come to find. Subdued by the strangeness and silence of the place, he passed with light steps through the sunlit yard. Then, as he opened the gate, he saw the child, stand- ing by a tree. Her flaxen hair was brushed back in the manner of Alice in Wonderland. Her eyes were blue and wide but not frightened. She seemed to have been looking at him for a long, long time. He passed quite close to her but she made neither move nor sound. The Drifter ex- plored the old church. When he turned to go she was still there. And she is probably there now, unless someone spoke to her and she disappeared into thin air. ***** THERE are things not so fine in Brittany — superstition, ignorance, fear, that combine to produce that "quaint- ness" which is so "picturesque" to American tourists. The Bretons still believe in the "evil eye." It is said that they still propitiate the monoliths, those great gray stones, some of them twenty feet high, that stand upended in peasant fields as they have stood for no one knows how many cen- turies. And if one would probe the true spirit of Brittany he should seek out these stones. They are the most vivid expression of fear, and worship, that the Drifter has ever seen — like primitive cries for mercy preserved in stone. It is evident that they still dominate the peasant mind, for the church has taken care to place on the top of most of them tiny stone crosses. And this combination is a reveal- ing commentary. Twenty feet of pagan stone — and six inches of the Christian cross — that is Brittany. The Drifter Correspondence Is the American Legion Liberal? To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: It is a relief to read in The Nation an article so fair- minded as Sylvanus Cook's on the American Legion. Much of what he says might be applied to the Officers Reserve Corps. Both represent cross-sections of America and both come in for undeserved slaps because of their zealots. The great mass of men in these organizations — the un- impassioned and, in the case of the reserve officers, those in- terested primarily in professional fitness — have little instinct for publicity and no desire to impose their political beliefs on their fellow citizens. New York, September 8 John D. Kenderdine To the Editor of the Nation: Sir: The article on the American Legion by Sylvanus Cook in your issue of September 7, may be an effective defense of the Legion, but it is a most terrible indictment of the coward- ice of the liberal majority and the liberal officials in the Legion for their failure to stand up against the bigotry and intolerance of the minority. We have, right here in Boston, boys and girls in the Young People's Socialist League with more courage than those men. Two years ago when we held a peace parade in Boston on Ar- mistice Day, the American Legion, or rather — according to Mr. Cook — its noisy and intolerant minority, were breathing fire and hatred against the parade and especially the Socialist contingent, because we had stood for pence in 1917-18. Yet not a single one of the boys and girls in the Yipsels failed to show up to take their part in the parade. It seems to me that the alleged liberal majority in the American Legion might take heart from the example of the courage of those Socialist young people. Cambridge, Mass., September 3 Alfred Baker Lewis To the Editor of the Nation: Sir: It was time that somebody should say a good word for the Legion, and Mr. Cook has done it very well. It was a specially propitious moment for reminding the public of the great work that the organization has done in taking care of disabled ex-service men and in rendering assistance in times of distress such as flood, fire, earthquake, tornado, and mine catastrophe. A number of references in Mr. Cook's article seem to imply that the American Civil Liberties Union has been a harsh and unfair critic of the Legion. Probably Mr. Cook either got his information from the newspapers instead of reading the union's annual report, or he read the report with an in- terpretation which is hardly fair. The one general statement about the American Legion in the report for 1926 was as follows: "Twenty-seven States reported the American Legion as the most active agency of intolerance and repression, the Ku Klux Klan having lost its influence in practically every section." This means simply that correspondents in various localities believed, because of acts of individual posts, that the Legion deserved the prize for intolerance and repression. These particular acts were not specified in most instances but were used merely as a basis for answering specific questions in a questionnaire, the purpose of which was to ascertain what agencies during the year had been most active in repression and intolerance. The Civil Liberties Union will always be glad to recognize any signs that the Legion as a whole is broadly tolerant and liberal. Mr. Cook wishes to know whether the report for 1927 will record that the Legionnaires of Emporia, Kansas, de- fended the right of a militant pacifist to speak in their midst. Assuredly it will, if it is able to find confirmation and full particulars in connection with this unusual event. Forrest Bailey, Director, American Civil Liberties Union New York, September 6 To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: Perhaps you will grant me the opportunity to supple- ment Sylvanus Cook's article in your September 7 issue, The Real American Legion. As a fellow liberal who finds member- ship in the Legion entirely consistent with his liberal views, I would like to clear up the matter of "militarism" of which the Legion has often been acci Ninety per cent ot' the Legion, I judge, believe in adequate preparedness — but not in over-preparedness. In this respect the Legion may continue to be criticized, for various well- known reasons. The Legion has among its members nearly every army officer who served in the war. These officers are men of ex- perience and it is not strange that their opinions often pre- vail over those of other Legionnaires who have not the military mind. In the large cities the Legion often avails itself of the hospitality of commanders of armories for meetings and

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314 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3247 social affairs. As a result, when favors are sought by army or navy officers they are difficult of refusal. As long as the Legion accepts favors from professional army and navy boost- ers, it will be criticized for its militarism. As a whole the Legion has no love for conflict, having tasted of it in the raw. I have before me a copy of the Fidac Bulletin for August, published in Paris by the Federation Interallied des Anciens Combattants. In it is a report of the International Congress of Ex-Service Men held at Luxemburg, July 9-10. There were present delegates from the Reichsbanner Schwarz-Rot-Gold, Arbeitsgemeinschaft der Vereinigung der Kriegsgefangener Oeutschslands, and the Reichsverband der Kriegsbesehiidigten, German ex-service organizations representing 3,850,000 men; other German organizations representing 600,000; delegates from four Austrian organizations representing DO.OOO men; French delegates representing 1,150,000 men; Belgian organi- zations of 115,000 men; the American Legion of 700,000 men; the British Legion of 400,000 men; Italians representing 470.- 000 men; Polish representing 463,000 men, and Rumanian rep- resenting 62,000 men. It was the first time enemy had met en- emy since the war. Occasionally some of us fear the Legion is being led away from its original purposes, especially when an isolated unit goes to the limit of intolerance. At such a time national head- quarters manages to assure us that the Legion's feet are on the ground and its mind unbefogged, as in July when the Legion Monthly published There's Only One Kind of Ameri- canism, by Rupert Hughes, at a time when feeling was running high because of the action of a West Chester, Penn., Post in securing the dismissal of two teachers for their liberal views. The Legion is young; a majority of its members are also young — have not learned yet to study controversial questions coolly and in consequence remain quiet when the noisy intol- erant minority rears on its hind legs — but they are gaining experience all the time, and making it harder for those with an axe to grind to speak for the entire organization. New York, September 3 JOSEPH B. MlLGRAM Our Wonderful Language To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: Your editorial plaint as to the "lingo" used by our eminent sports editors may be extended to broadcasters of radio programs in the holy city of Boston. On my visit there a month ago, the broadcasting announcer of one of the stations introduced a trio of instrumentalists in the following manner (1 do not recall the exact names but they were of Celtic, Hebrew, and Italian origin) : "And now 1 have the pleasure of presenting to you the artist trio consisting of the following members: Mr. 1 who strums a mean banjo; Mr. Baccigalupo, who blows a wicked saxophone; and Mr. Finkelstein, who devilishly tickles the ivories." Ye . Lowells, and Lawn a simple piration. As long as twenty years ago I wrote "The M of the Sky" and other si pawon and things like that. The sk dly juvenile. Your reviewer missed their function, but I do not blame him. May I ask you to give me the address of its publishers, the Purdy Press? If all reviews of this stolen book are like yours, I shall soon be made ridiculous. My des rving to b< does not make me want to be so! Mercersburg, Penn., August 1 Archibald Rutledge The Role of the Farm Bureau Federation To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: In checking the article under the title, "The Armours Betray the Farmers," on page 196 of the August 31 issue of The Nation, I find several errors in fact which I believe should be called to your attention. First, the listing of Gray Silver as former president of the American Farm Bureau Federation. Mr. Silver at no time was president of this organization. He at one time was a mem- ber of the executive committee, but for the most part served as an employee of the organization in charge of the Washington office. Second, the American Farm Bureau Federation did not un- dertake to, nor was it contemplated in the Grain Marketing Company plan that the Farm Bureau should sell stock to Farm Bureau members. The American Farm Bureau is not a com- mercial institution and does not sell stock in any enterprise. And again, this statement appears: "His (Emanuel Rosen- baum's) testimony was received with approval by the officials of the American Farm Bureau Federation." I find no record justifying this conclusion. Chicago, August 2? H. R. KlBLEB, Director of Information, American Farm Bureau Federation To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: Mr. Silver was never a president of the American Farm Bureau Federation. But when Mr. Kibler states that the federation did not sell stock to its members he is splitting hairs. The Grain Marketing Company \ med with the aid of Farm Bureau officers. One of those officers, Mr. Silver, was placed in charge, and Mr. Kibler's own weekly news letter, sent to members, hailed the project for months and outlined the method of selling stock. Mr. Silver stated from the witness stand that he expected to sell the stock to Farm Bureau mem- bers. Obviously the actual transaction of sale of stock would carry the name of the Grain Marketing Company as vendor, rather than the name of its sponsor, the American Farm Bureau Federation. 1 was present at the hearing when Mr. Rosenbaum testified and told of his "struggle" to give cooperative market- ing to the farmers. Illinois members of the federation stated to me at the time that they believed Mr. Rosenbaum had acted in good faith; Mr. Silver stated the same thing. The following day Mr. Rosenbaum declared to me that as a result of his state- ment that he would go in for a cooperative marketing scheme again, he had been approached by Farm Bureau members and asked if he could submit another plan. Since this article was published I have received a it from Charles T. Peavey, grain auditor, 309 South La Salle Street, Chicago, in which he charges that he investigated the properties before they were bought by the farmers and reported the price too high. He now that since the failure of the company 60 per cent of the Armour and other properties which were appraised at S9, 000,000 were actually sold for less than .000. New York, Septemb* Frederick Boselly Thank You To Tiir. Editor of The Nation: Sir: Your whole handling of the Sacco-Vanzetti case seems to me masterly and your editorials so superb that I must ex- press my appreciation and say "Thank you." Also I wish to thank John Dos Passes for his letter to President Lowell. Wequetonsing, Mich., Sept. 12 Serma G. Shapleigh

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Books and Plavs Quaker Pagan By SARA BARD FIELD Quintessence of quietness, Gesture of trees Or grasses Bending in the breeze; His rafters yellow-hammers choose, Near him to rear the helpless brood; First-urged willows use His garden. When he walks the wood, No trill abruptly falls to hush, No sudden whir of winged dread; Nor run the timid crests to brush, Warned by the cock-quail overhead. No frightened furry feet are seen Scurrying to secret green. His pagan spices purify A puritan-polluted land; A step, a snapped twig near at hand — Never a girl need snatch her dress Fearing dripping loveliness Be withered by the evil eye. Only forbidding is forbidden. Only ugliness is hidden. In Haiti Occupied Haiti. Edited by Emily Greene Balch. New York: Writers Publishing Company. WHEN Thomas Jefferson was President of the United States the black slaves and freedmen of Haiti drove their French masters into the sea and set up the second inde- pendent republic in the western hemisphere. When Woodrow Wilson was President in Washington United States marines landed in Haiti, seized the gold in the National Bank, took over the customs-houses, closed the legislative assembly, and refused payment of salaries to Haitian officials who refused to do the white man's will. That was war time, and the American people, engrossed in the European carnage, did not stop to notice that our own marines had killed 3,000 Haitians fighting for freedom. In so far as they heard anything of the bloodshed, they understood that the marines had killed some "bandits." That is the tech- nique of imperialist publicity the world over, and the Marine Corps copy-boys know their job. In 1920 James Weldon Johnson, of the National Associa- tion for the Advancement of Colored People, persuaded Mr. Harding, then a candidate for the Presidency, that he might gain votes by denouncing Democratic excesses in Haiti. Mr. Harding did so; and after he became President a senatorial committee "investigated" Haiti. The Haiti-Santo Domingo In- dependence Society, organized in the office of The Nation, and inspired largely by the passionate idealism of Ernest II. Gruen- ing, who believed that if the facts were made known the Amer- ican people would stop the outrage, sought to make the investi- gation real, and did for some months keep the tiny Negro republic on the front pages of the newspapers. Then the sena- torial committee issued an on-the-one-hand-and-on-the-other re- port, and the impression gained currency that while unfortunate excesses might have occurred the situation had been remedied. Sunday stories now appear with interesting regularity report- ing the astonishing achievements in health and agriculture of the American experts, and the desolate backwardness of the Haitians before the marines came to uplift them. Now, in 1927, we read that the marines which are no longer needed to uplift Nicaragua are being returned to their posts in Haiti. The American people have shown scant interest in the facts or sympathy for the second republic in the Western hemisphere. Gas is cheap; and when it rains the movies are open. Five American women, and one male college professor, representing the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, visited Haiti in 1926, talked with American officials, French priests, Haitians of every class and occupation, and now submit their report. It bears marks of the most rigorous editing. Passion is excluded; the bare ribs of factual data stick out on every page. Paul Douglas summarizes the official record of the American occupation — how it came to be, what it costs Haiti, what it costs the United States, the balance-sheet of American corporations in Haiti. They have, it seems, had scandalous privileges, and, with the exception of the National City Bank, have generally lost money. Emily Balch with scrupulous fairness expresses the American point of view that large land holdings and foreign capital are necessary for Haiti, but obviously fears the development of a landless proletariat such as makes Porto Rico miserably unique in the West Indies. She also reports upon the energetic Dr. Freeman of the Depart- ment of Agriculture, who has an ambitious plan for rural agri- cultural schools throughout Haiti, and has begun with a Central School of Agriculture, attended exclusively by subsidized city boys, where the learned American instructors lecture in Eng- lish and pause while their remarks are interpreted into French for the benefit of the ignorant Haitians. Chapters follow on public health — the brightest page in the record; education — where the Haitians have stubbornly resisted Americanization; public works; the gendarmerie; and racial relations. The social relations between the bringers of civilization and the native Haitians are what one might expect those between Southern soldiers — and their wives! — and Negroes to be. "Even more than [we] anticipated [we] found the problem in Haiti to consist not in individual instances of misused power but in the fundamental fact of the armed occupation of the country. ..." Many of the American officials are earnestly endeavoring to work for the Haitians, but they have not learned to work with them. So the committee in a final chapter recom- mends withdrawal of the American officials and restoration of self-government "as soon as practicable," with interim civilian control. The committee obviously labors to be fair to the American officials, and to be practical. After all, the Americans have de- stroyed the frail edifice of Haitian self-government, and what can you do about it? "Let's be practical," one is told. "You can't ■ the American people to .--.and for paying punitive indemnities for the damage the marines did. And after all, we have stopped revolution. What the Haitians need is peace, and foreign capital. It's a rich country, with great possibili- ties. Rubber . . . cheap labor . . . don't sacrifice the poor peasants to the city politicians. ..." Lord, how smug Amer- icans can be when they set out to uplift the rest of the world above their own home level! The committee, one feels, restrains itself on every page of its repoi i ; it hopes thereby to impress the enemy. I hope it will. (Possibly this effort explains the curious omission, in its history, of any reference to the work of Dr. Gruening, Mrs. Weed, Mr. Johnson, and the Haiti-Santo Domingo Independence Society.) But what William Hard calls "the glacial drift of the American republic toward uplift at home and abroad" — espe- cially abroad — continues. American corporations continue to invest American dollars abroad, and where they invest they ex-

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316 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3247 pect protection. The Anglo-Saxon capacity for committing murder in the name of civilization is still unchecked; with smug self-righteousness, in Nicaragua, Shanghai, Boston, and Haiti, we still make of our crimes a virtue. Books like this help set straight the balance-sheet of history; and make a faint beginning toward a counter-drift. The struggle is not helpless. The juggernaut of imperialism does not roll on un- opposed. China may seem to be in chaos, but the glacier of im- perialism is receding in Asia; and Latin America's turn will come. Lkwis S. Gannett A Philosophy of Renunciation Platonism and the Spiritual Life. By George Santayana. Charles Scribner's Sons. $1.75. F^EELINC perhaps the need to give his system a greater cogency and deeper foundations, Santayana has of late been making incursions into fields which had previously inter- ested him slightly. In this book he attempts further to eluci- date his obscure concent of spirit, with which he had wrestled unsuccessfully in what is undoubtedly the worst chapter of "Skepticism and Animal Faith." Be it because his usual style is not adequate to bear the burden of precise analysis — to at- tempt to render fundamental abstractions in loose poetical metaphors is to add to confusion — or be it because the con- cept is not quite clear in his own mind, he succeeds indifferently in his task. Santayana, however, has asked us several times to consider him a moralist, not a philosopher in the strict sense of the word. And, indeed, his thought obtains attention outside of academic circles as the moralist of "The Life of Reason," and not as the author of one more system of epistemology. The life of reason is to Santayana the life of balanced interests and instincts held in check or satisfied for the sake of a wide and liberal moral economy. On the surface, as he enunciates it, it has a persuasiveness which is far from being based — as it has been said to be — upon the beautiful style in which Santayana has couched it. For its principle, that of selection, is not only one which naturally commends itself to the interests of a shrewd mind, but one which imposes itself as essential to any sort of conscious life. A certain amount of daring in fact, of intellectual foolhardiness, is necessary to re- ject it; or else a deeply irrational antagonism toward happiness and a brutal preference for chaos and unfruitful struggle. But tne principle upon which a philosophy is based and its final elaboration into a way of life are two very different things. Santayana, guided by temperamental preferences, has per- verted a wholly sound principle into a system which cannot be accepted when examined in the light of its implications. From a social point of view, Santayana's philosophy must be objected to because more than a way of life it is really a sophistical defense of that which was against that which may be. There is in Santayana a radical distrust, almost a hatred for change; a tendency to idealize the past which makes him suspicious of all reform and revolution. His tirade against liber- alism — all the more dangerous because it is an intelligent mis- understanding of it, so to speak — is not the only instance in which this distrust finds explicit avowal. Implicitly, his resent- ment of change permeates his whole thought so thoroughly that the critical reader often wonders whether this man. who as a moralist must necessarily be a reformer, and is yet so smug about traditional institutions, is not really a preposterous, living contradiction. From a psychological point of view Santayana's philosophy is even more objectionable. The system of ethics embodied in "The Life of Reason" is the product of a timid yet dogmatic spirit, apathetic to the thrill and danger of life; of a spirit naive enough, or arrogant enough, to pretend that it holds the key to wisdom in its hands. For that fine dis- crimination which Santayana persuades one to use, that selec- tiveness in meeting immediate contingencies, has not really wis- dom for its source, but fear of experience, wl meretricious, timorous wisdom to its aid. Lack of courage — not intellectual, of course, nor moral, but courage to live — dic- tates in his thought reason's choice, and makes him prefer the pale happiness of denial to the risk of utter loss or success, which the man eager for life for its own sake would prefer to mediocre satisfaction. Either apathy or a low vitality causes him to hold as essentially evil the lust of experience, and makes him counsel the absolute eschewing of pain, as if pain, too, did not have its rewards, greater often than those of a calculating, narrow-visioned shopkeeper's love of safety. There can be no room therefore in his system, and in fact there is none, for the hero and for the martyr — though there may be no lack of praise for those who have been consecrated and are thus rendered safe — since the risks these choose are a tacit denial of the validity of happiness as an absolute ethical criterion. Obviously, a way of life with such limitations may be very well adapted to a finished, settled, perfect world, or to a world of philosophers, but it is certainly not a useful grammar of conduct in a world which remains yet to be conquered, and which resists conquest with irrational tenacity. This is perhaps the main reason why Santayana has so signally failed to make a scratch upon American life. The American, a gambler, a man of action who must wreak his super- abundant energy upon any object irrespective of ultimate con- sequences, may feel for Santayana's system of squeamish re- nunciation the same mixture of admiration and respect which the ragamuffin feels for the poor little rich boy. But he also feels a tremendous temperamental incompatibility with it. Re- nunciation may possibly be the better part of wisdom and the foregoing of experience itself an experience. A certain amount of renunciation is certainly imperative to the well-ordered life. But in Santayana's system it becomes an implicit end in itself. An ethics such as this, so closely girt with the staid neat row of elms of an academic view of life, cannot serve as inspiration or guide to a people adventurous and daring. It can only appeal to men afraid lest life impinge its luxuriance and its brutality upon their safety. Eliseo Vivas Merezhkovsky The Birth of the Gods. By Dimitri S. Merezhkovsky. E. P. Uutton and Company. $2. Akhnaton. By Dimitri S. Merezhkovsky. E. P. Dutton and Company. $2.50. \ f EREZHKOVSKY is always Merezhkovsky — a grotesque ^ •*■ and pathetic little figure, a miniature compound image of Soloviev and Dostoievsky. Yet it is curious to see this pur- blind little man, this dogmatic little scholar in "silk morning dress and tasseled slippers," clench his fists, puff his cheeks, pop his eyes, and try to execute one grand and unprecedented leap into futurity. The present? He disdains the present. Contemporary wars and revolutions mean little to him. To- gether with his dogmas and his linens, he packs his endless ex- cerpts from countless authors and scuttles off abroad, to Poland, to France, anywhere out of the Communist inferno. After a bit of fussing and fulminating, he settles in Paris, and there he does his great, his final, his glorious leap. Merezhkovsky disdains the present. By soaring over mankind's remote and pagan past, over ancient lands and forgotten civilizations, over countless ages in man's history, he hopes to reach the future. A rather devious way of getting there, but for a man of Merezh- kovsky's courage to scale infinitude is a simple matter, particu- larly since he is possessed of mystical powers. Striking a flying posture, he whispers "abracadabra" and he is off. To Merezhkovsky's eclectic mind the development of man- kind from its earliest beginnings to the Java man and from the Java man to modern times is the "geometrical space in which the Body of Christ is being formed." All of pre-Christian his- tory is only an adumbration; the birth of Christ is the "geo- metrical point that unites the Body and the shadow." "The

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Sept. 28, 1927] The Nation 317 mystery of the suffering God stretching throughout the ages falls at the feet of Christ." All the suffering and immolated gods of old — Osiris of Egypt, Tammuz of Babylon, Adonis of Canaan and the Aegean Islands, Attis of Asia Minor, Dionysus of Cjreece — "are the shadows, and the Body is of Him." Take Christ out of universal history, and you destroy universal his- tory, "for the whole of it is about Him." Making this leap through the past, our author alights in the future. For just as Christ was the "revelation," the "apocalypse" of paganism so will the "Holy Ghost," the "Mother," be the revelation, the apocalypse, of Christianity. Paganism was the religion of the Father foreshadowing the coming of the Son; Christianity is the religion of the Son foreshadowing the coming of the "Mother." "The Birth of the Gods" and its sequel "Akhnaton," one dealing with ancient Crete, the other with Egypt during the reign of Akhnaton, are not novels at all. They are merely illus- trations of the first part of the author's thesis, namely, that Christianity is the apocalypse of paganism. In these "novels" the men are not men, and the women are not women. Love is not love, and hatred is not hatred. The characters are pup- pets whom Merezhkovsky compels to tremble and shiver, to utter mystical words, to have epileptic fits, and to prophesy His coming. One does not believe Merezhkovsky, but if one be- lieved, one might imagine that the peoples of the ancient world, the Cretans, the Babylonians, the Egyptians, lived only for one purpose — to prove that "all of paganism was an insatiable yearning for the Son." It is this schematism, this artificiality, this forcing of historical evidence, that gradually begins to pall on the average uninitiated reader. Indeed, the interest in this author evinced by some sections of the American intelligentsia seems rather strange and anachronistic. In Russia Merezh- kovsky is dead. Some Russians say that he has merely ceased to exist, but others agree with Trotsky and maintain that Merezhkovsky "had never been." Joshua Kunitz Washington in Pictures Washington. By Joseph Dillaway Sawyer. The Macmillan Com- pany. Two volumes. $20. IN two fat volumes of more than 1,200 pages, Mr. Sawyer retells the conventional story of Washington familiar to us all. It is a complete negation of the Woodward and Hughes biog- raphies, accepting the traditional figure of mingled myth and fact. The more bizarre stories, like those of Weems, are not sponsored — nor neglected. The Jumonville incident is dismissed lightly, the schoolbook interpretation of Braddock is adopted, and Sally Fairfax does not swish her silken skirts at all. The hero is shown kneeling in prayer in the snows of Valley Forge despite the fact that even in church he did not kneel. From all of which it is evident that Mr. Sawyer is more an idolator than an interpreter, and that his biography will be found more comforting to the sensitive than to those previously mentioned. Unfortunately the author has but a slight appreciation of the significance of the political struggles of the first two Administrations. Hamilton here remains one of the sponsors and creators of the Constitution. He left the convention, it seems, after making an "impassioned speech," but the nature of that speech, an impassioned argument on the ad vantages of monarchical over the republican form of government, is not suggested. The Whiskey Rebellion is dismissed in less than two pages — merely a rising of wicked men. Again we have the story of the mob that wanted to drag Washington from his home — which is without foundation. The Livingston resolu- tions asking for the papers in connection with the negotiation of the Jay treaty again appear as threats of impeachment. The author seems to think that Hamilton's resignation was the first break in the Cabinet — Jefferson apparently not worth mention- ing. And here, again, we have it that Washington refused to take command of the army in the framed-up war with France unless Hamilton should be second in command. A reference to the letters exchanged between Wolcott, Pickering, Hamilton, and McHenry would reveal a conspiracy of misrepresentation telling a different tale. No biography, however, goes so in- tensively into Washington's Masonic relationships. Even so, this work is not to be flippantly dismissed. It represents the ardent labors of a lifetime; and the result ap- pears in the greatest collection of pictures of Washington and scenes associated with his career ever assembled in a single work. More than a hundred pages are required for Washington portraits alone, comparatively few of these, of course, having been painted from life. As a pictorial biography this is prob- ably as complete as we shall ever have. Pictures of the ancient seat of the Washingtons in England; numerous pictures of scenes in Barbados, including the interior of the house in which Washington, while with his brother, was stricken with the smallpox. Turning these pages one can scarcely conceive of any possible pictorial omissions. Without a line of text the two volumes would be well worth while as a biography in pictures. They are unique. Claude G. Bowers Bad Editing The de Imperatorum et Pontificum Potestate of William of Ockham. Hitherto unpublished, and now edited by C. Kenneth Brampton. Oxford University Press. $2.50. rT,HE editor of this reprint of Ockham's famous treatise is * at pains in his introduction to make clear that his interest in the matter is not with the "details of an arid controversy" but with "some fundamental problems of practical experience." This is altogether a proper justification for a treatise which proceeds to a nice logical analysis of a problem (that of the relation of church and state) which has not ceased, since the fourteenth century, to interest the world. But Mr. Brampton permits his Protestant enthusiasms to spread an anachronistic color over the enterprise, and the audacious criticism in which Ockham is led to the denial of both the infallibility of the pope in spiritual matters and the propriety of his concern in tem- poral matters is made prolific of significances. These appear in the 38-page introduction in which Mr. Brampton undertakes to survey the history of attitudes toward the papacy from the time of Paul to John XXII, with prophetic glances further; as an introduction this was to have been in elucidation of Ock- ham's work, but it is quite free from immedite historical con- cerns, and there is no mention of even such matters as the attack of Konrad of Megenberg. Ockham had had occasion to criticize the abuses of a pope, but before his editor finishes he must off to dispose of the papacy. The text, however, is even more startling than the intro- duction to it. This, according to the title-page and preface, should be the edition of a hitherto unpublished and unique manuscript. Actually the manuscript has been published be- i'oiv and far from being unique it is only about half the length of the complete work which has already been published from another manuscript. As long ago as 1914 Richard Scholz edited this treatise in the Unbelcannte Kirchenpolitische Streitschriften (prophetically named, one supposes, for the present editor). That Mr. Brampton should not have known this edition is bad enough, but it is inexcusable that his edition should end in the middle of a sentence halfway through Ock- ham's tract; the second half of the work, which he leaves out, was published in 1924 (in the Archivum Franciscanum His- toricum, see vols. XVI pp. 468-492 and XVII pp. 72-97). Had Mr. Brampton known the Deventer manuscript he might have been saved his romanticizing concerning the circumstance of this work coming through the ages in a single manuscript, and he might have been saved too his conjectures concerning how the last sentence might have ended — ante expropriationem talem habuerant, he has it, whereas it turns out to have been ymno quam aliqrando habuerant.

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318 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3247 It is not unimportant to point out that the Oxford Press has sinned more than once of late in the unscholarly form it has given to what, from the language alone in which they are written, should be learned contributions. Even in an age of popularizations Latin manuscripts should be edited with rather more scholarship than unction. It is hard to understand what concern an editor can have with useful and practical aims, however edifying, if they are to lead him so far afield; one might even suppose, though the suggestion is doubtless unfair to the former editor of Marsilius of Padua, that the human and practical values with which his introduction is concerned might have been better served if he had busied himself with the arid details of learned journals. Richard McKeon A Gifted Portraitist Robert Field. By. Harry Piers. Frederick Fairchild Sherman. $20. O OBERT Field is an artist who has been little more than * ^ a name to many students of early American painting. Specimens of his work are almost altogether privately owned, except for a few in public places in Nova Scotia; consequently it has been difficult to form an accurate estimate of his merits. For instance, Anne Hollingsworth Wharton, in her "Heirlooms in Miniatures," shows an acquaintance with only one of his pictures in the four sentences she devotes to him. Mr. Piers's new book on Field, with its fifty-three excellent illustrations, makes it clear that he is a more important figure than has been generally realized. He was an accomplished maker of portraits in oil and of miniatures on ivory and in water color, as well as a competent engraver. His oils, to be s re, show some unevenr.ess of execution, judging from the reproductions before us. Several of them appear not to rise much above the standard of the average itinerant of the period. But his best canvases are obviously the work of one of the genuinely gifted painters of his time. Mr. Piers's contention that Field's style is to some extent similar to Stuart's is scarcely borne out by the illustrations, but one readily agrees that the portrait of Commander John Harper, which serves as frontispiece to .his volume, no less an artist than Raeburn might have been proud to sign. It is his miniatures on ivory, however, that most impres- sively display Field's powers. Even the uncolored reproduc- tions manifest a delicate but firm beauty and a sure molding of the head that compel assent to the author's favorable com- parison of this work with that of Malbone. By diligent search Mr. Piers has been able to construct an outline of the main events of this interesting artist's life, although most of the details are still lacking. Field was born in England about 1769. After some artistic training he emi- grated to America in 1794 and worked in Baltimore, Phila- delphia, Washington, Maryland, and Boston, until in 1 returned to British soil by taking up residence in Halifax. Here he enjoyed much onal and social favor for about eight years, and then, having painted most of the paintable citizens of Nova Scotia, sought fresh laurels in Jamaica. Of his experience in this island his biographer has bei-n able to discover almost nothing except that he died there August 9, 1819. Mr, Piers adds a scholarly analysis of Field's technique and a full description of the 146 portraits known to him. It is evident that the author, himself a Nova Scotian, has worked with prolonged devotion over his subject in order to acquire the minute information concerning Field's paintings which he reveals on every page. None the les^ he recognizes that his catalogue is incomplete; hence the reviewer may be allowed to suggest one addition : the miniature of Lawrence Read Yates, shown at Philadelphia in the recent exhibition of the Penn- sylvania Society of Miniature Painters. Though writing in a manner that aims to inform rather than to interest, Mr. Piers has produced a monograph that is of unmistakable value to the special student and the collector, and that is an honorable accession to the growing shelf of books on the early art of America. Oral Sumner Coad Books in Brief Harsha. By Radhakumud Mookerji. Oxford University Press. $2. King Harsha (606-648 a.d.) was not only one of the great- est of Indian rulers but also one of the most interesting. Of sufficient political and military ability to extend the empire he had inherited until it covered practically all northern and cen- tral India, he was also a religious enthusiast, and, amazing to relate, a dramatist as well. His character recalls Asoka (c. 250 B.C.) and the Western Constantine, each his superior as con- queror and administrator, but neither boasting literary ability. He came to the throne on the foul murder of his elder brother, whom he succeeded, and the abduction of his sister, whom he rescued just as she was about to ascend a funeral pile. At the height of his rule, he used to hold a general alms-giving once every five years, in which he literally gave away the accumu- lated treasure of five years, including his own gems, clothing, and other possessions; at the end he begged from his sister an ordinary second-hand garment, which he put on and then paid worship to the Buddhas of the ten regions, rejoicing that his wealth was bestowed "in the field of religious merit." In more reflective moments, he composed three dramas of high merit, which have come down to us, and lyric poems, of which two are preserved. What a biography might have been written about such a man! But Professor Mookerji has not written a biog- raphy of Harsha; rather he has written an account, and a good one, of the social, economic, and administrative conditions under that emperor, with a couple of biographical chapters thrown in. And these chapters are the poorest in the book. We are disap- pointed, for we had expected a personal study of Harsha. Problems in Shakespeare's Penmanship. By Samuel A. Tannen- baum, M.D. The Century Company. $4. This volume, published for the Modern Language Associa- tion of America, is the second volume to appear under the terms of the Revolving Publication Fund. It is a detailed and severely technical study of a subject which has more of interest in it for the general reader than might at first glance be supposed; for upon the conclusions regarding Shakespeare's handwriting rest ultimately a great many vexed problems in the text of the plays. There is also the question, much debated during the past decade, of Shakespeare's share in the play of "Sir Thomas More." Dr. Tannenbaum reaches the conclusion that the three manuscript pages of that play, which several scholars believe to be in the poet's autograph, were not written by Shakespeare. He holds, on the other hand, that the signature in a copy of Florio's "Montaigne" may be genuine. He includes a detailed examination of the will. He was led to this investigation by the hope that his study might throw light upon the reasons for Shakespeare's early retirement and untimely death. The volume is illustrated with abundant and excellent facsimiles. The American Civil War. A Brief Sketch. By David Knowles. Oxford University Press. $3. The chief importance of this little book to most American readers will be in the evidence which it seems to afford of a growing popular interest in England in American history. Mr. Knowles, who confesses to a "long and deep interest" in the Civil War. has written a sketch wrhich naturally lays no claim to originality, and which in matters of fact is not always in- errant, but which nevertheless merits the conventional praise of being readable and well-proportioned. His character draw-

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Sept. 28, 1927] The Nation 31i» ings of Civil War leaders, on the other hand, on both the Union and the Confederate sides, are much better than ordinary, and his emphasis upon these personal elements of the war ought specially to commend the book to readers who like their his- tory in terms of biography. Incidentally, the book should be well received in the South, if the South reads English books, for its appreciations of Lee and Stonewall Jackson are notably friendly as well as discriminating. tin Introduction to Sociology. Edited by Jerome Davis and Harry Elmer Barnes. D. C. Heath and Company. $4.48. This latest exposition of the science of sociology is sur- prisingly, not to say erroneously, subtitled "A Behavioristic Study of American Society." The two editors write upon The Evolution of the Great Society and upon Sociology Applied to Social Problems, Mr. Barnes being responsible for the first and Mr. Davis for the second. Ellsworth Huntington writes on the physical environment of society, Frank H. Hankins on the biological equipment of society, L. L. Bernard on the psycho- logical foundations of society, Malcolm M. Willey on the cul- tural heritage of society, and Seba Eldridge on Social Organ- ization. The volume has many excellencies and, in spite of some perhaps unavoidable overlapping, presents a unity and coherence not ordinarily found in such cooperative under- takings. The Twilight of the White Races. By Maurice Muret. Charles Scribner's Sons. $3. M. Muret sees a rising tide of color washing hither and thither through the world, but he sees it through the eyes of other observers and magazine articles, and if his chapter on race problems in the United States may be taken as a test he does not see it either comprehensively or very clearly. Believing that Woodrow Wilson inaugurated the present wave of demo- cratic feeling and the spirit of self-determination instead of realizing that his value was as an interpreter is characteristic of the thinness of his view. His opinion is the comparatively cheerful one that if the white races have to go down before the rest the process will be gradual and so painless. They could put up, he suggests, a long defensive warfare. But that is not the kind of war they want to fight. Most of the war- fare on these lines has been the result of the white races' desire to insist on contact with the other races on their own conditions. The Spirit of '76 and Other Essays. By Carl Becker, J. M. Clark, William E. Dodd. Washington: The Robert Brook- ings Graduate School of Economics and Government. These lectures, three in number, were all delivered on November 19, 1926, at the Robert Brookings Graduate School, "in commemoration of the one hundred and fiftieth anniver- sary of the year which witnessed the publication of 'The Wealth of Nations' and The Declaration of Independence." Professor Becker, who suspects that Professor Lyon of the school, who asked him to speak, "hadn't any clear notion of what was meant by the phrase 'The Spirit of '76,' " and who confesses that he himself had none, offers as his contribution an alleged manu- script of 1792 in which one Jeremiah Wynkoop, of New York and Greenwich Village, is made the central figure of a twen- tieth-century discussion of the reasons which led some Amer- icans to become Patriots and others to remain Loyalists. Pro- fessor Dodd, for his part, tells in agreeable fashion the story of the role, chiefly military, which Patrick Henry played in the revolt of Virginia. The historical substance of both of these addresses would adapt them admirably to the requirements of an exceptionally provincial woman's club or a moderately high- grade luncheon group of Rotarians. Professor Clark, on the other hand, appears to have taken his invitation seriously, and presented to his audience a capital brief account of the position of Adam Smith and a summary of his contributions to economic theory and practice. Importa nt BORZOI BOOKS THE COUNTERFEITERS By ANDRE GIDE. Translated by Dorothy Bussy Although he has been writing fiction for thirty years, Gide insists that this dramatic story of the heights and depths of life in modern Paris is his first novel. This, from the greatest living master of French letters, establishes its importance. $3.00 MONTAIGNE By IRENE COOPER WILLIS This deft study which contains the essence of Mon- taigne the man, captured from his writings, makes a brilliant literary portrait. $2.50 JOURNAL OF KATHERINE MANSFIELD Edited by J. Middleton Marry Here in these notes, confessions, sketches for stories, unposted letters, is the inner life of one of the most beautiful writers of modern times. Pathetic and gay, ironical and tender by turns, this journal runs the gamut of the emotions. Illustrated. $3.50 UNCLE ANGHEL By PAN AIT ISTRATI The passion, the degradation, and the death of Uncle Anghel, and the strange, fierce love of Cosma and Floritchika. $2.50 DECLARATION OF LOVE By GEOFFREY DFX MS Here, in a moving and t.>!d love-story, are a breaking of all the idols that masquerade in love's name, and a pitiless analysis of the emotions that a man and a woman can arouse in each other. $2.50 STUFFED PEACOCKS By EMILY CLARK A series of imaginary character sketches which amusingly and brilliantly re-create the Virginia tion. $2.50 PETER WHIFFLE: I!!S LIFE AND WORKS By CARL FAX VECHTEN A beautiful gift edition of this famous novel, spe- cially illustrated with thirty photographs and drawings in aquatone which recapture the at- mosphere of the early twentieth century. The binding is after Ralph Barton's famous map of Pari-. lioxed. $4.00 *3BS^<^££?. AT ALL BOOKSHOPS £&^®^ -v*s="~.eWi_' « In Canada, from The Macmillan Company of Canada. Ltd.. St. Martin's House, Toronto. Alfred A. Knopf Publisher p ifa-J New York When writing to advertisers please mention The Nation

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320 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3247 Drama Pickwick Redivivus AT least half the magic of Dickens is purely verbal and hence not to be translated into visual terms. Not only was his primary gift a gift for words, but even these words are usually effective less because of the exactitude with which they convey an image than because of the flavor which they diffuse. In- toxicated as he was with his own good humor, he could make even the cadence of his exuberant sentences do much towards creating in his readers that mood of abandonment which en- ables them to accept his situations; and his fantastic charac- ters can breathe no atmosphere other than that wholly unearthly one generated out of mere language. No illustrations — not even the famous ones by Cruikshank — are quite satisfactory. They inevitably degenerate into something nearer mere carica- tu -e than the personages they are intended to represent ever, on the printed page, appear to be, and the reason is simply that both the narration and the description of Dickens are frequently no more than a scries of colorful suggestions never intended to be completely objectified. His characters and sit- uations were not first visualized and then written down but grew in the writing instead, so that they have their existence in sentences and paragraphs rather than in any plastic realm. To say this is, of course, to say that his novels are not very well fitted for dramatic treatment, since only his dialogue can be directly utilized and since no designer of a mise en scene can either handle his rebellious materials as nimbly as Dickens handled words or make it as changingly responsive to the mood of the moment. And yet, within these necessary limitations, "Pickwick" (Empire Theatre), which Cosmo HamPton and Frank C. Reilly have fashioned from the best and mos; charac- teristic of the Dickens extravaganzas, is both surprisingly fine and delightfully entertaining. There are, to be sure, occa- sional moments — like that in which the hackney-coachman, who has just driven upon the stage, describes his horse — when one is forcibly reminded of the fact that, for instance, no real horse present before the eyes could ever live up to the description which has just been given of him, but such mo- ments are rare and the effects seldom miss fire. The adapters have frankly accepted the episodic character of their material and they have got much out of the episodes. Without resort- ing to any of that too forcedly exuberant clowning which so often renders modern performances of old comedies genuinely painful, the production does manage to achieve the requisitely exuberant good humor, and without ever falling into mentality it does also manage to achieve that hint of sentiment which makes certain of the moments charming. Tims the courtroom scene in which Buzfuz describes to the jury how the monster Pickwick betrayed the faith which the widow Bardell had always had in single gentlemen, is a brilliant of satiric farce, and thus, too, the concluding scene — the < mas party at Old Wardell's— is, in spite of the fact that it is no more than a tableau, picturesquely delightful. Doubtless the play, superbly acted though it is. would not stand wholly on its own feet. One must bring to it some previously acquired capacity to understand things "in the wickian sense" — one must, that is to say, be able to enrich or interpret some of that which one sees upon the stage by the memory of a mood which only the novel is su generate in the first instance; and yet, however important the little which the spectator must bring with him may b( , not much. Any one who ever, even long ago, read "Pickwick" with delight will find the play also de ightful. He may miss some of his favorite characters — where, for example, is that reverend and unforgettable Mr. Stiggins who had his red nose immersed in a horse-trough? — but he will see enough to him richly for a visit to the Empire. If — and I confess that it does not seem probable — Theodore Dreiser should ever collaborate on a play with Mr. Willard Mack the result probably would be something very much like "Women Go On Forever," the melodrama now playing at the Forrest. The author, Daniel Rubin, has combined the tech- nique of the crook play with the ethos of the naturalistic novel, and the result is something far from ineffectual but not a little startling. His scene is a cheap boarding house and his story involves three gang murders, but instead of sweetening his characters up after the conventional formula he treats them with all the crass cynicism of a police court reporter, and pro- duces a play as sordid in its implications as a front page story in the tabloid press. It ends when the amorous land-lady who has just sent one of her boarders out to be shot in the alley begins to make eyes at the new tenant, and even a hardened audience tittered nervously at the scabrous brutality of some scenes. The ineptly named drama "Such is Life" (Morosco Theatre) is a serious study of three sisters crushed by a sense of family duty. The scene is the America of the Nineties and the play has solid merit in spite of certain crudities. Crudity is, on the other hand, the last thing one would charge against the new Cohan farce "The Baby Cyclone." It re- volves around the efforts of a young man to get rid of a -dog too much beloved by his wife, and in spite of the fact that this theme is far from new, extraordinarily expert writing keeps it continuously funny. Moreover it has at least one original touch. Though one never felt quite safe until the curtain finally descended, the fact is worth recording that the difficulties were settled without even a hint that a little stranger, destined to displace the dog in the affections of the woman, was imminent. Joseph Wood Krutch n THEATER THEATRE GUILD ACTING CO. I SECOND MAN pTTTT T"\ Thea., W. 52d St. Evs. S :40 ts. Thurs. & Sat., 2 :40. □ LECTURE D "Education and the Good Life" Lecture by BERTRAND RUSSELL TOWN HALL, Tuesday Evening October 4 Tickets. $2.00, $1.50, $1.00. and 50c, at the RAND SCHOOL. 7 E. 15th Street din; R You are invited to a dinner to BERTRAND RUSSELL on Friday evening, October 7. 0:30 P. M. Fifth Ave. Restaurant. 200 Fifth Ave., New York City Subject: "Rl'SSIA, ASIA AND THE WEST" LEAGUE FOK INDUSTRIAL DEMOCRACY Tickets at $2.50 may be obtained from i . I. D., 70 Fifth Avenue, New '. ea 3877 When

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International Relations Section British Opinion on the Sacco- Vanzetti Execution BEFORE the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti foreign newspapers and periodicals presented an amazing unanimity of opinion in opposition to such an act. French, German, and English journals, regardless of their political sympathies and even in spite of their acknowledged horror of both anarchistic and communistic theories, pleaded that the United States observe "a decent respect to the opinions of mankind." Feeling was aroused still further by the news of the execution, as the following quotations from English periodicals, mostly weeklies, indicate: The London Nation, August 27 At the center of a world scene that has had no parallel in history, Sacco and Vanzetti were executed at midnight on Mon- day in Charlestown jail, Boston. The city was as if in a state of siege. The entire police force was mobilized, together with detachments of the State militia. The prison was occupied by a special guard of five hundred police, heavily armed and sup- ported with machine-guns, gas-projectors, and tear-bombs. The reasons for such extraordinary precautions were not apparent in Boston, since the only demonstrations reported were mass meetings of protest on the Common and processions toward the jail. In New York, where the police force at call is stated to have reached a total of fourteen thousand, a great protest was or- ganized in one of the central squares. Demonstrations against the executions took place in numberless cities throughout the world, the most violent being in Paris and Geneva, where all American official centers and every place known to be fre- quented by Americans were in imminent danger from the mob. Police to the number of two thousand were set to guard the American Embassy and Consulate-General in London, perhaps the only capital city in the world where the anger aroused by the terrible end of the affair was not a menace to the public peace. For the first time in 150 years the flag of the United States has been treated in every land as the symbol of a great wrong. This is the grave fact which the American Govern- ment and people have to recognize. (Italics ours). The New Statesman, August 27 There is grotesque irony in the fact that the killing of these two Italians involved in the United States a display of armed force such as no American citizen has ever before seen, and in every European country a police mobilization costing huge sums of money. ... In Paris and Geneva the authorities had to deal with mobs raging against the United States and swooping down upon every public place, every cafe and cabaret, asso- ciated with Americans. "The imposing unanimity of foreign opinion has made a deep impression everywhere," cabled the Times Washington correspondent, and we can well believe it. The conclusion of the whole tragic matter would seem to be that the Governor of Massachusetts was able to resist the re- markable force of legal authority and public opinion organized on behalf of the victims because he knew himself to be sup- ported by the blind mass-opinion of American nationalism, demanding that Sacco and Vanzetti be done to death — first be- cause they were Reds and, therefore, pests to be wiped out, and secondly because Uncle Sam is master in his own house. And yet, it may be recalled, the authors of the Declaration of Inde- pendence affirmed that what they did in 1776 was done with "a decent respect to the opinions of mankind." The Spectator, August 27 There has been a continuance of demonstrations, riots, and explosions all over the world. In Hyde Park on Tuesday night a very large crowd was dispersed by the police. Some persons were injured chiefly through being thrown down by the jost- ling crowd which was trying to escape. There is no doubt that the whole Sacco-Vanzetti affair has caused considerable mis- giving among many thoughtful Americans. As such incidents, which provoke hot foreign criticism, are likely to lead to bad feeling, let us be precise once more as to where we think criticism is justified and where it is not. . . . The defects to which we think we are entitled to call attention are the fact that Judge Thayer should hear appeals against himself and that there should have been the monstrous delay of six years during which the condemned men were in unrelieved suspense. The Economist, August 27 Compared to the torment of constantly expecting, year in and year out, to be put to death, the final infliction of the penalty seems almost an anti-climax — a relaxation of the ten- sion rather than the last turn of the screw. When we turn, however, from the humanitarian aspect of the case to regard it as a social phenomenon, the interesting fact is the violence of the emotion which it has aroused and the extent to which this emotion has propagated itself through all countries and all classes. To begin with, no doubt, it was not unmixed with political partisanship. In the earlier protests, the most promin- ent part was played by the political organizations of the con- demned men's fellow-Communists; and no doubt the Communist leaders, beyond their genuine and spontaneous feeling for their comrades, saw in this agitation a favorable opportunity for spreading the atmosphere of the class war. Another political current, again, has been derived from the gradually accumu- lated irritation against the United States which undoubtedly exists both in Europe and in Latin-America, and which has found vent, in those continents, in a campaign on behalf of Sacco and Vanzetti, in which the "bourgeoise" has partici- pated almost as heartily as the "proletariat." The point of real interest is that, beyond these expressions of class or con- tinental feeling for which the martyrdom of these two Euro- pean Communists in America has given occasion, there has been called into activity a genuine international public opinion of a quite disinterested kind . . . and as it becomes less emotional and better informed, it may become the greatest force for good. Foreign Affairs, September On Tuesday, August 23, something happened whose con- sequences will stretch far on in time; one of those events which, by crystallizing men's fluid thoughts, shape them to belief and action. Two obscure Italians, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, who had lain in jail seven years on a charge of murder for robbery, were electrocuted by sentence of the Mass- achusetts court of justice. During those seven years millions of people all over the world came to believe these two men innocent. Never has there been such a world-wide passion of revolt against a judicial sentence. The Dreyfus case was noth- ing to it. In America itself a devoted committee gave time and poured out money in protest and defense. In Latin-America, in Britain and Germany and France, and even in Switzerland. oft-renewed popular demonstrations have witnessed to deep feeling. It is the nature of that feeling which gives peculiar political and social importance to the killing of these two. Out- raged sense of justice, pity for men so long tortured, gave poignancy to feeling; but the intensity of passion which bound millions together over this ease is the measure of their con- viction that there is no justice for those who take political means to change fundamentally the lot of the worker. They may tinker, but they may not try to change the social order. Above all, the institution of war is sacred. These two men were pacifist anarchists, and therefore terrible.

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322 The Nation [Vol. 125. No. 32- It is probable that those responsible for American justice believed that they were honestly doing the right thing; that is the ghastly part of it. Hot-blooded murder is not half so ghastly as such stupid automatism. Some of the demonstra- tions against the process of law have seemed, on the surface, as unmeaning and as undirected; basically, however, the most violent and senseless of them had an infinitely deeper and sounder foundation in humanity. The New Leader, August 26 The incredible has happened. Sacco and Vanzetti have been electrocuted, despite the moral protest of the whole world. Their names and words will be revered through history. The day will come when even America will be proud of them and ashamed of their murderers, as we are proud of the many martyrs in British history and ashamed of those who did them to death. The explanation of the indifference of the Massachusetts judicial authorities to the opinion of the world is indicated in one of the messages sent by the Daily News correspondent. "At the eleventh hour public opinion in America remains unchanged," he cabled: That opinion, in brief, is that it is better these men die rather than anarchists and inn. should get encour- agement to attack the political basis on which prosperity rests. Even from this callous point of view the American ruling class will find that it has made a mistake. The murder of Sacco and Vanzetti has done more to bring the "political basis" of America into contempt than all the propaganda of the anarchists. The Fascist State THE following view of the Fascist state is from the London Times of August 18: The war bore particularly hard, in Italy, upon the lower middle class, from which come the professional men, the physi- cians, lawyers, doctors, and engineers — all those, in a word. who see in a university degree a means of making a career, in a country where industry, commerce, and colonies do not yet , ttract and absorb, as in England and America, a great part of the population. The youths of the lower middle class, whose studies were interrupted and whose ordinary channels of life were upset by the war, have thrown themselves into the Fascist movement just as they would have thrown themselves into any all its re- sources. Signor Mussolini, who sometimes is sincere to the point of brutality, once said that, all things considered, the Fascist revolution had simply been "a violent substitution of ness" in itself, but these youths, encouraged by success, went farther and, < n ted to help to transform it on the lines laid down by the Syndicalists, in order to be able to satisfy their needs more generously. The - use it ha ; ie with th ■ ficers, and has set up with the syndicates a complex, vast, and remunerative bureaucracy in which, as organizers, secretaries, and so forth,, hundreds of thousands of persons are finding plac With what thoughts and with what fe< youths reached all the posts of responsibility in the new Italy? The great majority of them came with very little preparation and with an incomplete education, having been away from schools and books for four or five years. But they came with a remnant of the feelings of violence and arrogance which the war had awakened — at least among those who had fought with less austerity and nobility — and, above all. with the conviction that the war, which they had won. had not given to Italy re- sults adequate to the effort made, and that their country h? been deprived, by the envy and ill-will of the Allies, of tl fruits of victory at Versailles. Hence their exasperated ar aggressive patriotism, their distrust of the Allies of yesterda and, generally, their instinctive dislike and suspicion of a that is foreign. Hence, also, that feeling of scorn so wid< spread, not to say genera. . in the new Italy for the Leagv. of Nations, which in their eyes represents the guarantor c treaties which they believe unjust to their country and of status quo and a peace which they think it is not in Italy interests to preserve too long. The new Italy has a grievance and means to redress i" Hence the bellicose spirit that it is desired to instil into thl new generation, which is to think and feel imperially and pre} pare for the day — dcr Tag! — (Signor Mussolini has informe* us that it will be between 1935 and 1950) when the "wings o Italian aeroplanes will obscure the sun. . . ." ap th fruits of her victory, the fault lay not only with the Allies but also with the statesmen and, generally, the men anc parties of th country at the time when peace was discussed and concluded their re and Liberalism, Democrat; and Democracy, Socialists and Socialism, and their infatuatior for ideas of absolutism, dug up from all the dusty treatises ol political archaeology and brilliantly presented by the Fascisl writers as the new and original revelations of the Third Rome Finally, as a third consequence of the ideas and the feelings with which the new state is now being formed, these youths who wish at all costs to be different from their predecessors oppose to what they scornfully call Liberal idealism the prac tical and realistic spirit of Fascism. Never has the cult of material things had so many devotees as it has now in Italy. To construct bridges and turbines, hydraulic plants and rail- ways, ports and ships, engines and machinery, to develop in dustry, commerce and agriculture, is no doubt a promising sign of energy and enterprise: it is a very beautiful thing, but, surely, it is not the only thing that will give happiness and greatness to a people. For the moment, at any rate, we see that its chief result has been to give a cei'tain amount of riches to a certain section of Italian society. The lower middle class has, in a very short time, risen to fortune, and today sits in the front row of the national show. Contributors to This Issue ROMAIN Rolland's most recent books are "The Game of Love and Death" and "The Soul Enchanted." Donald Kirkley writes of Daniel Willard from personal acquaintance. Max Eastman, American poet and critic, is the author, among i ther volumes, of "The Enjoyment of Poetry," "A Sense of Humor," and "Leon Trotsky." T. Swann Harding, a chemist by profession, has con- tributed essays to several magazines. Charlcs N. Feidelson is the editor of the Birmingham i Alabama) Aye-Heroid. Sara Bard Field of California is soon to publish an- r volume of poems. Lewis S. Gannett is an associate editor of The Xatioii. ■ o Vivas frequently reviews works in literature and philosophy for The Nation. Joshua Kunitz is on the faculty of the College of the City of New York. CLAUDE S. Bowers is the author of "Jefferson and Ham- ilton" and other works in American history. Richard McKeon is in the department of philosophy at Columbia University. Oral SUMNER Coad is an American poet.

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The Nation FOUNDED 1865 Vol. CXXV NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 5, 1927 No. 3248 Contents EDITORIAL PARAGRAPHS 323 EDITORIALS: Wanted : Leadership 326 From Morgan's Up 3- ' Abolishing the Death Duties 327 Pious Unbelief 328 IT SEEMS TO HEYWOOD BROUN 329 AMERICANS WE LIKE: JUSTICE BRANDE1S, APOSTLE OF FREE- DOM. By Norman Hapgood 330 SCANDALS OF 1927: INDIANA. By Louis F. Budenz 332 NOVEMBER CORN FIELD. By Wilbert Snow 333 ON THE TRAIL OF SACCO-VANZETTI ABROAD: I. The Anger of South America. By Ruth Crawford 334 II. A Visit to the Men's Home Towns. By K. M. Ratcliffe 335 SOME MASS DEMONSTRATIONS. By Freda Kirchwey 337 IN THE DRIFTWAY. By the Drifter 338 CORRESPONDENCE 339 BOOKS AND PLAYS: Sacco and Vanzetti. By Kathleen Millay 340 Ancient Arabia. By Nathaniel Schmidt 340 Brain Child. By Marie Luhrs 341 The Science of Social Psychology. By Joseph Jastrow 342 Buddha Once More. By W. Norman Brown 342 Books in Brief 343 Drama : Stone Walls Do Not. By Joseph Wood Krutch 343 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS SECTION : Trotzky Answers Some Questions 346 OSWALD GARRISON VILLARD, Editoh Associate Editors LEWIS S. GANNETT DOROTHY GRAFFE VAN DOREN ARTHUR WARNER JOSEPH WOOD KRUTCH Managing Editor Litbuary Editor FREDA KIRCHWEY MARK VAN DOREN Contributing Editors JOHN A. HOBSON LUDWIG LEWISOHN H. L. MENCKEN NORMAN THOMAS HEYWOOD BROUN CARL VAN DOREN DAVID BOEHM. Advertising Manager Subscription Rates: P'ive dollars per annum postpaid in the United States and Mexico ; to Canada, $5.50 ; and to foreign countries of the Postal Union. $.j.U0. THE NATION, No. 20 Veeey Street, New York City. Cable Address : Nation, New York. British Agent of Subscriptions and Advertising: Miss Gertrude M. Cross, 18, Woburn Square, London, W. C. 1, England. THE NATION is on file in most public and college libraries and is indexed in the Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature. ADMIRAL MAGRUDER'S BROOM has raised a cloud of dust in the Navy Department that seems to have set the whole Washington staff of arm-chair tars choking. He says in the Saturday Evening Post that the department is rotten with inefficiency and extravagance — so much so that "for every dollar expended for repairs it required that nearly four dollars be expended to maintain a navy yard to make repairs." Since 1908 the cost of the navy has quadrupled; it has twice as many men and four times as many officers as twenty years ago. Where 171 officers were on duty in Washington in 1916, 508, with a full force of clerks and stenographers, spend the government money to- day. A new aircraft-carrier is comfortably equipped with 62 typewriters. And so on. The majesty of the Depart- ment seems aggrieved at the admiral's plain speaking — bureaucrats always resent criticism; but the country is likely to agree with Senator Borah and to wish that we had a Magruder in every department and bureau in Washington. INDIANA'S POLITICAL SCANDALS broaden and deepen. Following the indictment of Governor Jackson has come the trial and conviction of Mayor Duvall of In- dianapolis for violating the corrupt-practices act of the State. Mr. Budenz, in telling on another page the curious vagaries of Mayor Duvall, indicates that Indiana's political dirt has soiled the hands of men as high up in the Repub- lican Party as United States Senators Watson and Robin- son. Mayor Duvall himself appears to be an oddly befud- dled individual whose promises have far outrun his possible performances. In order to find jobs enough to go around he has filled about every place in the City Hall twice. Since Mr. Budenz wrote, Mayor Duvall has appointed his wife as City Controller and had persuaded Claude Johnson — who previously had held three successive posts in one day — to become Chief of Detectives. Johnson was asked to relin- quish the office of City Controller in order to make way for Mrs. Duvall. If Duvall's conviction is upheld in the higher courts and he is ousted as mayor, his wife will succeed to that job. The people of Indiana are reported to be stunned rather than angry over the revelations thus far. We shall watch their actions with interest when they come out of the daze. P ROGRESSIVE PROGRAMS, in the absence of a pro- gressive party, may seem of the substance of dreams, but they are also the substance of which parties are built. Senator Nye of North Dakota has drawn up a platform for Progressives in the next Congress. He wants farm relief — as to what kind he is vague; flood relief; a clipping of the overgrown wings of the federal-reserve bank system; government operation of Muscle Shoals and other power developments; abolition of the "lame-duck" sessions of Con- gress; and abandonment of all semblance of government guaranty of private loans abroad. Senator Nye has gone further in defining his program than many other Western Progressives, but we wish that he might have developed it as a coherent philosophy of popular government. Parties seem to crystallize about immediate issues, but where they endure they express something more profound. Also, Senator Nye does not seem to see that the tariff is the Achilles' heel of that business control of government which he seeks to destroy. SO COLORFULLY AND AMICABLY has the Legion convention in Paris gone that we cannot but regret that it should have been topped off by the choice of Edward E. Spafford as head of the Legion. For Mr. Spafford rep- resents all the reactionary and narrowly patriotic tenden- cies within the Legion. He stands for the opposite of what the liberal minority in the permanent staff of the society is trying to accomplish. W7e seem, therefore, to be in for a year when the Legion as a national organiza- tion will be on the side of the 100-per cent patrioteers and heresy-hunters. More than that, there are uncomfortable rumors afloat in Legion circles that the election was the result of a deal put through at the last annual convention, and that the methods employed to bring about Mr. Spaf- ford's election suggested the familiar methods of cheap ward politicians. THE TEXT of the American note to France on the tariff entanglement has not yet been printed in full, but enough of it has appeared to make the Westminster

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324 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3248 Gazette in London declare that it is unprecedented in tone and substance. It admits that our tariff is high and will continue to be high, but it demands favors for us with, apparently, no quid pro quo. Premier Poincare, it is an- nounced, lias personally taken the matter up and is study- ing the note with care. We hope he is, and merely trust that nothing will keep him from replying with the greatest frankness. He usually has the courage to say what he thinks and in this case he can if he wishes speak for all of Europe. He might point out that one of the beloved Fourteen Points for which we went to war called for "the removal so far as possible of all economic barriers and the establishment of an equality of trade conditions among all the nations consenting to the peace." We doubt, however, if he will, as Washington fears, link his reply with the question of the money France owes us, though, economically speaking, he would be entirely justified in doing so. The European nations can hardly pay their debts to us if we continue to maintain our high tariffs. If Washington wants tariffs most it ought to accept the consequences — the loss of hundreds of millions of dollars, and tariff wars thrown into the bargain. Tariffs spell international hates and trickery and friction, and are stupidity itself for a country like the United States, which is compelled to obtain from the rest of the world at least seventy vital articles of trade. T WILL SOON be necessary to organize a national so- ciety for the reform of our police. In Memphis no less than thirty-eight policemen have had to be c'ismissed at one fell swoop, including lieutenants and sergeants, be- cause their names appeared on a bootlegger's payroll. Even more serious are the persistent crimes by policemen against the persons of men they arrest. Magistrate Silber- man in the Washington Heights court of New York City recently denounced two policemen who had arrested three Negroes on the charge of assault and declared that these guardians of the peace had acted like "infuriated beasts" and "raving maniacs." The Negroes had done nothing, but, as one policeman explained, "we've had three shots of liquor and we feel like raising hell." So they beat the Negroes until the patrol-wagon came and then subjected them to the almost usual procedure of being beaten up again in the police-station. "Have you ever heard of any- thing more brutal in the history of the city?" asked the magistrate as he declared that not a scintilla of evidence had been produced against the Negroes. Well, we have. There have been worse cases here in New York, but we are perfectly certain that the Police Commissioner will do as little in this case as he has done in the other instances of police crime which have found their way into print. He has not yet done anything decisive to stop the reckless shooting by his men who recently killed three citizens in a week. THE NEGRO is the target not only of criminal police- men. Recently an elderly physician was murdered in his motor car in the woods near Hammonton. New Jer- Ilis wife declared that two partly disguised Negroes had stopped the car. attempted to assault her. and. when her husband came to her aid. killed him. At once State police and posses searched the country. Had two Negroes been caught near the scene they would have been lucky to have es< 'ihird-degree" torture. It now appears probable that the wife was carrying on an intrigue with another man, and the police have abandoned the search for those Negroes. Every Negro knows that there is no commoner device of white criminals than to blacken their faces or for persons guilty of a crime to declare that "two Negro brutes" committed it. In August Manly Jus: white, shot and fatally wounded Earl Williams, at Durh N. C. Until he died Williams maintained that a Negro had shot him and a mob at once instituted a "man-hunt." Ai Williams died Justice confessed to the murder. Luckily no Negro had been caught and killed meanwhile. On March 15, 1922, Maurice Mays, colored, was legally executed in Knoxville for the murder of a Mrs. Lindsey. a white woman. In August, 1927, a white woman confessed in Norton, Va., that she, "dressed in men's clothes and with her face bl; ened," had killed Mrs. Lindsey. Despite her confession she was released. Had not a dead "nigger" already atoned for her crime? DEFEATED BY THE OVERWHELMING POWER of the employers, the State militia, and the strike-break- ers, eight hundred strikers of the Harriet Cotton Mills of Henderson, North Carolina, have gone back to work. The strikers were working a fifty-five-hour week in an old-fash- ioned, unsanitary mill-village, in many cases for wages of less than $9 a week. They asked for a 12a2 per cent in- crease in wages, and were ignored. They struck, and were organized into the United Textile Workers by an organizer of one of its branches, the full-fashioned hosiery weavers. In spite of their isolation and poverty, and in spite of the needless intervention of State troops, they held out for many weeks with magnificent courage. The mill-owners agreed, in taking the strikers back to work, to clean the village wells, provide shoes and school-books for the chil- dren, and to forget five weeks' back rent. THIS HENDERSON STRIKE marks an important step in the progress of the Southern mill-workers because of the sympathy which the strike aroused in the South. Farmers for miles around Henderson contributed food to the strike. Some powerful Southern papers, notably the Raleigh News and Observe)-, owned by Josephus Daniels, questioned the justice of the mill-owners' position. The advertising of the strikers' grievances served to underscore some very significant statistics concerning the distribution of our national prosperity. The Henderson strikers who received $9 a week are not exceptional — the average weekly wage of all cotton-mill-workers in North Carolina is only S13.63 — and North Carolina has a legal sixty-hour week with higher wages than any Southern State. The men who started the Henderson strike and lost their jobs may never again secure employment from the anti-union mill-owners of their State, but their efforts have not been in vain. They have done much to prick the bubble of self-satisfaction with the South's industrial boom. AN INCONSPICUOUS DISPATCH from India via Lon- don, published in the New York Heiwld Tribune, re- ports two items bearing significantly on social questions of the greatest importance. The first announces the promulga- tion in the native state of Kashmir of a law prohibiting the consummation of marriage of girls less than fourteen years of age and of boys less than eighteen. This is a most vigor- ous measure against child marriage, perhaps too much so to

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Oct. 5, 1927] The Nation 325 be enforceable, yet indicative of the growing tendency to- ward reform. All over India leaders have for many years labored for such action: but in British India, due to the more complex nature of the governmental problem, it has been harder than in the more autocratically ruled native states to overcome the prejudices of orthodox Hinduism — with orthodox Hindus to have a daughter who has reached puberty without being married is accounted a major sin to the parents. Most gratifying is it to see that the present step has been taken in a state governed by a Hindu, not Mohammedan, family. THE SECOND ITEM points to retrogression. The aged Begum of the large native state of Bhopal, having recently abdicated the throne, now as a private citizen de- votes her personal fortune, estimated at fifty million dollars, to an India-wide drive for Islam. The most lamentable phase of the present Indian situation is the Hindu-Moslem tension that keeps the country in two great hostile camps, even making it necessary that members of the various legis- lative bodies should be elected separately by religious com- munities, and, as Gandhi constantly points out, more than any other fact prevents the attainment of self-government. Five years ago under his persuasive leadership the age-long conflict had temporarily subsided; within the past two years it has blazed forth again in renewed fury. The Begum's pious act will fan the flames still higher, and is to be men- tioned only in the same breath with the provocative Shuddhi (purity) campaign of the Arya Samaj to win back to Hin- duism certain groups that have been converted to the Mohammedan faith. If the glory of India has in the past been her religions, one may wonder if they are not now her curse. THE MERGER of the George H. Doran Company with Doubleday, Page and Company comes as a surprise to those who supposed that either publishing house was as large as it could comfortably be. Whatever the motives for such consolidation, or whatever the necessity, it is clear that in Doubleday, Doran and Company we are to see one of the most elaborate of all organizations to date for the produc- tion and sale of books. In England also will the effect be felt, since the firm of William Heinemann, Ltd., enters the merger and brings a long and representative list of British authors. The new house, which officially begins operations on January 1, will be the publishers for Kipling, Conrad, Bennett, Wells, Conan Doyle, Somerset Maugham, Ellen Glasgow, Hugh Walpole, Frank Swinnerton, Booth Tarking- ton, Mary Roberts Rinehart, Edna Ferber, Irvin Cobb — and hundreds more — a formidable list of writers both popular and distinguished. And there are all the magazines issued under the name of Doubleday from Garden City. Thimrs are happening in the world of books, and this perhaps is one of the most significant. Possibly the future fh^re as else- where lies in the direction of consolidation. What will bo the result? THE STOCK OF JAMES BOSWELL continues to sour. Professor Tinker's recent edition of the letters written by that friend and creator of Dr. Johnson woke numerous readers to a realization that in him we have one of the principal snirits of the eighteenth century. And now comes Colonel Ralph Isham from England with the contents of the famous "ebony cabinet" which Boswell mentioned in his will as containing valuable literary remains. The whole contents of the chest are still to be known, but there are new letters between Boswell and Pitt, Johnson, Burke, Malone, Goldsmith, Voltaire, Burns, and William Temple; there is the complete manuscript of "An Account of Corsica"; and there are other, perhaps still more precious, memoranda describing experiences and relationships which we shall want to know about. Professor Tinker with pardonable par- tiality has been quoted as saying that the collection is the most important literary discovery of the century. In any event it is one of the most interesting, and we now await the edition of the papers which is promised by Colonel Isham in collaboration with Geoffrey Scott. The nineteenth century supposed that Boswell was a silly man and there- fore not a great one. He was silly; he was, in his own very original way, great. YELLOW FEVER came to America in the water-jars of the African slave-ships, a sort of cosmic curse upon the institution of slavery. It killed hundreds of thousands — 8,000 in one year in New Orleans, only three-quarters of a century ago. There were ports in South America which became known as sure-death pest-holes, and lost their trade. Then came the suggestion that a mosquito carried the infec- tion, and the heroic proof when Walter Reed and his asso- ciates faced death to prove a scientific guess; and then the demonstration by Dr. Gorgas, in Havana and Panama, that sanitary measures could wipe out the plague. In the last two decades yellow fever — in large part due to the work of the Rockefeller doctors — has been virtually wiped out in the Western Hemisphere, surviving only in a few remote parts of Brazil — one of the greatest scientific achievements of our day. In recent years the Rockefeller doctors have followed the germ to Africa, attempting to locate the source of the infection in West Africa, hoping in the coming decades to stamp it out off the earth. That Adrian Stokes, one of the British doctors with the Rockefeller Yellow Fever Commis- sion, should have died in West Africa of an infection caught from one of the mosquitoes used in his own experiments, is an heroic tragedy in keeping with the strange history of the disease. THE TRAGIC DEATH of the German Ambassador to the United States, Baron von Maltzan, in an airplane accident, is a grave loss to both countries. There was an unusually warm note of regret in the official condolences sent by President Coolidge and Secretary Kellogg, and there is no question that all of Washington official society will lament this termination of a career which, short as it was, had accomplished a great deal for the reestablishment of the old friendly relations between the two countries. The Ambassador showed tact and discretion in his con- tacts with the government, was guarded and discreet in his wisely occasional public utterances, and, with the great aid of his wife, made his embassy socially the most popu- lar in Washington. It is no derogation of him to say that he knew what cards to play, how to play them, and with what persons to play, for that, after all, is a diplomat's business. The task of recreating the relations of the two countries after such a ghastly war of falsehood, calumny. and lying on both sides was a gigantic task. Herr von Wiedfeldt began it well as a quiet business man; Baron von Maltzan carried it far as a skilled professional diplomat and man of the world.

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326 The Nation [Vol. 125. No. 3248 Wanted: Leadership NICHOLAS MURRAY BUTLER may have been wrong when he declared that there were no great men in the world today, but he could point to the position of the old political parties in the United States as proof positive of the correctness of his statement as far as this country is con- cerned. The absence of outstandingly first-rate men among those most mentioned for the Presidency seems to us an- other striking evidence of the humbug which our participa- tion in the World War was. Had the war been that glorious uprising for democracy, that passionate spending of our- selves in order to preserve civilization, that selfless forging of a new charter for humanity which it pretended to be, could we today face the fact that, barring Herbert Hoover, not a single one of those whose names are suggested for the Presidency rose out of the war or gained prestige from it? The war achieved no immortal music, no national hymn, no glorious bit of literature, and no statesman who in his ideals, his aspiration, his record, or his personality even faintly typifies the "crusade" of 1914 and consequently challenges the interest and regard of the American electorate. Take the Democratic Party. It is universally admitted that the retirement of Mr. McAdoo leaves Governor Smith far in the lead for the nomination. Ex-Senator Underwood of Alabama declares he must be named; representative Democratic politicians from eight Western States all but unanimously declared on September 23 that Smith was the man. There is actually no alternative, save to name as candidate a man unknown to the bulk of the party, who has neither program nor policies, who would have to win his audience as completely as a hitherto unheralded stage star on his or her first night. So the Democracy must choose "Al" Smith, who, for all his engaging qualities, has not identified himself with any national political program or defined school of thought, who has given not the slightest evidence of equipment to deal with the vital international issues which confront not only the United States but the whole world. What, let us ask, would happen if an unkind fate should disable Governor Smith before next June? The great Democracy which cast votes at the last Presidential election would not know which way to turn for a candidate now in public life. It might then be compelled to turn from politics to business and to consider a man of the type of Owen D. Young, who has made his name in connection with one of the biggest business enterprises in the country. The Republicans are, of course, in a better situation. Mr. Hughes has unusual ability, a ruthless will, a self- righteousness and self-conceit to rank him with Woodrow Wilson himself. Mr. Hoover is a success as an adminis- trator, without, however, the attributes of political leader- ship or of popular appeal. Ex-Governor Lowden made a record as Governor of Illinois which reformers and pro- gressives in that State are quick to admit is deserving of high praise. These three all stand in ability head and shoul- ders above Calvin Coolidge — yet not one gives the slightest promise of breaking the stronghold of Big Business. They personify the present trend of Washington— have not Hughes and Hoover helped to shape it? Both of them are militant imperialists at heart who may be counted on to carry on the international policies which have made us universally disliked, feared, and hated in one country after another. When one turns to the Senate the dearth of Presiden- tial timber is obvious — although the increasingly erratic Senator Borah ranks high. But, of course, the fact is that no one in the Republican Party will be definitely chosen to succeed Calvin Coolidge until the masters of that party get together in a hotel room either before or during the convention and make up their minds who their choice is. It may be that it will be settled soon, for the leaders are worried over the Smith candidacy and are beginning to believe that if the Governor is nominated it will be neces- sary to take Mr. Hughes who has carried New York when- ever he has run. Secretary Mellon has only made a half- denial of his reported leaning to Mr. Hughes and belief that Mr. Coolidge's "choice" is final. For Wall Street Andrew Mellon is a beneficent deity, and it is certain that if Mr. Mellon really indorses Mr. Hughes's candidacy and proceeds to work for him the ex-Secretary of State will go to the convention almost solidly backed by the busi- ness interests. Is he not a great corporation lawyer? Has he not unquestioned ability and long training? Has he not been a successful Justice of the Supreme Court and an able Secretary of State? Is he not safe and sound? Will not he, who held out so strongly against the recognition of the Soviet Government, be in the White House a glorious bulkhead against those subversive elements who seek to alter and therefore undermine the best possible government in the best of countries? Can he not be counted on to back the United States flag with marines and warships wherever it shows itself in company with American dollars? Yet to our renegade minds Charles E. Hughes is one of the last men who should be picked for the White House. And what of the Progressives? There, too, the lead- ership is wanting. Were another like the elder La Follette ready to head a third-party movement, we believe that it could be made more formidable than the last. There are more Americans consciously dissatisfied today than in the campaign year of 1924. To multitudes, we believe, the Sacco-Vanzetti case has proved an eye-opener, to many others the final straw. We are emphatically of the opinion that if one man of power and uprightness should step forth now to take up the old fight against the corruption which is permeating our entire public life, there would be a tre- mendous response. Only the absence of such a leader makes it possible for the New York Times to rejoice that whatever else may happen, there will be no third party in the field this year. Even the Socialist Party could make a big showing now if it but had the leader. We are drugged by our prosperity as well as poisoned by the bacilli of war. But we shall not be so for long. There are plenty of portents to the contrary. We are still in the trough of the after-war wave, but there is no more ground for discour- agement than there was in the days when to advocate free- dom of the slave meant official reprobation, imprisonment, or mob violence. It seemed long then before the tide turned ; millions of backs were scarred by the lash or bowed by the yoke, and thousands died in misery while it was turning. But the change came, the tide turned, and the needed leadership arose. And so it will again.

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Oct. 5, 1927] The Nation 327 From Morgan's Up D WIGHT MORROW, partner in J. P. Morgan & Co., has been named United States Ambassador to Mexico. Mr. Morrow happens to be a college classmate and life- long friend of Mr. Coolidge's. But he is so much more that his appointment was an act of courage on the Pres- ident's part and his acceptance an act of courage for Mr. Morrow. Hardly any post to which the President might appoint him could give Mr. Morrow power comparable to that which he wields as a partner in the greatest inter- national banking firm in the world. The extent to which the Morgans dominate the industrial system of this coun- try— its railroads, its power companies, its enormous automobile industry — can hardly be exaggerated. Through- out the Great War, furthermore, it acted as the agent for the British, French, and Russian governments in this coun- try. To its power and organization was largely due the immediate success of the great loan which reestablished Japan after her earthquake; the mere announcement of a Morgan credit — coupled with the knowledge that such a loan meant Morgan financial guidance — steadied the fall- ing French franc; the Morgan firm has buttressed Italy; it dominates the International Consortium which makes or withholds loans to China; it leads the group of creditors who negotiate, more successfully than Washington official- dom, with the Mexican Government. In the ordinary under- standing of the word it is no promotion for a Morgan partner to be named United States Ambassador to Mexico; and Mr. Morrow is one of the leading Morgan partners. Even if he were to become Secretary of State Mr. Morrow would hardly have more power than he has had as a partner of Morgan. J. P. Morgan & Co. negotiates on equal terms, unhampered by any responsibility to Con- gress, with foreign Powers. America has a natural preju- dice against the financier in public office, and the financier has usually preferred to pull the strings without accepting political responsibility. Yet Mr. Morrow obviously has been eager for official life and has accepted this difficult post as his first opportunity. It is striking that a business man can still be so eager to don the harness of politics in a day when leadership has seemed to gravitate so over- whelmingly to business. What will Mr. Morrow do in Mexico? The office is a challenge to his powers. Mexico is a graveyard of repu- tations; three administrations have failed to reach an equilibrium with that volcanic republic. American business has stood in the way of American diplomacy. But Mr. Morrow comes of a wise school of business. We have often remarked that the great lending houses of Wall Street have a longer vision than the oil men or the manufacturers. J. P. Morgan & Co., long interested in Mexican govern- mental loans, has not always seen eye to eye with Mr. Doheny, and it has been able to negotiate agreements which Mexico was willing to countersign and keep. Pre- sumably any Morgan partner knows, as every lender does, that it is to the creditor's interest to set the debtor on his feet. He cannot want intervention; he must want to see the oil wells at work, producing for Mexico the revenue with which to pay her loans. It is, of course, true on the other hand that the whole group of financiers interested in American foreign investments have a common horror of Mexico's social legis- lation, and fear it as a precedent in other countries. If one backward country can redeem its national heritage, freeing itself from control by the foreign moneyed in- terests which have been buying up the mineral resources of the world, others may follow. It is equally disturbing that Mr. Morrow's record, while it is full of examples of high-minded and disinterested service (he is a trustee of Amherst College, of Union Theological Seminary and of the Russell Sage Foundation, and has been active in prison- reform and charitable work) is definitely a big-business career. He began his public life as an attorney, and it was largely his services to the New Haven Railroad, where he ably opposed the public-service conceptions of Louis D. Brandeis, that won him promotion to the Morgan firm. One may be sure, however, that Mr. Morrow will not take orders. He will have a prestige with American business firms in Mexico which no one but a Morgan partner could have. If he recommends to them a less stubborn policy, they will hardly dare complain. And Mr. Morrow, resign- ing from the Morgan firm to enter politics, must be de- termined to succeed in his first mission. To those Americans who have not realized the extent to which our diplomacy has become a tool of business Mr. Morrow's appointment will be a shock. But in view of the possible alternatives, of subservient corporation lawyers and lame-duck politicians, and despite the ghastly example of Mr. Mellon, we greet this assumption of responsible pub- lic office by one of the outstanding leaders of financial America with hope. It is always better to send the chief than the office-boy on an important mission, and Mr. Mor- row is a real chief. Abolishing the Death Duties "ri~>HE federal estate tax must be repealed." This is to A be the battle cry of an exceedingly well organized and well financed group of lobbyists in the next session of Congress. A similar attempt failed last year, but the effort is to be made again with renewed hope — and better lobby- ing. Regardless of the merits of the inheritance tax, bank- ers and business men in cooperation with legislators are determined upon its repeal. There can be little doubt about the intensity of the fight which they will wage. Supporting them, they have the legislatures of twenty-two States, the governors of twenty-five, perhaps a majority of the Sena- tors, and, in the Administration, both President Coolidge and Secretary Mellon. The inheritance tax. of course, rests most heavily upon the wealthier classes of the population, reason enough for every loyal Republican to find his sympathy with the present repeal movement. Already the Administration has exerted itself considerably to make the lives of our bankers and brokers run more smoothly, but there yet remains this fed- eral estate tax as a source of unpleasant irritation. Of all the taxes in our revenue system, none is more obnoxious and challenging to the instincts of the expert coupon-cutter. In the property tax and in the income tax there are many paths that lead to the enticing forest of evasion — which good lawyers can find at fair rates — but the inheritance tax defies such strategy. It must be paid. When the wealthy taxpayer dies, his bonds, his stocks, and other securities — although they may have been hidden throughout his life in the "forest of evasion" — must at last come out into the open.

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328 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3248 For the legal protection of the heirs, the executor must list and itemize the deceased man's property, and thus his secur- ities conic under the ruthless gaze of the inheritance-tax ad- ministrator. Even tax-exempt bonds are subject to this horrid estate tax. No wonder it infuriates some wealthy citizens to be forced to submit their property to so sure, efficient, and inescapable a levy, and no wonder, too, that they have wasted little time in finding a way out. If evasion of the tax is not possible, then it must be repealed. It is the effort to carry out this resolution that we shall witness in the next Congress. Of course, we shall hear no talk about the difficulty of evading the federal death duties — that will be kept camouflaged by arguments more appealing to the community. Already in the newspapers a flood of propaganda, sponsored principally by the Bank- er's League and the American Taxpayers League, has been let loose telling the American people what a terrible thing tnis estate tax is. And what is their contention? In the main, peering out of many confusing and distorted argu- ments, one discerns an earnest solicitude for the finances and revenues of the forty-eight States. The statements are seldom definite with respect to the means by which the States should secure these death duties but, in varying degrees, one is assured that the sentiment is there. Ominous predictions are likewise made that something fear- ful will happen because the estate tax "eats up capital" and is inherently "communistic" and "bolshevistic." All of this, of course, is grotesquely misleading. No tax has a better basis in sound economics. If the State revenues are to be helped by the death duties, then surely the worst thing to do would be ;o abolish the present federal measure. In a practise of thirty years the States have demonstrated their inability to cope with the more serious problems of evasion and multiple taxation. In the period before the federal tax, rates varied greatly among the States; some, with the hope of attracting men with capital, even abolished the death duties altogether. Today five States have no inheritance tax, and Florida has a constitutional amendment against such a measure. Re- peal of the federal estate duty would be likely to mean the appearance of other taxation paradises like Florida, with similarly attractive provisions for millionaire residents. We should witness again the old inter-State rivalry for capital and the intolerable conditions of multiple taxation would be made worse. If the States really need revenue and if their present spokesmen among the State legislatures and governors are in earnest, they should propose instead that the 80 per cent rebate clause of the Act of 1926, which returns to the States an amount up to 80 per cent of the federal inheritance tax. should be increased to the full amount of the tax. States" rights would then be preserved, yet there would remain a just tax with a uniform rate throughout the country. As Simeon Leland of the University of Chicago states: The chief argument advanced in favor of ni of the estate tax is seldom mentioned, yet it underlies prac- tically every statement of the case against the federal tax. The repeal of the federal tax is desired mainly because it is a success, while the inheritance taxes of the re not. The federal estate tax functions too efficiently to suit its adversaries. That is it. The federal tax functions "too efficiently," and therefore organized wealth is making this concerted effort to end it. Pious Unbelief MISS CHRISTINE WALKER, eighteen-year-old secre- tary of the Junior Atheists League, has arrived in New York from Gap, Pennsylvania, and at the Fourteenth Street headquarters of the Anti-Bibie Society she is formu- lating plans which look toward a vigorous revival of dis- belief among the members of the younger generation in this city. Reporters who have interviewed her find her flashing blue eyes persistently reminiscent of Miss Uldine Utley, girl preacher of the old-time Bible religion, and they say that she speaks of her mission with a genuinely evangelical ardor. "I have," she says, "read enough of the Bible to feel that it is false, and I want to enlighten other people." Miss Walker also informed the reporters that there are at present four active chapters of her organization — in New York, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and Petoskey, Michigan — though she did not explain how it happens that the latter place rose to this dangerous metropolitan emi- nence. She did add, however, that much of her work among the high schools and colleges has to be carried on secretly in order to avoid interference from educational authorities, and it is this latter fact that amazes us. Anyone who ever attended a free-thinkers' meeting must have realized how nearly its atmosphere resembled that of a non-conformist chapel and anyone who has ever known any group of fer- vently professing atheists must know that a certain prig- gishness is the only moral vice which can usually be charged against them. Miss Walker feels that the experience which she gained as a worker in the Presbyterian Westminster Guild in the days before her negative conversion will be of great service to her in her new task, and Miss Walker is entirely right. Atheism is one of the evangelical religions and a really devoted atheist is one of the most churchly of people. If we were among those who are worried by the lax conduct of the younger generation we should welcome the entry of the atheists into the missionary field, and our only fear would be that the movement would not spread very widely for the simple reason that the impeccable conduct and the proselyting zeal expected of an active member of any atheistical society are too nearly indistinguishable from those required by the Y. M. C. A., the Baptist Young Peo- ple's Union, and the Epworth League to appeal to very many who have not already joined one or more of those organizations. Most of the frivolous young who are bored with talk about God will be equally bored by talk about his non-existence, and those who prefer jazz to the hymnbook are not very likely to break off a foxtrot in order to con- sider the errors of Moses. But wherever the Anti-Bible Society does find a foothold, wherever it can gather to- gether a group of young people dedicated to the spread of unbelief, there, we predict, will be found a sober and harm- less group. If it is merely a question of keeping the youth off the streets, a Free Thinkers Society is every bit as effective as a chapter of the Christian Endeavor. Who ever heard of an ardent young atheist with a flask in his hip- pocket or any inclination to go on a petting party? In the first place he has weighty things to think about, and in the second place he has to confound his religious enemies by the uprightness of his life. It is those who don't care whether God's in his heaven or not that cause most of the trouble.

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Oct. 5, 1927] The Nation 329 I u GOSSIP about anybody is good and gossip about a public character is better. One must be more than usually high-minded not to admit curiosity concerning an account of a President caught with his shirtsleeves down, as the saying goes. "The President's Daughter" undoubtedly will serve to satisfy this reprehensible but natural craving. As in the case of all memoirs the question of authen- ticity may not be brushed aside. There has been, as far as I can ascertain, no official denial of the fundamental facts set forth in "The President's Daughter," and it may be that eventually admirers of the martyr president will be asking us to judge Mr. Harding not by this book, set forth as fact, but by "Revelry" which purports to be fiction. Nan Britton's book professes to make a plea for more merciful laws in regard to legitimacy. This excellent ob- ject is somewhat lost in the shuffle, and more stress is given to the promise upon the jacket that here is a book "reveal- ing the love-secret of President Harding." A young woman without any vestige of literary skill and an entire absence of good taste has managed to write a book which is often absorbingly interesting. Possibly the secret lies in its insincerity. Again and again she breaks into rapturous admiration of Warren Gamaliel Harding, but it is hard to believe that she did not possess some underlying hatred of the man, for the portrait is that of an utterly fatuous person. Still, it must be admitted that the author does very little better by herself, and the general effect is not unlike a tale by Fanny Hill concerning her great romance with Elmer Gantry. Beyond question the book is shocking. Here and there one may find a phrase somewhat more frank than usual, but this is not the factor which tends to make "The President's Daughter" a shade disturbing. It is the undying smugness of the story which causes a sinking sensation. Persistently Miss Britton insists that her romance with Mr. Harding was one of the great love stories of all history, but this point is somewhat impaired by her report of the very first ardent meeting. "Between kisses we found time to discuss my immediate need for a position." Nor is the reader more warmly drawn to either protagonist when the book goes on to reveal the manner in which Mr. Harding made good his promise of patronage. "Mr. Harding handed his card to the secretary in Judge Gary's outer office. The Judge came out immediately. After introducing me to Judge Gary, Mr. Harding inquired casually of him whether his senatorial services in a certain matter had been satisfactory. The Judge replied that they had indeed." From this auspicious point the romance flowers and we learn that "Going down in the elevator Mr. Harding whis- pered to me: 'Now, do you believe that I love you?' ' A little later Miss Britton obtained a job with the United States Steel Corporation at $16 a week. Some of the heroine's enthusiasm for her knight in shining armor is a little puzzling. She seems inclined to endow the great man with gifts not altogether inherent in the evidence. Thus we are told: "Mr. Harding himself was, I thought, quite an epicure, despite the fact that he could enjoy plain substantial food. Eggs were my break- fast stand-by, but invariably Mr. Harding's query when we breakfasted together would be : 'Will you have some cod- fish cakes with me this morning, dearie?' " Always she seems to have been "dearie" to him, al- though he occasionally switched to "you purty thing." Miss Britton was rather more formal and tells us: "I called him Warren very rarely. He used to tease me to say : 'Warren, darling, I love you,' and it seemed to delight him to hear me say his name. But I was so much younger than he — exactly thirty years his junior — that somehow it seemed out of tune for me to address him by his first name. I just resorted to endearments, usually called him 'sweetheart.' " To this particular reader the whole romance seems to have been an exceedingly shabby and clumsy involvement, but it has not been his privilege to read the love letters which are for the most part omitted. That seems a pity for the book states: "Many of the heart-revealments of which I have spoken and will speak were put in writing by Mr. Harding — and declarations much stronger as well — and he himself admitted that nowhere except in French had he ever read anything comparable to the love-letters we used to write to each other." It is just as well that the two parties concerned were willing to admit that in France such things are done better, for the strategy of the romance was often sadly bungled. Once Warren Gamaliel Harding was obliged to hide in a wardrobe, but at that time he was merely a Senator and his dignity may not have been a matter of vital moment. The White House rendezvous seems to have been a clothes closet, and there were many trysts in such hotels as local taxi drivers cared to recommend. Concealment would appear to have bulked larger in the mind of Mr. Harding than in that of Miss Britton. To be sure, she did not reveal to everyone that Warren Harding was her lover. But the President was not altogether a model of delightful reticence himself. If we may judge from Miss Britton's report he "always spoke disparagingly to me of Mrs. Harding, and in loving as well as in disposi- tion and everything else he certainly failed to picture her as his ideal." It is unfair to assume, of course, that every word set down in "The President's Daughter" is true beyond all question. It may be that Miss Britton has drawn largely upon her imagination. In that case I owe her an apology. If the book is in any large measure creative work it would be grossly unfair to deny the author a high degree of literary skill. In that event Sinclair Lewis would be obliged to abdicate his leadership of the more savage satirists, for modern American fiction contains no such complete and convincing picture of an utter bounder. We have had professors in the White House and sol- diers, but if the testimony of "The President's Daughter" is to be accepted Warren Gamaliel Harding was the first heavy-sugar daddy. And out of his many precious words the little girl whom he befriended has preserved a single sentence which might well serve as the epitaph of his entire administration: "Remember, dearie, no recriminations."

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330 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3248 Americans W e Like Justice Brandeis: Apostle of Freedom Bv NORMAN HAPGOOD WHEN The Nation asked me to write something about Justice Brandeis I was not sure whether to be glad or sorry. It is wholesome to celebrate a powerful spiritual and liberal character, in a time when the type in this country is rare, but also it is difficult to do justice to forty years of service, covering a multitude of issues, in a short space. After Woodrow Wilson was elected, in 1912, I happened to be talking with Joseph Medill Patterson, at that time much more in sympathy with critical movements than he is now, and to say I hoped Mr. Wilson might put Mr. Brandeis in his cabinet. "The place for a man like that," said he, "is on the Supreme Court. There is where the real influence is exerted." About the same time Jane Addams said: "What the Supreme Court thinks determines not only what laws Congress may enact. It decides the possibilities for forty-eight State legislatures also, and for every social worker in the land." In 1916, when there was another vacancy, Mr. Wilson said to me: "I cannot live up to the standard T set when I appointed Brandeis. I cannot find another man who is at the top of his profession in practical success, and who at the same time represents not concentrated money but the interests of the whole public." On that subject Mr. Brandeis himself said, a number of years ago: "It is true that at the present time the law- yer does not hold that position with the people which he held fifty years ago; but the reason is in my opinion not lack of opportunity. It is because, instead of holding a position of independence between the wealthy and the people, prepared to curb the excesses of either, the able lawyers have to a great extent allowed themselves to become an adjunct of the great corporations, and have neglected their obligation to use their powers for the protection of the people." The fact that Mr. Brandeis, in spite of first-class practical success, kept himself free from the psychology of excessive wealth, and devoted his efforts to public service, was what cre- ated the bitterness against him. That bitterness was moderate in amount and intensity as long as he was en- gaged in solving traction problems in Boston, working out a proper relation between the public and the gas com- panies, or starting a device by which the poor, if they cared to do so, could get their insurance much more ehe .ply. It broke into a fury when he inter- fered with the plans of the New Haven Railroad, for in that road were in- vested many of the funds of the people who make up respectable society in T h e t h i r d i n a s e r i e s o f p e r s o n a I i t y p o r t r a i t s Louis D. Brandeis Associate Justice United States Sup~re?ne Court New England. The controversy with the New Haven had the same origin as the earlier services in checking the inroads of public utilities on public rights. Both came from a conception of freedom. It was years ahead of Mr. Wilson's exposition of "the new freedom," but it meant the same thing, and Mr. Wilson to his death was grateful for the help he found in the philosophic depth and detailed mastery of Mr. Brandeis. Here is a statement of the underlying doctrine: The government must keep order not only physically but socially. In old times the law was meant to protect each citizen from oppression by physical force. But we have passed to a subtler civilization; from oppression by force we have come to oppression in other ways. And the law must still protect a man from the things that rob him of his freedom, whether the oppressing force be physical or of a subtler kind. There is no such thing as freedom for a man who under normal conditions is not financially free. We must therefore find means to create in the individual financial independence against sickness, accidents, unemployment, old age, and the dread of having his family destitute, if he suf- fer premature death. For we have become practically a world of employees; and if a man is to have real freedom in dealing with his employer, he must be financially inde- pendent of these ordinary contingencies. Unless we pro- tect him from oppression, it is foolish to call him free. In the notable victory over the New Haven Mr. Bran- deis was doing something beside the work of a great busi- ness expert, protecting the public against wild finance. He was also protecting it against oppression. He saw lucidly why the hectic expansion of the road meant in the end in- jury to the investment, but he also felt with ardent con- viction that New England could not be free if it put no limit on the size of the money combinations that might be allowed to grow up in its midst. Mr. Brandeis could never have done his work if he had not been an expert in money matters, but money and its combinations have always been looked upon by him as a tool to be used for promoting the higher forms of freedom, not as ends sacred in them- selves that may be permitted to invade the general freedom. When the au- thoritative life of this justice comes to be written I hope the keynote of it may be liberty. There are not many prophets of that doctrine here and now, for this is not only an age in which Mr. Mellon is Secretary of the Treas- ury, in spite of the existing statute in- tended to protect us from just such a control of the treasury by big busi- ness, but it is an age also in which

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Oct. 5, 1927] The Nation 331 the usual American thanks God for the good fortune of having so rich a man in so high a post, and in which the usual newspaper, with income and profit taxes hanging over it, subject to treasury interpretation, treats Mr. Mellon, who has had little to do but spend and reduce a huge surplus, as a combination of the genius of Hamilton and that of Gallatin. If, alone among lawyers of his rank, Mr. Brandeis threw his strength into representing the public against overgrown special interests, he accepted full responsibility for building where he tore down. He would never attack without being able to replace. If he believed railroad rates were too high he was prepared to tell the roads how to save a million dollars a day, and he steadily refused to lift a finger against the head of the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad from the moment when he saw his vic- tory essentially won. The city public-service corporations, the railroads, the banks, the insurance companies, the inflated industrials, the evils of long hours and low pay, had all been dealt with by him by 1912, and during the campaign of that year he was the most powerful intellect assisting Mr. Wilson to expound the principles of democracy applied to the prob- lems of a machine age. From his speeches and writings during those months can be built the best picture I know of the advantages of small and moderate units in industry as against gigantic ones. Inevitably some of the devices that Mr. Brandeis originated or adapted for one purpose or another are of less interest to him today, but not the small unit. It is fundamental, and it remains as much a part of his faith as it was a part of the faith of Aristotle. Those who believed the place for Mr. Brandeis to be the Supreme Court have been justified by the outcome. Powerful dissents are needed in that body — in the nine dic- tators of our law. Even the majority opinions sometimes show the influence of the presence of a great expert in modern industry, but it is the dissents of Holmes and Bran- deis, alone or with one or two others as the subjects differ, that are building up a body of thought on social rights at least as influential in our leading law schools as the ma- jority opinions opposed to them. If the bar has a spiritual revival, before our grandchildren are buried, these dissents are the material of which the revival may not improbably be made. And the fact that Justices Holmes and Brandeis are thus bracketed shows how shifting a substance are words. Justice Holmes is not a liberal, in the sense that Justice Brandeis is. He is not excited about what may be done by legislation to make better the lot of man. Rather is he impressed with the futility of most such dreams. Often when Brandeis is filled with the picture of the evil a law seeks to kill, or the advantage it seeks to bring about, Holmes's mind, skeptical of such visions, and not addicted to studying them, is not less vehement in the same con- clusion, reaching it by the route of the public's right to experiment. Never has he swerved from his fidelity to the basic tenet of our system, that the courts are not to substi- tute their ideas of policy for those of the elected legislators. This dogged refusal to usurp takes on an added impor- tance when we remember that the most successful climbers in the legal profession make themselves psychologically mem- bers of the plutocracy. That Holmes and Brandeis reach the same spot from partly opposite directions is to me a most cheerful fact. It shows that our Constitution, and our political institutions in general, are adequate to our present needs if they are committed to men of knowledge and de- tachment from limited interests. Lest we put too much stress on the devotion of our own lawyers to plutocratic ideals we might quote a state- ment of Mr. Brandeis about the tendency of the bar in all times: Law has always been a narrowing, conservating pro- fession. In England it has always been easy for a Tory government to find great lawyers for judicial office, but for a Liberal government it was hard. And so it has been throughout history. . . . What we must do in America is not to attack our judges, but to educate them. All judges should be made to feel, as many judges already do, that the things needed to protect liberty are radically different from what they were fifty years ago. In some courts the judges' concep- tion of their own powers must also change. . . . The courts and the people have been too far apart. There is no subject so complex that the people cannot be interested in it and made to see the truth about it if pains enough are taken; and I believe that a common agreement of public sentiment should influence the court's decision on many a question. For the aspirations of the people must have adequate legal expression. Otherwise we shall have a revolt. . . . The people are beginning to doubt whether in the long run democracy and absolutism can coexist in the same com- munity; beginning to doubt whether there is really a justi- fication for the great inequalities in the distribution of wealth. This movement must necessarily progress; the people's thought will take shape in action. And it lies with our lawyers to say in what lines that action shall be expressed: wisely and temperately, or wildly and intem- perately; in lines of evolution or in lines of revolution. Of course the time when questioning of our present economic morality amounts to much is still afar, and will not come while the general standard of living is rising. But statesmen think of the future. Holmes and Brandeis cannot last forever. During the present craze over material things are we likely to elect anybody President who would even wish to find their counterparts? The author whom Justice Brandeis quotes most often is Goethe, more often, I think, than Shakespeare or the Greeks. Goethe has a ballad called The Magician's Ap- prentice, Der Zauberlehrling. The magician had ordered the apprentice to scrub the floor while he himself was ab- sent. The water had to be brought from the brook, but the apprentice had seen his master order a broom which stood in the corner to bring the water, and had noticed the words used ; so he repeated them, and the broom obeyed. It brought a bucketful, emptied it on the floor; then another, and another. Not knowing how to stop the flooding of the room the apprentice broke the broom. Then each part be- gan bringing as much as the whole broom had brought be- fore, and the house was full. Finally the magician returned, knowing how to control the process, as well as set it going, and he ordered the broom back into its corner. In connection with this story Justice Brandeis quotes, also from Goethe, "Even if we had the wise man's stone, the stone would be without the wise man." (Wenn wir den Stein der Weisen hatten, der Weise mangelte dem Stein.) Into a machine age, into the irrepressible advance of technique, it has been Justice Brandeis's life work to put wisdom.

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332 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3248 Scandals of 1927 — Indiana By LOUIS FRANCIS BUDENZ rpHAT political typhoon, which blew up this midsummer I to rock Indiana's ship of state, continues into the autumn with unabated fury. The apostles of mysterious clap-trap who lately threw terror into the Hoosier citi- zenry, suddenly find themselves the center of a storm of ridicule and censure. Heavy seas of scandal and expose threaten to wash overboard the most exalted members of the Klan-f earing crew — United States Senators James E. Watson and Arthur R. Robinson. When and where the end will be, no man knows. Senator Robinson has even declared in his own defense that the "President of the United States is indirectly involved." The junior Senator, with delightful naivete, rushed forth impetuously to bring the deluge down upon his head. A slick tongue has been Mr. Robinson's chief asset through- out his public career. It has compensated largely for his lack of mental depth. Through this powerful organ of speech he has climbed successively into the State Senate and the Republican leadership thereof, into a judgeship, and finally into the Holy of Holies itself, the United States Senate. In the present Gargantuan emergency, however, this source of strength — his nimble tongue — proved to be his weakness. He spoke up at the wrong time. Noting an at- tack upon him by the Indianapolis Times to the effect that he was part of the supergovernment — or, more exactly, the subway government — bringing Indiana into disrepute, he boldly demanded a retraction. Were that not forthcoming within three days, dire penalties would be inflicted upon the "unscrupulous editor of that unscrupulous publication." The three days came and went; at their conclusion his own hitherto faithful ally, the Indianapolis Star, proceeded to put him in a pretty pickle. By way of a news beat that papei published correspondence showing that Robinson had endeavored surreptitiously to exert pressure on the State Supreme Court in the contempt case of Dr. E. S. Shumaker, head of the Indiana Anti-Saloon League. Shumaker had made it very plain that the fate of the Republican Party rested in the hollow of his hand. At his behest the alarmed junior Senator had pleaded with Senator Watson last year "in your own way" to persuade the Supreme Court judges to free the anti-liquor crusader or let him off with a fine. Caught thus red-handed. Mr. Robinson executed a com- plete somersault. Now he declares that he will say nothing further on the subject, for fear it would seem to be exerting undue influence on the court which he formerly sought to influence sub rosa. Out of the episode has come a further proceeding in the Supreme Court to extend the sixty-day sentence of Shumaker. At the hearing of this case the two Senators, Henry Lane Wilson, ex-Ambassador to Mexico. and the Klan-appointed Republican State chairman, Clyde Walb, will be compelled to testify. Much more of the back- stairs government of Indiana bids fair to be dragged out into the open in the course of this proceeding. The strange case of Arthur Robinson, thus brought to light, is important in that it reveals him as one of the missing links between the Anti-Saloon League and the Klan. Old croney and personal attorney of ex-Grand Dragon D. C. Stephenson and devoted adherent of George V. Coffin, Stephenson-created Republican chairman of Marion county, he has always been at the same time a zealous follower of the Shumaker coterie. With becoming consistency, he waxed fat financially off the defense of wealthy bootleggers, on the basis of a widespread rumor that he had special in- fluence with Federal Judge Balzell. If such influence ex- isted, it was never very apparent. The judge seemed to send Mr. Robinson's clients to jail with the same gusto that he committed others to a like inclement fate. Other missing links in the Klan-Anti-Saloon League in- terlocking relationships are now coming into the fore- ground. One of the most conspicuous of these is the Rev. George S. Henninger, militant pastor of the East Tenth Street Methodist Episcopal Church in the city of Indian- apolis. He has been no small figure in the just-concluded trial of the capital city's Klan Mayor, John L. Duvall. Ruddy and pugilistic in appearance and mannerism, the Rev. Mr. Henninger has packed a wicked punch in behalf of both Anti-Saloon League and Klan. The most powerful figure in the Marion County Klan No. 3, he testified against the Mayor, with uplifted left hand (Klan-fashion), that the said Mayor, as a candidate, had pledged himself in open meeting to deliver 85 per cent of the city positions to the white-robed guardians of purity if elected to the office he sought. The Mayor apparently attempted to keep this pledge in his own bungling way. Testimony for the defense con- sisted of a long parade of city employees, who were or had been Kluxer zealots and Volstead Act protagonists. Their stammering mentalities and confused conceptions of Klan principles gave some clue as to why the Invisible Empire had chosen to remain invisible. Stripped of their flowing robes and robbed of the friendly cover of darkness, their childish ignorance made them a sorry and depressing lot. Their testimony failed to impress the jury; it had enough acumen to see the obvious, and found Duvall guilty of the crime charged. DuvalPs sentence was fixed at thirty days in jail, with a fine of §1,000 and four years' exclusion from public office. The trouble with the Mayor was that he promised too profusely. He did not have enough positions to go around. A feeble, wishy-washy character, suffering apparently from some fear mania, he sought to solve the problem by light- ning-like shifts in his official family. Almost every impor- tant office in the city hall has been filled at least twice dur- ing his term. Only a short time ago he discharged Claude Worley, Stephenson's old pal, as Inspector of Detectives. Learning that Worley had been promptly made special in- vestigator by Judge Collins of the Criminal Court, and would probably therefore dig into Duvall's various indictments, the Mayor suddenly recalled the outcast and elevated him to the chieftainship of police. To do this, he had to shift the erstwhile Chief, Claude Johnson. That gentleman found himself Chief one morning, Superintendent of Detectives in the afternoon, and City Controller by midnight — all in the same day. It is now disclosed that the Mayor gave several prominent Klansmen secret written appointments which he later withdrew. Wiggling and wobbling were his settled policies.

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Oct. 5, 1927] The Nation 333 So it was with his affair with "Bill" Armitage, ex- saloon keeper and gambler, which brought Duvall into court this first time. "Bill" is a typical political boss— flashily dressed, diamond-studded, and diamond-ringed, cynical and hard-boiled. He was the dominant personality in the pre- ceding Lew Shank administration. When he saw that Duvall would be elected mayor through Klan support, he hastened to offer that gentleman $12,000 or $14,500— the sum is in dispute — for various important appointments. Duvall ac- cepted the money, and put it away in his safety box at his bank. After the election, when the bargaining for offices began, Duvall in a sweaty fright rushed to return the money. Only, however, after a secret meeting with Armi- tage in Pekin and Springfield, Illinois, where they regis- tered at a hotel under assumed names. The Mayor's de- fense was that he took the money "to protect the taxpayers" and get Armitage out of the way, intending to double-cross that gentleman all the time. The Mayor will probably be obliged to have still an- other day in court. He has been indicted anew on other corrupt-practice charges by the present grand jury, which also indicted Governor Jackson for bribery, along with his law partner, Robert I. Marsh— the much-advertised and eloquent lecturer, "G4," of the Indiana Klan. What do the people of Indiana think of the mess of incompetence, underground intrigues, and widespread cor- ruption which is being washed up by this flood of disclos- ures? To say that they are flamingly indignant would be to state a falsehood. It is more literally correct to con- clude that they are stunned. By and large, they cannot understand why so much attention is being given then- troubles by the outside world. Taking the State as a whole, they have not yet grasped the inevitable connection between the outcome and the reign of such a moronic movement as the Ku Klux Klan. The newspapers, more alert than the rank and file of the populace, adopt a more healthy attitude. This includes a number of Republican papers. Vigorous denunciation of the "gang" in power is becoming a pleas- antly common thing. The Klan is on the run, however, because leading personalities in its ranks are on the de- fensive or utterly discredited. There is no dashing or un- scrupulous leader behind whom the scattered legions can rally. With that said, almost all is said. There will be a housecleaning in Indiana, but the pas- sions and prejudices which created the situation will re- main. Let a new Messianic message, the old patent medi- cine stamped with a different label, be offered to the Hoosiers — and he would be a rash prophet indeed who would foretell its rejection. The "why" of that is easily understandable through only a cursory study of the State's population. The north- ern section can be ruled out of our calculations; spiritually it is not a part of Indiana at all. A goodly infiltration of alien blood has changed its complexion and viewpoint. A Catholic, a Jew, or even a radical has at least half a chance in that region. Reaction can rule there on economic ques- tions, but not so readily on the basis of Nordic intolerance. In the broad central belt, which dominates the State to a large extent, an entirely different condition exists. There the Catholic, Jew, and foreigner are decided oddities. From Indianapolis to Vincennes — a distance of 195 miles — there is not one Catholic parish. In Hamilton County there are sixty-five Catholics in a total population of 15.000. These are rough examples of the status of the rural districts in that section. And in regard to the Catholics and the Jews in these parts it seems that prejudice against them increases in proportion to the slimness of their numbers. In the extreme southern section of the State Jews are very scarce and Catholics have herded themselves together in little colonies, aloof from the surrounding peasantry. These were in origin mostly German-speaking towns, in some of which even the Irish became Germanized in the course of time. A language barrier divided them from the "hill-billies" and the farmers of the south. It increased the possibility of misunderstanding. The city of Indianapolis is fed by immigrants from the rural territory of the central belt. It is full of good folks who connect the Negroes in some mysterious way with the dark Latin peoples, under the Pope, and consider a shady pigmentation a possible link with the devil. "Niggers and Catholics" were to be kept out of office, according to Mayor Duvall's promise to the Klan brethren of the Red Star. That expresses the sentiments of these rural immigrants to the capital city to a T. The Hoosier, anyway, is not much given to indignation or enthusiasm, except in what might be called metaphysical questions. He is as economically servile as he has been im- potent to cope with political corruption. His farmers have seldom engaged in the great revolts that have marked the history of the Northwest. The industrial population of Indianapolis, with much less colossal combinations of capi- tal to deal with than many other cities, suffers low wages and poor conditions. They are ruled by one of the most ac- tive and belligerent of employers' associations. They live under one of the most drastic anti-picketing ordinances in the country, with scarcely a murmur of protest. During the dominance of the Klan, no man of substance in financial or business life spoke up against it. Correspondents from other places were given information behind closed doors, and then with the solemn injunction: "Don't quote me." Meredith Nicholson, the author, was the only man of any prominence who made it a business to decry what was going forward. When the winds and waves have passed a number of figures of high and low degree will have been washed off the ship of state. It is doubtful if the root-causes for their having been at the helm will have been wiped away with them. November Corn Field By WILBERT SNOW The tattered standards of the broken corn Rustle defiance on the frozen air That strove to wreck them ; blouses now outworn That gave their youth a gay mid-April flair When on parade, cover today instead A decimated legion old and proud — Their dry bones rattle in the breeze; their bed, Ice-cold at night, awaits the winding shroud. A canteen hanging loosely here and there For rats and crows to riddle, they recall When they could scale at ease the high stone wall And forage in warm pastures whose long stare At blades and gorgeous tassels gave the field Faith in their standing orders not to yield.

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334 The Nation [Vol. 125. No. 3248 On the Trail of Sacco-Vanzetti Abroad I. The Anger of South America By RUTH CRAWFORD Buenos Aires, August 23 LISTEN!" I had been listening. How long I did not know. How long had I been lying there, listening to that crying, shouting, that rose above the tread of thousands of feet, the clatter of horses' hoofs, the whirr of motorcycles, the clarion honking of automobiles? "Listen!" The whisper brought complete awakening. Then I knew. This was the night Sacco and Vanzetti were to be executed unless some miracle saved them. "They've been killed." We said no more. We left our beds, threw coats on, and hurried to the bedroom window which opened on to the Avenida de Mayo in Buenos Aires. We opened the wooden shutter and leaned out. Five stories below stretched the Argentine's principal thoroughfare. We looked down the street toward the Plaza de Mayo, for it was from that direction the crowd was coming. There, before the office of one of the leading newspapers, stood a mass of men whom we knew were reading the news asso- ciation flash. They read, then joined the procession moving slowly, angrily, resentfully, up the avenue. As we watched that moving mass of men, foreboding, yes, terror came to us. Safe, we were safe, but this feeling was nothing personal. It was a fear for our country. These people, these South Americans, were marching because it was the only way they had of venting their hatred against the United States, the land of oppression, as they sincerely believed. What did it matter that we knew differently? How make these others know that some of our countrymen had fought valiantly for two Italians whose fate had curiously come to symbolize a struggle over human rights? How explain to these indignant Argentines that the struggle had gotten beyond human straightening? The message on the bulletin board meant only one thing to those thou- sands of men marching up the Avenida de Mayo. To them two innocent men had been sacrificed to the world by the United States of America, the land of oppression. Thus ended for me the trail of Sacco-Vanzetti, followed from Rio de Janeiro through the interior of Brazil, then across Uruguay to Montevideo, and at last to Buenos Aires and the Argentine. I had left New York shortly after Judge Thayer's de- cision had been given. The impassioned plea of the con- demned men for justice stood out clearly and vividly for me. I had faith. They would have justice, I thought confidently. Soon I learned that South America had no such faith. "You don't mind what happei s to you, do you?" the American Consul asked as I entered his office in a beautiful building overlooking Rio's magnificent bay. "What do you mean?" "You are right in the path of that bomb that is sched- uled to blow all of us to glory," the Consul laughed, affect- ing a gaiety which did not ring true. The consulate had been warned that there might be trouble from Sacco-Van- zetti sympathizers; that accounted for the presence of the guards passing regularly to and fro before the building. Reds, bolshevists, anarchists, they were just using this Sacco-Vanzetti thing to take out their long-smoldering hatred of the United States, our fellow countryman ex- plained. They looked at us askance as we dared protest that in the United States it was not merely the Reds who doubted the justice of the verdict. "They should have been done for seven years ago," was the inevitable answer. Brazilians, evidently, had another view, for the day I left Rio the automobile in which I was riding was turned out of its way. There was a Sacco-Vanzetti demonstration on the steps of the municipal opera house. It was a holiday, one of the numerous ones which brighten the lives of the Brazilians, but instead of attending fiestas and making merry dancing the maxixe, they were gathered by the thousand to hear an impassioned oration against the "mur- der" of two Italians by the United States. Several days later in Sao Paulo, the richest industrial city of Brazil, I visited the American consulate. Two police- men, standing in the entrance to the building, looked crit- ically at all who entered. In the consulate itself there was the same laughter as that in Rio, but this time men frankly admitted danger. They were planning to have no elevators stop at the consulate floor. "It's a bad situation," said the Consul. "What do the people in the States think of the case?" he asked. He hoped for enlightenment, which was not forthcoming, about what had brought our country to the position where in friendly Brazil her consulate offices had to be guarded. From Sao Paulo I took the train for the interior of Brazil, bound south for the Argentine. The route lay through Parana, the state of the great pine forests, parts of which are as yet unexplored; then on to Rio Grande do Sul, the cattle country of Brazil. The country is so primi- tive that the train stops whenever flagged in order that the inhabitants may come aboard to buy fruits and liquors and deliver and collect mail. Surely a country so unsettled would have no touch whatsoever with a court case in far-off Boston. But time after time I, who could speak no Portuguese, listened as 1 heard my fellow passengers talk of Sacco and Vanzetti. At Marcelino Ramos, a frontier town in the heart of the forest, a newspaper was found which had been brought from one of the coast cities. The men all read it eagerly. Then they passed it to me. They pointed to the headlines, "Sacco- Vanzetti," as if they would have an explanation. The next day we stopped at Cacequy. I doubt if there has been so picturesque and so primitive a frontier settle- ment since the time when our own West was being settled. Down a dirt read lined with blacksmith shops, bars, eat- ing houses, and a general store, we walked, following be- hind an oxcart filled with oranges. Brazilian cowboys, who had ridden in to meet the weekly train, stared at its pas- sengers and then went about their trading. A crowd gath- ered around a blind Negro who was playing the maxixe

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Oct. 5, 1927] The Nation 335 on his guitar. It was like being in a story land, so far, far away from modernity was this settlement. Finally we reached our eating place, a shed which had been converted into a dining room. We all sat around a long table to eat our beans and rice and drink mate. The man next to me asked if I were a North American. Like all Brazilians, he wanted to talk even though we had no common language. He had been to the cities, he made me understand. We laughingly tried to talk to each other about my country. I would name the cities; he would make a comment upon them. New York — his face beamed as with gestures he in- dicated its speed. Washington — he exclaimed with pleasure. Boston — the smile left his face. "Sacco-Vanzetti?" he asked. I could not answer his question. As we were going through the illimitable plains of Uruguay the next day I discovered there was a fellow countryman on the train, the first I had met on that week's journey, day and night, through Brazil. "Is it true that Sacco and Vanzetti are dead?" I asked. "No, they have been granted a stay of sentence, some new evidence or something like that," he answered. Then he queried: "You've just come down from the States. What about that case?" How was I to tell ! "Well, anyway, it's a fine old mess down here now. I've been over to Porto Alegre (the most important south- ern port city of Brazil) — had to go to see why we had a cancellation for a shipment of automobiles. Found out the fellow was getting in French cars when we thought we had him cinched. I asked him about it. 'It's this way,' he told me. 'Yours might be best — no, I haven't a complaint about them; satisfactory, but every time I think about that Sacco-Vanzetti business — ' " Upon arriving in Montevideo, Uruguay, and announc- ing my intention to go to the consulate for mail, protest was raised. "It's dangerous. There's a strike on. It's not safe to go there today. This town's a hotbed." Sacco-Vanzetti again. A sympathy strike of the Uru- guayans. Then in Buenos Aires, one horrible week before the night of the execution! Sacco-Vanzetti — could one never escape those words, the reproach, the arguments, the hard feeling they engendered everywhere? Was there no getting away from this? Our countrymen were embarrassed. "It is none of these Argentinos' business," they as- serted. They looked sheepish as one turned on them: "No. it is none of their business. I guess we're just getting a taste of how these Latins like our interference in what they think is none of our business." The Saturday before the execution there came a prized opportunity to talk to Dr. Alfredo Palacios, president of the Latin American Union, one of the most brilliant of the Argentines. I had gone to interview him, but he asked the first question: "Will Sacco and Vanzetti be saved?" "No one knows," I answered. Then I asked: "But if they die—" "Then it will take years for America to live down the hatred which will follow." I believed him Monday afternoon — the day of the sym- pathy strike in the Argentine — as I skirted the crowds which filled the plaza before the House of Congress. Five speakers at different sections of the plaza were holding the crowd. Squadrons of mounted police were stationed within hearing distance. Other police watched the crowd from their vantage point in the monument overlooking the plaza. And yet — no one was certain. There was only the newspaper bulletin. Flash after flash about this judge and that one. Finally there came the report that the defense had given up. Still, there might be a way to avert the trouble which the North Americans in the Argentine feared. We awoke shortly after midnight to know that no way had been found. That was why this crowd was going so desperately along the Avenida de Mayo. The men in it had cared enough to wait before the newspaper office until the verdict came. They had cared enough — bolshevists or what- ever else they might be called — to march slowly but not im- passively in a protest against the United States. But the Argentine Government was protecting the United States. Guards were there by the scores, their swords flashing as they rode along. A group of them were drawn up ready to ride should a signal come from the consulate, only a few blocks off the Avenida. We watched until the chill of the Argentine winter night drove us to our beds for warmth. Long we lay lis- tening to that marching, crying crowd in the street below. "It is our country they hate!" was all we had to say to each other. II. A Visit to the Men's Home Towns By K. M. RATCLIFFE TORREMAGGIORE is Sacco's birthplace; and here his father, sisters, brothers, and numerous relations still live. The father as a former mayor (podesta) of the city, is held in great respect, and doubtless his prestige is not lessened by the possession of a Fiat automobile. Torre- maggiore lies on a hill about four miles to the west of San Severo, in Apulia, and San Severo by rail is a good thirty- six hours by train from the western frontier of Italy. It was early in the morning of a hot August day that the dele- gate of the American Defense Committee left Turin, with her English companion [the writer]. This was one week before the Boston executions. The way lay across the plains of Piedmont and Lom- bardy. passing many cities Whose names beholden Fill men's eyes with light as of golden Days more fair than their flight was fleet. As an express message had been mailed from Turin, the pair were expected, and Sacco's brother was already on the platform with an interpreter, Angelo Carideo, a musician who comes and goes regularly between Italy and Boston. With affectionate concern the simple station caffe prepared a fresh brew of coffee and sent for the morning's milk. All the way this interest in the cause cilebre was accumulating. As the cart drove through the streets the morning markets lay on the curbs — piles of rosy tomatoes, beans, gourds of every size, shape, and color, peaches and grapes in abundance. Here and there the goats were being milked on the sidewalks. The party became even more conspicuous as it was transferred into the spacious Fiat and charged up the long white hill to Sacco's home town. By a miracle no casualty was incurred, not even in the lanes of Torremaggiore, where

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336 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3248 again the morning markets seemed in full swing. The kindly hosts were anxious to show all that was possible of their native town, and so by many detours the Sacco home was reached. From the moment of the visitors' arrival the coming and going never ceased. The circle of chairs in the large, lofty room was constantly added to. There were impetu- ously affectionate welcomes from the womenfolk and ap- preciative sympathetic greetings from the men. The crowd at the open doorway never dwindled, and that in spite of vigorous cuffs distributed repeatedly and at random by a spirited younger member of the group. One was grateful for something that softened the harrowing nature of the visit. The entrance of. the father was unforgettable. He is probably in the prime of life, a small, spare figure, refined features, dignified and courteous manner. But the suffering depicted in his eyes and recorded in the lines of his face had given a look of premature age that touched the heart. The American visitor produced her messages and with conscientious eagerness told the family how Nicolo had looked last June on the day of her farewell visit to the prison, how both had enjoyed the exercise with the Italian balls given them by friends, and much more that must have brought warmth and comfort to the listeners, who in turn read their message to the Pope and his Holiness's answer. While the interpretation of question and answer was going on, word was brought that the mayor would like to receive the visitors, and at once a group conducted them to the Palazzo Municipale. Here, in the Mayor's private room, the more technical points of the trial and its sequelae could be explained before a skilled member of the legal profession. The Mayor was a young, energetic man, evidently eilicient and markedly proud of the Mussolini regime so far as it had affected Torremaggiore. By this time the need for food had become clamorous and the members of the Anglo- American mission had reason to be grateful when after many calls of the mayoral telephone, marmalade, jam, and .sweet wafer biscuits were brought in for them, while one generous townsman, Silvio Palma, the second interpreter, surrendered his family's milk to the visitors, truly a gracious gesture. Never can the departure fade from memory. Descend- ing the white stone stairway to the sudden glimpse of a sea of heads, the walk from the City Hall to the car through a living lane of Nicolo Sacco's townsfolk, in their faces compassion welling up for his unhappy family; the fare- wells which only half hid the tears, and then, a broke away and they looked back for the last adieux, the deep regret that whatever else the visit had brought it could bring no hope. The same underlying hopelessness marked the visit to the Vanzetti home, which took place on the Monday of the week before the executions. Villafolleta is a village of about four thousand, to the southwest of Turin, not far from the foothills of the Cottian Alps. By delaying the start till noon the crowd of holiday-makers were avoided; this was the second day of Ferragosto, the Italian bank holiday, when all who can leave the hot, dusty cities for the hot, dusty countryside, for family reunions and the excitement of the chase. At every little wayside station some simple contadini had come to meet their visitors, and boys and girls were submitting to the double kiss inflicted at most continental greetings and partings. Villafolleta is only two or three hours by stopping train from Turin, but the journey seemed long as well as hot. Yet the object of the visit in its tragic nature annihilated physical dis- comfort. As the Quakers say, the travellers "had a con- cern," and everything else sank into insignificance. The mere question: "La casa del Signor Vanzetti?" was enough to draw attention to the visitors as they stood outside the station and make sure that, as the country cart jolted peace- fully along the mile of dusty road, and clattered into the broad pebble-paved street of "my micropolis," as Vanzetti himself called it, the other six travellers knew quite well why the two strangers should have been set down at this remote Italian village. Bartolomeo's home was the village wineshop. Two cardboard placards announced his merchandise: "Vendita di Vino al Ingrosso." "Aceto bianco e rosso." (Wines sold wholesale. Red and white vinegar.) The deputation passed out of the glare into the quiet of the tiny stone-flagged shop, where the lines of bottles were rigorously neat and regular. The same exquisite cleanliness and order were repeated in the adjoining room, whither Vanzetti's younger sister conducted her guests. It was small but lofty, its almost painful nakedness accentuat- ing the worn refinement of her face and the rich beauty of the only ornament, a wrought silver crucifix fastened to the bare wall. Signorina Vanzetti's face would have melted adamant. The neighbors told of her constant weeping, and indeed the sad dignity of the reception she accorded was that of a Mater Dolorosa. The handicap of no common language, felt so keenly on both sides, was in the end a means of grace. For from his adjacent home brown-eyed, glowing, young Pietro was quickly fetched, and proved the most delightful interpreter imaginable. His modest efficiency and unconscious youthful charm certainly helped to deaden the encounter with so huge a grief. The brother's letter was first delivered and then the representative of the Defense* Committee told all the happy personal details she had stored in her memory for solace, support, and comfort. A cousin brought in iced- syrup drinks, while appreciative letters from an earlier American caller were shown, and the photo of the con- demned brother with the faded roses sent from Paris at the time of Signorina Luisa's sailing for New York. It was all terribly moving. The younger sister's eyes begged for hope; hope there was none. But the garden had to be seen. The dusty courtyard was crossed, where the elderly father was tranquilly shelling cans; the group crossed the lane into the little sunny garden where the squashes with their pretty Italian names sprawled across the grass, where beans lay drying among mulberry and peach trees and figs beginning to ripen. A p, transparent brook was chattering past. How the un- happy man's memory must have lingered over the lovely details of his village home, perfect in its simple refinement and dignity. On the way back to the house the good father managed to tell in his broken English how he had been for several years in California in the fruit-canning business. It was nearly midnight before Turin was reached; it was testa and the train was more than an hour late rn starting. Cousin Caterina with her mother, Louise Caldera, had accompanied Pietro to the station, and the last view was of these dear affectionate Italians, for whom nothing was too much to show their sympathy with the family and their gratitude to the envoy.

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Oct. 5, 1927] The Nation 337 Some Mass Demonstrations By FREDA KIRCHWEY Heiligenblut, Austria, August 16 I. Berlin WITH others of our kind we walked across the Schloss- briicke, past the angry lions crouching at the monu- mental feet of Wilhelm I to guard the spoils of empire, through the stony courtyards of the Schloss itself, and out into the Lustgarten. The Sunday brightness fell on small groups of Berliners perched here and there on benches and on the edges of granite monuments. A few children ran about. Some boys and girls walked through with packs on their backs, home from a week-end in the country. The Lustgarten was no less dull and no less peaceful than any other small city park on a Sunday afternoon. Except for one fact: that police walked or stood or lounged at every corner. Behind the lions in the corners of the stone colon- nade, rifles were stacked in pyramids and policemen stood in groups beside them. Around the Schloss and in its echoing courtyards were more police — negligent and casual in manner, but with arms near at hand. Among the trees beyond the Dom, a squad marched along under the eye of an officer. Were these the Sunday habits of the Berlin police force? I thought of asking a cheerful young officer who leaned against a bronze horse and smoked a pipe. But before I could ask there came the sound of a band, and in a moment a line of marching men and women rounded the corner of the Schloss. A few of the men wore gray tunics with red arm-bands; most of them were in nondescript workmen's clothes. The women were bareheaded. Some small children trotted beside them. There were banners — red banners — and placards: "The Capitalists Are Preparing a New War Against Soviet Russia." "Join the Red Front for the War Against War." "Soviet Russia is the Mother- land of the Proletariat." And then other ideas, proclaimed rather as side issues: "Heraus mit Sacco and Vanzetti!" "Remember Our Fallen Comrades in Vienna." These marching workers looked few and weak, I thought, in spite of the martial clamor of the band. But the police showed signs of interest and attention ; and al- most immediately more drums were heard, more banners flamed, more gray tunics and red arm-bands appeared at the corner. Soon, like a tide flowing in around rocks and sheer cliffs, the gray workers of Berlin swept past the stony barrier of the Schloss, eddied around statues and benches, and gathered into vast pools, while more workers poured through the narrow openings. The Communist Party had called out the workers of Berlin on the anniversary of the Great War to protest against other wars in the making and especially to denounce the grouping of the Powers against Russia. And the work- ers were out. Active Communists, battalions of the Rote Front, working women, children, "youth" organizations. factory delegations, veterans of the war, all were united for a day in a wave of protest against the system that had driven them from war into starvation and threatened to drive them back into war again. They were of all ages, but a great number looked as if their childhood had passed in the hungry war years. They were thin and pale, but they knew how to march. They kept time and sang; the bands played gaily ; the speakers shouted defiance at a world in league against peace. They kept time and sang and for a few hours they flowed through and possessed that piece of ground that had been an emperor's garden, and with their swelling strength they made themselves and me believe that the workers might indeed unite to stop wars and overthrow outworn systems. But all the while they knew — and I knew — that enough guns were stacked in nearby corners to drown the great square in the blood of the workers of Berlin. "They're always pulling off these shows," said an American newspaperman. "The Social Democrats had an anti-war demonstration on August 1. I hear it was a fizzle." "I wouldn't call this one a fizzle," I said. "The papers say there were 125,000 workers out." "Yes," said the news- paperman, "the Communists pull off good ones. They all turn out — even the boys who vote Social-Democrat on elec- tion day. But it doesn't mean anything." "Why doesn't it?" I asked. "O, because they're always demonstrating," replied the newspaperman easily. II. Vienna But it meant something in Vienna. It meant, even on the face of it, the death of more than a hundred people, the destruction of fine buildings, the creation of a tangible atmosphere of fear and suspicion. Underneath it meant even more: it was a visible spasmodic shudder passing through a people who have suffered too long from misery and the pin-pricking of injustice. It was only a faint spasm — but it hesitated on the edge of a convulsion of re- volt and terror. It hesitated and then collapsed under an indiscriminate downpour of soft-nosed bullets. I reached Vienna on August 10. All over Europe, and in America, in ways sane and insane, people were protest- ing against the death of Sacco and Vanzetti, set for the fol- lowing day. But Vienna was quiet; you would have thought it unconcerned. I asked Herr Breitner, Socialist chief of the city's finance department, how the people felt about the threatened execution. "The feeling is very hitler against it among all classes," he said. "Even the bourgeois papers denounce it." "But there are no demonstrations," I said. "No, of course not now. Before July 15 surely there would have been great meetings. But now that sort of thing cannot be risked. The trouble in July came too close ... a little more and it would have been revolution." In Vienna, too, the workers were "always demonstrat- ing." Here the demonstrations were Socialist-led, encour- aged and directed by the militant Bauer. They have been used effectively as a fist shaken in the face of a reactionary Catholic government, and the workers have felt the exhilara- tion of power through direct action. In July it was ap- parently "just another demonstration" — spontaneous and, at the beginning, orderly and quiet. But flames sweep fast through ranks of marching men and women. The wild ges- tures of a few irresponsibles, the brutality of the police,

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338 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3248 these are enough to bring trouble when the marching ranks are hungry and hopeless to start with. Just a little more and it would have been revolution in Vienna; with a sure sequence of intervention and reaction to follow. III. IlEILIGENBLUT Mass demonstrations are of all sorts, and it is this that keeps the old guard in power. As long as the faiths of common men clash, the old guard is safe. Yesterday was Marientag— the festival of the Virgin. Before daylight the bells in the steeple of the church of Heiligenblut began a pleasant, dissonant clamor. At seven o'clock and from then on at short intervals through the morning a gun let out thunderous lumps of sound that crashed against the steep rocks across the valley and bounced back from wall to wall. Soon after breakfast the procession began. It came from the church. Slowly it moved down the road. It comprised surely ten times the population of this little village. The farms far up on the mountain meadows above us, farms in other valleys, must have emptied themselves into the church. They were all there, especially the women, though the hay lay on the fields and the sun shone. A band played cheerful marches in several keys. First came ihe youngest of the maidens with small wreaths of artificial white flowers on their heads. They marched soberly, their great awkward shoes clumping, their hands pressed together in attitudes of prayer. The older girls followed, dressed in their best hats with ribbons streaming. Their long skirts and fine silk aprons came down past the tops of their boots. They carried rosaries and murmured "Heilige Marias" while the band played. A few boys and men followed. The fortunate ones had laid off their Tyrolian breeches and feathered hats — worn even on Sunday for church — and had covered their knees with a clumsy version of store pants. Some carried banners. A group of sober middle-aged citizens held poles supporting a white canopy, embroidered in colors and gleaming gold. Under it were priests — not the parish priest, but important dignit: ries from a distance, dressed in fine embroidered vestments. And one among them carried the tiny vial con- taining the drop of holy blood brought here by the good Saint Briccius in the tenth century. Then came the women. Strong young mothers with babies in their arms; heavy women, clumsy with farm work; old bent women. Their flat hats had flowers embroidered under the brim and rib- bons falling from it; their aprons over full, long skirts were gay with stripes and flowered patterns. This was their day. the day dedicated to women and girls, so they marched in their best and said their prayers as they marched. But the faces of all except the young children in that long line were empty of all expression except one of heavy patience. They were earnest faces, brown and deeply cut by wind and the sharp sun. They were terrible faces, the faces of men and women who have spent all their years in a steady fight to draw life out of bare stony fields set up on edge against the sun. In no adult face was there a look of eagerness or humor or reflection. They were poor, bare souls making their mass demonstration to the suffering God who hung, even more stark and weatherworn than they, on the cross beside the road where they stopped to kneel in the dirt and chant their litany of hope. They kneeled in the dirt. The old, old woman who had walked bent half over on her cane carefully picked up her long silk apron and her dark skirt and kneeled on the broad red and white stripes of her petticoat. She led the prayers of all the women around her. Her voice was surprising — harsh and strong. "Heilige Maria," she chanted, and the chorus of women joined in the phrases of their faith. She looked like a stark symbol of battered, spent humanity, voicing fiercely a belief in some better life in another world, quite remote from the world of hard and shining hills that leaned above her. The band played and the mass demonstration of the workers of the mountain valleys got up from its knees and proceeded down the steep road, carrying with it the vessel of holy blood deposited here by miraculous means in the year 914 by the good Saint Briccius. Gladly, no doubt, they would have marched on to Vienna, if the need existed, to defend the faith against Socialists and atheists. For what is the duty of man but to support the Holy Church and to labor and suffer in patience, knowing that a heavenly reward awaits all but unbelievers and unrepentant sinners? And what is to become of this world if the forces of anti-Christ prevail and the Holy Church is delivered into the hands of her enemies? These grim and earnest workers, in simple faith, are on the side of the old guard. And it is hard, here in the mountains, to believe that the faith of the workers of Berlin and Vienna can soon prevail against them. In the Driftway VARIOUS good people, especially church people, in this Christian land of ours have for the last few years been voluble in their denunciation of any kind feelings the State Department may have had toward Turkey. They say that Turkey should never be recognized by the United States and they base their plea upon the fact that the Turks have mur- dered so many of our Christian brothers, the Armenians. NOW the Drifter holds no brief for a massacre, no matter who the victims may be, but he does feel that even a massacre may have extenuating causes. If the Armenian slaughters had as their sole reason the fact that the victims were Christians, the Drifter might more readily join the chorus of hate against Turkey and even insist that it should be outlawed by Mr. Kellogg and his Christian State Depart- ment. Even then it would be rather an illogical procedure. "Christian" nations have murdered a good many heathen in the last two thousand years, yet the Drifter has never heard of a heathen nation outlawing them on that account. * * * * * BUT the Drifter happens to have inside information on these Armenian massacres, and he feels much less bitter toward the Turks than he did in the days when he believed all that he was told by the history books and news- papers. For it appears that the real reason for these mas- sacres involves not a question of religion but of brass beds. The Turk, so the Drifter is assured by a historically-minded, humorous realist, has an inordinate desire for brass beds. But the Turk finds it difficult to gather together the price of the beautiful shiny bed of his desire. The craving in- creases. Now there is always one person in his vicinity who has money — and that is the nearest Armenian. So the Turk goes to the Armenian and asks for a loan. The Armenian is

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Oct. 5, 1927] The Nation 339 always ready to lend money, at sufficient interest. Every- body is happy. The Turk has his bed, the Armenian his interest. In time, however, the Armenian begins to worry about his principal. He asks for it, but in vain. He de- mands it, and still it is not paid. Finally, he commits the unforgivable sin. He goes to the Turk's house and carries away the brass bed. ***** THIS series of events is almost invariably followed by an Armenian massacre. But the Turk is not murder- ing Christians. He is murdering bill collectors. And at this point the Drifter certainly has sympathy for the Turk. Of course, it may easily be that the Turk, because all the bill collectors he knows are Christians, thinks that all Christians are bill collectors, but this confusion is widespread even among the best minds, so the Turk can hardly be blamed for falling into it. The Drifter Correspondence On Leaving Newspapers To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: I wonder if on leaving the World Mr. Broun felt as I did in leaving the dramatic department of a Boston newspaper after the dramatic editor had informed me that a Shubert mu- sical comedy came in ahead of Ethel Barrymore in the reviews, because the Shuberts paid more per year to our paper for ad- vertising than the Barrymore management. My father, a veteran newspaperman, started training me at eighteen to be a sob sister. I quit at twenty-four. I couldn't be that much of a hypocrite. Weirs, N. H., October 21 Zoe Leary Andrew Carnegie Said: To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: When Andrew Carnegie, on December 14, 1910, trans- mitted $10,000,000 to the Carnegie Peace Fund, he remarked, in the course of the letter of transmittal, that "the judge who presides over a cause in which he is interested dies in infamy if discovered." Could there be an apter summary of the prob- able future of one Webster Thayer, of Massachusetts? Wilton, Conn., September 16 Devere Allen Wayne B. Wheeler To the Editor of The Nation: SIR: You missed the mark in your editorial on Wayne B. Wheeler, in my judgment, when you wrote: "To his mind any means was justified that helped the good end — poison, sharp politics, perhaps even near-bribery." A great many of us refuse to believe this; nor can what you call "the moral failure of national prohibition" be ex- plained as easily as you infer. Keep up your good work of exposing some of the other moral failures of our generation but please be fair to one of the most unselfish men of our time! Berkeley, California, September 15 Stanley A. Hunter A Buddhist Source for Christian Legend ? To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: Through shortening of my notice of E. J. Thomas's "The Life of Buddha as Legend and History," published in The Nation for September 7, my meaning has been somewhat ob- scured. The place is in the next to last paragraph, where I speak of Mr. .Thomas's apparent aversion for the notion that a few Christian gospel legends may be derived from Buddhist sources. In my original manuscript I had mentioned, with some reference to detail, the legend of the Buddhist saint Asita, which is an excellent parallel to the Angel Chorus and Presen- tation to Simeon, with the Nunc Dimittis, in Luke 2:8-18, 25-35. I then went on to say, as in the published review, "To escape the possible conclusion that the Buddhist legend is the source of the Christian, Mr. Thomas goes to much effort to show it 'late' — one version of it surely is not — and by referring to details in which variants disagree make it appear no parallel at all." The omission of my mention of Saint Asita and the Christian legends in Luke 2, leaves the pronoun "it" (occurring three times) in the sentence I have just quoted without an indication of the specific legend to which it refers. In my original manuscript I had also pointed out, in this connection, the inexcusably inadequate bibliographical refer- ences Mr. Thomas gives on the subject of Buddhist and Christian borrowing. Philadelphia, Pa., September U W. Norman Brown Vilma Glucklich To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: The news from Vienna that Vilma Glucklich of Buda- pest died there suddenly on August 20 came as a shock to her friends. Her death is an irreparable loss to the international feminist and pacifist movement. Vilma Glucklich, professor at a high school in Budapest, came from a family of educators. She was already teaching when in 1895 the schools of philosophy and medicine at the University of Budapest were opened to women. Vilma Gluck- lich left her post and matriculated, as the first woman student, in mathematics and science. Like the multitude of persons mysteriously descended from the pioneers of the Mayflower, there is a whole generation of Ph.D.'s claiming to have sat next to Miss Glucklich during the four years of her university studies. Several years of teaching at a girls' high school in Fiume made her the idol of the Hungarian-Italian youth of that city. Changing to a post in a municipal school at Budapest she was singled out for leadership in the Hungarian feminist movement. From the start of the movement in 1904 to the day of her death she was president of the Hungarian Feminist League. Men and women of all classes followed Vilma Glucklich's leadership enthusiastically. The purity of her character, her crystal-clear intellect, and her high scientific achievements were combined with a puritan reserve. But under the calm surface her soul was burning with indignation at the stupid mismanage- ment of human affairs. Vilma Glucklich stood the fire-test of her convictions dur- ing the World War. The Feminist League, founded on pacifist principles, stood uncompromisingly against the war. Miss Glucklich refused to cooperate in civilian war work and, as professor in a municipal school, risked dismissal and worse. At the Woman's Peace Congress at the Hague in 1915 she joined those who demanded immediate peace. But the com- pelling force of her personality and the political weight of her organization saved her from trouble. Some months later the military authorities sentenced her and some other Hungarian pacifists to a few days in prison for carrying on a house-to- house propaganda for peace, but they feared to make a martyr of her. Peace meetings continued all over the country. When the opportunity offered in 1922, she left her work and her country to become, for three years, general secretary of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, of which Jane Addams is president. From her headquarters in Geneva, she directed the work of women of all continents who united in opposition to the rule of international violence. New York, S&i>tember 1 Rosika Schwimmer

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Books and Plavs Sacco and Vanzetti By KATHLEEN MILLAY Wake I am ashamed of weeping and of words, They are the little way For little woi To swagger for a while and find their ease; They are the empty way For frightened souls To clamor and be still. Dir^e It is too much to know a million men Can make no footprint on the bleeding world. It is too hard for humankind to learn A million million cries can but return Into the emptiness whence they were hurled — And wait a little while and cry again. El^y If in the past at times I have forgotten, If I have hoped the world was such a place That men might live and laugh beneath the sun And lay them down to rest when day was done — If in the past at times I have forgotten, Now nevermore again shall I forget. Ancient Arabia Ha-ndbuch do- altarabischen Altertumskunde. In Verbindung mit Geheimrat Fr. Hommel und Prof. Nik. Rhodokanakis. Hi' ausgegeben von Dr. Ditlef Nielsen. I Band: Die alta- rabische Kultur, mit 76 Abbildungen. Kopenhagen: Nyt Nordisk Forlag, Arnold Busck. THE Queen of Sheba need not be jealous of Semiramis. Like her, she once moved in majesty before the eyes of men, the representative of a vanished and forgotten civilization. She came from the ends (if the earth to see Solomon and all his glory, tried him with riddles, communed with him of all that was in her heart, and gave him incense, gold, and precious stones. Then, like her Assyrian sister, she was relegated to the shadowy realm of 1< Vow Semiramis has returned to the stage of history as a real queen sitting on her throne in 811-808 B.C., though she occupies a modest place among the hundred rulers of Assur, Calah, and Xineveh. Such miracles may be wrought where the spade is at work and inscribed bricks are turned up by the thousand. Arabia's past is also unfold- ing. While circumstances have not yet permitted excavations, thanks to the travels and labors of such men as Karsten Nie- buhr, Arnaud, Halevy, and Glaser, copies and squeezes of about seven thousand inscriptions on stone have been secured, our knowledge of the country has greatly increased, and a tenta- tive outline of its history for perhaps fifteen centuries before Mohammed is possible. In the light of what is known today it is not at all improbable that when Solomon was building- ships at Ezion-geber, on the Aelanitic gulf, an Arabian qu en, perchance a fair rebel in the northern colony of Sheba. set out on a neighborly visit to Jerusalem to talk over the political situation and, after the fashion of monarchs, to establish an entente cordiale against common enemies. What is of vastly more importance, the story of her people's life, their kings and parliaments, their social institutions, their agriculture, trade, and commerce, their palaces and temples, their religious concep- tions and practices, can now be roughly told. Nothing could give a better idea of the advance of our knowledge in this field through recent discoveries than the "Handbook of Arabian Antiquity" now appearing in German under the competent editorship of Dr. Ditlef Nielsen of Copen- hagen. When the extraordinary difficulties of the task are considered, the first volume, just out, must be regarded as a work of real distinction and great value. Students of the epi- graphic material will, of course, look forward with special interest to the texts, many of them still unpublished, the trans- lations, the commentaries, and the lexicon and grammar prom- ised for volumes II and III. But historians, sociologists, artists, and theologians will be grateful for the general orientation volume I provides. It is authoritative, amply documented, and excellently written. Dr. Nielsen begins with an admirable sketch of the material, how it has been obtained, where it is, and what it amounts to. He takes in not only the inscriptions from Ma'in, Saba. Kataban, and Hadhramaut. kingdoms known already to Eratosthenes and Strabo, but also the Linyanian and Thamudene around al-'Ula. the Safa'itic south of Damascus, and the recent Sinaitic, as well as the earlier Abyssinian. His teacher, Professor Hommel, with whom he studied many years at Munich, outlines the history of the South Arabian states. The chapter on Public Life in the Old South Arabian States, by Professor Rhodokanakis, is an extraordinarily valu- able contribution. Perhaps the most startling discovery is that parliamentary institutions existed, at least in Kataban. They consisted of a general assembly, meeting in the capital, in which the nobility and land owners of the various tribes were represented, excluding apparently only slaves and peons; and a council, made up of a limited number of nobles and prob- ably officials, who proclaimed the law in the name of the king. Both had administrative as well as legislative functions. One is reminded of the Carthaginian constitution, though Aristotle's account is none too clear. In the closing section. Dr. Nielsen treats at length the reli- gious life of ancient Arabia. In all parts of this country he finds a divine triad, father, mother, and son. the monn-god, the sun- goddess, and the boy Venus. The numerous other divine names are, at least originally, adjectives designating qualities of these three. II, Hah. al Ilahu. Allah is the great national lunar deity. Renan went too far in positing a primitive Semitic monotheism, but "the possibility cannot be denied that II once was what he later became, a spiritual, personal god, having ing to do with any nature cult." Ilahat, Allat, as well as al Uzza is the solar goddess. Athtar is Venus worshipped as ;■. god. Among the northern Semites, coming from Arabia, the sun (Shamash. Shemesh') became a god. and Venus (Ish- tar, Astarte) a goddess, because of changed social conditions. El. Eloah, Elohim remained a lunar god. and so also Yahu, Yahwe, symbolized by a bull, as in Arabia, before the connec- tion with the moon was severed through the prophetic move- ment. In Israel this movement derived strength from the sur- viving Arabian tendency to emphasize divine paternity and mi rcy in contrast to the dominant North Semitic conception ■ if man's relation to the deity as that of slave to master. In Arabia, Mohammed was more profoundly affected by native thought than by what little he knew of either Judaism or Chris- tianity. The simplicity and grandeur of this conception are im- pressive, and there is unquestionably a great deal of truth in it. Yet it is impossible to suppress some doubts and queries. Is it likely that all objects of divine worship were connected with the celestial luminaries? May not many of the adjectives refer to local numina? Were there no mountain, tree, and

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Oct. 5, 1927] The Nation 341 river gods, no chthonic divinities in Arabia? The El of Penuel was apparently a river god. Is it necessary to suppose that, before the Arabian II was associated with the moon, ho was "a spiritual, personal god"? Were there no survivals of earlier stages of religion, animistic and pre-animistic? Did really all the peoples classed as Semites come from Arabia? As regards the Semitic alphabet, its origin is pushed back to the middle of the second millennium B.C. This is justifiable, whatever the date of the Ahiram inscription may be or the significance of the Sinaitic graffiti. Format, paper, print, illustrations, and indexes are excellent. But there should have been, in addition to the routes of Niebuhr, Halevy, and Glaser, a general map of Arabia. Nathaniel Schmidt A Hungarian View of Diplomacy Bismarck, Andrdssy, and Their Successors. By Count Julius Andrassy. Houghton Mifflin Company. $6. WITH the exception of certain voluminous contributions like Conrad's "Aus Meiner Dienstzeit," the Austrians and Hungarians have been scarcely as prolific as the Germans in producing autobiographies and memoirs dealing with the pre- war diplomacy. Hence we may welcome this first instalment of a two-volume work by the son of one of the most famous of Hungarian statesmen since the union of 1867. The present volume deals with the period from 1870 to 1905, and the second will bring the story down through the war period. Count Andrassy takes the sensible view that a correct un- derstanding of the diplomatic history of Europe from 1870 to 1914 is the indispensable basis for the correction of the evils of contemporary European diplomacy and international rela- tions. In his two earlier books, which followed the outbreak of the war and the Treaty of Versailles respectively, he sharply criticized the alleged bellicose policy of Germany. Now, after reading the "Grosse Politik," he admits that: In the twenty-five volumes of the Transactions of the German Foreign Office that I have so far been able to ex- amine, there is not a single expression to lend color to the allegation of belligerent aims on the part of any German statesman — not a single remark which even an unfriendly reader could interpret as bellicose. There is little in the book which will be novel to those fa- miliar with Rachfahl, Brandenburg, and Hammann, but it is a moderate and highly interesting work, which takes on added importance from the distinction of the author and the fact of his personal knowledge of many of the episodes and personages dealt with. It is particularly illuminating on account of the estimates of personalities, of which the most complete is that of the Kaiser. He acknowledges the Kaiser's intellectual ability, his devotion to the prosperity and happiness of Germany, and his desire for European peace, but criticizes his international manners and diplomatic methods. Andrassy is highly critical of the Russians, though he recognizes the personal honesty and pacific intent of the Czar. By and large, the new Russian ments support his indictment. In general, his case against the Central Powers comes down to this: that Germany after Bismarck's time, for the most part, exhibited excellent diplomatic technique in a dubious policy, while Austria spoiled a good policy by maladroit diplomacy: If only Vienna had known how to use its inherently good policy more skilfully, if only Biilow had devoted his superior diplomacy and personal ability, coupled with the loftier prestige of Germany, to the cause of a better basal idea, the position of the Central Powers might have been far more favorable. This verdict is certainly correct in regard to German policy with respect to England and Russia. With respect to Morocco, however, exactly the reverse was true. Germany there bun- gled an excellent cause by stupid diplomacy. The chief mis- takes of Germany were her letting go of Russia in 1890; her failure to seize the psychological moment for an alliance with England, after having abandoned Russia in part to secure bet- ter relations with England; and the needless irritation of Eng- land by the specific methods and attitudes of Germany in the policy of creating her larger fleet. His criticism of Germany for failure to link up with England is sharp, for he holds that it was the greatest of the German diplomatic blunders and was what made possible the launching of the World War by France and Russia. He holds Holstein chiefly responsible here. In the main his view is correct, though he takes Eckhardstein slightly too seriously and fails to indicate adequately the failure of England to offer reciprocal advantages and obligations in return for what she demanded from Germany. Particularly accurate and cogent is his general estimate of German world policy as compared with that of the Entente and the United States. He contends that Germany was less culpable in fact, but seemed chiefly at fault because of her noise and bluster. In an eloquent passage Andrassy defends the thesis that there was nothing aggressive in Austro-Hungarian foreign policy after 1878, the sole ambition of this state being to pre- serve the status quo. This was not due to any unearthly no- bility of ideals or policy, but simply to the fact that such pro- cedure was to the interest of the Dual Monarchy. Disaster came to Austria-Hungary chiefly because she did not have enough weight in European affairs to exert a decisive influence, particularly in promoting Anglo-German concord, and because her diplomatic methods in the Balkans alienated those who might have been made friends by a more adroit procedure. Andrassy might have said more about the effect of Tisza's treatment of the Rumanians in the Dual Monarchy in alienating the Balkan peoples, but, in the large, it must be admitted that his estimate of the policies and methods of the Central Powers is remarkably accurate. We shall await with impatience his second volume, which will treat of an even more thrilling period. Harry Elmer Barnes Brain Child The Love Child. By Edith Olivier. The Viking Press. $1.50. \ T first glance "The Love Child" would seem to be one of A *• those child-birth-and-abortion books of which there are too many masquerading as realism in a suddenly sex-conscious America. Miss Olivier's little novel has a title that is provo- cative and wittily deceptive. For Clarissa, the love-child of Agatha Bodenham, spinster, might be more accurately de- scribed as a brain child, since she is a pure figment of Agatha's imagination. Agatha in her lonely inability to make any friends whatsoever creates Clarissa with such intellectual earnestness and passion that the child becomes real and em- barrasses Ik r creator by her physical presence. Agatha ex- plains to an inquisitive policeman that Clarissa is a love-child, an explanation which creates gossip hut not scandal, since no one can believe such an event in Agatha's blank life. Clarissa grows into an engaging neighborhood character, draws friends to the lonely Bodenham house, and eventually a lover, David. But at David's kiss Clarissa vanishes forever from physical reality — like Peter Pan, she can never grow up. And Agatha is left none too sanely lamenting. This remarkable tale is told with an utmost simplicity that gives credence to the incredible and with a gravity that points up the fantastic with humor. On the surface it is a literary hors d'ceuvre told with unfashionable and welcome tenderness. Underneath are discovered philosophical and Freudian implica- tions. "The Love Child" might illustrate fictionally Berkeley's intricate notion that nothing has existence outside of the mind, or it might be an aesthetic demonstration of the famous sup- pressed desire. And most happily of all it is not outside the realm of the fairy tale, a fairy tale however, like the might- have-been daughter in one of Barrie's plays, not quite innocent of tragedy and tears. Marie Luhrs

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342 The Nation [Vol. 125. No. 3248 The Science of Social Psychology An Introduction to Social Psychology. By L. L. Bernard. Henry Holt and Company. $4.50. PROFESSOR BERNARD'S volume will take its place among: the distinctive additions to the rapidly growing shelf of texts and guides in this engaging but not well-defined field. It, merits recognition by virtue of the author's command of his data and their coordination, his industry and skill, his directness and independence of approach and presentation. No student or reader can follow this compendium attentively with- out securing a profitable acquaintance with the problems, the concepts, the points of view, the data, the conclusions that con- stitute the sociological thought of the day. It may well become a preferred avenue for class-room and reference service. By reason of these not inconsiderable credits, the volume may be discussed in terms of the more fundamental service to be expected of "social psychology." What shall be the cre- dentials and province of that science? The question arises whether "social psychology" is the specialty of the psychologist who focuses upon the social phases of psychic behavior, or of the sociologist surveying the psychological foundations of his domain. Content and treatment will follow accordingly. At closer range we meet the same issue (or, as it hardly carries that measure of disagreement, the same alternative of emphasis or preference of exposition) in considering the phenomena common to the two disciplines either predominantly as trends of behavior, as psychic processes, or as their products character- istically institutional, but in so comprehensive a sense as to include customs, beliefs, organization, and the instruments of their continuity. The sociologist's point of view will conceive the project in terms of products, concrete working details, ma- terials, specifications, environmental conditioning; the psychol- ogist's bent will run to plans, styles, meanings, formulae, in- terpretations, the interplay of processes and their career. The one will consider what man does in terms of what he is; the other will trace the essential evidence of what he is in what he does. One must be careful not to overvalue definitions and demar- cations; there is no intention of either scientist to stake a claim and homestead the territory. The remark is apposite that sociology was founded by taking possession of the neutral territory where the contours of the other sciences failed to meet; yet the organization of that domain imposes the obliga- tion of a proper logical system of occupation. If he is an adherent of the one temper, the social psychologist will present those phases of psychology of most direct service to the socio- logist, just as the "educational psychologist" would serve the teacher, or the "medical psychologist" the prospective and prac- tising physician. If his alliance is in the other camp, the social psychologist will analyze and interpret human institutions as psychological data, for the psychology that in them lies, as a differently minded student would survey them for their eco- nomic bearing, and another for their moral aspects; for thus are economists and moralists specialized. It would lead to clarity and orderliness of exposition to have these purposes clearly in mind, however liberal and eclectic their application. Presumably an excellent and serviceable text could be pre- pared from either approach, so much more does value depend upon the skill of the expositor, his individual flair for the pur- suit; the success of the exploration is determined by the ex- plorer's capacity and insight more than by his choice of routes. So judged, Professor Bernard's volume, like many another, in- vites criticism. Two defects are conspicuous: the constant and detailed concern with definitions, concepts, triangulations, elab- orate preparations for a journey that is never consummated; and the equally constant occupation with the generic, the ab- stract, the principular to the consequent neglect of the concrete, the descriptive, the actual and factual realities, the clinical diag- nosis, without which (to change the figure) the portrait of social psychology is featureless. For one gathers, despite the shift of focus and lack of precision, that Professor Bernard is a sociologist who has delved into the psychological foundations of his science more deeply than many of his confreres, through the conviction shared by many that man the sociological re- agent can be understood only through the intricacies of the human psychological organism. He is so bent upon including every phase of a psychological determinism that the resulting composition is crowded and its meaning obscured; and since he has adopted this manner of perspective, the sociological can- vas, when he reaches it, is over-psychologized. A better "sociology" would have resulted if the author had made the psychological background more precise, and had made more concrete and prominent the sociological nature of homo psychologicvs. Professor Bernard is an environmentalist. That conviction determines his psychology and might bring him into a spirited controversy with those who assign a deeper deter- mining potency to the organic conditioning; it makes his treatment of temperament, disposition, sex, and race rather cavalier, and ascribes to human grafting and training a value in some directions exaggerated, in others distorted. In the confederation of the sciences the position of psy- chology is secure. The temptation is strong for the sociologist to capitalize the large psychological stock which he must carry to accredit the total conduct of his enterprise. If he leans too heavily upon the psychologist for his Fach-nuiterial, he may have a fear that his occupation will be curtailed; if he concerns himself too dominantly with human products, he may be tres- passing upon the domain of the anthropologist, or the econ- omist, or the moralist, or the religionist. Yet sociology cannot attempt to be all things to all men. Doubtless the day of sys- tem-building is of the past; but the ventures of Herbert Spen- cer, and, with greater pertinence and pioneering penetration, those of Lester F. Ward, still exemplify the ideal of a distinc- tive career which modern eclecticism has too largely forsaken. We still await the master sociologist to justify the conviction that he can lay the keystone in the arch of the science of humanity. JOSEPH Jastbow Buddha Once More The Life of Buddha, according to the legends of ancient India* By A. Ferdinand Herold. Translated from the French by Paul C. Blum. A. and C. Boni. ?3. /^~\F the three biographies of the Buddha that have appeared ^^ recently. M. Herold's. within the limitations of the sur- viving materials, is the most effective in accomplishing its avowed purpose.1 It is not meant, as are the others, to decide the historicity of the various legends preserved or to provide an exact rendering of the Buddha story according to the oldest established texts, but rather to extract the essence of Buddhist feeling about the Master and present it intelligibly and beauti- fully to Western minds. The result is wholly admirable. The key to an understanding of Buddhism lies in the story of Gotama, just as with Christianity it lies in the story of •lesus. The theme, as with the founder of any religion, is the evil of the present existence and the hard-to-find road to some- thing better: the quest of Siddhartha, god become man, his j!e and his victory, constitute life, entanglement, and release as ideally conceived by the Buddhist masses. The same legends were carved into enduring rock by Buddhist artists throughout most of Asia, but especially in the Gandhara region about two thousand years ago, and everywhere furnish the subject of the greater part of Buddhist art. Even those in- numerable statues of the Buddha that all seem alike to unin- formed eyes really represent a number of different moments in the great story. Such is its importance to the Buddhists. The narrative of M. Herold is not much interrupted with ' The other two biographies wove reviewed in The Nation for September

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Oct. 5, 1927] The Nation 343 doctrinal teaching. This seems to reflect the attitude of the Buddha himself, for his message appears to have been exceed- ingly simple. Discourses have been preserved in which he re- fuses to discuss difficult metaphysical problems, and it might have added another jewel to the crown of M. Herold's book if he had utilized one of them. Doctrine on abstruse points was not relevant to the solution of the great problem of religion. M. Herold's account is taken from ancient Buddhist texts, composed of inseparable fact and fiction, which he does not translate or reproduce in full, but re-renders with condensation, retelling, paraphrasing. This in itself would not be sufficient to make his book a work of art, but in addition he tells the tale with an unsurpassed choice of word and a corresponding simplicity of style that, matching the beauty and naivete of his originals, gives the spirit of the Buddha story as well as its substance. Such is the aim of every conscientious popularizer and interpreter, but only rarely is it achieved. W. Norman Brown Books in Brief How Red Is America? By Will Irwin. J. H. Sears and Com- pany. $1.50. The answer is "Not very." The American Legion and the alarmists may rest in peace. The Communist Party with its fringe of sympathizers number, according to the author's out- side guess, no more than 75,000. Add 3,000 anarchists and 16,000 I. W. W.'s and you have 95,000, or one-sixth of one per cent of the adult population of the United States. The other brand of "reds," who are really pale pink, the Socialists, are favored with a liberal estimate of 400,000, members and camp- followers together. All told, this dilutes 100% Americanism with three-fourths of one per cent of "redness." The "redicals," says Mr. Irwin, "are losing ground." He has figures to prove it. Why? In a few pages he traverses the entire American economic scene to show how improvements in the workers' lot, trade union capitalism, employee share holding, etc., along with Fords, radios, and bathtubs have made a difference. The au- thor may be right, but his method here is slipshod. When he asserts that millions own Standard Oil stock he ought to prove it and show whether the "millions" are workingmen. In an effort to be "jazzy" and interesting, scientific procedure has been sacrificed. The future? This chapter is a hodge-podge of everything which says nothing. Our halcyon days of pros- perity, to be sure, will end and there will follow distress and discontent, "the soil in which radicalism flourishes." But it will depend on Europe's recovery, on the rise of a "red Moses or Marx, on developments in Russia, on the relation between the Soviet government and the Communist Internationale, on the emergence of political trade unionism here, and on many other things, including a new cut in Karl Marx's whiskers." ( Mr. Irwin owes an apology to H. G. Wells for this.) The whole thing is a racy and elongated magazine article. China, and Foreign Powers: An Historical Review of Their Relations. By Frederick Whyte. Oxford University Press. $1. This little apologetic for British policy in China was pre- sented to the Institute for Pacific Relations at Honolulu by the Royal Institute of International Affairs, apparently as a model of British historical research. The careful reader may be in- trigued by the contrast between the two and a half lines which veil British advances in Tibet and the pages given to Russian moves in Mongolia. One gathers that the pro-Chinese orien- tation of the Washington Conference, including the denuncia- tion of the British-Japanese alliance, was of purely British inspiration, and that the British have no responsibility for their failure to keep their promise to return Weihaiwei to the Chinese; one learns that "in the present politically weak state of China the Consortium is almost the only remaining bulwark of her political integrity" and that the Reorganization Loan of 1913, which enabled Yuan Shih-kai to crush the republican movement, was part of British determination to "stand aside and leave China to work out her own salvation" — and that such is British policy today more than ever. The mind of a British "liberal imperialist" is a curious phenomenon. The Europa Year-Book, 1927. Edited by Michael Farbman, Ramsay Muir, and Hugh F. Spender. Harper and Brothers. $5. "An annual survey of economic and social conditions; a European directory and Who's Who in politics, trade, commerce, science, art, and literature," the editors call this book. It is, in fact, a sort of modernized "Statesman's Yearbook," less of- ficial, less governmental, more concerned with the economic problems which dominate the formal veneer of politics. The Art of History. By Prof. J. B. Black. F. S. Croft and Company. $2.50. The historical specialist of today considers his predecessors of the past as mere amateurs. Nevertheless, history has fallen from its high estate. The new scholarship has not produced works with a vitality that will hold the readers of future gen- erations. Professor Black attacks the problem by the case sys- tem. He analyzes four historians of the eighteenth century, Voltaire, Hume, Robertson, and Gibbon. He traces the elements of their success and in it finds a lesson for the modern historiog- rapher. Many inaccuracies can be pointed out in their work. Their criticism of sources was not thorough. Voltaire failed to carry out his books on the vast scale he planned. Hume was led astray by his didacticism. Gibbon very rarely got down to really primary sources. Robertson had very formal ideas about the dignity of history which stiffened his style. This illustrious quartette, however, were saved from the perils of too great specialization. "They applied the whole culture of the age in which they lived to what they did know of the past." Professor Black believes that history should cease to ape the exact sciences and regain its ancient footing among the muses. Insurance Trusts. A Manual for Attorneys and Life Under- writers. By C. Alison Scully. The Spectator Company. $3. A convenient digest of information concerning both the legal and the business aspects of a most interesting recent develop- ment in the field of trust service and life insurance. Dram; i Stone Walls Do Not rj^HE John Golden Theater, until recently given over on alter- * nate weeks to a portrayal of the difficulties of Ned McCobb's daughter and to an exposition of the ease with which a too lov- ing son may trip over the Silver Cord, now echoes nightly to the spit of an automatic and resounds with the familiar "Y-e-a-h? Now what d'yuh think about that?" ironically ut- tered by one of those ubiquitous plain-clothes men who — upon the stage at least — are always dropping in upon the enterprising burglar just at the moment when he is least anxious to receive visitors. This time Sullivan — known to his intimate enemies as "Sully" — is on the trail of a reformed gunman who un- fortunately forgets himself so far as to fling an old enemy off a roof-top, and in the end Sully marches off with his vic- tim not because the latter had not provided himself with a water-tight alibi, but because he has come to realize that he chooses that inward freedom which not even a prison can take away rather than submission to a mean little woman who knows his secret. The occasion of these proceedings is "Four Walls," a new melodrama written by Dana Burnet but touched up and directed by George Abbott, whom it has become the custom

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344 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3248 to call in whenever it is necessary that a rough-house shall be made thoroughly convincing and that the pistols shall not fail to go off. if you still like this sort of thing — and the incon- trovertible evidence of the box-office proves that a great many people still do— it is to be noted that "Four Walls" is one of the best of its kind. It is more careful than most pieces in a simi- lar style to build up a convincing atmosphere before the shoot- ing begins, and it is calculated to hold the nerves tense until the last curtain. There is, indeed, some evidence that the original author had at one time some idea of writing a drama of character before he yielded to the dangerous impulse to distribute pieces of what the thugs of melodrama euphemistically call "hardware" to the members of his dramatis personae, but thereafter he forgot his purpose in the excitement which they introduce. The hero, a thoughtful young Jewish boy, has succumbed to the influence of his environment, but when the curtain rises he has just returned home after five years in prison and he is still chewing the cud of reflection. Stone walls, he thinks, do not a prison make, and freedom lies within. It is from our passions, from the things which we want, that (pace a still more learned Jew) we forge the chains of our realest bondage, and it is in the realm of the intellect that we must seek for human freedom. "Four Walls" promises to trace the effect of this idea in the mind of a half-articulate East-Sider, and the final situation is intended to indicate the conclusion to which it brought him; but during most of the proceedings the purpose of the play is pretly thoroughly lost sight of. Now the "laws of the drama" exist for the most part only in the imagination of pedants and there are few of them which have not been triumphantly disobeyed by the breakers of tablets, but there is one which is well nigh inviolable and that is the one which rests upon the sound psychological princip^ that one cannot successfully play upon the mind and the nerves at the same time. Mr. Burnet cannot expect us to be inter- ested in Spinoza when pistols are being flashed upon the stage, for when someone is about to be shot it never makes, for the moment, very much difference why, in the idiom of this sort of play, he is going to be bumped off. When melodrama in at the door every other kind of drama flies out of the win- dow, and one must make one's choice. Many other authors be- fore the present one have fancied that they might make cere- bration more palatable to the general by relieving it from time to time I y something more exciting, but the plan never works because, if thoughtfulness seems pallid to some when it stands alone, it inevitably seems so to everybody when placed in juxta- position to things more immediately and superficially e\ When "thoughtful" melodrama succeeds it is always because it is melodrama, never because it is thoughtful, and such will be the ease in the present instance. "Four Walls" is both written and directed in such a way as to keep its melodramatic values intact and it will be popular, but it will be so because while its appeal to the nerves is never once forgotten its Spinoza remains a mere harmless excrescence. Seeking about for an ultimate absurdity and supposing that I had found it I once suggested that our dramatic cen- sors should see to it that, out of respect to the friendly nose, no revival of "The Mikado" was ever attempted here; but the censors always forestall by an actuality any extrava- gance of satiric imagination, and from the program of the current production I learn that in 1907 the English Lord Cham- berlain not only issued a ban against it on the ground that it might give offense to a Japanese prince then visiting in London, but stuck to it even after the prince in question had publicly declared that he would not be offended. 1 trust, how- ever, that no untimely visitor from the Orient will, in the present instance, interrupt the run of the joyous and well-nigh perfect revival of that opera which Winthrop Ames has pro- duced con a more at the Royale Theater. In New York we are accustomed to the lavish spending of money and Mr. Ames has not stinted himself in that direction, but we rarely scj productions upon which care and skill have been so generously expended. Not only is it rich both pictorially and musically, but the difficult job of coordinating the various elements, of seeing to it that the picturesqueness, the tunefulness, and the humor all get their due without interfering one with another, has been most adroitly accomplished. It is rich with effective business, it shows everywhere the presence of excellent taste, and it is, all in all, probably as satisfactory a performance cf the opera as has ever been given. "Ten Per Cent" (Cohan Theater) manages to extract a reasonable amount of amusement out of the adventures of two ambitious young theatrical producers with a Jewish "angel" who is equally anxious to satisfy his daughter by getting her on the stage and to satisfy himself by getting her safely mar- ried. "My Maryland" (Jolson's Theater) is another of the elaborate Shubert operettas with lusty marching choruses and impressive ensembles. Although "Revelry" (Theatre Masque) is said to take place "in the day beyond our day," every little schoolboy will recognize in it the story of the scandals and cor- ruption that shook the Harding Administration. Dramatized by Maurine Watkins from Samuel Hopkins Adams's novel, the play is a somewhat jerky melodrama which only at times be- comes impressive. Joseph Wood Krutch □ THEATER □ THEATRE GUILD ACTING CO. I SECOND MAN PTJTT D Thea- w- 52d St- Ev>- 8:4°- Thurs. & Sat., 2:40. □ DANCING D Sara Mildred Strauss THE CREATIVE DANCE! Do you know what it really i>? Do you know what it can do for you? Would you like to find one? Si nd for Illustrated Booklet. CLASSES FOR PROFESSIONAL, INTERMEDIATE AND BEGINNERS. STUDIO 825, CARNEGIE HALL Circle 1350. □ LECTURE G Coming Features in The Nation Americans We Like (Among others) FATHER JOHN A. RYAN By William Hard Dr. Ryan will give twelve lectures on Social Economics at the NEW SCHOOL FOR SOCIAL RESEARCH Beginning Saturday e% erring, October 1. 465 West 23d Street New York City ll'hrn writing to advertis mention The Nation

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Oct. 5, 1927] The Nation 345 I— OUTSTANDING BOOKS of the YEAR THE RISE OF AMERICAN CIVILIZATION By Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard Third Large Printing One of the great books of modern times — a book that critics everywhere have described as the "high-water mark of modern historic pres- entation in America" and "the ideal history for the layman." In two handsome, illustrated vol- umes of 1650 pages, boxed. $12.50 t Men of Destiny By Walter Lippmann Illustrated by Rollin Kirby Just Out A new view of the American Scene which "informs our national concerns; informs them with a sense of humor." Price $2.50; Auto- graphed edition $5.00 TRISTRAM By Edwin Arlington Robinson Now in the Fortieth Thousand The literary sensation of the year, because it is a "poem which, for beauty, for tech- nique, for passion, for dra- matic skill, is the equal at least of any great narrative poem in the English lan- guage." Cloth$1.50.Leather$3.00. This Believing World By Leu/is Browne Author of "Stranger Than Fiction" Tenth Large Printing Within a Year This story of the great religious systems of the world, told in a sparkling jour- nalistic style, is still a best seller a year after publication. It is recommended by Dr. George A. Dorsey, Will Durant and others as a fascinating book. $3.50 YOUR MONEY'S WORTH A Study in the Waste of the Consumer's Dollar By Stuart Chase, Author of "The Tragedy of Waste" and F. J. .V Mink In the Fiftieth Thousand "High pressure salesmanship has never had such a complete showing-up in all its falsity of economic principle. A book that should be in the hands of every Ultimate Consumer . . . One day's purchases made ac- cording to the book will save enough to pay for it and I guarantee you will have a good time for the money. At least I did." —New York E-vening Post. $2.00 Ijr The Macmillan Company « New York Ti OPEN SHELF GOOD CHEER, COMRADES! Want to buy, tell, or swap books, bronzes, old china, clocks, curios, etchings, lamps, paintings, prints, oriental rugst Bus, or Btroll to Daca's, 63 Washington Sq. So., N. Y. C. Books always 20 to 80% off. Open eve*. BOOKS All books (except text) sent post free anywhere at 15% discount from publishers' prices. List on request. ISRAEL SOIFER 1244 Clay Avenue New York City THAT BOOK YOU 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 Charing Cross Road. LONDON, FNGLAND SPECIALTY SHOPS DEAR FOLKS : My summer half price sale will last only a few weeks longer. Russian hand- embroidered linen smocks, dresses, shawls and blouses. Also copper wear, rugs, and many other novelties. MARITZA, 49 Christopher St.. N. Y. EARLY AMERICAN FURNITURE at 5 Christopher St. ANN-SELEY'S Sprine 2S10 New York City BARGAIN OFFERING $1.90 each. Circus Parade; Durant's Transition; Oil : Zelda Marsh ; Dream of Woman ; Death for Archbishop: Meanwhile: Good Woman: Great Bear: Something About Eve: Kitty: Mad Carews. Fol- lowing $1.55 each. Barberry Bush; More than Wife; Abie's Irish Rose; Jolna ; — Story of Philosophy. $:5.85 ; American Caravan. $3.95 ; Uncle Joe Can- non, $:!.95 ; Trader Horn, $3.15. 15 to 25 count all other new books postpaid. Visit our new retail store, 601 Madison Ave., at 57 Street. Rare books, importations, and publishers' remainders. Send mail orders to GERRY PASCAL LIEBERMAN. 246 Fifth Ave., or 601 Madison Ave. from The Inner Sanctum of SIMON and SCHUSTER Publither* . 37 West 57th Street . Neur York Believe it or not, Cross Word Puzzle Book Number Eight is published today, in response to cumulative and clamorous demand. Puzzle conditions: market fitra, demand stabilized, the Buranelli- Hartswick-Petherbridge books en- joying virtual monopoly (not through restraint of trade, but by natural selec- tion— on sheer merit). The first million copies were the hardest. j From the American Museum of Natural History, Martin Johnson, intrepid explorer and big-game hunter, writes: " 'Trader Horn' kept me up all last night — in fact it's tho best book of adventure I ever read." /AYAYAI Another big-game hunter writes: "'Trader Horn, is an extraordinarily novel and interesting record. The tale falls far outside ordinary human experience and is told superbly."— H. L. Mencken _ In the All-American best- seller sweepstakes, Trader Horn and The Story of Philosophy continue their private rivalry. We have just ordered another printing on the Durant entry. That brings The Story of Philosophy into the 167th thousand. Trader Horn, starting a year later, is now selling faster-about 4,000 a week, Lindbergh's We and Trader Horn are now the best of the best sellers, although Durant still holds the non-stop record. — Essandess KDl CATIONAL [Preparatory SCHOOL STATE BuANKBIDG • FIFTH AVENUE AT 1 1 * STREET Telephone VSlversity 5149 REGENTS: :COLLEGE ENTRANCE COMMERCIAL Pre-eminent in faculty — Strong in Equipment — A keen school for those who want good teaching — Co-Ed. Moderate Tuition Fees DAY and EVENING SESSIONS Catalogue upon request. INSTRUCTION in Piano, Harmony, Composition, Solomon Pimsleur. M.A. (Awarded Juillard Musical Fellowship in 1926.) Studio at 1205 Nel- son Ave., City. Tel. Jerome 4213. Rates $3.00 per hour. /CHILDREN WANTED: There u< room for a lim- V— ited number of boys and girls, ages 5-7, in a little country school near New York City where children may enjoy the benefits of a modern educa- tion without the over stimulation of the city. Board- ing and day pupils. THE LITTLE WHITE SCHOOLHOUSE, Valley College, N. V. Agnes de Lima. Director. EXCHANGE SERVICES FOR ROOM \^OUNG man will companion child (or children) evenings in exchange for room and slight re- muneration. Will teach art appreciation and prin- ciples of design. Experienced. High vices. 00, </! The Nati When writing to advertisers please mention The Nation

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International Relations Section Trotzky Answers Some Questions ON August 19 the delegation of American labor men and economic experts who recently visited the Soviet Union, interviewed Leon Trotzky, who answered a number of questions submitted to him by members of the delegation. A detailed account of the interview appeared in the Moscow Pravda of August 24 which accompanied Trotzky's answers with some remarks of its own. Trotzky's answers and the comments of the Pravda follow in part: Q. Would it bo correct to say that the Soviet state is a de- mocracy, or should it be said that this is a dictatorship of one class or of a part of that class — the Communist Party? A. It depends on what is understood by democracy. I agree that, from the point of view of the existing American democracy, the Soviet Union may be denied the right to call itself a democracy. But I reserve for myself the right to deny, from our point of view, that the United States constitutes a democracy. . . . The United States is ruled by the dictatorship of the most concentrated capital under the camouflage of the external forms of political democracy. . . . The Soviet system represents the dictatorship of the working class which has no interest in misleading anybody as to the character of its dic- tatorship. . . . Another essential difference ... is in the fact that, while the feudal lords and capitalists strive to perpetuate their rule, the Communist Party looks upon the dictatorship of the proletariat only as upon a temporary passing phase. The object of the revolutionary dictatorship is to create < society wherein there will he no need of state authority since it will be based on the solidarity of the producers liberated from exploitation and with all class barriers removed. Q. Why is there no freedom of the press and of speech? A. In order to answer this question we again have to agree as to what is understood by freedom of the press, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly. Everybody has the freedom to fly. But in order to exercise this freedom one must have an airplane. The workers in any democratic country may have the right to their own press, their meetings, etc. But for the press you must have printing plants and paper, and for meetings you must have halls and leisure time, and these things belong not to the workers but to the bourgeoisie. . . . For the workers of America freedom of the press means the freedom to buy for two cents one of those newspapers which are created by bour- geois journalists in the interests of the capitalists. . . . There is no such freedom in our country. . . . We have put these material instruments of the "freedom of the press" to serve the interests of educating the working classes and the people generally. Q. Is it not a fact that, under the Soviet regime, there may be a possibility of the people being dissatisfied and not having any means for the expression of its dissatisfaction? A. Of course, the possibility or the existence of dissatisfac- tion cannot be denied. As long as there is scarcity, as long as there are class differences — and all these things exist in our country — it is inevitable that there should be dissatisfaction. and this dissatisfaction is a force moving forward. Can it find expression? We maintain that, notwithstanding the shortcom- ings of the Soviet regime as it is at present, this system — through the agency of our Party — offers incomparably greater possibilities for the more complete and direct expression of the interests and feelings of the toiling mas ,es than the thoroughly artificial and deceptive system of bouregois democracy. . . . The Soviet state system, as opposed to bourgeois democrat-;, , offers the working masses incomparably greater possibilities of exert- ing their direct influence on the course of the national and social life. Q. What are the causes preventing the recognition of the Soviet Union by the Government of the United States and what should be done for the elimination of these causes? A. To this question, I should like to hear the answer of the esteemed guests. The basic obstacle, as I understand it, is i-ooted in the contradictory character of our social systems. The United States at present represents the most complete, the most perfected, and the most powerful expression of the capitalist sys- tem, and we represent the first experiment, the rough sketch, of a socialist system. . . . The basic obstacle cannot be removed since neither country is prepared to change its system volun- tarily. However . . . much might be done to improve relations. In the first place, it is necessary to explain that we are not as bad as we are thought in America. ... It is necessary, in particular, to explain that, although we are opposed to private ownership in principle, we heed existing facts, and when we conclude contracts with capitalists, we faithfully carry out our obligations. Why are we being accused of subversive propa- ganda? Because the capitalist governments cannot reconcile themselves to the fact that there exists a government which represents a non-capitalist mode of thinking. Take, for example, our present conversation. We are sit- ting here in a government institution. I have before me a list of about twenty questions, and almost every one of these ques- tions . . . might be construed as an attempt at the overthrow of the Soviet order. Nevertheless not one of our newspapers would think of accusing the esteemed guests of subversive propaganda against the Soviet regime. But imagine a delega- tion from the Soviet Union in one of the government institutions at Washington putting to one of the government officials of the United States similar queries and questioning the very bases of the American social and state order. You can see for your- self that it is impossible. I beg pardon if my words might be construed by somebody as a reproach for asking such ques- tions. ... I only want to show that if we should ask questions of this nature in regard to a capitalist state, they would in- variably be pictured as an attempt at subversive propaganda. Q. What are the tasks of the Soviet Government in the field of foreign policies? A. Our primary task is to maintain and preserve the peace. We think that this task we have in common with the laboring masses of all the world. . . . Our efforts to preserve the peac« are rooted in the very foundations of our order, which is a state of workers and peasants, and for us it is a law of social and cultural self-preservation. Q. Will the Soviet Union be in a position to overtake the advanced capitalist countries, and how soon? A. We are constantly advancing — that has been proven by facts. We have no doubt but that we can keep on advancing. That part of the national income which formerly had been diverted to the monarchy, the nobility, the bourgeoisie, can now be spent for the development of the productive forces and for raising the material and cultural level of the working masses. We have the great advantage of a centralized economic man- agement. . . . The distance which separates us from the ad- vanced capitalist countries is still very great. Our task is to lessen this distance systematically by the rational utilization of our own internal resources as well as of those additional resources which we may receive — of course, at the price of adequate compensation — from the world markets of capital and goods. But in order to answer the question as to when we may overtake the capitalist countries, it is also necessary to know what will happen to those countries in the meantime. ... At present the capitalist countries of Europe have attained the pre-war economic level. Simultaneously we see the recurrence of the struggle for markets and for the sources of raw ma-

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Oct. 5, 1927] The Nation Alfre Aloysi Horn jOidventurers Both! THERE arc two outstanding cur- rent books of which it can be literally said: "More exciting than fiction — and selling faster." They are Trailer Horn (in its 40th thou- sand) and The Story of Philosophy (in its 172nd thousand). The unprecedented popularity of both is a tribute to the wide- ranging intellectual curiosity of Americans, for Trader Horn records stark bodily adventurein the early days of African exploration — while The Story of Philosophy "humanizes" the world's great lovers of wisdom — an adventure for the mind. 347 'OUR training for social work will be enhanced in value by association with students from other parts of the world. Switzerland, Russia, Armenia, Japan, France, China, Poland, Germany, India, Scotland, Turkey, Siberia and Iceland \ % % are among the thirty-one countries represented in re- cent student bodies of the School. The New York School of Social Work JO I East Twcnty-tecotid Street New Yot{ Trader Horn, a best seller in both America and England. At all bookjtorts. $4.00. The Story of Phil- osophy— The I lves of the philosphers from Socrates toSancayana. Arallbcek~ Horn. $500. SIMON and SCHUSTER, Inc. 37 West 5 7th Street New York ^ '^ ■»» ■ ■■ HI I THE EVOLUTION OF MAN, by WilhelmBoelsche A clear, strong, simple nummary not oniy of Uarwin's theory but of the work of a generation of scientists alone the lines Darwin openec up. Just what u busy man wants to t:ive aim a bird'a-eye view of Evolution. Cloth, illustrated. 60 cents by mail. Catalog free. Charles H. Kerr & Co., 34? East Ohio St., Chicago, UJ. € fcate»Jleo^ie:lie ted A Church School for American Boy» preparing for AnMricam Colleges. Wholesome country life organized in a historic feudal cutl*. American standard* of hygiene and diet: yearly tuition Jl.200 Full sports program, including crew. Ths) Rt. Rev. Charles H. Brent. Bishop of Amene»u Church** in Europe, Chairman of Board of Trustees. Address: Dr. Conrad Chapman, Head Mssttr, OhaTeiui-'Nfwio. Neuvio-SBr-l'IslV. Dordogrnt'. France YOUNG WRITERS GROUPS COMMUNITY CHURCH 12 Park Avenue New York City FIVE COURSES in writing short stories, timely articles, children's books, scenarios, novels. Register now. Ashland 3180. GERTRUDE BREVOORT TUCKER, Director. POSITIONS WAMKi) "DEFINED, well educated woman, years of foreign -!■*- travel, desires position as companion. Box 48 1, Brooklyn, N. Y. TjROOF-READING, editing, writing on interior -L decorating, foods, medicine, wanted evenings by experienced woman; college graduate. Box 893, <"/< The Nation. "V7"OUNG woman, excellent pianist, good knowledge J- musical history and theory, literary, desires position, musical or otherwise, whole or part time. Box 897, % The Nation. CMITH COLLEGE M.A. in Social Science, ex- ►J perienced psychiatric social worker, desires position as a research assistant or scientific secre- tary. Is editing scientific production of European Psychiatarist but could make new connection at part or full time. Box 898, ', The Nation. A TASTER of Arts in Government and History ■"-I- seeks temporary or permanent employment. Would prefer academic or literary occupation ; other propositions will be considered. Highest scholas- tic and executive references. Box 895, % The Nation. ECONOMICS student will tutor individual or lead small discussion group. Box 896, % The Nation. KISKAKCH WORK UrASHINGTON, D. C. RESEARCH— Deiai search work done for writers, speakers, etc. Library of Congress and Govt. Depts. covered. Dorcy Cole, '.'20-lVlh St. N. W.. Washington. D. C. HEIjP wanted \\RITLR. farm bred, occupy cottage, five-acre VV woodland property, near Tarrytown. Writer- owner offers free rent for occasional help landscap- in Could later also pay some cash for scientific and literary assistance. Box 894, r, The Nation. itorsi: WANTED l I 'ANTED to rent: House in neighborhood of « » artists and writers ; not over one hour from New York; open country; about six rooms. Send photograph if possible. Box 899. c', of The Nation. Do you want best current fiction free? Address Dept. 11 THE NATION 20 Vesey St. New York Your Fall Problems If you want to rent a house or an apartment for the coming winter, or if you have one to rent — or sell, advertise in the classified section of The Nation, read by desirable landlords and tenants. Rates on applica- tion. Special three-time rate. Dept. F. P., The A at i on. When writing to advertisers please mention The Nation

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348 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3 ., that same struggle which, thirteen years ago, .hi imperialist war. The further growth of the produc- tive forces in capitalist countries will automatically lead toward a new war, and a new war will bring on a revolution, first of all in Europe (the United States will have a respite). On the whole I lie immediate future will be one of gigai an, I social upheavals. It is hard to foresee what technical and cultural level will be maintained in the capitalist countries. This one thing is certain: a victorious revolution in, let u Germany or England, and, moreover, in all of Europe in con- junction with our Soviet system and our natural resources would stimulate immensely the development of the productive forces both in our country, and in Germany, England, or the whole of Europe — on new socialistic bases. Such a events would also, naturally, accelerate the coming of the revo- lution in tin1 United States. Q. What is the most important achievement of Communism in the Soviet Union since 1921? A. We have reconstructed our industry and attained the pre-war volume of production. . . . For the first time in history socialism has proved by this that it is able to raise the produc- tive forces of the country. ... In connection with the question of the war danger I return to the question of the differences in our party. . . . First of all we would ask you to make this clear to yourself, that here we deal with differences within one party which has been welded together in all its previous h of struggle underground, by the battles during the November revolution, by the Civil War, by the socialist reconstruction, by internal iron discipline. It is hardly to be expected that these differences could lead toward such events as our enemies are counting or would like to count on. That which separates us is incomparably smaller than that which binds us. Some of the most hostile, most lying, and most muddled foreign newspapers have attempted to attach even war possibilities to the struggle within our party. Such calculations or hopes are basically false. . . . We have remained the same revolutionists as at the time when we raised the banner of revolt against the autocracy of the czars, against the bourgeoisie, against the war; and if our enemies think that since then we have become fat and lazy on our government positions they will be sorely disappointed. Q. Is not the day near when Soviet Russia will permit freedom of opinion in social life both for the workers and for all those who are not in agreement with the policies of the Government? A. We would immediately sign an obligation of this kind, if those present would sign a parallel obligation that our world enemies with the enormous material means at their disposal would not intervene in our internal life with the aim of aiding the exploiting classes to overthrow the Soviet regime and turn the country back upon the road to capitalism. . . . Humanity is divided into two main camps: the revolutionary proletariat and the imperialistic bourgeoisie. Everything that occupies a position in between these two joins in critical moments the one camp or the other. The struggle does not cease for a single day. It is not a matter of the abstract freedom of abstract opinions. The question is whether this country is to be a social- ist or a capitalist country. . . . Humanity divided by class an- tagonisms is not a debating society. In their struggle the classes resort to all means of persuasion and coercion. We are the pioneers of a new social order. Our enemies are incomparably more numerous. They are wealthier, better armed than we. They are watching erery step we make. . . . For the aims of their struggle against us our enemies need the so-called -demo- cratic liberties." We will not concede it. As before, we will defend by all means of persuasion and coercion at our disposal the dictatorship of the proletariat, which is the only road toward a new actually free human society. I., however, the present or absent friends will promise to eliminate the rule of the banks, trusts, armies, dreadnaughts, airplanes on land, on sea, and in the air, we will promise that same day to give full and unlimited freedom to all parties and ail factions. THE DEBATE 1)1 THE CEXTIRY BERTRAM) Dr. WILL RUSSELL Vs. DURANT English Philosopher Author of ist, Tub!: ry of Philosophy" SAYS YES SAYS .NO SUBJECT: Is Democracy a Failure? Saturday, October 22nd, 8.30 P.M. MECCA TEMPLE, 55th St. and 6th Ave. Tickets: $1.10, S1.65, $2.20, $2.75, $3.30 (including tax) SCALE OF TICKETS: ORCHESTRA 350 seats at $3.30 425 seats at 2.75 250 seats at 2.20 DRESS CIRCLE 150 seats at $2.75 900 seats at 2.20 275 seats at 1.65 BALCONY 400 seats at Si. 65 700 seats at 1.10 For sale h\ mail or at office i' Discussion Guild, Room 2 '■,. i i - r.te for inlor- c-c specimen ;-£gcs if «£|*&^l£) )-ou n:< ;icn this paper. When huyinf;. insist upon a ■•merriam Webster •• & C. MERRIAM COMPANY SPRINGIiELD. MASS. 1

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Oct. 5, 1927] The Nation 349 \ \ fez 1 f 1 KM | /F * F 3 £ LESS THAN ONE PER. CENT \ 1 '? '. V^SWi/UA- — ^^^-«.^^^— ^^-. ^^»iSKl/-«£S 66 An Advertisement of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company No one person owns as much as i% of the capital stock of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company. The company is owned by more than 420,000 people, with stockholders in every section of the United States. It, in turn, owns 91% of the common stock of the oper- ating companies of the Bell System which give telephone service in every state in the Union, making a national service nationally owned. The men and women owners of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company are the largest single body of stockholders in the world and they represent every vital activity in the na- tion's life, from laborer and unskilled worker to wealthy and influential executive. Although the telephone was one of the greatest in ven tions of an age of large fortunes, no one ever made a great fortune from it — in fact, there are not any "telephone fortunes." The Bell Tele- phone System is owned by the American people. It is operated in the interest ol the telephone users. OPEN ALL YEAR! AS-ER LODGE! ABOVE CROTON-ON-HUnsoN A congenial home atmosphere in the picturesqueWestchester Blue Mountains. Large airy rooms with modern facili- ties. Billiard, library, tennis, rowing and fishing'. Wholesome food — like mother used 1 ke. hour from the city with com- mi ting facilities. Reasonable rates! \N Kit CAMPUS AND LODGE FURNACE! WOOD ROAD, PEBKSKILL, N. Y. Tel., Peekskill 1403 ; Mjoy these Fall Days at TOPSTONE FARM Among the hills and woods of Connecticut, now taking on autumnal color; tramp over sumach-covered pasture lots, or down cjuiet ids, loaf in the sun I h art's content, anil eat good tastj your vacation when the > best. Only l'-j hours from New York. "\VeR 5 {EXT stchester. thirty from New York, house suitable for writer or p ofessionn! furnished, for year, one hundred and thirty- five dollars monthly. Write Box 892, '' , The Nation. REDECORATED Studio at 191 West 10th St. Near subway. 2 large rooms, hath, kitchenette. Brick fireplaces. No; thorn skylight den. $125. Also small at $80. Tel. Walker TWO iiuiot cultured \ ccupying modern apartment. 82nd St.. off Central Par!. West, will rent large sunny room, ' n1 i ntrance. References. Phone Trafalgar 1032, evenings and Sundays. FA1RHOPE. ALABAMA, i n Mobile Baj mi furnished heated at. Four sunny rooms. Elecric light gressive school. Box 3"S. UNUSUALLY sunny attractive front bed sitting room for gentleman. Permanent. All modern conveniences. Near subway, bus. It' fined family. References exchanged. 517 West 113th St., Apt 33. Tel"-. bono > location. In sin";-' tax colony. Near pro- Pc Olfice When writing to advertisers please mention The N

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350 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3248 Trotzky Corrected The Pravda, speaking for the Communist Party, made corrections to some of the answers, as follows: On the question whether the Soviet state is a democracy: To the question put by the members of the American delega- tion in this form, Comrade Trotzky has not given the correct Leninist answer. Instead of emphasizing the fact that the Soviet state represents a proletarian democracy, which is a higher form as compared with the bourgeois democracy, Com- rade Trotzky missed the class conception of democracy and substituted for it the incorrect contrasting of "democracy in general" and "dictatorship in general" which is contained in the formulation of the question by the delegates. As a result, Comrade Trotzky reduced the whole question of democracy to the "camouflage" which is needed for the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie but is not needed for the dictatorship of the prole- tariat, thus failing to emphasize the proletarian democracy which is the basis of the proletarian dictatorship and overlook- ing a historical fact of the greatest importance: the unprece- dented development of democracy under the Soviet regime. In answering the question . . . whether the day is not near when Soviet Russia will permit the freedom of opinion in public life both for the workers as well as for all those who are not in agreement with the policies of the Government . . . Comrade Trotzky essentially dwelt only on the question of the bourgeois parties. He entirely left without a reply the allega- tion that there is no "freedom of opinion" for workers. . . . We think that an acquaintance with the facts of Soviet reality will convince the members of the delegation that the allegation that there is no freedom of opinion for workers in the USSR is false and slanderous. In our country more than sixty mil- lion of the toiling population over eighteen years of age, ir- respective of race, sex or nationality, enjoy the right >f voting. During the last election campaign more than 50 per cent of this number actively participated in electing the members of the Soviets. ... In our country elections mean the personal participation of the voters in the meetings where the reports of the work of the Soviets are heard and discussed . . . and the candidacies of the persons running for soviet posts are dis- cussed and decided upon. More than thirty million workers and peasants exercised this right during the last campaign when the now-functioning Soviets had been elected. The num- ber of active participants in the elections is growing from year to year. Not a single bourgeois country can boast of that much. ... It is true there is no freedom of opinion for bourgeois and anti-proletarian parties the aim of which is to overthrow the rule of the working class and to restore capital- ism. But this fact has nothing to do with the freedom of opin- ion for workers. It is for this reason that ours is a proletarian and not a bourgeois democracy, a democracy for the poor and not for the rich, for the workers and toiling masses of the city and country and not for the capitalists and landlords. Comrade Trotzky stated that in the Soviet Union . . . "dissatisfaction is a force moving forward. . . ." In that general form in which the assertion was made ("while there are class differences," "dissatisfaction is inevitable" — this ap- parently refers to the dissatisfaction of classes) it is true in regard only to capitalist countries where the class dissatisfac- tion of the working masses is a revolutionary force "moving forward. ..." In a country where the power is in the hands of the proletariat, class dissatisfaction is shown in the first place by the bourgeoisie. . . . This counter-revolutionary dis- satisfaction can in no way be recognized from the viewpoint of the proletariat as a "force moving forward." and this is what may be inferred from Comrade Trotzy's statement. We consider entirely incorrect the answer given by Com- rade Trotzky to the question whether the Soviet Union is in a position to overtake the advanced capitalist countries. . . . There are fields in which we have overtaken the capitalist countries long since (the soviet system as a form of proletarian dictatorship and as a higher type of democracy; the successes of the socialist economic method which subjects the public econ- omy as a whole to the interests of the proletariat and the toiling masses). . . . Supposing that the question of the American delegation referred only to the technical achieve- ments of the Soviet industry . . . we can overtake the cap- italist world in this field also under the condition that our development will not be obstructed by intervention on the part of foreign imperialists. This success is guaranteed by the ad- vantages of socialist management and economic planning. Contributors to This Issue Norman Hapgood is the author of several books, including "Industry and Progress" and "The Advancing Hour." Louis Francis Budenz is the managing editor of Labor Age. Ruth Crawford made an extensive trip through South America last summer. K. M. Ratcliffe, wife of S. K. Ratcliffe, English journal- ist, went to Italy with Gertrude Winslow as delegate of the American Sacco-Vanzetti Defense Committee. Freda Kirchwey is managing editor of The Xation. Kathleen Millay is to publish a volume of poems this fall. Nathaniel Schmidt is professor of Semetic languages and oriental history at Cornell University. Harry Elmer Barnes is the author of "The Genesis of the World War." Joseph Jastrow is to lecture on psychology this year at the New School for Social Research. W. Norman Brown is professor of Sanskrit at the Uni- versity of Pennsylvania. "See Rassia lor your- self." TOUR EXTRAORDINARY to Soviet Russia to witness the GALA FESTIVALS of the TENTH ANNI- VERSARY of the Russian Revolution You Must Act Immediately A FEW RESERVATIONS still open on the "Carmania" sailing from New York October 14th, 1927 to LONDON— LENINGRAD— MOSCOW ENTIRE COST ONLY $600 VISA REQUIREMENTS MET BY WORLD TOURISTS, Inc. 69 Fifth Ave., New York Algonquin 6900 "The greatest Achievement in History." When writing te> advertisers please mention The Nation

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The Nation FOUNDED 1865 Vol. CXXV NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 12, 1927 No. 3249 Contents EDITORIAL PARAGRAPHS 351 EDITORIALS : The Navy and Army Waste 354 Literature and Tradition 355 The Courtship of Chiang 355 Faster Atlantic Liners ? 356 CARTOON. By Hendrik Willem van Loon 357 IT SEEMS TO HEYWOOD BROUN 358 THE FEDERAL RESERVE FIGHT. By Elisha M. Friedman 359 AMERICANS WE LIKE: GEORGIA O'KEEFFE. By Frances O'Brien 361 IN THE DRIFTWAY. By the Drifter 362 CORRESPONDENCE 363 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS SECTION : The Citizen Abroad. By Edwin M. Borchard 365 SOME NOTABLE FALL BOOKS 367 FALL BOOK SECTION MUCKRAKER TACTICS. By Heywood Broun 375 A SURVEY OF THE SEASON'S BOOKS. By- Mark Van Doren 376 PAUL VALERY AND THE INTELLECTUALIST CRITICS. By Joseph Wood Krutch 377 SONG. By Marie de L. Welch 378 THE OUTLINING OF KNOWLEDGE. By John Haynes Holmes and Mortimer J. Adler 379 BOOKS: First Glance. By Mark Van Doren 382 "Al." By Oswald Garrison Villard 384 The Life of Joseph Conrad. By H. L. Mencken 384 A Call for a Commentator. By Carl Van Doren 386 Young America. By Herbert Gorman 386 "America." By William MacDonald 388 The Pathos of Distance. By Joseph Wood Krutch 390 Three Thousand Years of Civilization. By William Linn Wester- mann 390 Upton Sinclair. By W. E. Woodward 392 Among the Arabs: Traveller and Tourist. By William Seagle 394 Strangely American. By Clifton P. Fadiman 396 Law and War. By Norman Thomas 396 Master of Marine. By John Macy 398 Genghis Khan. By R. F. Dibble 401 Books in Brief 402 MUSIC : Music and Its Re-creation. By B. H. Haggin 405 DRAMA : Oyez, Oyez, Oyez. By Joseph Wood Krutch 406 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 HEYWOOD BROUN 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. THE NATION is on file in most public and college libraries and is indexed in the Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature. LUCKY STRIKE CIGARETTES are, as we all know, "toasted." Many of us have also read, in the adver- tisements, that 6,000 doctors recommend them. Unless this paragraph discourages Lord & Thomas and Logan, ad- vertising agents for "Luckies," we may soon learn that dentists also urge their use. At any rate, some thousands of dentists have received from this firm of counsellors on public relations a carton of one hundred Lucky Strikes, free of charge. With them went a letter stating that "a good many dentists are recommending Lucky Strikes," a ready- stamped envelope, and a questionnaire card, as follows: 1. In your judgment {where proper care is taken of the teeth, including scientific cleaning at regular intervals) does smoking tend to inhibit the progress of dental decay? 2. Do you think {from scientific deduction or from your own experience with Lucky Strike cigarettes) that the toasting process used in the manufacture of Lucky Strike cigarettes serves to remove all harshness and conse- quently to make them non-irritating to the sensitive mu- cuous membrane of the mouth and gums? Name State Street City The letter adds: We certainly have no purpose to publish any testi- monials and our reputation for integrity must be your as- surance that your identity will be preserved in confidence by us, and that your name will not at any time be pub- lished. With this assurance of anonymity doubtless many dentists signed on the dotted line and smoked their hundred Luckies with serene assurance that they were thereby inhibiting dental if not moral decay. We submit it as a sample of modern scientific advertising methods. RUTH MCCORMICK is another American we like. She chooses to run for Congressman-at-large in Illinois against the henchmen of Governor Len Small; and we bet on her to win. She happens to be a daughter of Mark Hanna and the widow of the late Senator Medill McCor- mick, but fortunately she is not running for office as a widow. The sentimental appeal of the widow for her hus- band's office seems to have become a settled part of the blah of American politics, but there is no respect for women in it. The politicians do not renominate the widows after one mournful term, and if they do the voters do not elect them. The whole tradition belongs to the same school of newspaper thought which greeted with surprise the an- nouncement of a Cornell scientist that women's brains could be as large as men's and treated it as first-page news. Mrs. McCormick belongs to another school. She has in Illinois an organization of Republican women voters which is one of the few politically effective organizations of women in the United States— and it is her own creation. She asks for votes not in order to commemorate her hus- band but in order to smash a corrupt politician, and she has a demonstrated personal ability to offer as a substitute. She seems in a fair way to prove what the many estimable women who have sat in Congress and in governors' chairs have not yet done — that a woman can beat men at their own game of politics. AL" SMITH and his managers persuaded the New York State Democratic convention not to indorse him for President now because they thought that in the long run it might hurt the campaign to nominate him. And the Republican bosses persuaded their equally well-managed convention not to indorse Charles Evans Hughes because they were afraid they might want to change their minds later. Neither party dared peep about prohibition, although the delegates probably discussed it among themselves even more than they discussed Presidential possibilities. These conventions are an instructive comment upon the apathy the voters showed in the previous week's primaries. Why shouldn't they be apathetic, when the bosses are so afraid

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352 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3249 of an issue or a man or of any clean-cut, honest statement on a controversial question? Philadelphia voters trooped to the polls to nominate Boss Vare's white-washing crew, and even the prospect of an independent campaign in the regular election, with a nonpartisan-ticket campaigning for common honesty, does not seem to alarm Pennsylvania's Senator-elect. Only in Rochester, New York, did indepen- dent voting prevail, and there it was supported and heavily financed by George Eastman, the millionaire manufacturer, who in his seventies has turned from kodaks and big-game- hunting to city management and municipal reform. LITTLE TEDDY ROOSEVELT is unlucky. His plans to blow himself along his father's trail seem doomed always to go awry. His wild abuse of "Al" Smith at the Republican State Convention missed fire even on the day of its utterance, and now proves a boomerang. "A man must be judged by the company he keeps," said Roosevelt. "Next to being corrupt yourself is tolerating it in your support- ers." Two days later a nonpartisan committee of high dis- tinction, headed by Dr. Haven Emerson, made public a long and detailed report charging a whole series of acts of malfeasance against Mrs. Florence Knapp, former New York State Secretary of State, who was young Roosevelt's associate on the 1924 Republican ticket. George K. Morris, Republican State chairman, is also heavily tarred by the exposure. "A man must be judged by the company he keeps." Quite so. K ASH FROM THE KLANSMEN" has long been the war-cry of Ku Klux Klan officials, and now that the Klan is engaged in exposing itself, particularly in Pennsyl- vania, we learn from affidavits signed by Kleagles and Kla- liffs that Imperial Wizard Hiram W. Evans has pocketed a considerable portion of the half billion dollars that has been raised by Klan memberships and other fees during the past few years. The Imperial Klan, which evidently means Evans, has a neat system of mulcting the gullible: first by gaining new members and charging them an initia- tion fee of ten dollars and subsequent fees in proportion, second by revoking charters of Klan locals and appropriat- ing the funds in their treasuries. From time to time busi- ness has been slow, new members have been hard to find, and in circumstances such as these the real business acumen of Evans and his associates has come to the fore. It was a simple matter to instigate a riot, to manufacture a lynch- ing, to stage a kidnaping, in order to make it seem that American womanhood and white race supremacy wore in danger. This the Klan did; one of its most successful riots — according to the charges now being investigated — took place at Carnegie, Pennsylvania, in 1923. There one Klans- man was killed and many wounded, which resulted in 25,000 new members at ten dollars a head. We cannot work up much sympathy for the 25,000 victims of this swindle; but it is devoutly to be hoped that they will learn not only how not to be swindled out of their money, but how not to be gulled by false patriotism and race hatred. THE BOYS AND GIRLS of Gary, Indiana, have gone far to make us doubt our favorite doctrine that youth is always right. In Indiana youth may, on the contrary, be in the Ku Klux Klan. Nearly 1.200 students walked out of the Emerson High School in Gary in protest against the presence in the school of nineteen Negroes. For a time the authorities stood firm: if the boys and girls of Gary were ready to forego their high-school education for the sake of bigotry and prejudice, at least there were the Negroes willing to be taught. But the strike went on, and the authorities faltered. The strike committee conferred with the mayor, and together they drew up a petition to the City Council. In response to this petition the Council has appropriated §15,000 for a temporary school building to accommodate the Negro students, and the white students have generously consented to attend classes on the follow- ing terms : Three Negroes who are seniors and have at- tended the school for several years may remain and finish their studies; three others are to be transferred to another high school with a large Negro enrolment; the rest will apparently wait for the new $15,000 school. Three Negro members of the City Council voted against the appropria- tion for this school ; in order to shove the measure through the Council abrogated its own rule requiring a three- quarter majority vote on any emergency measure. Ulti- mately a "million-dollar all-Negro school" is promised. When that is built, Gary will doubtless feel it has wholly sustained the principles of liberty, equality, and fraternity. Meanwhile, wouldn't it be well to change the name of the Emerson High School to something more appropriate — such as the Hiram Wesley Evans School for Protestant Evangeli- cal Nordics? SOMETIMES MILITARY MEN are astute and then again one might call them almost subtle. The Round-Up, for example, a paper which expresses the jour- nalistic ambitions of New Mexico State College students, prints the following alluring invitation : Advanced R. O. T. C. pays. Whether you juniors be- lieve in military training or not, if you are in need of money you had better take the course. The compensation is nine dollars a month. Besides this, a thirty-six-dollar uniform is given to the advanced student. . . . Some claim that the summer camp is a disadvantage. True they get only sev- enty cents a day. with board, room, and clothing; but most of them make considerable from the transportation appro- priation, which is five cents a mile. This nine-dollars-a-month bait may work well enough in New Mexico, but obviously the sons of bankers and success- ful soap manufacturers who attend Yale demand more. Ac- cordingly the military department in New Haven maintains a stable of polo ponies for the artillery students, and thirty-six-dollar uniforms are replaced by snappy tailor- made officers' outfits. The Yale Daily News presents the further sagacious argument: "Why learn to be a soldier?" [it says] is a perfectly natural question that comes into the mind of a Freshman when he is debating whether or not he should take R. O. T. C. . . . If he is serious about the matter he may feel that four years training in the field artillery would benefit him little in a bond selling career. . . . Letting alone the desire of the government to build up an organized reserve, there remains the fact that this military training gives a man one of the finest preparations for a profession or business that can be found at Yale. INDUSTRIAL STRIFE in America seems to have reached a stage wherein the main participants are the federal courts and organized labor, the employers politely with- drawing into the background. The most recent example is the injunction granted by federal Judge Schoonmaker

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Oct. 12, 1927] The Nation 353 against picketing by the Pittsburgh miners. More serious in principle, however, is the injunction handed down by federal Judge W. I. Grubb in New York against the Journey- men Stone Cutters' Association of North America. The 5,000 members of the stone-cutters' union are enjoined from their customary practice of refusing to work on non-union stone imported into the metropolitan district. Such a de- cision destroys the trade-union principle of never working on "scab" material. A similar issue arose last June in the fight of the Bedford Stone Company of Indiana upon the Journeymen Stone Cutters' Association. The United States Supreme Court there decided that the refusal of union men to work on material cut by non-union labor constituted a "conspiracy in restraint of interstate commerce," Justice Brandeis dissenting in an opinion which stated that "the propriety of the union's conduct can hardly be doubted by one who believes in the organization of labor." Newspaper reports hail the New York injunction as "a great victory for the government." To us such a "victory," virtually crippling organized labor, seems a disaster. HINDENBURG IS EIGHTY, president of the German Republic, and a mighty warrior. There is something in the massive figure of the dour old man that commands respect and excites enthusiasm. His lieutenant, Ludendorff, stumbles in a bog of race prejudice and party politics; others of his fellow-generals eat out their days in lonely recollection; Hindenburg alone has succeeded in maintain- ing himself above party yet indisputably contemporaneous. He was the demigod of the Kaiser's Germany, yet he sur- vived the shattering of idols in the days that followed the armistice. When Wilhelm fled to Holland and Ludendorff escaped in disguise, Hindenburg remained. After his fashion he has adapted himself to the republic and accepted the new regime. One may disagree with his philosophy and doubt the wisdom of his speeches, but one knows that his acts arise out of something far beyond personal ambition or party scheming. He represents and expresses German nationalism, German patriotism, at its dangerous best, and it is fitting and natural that in these dull aftermath-days the German crowds should find an outlet for their long repression in celebrating his birthday. WHO IS JOHN COOLIDGE? To what public office has he been elected or appointed? All we know about John is that he is a student in Amherst College and hap- pens to be a son of the President of the United States. And yet we read that he has arrived in Amherst for his senior year "accompanied by a young secret-service man." In the name of Beelzebub, why? We heard first of this secret- service man last year and hoped by now that he had been returned to some legitimate work— or is there such an army of these men that no legitimate work can be found for them all? We can't think of a shadow of a reason why John should need a watchdog or, if he does, why Calvin Coolidge shouldn't pay for it out of his own pocket as any other father would. Are we to wind up by charg- ing the American people for a nurse for Calvin Coolidge's fourth cousin's baby girl Gwendolen or a veterinary for his wife's great aunt's pet poodle Trixie? HP HE ANNOUNCEMENT of the plans for the second i season of the Civic Repertory Theater signalizes the success of one of the most remarkable theatrical enterprises undertaken in New York City. Miss Le Gallienne's com- pany based its appeal upon nothing except interesting plays well produced. Housed in an old and remote theater on Fourteenth Street and surrounded by no smart or fash- ionable atmosphere, it attracted an audience generally said by theatrical managers to be non-existent — an audience, that is to say, which preferred serious plays seriously pro- duced to any of the extraneous attractions of Broadway. Miss Le Gallienne held, moreover, more consistently to the repertory idea than any other New York organization has done in many years. Not only did she produce and keep alive a number of plays during a whole season, but she will carry six of them over into the present winter. Despite the gloomy prophecies amid which she began, her organization bids fair to become one of the most firmly established as well as one of the most interesting in New York. STEFAN GEORGE is the first German writer to re- ceive the Goethe Prize of 10,000 marks, offered by the Common Council of Frankfurt-am-Main for work best rep- resenting in modern times the spirit and dignity of the author who made Frankfurt immortal in his "Dichtung und Wahrheit." As long as there must be literary awards, and apparently they increase in number around the world, this seems to us one of the more justifiable kinds. To be sure, it tends to obscure the recipient by placing another name than his in the foreground, and by lending him a kind of historical identity. But it emphasizes that prin- ciple of continuity which informs any vital literature, and if it is intelligently administered year by year — which of course there is always a chance it will not be — it need not provoke thoughts of the dead hand which the past is sup- posed to hold ever ready to descend upon living artists. No really living writer ever got along without the past — or the present either. It is only to be hoped that the administra- tors of the Goethe Prize continue to interpret this truth with imagination and courage. NEWS COMES from London of the recent and sudden death in London of Walter Fuller. He was, during the years of his work in this country, inevitably connected with every valiant intellectual impulse and enterprise. First with the World Tomorrow and later with the Freeman, he added to his functions as editor a creative touch very like magic, bringing life and humor and individuality to dull men and prosy articles. In 1917 when Morris Hillquit polled 145,000 votes for mayor of New York, Walter Fuller flung a rare sort of political imagination into the dust of the campaign. He saw possibilities other men missed; he in- vented jokes, he created situations. Wherever he was, new meanings sprang out of commonplace situations. Our liberal cause lost much when he went back to England, his home. His work there has been varied; but for some time before his death he was editor of the Radio Times, organ of the great official British Broadcasting Company. A Lon- don dispatch to the Manchester Guardian says of him: He was one of the first English journalists to realise the importance of wireless for education and entertainment, and in the radio world there was no more vivacious and resourceful worker. . . The opportunities of radio stimu- lated and absorbed him. He overflowed with ideas for the educational programs, in which department for a time his work lay, and he made a very competent and effective job of the Radio Times.

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354 The Nation [Vol. 125. No. 3249 The Navy and Army Waste REAR ADMIRAL MAGRUDER has rendered a service to the navy and the government to entitle him to a D S M if only he has hit hard enough to compel the Navy Department, or better Congress, to act. The waste and extravagance of which he complains in the Saturday Eve- ning Post have always been inseparable from our naval and military administrations. There has never been a time in our knowledge when an efficient civilian administra- tor like Owen D. Young could not have gone into either department and saved millions upon millions of dollars provided he were given a free hand by the politicians and t'<e ruling cliques in the Navy and War Departments. For this situation it is only fair to say that the Navy and Army officers are only partly to blame. The responsibility is even more that of Congress and the Executive. Next to the Post Office the Navy Department has always received the worst Cabinet deals from the several Presidents. While the Post Office has been used as a roosting-place for the professional politician who successfully steered the cam- paign of the incumbent of the White House, the Navy De- partment has been decorated with a succession of misfits, lawyers, society favorites like George Von L. Meyer, in- competents like Denby (whom the Supreme Court of the United States has declared highly censurable), or unhappy bunglers like the present secretary, who was taken off the Supreme Court of California to put his foot into it when- ever he could, by public utterances such as his cruel cas- tigation of two of the lost Pacific flyers for sending an S.O.S. signal before they were actually dead. The greatest scandal of the navy has, however, been the maintenance of the navy yards by the politicians. Rear Admiral Magruder points out that there are seven navy yards doing the work that three or four could accomplish. From the beginning of the republic this scandal has been goinfe, on and nobody has ever been able to stop it. New yards have constantly been built like those at Charleston, S. C, and Port Royal and Bremerton, Washington, for purely political reasons, just as during the nineties any Senator could get from Congress a brick barracks for his pet city. Thus Senator Proctor of Vermont obtained an appropria- tion for a cavalry post near Burlington, climatically one of the worst places in the United States for mounted troops— on the excuse that we had to watch the Canadian borderl- and Senator Carter of Montana worked a bill through to give him a regimental station at Helena, Montana, which has no military value whatever. When the Democrats were in, the Southern yards profited; when the Republicans con- trol the Treasury, the Northern and Western navy yards flourish. In one of these yards the only vessel repaired during the last fiscal year was a tug. Now Admiral Magruder points out that the Navy's high officers have realized the folly of this but have con- sidered themselves powerless to abandon the useless navy yards because of pressure from politicians. The Admiral rightly points out that this is no pxcuse; that they could refuse to send ships and men to the needless yards, and at least make some saving in that way. From end to end of the naval service he points out extravagances and incred- ible waste. An airplane carrier about to go into commis- sion is to have sixty-two typewriters, and presumably that number of clerks to keep the typewriters going! He shows that the cost of the Navy has risen since 1908 from $82,- 000,000 to $300,000,000, for which he says the United States gets a $200,000,000 navy. We should lower that latter figure a good deal, but we entirely agree with the Ad- miral when he says that "the truth is that they are spend- ing money like hell and getting little for it." We believe that if a general could be found with the courage of a Colonel Mitchell to tell the truth about the rest of the army as Admiral Magruder has told it about the navy, there would be a similar showing of hundreds of millions of dol- lars wasted. Here are some of the facts which Admiral Magruder has brought out : The number of officers has risen from 2,204 in 1908 to 8,574 in 1925, although this covers the period since the Washington Disarmament Conference, after which we put an end to our battleship-building and destroyed thousands of tons of seagoing vessels. In the same time the number of men has risen from 38,500 to 82,000, and the pay of the navy from $24,000,000 to $124,- 500,000. Meanwhile, and this is highly significant, the number of officers on duty in Washington has risen from 146 to 519 — that is where the lobbying is done, where the fortunate inside clique which rules by favoritism, toadying, politics, and petticoats has its seat ; where one falls over needless admirals. There are now fifty-five active rear- admirals, for whom of course there do not exist the neces- sary commands, so that one vice-admiral now commands a light cruiser and six destroyers, and another four fuel- supply and repair ships and five tugs! Fifteen admirals took part in the maneuvers in 1926, although there was no fleet to warrant such an overhead of commanders. The truth is that the fleet was never de- mobilized after the World War, and that the navy itself has continued the utterly extravagant methods introduced during the war, when the motto in all the departments of the government was "hang the expense." It is over-organ- ized afloat and ashore; it keeps useless ships in commission and good ships out of commission; it is honeycombed with inefficiency, waste, extravagance, and red tape. The naval officers cannot free themselves from the responsibility for this. If the General Board would devote itself to problems like this instead of scheming to get larger appropriations out of Congress and planning for coming wars with Japan and Great Britain, we should get reforms in plenty, worth- while economies, and a more efficient fleet. But they like the present situation because it means more fuss and feathers, more rank, more display, more influence, more quarterdecks to parade, more projection of their person- alities upon the screen of our political and official life. Secretary Wilbur has been wise not to yield to the clamor for a court martial for Admiral Magruder's "traitor- ous" articles. But his order that the Admiral work out a plan for the entire reorganization of the navy is both tricky and puerile. The Admiral has outlined any number of reforms in his article; if Secretary Wilbur should act on them he would win the thanks of the country, make him- self a respectable figure in the Cabinet, and find enough to do for the rest of his term in office to keep him from chiding desperate aviators for calling for help.

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Oct. 12, 1927] The Nation 355 Literature and Tradition NO one who looks over lists of books announced by pub- lishers these days can help being struck by the num- ber of reprints he finds there. It is not merely that the classics are being rendered popularly available at a rate hitherto unknown. That process, after all, is well over a hundred years old, and was quite familiar to the Victorian reader. As we have our Everyman's Library and our World's Classics, he had his Morley's Universal Library and his Cassell's National Library; and if it is of Greek and Roman works that one is thinking, there was Bohn's Clas- sical Library long before the Loeb Classical Library was dreamed of. We refer rather to the demand for old books off the beaten path — old books, it may be, merely because they are old books. The last few years have seen an aston- ishing development in the business of type facsimiles — that is, volumes reproducing as perfectly as possible the appearance and flavor of, say, a first edition of Gray or Collins of Akenside or Shenstone or George Herbert or Henry Vaughan or Michael Drayton. And it would seem in general that all past literature, British and otherwise, is being ransacked for unique, reprintable items. It is fashionable, if one can afford it, to be a subscriber to the Dove or the Nonesuch or the Golden Cockerell press. This can mean a variety of things. It can mean sim- ply that in an age of many books there is an audience for the antiquarian as well as for the new. Many of the re- prints at any rate are so attractive to the hand and eye that they may be said to have the value of any beautiful object whatever. Or it can be made to mean that a novel form of decadence has beset us — that, losing the blind urge which drives creative artists in the healthiest periods of production, we have become tired of creation and have be- gun to sit back easily in the cool company of ancestors who knew nothing of our problems, and who, though they had problems of their own, did once for all settle them. T. S. Eliot's recent complaint that British fiction more and more loses contact with current realities may, then, have a con- nection with the circumstance that the advertising columns of the London Times literary supplement are regularly emblazoned with descriptions of exquisite revivals of half- forgotten works; or with the fact that the Oxford Univer- sity Press has come to many readers to stand fur expensive editions more than anything else. In the United States the movement started a little later than it did in England; but here too we have our "libraries" and "bookshelves" con- ceived in the interest of the American literary past. Here also the charge is brought that the creative impulse which freshened our letters a decade or more ago has at last been spent. But it may not be necessary to use the word "deca- dence" in this connection. There is still another explanation of the tendency we have been describing. Into some of the best criticism of the last few years has been creeping the word "tradition" — a word very much frowned upon in the heyday of our "renaissance," and a word, to be sure, which only the ablest critics ever seem able to use without making fools of themselves. It was folly, for instance, that inspired the enemies of free verse to attack it some years ago merely because it was new; or that moved some of the deans of American letters to shudder in print at the nov- elties achieved by our subtlest story-tellers. There is today. however, a school of critics who appeal to tradition in a fashion that is worthy of respectful attention. T. S. Eliot, who consistently attacks the generation of Shaw and Wells, does so because in his opinion that generation cared noth- ing for the discipline without which art is seldom achieved. It was generous and loose and free, he says, and perhaps magnificent in its impulses. But it sacrificed the letter to the spirit; whereas, insists Mr. Eliot, "the spirit killeth and the letter giveth life." An understanding of this ap- parent parodox — perhaps it is a paradox only to those old- fashioned folk who believe in the perfectibility of man — would involve an understanding of the whole intellectualist movement which Mr. Eliot represents both for England and for America. And it would help anyone to understand fur- ther why the sternest critics we have — and the most in- sistent upon contemporaneity — are most aware of the im- portance of all that has happened to literature in the past. The current realities which Mr. Eliot cannot find in cur- rent fiction are the realities of a new life, a new society, a new psychology which the utopianism, the optimism of our now aging prophets somehow fail to control. Mr. Eliot and his school may be very wrong — may be only read- ing their own special thoughts into the intellectual struc- ture of the age. But there they are, and they need their literary ancestors about them as they work. The Courtship of Chiang CHIANG KAI-SHEK, having resigned as generalissimo of the Chinese Nationalist armies, has engaged in a more congenial campaign. He is suing for the hand of Mei-ling Soong, Wellesley, '15. Miss Soong, the cables re- port— and who would doubt a cable from China? — is will- ing; but her sister, Mrs. Sun Yat-sen, graduate of Georgia Wesleyan, and her brother, T. V. Soong, Harvard '15, and her brother-in-law, Sun Fo, once of Columbia University, and her other brother-in-law, H. H. Kung, erstwhile of Ober- lin College, object. They have all been associated with the Hankow Government, against which Chiang fought; and they seem to believe that in China, as in dynastic Europe, marriages should continue to partake of the color of politics. Yet Chiang has gone to Japan to win the consent of Mrs. Soong, and doubtless the spectacle of the ardent gen- eral reverently traveling abroad to seek a parent's permis- sion will soften the heart even of a mother of Harvard, Wellesley, and Georgia Wesleyan graduates. Chiang has been too conservative in politics to suit the men of Hankow; but in marriage he goes the limit of modernism. He has divorced his first wife — which is more than Dr. Sun did before he married the beautiful lady who is now in exile in Moscow; he has freed his concubines, which is action unusual in a Chinese general; and he lias taken the utterly unprecedented step of appearing publicly as a suitor before he has been accepted. It is many a century since a Chinese leader has appeared in a role so humiliating to the male — and it is a sign that along with China's other revolutions has gone a revolution in the status of woman. Chiang Kai-shek is close to forty, and his only foreign schooling was in Japan, where marriage customs are as con- servative as in China; oddly, it is the foreign-trained young men and women of the Soong, Kung, and Sun tribes who are objecting to a marriage based solely upon the love of the two parties principally concerned. Every foreign-trained

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356 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3249 young man or woman in China has faced the same dilemma. Should they marry as their hearts bade them, according to the code learned in the West, or let their parents pick their mates, according to the immemorial custom of China? Many a girl student has flung herself into the rivers of China when family pressure put an end to a college romance. More than one of the young leaders best known abroad bears the wounds of the struggle that ended when he decided that his usefulness in China would be finished if he did not obey his parents' wishes. A Chinese statesman, well known in Europe as a cultured modern, recently sent an intermedi- ary to propose marriage to a girl whom he had met at a foreigner's home, saying that he could not lose face by appearing in person until he was certain of success. Many stories are told in China of the courtship of Feng Yu-hsiang, the "Christian general." This much at least is f-ict: Feng wanted a "modern" woman as his second wife, and was impressed by stories of the talents of a Y. W. C. A. secretary. He sought to make her acquaintance, but she, faithful to old codes, refused, and it was by a ruse that he succeeded in meeting her at the home of a foreign mission- ary. And it was only after he had made a whole series of pledges of conduct different from that customary in a Chinese husband that he won his present bride. Feng's wife was a graduate of Yenching, an American mission college; but Mei-ling Soong passed years in the United States. She knows the West; she has contributed good verse to American periodicals; she can be as tart- tongued as any Yankee flapper; and the generalissimo Chiang can hardly have been the first to ask her mother's permission. Her Georgia-trained sister had much to do with Dr. Sun's success in his later years; it will be inter- esting to see whether a Wellesley wife, unorthodoxly wooed, can coach Chiang Kai-shek back to leadership in China. Faster Atlantic Liners? AGAIN the project for a faster transatlantic service has been mooted. This time the proposal is for a four- day crossing from Montauk Point to Plymouth or Havre. The 20,000-ton turbine ships are to have a speed of be- tween 30 and 35 knots. More than that, departures are to be daily from each side, for which reason the fleet is to comprise no less than ten vessels. They are to be quad- ruple-screw, with accommodation for 400 passengers in modest staterooms, and room for only 500 tons of first- class freight. The turbines are to develop no less than 100,000 to 130,000 horse power, the steam being sup- plied by twelve boilers. The ships are to carry airplanes for the use of passengers who wish still further to shorten the time of the voyage when the weather permits. The names of some well-known steamship men are mentioned in connection with the proposal, among them that of Mr. H. B. Walker, president of the American Steamship Owners' Association. While it is not yet clear that the money for the enterprise has been found, it is hinted that the Penn- sylvania Railroad may be interested by reason of its own- ership of the Long Island Railroad, which would carry all the freight, passengers, and mails from the ships to New York City and vice versa. It will take a great deal of backing to make us believe in the feasibility of this particular scheme. We have long been of the belief that the time of crossing the Atlantic should be cut and have thought of the possibility of two fast ships to make the trip in four and one-half days, leav- ing New York early Friday evening and arriving at Plymouth Tuesday morning. There is nothing impossible in this. The speedy Mauretania on her last voyage to New York left Cherbourg at 6 P. M. Saturday and was at her American pier by 10 P. M. Thursday evening — within one hour and a half of the transatlantic record made by her — yet she is twenty years old and a veteran of the World War. Four more knots of speed and the trick could be done, and the Mauretania carries not less than 1,000 tons of freight and 550 first-class passengers — even more when crowded. Such experimental vessels as we have suggested could be run as extra-fare boats, precisely like the limited trains (such as the Twentieth Century) which are amaz- ingly profitable for the railroads which operate them. Our objections to the Long Island scheme are that daily sailings are unnecessary and, at present, financially impossible. Every extra knot of speed costs enormously. Some money could be saved if all the costly accommodations could be banished, such as the de luxe staterooms, the gym- nasiums, swimming pools, tea-gardens, orchestras, etc. — all unnecessary extravagances for a four-and-a-half-day voyage. Indeed, the architect of the ships, Ernest H. Rigg, is clearly of the opinion that the cabins should be as simple as Pullman compartments. But even with this saving the cost of speed remains very high, and we cannot see a daily service running except at a dead loss during the bad winter months. Moreover, one must admit that no four- or four-and-a-half-day ship can keep her schedule in bad weather. She must slow down to avoid plunging in heavy seas, with the terrific strain upon her engines, to speak not at all of the comfort of her passengers. Again, it would take more than ten vessels to keep up a daily service, yet leave a reasonable rest for crews and a margin for accidents and delays. Finally we cannot wax enthusiastic over Montauk Point as a terminal. New London has a superb harbor and a fine State pier, and is hardly an hour's further steaming. The New Haven Railraod can run fast boat-trains better than the Long Island. Besides, New London is half way from New York to Boston. Trains could leave at once for Canada and all New England points. If there is to be an American Southampton or Plymouth let it be New London. Fast vessels are a luxury because of their heavy winter losses — which is a chief reason why the lines are so eager to charter their big vessels for winter cruises. It is also the reason why a company which operates a Leviathan or an He de France must surround those vessels with a fleet of economical, slow-running vessels with low coal or oil bills. Yet, as we have said, we should like to see the experiment tried with 20,000-ton rather than 50,000-ton vessels. There will be greater discomfort from vibration and motion in the smaller size — the 40-knot destroyer is indubitably the worst vessel to go to sea in; but, in the years that have elapsed since the Mauretania made her world's record, engineering has progressed and so has the stabilization of ships. The United States has grown vastly more important to Europe during those years, and Europe to us. The transatlantic mail service could and ought to be improved as to speed and will pay for itself if it does cross in faster time. The Zeppelin and airplane-mail ser- vices still lie far in the future. Faster steamers are possible. Let us have them.

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Oct. 12, 1927] The Nation 357 Yesterday your correspondent interviewed a Prominent Ameri- can now making certain eco- nomic studies along the Boule- vards of Paris. This patriot declared himself disgusted with recent French victories in the field of sport. "This will never do," he said. "We can't afford to let a frog gel the best of an honest Ameri- can. And it is up to Con- gress— "to vindicate the honor of old Clory as it has done in other fields during these last fifty years. "Look nere< wose Frenchmen used to beat us at dress-making. Very well, we passed a /<"» which put 80 per cent on all French dresses. "Those silly Swiss yodlers used to mal(e better watches than we do. Very well. We put a duly of 90 per cent on all Swiss watches and saved the reputa- tion of the American clock in- dustry. "The Wops made better cars than we did. So we put a tax of 95 per cent on all Eyetalian cars and gave our own machines the victory. All cames will BEqim FQ^Ty - LOVE. TO "ME DM ADVANTAGE. OF THE. FOREIGN COfMPETlTOH "Then there were the Dutch. Our bulb lobby told Congress that Dutch tulips were full of dangerous bugs. We legislated them out of existence and our own tulips are triumphant. "And it was a cinch to put such a duty upon English cloth that our own mills won their well-l(nown victory. And so in the future why not apply a little tariff commonsense to in- ternational sport?"

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358 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3249 h SOMEBODY in Kansas said that a man who took a high- hall was as much a public enemy as one who threw a bomb. This is not as silly as it sounds. Drinking has always been a form of protest. It lias, however, the ad- vantage of being effective and dignified. As a progressive 1 may express myself by shouting for Mr. McAdoo or for gin. I much prefer gin. People who are entirely satisfied with the present state of the world have a right to be bone-dry. All others should drink to excess. It seems, so the anecdote goes, tnat there were two reformers. "Why are you drunk?" said the one called Osbert. "Why are you sober?" patly answered the one called Mike. The right to get tight belongs with the right to as- semble, to petition, and to speak freely. Sooner or later there will be a recognition in this country of the fact that the wet-and-dry problem is an issue between radicals and conservatives. At the present time you may find reac- tionaries in the rum camp and liberals in the ranks of the enemy. This is all wrong. The count should be delayed until the men are compelled to go to their rightful corners. I don't see how anybody can be politically dry and at the same time progressive. To argue that America is any- thing less than the Utopia of the dreamers is to insult the Anti-Saloon League. To view with alarm at the present moment is sedition to the Eighteenth Amendment. This is the richest and most fortunate country in the world and everybody is happy. In the old days the tariff did it, but now it is prohibition which scats the wolf away from the worker's door. In other words, the prohibitionist has got what he wants and must logically become conservative. But we who believe that much is out of joint owe it to our cause to drink and defy the smug and satisfied. Moreover, alcohol transcends political considerations. It is the rock at which material and spiritual forces divide. Without wine the soul perishes. You cannot have dry poets, painters, and dreamers. Quite justly all the famous pro- hibition leaders in America have denied the charge that they are fanatical. Obviously this is a silly accusation. You will find none but practical men in the tents of the arid, i nevt r read a single argument for I cause which ditl not bristle with facts and figure.-'. "In 1014, 6.1216 per cent of the inhabitants of Hill- mnty were depositors in savings banks. In 1926 15.6982." In the old days preachers beyond the skies, but now sermons chiefly celebrate the rum is compounded semi-annuall; ou would things you must find yourself a speakeasy. Possibly the misfortune is personal and accidental but I have never heard any good conversation in a house bereft of rum. I don't mean that wholly sober people are in- capable of puns and anecdotes and perhaps a 1 but they are so insufferably frivolous. Nobody talks al immortality, love, or the way to paint a picture until he stands under the vine leaves. Cold-sober people keep both feet upon the ground, and if there isn't a Greek legend there should be one about a mortal who found he could re- new his strength by kicking up his heels. Again and again at parties I have noticed the sudden lift which came to all present when the last teetotaler went home. His exit marked the end of singing "Lord Geoffrey Amherst," playing twenty questions, and discussion of the market possibilities of American Sumatra. As the door closed behind him some one said: "I think of God as " and the essential part of the evening had begun. It would be silly to say that there are no kind and charming people who are also total abstainers. I have met none. Being dry and agreeable is extremely difficult. A man who doesn't drink is prudent. The world could hardly get along without prudent people. They are the hewers of wood and the drawers of water. They should drive auto- mobiles and perform surgical operations, but certainly no- body looks to the prudent for entertainment. Possibly even the most enlightened country should have a helot class of wholly sober people. It may even be that in a true Utopia life without liquor can prevail, but as yet no nation is good enough to get along without stimulation. When every slum is down, when science has conquered pain, and dull and grinding work is gone there will be time enough to talk of prohibition. It is conceivable that a non-alcoholic nation might develop a greater efficiency than the world has ever known. That seems to me no very glittering goal. There is a great deal of efficiency in America right now. There is hardly a single practical thing which is not better ad- ministered by us than any other country in the world. Being efficient is the national vice. Unfortunately no man and no nation can achieve efficiency without shouldering self-sufficiency as well. Uncle Sam was more lovable in the days before he took up calisthenics and the morning's cold shower-bath. I am only middle-aged, and yet I think I can remember back to a time when it was not considered necessary for every American to button-hole each foreign stranger and tell him of our gold reserve. There may even have been a day when we did not send ideals and marines to backward countries. I think it was a better land when we were all a little poorer and far less sober. sure, it is only fair to say that no nation has appealed to us and been turned away with a stone. In every crisis we have been ready with advice. Columbia in her coach was told that Europe had no bread and to this she is said to have replied: "Why don't they have ideals?" Of course, not every consequence of prohibition has been hurtful. Bu1 for Mr. Volstead we might have run head on into the destruction which lurks for all who bow down to wood and stone. Without the respite brought into being by the Eighteenth Amendment we might never have nicked the belief that the Constitution is something carved in rock-hewn tablets on the top of Sinai. Again in our own day there recurs the sane and comfortable doctrine that bad laws are best forgotten. And looking back across the years we now may drink a not altogether unsatisfactory toast in bootleg gin to the gentlemen who gave the tea party in Boston harbor. Heywood BROUN

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Oct. 12, 1927] The Nation 359 The Federal Reserve Fight By ELISHA M. v.sed the Federal Kesei ^^ Th(jre. Srtta F dS Retrvl Board ordered the Chicago Re- serve B-I to lower its rate to 3% per eenithe rate throueh the weekly submission by the banks of their reserve S for approval by the Board. This rule was revoked and h Litiativ'e again left with the reserve b*w^ mitted rates to the Board only when they des red to make T change. However, in 1919, when it was thought that a risis existed, one of the reserve banks was prevented by the Board from fixing a high rate. In the autumn of 1925 when the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston wished to r!fse Its rate to check speculation, the Federal Reserve Board deferred the rise for six weeks. The controversy has assumed several aspects. Shall the Federal Reserve System tend toward the central bank idea or shall each bank have local autonomy? Shal the Federal Reserve Board or the local bank initiate a rate or be the final arbiters of that rate? Shall international finan- cial considerations share in determining a change of rate As to the legality of the action, there seems to be little doubt, according to the Attorney General's ruling of 1919. As to its advisability, there is another question. It is cer- tainly not desirable to throw disputed questions of the Fed- eral Reserve System on the floors of Congress. To say that there has been political influence from Washington in the Chicago rate decision is meaningless, for the controversy finds Mr. Glass and Mr. Borah, a Democrat and a Republi- can, both on the same side. Hot heads may open the system to attack of sectional politics and to tinkering by advocates of panaceas and Utopias. It is charged that the reduced rate will stimulate specu- lation However, the Florida land boom and fiasco, the real estate speculation which has been going on for the past five years, have not been dependent upon a 3% per cent redis- count rate. It is charged that the recent cotton speculation was due to the ease of money. However, in the same journal in which this charge is made, there is the government re- port of a short cotton crop, which had a decidedly bullish effect, as well as the department's prediction of a lower price trend, which had a decidedly bearish effect. It was these two conflicting government reports, rather than the reduction in the Chicago rate, that caused the recent specu- lation in the price of cotton. As for stock speculation, it is well known that there have been bull markets on 4% per cent and 5 per cent money and that a low money rate alone will often not produce a bull market, as in periods of in- FRIEDMAN dustrial depression. The call money market in New York in the past five years has moved quite independently of the Federal Reserve rediscount rate. For example, on July 29, 1926, the call money rate for the preceding week was 4 per cent and the Federal Reserve rediscount rate was 3y2 per cent, whereas on July 29, 1927, the call money rate for the previous week was lower— 3% per cent— whereas the Fed- eral Reserve rediscount rate was higher— 4 per cent. Nevertheless, the problem of a uniform rediscount rate throughout the United States presents difficulties. The United States has the largest area and the largest popula- tion under one banking system. Conditions in various parts of the country are very diverse. Industrial Essen and agricultural Pomerania do not require as diverse bank rates as do say Pittsburgh and Texas. For instance, on August 31, 1927, the Federal Reserve Bank ratios of gold to lia- bilities were 82 per cent at New York, 83 per cent at Chi- cago, 59 per cent at Dallas, and 52 per cent at St. Louis. Similarly the rates on prime commercial loans charged by member banks in August, 1927, were quite diverse— in New York 4y2 per cent, in Chicago 5 per cent, in Atlanta 6 per cent, and in Cleveland 6 per cent. And yet a 3y2 per cent rediscount rate prevailed at all of these cities except Chicago. Undoubtedly the prime consideration in reducing rates in the United States was to help England maintain the gold standard and thus to keep the other exchanges of Europe sound. The United States could afford to do so, for in the period 1920-1926 the United States had a net import of gold of one billion five hundred million dollars. The in- crease in the supply of reserve funds outran the demand for reserve bank funds by over a hundred million dollars. The reduction in rate was helpful because normally sterling moves against London during her period of heavy impor- tations of agricultural products, and threatened to do so this year. This would have resulted in an outflow of gold from England, where it is seriously needed, to America where it is redundant. As a result of the reduction of the Federal Reserve rate, sterling exchange went above parity a few days ago, for the first time since June 30, 1926. The Federal Reserve Board followed a practice which was quite common in Europe before the war — regulating exchange rates by an increase or reduction of the discount rate, which results in a flow of funds from a low interest market to a high interest market. The policy of the Federal Reserve Board is a consequence of the restoration of a gold basis in England. Keynes and other economists favored the de- ferring of a return to the gold basis, and even advocated a "managed currency." Keynes predicted the evils of de- flation— high production costs, strikes, and high interest rates. However, the conservative bankers in England de- cided that the advantages of a stable currency offset the evils incident to attaining it. The coal strike and unem- ployment in England were probably aggravated by the pre- mature return to a gold standard. At present, when so many countries of Europe are on a gold basis, it is impor- tant that America help maintain the gold standard. One of the devices in accomplishing this purpose is to make in-

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360 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3249 terest rates lower in this country than in England, so that American funds will flow to London, thus creating a supply of dollars and a demand for sterling. In the light of these facts, the attitude of the Chicago directors now may be more intelligible. The Middle West has entertained a strong anti-foreign feeling. It was a Mid-West Senator who asked, "What have we to do with abroad?" It was the Middle West that elected Wilson on the platform that he "kept us out of war." It was the Middle West that opposed the League of Nations and now is indisposed to be helpful in the financial restoration of Europe. And Chicago elected as its Mayor, Mr. Thompson, whose campaign slogan was "Down with King George V." There are some who favor an isolationist financial policy. They say that if sterling was put on a gold basis too soon and therefore needs artificial support, why let it d-op. However, the repercussion throughout the world and even upon ourselves might be serious. Moreover, the altru- istic policy followed by the United States is not without its benefits. The maintenance of a low rate of interest in New York has resulted in the growth of New York as an important financial center. Foreign financing in New York has grown very greatly as a result of low rates prevailing. On the other hand, England at one time embargoed foreign loans so as not to create too large a supply of sterling in foreign hands, which would depress sterling exchange. In fact, the New York market has taken foreign issues which hitherto had never borrowed except in London, such as Australia and the states of the Commonwealth. At present New York is issuing twice as large a volume of foreign loans as London, with the result that the supply of dollars thus created in foreign hands has depressed dollars and improved the other exchanges. The reduced rate of dis- count has made it possible for the very Chicago banks that now complain to become leaders or participant in large foreign-bond underwritings. Furthermore, as a result of the low rates of discount, New York is becoming increasingly a center for short-term financing by acceptances or bills covering imports and ex- ports. "Salt water" acceptances of the United States have grown substantially in the past few years, and with the maintenance of low rates in this country an increasing part of America's foreign trade will be done by means of Ameri- can bank drafts rather than through foreign bank drafts. In view of the fact that in the Federal Reserve System as a whole the ratio of reserves to liabilities is close to 80 per cent, there would seem to be adequate justification for the maintenance of a low rate and for the encouragement of the growth of the American acceptance market. The reduction of the Chicago rediscount rate and the focussing of public attention on the international aspects of the question, throw light on many related problems quite outside the field of technical finance. England is primarily an industrial power, depending upon manufactures and ex- ports. The restoration of England to financial and indus- trial soundness and health is a matter of efficiency and competition. Low rates of interest in the United States and heavy lending of dollars are but temporary expedients to help England. A revision of British industrial methods and labor relations is essential to fie permanent reestab- lishment of Britain's position in the world of trade. Others say that the difficulty lies primarily in the large invisible credits received by the United States on payment of inter-allied debts. The cure for Europe would, accordingly, be even more complete cancellation of the inter- allied debt and the elimination of reparations. This would reduce the flow of gold to the United States in payment of these obligations. Money in Europe would, therefore, not be so tight nor deflation in Europe so disastrous. However, the total payments on the inter-allied debt at the current low rates of interest and with partial cancellation agreed upon, are but a fraction of the interest on the other foreign loans issued in this market at from 6 per cent to 8 per cent. In comparison with the other invisible credits in the Ameri- can international balance of payment, interest payment on the inter-allied debt is not an important factor. Even if these debts were completely cancelled, the difficulty of Europe attendant on returning to the gold standard would not be removed. A solution proposed generally in Europe is to have America check the inflow of gold. Gold has not been com- ing in as the result of any deliberate policy fostered by American bankers or the American Treasury. It has come into the United States in response to industrial and financial forces which are not easily controlled. America, with its 120 million people, is a big free-trade market which makes possible mass production and low costs. These in turn facilitate exports — as autos, typewriters, agricultural im- plements— at prices under those of the European manu- facturer. Part of the gold comes in payment of our ex- ports. Again, Europe could obtain gold by buying it in this market and keeping it, but with Europe partly on a gold- exchange standard rather than on a gold standard, these countries do not wish gold because it earns no income. Instead, they buy as their bank reserve American bills and securities which are convertible into gold at will. In other words, the American gold reserve is partly foreign owned, even where it is not so ear-marked. Another form of adjustment of the international bal- ance of payments is for American citizens to buy luxuries abroad, to travel extensively in foreign countries, and to increase other invisible debits. In this way Europe's debits to us will be offset. The Harvard Economic Service in its letter of July 23 is quite pessimistic. So long as we continue to lend money needed to pay debt charges, the readjustment of international trade may be postponed, but the difficulty of the ultimate readjust- ment will be increased in proportion to the period of postponement. Extending credit postpones payment for a time, but even so, the day of reckoning must come. However, what has been the British experience? Great Britain, with a population of approximately forty million, had in 1913 foreign securities equivalent to about twenty billion dollars. America, with a population almost three times as large, surely can lend far beyond the eleven odd billion dollars of government loans, excluding the uncertain factor of the inter-allied debt. The readjustments will come, not through any formula, but through the organic processes which characterize a living society. This whole discussion points out the costliness of war. Norman Angell's pre-war prophecies are being fulfilled. Wars must be paid for. Achille Loria, the Italian economist, laid down the law that the zone of arbitration widens as the costs of war increase. Wars will cease — not through yearnings of sentimentalists, but through the cold facts of economics. When even the victors can expect only a loss, peace becomes a practical possibility.

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Oct. 12, 1927] The Nation 361 Americans We Like Georgia O'Keeffe By FRANCES O'BRIEN IN an apartment on the twenty- The Fourth eighth floor of the Shelton a of P c r s o n all woman sits painting. A tall, slen- der woman dressed in black with an apron thrown over her lap. Beside her is a glass palette, very large, very clean, each separate color on its surface remote from the next. As soon as a tone has been mixed and applied to the canvas its remains are carefully scraped off of the palette, which thus retains always its air of virginity. It is late afternoon and even in this high place the room is growing dusky. The artist does not seem to know this. She goes on painting carefully, swiftly, surely — and she and the canvas and the glass palette are one world having no connection with anything else in existence. And then the telephone rings. "Hello, Georgia? This is " "Hello, how are you? Would you mind calling up a little later after the light goes?" And the chastened caller ponders the twilight out- side his window and wonders how even on a twenty-eighth floor one can go on painting. But of such intensive work as this is born the beauty which annually, on the walls of the Intimate Gallery, makes that little room the largest place there ever was in the world. Paintings of flowers and leaves and the music of flowers and leaves. Paintings also of tall buildings, of tiny shells, of Lexington Avenue. The flowers are painted very large, the leaves are painted very large, until you begin to feel large yourself. And the colors make some people say "gorgeous" and make other people keep quiet altogether. All this is because Georgia O'Keeffe has never allowed her life to be one thing and her painting another. She has never left her life in disorder while she sat down to paint a picture that should be clean, simple, and integrated. To her art is life; life is painting. What you are is also the thing you put on canvas, or into a symphony or a book. When you look at her pictures you know that she is chiseled, ordered, and fine just as they are. You know that she lives simply, almost as a recluse, that she orders carefully every detail of existence so that the maximum of time may be given to her work. Georgia O'Keeffe is an iconoclast to the old European traditions of art and artists. All the thrilling tales we have heard of life in a studio, of Bohemianism, of cocktail- inspired masterpieces become remote fabrications beside the serenity of this woman of many paintings. We begin to believe that inspiration really comes out of introspection, human sympathy, profound contacts rather than, as we were taught to believe, out of a bottle. America is versatile — producing alongside of jazz and the Black Bottom so austere and ascetic a religion for artists. O'Keeffe is America's. Its own exclusive product. It is refreshing to realize that she has never been to Europe. More refreshing still that she has no ambition to go there. Born in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, and with a childhood spent in Virginia and Texas, she absorbed an atmosphere un- i n a Series tainted by theories, by cultural tra- t y Portraits ditions. When she came to New York, William Chase, at the Art Stu- dents' League, was explaining to young America the brushwork technique of the Paris salons. Georgia, being just seventeen, listened politely and wielded her brush with such dexterity that Mr. Chase awarded her the medal in his still-life class. But the candor that was to distinguish both her life and her painting was even then playing its role. She may have said: "Why should I receive a medal for being an obedient, intelligent child? Is not this supposed to be a class in painting? What has a medal to do with me? Moreover, what has all this painting to do with me?" She may have said all this. Those who know O'Keeffe best will admit that this would have been characteristic of her. And presently she abandoned the league and with it New York and its esoteric painting. All painting, in fact. The next few years found her doing advertising work in Chicago. "Commercial art" they call it nowadays. Then it was just making pictures of alarm clocks and tomato cans. Our aesthetes may well lift their eyebrows in hor- ror. But I have no doubt that then, as now, Georgia O'Keeffe was "working herself out." This period of work having afforded her the means to do so, she journeyed to the University of Virginia and spent the years 1912-1914 under the paternal baton of Alan Bement. She studied everything except painting and presently found herself in Texas with the title "Supervisor of Schools." Later on she became the "Art" of the West Texas Normal College. Meanwhile, having purged herself of New York's bor- rowed art theories and the academic technique, she would lock herself in her room evenings and tentatively draw with charcoal. And nothing was urging her to draw save the pure need of expression. No one was to see what she did. Having struggled by herself with life, she was free to set down her feeling about it. No instructor was standing be- hind her to signify with sophisticated squint his approval of what she did — or his disgust. It was very nice; life was complete in a bit of charcoal carefully rubbed on a sheet of paper. And Georgia impulsively showed two drawings to a friend. The woman to whom she showed the drawings took them to New York; and that is why this past February we could walk into the Anderson Galleries and see hanging there "Forty New Paintings by Georgia O'Keeffe." At that time Alfred Stieglitz was making his brave struggle to present America with its own artists and Europe's in his famous "291" Fifth Avenue, an institution remembered today by but a few of the intelligentsia, but an all-important chapter in the history of American art — when we get to the point where we can write one. To "291" came the academicians and native art dealers to shake with uproarious laughter at walls hung with Matisse and Picasso. Also a select and very small group of the far-seeing to gaze with religious awe at new and significant manifestations

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362 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3249 such as these, and to quarrel about their virtues. Verily, they were days of travail for Stieglitz. And then, one day when he was feeling his weariest from the fruitless en- deavor to explain to Babbitt that this, also, was art, there walked into "291" the woman to whom O'Keeffe had confided the two drawings. To Alfred Stieglitz nothing was ever so refreshing as those two drawings. Long after the woman who brought them had gone they remained on the walls of "291." A controversial correspondence followed between Stieg- litz and the young lady who was teaching art in the West Texas Normal College, the upshot of which was that there presently arrived in New York an artist with approxi- mately $40 in her pocket-book, but with an indomitable en- thusiasm. True, artists have arrived in New York with less than $40 and quite immeasurable enthusiasm and — well, I can't help recalling George Bridgeman's boast that he never has to pay any subway fare because all his former students at the Art Students' League are now officiating in the ticket booths. Ten years have not made a different person of Georgia O'Keeffe. Today finds her the same strong, clear, and intro- spective person as the girl who wandered with her class- mates through the Virginia woods, studying bird life. Georgia never saw the birds ; but no flower or leaf or tree escaped her passionate exploration. "If only people were trees," she has said, "I might like them better." That is why she has remained undisturbed by the worship of the culturally elite. That is why of all our modern painters she is the least influenced by any of the trivialities, the aesthetic fashions of the time. These things do not exist ""or her; her roots are in the earth and her kinship is with the things that grow from the soil. Yet there is one potent bond uniting her with the world of humanity. If Georgia O'Keeffe has any passion other than her work it is her interest and faith in her own sex. She married Alfred Stieglitz about eight years ago, and you must not, if you value being in her good graces, call her "Mrs. Stieglitz." She believes ardently in woman as an individual — an individual not merely with the rights and privileges of man but, what is to her more im- portant, with the same responsibilities. And chief among these is the responsibility of self-realization. O'Keeffe is the epitomization of this faith. In her painting as in her- self is the scattered soul of America come into kingdom. guessing that they had bought the same thing on Fifth Avenue the week before. ***** THE DRIFTER'S hatred for souvenirs weakens, how- ever, when they come from bazaars. He has often been rude to ladies who forgot the contents of the Musee du Louvre, but remembered those of the vast department store with the same name. He always ignores their collections of pewter out of an antique shop in the rue des Saints Peres; but a much inferior set which has been assembled piece by piece, Sunday after Sunday, from the junk-piles of the Flea Fair never fails to excite his envy; and he will listen patiently to the owner's tales of how much the old woman wanted for the large porringer, and what she said when he asked the meaning of the cock on the handle of the ancient twisted spoon. ***** NOR does the Drifter claim to be entirely free from the feminine vice of shopping himself. Not when he travels in the Orient. He haunts bazaars, in fact, with the fidelity of a beggar. This does not mean that he would display any great degree of heroism in the cause, like one of his friends who made a painful journey across the Caspian Sea, on the slower than slow eastern trains that push their exhausted way into the foothills of the Him- alayas, where they gradually give up and come to rest in the hill towns; and through desert villages whose entire water supply trickles down the gutter of the steep street, and whose best accommodations are squalid inn rooms bare of any furnishing save dirt — undergoing all this hardship simply for the sake of buying brasses and embroideries in the bazaars of Tashkent and Samarkhand. The Drifter's enthusiasm does not lift him to heights like these, but it has kept him walking through the dust on aching feet under a semi-tropic sun, up and down past shabby booths in chattering crowds; and it has led him up a steep hillside into booths as ruinous as the Parthenon, to buy senseless gewgaws soiled with snow and mud, on winter days when his stiff fingers could hardly pick a coin from his purse. He has seen the great bazaar of Stamboul, spread like a mellow carpet over a wide space; but he would always prefer a village fair of Angora or the Caucasus, sprawling over fields on the outskirts of town, where peasants travel all night in creaking carts to bring homemade brooms and butter and squares of lace. In the Driftway AS the Drifter stands on the pier to greet the hordes of tourists returning to New York, and constitutes himself an entertainment committee to give them the keys and freedom of the city, whatever those may be. his de- lighted hospitality is tempered by certain serious reflec- tions. Sometimes he can hardly restrain a shudder at the sight of so many amateur drifters, who have learned the crude outline of his honored profession and missed its essentials. Can he have looked like this when he himself returned after some voyage — full of souvenirs, anecdotes about the customs, and condescending remarks about pro- hibition? The Drifter tries to think aot. At least he was never able to afford to come home laden with a cargo of presents of Florentine leather work, French perfume, and Irish linen for friends who would try to keep him from AT his first visit the Drifter was ignorant enough to pay the trifling price that was asked for some rudely decorated water jugs, degenerate cousins of the proud fam- ily of vases that the ancients used to make in the same town. He will never forget the look of contempt and dis- appointment on the face of the vendor, who would rather have lost a third of his price than the pleasure of the argu- ment. At his second visit, accordingly, the Drifter grew penurious, haggled for five minutes over every purchase, and finally made none. After that he went to some trouble to learn the art of bargaining. He worked out mathema- tically the proportion of the expected price asked by the peddler, whose technique is at least as complicated as that of a graduate of a school of high-powered salesmanship in Detroit or Chicago. The whole procedure of both buyer and seller is a highly organized and recognized form of bluffing, at which orientals invariably excel. Their im- passive poker faces conceal any desire they may feel; but

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Oct. 12, 1927] The Nation 363 the secret is to feel none. Months of serious study con- vinced the Drifter that the only way to bluff successfully is not to bluff, a principle which can be applied to even more important concerns than country fairs. If you walk away from the bit of antique jewelry, or the exorbitant gondola, or the desirable lady, feigning indifference, your own eagerness may bring you back eventually, but you will never be summoned. But if you honestly don't care enough to pay the price, you will find that the price is always low- ered, or at least often enough to make it worth while to take the chance, and haunt bazaars, and develop an oriental philosophy. The Drifter Correspondence Honor in Languedoc To the Editor of The Nation : Sir: In your issue of August 31, 1927, H. H. Horowitz calls attention to the case of Jean Calas in connection with the Sacco- Vanzetti matter, and to Voltaire's pamphlet on "toleration." One of the most pertinent things in this pamphlet reads: They [the Calas] had still enemies, however, for it was a question of religion. Many of those people who are known in France as "devout" said openly that it was much better to let an innocent old Calvinist be slain than to compel eight councillors of Languedoc to admit that they were wrong. One even heard such phrases as "There are more magistrates than Calas"; and it was inferred that the Calas family ought to be sacrificed to the honor of the magistrates. They did not reflect that the honor of judges, like that of other men, consists in repairing their blunders. Henry W. Dooley, Democratic National Committeeman for Porto Rico San Juan, Porto Rico, September 7 There's Room for Freedom in Texas To the Editor of the Nation: Sir: We hasten to supplement the dismal picture painted by our fellow-reader W. M., writing to The Nation from "Some- where in Texas." His statement that "no teacher in this be- nighted South . . . dare acclaim The Nation and its ideals . . . and hope to live by teaching. It just isn't done. The mob would be on his neck," is as true as the statement, "It never rains in summer time in Texas." Which is to say, it all depends on where you are. Texas, let us remind those who have forgotten it, is a very large State. W. M. could be living farther from us than Dedham jail is from the Bowery for all we can tell from his address, which is "Somewhere in Texas." We are acquainted with the deprav- ity of the South from the plumber who was flogged in Fort Worth for getting too much business to the case of W. M. himself. But let us tell a thing or two about our neck of the woods. We are a town of 6,000, having for a neighbor (or a suburb) the thriving and beautiful city of San Antonio — sunny Antonio reeking with history and, as advertised, the nation's play- ground. You could hardly imagine the playground of this nation being closed on Sunday; and it isn't. Nor is our little city. Nor, as a matter of fact, is El Paso, and for all we know, several other important centers in the State. All of which is contrary to the State law. And when some rabid reformer in the legislature proposed that the State militia be called out to dry up our oasis of anarchy the proposal somehow managed to get pigeon-holed before any damage was done, and it has not been heard from since. The Nation is in the reading-rooms of the libraries of the State Normal School at San Marcos and the State University at Austin. Not only on file, but patronized. One of us is about to teach in the grade school here, and while neither of us has stood on the street corner proclaiming the gospel of The Nation, nothing has been done or said to indicate that its weekly appearance in our P. 0. box is a liability or a disgrace. We know of a girl teaching American history in the State Normal School who is a regular reader, and the last we heard she was on the verge of accepting a high-school position in San Antonio. We feel for W. M. We have been in somewhat his position in another State. But before losing himself to complete despair over the South we invite him to look around a little. The New South is pushing forth its sprouts with unexpected vigor in places where the soil is richest. And we know of one town at least, in Texas, where the policy of live and let live is a tradition that is jealously guarded. Philip N. Rawson Gertrude K. Rawson New Braunfels, Texas, August 2U When the Fan Stops, Get Out To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: I have just noticed the communication of John B. Andrews, secretary of the American Association for Labor Legis- lation, criticizing my review of "The Rock Dust Remedy," by Harry Phythyon, a State mine inspector of Pennsylvania. He implies in his communication that Mr. Phythyon and I are op- posed to rock dusting bituminous mines, which is incorrect. Mr. Andrews ignores my statement that "Mr. Phythyon would certainly not relegate rock dusting to a less important position than the last line of defense. He is not against rock dusting as such, but he insists that it be kept in its proper place." He believes in rock dusting as one of the safeguards against mine disasters but he does not believe in magnifying its importance out of all proportion to other means for preventing explosions, as is done by the American Association for Labor Legislation and the Bureau of Mines. Such undue stress on rock dusting will result in the neglecting of the primary de- fenses against loss of life by explosions such as adequate venti- lation, which prevents the accumulation of explosive gas, and proper equipment to prevent the ignition of gas. Over-re- liance on rock dusting will also result in overlooking such im- portant secondary defenses as enough exits from the mine to enable the men to escape in case of an explosion so that they will not be killed by after-damp. "Seven hundred miners owe their lives," Mr. Andrews writes, far from the coal fields, "to this safety device (rock dusting) in the most recent coal mine explosion of Pennsyl- vania." He undoubtedly refers to the Ehrenfeld mine of the Pennsylvania Coal and Coke Corporation, where there was al- most a major disaster but in which all but four of the nearly four hundred miners escaped with their lives. I was working at the time in a nearby mine of the same company at Cresson and went with other Cresson miners to Ehrenfeld. While rock dust- ing probably helped prevent the explosion from spreading in that instance, there were numerous openings in the remote cor- ners of the mine by which the men were able to escape in a few minutes before any of them were killed by after-damp. A few years ago I saw seventy-nine dead bodies taken from a mine in Spangler, Pennsylvania. About fifteen had been killed by the force of the explosion. The others died some hours later from the deadly after-damp following the explosion because they could not get to the shaft over a mile from where they were working. The mine shaft was only ninety feet deep, yet there were no openings except the main hoisting and air shafts far from the coal face. This disaster was distinctly a gas explo- sion; rock dusting could not have saved the men. Adequate ventilation and safety lamps to prevent the ignition of gas would

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364 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3249 have saved them all. Openings near the working places would have saved over sixty of them who, trapped, were suffocated hours after the explosion. The question whether gas or dust is the greater factor in mine explosions is important, because on the answer to it de- pends whether one stresses most rock dusting or ventilation. Mr. Phythyon shows that although the non-gaseous mines out- number many times the gaseous ones no major explosion has ever occurred in the entire mining history of Pennsylvania in a strictly non-gaseous mine. Those who say that rock dusting will prevent mine explosions are, therefore, lulling the operators, miners, and public into a false sense of security and thereby endangering human life. Rock dusting is important, yes, but when advertised and stressed out of all proportion to its usefulness it results in such astounding statements as the one I quoted from the Salt Lake City Tribune of March 12, 1926, which does not seem to disturb Mr. Andrews in the least: "The Bureau of Mines is convinced that neither ventilation nor water will prevent mine explosions. Ventilation particularly is ineffective, as tests have shown that explosions occur only when the dust is in motion and ventilating fans therefore add to rather than diminish the danger." Any one who has ever worked in a mine knows that when the fan stops it is time to get out. Pittsburgh, Pa., September 20 Powers Hapgood To Chicago Readers of The Nation To the Editor of The Nation : Sir: I move that we form a circle of Nation readers in Chicago. Such a group of like-minded progressive people would not only form a sound foundation for a liberal club, but it would also materially advance the influence of the publication which we cherish. Let us rally around The Nation for such a circle. I suggest that Nation readers in Chicago get in touch with the undersigned at P. 0. Box 1224. We will then issue a call to all these to meet for a conference and organization. Chicago, September 12 Margaret Calder □ LECTURES □ ENDOCRINE GLANDS AND BODILY ORGANIZATION by DR. WALTER B. CANNON Professor of Physiology, Harvard Uniiu Author, "Bodily Changes in Pain, Hanger, Fear. Rage," "Traamatie Shock,** etc. Thursday, October 6, at 8:20 P. M. Lantern slides will be shown NEW SCHOOL FOR SOCIAL RESEARCH •165 West 23d Street Admission. $1.50 New York City RAND SCHOOL OF SOCIAL SCIENCE 7 EAST 15th STREET Tel. Algonquin 3094 Lecture courses about to begin Monday, 8:30 — "Experimental Science and Human Welfare." — Benja- min C. Gruenberg. Monday, 8:30 — "World Literature." — John Much. Tuesday, 8:30 — "Psychology of Personality." — Joseph M. Osman. Thursday, 8:30 — "Four Modern Idealists." — Win. P. Montague. Friday. 8 :30— "The New Drama In Europe." — V. F. Calverton. BERTRAND RUSSELL will lecture "WHY MEN FIGHT" Community Church, 34th St. A. Park Ave. Friday evening, Oct. 14 Chairman, Oswald Garris( Villard Heywood Broun, Honorary Chairman Reserved section, 50c, 75c, and $1.00 Tickets on sale at Y. P. S. L... Room 505, 7 E. 15th St.. Community Church Office, Park Ave. and 34th St., and Rand School. 7 E. loth St. Auspices Young Peoples Socialist League. THE DEBATE OF THE CENTFRY BERTRAM) Dr. WILL RUSSELL «,. DURANT English Philosopher Essayist, Publicist Author of "Story of Philosophy" SAMUEL UNTERMYER. Chairman SFBJFCT: Is Democracy a Failure? DFR.VXT says YES RUSSELL says NO Saturday, October 22nd, 8.30 P.M. MECCA TEMPLE 55th Street and Seventh Avenue Tickets: $1.10, $1.65, $2.20, $2.75, $3.30 (including tax) TICKETS FOR SALE NOW Rand School, 7 E. 15th St. , New School Book Shop, 465 W. 23rd St., Columbia University Book Shop, Journalism Bldg. And by Mail or at Office of DISCUSSION GUILD, 11 W. 42nd St. Room 2854 Longacre 2740 THE CHANGING COLLEGE The Fall Number of Progressive Education A Quarterly Review of the Newer Tendencies in Education A summary and interpretation of recent educational achievements in our colleges and universities, show- ing the reconstruction now in process, and pointing the way for further advance. Sixty Cents the single issue FALL SUBSCRIPTION OFFER Subscription price increases January first to Two Fifty — $2.50. Sub- scriptions placed now secure five numbers for the price of four — .-.11 issues of 1928 at the old price and THE CHANGING COLLEGE. The Progressive Education Association 10 Jackson Place Washington, D. C. REAL HARRIS HOMESPUNS SfTSlBte^.M!SS Suit Lengths Cut to Order. Postage Paid NEWALL. 150 Stornoway, Scotland. Write let patterns statin; sbides desired DANCING LJ Sara Mildred Strauss the creative dance! Classes for beginners, advanced amateurs and professionals. STUDIO 825, CARNEGIE HALL Circle 1350. When writing to advertiser* please mention The Nation

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International Relations Section The Citizen Abroad* By EDWIN M. BORCHARD EVERY science starts from certain major postulates which are assumed to be true and are rarely if ever reexamined. In the subject we are to discuss today it is assumed that the country owes a duty to its citizen abroad, and for itself has a privilege, to protect him against the im- pairment of his rights in the foreign country in which he resides or invests. What those rights are and how far they may be protected by international action are serious ques- tions, which deserve examination. The institution today under discussion reflects one of the most primitive theories and practices of community life — the theory that when a member of the clan is injured by some alien clan or agency, his entire clan must go to his rescue. Carried out to its logical extreme in this day of immense foreign investments, it presents an opportunity and a danger of more or less continuous intervention in the affairs of other nations and a very considerable supervision and guardianship of foreign investments. A distinguished statesman has recently advanced the thesis: "The person and property of a citizen are a part of the general domain of the nation, even when abroad." If by this it is intended to claim that the citizen must not submit to the local law, or that he carries with him a certain extraterritoriality, the assertion is open to serious question. The very fact that the danger is now so common of having to enlist all the citizens of a country in the cause of one of them has produced considerable feeling that the pos- tulate itself is open to challenge, or, at least, that the method by which the rights of the citizens abroad are de- termined and the method of giving effect to them should be modified. The challenge runs to the point of demanding that the citizen abroad should take the risks of his loca- tion and of the local law, as he finds it, and should not ask his fellow citizens to become his insurers; and the argu- ment is advanced that the citizens abroad can ask no greater rights than are enjoyed by the natives of the country in which he makes his home or investments. It is doubtful whether this criticism of the existing practice, and the demand it involves, can be accepted com- pletely as a measure either of the citizen's rights or of the nation's duty. Yet there is reason to believe that un- less the countries of the foreign investors exert some self- restraint and adopt some more definitely legal machinery than that now employed, to determine impartially both the validity of the right and the manner of its enforce- ment, these demands made by fellow-citizens at home will receive ever greater political recognition and will be trans- lated into general rules of municipal law and into rules of international law. It must be remembered that the greater part of the world consists not of "exploiting" but of "exploited" countries — terms used in no opprobrious sense — and that the latter have already for many years been demanding legal limitations on the privilege of pro- tecting internationally those who live among them, or ac- quire economic interests there, as aliens. It is commonly said that the alien entering a country * An address made as presiding officer at the meeting of the American Society of International Law in Washington, D. C. is entitled to the enjoyment not only of the local law but also of international due process of law, the standard of civilized justice below which a nation's municipal law, in its application to the alien, may not fall. When he com- plains of injuries at the hands of the local administration, measured by the standards of the local municipal law and of international law, he is required first to exhaust his local remedies, if they are deemed adequate or promis- ing of relief, before he invokes the diplomatic protection of his country. The main ground of such interposition is discrimination against the alien. So in the case of leg- islation to which international objection may be made — it is the element of discrimination which is the essential basis of the international claim. To be sure, occasional international objection has been raised to the application of general domestic legislation binding on all the inhabi- tants of the country indiscriminately. When made, the objection can rest only on the very unusual allegation that the domestic legislation, as a statutory system, falls below the standard of civilized justice or what may be called in- ternational due process. This is not a light charge to make against the legislation of a foreign country, and it must be realized that a promiscuous use of this privilege of ob- jection would hamper foreign countries in undertaking so- cial and legislative experiments which, as free and inde- pendent countries, they may deem themselves privileged to make. It is, indeed, not at all settled how far a nation may go in such experiments without violating what may be called international law, nor whether the international claim may go further than a demand for compensation without asking a repeal of the legislation itself. The question arises mainly not on the principle that no nation may legitimately act or legislate in violation of in- ternational law, but on its application, and this again in- volves the issue who is to be the judge of the question. Now it is not unknown to history that strong nations are prone to make such determinations for themselves, and will decline to give the weak nation the benefit of the doubt or even suggest arbitration. It is to this unilateral determina- tion of the question that weak foreign countries object, and the distrust created by a frequent resort to compulsion to induce a recognition of claims is not lightly to be disre- garded. It may ultimately grow to considerable propor- tions and affect political relations. On the other hand, we cannot leave the questions of the alien's rights and whether the local law has violated them exclusively to the local courts, as so many foreign coun- tries have demanded. This would make them a judge of their international duty, and under present postulates of international law, that demand will not obtain acceptance. The realization of the inequity likely to result from a unilateral determination of such difficult questions, either by the complaining or by the defendant state, suggests that the only practical solution for the determination of the issue is the international forum, in the event of inabil- ity of the two countries to settle the matter diplomatically. Each country usually assumes that it is entirely right and that there is nothing to say for the other side. Experience does not sustain the axiomatic truth of this assumption. Without now undertaking to reach a conclusion upon the question in any way, I will assume that a foreign country seeks to change its system of land tenures. Those who, citizens and aliens, are likely to be affected by the change,

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366 The Nation [Vol. 125. No. 3249 however slightly, are likely to charge "confiscation." That, of course, if only a label for a set of facts, events, and emo- tions. The real issue is, has the country gone so far in the diminution of property values by the change of its and every country is continually exerting its police power to modify property rights — as to justify an im- partial tribunal in declaring that the municipal legisla- tion falls below the standard of civilized justice — consti- tutes a denial of justice or of due process. This, again, is a question of degree, and on that question neither party is competent to be the exclusive judge. Violent and serious impairments of property rights bring their own reward or penalty — a loss of confidence and the loosening of that cement, law and the feeling of security, which holds the social structure together. We label those impairments, when severe enough, confiscation, but, strange to say, such practices cannot be laid only at the door of weak coun- tries. What the world has seen put into practice since 1918 in the way of the confiscation of foreign investments, not by general legislation, but by legislation directed ex- clusively against particular foreigners, has no counterpart in history. It not only weakens the force and dignity of any demand made against weak countries, but constitutes a precedent for all time, dangerous to the confiscator and to all foreigners. The sooner the road to financial integ- rity is again resumed, the better for all concerned and for the world's future. But to return to the manner of establishing the right and its enforcement, when determined. In the Porter proposition at the Hague, arbitration was agreed on in the case of contractual claims, with an unfortunate sanc- tion of force if arbitration is refused. If the right is determined in an international forum, it is to be doubted whether the question of enforcement will present serious difficulty. But if its exercise should prove necessary, it will be likely to have the support of world approval. At present the unilateral determination of the right and the arbitrary enforcement of that determination is calculated to arouse resentments without necessarily promoting jus- tice c • the rule of law. It may well be asked, then, that no1 only in contract claims, but in tort claims as well, the nations shall agree to submit to an international tribunal, existing or to be created ad hoc, the question of the exist- ence of the right. This legal method of judicial determina- tion should be deemed an inherent part of international due process of law. On this continent it has already been agreed in the Pan-American Conventions to submit all pecuniary claims to arbitration; and questions involving property rights, and the propriety of their alleged im- pairment, are distinctly legal. In Europe, some eighteen nations have ratified the optional clause of the Permanent Court of International Justice, giving the court jurisdic- tion in such cases at the behest ^\' a complaining signa- tory. The aim should now be to induce all th including especially the larger powers, to adhere to such obligatory jurisdiction over legal questions, or. if not that, of pecuniary claims arising out of alleged injuries t zens abroad. That alone would take out of the eh, of politics and force a subject which is essentially and would promote the rule of law. Apart from such obligation, which nations should and may assume without the slightest loss of prestige or of legitimate rights, it may be deemed advisable to give the injured citizen himself a right to proceed against the de- fendant nation in an international court, if he believes that the local remedy still embodies a denial of justice in the international sense. If necessary, his nation may think it proper to aid him financially and with counsel, if it con- siders the case meritorious. This will require international agreements, but it seems to me to be asking but a trifling concession in the interests of law and order. The existing practice is dangerous to all parties concerned because of the injection of the elements of unilateral determination, force, and politics. The reform suggested, mild and tem- perate and promotive of the rule of law, should, I believe, command general support. AMERICANS WE LIKE coming in The Nation Ru th H. McCormick Cnndidati for Congrcssmun-at-Large of By Mildred Adams Illinois Contributors to This Issue Elisha M. Friedman, banker and statistician, is to give a course of lectures on international finance at the New School for Social Research. He is the author of "Amer- ica and the New Era" and other works on international economics, and was formerly on the staff of the United States Treasury. Frances O'Brien is a contributor to current publications. Edwin M. Borchard is a member of the faculty of the Law School of Yale University. John Haynes Holmes is the pastor of the Community Church in New York. Mortimer J. Adler reviewed "The Story of Philosophy" for The Nation. H. L. Mencken is editor of the American Mercury. Carl Van Doren is the author of "James Branch Cabell." Herbert Gorman is soon to publish a novel, "The Place Called Dagon." William MacDonald is the author of numerous volumes in American history. William Linn Westerman is the professor of ancienc history at Columbia University. W. E. Woodward is preparing a life of General Grant. William Seagle is a lawyer who has contributed to the American Mercury, the New Republic, the Menorah <;/, and other magazines. Clifton F. Fadiman begins in this issue to review fiction bi-weekly in The Nation. Norman Thomas is a contributing editor of The Nation. John Macy is the author of "The Story of the World's Literature." R. F. Dibble is the author of "Strenuous Americans," "John L. Sullivan," and "Mohammed."

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Oct. 12, 1927] The Nation 367 Some Notable Fall Books BIOGRAPHY, MEMOIRS Adams, John and Waterhouse, Benjamin. Correspondence Of. Little, Brown. $3. Aikman, Duncan. Calamity Jane. Holt. $3. Amundsen, Roald. My Life as an Explorer. Doubleday, Page. $3.50. Anonymous. Northcliffe. Lippincott. $4. Aretz, Gertrude. Napoleon and His Friends. Lippincott. $5. Arliss, George. Up from Bloomsbury. Little, Brown. $4. Bagger, Eugene. Francis Joseph. Putnam. $5. Barbusse, Henri. Jesus. Macaulay. $2.50. Baudelaire, Charles. Letters. Translated by Arthur Symons. Boni. $4. Bell, Gertrude. Life and Letters of Gertrude Bell of Arabia. Boni and Liveright. 2 vols. $10. Belloc, Hilaire. Robespierre. Putnam. $5. Berchtold, Count. Own Story. Macmillan. $7.50. Bidou, Henri. Chopin. Knopf. $3.50. Birkenhead, The Earl Of. Law, Life, and Letters. Doran. 2 vols. $10. Bordeaux, Jeanne. Benito Mussolini. Doran. $6. Bradford, Gamaliel. D. L. Moody: a Worker in Souls. Doran. $3.50. Browne, Lewis. That Man Heine. Macmillan. $3. Brusson, Jean Jacques. Anatole France Abroad. Holt. $3. Busbey, L. White. Uncle Joe Cannon. Holt. $5. Carco, Francis. The Romance of Villon. Knopf. $5. Case, Shirley Jackson. Jesus: A New Biography. University of Chicago Press. $3. Chaliapine, Feodor Ivanovitch. Pages from My Life. Harper. $5. ChotzinofF, Samuel. Eroica: The Life of Ludwig Van Beethoven. Simon and Schuster. $3.50. Croce, Benedetto. An Autobiography. Oxford University. Davis, Robert H. Bob Davis Recalls. Appleton. $2. De Sola Pinto, V. Life of Sir Charles Sedley. Boni and Live- right. $6. Dodd, Anna Bowman. Talleyrand. Putnam. $5. Dole, Charles F. My Eighty Years. Dutton. $5. Durant, Will. Transition. Simon and Schuster. $2.50. Ellison, Grace. The Memoirs of Mustafa Kemal. Stokes. $5. Fisher, Sydney George. Benjamin Franklin. Lippincott. $3.50. Emperor Frederick III. War Diary, 1870-1S71. Stokes. $5. Gay, Robert M. Ralph Waldo Emerson. Doran. $2. Geer, Walter. Napoleon and His Family. Brentano's. $5. Goldberg, Isaac. The "Compleat" Gilbert and Sullivan. Simon and Schuster. $5. Gwynn, Stephen. Experiences of a Literary Man. Holt. $3.50. Hackett, Francis. Henry the Eighth. Boni and Liveright. $3.50. Hamilton, Mary Agnes. Thomas Carlyle. Holt. $2.50. Hapgood, Norman and Moskowitz, Henry. Up from the City Street: Alfred E. Smith, a Study in Contemporary Politics. Harcourt, Brace. $2.50. Harris, Frank. Contemporary Portraits. Macaulay. $L!...0. Harvey, George. Henry Clay Frick: The Man. Scribner. $5. Herold, A. F. Life of Buddha. Boni. $3. Hibben, Paxton. Henry Ward Beecher. Doran. $5. Howden Smith, Arthur D. Commodore Vanderbilt. McBride. $5. Howe, Marie Jenney. George Sand: The Search for Love. Day. $5. Hughes, Rupert. George Washington. Morrow. 2 vols. Huntington, Ellsworth. The Builders of America. Morrow. Jean-Aubry, G. Joseph Conrad: Life and Letters. Doubleday, Page. 2 vols. $10. Joseph, Franz. As Revealed by His Letters. Stokes. $5. Lamb, Harold. Genhis Khan. McBride. $3.50. Landucci, Luca. A Florentine Diary. Dutton. $3. Lee, Sir Sidney. King Edward VII. Macmillan. 2 vols. ea. $8. Leonard, William Ellery. The Locomotive God. Century. $4. You will vote this as human and appealing a story as you have read in many a day The Royal Cravatts by Lillian Rogers New York through the eyes and hearts of a Russian immigrant family — pride, ambition, self- confidence, no less because they are far removed from Park Avenue — selfishness, love-hunger, temptation, as poignant in the lives of the Cravatts as in any suite in the Plaza. Here is a novel you can confidently call good. With its fresh viewpoint and its unique charac- ters it has novelty, yet it is based on the sin- cerity and truthfulness that make a worthwhile story. 12 mo. $2.50 A Sea Story That Roars like a Gale The Tramp by W. Townend The thrilling saga of the last voyage of the tramp-steamer Medea that clears from Cardiff with as tough a crew as ever sailed the seven seas. 12 mo. $2.00 WHO KILLED CORALIE ? by The Aresbys Mystery that really Is mys- tery. It carries you to the heart of San Francisco's Chinatown, to the strange curio shop that was the set- ting for beautiful Coralie. And It faces you with the unknown that spelled her death. Disturbing as the be- ginning of the tale is. it is oify the beginning. Powerful as the first episode Is. the novel builds up, through a series of thrills, to a real c!imax — and a real surprise. 12 mo. $2.00 A Western With the Kick of a .45 THE GUN- SLINGER by George M. Johnson Dan Butler It was who per- fected himself in the art of gun-slinging because he had sworn to kill five evil men. 12 mo. $2.00 The War Diary of a Nurse "Sister" by Helen Dore Boylston The woman's side of it at last! A straight-from-the-shoulder account of the experiences — trn^ic and humorous — of an American girl in a front-line dressing station during the World War. unforgettable scenes — the real thing without the edges rubbi 12 mo. $2.00 Th^ thTrs Marquise de Keroubec "Charming but naughty." says John O'London's Weekly; "she seems to have modelled herself upon the heroine of 'Gem Prefer Blondes' or rather, as she lived during the French Revo- lution. we had better say she was another (and a bi i example of the class of ladie- : by Miss Loos." Illustrated with contemporary p:iir.s. 12 mo. 52.50 To be published i 1 Oct The Story of Law Tho onlv complete story of how LAW came into existence, developed through the ages, and grew into the prominent part It plays in our lives today. By John M. Zane, LL.D.. Litt. D.. with an intro- duction by James M. Beck, former Solicitor-General of the United States. Popularly Illustrated. Octavo $5.00 AT ALL BOOKSTORES IVES WASHBURN, Inc. 119 West 57th Street, New York In Canada: McLean & Smithers, Toronto When writing to advertisers please mention The Nation

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368 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3249 Dodd, £2. 50. Lord Lcverhulme. By His Son. Houghton Mifflin. $5. Lippmann, Walter. Men of Destiny. Macmillan. $2.50. Ludwig, Emil. Bismarck: The Story of a Fighter. Little, Brown. $5. Ludwig, Emil. Genius and Character. Harcourt, Brace. $3.50. Lynch, Denis Tilden. Boss Tweed. Boni and Liveright. $3.50. Macfall, Haldane. Aubrey Beardsley. Simon and Schuster. $5. Maclay, William. Journal. Ed. Charles A. Beard. Boni. $4. MansHeld, Katherine. Journal Of. Knopf. $3.50. Melville, Lewis. Life and Letters of Tobias Smollett. Hough- ton Mifflin. $5. Minnigerode, Meade. Certain Rich Men. Putnam. $3.50. Morley, Edith J. Correspondence of Henry Crabb Robinson with the Wordsworth Circle. Oxford University. 2 vols. Morrow, Honore Willsie. The Father of Little Women. Little, Brown. $3. Munson, Gorham B. Robert Frost. Doran. $2. Murray, D. L. Disraeli. Little, Brown. $4. Nevins, Allan. Edited By. The Diary of Philip Hone. Mead. 2 vols. $25. Nevins, Allan. Fremont. Harper. 2 vols. $10. Ornitz, Samuel. A Yankee Passional. Boni and Liveright. Paleologue, Maurice. Cavour. Harper. $5. Peck, Walter Edwin. Shelley: His Life and Work. Houghton Mifflin. 2 vols. $12.50. Mrs. Pilkington. Memoirs Of. Dodd, Mead. $4. Porter, Katherine Anne. The Devil and Cotton Mather. Boni and Liveright. $4. Pringle, Henry F. Alfred E. Smith. Macy-Masius. $3. Prussing, Eugene E. The Estate of George Washington, De- ceased. Little, Brown. $6. Read, George Willis. A Pioneer of 1850. Little, Brown. $3.50. Robinson, George W. Life of Joseph Scaliger. Harvard Uni- versity Press. $2.50. Root, Harvey W. The Unknown Barnum. Harper. $4. Russell, Phillips. John Paul Jones. Brentano's. $4. Schermerhorn, Elizabeth. Seven Strings of the Lyre: The Ro- mantic Life of George Sand. Houghton Mifflin. $3.50. Scott, Hugh L. Some Memories of a Soldier. Century. $5. Sewall, Samuel. Diary. Macy-Masius. $2.50. Shay, Frank. My Pious Friends and Drunken Companions. Macaulay. $2. Spender, J. A. Life, Journalism and Politics. Stokes. 2 vols. $'0. Stanford, Alfred. Navigator. Morrow. Steel, Byron. O Rare Ben Jonson. Knopf. $3.50. Steuart, John A. The Cap of Youth, Being the Love-Romance of Robert Louis Stevenson. Lippincott. $2.50. Stewart, Herbert L. Anatole France, the Parisian. Dodd, Mead. $3. Sullivan, Herbert and Flower, Newman. Life of Sir Arthur Sullivan. Doran. $5. Tully, Jim. Circus Parade. Boni. $2.50. Van Gogh, Vincent. The Letters Of. Houghton Mifflin. $20. Vollard, Ambroise. Degas: An Intimate Portrait. Greenberg. $3. Warshow, Robert Irving. Jay Gould: The Story of a Fortune. Greenberg. $4. White, William Allen. Masks in the Pageant. Macmillan. ^2.50. Willis, Rene Cooper. Montaigne. Knopf. $2.50. Wilson, David Alec. Carlyle at His Zenith. Dutton. $5. Wilson, Philip Whitwell. The Greville Diary. Doubleday, Page. 2 vols. $10. Winkler, John K. W. R. Hearst. Simon and Schuster. $3. Youssoupoff, Prince Felix. Rasputin. Dial Press. $5. DRAMA Anderson, Maxwell. Saturday's Children. Longmans. Green. $2. Archer, William. Three Plays. Holt. $2.50. Basshe, Em Jo. Earth. Macaulay. $2. Conrad, Joseph. The Nature of a Crime and Three Plays. Dou- bleday, Page. $2. Four Thoughtful Books The Practical Application of Sociology, by Herbert X. Shenton A trained sociologist discusses the possibility of harnessing social forces. ^3-5° The See of Peter, by James T. Shotwell and Louise Ropes Loomis A real investigation of the foundations for the claims of the Roman Church to Christian primacy. $10.00 Experimental Embryology, by Thomas Hunt Morgan An up-to-date and thorough survey by one of the leaders in the field. ^7-S° The Scientific Habit of Thought, by Frederick Barry An informal book which deals penetratingly with science and scientists. ^3-5° COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS NEW YORK *a crvxvT) cr^y^Nr'a ^rvw? S""SyW7) by the Author ojr~ •'WILD GEESE" "THE DARK DAWN' The MAD CAREWS By MARTHA OSTENSO Light and shadows sweep across the prairie in swift succes- sion in this brilliant novel of marriage and love. The story of the Carews, accustomed to marry where they will and rind no women to match them. $2.50 at Booksellers DODD, MEAD

vL>-*^ ^^n^-^ Z^*townti<m The Nation

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Oct. 12, 1927] The Nation 369 Cummings, E. E. Him. Boni and Liveright. $2.50. Drinkwater, John. The Art of Theatre-Going. Houghton Mif- flin. $3. Galsworthy, John. Escape. Scribner. $1. Gogol, Nikolai V. The Gamblers and Marriage. Macaulay. $2.50. Green, Paul. The Field God and In Abraham's Bosom. McBride. $2. Hammond, Percy. But— is it Art? Doubleday, Page. $2.50. Isaacs, Edith J. R. Essays on the Arts of the Theatre. Little, Brown. $4.50. Hamilton, Cosmo and Reilly, Frank C. Pickwick. Putnam. $2. Jonson, Ben. Edited by C. H. Herford and Percy Simpson. Vol. III. Oxford University. Kennedy, Charles Rann. Plays for Three Players. University of Chicago Press. $2.50. Lawrence, William J. Pre-Restoration Stage Studies. Harvard University Press. $5. Lawson, John Howard. Loud Speaker. Macaulay. $2. Locke, Alain and Gregory, Montgomery. Plays of Negro Life. Harper. $5. Machiavelli, Nicollo. Mandragola. Macaulay. $2.50. Masefield, John. Tristan and Isolt. Macmillan. $2. Maugham, W. Somerset. The Letter: A Play in Three Acts. Doran. $2. Nicoll, Allardyce. The Development of the Theatre. Harcourt, Brace. $19. Nicoll, Allardyce. History of Late Eighteenth Century Drama. Macmillan. $6.50. O'Neill, Eugene. Lazarus Laughed. Boni and Liveright. $2.50. Palmer, John. Studies in the Contemporary Theatre. Little, Brown. $2.75. Quinn, Arthur Hobson. A History of the American Drama. Harper. 2 vols. $10. Shakespeare, William. Coriolanus. Edited by Horace Howard Furness, Jr. Lippincott. $6. Spencer, Hazelton. Shakespeare Improved. Harvard Univer- sity Press. $2.50. Young, Stark. The Theater. Doran. $1.50. ECONOMICS, INDUSTRY, POLITICS, SOCIOLOGY Auld, George P. The Dawes Plan and American Dominance. Doubleday, Page. $2.50. Barker, Ernest. National Character. Harper. $3. Bober, Mandell M. Karl Marx's Interpretation of History. Har- vard University Press. $3.50. Brailsford, Henry Noel. This Distracted World. Harper. $3. Calvert, E. Roy. Capital Punishment. Putnam. $2. Darrow, Clarence and Yarros, Victor. The Prohibition Phobia. Boni and Liveright. $2. Delaisi, Francis. Political Myths and Economic Realities. Vik- ing. $5. Eastman, Max. Marx, Lenin, and The Science of Revolution. Boni. $2. Edwards, Lyford P. The Natural History of Revolution. Uni- versity of Chicago Press. $3. Engels, Plekhanov and Others. Karl Marx; Man, Thinker, and Revolutionist. A Collection of Essays. International. $1.75. Feldman, Herman. Prohibition: Its Economic and Industrial Aspects. Appleton. $2. Frankfurter, Felix. The Business of the Supreme Court. Mac- millan. $4. Gandhi, Mahatma. Young India. Viking. $5. Groves, Ernest R. and Gladys H. Wholesome Marriage. Hough- ton Mifflin. $2. Hobson, J. A. The Conditions of Industrial Peace. Macmillan. $1.50. Houser, J. David. What the Employer Thinks. Harvard Uni- versity Press. $2.50. Hungerford, Edward H. The Story of Public Utilities. Putnam. Kenworthy, J. M. Peace or War? Boni and Liveright. $2.50. "It Brings One's Education Down to Date" Writes Professor E. A. Ross of this Prose Epic of the Modern Universe In which modern science, society, art, religion, and phil- osophy are outlined and integrated in one poetic world whole The New Universe By Baker Brownell Hailed with an Enthusiasm Few Books Could Inspire BtRTRAND RUSSELL: "Its scope is CARL SANDBURG: "Of all the out- amazing. I do not know of lines covering various fields of any other book that so covers knowledge in recent years, the modern world." this is my favorite. It merges TH: NF.W REPUBLIC: "This book document and poetry." is poetry; it is all poetry. It cnn,IM c .,„„„„ ,.T , is a literary achievement of EDWIN E. SLOSSON: I do not high order." know of any other book which ,„,,. -.IC "„!, iU ^. gives in one volume such a ZONA GALh: tor the first time sweeping survey of modern in America, so far as I know view3 and recentIy acquired such writing, here is a biogra- knowledge of all fields— astro- phy of the universe, bodied in nomical. physical, biological, beauty undeniably singing, and sociological." yet colored and lit by the bril- liant common sense of Amer- NEW TOrk TIM-S: "A book of ,ca- hope, inspiring hope. It goes PROFFSSOR JOHN DEWET: "It is back to the eternal things ; it a most valuable contribution inspires new hope for the fu- to the coordination of present, ture of philosophical thinking specialized knowledge." and writing in America." These are but a few typical selections from the avalanche of praise for this book. You will find it as "The Nation" testifies, "A new thing in literature." Don't miss its stimulation, enlightenment, challenge. See the volume at your bookseller's ; or if you wish, it wM be Sent to You Postpaid by the publishers on receipt of price — $4.00. Order immediately and become familiar with one of the most important books of recent years. D. VAN NOSTRAND COMPANY, 8 Warren Street, New York > crvyy^s cr^vsrs crw^ crw crw tr^y^n) g^ Stepping Ahead! The circulation of The Bookman, under its new owners and editor, has doubled since the September number appeared, fl Newsstand sales are three times as great. \\ Subscriptions are coming in faster than at any time in The Bookman's history. U Burton Rascoe has made a new magazine, and a wide, enthusiastic audience im- mediately discovered it. The October BOOKMAN is now on sale. It includes: Elsie Uinsmore: Or How Fundamentalism Came to Dixie by Ruth Suckow Man About Town by Ernest Boyd The Literary Awakening in the South by Herschel Brickell 1909: A Poetic Narrative by Halcyon Van Moore r* M and a brilliant array "I essays, stories, poems, sketches, bur- lesques and reviews. Edited by BURTON RASCOE THE BOOKMAN was repeatedly sold out on all stands last month. The greatly increased print-order proved entirely inadequate, even in- cluding a lartre supply reserved for advertising purposes. Buy early! — or use this blank for a subscription. Remember: The subscription rate goes from $4to$5on January I. THE BOOKMAN 452 Fifth Avenue New York City Please inter my subscription to THE BOOKMAN for one year, to start with the issue. I enclose $4.00* (money order or check) ; or, send me a bill. ($6 brings the magazine for two years.) Name Address (2 'Canadian Postage, 50c a year extra: foreign, $1 extra g\ S^JXLWr*^) <tjW*±D (L^W^S Z^#r%J) <L<W$*J) CL^4fr^S d^£ When writing to advertisers please mention The Nation

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370 The Nation [Vol. 125. No. 3249 Lindsey, Ben B. and Evans, Wainwright. The Companionate Marriage. Boni and Liveright. $3. Laski, Harold J. Communism. Holt. $1. Marriott, John. The Mechanism of the Modern State. Oxford University. McBain, Howard L. The Living Constitution. Macmillan. $1.50. Monroe, Paul. China: A Nation in Evolution. Macmillan. $3.50. Norton, Henry Kittredge. The Far Eastern Republic. Day. $3. Odum, Howard W. Man's Quest for Social Guidance. Holt. $5. Peffer, Nathaniel. The White Man's Dilemma. Day. §3. Robertson, William J. The Changing South. Boni and Live- right. $3. Ross, Edward Alsworth. Standing Room Only. Century. $3. Salvemini, Gaetano. The Fascist Dictatorship in Italy. Holt. Vol. II. $3. Smith, T. V. The American Philosophy of Equality. Univer- sity of Chicago Press. $3. Soule, George. Industrial Arbitration. Macmillan. $1.50. Spaight, J. M. The Beginnings of Organized Air Power. Long- mans, Green. $6.50. Thomson, Lord. Air Facts and Problems. Doran. $3. Tugwell, Rexford Guy. Industry's Coming of Age. Harcourt, Brace. $2. Wildes, Harry Emerson. Social Currents in Japan. University of Chicago Press. $3. ESSAYS, CRITICISM, LITERARY HISTORY The American Caravan. Macaulay. $5. Asquith, Margot. Lay Sermons. Doran. $2.50. Atkinson, J. Brooks. Henry Thoreau. The Cosmic Yankee. Knopf. $2.50. Bent, Silas. Ballyhoo. Boni and Liveright. $3. Boyd, Ernest. Literary Blasphemies. Harper. $2.5U. Boynton, Percy Holmes. More Contemporary Americans. Uni- versity of Chicago Press. $2.50. Brown, Tom. The Works Of. Dodd, Mead. $6. Brownell, W. C. Democratic Distinction. Scribner. $2.50. Chase, Cleveland B. Sherwood Anderson. McBride. $1. Chesterton, G. K. Eugenics and Other Evils. Dodd, Mead. $2.50. Cowling, George H. Chaucer. Dutton. $2. Drake, William A. Contemporary European Writers. Day. $2.50. Fay, Bernard. Since Victor Hugo: French Literature of To-day. Little, Brown. $2. Forster, E. M. The English Novel. Harcourt, Brace. $2.50. Galsworthy, John. Castles in Spain: And Other Screeds. Scrib- ner. $2. Gard, Wayne. Book Reviewing. Knopf. $2. Gosse, Edmund. Leaves and Fruit Scribner. $3. Grandgent, Charles Hall. From Latin to Italian. Harvard Uni- versity Press. $2.50. Harwood, i';x. Getting and Writing News. Doran. $2.50. Huxley, Aldous. Essays Old and New. Doran. $2.50. Johnston, James C. Biography — the Literature of Personality. Century. $2.50. Krapp, George Philip. The Kn Legouis, Emile and Cazamian, Louis. History of English Litera- ture. Macmillan. $6. Lewisohn, Ludwig. Cities and Men. Harper. $! McMurtrie, Douglas C. The Golden Book. Pascal Covici. $6. Megroz, R. L. The Three Sitwells. Doran. $3. Mencken, H. L. Prejudices: Sixth Series. Knopf. $2.50. Mencken, H. L. Selected Prejudices. Knopf. $2.50. Michaud, Regis. The American Novel Today. Little, Brown. $2.50. Morand, Paul. Europe at Love. Boni and Liveright. $G. Murray, Gilbert. The Classical Tradition in Poetry. Harvard University Press. $2.50. Nathan. George Jean. Land of the Pilgrims' Pride. Knopf. $2.50. Nicolson, Harold. Some People. Houghton Mifflin. Orcutt, William Dana. The Kingdom of Books. Little, Brown. $5. Plowman, Max. An Introduction to the Study of Blake. Dut- ton. $2. Prescott, Frederick C. Poetry and Myth. Macmillan. $2. Rascoe, Burton. Morrow's Almanack for 192S. Morrow. Robertson, J. G. Goethe. Dutton. $2.50. Rosenbach, A. S. W. Books and Bidders. Little, Brown. $5. Russell, Mrs. Bertrand. The Right to Be Happy. Harper. $2.50. Shenstone, William. Men and Manners. Houghton Mifflin. $5. Shepard, Odell. The Heart of Thoreau's Journals. Houghton Mifflin. $3. Sinclair, Upton. Money Writes. Boni. $2.50. Smith, Paul Jordan. A Key to the Ulysses of James Joyce. Pascal Covici. $3. Spitteler, Carl. Laughing Truths. Putnam. $2.50. Squire. J. C. Contemporary American Authors. Holt. $1.75. Stefansson, Vilhjalmur. The Standardization of Error. Nor- ton. $1. Taft, Henry W. An Essay on Conversation. Macmillan. $1.60. Thoreau, Henry David. The Moon. Houghton Mifflin. Winslow, Ola Elizabeth. Harper's Literary Museum. Harper. $4. Woolf, Leonard. Essays on Literature, History, Politics. Har- court, Brace. $2.50. Zweig, Stefan. Conflicts. Viking. $2.50. FICTION Aiken, Conrad. Blue Voyage. Scribner. $2.50. Armstrong, Martin. The Water is Wide. Harper. $2. Bacon, Josephine Daskam. Counterpoint. Day. $2.50. Bacon, Leonard. Guinea Fowl. Harper. $2. Bailey, H. C. The Fool. Dutton. $2.50. Bedier, Joseph. Tristan and Iseult. Translated by Hillaire Belloc. Boni. $2.50. Beer, Thomas. The Road to Heaven. Knopf. Benefield, Barry. Bugles in the Night. Century. $2. Bennett, Arnold., The Vanguard. Doran. $2. Bercovici, Konrad. Alexander of Macedon. Doubleday, Page. $2.50. Borden, Mary. Flamingo. Doubleday, Page. $2.50. Boyd, James. Marching On. Scribner. $2.50. Bromfield, Louis. A Good Woman. Stokes. $2.50. Busson, Paul. The Man Who Was Born Again. Day. $2.50. Cabell, James Branch. Something About Eve. McBride. $2.50. Cahill, Holger. 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Oct. 12, 1927] The Nation 371 SPEAKING OF GREAT DISCOVERIES A little more than fifteen years ago life insurance actuaries found that large groups of men and women could be in- sured without medical examination and at minimum cost, the law of averages making this concession possible. Thus was Group Life Insurance born. Today its benefits have been extended to nearly FIVE MILLION wage earners, who are covered for about $5,500,000,000. Much has been said of the value of this form of protection, in increasing efficiency, reducing labor turnover, and creating good will, but it does more than that. It guards the dependent family from the necessity of relying on "hat passing" when emergency arises. If you are an employer or an employee, ask your Prudential man about this policy. THE PRUDENTIAL INSURANCE COMPANY of AMERICA EDWARD D. DUFFIELD, President Home Office NEWARK, N. J. When writing to advertisers please mention The Nation from The Inner Sanctum of SIMON and SCHUSTER Publishers . 37 West 57th Street . Netv York AM) __ "The whole truth of the matter is that falling into this l>ook, head first, which is the only way one can fall whether he wants to or not, is like finding yourself suddenly in a gold mine, surrounded on all sides by riches to which you have only to turn your eyes and they are yours, gleaming and solid and rare, in deep veins and strangely-shaped nuggets. This book is the best thing that lias hit the reading world in years. There is not on any book-shelf, anything quite like it . . . All we plead is that no one with a spark of imagination, of life, of intelligence will hesitate to send today for this book. No, we are not agents for this book. We almost wish we were, for then we could with propriety go through the country in a gayly be- postered wagon shouting through a megaphone: " Here you arel Here's your copy I Step up ladies and gentlemen. Don't push!" I This review from the current issue of the Elks Magazine refers to Trader Horn. It is restraint such as this which has kept Trader Horn in second place on the best-seller list, just behind Col. Lindbergh's We. If the re- viewers really let themselves go, the book would be further ahead than its 51st thousand in three and one-half months . . . The Inner Sanctum will just have to grin and bear it philo- sophically. The Inner Sanctum policy of never using rejection slips may be suspended temporarily, now that we have unearthed the following form used by a Chinese editor of pre-revolu- tionary days: "We have read thy manuscript with in- finite delight. By the sacred ashe.s of our ancestors, we swear that we never before have reveled in s enthralling a manu- script. "If we printed it His Majesty the Em- peror, our high and mighty master, would ordain us to take it as a model, never hence- forth to print anything inferior to il. As it would lie impossible to find its equal within ten thousand years, we are compelled, tho shaken with sorrow a I oar art ion. to return thy it.* ine manuscript . and lor doing so we ask of thee a thousand pardons." Will Durant's new hook Transition, A Menial Autobiography was written before The Story of Philos- ophy was published. Da. Durant says of it : "The accompanying 'remem- brance of things past' was written in a pleasant vacation time, as an indulgent relief from a year of historical research, but it was done run aniore; and t here tire some passives iii it which 1 am afraid will remain to the end the best that 1 ha\ e written." ^) Rev. Edgar White Burrill, whose Literary Vespers are well known to the booklovers of New York, has this to say of Witt. Durant's new book, Transition, A Menial Autobiography: "1 have this moment finished reading Wn t. l)i want's fine book. Transit ion, and i want yon to know that I feel il to be even a frealer thing than his Story of Philosophy. t is one of the finest and most grippingiy told life stories that I have ever read. — ESSANIU.SS

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372 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3249 Hamilton, Mary Agnes. Folly's Handbook. Harcourt, Brace. $2.50. Hemingway, Ernest. Men Without Women. Scribner. $2. Hummel, George F. Lazy Isle. Boni and Liveright. $2.50. Ibanez, Vicente Blasco. The Mob. Dutton. $2.50. Irwin, Inez Haynes. Gideon. Harper. $2. Itrati, Panalt. Uncle Anghel. Knopf. $2.50. Johnston, Mary. The Exile. Little, Brown. $2.50. Kennedy, Margaret. Red Sky at Morning. Doubleday, Page. $2.50. Komroff, Manuel. Fantasy of Quest. Boni and Liveright. $2.50. Lagerlof, Selma. Charlotte Lowenskold. Doubleday, Page. $2.50. Loos, Anita. But Gentlemen Marry Brunettes. Boni and Live- right. $2. Mackail, Denis. The Flower Show. Houghton Mifflin. $2.50. McKay, Claude. Home to Harlem. Harper. $2.50. Merezhkovsky, Dimitri. Akhnaton. Dutton. $2.50. Meynell, Laurence W. Lois. Appleton. $2. Molnar, Ferenc. The Paul Street Boys. Macy-Masius. $2. Mottram, It. H. Our Mr. Dormer. Dial Press. $2.50. Norris, Charles G. Zelda Marsh. Dutton. $2.50. 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The Story of Architecture in America. Norton. $3.50. Turner, W. J. Beethoven. Doran. $6. Wehle, Harry B. and Bolton, Theodore. American Miniatures 1720-1850. Doubleday, Page. $10. Wilenski, R. H. The Modern Movement in Art. Stokes. $5. Yerbury, F. R. and Ellwood, G. M. The Human Form and Its Use in Art. Marshall Jones. $7.50. Young, Art. Trees at Night. Boni and Liveright. $3. HISTORY Adams, Randolph G. The Gateway to American History. Little, Brown. $3. Aulard, A. Christianity and the French Revolution. Little, Brown. $3. Bury, J. B., and Others, Editors. Macedon. Cambridge An- cient History. Macmillan. v. VI. $7. Bywater, Hector C. Navies and Nations: A Review of the Naval Developments Since the Great War. Houghton Mifflin. $4. Cheyney, Edward P. Law in History and Other Essays. Knopf. $2. Colman, Edna M. Famous American Wills. Doubleday, Page. $10. Dennis, Alfred L. P. Adventures in American Diplomacy, 1896- 1906. Dutton. $5. Fay, Bernard. 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Why Rome Fell. Harper. $3.50. Wrong, E. M. History of England, 1688-1815. Holt. $1. Young, George. Egypt. Scribner. $5.

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Oct. 12, 1927] The Nation 373 The CHILD STUDY ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA announces the following Study and Discussion Groups for parents, teachers and social workers to be held at head- quarters, 54 W. 74th St., N. Y. C, for the season 1927-1928: Infancy and Early Childhood Early Childhood Child Development and Child Training The Child from 6 to 12 Introduction to General Child Study Sex Education for Parents Progressive Methods in Education Changing Concepts of Child Training Vocational Guidance Mental Hygiene The Adolescent in Modern Society Scientific Ethics These Study Groups will be led by members of the staff of the Child Study Association and other specialists in child development. Registration October 18th, 19th and 20th. For complete pro- gram address Child Study Association 54 West 74th Street -:- New York City Telephone Endicott 8298. WHAT DOES JEWISH SOCIAL WORK OFFER AS A CAREER? "(1) ... an unexcelled opportunity for a life of idealism and sen-ice. In it one can be of service, both to his own people and to the general community. . . ." (See Pamphlet, p. 7). The Training School for Jewish Social Work Offers a fifteen months' course of study in Jewish Family Case Work, Child Care, Community Centers, Federations and Health Centers. For information, address The Director THE TRAINING SCHOOL FOR JEWISH SOCIAL WORK 210 WEST 91ST STREET NEW YORK CITY LABOR TEMPLE, 14th Street and 2nd Avenue, New York EDMUND B. CHAFFEE, Director Fall Announcement 1927 Sunday, 5:00 P. M., Labor Temple School 7:15 P. M., American Inter- 8:30 P. M., Labor Temple Lecture by Dr. G. F. Beck on: national Church Service. Address by Mr. Chaffee on: Forum: Oct. 2 "The Antigone of Sophocles." L-ihrr Temple Night — Special Labor Temple Night — Special Program Program 9 "The Forsyte Saga of Gals- "Physical Science and Religious Dr. G. F. BECK on "A Radical- worthy." Faith." ism that Cannot Die Out." 16 "The Prometheus of Aeschylus." "Personal Virtues and the So- SALOMON DE LA SELVA on cial Gospel." "As the Nicaraguans See It." 23 "The Prometheus of Shelley." "What and Where Is God?" W. E. B. DU BOIS: "The Negro and the Future of America." 30 "The Book of the Month." Address by LEON LAND A. J. MUSTE on "Labor and Education." Nov. 6 "Shakespeare's 'Hamlet.' " "International Peace and Mod- NORMAN THOMAS: "What ern Industry." We Might Do With New York." URBAIN LE DOUX: "Ho- 13 "O'Neill's 'Great God Brown.'" To be announced boes and the Rest of Us." 20 "Goethe's 'Faust.' " Special Thanksgiving Program. Dr. ISAAC B. BERKSON on "The Jews, Race, Religion or Nationality?" 27 "The Book of the Month." "The Unpardonable Sin — Living PAUL BLANCH ARD: "China Without Work." Today and Tomorrow." Dec. 4 "The Birds of Aristophanes." "Communism — Its Truth and Prof. S. C. MITCHELL of Rich- Error." mond, Va., on "The South To- day." To be announced 11 " 'The Tempest' of Shakes- Address by LEON LAND 18 peare. "Shaw's 'Back to Methusalah.' " "Holism and Evolution." Dr. G. F. BECK — Subject to be announced 25 "The Book of the Month." Specia! Christmas Program. Special Christmas Program Admission to above 25c. These addresses will be preceded by a brief Organ Recital by Stanley A. Admission to above free. For Schedule of Courses in Day, Labor Temple Organist. Admission tG above free THE LABOR TEMPLE SCHOOL (7th Year) Every Thursday Evening, beginni ng October 6, at 8:30, Mr. Chaffee Write Labor Temple Office. 242 E. 14th St.. N. Y. conducts a Forum on "The Event s of the Week." Admission is Free. All are Welcome. KEEP THIS FOR REFERENCE. When writing to advertisers phase mention The Nation

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374 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3249 PHILOSOPHY, PSYCHOLOGY, RELIGION, ANTHROPOLOGY, EDUCATION Adler, Alfred. Understanding Human Nature. Greenberg. $3.50. Bjorkman, Edwin. The Search for Atlantis. Knopf. $2. Bosanquet, Bernard. Science and Philosophy, and Other Essays. Macmillan. $5.50. Briffault, Robert. The Mothers. Macmillan. 3 vols. $27. Buell, Raymond Leslie. The Native Problem in Africa. Mac- millan. 2 vols. $10. Burrow, Trigant. The Social Basis of Consciousness. Har- court, Brace. $3.75. Conklin, Edmund S. Principles of Abnormal Psychology. Holt. $4.50. De Unamuno, Miguel. The Life of Don Quixote and Sancho According to Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra, Expounded with Comment. Knopf. $5. Dewey, John. The Public and Its Problems. Holt. $2.50. Driesch, Hans. Mind and Body. Dial Press. $3. Freud, Sigmund. Psychoanalysis for Everyone. Brentano's. $2.50. Hoernle, F. Alfred. Idealism as a Philosophy. Doran. $2.50. Holt, Henry. The Hopeful Borderland. Holt. $2.50. Inge, W. R. 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Macaulay. $3. Kreymborg, Alfred. Funnybone Alley. Macaulay. $3.50. Lowell, Amy. Ballads for Sale. Houghton Mifflin. S2.25. Millay, Kathleen. The Evergreen Tree. Boni and Liveright. $2. Milne, A. A. Now We Are Six. Dutton. Putnam, H. Phelps. Trine. Doran. $1.75. Reese, Lizette Woodworth. Little Henrietta. Rice, Cale Young. Stygian Freight. Century. Rittenhouse, Jessie B. The Third Book of Houghton Mifflin. $2.50. Sandburg, Carl. The American Songbag. Harcourt, Brace. ;>7.50. Sitwell, Edith. Rustic Elegies. Knopf. $2.50. Sitwell, Sacheverell. The Cyder Feast. Doran. $2. Wheelock, John Hall. The Bright Doom. Scribner. $2. Wolfe, Humbert. Requiem. Doran. $1.50. Doran. $1.50. Modern $1.50. Verse. SCIENCE Har- Alverdes, Friedrich. Social Life in the Animal World. court, Brace. $3.50. Clendening, Logan. The Human Body. Knopf. $6. Collet, Leon W. The Structure of the Alps. Longmans, Green. $5. Eddington, A. S. Stars and Atoms. Oxford University. Flammarion, Camille. The End of the World. Appleton. $2.50. Haldane, J. B. S. The Last Judgment. Harper. $1. Huxley, Julian. Animal Behavior. Doran. $1. Jennison, George. Natural History: Animals. Macmillan. $6. Lodge, Sir Oliver. Science and Human Progress. Doran. $2. Michelson, A. A. Studies in Optics. University of Chicago Press. $2. Pupin, Michael. The New Reformation. Scribner. $2. Singer, Charles. From Magic to Science. Boni and Liveright $7.50. Weir, John W. Comets and the Sun. Longmans, Green. $5. TRAVEL, GEOGRAPHY, NATURE, DESCRIPTION Berkey, Charles P. and Morris, Frederick K. The Geology of Mongolia. Putnam. $10. Dwight, H. G. Potomac Packet. Harper. $3.50. Hall, Leland. Timbuctoo. Harper. $4. Lawrence, D. H. Mornings in Mexico. Knopf. $2.50. Byrd, Richard E. Skyward. Putnam. $3.50. Cendrars, Blaise. The African Saga. Payson and Clarke. $5. Le May, Reginald. An Asian Arcady: The Land and Peoples of Northern Siam. Houghton Mifflin. $6. Morand, Paul. Nothing But the Earth. McBride. $3.50. Nevinson, Henry W. 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Fall Book Section Muckraker Tactics By HEYWOOD BROUN kcv ONCE upon a time the muckraker charged straight at the citadel of corruption and from behind the barri- cades the entrenched forces riddled him with bullets. He has, with the passing of the years, taken to tactics and learned the value of hitting an exposed flank. And so when people ask why Samuel Hopkins Adams chose to call Warren Gamaliel Harding "Willis Markham" the answer is very simple. "Revelry," the novel, and the current play derived from it, gain vastly in effectiveness from being cast into fictional form. The parable is still the silver bullet of the reformer. Much that Mr. Adams put into "Revelry" is a matter of public record, and the public record merely aggravated the tendency of Americans to fly into a great state of calm about public scandals. Most of the testimony con- cerning the oil deals was damn- ing, but obviously neither the voting nor the reading public took it to heart. An episode in a novel fires the imagination far more than a news report. In- deed when "Revelry" was still in manuscript Mr. Adams showed his story to a journalist who prides himself upon his famili- arity with current events. To make no secret of the mat- ter, the volunteer reader was "F.P.A." And this Mr. Adams reported back to the author that it seemed to him a lively tale, but that some of the incidents failed to carry conviction. The columnist did say that one portion of the book seemed to him utterly thrilling and persuasive. "I refer," he said, "to the chapter about the young lieutenant who is sent to seize the fields to further the plot of the grafters." At this, the creator of the tale made rather a long face and confessed. "It ought to sound true because I took it almost word for word from the testimony of a young lieutenant who was a witness at the inquiry." This particular part of the public record attracted not the slightest attention, but once imbedded in a novel the thing took on vitality and interest. Naturally, I do not intend to suggest that Samuel Hopkins Adams is the first reformer to hit upon the de- vice of attacking persons in the public eye by casting them as characters in a novel. Each one of us who opens a can of beef today should mention Upton Sinclair's name in saying grace. Now if Mr. Sinclair had chosen to call his book "A Plain Statement of Facts About The Packers," canned beef would be pretty much the same this morning as in the bad old days. More shrewdly the author got his information abroad by garnishing his truths with a tale. It may be that the adult-minded are prepared to take their information straight, but most of us want some pleasant chaser. Deep-rooted in the human mind is the feeling that if it isn't fiction it can't be true. Obviously, not everything in "Revelry" is literally from the life. No one has a right to ask that much of any fictionist. The business of the novelist, as I understand it, is to take observed experience and shuffle it around a bit. The only complaint to be made against Samuel Hop- kins Adams is that he has shuffled too little rather than too much. He, and Miss Maurine Watkins, who drama- tized the story, have done perhaps no more than cut the cards before dealing. A few may feel that since Presi- dent Harding did not commit suicide and Willis Markham did, the book and the play must contain no more than a pack of lies. But that is a silly assumption. The only responsibility resting upon Mr. Adams was to be faithful to the mood of the Harding Administration. From this point of view I think he has given the country a fundamen- tally truthful document. Prob- ably a close analysis might re- veal the fact that here and there "Uncle Tom's Cabin" contained passages slightly exaggerated, and yet it may be that the novel did more to arouse opposition to slavery than any plain statement of fact. The recent agitation in Phila- delphia against the production of "Revelry" seemed centered less in a feeling that the charges were untrue than in the fa- miliar emotion that it is best to say no ill concerning the dead. People who refuse to pursue grudges beyond the grave's edge flatter themselves that they possess a kindliness of spirit, but I think this squeamishness is animated rather by superstitious terror. In some unexplored cranny of the mind there lurks the dread that a hard-pressed ghost will rise to haunt his at- tackers. And I hold to the theory that Presidents, at least, do not die utterly. No service is done to the national welfare by saying, "Let Warren Gamaliel Harding sleep deep." Indeed the members of his party have not even offered such a com- promise. Instead we are supposed to wink while monu- ments are reared to this great and good man because he happened to die before he was found out. Friends of Harding should applaud and not condemn "Revelry." Samuel Hopkins Adams has gone to great lengths to stretch a point in favor of the martyr President. In his book Mr. Adams has insisted that the man from Marion was not corrupt but merely dull-witted. The novelist seems to have overlooked the possibility that a Republican politician might conceivably be both. Some have said that Samuel Hopkins Adams must be a dreadful man to say such terrible things concerning Hard- ing. Those who hold this opinion also believe that any book by a monster must be monstrous. That isn't so. There ought to be more appetite for the brine of dissent. But "Revelry" will not make many converts in this cause, for Mr. Adams has shaken the top off the salt-cellar.

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376 The Nation [Vol. 125. No. 3249 A Survey of the Season's Books By MARK VAN DOREN 1HAVE heard more than one publisher declare that his list this fall was to be a weak one. But another glance at the titles of the season has reassured me — at least to the extent of making it impossible for me to say just wherein the times are slow. Publishers, of course, have their own ways of looking at literature, and it may be that fewer books than in other falls will sell into the hundreds of thousands. Many interesting books are announced, how- ever, and as I am fortunate enough not to have to be con- cerned witli sales, I am at liberty to go on checking with a pencil the announcements that seem most promising. In the department of biography I am impressed once more with the activity among students of the American past, particularly that not very remote past which may be designated roughly by the term mid-nineteenth-century. Colonial and Revolutionary America have hitherto been bet- ter known than this America out of which a living genera- tion draws its character. Victorian America is a weird enough land, and indeed one sufficiently remote, to need explaining, and doubtless in time it will be amply ex- plained. Meanwhile we shall have in Gamaliel Brad- ford's "D. L. Moody," Paxton Hibben's "Henry Ward Beecher," Arthur D. Howden Smith's "Commodore Vander- belt," Denis Lynch's "Boss Tweed," Harvey Root's "The Unknown Barnum," and Robert Warshow's "Javr Gould" some of the materials for the study of personalities sig- nificant in such a day. Meanwhile too the colonial work goes on with Katherine Anne Porter's account of "The Devil and Cotton Mather," Rupert Hughes's continuation of his "George Washington," Eugene E. Prussing's analysis of Washington's will, Phillips Russell's "John Paul Jones," and — something that has been long desired — Charles Beard's edition for the American Library of William Mac- lay's "Journal." And meanwhile too we are treated to memoirs picturing the contemporary American world as experienced by Will Durant, William Ellery Leonard, and Samuel Ornitz, as well as to "lives" of the living or lately dead — L. White Busbey's "Uncle Joe Cannon." George Harvey's "Henry Clay Frick." Walter Lippmann's "Men of Destiny," William Allen White's "Masks in the Pageant," and John K. Winkler's "W. R. Hearst." As was to have been expected, there are two volumes out on "Al" Smith: Henry F. Pringle's, reviewed elsewhere in this issue of The Nation, and another one yet to come by Norman Hapgood and Henry Moskowitz. All this, as must be apparent, with- out any mention of several most interesting biographies coming from abroad and dealing with such figures as Ana- tole France, Joseph Conrad. Bismarck, Heine. Mustafa Kemal, Edward VII., George Sand, and Joseph Scaliger. In belles lettres we have an America]', innovation in the form of a year-book of literature. "The American Caravan" may mean this or that to American literature there will be debates as to just what it does "mean" but its eight hundred pages of verse ind prose In- varied authors ought to show something at any rate not shown by any or all of the magazim The season is rather richer than usual in criticism and literary history and in collections of essays. Allardyce NicolFs "Development of the Then rnard Fay's "Since Victor Hugo," A. H. Quinn's "History of the American Drama," and the second volume of Legouis's and Cazamian's "History of English Literature" will be valua- ble surveys by experts. E. M. Forster will surely have something to say about "The English Novel." Miscellanies are to come by Aldous Huxley, Leonard Woolf, Ernest Boyd, W. C. Brownell, Ludwig Lewisohn, H. L. Mencken, and George Jean Nathan. Mrs. Bertrand Russell's "The Right to be Happy" is said to inhabit a classification of its own; and I am glad to see that Thoreau is remembered this fall with two volumes, one a study by J. Brooks Atkin- son and one a compilation by Odell Shepard called "The Heart of Thoreau's Journals." Thoreau's journal, so im- portant for an understanding of the complete man, needed this kind of notice even more than Emerson's did last year. The fiction list is headed by great names from Europe, and first of all by that of Marcel Proust, the new instal- ment of whose masterpiece, called in English "Cities of the Plain," unfortunately is to be had at present only in a limited edition. Then come Andre Gide's "The Counter- feiters," Reymont's "The Promised Land," Sudermann's "The Mad Professor," Schnitzler's "Daybreak." and Alexis Tolstoy's "The Prince of Outlaws," with English novels by Bennett, Wells, Chesterton, and May Sinclair taking their customary places in the procession. Interest in new novels by Americans will probably center in those of Willa Gather, James Branch Cabell, Zona Gale, Glenway Wescott, Conrad Aiken, Thomas Beer, Louis Bromfield, Floyd Dell, and Ernest Hemingway; though here it is difficult to do justice beforehand to a season's list, since the chances are so great that good new writers will be missed. With the exception of volumes by Padraic Colum, Countee Cullen, Amy Lowell, "H. D.," H. Phelps Putnam, Lizette Woodworth Reese, and Edith Sitwell, few of the new books in poetry promise very much — and some of these indeed promise very little. In Phelps Putnam, the freshest arrival, a remarkable talent will, however, wait to be discerned. And quite possibly the best contribution to poetry in 1927 will be that of Carl Sandburg in his "Amer- ican Songbag," collected from many sources past and pres- ent by this poet who of late has taken to the road in order to listen and sing. In history there will be the long awaited translation of Bernard Fay's "Revolutionary Spirit in France and America," once selected for the Pulitzer Prize but denied the award because it was not yet in English. Sidney Fay with "The Origins of the World War" and Hermann Lutz with "Lord Grey and the World War" will carry on the battle of the scholars for recognition of the truth concern- ing the subject now technically called war-origins. Mark Sullivan continues "Our Times." a piece of contemporary history in many ways unique, into its second volume; M. Rostovtzeff completes his great "History of the Ancient World"; and Hendrik Willem Van Loon comes home with pen and brush to "America." Beyond this point I am unable to tread with much assurance. Yet anyone could remark that it is a distin- guished season which offers works in philosophy by San- tayana. Bosanquet, Unamuno, Russell. Dewey, and White- head; in psychology by Adler. Freud, Driesch, and Kohler; in physics by Eddington and Michelson; and in travel by Henry W. Nevinson, D. H. Lawrence, Captain John Noel of the Mount Everest group, Marmaduke Pickthall. and H. M. Tomlinson.

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Oct. 12, 1927] The Nation 377 Paul Valery and the Intellectual- ist Critics* By JOSEPH WOOD KRUTCH I LONG before the vogue of Paul Valery had reached its present proportions English and American readers were familiar with T. S. Eliot's "The Sacred Wood" and were aware of the existence of a widespread dissatis- faction among younger writers with the theories concern- ing the arts of composition and criticism prevalent among the more thoroughly established practitioners of both. They knew that Romanticism (of which Shaw and Wells were regarded as the most conspicuous contemporary ex- emplars) had been declared passe; that "impressionistic" and "interpretative" criticism, praised by the nineteenth century as the only sort which a man aware of the relativity of all things could permit himself, was by such men as Eliot regarded as no criticism at all; and they were aware, in addition, that this set of literary opinions was but part of a larger "intellectualist" movement whose aim was to reestablish metaphysics as an instrument for attaining truth. Yet even those most hospitable to new ideas were some- what at a loss to know where to turn for first-rate modern examples of intellectualist criticism. Mr. Eliot himself, though he discussed bad critics at some length, had to go as far back as Coleridge to find a good one, and though there were many young writers eager to tell one what the qualities and methods of a real critic would be, they were generally compelled to confess that that no one preeminent enough to serve as a satisfactory illustration could be found. Such a critic, they say, would not concern himself with the sociological implications, the psychological origins, or the historical place of an author; he would, on the other hand, "faire sortir" the essential qualities inherent in any particular work of art considered as a separate, self-con- tained entity. But they were not sure just who had accom- plished this feat. And then, just when the desideratum was being considered, Paul Valery emerged from his ob- scurity. Here was a man who not only shared the preva- lent discontent but who had, in addition, an original force of mind sufficient to enable him actually to strike out in a new direction. Accordingly, and with no little eagerness, he was seized upon by those who had been crying in the wilderness. The bulk of Valery's prose is far from great; it has concerned itself with a rather bewildering number of sub- jects; and, for all the precision for which, upon certain subjects, he has striven, his work is hardly more than a succession of remarkable fragments. Yet all such defects are more than made up for by the fact that his mind works in an original fashion, and thus he owes his vogue less to any system which could be deduced from his works and presented as a precis than to the extraordinary sug- gestiveness of even his most fragmentary efforts. Even when an individual piece seems, as often it does, tentative and incomplete it has usually the virtue of ap- proaching the problem from an unexpected angle and of * Variety. By Paul Valery- Translated by Malcolm Cowley. Harcourt Brace and Company. attacking it with weapons either new or, at least, half- forgotten through disuse. No matter how small or how great the progress which his mind may make in attacking any particular problem, it moves off in a fresh direction and that direction is usually one which the intellectualist delights to see taken. Perhaps the most rounded and complete of his achieve- ments are "Le Soire de M. Teste," "L'Architecture," and "L'Ame et le Dance," none of which has been translated into English. But even among the less perfect pieces which are gathered together in "Variety" one can hardly find a page which does not touch somewhere some aim, effort, or ideal related to that attempt at a new orientation of the mind which is the concern of so many of the most interesting if not the most widely read of contemporary critics and writers. In, for example, the essay entitled "The Intellectual Crisis" he describes, better perhaps than it has ever been described before, that confused state of modern culture which its enemies have dubbed "Romantic Decadence"; in A Foreword (to a volume by Lucien Fabre) he pursues with consummate skill the phantom of Pure Poetry; in "Adonis" he dissects a poem of La Fontaine in a fashion which, however important or unimportant it may be, certainly succeeds in being concerned with no qualities except those of the poem considered by itself; and through all the essays the dominant ideal is a "pre- cision" which is held up as the virtue of classic art distin- guishing it from the suggestiveness of the romanticist. Valery has, perhaps, no system, but his preoccupation is always with one or the other of the elements which make up the intellectualist complex. II He himself has told us that Poe's "Eureka" supplied him with his first ideas of science, and without quite con- fessing how unsatisfactory a textbook that volume is he has gone on to tell how it inspired him to worship pre- cision— "confusedly, it is true, but with passion." Mathe- matics he thought of as the special province of minds in- commensurate with his own, but literature, on the other hand, shocked him by "its lack of discipline, connection, and necessity in handling ideas." Hence he began to dream of an art which should be as exact as geometry, he took Leonardo as his hero, and he began to study words as symbols potentially as exact as those of mathematics. Terminology aside, the effect of his enthusiasm was not only to alienate his sympathy from all the efforts of romantic literature to be suggestive rather than precise but, more especially, to disgust him with all that impres- sionistic criticism whose aim is to reproduce the effect of a work of art upon the critic by a description of it; and it led him to the enunciation of perhaps his fundamental thesis, which is that poetry is not, as has so often been affirmed, analogous to a dream, but on the contrary its antithesis. "The true condition of a true poet," he says, "is absolutely distinct from the state of dream. The man, even, who tries to describe his dream must be infinitely awake," and "whoever says exactitude and style is invoking the opposite of dream." Perhaps it is worth while to point out that the effect of this thesis is not to controvert as directly as might at first sight seem the ancient assumption of an analogy. It does not say that the experience communicated by the poet to the submissive reader is not something pleasing for the

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378 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3249 same reason and in the same way that a dream is pleasing, but it does say that this communication can adequately take place only when the poet emerges from his dream in order to plan with his awakened consciousness the means which he will employ to render an experience of his own comprehensible to another. The difference between a poem and a dream may consist, then, not in content but in ex- pression, but the effect of stressing the distinction rather than the similarity is to turn the attention of the critic from an effort to describe the effects produced by the poet and to lead him instead into an investigation of the technique of expression. Such an investigation is exactly the thing which Valery undertakes in the essay on the "Adonis" of La Fon- taine, which constitutes his most successful attempt to put into practice the principles of criticism which naturally follow from all his discussion of method. In that essay he begins with a few paragraphs which invoke in a fashion quite Pateresque the image of La Fontaine which arises in our minds when his name is mentioned, and then, ceas- ing to concern himself with history, anecdote, or "atmo- sphere," he turns brusquely aside to fix his eye upon the poem itself, considered purely as a collection of words existing in isolation upon a series of pages. The result is something which a romantic critic would probably call "barren." No image is evoked, no mood created, no inter- pretation attempted, but there is instead as skilful and exact an analysis of the means of expression there em- ployed as has ever been made of any piece of writing. Pater would hardly be interested; any rhetor would be compelled to admit that no completer or more subtle dis- section of a style had ever been effected. Ill Our immediate concern is, however, not with the merits of this particular poem but with the method of criticism by which it is expounded and with the idea which it gives of the critic's function. Fortunately Valery him- self has made it possible to be precise on this point because he is himself precise, and after speaking of "the thousand difficulties overcome, and a thousand delights so caught in the length of an inviolable web that they touch and are forced to melt one into another," he defines his conception of the critic and his function by saying that it is "all this hidden labor which the lover of poetry considers, as it were, by holding the tapestry against the light, seeking what lies beneath its artifices, turned aside from his search neither by the movement of the hunt [in the poem] nor by the vicissitudes of love, and beginning by degrees to admire as his mind succeeds in reconstructing the poet's skill." From this it is evident that the lover of poetry is, in Valery's mind, one who takes his pleasure not in the effect of a poem but in a realization of the skill of the poet, and the critic, presumably, is one particularly skilful in detect- ing the evidences of such skill. Here in a few lines is the most clear-cut distinction between the intellectualist ideal and that of the nineteenth century. Then it was supposed that the reader of a poem submitted himself to the spell of the poet, that in the case of ' Adonis." for example, he would do exactly what Valery forbids him and strive to feel the "movement of the hunt" and "the vicissitudes of love." It was even supposed that at least one of the func- tions of the critic was to constitute himself an unusually sensitive and responsive reader; but here even the "lover of poetry" as distinguished from the critic of poetry is enjoined to concern himself less with the spell of the poet than with the means by which the poet endeavored to cast it, and we are to admire him not in proportion to his success in capturing us but in proportion to the ingenuity of the means which he employed in his effort to do so. No one could wish to deny that Valery performs his analysis with consummate skill or that the piece of criti- cism which he has produced is a valuable one, but the limits of his method are clearly defined by its aims and they are such as to constitute a sufficient confutation of the claims made by certain of the intellectualists that such criticism is the only true or valuable sort. The lover of poetry may legitimately delight himself with the communicated dream of the poet as well as with the means by which it is com- municated, he may follow the "movement of the hunt" and "the vicissitudes of love" when these are the subject of the poem; and even the critic who sets out to enrich the reader's pleasure may concern himself, as the "interpreta- tive critic" always has, with the emotional reactions which accompany his comprehension of the poet's meaning. To- ward the end of the essay under discussion Valery warns us not to think that "we are reading the same poem that was known to the contemporaries of the author. Perhaps the qualities they prized most highly are those which escape us; others which they hardly perceived may affect us deeply." Does not that admission of the fact that when we think of a poem as an aesthetic experience rather than as a series of words it is, potentially, as many different poems as there are readers for it, constitute a defence of even the impressionistic critic who endeavors to communi- cate his poem to the reader by surrounding it with what- ever historical or other facts contribute to the total ex- perience which is his when he reads it? In the course of an extended essay on Stendhal, pub- lished in the Parisian quarterly Commerce, and more re- cently written than any of the essays in "Variety," Valery makes reference to the fact that his concern is exclusively with the technique of an author: "I see the pen and he who holds it : I have no care, I have no need of his emotions. I ask of him nothing except instruction as to his methods." Such a critic is of no small importance, but the majority of readers will still go to literature in search of the very thing which he does not seek, and they will continue to find a use for critics who help them to find it. Song By MARIE de L. WELCH What shall we remember when we are old? What shall we remember even when we are wise? Softly, softly we shall remember Love and love's mouth and love's eyes. What shall we remember more beautifully than wisdom? What shall we remember in our cold years? We shall remember, we shall remember Love and love's laughter and love's tears. What shall we remember when we are lost in quietness? What shall we remember? What shall be keeping? We shall remember, forever, forever Love and love's sigh and love's sleeping.

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Oct. 12, 1927] The Nation 379 The Outlining of Knowledge A Debate on Popularization By JOHN HAYNES HOLMES "rpHE popularization of knowledge" is a phrase which L explains itself. It obviously means the diffusion of knowledge through the mind of the populace — the deliberate attempt to disclose to the unlearned many what is known to the learned few. From one point of view, all education is popularization. The primary teacher writing the multipli- cation table on the blackboard, the college professor lectur- ing on Kant or Einstein, the scientific specialist explaining to his colleagues some new experiment or discovery, all are engaged in imparting information to the ignorant, in popu- larizing knowledge for the benefit of whatever large or small section of the public may in each case be concerned. But from the standpoint of this discussion, popularization means the diffusion of knowledge on a vast scale by methods uncontrolled by standardized instruction. Dr. Adler and I have in mind the business of distributing second- and third- hand knowledge by wholesale methods to the general public. Popularization, as thus defined, involves one or both of two processes. On the one hand it involves, or may involve, translation. When a man sets himself down to translate Aristotle's "Ethics," or Aquinas's "Surama," or Spengler's "Decline of the West" into the language of his own place and time, he is obviously undertaking this task in the inter- ests of popularization. The scholar needs no translation; or, if he needs it, he will not use it. Though his original sources be in Aramaic or Coptic, he will master that tongue, that he may have his knowledge at first-hand. But the aver- age man, as Emerson suggests, cannot swim the stream; he has neither time nor strength to train himself for such a venture. If he is to cross, he must have a bridge; and a translation is a bridge thrown over the stream of an unfamiliar language in order that the trudging wayfarer as well as the well-trained athlete may reach the land of knowledge. Secondly, and more commonly, popularization involves interpretation. Most men cannot understand the meaning, much less the significance, of a great and original work of knowledge. Aristotle's "Ethics," Aquinas's "Summa," Spengler's "Decline of the West" need to be not only trans- lated but interpreted if the common man, even the well- informed man, is to comprehend them. What chance have I to understand Bertrand Russell's mathematical philosophy unless it be expounded by one who knows? What chance have you to know what Einstein's scientific discoveries mean unless they be explained in simple language? For most of us the intricate details of modern science and philosophy on the one hand, and the vast panoramic sweep of contempo- rary knowledge on the other, must be transmitted at second- and third-hand by a process of interpretation, as a kinder- garten explains letters to an infant, if we are to understand at all. This is what is being attempted by the authors of * These two articles are summarirs of the arguments used by Mr. Holmes and Mr. Adler in a recent debate in New York. the various "outlines" and other works of popular knowl- edge which are flooding the book-stalls today. H. G. Wells's "Outline of History," J. Arthur Thomson's "Outline of Science," Dr. Will Durant's "Story of Philosophy," Lewis Browne's "This Believing World" are perhaps the most familiar recent examples. Jowett's immortal edition of Plato, with its translations and its elaborate inter- pretative introductions, is an excellent illustration of both processes of popularization combined in a single notable work. Now what are we to say about this business of popu- larization in its twin forms of translation and interpreta- tion? Is it good or bad, wise or unwise, justifiable or un- justifiable? Our answer to these questions will be deter- mined, it seems to me, not by any theory of knowledge in itself, but by our theory of society. If we believe in the aristocratic theory of society — the subjection of the many to the few — then we will be opposed, as Dr. Adler is opposed, to the popularization of knowledge. We will argue that knowledge is for those who are fit to use it for their own enlightenment and for the guidance of the people. In India, for example, knowledge is the possession of the Brahmins, who pass on from generation to generation the lore which belongs to them alone. In a caste system of society there is naturally a chosen group of scholars or priests whose business it is to know the sacred mysteries. To impart this knowledge to others would be a betrayal of trust. Plato sets forth something of the same idea in his "Republic." At the head of society, as the responsible lead- ers of the state, are the philosophers who know and are therefore fit to govern. The other two groups in the com- munity, the guardians who protect it and the workers who support it, have no need of learning. They would not know what to do with it if it was given them. So the populariza- tion of knowledge in this Utopia of the Greek philosopher would appear both abhorrent and unnecessary. Every ob- jection to popularization is based on this aristocratic theory of society. If men oppose it, it is because they believe that the common people are incompetent to manage their affairs, and thus would only degrade a knowledge which they could not use. But there are some of us who still believe in democ- racy— "government of the people, for the people, by the people"! To such the popularization of knowledge is as necessary and beneficent as education itself. Indeed, we regard popularization, as exemplified by the "best-seller" outlines of our time, as only the farthest ripples of that whole great educational disturbance, central in the life of a democracy, which starts with the placing of a child under trained instruction. The popularization of knowledge, as one phase of the enlightenment of a people for their own self-guidance in the affairs of life, is legitimate, and indeed must be considered wholly necessary, for two reasons: First, a democratic society can survive — indeed, it can come into being at all — only by giving the people knowledge. What one event so surely marks the opening of the modern democratic era as Martin Luther's translation of the Bible

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380 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3249 into the vulgar German tongue of his day? This achieve- ment, with similar achievements elsewhere, wrought the spiritual emancipation of the European peoples and there- with prepared the way for later political and social emanci- pation. And Luther's work was simply and solely a piece of popularization! Hitherto the Bible and all it connoted to the life of those times was the possession of the priests, who were the scholars of the medieval church. Only the man who knew Latin could read the Vulgate. But now Luther put the Bible into the hands of every humblest peasant by translating it into the vernacular — and the world was free! Another example of popularization of this kind is Thomas Huxley's life-long work in interpreting Darwin. How many people have ever read the "Origin of Species"? How many, if they have read it, have really understood it? liuxley, himself a biologist of the first rank, called it an enormously difficult work. It was perhaps because of his realization of this fact that Huxley undertook the interpre- tation of Darwin's masterpiece to his generation. And what a job he did ! Read his six lectures to workingmen on "Evolution," and behold a classic of popularization! Hux- ley, more than any other man, educated a whole people in the new and revolutionary knowledge of his time, and there- with served democracy. Secondly, the popularization of knowledge is necessary in a democracy because knowledge itself can survive only by diffusing its light among the people. A parable! In New York City not long ago, an ignorant man slew a physi- cian who had injected an antitoxin into the bciy of his little son too late lo save his life. When this man saw his boy suddenly dead after the injection, he assumed that the physician had killed him with his instrument, and he mur- dered him in revenge. Here is an instance where knowl- edge was destroyed by ignorance, for lack of popularization. Had the physician explained to the father, in simple lan- guage, what he was doing to his son — popularized, that is, the theory of anti-toxins — the father would have understood and +he physician be still alive. What is the matter in Tennessee? Why are anti-evolu- tion campaigns flourishing in this and other States? Be- cause no Huxley has popularized evolution for this genera- tion as the great Huxley popularized it for the last genera- tion ! We have reared up a nation which knows not Darwin, and the result is a threatened return of ignorance and superstition. Knowledge can survive in a democracy only by popularization. Make it a hidden, esoteric thing, and always there is the possibility of a sudden uprising or inva- sion of barbarians, to destroy they knew not what — of truth or beauty or wit — and thus to inaugurate once again a "dark ages." The case for the popularization of knowledge is one with the case for democracy. Popularization is not always a lovely process, as democracy is seldom an ideal state of society. It involves the hazard of errors, perversions, dilu- tions, even degradations. But knowledge is made for man, not man for knowledge. Use must transcend beauty, and luxury give place to need. Popularization, if the scholars will, can be made itself an art. It can be done brilliantly, as Durant has done it in his "Stor: "; it can be done nobly, as Wells has done it in his "Outline"; it can be glorified, as Huxley glorified it in a literature that abides. Then will democracy be safe because it is enlightened, and knowledge safe because it is free; the two, like righteousness and peace, kiss each other in sign of unity. II By MORTIMER J. ADLER THE question whether knowledge should be popularized tends to provoke rhetoric expressive of noble humani- tarian sentiments on the one hand and of aristocratic dis- temper on the other. It may be that the question is itself rhetorical, and essentially evasive of any analytic solvent. But at least the attempt can be made. Reason may not have a silver tongue, but its labored accent should find an audi- ence in those who prefer even silence to unclarity. There is first a matter of definition, and second a mat- ter of evaluation. What are the traits of the class of books to be designated as "popularizations"? And what value is to be placed upon them? A popularization is here defined as a book whose sub- ject-matter is other books, the latter being either primary or secondary sources of scholarship or theory, whether sci- entific, historical, or philosophic. It is not the subject-mat- ter, however, but the method which is distinctive. A popu- larization of any subject-matter is (1) a simplified report of (2) the important facts in a given field, and its aim is (3) to educate a group of people with regard to whom it is assumed that (4) their training or intelligence is insuffi- cient to a degree which renders the original sources inac- cessible or at least so difficult as to be unattractive. Inevitably correlated with the four characteristics men- tioned are two further traits, to be stressed not only in themselves but because they are significant in differentiating the popularizations from two other kinds of books with which they are frequently confused. (5) A popularization is always a selection of the important facts in a given field, their importance being determined by some moral, political, or philosophic theory in the author's mind. This theory determines not only the selection but the organization of the material, and is, furthermore, insinuated as authoritative commentary into what pretends to be merely an expository text. It is here asserted that a popularization is distin- guished by the fact that the theory of the work is never frankly stated and defended by its author ; but rather is throughout implicitly assumed as justifying the eccentrici- ties of the popularizer's scholarship, the partiality of his formulations, and as grounding the authority of his im- posed and intruded comments. In other words, a populariza- tion is always authoritarian and dogmatic in that it fails to exhibit, examine, or defend its necessarily assumed theses. (6) A popularization, finally, employs certain devices, stories, pictures, analogies, charts, jokes, and literary vul- garisms which are irrelevant to the subject-matter beinir treated. They are irrelevant in that they are adventitious to the direct understanding of the subject-matter, their function being an appeal to "human interest" and to man- kind's inveterate interest in itself. These devices may in part be efforts at simplification, but they are always more than that. They are of the same order as the literary or pictorial expedients used by the tabloid newspapers, the Sunday supplements, and the journalistic magazines. That they are weapons of exploitation can be seen by a study of the content of the advertising copy which has made any given popularization popular in terms of sales statistics. Knowledge must not only be simplified in order to be sold; it must be exploited in the manner which the tabloids have discovered to be the way of increasing the number of people who read some printed page. The point here being made

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Oct. 12, 1927] The Nation 381 is that these devices are intellectually irrelevant to the com- prehension of the knowledge which they are designed to make seductive and palliative. The class of books under consideration having been defined, some of the members of the class can be pointed out. Each of the following exemplifies to a greater or less degree the specified traits: H. G. Wells's "The Outline of History," Hendrik van Loon's "The Story of Mankind," Will Durant's "The Story of Philosophy," George Dorsey's "Why We Behave Like Human Beings," and Lewis Browne's "This Believing World." As before said there are two other classes of books, often thought of as popularizations, which should be dis- tinguished therefrom. (1) Books which utilize simplified and selected knowledge to support or even to propagandize for a frankly polemical point of view. The distinction of these books is the explicitness of their theses and the frankness of their purpose. In this class belong Huxley's popular writings on evolution, J. B. S. Haldane's "Daeda- lus," and a book like C. E. Ayres's "Science the False Messiah." (2) Books whose effort is to present the general ideas of a given field of research or reflection, for which purpose evidence is selected to embody and illustrate the chosen themes. In this class belong Whitehead's "Intro- duction to Mathematics" and similar books in the Home University Library, Hart's "Psychology of Insanity," Shap- ley's "Starlight," Eddington's writings on relativity, T. H. Morgan's "Critique of the Theory of Evolution," Galileo's "Two New Sciences," and Boyle's "Skeptical Chemist." The distinction of these books is that they are critical sim- plifications of subject-matter governed entirely by a con- sideration of leading ideas. They are not summaries; they are generalizations of knowledge, often original contribu- tions. Their authors are eminent scientists and scholars writing directly to a relatively small public, not journalists or publicists seeking to hold the market-place. This is not a matter of arbitrarily calling names; it is a process of invoking distinctions that will define and differentiate. The term "popularization" certainly is de- served by books of the Wells-Durant-Dorsey class, for they alone are really popular in terms of circulation. The pres- ent argument is concerned with this class alone, for it is this class and not the others which have created the prob- lem. No evaluation positive or negative is implied by the exclusion of the others from consideration. It is now necessary to evaluate the books of the class defined. They are good either (1) in themselves or (2) as means to some end which is judged good. (1) In terms of any standard of excellence, whether it be the criterion of scholarship, of intellectual form, or of literary merit, it is unlikely that any group of tech- nically competent judges would commend these works. Pru- dence requires that this be asserted merely as a statement of probability and statistics. It is memorable, however, that at time of publication each of the recognized popu- larizations was charged by one or more competent special- ists with gross inaccuracy, unrelieved dogmatism, and vul- garity of presentation. (2) But the popularizations are seldom praised or defended in terms of their intrinsic virtues. Rather the defense is made by reference to the service they render in the realization of a democratic ideal of society. Popular education seems to be the unfortunate burden of democ- racy. Democracy, it is claimed, depends upon the dissemi- nation of knowledge, and scholarship and science can sur- vive in a democracy only in so far as the people are edu- cated. This is not the appropriate place to argue such claims. It can only be suggested that they derive their force from a political theory, and not from an empirical survey of the situation. Our present discussion must turn to a question that can be more readily answered. Granted that the popularization of knowledge is important in a democracy as an instrument of public education, can it be maintained that the defined class of books performs that function effectively? I assert the negative, not as a fact but as a suspicion, the grounds for which may be stated as follows: (1) It is assumed not only that all individuals have equal right to education, but that they are equally susceptible to its per- suasion. Whether or not there are profound native dif- ferences in intelligence, the fact of a wide range of intel- lectual ability in the population cannot be disputed. De- mocracy may insist that all should be free to read, and that every effort should be made to render knowledge avail- able; but it would be absurd to insist that all men be given equal opportunity to understand what they read. Either a drastic program of eugenics, or a fundamental economic revolution, might make this possible, but not populariza- tion. (2) These books inform rather than educate, if edu- cation be conceived as the alteration of the intellectual process and not merely as the inculcation of factual con- tent. (3) These books indoctrinate. They not only fail in the most crucial aim of education, the liberation of the individual mind to become autonomous and critical; but worse, they achieve the very opposite. The dogmatic and simplified presentation of the data of knowledge, unaccom- panied by insight into the methods and qualifications of the actual research, develops the stereotypes of a new myth- ology of science as a substitute for the myths of the older tradition. Myths in themselves are not to be deplored when they are taken as poetry, but the popularizations spread their mythology as a gospel. It is the Truth which is being disseminated, and it is to be believed with the genuflections of unquestioning faith. On these grounds, too briefly stated perhaps, I offer that popularizations not only do not satisfy the ends of education but are instead instruments of a new bias and bigotry, and are clouds that obscure the dawning of "creative intelligence" over the land — the central hope of the democratic philosophy. But the democratic philosophy itself, so insidiously prevalent in current American thought, is far from being above question. If, instead of assuming that social de- mocracy is the most desirable state of affairs, one made the equally possible postulate of an aristocratic convention there would be no ground whatsoever upon which popu- larizations could be praised. Even if they served in some slight manner to improve the great masses of the popu- lation, that would be a totally irrelevant and insignificant item. For the great masses would not matter; the intel- lectual tradition would be properly the possession and the care of the few who, by economic or eugenic good fortune, were capable of the task imposed upon them. Populariza- tions would be denounced not as socially evil, but merely on aesthetic grounds as ugly, crude, vulgar objects. The aristocrat would not attack them with Comstockian zeal; he would merely consider them with contempt, along with the tabloids and the public prints in general, as the shadows

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382 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3249 which those who are chained within the cave perforce must view. With platonic detachment he might spend an idle moment dreaming of that city in the skies from which the poets and the popularizers would be banished; but he certainly would not seriously pursue that project on earth. Summarily let it be said that the value placed on pop- ularizations depends first upon whether one or another social philosophy is arbitrarily assumed, and secondly upon the analysis of the precise educational service which they are capable of rendering. It has been here suggested, not asserted, that in none of these relations has the populariza- tion any great positive value. It must be admitted, according to the law of proba- bility, that a popularization may be good in one way or another — as a stimulant to research, as the germ of a de- sire for more and better knowledge, as provocative of reflection, and, even though it be the humble hedonic good, a,, a source of recreation and amusement. But it must be remembered at the same time that popularizations may do evil as well as good, if there be any who agree that dog- matic indoctrination, the conversion of the masses to a new mythology, and the cultivation of an obstinate re- ligiosity toward science are evil, or at least no less evil than the state of affairs which already obtains. Finally, it is submitted that apart from their questionable educa- tional value these books are worthless, having no intrinsic excellence, no scholarly or literary justification. Were it not for the fact that the issue has been raised in social terms, the attitude of ignoring these books en- tirely would recommend itself. It is, moreover, very doubt- ful whether the issue as stated is genuine. I may be largely the indirect result of phenomenal advertising suc- cesses. The pedants having protested, the populace defended its idols of the moment, and the regnant democratic phil- osophy transformed an easily explicable disagreement in taste into a social question — "Should not, must not, knowl- edge be popularized?" — the answer, as far as the facts go, may be Yes or No. But those whose secret faith it is that knowledge cannot be popularized without a degradation of its value will conclude that it is after all merely a rhetorical question. Books First Glance THREE volumes have recently appeared by poetesses each of whom in her time has been considered radical, or in some other manner perplexing, and each of whom has gradually come to be accepted for better or for worse. It should be interesting to compare not only their work as now represented, but also their careers, in so far at least as these throw light upon the question what it means to be radical in poetry, and what it comes to in the end. In the case of Amy Lowell, whose third posthumous collection, "Ballads for Sale" (Houghton Mifflin: $2.25), makes still longer the row of short, stout, clearly printed volumes which she must have wished to be her monument, I am afraid the question has litt e positive significance. Miss Lowell did little more — at any rate she does little more in "Ballads for Sale" — than display her energetic personality. It was refreshing to have this personality come once upon the scene, but there is not much to say about it any more. Here again she names over the flowers, the poets, and the objects she loves, and crackles in wrath against the things she hates. The tale, however, has been told — and we are forced to wonder whether, if it seems in- consequential in this retelling, it ever was of the first con- sequence. Whether, that is to say, a poet has not some- thing better to do than talk ever on and on about himself, identifying the whims of his vision with the rules of art. Miss Edith Sitwell, whose "Rustic Elegies" (Knopf: $2.50) is, I believe, the third of her eight volumes to ap- pear in the United States, has been damned in England for her difficulty, though latterly, it would seem, the cry against her has either died down or been put down. It ought still to be permissible to say that she makes hard reading. With all her sophistication and sensitiveness, with all her attention to details of imagery and rhythm, with all her finely, thinly perfected art. Miss Sitwell dares you to understand her — and you do not. You perceive, per- haps, that she is engaged through most of her volumes in constructing, shell by shell, a delicate remote world where her fancy can be at peace, and you may have heard how certain aspects of this world are to be comprehended only when it is comprehended that she writes without foot- notes of the Sitwell family's very old and interesting past. But so much will not make you at home among her bizarre images or explain who her curious persons are. Now Miss Sitwell is barely in her prime, and time may render clear what she has not. I suspect, however, that her case will seem to be something like Amy Lowell's. Miss Sitwell too is capitalizing a personality — not an energetic one at all, and one enormously more subtle than Miss Lowell's, yet still a thing unique in its essence. She is hard to get at. When we do get at her we shall, I fear, merely be getting at her limitations. "H.D" grew up, poetically speaking, with Amy Lowell, and came to fame as soon. She too, I do not doubt for an instant, has been all the while making poetry out of her character — indeed, a remarkable work in prose fic- tion which she published last year is proof of this. But it is poetry with a difference, since it ends not in character, where all good poetry begins, but in communication. And the result can plainly be seen in "Hippolytus Temporizes" (Houghton Mifflin: $5), her major effort to date. It is a lyrical tragedy dealing with that youth passionate after purity whom Euripides wrote his best play about. The story has been much altered to suit the author's lyric pur- pose, and the whole emphasis has been shifted from Hippo- lytus himself to Artemis, whose words begin and end the poem. Hippolytus, far from escaping Phaedra's love, is tricked into enjoyment of it — thinking that he embraces Artemis. The tragedy is in the mind of Artemis, thus violated, and even more in her mind when Hippolytus, restored to life for a moment by Helios, says in delirium that it was the Cyprian he had embraced. Of the whole conduct of the drama, or of the many passages wherein gods and mortals break their brains with song, it would be futile to speak in this space. My point simply is that "H. D.," while writing still for a small audience, writes in truth for that audience and not for herself. That is at least one reason why she has achieved passion in her poetry rather than sentiment, and why it is better to ask not why a poet is radical but whether he is good. Mark Van Doren

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The Nation HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY'S Books for Nation Readers The Education of Henry Adanis Formerly $6.00 now $2.50 One of the greatest of all autobiographies — filled with such passages as the following — is now for the first time available at the price of a novel. "Except for two mistakes, the earth would have been a success. One of these errors was the inclination of the ecliptic ; the other was the differentiation of the sexes, and the saddest thought about the last was that it should have been so modern. Adams, in his splenetic temper, held that both these unnecessary evils had wreaked their worst on Boston. The climate made eternal war on society, and sex was a species of crime." The Art of Theatre-Going John Drinkwater The author of "Abraham Lin- coln" discusses playgoers, the art of the theatre, movies, the Repertory Movement, and other related subjects. $3.00 A Pageant of India Adolf Waley A concise and readable history of India from earliest times to the present. $6.00 The Tall Men Donald Davidson New poems by the author of the "Outland Piper." $2.00 Life and Letters of Tobias Smollett Lewis Melville A delightful study, the first de- finitive biography of Smollett to be published. Illus. $5.00 SOME PEOPLE Harold Nicolson Sketches in a lighter mood by the biographer of Tennyson, Verlaine and Byron. Among those present are : Miriam Codd: She came from Tennessee and discussed sex re- pression with a Polish neuro- path while crossing the pitiless sands of Arabia. Titty: A distraught diplomat who cabled desperately for war with Colombia and was told to shut up. Arketall: "You are either very ill or very drunk," said Lord Curzon to his valet. "Both, m'lord," replied Arketall and hid his Lordship's trousers. Professor M alone: A super- journalist at whose words the Chancellories of Europe trem- bled until Lloyd George pricked the bubble. $2.50 Sir Pompey and Madame Juno Martin Armstrong "Armstrong is the successor of Katherine Mansfield." Conrad Aiken. "Admirable story-telling." New York Times. $2.50 Children of the Wind Doris Peel "A remarkable book ... a really notable first novel." Independent. The $2.50 The Flower Show Denis Mackail Twenty- four crowded and glorious hours in the life of an English village. "Enchanting." — London Punch. "Wholly delectable." — New York Herald-Tribune. $2.50 Topsy-Turvy Vernon Bartlett Sophisticated and somewhat ironic talcs of post-war Europe, of Paris, Vienna, and Berlin gone mad with jazz. $3.00 Ballads for Sale Amy Lowell The appearance of Amy Lowell's third posthumous volume of verse is an event not only in the literary year, but in literary history. "Ballads for Sale" is especially remarkable for its range both of feeling and subject. $2.25 The History of Carl Rergmann The first complete and authentic history of this im- portant problem. "No single participating statesman could tell so much of the narrative with first-hand authority." Sir J. C. Stamp. $6.00 When writing to advertisers please mention The Nation

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384 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3248 "Al" Alfred E. Smith. A Critical Study. By Henry F. Pringle. Macy-Masius. $3. THIS book is what it purports to be— a critical study. It is as free from "bunk" as Governor Smith usually is free from that stock-in-trade of politicians and of our latter-day journalists. Mr. Pringle has really tried to give a correct portrait of the most interesting political figure of the day, and the one that he has drawn ought to be the official cam- paign biography, if there is to be one. He could have drama- tized "Al," but he did not; neither does he, thank fortune, stress the worn-out story of the poor little fish-market boy who worked up from the sidewalks of New York. Probably his frank discussion of the Governor's shortcomings will make his text unavailable as a campaign document, so stupid are the usual campaign managers. To people of discernment this dis- c: iminating picture will be far more moving and convincing than any mere glorification. Today, Mr. Pringle thinks, Governor Smith is unquestion- ably of Presidential timber. He does not believe that he was at the time of the Madison Square Garden convention in 1924, and as proof he quotes the Governor's dreadful speech at the close of that hapless gathering. He minces no words about that disastrous utterance, and throughout he does not suppress the fact that "Al" neither reads nor in any way cares for books — it is understood that nothing resembling a book is to be found in the Executive Mansion. In all frankness Mr. Pringle sets forth that "Al" has outgrown Oliver Street, and now prefers the Biltmore Hotel and the luxuries which he can now afford to buy. He also dwells on the Governor's ability to keep his mouth shut and lie very low — as he has been doing this past summer on all important issues which extend beyond the boundaries of his State. This biographer admits that there is a gi'owing irritability in the once ever-genial sub- ject of his book, and he is frank enough to admit that he is thoroughly scared lest the Governor allow himself to be talked into a pro-Volstead utterance. His tortuous prohibition record is here set forth in full. Mr. Pringle admits that other people have written many of the Governor's public utterances for him and he has done a specially useful service in devoting a chapter to Mrs. Henry Moskovitz, "Al" Smith's guide, philosopher, and friend, who has done so much to educate him along the lines of social re- form, has penned or edited many of his speeches, ami, with her husband, has managed his later campaigns and generally sought to steer him in, however, the most unselfish and help- ful spirit. The ordinary biographer would sedulously try to conceal these facts. Mr. Pringle has done well to bring them out, for if Mr. Smith should go to Washington it is most reas- suring to know that he has such excellent taste in advisors and that his most confidential one is a Jewess known for her extraordinary ability, her social progressiveness, and her wise judgments. Mr. Pringle rightly praises Governor Smith to the skies for his admirable attitude in the days of post-bellum hysteria when he refused to be stampeded into thinking that Socialists have horns and that they should be denied Constitu- tional rights, and when he was brave enough to pardon Gitlow in the face of the whole 100 per cent American pack of baying hounds. Altogether Mr. Pringle has done his job so well as to have made the case-hardened journalist who writes these lines think better of the Governor than heretofore. The only things lie does not throw light on are just how many cocktails the Gov- ernor takes a day and whether or • ot it is true that his father's name was originally Schmidt and that he is. there- fore, half Irish and half German. Mr. Pringle answers directly the doubts of those who think that this tobacco-spitting rough- neck would be out of place in the White House by affirming a number of times that "Al" wears nice clothes, and the proper ones, and has learned how to conduct himself in the best so- ciety as well as on Oliver Street. He seems also to believe that "Al" has the equipment to deal with foreign problems. He traces religiously the man's evolution from a conventional tool of Tammany Hall to the four-term Governor who, many be- sides Norman Hapgood assert, is sure to win the Democratic nomination for the Presidency. He rightly stresses the superb fight made by Smith against William R. Hearst in the Syracuse Convention of 1922, which he thinks the high-water mark of the Governor's achievements, and as marking the man's final rising above Tammany Hall — incidentally it was the final coup- de-grace to Hearst's political ambitions. It is refreshing to get hold of a political book by a realist and truth-teller. Mr. Pringle looks behind the scenes and does not care who knows that he is quite aware that the Republican Party in New York State is just as crooked as the Democratic Party, only vastly more sanctimonious and hypocritical — and infinitely stupider. He is correct in believing that the Governor owes a tremendous debt to the shallow pates of Republican leaders who, like Messrs. Miller, Mills, and Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., have done their best to improve "Al's" standing with the people by their extraordinary ineptitude and by the quality, or lack of any sound quality, of their opposition. Really Mr. Pringle's book is a picture of government in our Empire State as well as a biography, illumined by his own honest and caustic criticisms and comments. Oswald Garrison Villard The Life of Joseph Conrad Joseph Conrad: Life ayid Letters. By G. Jean-Aubry. Double- day, Page and Company. Two volumes. $10. T N these stately volumes M. Jean-Aubry assembles materials * that the future biographer of Conrad will find indispensable, but he has scarcely done a biography himself. His work is too chaotic to be called that, and there are too many gaps in it. He is meticulous about names and dates, but often quite ob- livious to the facts behind them. When and under what cir- cumstances did Conrad study navigation — a study plainly pre- senting bristling difficulties to a young man of his meager edu- cation? Who were his teachers, if he had any? And when he came up for examination for his mate's certificate, how did he surmount the difficulty of his Russian citizenship? These may seem to be trivial things, but they were surely not trivial to Conrad, and the reader made privy to his life is apt to have a natural curiosity about them. But M. Jean-Aubry has noth- ing to offer, nor has he anything properly describable as light to offer upon many other important episodes of Conrad's life, including his marriage. About all we learn about Mrs. Conrad is that Conrad met her "at his friends 'the Hopes' " — but even the Hopes l-emain very shadowy, though it must have been G. F. W. Hope who first heard those marvellous tales that were later to become "Youth," "Heart of Darkness," and "Typhoon." The letters are far more satisfying. There are gaps in them too, and important ones, but even as they stand they pre- sent a dramatic and often somewhat painful picture of Con- rad's slow and laborious struggles as a writer. More than once he was so discouraged that he thought of abandoning the pen and going back to the bridge. Even so late as 1905, with half a dozen masterpieces behind him, he journeyed to Glasgow in the vain hope of getting a ship: it was in that year that Sir Edmund Gosse and William Rothenstein began their heroic efforts to get him a pension from the Civil List. M. Jean- Aubry is not clear as to when that pension was actually granted. In 1909, judging by a letter of Conrad to his agent, the late ,). B. Pinker, it seems to have been withdrawn. In that year, confronted by a bill from his eldest son's schoolmaster, he stopped work on "Under Western Eyes" long enough to write

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Oct. 12, 1927] The Nation 385 KM ^MMM^k s [ ((ffiffffi tt ALFRED E. SMITH: A CRITICAL STUDy oy Henry F, Pringle No intelligent citizen should jail to read this enormously entertaining book. For this brilliant young writer has written a keen and penetrating study oj the most talked about American oj the day. It is an important political biography and an interesting insight into contemporary politics, with an exhaustive index. 404 pages, $3 THE DEVIL OF PEULING by Herbert Asbury The author oj "Hatrack" has here written a thrilling mystery story upon a jascinating back- ground oj demonology. $2 COASTER CAPTAIN by James B. Connolly 2 he first fullflength novel in many years jrom the pen oj America 's premier teller oj sea tales, a fine story. $2 AN AMERICAN BOOKSHELF edited by Mark Van Doren An interesting new series, bringing to the modern reader a series oj racy and exciting, but little known, American books. The first two oj these volumes are: 1. Samuel Sewall's Diary, the delightful intimate revelations oj an early New England Judge, often rejerred to by the critics as "the American Pepys" . 2. The Life of General George Washington, by Parson Weems, the jirst and least critical biography oj Washington; a droll book which will amuse all intelligent people. THE DRUMS OF PANIC by Martin Feinstein A fine war novel which tells the tale oj the effect upon an Amer- ican jamily ojtlie return oj an American soldier. $2 Each volume, $2.50 THE RITZ CARLTONS by Fillmore Hyde A simply swell hook about one oj America's simply swell jam- Hies, with simply swell illus- trations by Rca Irvin. $2 MMACy.MASIUS ^ CHECK LIST OF GOOD BOOKS ^>THEADVEN= TURESOFANOAF by Herb Roth and Frank Sullivan. An hi- larious volume jor people who are old at six, and people who are young at sixty, which William Allen White calls "a mod- ern 'Alice in Wonder- land'". $2 .^THAT'S NEW YORK! by Morris Markey and Johan Bull. Airs. May Lamber- ton Becker (" The Reader's Guide") says that this is the best book about New York ever written. A good book it is, jull oj brilliant writings. $2 *v ^r LITTLE BEN= Ny'S BOOK by Lee Pape. Ij you can appre- ciate fine and wistjul American humor, you should get this book im- mediately, jor Don Herold, Baird Leonard and many others untie in imploring you to come upon it. $2 ..^ THE SEC. OND CONNING TOWER BOOK edited by F.P. A. A col- lection oj the best con- tributions to Franklin P. Adams' jamous column, this book contains light and serious verse by some oj America's best poets. $2 551 FIFTH AVENUE NEW yORK CITy £ & si. ft tl it i) sra ^AsaSS^^a^PS^stfv^as^K 0 i When writing to advertisers please mention The Nation

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386 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3249 an article for the London Daily Mail He was paid twelve guineas for it, but found that he needed $25 more, and had to ask Pinker to advance it. Down to his last half dozen years he seems to have been chronically short of funds. "Typhoon" went begging, and the American and British serial rights to "Under Western Eyes" appear to have been sold for $1,200. When success was upon him at last, he reflected sardonically upon the fact that "The Planter of Malata," an unimportant short story, written to boil the pot, brought him in "eight times as much as 'Youth,' and six times as much as 'Heart of Dark- ness.' " Conrad's domestic life was apparently very happy, but it would be greatly stretching the facts to call it placid. There was illness in the house almost continually, and the servant problem more than once interfered with the composition of masterpieces. Once the maid-of-all-work became so engrossed in twilight amours that she had to be discharged; this left Mrs. Conrad, who was ill, to cook and sweep, and Conrad, who was busy, to care for a sick child. That child remained ill for years. There was an endless succession of alarms and quaran- tines. Finally the French faculty at Montpellier advised mountain air, and the whole family moved to Geneva. But when whooping cough developed on the way, the Hotel de la Roseraie refused to take the pilgrims in, and for a couple of weeks they were imprisoned in some lesser hotel, "at the end of a corridor." It was all a great deal worse than the ty- phoons of the China Sea— nay, than the agues and poisoned arrows of the Haut-Congo. And in later years there were other and perhaps even more bitter afflictions, not mentioned by M. Jean-Aubry. It would be silly, in a review of so homely a book about him, to offer any estimate of Conrad as an artist. The time, indeed, for such estimates is past. If he was not completely of the first rank, then all the literary standards that now prevail in the world are worthless. He will long outlast, I believe, his chief contemporaries. In his letters one encounters his gener- ous and often lavish praise of Henry James, Stephen Crane, H- G. Wells, Arnold Bennett, and others. He was immensely greater than any of them. There was in him a surge and thunder that they could not hope to match. His strength was that of the old bards, but he remained preeminently a modern man — aloof, subtle, highly sophisticated, and wary of the very emotions that he evoked with such superb skill. Few greater story-tellers have ever been seen in the world. Consider "Youth," or "Heart of Darkness," or "Lord Jim," or "Victory." But it is too late to be considering them. They are massive and overwhelming facts. They belong among the permanent glories of the human species. H. L. Mencken A Call for A Commentator Something About Eve: A Comedy of Fig-Leaves. By James Branch Cabell. Robert M. McBride and Company. $2.50. SOONER or later there will have to be a Commentary on Cabell. The various introductions to his separate works are not enough. Even his own Scholia merely tantalize, with their lineages and ground-plans and, when it comes to details, their dexterous evasions. Moreover, every treatise that has so far tried the theme is too slight for its purposes. The Commentary on Cabell, when it comes, must be a packed, extensive work, an insolent dictionary, a delicate encyclopedia. It must contain dissertations on the Cabellian geography, chronology, mythology, metaphysic, and critical doctrine. It must abstract the plots, analyze the characters and trace them from book to book, and subtly, stubbornly interpret the symb lism. What other coun- try as visitable as Poictesme is without its Baedeker? Yet the thought of Baedeker troubles the prophet who con- cerns himself with Cabell. Any commentator stubborn enough to do the work demanded is almost certain not to be subtle enough. And any commentator subtle enough will have creative plans sufficient to keep his hands busy. The best that can pre- sumably be hoped for is that somewhere there will occur a writer with all the insight and none of the personal ambition possible to his tribe, and that he will take up what his review- ers will be sure to call, though he must of course blush at the term, a labor of love. Unless, indeed, Cabell himself, during some seventh day when he is resting from his labors, may have the helpful impulse to call in a Poictesme Moses and dictate a Dizain des Pentateuques. "Something About Eve," which has suggested this need of a general Commentary on Cabell, embarrasses the hand which finds itself obliged to deal with the new comedy in a page or less. Like each of Cabell's recent additions to the series, the part is deeply complicated with the whole. Gerald Musgrave, leaving Lichfield in the year 1805, sets out on a quest which more or less resembles the quests of Manuel and Jurgen. He has grown tired of his natural body, which is bored with the love of a good woman, and he wants to visit Antan (Mais oil sont les neiges (Taiitan?) , where, his illusions tell him, he is to be Redeemer and Emperor. He is, however, waylaid by several women, some in the costume and all in the image of Eve, and eventually he collapses into a respectable career. This is the true Cabell cycle for a hero to go through, and Gerald goes through it with familiar paces. The novelties lie in the details, which are diverse and bold, but also occasionally mystifying. Honest plain men will blunt their teeth on some of the details. Cabell experts will wriggle with satisfaction. They may as well admit, at the outset, that "Something About Eve" is a learned book. The unlearned reader will ordinarily have to learn something about Cabell before he can learn much about Eve. And by that time he will no longer be quite so unlearned as he was. It is a pleasure to point out, for the benefit of the un- learned, that the moral of the romance is edifying. Gerald is, in his fashion, of the species of Galahad. He wants to be Lord of the Third Truth, which will take him beyond the Two Truths of which the burden is that men copulate and die and have no other careers. True, Gerald does not quite tell what he knows when he has got at the Third Truth, but he is relatively faith- ful to it. He aspires, and aspiration is edifying. He in the end becomes content, and contentment is edifying. "Something About Eve" is sound at the core. If now and then it stirs the senses, that is only its high spirits. Carl Van Doren Youn£ America The American Caravan: A Yearbook of American Literature. Edited by Van Wyck Brooks, Alfred Kreymborg, Lewis Mumford, and Paul Rosenfeld. The Macaulay Company. $5. T F "The American Caravan" winds its way through the rep- *■ resentative yeasty section of "fresh racy attacks" and an adumbrated "progressively broader expression of American life" in our contemporary letters, then it offers food for strange and conflicting conjecture. For instance, we are supposed to be in a poetic decline; yet half the 73 titles in this Leviathan of anthologies are poems (no less than 123 of them). We are supposed to have become critically self-conscious of our literary output; yet there is but one purely literary essay (and that a short one on Mr. T. S. Eliot) imbedded in the 843 pages of assembled material. The voices of women are supposed to be loud in our creative endeavors; yet there are but fifteen women represented to fifty-seven men. Of course, these hasty statistics mean nothing, for the only things that statistics prove are the birth and death rates and that statisticians are dull fellows. Then, again, a number of causes limited "The American Caravan." There were the personal idiosyncrasies of the four editors, the scope of the material submitted to them, their evi- dent determination, presumably, to keep out "established" fig-

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Oct. 12, 1927] The Nation 387 DUTTOH NON-FICTBON LEADERS &«********* a********************************* When writing to advertisers please mention The Nation

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388 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3249 ures (Robinson, Frost, Lindsay, Masters, Sandburg, Millay, Wylic, Eliot, Anderson, Dreiser, Cabell), their announced ob- jective of making up for "the passive and recessive attitudes of the leading magazines toward new fields of reality and fresh racy attacks" and "taboos . . on the character of literary work." Accepting these limitations one may turn to the tome with some degree of expectation. That there is much here that will arouse the interest and stir the faculties goes without saying, for it would be impos- sible to bring together seventy-two young writers without a few sparks flying. There is life in "The American Caravan," a pulsing undercurrent of freshness, and if more often than not it fails to achieve itself we may, perhaps, lay it to a condition in the American scene that the editors might indignantly deny. They, at least, reveal a valiant front through the purpose of their endeavor. Their faith is undiminished in the liberality of the American literary scene, for they apparently see it as but stemmed by the choking influence of the typical maga- zine. It would be purposeless to inquire as to whether the "passive and recessive attitudes of the leading magazines" are volitional on the parts of fearful editors or the reflection of the American cultural scene itself. At the same time one may ask: since when did a group of magazines retard "a pro- gressively broader expression of . . . life" when the reading public demanded that very thing? It is my earnest belief (and an extraordinarily obvious one, it seems to me) that a national spirit in letters evolves from a majority demand, and by that majority I mean readers of literature and not the devourers of lollipops provided by pop- ular purveyors of pseudo-literature. That easily-satisfied class will always be in a physical majority. Several steps above them in the scale of intelligence is the audience that evolves from its more or less unified demand a national letters. Tt is this audience that will accept or reject "The American Caravan." The greater part of Messrs. Brooks's, Kreymborg's, Mumford's, and Rosenfeld's compilation will be accepted, for there is noth- ing iconoclastic or unusual to bewilder that audience in it. A small proportion of the material will aggravate it because of the rebellious spirit more suggested than posited. Now why is this rebellious spirit more suggested than posited? It is here that the editors will disagree with me. I do not believe that the American scene tends toward rebellious- ness; it is satisfied with a slower evolution; it is marked by a restraint. Its representative poets, for instance, are Robin- son and Frost and Millay; not Pound and Cummings and Marianne Moore. When a young man grows rebellious in this country he gets rather shrill about it. He is like the frightened boy going through the forest at night; he whistles too loudly. And he doesn't quite comprehend the tune because his impetus is an urge and not a purpose. It is so that I find the few determined young writers in "The American Caravan." The undercurrent pulses there, the urge is manifest, but they are encircled by a scene that is evolutionary and not rebellious. Their bravery becomes bravado, then, and they smash a few surfaces, break up a few verse-forms, intoxicate themselves with the jazz-spirit, i-aise their whistle to a loud shrill where sex is concerned, and thumb their noses a few times at the bland scene that, for the most part, ignores them. It is not the "fresh racy attacks" that are most success- fully consummated in "The American Caravan." It is rather the evolutionai-y matter, if such a description may be used. It is Paul Green's Supper for the Dead and Elizabeth Madox Roberts's Death at Bearwallow and Phelps Putnam's Ballad of a Strange Thing and Lyle Saxon's The Centaur Plays Croquet, to select, almost at random from this matter, a play, a short story of tragic implications, a poem, and a fantastic bit of fiction. Here, it seems to me, is the natural evolution of the American spirit in letters, a growing integrity, a coura- geous abandonment of sentimentality and subterfuge and "nicety" of thought and the swaddling bands of the Women's Guild tradition. Perhaps, on second thought, this type of work represents the "fresh racy attack" as it is applicable to the American scene. But what becomes of the more "rebellious young men?" What are they to do if they are sincere and determined and willing to stake their careers upon an urge? There is only one thing they can do and that is to work from without in, to amalgamate themselves with the free European urges and destroy in so far as they are able the evolutionary American spirit. In the end they will cease to belong to a national tradition (if, indeed, they belong to it now) and will form part of an international urge that overlays and partakes of all national urges. Meanwhile the American spirit will con- tinue to progress in an evolutionary manner while those freer spirits, finding themselves out of the woods, will not have to whistle so loudly to keep up their courage. "The American Caravan," then, may be offered as a fair example of the younger American surge forward with all its flaws and most of its virtues, and in being offered as such it may be offered as an implied limitation to pure art. Herbert Gorman America America. By Hendrik Van Loon. Boni and Liveright. $5. T T would be futile to think of applying to Mr. Van Loon's •^ book any of the tests that are commonly used to evaluate historical writing. In the proper sense of the term he is not, it must be admitted, an historian at all. He has certainly studied history a great deal, and as certainly knows a great deal about it; but one of the last distinctions that he probably would claim is that of having added anything of importance to the kind of knowledge of the past which it is the particular business of the historian to accumulate and arrange. His place, if he is really to be classed with anybody except himself, is with the parti-colored aggregation of social philosophers and moralists whose function it is to explain what the human adventure, or this or that phase of it, is all about, and how mankind may possibly hope to escape making as great a fool of itself in the future as it has often done heretofore. Such philosophies and moralizings, of course, are always personal, whether their subject be the freedom of the will, the relation of alcohol to literature or art, or the ultimate fate of a people under the combined influences of capitalism and birth control, and Mr. Van Loon's observations about history are at least as personal as any, and immensely more entertaining than most. Not more than twenty pages of the book are likely to be read by the type of person who can consume with relish the nine volumes of Mc Master or the seven or eight of Rhodes, or who drinks in documents and calendars as the veritable wine of the kingdom. To such Mr. Van Loon and all his works are an anathema, and an anathema they will probably remain. Fortunately, however, for Mr. Van Loon and his economic prospects, most readers of history in these days seem to pre- fer generalizations to data, pungent criticism to orderly nar- rative, and genial humor or irony7 to scientific appraisal, and for them this book offers a full money's worth. There is no resisting its jolly flings at hoaryr traditions, or its sweeping judgments of motives and acts, or its dramatic word-paintings of men and their ways. As for keeping to the beaten track, that is one of the least of Mr. Van Loon's worries, and the slightest suggestion sends him off among the byways and hedges, over the prairies or across the sea, anywhere, in fact, that holds a dictum or a laugh. Then, when the breathless chase has ended, he usually comes back to something that re- sembles the starting-point, with a reminder that but for Allah the little journey might have turned out worse, and a kindly hint that some of the unsightly things that have been observed may look better next time. The story begins somewhere this side of the age of the Pharaohs, comes down more or less consistently to the end of the Civil War, and closes with some observations and prophe-

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Oct. 12, 1927] The Nation 389 "Positively engrossing . . . the book is doubly valuable; as a document, as evidence of the temper of the nation.'''' — N.Y. Herald Tribune. "Excellent . . . comprehensive record of the more advanced writers." — Hersehel Brickell, N.Y. Evening Post. "A gorgeous cargo! Free of the reticences and whispered inhibitions. " — Harry Hansen, N.Y. World. AMERICAN CARAVAN A Thrilling Panorama of our Living Literature! 72 CONTRIBUTORS- 857 PAGES-ALL ORIGINAL MATERIAL Edited by Van Wyck Brooks - - - - Alfred Kreymborg Lewis Mumford - - - - Paul Rosenfeld m ■' mi .i u ,,u,„, Short Stories by Plays by Novelettes by Poetry by ,-"■■-"■ """"""" ■■*■<! * ■ ' { t I. Vw Elizabeth Madox Roberts Paul Green illiam Carlos Williams Eugene O'Neill Ernest Hemingway Michael Gold Eric Walrond Dialogues by Nathan Asch Alter Brody Edna Bryner Avrum Yarmolinsky Edmund Wilson John Dos Passos George O'Neil Louis Untermeyer Philip E.Stevenson Isidor Schneider Robert Hillyer Hart Crane Gertrude Stein William Ellery Leonard] A Treasury of American Art— Recommended by CARL VAN DOREN HENDRIK WILLEM VAN LOON GLENN FRANK ZONA GALE JOSEPH WOOD KRUTCH ELINOR WYLIE it ill Bookstores, $5.00 y-- JESUS""^ Personal Revelation by HENRY BARBUSSE Author of "Under Fire" "I too have seen Jesus," says this brilliant writer. "He revealed Himself to me in the beauty of precision. I love Him: I hold Him to my heart: and I will champion Him against others if needs be." This moving interpretation is an exquisite fulfillment of the author's promise. $2.50 THE BRONZE TREASURY Edited by HARRY KEMP Author of "Tramping on Life" Harry Kemp projects the personalities of 81 poets — a chronicle of five centuries of English verse — and as- sembles their best work in this stimulating anthology. He shows us John Skelton, Thomas Warton, John Clare, Hartley Coleridge, and many other delightful poets, their times and lives. $3.00 MY PIOUS FRIENDS and DRUNKEN COMPANIONS The Jolliest Drinking Songs (with the Music) Tenderly assembled by FRANK SHAY Gloriously Illuminated by JOHN HELD, JR. These songs and ballads of conviviality are a contribu- tion to the gayety of a dry nation. $2.00 'L'Y* Good Book for Gvenj 'Taste" s MANDRAGOLA by NICOLLO MACHIAVELLI Translated by Stark Young This famous play was first produced in the early part of the sixteenth century. It is the hilarious satire of which Voltaire wrote, "It is worth more than all the Comedies of Aristophanes." It is the comedy for which a Pope built a special theatre. $2.50 LATEST CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS by FRANK HARRIS, Author of "Oscar Wilde, His Life and Confessions" Once more Frank Harris presents vivid, unflinching sketches of important men and women. Pathos, com- edy, nobility, sordidness move through these intimate biographies of a score of the world's powerful per- sonalities. $2.50 HUMANIZING EDUCATION by SAMUEL D. SCHMALHAUSEN "A valuable and original work. . . . Stimulating sug- gestions as to the reorganization of our educational system." — Harry Elmer Barnes. "I am impressed with its freedom of outlook and the vigor of its onslaught." — Bertrand Russell. $2.50 "<A Good Book for Svery 'Taste" When writing to advertisers please mention The Nation

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390 The Nation [Vol. 125. No. 3249 cies through which are woven a number of events of more re- cent date. Having already told the story of mankind, it is natural to find Mr. Van Loon dwelling at length upon what have been called the "European origins" of American history, and throughout his march he switches us rapidly from Amer- ica to Europe and from Europe to America as he explores the chasm from which these present times have emerged. It would be superfluous to point out, at this late day, that he has no illusions about the loftiness of human motives or the plain honesty of much human conduct, but his spacious iconoclasm has mellowed since he first began striking out among the images and monuments, and if the priests and the Puritans still get their deserts, so also, but in fine and generous temper, do the Quakers and the Dutch, King George and "those Adamses," Washington, Jefferson, Jackson, and Lincoln. In short, "America," for all its sprightly daring and its occasional intimations of swashbuckling, reveals Mr. Van Loon as an optimist. He confesses, in his final chapter, that he is n t "an inordinate admirer of that state of mind," and admits that "nature is not interested in happy endings," yet it is with a happy ending that he takes his leave. America has floun- dered through materialism and found it wanting, just as Europe found it wanting in the World War, and for the mo- ment the outlook is chaos, but the future of civilization is nevertheless in America's keeping, and the hope of America is its Younger Generation. To that Younger Generation, as to such of the elders as may be induced to join with youth in reading what Mr. Van Loon has written, these fifty-odd chap- ters and six score drawings (the latter a brilliant and often deeply moving commentary upon the text) may be commended as cheerfully and confidently as a rubric commended the once popular Ripans Tablets: "No matter what's the matter, one will do you good." William MacDonald The Pathos of Distance Death Comes for the Archbishop. By Willa Cather. Alfred A. Knopf. $2.50. IN one of his literary essays Havelock Ellis drew a useful dis- tinction between what he called the Nordic and the Celtic treatments of the past. The uninstructed reader of Homer might, he pointed out, very reasonably suppose that the poet was contemporary with the events which he described, whereas in the case of any Celtic epic it is always perfectly evident that the author is dealing with things which, for him as well as for the reader, are remotely picturesque. The Greeks, in other words, preferred to treat the past as though it were present be- cause they were interested in a dramatic immediacy, but the Celts deliberately evoked the pathos of distance because that pathos was to them the essence of poetry. Now I am by no means certain that this distinction upon the basis of race is valid; perhaps it would be safer to speak merely of the heroic and the elegiac moods; but certainly the distinc- tion itself is of fundamental importance and it is, moreover, the one which serves better than any other to define the particular quality of Miss Cather's work. Though she is absorbed in what would be to another the heroic past of our continent, her mood is that which Ellis would call the Celtic. She has upon occasion evoked her own memories, and one would expect to find in them the softness of remembered things, but even when her stories are rather documented than recalled she manages to invest docu- ments with the wistful remoteness of recollected experience and to make past things vivid, less because they are present in the heat and sweat of actuality than because some softened memory of them seems to be. Not Calliope noi Melpomene is her muse but rather she who was called the mother of them all, and she is always at her best when that fact is most clearly recognized. Certainly her newest story — concerned with the life of a missionary bishop to the newly annexed territory of New Mexico — would be in the hands of another something quite different from that which she has made it. These were stirring, adven- turous times; many writers might feel that they could be recap- tured only in some exciting and dramatic narrative; but Miss Cather softens the epic until it becomes an elegy. In recounting the lives of her characters she chooses by preference their mo- ments of calm reflection; when she wishes to throw the long tradition of the priesthood into relief against the primitive back- ground of the new land, she seizes upon some contrast that is deep without being violent; and she sees everything as one sees it when one broods or dreams over the past. The tumult and the fighting reach us but dimly. What we get is the sense of something far off and beautiful — the picturesqueness and the fragrance of the past more than the past itself, pictures soft- ened by time and appearing suddenly from nowhere. In a garden overlooking Rome, a cardinal drinks his wine and discusses the appointment of a new bishop for a vague and distant see. That bishop, come all the way from the Great Lakes, struggles with the paganism of his priests, rides miles over the desert to perform a belated marriage ceremony over the Mexicans whose children he has baptized, or dreams of the cathedral which shall some day rise in the savage land; but at night he cooks himself a soup with "nearly a thousand years of history" in it and in the sense of these vanished contrasts lies the effect of the book. After supper was over and the toasts had been drunk the boy Pablo was called in to play for the company while the gentlemen smoked. The banjo always remained a foreign instrument to Father Latour; he found it more than a little savage. When this strange yellow boy played it, there was softness and languor in the wire strings — but there was also a kind of madness; the recklessness, the call of wild countries which all these men had felt and followed in one way or another. Through clouds of cigar smoke, the scout and the soldiers, the Mexican rancheros, and the priests, sat silently watching the bent head and crouching shoulders of the banjo player, and his see-saw- ing yellow hand, which sometimes lost all form and became a mere whirl of matter in motion, like a patch of sand- storm. Even when Miss Cather strives most consciously to give to her books a narrative movement there is likely to be some- thing static or picture-like about her best effects, and when she falters it is usually in the effort to carry the reader from one to the other of the moments which rise like memories be- fore her. In the present instance she has nothing that could properly be called a plot, but she is wisely content to accept the fact and to depend upon the continuous presence of beauty rather than upon any movement to hold the interest of the reader. When things are recalled in the mood of elegy there is no suspense and they do not take place one after the other because, all things being merely past, there is no time but one. And so it is in the case of "Death Comes for the Archbishop." It is a book to be read slowly, to be savored from paragraph to paragraph, and it is quite the most nearly perfect thing which its author has done since "A Lost Lady." Joseph Wood Krutch Three Thousand Years of Civilization History of the Ancient World. By Michael Rostovtzeff. Oxford University Press. Two volumes. $10. "TN close connection with other departments of human A knowledge, history tends to become more and more a sci- ence whose end is to define the laws under which the life of man develops, and the regular process by which one type of communal life is displaced by another." Professor Rostovtzeff in his preface has stated in simple and impressive words the difficulties and the problem connected with historical writing under the scientific requirements which, according to the state- ment above quoted, the historiography of today imposes upon its practitioners. The primary task is that of selecting out of

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Oct. 12, 1927] The Nation 391 ejfc ^3 C2/cnbner < ' JcillCstJooK THE NEW REFORMATION: From Physical to Spiritual Realities By Michael Pupin The general purpose of this book is to show how completely science has changed our comprehension of the universe to the degree that the old religious formulas can no longer satisfy us. Professor Pupin shows the astounding range of the knowledge of the modern scientist, and yet he shows, in his most beautiful aud eloquent chapters, that it always leads— and apparently always will — to some- thing which cannot be explained. $2.50 CLEARED FOR STRANGE PORTS By Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt, Sr., Mrs. Kermit Roosevelt, Richard Derby, Kermit Roosevelt The title of this volume is the phrase used in old shipping reports and suggests a wide range of adventure and travel in many lands. It is the product of a family group. With illustrations from photographs. $3.50 CREATIVE EDUCATION In School, College, University, and Museum By Henry Fairfield Osborn A selection of from forty to fifty of Professor Osborn's recent educational addresses, re-edited and, in part, rewritten with an en- tirely new introduction and closing chapter. A clarifying and valuable compendium, of great general interest but indispensable to all educators and workers in this field. $2.50 SnSis CZ/ouvtli Gsrinhng BLUE VOYAGE By Conrad Aiken "One of the most interesting psycho- logical studies that has come from an American writer for a long time." — Harry Hansen in the New York World. $2.50 ssttats SS«S Cover design from " Blue Voyage " ■ffixx \HotaUc I lav \flovels THE LLANFEAR PATTERN By Francis Biddle An impressive novel of a great Philadelphia family; a large conservative tribe of highly individualized characters. $2.00 YOUNG ORLAND By the Hon. Herbert Asquith "A finely considered piece of work, full of sensitive judgment, of quiet humor and pathos." — Liverpool Post. $2.00 FIELD MARSHAL SIR HENRY WILSON, G.C.B., D.S.O. His Life and Diaries By Major-General Sir C. E. Callwell, K. C. B. "The man with whom lay the chief credit for Britain's victorious emergence from the war was Sir Henry Wilson," says The I^ondon Times. Outspoken by nature, he held no shield before prominent officials, and the reader sees in these pages facts and situations as they actually existed, not smoothed over for public consumption. Among the masterpieces of war history. With illustrations and a map. 2 vols., boxed. $10.00 REMINISCENCES OF ADVENTURE AND SERVICE By Maj.-Gen. A. W. Greely General Greely has been in the public service from that day at the opening of the Civil War when at the age of sixteen he chalked the figure eighteen on the soles of his shoes and stood up in a recruiting-office to declare t hat lie was over eighteen. As an organizer of Signal Corps Service and as soldier and scientist and explorer, he was part of almost every great public event of recent times. His record is that of a direct, outspoken man of action. Illustrated. $3.50 JACQUES C(EUR : Merchant Prince of the Middle Ages By Albert Boardman Kerr The epic story of this remarkable Frenchman, contemporary of Joan of Arc and Chaucer, unfolds before the reader the whole pageant of a period vanished five hundred years ago. A thrilling narrative. Illustrated. $3.50 CCLQlLLn, K'orU EGYPT By George Young The new volume on Egypt in the distinguished "Modern World" series is written by a man whose diplomatic experi- ence has given him a wide knowledge of the Mohammedan countries. $5.00 i ifoeUy THE BRIGHT DOOM By John Hall Wheelock This is Mr. Wheelock's first volume since 1922 — a period dur- ing which he has been acclaimed by various authorities as one of the three or four leading contemporary American poet6. $2.00 \^ navies C2s cmbner's ClJ onsf §Q~ C^J ijlli , ' ivenuef v/ lew cJJovk When vrritmg to advertisers please mention The Nation

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392 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3249 many thousands of statements those which may safely be re- garded as true and of eliminating those which are manifestly untrustworthy. This is difficult enough in itself because "the memory of man is short and his imagination fertile," as Pro- fessor Rostovtzeff has put it. To this primary difficulty two exacting tasks must be added, that of arranging in a compre- hensible sequence the facts once established and selected for use; and that of expressing the delicate reactions and rela- tions of one fact with another or with a given group. Thus it will be evident to the reader of Professor Rostovtzeff's intro- ductory chapters that historical writing is today a technician's job. The task which Professor Rostovtzeff has set himself in these two volumes is that of making intelligible to the reading pub- lic the course followed by the vigorous, productive, and bril- liant civilization of antiquity from its Egyptian and Baby- lonian beginnings until a new type of civilization succeeded it. Obviously Professor Rostovtzeff regards the civilization of an- tiquity, when broadly conceived, as a unit, or at least as capa- ble of presentation, for historical purposes, as a unit. In this aspect as a whole ancient civilization would stand in contrast with the west and north European civilization which has been developing since antiquity. Under the religious banner of Christianity the later civilization has produced different modes of thought and different types of cultural expression from the ancient. One must agree with Professor Rostovtzeff that the new forms which appeared in the centuries immediately follow- ing the period from 200 to 350 A.D., as compared with the old, were decidedly primitive. But the reader who has im- mersed himself deeply in the history of the early Middle Ages may not be willing to follow him to the point of believing that there was a "steady reversion of civilized man to the primitive state of barbarism," as the author has declared in the final chapter of his second volume. Probably we will move faster and further toward an understanding of the end of ancient civilization if we avoid all such terms as "decay," "decline," or "dissolution," and deal with the shifting of the centers of economic and cultural gravity from the Mediterranean littoral to the new geographic areas of western and northern Europe. These new areas were inhabited by peoples of different physi- cal and mental stamp and of different traditions, which were of course primitive. This method of approach would approxi- mate that established by Frederick Jackson Turner for Amer- ican history — the movement of the frontiers of civilization and the results upon the new areas and the new peoples, and upon the old as well, of that movement. This admirable survey of the entire stretch of ancient his- tory was originally written in Russian. It has been translated in English by Mr. J. D. Duff — exceedingly well translated, as the directness and simplicity and clarity of the style indicate. It embodies the knowledge and the points of view gained through a lifetime of devotion to the problems of ancient his- tory by a vigorous and penetrating intelligence. There are perhaps a dozen or more living men who could write an his- torical summary of these three thousand years which would be satisfactory in the mastery and the arrangements of the facts. There are certainly not more than three men who could do it with so complete a control of all those many factors which go to make up civilizations, who could so well balance the po- litical, social, and economic factors involved, or carry the reader through the long vista of years and events with a vigor so constantly sustained. Two elements of Professor Rostovtzeff's method of presen- tation are particularly striking. He is a believer in the use of handiwork of men in the arts and crafts, commonly called archaeological material, as a powerful ; d to the understanding of the life of antiquity. His knowledge of the museum ma- terials in all parts of the world is vast. The publishers of these two volumes have been generous in their allotment of space to this end. The author is a past master in the art of applying and interpreting the many full-page illustrations which ap- pear. Each of these has, facing it, a clear explanation of the subject presented. None of these plates contains trivial or useless pictures; and the reproductions are unusually clear. It is pleasant to note that Professor Rostovtzeff has made use of the materials which are to be found in increasing amount in the larger museums of the United States. It has become a commonplace of historiography, as it is practiced nowadays, first to present the political development of the various peoples who must appear for consideration in a given series of years, a century perhaps or more, and to fol- low this by a summary of the greater social and economic trends which distinguish the period thus treated as a unit. This method Professor Rostovtzeff has already used in his splen- did scientific book of two years ago upon the "Social and Eco- nomic History of the Roman Empire." The same method is employed in his present summary. He accentuates the simi- larities of social movements in the various areas which must be treated. This he follows by an evaluation and explanation of the local variations from the general tendencies already laid down. Thus he avoids the danger of generalizations which may be true as generalizations but blur over one-half the truth lying in the detailed divergencies. The author of these volumes is not a sociological impressionist. The work is dedicated to the University of Wisconsin, where the author for five years held the chair of ancient his- tory. In the preface he pays, in simple words, a tribute to his former colleagues and to his former students of that univer- sity. It does great honor to all the parties concerned, and it is particularly useful just now to note that an eminent scholar of foreign training and experience has met with a sympathetic hearing from American college students. They have indeed many sound qualities. Among these is a ready appreciation of ability and of any sincere devotion to the task of teaching them. William Linn Westermann Upton Sinclair Upton Sinclair: A Study in Social Protest. By Floyd Dell. George H. Doran Company. $2. ALL real biographies are epitaphs. One must die to enjoy the luxury of biographical renown. Great biographies are experiments in dissection, and both law and morals forbid the vivisection of living people. This thought, I am confident, was in Mr. Dell's mind when he wrote his biography of Upton Sin- clair, and explains, perhaps, why it is so formal and literary. He says, indeed: "The biographical details in these pages are intended to be subordinate to the critical study of his develop- ment as a certain kind of writer — a describer, critic, and prophet of modern industrial America." In other words, Mr. Dell's study of this great and forceful critic of our civilization is essentially an extended literary review, an essay on Upton Sinclair's intellectual development and literary achievements. With these limitations it is a book of excellent qualities, not only in style and manner, but also in perception. Mr. Dell does not tell his readers much about Upton Sinclair as a person, but what he does tell is extremely informative, even to those who, like myself, have been reading Upton Sinclair's books for twenty years. I never knew, until Mr. Dell told me, that Upton Sinclair was the son of a whiskey salesman, although I knew that he was a Southerner by birth, and that his uncle had been in the Confederate navy. Nor did I know that part of his boyhood was spent in New York boarding houses, waiting with his anxious mother for his father to come home. At that time the elder Sinclair had be- gun to consume his own merchandise in large quantities, and his home-coming was entangled in the myths of numerous bar- rooms. These facts are instructive, and through Mr. Dell's story I see Upton Sinclair much more clearly than I had ever seen him before.

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Oct. 12, 1927] The Nation 393 NEW MACMILLAN BOOKS NEW FICTION St. John Ervine's New Novel The Wayward Man The wayward man is a romantic Ulsterman whose life is set down with typi- cal Ervine charm in this robust story of Belfast and the sea. $2.50 William Stearns Davis Author of "A Friend of Caesar" Oilman of Bedford A stirring tale of the American Revolution with the scene laid in Boston. $2.50 The Novels of Winston Churchill This is the first complete, uniform edition bf the ten novels which established Winston Churchill as the most popular novelist of this century. His books are perennially interesting be- cause he never forgot what many novelists have never learned — how to tell a good story. Richard Carvel The Crossing The Crisis The Celebrity Mr. Crewe's Career A Far Country The Inside of the Cup A Modern Chronicle Coniston The Dwelling Place ol Light The Set $25.00 Each vol. $2.50 BIQQRAPHY THAT MAN HEINE A New Biography By Lewis Broume Author of "This Believing World" In Collaboration with Elsa Weihl The amazing story of Heinrich Heine's strange, bizarre, scintillating life is told with all the flair, color and sense of the ' dramatic that made "This Believing World" one of the best sellers of last year. The great German poet and genius has never been so well portrayed. $3.00 King Edward VII By Sir Sidney Lee This is volume II of an admirable biography of King Edward covering his reign from 1901 to 1910. Vol. II $8.50; The Set $16.50 HISTORY :: POLITICS MEN OS DESTINY By Walter Lippmann Illustrated by Rollin Kirby "One of the fall books that demand to be read by all thinking Americans: it has the fine quality of stimulation . . .An exciting book." N. Y. Post $2.50 The New Illustrated Outline of History By H. Q. Wells The revised text of the Wells' classic story of mankind, embellished with 700 pictures and illustrations. In one handsome volume $7.50 The Rise of American Civilization By Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard Third Large Printing The great history of our nation — a readable, stimulating interpreta- tion of American life and culture. 2 Vols., 1650 Pages, Illustrated, $12.50 A Pilgrimage to Palestine By Harry Emerson Fosdick One of America's great spiritual lead- ers has revisited Palestine and written a rich, glowing account of his expe- riences on the old paths of the Prophets and the Messiah. $2.00 POETRY The Collected Poetry of Edwin Arlington Robinson This is a completely new edition, in five volumes, bringing together in a uni- form set the work of one of America's great poets. Cloth $10.50 Leather $15.00 John Masefield Tristan and lsolt A new dramatic version of the famous lovers, in which Masefield "exhibits their folly, their madness, their futility without mercy" $2.00 Autographed edition $10 ART History of American Painting By Samuel Isham and Royal Cortissoz The classic text of Isham, long out of print, has been brought up to date By the noted critic, Royal Cortissoz. Fully Illustrated $10.00 Chinese Art A beautiful collection of one-hundred color plates of all phases of Chinese art, with an introduction and explanatory note by R. L. Hobson. $12.00 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY Your Money's Worth By Stuart Chase and F. J. Schlink Over so, ooo Sold Debunking advertising and the new salesmanship for the consumer. $2.00 NEW YORK When writing to advertisers please mention The Nation

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394 The Nation [Vol. 125. No. 3249 As a youth he was highly strung — neurotic, in my opinion — vivid, intelligent, sensitive, poverty-stricken. The component of these spiritual forces is the impulse that makes great men or little ones. People who are so tortured are never mediocre and complacent. They either take wings and soar away into dangerous skies — or, if they are too weak to fly, they are ground to dust under the heel of civilization. At that time — in Upton Sinclair's early maturity — Amer- ican literature lay becalmed in a sort of Sargasso Sea of the intellect. Books were on a level with needle-work. To write for respectable people it was not enough to be merely light and mushy; one had to be sweet as well. It was in this period that Hamilton Wright Mabie published his carefully prepared "White List of Rooks," and his standard was sweetness and light. The successful novels of the day were concerned mainly with sexless young ladies of the best families and well-bred youths who made good enormously in business and then sought the colorless virgins as their wives. Courtship and lovemaking w^re expressed in the literature of the time as a progress through a net of childish difficulties. Sometimes kind old gen- tlemen appeared in these books, fatherly dotards full of plati- tudes passing for aphorisms; and now and then one encoun- tered in them a sensible dog, with eyes that were almost human. In 1906, Upton Sinclair, then grown into a rebel devoid of fear, and without respect for tradition, came upon the scene with a novel called "The Jungle." This tremendous book said something, and it stood out like a muscular and hairy fist among the current literary confections. I remember reading "The Jungle" at one gulp, with an interest that I can only de- scribe as breathless. It caused me to turn to a prolonged study of socialism. In the end it made me a radical socialist, which I have been from that day to this. In the twenty years that have passed since "The Jungle" first appeared I have read it several times again; and in my judgment it is one cc the few really great novels that have been written in America. Strange to say, "The Jungle" became an immediate best- seller, to the surprise of its author and everybody else. Its success was due not, however, to its great literary merit, but simply to the revelations that it made of conditions in the meat- packing establishments of Chicago. Upton Sinclair bad worked long enough as a laborer in a packing establishment to learn conclusively that diseased and contaminated meat was sold in handsome tins bearing labels on which the words "tasty" and "delictus" were displayed in advertising splendor. The book entered the most velvety homes. The respectable readers of the "White List of Books" laid down "Beverly of Graustark" and picked up "The Jungle," delicately and with gloves. The poignant tragedy of the immigrant community which Sinclair described was lost on them, and his socialistic pages were doubtless skipped, but they read what he said about those shiny cans of potted ham they had in the pantry; and when father came home they showed the book to him. Father read it and wrote to his Congressman about the poisoning of a whole nation, nefarious traffic, and so on — unless he was finan- cially interested in meat-packing himself. The uproar could not be stopped. There was a Congressional investigation, and in the end grudging improvements. Upton Sinclair had become an author of world-wide celeb- rity, though even then in discussing him in bourgeois circles it was usually agreed that he was, after all, a fanatic; and that the whole thing should have been handled more quietly; that is, with more regard for investments. Since then he has been called everything from a publicity seeker to a plain liar. He admits that he is a publicity seeker — and with reason, for the only way a radical of his vehemence and indignation can be heard at all is by doing something that gets him on the front page of the newspapers. As to his being a liar, no one has ever proved it, though many have tried. But as his reputation and influence are growing, no doubt more determined efforts will be made in the future. He stands today as one of the great and heroic figures of our time, and I do not use these words loosely. One of the chief elements of greatness is the courageous handling of great, though forbidden, ideas — and Sinclair has spent his life in doing that. It is this quality that distinguished Savonarola, Spinoza, Samuel Adams, and William Lloyd Garrison. He is a great literary man because he deals habitually with great causes in a masterly manner; and he is heroic because he has not flinched at contumely and poverty in a land where success is a religion and poverty is a disgrace. One is impressed, in reading Mr. Dell's biography, with the amazing industry of Upton Sinclair's career. He has produced thirty-eight books — some of them called pamphlets — on all kinds of subjects. He is irrepressible, indignant, and bold. His books have been censored, vilified, banned, and burned by the common hangman. Even today, after he has become a celebrity of whom the nation ought to be proud, we hear of the Watch and Ward Society of Boston attempting to keep his latest novel, "Oil," from spreading its radical virus among the prim and timid citizens of a commonwealth that has recently degraded itself by executing two men in the face of the enlightened opinion of the world. W. E. Woodward Among the Arabs: Traveller and Tourist Oriental Encounters. By Marmaduke Pickthall. Alfred A. Knopf. $3.50. Adventures in Arabia. By W. B. Seabrook. Harcourt, Brace and Company. $3. HPO evaluate properly these two books it is well to emphasize *■ that now, as in Pickthall's time, as improper a conception of alienage has prevailed among the Arabs individually as in a different way prevails collectively often in our own State Department. The Arabs are suspicious one hundred percenters, and often the police power has been largely inoperative in large parts of the Near East. In the more inhabited parts of Syria, Irak, and Mesopotamia in the vicinity of the greater cities there is comparative safety, but there are still stretches of the Arabian peninsula proper which remain terra incognita despite a long line of explorers from Niebuhr and Burckhardt and the tempestuous Burton. The Near East thus demands something of a true adventurer and traveller. It still remains the inspiration of a literature of escape — as much for the sophisticate who wants his "Arabian Nights" straight and un- expurgated as for the hundreds of thousands who thrilled to the late Valentino. A more or less sedentary Westerner will judge a book about the Arabs rather more as literature than as document. He simply has to know what he likes. Marmaduke Pickthall did not perhaps venture into the more inaccessible places, but he did penetrate into the innermost recesses of the Arab mind. The casual sketch book of his ad- ventures which he modestly calls "Oriental Encounters" is lit- erature of a high order. He belongs indeed to the long line of Englishmen, adventurers and men of letters, who have been attracted to the East and established almost an Arabian tradi- tion in English literature. They are, perhaps, in Divine Provi- dence, one of the justifications of British imperialism, which has turned the minds of Englishmen generally toward the East. Like the poet Flecker, Pickthall had dreamed of the East in his boyhood, and he experienced no disillusionment after he reached the scene. "Oriental Encounters" recounts his wan- derings in Syria and the Palestinian hills from 1894 to 1896, when he came to love and intuitively to understand the Arab psyche as few have done. His method was that of the true traveller: it was simply to loaf and invite his soul. At an early stage he picked up the zealous Raschid, securing his re- lease from the Turkish Army, and with him as a retainer and with the more occasional company of his wise friend Suleyman, the Dragoman, whom every incident reminded of a story and who never paused to say "Stop me if you've heard this one," he spent his leisurely days among town and desert Arabs, avoiding

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Oct. 12, 1927] The Nation 395 Acclaimed from Coast to Coast THE HARPER PRIZE NOVEL The GRANDMOTHERS by GLENWAY WESCOTT Author of "The Apple of the Eye" New York — Harry Sal peter in the N. Y. IV or Id. "The Grandmothers is made out of thick, rich layers of human prob- lems and personalities. To read The Grandmothers is to be washed by waves of cleansing pity." San Francisco — The San Francisco Chronicle. "One of the few notable American novels of these times. Not since American writers began to busv themselves with national self-con- sciousness and self-criticism have we read more honest, more finished or better tempered writing." $2.50 MEMOIRS OF AN EIGHTEENTH CENTURY FOOTMAN Indiscreet and piquante remi- niscences by a servant in the gallant days of George III. $5.00 SIMPLE STORIES by Archibald Marshall Hilarious and thoroughly ab- surd narratives. "Simple Sto- ries" is the perfect title — they are simply incredible, delight- ful and immense. $2.00 THE LORDLY ONES by B. H. Lehman A penetrating study of the ef- fect of an academic career and of family life on a brilliant, re- bellious man. $2.00 WHY ROME FELL by Edward Lucas White How Christianity destroyed the world's greatest empire. $3.50 A Novel of the Sea and the Jungle GALLIONS REACH by H. M. TOMLINSON "A literary event. Gallions Reach is a novel of Lon- don, of ships and the glamorous east." — William McFee, The World. "The storm, and the wreck of The Altair is an experience which no one who endures will ever forget." — J. Middleton Murrv. "The best novel I have read since Conrad's." — Hervey Allen. $2.50 THE RIGHT TO BE HAPPY by MRS. BERTRAND RUSSELL A frank appraisal of life and sex. "Mrs. Russell writes with the courage, faith and clarity of a Utopian who is not so young as to be sillv and not so old as to be tired."— Harry Salpeter, N. Y. World. $2.50 Coming Soon CITIES AND MEN by LUDWIG LEWISOHN Author of "Roman Summer," "Upstream," etc. A brilliant analysis and appraisal of such striking lit- erary figures as Hazlett, Santayana, and many others. $2.50 By the author of "The Red Pavilion" EDEN FOR ONE by JOHN GUNTHER This observant, delicious, satiric tale has to do with the imaginary — and yet not altogether imaginary — ad- ventures of one Peter Lancelot. $2.00 HARPER & BROTHERS Established 1817 IMPATIENT GRISELDA by Dorothy Scarborough "A tine, clear-cut novel, en- grossing from the first page to the last." — Martha Ostenso. $2.00 TARBOE by Gilbert Parker The romance of the most ac- complished gambler of his time uliii was lucky in everything but love. $2.0(3 THE CRIMSON HANDKERCHIEF by Comte de Gobineau A volume in the "Odd Number Series." "Not even Nietzsche has surpassed Comte de Gobi- neau in a love of heroic char- acters." $2.00 FANCY LADY by Homer Crov An interesting and exciting dramatization of the unceasing struggle between belief and un- belief by the author of "West of the Water Tower." $2.00 When writing to advertisers please mention The Nati

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396 The Nation [Vol. 125. No. 3249 his own countrymen. He spoke a fluent Arabic and his en- counters were productive of tales that are rare and perfect in the manner they hit off Arab character and customs. In tone they are quiet and intimate and with no traces of usual oriental cliches, nor dependent upon usual tricks of local color. "Orien- tal Encounters" will enlarge the Pickthall cult which arose locally with the publication of "Said, the Fisherman." When there are no longer such Arabs as Pickthall's. it will be neces- sary to invent them. Mr. Seabrook and his book are remarkable, too, but in a much different way. "Adventures in Arabia" is the sort of book which will knock Main Street off its feet. Mr. Seabrook, too, dreamed of the golden road to Samarkand, and in his youth made a futile attempt to get there as a stowaway. He vowed when he was caught in Naples and beaten that some day he would make the journey in comfort and style. The moment of that oath the adventurer died. He subsequently married and opened a coffee-shop in Greenwich Village, where he pros- pered. In his leisure he studied Arabic, and as luck would have it, into his place one night walked Daoud Izzedin, Arab and Druze. He knew, it appeared, just the right Sheiks of Sheiks. We next find him discharging the obligations of the Bohemian life in the tents of the wild Beni Sakr in the desert! He was almost robbed on the way but his letters of introduction saved him. After leaving the Beni Sakr he spent his time in Syria and Mesopotamia from Beirut to Baghdad rushing breathlessly about among the Druses. Whirling Dervishes, and Yezidee Devil-Worshipper* With the exception of his rather more perilous visit to the Beni Sakr, he always had his wife Katie at his side. Everywhere he kodaked as he went and his book is full of gorgeous photographs. He never tires of paying his tributes to Arab hospitality, and he collected innumerable souvenirs and trophies. He risked his life several times, but mostly through mismanagement. In short, he accomplished the remarkable feat of being a tourist in Arabia! His book is full of the spectacular and weird and contains some passion- ate Arabian love stories as interludes. But for him were not the austerities of a Doughty or the intimacies of a Pickthall, and always, alas, he remained outside looking in. William Seagle Strangely American The Grandmothers. By Glenway Wescott. Harper and Brothers. $2.50. THE creators of the civilization of the Mississippi Valley have furnished a consistent stumbling-block in the way of ar- tistic interpretation. The difficulty has been the usual Amer- ican difficulty — that of securing the necessary detachment. The obvious trouble with Cooper, Bret Harte, Hamlin Garland. Mark Twain was that they were themselves too clearly marked with the tar-brush of the frontier. This unhappy incorpora- tion of themselves with their subject-matter forced them to schematize the pioneer spirit with which they dealt. They en- visaged it sentimentally in terms of courage, kind-heartedness (or brutality), stoicism, rough humor. With the epic sim- plicity inevitable in all primitive recording, they projected the frontier in terms of action, incident, and adventure. The result of this elementary approach has been clearly indicated by a number of critics: we have been presented with a gaudy melodrama which arose largely as a defense reaction against the possible sneers of cultured European critics. They dared to call us a rough people! We would show them that we were even rougher than their feeble imaginations could conceive, magnificently rough, with all the extravagant virtues pertain- ing to a complete state of roughness. Posed against this traditional interpretation the impor- tance of "The Grandmothers" becomes clear. Mr. Wescott's very beautiful and moving chronicle (for only out of courtesy to the rules of the Harper Prize Contest can it be termed a novel) is possibly the first artistically satisfying rendition of the soul of an American pioneer community and its descendants. Native intelligence and a receptivity to the subtleties of the continental novel-aesthetic combine in him to make his chronicle delicately psychological rather than rudely narrative, despite the fact that on the surface the book is but a compound of a dozen short stories. These same qualities exclude the possi- bility of sentimentality; although this is presumably a history of the author's own ancestors there is not a single apologetic or lyrical note in the volume. Finally, by grouping his stories about a family, or rather two families, the Towers and the Duffs, he is enabled to express what no history with an indi- vidual hero could ever express — the spirit of a people who, existing among primitive conditions, were forced as a pre- servative measure to emphasize loyalty to the clan. Nevertheless the delicacy of Mr. Wescott's perceptions pre- vents him from committing Galsworthy's error. There is no insistence on "family traits." Here we have the seemingly irreconcilable stories of a dozen individuals whose careers ex- tend from about 1830 almost to the present. Loosely con- nected by the fact that their protagonists are related by blood or marriage, these stories are superficially unified in that they are all seen through the eyes of young Alwyn Tower, to whom the stories are told by his grandmother. Yet despite this ap- parent structural vagueness something emerges at the end which is convincingly the spirit of the Anglo-Saxon Protestants who moved westward from New York and New England and settled the Mississippi Valley. They were all aristocrats, these Duffs and Towers, pos- sessing the fundamental characteristic of all aristocrats — sensi- tivity. Grand-aunt Nancy, married to a husband who smelt of cattle, could go mad ; Uncle Leander could consume himself with life-long remorse because his brother Hilary had quar- relled with him in a Civil War camp and then disappeared forever; Grandfather Tower, remembering the early days of peril and physical labor whose quality he could never hope to communicate to his posterity, could shut himself up in a strange relentlessness and reticence. They were a passionate people, but a people whose passion was curbed by an austere Puritan morality. Those who rebelled against that morality, like the deserter Evan Tower, rebelled greatly and paid for that rebellion with the loss of their communal heritage. Those who obeyed the morality obeyed it at the cost of profound inhi- bitions, living ultra-vivid interior careers which were denied outward expression. All of them were strange and lived strange lives; yet all of them were strangely American and lived strangely American lives, conditioned by farm and forest, Bible and Mayflower compact, a common unexpressed faith in the future of a new continent. The stories of these lives, carefully and simply set down, acquire a saga-like poetry because they are not so much told as remembered, seeming to have passed through the minds of many generations before they are recorded by young Alwyn; and in that slow migration they have taken on the incalculable richness and color that come with the passage of years. The author tells us that one of the elements leading him to write this book was the spectacle of contemporary America, a coun- try where "no tragic arts might flourish." This melancholy description is happily contradicted by his own work — a chron- icle, beautifully tragic, of a race which has, in the year of grace 1927, all but vanished from the soil it tilled and the broad country to which it gave birth. Clifton P. Fadiman Law and War The Outlawry of War. By C. C. Morrison. With a foreword by John Dewey. Willett, Clark, and Colby. $3. O ERHAPS the first thing to be said about this book is that *■ it is the most comprehensive and convincing argument for the Levinson-Borah plan for the outlawry of war which has

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Oct. 12, 1927] The Nation 397 Putnam "Books of Importance I % ROBESPIERRE By Hi lair e Belloc A keen character analysis of the unscrupulous philosopher who stands as preeminent among the men responsible for the direction of affairs during the most active years of the French Revolution. $5.00 * TALLEYRAND By A?ina Bowman Dodd The life of a suave and elegant diplomat who was forever proving treacherous to his friends to further the interests of France. The story of a man who brought six changes in government, guided the affairs of his country with exquisite tact and skill. Illustrated. $5.00 CERTAIN RICH MEN By Meade Minnig erode The furious din and tumult of money conflict in the New York of the i87o's, with its parade of mountebank financiers, black Fridays, and greenback lockups. A tale of the tremendous power wielded by such financial giants as Astor, Gould and V underbill. Illustrated. $3.50 Francis Joseph By Eugene S. Bagger The gloomy, tragic Emperor of a degenerate and immoral court has been reconstructed as a real human being. Very fully illustrated. $5.00 Old Court Life in France By Frances Elliot Remarkable sketches which re-create minute details of dress, conversation, manners and personal eccentricities of countless court characters who lived in 16th and 17th century France. Illustrated. $5.00 Pickwick A Play By Cosmo Hamilton and Frank C. Reilly This delightful play brings vividly to life the famous rick- wick Paper characters. Among them Mr. Pickwick himself, Sam and Tony Weller, the Misses Wardle Snodgrass and Joe, the fat boy, and many others. $2.00 Palmerston The Statesman who defied a Queen By Philip Guedalla "Mr. Guedalla does not merely tell us about Palmerston. We live with the man himself. Like drama, it is life fore- shortened. But it is real life." — N. Y. Times. Handsomely bound. Illustrated. $5.00 Louis XVIII By J. Lucas-Dubreton The history of a pathetic French monarch, the last remnant of Bourbon royalty, standing out as a lonely figure on a troubled horizon, a monarch of the Salon, rather thai army or of a people. $3.50 Letters of the Marchioness de Sevigne to her daughter An attractive reissue of these famous letters with an entirely new introductory essay by that eminent authority, Madame Maty Duclaux. 10 volumes. $30.00 GalapagOS: World's End By J Villi am Bcebe A new popular edition with the same text as the original. One color plate and forty-eight specially selected photo- graphs. Only $5.00 Wilhelm Hohenzollern The Last of the Kaisers By Etui I Ludwig "A dramatic biography so powerful seldom gets into print in any language." — Ne<w York Times. "Fascinating on every page. Startling, brilliant, forceful." — New York World. Illustrated. $5.00 New York G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS London When writing to advertisers please mention The Nation

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398 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3249 appeared in print. But it is more than that. It is a rousing militant challenge from a pacifist to his fellow pacifists to support the "American" plan of the outlawry of war as the way out of the frustration which has come upon them in con- sequence of their devotion to various "European" schemes for preserving the peace. (This appeal to American patriotism has at times a naively chauvinistic sound which the author scarcely intended but which will hardly recommend his book abroad.) Everybody knows, who is likely to read this review at all, that the essence of the Levinson plan of which Dr. Morrison makes himself the lusty champion is that it would make war as an institution illegal, put it outside the pale of civilized usage just as dueling is now outside the pale in individual conduct. The right of self-defense for nations as for individuals would remain. The process involves three steps: A solemn treaty outlawing war, another treaty setting up a code of international law drafted by experts, and a third establishing an inter- national court of justice. The effect will be revolutionary but not, in the opinion of the author, impossibly revolutionary. One nation might successfully take the initiative, especially if that nation were the United States. Even failure in the first attempt would have a tremendous educational value and give us a far more realistic knowledge than we now possess of the difficulties in the way of peace. For the most part Dr. Morrison is constructive and con- vincing in building up his case for the practicability of the Levinson plan. He 1 uilds no mere castle of dreams. And certainly he lays about him vigorously and effectively to de- stroy the dream castles of advocates of rival plans. He is both caustic and convincing in discussing the inevitable weak- nesses of every plan to enforce peace by military sanctions. Such plans, no less than the outlawry of war, rest upon the good faith of the nations which adopt them. And good faith is more likely to work in the expectation of peace than of war. I finished the book with real gratitude to the author and a new conviction that the outlawry of war furnishes the most practicable single plan for the furthering of peace. Neverthe- less, although the outlawry of war may be the best medicine for the sickness of the world, it is by no means a panacea. The inestimable blessing of peace cannot be bought at so cheap a price as Professor Dewey in his thoughtful foreword and Dr. Morrison suggest. They trust far too much to law. or to what Dr. Morrison calls the "juridical approach." In con- sequence he minimizes unduly the importance of the moral aspect of the peace problem and popular feeling on wars of self-defense. He deals cavalierly with the search for the causes of war. He says with some truth that the existence of the war system is itself the most important cause of war. But to dismiss the whole problem of the causes of war by this suggestive statement is dangerously inadequate. Nowhere does Dr. Morrison recognize that international law based on existing treaties by no means conforms to jus- tice. It is the moral code of the strong. The grievances of exploited peoples are imbedded in treaties and customs which any code and any court would have to recognize as legal. To find these injustices frozen into a solemn code of law might serve to increase the bitterness of the victims out of which in time violent revolt will arise. The vague assurance that the code can be revised from time to time will not be enough — for in- stance, for the Chinese in their struggle against the Western Powers. I can see nothing in the outlawry of war which will automatically solve the problems of imperialism or deal with such shameful acts as America's recent intervention in Nic- aragua— an act which we have never even recognized as war. Dr. Morrison thinks that we would let Nicaragua and Mexico alone were it not for the existence of the war system which makes us anxious about our own defense. He is only partly right. The removal of the war system would indeed remove the argument that to defend ourselves we must sub- due our neighbor. It might also lessen the urge of strong nations to acquire under their own flag every sort of raw material so that they may be self-dependent in time of war. In other words, the outlawry of war is distinctly useful in the struggle against imperialism, which is the fruitful cause of war. But of itself it will not end that greed for profit and that sense of superiority which have more to do with the presence of our marines in Nicaragua than the protection of the Panama canal against hypothetical enemies. Nations which are content to accept a politico-economic system which legalizes the constant, systematic, and often violent exploitation of certain groups and classes of men by others cannot ex- pect to exorcise the demon of war by any mere juridical ap- proach. Just as the Dred Scott decision of our Supreme Court was in itself a contributary cause of the Civil War, so may some similar decision of a world court precipitate violent and passionate revolt in years that are to come. To say that such a revolt will not be "legalized" as our present war sys- tem is "legalized" will be cold comfort to those who want to get rid not only of a legal institution but of a tragic reality. This undue dependence of advocates of the outlawry of war upon legal processes is strikingly illustrated by the fan- tastic extreme to which they press the analogy between war and dueling. Actually the analogy is very imperfect. Duels as distinct from the earlier judicial combats from the Middle Ages down into the nineteenth century were seldom resorted to as a means of settling tangible grievances for which legal processes might have been a substitute. Men would have died of ridicule if they had carried before judges most of the ridic- ulous disputes for which they faced death on "the field of honor." Moreover, a decree in France, the classic home of dueling, made it punishable by death as early as 1602. Laws against dueling were far more ineffective than any Volstead Act until a different public opinion, due mainly to the economic fact of the rise of the bourgeoisie, made law at once effective and relatively unnecessary. The history of dueling proves the inadequacy not the adequacy of Dr. Morrison's juridical approach. To point out these weaknesses in a strong case is not to detract from the merit of "The Outlawry of War." It is only to urge that if the outlawry of war is to be made possible or effective it must be treated as one move in a great cam- paign against not only a legal institution of war, but a politico- economic system of which war is the natural fruit. I should be willing to cooperate gratefully and gladly with the power- ful advocates of the outlawry of war, but I should always re- serve the right to remind them that our gigantic American em- pire will have to pay a bigger price for peace than mere consent to the Levinson-Borah plan for the outlawry of war. That plan, I repeat, remains the most practicable immediate step before the country. Norman Thomas Master of Marine Navigator: The Story of Nathaniel Bowditch. By Alfred Stan- ford. William Morrow and Company. $2.50. TWO or three men have given their proper names to books of * information or reference. Euclid means geometry. Every American knows what you mean when you speak of looking a word up in your Webster. Every English-speaking officer on sailing-ship or steamship knows his "Bowditch," the title of which is "The American Practical Navigator." And versions based on this classic exist in other languages. Mr. Stanford in a fascinating narrative, which is part fact and part the kind of fiction more illuminating than fact, has reconstructed Bowditch's character and given the spirit which animated his extraordinary epoch-making work. For Bowditch revolutionized the art of sail- ing and made the supremacy of the American navy, merchant and fighting, a hundred years ago. Stanford has done a beau- tiful piece of work; there are passages in this book which are as vivid and essentially poetic as anything in Loti or Conrad.

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Oct. 12, 1927] The Nation 399 Five Leading Novelists Join the Chorus of Approval of the $10,000 Award to Miss de la Roche Gertrude Atherton says: "My experi- ence of prize stories has been invari- ably discouraging, but I found 'Jalna' not only unique and intensely inter- esting but singularly rich for these days when so few novels seem to have any background. It is a fine, first-rate, fascinating novel, full of life and character. Please accept my con- gratulations as well as my thanks." Honore WtllsieMorrou'says: "Ihave- n't enjoyed any story so much in a long time. It has an originality of thought and style — a wholesome raci- ness — and a soundness of technique that filled me with content." Margaret Prescott Montague says: "I have not read a novel for years that has delighted me so much." Basil King says: " 'Jalna' is a real gift. In style, strength and amplitude it ranks with the best fiction in Eng- lish. Most novels one reads and for- gets, 'Jalna' one could never forget." Sir Gilbert Parker says: "Certainly Mazo de la Roche can describe charac- ter—she understands life and it is all very skilfully done." S'2.00 The autobiography of a great character actor UP THE YEARS FEOM BLOOMSBUIIlf By George ArSiss A world-famous actor's own account of his life and stage work, a chronicle packed with interest, humor and anecdote, written in a style of unusual charm. With 16 illustrations. $4.00 By Lucy Fireman A novel founded on the intense friendship between two Southern mountaineer boys, picturing the dramatic complications as they come intocontact with loveand ma- turity. An Atlantic Monthly Press Publication. $2.00 SINCE VICTOR HUGO French Literature of To-day by Bernard Fay A brilliant outline of French literature since 1880, aiming to show the principal currents which have deter, mined its evolution during the present century. $2.00 THE SENTIMENTALISTS By Dale Collins Of this tale of tropic seas by the author of "Ordeal", The New York World says: "This is an excellent book. It has rich, piquant char- acterizations; it has action and suspense. It is carefully plotted and well written. A really fine yarn." Second printing. $2.00 THE EXILE By Mary Johnston The events which come to a political exile on Eldorado Island, told by America's leading historical novelist in a haunting and romantic love, story with an unusual background. $2.50 THE MOCCASIN TELEGRAPH By Hal G. Evarts The romance of Clay Harrington, who goes to the mysterious North- land to track down the rumor of a wonderful Diana who led a pack of wolves through that uncharted country. $2.00 A PIONEER OF !8§o By George Willis Read Edited hy his daughter, Georgia Willis Reed This record, from the diary of a pioneer who journeyed from Fort Independence to Placerville just after the gold cra:e had swept the country, makes a valuable addition to the literature of the Old West. With 21 illustrations and a map. $3.50 HEROES OF MODERN ADVENTURE By H. Hessell Tillman and T. C. Bridges The thrilling stories of great adventurers and heroes of the present century — Amundsen, Stefansson, Grenfell, Lawrence of Arabia, Lindbergh, and fourteen others. With 32 illustrations. $2.50 A NEW ENGLAND BOYHOOD By Edward Everett Hale A new edition of Dr. Hale's classic story, in which he writes simplv and delightfully of his boyhood days in Boston and at Harvard College during the 1820's and 1830's. With 16 illustrations. $3.00 PUTTERING ROUND By MacGregor Jenkins This companion volume to "Bucolic Beatitudes" describes further episodes in the life of "Rusticus, the rural sentimentalist" in an engaging manner, with a humor that is infectious. With 14 illus- trations. An Atlantic Monthly Press Publication. $1.50 AN AMERICAN SAGA By Carl Christian Jensen | " 'An American Saga' is an unusual book. As a human document it has no parallel. Jensen's story of his love and marriage is an idyll of rarest delicacy." — The New. York Times. Second large printing. An Atlantic Monthly Press Publication. $2.50 These books are for sale at all Booksellers. LITTLE, BROWN & COMPANY Publishers, Boston By the author of "In Quest of the Perfect Book" THE KINGDOM OF BOOKS By William Dana Crcutt In this volume Mr. Orcutt shares with the reader his further adventures in his quest of the perfect book. Nearly a hundred illustra- tions illuminate his text, and the type has been especially imported for the book. $5.00 THE BREAKDOWN OF SOCIALISM by Arthur ShadweU A systematic analysis, based on official records and personal investigations, of Socialism as put to the test of reality in European exper- iments since the War. $3.00 CHRISTIANITY AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION by A. Aulard A scholarly study of the danger incurred by the Christian - religion during tKe French Revolution, by "the greatest living author- ity" according to The Safir- day Review, London. $3.00 ^v^awx When writing to advertisers please mention The Nation

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400 The Nation [Vol. 125. No. 3249 And— more important— this extraordinary genius comes alive. What Bowditch did, if a landlubber can explain it, was to put sailing, course-directing, steering, the map of the sea on an accurate, scientific basis. Before Bowditch navigating was hap- hazard guess-work. Since Bowditch an officer (or a common seaman) can figure out by Bowditch the spot on the ocean where he is at any moment; lie can tell within a few minutes when he is due to make port, anil with the recent developments of wire- less telegraphy, he can report an accident to himself or other ships and the location and drift of icebergs. Bowditch was a strange fellow, a born genius, persistently, obstinately, doggedly carrying out the work that he had deter- mined to do. I know of no character in biography or fiction more convincing, more human than the person that Stanford has recreated. I shall not tell the story of Bowditch because I want to be a literary navigator and steer a whole ship-load of readers on Stanford's ship to port. The reader will find not only the man admirably drawn, but his friends and family and others not so friendly, the "atmosphere" of old Salem and the Yankee and his awful limitations done to perfection. Bowditch was not a very lovable person. He was self- centered, independent as a hog on ice, very sensitive, close at times, as I gather from Stanford's book, though he does not say so, to attacks of neurosis, but with a perfectly terrific will in a weak body. With no training, no schooling beyond the primary grades, he made himself a master of mathematics, that is, the kind of mathematics that he needed to teach people how to sail ships. He found his townsmen — almost all the more prosperous ones of course, were captains, mates, or owners — ignorant of their job, which was steering a ship. And with his logical arithmetical mind Bowditch said that the simplest way to get from one point to another is by a straight line. So he taught the world of seamen how to draw a straight line, as straight as you can get it on our bulging globe. It sounds sim- ple. But it was not simple as a theoretical or practical matter. For Bowditch had nothing to go on except the astronomy, gen- eral mathematics, and geography of the time, and his neighbors thought him an unpractical dreamer and fool. Toward the end of his life he was recognized and duly honored. But that was after his work was done, and he might have said with Johnson, had it been early it had been kind. But the man, for all his difficulties and a sort of sadness that pursues him and his loves to the end of his days, was not unhappy. For he wras possessed by his idea. And he literally lived in figures, even the figures of business, in which he was not unsuccessful but rather shrewd. His final triumph, the local victory in Salem, not his world fame, is somewhat comically dramatic. He was master of a ship, being a practical sailor as well as a man of figures. When his ship was due in Salem there was a terrible storm and every- body thought it must be lost. But he sailed in quite calmly and explained to his anxious wife and friends: "I simply was for- tunate in having unusually good observations before the storm closed in. That and a fine compass served me." So Bowditch who filled countless reams of paper with calculations saved his life because the calculations were facts. And it is not too much to say that thousands of sailors have owed their lives to Na- thaniel Bowditch of Salem. I cannot do more than suggest the beauty of this book, its literary charm, its style (I am told that Mr. Stanford hates style and art and wishes to be known only as an honest work- man). But I can give a taste of it by quoting the last para- graphs, at which the reader will arrive if he opens this book at all : Nat caught the dark swirl of snow against his gratefully. He would walk out the Danvers road, on the way to the meadows, before he went home. He would stop for a while at Elizabeth's grave. Then he would go on, his footfalls hushed by the soft snow. ... A slight eddy of fine flaki .1 to form in the air about him. His heart warmed the blood in him at this friendly touch. The forces that had come into this frail body of Nat LIPPINCOTT BOOKS ■ -■■ ■ Disclosures That Bring to Life a New Napoleon Napoleon and His Women FriendS By Gertrude Aretz Translated from the German by Eden and Cedar Paul Startling — almost sensational — disclosures that throw an entirely new light on Napoleon. Frankly and absolutely without prejudice the author discus>es his calf loves, his one real love, his mistresses, his momentary tools. The material has been collected from the thirty-two volumes of Napoleon's correspondence and from hundreds of memoirs and monographs. 16 Illustrations. $5.00 Lord Northcliffe By R. Macnair Wilson The author, who knew Northcliffe intimately for years, offers this significant and clear-sighted portrait in the hope that the world may come to a better realization of the greatness of this man whose loyalty and devotion to his country were unceasing. Frontispiece. $5.00 tl. /*-»-» «* V/mi + U The Love Romance of The Cap Of YOUth. Robert Loujs stewenson By John A. Steuart Stevenson wrote the story himself but other hands de- stroyed it. Mr. Steuart, himself a novelist of distinction and author of the only authentic biography of Stevenson, retells the story with all its poignancy, sweetness and dramatic force. $2.50 An Artist in the Tropics By Jan Poortenaar. Foreword by Frank Brangwyn An art journey by one of the best known younger artists through Java, Boli. the Celebes, Borneo and Sumatra. The author's magnificent full-page color plates and black and white sketches are vivid with all the magic glamour of the East. 56 Illustrations, $7.50 That Mind of Yours By Daniel B. Leary, Ph.D. The most interesting story of today — the story of your ovm self — told in popular, non-technical style. This com- pact volume gives the cream of the New Psychology. ' $1.75 ThePractical Book of Spanish, Italian and Portuguese Furniture By Harold Donaldson Eberlein and Roger Wearne Ramsdell The first book on Portuguese furniture and the first of moderate cost on Spanish and Italian furniture, covering the many phases from the Renaissance to the early Nine- teenth century inclusive. 373 Illustrations. $10.00 Old Trails and Roads in Penn's Land By John T. Faris Author of "Old Roads Out of Phil a J el phi a," etc. Fascinating "tours of discovery" to out-of-the-way cor- ners, written by one who holds a pre-eminent place among American travel book writers. 62 Illustrations. $5.00 J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY PHILADELPHIA LONDON Hon The Nation

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Oct. 12, 1927] The Nation 401 Bowditch, so many years ago in the meadows, the world that had given him his life to lead with such intensity and conflict, had at last offered him achievement, and through that achievement, peace and a degree of understanding from his fellowmen. I submit that that kind of writing has the right kind of eloquence, of beauty. Anyhow, read the book. It is a lovely story. Amazing material handled by a writer of fine imagina- tion. John Macy Genghis Khan By Mrs. Alfred Wingate. Bren- Robert W. McBride and A Servant of the Mightiest. tano's. $2.50. Genghis Khan. By Harold Lamb. Company. $3.50. rpHESE books were bound to come; the only marvel is that ' their appearance has been so long delayed. In an age when every "colorful" individual, from the most ermine-bedizened prince to the dirtiest ragamuffin, is being hastily slapped be- tween the covers of a book, Genghis Khan could hardly have been overlooked. Each of these volumes is relatively successful. Mrs. Wingate's historical romance is historical enough to serve for a college class, and sufficiently romantic to please strap- hangers and servant girls. The trouble with her book is that it tries to bridge the impassable gap that divides austerity from sentimentality. At times she writes with superb detachment; but more frequently she endeavors to idealize her subject by representing him as a superman who combined the various traits of Torquemada, Napoleon, and Lon Chaney. This attempt to put frills and furbelows around the shaggy neck of her hero causes one to reflect on what would happen if one were to dress up Grendel in a Little Lord Fauntleroy costume, or try to make Vesuvius more impressive by popping firecrackers in its crater. From the many accounts of the great Khan's death, she chooses one "in preference to any other, for the mystic significance which probably underlies it," whereas Mr. Lamb allows the dying warrior to depart after making this plain speech: "It is clear to me that I must leave everything and go hence." She is also fond of breaking her narrative by inserting windy preachments and dissertations on history — in brief, she should read less of Jane Porter and Walter Scott, and more of Dumas. Mr. Lamb essays a less lofty flight. Basing his compact narrative upon the best authenticated chronicles, he has wisely followed a simple chronicle form; and if his presentation thus seems a bit flat and undramatic, it at least avoids the hectic melodrama, the depressing sprightliness, and the appalling de- termination to "humanize the subject" that characterize the — so-called — new biographers. Whatever his defects as a mod- ern biographer may be, Mr. Lamb is too wise to try and human- ize a man-eating tiger. Although these two books probably tell as much truth about Genghis Khan as will ever be known, one lays them down speculating on what the grisly old fighter was really like. A transparently simple and primitive soul, probably, and as ruth- less and elemental as the sands of the great Gobi Desert whence he sprang. Did such a person ever utter these flamboyant words which Mrs. Wingate puts into his mouth? "Forward! I am Chingiz! In my right hand I carry the flaming sword of justice and at my left hand, as a councillor, rides Death. These are the gifts of the Mightiest Whose servant I am. Praise to the Mightiest Who has answered my prayer! Forward, to the conquest of the world!" Such sentiments smack too much of opera bouffe — they might almost have been spoken by Gilbert's Mikado. There is a more authentic ring in some of the saving's which Mr. Lamb attributes to him. "To crush your enemies, to see them fall at your feet — to take their horses and goods and hear the lamentations of their women. That is best. . . . Get drunk only three times a month. It would be better not to get drunk at all. But who can abstain altogether?" THE BROADWAY LIBRARY OF iSTH CENTURY FRENCH LITERATURE Edited by Richard Aldington Introduction by Sir Edmund Gosse DIALOGUES: by Denis Diderot Translated by Francis Birrell ($4.00) LETTERS OF VOLTAIRE AND FREDERICK THE GREAT Translated by Richard Aldington, ($4.50) MEMOIRS OF THE BASTILLE by Latude and Linguet Translated by F. and S. Mills Witham, ($4.00) THREE STORIES Translated with introductions by Mrs. Wilfrid Jackson FORTUNES IN THE FIRE, by Crebillon Fils. A TALE OF FELICITY, by The Abbe de Voisenon. ARSACE AND ISMENIE, by Montesquieu, ($4.00) THE SOFA: A Moral Tale, by Crebillon Fils Translated by Bonamy Dobree, ($4-00) THE PRIVATE LIFE OF THE DUC DE RICHELIEU Translated by F. S. Flint, ($4.00) THE REVERIES OF A SOLITARY by J. J. Rousseau Translated by John Gould Fletcher, ($4.00) LETTERS and MEMOIRS of The PRINCE de LIGNE Translated by Leigh Ashton, ($4.00) GREAT STORIES OF ALL NATIONS By Maxim Lieber and Blanche Colton Williams, Ph.D. Thirty-eight literatures are included in this magnificent anthology of the world's greatest short stories. Many of these masterpieces are printed for the first time in English. The stories are divided into national sections preceded by a survey of the nation's literature. Before each of the 160 stories there is a biographical sketch of the author. ($5.00) THE WINTHROPS By Sybil Norton Professor William Lyon Phelps of Yale says, "THE WINTHROPS is an excel- lent novel and well worth reading. Its characteriza- tion is remarkable and the style has distinction. I believe the author will go far." ($2.50) JULIUS CAESAR And the Grandeur that Was Rome by Victor Thaddeus With rare imaginative in- sight this important biog- raphy approaches Caesar from a refreshingly new point of view and gives a picture of Roman civilization with startling vividness. ($5.00) THE SECRET FOOL By Victor MacClure A man of high ideals, his marriage a failure, divorce impossible, the inescap- able yearning for a son — in short, a problem that vitally concerns many homes. "A remarkable book of compelling power." {London Express) ($2.00) JOHN PAUL JONES MAN OF ACTION by Phillips Russell Author of "Benjamin Franklin" "A major book of its kind. A fine exemplar of what a modern biography should be like." (N. Y. Eve. Post) "All of his career is well and arrestingly told." (N. Y. Herald Tribune) ($5.00) luiixiwrs 1 1 1 1 1 j XT AXt I & A<-»- ); When writing to advertisers please mention The Nation

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402 The Nation [Vol. 125. No. 3249 His contempt for philosophers, too, is refreshingly pungent. "I have pondered the wisdom of the sages. I see now I have slain without knowledge of what to do rightly. But what care I for such men?" Perhaps a man who had conquered more terri- tory and sent more soldiers to their deaths than any other general who ever lived might have been pardoned for bragging a little; but it seems doubtful whether Genghis Khan cared enough about setting up empires and over-lording the world to be very boastful. No. it was enough to take what he wanted —whether it was a slant-eyed girl, a leopard, or half a dozen mighty nations — and then let crazy fellows who could do noth- ing but write burden him with such high-sounding names as Mighty Manslayer. Scourge of God, Perfect Warrior, Master of Thrones and Crowns, Emperor of All Men, and so on. It was better to fight just for the fun of seeing blood flow than to lure men to death by emitting fine phrases about making the world safe for the Gobi Desert. And instead of torturing de- feated foes by depriving them of their territorial possessions, burdening them with impossible war debts, or causing panics in their stock markets, it was much more dignified to translate them speedily to another world by pouring molten silver in their ears. Genghis Khan was too old-fashioned to enjoy the refinements of cruelty. R. F. Dibble Books In Brief The Romance of Villon. By Francis Carco. Translated from the French by Hamish Miles. Alfred A. Knopf. $5. 0 Rare Ben Jonson. By Byron Steel. Alfred A. Knopf. $3.50. The problem of making the novelized biography as inter- esting as fiction and yet as convincing as history is better solved by Mr. Carco than by Mr. Steel. The trouble usually is that we have to hear a great deal about what t^e subject thought or felt on this or that famous occasion. The bare record of what he did is better. Both of the present authors give us lively books; the first gives us the truer and the more distinguished. The Three Sitwells. By R. L. Megroz. George H. Doran Com- pany. $3. Rather chaotic criticism of an interesting English literary family. The Jearch for Atlantis. By Edwin Bjorkman. Alfred A. Knopf. $2. Mr. Bjorkman in an erudite and entertaining little essay finds Atlantis to be identical with Scheria, the home of Ho- mer's Nausicaa, and in turn with Tarshish or Tartessos. Builders of the Republic. By Frederic Austin Ogg. The Amer- ican Spirit in Art. By Frank Jewett Mather, Jr., Charles Rufus Morey, and William James Henderson. Volumes VIII and XII of The Pageant of America. Yale University Press. The excellence of this series is excellently kept up. Mr. Ogg has naturally more difficulty in telling the story of politics in pictures than the authors of the other volume have with painting, sculpture, and the graphic arts. Mr. Mather's ac- count of painting is particularly pungent and full; his record of illustration and caricature especially suits the purpose of the series, which is to describe all past American life. Harper's Literary Museum, A Mirror of American Manners and Morals from Pocahontas to the daijs of Dolly Madi- son. Compiled by Ola Elizabeth Winslow. Harper and Brothers. $4. A particularly amusing and revealing collection of Amer- icana titbits, including in a final section representative adver- tisements from newspapers and handbills from the earliest times to well on into the last century. NEW OXFORD BOOKS THE LEGACY OF ISRAEL $4.00 An illuminating and readable account of Jewish cul- ture and traditions for the general reader. Planned by the late Israel Abrahams. Edited by Edwyn R. Bevan and Charles Singer. INDIA'S PAST By A. A. Macdonell $3.75 "An excellent introduction to the literature, religions, architecture and philosophies of India." — The American Mercury. CHINA AND FOREIGN POWERS An Historical Review of Their Rela: By Sir Frederick Whyte $1.00 "The author has managed to get together within the com- pass of 78 pages a considerable amount of useful material which has hitherto only been available piecemeal for students of Chinese affairs.'' — Christian Sewr.cc Monitor. THE ARCHITECT IN HISTORY By Martin- S. Br $3.75 An historical account of the profession of architecture, with biographical detail of some of the greatest of its mem- bers from the earliest time to the present day. HISTORICAL TRIALS By the late Sir John MacDoxell, Edited by R. W. Lee, with a preface bv Richt Hon. Lord Shaw of Dunfermline. $3.75 "Here the reader will find discussed, with acuteness and in delightful manner, displaying great reserves of knowledge, some of the greatest problems of history." — The London Times. THE CONQUEST OF THE AIR An Historical Survev By C. L. M. Browx ' $1.00 In this small volume, the author, a professional expert, has written a simple, non-technical account of man's mastery of the air. It is a fascinatincr story, well-written and illus- trated with many interesting pictures. HORACE WALPOLE. A Memoir. By ArsTix Dobsox. $4.00. Hand-made Paper Edition, $11.00 The charming Memoir of Horace Walpole, edited by Paget Toynbee with the addition of new material, and an appendix of books printed at the Strawberry Hill Press. THE OLD BENCHERS OF THE INNER TEMPLE By Charles Lamb. With Annotations by Sir F. D. Mackinnon. $7.00 A book for all Lamb collectors, lawyers (and particularly templars"), and all lovers of vanished London. ENVIRONMENT AND RACE By Griffith Taylor $6.50 A study of the evolution, migration, settlement and status of the races of man, based directly upon modern research. THE WATSONS. A Fragment. Bv Tane Austen. Now reprinted from the manuscript. $2.50 Limited Edition, $7.00 This edition restores the true reading, in a number of places, for the first time. Uniform with Sanditon (second impression), Lady Susan, Cancelled Chapters of Persuasion, and Memoir of Jane Austen. BENEDETTO CROCE. An Autobiography. Translated from the Italian bv R. G. Colli xgwood. With a Preface bv J. A. Smith. $2.00 Benedetto Croce. critic, historian, and philosopher, is the most important figure in present-day European thought. OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS AMERICAN BRANCH 35 West 32d Street New York City When writing to advertisers pirns,- mention The Nation

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Oct. 12, 1927] The Nation 403 Domestic Manners of the Americans. By Frances Trollope. With an introduction by Michael Sadleir. Dodd, Mead and Company. $4. A long overdue reprint of one of the most caustic of nineteenth-century books on America. The Diary of a Country Parson, The Reverend James Wood- forde. Volume III, 1788-1792. Edited by John Beresford. Oxford University Press. $4.25. The resurrected records and confessions of this hitherto unknown Englishman are here continued in one more inimitably charming volume. The Indians of North America. Selections from The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents. Edited by Edna Ken- ton. Harcourt, Brace and Company. Two volumes. $10. Miss Kenton continues the excellent mining operations she began a year or so ago in the priceless treasures of the "Jesuit Relations." The Indian material here gathered is of course restricted for the most part to the territory east of the Mis- sissippi; but within those limits a very rich yield is achieved. Pomes Penyeach. By James Joyce. Paris: Shakespeare and Company. One shilling. The thirteen poems which James Joyce has put together cover a period extending from 1904 to 1924. It was in 1907 that "Chamber Music" appeared and in the years that followed the poet was immersed in his various prose volumes. Poetry, then, was no more than a passing phase with him, a brief flowering of sensitive youth into what was, for him, a sturdier growth and a profounder metier. The few lyric snatches that evolved from his consciousness were (and are) unimportant except in so far as they predicate a disposition enamored of delicate sound and fragile rhythms, for the prime value of Joyce's poetry is implicit in a fastidious arrangement of vo- cables. Of the thirteen short pieces in "Pomes Penyeach" not more than three are dated to any one year. They are mani- festly casual impulses, brief sublimations. Three of them, She Weeps Over Rahoon, On the Beach at Fontana, and Alone, appeared in Poetry: A Magazine of Verse for November, 1917. She Weeps Over Rahoon, with its softly falling pattern, is the best piece in the little book. It is to be suspected that this tiny booklet is a cleaning-up of unconsidered trifles, that it marks the end of Joyce's appearance as a poet, that his poetry here- after will be found (as most of it has been found in the past) imbedded in his prose. Black Stream. By Nathalie Sedgwick Colby. Harcourt, Brace and Company. $2.50. New York society, if one is to believe Edith Wharton and Nathalie Colby, is dark and turbid. The material of Mrs. Colby's book has points of resemblance to "Twilight Sleep." But where Edith Wharton's style flows along lucidly and nat- urally, Mrs. Colby's is choked by an impressionism that is some- times interesting, but more often artificial. In "Black Stream" Jim Brazee juggles with Wall Street for the greater glory of his adventuress of a wife, and Dr. Farraday sacrifices his re- search work and cultivates a fashionable practice that his oldest daughter may buy herself a prince. Lust, greed, and pride of power move most of the characters in the novel. The ugly pessimism of ignoble desires underlies it, rather than the beautiful pessimism of defeated aspirations. Knock Four Times. By Margaret Irwin. Harcourt, Brace and Company. $2.50. Here is a whimsical tale of London's Greenwich Village, of Celia from an impeccable, conventional family, of Dicky, a young writer with an impossible Greek name who afterwards becomes world-famous. The book is populated with struggling young artists who throw so many parties and behave in such Headliners from the McBRIDE LIST SOMETHING ABOUT EVE A Comedy of Fig-leaucs By JAMES BRANCH CABELL $2.50 STRANGE WOMAN By ELMER DAVIS, Author of "Friends of Mr. Sweeney" $2.00 LILY— IRON By MARY BIGGS $2.00 COMMODORE VANDERBILT By ARTHUR D. HOWDEN SMITH Illustrated. $5.00 GENGHIS KHAN The Emperor of All Men By HAROLD LAMB Illustrated. $3.50 GREAT POEMS of the English Language Compiled by WALLACE ALVIN BRIGGS Cloth, net $7.50 Half Morocco, boxed, net $15.00 ROBERT M. McBRIDE & COMPANY 7 West 16th Street New York When writing to •idi-erti.'i-rs please mention The Nation

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404 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3249 a charming, scatter-brained way that one wonders when they do their work in the world. The love affair of Celia and Dicky is light, gay, irresponsible, and never comes to fruition. Style and atmosphere are correspondingly kittenish. A twist at the end of the book links it neatly to the beginning in a short- story manner. Indeed, "Knock Four Times" would have made an excellent short story if weeded out and compressed. As it stands, it has too much meat on its delicate bones. Women avd the Miners' Lock-Out. By Marion Phillips. London: Labour Publishing Company. 2 6. Every industrial conflict has its unsung heroes and heroines. This little book is a graphic account of the part women played in the great miners' strike in England. Organized into com- mittees throughout the length and breadth of England, these women raised money to feed and clothe the wives and children of miners. In every imaginable manner, from house-to-house collections to the selling of miners' lamps at auction, was money painfully but persistently collected for relief purposes. Dr. Phillips has given a helpful recitation of how the domestic side of a great economic battle must be handled. Jacques Cceur: Merchant Prince of the Middle Ages. By Albert Boardman Kerr. Charles Scribner's Sons. $3.50. A well-documented and painstaking biography of a chival- rous fifteenth-century merchant who had a genius for organiza- tion, for statesmanship, and for getting into scrapes. The author's constant attempt to weave glamor around his subject is not over-successful; and neither the fact that Jacques Cceur has been compared with Joan of Arc nor that he died fighting in the crusades makes him worthy to appear in a full-dress book. Lampoons. By Humbert Wolfe. Kensington Gardens. By Humbert Wolfe. Requiem. By Humbert Wolfe. George H. Doran Company. $1.50 each. Two reissues and one new volume by an English poet who with "Requiem" is said to have become the most read contem- porary poet in his native land. We confess that we do not see why. Mr. Wolfe is nimble and intelligent, but there is li profundity or even of art in his work than there is of a certain show ■ f these things. A History of the Cuban Republic. By Charles R. Chapman. The Macmillan Company. $2.50. Professor Chapman is up-to-the-minute in research but conventional in standpoint. His introductory chapters are ex- cellent, lie Is mainly concerned with the relations between Cuba and the United States, and sees events from the stand- point of tlie Yankee Colossus. Sfnij, Costuming. By Agnes Brooks Young. The Macmillan Company. $2.50. A short and useful handbook for little theaters. Beside some chapters on the jxeneral theory of stage costuming it gives patterns, methods of dyeing, and general suggestions for the preparation of stage effects. Hers' Tales. A Book of Mart-els. By H. C. Adams. Boni and Liveright. $3.50. At a time when travel books are popular, such a com- pendium of bits from farers ancient, medieval, and modern has its value. Mr. Adams's only defect was probably an incurable one — lack of fulness due to a lack of space. The Rebel Earl and Other Papers. By William Roughead. E. P. Button and Company. $4. An interesting addition to the literature of crime, consist- ing of essays on classic criminals done with professional and scholarly finish. WILL A CATHER'S NEW NO] EL DEATH COMES FOR THE ARCHBISHOP ' aiding. 306 pages, $2. SO net Third large printing. "The story of one who. when a voung man, is sent to New Mexico a? the Bishop of Santa Fe . . . beauty of the rarest, truest kind." — Michael Williams, in The Commonueal Is Culture contagious? Does it spread or does it develop independently in different communities? Read what the world's leading anthropologists say. Economics and Human Behavior By P. SARGAXT FLORENCE The spotlight of the new psychology thrown on "the economic man." "Just and penetrating." — Stuart Chase. The Standardization ot Error By YILHJALMUR STEFANSSON Stefansson leaves the role of explorer to urge new fundamentals of education. fl.OO each at all booksellers or from the publishers. WWNORJONfiCOMF/^ When writing to a ,;tion The Nation

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Oct 12, 1927] The Nation 405 Music Music and Its Re-creation SINCE music is known and meant to be known only through performance, real or imagined, performance itself has grown in importance as its technique has grown in power. Thus, a sufficiently competent conductor can make spurious stuff sound all but genuine, and this only because his command of re-creative technique enables him to create an appearance, in the music, of the significance which the technique would ordinarily be used to emphasize in good music. Occasionally, then, performances of good music or bad are notable, not only for their service to the music, but for the light they throw upon the entire art of re-creating music. Whatever music conveys it conveys through sound which is articulated by rhythm — i.e., by durations of time and stresses — very much as color is articulated by lines or outlines. The lines or outlines constitute a design in space, the durations and stresses a design in time which, because it is more extended and complicated, and because it is intangible and is revealed in motion, is more difficult to grasp — the design, say, of a phrase which repeats or adds to itself to produce a larger and larger design, or musical form.1 It is, then, the job of the performer who actually produces the sounds to make evident the design in which they are ar- ranged, which he does by emphasis, i.e., by distortions of the given durations of time, and by changes of loudness, both sim- ilar to those in speech. Where, as in the first movement of Brahms's Fourth, the music does not permit much change in speed, the performer relies on change of loudness; on the other hand, Mengelberg's performance of the first movement of Brahms's Third demonstrates the power, perhaps even the greater power, of change of speed.2 Within a single phrase he extends the durations of some notes to make the outline of the phrase more definite, of others to indicate the transition to the next phrase, or of the entire set to indicate that it is a more emphatic repetition of the phrase preceding. And hav- ing established a slower tempo in this way he retains it as the tempo (to be modified within phrases) of the transitional passage which leads to a new section in a still slower tempo. With this procedure he seems to carve out the shape of the movement as nobody else seems able to do. On the other hand, the performer may emphasize the mere movement of music,3 using the changes of speed and loudness for this purpose. In this, their sweep, their waves of motion, lies the greater effectiveness for ordinary listeners of Stokow- ski's performances of the same Brahms symphonies. And it is a measure of Mengelberg's artistic stature that, incapable of this easy effectiveness, he can instead give interest to the inner logic of the music. He plays the first movement of the Fourth Symphony in a tempo that shocks one at first with its uncustomary deliberateness, unrelieved until a slight but doubly potent acceleration at the end; but holds one taut as he fills out the structural design. This for the first time, one 'This, however, should be noted: that design can exist without color as a line drawing, but that rhythm has only a limited effect apart from Bound. For example, the significance of a rhythm that is repeated — the mere recognition of the fact that it is repeated — depends on the two series of pitches articulated by the repeated rhythm, and varies according to whether the two are identical, slightly different, or entirely different. We have here a _ reciprocal relation best illustrated by an extreme example: pases of Mozart's or Beethoven's piano compositions are no more than a few chords that would not hold attention if they were not broken up and spaced out in the form of rapid figuration, the rhythmic figures of which in turn would not hold attention if they were not differentiated by the notes of the chords. Here I can only allude to the bearing of all this upon music like Antheil's "Ballet Mecanique," which for its purpose uses only a limited number of noises in rhythmic patterns. 2 One can try for oneself the experiment of omitting the changes of loudness but retaining the changes of speed: one will hear every change of loudness as an implication of the change of speed. And Moiseiwitsch. in a performance of Chopin's B flat minor Sonata, achieves a shattering climax by manipulating time values up to a final distended tempo that im- plies twice as much force as the sounds actually have. 3 Since completing the article I have found that Frank Howes, in "The Borderland of Music and Psychology," calls attention to "the close connec- tion between emotion, bodily movement, and the movement of music." NEW CENTURY BOOKS BUGEES IN THE NIGHT By BARRY BENEF1ELD Author of "The Chicken-Wagon Family" Here Barry Benefield writes the story of old Easley Wheatley and the beautiful young girl who is his "daughter." The New York Times says: "Benefield has charm. His prose is lirm and clear and dulcet. He tells a story uncommonly well." $2.00 DIRT ROADS By HOWARD SNYDER A distinguished novel: the etory of Ellic Wingate and the beautiful thing which came into his life between tragedy and despair. $2.00 THE SIEENT FORCE By T. MORRIS LONGSTRETH The thrilling history of the Mounted Police of Canada, complete and richly anecdotal. Illustrated, §4.00 The Brilliant New Biography of Napoleon THOSE QUARREESOME BONAPARTES By ROBERT GORDON ANDERSON Critics and readers alike proclaim this the richest and most penetrating life story of Napoleon Bonaparte. It is great anil true biography, exe- cuted with rare glamor and pageantry. §2.50 THE RADIANT STORY OF JESUS By ALPHONSE SKCHE A new biography of Jesus for all people. It is a literary achievement of a high order as veil as a complete and dramatic life of Christ. §3.50 BIOGRAPHY— The Literature of Personality By JAMES C. JOHNSTON Foreword by Gamaliel Bradford A new examination of biographical materials and methods. A brilliant pioneer work in this field. $2.50 THE EOCOMOTIVE GOD By WILLIAM ELLERY LEONARD The Author of Tiro Lires writes his long-awaited auto- biography. It is one of the most important life stories of modern times. §4.00 THE CENTURY CO. Publishers of Enduring Books When writing to advertisers please mention The Nation

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406 The Nation [Vol. 125. No. 3249 feels, is the authentic Brahms style, superficially ineffective in its sobriety and architectural solidity; this is great perform- ance, to reveal in such a style its own inherent effectiveness and power. And his, therefore, were the most notable and memorable performances of the seasons in which they were given. Now a conductor only makes more evident what is al- ready present in the music and. to this extent, self-evident; and even in this he starts with directions from the composer telling him what to emphasize and how. But his technique, like that of the actor, is not exact or approximately exact reproduction; it is deliberate, if discriminating, distortion. Most of his activity consists in repeating a fairly large but nevertheless limited number of accepted masterworks. With each repetition of such a work he feels the insufficiency of previous performances, his own and other conductors': even the same structural relations must be indicated more clearly, and there are newly perceived relations to indicate. Eventually ho reaches the point reached, say, by Mengelberg with the Brahms symphonies: he reveals everything there is to be re- vealed, and makes it as clear as it can be made. But there is no stopping; and going further he obscures the total de- sign with too many details underscored too heavily; and so he ends by ruining the performance as, again, Mengelberg has ruined his performance of Tchaikovsky's "Pathetic" Symphony. At this point the maximum of effect is achieved by a reversion to the minimum of means; and the listener's ear is held by the simplicity and sublety of say, a Karl Muck. B. H. Haggin. Drama Oyez, Oyez, Oyez THE young season has not yet revealed any new master- pieces of dramatic literature or even any plays likely to be singled out as rich in that rather plentiful commodity called promise, but it has, on the other hand, been more than usually prolific in "hits." Musical shows aside, there are already at least half a dozen productions intended to entertain the more intelligent and less completely exhausted sort of tired busi- ness man; they are pretty certain to go on for many months to come, and another — perhaps the best of the lot — has just made its appearance at the National Theater under the title of "The Trial of Mary Dugan." The author is the same Bayard Veiller who made history in the show shops fifteen years ago when "Within the Law" not only set the tone of the crook play but started Jane Cowl on the road to fame, and though it would not do to say that fifteen years have either deepened Mr. Veiller's vision of life or in any way affected the aims of his writing, those years have increased rather than diminished that grasp of popular psychology and that sense for theatrically effective construction which, taken together, make the fortune of the commercial playwright. Few men retain for more than a decade the trick of writing popular successes, but "The Trial of Mary Dugan" seems as good as "Within the Law" once seemed, and since audiences, even if they are no wiser, are at least quite a little more sophisticated than they were in 1912. that means that it is really a good deal better. Mary is a Follies girl accused of the murder of her "sugar daddy." She has really been his mistress, though that was only in order to supply money for the education of a younger- brother who has always thought that he had been left a legacy and — but why tell a gaudily preposterous story when the whole effect of the play depends upon the f"ct that the spectator be- comes so absorbed in the way in which it is told that he for- gets to care whether or not it would be credible in any other form? Mr. Veiller has chosen, to begin with, a novel form. His entire action takes place in the court room, the duration of the play is identical with the duration of the trial, the entre- Make A Habit of It Lay aside each week the small sum of 4 BITS for a Vanguard book.* Choose from the latest additions to the list. The titles and authors will speak for themselves to Nation readers. You have little to risk — but what a world of wisdom and entertainment to gain! Heavenly Discourse. C. E. S. Wood — which is causing as much commotion on cartl; as it fnust haze in heaven. The Main Stem. William Edge — a brilliant "stiff" relates his adventures as a migratory worker during the :. Daughter of the Revolution, and Other Stories. John Reed — colorful bits of life found in cafes, outposts, boulevards, seen through intensely human eyes. Kropotkin's Revolutionary Pamphlets. Peter Kropotkin" — (; rare and valuable collection, compiled for the first time. Company Unions. Robert Dunn — what arc they, and why do employers and corporations favor t'hemf An American Pilgrimage. Letters of Grace Scribxer — a glimpse into the soul of a rare person. The A B C of Art. John Haldane Blackie— what is Art? An answer happily devoid of technical jargon. Proudhon's Solution of the Social Problem. P. J. Proud- hox — The author's plan for realising his famous phrase. "Liberty — not the Daughter but the Mother of Order." *If you can spare more there will be no violent objection. Vanguard books are clothbound — full size — well printed 50c each, at all booksellers By mail 55c including catalogue Vanguard Press, 80 Fifth Ave., N. Y. C. -4t)ntKRNATIOHAft- The LIFE and DEATH of SACCO and VANZETTI by EUGENE LYONS All the elements of the social drama which has shaken the world are presented in this complete account by a brilliant writer who has been associated with the case from the very beginning. Fascinating as a novel : penetrating as a history. Si. 50 RUSSIAN POETRY an Anthology, chosen and trans- lated by Babette Deutsch and Avrahm Yarmolinsky. A selec- tion of lyrics covering the period from Pushkin to the present day. $2.25 MODERN RUSSIAN COMPOSERS by Leonid Sabaneyeff. Aesthetic characterization of about forty representatives of Russian music, including Skryabin. Stravinski. Myaskovski, Frokofyeff and Rakhmaninoff, by a Russian composer who writes in a de- lightful and intimate manner. $2.75 HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN WORKING CLASS by Anthony Bimbo. An account of the rise and struggles of American labor against the back- ground of political and industrial devel- opments. $2.75 MEMOIRS of a REVOLUTIONIST VOICES OF REVOLT A series of small books in which are collected the out- standing utterances of renowned revolu- tionary leaders. The first to be published are: Robespierre, Ma- rat. Lassalle, K. Lieb- knecht. Debs and Lenin. 50c each The AMERICANIZATION of LABOR by Robert W. Dunn. A new book giving the ramifications of the present employers' offensive against the labor unions. SI. 90 MATERIALISM and EMPIRIO-CRITICISM (Vol. XIII. of Collected Works) by V. I. Lenin. In this book Lenin fights against all attempts at philosophic revisions of Marx- ism. $4.00 THE ECONOMIC THEORY OF THE LEISURE CLASS by Nikolai Bul;harin. A criticism of the value and profit the- ory of the Austrian School of Economics. $2.50 by \'era Fipncr. An autobiography of this famous Russian terrorist, who participated in the assassination of Tsar Alexander II. $3.00 AT ALL BOOKSTORES WRITE FOR CATALOG INTERNATIONAL PUBLISHERS CO INCORPOR AT E D 381 FOURTH AVENUE NEW YORK Wken writing to advertisers pleast mention The Nation

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Oct. 12, 1927] The Nation 407 acts are only reasonably managed recesses, and even the door- man wears a badge and swings a billy in order to promote the illusion. Reinhardt turned the theater into a cathedral; why should not Mr. Veiller turn it into a supreme court? Such an initial conception is, however, only a beginning; the author's skill is far more impressively demonstrated in his working out of the idea, for not only has he taken full advantage of the dramatic opportunities naturally afforded by the form of a trial but he has, in addition, been remarkably fertile in devising all sorts of unexpected turns of events and in managing various surprising eruptions of action which might conceivably inter- rupt the formalized procedure of the court. Doubtless it is only in a judge's nightmare than any trial was ever marked by so many unusual incidents or ever ended with the revelation that the attorney for the defense really committed the mur- der; doubtless any decorum-loving judge who ever had the mis- fortune to preside over such a trial would, unless he were him- self first carried shrieking to Bellevue, sentence all the parties concerned to be boiled in oil or to suffer whatever other penalty he could devise as a fitting punishment for proceedings so little in accord with the sacred atmosphere of the courtroom; but the important fact is that Mr. Veiller has made everything acceptable by the skill with which it has been handled and in particular by adroitly following the sound melodramatic prin- ciple that if you can win the confidence of an audience by a reasonable beginning the limit to what it can be made to ac- cept as the action proceeds is set only by the amount of tension which can be generated. "The Trial of Mary Dugan" is superb melodrama which makes, so it seems to me, but one mistake. Perhaps it would have been just as well to fasten the murder upon someone a little less unlikely and hence, in melodrama, a little more unsus- pected, than the attorney for the defense. It is true that by the time the revelation is made the audience is excited enough to be- lieve anything, but the fact remains that this particular turn follows the pattern of the mystery play a little too closely, that it is — well, too expectedly unexpected, too tritely novel. That, however, is a very minor point and is much more than made up for by the fact that Mr. Woods, the producer, has given the play one of those unstinted productions which astute man- agers make when they are perfectly sure they will get their money back. Rex Cherryman is a sympathetic young brother, Ann Harding is so blondly tearful that only a professional prosecutor could possibly imagine her guilty, and Cyril Keightly (as the attorney for the defense) is admirable as one of those handsome, gentlemanly men who speak such good English that most audiences of the sort one finds in New York are secretly pleased to have him turn out not all that he should be. No less adroit in its own way and destined to hardly less of popular success is the highly entertaining and suavely scabrous comedy "The Command to Love" (Longacre Theater). It deals with some of the embarrassments suffered by a young French military attache at the court of Spain whose chief function is to make love to the more influential Spanish ladies and who is expected to serve his country jusqu'au (petit) vwrt. It skates continually over thin ice and, occasionally breaking through, it falls — if the paradox be permissible — into hot water. But though translated from the German it is all that "French farce" is generally supposed to be but so seldom is. Nothing more amusingly or tastefully indelicate has been seen here in some time. Basil Rathbone is the patriotic lover and Mary Nash, who gives perhaps the best performance of her career, is so seductive a lady that she makes his duty a pleasure. For a series of special Tuesday and Thursday matinees the Grand Street Follies company is presenting at the Little Theater "Lovers and Enemies," a tragi-comedy by Artzybasheff pre- viously known in translation simply as "Enemies." It is an interesting piece and would be worth seeing, even if for no other reason, on account of one magnificent piece of acting by Leo Bulgakov and another, almost as remarkable, by Eva Condon. Joseph Wood Krutch The Clash of Passion and Class! CRUDE A NOVEL BY ROBERT HYDE Watch for reviews of this tender and powerful novel of love in the shadow of the California derricks, in which romance and realism are fused in a style of unaffected simplicity and masterly clarity. $2.50 fid "OTHER BOOKS THAT ARE DIFFERENT" t*? COGNAC HILL By Charles Divine The bunkum of the war behind the lines $2.50 TOWARDS A NEW ARCHITECTURE IMMMMHimill ■■■■ ■■■HI»»U«IWiaHIMH» — By he Corbusier Modernism as advocated by the most uncompromising of European architects. Profusely illustrated $6.00 THE SINS OF THE FATHERS By Felix Hollaender The most popular of German novelists. The original story of the great film "Variety" and its dramatic sequel . . $2.50 Payson & Clarke Ltd. 6 EAST 53D STREET NEW YORK Congaree Sketches By Edward C. L. Adams. "These sketches stand in direct line of the tales that made Joel Chandler Harris famous and like them should find readers not only among students of folk-lore but also among that part of the public, young and old, which rejoices in the fertility and ingenuity of the untutored negro mind." — The Satur- day Review of Literature. Limited autographed edition, $5.00 Trade edition, $2.00 America and French Culture, 1750-1848 By Howard Mumford Jones. Departing from the conventional ways of literary and cultural historians both in the outline of the forces in American culture and in the method of study. $4.50 Juvenile Courts in the United States Bv H. H. Lou. A thorough examination of this movement in all its important aspects, principles, development, present status, forms of organization, significant tendencies. $3.00 The Frecdmen's Savings Bank By Walte' L. Fleming. A chapter in the economic history of the Negro race. — A Vanderbill University Publication. $2.00 The Social Theories of L. T. Hobhouse By Hugh Carter. A resume and critical appraisal of Hob- house's writings, sifting out his social theories from his mass of philosophical material. $1.50 The North Carolina Chain Gang By Jesse F. Steiner and Roy M. Brown. A study of the county convict system in North Carolina, its early development, organiza- tion, living conditions, discipline, economic aspects. $2.00 The University of North Carolina Press At Chapel Hill When writing to advertisers please mention The Nation

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408 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3249 XJLJLJL ~ — *«■ - ■■«-■-»-»»»-»■ -a-* CERTAIN BOOKS o/ IMPORTANCE The Casement by Frank Swinnerton. A novel considered by many critics to stand with NOC I URN available for the first time in an American edition. This story of two sisters, delicatel) woven and shrewdly developed, mirrors Mr. Sw inner ton's extensive analytical powers and is another example of his character creat ion, for 1 oraine and Oliva are t ypes which reflect in full measure the attitude and manners of the woman ol today. THE CAM NUNC is in every way a novel worthy to be compared with NOCTURNE. $2.50. Goblin Market by H. deVere Stacpoole. This is the unusual and powerful story of a man who falls in lose with a younger woman and exposes with measured emphasis the contrast of mature and adoles- cent line. The greatest novel yet written by this famous author. $2.50. The Messenger of the Gods by Phyllis Bottome. With brilliant wit and shrewd understanding the author of OLD WINE tells the unusual story of a small town girl and her attempt to solve the life she- found in the complicated out- side worlel. $2.50. Julius by "A Gentleman With A Duster." The dramatic s'orv of an in- telligent young Jew, <*( his family and his friends, his i leals and ambitions, and his efforts to make a plaee for himself in the complicated structure <f modem English social life. $2.00. Three Silences by Catherine Codd. A delightful new tale of the Manxmen by the brilliant au- thor of THE FARTHING SPINS- TER. It is a novel of rare quality, vividly tracing the fortunes of Henry Ward Beecher An American Portrait by Paxton Hibben. The biographical sensation of the year is this powerful study of America's most striking man of religion. About his spectacular figure has centered much speculation and doubt, and Mr. Hibben. pursuing an elaborate psychological method, reveals him as a figure somehow heroic, infinitely tragic and everlastingly human. Illustrated. $5.00. Are They The Same At Home Being a Series of Bouquets Diffidently Distributed. by Beverley Nichols. The extraordinary young and clever author of 25 and CRAZY PAVEMENTS offers his most amusing and sophisticated book — a series of intimate sketches of the great and near-great of today. $2.50. Distinguished Editions ol Famous Novels The Old Wives Tale by Arnold Bennett Fortitude by Hugh Walpo'e Mrs. Craddock by W. Somerset IWaugham Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham Antic Hay by Aldous Huxley Young Low by George A. Dorsey Janet March by Floyd Dell Each. in Special I S2.50. Exceptional Books of Varied Interest The Letter A Play in Three Acts by W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM The dramatic sensation of this ~reat writer, now playing at ) Iheatre, New Little Henrietta by Lizette Woodworth Reese. A Ion , narrative poem which ce and ic quality of which she Robert Frost \ Study in Sensibility and < ommon Sense. by Gorham B. IWunson. One of our greatest living e first timi ad uat ■ biographical treat- , The Murrv Hill Biog- New York Nights by Stephen Graham. The author of LONDON NIGHTS again proses himself the night- hawk extrac rdinary and present s a glamorous and lurid picture of Gotham . light w hich will amaze the most astute a ite. Illustrated - Passenger to Teheran by V. Sackville-West. Written in the manner of a wandering philosopher, this de- lightful journal of a pilgrimage through Persia reveals the au- thor to have not only a keen eye for beauty, but an intelligent understanding of people. Illustrated. $4.00. mviuiv iiiieni'; lilt mi iuiks vil three generations of unfortunate women and their heritage 52.50. An Unmarried Father by Floyd Pell. Floyd Dell, one of the most brilliant moderns now writing, tells the humorous and exciting tale of a lather's violent revolt against conventionality and its ensuing dramatic consequences. This, without question Mr. Deli's most delightful novel, displays his engaging humor and mature narrative powers as lias no Other of his hooks. Colorful, crackling with epigramatic phrases, somehow- daring, it is essentially a story modern and pertinent The Theatre by Stark Young. A concise treatise by a noted authority. (Doran Modern Reader' Bookshelf). $1.50. Benito Mussolini — The Man by Jeanne Borrieux. Shrewd and provocative bio- h\ of the greatest dictator since Machiavelli. The author not onlv makes a study of her famous subject but the people whom he rules. Illustrated. $5.00. Oliver Cromwell by John Drinkwater. The author ot THE PILGRIM OF ETERNITY proved tobe a master of I y. and this dramatic story of one of the greatest figures of history further substantiates it. Mr. Drinkwater proclaims his admiration for Cromwell at the start, but does not allow it to bias his critical estimate. Altogether, he presents a fascinating and provocative picture ^t a violent figure and the violences he so much engendered. Illustrated. $2.50. The Cyder Feast by Sacheverell Sitwell. A new volume of glowing, rhythmic poems by a member of Eng land's famous literary trio. $2.00. GEORGE EI, DORAN COMPANY New York TBBBMHillif ill M ■ ■ ■ M ,»:«jv/:Vi;^:<ai When writing to advertisers please mention The Nation

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The Nation FOUNDED 1865 Vol. CXXY NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 19, 1927 No. 3250 Contents EDITORIAL PARAGRAPHS 409 EDITORIALS: Mexico's Election 412 Text : The World's Series 413 Tariff Tangles 413 Celluloid 414 GALERIES LAFAYETTE. WE ARE HERE! By Hendrik Willem van Loon 415 IT SEEMS TO HEYWOOD BROUN 416 PRESIDENTIAL POSSIBILITIES: 1. CHARLES EVANS HUGHES. By Oswald Garrison Villard 417 IS THIS AMERICA? By Ida Treat 420 AN ANTI-TRUST LAW FIASCO. By Dexter M. Keezer 422 IN THE DRIFTWAY. By the Drifter 424 CORRESPONDENCE 424 BOOKS AND PLAYS: Eavesdropper. By David Morton 427 First Glance. By Mark Van Doren 427 Man as a Mechanism. By H. L. Mencken 427 The Biography of a Complex. By Joseph Wood Krutch 42S Blood and Banners. By Margery Latimer 429 Jim, Slim, and Bill. By J. Frank Dobie 429 A Frightened Woman. By Ernestine Evans 430 Books in Brief 430 Drama : Ibsen Again. By Joseph Wood Krutch 431 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS SECTION: The Australian Labor Situation. By C. Hartley Grattan 432 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 HEYWOOD BROUN 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. THE NATION is on file in most public and college libraries and is indexed in the Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature. DID MAYOR THOMPSON ask King George's permis- sion to run for Mayor of Chicago? Did a French presidential candidate ever go to Berlin to see if he was regarded with favor? And how would American editors comment if Mr. Cosgrave publicly went to London for ad- vice and approval before conducting a campaign in Ireland? They would hoot at him. And they should hoot at the pres- ent spectacle in Nicaragua and Washington. General McCoy is on the spot, preparing for an "honest election," with United States Marines supervising the free expression of Nicaraguan opinion all the way from registration to vote- casting. Ex-President Chamorro has done the natural thing under the circumstances. He has gone to Washington frankly to "seek permission to run for President of Nica- ragua." The New York Herald-Tribune's Washington bureau reports cryptically that This government is not going to say that any man shall not run for the Presidency in Nicaragua. However, it will not recognize any man elected who is unable to qualify under the Nicaraguan constitution. General Cha- morro was former President of the Republic and it is alleged [by the State Department] he is ineligible for President under the Nicaraguan constitution. When one recalls what the Marines did to the last man whom Washington refused to recognize the cryptic report loses its obscurity. We will not say that any man shall not run for the Presidency, but if a man we do not like is elected we will not "recognize" him— we will merely disarm his sol- diers, seize and dump his arms into the river, and declare "neutral zones" wherever opposition troops are in danger of attack. Will Rogers only mildly exaggerates when he says "if necessary the marines would do a little voting on the side themselves." \\/HAT IS NEWS? It>s an old question and there are • \ many answers. We offer this sample of the foreign correspondence of the Associated P»ess, culled from its set- ting, between the fight films and a bomb plot, on the front page of the New York World: In the white uniform of a nurse, with the red cross on her forehead and chest, the "slim gray Princess," as the Rumanians call her, makes a striking figure of beauty, benevolence, and benignity, her beautiful bobbed blond hair growing in such profusion that it covers even her sad, blue eyes and her deep dimples. DREADFUL NEWS comes out of New York. One hun- dred per cent Americanism and the bolshevik menace are a drug on the market. Please don't take our word for it, for we have high authority for this calamitous state of affairs. It was Mrs. George E. Owens, the president of the Government Club in New York who rose and said to the members of her club: "This year you won't hear anything about the red menace. It is a horrible commentary, but women seem to be fed up with patriotism and bored by talk of our nation's security. This year we are going to stress municipal government." And so this loyal and devoted club, which since its foundation has been devoting all its precious energies to the combatting of bolshevik ideas, the further restriction of the immigration which is "ruining" America, and the inculcation of aggressive Americanism in the public schools had to step down from this noble pedestal, and was compelled to spend an afternoon listening to the Commis- sioner of Parks of New York City denounce the Americans who scatter newspapers and trash all over the public parks. But their fall in the scale of true Americanism did not stop there. They actually let a full-fledged general come before them and advance the bolshevik idea that there should be no further amendments to the Constitution unless they are submitted in advance to all the people to be voted on in a nation-wide referendum. Only one thing revived our droop- ing spirits as we read of this happening. Mrs. Owens saved the day by denouncing the nation-wide efforts to save Sacco and Vanzetti, and demanded that "when citizens of the United States try to intimidate governors, judges, and juries, they should forfeit their citizenship." Fortunate the republic that has a Mrs. Owens still on guard ! T OUVAIN'S LIBRARY is being restored. Its destruc- -H— i tion was deplored all over the world; Americans have been largely instrumental in rebuilding it. Yet because Cardinal Mercier, now dead and unable to speak for him- self, agreed, during the stress of after-war emotion, to a certain inscription over the new building, Whitney Warren, the architect, refuses to have the inscription d, even pu Li

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410 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3250 at the suggestion of the president of the Carnegie Founda- tion for International Peace, Nicholas Murray Butler. The inscription now reads: "Destroyed by Teutonic Fury; Re- stored by American Generosity." The bad taste of the sec- ond half of the sentence is hardly debatable— it is typically "American" to take all the credit for what may not be solely due to American efforts; and of the unwisdom of the first phrase there can be no question. Dr. Butler suggests the obvious emendation: "Destroyed by War." Destroyed by War— that it was. In war men do not think of rare books, of fine libraries, of priceless cathedral glass, any more than they consider human life. War is war. And peace should be permitted to be peace. AFTER STRIKES lasting since April 1 the miners in the bituminous coal-fields of Illinois and Iowa have a -on. Just what they have won is not so certain. The truce which was recently signed grants to the 72,000 miners in Illinois and the 9,000 in Iowa the same old wage scale. This is to last until February 7. In the meantime it is hoped that a joint commission will have discovered some plan that will be acceptable to both sides. But if it does not, then what? If a suitable plan is not drafted by February 7. the coal miners will again face the choice between a six- months' strike or starvation wages. They will again have visions of the destitution that has prevailed in Illinois for months. Furthermore, it should be remembered that the miners in Ohio and Pennsylvania are still on strike and fac- ing daily worse conditions. As long as the miners are forced to make separate truces like the ones in Iowa and Illinois they will be faced with the possibility, if not prob- ability, of more strikes and tie-ups. There is no local solution. The chaos that has prevailed in the bituminous coal industry throughout the summer, which still exists in Ohio and Pennsylvania, is ample evidence that something far more thoroughgoing than these simple truces is re- quired. A CENTURY OF SANCTUARY in the United States having been rudely broken by the World War, the non- resistant sect of Mennonites has been compelled to seek refuge elsewhere. In Paraguay they have found their new paradise, and more than a hundred thousand are expected to migrate there within the next few years. The Para- guayan Government has been generous in its protection of and concessions to these new citizens. A charter has been granted the Mennonites which provides, among other things. for complete and perpetual immunity from military duty and exemption from participation in a war. even as nun batants; the Mennonites are also to be relieved from the obligation of taking an oath; they are to be permitted their own churches and schools conducted in their own language — German; they are to be exempted from all national and mu- nicipal taxes, immigration laws, and tariffs — in shor Government of Paraguay is making a gesture of welcome, without any strings to it. In this year of grace, with i of war persecution still ringing in our e heeded protests of religious o military s fresh in our memories, the action of Paragui A description of the three-million- by the Mennonites reads like paradise indi There are endless inities await;- skillful and industrious man. ... rmant av men of energy, thrift, and skill to turn t uncultivated prairies and meadows into a paradise. There are all resources for the creation of wealth, coupled with the most wonderful climate which can be found anywhere on the globe. Which, except for the extravagance about the climate, might have been written of our own Mississippi Valley a century ago. In those days we, too, had not yet learned that every man who has scruples against killing in war must be a lying blackguard, a coward, and a murderer, obviously desirous of overthrowing the Government of the United States. WE CHARGED GOVERNOR FULLER of Massachu- setts, in our issue of August 17, with having demon- strated his inability to rise above class and political prejudice as early as the red hysteria of 1919. He was then a member of Congress from Massachusetts, and in the debates over the expulsion of Representative Victor Berger he violently attacked "the red scum of Europe," "the wolves of anarchy," "the enemies within," and "the whole brood of anarchists, bolsheviks, I.W.W.s., and revolutionaries." We stated that he had called for the "execution of the whole scum and brood." This was a misquotation, and we owe Governor Fuller an apology for it. We based our statement on an apparent quotation from his speech reported in the New York Evening Woi-ld of August 8. The World, in con- densing a statement sent out from the Socialist Party head- quarters, made a confusion of terms and substituted the word "execution" for "crucifixion." Governor Fuller did not suggest execution. He demanded "the crucifixion of dis- loyalty, the nailing of sedition to the cross of free govern- ment, where the whole brood of anarchists, bolsheviks, I.W.W.s, and revolutionaries may see and read a solemn warning." and the context shows that by "crucifixion" he meant such action as the expulsion of Berger. But the whole speech proves his complete lack of judicial quality. THE UNITED STATES is the workers' paradise, accord- ing to figures taken from the Monthly Labor Review of the Department of Labor. That is to say, skilled union labor in this country receives wages that would make most European workers in a corresponding job faint with sur- prise. In New York City for an eight-hour day in the cur- rent year bricklayers receive $14, carpenters $12, painters S14, plasterers $14, plumbers $12, and the humble and once derided hod-carrier $9. Compare these figures, which are by no means an indication that workers in these respective occupations are rolling in wealth, with figures in other parts of the world; in Great Britain in 1924 — and there is no reason to suppose that since that time wages have been greatly increased — workers in building and allied industries received for an eight-hour-day approximately $2.40. Brick- layers in Brazil in 1927 receive a daily wage of from $1.53 O.S6; carpenters in Japan in October, 1926, were paid $.91 daily, plasterers $1.42, bricklayers $1.63, and painters $1.69; for an eight-hour day in Latvia carpenters now receive $.86. masons $1.11, and skilled building-workers an average of $1.08; in Warsaw masons are paid $.99 for an eight-hour day and carpenters $.96. It is plain to one who knows America that carpenters' wages here are not twelve times as large in purchasing value as wages in Poland, but il would be difficult to make a Polish carpenter believe it. And allowing for the difference in price levels, the American standard of living is so much higher as to justify envy among workers in other countries.

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Oct. 19, 1927] The Nation 411 WHEN THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF MANU- FACTURERS starts gunning against child labor the battle is half won. That stalwart band of hard-boiled con- tributors to Republican campaign funds, having gloriously- defeated the child-labor amendment to the federal Consti- tution, have now come out with a "program for the further protection of employed children fourteen and fifteen years of age." This amazing and encouraging document demands a medical examination of working children, a minimum sixth-grade educational requirement, provision for continu- ation schools, a 48-hour week, and no work after 9 p. m. The National Child Labor Committee hails the program as "one of the most important events" in that field for many years. It would, of course, like more — it wants a specified eight-hour-day and six-day-week, an earlier closing hour, and an eighth-grade minimum. But it hails the program as evidence that public opinion against child labor has worked through into the citadels of industry. And it is ready to cooperate with the manufacturers in an aggressive campaign to realize their program. Only six States (Illi- nois, Iowa, New York, Ohio, Oregon, and Wisconsin) now have legislation measuring up to the manufacturer's stand- dards. Seventeen do not require physical examination of children applying for work permits; 19 do not require the completion of the sixth gi-ade; 21 have no continuation- school law; 13 permit more than a 48-hour week for fac- tory children between 14 and 16 years ; while 32 States per- mit children to work in factories before seven in the morn- ing and 5 after nine o'clock at night. What will the manu- facturers do to realize their program? THAT A GOOD JUDGE ought to be reelected regardless of his party is accepted today in both major political camps of New York City, and the fact is another evidence that political progress is not impossible. But recently a new limitation has been set on this principle — the Democrats and Republicans are fighting to defeat Judge Jacob Pancken for reelection as Judge of the Municipal Court. He is a Socialist, elected in 1917, and it seems that the party truce does not apply to Socialists — although at one time the Re- publicans, weak in his district, talked of making him their candidate in order to defeat the Democrats. "The poor man's court" does not often get judges of Mr. Pancken's caliber; it is one of the easily-awarded political plums. But Judge Pancken has given it distinction. He has cleared his courtroom of "steerers" and other parasites; he has talked to witnesses in their own foreign languages and made them feel at home; he has adjourned court again and again in order to inspect tenant-homes in rent cases which came be- fore him. Despite his avowed sympathy for the underdog, he has won such a reputation for fairness that landlords have suggested nis name as arbiter in difficult cases. The municipal courts need such men, and party considerations ought to play no part in choosing them. That a group of nonpartisan lawyers is supporting him is encouraging. NT '0 MORE IMPORTANT ART EVENT can occur here this winter than the return after twenty-eight years of Jacob Epstein, the sculptor, to America his native coun- try, and the exhibition of some fifty of his works in New York and, we hope, other cities. Mr. Epstein is another of those products of free immigration, which, as every patrioteer proclaims, has done such infinite harm to us as a nation and to our standing in the world. For a quarter of a century he has been living in London and hypnotizing the English art world into declaring him to be, as the Manchester Guardian puts it, an "artist of deep and curious genius." Under the spell of that belief his work has been purchased not only for the British national collection, for the Tate Gallery and the Manchester, Glas- gow, Dundee, and other municipal collections, but he has been commissioned to make portrait busts of Joseph Conrad, Admiral "Jack" Fisher, Ramsay MacDonald, C. P. Scott, the Duchess of Hamilton, Lady Gregory, and other distinguished persons. True, there have been discordant voices, as when his memorial to W. H. Hudson was erected in Hyde park — good, old-fashioned, British protests against anything so unconventional and original. Now he is back on the spot where his Russian-Polish parents landed from the Old World. So far America has let him see by its in- difference that it knows how to treat him. We wonder if this superior attitude will be maintained or whether Amer- ica can be induced to forego its prejudices long enough to follow British example and honor a man who as much as any other living has convinced England that art did not die with the last century. 11 HE ACTION OF JUDGE KNOX in refusing to hear "experts" testify to the literary value of John Herr- mann's novel "What Happens," 300 copies of which, coming from France some months ago, had been seized by the cus- toms authorities as obscene matter, in a sense does not dis- turb us. We heartily wish that the book were allowed to cir- culate, as now it is not to be, but we do not recognize "experts" in such cases. We look to the time when any book whatever may be allowed to find its audience without inter- ference from the courts. Meanwhile we should like to spare such citizens as Messrs. Broun, Mencken, and Hansen the embarrassment of having to stand before a jury and speak as if their personal judgment were relevant to the right of books to live. In another sense, however, the refusal of a judge to hear an author's contemporaries attest the value of his work is highly regrettable at this stage of the war against censorship. The courts have a ruling that the clas- sics are admissible, however obscene, because the verdict of the ages is in their favor. But how is a living writer to prove that his books are admissible if his own age first of all does not have a chance to approve or disapprove? The law here is not only unfair but foolish, and we hope that counsel for Mr. Herrmann and those who come after him will be able to make this clear. THE RIGHT OF BOOKS to be read by high-school seniors is being decided in Grand Rapids, Michigan, by parents and officials. Albert Marckwardt, teacher in a Grand Rapids high school, asked his class in English to review George Jean Nathan's "Land of the Pilgrim's Pride." The mother of one of the girls saw the book at home, and pro- tested to the superintendent, which led to Mr. Marckwardt's disappearance from the Grand Rapids school system. The offending section of Mr. Nathan's book dealt with the thing once celebrated by The Nation as "Our Changing Morality" — a thing upon which Mr. Nathan, ironically enough, has Tory views, though he speaks plainly in expressing them. For that matter, many of the students may have had Tory views which their parents would be happy to hear. In the interests of "morality" these, it appears, are not to be ex- pressed at all.

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412 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3250 Mexico's Election MK EXICO has been repeating her blood-stained history. Another revolution has died aborning; several score of rebels, "court-martialled" in the fields where they were captured, have been shot dead, and the election of 1928 seems to have been decided -with guns. It isn't pretty. It is Mexico. And, since the issue had to be fought with guns, one may as well be glad that the Calles-Obregon group won. It is, of course, nonsense to suppose that the electoral campaign could have been fought with Anglo-Saxon parliamentary rules. When, four ago, President — or General, for all presidents in Mexico are lis— Obregon paved the way for his friend Calles to succeed him, Mexico came nearer to having a real eh than she had ever come before; but even Boss Tweed would have chuckled at some of the things that happened. This year Mexico was approaching the electoral battle with three leading candidates. In the Calles camp there was no one but Obregon strong enough for the succession. It required tinkering with the constitution to open the way, for in 1917 the revolutionaries had prescribed that no man might sit twice in the Presidency. The memory of the long dictatorship of Diaz was then still strong in men's memories, and the constitution-makers pathetically hoped that a legis- lative phrase could change Mexico. It is a tribute to Presi- dent Calles, and to the progress really effected in the sixteen years since Mexico's revolution began, that neithe,- Obregon nor Calles lias sought to succeed himself directly as Presi- dent. They have tampered with the constitution only in a Rooseveltian sense, altering it to permit a second term but only after an interval. So Obregon, who has not always seen eye to eye with President Calles but stands on the whole for the same progressive agrarian policy, became the government candidate this year. Calles did not openly sup- port him, but his attitude was well understood, and some of the generals who supported his rivals found themselves shifted to more modest positions. His opponents campaigned on a platform of high- minded devotion to the principle of "No reelection," but no one suspected that their affection would survive a personal test. Both were military men pure and simple. Arnulfo Gomez, long military governor of Vera Cruz, used to boast that he had executed more "criminals" than any other gov- ernor in Mexico. He was a famous strike-smasher; and it was generally believed that foreign oil companies in Vera Cruz were contributing to his campaign funds. In his elec- toral platform he included, along with "No reelection." a plea for religious freedom, by which he meant amending the constitution to favor the Catholic Church; "collaboration of classes," by which he meant abandoning Mexico's attempt at a modern labor code; and "non-retroactivity of Article 27" of the constitution, by which he seemed to mean all that any American oil company, or even Mr. Kellogg, could wish. Francisco Serrano was a better man. He was long Obregon's chief of staff, and. although only 35, had the repu- tation of being one of the ablest military strategists in Mexico. Unfortunately he also had the reputation of being one of the heaviest grafters in a country cursed with Doheny standards. His administration of the Federal District was said to lie extremely remunerative. Before Obregon decided to run for office again himself. Serrano was regarded as his candidate — and the history of Obregon's rise from small land-owner in Sonora to one of Mexico's wealthiest men does not make the alliance seem strange. Gomez and Serrano — they acted as partial allies — knew they could not go far without resort to force. Despite the Catholic unrest and the local feuds they had little mass sup- port. Neither of them was in a position to attack official corruption or military rule, the twin curses of Mexico; and their objection to reelection would have come with better grace from men who had made some attempt to develop democratic institutions in the territories which they gov erned. At any rate, instead of attempting a popular appeal — which would, indeed, have been quixotic in present-day Mexico — they plotted among the myriads of ambitious gen- erals who infest every province of Mexico. Probably they did not intend to take the field so soon — certainly their effort at rebellion proved dismally ill-prepared — but, apparently, the reaction to General Serrano's charge that Obregon was responsible for the murder of Carranza in 1920 made it necessary to act now or never. Gomez took the field in Vera Cruz; Serrano persuaded a portion of the garrison of the capital to join him in an effort to oust Calles. They failed. Within forty-eight hours Serrano and thirteen of his aides had been captured and shot; and Gomez is fighting for his life in the mountains of Vera Cruz. The local military commanders proved unexpectedly loyal to Calles, and the Associated Press correspondent in Mexico says that "everywhere" Calles is being called "the strongest man Mexico has produced since the days of Porfirio Diaz." The praise is too true for our taste. Calles is strong — undoubtedly — and certainly Mexico has never had a strong man who used his strength so frequently for his nation's good. His support, colored though it has often been by minor political fluctuations, of the great movements of agra- rian reform, mass education, labor emancipation, and con- servation of natural resources, his rigid opposition to the attempts of American capital to interfere with Mexico's do- mestic legislation, have commanded our enthusiastic sup- port. The suddenness and violence of his anti-clerical move- ment, and the extremes of his anti-Catholic legislation, seemed to us to go beyond the necessities; and this business of assassinating one's political opponents, deep as it may be rooted in Mexican tradition, is to us wholly indefensible. The Indian has held his ground in Mexico as nowhere else on this Continent, and one cannot explain Mexico merely in terms of Spanish colonialism and American contiguity. The tom-tom still beats in the Sonora mountains, and in the hearts of many of the "strong men" who have come down from the North to govern in Mexico City. Government there betrays its primitive origin in war. The patterns of Euro- pean democracy and parliamentarism have not sunk as deep as we had fondly hoped. The election of 1928 will be an expression of the will of the people only in so far as the people in indirect ways have affected the success and strength of the successful group of generals. Obregon and Calles won the battles because they commanded the support of the majority of the lesser generals; but it has become true in Mexico that every general feels compelled to pro- claim revolutionary ideals, and fears to fight against the growingly self-conscious peasantry.

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Oct. 19, 1927] The Nation 413 Text: The World's Series FROM presidents and other preachers, America has sel- dom lacked congratulations upon current idealism and earnest propulsion toward further sacrificial triumphs. Un- fortunately, local and foreign cynics have complained that specific instances of our national unselfishness were a little obscure and remote. Help has just come from a quarter once despised. Baseball, the national game, has gilded the national honor in a manner to make the world blink with surprise and pleasure. A commercialized sport has proved beyond quibble its immediate, scrupulous honesty. By win- ning the championship in four straight games the Yankees have removed the reproach that New York is a metropolis given over wholly to thoughts of gain. The owners of the contending clubs will be compelled to return more than $200,000 because of the expeditious manner in which the series came to a finish. It is easy enough to say that this is no more than com- mon honesty and that to prolong the contest would be rank knavery. Yet even in amateur sport, in lawn tennis, for instance, a winning competitor has been known to let down under the theory that his ultimate triumph may be the more certain if he loafs a little and allows his adversary to take a set at the price of exhausting effort. Dwelling wholly in the shadowy domain of good tactics, the executive forces of the New York American League baseball club might have said, "We will save our best pitcher for a fifth game and try to win with a less gifted performer." Granted all the good will in the world, it is hard for any organization to put forward its best efforts to achieve financial disaster. To return money already in hand closely approaches the heroic. Before the crucial struggle began all cynics said "There will, of course, be seven games, or six at the very least. Professional promoters cannot be expected to neglect the opportunity of harvesting dollars in great number." Yet when the day of the fourth game dawned bleak and chill Miller Huggins, manager, chose Wiley Moore, the best man available, to turn back the Pitts- burgh Pirates and check the flow of gold into the respective box offices. Wiley bore down and with his "sinker" saved the honor of the pastime. Further analysis will show that the baseball series bloomed throughout with moral lessons. The Epworth League could have furnished no greater number of shining texts in celebration of good conduct. Possibilities of inter- national cooperation were made manifest and even the most casual examination of the box score shows the fallacy of those who hold that it is impossible for the United States to assimilate the foreigner. Grabowski, Lazerri, Koenig, Groh, Cvengros, Miljus, and Gehrig — all these are names to shake the confidence of believers in exclusion. And it is not too much to hope that hundred percenters may have ob- served the fact that the final play of the series occurred when a Serbian threw wildly in his effort to deceive an Italian, thereby permitting a Kentucky mountaineer to come home with the winning run. Whether or not the fact is of political importance, it might be added that Babe Ruth, the hero of the contest, is not only of German ancestry but most flagrantly a Catholic. In these baseball games between New York and Pitts- burgh the old familiar battle of democracy against autoc- racy was waged again. It was the democrats who took the four straight games. Miller Huggins of the Yankees is reckoned as a liberal among the martinets of the big leagues. Unlike other managers he imposes no curfew hour, and few training rules. Often he permits a player to think for him- self. Donie Bush, the Pittsburgh leader, is classed with the little Napoleons. Under his regime it is no portion of an outfielder's privilege to reason why. The brilliant Kiki Cuyler asked to have his place in the batting order changed, and Bush, forgetting the inalienable right of petition, benched him. He was on the wood, as the players say, all through the series and watched lesser men perform in his place. Eagerly the multitude espoused the cause of the exiled athlete, and once in Pittsburgh 60,000 spectators joined in a great chorus of "We want Cuyler." Bush re- mained obdurate in the face of this clear mandate of the multitude. To him a popular referendum was less than nothing and when the people asked him for Cuyler he gave them Brickell. If the strategy of the manager had succeeded we would probably have been told that Mussolini had the right idea. Dictatorship always inspires admiration as long as it seems to work. But this time it failed. And in four straight games ! Tariff Tangles AT last with the publication of the recent tariff notes exchanged between Paris and Washington there are signs that some good may come of the whole controversy. There are indications that the present Franco-American squabble may force the great minds in the State Depart- ment to think the tariff problem through, something which their shallow and inconsistent statements would indicate they have not yet done. Already President Coolidge and Secretary Kellogg are worrying over the weak position in which the French notes have put the American case for high protectionism. And what the French notes have not done Assistant Secretary Lowman has, in his public statements that the higher the French rates went the higher we would push the American rates, under the provisions of Article 317 — thus showing that we have a "reciprocity" clause in our tariff act and that Secretary Kellogg was either un- familiar with it or trying to conceal it. Clearly, Article 317 embodies the reciprocity principle as much as do the Euro- pean treaties, with the great difference that the European countries use the reciprocity treatment for bargaining while we use it as a penalizing measure. So the tn.riff experts of the Coolidge Administration are scurrying away from the boomerang effects brought upon the entire Republican tariff scheme. The notes of Secretary Kellogg, which were intended to convince the world of the inherent righteousness of high American trade barriers, have done nothing of the sort. Rather they have shown with remarkable clearness (considering that it was done unin- tentionally) that the Fordney-McCumber Tariff Act is in- consistent not only with a peaceful foreign trade but also with itself. Even the New York Herald-Tribune, in an edi- torial that cannot be described as other than treason in the innermost citadel of protection, has turned against the Fordney-McCumber Act. This change is decidedly encour- aging and shows that economie truth is mighty and will prevail. With astonishing rapidity the Administration has

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414 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3250 executed a volte face, hoping thereby to settle the dispute quietly before Congress meets and to prevent it from as- suming sufficient proportions to become a campaign issue. The wailing protests and indignant lamentations that issued forth from Washington a few weeks ago have stopped; France is to be permitted to refund her $78,000,000 loan on a 6-per-cent basis, 2 per cent less than she is now paying. Official impudence is thus replaced by conciliation. Yet it is difficult to believe that France will be so easily placated. The fundamental differences that started the dispute remain untouched. The fundamental fact is that our tariff wall is too high. For us merely to say that it is uniformly high for everyone and therefore theoretically non- discriminatory is so much nonsense. Yet it is to this point that our note of September 19 attributes much importance, totally ignoring the fact that the discrimination lies not so much in the uniformity of the rates as in the character of the goods so taxed. When the rates are excessively high on perfumes, cosmetics, and other products which go to make up a principal part of the French export trade to the United States, it is plainly France that is being dis- criminated against. In her note of September 30 France, citing logic and facts, made this point quite clear — clear enough for even our State Department to understand. French exports to the United States in 1913 were $136,- 877,990. Now, according to the French note, if one takes into account the world-wide rise in prices, the increase which dollar prices have undergone, and the new possibili- ties of French trade, the French exports to the United States in 1926 should have been $200,000,000. They were, however, only $152,030,000. This would seem o indicate a very serious restriction of French exports to the United States and a restriction fraught with serious consequences. With France in the position of a debtor nation to the extent of over 25 billion gold francs there is only one way in which she can pay off her present debt and keep from going further into debt: by enlarging her exports. Since the French owe more to the United States than to any other nation, it is extremely short-sighted for us to restrict the one way she has of paying us. Practically the same may be said for the trade relations of Europe in general to the United States. To a very large extent at present Europe is able to buy only by borrowing from America, these sums running into billions of dollars each year. Though America may be temporarily benefiting by this situation, there are signs that the tide is turning. And as soon as American loans cease, European imports must fall and American in- dustry will slump as a result. The natural reaction of Europe is evidenced by the recent Franco-German trade treaty in which each party grants special favors to the other. By extending similar reciprocity treaties Europe can seriously restrict American exports. The United States may yet be forced to change the stub- born Fordney-McCumher measure, as the most astonishing statement in the Herald-Tribune urges. It may be true, as Secretary Kellogg contends, that the reciprocity treaties of the European countries involve much negotiation and some discrimination. But what tariff system does not? What tariff system does not subordinate high principle to commercial advantage? Whether or not the present con- troversy results in a wholesome downward revision, it has at least done some service. It has brought the tariff specter out into the open light, and there is nothing quite so unhealthy for specters as pure, unadulterated illumina- tion. Celluloid SOiME time ago a Broadway theater was given over to a movie version of "The Prodigal Son.-' The director who made this celluloid masterpiece was one of those hardy adapters who are sure that they can improve upon the work of any author even if he should be — as in this case he was — Jesus Christ himself, and so he set out to realize those possibilities of the story which had been muffed in the version hitherto considered the standard one. Since to him, as to any movie director, it was obvious that the sim- ple statement that the erring young man "took his journey into a far country and there wasted his substance in riotous living" slurs over the only really effective action in the whole story, this phrase was quickly seized upon and elabo- rated con amore into such a highly colored picturization of night life in the oriental cabarets as Hollywood conceives it should have been. But the publicity man was not to be outdone by the director, and in order that the public should not be misled into staying away by any memories of the Sunday School he caused to be proclaimed in electric letters across the theater-front the interesting fact that the parable of the Prodigal Son is a story "Glorifying the Babylonian GirL" Not even the movies often achieve such perfect bathos as this, but that is merely because they do not often have such a height from which to fall. Whatever story they may seize upon undergoes some change in the course of which whatever meaning it may once have had is perverted into the platitude, sentimentality, or carefully guarded lascivi- ousness which alone constitutes what is euphemistically called "available movie material," and the extent of the desecration involved depends entirely upon the original value of the thing desecrated, since the directors may be depended upon to do their worst. Here, for example, is a quotation from the press story which accompanies the pic- turization of "What Price Glory." and illustrates how a bitter satire on war can be made into "available movie material" : Every soldier will tell you that he had a lot of fun out of the war. Ask any reminiscent veteran of the A. E. F. or some erstwhile gob of the U. S. N. and they will smile and say "beteha." But ask a leatherneck — and your answer will be "hot dog." . . . The comedy end of war was what impressed Winfred R. Sheehan, general manager of Fox Films, when the job of making a screen story of the Stallings-Anderson play was undertaken at Hollywood — and Sheehan knew because he was a sergeant in the U. S. A. . . . Then, Director Raoul Walsh took battle as a back- ground, gave it plenty of clash and conflict, tragic touches, and pathetic pulses, but he let his soldier man overseas just have the time of his life — in which director Walsh was right and followed form. So laughter of the uproari- ous, deep-down kind is promised when the picture "What Price Glory" has its premiere at the Blank Theater. We wonder what the original authors of the play think of this and we wonder still more when we remember that one of them was also the author of a novel called "Plumes," which had a bitter honesty about the war and refused to stoop to the claptrap devices of cheap laughter and of easy sentiment. The cinema has certainly made satire out of the old saying that "The camera can't lie," and the Hollyw< tol of cinema art has assuredly given new point to a modified version of another: "He who touches celluloid shall be defiled."

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Oct. 19, 1927] The Nation 415 © i § i ® S> li | |1@ § ® |J $ $ ® $ $ ® fi $ Drawn by Hendrik Willem Van Loon Galeries Lafayette, We Are Here ! American Legionnaires, accompanied by their ivives and children, see Paris again.

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41(5 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3250 HENRY MENCKEN has been appraising, in the last few weeks, the artistic achievement of the Negro in America. "Not so much," is the substance of Mr. Mencken's verdict. The task of setting down to a penny- weight the ponderability of an individual contribution is difficult enough and a complete survey of the trophy room of a race falls beyond the powers of any critic. Naturally enough Mr. Mencken has overlooked a certain number of events. Once, at the home of a Broadway star, we played the game of twenty questions and with the aid of only a small proportion of my allotment I narrowed the field down to the fact that the unknown person was living, American, and a practitioner in the arts. There I bogged for they said "No" when I mentioned literature, music, the graphic arts, and oratory. "There are no other arts," I pleaded and gave up, which earned me the lifelong enmity of my hostess. "I suppose," she said with bitterness, "you never heard of the art of acting?" And to my amazement and indigna- tion Walter Hampden turned out to be the name I was sup- posed to guess. There was some justification for my failure to remem- ber, but if one forgets that actors may be artists the fault lies partly with the players. They have thrown the word about with such indiscrimination that the definition of "artist" has been reduced to "everybody on a vaudeville bill except the trained seals." However, they also serve who interpret, and Mr. Mencken errs when he omits from his catalogue the name of any Negro singer, orator, dancer, or actor. Surely there are half a dozen Negro concert performers who should be called "artist" even in a community chary in the use of the word. Probably Mr. Mencken is right when he says that at the moment there is no Negro composer, novelist, painter, or poet deserving the first rank. But Roland Hayes may not be brushed aside, nor Paul Robeson, nor Taylor Gordon. Indeed I would not limit my list to those who appear with serious intent in concert halls. One must look to the caba- rets and varieties. If Raquel Meller is an artist then so are Clara Smith and Ethel Waters. And not to stress the point unduly "St. Louis Blues" is a ballad infinitely finer than anything which the Spanish woman ever consented to sing. "Feeling tomorrow just like I feel today" is a line worthy of any contralto's sob. And if monologists belong among the Lord's annointed I would like to put the late Charlie Case within the Hall of Fame. But I am not competent to make any complete list of notable Negroes engaged in various interpretive arts. I would like to beg the question by a few degrees and discuss the artistic potentialities of the Negro in the mass rather than pick out certain individuals. History will not record the names of thousands of brown men and women in choirs, cabarets, and music halls. That they are all geniuses born to bawl unheard I do not say. My point is merely that the average aptitude of the Negro for musical interpretation far transcends that of the white. There used to be a say- ing among vaudeville patrons that no Negro act was ever wholly bad. Into any dark-skinned throng you may toss a piano or a banjo and be sure that there will be one to catch it and give you music. And in Harlem when the nights are not too white there will be spontaneous and amateur danc- ing of a sort to ravish the eye of any sculptor or painter. There could be, perhaps there is, a Negro advance toward beauty conducted without the help of any very con- spicuous leaders. Perhaps they charge like well ordered cavalry, huddled, knee to knee, all in a cluster. Not all the bluesey ballads which sweep the country now are African in origin. Henry Mencken has pointed out that the best of current mammy songs are composed by Jews. Still there was a Cole and a Johnson before the Gershwins and Berlins and surely the Negro has a right to take to his heart the continuous compliment of imitation which is tendered to him in popular music. Mr. Mencken did not take up the difficulties which afflict the Negro artist. I do not speak of obvious and to some extent superficial things. When Hayes sang last in Detroit the house was thronged with carriage trade. En- raptured by his singing the audiences called ceaselessly for encores. Everybody applauded madly and a few whistled. But when the lights were down this man hailed by the mul- titude as a great artist found that his own coach must be a pumpkin shell. The Nordics of Michigan were wholly wil- ling to tingle spinally while a Negro sang, but letting him into any hotel was something else again. I have never un- derstood why it was supposed to be a casual thing to give a man some small piece of your immortal soul and terribly intimate to sit in the same dining room. But factors such as these, though monstrous, constitute no more than an annoyance in the pathway of the Negro artist. You cannot kill a talent by sowing it with salt. Every now and then some Sunday magazine section digs out the story of the possibility of shaking down bridges and great buildings by some insistent vibration upon the violin. Whether mortar is actually so susceptible to music I do not profess to know but I have seen the whole edifice of white superiority totter when Roland Hayes sang "The Crucifixion." The Negro musician escapes one reproach which dogs his brother novelist or poet. "This," the critic is fond of saying, "may be excellent propaganda but for that very reason it can't be art." To get enmeshed in the debate about the function of art and propaganda would be unfor- tunate. For my readers I mean. I merely want to make mild protest against the manner in which the Negro is often cut down by both the direct and richochet fire re- viewers. When Countee Cullen puts into a poem the bitter- ness belonging to anyone who lives within a walled city, critics are likely to say that they wish the young man were less race conscious. It will be remarked that lyric fervor and a passion for reform team up indifferently. But there are times when Cullen changes his note and speaks of flow- ers whollv white and clouds and brooks and possibly a few

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Oct. 19, 1927] The Nation 417 trees. And when this happens he finds himself attacked upon a new flank and now the charge is that he has con- fused himself with Keats and Shelley and would do well to draw his themes from subjects more peculiarly Negroid. Allow a critic two assorted damns and he can handcuff any minstrel. Mr. Mencken and many others feel that the Negro has had rather more than just treatment from the commenta- tors. It was George Jean Nathan, as I remember, who voiced the theory that Bert Williams had been puffed far beyond his deserts as a stage comedian because he was a "colored man." I agree, but it is careless to assume there is any tonic quality in praise bestowed with condescension. The most punishing blow in the quiver of the critic is not the right hook to the jaw. It is the pat upon the head. Writers knocked down by reviewers have been known to rise again before the count of ten, but what can a man do if he is met by the comment, "Why that's really very good for a Negro." Most certainly the darker artists have not asked for critical opinions padded like gloves in training camp. Indeed I believe that they will and should welcome Mr. Mencken's articles because he has said in effect that he purposes to be no more kind to Negro authors than to any others. Some of our book sections have carried Jim Crow cars. Jim Crow remains Jim Crow even when the seats are plush and velvet. Almost I would be ready to depart in peace upon that morning when a musical critic writes, "Roland Hayes, the tenor," and not, as is the un- broken custom, "Roland Hayes, the Negro tenor." It may be that artistic stature of the Negro is some- what less than Henry Mencken has a right to expect but if this is so it should not be laid to natural perversity. He will grow faster when people cease to smile, and stoop, and blight him with, "There, there." * * # * * "Gene Tunney," says a United Press dispatch, "created something of a furore at the luncheon when he referred to the 'indefftigability' of Getz." Apparently the jaw which Dempsey failed to shatter may yet be cracked by some polysyllable in fighting trim. ***** It seems to me that the reputation of Warren Gamaliel Harding suffers greatly at the hands of Nan Britton in "The President's Daughter." And to my mind the incident weighing most heavily against him concerns an evening upon which he offered to go out into the streets of New York and procure for Miss Britton a bottle of champagne. Mr. Harding was at this time the Republican nominee for President of the United States. But this is not the limit of his shame. Miss Britton reports that he came back after several hours and confessed that he could not get it. ***** New York baseball reporters in Pittsburgh were shocked by the fact that the city has no ordinance to pre- vent speculators from charging exorbitant prices. Here we do things much better. The New Yorker who pays twice or thrice the face value of a ticket can comfort himself with the thought that it is against the law. Heywood Broun Presidential Possibilities I. Charles Evans Hughes By OSWALD GARRISON VILLARD DO you recognize anything X h e f i r s t i tl about this man Hughes . as pertaining to the Hughes s l u " ' r * °l f " that you and I supported more enthusiastically and loyally than any Republican edi- tors when he was Governor?" asked Frank I. Cobb of me the last time I met the lamented editor of the World- I replied that I could not recognize anything about him as belonging to the Hughes of the insurance investigation and the governorship. "Nor can I," said Mr. Cobb. So it is with two Hugheses that one has to deal today. That is not unusual in politicians; there were two Woodrow Wilsons and two or more Theodore Roosevelts. In this case, how- ever, the two Hugheses are not coterminous. The one ex- isted, withered, and died before the Secretary of State was born. It was during his service on the Supreme Court, apparently, that this metamorphosis took place. Must that august body shoulder the responsibility for it? It is easy to recall the thrill that came to New York when Mr. Hughes was chosen to conduct the insurance in- vestigation and speedily made it clear that he cared not at all where the chips might fly. He displayed at once cour- age, resourcefulness, mental quickness, the ability to meet any situation as it arose, and a genuine sense of dramatic a s e r i e s o f e c a n d i d a t e s values. At last, it appeared, New York had found a fearless man of extraordinary ability, the kind of uncompromising reformer for whom city and State had been longing. But not big-business circles. They were all but speechless with indignation. He was laying ruthless hands upon an old-established private business, interfering with customs of long standing, with the right of the heads of the insur- ance companies to line their pockets and to provide sinecures for all their relatives at the expense of the policy-holders. When he attacked men like the McCalls and McCurdys, pil- lars of the business world and of the Chamber of Com- merce, he was striking at the very foundations of society. More than that, he stood early for greater interference of the State with private business — one of the deadliest sins. If the term Bolshevik had been invented then the business community would have applied it to Charles E. Hughes. As it was he was declared to be a notoriety-seeker, ruled by political ambition, grossly unfair and unjust in his cross-examinations, which were, it was said, deliber- ately spectacular and sensational, without giving the other side a chance to get its case before the public with similar space and a similar newspaper "spread." If he was not

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418 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3250 accused of advocating free love, it was merely an oversight. The other side went so far as to send out bogus news of the inquiry, for printing which a number of our press cham- pions of honesty in public life received a dollar a line. It was typical of the man that when he heard about it, he put some of those high-minded publishers on the stand, includ- ing those of the Boston Herald and St. Paul Pioneer Press, and proved the whole conspiracy. That was the way he fought, the way he inspired terror among his adversaries— and victims; and the way he fairly earned the governorship. The rotten Republican machine which, about as much as Tammany Hall, lived on the contributions of corporation magnates, traction-company highbinders, and business seek- ers after special favors, did not want him any more than they had wanted Theodore Roosevelt to be Governor in 1898. Public opinion made the Old Guard bosses swing to him ; they saw he was a winning card, and he won. He made an excellent Governor, clean-cut and challeng- ing, and earned early the cordial dislike of the machine. Throughout his nearly four years he had to fight his own party associates in order to achieve the reforms he desired. The insurance bills were easily put through; the public- service commissions, which confirmed Wall Street's dislike of him, since they interfered with the exploiting of the city by the transportation companies, not so easily; the direct primary with still greater difficulty. It is an interesting fact that the public-service commissions have long since dis- appeared and that the direct primary has proved anything but the protection to the people it was hoped. Other Hughes reforms have proved to have been built on sano. But the hour seemed to call for them and they in turn gave every promise of achieving the desired reforms. Behind them he put resistless energy and determination, tireless industry, direct, forceful, and most effective public presentation of his views, the years being marked by a growing selfconfi- dence and personal power. Between Grover Cleveland and "Al" Smith no other Governor stands out as does Mr. Hughes. While far inferior to "Al" in his mastery of the pubi'c business — quite naturally, since he had had no such apprenticeship in Albany as the pride of Tammany Hall — he nevertheless wreaked himself upon it. and he received all the abuse which comes to a reformer who, among other things, stopped race-track gambling. He was holier-than- thou; he was "Charles the Baptist"; he was the "animated feather-duster"; he was a Pecksniff; he was that awful thing, a reformer with morals and principles. Perhaps the greatest of his public services was his de- feat, after his renomination, of William R. Hearst, then at the height of his noxious career. If Hearst had not been stopped then he would unquestionably have been a serious candidate for the Democratic Presidential nomination — in- deed he had been in 1908. Mr. Hughes handled his ad- versary admirably, sparing his private life, while the Hearst newspapers piled one abuse after another upon the Gov- ernor. Fortunately, their ridicule and their bitterness did not avail. But one thing Mr. Hughes did dwell upon — the shameful way in which Hearst sought to avoid responsi- bility for reckless reporting and bold-faced libelling, by organizing one company within another for the purpose of dodging judgments, so that a litigant might sue for several years only to find out that the company he was suing was really not the owner of the particular Hearst paper in ques- tion at all. Mr. Hughes promised during the campaign to rectify that, and he did so ; it is to him that we owe the law , requiring newspapers to publish the names of their respon- sible owners and editors. Reelected, Mr. Hughes went at his task with renewed vigor, with a ripening understanding of where the real enemy lay within his own party's ranks, and by 1910 he was well on his way to a position of complete dominance and control. To this it was my good fortune to make a con- tribution, in that I was able to publish the charges of bribe- taking against Senator Jotham P. Allds, then Acting Lieu- tentan Governor, which resulted in Allds's resigning just in time to avoid being expelled from the Senate. That ses- sion of the Legislature was entirely absorbed by the Allds trial, save for the necessary passing of the supply bills. It is just to add that it was in part due to Governor Hughes's counsel and aid — still in some respects unex- plained even to me — that Allds's misconduct was brought into the open in what was probably the most sensational publication ever made in the old Evening Post. The Legis- lature adjourned, leaving Mr. Hughes with heightened pres- tige and power. It seemed as if he had at last arrived at the point where the Republican machine could be cleaned up once and for all. Suddenly, without the slightest warning, like a bolt from the blue, the Governor was laid by the heels and the whole structure built up during three and one-half laborious years collapsed ; the old order came back. The man who did this to Charles Evans Hughes and the State of New York and for all time ended Mr. Hughes's career as a militant reformer was the President of the United States, William H. Taft. He offered Mr. Hughes a seat upon the Supreme Court of the United States, and Mr. Hughes accepted. Mr. Hughes's Puritan conscience would not permit him to ask Mr. Taft to let his acceptance of the office remain a secret until he was ready to take office in October or December. The announcement was made in May, 1910, and at once Mr. Hughes's power left him as Samson was shorn of his by Delilah. The Legisla- ture had adjourned; the Old Guard knew now that Hughes was done and that they had only a few months to wait be- fore he got out. From that moment not a politician cared what the Governor did. It is a fact that Mr. Hughes was tired and worn after three and a half years of steady bat- tling; that he was unduly depressed; that he had made up his mind not to run again for the Governorship. I have before me as I write a long letter in which he set forth the reasons, convincing to him, why he felt that he must ac- cept. After seventeen years I am still unconvinced, and my position is confirmed by the fact that so much of the Governor's achievements went for naught. It is. in conse- quence, just about the same old Republican elephant we have to deal with, just about as spotted, but a little more respectable, a little less corrupt, and infinitely stupider, as witness its campaigns against "Al" Smith. The years that passed while Mr. Hughes was on the Supreme Court profoundly affected him in more ways than one, but did not still his ambition. It was early made clear that Mr. Hughes would not say no to an attempt to call him back to political life from the highest bench in the land. Other jurists and lawyers in plenty might feel that it was a mistake to establish a precedent that politicians might go to the Supreme Court and lure therefrom a justice to stand in the public forum and bid for the favor of the populace. Mr. Hughes felt differently, and his nomination

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Oct. 19, 1927] The Nation 419 filled with high hopes many who had fought under his ban- ner in his active years. But it soon appeared that this was not the same man at all, that it was a changeling who wore the name. His campaign lacked inspiration, issues, and fire; it lacked conviction. It in no wise conformed to what he at first said privately that it was going to be. There was nothing whatever of the militant reformer about him, and his tactlessness in California, as everyone knows, cost him his election. He seemed to have grown colder, more austere, and suspicious. Wall Street after a brief period rallied to him; with its extraordinary intuition it sensed the change long before others did and realized that it had nothing further to fear from the man who had once defied the most powerful forces in American business life, and that at a time when the muck-raker was still abroad in the land. The editors of the Evening Post hoped until the last that one single word, one bit of righteous flaming indigna- tion, one far-reaching and constructive appeal, one hopeful stimulating word about the horrible plight in which the world found itself might emerge from those once frank and outspoken lips. None came; at the last moment, dis- illusioned and disappointed, they reluctantly turned again to support the candidacy of Woodrow Wilson. The inde- pendent vote, which had been Governor Hughes's chief sup- port and greatest power, was his no longer. True, he car- ried New York, but not the Union, and the bitterest dis- appointment that could come to an American citizen — to believe himself elected to the Presidency and find that this was not the case — was his. The old fighting Hughes would have taken that dread- ful disappointment like a man. But it was days, in 1916, before Mr. Hughes could bring himself to congratulate Woodrow Wilson, and then he did so with a lack of grace, of cordiality, and of sportsmanship that told its own tale of the inner change. Now the darling of the corporation gods, he went back to the practice of the law, and earned yearly what would be a fortune, indeed, to the bulk of the people of the United States. They know how to draw a re- former's teeth in Wall Street ; they know how to make him the bulwark of all the things that be, the defender of family life, of the sacred right of private property, of the sanc- tity of great wealth. And there Mr. Hughes remained, admittedly the head of the American Bar since the death of Joseph H. Choate until he, "Charles the Baptist," the flaming apostle of personal righteousness in public life, accepted the invitation of President Harding to enter the crookedest Cabinet that has ever disgraced the United States of America. There he sat, the brilliant and able associate of, to put it mildly, the weakest and most vulgar of Presi- dents, of Daugherty, of Fall, and of the Denby whom the former associates of Mr. Hughes on the Supreme Court branded as recreant to his trust. What an irony of fate! Of course, he kept himself intact. He was not one to join the Cabinet poker parties with the Ohio gang; he shared their drinks no more than their cards. But few can measure adequately the blow that it must have been to the pride of this extremely proud man to know the true charac- ter of the Cabinet at the head of which he sat on the right hand of the President. Never once has he, however, re- ferred to it. Nor, as far as I can recall, has he ever scored faithless public servants in the abstract. Not as president of the New York Bar Association has he lifted his voice to denounce public corruption; thus reformer's lips are sealed. The technique of his own job he mastered quickly and in conventional style. Every one of the outworn shib- boleths of the statsmanship which went on the rocks in 1914, he made his own. With him the flag everywhere followed the dollar. Under him the powerful cliques in the State Department became more powerful, dollar diplomacy more firmly established, the aggressive imperialism of the coun- try more marked, the dislike of the rest of the world for us stronger and stronger. Able, wrapped in self-righteousness, absolutely satisfied that neither he nor his country could do the slightest wrong; not open to argument; unyielding in the face of all protests; as ready to doubt the Deity Himself as his own wisdom. There is something profoundly alarming in this type of mind when it reaches high office deeply inoculated with the virus of office-holding and of political ambition. That very self-righteousness makes for a ruthlessness that thinks nothing of sacrificing thousands upon thousands of lives of the youth of one's country to achieve one's ends — you in- variably under these circumstances identify yourself with your country. "I and the country," "I and God," as the Kaiser put it, become the same thing. You meet any prot- estant with pity that he knows so little, that his arguments are so weak, that they make not a dent upon the armor of your right-thinking. You ponder with pity, as did Wood- row Wilson, that there are only three or four other minds comparable to your own. You are the court of final resort, and you pass upon all problems with the same competence, the same confidence, the same directness, and the same power dispensed by justice upon the Supreme Bench of the land. You have only pity for the reformer or idealist, who in his ignorance of official dispatches from official repre- sentatives upon the ground, dares to preach to you for- bearance, patience, good-will on earth. It is for you, in your wisdom, to say what is right and to outline your policy, knowing that you have the force to make might right. A brilliant Secretary? Yes. That was a brilliant per- formance, indeed, when Mr. Hughes opened the Washington Conference for the Limitation of Armaments, and stunned the Conference and thrilled the country with the concrete, business-like proposals for the reduction of armaments — proposals which went through, saved the taxpayers millions upon millions of dollars, and added enormously to the pres- tige of the United States. Few men are capable of a stroke like that — witness the disaster of a second-rate man and a disloyal admiral at the abortive Coolidge conference in Geneva. Both President Harding and Mr. Hughes looked and acted their parts admirably on that memorable day in Washington. The former Secretary of State wears well* the frock coat of statesmanship, and uses ably the "right hand of oratory." The Washington newspaper correspondents testified to his accessibility, to the extraordinary lucidity and ability with which he expounded his ideas— and the skill with which he overwhelmed those who dared to doubt the completeness and the correctness of his creed that the sacred right of private property is the foundation of the family and the family the cornerstone of the state. The United States, he maintained, had always stood for this principle; how could we recognize Mexico or the Soviet Republic— that profane, wicked institution that had laid bloody hands upon private property? Against that profound conviction nothing whatever could make headway. You might, if you dared, and if you were not overwhelmed by the torrent of words with which the Secretary of State always defended

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420 The Nation [Vol. 125. No. 3250 his position, point out that the United States itself never made compensation for the property stolen by the revo- lutionists of 1776 from those who remained loyal to King George; that it never compensated the foreign owners of slaves for their slave property of which Emancipation robbed them; that it offered no redress to the foreign stock- holders in distilleries and breweries and wine-making com- panies whose private property was destroyed when prohi- bition came; that the story of the United States Govern- ment's relations with the American Indian is a tale of incredible theft of private property, violation of a sover- eign's word, the breaking of close to a hundred treaties that should have been as sacred to us as her treaty with Bel- gium to Germany. Against Mr. Hughes's armor of self- righteousness facts like these struck as uselessly as the arrows of old against the armor of the Crusaders. Others might fail; others near him might steal and take $100,000 bribes in black bags, and still others prove recreant to the trust placed in them by 115,000,00 people, but Charles E. Hughes stood up straight and strong and adamant, and just, and good — so good one longed for one little touch of human frailty, one little tiny proof — never afforded — that under- neath his polished and suave exterior, within that intellec- tual machine, directed with completest self-control, there is an organ known as a heart. One wonders whether what is needed here is not the lubricity of a few simple sins. Certainly something of the warm sympathy, the rich under- standing of plain human beings, which was the one noble quality of Warren Harding, is lacking; something that Harding gained out of sordid experiences in the back-rooms of Ohio saloons and of Ohio newspaper offices, oat of his knowledge of the men with their wives and their mistresses who ran the machine that elevated Mr. Harding to the point where the Old Guard and Wall Street decided that he was to be the first citizen of the Republic. Mr. Hughes in the White House? It's hard to vision it and to believe that it would mean anything to the plain people of America but a rigid, able, supremely self- righteous government imposed from above by one who must admire with all his unusual intellect the blood and iron of Otto von Bismarck. It would not mean one genuine re- form, see not one of those radical progressive proposals enacted into law for which Roosevelt and Wilson contended in 1912. There would be the same old imperialistic dollar- diplomacy, no such foolishness as a direct presidential pri- mary, or the establishment of a referendum; no raising of the issue as to whether the courts or the people rule this country, no plan whatever to interfere with the Big Busi- ness over-lordship of America, but the steady upbuilding of the might of the state and the executive power as against the people, and the crushing of all opposition — opposition would quickly be lese majeste as it was to Woodrow Wilson. Certainly it is to the old world of what passed for states- manship and power and righteousness, and narrow con- ventional religion — to be worn as a cloak but not applied — that Mr. Hughes belongs. And the new world? It may lag far around the corner, and yet it can be achieved, and some day it will be achieved by some young man using his God-given talents to tear the veils from people's eyes, to place something human and divine far above the worship of private property and riches and power and, yes, big business as we know it in America, the "land of the free." Just as once a young lawyer in New York went forth to defy the concentrated power of wealth and business and of wealth-controlled politics, to rescue the invested insur- ance savings of multitudes, savings that meant to hun- dreds of thousands the entire product of their lives of toil. Today the question is whether the Big Business of the East, backed by Andrew Mellon, will nominate for the Presidency of 1928, Hughes the wrecker and Bolshevik of 1906, or whether the Big Business of the West will insist upon Charles G. Dawes of Chicago, who, so rumor has it, was once a dues-paying member of the Socialist Party of Illinois. Times, yes, and men, too. . . . Is This America? By IDA TREAT Paris, September 19 MOBILIZATION day— for the church, the army, the fascists, the police, Montmartre, and Montparnasse — for everyone in fact who for reasons personal or political has determined to give the American veterans a rousing welcome. Many of those whom the war robbed of their dearest affections have turned out to cheer the "pious pil- grimage" of their brothers in arms. But it is the political element that dominates. Welcome to the Legion! — to show that, for all their noisy demonstrations, the radicals do not yet rule in France. Welcome to the Legion! — to show that we can be hospitable even to our creditors. Tomorrow, who knows? you may be our bulwark against the advance of bolshevism. Tomorrow. who knows? you may help us to arrange a little matter of war debts. (When one asks a man to dinner, he may find it embarrassing to present a bill.) The stage is set. The boulevards are flooded with elec- tricity. Every public building wears its tiara of gas-jets. Fountains play. Colored projectors flash across Paris. Autobuses and taxis, churches, monuments, banks, and shops, marry the tricolor and the starry flag. Each of the twin towers of Notre Dame bears its red- white-and-blue, blue-white-and-red banner. At yesterday's ceremony within the vast nave, hung with red and gold and bristling with flags, the Legion made its first official bow to Paris, presented by the Reverend Joseph Wolfe, national chaplain. "The ideals of our country have never been sur- passed in the history of any government in the world. . . . An ideal that never goes to extremes or radicalism. . . . An ideal that has given us ... a violent hatred of oppres- sion and injustice, and an ardent sympathy for the weak, the disinherited, and for all those who suffer." Organ, orchestra. Star Spangled Banner and Marseillaise. This morning in the Trocadero the congress opened its first session — a little behind schedule, as the congress (insinuates les Dcbats) is "doubtless not the main attrac- tion." More red and gold. An orgy of banners. Organ and brass in crashing, conflicting tumult. Hymns, Madelon, Tipperary, speeches in two tongues, prayers and hurrahs.

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Oct. 19, 1927] The Nation 421 The air of a football game in a church. A single voice piping "Vive Sacco et Vanzetti!" — promptly suppressed. And now at last — the grand parade, source of consid- erable apprehension on the part of its sponsors — in spite of the carefully restricted itinerary and the elaborate "pre- cautions" of the Prefecture. At noon, the Place d'lena is martial with bugles and drums. Regiments of horizon blue. Gold- and silver-braided officials. Shoals of police, mounted and on foot, parked in truck-loads in the adjacent streets. The Legion gathers, flushed and boisterous, from a thousand noisy lunch-tables. In the Place de l'Etoile they have taken down the chains that bar the Arc de Triomphe. After the Germans in '71, after the troops of the victory in '19, the way to glory is open for the passage of the "pious pilgrims." All down the Champs Elysees a double line of soldiers. Agents de ville, holster on hip. Plain clothes men, mous- tached and derby-hatted, circulate uneasily through the crowd. There is nothing in the crowd to warrant their attention : strolling bourgeois, well-dressed foreigners, em- ployees from government offices closed for the day. Jeunesses Patriotes in determined groups. A triple row along the Champs Elysees, denser masses at the Concorde, the Opera, and the Place de l'Hotel de Ville. A Sunday atmosphere rather than that of a holiday. No electricity in the air. There is a stir at the Etoile, an eddy of flags. The procession is under way. The helmets and switching horse- tails of the Republican Guards, their band — playing a brisk and martial Sambre et Meuse — open the way for the most amazing cortege that the gray avenues of Paris have ever witnessed. Whatever the Parisians may have anticipated, they were far from expecting this. Uniforms — every shade of the rainbow. Brandenbourgs and pyjamas, cowboys, knights, monks, feathered Indians, flappers in blue and yel- low, Columbia draped in a flag, two lonely Negroes drowned in the mass. A forest of banners. Bands and bands and bands. Saxophones, trombones, fifes and bass drums, ac- cordeons. Giant drum-majors. Real silk, real leather, real gold, brand new, flashing, triumphant. A street fair, a cir- cus, a Rotarian carnival. The grand parade. La guerre, madame. The Greatest Show on Earth. The crowd, stunned at first with astonishment, is car- ried away by the color, the noise, and the movement. Men push and tug, play elbows and shoulders for a better view. Women clamber on chairs. Their audible comments are admiring: "That drum-major — qu'il est beau, qu'il est beau!" "My dear, such marvelous jazz!" "Think what it must have cost!" "In dollars . . ." Or, in undertones: "Are there no mutiles among these — veterans?" "Have they lynched all the other Negroes?" "They've forgotten the electric chair!" That for the passage of Massachusetts. Now and then the anticipated cry flung from a score of frenzied throats: "Vive l'Amerique!" Is this America? September 24 The grand parade is over. In the Court of Honor of the Invalides four thousand pious pilgrims have consumed 1,000 quarts of consomme, 60 hams, 1,200 pounds of salmon, 1,200 pounds of beef, an equal quantity of vegetables, salad, cheese, and fruit, 4,500 bottles of wine, and 800 of cham- pagne. They have been dined and feted, singly and in groups at hotels and palaces and ministeries. They have Charlestoned at the Opera and black-bottomed in the rain on the Place de la Bourse. (With hundreds of Agents de Ville on guard.) Total, two millions of francs. Up at the Trocadero, the business of the Congress goes on — cere- monies and speeches, prayers and jazz, with an attendance that diminishes daily. The Legion may well be satisfied with its official re- ception. The oilicials themselves are doubtless rubbing their hands with satisfaction. Not a hitch anywhere in the whole brilliant program. Paris has seen the Legion. The Legion has seen Paris. But to what extent have the people of France taken part in the festivities? "There has been no fete — only ceremonies," states the Quotidien, liberal organ representing the solid petite bourge- oisie. "Curiosity, occasional clamors, but no enthusiasm. ... A strange national festival in which the nation refused to participate." Why? It is an open secret that until last May Americans had been growing steadily more unpopular in France. Their popularity dropped with the franc. Anyone in France a year ago remembers the atmosphere when the dollar stood at 45. But that was before Lindbergh. Lindbergh worked a revolution in public sentiment. His achievement first; his personality afterwards — not wholly understood (when do Latin and Nordic completely understand each other?) but none the less admired. Lindbergh — modest, daring, young, drinking water — for once prohibition did not appear ridiculous to French eyes — scorning offers of money and publicity. He was a revelation. A new America whose "ambassador" effaced in a night the war-time and post-war- time impressions of Americans — neither of which was too flattering. With disinterested enthusiasm, Paris — all France in fact — forgot its grudge against the dollar citizens and took Lindbergh, and with him the country of his origin, to its bosom. Perhaps the enthusiasm would not have lasted ; perhaps the transition was too rapid to have endured. The fact remains. Then was the time to hold a congress of Americans in Paris. But not after Sacco and Vanzetti. Few Americans realize how deeply that affair pene- trated every layer of French society. No case since the days of Dreyfus has aroused a more wholesale interest. This time, however, there was no divergence of opinion. While Socialists and Communists viewed the affair from the stand- point of the class struggle, and the rest of France from a purely "human" angle, the conclusions were identical: to execute the two Italians after six years of mental torture was nothing less than criminal. What shocked French sentiment more than all the rest was the final postponing of the execution. At the news of that last delay, all France gave a sigh of relief. On every hand one heard the same comment: "Now they are saved. No civilized nation would torture human beings with vain hope up to the last minute. It would be unthinkable." Then came the news of the execu- tion. Stupefaction and horror. It was inconceivable, sav- age, barbarous. After the demonstrations that took place all over the country on August 23, the reactionary press did attempt a belated defense of American justice. But it was timid and faint-hearted. Public opinion as a whole remained unchanged, however bitter the hatred, on the part of French reactionaries, of the "red" champions of Sacco and Van- zetti. There can be no doubt that their execution planted a knife in the newly born enthusaism for America and Americans. Lindbergh was forgotten — or considered a glorious exception. Frenchmen remember their antipathies, their apprehensions. No mercy over there; today, the pound of flesh, tomorrow — the ducats. Once more America stood in the limelight with all her faults magnified.

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422 The Nation [Vol. 125. No. 3250 Then came the grand parade. For France — who can doubt it?— the war was not a "grand parade." Though cer- tainly much has been forgotten, still the war remains to France today an experience too terrible and too tragic to be evolved with the color, the noise, and the place of a carni- val or a circus. And in spite of official gravity, of solemn talk about "serving God and the nation," of prayers and special services in cathedral and synagogue, the spectacle offered by the Legion in Paris has been on the whole as tactless and as shocking to French sensibilities as would be jazz on the battle-fields. Undoubtedly all the Legion was not given to carousing. There were those who did attend ceremonies and church services, who did listen religiously to innumerable speeches in a tongue they did not understand, and who presumably did go to bed at ten after a profitable day in the museums. But this was not the Legion that Paris saw. Paris saw the (rand Parade of an imposing military organization. Paris saw the Legion — in tens of hundreds — crowding the dance halls and night restaurants of Montmartre, with rows of police standing by; painting the boulevards a deep alcoholic red; parked in long rows of taxis before the houses with the big numbers; and toted home at four in the morning too far gone to remember its address. Peace-time Paris saw what war-time Paris had already seen: the obviously arro- gant, the obviously drunk, giving vent to the opinion that all Paris is a bar and a brothel — and that the town is ours! Already this impression is finding a reflection in the French press. Not only in the papers of the extreme Left which ha\ outspoken from the first but— very dis- creetly as yet— in n the dig- nified Temps, while relating in an admiring key its "strange impression" of the Big Parade that combined "pious duty" with "joyous extravagance," discovers that America, like the land of bolshevism, is confronted with two grave dangers; the "devalorization of the intellectual" and the "dissociation of the family." In the satiric press — un- subsidized — the criticism has already taken on a chauvinis- tic tone. La Fouchardiere, the Mr. Dooley of France, con- cludes a paper on the Legion that begins — "When are they going home? I don't like their looks anyway and we've seen too many at a time" — with the following paragraph: I met my daughter Charlotte out walking with an American. A real American with eyeglasses. There was one who couldn't deny his origin. I didn't say a word . . . but I avenged Georges Carpentier. I knocked him down. . . . And my daughter Charlotte, she said "But papa, he isn't an American, he's only a little salesman from the Galeries Lafayette." But I didn't for an instant regret. . . . When you have the honor of being a Parisian, you don't dishonor yourself by making up like an American. The Legion — 4,000 unofficial "ambassadors," according to the press. But what America do they represent? Is it the old America France had learned to honor ; pioneer Amer- ica, generous, brave, simple, sincere in faith and modest in achievement? America, where the very word militarism was anathema ? The America she thought she had found in Lindbergh? For Lindbergh was an "ambassador." Roger Baldwin, speaking words of fraternity at the inauguration of the Place Sacco-Vanzetti at Clinchy, while the grand parade pranced down the Champs Elysees, was also an am- bassador. But not the "American Legion." Better keep it at home. An Anti-Trust Law Fiasco By DEXTER M. KEEZER WHEN former Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer, in the austere setting of the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia, faced a battery of motion p cameras, skillfully focused to exclude the fact that no judge was seated on the bench, and read to a humbled and contrite little group "The Packers' Consent Decree" of February 27, 1920, the event was widely proclaimed as a glorious vic- tory of justice over sinister forces. After tins striking demonstration, pictures of which were dashed to all corners of the land, a justice of the court was led in to sign the decree about which, it is said, he knew nothing more than that the parties seemed reasonably well satisfied. Slightly more than five years later, under much less histrionic circumstances, an order was entered in the same court, declaring that "the decree as a whole is suspended until further order of the court, to be made, if at all. after a full hearing on the merits;" and the presiding judge asserted in his opinion that "there seems to be little differ- ence in effect between vacating the decree and suspending its operations." Government appeals from this order have since been dismissed. The packers are seeking to have the sus- pended decree wiped out entirely. A guments on this sub- ject will be presented to the United States Supreme Court at the present session. Regardless of the outcome of this case the Consent Decree will at least remain suspended and sub- ject to a "full hearing on the merits" before it can be rein- stated. Thus after seven (it may develop into ten) years of legal wrangling, the LJ20 "victory" over the great meat packers as anti-trust law violators amounts to little more than an original complaint which, to be sustained, must be supported by evidence to be gathered anywhere from seven to fifteen years after the alleged offenses were committed. While the force of the decree has been reduced from the mighty roar of an outraged conqueror to little more than a plaintive voice in the wilderness, the record of this strange development is perhaps as important in its implications as that of any major proceeding under the Sherman act in recent years, and is strongly suggestive of a restatement of the entire problem of "trust-busting." In drawing up the decree Attorney General Palmer fol- lowed, as closely as the post-war withdrawal of the govern- ment from extensive participation in industry would per- mit, the recommendations made by the Federal Trade Com- mission as the result of an extensive investigation of the so-called "Big Five packers," since reduced to the "Big Four" as a result of the merger of the Armour and Morris interests. The other interests involved were those of Swift, Cudahy, and Wilson. With the stipulation that they should not be presumed to have violated the law these packers accepted a blanket mandate to obey it, and more specifically agreed to divorce themselves from the ownership of stockyards, terminal rail-

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Oct. 19, 1927] The Nation 423 roads, market newspapers, and public cold storage ware- houses, except when necessary for their own products. They also consented to disassociate themselves from the retail meat business, a type of activity in which, it was ob- served after the entrance of the decree, they had never been engaged; and to discontinue manufacture and commerce in a group of "unrelated" commodities, constituting a rather complete catalog of a wholesome grocery stock. The pro- vision in regard to the so-called "unrelated" lines was in- spired largely by the trade commission's finding that "not content with reaching out for mastery as to commodities which substitute for meat and its by-products, they have invaded allied industries and even unrelated ones," and that "at the present rate of expansion, within a few years the big packers would control the wholesale distribution of the nation's food supply." A sweeping decree was obviously needed to meet such a menace as this, but Attorney General Palmer was equal to the task, even if the law was not. When, appearing be- fore a congressional committee on April 3, 1920, he was asked, "The decree goes beyond the law, does it not?" he replied, "In some respects," and when pressed further agreed, "in a great many respects." But clearly it was no time for technical legal details and such pedantic questions as whether one can be pre- vented by law from engaging lawfully in the legally ap- proved business of distributing groceries. Mr. Palmer had an engagement in San Francisco to be hailed as the presi- dential standard bearer of the Democratic party; and he hurried away to participate in his triumphal march, taking with him as one of his most prized trophies the evidence of his victory over the packers which compensated in vigorous rhetoric for what it may have lacked in legal exactness. When he arrived in California, however, he found that the consent decree involved much more than a few liberties taken with the anti-trust laws. It seemed to a persistent group of California fruit growers engaged in conducting canning enterprises to be a matter of economic life and death. They contended that when the packers, particularly Armour and Company, were barred from the distribution of "unrelated" commodities, including canned fruit, they — the fruit growers — were deprived of an efficient distributive 3ystem. Without these distributive facilities they said that their infant cooperative industries would fail., particularly because the wholesale grocers' associations were not sympa- thetic with their industrial endeavors and were irritated to the point of threatened boycotts because of their advocacy of packer distribution. These farmers were much more per- sistent in their attentions to Mr. Palmer than were the delegates to the convention, and it is reported that when he left the city of San Francisco without the nomination. he also left little farmer vigilance committees waiting at all places where it was expected he might pass. Advised that this group of California fruit growers was on the rampage, the National and American Wholesale Grocers' associations obtained permission from the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia to be heard in case of an attempt to modify the decree, and then an April 22, 1922, the California Cooperative Canneries asked permission to intervene in order to seek a modification of the decree which would permit them to enjoy again the use of the packer system of distribution. In its petition, which was vigorously opposed by the wholesale grocers' associations, the cooperative canneries alleged as the reason for this opposition "that the direct and immediate effect of the decree was to create and continue an absolute monopoly in the unrelated commodities in their members' favor." Be- sides suggesting that its opposition to the decree was bring- ing upon it the commercial wrath of these powerful trade organizations, the canneries company urged that "if the decree in this cause be not promptly vacated or modified, the very existence of the efficient and economic facilities of the packers for food distribution will entirely disappear, and the producers will be left entirely at the mercy of the wholesale grocers." The right to intervene, which had been extended to the grocers' associations, was denied to the canneries com- pany by the lower court. The argument, however, that "the consent decree is an outstanding document in the history of this country, and bears the unique distinction of being a palpable violation of the anti-trust laws under the guise of preventing such violation" seemed to the Court of Ap- peals of the District of Columbia to be worthy of investiga- tion. In his opinion of June 2, 1924, granting permission to the cooperative canneries to intervene, Justice Van Orsdel said, "If the contention ... is true that the whole- sale grocers are using the decree against the packers to strengthen and build up a giant monopoly in their various and varied lines of business, there would seem to be demand for a searching inquiry as to whether or not the court is being used as an agency to restrain one monopoly and thereby promote, strengthen, and build up another. Clearly it is not the policy of the act to accomplish this result." Although the legal proceedings, which resulted in the suspension of the decree, have not completely run their course, several questions of real public importance would seem to emerge from the legalistic maze. The first is whether a system of food distribution, ad- mitted by all parties concerned as well as by the Interstate Commerce Commission to be the most efficient yet devised, should be' arbitrarily curtailed in order to preserve the vaguely defined blessings of competition. In testifying for the wholesale grocers in one of the many proceedings con- cerned with the decree, Clifford Thome said, "the packers have developed, and they deserve the credit for developing the highest type of transportation service that we have." And in reviewing the question of private railroad car lines' the Interstate Commerce Commission declared that "no class of cars in railroad service is used more effectively than the cars owned by large shippers," and observed in the case of the large meat packer that he "could no more do business on an efficient and economical basis without his private cars than he could without his modern equipped packing plant." On the specific complaint of the wholesale grocers' associations that the use by the packers of their private car lines for the distribution of grocery products involved undue discrimination against the grocers who are depend- ent upon regular railroad freight service, the commission held "that the practices of the defendants (certain rail- roads) in permitting the meat packers to load certain arti- cles of groceries in their peddler and branch-house cars is not shown to result in undue prejudice to complainants (the grocers' associations) or unduly to prefer the packers." It would seem that any competitive advantage which the packers enjoy with their system of distribution is that based upon superior efficiency; and in the bulky record com- piled concerning the consent decree there is yet to appear a coherent statement of how the public interest will be served

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424 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3250 by destroying that efficiency insofar as it is directed to the distribution of "unrelated" commodities. The controversy ranging about the consent decree, while primarily concerned with the question of packer dis- tribution of certain lines of groceries, brings into sharp relief a much larger question, involving many of the assumptions underlying the anti-trust laws. Although dur- ing the five years in which the decree was operative the Federal Trade Commission found that little progress had been made in carrying out its more important provisions, enough was accomplished to arouse the complaint that it served to foster one monopoly while attempting to destroy another. This complaint, viewed in connection with the current trend of industrial development, would seem to suggest a real limitation on the effectiveness of the negative type of p ocedure called for by the anti-trust laws. With the in- creasing change from competition between individual estab- lishments to competition between large consolidations of related enterprises — a movement surely aided and abetted by the decision of the United States Supreme Court in the United States Steel Corporation case — how much can be done in the way of breaking down restraints of trade and monopolistic conditions in one quarter without playing into the hands of another comparably powerful consolidation? The anti-trust laws are directed toward a restoration of competitive conditions, and assume that by eliminating certain obstructions to competition that end can be gained. What of the case, which is tending to become the norm, when the competition is between great consolidations and associations which are able to absorb such advantages as are taken from the large scale competitors? Is the policy, under the anti-trust laws, to be to proceed progressively against these various giant competitors as preferential ad- vantages are tossed back and forth among them? To these questions there is no ready answer. Incidentally, however, it should be noted that the Pack- ers' Consent Decree was not without effect, and a delight- fully ironical one at that. It gave the packers, who have probably enjoyed public disfavor during the twentieth cen- tury more consistently than any other set of industrialists, their first thoroughly respectable political ally — a group of farmers. The full significance of this odd bit of Mr. Pal- mer's handicraft is for the future to tell. In the Driftway THIS is the season of the year when one hears long sad stories about "how I was robbed in Europe." Gradu- ally one gets the impression that all Europeans are thieves, with Frenchmen and Italians heading the list. And the American Legion convention in Paris has given the old story even wider circulation, for since most of those legion- naires probably never saw France until a month ago, they were easy marks for the most artless Frenchman. IT is true that when one ceases to be a human being and becomes an "American tourist" one enters a game in which the odds, financially speaking, are heavily against one. To the European, all Americans are rich, and he can hardly be blamed for getting as much as he can out of a golden opportunity. The Drifter has been overcharged in various languages and he lias come to care less about the overcharge than about the method in which it is adminis- tered. He much prefers, for instance, to be overcharged in Italian to being mulcted in Austrian. He still shudders at the thought of the surly hotel keeper in Innsbruck who not only collected an outrageous price for a cheerless room but was so consistently unpleasant that the Drifter cut short his visit and hurried on to Italy. And then, what a differ- ence! He arrived in Verona late in the evening loaded with two heavy bags. He started for the tram car which he was told would take him to the city. (The new station at Verona is half a mile outside the city gates.) At the door of the station, he encountered a smiling gentleman who stopped him with a magnificent gesture and pointed at his bags. Through the door the Drifter could see the tram, but the courteous smiling one was telling him that his bags were too big to be carried on the car. Further, the Drifter learned that the gentleman was the motorman of that tram. * * * -X- * IT was distressing. The hour was late. The Drifter was very tired — and his bags were too big. Yet the little man was smiling so gaily that the Drifter couldn't help feeling that it was all a great lark. It warmed his heart and he forgot all about Innsbruck. Suddenly the motor- man, perceiving that the Drifter was either stubborn or stupid, indicated by certain unmistakable signs that money — a lira or two — might make his bags less of a problem. So the Drifter was allowed, amid much bowing and smiling and many knowing looks, to enter the tram along with the bags, which the motorman seemed to have no difficulty in stowing. On the way to town, the Drifter inquired for a good hotel and the motorman was voluble in his assur- ances of help. A few minutes later the car stopped, the motorman picked up the Drifter's bags and graciously led the way to a hotel, while his other passengers waited. Of course this service cost the Drifter something, too, but was not such a welcome worth the price? The Drifter Correspondence Brandeis, Holmes, Sacco, and Vanzetti To the Editor of The Nation: Sir : The pleasure I had in reading Norman Hapgood's article on Justice Brandeis in a recent issue of The Nation was marred somewhat by the memory of a passage from a letter written by Bartolomeo Vanzetti to Professor Harry Dana, bearing the historic date of August 22, 1927: Judge Holmes repelled our appeal on the ground that the State Supreme Court had passed on the case and he does not want to invade the State court ground. Yesterday, Justice Brandeis repelled our appeal on the ground of personal reasons; to wit. because he or members of his family are favorably interested in our case, as dem- onstrated by the fact that after our arrest Rosa and her children went to live for a month in an empty house of Justice Brandeis. in Dedham, Mass. These two justices are the symbols of liberalism in the Federal Supreme Court and they turned us their shoulders. Now our lawyers are presenting the appeal to Justice Stone. Since the other federal supreme justices are reac- tionary, well, that will be a good ground on which to repel our appeal. So that it is coming to pass that some justices repel our appeal because they are friendly with us and the other justices repel our appeal because they are hostile to us. and through this elegant fouche caudine, we are led straight to the electric chair. New York City, October 7 Charles Yale Harrison

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Oct. 19, 1927] The Nation 425 To the Editor of The Nation : Sir: I return herewith various letters, drawn out by my article in The Nation of October 5, all to the same effect. The writers charge that Justice Brandeis, and likewise Justice Holmes, are false to liberalism because they refused to intervene in the Sacco-Vanzetti case. Justice Holmes refused, after a hearing, to interfere in the case on the ground of lack of jurisdiction. Justice Brandeis would, in my opinion, have reached the same conclusion as Jus- tice Holmes, but he never got that far. He was prevented by a personal disqualification. He has always acted strictly on the principle that he would not sit in any case where he had any personal interest. He kept out of a minimum-wage case because one of his daughters had been working on a minimum-wage board. He looked upon himself as disqualified in the Sacco- Van- zetti case because his family had been actively interested in getting the men off. He might have added also, had he thought it best, that the woman who is perhaps the oldest and closest friend of the family had been for seven years the backbone of the effort to free the defendants, and had made far more sac- rifices for that cause than anyone else. The people who wrote the letters to The Nation are not law- yers, and do not understand the obligations of a judge not to usurp power merely because he wishes that a different outcome had been reached. They do not understand that if Justice Holmes or Justice Brandeis would have been justified in exceed- ing his powers in order to accomplish one result, then Judge Thayer was justified in abusing his opportunities, as he did, in order to send Sacco and Vanzetti to the chair because he hap- pened to think them guilty. President Lowell would then be justified in his inaccurate and personal use of the record to reach a result he wished to reach. It is a poor way to get ahead, to meet one judicial lynching by a state by clamoring for an- other kind of judicial usurpation. The two greatest judges in America would not be the men they are if their conception of their powers and duties changed because their personal sympa- thies were involved. While Thayer is entirely unfit, the basic evil of the Sacco- Vanzetti case is not in the law, faulty as the Massachusetts law is. It is in public opinion. That the war made us wish to lynch dissenters was inevitable. If we are going to have wars we are going to lynch those who oppose the majority. The Sacco-Van- zetti case started in the post-war frenzy. A sadder fact is that nine-tenths or more of the people of Massachusetts are still in a lynching mood toward alien revolutionary theorists. While that remains the situation, no change in the law would mean much. I fear that readers who seek a cure in asking our most conscientious judges to ignore their prescribed duties in order to bring about what they deem moral results are encouraging the disregard of permanent principles that is the very thing from which we suffer. New York, October 6 Norman Hapgood to give myself time to think what to say, I began, "When Dr. Washington comes to Boston, my children always want to have him come to lunch or dinner ; it is a pleasure, there- fore, to me to be entertained by him here." Then I began a short address, but felt that something — I did not know what — had dropped with a thud; and after a few feeble sentences I sat down. ... I suspected nothing until the next day, as a few of us were sitting on the piazza . . . the wife of the Governor said to me, "Bishop, if you lived in the South would you entertain Booker Washington?" I looked at her, and the truth dawned on me as I said, "I did make a fool of myself yesterday, I had no idea." "Oh," she interrupted, "I did not mean that. I want to know." "If I lived in the South [the Bishop replied] "I am sure that I should do as Southern gentlemen do and should not entertain him. But living in the North, I feel as a North- ern gentleman at liberty to do so." Evidently he felt that he had met the situation admirably, and he goes on to talk of other things. It seems never to have occurred to him that he had missed the opportunity to reply that Dr. Washington was one of the greatest educators of the country and one of the two or three greatest orators, and that he would feel honored to entertain such a man wherever he happened to live! The Governor's wife had not asked the Bishop what he would have done had he been born a Southerner, but merely if he had been living in the South. Also note the manner in which the Bishop himself introduces the episode — "To show how stupid we Northerners can be," Therein lies the significance of the entire story. It is considered a social solecism to mention the Negro question in the South. One is looked down upon (and this is what gets under the skin of the Northerner and makes him lose his Northern viewpoint) as one who is not acquainted with good social usages, and is not quite a lady or a gentleman. The consequence is that the growing number of liberals in the South receive no support at all — not even from the majority of the liberals who visit the South. Annie Nathan Meyer Woods Hole, Massachusetts, October 2 Who'll Help ? To the Editor of The Nation : Sir: May I suggest, through the columns of The Nation, that all who can, be they editors or private folk, reprint Romain Rolland's remarkable article in The Nation and let it be known where the reprints can be secured for distribu- tion. There could be no better beginning for the movement to clear the names of Sacco and Vanzetti. Massachusetts people par- ticularly should be bombarded with copies of this splendid ex- pression of opinion. Manchester by the Sea, Mass., Sept. 29 Blanche Watson A Christian Bishop To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: The following is taken from Bishop Lawrence's "Memories of a Happy Life." In other matters Bishop Law- rence really has proved that he does possess moral courage. It reveals the subtle poison of the South's Bourbonism acting upon a man who in the North undoubtedly looked upon himself as a leader of men: To show how stupid we Northerners ean be, 1 will toll a story of how by one sentence I came near breaking up the whole trip. [He refers to one of the late Robert Ogden's trips into the South, visiting the schools for colored people.] It was at Tuskegee. The chapel was filled with hundreds of whites and Negroes. Booker Washington called me un- expectedly to the platform to say a few words. In order Rosicrucianism To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: A copy of The Nation, dated September 14, has found its way to my desk, and I note an article written by Aldrich Blake entitled Oklahoma Goes Rosicrucian, in which he hints at the fact that Governor Johnston's political enemies seek his removal because he has adopted the religion of the Rosicrucians. . . . Mr. Blake admits that in the earlier days of Governor Johnston's life he was known as a good fellow and upheld the liquor interests, but that he has now become a teetotaler, a churchman, and a clean man generally. This should be greatly in his favor in the eyes of the general public. If Governor Johnston has become a vegetarian he has perhaps realized that a clean diet is conducive to health and to clear thinking, which

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426 The Nation [Vol. 125. No. 3250 is a very necessary thing in his executive work. As to his membership in the Rosicrucian Fellowship which has its head- quarters at Oceanside, California, Governor Johnston has at no time been a member of our organization, neither has his assis- tant, Mrs. O. O. Hammonds, been ever directly associated with the Rosicrucian Fellowship. If the interest which has been displayed by the above two people in the science of astrology is held against them it is a pity, or if Governor Johnston was perhaps a little over-zealous in the signing of the bill for the hospital for crippled children, and endeavored to use this science when the planets were pro- pitious for the best of the work, he did this for the good that might arise from the benefic aspects of the planets, but this should be a very lame excuse for his enemies to attack him. It would be a pity if the Christian people in the State of Oklahoma would permit the removal of so worthy and so clean a representative as Governor Henry Johnston simply because he is interested in or has spoken favorably of the Rosicrucian cachings. Mrs. Max Heindel, President, The Rosicrucian Fellowship Oceanside, California, September 28 The Gandhi Relief Fund To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: Recent newspaper dispatches have told of disastrous floods in India. Private letters have now brought full details of a colossal calamity. A fall of fifty inches of rain in four days over an area larger than Great Britain engulfed hundreds of villages, rendered more than 500,000 people homeless, destroyed crops, cattle, and all means of livelihood. In Ahmedabad, Gandhi's home, more than 5,000 houses were swept away and the people left destitute. Gandhi's famous school, tl e Ashram, was under water for days and all the buildings have been left in a precarious condition. A Gandhi Relief Fund is being raised by the undersigned, and appeal is herewith made to all friends of India and of India's great spiritual leader to render aid. An initial contri- bution of $100 is already on its way and a steady flow of gifts is now besought. Money in any amount sent to Mr. Holmes, at 12 Park Avenue, New York City, will be forwarded at once. John Haynes Holmes Few York, September SO Harry F. Ward Another Son of Massachusetts To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: Please count me as another of those who, still hop- ing, almost against hope, that progress may be achieved with- out bloodshed, and. son of Massachusetts as I am, heavyhearted with the thought of how she has put herself and the whole United States to shame before the eyes of the world by her treatment of Sacco and Vanzetti, — count me, I say, as one of thosi indebted to The Nation for seeing clearly and stating fori ib'y the issues at slake. Berkeley, Cal., September 14 Robert F. Leavens Sara Mildred Strauss the creative dance! Classes for beginners, advanced amateurs and professionals. STUDIO 825, CARNEGIE HALL Circle 1S50. THE EVOLUTION OF MAN, by Wilhelm Boelsche A clear, strong, simple summary not only of Darwin's theory but of the work of a generation of scientists along the lines Darwin opened up. Just what a busy man wants to give him a bird's-eye view of Evolution. Cloth, illustrated, 60 cents by mail. Catalog free. Charles H. Kerr & Co., 347 East Ohio St., Chicago, 111. THE DEBATE OF THE CENTURY BERTRAM) Dr. \YTLL RUSSELL „. DURANT English Philosopher Essayist, Publicist Author of "Story of Philosophy" SAMUEL UNTERMYER, Chairman SUBJECT: Is Democracy a Failure? DURANT says YES RUSSELL says XO Saturday, October 22nd, 8.30 P.M. MECCA TEMPLE 55th Street and Seventh Avenue Tickets: $1.10, $1.65, $2 JO, $2.75, $3.30 {including tax) TICKETS FOR SALE NOW Rand School, 7 E. 15th St. , New School Book Shop, 465 W. 23rd St., Columbia University Book Shop, Journalism Bldg. And by Mall or at Office of DISCUSSION GUILD, 11 W. 42nd St. Room 2854 Longacre 2740 "An admirable discussion of some of the mosf vital principles underlying the Prohibition ques- tion. Nothing else was to be expected from the pointed and luminous pen of its author." — WILLIAM CABELL BRUCE, United States Senator from Maryland. THE ABC of PROHIBITION By Fabian Franklin Author of "What Prohibition Has Done to America" "A treasury of logical argument." — From an editorial in the New York Herald Tribune. "It is just what it pretends to be, the A B C of Prohibition, to which one may refer for information on any detail in con- nection with the subject." — St. Louis Globe- Democrat. "Any American citizen, what- ever his views on the subject, cannot fail to find Mr. Franklin's book interesting and stimulating." — Boston Herald. At Bookstores, $1.00 HARCOURT, BRACE & COMPANY 383 Madison Ave. NEW YORK When ui-iting to advertisers please mention The Nation

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Books and Plays Eavesdropper By DAVID MORTON The talk among the poplars is of rain: From leaf to leaf the eager gossip goes, Out in the dark, low-pitched and very plain, Tree unto tree telling the thing it knows. This delicate and silver sound they make Would seem tonight to have no league with sorrow, Yet all my thought is saddened for the sake Of poplars that will strip their leaves tomorrow. For I who lie here listening in the dark Learn in this wise how rain will fill the dawn, And how the slow, uncertain light will mark Their hammered-silver shining from the lawn, — One listener, secret as the gnomes and elves, Who heard the poplars talking to themselves. First Glance T F one did not already suspect "The Story of Philosophy" one would have to suspect it after reading its author's "mental autobiography," which appears now under the pre- tentious title "Transition" (Simon and Schuster: $3). Is this all the philosophers could do for Dr. Durant? It is a vulgar, barren, and simple-minded book, this autobiog- raphy, and I blush for the philosophers who have made the reputation behind it. Doubtless they are guiltless. Doubt- less it is true, as the minority report on "The Story of Philosophy" has it, that Dr. Durant never proved his right to be clubby with Plato, Spinoza, and the rest. Still I blush for them. Take the hero's love affairs — and it is proper to do this since he makes so much of them himself, and tells us with such a lack of passion how as a very young man he yearned to bite the flesh of girls. There was Irene, for instance. Where is Irene now? What a shame it is that I do not know, that I allowed the chaotic currents of our diverse lives to make us strangers in the world! I am told that she became a nun, and disappeared into the anonymity of the convent. Perhaps if I saw her now I shoulu not recog- nize her — though I am sure that she is beautiful still. No doubt these profane pages will be hidden from her pious eyes, lest she should remember that she once had kissable knees. And better yet there was Rose. Alas, poor Rose, I helped to wither you, did I not? — sipping your honey greedily and then passing on as coldly as the wind that blows a petal from a flower. I did not hurt you, and I left you as when you first discovered love; but I was shamefully unkind to you. When I met a lass fairer than yourself, I tired of you, not understanding yet the joy of honor and fidelity; and to free myself I told you that I was an unbeliever, so that you might send me away. You did what I wished; but I know that you would have come with me had I asked you even once more; and it was brutal of me not to ask that once again. I wonder where you are now, and if you are happy? Perhaps in your modest way you are happier than I, happier than any man can be who has read the books of the philosophers. Dear, dear, it is all so beautiful and melancholy — these Girls Who Have Influenced Me, and in their humble way left me a finer and a wiser man. Dr. Durant, I imagine, has thought to forestall criticism of such passages by admitting on the title-page that "Transition" is a "sentimental story." In my opinion it is not even that. It is a work of perfectly cool and commonplace conceit, written in the very language its author must have been using when the city editor of the New York Journal said to him one day : "You're not the man for newspaper work. You're too soft and literary." Soft and literary. There you are, and if you want more evidence read the book, which is amusing for its badness when it is not shocking in its simplicity. It pretends — hence its title — to be the story not merely of a mind but of an age; and we are expected to find in it the fable of a generation which, losing its faith, fell into confusion. But there is no confusion ; the book is all too clear. The hero falls from religion, rises to radicalism, falls again to cyni- cism and despair, and at the end rises once more — having become "a daddy" — to heights whence he can reflect that progress after all is possible in a world of parental love — see "how it lifts the children upon the shoulders of the pa- rents, generation after generation, and raises life to higher levels of enterprise and thought!" Our age never enters, except to be travestied thus. Soft and literary. Mark Van Doren Man as a Mechanism By Logan Clendening, M. D. Alfred A. The Human Body. Knopf. $6. rPHERE is in this somewhat formidable tome (it weighs more * than three pounds) a mellow and amiable wisdom which lifts it far above the level of its kind. It is devoid alike of the evasions and obfuscations which make nonsense of the school physiology books, and of the propagandist fervor which botches most of the handbooks for older and more wicked readers. Dr. Clendening, who is a successful physician in Kansas City and an author of standard medical texts, is quite innocent of evan- gelical passion. It seems to him to be quite natural that men should abuse their bodies and get into trouble; he is philosopher enough to view disease without growing indignant. What he has to say about the dreadful subject of sex, for example, will probably cause uproars among the sex hygienists, and what he has to say about exercise will shock every golfer in the land. But it is hard to read his book without gathering the impres- sion that he knows precisely what he is talking about. A back- ground of hard experience, at the bedside and in the laboratory, looms behind him. When he describes a bone, it is obvious at once that he has seen, handled, and (in his aloof, scientific way) loved that bone, and when he speaks of a disease it is with the authority of a man who has actually wrestled with it. A good deal of the charming humanism of the late Sir William Osier is in him. He writes gracefully and clearly, and he never forgets that the human machine is also a man, and that the man has hopes and dreams as well as liver and lights. Most medical men write atrociously, especially when they address the layman, but not Dr. Clendening. The plan of his book is simple and excellent. He assumes, first, that his readers are intelligent and that the basic facts of anatomy and physiology are thus within their grasp, and he assumes, second, that they are seldom interested in those facts save when they have a pain somewhere, or are otherwise out of kilter. This last assumption, it seems to me, is a sound one; I myself, though I am excessively educated, had never heard of the synovial membrane until the dissipation of laying bricks brought me synovitis in the wrist. But it is one thing to explain

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428 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3250 to the layman the mechanics and chemistry of his frequent in- firmities, and quite another thing to set him insanely to doctor- ing himself. This unwisdom Dr. Clendening very adroitly avoids, and without any gloomy warnings and alarms. What he ex- hibits constantly is the fact that disease is usually a very com- plicate! matter— that there is no curing it without a thorough study of its nature, its seat, and its causes. He makes that fact plain without any punditic eye-rolling. The reader, made privy to the chief landmarks, comes away with a cautious respect for the jungles intervening. If, having read and attended, he yet essays to cure himself, then it is a sign that God, having marked him for early bliss, has not bothered to give him sense. Dr. Clendening begins with a chapter upon what might be called human normalcy: he describes the ideal human body, and shows how far an individual may depart from that ideal with- out being a pathological case. Then, after a chapter on heredity and environment, and another on the cell, he follows the classical course through the bones, the muscles, the skin, the digestive system, the respiratory system, the blood, and the nerves, ending with chapters on the relations of the body to the mind, the reproductive mechanism, and the elements of general pathology. At all points he offers clear and effective drawings: they show all that is necessary, and nothing else. And at all points he illuminates his discourse with apposite parables and anecdotes, many of them from medical history. Describing the cell, he does not forget old Theodor Schwann, and dealing with the heart and its disorder ,, and the effects of digitalis thereon, he pauses long enough for an eloquent and fascinating account of the debt that humanity owes to William Withering and James Mackenzie. The book is immensely readable; it was made to be read. The grisly flavor of the average medical work for laymen is not in it. There are no horrors, and there is no preaching. Dr. Clendening is too busy explaining things that ob /iously in- terest him enormously to stop to argue anything. In his chapters on sex, at the end, there is more sound sense than you will find in all the so-called sex hygiene books ever written. He simply refuses to give any credit to the conventional horrors. For the teaching of "the facts of life" by scared schoolma'ms and bawdy lady doctors he has only derision. The gutter, he maintains is a better school. But the gutter views sex as a joke! Well, to a large extent that is precisely what it is. The effort to convert a fascinating mystery into a horror com- parab'e to hydrophobia or Calvinism has only piled up obsceni- ties: the teacher, no doubt, gets a thrill out of it, but the pupils get only bad dreams. Nor is Dr. Clendening deluded by the current pother about the venereal diseases. As a practical medical man, he is well aware that syphilis and gonorrhea, if taken in time, are quite amenable to treatment — that many other diseases are far worse. He describes their symptoms sim- ply and decently, and tells what may be done about them. He describes all the other common distempers of man in the same way. His book is sound in its facts, admirable in its clarity, and very charmingly written. It is, by long odds, the best work of its kind that has yet come to light in America. H. L. Mencken The Biography of a Complex The Locomotive God. By William Ellery Leonard. The Cen- tury Company. $-1. TN June, 1911, William Ellery Leonard, poet and philologist, *■ went for a walk with a friend. The tragic death of his wife and the hostile attitude of some of that wife's friends had re- duced him to a state near nervous colb~se, but when he turned with his friend into a little road house he was not, so far as he knew, the victim of any definite psychic disorder. Then his eye fell upon a map, advertising the Northwestern Railroad com- pany, in the center of which was pictured an on-rushing locomo- tive. Without his ceasing to realize the real nature of the object it suddenly became a symbol — the locomotive was an avenging God sweeping forward to destroy him and his guilt. Struggling to gain possession of himself he lit a cigar and began to make random sketches upon a piece of paper, but the odor of the cigar intensified his terror and the sketches were sketches of locomotives. As he left the door of the road house, a train, horribly like that upon the wall, was passing across a meadow and in spite of the fact that the meadow was empty he was oppressed by an unreasonably intense conviction that boys were playing baseball near by. A few minutes later he begged for a moment alone and, walking four or five hundred feet away, stood looking out from the edge of a bluff. Premonitions of terror came upon him. He called to his friend but received no answer. The whistle of a freight train came across the fields and suddenly diffused premonitions became acute panic. The ti-ain, half a mile away, was about to bear down upon him, and then from out the sky a chariot drawn by two shining horses rushed upon him. Mad with terror he got back somehow to his friend, the panic subsided for a time, only to return a few minutes later and in a commandeered automobile he wras taken home. Since that day he has never "walked or ridden, alone or with others, as a normal man." He has taught his classes, writ- ten his books, and, upon one or two occasions, made brief agon- izing journeys in a train; but he cannot, without running the risk of utter and unmasterable panic, go further than the dis- tance of a short walk from the apartment where he lives and the university where he teaches. The safety of home must be always near. Such cases as this are, of course, the commonplace of all text-books in abnormal psychology, but Mr. Leonard's book is unique as a frank, first-hand account by a man whose mind is of the first order and who is gifted with extraordinary powers of expression. It tells the story of a life very much worth the telling for reasons which have nothing to do with the phenome- non which has come to play a disastrously large part in that life, and it tells besides a fascinating story of the quest for for- gotten memories which might throw some light upon the origin of his Locomotive God. That quest leads him first to an incident in boyhood when a mob of derisive school boys chasing him home were half hallucinated into an on-rushing locomotive and it dis- covers the ball-game as part of that incident, but it reaches its end when the mind gradually recovers an experience, totally forgotten but verified in the memory of others, which occurred when the author was two and a half years old. On the platform of a station he gets his first terrified sight of a locomotive. As it roars past a jet of steam scalds him slightly and in the pres- ence of a little girl before whom he has been playing the domi- nant male he rushes screaming for mother, home, and safety. A man with a cigar diffuses the pungent odor of tobacco. The boy wonders if Mary thinks he is a fool. Mr. Leonard does not attempt to make magic out of psycho- analysis. His childhood memories were recovered by himself with the aid of two members of the psychology department at Wisconsin, he is not cured, and he does not feel sure that he ever will be. He is well aware of the fact that an orthodox analyst would be inclined to deny that the ultimate cause of a neurosis can be found by the victim since it is protected and cherished by him ; but he has no great faith in either the specific theories or the therapeutic methods of the orthodox analyst, and he is content to find at least a partial explanation of his predicament in the incident just recorded. His book dees not pretend to settle the problem with which it is concerned, but it does con- sider thoughtfully all the questions which arise in connection with it. Was, for example, this childhood fright in itself a suf- ficient cause of the phobia and to what extent has that phobia influenced the direction and character of his wrork? Mr. Leonard finds no evidence of any hereditary disposition toward nervous disorders, but he does not minimize the effect of the abnormal strains to which he was subjected after the death of his wife and wrhich made him succumb to the effects of a sup-

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Oct. 19, 1927] The Nation 429 pressed memory which might never have seriously disturbed a nervous organization not already subjected to unusual stresses. Nor is he inclined to make too close an identification between his obsessions and his creative impulses. Admitting that "The Lynching Bee" probably owed something to a subconscious mem- ory of the mob of urchins which had once pursued him, he never- theless refuses to identify poetry and neurosis. "I could have become a phobiac without becoming a poet or half a poet, and vice versa. But there does remain a connection; a sensitive, imaginative, emotional organization is the prerequisite for be- coming either half a poet or a good phobiac. The poet is by constitution more exposed than most mortals to initial shock; the poet is more exposed to the subconscious effects of initial shock; but all men are exposed in some degree. And the poet may escape this exposure or the calamities of this exposure as most poets or other artists have in fact escaped. I was one who did not escape." "My . . . incomplete science," he adds, "can get no farther." And that, indeed, is about as far as anyone's can get. Joseph Wood Krutch Blood and Banners The Black Douglas. By Donald Douglas. George H. Doran Company. $2.50. T N most historical romances you keep thinking all the time of *■ reference books and the author visiting ruins with a pair of field glasses or working in a library reading up on costumes. And usually there are footnotes and in the back an enormous bibliography destroys most of the imaginative content of the book. Usually a peasant is set aside to be rustic and humorous in dialect that is never completely translated and his cos- tume is so minutely described that you imagine it is to give the "feel" of the period. But those are bad books and this is a good one. Here a dog is completely evoked simply by saying "the hound broke through the trees" and the five men who follow him are described as having "faces rough as bark" — no more than that, and yet you see their thick legs and necks and hear their panting. There are old peasant hags who "mutter as if their mouths are filled with oats" and there is a language that is described as the "glug of apes." All through the book are vivid words that evoke not only a face or a figure but the back- ground, the country, the house, the particular room and chair, all with a mysterious power. There is the shock and mystery of meeting people face to face as if they had never died. You see the past as if it had never faded or turned to earth. You meet the Black Douglas and Robert the Bruce in the flesh, they walk into your room to rest between battles. You know their horses and can pick them out in battle and you know how they look as they pull themselves on their stomachs through a dangerous wood. You watch the English ride down a hill with a hound in front. "He saw their basnets flame in the sun and the field shone with pennon and shield and spear. Bright banners flapped in the wind and hauberks gleamed white as flour and coat-armor ran to a knot of color so that they rode like a troop of bright angels let down from the thrones of the sky." But none of this means that the book is pleasant or that women will sit up all night reading it. There is only one woman in the story, a creature too patient and agreeable to be real, and none of the men want to die for her and they don't even pre- tend that they want to — they are all pledged to their King and to saving Scotland from the English. (Should a good historical romance be so realistic?) The good creature never comes to life. She marries the Black Douglas while she is held in a castle for ransom. He endangers his life to see her, goes through the slime, climbs a castle wall, but all of that occupies a very small portion of the book, a dozen pages or so. She has a child and tries to escape with it and the Douglas and is killed in a meadow near the castle. The saddest part of the woman's brief story is that her hus- band appears to feel the death of the King (who gives him his heart to take to the crusades) more than he does her death. He speaks to the contrary and falls into blackness but you don't believe him. His happiness is in a world of men and war, on plains that surge with blood and where heads float with tongues straining out and necks show cords turned soft and black. Here his will is his own even though he serves his king, and he is forever free from women and the responsibility of their love. But women played the important roles in Mr. Douglas's first book, "The Grand Inquisitor." They were simple, tragic women who wanted to be biological and permanent and secure. They were present all through the book in some form; sometimes they lurked in the background like stealthy cats with incredible claws unsheathed, sometimes they were huge spiders with green eyes, or witches who were reaching for the souls and wills and manhood of the men they intended to own. These women wanted to draw men into their world, they could endure no separation, and the men fought to remain separate, in possession of them- selves, free to seek beyond fulfilment in love and sex. The book had a fiendish nightmare quality. The whole city was crowded into it and you saw it shake and groan and dissolve before your eyes. And one man freed himself by killing the image he had made of the woman he loved and the other sank down in mad- ness. In this new book the hero is happier but the woman, though more ideal and noble, less real. And their worlds are separate and miles apart. There is a man in "The Black Douglas," William Francis by name, who talks with Randolph. Francis is to climb the wall and it suddenly reminds him that he used to climb out of his father's house at night with a rope ladder twelve feet long and go to see a girl in the town. He stares ahead with a fierce look and then says to Randolph: "Ah, my lord, one's love for a wench is a thing of one year. One's love for the King . . ." And Randolph replied: "Your love shall not bring you death." Besides Douglas and the King there is a third figure in this book who is not forgotten, who stays around even though he was slain by the Black Douglas, and whose meaning is buried. With all the brightness of banners in the sun and hoof beats and vic- tory this awful figure stays. "He saw a cowl shield a face sallow as mud in a robed man that came in a slow creep over the floor. He saw hands yellow like bilge and the fingers dried like stale claws. He saw black eyes that fell at his look . . ." He gets a dagger through him and spills on the floor "like a yellow worm," but even at the end he is alive and the Black Douglas and the King are alive. Margery Latimer Jim, Slim, and Bill Cirrus Parade. By Jim Tully. Albert and Charles Boni. $2.50. The Main Stem. By William Edge. The Vanguard Press. Fifty cents. IKE most parades "Circus Parade" is a gaudy and vulgar *— ' spectacle, only here the clowns wear no masks, the ladies no spangles, the tent-stretching crew no gloves. No species of the class is omitted from the human menagerie which travels with "Cameron's World's Greatest Combined Shows." The mean, lean, taloned, competent Cameron, owner; his woman, Baby Buzzard, a leering, outworn bare-back rider; Silver Moon Dugan, who could "redlight" (pitch out of a moving train) an honest boy whose money he had in charge; Slug Finnerty and Gorilla Haley, who belonged to Dugan's gang of tent pitchers; the tragic Denna Wyoming, lion trainer; the profoundly pathetic Strong Woman; the hideous-souled Blackie, a Negro roustabout; the Moss-Haired Girl; side-show barkers, circus trailers, rubes real and rubes pretended — they are all here. We see them as they appear without, but the interest is focussed on what they are within. The next time I look out the car window as my train whizzes past a circus train waiting on a side-track, I shall have

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430 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3250 a better basis for wondering about the enigmatical faces that return my glance. Jim Tully writes of his own experiences as a hobo who threw in with Cameron's shows. The critics all say that he has strength in his pen; he has. He also has a fatal facility. His formula for baring souls is too simple, sometimes superficial. Often he fails to perceive that mere nakedness may be no more revealing of character than Victorian wrappings. He has a sense of humor that William Edge does not have and somehow he better combines sympathy and detachment; but I doubt if he is as convincing. During war time William Edge threw in with a man named Slim to work and bum over America. Slim had reformed from living in bourgeois comfort in order to follow the philosophy of Danny de Leon, socialist, and also to evolve and practice a labor philosophy of his own. Despite a lot of talk, recorded in "The Main Stem," that philosophy is vague. The two sophisticated hobo laborers wandered from city to city, from camp to camp, sometimes working hard and sometimes malingering but nearly always drawing tine wages; occasionally stealing, occasionally lying, always feeling superior to bosses and capital. The best thing about the book is the insight it gives into the ethics and morals of munition factory workers of both sexes. All the time he was wandering Mr. Edge had a notebook in his head, and it was a stroke of fortune when sickness sent him back to clean s, a respectable home, and a typewriter. J. Frank Dobie A Frightened Woman ring Quince By Dorothy Van Doren. George II. Doran Company. $2.50. MOST novels weary me. They seem a sweet and si^kish not warranted to distract from the world about us. Occa- sionally I find one peopled by characters so wholly created, and so intent upon their business, that they in turn blow into me some breath of life. On equally rare occasions I find more deli- cate pleasure in a novel that seems to be written with disquiet- in;,'- quietness about something I have myself seen, notice stuff of but not the design. I am interested. The novel seems written for me to read, not to be sold to an editor primarily, or to preach a simple and saccharine gospel to the readers of wome' 's magazines which the author most certainly does not live by. Dorothy Van Doren's second novel is more beautiful than her first. "Strangers" was a calm recital of interwoven and very nice adulteries that turned gossip into social pa: left us without a moral but with a new sensitiveness. "Flower- ing Quince" is the story of a passive, sentimental woman. I have been reading it on the Massachusetts coast, Queen Anne's lace on the meadow as beautiful as was ever the rosy bush in Katherine Tanner's garden. Pi and Poles go by my house to the stocking mills. Rich Jewish commercial artists have early American estates, on the road to the dunes, and a Chicago bath-tub manufacturer has built a three-million-dollar mansion on the top of I 'i and enclosed the beach where ten genen natives hav< for midsummer bathing. Of such social changes "Flowering Quince" takes no notice. But of the women I meet in the morning, not women to whom nothing could have happened, nor merely women to whom nothing has happened, but women who would not let anything happen to them, this story is one account. You would say the heroine is of no importance, except that there she is, a peculiarly American phenomenon, her brown braid-' wound about her busy, asking the tenderness of understanding for her still-born puritan integrity. How did so many women come to be so afraid? How did so many women come to go to college, impervious there to any of the maggots called ideas? The novel asks no such questions, but with sure and sedate narration traces faint but flowing the life and adventures of the minister's daughter who found her greatest satisfaction in a flowering bush. What be- came of the dark-haired school teacher? The book is full of episodes without sequels. That is part of its life-like charm. Do the bolder women achieve very much? No, not especially. The war is there, seen through Emily Ann's eyes, the bank, the banker, lavish but a curiously impoverished man, and an old bush, a gnarled, sprawling quince bush, pyrus japonicus. pink flowering. . . . Ernestine Evans Books in Brief The Private Diary of Leo Tolstoy, 1853-1857. Edited by Aylmer Maude. Translated by Louise and Aylmer Maude. Doubleday, Page and Company. Written in a crucial period of Tolstoy's life, when he was finding himself both as artist and as philosopher, this hitherto unpublished diary is of the utmost value. But what a pity that Mr. Maude was not permitted by the Russian owner of the manuscript to translate the passages describing Tolst amorous life during these years as well as his intellectual and professional career. The omissions thus made necessary are painful to think upon, particularly when it is considered how important was the role of sex in the titan's lonely drama. The Religion Called Beliaviorism. By Lewis Berman. Boni and Liveright. $1.75. Since the founder of Behaviorism is himself inclined toward polemics he can hardly object to this little book by the author of "The Glands Regulating Personality." Dr. Berman is anxious not to be taken for a mechanist and makes a plea for the recognition of consciousness as a significant subject for study. To the layman alarmed by the simple materialism of the behavioristic theories he offers a popular explanation of "Ges- talt" psychology as a way out. Pessimists on the point of suicide are bidden to "configurate with the universe." Drama Ibsen Again H 7ITH the exception of "A Doll's House," no other play of * * Ibsen's is so nearly reducible to the bare bones of its thesis as "An Enemy of the People." Dr. Stockmann is, of course, Ibsen himself and the whole is a parable intended as an answer to those of his enemies who talked as though the author of "Ghosts" were himself responsible for the pestilential poisons whose existence he was endeavoring to point out to his fellow citizens; but the play has comparatively little either of the fancy which marked his earliest efforts or of the mystical symbolism which makes the later plays interesting for the very reason that their meaning is so illusive. Much of "An Enemy of the People" is argument for argument's sake, essentially polemic rather than dramatic in its intention, and hence, it would seem, destined to be valuable only so long as it was new and fresh. Does not Dr. Stockmann himself tell us that truths grow old, that a "normally constituted one." living at most but seven- teen or eighteen years, has precious little nourishment left in it even at that not very advanced age; has not "An Enemy of the People" already had more time than that in which to becomes one of those "majority truths which are like last year's cured meat?" Yet the play, as intelligently revived by7 Walter Hampden at the Hampden Theater, proves far more interesting than a prediction based upon a priori principles would have led one to suppose. It is, to be sure, no longer the startling paradox which once it seemed; time has reduced many of its most daring lines to the status of mere liberal platitudes and has made it seem often more explicit in its argument than it is necessary to be

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Oct. 19, 1927] The Nation 431 in this day when the point of view from which it is written is so much more familiar than it was in 1882. Yet the play has wit enough to keep it sweet. Much of it is argument but not all of it is merely that. Dr. Stockmann is not simply a mouth- piece for an opinion. He is a genuine comic character con- ceived with great force, and because his convictions, the result of an individual experience, bear always the slightly fantastic stamp which make them his rather than exactly those of his creator, the whole possesses that permanency of interest which is inherent in character but not in argument. I went to the performance without great expectations, I came away with a renewed sense of the pleasure to be got even (or perhaps espe- cially) in this day, when the stage is so shrill and so bustling, by contact with a play which time may have made seem some- what subdued in its appeal but which is nevertheless marked everywhere by that serene power which is the sure sign of a greatness even as troubled as that of Ibsen was. Nor is, I suspect, the continued vitality of the piece due entirely to the strictly dramatic virtues just insisted upon, for in point of fact not all its truths have yet become mere platitudes and the central discovery of Dr. Stockmann is one which has not grown acceptable and hence decrepit as rapidly as most discoveries do. When the play was written, the world had not had as much experience as it now has had with the fact that the "people" are not always so virtuous or so high minded as the rosy assumptions of democratic theory had pic- tured them. Ibsen himself was just awaking from the delusion born of the days when, power being all in the hands of the few, it was easy to assume that the disinherited majority had all the good intentions which the enthroned minority had not; and when he made Dr. Stockmann turn confidently to the crowd and find there, not the enlightened public which a century of un- tested liberal theory led him to expect, but merely the mob instead, he was revealing for the first time the bitter joke which time played upon the idealists who had built so much upon an "enlightened majority" such as never existed outside their own imagination. But is the problem there raised one which time has done anything to solve? Thousands of Noras slamming doors throughout the civilized world have answered effectively the question which "A Doll's House" asked, and it can have no longer any except an academic interest, but that which "An Enemy of the People" propounds is subject to no such conclusive response and grows, indeed, more puzzling the more effective the triumph of democracy becomes. Those advanced thinkers who lived under kings were in a sense happier than we. They could at least look forward to the blessed time when "the people should rule"; for us the fait accompli has dampened our op- timism. We have learned well enough the lesson of Ibsen's play; we know well enough that "enlightened public opinion" is a pretty phrase and that "the mob" is a bitter reality; but we know no more than he what to do about it. Parties, whether liberal or conservative, are still parties and he is still strongest who is most alone. Mr. Hampden has generally preferred roles somewhat more florid than his present one, but he gives a restrained and in- telligent performance, and from a generally competent cast Cecil Yapp stands out because of a wholly admirable interpretation of Aslaksen, that excessively un-excessive exponent of "discreet moderation and moderate discretion." Somerset Maugham's melodrama "The Letter" (Morosco Theater) is a good deal of a disappointment. A certain suave- ness characterizes all its author's plays, but the present one is made from a short story, written in his brittlest manner, which does not even supply sufficient material for a full length play. Catherine Cornell takes full advantage of the two opportunities afforded for an emotional outburst, but if, as is obviously the case, she aspires to a high place in the contemporary theater, then why are two seasons devoted to "The Green Hat" followed by a play as obviously unimportant as "The Letter?" In "The Shannons of Broadway" (Martin Beck Theater) James Gleason has written for himself and Lucile Webster another comedy which, like his two previous efforts, can hardly be made amen- able to critical censure. He has created two real and salty characters — members of a stranded vaudeville team — which de- pend for their effectiveness very largely upon an exploitation of his own and his wife's personalities, and he has projected them into a play composed exclusively of conventional hoakum which is never intended to be taken very seriously. The per- formance is continuously funny, but it belongs rather to the genre of vaudeville than to that of even farce. "The Garden of Eden" (Selwyn Theater) is a rather laborious comedy which deals with the adventures of a cabaret singer who finds true love while masquerading as a member of the fashionable world. It could only be made effective by the presence in the title role of someone with a more vivid personality than Miriam Hopkins has yet developed, and it succeeds only in giving the impression of being a musical comedy with the music and the dancing left out. At the Little Theater an amiable comedy called "Ro- mancing 'Round" is saved from dangerous sentimentality by the admirable acting of Helen McKellar and by the charming in- genuousness of Charles Ritchie in the role of an irresistible young naval lieutenant. Joseph Wood Krutch □ LECTURE □ Hon. BERTRAND RUSSELL on SCIENCE and HAPPINESS Prof. Morris R. Cohen, Dept. of Philosophy C. C. N. Y. Chairman Dr. Henry R. Neumann, President B'klyn Ethical Culture Presiding Officer at Brooklyn Academy of Music Atlantic Avenue Station SUNDAY AFTERNOON, 3 P. M., OCTOBER 23rd Tickets $1.00 at the Box Office NEWSPAPER Why Travel for a LIBERAL EDUCATION! From the middle ages onward the value of travel in foreign countries has been recognized as adding the final touch to a liberal education. The broadening of one's views accomplished by travel can also be effected by coming in contact with the fresh view- point on world affairs and the unbiased ideas on men, letters and things presented in ®ljr MnmiftBtcr (Sitaritfan WEEKLY 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 de- pend on The Manchester Guardian Weekly to keep them furnished with reliable information on all important world happenings and to keep their viewpoint on vital affairs clear and unprejudiced. MAIL COUPON BELOW The Manchester Guardian Weekly, 224 West 42nd Street, New York Gty. I enclose three dollars for a year's subscription to THE MANCHESTER GUARDIAN WEEKLY. Name Address When writing to advertisers please mention The Nation

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International Relations Section The Australian Labor Situation By C. HARTLEY GRATTAN IN Australia there is the apparently anomalous situation of a highly developed labor group with extensive eco- nomic and political power, in a land that is in a low state of industrial development, in the United States the labor or- ganizations include about 27 out of every thousand of popu- lation. In Australia the proportion is approximately iOu to the thousand. Australia was settled after the philosophy of trade unionism came into vogue. It is true that the rirst labor supply in the land was convict to a very considerable extent, but it must be recalled that the country was not developed in an intensive fashion until after the gold rushes of the fifties. Previous to that time grazing was the prin- cipal occupation, and it required unlimited land, but a small labor supply. To be sure the graziers had their difficulties in getting labor, but the laborers could not utilize the de- mand to their advantage. During the gold rush period cer- tain of the building trades were able to make detinite ad- vances on the basis ~f scarcity of workers. The sole labor supply was then free labor, as transportation was discon- tinued in the middle of the nineteenth century. The build- ing trades substantially increased their wages and got the eight-hour day. Since then, setting aside the severe re- verses of the early nineties, progress had been steady. The strategy of Australian labor has always ueen based on the lack of surplus population. Intensive organization of a small population and a careful limitation of immigra- tion is at the basis of every success it has made. Further- more, Australian labor leaders have never been faced with the task of organizing groups other than British in racial composition. The so-called "White Australia" policy which was developed out of the race riots on the gold helds has become dignified into a national dogma of high emotional value, and has been given firm support by the Common- wealth Immigration Act. Most of the immigrants have come into the country firmly grounded in the philosophy of trade unionism. And, finally, the leaders have accom- plished the unique task of organizing the workers in the pri- mary industries — the farm laborers, shearers, shepherds, boundary riders, and station (ranch) hands generally — into a strong union. The importance of the population situation to the suc- cess of Australian labor is frequently emphasized. It is a constant preoccupation of the leaders. Resolutions are passed regularly and deputations wait on the Prime Minis- ter to discuss the matter. No policy of immigration can be successfully adopted by any state or by the Commonwealth without the support of the unions. Contrary to the ex- perience of the United States in the early days the avail- ability of land does not control the labor market. It is diffi- cult to get men to go on the land, and yet the labor policy is to favor only those immigrants who will go on the land. There is a more or less constant body of unemployed, which is a menace to the union position, ;nd it is not wisdom to have it augmented. With a large body of unemployed and a constant influx of new hands it would not be long b the unions would lose their advanced positions. Such advantages as a minimum wage of £4 4 (a $20.36), an elaborate compensation scheme for illnesses and accidents, old age and invalid pensions, together with strict factory legislation and similar boons, and such valuable achievements as child endowment and national unemploy- ment insurance in prospect are not lightly to be toyed with, and could not have been won in the industrial sphere alone. Labor in Australia is the political power, for when it is not the party in power it holds the strategic advantage. It has not been in politics from its beginnings, but made its first moves in that direction in the early nineties, as a result of a series of severe set backs due to strikes that miserably failed. Australia passed through a severe crisis at that time caused partly by excessive land speculation and partly by severe droughts, which are and always will be the curse of the country. Today labor controls five out of the six states, and in the twenty-six years of the existence of the Commonwealth, labor has been in power for twelve. It expects to capture the Commonwealth Government in 1929. Naturally with these tremendous successes at their backs the labor leaders are anxious to consolidate and con- firm their gains. They aim, in no idle sense, to make Australia a workers' paradise. Class conscious to an ex- traordinary degree, their aspirations are very little tinged by bourgeois considerations. They firmly reject any ad- vances from the employers that will sap their militancy, and consequently Australian employers can learn little from American employers. The Australian worker rejects with scorn such things as bonuses and welfare work. More im- portant, he is firmly opposed to any industrial methods that increase the production of wealth and consequently em- ployers' profits, without an exactly corresponding share for the worker. Australian labor resents any variety of "speed- ing up." It turns in horror from American methods. Yet while the leaders aim at a workers' paradise, they have not given any serious attention to the utilization of leisure. Sport, the Australian religion, absorbs surplus energies. Culturally the country- does not profit at all. !1 But the paradisiac aspects of the situation, actual and prospective, do not keep labor satisfied. There is always something just beyond their grasp. And the extreme sen- sitivity and great power of the men makes for frequent strikes. Sometimes the strikes are intensified by race troubles, as in the sugar mills of Queensland at the present moment. The influx of Italians (who being white men and able to pass the educational requirements cannot be ex- ed) has exasperated the British workers. It must be recalled that there is no colored labor in Australia and all tropical agriculture is carried on by white men. The Italian has shown himself better adapted for tropical work than the Pritisher, and consequently has tended to oust the latter. Furthermore, the Italians are not in the control of the unions, and the unions are reluctant to expend the effort to bring them in line. But as a rule Australian strikes are of purely economic significance. Probably the most agitated question at the moment, after immigration, is compulsory arbitration. Labor is re- sponsible for putting the laws on the statute books, and there is no general disposition to scrap the principle. The objection, which is strenuous, is to the way in which the machinery is being operated. Labor contends that the court is being used to its detriment. Mr. T. R. Ashworth, of the Victorian Employers Federation, recently remarked: "Mr.

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Oct. 19, 1927] The Nation 433 A HEW BIOGRAPHY BY LEWIS BROWNE That Mam Heine By the Author of "This Believing World" In Collaboration ivith Elsa Weilil T, WGSXXGSPXS&&F5Z was, like his work, one long, HE life of Heinrii-h Heine rieaS romance, of which Lewis Browne has caught every delicate meaning. The result is a scintillat- ing biography of a saint and sinner, philoso- pher and fool, cynic and sentimentalist, scoffer and believer, hater and lover, poet, sardonic wit, and amazing genius. The story is stranger than fiction — and better than most of it. At your dealer's Illustrated $3.00 THE MACMILLAN CO. NEW YORK THE EDUCATIONAL DEPARTMENT of the COMMUNITY CHURCH Presents WILL DURANT who will speak on "The Ten Greatest Thinkers" John Haynes Holmes, Chairman Community Church Auditorium Park Avenue and 34th Street Thursday 8.15 P.M. October 27 RESERVED SECTIONS 50c 75c $1.00 OPEN ALL YEAR! AS-ER LODGE! ABOVE CROTON-ON-HUDSON A congenial home atmosphere in thf picturesqueWestchester Blue Mountains. Large airy steam-heated, rooms with all facilities. Billiard, library, tennis, rowing and fishing. Wholesome food — like mother used to make. One hour from the city with com- muting facilities. Reasonable rates! AS-ER CAMPUS AND LODGE FURNACE WOOD ROAD, PEEKSKUX, N. Y. Tel., PeekskiU 1403 Enjoy these Fall Days at TOPSTONE FARM Among the hills and woods of Connecticut, now taking on autumnal color ; tramp over sumach-covered pasture lots, or down quiet back-country roads, loaf in the sun to your heart's content, and eat good tasty food. Take your vacation or week-ends when the year's at its best. Open all year. Only 1% hours from New York. Telephone : Ridge- fleld 39, ring 6. Mail address : Topstone Farm, R. F. D. 4, Ridgefield, Conn. TRANSITION A MENTAL AUTOBIOGRAPHY by WILL DURANT IN this intimate chronicle, writ- ten with the same warmth and wisdom that attracted a vast au- dience to The Story of Philosophy, Dr. Will Durant treats of the personal and persistent problems of our changing faiths — in religion, in politics, in love, in all of life. * The new book by the author of The Story of Philosophy Simon and Schuster, Publisliera $3.00 everywhere HEALTH SIMPLIFIED NO cult, no school, the good from all schools. Exposing healing quackery wherever found. Edited by a practicing physician experienced in health education. Rationed Living, Box 2, Sta- tion M, New York. B. Liber, M. D., Dr. P. H., Editor. — 6 months trial subscription $1. Sample copy free. — With yearly subscription the famous book "As A Doctor Sees It" free, if requested. SUBURBAN BO AltO MANHATTAN BEACH HOTEL, N. Y. LIVE in a modern, fireproof hotel by the lea shore, for less than in the crowded city. $12 per week for two ; homelike comforts : outdoor sports; maid, valet and telephone service; 87 min utes from Times Sq., BMT. Phone Sheepshead 3000 EUROPEAN TRAVEL AM arranging (for next summer) my 16th trip to Europe and would like to hear from a few radicals who might be interested to join me. At- torney Nicholas Klein, Cincinnati, Ohio. When writing to advertisers please mention The Natii 1 A unique development STONY BROOK COLONY HERE is the solution to your summer vacation and winter week - end problems. A beautiful tract of woodland, with a picturesque river running through it is being developed in the hills of Westport, Conn. Do you enjoy tennis, swim- ming, horseback riding, ice-skat- ing, skiing, tobogganing, sleigh- ing? You can have all these at the front door of your own studio, and have an interesting community life besides. An artistic 4 room studio, with large open fireplace, mod- ern plumbing, electricity, on an acre of land is available on very interesting terms at a moderate price. For about $200 actual cost per year, including interest on investment and taxes, you can own what was formerly only possible for the man of means. The place is 1 hour's ride from Grand Central, 15 minutes from the station. A golf course and a salt water beach is nearby. We should like to drive you up to see this ideal retreat. A number of artistically furnished studios for rent Stony Brook Colony Development Watkins 2652 13 Charles St. yj OPEN SHELF GOOD CHEER COMRADES! Want to buy, sell, or swap books, bronzes, old china, clocks, curios, etchings, lamps, paintings, prints, oriental rugs? Bus, or stroll to Daca's, 63 Washington Sg. So., N. Y. C. Books always 20 to 80% off. Open eves. Allf books (except text) sent post free anywhere at 15% discount from pulishers' prices. List on request. ISRAEL SO I PER 1244 flay Avenue New York City BOOKS THAT BOOK YOU WANT! vVe 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 Charing Cross Road, LONDON, ENGLAND SPECIAL REDUCTIONS FOR TWO WEEKS -J ONLY. Books $1.90 each postpaid ; Something About Eve, Now East Now West, Circus Parade, Kitty, A Good Woman. Catalogue issued. Hermes Library Service, 81 Nassau Street, N. Y. C.

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434 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3250 Justice Higgins has written a book in which compulsory arbitration is called 'A New Province for Law and Order.' At the moment this province has reduced Australia to a con- dition bordering on anarchy." Early in 1926 the Federal Government asked the Court to determine the normal work- ing week for all labor. To do so required a test case. By mutual agreement the employers and employees selected the engineering industry as a normal industry, and the engi- neers then applied to the court for an award giving them the forty-four hour week. The hearings lasted four months and cost $100,000. The unions won, but the employers immediately set machinery going to "whittle down and post- pone the award." Consequently, it was not until May of this year that even the engineers got the forty-four hour week, and then certain concerns were exempted from the award. The rest of the workers were not included at all. Some unions, such as those in the construction trades and timber workers, had gained it earlier and so were not con- cerned. The workers in the exempted engineering factories immediately protested, eventually struck, and then were threatened by judicial order, with fines and imprisonment if they did not return to work. So the matter stands at the moment. The result is that labor is demanding changes in the arbitration act that the Government will probably grant, which will facilitate the meeting of employers and employees in conciliation committees on the round table idea before going to court, and presumably after, when the award is displeasing. Those hostile to the unions contend that they are scheming to emasculate and destroy the court and so return to direct action. With one or two exceptions the labor leaders profess loyalty to the court, but contend that they have interests that they cannot allow court awards to contravene, and when awards do contravene them they have no alternative but to fight. In other words, loyalty to the union program comes before loyalty to the court. The result is that Australian workers have not yet achieved the universal forty-four hour week. The engineers' case was but a partial victory for that trade, and no gain at all for the movement. It is announced that thirty-five other unions are ibout to go before the court in an effort to gain the forty-four hour week. Judge Beeby, who made the final award in the engi- neers' case, made provision for "piece work, bonuses, and similar devices for individual bargaining instead of col- lective bargaining." Consequently the unions interpret it as "an attack on working class conditions." Dissatisfaction with the court was made sufficiently acute by the trouble over the forty-four hour week, but it was made doubly acute by injecting into the controversy the matter of piece work. Australian labor is as strongly opposed to piece work as it is in favor of forty-four hours. As pointed out the unions are opposed to any device that will increase the pro- duction of wealth without giving them a share in the acru- ing advantages. In the matter of piece work they con- tend that it both speeds up the worker and lower? wages. They stand for the weekly wage. A delegation of trade union officials recently waited upon the Attorney General (in the absence of the Prime Minister) and Mr. C. A. Crofts, a principal figure of the movement, said in pa workers did not want 'our hour week at the expense of their health, or at thi doning union rules and customs. They belie* to a forty-four hour week without tagging on "speed- ing up" methods. It now seemed they were expected to buy need working week at the expense of their health. The CHILD STUDY ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA announces the following Study and Discussion Groups for parents, teachers and social workers to be held at head- quarters, 54 W. 74th St., X. Y. C, for the season 1927-1928: Infancy and Early Childhood Early Childhood Child Development and Child Training The Child from 6 to 12 Introduction to General Child Study Sex Education for Parents Progressive Methods in Education Changing Concepts of Child Training Vocational Guidance Mental Hygiene The Adolescent in Modern Society Scientific Ethics These Study Groups will be led by members of the staff of the Child Study Association and other specialists in child development. Registration October 18th, 19th and 20th. For complete pro- gram address Child Study Association 54 West 74th Street -:- New York City Telephone Endicott 8298. Give the People Their Own War Power By THOMAS HALL SHASTID, M. D., LL. B., etc. ALMOST the whole world is filled, now-a-days, with questions and discussions on peace and war. Especially, How can the world attain, if at all, to per- manent peace? Yet not one person in ten thousand understands that, in no country on the globe, have the people themselves any vote, or legal say-so of any sort or kind, on war. What -would happen if, in the four or five dominant nations of the world, the war-making power were removed from the hands of just a few politicians and placed in the hands of the people gen- erally? To answer that question Dr. Shastid has writ ten this book. .1 volume that no one can read without a profound modifica- tion of all hi! peacc-and-ii-ar I'ieius. A peace hook, yet a Jt'AJIR book. Price, postpaid, $2.00 GEORGE WAHR, Publisher ANN ARBOR, MICH. s please mention The Nation

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Oct. 19, 1927] The Nation 435 EDUCATIONAL STATE BANK BlOO • FIFTH AVENUE AT 114 STREET PREPARES FOR ALL COLLEGES Preeminent in faculty, time saving in method ; a keen school for those who want good teaching. Moderate fee. Catalog 3-R upon request. FOR RENT IN Westchester, thirty minutes from New York, ■mall house suitable for writer or professional person ; furnished, for year, one hundred and thirty- five dollars monthly. Write Box 892, % The Nation. AQ WEST 84th Street: Unfurnished parlor floor, ^iO three light rooms, steam heat, parquet floors, tile bath, shower, kitchenette, suitable for studio. $100 a month. Lease. COUNTRY PLACE WANTED WANTED to Rent or Purchase — A country place within 50-100 miles of New York. Garden, orchard. Must be beautifully situated and con- venient for year-round residence. Suitable for poultry, fruit and stock raising. Send photographs to Box 920, % The Nation. POSITIONS WANTED «-pEACHER-PSYCHOLOGIST, experienced in mod- J- ern educational techniques, seeks opening in private family caring for child 3-7 years; will han- dle all behavior problems. Training in self-reliance, initiative thru work and play. Box 905, % The Nation. M USICIAN— Young lady, well-educated, OS prac- tice teacher and tutor for children. in musie and languages. Box 916, % Th j Nation. wc POSITION WANTED as secretary, correspondent or translator. Young man, age 30. Hollander, perfect use of French, German, English, Dutch (some Spanish). Doctor Law and Science; highly recommended. Reply by letter: Hage, Room 1904, 104 Fifth Avenue, New York City. INTELLIGENT young man, married, scholarly and adroit, seeks position of culture and prom- ise. NO REAL ESTATE, Insurance, Canvassing jobs. Box 918, % The Nation. "\7"OUNG lady, two years college education ; wishes J- position in which intelligence is required. Box 917, % The Nation. rOMAN of culture with training and practical knowledge of Interior Decorating wishes posi- tion in New York. Experience in buying, selling, shopping. Florence Herrick, 91 Hope St. Stam- ford, Conn. Xj'XPERIENCED, responsible woman, college grad- -*-' uate, would like part time work. Free morn- ings until 2 :30. No soliciting. Box 921, % The Nation. . /"ORGANIST and musical director, 15 years' church experience, 20 years in Motion Pictures, wishes position as organist or director in high class theatre. Address H. Humphrey. 118-31 Queens Blvd., Forest Hills, L. I. or Phone Boulevard 5071. COUPLE WANTED COUPLE, Jewish preferred, to take care of 7- year-old, motherless girl and household in ex- change for comfortable home in suburbs of Newark, N. J., and reasonable remuneration. Box 916, c/c The Nation. TUTOR WANTED "VTOUNG man, college student, Russian, wishes to J- take lessons in accent correction either for monetary payment or in exchange for Russian les- sons. Party with previous experience in accent correction preferred. Box 922, % The Nation. RESEARCH WORK WASHINGTON, D. C. RESEARCH— Detailed re- search work done for writers, speakers, etc. Library of Congress and Govt. Depts. covered. Dorcv Cole, 920-17th St. N. W., Washington, D. C. THOUSANDS CHEER the street cars in Qrand Rapids The people of Grand Rapids cheered a parade of new street cars. They were proud of them. Light, speedy cars they were, with comfortable seats and quiet motors. They ran faster, carried more passengers, and saved power every mile. Grand Rapids, like scores of other cities today, is helping people to realize more and more — that the public must be served. — that the demand for such a service will continue. — that more passengers can be carried by the trolleys with less traffic congestion. — that extensive improvements are being made. Thousands cheered in Grand Rapids. Why? Because they appreciated the expression or service. Since 1888, General Electric engineers have continually contributed to the industry. G-E designed motors are used on Grand Rapids cars, and on subway cars, city and interurban lines, and electrified divisions of steam railways. G-E safety devices, brakes, and control are also a part of this complete, modern transportation service. GENERAL ELECTRIC •CONTACTS" CLUB CONTACT WITHOUT FRICTION I ARE you mentally isolated? "Contacts," lit correspondence club, puts you in touch with versatile, unconventional minds. No formalities. Books loaned free ; members. Membership fee: $2.00, year. Particulars free. (stamp please) Write: Merlin Wand. Manorsville, Pa. SHARE APARTMENTS T">\VO business girls want young woman to 6hare their attractive studio apartment. Ideal Idea- tion (13th St.). Reasonable. References exchanged. Call Wa leasc mention The Nation

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436 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3250 The MINISTER: Is it piece work you are now alluding to? Mr. Crofts: Yes. The workers wanted to get over the difficulty without interfering with continuity of operations. But they were determined to resist what they considered unfair conditions. . . . Bonus system and piece work. Yet some unions have accepted piece work when it appeared to their advantage to do so. They, however, would cheer- fully abandon it. The cigar workers have accepted it. So have the clothing workers, in part. The unions will, how- ever, accept piece work only to the extent that circumstances force them to do so, and will agitate for its abolition at all 111 It is idle to compare Australian industrial conditions with American. American industrial strategy with regard to labor is based on the existence of a large body of un- skilled, unorganized labor. The technical methods of pro- duction are made possible by the presence of a huge home market. Neither condition exists in Australia. Neverthe- less the Australian unionist has a horror of the possible Americanization of Australian industry. Writing in the Union. Voice (Melbourne), Mr. Don Cameron of the Stew- ards Union, says: In a word, the Americanizing of Australia means that the workers of Australia, so far as it is possible to do so, are to be more effectively organized for the production of wealth, and more effectively rendered incapable of becoming self-conscious and masters of their own lives and the wealth that they produce by their labor. And then, as in America, and as the inevitable outcome, we would have here in Australia more of the ignorant and arrogant type of employers and their degenerate progeny; more crime and private murders, such as street executions and mob lynchings; more corruption and immorality both in public and private life; more religious bigotry of the anti- evolution and Ku Klux Klan brand; more sexual grossness and perversity in literature and the theaters; more drug fiends and freak social reformers; more weird Negro jazz music and the antics and dancing of primitive man; more of the extremes of the uncultured wealthy and the cringing poor, and more generally of men and things that are not only positively dangerous, but also the very antithesis of healthy and progressive social life. Perhaps this is an extreme statement, but it certainly ex- presses, when reduced to lowest possible terms, the Austra- lian attitude. And once again it is necessary to come back to the original proposition: The labor problem in Australia is linked up, like nearly every other problem, with the popu- lation problem. The interests of employer and employee are diametrically opposed on this issue. The one that con- trols immigration policy has the balance of power. Contributors to This Issue Ida Treat is an American living in Paris who has fre- quently contributed articles to The Nation. Dexter M. Keezer is in the Department of Economics and Commerce at the University of North Carolina. H. L. Mencken is editor of the Americari Mercury. J. Frank Dobie is secretary and editor of the Texas Folk- lore Society. Ernestine Evans is a frequent contributor to current magazines. ISRAEL FRIEDLAENDER CLASSES Teachers Institute — Jewish Theological Seminary An Opportunity FOR JEWISH YOUNG MEN AND WOMEN To Become Acquainted More Intimately and More Intelligently with JEWISH HISTORY: Biblical, Post Biblical. M JEWISH LITERATURE: Biblical, Post Biblical HEBREW: Eleme RELIGION: Customs and Cercm 1 Teachings OTHER SUBJECTS: ( /;' there are I applicants to form a cla PROFESSIONAL TRAINING FOR THOSE WHO WANT TO TEACH IN JEWISH SUNDAY SCHOOLS AND LEAD CLUBS IN JEWISH INSTITUTIONS Classes are arranged in various sections of the city and according to the needs of the students. For further c apply at the Central Office 34 Stuyvesant Street Telephone, Lexington 3094 STATEMENT OF THE OWNERSHIP, MANAGEMENT. CIRCU- LATION, ETC.. REQUIRED BY THE ACT OF CONGRESS OF AUGUST 24. 1912, OF The Nation Published weekly, Wednesday, at New York, N. Y., for October 1, 1927. State of New York, } County of New York, J ' Before me, a Notary Public in and for the State and country aforesaid, personally appeared Oswald Garrison Villard, who, having been duly eworn according to law, deposes and says that he is the editor and publisher of The Nation and that the following is, to the best of his knowledge and belief, a true statement of the ownership, management (and if a daily paper, the cir- culation), etc., of the aforesaid publication for the date shown in the above caption, required by the Act of August 24, 1912, embodied in section 411, Postal Laws and Regulations, printed on the reverse of this form, to wit: 1. That the names and addresses of the publisher, editor, managing editor, and business managers are : Publisher — Oswald Garrison Villard, 20 Vesey Street. New York. N. Y. Editor — Oswald Garrison Villard, 20 Vesey Street, New York N. Y. Managing Editor — Freda Kirchwey. 20 Vesey Street, New York, N. Y. Business Managers — None. 2. That the owner is: (If owned by a corporation, its name and address must be stated and also immediately thereunder the names and addresses of stockholders owning or holding one per cent or more of total amount of stock. If not owned by a corporation, the names and addresses of the individual owners must be given. If owned by a firm, company, or other unincorporated concern, its name and address, as well as those of each individual member, must be given.) The Nation, Inc., 20 Vesey Street. New York, N. Y. Katherine S. Dreier, Central Park West, New York, N. Y. Agnes Brown Leach. 160 East 64th Street. New York, N. Y. Ellen McMurtrie, 1104 Spruce Street, Philadelphia, Pa. Mary McMurtrie. 1104 Spruce Street, Philadelphia, Pa. Maria C. Scattergood, 355 Bourse Street, Philadelphia, Pa. R. L. Selene. 334 California Street, San Francisco. Cal. Fanny Garrison Villard. 525 Park Avenue. New York, N. Y, Oswald Garrison Villard, 20 Vesey Street. New York. N. Y. Edward S. Waters, 52 William Street, New York, N. Y. Maurice Wertheim, 44 Pine Street, New York. N. Y. Margaret DeSilver, 9S Joralemon Street, Brooklyn, N. Y. 3. That the known bondholders, mortgagees, and other security holders owning or holding 1 per cent or more of total amount of bonds, mortgages, or other securities are: (If there are none, so state.) None. 4. That the two paragraphs next above, giving the names of the owners, stockholders, and security holders, if any, contain not only the list of stock- holders and security holders as they appear upon the books of the company but also, in cases where the stockholder or security holder appears upon the books of the company as trustee or in any other fiduciary relation, the name of the person or corporation for whom such trustee is acting, is given ; also that the said two paragraphs contain statements embracing affiant's full knowl- edge and belief as to the circumstances and conditions under which stock- holders and security holders who do not appear upon the books of the com- pany as trustees, hold stock and securities in a capacity other than that of a bona fide owner: and this affiant has no reason to believe that any other person, association, or corporation has any interest direct or indirect in the said stock, bonds, or other securities than as so stated by him. 5. That the average number of copies of each issue of this publication sold or distributed, through the mails or otherwise, to paid subscribers during the six months preceding the date shown above is (This infor- mation is required from daily publications only.) OSWALD GARRISON VILLARD, Editor and Publisher. Sworn to and subscribed before me this 29th day of September, 1927. [Seall Mary E. O'Brien (My commission expires March 30, 192S.) 11 her. writing to advertisers please mention The Nation

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The Nation FOUNDED 1865 Vol. CXXV NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 2G, 1927 No. 3251 Contents EDITORIAL PARAGRAPHS 437 EDITORIALS: Calling Men by Their Right Names -110 Exhibitions and Expositions 411 What Is Happening in China 441 Well. Then, a Short Cheer 442 IN THE PRESIDENTIAL YEAR. By Hendrik van Loon 113 IT SEEMS TO HEYWOOD BROUN. By Heywood Broun 444 SINCLAIR AND FALL ON TRIAL. By Raymond Clapper 445 HINDENBURG HAS A BIRTHDAY. By Dorothy Thompson 447 THE SUBWAY. Bv Allen Tate 448 AMERICANS WE LIKE: RUTH HANNA McCORMICK. By Mildred Adams 449 ' IN THE DRTFTWAY. By the Drifter 450 CORRESPONDENCE 451 BOOKS AND PLAYS: Poem. T!v Chard Powers Smith 453 Fascism Before the Bar of History. By W. Y. Elliott 453 Pure Novel. Bv Clifton P. Fad^man 454 The Tmmortal Nazarene. By John Haynes Holmes 455 A Bold Book. Bv Talbot Faulkner Hamlin 455 Books in Brief 456 Drama : Black Ecstasy. By Joseph Wood Krutch 456 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS SECTION : Labor's League of Nations Explodes. By Heber Rlankenhorn i«0 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 HEYWOOD BROUN 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. Sfi 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 NATION is on file in most miblic and college libraries and is indexed in the Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature. THE IMPERTINENCE of our naturalization courts has never been better illustrated than in the case of Madame Rosika Schwimmer, well known author and lec- turer, who wants to become a citizen of the United States. Judge Carpenter, dean of federal district judges, before whom she appeared to be granted her final citizenship papers, denied her petition. Having ascertained that she was both an "unqualified atheist" and a pacifist, his Honor put to her this pretty little fiction: "If you were a nurse, caring for a wounded American soldier, and observed an armed enemy approaching, would you take up a pistol and «hoot the enemy?" To this bit of nonsense, which Madame Schwimmer was kind enough to consider seriously instead of informing the judge that his question was irrelevant and immaterial, the answer was: "No." Madame Schwimmer added that she would warn the "wounded American soldier" of his danger, and that she would throw herself on the "armed enemy approaching" in an attempt to disarm him. "I would not kill a man even if he tried to kill me," she said. Judge Carpenter would doubtless be one of the last to deny that this was a Christian country; but he is not willing to suffer Christian sentiments from a professed atheist : "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you . . . resist not evil; but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also." Surely Judge Carpenter ha? hoard those words before; it is perhaps just as well that the man who spoke them first is not seeking to become a citizen of the United States. CARTER GLASS is on the war-path against the State Department's policy of supervising private loans to foreign governments and corporations. The practice grew up in Mr. Hughes's day of "requesting" American investing houses to submit their proposed loan contracts to the State Department, objecting to some and giving the others a form of indorsement. The objections may have been sound; but the procedure was both extra-legal and dangerous. The Nation some years ago exposed one banking house which assured investors that the State Department would hardly give its approval if it were not ready to use gunboats in the future as it has used them in the past; and since then the Department has been diligent in asserting that its approval involved no promise of protection. The implication, of course, remained; the policy smelled like the pre-war Euro- pean custom of using private loans as instruments of politi- cal aggrandizement and gave indorsed loans a better chance with investors than unindorsed domestic loans. Some of the State Department's actions, also, have shown plainly that it meant to use its powers as a form of diplomatic pressure. Mr. Glass points out these dangers; he also insists with cogency that the Department of State has no more right to prohibit the sale of American credits abroad by the National City Bank, the Chemical National Bank, or the house of Morgan, or all these combined, than it has to favor or veto the sale to the European trade of the products of General Motors, the United States Steel Cor- poration, Henry Ford, or any other private concerns in this country. FOR IMPUDENCE, sheer and unadulterated, of the most unblushing kind the first prize goes without question to Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. This is the gentleman who is just now attacking Governor Smith and laying at his door the misgovernment of the city of Albany — although the Gov- ernor is the Governor of New York State and not the Mayor of Albany — and threatening that if he does not get a cate- gorical answer in the next week he will make still further revelations and carry them right to the Governor's door. Now the man who says this is the same young gentleman who was the Assistant Secretary under Edwin Denby when the Navy Department consented to turning over the Teapot Dome and Elk Hills naval reservations to Messrs. Doheny and Sinclair, both of whom have been found guilty by the Supreme Court of havincr corruptly acquired these great resources. It has been alleged on Roosevelt's behalf that he did not understand the significance of Teapot Dome, though he has been charged with drafting the transfer order which President Harding signed, but, as we said at the time, a son of that President of the United States who sponsored and forwarded the conservation policy has no right to plead ignorance on such a score. Instead of re- signing in protest, young Roosevelt had his brother made vice-president of one of Sinclair's companies; the brother later testified that he drew a fat salary, but did practically nothing. The same Theodore Roosevelt himself signed the

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438 The Nation rVoI. 125. No. 3251 ord< r for the sending of a handful of armed marines under Captain G. K. Shuler to the Teapot Dome reserve for the purpose of expelling certain trespassers, in the interest of Mr. II. F. Sinclair. Mr. Roosevelt is one of the last men in America to talk to Governor Smith about civic virtue. FROM SEVERAL READERS we have received protests in regard to our recent paragraph on Ruth Manna McCormick (Mrs. Medill McCormick). These correspond- ents do not deny that because of her personal charm, her rare ability, and her extraordinary knowledge and under- standing of politics, Mrs. McCormick is a most interesting figure in our political life, as set forth in the article we print elsewhere, but they call attention to the fact that she appears to have struck hands with the Crowe-Thompson machine than which, so writes one reader, "there is no more corrupt political gang in the country." Since Governor Small seems to have allied himself with Thompson, Mrs. McCormick is thus tied up with another one of the most deplorable figures in our governmental life. Again, Mrs. McCormick does not seem to have supported for reelection Judge Jerecki, who has been doing such admirable work in sentencing judges and clerks of election of both parties to jail for their criminal practices on election day. These are discouraging things to report about one who has in the past played an independent part in political life surprising in view of her inheritance. We shall see what we shall see, but we do not hesitate now to say that if Mrs. McCormick is really going to tie up with men like Thompson and Small for the sake of getting office she will gravely injure and not aid the political life of America and the position of women therein. We shall continue to hope that she will take a stand against the men who now control Chicago and Illinois. PITTSBURGH, MELLON, COOLIDGE: the words flow with ease. But when one tries to say "Pittsburgh, injunction, Mellon, striking miners," the words refuse to mix. Probably President Coolidge noticed this, and so, speaking in Pittsburgh as a guest of Andrew Mellon, he simply left out the intrusive words. Instead, he delivered himself of these mellifluous thoughts: Andrew W. Mellon and Richard B. Mellon stand out as men who arc devoting themselves to the service of hu- manity, one by remaining as a leader in great financial and industrial enterprises and the other by turning his great talents to the administration of the treasury of the United States, where his leadership in the last six years has been greatly instrumental in restoring the industi of the world. As to the ranks of unskilled labor, the Pre ■' this masterly phrase: "Their condition is gre; • what they ever before received." Meanwhile, close to 100,000 miners had been on strike since April i. asking a mere living wage, and Judge Schoonmake iust issued one of the most sweeping injunctions in labor hi F JUDGE SCHOONMAKER'S FIAT i ively en- forced— and the Pittsburgh Terminal ( ttion has already posted a bond of $50,* 00 tempts of the organized, miners to bargain or to maintain union wages will be prohibited. The union men must not use "abusive language"; they must not parade in the vicin- ity of the mines; nor must they interfere with | i.e.. talk to] corporation employees or their families. In fact, any act which might interfere with the production, mining, trans- portation, or shipment of coal is restrained by the court. In addition to the foregoing restrictions, the corporation has won legal permission to regain possession of company- owned houses occupied by striking miners. Hitherto the lower courts had prevented the eviction of the strikers from company-owned houses; but the New York Times quotes Lee Hall, of the United Mine Workers, as saying: When the courts decided that the families could remain on the property, the company forbade trespassing on its property. This rule was applied to milk drivers, to the de- livery of foodstuffs, and even doctors were refused permis- sh n +o visit the striking miners unless given permission by the company. Families were prohibited from visiting one another unless the company agreed to allow such visits. In some instances representatives of the company tore the doors off houses, removed the roofs and windows, and did everything they could to make the places uninhabitable; all this despite the fact that the union has furnished bond to guarantee payment of rent. Mr. Coolidge might have looked around before asserting the conditions of unskilled laborers are "greatly im- proved over what they ever before received." THE BRITISH MENACE is not only confined to Chi- cago, where School Superintendent McAndrew is be- ing tried, among other charges, for having permitted "pro- British" textbooks to poison the minds of his young charges. "Modern History," a textbook compiled by Carl- ton Hayes and Thomas Parker Moon of Columbia Univer- sity, is being attacked by the New York Veterans of Foreign Wars as containing "subtle falsehoods designed to restore America into sentimental, spiritual, and political subjection to Great Britain." The statement further says: "The inspired men of sublime zeal and genius who startled the world with their new conception of human rights [we take it the Fathers of the American Revolution are meant] are charged with having plagiarized it all from the store of British principles." Which is perhaps natural enough, con- sidering that each of these inspired sublimities was for many years of his life a British subject, and many of them were born on England's soil itself. We confess that we are not alarmed by the prospect of a spiritual alliance with Great Britain: it seems to us the most desirable thing in the world that these two great nations, speaking the same language and with a common tradition, should be joined spiritually always, politically on occasion, and even, if neces- sary, sentimentally. The thought of America being "sub- ject" to Great Britain, or vice versa, is the veriest non- sense, and we shall be certainly in a bad way if we select our textbooks by guessing at their probable political effect. SAMUEL GOMPERS is dead; but his cautious soul still dominates the American Federation of Labor. In- deed, it becomes more cautious year after year. Its Los Angeles convention this month just marked time. Again the federation approved rigid restriction of immigration; it turned down the New York resolution calling for the "withdrawal of the war fleet and marines from China, Nicaragua, and other countries occupied by the armed forces of the United States"; it refused to associate with European labor; and it side-stepped the Boulder Dam issue. When Max Hayes of Cleveland ridiculed officials for "cool- ing their heels" in the anterooms of old-party bosses the

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Oct. 26, 1927] The Nation 439 delegates applauded, but they voted against independent political action. The high moguls of the federation have not yet recovered from the shock of indorsing La Follette in 1924, and until they get a new courage and a new faith in themselves — or until they are replaced — there will be scant progress toward a labor party in the United States. Even' the "new wage policy" which bounced into the head- lines was hardly new. The principle that gains in indus- trial productivity should spell increased wages as well as increased profits is sound enough; and labor certainly needs competent research men as well as competent publicity men to help it present its case to the public; but fundamentally unions will still have to depend upon mass economic power. And the federation still hesitates at the decisive problem of organizing the unorganized. IN SPAIN STRANGE THINGS are happening. Professor Besteiro of Madrid has dared publicly to attack both the dictator, Primo de Rivera, and King Alfonso, placing direct blame upon the two for the failure of the Moroccan cam- paign as well as for domestic difficulties. Oddly enough, Professor Besteiro's position as chief of the Socialist Party and head of the Spanish Federation of Labor seems to keep him out of jail. Five hundred persons not so influential have recently been locked up on suspicion of plotting against the government. To allay this opposition and tension throughout Spain the National Assembly has been called and is now enjoying its first session since the establishment four years ago of the Primo de Rivera dictatorship. As a democratic institution this National Assembly is a mere gesture. It presents as fine a collection of hand-picked dele- gates as any dictator ever dictated to. Of the 400 members half have been selected by de Rivera personally, and the re- maining 200 by the mayors of the municipalities, who were themselves appointed by de Rivera. Furthermore, the functions of the assembly are limited to advising. If the general unrest in Spain at present is symptomatic of a real movement for representative government, it is difficult to see how the feeble collection of wooden sticks in the Na- tional Assembly will satisfy or allay it. FLOGGINGS IN ALABAMA are not to go unpunished. After two years of the most lawless activity on the part mainly of members and even officers of the Ku Klux Klan, the grand jury has returned 102 indictmi hist 36 men in Crenshaw and Butler counties. The Klan fought bitterly to prevent such an outcome and its nolitical strength in that part of the State was considerable: to sever;. 1 cour- ageous newspapers must go the credit for having forced ac- tion by the grand jury. The jury's report is as severe an arraignment of the Klan as any Southern State has ever offered : We find that in most, if net all. of these cases these outrageous acts of hooded mobs wearing the regalia of the Ku Klux Klan are the evil fruits of leadership at war with all constituted authority and d^ne in bigoted disregard of the courts. . . . Nothing can be more cowardly . . . than for persons who call themselves men to gather together purport- ing to so gather under the banner of Christ, and . . . there before the Cross of Christ to plot and plan, to conspire and concoct, connive and conjure up the yellow deeds, the dia- bolical schemes, the unmerciful lashings, and the cowardly torturing attacks which have . . . been committed upon de- fenseless men and women, white and black, in this cor We submit that this is fine rhetoric and admirable plain speaking at the same time. The grand jury urges immedi- ate and fearless action by petit juries when the cases are brought to trial. Attorney General McCall, who, though himself a Klansman, has vigorously conducted the investi- gation, promises that the cases will be heard in the regular term of the Circuit Court beginning November 7. THE TESTIMONIAL DINNER given last Saturday to Professor Morris R. Cohen in celebration of his twenty- five years of teaching at the College of the City of New York was a significant event in the intellectual history of the city. More than a thousand persons, ranging from devoted young men only a year ago in Mr. Cohen's classes to such distinguished philosophers as John Dewey, Bertrand Russell, and Mr. Cohen's former teacher, Dean F. J. E. Woodbridge, came to pay homage to a man who has done, as Felix Frankfurter said, nothing more useful than to live a "useless" life. He has merely taught thousands of students the beautiful and impractical virtues of candor and uncom- promising intelligence. He has in his critical articles done much to call philosophers back from hasty enthusiasm for uncertified gods. The tributes were astounding in the diver- sity of their sources and subjects. Einstein wrote a letter praising Mr. Cohen as a mathematician and Justice Holmes wrote him a letter praising him as a jurist. But it was not to pay tribute to a scientist and a critic that a thousand people came together. It was perhaps above all to express their affection for an intelligence singular in its integrity and beautiful in its sweetness. It was a great occasion and should remind the city whose college boasts such a philoso- pher what it has to boast of. Speak roughly to your little boy And beat him when he sneezes. . . . BUT what can you do with a robot? The new mechanical man created by the Westinghouse Electric Company will close the door if you tell him to, but only if you speak in a voice with a pitch of 900 vibrations a second. You may shout at a human office-boy; you may throw rocks at the dog or your stenographer, and still expect a degree of respon- siveness. To a robot you must speak softly, you must be polite and kind, or you may wait all day for your commands to be carried out. The Westinghouse Company announces that three mechanical men are already at work in the War Department, earning their mechanical equivalent for bread and butter. Others are being tried out, shutting doors, turning off switches, detecting short circuits, and otherwise making themselves useful twenty-four hours a day. The ot knows nothing of union hours; he works on holidays without complaint; and, if he demands a soft, low-toned command, he is docile and obedient once he has heard it. The possibilities of this new invention are not a little frightening. We may have mechanical waiters, cooks, book agents, authors, musicians, and editors. But let us never have any robot in a situation more personal than, say, that of President of the United States. There a robot might do very well; he could easily and comfortably ride the mechani- cal horse; he could execute orders without fuss, without complaint, without objection; and he could learn to shake hands interminably, saying "Delighted" at intervals of a second or so. Such a device should be elected not for fo.ur years but for life.

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440 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3251 Calling Men by Their Right Names AGAIN a decision of the Supreme Court of the United States quickens the belief that justice may still on occasion prevail in America against wrongdoers in the seats of the mighty at Washington, against the big-business thieves who steal millions and their journalistic protectors. In the Teapot Dome case the court has followed its own precedent of the Doheny-Elk Hills suit, and has declared the leasing of the Wyoming naval-oil lands by Sinclair to have been "procured by corruption" and to have been "tainted with fraud" from beginning to end. It again brands ex-Secretary Fall, who took the $100,000 bribe from Doheny, as a "faithless public officer," and repudiates his story that the $230,000 worth of Liberty bonds passed to him by Harry Sinclair constituted a legitimate transaction. It was, the court declares, a "clandestine and unexplainable acquisition" of "sinister significance." For all time these men and their associates are thus branded as crooks by the highest court in the land, from which there is no appeal. It makes no difference what the outcome of their criminal trial now taking place m Washington will be. The Supreme Court has stamped them as faithless Americans who cheated and betrayed their country in order to line their pockets. The deep significance of this goes far beyond the re- covery of the oil lands. This is the final triumph of the move- ment to purge the government which was set on .coot by one great but bitterly calumniated American, the late Robert M. La Follette, who called attention to what was going on a year before public action began. He was ignored by the majority in the Senate and out, although The Nation and other free journals and the few Progressive Senators came to his aid. But when, under the leadership of Senators Walsh and Wheeler of Montana, the Senate inquiries were set on foot, all the forces of big business and of the commercial- ize^. daily press mustered successfully to destroy the effec- tiveness of that attack. One would have thought that these Senators were the arch criminals — not those whom the Supreme Court has just convicted of everything that was charged against them. Many of the leading newspapers printed with highest editorial approval the statement sent out by the Republican National Committee in March, 1924: If the innovation of proving honest men and public officials guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors by intro- ducing testimony of convicts and ex-convicts, crooks, forg- ers, bribe-takers, murderers, train robbers, and other crimi- nals is to be followed, then there is no end in sight of the present investigations until all the inmates of our peniten- tiaries have been put on the stand. The deliberate adoption of the policy of writing down the scandals, in which pleasant pastime no newspapers were more distinguished than our highly respectable New York Times and Herald Tribune, succeeded in confusing the pub- lic mind so that the rascals were not driven out of public office at the next election and Mr. Coolidge. who retained Daugherty and Denby and never once has lifted his voice to denounce corruption in high office, was reelected. We agree with the New York Telegram that this deci- sion of the Supreme Court is an imperishable monument to Robert M. La Follette. Just at present it must come with heartening vigor to the group of Progressives who have boldly met together, Senator Borah sitting with them, to run an honest man for the Presidency in the Republican primaries, and to declare their allegiance again to the Pro- gressive causes which have been betrayed and sold out by the Democracy of Woodrow Wilson as well as by the crooked and debased party that was once Abraham Lincoln's. Not only do the mills of the gods continue to grind exceeding fine ; the spirit of revolt cannot be downed. It is well that the editorial writers of the New York Times are again ridiculing the handful of honest men in Washington; it is proper that these new editorial assaults should appear si- multaneously with the Teapot Dome decision. If it had rested with the Times the Doheny and the Sinclair cases would never have reached the Supreme Court; they would have been smothered under its deprecations of the "muckrakers" and "scandal-mongers," the "mud-throwers" to whom, and to whom alone, wTe owe the fact that the good name of the United States has, in this matter at least, been vindicated. For ourselves, we hail with joy the announcement of Senator Borah, Senator Nye, Senator Norris, and their associates that they are determined to do their uttermost to prevent the nomination of another Harding ready to put criminals in the Cabinet, or of another Coolidge ever ready servilely to lick the boots of Big Business — as he has again done in Pittsburgh where he has praised the brothers Mellon, owners of the crookedest of crooked political ma- chines, as the type of men whom the students of Pitts- burgh's colleges should regard as the finest in the land. It is impossible to tell what results this group action will have in the country and in the next Republican con- vention, but it can only be heartening and inspiring to every decent-minded American that these men are willing once more to stand in the open to face the fresh press attacks which will come to them for championing anew the righte- ousness that brought the Cabinet crooks of Warren Hard- ing to justice. They can exert a profound influence. They can perform the magnificent public service of being once more a protestant minority. They can give to millions of citizens the opportunity to vote in the primaries for one of the finest Americans, and one of the most devoted of patriots who ever went to Washington, Senator George W. Norris of Nebraska. True. Daugherty and Fall are not yet in jail. We care nothing for that; we would not send anybody to jail as jails are now organized and run. The glorious fact is that a great wrong has been undone; that some of the millions stolen from the American people have been restored; and that the group of honest men, which makes Congress such a living force, is again on the warpath, reinforced by Sen- ator James A. Reed of Missouri. Senator Reed has just refreshingly told the truth by saying that Harry Daugherty is "as vile an insect as ever crawled across the page of time," and has drawn fresh attention to the fact that the present President of the United States never lifted a hand to expose the oil-land fraud, but "remained as mum and inactive as a Boston oyster stranded on the beach in the month of August." Thank fortune, the Republic is getting back to a period of political activity and to the good old- fashioned American practice of calling men by their right names, however high the offices they hold.

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Oct. 26, 1927] The Nation 441 Exhibitions and Expositions WHEN the Philadelphia Sesquicentennial Exhibition shut down after six ghastly months, with losses run- ning into the millions, there were many to say that the day of such exhibitions, or fairs, was over. The public, it was contended, knows so much of what is going on in the world through the radio, the movie, and the illustrated daily, that it is too sophisticated to be drawn readily to a celebration like that in Philadelphia. At the Chicago World's Fair the Venetian gondolas and the Javanese village fascinated mil- lions to whom they were entire novelties. Today every child has seen Javanese and Ceylonese villages on the screen and more romances than one in which the hero escapes the doge's headsman by lying in the bottom of a gondola as it drifts lazily along the Grand Canal. The reasoning is plausible but false. The Sesquicen- tennial failed because it deserved to fail. It was conceived in politics and born in graft, or near-graft, and inefficiency. It was never really finished and what there was did not fill the beholder with enthusiasm. The public knows when it has been fooled, and, unlike some of the spectators observed by Huckleberry Finn, did not pretend that it had seen a wonderful show in order that others might also be fooled. It went home and told the truth. By contrast a three weeks' exhibition which has just closed near Baltimore has been an amazing success — the Baltimore & Ohio celebration of the first century of its existence. Originally planned for two weeks, the "Fair of the Iron Horse" had to be extended for another week and it could have been extended indefinitely. Yet it was not advertised in New York and other cities. It was not opened by a great political light and baptized with fulsome oratory. There was no jazz, and there were no "barkers." One could spend money only for eatables, souvenirs, and soft drinks, there was no entrance fee, and the railroad charged only twenty-five cents for the round trip of sixteen miles from Baltimore and return. It was an exhibition frankly devoted to one purpose — the history of railroad transportation, and yet the place was crowded — on one weekday 81,000 per- sons jammed the trains from Baltimore until they sug- gested the New York subways. In two weeks 1,200,000 persons attended the exhibit. An entrance fee would not have deterred these crowds; they were extraordinarily in- telligent and they were extraordinarily interested in what they saw. They were obviously familiar with the movies. Yet they stood many rows deep about the Indian vil- lage, and though doubtless many had seen the movie entitled "The Iron Horse" and in dozens of films had become familiar with the prairie schooner, they were fascinated by the real schooners and the Wells-Fargo stage that appeared in the pageant. The show succeeded because it was a good show, ad- mirably put on, and the circumstance that the Baltimore & Ohio got an enormous amount of advertising out of it can- not hide that fact. It was a B. & O. show, but it was more than that. For the Pennsylvania and the New York Cen- tral were there, too, and an English railroad had sent its finest new engine, the "King George V," as an act of friend- ship and good-will. Daniel Willard, the president, and Edward Hungerford, who was the director for the B. & O., were wise enough to make this a remarkable historical exhibit and to realize that the exhibits themselves were the road's best advertisements. The visitor never felt that the B. & O. was being rammed down his throat at every turn. It was all as much worth while from the standpoint of every railroad in the country as from that of Mr. Willard's. After the first three or four days there was no need to announce the show; the banners and posters could have been taken down — the crowd would still have poured out. For the pageant given twice a day told concisely the whole story of the rise of transportation in America from the days of the Indian's birch-bark canoe and "bull-boats" to the latest train de luxe. The trains all went past the reviewing-stand under their own steam — even engines ac- quired by the B. & 0. ninety-seven years ago. The public was thrilled when, for instance, the first train ever run in Minnesota steamed past in quaint simplicity, and in old- fashioned yellow. It climbed into the latest engine-cabs with the same thirst for knowledge which made it joyously examine the first Pullman and that tragic engine, "The General," whose capture by Northern soldiers and recap- ture, with the ensuing execution as spies of some of the Federals, was one of the most daring and dramatic episodes of the Civil War. And not a cheap side-show anywhere; no fat women, no Siamese twins; just pieces of machinery, old or superb in their modernity. Nor was an automobile, or a radio, or an airplane to be seen. They did not exist for the Fair of the Iron Horse. No, exhibitions are not dead. The movie may, indeed, even have stimulated a taste for the real instead of the pictured thing. The Baltimore & Ohio has proved that crowds will come to study and be instructed, provided they are given the worth-while and the genuine in a straight- forward and honest manner. What Is Happening in China WHEN the Chinese Nationalists started North from the Yangtze River last spring, the Japanese landed troops in Shantung, advanced them inland along the rail- way, and announced that in order to protect Japanese lives and property they would not permit military operations in the neutral zones thus established. The Nationalists were unable to advance; behind the Japanese screen the North- erners reformed their forces. And after the Nationalists had been driven South the Japanese announced that they would withdraw their forces from Shantung. We have not yet heard that they have done so. The tide of civil war shifted westward. Yen Shi-shan, China's prize fence-rider, the governor of Shansi Province, who through sixteen years of revolution had managed to maintain neutrality and keep his province from the ravages of civil war, at last entered the struggle. For three years he had wavered and wabbled. He had, ostensibly, made al- liances with the North — but had slaved at home when in- vited to enter battle on the North's side. This year he flew the banner of the Nationalists and advanced against Peking. There is reason to believe that he was urged forward by promises of aid from the "Christian general," Feng Yu- hsiang, whose promises have so often proved treacherous; and the net effect of Governor Yen's attempt to take the Northern capital may be that Feng will take Yen's place as commander of the rich province of Shansi. Feng, after two years on the edge of the desert, needs a more fertile camp for his armies. At any rate, Yen's army has been

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442 The Nation [Vol. 125. No. 3251 driven back by the Northern forces which owe allegiance to Chang Tso-lin, who in turn remembers that Japan has more than once saved his forces from destruction. The center and south of China remain in the hands of vaguely defined groups of Nationalist generals; but since the collapse of the Hankow Government the generals seem to be more important than the Nationalism. No general can hold power in that territory without yielding lip- allegiance at least to the principles of Sun Yat-sen; but most of them have been crushing as ruthlessly as any Northerner the peasant associations and labor unions which gave that movement its broad basis in the civilian population. A so- called "Communist" army has established itself in Kiangsi Province and at Swatow in northern Kwangtung, but it has yet to prove itself more genuinely devoted to the people than the other armies which prey on the civilian population. Feng and Yen, in the Northwest, also declare allegiance to Dr. Sun's principles, but theirs are again personal military orships. Meanwhile, in this moment of discouragement, Japan is quietly forcing the issue and tightening her grip upon Manchuria. When, after the Washington Conference in 1922, Japan returned Shantung Province to China, she left unsurrendered the claims upon Manchuria which she had extorted from China as part of the infamous Twenty-one Demands of 1915. The Chinese Government declared that the treaty, being extorted by force majeure, was invalid; the American Government refused to recognize at least cer- tain parts of it; and for a time the Japanese Government, secure in essential control of Manchuria, seer.ied content to let the matter rest. But Japan today has a new Govern- ment, committed to a "positive policy" in China. Japan now demands that Japanese citizens be permitted to lease lands and erect buildings anywhere in Manchuria — a right not allowed foreigners in other parts of China; that China should cease building railway lines in Manchuria which parallel and rival Japan's South Manchuria Railway; that the Chinese agree to extension of the Japanese lines in Manchuria; and that the Chinese permit Japan to open a new consulate in Linkiang — a town where Japan 1 trade, but which has been a center of the Korean inde- pendence movement. Furthermore, Japan is reorganizing her bureaucracy in Manchuria, giving more power to the officials of the South Manchurian Railway — a railway which is a government in itself, with a certain territorial jurisdic- tion, its own police and schools, and its own coal and iron mines. And, finally, the Japanese Diplomatic Re- view, a semi-official publication, has been rewriting history, voicing the curious doctrine that the Chinese "have no voice at all in regard to Manchuria and Mongolia" — a plain hint of annexation to come. In North Manchuria the Japanese have encouraged the Chinese to drive the Russians out of control of the Chinese Eastern Railway. There the Japanese lose their hallowed respect for the sanctity of treaties; and the Chinese, with their open encouragement, have seized the fleet which was a joint Chinese-Russian property, taken over administration of the railway schools, flooded the offices with incompetent Chinese employees, and forced the Russians to deposit half the receipts in Chinese banks. It is, from the point of view of Chinese Nationalism, a healthy precedent, but the Japa- nese do not intend to let it be followed in South Manchuria; they are eager only to get rid of rival Russian influence. So today the question of immediate importance is not whether an army flying the Nationalist flag can take Peking, but whether the inchoate force of Nationalism will be strong enough, even in Northern territory, to stop Ja] program of gradual annexation. Well, Then,, a Short Cheer THE other heroes of the air seem somewhat more than mortal, but not Levine. And it is heartening to have a demigod capable of supplying that clay which makes for comfort utroversy. This transatlantic dying has, in its latter days, assumed grim aspects. There is need for knocking at the door and for some porter to amble on and relieve the tension with the proper touch of rowdy comedy. Others may choose to remember Lindbergh alone, facing the fell clutch of sleet, but there is more warmth in the picture of Levine bouncing about on Croydon field. They say that when the wheels of the Columbia first touched the soil of England the plane rose up again full twenty feet as if even the red earth spurned this little man in business attire. Most of the traditions of the air Levine has vio- lated. It cannot be denied that he brought to flying a dis- turbing touch of commercial instinct. However, it should be added that it was the role of Potash which he played and not that of Morgan. Out of his schemes he see'ms to have profited very little and at the moment the only rewards within his grasp appear to be a speech from Mayor Walker and a complimentary dinner in Far Rockaway. Whether it was his intent or not Charles A. Levine looms up as the pur- est amateur who ever leaped across the broad Atlantic. Chiv- alry and sportsmanship are beautiful, and a little false. Levine has earned ill-will by being far more frank than any of the others. "Lindbergh had all the luck," he is supposed to have said when the Columbia grounded ob- scurely in a German village. This was bad taste and niggling, but surely it was also an honest expression of opinion. A tactless man goes naked into the world and must fight at each cross-road in his journey. Such has been the fate of Levine. The records show that he has bickered with everyone he met in Europe except the Pope. Legends grow up around all heroes, and it may be that one anecdote associated with the flier is not quite literally true. "No," said a man across whose field Levine and Chamber- lin passed in the night, "I did not see the plane but I know they went this way because I heard them arguing." Not for Levine will be the roses and the motion-pic- ture offers. There is no evidence that he has been asked to give out autographs and kisses. Some wit has said that his return up through the canyons of New York City would be unmarked by the traditional ticker tape of triumph and that instead subpoenas would rain from every wdndow. But after all, there is no getting away from the fact that he flew across the ocean. He is not Galahad precisely or any- one in shining armor, but the Atlantic is just as dangerous and deep for the ludicrous as for the sublime. It has been something of a strain to play up to the various immaculate heroes. We have been upon our knees to the others. Now we can rise, and even stoop a little, as we reach out a hand toward this little flying tradesman, and there need be no lack of cordiality in the greeting as we shake his hand and say. with true Far Rockaway courtesy, "Excuse my glove."

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Oct. 26, 1927] The Nation 443 fywi^kcA^ *_ l&^ In the Presidential Year "My felloio-citizens, ours is the greatest country underneath the sun. We have the most powerful navy in the world. Our army is invincible. There is no limit to our resourcefulness. There is not anything which as a nation we can not achieve. . . ." Voice from the Gallery: "Hey Mister, get me a cook."

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444 The Nation [Vol. 125. No. 3251 u THE Irish are always being insulted by somebody. They take more umbrage than is good for them. At least they sometimes fail to carry it with becoming dignity. The fine old fighting Gael of the legends has dwindled into a whimperer who cries out, "There ought to be a law," when- ever he is hit. And now the proposal has been made in New York City that the toes of every Irishman shall be made a special government preserve with punitive penalties for each trespasser. Joseph McKee, president of the Board of Aldermen, wants a new ordinance empowering the Com- missioner of Licenses to close any motion-picture theater if it shows a film which tends "to ridicule, disparage, or hold up to obloquy or contempt any race, creed, or national- ity." Also the commissioner is to be empowered to proceed against such movies as are "calculated to arouse racial, na- tional, or religious piejudice, or do in fact give offense to a considerable number of any race, creed, or nationality." The members of the oppressed nationality are instructed that they "shall report same to the Commissioner of Li- censes who shall thereupon abrogate and cancel the license or licenses of the theater or theaters exhibiting such motion pictures." It is true that the proposed ordinance does not specify offenses against Irish sensitivity, but Mr. McKee stated that his bill was based on a complaint from the American Irish Vigilance Committee and that the particular films which he had in mind were "The Callahans and the Mur- phys," "Irish Hearts," "The Shamrock and the Rose," and "The Garden of Allah." Of the works listed, I have seen only "The Callahans and the Murphys." It seemed to me a silly and vulgar production and yet I cannot agree that the legal system of a great city should be radically altered because of this un- happy film. Concerning the other three upon the black list I can only guess. The inclusion of "The Garden of Allah" puzzles me. I had been under the impression that this was a story dealing chiefly with camels. Possibly it is insulting to the Arabs of New York who are prepared to come for- ward and protest in considerable numbers. It is fair for us to assume that none of the scorned scenarios offends against purity as there is already ample machinery in the State of New York to deal with such transgressions. The crime which they commit must consist of ridicule. Possibly the authors of these impertinent stories have been devilishly malignant in scoffing at the greatness of the Irish people. And even so I think it a grave mistake to summon censors. Possibly Mr. McKee has not considered the poten- tialities of his little ordinance. After all. polyglot New York harbors nationals less rich than the Irish in humorous appreciation. I should like to state the sort of case which might arise under the proposed law. Recently, within a great cinema temple, I saw a motion picture which con- tained the caption: "What is the difference between a Scotchman and a canoe? A canoe tips." This did not move me to enormous merriment, for I had heard the joke some several years ago. Still, I had not regarded it as insidious propaganda calc :o arouse national prejudice. Under the law my feelings in the mat- ter would be wholly irrelevant. This would be a matter for Scotchmen to decide. Let us suppose, then, that thirty thousand Caledonians marched to the license office with bag- pipes skirling to keep their anger hot. Even the city official would be without the power to reason why. Under the law the decision would lie wholly with the offended nationality, and the Commissioner of Licenses would be compelled to say, "Thirty thousand Scotchmen can't be wrong" and close the theater. Because of one small sorry jest "The Dance of the Hours" could never more be heard in that great' gilded audi- torium and the passing multitude of merry-makers would be compelled to walk full half a block to find another theater in which to get a baritone version of "The End of a Per- fect Day." Mr. Cecil de Mille might some day, God forbid, produce "Hamlet" upon the silver screen. What if the director were incautious enough to let the harassed Prince exclaim, "There's something rotten in the state of Den- mark"? This should be enough to make Danes descend upon the City Hall in clusters crying out for cloture. Atheists might with perfect logic protest against that gi-eat million-dollar Biblical masterpiece "The King of Kings" on the ground that this Gospel narrative tended to hold the creed of unbelief up to contempt. I'm afraid they would not get far, for it is always difficult to gather atheists together in considerable numbers for any purpose. Gener- ally they are too busily engaged in good deeds to take up organization. The Chinese, also, might fail in procuring the suppression of "Broken Blossoms," though this tale from "Limehouse Nights" most certainly falls within the classification of themes disparaging a race. It might be remarked parenthetically that when the Negroes of New York asked for action against "The Birth of the Nation" they received but scant official attention. Under a strict interpretation of the McKee ordinance things might come to such a pass that the scenario writer wishing to include a villain among his characters wrould have to make him a Moabite or Hittite or a member of some other civic minority not numerous enough to muster con- siderable numbers even under provocation. As a matter of fact, no other nationals have come for- ward to join the Irish in their plea for censorship along racial lines. The Jews of New York have always been patient with the Perlmutters and Potashes. No Frenchman as far as I know has objected to the film tradition that every Gaul is a waiter whose articulation is limited to "Ou la la." Not all the pictures dealing with the war have been wholly sympathetic with the Germans, but as yet Mr. Yiereck has failed to raise a finger. The Portuguese and the Argentines and the Greeks, all these are mute. I think it is fair to say that of the proud peoples who dwell within the borders of NewT York none approaches the Irish in the demand for special fictional and dramatic favors. Sidney Howard's play "They Knew What They

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Oct. 26, 1927] The Nation 445 Wanted" was refused by dozens of managers before it found shelter within the chill arms of the Theater Guild. The commercial producers knew well enough that here was an excellent play, but they feared to put it on because an Irish priest was represented as being a little less than superbly educated. The notion of a rascally Irish prelate is unthinkable upon the stage of New York. No producer in the city would have dared to touch "Rain" if the un- fortunate missionary had been called Father Kelly. The present protest against cheap and vulgar films of Irish life and character would win more sympathy from me if the Celts had not been so ready in the past to accept and even applaud so large an amount of trash if only it were sentimental. I have yet to hear of any vigilance committee raising a single shillelagh against the noxious banalities of "Abie's Irish Rose." The sons of Erin were enraptured when Chauncey Olcott and his many imitators pictured the Irishman as a fellow with a heart of gold and a brain of some much softer metal, but when a truly great comedy came out of the very peat smoke of Ireland they would have none of it and rioted at the opening. I was at the first performance of Synge's "Playboy of the Western World" and heard the snarl go up — "It never happened in Ireland." After that the potatoes and stink bombs began to fly and Marie O'Neill was stunned when hit by a missile thrown by some man who had familiarized him- self with Irish life through long residence in Elmhurst. To be fair, which is not altogether my intention, not all the Irish in America were gathered in the Maxine Elliott Theater, but it sounded to me as if they were present in con- siderable numbers. Undoubtedly there were many Gaels who recognized the fine flash of Synge's play and when the piece was done again in later years there was no riot. Still, I think it is not unjust to say that the pseudo-Irishman holds greater appeal for the Irish-American public than the more authentic fellow. The Clan-na-Gael failed to decree dancing in the streets in honor of "John Bull's Other Island." If there is to be any sort of nationalistic censorship I think it might be an excellent idea to provide for a rotation of the function. Thus, the Jews could be empowered to decide what is offensive to the Irish, the French might act as censors for the Germans, and the Irish call a halt at themes too libelous toward England. This is much the better way. Surely no nationalistic decision should be left to a people whose representatives in New York seem to believe that Don Byrne is a greater Irish writer than George Bernard Shaw. Heywood Broun Sinclair and Fall on Trial By RAYMOND CLAPPER Washington, October 18 THE trial of Albert B. Fall, former Secretary of the Interior, and Harry F. Sinclair, millionaire oil man, for conspiracy to defraud the Government in the Teapot Dome affair has begun in Washington and newspaper dispatches for the next few days are going to read suspiciously like chapters from the novel "Revelry," Samuel Hopkins Adams and the government prosecutors having been inspired by the same set of facts. As the two defendants scrutinize the faces of the twelve men who are about to pass judgment on them, they doubt- less reflect hopefully on the fact that juries are not made up of justices of the United States Supreme Cou*t. Just one week before they went on trial, the Supreme Court ended the Government's civil suit to set aside the Teapot Dome lease declaring that the transaction had been fraudulent, that there had been a "clandestine" and "sinister" transfer of large funds to Fall, some of them certainly and the re- mainder probably from Sinclair, and that Fall had been a "faithless public officer." That was the highest court of the land speaking without a dissenting voice. On the same evidence that the court reviewed, the jury will decide the present criminal con- spiracy case. It is a long and devious trail that leads from the Fall ranch near Three Rivers, New Mexico, to the jury box at Washington. On New Year's Eve, 1921, Sinclair arrived in his private car at the ranch. There, so far as is known, the present codefendants first discussed the Teapot Dome project. Three months later, on April 7, 1922, Fall signed the Teapot Dome lease in strictest secrecy, giving Sinclair exclusive rights to all oil in the 9,000-acre naval reserve in Wyoming excepting about 6 per cent which eventually was to go into storage tanks to be built for the navy by Sinclair. The lease did not state the proposition so baldly, but that was the way it was to work out. In defense of the deal it was said that the navy's oil was being drained by private drillers outside of the reserve. The Supreme Court has said that the principals knew this was not the case and acted in bad faith in using it as a pretext. Even had there been serious drainage the Gov- ernment was protected, for, as Senator Walsh pointed out, the Government received 25 per cent to 50 per cent royalties on all oil from these adjacent wells. So that if every drop of Teapot Dome oil had been drained by outside wells, the Government still would have received more of it through royalties than through the Sinclair lease which cost the nation ninety-four barrels of oil for every six tanked. If Sinclair merely had outdone Fall in a trade, the Gov- ernment could have done little about it. But the prosecu- tion believes there was something more in the bargain and the Supreme Court is inclined to agree. One month after the lease was signed, and while Fall still was in the Cabinet, Sinclair, so the Government charges, caused $230,500 in Liberty bonds to reach Fall's son-in-law, M. T. Everhart, of Pueblo, Colorado. In the civil trial Everhart refused to testify as to the source of these bonds, falling back on the rule against compulsory self-incrimination. The Govern- ment traced $90,000 in bonds directly to Fall. All of the bonds were traced by serial numbers and were found to have been drawn by H. S. Osier, a Canadian lawyer, presi- dent of the mysterious Continental Trading Company, a resale corporation formed under Canadian laws about the time Sinclair was considering the Teapot Dome opportunity. Osier refused to testify in the civil trial or permit his depo-

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446 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3251 sition to be taken, and the Government never was able to get direct evidence that he was acting for Sinclair. Other witnesses left the country during the civil trial and the two most important ones, II. M. Blackmer and James E. O'Nei!, have not yet returned, despite many attempts to get them back for the present trial. As an official of the defendant Mammoth Oil Company, Sinclair did not testify in the civil suit, and the Supreme Court said: "It justly may be in- ferred thai he was not in a position to combat or explain any fact or circumstance supported by evidence and mate- rial to the Government's case." The Continental company was dissolved at about the time of the Teapot Dome investi- gation, and its records were destroyed. The Supreme said it was plain that the company was organized for "some illegitimate purpose." "The clandestine and unexplained acquisition of these b >nds by Fall confirms the belief, generated by other cir- cumstances in the case, that he was a faithless public offi- cer," the Supreme Court stated. "There is nothing in the record that tends to mitigate the sinister significance attach- ing to that enrichment." This episode was discovered by the Government's special prosecutors, Owen J. Roberts and Atlee Pomerene. Working under the most exasperating handicaps they have built up their evidence until it forms an important element in the prosecution's case. Much of the other material, practically all of it, was developed by Sena- tor Walsh in the Senate's investigation. This reveals the secrecy leading up to the lease of April 7, 1921, and the refusal of Fall to permit any information to be given out for several days thereafter until the Senate by resolution demanded it; the sharp rise in Sinclair Consolidated oil stock during this period; the loan of $25,000 in Liberty bonds made to Fall by Sinclair under circumstances which the Supreme Court considers suspicious; Sinclair's payment of $1,000,000 to clear up minor claims on the reserve and his promise to pay an equal sum to others who were t ening lawsuits over their uncertain rights; and, finally, Fall's dispatch of marines to the reserve to clear off the last stubborn squatters. That incident is best des the marine captain who led the raid, George K. Shuler. later State Treasurer of New York. He was told to i for orders to Fall; his account of that picturesque as given to the Senate committee follows: I went over to the Interior Building and the Secre- tary was waiting there and 1 went in and he said: "I have got a job for some marines. We have a naval resei" out in Wyomir Creek country, and there is an oil company that is going in there and they are tn that is, they are drilling a well," and he says, "We know that they have no rights there" and that he had called on the Secretary of the Navy to detail some marines to g and drive them off. And that he had taken the matter up with the President that morning, and that the President did not want to take this action because an officer of the company that was trespassing was a close personal friend, and contributed to the campaign fund. And Mr. Fall told me he had told the President that his friend was a low-down s.o.b., and Mr. Fall said that the President told him that he supposed he was all that when he sent him his check, and Mr. Fall said that he told the Pres "Mr. President, by God, he was." But he said the Presi- dent finally consented, and that was why the marines were to go out. He said "What would you do if they served an injunc- tion on you, signed by a federal judge?" I said "Mr. etary, I have never seen an injunction in my life, and wouldn't know one if I saw it, and if they served one on me 1 would file it." He said, "I guess you will get along all right out there." To have reached the point where his friend in the Cabinet not only gave him an exclusive right of way in this rich government oil reserve, but insisted on sending out marines with fixed bayonets to drive off Harding campaign contributors, marked new heights of power in the spectacu- lar and successful career of Harry Ford Sinclair. He had not begun very auspiciously. His father was a druggist in Independence, Kansas. Harry went to the University of Kansas to study pharmacy. When his father died, he took over the store, but he was not successful and soon he was spending his days hunting. One day he happened to shoot himself in the foot. An accident policy gave him enough to start a small business selling timber to the oil drillers in the newly opened oil fields of southeast- ern Kansas. He bought into a drilling pool. Soon young Sinclair felt the first thrill of big luck in oil. The gamble of the business gripped him and he kept on playing. He expanded rapidly and in twenty years he rose to one of the dominating places in the industry, with more than twenty companies engaged in oil producing, refining, and market- ing, in coal, water transportation, exploration, pipe lines, Mexican production, real estate, and publishing. His hold- ings reach into almost every corner of the world where there is oil. He offered to take over the entire oil business of Soviet Russia. As Sinclair's fortune mounted into the millions, and doubtless into the tens of millions, he began to enjoy the expensive luxuries of millionaires and to gratify the sport- ing instinct which had made him love the oil business. He was one of the backers of the old Federal League which undertook to break the grip of organized professional base- ball. He built up the Rancocas stables with a fast line of racing horses that included the famous Zev which a few years ago won the international race against Papyrus, the English derby winner. He became the friend of the high and mighty. Cabinet members went to the races as his personal guests. Political managers tactfully sought campaign contributions — Will Hays collected $75,000 from him when the Republicans passed the hat to pay off the Harding campaign deficit. As a crowning distinction, the Kansas drug-store boy finally was offered the throne of Albania, the legend is, if he would apply his talents, and probably his bank roll, to the job of straightening out the poverty-stricken treasury of that kingdom. But the uncertainties of a Balkan kingdom offered no lure for a powerful emperor of oil. Sinclair is still in his early fifties. Such hair as he has lei: is untouched with gray. His eyes are cold and calculat- ing and there is a hard-set line about his mouth — and with some reason, for he got where he did by grim fighting in one of the most ruthless of industries. He has driven his way through obstacles by any means at hand. Results are all that interest him. He is impatient of politicians. He dislikes their nosing ways. In the La Follette gasoline in- vestigation Sinclair had to be subpoenaed before he would produce some of his records although other oil men were submitting theirs voluntarily. When he appeared before the Senate Teapot Dome committee he refused to answer certain questions and as a result was convicted by a jury of

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Oct. 26, 1927] The Nation 447 contempt of the Senate and is now under sentence to spend three months in a "common jail" and pay a $500 fine. The case has been appealed and Sinclair is free under bond'. He appears in court a sleek, somewhat defiant figure, lacking much of the sentimental appeal of the kindly, obliging Doheny. That twinkling, elderly little man suc- ceeded in creating an "old pal" atmosphere about his rela- tions with Fall. He completely disarmed the jury and they refused to believe that he was anything except a kind old gentleman who wanted to help his old friend, Fall, out of debt and to help the navy prepare itself against the Pacific war which he was told was imminent. Instead of refusing to answer the Senate committee's questions as Sinclair did, he came forward voluntarily and admitted sending the $100,000 to Fall. He repeated his story to the jury in his conspiracy trial. Sinclair has remained doggedly silent, refusing to ex- ploit sentimental or patriotic motives. In the present trial his attorneys may insist upon adopting the strategy which Doheny found so successful. But it is not Sinclair's own way. He is a fighter and bows before no storm. This is Fall's second appearance here on conspiracy charges. He did not take the stand in the Doheny trial. He never has explained his false testimony before the Sen- ate committee. After he had received $100,000 from Doheny and from Sinclair at least $35,000 testified to by Sinclair's attorney and possibly $230,500 from the Continental Trad- ing Company, he told the committee in writing: It should be needless for me to say that in the purchase of the Harris ranch, or in any other purchase or expendi- ture, I have never approached E. L. Doheny or anyone connected with him or any of his corporations, or H. F. Sinclair or anyone connected with him or any ef his cor- porations, nor have I ever received from either of said parties one cent on account of any oil lease or upon any other account whatsoever. Hindenburg Has a Birthday Bv DOROTHY THOMPSON Berlin, October U REICHSPRASIDENT, ex-Feld-Marschall Paul von Hin- denburg celebrated his eightieth birthday. He received some half million marks as a gift, which he distributed to war invalids. On his birthday itself 1,200 of the most seriously wounded — -the blind, the totally in- capacitated— got $50 apiece. In honor of this day some hundreds of political prisoners were set free from federal and state prisons. This number included all of those still imprisoned for participation in the Munich Soviet Revolu- tion: all, that is to say, except the romantic Robin Hood of the movement, Max Hblz, and Lindner, convicted of at- tempting the assassination of Ignatz Auer, then head of the Social Democratic Government. Those who were freed were all practically at the explication of their sentences. The amnesty included Count Arco, who assassinated Kurt Eisner, first President of the Bavarian Republic. But Arco, a director of the German Lufthansa, has been at large on parole for some time. The amnesty also included Major Buchrucker, notorious Fascist, leader of the Kustrin putsch of the Black Reichswehr. Hindenburg's birthday present reduced his sentence by six years. As a personal gift President Hindenburg received his ancestral estate at Neudeck — a modest property — a rather superfluous number of dinner services of porcelain, a newly planted garden, and of course tons of small tokens, oceans of letters, floods of telegrams. There were three days of continuous celebration. As for the flag question — celebrations involve meters of bunting — a "truce" was called. The President of the republic did not recognize the banner of the republic as the official symbol of the day. He pleaded for "unity" of all parties. Only the Prussian Government demanded that the black-red-gold banner be displayed on all official buildings and on the hotels. The Prussian state had a quarrel with the hoteliers about this, but won. In the city, if the writ- er's observation can be trusted, there were far more black- red-white banners displayed. With one notable exception the entire population seemed to participate in this celebration. The exception was the Reichsbanner. It is the organization for the de- fense of the republic. It has three million members, and is therefore greater than the Stahlhelm, the Werewolf, or any other national organization formed for a similar or con- flicting purpose. It refused to march in the same line with the black-red-white banners of the old regime. And of course the Communists sabotaged. Here and there, in the sections of Berlin where the proletariat dwell, they tried rather futily and rather heroically to interrupt the demonstration. They were up against Massenpsy- ehologie. The police warned carriers of red flags that they could not protect them. Toward nightfall the first day there were clashes. Twenty odd Communists were wounded by Stahlhelmists; three hundred Communists were ar- rested. A small incident. But for the rest, all Berlin was on the streets for this unique demonstration. On October 2, the day of the main festivities, the city was jammed as Rome must have been when the Pope first left the Vatican. Hindenburg is the least visible of presi- dents. Thousands came out just for a glimpse of him. The Tiergarten, the Linden, the Wilhelmstrasse, and all the streets leading to the sports stadium where the real show was to be held were black with people. Traffic despite efficient policing was at a standstill. There were innumer- able organizations and vereins, in uniforms, under banners, plated with medals and other insignia. We saw Schleswig- Holsteiners flaunting their Nordicism, Stahlhelm and Jungdo, competing in brands of patriotism, Kyffhauser — "non-political" ex-service men; half a dozen other veteran associations; "Wandervogel" and "Pathfinders," in khaki shorts, risking their lives on bicycles among the motor cars and lorries; street-car employees (the workers waiting until the celebration was over to begin their strike) ; mem- bers of the automobile club; students of the corps (seas of red, blue, and green caps) ; fifty thousand school-children in white dresses and shirts— and, we hope, in woolen under- wear; and people, ordinary people. Astonishing how many

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448 The Nation [Vol. 125, Xo. 3251 such there were. Despite the abstention of the Reichs- banner and of the Communists and the half-heartedness of the Socialists, it seemed to me that every class of the population of Berlin, from porter to banker, from shopgirl to Schieber's wife, was represented in that vast crowd, eight kilometers long, who formed a cheering alley through which Hindenburg rode in state. The official, public festivities were harmless enough. The fifty thousand school-children sat in grandstands and waved handkerchiefs, or grouped on the stadium green sang German school songs; well-trained, sweet, clear voices, displaying that harmony and unity which the President deplores the lack of in the nation. Very touching. The October third celebration in the same place the next day was less naive. Hindenburg emerged, not as President but as Field Marshal. In place of the frock coat and silk hat of his official office he wore his uniform and medals. Instead of the Chancellor and Secretary of State he was surrounded by generals. No white-clad children sweetly sang "Ich bin ein deutsches Madchen." There was a defile of battle flags— relics of many wars — which lasted an hour and a half. There was a pageant of historic war costumes from the tunics of the Landsknechts who subdued Rome to the tin hats of the last Great War. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde? Not at ail! Two manifestations of the German Geist, which Hindenburg is supposed to incorporate, in all its properties, in his person. Through all the celebrations there was much singing of "Deutschland fiber Alles": music by Haydn, stlen from the Hapsburg anthem both by Germany and by the Chris- tian church ; words by Hoffmann von Fallersleben. On October 12, 1847, the same newspaper which an- nounced that a son, Paul, had been born to Lieutenant Benckendorff von Hindenburg carried the following item: Hoffmann von Fallersleben, who has been stopping here for two days with his friends, the von Itzsteins, has just received from the local authorities the order to leave the Grand Duchy of Baden within twenty-four hours. This man, author of "Deutschland fiber Alles," was, you see, a dangerous character. The song which rang Octo- ber 2 and 3 from black-red-white throats was written by a champion of the black-red-gold flag, who suffered for his opinions. In those days the students who flocked around him sang — not too loudly — Er hiingt auf keinem Baume, Er hangt auf keinem Strick, Er hangt nur in dem Traume Der Deutschen Republik. The gentleman whom they so cordially hanged in their Republican dreams was His Majesty, the King of Prussia. It was left to Major Sodenstern, leader of the Stahl- helm, addressing national associations in a little separate celebration in honor of Hindenburg's birthday, to say. "the true Hindenburg spirit cannot be realized until Germany is again an empire under a German Kaiser, and under the red-white-black flag." And Hindenburg. expressing his own birthday wish for the republic, referred to the spirit of 1870, to the spirit of 1914. but not to the spirit of 1S4S, into which he was born. And the "Birthday Child" himself — as the Germans quaintly call those of any age who have a right to cake and candles? Ah, well, eighty is old — even for Hindenburg. A square-headed, square-shouldered old gentleman, the broad- cloth tight on his stocky body, his top-hat in his hand. (Oh, festival of top-hats, symbols of the bureaucracy, mighty as steel helmets, what a day it was for you!) His hair was cropped in true German fashion, mowed with the clippers, his quaint moustaches wreathed his heavy, trembling jowls. His face was impassive. h. Hindenburg!" they called — students and shop- girls and veterans and bureaucrats; "Hoch, Hindenburg!" He bowed, but did not smile. Only when he left his motor to mount to the flag-decked loge reserved for him, only then did an expression come into his eyes. Twenty steps rose before him; twenty steps, a flight of steep stairs. His brow contracted; he looked dismayed. Then he began toil- ing upward, quietly, steadily. It was his duty. Hinden- burg has always done his duty. We thought of Lion Feuchtwanger's birthday wish for him. (German writers were each asked to express a birth- day wish.) Feuchtwanger wrote one word: "Rest." Well, and what did it all mean? The taps under the President's balcony, forty orches- tras, nationalist organizations defiling, and the veterans proud in their long unused uniforms, the school-children and the shopgirls and the amnesties and speeches of Major Sodenstern and Count Westarp. Was it a sincere demon- stration? We think, yes. Granted that the gentlemen of the old regime made the most of it. But the demonstration did not have the character of a Potemkin village. Did it mean, as Walter Hasenclever rather hysterically shouted, that all Germany is willing to go to war again tomorrow and that there is no republic? We think not. No Hohenzollern — at least no birthday party of Wil- helm II — ever got out such a crowd as celebrated Hinden- burg's fourscore years of life and service. When a com- moner can embody such symbolic significance, a restoration is not imminent. But for those who have prayed in Ger- many for a "revolution d'esprit" — for them it was a sad day. Germany greeted in her President the man who stabil- ized the republic on the basis of the Wilhelmian tradition, who proves in his person and his office that the form of the state is not the essence of the state ; Germany celebrated in him the continuity of tradition. This celebration was an admission — let us admit — of the failure of the revolution. But where is revolution prized today? The Subway By ALLEN TATE Dark accurate plunger down the successive knell Of arch on arch, where ogives burst a red Reverberance of hail upon the dead Thunder, like an exploding crucible! Harshly articulate musical steel shell Of angry worship, hurled religiously Upon your business of humility Into the iron forestry of hell : Till broken in the shift of quieter Dense altitudes tangential of your steel, I am become geometries — and glut Expansions like a blind astronomer Dazed while the worldless heavens bulge and reel In the cold revery of an idiot.

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Oct. 26, 1927] The Nation 449 Americans W e Like Ruth Hanna McCormick By MILDRED ADAMS IN the morning papers of Septem- T h e F i f t h ber 29, occupying front-page space out of all apparent proportion ° J *■ c r s ° n a ' to its importance, appeared the an- nouncement of a woman's candidacy for public office. "I have been asked for a statement of my political intentions"; it began almost as though apologizing for in- truding on the attention of the honorable editors. And then after a short and simple account of the length of her public service, she justified the intrusion and caught the headlines with "I choose to run for the Republican nomination for Congressman-at-large from Illinois in the April primary of 1928." That phrase "I choose to run" is no mere twist of Presidential words, but an actual statement of fact. For two years Ruth Hanna McCormick has been in the position of a small girl playing London Bridge. She has had her choice between a diamond coach drawn by eight snow-white horses harnessed in platinum, and a golden frosted birthday cake as high as the Woolworth Tower. The office of Repre- sentative, Governor, Senator — all of them have been pol- ished on political coat sleeves and dangled in front of her sensitive nose. "If only she would make up her mind" groaned the political gentlemen. Then they could decide what was to be done about her. But as long as she concentrated on her political fences, and went on digging post-holes and stretch- ing wires, she kept them distinctly uneasy. More than one sigh of relief must have gone up to high heaven the morn- ing she announced that she would definitely run for an office. Ruth Hanna McCormick is one of the few women in the United States who wields political power in terms that professional politicians recognize. Her friends and her influence run through the whole fabric of political lite, from the White House to the muddiest village on the east bank of the Mississippi River. She is the friend of presi- dents and of farm hands. She has presided at banquets in Washington and at schoolhouse suppers in Walnut Center, Illinois. On the top side, where "influence" is part of the very air, she was the only child and the constant companion of Mark Hanna, Senator from Ohio and maker of presi- dents. She married Medill McCormick, child of the har- vesters, part owner of the most powerful reactionary news- paper in the Middle West, millionaire, and Senator from Illinois when he died in 1925. With such a position among the politically mighty, and with the affection and admira- tion they have for her, there was no reason why she should not have been given any honorary and ornamental job she pleased. But she did not please. Her interest lay not in appointments, but in votes. She was made National Republican Committeewoman from Illinois, and in that position she set about the un- grateful task of "educating" voters. She went to villages and attended farm-center meetings. She drove over the deep-soiled length and breadth of Illinois, learning the ideal in a S e r i e S needs, and interpreting the national . issues. She listened gravely to the III) I ortraitS district leader's plea for a new post — office, and explained to his flock the position of the national Republican Party in regard to the World Court. And she organized her Women's Repub- lican Clubs. Those are the groups whose existence makes the bosses shiver. Because of them, they say that Mrs. McCormick is the first woman who has built up her own machine. She probably would not like the term, downright though she is in using plain words for simple facts. "I believe in education rather than in propaganda," she said in conversation a year ago. "It is bad theory and bad prac- tice to subsidize any idea in a democracy. We present to the women the conflicting ideas that prevail within the party, and encourage them to think for themselves and to form their own opinions." Her brand of "education" is interesting enough so that several thousand women, in ninety out of the hundred and two Illinois counties, are members of the clubs and pay dues to them. They are outside the regular Republican organi- zation of the State, and party bosses have learned that they look to Mrs. McCormick for leadership. And it is never certain where she will lead them. No one is guaranteed "safe" who opposed Governor Small and fought Frank Smith in the primaries — though she supported him at the regular election. For that matter, Mrs. McCormick is "safe" from no one's point of view. The machine can't count on her and the progressives can't count on her. She has denounced the machine on occasion, and on occasion she has made alliances with its tools. As a rule she does her fighting within the party, and if she loses accepts defeat and obeys the party's orders. She is a tall, slim woman, this uncertain power, her wrists almost transparent, her fingers long and flexible and shaped for fashioning things. Her mouth is wide and firm. A steady flame burns in the brown depths of her eyes. No mere prettiness mars the interest of her face. Mobile, vig- orous, it has a fascination that transcends color and con- tours. She wears simple clothes, well tailored, and she for- gets about them as soon as they are on. She showed the shock of her husband's sudden death only in black clothes and shadowed eyes. She neither re- tired from the world to nurse her grief, nor made political capital out of her position as a Senator's widow. She had been interested in politics since childhood. She continued that interest. And if she worked a little harder, if her nerves were a bit more taut, and her slender bones a bit nearer the surface, only her friends knew that. Myths gather quickly around a figure so able and so picturesque. The story of her childhood is assuming the proportions of a national legend, told by her friends to show how wise and how experienced she is, and by her enemies to prove that with such a background she must not be trusted. She was her famous father's playmate. A wiry, long-legged

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450 The Nation [Vol. 125. Xo. 3251 child, she drove over the countryside with the man who made McKinley President, and poked into his mines, or sat curled up in a comer till long past bedtime, intent on the twists and turns of conversations whose results were to the whole country. As she grew up she became Boss llanna's secretary, went faithfully to the Senate and the House to listen and report on speeches, and kept regular office hours no mailer how late she had been dancing the night before. She absorbed the language, the routine, and the intangible spirit of politics. Argument and a fight for power became the breath of life. Her teacher was politi- cally the biggest man in the United States. His pupil adored him, and was flatteringly, and sometimes annoy- in gly, apt. But it takes more than the accidents of parenthood and association to make such a politician as is the lady from IlHnois. She is first of all a person — of force and character and individuality. Politics to her is neither a toy nor a garment to be donned for a day, but a means of expressing herself, a channel of contact between her and the world. A very articulate person, she has a concrete, salty habit of phrasing that catches and holds attention whether she is talking on a platform, in a farmyard, or from the depth of a big chair. She still curls up in chairs, folded like a carpenter's rule, slim feet under her, and fingers clasping her knees. Her vocabulary holds the technical words of dairying and alfalfa culture as well as the language of child-raising and the phrases of politics. "I have spent my life studying the opinions of the American people," she said one day. And a moment later she was describing scientifically the chemical and physical make-up of a globule of Holstein milk. Ideas fascinate her, but she turns them instantly into practical terms. She likes the concrete and the tangi- ble, and she abhors the kind of vague idealism that waves blurred generalities through smoky air and calls them prin- ciples. Yet she considers herself something of a crusader. She made personal studies of stockyard conditions and worked for labor legislation when it was the most unpopular thing in Illinois. She was a vivid and active figure in the suf- frage fight. She bolted with the Progressives in 1912 even though it meant breaking the "Hanna creed" of party regularity. Perhaps the keynote of this woman is the depth of emotion with which she is endowed. She is never interested in a cause or an occupation merely on the surface. There is about her no taint of the dilettante. Things that matter to her, matter intensely, and she devotes herself to them with enormous energy. For her three children she has a depth of affection that is almost frightening. Yet she has never construed it in terms of staying with them every minute, smothering them, and winding herself into hard knots. She arranges the routine of their lives and goes about her own affairs as long as things run smoothly. But there were weeks in the winter when she broke every engagement and refused every invitation. The children were fighting measles or mastoids and no one else could take her place with them. Her farm is neither a rich woman's toy nor was it established as a source of political c.pital. It grew out of the needs of her own children. Her first baby needed spe- cial milk, which no farm in Illinois could supply. Mrs. Mc- Cormick was so horrified at the dairy conditions as they then existed that she started immediate plans for a model farm. She now has twenty-two hundred acres of rolling land on the Rock River some hundred miles northwest of Chi- cago. This is her home, her permanent address, and her voting residence. Here she is a professional farmer, rais- ing cattle for the Chicago market, breeding prize Holsteins, and most important to her, shipping certified milk for inva- lids and babies. She is trying to work out a fool-proof method of producing clean certified milk at minimum ex- pense. In spite of expensive experiment, she keeps the farm on a self-supporting basis. The Holstein Fresian Association of Cattlemen made her a member of its Board of Directors in recognition of her work, and for them she goes about the country holding con- ferences and talking over problems, equally at home in cowbarn and conference room. All this experience has given her a high quota of the traditional political equipment. She talks to farmers on a plane of equality and understanding. She has a practiced hand with babies that transcends any masculine head-pat- ting. Women are her friends and her supporters. Already the tangled filings of the Illinois political situ- ation are moving toward their magnets. The Hearst papers have always applauded Mrs. McCormick. Nov,- Mayor Thompson, whom she has attacked in the past in phrases that should have stung a skin less hardened, has announced his support. Not out of love for her, they say, or a sudden conversion, but because he is sworn to put Rathbone, the present incumbent, on the junk-heap. What she will do with the office of Congressman-at- large if she gets it, one would be rash who ventured to pre- dict. She said once in private conversation that office per se had no glamor, for she had known too many politicians to have any illusion about it. "But." she added, "there might be a political situation in Illinois where I could render definite service by running for a conspicuous office. There is no patronage for a Congressman-at-large, but he can make a lot of noise." Knowing the lady, it is at least safe to say that the noise will be interesting. A T last / * neatlv In the Driftway T last the Drifter has found a cause. It came in, folded, in an envelope postmarked New Or- leans. It was not addressed to the Drifter, but since it is well known that he has spent the best years of his life looking for a suitable cause it was immediately passed on to him. "Shady Streets for Southern Cities" is its name and the Drifter wonders why he never thought of it him- self. Nevertheless he is deeply grateful to Mr. Walter Parker of New Orleans for calling it to his attention even at this late date. ***** I AM trying to develop a new vision in the South," says Mr. Parker. "A shady Southern city is cool and com- fortable in the summer. Without shade just the reverse is true. One condition promotes business. The other retards it." "New Orleans," he goes on, would be a far more delightful place in which to spend the long summer months were there more shade — shade over every sidewalk and shade over the principal street cross- ings. Before the Americans came into control, the French and Spaniards built balconies over the sidewalks. They also

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Oct. 26, 1927] The Nation 451 built homes with heat-resisting walls and cool, shaded courtyards. They understood our climate. The Americans have torn down most of the picturesque balconies and they do not build cool shaded courtyards. Watch the people pass along the sunny side of any of our streets in July, August, and September. Their faces are drawn with the glare and heat; they hurry along in search of relief at the first shady corner. Then their features relax. Every shady spot in New Orleans is fairly comfortable in July, August, and September. There is nearly always a breeze in the shade. Let's advocate shade, more shade, and then still more shade for New Orleans; Let's capitalize the obvious comfort of shade; Let's make the creation of shade a cardinal principle of our lives here; Let's convince the storekeepers that systematic planning for shade will increase their summer business; and let's teach the children to believe in cool, shady sidewalks in place of hot sunshine. As an individual effort for the good of New Orleans I am going to advocate shade, more shade, and still more shade for New Orleans on every possible occasion. ***** THIS is an excellent cause in many ways. It has imagination. "One little acorn," Mr. Parker points out with true poetic insight, "given a chance, can grow into a mighty oak, and under that oak there will be cool, shady comfort in the warmest of weather." Moreover, it is a cause which even children can espouse with perfect safety. "Should not the schools," asks Mr. Parker, "teach the boys and girls that most of the comforts they will enjoy in this life were prepared for them by those who have gone before, and that in gratitude they should leave behind them com- forts for those who will come after?" And it is a cause exactly suited to a Drifter, because it would not interfere with his drifting. Whether he sat fishing from some sunny rock in Glacier Park or camped on an island in Maine he could still be advocating "shade, more shade, and still more shade" for New Orleans. But its best recommendation is the one which Mr. Parker himself gives it. "I do not believe that such a campaign will interfere with any group's rights, privileges, or prejudices." The Driftkr Correspondence For President: Jane Addams To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: Your fine editorial, entitled Wanted: Leadership, pro- vokes a reply. The Progressives have a leader ready to their hand, one whose devotion to lofty ideals, combined with prac- tical efficiency, is common knowledge. If the masters of Big Business can get together in a hotel room and decide that the country must have a ruthless imperial- ist as the leading Presidential candidate, may not Progressives, who do not want war abroad, or injustice at home, also get together and nominate this priceless woman, Jane Addams, as a candidate for the highest office the nation can bestow? Would not the affairs of the country be safer in her hands than in those of any of the men you have mentioned as the likeliest candidates in the coming contest? Jane Addams, if she were President, would really and truly keep us out of war, and she could be trusted to rectify every injustice that it was in her power to set right. If the mere fact of her sex would prevent her election, shame on us as a nation! Men have governed the country a long time, and not with unqualified success. Now let this superb woman be invited to guide the car of state. Caroline L. Goodenough Mattapoisett, Massachusetts, October 7 Some Survive Without Wine To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: Heywood Broun's opinions that one finds "none but practical men in the tents of the arid," and that "You cannot have dry poets, painters, and dreamers" are so commonly held by liberals and dilettante radicals that attention should be called to their hollow and baseless character. In comparison the statement, "Without wine the soul perishes," is fairly sci- entific. Shelley was an abstainer and Bernard Shaw is notori- ously dry. New York, October 7 John N. Washburne A Twentieth Amendment To the Editor of The Nation : Sir: Your publication would indubitably earn the grati- tude of progressive men and women all over the world and at the same time help the people of this country to make a tremen- dous step toward civilization if it should sponsor an amend- ment to the Constitution of the United States to abolish capital punishment. Such an amendment would lend a truer meaning to the almost stereotype passage in the Declaration of Independence: "Life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness." If the federal government has a right to legislate what percentage of alcohol an individual may imbibe in a beverage, it surely has a right to dictate to the component common- wealths in the matter of taking human life, though taken by "due process of law." Brooklyn, N. Y., September 28 Max Fruchter In Defense of Missions To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: I wish to reply to what Mr. Hubbard said in your issue of September 14 about the work of the Christian mis- sions. I agree with his praise of industrial training and medi- cal work, but this is not being done apart from Christian teach- ing either in missions or in government industrial schools. I do not believe in a mission confining its energies to evan- gelization work alone, and I would condemn any work "that tears down the belief of centuries and builds nothing in its place." . . . It is not religious teaching, as such, that is "breaking down the homogeneity of the tribe" as much as it is the in- creasing contact of the African with Western civilization ami industrialism. The moral and social chaos in African society today comes from the conflict of the group idea of the African tribal life with our conception of society as made up of indi- viduals. The African thrust into this new society loses his regard for and belief in the old tribal taboos, inhibitions, super- stitions, and belief in spirits, and has nothing to take their place. Here is the place of the mission and its Christian training, to replace the lost things with the Christian gospel in its fulness so that moral and social chaos will not be the fate of African society. In conclusion let me give an example of cooperation be- tween missions and government, and this is only one of the many that might be given: In Southern Rhodesia from among a native population of 800,000 there are more than TO, 000 i and girls attending mission schools, which are partially sup-

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452 The Nation [Vol. 125. No. 3251 ported by grants from the government of more than £30,000 annually. There are about 275 boys in two government indus- trial schools supported wholly by the government. The British colonial governments believe in Christian education for the African. Ob, rein, Ohio, September 12 Frank T. Meacham, Of the American Board Mission, Chikore, M. S., S. Rhodesia, Africa Testimonials To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: By order of the Committee of the Library our sub- scription to The Nation is hereby canceled. Boston, August 29 Richard Ray, Jr., Librarian, Boston Y. M. C. A. To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: Although the Exchange Club's subscription to The Nation does not expire until January 1, 1928, you are hereby instructed to send no more issues after this date. Our Board of Governors are not willing to have our reading-table longer disgraced by your paper. Boston, August 2? John P. Macy, Superintendent Exchange Club of Boston To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: Please cancel my subscription to your paper. There are a few worth-while things which have not been attacked as yet by The Nation. Gladys M. Metcalfe, Robert D. Metcalfe Worcester, Massachusetts, August 29 Sir: I am writing to order that the McLeansboro High School be stricken from your list of subscribers. The youth of our land have enough lures to anarchy without placing in their pathway so dangerous a publication as The Nation. McLeansboro, Illinois, September 12 J. B. Boswell, Superintendent of Schools To the Editor of The Nation : SIR: Inclosed find money order for $5 to cover a year's subscription to The Nation. As a former member of the Young Men's Christian Union I take this means of protesting against the cancelation reported in your issue of September 14. I hope that for every such can- celation you may receive a hundred subscriptions. You may have lost a few "friends" by your intelligent and courageous stand on the Sacco-Vanzetti case, but you have probably gained more. I shall spread the gospel of The Nation among as many "young men of this community" as I can. Jamaica Plain, Mass., September 27 CARL AXTHONSEN Contributors to This Issue Mildred Adams is a frequent contributor to current periodicals. Dorothy Thompson is the Berlin correspondent of the Philadelphia Public Ledger. Raymond Clapper is in the Washington office of the United Press. W. Y. Elliott is in the department of government at Harvard. John Haynes Holmes is pastor of the Community Church in New York. Talbot Faulkner Hamlin is author of "The American Spirit in Architecture" and other books. A BETTER HOUSING BOND $2,000,000 City Housing Corporation 15- Year 6% Mortgage Collateral Trust Sinking Fund Bonds Due July 1, 1942 Direct obligation of the City Housing Corporation, with Capital Stock (fully paid) and Surplus more than $2,375,000. and secured under Trust agree- ment by Second Mortgages aggregating 120% or marketable securities aggregating 100r< of the face amount of the bonds outstanding. Denominations of $100 or any multiple thereof, interest payable January 1st and July 1st. American Exchange Irving Trust Company, Trustee A sinking fund is provided for, beginning in January, 1932, calculated to retire 40% of this issue by maturity For Better Housing These bonds offer the opportunity of investing in a sound 6% bond amply and directly secured by a large number of small mortgages. They should appeal to many investors, and especially those desirous of participating in the providing of better housing for families of moderate incomes. $1,200 worth of second mortgages on Sunnvside homes will secure every $1,000 of bonds outstanding. Bonds are the direct obligation of City Housing Cor- poration with Capital and Surplus of over $2,375,000, and with assets, after giving effect to this issue, of $4.3S9,534. There will be over $2,194 in assets for each $1,000 in bonds issued. The Corporation has constructed dwellings of an actual sales value, including land, of more than $7,000,000. Net earnings available for interest on these bonds for the years 1925 and 1926 have averaged $3 14.245 per year, as compared to the annual interest requirement on these bonds of $120,000. Interest re- quirement has thus been earned an average of more than 2.61 times per year. Descriptive circular sent on request. Priced at par, to yield 6% (Interest will begin from date of receipt of subscription payment) Subscriptions may be sent direct to City Housing Corporation A Limited Dividend Company — Organized to build better homes and communities. 589 Fifth Avenue New York City Directors .' Alexander M. Bing, President, Dr. Felix Adler, John G. Agar, Leo S. Bing, Charles S. Bird, Jr., William Sloane Coffin, Vice-President, Thomas C. Desmond, Douglas L. Elliman, Prof. Richard T. Ely, Arthur Lehman, Frank Lord, V. Everit Macy, John Martin, Mrs. Joseph M. Proskauer, Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt, Robert E. Simon. When writing to advertiser* please mention The Nation

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Books and Plays Poem By CHARD POWERS SMITH I'm looking for a fellow Pan Who's partly goat and mostly man, And so I built my cottage here To hear him piping in the weir, To hear him humming in the bees, And hear him whisper in the trees. 0 peace immeasurable that sings In the great soul of simple things ! One impulse from a vernal wood — To stand here where a deer has stood To drink at dawn ! To hear the fall Of evening dewing over all! To watch the distant planets move ! And hear birds roosting chirp of love! To watch the fiddling Summer slide To Autumn, and to hear the stride Of thundering Winter, and in rain To feel the Spring come back again! Something there is — a glimpse of all — And yet — 0 Spring! 0 Summer! Fall! 0 Winter! Once more everything — 0 Summer! Fall! Ah Winter! Spring. Trees, brooks, and birds, and flowers, and bees! And bees and flowers, birds, brooks, and trees ! To wonder always, more and more! 0 wonderful! Ah wonderful! Oh! Ah! Oh! Ah! 0 God, how dull! What was it I was looking for? Fascism Before the Bar of History The Fascist Dictatorship in Italy. By Gaetano Salvemini. Henry Holt and Company. $3. HPO those who still believe that there is an ultimate power in * the moral conscience of men Professor Salvemini has seemed since the deaths of Matteotti and Amendola to be the most dangerous surviving enemy of Fascism. This book, the most effective indictment yet drawn up against Fascist methods and Fascist "facts," carries all the weight of a trained histori- an's expert documentation. It is primarily an appeal, passionate even in its restraint, to the conscience of the world for a verdict against the protected lawlessness of the Fascist state which is shielded behind the "movie" facade of the Mussolini myth. Perhaps no single factor in that gradual shift of journal- istic and informed opinion to a verdict against Mussolini which seems to be taking place both in England and in this country has been so great as Professor Salvemini's speeches and writing. Even the London Times has recently come into line. The anti- Fascist center in Paris has affected opinion very little in the English-speaking countries. With the exception of William Bolitho and James Murphy, few accredited correspondents had the background or the backing for a searching expose of Fas- cism as it worked upon Italians — not tourists. Only Don Sturzo and Salvemini, among the political exiles, spoke authoritatively of Italy to England and America — and Don Sturzo has until lately been silent. "The Fascist Dictatorship in Italy" does not pretend to im- partiality and it loses force at times through an unwillingness to see any possible good in its Fascist enemies. Professor Sal- vemini is here a prosecuting attorney. His aim is to present a smashing case, documenting it with an overwhelming mass of evidence, in order to give the lie once and for all to the suppres- sions and evasions that have represented Fascism to world opinion. Against the myth-makers and the glozers over (like Luigi Villari) of the disreputable origins and dubious motives of the Mussolinian groups of ex-combatants of 1919-1920, Pro- fessor Salvemini opposes a picture of the reality of Italian post- war neurasthenia. Even Fascist heroes were advocating the occupation of unproductive land and factories by the workers, the confiscation of war profits, a National Constituent Assembly to be the Italian section of an International, universal suffrage of both sexes, abolition of the senate, the nobility, the crown, and compulsory military service, and a generally syndicalist program. Fascism, so far as Mussolini spoke for it in the Popolo d'ltalia, was still congratulating the workers on the general railway strike in January and viewing benevolently the occupation of the metallurgical industries in the fall of 1920. It was, according to this convincing picture, rather the failure of Bolshevism than its danger that loosed Fascism on Italy. Mussolini criticized Socialism from the left as an ineffec- tual revolutionary force, until social revolution was shown to be impossible; then he veered rapidly to the most reactionary attitude of the right — toward the nationalists. Universal suf- frage as a safety valve plus the Christian-Democratic (Popo- lare) Party as a means of dividing the Italian peasantry really prevented the organization of direct action in the immediate aftermath of the war, when the disillusioned populace was in a mood to collect part, at least, of what all parties had so rashly promised during the war. Even proportional representation, by braking the socialist victory, helped save the day. It is certain, on Mussolini's own witness, that by the sum- mer of 1921 all threat of Communism in Italy had passed. What the anti-Fascists hardly are willing to admit, Professor Salvemini among them, is that the brake worked too well. No ministry could accomplish a coherent program so long as the Socialists on one wing were completely revolutionary and on the other were controlled by an incoherent group of 150 or more deputies who refused to -cooperate with any ministry; and so long as Don Sturzo's Popolari were unwilling at all costs to back the parliamentary aims and methods of the Giollitians, the only other considerable group. However, Professor Salvemini pretty conclusively spikes the ascription on the one hand of economic paralysis to parlia- mentarism and on the other of economic regeneration to Fas- cism. He shows that quite inevitable economic forces produced the budgetary deficits of 1920-23; that the balance of trade was less unfavorable than it has become under Fascism; that a popular loan in 1920 produced 18 milliards of lire, without bludgeons; that, in return for a fancied economic and social security, the rulers of Italy — king, army, even some Liberals — discarded patience and welcomed the treatment of a national state of nerves by the castor-oil-and-cudgel method, followed by a regimen of absolutism, terrorism, and espionage superior to anything that Metternich ever thought possible. He makes an important charge (one made also by Bolitho and Murphy), that Fascism was encouraged by Giolitti, Bonomi, and Fera in 1920-21, and that arms were liberally provided by the army officers with official connivance in order to reduce the Popolare and the Socialist strength by a "white-guard" counter- offensive. The other charges, which constitute the bulk of the volume, are more specific and better supported by evidence — including facsimile reproductions of Mussolini's own orders. They pic- ture a reign of organized and protected lawlessness quite un- paralleled in a modern state. The electoral terrorism before Fascism found it convenient completely to repudiate balloting as a means of invoking consent, and the formidable list of kil- lings, assaults, terrorizations, and exiles will, most of them, be novel only to those who have not followed the Fascist story.

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454 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3251 But no such record as is here presented has before been available. On only one serious point is the book open to criticism. It expresses, as accurately as an indictment can, the incidents and the nature of Fascism in its early period; it exposes thi tected violence that has not ceased with the deaths of Matteotti, Komi, Misuri, Amendola, Pilati, Consolo, and a host of others. It shows the authorized nature of outrages, the complete sup- pression of press criticism and free association, the deliberate character of a reign of terror through hostages, mob violence, and exile, that has silenced all internal efforts at criticism or constitutional opposition. But it is probably subject to the sus- picion of regarding Mussolini as merely a puppet who was loosed by the militarists and reactionary timidity of war- profiteers and is still worked by them. This is to underestimate the man, for he has outgrown his origins and has gone in for a degree of slate control of all economic forces that demands a playing off of labor against industrialists, as well as of indus- trialists against labor, and a subordination of the military caste to the Fascist Grand Council, backed by the militia of the Black- Shirts. It is also to underestimate the danger of Fascism as a phenomenon which, having seized power to the accompanim< nt of a sense of relief among the bourgeoisie, soon sheds all pre- tense of responsibility to any opinion whatever. The result is, as Professor Salvemini terms it, "moral anarchy," but it is a much more disciplined despotism than appears in this view of the dictatorship. It is not so lacking in direction as to amount to legal anarchy. For those to whom the punctuality of trains, the disciplin- ing of labor, and the balancing of the budget are a sufficient offset to any methods, Professor Salvemini has in store another volume, to be published shortly, in which he promises to deal equally roundly with the myth of the "Corporative S ate" and its parallel of Fascist efficiency. To a public in whose eyes efficiency seems to outweigh such matters as justice, abstract or concrete, and to recompense any attack on constitutionalism, in theory or practice, this second line of defense is more neces- sary to breach than the first. Fascism can afford, it seems, to treat with frank cynicism any peccadillos such as political mur- der and the espionage of a Cheka. What it really fears is an expose of an alarmingly adverse trade balance, a serious drop in the value of industrial shares and governmental loans, an increase in bankruptcies and bank failures, and a partial stag- nation of industry. If Professor Salvemini can point to these or to Mussolini's new tendency to fix prices, he may stir Amer- ican opinion where stirring counts. W. Y. Elliott Pure Novel The Counterfeiter*. By Andre Gide. Translated from the French by Dorothy Bussy. Alfred A. Knopf. $3. G IDE'S definition of what he terms "the pure novel" is a very simple one: a long prose narrative involving a con- flict of characters and a conflict of ideas. A perfect projection of this double conflict presupposes the exclusion of all those elements "which do not belong specifically to the novel." These elements are, roughly speaking, comprised in the realist-natural- ist credo which has been so often attacked that it hardly seems worth while to dwell on its articles: detail, local color, at- mosphere, sociologic background, a faithful rendering of life as seen rather than as felt. In form the realist's novel tends to the horizontal biographic outline of Bennett and Dreiser: and in its conception of character it lays itself open to the charge made by Gide: that the author has not affected that degree of depersonalization which makes it possible for him to be un- aware of the next move or thought of his creation. Against all this certain modern writers have set their faces and their minds. We may note briefly the elements which have instigated their revolt. First, there has been an inevitable impatience with the intellectual view of the older men. This view (and the structure and theme of the novels embodying it) was based, in one way or another, upon the consciousness of class and class struggle ("The Forsyte Saga," "Budden- brooks," "An American Tragedy") and normally tended to express itself in some form of democratic liberalism (Wells, Zola). Now it so happens that the social and economic struggle which we see about us has stated itself so clearly in actuality that it has ceased to contain that element of speculation (other- wise known as poetry) which makes it available for art. In the same way, the panacea that was supposed to provide a reso- lution for that struggle has now been proved futile — the modern novelist, if he desh-es to be modern, is forced to deny the humanitarian faith of his predecessors. The first reason, there- fore, for his artistic revolt was a conviction that the idea- world of Wells and Shaw has, for both poetic and practical purposes, been completely exhausted. Consequently he was driven to a search for new creative material and a new creative form. At this point he met, by a happy accident, with a powerful ally. The discoveries of mod- ern psychology permitted him to fashion a subtler narrative pattern with which to replace the traditional biographic outline; and they furnished him with a more flexible and exciting method of approaching human emotions, as well as providing him with an entirely new realm of emotion in itself. The employment of this method finally led him to the recog- nition of the fact (known long ago by the Greek dramatists and the classic Frenchmen) that you do not make people real by presenting them realistically. With this perception the case against the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century novel may be said to be reasonably complete; and the effort to construct a really modern novel began, an effort which was to produce Joyce, Proust, Gide, and practically all the intelligent con- temporary writers of fiction, including one or two Americans. Unless all this is kept in mind the importance of "The Counterfeiters" may be minimized or entirely overlooked. For, if we consider it merely from the point of view of technique, it may be said to be a breviary for modern novelists. In the cases of Joyce and Proust the peculiarly intense quality of the author's personality is likely to dominate all other impressions; but this is not so with Gide where the lyrical intrusion is of a most soft-footed and undisturbing type. In "The Counter- feiters," then, we see held in solution a well-nigh perfect example of the revolt described in the preceding paragraphs. In it we observe the abandonment of the sociologic-humanitarian theme, the employment (but tactfully and quietly) of the ver- tical exploratory psychologic method, the denial of realism as an instrument for the projection of life. On these three counts Gide rests his famous conception of the roman ptir — a concep- tion which has its rough analogue in the pure anti-literary aesthetic of the modernist painters. It has not been easy for Gide to arrive at his goal. In his preceding works (to which he cannily refuses to accord the title novel) he fell a victim to the siren attractions of his own theory. His zeal for purgation was so fanatic that his narra- tives had a frigid and intellectual air. He made one of two mistakes: either he started with an obsessing idea (that of the unmotivated crime, for example), in which case his characters tended to be functions of a series of intellectual conflicts; or (and hei'e his Huguenot ancestry comes to the fore) he presented his characters schematically, projecting them through the operation of a series of moral conflicts. In both cases he was merely applying his own definition of the novel as a conflict of ideas and a conflict of characters (for characters are always moral characters to Gide), but he was applying it crudely. The joints showed. This is not the case with the rich and passionate texture of "The Counterfeiters." Here the double conflict is always implied but never actually exposed, though the book is full of dialectic. It must not be supposed from what has bee7i said that "The Counterfeiters" is a tour de force; indeed, no descrip-

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Oct. 26, 1927] The Nation 455 tion could be more inapposite. On the contrary its outstanding quality (and one which cannot be here treated as its recognition is so largely a subjective matter) is its tremendous emotional impact. Before this its nine technical achievement pales; but it has seemed to the present reviewer advisable to suggest that achievement rather than to attempt a summary of the actual substance of a book which is too complicated to allow of brief analysis. All the writer can do is simply to record his feeling that, with the exceptions of "Ulysses" and "The Magic Moun- tain," no other modern novel has so profoundly moved him; and to record his conviction that "The Counterfeiters" is defi- nitely among the great novels of at least our own time. Clifton P. Fadiman The Immortal Nazarene Jesus: A Netv Biography. By Shirley Jackson Case. University of Chicago Press. $3. THE first thing to be said about this "new biography" is that it is not a biography. I think of a biography in terms of such works as Southey's "Nelson," Trev.elyan's "John Bright," Sandburg's "Lincoln," or Renan's "Jesus." In each such case we have a noble edifice of narrative reared from an exhaustive study of available sources of information. But this preliminary study — the gathering, sifting, assembling, and pre- paring of material — is no more a part of the completed work than the stone quarry, the steel foundry, the steam-shovel, der- ricks, and scaffolding are a part of a completed building. What we want in a biography is a story, as what we want in building construction is a hotel, a courthouse, or a cathedral. In the case of Jesus the sources are so few, the information so scant, the story so doubtful, that the temptation is almost irresistible to weight down a biography of the Nazarene with lengthy and scholarly discussions of the Gospels, Jewish history in the time of Jesus, the early Christian Church, etc. Professor Case has yielded to this temptation. His first chapter is a thoroughgoing study of the origin, character, and inter-relation of what he calls the "ancient biographies" of Jesus. The second chapter is an illuminating discussion of the difficulties involved, and the critical methods that must be used, in getting back to "the historical Jesus." Then comes a long and exceptionally clear presentation of "Jewish life in Palestine" at the opening of the Christian era. Not until the fourth chapter, on page 160, do we come to the story of Jesus's life; and then the narrative stream, like a river in sand, flows with difficulty through the ever-present study of material. All of which means that Pro- fessor Case's "Jesus" is not a biography of Jesus but a study in New Testament cr^icism. It classifies with Strauss, not with Renan; with Nathaniel Schmidt's stupendous "The Prophet of Nazareth," not with Mary Austin's colorful "The Man Jesus." In saying this we would make it plain that we are offer- ing a definition, not an indictment. We are classifying, not condemning Professor Case's work. For, placed in its own field, seen in its own true character, this latest study of Jesus is a book of the first importance. Written by a great scholar with thorough knowledge of his subject, and in a spirit of dig- nity and reverence, this volume may be regarded as the last word on what we know about the Nazarene today, and how we know it. As it is the most recent, so it is the best book now available on the life and teachings of Jesus. Professor Case tells us that he wrote "with a single pur- pose in mind" — namely, "to depict Jesus as he actually ap- peared to the men of his own time in Palestine nineteen hun- dred years ago." The enormous difficulties in the way of re- covering such a picture are frankly and fully stated. The author makes more than ordinarily clear the ulterior purposes which went into the writing of the Gospels and other early sources — the effort made not only by "John" but by "Mark" to present Jesus in such a way as to meet the special needs of the early Christian movement in the Gentile world. What we have in the Gospels, after all, is not so much a statement of what Jesus said and did, as a revelation of what certain Christians, generations after his death, thought, or hoped, or believed he said and did. Such biography or history as there is in the New Testament is almost hopelessly overladen with missionary propaganda. That Jesus was we know, as Pro- has himself shown us in his earlier work on "The Historicity of Jesus"; what Jesus was, however, must remain forever a matter of speculation. Professor Case sees in Jesus a young man of vigorous per- sonality and prophetic enthusiasm, caught up on the one hand by a mystic consciousness of God and on the other by a vision of the imminence of God's Kingdom upon earth, giving himself as a leader of his people to the proclamation of this Kingdom and the preparation of mankind for its advent. At no time did Jesus think himself to be the Davidic Messiah — Professor Case is emphatic in his conviction that this idea was foisted upon the record by his believing disciples. Neither was Jesus a miracle-woi-ker, a divine or supernatural being in any sense of the word. The Virgin Birth, the Resurrection, the wonders, all are relegated in this book, almost without discussion, to the limbo of fantasy and legend. The Jesus of histoiw, not the Christ of dogma, is what concerns Professor Case, and this Jesus is a man, inspired by genius, but saturated none the less in the thoughts, habits, and movements of his age. It is a fortunate thing that a book of this authoritative character has appeared at just this time. What with the sanc- timonious sentimentalisms of Papini on the one side and the superficial vulgarisms of Bruce Barton on the other, the Naza- rene is in danger of being lost anew in the superstitions of the twentieth century, which are not less dangerous than those of the first. Professor Case has called us back to facts. Would that we had another Renan to make such facts once again a part of popular literature. John Haynes HOLM A Bold Book New Backgrounds for a New Age. By Edwin Avery Park. Harcourt, Brace and Company. /^"\VER the caldron of modernity, where the forces and ma- - terials of a changing life boil seethingly into transition, hangs a turbid fog exhaled therefrom, shot through with strange nostalgic lights — the fog wistfulness. Even Professor Park's daring and important attempt to formulate a complete philosophy of modernist art and its relation to us all is colored deeply with it. His attempts to pierce it, to ignore it, to con- fute it, rise themselves occasionally to that bitterness only ex- istent in those fighting an enemy whose claws they know only too well. Yet any attempt of this type is magnificently worth while, and Professor Park brings to this search a knowledge and a synthetic imagination rare enough in artistic criticism. He sees, as so many critics forget, that the truth of created beauty lies not only in questions of technique, or of the artists' indi- vidual vision, or of schools of thought, but also, and more, in the entire sensitiveness of created form to the life which creates it — in "those underlying and mutable factors govern- ing its development." So it is that the chapters American Aesthetics Today, and Industrie! Democracy and Art, become among the most vital and exciting examinations of industrial- ism in modern life that this reviewer knows; seen, strangely enough, not as problems sociological or economic, not as statis- tics, but from the synthetic and aloof viewpoint of artistic emotion. Speed, hope, questioning: these are the positive qual- ities the author finds dominant; and, for their opposites, exas- peration, weariness, a hatred for reality that makes us long for a masquerade environment as a relief from the struggle of today. Confronted with the terrific complexity of civilization a man today is like "a tired person confronting an enormous pile of soiled dishes to be washed, sorted, stacked, and put

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456 The Nation [Vol. 125. No. 3251 away. . . ." So advertising "fosters the cult of the unreal, and deadens any effort to be honest." So today the artist, once supported by, and serving, the educated aristocrat, is now the servant of the great populace and the middle man, and beauty of the old order dies under such a regime. Yet new beauty is being born. Here again Professor Park seeks its essence surely and rightly in modern life. "As the symbol of our age," he says, "I conceive a man standing soli- tary with outstretched arms, and face upraised beneath the noon sky. There are no long shadows. Everywhere objects stand revealed pitilessly in the brilliant bath of light. There are few secrets — little save the eternal mystery of life, which is the upturned face." And it is directly in the pitiless clarity of this light that the seeds of modern beauty are engendered. This modern be?.uty is simple, direct, non-sentimental, stark. It inclines to the geometric. It is impersonal, and a little cruel, yet it is vital and alive. This beauty is without conno- tation; abstraction is one of its aims. It is to the discovery of this new beauty, this beauty of efficiency, of science, of the aeroplane or the automobile, of commercial buildings, that this book is dedicated. And as such its importance in America today can hardly be overestimated. Its chapters on American Decorators and Craftsmen, enlightening as they are, ai-e thorough and illus- trative; and its examination of modern aesthetics and modern art education, and the fa 'lure of modern art to build a home in which modernism shall serve us and not master us, all this is new and stimulating and a little bitter. And it is, more- over, written in a style vivid, epigrammatic, and itself modern, unconventional in its occasional disregard of general usage. One question alone remains to this reviewer; and it is a question that no modernist critic has as yet answered. Profes- sor Park hints that there is more beauty in an automobile than in twenty museums. Is then a man to feel the thrill of beauty only in reference to its creation? If "The Eve of Saint Agnes" were written today would it be less beautiful? Or if you or I should come suddenly upon the tremendous repose of the Olym- pia pediments, should we refuse to worship because they are not an aeroplane or a Cezanne? Talbot Faulkner Hamlin Books in Brief Plutarch's Moralia, Volume I. Translated by F. C. Babbitt. The Geography of Strabo, Volume IV. Translated by H. L. Jones. Cicero: Pro Lege Manilla, Pro Caecina, Pro Cluentio, Pro Rabirio, Perdueltionis. Aristotle: The Poet- ics. "Longinus" : On the Sublime. Demetrius : On Style. Translated by W. Hamilton Fyfe and W. Rhys Roberts. Loeb Classical Library. Four volumes. $2.50 each. G. P. Putnam's Sons. Of these new volumes in a great series the last is the most welcome, grouping as it does three of the most famous treatises in criticism ever written. Other Doors. By Ann Linington. Poughkeepsie, X. Y. : Vassar Cooperative Bookshop. A mildly distinguished little volume of undergraduate verse, published, as more such verse should be, under c; auspices. Edgar Allan Poe. Talcs of Mystery. Poems and M Oxford Edition of Standard Authors, sity Press. Two volumes. Eac . •"■ 6. A convenient though necessarily incomplete tdition of Poe. The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man. By James Weldon Johnson. Alfred A. Knopf. $.'5. A welcome reprint of this classic in Negro literature and life, issued some years ago anonymously. American Poetry, 1927. A Miscellany. By Sixteen Authors. Harcourt, Brace and Company. $2.50. To the poets honored in this annual volume are now added Robinson Jeffers, Archibald MacLeish, Leonie Adams, and Nathalia Crane. Celibate Lives. By George Moore. Boni and Liveright. $2.50. A reissue for a popular audience of the work "In Single Strictness," with the omission of "Hugh Monfert" and the in- clusion of the story from "A Story-teller's Holiday" called "Albert Nobbs." Great Poems of the English Language. Compiled by Wallace Alvin Briggs. Robert M. McBride and Company. $7.50. A huge anthology, more trustworthy in its selections from the standard authors than in those from modern poets in Eng- land and America. / Think I Remember. By Magdalen King-Hall. D. Appleton and Company. $2. The burlesque memoirs of "An Ordinary English Snob and Gentleman" by the author of the successful hoax called "The Diary of a Young Lady of Fashion." The supposed subject (who tells his own story) comes of an old family whose motto is "I grabbe what I cann and hold it for the common weal," and he considers the introduction of fish-knives into good society the most remarkable change brought about by the late %var. The book is amusing in spite of the fact that the author allows herself greater latitude in her burlesque than she did when she was attempting to maintain sufficient verisimilitude to make deceit successful. Drama Black Ecstasy rpHOSE who have watched the Negro actor on Broadway *■ must often have observed how fundamentally the character of his art differs from that of his white fellows. Put him as a subsidiary character in a play for and about a white society and he is likely to be either merely incompetent or so authentically his own natural self that he destroys for the moment all the illusion which art has built up, since the subdued traditions of our conventional drama and the intellectualized dialogue which for generations we have cultivated are so little natural to him that when he tries to adapt himself the effect is of something merely feeble and amateurish. Permit him, on the other hand, to express himself in terms more nearly his own and he is in a moment transformed. He is not accustomed to translate his deepest emotions into words and he does not speak well even the words which others have written for him if the meaning of those words depends upon a logical coherence defining a thought; but it is in supplying their deficiencies that he excels. What he cannot say he can with unmatchable eloquence shout, or sing, or dance, for he has at his command all those means of expression which we, too long accustomed to be dumb with all but our tongues, have allowed ourselves to forget. A banal colloquialism issues from his mouth with an intonation which makes it say all that the mere words were impotent to say; his shoulders, more eloquent than a Latin's, can have fathomless despair written upon them; and in his legs is an ecstasy. Ecstasy seems, indeed, to be his natural state. While our own actors pant after an emotion and must depend for their outburst upon elaborately learned tricks he, on the contrary, is good only when some utter abandonment is to be portrayed. He may move awkwardly, almost uncomprehendingly, through level scenes which the most mediocre of general utility men could carry off with competence, but he leaps with an effortless ease into a crisis and surrenders himself to joy, to terror, or to grief as to a native element. And above all he catches the con-

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Oct. 26, 1927] The Nation 457 VIKING OOKS ELIZABETH MADOX ROBERTS has carried on the fine achievement of her first novel THE TIME OF MAN in a deeply moving story of a woman's life MY HEART AND MY FLESH ("My heart and my flesh crieth out for the living Cod.") THE story of Theodosia Bell, courage- ously facing the decay of the gen- tility in which she had been reared. Its theme is universal, and its roots are deep in nature. Those who plunge themselves into its rich life, its love and pain and hope, will experience a unique adventure of the mind and heart. EDWARD GARNETT, after reading a part of the proofs, wrote: "I was deeply im- pressed. It has all her quality. That wonderful scene in which Lou handles the knife before the fascinated eyes of Theodosia is a masterpiece, and the scene of setting the frantic dogs on the lover is of amazing force." My Heart and My Flesh is unquestionably an American masterpiece. $2.50 Political Myths and Economic Realities is a challenging com- ment on the con- tradictions of the modern world. Its author, Francis Delaisi, insists that peace depends upon our recognizing the economic interde- pendence of all na- tions and forgetting the myth of Nation- alism. His words will be read with avidity by students and men of affairs. $4.00 Portraits in dolor, by Mary White OviNGTON, tells the life-stories of twenty representa- tive Negro leaders of today. The strug- gles and achieve- ments of the whole race are personified in these living biog- raphies. $2.00 30 Irving Place THE VIKING PRESS New York City When writing to advertisers please mention The Nation

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458 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3251 tagion of a group. His voice swells with the swelling of other voices; his body catches the rhythm of a crowd; and he reveals an instinctive sense for participation in an emotion larger than his comprehension. One searches for a word to describe his abandonment and one discovers that the word is Dionysian — that his gift is a gift for drama in a form more primitive as well as, perhaps, more purely dramatic than that of our con- ventional stage which is no more than a platform where the decorous conversations of decorous life are recited. He is drunk, as the followers of Dionysus were drunk, with emotions that words cannot convey, and he dances or shouts his ecstasy. Fortunately the dramatization of the novel "Porgy" which the Theater Guild has caused to be acted at its own theater by a large company composed almost entirely of Negroes is one which affords a great many opportunities for just such casting. Most of the action takes place either in the courtyard of a swarming Charleston tenement known as Catfish Row or in the room of one of its denizens where the community gathers to hod a wake over a murdered man; and the effects are created by a succession of mass scenes in the course of which the per- formers, abandoning themselves with almost equal completeness to the excitement of a crap game and the frenzy of a religious excitement, succeed in conveying to the spectator a sense of life in a community which, for all its ignorance and squalor, lives passionately and as a unit. The whole is, indeed, a highly interesting and, in part, very successful attempt to translate a novel into purely theatrical terms, and if the method were car- ried only a little further it would result in a type of play in which ordinary dialogue had been completely replaced by the pageant, the pantomime, and the chant of the ritualistic drama. When it fails of its effect it does so because it has not quite sufficiently mastered its own method to enable it to dispense wholly with more conventional devices; because it seems to remember from time to time that it has a story to tell and because it pauses, much as a musical comedy often pauses, to tell it with unfortunate results. When it does so we descend quickly from ecstasy to melodrama and exchange the moving authenticity of genuine passions for the meager emotions of a rather artificial tale. "Porgy," like the actors who play it, is most successful when it attempts what appears to be the most difficult tasks. It soars with ease, but when it walks it stumbles. Ever since the days of "The Bat" and its kind New York has been accustomed to have its dramatic horrors spoofed by the author, but in "Dracula" (Fulton Theater) it is again asked to take them straight. The play, made from Bram Stoker's well-known tale of the vampire and his victim, is not done with any remarkable subtlety, but it has its shivers. "Hidden" (Longacre Theater), Freudian tale of the havoc wrought by a girl who did not know that she was in love with her sister's husband, has a good deal of a case-book's interest, but in spite of the good acting of Beth Merrill it never seems quite to reach the effects it is aiming at. Several of the new musical comedies are better than the average. "Just Fancy" (Casino Theater) is made from a rather naively romantic play by A. E. Thomas dealing with the days when Prince Edward fluttered American hearts, and though it is decorously innocuous it is prettily staged and it has Ray- mond Hitchcock to help make it amusing. At the Cosmopolitan the imperturbable Balieff is again presenting the Chauve Souris company in a new program. But best of all is "The Five O'clock Girl" (Forty-fourth Street Theater). It is both tuneful and witty, and has in Al Shaw, Sam Lee, and Pert Kelton three most unusual comedians. In Louis Bromfield's "House of Women" (Maxine Elliott Theater) Nance O'Neil, Helen Free- man, and Elsie Ferguson contribute extraordinary acting to a rather unimpressive story. "High Gear" (Wallack's Theater) tells with crudity and feeble humor the difficulties a young married couple encounter in entertaining an uncle from the West. Joseph Wood Krutch THEATRE THE THEATRE GUILD Presents PORGY A FOLK PLAY BY DUBOS^ AND DOROTHY HEYWARD PI "IT D Theatre' Wes' 52rd St- Eves- 8.40 UL 1-L-'1 — Matinees. Thursday and Saturday, 2.40 □ LECTURES Last Announcement! There is still time to get your tickets for the Debate of the Century BERTRAND WILL RUSSELL **' DURANT Samuel Untermyer, Chairman Subject: Is Democracy a Failure? This Saturday, October 22nd, 8:30 P. M. Mecca Temple, 55th St. & 7th Ave. Tickets at the Box Office, phone Circle 8513 ; Rand School, 7 E. 16th Street, or at the office of THE DISCUSSION GUILD. 11 W. 42nd St. Room 2854 Phone, Longacre 2740 AMERICAN STUDENT FORUM Presents Sunday Afternoon, Oct. 23rd, 3 P. M. at BROOKLYN ACADEMY OF MUSIC Atlantic A\enue Station Hon. BERTRAND RUSSELL on Science and Happiness PROF. MORRIS R. COHEN, Chairman Dept. of Philosophy C. C. N. Y. DR. HENRY NEUMANN. Presiding Officer President Brooklyn Ethical Culture TICKETS S1.00 At the Box Office and Rand School, 7 E. 15th St., New York. RAND SCHOOL OF SOCIAL SCIENCE 7 East 15th St. Tel. Algonquin 3094 "Psychology of Personality" Joseph M. Osman Tues. 8:30 "The Story of Religion" Alexander Goldenweiser Wed. 8:30 "The New Drama in Europe" V. F. Calverton Fri. 8:30 Mercantile Library Makes a specialty of new books: Novels, Travel, Drama, Biog- raphies, and new- books upon all topics of the day Subscription, $5.00 per year 13 Astor PL New York 2 E. 57th St. 149 B'way. When writing to advertisers pleas* mention The Nation

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Oct. 26, 1927] The Nation 459 AMERICA By Hendrik Van Loon (Reg. $5.00; The President's Daughter, Our Times (J* A $"fc g\ (V. I or II), Royal Road to Romance,

get things done. You'll be surprises how little they cost. BELL LONG DISTANCE SERVICE THE EDUCATIONAL DEPARTMENT of the COMMUNITY CHURCH Presents WILL DURANT who will speak on "The Ten Greatest Thinkers" John Ilayncs Holmes, Chairmen Community Church Auditorium Park Avenue and 34th Street Thursday 8.15 P.M. October 27 RESERVED SECTIONS 50c 75c $1.00 MT'I/TIGRAFHING V Tai ,REC tor 3416 tk The MULTIGRAM MULTIGRAPHING MAILING MIMEOGRAPHING ADDRESSING FACSIMILE LETTERS 39 CORTLANDT ST., N. Y. Ask The Nation about us ! by Paul Hutchinson -aoth,$i.oc Already acclaimed in more than sixty leading book reviews for its bright, clear picture of the pres- ent China situation — a fascinat- ing China. AT BOOKSTORES Willett, Clark & Colby 440 S. Dearborn St., Chicago When writing to advertisers please mention The Nation

Page 481

International Relations Section Labor's League of Nations Explodes By HEBER BLANKENHORN Pari*, Scpti 1 i FTER a week of dramatic sessions — whose significance was hidden rather than advertised in the press — labor's league of nations has dissolved in disagreement. The delegates of thirteen million people, from twenty- five different political divisions of the world (including Canada but excluding the United States), fell between two stools : a red one, Russia, and a supposedly gold one, Amer- ica. How their old organization will pick itself up, and which direction it will turn — east or west — may be as im- portant, ultimately, as are those conferences of Baldwins, Poincares, Mellons, etc., whose grand gatherings at Geneva, or quiet chats elsewhere, are reported as world events. Labor's league is much the older, antedating that of Geneva by two decades. It is the International Federation of Trade Unions, the "I. F. T. U., or "Amsterdam," from its headquarters. Once it was modest enough for a beer- hall to contain its "world congresses" — usually in Germany where its headquarters formerly were. This August its tri- ennial assembly was held in the Grand Palais, the big exhibition hall off the Champs Elysees in Paris. Its ban- quet was at Versailles. A few ex-cabinet ministers were among the 175 dele- gates, from Labor Governments which had ruled Britain. Denmark, Sweden, Germany, or shared power in countries like Belgium. But the I. F. T. U. delegates met primarily as trade unionists, rather resentful of "interference" from even their own political parties. For politics they have another league, the Labor and Socialist International, scorned as the "Two and a Half" by its lesser rival, the "Third" in Moscow. The I. F. T. U. delegates referred to their home organizations, the unions, as the ones which create, finance, and manage the more showy political parties. More "direct" action than operates through legis- latures was the concern of the I. F. T. U. For example here sat Austrian trade-union leaders whose members recently broke their discipline to burn up the Law Courts "which were hatching Fascism." Yonder sat the German chiefs of railroaders, public-service union:;, and the like, who a few years back, when Kapp's army seized Berlin and the government was in flight from town to town, ordered the general strike which strangled the monarchists— whom soldiery could not have beaten. Hero at the British tables sat the very men whose orders some years ago stopped dead a threatened war with Russia and who last year conducted unsuccessfully a general strike which was a nine-days' wonder. The failure of that strike. and the resultant weakness of the four and half millions of British trade unionists, was the real cause back of the turn of events in the congress. A black brother for the first timt was present, Clements Kadalie, organizer of his race in the Union of South Africa. The congress recognized his claim for support against oppressors, chiefly the white skilled trade unions! Kadalie sails this autumn for the United States. Three other dark faces were guests from the All-India Trade Union Coneress. For the first time Argentina had a full-fledged delegation. From Mexico as an invited guest had come Samuel 0. Yudico, railroader, and right-hand man of Morones. An invitation to send a guest-delegate had been declined by President Green of the American Federation of Labor. Russia was not invited. In this line-up of new members, guests, and absentees was contained the germ of the fight which tore the congress to pieces. For the great question before them was — which way to march, to complete their federation as a "world" league? East, to Russia? West, to the United States? Or south to Latin America, Australia, China? Though 13,000,000 are in the I. F. T. U., outside are the 3,000,000 of the A. F. of L. ; the 9,500,000 of Russia; the 1,500,000 of the Mexican feder- ation (CROM) ; and many smaller powerful federations like the Australian, and weak but portentous movements like the various Chinese. When the I. F. T. U. was reconstituted after the war the American Federation was a member but withdrew partly because of intense personal antipathies be- tween the late Mr. Gompers and M. Thomas, the present director of the (Geneva) International Labor Organization; largely, however, because the science of world cooperation of labor is no more developed than is that of governments. The League of Nations stands deadlocked at about the same place as the I. F. T. U., a little behind perhaps, since Ger- many has been in the I. F. T. U. since 1919. "To get men to think together is the hardest thing in the world." In the realm of labor, cooperation is a science where highbrow writers have scored mostly failures; it is a workingman's job. Workingmen and "statesmen," working together, in 1919 achieved the establishment of the Inter- national Labor Organization. It in turn has achieved at least one thing more solid than has the League — its own huge office "palace" on the shores of Lake Geneva. The Labor Section in that office, and in its world conferences, has been clearly dominated by the I. F. T. U. There are in existence twenty-seven trade federations — miners, metal-workers, transport-workers, wood-workers, builders, post and telegraph, and so forth. These are affili- ated with the I. F. T. U., and have three representatives on its board. American trade unions are joining these trade federations in increasing numbers. The carpenters have joined the wood-workers, the machinists the metal-workers, and various railway brotherhoods have approached the transport-workers. One of these twenty-seven has admitted the Russians — the food-workers. The trade federations thus repeat the history of pulling and hauling — east vs. west — of the I. F. T. U. Of course the belief that going east means toward revo- lution, and west away from it, lay behind the whole debate. But in the immediate foreground was chiefly a question of stand-patters against progressives. Some in the I. F. T. U. were anxious to keep out anything big, lest it upset their balance of power. The I. F. T. U. balance of power is im- portant to others besides labor leaders in Europe. Foreign offices and cabinets keep a sharp eye on it. Amsterdam policies confront governments at Geneva conferences. Am- sterdam demands monopolize the agenda of Geneva annual labor parliamentary proceedings, surely the most deliberate and involved of any legislative body in the world. States- men liked to see I. F. T. U. executives, Oudegeest, Jouhaux, Mertens, Poulton, arriving on schedule in Geneva, and these leaders visibly enjoyed their equality with governments

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Oct. 26, 1927] COUNTRY BOARD OPEN ALL YEAR! AS-ER LODGE! ABOVE CROTON-ON-HUDSON A congenial home atmosphere in the pietuiesqi'i Westchester Blue Mountains. Large airy steam-heated, rooms with all facilities. Billiard, library, tennis, rowing and fishing. Wholesome food — like mother used to make. One hour from the city with com- muting facilities. Reasonable rates! AS-ER CAMPUS AND LODGE FURNACE WOOD ROAD, PEEKSKtLI,, N. Y. Tel., Peekskill 1403 SUBURBAN BOARD MANHATTAN BEACH HOTEL, N. Y. LIVE in a modern, fireproof hotel by the sea- shore,, for less than in the crowded city. $12 per week for two; homelike comforts ; outdoor sports ; maid, valet and telephone service ; 37 min- utes from Times Sq., BMT. (Brighton Beach Sta- tion) Phone Sheepshead 3000. EUROPEAN TRAVEL AM arranging (for next summer) my 16th trip to Europe and would like to hear from a few radicals who might be interested to join me. At- torney Nicholas Klein, Cincinnati, Ohio. FRENCH family, charming university city, Medi- terranean, has home for three American girls. French lessons, trips, etc. Madame de Puechredon. Clos du Mail, Montpellier, France. Reference L. M. Harpham, 143 N. Highland Ave., Akron, Ohio! FOR RENT FOR RENT : — Attractively furnished six room bungalow. All modern improvements. Garage. 40 minutes from Grand Central to Mamaroneck. Three miles from station in the midst of fields and woods. Occupancy from November 1st to September 15th. Tel. Mamaroneck 161-R. Address, Florence M. King, White Plains, New York. R. F. D. No. 1. REAL ESTATE FOR SALE FOR SALE : Modern, quaint cobblestone house with spacious balcony commanding view of picturesque valley in Catskill Mountains in Woodstock Township, Ulster County, N. Y. Woodburning fireplace. Communicate with Chas. Mannino, 67-7th Avenue. Price, $5,000. FOR SALE. Large farm in Delaware County, very beautiful location, well suited to purposes of adult or boys camp. Address Box 926, % The Nation. 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Want to buy, sell, or swap books, bronzes, old china, clocks, curios, etchings, lamps, paintings, prints, oriental rugs? !!us. or stroll to Daca's, 63 Washington Sg. So.. N. Y. C. Books always 20 to 80% off. Opt >n eves. THAT BOOK YOU WANT! A'e hold 1,250,000 vols., second hand and new -very conceivable subject. Books on approval. Also Rare Books, Out-of-Print Books, and Sets of Authors. Catalogues free (20 issued). Outline equirements and interests. FOYLES, 121 Chsrin? Cro«« Road. LONDON. ENGLAND ANTIQUES OPECIAL reductions in four post beds. New coi- -^ lection of O G mahogany mirrors. All furni- ture genuine antiques. No reproductions carried At 5 Christopher St Ann-Seley's Spring 2810 New York City PLAYS WANTED PLAYS WANTED IMMEDIATELY Prompt Decision Gross Play Brokers 236 W. 44th St. New York PROFESSIONAL SERVICES "pAINTING, Paperhanging, Decorating Apis., Stu- -L dies. Showrooms. Restauran's, S-ores, Offices, Private homes. First grade work ; moderate prices. City — vicinity. 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462 The Nation [Vol. 125. No. 3251 there, even when voicing labor dissatisfaction with Genevan results. The balance of power, "so serviceable to European stabilization," had survived years of criticism from Moscow without much worry, but in recent months it had been seri- ously threatened by the restiveness and enterprise of a member group, the British trade unions. To try to "defeat the British" had become almost a habit of certain national groups in I. F. T. U. meetings, a habit readily met with efforts to "defeat the French" or "hold the Germans." Thus the congress assembled in a great glassed hall where redness was confined to a circle of vivid banners and to the red posies in the geranium pots on delegations' tables, while internationalism and universal brotherhood as expounded in the opening address of Presi- dent Purcell instantly turned those desideratums into myths for the rest of the session. Three of those on the platform became the center of the melee. One was Jan Oudegeest (Holland), ".the old man," senior secretary of the I. F. T. U.. the ruddy-faced, stocky, former railroader who had become the walking embodiment of "Amsterdam" in the halls of Geneva. Another was young John Brown, the English-language secretary, a lean, distin- guished face marked by an odd twist of the lip. The third, A. A. Purcell, M. P., had succeeded J. H. Thomas as head of the I. F. T. U. when Thomas had become a member of His Majesty's Labor Government. Continental colleagues deemed Purcell a notable, and trying, contrast to Thomas. Purcellian energy, arrogance, and individualism had offended them almost as much as had his habits of visiting Russia, the United States, and Mexico. These countries were the heart of Purcell's "keynote" speech, together with China, India, and South America, and such countries as Australia and Mexico which have refused to join the I. F. T. U. until Russia has been ad- mitted to membership. Purcell's speech had nothing stand- pat in it; very "left," as Europeans term it. Just the sort of pronouncement the British unions "had no right to make," considering their year of defeat and demoralization. During the lumbering process of translation, while the speech was re-thundered in French and in German, with side groups listening to it in Scandinavian, Polish, Czech, and other tongues, there was visible disturbance among Oudegeest's neighbors: Jouhaux, the portly head of French non-Communist unions; Mertens (Belgium), the tall docker from Antwerp, now floor leader of the Labor section at Geneva conferences; and the elderly, silent Leipart (Ger- many), whose face looks like a scientist's forever stooped over a microscope. Jouhaux took advantage of his "wel- come to Paris" speech to disavow Purcell's keynote, in behalf of all the executives except Purcell and Brown. In the name of brotherliness. Purcell was no brother of theirs. At that the British delegation — and some of them had looked uncomfortable over Purcell's tone — rose as one. In a hubbub they refused to countenance any attacks on Pur- cell. They were well-schooled in the Marxian rule that "an injury to one (Britisher) is an injury to all." The British rising stampeded France and Belgium into furious counter- attack to save the stand-pat fort. Mertens and Jouhaux represented the whole British policy, culminating in Secre- tary Brown, as "intrigue" and sabotage of the "true I. F. T. U. policies." Last year's international labor dele- gation to Mexico, invited by the unions and Government there, was termed the handiwork of Brown, with the ap- proval of Moscow. Whereupon Brown wrecked the meei For years at Amsterdam he had been hamstrung and isolated in every effort to broaden the policies; sick of it, he was ready to quit. On the topic of intrigues he produced facts. He read a cablegram to himself when in Mexico received at the hour Mexico was ready to join the I. F. T. U. : it was from Oudegeest in Amsterdam and it asked "Why can't the Mexicans pay up first?" which made Morones and Mexico dismiss the I. F. T. U. with contempt. Then Brown read the letter dealing with Russia during the negotiations two years ago, begun by order of the 1924 I. F. T. U. con- gress. It was a confidential letter from Oudegeest to Jou- haux (circulated by error to Brown) giving the perfect pic- ture of stand-patters coagulating against "outsiders." Mer- tens, Jouhaux, and Oudegeest were to prepare the reply to the Russians before "the Englishman Hicks" arrived. This sentence was in the letter: "Tomsky seems to desire to collaborate on a sincere basis; it is therefore time to attack him." Thus in one stroke a year's literature from Moscow seemed justified. That the congress could not forgive. Oudegeest and Jouhaux denied it. After a day's gril- ling by the British in committee, Oudegeest admitted it. As the congress reassembled, he rose and resigned. The only veteran who had been at every international congress since the beginning of the century thus left the stage with unexpected drama. Germany, the largest federation in the congress, re- sented Oudegeest's fall and set about getting Purcell's scalp. This meant either crowding out the British (and so wrecking the I. F. T. U.) or dictating to Britain the name of the British representative. For Purcell was the official nominee of British labor. The Germans therefore did the unprecedented thing, and nominated, beside their own Ger- man representative, George Hicks, present chairman of all British unions, as candidate against Purcell. The British were aghast. Solemnly they warned that the fate of the I. F. T. U. was at stake by such maneuvering. When Germany proved resolute, the British delegation in a body marched out. A minute after they were notified that Hicks had been elected in their absence, with the virtual offer of being made president of the I. F. T. U. Apparently Britain had walked off. and been bounced back. They left Paris to put the whole question of staying in the I. F. T. U. before their own people. At that hour so little was left of the I. F. T. U. that the congress did not dare attempt to elect officers or debate reports or do anything except decide to remove the head- quarters— to Frankfort in Germany or possibly to Brussells — selling their building in Amsterdam. A commission of six national representatives was left in charge to pick up the pieces, to consider reorganization, or to congeal into the old stand-pat, if smaller, I. F. T. U. For the present all will await the decision of Britain. Yet labor's league, with older and deeper roots than the Geneva league of governments, cannot avoid its destiny. The League of Nations evades without too great pain the objects of its charter, which would have to be met by fetch- ing in Russia and America and proceeding to disarmament. Labor's league's habit of coming to grips with its basic object was, after all. what split it at Paris. Nobody know- ing its history expects it to stay split and impotent. And if the British should happen to vote for leading a new organization now. there would be sudden concern among various governments which for the moment are smiling with satisfaction.

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The Nation FOUNDED 1865 Vol. CXXV NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 2, 1927 No. 3252 Contents EDITORIAL PARAGRAPHS 463 EDITORIALS: Politicians and Issues 466 National Flood Control 467 The End of "Abie's Irish Rose" 467 "The Good Gray Poet" 468 IT SEEMS TO HEYWOOD BROUN. By Heywood Broun 469 THE HAMPTON STRIKE. By W. E. Burghardt DuBois -171 ADVICE TO A MENDICANT. By Lynn Riggs 472 FIGHTS AND FLIGHTS IN THE NEWSPAPERS. By Silas Bent.... 473 AUSTRIA WAVERS TOWARD REACTION. By G. E. R. Gedye 474 IN THE DRIFTWAY. By the Drifter 478 CORRESPONDENCE 478 BOOKS, ART, PLAYS: Bookworm. By Clifton Cuthbert 480 India Year by Year. By W. Norman Brown 480 An Impoverished Art. By Joseph Wood Krutch 481 Labor and the Law. By C. M. Joseph 481 Our Puritan Artist. By Vernon Louis Parrington 482 Magic. By Alice Beal Parsons 483 Books in Brief 484 Art: Modern Art in Palestine. By Frances O'Brien 484 Drama : Dutch Interior. By Joseph Wood Krutch 485 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS SECTION : "Drain Inspector's Report" 488 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 HEYWOOD BROUN CARL VAN DOREN DAVID BOEHM, Advertising Manager Subscription Rates : Five dollars per annum postpaid in the United States 3nd 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. THE NATION is on file in most public and college libraries and is indexed in the Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature. P EACE COMMISSIONER" STIMSON reported to President Coolidge on May 14 that the insurrection in Nicaragua was definitely ended. Since then the United States Marines, aided by the American-financed constabulary, have been mopping up the revolutionaries (called, in State Department parlance, "bandits"). In early July the Navy and State departments announced that all Nicaraguans had been disarmed except some fifty ban- dits headed by Sandino. Mr. Maurice A. Hallgren, of the International News Service staff in Washington, has done a public service in compiling a list of the engagements and casualties since Mr. Stimson declared the civil war ended. It is as follows : May 15-16 — At La Paz Centro, 14 Nicaraguans killed; number of wounded unknown. Two marines killed, includ- ing Captain Richard B. Jackson. July 16 — Ocotal, 300 to 500 Nicaraguans killed; more than 100 known to be wounded. One marine killed. July 26 — San Fernando, six Nicaraguans killed; 15 to 20 wounded. One marine wounded. JULY 27 — San Fernando (during pursuit by United States planes of fugitives from battle of July 26), 20 Nic- araguans killed or wounded. AUGUST 16 — Along northern border, two Nicaraguans killed. September 3 — Telpaneca, five Nicaraguans killed or wounded. September 8 (reported September 15)— Sanata, five Nicaraguans killed. September 19 — Telpaneca, 20 Nicaraguans killed; 50 wounded. Two marines killed. September 21 — Telpaneca, unreported number of Nica- raguans killed and wounded. No mention of marine cas- ualties. October 9 (reported to Managua October 18) — 67 Nicaraguans killed or wounded. Four members of native guard killed. No marine casualties. FIVE OR SIX HUNDRED NICARAGUANS, then, have been killed — or let us use the honest word, murdered — by United States troops fighting, without a shadow of constitutional justification, on foreign soil, since Mr. Cool- idge's "peace commissioner" and publicity man said fight- ing was at an end. Throughout the Nicaraguan affair the State and Navy departments have deliberately and per- sistently lied to the American people. Can any one pretend that the manhunters of the Marine Corps are still "merely protecting American lives and property"? Is there no way of stopping this butchery? CHICAGO'S HERESY-HUNTING school commissioners seem to be unpopular; the press ridicules them from coast to coast. David Saville Muzzey, author of one of the sinning textbooks, is suing his abusers for libel; and the embattled historians have arisen in defense of Truth. We would have more sympathy for them if they had had more- sympathy with Truth in the past. There was a time, ten years ago, when they sat at their desks, very mum about Truth, busily revising their textbooks to fit the needs of war-time propaganda. It was in those days that King George III took on a mildness of character unknown to previous generations, and that all the hardships of the Revolution were unloaded on the heads of the mercenary Hessians. Britain did indeed acquire a surprising halo in more than one war-time textbook. Doubtless much of that revision consisted in a wise erasure of haloes where haloes did not belong; the fathers of our country were, after all, human beings like the British. But the motivating force was less a pure passion for truth than a desire to adapt the textbooks to the mood of 1917, when blood was thicker than water and all Germans were Huns. Mayor Thompson and his cohorts, absurd as they are making themselves, are only acting is the historians themselves did a decade ago. MAINE HAS RETAINED the primary election system by what appears to have been a two-to-one vote. This result is the more remarkable because only two newspapers, one in Bath, the other the Portland Evening News, were for the primary. The rest of the Maine press was unanimously in favor of returning to the old convention system. It is true that the vote was light, but the voice of the majority is none the less unmistakable, and it is the occasion for real rejoicing, while incidentally showing, as has happened so many times before, that not even a practically united press in a State or a city can persuade an electorate to do what it does not want to do. There are many signs that a

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464 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3252 nation-wide effort is being made to do away with the primary. Had the Maine election gone the other way and the primary been abolished there, the result would have been widely trumpeted by our reactionaries and our Fascists as proof that the people themselves were beginning to turn away from the democratic experiment. Beyond question it would have heartened the efforts in other States to do away with an institution which, whatever its faults, re- mains a bulwark against the encroachments of corrupt po- litical machines. PRESIDENT COOLIDGE assures the country that it is prosperous. "Crops are better," he says — he omits to note that prices are lower. "Exports are on the increase," ii i remarks, quoting the September figures — he might have added that trade always picks up in the fall, but that September 1920's exports were $22,000,000 below those of 1926. Railway net receipts, he admits, have fallen, but the decrease is not great — though the railways say it was a drop of 11 per cent from the 1926 figures. Tonnage fig- ures, he announces, are encouraging— in fact freight-car loadings dropped 4V2 per cent. It is difficult to understand why business continues its adulation of so ignorant a Pres- ident, and of the Mr. Mellon whose Treasury estimates tend to be a billion dollars wrong each year. Perhaps the cynical commentator of the New York Times financial staff has the clue: "Generally," this astute gentleman remarks, Wall Street comment was "that the President had dope his best to prevent undue discouragement over such reaction as is known to have occurred." In other words, the President did his best to keep the country happy by telling it bedtime stories. Wall Street is not fooled, but it likes other people to be. EDISON HEDGES is an obscure lawyer from Atlantic City, New Jersey, and Nathan L. Miller is a former Governor of the State of New York, and attorney for some of New York City's wealthiest corporations. That is one difference between them ; there are others. Hedges is at- torney for Willis Beach, wanted by the police in connection with the Lilliendahl murder case. On October 17 his client disappeared. Whenever the courts want my client I will produce him [said Hedges]. I told Beach to leave town because of the inhuman treatment [by] detectives and the refusal of the Prosecutor to allow me to be present when they questioned him. . . . When only the police demanded him to appear he was acting within his constitutional rights in leaving his home. If Beach is indicted for murder he will appear at once to answer that charge. The next day Hedges, the attorney, was indicted on two counts charged with spiriting away a material witness. "This Hedges phase of the investigation," said the Assist- ant Prosecutor, "will disclose whether a lawyer can obstruct justice and stifle an inquiry of this sort. It will show whether one lawyer is bigger than the whole State of New Jersey." NATHAN MILLER had different luck. He is attorney for Harry M. Blackmer, former chairman of the board of the Midwest Refining Co., and the missing key man in the Government's case against Harry F. Sinclair and Albert B. Fall. Blackmer left the country in a hurry about the time of the Walsh investigation, and has not been home since. He was discovered, and subpoenaed in Europe; and Atlee Pomerene, counsel for the Government in the oil cases, made a special trip abroad to persuade him to return; but Blackmer has not come back. When Black- mer's name was called as a witness in the Sinclair-Fall case, Nathan L. Miller stepped forward to explain his absence. According to the New York World Mr. MiDer explained that "he had advised Blackmer to disobey the subpoena on the ground that service in a foreign land is unconstitutional and therefore void." The other news- papers report him in substantially the same terms. Ob- viously Mr. Miller is a lawyer who considers himself greater than the government of the United States. Per- haps he is. Without waiting for a mere court to rule on it he has declared a United States law unconstitutional, and has advised his client to disobey it. Yet he has not been indicted for obstructing the course of justice, and we pre- dict that he will not be. Attorneys for oil magnates are not treated like Atlantic City lawyers. . / TO HAVE HAD ELEVEN CHILDREN and to be sen- tenced to prison for life at thirty-two must surely be a record in hectic careers. A Detroit woman, convicted six times of larceny, is now liable for life sentence under Michi- gan's new Habitual Criminals Act. Mrs. Brennan explains that she was married at fifteen, that eleven children have been born to her, and that only when she is about to have a baby is she seized with the tendency to kleptomania which makes her steal. Obviously Mrs. Brennan is a subject for a psychiatrist, not a court ; yet this Michigan Baumes law is so blind that it makes no provision for cases like hers. Any more than for the case of Fred Palm, another young victim of Michigan's new passion for punishment, who was sentenced to life because he had in his possession a pint of gin. This was the last of a series of convictions for minor crimes, but to say that Palm is a dangerous criminal and a menace to society at large and that the State should there- fore support him for the balance of his life because he owned a pint of gin is to indict also a fairly large group of citizens at present comfortably out of jail. \\ JARDEN LAWES of Sing Sing prison has seen 109 r men electrocuted since he became warden in 1920; but he thinks capital punishment worse than futile. He points out in the Survey Midmonthly that "juries and judges erred in 11 per cent of the original commitments for first- degree murder," and suspects that more errors are never discovered. If so, the state kills constantly with no excuse whatever. Murderers, Mr. Lawes adds, are rarely chronic criminals. Ninety per cent of those committed for first- degree murder have no previous criminal record; "nor is there a single instance in which a prisoner pardoned or specially committed for murder, first-degree, returned to Sing Sing prison because of a second homicide." His studies of the racial origin of murderers in various decades punc- ture another popular myth. The Irish led for a long period following their immigra- tion and the Germans were a close second following their immigration period. The Italians then took first place and now the Negro, who is migrating from the South, is rapidly forging toward the lead. In other words, the typical mur- derer of any given period comes from that race which is making a place for itself in a new environment.

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Nov. 2, 1927] The Nation 465 WE ARE TIRED of "weeks." On that one point we sympathize with Calvin Coolidge, who refused to indorse National Education Week. We too have refused to give publicity to weeks — to National Reindeer Week, Pop- corn Week, Crabapple Week, and we forget what else! But when it comes to Visiting Nurse Service Week in New York we relent. We can merely advise the Henry Street nurses . that they know more about nursing than about publicity, and that the day of the week is past. The day of the visiting nurse is here; and it is here in part because Lillian Wald's Henry Street Settlement has put it on the map. For this nursing service is one of New York's really great institu- tions. What Miss Wald began on the East Side has spread over the city — it now has eighteen centers in three bor- oughs; and its two hundred graduate nurses average a total of 1,600 visits every day — Negro, Irishman, Armenian, Jew, Italian, Yankee — the nurses go to all who need them, and are paid as the patient can afford. A baby born in New York City today has a better chance of living and thriving than most babies born on American farms — and for that the "Henry Street nurses" deserve a large share of the credit. It is natural that nurses from forty-seven countries have come to New York to study and admire the Henry Street system — and typical that most able-bodied New Yorkers are unaware of its existence. TOLSTOI, TROTZKY, and now the United States cus- toms service, have tried to define art. When Edward Steichen brought in an ovoid piece of metal shaped by the sculptor Brancusi and labeled The Bird, the literal- minded customs authorities said it was not art and assessed it 40 per cent duty as a "manufacture of metal." Mr. Steichen protested, and now the United States Customs Court is earnestly at work. "Would you recognize it as a bird if you saw it in a forest, and would you take a shot at it?" the judge asked one artist on the witness-stand. "It is a matter of indifference to me what it represents," came the intelligent answer. "If the artist calls it a bird so would I." The artist remarked that the profile might suggest the breast of a bird. "Or the keel of a boat, or the crescent of a new moon?" asked the judge, still seek- ing wisdom. "Or a fish or a tiger?" added the learned Assistant District Attorney. We confess that some mod- ern art has left us as unmoved and frivolous. But the whole discussion seemed somehow to be lifted to clean wind-swept mountain-peaks when Jacob Epstein, a very great modern artist, answered the question, "Why is this a work of art?" with the simple but final words: "It pleases my sense of beauty. I find it a beautiful object." When the judge persisted "So a brass rail, highly polished and harmoniously curved, could also be a work of art?" Epstein answered "It could become so." "Then a mechanic could have done this thing?" the customs lawyer interrupted. "No," said Epstein impressively. "A mechanic could not make a work of art. He could have polished this, but he could not have conceived it." THE AGORA OF ATHENS is on its way to the sun- light at last. Buried for centuries, some of it under thirty feet of silt and rubbish, the market-place familiar to Greeks as early as Herodotus and as late as Plutarch is now to become as accessible as the Forum is in Rome. Professor Capps of Princeton, laboring over a plan to raise $2,500,000 among the American universities for ex- cavations in this most famous of unseen places, has just heard the good news that an anonymous donor has prom- ised the whole of the required sum, to be paid in checks as soon as satisfactory arrangements can be made with the Greek Government and with the citizens of Athens who live on the site — whose house walls, we hear, are veritable museums of imbedded tablets, capitals, and bas-reliefs. We hope the work can proceed quickly, for temples lie under this common dirt, and there may very well be statues, archaic or classical, which it would be worth one's time to sail to Greece to see. It is pleasant to think that the Acropolis may one day look down and recognize its old friend the Agora, as the Capitoline and the Palatine have long been able to do with their old friend the Forum. Pau- sanias, who described it all, should be on hand to hear us say that he had done his Baedeker well. TO THE BALTIMORE SUN go our deepest sympathies in the sudden death of its editor, John Haslup Adams — and to the entire profession of journalism. Writing in the Sun, Henry L. Mencken says that Mr. Adams was the only journalist he ever knew "who never made a visible compromise with his convictions." We have known others, but that does not keep us from believing that there is no finer tribute for the epitaph of a journalist. It is as much the right of the unselfish and devoted journalist to have this said at his grave as it is that of the soldier to have his unsullied sword upon his bier. Mr. Adams was of that category of editors who have believed that newspapers exist primarily to right injustice, not merely to make money as vulgarly as a chain of tobacco stores or a cut-rate bargain emporium. Hence his loss affects the whole profession — there are so few men with his type of conscience and his ideals left in it, and so few newspapers which value such a man and give him free rein. Like the lamented Frank I. Cobb, of the New York World, Mr. Adams died much too young — he was but fifty-six. Like Mr. Cobb, he was a great liberal, but one who felt that changed conditions made impossible the laissez faire doctrines of the great liberals who are the forefathers of the present day. He never lost faith and courage, despite years of almost unbearable physi- cal suffering. To John W. Owens, who now succeeds him as editor of the Baltimore Sun, Mr. Adams has left the highest of writing standards and the noblest of editorial traditions. THE DEATH OF CHARLES H. LEVERMORE ended a career of fine scholarship and steady effort in behalf of peace. For many years before he won the Bok peace prize in 1924, Dr. Levermore had been actively connected with various organizations working for international de- cency and the rule of reason. The $50,000 prize, relieving him of the necessity and restrictions of money-earning, made it possible for him to travel and investigate inter- national relations at their sources. He has been in Europe the greater part of the time since 1924, continuing his close study of the machinery and activities of the League of Nations. With a certain fitness, death came to him while he was delivering a public lecture on peace. Men of the temper and learning of Dr. Levermore are rare, too rare, and it is a consolation to know that one of them lived long enough to taste honor and the fruits of honor, and to put to such satisfying use the money that a prize essay brought him.

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466 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3252 Politicians and Issues WITH Nicholas Murray Butler we so rarely find our- selves in agreement that it is a pleasure to record the fact that he is rapidly becoming the enfant terrible of the Republican Party. Whether it is that he has aban- doned as hopeless his own political ambitions and feels that he is now free to talk as he thinks, or whether the change is due to some other reason, he has, beginning with his prophecy that Calvin Coolidge would not run for re- election, rendered a genuine service in demanding that the candidates stop concealing their views and come forward £nd let the public know exactly where they stand. His latest offense consists in the speech, The Lost Art of Thinking, which he delivered before the Institute of Arts and Sciences in New York. In the course of that address he pointed out the familiar fact that the office-holding and office-seeking class dislikes thinking and pretty uniformly discredits both it and the thinker. To hold reasoned convictions, and to give public expression to them, is to incur criticism, possibly enmities, and to the office-holding and office-seeking class that is well-nigh fatal. He added that as a result the office-holders and office-seek- ers "block the road of the people toward those higher and finer things which it is in their hearts to accomplish." This is, of course, what we have been saying in The Nation, lo, these sixty-odd years. The offense is, moreover, as old as the politician, but it is true that since the war the art of thinking has been lost by wide American circles. There has been practically no political thinking at all, and the sinners are not merely politicians, but also clergymen, the legal fraternity, almost the entire press of the country, teachers, and everyone else who ought to reason and ought to apply critical yardsticks to what is happening, not only within our borders, but beyond. If that had not been the case Calvin Coolidge could not have lasted in the White Mouse six months without becoming an object of public ridicule. It is not only that he never gives us an original or really worth-while thought, but that when he does say something to commend itself to liberal opinion the world over he promptly offsets it by moving in the opposite di- rection. Thus he failed in his Disarmament Conference at Geneva and now announces that he wants the army and navy to receive much larger appropriations — forgetting that he informed the American Legion at its Omaha meeting in 1925 that armaments have never prevented a country from being attacked or assured its success in a war. The almost inevitable cowardice of the politicians is the more extraordinary because if they had the slightest courage, or intelligence in the reading of American his- tory, they would know that the American people rally with enthusiasm to men whom they believe free and fearless, with the right to call their souls their own. It is true that they are often deceived by appearances, and that men to whom they gave support have subsequently turned out to have feet of clay. But until that was discovered the people supported them with joy, happy in the thought that at last they had discovered real men and not puppets. Hughes when he was Governor, Wilson and Roosevelt when they made war upon big business, Cleveland for some years, Foulke when he seemed bent on purifying the State of Indiana, Governor Hunt in Arizona where he is today doing admirable work, and many another have found the public backing them. But the politician continues to think that the only way to get ahead is to keep mum on all the pressing issues, hoping that if he offends no one the light- ning will strike him as it struck Harding and Coolidge. Mr. Butler's ire is rightly aroused because the leading Presidential candidates on both sides are, as our gifted Senator Reed of Missouri would say, "as mum as oysters stranded on the Massachusetts coast." Not one of them dares mutter ; they are all engaged in hiding in bomb-proofs lest somebody ask them how they stand on prohibition, or on the tariff, or on disarmament, or the foreign debt, or some other worth-while issue. Mr. Butler lists nearly a dozen problems besides prohibition — the problems of the land and of the agriculturalists, of international coopera- tion to establish peace, of freeing the government from control of business and privilege, of doing away with lame- duck sessions of Congress among them. In short, he de- mands that the nation face the problems of its day. Everybody knows that the liberation of the government from big-business control, so loudly called for by both Wil- son and Roosevelt in 1912, is much further from achieve- ment than it was a decade and a half ago. Indeed, Mr. Butler might well have pointed out that no nation can stand still in the face of the ever-moving juggernaut of capital. With trusts and super-trusts and international trusts being formed every day — the latter chiefly aimed at the United States — to content ourselves with contemplation of the colossal number of automobiles, radio sets, phonographs, and moving-picture houses is to invite a day of most dan- gerous reckoning. Behind "prosperity" stand these terrible- specters of corporation greed and avarice and the heaped-up billions of capital that, when in the hands of individuals, challenge the very existence of the political state. It is also a gratifying event that, on the same day on which Mr. Butler spoke. Senator Borah publicly accepted an invitation to discuss in New York the status of prohi- bition in connection with the Constitution. He wants a showdown as to whether the Eighteenth Amendment of the Constitution is to be allowed to become a dead letter or not. That is courage and wisdom. Whether one is for or against prohibition the time has come to face it in all earnestness. We would put to every candidate the ques- tion: Are you Wet or Dry? If politically dry, do you drink intoxicating liquors? Whichever you are, what do you propose to do about the situation? Are you for or against the Constitution? Are you a conscientious objector to the obeying of the Volstead law? And then we should go on, and make them answer categorically without platitudes or glittering generalities how they stand on the tariff, and dis- armament, and world peace ; whether they believe that big business should continue to rule this country as it does now or not. It is high time, with corruption widespread in this country and official lawlessness flagrant from one end to the other, that pussyfooting should stop. If Mr. Butler and Senator Borah, and the Progressive Republican group, will put pistols to the heads of candidates, beginning with that delightful man of mystery, Herbert Hoover, and find out what they really think, they will do a valiant serv- ice to the entire country and its political life.

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Nov. 2, 1927] The Nation 467 National Flood Control THERE are at last signs that the problem of flood control in the Mississippi Valley will be presented in the next Congress as one of national importance, a problem that can be solved adequately and permanently only by the federal government. Most heartening in this respect are the recent statements of certain members of the Adminis- tration. If their words were never heeded before, one hopes they will be in this instance. No public pronounce- ment, for example, is more pertinent to the whole problem than the declaration of Secretary of War Davis that the Mississippi River must be kept "in its banks and out of politics." If the Secretary's position had been accepted sev- eral years ago there is strong likelihood that "the greatest peace-time disaster that the United States has ever known" (as Herbert Hoover puts it) would never have occurred. The importance of full federal control of the Miss- issippi flood problem has not been recognized by Congress. Petty pork-barrel legislation and independent State jeal- ousies have been given precedence. States have been al- lowed to treat the matter as of more or less local concern, and the result has been the policy of always passing the water on to the next State downstream, and letting the people below look out for themselves. And the fruits of this shabby decentralized policy, as we were permitted to read in the papers three months ago, are destruction, deso- lation, and starvation for the people in the lower Miss- issippi Valley. In addition to these hardships is the irrep- arable destruction of farm land by the washing away of its choice topsoil. One cubic mile — equivalent to three inches from the top of 13,000,000 acres — finds its way to the gulf each year. With the possibility of similar catastrophes recurring each spring, it does not take genius to see that the Mississippi flood problem is most decidedly national in importance and that the administration of flood control for the entire region should be under one centralized federal bureau. It should be equally plain that once Congress loses sight of the national aspect of the problem, the result can only be confusion, with a wonderful opportunity for the pork-barrel specialists to do their worst. Already greedy eyes have been watching the nation-wide sentiment for flood control, and plans are brewing to unite other schemes with the flood-control legislation. Hydro-electric power in the Boulder Canyon region, reclamation of arid lands, and flood relief are hailed as "one and the same problem." And it is just this sort of hokum which, following the devasta- ting floods of 1912, resulted in the Newlands Act of 1917, a measure of some initial worth which became so palpably an omnibus log-rolling affair that it prejudiced flood relief throughout the country. Plainly, the record of the United States in the Mississippi Valley is not exemplary. But that is all the more reason why the next session of Con- gress should treat the matter with intelligence and de- liberation, and that engineering skill should be allowed to work unhampered by political strings. If the engineers are to accomplish a real solution they must be given a free hand. It is a problem that chal- lenges their skill and knowledge to the utmost. The Miss- issippi River seems today more portentous than ever be- fore; and man, despite the enormous progress of science, despite all his successes in harnessing the forces of nature for his own betterment, seems just a little weaker in comparison. One thing is certain ; there is no single, simple solution. So far, there have been three broad theories of flood control. These are (1) "levees only," supported prin- cipally by the army engineers and the Mississippi River Commission; (2) levees plus spillways — a plan particu- larly favored by New Orleans, since it was the operation of the spillway theory in the blasting of the Poydras levee that saved New Orleans from inundation; and (3) levees plus spillways plus source control. Through source control in reservoirs there is the possi- bility of both the generation of hydro-electric power and the creation of great inland waterways. The statement of President Coolidge in his address to the Red Cross that "in the solution of the problem we shall advance our system of inland waterways," and the belief of Secretary Hoover that the Mississippi River affords an opportunity for a revolu- tion in inland transportation in America, give added weight to this third scheme of flood control. The practica- bility of hydro-electric power-generation through reser- voirs, however, is questioned, because the bulk of the flood water does not originate in the higher lands where reser- voirs are most feasible; and because the reservoirs, if they are to be effective in storing flood waters, would necessarily be empty part of the year — and empty reservoirs seem to be of no use. As to the "levees-only" policy, it was so pat- ently responsible for the recent disaster that it will hardly again be accepted as the sole method of control. The flood records have demonstrated its inadequacy. There are some objections to every method of flood control suggested. The problem obviously needs the most expert engineering attention of the nation, and Congress's first task is to collect and sift that expert information. Until the engineers and scientists, with the necessary data in hand, have reached a measure of agreement upon the proper solution, it should surely be the fervent hope of everyone that Secretary Davis's admonition to keep the river out of politics will be observed. The End of * 'Abie's Irish Rose ' "ri^HE success of 'Abie's Irish Rose,' " Anne Nichols has M. explained with the customary frankness of the cre- ative artist, "is the result of its great message — the spirit of tolerance." It must be admitted that the comedy did win the tolerance of Broadway, for it was performed 2,327 times at the Republic Theater. Back in May of 1922 the play was first shown to a New York audience; or, to express its longevity in more comprehensible terms, one actress who began as a flower girl in the cast at the age of ten ended the run in the character of a bridesmaid. Another member of the troupe found time to be married twice and once divorced as "Abie" ambled on. It would be heartening to believe that the playwright's profit of $5,000,000 came wholly out of America's great love and passion for tolerance. During the life of this comedy celebrating denominational democracy the Ku Klux Klan rose and fell. Governor Smith wrote his famous letter explaining how one might be both Catholic and patriot. Henry Ford discovered a Jewish conspiracy and recanted. And here and there in minor ways race prejudice was manifest. Great as is the triumph of "Abie's Irish Rose,"

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468 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3252 it can hardly be maintained that universal brotherhood has come bounding in upon its heels. Millions saw the happy- romance of Abie and Rosemary and though very many laughed not every heart was softened. There is a great gulf fixed between dramatic literature and life, and some who remained to applaud no doubt went down to business the next day and advertised for "Christians only." Possibly Miss Nichols is mistaken. It may have been the jokes and not the message. Few plays have ever suc- ceeded in gathering within a single evening so many of the old, familiar wheezes. Some have said that America is too new and lacks tradition. Yet there is love and rever- ence for the jokes of our ancestors. Buildings hallowed by age and gentle memories may go down because they stand across the march of progress, but not the warm and humor- ous belief that Irishmen bridle and grow apoplectic at even the most casual mention of an orange. Nor will America surrender its belief that twins are by nature a fact hilar- iously funny. The critics said that "Abie's Irish Rose" was cheap and sentimental folly. Ten million paying patrons flocked to see the play. Ten million Americans can't be wrong? Per- haps not; but there was a Harding landslide. It is a healthy sign, to be sure, that there should be a public opinion un- terrified by any dogma issued through a little group of wil- ful men. If the ten million enjoyed "Abie's Irish Rose" they were quite right and justified in trampling down the censures of a handful of newspaper critics. Still, it is difficult to accept the contention that the vast revenues of the play prove beyond doubt that all pro- fessional reviewers are dolts and pedants. There remains posterity to be considered. It is by no means certain that "Abie's Irish Rose" will linger through centuries of re- vival. Nor can the final test be left wholly to the ages. If ten million persons can be wrong over a stretch of five years, ten thousand might err for many decades. There must be somewhere a court of last resort, though it is difficult to locate it this side of Paradise. When Judg- ment Day roars round, there ought in all reason to be criti- cal comment upon plays as well as people. Celestial criticism would be without bias and quite independent of the box office. How will "Abie's Irish Rose" fare in this last review? There is at least a chance that it will go to the pit accompanied by hissing. The children of light, we have reason to believe, are interested for the most part in the potential magnificence of man. Miss Nichols made him ludicrous and banal. Even after fame and fortune came to Miss Nichols she remained bitter against those journalists who said her little play was not so good. And is there tolerance in this? The critics have a right to sneer at the ten million. A minority need not be liberal-minded when the odds against it grow overwhelming. One does not carry gifts of gold to Midas. Rather the responsibility of tolerance rests upon the great cheering horde which likes the Nichols drama. There should be compassion for the few who tried to hold the pass against an army. Take, for instance, the glamorous example of Robert Benchley. For fifty-two weeks in each of the five years he reiterated his opinion that the play was catastrophic. Those who know the man feel certain that he will never weaken. Indeed he is among the happy ones who need not fumble for a fitting message when his final hour approaches. Surely those who stoop for his last words have every reason to expect a thin, devoted whisper: rotten." 'Abie's Irish Rose' is 'The Good Gray Poet OUR favorite Irishman for the moment is William Douglas O'Connor, whose pamphlet in defense of Walt Whitman, "The Good Gray Poet," has just been reprinted in Canada. Henry S. Saunders, Toronto enthusiast for Whitman and other important causes, has with his own hands set up and bound 125 copies of the little book first issued by O'Connor in 1866, and it will take two dollars to get one of these copies. We wish the book were to be more accessible. In a proper society it would be distributed to everybody free — though in such a society there would never have been need for the thing to be written. The need was this. On June 30, 1866, Whitman was summarily dismissed from his post in the Department of the Interior at Washington, and in response to inquiries into the reasons for such action the Secretary of the De- partment, James Harlan, gave out that Whitman had been discovered to be the author of "Leaves of Grass," a book "full of indecent passages," proving that their maker must be "a very bad man" and a "free lover." Protests from Whitman's friends led Harlan to admit that it would be difficult to prove the badness of the book, and even that he had now revised his judgment of the man. But Harlan thought it better not to invite the poet back, and the poet would ask no favors. O'Connor, who was one of Whitman's warmest and most intelligent friends, waited nine weeks for something to happen. Nothing did, and he poured his pamphlet forth. It has been called "the most brilliant monograph in American literature." It is at any rate all red-hot, from the first indignant word to the last. It is a stream of fire directed at the head not only of Harlan but of any censor who was ever to come after him. And it is as complete an arsenal of ammunition against censorship in general as any- one, even in these fundamentalist days, would want to bor- row from. All the arguments we moderns use are here, O'Connor declared first that Whitman and his book were not bad — his rhetoric on the theme of Whitman's goodness being, as Professor Holloway has recently pointed out, a little excessive but tending toward a substantially accurate statement. He declared next that even if they were bad it was not the business of a Secretary of the Interior to do anything about it. And he asked at last whether all such questions should not be left to the simple reader rather than to that large class of persons whom he had once heard Whitman call "the immutable granitic pudding-heads of the world." Which is all there is to say, we think, upon the subject of the censor. "If," wrote O'Connor, "rising to the utmost cruelty of conception, I can dare add to the calamities of genius a misery so degrading and extreme as to imagine the great authors of the world condemned to clerkships under Mr. Harlan, I can at least mitigate that dream of wretchedness and insult by adding the fancy of their fate under the action of his principles." Then he showed how Moses, Homer. Lucretius, Dante, Shakespeare, Goethe, and a dozen others would have suffered and been suppressed. It is an argument which liberal lawyers today are using in the courts without too much success.

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Nov. 2, 1927] The Nation 469 DR. JUNG in Zurich has an assistant named Miss Wolfe. When American men come with shattered nerves they are sent to her for preliminary consultation and con- fession. The doctor believes that America is a land sodden with the worship of women. The wife, the mother, and even the niece stand upon a pedestal in the United States according to the notion of foreign observers. It is the function of Miss Wolfe to remove this cursed miscon- ception of feminine perfection and ease the crick out of the neck of the idolators. Neurotics go away entirely cured and mumbling something about the fundamental similarity between the Colonel and Judy O'Grady. I do not know the precise nature of Miss Wolfe's tech- nique, but it is no great trick to prove that women are not so much. I mean not a whit more or less than men. To work on a paper with a woman, to attend a coeducational school, or even to fall in love should carry conviction of the basic equality of the sexes. Where on earth does this notion come from that American men think of women as in some peculiar way divine? And I wouldn't have asked that question if I didn't know the answer. There is, or used to be, the toast "To the Ladies." Mother's Day persists and the Southern gentleman some- times finds his way into print. But whoever took any of that nonsense seriously? This time I don't know the answer. A foreigner may be excused if he is fooled by our national hyperbole, but there should be less patience with a native who compounds the fallacy. Distinctly in my mind is Louis Bromfield, who writes novels and won a Pulitzer Prize. Before embarking on a lecture tour the young man said that the American woman lorded it over her fellows because she had been led to be- lieve that she was pure and holy. This is a second distilla- tion out of the roots of folly. I will admit that I have known women in politics and elsewhere to seize upon tra- ditional sex eulogies and try to pass them off as honest coin, but even these deceivers grin and give up the instant the base metal is clinked against the counter. If a man is foolish enough to treat a woman as a saint she may allow the impression to ride, but that is no proof that she herself believes it. And, as a matter of fact, she is almost certain to tell him to leave off kneeling and to provide adequate and logical persuasion. Saints do not seem to have much fun. Of course I belittle masculine intelligence in suggest- ing that only fools go in for talk about the purity of American womanhood. Pascals have had recourse to just such oratory. Bosses with well-oiled machines were against the extension of the franchise. Probably they did not be- lieve that all the new voters would be reformers, but they were disposed to let well enough alone. To the credit of women it may be said that they have been muddle-headed, corrupt, and incompetent at the polls in precisely the same manner as men. Recent disclosures of census-taking at Albany are in many ways deplorable, but at least they indi- cate the rapid approach of the day when it will be necessary for no man to take off his hat in any elevator. Even at the present time I think a well-informed American has the right to boast that there is less chivalry and more com- radeship between men and women in our land than in any other nation of the world. Sometimes the point is admitted with regret. The belief prevails that the gross Anglo-Saxon understands nothing of the art of love and that rich American girls are forever marrying foreigners. This is one of the subjects upon which statistics are meager, and I contend that the international alliance is rare rather than otherwise, in proof of which I cite the fact that it is always first-page stuff. Mr. Bromfield includes in his lecture the observation that marriage is a failure in America because the Ameri- can male works so hard that he has no time to pay women charming attentions. Many American marriages fail. So do French an ' English marriages. Surely the divorce rate is no fair test oi marital success or failure. The causes for secession are many, and few I believe are purely local. The hag-ridden, hard-working American man is largely a legendary figure. He, too, is the creation of the casual European tripper. We have no leisure class, I am told, but here in New York, the traditional hive of industry, you can find thirty thousand people at a double-header in the Yankee Stadium on almost any sunny afternoon. Possibly the American business man keeps slightly longer hours than are known in Latin countries, but he takes longer and more frequent vacations. Anyhow, not very much goes on in an office. It is perfectly simple to get hold of a couple of bond-salesmen for bridge on any afternoon except Saturday and Sunday, when they play golf. The supposed high pressure of a newspaper office is largely fictional. There may be one or two executives about the premises who like to yell, but that is of no consequence. Even the grinding gravity of weekly intellectual publica- tions I find greatly exaggerated. Before I ever attended a conference at The Nation I was terrified because Dorothy Parker had said: "You won't be able to hear a word on account of the clanking of the Phi Beta Kappa keys." She was mistaken. But to return to women and their alleged dominating saintliness, another charge remains to be answered. It is said that our literature and our drama grow increasingly feminine. The theory of the theater is that man pays for the seats but woman selects the show. What is the result? Thirty years ago the best-known American playwright was Clyde Fitch. Today Eugene O'Neill rules the roost. This does not seem to me a diminution of virility. My earliest memory of an American best-seller is "Richard Carvel." And now "Elmer Gantry" sweeps the country. If the prevalent literary taste has become over-sentimentalized through feminine influence, just what is the reason for the success of Ernest Hemingway, Theodore Dreiser, Sherwood Anderson, and Sinclair Lewis? Naturally I do not accept the theory that men are realistically minded and women

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470 The Nation [Vol. 125. No. 3252 romantical. If I had any faith in generalizations I would be prepared to argue just the other way about. I think it is likely that women read more books than men, but since the standards of our native literature are constantly rising I see no reason for complaint. If I may quote again from Louis Bromfield I should like to mention the fact that he believes it odd that in a country so young and vigorous as America "the subject of love should be taboo." Where has Mr. Bromfield been keeping himself? If he means that there is very little frank discussion of sex in current novels or upon the stage I will agree with him. The theater grows less shamefaced, but the road to freedom still stretches many miles ahead of us. Naturally the shout of the censors is without sig- nificance. There has been no American generation which d'd not insist that its own particular theater had reached the lowest depths of degradation. Back in the eighties Anthony Comstock expressed precisely the same concern about nudity in musical comedies which agitates Mr. Ban- ton, the New York district attorney, today. However, we do not learn wholly from the lips of players or from the printed word. I feel that there has been an extraordinary advance in conversational limita- tions. It has not been my privilege to hear "Shall we join the ladies?" for fifteen years. Preachers are correct in complaining that anecdotes once known only to barrooms now pass about a dinner table. If the question is asked whether it is admirable that custom should permit the telling of ribald stories in the presence of honorable women I shall answer "Yes" without hesitation. My love of ribaldry is not intense. Most of the stories are not much good, but they serve as symbols. When a fairly strong tale goes by unrebuked a barrier goes with it. Once smoke and smut were reserved wholly for men. Accordingly, these vices might justly be called anti-social. The woman who smokes and says "Have you heard this one?" is bringing about a better and a cleaner America. A story with a double edge acts as an ice-breaker. It is not possible to hold serious conversation until all the taboos which chill the spirit have been splintered. Men and women talk much more honestly to each other than ever before in America because the need for being finicky is abating. Here's to the ladies! Sweet rest to them in the churchyards where they lie. They didn't ask to be pure and protected and fragile. I don't believe they even wanted to be ladies. Heywood Broun i i Norris for Presiden 5 1 By LEWIS S. GANNETT Washington, October 25 THE Progressive Senators in Washington have an- nounced a new coalition, led by Senator Borah, to support Norris for President. "George Norris is the only honest man in political life in America," says a cynical Washington correspondent. The hard-boiled gentry of the press actually believe the Nebraska Senator when he says he does not want the Re- publican nomination for President and allows his name to be used against his will. Certainly there is no other man in Washington whom they do not suspect of Presi- dential ambitions. Norris knows that he will not be President, or Repub- lican nominee for President, and he would not want to be if he could. He lacks the sanguine enthusiasm of his life- long friend, the late Senator La Follette, and though his political life has been one long fight he has not La Follette's zest for battle. Norris has been fighting Muscle Shoals and the power trust, sometimes almost single-handed, for a decade, and he is still fighting, but he is too clear-headed to be an ardent hoper. He would rather encourage inde- pendent voting than build up a loyal party following — as he showed when he entered the barony of Pennsylvania and spoke there, as a Republican United States Senator, against Republican corruption and in behalf of the Democratic candidate for the Senatorship. Nebraska voters, be it said in their honor, respect that kind of independence. The Re- publican organization in that State includes some of the same breed of patronage-hounds as infest the G. 0. P. in other States, but when George Norris's turn for re- election came up they stopped baying, and Senator Norris — despite the fact that nine-tenths of the Nebraska press was against him and that he did not stop work to make a speech — was overwhelmingly reelected. And next year Nebraska's delegation will be for Norris for President. Even Governor Adam MacMullin, who recently informed Mr. Lowden of Illinois that the corn-fields of Iowa were thirsting for Lowden, is at work changing his mind. Wis- consin, the Dakotas, Idaho, will probably be for him too; and half a dozen other States are possibilities. Such a bloc should at least have a voice and influence in the con- vention. The Northwest is unhappy. It isn't dreaming dreams of a Progressive Messiah, but it is acutely aware that the price of wheat, ignoring Mr. Coolidge's proclamations of prosperity, has just made another low record. The North- west wants farm relief, wants it badly, really needs it. That, of course, is the economic impulse behind the gather- ing of the Progressive Senators and the launching of the Norris "boom." From a legislative point of view the most interesting thing about this Progressive revival is that Senator Borah is leading it. He called the conference which sent forth the call to battle, and the publicity statements have been issued from his office. Now Senator Borah has always been an independent, but he has usually played a solitary hand. He did not support Mr. Roosevelt in 1912, or Mr. La Follette in 1924. He has not crossed party lines as Mr. Norris did in Pennsylvania, and he has made most of his brilliant fights in the Senate as a lone lion. If he wants company now, wants to cooperate and organize, that is a healthy sign. The Progressive bloc will have the balance of power in the next Senate, and unless the Democrats all desert to Mr. Mellon they should be able to make Congress lively. Since the death of the elder La Follette they have, however, lacked dramatic and effective leadership. The cynical see other thoughts in the lines on Mr. Borah's forehead. He supports the candidacy of Senator

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Nov. 2, 1927] The Nation 471 Norris, who has no chance. He assures his visitors that Mr. Coolidge does not wish to run for office because the President sees business bumps ahead and does not choose to take the blame for them. He is against Mr. Lowden because of the Missouri scandals which he himself exposed in 1920; against Mr. Hughes as the private attorney, in office and out, of the Standard Oil Company; against Mr. Dawes because of the Lorimer bank scandal; and, while he professes respect for Mr. Hoover, he fears that the war-time fixation of the price of wheat would make it im- possible for Hoover to win the West. Which, to be sure, seems to leave William E. Borah as the residuary legatee of the Norris bloc and perhaps as the logical nominee of a deadlocked National Convention. It is possible that this thought may have occurred to the Senator from Idaho, and may have something to do with his zeal for Norris. Mr. Borah has just announced liquor as the paramount issue of the next campaign — or rather the question of obedience to the Constitution that underlies the liquor question. But the politician fears to touch the liquor issue on a national scale. Norris, himself a Dry, has had the honesty to blurt out that he would rather support for Presi- dent an honest Wet like "Al" Smith than a dishonest "Dry" like Mr. Mellon, or a "Dry" who doesn't dare peep on the subject, like Mr. Hoover or Mr. Coolidge. (If "Al" con- tinues his recent reverential silence on the liquor question Norris may find still more to say.) But few have the Nebraskan's freedom of speech. One Progressive Dry Senator from an arid Western State said: "If Al should run against Cal, I'd pray for Al, but in public I'd be so damned silent you wouldn't know I existed." Furthermore, the Progressives are not united on the issue. Borah, Nor- ris, Brookhart, the North Dakota Senators, and Shipstead of Minnesota are all Dry; but Wisconsin is Wet — and what is a Progressive movement without a La Follette? Liquor, it is safe to say, will not be too heavy a plank in the West- ern Progressive platform. They all want farm relief. No issue is so popular in the corn and wheat States. But while Mr. Borah opposed the McNary-Haugen bill, Mr. Norris has his own plan for a government marketing corporation, and almost all the other Progressives supported the Haugen bill only for lack of a better standard. Yet here is the crux of the Western movement — the one cause that fires the prairies. It is possible that the Senators, conferring, can reach common ground; they are all willing to shift position a little. They consciously represent a Western protest against the dom- ination of Congress and of legislation by the industrial Fast. The tariff, they argue, has been a subsidy to Eastern manufacturers, and the Mellon crowd continues to expect its raw materials to come in duty-free while its finished products are protected. No one in the Western group has the courage and vision and optimism — a bit of blind op- timism would be necessary — to lash out at the whole system of special protection. Instead of demanding a free field for all, these Progressives tend to climb on the tariff wagon and to demand their part in privilege. This latest Pro- gressive revolt threatens to simmer down to North Dakota's demand for a duty on flax-seed and Idaho's for protection against Egyptian and Turkish onions ! It reminds one painfully of Hiram Johnson's historic plea for the patriotic California lemon. Yet in this Western group is the hope of American politics — such as it is! Against the domination of Amer- ican life by the Mellon-Gary type of mind they stand almost alone — and they have made a gallant fight. They have slowed the pace at which private corporations can grab the people's heritage of water-power, and on that issue they are united. They have a quick, instinctive re- sentment of America's imperialism in Mexico and Nicara- gua, and of naval concentrations in China. It was the Western group which forced the investigation of the oil scandals, and the Supreme Court's decision is their victory. They do stand out, without oratory or blah, against cor- ruption in political life. George Norris is that dodo of politics, a genuinely independent man. When a group of Senators rallies about him and announces its belief that he can carry a dozen State primaries, it is time for us of the East to wake up. The Hampton Strike By W. E. BURGHARDT DU BOIS THE wave of revolt against local conditions that has already aroused Negro students at Fisk, Howard, Lincoln, Shaw, Johnson Smith, and other institutions has reached Hampton Institute, where it was long overdue. Hampton is beautifully situated, adequately endowed, and has a fine tradition of human service. Its principal is a white man; most of its teachers are white, but there are several Negroes on the faculty. For many years the Hamp- ton students have been a selected group, coming, in large part, from the best homes of black Virginia. They have been self-respecting, healthy, eager young folk, obedient and patient by nature and more so by Hampton training. The "Hampton idea" of education has been long and tirelessly exploited. It was based on a program of indus- trial training for Negroes, the discouraging of college work, and the exploitation of certain methods of "learning by doing." This program has broken down under its own weight. The South came to want Hampton graduates as teachers because they were thought to "know their place," to be docile and uncontaminated by college "ideals." At the same time the South was coming to recognize certain required standards of education for teachers, both white and colored, and in some cases even asked a college degree. Hampton was thus compelled to meet more modern educational standards. A survey by a Harvard professor showed that her educational system was not effective and — worst of all — that Hampton graduates were becoming teachers, physicians, and lawyers, instead of cooks, car- penters, and farmers. Consequently Hampton was forced to raise her standards and to establish college courses. She now offers the degree of Bachelor of Science in agriculture and teaching and has nearly 400 college students. But this very yielding to the new educational standards brought in- ternal difficulties. Hampton was no longer dealing with docile and half-grown elementary students, regimented to strict military discipline; she had to deal with older college men who were thinking for themselves. The growing dissatisfaction among these students led repeatedly to petitions which were laid before various de- partments and the president and administrative officers. Most of the petitions were denied. A student council was formed, but it is dominated by the faculty. In 1923 the students struck for a characteristic cause. According to

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472 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3252 the "Hampton idea" a student is especially honored if he is made servant to a teacher. One such student chauffeur failed in his duties and was denied the right to participate in the concert. The whole student chorus struck and a public concert had to be "postponed." And the students have struck again. Today they state their grievances thus: They want the educational system so revised at Hamp- ton that "we shall no longer be subjected to instruction from teachers whose education is below that of the average student." "All teachers in the trade school should have at least high-school training." They ask that the whole edu- cational system be improved, especially "in the academy, the trade school, and the school of agriculture." They de- clare that the institution should live up to the courses prescribed in the catalogue, especially in the trade school, rnd in the matter of electives, which they claim are "elec- tives" today only in name. Secondly, the students object to the present regime of discipline at Hampton: men are required to dress in uni- form and to be members of the military cadet body. They ask that they be at least allowed to lay aside their uniforms "from Saturday noon until Sunday morning inspection," and they want the cadet officers chosen hereafter by com- petitive examination instead of by official favor. They complain about the food. Despite increased payment for board this year the food is just as bad: they still have beans and molasses four times a week. They complain about the laundry: clothes are lost and torn with- out compensation to the students. Hampton is a coeducational school. The boys and girls want to associate with one another and the authorities at Hampton seem to regard this as suspicious if not wrong. It was this spirit that precipitated the present strike. The students demand increased social privileges: they want the right to dance with the girls, which is now allowed only to seniors and then only once a year; they want ten days vacation instead of six at Christmas. About two years ago college students and senior high- school students were granted the privilege of taking girls to certain evening exercises at the school — among these, the Saturday night cinema. The plan has seemed to work well. At any rate, the students declare, during the two years no complaint has been made to the student body, either through the Student Council or otherwise, of the conduct of students on these occasions. It is probably true that there was some love-making, but if there is any insti- tution in the United States, white or black, where this does not occur we have yet to hear of it. Nevertheless, on Saturday night, October 8, during the movie show, most of the lights were left burning, the authorities merely informing the students that this was necessary "to insure the greater decorum of the escorting parties." The students were angry. They felt that proper order had been maintained and they regarded the incident as a "direct insult to the student body and especially to the womanhood of the Negro race." They showed their resent- ment on Sunday by refraining from singing during church services, in spite of the presence of Sir Gordon Guggisberg and the pleas of the principal, and Ly refusing to submit to military inspection. They organized the men and appointed a Student Protest Committee to lay their grievances before the faculty. The students maintained perfect order, but the faculty secured Southern white men to patrol the campus at night. Then began one of those silly games of stalemate which colleges are so fond of staging: Students (Monday morning): "Hear our complaints!" Faculty (Monday noon) : "First go back to classes!" Students (Monday afternoon) : "We'll go, but hear our complaints and promise no punishment for this protest." Faculty (Monday night) : "We will hear the complaints but we promise no immunity to the men; we will not, however, blame the women or new students." Thereupon the principal on Wednesday proceeded first to commend the order and discipline maintained by the students and then went on to suspend the ringleaders; and on Thursday the whole school, men and women, new and old, struck again. The Administrative Board then closed Hampton Institute "until further notice." Three hundred students left. Letters were sent to parents stating: "We shall require all those wishing to return to apply in writing to the vice-principal for readmis- sion. This application must be accompanied by a pledge of loyalty avd obedience." (Italics ours.) Slowly the students are drifting back. Their parents for the most part have joined with Dr. Gregg and the Hampton faculty to force them into submission. The strike has thus failed, and the compelling forces at Hampton are free to proceed with the Hampton "idea." The faculty is riding high in the saddle. An onlooker writes me: Very much depends on public opinion in this affair. The authorities are crediting this strike as the work of disobedient boys and girls who were led on to do what they did. On the other hand, each student I have talked with has impressed me with the serious attitude he has taken in the matter — with each one of them it became a holy cause. The strike to them was not a prank, in fact it was partly forced on them; but when they found them- selves too deeply involved to back out, they went straight ahead with great religious fervor. Previous petitions have always been ignored ; their student council has six faculty members; and they felt drastic action was necessary if they were to be heard this time. Many are arguing that the students went about their strike in the wrong man- ner; but be that as it may, they carried it through in an orderly and manly fashion that brought commenda- tion. . . . Through my own observations and experiences, and what I have learned from others in a position to know what they are talking about, I have become keenly aware of the state of hypocrisy, racial prejudice, and backward- ness into which Hampton has fallen. As a result five students were dismissed, twenty-nine sus- pended, and thirty made "temporarily ineligible." Advice to a Mendicant By LYNN FJGGS Learn this: your mind, in straying after Tiger lily, tufted sedge In their lush paths, can never build Under itself a rocky ledge. Turn to the stony seed unhusked, Turn to the oak so brightly vined: These are the slow and adamantine Givers of granite to the mind.

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Nov. 2, 1927] The Nation 473 Fights and Flights in the Newspapers By SILAS BENT RUTH ELDER'S oversea hop is acclaimed by the daily press as a triumph, although she fell more than six hundred miles short of her destination, and seems from the headlines to have accomplished nothing much beyond saving her lipstick. Flying over water is a commonplace, and Miss Elder was not the first woman to undertake it; but her ad- venture is described as "sheer daring," and herself as "the prettiest, bravest of girls." In view of the stories as cabled to the American news- papers, my allusion to the lipstick may seem ill-natured. Let us see. The Associated Press vouched for this dare- devil feat: Before their descent to the sea . . . her courage was tested in a breath-taking manner. The fliers had been driving their plane, even then slowed down by a defective oil line, through a sleet storm. The tail of the plane, on which a heavy coating of sleet had formed, became too heavy for the machine to be kept on an even keel. Something had to be done to right this. There was some gasoline stored in the tail of the plane — a reserve supply to be used in an emergency. Haldeman and Miss Elder consulted each other regarding what should be done. They decided the reserve supply of gasoline would have to be jettisoned. They then took their turns at the stick while one or the other crawled along the icy fuselage of the plane and threw overboard some of the reserve supply. Miss Elder took her turn at crawling along the fuselage without a tremor, it was related, and, this chore accom- plished, returned to do her shift at the stick. How ungallant to call it a chore! You get the picture: a dauntless heroine buffeting icy midatlantic blasts as she crawls over a sleety, sloping surface, with watery wastes yawning beneath her. How thin and sterile the ten- twenty-thirty melodrama in comparison with such a situa- tion! Who shall say Miss Elder doesn't deserve the pulp- wood encomiums heaped upon her? Well, let "Bill" Brock and "Ed" Schlee, who actually flew across the Atlantic, in a plane precisely like Miss Elder's — let them say it. "Once you are in the cabin of that plane," they ex- plained to the New York Evening Post, "you can't get out on the fuselage as long as you are in flight. It simply can't be done. Silly to talk about it." They added that there was no aperture in the plane making it possible to get out of the cabin to the top of the wing and thence to the tail. It seems a pity that mere physical fact should interfere with a story so romantic that the Associated Press and its member newspapers swallowed it hook, line, and sinker. Romance and peril was what was wanted, to build circula- tion. For the sake of circulation, a heroine is still being made of a young woman. The flight is another in the chain stimulated by the successful journey of Colonel Charles A. Lindbergh, which was arranged as a publicity stunt to put St. Louis, Mis- souri, on the map, and succeeded beyond the wildest dreams of its promoters. The chain has included an aerial derby to Honolulu, to advertise a "pineapple king," which cost seven lives. The majority of these events, encouraged by the press because they help sell papers, have left tragedy in their wake. The newspapers of this country have just come through their first peace-time summer without a slump in circula- tion. In a page "spread" the New York World declares that in the six months ended September 30 "one event of inter- national importance followed fast upon the heels of another. . . . When news of transcendent importance is afield it is to the World that New Yorkers turn in ever-increasing num- bers for the most authoritative, quickest, and most reliable account of world events." Editor and Publisher, however, offers no pious palaver about "news of transcendent import- ance." It frankly entitles a leading article: Fights and Flights Banished the Slump from Summer Circulations. The New York dailies, its figures show, have gained an aggregate of 400,000 daily sales, and similar benefits were reaped the country over. The Dempsey-Sharkey fight sent the Seattle Times circulation up 113,729, which was three thousand more than the gain on Lindbergh's flight; while the Dempsey-Tunney fight gave a gain of 15,000 more than Lindbergh. The circulation manager wired the trade jour- nal: "I believe this type of news has genuine circulation- building power; the best, in fact, we have yet experienced." From many other quarters the cry was echoed. "Sports seemingly fetch more and hold more than crime news," said the Philadelphia Enquirer. Of all the papers quoted, only one attributed its advance to crusading. "Our gain," said the St. Louis Star, "may best be attributed to the stead- fast policy of this newspaper in defending the interests of the public in several outstanding issues during the last year, rather than to any sensational news." Flights got due credit, but not one word was whis- pered about prize fights when the New York Times polled the publishers and printed their views under the headline What Increased Newspaper Sales. Ralph Pulitzer of the World said that paper's gain was accentuated by a reduc- tion in price, a fact ignored in the page advertisement. The others spoke of "an abnormal amount of news," "un- usual and stirring events," greater proportionate literacy since the stoppage of immigration, and "a widening inter- est in news happenings." But not one word about the squared circles, a strange instance of ingratitude. It was too bad that no statement was obtained from the Evening Post, which outdistanced them all in the proportion of its gain. In the year ending the first of October it doubled its circulation. "More sports play than last year," said Edi- tor and Publisher, "is the crux of the Evening Post's story." Occasional peaks of sales from sensational events alone do not mean substantially higher levels of circulation; the theory is that they make new readers, and make old readers buy more editions, and that some of the gain is maintained between times. The New York Journal, which has a highly responsive audience, affords an instance of how certain circulation-building stories have fattened its figures during the late spring and the summer months; the circulation of the paper is 680,000, and the peaks are given in round numbers. May 10 — Snyder-Gray murder verdict and disappear- ance of the Nungesser-Coli plane, 106,000 gain.

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474 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3252 May 21 — Lindbergh's arrival in Paris, 170,000 gain. June 6 — Chamberlain and Levine land in Germany, 95,000 gain. July 22 — Day after Dempsey beat Sharkey, when dis- cussion of foul added interest, 85,000 gain. August 23 — Sacco-Vanzetti execution, 50,000 gain. The only event of "transcendent importance" in this list was the Sacco-Vanzetti execution, and it was at the bottom of the list as a circulation stimulant. All the others were prearranged and press-agented exhibition stunts, to which the newspapers lent their columns in order to pad their sales. The advertiser demands mass circulation; and the newspapers are generous with free advertising of com- mercial sport and aviation enterprises, however dubious their nature, when there is the prospect of a circulation s?ain. The period under discussion included other big stories. Tnere was the Mississippi flood and the Geneva conference on naval limitation, during which the world saw with aston- ishment that Great Britain and the United States were eyeing each other with a view to "the next war." In the spring there was an arrangement between the Federal Re- serve Board and the central banks of France and England to maintain a low interest rate here, which would improve the international position of the franc and pound, and would enable the Treasury to refund our Second Liberties at advantageous terms. The low interest rate and cheap money brought an orgy of Wall Street speculation, but the story about the Federal Reserve Board did not get onto the first pages un'il a minor development fitted it into the jour- nalistic pattern of sensationalism. When the board com- manded the Federal Reserve Bank in Chicago to maintain its low rate, despite an announced increase, there was the threat of court proceedings and a Congressional fight. Here was conflict, and the story made Page One. But none of these stories was "played" by the press, for none of them had the thrilling emotional quality thought necessary for circulation building. The Gray- Snyder murder trial shouldered the Mississippi flood, which imperiled a million and a half of the population and made 700,000 homeless, over to the inside pages. The press is preoccupied with thrills; and a tabloid picture paper out- bids its big brothers by paying $100,000 for Ruth Elder's "own" story, that its readers may have an illusion of in- timacy. The newspaper's function, on which its privileged status and Constitutional guaranty are based, has been abdicated. Austria Wavers Toward Reaction By G. E. R. GEDYE Vienna, October 5 '" A USTRIA," once remarked one of those witty self- l~\ critics whom Vienna has produced in far greater numbers than she has vigorous reformers, "is destined to be always one idea too late." The present ever-growing movement of the Heimwehr, or home-defense forces, also called Selbstschutz and Selbstwehr, is proof that the epi- gram is still true. The movement grew indirectly out of the riots and shooting of July 15. The majority of those engaged in promoting it would declare that it grew directly out of those deplorable events, but that is not so. I have recently spent a month traveling all over Austria, and have had some opportunity of judging how serious things are, how great a gulf yawns between the Clerical provinces and the Socialist capital. What struck me everywhere was the honest conviction among the peasantry and small trades- people of the provincial towns and cities that July 15 was an attempt by the Social Democratic Party to cany out a cowp-de-main, to imprison or execute the Chancellor, Dr. Seipel, nationalize all property, and govern through the dic- tatorship of the proletariat. These things sound so ridicu- lous to all persons, whether enemies or friends, who study the principles of Social Democracy as well as those of other political creeds, that I may be suspected of exaggerating. I am not. The view of July 15 which I have set forth here was expressed to me, not once, but a dozen times during my tour, and in every case sincerely. It is not to be wondered at that timid peasants and small-business men, under this impression, are forming fours, prodding at sacks of straw supposed to represent human bodies, and shooting holes in paper targets all over the countryside in preparation for a hand-to-hand fight which shall end the Red Terror of Vienna forever. The task of the nationalist agitators was not a hard one. Vienna, standing for a bureaucracy concerned only with securing the personal aims of the Hapsburg family, is disliked in the provinces as it was in the lands of the "Nationalities" which have now left Austria. Always there- has been a gulf between Vienna and the countryside greater than that existing between most capitals and their prov- inces. The social contrast between the gay, super-sophisti- cated capital and the backward, grave, devout Catholic German provinces or the often semi-Europeanized "nation- alities" helped to deepen it. After the revolution Vienna became doubly a bugbear. There ruled the Socialists, the enemies of the church, the men who wanted to steal the peasant's half acre, to confiscate his produce, and give it to lazy dogs of workmen and mechanics whose ambition it was to riot in luxury in Vienna. There, too, in so far as the Socialists did not rule the roost, the "Jewish bankers" who speculated and increased the cost of living did. Then came stabilization. The speculative banks col- lapsed, the power of the big banks diminished while they were busy trying to cut their losses in safety, and the provincial banks attained an undreamed-of importance. Dr. Ramek, a country solicitor from Salzburg, formed a gov- ernment behind which stood the Clerical banks of the provinces. The Socialists had to stabilize their municipal finances in Vienna as Dr. Seipel and then Dr. Ramek had the national finances with the help of the League loan. As it became clear that the former would never possess the majority in Austria (or lose it in Vienna), so their attitude (which had often been aggressive) was modified. A cer- tain amount of cooperation had begun between them and the Ramek Cabinet when a series of financial scandals, which in no way affected the Chancellor but did concern a

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Nov. 2, 1927] The Nation 475 a number of his lieutenants, brought a fresh change. Dr. Seipel, a statesman of great ability but without much belief in compromise, again took the reins. The big Vienna banks, now recovered, resumed the financial control. The Socialists, after some slight gains at the elections this summer, began a violent campaign against the Chancellor. For the provinces, Vienna, which because of Dr. Seipel, the big banks, and the increasingly more aggressive Socialists had disappointed provincial hopes, became more detestable than ever. It was not easy in these circumstances to per- suade the disgruntled provinces that the Social Democrats had, by a miracle, failed to set up a proletarian dictatorship on July 15. I write as one who is neither Socialist nor Clerical, but merely a well-wisher to Austrians of both parties. It is beyond question that much of the fault lies at the door of the Socialists, some of whom have incurred natural sus- picion by the violence of their language. By playing at soldiers ever since the revolution with their Repub- likanische Schutzbund, they have made it difficult for them- selves to complain of the undoubted illegality under the Treaty of St. Germain of these Fascist-like organizations of Heimwehr which are springing up and drilling all over the countryside. They committed the grave error of call- ing for a complete amnesty for all those arrested in con- nection with the July disorders. A great many of the charges brought against those arrested have been revealed as trivial, but although no really grave case of rioting has yet been tried, some of the offenders were certainly not of the type for whom the Socialist Party should have taken up the cudgels. But they were infuriated by the fact that the Government did nothing for the many obviously innocent victims of the shooting, though large sums were paid out to the police, and that so far the Socialists have been unable to obtain satisfaction for their charges of unneces- sary police brutality. Slowly the Socialists realized the strength of the feeling against them — it is tremendous and sincere, though based on an absurd misreading of the events of July 15 — throughout the country and became more conciliatory. It became clear to the reactionaries long before it did to the Socialists what a weapon July 15 had delivered into their hands. The provinces knew and cared nothing about the shocking miscarriage of justice which had provoked the workers to noisy protest, knew nothing of the efforts of the Socialist leaders to calm the mobs at the risk of their lives, knew nothing of the attempts of the Socialist Republikanische Schutzbund to help the firemen to end in- cendiarism and to restore order without violence. The failure of these efforts entitles the Right to query the extent of the leaders' influence over the masses and to laugh at the utility of the Schutzbund. It should in honor prohibit the extreme Right press from continually holding up these leaders as "Moscow Bolshevists." The provinces, realizing only that Vienna had "been at it again," were only too ready to listen to appeals to join in the parades of these new formations. There was a chance directly after July 15 — which is unlikely ever to recur — of burying with the eighty-five dead those bitter animosities and indecencies of political con- troversy which created the atmosphere in which July 15 was possible and which imperil the existence of the Austrian state. Councilor Julius Meinl, Austria's great multiple shopowner, whose businesses may be found from the shores of the Adriatic to the steppes of Poland, a non- party man but anything but a Socialist, sent a large dona- tion to the President of the Republic to be used to open a Reconciliation Fund for the innocent victims of the dis- orders, without distinction of party. The officials, obviously on the instructions of the Cabinet, returned the check with a sarcastic intimation that Herr Meinl had better keep his ideas of reconciliation for a more convenient and appro- priate season. This was typical of the attitude of the Austrian Gov- ernment. Having gained a tactical advantage, it refused to think of doing anything but pursuing the party advantage to the last against the Socialists. Certainly at that mo- ment the latter showed no desire for reconciliation, but it was far more difficult for them to do so than for the Gov- ernment. The latter declined, thereby losing an opportunity as rare as that which was flung away by the Allies under very similar circumstances at Versailles. The latter could have instituted a new order in Europe, the former in their own little country. Both preferred the sweets of victory, and in Austria today, as in Europe, there is no thought of peace. None of the regular organs of public opinion will hear of reconciliation now. They cry for a new heart and for "material concessions" by the Socialists, forgetting that what Austria really needs is not a cessation of political controversy but something far more practicable and urgent — recognition on each side that the other is not an unspeak- able scoundrel to be abused and insulted day after day because he happens to differ in matters of politics. Alone one illustrated newspaper — the Stunde — grasps this point and struggles in vain for a hearing. The Socialists were "an idea too late" with their pres- ent feelers toward conciliation. But the Right are more than an idea too late with their Heimwehr organizations. Openly the papers speak of a Heerschau — a military review. Dr. Pfliigl, a former under-secretary in a government de- partment, writes openly in the Wiener Journal that the spirit of these organizations, which sweeps over Austria like a fresh north wind, is determined "to bring order to Austria." It comes, he says, from Bavaria; the Heimwehr are modeled on the notorious Orgesch; Austria is deter- mined to follow the example of Bavaria in 1920, when the revolutionary government of Kurt Eisner was smashed, by the bullets of the reactionaries. How many ideas too late is this? There has been no Communist putsch in Vienna and will not be while the Social Democrats lead the masses. Europe has had enough of that. Austria is surrounded by jealous neighbors who would welcome the opportunity to "restore order" and to take a little territory at the same time. Hungary makes no secret of her determination to get back the Austrian Bur- genland as well as the rest of the territory liberated from her misrule. Dr. Bauer, one of the Socialist leaders, hit the right nail on the head in his important speech this week when he declared that it was essential for Socialist Vienna to realize that she could not get on without the Clerical provinces and vice versa. He was "an idea too late," again; his party should have seen and preached that long ago. But the Right does not see it yet, and dreams of crush- ing Socialist Vienna by force. Any attempt to do so would imperil the peace of the world.

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476 The Nation [Vol. 125. No. 3252 Here Are My Reasons I have mil n i-iiiio Blue Hooks left ' Tin \ aie lap Id!) disai . this last chance to Ret Littl tbi'ii own choice, . book, carnage cliamre prcpa.d. Here is a his list ol these pod el Bi; ■! booli -avei iglne IC.OIIO words . liouncl i tens, printed in easily I-.-..1. i i-.- in*— make vol K seloclii*n beioj* it is too i. . our order uul 1 sin .srilin* «> II the ren I. jiii,- Blue Books in Ihis way because I am going to change iioui M i .- i" tlualln Production. ■i idurtion made the Little .;>.K, Books the five cent cl issics — a national institution. Bat now the |» o|.le, tlie milli'ins who own ., ii, i jv.nl Little Blue Boi I llllR .1 MCit ,,ul There, lncludi wan) Quality - tin « want il iiroducl instead of a i-lccd article. farts. 1 sin a vast uublislilnit mil in etfecl the tail of the Little ie. There are otili 2,31)0.000 te oi these books when this ail '\i [his ratv, il won'l be long now before I s)iall .--tart on ii ,. new sei ii . of large! and more beautiful t lis. Bui remember that thi - is NOT TO SI'l.L AT .V EACH I The new nill he a nunc expensive I ocliicl. and will sell at a higher the i ublic demands bi I ei bonks tor more money, just is the public has demanded bet- more money— anil is getting them. First, ning stock of 10 they are tonic fast. And the quicker these emainii 'id. the sooner will I Ties be nil pm on tin So buy I. in I iks now while tin l'iek out vonr favoi lies while there is still a complete si Voui ordei ran be illled now. Inn it is impossible to tell ,ng the sni ply will last. E. Haldeman-JULICS. Love 24 87 1/2 1 . 5 1/3 107 .'ii ; 213 250 other Tales. Guy de Anton Stories i [ Pawns Schi Physiology of Sen i i Jreer Love Litters of a Nun \vi. i| is I over Karing Essay. Montaigne Love Letters of Men and oi Uenlus How to I il Wood The Evolution of Sex Wood I e Book (Tbe lutra ) one of Cleopatra's Nights. Uautlcr What Frenchwomen Learned tits of Women. Havc- ini'k Ell Ellis' Plea for Sane and Other Fcetns. and Juliet. Shakespeare ■ el low Anton Books Are y the postage — 5 , in 5-10 lit I OH. 665 672 676 717 740 ;;,, 833 •.in ; 387 10 ■!$ 1089) ; 1 06 1 I/O ,1190 1195 1202 I Ml 124/ liM9 27 46 Id, 140 247 J 7 9 315 366 02 1 558 81!) 824 883 1 0 : D 1 042 1055 400 460 0 1 3 602 642 770 795 797 French Amorous Misadventures Brightly Colored Tales of Passion Passion Stories of Many Hues Emerson's Analysis t Love Letters of a Parisian Actress Illicit Love, etc. Boi Tales of Love and Life. Briccaccio More Love Letters of Parisian Actress Epigrams of Love, Life., Laughter Daughter of Eve. Frank Harris Costa Iticaa Love Her Burning Secret. Follies of Lovers: French Stones French Love Maxims. Stendhal French Love-Artists. Symons Art of Kissing. Clement Wood A Mad Sweetheart, Balzac Common Sense of Sex. James Oppenheim Infatuation and Other Tales. Hecht A Mad lane. F"rank Harris What Price Lover Anton Chekhov First Love and Other Stories Forbidden Love. Barry Pain How to Write Live Letters Psychology of Love and Hate Best Jokes About Lovers Hyde. Oscar Vellcw Last DayB of Condemned Man. Hugo Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Salome: Love Murder. Wilde Crimes of the Borglas. Dream-Woman and Tiger. Collins Historic Crimes and Criminals Murders in Rue Morgue. Poe Macbeth. William Shakespeare Markheiiri's Murder. Stevenson Pen. Pencil. Poison,. Crime Story Religion's Failure to Combat Crime Death. Catalepsy, etc.. Ex- Great Plrntes and Their Deods Strangi C. J. Finger imada: Spanish T Capital Funis: ieard and His t nhappy Wives Crime at Bed Inn. Balzac Truth About N. Y.'s China- town My Favorite Murder. Anion se Bleree Adventure Carmen: Adventure Story". , Sea ■ ■.ires of Baron Far North. Jack London ■ Arabian Jaddin: Ara- ".d EMC3- Five Weeks in Balloon. Jules Cap! Jules lures . venture New Atlantis: Lost H4 321 122 823 855 902 030 Dictionary df American Slang Common Faults in English ■ Book of Synonyms How to Improve Y'our Con- versation How to Write Movie Scenarios How to Write Poetry Most Essential English Words Spelling Self Taught Grammar Self Taught Punctuation Self Taught How to Pronounce Proper Names Words Often Mispronounced The Romance of Words Handbook of Useful Phrases How to Improve Your Vo- cabulary Rhetoric Self Taught Composition Self Taught How to Write Letters Foreign Words and Phrases How to TaJk and Debate,' Sex Hygiene 14" What Every Girl Should Know ?( Manhood: Facts of Life for Boys !27 What Expectant Mothers Should Know 535 What Women Past iO Should Know 653 What Every Boy Should Know P54 What Young Men Should Know 055 What Young Women Should Know 656 What Married Men Should 557 V, Oat Married Women Should Know fGI America and Sex Impulse. S v.ial Life. Fielding ;ual Life. Fielding 691 Child's Sexual Life Fielding 1192 Homosexual Life. Fielding >I7 Modem Sex Morality. Clement Wo d 7jfi Venereal Diseases. Dr. Greer SfTO Sex in Ps: s. Wood 804 l't cud on Sleep and Sexual . Fenton C. L. Fi nt E46 Womanhood: Facts of Life for Girls T-03 All lis. Dr. Pusey 504 Sex Symbolism. Win. J. .ion of Sex. Fielding 1250 Judf on Conipan- C.0 Man-. Queen of Scots. Dumas 77 What Men Learned About Women 106 Frenchwoman's Daring Views of Life 123 Mme. du Barry: A King's i Mistress J 34 Misanthrope: Woman-Hater. Moliere Jb4iges Life in Greece and Rome •77 Subjection of Women. J. S. Mill 189 Eugenics Explained. Havelock (96 Marquise: Secret Passion. Birth Control. Aspects of Birth 203 Debate 209 Modern trol 221 How to Know Women. Maeter- linck ' .223 Wife cfV. King. Jack London 229 Ridiculous Women. Moliere 241 Merry Wives of Windsor. are. 292 Mile. Fifl and Other Tales. Maupassant 30 f What Women Learned About Men 303 She Stoops to Conquer. Gold- 323 Life cf Joan of Arc 353 a Doll's House. Henrlk Ibsen 370 Woman of No Importance. ' . Wilde 378 Maid of Orleans. M. V. Samuels 417 Nature and Meaning of Dreams 556 Hints on Etiquette. E. Floyd 631 The Naturewoman. Upton Sinclair W-* Women Who Have Lived for Love 666-TJ67.' Memories of a Parisian . 10 cents) 7 IS Great Women of Antiquity 730 MTistressi 9 of Today. Markun 1 arences Between .Men and H'OBen 883 Men. irs of Mine, de Stael 301 Woman: Eternal" Primitive. 922 A Wife's Confession. Mau- ssant ri cf Spades. Alexander ikin 955 Italian Tales of Heroism and 982 rThe Beal Mary Baker Eddy. Wood ' Iff I 7 'Without Benefit of Clergy. ''Kipling 1043 A siudy of Woman. Balzac of Woman. Balzac .uette vs. a Wife. Balzac rs of a Courtezan. Baizac 10/OHow to Fight Nervous Troubles 1079 Phallic iSex) Symbols in lauty Hints, Goddard Dress on a Small 1113 l-.'.e from Many Angles I 122 O n Hecht .-. Have- lake Y'our Own Cos- Ways and Other Tales 1209 Charming Entertain- 1212 Marriage and. Morals in Soviet Homelike 1013 Be er Steals " ■: Less Money 2,300,000 Becks still to be sold to make room for th© new series ! Before We can beg-in to pu) larger, m pensive books — books at a higher i 5c per chap il,,' ; the remaining Little Blue Bunks. These are going last, i ou must act ai your winter slock of good . (Tom among : nal. entertaining Little Blue Books. You lia varied assortment to choose from — your pick 5c per book, ana we pay tbe postage. i-.-. 228 254 t IS 723 789 R20 364 900 958 964 ?sa 997 HI3I 1032 1041 1073 (090 1143 1189 1197 1225 1233 1258 Marriage Marrf ge vs. Divorce Origin and Evolution ' Eisavs on Sra. Havelc Plain Talks With the Taming of the Shrew. Confidential Chats wit Facts About Sex Keju y of the A C, s. Marriage and Laws :es About Man Dial chats wi .bands An Arabian Marriage. - Gourdon's 4 Days Zola Love Tales cf Italian How to Be Happy Married Courtship. Becipes for Art of Simple Cooking 'How to Own Your Hoi Home Vegetable GarE How to Cane and D (L'hairs ' Paint Woodv Grow Home Fi fSex Crimes and Americ Hovfl to Make Money a Morau Divorce and Oth< How to Avoid Mariti cords , Beginning MaVrled Llf Why I Believe in C ionate Marri3ge. Marcet man Julius Ghosts f 6 Ghosts. Henrlk Ibsen 3)0 Haunted House and Br 41 Christmas Carol. Dick 122 Debate on Spiritualism 124 Kelncamation Exnlaine 145 Great Ghost Stories 215 Miraculous Bevenge. Shaw 345 OTnirmonder Ghost Gajitiir 445 446, Psychical Research Worldl 2 rols.. 10 cent 577 False Lover's Lifted V< 7)9 Tales of Terror and W 838 Dialogues of the Dead. pns The Yellow Cat. W. B 523 Magic Glasses, etc. Harris 940 Weird Tales. Edgar A 9$n Supernatural Tales. Mi 970 Out of the Earth. Mai 996 Dual and Multiple Per; t059 Myth of Immortality. 1075 Tales of Ghouls and Gl 1080 Haunted Houses. i . P.ierce 1132 New Light on Witchc 115; Haunted Mind. etc. Ha' 1 1 no Two Masterly Ghost St. 1 162 Tales of Ghosts and VI 1170 Funny Ghost Stories. '. Jokes 187 21.7 382 f, £58 662 6S9 738 768 '. , ! 345 ^;r 88 SOi 9S9 960 961 362 971 972 1012 1013 1014 1015 (0IC 10(3 1032 I03i . Erlgnuns of Wit and \ Whistler's Famous Hut Best Jokes About Dcx l:<\st Lincoln 'Anecdote! Best Yankee Jokes Wit and Wisdom of Di Toasts for All Occasion Funny .Answers. Mark tfosh Billings' Funny E Poor Bichurd's Alman Best Jokes About Law Humor of "Bill" Nye Best Jokes of 1925 Best Jokes About Pre» Best Jokes About Kissi Funny Burlesques & E Masterpieces of Americ Vnor leces of Americ Humorous Verse Comic Poems Besl Humorous Anecdc Popular Joke Book ■'., ' Negro Jokes Best Irish Jokes Host American Jokes Comic Dialect Poems Funny Nonsense Poem Humorous Limericks Masterpieces of Russli rnor Masterpieces of Span! mor Now is the time to get your last supply of Little Blue Books. They will not reprinted. Send only 5c per book — we pay the postage HVu'n writing to advertisers please mention The Nation

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Nov. 2, 1927] The Nation 477 sappearing Fast! ts each is all you pay isterpieces of Italian Humor isterpieces of German Hu- rt ,r 1 it Jewish Jokes st Amusing Pun3 :!4- Hies in Fiction. Stephen acock st College Humor isense Alphabets st Scotch Jokes st Broadway Wisecracks nsenso Stories and Pictures st Ford Jokes st Rube Jokes st Jokes About Drunks st Jokes of 1928 st Hobo Jokes Detective erlock Holmes Tales. Conan fie ventures of Sherlock Holmes e Gold Bug. Edgar A. Poe ,rk of the Beast. Kipling liters: Shcrift and Escaped nviet ce of String. Guy dc Mau- ssant fl cat Detective Stories erlock Holmes Detective les erlock Holmes Mystery irles Holmes Crime Stories of Sherlock Holmes icrlocl; Holmes Problem >rles lest Sellers ibalyat of Omar Khayyan e of Reason. Thomas Paine )ry of Nietzsche's Philosophy ory of Aristotle's Philosophy p Van Winkle. Irving des from Boccaccio's Dc- meron 1al and Death or SoiWLito ilf- Contradictions of Ibit ble (■ Facts to Know About assies (2 vols.. 10 cents) mr uf- Plato's f MtmnnM*' lgllsh as She is Spoke. irk Twain ■eryday Rules of Health , icechcs of Abraham Lincoln zzle of Personality. Fielding mator Vest's Tribute to a >g Reasons for Doubting the ble. Ingersoll ; Men and Girl. Maxim jrki amlct. William Shakespeare an Without, a Country. Hale ark Twain's Jumping Frog !(f| Dante's Inferno (2 vols., ( cents) barge of the Light Brigade, ennyson ow to Argue Logically omances of Paris, de Musset rt of Being Happy. Powys utline of 100 Best Book3. OWJ'S tory of Francis Bacon's hllosophy volution Made Plain sychology for"- Beginners ictionary of Classic Myth- ogy ow to Tie Knots yth of Paul Rovcre's Ride tory of Bergson's Philosophy tory of Spinoza's Philosophy ist of Spencer's Philosophy Ugrim's Progress. John Run- in andbook of Legal Forms tory of Kant's Philosophy ow to Psycho-Analyze Your- !lf . S. Constitution tory of Schopenhauer's Phil- sophy acts to Know About Talm- itry urbank Funeral Oration. Udge Lindsey acts to Know About Astrol- » tory of Spencers; Philosophy low to Form Good Habits landalay and Other Poems. apling ^-x-A*c^> btt Behaviorism: New Psychology 868 Hints on Self- Improvement °'2 Manual, of Parliamentary Law |76 Curiosities of Mathematics 8B4 T)arrow's Debate on Prohi- bition SOS 'Hook of Bibleal Allusions 910 Is Life Worth Living? Darrow 548 Famous Russian Stories S92 Sinner Sermons. E. W. Howe 1020 Why I Am an Infidel. Lather Burbank 1023 Honk of Popular Recitations 1025 Casey at the Bat. etc. 1038 T. It. Fannie Hurst 1030 Qevll's Dictionary. Ambrose Bierce 10*8 Truth About N. Y..'s White Lights 1062-Humoresaue. Fannie Hurst 1064 Slmolicltv of Radio. Crosley 1065 Lives of O. S. Presidents 1074 Handbook of Commercial Law 1084 Did Jesus Ever Live? McCabe 1088 Truth About Mussolini 1 115 Ridiculous Stories. Stephen Leacock 1125 Hook of American Shams 1139 Photography Self Taught 1175 Amusing and Popular Riddles J 199 Laughable Lyrics. Edward - ' Lea i 1203 7 Infidel D. S. Presidents 1208 Success Easiei Than Failure 1251 What Do You Know? (j-itzzes 1258 Darrow's Dry Law Debate 1 260 Story of a Lynching Entertainment 78''Hint«-on PttbWw-epeaFMrTjff 86 How to Get Most fiom Reading 92 Hypnotism Made Plain 68 Witty Epigrams of Oscar Wilde 331 Chanties & Cowboy 347 4 71) 493 5 I 3 606 626 ,668 670 713 831 847 859 877 893 8 07 995 1010 Mir. 1049 Sailor Songs Book of Riddle Rimes Jazz: What It is. etc. Novel Scientific Facts How to Make All Kinds of Candy r How to Play Chess Old Favorite Negro Songs Humorous Fables. Mark Twain Josh Billings' Comic Lexicon Auction Bridge for Beginners Moro Crossword Puzzles How to Play Card Games How to Enjoy Good MurIc French Cooking for Amateurs 500 Fascinating Riddles How to Enjoy Reading How to Play the Piano Amateur Magic Tricks Book of Bedtime Stories How to Teach Yourself to ..,, Sing .net Psychology of Laughter lubtt Best pua from Pickwick (Papers 110a puzzles and Brainteasers 1116 Funny Dramatics. Stephen Leacock II7| Funny Facts About Stageland 1183'How to Plav Clickers ll?2 Bookbinding Self Taught 1210 -Mathematical Oddities 1230 1927 Directory of Radio Sta- tions 1239 Party Games for Grown-Ups 1253 General Information Quizzes 1254 Contract Bridge Made Easy Famous Lovers 31 PcUeas&Mdisaude. Maeterlincg- 35$iAucassin and Nlcolcte; French Lovers 395 Cellini: Swordsman. Lover, Sinner 434 Love of Lord Nelson and Lady Hamilton 438 Memoirs of a French Royal Mistress 515 Louis XVI and Hia Corrupt Court 712 Shelley and Women Ho Loved. 713 Lord l'.yron and Women He Loved 747 Love of Eleonora, Duse and D'Annunzio 78S Catherine the Great and Lovers 871 Love Letters of Ahelaid and Heloise 975 Cleopatra and Her Lovers 976 Casanova: History's Greatest^ l Lover 977. Pope Alexander VI and His Loves 990 Wagner's Famous Love Affair 1085 Frenchwoman's Love Life 1106 Bohemian Life in Greenwich Village 1133 Love Tales of Queen of Na* _ varre 1 1 78 Chorus Girl and Her Lover's Wife 1213 Romance That Balzac Lived iVlystery Poe 17 440 535 12 Tales of Mystery. E. A. f5 Accursed House. Balzac 34 Mystery of Main In Iron Mask 37 Strange Dream of John Ball 161 Country of Blind. H. G. Wells 232 Three Strangers. Thomas Hardy 319 Infamous Intrigue. Dumas 331 Finest Story In World. Kipling 363 Miggles: Girl In Night. Bret Harte 766 Gallant Casslan: Love Puppets 913 Black Jack, e,te. Kipling 917 Room No. 11. Guy De Mau- ' passant 920 Queer Night In Paris. Mau- passant 925 Empire of Ants. H. G. Wells 926 Obliterated Man, H 43. Wells 943 Masterpiece Mystery Stories 1022 Heroic Tale of North. Jack London 1047" Mysterious Exiles. Balzac 1054 Civil War Stoiles. Bierce 1155 Great Mystery Tales. O'Brien I I5ti Extraordinary Mystery Stories 1153 Mystery Tales of the Sea 1159 Mystic-Humorous Stories llfil Mysterious and Weird Tales 1198 Devil's Mothcr-in-Law and Oilier Tales Recreation Joys of Walking. Thoreau Facts to Know About Music How to Play Baseball How to Play Coll Lardner 749iCamplng. Woodcraft. Wildcraft 750 Helpful Hints for Hikers 853 How to Know the Siuib Birds 1005 H°w '" Enjoy the Orchestra I00G Book of Children's (lames 1 186 Handbook of Golf Rules 1206 How to Teach Yourself to Swim 1245 How to Get Most Out of Rec- reation 1255 Question and Answer Games Horror 85 Attack on the Mill. Zola 95 Confessions of am , Opium- Ea !00 Red Laugh of War. Andreyev 103 pan ,,t • 43 Time ol the Tel i ir 225 Strange Loves. Manuel Kom- .' roff 300 Terrorist! 30S Hanging of a SI 3S7 (iiv of Dreadful Night. Klp- ■'. lHIK 380 (natures That Oneii Were Men ■110 Cod of Vengeance . (linder- orld) 915 Mad and Other Tales. Mau- passant 933 1'ieiuh Tales of Passion and « Facts to Know About Fhrenol- .,'' 'ogy 4 1 J Origin and Nature of Life 431 Tj. s. Commerical Geography 4-47 /Auto-Suggestlon Explained 465 Esperanto for Beginners 466 Facts to Know About Sculp- ture 468 Facts to Know About Archi- .tecture 498 GfeeK and Roman Mrthology 503 History of U. S. Civil War- S7I Story of Kant's Philosophy 597 History of American Revolu- tion, 677 What Can a Free Man Wor- 6_„ ^hip? Beruajui RuiscJl b/O Chemistry for Beginners 685 Hints on Interior Decoration 703, Physiology Self Taught 740 Botany for Beginners ■914 is Man Progitssing? Darrow 985 Psycho-Analysis of Ai 729 How to Budget Your Inc-"mie 754 Dictionary of Authors 759 How to Conquer Stupidity 763 OptlmiBm or Pessimism? Dc /ol Psycho - Analysis Association Tests S58 Psychology of Leadership 862 German Self Taught SSI Intel lor Decoration for Small Homes 582 Psychology of Character Build- ing 891 How to Develop Your Talent 335 Astronomv for Betnniura 994 Physics Self Taught 998 Dow to Make Monty In Wall Street 999 Latin Self Taught 1003 How to Think Logically 1001 Hovt to Save Money 1009 Typewriting Self Taught 1021 Italian Self Taught 1030 Tht World's Great Religions 1051 Cause and Nature of Genius 1001 Human Origin of Morals 1069 The Conquest of Fear 1087 The Facts About Fascism 1097 How to Improve Memory IIO'J Spanish Self Taught 1 126 Eating for Health 1131 Writing for the Market 1147 How Communists Rulo Russia 1174 How to Write Business Letters 1 185 All About the Weather 1 2Q4 Dictionary Of Mnslqal Terms. 1 203. I'aine's Revolt vs. the Bible c each ( postage prepaid) 1207 French Sole Taught 1221 Facts to Know About Will ■ Power 1223 How to Work Way Thru college 1240 Short-Story Writing Course 1241 Outline of U. S. History 1257 How to Become U. S. Citizen 1259 Dictionary Geographical Namea Health 8f Care of the Bahv. Dr. flnileo U3 How to Live 100 Y'ears. Cor- naro 13*6 Childhood Diseases. Dr. Weaver 137 Home Nursing: First Aid at Home 2J3 Quacks of Healing Cults. Dr. Fishhein 291' The Great Outdoors. Whitman 354 Truth About Christian Scienco. dd'i vntosuccmstion and. Health. 630 Pasteur: Chemist ot Human Ills £38. Tooth & Mouth Hygiene! /22 Electricity & Life.""Sl,Tplev /CI Latest Food & Diet Facts /82 Psycho- Analysis : ■ Body 794 Truth About cine" 860 How to Fight Household In- sects S70 Tuberculosis: Cause & Pre- vention 875 Diabetes: Cause & Treatment 1000 Wonders of Radium. Shiplev 1050 X-Kay. Violet Ray & Other Rays I0520ur Instincts & Emotions 1091 Facts About Cancer. Dr. Bloodgood 1094 Insanity & Other Mental Dis- orders 1179 How to Make Pies & Pastries 1180 How to Cook Fish & Meats 1 181 How to Make Ice Ci 1242 Care of Skin and Hair. Dr. Fishhein Mind and "Patent Medi- Passion 230 Quest for a B'onde Mistress 335 Unconventional Amoui "" Snort Stones of French Life 3iiPJi"J'!0B '" "1* Desert. Salzao 350 Hcdda Gal .379 Lustful King- Enjoys Himself 444'Smart Epigrams. De Gour- Inont 593 "Happy Hypocrite's Lore-Life (■59 Lost Phoebe. Theodore Dn-is-r 5' 4 lfi!£-,Ii'alcon. etc /_3l BTazilun Love .Stone.-. Ebljaltj Matador & 1 793 A Niin's Desire & 810 Polite Parisian Scandals 8'J(i Wages of Sin, W. Ji 907 Sex Obse 909, Amorous Talis of the Monks Ultf Night In Whitechapel. Mau- i>a ssant 921 Mm.-. ToIIier's Establishment 951 Amateur Peasant Girl. Push- kin 93i A Bath. etc. Emile Zola 957 Italian I ,„ 1193 Policewoman's Da Ilfi5 Jai'z. etc Ben Hi 1194 Line's Heroism & Other Talcs 1190 Girl with 3 ilr fit's easy to Order this way Just check off the books you want antl order by number. Thus, if you want a copy of "Carmen," put down "21." Only the numbers aro necessary. Remit at tho rato of 5c per book, which is all you pay. Send currency, check, or money ordor. Order at least 20 books at 0110 time (minimum $i). We pay the postage and ship at once. NOTE:— Postage will bo added to C. 0. D. orders — postage prepaid offor applied only when remittance accompanies order. Use This LAST CHANCE BLANK Without DeSay! HALDEMAN-JULIUS PUBLICATIONS, ■Dcpt. X-172. Gir.ii.l, -Kansas. >se * for. Little Blue Books as per list of numbers enclosed 1 am rftmlt'lng at the rate of 3c per book. In full. You pay the postage. (Minimum.' order $1). Name .. Address City ... State When writing to advertisers please mention The

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478 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3252 In the Driftway BROCCOLI has become fashionable. Like the flu and the crossword-puzzle craze the broccoli epidemic has swept New York. A downtown eating-place would no more be without it than without clams. And the Drifter's young friends tell him that broccoli is another example of the cul- tural conquests of the Italians. The triumph of spumoni and ravioli is followed by the victory of broccoli, and another immigrant race has come into its own. ***** IT is a pretty story, but it is only another example of the ignorance of youth. This theory that the habit of eat- ing green vegetables landed at Ellis Island with the swarms from Southern Europe is just another of those melancholy myths which a robustious younger generation attempts to foist upon its elders. It may be that the nineteenth cen- tury reached its peak in a carnival of red meat and greasy potatoes, but it began with a nice appreciation of salads and kales, and an understanding of the succulence of fresh corn and green peas rivaled in our own day only by the marketers of Pari3. Cld Timothy Dwight, who was presi- dent of Yale a century or so ago, planted Indian corn in the presidential back yard in ten successive plantings so that he might eat it in the full milk every day from July to November; and he did not need an Italian gardener to teach him. The Drifter does not know the nationality of President Angell's gardener, but he will wager that the 1927 president of Yale does not eat as well as his pre- decessor. ***** HILE President Dwight was planting ten succes- sions of corn, and three kinds of strawberries, in his New Haven garden, Virginians were also at work. President Jefferson, throughout his eight years in the Presidency, noted the dates on which green vegetables ap- peared in and disappeared from the markets of the capital city, and to the thirty-three vegetables of President Dwight's New Haven list he added only sorrel, "sprouts," corn salad, lima beans — and "brocioli." President Jefferson may have grown brocioli on his own Virginia estate; at any rate his library included a book written before 1784 by his friend John Randolph, Jr., which described its cul- ture. Randolph's "Treatise on Gardening" — a rare book which Marjorie Fleming Warner has recently unearthed and made available to the curious modern — explains that The proper time for sowing the seed of broccoli is in the latter end of May, and transplant them into beds when they have eight leaves, and plant them out about the latter end of July, in a place well sheltered, not under the drip of trees, in a soil rather light than otherwise. . . . The Roman broccoli is the proper sort to cultivate, otherwise called the Italian broccoli. When you have cut the flowers or heads, cut to about five or six inches of the stem, and before they are boiled, strip off the skin, and after having washed them boil them in a clean cloth, and serve them up with butter, as cauliflowers are. Th stems will eat like asparagus, and the heads like cauliflowers. ***** BROCCOLI did indeed come from Italy, but long before immigration laws were dreamed of. In those days the seaboard States were in many ways less provincial than in this supercivilized, aeroplaning year of 1927. Timothy Dwight called tomatoes "love apples" — a name which the colonists had transplanted from the French "pomme d'amour." The French in turn got their word from the Italians, misunderstanding the name, "porno dei Mori," which the Italians gave to a fruit brought from South America by the Spanish Moors. "Cultural complexes" ex- isted long before the sociologists began thinking up long words to describe them! The Drifter Correspondence Gallinipper Wisdom To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: All of this hue and cry about the red peril threaten- ing to destroy the foundation of democratic institutions reminds me of the fables of two gallinippers who, upon a time, lit upon the dome of the Capitol. The more venturesome and reckless of the twain gave vent to his vainglorious purpose in these boastful words: "I've a great mind to stomp my foot and shake this pesky old structure to the ground." The other with greater restraint and caution advised: "If I were you I wouldn't do it." Washington, D. C, September 15 Kelly Miller The Lugano Spirit To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: I'm in the middle of translating an article about Sacco and Vanzetti. from the Journal de Geneve, into German for a journalist here. Oddly, in Lugano there is a statue to George Washington. And they have just had a procession and put wreaths on Washington's statue, inscribed in four lan- guages: "In remembrance of Sacco and Vanzetti, murdered.'- And they parked two fellows in red shirts to guard them. Lugano, Switzerland, September J, John Zed Fake Pictures from China To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: I just finished reading the article on The Camera Leai'ns to Lie by Samuel Tenenbaum in your June 8 issue and was interested in it for the reason that the faking of pictures for American and British consumption is not confined to the United States. These camera artists have also been out here, one in particular who probably has done a considerable amount of harm in misrepresenting the China situation to American and British movie patrons as well as newspaper readers. Some two years ago, following the anti-English outburst resulting from the May 30 atrocities in Shanghai, the Canton authorities were forced to expel an American camera man from Canton owing to his attempts to "frame" pictures showing out- rages upon foreigners by Cantonese strikers and pickets. This man, an American, represented one of the "news reel" organ- izations connected with a powerful newspaper syndicate. Im- mediately following his expulsion from Canton this resource- ful gentleman came to Shanghai and, renting one of the local Chinese movie studios, he staged a whole set of pictures, both "movie" and "stills," showing the activities of the Cantonese strikers and pickets. The pictures depicted the forceful seizure and confiscation of foreign goods. About two months after this I saw the whole show in a double-page spread in one of the London illustrated papers and being somewhat familiar with Canton, noticed something strange about the pictures. Inquiry in Chinese circles here exposed the whole fraud, even to the amount of money which had been paid to the proprietor of the local movie studio.

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Nov. 2, 1927] The Nation 479 This, unfortunately, is not an isolated incident. Recently I noticed in several American newspapers a picture showing a Chinese woman bound hands and feet and being carried through the streets of a Chinese city by two Chinese coolies. The woman was suspended from a bamboo pole. Since this picture looked fishy, I inquired among local newspapermen and found that the picture had been staged and the Chinese woman paid the munificent sum of $1 for her part of it. Under the picture was a title stating that this was the way the Cantonese treat those who continue to accept employment from the British. Still another case. In Shanghai there is a wealthy local resident who makes a practice of providing every beggar in Shanghai with a ticket for a free meal on New Year's Day. As a result of this professional beggars from the infant stage up collect on one of the side streets to receive their tickets. Naturally they provided an excellent subject for the camera men, but imagine my surprise when I saw these pictures in the American and English press labeled as "Poor Chinese farmers and villagers driven from their houses by the Cantonese invasion of the Yangtze Valley." It is true that the camera doesn't lie, but it's wonderful what a lying camera man can do with a picture. Many of the pictures which were taken in Shanghai during the recent crisis when the Cantonese forces occupied this district were deliber- ately posed for the purpose of glorifying the activities of the foreign forces and showing the necessity of the barbed-wire barricades in the protection of the foreigners against the Chinese mobs. Shanghai, China, July 28 Frederick Hough Mr. Hughes and Michael Karolyi To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: May it not be possible that Mr. Hughes will go down in history books as the humorless Secretary of State who, disregarding the founders' faith in freedom of speech and the significance of these United States as a political haven, gagged the first president of Hungary, Michael Karolyi, when on a visit to these shores? I wish also that Mr. Villard had made use of the degrading effect on Mr. Hughes of party loyalty. Republicanism became a faith so potent that even the oil frauds against the nation were passed in silence. If Mr. Hughes sat through the oil-investigation days and knew nothing of his confreres' doings he is hardly acute enough to fill the job of stopping another steal. If on the other hand he knew of the frauds and Republican reprisals and remained silent, then let us apply the old legal maxim: "He who is silent when in conscience he should speak, may not speak when in conscience he should be silent." New York, October 18 Morris L. Ernst Our Rights in New York To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: You mentioned some weeks ago a city ordinance against distributing circulars. The only time this ordinance (Section 15, Article 2, Chap. 22, Code of Ordinances of the City of New York) has been passed upon by an appellate court, Special Sessions determined that it prohibits only the distribution of commercial or advertising matter (People vs. Johnson, 117 Misc. 133). For this reason, on August 22, Mag- istrate Simpson discharged one Fred Stoll, an I. W. W., charged with distributing leaflets announcing a Sacco-Vanzetti protest meeting. It is apparent that if, as reported in The Nation, Magis- trate Ewald gave a Red sixty days for distributing similar cir- culars, his ruling was not warranted. An appeal by the defendant might have been successful, but I believe that he is actually serving his sentence. The conviction by Magistrate Simpson was based upon the testimony of the arresting officer that the defendant's machine, plastered with Sacco-Vanzetti posters, had been parked for half an hour in violation of his order and had collected an enormous crowd. The five-dollar fine imposed was paid. What the law permits and what the police officers and magistrates tolerate are frequently as far apart as the poles. The law as construed by the courts would permit a Sacco- Vanzetti sympathizer to speak in New York City without a license (except if he is trying to speak in a park) — unless what he says conflicts with the provisions of the New York Criminal Anarchy Law, a matter over which the magistrate has no juris- diction. Similarly such a sympathizer has the right to distri- bute circulars unless they violate that law, and, presumably, he has the right to carry posters on his machine unless that machine is actually violating the traffic rules. New York, October 5 Carol Weiss King Mayflowering To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: I inclose my yearly subscription for The Nation. I cannot tell you how your articles on the Sacco-Vanzetti murder moved me nor how I thank you for your gallant defense. I am of Mayflower ancestry, and for generations my family have lived in Boston, where we have a family tomb on the Common, where those shameful arrests were made. I am the widow of an Episcopalian clergyman, and have been in bed for twelve years in this hospital, a victim of heart disease. On that last night my doctor gave me veronal that I might sleep the eleven hours away! I am seventy-three years old and I never be- lieved I would live to see Massachusetts sink so low. I get my nurses to read The Nation; I have it left in the sun parlor, and I send it to the men's Surgical Ward, in the hope of getting a little "fresh air" in this place! Philadelphia, September 20 A. S. P. Henry Harland's Letters To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: I am interested in obtaining either the originals or copies of as many as possible of the letters of the late Henry Harland, editor of the Yellow Book and author of "The Car- dinal's Snuff Box." I should like to use these lettei's in the completion of a definitive biography of Mr. Harland on which I am now at work. The cooperation of any readers of The Nation who may have known Mr. Harland or who may possess his letters will be gratefully received. Communications may be addressed to me at the College of the City of New York. New York, October S Donald A. Roberts A Correction To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: I am troubled to see that Mrs. Ratcliffe, in her other- wise excellent account of our visit to the homes of Sacco and Vanzetti, refers to me several times as a delegate from the defense committee. My trip to Italy, while made in accordance with the earnest wish of the two men, was a purely personal and unofficial one. I have never had any connection with the defense committee, and I do not like to seem to be claiming an honor that is not mine or to be sailing under false colors. My association with the case, as far as actual work is concerned, has been compara- tively slight, and it is only my interest and my faith in the two men's innocence that have remained deep and unbroken ever since I attended the trial six years and more ago. Boston, Mass., October 6 Gertrude L. Winslow

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ooks, Art, Plavs Bookworm By CLIFTON CUTHBERT When Tuesday's platitudes Ponderously do nothing It is time for the mind to go dancing Down straight rungs of small pica. Life is a drunken goddess Jabbering irrelevant encyclicals Over an incongruous realm. Bring books to temper the idiocies of reality Superb classics, bound in blue morocco, To supersede the long commonplace; Exquisite volumes of satire To analyze the idiosyncratic parade; Weighty black tomes To squash the puny substances Of Momentous Events. Men are s'.aves to fact. The truth shall set them free, And the truth is only in books. Pile them on every side of me, And leave me undisturbed Until the last paradoxical realism Is revised And dulv recorded. Indii Y ear "nr by Year India in 1925-2G. A Statement Prepared for Presentation to Parliament. By J. Coatman. Calcutta: Government of India, Central Publication Branch. (To be had of the British Library of Information, New York. $1.35.) Bibliography Relating to India (1900-1926). London: Royal Colonial Institute. (To be had free of the British Library of Information, New York.) Bibliography. A Selected List of Books Concerning Indian Art. London. National Book Council. 2d. The Education of India. By Arthur Mayhew, C. I. E. London: Faber and Gwyer. 10/6. '"PHE yearly accounts of Indian affairs prepared by the Di- rector of Public Information for the Government of India I are most valuable resumes. Although meant to justify the Government, they nevertheless achieve general reliability in the presentation of facts, while expressions of opinion are kept well in hand. The year 1925-26 was more important in India than the readers of American newspapers might have thought. It witnessed the climax of power and then disruption of the pow- erful Swaraj Party, which by its obstructionist ta seriously embarrassing the Government in the working of the unpopular "reforms" and in Bengal and the Central Provinces had produced political chaos. It saw the settling of the Sikh situation and the final suspension of the long-established excise tax on Indian woven cotton goods that was originally meant to equalize the market for Lancashire products. It marked the close of the first period of Indian legislative history under the new constitution with the first government-appointed president vacating office, as had been prearranged, to be succeeded by an Indian elected by the Legislative Assembly. In politics it was a year that in the last analysis was a disappointment to the old style non-cooperating Nationalists. Too weak to withstand in- ternal dissension, the ill-feeling aroused by renewed Hindu- Moslem outbreaks, and the ever-growing desire to work the reforms rather than fight them, the Swarajists seem to be abandoning the policy of non-cooperation for that of "responsive cooperation." It was, if anybody's, the Government's year. Some of the most interesting parts of this book deal with non-political matters, such as the growth of the cooperative so- cieties among the peasants, which are bringing relief from the demoralizing grip of money lenders; the development of indus- try; the abolition of slavery in a remote section of Burma; the progress of both lower and higher education; the conservation and development of natural resources; the scientific breeding of cattle; the spread of medical relief. Economically and so- cially it was a year of progress, as in fact almost every year has been recently for India. Although things move slowly, too slowly to suit Miss Katherine Mayo, author of "Mother India" (19271, nevertheless they do move, as a survey of any decennium will show. The sixteen-page bibliography relating to India, published in February, 1927, is an admirable collection of titles under ten general heads with many sub-heads — General De- scription, Administration and Politics (including important titles both for and against the present system), Economics, Finance, Frontiers and Foreign Relations, History and Biog- raphy, Literature, Religion, Reminiscences, and Travel. It is weakest on literature and contains a number of minor errors, but is an excellent and useful guide. The separate four-page folder on Indian art is equally commendable. The problems of education in India are far cruder than they are here. The system has long been criticized as top- heavy, with too many colleges and universities in proportion to the lower schools, and it is necessary to spread instruction among the masses. In the high schools and colleges the me- dium of instruction is English, a foreign language, which makes the process of learning as difficult for Indians as it would be for us if we had to use Chinese. A third problem has been the subjects of study, which have been prevailingly Western with a countenancing of Oriental culture but no encouragement to study it and hence its general neglect. Added to these are social and religious problems arising from caste, the joint fam- ily system, the Hindu-Moslem antipathy, the economic difficulty of finding acceptable positions for graduates, the question of educating females who are precluded from attending school by the practices of child marriage and seclusion, and finally the great mistrust by Indians of any learning that is not motivated by some religion, whether it be Indian, Mohammedan, or Christian. Mr. Mayhew begins with the intrusion of Western learn- ing and the long and bitter controversy preceding its adoption in 1835 in government-supported institutions as against Oriental learning. The policy is symbolized to the public by the utter- ances of Maeaulay, whose ignorance of Indian culture was ex- ceeded only by the vigor of the phrases in which he reviled it, but it must not be thought that his was the compelling voice. Advanced Indian opinion, as Mr. Mayhew points out, wanted the foreign learning, which it mistakenly thought would auto- matically rid the country of social and economic ills, while the East India Company wanted it to train cheap servants for its employ. In addition, the missionaries saw in it a lever to turn the "heathen" overnight into Christians. Thus educational cur- ricula, embodying English literature and Western history and philosophy, were imposed that never touched the heart of the country, and the system was not looked upon as an instrument of cultural function but merely as a means of getting entry into government service. The one other ideal it inspired was that of political independence. Nowadays Indian education is shifting its center of gravity. Natural science and technological training are coming to the

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Nov. 2, 1927] The Nation 481 front, a decided advantage. Not serving culturally, it is at least becoming utilitarian, and the country needs just this sort of help. Mr. Mayhew's survey of Indian education after many years of distinguished labor in the Indian Educational Serivce leads him to the five following conclusions: (a) Our education has done far less for Indian culture than for the material and political progress of India. . . . (!>) Emotional reaction against foreign culture affords no soil for indigenous growth. The sympathetic applica- tion of critical and scientific methods to Indian life and thought, and the adoption of a "Western" attitude of mind, must precede the fusion of East and West that India's wisest minds desire. (c) Indian personality and life as a whole will not in- timately he affected by any education which is not ani- mated by religion. . . . (d) Higher education in India depends for warmth and color, vitality and response to communal aspirations, on the measure of its freedom from the control and direction of any form of government, whether Indian or alien. The function of government in this sphere is to suppress what is harmful to the commonweal and to support, with the utmost elasticity, whatever is useful and effective. But for the better education of the masses, as a fundamental condition of national progress, a vigorous initiative must be taken, and a financial policy prescribed by the Govern- ment. (e) At no previous stage has Indian education needed more sorely Western sympathy, support, and guidance. English educational work in India will be more deeply ap- preciated and more fruitful when it is not associated of- ficially with an alien government. This is the considered opinion of an experienced educator and is entitled to our profound reflection. For details readers must turn to the book itself. W. Norman Brown An Impoverished Art History of Anthony Waring. By May Sinclair. The Macmillan Company. $1.75. "JV/flSS SINCLAIR is one of the relatively few contemporary ■^ -* novelists who have continued to practice the art (as dis- tinguished from the trade) of fiction long after the more ele- mentary motives for doing so have passed away. It is obvious that she ceased, sometime since, to have what is called in com- mon parlance "anything to say." It is obvious, that is, that she is no longer moved either by that impulse to social protest which once tinged even her work or by any less definite need to communicate an individual attitude toward life, and hence obvious, too, that if she continues to write novels she does so merely because she is still intrigued by the practice of what we may call, without thereby implying any praise or blame, a "pure art." Each of her recent books has been, more con- spicuously than it has been anything else, an exercise, and though that does not mean that any has been carelessly or mechanically written — indeed, the reverse is true — it does mean that we can read them only because we are interested in her method and can judge them only by its success. She has de- liberately chosen people and events as little extraordinary as possible and deliberately imposed upon herself the task of conferring upon them whatever distinction they may seem to possess entirely by her manner of writing their story. The "History of Anthony Waring" carries her particular experiment still further, and its direction is exactly the oppo- site to that taken by other experimental novelists. While their works have become longer, more complicated, and less direct, hers have grown shorter, simpler, and more completely straight- forward. Here one hundred and thirty-one pages, printed in large type and with lavish margins in every possible direction, serve to tell the story of a life from the nursery to the death- bed. There are paragraphs four words long and whole chap- ters shorter than a single paragraph of this review. Every- thing not absolutely necessary has been eliminated and the whole is told in words each one of which would be comprehen- sible to a child just finished with its primer. Simplification could be carried no further, but here at least simplification de- feats its purpose, and even as an experiment the result is negative since it proves either that what Miss Sinclair is at- tempting to do cannot be done or else it proves nothing at all. So far as I know no critic of his own or another's craft has ever succeeded, even when analyzing a specific novel, in pointing out just which of its details are in themselves respon- sible for the effect produced. One may go over a great work for the purpose of abridging it and one may fancy that this or that might be dispensed with but one can never be sure at just what point one has begun to diminish the effect of the whole. One can never be sure just when the mere number of words used to recount an incident serves by itself to place an emphasis upon it or just how many details of a sort insig- nificant in themselves are necessary to give a solidity or a color which their aggregate contributes. Somehow the essential emerges as a result of the relationships subsisting between unessentials and somehow the indispensable is dependent upon things individually dispensable. The art of the novelist de- pends, of course, upon an intuitive perception of how he may bring this about but Miss Sinclair seems to have edited or abridged her own words with fatal results. She seems to have gone over them, asking if this or that might not be omitted, and to have taken so many things away that nothing is left. One may be amazed that the "History of Anthony Waring" is not flatter than it is; one may grant that it is better than either "Far End" or "The Allinghams," but one must conclude nevertheless that the author has not been able either to say or to imply anything very significant in words so few and so simple. Even the mood which the book provokes is not the mood which it seems probable that Miss Sinclair intended. She is not exactly a bitter person; one knows that the impres- sion which she wishes to give of life is not an impression of futility; and yet when the whole earthly existence of a hero is recorded in a book which a child could read and understand in an hour the effect is almost inevitably that. If all that is significant in a life can be recorded in a few simple sentences, if a few level pages can record, dispose of a youth, a few more of love and marriage, and a few more of death, then life is hardly worth the years which it takes to live itself out and the biography of a man is no more worth writing than the biography of a may-fly. I do not say that a novel no longer than this one might not possibly be made to seem adequate and more; but I do believe that it would have to retain at least some one of the various things which Miss Sinclair has left out even if it were only a language less simple than hers. Either condensation would have to be achieved by packing in instead of cutting out or the fewness of the incidents chosen would have to be compen- sated for by some extraordinary vividness which the mere competence of Miss Sinclair does not achieve. She is, to put it bluntly, never intense enough to justify her brevity and her novel is no more than a mere synopsis. Joseph Wood Krutch Labor and the Law The Law of Organized Labor and Industrial Conflicts. By Edwin Stacey Oakes. Rochester, N. Y.: The Lawyers Co- operative Publishing Company. $15. IT is approximately seventeen years since anyone has at- tempted to make a study of all of the decisions bearing on the law of industrial disputes. There is much to report. Far- reaching changes in the law during that period, in many ways disadvantageous to labor, more than amply justify the issu- ance at this time of another work.

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482 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3252 The law in regard to boycotting, sympathetic strikes, picketing, the organization of non-union fields, the validity of growing power in the hands of the national union, has dealt poorly with labor. Even labor's "constitutional right to strike" becomes an ignis fatuus in the hands of Mr. Justice Brandeis's gratuitous dictum in the case of Dorchy vs. Kansas (1926) to the effect that "Neither the common law, nor the Fourteenth Amendment, confers the absolute right to strike." No matter that labor never had the constitutional right to strike. The illusion was a fond one. Finally the recent decision of the United States Supreme Court in the case of Bedford Cut Stone Company vs. Journeyman Stone Cutters' Association, overruling the federal Circuit Court of Appeals, marks the complete dis- sipation of Gompers's day-dream concerning the Clayton Act. The courts, rulers in a higher sphere, in no way accountable to the expressions of Congress, have seen fit to direct the law in other (ancient) channels. Mr. Oakes's exhaustive work presents labor with an op- portunity to take stock and discuss ways and means. It con- tains all of the significant cases in the field he attempts to cover. It is a big job of collection, digestion, and classification, admirably done by one thoroughly trained in the search and use of legal materials. Its excellent arrangement and index- ing will earn the gratitude of the practicing attorney who is constantly in danger of being pressed into an opinion on short notice. Cases bulking formidably in the various State, federal, English, and Canadian law reports are here hewed and whittled to a cause or phrase. The value of the book is considerably enhanced by the inclusion of helpful allied matter, e.g., criminal syndicalism, and other subjects of especial concern to the employer, such as the existence of a strike as an excuse on the part of the employer for failure to perform a contract obliga ion, the liability of an employer for injury suffered by scabbing work- ers, and insurance against strikes. Intelligently also the subject of boycotting is treated as one aspect of the larger question of the refusal of one person to have business rela- tions with another. Trade unions, however, also need orienta- tion in cognate matters. If those factors that condition the struggle of organized labor are proper subjects for such a work, why not include treatment of the law of arrest, of searches and seizures, and possibly an inquiry into the author- ity of oolice captains, sheriffs, or justices of the peace? All too often are the issues of a strike decided as a practical mat- ter by abuse in low official places. The bland hostility of a police captain or sheriff, or, frequently, of a justice of the peace, is sometimes as effectually disastrous as the directness and dubious legality of a preliminary injunction. In a sense it is regrettable that this book follows as closely as it does the abstract, legalistic terminology of the courts. Courts deal largely in traditional legalisms, hardened by outward logical symmetry. Only the exceptional court will compound its reasoning with realism derived from a considera- tion of constantly changing economic and sociological factors. Perhaps the largest part of labor's activity is condemned as unwarranted "interference with the right of an individual to conduct his business." The courts translate this into the con- cept of property, involving thereby every traditional and sup- posed constitutional guaranty designed for its protection. What of labor's interests? They fall under no legal concept accorded the sacredness of property. Labor wants a voice in the dictation of the conditions and remunerations of industry. However, the language of the law does not yet exist to com- prehend these interests of labor or even to explain them. Labor therefore approaches the law at a great handicap. Labor sustains the burden of proof before the law. Labor must justify its "interference" with the individual "right" to conduct one's business. Legal analysis proceeds in terms of the "rights" of the employer with which labor "interferes." It never occurs to the courts that the employer's "right" may invade and restrict that area claimed bv labor on the basis of social or collective interests. The result of this one-sided terminology thus not only leads to confusion of thought on the part of the courts but also to a disregard of those inter- ests which labor has come to press for their attention as a consequence of an industrial age. Perhaps more consideration of dissenting opinions, par- ticularly those of Messrs. Holmes and Brandeis, cannot fairly be asked of the author. Their interest for labor is great, though possibly somewhat out of proportion to their authority as precedent. For labor, however, the path of the law lies along just such a realistic approach as that of Holmes and Brandeis to the possibility of new "rights" and new "legal concepts." C. M. Joseph Our Puritan Artist Hatvthorne: A Study in Solitude. By Herbert Gorman. Mur- ray Hill Biographies. George H. Doran Company. S2. J T OW heavy a tangle of hero-worship has grown un about * * the greater figures of the New England Renaissance only one who has tried to push his way through and come rmon authentic reality can realize. Our Victorian biographers and critics who took charge of New England reputations made a thorough job of it. They entered whole-heartedly into a pleas- ant conspiracy to set. up shrines for the American people to worship at. No touch of realism sullies their idyllic pages; no concern for standards or values is suffered to minimize their heroes. Certain names are sacred and one anproaches Craigie House or the Old Manse as one approaches the shrine of Thomas a Becket. One may read volumes, for example, with- out discovering that Sophia Hawthorne — to whom every Vic- torian pilgrim offered a nosegay of praise — was a sentimental- ist who wrote so gushy a letter to Aldrich in praise of a poem he afterwards deleted from his works that he must have blushed for her, and whose literary judgment could have had no good influence on her husband's work. But the realists are having their innings at last, and it is an immense relief to read a study of Hawthorne written by one who has no client to defend and who thinks as an American rather than as a Bostonian. Such a study may not say the last word — which. of course, is never said — but at any rate it is an attempt to evaluate the work of the artist as a product of his strange men- tality, and of the Puritan world that shaped that mentality. I am not at all sure that Mr. Gorman's interpretation is wrong. The more I try to puzzle out the problem of Haw- thorne's refined technique and scanty accomplishment — the thin atmosphere in which his stories move and the poverty of thought that marked his intellectual life — the more I am driven back upon the hypothesis of inhibitions that prevented his normal unfolding: and those inhibitions certainly resulted from the unhappy solitude into which he was early thrown, and the Puritan heritage that held his mind in its cold grasp. Here then is Mr. Gorman's thesis — a thesis that he defends with much persuasiveness and charm. It is a much more elusive task than he set himself in his study of Longfellow, calling for subtler analysis and shrewder insight. It is a study in the psychology of what, perhaps, may be called the skeptical after- math of Puritanism — of the workings of a mind emptied of Calvinistic dogma but still aware of the reality of sin and sensitive to its possibilities as material for the artist to deal with. The world that Hawthorne created for his art was un- real— more unreal probably than Mr. Gorman has realized; with no likeness to the every-day realities of Samuel Sewall's world, or to the passionate intellectuality of Jonathan Edwards's broodings on the inscrutable Stable Will of God. It existed only in the twilight of his imagination and was subdued by the shadows of twilight; yet once he had taken up his abode there, refusing all contacts with other worlds, his literary expression was rigidly fixed. Mr. Gorman's study is done with skill and insight. If he

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Nov. 2, 1927] The Nation 483 reveals a somewhat inadequate knowledge of the Puritan back- grounds of New England, and dismisses rather too hastily the stirring movements in ferment all about Hawthorne, such shortcomings are more than compensated for by the intelli- gence with which he has penetrated to the heart of his problem and has stripped from Hawthorne the tangle of maudlin eulogy that has so long covered his reputation. I accept his interpre- tation as just and am thankful for the clean and beautiful way in which he has done his job — only I wish he had split somewhat fewer infinitives and had not permitted Hawthorne to be "fed up" on anything. Vernon Louis Parrington Magic The House of Lost Identity. By Donald Corley. Robert M. McBride Company. $2.50. T^HE short story is perhaps the most obdurate of prose forms * for the artist seeking self-expression, since, like the son- net, it is already so straitly conditioned by tradition that it has a characterless character of its own. When, now and then, a writer succeeds in putting his mark on it, stories of his type come henceforth to be regarded as his own. And so it is not to be held against Mr. Corley that his House of Lost Identity is a Hawthorne story, and that his Glass Eye of Throgmorton is a Kipling story, and that his Book of the Debts and the Price of Reflection are American Magazine stories, and that "Figs" and "The Manacles of Youth" and "The Song of the Hombelaine" and various others remind us of Cabell, who writes a cordial preface to the book. "Hereinafter," he says, "you encounter magic. . . ." But "no magic can affect anybody — precisely as Mr. Corley tells us, in 'The Glass Eye of Throgmorton,' unless 'the sorcerer has first got hold of something personal, extremely personal, be- longing to the intended victim.' Now I take it there is nothing more 'extremely personal' than one's heart. And magic — the special sort of magic that here solicits us — does, certainly, re- tain an inveterate hold upon the hearts of all who have rid- den, howsoever briefly, and no matter how long ago, in the man- ner of Pierre Salabat, upon the horse with golden wings which flies high, and so very high, above the earth familiar to us." Which means, dear reader, that if you don't perceive the beauty of these stories, there's no one to blame but yourself. This beauty, like Mr. Cabell's own, is associated with a consciously studied literary style — though, unlike Mr. Cabell, Mr. Corley uses half a dozen different consciously studied styles. Sometimes he is very simple and colorful, almost pa- ternal in his tenderness, as in "The Legend of the Little Horses." Sometimes he is sophisticated and cosmopolitan, as in "The Glass Eye of Throgmorton." Sometimes he is fragrant and mysterious, as in "Figs." Always he knows his muttons as a story teller, just as well as Fanny Hurst knows hers and Edna Ferber hers and Cabell his; so that it is no wonder, after all, that his delicate confections have found their way into the popular magazines. "San-Yada, the Governor of the Province of Chouan, was drinking tea in the audience room of his pal- ace, with his feet upon a cushion of rabbit furs. His shoe- maid, Ssu, had just taken off his oiled silk boots and brought to him slippers of green silk embroidered with green wading birds." He gives us long catalogues of glamorous names. "The castle of Warekin, as white as the sea-gulls that haunted its towers of an afternoon, flaunted blue marriage banners from every window and every gonfalon. The Island of Idressy, of which the castle was the kingskeep, awaited the coming of Hedragors, that evening; Hedragors, Isle lord of neighboring Kelmsney. . . ." And always in this conscious literary way, and according to distinguished precedent, and through a glass that seeks in some way to put an enchantment upon reality, he pursues those things that to him symbolize beauty. Alice Beal Parsons CLARENCE DARROW vs. DR. THOMAS V. SMITH "Can the Individual Control His Conduct?" Mr. Darrow says No! This debate on the subject "Can the Individual Control His Conduct?" can now be read verbatim as revised by both disputants. Dr. Smith says Yes. Clarence Darrow says No. Be sure to read this discussion — a vigorous mental tonic. Upton Sinclair's "MONEY WRITES!" The newest work by the militant Upton Sinclair is "Money Writes" — a study of the economic control of literature today. It is often said that money talks, and here Mr. Sinclair shows that money also writes. Crammed with astonishing revelations about Zane Grey, Harold Bell Wright, Sinclair Lewis, James Branch Cabeil, George Sterling, etc., etc. 448 Pages of Stimulating Reading THE RIDDLE OF HUMAN BEHAVIOR, You Behave Like a Human Being Because You Have a Human Brain. By Harry Hlbschman. THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEADERSHIP. What Made It Possible /or Individuals to Control and Move the Masses'? By Leo Markun. THE FOLLIES OF LOVERS. Fascinating French Short Stories of Love's Caprices and Ironies By Catulle Mendes. THE STORY OF THE FASHION INDUS- TRY IN PARIS, Why France Leads the World in the Art of Creating Milady's Gowns. By Lamar Mlddleton. THE HOLLYWOOD I KNOW, Stories of Those Who Are Walling and Those Who Have "Crashed." By Edgcumb Plnchon. NEGRO LIFE IN N. Y.'S HARLEM. A Lively Picture of a Popular and Interesting Section. By Wallace Thurman. ROBERT G INGKRSOLL, BENEV- OLENT AGNOSTIC, An Outline of the Great Rationalist's War on Superstition. By Joseph McCabe. IS MAN AN ELECTRIC MACHINE? The Latest Ideas in Support of the Mechan- istic Conception of Life. By Mavnard Shipley. NEW LIVES FOR OLD IN TODAYS RUSSIA, What Has Happened to the Common Folk of the Soviet Republic. By Anna Louise Strong. THE TRIUMPH OF MATERIALISM. In Materialism Lies Civilization and a Glo- rious Human Future. By Joseph McCabe. WHY I AM A HERETIC, A Statement of Belief to Aid the Progress of Freelhought. By Harry Hlbschman. THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SUICIDE, Is the Momentum of an Intense, dialled Egoism the Basic Cause! By Hugh Russell Eraser. CATHOLICISM AND SEX, Can One Whit of Virtue in Ascetlsm Be Proved' By Gerard Harrington. THE MAN WHO MADE OMAR, Fin- Gerald. Odd British Genius Who Toot Pains to Avoid Fame. By Vincent Starrett. THE MENTAL DIFFERENCES BE- TWEEN MEN AND WOMEN, Neither of the Seles Is to an Important Extent Superior to the Other. By Leo Markun. OLD MAID, She Began to Love at 16, but Waited, for Whan Bj Sara Haardt. THE QUEST FOR HAPPINESS IN MODERN MARRIAGE, An Essay Based on the Psychology of Dr. Jung. By James Oppenhetni. WOMAN, THE ETERNAL PRIMITIVE, Closer to Primordial Nature Woman Enjoys Certain Biologic Advantages. By William J. Fielding. THE NEGRO AND HIS PROBLEMS. A Comprehensive Discussion of the Negro Situation in America. By Walter F White. SELLERS OF WHITE SPACE, The In- side Story of an American Advertising Agency By Howard Blattels. RELIGION IN THE GREAT POETS The Truth About Poetical Inspiration and So-Called "Religious" Poets. By Joseph McCabe. THE INFLUENCE OF PERSONALITY Who Wants His Inmost Self Meddled tilth and Invaded? By John Cowper Pmvys DR BEN L. REITMAN. Ex- Anarchist' Friend of the Poor and Sick. Good of Heart' but Muddled. By Dan Hennessy PRISONS OR PREVENTION? Hysteria Has Replaced Reason. Fear Has Taken the Place of Judgment. By Benjamin Gla«sberg. DEFLATING THE CHEMIST, The Plight of Scientists Who Are Not Being U<ed By H T Stowell FEEDERS OF DEMOCRACY. A Teacher's Honest and Realistic Estimate of His Job By O. H Epperson THE BANKRUPTCY OF LIBERAL RE- LIGION, We Need Emancipation from Preachers, Their Books and Man-Made Gods By Harry Hibschman LIGHT WITHOUT HEAT. The Dan May Come When Man Will Carry Cold Light In Ills Pocket By Maynard Shipley ROMANCES OF PARIS, Two New Trans- lations of French Short Stories. By Alfred de Mussel STANDARDIZED AMERICA: ITS MEN- ACE, .1 Modern Application or John Stuart Mill's Individualistic Philosophy By Ray Rnnnlon THE WORLD'S FIRST MARTYR TO SCIENCE, Even Athens, in Its (.olden Age, Was Infested v tth "Fundamental- ists " By Maynard Shipley. THE ART OF FORGETTING. Is It Not the Secret of the Art of Life? By John Cowper Pom THE FIRST MODERN MAN. It Was Erasmus Who Blazed the Trail of Today's Culture. By J V Nash INDIANA: A TRAGI-COMEDY. The State Thai Mothered Pluto Water. Ben llur and Christian Endeavor By Basil Bass THE PROBLEM OF TALENT. Why I lis Important for lis to Become Amateurs In the Arts. By James Oppenhclm ALL ABOVE FOR *1 Here is an opportunity to secure no less than 4 18 pages of excellent reading for $1 ($1.25 Canadian and foreign) — contained in a six months' trial sub- scription to the Haldeman- Julius Quarterly, a large, handsomely printed magazine for an intelligent minority. Send the blank below with $1 and get all of the above — and start at the beginning of Upton Sinclair's "Money Writes 1" [- — — — — — PIN $1 TO THIS BLANK- - — — — — -l Haldeman-Julius Publications, i Dept. Q-27, Girard, Kansas I enclose $1 ($1.25 Canadian and foreign) for 6 months of the Haldeman-Julius Quarterly — the issues from July to December, 1927, inclusive — including the first instal- ments of "Money Writes!" Name Address City State When writing to advertisers please mention The Nation

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484 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3252 Books in Brief Strange Woman. By Elmer Davis. Robert M. McBride Com- pany. $2. When Lucy Merriam's husband has an affair with Dagmar Dahl, the opera singer, Lucy wakes up to the fact that there is very little left for a woman of forty to do. In this crisis she manages her 1 nd a few " itions of her own with almost supernatural tact. Eventually she and her husband are united on the old basis, and Dagmar returns to the more hectic world of art. The book, done largely in racy conversations, is a little unreal in many of its situations and by no means solves the problem of women of forty. But it is an amusing exposition of what fools old men can be. The Flower Show. By Denis Mackail. Houghton Mifflin Com- pany. $2.50. This leisurely tale of a day's events on an English country estate, seen through the eyes of a child and interpreted whim- sically but superficially by the author, will make pleasant enough reading for gentle old ladies and all others who enjoy the details of the manner in which "the heir to the property" takes his tiffin. Zelda Marsh. By Chades G. Norris. E. P. Dutton and Com- pany. $2.50. Mr. Norris, following in the wake of the popular interest in stage folk, offers the turgid tale of Zelda who proves her basic virtue, despite several transgressions of the Seventh Com- mandment, by returning to her first lover and seducer in his hour of need. "John," she cries, "I'm leaving my he; rt behind me, but I'm gaining my soul." The End of a World. By Claude Anet. Translated from the French by Jeffery E. Jeffery. Alfred A. Knopf. $3. This would make a delightful sugar-coated pill for geol- ogy or archaeology classes to read along with their required texts. It is a novel dealing with a certain phase of pre- historic civilization and gives the art, the hunting and fishing industries, and the social customs of our more brute-like ances- tors, ^art of the book is very beautiful, and some of it is very amusing (the origin of some of our moral and marital notions, for instance), but a portion of it is very dull. It is really too instructive to be altogether amusing. God Got One Vote. By Frederick Hazlitt Brennan. Simon and Schuster. $2.50. Here is a sprightly book on the ways and means of poli- ticians. Up to a certain point it is honest and iconoclastic, and then it switches suddenly to an unwarranted optimism and sentimentality brought on, no doubt, by the effort to provide the hero's daughter with a husband. The material is interest- ing but photographic and reportorial, and needs blurring and softening before it can enter the realm of art. The book is most to be remembered for its portrait of Patrick Van politician. From Gallegher to The Deserter. The Short Stories of Rich- ard Harding Davis. Selected by Roger Burlingame. Charles Scribner's Sons. $2.50. This copious collection will be welcomed by those who have found it difficult to lay their hands upon the most characti and permanent of Davis's work. Profane Earth. By Holger Cahill. The Macaulay Com- pany. $2. A first novel crammed with a deal of naturalistic observa- tion which might conceivably have resulted in a reasonably satisfying work if Theodore Dreiser had never existed. The usual sensitive farm boy goes to the usual big city, becomes the usual reporter, has the usual love tragedy, and at the end, dry- eyed and stubboim, repeats to himself that Life is Like That. Strong stuff for weak minds. The Kingdom of Books. By William Dana Orcutt. Little, Brown and Company. $5. Mr. Orcutt pursues his way still farther among the de- lights of the older and better typography. Declaration of Love. By Geoffrey Dennis. Alfred A. Knopf. $2.50. Those who were fortunate enough to marvel at Mr. Den- nis's earlier novels, "Harvest in Poland" and "Mary Lee," will not be surprised and assuredly not disappointed in this analysis, at once savage and mystic, of the states of mind preceding the efflorescence of love in the hearts of two very modern young people. A book of astonishing sincerity and originality. It will not be widely read. The Negro in the Reconstruction of Virginia. By A. A. Taylor. The Association for the Study of Negro Life and His- tory. $2. The reconstruction period aroused such bitter resentment that its chief literary products have been the polemic novels of Tom Dixon and Judge Tourgee. The present dispassionate study shows that no extreme view can be taken. The author understands the difficulty the white South experienced in see- ing the bottom rail on top, but he shows that the Negro under tremendous difficulties of self-adjustment made a better show- ing than he has been credited with. Civil Liberty. Edited by Edith M. Phelps. H. W. Wilson Com- pany. Ninety cents. Thomas Jefferson, Mark Twain, Jeremy Bentham, Bernard Shaw, Alexander Hamilton, Archibald Stevenson, Louis Brandeis, Benito Mussolini, and Nikolai Lenin on civil liberty, with schematized arguments pro and con, and bibliographies- ready made for the college debater. Art Modern Art in Palestine "IN Palestine . . . everybody buys a picture. Clerks, stu- •*■ dents, woi'kmen — everyone, with however little money to spare, buys a painting as he would buy a book." This from Elias Newman, whose paintings we shall presently see at the Galerie Intime in New York. And his gratifying statement refers particularly to the work of the young Modern Group in Palestine, that group of which he is the first member to be shown in America. His is the first of a series of exhibits planned to introduce the modern Palestinians. Almost without parallel in the history of painting is the consciously nationalistic aim of this group; aesthetics, for the moment, assume second place, and here for the first time we have a gathering of young, social-minded artists determinedly striving to interpret a nation, the spirit of a people — if you will, a social idea. Newman, youthful, enthusiastic, alert, ap- pears in America with little desire to exploit himself but with a determination to prepare the way for his coworkers, and with a religious fervor embracing the Palestinian ideal. Listening to him is an amazing revelation to one accustomed to hearing contemporary artists releasing in wholesale quantities such remarks as "So-and-so is a nice fellow — but of course he's a rotten painter. . . ." And this in view of the fact that the Palestinian moderns have attempted to establish no "school" of painting. Each approaches his subject in his own erratic fashion. But it is supposed that as long as the common aim is not lost sight of, much is mutually forgiven. It is to be hoped

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Nov. 2, 1927] The Nation 485 that this generosity of spirit does not wane with the youthful- ness of the group. The ten workers representing this new movement worked quietly for several years until they felt the time was ripe for a public showing. There are some outstanding names among them: Lubin and Melnikoff of Chicago, Rubin of Rumania, Paldi of Russia, Newman, born in Poland, Siona Tager, the only woman in the group and the only member born in Palestine. It is, of course, a question whether a national art can ever be produced until at least one generation has grown up in a country; whether Lubin and Melnikoff can avoid painting their Chicago influences in Palestine; whether Paldi does not still paint Russia; whether Newman's previous train- ing in New York at the National Academy and the Educational Alliance is not part of the voice giving a tale of Palestine. The group is positive in its answer to this question; they point to their youth, their Zionistic enthusiasm, their individual im- mersion in the struggle of the country. But it remains for their paintings to prove or disprove these assertions. And Newman's collection of oils and water-colors may, or may not, give a positive answer. His paintings show a tremendous struggle, an early consciousness of adaptation which has given way, in his later things, to a fresher naivete. Certainly they are an interesting problem, just as Palestine is. His water- colors, for all their wider appeal to most critics, seem to me much farther from the goal than certain of his oils. He has a large canvas of Jerusalem, "The Blue Synagogue," which gives me the impression of a near approach to coherence and simplicity. The hot, pure color of Jerusalem vibrates through- out, and it has an elusive richness and a depth that may well be part of Palestine's own experience. There are also scenes of Jaffa partaking of this feeling. And, all in all, one may safely say that it is serious painting. It has not had the label ^Palestinian" attached to it merely as a theoretical distinction. The exhibition will have its interest not only for artists but for all those who harbor the belief that painting must not be afraid to align itself with social forces. Frances O'Brien Drama Dutch Interior OOMEWHERE between the past and the present, in a region ^ where things are neither new nor old, lies the limbo of the outmoded. It is a sort of attic in the house of culture, a place where costumes no longer chic but not yet old enough to be quaint are stored away along with the furniture which may be antique tomorrow but is merely unfashionable today; and it is a dim and dusty region. There is the slang of yesterday, there are the unread novels which history may or may not take up, and there, too, are the plays which, having had their hour upon the stage, are not likely to have another. Musty with the odor of undignified decay, it is not a heartening place to rummage in, and he who goes there in search of some re- membered thing is likely to find a tarnish upon its brilliance, a mold upon its sentiment, and a crack in the ring of an eloquence which once sounded so clear and so strong. Much Pinero and Jones, much Brieux and Bjornson is there along with unnumbered Germans who aspired to or achieved a per- formance at the Freie Biihne but upon whom the dust now lies as thick as it does upon our own Clyde Fitch or William Vaughn Moody. Many an enthusiast, fired by memories of his youth and determined to resurrect what he fancies to have been a glory of the past, has mounted there full of hope but has usually descended with nothing but a dry sneeze for his pains and a conviction that though the contemporaneous and the ancient both have their charms there is nothing so dull as a mode which has just been outlived. Yet even here the rule has its exceptions and it is from ISRAEL FRIEDLAENDER CLASSES Teachers Institute — Jewish Theological Seminary An Opportunity FOR JEWISH YOUNG MEN AND WOMEN To Become Acquainted More Intimately and More Intelligently with JEWISH HISTORY: Biblical, Post Biblical, Modern JEWISH LITERATURE: Biblical, Post Biblical HEBREW: Elementary and Advanced RELIGION: Customs and Ceremonies, Ethical Teachings OTHER SUBJECTS: (If there are sufficient applicants to form a class) PROFESSIONAL TRAINING FOR THOSE WHO WANT TO TEACH IN JEWISH SUNDAY SCHOOLS AND LEAD CLUBS IN JEWISH INSTITUTIONS Classes are arranged in various sections of the city and according to the needs of the students. For further information apply at the Central Office 34 Stuyvesant Street Telephone, Lexington 3094 Sara Mildred Strauss the creative dance! Classes for beginners, advanced amateurs and professionals. STUDIO 825, CARNEGIE HALL Circle 1350. Why Travel for a LIBERAL EDUCATION! From the middle ages onward the value of travel in foreign countries has been recognized as adding the final touch to a liberal education. The broadening of one's views accomplished by travel can also be effected by coming in contact with the fresh view- point on world affairs and the unbiased ideas on men, letters and things presented in Sit? i$tanriti>st?r (Suariimn WEEKLY 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 de- pend on The Manchester Guardian Weekly to keep them furnished with reliable information on all important world happenings and to keep their viewpoint on vital affairs clear and unprejudiced. MAIL COUPON BELOW 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. 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486 The Nation [Vol. 125, Xo. 3252 the lumber-room that Miss Eva LeGallienne has extracted Her- mann Heijermans's still moving play "The Good Hope," which she is using to introduce her new season at the Fourteenth Street Theater. The play was first produced in 1900; it is said to have been seen here briefly once before with Ellen Terry in the leading role; and it belongs to one of the deadest of dead periods. Heijermans was a Dutch follower of Hauptmann who wrote at the time when the drama was just discovering the pro- letariat, when it was busy pointing a heavily accusatory finger at the sorrows of the humble, and when every social wrong was considered to constitute per se the materials of a drama; and yet he managed in this case to transcend the limitations of the mode. The play is said to have been writ- ten (God save the mark!) as a protest against the loose methods of Dutch companies in insuring unseaworthy vessels; I pre- sume and hope that these methods have been since reformed; but whether they have or not the piece would be no more inter- esting on account of its purpose than "Hamlet" would be if >ur concern depended chiefly upon an active indignation against those things which were politically rotten in the state of Den- mark toward the end of the ninth century. Fortunately, how- ever, Heijermans built better than the theorist of naturalism thought necessary. His impulse toward social protest served only to supply him with an attitude and to sharpen his observa- tion so that he might make the old story of the rotten ship and the wives at home real once more by giving it a local habitation and a name among particular people, in a particular place, at a particular time. He had the gift for indignation but he had much more conspicuously the gift for character drawing and for situation; so that he has painted the life of a fishing village with something of that realism, at once uncompromising and yet loving, which once served as the mark of his countrymen's graphic art; and he managed at the same time to rise to moments of almost painful tension like that in which the timid son is sent away to the ship by the mother who soon will mourn his death. One fancies that the play was written rather di- rectly under the influence of Hauptmann's "The Weavers," but it becomes, in spite of itself, much more than an imitation. There is a robustly cheerful good humor in the genre scenes which is most un-Hauptmannesque, and there is besides an indi- vidual vitality in the characters which makes them refuse to be merely either representatives of a class or straw men to serve as the subject of an argument. The play has life in it and ic will not take its place quietly upon the shelf with the other documents for the study of an out-moded school. Whether by deliberate intention or not Miss LeGallienne's Civic Repertory Theater has made an individual place for itself among the various "Art Theaters" of New York. While the Guild (its show specialties aside) devotes itself chiefly to con- temporary plays and while both the Provincetown and the Playwright groups concern themselves chiefly with the more radical sort of experiment, Miss LeGallienne has been con- spicuously concerned with the recent past and she has shown remarkably good judgment in selecting those relatively few plays of yesterday which it would be a pity for us to lose. "The Good Hope" is well directed and soundly played by her stock company. It will, I fancy, attain something of the steady unsensational popularity which rewarded "The Cradle Song" last year. Madge Kennedy has usually specialized in unscrupulous little minxes who are too charming ever to receive the spank- ings they so richly deserve, but in Alice Duer Miller's sprightly comedy "The Springboard" (Mansfield Theater) the tables are turned upon her and she appears as the long-suffering wife of a man who cannot resist the solicitations of his own natural talent for philandering. The piece ib sparklingly written, it has an edge, and it is, all in all, one of the brightest little pieces of the season. "Interference" (Empire Theater) is a polite English melodrama dealing with blackmail and murder as really nice people meet them. Joseph Wood Kri'tch JOHX GOLDEN THEATRE Matinees WED. and SAT.. 2:30. DAXA BURXETT'S and GEORGE ABBOTT'S WALLS STAGED BY GEORGE ABBOTT SEATS 8 WEEKS IX ADVANCE THE THEATRE GUILD Presents PORGY A FOLK PLAY BY DUBOSE AND DOROTHY HEYWARD Eves. 8.40 and Saturday. 2.40 PI III Pi Theatre, West 52nd St. VjUlLl-V Matinees, Thursday T7MPTR17 Thea. B'way. & 40th Street -C>x\±.r ±I\..C. Evenings 8.30, Mats. Wed. & Sat. 2.30 INTERFERENCE By Roland Pertu-ee and Harold Dearden with ARTHUR WOXTXER. PHOEBE FOSTER, KATHEEXE McDOXELL and A. E. MATTHEWS "Is it entertaining? Does it hold you? To both ques- tions I answer affirmatively." — Alan Dale in The American •IF" THE ACTOR-MAXAGERS (Formerly the Grand Street Follies Co.) in association with Sidney Ross IF" tt present IF" 'IF" A Comedy by Lord Dunsany at the Little Theatre, West 44th St. Eves. 8:30. Mats. Thurs. & Sat. 2:30 'IF' THE PEOPLE'S INSTITUTE Thirtieth season Opens Friday, November 11th at COOPER UNION Sth Street and Astor Place with a lecture by EVERETT DEAN MARTIN on THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE AMERICAN PUBLIC at 8 o'clock Other lectures on Sunday and Tuesday Evenings Sunday, November 13th : Professor Wm. P. Montague "The Freedom of the Will" Tuesday, November 15th: Professor Harry Elmer Barnes "The Contemporary Challenge to Democracy" Open Foruni Discussion — Admission Free THE SCHOOL OF THE PEOPLE'S INSTITUTE Lectures and Informal Discussion at MUHLENBERG BRANCH LIBRARY Seventh Avenue and 23rd Street ERNEST BOYD — Literary Main Currents 5 lectures on Mondays EDGAR WIND — A Metaphysical View of Science 7 lectures on Wea E. G. SPAULDING — Questions People Expect a Phil- her to Answer 12 lectures on Thursdays MORTIMER J. ADLER— Philosophy and Silence 5 lectures on Saturdays School opens Monday, November 14th. at 8 o'clock Single Lectures Twenty-five Cents watkins THE PEOPLE'S INSTITUTE 7J™J When writing to advertisers please mention The Nation

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Nov. 2, 1927] The Nation 487 IB OPEN SHELF GOOD CHEER COMRADES I Want to buy, Bell, or swap books, bronzes, old china, clocks, curios, etchings, lamps, paintings, prints, oriental rujrsT Bus, or stroll to Daca's, 63 Washington Sg. So., N. Y. C. Books always 20 to 80% off. Open eves. THAT BOOK YOU 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 oi Authors. Catalogues free (20 issued). Outline requirements and interests. FOYLES, 121 Charing Cross Road, LONDON, FNGLANI) DARK LAUGHTER— Anderson : Growth of the Soil — Hamsun ; Four and Twenty Minds — Papini ; Three Black Pennies — Hergesheimer ; God's Stepchildren — Millin ; Thunderstorm — G. B. Stern, ALL $1.00 each. Write for Catalogue. Hermes Library Service, 81 Nassau St., N. Y. C. BARGAINS:— Trader Horn $2.95; Story of Philosophy $3.75; Aphrodite $4.75; Cellini's Autobiography $1.00. Reductions on late fiction and non-fiction. Books rented by mail. Columbia Book Service, 131 W. 23d St., N. Y. C. MARRIAGE and DIVORCE By MILTON IVS LIVY $1.00 prepaid A complete compilation of both the divorce and marriage laws of 48 States, with a comprehen- sive discussion of the evils and remedies of the divorce laws in the United States. MILTON IVES LIVY, 233 Broadway, New York.N. T. ANYBOOK IN PRINT Delivered at your door. We pay the post- age. Standard authors, fine editions, new books, all at biggest savings. Be Bure to send postcard for Clarkson'a catalog, pp p P Wri te for our great book catalog. d BniBfct This catalog is a short course in literature and is so used by some of Amer- ica's leading universities; 300,000 book lovers buy from it. Free if you write now. DAU9D B. CLARKSDN FrV^S lilt CLARKSON BLDQ. CHICAGO, !L(.. LECTURES TEMPLE ISRAEL OF WASHINGTON HEIGHTS FORUM presents UPTON SINCLAIR who will speak on "MONEY TALKS" Rabbi Mitchell Salem Fisher. Chairman TEMPLE AUDITORIUM, 560-5G6 West 185th St. Sunday, — 8:15 P.M. — November 6 Reserved seats 75c, $1 and $1.50 at thr Temple Oflice, Columbia Bookstore, Rand School, and New School lor Social Research. #^Books of "the Modern Library" , at 'Jlie UNIVERSITY PREPARATORY SCHOOL (Fifth Ave at US"St) Single Admission^O/ (Year Course -f 1092) October 28th — Strindberg, August . . "Married" How many are 421,000 stockholders? An Advertisement oj the American Telephone and Telegraph Company On October 15th, American Telephone and Telegraph Com- pany checks representing the 1520I dividend were mailed to its 421,000 stockholders. That is the largest number of stock- holders of any company in the world. The American Tele- phone and Telegraph Company is owned by a great investment democracy. Its dividend checks are cashed at banks in every state in the Union, by people representing all trades, stations and professions. 8J No institution is more nationally or publicly owned than the Ameri- can Telephone and Telegraph Company, which in turn owns more than 9 1 % of the common stock of the operating com- panies of the Bell national System. The average holding is 26 shares, and no one person owns as much as 1% of the total stock. The Bell System was devel- oped in the interest of tele- phone users and is owned by the public that it serves. Remember the date! BERTRAND RUSSELL vs. MAX EASTMAN Informal DEBATE and Discussion The Goal of Freedom and the Road to It Monday evening, November 21st, S o'clock Cooper Union — 4th Avenue at 8th Street Tickets: $1.10; $1.65, a few at $2 20 For Sale NEW MASSES. 30 Union Square — Algonquin 444 = SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN LITERATURE Symposium directed by Floyd Dell and Joseph Freeman. Lecturers: Dos Passos, Gold, Hib- ben, Olgin, Taggard, others. Friday at 8:15 P. M. Begins this Friday night. Floyd Dell — Literature and Machine Age. Workers School, 108 E. 14th St., Stuy. 7770. W rite for catalogue of fifty courses. BOOKS THE EVOLUTION OF MAN, by Wilhelm Boelsche A clear, strong:, simple summary not only of Darwin's theory but of the work of a generation of scientists along the lines Darwin opened up. Just what a busy man wants to give him a bird's-eye view of Evolution. Cloth, illustrated, 60 cents by mail. Catalog free. Charles H. Kerr & Co., 347 East Ohio St., Chicago, III. MISCELLANEOUS REAL HARRIS HOMESPUNS ^^J^^.MtV^ Suit Lengths Cut to Order. NEWALL. ISO Stornowar, Scotland. Postage Paid Write ler patterns stating shades deiirad When writing to advertiser* please mention The Nation

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International Relations Section 'Drain Inspector's Report * j UNDER the title given above, Mahatma Gandhi has published in Young India (Ahmedabad) for Septem- ber 15 a review of Katherine Mayo's book "Mother India," from which we print an extended extract. Several correspondents have sent me cuttings containing reviews of, or protests against, Miss Mayo's "Mother India." A few have in addition asked me to give my own opinion on it. An enraged correspondent from London asks me to give him answers to several questions that he has framed upon the authoress's references to me. Miss Mayo has herself favored mt with a copy of her book. I would certainly not have made time, especially when I have only limited energy and caution has been enjoined upon me by medical friends against overwork, to read the book during my tour. But these letters made it obligatory on me to read the book at once. The book is cleverly and powerfully written. The care- fully chosen quotations give it the appearance of a truthful book. But the impression it leaves on my mind is, that it is the report of a drain inspector sent out with the one purpose of opening and examining the drains of the country to be re- ported upon, or to give a graphic description of the stench exuded by the opened drains. If Miss Mayo had confessed that she had gone to India merely to open out and examine the drains of India, thei*e would pei'haps be little to complain about her compilation. But she says in effect with a certain amount of triumph, "The drains are India." True, in the concluding chapter there is a caution. But her caution is cleverly made to enforce her sweeping condemnation. I feel that no one who has any knowledge of India can possibly accept her terrible accusa- tions against the thought and the life of the people of this unhappy country. The book is without doubt untruthful, be the facts stated ever so truthful. If I open out and describe with punctilious care all the stench exuded from the drains of London and say, "Behold London," my facts will be incapable of challenge, but my judgment will be rightly condemned as a travesty of truth. Miss Mayo's book is nothing better, nothing else. The authoress says she was dissatisfied with the literature she read about India, and so she came to India "to see what a volunteer unsubsidized, uncommitted, and unattached could ob- serve of common things in daily human life." After having read the book with great attention, I regret to say that I find it difficult to accept this claim. Unsubsidized she may be. Uncommitted and unattached she certainly fails to show herself in any page. We in India are accustomed to interested publications patronized — "patronized" is accepted as an elegant synonym for "subsidized" — by the Government. We have become used to understanding from pre-British days that the art (perfected by the British) of government includes the harnessing of the secret services of men learned and reported to be honest and honorable for shadowing suspects and for writing up the virtues of the Government of the day as if the certificate had come from disinterested quarters. I hope that Miss Mayo will not take offense if she comes under the shadow of such suspicion. It may be some consolation to her to know that even some of the best English friends of India have been so suspected. But ruling out of consideration the suspicion, it remains to be seen why she has written this untruthful book. It is doubly untruthful. It is untruthful in that she condemns a whole nation, or in her words, "the peoples of India" (she will not have us as one nation) practically without any reser- vation as to their sanitation, morals, religion, etc. It is also untruthful because she claims for the British Government merits which cannot be sustained and which many an honest British officer would blush to see the Government credited with. If she is not subsidized Miss Mayo is an avowed Indophobe and Anglophile, refusing to see anything good about Indians and anything bad about the British and their rule. She does not give one an elevated idea of Western standard of judgment. Though she represents a class of sensational writers in the West, it is a class that, I flatter myself with the belief, is on the wane. There is a growing body of Americans who hate anything sensational, smart, or crooked. But the pity of it is that there are still thousands in the West who delight in "shilling shockers." Nor are all the authoress's quotations or isolated facts truthfully stated. I propose to pick up those I have personal knowledge of. The book bristles with quotations torn from their contexts and with extracts which have been authoritatively challenged. The authoress has violated all sense of propriety by asso- ciating the Poet's [Rabindranath Tagore's] name with child- marriage. The Poet has indeed referred to early marriage as not an undesirable institution. But there is a world of differ- ence between child-marriage and early marriage. If she had taken the trouble of making the acquaintance of the free and freedom-loving girls and women of Shantiniketan, she would have known the poet's meaning of early marriage. She has done me the honor of quoting me frequently in support of her argument. Any person who collects extracts from a reformer's diary, tears them from their context, and proceeds to condemn, on the strength of these, the people in whose midst the reformer has worked would get no hearing from sane and unbiased readers or hearers. But in her hurry to see everything Indian in a bad light, she has not only taken liberty with my writings, but she has not thought it necessary even to verify through me certain things ascribed by her or others to me. In fact she has combined in her own person what we understand in India as the judicial and executive officer. She is both the prosecutor and the judge. She has described the visit to me, and informed her readers that there are always with me two "secretaries" who write down every word I say. I know that this is not a wilful perversion of facts. Never- theless the statement is not true. I beg to inform her that I have no one near me who has been appointed or is expected to write down every word that I say. I have by me a coworker called Mahadev Desai who is striving to out-Boswell Boswell and does, whenever he is near me, take down whatever he con- siders to be wisdom dropping from my lips. I can't repel his advances, even if I would, for the relationship between us is, like the Hindu marriage, indissoluble. But the real crime com- mitted against me is described by her at pages 387-388. She ascribes to the Poet "a fervent declaration that Ayurvedic sci- ence surpasses anything that the West can offer" (she has this time no quotation to back her statement). Then she quotes my opinion that hospitals are institutions for propagating sin, and then distorts out of all recognition a sacred incident, honorable to the British surgeons and, I hope, to myself. I must ask the reader to excuse me for giving the full quotation from the book: As he happened to he in the prison at the time, a British surgeon of the Indian Medical Service came straightaway to see him. "Mr. Gandhi." said the surgeon, as the incident was then reported. "I am sorry to tell you that you have appen- dicitis. If you were my patient. I should operate at once. But you will probably prefer to call in your Ayurvedic physician." Mr. Gandhi proved otherwise minded. "I should prefer not to operate," pursued the surgeon, "because in case the outcome should be unfortunate, all your friends -will lay it as a charge of malicious intent against us whose duty is to care for you." "If you will only consent to operate," pleaded Mr. Gandhi.

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Nov. 2, 1927] The Nation 489 J ULIAN GREEN, a young American, living in Paris, writing in French a novel of life in Virginia, has stirred the lit- erary world. The French critics have acclaimed him the best nov- elist of his generation in France. This first novel, "Mont-Cinere," has just been translated and is now published in English under the title : AVARICE HOUSE E, iRNEST BOYD com- pares this strange story of an old Virginia house to "Wuthering Heights," while the French critics compare Green's work to that of Balzac. B, BERNARD FAY in The Saturday Review of Literature says: "Julian Green is going to be one of the greatest living French writers. His novels in less than a year have made of him the fore- most French novelist of the young- er generation." O I THER recent novels so fine that no appreciative reader should miss them are: The Grand- mothers, the new Harper Prize Novel by Glenway Wescott; Giants in the Earth, a saga of the prairie by O. E. Rolvaag; From Man to Man, by Olive Schreiner; and Gallions Reach. a novel of the sea and the jungle by H. M. Tomlinson. . F you have not read The Right to be Happy, Mrs. Ber- trand Russell's sensational new book — a woman's brilliant ap- praisal of life, religion and sex, buy a copy today. On Sale at All Bookstores HARPER & BROTHERS C1RC13S JIM TUUY Author of "Beggars ©S Life" and "Jarttegan" "A MCtaMe BOOk" — New York Times "1 IS 3 "WallOp*9— Harry Hansen "Has no equal in the season's Offerings99— Wm. Allen White "Would he hard to overestimate the vividness and power oS this extraordinary book99—//, l. Menck en Illustrations by William Gropper At all bookstores, $2.50 Alfeg2»t & Ciaarlgs Bosia, 6& Fifth Ave., N. Y. DEATH COMES FOR THE ARCHBISHOP WILL A CATHER'S NEW XOFEL "Hers it is to move on the sunlit face of the earth, with the gracious amplitude of Ceres, bidding the soil yield richly." — Rebecca West in the AV York Herald Tribune. Fourth large printing. $2.50 at every bookshop Alfred A. Knopf, Publisher, N. Y. ANY BOOK ADVERTISED ON THIS PAGE You may have an]) bool( advertised on this page free in return for one nerv subscription to The Nation. The subscription must be for a year ($5) and it must be netv and not a rcnerval. Your on>n subscription does not count nor the subscription of anyone in your immediate family. The bool( is offered as a reward for effective use of your enthusiasm for The Nation. Address 20 Vesey Street, New Yort{. When writing to advertisers please -mention The Nation

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490 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3252 "I will call in my friends, now, and explain to them that you do so at my request." So Mr. Gandhi wilfully went to an "institution for propa- gating sin," was operated upon by one of the "worst of all," an officer of the Indian Medical Service, and was attentively nursed through convalescence by an English Sister whom he is understood to have thought after all rather a "useful sort of person." This is a travesty of truth. I shall confine myself to cor- recting only what is libelous and not the other inaccuracies. There was no question here of calling in any Ayurvedic physi- cian. Colonel Maddock, who performed the operation, had the right, if he had so chosen, to perform the operation without a reference to me, and even in spite of me. But he and Sur- geon General Hooton showed a delicate consideration to me, and asked me whether I would wait for my own doctors who w>re known to them and who were also trained in the Western medical and surgical science. I would not be behindhand in returning their courtesy and consideration, and I immediately told them that they could perform the operation without wait- ing for my doctors, to whom they had telegraphed, and that I would gladly give them a note for their protection in the event of the operation miscarrying. I endeavored to show that I had no distrust either in their ability or their good faith. It was to me a happy opportunity of demonstrating my personal good-will. So far as my opinion about hospitals and the like is con- cerned it stands, in spite of my having subjected myself and my wards to treatment more than once by physicians and sur- geons, Indian and European, trained in the Western school of medicine. Similarly I use motor cars and railways, ' rhile hold- ing to my condemnation of them as strongly as ever. I hold the body itself to be an evil and an impediment in my progress. But I see no inconsistency in my making use of it while it lasts, and trying in the best manner I know to use it for its own destruction. This is a sample of distortion of which I have a personal knowledge. . . . That a book like Miss Mayo's can command a large circu- lation furnishes a sad commentary on Western literature and culture. I am writing this article also in the hope, be it ever so distant, that Miss Mayo herself may relent and repent of hav- ing done, I hope unconsciously, atrocious injustice to an ancient people and equally atrocious injustice to the Americans by having exploited her undoubted ability to prejudice without warrant their minds against India. The irony of it all is that she has inscribed this book "To the Peoples of India." She has certainly not written it as a reformer and out of love. If I am mistaken in my estimate let her come back to India. Let her subject herself to cross- examination, and if her statements escape unhurt through the fire of cross-examination, let her live in our midst and reform our lives. So much for Miss Mavo and her readers. . . . Contributors to This Issue W. E. Burghardt Du Bois is editor of The Crisis. Silas Bent is the author of "Ballyhoo." G. E. R. Gedye sends The Nation articles from Central Europe. Clifton Cuthbert is a New York poet. W. Norman Brown is professor of Sanskrit at the Uni- versity of Pennsylvania. C. M. Joseph, a New York lawyer, has lectured at the New School for Social Research. Vernon Louis Parrington is the author of "Main Cur- rents in American Thought." Frances O'Brien wrote an article on Georgia O'Keeffe in the October 12 Nation. REAL ESTATE FOR SALE FOR SALE : Artist's quaint cobblestone house with spacious balcony commanding view of picturesque valley in Catskill Mountains in Woe stock Township, Ulster County, N. Y. Woodburning fireplace. Communicate with Chas. Mannino, 67-7th Avenue. Price, $5,000. FAMOUS historical estate known as "Pine Needles," former home of Ex-Governor Dix, at Schuylerville, N. Y. Ten miles from Saratoga Springs ; consisting of 95 acres. 2,700 foot frontage on Hudson River. Suitable for hotel, sanitarium, school or camp, or high class gentleman's estate. For particulars phone Bushwick 6092. APT. FOR SALE OR LEASE /^■O-OPERATIVE apt. 6 rooms. 2 baths. 1th floor, ^ front, elevator. Near Riverside. Owner leav- ing city offers sell for $2,500 cash — two-thirds value. Or would lease, furnished or unfurnished. Stockbridge Apts., 603-5 W. 138th St., Apt. 41. HOUSE FOR RENT EIGHT room house, fully and up-to-date fur- nished, all improvements, ideally located near Paterson, N. 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The Nation FOUNDED 1866 Vol. CXXV NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 9, 1927 No. 3253 Contents EDITORIAL PARAGRAPHS 491 EDITORIALS: .Q, Where Genghis Died "J Something New in the World 494 Our Waning Prosperity V™ Begging for Women's Colleges 4»b The Inoffensive Art 43° BUILDING A NEW RUSSIA. By Hendrik van Loon 497 IT SEEMS TO HEYWOOD BROUN. By Heywood Broun 498 ON THE ROAD TO SOCIALISM. By Louis Fischer 499 SOVIET ACHIEVEMENTS IN PUBLIC EDUCATION. By N. Krupskaya. 601 ALL OVER THE SOVIET LAND. By Albert Rhys Williams 60S LIBERTY UNDER THE SOVIETS. By Roger N. Baldwin 505 MASS MOVIES. By Mikhailovich Eisenstein 507 THE PATIENT. By Michael Zoshchenko. Translated by Max Eastman 608 MODERN WOMEN IN SOVIET RUSSIA. By Alexandra Rakovsky 609 THE COLORADO RIVER CONTROVERSY. By Mary Austin 510 IN THE DRIFTWAY. By the Drifter 612 CORRESPONDENCE BIS BOOKS AND PLAYS: To the Impatient Revolutionist. By John Waldhorn Gassner 514 Ivy Lee on Russia. By Louis Fischer 514 Russian Nightmare. By Johan Smertenko 514 Propaganda Value. By Clifton P. Fadiman 515 Rozanov. By Joshua Kunitz 615 H. M. Tomlinson. By Hawthorne Daniel 518 Three Poets. By Herbert Gorman 518 Books in Brief 518 Drama : Petruchio in Modern Dress. By Joseph Wood Krutch 621 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS SECTION: A Chronological Record of the Russian Revolution 523 The Soviet Invasion of America. By Tansy McNab 528 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 HEYWOOD BROUN 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. THE NATION is on file in most public and college libraries and is indexed in the Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature. CERTIFICATES OF PURITY, in Chicago's anti-British- textbooks war, have been issued to three historians. The fortunate ones are Albert Bushnell Hart, C. H. Van Tyne, and Willis Mason West. Mr. "Sport" Herrman, Mayor Thompson's public-library investigator, has pronounced his- tories of the War of Independence written by these three men to be fit for the American child. Mr. Herrman ex- plained that he had not exactly read the books but that he had "looked through them" and they were "all right." Oth- ers besides the three authors in question must draw a sigh of relief. Not only have Mayor Thompson and his band decided not to burn the nasty books they think corrupting and pro-British; but they have actually found books already in print which will do. This is very cheering; we had begun to fear that no such books would be found and that Mr. Herrman would have to write them, or perhaps Mayor Thompson himself. Meanwhile, all is not well in the Thomp- son camp. Time was when prospects looked bright for a "Thompson for President" boom. Now rude citizens in all parts of the country are laughing at Chicago's mayor for his dust storm over the British menace, and as every little schoolboy knows, the minute you begin to laugh at a Presi- dential candidate, that candidate's chances are a flop. You may insult him, you may make unpleasant insinuations about his private life or his public character, you may call him a bully, a hypocrite, a crook, a time-server. But no matter what you call him, you must not smile. SECRETARY WILBUR has run true to navy form in detaching Rear Admiral Magruder from the command of the navy yard at Philadelphia after declaring that no punitive action would be taken against him. We have care- fully read such extracts from the correspondence as have been published and are impressed with the way in which the Admiral, who had written in the Saturday Evening Post that the United States was paying $300,000,000 for a $200,- 000,000 navy, stuck to his guns in the face of Secretary Wilbur's belligerent letters. The Secretary was palpably in- sincere in asserting that the detachment of the Admiral was not a disciplinary action but simply an administrative one. What has happened to the Admiral is precisely the his- toric fate meted out to anybody in either the army and navy who revolts against the system. If an officer dares to criticize publicly he is likely to be court-martialed or thrown out — witness the fate of Colonel Mitchell. If a dis- senting officer protests through the regular official chan- nels his reports are promptly pigeonholed and never heard from again. Competent civilians, if given a free hand, could, we are sure, save hundreds of millions in both services. But once in the service the progressive officer might as well submit to powerlessness unless, like Admiral Sims in his historic crusade against the bad target practice of the navy, he has newspapers and politicians to help him. In this case President Coolidge has even declined to give to Admiral Magruder a hearing. We trust that Senator MacKellar will stick to his present intention to demand an inquiry by Con- gress. There are dozens of officers who will back up the Admiral if they can be heard under circumstances that will assure them freedom from black-listing by the governing clique of the navy. A TEMPORARY, BUT ONLY TEMPORARY, SOLU- TION of the disagreement with France in the matter of tariffs was reached on October 26. By decree American products will be restored to the favorable rates they enjoyed in France prior to September 6, which makes it possible for the American exporters who have millions of dollars' worth of products tied up in bonded warehouses in French ports to release them for sale in France. The long and tedious task of negotiating a permanent commercial treaty will now be undertaken, with the French in a much more favorable position than before because they have shown their readi- ness and their ability to strike hard in order to get what they believe to be just terms. While the effort is being made in Washington to portray this as a decided success for the American Government it is nothing of the kind. The State Department has had to promise that the American Government will lift our restrictions upon French agricul- tural, sanitary, and pharmaceutical products which have

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492 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3253 virtually excluded them from the American market — whether this can be done by Presidential decree, or requires consent of Congress, remains to be seen. More important than that, the Government of the United States has been forced to abandon in France the abominable spy system to which we have repeatedly referred in these columns, in accordance with which French exporters have been asked to open their books and reveal their inmost trade secrets to American customs agents, under the penalty of being ex- cluded from American markets. Switzerland, the Argen- tine, and Sweden have already struck against this impudent demand. Congress would do well to end it. AT LAST THERE ARE SIGNS that the police are going to be held accountable when they themselves turn criminals. In New York City, one Thomas Raffaele has obtained a verdict of $1,000 against a city detective. This policeman, with an associate, was searching for hold-up men. Meeting Raffaele they arrested him, dragged him to the drug-store which had been robbed, and beat him up with blackjacks. He was then locked up overnight, but was re- leased as entirely innocent when taken into court the next day. This sort of official crime occurs every day, and it is, of course, connived at by the highest police authorities. If the legal profession will not exert itself to stop these prac- tices which bring the law into contempt, then the thing to do is to bring suit against both the policemen and the head of the police for false arrest and assault whenever one of these crimes occurs. Only then will the guardians of the law begin to realize that theirs is the first duty to obey the law. It is also encouraging, in this connection, to note that public opinion has forced the release, in custody of counsel, of a youth who, after being beaten by police, was sentenced to serve three months in the workhouse — merely because he was caught sleeping in subway trains in order to save money! He had deposits in two banks and was sending some of his earnings to his mother in Massachusetts. In Passaic, New Jersey, the chief of police who two years ago so brutally maltreated the striking textile workers, has just been arrested because of his peculiar habit of possess- ing stolen automobiles. How can such men make the law respected? The Red Cross [said Mr. Nelson, chairman of the Brooklyn chapter of the American Red Cross] does not have to ask permission of any commandant to enter the Brooklyn Navy Yard. The American Red Cross is in the Brooklyn Navy Yard by the authority of the President of the United States, who is also President of the American Red Cross, which is as much under the command of the President as the army and navy. THESE HARSH WORDS were directed at Rear Admiral Charles P. Plunkett, for refusing to allow Red Cross officials to solicit subscriptions from the small-salaried civil employees of the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Fortunately Mr. Coolidge, who is President of the United States, the Red Cross, the Boy Scouts, and several other organizations, was not as dictatorial as Mr. Nelson, and Secretary Wilbur an- nounced, the day after Mr. Nelsc l's fiery pronunciamento, that he had no intention of interfering with the Admiral's orders. Nobody would deny the excellent and indispensable work that the Red Cross does in peace as well as war. But other persons besides Admiral Plunkett have questioned the advisability of money-getting "drives" — a disease caught during the war from which we have by no means recovered. Twelve-dollar-a-week clerks in some of New York's largest offices are frowned upon if, by begging off from Red Cross membership, they keep their division from being "one hun- dred per cent enrolled." Gifts made under duress surely cannot be welcome ; and it hardly seems in keeping with the Red Cross spirit to wring unwilling and hard-won dollars from those who can ill afford to spare them. NEW HAVEN NEWSPAPERS are usually delighted to report any transgression on the part of a Yale man. Let a student run counter to the strong arm of the law, be it because he was surprised in the wrong apartment, because his automobile misbehaved on a public highway, or because of any other aberration discountenanced by the statutes of the Nutmeg State, and the journals of New Haven will obligingly blaze forth with all the details. This reputation of the newspapers led three students, members of the Yale Liberal Club, to take part in the picketing in the local necktie strike and allow themselves to be arrested. For six weeks the strike had been running and with the excep- tion of the Times-Union no New Haven paper had mentioned it. The papers even refused union advertising which would have presented the case of the workers to the people of the city. The strike was primarily against two concerns, Berk- man and Adler, and Stern and Merritt, who had moved from New York to New Haven in order to avoid union conditions. The students believed that if they had themselves arrested, strike news would surely find its way to the front pages. They succeeded in their first ambition, but not a word appeared in any paper. The business manager of one New Haven newspaper explained: "You know, we don't pay any attention to labor troubles here unless we have to." THERE ARE ENOUGH BUBBLES in the pot of Euro- pean politics to make a hard-boiled American isola- tionist smile. Poland and Lithuania are growling at each other across the Vilna frontier; Rumania and Hungary can- not agree about Transylvania; Jugoslavia has talked war because Bulgarian irredentists assassinated a Serbian gen- eral in Macedonia — but has had the common sense to simmer down ; Italy has sent a squadron to Tangier as a kaiser-like hint that she wants a share in the international administra- tion of that city ; and Spain and Rumania have escaped revo- lutions by hair's-breadths. Another whole crop of rumors centers about the conversation which Austen Chamberlain, British Foreign Minister, is supposed to have had last month with Primo de Rivera. Primo seems to have given an inter- view to a London newspaper — only to deny it three days after publication — suggesting that he and Sir Austen were planning large plans. Spain was to cede her African colo- nies to France but to gain a free hand in Tangier; France might give Italy compensation in Syria or elsewhere; and England would thus cement her anti-Bolshevik alliance of the Western Powers. The project is nebulous in the dis- patches ; but Sir Austen's record gives no guaranty that it is not true. The spirit of Locarno seems to be hibernating. A CURIOUS STORY comes from Bolivia of how four men, convicted of assassinating a former president of the republic, were instructed to draw lots so that one might die for the offense and the others be set free. Would the advocates of the death penalty in this country — who insist on it chiefly as an example — think their purposes as well

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Nov. 9, 1927] The Nation 493 served if only one out of every four condemned men were executed? And if one in every four is enough, could we not presently satisfy our blood lust by sacrificing only one in ten and finally one in every hundred? Probably the sugges- tion will seem visionary, but there does appear to be one practical and reasonable opportunity for the drawing of lots in this ghoulish business. Even among the strongest advo- cates of capital punishment there is a general loathing for a public executioner. Yet what right have we to ask an- other to perform an act which we ourselves would be un- willing to undertake? Why therefore should not execution- ers, like juries, be chosen by lot from a panel of citizens? — those not believing in the death penalty to be excused. Or, better still, perhaps, let every jury that condemns a fellow- human to die draw lots to decide who shall press the button of the scaffold or the electric chair. GENTLEMEN OF THE JURY," said Maitre Torres, counsel for the Jew Schwartzbard, on trial in Paris for murdering the Ukrainian Hetman Petlura, "there is only one question before you. Can Schwartzbard be considered guilty?" Unanimously, after thirty-five minutes' delibera- tion, the jury answered, "No." The plaintiffs were ordered to pay the costs of the trial (though Mme Petlura and her brother-in-law received damages of one franc each), the crowd shrieked "Vive la France" as the verdict was an- nounced, and the confessed murderer fell on the neck of his defender. The explanation of the trial and its outcome lies deep in the make-up of the French mind and French processes of justice. Schwartzbard was in fact never on trial for the murder of Petlura. There was at no time any doubt about his guilt. It was Petlura, the dead man, who was tried. Did Petlura commit atrocities against the Jews of the Ukraine during the dark days of the civil war in Russia when thousands of innocent Jews were slaughtered by their Christian neighbors and the troops of the White armies? Did Petlura know of these atrocities or, knowing, could he have prevented or stopped them? Did Schwartzbard seek to avenge the massacred Jews on his own volition or did he do it as a tool of Russian Communists? Such were the ques- tions which turned a murder trial into a pandemonium of political accusations, insults, and fist fights. And the jury, in deciding as it did, justified Schwartzbard in an act of violence which has, ironically, succeeded for the first time in focusing public attention on an organized regime of vio- lence certainly as brutal and wanton as any the world has ever witnessed. MAXIMILIAN HARDEN is dead. Born Isador Wit- kowski, he became a Christian at the age of 16, sup- ported himself for years as an actor, and never entirely recovered from his histrionic training. As the confidant and partisan of Bismarck, he hated the young Kaiser who dropped the old pilot, and in pre-war Germany Wilhelm had no bitterer critic. When exposures in his magazine, the Zukunft, led to his trial for perjury, he used the trial to reveal more of the cheap scandals which abounded among the sycophants of the imperial court. He had courage, and shrewdness, but he lacked the thrust that carries through. During the war he was hailed as a hero in Allied countries because his voice was loud against the Kaiser, but his criti- cism was rather of strategy than of aims. If he had thought the Pan-German dream possible he would have been for it. His common sense, however, brought him the hate of the short-sighted Nationalists, and in 1922 a group of "patri- otic" thugs blackjacked him, leaving him with injuries from which he never entirely recovered. Where Genghis Died NEITHER Tutankhamen nor King George ever reigned over as vast an empire as bowed the knee to Genghis Khan. The papers say he "ranks with Alexander, Caesar, and Napoleon among the world's conquerors," but it is only the provincial astigmatism of the white race which leads us to class those petty men with the giant whose armies swept across the deserts of Central Asia to the rich valleys of India, Persia, and Asia Minor, crossed into Russia, harried the Adriatic, and at the other end of the earth laid low the mighty empires of old China. Now, according to the Sunday Express of London, Piotr Kozlov has found the secret tomb of Genghis, deep in the labyrinthine heart of a Mongolian mountain, in a great stone hall forty feet square, hewed out of the solid rock. Seven silent lamas guard it, and every seven hours one of them strikes seven times upon the great jade bell which overhangs the sarcophagus of the Khan. The silver coffin rests, the story says, upon the gem-studded crowns of seventy-eight conquered princes; and among the relics of the shrine are a thirteenth-century Bible presented by Marco Polo and a chronicle of the Mongols signed with Genghis Khan's own hand. We hope the story is true. If Kozlov comes out of the desert to confirm it, it is true, for he is among the greatest of living explorers. But the picture does not jibe with what we have known of Genghis Khan and the city of the Black Sands, Karakorum, where Kozlov, led by a lineal descendant of the great Mongol, is supposed to have found the tomb. It may be that for seven centuries the desert lamas have kept such a royal secret; but it has been the Mongol tradition that Genghis was buried a thousand miles or more north of the black city, under a great tree in the forests of his boyhood. One tribe was exempted from military service to guard the forest, until the trees grew so tall and thick that the emperor's tree was lost and all trace of his grave vanished. He lived in a tent all his life; the luxuries of his grandson Kubla's court were unknown to him, even when he amassed treasure beyond Midas's dreams; and he would hardly have liked the gaudy glory of such a tomb. It would not be in keeping with the character of the man who, dying in far-off China, left minute instructions for the completion of his campaign there, at the same time directing that his own remains be taken to Mongolia post-haste, and every man met on the way killed, so that news of his death might not spread and give new courage to his enemies. Moreover, Kozlov was in Karakorum in 1909, and if there are vast rocky mountains among the desert sands that now climb over its deserted walls he did not mention them in his account of his earlier explorations. It is true that in that arid air decay is slow; but how did Marco Polo's Bible find its way to Genghis's tomb? He was not born when the old warrior died; and it was forty-eight years later when Marco reached the court of Genghis's grandson. He might make an offering, even so, to the tomb of a dead hero; but then the location of the grave must have been known; and how are we then to account for the story, centuries old in Chinese annals, of Genghis's burial in the northern forest?

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494 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3253 Something New in the World TEN years ago something new was born into the world — something fresh and live, infectious and creative. The world into which it was born did not like it. At first it did not even take it seriously. It seemed to be just the temporary rioting of a few wild soapboxers, annoying be- cause it interrupted the business of winning the war. To- day the world is engaged in rectifying the mistakes of a war won too thoroughly, while Soviet Russia, still hated and feared by the West, is enthusiastically celebrating its tenth birthday. Russia's March Revolution ousted the Czar and substi- tuted a regime which, seeking to undo the worst abuses of autocracy, clung to the old forms of legality, promised the peasants new land legislation, and sought to reorganize Russia to continue fighting the war. The West accepted even that mild regime doubtfully, conditioning its approval upon the new Russia's success in killing Germans. Keren- sky's Government pleased neither its Allies nor its own people, and in November Soviet Russia was born to the twin battle-cries of Land and Peace. The Bolsheviks made no effort to keep the peasants from driving out the feudal land- owners and appropriating the soil of Russia to themselves, but rather encouraged them to take at once what legisla- tion might have brought them after many years. It shouted peace from the house-tops; it urged the conscripts to go home and till their new- won fields ; and it sougnt with pa- thetic earnestness to persuade the world to make peace upon the basis of "no annexations and no indemnities." The Powers, desiring both annexations and indemnities, were ready to let millions of human beings bleed to death rather than admit a peace without victory. When Trotzky, without an army behind him, stood on his soapbox at Brest-Litovsk and orated over General von Hoffmann's head, calling upon the German masses to join Russia in revolution, the Kaiser's ministers saw only a chance to win a battle, and made the ephemeral peace of Brest-Litovsk. The Allies were no wiser. The first point upon which Germany, England, and France joined hands was common opposition to Lenin's Government. The Allies begged the Germans to keep their troops in the Baltic provinces until they could themselves organize anti-Bolshevik crusades. British, French, Japanese, and American troops were landed upon Russian soil long after the Armistice ; every anti-Bolshevik freebooter found the Allies ready to finance and equip him; and while the peo- ple's armies of young Russia crushed one after another of these terrific counter-attacks the war-worn country was racked and torn and brought to the depths of distress. Surely no government in history ever attempted to build upon more ruinous foundations. Yet this group of men whose lives had been passed in prison and exile, who had had no training in government and administration, who sought to apply in their country principles untested and un- charted, did succeed in building a stable government out of that chaos — and a stable goven ment founded primarily on an honest desire for the happiness of the people. The West is disillusioned today, weary after the emo- tional debauch of a war which almost drove democracy out of our world. But Soviet Russia has become a land of hope, a country where millions of men and women feel a new intensity in the dull business of living. It must be judged, in part at least, in the light of what it followed. It rose on the ruins of a country soaked in the bloody tyran- nies of Czarism and sunk in the hopelessness of medieval feudalism. Roger Baldwin elsewhere in this issue gives, we believe, a fair picture of the new freedoms of Russia. The old bourgeoisie is still harried and persecuted as labor was until a decade ago. But women have a freedom exceed- ing even that of America and Scandinavia ; children have a primary consideration unknown elsewhere ; and the whole machinery of the state is directed toward raising the stand- ards of living of the millions. No government in history has set out so deliberately, and so successfully, to annihilate illiteracy, to build up mass health, to set its people economi- cally free. There is no divergence of testimony regarding the devotion of the Communist commissars. They sacrifice themselves to their ideal as ruthlessly as they do others. They live on a salary of 250 rubles a month and if they are caught in peculation they suffer more rigidly than mere lay- men. The usual perquisites of rulership are not theirs. Comparing this regime with the callous class contrasts of Czarism, or even with the aimless profiteering of the pres- ent-day West, one feels the breath of a new life. Russia is far from her goal of socialism, or communism. As Louis Fischer suggests elsewhere, the effort to build the economic life of a nation upon the principle of planned com- mon welfare is an experiment still. The valid criticism of Russia's method would be that it does not work; and only today, after the harsh years of counter-revolution, blockade, and famine, is that question receiving a fair test. The second decade — if England does not first produce another war — will tell. In its first decade Soviet Russia has had most influence upon the world in the field of foreign relations. It hoped in its early days that the fire of its own revolution would spread — and the cruel ashes of that hope still scar Europe. Yet it was a natural hope; the Western governments were sponsoring rebellions in Russia, and the Bolsheviks only followed the Western lead when, through the Third Inter- national, they sought to organize revolt behind those hostile governments' backs. It is not only the fear of the Third International, however, which has set the West against Russia. The Soviets early began publishing the archives of the Czar's diplomacy, and the crass light they shed upon the hypocrisy of Allied pretensions was bitterly resented. They sapped the war myths, and made a joke of the slogans which sent millions to futile death. M. Chicherin, Russia's able Foreign Minister, has again and again punctured the armor of his opponents and revealed behind their puffed-out fronts the inspiration of oil, of steel, of military power. But Soviet Russia's cruelest sin against the imperialist West has been committed in Asia. First, by giving a new freedom to most of its subject nationalities, and second, by treaties with the independent nations of the East, it set an example to the white empires of Asia which they have no inclination to follow. It abjured the special privileges to which America and the other Powers still cling in China; it canceled Czarist concessions in Persia; it helped the Emir of Afghanistan — and those who denounce these steps as essentially selfish forget that the same opportunities to ex-

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Nov. 9, 1927] The Nation 495 press enlightened self-interest have been open to the West- ern empires, and conspicuously neglected by them. It is for her virtues that Russia is most hated; and we love her for her enemies. We do not dedicate this issue to her tenth birthday because we subscribe to the communist principles of her rulers, or because we condone the brutali- ties of the Red dictatorship. We have a horror of all reli- gious fanatics, of all men who feel so sure of themselves that murder and lying become acceptable means, however beautiful the goal or god to which they make their sacri- fices. But all things are relative; and we live in a world which has just poured out the blood of ten million boys, and our Western countries were ready to let more thousands go to death if they could crush the workers' republic of Rus- sia. It is because Russia's success would threaten the pres- tige of the private-profit world upon which the Mellons and Dohenys feed that our American Government, which was on friendly terms with the Czar and today hobnobs with Mussolini, refuses to recognize the Soviets. It is because Soviet Russia has openly and ably encouraged the struggle for freedom of the subject peoples of Asia that Britain fears her most. In the stale world of diplomacy Soviet Russia has been a living yeast; and the example of its workers' republic has been a creative ferment in Western politics. The scars of the Czarist centuries still lie deep, and the regime which brought so much hope and freedom still fails of its broadest destiny; but in this muddy age its ten years shine. Our Waning Prosperity WITH each day it is more difficult to reconcile Presi- dent Coolidge's optimistic statement of October 18 and his rosy prophecy of a greater prosperity than ever with the facts of our economic situation. It is true that public-utility companies are prospering and that General Motors reported earnings for nine months of 1927 of $193,- 758,302, thereby becoming the greatest money-maker among American corporations. But on the same day the earnings of the United States Steel Corporation for the same period were announced to be but $74,050,623 as contrasted with $85,433,404 during the similar months of 1926. Meanwhile, the railroads continue to report decreasing earnings in the East, West, and South, the Atchison, the Baltimore & Ohio, Southern Pacific, Seaboard, Wheeling and Lake Erie, Central Railroad of New Jersey, and Chicago and Eastern Illinois, among others, recording decreases in both gross earnings and net operating income. The losses are chiefly in miscel- laneous freight, general merchandise, coal, ore, and forest products. Fifty railroads report a joint loss of $9,250,762 in net income for the month of September. In the steel and iron industry, the Bethlehem Steel Cor- poration earned only sixty-one cents a share on its common stock, as contrasted with one dollar and fifty-seven cents during the third quarter of 1926. Its President, Eugene Grace, after laying the blame for this entire situation at the door of President Coolidge, merely because that gen- tleman did not choose to run for the Presidency again, de- clared that every possible saving had been made, but that with the prices of steel lower by $4 a ton than they were at the beginning of the year there is nothing left to do to make a better showing except to cut wages. That, he said, no one likes to think about, and, he added : "If we have to save invested capital by reducing wages it will signify that we are really in a serious business cycle. Business is being carried on largely by deferred credits, or instalment buying. If we have to reduce the purchasing power of the working- man it will have serious consequences." Precisely. It is to just two facts that so much of our recent prosperity has been due: Purchasing on credit and our export trade. If the deferred-payment structure begins to crumble we shall be in for bad times, and so we shall if our export trade does not show a volume equal or superior to that of last year. Already, as Mr. Grace has doubtless noticed, there is be- ginning to be serious unemployment. Baltimore reports a considerable slackening of trade and employment, and Cleve- land, to take another example, with an army of 70,000 un- employed is witnessing public meetings demanding that those out of work shall be supported by the municipality. But the most striking symptoms of trade slackening are in the pig-iron field. Thus, the price of foundry pig iron delivered in Philadelphia has decreased from $23.26 in De- cember, 1926, to $20.26 at this writing. That in turn has had its effect upon the furnaces. On September 30 only 174 furnaces were in blast as compared with 189 in August; the daily average rate of pig-iron production was the lowest for any month since September, 1925. The decrease in the number of active blast furnaces is directly due to the fact that of the four most important lines of business using steel only one, building construction, is holding its own in com- parison with 1926. The automobile industry, the railroad business, and the oil fields are all of them far behind in their orders for steel products — the automobile industry, in large part, because of the suspension of production by Henry Ford which apparently more than offsets the great gains in sales of the General Motors Corporation. The steel indus- try firmly believes that November and December will see increased orders from railroad and automobile companies, but it expected increased orders during September which it did not get. The stock market has reflected the growing uncertainty by the recent downward pressure against very determined efforts to keep up the prices. All of which makes many people believe that President Coolidge had seen the storm signals before he decided to let some other fellow carry the burdens of government during the next four years. That may or may not be the case, but that there are grave industrial symptoms at this moment cannot be denied. No one can look forward with any satisfac- tion to a period of depression in this country at any time. But just now there are two reasons why a serious depres- sion would have exceptionally bad results. For one thing, the American people have enjoyed greater luxuries and com- forts of living than ever before, and it will be correspond- ingly difficult for them to give up those luxuries and com- forts and return to a lower scale of living. Again, despite warnings and excellent recommendations by unofficial bodies, neither the Union nor any single State has done anything to prepare to deal with unemployment on a large scale. That Cleveland has today no recognized machinery to deal with the feeding of its unemployed is nothing excep- tional ; so far as we are aware it is true of every city. While certain trades like the cotton and woolen industry have lived through bad times without much public aid, that will not be possible if the depression should affect many lines. Social engineering has been neglected in favor of radios and phonographs and automobiles.

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496 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3253 Begging for Women's Colleges TO the eye of the outsider our great Eastern women's colleges appear to be stable, prosperous institutions, delightfully equipped with handsome buildings, large trees, playing fields, and a certain pleasant air of intellectual ac- tivity. To the insider— the trustee, the president, the dean, and the lesser administrative deities— the woman's college is a plant for the mass-production of education, which can be kept running at all only through the greatest economy of operation, achieved in part by the usual expedient of inadequate wages and long hours for its employees, the faculty, and in part by inadequate physical equipment. None of these colleges has an endowment sufficient to meet its legitimate needs either for buildings and their upkeep or for teachers and their salaries. What is to be done about it? This question is forcibly put by the heads of the seven largest Eastern institutions for women in an article appearing in the November Atlantic Monthly. They describe, with more particularity than would seem necessary, the fine academic record of the colleges they represent and the achievements of the alumnae; they point to the friendly attitude of the public, the overwhelm- ing demand for such education as they offer. And they ask, why cannot the women's colleges get support from the com- munity, on the same scale as the men's? The women's colleges are steadily drained of their best men teachers by the men's colleges and the State universi- ties, both of which offer higher salaries and more ^isure for research and writing. The women teachers stay in the women's colleges, on insufficient pay, only because they are not wanted— whatever their qualifications— by those other institutions; it is this fact, no doubt, that is responsible for the high grade of teaching that actually persists in the women's colleges. If the twin problems of poor salaries and inadequate plant were to be met within the college it would mean largely increased tuition fees— and a correspond- ing iacrease in the proportion of wealthy students. In our present civilization the manufacture of educa- tion cannot, it seems, be made self-supporting. It must be paid for by the public either through state aid or through private endowment. The private colleges depend solely on gifts from interested wealthy citizens to make up their deficits. At present those gifts go in disproportionate amounts to the men's colleges. Quite naturally, since the large fortunes in America are generally controlled by men, who give most freely to their own colleges. Can our millionaires develop the imagination and inter- est necessary to induce them to take the women's institu- tions under their golden wing? We hope the arresting appeal in the Atlantic will help them to, but we fear that it will take more than a single prod. We suspect that one reason for the poverty of the women's colleges was ignored in the article by their presidents: Do those same presi- dents spend as much time as their colleagues in the men's colleges in going about, hat in hand, begging money from the men who have it to give? We recall the pathetic effort of the head of one of our Eastern r^en's colleges to compute the number of miles he had traveled up and down in the elevators of great office buildings in order to solicit funds from rich men. He could, he believed, have reached Mars if his vertical voyages had been put end on end. This is a wretched way to get money for the produc- tion and distribution of education. But it is the way in which it is done in the present commercial-industrial civil- ization. Such articles as the one we have quoted, together perhaps with more brazen and unremitting money-begging, must be trusted to carry the women's colleges along until a better day. The time will come when sex divisions in educa- tion will be wiped out, when there will be no separate men's and women's institutions scrambling and bidding against each other for money and teachers, and when the state will assume the responsibility for the higher as well as the lower education of its children. The Inoffensive Art OF all the radicals in the various arts the modern painter would seem to be the least offensive. He makes no demands upon the time of his fellow-citizens, as do the poets, nor drills upon their ears, like modernist musi- cians. It is the work of a moment to ignore a picture, but this the conservatives cannot do. An academician will press and prattle round a picture which annoys him much after the manner of a sufferer from toothache. For him the new art aches and lingers. John Kane, aged sixty, sent a picture to Carnegie Insti- tute, and the judges hung it. Mr. Kane works by day at the trade of house-painting and in the evening adventures into more creative effort. It was in late hours that he did his "Scene from Scottish Highlands." Here is a legitimately romantic story. Many will feel that it is just as exciting to have a first picture accepted in a show as to drop in the Atlantic Ocean, but the newspapers have been less friendly to John Kane than to the fliers. The New York World refuses to "thrill over the product of sheer ineptitude." It "asks to be excused from taking it seriously." The newspaper admits that its criticism is based only on a photographic reproduction. There is a grudging refer- ence to the potential "charm of color," but though a compe- tent committee judged the Scotch scene worthy, the editorial critic refuses his sanction. He bridles at the conception of "Art, that shy and fickle jade, going off on a joy-ride on a kiddie-kar." By now there is a considerable public willing to admit that no one right way exists to tell a story or to compose an opera. The old bitterness about free verse has ended. Painting remains the last barricade of the Bourbons who stand in solid, shining ranks all armed with mirrors which they hold up to nature. Only God and the literalists can make a tree. It is hard to understand just who has been injured by John Kane's journey to the Highlands. He has not swaggered, nor has his picture. The World may hold, if it chooses, to another Scotland. Mr. Kane has merely taken a tiny corner from that land for his own. Perhaps it is not a good picture, but there is something gal- lant in this glorified busman's holiday. The man who paints a house and then, at the age of sixty, a picture deserves to be taken not only seriously but in kindly fashion. If it is hard to think of Art off on a joy-ride then most of the prevalent thinking about Art must be muddle-headed. Where would Art be except careering and careening? "Montessori Art," the World calls it, but as a matter of fact there is no other sort worth cherishing. By all means let John Kane continue to go as he pleases with a full brush and a merry one.

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Nov. 9, 1927] The Nation 497 Building a New Russia We may not always like these modern styles of architecture, but nobody can deny that they are interesting and impressive.

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498 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3253 Jo A CITIZEN of Fort Madison, Iowa, has been chosen by the American Magazine as the average man and he has not sued for libel. Perhaps it is too much to expect an average man to resent the accusation and to say "When you call me that, smile." Indeed the whole tone of the article suggests that Roy L. Gray is honored by the se- lection and that he should be. Still I wonder whether the editor of the American Magazine would be pleased to hive his publication referred to as an average magazine. In order to determine whether the Life Force should bestir itself to produce more Mr. Grays it might be well to run briefly through the creed and practices of this average citizen. He owns and runs a retail clothing store and lives in a brick house with his wife and two children. He is not interested in foreign affairs. "I reason that we've sent folks to Washington to attend to these matters for us." Mr. Gray does not always agree with the men who conduct the government but feels that they always "do their best." Concerning prohibition he believes that there is much to be said on both sides. In national politics Roy Gray is regular on the theory that he has no way of know- ing the candidates, and "the best I can do is to st'ck to the party which most appeals to me and trust it to pick the best man available." To him the evolution trial in Ten- nessee was merely funny and "a lot of noise over nothing." He sticks to the religion he was taught as a boy. "I don't question it." Books are not in the life of Mr. Gray but he subscribes to several magazines. "I turn first of all to the advertisements." He sees no plays, but occasionally goes to a picture if he h?3 been told that it is clean. "I have no use at all for this sex stuff." His news interests are inventions, great disasters, and unusual crimes. For a time radio constituted a field in which Mr. Gray employed his own initiative and exercised the right of choice. He used to "fish around" but this dissipation of aerial adventuring has been aban- doned. "Now I tune in on the stations that I know have good programs and stick to them." Mr. Gray is a member of the Chamber of Commerce, the Elks, the Odd Fellows. and the Rotary Club. According to William S. Dutton, who tracked down the average man in his lair and wrote about him, "He is a little of all of us — and much of some of us. A dependable man! A steady, sane, conservative man !" But I want to know just who and what can depend safely and sanely upon Mr. Gray. Is he a bulwark or a menace? He may be a little brother to the editor of the American Magazine, but he's no little brother to me. I do not think it is sane to stick to a political party through thick and thin and to assume that everybody in office does his best and may be depended upon without question. Roy L. Gray is forty-three and should be able to remember that there was a war. That was a war which came out of the Amer- ican disposition to have no interest in foreign affairs and to let "the folks in Washington attend to these matters." It was a long way from Tipperary to Fort Madison but the war did come to Iowa. God in His mercy help the nation if we must depend upon men who learned no lesson from that conflict. Mr. Gray does not seem to go in heavily for opinions. He accepts his government, his radio, and his religion as they are handed to him without question. Maybe this is sanity, but I should call it not quite bright. In these days of syndicated editorials and magazines for millions there has been a considerable tendency to slap the average man, any average man, on the back and to tell him that he is the backbone of the country and more than that, of the human race. And, of course, he isn't. Unde- niably he has his moments of grandeur upon the barricades, but not until somebody, who isn't average, hands him a slogan, a flag, or a white cockade. The trouble with the average man is that he does not retain. Having fought nobly to right some grievous wrong, he forgets and in ten years the thing has to be done all over again. The notion that America was preserved and founded by the might of the average man is wholly erroneous. All the trails were blazed by exceptional people. Practically every national crisis has found its genius. Of late there has been a dis- position to write about Lincoln as if he were "just folks." We have comforted ourselves with the notion that he was merely one of many tall stalks in the prairie. Nobody has blasphemed to the extent of suggesting that Lincoln was the average American, but some have had the audacity to call him a typical American. Well, rails have been lying about for more than half a century for other men to split and there has not been one man to stand back to back with Abraham. He was by every biological standard a sport, and it seems likely that people may go on until the end of time being born in log cabins without a Gettysburg ad- dress coming from one of them. If life is an experimental process and Somebody with enthusiasm and curiosity putters over the test tubes then the advent of the average man must be to Him the greatest of calamities. Even the outcropping of degeneracy is more useful for the future of the race. A slump in the scale contributes its cosmic knowledge because it shows just which factors will not work and must be eliminated from the next equation. Since this is not the best of all possible worlds there is no symphonic glory in merely holding your own. Anything average may be set down as belonging to that dull part of the orchestration which is indicated as "vamp till ready." Average poetry or gallantry or even average eggs are not exciting. But man. when carefully inspected, does not fit into any crate. It seems likely that injustice was done to Roy L. Gray, the average man from Fort Madison, Iowa. There must have been reticences into which the interviewer did not penetrate. Depend upon it, this sane, solid man has somewhere in reserve an identifying birth- mark, a secret and peculiar virtue. And if not, let us still give Mr. Gray the benefit of the doubt and in all charity assume that there is in him. hidden, some vice the Amer- ican Magazine neglected to discover.

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Nov. 9, 1927] The Nation 499 SOVIET RUSSIA— 1917-1927 On the Road to Socialism By LOUIS FISCHER Moscow, October 8 IT was interesting this summer to watch the tourists come and go. Students, professors, writers, and labor leaders tried, with varying success, to fathom the intricacies of Soviet affairs and left at least a bit more "pink" than they had been when they arrived. There were few exceptions. Hard-boiled business men, too, carried away favorable im- pressions. Some even grew enthusiastic about present per- formances and future possibilities. The essential reason is Russia's obvious economic progress. A decade of Soviet rule may be roughly divided into two quintennials: 1917 to 1922 — conquest of power, civil war, economic destruction, and preparation for economic reconstruction; 1923 to 1927 — economic rehabilitation and the beginning of improvement over the pre-war past. I have been able to watch events during the latter period and I know with what exhilaration and vigor the creative forces let loose by the Bolsheviks can infect one. If the outsider feels this, how much more the man in daily, intimate con- tact with the remolding of the life of a nation. To grasp this truth is to understand the sources of the enthusiasm, optimism, and confidence with which the Communists have faced innumerable heart-breaking tasks — and won. But there are greater possibilities ahead, for the Russians have been sharpening their tools and removing incumbrances from the field of action. This tenth anniversary is the dawn of a new phase promising attainments hitherto un- known to Russia. The Bolsheviks and the millions who with them hold the rifle and the trowel pause for a brief moment to rejoice and to laugh at the prophets of evil who still sip drinks in Paris cafes. The material prosperity of this country is undeniable. Here are some indices jotted down at random: better- dressed people in Moscow, Leningrad, and the provinces; more taxis and more citizens riding in them ; more restaurants, ice- cream parlors, and cafes, and more patrons in them ; more buses with more passengers who can afford to pay the extra kopecks for the extra speed and comfort ; new homes built cooperatively by workers and state offi- cials ; new office-build- ings, b e 1 1 e r-p a v e d streets and walks, cleaner, brighter-look- ing children, more pay- station telephones, more spending of money at railway sta- tions during train-stops, more travelers to trade-uni«n and government summer sanatoria; the appearance of bicycles owned by students, young workers, and petty government employees. Some would add more unemployment, more beggars. Quite correct. There are more unemployed, but more em- ployed, too. The number of trade-union workers is grow- ing and also the number of individuals gainfully employed. Unemployment in Russia is no sign of shrinking produc- tive possibilities but rather the result of peasant migration to the cities and the discarding of excess personnel through "rationalization." The Bolsheviks are meeting these phe- nomena by rural colonization and technical training for the unskilled. Beggars: they are a public nuisance. They con- centrate in central streets, especially those frequented by foreigners, and in stations. Some one has suggested that more people ask alms because there are more people who can give them. I do not know. But at worst there are a few thousand beggars in Russia; they weigh as nothing against indices of prosperity which apply to millions of inhabitants. What of the bezprizorni, the tens of thousands of home- less, Bedouin waifs scattered over the face of the Soviet Union? Stanley Baldwin referred to them in a recent speech. ... I went to the dog show yesterday (an exhibit, incidentally, not of lap-hounds, but of sheep and police and proletarian, working dogs). At the merry-go-round nearby, bezprizorni were pushing copper kopecks across the counter for entrance tickets. They have money. I noticed, too, that their rags were less shabby. But the waifs are a terrible cancer on the body of Russia, a wound left by ten years of world war, civil war, foreign intervention, and famine. The Government and voluntary organizations are spending huge sums for the creation of colonies and farms for the bezprizorni. They are sent to villages to work, and to schools, but much of the difficulty remains. What the eye tells one of the general ma- terial well-being, the statistician confirms. The wealth and income of the country are in- creasing, witness the comparative ease with which successive inter- nal loans are absorbed by the mass of the peo- ple, and the steady rise in savings accounts. The buying capacity of the peasant expands be- cause he grows more, gets more for his sur- plus, and, this year, Lenin's Mausoleum at Moscoiv pays less for manufac-

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500 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3253 tured goods. Workers' real wages average 100 per cent pre-war plus about 32 per cent additional in insurance, vacations, social and cultural benefits, and funds for im- provement of living conditions. Moreover, salaries of state employees have risen — for a six-hour day. According to official figures, the income of the entire population, peasants included, went up 28.5 per cent in 1925-1926 and showed a 10.3 per cent increase in 1926-1927; for wage earners only the corresponding figures are 49.1 and 18.1. But after all, 1913 represents no ideal. The Bolsheviks plan to leave the antebellum norm far behind them. Russia was and is a poor country. Its annual income could be trebled without straining the natural possibilities of the country. Wages are relatively low, teachers are underpaid, and the general standard of living must be lifted high above ifs present level. The Bolshevik goal is a socialist Russia as rich as but quite different from America. They insist that their methods and form of organization will enable them to do quickly what for capitalist Europe is impossible. The volume of industrial products now exceeds the pre- war figure. Taking 100 as representing 1913, coal output was 105 in 1926-1927, oil output 109.7, textiles 109.6, pig iron 70.5, metal production 76.3, freight loadings 99.1, the number of horses 82, cows, 112.7, oxen 118.5, horned cattle 106.3, and acreage planted 97.1. Much remains to be done. Retail prices throughout the Union were cut from 8 to 10 per cent during the first ten months of 1926-1927, but they are still too high. De- spite considerable reduction of staffs and the elimination of preposterous red tape, bureaucratism flourishes and pre- sents a moral as well as an economic problem with which the authorities are grappling with insufficient success. Above all, the cost of industrial production is excessive. This is the most difficult nut the Bolsheviks have to crack. Instead of carrying out the government program of decreas- ing costs by 5 per cent, costs increased 1.2 per cent in the first half of the current fiscal year. In the second semester a change for the better intervened which will bring down the costs for the entire year by 2 per cent. This, however, is very little. Have not the successes of the last five years, some may inquire, been achieved despite the Bolsheviks, or at least, without their assistance? No. That tiny portion of indus- trial activity not in the hands of the government is closely regulated by it through direct control and taxation. The state's price policy in the collection of farm surpluses not only determines roughly the area sown but also the char- acter of the crops and, occasionally, even their quality. Dis- tribution is either a state or cooperative function, or a pri- vate business harassed and restricted by the Government. The economic system here is highly organized and central- ized and the Communists have their whole hand in every pie. But is this socialism, or communism? Is it not true that in the tenth year of the revolution Moscow is further away from socialism than ever before, and that the retreat is still progressing? Are not the attainments of the last five years explained by the adoption of capitalist methods? For two years the majority of the Communist Party and the Trotzky Opposition have bcjn debating these ques- tions. The former say Russia has socialism; the latter, state capitalism. Land, natural resources, forests, rail- roads, all banks, and between 85 and 95 per cent of all in- dustry are in the hands of the state. Foreign trade is a government monopoly. A small fraction of industry, petty artisans, part of domestic merchandising, and, most impor- tant, agriculture, remain. Cooperatives and the state do more trading than private merchants. In the cities, the Socialist elements far outdistance the private-capitalistic. In the villages, the exact opposite prevails. The mujik, though he does not own his holding, is still a small-scale capitalist. The relationship between the socialistic and the capi- talistic factors in economic life, however, is not static. In 1924-1925, 29.5 per cent of the entire production of the coun- try came from socialized enterprises; in the coming year it will be 39.8 per cent. The 25,000,000 peasant households in the Soviet Union still account for the bulk of the nation's products, but they are losing ground. Moreover, the pri- vate merchant is slowly being ejected from the scene by state and cooperative stores. It is significant, too, that the socialized trading institutions have succeeded in gaining more than majority control of grain collection, the largest single economic activity in the country. Private industry is likewise collapsing. In 1925-1926 it employed 41,682 work- ers (against several million in government plants) ; in the first quarter of the current year 31,033, and in the second quarter 25,715. The explanation of the more rapid growth of the social- ized elements in the national economy as compared to the capitalistic lies in the heavy investments of fresh capital which the former have been able to make. The Government, in the last three years, has spent upward of five billion rubles for the development of socialized producing and dis- tributing agencies. The peasants and the urban private- business community of course had far less money at their disposal. The rate of growth in agriculture and in other capitalistic forms has therefore lagged behind that of social- ized activities. In the coming year, 3,350,000,000 rubles will be added to the funds of the socialized sector of the country's economy — for industry, transport, electrification, cooperatives, housing, and city building. These figures promise gigantic achievements in the in- dustrialization and modernization of Soviet Russia. The city will soon become all but perfectly socialized. In the country there will be socialized finance, transport, and, in large part, trade. Capitalistic agriculture, and the problem of the peasants, remain. The Bolsheviks, accordingly, are definitely not return- ing to private capitalism. They are drawing further away from it. Their system is not communism, but it is not the capitalism of the Western world. The most socialistic feature of the economic system in the Soviet Union, and the one least known abroad, is state planning. The ideal of socialism is an ordered, correlated economy free from wasteful competition and duplication. The State Planning Commission serves this purpose and much of the loss suffered by the country by reason of lack of capital, lack of experience, mistaken experiments, etc., has been balanced by the gain through planning. Capitalist production is anarchistic; bolshevism is a mortal enemy of anarchy. The State Planning Commission or Gosplan is a romance in itself. There is no more important institution in Moscow. Whatever this system is called — socialism or state capitalism — it has certainly passed the stage of an experi- ment. Changes there probably will be, but the Bolsheviks feel that their method will lead Russia quickest up the lane of economic progress.

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Nov. 9, 1927] The Nation 501 Soviet Achievements in Public Education By N. KRUPSKAYA WE are beginning on the eve of our tenth anniversary to forget the "good old times" when the landowners and capitalists were the masters and the Czar's government did all in its power to keep the people in ignorance. We are beginning to forget what our schools used to be before the revolution. The country was largely illiterate. The public school was under the strict surveillance of the priest, the tight-fisted rich peasant, and the policeman. The teacher was always under suspicion. Prayers and religious instruction filled most of the school-time. Icons were the principal equipment. All the textbooks were permeated with a spirit of bigotry. Histories were written in servile loyalty to the authorities. Discussion of the realities of life was taboo. Nature-study was viewed with suspicion. Half the population of the Russian Empire consisted of non-Russian nationalities who often had no knowledge of Russian at all. The Czar's government assumed the task of "Russifying" these nationalities. Many of the Oriental nationalities were without a script of their own. There was no literature or periodicals printed in the languages of the national minorities. No school was conducted in any language except Russian. Minister of Education Delyanov plainly stated that the "middle" or secondary school was not for the "cook's children," but only the lower school. The middle school was turning out mainly law-abiding functionaries. The preva- lent type of middle school was the classical gymnasium which prepared its students for the university. The principal subjects in the gymnasium were Latin and Greek and the history of the czars. Conditions were somewhat better in the so-called Realschule, but also there abstract academic instruction prevailed. The landed nobility and the rich educated their children in the institutes for young girls of quality or in private gymnasia, in military academies, law schools, or lyceums. The Ministry of Education took little interest in adult education, and was concerned mainly with surveillance over schools for adults — in forbidding Sunday schools, closing schools because they overstepped the limit and taught fractions whereas the adult workers were al- lowed to go only as far as the four basic operations in arithmetic. The government persecuted the instructors of Sunday schools, disrupted literacy committees, kept out of the public libraries even the works of Nekrasov, Tolstoi, Gorki, Korolenko, and closed libraries without explanation. After the October Revolution the intelligentsia, includ- ing a large portion of the teachers throughout the country, at first did not realize the full meaning of the change. The more aristocratic among the teachers at first boycotted the Soviet Government. When the Commissar of Public Edu- cation, A. Lunacharsky, came with his assistant to the Ministry of Education, he found the institution deserted except for the technical staff. The boycott did not last long. It quickly dissipated under the pressure of the liberated masses, but the schools and the extra-scholastic education had to be rebuilt. The first decrees of the Council of People's Commis- saries separated the school from the church, removed the clergy from the school administrations, and placed the reli- gious, parochial, and missionary schools under the author- ity of the People's Commissariat of Education. The office of religious instructor was abolished for all denominations and the teaching of religion or the performance of religious rites in the schools was forbidden. To this change there was no resistance on the part of the population. The above-mentioned decrees could not be carried out with the old textbooks, permeated with the spirit of reli- gion and the church. Even the better textbooks in the ele- mentary schools were irreconcilably at odds with the spirit of the new decrees, and when the new system of simplified spelling was introduced, the old textbooks were still less acceptable. It required an enormous amount of work to prepare and publish new textbooks. Coeducation was de- creed in May, 1918. The reform included all grades and types of schools and met with no resistance anywhere. In October, 1918, decrees were adopted encouraging the non-Russian nationalities to organize schools conducted in their own languages. This decree gave tremendous im- petus to the cultural development of the various national minorities. Thus, for instance, under the Czar's govern- ment there were in Tartaria (former province of Ka- zan) only thirty-nine schools open to Tartar children and instruction was conducted only in Russian. In the Crimea there were only eleven such schools for Tartars. Under the Soviet rule Tartaria now has 1,500 schools and the Crimea 350, with instruction in the native language. The Karelians, a people living on the Finnish border, once sent a delega- tion to the governor of Olonetsk requesting permission to open a school with instruction in the native language; the governor considered this petition nothing short of mutiny and ordered the delegation arrested. Now the Karelian Re- public has 450 schools in the native language, seventy-one reading huts, and 227 reading circles. In 1918 the system of unified work schools was intro- duced. These schools are divided into two grades embrac- ing the ages from 8 to 17. So far they are too few to meet the needs of the entire population. Therefore in the second- grade schools preference is given to children of workers and to non-propertied and small-propertied peasants. It is but natural that the Soviet Government should take care of the laboring population first. The same principle governs the admission to the higher educational institutions. Children of workers, farm-hands, and poor peasants get the preference. One of the first circulars (December, 1917) of the Commissariat of Public Education recognized the principle that pre-school education must be considered as an integral part of the school system. This work is closely connected with the work of promoting public health and expresses itself, among other things, in safeguards for mothers and infants, in the establishment of nurseries and consulting stations where mothers are taught how to care for their babies. In Czarist Russia half of the children died before the age of five. Even in such cities as Moscow and St. Petersburg infant mortality in 1913 was as high as 26 per cent. Now infant mortality in Leningrad is 13.8 per cent and in Moscow 13.3 per cent. With the rise in the general culture of the population

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502 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3253 there has been a corresponding growth in child-care. The number of nurseries is steadily increasing. Before the revolution these were rare. In 1923 we had only 475 nurseries, but in 1926 the number increased to 4,101. Prior to the October Revolution the rural population had no idea of what a nursery meant, and in 1918 the peasants of the middle Volga regions were still bringing their petitions to the propaganda steamer Red Star imploring the authorities not to put their infants into the nurseries. Now this igno- rance is no longer in evidence. In the rural communities there are at present about 10,000 nurseries for mother and child, and in many instances the peasants have volunteered to participate in communal plowings as a means of raising a nursery fund. In the textile regions all of the factories have nurseries. But even there the facilities are inadequate to take care of all infants. The work in this direction must je extended a great deal. In addition to the above-mentioned types of pre-school institutions there has been a marked increase in the num- ber of so-called "platforms," outdoor places equipped for the care of pre-school children during the summer months. The number of these platforms has been increasing rapidly. In 1924 there were only 300 of them, in 1925, 1,500, and in 1926, 3,000. These summer stations have been established not only in the Russian regions but also among the non- Russian nationalities. In a number of provinces the child- platforms have been turned into permanent kindergartens. Simultaneously with the development of pre-school edu- cation there has been opened another new avenue of en- lightenment— the extra-scholastic education for idults. A special department was organized under the Commissariat of Education to direct this work. Later it was renamed the Department of Political Education. The local sub- divisions of this department are working hard toward the eradication of illiteracy. Upward of five million adults have gone through the "liquidation points," as these schools for abolishing illiteracy are called. In the towns and villages there are many schools for semi-literate and literate adults as veil as courses for peasants, workers' universities, and party schools. The book is more and more recognized as a carrier of education to distant places. The reading huts and traveling libraries are carrying on an extensive cultural work. Club activities are promoted. The work is conducted with the active participation of the population itself. It is here that one particularly realizes the growth of the new mass cul- ture. The ever-growing number and variety of periodicals, the introduction of radio and the traveling cinemas have enormously widened the range of political education. The Red Army is an important center for disseminat- ing culture. Those who enter the Red Army receive, be- sides purely military instruction, a good general education. There are 1,509 libraries in the Red Army, 719 clubs, 47,000 reading circles. Political instruction is offered daily. After he leaves the Red Army, the soldier becomes a carrier of culture, bringing to his village enthusiasm for knowledge, the habit of reading newspapers, eagerness to raise the cul- tural level of the village. In the first year of its existence the Soviet Government indicated the main course of the work on behalf of popular education. The next step was to mobilize the teachers. At first, as has been said, only a few teachers followed the lead of the Government, but gradually the teachers of the lower strata, from among the masses, drew closer to the Soviets. These teachers began to realize that the Soviet Government was affording them an opportunity to do creative work in raising the new generation destined to complete the task of the October Revolution. In the years that followed there has been steady improvement in the type of the new teacher for the new school. The teacher now is a mature person, a Red Soviet educator, standing close to the masses of the population. The October Revolution separated the school from the church and removed the clergy from the school adminis- tration. This has been an easy task compared to the one of inculcating a sound materialist conception of life. The problem has been solved thus: The core of the curriculum is the productive activity of mankind and its various forms of organization, viewed in a historical cross-section. Nature study, occupying a prominent place in the Soviet school, illumines the material basis for the growth of one form of productive activity or another, and shows how the economic mode of living at a given time and place determines the forms and relationships of social life, thereby revealing the connection between politics and economics. In the curricula all this is, of course, treated in the simplest possible form. The relations between nature, productive activity, and social order are explained on the basis of concrete facts and observations. The curricula include matters that are vital to the population of any given section and are of immediate and natural interest to the child. Still another peculiarity of the curricula is their linking of the given subject with practical work in the school and the home. The school- children help in carrying out the programs of pre-school edu- cation, in organizing the children within and without the school, in teaching and serving the illiterate adults, cir- culating newspapers, sanitation work, popularizing new methods of farming and tending cattle. They cultivate the school gardens and farms, they form flower-cooperatives, school-cooperatives, etc. Our schools are essentially vocational and adapted to the needs and interests of the working masses. But our material conditions are poor. We still have schools working in three shifts ; the lack of buildings and equipment hinders in the establishment of workshops. The relationship between the school and its teacher is interesting. Corporal punishment is forbidden. Coarse treatment of the children calls forth protest on the part of the children and the population. Discipline in the school aims to develop in the child an inner sense of discipline, based on a realization of its importance. To this end com- plete self-government has been instituted in the schools. Our schools are in living contact with the population they serve. School exhibitions for parents are common and regular occurrences. There are also report-meetings where the children tell their parents of the work done at school. The local Soviets and their subdivisions, the dele- gates to the women's sections, the branches of the Com- somol (Communist League of Youth) — all are interested in the school. In the factories and at the village meetings school matters are frequently discussed. Interest in the problems of school and education is ever increasing among the population. With rapid strides we are coming abreast of other peoples, at the same time creating something new, a new culture which in its culmination will be broad and profound and permeated with the spirit of Marxism and Leninism.

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Nov. 9, 1927] The Nation 503 All Over the Soviet Land By ALBERT RHYS WILLIAMS FOUR years ago I went out to live among the people of the steppes and forests and villages of Russia. My first guide was Yarkov, the singing peasant of Bronitz, who fifteen years ago was cursed as Antichrist by his fellow-villagers for proposing the rotation of crops. Then with Dmitriev I went out to the villages of Vladimir, swinging the scythe with the mowers in the river meadows, cracking the long whips with the cowherds behind the cattle, circling the fields with the women carrying the ikons to save the crops from insects. With the People's Judge Khonin, I journeyed out to the Old Believers' villages in Saratov, dealing with horse- thieves, moonshiners, and village hooligans. All day long in the hall, holding regular court. Then in the izba of our peasant host, holding samovar court till midnight, the judge giving counsel and advice to all comers, reconciling hastily marrying and hastily repenting youths, hot-tempered sons with despotic fathers. Burenkov was my guide into the village made famous by Gogol. Some forty delightful evenings I passed in the khutors near Dikanka and in the village itself: evenings luminous with Ukrainian moonlight and vibrant with the balalaika and the peasant choruses ; out under the great oak where Mazepa declared his love to Maria; or roaming through the ruins of the old Kochuby estate with peasants telling how they burned the palace and why; and finally an "Octobering" evening in the Soviet hall where I stood up in an Ukrainian costume as the Red godfather for two Dikanka babies dedicated to the revolution. And their naYnes were Engels and Profinterna (Trade Union Interna- tional). Then into the village made famous by Tolstoi, where the old peasants discussed Leo Nikolaevich as a plow- man, friend, and philosopher. With Yesenin, the poet, I drove out some forty versts from Kirmy to see the chief peasant of the Soviet Union, that mujik of Tver, known to all the world. We found him flat on his back under a threshing machine, mending a broken wheel. Neither Russian poet nor Ame: ican journal- ist could drag him away from his job until he had finished it. After that Kalinin was amiable enough. For work he took us mushroom gathering in the forest. For dinner he gave us each a wooden spoon to dip to- gether from the common bowl. For a bed, a place in his fragrant hay-mow. For recreation he drove us over to holiday in a neighbor village. It was a question who was the happiest, Yesenin chant- ing his poems aloud to the peas- ants, or the peasants listening and applauding, or Kalinin passing his criticism on poets and literature in general. The Tartar Gubaidulin was my guide into the villages around Kazan where the Azanche still cries to Allah from the minarets Drawn by Louis Lozowick. Poor Peasant House of the mosques and the sons of the Azanche sing Commun- ist couplets through the streets. It is pleasant to have guides and fellow-travelers. But for direct unimpeded contact one must go it alone. So I traveled third-class on little steamers down the winding Moscow, the Okla, and the northern Dvina, and in big steam- ers on the Volga and Dnieper. Everywhere I found the peasants ready to talk freely, even though I was a foreigner. When a man carries a tea-kettle, smokes makhorka, and takes his fleas and cockroaches philosophically, they count him straightway as one of their own and press him to join them in their travels or come with them to their villages. Thus on the Pinega, five hundred versts from Arch- angel, I fell in with the woodsmen poling their boats up-river into the heart of the northern forest. Three weeks I spent with them in the land of bears, wild swans, and monstrous mosquitoes. The peasants of Popovka insisted that I should celebrate with them the ancient pagan holiday of Mas- lenitza. A parade of three hundred horses decked with rib- bons, the straw effigies of the old Slavic gods hung up at the end of the street, and a smashing wall-on-wall fight be- tween the two ends of the village with victory for the lower end — an auspicious omen for a good harvest. Then in Alekseevka the triumph session of the Soviet which declared the old three-field "grandfather" system of agriculture dead and decreed the nine-field system for the future. Thus following the lead of chance acquaintance, I so- journed in, perhaps, a hundred villages of central and north- ern Russia, and when my eyes wearied of the plains I turned south to the Caucasus, "the stone girdle of the globe." On foot over the Georgian Military Road, bathing in the Narzan pool from the bubbling spring on the crest, following the shepherds with their flocks up into the moun- tain meadows; then into Kaketia, the valley of wine, where the over-hospitable natives sought to drown me in red and purple floods. A coasting steamer carried me along the Black Sea to the Crimea, and from Yalta I followed the bandit-infested highway that zigzags up past Ai- Petri. Happily, Abdullah, my chance companion, had the best of bandit connections, and so we came safely to Bakchesarai and Sebastopol. From there again into the Ukraine; a year and a half in the Chuvash, Mordvian, and Russian settlements along the Volga ; and six months in a village near Moscow. In these five years I have seen great changes in the life of the masses. First, a general rise in their material welfare. I came in the wake of the p&»,

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504 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3253 famine, when the land was still in the throes of pov- erty and epidemics. Now I have seen the harvest return to the Volga Basin. Into Kvalinsk, the worst of the hunger-scourged volosts, I have seen wheat come pouring down in long files of creaking wagons and in camel caravans from across the steppe. In big streams it pours into granaries and barges and into the mills, grinding away day and night. It pours life into the veins of the state, loosing the tides of trade and commerce. It pours laughter and song into the peasant masses crowding into the bazaar. It sets the forges glowing and the anvils ring- ing and brings tractors and machines into the villages. Ex- cept for a few nailed-up izbas, whose owners never returned from their long pilgrimage after bread, and the glistening white trunks of the willows peeled of their bark for food, no sign remains of the holocaust that reigned here a few years ago. Not everywhere is the change in the well-being of the peasant so marked, but all over the Soviet land it is steadily improving. Not only did the peasant receive tens of mil- lions of dessiatines from the revolution, but these were the best lands, the fertile fields and meadows of the landlords, giving him the foundation for the creation of a fairer stand- ard of life. The peasant is still poor. But along with black bread and cabbage soup he is now eating the butter and eggs he formerly sold in the market. He still lives in a log- hut, but the new ones he builds are bigger and have more window space. "We want to live in the light," he says. No longer are there complaints about the "cursed want- lessness" of the mujik. Content no longer with che mere necessities of life, he is demanding its comforts and ameni- ties— demanding them insistently in keeping with his new evaluation of himself. In every peasant can be seen the growth in conscious- ness of himself as a citizen and a man. Didn't he realize his dreams of centuries in wresting the soil from the land- lord? Didn't he defend it from invading armies on seven- teen fronts? Hasn't he forced radical changes in Soviet polici is? No longer a pawn or puppet in the hands of an inscrutable force to which he must helplessly submit, he feels himself master of his destiny, the maker of history. Last winter with a commissar I made a sleigh journey across the steppe of Saratov. Our road — a narrow track cutting through the deep snow-fields. Our old yemshik in as fine fettle as the blooded horse he was driving, and a bit arrogant. This was like the days of old when he dm landlord and the peasant sledges hastened to give him the right of way. Now a sledge was coming head on and our yemshik, cracking his whip and rising grandly on his box, cried out: "Ho there, mujik! Off the road! Don't you see I'm driving a commissar?" "Commissar, eh?" jeered the mujik. "He's not a czar, is he? If we made the Czar get off the road, we can make a commissar!" Threats and curses from our yemshik, but to no avail. Then he changed his tone to one of entreaty and persu; "But, tovarish, don't you see it's a town horse I'm driv- ing? A two-year-old and afraid o: the deep snow?" "Now, little dove," said the mujik. smiling amiably, "you talk sensibly. After all the revolution did let light into your thick head." And turning his sledge into the deep snow he gave us the road. More marked than the peasant's growth in material well-being and self-esteem is his growth in political under- standing. A far hark back to the days of those agitators who complained that when the peasants heard of the Con- stituent Assembly they thought it a new sort of vodka, and the secret Australian ballot some sort of a kangaroo. In the last decade the peasant has received an intensive educa- tion in politics and government. Scores of peasant papers have been established and hundreds of ring posts to carry them into remotest districts. Thousands of nardoms (folk- homes) have been erected; and when funds were lacking, two or three sheds, stores, and kulak's houses have been combined for the purpose. Anything for a place of assem- blage to give vent to feelings long repressed and now well- ing up in speech that starts at sundown and lasts till roos- ter-crow. Millions of meetings, lectures, disputes, debates. Amazing, this increase in political literacy. Penetrate into the most backward section of Russia — the deaf villages of the North, the mountains of the Caucasus, the far off steppes of the Urals — and with difficulty you will find a group of men who cannot discuss with a degree of intelli- gence the French debt demands, the encircling tactics of Chamberlain, or the careers of the Chinese generals. There may be peasants who have not heard of Sacco and Vanzetti, but I have not met them. Criticism of the social order is not limited to the "demo- cratic" system under which various other nations live, or to the monarchist system under which the peasants formerly lived. It is directed quite as mercilessly at the system un- der which they live today. Yesterday, around a campfire on the river bank, I took pot-luck with a threshers' artel going home at the end of the season. While we drank our raspberry tea, the "elder," a tall blond lad of twenty-two, discoursed on the principles of the Soviet. Easily, philosophically, he explained that the Soviet is a temporary expedient, that, like other systems, *it plays a coercive role, then it passes away to the stateless society in which "we shall be one big family, the workers giving tools and cloth, and we mujiks supplying the workers with bread. And there will be no money. Not hard for us mujiks to get along without money; we never had much, anyhow." He was repeating the theory learned in the win- ter school of peasant youth in his village sixty versts back from Ryazan. Needless to say, most discussions of the Soviet system are not carried on in such an abstract, theoretical manner. They concern themselves with practical issues: the tax-levy; the grain loan; the excessive vodka-drinking of the volosi secretary; where the judge got his funds for building a new house; the bourgeois traits manifesting themselves in their former fellow-villager. Ivan Petrovich, since his ele- vation to a post in Moscow. The peasant accepts the Soviet as an institution in which "he is teaching himself how to rule himself." He well knows its defects and disabilities and comments on them in a language of great strength and variety. This right to curse is for the peasant one of the supreme con- quests of the revolution. It rises out of the conviction that this is a government of his own, a government in which he has a part and a say and which he can alter. But let no outsider presume to join the peasant who is criticizing or assailing the Soviet. To his great sorrow he will find that privilege the peasant jealously reserves for himself.

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Nov. 9, 1927] The Nation 505 Liberty Under the Soviets By ROGER N. BALDWIN Paris, October 15 1 SPENT a little more than two months this summer traveling from the top to the bottom of Russia — from Georgia to Leningrad, through the Crimea and the Ukraine. My inquiries were made with a special eye to Russia's methods of political control and to the kinds and degrees of liberty existing there. Allowance must be made for the fact that I happened to arrive at a time of greater repres- sion and terrorism than has existed since 1921, due to the fear of counter-revolutionary plots following the murder of the Soviet Ambassador at Warsaw and the rupture with Great Britain, with the consequent threat of war. Thou- sands had been arrested all over Russia. The prisons were crowded. The Government was nervous. The Kremlin in Moscow was closed to all visitors; the Moscow political prisons were closed to all except their inmates; and the high chiefs of the G. P. U. (political police) were inacces- sible to all inquirers. Despite this extraordinary situation I was able to visit a dozen prisons, to discuss freely with officials the issues and the facts, and to talk with many opponents of the Soviet regime, both among the old bourgeoisie and the Anarchists, Socialists, and Tolstoians. Away from Moscow the tension was markedly less. In the villages, which after all constitute most of Russia, there was hardly the slightest reflection of it. Access to officials and to institutions, save for the exceptions I have noted in Moscow, is easier for a foreigner in Russia than anywhere else in Europe. Contrary to com- mon report, this is true even on the delicate subjects of political prisoners, exiles, and the secret service. Prose- cutors, wardens, G.P.U. officials, all talked freely. Some things they frankly refused to tell — the numbers of political prisoners and exiles, the method of executions, and the size of the police and secret service. My personal bias in approaching repression under the Soviet regime is divided between warm support of the revo- lution and a Western prejudice in favor of the utmost freedom of opinion consistent with its maintenance — as a basis essential to its further growth. Though there is no such freedom of political opinion in Russia today, it does not follow that Russia is without significant liberties. They do not fit our traditional Western concepts of individual liberty, based historically upon the emergence of private capitalist enterprise; they are group and class liberties within the political structure of the Soviet state. In addi- tion there is a striking freedom of nationalities in their cultural life, of religious organizations (provided they do not mix in politics), and of women in all social relations. Against these developing class and group freedoms in the Soviet state stands the fact of universal suppression of political opposition — whether from bourgeois counter-revo- lutionary sources, from the remnants of the old Socialist parties, from the Anarchists, or even from within the Com- munist Party. The G.P.U. exists to suppress it, doing probably the most effective political police job in the world. But more important than its function is the rigid control exercised over every means of communication throughout the Soviet Union, not only to stifle political opposition but to keep the way clear for the dictatorship's program. The press and all publications, the mails, cinema, radio, and all associations are either Communist-directed or Communist- censored. This censorship remains essentially unchanged on the basis established in 1922. It is more thorough, more frank, more effective than any control in Europe. But it dis- plays an unexpected elasticity and intelli- gence, though it suf- fers from the stupid- ities inherent in all dictatorships. There is terrorism in Russia, but it is directed chiefly against a compara- tively small class, the old bourgeoisie. They live in con- stant fear of arrest on the slightest sus- picion of political activity H.H.H«'i<-r»T Leon Trotzky Leader of the Opposition They are discriminated against in every possible way. When, in discussing with a Com- munist official what seemed to me unnecessary cruelty to an impotent class, I referred to their sense of being ter- rorized, he said: "Thank God they are!" The great masses of the Russian people have no such sense. I doubt if one peasant out of ten ever heard of the G.P.U. There is no repression by force in the villages, either against the kulaks (richer peasants) or the priests. There is no forcible repression of any section of the work- ing class, though Anarchists and Socialists among them are sometimes exiled for activity. The G.P.U. is careful not to arouse antagonism among workers or peasants by arrest- ing bona fide producers. Intellectuals or office workers are regarded as another breed. Great surprise was voiced in Russia during the arrests last June because a number of factory workers and peasants had been arrested in the gen- eral round-up. The cries of horror which accompany political execu- tions of bourgeois opponents are all of bourgeois origin. I asked the president of a peasant Soviet — a non-Communist — what he thought of the summary execution of twenty members of the old regime last June. His reply would be echoed by any of the active peasant minority supporting the Soviet regime: "If it is necessary to execute a thousand of them to save the revolution, I would be for it." No peasants or workers have been executed for political reasons since the civil war ended in 1921. Nor have any Socialists or Anarchists, with the sole exception of a few Georgian Socialist-Nationalists. Real fear of speaking out is limited to the classes definitely opposed to the present regime — the old bourgeois, the old intellectuals, the reactionary priests, the rich peas- ants who have less land now than before, the traders, and

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506 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3253 the national-independence advocates in Georgia and the Ukraine. These classes are far less numerous in Russia than the suppressed classes under other dictatorships, and fear is therefore far less general than it is elsewhere in Europe under systems similarly controlled. Nor does the rigid control of means of communication mean the univer- sal imposition of propaganda. Russian habits of discussion and protest, vigorous even under the Czar, together with the stimulus of the new life growing up under the con- stant encouragement of the Communist Party, go far to offset the evils of regimentation. Indeed, I met everywhere among workers and peasants a spirit of freedom, a released creative force that stands out in contrast to the furtive fear that marks every other dictatorship. There are exceptions, of course, even among workers and peasants, especially where socialism or anarchism had a hold or social religion sv3h as Tolstoi's, a following. Criticism of the regime is amazingly free, but it is confined to the causes of economic discontent — unemploy- ment, high prices, shortage of goods, and bureaucratism. It does not and cannot attack the dictatorship as such. The Communist regime keeps its ear to the ground, and is con- stantly endeavoring to meet this discontent. I happened to be present at a meeting of a village Soviet when the tax bills for the year were presented by a messenger from the county seat. They were denounced as iniquitous, and the Government was attacked as a robber of peasants. There is no sharp dividing line between those who thus may speak their minds and those who are arrested and exiled for their expressed opinions or their activities. Counter-revolution and economic espionage are elastic of- fenses, and the system of administrative exile allows no real defense to anyone charged with subversive activity. By far the largest number of those exiled or imprisoned are members of the old bourgeoisie, many of them guilty of nothing but being what they are. A sharp distinction is made between them as "counter-revolutionaries" and "political prisoners" — Socialists or Anarchists. The bour- geois counter-revolutionaries convicted in the courts are treated like common criminals, and a few can be found in any Russian prison. But most of the bourgeois and all of the Socialist and Anarchist political prisoners are now dealt with administratively, not by public trial in the courts: they are sent either to one of six special prison colonies, where they get a better regime than in ordinary prisons; or they may be sent into exile in Siberia or Turkestan, or to exile in its lightest form, a prohibition of living in any one of the six largest cities. This whole system of exile is surrounded with mystery in Russia. It is never mentioned in the press. The Gov- ernment will not publish the number of persons arrested or exiled. Facts as to the disposition of any particular person are given, but that is all. It is therefore impossible even to estimate fairly how many persons are now in exile. All that it is possible to say is that it runs into thousands and that as between the bourgeois and revolutionary exiles the proportion is about 5 to 1. The number of persons actually sentenced by the courts for political offenses is of course known, but no figures have been compiled. They include some hundreds of the bourgeoisie, a few score of Socialists; no Anarchists. The pressure on Socialists and Anarchists has light- ened somewhat, as the chance for their anti-Soviet activity has decreased. The Anarchists are allowed to maintain a bookstore in Moscow, and occasionally to publish books properly censored. One young Anarchist, arrested in Mos- cow on the night of the Voikoff murder, told me that he was kept three weeks in prison, apparently for the sole object of persuading him that anarchism and communism had the same ultimate objective and that he ought to sup- port the Soviet regime. When he failed to see the point he was released. Conditions of the exiles are about the same as under the Czar, for the unique Russian system remains the same. They are sent to very distant places in small villages where work is hard to find, and they get only an allowance of a little more than $3 a month to live on in a land where $3 goes about as far as it does in the United States. They may, of course, receive money or goods from friends and relatives, and their families may accompany them. Although the period of exile is limited by law to three years, that period is commonly renewed without the formality of doing more than change the place of exile. Conditions in the prisons have undoubtedly improved. Physically they are still very bad, but humanly their ad- ministration is an advance on anything I have seen else- where. Wardens are practically all former political pris- oners who know how prisons should be run. The new penology, taken over by the Soviets from the best ideas of the West, has a real hold, even in the most remote places. It is not, however, the conditions of prison life which are significant from a political viewpoint, but who is in prison. And that depends largely on the Government's atti- tude in the international situation. More prisoners are taken in, and of more varied types, whenever the anti- Soviet pressure abroad becomes acute or whenever some internal counter-revolutionary plot arouses fear. At such times, as for instance in June, hundreds on the lists of the G.P.U. are picked up in a hurry, to be examined, and, for the most part, later freed. Of perhaps four or five thousand arrested all over Russia last June, it was estimated that only seven or eight hundred were actually exiled. The attitude concerning the G. P. U. is everywhere one of reticence — even where it is not feared. It exercises a power all but supreme, checked only by the highest political authority. Even the government chiefs are inclined to defer to its judgment of what constitutes public safety. Its operations are masked in secrecy; it encourages dread by making its arrests late at night; and rumor is the chief reporter of its decisions. Wild stories are constantly afloat about executions, though it is certain that none has taken place without public announcement. There is more reason to believe that some of those announced have not occurred, especially where the G. P. U. has been able to secure a use- ful agent by sparing a life. Several hundred religious conscientious objectors are serving sentences for refusal to take military training. The administration of the law has become much narrower since the death of Lenin, who had drafted it on liberal lines. Comparatively few sects are exempted from active service, and none from some form of service. The Tolstoians are the chief sufferers. An interesting commentary on the situation which confronts them developed at a meeting of their society in Moscow at which I spoke. Three of the young men present came up to me afterward, explaining that they were conscientious objectors serving terms in prison, from which they had been released to attend the meeting on their promise to come back in a day or two.

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Nov. 9, 1927] The Nation 507 These leaves of absence from prison are one of the charac- teristic features of the new penology in Russia. But at the same time the secretary and two women assistants were in prison for writing letters to members concerning the military-service law, and next day they were exiled to Siberia. One of the prisoners out on leave went to the station to see them off. There is talk in Russia about an amnesty on the tenth anniversary of the revolution, but it is hardly possible in the still nervous state of affairs in Russia that any essen- tial change will take place in the control of opposition. The struggle within the Communist Party has doubtless in- creased the rigors of internal repression. Members of the Opposition have themselves been the objects of G. P. U. sur- veillance, and in a few cases of arrest. A few expelled Opposition members have suffered exile. Nor is there any discernible tendency in Russia toward other tempering changes in the universal control of com- munication. The censorship of books and periodicals has lifted slightly, and out in the republics away from Moscow it is even easy-going. The radio and cinema are on about the same level of control as elsewhere. Incoming foreign news, while controlled by the state telegraph agency, is sub- ject to no more than a casual censorship; and the foreign correspondents in Moscow call the censorship on their dis- patches "one of the lightest possible." The censor calls it a control for "accuracy and fairness only." The way it works in matters of opinion was well illustrated by two American journalists this summer. One, who wrote an article on the Red Terror, was asked if he minded putting that phrase in quotation marks; the other, who wrote on the "war danger," was asked if he minded taking off the quotation marks. Despite this wholesale political control in Russia, the basis of the dictatorship is wider than any in Europe. A comparison of Russia with Italy is ridiculous. The Italian regime is a one-man-and-the-police dictatorship, with the overwhelming mass of Italians against it. The Russian regime is a dictatorship of a whole party and the police, with only a minority against it. It suffers from an in- herited system of high-handed political control, and it dis- plays traits of cruelty obviously unnecessary to its security. But it is directed by an amazingly devoted, if somewhat fanatical group, doing the most heroic piece of social engi- neering ever undertaken, and that in a country of primitive economy and culture. The working out of its great experi- ment depends in large part upon democracy in the Com- munist Party machine and upon the party's i*esponsiveness to criticism, to discontent, and to the creative forces of the Russian people in peasants' and workers' associations. Its rigid controls are regarded as temporary war measures, but of course they run the danger of becoming intrenched as a system of government. How far that danger is real depends largely on how free the rest of the world will leave Russia to work out a revolution which is perhaps — happily or unhappily — too universal in its significance to be let alone by its enemies. Mass Movies By SERGE MIKHAILOVICH EISENSTEIN 1AM a civil engineer and mathematician by training. I approach the making of a motion picture in much the same way as I would the equipment of a poultry farm or the installation of a water system. My point of view is thor- oughly utilitarian, rational, materialistic. When the little "collective" which I direct hits on a subject we do not draft plans in an office. Nor do I go and sit under an oak tree waiting for poetic inspiration. Our slogan is "Down with intuitive creation." Instead we wal- low in life. Having chosen the village as the theme of our latest production, "Generalnaya Linya" (General Peasant Policy), we dip into the archives of the Commissariat of Agriculture. Thousands of peasant complaints are perused. We attend village soviet meetings and listen to village gos- sips. The picture — it will be finished on January 1 — shows the power of the soil over man and aims to teach the town- dweller understanding and affection for the peasant. We took the actors from night-lodging houses; we picked them up on the road. The "heroine" must plow and milk a cow. Our films do not center around an individual or a tri- angle. We want to develop the public, not the actor. This is a reflection of the spirit of collectivism which is abroad in the land. Nor do we attempt to excite vicarious partici- pation in the lives of the persons of the drama; that is an appeal to sentiment. The cinema can make a far bigger contribution and a far stronger impression by projecting matter and bodies rather than feelings. We photograph an echo and the rat-a-tat-tat of a machine-gun. The impres- sion is physiological. Our psychological approach is on the one hand that of the great Russian scholar, Pavlov, with his principle of reflexology, and on the other, that of the Austrian Freud — the principle of psychoanalysis. Take the scene in "Potemkin" where the Cossacks slowly, deliberately walk down the Odessa steps firing into the masses. By consciously combining the elements of legs, steps, blood, people, we produce an impression — of what kind? The spectator does not imagine himself at the Odessa wharf in 1905. But as the soldiers' boots press forward he physically recoils. He tries to get out of the range of the bullets. As the baby carriage of the crazed mother goes over the side of the mole he holds on to his cinema chair. He does not want to fall into the water. Our mounting method is a further aid in achieving such effects. Some countries in which the picture industry is highly developed do not use mounting at all. A sled rushes dow:; a snowy toboggan and you merely see it sliding and skidding to the bottom. We photograph the bumps, and the movie goer feels them, and hears them, too, from the orchestra pit just as he did the throbbing of the engines when the armored cruiser "Potemkin" moved into battle. For this reason, probably, the movement of things and of machines in our pictures is not a part quickly to be passed over but one of absorbing interest. Mounting — the inter- lacing of close-ups, of side-views, top-views, bottom-views — is the most important part of our work. A picture is either made or unmade by it. Such methods cannot be adapted to the theater. I started in the theater, with the Proletcult, but left it for motion pictures. The theater, I believe, is a

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508 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3253 dying institution. It is the handiwork of the petty artisan. The movie reflects heavy, highly organized industry. The scenic effect is calculated; so also is the ideological effect. We never start a picture without knowing why. "Potemkin" was an episode of revolutionary heroism calcu- lated to electrify the masses. "Generalnaya Linya" seeks to encourage the bond between the city and the village — the outstanding political task of Bolshevism. "October," which will be shown all over the Union on November 7, depicts the ten days in the autumn of 1917 that shook the world. It shows history being made by the man in the street, by the worker from the foundry, by the lousy soldier from the trench. It identifies the common citizen of today with that history. Conditions make our work easy. Night after night from four to five thousand Leningrad workers volunteered to participate in the storming of the Winter Palace which forms part of "October." The government supplied the arms and uniforms, as well as the army. In addition to workers and soldiers, we needed a mob. But word was whispered about and the militia had to be summoned to keep away the tens of thousands. In "Potemkin" the Black Sea fleet was put at our dis- posal. On November 7, 1917, the flagship Aurora of the Baltic squadron joined the Communists and proceeded up the Neva to bombard the Winter Palace. The state lent us the Aurora for the reenactment of this scene in "Oc- tober." We likewise had the use of tanks and artillery. As we stick to life for our subjects so we stick to life for our scenery. We never build streets, or cities, or vil- lages. The natural ones are truer. The detail of permis- sion is easily arranged. No private owner or entrepreneur can object to the photographing of his premises or demand payment for the privilege. These things cheapen production. "Potemkin" was a poster. "Generalnaya Linya" and "October" are subtler. They are nearer life. We are learn- ing. We feel that our method is the only correct one and that its potentialities are unlimited. Our method and America's highly developed movie technique ought to be a powerful combination. For this reason we are interested in an invitation to work in the United States during the next year. If our activities here permit, and if we are granted freedom of action in the United States, we may soon be there. Tatlin's Proposed Phi « Monument to the Third International il> M O S : The Patient By MICHAEL ZOSHCHENKO Translated by Max Eastman PELAGEIA rode thirty versts to the village hospital. She started at dawn and arrived at the one-story white house about noon. "The surgeon?" she asked interestedly of a mujik sit- ting on the porch. "The surgeon?" The mujik asked with equal interest. "Sick, eh? Belly, very likely." "Yes, I'm sick." answered Pelageia. "I'm sick, too, dear," said the mujik. "Ate too much meal. I'm number seven on the list." Pelageia tied her horse to the lattice and went into the hospital. The doctor's assistant, Ivan Kuzmich, was receiv- ing patients. He was little and old and dreadfully famous. Everybody around there knew him and praised him and called him "surgeon," without any reason. Pelageia entered his room, bowed low, and sat down on the edge of a chair. "You sick?" asked Ivan Kuzmich. "I am sick," said Pelageia. "That is to say, I'm sick through and through. Every little bone aches and trembles. My heart is rotting alive." "What could that come from?" the assistant asked in- differently. "Since when?" "Since autumn, Ivan Kuzmich. Ev*er since autumn. In the autumn I got sick. You know just when my husband, Dimitri Naumich, arrived from the city, I got sick. I'll be standing, for instance, beside the table, rolling cookies in the flour. Dimitri Naumich used to love those same cookies. 'Where is he now?' I thinks to myself, 'In the city he is a Soviet deputy.' " "Now please, little woman," said the assistant. "Jabber a little, but not too much. What's your trouble?" "That's just what I'm telling you," said Pelageia. "I'll be standing alongside the table rolling cookies. Suddenly my aunt Agafia runs in like a ram and waves her hand. 'Come!' she cries, 'Pelageiiushka, come quick! You'd never believe it. Your man has come, and is walking up the street with a bag and a stick!' My heart stops beating. My legs give out. I stand there like a fool and knead cookies. . . . Then I drop the cookies and run out in the yard. And in the yard the sun is playing. The air is soft. On the left, right by the stable, a yellow calf is standing, shooing flies with his little tail. I look at that calf. Teai*s come to my eyes. 'There,' I think, 'Dimitri Naumich will be delighted with that same yellow calf!' "If you please," the doctor's assistant said, frowning, "talk business." "I am talking it, little father. Don't be angry. I am talking business. I ran outside the gate. I looked this way, you know — to the left. There the Klopovski's goat is browsing; a rooster is scratching with his feet. I look to the right. In the very middle I see Dimitri Naumich com- ing. I look at him. My heart flutters. A hiccough rises in my throat. 'Oh, honest holy mother of God! Oh!' I think, 'I'm a little sick!' "And he comes along with a serious short step. His beard waves in the wind — and a city suit on him — and leather shoes!

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Nov. 9, 1927] The Nation 509 "When I saw those shoes, something kind of broke loose inside of me. 'Oh!' I thought. 'What am I good for, such an ignoramus, if he is maybe a big citizen and a Soviet deputy?' "I stand like a fool by the lattice and can't make my feet go. I run my fingers over the lattice and stand stock still. And he, Dimitri Naumich, the Soviet deputy, comes up to me with short steps and salutes me. "'How do you do?' says he, 'Pelageia Maximovna! How many long years since we met!' "I should have taken that bag from Dimitri Naumich, but Jike a fool I just looked at his shoes and never moved. "'Oh!' I think, 'my mujik has forgotten me — wears leather shoes — talks with city folks — maybe with Commun- ist girls!' "But Dimitri Naumich speaks in a deep bass voice. 'Ah,' says he, 'Pelageia, Pelageia! Such you are! Ignor- ant,' says he, 'my ignorant Pelageia Maximovna. What can we talk about now? I,' says he, 'am an educated man, a Soviet deputy. I,' says he, 'know perhaps the four rules of arithmetic right through. I understand,' says he, 'frac- tions. And you,' says he, 'look at what you are! Maybe you couldn't even,' says he, 'perhaps write your name on a piece of paper. Another man might very easily throw you over for ignorance and lack of education.' "And I stand by the lattice and murmur these words: 'Of course, Dimitri Naumich, throw me over. It means nothing to you.' "And he takes me by the hand and says, 'I was only joking, Pelageia Maximovna. Stop thinking. I was only fooling,' says he. 'What do you imagine?' "My heart rolled over again, and the hiccough rose in my throat. Says I: 'Dimitri Naumich, don't worry, I can learn fractions, too, you know, and the four rules, or even to write my name on a paper. I won't disgrace you,' I says." The doctor's assistant rose from his chair. "Come! For Heaven's sake!" he said. "That's enough ! enough! No more jabber. What's your trouble?" "Trouble? Why nothing now, Ivan Kuzmich. It goes better now. I can't complain of my health. But he says to me, 'I was fooling,' he says. That means he meant some kind of a joke." "Yes, yes, he was joking," said the assistant. "Of course. Shall I give you some powders?" "Oh, I don't think it's necessary. Thank you, Ivan Kuzmich, for the advice. I must be going." Pelageia, setting a little bag of grain on the table as a fee, got up and went toward the door. Then she came back. "As to those fractions, Ivan Kuzmich, where should I go now to find out about those same fractions? Should I go to a teacher?" "Yes, go to a teacher," the doctor's assistant said. "Of course! That has nothing to do with medicine." Modern Women in Soviet Russia By ALEXANDRA RAKOVSKY THE great French idealist, Charles Fourrier, declared that one could judge the degree of civilization of a country by the social and political position of its women. The ten years since Russia's October revolution have wit- nessed an enormous change in woman's status. In Czarist days she had no civil or political life. In present-day Rus- sia she is ahead of her fellows in Europe or, indeed, any- where in the world. The development of large-scale industry in Russia had its start before 1870, and from the beginning women took part side by side with men in the economic life of the coun- try. According to the census of 1897 Russia had five and a half million male industrial workers, and one and a half million women; and the Bureau of Labor reports for 1913 indicate that 30.7 per cent of the factory workers were then women. During the war the proportion of women workers grew. By 1917 they formed 40.2 per cent of the industrial working class of Russia, and this proportion has been grow- ing ever since; in 1918, in thirty-one out of the thirty-eight provinces of old Russia, it was already 42.8 per cent. The trade unions have also developed since the October revolution. In Czarist Russia they were illegal and secret; only in 1917 did the Russian proletariat win a legal right to organize. By 1925, out of a total of 6,604,684 trade-union members, 1,682,991 were women — 25.5 per cent. In the tex- tile industry 53.9 per cent of the organized workers were women; 57.5 per cent of the clothing workers, and 38 per cent of the organized clerks were women. In the same year in Germany only 21.8 per cent of the trade-union members were women; in France 10.3 per cent; and in Great Britain 15.1 per cent. Women play a large part also in the organizations of poor and middle-class peasants and they supply about one- seventh of the members of the unions of agricultural work- ers. In Russia the cooperatives are highly developed and in them women, as organizers, producers, and consum- ers, have an important share. A quarter of the cooperative officials are women ; a woman often begins in a small coop- erative and rises to be a member of the committee or com- mission of control of the whole cooperative society. But it is particularly in the structure of the law that woman has obtained her full equality. In the first place she has an absolutely equal right to vote and to hold office. About 15 per cent of the members of the local Soviets are women — as many in the country as in the city. Women participate as delegates in the Soviet congresses and they serve as commissars, particularly in the departments of edu- cation and of public assistance. They are even admitted to the General Staff School — we have women officers who have graduated from this military academy — and to the diplo- matic service. Alexandra Kollontai has served as minister to Norway and to Mexico. Lenin said: "In a workers' and peasants' republic every citizen should be educated, and so educated that he may direct and defend the interests of the state." The political education of women begins in the local Soviet, where women not only participate in the discussions but also in the village or city administration. As every woman elected to the Soviet periodically reports upon her service,

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510 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3253 they become accustomed to political life. Their service is equally important in the people's tribunals where women often serve as judges and in settling labor conflicts. Thanks to this varied activity, Russian women exercise a powerful influence in questions concerning childhood and maternity and supervise the application of the laws protecting women — in which respect Soviet Russia has the most advanced legislation of any country. But it is in family legislation that women have acquired their most important rights. They are no longer subordi- nate members of their own families. The new marriage and family law of January, 1927, asserts the necessity of registering marriages "in the interest of the government and of society and with the purpose of better defending the personal and material interests of the two parties and of the child." Civil marriage is obligatory; religious marriage ;s a private matter for the individual to decide. The mini- mum age for marriage is eighteen. Man and woman are equally free to retain their own names or to assume the name of the other party. The property of either before marriage continues to be his or her property afterward, and the two parties have equal rights in the administration of the family estate. Any attempt to diminish the rights or property of the other is illegal. Divorce takes place by a simple declara- tion made in common by both parties or even by one of them alone. Then arises the question of the children. When the father is known and recognized by the court it obliges him to bear his share of the cost of educating and maintaining the child. It is the government's duty to de- fend the interests of a mother or of children who ire abused by the husband or the father. Children of an unregistered union have equal rights before the law with those whose parents have recorded their marriages. All children are legitimate; there are no more "bastards" in Russia. The struggle for social and political equality in Soviet Russia has been facilitated by the extensive organization of committees to end illiteracy, of lecture series, and of popular libraries. In the last few years more than half a million women have leaimed to read and write, and along with this has gone a process of political education. Close to the factories and workshops everywhere in Russia one finds various sorts of political schools. There are also continuation schools, some with long terms, some with short, to tram the women for more skilled labor. The doors of the university, too, are wide open to women of the various nationalities within the Soviet Union. A third of the college and uni- versity students in 1926 were women, and more than half of these women students were workers. Among the recent university graduates are women lawyers, doctors, engineers. The women's section in the local committees of the Communist Party facilitate all this cultural activity and insist upon strict application of the laws for the protection of women and children. These sections also seek to organ- ize the working women outside the party — not only in Mos- cow but in the most distant corners of the republic, particu- larly in the East where before the revolution women were literally the slaves of their husbands. The October revolu- tion caused a radical change in sex relations in European Russia, but the declaration of sex equality in the Soviet republics of Central Asia has revolutionized social life from top to bottom. Hence the particular importance of the women's sections in the Asiatic parts of the Union. The Colorado River Controversy By MARY AUSTIN THE second Colorado River Conference, which began at Denver, August 22, and is still going on between re- cesses to permit the assembled governors of seven States to attend to their respective duties, is not only the most interesting of our territorial adventures, it is in some re- spects the most American conference which has taken place among us since the Continental Congress. Here, while the congress of peace-seeking nations fails at Geneva and Europe is still staggering under the burden of its own struggle across a little river like the Rhine, a territory equal to the whole of the republic of France, within which our original Colonies could be so disposed that it would take a good car two weeks to locate all of them, is being dis- cussed by a small group of men whose names are Hunt, Adams, Emerson, Young, Wallace, Winsor. Mathews. Wilson, Dern, Dillon, McClusky, and others of that ilk. And if you imagine that Dillon, McClusky, Mecham, and Balzar are not de novo American names, you have only to turn back the pages of American history to dis- cover that there never was an important territorial confer- ence in the United States which did not include nam< similar derivation. In keeping with this tradition the first Colorado River Conference, which was held at Santa Fe in 1922, included the Pennsylvania Dutch Quaker name of Hoover, representing the federal government. At this sec- ond conference, however, the States are on their own, set- tling a controversy which had arisen between two of them. Wyoming, Utah. Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Ari- zona, and California are all involved in the project for con- verting the rampageous Rio Colorado into irrigation ditches and hydroelectric power. But from the beginning the situ- ation of California was somewhat apart from the other intramontane States. The others are all relatively un- developed, anxious to restrain development rather than to hurry it. California, on the other hand, is involved in an inflated economic complex which by its own momentum has outrun its own resources. Unless new resources can be found, Southern California — it is only the section southwest of the San Bernardino Mountains which is affected — must suffer a serious check to her characteristic expansion. And California's claim on the Colorado is not quite in the same case as the other States. Hers is the smallest fragment of the basin, and she contributes no flow to the waters of the river, her natural right resting on 300 miles of State line along the Colorado. Her chief claim is to the waters already taken out of the river for irrigation in Imperial Valley, and to uncompleted filings for domestic water for coastal cities. And at the original conference California was, of all the seven States, most alive to the possibilities tied up with the river project. At that conference a compact was drawn up which secured to the four upper basin States, Wyoming, Colorado. Utah, and New Mexico. 50 per cent of the flow

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Nov. 9, 1927] The Nation 511 of the river, in perpetuity, leaving the other 50 per cent to be divided among Nevada, California, and Arizona. Ne- vada, in view of the small amount of land suitable for irri- gation, was easily contented with 2 per cent of the lower half of the river, Arizona and California being left to agree on the partition of the remainder; until such agreement had been arrived at, Arizona refused to ratify the compact. A little later California withdrew from it altogether. And then Utah. And in August of 1927 a second conference was called to uncover the roots of the situation. It is always a little difficult to deal with Southern California as one deals with other localities. In Southern California boosting has become a religious duty; and the divine right of that section to all it can get, by any method whatever, is unquestioned. Naturally California wanted more than half of the water left by the compact to be shared between her and Arizona, and was hurt because Arizona so evidently didn't mean to surrender it. A great many people in the Southwest felt California's way about it; such is the glamor over all the American view of the immediate and the outsize enterprise. Even Mr. Hoover called Ari- zona rebellious, though what she rebelled against was the forced limitations of the development. Arizona has prac- tically all her lands in the basin subject to irrigation, and contributes the major portion of the southern basin flow. Moreover, she has lands that would produce in due time exactly the citrus fruits and sub-tropical crops that are grown in California. Arizona therefore continued to insist that a fifty-fifty allocation was not only fair but generous. Also there was the question of power control. Suppose Arizona should continue to insist on the natural logic of natural resources. It was much to California's interest to build a dam at Boulder Lake as soon as possible. This would take care of all Southern California's necessities, and do very little for Arizona. It would benefit the five other States not at all. But the dam would be on Arizona's soil and subject more or less to her State control. California withdrew from the Santa Fe Compact and initiated the Swing-Johnson Bill. Detailed discussion of the Swing-Johnson Bill is re- served for all citizens of the United States who have an interest in the question of the federal control of State re- sources, for all people who have an interest in power, both present and prospective, and for those who see in any move toward the socialization of natural resources either an ad- vantage or a menace. Also the six intramontane States whose chief natural asset is the Colorado River are inti- mately concerned. The power to be developed by the pro- posed Boulder Creek Dam is estimated as about equal to the sum of all the existing power development in the United States. A few of Arizona's reasons for objecting to the Swing-Johnson Bill are that irrigation demands are sacri- ficed to power prospects; that the bill utilizes the natural resources of Arizona and Nevada to develop California; that the bill initiates the taking of natural resources from one State to another without compensation. There are twenty-three other reasons set forth in the statement of Arizona which can be had by applying to her Governor; quite enough to stiffen the resolution of the whole State and quicken the apprehensions of five others. It was to clear up the general situation, baldly and too briefly out- lined here, that the Denver Conference was called. One of the omitted items relates to the use of water by landowners in Mexico below the State lines. The general usage of waters for irrigations in our Southwest follows the old Spanish law of prior use. Landowners in Mexico are now entitled to all the water they are using or can put to beneficial use before the United States takes action by advising them that the remaining flow of the Colorado is about to be impounded for use within the United States. This can hardly take place until an agreement is reached by all the States affected. Thus the flow available for future irrigation north of the international boundary is steadily being diminished by the amount that is increasingly used below the boundary. This makes for urgency in point of time in settling the allocation of interstate waters. But as it is reported that California capital is invested in these Mexican irrigation schemes, the urgency is greater on the six other States than on California. There are also claims of water users in California for flood and silt protection, but as these are freely conceded by the other States they do not ma- terially affect the problem. And over the whole situation hangs the Swing-Johnson Bill, which California is steadily pressing and all the other States are preparing to resist. Perhaps this is the time to mention a factor that is definitely operative, and singularly unaccounted for: a wide- spread disposition on the part of the press to minimize and definitely to misrepresent the situation. Even while the present conference was in session many newspapers throughout the country carried reports of its proceedings which were explicitly contradicted by the facts. Such mis- representative reports reaching citizens of the seven States unable to come into more direct relation to the facts will undoubtedly affect the reaction of those States to their own problems. The general implications of the reports in ques- tion were, first of all, that the Swing-Johnson Bill is more certain to pass than anyone is at present warranted in as- suming; and, secondly, that the responsibility for the fail- ure of agreement rests primarily on Arizona. One never quite knows whether the American press means anything by its freely expressed biases, or whether it is simply not sufficiently interested to form an intelligent opinion. If that is the case, it is much the worse for the American people, for what really transpired at the conference was the swing of the whole subject away from a two-State contest to a national policy. There was no question that the five States already con- tented with their allocation of waters had met to hear out the matter of the other two with sympathy and without ran- cor. The details of the discussion would hardly interest a public unacquainted with "acre-feet" and "miners' inches." At the end of the discussion a committee of the governors of the four upper basin States was appointed to effect such compromise as was thought advisable. To the compromise thus proposed Arizona finally consented. And in the end California still stood out for a larger share, the exact amount of which would mean nothing to the uninitiated. For possible beneficiaries of either the Arizona or the California contention, there are the printed statements of each side. But for the country at large there are far more serious considerations than the matter of a few hundred thousand acre-feet of water for irrigation. As a matter of executive convenience at the conference, an effort was made to keep these larger factors in the background of the earlier meetings. But when the conference reconvenes on November 7, the real problem of the Colorado must be faced. To understand it in its national implications, it must be realized that the Colorado basin is the United States' last

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512 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3253 large-sized opportunity for peaceable territorial expansion. For a territory the size of the republic of France all Europe would gladly permit itself to be torn to tatters. It is a goodly land, immensely varied in climate, topography, mineral wealth, and crop possibilities. It has in an un- usual degree the new and imperfectly estimated possibility of hydroelectric power. It has the beginnings of a strongly marked regional culture. It beckons from every hill and valley with the last opportunity for the rise of a superior English-speaking culture within the territory of the United States. Should the Swing-Johnson Bill pass and California have her way, or even the dominant position in the distribu- tion of benefits, many of these opportunities would pass away forever from the people of the United States. Prob- ably, outside of Arizona, this is only half realized even by the people whose immediate future is at stake. Let me not be misunderstood as imputing any special iniquity to Southern California in making every effort to secure the advantage of her own territory. It is the tra- dition of American expansions that we should tussle over our natural advantages and the devil take the hindermost. While our resources seemed practically unlimited it was useless to try for a more considered and far-looking method of dealing with them. But this adventure of the Southwest can never happen again. What will happen if she has her way is that Southern California will continue for a time her phenomenal material expansion. She will produce more of the same thing in the same limited district of the identical limited type of what goes by the name of "prosperity." And large areas of Arizona capable of producing not only the same thing that Southern California produces, but other things and more of them, will remain forever un- developed. There is practically no agricultural development in the Southwest without water; and owing to factors of climate and soil formation water will go further in Arizona than in the parts of California where it is proposed to use the waters of the Colorado. It can also be done more cheaply in Arizona than by lifting the water out of its natural basin over the divide onto the California coastal plain. This is the first, but only one item. There are unhappy possibilities among the six remaining States, of other strug- gles for the remainder of the river's possibilities, of oppos- ing inter-State interests, instead of the unified development of an intramontane culture such as is suggested by the natural configuration of the land. And there is the begin- ning of the usurpation of State control by the federal government, and the exposing of natural resources unre- servedly to political intrigue rather than the checks of pri- vate enterprise which have so far regulated such matters in the United States. The beginning is inauspicious for those who favor federal control of natural resources, for no way of arguing the Swing-Johnson Bill can make it seem other than the rape of the natural resources of one State against that State's consent, for the advantage of another State. There is no manner of doubt that, unanimously as Cali- fornia seems to be fighting for the Swing-Johnson Bill. Arizona will fight against it, and on constitutional grounds. So that even the convinced advocate of the federalization of such control must see that the forcing of Arizona's hand would heavily prejudice the whole project of federalization. That the people of the United States must eventually face this possibility, this closing of the doors of individual enterprise, this sharp regional struggle for portable ad- vantages, we have all known. The real question is. Are we ready to face it now and on this layout? It must not be forgotten that there is an international factor involved, and that the Colorado River is not the only source of water for irrigation divided between the United States and Mexico. There is also the Rio Grande, with the two growing States of Texas and New Mexico having somewhat differing inter- ests. This international situation has not yet got beyond the reach of reasonably diplomatic control. But it does af- ford, in the possibility of a protracted struggle among the Southwestern States, an easy loophole of advantage for Mexico. These are the most salient aspects of the situation being dealt with in the conference of governors and their ad- visers at Denver. There is probably no one at that con- ference who does not fully realize the national reach of the problem and its almost fatalistic relation to the American future. The one thing most needed to aid them in coming to decisions which will have the good of the country in full regard, is that the country itself should awake to a proper share of its own interest. In the Driftway THE Principessa Mafalda! The name staring at the Drifter from the first pages of the newspapers brings back memories of a good many years ago when he first saw this steamship in the docks of Buenos Aires. She was then the undisputed queen of the European-South Amer- ican fleet. Today she is a mass of mangled wreckage off the coast of Brazil. WHEN the Drifter first saw the Principessa Mafalda she was a comparatively new addition to the fleet of the Lloyd Italiano, and had no rival among the craft entering the River Plate. There is no vessel entering New York harbor today which enjoys such a supremacy, and perhaps there never has been. Half a dozen or more liners which steam regularly in and out of the North River dis- pute with one another for first place. The Mauretania still holds the blue ribbon for speed, but in size she is scarcely more than a minnow beside the great Majestic or Leviathan, while in luxury of appointments the new He de France is now the talk of Park Avenue. No one entering New York harbor can say condescendingly: "I'm the queen of the waterfront. Stand by and watch my wake." ***** THE Principessa Mafalda could. She was the first eighteen-knot vessel to enter the South American service and for years hadn't even a near competitor. The nearest to this speed was offered by the Hamburg South American Line, which had one or two ships that could log sixteen knots. The spoiled transatlantic traveler may be disposed to pooh-pooh such speeds as inconsequential be- side the progress to which he is accustomed. But if he has traveled anywhere else except between Europe and the United States he knows that sixteen sea miles an hour is fast, that twelve or fourteen is more common, and that eighteen is an exceptional speed which only a large, steady passenger traffic — capable of paying high fares — can make possible. The Mafalda used to whisk her passengers over the 6,500 miles from Buenos Aires to Barcelona in fourteen days, with a stop or so en route. In another day an ex-

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Nov. 9, 1927] The Nation 513 press train landed them in Paris, the goal of all smart Ar- gentinos. And the Mafalda was not only fast; she was luxurious too. Her name was a household word, at least on the lips of all the elite who turned out for the afternoon parade through the fashionable shopping district of the Calle Florida or sipped the most wonderful coffee in the world in the sidewalk cafes of the spacious Avenida de Mayo. * # * * * THE docks of B. A. (as the English call Buenos Aires) are in some ways the most interesting in the world. Certainly they are the most concentrated. They are not spread out over miles and miles as in New York and Lon- don. The view of the ships is not shut off by great sheds and warehouses. At the time of the Drifter's visit, at least, the docks were rectangular basins with ships moored against all sides, the warehouses far enough back so as to leave a generous passage-way all round. At some places ships were ranged three or four deep along the dock sides. The Drifter has never seen any other port where one can get such an eyeful of shipping in so small a compass. ***** IT was in one of those docks that the Drifter first — and last — saw the Principessa Mafalda. He was impressed at once by the extent of what sailors would call her top hamper. That is, there was a great deal of structure above her main deck; it rose so high as to make her appear top- heavy. She would have been except for plenty of ballast along the keel. She had been built simultaneously with a sister ship. The sister never reached South America. She was not sufficiently ballasted at the time of her launching in Italy, turned turtle when she slid off the ways, and was abandoned as a total loss. ***** THE Drifter had always surmised that if the Princi- pessa Mafalda was lost at sea it would be due to foun- dering in a storm. Fortunately severe storms are not frequent on the route between the Mediterranean and the River Plate and the ship came to another end. Not such a bad one either except for the tragic loss of life in connec- tion with the accident. The vessel had seen a score of years of service. She had lately been supplanted in speed and apparently was no longer fashionable. It is better to be torn asunder quickly and buried in the salt Atlantic than to live to be sent to the scrap-heap. The ocean is warm and tranquil in the equatorial belt off the city of Bahia, yet fanned day and night by strong and steady trade winds. It should be snug lying there for the Principessa Mafalda. The Drifter Correspondence Only Do£s To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: Are you exclusively anthropophilist, or have you an inch or two for the rights and wrongs of our poor relations? There's something closely (to my thinking) related in the inhu- manity of man to beast and that of man to man. A pregnant female terrier, at Western Reserve Medical School, had the adrenals removed, and in the end, "within an hour," say the experimenters, "she had three yelling spells. ... At 1:30 p. m. unchanged, yelling fits from time to time . . . tetanic spasms; at 6 p. m. coma and convulsions at intervals. At 6:45 p. m. she was found dead. . . . One pup had been expelled . . . another was bulging from the vagina. . . ." This was "Dog 1137." The 74 control dogs all died within 15 days. The 30 preg- nant ones lived much longer. A bull terrier held out for six weeks. The article is in the American Journal of Physiology for January, 1927. It is called "The Influence of Pregnancy Upon the Survival Period in Adrenalectonized Dogs." Manchester, Vermont, September 21 Sarah N. Cleghorn Concentrated Control To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: Intensive solicitation by banks for trust business is steadily increasing the amount of the property of the middle class held in trust by these banks — either by devise or living trust. If the process keeps on will not all the wealth of America soon be in control of the few? Chicago, September 28 Harry G. Wexler Another View of Brandeis To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: I have no desire to prolong the Brandeis discussion. But Norman Hapgood in his apology for his hero's action in the Sacco-Vanzetti case neglects to take notice of the fact that this was but one of a number of similar failui'es — the Don Stephens case, wherein he joined in upholding the Conscription Act, in spite of the Thirteenth Amendment; the Debs case, wherein he concurred in upholding the Espionage Act in spite of the First Amendment; and the Whitney case, wherein he con- curred in another violation of constitutionally guaranteed rights. Mr. Hapgood speaks of "the obligation of a judge not to usurp power." This alleged obligation in the Sacco case can be construed as nothing else than an obligation to allow a murder to be committed. And these other cases dealt with clear violations of the Constitution which required no usurpa- tion of power to check. It was a violation of duty to let them stand unchallenged. Baltimore, October 17 Samuel Danziger Justice in Hell To the Editor of the Nation: Sir: When Bob Ingersoll was asked to intercede with Gov- ernor Oglesby in behalf of the Chicago anarchists he replied: "It's no use — Oglesby wants to be governor again. Besides, every politician is a prostitute." When Bob reached hell lie found the place so full of politicians that an apology was demanded. Bob claimed certain rights which are constitutional in hell; the right to a trial by a jury imported from heaven. The jury was composed of Socrates, Jesus, Bruno, Joan of Arc, Raleigh, John Brown, Sacco, Vanzetti, and four other martyrs. This jury brought in a unanimous verdict that Bob had uttered the foul- est aspersion on the prostitutes that could be expressed in par- liamentary language and owed an apology to them. Canton, Pa., October 1 John Basil Barnhill Farmers and Pullman Porters To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: Everything is comparative. Farm laborers average well under forty dollars a month for ten-hour days of semi- skilled hard manual labor. Farm owners average only about seventy-five. To such, Pullman porters, receiving a "pitiful $72.50" minimum wage exclusive of an average $56 per month in tips, must appear a "privileged class." Trescott T. Abele Tommyrot Farm-, Totvnsend Harbor, Mass., Sept. 20

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Books and Plays To the Impatient Revolutionist By JOHN WALDHORN GASSNER In the stillness of dark maple Came the voice to me singing Of the noise that shall be: Of the dissolution, Of the tempestuous end. I who sit comfortably in my rocking-chair In the small white porch of my sleep Will find no weapon sharp enough to slay. Nothing will suffice me — grown awake — Nothing stand the trip-hammer of my hate so well As one large lever cast of human hands — Till down the adamant deeps After mad rushing Splinters our smudged ball. . . . Laugh and smirk not, you fragmentary clouds Of a moment's irisking, If in a silence far from you I who grow the thunder Sag high and gather blackness. Ivy Lee on Russia USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) , A World Enigma. By Ivy L. Lee. Privately Printed. HHHIS is my second day on a southbound train from Moscow. * One can travel five days, ten days in the same direction in the Soviet Union. Soon I will be on the mysterious Ukrainian steppe. Two riders race across the black-soil field on the right. I see a tractor; but also a mud hut; thatched roofs; peasants spitting sunflower seeds at stations; passengers running for free boiled water as we frequently stop. Yesterday, I spent the day in the coupe with a Moscow University professor. A tax collector got on and off and talked. A student discussed America and told the professor what the youth thought in Russia. At Kurusk a worker joined us. He had repaired locomotives on the Chinese Eastern Railway. Now he was coming from the neighborhood communal farm where he repaired their tractors. He talked like a red-hot Communist though he did not adhere to the party. From him I learned how the common laborer in the ranks looks at the Stalin-Trotzky controversy. And when there are no interesting fellow-passengers I read Ivy Lee on the USSR. Brave man to write on Russia after a ten days' visit to the country. Foolish man to believe that Rykov, Radek, Tomsky, Litvinov, etc., can tell him what is the revolution, what are the policies of the government, what are the ways of the people, what are the attitudes of the masses. The book is politically fair more or less — but so poor in material and in diction! It is not even a good piece of jour- nalism. There are a few glaring errors and many mistakes. It is not true, for instance, that correspondents in Moscow must submit their mail articles to a censor and. failing that, are liable to expulsion. Unlike Gaul, the Communist Party divided into three sections. Ivy Lee's explanation of the Oppo- sition is as incorrect as it is naive. His chapter on Lenin and Leninism is laughable. It is well enough to write these things, but I do hope Mr. Lee himself does not imagine he understands Trotzky's position on foreign capital, or Stalin's views on the permanent revolution, or Lenin's fundamental philosophy. Also, it is a grave misconception to say that "All business in Russia which is not done either directly or indirectly by the government is done through 'concessionnaires.' " What about private trad- ers and private manufacturers? This is the danger of turning out books on the basis of a week-end to week-end stay in the capital only of a tremendous nation. People have so little sense of responsibility toward the printed word. Pages 113 to 156 constitute the only part of the book an intelligent man can read with a little profit, and only the last chapter is reminiscent of the old Ivy Lee. The author's conclusions are three: (1) "The present Soviet regime is there to stay." (2) Backward Russia is making progress toward a new life. (3) The tendency is away from communism and so- cialism to capitalism. What must Russia do, according to Ivy Lee? His answer is, "Establish a reputation of good faith" by recognizing and paying Czarist and Kerensky debts probably; scrap the Third International ; "establish real freedom of thought, action, and belief." The chief problem, then, is to drive "a wedge between the Communist International and the Russian people" — who "as a people are all right." In conclusion, "The dilemma which faces civilization is this: How to draw Russia toward the West, to cure the disease of Bolshevism, and to avert the menace of revolutionary Asia." The Standard Oil's publicity man, we all know, would solve the dilemma by buying Soviet petroleum and entering into trade relations and perhaps political relations with the Soviet state. I do not see, however, why an apologist of business inter- ests need be so roundabout in getting at the real point. You do not want to trade with Russia in order to save Europe — if Europe is worth saving — from the menace of Asiatic Bolshe- vism, but simply because trade may prove very profitable. The rest is simply barrage. The existence of the Communist Inter- national will no more prevent the Vacuum Oil or the Soeony from dealing with Moscow than it did Harriman, or Lena Gold- fields. What you must have is a tempting contract. Louis Fischer Russian Nightmare A Prince of Outlaws. By Count Alexis K. Tolstoy. Translated by Clarence A. Manning. Alfred A. Knopf. $3. O USSIA'S tempestuous life during the latter half of the " *- sixteenth century had a tremendous fascination for Count Alexis Tolstoi, and his major creative work was the interpre- tation of this period to a generation which, under the veneer of nineteenth-century civilization, had the same characteristics and suffered the same evils. First in the order of writing, as well as in historical sequence, was the novel "Prince Sere- bryany," now made available to English readers as "A Prince of Outlaws"; then followed the vastly superior trilogy of plays. "The Death of Ivan the Terrible," "Czar Feodor Ivan- ovich," introduced to America by the Moscow Art Theater, and "Czar Boris." It has been the custom of literary historians and other cataloguers to classify this novel as an historical romance; and to write an historical romance was probably the author's orig- inal intention. But it was an intention never achieved because Count Tolstoi was too intensely stirred by his material to accept the detachment and the limitations of fiction. Quite aside from the crudities and uncertainties inevitable in the work of a novice there is an authorial intrusion here which betrays that he had determined to sacrifice the effects of his medium for the effectiveness of his message.

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Nov. 9, 1927] The Nation 515 Writing his belated preface in 1863, Tolstoi naively an- nounced : In his description of the terrors of that age the author has constantly been kinder than history. From respect for the artistic and moral sensibilities of his readers he has cast a shadow upon all of them and has kept them ;is far as possible in the background. Nevertheless he con- fesses that as he read the historical sources for this period, the books have more than once fallen from his hands and he has thrown down his pen in anger, not from the thought that Ivan IV could exist but from the thought that a society could exist which could look at him with- out dissatisfaction. This heavy feeling constantly dis- turbed the objectivity necessary to an historical work and was one of the reasons why this novel begun more than ten years ago has just been completed. And when he did not throw his pen down Tolstoi used it to moralize upon the iniquity of his villains. The faint resemblance of "Prince Serebryany" to such genuine historical romances as the products of Scott, Dumas, and Hugo lies in a love affair that is as extraneous to the plot as the romantic name which the translation substitutes for the original title. But to say that there is more history than romance in this work is in no way a reflection on its vital interest. Ivan the Terrible's sadist companions and sav- age victims, his incongruous indulgence and asceticism were the elements of a national nightmare. And their maniacal extremes and vast significance have a magnetic attraction of immense force even when, to Americans, the entire story will seem precisely like a frightful fantasy of improbable horrors despite the obvious verity of Tolstoi's details and the matter- of-fact stolidity of the translator's English. JOHAN SMERTENKO Propaganda Value Right Off the Map. By C. E. Montague. Doubleday, Page and Company. $2.50. MR. MONTAGUE'S literary productions and particularly his most recent one are of peculiar interest in that they reveal with a nice clarity the impact of the late lamentable war upon a highly intelligent but slightly naive mind. Some time ago, and obviously as a result of personal experience, Mr. Montague learned what a careful reading of any sound economics textbook would have revealed to him : that modern wars are inevitably produced by selfish economic interests. He also learned that the war spirit is always induced by a combination of machiavellian propaganda and self-deceiving sentimentalism and that the gal- lant military tradition is either soft-headed idiocy or pap manu- factured to satisfy the romanticism of the masses. There are a number of unpleasant souls who are so smart that they know all this intuitively, from their cradles; for them, to use Mr. Montague's phrase, there is no "disenchantment" because there has never been any "enchantment." But it is true enough that these hard-heads are a vain and useless crowd; they have long ago, with a supine and possibly inexcusable irony, abandoned the struggle to make these staring facts about war clear to the good citizens of their country. From these disagreeably bored sophisticates "Right Off the Map" will exact an hour or two of amused attention (for Mr. Montague writes extremely well) — and an eventual yawn. But for those who are both intelligent and innocent (the spiritual state, it would seem, of so many "decent" university English- men today) this satire on war and its makers may very well have a profoundly enlightening effect. Their eyes will be opened by its characters, perhaps, all the more because those characters are presented with such crude and downright energy. Mr. Montague is too laudably earnest in his crusading to worry about subtilizing his puppets: there is Bute, for example, whose economic ambitions furnish the mainspring for the struggle be- tween Ria and Porto, two technically hypothetical modern states; Bishop Case whose rich and rotund oratory assures his bellicose congregations that Christ came not to bring peace but a sword; Dr. Browell, the romantically militaristic university president who devoutly believes that war is a glorious instru- ment for elevating mankind far above the petty cares of the everyday materialistic life; Burnage, a liberal newspaper editor whose independence is undermined by his (unconvincing) love for his bored, cruelly aesthetic wife; and Major Willan, gallant and modest soldier of fortune, sure at the beginning that he has found a really just war, wondering, as he approaches his tragic end, whether there is any such thing. Good counters all of these; a little hard to believe in, for they are so terribly stupid that if we did not have our own com- monalty right at hand we should find it difficult to imagine any state intrusting its governing to them — but good materials, for all that, simple yet available for all the purposes of effective, if not highly artistic, satire. But Mr. Montague, following the instinct of a competent romancer, had to go to work and spoil his satire — or not so much spoil it, perhaps, as puff it up so that it assumed a vague and distended appearance. Hoping possibly that by sugar-coating the bitter pill he might reach a larger audience he surrounded the hard satiric core of his book with a moving little romance for feminine consumption and a glorious piece of military adventuring for the satisfaction of highly male desires. These two pieces of sentimental intrusion take the edge off the satire; for when we finish the book we are less likely to remember that the Ria-Portan War began with the selfish desires of a certain Mr. Bute, professional capitalist, than that it ended with the sad death of Major Willan, profes- sional hero. When the sugar-coating is too thick the pill may lose its purgative quality. This Major Willan is really so noble and brave and self-sacrificing that one forgets that he is also a fool living on a rotten romantic tradition. It will not do to fall in love with him, as the author occasionally does himself, for wars are made not only by captains of industry but by romantic idiots, highly sexed neurotic women, and other over-agreeble creatures. Despite which, "Right Off the Map" is a laudable piece of rough and ready satire on modern war, written with sparkle and energy and bluff honesty. It has a high propaganda value and should be circulated widely. Considered as a novel (in this case a matter of minor importance) it is a little too naive in outlook and miscellaneous in structure to take very lofty rank. Clifton P. Fadiman Rozanov Solitarici, Together with Matter from The Apocalypse of Our Time. By V. V. Rozanov. Translated from the Russian by S. S. Koteliansky. Boni and Liveright. $4. "ll/HISPERS," "sighs," "half thoughts, half feelings," » » "fragments of sound coming straight from the soul, without elaboration, without purpose, without premeditation, without anything external," jotted down by the author, any- where, at any time — in a railway carriage, while bathing, while examining coins, in bed at night, on the sole of a slipper — and gathered into a volume of delicate beauty — this is "Solitaria." With the appearance of this book the American reader is for the first time brought soul to soul with Rozanov, one of the most enigmatic and disputed personalities in Russian literature. Inordinate praise and bitter condemnation have been this writer's lot ever since he first appeared in Russian letters in the early nineties of the last century. While writers like Strakhov, Merezhkovsky, Gippius, Khovin, and Filosofov have acclaimed him as a "great man," a "seer," a "genius," a "most complex psychological phenomenon" to whom ordinary human criteria were not in the least applicable, there have been others (Biely, Trotzky, Struve, and the whole of revolutionary Rus- sia) who saw in him nothing but a "wriggling, slippery, sticky worm," a "vile creature," a "swindler," and a "fool."

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516 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3253 Indifferent to what the world thought of him, Rozanov in his estimate of himself whimsically agreed with both sides in the controversy: I may be a "fool" (there are rumors), perhaps even a "swindler" (then' is gossip to that effect), but the loidth of thought, the incommensurability of "horizons revealed" — no one has had that before me in the way I possess it. And all of it came from my own mind, without borrowing an iota even. Wonderful. 1 am simply a wonderful man. But even Rozanov's friends had to admit that, on the whole and judged by ordinary human standards, his conduct was that of a rascal and a knave. A man without principles, a syco- phant, a lickspittle, an amphibian, he did not hesitate to pose as an avowed reactionary or a revolutionist, Judophile or anti- Semite, hater of Christ or devout Christian, as circumstances seemed to demand. He even managed, under assumed names, to defend simultaneously, and apparently with equal zest and sincerity, two incompatible opinions in two diametrically op- p sed journals. To many he appeared lewd and coarse. Gip- pius, one of his admirers, remarks that Rozanov's frequent references to various natural functions often carried with them a haunting exhibitionist suggestiveness. To ascetic revolution- ists and austere Christians his dithyrambs on sex, his persistent exaltation of that instinct and its functions to the heights of a mystical religion and ritual, appeared especially repellent. How- ever, the thing that aroused the ire of most people was Rozanov's brazen nonchalance. He boasted: 1 am not yet such a scoundrel as to think of morality. A million yeai I before my soul was let out into the world to enjoy it; and how can I suddenly say to her: "1 lon't forget yourself, darling, but enjoy yourself in a moral fashion." No, I say to her: "Enjoy yourself, darling, have a good time, my lovely one, enjoy yourself, my precious, enjoy yourself in any way you please. And low aid evening you '*\ ill go to God." For my life is my day, and it is my day, and not Socrates's or Spinoza's. . . . It is surprising how I managed to accommodate myself to falsehood. It has never worried me. And for this odd reason: "What business is it of yours what precisely I think? Why am I obliged to tell you my real thoughts?" My profound subjectivity (the pathos of subjectivity) had this effect that I have gone through my whole life as though behind a curtain, untearable, irremovable. "No- body dares touch that curtain." "We shudder: "What cynicism!" "Cynicism through suf- fering — did it ever occur to you?" whispers Rozanov almost inaudibly. And nothing is quite so touching, so stirring, so seductive as Rozanov's intimate whispers, not even thi Dostoevski. In those cryptic, passionate outcries of his soul one catches vague, fleeting intimations of another, perhaps the "real," the "noumenal," Rozanov, of him whose "head was rocking in the sky," and in whose soul "there always monastery," of him who was "interwoven of dirt, tenia and sadness," and who through "sin got to know everyl and through sin i was related to nt; on earth," sature who never knew wl he wa hing or " and wl so much as fo and the resulting "r; soul" and "highest spiritual illumini Devil or angel? Both. Two polarities, two abysses, two utterly irreconcilable principles. A fat: fantastic milieu. "Fallen leaves." said Rozanov of his "£ fallen leaves. . . . Leaves fallen oil" a strange, missh; tree that stood brooding over the boundary inimical worlds, its roots sunk deep in the decadence, its bare branches piercing the sky, hoj ing for the last pale, mystic kisses of a dying sun, its leaves caught up by the roaming, hooligan winds of tie sian steppes and carried over mountains and across oceans to the four far corners of the earth. Joshua Kunitz H. M. Tomlinson The Foreshore of England, or Under the Red Ensign. By H. M. Tomlinson. Harper and Brothers. S3. Gallions Reach. By H. M. Tomlinson. Harper and Brothers. $2.50. * 'HPHE Foreshore of England" is a powerful picture of ^ Great Britain as the author sees that kingdom from the point of vantage he has taken down along the waterfront. The book is an economic study, yet it is stated in human terms, for Mr. Tomlinson sees something far more important in an economic survey than pounds sterling and bills of lading. The author knows the foreshore of his country. He is intimately familiar with the harbors and quays, and he knows, equally well, the neglected slums that invariably cling to the water- front of every port. It is with a foreground of ships and quays and waterfront slums that he discusses Britain's economic prob- lems, and occasionally, through a rift in the fog of difficulties that hangs over the merchant marine and the trade of the Mistress of the Seas, Mr. Tomlinson is able to see a remarkably clear picture of the difficulties that face his country. For those interested in Great Britain's problems "The Foreshore of England" is a clear and sane discussion worthy of the closest scrutiny. Such a book would be a credit to any author, and in that respect it goes hand in hand with Mr. Tom- linson's earlier work. The surprise is all the greater, then, when this able author presents the world with such a book as "Gallions Reach" — his first novel. In it is told the story of James Colet of London, who, having disagreed with his employer, strikes the man only to see him fall dead immediately — of heart disease, apparently. Colet spends the night aimlessly wandering about the city, and early the following morning finds himself at Gallions Reach — a waterfront section along the Thames. He boards a ship in order to do a favor for her captain who is ashore, and the ship sails with him aboard when the captain sends word that he has decided to join the vessel at Plymouth. Colet frankly admits to the First Officer what he has done, and is invited by that person, as if such an invitation after such an admission were purely a matter of course, to stay on the vessel during her voyage to the East. When the captain comes aboard the story is retold and the reaction is the same. This accomplished, Colet, for most of the rest of the book, seems to dismiss from his mind the fact that he has been responsible for his em- ployer's death. The ship sinks in a storm and Colet, rescued, goes on a prospecting trip into the Malayan jungles. Then he tries to help a learned and absent-minded ethnologist cross the peninsula. Finally he makes his way through to Penang and there announces his purpose of returning to London in order to lay his employer's "miserable ghost," which seems to have troubled him very little indeed throughout the course of the story. A first novel is likely to have its weaknesses, and this one is no exception to the rule. Three or four revealing incidents suggest that there is really a character hiding behind Colet's name, but no reader of the book can possibly feel that he has any idea of what Colet might do under any given set of cir- cumstances. Nor is the story any more complete. As to the ptions — only here and there is there a paragraph, a sentence, a phrase which suggests that it really is Mr. Tom- linson writing. That the author knows the sea is apparent — sometimes. Yet his description of the storm in which the Altair sinks is anything but convincing, quite aside from the fact that it is filled with nautical inaccuracies and impossibilities. A loose rope end is described as "resting straight on the wind as rigid as an iron bar." The captain, who at one moment is described as an exceptionally able sailor, permits himself to go down with his ship in the most landlubbeiiy and unnecessary fashion.

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Nov. 9, 1927] The Nation 517 Do You Choose Your Books by the hit or miss method? Do you read only what the Book Club or the Library sends you or what some one tells you is good, whether it suits your taste or not? WHY NOT READ ONLY THE BOOKS YOU T is as easy to choose your own books to read each month as it is to select your own clothes or the food you eat. And you may be sure that the books you buy are the books you will like, whether they be fiction, biography, history, poetry, drama, popular science or any other class. Or if you need the help of good books in your daily affairs you may quickly discover the newest publications that will be of greatest practical use. For there is now made available to you at moderate cost a book selection service which for years has been used chiefly by public libraries and large institutions as an aid in making their purchases. 3i3 YOU'LL LIKE? ;HIS is The Book Review Digest, a monthly survey of the entire field of book publishing. Heretofore the cost of The Book Review Digest lias made it prohibitive to individuals. Now through special arrangement any booklover may subscribe to this service at a cost within his reach. The Book Review Digest gives concise descriptions of the latest books together with the opinions, not of one critic, not of any one little group of the literati but of 70 of the foremost journals of Amer- ica and England. The Book Review Digest will help you to select the best books and those you will really like, with the greatest possible saving of time and money. BOOK REVIEW DIGEST Gives You Each Month — The gist of each of 200 new outstanding hooks. — Excerpts giving the opinions of leading critics of 70 journals. — Plus and minus signs showing the degree of favor of the critics. — A complete analytical index showing hooks on every subject, pseudonyms of authors, etc. — Valuable general information about books and authors. — A selected list of the outstanding books reviewed. YOU ALSO GET FREE OF CHARGE An encyclopedic, cloth-bound reference volume describing all the outstanding books of 1926 togethei with a great analytical index showing the books published during the last five years in all fields. I are interested in Abyssinia, accidents, accounting, actors, adolescence, adventure — turn to the index and there are listed all the important books of the last live years. (Retail price $12.00.) And at the end of the year you get another large cloth-bound volume covering the books of 1927 in the same way. An $18.00 service now available to the general public for only $6*°° a year THE H. w. WILSON COMPANY /. ibrary 1 Service Since x8g8 371 U niversity Avenue, New York City M. W. WILSON CO., 97! University Ave., New York City. Enclosed find $6.00. Phase enter my subscripts le year to tli >K REVIEW DIGEST to be sent monthly. You are also to of charge, at once, the large bound volume of the BOOK RE\ DIGEST covering 1(J2(>, and are to send a similar volume covering free at the expiration of my subscription. If not entirely satisfied I am urn the book and magazines at once and you will refund my money. Name . Address | City When writing to advertisers please mention The Nation

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518 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3253 Extraordinary things are done at the height of the storm with a lifeboat, in which, quite contrary to nautical practice, both the First and the Third officers accompany their men and make a preposterous but apparently successful attempt to repair something in the vicinity of the rudder. Nor is his jungle greatly more convincing than his sea. Novels, of course, may be designed to serve any of a num- ber of purposes, but it is difficult to see what end is furthered by this one. It is merely another first novel, and not at all a good one. Hawthorne Daniel Three Poets Branches of Adam. By John Gould Fletcher. London: Faber and Gwyer, Ltd. 6s. The Pyramid. By Sherard Vines. London: Richard Cobden- Sanderson. 5s. Copper Sun. By Countee Cullen. Harper and Brothers. $2. S'O disparate are the approaches of Messrs. Fletcher, Vines, * and Cullen to the poetic substance of their thought (which in the first two, at least, is a decided philosophic adumbra- tion) that they may well be put forward as representative of certain urges permeating contemporary poetry. Mr. Fletcher, in "Branches of Adam," is intent on a larger and more impersonal gesture than that of most of the young men. In a loose, cadenced verse he retells from a new angle the most powerful of myths — that of man's creation, his fall, and the introduction of evil into the world. Of course, he draws an implication from it: that good depends on evil and evil on good and that civilization could not exist if it were altogether good. The ghost of Bernard Mandeville hovers outside the door here. Mr. Fletcher, it is to be suspected, is spiritually disturbed about God. His poem, as a whole, fail, because the philosophical concept is not sufficiently fused with the poetic flare to make it worth while. There is more vigor and distinguished intelligence manifested in "Branches of Adam" than poetic inspiration. This intense desire to convince oneself of Godhead (what Mr. Fletcher calls "the ultimate unchange- able value which exists in each one of us") is certainly a part of the travail of the modern poet. The anfractuosities of Mr. Sherard Vines are also con- cerned with a philosophical reaction to life, to modern life. "The Pyramid," with its fastidious modernities, its employ- ment of scientific terms, its faint aura of Mr. T. S. Eliot, is a book that both fails and succeeds. It fails because it is too self-conscious; it succeeds because it reveals a distinct personality. Mr. Vines is walking in The Waste Land and a certain desolation hovers over him, but he faces his times a trifle preciously. He suggests a sophisticate in a silk hat. Yet there is indubitable color, a restrained current of steadily moving passion, an ingenious agility in imageries, and an implied irony that stamp his work with individuality. He, too, is representative of an urge in modern poetry, that urge which smiles both bitterly and ironically at its own disillu- sionment and cages its vaster aches in the preciosities of an intensely conscious style. So far as surface mannerisms go there are moments when Mr. Vines suggests the Sitwells (My Lady Edith, most of all) but this may be forgiven him. Mr. Cullen, in "Copper Sun," continues to be good but not so good that there is not crying need for improvement. He is less broadly concerned with philosophical approaches to his times, but this is understandable in a young Negro poet of immediate personal reactions. There is naivete in his work. a love of color, an inborn lyric impulse. Although his thought is neither profound nor set forth with any striking individu- ality, there is an evident sincerity ab< .it him that is "taking." Best of all, he can forget that he is of the colored ra^ be just "poet" most of the time. It seems to me that the future of the Negro in literature, his equality with white wiiier-, depends somewhat on wer of forgetting that one must be a Negro first of all, and a writer in the second place. Few white poets (Mr. Kipling, perhaps) constantly harp on the evident fact that they are white. Why should the Negro insist that he is black? The spirit of his work will reveal his race without his reiterating it constantly. Which, after all, opens up a field for argument from which I back away gracefully. Herbert Gorman Books in Brief The Works of Ben Jonson. Edited by C. H. Herford and Percy Simpson. Oxford University Press. Volume III. §1. The third volume of this magnificent edition initiates the long series of plays, masques, and miscellaneous writings which will, when completed, occupy five volumes of the entire edition, three more instalments being planned, to contain a commentary. In thus adopting the arrangement of which Skeat's "Chaucer" is the most familiar example (i. e., of separating the com- mentary from the text) the editors offer little matter for dis- cussion in a review; for the plays themselves are too well known to require comment of an appreciative sort and before estimating the contribution of the editors in its entirety we must wait for the three concluding volumes. At the time of the appearance of volumes I and II ("Ben Jonson: The Man and His Work") we devoted ample space to commendation of this undertaking. It is familiarly known that Jonson's plays are textually the most nearly accurate of any body of Elizabethan dramas. Unlike almost all his contemporaries Jonson expended great pains upon the publication of his plays, regarding them not merely as ephemeral entertainments but as a permanent part of literature. The editors are thus spared much of the toil of "establishing" the text; but there are innumerable "vari- ant readings," due to the dramatist's own care in correction and revision; and the recording of these with the minute accu- racy required by modern scholarship has been an immense labor — a labor not without profit, however, even to the non-academic reader, since it shows the dramatist in his very workshop, alter- ing this phrase, polishing this metaphor, revising this scene, all in the interest of a nearer approach to his ideal of per- fection. And even Jonson's text is not perfect. He was not (or at any rate very rarely) at the mercy of piratical publish- ers, as was Shakespeare; but the imperfect state of the print- ing trade in his clay left a legacy of many misprints which Gifford was the first to attempt to eliminate. The present editors, while owing much to Gifford, have produced a better text, probably as nearly "definitive" as is possible. Southen Albania or Northern Epirns in European International Affairs, 1912-1923. By Edith Pierpont Stickney. Stan- ford University Press. $2.50. Miss Stickney's book deals only with a fragment of the Albanian question. It is an account of the diplomatic litiga- tion between Albanian nationalism and Greek irredentism over the southern boundaries of Albania and the fate of a population of less than 200,000. It gives a clear, exhaustive, and scimpu- lously fair account of the various phases of the dispute from 1913 to 1922; but does not quite succeed in presenting it in its relation to the general European situation from which it de- rived a significance disproportionate to its intrinsic merits. For. after all, it was very largely Sir Edward Grey's eager- ness to placate Italy and Austria-Hungary in the interests of general peace that inspired the pro-Albanian verdict of the CoTiferenee of Ambassadors in 1913; and the virtual confirma- tion of that verdict by the Council of Ambassadors and the League of Nations in 1921-1922 was due at least as much to the desire of the dominant European Powers to remove another danger spot in the Balkans as to the strict merits of the Al- banian case. A generous supply of accurate maps and an exhaustive bibliography help to make the book very useful to the student of international relations.

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Nov. 9, 1927] The Nation 519 What I Saw In RUSSIA by ABRAHAM CAHAN Editor Jewish Daily Forward IV/TR. CAHAN now relates his impressions ^*A and experiences in a series of articles which are the result of a recent visit to Russia, where he devoted three months to an intimate study of Russian life under the Soviets. Every article is a vivid pen picture of the forces that are molding present-day Russia, as well as a comprehensive analysis of the constructive and destructive elements which are keeping- Russia isolated from the rest of the civilized world. Mr. Cahan writes frankly and with an open mind about every phase of Russia's present- day problems. Read it daily in Yiddish, and in English every Sunday, in the FORWARD When writing to advertisers please mention The Nation

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520 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3253 Labor and Politics in England. 1850-1867. By Frances Elmar Gillespie. Duke University Press. $4. Dr. Gillespie here presents an intensive study of the social and economic activities leading up to the enfranchisement of the English working classes. Taking her start from the col- lapse of Chartism, she shows, by a skilful weaving of evidence from innumerable published and unpublished sources, the oper- ation of the two new potent ideas which Chartism left in the working-class movement. The first was the recognition of the need of political power to help in the economic struggle. The second was the new motive which a sense of justice and of the moral dignity of labor contributed to the movement, which two generations later was to take a socialistic shape and color. The difficult and delicate work of welding together the activi- ties of the middle-class liberals and the trade unionists for po- litical purposes involves Dr. Gillespie in a very intricate re- search. Her book is not for the popular reader, but the seri- ous student of the democratic movement will find it full of use and interest. India's Past. A Survey of Her Literatures, Religions, Lan- guages, and Antiquities. By A. A. Macdonnell. Oxford University Press. $3.75. The emeritus professor of Sanskrit at Oxford, known for fifty years as a distinguished laborer in his field, gives us here a rapid survey of India's intellectual life from the earliest times down to the arrival of Vasco da Gama on the Malabar coast in 1498. He touches upon religion, art, and language, but allots most of his space to literature, especially that in Sanskrit, of which he wrote a brief history many years ago. As a guide to the study of native Hindu culture, as distin- guished from the imported Mohammedan, the book is useful although in no sense complete, while those who wish to read further on any special phase of Indian civilization will find satisfactory references in the brief bibliographical notes ap- pended to the separate chapters. The book is not intended to advance knowledge, but rather to summarize it, and in this respect accomplishes its purpose. A Pageant of India. By Adolf Waley. Houghton Mifflin Com- pany. $6. It is hard to tell for just whom this book is meant. It adds nothing to scholarship, is not a history according to the modern conception of that science, nor is it fiction. Perhaps the g. oup of people who could use it to greatest advantage would be tourists who want to know about the events and per- sons connected with points of interest in India, but here the publishers have let the author down by not giving him an ade- quate index. The book is almost exclusively a narrative of political events, based on a few good authorities, but neglecting others that should have been consulted, not amplified by social and economic description nor adorned, except rarely, with ref- erence to literary and artistic achievement and religious de- velopment, uneven in its treatment of the characters it presents (as only 10 pages to Asoka against 88 to Akbar), yet often re- deemed by a gift for story-telling. The possession of this last quality possibly explains Mr. Waley's predilection for the ro- mantic tales he has culled from translations of the old Rajput bards and the medieval Mohammedan romani Modern Russian Composers. By Leonid Sabaneyeff. Trans- lated from the Russian by Judah A. Joffe. Intern;. Publishers. $2.75. This book begins with Taneieff, Scriabin, and Rachman- inoff, and ends with the composers of the revolution. It is written with apparent sensitiveness, discernment, and perspec- tive, and is therefore enjoyable and profitable; nevertheless it must be read with the discrimination bt rn of acquaintance with the various composers' music. For sometimes the author de- velops an idea beyond the corresponding development of the musical facts it supposedly accounts for; and sometimes, there- fore, he errs in judgment. ■ T B From A Distinguished List CITY OF BREAD: From the Russian of ALEXANDER NEWEROFF One of the met unusual books of the year — a gripping storv of the famine period in Russia. Decorated bv THEODORE NADEJEN. $2.50 AN UNMARRIED FATHER by FLOYD DELL "The best novel Flovd Dell has ever written." — St. Louis || Globe-Democrat. $2.00 HENRY WARD BEECHER : An American Por- trait by PAXTON HIBBEN "The most important American biography of the year." — .\Vx;- York Sun. Illustrated. $5.00 NEW YORK NIGHTS by STEPHEN GRAHAM A lurid and devastating expose of New York after mid- night. Illustrated. $+.00 JEREMY AT CRALE by HUGH WALPOLE "Belongs in a great tradition." says the Saturday Review of this fascinating sequel to JEREMY. Regular Edition, $2.00. Uniform Author"s Edition, $2.50 FLOWERING QUINCE by DOROTHY VAN DOREN "A tense and tender tale." — N. Y. World. "At once quaint and charming." — San Francisco Chronicle. $2.50 GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY, NEW YORK AMERICA FINDING HERSELF Mark Sullivan The storv of ft OUR TIMES" through the eventful years immediately following the "Turn of the Century". A complete and fas- g history of the advent of Roosevelt in na- tional affairs, the rise of Standard Oil, the growth oftheTrusrs, the Harriman-Hill conflict, theWright brothers and their "living machine" and a host of other personalities and events set against the amazingly diverse background of American every- day life in the early 1900's. Two hundred and four contemporary cartoons, sketches, and photo- graphs make the brilliant text even more vivid. ookstores Sj.co Charles Scribner's Sons, New York When writing to advertisers please mention The Nation

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Nov. 9, 1927] The Nation 521 Drama Petruchio in Modern Dress rj^WO seasons ago Mr. Basil Sydney played Hamlet in a busi- *■ ness suit, and now that he and Mary Ellis are at the head of their own company at the Garrick Theater he is undertaking to interpret the role of Petruchio with a gray derby upon his head. The resulting production of "The Taming of the Shrew" ("in modern dress") is the most thoroughly delightful one that I, at least, have ever seen, but I am still somewhat at a loss to understand just why contemporary costuming should be as conspicuously favorable to an interesting interpretation of Shakespeare as experience with two productions has proved it to be. There are, to be sure, good abstract reasons to justify the method. Shakespeare, as everybody knows, wrote his plays to be played in the "modern dress" of his day and his Cleopatra was acted in the farthingale and stays of Queen Elizabeth's court. Knowing little and caring less about antiquarianism, he gave to historical personages the habits and ideas as well as the dress of his age and he thought of them as contemporaries in every respect except the accident of time. If the exigencies of the plot demanded that some unfamiliar custom be accepted as a premise then he accepted it without question, but the igno- rance of an audience in which deficiency of knowledge was scarcely less conspicuous than liveliness of perception made it unnecessary for him to worry about any mere anachronisms. When we dress his characters up (as the eighteenth century began to do) in historically authentic costumes then we empha- size the fact that neither the language nor the ideas of these characters are historically authentic when, as a matter of fact, historical authenticity is the last thing about which we ought to be thinking. In fancy one can always see the Elizabethan hose protruding from the bottom of Caesar's toga, and logic might seem to direct that the costume of any Shakespearean character should be that of Shakespeare's own time, since, if the mood and language of his plays correspond to any style of dress, it is rather to that which includes the ruff and the farthingale than to any known to either ancient or modern times. These reasons, I say, are good enough as such reasons go, but I confess that I am convinced of their cogency only after the fact, and that both in "Hamlet" and in "The Taming of the Shrew" the "modern-dress" productions were far more interesting than I should have anticipated. Even now I am inclined to suspect that the mere matter of costuming is in itself of little account, that we quickly cease to notice the dress at all, and that, in the case of "Hamlet" at least, the magic of the play is so great that even if it were played by actors in no costume at all except that which nature gave them we should forget their nakedness by the time the ghost had made each of our particular hairs to stand on end "like quills upon the fretful porpentine." The real importance of the modern dress seems to lie chiefly in the sense of freedom which it gives to actors and audience alike, in the fact that it effectually banishes that oppressive sense of responsibility which so often makes even the presentation of a Shakespearean comedy a solemn affair. Some contagious pomposity residing in a doublet seems to infect the player who dons it, and in the presence of a robe the spec- tator seems always in danger of mistaking his seat for a pew. But this frigid awe is put off with the clothes which inspire it, and a Hamlet or Petruchio in trousers seems to feel an ease in the company of his contemporary, Shakespeare, not unlike that which Shakespeare himself felt with characters equally remote from him in time. Certain plays — the Greek for example — require ceremony; they were not treated familiarly even by the people for whom they were written and they must be thought of as solemn rituals; but the Elizabethan drama was a lively, rather informal, affair and the closer it can be brought Out of Russia— in search of Eldorado. What has New York in store for this proud, courageous, hopeful, little group? The Royal Cravatts by Lillian Rogers "Only once in a very long while do we dis- cover a novel which treats of life from a new angle — that transfigures it with imagination. Such a book is 'The Royal Cravatts'." — Boston Transcript. "One of the most noteworthy first novels by an American author we have read in the current year." — N. Y. Sun. At All Bookstores, $2.50 NEW YORK A New Novel by William Stearns Davis GILMAN of REDFORD By the Author of A Friend of Caesar, The Beauty of the Purple, A Victor of Salamis. -1 HE story teller's art and historical facts are blended into a novel that is at once a gallant, spirited tale and a faithful picture of the social life, customs, lan- guage, politics and great events of colonial days. The rich, warm, vibrant life around Harvard College and Boston in 1770-1775 glows through the pages of this ro- mance of the American Revolution. The past becomes authentic under the touch of William Stearns Davis, in this distinctive historical novel. At your bookstore now — $2.50 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY New York Boston Chicago Atlanta Dallas San Francisco When writing to advertisers please mention The Nation

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522 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3253 to us, the less pompous it can be made to seem, the nearer we approach its spirit. Mr. Sydney and Miss Ellis (conspicuously aided by Reginald Bach, whose transformation of Tranio into a hearty cockney is one of the delights of the evening) move easily and gaily through the rapidly moving farce, and the air of modernity which they give it results less from the introduction of such objects as a camera and an electric heater than from the fact that they have realized that the play is neither more nor less realistic now than it was when it was written and that they have accordingly played it in the mood of contemporary ex- travaganza. Mr. Sydney is merely an energetic and go-ahead young man and Miss Ellis merely a cantankerous young girl who is reduced in the end not to that state of simpering vacuity which is generally taken to be the permanent state of any really nice girl in a Shakespearean play, but merely to the condition of accepting, with some humor, the fact that it is wiser to get along with her husband. There is a touch of mockery in all her submission and there are many humorous subtleties in her entire interpretation. In particular she was greeted by a burst of well-deserved laughter at the moment when, having been violently kissed for the first time, she made her exit with an expression in which indignation seemed to be struggling with a certain surprise that she was not angrier than she found herself to be. It was one of the most intriguing bits of acting seen here this year. Mention should also be made of Madam Ouspen- skaya who touches the minor role of Curtis with her usual vividness. "The Wasp's Nest" (Wallach's Theater) is a conventional mystery melodrama which is more than usually irresponsible. Novelty dancing, vaudeville singing, and fair acting are happily combined to make "Weather Clear, Track Fast" (Hudson Theater) good, amusing entertainment Joseph Wood Krutch □ THEATRE D JOHN GOLDEN THEATRE Matinees WED. and SAT., 2:30. DANA BURNETT'S and GEORGE ABBOTTS WALLS STAGED BY GEORGE ABBOTT SEATS 8 WEEKS IN ADVANCE THE THEATRE GUILD Present* PORGY A FOLK PLAY BY DUBOSE AND DOROTHY HEYWARD C] ITT Fi Theatre, West 52nd St. Eres. 8.40 VjUU-iL/ Matinees, Thursday and Saturday. 2.40 TT'i /TTJTT?T? Thea. B'way. & rLlVlJrlKll Evenings 8.30. 40th Street Mats. Wed. & Sat. 2.30 INTERFERENCE By Roland Pertwee and Harold Dearden with ARTHUR WONTNER, PHOEBE FOSTER, KATHLENE McDONELL and A. E. MATTHEWS "Is it entertaining? Does it hold you? To both ques- tions I answer affirmatively." — Alan Dale in The American IF' THE AOTOR-MANAGERS (Formerly the Grand Street Follies Co.) in association with Sidney Ross presen t IF' t( IF" 'IF" A Comedy by Lord Dunsany at the Little Theatre, West 4 4th St. Eves. 8:30. Mats. Thurs. & Sat. 2:30 'IF' □ DANCING □ ONLY NEW YORK APPEARANCE THIS SEASON This Sunday Evening, Nov. 6th, at 8:30 P. M. Angna Enters urni CAniTQ' 5 Com positions H.T IOU17LO !n Dance Form Premiere oi 6 "The great American mime." — Times. "Genius." — Herc!d-Tribune. "This is real entertainment." — The Dance. "Not interpretative hut creative work." — Pom! Rosenfeld, Dial. "She has made of the dance a perfect mirror of human experience." — Gl Seats Now on Sale PLYMOUTH THEATRE 236 W. 45th St. u DEBATE □ Admiral T. P. MAGRUDER U. S. Navy DEBATES Bertrand RUSSELL Question: "SHOULD NAVIES BE ABOLISHED ?" at Mecca Temple, 133 West 55th St., New York City Saturday Evening, December 3rd, 1927 Reserved Seats: S3. 30, $2.75, $2.20, $1.65, $1.10 Mail Orders Filled Upon Receipt Direction: AMERICAN PUBLIC FORUM, Room 1006, 1650 Broadway, N. Y. City. Tel. Circle 4352. BERTRAND RUSSELL vs. MAX EASTMAN Informal DEBATE and Discussion The Goal of Freedom and the Road to It Monday evening, November 21st, 8 o'clock Cooper Union — 4th Avenue at Sth Street Tickets: $1.10; $1.65, a few at $2.20 For Sale NEW MASSES, 39 Union Square Altronquin 4445 □ LECTURES □ • t JOHN HAYNES HOLMES announces four sermons on RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION" Oct. 30 — "What the World Owes to the Bolsheviki" Nov. 13 — "Lenin and Gandhi: Apostles of Utopia" Nov. 20 — "Religion and Revolution: Must they always be Opposed?" Nov. 27 — "America and Russia: When Shall They be Friends'?" Services at 11 A. M. THE COMMUNITY CHURCH Park Avenue and 34tli Street ALL SEATS FREE ALL PERSONS WELCOME These sermons will be printed and copies may be procured at 10c each or 85c for a bound booklet of the four in one. When writing to advertisers please mention The Nation

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International Relations Section A Chronological Record of the Russian Revolution Before the October Revolution 1917 March 10. General strike declared in Petrograd. Soviet of Workers' Delegates elected. March 11. Street fighting in Petrograd. The Duma dissolved by a ukase of the Czar. March 12. The troops of the Petrograd garrison join the peo- ple. Czarist ministers arrested. Provisional Revolutionary Committee formed at Moscow. March 15. The Czar signs his abdication. — Provisional Gov- ernment formed with Prince Lvov as premier. March 27. The Petrograd Soviet issues an appeal to all com- batants for peace without annexations or indemnities. April 11. Unofficial conference of the All-Russian Soviet Com- mittees. April 16. Lenin arrives in Petrograd. May 1. First free May Day celebration in Russia. — Foreign Minister Miliukov publishes his note pledging Russia's loy- alty to the cause of the Allies. May 4. Numerous protest demonstrations against Miliukov's note. May 7. All-Russian conference of the Bolshevik Party. May 15. Miliukov resigns his post. May 17. All-Russian conference of peasant delegates. — Trotzky and Rakovsky arrive in Petrograd. May 18. Coalition Government formed with Kerensky as Min- ister of War. June 6. First All-Russian Congress of the Soviets. July 1. Kerensky orders an offensive by the Russian Army. July 16-17. The "July uprising." Workers in armed demon- strations against the Provisional Government demand an immediate peace and a government of the Soviets. July 19. German and Austrian armies start a counter-offen- sive. The Russian front at Tarnopol gives way under pressure. July 20. The Provisional Government orders the arrest of Lenin, Trotzky, and other Bolshevik leaders. July 21. Kerensky appointed Prime Minister of the Provisional Government. August 5. Trotzky and Lunacharsky arrested by the Pro- visional Government. September 8. General Kornilov moves his troops against Petro- grad and issues an ultimatum to the Provisional Govern- ment demanding dictatorial powers for himself. The Kor- nilov movement speedily put down. September 14. The Provisional Government proclaims Russia a republic. September 27. Opening session of the All-Russian Democratic Conference. October 3. The Moscow Soviet elects its executive committee with a Bolshevik majority. October 8. The Petrograd Soviet elects its executive commit- tee with a Bolshevik majority. Trotzky elected president of the Soviet. October 20. Opening session of the Council of the Republic (Pre-Parliament). The Bolshevik delegates withdraw after making a declaration. October 23. The Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party adopts a resolution calling for an armed uprising against the Provisional Government. October 29. The Petrograd Soviet creates the Military Revo- lutionary Committee. After the October Revolution November 7. The Second All-Russian Congress of the Soviets proclaims itself the Government of Russia. — The Military Revolutionary Committee directs the fighting against the forces of the Provisional Government. November 9. The Soviet Government formed. Lenin elected chairman of the Council of People's Commissars. November 11. Uprising of the military cadets in Petrograd. The uprising is suppressed and the Red Guards occupy the Winter Palace. November 12. Street fighting in Moscow. November 15. The fighting in Moscow ends with the complete defeat of Kerensky forces. December 3. Soviet detachments seize the headquarters of the Commander-in-Chief of the Russian armies. December 5. Truce with Germany signed at Brest-Litovsk. December 7-8. Generals Kornilov, Kaledin, and Dutov start operations against the Soviet power in the south of Russia. December 16. The Central Rada of the Ukraine permits Cos- sack regiments from the front to pass through Ukrainian territory to join forces with Kornilov and Kaledin. December 17. The action of the Ukrainian Rada provokes an ultimatum from the Soviet Government. December 19. The Kornilov forces are defeated at Belgorod. December 22. Beginning of peace negotiations at Brest-Litovsk. December 27. The First Ukrainian Congress of the Soviets proclaims itself the Government of the Ukraine. December 28. The Donetz Basin occupied by the Kornilov forces. December 81. Finland proclaims its independence of Russia. 1918 January 2. The Council of People's Commissars recognizes the independence of Finland. January 3. The first revolutionary tribunal is formed. January 14. An unsuccessful attempt is made to assassinate Lenin. January 16. The Central Executive Committee of the Soviets publishes the Declaration of the Rights of the Working People. Russia is proclaimed a Federated Soviet Republic. January 18. Opening session and dissolution of the Constitu- ent Assembly at Petrograd. January 21. Soviet forces begin their offensive in the Ukraine. January 25. The Central Rada proclaims the independence of the Ukraine. February 2. Workers in Kiev under Bolshevik leadership rise in arms against the Central. Rada. February 6. The Central Rada signs a separate peace with the Central Powers. February 8. Kiev, the capital of the Ukraine, is taken by the revolutionary forces under command of Muraviov. February 9. Trotzky, acting as chairman of the Soviet peace delegation at Brest-Litovsk, refuses to sign the terms of peace offered by the Germans and Austrians and declares the suspension of all war activities on the part of the Soviet republics. February 11. The forces of General Kaledin in the Don region suffer a crushing defeat. Kaledin commits suicide. February 21. The German armies start a new offensive on the Western (Russian) front. February 23. The Soviet Government issues a decree for the creation of the Red Army. February 27. The Council of People's Commissars decides to accept the German peace terms. March 3. Signing of the Brest-Litovsk peace treaty. March 4. Suspension of all war activities by ordsr of the Council of People's Commissars.

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524 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3253 March 6-8. The Seventh All-Russian Congress of the Bolshe- vik Party decides to ratify the Brest-Litovsk peace agree- ment.— The Congress adopts for the party the name of the Russian Communist Party. March 9. The British, Italian, and French missions leave So- viet Russia. March 12. The Government moves to Moscow. March 15-17. The Fourth Extraordinary All-Russian Congress of the Soviet ratifies the peace agreement of Brest-Litovsk. March 16. Kiev occupied by the Germans. April 6. A Japanese landing party occupies Vladivostok. The Germans occupy Kharkov in the Ukraine. April 10. An armed uprising of Anarchists in Moscow. April 12. Anarchists in Petrograd are disarmed by the forces of the Government. April 18. Kornilov forces in the South are routed. Kornilov is killed. / pril 20. Germans occupy the Crimea. April 27. The Ukrainian Central Rada is dissolved by the Ger- man occupational authorities. The Congress of Ukrainian landlords in Kiev elects General Skoropadski Hetman of the Ukraine. May 5. Orenburg is taken by the counter-revolutionary forces of General Dutov. May 6. Rostov and Taganrog in the Don are occupied by the German and Ukrainian forces. May 15. An upnsing of Anarchists and Right Social Revolu- tionaries in Tsaritsin. May 21. Peasant uprisings against the Germans in the prov- inces of Kharkov and Kherson. May 25. First skirmishes of the Soviet forces with the Czecho- slovaks in Siberia. May 27. The Menshevik Government proclaims the independ- ence of Georgia. June 3. A provisional Siberian Government is organized by the Right Socialist parties in Novonikolaevsk. June 30. Decree of the Soviet Government concerning the nationalization of factories and mines. July 2. Allied forces land in Murmansk. July 6. German Ambassador Mirbach killed in Moscow by Left Social Revolutionaries. Beginning of the White Guard up- rising at Yaroslav. July '. Uprising of Left Social Revolutionaries in Moscow. July 8. Uprising in Moscow suppressed. Left Socialist Revo- lutionaries disarmed in Petrograd and other cities. July 10. Congress of the Soviets adopts the Constitution of the RSFSR (Russian Socialist Federated Soviet Republics). — Ufa occupied by the Czecho-Slovaks. July 11. Muraviov betrays the Soviet Government. White Guard uprisings in Arzamas, Rostov, and other cities. July 16. Ex-Czar Nikolai and family shot in Ekaterinburg. July 21. The uprising in Yaroslav suppressed. August 1. Ekaterinburg occupied by the Czecho-Slovaks. August 5. Archangel occupied by British and French forces. The so-called Northern Government is formed. August 10. Kazan occupied by the Czecho-Slovaks. August 30. Second attempt is made to assassinate Lenin. Le- nin is wounded by a member of the Right Social Revolu- tionary Party, Dora Kaplan. September 2. The Revolutionary War Council of the Republic is created. September 4. Conspiracy of Allied diplomats and consuls against the Soviet Government disclosed. September 10. Kazan is retaken by the Red Army. The Coun- cil of People's Commissars adopts a decision initiating the Red Terror. September 16. Opening session of the anti-Soviet "State Con- ference" at Ufa under the chairmanship of the Right So- cial Revolutionary leader, Avksentiev, and formation of a "directory" government. September 18. German and Austrian regiments at Mohilev and Rovno mutiny. October 1. Mohilev taken by Soviet troops. October 7. The Red Army retakes Samara. November 13. In connection with the revolution in Germany, the Central Executive Committee of the Soviets decides to annul the peace treaty of Brest-Litovsk. November 18. Kolchak orders the arrest of the Directory at Omsk and assumes dictatorial powers as Supreme Ruler. December 1. The Ukrainian Government of Hetman Skoropad- ski at Kiev overthrown. December 23. The Central Executive Committee of the Soviets recognizes the independence of Esthonia, Lithuania, and Latvia. 1919 January 3. Workers' uprising in Kharkov under Communist leadership. — The city is taken by Ukrainian Soviet troops. January 18. British and French landing parties are put ashore at Odessa. February 5. Ukrainian Soviet troops in drive from Kharkov take Kiev, ousting the Petlura forces. The Central Execu- tive Committee of the Soviet ratifies the independence of the White-Russian Soviet Republic. March 2-6. First Congress of the Communist International. March 14. The French troops evacuate Nikolaev. The Soviet assumes power in the city. April 6. The French evacuate Odessa. — The city is taken by Soviet forces. Red troops enter the Crimea at Perekop. April 9. Kolchak starts a general offensive along the Eastern front. May 9. Anti-Soviet uprising led by Hetman Grigoriev in the Ukraine. May 14. Yudenich starts an offensive in the direction of Petro- grad. May 15. The Grigoriev uprising is put down. May 19. Denikin starts his offensive from the South. June 6. Peasant uprisings in Kolchak's rear. June 14. The Allies recognize Kolchak as the Supreme Ruler of Russia. June 25. The Denikin forces occupy the city of Kharkov. July 7. The French navy shells the Black Sea coast in the vicinity of Odessa. July 14. In a counter-offensive against Kolchak on the East- ern front the Soviet troops retake the city of Ekaterin- burg. July 23. The French navy shells the city of Ochakov on the Black Sea. August 3. The English forces suffer defeat at Onega in the North. August 17. General Mamonlov breaks through the Soviet front and raids the cities of Tambov and Kozlov. August 23. Odessa is occupied by the forces of Denikin. August 31. The Denikin forces capture Kiev. September 3. The Siberian Revolutionary Committee is formed. September 30. Conference of Baltic States decides to initiate peace negotiations with Soviet Russia. October 11. Yudenich starts his second offensive in the direc- tion of Petrograd. October 12. The Allies declare the Baltic regions under block- ade. October 13. The Denikin forces take Orel in their drive toward Moscow. October 20. The Red Army in its counter-offensive on the Denikin front recaptures Orel. Heavy fighting against the Yudenich forces in the vicinity of Petrograd. October 22. Yudenich in retreat. November 14. On the Yudenich front the Red Army captures Yamburg on the Esthonian border. On the Kolchak front the Red Army enters Omsk in Siberia.

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Nov. 9, 1927] The Nation 525 A COMPLETE LIBRARY ON SOVIET RUSSIA RUSSIA AFTER TEN YEARS Report of the American Trade Union Delegation to the Soviet Union. $1.00 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST by Vera Figner. An autobiography of this famous Russian terrorist who participated in the assassination of Tsar Alexander II. $3.00 TEN DAYS THAT SHOOK THE WORLD by John Reed. An eye-witness pen-picture of the ten days in which the Soviets seized power. $1.50 RUSSIAN POETRY, An Anthology chosen and translated by Babctte Deutsch and Avrahm Yarmolinsky. $2 25 MODERN RUSSIAN COMPOSERS by Leonid Sabeneyeff. Aesthetic characterization of about forty rep- resentatives of Russian music. $2.75 WHITHER RUSSIA— Towards Capitalism or Socialism? by Leon Trotsky. An analysis of the strides Russia has already made and the direction of her future development. $1.50 BROKEN EARTH by Maurice Hindus. The Russian village after the Revolution. $2.00 OIL IMPERIALISM by Louis Fischer. The international struggle for Russian petroleum. $2.00 LITERATURE and REVOLUTION by Leon Trotsky. A brilliant criticism of Russian literary groupings and a discussion of the relation of art to life. $2.50 EDUCATION IN SOVIET RUSSIA by Scott Nearing. A first hand account of school facilities under the new regime. $1.50 THE NEW THEATRE and CINEMA of SOVIET RUSSIA by Huntly Carter. A veritable encyclopedia of the Russian theatre today. Profusely illustrated. $6.00 MATERIALISM and EMPIRIO-CRITICISM by V. I. Lenin (Vol. XIII of Collected Works). Lenin fights against all attempts at philosophic revisions of Marxism. $4.00 The LIFE and DEATH of SACCO and VANZETTi by Eugene Lyons. A complete account of all the elements of the social drama by a brilliant writer closely associated with the case from the very beginning. Fascinating as a novel ; penetrating as a history. $1.50 AT ALL BOOKSTORES WRITE FOR CATALOG INTERNATIONAL PUBLISHERS CCL INCORPODATED 381 FOURTH AVENUE NEW YORK B & Tic Tfiote UweHJxu^vL-* over exact definitions or pronunciation ol words; over the iden- tity of historic characters; over questions of geography; over points of grammar, spelling, punctuation, or English usage. A Great Field of Knowledge is covered with answers to a surprising variety of questions. What is the meaning of aviette? — the pronunciation of liaison? — the location of Kenya? — the identity of Fabre? These are typical of thousands of questions fully answered. Look your questions up in &e4t Ofaidyeci because it is based upon the "Su- preme Authority" — Webster'* New International Dictionary. 106,000 entries with definitions, spellings, pronunciations, and use of words; a dictionary of biography; a Gazetteer; a guide to rules of punctuation, use of capitals, ab- breriations, etc.; a dictionary of for- eign phrases with pronunciation and translations. Many other features ol practical value. It is an excellent book of 1,256 pages with 1,700 illustrations. Purchase of your bookseller ; or send order and remittance direct to us ; or write for information. Free specimen pages if you mention this paper. When buying, insist upon a "MERRIAM WEBSTER" G. & C. MERRIAM COMPANY - Springfield, Mass. Look for the Merri- am Circular Trade Mark — sign of high- est scholarship and accuracy. The thin -paper edition is especially handsome and convenient. Art can- vas binding, $5.00; Fabrikoid, $6.00; Leather, $750. mm\\wm/mmimy//miMimmm&m How FREE is FREE LOVE 9 v ALEXANDRA KOLLONTAY'S daring, brutal novel RED LOVE tells the human story of Soviet Russia Has Communism Broken Down the institution of marriage? the double standard of morals? the tradition of monogamy ? the necessity of prostitution? the traditions of family life? Does Communism Glorify Free Sex Relations? READ Mme. Kollontay's brilliant, ruthless, romantic novel set within the boundaries of Soviet Russia but applying to the entire modern world. RED LOVE $2.50 from the publishers SEVEN ARTS PUBLISHING CO. 160 Fifth Avenue New York City Enclosed is ($2.50 per copy) for Alexandra Kollontay's novel, '•Red Love," which lias been unanimously acclaimed by the critics as the most honest picture of conditions in Soviet Russia printed since the Red Revolution in 1917. Name Address City When writing to advertisers please mention The Nation

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526 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3253 November 20-2G. The First Congress of the Communist Youth International is held in Berlin. December 5-9. Seventh All-Russian Congress of the Soviets. — Resolution adopted offering to open peace negotiations with the Allies. December 12. The Red Army captures Kharkov on the Denikin front. December 14. The Mamontov and Shkuro cavalry are routed by Budenny. December 16. Kiev taken by the Red Army. December 27. Kolchak's train arrested by the Czechs. New government formed in Irkutsk. 1920 January 7. The Red Army enters Tomsk in Siberia. January 8. The Kolchak forces routed at Krasnoyarsk. Red cavalry detachments enter Rostov. February 2. Peace treaty with Esthonia signed. February 6. Odessa taken by the Red Army. February 19. Uprising in Archangel. The White Government flees the city. February 21. Red troops enter Archangel. February 29. First All-Russian Congress of Toiling Cossacks. March 13. Murmansk occupied by the Red Army. April 25. Poles start their offensive against Soviet Ukraine. April 27. Revolutionary Committee seizes power in Baku. April 29. Truce signed between the Japanese and Russian command at Vladivostok. May 6. Kiev occupied by the Poles. May 7. Treaty signed between Georgia and the RSFSR. May 27. Autonomous Tartar Socialist Soviet Republic created as part of the RSFSR. June 6. Counter-offensive of the Red Army agains^ the Poles begins. June 7. Wrangel forces start their offensive from the Crimea. June 11. Kiev taken by the Red Army. July 12. Peace treaty with Lithuania signed. July 14. Vilna taken by the Red Army. July 19. Opening session of the Second Congress of the Com- munist International. August 1. Brest-Litovsk taken by the Red Army. August 14. Peace treaty with Latvia signed. August 18. Polish counter-offensive begins. August 21. Brest-Litovsk and Kholm retaken by the Poles. September 2. Bokhara is proclaimed a Soviet republic. September 18. Peace treaties with Lithuania and Latvia rati- fied. September 22. Alexandrovsk on the Dnieper is taken by Wrangel forces. October 12. Armistice with Poland signed. October 21. Chita in the Far East occupied by the forces of the People's Revolutionary Army. October 23. The Red Army starts counter-offensive against Wrangel forces. Red troops cross the Dnieper at Alex- androvsk and capture the city. November 1. The Far Eastern Republic formed with capital at Chita. November 9. The Battle of Perekop. Red Army enters the Crimea. November 17. Wrangel forces routed. All Crimea in the hands of the Red Army. November 21. The army of the Far Eastern Republic defeats the Semenov forces. Semenov retreats into Mongolia. November 30. Revolutionary Committee formed in Armenia. December 22-29. Eighth All-Russian Congress of the Soviets. The program of electrification adapted. 1921 January 1. Peace treaty with Finland ratified. February 25. Treaty of friendship with Afghanistan signed. February 26. Treaty of friendship with Persia signed. WHAT DOES JEWISH SOCIAL WORK OFFER AS A CAREER? "(4) . . . opportunities for stimulating professional contacts and for companionship with outstanding and intellec- tually alert persor.s . . . S). The Training School for Jewish Social Work Offers a fifteen months' course of study in Jewish Family Case Work, Child Care, Community Cen- ters, Federations and Health Centers. Several scholarships and fellowships ranging from $250 to $1,500 are available for especially qualified students. For information, address The Director THE TRAINING SCHOOL FOR JEWISH SOCIAL WORK 210 WEST 91ST STREET NEW YORK CITY ,7$ (OONER or later, you will recognize the practical importance of aca- demic professional training for social work. Seventy per cent of a student body recently canvassed at this School had matriculated for such training after having entered social work without it. * * \ The winter Quarter be- gins Januarv third. • The New York School of Social Work fOj Edit Twenty-second Street New Yc?{ When writing to advertisers please mention The Nation

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Nov. 9, 1927] The Nation 527 February 26. Soviet Republic proclaimed in Georgia. March 16. Treaty of friendship with Turkey. Trade agree- ment with England signed. March 18. Peace treaty with Poland signed at Riga. April 14. Ratification of the peace treaty with Poland. April 24. University of the Toiling People of the East organ- ized at Moscow. May 6. Trade treaty with Germany. June 3. Opening session of the First Congress of the Red Trade Union International at Moscow. July 27. By decree of the Central Executive Committee of the Soviets the All-Russian Committee for the Relief of the Famine Stricken is formed. August 11. The Council of People's Commissars publishes de- cision introducing the New Economic Policy (NEP). October 12. The State Bank of the RSFSR is organized. October 19. Autonomous Socialist Soviet Republic of the Cri- mea created. December 8. Trade treaty with Austria signed. 1922 February 8. By decree of the Central Executive Committee of the Soviet Government the Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter Revolution and Speculation (the Cheka) is dissolved and the State Political Department (GPU) is created. April 4. Decree creating Chief Concessions Committee promul- gated. April 16. Soviet Russia recognized by Germany (Treaty of Rapallo) . June 5. Trade treaty with Czecho-Slovakia. August 20. Litvinov signs agreement with the American Re- lief Administration (ARA). October 11. The State Bank introduces the new chervonetz currency. October 25. The Japanese evacuate Vladivostok. November 19. The Far Eastern Republic joins the RSFSR. December 23-27. Tenth Congress of the Soviets of the RSFSR assembles. December 30. First Congress of the Soviets of the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics. The Congress issues a dec- laration proclaiming the creation of the Soviet Union and the treaty concluded between the republics entering the Union. 1923 May 5. The Soviet representative in Italy, Vorovsky, is assas- sinated by Konradi in Geneva. May 15. Introduction of the Single Agricultural Tax. July 4. Constitution of the Union of Socialist Soviet Repub- lics adopted. July 13. First session of the Central Executive Committee of the Union. July 19. Agricultural Exposition opened in Moscow. October 10-15. First international peasant conference. The Peasant International formed. 1924 January 21. Lenin dies. January 26. Second All-Union Congress of the Soviets. Petro- grad renamed Leningrad. January 27. Lenin's funeral. February 2. Rykov elected chairman of the Council of Peo- ple's Commissars. February 8. Soviet Russia recognized by Italy. February 14. Soviet Russia recognized by Norway. February 20. Soviet Russia recognized by Austria. February 22. Soviet currency put on a gold basis. March 3. Soviet Russia recognized by England. March 8. Soviet Russia recognized by Greece. March 14. Soviet Russia recognized by Sweden. THAT MAN HEINE The Greatest Biography of Europe's Greatest Lyric Poet and Lover (Reg. 3.00) Revolt of Modern Youth, >^^ f* g\ The Companionate Marriage, ^ B k U Napoleon, The Doctor Looks ,j) m •%$ *J at Love and Life, O Rare Ben J r>rvcr Johnson, Revolt in the Desert, Jm^^^^ A and any other $3.00 book - - ^^m PAID FICTION AT 20% OFF SILENT STORMS, SOMETHING ABOUT EVE, OIL, CIRCUS PARADE, MEANWHILE, and any other $2.50 Fiction - - $1.98 Post Paid JALNA, CASTE, AN UNMARRIED FATHER, BUGLES IN THE NIGHT, STRANGE WOMAN, and any other $2.00 Fiction - $1.59 IMPORTANT BOOKS AT GREAT SAVINGS! Rise of An American Civilization, by Prof. Beard - ($12.50) $9.98 The Human Body, by Dr. Clendening -----( 5.00) 4.29 America, by Van Loon ----------( 5.00) 4.29 The President's Daughter, by Nan Britton - - t 5.00) 4.29 The American Tragedy, by Dreiser ----- ( 5.00) 4.29 World's Illusion, by Jacob Wassermann - - - - ( 5.00) 4.29 Why We Behave Like Human Beings, by Geo. Dorsey ( 3.50) 2.98 "Boss" Tweed, by Denis Tilden Lynch -----( 4.00) 3.59 Mother India, by Margaret Mayo ------( 3.75) 3.29 The Right to Be Happy, by Mrs. Bertrand Russell ( 2.50) 2.09 Men of Destiny, by Walter Lippmann - - - - ( 2.50) 2.09 Morrow's Almanack -----------( 2.00) 1.59 MODERN LIBRARY TITLES (95c) Single copies, 79c; In lots of 5, 77c; In lots of 10, 75c Post Paid C. O. D.'s small extra charge. Add Send for "THE LANTERN" ioc West of Mississippi and Canada unique catalogue-guide FREE. BOOK-LOVERS LEAGUE, Dept. NN9 405 Lexington Avenue New York, N. Y. FOREIGN AFFAIRS A Journal of International Understanding Edited by H. M. Swanwick November Issue will contain articles on International Oil Intrigues by Fran- cis Delaisi; Problems of Indian Self-Government by Rt. Hon. Lord Olivier; War Guilt by Georges Demartial; on Sin-Japanese Relations, Georgia under Soviet Rule, Native Claims in the Dutch East Indies; etc., etc. RECENT CONTRIBUTORS INCLUDE C. F. ANDREWS, W. ARNOLD-FORSTER, H. N. BRAILSFORD, G. LOWES DICKINSON, G. E. R. GEDYE, J. A. HOBSON, DR. HENRY T. HODGKIN, HON. CR. KENWORTHY, M.P., F. W. FETHICK- LAWRENCE, M.P., COUNT MAX MONTGELAS, SCOTT NEARING, ARTHUR PONSONBY, M.P., E. F. WISE. Mr. (i. Lowes Dickinson writes of Fort airs: "If war is to be prevented in future, it can only be by knowledge, and nowhere else is knowledge to be so easily and cheaply obtained." Obtainable of all export booksellers. Annual subscription $1.95, post free, from the Manager, Foreign Affairs. 34 Victoria Street, London, S.W.I, England. To the Manager, Foreign Affairs. Please send me a specimen copy of Foreign Affairs. Name NYN Address When writino to advertisers please mention The Nation

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528 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3253 May 31. Soviet Russia recognized by China. June 18. Soviet Russia recognized by Denmark. August. Soviet Russia recognized by Mexico. October 28. Soviet Russia recognized by France. 1925 January 20. Agreement signed with Japan for the resump- tion of trade and diplomatic relations. October 12. Trade treaty signed between the Soviet Union and Germany. December 6. Opening up of the Shatura Electric Station near Moscow. December 15. Trade treaty signed between the Soviet Union and Norway. December 17. Treaty of neutrality signed between Turkey and the Soviet Union. 1926 February 25. Franco-Soviet conference for the liquidation of outstanding differences between France and the Soviet Union starts work in Paris. April 24. Treaty of neutrality with Germany signed in Berlin. April 25. Economy campaign initiated. May 8. The Nevsky Works in Leningrad produce the first cotton-ginning machine of Russian make. May 16. Foundation laid for the first tractor works at Stal- ingrad. The works will employ 10,000 workers. July 20. Felix .Ozerjinsky dies. August 23. Soviet Russia recognized by Uruguay. August 31. Treaty of neutrality and non-aggression signed by the Soviet Union and Afghanistan. November 28. Treaty of neutrality and non-aggression with Lithuania arranged. 1927 May 12. Arcos House in London raided by the British police. May 24. Rupture of diplomatic relations between the Soviet Union and Great Britain. June 7. Soviet Ambassador Voikov in Warsaw assassinated by a Russian White Guardist. October 1. New treaty with Persia signed. October 13. France asks for recall of M. Rakovsky, Soviet Am- bassador to Paris. October ... Decision providing for the introduction during the r ext year of the seven-hour day for all factory workers. November 7. Celebration of Tenth Anniversary of the October Revolution. The Soviet Invasion of America By TANSY McNAB WHILE in a diplomatic sense Washington and Moscow do not speak as they pass by, New York and Mos- cow are conversing more and more intimately on economic matters and are exchanging visits with growing frequency. Scores of American bankers and business men and engi- neers have visited the USSR in the past two years. Scores of Soviet industrial executives and technicians and scien- tists have made trips to the United States. On both sides one subject is strictly taboo — politics and diplomatic rela- tions. Most of the Soviet visitors, except the scientists, do not go to Washington at all. They pass up the show city on the Potomac in favor of tours to the steel mills of Penn- sylvania, the oil fields of California and Texas, the hydro- electric plants at Niagara, the automobile factories at De- troit, particularly the mechanized hive of Henry Ford. The number of these pilgrims from the Soviet Union during the past two years has been well over 250. They come singly and in delegations and stay from a few weeks CENTROSOYUS-AMERICA, inc. General Offices: IT BATTERY PLACE Phone: Whitehall 4660 Fur Department: 238 WEST 28TH STREET Phone: Lackawanna 3172 New York City Sole Correspondent in U.S.A. of the Consumers Co-operative Societies of U.S.S.R. We import from U.S.S.R. to U.S.A.: Furs, Flax, Bristles, Animal Hair, Carpet Wool, Feathers and Down, Crude Drugs, Frozen and Dried Fish, Caviar, Mush- rooms, Nuts, etc. We export from U.S.A. to U.S.S.R.: Agricultural Machinery, Repair Shop Equipment, Tools, Printing Machinery, Typewriters, Accounting Machines, Bind- er Twine, Leather, etc. ALL-RUSSIAN UNION OF AGRICULTURAL (PRODUCERS') CO-OPERATIVE SOCIETIES SELSKOSOJUS HEAD OFFICE: B. Dmitrovka, 4, MOSCOW, U. S. S. R AFFIUATED 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) Rcpresoited in America b\<: SELSKOSOJUS, INC., AMERICA 90 West Street, New York City Telephone: Rector 0117-0118 PURCHASES^. Tractors and Repair Shop Equipments, Agricul- tural Implements, Binder Twine, Seed Cleaning Machinery and Seeds. SELLS^ Furs, Skins, Casings, Butter, Flax and Tow, Seeds. When u-riting to advertisers please mention The Nation

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Nov. 9, 1927] The Nation 529 to six months or more. The largest contingent consisted of fifty peasant boys who came over last year to study automo- tive principles at the Ford school in Detroit. Another large delegation consisted of twenty-one agricultural scientists, headed by the eminent Dr. K. D. Glinka, who came to attend the sessions of the First International Congress of Soil Science held in Washington last June, and subsequently made a tour of the country for research and study. They formed the largest foreign delegation at the congress, and their exhibit of soil samples and charts was the most com- prehensive. Other scientific visitors have been Dr. V. V. Obolensky-Ossinsky, editor of the magazine World Policy and World Economy and an editor of the new Soviet En- cyclopedia; Dr. John G. Alexandroff, professor of hydro- electrics at the University of Moscow and father of the Dnieper River project; Professor V. V. Talonoff, director of the Soviet Institute of Applied Botany, and Dr. Boris E. Linberg, dean of the Medical Faculty and director of the Surgical Clinic at Smolensk University. Vladimir Mayakovsky, the Soviet poet, came over a year ago. Stanislavsky has led his players of the Russian Art Theater for a tour of the United States under the tutelage of Morris Gest, and the Second Studio of the Art Theater has also come with a repertory of opera including a new Carmen and a lively interpretation of Lysistrata. The actors of the famous old Jewish Habima Theater have also enjoyed an American tour. Director Nemirovich- Dantchenko of the Moscow Art Theater has put in some time at Hollywood and Director Glagolin of the Revolutionary Theater visited the United States this fall. Virtually every important phase of American produc- tion or of industrial organization has been studied at first- hand by these eager-minded guests. Among recent visitors, executives and technicians of the Donugal Coal Trust have inspected mining methods in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Illinois, and plants manufacturing coal-mining machin- ery; several delegations from the Soviet oil trusts have made an intensive survey of our oil fields and oil machin- ery; experts from the Metal Institute at Leningrad have investigated our metal industries preparatory to drawing plans for the expenditure of $300,000,000 for new plants and mills in the Soviet Union; Soviet hydro-electric engi- neers have toured the country to visit all the more impor- tant power plants; the glass and porcelain industry, the rubber industry, the canning industry, the timber industry, and others have come in for minute observation by Soviet inquisitors. A delegation from the Ukrainian cooperatives, which run 10,060 stores, recently made a study of the meth- ods of American department stores, chain stores, restau- rants, bakeries, and large warehouses. Soviet agronomists and statisticians have toured the country studying farm methods from coast to coast. Once a year executives of the Soviet Textile Syndicate come over to inspect their Ameri- can cotton-purchasing agency, which purchased American cotton to the value of $45,000,000 in the past year. In fact all the Soviet visitors have met a cordial wel- come from American industrialists, whether they came to leave substantial orders with the Amtorg Trading Corpora- tion, which buys equipment here for the big Soviet trusts, or whether their visits were merely platonic — i. e., for study. The scientists have also been well received. They have included such distinguished names as Professor Glinka, Dr. Adolf Joffe, physicist; Dr. D. I. Mushketov, director of the Soviet Geological Committee. Distributors in America of Motion Pictures Produced in Soviet Russia Amkino Corporation Representing " So vkino " of Moscow (All Russian Photo-Cinema Syndicate) Released: "Potemkin" "Bear's Wedding" To Release: "Ivan the Terrible" "Mother" "The Station Master" "The Dancer of His Majesty" "Ten Days That Shook the World" "Mechanics of the Brain" 723 Seventh Avenue New York City When writing to advertisers please mention The Nation R ii

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530 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3253 One Soviet visitor, a young man representing the Northern Timber Trust, had a veritable American Odyssey. Entering the country on the Pacific Coast, he worked as a lumberjack in Western camps and then got jobs in various sawmills. Thereafter he took a course in forestry at a West Coast university. With this apprenticeship he presented his introductions and made a study of the timber industry in all parts of the country, finally winding up with a survey of the operation of pulp mills, wood-working factories, and plants producing machinery for the industry. Reciprocally, American engineers are now assisting in developing the ambitious superpower plans in the Soviet Union ; they are supervising the construction of model coal mines in the Donetz Basin, designing new metal plants and glass factories for Soviet industry, helping to revive the platinum works on the slopes of the Urals. In fact Moscow and New York have developed a broader network of rela- tions than before the war. Contributors to This Issue Louis Fischer is The Nation's correspondent in Russia. N. Krupskaya, the widow of Nikolai Lenin, is in charge of Political Education in the Soviet Union. Albert Rhys Williams, author of "Through the Russian Revolution," has lived and traveled in Russia for more than four years collecting material for a book on peas- ant life. Roger Baldwin, organizer and director of the American Civil Liberties Union, has been making a study of civil rights and the treatment of political prisoners in vari- ous countries of Europe, including Russia. Serge Mikhailovich Eisenstein, known in the United States for his great picture "Potemkin," is the most famous motion-picture director in Soviet Russia. Michael Zoshchenko is one of the youngest Russian writers, author of "Esteemed Citizens." Max Eastman, author of "Leon Trotsky" and "Since Lenin Died," has translated verse and prose by many of Russia's revolutionary writers. L. Rakovsky, wife of the former Soviet Ambassador to France, is a journalist and social worker. John Waldhorn Gassner is a novelist and poet of New York. Joshua Kunitz is in the department of English at the College of the City of New York. Hawthorne Daniel is author of "Ships of the Seven Seas." Herbert Gorman has just published a novel, "The Place Called Dagon." AN IDEAL CHRISTMAS PRESENT THE WORKS OF BRANN THE ICONOCLAST The fiery genius of his age The most unique charactei in American literature Two volumes, elegantly bound in Artcraft leather with gold tops and silk headbands Two volumes. Price $10.00 per set. only 384 sets left REMIT CHECK OR MONEY ORDER WITH ORDER THE BRANN PUBLISHERS, INC. 225 West 80th Street, New York City, N. Y. All-Union Textile Syndicate Razinskaya 9, Moscow Purchasing, Sales and Fiscal Agents for 355 mills, 95% of the textile industry of the U. S. S. R., including: 154 cotton mills 21 hemp mills 73 woolen mills 13 knit goods mills 57 linen mills 11 silk mills and 6 sundry manufacturing plants SALES OF FINISHED TEXTILE GOODS IN RUSSIA (WHOLESALE PRICES) 1923-24 8248.040,320 1924-25 443.945,420 1925-26 794,138,800 1926-27 (first eight months) 680,170,800 PURCHASES, IN THE UNITED STATES, OF RAW MATERIAL Through The All-Russian Textile Syndicate, Inc., 120 Broadway, New York 21 months to Sept. 30. 1925 $80,966,963 Year ended Sept 30, 1926 33.053,445 Year ended Sept. 30, 1927 42,372,666 Extension of Cotton Acreage in Russia and Increase of Average Yield Per Acre 1923-24 1924-25 1925-26 1926-27 Acres in cotton. 557,550 1,244,700 1,611,900 1,971,000 (Irrigated) Yield per acre, seed cotton, lbs. 626 704 800 Russia in Revolution SELECTED EDITORIALS by Daniel De Leon A series of profound studies of the pre-revolutionary upheavals in Russia with particular reference to the revolution of 1005 and its consequences. Illustrated. — 4S pages Price Twenty Cents New York Labor News Company 45 Rose Street New York A NEW WORLD / IN THE MAKING - - - • SOVIET RUSSIA Labor delegations, economists, professors and writers have returned from Soviet Russia with reports of tremendous progress and achievements. THE DAILY WORKER Brings the latest and most reliable news from the Soviet Union — every day, thru special cable service — correspon- dents— features — photographs — cartoons. $6.00 A YEAR— $3.50 Six Months— $2.00 Three Months. on all New York newsstands. THE DAILY WORKER. 33 First Street, New York When writing to advertisers please mention The Nation

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The Nation FOUNDED 18G5 Vol. CXXV NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 16, 1927 No. 3254 Contents EDITORIAL PARAGRAPHS 531 EDITORIALS: Bloody Colorado B;M The Harvard War Memorial 636 An Enemy Worth Having 535 IT SEEMS TO HEYWOOD BROUN. By Heywood Broun 636 BRITISH FINANCE AND THE LABOR PARTY. By J. Ramsay MacDonald 637 HIGHER EDUCATION IN CHICAGO. By Lawrence Martin 638 WEEPING THE BONE. By Anita Brenner 510 AMERICANS WE LIKE: ALEXANDER MEIKLEJOHN. By Lueien Price 541 IN THE DRIFTWAY. By the Drifter 643 CORRESPONDENCE 513 CHILDREN'S BOOK SECTION THE PLAGUE OF JUVENILES. By Rebecca Drucker 545 WHAT BOOKS SHALL MY SMALL CHILD READ? By Rebecca Hourwich 546 BOOKS: The End of Art. By Joseph Wood Krutch 548 The Record of "Al" Smith. By Oswald Garrison Villard 548 Two Highly Prized Novels. By Marie Luhrs 550 Children's Books in Brief 550 ART: Composograph at the Dance. By Katherine Niles, Abbe Niles 552 DRAMA: Hare and Hounds. By Joseph Wood Krutch 553 INTERNATIONAL RELATION* SECTION AN EPISODE OF FASCISM. By Gaetano Salvemini 556 OSWALD GARRISON VILLARD, Editok 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 HEYWOOD BROUN 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. THE NATION is on file in most public and college libraries and is indexed in the Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature. SINCLAIR'S MILLIONS may keep him out of jail, but his name stinks. The time may even come when it will be impossible to find in Washington a jury of men and women so illiterate that they have never heard of his crimes. The whole long process has been a revelation of the ease with which money can warp the law to its own ends. It was four years after the elder La Follette ex- posed the Teapot Dome scandal in the United States Senate that the Supreme Court denounced the crooked leases in the civil suit for their recovery, and the criminal suit against the conspirators has only just come to trial. And under what circumstances! Sinclair's right-hand men skulk in Europe, and the Government cannot bring them back. The jurymen who judge him must be such weak-minded morons that they have never heard of the Supreme Court's de- nunciation or formed an opinion of this scoundrel's guilt. The trial is held up for days by legal quibblings over the question whether Sinclair's previous testimony before a Senate committee will be admitted in evidence: and the court's decision is that it may not — the jury cannot hear his former admissions. He and his associates refuse to answer questions on the ground that to do so might incriminate them — yet the jury may not hold that against them! And finally, it is discovered that the unscrupulous scalawag has hired a corps of Burns detectives to shadow jurymen, in- quire into the mortgages on their houses and into their debts and friendships— for no conceivable purpose except to browbeat or bribe them. Yet this man is one of the leaders of American business, allied even in the Teapot Dome deal with the Standard Oil, and the employer of Cabinet officers and President's sons. /^vIL MEN GO FREE while awaiting trial, but Donato V^ Carillo and Calogero Grecco, anti-Fascist Italians, have spent five months in the Bronx County jail, New York City, hoping daily for legal action on their case. They are accused of killing two Fascists in the Memorial Day parade last June; but a group of Italian and American liberals be- lieve that they are in jail only because their Fascist op- ponents want them out of the way and have succeeded in persuading the New York police to do Mussolini's dirty work for him. Giacomo B. Caldora, president of the Duce Fascist Alliance, has told the story of this plot. Caldora was formerly high in Fascist circles; but, he says, he split with his associates when they sought to avenge their own dead by railroading innocent men through the law courts. It is alleged that the detective in charge of the investiga- tion is himself an active Fascist. There seems to be no doubt that anti-Fascists killed Fascists on May 30, and the murderers should be discovered and punished; but vi- carious atonement by innocent men in political sympathy with the guilty men is hardly a sound principle of justice Norman Thomas, 70 Fifth Avenue, New York, is chairman of the committee which is raising funds for the defense. MAYOR THOMPSON of Chicago has had "words" with the directors of the Chicago Public Library and the directors of the library have had words with his Honor. The directors say: ... We believe these books should be supplied to the library patrons that they may be acquainted with every shade of opinion. In this the Chicago Public Library is like all other libraries in the world, a depository of human thought; consequently much of its contents are contradic- tory. This exchange and freedom of thought we consider the primary function of a library and in keeping with the American ideal of a free press. To this the Mayor could only reply: As your views evidently do not agree with those of the people and as you are expending the taxpayers' money against the will of the people as expressed at the polls, the honest thing for you to do is to resign. Surely the situation has passed beyond the bounds of adult controversy, and the twenty-nine civic organizations which have just drawn up a protest against the antics of their exuberant Mayor have made a worthy but futile gesture. The Chicago Women's Club, the Chicago Church Federation, the Women's Trade Union League, and the Young Women's Christian Association are among the groups represented, all of them being part of the Joint Committee on Public School Affairs.

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532 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3254 OBVIOUSLY THE ADMINISTRATION intends to make an impression on the Sixth Pan-American Con- ference when it opens in Havana, Cuba, on January 16. President Coolidge will go down to deliver the opening address; and in the whole history of American diplomacy we do not recall any list of delegates to a diplomatic con- ference so imposing as the roster of the men we will send to Cuba — Charles Evans Hughes; Henry P. Fletcher, for- mer Ambassador to Chile, Mexico, and Belgium, and now to Italy; ex-Senator Oscar W. Underwood; Dwight W. Mor- row, who has just left J. P. Morgan and Co. for the am- bassadorship to Mexico; former Justice Morgan J. O'Brien; James Brown Scott of the Carnegie Endowment; Ray Lyman Wilbur, president of the Leland Stanford Univer- sity; Leo S. Rowe, director-general of the Pan-American U lion ; and the new Ambassador to Cuba, who has not yet been named. The occasion is regarded, the Washington dispatches say, as "an opportunity to remove misunder- standings." Ex-Senator Poindexter has just returned from his embassy in Peru with news that South America is alive with fear and hatred of the United States; the same newspapers that announced this delegation carried the story of another "battle" in Nicaragua, in which one United States marine was wounded and six Nicaraguans killed. As Ex-Senator Poindexter points out, every such battle is heralded throughout Latin America as new evidence of Yankee imperialism. It will be hard to remove such "mis- understandings"; it is even possible that the Latins un- derstand the significance of our policy better than do the people of the United States. JAPAN'S WORKINGMEN cast their first ballots at the elections of members of the prefectural councils in Sep- tember; and the results were anxiously watched as the first test of the new universal manhood-suffrage law. The gov- ernment party led, with 602 candidates elected; the Oppo- sition won 522 seats — a closer vote than was anticipated. But tv>e most interesting sign was the appearance for the first time at a Japanese election of official representatives of Labor. The Government's repression of early attempts at the formation of Farmer-Labor parties had succeeded in splitting the Labor forces into four groups; but the embry- onic parties nominated 200 candidates and elected 26 of them — twice as many as the Government expected. The Ronoto, most radical and outspoken of the groups, led by Ikuo Oyama, who last year was forced to resign his pro- fessorship of political science at Waseda University, won 23 of the 26 Labor seats; and in the seaport city of Kobe a Labor candidate led the poll. Politics in Japan are notori- ously corrupt; Mr. Oyama's "radicalism" consisted largely in the bitterness of his attack upon bipartisan graft. Even relatively conservative journals express the hope that the advent of these pioneer Laborites will exercise a restraining influence and look forward to further Labor gains in the parliamentary elections of 1928. S PARKER GILBERT, the able American who is serv- • ing as Agent General of Reparations in Germany, has published the vigorous memorandum which he addressed on October 20 to the German Government. He warned it against its mounting expenses, suggesting that the proposal to increase the salaries of its civil employees, to give in- demnities for private property lost during the war, and to increase school expenditures menaced the equilibrium of the budget. He objected particularly to the growing in- debtedness of the states and communes — which seem to have borrowed more than §650,000,000 abroad — and he concluded that, despite Germany's extraordinary success in reconstruction, there were evidences of "overspending and overborrowing," of "artificial stimulation and overexpan- sion" which, if unchecked, would lead to severe economic depression and endanger the reparations payments. The German officials think Mr. Gilbert's fears exaggerated. Hitherto he has been an optimist, but any economist must regard the increased payments due in 1928 with a certain awe and doubt. What impresses us most, however, is the spectacle of this "unofficial" American lecturing the Reich on its finances. Mr. Gilbert was not appointed by the American Government, but he is inevitably regarded as its spokesman, and through it as the spokesman of the Ameri- cans who have lent hundreds of millions of dollars to Ger- many. Will Germany heed his warning? If not, wThat will we do about it? Our financial overlordship of the world is leading us into deep waters. THE GAIN BY THE LABOR PARTY of more than a hundred new seats in the local elections just held in England and Scotland has this year a particular signifi- cance. Labor majorities in many borough and town coun- cils and boards of guardians, and strong Labor minorities in many more, have, since the war, been a source of bitter annoyance to the Conservatives. By their power to vote unemployment and poor relief, these Labor councilors have wron the support of large working-class constituencies, a support which in the long run is translated into votes for Labor in the general election. Labor councilors, such as George Lansbury and Susan Lawrence, have gone to prison for voting appropriations for relief in their boroughs, which have been judged "unreasonable" by the auditors. Going to prison has, of course, only had the further effect of increasing their popularity and that of the Labor Party; both Susan Lawrence and George Lansbury are now in Par- liament. The Conservatives have tried by various devices to discredit the local Labor authorities and limit their power over the taxpayers' money. Parliament has tightened the control of the auditors — appointed by the Ministry of Health — and has changed the penalty for recalcitrant coun- cilors from a prison sentence to disbarment from office for five years. It is encouraging to see the prompt answer of the voters to this effort to eliminate and undermine Labor's local representatives. LEON TROTZKY AND GREGORY ZINOVIEV have , been expelled both from the Executive Committee of the Communist International and from the Central Com- mittee and Central Controlling Commission of the Com- munist Party. "Autocratic usurpers," "cheats," "despots," and "voting rabble rounded up to give a semblance of au- thority to the decrees of self-appointed dictators" are among the epithets which Trotzky is reported to have hurled at the Stalin-Bukharin bloc which ousted him. It remains to be seen whether Trotzky and his associates will be per- mitted to remain within the Communist Party, and what they will do if they are expelled. It has been the boast of Russian Communists that however rigid their control of politics outside their party, within that charmed circle criticism was free. Evidently Trotzky was too much for them to bear. His worst crime appears to have been the

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Nov. 16, 1927] The Nation 533 reprinting, on a secret non-Communist press, of Lenin's last "testament," and it is amusing to recall Lenin's words: Comrade Stalin, having become general secretary, has concentrated an enormous power in his hands; and I am not sure that he always knows how to use that power with sufficient caution. On the other hand Comrade Trotzky . . . is distinguished not only by his exceptional abilities — per- sonally he is, to be sure, the most able man in the present Central Committee — but also by his too far-reaching self- confidence and a disposition to be too much attracted by the purely administrative side of affairs. These two qualities of the two most able leaders of the present Central Committee might, quite innocently, lead to a split. . . . Stalin is too rough, and this fault, entirely supportable in relations among us Communists, becomes insupportable in the office of general secretary. Therefore I propose to the comrades to find a way to remove Stalin from that position and appoint to it another man who differs from Stalin — more patient, more loyal, more polite, and more attentive to comrades, less capricious, etc. WHEN KING GEORGE'S WHISKERS were replaced on the South African stamps by springboks and other local flora and fauna one weighty step in the develop- ment of South African nationality was taken. But the question of a flag for the South African Union presented greater difficulties. The Nationalists left the Union Jack entirely out of their original design, whereupon the old British stock tumultuously set out to prove that the theory of British stolidity was a myth. To judge by the tempera- ture of the talk, civil war was narrowly averted. The Gov- ernment lost something of its Dutch stubbornness. After the era of good feeling initiated by the Imperial Confer- ence, General Hertzog proposed a compromise flag — the flag of Van Riebeek, the founder of the original Cape Colony, with broad orange, white, and blue horizontal stripes, a quartered shield to be set in the middle of the white stripe. One quarter of this shield was to bear the old Transvaal flag, one the Free State, one the Union Jack, and one four stars — to fill up. But patriotic Britons calculated that the Union Jack covered only one sixty-fourth of the whole, and demanded the shield alone as a substitute for this flag. The oratorical war broke out anew. The Rev. Van der Merwe stirred the cohorts by proclaiming that the shield was a mere "scab on the flag" which in due course would fall off. Now the Government has made further conces- sions. The shield is dropped; instead the three old flags are together to fill a third of the broad white stripe, so that the Union Jack mounts to one twenty-seventh of the whole flag's space; and in Natal always and in certain cities on state occasions the Union Jack will fly alongside the South African emblem. Apparently, everybody — for the time be- ing— is happy. But some day the majority race of South Africa may demand a great black square in the flag — and if Negroes are civilized into becoming as big fools as white men, that will be another pretty row. TEACHING IS STILL the chief function of our colleges and their faculties should consist of teachers, in the view of Ernest Hatch Wilkins, recently inaugurated as president of Oberlin. In his inaugural address Dr. Wil- kins, who was formerly professor of Romance languages in the University of Chicago and for three years dean of its College of Arts, Literature, and Sciences, said that "If the teaching is good, the college is a good college, even though its plant be inadequate and its athletic stars be dim. If the teaching is poor, the college is a poor college, even though it have a Freshman Week and a psychiatrist." In regard to research among the teachers Dr. Wilkins defined his position thus: I have been clear enough, I hope, in my insistence that for college purposes excellence in teaching is the main thing. I do not regard interest in research as a necessary concomi- tant of college teaching. And I deplore the wasted energy of men who, under extrinsic pressure, attempt research though they have no gift for it. But if a man has, in ad- dition to teaching ability, the gift of research — if he has really, in the intellectual domain, the adventurous spirit of the pioneer, if he combines wide-ranging imagination and infinite patience — then that gift is to be cultivated as a precious thing: precious not only because of the inherent value of its results, but precious because if rightly utilized in connection with his teaching it may vivify that teaching in the highest degree. IT WAS STRANGE to find the rebel Shaw defending the apostle of castor oil as a cure for civil discontent. But it remained for Mussolini's censors to cap the comedy by reediting G. B. S.'s apologia for their chief, and for Gae- tamo Salvemini to bring their antics to the light in a letter to the Manchester Guardian. "Mussolini achieved a dictatorship," Shaw wrote, "after marching to Rome with a force of blackshirts which a single disciplined regiment backed by a competent Government could have routed at any moment." When Shaw's remarks were reprinted in Italy, the censors cut out the words which we italicize ; they did not harmonize with the official Fascist myth. Shaw wrote: "To tell us that Mussolini's extraordinary success was achieved by murdering one hostile deputy and admin- istering castor oil to his supporters is childish." The cen- sors omitted the murder, and changed the word "sup- porters" into "adversaries." At another point they inserted into Shaw's text a whole series of remarks of their own. Mr. Shaw has thundered at censors before; will he now renounce his sudden love, or, as Salvemini suggests, has "Kate at long last met her Petruchio"? Must some new dramatist write "The Taming of the Shaw"? POLICEMEN IN AUTOMOBILES to keep the crowds in order, 57,000 people come to view the body which lay in state for four days, $100,000 worth of flowers — one piece rumored to have come from the Prince of Wales — breath- less crowds standing all day in a cold November wind, crowding the church, fainting, moaning, crying — these were the dramatic periods that marked the funeral of a dancer and comedienne; this was the last gesture to Florence Mills by the members of two races, but chiefly of her own. Nor would we begrudge her one flower, one tear; she made thou- sands of people laugh; she could sing in a weird, wild way; she could dance. Most of all she was herself, and, being herself, she joined that small group of persons whose genius rests on their personality. That she was a Negro made it harder at first for her to get a hearing outside her own race, and after she once got started it made things easier for her. She was unique, and therefore wonderful. Inevitably she opened a path for other Negro performers: she did not need to present her race with laughter — they had it already ; she presented an alien race with a strange, new kind of laughter, she made them like it, and they will demand it again and again.

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534 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 32.54 Bloody Colorado IT is the old, old, bloody story, with a few 1927 trim- mings. The miners move from mine to mine today in motor cars; but when the coal company puts them out of the company houses they move into tent colonies that are no warmer than the Ludlow tent colony into which the State machine-guns poured their soft-nosed bullets on that gory April 20, 1914. A twenty-year-old bobbed-haired Mexican girl named Rosia, the Associated Press reports, leads the women's picket-lines in place of old Mother Jones, whom the mine police held incomunicado for ten weeks in 1914; but Rosia is old enough to recall that two of her brothers were killed in the coal war thirteen years ago. The mem- ores of that war still dominate the canyons and arroyas of Southern Colorado; at Ludlow stands a statue of a miner and a miner's wife, with a child in her arms; and the in- scription on the monument reads: To the memory of the men, women, and children "who lost their lives in freedom's cause at Ludlow, Colorado, April 20, 1914. Erected by the United Mine Workers of America. Not the United Mine Workers, but the Industrial Workers of the World are leading the fight in 1927. The reason lies in the history of the company-union plan de- vised by W. L. MacKenzie King, present Prime Minister of Canada, and put into effect by John D. Rockefeller, Jr., the largest stockholder in the Colorado Fuel and Lline Co., which dominates the mine field of that State. Mr. Rocke- feller refused to deal with the more conservative union; and the result is that today a more radical union has his mines tied up and idle; and the company officials are in- sisting that without the aid of the dreaded State militia they can do nothing but close down or capitulate. Com- pany unionism has raised its own tombstone. There were strikes in Colorado — violent, bloody, fron- tier strikes in 1883, 1893, and 1903. In 1903 the com- panies came near to crushing the United Mine Workers; and thereafter they preferred foreign-born labor. Then came the historic strike of 1913-14. The companies owned the mine towns — their streets, houses, Y. M. C. A.'s, schools; and the striking workers were ejected from their homes on twenty-four hours' notice. The union housed them and their children in flimsy tents through the snowy winter, and the strike held strong. The militia kept search- lights playing on the tent colonies all night long; State troopers with drawn swords rode down parades of protest- ing miners' wives ; the Governor ordered the newspapers not to print "news calculated to injure the State"; union organ- izers were shot in cold blood. Finally one morning the militia, led by an officer who told his men to "shoot every God damned thing that moves," poured death into the Lud- low colony and set the tents afire. Beneath one cellar floor two miners' wives and eleven children were found dead the next day, and estimates of the dead ran from twenty-five to forty-five. Against that grim background +he Rockefeller Plan was born. Mr. Rockefeller said that he would rather lose all the millions invested in the coal-fields than recognize the union there. The operators refused the Governor's propo- sals of mediation and even Woodrow Wilson's plan for a three-year truce. But when the strike was well over and the ashes of Ludlow were cold, the Colorado Fuel and Iron Co. installed its famous Employee-Representation Plan, one of the first and certainly the most-advertised of American company-union plans. It would be pointless here to analyze the details of that plan. It was exhaustively studied and analyzed by two investigators for the Russell Sage Foundation in 1921. (Selekman and Van Kleeck: "Employees' Representation in Management: the Colorado Fuel and Iron Co.") The com- pany superintendents did their best to make the men vote for representatives under that plan and to take an interest in its workings. Undoubtedly Mr. Rockefeller and his asso- ciates were genuinely concerned to develop a system of company unionism which might satisfy the men without taking control of their organization out of the company hands. They did give the miners better homes and schools, clubs and bathhouses, and a method, which sometimes worked, for preventing arbitrary discharge. But the miners knew that the plan was invented to defeat their union ; it was operated by their bosses. Where they were allowed to, they continued their own organization. In 1919 the company's workers joined in the national coal strike, and there were smaller strikes, despite the com- pany-union plan, in 1921 and 1922. And now in 1927 the company's mines are closed. Its steel mill has had to stop for lack of coal, and its railway has ceased running. The company defeated the United Mine Workers, but the I. W. W. has taken its place. The mine workers even charge that the companies encouraged the I. W. W., hoping thus to divide the workers and crush both unions. Must we have more Ludlows before the right of Colo- rado miners to have their own unions can be recognized? The story of the last few weeks is painfully and perilously reminiscent. The strike was called to begin on October 16. On the night of October 15 a gang of thugs, who advertised themselves as vigilantes upholding law and order, broke in the door of the I. W. W. hall in Walsen- burg and sacked the place. According to the Denver Post and the Pueblo Chieftain other bands of armed citizens took the law into their own hands and attempted forcibly to deport the members of the I. W. W. But these Colorado miners are made of stern stuff. They did not flinch; they continued to strike. The walk-out spread. Singing pickets rode in their flivvers from mine to mine, carrying the news. The wives and sisters went along for the holiday, and when mine guards stood in the way they led the picket-lines. Scores were arrested; the miners announced that if pickets were being arrested they would fill the jails to overflow- ing. They refuse to plead guilty or not guilty: picketing, they say, is not a crime. The State Industrial Commis- sion refuses to hear their plea on the ground that the I. W. W. is not a representative union, despite the evi- dence of the idle mines. The Governor has denounced the strike as "un-American," ordered the National Guard to be recruited up to full strength, sent airplanes to watch the picketers, and dispatched a group of national-guard officers to warn the workers against picketing on pain of martial law — and there the matter now stands. It sounds perilously like 1914.

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Nov. 16, 1927] The Nation 535 The Harvard War Memorial An Enemy Worth Having ONE million dollars is the sum sought of Harvard grad- uates for the war memorial in memory of those Harvard men who died — on the Allied side; those who died because they conscientiously believed in Germany and her cause are not to be so honored, if we are correctly informed. Of this large sum not much over half has been subscribed. The reason for this is not difficult to seek: It is because a great modern church is to be erected on the site of the historic Appleton Chapel opposite to the Widener Library, thus further dwarfing, if not ruining, what is left of open space in that part of the College Yard. Appleton Chapel is not a thing of great beauty; it be- longs to no school or period, but it has been there a long time and, what is more important, it completely fills the need for a college church. But now it must go and the million dollars to come are not, as has been suggested, to recreate some beautiful old colonial church, say by Bulfinch; it is to build a tremendous modern cathedral of an entirely different type. The money is not to be productive. The income from it is not to help to do away with war and make impossible further useless sacrifices of young Harvard lives. It is not to be made into a foundation using its income to aid struggling students or in supplying some of the spiritual needs of the university. No, it is to go into a brick-and-mortar structure far larger than is needed, and Harvard graduates are being told that "the honor of Harvard demands that this honor of her sons be lastingly recognized." Jewish and Catholic graduates are being dunned like the rest for this Protestant memorial. This blundering is the more remarkable because Har- vard has on its own grounds the ghastliest example of war-memorial folly to be found anywhere. Memorial Hall, a monument of post-Civil War ugliness, stands unused near the Chapel. Long a dining-hall and the scene of Com- mencement exercises, it is now utilized for concerts and scattering lectures. It cannot be torn down, and no project has yet been worked out for remodeling and reconstructing it — no one dared suggest that the new war-memorial money be utilized to make a valuable structure out of the old Me- morial Hall. No better proof could be given of the folly of attempting to build a monument for the taste and uses of the future. Yet the cry for a great big fashionable church goes on, and the Harvard Alumni Bulletin has been voicing with irritation a put-up-or-shut-up policy in reply to the many letters of protest which it has been receiving. It has declared the issue settled by the vote of certain organizations of alumni, and that is all there is to it. The error is not to be corrected. Fortunately, men are continuing to speak out against it. Owen Wister, than whom no man was bloodthirstier in the war days, finds the proposed church out of place, and so does John Mead Howells, the architect who made the original suggestion that if it be a church it be a beauti- ful Bulfinch creation. The truth is that the day has gone by for this sort of memorial. Sensible people do not try any more to connect God and war. The small attendance at chapel will look ridiculous under its vaulted arches; if it is built there ought at least to be a Catholic chapel and a Jewish synagogue to keep it company. If Harvard Uni- versity were as wise and as far-sighted as it is old and big, it would refuse to build any visible monument whatever. MOST personal organs, whether issued by an individual or a coterie, suffer in common from a distressing sort of anemia. Whether radical or conservative, devoted to imagism or to deep breathing, they look, feel, and taste so much alike that one can remember nothing about them ex- cept that they are printed on soft paper and bound up like one of Mr. Otto Kahn's speeches. Nothing of the sort can be said, however, of the substantial quarterly, The Enemy, edited and for the most part written by Wyndham Lewis. It is full of fresh ideas and intellectual excitement. Mr. Lewis, who, by the way, recently visited America in a spirit less condescending than is usual with his coun- trymen, devotes most of the present issue of The Enemy to American affairs. He has one trait (and probably only one) in common with our own Mr. Mencken. That trait is the result of an insatiable interest in every phenomenon of contemporary society combined with a capacity to make an original comment on each. Whitehead is not too abstruse for him, nor Ring Lardner too popular, and in the midst of a discussion on Alexander's time philosophy he can see just how Anita Loos's fiction illustrates one of the most important tendencies of our age. Pages could not contain a catalog of his enthusiasms or his hates. He believes, for example, that Mencken and others have presented America with an inferiority complex which finds its expression in Sherwood Anderson's dithyrambs over the Negro; and he believes that the New York skyscraper is less the result of the narrowness of our island than of the competitive adver- tising of Big Business working among a people who have assumed that the biggest business will have the biggest sky- scraper. In literature he is against James Joyce, Gertrude Stein, and all Montparnasse. He is against Mr. Lawrence's "dark God within" and against the "revolt of Asia" implied in Bolshevism. He is also against Bergson's philosophy of change, and he invents interesting classifications like the "time mind" and the "cult of the child" by which he can link James Joyce with Henri Bergson or Gertrude Stein with Anita Loos. Mr. Lewis is a radical in the literal sense of the word — he is looking for the roots of things and as he digs down after them the dirt flies. But he accepts, on the other hand, very few of the dogmas of current radicalism and he is no part of the dominant Spirit of the Age. He sees no reason why the opponents of certain "radical" tendencies should confine themselves to dull platitude nor why all the daring and brilliance should be on one side. Perhaps, indeed, he is really that very rare and hence very valuable thing, an in- telligent conservative who, for example, can criticize the ideals of the modern revolution without thereby implying that he thinks President Coolidge is a great statesman, and who can also have interesting doubts about James Joyce without suggesting any suspicion that he considers Thomas Nelson Page the greatest writer yet produced in America. As such we welcome him. For all those who fear to see radicalism solidify into dogma, the free play of his ro- bustly critical mind and the suggestiveness of his opinions will be the source of delight. Even those who believe most firmly in all that he doubts will do well to read him, for he is an enemy worth having in a day when radicals seldom have a chance to match themselves against any except second-rate minds.

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536 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3254 A LITTLE biology is a dangerous thing. Particularly if it happens to be part of the equipment of a young Englishman. Let an Englishman putter around a labora- tory for a year or so and he will emerge to write a novel, or a defense of the empire, or an essay on women. John Langdon-Davies took anthropology as well as biology and so his essay has become a whole book called "A Short History of Women." Biology and anthropology are both beautiful sciences to play around with. Like a good anec- dote either serves to score any point you please; that is as soon as you get away from the strict confines of the particular science. For instance, here in America, it can be proved anthropologically that our immigration laws are right and excellent. It can be proved that they are all wrong. The deciding factor is the emotional complexion of the scientist who happens to be writing the article. This is not to say that Mr. Langdon-Davies has done an unworthy book. My quarrel may be kept within small compass. To be sure I do prefer the biologists who re- frain from taking a moral tone. It seems to me possible that Mr. Langdon-Davies has been unfair to "a worm-like animal called Bonellia." It is the male which n.oves him to indignation. "We must assume," he writes, "that in Bonellia, to be a male is part of the reward of successful parasitism, a reward purchased at the price which has always to be paid by parasites — beastly degeneracy." Now some of my best friends are parasites. It would not be im- possible to write a defense of parasitism. Much of the grace, softness, and beauty of the world comes from those who cling and are supported. Even the Bible has kind words for the lilies of the field which spin no more than the male Bonellia does. But what I had in mind was a defense of women. Langdon-Davies treats the more radical feminists almost as rudely as if they too were worm-like animals. Much that they say seems to him the most arrant sort of rubbish. It is reasonable enough to be indignant with anyone who misstates a present fact. A milder sort of impatience may be manifested against those who falsify events of the past, but when the future comes up for discussion I hold it is no part of wisdom to dismiss abruptly any guess, however fantastic may be its garment. In many fields the gift of prophecy is not given even to the scientific. And Langdon-Davies should know this, for in his book he quotes certain statements of men honored in their day whose words now seem to have dwindled to myth and supersti- tion. Today's axiom can be tomorrow's folly. God set a great, deep gulf between "This has not happened" and "This can never be." The younger biologist is far too sharp and short with "the ridiculous assertions of a certain type of extreme feminist who would have us believe that women, educated and trained like men, would have the muscles and stamina of men." "Women," this author decides, "are by nature the weaker sex." And he is dogmatic, too, in declaring, "No amount of gymnastics will make women on an average as muscular as men." urwr^. (J, A $T*v\. Readily enough I will agree that at the moment of going to press women, by and large, seem less athletic than men. I rather think that this will still be true two weeks from Thursday. But, being no scientist at all, I should hesitate to hazard just what will happen one thousand years come Monday. Indeed, there is reason to quarrel with the phrase "by nature." I have heard a hundred things which men and women must deny themselves for all time because Nature is in opposition. But do these young biologists assume that natural law makes no provision for amend- ment? Nature is still going on and has never joined the standpat party. Perhaps she cannot spin about on a dime like the more fluid politicians, but give her time and Nature is quite competent to change her mind and ways completely. If in the course of ages there seems good reason to put male and female persons upon a physical parity Nature is quite capable of arranging it even at the expense of disturbing the biological dogma of John Langdon-Davies. Nor am I at all certain that at least a close approx- imation of prowess may not be nearer than any of the laboratory men assume. They go, these scientists, to such obscure corners for proofs and tokens. The short historian of women bases many of his conclusions upon investigations made by Dr. Ales Hrdlicka among the Indians of North America. Among these findings Langdon-Davies records the fact, "Although women work hard all their lives among the Indians, they are more likely to become stout than the men." The young biologist puts this interesting phenome- non down to the sex difference in metabolism. It may be so, but I should like to know whether good Dr. Hrdlicka consulted whatever equivalent for Vogue existed among the Indians to ascertain just which figure was held by squaws to be most fascinating. As one who has seen the female form change all the way from Lillian Russell to Marilyn Miller within two decades I must admit that my faith is slim in the immutability of metabolism. And while Dr. Hrdlicka was out among the Indians why didn't Langdon-Davies observe the headlines upon the first page of the daily journals? Is it nothing to a scientist that Trudy swam the Channel and Lenglen revolutionized the game of tennis? They are exceptions, to be sure, but Nature seems to be a scout in constant search for varia- tion. Ederles of some other day may cross even broader expanses of tumultuous water sporting like dolphins as they do it. Nor is it so that Trudy is solitary in her prowess. In every long swim of the past season some woman has been well up among the contenders. Nobody knows just how many men in all the world can vanquish Suzanne at tennis. My guess is about two hundred, and even if this estimate ought to be higher there would re- main thousands and thousands of men incapable of match- ing her skill despite the advantages of male metabolism. The story does not end with the tally of a few women in golf and tennis and the water. The gap between good female golf and that of men grows slighter. Here at least the scientist should avail himself of facts since

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Nov. 16, 1927] The Nation 537 they are capable of being set down in figures just as pre- cise as anything which Dr. Hrdlicka may have found among the savage redskins. No figures will be supplied here at the moment. Let it suffice that ten years ago it was almost unheard of for a woman to break eighty even at the shorter courses. Now the thing is a commonplace. To be sure, the golfing standard of the male has also undergone an im- provement but not at the pace set by the women. An un- scientific mind cannot be shaken from the theory that when two objects are moving in the same direction at dissimilar speed the one which goes a little faster is in time likely to overtake the other even though it starts out in the rear. Golf might be ruled out as not among the key activities of human life, but at that I think it may have more importance upon the growing equality of the sexes than the unfortunate habit of Indian women to grow stouter. Nor would it be a bad idea for biologists to take vacations now and then from their bonellia and other barnacles. It is one thing to show by graphs and charts that woman is the weaker vessel, but when a man gets on a tennis court against some girl with a good forehand drive his statistics will avail him nothing. Then he'll have to prove it. British Finance and the Labor Party By J. RAMSAY MacDONALD OUR Tory press is once more working up frenzy over the new financial program of the Labor Party, and as the Liberals are beating drums for a revival, they follow suit. The United States is freed from our problems of national finance, but as our position is not without interest across the Atlantic and Labor views on finance had better not be taken from prejudiced or ignorant sources, an ex- planation of the new program may be helpful. The patrons of The Nation will not have forgotten the suppressed panic which preceded the assumption of office by Labor in 1924, the flight of capital which nobody missed here, and, later on, its sneaking return, diminished, I am glad to say, by its journeyings. The same panic will be tried again and, I make bold to prophesy, with the same results. In 1922 the Labor Party committed itself to a levy upon capital for the sole purpose of paying off a substan- tial part of the national debt. It was not to be repeated; it was to be one effort. Nevertheless, the Tory press shrieked about thrift and confiscation, and only when it found that the mass of the people were wiser, calmer minded, and knew more about economics than it thought, did it settle down to argument. The Capital Levy was un- doubtedly a good electioneering cry for us, and it was also a sound economic proposition. The political difficulties of the levy were never minimized by the party, however. When national stock was held in vast quantities by the peo- ple who would have to pay the levy, its collection would have been easy because the bulk of it could be paid in na- tional bonds of one kind or another, and capital invested in industry need hardly have been touched. From that point of view, a levy now would not be so easy as in 1922. Moreover, sinking funds have been created, and movements in money have raised some doubts as to whether, at this time of day, a large decrease in the debt would be worth the effort required to pay it. The Colwyn Committee (so called because Lord Colwyn was its chairman) was ap- pointed by the Labor Government in 1924 to inquire into the effect of our heavy taxation upon industry and to make recommendations. The chief value of its report is that it makes it clear that an income tax has but a small adverse effect upon national economy, and that the sinking fund should be raised from £50,000,000 or £60,000,000 to £100,- 000,000 per annum. Thereupon the discussion on the effect of a national debt has been revived, and at the moment the arguments are in favor of not fussing too much about it. But the debt is a political problem as well as a finan- cial one. A budget of £800,000,000 per annum looks alarm- ing, and though the country has too much common sense to rush blindly into an economy cry, the taxation imposed does seem to have reached the limit, and if public opinion may not clamor for retrenchment it is not inclined to sup- port expansion. Of this enormous budget about £380,000,- 000 is chargeable to the debt services. Various moralists may point out that the real value of the debt capital has doubled since 1918, and that those who gave the state ten shillings in 1914-1918 now get from a pound to thirty shillings in return ; but no one has yet been able to devise a method of rectifying that anomaly short of doing serious damage to national good faith. So the burden is borne and will be borne. If there is retrenchment in our taxation or a de- termination not to expand, it is not the holders of the debt who will suffer; it is those who need social service like edu- cation, state insurance, pensions, health. That has to be understood, for that is the key to the Labor Party position. It will commit no act of bad faith to its creditors, but it will fight for an efficient system of social service. An important consideration must here be noted. Gen- erally speaking, the debt is held by the wealthy who com- plain most of the high income tax. But let us see what happens to them and their taxes. They receive their in- come-tax demand and dig a hole in their bank balance to pay it. In due course they receive their interest on their debt-holdings and with that fill up the hole made by their taxation. That simple transference from a bank balance to the Treasury and from the Treasury back to a bank balance is literally true when we think of the position of the wealthy class as a whole. The tax necessary to pay our debt is no burden upon the wealthy class whose sacri- fices are in appearance only; and yet that appearance en- ables them to cry out for a crippling of the social services, and they find a willing ear in our present Government. That so much of the taxation paid by the rich finds its way back into their own pockets is one of the reasons why we find no traces of a shortness of necessary capital, and no limitation of the shameless and Byzantine display of wealth extravagantly and vulgarly used. Nor is that all. The high budget totals give chancel- lors the excuse, not only for cutting down the costs of en- lightened government, but for imposing indirect taxes upon necessities which keep the cost of living higher and reduce the real value of wages. Our poorer people are paying more for essential government than ever they did; our rich, far

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538 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3254 less than their just share. Our present system of taxation is ingeniously devised to make the rich suffer nothing and the poor pay for services which they are supposed to require by reason of their normal poverty. To rectify this, the Labor proposals have been drafted. They advocate a surtax which will be graded but which will average two shillings in the pound upon unearned in- comes of over £500 per annum. Were this done we should only be back to 1918, and when we remember how much of existing taxation is not a burden but a transfer, the real weight of taxation would not be much, if at all, heavier than it was before the war. When a political party talks about thrift it generally has its tongue in its cheek; when it uses it for electioneering purposes its tongue is always there. A Conservative paper which stated that if a workman who has saved £10,000 finds he has to pay a pound or two in extra income tax he will not save at all, had the same knowledge of life as the Liberal organ which informed its readers that when a workman saved £500 the Labor Party would begin to confiscate the rest, had of the English language. Thrift will not be affected, the necessary supply of new capital will not be curtailed. The pull in favor of the financier and money lender in the distribution of national wealth caused by a big national debt will be modified in the interest of the masses of the people and the figures of taxation will be made to conform to reality of sacrifice and be deprived of the fiction which they now bear. Only this and nothing more will be the result of the new financial proposals of the Labor Party. Higher Education in Chicago By LAWRENCE MARTIN WHEN "Big Bill" Thompson put on his whirlwind campaign in Chicago last spring he won on the strength of the thumping show he offered. He jazzed pol- itics. In his str'dent and colorful burlesque he made use of such properties as faked tar-paper, rats named after his enemies, descriptions of his whiskered rival's method of eating eggs, and thundered revelations of the British lion's designs on Chicago's independence. He charged freely that Anglophile propaganda was having free play in the schools. He promised that as Mayor one of his first acts would be to drive the Superintendent of Schools, William McAndrew, "that stool-pigeon of King George," out of town. On the day of his inauguration Thompson appointed J. Lewis Coath as president of the school board. Coath vowed he would have McAndrew discharged before September 1. In 1915 — to place the show in its setting — Ella Flagg Young, then Superintendent, created the position of extra- teachtr (commonly called teacher-clerk) for the purpose of assisting the principals of large schools. According to Sec- tion 129 of the School Law of 1917 all employees of the school system except superintendent, business manager, at- torneys, principals, and teachers must come under the civil- service law. The school board ignored this law until the matter became an issue in the suit of Brennan, a stationary fireman, in 1925. In June, 1927, the State Supreme Court refused to review the Appellate Court's decision, making it mandatory upon the Board of Education to abide by the letter of the school law. On August 3 the attorney for the board, James Todd, prepared a resolution which, over the protest of Superintendent McAndrew, was adopted by the nine members present, to bring the board's action into com- plete harmony with the decisions. Particularly, it directed the Superintendent "to forthwith arrange for the transfer to instructional work of all members of the teaching force who have been assigned to any other line of employment," and "to forthwith make requisition for the appointment by the civil-service commission of such employees as may be necessary to carry on the clerical and business administra- tive activites of the education department." Two weeks later the extra-teachers filed a petition for injunction to prevent enforcement of this resolution by the Superintendent and the board. Evidence was heard before a master in chancery, and the first and chief witness for the plaintiff was the Superintendent of Schools, who had been made technically a defendant. It was disclosed that Mr. McAndrew had opposed the board's resolution; that he regarded it as a personal matter directed against him ; that he had taken no steps to put the order into effect ; and that prior to the filing of the bill of complaint he had been in conference with the teachers' attorney without informing the board's attorney of his intentions. Mr. McAndrew contended that the matter turned on the question whether teacher-clerks should be considered clerks or teachers. He maintained that they were teachers, that the resolution had been drawn without consulting him, and that the "haste and misunderstanding evident . . . justifies all legitimate means to prevent the resolution to be put into effect." Therefore, he declared, "as a defendant, I admit the allegations of the bill and admit that the complainant is entitled to the relief asked." As a result of this clash between McAndrew and Todd, the latter brought resolutions before the board which Mr. Coath accepted as a mandate for the ousting of the Super- intendent. Accordingly, on August 29 charges of insub- ordination were filed against McAndrew and he was sus- pended. But when he came to trial before the Board of Education thirty days later he was confronted with a bill of particulars enlarging the original complaint to include "conduct incompatible with and in direct violation of his duties as superintendent" — and unpatriotic acts. It was specifically charged that the Superintendent was continually insubordinate and insolent, that he disregarded direct orders from the board, that he had refused to call teachers' council meetings, and that he had hindered with- drawal of a textbook written by a member of the school system. Another group of complaints stated that he Absented himself from duty without leave; Left his office frequently to go on lecture tours; Edited an educational magazine subsidized by a firm of book publishers; Introduced a program of education which caused con- fusion and impaired teacher morale; Employed various persons without examination.

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Nov. 16, 1927] The Nation 539 Finally came the charges of unpatriotism and subversion: Recommended pro-British texts; Recommended texts in order to make the Declaration of Independence seem old-fashioned; For purpose of perverting the patriotic instincts of school-children, caused to be removed from school walls the picture, "Spirit of '76"; Refused to recommend to the board that school-children donate sums for reconditioning Old Ironsides; Entered into conspiracy with Charles Merriam and Charles H. Judd and others to destroy love of America in the hearts of children. Probably not one of these charges is well founded, and most of them are merely ridiculous. For exam- ple, while it is true that McAndrew did not favor the teachers' councils, the board itself refused three years ago to give official ear to the protest of the Teachers' Federa- tion that he was not calling meetings, thereby becoming a party to the offense of which it now accuses the Superin- tendent. Such at least is the opinion of Margaret Haley, business manager of the federation and no friend of Mc- Andrew. Undoubtedly McAndrew made lecture trips, but other Chicago superintendents have done the same without incurring the board's displeasure. The charge that McAndrew had "introduced a program of education which caused confusion and impaired teacher morale" is peculiarly disingenuous. McAndrew's educa- tional ideas are what led to his appointment as superin- tendent of Chicago's schools. The "program" he introduced included the establishment of a bureau of research, such as exists in most progressive cities, for the purpose of educa- tional experiment and progress. The bureau was bitterly opposed by the Teachers' Federation, which claimed that the tests administered were harmful to the children and led to insidious discriminations between rich and poor. The anti- McAndrew feeling created by the federation is now being capitalized by the Thompson crowd to attack McAndrew for the very methods he was chosen to instal. The Board of Education apparently has forgotten that McAndrew is being tried primarily for insubordination. Perhaps word has gone out from Boss Thompson's office to play up the patriotic stuff which worked so magically in the campaign last spring, and which may constitute Big Bill a national figure if the population of the rest of the country is as readily beguiled as that of Chicago. What- ever the reason, the trial, which started as a star-chamber on insubordination, is definitely committed to finding Mc- Andrew guilty of scheming to make the United States a part of the British Empire. Big Bill himself has written a letter of warning to George V, and has circularized nationally known men ask- ing them to come to Chicago to testify regarding pro- British activities in the United States. In a country as heavily endowed with leisure and wealth as ours it is not difficult for Thompson to find cranks, alarmists, and publicity seekers to regale the world with old wives' tales of the schemes and machinations of the English Speaking Union and British bankers to bind America to Great Brit- ain with hoops of intrigue and perfidy. The definite charges against McAndrew of "aiming to poison American history with pro-British lies" turn on an "investigation" made by Congressman John J. Gorman, at the instance of the Mayor, of history texts for the pur- pose of discovering evidences of British propaganda. The Congressman's report, which purported to be a survey of the books used in the Chicago public schools either intro- duced or retained by McAndrew, bristles with inaccuracies and misstatements. Most of the books complained of were in use in the schools before McAndrew was appointed, many having been introduced during the previous Thompson ad- ministration. The history particularly selected for the patriotic wrath of Gorman, Muzzey's "History of the Amer- ican People," is not used in the Chicago schools. Sentences quoted by Gorman are mutilated and lifted out of their proper texts; for example, in quoting Muzzey's sentence, "the Boston tea party was the last straw — the colonists had added insult to injury," the investigator omitted four words at the end: "in King George's eyes." As a result of these deliberate misrepresentations, Professor Muzzey has filed suit against the author of the report. The first of the patriotism charges — that McAndrew caused the removal of the picture known as the "Spirit of '76" from school walls — is based on a statement by the Superintendent that the picture represented a belligerent spirit which was hardly one to hold up as the ideal for children. Principals of about a dozen schools in which this picture occupied a prominent place thereupon removed it. As to Old Ironsides, it has been for years the practice here not to dun children for money. The third charge, that of conspiring against the country with University of Chicago scholars through the teachers' courses offered at the univer- sity, is probably the most ridiculous of all. Here the main avenue of propaganda is Professor Schlesinger's text, "New Viewpoints in American History," which was the Mayor's target in last spring's campaign circus. There is talk of having a special history written for the schools, calculated to instil "old-fashioned" ideals. Milton Fairman in the Publishers' Weekly points out that "the city's book bill is one of the largest in the country — $989,000," and that those who profess to know believe that "the veil of patriotism is being used to disguise very mercenary motives. ... A tidy fortune awaits the firm which publishes a 100 per cent American text for more than 500,000 children." Finally, a word about personalities. It is believed by some that Mr. McAndrew was often brusque and tactless. Manifestly he failed to adapt himself to the situation which arose, but it must be admitted that to adapt oneself to Chicago's Coaths, Haleys, Todds, and Thompsons, and still not degenerate into a pussyfooter and an errand-boy is a tremendous contract. Meantime the continuous vaudeville show goes on. Maintaining that the trial is illegal regarding all charges except the original one of insubordination (since he was not given the legal thirty days in which to reply to the others) the suspended Superintendent refuses to answer questions dealing with his alleged unpatriotic practices. This fails to trouble the six members who vote solidly against him on every disputed point. The cards are stacked; the trial is a farce. One of the six is Trustee Hemingway, who brought the original charge. Another is Coath, Thompson's president, who is accuser, judge, and executioner-in-prospect all in one. The two parties to the combat, including the trustees, sit on opposite sides of the room. In the front row sits the accused. His curly beard, white but tinged with red, sometimes bristles at the proceedings, but for the most part he leans back unconcernedly in a swivel chair, reading the

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540 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3254 afternoon paper from headlines to comics, or gossips with friends and colleagues, while Attorney Todd thunders on about Georges III and V, and defense counsel object, only to be automatically overruled by the honorable Judge Coath's ready gavel. The trial is a political gesture, whose object is to drag the proceedings along until the end of McAndrew's term in January. Should he be discharged tomorrow he could seek legal review and might get an order of reinstatement. But by dragging out the case the Thompson six can drop the charges a few days before the end of the Superinten- dent's term, leaving him without legal redress. Weeping the Bone By ANITA BRENNER MACBETH feared the ghost at the feast, but Mexico makes a feast for the ghost. All-Saints' Day and All Souls' Day, November 1 and 2, are the Mexican Hal- lowe'en and mark one of the gaiest holidays of the year. Each is a Dead Men's Day — the day the ghosts come home to eat, drink, and be merry. In the villages the Indians perform the same rites as in pre-Spanish times, fitted into their version of Catholicism. The Aztecs believed that, except for warriors and women dead in childbirth, life hereafter had much in common with life on earth. Hence each corpse was buried with his personal sleeping-mat rolled around him, and was given food — if only a crock of beans — and other possessions he needed for the journey to the hereafter: strips of colored paper to pay whatever fees might be convenient, effigies of his family, servants, or himself, perhaps jewelry, and always a single precious stone, jade or coral for the rich, obsidian or basalt for the poor, which was cal.ed "the heart." A small yellow dog, in ashes, always accompanied his master to the other world. Through the mountains that perpetually knock together and over the bridge made narrow and thin for the bad and wide for the good, to the river which was at the end of the journey, the canine trotted along. The river was wide and there was no way of crossing except to swim, and alone no man could do it. The d"g, therefore, supported the man's hand on his collar, and thus helped him across. White or black dogs were said to be too proud to proffer this service. There was a famous dog market at Acolman, where were sold both fattened pups for the epicureans and the amiable yellow plebeian guides to the underworld. Once a year the dead return. On All- Saints' Day the fam- ily watches at night as if at a wake — a Mexican wake — sing- ing, praying, drink- ing, making love, tell- ing tales. Not praying for the dead, but, in their o w n words, "p raying to the dead." Each family sets a table gener- ously spread with beans, chile, rice, tor- tillas, baked pump- kins, yams, and pulque or a bluish maize drink to wash it down. More delicacies are provided if the family can afford it. On the second day — All Souls' Day — come the ghosts of the children. Sweets, cakes, fruit, and toys are laid out for them. There are candy skulls, pastry coffins, ribs and thigh-bones made of frosted sugar, tombstones, wreaths, candles, and whole funerals in miniature and in confec- tionery. Everybody goes picnicking to the graveyards and spreads the goodies on the tombs. The extra mourners receive special consideration at the feast, for helping to "weep the bone." But there is not much weeping, for the Mexican ghosts are cheerful ha'nts, with all the guitar- strumming and amorous, inebriate tendencies of more vis- ible days. On the morning after it is over, the living eat the food the dead have left on the altar table. An occasional note of sorrow strikes the basic chord of the Mexican symphony : A lone man, face down on a fresh grave, murmuring brokenly into the sod . . . putting his ear to the ground to listen . . . resuming the murmur. There is, too, a timelessness about the graves molded with yellow and purple flowers, wreathed in moving strands of many-colored tissue paper, set with flaming candles, and giving off the heavy incense of romero, the traditional blos- som of the season and holy for centuries past. The Indians are not the only ones to entertain their ancestors and dead acquaintances on Dead Men's Day. The most fashionable pastry-shop in cosmopolitan Mexico City yearly displays this sign: Buy Your Dead Men's Bread Here. The city cemeteries are as full of picnickers as the village graveyards, and the city candy-stores blossom with bewildering numbers of skulls — white, with luscious red cherries for eyes and luscious grins on their mouths — miniature funerals of expensive milk choco- late, funeral wreaths of tiny candied fruits, a fascinating array. And though the sweets and other dainties of the season are especially for the dead, no child in the city but wakes up on Dead Men's Day ask- ing for his "funeral" or at least his "skull." The pottery booths, multiplying for this carnival time, seem veritable dances of death. The small From "Dead Men's Day," published by Antonio Vanegas Arroyo, Mrricn City

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Nov. 16, 1927] The Nation 541 clay statuettes, on sale throughout the year, representing more or less realistically people in all classes and all pro- fessions, on Dead Men's Day are supplanted -by equally realistic skeletons of those same people. There is the drunk- ard, a wobbly skeleton tightly clasping his bottle and his ladylove with coy expression on her fleshless face. There is the carpenter and the fruit-seller, the priest and the scholar, the poet and the prostitute, Don Juan and the president, a nun and a newsboy, the fat horseman of the sierras and the swarthy bull-fighter of the arenas — all in skeleton — not to mention the bob-haired modern girl and the foreign tourist — in sizes from half an inch to half a meter, and all caught in characteristic poses. It is an impressive travesty, and skilfully done. The press, crystallizing the spirit of the moment, be- comes a sort of dead men's record, and so strong is the suggestion that even ordinary pages of daily news appear fantastic, and one can scarcely make distinctions between dead and alive, between past and present, between fancy and fact. Special editions of comic publications publish political and theatrical caricatures, in skull and skeleton form, of dead and living notables, with an "epitaph" in verse depicting their virtues and fatal weaknesses. Satiri- cal news items are printed. A popular ballad suggests this very cleverly, under the pretext of "giving the newsboy his skull" : He knows what he sells is lies; And all the news he releases The daily the dead man buys Tears into little pieces. This daily takes care to tell News of the opposite hue. It makes a few bones and a smell Of all that the live men do. Black print in white is seen, Truth appears out of lies, The fat man becomes quite lean, And the live man usually dies. There is no blasphemy in this grotesque humor, nor is it indeed a conscious effort at humor. It is part of the Indian heritage, most amazingly common to all Mexico. It is at the same time the paradoxical Mexican mood — the vacilada — taking nothing, not even death, at its face value. Where death is, and has been, a familiar and terribly fre- quent guest, there is little room for sentimentalism. If this familiarity does not exactly breed contempt, it surely laughs at the European terror of an unknown visitor. It is a significant attitude. For here is the most tremendous of mysteries put into its physical place, implying that all other mysteries may, by the same token, be given their physical places. Americans We Like Alexander Meiklejohn By LUCIEN PRICE T h e S i ce t h of P e r s o n a I THERE is a tradition about one of the English cathedrals that its finest window was assembled from bits of broken stained-glass thrown away by the artisans in making the others. Four years ago last spring there was considerable stained-glass of a high quality thrown away by one of our American sanctu- aries of learning. It is four years since Dr. Alexander Meiklejohn was eliminated from the presidency of Amherst College. As Brittingham Professor of Philosophy at the University of Wisconsin he is now being permitted to estab- lish within the precincts of that institution an Experimental College which has opened its doors this autumn. It is one of the laws of life that a steadfast creative purpose is able to create its own instruments. It is a rugged plant. Cut it down here, it sprouts there. By the same law it would appear that a man with a vigorous creative purpose finds himself automatically eliminated from a situ- ation where he can work to less advantage and transferred to one where he can work to a greater. It has happened to more than one college president in our time. How dis- heartening it must be to have eliminated Woodrow Wilson from the presidency of Princeton only to find yourself con- fronted with Woodrow Wilson as war-President of the United States. Shortly after Mr. Meiklejohn's removal from Amherst I was permitted to read a letter which he had just received from ex-President Wilson. Analogy was written all over it. Why was Mr. Meiklejohn removed from Amherst Col- i n a S c r i e s it y P o r t r a i t s lege? The dust of that affray hav- ing settled, the issues are now, I think, clear. Mr. Meiklejohn was removed from Amherst College for endeavoring to turn a delightful country club into an insti- tution of learning. The immediate occasion was that he was making possible the teaching of upper and middle-class American boys to examine our modern civilization with candid eyes and to think for themselves. The agents of an alarmed ruling class put a stop to it. To call Mr. Meiklejohn a radical is absurd. His impar- tiality is the despair of fanatics. His position quite sim- ply is that a delightful country club is no place to prepare youngsters for their duties as citizens of a republic in an increasingly precarious age. This, be it remarked, would hold true equally for the crown princes of a ruling class and for a nobler type of youth attuned to higher standards of generosity and justice. And now the Athenian Academe which might have been established at Amherst has migrated to the shores of Lake Mendota. On these shores, somewhat apart from the other build- ings of the university, is a new dormitory for men. This is to bivouac the experiment and to house at least a part of its 250 students and perhaps dozen instructors. It is to be a college within a college — that desideratum of our elephantine universities: the small and highly personalized group enjoying access to the riches of a large academic com- munity. One hundred and twenty-five have been admitted (on application) this year as freshmen; the rest will be

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542 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3254 admitted next autumn. They will enjoy full standing in the freshman and, in due season, the sophomore classes of the university. There is no attempt to choose exceptional stu- dents. The group is to be, so far as possible, a cross-section typical of the university. Lecture and class-room methods of teaching will be discarded in favor of that method of teaching through discussion in small groups which suc- ceeded so well in certain courses at Amherst. The work of the first year is expected to be a study of the Hellenic civil- ization, especially that period of its flowering which is known as the Great Age. The second year's work, as yet undecided, will be a comparative study of some modern in- dustrial civilization, perhaps that of England in the nine- teenth century. This choice is not surprising. The slant of Mr. Meikle- john's mind is definitely Hellenic and there has always been in him a bit of the old Socrates. One trait of this is his relish of dialectic; others are his lively humor, his robust good sense, and his detachment from proselyting zeal. He has the serene confidence — Greek through and through — that, win in the short run though such zeal may, in the longer run the force of lucid intelligence and free inquiry can be relied on to carry the field. In the history of such forces two thousand years — nineteen hundred and twenty-seven of them, to be exact — may be accounted a short run. And here, be it understood, I speak of the Hellenic tradition quite dissociated from Mr. Meiklejohn, the Experimental College, or the University of Wisconsin. I speak of it as it vitally concerns our land and time. As things are in America today is there anything which young and active minds could study with more profit than the Hellenic civilization? A boy who has once seen our Machine Age from the outside is forever after protected from it. Never again will he be taken in by it, never again accept it as the be-all and end-all. To invent machines may require creative ability of a high order. But this creating of machines is the work of a comparatively few minds, and the use to which the machines thus created are generally put is not creative but acquisitive. Machinery can transmit, transport, disseminate, and popularize. It cannot originate. What, then, will be the quality of the cultural material thus disseminated? Could the age which hailed the printing- press as the salvation of society but see an American news- paper! And what will be the origin of the cultural material to be disseminated? That was the question of the Roman Empire yesterday. It is the question of the American Re- public today. Wipe out America's merely material achieve- ment (as time so surely does) and how much of the im- perishable would you have left? How rich a spiritual heritage could American thinkers and artists bequeath to humanity? Is a creative force to be liberated in the minds of our youth vigorous enough to originate a culture of our own, based, it is true, on our European traditions, but indige- nous to our soil and conferring some unique enrichment on the human spirit? The clearest spring I know, of waters which embolden youth to know itself, to trust itself, to be itself, to "make music and create," is Hellas. The Greeks were of our own breed. Their blocd runs in our brains. Their powers were not inhibited by a conception of conflict between flesh and spirit gnawing like a canker at the very core of life. No agonizing ascetics, they knew how to take nature naturally. They knew — as Hellenic spirits in every age have known — that it is more blessed to create than to enjoy. Or as that radiant and sunlit Hellenic spirit of Judea worded the same idea : it is more blessed to give than to receive. With this knowledge comes health of mind. A man exercising his creative faculty on a task which he can believe in as an ennoblement and enrichment of human life is a happy man. Passionate absorption in such a task generates of its own momentum a stern self-discipline. Its ethical code happens not to be yours or mine? That is none of our business. Youth will no longer be dragooned. Veto and credo have collapsed. But sincere creative effort also creates a surrounding code of values. It is more noble to create than to enjoy. It is also more enjoyable. That is good which furthers creative effort. That is less good which hinders it. It is to some such quarter that I look for that ennobled generation of youth which is so surely coming and for the standards of high conduct which such youth will so surely fashion for themselves. Our prophets of cynicism and un- faith have their value. They demolish shams. But ask them "Where shall I look for the good and the beautiful?" and your only answer is a scoff to cover their embarrass- ment. They do not know. It is easy to destroy. To create is difficult. Our apostles of demolition, our sitters in the seat of the scornful may do a useful work. But the world does not cherish the memory of what you destroyed. All the world cares to remember is what you created. The future does not care what you scorned. All the future cares for is what you loved. The good and the beautiful, where are they to be found? The war, by deflating traditional Christianity, has jolted this question into the foreground. Does it strike no one as singular, to say the least, that directly the war was over came a flood of books — serious works many of which have had an astonishing circulation — on Hellenic culture? Wherever it may be that the good and the beautiful are to be found, I believe Mr. Meiklejohn is one of those exceptionally well endowed for the search. He is one of the toilers along the levees of American education able to stop at least a few of the leaks through which the spiritual forces of our youth are bursting to the devastation of the land. Young lives that felt the glow of his intellect and the charm of his personality at Amherst have gone on blos- soming and bringing forth good fruit. His power is all the more sure for being so difficult to define. Two years ago I happened into a city and a college on the Pacific Coast where he had sojourned and spoken. It was a year since his departure, and their minds were still full of him. What had he said? They were somewhat inarticulate, as people always are when they have been profoundly moved. What had he done? Well, this and that. But I knew what he had done. He had brought exhilaration. For he wields some sort of electricity of the intellect which is charged with the power of the spirit. Who will breathe into the foul and fetid cabaret stench of our American neo-Pome a breath from the spirit of im- mortal Hellas? Who will teach us that we Americans have it in us to be something nobler than merely one more ant- horde of empire-builders, that we have it in us to cause another Athens to arise? That new Athens, that America of artists and thinkers, of free spirits and creative minds, must arise in many places. Why may not one of them be a dormitory on the shores of Lake Mendota?

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Nov. 16, 1927] The Nation 543 In the Driftway EVERY country that is worth its salt has some craft for which it is world famous. France excels in cookery, England in cutlery, and Morocco in kidnappery. Without question the industry of kidnapping has been more highly and more artistically developed in Al-Moghreb Al-Aksa than anywhere else on our planet. From the time more than a quarter century ago when President Roosevelt made his electrifying demand "Perdicaris alive or Raisuli dead," down to the recent abduction of two of Governor General Steeg's nephews and the women who were with them, the highest-paid and the best-advertised kidnappers have been those of the country of the Farthest West. THE fact that a Paris newspaper dispatched a repre- sentative by airplane to write the story of the latest Moroccan kidnapping, and negotiate with the abductors, is of itself proof of the quality of the exploit. The Drifter does not recall that a New York newspaper has ever hur- ried a correspondent by airplane, or even by ox cart, to negotiate for the release of any kidnappee in Mexico. But the Moroccan bandits have always known how to use the press. They have treated "the boys" right and the corre- spondents have made them rich and famous. This friend- ship between the newspaper correspondents and the cap- tains of kidnappery is a matter of long-standing tradition. When the Drifter was in Morocco a good many years ago — just after the capture and ransom of Sir Harry Maclean — the said Drifter sought some information about Raisuli, the hero of the exploit, from an English newspaper corre- spondent living in Tangier. "Raisuli," said the correspon- dent pleasantly, "well, if you are interested, I'll invite you in to have tea with him some time when he is in town." The tea got put off, but the Drifter learned that Morocco's premier brigand was anything but a cutthroat outlaw; on the contrary, he enjoyed the acquaintance and respect of some of the leading European residents. He was espe- cially respected in financial circles, having an account of impressive dimensions with one of the French banks. ***** RAISULI was not only Morocco's premier brigand, crea- tor of the traditions that have made her kidnappery famous, but next to Robin Hood he was perhaps the best- loved man of his calling in history. Don Perdicaris, who indirectly made Raisuli a world figure through inspiring President Roosevelt's message, has himself testified to the courtesy, charm, and urbanity of his host. In an account of his stay with Raisuli — the latter would not for a long time hear of his leaving — Perdicaris said that the bandit chief was much put to it at first to determine what to do with the 70,000 silver Spanish dollars that were part of the ransom. To the great amusement of Mulai Ali [wrote Perdi- caris], and to my own considerable astonishment, the solu- tion of this troublesome question which Raisuli proposed was that "La Senora," as the natives called my wife, should receive the $70,000 from Torres and deposit the money to her own credit in Tangier at the bank where we were accus- tomed to cash our checks, and that he [Raisuli] might then draw upon Mrs. Perdicaris as occasion should require. The counting of the ransom, wrote Perdicaris, was an oc- casion of great formality. Finally "The silver," said Raisuli, addressing me, "has been counted . . . but these letters," showing me as he spoke a checkbook containing certified checks on the Comptoir d'Escompte, the French bank at Tangier, "of the value of these, which are supposed to represent $50,000, I know noth- ing. However, I will accept them on your personal guar- anty, but on that condition only." Perdicaris readily guaranteed the excellence of the bank checks, but he declined the suggestion that his wife should become Raisuli's banker. That, he explained, might lead to misunderstanding, whereupon Raisuli promptly withdrew the request. ***** POOR Raisuli! And magnificent Raisuli too! He has gone to his last reward — or should one say to his last ransom? For many years there were reports at periodic intervals that Raisuli was dead; and a short time after, he turned up again in the news dispatches in some fresh exploit. But for a couple of years or more there has not been a single report of the death of Raisuli. It must be, therefore, that this king of the kidnappers has passed from the scene, and the tea-party for which the Drifter has been waiting will never take place. The Drifter Correspondence The American Plan To the Editor of The Nation : Sir: A few days ago I saw that General Somebody, whose name I have forgotten, has arrived in Nicaragua to supervise the election next year. In order to guarantee fair election, after the American plan, I respectfully suggest to the State Department that Messrs. Vare, of Pennsylvania, and Smith, of Illinois, be added, making a commission of three. University of Arkansas, October 1 David Y. Thomas Charles Evans Hughes To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: I have just read your article on Charles Evans Hughes. It is amazingly excellent — one of the best apprecia- tions I have seen from any person's pen — and deserves the highest commendation from the readers of The Nation. Many congratulations. Chicago, October 21 Herbert J. Friedman Reparations for Robbers To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: "Only Congress," wailed the New York Times in its headline at the time of the Supreme Court decision on Teapot Dome, "can repay Sinclair the millions he spent on property." On page 23 of that issue, under an obscure one-line head, was the statement that Colonel Robert Stewart, chairman of the board of the Standard Oil of Indiana, had no comment to make on the decision. Why do our newspapers step so lightly around the Standard of Indiana, which was a co-partner with Sinclair in building tanks and pipelines to steal oil from the American public? Sinclair merely did the dirty work of bribing Fall; the Standard spent half the millions "only Congress can repay." This plaint about the cruelty of the Supreme Court, which allowed no legal redress for the money spent to consummate

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544 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3254 the theft, was the beginning, I take it, of an organized ballyhoo for the reimbursement of all hard-pressed oil patriots. Obvi- ously, the taxpayers should repay them. I think that Congress should reimburse also every burglar who invests in a kit of tools for an abortive job, and every stock promoter who contracts an engraving bill for an unsuccessful fraud. Sound Beach, Conn., November 1 Silas Bent is the commonest torture among the Liberian governing class. I would not condemn the Liberian Republic in toto for this. One might remember that these Liberians, many of them descendants of American slaves, learned whipping in the fields of the South. They have not forgotten their lesson. Sausalito, California, October 20 Frederick O'Brien The Police of Monrovia To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: In a recent letter to The Nation appeared the fol- lowing, over the signature of Thomas L. Dabney, organizer of the American Negro Labor Congress: America is a land of oppression, murder, lynching, and crude civilization. Nowhere, so far as I know, are police so ignorant, arrogant, crude, and uncivil as in America. For my own part I have long since lost faith in America to lead the world in anything except mob rule, murder, race prejudice, and oppression. Good, brave men seldom become policemen, and such are sub- ject to an extremely corrupting environment. But police meth- ods tend everywhere to be brutal through mere consciousness of power in the minds of inferior men. Negroes are no excep- tions. In Liberia, Africa, last December, very near a monu- ment dedicated to the nation, on which a legend reads: "The Love of Liberty Brought Us Here," I saw the chief of police of Monrovia, a Negro, torture a Negro boy with scourge and fire (hippopotamus-hide whip and lighted candle) merely to cause him to confess complicity in a trifling theft. Scourging Have We Forgotten Centralia? To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: Silence from the liberal press, to its disgrace, sur- rounds an American Legion crime worse by far than any of its other outrages. While the Legion elite are drunk somewhere in France, where they dodge the ghosts of Sacco and Vanzetti, permit me to remind you of the Legion's most fiendish crime. How about Centralia? There the Legion raided our I.W.W. hall on November 11, 1919, at the instance of King Hubbard of Lumberlust, now happily dead. Our members legally de- fended their lives and hall against the tools of the king. Four tools paid with their lives. They turned their parade into a funeral for themselves. Fellow-worker Wesley Everett, I.W.W. member, was unsexed and lynched that night by Centralia business men who had ordered the power-house of the city to cut off the lights. The doctor who operated on Everett en route to the lynching-ground received a high political appoint- ment as his reward from the then governor, Louis F. Hart. Eight men are in Walla Walla Prison on a frame-up mur- der charge. How long, liberals, how long? Shame on you! Chicago, October 26 John A. Gahan, Editor, Industrial Solidarity m&Bm ■0>/ Th« Rt. W«v. Irving 8. Cooper\'>,X THE doctrine of Reincarna- tion teaches that man is a soul, not has a soul. That he becomes embodied in ever- improving physical forms life afterlife, until all earth's les- sons have been learned. That every human being is incourse of growth from the stage of the savage to that of the Man made Perfect. It restores jus- tice to God and power to man. Above all, it renders life intel- ligible. ^^_^^ "Reincarnation," writes Bishop Cooper, uis one of the long-forgotten teachings of early Chris- tianity and it forms part of the esoteric doctrine of Judaism." PHILOSOPHERS BOOK SHOP inc 441 MADISON AVE. NEW YORK LECTURES THE PEOPLE'S INSTITUTE Program November 18-26 AT COOPER UNION (8th St. and Astor Place) At 8 o'clock ADMISSION FREE Friday. Nov. IS — Everett Dean Martin — "The Nation with the 'New Start.' " Sunday Eve., Nov. 20— S. H. Clark— "The Mob." Tuesday Eve.. Nov. 22— Bruce Bliven— "Is America Imperialistic?" AT MUHLENBERG BKANCH LIBRARY (209 West 23rd St.. at 8 o'clock) Monday. Nov. 21 — Ernest Boyd — "Germany: The Flight from Realism." Wednesday, Nov. 23— Edgar Wind— "The Metaphysical Implications of the His- tory of Science." Thursday, Nov. 24 — No Meeting. Saturday, Nov. 26 — Mortimer J. Adler — "Thereof one must be silent : the aesthetic experience." BOOKS HEALTH SIMPLIFIED NO cult, no school, the good from all schools. Exposing healing quackery wherever found. Edited by a practicing physician experienced in health education. Rational Living, Box 2. Sta- tion M, New York. B. Liber. M. D.. Dr. P. H., Editor. — 6 months trial subscription SI. Sample copy free. — With yearly subscription the famous book "As A Doctor Sees It" free, if requested. MARRIAGE and DIVORCE By MILTON IV S LIVT $1.00 prepaid A complete compilation of both the divorce and marriage 1-ws of 48 States, with a comprehen- sive discussion of the evils and remedies of the divorce laws in the United States. MILTON IVES LIVY. 233 Broadw.y, New York, N. Y. A NEW PLAY By JOHN MASEFIELD Tristan and Isolt A new dramatic version of the •tor*- of Tristan and Isolt in which Mawfield "exhibits their folly, their madness, their futility without mercy." A beauti- ful old story beautifully presented. Price $2.00 — Autographed edition $10.00. fJMidnight Folk Fanciful adventures of a small boy in the fairvland of Midnight. Price 82.50 Autographed 97.50 "Philip the King The epic of the defeat of the Armada in a new autographed edition of 375 copies, illustrated by Laurence Irving with twelve full-page drawings. $12.50 Collected Works Fonr volumes of plays and poetry. Each 83.00 THE MACMILLAN CO. New York City When writing to advertisers please mention The Nation

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Children's Book Section The Plague of Juveniles By REBECCA DRUCKER THE day is gone when the whole family waited eagerly for the next instalment of "Pickwick" and it was read aloud in the family circle, as we are assured, to the uproarious delight of old and young. The family circle has gone askew and lost literary unanimity among other kinds. Literature has shed its homogeneity in the vast onrush of writing and printing. The book business has expanded into the breach and made new classifications, some natural and some artificial. The classification of the "juvenile," having in mind books for children from ten to fourteen, is one created out of the sheer enterprise of the book business. Obviously the great juvenile classics are among the most nourishing fare of childhood. Obviously, too, the book business cannot wait for the great juveniles to mature naturally. There would be no fall or spring list of titles. There might even be no "juveniles," for the "Gullivers" and "Robinson Crusoes," the "Alices" and "Huck Finns" were not written for children, or only incidentally came to be so. The awkward age for children is the awkward age for their parents, too. They may hold the high-minded attitude that from the age of ten, or perhaps twelve, the child may read anything, but it is usually with the vague hope in reserve that the "good books" of the past will con- tent him indefinitely. They do not. The child comes up clamoring for the present. Elders waver when they think on what arid stretches a child may be cast in the complex adult literature of the present. This is the book publisher's chance. With vast industry and with great thrift of ideas the synthetic classification is accomplished. Looked at from the outside this synthetic literature looks like a real one. All the departments of adult writing seem to be there in a kind of doll-house replica — fiction, biography, history, folk-lore, tales of travel, science, and invention. It is only on examination that one perceives that it is sleazily written, insubstantial in information, and makeshift in character. It is obviously conceded that an author needs less talent to write for a child than for an adult. No one doubts that less charm will serve to win the child. Besides, the purpose of all this writing is not to charm him. Between the ages of ten and fourteen the child is pre- sumed to be material for firm molding. The bulk of this writing is heavily utilitarian. It is to instil right senti- ments, to guide and inspire him, and to render him useful information. The fiction device is a favored one for con- veying information. Young children's books, being an or- ganic part of literature, have undergone some development, but "juveniles" show few changes. The motor devices of the stories are high-powered automobiles, airplanes, and submarines, but the children who inhabit them are out of St. Nicholas of the eighties. The sensuality and cruelty of childhood fairy tales are done with. In the "juvenile" no Rapunzel lets down her golden hair, no malevolent step-sister lies in wait, no Guine- veres and Lancelots flame with ardor. There is no ardor and no carnality in this fiction. From the age of ten the child's mind is presumed to be wiped clean of all that ele- mental passion which surges through the tales of childhood. He is presumed no longer to have any dreams, any longings, any curiosities about those mysterious ardors that flamed so frankly then. The boys and girls of these stories stu- diously avoid any curiosity about each other, automatically they have become austerely companionable. If they are boys they do not waste any time wondering what girls are like. Girls are to them a very minor consideration. If they are girls they are pathetically anxious to prove them- selves good athletic little comrades who resemble boys as much as possible. Some time in the, oh, very distant fu- ture, the author may roguishly hint, a deeper tinge will creep into this boy-and-girl friendship, but if he knows how this is to come about he leaves it a bleak and remote mystery. In this fiction the parents are all benign and the chil- dren affectionate. If the parents are poor and rustic the children are even more filial. There is no disreputable like Huck Finn who loathes and fears his drunken pap, there is no liar and swaggerer like Tom Sawyer. None of the chil- dren live up a third floor back or ever heard of a strike or lay-off. Country children are, naturally, more democratic than city children. A sneak always finds retribution and a poor sport is the lowest of God's creatures. To be sure, in one tale one boy does confess to a lack of courage, but he performs even greater prodigies of valor in proof of a moral heroism. And no little boy or girl will hesitate to die for St. Mark's or St. Agatha's. Does it ever occur to writers and publishers of this stuff to wonder what does go on in the mind of a twelve- year-old? They might read "The House Without Win- dows," the amazing story by a twelve-year-old published last spring, and know (Knopf: $2). They would find no such cloudy vapors as they imagine to exist in such a mind. A powerful sensuousness, a merciless logic, a vast sobriety inhabits there. Whimsicality, the silly ironical trifling of the old, is no part of it. Such an avidity for life, such quick perception, and such rapturous fancy as shames the old is in it. The little girl, Barbara Newhall Follett, who wrote it when she was nine and rewrote it when she was twelve, is an exceptional child only in her ability to make articulate moods and emotions that elude most children before they are old enough to put them down. She is ex- ceptional, too, in her power to describe what she has in her mind and in the symmetry and soundness of her archi- tecture. In this she is the superior not only of most chil- dren but of a good many adults. But the major interests of her mind are those of a child, and the tale is such as any child might tell itself. Eepers'p is a little girl who finds a house with things hanging at the window and little mats on the floor un- bearable, and she runs away. Her parents grieve bitterly for her but it never occurs to her to pity them. She never goes back to them. She lives for a time in the woods, growing more and more a wild creature and taken by the creatures of the wild as an equal. This world of the elements is the House Without Windows. The facts of shelter and sus- tenance in it are half-heartedly accounted for by the young author, who doesn't trouble to keep it up. Then Eepersip goes to the sea where she lives in a cave, fearing neither wind nor storm nor elements and becoming half a sea crea- ture. Then she finds her way to the mountains where, in the sublimity and silence of their heights, she lives in a

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546 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3254 fantastic fairyland of snow and ice and her ecstatic com- munion with the elements reaches a crescendo. She never thinks of her parents. She has a powerful distrust of all grown-ups lest they drag her back, and always craftily eludes them. She has slight need for humankind. Once she finds a beloved playmate at the shore whom she invites to share her life, but his parents snatch him back. Once she longs for the little sister who has been born since she left. She does indeed spirit her away and take her with her to the mountains, but the solitude saddens the younger child and Eepersip sorrowfully brings her back to the plains. But she herself cannot stay. She cannot give up the joys of her House Without Windows. She goes back to her mountains, holds the ecstasy of freedom more dear, and finally dissolving into the elements becomes one of the spirits of that place. Now this is a powerful and poetic conception, and a subtle one too. But no one can say that it is an unchildlike one. It has a vast pertinence to the life around it. But what pertinence has juvenile literature to such a mind? Naturally the idea is not to develop little Eepersips who will quit the musty house, but to make good biddable little children who will live in it. And so we have fiction, biog- raphy, legend directed at just this suspected truancy of the child-mind. The Western tales are by far the most refreshing of a miscellaneous lot of juvenile literature recently received. In the point of view of the writer of a good Western tale one is apt to find the peculiar combination of qualities that makes a natural juvenile. "Cow Country," by Will James (Scribner's: $3.50), fulfils the first requirement by not having been written for children at all. Will James's earlier tale "Smoky" became a juvenile success by that process of natural selection which determines the more enduring of childhood's favorites. "Cow Country," containing eight sketches of men and animals of the cow country, with the author's vivid illustrations, has the unforced simplicity and vivacity, the true and fresh observation that make the chief charm of this author's work. "The Log of a Cowboy," by Ardy Adams (Houghton Mifflin: $2), is that fine ac- count of a cowboy's stirring life written for grown-ups twenty years ago, now a classic and revived by the River- side Bookshelf. It falls most aptly into the juvenile classi- fication. So does "Hands Up!", a series of sketches of the heroic figures of the old Western frontier, by A. B. Macdonald (Bobbs Merrill: $3). "The Boy's Life of Hamilton," by Helen Nicolay (Cen- tury: $2), is the best of the biographies. It is a straight- forward account of that statesman with the figure justly proportioned against the stirring times. "The Boy's Life of Lawrence," by Lowell Thomas (Century: $2), makes Lawrence out to be a cross between Tom Brown and the Grand Lama. "Heroes of Modern Adventure," by Bridges and Tiltman (Little, Brown: $2), is an illustration of the adult point of view which believes that the child cannot appreciate an adventure until it has been inflated. "Jungle John" by John Budden (Longmans: $2.50), with a lively running commentary of drawings, is an excit- ing narrative of a small boy's adventures in the Indian jungle. It is written by a person who knows the jungle and knows boys and has no small aptitude for story-telling besides. There has been a determined effort to keep the spring of enchantment running by bringing the wealth of folk-lore before children. But by now the supply has run down to a thin trickle, and the Malayan and Amazonian and remoter Gaelic legends are merely queer and unin- telligible. The publishers have shown a good deal of enter- prise in bringing before the child the exotic and strange, and the result is occasionally valuable. But "Children of the Mountain Eagle," by E. C. Miller (Doubleday: $2), and "Saturday's Children," by Helen Coale Crew (Little, Brown: $2), are merely formulized travel tales inhabited by little pattern-children. "The Trade Wind," by Cornelia Meigs, won a $2,000 prize offered by Little, Brown and Company. We are told that it was chosen from nearly four hundred manuscripts submitted and was the choice of experts in children's tastes. Yet it seems a dull and clumsy piece of work. It is the very apotheosis of the romantic novel synthetically achieved. If the prize had been frankly offered for the nearest ap- proach to the Stevensonian formula this tale with its heavy paraphernalia of pirates, privateers, and gun-runners would have better deserved it. What Books Shall My Small Child Read? By REBECCA HOURWICH SPECIAL books written for children appeared in Eng- land and America during the latter part of the eighteenth century. Anyone who has seen the Rosenbach or any other collection of early American children's books — for the most part pocket-size moral tracts, occasionally illus- trated— realizes how we have lifted children out of that era of moralizing and depression into a period where the printed page is expected to be a delight to all the senses, a book a pleasure to see and touch as well as to read. From a few dozen pathetic and barren books we have evolved to a bewildering profusion of gay and carefree books, books that spell romance and adventure, books that are of land and sea, and books never of land and sea but of whimsical fancy; nonsense books, books of specific instruc- tion, ancient myths and fables popularized; books about birds, animals, and all the familiar objects of the world we live in; books of lasting beauty; books that make a sure appeal to children, that capture their hearts and minds and permanently hold them in their power; books of our own childhood which we read eight and ten times over, to which we always came back with fresh zest and interest, from which we could not bear to part; favorites of our own chil- dren, thumbed, worn, dragged from place to place, never wholly forgotten. And in equal profusion, also never wholly forgotten, simply terrible books. We have traded old evils for new ones. For hell-fire and damnation we have substituted the same moralizing cloaked in sickly sentimentality. Presumably to protect and prolong infancy, at one time burdened with overpowering adult concepts and taboos, we have sifted and sorted and simplified into the classification juvenile, until juvenile is almost certain to be synonymous with innocuous, the hum- drum stupid tales of the dull routine of commonplace peo- ple. These unimaginative, utterly worthless books are issued by the thousands, usually inspired by the failure of their authors to gain a publisher for their adult wares. Hence the perennial question of every intelligent

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Nov. 16, 1927] The Nation 547 parent: What books shall my small child read? Shall a child be turned loose to steer his own course through the labyrinths of existing books, shall there be gentle uncon- scious pressure to left or right, or shall there be frank adult guidance? What shall be the underlying principles of such guidance? Most educators beg the question, and for good reason. There are very few data available on what constitutes satisfactory reading for children, either from their own or from an adult point of view. The New York Public Library, which probably caters to the widest variety of tastes in the world, tries to apply the same standards to its Children's Department that it applies to other departments. Are the authors sincere, are the books genuine pieces of writing? Are they interesting, alive, beautiful to look at? Are they good literature? Will they interest the children? There are people specializing in the study of child psy- chology who see all manner of evil resulting from undi- rected children's reading, and who would particularly pro- scribe fairy tales. They hold that at an early age a child is unable to distinguish fact from fancy, that in the reali- zation of fact lies the child's adjustment to reality. If this groping for reality is handicapped and confused by tales of fancy, adjustment to reality is postponed with attendant difficulties, and sometimes never reached. They suggest tales of familiar objects, going from the familiar gradually to the unknown. They admit that some children learn to distinguish fact from fancy much earlier than others, and that it becomes largely a matter of the individual child. To a degree one must accept this attitude. The prob- lem still remains of how to feed a child's imagination, how to nourish the desire to lift oneself out of one's self, to find in reading that level of ecstasy which every book-lover knows and cherishes; how to balance adjustment to reality with the necessity for escape which is inevitable in adult life, and which finds a definite and valuable release in books — release that is not and cannot be possible if books are to give only an intensely practical fulfilment. There is likewise the attempt to go to children them- selves for the answer to the riddle of their reading, chiefly by stimulating them to efforts of their own. These books by children are excellent self-expression, but obviously a literature for children limited by the scant knowledge of child authors is narrowed down to crude confines. To me the acid test is, Does the book compel the child's interest? Children are the true readers, disgrace- fully unappreciated by authors and publishers. Children are utterly unmoved by anything but the stirrings of their own responses. Hungry, eager, wide-eyed, and breathless, they stamp their approval; listless and bored, restless and irritated, they signify their disapproval. They are subject to the same vagaries of taste as adults. Some children prefer the grotesque, others are offended by it; some like to have the creeps of horror run up their spines through blood and murder tales, others shudder away; some like saccharine tales of little girls who die and go to heaven, others want animals and a bit more dash. Some children like all books, anything with type on it, while others for no apparent reason fasten on one book and dismiss another. I know of one little girl who objected to "Alice in Wonder- land" because it was "just too silly," and who nevertheless was transported into ecstasies of delight by the antics of Mr. Milne's Heffalump in "Winnie-the-Pooh." So secure is A. A. Milne's place among his readers that automatically the first place in the season's books for chil- dren goes to him. "Now We Are Six" (Dutton: $2), though not as fresh and original as its predecessor, is nevertheless a Milne. A runner-up for first place with A. A. Milne will be "Magpie Lane," by Nancy Byrd Turner (Harcourt, Brace: $1.60), and "Dimple Diggers," by Robin Christopher (Elm House: $2). A vital part of Miss Turn- er's book in which Young Prince Peter, suddenly once, For no real reason behaved like a dunce, is Decie Merwin's silhouettes, as provocatively saucy as the poems. Both the elf-like figures and the verses have subtler and deeper moods tinged with the flavor of genuine poetry. "Dimple Diggers" is exquisitely published, but the form is only a fitting background for the contents. Hide and Seek, typical of its spirit, begins: When I am alone, and quite alone, I play a game, and it's all my own. I hide myself Behind myself, And then I try To find myself. I hide in the closet Where no one can see; Then I start looking Around for me. Negligible as poems, Cecily Mary Barker's pocket series of "Flower Fairies" of the Spring, Summer, and Autumn (Macmillan: $1 each) have a definite charm in their water- color pixies, each endowing flowers with human attributes. In "The Little Long Ago" (Dutton: $5), Laura Spen- cer Porter links the past with the present in a prose story that in its wistful appeal most nearly resembles the best of the season's poetry. "Number Five Joy Street" (Appleton : $2.50) is the fifth of a series of short stories issued each year in book form. The work is a collaboration by well-known English authors, and has won a distinct place among children. Caroline D. Emerson in "A Merry-Go-Round of Mod- ern Tales" (Dutton: $2) gives an excellent example of what is meant by tales for children about familiar objects, tales in which reality triumphs over fancy. Lois Lenski, the illustrator, excellently interprets the author. In "To and Again" (Knopf) the author, Walter R. Brooks, and the illustrator, Adolfo Best-Maugard, have shared to a nicety in producing a book about animals that is superior to all its animal contemporaries of the fall. Of the other animal books, "Mickey and the Monkeys" by Victorine Kirk (Viking: $2), has a dash and sweep to it, with an Irish lad dividing honors with the monkeys. There is a reprint of Richard Henry Home's "The Good Natured Bear" (Macmillan: $1), with scis- sor cuts by Lisl Hummel. The story is laid in Germany — but it might have been anywhere — of the Bear who was a "foreigner to Society, who rode horseback with rather a round back, and his stirrups very short, but in other re- spects he sat well, like a portly gentleman on a journey, and held the reins with an air of consequence." A bear who tells his story to a group of children who are fond of him — as I was until he stepped out of character to make the happy ending. In "The Cat and the Captain," by Elizabeth Coatsworth (Macmillan: $1), cat lovers can follow the Cat, the Captain, and black Susannah through a hundred

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548 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3254 pages of large-type adventures, interpolated with cheery illustrations. If you are not biased in favor of cats, the tale fades out. "The Janitor's Cat," by Theodore Harper (Appleton: $2), is more literary, and apparently this is a virtue rather than a vice in cats. Tony the cat possesses magic of which only he holds the secret, and that in his whiskers. There are a few books helpful for adults in teaching children music, sewing, simple cut-outs, and carpentry: "The Piece Bag Book" (Macmillan: $1.60), "Prince Melody in Music Land," with animated notes (Knopf) ; and "With Scissors and Paste" (Macmillan: $1.75). "The Wind That Wouldn't Blow" (Dutton: $2.50) is the best of that increasing number of books which are a potential factor in real internationalism fostered by books for children about peoples and things that might otherwise remain of the unpleasantly strange. Arthur Bowie Chris- man has managed to put into his Chinese stories a lyrical quality and a quaint idiom, gently patterned with an under- current of humor. There are also books on Sweden: "Children of the Moor," by Laura Fitinghoff (Houghton, Mifflin: $2.50); on Italy in Garibaldi's time: "Nimble-Legs," by Luigi Capuana (Longmans: $150); on Finland and Lapland: "Canute Whistlewinks," by Zacharias Topelius (Longmans: $2.50); on "Michael of Ireland," by Anne Casserley (Harper) — as much about fairies as Ireland; on France in the eighteenth century: "The Mystery of Castle Pierrefitte," by Eugenie Foa (Longmans: $2); and on Hungary, Turkey, Arabia, Java, South America, and other places all in on< volume: "Tales Worth Telling," by Charles J. Finger (Century: $3.50). Grace Moon's "Nadita" (Doubleday: $2), treating of Mexico, and "Tewa Firelight Tales," by Ahlee James (Longmans: $2.50), about the American Indians, are about the strangers of our own continent. Books The End of Art Men Without Women. By Ernest Hemingway. Charles Scrib- ner's Sons. $2. IT^ROM Oscar Wilde to Aldous Huxley the favorite characters of our cleverest writers have been tired of everything except talk. Commonly represented as too lazy to work, too cynical to feel, and too disillusioned to believe, they have nevertheless never relaxed in their efforts to express themselves. Never weary of describing their weariness and never too bored to be voluble, they have polished their epigrams with a serious assiduity which seemed to belie the expressed conviction that nothing is worth the effort. In many respects Mr. Ernest Hemingway is the heir of these gaudier sophisticates. He has received much of his educa- tion around the cafe table and, apparently, consorted much with the members of a generation which takes a certain pride in pro- claiming itself lost. But either he has found them less verbally brilliant than they have commonly been represented or he has himself lost the last of their enthusiasms, the enthusiasm for things neatly said. Sometimes his characters are the illiterate heroes of the prize-fight or the bull-rin«\ and sometimes they are the bankrupt intellectuals who wander disconsolately from bar to bar in the forlorn hope that a drink will be more refreshing somewhere else, but the two classes have this in common: they are all but inarticulate. The one has never learned to express itself, the other has grown tired of choosing words, and so both talk the lazy, monotonous, undifferentiated idiom which is the common denominator of the relaxed intellectual and the rough- neck. Spiritually the distinguishing mark of Mr. Hemingway's work is a weariness too great to be aware of anything except sensations; technically it is an amazing power to make the apparently aimless and incompetent talk of his characters elo- quent, to make them say what they seem too inarticulate or too lazy to define with words. Two men have descended after a winter's skiing in the higher Alps. "You oughtn't to ever do anything too long," says one. "No," says the other, "we were up there too long"; and something about the moment at which these remarks are intro- duced makes the reader suddenly weary both physically and spiritually. In another story a man and a woman are discussing (so we gather from oblique evidence) an abortion which the former is eager to have performed and to which the latter is wearily consenting. They have just tried a new drink. " 'It tastes like licorice,' the girl said and put the glass down. 'That's the way with everything.' 'Yes,' said the girl. 'Everything tastes of licorice. Especially all the things you've waited so long for, like absinthe.' " Each of these conversations is in some sense quotable and therefore not entirely typical; each, too, involves the same trick (again repeated in the story of the drug addict who replies "They haven't got a cure for anything" to the suggestion that "they" have a cure for his disorder), and the trick consists in making the weary response to an individual situation imply a general hopelessness in the face of all situa- tions; but much of the conversation is effective for reasons more difficult to analyze. It is apparently meandering and endlessly repetitious; it seems to require a page to make articulate the simplest idea; and yet this dialogue, standing almost by itself, is sufficient to make fourteen mostly very short stories both vivid and convincing. It appears to be the most meticulously literal reporting and yet it reproduces dulness without being dull. Here, if you like, is art upon its last legs. For all his scru- pulous detachment and his care never to say one word in his own person, Mr. Hemingway tells us both by his choice of subject and by the method which he employs that life is an affair of mean tragedies, and he tells us it as plainly as if he were devoting a treatise to the exposition of his ideas. In his hands the subject matter of literature becomes sordid little catastro- phes in the lives of very vulgar people and its language the most undistinguished which can possibly be made by the most skilful manipulation to convey a meaning. And yet he possesses a virtuosity not short of amazing; once begun, none of his stories will allow themselves to be laid down unfinished. Mr. Heming- way's range may be narrow and his art "unimportant," but within the limits of what he undertakes in the present volume he is a master. These stories are painfully good. No one, what- ever his artistic creed may be, can escape their fascination dur- ing the moments it takes to read them; and no one can deny their brilliance. Joseph Wood Krutch The Record of "Al' Smith Up From the City Streets: Alfred E. Smith. A Biographical Study in Contemporary Politics. By Norman Hapgood and Harry Moskowitz. Harcourt, Brace and Company. $2.50. * ' \ L" SMITH is out of luck. For years it has been his -^ *• proudest boast, or happiest jest, that only once has he sullied the virgin purity of his mind by reading a book. And now come along two volumes he simply must peruse — even if he has to steal the time from the reading that holds him spell- bound, which is the official reports, typewritten and printed, piled up on the Governor's desk, or from playing with the elk and the doe and the turkey and monkeys, the birds and the five dogs and the other animals which make up his private zoo. The first of these books was Henry F. Pringle's life of himself; the second is the joint study by Messrs. Hapgood and Moskowitz. We have no hesitation in wagering that he will like Mr.

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Nov. 16, 1927] The Nation 549 Louis XVIII By J . Lucas-Dubreton Author of "Samuel Pepys: A study in Miniature" The last remnant of Bour- bon royalty, standing out as a lonely figure on a troubled horizon. $'3.50 Francis Joseph By Eugene Bagger Author of "Eminent Europeans" A masterful analysis which pierces to the bottom of the soul of Francis Joseph and illumines the hidden springs of his thought and action. Illustrated. $5.00 By Col. Charles A. Lindbergh Foreword by Ambassador Myron T. Herrick The national best seller. Col. Lindbergh's own story of his life and air experiences. Illustrated. $5.00 Caste By Cosmo Hamilton The romance of a love pil- loried by modern America's opposing racial aristocracies — Jewish and Gentile. $2.00 Robespierre By Hilaire Belloc Author of "Marie Antoinette" "Hilaire Belloc, in his fluent, readable way, has created a living portrait which we feel is a true approximation of an elusive and unusual personal- ity."— N. Y. Evening Post. $5.00 Talleyrand By Anna Bowman Dodd The life of a suave and elegant diplomat who survived six changes in government. Illustrated. $5.00 Camels! By Dan Streeter Author of "Denatured Africa" A modern Mark Twain ex- plores the strange and sav- age peace of the Sudan. He cameleers his light-hearted way through Africa and re- counts his amazing adven- tures and misadventures. Illustrated. $2.50 tHe .-Ate* W ,ice ST-l PP"( &**JL tf*.^*** &Vk r^et »Vt*-' 0 1 oftM"6 ,tvvs ; ^suv"e to** '~A$et «cell°r A 91 \V* 5^SS \V ^V ^ <C v^ ***** 65 L.I 6 By Emil Ludw'ig Wilhelm Hohenzollern The Last of the Kaisers "A dramatic biography so powerful seldom gets into print in any language." — New York Times Illustrated. $5.00 Certain Rich Men By Meade Minnie/erode Author of "The Fabulous Forties" "Done with the sure touch of tiie historian who has left no stone unturned." $3.50 -N. Y. Evening Post Across Asia's Snows and Deserts By William J. Morden The story of a great adven- ture on the Marco Polo trail from Bombay to Peking by motor, on foot, horseback. camels, wagons and sleighs. $5.00 Dragon Lizards of Komodo By W. Douglas Burden An expedition to a lost world of the Dutch East Indies. The thrilling account of a search for giant lizards. Illustrated. $5.00 G. P. New York PUTNAM'S SONS London When u-riting to advertisers please mention The Nation

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550 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3254 Pringle's best; it sparkles, holds one's interest — the human interest — and it has at points dramatic value. The other one is frankly quite disappointing as the work of two men so well qualified to tell the story. It is heavy and often dull; its very title is banal with its reference to those sidewalks of New York of which Al himself must be supremely tired. In their effort to be meticulously just and accurate and altogether encyclopedic, Mr. Hapgood and Mr. Moskowitz have unfortunately dropped into the old "Come-little-reader-and-let-us-take-you-by-the-hand- style" which makes them start one chapter in this wise: "This book began with the big new city and with little boys running around the docks. In the fifty years since Al Smith began to play in the streets, life has become faster and more crowded. In the metropolis a building is scarcely finished before it is obso- lete"; while another chapter assures us at the start that "we now understand Smith's major purposes," and still another soothes us at its beginning with the news that "as we approach a transition in Alfred Smith's life, from the period when he was merely a member of the organization to the period when he began to be a force for progress, we may well grant truth to more than one explanation of what brought the change about." This is unfortunate because the subject of this biography is enormously important and any book about him ought to reflect in some measure the Governor's own crisp, breezy style, his genuine charm, his wit, and his native common sense. Where Mr. Pringle jumped about with scant regard to periods, this life is conventionally chronological and chronologically conventional. It sounds, moreover, as if written to order; as if the authors never for a moment forgot that they were advocates making a case to prove that Al is ready and fit for the White House. In their eagerness to make their book a complete record of the man to whom they have plainly given their hearts, they have in- cluded much that is trivial, as well as facts never befo :-e printed. But the record is complete; it is a compendium of all that any- one need know about the work of the best Governor New York ever had. And an astounding record it really is when thus massed by Messrs. Hapgood and Moskowitz. No one else in public life outside of Washington, and only one or two there, can offer anything like it. There is here compiled amazing evidence of the Governor's independence, courage, and shrewdness, together with a concise and honest statement as to his long progressive record, his personal rectitude, his deep humanitarian feelings, his n.ost admirable defense of free speech and free thought in America. But there is no indication of what Governor Smith really thinks on international subjects like America's policy in the Caribbean, in the Philippines, in China, or toward Russia. The League of Nations is not mentioned in this book, the World Court but once. The page being blank, the Governor will him- self have to write on it between now and the Democratic Con- vention. As it is, no newspaper editor or politician who desires all the facts can be without this volume, and likewise no citizen who wishes to know truths about the man who will either be the next Presidential nominee of his party or be the cause, by reason of his defeat, of his party's again going on the rocks. Oswald Garrison Villard Two Highly Prized Novels Jahw. By Mazo de la Roche. Little, Brown and Company. $2. Children of the Ritz. By Cornell Woolrich. Boni and* Live- right. $2. OINCE we did not see any of the other novels submitted to ^ the Atlantic Monthly competitioi, we are quite powerless either to hail or to begrudge the ten-thousand-dollar award to Mazo de la Roche for "Jalna." But we are not powerless to say that it is beautiful, engrossing, and unusual — a novel whose interest and action flow out of its extremely live characters and gorgeous scenery. Furthermore it does not read as if it had been written for a prize. Jalna is the East Indian name of a Canadian estate popu- lated by the Whiteoak family of Victorian numbers. The matriarch of the household is a fierce, tyrannical old woman. Around her are grouped children and grandchildren — most of them men and all of them of decisive cut. There is Eden the poet and Piers who deals in pigs, there is heavy Renny and Finch, an ill-tempered, misunderstood neurotic boy, there is Ernest who makes the study of Shakespeare hi6 lifework and Wakefield, a delicate nine-year-old with an alert and charming mind. And there are others. Into this lusty English family is thrown a young American girl of secluded upbringing who marries Eden only to find that she has in a certain sense married his family. In the narrow, self-contained, forceful circle terrible ingrown situations arise. Amid the harsh quar- reling and cruelty of this nest of crows Alayne finally decides to return to New York and her polite publishing-house job. But Grandma Whiteoak reaches her hundredth birthday intact and with an air of triumph. Cornell Woolrich achieved ten thousand dollars, too. But his novel bears only too evidently the marks of conscious striv- ing for the luscious movie prize. However, what he does so openly is being done furtively by many a novelist of late with his mind's eye intent on flickering rewards. "Children of the Ritz" is reeled off rather than written. Every other line reads like a subtitle. We can imagine Mr. Woolrich laboriously going over his manuscript and "wising it up." The hero punches the villain in the end and bears off the heroine in a taxi. Fade-out. All the book needs is a license number and Colleen Moore. Ten thousand dollars for this slim and painfully studied manu- script! Cornell Woolrich is a clever boy. Marie Luhrs Children's Books in Brief Funnybone AU-ey. By Alfred Kreymborg. Illustrated by Boris Artzybasheff. The Macaulay Company. $3.50. Lavishly written and illustrated, this book ought to make an impression on the children for whom it is intended. But we doubt that it will. Mr. Kreymborg has made it too clear that he is utterly fanciful, has said too often to his young readers: "Come, let us throw our minds around just for the exercise there is in it, and because there is virtue in doing so." We suspect that most children like to believe what they are reading, even when they feel it is absurd. Mr. Kreymborg urges them to read what he tells them is not true. So while he and Mr. Artzybasheff have collaborated on a gorgeous book, we fear they have produced a dull one. Animal Stories the Indians ToM, By Elizabeth Bishop John- son. Alfred A. Knopf. $2. Stories dug by scholarship out of the oldest American folk- lore. Simply and expertly told, and illustrated with photo- graphs of the animals concerned. The general make-up of the volume is excellent. The Magic Paivnshop. By Rachel Field. Decorations by Eliza- beth MacKinstry. E. P. Dutton and Company. $2.25. To the magic pawnshop near Jefferson Market Court that carried miracles in its dusty corners, nine-year-old Prinda goes in search of a miracle, and is taken on as assistant in the shop. Though her eyes are perfectly good her duties call for glasses. These glasses color all the events of the strange New Year's evening that follow-s. It is a delightful fantasy. For those parents that patronize pawnshops and find them a friendly in- stitution, this book will be an invaluable aid to offset prejudice against them. The Moon's Birthday. By Dorothy Rowe. The Macmillan Com- pany. $2. "Life is a game, and it is easiest to play if the heart is glad," said Mai Jen's father when they went to see the warty

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Nov. 16, 1927] The Nation 551 ./^cSs-a Our Finest List of Children's ;Books In Our Seventy-Five Years of Publishing 1,300,000 people (old and young) read ''When We Were Very Young'' They came back to buy, and read ' 'Winnie 'the* V o oh' ' GAY NECK, THE STORY OF A PIGEON. By DhanGopal Mukerj i Illustrated by Boris Artzy- basheff. $2.25. ALISON BLAIR By Gertrude Croivnjield. $2.00 HIGHDAYSand HOLI DAYS By Florence Adams and Elizabeth McCarrick An anthology of children s poems for holiday use, $2. MRS. LEICESTER'S SCHOOL By Charles and Mary Lamb. Illustrated by Winifred Green. $3.00. And now they (and many more) are all rushing to the nearest bookstore to get SINE'S latest, delightful book NOW WE ARE SIX with E. H. Shepard's humorous drawings. GIRLS WHO DID By Helen Ferris and Virginia Moore. $2.50 THE MAGIC PAWNSHOP By Rachel Field. lllustratedby Elizabeth MacKinstry. $2.00. FOR THE GLORY OF FRANCE By Everett McNeil. $2.00 THE WIND THAT WOULDN'T BLOW By Arthur Chrisman, Author of "Shen of the Sea," winner of last year's Newberry Medal Silhouettes by Else Hassclriis. $2.50. Published October 14th - - Third week - - Thirty-seventh Edition E. P. OUTTON & CO. Send for our Children's Catalogue. New York City A New Book by TRIGANT BURROW The Social Basis of Consciousness By a leading American psychologist, this volume expounds a theory extending from psychoanalysis : the theory that in considering an individual's consciousness and unconsciousness it is neces- sary to embrace in one view the social environment as well as the individual element, the observer as well as the observed, the physician with the patient. Further Dr. Burrow, who is one of the foremost authorities in the treatment of nervous disorders, disputes the Freudian conception that these dis- orders primarily result from repressed sexuality. The book is in two parts : The Philosophy of the Neuroses; The Psychology of the Neuroses. $4.00 "He brings something of very great hope for the solution of human incompatabilities. Psycho-analysis already attacks problems of cul- ture, religion, politics. Freud has given it a very clever machine for proving the rest of the world in the wrong, and one of the most trium- phantly depreciatory attitudes the human heart has conceived. But Dr. Burrow's book seems to promise a more firmly based, a wider, and a more positive outlook upon our common life." - - Till Ni W STATES- MAN. HARCOURT, BRACE & CO., 383 Madison AveM New York EM30D9 JVLIVS CAESAR And the Grandeur That Was Rome By VICTOR THADDEUS With rare imaginative insight this important biography approaches Caesar from a refresh- ingly new point of view that illumines one of the most lurid periods in the world's history. Rome and the Romans emerge from the pages with all the vividness of a Topical Review — one that would never pass today's censors of the screen. (At all bookstores, $5.00) MffatfiMRIMSXTAXCroO^M When writing to advertisers please mention The Nation

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552 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3254 frog. Warmth and understanding pervade these stories of Chinese children engaged in festivals and games after the man- ners of their own land. The illustrations have a nice comical twist. Sails of Gold. New Prose and Verse. Edited by Lady Cynthia Asquith. Charles Scribner's Sons. $2.50. This is a compilation of pieces specially written for it and contributed by such English authors as Milne, Belloc, Black- wood, and Buchan. It is perhaps mean-spirited to suspect them of withholding their best, but in spite of the fine array of names the result is meager. The Lion-Hearted Kitten. By Peggy Bacon. The Macmillan Company. $2. An uncommonly diverting book. Miss Bacon has an adult following which will trail her through any number of velvet- hung galleries for the bland and devastating wit of her black and whites. This will now be increased by a large number of children to whom art is not even a name but to whom gaiety and veracity are everything. Of course, any adult looking at these apparently veracious jungle animals will see that Miss Bacon has turned the same cocked eye on the jungle as she has on the human zoo. But they have a thrilling awesomeness, too. The text is less distinguished, but pleasant. The Tiger Who Walks Alone. By Constance Lindsay Skinner. The Macmillan Company. $1.75. It hardly matters that this wild yarn of Central American revolution outdoes legend and history. The chile and jazz are condiments to as healthy a story of adventure as the season has brought forth. Miss Skinner knows and loves the faults and the virtues of Latin America and she has filled her book with a dozen characters from the life, with beasts and jungle and pre- historic weapons. Her melodrama has tropical exuberance, not mere artificial multiplication. Gay-Neck. By Dhan Gopal Mukerji. E. P. Dutton and Com- pany. $2.25. This tale of a boy's experiences while keeping pigeons in India, relating in particular the prowess of one heroic carrier- pigeon, gives a charming and glamorous picture of an Indian boyhood. Alas, the latter part of the book runs to mysticism and the magnificent pigeon becomes merely a symbol; but the charm of the early part of the book is undeniable. Red Crow's Brother. By James Willard Schultz. Houghton Mifflin Company. $1.75. The second in the exciting series of adventures of Hugh Munroe, the frontiersman, by an author who has fascinated two generations of boys with his many Indian tales. / Know a Secret. By Christopher Morley. Doubleday, Page and Company. $2. Mr. Morley seems to us to have an unfortunate manner with children. He goes through the motions of entertaining them with his eyes fixed eagerly over their heads on their elders. Mr. Morley's little impromptus are carefully formulated — a little whimsy for the young, a little wisdom for the old — and sometimes he reverses the order. The formula for entertaining the young by which animals are made to do everything like human beings is a very old one and has magic. But its magic is not invariable. Mr. Morley's use of it is rather less success- ful than Lewis Carroll's. Merely to make animals go through complicated human operations does not seem to us humorous of itself, though a vast number of writers for children seem to think so. Animals who open tea-shops and run little Ford cars and give lectures do not seem amusing. Mr. Morley's creatures are no more imaginative than the thousands of others who fol- low this routine. Mr. Morley only pursues whimsicality more relentlessly. What Mr. Oliver Herford once said of someone else applies to him. He has a whim of iron. Art Composograph of the Dance TN any art the multiplication of divergent ideals is a confusion ■1 to laymen, and a resulting annoyance to the artist who would have his work valued in terms of his own aims. At the opening of a new season, let us roughly distinguish a few of the diverse faiths that hide under the blanket term "the dance." The learned branch of the profession should be mentioned first, in spite of the fact that at the moment its foreground is being occupied by musical-comedy stars such as Marilyn Miller and Mary Eaton. The ballet, calling at the outset for the gifts and industry necessary to achieve support and bal- ance on the very toe-tips, is the purest form of the dance, independent of aid from "stories" and elaborate costumes, and so, nearly a fixed quantity. In this school an American name is beginning to stand out: Harriet Hoctor has already the tech- nique of a great artist, and she may have the soul to match it. Radically different is the conception known — in various aspects or quite indiscriminately — as "interpretative," "Greek," "aesthetic" dancing, "music visualization," and so on; the vaguest and broadest of schools, where if there are rules there are few penalties. Very generally speaking, the underlying purpose is to convey what the accompanying music means to oneself; to add a silent instrument to the orchestra. Unless extraordinary appreciative and interpretative gifts concur, this object is not attained, and the encounter between artist and audi- ence is resolved by considerations of grace, comeliness, personal- ity, and character. The tragic name of Isadora Duncan stood for all these gifts, but unfortunately the communicable portion of her art consisted principally of the bare purpose — practically, the license — which has been mentioned. Her successor may not soon arise, although it is pleasant to know that her protegee, Anna Duncan, is a personage in her own right. Thirdly, there is the cult of Oriental dances, whose proph- etess is Ruth St. Denis. When the latter made and acted upon her first researches, she introduced realism in this genre to the American stage, and although her sources were literary and pictorial, today, just back from a two-years' tour of the East with her company, she is in a position to be dogmatic. Natural grace, a strong sense of rhythm, and imitativeness may enable a novice in this school to satisfy lay spectators, but Miss St. Denis's pupils work hard. They must learn an intricate code of positions and movements of body, limbs, and fingers, based on rigid ceremonial and religious conventions (Miss St. Denis herself has a charming "dance" of arm, hand, and finger posi- tions painstakingly collected from dozens of Chinese statuettes and paintings), and such performances as Charles Weidman's superb Cinghalese devil-dance and Ted Shawn's "Cosmic Dance of Siva" involve difficult feats of motion and balance. Last among the "serious" schools mentioned here are Euro- pean folk-dances, which range from infantile simplicity to fast and virile figures calling for natural agility and long training; practiced by immigrant societies, classes of school-children, and for the sake of motion and local color introduced into operas and operettas. A characteristic example of the latter use was furnished last spring by the Neighborhood Players in the Hun- garian cycle "Ritornell," wherein the spirited dances were com- bined with folksong, brilliant costumes, and a thread of legend. All these distinct traditions, with others, are inextricably interwoven in present-day programs. The toe-dance is amplified by the Russians into story-ballets; the same corps present Ori- ental legends and folk-dances from the steppes, and the ex- traordinary Simeon Karavaeff performs the violent squatting peasant dance as a clog, or on his toe-tips. The Denishawn troupe study the easier and imitate the severe ballet work; Miss St. Denis "interprets" Liszt; both she and Mr. Shawn have Spanish solos; with each one occasionally encounters highly developed pantomime. By Angna Enters we find pantomime

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Nov. 16, 1927] The Nation 553 carried frequently clean into the domain of Ruth Draper, which is to say, quite out of that of the dance. The Neighborhood Players accept on faith the title of Griffes's composition "The Lake at Evening," and their young ladies, recumbent beneath a great blue veil, make its surface undulate as "naturally" as anyone could ask. This, one notes, "visualizes" the generally arbitrary label rather than the music, and belongs with such other imitations as Pavlova's "Mort du Cygne." There are numberless further overlappings and gradations: toe-dancers who double in acrobatics or, like Miss Miller, in tap-dancing, or in the grotesque, like Bolm; Orientalists who are equally contortionists, and so forth; the combinations tend- ing to become incongruous as genuine ability diminishes, or as show-directors put their ears to the ground. Audiences want, not an evening's instruction in ideals and means theretoward, but an evening's entertainment, and showmanship will see to it that that entertainment suits more than one taste, keeps not too far from earth, includes plenty of motion and color, and sends the unconcerned majority away happy in the conviction that it has seen, at least partly comprehended, and still had a good time. Kathebine Niles Abbe Niles Drama Hare and Hounds A YOUNG man who has been accosted by a prostitute in ■*^ Hyde Park becomes involved in an altercation with a plain-clothes detective. He gives him a blow upon the jaw and the detective, striking his head upon an iron rail as he falls, is killed. After serving two years of a five-year sentence for manslaughter the young man escapes from a prison camp on the moors and for about forty hours he is a fugitive until, weary of being hunted but wearier still of the hesitations and perplexities of the people upon whom he must thrust himself for help, he surrenders. Such is the story told through ten brief but vivid episodes in Galsworthy's "Escape" (Booth The- ater) , and simple as it is, it is made the adequate vehicle of a typically Galsworthian comment upon men and society. Dur- ing the course of his few hours of freedom the hero of the play traverses a cross-section of English society, and except for the two or three instances when he comes in contact with people whose sense of self-righteousness is sufficient to allow them to indulge their vindictiveness with a clear conscience, he finds a general if somewhat wavering disposition to help him. Most of those whom he meets obviously hope that he will get away and yet they are hardly less willing to give him up than they are actively to aid him. They rationalize their unwilling- ness into something which passes as a sense of their duty to society, but that something is really fear. The sight of a hunted man awakens their pity but it stirs in them also a reali- zation of the comforts of their own security. Society has as yet no license to harry them and it is as well not to cross the imaginary line which separates the hunters from the hunted, since he who does not pursue may be pursued, and he who is not part of the pack is in imminent danger of becoming one of the quarries. When the dogs are in cry it is better not to be caught showing any suspicious solicitude for hares, and when society is demanding its revenge upon one of its members whom it has cast out pity can hardly hope to ask for more than the averted eye. "I wash my hands of this man" — that is as near to the heroic as prudence can ever come. A sense, rather sad than indignant, of this weakness in- herent in even the nicest and most amiable people is typically Galsworthian, and so too is his almost unwilling recognition of the fact that the most generous impulses of his characters arise in those parts of their souls least likely to be reached by any formal or organized agencies for moral cultivation. The thing Books for Children MYSTERY of CASTLE PIERREFITTE By Eugenie Foa Translated from the French by Amena Pendleton. Illustrated by Frank Dobias. The French Pyrenees at the close of the 18th Cen- tury. ... A haunted Abbey. . . a "dark woman," mysterious and awful in her horrid black veil ... a ghost . . . lights moving in a long-abandoned castle . . . two boys and a girl kept prisoners under the strangest circumstances. . . The MYSTERY OF CASTLE PIERREFITTE has long been a favorite with French children. Its quick action, its humor and the breathless plot which is revealed only in the last page, will endear it to American children. 8 vo. $2.00. JUNGLE JOHN By Major John Budden Illustrated by Major General Herbert J. P. Brown. Jungle John travels through the great jungle of Cen- tral India with his father, and learns the law of the jungle from an old hunter. Boys will like JUNGLE JOHN because it is authen- tic, simply written, and exciting. The habits of tigers, panthers, bears, bison, elephants and snakes are seen first-hand, and the young hero has some thrilling per- sonal adventures hunting the jungle creatures. 8vo. $2.50. CANUTE WHISTLEWINKS By Zacharias Topelius Translated by C. W. Foss, and edited by Frances Jenkins Olcott. Stories of the Midnight Sun and the Long Night, translated from the Swedish — fantasies, legends and studies of child life to delight American children. The illustrations by Frank Mcintosh emphasize the colorful and delicate fancy of the stories, and help to make the book an excellent choice for a gift. 8 vo. $2.50. ONGMANS, GREEN AND CO. Publisher Since 1724 {At the Sign of the Ship) 55 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK When writing to advertisers please mention The Nation

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554 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3254 ■which puts them on the side of the victim of unjust justice is merely a sporting instinct — an impulse to give the under-dog a chance — rather than any high moral scruples, and the thing which favors that sporting instinct is a feeling not of righteous- ness, but of a glad recognition of enough original sin in oneself to enable one to recognize and forgive it in others. Compassion, Galsworthy seems to say, is the purest and least dangerous of human virtues, and yet compassion arises only out of a sense of our own weakness and guilt. Let humanity beware then of ever becoming too good. Linked though he is by his socio- logical preoccupations with Shaw and Wells, a certain laborious, impartial fair-mindedness — something giving birth to all sorts of doubts and perplexities — contributes to Galsworthy's work the flavor which distinguishes it from theirs. They are so sure they know what is wrong with the world and so confident their program would set it right that there is a suggestion of shrill scolding about their indictments and something cocky about their conclusions. They propose problems only that they may emerge triumphantly with the answers, and they sweep difficul- ties away with the simple assurance that "we will change all that." Galsworthy, on the other hand, does not deal so lavishly in solutions. More a simple humanitarian and less definitely a sociologist than either of them, he neither has nor needs to have their faith in the perfectibility of human society or human nature because his mood is rather that of a somewhat melan- choly tolerance t^an that of any dogmatist come to lead a straying humanity back to the right path. Tender-hearted almost, at times, to the point of sentimentality, he is wounded deeply by the cruelties and injustices of life, but he has too little faith in the value of anger to be angry at them. Perhaps somewhat old-fashioned in his faith in the maxim tout com- prendre, etc., he broods over humanity far more than he in- structs it or inveighs against it; but, perhaps for that very reason, he is more successful in his efforts to love that humanity as he finds it than are most of those who are surer that they can make something decent out of mankind at last. "Escape" is well acted by the members of a cast all of whom are good in spite of the fact that many appear only briefly in one episode, and the leading role is played most ingratiatingly by Leslie Howard. It is serious without being either heavy or didactic, and in a season during which good serious plays have been few it stands out conspicuously as the best new drama now on Broadway. The group known as The Playwrights Theater has taken up a new home in the little Cherry Lane Theater and is there presenting a satiric, slightly "expressionistic" drama of social revolution called "The Belt." It has for its theme the mechani- zation of a workman in a factory evidently intended to suggest Ford's and for its action the story of an uprising upon the eve of a shut-down. The play suffers somewhat from the fact that its theme has become stereotyped in the hands of the "experimen- tal" dramatist but it is written with considerable force and has one scene — that at "the belt" in the factory — which is extremely well staged. "If," Lord Dunsany's amusing if somewhat thin fantasia, is being capably revived by the old Neighborhood company at the Little Theater. "Behold This Dreamer" (Cort Theater) has Glenn Hunter in its leading role and he, with Tom Wise and Sylvia Field, saves an obvious and heavily writ- ten play from being anywhere near as bad as it deserves to be. Joseph Wood Krutch □ THEATRE □ □ THEATRE □ JOHN GOLDEN THEATRE Matinees WED. and SAT., 2:30. DANA BURNETTS and GEORGE ABBOTT'S WALLS with MUNI WISENFREND STAGED BY GEORGE ABBOTT SEATS 8 WEEKS IN ADVANCE THE THEATRE GUILD Presents PORGY A FOLK PLAY BY DUBOSE AND DOROTHY HEYWARD C\ III O Theatre. West 62nd St. Eves. 8.40 Vj«Jll_L^ Matinees. Thursday and Saturday. 2.40 EMPIRE Thea. B'way. & 40th Street Evenings 8.30, Mats. Wed. & Sat. 2.30 INTERFERENCE By Roland Pcrtwee and Harold Dearden with ARTHlIt WONTNER, PHOEBE FOSTER, KATHLENE McDONELL ami A. E. MATTHEWS "Is it entertaining? Does it hold you? To both ques- tions I answer affirmati%rely." — Alan Dale in The Amencan lLF': THE ACTOKMW.i USERS (Formerly the Grand Street Follies Co.) in association with Sidney Ross present •LF tt IF" 'IF" A Comedy by Lord Dunsany at the Little Theatre, West 4 4th St. Eves. 8 :30. Mats. Thurs. & Sat. 2 :30 'IF" / BOOTH lvJ!th8:fo. Matinees Wed. & Sat. AT 2:40. WINTHROP AMES presents JOHN GALSWORTHY'S With LESLIE HOWARD LiiJvr\r <Cj / CHANIN'S DHVAI P Eves- s-30- Mats. W. 45th St. *^v J **■*-*-• Wed. & Sat. 2.15 WINTHROP AMES GILBERT & SULLIVAN OPERA CO. ALL PERFORMANCES EX. MON. MIKADO EVERY MON. NIGHT ONLY IOLAXTHE □ DEBATE □ Admiral T. P. MAGRUDER U. S. Navy DEBATES Bertrand RUSSELL Question: "SHOULD NAVIES BE ABOLISHED ?" at Mecca Temple, 133 West 55th St., New York City Saturday Evening, December 3rd, 1927 Reserved Seats: $3.30, $2.75, $2.20, $1.65, $1.10 Mail Orders Filled Upon Receipt Direction: AMERICAN PUBLIC FORUM, Room 1006, 1650 Broadway. N. Y. City. Tel. Circle 4352. When writing to advertisers please mention The Nation

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Nov. 16, 1927] The Nation 555 GOOD BOOKS 2^? Unit* nf ttje Press FIRST EDITION BONI &. L1VERIGHT NEW YORK BALLYHOO Silas Bent The author is a vet- eranot the city room. He has been con- nected with the Pulitzer, Hearst and Ochs' press. He has lectured on the modern newspapei at universities and published many articles on modern trends in the news- papers. THE VOICE OF THE PRESS New Book by Silas Bent Tells Story of America's Newspapers What this important and outspoken story of the press offers may be gathered from the following random headings from the contents: The Invasion of Privacy, "Fictionized" News and the "Right of Caste"; Washington Correspondence, Goose-stepping for the Administration; Reporters then and now, Is the Adventurer Becoming a machine; Changing Newspaper Morality, Pulitzer, Hearst, Ochs, and Their Influences; The Tabloid Picture Papers, Legitimate Heirs of the Fourth Estate; Press and Church, A Parallel; etc. Illustrated. Large 12 mo. $3.00 Boni 8C Liveright, N.Y. GOOD BOOKS Over 30,000 first week LEWIS BROWNE'S NEW BIOGRAPHY THAT MAN HEINE) By the author of "This Believing World" With the Collaboration of Elsa Weihl "An acutely penetrating; biography of one of the most difficult, fasci- nating personalities in literature. Recreates Heine and his day with understanding and sympathy." —Philadelphia Ledger At Your Bookstore— $3.00 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY Now York Atlanta Boston Delia. Chicago San Francisco LECTURES RAND SCHOOL of SOCIAL SCIENCE 7 East 15th St. Tel. Algonquin 3094 "THE STORY OF RELIGION" Alexander A. Goldenweiser. . Wednesdays, 8:30 "THE STORY OF WORLD LITERATURE" JOHN Macy Mondays, 8:30 "SCHOPENHAUER AND PESSIMISTIC IDEALISM" William P. Montague. .Thursday, Nov. 10, 8:30 front The Inner Sanctum of SIMON and SCHUSTER Publishers . 37 West 57th Street . Neu> York \"Nol a bestseller, and proba- bly never will be!" lMA _ Such is our "keynote," as the politicians put it, for the advertis- ing campaign on Franz Werfel's new novel, The Man Who Conquered Death. rMvfti _ We hope we're wrong, but our experience with Werfel's earlier work, such as Verdi, A Novel of the Opera, and Juarez and Maximilian strengthens our literary pride, just as it prompts our sales misgivings. j After all, there are some authors meant just for the elect, and apparently Franz Werfel is of that noble company. | A contemplation of the sales chart of Verdi — 2,405 copies in two years, as against 55,000 abroad — does not depress us. Rather it imbues us with a snobbish, aristocratic, and not unpleasant thrill. This novel of the opera, for at least The Inner Sanctum and perhaps 2,403 other souls, belongs with Jean Christophe, Of Human Bond- age and Moby Dick as an unforgettable adventure in reading, a memorable in- timacy with genius. (MA cMA _ We like to share such ex- periences, but — we hope the sales manager isn't peeking — not too in- discriminately. Watch Werfel! _ For unmitigated ruthlcssness, no reviewer of our time can match G. D. Eaton, editor of Plain Talk. All the more potent, then, is his tribute to Will Diirant's new book, 1'ransition, A Mental Autobiography: Transition I recommend to everyone. It is superbly written and profoundly moving ... I list the hook ns biography because it isn't a novel and because it isn't admittedly an autobiography —the lirst hall, as I started out to say, has nil the tenderness and humor of Analole Frances Le I.nre de mon Ami. No novel could be more touching and no poem more beautiful . . . . . . One sees why Durani is loud of Spinoza. Tin- men have much in common I defy you to forget Transition; you can no more do it than you can forget the life of Spinoza . . ESSANDESS yj OPEN SHELF GOOD CHEER COMRADES! Want to buy, sell, or swap books, bronzes, old china, clocks, curios, etchings, lamps, paintings, prints, oriental rugs? Bus, or stroll i-< Daca's, 63 Washington Sq.. So., N. Y. C. Books always 20 to 80% off. Open eves. THAT HOOK YOU WANT! We hold 1,250,000 vols., second hand and new, every conceivable subject. Books on approval. Also Rare Hooks, Out-of-Print Books, and Sets of Authors. Catalogues free (20 issued. Outline requirements and interests. FOYLES, 121 Charing Cro«« Ro.d. LONDON, ENGLAND COMPLETE and unexpurgated translations of Foreign Classics. Privately Printed and Illus- trated Editions. Rousseau's Confessions, Boccaccio's Decameron, Balzac's Droll Stories, the Heptameron, etc., $3.50 each. Catalogue upon request. Ameri- can Book Collectors' Service, 321 Broadway, New York. When -writing to advertisers please mention The Nation

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International Relations Section An Episode of Fascism BY GAETANO SALVEMINI ON September 9, 1927, a trial took place at Savona, near Genoa, which throws a light on life in Italy today. The accused were a group of men guilty of having aided and abetted the escape from Italy of Signor Filippo Turati on the night of December 11, 1926. A law of November, 1926, punishes with imprison- ment up to six years and with a fine up to an unlimited amount (which may therefore be equivalent to total con- fiscation of property) any person attempting to leave the country without a regular passport. It authorizes fron- tier guards to shoot at sight anyone crossing the frontier by irregular routes or in a clandestine manner. Signor Turati was the leader of the Reformist Social- ist Party and from 1890 to 1926 played a role in Italian political life comparable to that of Mr. Ramsay Mac- Donald in England. Though over seventy years of age and afflicted with serious heart-trouble, he, with some friends, escaped in a little motor-boat on a rough and star- less night. Wind and weather drove them out of their reck- oning, and when they made the coast of Corsica next morn- ing it was on the opposite side of the island to that they had intended to strike. All those who had frequented Turati's house in Milan, his intimate friends, even his doctors, were immediately arrested. Most of them were later released, while several were imprisoned or interned on the prison islands in the Mediterranean. Eleven were tried at Savona, among these being Ferruccio Parri and Carlo Rosselli who had accom- panied Turati on his journey and had returned to Italy. Parri and Rosselli deserve to be known as two of the finest examples of the Italian younger generation. Carlo Rosselli, who is 29 years old, fought gallantly in th- war. He joined the Socialist movement in 1923 after the "March on Rome," when to be a Socialist meant facing prison and perhaps death. He was a lecturer in economics at the Commercial School of Genoa, and in 1926 left this post to found a weekly paper of political culture which was suppressed after an existence of a few months. His house was looted by the Fascists on July 15, 1925, be- cause I had slept there two nights previously. When I came out of prison at 11 p. m., on July 13 the police ad- vised me not to go to my own house to sleep as the Fas- cists would probably attack it. Not knowing whither to turn, I asked hospitality of my young friend. A man- servant, who acted as a Fascist spy, informed the Fascists, and they looted the house in consequence, causing damage to the extent of 150,000 lire ($7,500). Parri is a liberal. Before the war he was a high- school history teacher. Called up at the beginning of the war as a second lieutenant, he was promoted for conspicu- ous merit to the ranks of captain and major; he took part in nine offensives; wounded four times, he was four times decorated for heroism; he received the French Croix de Guerre and was mentioned in dispatches by General Nivelle. After the war he joined the staff of the Corriere delta Sera and left only when in November, 1925, Senator Albertini was forced to relinquish the paper to the Fascists. Arrested as accomplices in the crime of "unauthorized expatriation" of Signor Turati, Rosselli and Parri had the right by Italian law to receive "provisional liberty" (free- dom on bail) awaiting trial. Instead of this they were in- terned on the island of Ustica. From the island, handcuffed like common criminals, they were brought to Savona for trial. While Rosselli was in Ustica, his young wife, an Englishwoman, gave birth to their first child. The two young men, before the examining judge, fully acknowledged their share in Turati's escape and laid before the judge the following written declarations: Declaration of Carlo Rosselli The responsibility for my crime lies with Fascism. Fascism, by suppressing with blind fury and iniquitous laws any possibility of legal opposition, and by reducing to servitude millions of citizens, has forced upon them the tragic choice between abject acquiescence and exile. Fas- cism forces Italians to go into exile, and then unjustly accuses them of unpatriotism. The moral foundation of our national life having been destroyed, nothing was left to the opposition leaders save to leave the country. Through the suffering and protests of our exiles the world will learn of our struggle in defense of European civilization. ... It is an uphill fight today, not understood by the majority of our countrymen, and waged against a minority which is armed with all the power of a ferociously centralized state. But it is a fine fight for men who can never betray the cause made sacred by the blood of Amendola and Matteotti. It is in this faith that I have broken the Fascist law, determined to prove its futility and the impotence inherent in all despotism. Filippo Turati abroad means for me and my compan- ion a protest — backed by his forty years of service to the nation and to humanity — against the Fascist regime. In this grand old man, forced to leave his country because life worthy of the name was no longer possible, Europe will find a witness to the desolation to which Fascism has reduced Italy. . . . My own humble endeavor is, I am sure, in line with that of the great ones who fought for Italian liberty. This continuity between the struggle of today and that of yesterday is exemplified in the history of my family. A Rosselli sheltered in secret at Pisa the dying Mazzini, an exile in his own country. It is fitting that another Rosselli, half a century later, should help to save from the fury of the Fascists one of the most noble and disinterested of his countrymen. Carlo Rosselli Declaration of Ferruccio Parri I have not been guided by feelings of personal rancor toward the regime. My contempt for Fascism and my solicitude for the noble old man whose safety was threat- ened by it are only secondary motives in my action. I served the Italian state in peace and war with loy- alty and self-sacrifice. I have never followed revolutionary movements. Not caring for political strife, and having always remained outside party, I have no responsibility for the troubled post-war years. Against Fascism I have only one cause for aversion, but that one is unalterable. It is aversion on moral grounds. It is an entire repudiation of the very atmosphere of Fascism. In this I am not alone. My ideas are those of thousands of young men who yesterday fought on their country's behalf and today oppose the empty rhetoric and jobbery which characterize the Fascist regime. To them Fascism shall render strict account of the tears and hate which stain its record, of the good which it has destroyed, of the wounds which it has inflicted upon the nation.

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Nov. 16, 1927] The Nation 557 The regime can persecute and scatter us, but it can never stifle our opposition, for it is impossible to eradicate a moral instinct. . . . The ideals of liberty and of justice have been ever present in our history. ... By our faith in these ideals we know one another. By its contempt for them we recognize Fascism. Against our persons Fascism can employ bludgeons and handcuffs. Against our faith it is powerless. Fascism denounces us as anti-national. But having taught our national history in schools and fought in the Great War for an ideal of liberty and justice, I cannot but feel that the example of the Risorgimento and that of the war point out to us the duty of today. To those who most clearly see their way falls the honor of setting an example to others. When all remnants of resistance were crushed I felt it necessary to make some protest in vindication of a better Italy. This protest could only be effected beyond our own frontiers. I have with Signor Turati a bond stronger than all our differences: devotion to the same ideals and aversion to the present regime. Signor Turati, by his high-minded- ness and by the dignity of his life, is well fitted to represent to civilized Europe all those of us who condemn the dark- ness which has fallen on our country and desire to see again an Italy free and equal for all Italians. This is not on our part the desire for an easy martyr- dom. But since Fascist law calls us to answer for our act, we acknowledge with pride our responsibility. . . . The law of a faction, in sentencing us, will honor us. Ferruccio Parri On May 26, 1927, Signor Mussolini made a speech in the Chamber in which, throwing mud at his victims, he read letters from interned opponents who renounced their political past and asked for mercy. He gave no names. Rosselli, Parri, and another young man, Riccardo Bauer, who were all interned in Ustica, wrote to the Duce to declare that if others repented of their past they did not do so; they would refuse even to take advantage of an amnesty, since it was not they who should be amnestied but the Duce himself who should ask pardon from the Italian people. On the eve of the Savona trial Turati sent to the pre- siding judge the following declaration: Declaration of Filippo Turati Last October I was in a bad state of health. On the advice of my doctors I requested the prefect of Milan to provide me with a passport for abroad, since it was evi- dent that in whatever health resort I might visit in my own country I should be exposed to trouble from the Fascists, whereas a period of absolute quiet was necessary to me. I presented my doctor's certificate and an X-ray report, showing that I was suffering from serious heart- trouble and threatened with angina pectoris. The prefect agreed to forward this request to Rome and promised me an early reply. The only answer that I obtained was that the following day a numerous guard of police was posted at the entrance to my house, where it remained night and day. I was virtually a prisoner. The police were under orders to keep me always in sight, even accompanying me in my carriage if I left the house. This meant complete isolation for me, since none of my friends dared visit me, nor could I go to see them on account of the alarm occasioned by the inquiries of the police agents in the houses I frequented. I protested in vain to the prefect against this treat- ment. I asked that if any charge existed against me I might be sent to prison. Life became insupportable. I was under continual threat of assault and invasion of my house. On the occasion of the last attempt on the "Duce's" life at Bologna, the commissioner of police forced me, in spite of my protests, to leave my house by night, accompanied by police, to take refuge elsewhere, as "he was unable to guarantee my impunity from aggression and invasion from the Fascists." To find a little quiet I decided to leave my home and go incognito to stay with friends outside Milan. One evening in November I left my home by way of a back- staircase and a courtyard leading to a neighboring house, from which I was able to depart unobserved in the semi- darkness, while my guards remained talking together. I was received in his small house in the country of Varese by my old friend Signor Albini. I remained there until December 2, when, realizing that I was being searched for assiduously, and not wishing to be the cause of persecution to my hosts, I left this refuge. The next day the prefect of Milan, accompanied by an inspector of police sent expressly from Rome, descended on Albini's house with a force of police. It was only then that, finding myself followed and threatened wherever I sought refuge, I began to feel the necessity of leaving the country. It was not my wish to leave. I was literally hunted from Italy by persecution as unworthy as it was illegal. My real accomplices are those who forced me to leave against my will. It was only when I perceived that my persecution became every day more persistent and insolent and that wherever I took refuge I only brought trouble on my friends, that I resolved to escape by sea. The decision was made by myself alone at the last moment in the humiliation of finding myself, for no legitimate cause, spied upon and watched like a criminal. This abuse of power and the refusal to issue me a passport was contrary to the custom of any civilized country and to the law of Italy itself. My act was one of legitimate re- action to illegal treatment. Parri and Rosselli accompanied me. I had begged them not to come. They insisted on doing so, not because their presence was necessary, but simply out of devoted friendship to me in such a painful moment. ... I shall be grateful to fate — despite the anguish of this recent ordeal — if the exile which afflicts my declining years bears witness to my faith and makes me an instrument, however obscure, of civilization, even after the immediate facts have per- ished in oblivion. The trial at Savona resulted in sentences of ten months' imprisonment for each of the prisoners, but the government is not satisfied with this and will appeal. Contributors to This Issue Ramsay MacDonald, Labor Prime Minister of England, is a frequent contributor to The Sat ion. Lawrence Martin is the author of Chicago's Symphony Orchestra in a recent number of The Nation. Anita Brenner has lived for some years in Mexico and has contributed several articles on Mexican life and customs to The Nation. Lucien Price is on the staff of the Boston Globe. Rebecca Drucker is a New York journalist who has made a special study of children's literature. Rebecca Hourwich is a New York writer whose reviews have appeared frequently in The Nation. Katherine Niles has studied dancing under famous teachers, and is now herself a teacher in New York. Gaetano Salvemini is the author of "The Fascist Dic- tatorship in Italy."

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558 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3254 THE EVOLUTION OF MAN, by Wilhelm Boelsche A clear, strong, simple summary not only of Darwin's theory but of the work of a generation of scientists along the lines Darwin opened up. Just what a busy man wants to give him a bird's-eye view of Evolution. Cloth, illustrated, 60 cent* by mail. Catalog free. Charles H. Kerr & Co., 347 East Ohio St., Chicago, 111. REAL HARRIS HOMESPUNS Tm^Z^^pZI Suit Lengths Cut to Order. Postage Paid NEWALL, 150 Stornoway, Scotland. Write for patterns stating shades desired MONEY FOR CHRISTMAS You can easily earn from $15 to $20 in your spare time between now and Christmas. Others are doing it. Why not you? Write to The Nation Department 11 20 Vesey St. New York Throw Auay Your Glasses and SEE BETTER If you wear glasses — read this book '*jrfect Sight Without Glasses" By W. H. BATES, M.D. The author of this book presents evidence that all erro-s of re- fraction are caused by strain — and cured by rest and relaxation. A complete method of treatment is described so clearly that the reader can usually discard his glasses and improve his vision. Sold at ail bookstores. Price $S. The Central Fixation Pnbl. Co. Dept. 5, 383 Madison Avenue, New York Gentlemen : Please send me a copy of your book on "Perfect Sight Without Glasses." I will give the postman $3.00 plus post- age when it arrives. If I am not convinced of its value in five days. I will return the book and you will refund my money with- out question. Name Address RESTAURANT -Eat Your Way to Health- Your Diet Problems Solved by Our Scientific and Delicious Preparations of Fresh Vegetables and Fruits. Also food for diabetics. JrizfbocC iBwSSasSS} ^.t of Broadway 522 7th Avenue N. W. Cor. of 38th Street SPECIALTY SHOPS MARITZA wishes to announce an opening sale in her new shop — of Russian Rubashkas — em- broideries— and Roumanian blouses. 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The Nation FOUNDED 1866 Vol. CXXV NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 23, 1927 No. 3255 Contents EDITORIAL PARAGRAPHS B59 EDITORIALS: rf. The History of William J. Burns °** Mr. Borah Scores Again The Naivete of the English °** The Art of Translation THE OPTIMIST. By Hendrik van Loon SC4 IT SEEMS TO HEYWOOD BROUN. By Heywood Broun 565 TIME OUT FOR CORRUPTION! By Paul Y. Anderson 566 ENGLAND'S ECONOMIC PLIGHT. By John A. Hobson 567 RUTH ELDER'S REVOLT. By Russell Owen 569 IN THE DRIFTWAY. By the Drifter 570 CORRESPONDENCE 5|1 FOREIGN BOOK SECTION : French Literature Today. By Ludwig Lewisohn 572 German Literature Today. By Arthur Eloesser 573 A Selected List of the Season's Translations 574 Books: The National Myth. By J. A. Hobson 575 Youth of the Continent. By Clifton P. Fadiman 575 Sorcellerie tvocatoire. By Allen Tate 57b Transcendental Romanticism. By Eliseo Vivas 578 Aletta Jacobs. By C. Ramondt-Hirschmann 578 New Utopias for Old. By Charles Lee Snider 580 Books in Brief B8^ Drama : A Fiasco. By Joseph Wood Krutch 582 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS SECTION: Disarmament and the Labor Party. By Rennie Smith 584 OSWALD GARRISON VTLLARD, 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 HEYWOOD BROUN CARL VAN DOREN DAVID BOEHM, Advertising Manager Surscription 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 York. British Agent of Subscriptions and Advertising, Miss Gertrude M. Cross, 13, Woburn Square, London, W. C. 1, England. THE NATION is on file in most public and college libraries and is indexed in the Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature. SUFFRAGE AS A REWARD for being a good little Fas- cist is the latest of Mussolini's ideas for the unification of Italy. At a meeting of the Fascist Grand Council over which the Premier himself presided it was proposed that the right to vote should be granted only to those who are considered active contributors to the welfare of Italy. Presumably members of Fascist guilds in the best stand- ing will be among the elect; others may get into the charmed circle as best they may. And when they are in, when they are accorded the inestimable privilege of the vote, they will be permitted to vote for only one party — the Fascist — for the simple reason that only one party — the fascist — will exist. Candidates are to be proposed by the Fascist guilds or corporations; their names will be gone over by the Grand Council in order that the chaff may be separated from the wheat. The Grand Council will add names of its own choosing and the combined list will be submitted to the select few who are permitted to vote. This is a neat and inexpensive scheme, but, like most good schemes, it might be improved upon. Would it not be simpler, for instance, to eliminate the nominations by the corporations, to have the Grand Council choose the candi- dates and also cast a proxy vote for the rest of the country? If the council was too busy it could delegate its powers still further: II Duce could with one twist of the wrist cast a ballot for Italy, and the thing would be done. PICTURESQUE TALES about a six-year-old King, a golden-haired Queen Mother, and the various mis- tresses of a former Prince cannot disguise the fact that in Rumania things are not going well. Most recently the spotlight has been turned on M. Manoilescu, former Under Secretary of Finance, just acquitted of the charge of com- plicity in a plot to restore Prince Carol to the throne occu- pied by his son. M. Manoilescu emphatically denied that Carol ever wished to depose little King Mihai; possibly he was right. But whether he was or not, the trial and its at- tendant excitement ought not to divert attention in the outside world from what is really happening in this troubled section of the troubled Balkans. Rumania is fast disappear- ing into the maw of a despotism as unyielding as that of Primo de Rivera in Spain. Censorship, military dictator- ship, the helplessness of a child king are the weapons by which the Bratianu family is defeating Rumania. Premier Bratianu himself is a strong man; and he is able to place members of his family in subordinate positions in order that his commands may be carried out. If a coup were effected by which the exiled Prince Carol were actually re- stored to the headship of his country, one wonders how long he would last in opposition to so fierce and so experienced a political lion. LORD WEMYSS, lately First Sea Lord of the British Admiralty, who was one of the advisers to the English makers of the Peace of Versailles, has demanded in the House of Lords that Great Britain denounce the Declaration of Paris of 1856 and reassert her "ancient historic right" to search neutral ships at sea and confiscate cargoes bound for enemy countries even though not contraband. The British Government, through its First Civil Lord, promptly replied that this was impossible and Lord Haldane paid his respects to the Admiralty which seems bent on rousing world opinion against England as rapidly as possible. What Lord Wemyss proposes is another blow at what remains of the war-wrecked structure of international law, instead of helping to rebuild it, and thereby he gives convincing proof of the menace army and navy men everywhere are to the civilized world. Only a few weeks ago a French admiral announced that in the next war France would attack unarmed ships with its fliers without regard to passengers or anything else, although this is precisely what was called piracy and murder on the high seas when the Germans did it by means of their submarines. Freedom of the seas is about as far away, if not further, than the disarmament solemnly promised by our beatified Allies and ourselves when we jointly concocted the Treaty of Versailles. A L" SMITH'S impressive State-wide victory had its darker aspects in New York City, where the "New Tammany" showed it had not forgotten how to use the old Tammany tricks. Judge Panken, running for reelection BUR- ?

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560 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3255 after ten years on the Municipal Court bench, was defeated by a combination of fraudulent tactics designed to outwit even the mechanical honesty of the new voting machines. "Floaters" to the number of several thousand, it is charged, voted and repeated their votes in the hotly contested dis- tricts, and election officials perpetrated glaring frauds which the Socialist watchers seemed unable to prevent or stop. Similar methods were used to defeat Charles Solomon for the Assembly. An interesting comment on these practices was quoted by several newspapers as coming from no less an authority than John R. Voorhis, Tammany man and head of the Board of Elections. The Socialists [said Mr. Voorhis] have complained that the Republicans and Democrats were trying to do them, and the Socialists were probably correct. There is nothing new in it. But if the Socialists were defrauded of their fair gains in New York City, they did better elsewhere. In Reading, Pennsylvania, a city of 120,000, the whole Socialist ticket was swept into office; in Buffalo a Socialist was elected president of the City Council ; and in Boston, where for ten years the Socialist Party has put out no city ticket, a So- cialist ran second for councilman with a large vote, no doubt as a protest against the executions of Sacco and Van- zetti. In New York too the Socialist vote showed marked increases. Even in a year of flat reaction in the East, a faint breeze of protest has sprung up. FOR THE SECOND TIME Westchester County in New York State has given an amazing example of intelli- gent independent voting. This, the richest suburban county in the United States and one of the most populous, again defeated a proposed new charter which concentrated power in the hands of a few political insiders. The system of governing suburban towns by a board of supervisors is an anachronism and they know it in Westchester. Twice, however, the voters have examined the document submitted to them and rejected it — rejected it though powerful busi- ness bodies and the still more powerful Republican boss, William L. Ward, championed each one. Boss Ward and the growth of this commuter community have together made Westchester a heavily Republican county. But the Repub- licans there will take no charter on anybody's say-so when they have reason to believe that a chief result of its adop- tion will be the fortifying of two or three men in complete control of the county. POLICEMEN IN NEWARK, New Jersey, have an ef- fective if not original method of stopping meetings which they consider objectionable. The organization which wishes to hold the meeting duly applies for a police permit, stating on its application the purpose for which the meet- ing is to be held; the chief of police examines the documents — presumably — and the permit is duly granted. Prepara- tions for the meeting continue merrily. The day before it is scheduled the permit is revoked on some ground or other, and if an attempt is made to hold a meeting in defiance of police order, there are plenty of policemen on hand to ar- rest would-be participants or speakers for "disorderly con- duct." This happened last week to the Young Workers' Communist League, which desired to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the Russian Revolution at a gathering on November 13. The permit was granted on November 9, Chief of Police McRell being fully aware of what the meet- ing was for; it was "revoked" on November 12, twenty- four hours before the meeting was to have taken place. About 200 persons assembled at the hall to listen to a few sentences by speakers addressing them from soap-boxes; seven men, including the speaker, were arrested and re- leased on an aggregate bail of $900 — somewhat excessive, one would think, for the crime in question. The American Civil Liberties Union is undertaking the defense of the men, but meanwhile the time for celebrating is past. If any- thing can create a red menace in America it is this kind of arbitrary police czarism. Unfortunately Newark is not unique. In the Pennsylvania coal-fields the police act as agents of the owners; there is no pretense of maintaining the constitutional rights of free speech and free assembly. CHINA IS CARRYING ON with a normal supply of civil wars. In the North fighting has been suspended, pos- sibly because of cold weather; on the Yangtze the Nanking Government forces have driven General Tang Seng-che out of Hankow. Since Tang joined the Canton forces two years ago he has been successively the hero of the radicals, then the bloodiest suppressor of labor and peasant unions in China, and finally a personal military chieftain living on the country he ruled. Tang has retired to his old province of Hunan, while the soldiers and even the generals who were under his command have been incorporated into the Nanking army. Nanking now promises a purely civilian government of the Wuhan cities about Hankow — but she has not announced how she will get rid of the soldiers. Another effort at civilian government, under some of the old leaders, is being made at the traditional base in Canton. But civil government is desperately fragile in China, and no group which rejects the support of the workers and peasants — the beginnings of organized civilian power — is likely to endure. Meanwhile the foreigners in China are behaving as foolishly as ever; on the anniversary of the Soviet Revolution a white mob stormed the Russian Con- sulate in Shanghai, apparently with the tacit consent of the avowed upholders of law and order. A GALA DAY, totally unexpected, followed the formal ceremonies opening the Holland Tunnel under the Hudson River. Thousands of persons had been assembling before the New York and New Jersey entrances ; when President Coolidge gave the signal which declared the structure officially complete crowds surged toward the open- ings, marched in where only motor vehicles are supposed to tread, and with songs and shouts and waving of hands and of flags announced that as far as they were concerned the tunnel was in use. Enthusiasts shook hands with each other across the invisible State barrier; and the tunnel police joined in the fun. Thousands who were there may never ride through its miles of smooth concrete. They did not care. They were celebrating the machine, as thou- sands celebrated the airplane in which Lindbergh flew the Atlantic. This particular machine was, as they saw it, fresh and uncorrupted; the symbol in some way they could not explain for all machines. Thus the radio might have been honored before a message passed over its secret wires ; thus the dynamo just leaving the factory, the steamship standing helpless upon the ways. If these machines are put to unworthy uses it is no fault of the machine as such; while they are still new they are fit subject for popular rejoicing.

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Nov. 23, 1927] The Nation 561 The History of William J. Burns THIS Mr. Burns, whom the United States Government accuses of jury-tampering and of making false affi- davits, is an old friend. When he boasts that he has done nothing for Harry Sinclair that he had not done dozens of times for the Government, he is probably telling the truth. It would be hard to go lower than the Department of Jus- tice has gone in recent years, and government secret- service men have behaved very much like the animals known as private detectives. There is no lower job to which a human being can stoop. Generally speaking, the task of the private detective is not to prevent or expose crime; it is to provoke men into being worse than they are in order that they may be convicted, to another man's profit. And the private detective will commit any crime to gain his end. When Mr. Burns resigned from his post as Director of the Bureau of Investigations of the Department of Justice in 1923, the Attorney General stated that Burns had been identified with the Government for twenty-five years, hav- ing served in the Treasury Secret Service before Harry Daugherty put him at the head of the Government's under- cover men. What Burns did for the Treasury we do not know, but in 1907 he picked a jury for an Oregon land- fraud case in such fashion that five years later, when the facts were revealed, the then Attorney General recom- mended a pardon, and President Taft, pardoning the man whom Burns had helped to convict, said that Burns's work was "the most barefaced and unfair use of all the ma- chinery for drawing a jury disclosed to me in all my ex- perience in the federal courts." But the statute of limita- tions had run, and Burns went free. In 1918 an Attorney General of the other party looked into the records and con- firmed that judgment of Burns. In 1917 Burns operatives were caught tapping tele- phone wires in New York City and were accused of enter- ing offices at night to copy papers. Edward W. Edwards, secretary of the Allied Printing Trades Council, then asked that Burns's license be revoked, but Burns again escaped. When the Wall Street explosion occurred in 1920 Burns was very much in evidence. It was the work of Red plot- ters, he asserted before the streets had been swept; and he offered $50,000 reward for evidence convicting the plotters. Perhaps he felt safe; at any rate, one of his own agents later testified that he had written and mailed bomb threats at the behest of Burns officials, and added that a Burns agent had offered him bombs to plant in radical offices! When Burns denounces the "Red menace" in America, he is sometimes denouncing the work of his own agents. That Burns was a persistent agent provocateur there is no doubt. He was not in charge of the United States Secret Service when it organized Communist Party sections and instructed its agents to fix meetings for a certain night, so that the Government could round them up wholesale — that was Chief Flynn's dirty work. But Burns provoked crime on a large scale through his own private detective agency. More than one of his ex-servants has confessed the role he played by Burns's orders. And when E. D. Lindenfeld was arrested in Warsaw, Poland, in 1921, charged with responsibility for the Wall Street explosion, Burns gave away his hand. There was "no question" that Lindenf eld's arrest solved the "plot," he said; at the same time he asserted that Lindenfeld had been, first, the agent in America of the Third International, and second, one of Burns's own under-cover men. Eventually, Lindenfeld's story dissolved in mist. They were Burns agents, again, who persuaded the Communists in 1923 to stage their silly secret meeting in the sand-dunes of northern Michigan, and then tipped off the State police to arrest them all. Sidney Howard in "The Labor Spy" prints a series of unattractive reports made in 1923 by Burns agents who acted as I. W. W. organizers in the copper districts of Arizona when Burns was em- ployed by the mine companies. Two of these Burns stool- pigeons were later expelled from the I. W. W. because they "acted as hired detectives of the Burns International De- tective Agency and advocated force and violence after join- ing the I. W. W." The manufacturers' association of Erie, Pennsylvania, paid Burns $29,817 to defeat the molders' strike there. In Joliet, Illinois, only two years ago, a Burns detective was caught throwing a bomb at a non-union garage in an attempt to discredit a strike of automobile mechanics. Burns was in charge of the United States Secret Service when the Sinclairs and Dohenys were looting the nation's oil and when Daugherty was selling favors at the Depart- ment of Justice. Indeed he was Daugherty's man; he boasted of their forty-years' friendship. And he used all the power of his office to stop the investigations and pro- tect the scoundrels. He had the impudence to instruct his secretary, using a United States Government telegraphic code, to wire to Edward B. McLean, Fall's protector (who was on the secret roll of the Department of Justice as a dollar-a-year man), warning him of Senator Walsh's de- parture for Florida. When Senator Wheeler began probing into Daugherty's muck, Burns sent three United States agents to Montana instructed to "get something on Wheeler." In other words, he used his office against the people of the United States. Side by side with his misconduct of public office Burns carried on the work of his private detective agency. Osten- sibly he had resigned; in fact he wrote letters on United States stationery directing the operations of his private agents and stool-pigeons. And when he left office, he left it with the advantage of government associations. It was natural that Harry Sinclair should turn to Burns if he wanted to make sure of his jury. Burns was accustomed to that kind of work. The story that he instructed an agent to make out and swear to an affidavit, false from beginning to end, accusing a United States government official, does not surprise us. It is denied; it may be disproved; but it is in keeping with Burns's character and record. We would not besmirch William J. Burns unduly. He belongs to his tribe, and is probably no better and no worse than the rest of them — the Flynns, Shermans, Thieles, and others who sell their thousands of under-cover men to any- one with money to buy them. It will do no good if Burns goes to jail, and the country settles back in the comfortable conviction that a distinguished sinner has been punished. All these private detective agencies ought to be put under a checkrein and made responsible for their acts.

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562 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3254 Senator Borah Scores Again THAT was a refreshing and vigorous utterance which Senator Borah made before the Woman's National Committee for Law Enforcement in New York on November 12. In unqualified language he demanded that the two par- ties and the candidates for the Presidency announce prior to the conventions where they stand on the Eighteenth Amend- ment, and whether they propose to enforce the prohibition law if intrusted with the government. He properly de- nounced the politicians who believe that the issue can be sidestepped. He admitted the right of those who believe that the Eighteenth Amendment should be repealed to agi- tate to that end as much as they please. The Constitution, he insisted, must be upheld and enforced and he at last met the issue of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments by saying that he was for the enforcement of the entire Con- stitution but that he deemed those amendments so faultily drawn as to make their real enforcement impossible. In other words, he demanded that we face the issue which more than any other interests the American people today. That it should be necessary to make such a demand is surely proof of the way cowardice and hypocrisy rule our political life. We do not see why all Americans, whether Wet or Dry, should not rally behind him — all except those who today profit by the illicit liquor traffic, or desire to have the prohibition law remain a dead letter. Those who are opposed to the law on genuinely conscientious grounds have the right to violate it, but they do so at their own risk and must be as prepared to pay the penalt/, even to going to jail, as were the conscientious objectors to mili- tary service in 1917 and 1918. Such men, if sincere, will want to work openly for the repeal of the amendment. The Nation has long urged a nation-wide referendum upon this issue; there is no reason whatever why a country which could find a way overnight to conscript the youth of the land could not devise a machinery to register the feelings of the people on the liquor question. If this is not done, ther those who desire repeal should demand action of Con- gress and of the several legislatures and should stand behind Senator Borah in insisting that candidates say honestly whether they are Wet or Dry. The Senator's contention, which is also ours, that this is the subject which interests the public most, is upheld by the press reports of the recent election. Held in an off year, the newspapers were interested only in interpreting the re- sults from the angle of prohibition and their effect upon the political fortunes of Governor Smith. The defeat of the super-Wet Mayor in Detroit by a gentleman who never made a speech or gave a promise or appeared at a public meeting during the campaign; the race-track victory in Kentucky; the defeat, in an Ohio referendum, of the Anti- Saloon League proposal to legitimatize the practice of let- ting judges in prohibition cases collect their fees out of the fines imposed, have all been weighed and assayed, together with Governor Smith's latest victory in New York, as to their bearing on prohibition. Quite naturally the inter- preters read the signs as their own prejudices would have them. One Washington correspondent declares the election a great setback to Governor Smith, the Wet; another asserts that it more than ever puts him to the front as the only possible Democratic candidate. He has achieved so strong a hold upon the New Yoi'k electorate that he has now only to indicate his wish in order to have it carried out — an amazing circumstance. No one can deny the fact. Gov- ernor Smith rightly opposed one amendment out of eight — that which gave the Governor a four-year term but made his election coincident with that for the Presidency. The voters picked that amendment out and heavily defeated it — while the other amendments all carried easily. But Governor Smith, for all his power and popularity, is still one of those covered by Senator Borah's demand. If he tries to sit on the fence regarding the liquor question he is lost. So he will be if he allows any advisers to make him believe it wise to truckle to the Drys. He is a Wet by habit and conviction, and everybody knows it. The public will rightly despise him if he switches to gain votes; it should certainly not permit him to be a serious candidate until he states frankly and honestly whether he is for the repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment or not, and whether he himself, personally, will obey the law if he enters the White House. In heaven's name, let us have some respect for mental integrity and state, whether candidates or not, under which flag we stand. The woman's committee declares that it voices the views of ten million women who desire the law to be enforced. Let the Wets marshal their cohorts. The Naivete of the English INDIA is shaken again. On November 8 Parliament was informed that the British Government had appointed a commission to report whether India is ready for a further measure of self-government. This fact in itself would not be enough to shake that country; for, when the Govern- ment of India Act was adopted by Parliament in 1919, it was specifically provided that the reforms were to be effec- tive for a first stage of ten years, and before the expiration of that period an inquiry would be instituted into the re- sults achieved and recommendations for the future would be made to Parliament. The commission has not been ap- pointed any too soon. Two years are not a long time for an investigation of such profound importance to more than 300 million people. What has shaken India is the personnel of the com- mission. It consists of seven members, among whom there is not one Indian. Not only have the avowed Nationalists like Pandit Malaviya and Pandit Moti Lai Nehru been ig- nored; but men like Mr. Patel, who has officiated with the greatest satisfaction to all parties as the first elected presi- dent of the Indian Legislative Assembly, have been passed over, as has Mr. Srinivasa Sastri, who was long a "moder- ate" and seemed to have the confidence of the Government of India, and even those Indians of ability, occupants of posts of trust, who have been staunch supporters of the British Raj. All Indians have been omitted on the ground that "the desire, natural and legitimate, of Indian members to see India a self-governing nation could hardly fail to color their judgment of her present capacity to sustain that role." Could any but the most self-complacent Tory Government in history have uttered a statement of such perfect naivete? There lies nowhere in the announcement a hint that India is in any degree possessed of either the right or the ability to make decisions concerning her own fate. Rather she is like a child before its parents asking for a dime to go to the movies, or with forbidden jam on its lips; or,

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Nov. 23, 1927] The Nation 563 perhaps in a better analogy, a plaintiff before a jury — or is she considered a defendant at the bar? — without even a jury of her own lowly peers! This is the spark which is kindling India's flame of resentment and in some quarters threatening a boycott of the commission. Once more India's self-esteem has been shattered on British arrogance. We predict that in the future as in the past Britain will get small satisfaction from her policy of governing this proud people in the manner of condescension, not to say of insult. Yet the problems of governmental reform in India are not merely technical ones of division of administrative responsibility; extension of the franchise; collection, con- trol, and expenditure of revenue. They are, in their most troublesome aspects, rooted deep in social and political anomalies. Until the violent Hindu-Moslem hatred melts away, no satisfactory system of representation will ever be devised. Each element, distrustful of the other, clamors for a different method. The Hindus wish a single, general electorate, such as we have in this country. The Moham- medans, forming only one quarter of the country's popula- tion, insist on the election of representatives to the various legislative bodies by separate religious communities. Other- wise, they argue, and perhaps justly, they would never be represented and their rights would be ignored. A somewhat similar situation exists in the southern part of the country between Brahman and non-Brahman communities. Of a totally different character is the problem of the Native States, governed by hereditary monarchs and with greater or less degrees of independence as regards their internal administration. These are in no respect bound by the sys- tem of government prevailing in British India. But since they are scattered through all parts of British India like polka dots, they create an unusual disharmony of auto- cratic with representative government. These problems and others with them have baffled many excellent British minds for decades. We wonder what this commission's seven members, who start so innocent of In- dian affairs, will accomplish in two short years. We sus- pect that until Englishmen admit the equal right — we should say even a better right — of Indians to discuss the government of India, all the commissions in the world can do no better than mark time. Englishmen who cannot see the imperial color of their own minds are an obstacle to progress wherever they flaunt their naive complacencies. The Art of Translation IT is seldom that writers of power are attracted by the "other harmony" of translation, and seldom, therefore, that first-rate work is done in the field. Dryden, who in the preface to a volume of pieces he had rendered from the classics announced in 1685 that "For this last half year I have been troubled with the disease (as I may call it) of translation," was a writer of great original power. And since he was also given to reflecting upon his processes as he worked, and was one of the ablest of critics, he was able to publish some excellent remarks upon the general subject of translation conceived as an art. He put his finger, for instance, directly upon the weakness with which most trans- lators are afflicted. "The proprieties and delicacies of the English [language] are known to few," he justly said; " 'tis impossible even for a good wit to understand and practice them without the help of a liberal education, long reading, and digesting of those few good authors we have amongst us, the knowledge of men and manners, the freedom of habitudes and conversation with the best company of both sexes; and, in short, without wearing off the rust which he contracted while he was laying in a stock of learn- ing. . . . Thus it appears necessary that a man should be a nice critic in his mother tongue before he attempts to translate a foreign language. ... He must perfectly under- stand his author's tongue, and absolutely command his own." We do not presume to know how deeply experienced the average translator today may be in conversation with the best company of both sexes, but we are sure that in general no better counsel than Dryden's could be offered one who was about to undergo the pain of bringing life out of another language than his own. Dryden's counsel, in brief, was to become a great and fine writer. Now few can be that; and few, accordingly, can translate well. When in addition we consider the rewards that come to translators, often for work whose exasperating difficulties are never suspected by the reader in his armchair, the wonder is that there are any superb specimens of the art whatever. "It seems to me," said Dryden on another occasion, "that the true reason why we have so few versions which are tolerable is . . . because there are few who have all the talents which are requisite for translation, and that there is so little praise and so small encouragement for so con- siderable a part of learning." The only substantial re- ward indeed, today as in other times, is praise; and there is little enough of that, while of encouragement there seems to be none at all. How famous is C. K. Scott Moncrieff, whose endless, noble task of turning Marcel Proust into the best conceivable English is brought to mind this fall by the appearance in America of "Cities of the Plain," the fourth instalment of "Remembrance of Things Past"? He is not a famous man, we fear, though he deserves to be ten times more so than most English and American novelists. His work must be its own reward, as was the case with the great translators in Tudor England, who did what they did because of a passion to see Plutarch, Suetonius, Frois- sart, Montaigne, and the rest in the King's language; as was the case with the Augustans, who hungered to see the classics silvered over with the beauties of a modern tongue; as is the case today with Aylmer Maude, Constance Garnett, Eden and Cedar Paul, Edwin Muir, and several others- most of them, it must be confessed, in England. Elsewhere in this issue of The Nation will be found a partial list of titles appearing as translations in America this fall. The list, which incidentally makes no attempt to represent the work constantly going on in technical fields, may seem large to some, but to others who are aware of all that is going on in the literatures of Europe it will seem slight enough. The German language is represented best, with works by Emil Ludwig, Arthur Schnitzler, Hermann Sudermann, Jacob Wassermann, Franz Werfel, Stefan Zweig, and Sigmund Freud. France comes next, with Andre Gide and Marcel Proust at the head of its column. Spain and Italy send only a handful of volumes, and the same is true of the Northern countries; while of the new Russian literature about which we hear so much there is almost nothing to be seen. There is a committee for recommending American books for translation into Rus- sian; must there be a committee for recommending Russian books to us?

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564 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3255 The Optimist "Oh, look at the pretty little birds!"

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Nov. 23, 1927] The Nation 565 1 COULD wish "happy birthday" to Soviet Russia with a good deal more heartiness if I had not read the report by Roger Baldwin which was printed in The Nation. Of Mr. Baldwin's friendliness to the Revolution there can be no doubt, and his most unfavorable findings are hardly overdrawn since he advances them so apologetically. Though 100 per cent Americanism is still not my ideal, I may go all the way up to sixty-five or seventy if I hear many more excuses for the things which are amiss in Russia. "The prisons were crowded," writes Roger Baldwin and explains, "the Government was nervous." But that holds just as true of terrorism when we have it in these United States. There never was any doubt in my mind that Mitchell Palmer was a sincerely frightened man. It was a nervous Massachusetts which killed Sacco and Van- zetti. The conception of Governor Fuller as an arch-fiend always seemed to me uncomprehending. He was not cruel but panicky. If sincerity is the only test of right or wrong in gov- ernmental oppression I shall break at once into the Star Spangled Banner, for the heresy hunters of this land are as fanatical in their sense of godly inspiration as any you are likely to find in many marches. "The cries of horror which accompany political execu- tions of bourgeois opponents are all of bourgeois origin," says Mr. Baldwin. But that does not mark Russia as unique among the nations. When Fascisti murder a Socialist it is not the Fascisti who cry out in protest. And, again, I find : "There is terrorism in Russia, but it is directed chiefly against a comparatively small class. . . ." Here, too, Russia follows the usual formula of governments which imagine they hear footsteps on the stairs. The conscientious objectoi's were not numerous in America, which was one of the very reasons why they were hounded. Mr. Baldwin himself fought against the police power of New Jersey during the strike in Passaic and he must have known that the people whose cause he espoused were but a handful hemmed in by the hostile. Roger Baldwin has already done his share of suffering for liberty, but if logic holds him in strict allegiance he should top his six months sentence here for the right of free assembly, by going back to Russia and serving out another term for the glory of free speech. He believes, he says, in "the utmost freedom of opinion consistent with its maintenance." This introduces the element of interpre- tation. I would have freedom quite a little freer. Ob- viously a case might have been made against Debs under Baldwin's definition. The important question seems to me to be the authority which is allowed to pass upon consis- tency. We are told that the secret political police of Russia are doing the most effective job in the world. "Even the government chiefs are inclined to defer to its judgment of what constitutes public safety." Does this mean that such American liberals as disliked rule by Burns or Flynn or Palmer must go and apologize to these gentlemen? In speaking again of the GPU, or secret police, Mr. Baldwin says: "Its operations are masked in secrecy; it encourages dread by making its arrests late at night; and rumor is the chief reporter of its decisions." Apparently America has less to learn from Russia than I had assumed. Even our amateurs in Georgia and Mississippi are up to these tricks. I would rather put my trust in a corrupt congressman, or governor, or mayor, than depend upon the mercies of the best policeman in the world. Time after time the point is made that those in Russia who go to exile, jail, or death are only bourgeois. But it does happen that the bourgeoisie have flesh and blood and bones, and can feel cold and steel about the same as work- ers. I distrust the revolutionary faith in labels. Ten years ago, perhaps, there was some reasonableness in separating sheep from goats by tests based on economic gradations. By now there has been time even for capitalists to change their coats and see the light. Just how do you tell a mem- ber of the bourgeoisie if you happen to sit next him at a dinner table? Press hard upon his finger nail, I suppose, and watch to see if there is left a little splotch of purple. During our dark days the discovery was made that it was not difficult to use the word "bolshevist" to include almost anybody who happened to be in disagreement with your opinions on whatever question. Unless human nature has been radically altered by the Soviets, I suspect that a bourgeois Russian is a political opponent who has just left the room. As far as Roger Baldwin's article goes, I see in it nothing to uphold the hands of politicians here who would deny recognition to the Russians. In fact I don't see how we can fail to recognize them. The face which they turn toward us is certainly familiar. "Its rigid controls are regarded as temporary war measures." Surely we have heard that before. "Of perhaps four or five thousand ar- rested all over Russia last June, it was estimated that only seven or eight hundred were actually exiled." A. Mitchell Palmer showed the same sort of liberality. Indeed, the discouraging factor about the Russian dic- tatorship lies in its strength and its efficiency. One rather expects political rebels to be stood against a wall in Mexico because there the possibility of overturn is really imminent. But there is nothing to show that Russia has not safely weathered its greatest dangers from outside interference. From this corner of the earth the talk of war by England sounds not unlike some speech delivered in Chicago. Never- theless, it has sufficed to put out of the way men not popu- lar with Soviet officials. Our Security Leaguers urge upon us without cessation the virtues of military training. It promotes patriotism, increases chest expansion, and makes fine manly boys. I should think General Bullard would love the land of the Soviets where the rhythm of hob-nailed boots is never stilled. Russia is on the move, of that there can be no question, but is this a new road or are there ruts and wagon wheels to show that it is an old and familiar parade ground? Heywood Broun

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566 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3255 Time Out for Corruption ! By PAUL Y. ANDERSON Washington, November 8 NGULFED by the tide of corruption against which it .Li was launched, the Fall-Sinclair trial came to an igno- minious and premature end November 2. To the old charges of bribery and conspiracy in the oil cases, there is now added the new and even more abhorrent one of jury-tam- pering. Again, in the factories and on the farms of Amer- ica, men shake their heads and mutter the old axiom: "It's hard to convict a hundred million dollars in this country." The proceedings which compelled Justice Siddons to dismiss the jury and declare a mistrial at a time when the case appeared to be going very badly for the defendants, resulted from a natural meeting between the Sinclair wealth and the peculiar talents of that famous jury-scouter, Mr. William J. Burns. Day and night, from the very hour the jury was sworn, eleven of its members were dogged and watched, and their financial condition, business connections, social relations, per:>onal habits, and religion subjected to the most intimate and detailed scrutiny by fifteen opera- tives of the Burns Detective Agency, employed for that pur- pose by Henry Mason Day, one of Harry Sinclair's vice- presidents. Subsequently, called before the grand jury to explain his activity, Mr. Day declined to answer questions on the ground that he might incriminate himse.f. The incident of Juror Kidwell, who discussed Sinclair's "democratic manner" in a soft-drink saloon, and boasted that when the trial was over he would have an automobile "as long as this block," was a minor element contributing to the mistrial, if an interesting one. The presence in the jury box of this young leather-worker, who spent his even- ing hanging out on street corners, and had never paid any at- tention to the oil cases "except maybe to glance at the head- lines," was but the natural consequence of a rule which con- fined jury service to those who knew little or nothing about the most important public event in America since the war. So long as ignorance remains the first requirement of a juror in the federal courts, and so long as intelligent in- terest in great public events is sufficient to disqualify a citizen for the highest exercise of his citizenship, there will be more "Eddie" Kidwells in the jury boxes, and more juries of the kind that sang "Bye, Bye, Blackbird," and shot craps on the floor as a preliminary to acquitting E. L. Dohen> and Albert Fall. But that is another problem. It has been remarked that things were going badly for the defense when Sinclair money and Burns genius collaborated to produce the mistrial which gives the defense a lapse of two and a half months in which to redraft their strategy and perfect new explanations. With indefatigable energy and the skill which reveals him as one of the truly great lawyers of the country, Owen J. Roberts had woven a deadly net of fact and circumstance around the hard-boiled oil magnate and the feeble Fall. He had shown how Fall sought, obtained, and exulted over control of the naval reserves in the matter of leasing. He had shown the furtiveness with which the negotiation- with Sinclair were begun, and the secrecy in which they were consummated. Other oil men had come on the scene, eager to bid. They were rank outsiders. The crafty Fall strung them along, putting one off, lying to another, and as a ludicrous climax to a comedy of double-dealing, cor- dially invited one to submit propositions when the lease was at that moment lying signed in his desk, ten days old. Then the story of the reward. What a picture! Fall was in debt to his ears. The joint and several notes of him- self and his son-in-law, Everhart, totaled $108,000, most of them long overdue. Fall's own note for $15,000 was three years past due. Times were hard in the cattle country. Suddenly, less than two months after the leasing of Teapot Dome, this New Mexican night of despair was shattered by a burst of sunshine from the East. Returning from Wash- ington, where he visited Fall, and from New York, where he visited persons yet unknown, Everhart appeared in Pueblo, Colorado, with 8230,500 in Liberty bonds. With these he paid the debts of Fall, himself, and their cattle company, and from the remainder deposited $70,000 to Fall's cash account. Roberts deftly traced these bonds to the Continental Trading Co., a mysterious corporation which was born on the day that A. E. Humphreys by invitation met certain oil men in New York to sell them 33,000,000 barrels of oil. Those men were Sinclair: Robert W. Stewart, head of the Standard Oil of Indiana; Harry M. Blaekmer, head of the Midwest Refining, a Standard subsidiary; and James E. O'Neill, head of the Prairie Oil and Gas, a so-called "inde- pendent" with strong Standard ties. Humphreys sold them the oil; that is, he thought he had sold it to them until the last moment. When the time came to sign the contract, he discovered that the formal pur- cnaser was the Continental, unknown to him, but fully guar- anteed in the performance of its contract by Stewart, Sin- clair, and O'Neill. This infant prodigy on the same day resold the oil to companies controlled by Sinclair, Stewart, and O'Neill at a profit of 25 cents a barrel, which, under the contract, would have amounted to a total profit of more than $8,000,000. Out of $3,000,000 thus accumulated, the Liberty bonds were purchased which passed through the hands of Everhart into the pocket of Fall. What became of the remaining $2,769,000 is an absorbing secret, in which the Department of Justice apparently has not the slightest interest. The entire sum was invested in Liberty bonds, but one wonders in vain who got the others. Everhart, called as a witness to explain where he got the bonds, refused to tell on the ground that his testimony might incriminate him. His plea was upheld after his lawyer had argued to the court (out of the presence of the jury) that "to force my client to answer this question is to compel him to rivet the chains of the penitentiary upon his own limbs." For the effect on the jury of this damning testimony and the even more damning refusal to testify, I quote from a statement made by a juror after the jury was dismissed: I felt, and I believe the other jurors felt, that the Gov- ernment had made out a strong case of conspiracy. Of course, we intended to keep open minds until we had heard the defense. But certain things had to be refuted or satis- factorily explained before I could have voted for acquittal. There was all the secrecy, there were the bonds, and, worst

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Nov. 23, 1927] The Nation 567 of all, Everhart's refusal to testify. A man can't incrimi- nate himself by telling the truth unless he is guilty. And if there was guilt in connection with those bonds, Fall must have shared it. Perhaps the defense could have explained it, but I didn't see how. There seemed to me only one sensible conclusion. And this from another juror: Remember, we only heard one side. But to my mind, all this secrecy and lying, and this refusal to testify, pointed to just one thing — guilt. How would the defense have ex- plained it? The enormously distinguished and incredibly suave Mr. Martin Littleton, chief counsel for Sinclair, in outlining his case to the jury had promised to show three things, namely: 1. That Fall never sought control of the reserves, but that the transfer was urged upon him by Secretary of the Navy Denby. 2. That the leasing was made necessary by the danger of drainage. 3. That the secrecy was due to military necessities. Now the law may or may not be an ass, but those who contend it is will find a juicy argument in the circumstance that the Supreme Court of the United States, in canceling the Teapot Dome lease, has considered and rejected each of these three pleas. Moreover, it took occasion to comment on them specifically and in language that can be described as brutal. It said 1. That Fall persistently sought control of the re- serves, and when he had obtained it wrote in "an exultant mood" to E. L. Doheny that it would no longer be necessary to consult the Navy Department in any leasing negotiations. 2. That there never was any imminent danger of drainage, and it would be immaterial if there had been, the only material fact being whether Fall had any good rea- son to believe that such danger existed when he made the lease. It held that he did not. 3. That "there never was any legitimate reason for secrecy." Yet under the law and the rules of evidence, Littleton was permitted to make to the jury these pleas which already had been discredited and repudiated by the highest court in the land! Not only was he permitted, but he was entirely willing! Not only was he permitted and willing, but he was protected by the rule which prevented the prosecution from disclosing to the jury the Supreme Court's ruling! Thus matters stood when the sleuthing activities of the Burns men put a summary end to the trial, and nullified all of Roberts's brilliant and effective work. It is likely that the grand jury will have reported before this is printed; if present indications hold true, there will have been indictments. Meantime, Messrs. Blackmer and O'Neill sojourn pleas- antly in Europe, defying all attempts to obtain their testi- mony. Have those great industrial captains who control the oil industry endeavored to persuade their fugitive sub- ordinates to obey their Government's summons, and return? I have not heard of it. I heard the former Republican Gov- ernor of New York, Nathan L. Miller, declare that he had advised Blackmer to disobey the subpoena. Fall and Sinclair were not on trial here, and they will not be on trial when the case is reopened in January. They have been tried by the Supreme Court, and found guilty. Justice itself is on trial. The jury system is on trial. The honor and patriotism of American business and industry are on trial. Shall I say that the ethics of the legal pro- fession are on trial? Ah, I see the suave Mr. Littleton rising to object, and, like Mr. Roberts, I withdraw the point, and let the case rest on the record. England's Economic Plight Bv JOHN A. HOBSON London, October SO ALTHOUGH a few politicians and business men have been seeing visions of an approaching boom in British industry and commerce, hard facts and figures give them no support. The longest and deepest depression recorded in our modern industrial annals remains unabated. The slight signs of recovery, exhibited last spring in bank clearings, iron and steel output, and in exports, have passed away. The unemployment figure still stands well over the million, below which it has never fallen since the 1920 collapse of post-war prosperity. Large bodies of the younger workers have never been in regular employment: they have been kept living in compulsory idleness these many years upon the "dole" provided by fellow-workers, employers, and the Government. The distribution of this unemployment is an interesting clue to our general economic situation. It is mainly con- centrated in the industries dependent largely upon export trade, namely, coal, iron, and steel, and their related trades of engineering and shipbuilding, together with the cotton and woolen trades. The high rate of unemployment in the former of these two groups is manifestly due in large mea- sure to the artificial inflation given them by the demands of war, though a good recovery of European and world trade would probably by this time have absorbed the enlarged out- put of which these trades were capable. For a good recov- ery would have precluded the erection of tariff barriers be- hind which continental nations have set up protected indus- tries for the production of goods which otherwise they would have bought more cheaply from Great Britain. Thus our trade depression is closely linked with the bad politics and economics of a war-racked world. The Balfour Commission in their "Survey" point out that the weakness in our export trade is not peculiar to Britain but belongs to the general state of international trade. For several separate expert computations indicate that the share of Britain in the total export trade of the world shows no considerable reduction. Indeed, the Balfour Committee find that in comparing 1913 and 1924 the pro- portion of British to world exports rises from 13 per cent to 14 per cent. But the actual reduction in the volume of our export trade by one-fifth is sufficient in itself to account for the bulk of our unemployment. The trades which are prosperous and show little un- employment fall under two categories. First come those sheltered from foreign competition by the nature of the

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568 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3255 goods or services they supply, such as building, printing and paper, public utilities (gas, water, electricity, and trans- port), drink industries, laundries, and the distributive trades. Secondly, comes a cluster of luxury trades, beer, tobacco, motor cars, artificial silk, candy, and the broad class of amusements, sports, and recreations, such as cine- mas, broadcasting, racing, and betting. The evident in- crease of expenditure upon these and other forms of luxury seems at first sight in strange contradiction to the prevalent belief in industrial depression. It is in part explained by changes in the distribution of the national income. Sir Josiah Stamp and Dr. Bowley, two of our most competent statisticians, have shown by careful analyses that the total real income of Great Britain and Northern Ireland has risen by 1 or 2 per cent since 1911, but that since the population meanwhile increased the income per head has fallen some 5 per cent. But the disposal of this income among the various classes of the community has shifted. Sections of the landed aristocracy, and many wealthy families divorced from industry and living on fixed-interest securities, have lost heavily. The same is true of retired middle-class people who have found the purchasing power of their savings halved, and of most professional families whose incomes have not risen proportionately to the rise of prices. On the other hand, the war left behind it a crop of profiteers, new rich, who have developed a great spending power. On a somewhat lower level of post-war prosperity may be placed large bodies of retail traders, especially in the drapery and other clothing trades and in certain food trades This con- tinued prosperity of retailers throughout our period of de- pression is probably attributable to several causes. When wholesale prices fell substantially, as they did in 1920 and after, retail prices did not follow suit. Retailers were aware that their customers had got accustomed to the high prices of war and post-war years, and by formal or tacit agreement they conspired to maintain those prices, or to make reduc- tions far less than corresponded with the cuts in the prices the/ paid to the wholesale merchant or manufacturer. Drapers have everywhere made good profits, largely from the increased wages and purchasing power which the new era brought to women, just as the brewers have gained much from the rise of wages in the unskilled male trades. Thus both among the industrial and the commercial classes large new sections have been endowed with substantial means to add new comforts and luxuries to their standard of living. Taking the national income as a whole, we find a post- war distribution somewhat more favorable to labor, or rather to certain laboring classes. The Balfour Committee puts the matter quite succinctly in stating that It is a legitimate inference from the available data that, in industries in which time rates of wages prevail, skilled workers employed in industries directly exposed to foreign competition were in 1924 on the average less well off than before the war, while on the other hand unskilled workers generally, and workers both skilled and unskilled in the so-called "sheltered" industries, have, generally speak- ing, if with some exceptions, improved their average position as regards purchasing power. Messrs. Stamp and Bowley take an even more fav view of the working-class situation, finding that in great industries "earnings have increased much more rapidly than piece or time rates" (owing to improved equip- ment and organization), that "there has been some change- over from time to piece rates," and some shifting from worse-paid to better-paid occupations — all factors counting toward a higher weekly income. Generally speaking, wage- earning women and unskilled men have made a substantial real advance in wages, while the great majority of skilled workers make at least as much as in 1911, for a somewhat shorter working day. Though these estimates are strictly applicable to 1924, there is no ground for holding that since then any material change has taken place. There are many less formal testimonies to the fact that in most industrial centers, outside the area of large unemployment, the stand- ard of living of most workers is noticeably higher than in pre-war times, their leisure larger, and their expenditures upon cheap luxuries and recreations markedly enlarged. These brighter features of the situation do not, how- ever, dispose of the serious condition of our export trade and of the heavy burden of the million unemployed. More- over, our brief survey, if correct, shows that we are barely holding our earlier position in volume of production, in a world where science has made so many and such rapid advances in technique and organization that in most indus- tries large increases of output per worker are attainable. Moreover, the most seriously injured of our trades are those upon which our past industrial and commercial supremacy appeared to be most solidly founded, viz., coal, iron and steel, shipbuilding, machinery, cotton, and wool. To get these great industries once again in active and prosperous condition is a vital necessity to a country so dependent upon foreign trade. For though the decline in our birth-rate is rapidly diminishing the growth of population, there is no likelihood that we can sensibly reduce our dependence upon foreign supplies of foods and the raw materials for our industries. No agricultural reforms attainable at an early date could do more than offset the continuous, though de- clining, growth of our population. If. therefore, we are to make any progress in our standards of production and con- sumption, we must sensibly enlarge our export trade. This lesson has recently been driven home by some alarmist fig- ures, published by the Board of Trade, relating to our trade balance. In 1925 the estimated surplus of our visible and invisible exports over our imports amounted to £54,000,000. For 1926 there was no surplus. We barely paid our way and had no balance for further investment abroad, in order to provide for further needs in the future. Yet, according to the Midland Bank statement for 1926, we invested not less than £112.000.000 outside this country! It has been suggested that foreign balances, put into London temporarily and at short call, have been utilized for loans abroad and are included in the Midland Bank estimate. But this would be too obviously unsafe. It is possible, indeed, that considerable sums, payable in New York and other foreign countries as interest on British investments abroad, have been reinvested in foreign loans without figuring in our records of import and export trade. But it is also probable that some considerable error has crept into the method by which this disturbing estimate has been obtained. For nothing can be more certain than that export of capi- tal, in the form of investment, must be accompanied at no distant date by export of goods and services which must figure in the trade balance. How to get a genuine move on in our export trade is a problem that is getting on the nerves not only of our busi- ness men but of our economists. Dr. Pigou (the successor of Dr. Marshall at Cambridge) urges a reduction in wages

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Nov. 23, 1927] The Nation 569 as a prime condition of reduced unemployment and im- proved trade. High wages and high prices in our shel- tered trades mean high costs of production for our export trades and a corresponding inability to enlarge our foreign markets. He finds "strong prima-facie ground for holding that the wage earners have set their rates too high to allow of normal employment in present economic conditions, even although all the war-time maladjustments were overcome." Others lay chief stress upon the decline in the rate of sav- ings, or provision of new capital. It is generally agreed that the new distribution of national income has had this result. Total savings, it is estimated, have fallen from something like 16 per cent of the general income, in 1911, to 12 or 13 per cent in recent years. This is imputed partly to general extravagance, a psychological war-product, partly to high taxation raiding the normal savings-fund. It is indubitable that some considerable reduction in the rate of saving has occurred. But those who hold this accountable for unemployment and failure of export trade, may be reminded that during this period of depression ac- tual capital in the shape of plant has not been lacking, and that the financial world has been perfectly prepared to finance any business which could show that it could sell at a profitable price the goods which the available labor and plant could produce. It is difficult to understand why in- creased savings, that is to say, the application of more productive power to capital goods and less to consumptive goods, would under such circumstances do anything but harm. Cheaper money and cheaper labor might enable our export trades to secure a little more of the diminished ex- port trade of the world. But it would be attained at a heavy damage, not only to the standard of living of the workers, but to the trades supplying their reduced demand for consumable goods. It will not be by such niggling economies that Brit- ain's trade recovery can be compassed, but by such reorgan- ization alike of the technique and the government of indus- try as the ablest minds both among our business men and our politicians are beginning to plan. Broader-minded in- dustrialists are awakening to these needs. The principle of combination is displacing the old faith in competition. Trusts and cartels which were anathema before the war are now in favor in almost every quarter. Even labor poli- ticians support them as stepping-stones toward socialism. But successful organization along these lines demands indus- trial peace between capital and labor. Here also big indus- trialists show more liberal minds than heretofore. Sir Alfred Mond, president of the great chemical combine, has just launched a proposal of share-purchase on favorable terms to employees, in conjunction with a system of repre- sentative control through works councils, which, it is hoped, may reconcile the interests of the two main factors in indus- try and usher in a new era of peace and productivity. How far or how fast such a plan is generally applicable remains to be seen. A strong monopoly in an industry like chemicals, in control of a lucrative and growing market, can well afford to purchase industrial peace by concessions that do not seriously weaken expert administration or the profits of big owners. But the trouble Mr. Keynes is having in his gallant effort to induce the Lancashire cotton spinners to enter an effective combine for their evident advantage well illustrates the difficulties which beset the path of industrial reformers in this country. The typical business man is still afraid of compromising his liberty by entering any close and binding arrangement with other firms. Nor is he easily persuaded to grant to a representative body of his employees any real voice in the control of "his" business. The strong survival of this absolute spirit of sovereignty is the great obstacle to industrial as it is to international peace. It is incompatible with the growing intelligence and self-respect of the workers. The organization of industry for successful production upon modern lines is first and foremost an organ- ization of the wills and intelligences of all the human be- ings who by active participation are interested in the out- put. This is, indeed, an obvious truth, a truism, but to incorporate it in our economic system means the scrapping of a large number of obsolete yet obdurate ideas. Ruth Elder's Revolt By RUSSELL OWEN "T TOW do you like me now?" is Ruth Elder's attitude 11 toward life. This girl who hopped into an air- plane after powdering her nose and flew to what many thought was certain death, but which turned out to be a miraculous rescue in a year of desperate aviation, had her eye on the beholder. In everything she does she seems consciously trying to be picturesque, and almost invariably she succeeds. The zest with which she impresses this side of her odd, and yet exceedingly simple, personality on people causes them to forgive her pose. Of course she poses, but she does it well and enthusiastically. It is not conceit which makes Miss Elder lean against a propeller with her hands in the pockets of her knicker- bockers and beam at the camera. Not at all. She wants her place in the sun, she wants to be admired, and she goes about obtaining admiration as methodically as she handed drills to the dentist for whom she worked. She is a thor- oughly sophisticated, likable, and good-looking young woman, who knows what she is about. Hers is a revolt which is common in these days, but with her it has taken an unusual direction. She was de- termined to get out of the commonplace if she killed herself doing it. Marriage and work as a stenographer and den- tist's assistant had not satisfied her lingering desire to do something in the world which she could look back upon as having been a fair attempt at getting a "kick" out of life. She needed something more; and if fame came with it, so much the better. One night in New York shortly before her flight Ruth Elder was talking with a man who had been deputed to persuade her to give it up. Aviation was suffering from the misfortunes which had overtaken so many men and women, and manufacturers were justifiably against any more disasters. The man asked Miss Elder to try and explain why she was determined to go on. "Well, I've lived a while without amounting to a plugged nickel," she said. "I want to do something that will make people notice me, that may give me an oppor- tunity to get somewhere in the world. That's why I want to make this flight." "Is it worth risking your life?" "Yes, it is. If I make it, I may amount to something. If I don't, it won't make any difference anyway." It was probably the desire for thrills which made her

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570 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3255 learn to fly. Much to her own surprise she became a good pilot, due to her devil-may-care attitude. She learned to stunt a plane, doing with dexterity things which many older pilots never do better. Ruth was greeted rather skeptically when she came to New Yoi-k, and doubts of her ability to fly were heard on Curtiss Field. It was a sheep- ish group which met her when she climbed out of her plane after showing them what she could do. After that there was no doubt of her popularity among those who met her at the field. She was a thoroughly good fellow, she met everyone on his own ground. Pilots liked her and so did newspaper reporters. Particularly did the photographers like her, for she would pose at the slightest suggestion. She bounced about in her knickers and gay sweaters and bandeau, powdering her nose at intervals, standing with one foot on the running-board of an auto- mobile or on the wheel of her plane — always looking as if she wanted to know if she wasn't rather nice. If the pho- tographers had realized that once upon a time she had taken part in a bathing-beauty contest they would probably have asked her to dig out the bathing suit. And she would have done so. But with all her feminine gaiety there is a solid streak of disillusionment and sophistication in Ruth Elder. She takes things as she finds them and expresses no surprise. She knows the world well. Certain little reservations she has, which are quite as odd as the rest of her. She doesn't smoke, for instance. But she will sit around a convivial board with a group of pilots and be at home. A famous pilots' organization adopted her as an hon- orary member. That in itself means much, for it is hard to get into that secret order and no one can do so who is not a regular fellow. The night she was welcomed as the only American woman member the party was gay, and one man broke into enthusiastic profanity. He was thrown out by a dozen strong arms, but Ruth Elder smiled and told them to forget it. Now Ruth has her place in the sun. Half of her pur- pose .s accomplished. People know who she is because she took a method of freeing herself from anonymity which most persons — and particularly those who criticize her — would walk around carefully for a long time and then let severely alone. And some who laugh at her longing for the spotlight may remember the avidity with which they have pounced upon their own names in the newspapers. It is all a matter of degree, this desire for publicity, and Ruth Elder went after hers with a wholehearted frankness which seems rather admirable. Someone asked Senator Thomas H. Benton, a famous old warrior of pre-Civil War days, why he scrubbed himself in cold water with a currycomb. Senator Benton said: "Because the Roman gladiators did it, sir." It all depends on the point of view. In the Driftway Next Week "Al" Smith by Os wald Garrison Villard The second in a series of intimate studies of Presidential possibilities. TWO tragedies of the high seas, recorded in the news- papers lately, carry one back to the isolation which brooded over the deep before the coming of wireless teleg- raphy and are a reminder that modern inventions some- times imperil life rather than safeguard it. The installa- tion of a gasoline motor in the Japanese fishing smack Ryo Yei Maru, and the dependence placed upon it, seems to have been responsible for the harrowing fate which slowly overtook the crew of the vessel as it drifted over the soli- tary reaches of the Pacific Ocean. The Ryo Yei was picked up off the coast of Washington early in November and towed to Port Townsend. Two of the crew of twelve men were found, partly mummified, in bunks in the cabin of the smack. On deck were the whitened bones of seven or eight other men, the evidence indicating, so physicians decided, that cannibalism had been resorted to before the last mem- bers of the crew had perished of starvation. A note was discovered, written on March 6, last, saying that the ship had left Japan on December 5, 1926 (almost a year before she was found off the coast of Washington), and that the motor engine had broken down while the men were fishing, leaving the vessel to drift helplessly across the Pacific until food and water were exhausted and hope was abandoned. ***** THE newspaper accounts of the Ryo Yei spoke of the remnants of sails in the rigging, but it seems likely that these were of a makeshift or ineffective sort, be- cause the note left by the crew made no mention of storms such as might have disabled sound canvas. If the Ryo Yei had carried reserve sails probably she could have made port. ***** IN the case of the other disaster recently recounted in the press, a gasoline motor was again in evidence, but in this instance a long-headed skipper possibly saved himself and the eight other men in his crew by getting rid of the motor rather than putting his faith in it. When the four- masted schooner Horatio G. Foss showed signs of foun- dering 200 miles northeast of Bermuda Captain William D. Potter decided to abandon the vessel and, as a newspaper put it, "ordered the heavy motor taken out of the ship's lifeboat to accommodate the crew." Perhaps he acted not so much to make more room — there were only nine men to be embarked — as to lessen the weight and make the boat more seaworthy. Anyhow the crew attempted to make Bermuda by the aid of oars and some jury-rigged sails. ***** IT was a narrow squeak. For six days and seven nights the crew of the Foss lived and fought Atlantic tempests in their open boat. The Negro cook, crazed with fright, lay in the bottom of the frail craft holding fast to a prayer- book and wailing religious songs. Once the men were within a mile of the north reef of the islands, but were caught by a contrary gale and buffeted away. Finally they were sighted and picked up by the steamship Volendam on her way back from Hamilton with members of the Savings Banks Association of the State of New York who had been in convention in Bermuda. Probably the bankers will never again assist in any saving as thrilling as that of the crew of the Horatio G. Foss. The Drifter

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Nov. 23, 1927] The Nation 571 Correspondence Twenty -Three! To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: Darwin didn't finish his job. It is curious to note how the theory of evolution, in application, skips a beat now and then. That Boston librarian, you remember, who can- celed his subscription to The Natioyi — why should he still be an amoeba when you and I are so advanced? I suppose it's all in the point of view. But "Honi soit qui jamais pense." Permit me to replace the eminent librarian's subscription with my own — just as good, and likely to last longer. If, further, you care to give me an idea of how many subscriptions you lost for your Sacco and Vanzetti work, I will undertake to make them all good — within reason, within reason. Be honest! New York, October 28 Roger William Riis Humanity and Immigration Laws To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: The following wireless dispatch was just received on our ship: "Unless insane seaman [is] American citizen, im- possibility landing account immigration laws. Recommend mak- ing other port." Now turn to this freighter whose captain, not an Ameri- can citizen, has been suddenly struck down with violent frenzy. There are eleven cabin passengers on board, eight of them American citizens. When the dispatch arrived, they had to cling hard to their national pride. The next port is seven days away. On the ship there are only the most primitive accom- modations for such contingencies — no doctor, and only first-aid medical supplies. The coolness and efficiency of the officers and crew are winning universal admiration from the passengers, but the strain is beginning to tell on us all. For comfort we know that some laws are enforced to the last jot and tittle. But we ask ourselves, during this week of Inferno to which we are condemned, whether it is not possible to bring to the atten- tion of our law-makers the brutal inhumanity of an immigra- tion law which gives no discretionary power even to officials in important ports. At Sea, July 3 Benj. M. Woodbridge Capital Punishment in Germany To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: The Sacco-Vanzetti tragedy has given a new mo- mentum in Germany to the question of the abolition of capital punishment. In view of the work of our American League for the Abolition of Capital Punishment I should like to call at- tention to a petition which has been signed by a group of not- able German jurists and professors: The undersigned jurists acknowledge with satisfaction the measures of improvement, of prevention, and of protec- tion with which the proposed new German Criminal Code endeavors to fight the causes of crime, and to find proper preventive measures for the culprit rather than merely ex- ercising reprisals for the misdeed. All the more so do they deplore the retention of the death penalty provided for — and approved by the Reichsrat — which so grossly contradicts the spirit of this modern legal work, and which gravely jeopardizes the realization of that judicial community with Austria which was prepared with the valuable cooperation of the brotherland. Whereas, the death penalty never fulfils its purpose of intimidation by a public execution ; Whereas, the general sentiment for justice, fostered by the growing enlightenment of the people, rejects it more and more; Whereas, society does not need in any way this brutal and for that reason brutalizing method of punishment for its protection; Whereas, finally, the best legal administration is un- able to exclude grave miscarriages of justice, the under- signed petition the German Reichstag for the abolition of the death penalty. The movement for the abolition of capital punishment in Germany has been going on for nearly sixty years and it is at present on its way to the Reichstag where it appears to those who know most about the facts hopeful of success. I read also that Russia is vigorously taking up the question. New York, October 25 Marguerite Tucker Hendrik van Loon and Rosika Schwimmer To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: A few months ago when Henry Ford went to Canossa I was asked by one of the Jewish papers why, in my humble opinion, the excellent Henry, who cares not a whit for abstract ideas, had become so violently anti-Semitic. I ventured to sug- gest that Rosika Schwimmer was at the bottom of this primitive Fordian emotion. I said that this strong-minded woman seems to have been able to persuade Henry that the war would come to an end as soon as the belligerents of Europe had been made to understand in some visible way that the honest folk of America abhorred their sanguinary doings; that Henry had allowed himself to be persuaded and had filled a ship with rather nondescript enthusiasts; that many of those enthusiasts had turned the trip into a joy-ride, making Henry look ridicu- lous, and that as a result of this unfortunate affair Henry had turned anti-Semite." I still believe that guess to be entirely correct. Mrs. Schwimmer with her brilliant power of plausible reasoning must have found it comparatively easy to influence the simple-minded First Citizen of Detroit. When the expedition turned into a farce, it was just as natural that the simple-minded F. C. o. D. should have revaluated his anger into a silly gesture of Jew- baiting. Ever since my mail has been filled with angry pro- tests from participants in the famous peregrination to the Northland. I have been denounced in no uncertain terms. I have been accused of hitting a woman in the back. I have been told that I had become unfaithful to my own liberal convic- tions. I have been warned that if I did not retract every word, they, my correspondents, would refuse to buy any more of my books. In short, I have been called every sort of a wood-pussy for expressing what was and is my most sincere opinion. Why this statement should have been construed as an at- tack upon Mrs. Schwimmer only the intolerant gods of self- righteousness know. What I said seemed all rather rudi- mentary to me. Mrs. Schwimmer was and undoubtedly still is a strong character, a woman possessed of tremendous strength of will, a woman who most unselfishly has fought the good fight for a less idiotic and cruel world. I never questioned her motives and I never so much as suggested that she was actuated by anything but the loftiest of ideals. Unfortunately, a man with limited powers of observation and meditation, like Henry Ford, must have resented the fact that he had allowed himself to be "talked" into something he really did not want to do, and must have given expression to his childish anger in some absurd fashion, like the editorial policy of the Dearborn Indepeyident. How anybody could construe my remarks and observations into praise of Henry and attack upon a woman (whom I regret to say we are not allowed to call one of our compatriots) is more than I can understand. Wherefore I deposit this outburst of liberal anger as Exhibit 456,346,682 in my private Museum of Psychological Mysteries, and remain as ever, Your very obedient cartoonist, Hendrik Willem van Loon Westport, Connecticut, October 22

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Foreign Book Section French Literature Today By LUDWIG LEWISOHN Paris, October 1 THE French literary scene of the moment is hard to describe. There is activity; there is nothing salient. One has a sense of people rushing hither and thither with little to do. Or of people saying in their sub-consciousness: We have a great literature. It has always gone on and on — unthinkable that it shouldn't go on now. In this situation it is depressing to find men from the aged Paul Bourget to the younger and youngest quite sure that all will be mended if only time can be turned backward and the revolution undone. Luckily it can't. The glory of France is not wholly extinguished. She offers asylum to those whom Mussolini exiles; the other day in Strasbourg I heard thou- sands singing the Internationale in German without a policeman in sight. The Right and the Left were at one on Sacco and Vanzetti. It is these vestiges of the great and lasting France that make contemporary writing seem so feeble and futile. It is full of a hard and tired exoticism as in the popular novels of Blaise Cendrars and Paul Morand, whose "Boud- dha Vivant" is one of the successes of the year; there is hard and violent preciosity, as in the novels of Jean Gerau- doux, or a weary and constricted naturalism, as in those of Francis Mauriac. The Tharaud brothers go on journal- istically disapproving of the earth and M. PlliI Claudel (quaint ambassador from an anti-clerical republic to a democracy) discovers with Chesterton that farce and faith are one ("Deux Farces Lyriques"). It is at least arguable that in France, classic land of the novel, the novel is slowly perishing. Hence perhaps the enormous popularity of the novelized biography — "Le Eoman des Grands Existences." The Liszt of Pourtales, the Wagner of Barthou have found their way, I believe, to America, as did the Shelley of Maurois. There is now a Rimbaud, a Rivarol, a Villon, a Descartes, a Baudelaire and, above all at this very moment, the Disraeli of M. Andre Maurois. Nor must I forget G. Oudard's "La Tres Curieuse Vie de Law" and Dumont-Wilden's "La Vie de Charles Joseph de Ligne." Biography of one kind or another is usurping the role of imaginative narrative. One's attitude to this new genre must remain a matter of taste and in- stinct. To some scrupulous minds this mixture of fact and fiction is highly irritating. I am not sure but what the most hopeful things in lit- erary France today are, on the one hand, such scientific preoccupations as the R. Pere Jousse's researches in the psychology of speech and, on the other, the unwonted hos- pitality extended to foreign literature as, for instance, in Stock's excellent series "Le Cabinet Cosmopolite." A unique phenomenon, the significance of which still eludes interpre- tation, is the evident influence upon all the most sensitive minds of France of the great German poet, Rainer Maria Rilke. Another phenomenon that may be noted here is th?e fairly sudden but widespread and not at all faddish interest in the Freudian psychology. Anyone, however, who desires seriously and from a point of view that embraces more than the moment to gain an insight into the trend of literature and literary thinking in France can do no better than to read M. Paul Souday's three slender volumes (issued together and not obtainable separately) on Marcel Proust, Andre Gide, and Paul Valery. M. Souday is not a great critic and objectivity is assuredly not his most shining quality. But he is sensitive, agile- minded, infinitely involved with the men and movements he delineates, and one can be immensely instructed by reading not only his lines but between his lines. It is agreed on all hands that Marcel Proust is the last very great Frenchman of letters. There is not only M. Souday's volume. Gallimard is starting the publication of "Les Cahiers Marcel Proust" with "Hommage a Marcel Proust." Very well. And what, not seeking for a moment to deny the extremely high talent and even originality of that strange and unfortunate man, what was Marcel Proust? What were the sources of his work? He was a valetudinarian, a half -Jew, and a homosexual. Tragedy enough, heaven knows, for one poor devil in such a world as this. But elevated minds have been known to wring triumph from their inferiorities and abnormalities. Proust became a snob. In a series of volumes not yet completed he analyzed, with preternatural acuteness, with talent, with genius, if you will, the inhabitants of the Faubourg St. Germain. And by and large he took these ladies and gen- tlemen at their own valuation. ... Is that an extra-literary judgment? I think not. But that discussion would lead me too far. It will not be denied, at all events, that the unbounded influence of a writer of this kind and character is hardly likely to make for a powerful, a manly, and a philosophic temper among the youngsters who come after him. Then there is M. Andre Gide, luckily still alive and very flourishing and very acute and gifted and learned and a critic of a high order. In his more or less creative work he began with a complete nihilism, with "the most biting derision of the human mind, which neither truth nor error can affect." He proceeded to do something which he called the "pure novel" and which turns out to be the novel stripped as far as possible of all its elements of both life and thought. Nevertheless he imitates both Goethe and Flaubert in order to delineate a group of gentlemen who share the tastes in love and life of Proust's M. de Charlus and his friends. And finally, after describing in certain autobiographical volumes his "corydonneries arabes" he ends for the present with "Numquid et tu?" an account of his conversion, a tract that recalls the Salvation Army. M. Gide safe in the arms of Jesus! Satire could invent nothing further. And that — yes, I have stuck to literature and not moralized, for moral questions in literature are not questions of fact but of spiritual tone and tissue — and that is the second of the great writers of contemporary France. Fortunately there is a third. There is M. Paul Vale>y, a strict and profound thinker, a poet wrho at least in "Le Cimitiere marin" touches greatness, an admirable stylist, a mind once free and elevated. Yet how tiny is his output and how melancholy and disillusioned and dry the inner spirit of his work. Here is a talent fine in tone and temper, but without richness or vitality or triumph. The last elected of the forty immortals has, perhaps, a touch of immortality in his work. He will not keep the young men from either exoticism or stultification, from Indo-China or Chartres. . . .

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Nov. 23, 1927] The Nation 573 In a notable passage Remy de Gourmont explained long ago how nearly all great and fruitful literary movements in all countries were first inspired and fructified from with- out, and how these movements lost thereby nothing of their native taste and tang. It is such a fructifying influence that is needed in France today and the country's soundest instincts are reaching out for it. The results may come slowly; they will be fascinating to watch. German Literature Today By ARTHUR ELOESSER Berlin, October 15 TO understand present-day German literature it is neces- sary to go back a generation. In the year 1892, one of the proudest in the history of our letters, appeared "Die Weber," by Gerhart Hauptmann, "Blatter fiir die Kunst," by Stefan George, and "Friihlings Erwachen," by Frank Wedekind. Each of these three works, apart from its in- trinsic value, expressed a different program of fundamental ideas; and together they represent the three most important currents that have enriched our literature to this day. "Die Weber," appearing at a time when socialism was still a religion, a messianic ideal, remains the classical work of German naturalism, and is the noblest document of our social experience. To the east of us with the Slavs this naturalism assumed a religious tinge, while to the west among the Romance nations it became colored with atheism; yet its works always had in common the purpose of arraign- ing society. They taught the sacredness of suffering and brought consolation through the idea of redemption. Nat- uralism dominated German literature until it lost force through its own lack of ideas, or became dissipated by assuming the decadent attitude which heralded in a weak and tired mood the decline of the West. When Stefan George stepped forth from esoteric isola- tion, with his "Blatter fiir die Kunst," he erected a temple to which the modern man with his burdens and sorrows was denied access. Art should have nothing to do with the pres- ent, with civilization, or with the needs of society ; it should live for itself, imperturbable in that realm of ideas which makes Plato and Nietzsche contemporaries in a timeless world. As this school of pure form did not interest itself in the problems of the present, it was natural that it found its highest expression, not in the drama or the novel, but in the lyric. Today Stefan George is the only poet repre- senting this art, the only priest in a temple of prophecy. "Friihlings Erwachen" went beyond naturalism ; and so did Wedekind's later works, in which he seemed to speak from a platform, endeavoring to persuade and convince us. It is astonishing with what scandalous and hypnotic audac- ity this Satan ventured upon the most secret problems of the sexual life, emphasizing not existing conditions but their inevitable consequences. Thus he presented a challenge: he wanted to make life once again healthy, fresh, and virtuous by freeing people from their miserable subservience to sex- ual humbuggery and from the curse of hypocrisy. All of his writings are arguments and documents whose passionate subjectivism protests equally against the passive faithful- ness of naturalism to reality and against the marble-like ob- jectivity of Stefan George's school. Wedekind is the father of expressionism, which has also been called activism because it voices an appeal for action. All the plays which followed — and for a time the develop- ment of our literature centered in the drama — show his in- fluence, while the role of naturalism seemed to have been exhausted in Gerhart Hauptmann. After Wedekind came Sternheim, Kaiser, Sorge, and Hasenclever; and among the youngest of the present day Bronnen and Brecht. Together they preached : You must change your ways or the world — at least your bourgeois world — will perish. All of these poets who had the accent of the future felt in their bones the coming war and revolution. The poets, too, and the story- tellers preached the coming dawn. Franz Werfel appeared, like a new Jeremiah warning Jerusalem, and Georg Heym, who died young like Arthur Rimbaud, sketched in blood-red visions the terrors that would come over Europe. It is the misfortune of the writers of today that war and revolution actually came. Furthermore, Germany lies half-way between East and West and today more than ever is forced to choose between them. The radical critic says: It is for you to mold the memory of the war, and to carry out the revolution in literature. Today all problems touch all mankind; and the bourgeoisie with its smashed ideals is no longer mankind. Its humanism is an anachronism, as is the whole European tradition of culture and art. Art, too, needs a dictatorship of the proletariat to free us from clas3 and restore us to humanity. Look toward Russia, which makes such beautiful films. Do not be afraid of the new technique in the new art of movies, of radio, of the inven- tions which conquer time and space. Art, too, needs mass production. Solve the problems of the day; otherwise you will lose the tempo of the age. Literature was expected to react immediately to all that stirred the people. Our poets were compelled to take long strides in order to keep step with the "tempo of the age"; and they were soon worn and breathless. Temporarily they eased the situation by depreciating the older generation and by overestimating their own contributions. Gerhart Hauptmann, they thought, was finished; while little Ernst Toller satisfied them. Stefan George was relegated to limbo and the too bourgeois Wedekind was counted only as the father of a technique of playwriting. To speak of the "tempo of the age" is to use a frightful slogan, because tempo has nothing to do with the technique in art. The century of Shakespeare and Bacon, as well as the eighteenth century, felt the buoyancy of conscious progress despite the fact that the thoughts of Goethe and Kant could be neither telephoned nor cabled. The youth of today has not the good fortune to be rep- resented by outstanding personalities. To some, absorbed in games and dancing, this inarticulateness means nothing; others sadly explain that their spokesmen lie buried in the fields of Flanders. Indeed an entire generation of literature seems to be missing. The novelist, Alfred Doblin, a sort of expressionistic fresco painter, was for a time regarded as a leading literary spirit, but he is now almost fifty and no longer radical. Franz Werfel has ceased prophesying, but writes plays adapted to the needs of the theater. The younger dramatists who were generally regarded as expres- sing the tempo of the age have not stood up. The lyric as always has its talented exponents, but today no one has the magic of Rainer Maria Rilke, who recently died, or the power of Richard Dehmel, whom the workmen called "Father Dehmel" though he was not at all political. These who are now in their thirties have no spokesman;

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574 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3255 those who are in their forties, although they experienced the war and the revolution and should have expressed their significance, have despite vigorous efforts proved equally sterile. The important and representative works today still come from the older generation. One need only mention Thomas Mann, who openly confesses to be a bourgeois. "The Magic Mountain," in spite of what its author may have absorbed from the decadents and from Nietzsche, belongs to the tradition of Goethe and Gottfried Keller. Mann's motto is Humanity in the new-old sense, and this is true also of Wassermann, of Heinrich Mann, and of Her- mann Hesse — even when they express themselves in terms of Buddhist ethics. Their ideal is a democracy which re- deems itself through the social consciousness but, through cultivation of personality, becomes again aristocratic. The roots of our literature still receive their nourishment from that older source which fed them forty years ago. The post- revolutionary, radical critic cannot alter this. Personali- ties prove to be more steadfast than programs. The expected transvaluation of all values did not occur, and we are in a period of restoration. Now one speaks in Germany, as in Europe generally, of "the new objectivity" — an abashed expression for our return not only to tradition but also to nature, both of which expressionism sought to ignore. Work is being done with greater care, and tech- nique is again respected as the golden foundation of all art. Our poets again have their feet on the ground after a period of fluttering in the air. Writers are no longer judged by their politics, but by the talents with which the sacred par- tiality of nature has covered them. The creative man does not permit the dictation of his task or purpose; the more he follows his own individual destiny the more he will ex- press his people and mankind. A period of calm has come upon our literature, and with it a greater freedom. If one may prophesy, our literature, emerging from feverish crises, shows signs of a healthier and fruitful development. A Selected List of the Season's Translations BIOGRAPHY, MEMOIRS Barbusse, Henri. Jesus. Macaulay. $2.50. Baudelaire, Charles. Letters. Translated by Arthur Symons. Boni. $4. Bidou, Henri. Chopin. Knopf. $3.50. Brousson, Jean Jacques. Anatole France Abroad. Holt. $3. Carco, Francis. The Romance of Villon. Knopf. $5. Croce, Benedetto. An Autobiography. Oxford University. Emperor Frederick III. War Diary. 1870-1871. Stokes. $5. Franz Joseph. As Revealed by His Letters. Stokes. S3. Herold, A. F. Life of Buddha. Boni. $3. Jean-Aubry, G. Joseph Conrad: Life and Letters. Double- day, Page. 2 vols. $10. Landucci, Luca. A Florentine Diary. Dutton. S3. Ludwig, Emil. Bismarck: The Story of a Fighter. Little, Brown. $5. Ludwig, Emil. Genius and Character. Harcourt, Brace. $3.50. Paleologue, Maurice. Cavour. Harper. $5. Van Gogh, Vincent. The Letters of. Houghton Mifflin. 2 vols. $20. Vollard, Ambroise. Degas: An Intimate Portrait. Green- berg. $3. Youssoupoff, Prince Felix. Rasputin. Dial Press. $5. DRAMA Gogol, Nikolai. The Gamblers and Marriage. Macaulay. $2.50. Machiavelli, Nicolo. Mandragola. Macaulay. $2.50. ECONOMICS, POLITICS, SOCIOLOGY Delaisi, Francis. Political Myths and Economic Realities. Viking. $5. Engels, Plekhanov, and Others. Karl Marx; Man. Thinker. and Revolutionist. International. $1.75. Gandhi, Mahatma. Young India. Viking. $5. ESSAYS, CRITICISM, LITERARY HISTORY Fay, Bernard. Since Victor Hugo: French Literature of Today. Little, Brown. $2. Legouis, Emile and Cazamian, Louis. History of English Literature. Vol. II. Macmillan. $6. Morand, Paul. Europe at Love. Boni & Liveright. $6. Morand, Paul. Nothing but the Earth. McBride. $3.50. Spitteler, Carl. Laughing Truths. Putnam. $2.50. FICTION Bedier, Joseph. Tristan and Iseult. Translated by Hilaire Belloc. Boni. $2.50. Busson, Paul. The Man Who Was Bora Again. Day. $2.50. Carco, Francis. Perversite. Pascal Covici. $2.50. De Gourmont, Remy. The Dream of a Woman. Boni and Liveright. $2.50. Gide, Andre. The Counterfeiters. Knopf. $3. Istrati, Panait. Uncle Anghel. Knopf. $2.50. Lagerlof, Selma. Charlotte Lowenskold. Doubleday, Page. $2.50. Molnar, Ferenc. The Paul Street Boys. Macy-Masius. $2. Pirandello, Luigi. The Old and the Young. Dutton. $5. Proust, Marcel. Cities of the Plain. Boni. 2 vols. $15. Reymont, Ladislas. The Promised Land. Knopf. $5. Schnitzler, Arthur. Daybreak. Simon and Schuster. $1.50. Sudermann, Hermann. The Mad Professor. Boni and Liv- eright. $5. Thiess, Frank. The Gateway to Life. Knopf. $3. Tolstoy, Alexis. A Prince of Outlaws. Knopf. $3. Wassermann, Jacob. World's End. Boni and Liveright. $2.50. Werfel, Franz. The Man Who Conquered Death. Simon and Schuster. $1. Zweig. Stefan. Conflicts. Viking. $2.50. FINE ARTS, MUSIC Kondokov, N. P. The Russian Ikon. Oxford University. Le Corbusier. Toward a New Architecture. Payson and Clarke. $5. Meier-Graeffe, Julius. Cezanne and His Circle. Scribner. $25. Pijoan, Joseph. A History of Art. Harper. 3 vols. $36.50. Sabaneyeff, Leonid. Modern Russian Composers. Inter- national. $2.75. Wilenski, R. H. The Modern Movement in Art. Stokes. $5.

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Nov. 23, 1927] The Nation 575 HISTORY Aulard, A. Christianity and the French Revolution. Little, Brown. $3. Fay, Bernard. The Revolutionary Spirit in France and America. Harcourt, Brace. $4. Lutz, Hermann. Lord Grey and the World War. Knopf. $5. Moret, A. The Nile and Egyptian Civilization. Knopf. PHILOSOPHY, PSYCHOLOGY, ANTHROPOLOGY Adler, Alfred. Understanding Human Nature. Greenberg. $3.50. Cendrars, Blaise. The African Saga. Payson and Clarke. $5. De Unamuno, Miguel. The Life of Don Quixote and Sancho, Expounded with Comment. Knopf. $5. Driesch, Hans. Mind and Body. Dial Press. $3. Freud, Sigmund. Psychoanalysis for Everyone. Bren- tano's. $2.50. Hoernle, F. Alfred. Idealism as a Philosophy. Doran. $2.50. POETRY Deutsch, Babette and Yarmolinsky, Avrahm. Russian Poe- try: An Anthology. International. $2.25. SCIENCE Alverdes, Friedrich. Social Life in the Animal World. Har- court, Brace. $3.50. Flammarion, Camille. The End of the World. Appleton. $2.50. Books The National Myth Political Myths and Economic Realities. By Francis Delaisi. The Viking Press. $4. M DELAISI here makes a brilliant essay in the economic • interpretation of history. In the earlier chapters of his book he traces the growth of the national myth from the peasant's passion of ownership to the idea of a collective owner- ship of a country by its inhabitants, supported and strength- ened by traditions, usually false, of unity of race and culture, and utilizing unity of language and religion for the feeding of the sense of sacred nationality. Tracing the rise of the national state in different European countries from the decay of the feudal system, he illustrates from the French Revolution the new force of the popular myth which inspired the collective consciousness and evoked such heroic efforts and sacrifices from the common people. But the oft-told tale of the awakening of nationalism and the achievement of national unity throughout Europe in the nineteenth century is but a half-truth in the wider historical interpretation of the age. For while the nations were being thus consolidated and isolated politically by the policy of na- tional unity and sovereignty, they were being disintegrated economically by the new world-system of international coopera- tion in production, commerce, transport, and finance. Political unity and self-containedness were confronted by economic inter- dependence. M. Delaisi sets out with an immense variety of evidence the fumbling efforts of statecraft and diplomacy to adjust the national unity to this economic internationalism. Two chief methods are discernible. A nation, fearing and re- senting its vital dependence upon outside supplies and markets, may strive to make its economic system conform to its political by developing its own resources and protecting its home indus- tries. But few great modern nations could hope to attain com- plete success by this method. Limitations of natural supplies and growth of population require access to external sources of food and raw materials, and markets for manufactured goods. The national myth must be expanded into an imperial myth. Backward countries with the requisite natural resources and populations to exploit them must be brought under the national flag, as colonies, protectorates, mandates, or other forms of satellites. Thus the economy of the modern machine age breeds in the world of political states rival imperialisms, crippling the free development of the world along the lines of a national division of labor and exchange of goods, subjecting the weaker countries to tyrannical control by the stronger (the mission of civilization!) and embroiling the imperialist Powers in cease- less diplomatic struggles, competitions of armaments, and resultant wars. The story M. Delaisi tells is not new, but he tells it with the more convincing instances which the red glare of the World War exhibits. Brushing aside the chatter of super- ficial history, he goes down to the bedrock of the economic strug- gle for his "origin" of the war, the struggles of the great indus- trialized nations for the countries and the markets of the unde- veloped world, especially in Africa and Asia. Here lay the key to all the preliminary conflicts in the Boer War, the Russo-Japa- nese-Chinese imbroglio, Morocco, the instigated Balkan wars. All were movements toward stronger economic positions with incidental growth of political power and prestige. M. Delaisi subjects the peace treaties to the scathing criti- cism they deserve and shows how on every hand they served to aggravate the trouble which the political mythologists pre- tended to cure. But while the greater part of the book is ana- lytical and historical, it does not leave us in despair. "The origin of the trouble lies in our misguided interpretation of the facts. The difficulties reside not in the things as they are but in our conception of them: they are not material but psycho- logical." M. Delaisi is no state socialist. The state must take a hand, but its interference with the free play of economic forces should be narrowly confined. He looks rather to a con- structive government of the world, of which he sees the begin- nings in several recent economic enterprises, the International Chamber of Commerce, the International Labor Office at Geneva, and the League of Nations regarded as an instrument for equitable settlement of so-called national disputes which are in their last resort business quarrels. But to get the full use and growth of a genuinely inter- national government, the extirpation of deep-seated national myths is the first essential. J. A. Hobson Youth of the Continent The Gateway to Life. By Frank Thiess. Alfred A. Knopf. $3. Dusty Answer. By Rosamund Lehmann. Henry Holt and Com- pany. $2.50. THE thinking young men of contemporary Germany divide roughly into two classes: those who have swallowed Speng- ler and those who have rejected him. In the first division stand those who have thrown over the entire idealistic tradition of the continent, boiled their minds hard, and prepared them- selves with a certain grim brutality to take their places in the nascent Germany whose watchwords are to be trade and tech- nique. With a decisive bang they have closed their Goethes; and, should they open a book at all, it is likely to be the popular German translation of Mr. Henry Ford's "My Life and Work." It is the presence of these practical and energetic young men which makes good Americans feel more at home in Berlin than in any other European capital. Opposed to them are the devotees of an ideology and a metaphysic deeply ingrained in the German character. They are the tender-minded, the idealists, the individualists, the fol- lowers of the Jngendbewegung . They are puzzled and horrified by the brutal realities of a post-war world. They turn with disgust from trade and technique. Unwilling to recognize the

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576 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3255 corpse of European culture which Spengler's sardonic finger would point out to them, they abandon themselves to high speculation on the cultural future of Germany. They are the Younger Generation, greatly concerned with itself as an im- portant psychic unity. They issue manifestos about changing sex standards and talk unendingly of homo-erotism and the revolt against convention. They are eaten by the maggots of theory. It is with this latter class of very youthful ideologists that Herr Thiess's interesting novel concerns itself. His characters are a group of over-emotional and over-mental high-school stu- dents who talk, study, fall in love, and talk once more in a small South German town. One after another, with a fierce despair, they try to enter into experiences which their highly strung and over-reflective natures foredoom them to be incapable of assimi- lating. One of them, the most dreamy and addled of the lot, commits a sort of absent-minded suicide. The others — talk. They talk terribly well. They have astoundingly profound ideas on Alcibiadean love, on the status of the family, and their favor- ite ideals-of-the-semester, purity and freedom. Compared with a representative group of American schoolboys, they sound like a grave collection of Kants and Spinozas. They scorn the phil- istine, the Spiesser; they have even passed beyond the fraternal idealism of the Wandervogel — "pasteboard romanticism" as Diedrich contemptuously terms the movement. Their seriousness is preternatural to the point of priggishness. Their spiritual agonizings would make Rousseau hang his heart in shame. Herr Thiess follows the fortunes of his group of youngsters with so tender a sympathy that his thesis, though unspoken, becomes obvious. To him these adolescent idealists who have read Goethe and Nietzsche at sixteen and examine each slightest experience with a conscientious morbidity — to him these boys are the future of Germany. Herr Thiess loves goodness and sincerity and liberalism and freedom. And so it never occurs to him that his sanctimonious Diedrich and his weak-willed Wolf Brassen and his sentimentally masculine Willi Gast are the last evidences of the dying, not the living Germany. He ignores the obvious fact that their mental self-tortures and their exces- sive sensitivity are products of a decaying idealism; and that after this last flare-up of cloud-cuckoo culture Germany will, because it must, fall into line and divert the energy of its youth to laboratory and counting-house. His young and tender heroes are horrified at the mere thought of this other Germany. "Slave- moiality," they call it, "slave happiness — smiting the foe in all the Vereins of the fatherland, mid beer and cigarette." But it is this very humorless contempt for what is really vital in the fatherland that makes them slightly ridiculous, as a sleep- walker is slightly ridiculous. And it is his passionate espousal of their dying cause that makes Herr Thiess seem a little anti- quated and his book a little soft-headed. Yet his novel enjoys the strength of its defect, for at least it is filled with a sincere moral optimism that lends it a kind of solidity. Miss Lehmann's widely heralded opus, dealing with a very similar group of young people in England, does not possess even this praiseworthy quality. Her style and outlook suffer from the same melancholy anemia which is the keynote of her character. She is so sadly aware that her young people are decadent and rotted at the core. Here we have a group of young men and women in whom the subconscious accept- ance of a failing national destiny is so strong as to make them wearily impervious to all experiences save one, and that the most devitalizing and hopeless of them all — romantic love. They mill about and stew around in a sickly vortex of mis- applied yearning, trifle dutifully with homosexuality, write love- letters by the ream, sigh, cynicize, and suffer. Over-intelligent though they are they are never one sufficiently intelligent to question calmly the entire problem of romantic passion, to examine it historically as a traditional national wraknoss. to assign it its increasingly insignificant niche in an increasingly materialistic civilization. They, too, like Herr Thiess's high- school students, are a refined end-product, except that instead of being the end-product of a Teutonic metaphysical tradition they are the decayed remnant of an English agricultural aris- tocracy whose sentimental ethos is becoming more and more irrelevant in a mechanized universe. One is minded to recall that inexorable dogma uttered by the Jesuit in Thomas Mann's "The Magic Mountain": "It is an unloving miscomprehension of youth to believe that it finds its pleasure in freedom; its deepest pleasure lies in obedience." The young people in these two novels have not yet discovered their deepest pleasure. Clifton P. Fadiman Sorcellerie Evocatoire Vers une Alchimie Lyrique. By Rene Lalou. Vol. 7; Le XIXe Siecle, edited by Rene Lalou. Paris: Les Arts et Le Livre. 12 francs. l\/f RENE LALOU is a critic who deserves to be widely ■^ ■*• • read by English-speaking people. His recent work on the modern spirit in France, "Histoire de la Litterature Francaise," being historical in method, has doubtless tended to obscure his chief distinction as a critic, a distinction everywhere to be found in that volume, yet ambiguously placed. For M. Lalou is primarily — and this is no aspersion of his historical faculty — the aesthetic critic, as this function is understood, not in France, but with us. His critical gift is at its best in the breaking up and the weighing, one aspect against another, of the work of art itself; it is at its best in the present essay. This volume, and indeed the whole series to which it be- longs and of which M. Lalou is the editor, exhibits a new way of presenting problems raised by a writer or a school of writers. It combines the regular critical essay with the idea of the anthology, with the result that we get the model of what every critical anthology ought to be. From the time of the old English collections, like "Tottel's Miscellany" and "The Paradyse of Daintie Devyces," the possibilities of the anthology, a vehicle accidentally hit upon to meet a popular need, have not been much improved upon. Not the miscellaneous representation of persons, but the critical representation of a spirit or a tendency is the true direction which this form of bookmaking should now take. M. Lalou's subject here is one of great importance to the contemporary scene of letters. French romanticism, besides its own great intrinsic interest, is at once the measure of all that has happened in France since 1860 and the source of those ele- ments in modern English and American poetry which we have now assumed the habit of calling modern. For the poets who write in English, owing to the inaccessibility of their own heritage through the wall of the Victorian age, have looked to France for an example, if not to the romantics themselves, then to their successors, the symbolists, who proceeded from the greatest romantic of them all, Charles Baudelaire. In this instinct for sources the English poet was doubtless right. Gerard de Nerval and Sainte-Beuve, who gave the movement its strongest initial impetus, drew much from Wordsworth and Coleridge; Baudelaire was appreciably formed and matured under the influence of Poe. No great movement in literature, however, as M. Lalou points out, can be resolved into the mere question of literary contacts. Gerard de Nerval, an older man than Baudelaire, exerted no very considerable influence upon him. Aloysius Bertrand, the author of "Gaspard de la Nuit," a book that con- tained all the properties of romanticism except their perfection in form, wrote out of the thin air, under no conscious influence whatever. The same thing is true, to a large extent, of the author of "Joseph Delorme"; though the habits of the analyst did much to convince Sainte-Beuve that his attitude was that of a sort of inevitable contemporaneity. Baudelaire, it is true, supposed himself to have been spiritually awakened by Ber-

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Nov. 23, 1927] The Nation a VISITING CRITICS Each contributes the leading article to "Books" for a period of four weeks Thomas Beer Ellen Glasgow Lewis Mumford Llewelyn Powys G. B. Stern Lytton Strachey Frank Swinnerton Paul Valery Rebecca West Virginia Woolf v REVIEWERS Herbert Asbury William Beebe Van Wyck Brooks Floyd Dell Babette Deutsch George Dorsey Walter Prichard Eaton Ford Madox Ford Lewis Galantiere Zona Gale Albert Guerard John Haynes Holmes John Langdon-Davies William McFee H. L. Mencken George Jean Nathan Isabel Paterson Mary Ross Carl Van Doren Hugh Walpole William Allen White I Some said, John, print it, others said, Not so; Some said, It might be good, others said, No. — BUNYAN. N THE ever increasing volume of new books there is much that is worth while, and much that is not. How can the person who wants to read the worth- while know where to begin? "BOOKS" offers an authoritative source of information. In sparkling, intimately written articles the foremost writers of America and England keep the readers of "BOOKS" informed on the good, the bad, and the in- different in the world of literature. Last Spring the subscription price of "BOOKS" was temporarily reduced from $2.00 to $1.00. The plan was so popular that it will be repeated this season. Simply fill in the coupon below. It will bring you 52 issues of "BOOKS" for &1.00 BOOK t_A weekly review of contemporary literature published by the New York Herald Tribune J Edited by IRITA VAN DOREN (This Half-Price Offer Expires Dec. 31) "BOOKS"— New York Herald Tribune 225 West 40th Street, New York, N. Y. I wish to take advantage of your special half-price offer for a year's subscription to "BOOKS". I enclose $1.00 herewith. Name Address \ N. 11-27 When writing to advertisers please mention The Nation

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578 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3255 trand and crystallized by Poe. But with them all the source of the romantic spirit went deeper. M. Lalou's account of Nerval, Bertrand, Sainte-Beuve, and Baudelaire includes some very acute comment on the condi- tions that produced the romantic movement in France. To understand this movement, particularly for an American to disentangle it from the transformation and debasement it has suffered in the last half-century, it is not sufficient to isolate scientific materialism, or the decline of the aristocracy of France, or any single aspect of society as the sole cause. It is all causes together. But if there is one distinguishing feature of French ro- manticism, it is the quality which is best described in the phrase sorcellerie evocatoire. The character of Joseph Delorme is dedicated to it: the disgust, the "spleen," the lassitude, the paralysis of the will, all conducing to a resignation to the stream of sensation, provide a psychological mechanism from which the poet escapes through those occasional accessions of "vision" that restore, for the moment, the balance of the in- tellect and the passions. It was due to a disease: the world of the European tradition had been, and still is even more radi- cally, thrown off its origin, so that its recovery became a matter of fragmentary insight, no longer susceptible to ordered state- ment. Allen Tate Transcendental Romanticism The Life of Don Quixote and Sancho. According to Miguel Cer- vantes de Saavedra. Expounded with Comment by Miguel de Unamuno. Translated by Homer P. Earle. Alfred A. Knopf. $5. UNAMUNO is so complex a personality that, while f *om the affective point of view he appears sometimes organically constituted and in a certain sense consistent, from the intel- lectual he always appears radically antithetical and disjointed. Intellectually he is an explosion of irrationalities, a chaos of mutually exclusive tendencies. It would be very easy to dis- miss him lightly and remark, in the words of Goethe for instance, that concern for immortality is something "for ladies who have nothing to do." It is not altogether difficult to ab- stract any one of the aspects of his thought for the purpose of analysis and point out its validity in view of one's own arbitrary criteria. But only a shallow mind can dismiss Unamuno permanently. His words cut down to one of the fundamental disquietudes of the human spirit; and reflection will always drag it back to the surface of consciousness, how- ever much one may try to push it into the shadow. On the other hand intellectual analysis is utterly inadequate to deal with him. No one of the multiple aspects of his thought may be taken out of its psychological setting and remain fully relevant to his own world vision. And it is that vision — con- fused and darkened by despair though it may be — that is in him of ultimate significance. One faces then a dilemma: either one approaches Unamuno logically and does him a conscious injustice, or one leaves him entirely ununderstood in the hope that some time one may realize him completely. The dilemma forces upon us the question of his attitude toward the method of abstraction. One of the reasons he has so persistently been called a voice of the past — which rigorously speaking he is not — is that he denies, in his usual emotional way, the validity of the rationalistic method as an organ of knowledge. Not that he puts it in these words, or has any- thing equally efficient to substitute for it. He feels keenly its inability to deal effectively with ?11 the complexities it encounters; to deal, more exactly — for all his reasons are personal — with so unintelligible a phenomenon as his own per- sonality. And it is precisely in this sense that Unamuno may be said to be fully within the modern stream. For his reaction against the limitations of the method of rationalistic analvsis is another expression of that tendency which Professor Morris Cohen has so aptly called the "insurgence against reason," and which he finds characteristic of our modern thought. But Unamuno goes much farther in this respect than any modern: his attitude is radical; he will have nothing to do with logic or with rationalism; logic kills the letter as well as the spirit; values wither under its glare. Rationalism, with its method of hard-caked abstractions, produces shallow results and man- ages seldom really to tap those fountains of despair which run deep under the human conscience. His aversion to reason finds expression in his ethical phi- losophy— if so roiled a reservoir of opinions as his may be called "love of wisdom" — among other ways in his truculent refusal to consider the obtuse, rock-hard realities of the world, which philosophers are compelled to take into account as the determining limitations of their thought. In his "Tragic Sentiment of Life" we have already seen that he considers the very quick source of his spiritual life an ineluctable conflict of which he is the victim, which a man rich in worldly wisdom — Santayana, for instance — easily glosses over by rationalization and polite sur- render to fact. We may now see, in the present translation, how in the field of ethics, rather than the empirical modera- tion which the world has always counseled, he offers as the only important categorical imperative an utterly intemperate transcendental romanticism. For this is the meaning of his religion of Quixotism, found expressed not only in this book but in several other of his essays. The Mad Knight did not take the sorry untoward realities of this world into considera- tion. He had an urge, and because he felt it to be deeply seated he followed it passionately. He was guided by a vision, and because it was luminous to him he took it to be true. To the majority of us this is not wisdom but madness. Mad- ness it was to Cervantes. But to Unamuno it is not madness but the most courageous, the noblest of all possible wisdoms. One thing however must not be forgotten : that Unamuno has lived his own ethical philosophy with a consistency and a pas- sionate devotion equal to that of the Mad Knight himself. And like the Knight our commentator has quite frequently been called mad. One cannot go that far. For platitudinous as it may be, it is necessary to remember that it is exactly within the heat of the conflict between these two antagonistic attitudes — be- tween the clash of impulsive romanticism and the restraining moderation of reason — that progress, practical as well as moral, is at all possible. And though one may not have the inclina- tion to go against giants which are windmills — for the urge to be a martyr is the privilege of the few — one may at least, in the ease and comfort of one's safe rationality, reserve a grain of admiration and gratitude for those who are devoted to the ideal well enough to risk dashing their souls against the boulders of obdurate reality. Of these, Unamuno is a pure type. Eliseo Vivas Aletta Jacobs Memoirs of Aletta Jacobs. With an Introduction by J. Oppen- heim. Amsterdam: van Holkema en Warendorf. ¥7"N0WN throughout Holland since 1871, when she was the * *- first girl student to enter a university; causing a sensa- tion in 1883 by claiming the right to vote; shocking people out of their wits by taking up birth control later on; studying so- cial evils with a view to initiating all possible improvements; creating a movement for woman suffrage; ignoring the oppo- sition of her male colleagues to all her "dangerous" reforms — Aletta Jacobs, in her long and notable career, in her strife for women's and for human rights, has made a great many friends as well as a great many enemies. Even her enemies, how- ever, have to acknowledge that only an exceptional energy, a warm woman's heart, a powerful will, and a very clear in-

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Nov. 23, 1927] The Nation 579 Will Durant's New Book fAYAJAi This mental autobiography is the story of a philosopher in love with life. It is a frank and intimate story told with the sense of humor and beauty that characterizes his Story of Philosophy. Ernest Sutherland Bates in the Saturday Review of Literature says: Has Mr. Will Durant, after writing the most virile history of philosophers that has been produced in our period, now also written the most vital autobiog- raphy? It seems so, to one reviewer at least. -live, and for this reason he hangs on to life with n terrible determination long after the doctors iu attendance have agreed thai he should be dead. 1 1 is struggle for the goal in the face of these odds has in it the very essence of drama, and the ending, when, after beating death, the old man is left a mere heap of bones, is tremendous. You will search a long time for a book of this compass any more moving than Tlie Man Who Conquered Death. JPily. saysW ii.i.iAM \. Drake, is the outstanding attribute of Werfel's genius: "(t is the moment of sublimity which conies into being when one person, in the shock of a tragic instant, abandons his own security in com- miseration for the peril of another; the whole-spirited response to a generous conception of life, which recognizes the identity of all living creatures in the embrace of nature . . ." (AM) true talk. Poor sales copy perhaps, but — Essandess

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580 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3255 tellect could have carried her through the endless difficulties of her pioneer life. Born in 1854, Aletta Jacobs spent the first part of her life in a Groningen village where her father was the village doc- tor. Brought up in a spirit of democracy very unusual in those times, she considered it quite natural that the girls of her family should be treated as equals with their brothers and that she should at an early age decide to become an M.D. like her father and her eldest brother. It was only much later that she found out the obstacles she had to face. It was only by special consent of the Prime Minister, Thorbecke, that she could enter Groningen University and begin her studies in 1871. She settled in Amsterdam as the first woman physician, looking even then extremely young and incurring a good deal of sharp criticism. Her medical practice brought her into touch with social evils which gave rise to much suffering among women and children. A new world opened to her and another part of her pioneer career was started upon. It is to be seen from these "Memoirs" once again how much the younger generation owes to those pioneer workers all over the world. And besides it is refreshing to have the difference between past and present put before us in such a delightful way— with such humor and at the same time with such deep feeling. Not only can we follow Dr. Jacobs's personal career. She also gives us a vivid picture of the development of social and political life in Holland as well as in several other countries. Is it surprising that the war was an awful blow to such a one? With Jane Addams of Hull House she started a world movement for the reorganization of international relations. With them a good many women from warring as well as from neutral countries joined in what proved to be one of the hardest tasks ever taken up, especially in the countries at war. The English translation, for publication in the United States, is almost finished, we hear. We can only hope that it will be as well received abroad as it was in Holland. C. Ramondt-Hirschmann New Utopias for Old The Next Age of Man. By Albert Edward Wiggam. Bobbs- Me rill Company. $3. The Right to Be Happy. By Mrs. Bertrand Russell. Harper and Brothers. $3. Y) EADERS of Mr. Wiggam's previous books will recall the **^ burden of his biological song — how the superior stocks of our populations, privy to birth control, were failing to produce their quota of lusty young Nordics, while the inferior stocks, either ignorant of or indifferent to the lore of Mrs. Sanger, were continuing to procreate their kind with great abandon. As a result America was rapidly becoming an overcrowded apartment house for morons — morons headed for a social hell for sheer lack of brainy leadership. A sad state of affairs if true — and Mr. Wiggam offered plausible reasons for patriotic alarm. In the present volume Mr. Wiggam continues to dis- course on heredity, environment, genetics, eugenics, and what not in his best Sunday supplement manner, and until near the end appears to be alarmed as usual lest the better stocks of our people be petering out. But the darkest biological hour, it seems, is just before the scientific dawn. For, lo, in his final chapter Mr. Wiggam appears as the journalistic John the Bap- tist of a new messianic hope — salvation through the inhibition of the female sexual hormones, or safe, sane, and salubrious birth control through the simple process of a woman's swallow- ing an occasional synthetic tablet. Heretofore, as Mr. Wiggam points out, birth control has required a certain amount of intelligence and attention, and thus only the more civilized classes have availed themselves of its technique. The effect has, therefore, been dysgenic — tending to recruit the race more and more from the lower orders. Obvi- cl/z JAmjw Z)ook -Br *A. J\\ Whitehead Symbolism Its Meaning and Effect A philosophic examination of experience and the essential place of symbolism in it. Professor Whitehead again writes lucidly on an abstruse subject and the fresh view which he presents here is of importance for all who are interested in a true view of our changing concepts of life and the world about us. Si. 50 Also by Prof. Whitehead Science and the tern won "Perhaps it is not too much to say that this book constitutes the first step in the direction of a coming creative age." — Saturday Review "The most significant restatement for the general reader oi the present relations of science, philosophy, and the issues of life, which has yet appeared." — John Dewey /';/ the New Republic "It seems probable that this book will be one of the few produced in recent years to have any decisive effect on the thought currents of our day." — Spring field Republican $2.50 Religion in the Making "In the nature of a sequel to . . • "Science and the Modern World" . . . Leaves one with the wish that the author would write another book twice as large and twice as detailed on the same topic — and there are few philosophical works to which this compliment is likely to be paid." — Saturday Review $1.50 THE MACMILLAN CO, New York Atlanta Boston Dallas Chicago San Francisco When writing to advertisers please mention The Nr

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Nov. 23, 1927] The Nation 581 ously an easier and simpler technique was needed — something that the proletariat would find as fascinating as swallowing a dose of Peruna. Well, according to Mr. Wiggam, we shall soon have that very thing. Certain biochemists, he tells us, have lately discovered that the female reproductive process is under the control of two hormones — the one stimulative, the other sup- pressive; others have isolated this suppressive hormone and are now able to inhibit the menstrual process by hypodermic injections. Before long, he believes, biochemists will have re- duced this hormone to tablet form, and such tablets will be on sale at every drug-store. Plainly this will mark a crisis in human affairs — a biological advance, according to Mr. Wiggam, second only to that which occurred when Pithecanthropus learned to walk on two legs. For when birth control becomes perfectly simple and fool-proof, only the more intelligent, up- right, and forward-looking couples will as a rule desire to have children (or, at all events, more than one or two), and thus will be set in motion a highly eugenic process of natural selec- tion, efficacious beyond any scheme that Galton ever dreamed. It is a glorious vision that Mr. Wiggam sees, and he trumpets it with apocalyptic fervor. If Mr. Wiggam finds the key to his eugenic Utopia in bio- chemistry, Mrs. Russell is equally confident that humanity may be transformed by a bouleversement of bourgeois morals. Heretofore, she says in effect, Western civilization has been dominated by "an absurd Judiac-cum-Christian synthesis," un- happiness has been considered the normal state of man; one was supposed to forego the joys of earth in order to attain the joys of heaven. But heaven fades into mythology along with the Elysian fields and Valhalla, hence it behooves us to find our happiness here and now. We need a new ethics in which happiness shall be predicated as the right of the individual — as the normal state of man. Happiness, rare as it is in the modern world, is really a very simple matter. It is a matter of recognizing certain human impulses, instincts, or needs as vital, and giving these impulses intelligent expression. These vital impulses derive from the two great main-springs of human action — hunger and love. The hunger instinct in a large part of the population is now far from being properly satisfied; society needs a better distribution of material things, and science can point the way. But above all, society needs to modernize its ethics with regard to sex. Here we come to the central feature of Mrs. Russell's book. It is essentially a plea for a liberalization and beautification of ethics in the matter of sex. "Sex-love," says Mrs. Russell, "is the most intense instinctive pleasure known to men and women, and starvation or thwarting of this instinct causes more acute unhappiness than poverty, disease, or ignorance." Specifically, Mrs. Russell favors such a modernization of ethics as shall allow pre-marital intercourse without social disapproval, cheap and easy divorce for such couples as choose to have it, and open extra-marital relations aesthetically arrived at for such as desire variety now and then to give spice to the sexual life. Where children are desired — and Mrs. Russell rates children extremely high in the scale of values — "a few years of agreed sexual fidelity" will serve the purpose. As for the social con- sequences of her new freedom, Mrs. Russell speaks with assur- ance, visualizing only a vast increase of human happiness, with little or no cheap promiscuity and running amuck. Finally, she pleads, let us have done with medievalism and build a new civilization, a civilization embodying all the security, freedom, and beauty that twentieth-century knowledge can give. Like "Hypatia," Mrs. Russell's previous compact and out- spoken little book, "The Right to Be Happy," breathes a spirit of deep sincerity. Though less eloquent than "Hypatia" and too attentuated in style, it nevertheless rings at times with a dithyrambic fervor. No one, I suppose, has written more beau- tifully of sex and parenthood since Edward Carpenter laid down his pen. If ordinary men and women possessed half of Mrs. Russell's apparent integrity, intelligence, and sympathy, I should think that her new freedom might work with some sue- Just Published at Five Important Additions to The Modern Library OF THE WORLD'S BEST BOOKS SELECTED PAPERS OF BERTRAND RUSSELL Volume No. 137 95c Chosen personally by Mr. Russell, and with a new preface by him. An ideal in- troduction to one of the greatest minds of the time. THE ROMANCE OF LEONARDO DA VLNCI Volume No. 138 95c By MERE JKOWSKI. This is a new and unexpurgated translation by Bernard Guilbert Guerney. Previous editions have sold from three to ten dollars a copy. EREWHON Volume No. 136 95c By SAMUEL BUTLER. The shrewdest and most biting satire on modern life that Butler wrote. Lewis Mumford's introduction appears solely in the Modern Library edition. JUDE THE OBSCURE Volume No. 135 95c By THOMAS HARDY. The most typ- ical of the"Wessex Novels" and the first edition ever published at a popular price. THE IMPERIAL ORGY Volume No. 139 95c By EDGAR SALTUS. The story of the Russian Tsars. With an introduction by Ben Rav Redman. "TEN BEST SELLERS ,'in the MODERN LIBRARY Butler's Way of All Beerbohm's Zuleika Flesh (No. 13) Dobson (No. 116) Wilde's Dorian Gray.. .(No. 1) Douglas' South Wind. ..(No. 5) France's the Red Lily (No 7) Gautier's Mi.lb.de Hardy's Return of the .„ ™AUP!N™ (No. S3) «r ,.T .„„ Anderson s WiNtsBURo. . Native. (No. 121) 0hh> (No. 104) Lewisohn s Upstream.(No. 123) Melville's Moby Dick (No. 119) COMPLETE, UNABRIDGED EDITIONS LARGE TYPE • GOOD PAPER • LIMP BINDING • POCKET SIZE • 140 TITLES 95 cents a copy at every bookstore in America. (One dollar in Canada.) Send for free illustrated catalogue describing all HO titles. MODERN LIBRARY, INC. ■ 20 East 57tl. Street. New York ^k *' .00 ^ Use this Coupon To day > To Your Bookseller, or The Modern Library. Incorporated, 20 East 57th Street, New York City. Please mail me Modern Library books Nos.. □ I enclose J?l .00 for each volume (95c for the book, 5 cf or postage i. □ Send books CO. D. U I'lease send nie. free of charge, your new illus- trated catalogue, describing all of the books in the M odern Library. Nam, .State. When writing to advertisers please mention The Nation

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582 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3255 cess. But whether any liberalization of sex ethics can im- mensely increase human happiness, as Mrs. Russell imagines, I very much doubt. Greenwich Village, so far as I can learn from Harry Kemp and others, is not much more suffused with happiness per block than Zenith City and Gopher Prairie. Charles Lee Snider Books in Brief The Oldest Biography of Spinoza. Edited by A. Wolf. The Dial Press. $2.50 The oldest biography of Spinoza appears here in a more accurate text, made possible by a newly discovered manuscript, edited with critical introduction, English translation, and notes. Otherwise it is, of course, the "Life" attributed to Lucas and reprinted almost thirty years ago in Freudenthal's "Lebens- ge ;chichte." The apparatus and presentation of the work are excellent and some of the corrections brought in by the new manuscript are edifying; in all it is worthy to succeed to Pro- fessor Wolf's earlier translation and study of Spinoza's "Short Treatise." Of the "Life" itself little more need be said than that it contains information which sounds in the main authentic and which is not to be found elsewhere — and that it is written with an interest and an insight which make it, apart from questions of accuracy, an extraordinary narrative of an in- tellectual career. Students of Spinoza will be grateful for a more easily accessible and more accurate text, but it is possi- ble too that those who taste only of literature may be pleased to find a flavored seventeenth-century biography. The Development of the Theater. By Allardyce Nicoll. Har- court, Brace and Company. $10. Professor Nicoll is an indefatigable scholar who happens to have devoted himself to a study of the theater. On previous occasions he has plowed undismayed through mountains of ma- terials, he has edited worthless old plays quite as gladly as good ones, and he has written various volumes, including a history of the drama of the English Restoration which is so admirably exact upon minor points as to be almost unreadable. The present volume is, however, of a different sort. With the aid of two hundred and sixty handsome illustrations it traces briefly the development of the physical theater from the begin- nings to the present day and supplies the reader with all that is essential for an understanding of the influence of this devel- opment upon play production. Here Professor Nicoll's scholar- ship assures the accuracy of his statements without oppressing the general reader, and there is no other place in which that reader may find a more satisfactory treatment of the subject. Stage Antiquities of the Greeks and Romans and Their Influ- ence. By James Turney Allen. Longmans, Green and Company. A new volume in the Our Debt to Greece and Rome series. Dotvn Stream, and other Works. By J. K. Huysmans. Trans- lated from the French with a Critical Study by Samuel Putnam. Chicago: Pascal Covici. A translation of "A vau-1'Eau" and other minor works. Dialogue Betiucen a Priest and a Dying Man. By Marquis De Sade. Translated from an unpublished manuscript by Samuel Putnam. Chicago. Pascal Covici. An argument for atheism written by the man whom psyco- pathology has helped make famous. The National History of France. Vol. I. Tlie Earliest Times, By Funck Brentano. G. P. Putnam's Sons. $5. Funck Brentano is correct in his ethnology but chauvinistic in his views. He attributes to the inhabitants of France, who were then divided into quarreling tribes, a consciousness of national unity based on a territorial conception which did not then exist in any part of the world, and minimizes the Roman and Teutonic elements in French culture, ascribing to the aboriginal Celts a larger influence in forming the national character than seems in accord with the facts. Drama A Fiasco \fUCH was expected of Philip Barry's "John" (Klaw Thea- x ■*■ ter) . The author had previously written two failures rather generally regarded as too good for the public; the pro- ducing organization was the Actor's Theater, responsible last year for "Saturday's Children," one of the best of our come- dies; and the chief actors employed were recognized stars. This, however, was one of the occasions when all signs failed and it can only be said that all the implicated parties worked together in perfect harmony for the production of a fiasco. Of those concerned the author comes off decidedly best, for he had at least an admirable intention to start from. The John referred to in the title is the man generally described as "the Baptist," and the play is, or rather tries to be, concerned with the tragedy of his personal failure. Conceived by Mr. Barry as a man with all the passionate force and all the narrow limita- tions of most evangelists, it is his fate to be an instrument for the achievement of a purpose which he is incapable of under- standing. A nationalist, a man of violence, and preeminently the prophet of a revengeful God, it is not within the compass of his soul to comprehend the Messiah whose advent he has been foretelling. He has seen Jesus, he has liked him even, but it has been so impossible for the two men to know one another that when John, in prison, is told of the new turn-cheek doc- trine preached by his erstwhile disciple he can only set it down as a malicious lie, and though, at the moment of his death, he knows that Jesus is the Messiah he goes to that death gladly only because he is sure that the new leader will have the adul- tress Herodias stoned as the law commands and wield again the war-like might of the Jews. Not only is the conception intellectually interesting but — and this is more important still — it has the stuff of great tragedy in it. This John is exactly the large but imperfect man of whom Aristotle spoke, and death, coming upon him in a moment of exaltation, affords exactly that sort of situation which we properly call tragic — one, that is to say, in which the moment of external catastrophe coincides with the moment of internal triumph and a man dies in the full possession of his soul. John has not failed for himself, and because he can accept death gladly we, too, can accept it with that exaltation which makes the genuinely tragic as far removed from mere pathos as it is from comedy. Nor does the fact that the peace of his soul is founded upon a misapprehension, that he accepts his fate be- cause he does not understand it, do anything except intensify the interest of the situation. It complicates heroism with irony and it makes John not merely a triumphant failure but a glori- ous dupe as well. The play fails, not because of any lack of spiritual insight on the part of the author but simply because he has not been able to manage his narrative. Exposition, often unnecessary, clogs his action, and his story will not move forward. There is a long, meandering first act that barely succeeds in introducing the subject, a second largely concerned with irrelevant affairs in the home of the Tetrarch, and then, finally, a concluding scene too short to do more than suggest how effective the play might have been. As for the actors, they behave as though they had lost faith in the play sometime before the first curtain rose. Ben Ami plays with a heavy meaningless violence; Margaret Anglin recites her lines listlessly; and Anna Duncan, in the role of Salome, can scarcely be heard. Perhaps the fact that a

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Nov. 23, 1927] The Nation 583 dancer was chosen for the latter part and then not allowed to dance will serve as a sort of symbol of the general ineffective- ness of the whole, and in any event judgment upon "John" can be passed in a single sentence: It is excellently conceived, badly played, and still worse acted. "Coquette" (Maxine Elliott's Theater) is a rather subtle study concerned with a village belle who lets a lover be shot because she cannot bring herself quickly enough to the point of confessing that the "honor" which her father is defending is only a myth. The central character is finely drawn and the social background — that of the anachronistic South — skilfully suggested. Perhaps the play is somewhat too subdued in its methods to make itself heard on Broadway, but it is quietly acidulous and played with more force by Helen Hayes than those who have seen her only in more syrupy roles might be inclined to anticipate. "The Fanatics" (Forty-ninth Street Theater) is a somewhat overexplicit but nevertheless amusing comedy which comes here after a great success in London. It is devoted to a defense of trial marriage and in spite of a slight tendency in the direction of talkiness it makes its points with a good deal of humor. "Take My Advice" (Belmont Theater), a pure and sim- ple-minded little farce, is also well enough in its not very dis- tinguished way. In "A Connecticut Yankee" (Vanderbilt Thea- ter) Mark Twain is brought up to date in a tuneful, colorful musical comedy. He appears rather grotesque in modern clothes, but is amusing nevertheless. Joseph Wood Krutch D THEATRE □ JOHN GOLDEN THEATRE Matinees WED. and SAT., 2:30. DANA BURNETT'S and GEORGE ABBOTTS WALLS with MUNI WISENFREND STAGED BY GEORGE ABBOTT SEATS 8 WEEKS IN ADVANCE Moves to Republic Nov. 21. THE THEATRE GUILD Presents PORGY Extra Mat. Thanksgiving A FOLK PLAY BY DUBOSE AND DOROTHY HEYWARD RITpi TDT ](" Theatre, West 42nd St. r\.n,rUDL.l\^ Matinees, Wed., Thanksgiv Eves. 8.40 ing and Sat. 2.40 / CHANIN'S W. 45th St. ROYALE Eves. 8.30. Mats. Wed. & Sat. 2.16 WINTHROP AMES GILBERT & SULLIVAN OPERA CO. ALL PERFORMANCES EX. MON. MIKADO EVERY MON. NIGHT ONLY IOLANTHE EMPIRE Thea. B'way. & 40th Street Evenings 8.39. Mat*. Wed. & Sat. 2.80 INTERFERENCE By Roland Pertwee and Harold Dearden with ARTHUR WONTNER, PHOEBE POSTER, KATHLENE McDONELL and A. E. MATTHEWS "Ib it entertaining? Does it hold you? To both ques- tions I answer affirmatively." — Alan Dale in Tht American BOOTH Si«1JJ: Matinees Wed. & Sat. *4T0. WINTHROP AMES preeents JOHN GALSWORTHY'S With LESLIE HOWARD MONEY FOR THEATRE TICKETS Do you go to the theatre as often as you would like? You could, easily. Many Nation readers are earning extra money for extra pleasures. Why not you ? Write to The Nation Department 11 20 Vesey Street New York □ DEBATES □ u Admiral T. P. MAGRUDER U. S. Navy DEBATES Bertrand RUSSELL Question: SHOULD NAVIES BE ABOLISHED?" at Mecca Temple 133 West 55th St., New York City Saturday Evening, December 3rd, 1927 Reserved Seats: $3.30, $2.75. $2.20. $1.66, $1.10 Mail Orders Filled Upon Receipt Direction: AMERICAN PUBLIC FORUM, Room 1OO0, 1650 Broadway. N. Y. City. Tel. Circle 4352. BERTRAND RUSSELL vs. MAX EASTMAN Informal DEBATE ami Discussion The Goal of Freedom and the Road to It Monday evening, November 21st, 8 o'clock Cooper Union — 4th Avenue at 8th Street Reserved seats: $1.10; $1.65. a few at $2.20 For Sale NEW MASSES, 38 Union Squai Algonquin 4445 D BALL n The Gayest Event in the Literary and Radical Circles ^ NEW MASSES WORKERS AND / PEASANTS COSTUME BALL Friday Evening, December 2, 9 P. M. at Webster Hall, 119 East 11th Street Tickets: $1.50 in Advance $3.00 at the Door for sale, New Masses, 39 Union Square When writing to advertisers please mention The Nation

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International Relations Section Disarmament and the Labor Party By RENNIE SMITH London, October 10 E are painfully reminded in these days that the world will not run to general disarmament with the speed of the fabled hare. For example, in 1919 concrete sugges- tions were put forward by America for a peace that would be based on social justice and not on revenge. But the peace treaty was a peace of revenge. In the peace treaty itself there was a cogent need for the establishment, on a principle of equality, of an all-inclusive League of Nations. In practice we got a league raised on the blood-sodden ground of a military victory. While America wrapped round herself the proud mantle of isolation, Germany and Russia alike were scowled at as enemies. Or, to take the latest example, President Coolidge called for naval disarma- ment. At once the political barometer of general disarma- ment, carried from cold and shadow into the sunshine of hope, registered the new degrees. But, alas! the invitation to disarm only ended in more harm. They who foregath- ered as friendly guests, speaking a common language, de- parted with burning ears. The common people in three continents are left in bewilderment and anger, asking: What next? Workers for peace in pre-war days sought to in- struct princes, through Hague conferences and in diverse ways, that disarmament by itself would never fill the bill. They emphasized to the point of weariness, with many to hear and few to understand, that without the establishment of the neutral arbitration court, to which all possible causes of war could be referred for settlement, the prospects of disarmament would fetch but a small price in the market. They searched anxiously for the foundations of a security- in-common to replace the security associated with the pos- session of arms. It is to the credit of those responsible for the foreign policy of the Labor Party that years ago they perceived the need for a synthetic program to bring about peace. That is why they were among the first to advocate an all-inclusive league of nations to replace the international anarchy of our time. That is why, in 1915, men like Mr. Brailsford and Mr. Sidney Webb in their private thoughts and public utter- ances were busy raising that fabric of international life whereby the judge and the arbitration court could displace the soldier. The Geneva Protocol of 1924 gathered together the wisdom of a generation's political thinking and the ghastly finger-pointings of a world war into a political document of epoch-making importance. Mankind is not un- mindful of the debt it owes to American thought. Those triune foundations of peace — arbitration, security, disarma- ment— were in the Protocol, laid broad and deep in the so- ciety of nations. It is not an accident that the Protocol was championed by a Labor government in Great Britain. Nor is it an accident that Mr. Ramsay MacDonald revital- ized the League by appearing in person at Geneva, there to move the imagination of the world by clothing himself in the language and the spirit of this profound instrument of peace. Was it not logical, too, that the newly arrived Tory Government should be the main agent in the world for the rejection of the Protocol? The Tory Government:, when it rejected the Protocol, rejected by a process of reasoning based on nineteenth-century practices of the sovereignty of nations, a practical policy for the building up of that inter- national security which alone can replace the security of the national sword. And at the Imperial Conference the British Tory Government not only declared that the time was not ripe for the application of obligatory arbitration in the realm of international disputes, but it has systematically re- jected every offer that has come from other countries to conclude such treaties. Men cannot gather the figs of dis- armament from these wild thistles of polemic against pooled security and the international judge. An attempt is to be made by 1931 to redeem the failure of the Coolidge Conference. Before that time we shall have had at least one new government in England. It would be within the program of a Labor government, in harmony with its outlook on foreign policy and of the logic of its history, to be willing to negotiate on the issue of the outlawry of war and for the conclusion of an arbitration treaty which would undertake to submit in the last resort every judg- ment to a third party for pacific settlement. Similarly, it would be true to itself in desiring to apply, between Britain and the United States, that principle of common security which could give an international meaning to the "freedom of the seas" and could slay those ghosts of cruiser rivalries and blockade in war time which haunted the Coolidge Con- ference. Lord Cecil's resignation from the Cabinet, from Geneva, and from the General Disarmament Commission is the impressive proof, if one were needed, of how right Labor's diagnosis is. Lord Cecil, in his letter to the Prime Minister, writes : ... I cannot conceal from myself that on the broad policy of disarmament the majority of the Cabinet and I are not really agreed. I believe that a general reduction and limitation of armaments is essential to the peace of the world, and on that peace depends not only the existence of the British Empire, but even that of European civilization itself. . . . Much that happened during last spring was to me of a disquieting nature. Over and over again I was compelled by my instructions to maintain propositions in the commission which were difficult to reconcile with any serious desire for the success of its labors. ... I look back on the refusal to accept the Treaty of Mutual Assistance, the unconditional rejection of the Protocol, the Ministerial declaration against compulsory arbitration, the partial fail- ure of the Preparatory Commission, and now the breakdown of the Three-Power Conference. ... In each case the policy I advocated has been more or less overruled. . . . For the truth is, however unwilling I am to recognize it, that in these matters my colleagues do not agree with me. . . . Do you want disarmament? the Labor Party asked some time ago. Then work for arbitration and security at the same time. The harvest will come. General disarmament of a kind that will leave the Washington agreement behind; a general disarmament that will pass at once to the atmos- phere of that all-round and radical disarmament imposed with corresponding obligations on other states, on Ger- many, Austria, Hungary, and Bulgaria under the peace treaty of 1919 and the Covenant of the League of Nations. The Labor Party has drawn a second lesson from the fail- ures of this year. How easily statesmen can neglect the pledges they have by solemn treaty given. For the four late enemy states have carried out a process of disarmament on land, on sea, and in the air, which is the only model in exis-

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Nov. 23, 1927] The Nation 585 tence for the guidance of other states in the post-war world. And these four states, all now members of the League of Nations, can and do put forward a claim for the applica- tion of this model by other states, which is, both in respect of treaty obligations and of moral principle, irresistible. Germany is limited to six battleships of 10,000 tons, and six cruisers of 6,000 tons. Submarines are totally pro- hibited. Her army is denuded of tanks, armored cars, and heavy artillery, and is reduced on a voluntary basis to 100,- 000 men. Military aircraft and the manufacture and re- search associated therewith are totally prohibited. If these things can be done for four states, why can they not, in principle, be done for fifty-four? The display of tanks on Britain's Salisbury Plain this summer would thereby be- come illegal, and our military aircraft exercises of this year would disturb the sky no more. The world cannot run permanently on two standards of disarmament. Either the 1919 standard must win the general consent of the other states, or the four states now subject to its drastic measure will, sooner or later, provoke an irresistible movement to be released. When these are the issues, the choice of responsible men cannot be in doubt. □ LECTURES □ Contributors to This Issue Paul Y. Anderson is national correspondent of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. John A. Hobson, a contributing editor of The Nation, is a foremost British economist and the author of "The Conditions of Industrial Peace." Russell Owen is on the staff of the New York Times. Rennie Smith is Directing Secretary of the British Na- tional Council for the Prevention of War. Ludwig Lewisohn, a contributing editor of The Nation, has just published "Cities and Men." Arthur Eloesser is literary critic of the Berliner Tage- blatt. Allen Tate, American poet and critic, is at present engaged upon an anthology of contemporary poetry. Eliseo Vivas is in the department of philosophy at the University of Wisconsin. Madame C. Ramondt-Hirschmann is a Dutch pacifist, and treasurer of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. Charles Lee Snider has contributed articles to the American Mercury and other magazines. Throw Away Your Glasses and CJ7J7 R P" T T 7* R "Perfect Sight Without Glasses" By W. H. BATES, M.D. The author of this book presents evidence that all errors of refraction are caused by strain — and cured by rest and relaxation. A complete method of treatment is described so clearly that the reader can usually dis- card his glasses and improve his vision. Sold at all bookstores. Price $S. If ye-u wear (/ia*se« — read this book The Central Fixation Publ. Co. Dept. 5, 383 Madison Avenue, New York Gentlemen: Please rend me a copy of your book "Perfect Sljiht, Without Glasses." I will give the postman $3.00 plus piotase when It arrlTes. If I am not convinced of Its value In five days, I will returu the book and you will refund my money without Question. Name Address THE COMMUNITY CHURCH PARK AVENUE AND 34th STREET SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 20TH 11 A. M. - JOHN HAYNES HOLMES "Religion and Revolution: Must They Always be Opposed?" 8 P. M. Forum - STEPHEN S. WISE "The Best and the Worst in Modern Life" ADMISSION FREE THURSDAYS, 8.15 P. M. JOHN FARRAR in a course of four lectures on "Sidelights on Contemporary Literature" Nov. 24 — "New Women Writers" Dec. 1 — "The Literature of Fu- tility" Dec. 8 — "The Literature of Prop- aganda" Dec. 15 — "The Religious Angle on Current Literature" 75c for a Single lecture — $2.50 for the course RAND SCHOOL OF SOCIAL SCIENCE 7 East 15th St. Algonquin 3094 "THE ASCENT OF MAN" Five lectures by Samuel C. Schmucker Fridays. 8:30 P. M. Nov. 18 to Dec. 16 "THESE TEN YEARS: 1917-1927" Five lectures by Morris Hillquit Tucsdavs. 8:30 P. M. Nov. 22 to Dec. 20 "REBELS IN CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN LITERATURE" Saturdays, 2 P. M. Five lectures by N. Bryllion Facin Nov. 19 to Dec. 17 YOUR WINTER OF CONTENT You can ensure yourself some pleasant evening reading during the coming winter by devoting it to &Ijf iKtmrl}?Btrr CSitarirtan WEEKLY You will like its freshness of viewpoint coupled with the accuracy of its facts. It is a store-house of information on international pol- itics, European trends of thought, current English lit- erature, 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 impor- tant 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 direct from Manchester, England, to: Name Address When writing to advertisers please mention The Nation

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586 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3255 RESTAURANT -Eat Your Way to Health- Your Diet Problems Solved by Our Scientific and Delicious Preparations of Fresh Vegetables and Fruits. Also food for diabetics. Jrzzfbod, VEGETARHH East of Broadway 110 West 40th Street 153 West 44th Street 522 7th Avenue N. W. Cor. of 38th Street EDUCATIONAL, pEXPER!MENTJ57iy PERSONAL RELIGION* A unique and challenging series of studies from re- ligious history and current life. Projects under guidance. Corre- spondence instruction optional. A Home Study Course 75 cents, 60 cents for 5 or more The American Institute of Sacred Literature SEfje tSJnibersitp ol Chicago Dept. 165 Chicago, !li. FRENCH, Spanish, Italian, German, English ; native teachers : surprising results, 75c. PRIVATE SCHOOL OF LANGUAGES 1264 Lexington Avenue New York City THE SCHOOL FOR ADULT EDUCATION announces a double course giving the rudiments of philosophy and a synoptic view of modern psychol- ogy with special emphasis on their applications. First sessions begin soon. Also class and individual work in English, Mathematics. Public Speaking and the Sciences. A new method of teaching is used which makes it possible to deal directly with the individual. Telephone days 10-1, or write for further information. Chelsea 5264 — 1133 Broadway. ROOMS FOR RENT LARGE, tastefully furnished room, fireplace, ele- vator apartment, near Columbia University. Also one smaller. Quiet. Privacy. Reasonable. 503 W. 121st St. Telephone Morningside 5010. Apt. 53. T IGHT, furnished room, private entrance, in artists apartment. $25 a month. Orchard 6399. PERSONAL, PHILOSOPHY students please reply. I am en- deavoring to organize a small philosophical cir- cle of 5 or 6 sincere lovers of the "dear delight." If you are primarily interested in metaphysics, write Box 965, % The Nation. MISCELLANEOUS U»« long distance calls to save trips, w iet things done. You'll he surprise how little they cost. BELL LONG DISTANCE SERVICE CONTENTS Of the current issue of Rational Living, Box 2, Station M, New York : The Folly of Vege- tarianism?— Cases — New Attitude Toward Sex — A Bunch of Lies — Two Doctors — Letters from France — Food Heresies — Children's Diet — Health Instructions to Workers, to Parents for their Children, to Overweight People, to Those Suffer- ing from Constipation. — Editor B. Liber. M.D., Dr. P.H. — 25c. a copy. — 6 month's reduced trial subscription, SI. — Old sample copies free. — With yearly subscription the book "As A Doctor Sees It" free. MULTIGRAPHING V New Tel. No. CORtland 3339 The MULTIGRAM §fl'Jl.TIGRAPHIMG MAILING S3!!WEOGRAPHING ADDRESSING FACSIMILE LETTERS 39 CORTLANDT ST.. N. Y. Ask The Nation about us 1 ANTIQUES J&k EARLY AMERICAN FURNITURE at 5 Christopher St. ANN-SELEY'S Spring 2810 New York City VOCATIONAL, SERVICE GERTRUDE STEIN, Inc., 18 East 41st, NYC. A professional and commercial employment bureau. Secretarial, editorial, social service, publicity, cleri- cal, and other full time positions. Personal inter- views required. Lexington 2593. CONTACTS CONTACT WITHOUT FRICTION I ARE you mentally isolated? "Contact*," literary correspondence club, puts you In touch with versatile, unconventional minda. No formalities. Books loaned free to members. Membership fee: $2.00. year. Particulars free. (stamp please) Write: Merlin Wand, ManorsviDe, Pa. POSITIONS WANTED \rOUNG man, college graduate, would like posi- tion with future, versatile, with business and theatre experience. Box 959, c/o The Nation. TYPIST or stenographer for evening work. Ex- pert and efficient. Manuscripts copies also. Box 957. .M"pkrS Suit Lengths Cut to Order. Postage Paid NEWALL, 150 Stornoway, Scotland. Write lor patterns stating shades desired J^BOBKaCB When u-riting to advertisers please mention The Nation

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FOUNDED 1865 Vol. CXXV NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 30, 1927 No. 3256 Contents EDITORIAL PARAGRAPHS 587 EDITORIALS: B90 The Tariff. Agriculture, and the President °»" Curzon Weepa ' r,,. The Glozel War °^2 Justice or Dignity • ■ •*•■.; , COq WHAT THE EUROPEAN PUBLIC WANTS. By Hendrik van Loon.. ftJ.s IT SEEMS TO HEYWOOD BROUN. By Heywood Broun 594 PRESIDENTIAL POSSIBILITIES: II. ALFRED E. SMITH. By Oswald Garrison Villard °^ INTERIOR. By Dorothy Parker "° "MOTHER METROPOLITAN." By G. Findley Willison 59-' THE PASSPORT NUISANCE. By Ezra Pound 600 IN THE DRIFTWAY. By the Drifter 602 CORRESPONDENCE G02 BOOKS AND PLAYS: Ocean. By Thomas Hornsby Ferril »U1 A Heavy-handed Rascal. By W. E. Woodward 601 Tenuous Matter. By William Gruen 604 The Strategy of Lee. By Oswald Garrison Villard 60h In a Fog. By Dorothy Graff e Van Doren 60G A Referendum on War. By John Haynes Holmes 608 Contemporary French Masters. By Rene Lalou 608 Modern Witchcraft. By C. P. Fadiman 608 Books in Brief 610 Drama: Pauline Lord. By Joseph Wood Kruteh 610 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS SECTION: China — Seen from Moscow. By Louis Fischer 613 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 HEYWOOD BROUN CARL VAN DOREN SAVID BOEHM. Advertising Manacer Surscription 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. THE NATION is on file in most public and college libraries and is indexed in the Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature. GEMS FROM THE PRESIDENT'S SPEECH before the Union League Club of Philadelphia on November 17: America is much more than a geographical location. It is a combination and a relationship. It is the destiny of a masterful pioneering people . . . determined to be free. Our country is the result of incomprehensible triumph. Rightly understood there is no more sensational story of human experience. Society is made up of constants and variables. The variables attract us by their contrasts and are always appearing in the headlines. But the con- stants always predominate, always push ahead in the march of progress. History is littered with nations destroyed by their own wealth. It is true that we have accumulated a small, but a blatant, fringe of extravagance and waste, nourished in idleness, and another undesirable class who seek to live without work. A successful people are always a mark for the vicious and the criminal but these are conspicuous mainly by contrast. The great mass of our people, what- ever their possessions . . . know that the doctrine of e the doctrine of surrender and decay. The Nation hereby offers a reward of one hundred dollars to any reader who can convince its editors that a more "blatant fringe" of buncombe and senseless hokum exists in any speech of any other President in our history, the preeminent Warren G. Harding alone being barred. THE CUT IN THE BRITISH naval building program from three 10,000-ton cruisers to one of 8,000 tons comes in the nick of time. Undoubtedly the credit for it must be given to Lord Robert Cecil, whose admirable fight against his former colleagues in the British Government gives promise of offsetting some of the compromises and errors in the career of this erratic but engaging statesman. Beyond question there will be a most serious drive for big navy appropriations in Washington just as soon as Congress assembles. All our timid patriots and all the demagogues of the Mayor Thompson school will unite in urging that we outdo in armaments the very ally to whom we swore eternal fealty only ten years ago. That we are building against her is now perfectly obvious; our fleet has outstripped Japan's and there is no one else to arm against. Our jingoes will, of course, see in the cutting of the British Admiralty's building program a victory for us. We prefer to believe that a sober second thought is responsible for the change. Liberal and Laborite in Great Britain alike insist that the delegates to the Geneva naval conference gravely mis- represented British public opinion. Press dispatches refer to the "wave of pacificism now sweeping over England"; that tide has been rising in England ever since the end of the war. INDIANA IS HOUSECLEANING. Clyde Walb, Republi- can State chairman, under fire from the Indianapolis Times, announces his retirement from politics. The Times, continuing its good work, has revealed Mr. Walb's activity in behalf of T. Guy Perfect, a wealthy resident of Hunting- don, Indiana, who had been convicted of seducing a 14-year- old girl. Mr. Walb's work coincided with the investment of $2,500 by Mr. Perfect's family in Mr. Walb's construction company. Meanwhile, four of the nine councilmen of the "majority faction" in Indianapolis have been indicted by the Marion County grand jury, on charges of accepting bribes to break down zoning provisions in the city. The grand jury has extended its investigation into the State House, and is now following up charges of corruption in connection with the Insull public-utility interests. When Indianapolis's mayor went to jail the distraught city council, several of its members themselves under indictment, settled a tangled question temporarily by choosing a Democrat, L. Ert Slack, for the place after thirty-eight ballots. Although Mr. Slack has been conspicuous as attorney for the Klan and for the "majority faction," he has pledged himself to a clean-up and his first acts seem to confirm his pledge. Much credit for the thorough job of .setting Indiana's house in order is one to William H. Remy, Marion County prosecuting attorney, and to the present Marion County grand jury and its fore- man, William J. Mooney. B AWLING AT THE VOTERS" is what Prof< efforts of various civic organizations to get people to go to the polls regardless of whether they know or care anything about the candidates or questions involved. Speaking re- cently before the National Municipal League, Mr. Munro

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588 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3256 described the practice of encouraging citizens to "certify 1 licit- lack of knowledge" at the polls as ridiculous and more dangerous to the community than complete indifference to- ward the "slacker vote." A day or so later John Hays Ham- mond of the National Civic Federation expressed almost the same idea. "Doubling an uninformed vote only clogs the election machinery and is a liability instead of an asset," he said. "The various slogans, such as 'Vote as you please, but vote,' and the buttons inscribed 'I have voted; have you?' mean little in themselves in terms of enlightened citi- zenship." We are glad to see these indications of agree- ment with the position The Nation has taken in regard to all these recent campaigns to "get out the vote." But neither Professor Munro nor Mr. Hammond gets to the bot- tom of the trouble, which is that the two major parties pur- posely sidestep all the real political issues of the day so that there is no essential choice between their candidates and platforms. "Get out the issues" is the slogan of The Nation. Once that is done, the vote will take care of itself. THE EXPULSION from the Communist Party of Leon Trotzky, Karl Radek, L. Kamenev, Gregory Zinoviev, and eighty-odd of their companions-in-opposition forms a striking sequel to the love-feast of the recent anniversary. No sooner had the guests gone home from Soviet Russia's birthday celebration than the press announced this appar- ently final rupture in the ranks of the ruling party. Barring compromise amounting to surrender on the part of the Op- position, these erstwhile leaders appear to be ca? t, not only into outer darkness, but into idleness, penury, and possible starvation. Their jobs and their homes, no less than their opinions and political activities, are in the hands of the dominant majority. No good Communist — and, in the party or out, not one of the Opposition members would admit he was anything else — can earn a living by ordinary means. He cannot buy and sell; he cannot write articles for the foreign "bourgeois" press (and no Communist paper the wor'd over would print his views) ; he is untrained, usually, for factory or farm work. His dissidence condemns him to an idleness which must look little better than prison. It is difficult at this distance to understand why a Government like that in Russia, powerful and held in power by the strong logic of economic forces, should not be able to make use of the very unusual abilities of these political heretics — who are, at the same time, honest revolutionaries. PERHAPS, AS REVOLUTIONARIES, they are too hon- est, too stubborn. They see the revolution being swept into strange bypaths that may or may not rejoin the high- road toward communism. They cannot sit back and say nothing while concessions to the peasants create what they believe will be a vast and stolid bourgeoisie of small landed proprietors. They cannot contentedly watch Russia plunge into an era of industrial activity based on close economic relations with a capitalistic world. The Revolution, they say, is revolution only if looked on as a phase of a world movement. The Government must pursue a policy of "per- manent revolution," using every means that is necessary 10 dominate the peasant masses and to propagate communism in other countries. But the energy of Russia is pushing in other directions — toward production, reconstruction, indus- trial development, rather than toward world revolution. Trotzky and his associates are playing the ungrateful role of obstructionists, and as such they seem doomed. A strong and ruthless majority, which has on its side the temper of the people and the logic of events, wipes them out of politi- cal existence. REORGANIZATION OF THE COAL INDUSTRY has been urged by every investigating committee which ever honestly peered into this industrial morass. But noth- ing has been done. Now President Green of the American Federation of Labor is to call on President Coolidge and place before him charges of brutality and lawlessness on the part of State troopers, deputy sheriffs, and coal com- pany police in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia. The appeal, drawn up by the Council of the Federation, says: We call upon the churches, the educational institutions, and all liberal-minded and free institutions and organiza- tions to come into Pittsburgh, to see what we have seen, to learn for themselves, to behold this degradation and op- pression and brutality, to witness this economic and social tragedy, to learn of the perversion of the judicial proc- esses and of the feudalistic police control in the State of Pennsylvania. These may seem strong words; but a dreadful and by no means recent situation amply justifies them. It is not enough to say that the children of miners are hungry and without shelter; or that miners' wives are enduring daily hardship because of the refusal of their husbands to work. Possibly, whatever the merits of the situation, those who feel the need to strike must be prepared to bear the con- sequences of their decision. But no strike, no injustice whether to employer or worker can ever justify the strong- arm methods now in force in the striking counties. Mounted policemen who ride down women and children are not to be endured; armed thugs who beat up defense- less strikers are not to be endured; agents provocateurs who try to stir up trouble and, failing that, testify that trouble is brewing, are not to be endured. President Coolidge would do well to cease talking about prosperity until these things are stopped. MR. HEARST has been publishing in his papers a mag- nificent series of documents which are supposed to brand Calks and Mexico for all time. Apparently they are facsimiles of original orders by which President Calles directed that various large sums of money be paid to his friends in all parts of the world. If the documents had been more modest it might have been easier to believe them. But, after beginning with payments to the Nicaraguan Liberals who were finally defeated by the United States Marines, they continued to show payments for revolution- ary propaganda in Russia and China. The thought of little Mexico financing Russian and Chinese revolution is a real triumph of the human imagination; but we have reason to believe that the original set of documents included others which seemed too preposterous for even Mr. Hearst to pub- lish. The New York Telegram comments upon another evi- dence that Mr. Hearst's editors did not entirely trust the accuracy of their own revelations: Between editions they altered the date appearing in one of these "photostat copies!" Indeed there are several instances in which the artist of the documents seems to have got his dates mixed. THE GERMAN POLICE, meanwhile, have discovered a real international financial plot — a plan to ruin Soviet Russia by flooding the international market with

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Nov. 30, 1927] The Nation 589 forged chervonetz notes. The original conspirators were Caucasian revolutionaries, and according to the press re- ports— this part of the story has not yet been confirmed — they had the interested support of Sir Henry Deterding, head of the Royal Dutch Shell Oil Company, who is sup- posed in Russia to have been responsible for the break in Russo-British diplomatic relations. The Berlin corre- spondent of the New York Times makes the natural guess that favorable oil concessions had been promised him in the event of success. At any rate, millions of forged chervonetz notes were manufactured in Frankfurt-am-Main and shipments for various European capitals had been pre- pared when the German police got on the trail of the forgers. With the cooperation of the French police they have arrested the apparent leaders, but the ramifications of the plot touch so many highly placed European personalities that the police have been instructed to keep further details secret. CAMBRIDGE WITHOUT DR. CROTHERS must lose something of its charm. For, though an immigrant into the Harvard community, he struck such deep roots that the younger generation came to regard him as one of the founding fathers. Brought up in the pioneer West, a graduate of Princeton, ordained in the most un-Bostonian Presbyterianism, he was for more than thirty years pastor of the Unitarian First Parish of Cambridge, which in a large sense of the word is the Harvard Church. And he did maintain the elder Harvard tradition. He preached a bland liberalism which concealed, as did his Atlantic essays, its heretic implications beneath a polished surface. The hysterias of the Boston community never found expression through this adopted son from the West; often enough that community never realized how he was chuckling at it. But several generations of college men have left Cambridge a little more civilized because of his spirit. IN THE DEATH of Frances Gardner Davenport the United States loses a historian of distinction. She was educated at Radcliffe, the London School of Economics, Cam- bridge, and took her Ph.D. at the University of Chicago. At Radcliffe she came under the influence of Professor William J. Ashley, who one autumn handed her some manor rolls that he had purchased in England for Harvard. She spent many years on these and allied documents, visiting the manor itself, and in 1906 published the "Economic History of a Norfolk Manor." After teaching a year at Vassar College, in 1905, she went to the newly created Historical Department of the Carnegie Institution where, under Dr. J. Franklin Jameson, her most important work was accom- plished. As the compiler and expositor of "European Treaties Bearing on the Economic History of the United States" Frances Davenport will be known as long as United States history is studied. Her first volume was published in 1917. Two others were complete at her death save for some last checking up of authorities, bringing the work down to 1713. Each treaty is preceded by a careful exposi- tion of the political and economic history bearing upon the document — terse writing, impregnable as to fact. No jour- ney was too great for this historian to take to study original archives, no language too difficult for her to master if new material was to be found. Her patience was extraordinary and her lively interest in her work never flagged. "I knew I took a subject that needed a lifetime," she said a few weeks ago. "I see now that it needed more than one." AT THE UNIVERSITY OF WEST VIRGINIA Presi- dent Frank Butler Trotter banned a peace lecture by Kirby Page, which had been arranged by the student Y. W. C. A. The R. 0. T. O, the American Legion, and the D. A. R. had protested; furthermore, "too much turmoil had been caused by the invitation." In the face of such cir- cumstances what could be done by a fearless college presi- dent but obligingly to cancel the meeting? Much the same academic pusillanimity exists at the College of the City of New York where President Robinson has just suspended two students because they criticized compulsory military drill. This action, Dean Klapper explained, was to bring about "as complete a cessation of propaganda as possible by the student body." Last year a student referendum on the compulsory R. 0. T. C. went against it by a vote of 2,092 to 345. To placate the students the faculty instituted the hypo- critical alternative of civilian drill — but scheduled it at the most inconvenient hours and prescribed a $7 uniform for it — military uniforms were free. RUTH ELDER, who failed to fly across the broad At- lantic, succeeded in breaking down the taciturnity of President Coolidge. Her place was side by side with his at the recent White House luncheon for aviators. Accord- ing to the press reports he "engaged in animated conversa- tion with the woman flier." Also we are told that "his face was wreathed in smiles." But New England character is staunch and not every Vermont trait fell before the young lady of the Loew circuit. The headline of the little story, President Gives a Token, suggested a departure from the program of national economy which has so distinguished the present Administration, but the body of the news was reassuring: "When the guests were preparing to leave, the President reached over by his plate and picked up his place card which he offered to his companion. That is the favor she is treasuring." Mr. Ibsen's spendthrift in "The Wild Duck" gave away the menu. Still there is just the pos- sibility that on the back of his place card Mr. Coolidge may have written his telephone number. THOSE WHO ADMIRE MUSSOLINI have said that he has brought about a restoration of the glory that once was Italy. And yet it is not fantastic to assume that a recent comment of the Premier may well have caused Raphael to revolve rapidly within his grave. Howard Chandler Christy who does covers, painted Mussolini after three brief sittings. "Many artists have placed my face on canvas," remarked the Duce, "but you are the first to have placed me there." Later he told the wife of the Amer- ican illustrator: "It is a better portrait than was ever painted of me." Somewhat irrelevantly the Associated Press correspondent who described the meeting of the cre- ator of the Christy girl and the founder of the new Italy added that Mussolini had brought his country "from the confusion of five years ago to its present position." Ac- cordingly, if digressions are to be permitted, one may be allowed to recall a poem by another American, Franklin P. Adams, during a Christmas era in which it was announced that Mr. Christy would illustrate the poems of Walter Scott: The stag at eve had drunk his fill. "I fear," he said, "I shall be ill- ustrated"— here his eyes grew misty — "By artist Howard Chandler Christy."

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590 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3256 The Tariff, Agriculture, and the President While the President has not thoroughly studied the Nagel report he came out firmly today against its salient provision, which hits at the fundamental Republican tariff policy lie and his party propose to maintain. rilHUS a Washington dispatch appearing two days after 1 the publication of the report of the Business Men's Commission on Agriculture, headed by Charles Nagel, the former Secretary of Commerce. We venture to say that Mr. Coolidge had not studied the report at all when he gave out that statement to the press, but it would have made no difference if he had. He and the crowd that con- trol the Republican Party have closed minds on this ques- tion of the tariff, even when the demand for a change comes from one as high in the councils of the Republican Party as Charles Nagel, and from so representative a group of American business interests. To the President the tariff will remain a sacred fetish until he is convinced that more votes a>:e to be had by recommending a reduction. To date the only objects upon which tariff duties have been reduced under that famous flexible-tariff provision which gave the President the power to raise and lower duties, are live bob-white quail, millfeed, cresylic acid, and paint- brush handles! How the American producers of quail and paint-brush handles allowed this to happen w< cannot un- derstand. They must have been asleep on their jobs, for during the same period the President has increased the rates of duty upon fourteen articles, of which one of the most important is pig iron. Undaunted by this record the Business Men's Commis- sion on Agriculture was appointed jointly by the Na Industrial Conference Board and the Chamber of Com- 1 of the United States. Besides Mr. Nagel, the Com- mission had such distinguished members as E. N. Brown. chairman of the board of the St. Louis and San Francisco Railway Company; Alfred Swayne, vice-president of the General Motors Corporation; and Paul M. Warburg, whose reputation as an international banker and student of finance is known of all men. The Commission was, of course, not authorized to commit its parent bodies by its findings, but it has gone on record as saying that "efforts should be made more nearly to equalize, as between agriculture and manufacturing industry, such benefits as the existing pro- tective-tariff system can afford to both." While opposing any legislative measures of the type of the McNary-Kaugen bill, the Commission believes that there should be "intelli- gent and discriminating effort to diminish gradually those trade restrictions and tariffs on manufactured articles which tend to reduce the foreign market for our agricul- tural products." So far as this goes it is sound advice: practically, it is not worth the paper it is written on, since after five years of the Fordney-McCumber tariff the Presi- dent has been interested only in reducing the tariff on quail, millfeed, paint-brush handles, and cresyli Much more hopeful is the t ommission's recommenda- tion of a federal farm board to be appointed by the Presi- dent, to advise the agricultural world as to planni production and marketing of crops, and I rate with farm organizations and private companies in creating and financing corporations to buy and sell farm product:', in ilize prices. In other words, it wishes a fed- eral board to do indirectly what the farm representatives in Congress have wished the government itself to do. For the rest, the Commission urges cooperation and the usual remedies for our agricultural distress, such as better edu- cation of the farmer, better live stock, the utilization of machinery, calamity insurance, and standardizing farm products. In addition, the Commission is afraid of co- operative-marketing organization on a large scale, but urges a carefully planned policy of land utilization under what might be called a National Agriculture Foundation, which should also be charged with eliminating misfit farm- ers and with controlling the movement of population from the farms to the cities and vice versa. In view of Mr. Warburg's presence on the Commission its recommenda- tion for extending farm banking and serving agricultural credit needs by fewer and stronger banks is of great im- portance. It realizes that the farmer has a just grievance in the credit situation, and to remedy this it also urges the establishment of agricultural credit corporations and farm- ers' mutual associations under government control. Finally, it recommends a reduction of freight rates. Most of these recommendations are sound and useful. They ought to help the leading farm organizations, who have as yet been unable to agree upon farm legislation, to come to a joint understanding so that they may concen- trate upon a relief program. But if they should agree in demanding a reduction in the tariff on the articles that the farmer must use, it is obvious that the President would give them no aid or comfort. Yet the knowledge that the tariff is a fundamental stumbling-block to our obtaining those additional foreign markets which the farmers must have for their surplus products, whether the government markets their crop or private organizations do so, is grad- ually permeating wider and wider circles. Thus, speaking on November 18, before the Academy of Political Science in New York, Norman H. Davis, one of the delegates to the World Economic Conference, pointed out that the mere fact that we have changed from a debtor to a creditor na- tion in itself calls for a reconsideration of the effect of the tariff upon our economic life and that of other nations. He correctly declared that "the real test of our tariff policy will come from the need of additional markets and the necessity to safeguard and recover our foreign loans and investments." That Europe cannot recover unless our and other tariff barriers are reduced has been certified not only by the leading bankers of the world in their memorandum of last year, but by the World Economic Conference and every gathering at which the matter comes up for discussion. the interests of America and of the world are invari- ably side-tracked by the men in Washington who control the Congress and insist upon giving relief to a struggling Europe only in the categories of quail, paint-brush handles, millfeed. and cresylic acid. This list is an exact measure of the strangle-hold which the manufacturers have upon the country and the pettiness of the minds charged with formulating the national and international policies of the United States in these difficult economic times. American agriculture is being depressed to the danger-point, and Europe invited to organize against us.

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Nov. 30, 1927] The Nation 591 Curzon Weeps SO persistently has T. E. Lawrence, "uncrowned King of Arabia," kept in the public eye that some have found his professed desire for obscurity suspiciously paradoxical. :It is, they say, only by design that so clever a man as he could fail so signally in an effort to avoid publicity, and they have accused him of knowing only too well both how reluctance adds value to revelation and how mysterious shadows make high romantic lights stand out in bold relief. But, however that may be, he has real stories to tell, and even if there be a touch of the unconsciously histrionic in his genius he has played a great role well. Just about the time that the famous limited edition of his memoirs was published he was discovered serving under the name of Private T. E. Shaw in the Royal Air Force. Now, while he is still regularly performing the duties of that humble office, Robert Graves, the poet, comes forward with an authorized book in which is told how Lawrence, dressed in Arabian cos- tume, came to Buckingham Palace, refused the decorations which King George was offering him, and in plain terms rebuked his sovereign for having broken faith. It seems that in 1918 Lawrence, whose genius had played a large part in uniting the Arabian tribes in behalf of the Allies, discovered that the British Foreign Office had made him the unconscious instrument of a betrayal. It had promised independence to Arabia but at the same time it had repudiated this promise in a secret treaty with the other Allies in which a division of the country as part of the spoils of war was agreed upon. When Lawrence discovered that he would be unable to fulfil the promise with which he had won the confidence of the people he was leading "a long- ing for death to end his shame" came upon him, and though he survived the war he refused the thanks of the Govern- ment he had served because he did not care to receive hon- ors for having succeeded in a fraud. Shortly before he had protested to the Peace Conference he had, at a meeting of the Cabinet, made even the implacable, imperturbable Curzon weep — a phenomenon (says Graves) "horribly like a medie- val miracle, the weeping of a church image" — but it was all in vain. King George, having heard Lawrence say that he might soon be fighting with the Arabs against England, could only express an unwillingness to believe that his min- isters had broken their word and permit him to refuse the proffered decorations. Lord Stamfordham, private secretary to the King, has issued a statement in the course of which it is said that "the King has no recollection of Lawrence's saying that the part he had played in the Arab revolt was dishonorable to himself and to his country and government," but the state- ment acknowledges the chief features of the interview as reported by Graves and it throws little additional light upon the incident. There is, however, one other detail highly characteristic of Lawrence and highly significant as a revelation of his character. He had come to the palace in the company of Prince Feisal and he was clad in the white robes of an Arabian chieftain. "Is it right, Colonel Law- rence," demanded one of the officials of the court, "that a subject of the crown and an officer should appear here clothed in a foreign uniform?" "When a man serves two masters," Lawrence replied, "and has to offend one of these, it is better for him to offend the more powerful." There is something in the gnomic form of this retort and something also in the proud, impolitic Quixoticism of its content which suggest the East. Lawrence's memoirs may be, as Bernard Shaw has called them, "the greatest story of heroism by a hero since Caesar's 'Commentaries' " and he himself is certainly a typical example of those racial sports which seem so "un-English" in spite of the fact that England has probably produced more of them than has any other country, yet everything about him suggests that he not only came to understand very thoroughly the peoples whom he led but that there was something in his tempera- ment which predestined him to a sympathy with them and their ways. A certain sort of dignity is characteristically Arabian and it is so, perhaps, because circumstance has denied to the Arab every other sort of greatness. His pride must be Quixotic because he has no power, and, since he has neither wealth nor possession, the magnificent gesture is the only kind of magnificence he can afford. "When a man serves two masters and has to offend one of these, it is better for him to offend the more powerful" — that aphorism sounds as though it had been uttered before the door of a tent by a man who had nothing but honor to lose. Such sentiments cannot be afforded by anyone who owns very much or who happens to be serving an empire. When Law- rence talked Curzon wept and whether his were crocodile tears or not it is perfectly certain that he could never have understood Lawrence one-half so well as could those tribes whom the latter had led and unconsciously betrayed. The Glozel War T N that high, calm realm where the scientists pursue eter- J. nal truth, war has broken out; and it is a Stone Age war. The scientists of France are fighting bitterly, and, as with all French wars, the area is spreading to include all Europe. The Serajevo of this world war is Glozel. Glozel is a hamlet in the clay hills of Auvergne, not far from Vichy. Three years ago the peasant Fradin, plowing his fields, came upon what appeared to be the remains of a low brick wall. The local doctor became interested and dug further; soon he produced a variety of small unglazed tablets, variously scratched, and he announced that the scratches were a Neolithic alphabet — antedating, though re- lated to, that Phoenician alphabet from which our Western writing is derived. If Dr. Morlet was right Stone Age men, long before the invention of bronze, made the supreme human discovery of a permanent method of written communication. The hori- zon of history was pushed back, perhaps, a dozen millenni- ums. M. Salomon Reinach, president of the Academy of Inscriptions, visited Glozel, watched the excavation of more tablets, and pronounced the Glozel collections genuine. Other scientists had their doubts. Some thought it curious that the Glozel letters corresponded to a late form of Phoenician, whereas if they were the ancestors of Phoeni- cian script they would be expected to be more like the earliest known Phoenician characters. Dr. Morlet continued his digging, and shortly produced new tablets, bearing more characters, this time resembling the early Phoenician. More marvels followed. Dr. Morlet unearthed an engraving of a reindeer, indicating unsuspected relationships between the Neolithic art of the period to which Reinach had assigned Glozel and the art of the cave-dwellers of the Old Stone Age. Skeptics pointed out that reindeer had vanished from

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592 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3256 France long before the Neolithic period. Then, came the reply, it is not a reindeer but some other species of deer. The question was referred to the Norwegian specialists in reindeer. Unquestionably, they replied, the animal was a reindeer. Then, M. Reinach and others asserted, a few reindeer must have persisted in France long after they had been supposed to be extinct. M. Camille Jullian, the Gallo-Roman historian, entered the controversy with a new thesis. After an attentive examination of reproductions of the Glozel tablets he an- nounced that the "Neolithic" letters were merely a degenei-- ate form of illiterate Latin, and insisted that he could trans- late some of the inscriptions himself. The Glozelians called up new forces. A dozen professors visited the scene and attested the impeccable Neolithic character of the inscrip- tions. But some of the greatest French scholars held aloof. The Abbe Breuil, France's greatest Paleolithicist, after some hesitation, announced that he did not like the un- healthy propagandist climate of Glozel and that he would retire to the pleasanter atmosphere of his Paleolithic caves. Rene Dussaud, of the Louvre Museum, a member of the In- stitute of France, published a brochure attacking Glozel as pure fake. The "Neolithic" tablets were impudent forgeries — "Neo-modern," he called them. He said that the most in- teresting were found by the peasant Fradin and Dr. Morlet when no one else was present, called one of the supposed "tombs" a medieval blast furnace, and pointed out that it was remarkable that such soft tablets should ha /c been pre- served unbroken, fairly close to the surface of the ground, in fields which cattle had trod in dry weather and wet for centuries. Dr. Morlet replied, accusing some of the leading anti-Glozelians of mere personal spite. They had shown, he said, a willingness to declare the relics genuine if they could announce them to the world and win the glory. A few neu- tral scientists impartially decided that some of the tablets were genuine and others false. The Government took a hand. The Minister of Public Instruction decided to send an official commission to exca- vate on the spot and determine the authenticity of Glozel. Dr. Morlet replied agreeing, but insisted upon exercising a veto against the membership in the commission of certain savants whom he distrusted. The Ministry declared that it must choose its own scholars, and Dr. Morlet then re- fused to admit the Government's commission. Thereupon the Government took steps to declare the field a "national monument," which would give the Government control ; and finally the International Institute of Anthropology, meeting in Amsterdam, took up the war. A Portuguese partisan of Glozel and one of its French antagonists nearly came to blows, and an armistice was declared only after the ap- pointment of a neutral commission, consisting of one Bel- gian, one Swiss, one Spaniard, one Czech, an Englishwoman, an Alsatian, and two Frenchmen. At last accounts the international commission was camped at Glozel, personally excavating with its own inter- national trowels. Every night its members cover their pits with plaster of Paris, so that no midnight prowler can in- sert false tablets into the guaranteed authentic international trenches. So far as one can judge from the dispatches, the result is likely to be two contradictory reports. The New World may yet be called upon to enter the war. But what- ever may be established as to the origin of Glozel's "Neo- lithic" alphabet, the world should at least have learned from the war something about the infallibility of science — and of scientists. Justice or Dignity FOR "improper guardianship" children may be removed from the custody of their parents; and "improper guardianship" conjures up pictures of cold and hungry chil- dren, of children bruised and beaten, or foolishly pampered. But when ten-year-old Russell Tremaine was taken from his parents in the State of Washington and put in a detention home, and when later he was given to a private family for a six months' "trial" to be followed by adoption if he should "suit," there was no question of beatings or foolish pamper- ings or lack of nourishment. The Tremaines are decent, law-abiding citizens of the State; they belong to a non- resistant religious sect, the Elijah Voice Society; they are absolute pacifists and as such they were opposed to having Russell take part in the flag salute at school — and they "refused to acknowledge that the State had a right to com- pel school-children to be indoctrinated with the principles of nationalistic patriotism and flag worship." They kept Rus- sell at home and proceeded to educate him according to their own beliefs. And the sovereign State of Washington, in return, put Russell's father in jail and carried Russell him- self off to a detention home. This incredible proceeding took place two years ago. The Tremaine parents have tried to visit their son and are not permitted to see him — or, now, even to know where he is being boarded out. His father wrote of him: The supervisor of child-placing . . . said little Russell was hungering for someone to love him. That at the "home" for some time he would eat little and lay awake nights and sob and was developing a nervous twitching of the face and they were afraid he might lose his mind. This of course was intense agony for me to listen to. The sovereign State of Washington, in the dim way peculiar to governments, seemed to have an inkling that torture was being unnecessarily inflicted on certain of its citizens. Judge Hardin of the Juvenile Court wrote to Mr. Tremaine that if he would promise to send Russell to a private school or to public school at least for the first eight grades, the boy would be returned to his parents. But the Tremaines were consistent in their faith. They wished, they declared, to send Russell to school; they preferred public schools to pri- vate; but they asked to be assured that he would not be forced to take part against his will in a ceremony that was contrary to his own faith and that of his parents; and finally they could not recognize the authority of the judge or the courts that would urge such a course. And here, for the moment, the matter rests. Rus- sell is completing his six months' trial. He is liable for adoption at the end of this period. Judge Hardin, repre- senting the sovereign State of Washington, is evidently a little at a loss. And the Tremaines are still deprived of their son. Government, not for the first time, finds itself in the unpleasant dilemma of having to be cruel in order not to admit of making a mistake, or sensible and merciful and at the same time frank to admit error. The State of Washington seems to fear for its dignity. But dignity suffers only through blindness or ignorance or wilful injustice. And dignity is nothing against the spectacle of a boy deprived of his parents, of parents deprived of their child, when they are willing and eager and capable of bringing him up as a useful, intelligent citizen and an honest man.

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Nov. 30, 1927] The Nation 593 What the European Public Wants [foi4« *.%- i c ^ m^» tf'V'Ui ^A«^(^(iWfc^ifew^ Scene in any European town when a news bulletin provides the eager populace with the latest news of a disarmament conference. yji^SXltfu-v — J^-. • The same scene the next day when new rumors about the new Ford car are announced.

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594 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3256 THE trouble with college football is the amateur spirit. I am starting off with the assumption that present conditions in the game are less than ideal and undoubtedly a majority will agree that the barring of Bruce Caldwell from the Yale team was an unfortunate and silly perform- ance. His offense against established standards was tech- nical. Both Harvard and Princeton invited Yale to waive the rule under which he was dropped from the squad. He had, as you remember, played a few minutes of freshman football at Brown and therefore could not represent the Blue in either of its final contests. The athletic authorities at New Haven chose to adopt a legalistic attitude in the face of the situation. "Rules are rules and must be enforced," said the mem- bers of the governing committee. Whether the first stone was thrown by a man with a flask or without one the news- paper reports failed to mention. The philosophy that rules must be enforced simply because they happen to b down upon some parchment is always unfortunate. The world will not profit if men come out of Yale and apply this principle to the multitudinous facts of national life. It is my experience that the introductory remark, "This is a government of laws not men," nearly always pr some iniquitous proposal. But any attempt to follow out this particular point would necessitate a file of dissenting decisions by liberal justices. Let us merely confine ourselves to the more simple proposition that amateur sport practically always entails the creation of codes of practice. There is always the elaborate set of specifications defining just what constitutes an : mateur, and regulations invariably breed like rabbits. Back in the bad old days the colleges were only si concerned with the antecedents of any talented player. If he could kick or plunge or skirt an end nobody cared to question by just what process he had arrived at that par- ticular institution of learning. There are still freebo colleges which expect a coach to arrive each autumn bring- ing behind him the nucleus of a successful eleven, but it- was many years ago that the mentor of a well-known made the famous remark, "in the second half we had to use two students." Even in our own day Gil Dobie has been quoted as attributing the falling football genius of Cornell to the growing enthusiasm for Phi Beta Kappa. I believ. college football was a far less menacing factor in i tional life when professionalism was regarded lightly. This may need a bit of developing. My theory is that football is an excellent pastime for those who watch, and a dreary, bruising bore for all the players. In many convers; with a large number of former varsity athletes I have found not more than two or three who enjoyed their days on the eleven. To be sure, a few spoke gratefully of the manner in which the game had helped them in the bond business and a number felt that the sport served to build character. However, I am speaking of enjoyment, and I have a suspicion that any person who has been mauled by some experience must almost inevitably try to ease the sting of his wounds by pretending that his suffering made in some way for righteousne.-s. Obviously football fails as recreation for those who serve it. A candidate for an eleven spends only a small proportion of his working time at the game itself. To practice tennis it is customary to play tennis. The mechani- cal opponent invented by La Coste is still a rarity. Drills for basketball, hockey, and baseball consist largely of scrub encounters. This is not true of football. Stars are far too precious to risk them very much in scrimmage, and so foot- hall practice consists of many tiresome hours spent in tag drills, running through signals, tackling the dummy, and other kinds of manual labor. And after hours there are chalk talks and lectures on tactics which can hardly be much more fun than courses in anthropology or medieval his- tory. The old game was less dependent upon tactics. Sheer power was enough, and though the boys went back to their rooms aching in joint and muscle no great tax had been put upon the mind of any player. Today a football season is arduous enough to endanger the academic integrity of any but the most brilliant stud- ents. The men who can learn much in a little time get through their courses but naturally not unmarred. In this situation it seems to me that professorial practice repre- sents an extraordinary and topsy-turvy attitude. The boys who fail in examinations are barred from play. It is their betters who are permitted to make the sacrifice for dear old Harvard. No one should be allowed to play college football until he has proved beyond question that his mental attainments are not significant. Professionalism would solve this difficulty. If all the members of an eleven were students by courtesy alone, the standard of learning in the college would not suffer by their participation. When the last whistle blew7 these hand- picked representatives of alma mater could hibernate until the following season. Naturally there would be no three- year rule or any regulation barring transfers. Under such a system tradition would have room to flourish and it is easy to imagine the adoration with which the undergraduate would point to Biff or Slogger who had grown gray in the service of Yale as fullback. Even today it seems a pity when the ban comes down upon some brilliant star who has no talent except to squirm and keep on going in a broken field. Since there is distinctly an aesthetic value in the spectacle it seems a shame that brilliant practitioners should be compelled to return once more to the ranks of the humdrum. Football is maintained chiefly to please and excite the alumni, and a number of excellent college presidents have been broken because they failed to supply the graduates with a winner. But surely it is the duty of an educator to educate and not to keep an eye peeled for a good roving center. Give the game bodily over to the alumni and let them club together and provide a football team. If it fails they will have no one but themselves to blame, and there

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Nov. 30, 1927] The Nation 595 will be no more talk of dwindling endowments because the president has failed to attract material for a successful eleven. If Princeton paid a living wage there could be no possible objection to having the Tigers tour the country as widely as they pleased to spread the culture of that insti- tution. Many a big Eastern university is well aware of the advertising value of victories upon far-distant gridirons. However, you will find few in authority willing to be frank in admitting as much. With teams composed of mature men drawing adequate compensation there would be an end of all silly bickering about unnecessary roughness. A man on salary respects the dignity of his own health and that of his opponents and will make no useless tackles beyond the sidelines or heave himself upon some foeman who is already downed. Clean, hard, and skilful football might be expected from men allowed to develop team-work over a span of ten or twelve seasons. Furthermore, the game would be enlivened by the chance of promotion. No good running back would need spend all his athletic years in the obscurity of Geneva or Grove dry. It does not seem to me that undergraduate or even graduate enthusiasm would be dimmed too much by the fact that mercenaries occupied the pivotal positions. As far as football goes a red shirt should be ample to make any player a Harvard man. In one respect I will admit there might be a slackening in emphasis. No harm is done by having the sixty or seventy thousand spectators grow delirious during the entire duration of four periods, but reasonable objection can be made to the fact that college frenzy begins long before the big game and lasts well be- yond its finish. Professionalism should tend to restore proper perspective. Under such circumstances excitement ought to diminish very rapidly after the spell of the actual spectacle was ended. In this Utopia I picture rival undergraduates meeting without recrimination or souvenirs from goal posts. "You beat us fair and square," says Harvard '49 to Tiger '50. "That left halfback is the fastest man I ever saw to start and harder still to stop." "Well," says Tiger '50 with cheerful pride unscarred by swank, "he ought to be good — he cost us $15,000." Presidential Possibilities II Alfred E. Smith By OSWALD GARRISON VILLARD ' '\ A TOULD you vote for a The second W Tammany Hah rough- g &{ QJ f neck like 'Al' Smith? Would you ' have 'Al' spitting tobacco juice about the White House as he does in the Governor's room at Albany? Do you believe in electing to the Presidency a man who drinks too much for his own good, and is politi- cally a rampant Wet? Would you vote for a Catholic in the White House ? Do you believe in having as President a man who boasts that he has never read a book? Would you place in his hands the critical foreign affairs of this country when he does not know the difference between Albania and Abyssinia, or Angora and Anatolia? Can't we find a single gentleman in all America to grace the Wbite House?" These are the questions one hears whenever Alfred Smith's candidacy for the Presidency is discussed among the privileged and the prosperous. You cannot listen to them without becoming convinced that Governor Smith, if nominated by the Democrats next June, will become the acid test of our democracy. To millions his religion will be a fatal bar; to millions more his opposition to prohi- bition will be unforgivable. To multitudes of others "Al" Smith is still a Tammany heeler wearing a brown derby on one ear with a cigar in one corner of his mouth, who by dint of the aid of Tammany Hall has succeeded in having himself elected Governor of New York no less than four times; reluctantly only do they concede his ability, his in- dustry, his extraordinary talent for administration. They are unmoved by the fact that "Al" Smith's appeal is to the common people of Abraham Lincoln ; they want in the White House what is known as a gentleman, a Wil- son, a Taft, a Roosevelt. They are not willing to grant in a series of that Alfred Smith is by every j „ j • j . precedent and tradition as much h e c a ii d i d a t e s y ,.,, , , .. ,. . , „ entitled to the highest office in the land as was Andrew Jack- son, the frontier bully, cock-fighter, and duelist; or Andrew Johnson, the trader who never learned to read or write until he was married; or James A. Garfield, who drove a mule-team and steered a canal boat on an Ohio canal. For generations we have boasted that any child born under the American flag could rise to the Presidency if he merited it. The equality of opportunity in America, the ability of the lowliest born to achieve fame and fortune have been our stock in trade ; they are our most-often cited arguments against any change in the society or govern- ment which we have. How many of us are ready for an unread and uncul- tured man in the White House? Well, let us not spend much time on the fact that he has come up from the side- walks of New York. That story is, as I have said before, worn threadbare; "Al" Smith himself has doubtless had enough of it. The man himself is simple, boyish, straight- forward, and fascinating. He has a keen mind and he has wit and humor; he often sparkles — when not speaking as an official. He has Lincoln's understanding of the plain people they both sprang from, and he, too, frequently makes a point by a story which brings a laugh and goes home. He can sing a popular song and dance a few steps with all the zest of life that marked him when he was still on the sidewalks and a "parlor entertainer." He has a rare genius for friendship. More than that, he has a native common sense to guide him where the sophisticated so often fail — it has not been educated out of him — and he has a heart besides. Why was it that a murderer condemned to death

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596 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3256 had his sentence commuted although not a soul appeared before the Governor to ask for his life? Because to the Governor that fact made it seem his especial duty to inquire into the case. If the man had no friends then the Gover- nor must be his public defender, must be doubly certain that no error of justice could come to pass. So personally he inquired into the facts and personally he decided that the man should not die. It is not difficult to appeal to his sympathies, and yet the man who sits behind the Governor's desk at Albany is no soft and malleable person. Like many another man in public life he has grown harder with each year, and is often irritable. He is developing the impatience of the man who is master of his job and finds it harder and harder to put up with the ineptitudes, the fumbling, and the dulness or selfishness of the stream of persons who come to him for every conceivable purpose. He can do and still often does an extremely kindly act — even for a man he dislikes. But his glance is more steely, his determination more fixed. He can still tell a funny story, but when he ends it and becomes the Governor again he is the hard- bitten public official, with deep lines in his face and all the dignity and self-possession and self-confidence that anybody need have either in or out of the White House. He has his play hours, he can unbend, but the years of office-hold- ing and of exercising great authority are leaving their marks. When he hits out now he hits straighter and harder than ever, as his political adversaries know well. Never before has the business of the State marched along as under Governor Smith. He has worn nimself out on it; it is the breath of his body; the life of his soul. It fascinates him beyond anything else. A public document is his novel; a complicated set of figures entertains him more than a theater. An extraordinarily retentive memory makes it possible for him to get up on his feet and be cross-examined as to the business of the State for hours on end without ever making a slip or hesitating for a figure. He works early and he works late; he knows where to get his material and he knows just whom to turn to in order to have that material put into the best shape for his use. He knows how to listen, and he will adopt without hesita- tion, in their entirety, suggestions that come to him from men and women whom he completely trusts. Public life has been his high school, his college, his post-graduate course, and when a supreme test came to him in the Constitutional Convention in New York in 1915 he proved how well he had learned. There were great public men, distinguished law- yers, and scholars in that convention, but "Al" Smith, the product of Tammany Hall, outshone them all. More than that, he has graduated from the sophistries and the bunk of the ordinary politician. He spoke with amazing frank- ness in that Constitutional Convention. He often delib- erately pokes fun at men in public life, exposes their ab- surdities and hypocrisies with all that flair for acting which has been his since the days of early youth. His de- votion to his task is beyond all question. He has been for years planning for the Presidency, but he has been shrewd enough to see that the best way to move in that direction was to be the best possible Governor of New York, and he has publicly scorned those of his predecessors who tried to be Governors of New York when they had their eyes riveted upon the White House. This is the man who has such a hold upon the voters of the State of New York that he has only to express his opposition to a constitutional amendment to have it snowed under by more than a half million votes, who can be Governor of New York as long as he wishes to. He has won the confidence of the great mass of Republicans and Democrats, and he has merited it. He has been the best Governor, all in all, that New York has ever had. Let us go back to our questions. Does "Al" drink and does he drink too much? Well, I am reliably informed that he drinks every day, and the number of his cocktails and highballs is variously estimated at from four to eight. It is positively denied that he is ever intoxicated, much gossip to the contrary notwithstanding. He is a Wet, and he lives up to it, and for that consistency he is to be praised. Every journalist knows dozens of nauseating po- litical hypocrites who will go before any W. C. T. U. meet- ing, eulogize the Eighteenth Amendment and the Volstead Act, and then go and get drunk a few doors away; every journalist knows Senators and Congressmen who "vote Dry and drink Wet" wherever they happen to be; who, like the eminent Warren G. Harding, will uphold the cause of tem- perance and indulge in hard liquor to the wee sma' hours. One may differ with "Al" Smith on his attitude toward prohibition, but no one can call him a hypocrite. One may regret with all one's heart, as does the writer of these lines, that, being in an exalted position, he cannot set an example of abstinence to the millions whose State he gov- erns, but at least one knows where he stands. If there be any Progressive who puts the prohibition issue above all others he will, of course, vote against "Al" Smith, and by the same test he ought to vote against a large majority of our politicians — "Wet" and "Dry." Could I vote for a Catholic for the Presidency? I certainly could and I certainly have voted for Catholics for lesser offices, and to the best of my ability I propose to repel, wherever I can, as utterly unworthy of America, the suggestion that a man's religion has anything whatsoever to do with his fitness for the Presidency or for any other office. If there are persons so small as to believe that a vote for Smith is a vote for the Pope when Smith's cabinet at Albany at this moment contains only one Catholic to thirteen Protestants and one Jew, they belong in the class with those who still believe that women are nationalized in Russia, and that the Jews are organized in a gigantic con- spiracy to control the world and to commit ritual murders on the sly. One may search "Al" Smith's record at Albany from end to end only to find that if anything he has leaned backward so far as his co-religionists are concerned. The Republicans, having tried their utmost for years to find something damaging to Alfred Smith, have never yet dared to insinuate that in choosing men and women for office he has been influenced by the religion they profess. The Catholic church blunders almost as badly in our politics as does the more powerful Methodist church. It has cardinals and archbishops who are stupid enough to dabble in politics and so afford ammunition to those who are determined that no Catholic shall ever enter the White House. But the average plain American, if he believes in fair play and a square deal, will never be kept from voting for "Al" Smith because he grew up in the Catholic church. The final proof of this is that in a Presidential year, 1920, he won a million more votes in New York State than did the Protestant Democratic candidate for the Presidency. Well, what are the policies for which Governor Smith has stood at Albany? They are unquestionably progressive

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Nov. 30, 1927] The Nation 597 ones. One often doubts when one reads his solemn, con- ventional strictures upon bolshevism and socialism, notably that at Cornell in 1919, whether he really knows how far- reaching some of his own recommendations are, whether he has the faintest idea as to what socialism really is. I have frequently quoted from his annual message to the Legislature in January, 1920, the following nine recom- mendations: 1. A minimum wage. 2. The eight-hour day for all women workers. 3. Maternity insurance for expectant mothers. 4. The extension of workmen's compensation to cover occupational illnesses and accidents. 5. The appointment of State physicians and nurses in rural communities now destitute of medical aid, in coopera- tion with those communities. 6. The ownership, development, and operation of all water-powers in the State. 7. State-owned and operated grain elevators in three cities, after the manner of the Nonpartisan League experi- ments in North Dakota. 8. Control and supervision of the entire milk supply of the City of New York on the theory that every child is as much entitled to pure milk as to pure air and pure water. 9. The municipal operation of public utilities. This from a man who declares : "I am unalterably opposed to the fundamental principles of the Socialist Party!" Of these nine proposals, four have actually been accepted by the State. Some of these recommendations go further than those of any socialistic platform I can remember, especially his insistence that the State guarantee to the child as pure milk as he is now — supposedly — guaranteed pure water and fresh air. It is perfectly obvious that if a Eugene Debs or a Victor Berger had offered a platform like this, the great New York dailies would have rent him limb from limb for his dangerous radicalism. Think of that suggestion of "Al's" that the State begin the socialization of the medical and nursing professions by taking over the doctors and nurses to supply the communities that are without them! Isn't that dangerously socialistic? As for his recommenda- tion of State grain elevators, that came first when the New York Times and our other great journalistic saviors of society were denouncing the North Dakota Nonpartisan League for building warehouses and grain elevators and otherwise putting the government into private business; yet no one denounced Smith. Viewed from the standpoint of the days of Grover Cleveland, Alfred E. Smith is a dan- gerous radical. Adequately to set forth the progressive measures he has sponsored in addition to those mentioned above, would take almost an entire issue of The Natioyi. He has from the beginning fought for better working conditions for men, women, and children. His greatest opportunity to improve working conditions came in consequence of the Triangle factory fire with its terrible sacrifice of 145 girls' lives. The Legislature constituted an investigating com- mission of which the present Senator Wagner and "Al" Smith were the chief and the most useful political mem- bers. In consequence the session of 1913 was marked by the passage of an unprecedented number of labor bills, epoch-making in their improvement of labor conditions in the Empire State. Smith not only sponsored these bills but fought them through the Legislature. As a result the State Federation of Labor declared: "We doubt if any State in the Union can now compare with our Empire State in its present code of labor laws." Read any one of his annual messages and it is amazing how many sub- jects he touches upon that relate to the social progress of the people of his State. Take that of January 6, 1926, for example. It records the fact that New York leads the country in human-welfare activities. It deals with educa- tion, public health, institutional care, conditions of em- ployment, housing, recreation, child welfare, and the re- habilitation of the unfortunate. Through "Al" Smith's ac- tivities a hundred million will have been spent upon the institutions of the State which had been gradually falling behind the needs of the people during the administrations of his predecessors. He has consistently built for the fu- ture, especially for the ever-growing army of insane, thanks in large part to the fifty-million bond issue which he obtained from the State. It is largely because he has had to build for the past and the future that he has had so heavily to increase the expenditures of the State and has been attacked by the Republicans for his extravagance. Apropos of his financial policies the Governor annually issues a financial statement of the State's situation which is a model of clearness and compactness — comparable only to the best bank statements. In the message of January, 1926, also he asked that the Legislature declare that labor is not a commodity and demanded a revision of the use of the injunction in labor disputes. He appealed once more for the forty-eight hour week for women and minors, and for a minimum-wage board. He asked for an extension of the emergency rent laws and set forth a plan for the solution of the tenement problem in New York City which was in large part adopted by the Legislature, with the exception of his plan for the creation of a State Housing Bank similar to the Federal Land Bank, which proved too socialistic for the Republican leaders. (But the Governor still thinks that they will have to come to it if the bad tenement is to be eradicated.) To the question of the parks he has given unending attention, and nothing is more to his credit than his refusal to allow rich property owners of tremendous political and social in- fluence to divert him from his plan to establish State parks on Long Island — the owners of large estates did not want the "masses from New York" pouring out in their direction. He has been a genuine social crusader, and there is no doubt that this is largely due to his admirable group of advisers. It must be admitted, however, that they could have done nothing for him had he not had an open mind and a remarkably sympathetic understanding and appreciation of the needs of the people of his State. You can talk social reform to a hundred men; only those will react whose hearts and minds are attuned to the gospel preached. Even more to Governor Smith's credit is his keeping his head during and immediately after the war. He talked of course the usual lies about the war and its aims during that struggle, but with much less hate and bitterness than did most others, and he refused to see red when the war was over. He pardoned the Communist James Larkin and other political prisoners. He opposed the stupid and un- American ousting of the Socialists from the Assembly in 1920, promptly invited them to his home and called a special election at which all of the five Socialists were re- elected. He vetoed the bill permitting teachers to be ques-

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598 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3256 tioned regarding their loyalty and political views, with a penalty of dismissal if their views were not entirely sat- isfactory to their examiners, and he also vetoed a bill re- quiring private schools to submit their courses of study to the State for approval. He vetoed a third bill under which the Attorney General could institute proceedings before the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court against any can- didate whose views he considered radical. His are ad- mirable veto messages; there is dispute as to who wrote them, but there can be none as to the name signed to them and as to Governor Smith's entire belief in them. As Mr. Henry F. Pringle has said of them, they are statesmanlike papers and they throw much light on a side of the Gover- nor's character which has not been sufficiently emphasized. They prove, like his opposition to a censorship — though he did sign one bill to padlock theaters producing improper plays — that he is opposed to abridgment of freedom of thought and utterance, and that he has sympathy and tol- erance for views other than his own. Finally, I must also mention his admirable water-power policy upon which he has fought all the great power com- binations within the State, to prevent the exploitation by private capitalistic interests of what is the heritage of all the people. Again, he has done everything possible to de- vejop the State Barge Canal, except to furnish the traffic that it so sorely needs to justify itself, and he has advo- cated whole-heartedly its use by the federal government as a part of the proposed ship canal from the Great Lakes to the sea. In all of these matters his course has been truly progressive and beyond criticism. In conclusion, I do not urge all Progressives to support Smith. By no means. He has still much to do and much to say before Progressives can give him their complete confidence. He is still a Tammany man; against its ex- cesses and wrongdoing in New York he never protests publicly, although he has at times used his influence to procure better nominations or to compel the Hall to indorse a bi-partisan judiciary candidate. But about the corrup- tion o'' the courts and the police and the elections he has nothing to say — Tammany still steals elections with ut- most brazenness. It remains an organization for public plunder. It is outwardly whiter; it has better figureheads and has drawn some fine young men into its ranks who hold the futile old idea that an organization like this may be reformed from within. It no longer waxes rich out of petty pilfering from prostitutes and gamblers and saloon- keepers and the criminals, it licenses to prey upon the com- munity; it makes its money much more easily, but on a much larger scale. As for the prohibition issue. Governor Smith must tell the public exactly where he will stand if elected, whether he will continue to have his drinks in the White House or not, and whether he will determinedly uphold the Eigh- teenth Amendment. In foreign affairs he remains an un- known quantity. It is true that in 1926 he personally insisted that the Democratic State platform contain an indorsement of the World Court, and that in 1920 he made many speeches favoring Article X of the Covenant of the League of Nations and defending eve^y part of the Wilson program, probably without much real understanding of what it was all about. But the public has a right to ask how he stands today. Will he again seek to put this coun- try into the League? And how does he stand as to the Caribbean? Does he believe that the flag follows every American dollar across the seas and the Rio Grande? It is much to his credit that he has said apropos of Mexico: "My personal attitude is that ... no country has the right to interfere in the internal affairs of any other country" — but that is precisely what Mr. Coolidge has said while intervening in Nicaragua and threatening to intervene in Mexico. Will Governor Smith specify his position by add- ing to the words quoted above "as has been done by our brutal and bloody interventions in Haiti, Santo Domingo, and Nicaragua"? Will he, too, hold to the policy of a huge army and navy when the world is sick almost beyond hope of recovery from the use of force "without stint"? Does or does he not believe in tariff reform? As an administrator Governor Smith has no equal in America, not even in Herbert Hoover. But it is honest, radical, popular leadership that the country needs infinitely more than a great administrator in Washington. Will he always be for the people, or will he stand in the last resort with those whom Woodrow Wilson called "the bosses and their masters, the great capitalists"? What guaranty is there that he whom the corporations have regarded so com- placently in New York, whom Wall Street has never feared, will become the regulator of big business? He has never formulated any deep-lying political philosophy. Doubtless he will be taught much, particularly about foreign affairs, before the convention meets, but he cannot quickly acquire the background of experience and the personal knowledge of the national and international events of his lifetime which is so necessary to an intelligent conduct of the affairs of the Republic. Of all the candidates, Governor Smith on his record gives the fairest promise of progressive leadership along social and humanitarian lines. It is today, however, but a promise. Great masses of Americans, many of whom now never go to the polls, long for the coming of one more brave outspoken man, long again to "see one straightfor- ward conscience put in pawn to win a world." These voters are to be had, but they must be convinced and won. From now until June is the Governor's opportunity to demon- strate that as he has been in New York so will he be in the nation. He in himself is to be the acid test of America's democracy. Interior BY DOROTHY PARKER Her mind lives in a quiet room, A narrow room, and tall, With pretty lamps to quench the gloom And mottoes on the wall. There all the things are waxen neat And set in decorous lines; And there are posies, round and sweet, And little, straightened vines. Her mind lives tidily, apart From cold and noise and pain, And bolts the door against her heart, Out wailing in the rain.

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Nov. 30, 1927] The Nation 599 ' 'Mother Metropolitan" By G. FINDLEY WILLISON I believe in unions and strikes. No doubt they are sometimes wrong. But it is a fact that when you are in a fight, combatants are not to be separated by saying some are sheep and some are goats. THIS handsome statement was made some time ago by President Haley Fiske, of the Metropolitan Life Insur- ance Company, but in the present efforts of the Bookkeepers, Stenographers, and Accountants Union to organize the 10,- 000 clerical workers in the Metropolitan's home offices in New York City President Fiske has discovered a "Bolshevist movement that is city-wide." In this discovery he has found adequate excuse for refusing to countenance the present effort to organize his staff. If such stale nonsense is to be dignified by serious notice, the revolutionary character of the union may be judged from its A. F. of L. affiliations. Nevertheless, his excuse, however feeble, is the nearest thing to recognition the union has yet received from the junto in command of the Metropolitan Life — which, as a "mutual" company, belongs in its entirety to policyholders, including some 17,000,000 workers and members of their families. But it is the misfortune of these policyholders, and per- haps also the misfortune of Metropolitan employees, that their control over company management cannot even be fairly described as nominal. This has been sharply pointed out by so conservative a critic as Insurance Superintendent Beha of New York who has recommended legislation to give at least the State a voice in mutual company affairs in the interests of both policyholders and the general public. Faced with the fact that the majority of the "owners" of their company are workers, the Metropolitan man- agers have had good reason for not proclaiming their pri- vate opinions about union activities among their white-collar workers. Their opposition, though tacit, has been unremit- ting. Two years ago the Bookkeepers, Stenographers, and Accountants Union, relying upon Mr. Fiske's affirmations of the right of labor to organize and strike, sought to gain his consent for the unionization of the company's home office staff. Letter after letter from union officials went unanswered and every effort to secure a personal inter- view failed. Last year renewed attempts to approach Mr. Fiske met with no greater success. Last month, in a pub- lic letter to the press, the union returned again to the charge — determined to succeed at the very least in smoking out the Metropolitan and putting an end to its equivocation. Employees have not joined the union, so Mr. Fiske declares, because of the "simple fact that they are satisfied and do not care to join." This fact is hardly credible in the light of data collected by union investigators, supported by evidence volunteered by Metropolitan employees. Salaries for a large percentage of the girl clerks start as low as $12 a week, ranging from that figure to $16 a week at the end of three years. Average typists receive from $16 to $18 a week, while bookkeepers' salaries run from $18 to $25, ris- ing to maximum of $33 a week between their tenth and twentieth consecutive years of service. To these salaries must be added the value of the free lunches, cheap group insurance, wholesale dentistry, and medical care — the last also provided free of charge to em- ployees. The company also contributes an amount approxi- mately equal to that contributed by the employees to pro- vide a small pension for loyal workers who survive to the age of sixty-five and maintains its own sanatorium for those who break down meantime — a sanatorium which in thirteen years has had to treat more than 4,000 employees. And in addition, of course, there is the fiction which the company tries desperately to create that "Mother Metropolitan" is interested in nothing but the welfare of her charges. This paternalism is not pure philanthropy. As proof that they are not merely indulging their natural generosity with other people's money, the officers justify the expense to policyholders by showing in dollars and cents that the welfare and uplift work more than pays for itself in more labor obtained at less cost. As for employee?, this dividend- paying charity does not give the great majority of them suf- ficient added value to make their real wages anything like the decent living-wage minimum. Employees have no voice in the management of the com- pany or of their several offices. They have no appeal from summary dismissals or from arbitrary salary cuts and de- ductions. Extra pay for overtime work is the exception, not the rule: "Once in a while our work requires our office staff to stay half an hour or an hour after hours, but not often. When we really (!) have a volume of extra work, our em- ployees are paid for their overtime," thus speaks Vice-Presi- dent W. T. Dobbins, chief personnel officer. Above all, em- ployees justly fear the consequences of any concerted action to modify working conditions or wage scales. What atti- tude would the company take toward those who joined the union? "Why, they'd lose their jobs, of course," said the secretary of Vice-President J. V. Barry. Certainly, as Fannie Hurst has writ ton of the Metro- politan. "It is not a pretty social picture, that of an organi- zation dealing in billions paying out its employees in low wages camouflaged by such showy paternalism as wholesale dentistry and the mid-day meal thrown in free." And "deal- ing in billions" is no figure of speech. With more than $13,500,000,000 of life insurance in force, the company has no serious rival in its own field. More, the Metropolitan probably stands today as the world's largest and richest financial institution of any kind, as has been claimed by Mr. Fiske. On December 31, 1926, according to the State In- surance Department's official report, its total admitted assets had reached the staggering sum of $2,108,000,000— nearly equal to a tenth of the combined resources of national banks in the United States, Alaska, and Hawaii. The company's total gross income last year exceeded half a billion— $595,596,500. Per working day during 1926 it received gross revenues of $2,500,000; it paid to policy- holders or added to reserves $1,405,000; it wrote $9,940,000 of new business; it increased its assets $835,000. On its books were 34,240,000 policies, both "ordinary" and "indus- trial." In the latter class are included all policies for less than $1,000 with premium payments arranged on a weekly or monthly basis to suit the purse and convenience of work- ingmen. There were more than 17,200,000 such industrial

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600 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3256 policyholders, who paid gross premiums last year of $241,- 830,400. Gross premium income from all policyholders to- taled $492,270,500. And after more than adequate reserves had been estab- lished and allowances made for any and all liabilities, as the company is legally required to do under the supervision of the State Insurance Department, the Metropolitan closed its books last year with a surplus of $122,236,000. In no business is a reasonable reserve more necessary than in the life insurance business — but there is no need, as a mere glance at the Gain and Loss Exhibit of the vari- ous companies over a period of years will show, for the large surplus being accumulated under one heading or another by the mutual companies today. This overgrown surplus could be used (1) to pay company employees a decent money wage and (2) to reduce the cost of insurance to policyholders. Again, mutual companies each year pay policyholders what they call "dividends" which are nothing more than a partial return of premium overcharges. Last year the Met- ropolitan paid policyholders more than $52,000,000 in such returns — the size of these returns from year to year depend- ing upon investment income, mortality savings, and the actual cost of operating the company. Against these so- called dividends could most properly be charged any added cost of operating the company on a living- wage basis. In contrast with its labor policy, which is "economical" with a vengeance, the Metropolitan's policy in other particu- lars seems somewhat extravagant, as revealed in the Insur- ance Department's report. Last year, in salaries and all other compensation to officers and home office employees, the company paid out $13,560,000. Approximately $1,940,000 of this amount was paid in salaries alone to 178 officers, including all those in or above the $5,000 salary class. This left a sum of $11,620,- 000, slightly more than five times that paid to 178 individu- als, for distribution among some 10,000 other home office officials and employees below the $5,000 salary mark. As this class included large numbers of relatively well-paid sec- tion chiefs, supervisors, speed-up experts, etc., what was left for thousands of plain honest workers is conjectural. These individual salary items, more particularly, also appear: Haley Fiske, president, $150,000 per annum; Haley Fiske, Jr., divisional sales manager, $40,360 (in- cluding commissions) ; Archibald F. C. Fiske (another son), third vice-president, $27,000; Frederick H. Ecker, vice-presi- dent, $125,000; Frederic W. Ecker (son), assistant treas- urer, $20,000; then, running far behind Messrs. Fiske and Ecker come three vice-presidents at $39,000 each per annum, another executive at $36,000, another at $35,000, another at $32,500. still another at $31,000, and on their heels a pant- ing phalanx of sixteen struggling upward from the $20,000 mark. Altogether, in salaries alone, twenty-seven company officers collected $944,575 last year for managing the affairs of the Metropolitan, a sum which exceeded by many thou- sands the $913,980 spent by the company to provide more than 10,000 people with some 3,120,000 lunches during the year. Among the company's general disbursements are listed these interesting items: $37,650 for service medals, pre- sumably to improve the morale if not the pay of weary vet- erans; $137,993.35 for conventions; $11,060 for "legislative expenses" (unspecified) ; $30,000 to the Association of Life Insurance Presidents, organized after the insurance scan- dals of 1906 to improve the moral and social tone of the business and do its official lobbying. If the policy of the Metropolitan is not one of ruthless exploitation of its white-collar workers, President Fiske and his board of directors might make a start in the right direction by applying to the salaries of their worst- paid workers the considerable savings brought about by re- ductions that readily suggest themselves in many items of overhead, including officers' salaries. The Passport Nuisance By EZRA POUND 'TT^HE American people does not think." Very well, no 1 mass of 120,000,000 people ever has thought; it takes but the most rudimentary knowledge of crowd-psychology, unanimism, etc., to know that thought does not occur in such aggregates. Why expect our nation to surpass, all so easily and so undesigningly, the records of the past and "great nations of antiquity"? "The American people does not remember." Another age-old quality or defect of the populace, the traditional populace. Americans under thirty do not remember pre- war Europe, for the natural reason that they mostly never saw it; and in consequence they cannot be expected to be- come especially enraged over particular imbecilities that have developed in Europe since 1914 or 1918. Elder American tourists have not all of them been in Europe before ; and we are, let us suppose, the most patient and nebulous race of beings that ha\e ever moved on this planet. The majority of tourists appear to believe that European conditions were always as bad as they now are ; their historic perspective does not reach back to, let us say, the causes of Wilson's first election. We are, as a nation, educated to look not to the past but the future; as the sim- ple-minded freshman is told to look up — while you slip a bit of ice down the front of his collar. The post-war annual exodus to Europe is divisible roughly into three or four parts: (1) The studious, I mean the young, actively acquisitive explorers; (2) the cultural, I mean the patient old ladies who have been saving up for sometime; (3) the drunks (a post-war phenomenon — this — in any such quantity as to demand special treatment), and (4) the shoppers. I suppose these are all particularly pa- tient classes. The old ladies have learned patience; the young are still accustomed to being interfered with by col- lege deans and other such formenifera; the drunks are so relieved by the prevalence of certain facilities that they are ready to put up with anything; the shoppers are notably idiots, and besides they usually have attendants to take trouble for them. (So also have the envoys of the Standard Oil and other legendary monsters with whom the bureauc- racy distinctly does not monkey.) While Europe still "groaned under tyranny" I wan- dered about the face of this continent, I went on foot into

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Nov. 30, 1927] The Nation 601 its by-ways for sixteen years with no "papers," that is to say with no brass checks, no government's petty officials' per- mission, nothing in fact, but for one year (1911, I think it was) an unstamped membership card to the Touring Club de France, and a tin button of that fraternity which helped me to get into a small inn at Chalus when covered with twenty miles of mud. This comfortable period is "over"; not permanently, if I can help it, but at any rate suspended; and this sus- pension has continued for six or eight years too long. To trace the remote causes of any ill odor is a thankless task, especially if the search reveal such national treasures and sources of civic pride as the late Bryan, the late Wilson, and the unfortunately still extant personnel of the United States Department of State. It is, alas, almost wholly for- gotten that Bryan gave Wilson to America; and that Wilson subsequently introduced into international affairs an aca- demic mind; a mind used not to dealing with adults, but to administering petty formalities to an adolescent scholas- tic body. And whatever ultimately be said by Mr. Wilson's apologists, and whatever final praise be given to his aims and aspirations, there remains at least one private convic- tion that during his rule the civic organization of America suffered very great damage; that the individual welfare of the citizen went by the board ; that the powers of all classes of officials were extended beyond the limits of decency, and beyond limits compatible with the permanent safety of the commonwealth. Yes, these are very large words. Let 'em stand. What, gentle reader, are bureaucrats? Hired janitors who think they own the whole building. The French, being more given to speculation than we, have recently produced several students of bureaucracy, several authors who have studied the fonctionnaire as one studies other poisonous insects, and even tried to explain and account for his actions, his inhi- bitions. The result is not encouraging. One can sympa- thize with a tyrant, led on by some megalomania or some dream of ultimate benefit to the race or some decoration of his own personal glory; one can sympathize with the crook who does it for excitement, or the poor devil who steals to feed himself or his family; but for the rond-de-cuir who sits in an office devising, in perfect safety, some inane means of annoying others, one can have no tolerance. Mr. Wilson might have made a fairly successful Emperor of Byzantium; in the year 853 few of his habits would have greatly annoyed the populace of that city. But a President who exceeds his functions naturally encourages the small fry to follow suit. There had been, before Wil- son's election, very few Democrats; the supply for normal appointees was short, and for the abnormal war demands, still shorter. The war produced, if not a new ruling class, at least a new zealous bossiness. I had my first meeting with the new civic order during the armistice. I was living in London. I was told that I "could not go to France unless I had business." I naturally had business. I received a lot of other improbable informa- tion from the under-sub-vice-assistant. My wife could not possibly accompany me unless she were ill. I naturally pro- duced doctors' certificates. I could not move about in France; I must go to one place and stay there. At this point I was rescued by an elderly intelligent official from another department who took two hours off and swore to several contradictory statements in a manner showing great familiarity with the mind-ersatz of officialdom. I went to France. When I got to Toulouse I found, as I had suspected, that the under-sub-vice-assistant's informa- tion was false. The young chap at the mairie told me I could do as I liked, and that I was free to walk into the Pyrenees. A few miles from the Spanish border an officer on horseback rode up behind me and asked where was I going. I said "Mt. Segur." He said "All right, go there. I am looking for French deserters." This was, you perceive, before the so-called Peace of Versailles, and before all Europe had gone crazy over for- malities. I had no trouble till I got back to Paris and entered the American consulate. There the vice-assistant- second-sub categorically forbade me to return to my home in London. I said: "I live there," and suggested that he ask the assistant-first-vice or some one higher up concerning the regulations. He disappeared behind a partition, and re- turned with a request that I "get a letter" from my em- ployer, evidently knowing no strata of life save one where everyone has an employer. It was next suggested that I find some sort of "reference" for myself. Every American I had known in Paris before the war had left. I knew no one save the Ambassador whom I had met two days before. I thought vaguely that he might have other things to do — at that particular time — than look after passports. However, I stepped into a taxi and drove round to the embassy. The embassy dealt with the consulate, and I proceeded about my lawful occasions. That was 1919, and Europe was, confessedly, in a mess, and errors might be exceptions. But what in heaven's name has that temporary confusion to do with 1924, 1925, 1926, 1927? What has it to do with the unending boredom of waiting an hour, a half-hour, three hours, in countless bureaus, for countless useless visas, identities, folderols? England is not richer than we are; England is not less exposed to the immigration of undesirable units. The Brit- ish passport costs seven shillings, sixpence (less than two dollars) ; it is good for seven years. Visas to other coun- tries have either been mutually abolished or their cost reduced to a trifle. The American official and executive group does not desire the comfort and convenience of the American indi- vidual. And what is more, we have one of the clumsiest systems of communication between individuals, and unor- ganized groups of individuals, that exists in any allegedly representative government. Apart from our tendency to put up with anything, and our instilled duty to be humor- ous instead of taking action, the normal American has no idea whatsoever as to how he should or can deal with any executive infamy. That, I take it, is part of the price we pay for having our national capital tucked away in a cor- ner. The English who do most things badly are at least able to get at their rulers. Someone takes little Whiff or old Jiblet out on a golf-links and wrings his figurative neck; someone knows so-and-so and the matter gets a few mo- ments' attention. Anything causing inconvenience to ten or twenty thousand literate people can be got on the floor of the House of Commons in, I should say, forty-eight hours. In the United States this could only happen if the issue affected some very large organized business. Our ideal public servant was given a one-column-wide, four-inch newspaper boost some months ago : "Aged 70 and a bachelor, has not taken a vacation for 20 years, has never indulged in sports or other games, but occasionally enjoyed a good cigar."

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(502 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3256 I have left out the international aspects of the passport nuisance. The mass of mutual irritation between indi- viduals of one state and officials of another ought to be weighed; but for the space of this article I have tried to consider only the relation of the American to his own gov- ernment, and more particularly I rnment's attitude to the individual, as summed up let us say by a little dia- logue between one American (not myself) and his consul. The American, gently: "Forty dollars is a bit heavy for (passport and visa fees for) a little trip of six weeks." Consul: "Aw! We dun' care wether yuh trevul er not." In the Driftway DURING one of the Drifter's visits to Russia he was walking on the steppe beside the muddy river Kuma. when he saw a red rooster for the first time. If he were pressed the Drifter would have to admit that he had seen the species red rooster at other times and places; yet he repeats that he saw it that day for the first time, displayed against its right and inevitable background. It was in the mud season between winter and spring, after the snow had left the steppe and before the tulips have sprung up among the wheat, when the great plain is a flat sea of sticky, black ooze. Here and there rise out of it villages consisting of rows of identical huts, also made of mud. Occasionally a peasant is to be seen moving about on it, but not unless his errand is unavoidable, for the task of lifting a foot from the ground is too painful to repeat often. The peasants sit by their stoves at this season and make toys and embroid- eries and look out of their doorways, or if they are very rich, their windows, only to see if the mgla or cloud-ceiling shows signs of lifting. And they might look out to see a neighbor or a red rooster. THE tail of the rooster which the Drifter saw for the first time was curved like a fountain, and made of long, supple feathers in a rusty shade of red. His throat was sleekly furred with tiny feathers overlaid like tiles, in a proud arched line. His rose-red crest made a dissonance with the russet which was arresting and oddly pleasing, always against the neutral monotone of the steppe. He strutted along beside the winding fissure of the Kuma. on slender red feet that hardly pricked the mud, arrogantly conscious of dominating the landscape and of being the father of Russian art. LOOKING around for something beautiful to reproduce. the first mujik artist might have seen mountains and waterfalls, but not unless he lived in the Caucasus. He might have seen flowers and birds, but he would have had no time to paint their pictures, seeing them in the summer when he was busy with his crops. In the season when he had most time to spare for kustai-ni or handicraft, he would not have found a bit of life anywhere except his own domes- tic animals, and the only spot of color in his existence would have been his red rooster. So he painted the rooster on his wooden boxes, and his wife embroid red the rooster on her towels and iron-pieces'in various poses — parading the ridge- pole of the cottage, extending a foot in a commanding gesture, wings spread in flight. All this was in crude scar- let and black — it was peasant art. NOW mount a few degrees in the scale of evolution. Look at the paintings of sophisticated Russian artists. What distinguishes them most strikingly from their coun- terparts in other countries? Their frequent juxtaposition of orange-red and rose, their swirling curves and spirals — the colors of the rooster on the steppe and the lines of his plumage. Other subjects by this time have taken their share of the field, but the rooster motif recurs through painting and literature and even music. The Coq d'Or symbolized nothing less than the sun ; the related fable of the Firebird ran through stories and songs before it became Strawinski's famous ballet. Other countries, too, have roosters, the Drifter admits ; there are French national emblems and chanteclers and Spanish cock-fights. But there is something thrifty and domestic about a French chantecler, something brutal and perverted about a fighting-cock. No- where else does the bird dominate with such pomp and dignity, yes, majesty, as in Russia. The Drifter Correspondence The New Pacifism To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: A few days ago Dr. D. P. Barrows, president of the University of California, spoke openly in a newspaper here in support of intervention in Mexico. He is the man who has been chosen by the Carnegie Foundation to go to South America as a peace emissary next year. Berkeley, California, November 1 Peter Guldbrandsen On Irish Films To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: Mr. Broun condemns the protest against screen cari- catures of the Irish race because no other race has objected tc ridicule. Does it follow that, because my neighbor refrains from protesting against damage done his property by ruffians, I must be condemned when I protest against damage to mine? He condemris the protest because Irishmen of a past gen- eration seemed to enjoy the sentimental, totally unreal stage Irishman of the Chauncey Olcott type, preferring it to the drunken pig-in-the-parlor stage-Irishman of an earlier period, now being revived on the screen in such productions as "The Callahans and the Murphys." But the Olcott characters were a ed improvement upon their predecessors. Finally, Mr. Broun condemns the protest on the ground that Irish-Americans protested violently against "The Playboy of the Western World," pronounced by the critics a masterpiece, upon its first presentation and then did not protest when the play was revived. But this is not unusual in the history of literature. The critics might even flatter themselves that they had educated public taste! Mr. Broun has overlooked the salient feature of this pro- test. While our writers may, at times, depict other nationalities as vulgar, stupid, or brutal, all Irish characters are represented as being abnormal or subnormal. They may be sentimental fools or vicious fools, but never normal human beings. What popular writer would depict his Irish characters otherwise than trie, asinine, ignorant, or vulgar? If by their protest this committee can rid the stage and screen of even a modicum of the banalities, vulgarities, and in- decencies with which a tame, submissive public has too long been flooded it deserves the heartfelt gratitude of every Ameri- can who seeks entertainment not filth in the theater. Ballston Spa, X. Y., November 1 A. J. Reilly

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Nov. 30, 1927] The Nation 603 Our Passion for Arbitration To the Editor of The Nation : Sir: At the time when the League World Court was under discussion in the Senate of the United States there was a great deal said as to an alleged vital difference between arbitration on the one hand and the judicial settlement of international dis- putes on the other. It was vigorously maintained in certain quarters that arbitration was a process resembling compromise and that '"judicial settlement" was the only royal road to the reign of law. It was further maintained that the Permanent Court of Arbitration at the Hague was the representative merely of "arbitration" (that is, of compromise), whereas the new League World Court had emerged into the clear sunlight of "judicial settlement." Dismissing and admitting all claimed judicial merits for the Permanent Court of International Justice, it becomes inter- esting now to note the definition given to "arbitration" by the Inter-American International Commission of Jurists in its re- port on "public international law" to be presented to the Pan- American Conference at Havana next January. In Project Twelve of this report, Article 19, I find the fol- lowing statement: Arbitration has for its object the legal solution of con- flirts by means of judges chosen by the interested states. I note with interest the word "legal." I note with equal interest the word "judges." The eminent jurists of the United States and of the Latin American countries who produced this report did not say that arbitration was a give-and-take solution nor did they say that the arbitrators were horse-traders. They called the arbitrators judges and they gave to the process of arbitration the quality of law. They then, in Article 22, make the following statement: The permanent tribunal of arbitration, organized in conformity with the provisions of the "Convention for Pa- cific Settlement" of the Hague of 1907, shall be competent for all cases of arbitration. In other words, arbitration is law and the Permanent Court of Arbitration is a tribunal for settlement by law. I make two deductions: 1. We Americans do not need to go to the Permanent Court of International Justice to get law. 2. Since we do not hasten to the Permanent Court of Arbi- tration to get it for any of our difficulties, we indicate clearly that our interest in it is thoroughly academic. Washington, D. C, November 16 William Hard Is Boston Reforming To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: In view of the fact that boys were arrested in 1 for attempting to sell copies of The Nation during the Sacco and Vanzetti funeral procession, it is of interest to find of The Nation for sale during the past few weeks at the B and Cambridge stands in the Boston Elevated Railway sub Cambridge, Mass., November 2 Francis II. Big Colonel Ingersoll's Letters To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: I am collecting the letters of my grandfather, Colonel Robert G. Ingersoll, with a view to their publication in the near future. I will be exceedingly grateful if any persons having letters of his in their possession will send me copies, or the originals which I will gladly copy and return promptly to the lenders. Riverside, Conn., November 7 Eva Ingkp.soll Swasky Is Your Bank Account Working for Anything A bank account small or large or a special interest account can be used to back a con- structive economic and social enterprize. The Amalgamated Labor Banks [?SZSEKSZSZSE5^SZSZS^5HSH5H5Zn5H5ESE5iSZ5ZSH5rSSH.5 i THE AMALGAMATED BANK OF NEW YORK 11 Union Square New York Ci nJ P-1 g5ZnSEJaSZSZJE5HSHS?-SaSH5HSH5H5ZSESHScl5E5ZSZFa5E^ THE AMALGAMATED TRUST AND SAVINGS BANK 111 West Jackson Blvd. rG Chicago, 111. s Sponsored by the The Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America Write to either hank for further information

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Books and Plays o cean By THOMAS HORNSBY FERRIL Then laying seven pencils parallel Beside her notebook in the desk, she slipped Into the noon; twelve brazen hours fell From a successful tower on the tight-lipped Thing of the earth who walked until she dipped One slipper and the other in the sea At evening. "O great Ocean, I have kept Silk on my thighs and ribbon on my knee And moved through afternoon as quietly As any cloudy bird and I am here To meet no lover. "Ocean, I was free to come. "Ocean, I am afraid of fear And came here unafraid. Why must there be A girl who comes at evening to the sea?" A Heavy-handed Rascal "Boss" Tweed. By Denis Tilden Lynch. Boni and Live- right. $4. MR. LYNCH has written an immensely readable hook in re- lating the sinister story of Tweed's rise and downfall. After reading it, and reflecting about it, I have come to the conclusion that William M. Tweed was not the creator of his own destiny; nor a "boss" at all except in so far as he rep- resented powerful moneyed interests in New York City politics. Behind this husky vulgarian and coarse manipulator of the people's money there are dimly defined figures of more adroit, but not less unscrupulous, personalities. Now and then they come to light for a brief moment. When the New York Times and its following began to hound Tweed out of office and into jail a committee consisting of John Jacob Astor — the largest owner of New York City real estate — and five or six other millionaires of the churchgoing, highly respectable type met to consider the state of affairs. After pawing over a few innocu- ous papers these pillars of society rendered a report in which they declared Tweed free of wrongdoing. They held him up to the community's eyes as a statesman of impeccable ideals and virtuous habits, though unfortunately maligned by the invidious. That is what I have in mind when I say that Tweed was a tool rather than a boss; and in the end he was a victim. At the time of his whitewashing by the Astor committee he was floundering in a stream of stolen loot. It was even then a notorious fact that he and his friends had taken at least thirty million dollars from the city treasury — but most of it was passed along to other and more obscure persons. Every- body knew that he was a thief; everybody knew that New York was the most corrupt municipality on the continent. Why then did the white-collar committee indorse him? The simple answer to this question is that he remitted their taxes in wholesale fashion. This was revealed — as Mr. Lynch shows — in the inves- tigation that followed his downfall. Though he and his gang had taken thirty or forty millions — r aybe more — the ominous shadows in the background had swindled the public, through Tweed, of at least ten times that amount. As a rascal he was both thoroughgoing and picturesque. But he failed in the more refined and artistic qualities of the grafter's profession. His methods were so crude as to border on the grotesque. For example, we find him making the city buy several hundred benches at the rather fantastic price of six hundred dollars a bench, when they were actually worth five dollars a bench. And the plastering of the new courthouse cost not less than $646,000 — the contractor being one of Tweed's friends. Even worse: there were vouchers of cash paid to T. C. Cash, a name in which a pun lies concealed. In one pay- ment the wholly fictional T. C. Cash received $64,000. No thieving politician of today would think of such heavy- handed proceedings. There are more deft ways of going about it, but Tweed was not a slick rascal, and he disdained hypocrisy. When his peculations were exposed he said calmly: "What are you going to do about it?" Bravado, of course, for while this bold front was maintained we see his henchmen slipping around to the owners of the Times and offering to buy it at a price of five million dollars, which was probably five times more than the newspaper was worth. But the Times declined to sell. Mr. Lynch's book is comprehensive as well as vivid and dramatic. He explains "Boss" Tweed by setting forth the life and social ideals of the time. He has, in fact, written a history of New York City in the sixties and seventies with Tweed as the central figure. In his capacity for portraiture Mr. Lynch reaches a high degree of distinction. I thought I knew Jay Gould, for I have just finished reading a voluminous treatise on him and his financial methods, but Mr. Lynch depicts him more clearly in two or three pages than does the author of the five hundred pages I have recently read. In similar fashion he visualizes the Draft Riots of 1863, the Gold Conspiracy, James Fisk and Josie Mansfield, and most of the outstanding figures and events of the period. This book has the three-dimensional quality which should be a characteristic of genuine biographical work. In it you see people, and not merely names and words; people who move to and fro and do things in such comprehensible fashion that we are able to understand their motives. W. E. Woodward Tenuous Matter The Analysis of Matter. By Bertrand Russell. Harcourt, Brace and Company. $6. np O a sturdy common sense a naive realism has always been *■ an adequate philosophy to live by. And if that realism was challenged it could with a dogmatic reliance on sensuous experi- ence meet the challenge as Dr. Johnson did in his emphatic but dubious refutation of Berkeley. To such animal faith the knowl- edge of an external world held no mysteries and its crude real- ism hindered a more adequate sympathy with reality. Famili- arity with the world makes it seem obvious and for common sense the obvious needs no explanation. But if common sense has stuck too close to its perceptual data, physics in its speculative flights has almost forgotten them. Today the tenuous abstractions of physics present a world astonishingly different from the vivid natural scene un- folded in perception. Yet if the laws of physics are to be veri- fied, it must be through a correlation of its abstractions with the more concrete elements of this perceived world. For any eritique of empirical science therefore an interpretation of gen- eral laws in terms of perception becomes imperative. The works of Einstein, Weyl, and Eddington have introduced radical and paradoxical changes in such fundamental concepts as matter, eausality, and space-time which the old Newtonian metaphysics cannot express adequately. The new physics demands a recon- struction in metaphysics, and Mr. Russell has made the first important step in this direction. The problem, it is true, was recognized by such advanced

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Nov. 30, 1927] The Nation 605 $T A Special Offer to a Limited Number of Subscribers We have a small number of copies of THE AMERICAN MERCURY from September to November inclusive. To subscribers who send in their subscription at once these "back" copies (3 months) will be sent free. In other words, you have the opportunity to get 15 copies of THE AMERICAN MERCURY for the price of 12— pro- vided you act promptly. Subscriptions on this special offer will be accepted in the order in which they are received. These are not "back" issues at all in contents. Among many others, they con- tain the following capital articles: — The Biology of Superiority Under Which Flac?_ Bull Horrors We Rob a Bank In DECEMBER we will print A Jury Case Ladies of the Mob Professor Jerry Thomas Our White Folks .Dr. Raymond Pearl —Judge F. Bausman Jim Tully Ernest Booth — Sherwood Anderson Ernest Booth Herbert Asbury George S. Schuyler and 17 other features In JANUARY — The Man Who Knew Coolidge Sinclair Lewis James Branch Cabell. Joseph Hergesheimer A California Holiday Jim Tully even if that were all we believe it would be fully fifty cents' worth — but there will be at least fifteen more excellent articles. THE AMERICAN MERCURY 730 Fifth Avenue New York City Please enter my subscription to begin with the December number and send me the September to November copies free. Enclosed find five dollars ($5.00). NAM E ADDRESS \ city and state Additional postage: Canada $.50; Foreign $1.00 N 11-30-27 ^-^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^•^ Whi " writing to advertisers please mention The Nation

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606 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3256 thinkers as Poincare and Mach, but they lacked the necessary technique for its solution. The more subtle apparatus of mathe- matical logic, whose application Russell had illustrated in his earlier work on "Scientific Method in Philosophy," supplied this technique and made Whitehead's and Russell's contributions to our subject possible. In what is one of the most suggestive chapters of his "Sci- entific Method" Russell had foreshadowed much of his present analysis. Two tendencies in this most recent of Russell's philo- sophical attitudes unite in what has vaguely been called neutral monism. In this philosophy "matter is less material and mind less mental" than the traditional metaphysics supposes them to be. It has therefore a materialistic element most prominent in Russell's "Analysis of Mind" and an idealistic trend expressed in his "Analysis of Matter." The old sharp distinction between mind and matter is abandoned for a "neutral stuff" postulated as the stuff of reality. Russell's materialism, however, is saved from the fallacies of the simple determinism that the seventeenth century so naively accepted, and his idealism is free of Berkeley's difficul- ties. On the one hand his metaphysics is not irreconcilable with the fact that for modern physics "atoms might as well be pos- sessed of free will, limited, however, to one of several possible choices," and for him — as for Peirce — science "need not assume that there are laws everywhere." On the other hand, where for unperceived events Berkeley invoked a God, Russell appeals to the logic of a causal th' ory of perception. The bald economy of that logic dispenses with many of the traditions of physics and philosophy. The principle of the con- servation of mass has been invalidated by relativity physics, and Russell finally disposes of substance. It is an insubstan- tial matter he leaves to us, being simply a group of events ordered about a center. We perceive events, not substances, that is to say, what wo perceive occupies a volume of space-time which is small in all four dimensions, not indefinitely extended in one dimension (time). And what we can primarily infer from percepts, assuming the validity of physics, are groups <if percepts, again not substances. It is a mere linguistic convenience to regard a group of events as states of a ■'thing" or "substance" or "piece of matter." This infer- ence was originally made on the ground of the log c which philosophers inherited from common sense. But the logic was faulty, and the inference is unnecessary. By defining a "thing" as the group of what would formerly have been its "states" we alter nothing in the detail of physics, and avoid an inference as precarious as it is useless. If these conclusions seem startling when it is remembered that they are based on empirical science, it is because empirical science is still regarded by many in the light of the simple mechanism of the Greek atomists. Modern atomism, pa larly as exemplified in the well-known work of Hoisenberg, tends to regard matter as a conceptual construction character- ized by certain determinate finite numbers such as quantum numbers. If we restrict physics and our philosophy to observ- able quantities — as indeed we must if our terms are to have any meaning — Russell's conclusions seem inevitable. Matter for physics and therefore for philosophy is a series of events. The persistence of "one piece of matter" throughout a series of transformations is not to be expressed on the doubtful hypothesis of the indestructibility of matter but in terms of such concepts as Minkowski's world-lines which give the spatio- temporal function of events. This leads to a view of the physi- cal world as a logical structure having a certain kind of reality but not the reality we attribute to per eptions. The resulting philosophy is saved from extreme idealism by the postulate of the neutral stuff. It is not very clear what this neutral stuff is. Is it a Spencerian unknowable or a Kantian "ding an sich"? Or are we perhaps to identify the neutral stuff with events? One could wish that Mr. Russell had dwelt longer on this theme. Such brief review can give but inadequate account of the depth and scope of the book. It is undoubtedly the most thor- ough treatment of the subject that has yet been published, and Russell's recognized familiarity with modern physics and psy- chology makes it also the most authentic. In this book, written before Bridgeman's recent treatise though published after it, Russell has anticipated much of the admirable work on scientific method. It is written with his usual clarity and delightful rigor. William Gruen The Strategy of Lee .4;; Aide de Camp of Lee. Being Papers of Coloyxel Charles • ill, Military Secretary. Edited by Major General Sir Frederick Maurice. Little, Brown and Company. $3. npHE war studies of an American staff officer of our Civil 1 War edited by an English general? It sounds fantastic. But Major General Sir Frederick Maurice is one of the best- informed students of the war between the American States — witness his admirable life of Robert E. Lee. He has now taken the unpublished papers of Lee's military secretary, Colonel Charles Marshall, and edited them into this volume dealing with Lee's most important battles and particularly with the moot points of those conflicts, General Maurice himself sitting as a judge upon Colonel Marshall's contentions. The result is an extremely valuable contribution to the literature of our Civil War, one which must find an important place in every collec- tion dealing with that struggle. Thus, his account of what went wrong with Lee's strategy and tactics at Gettysburg is set forth for the lay reader more clearly and in briefer compass than we remember to have seen it anywhere else. General Maurice upholds Colonel Marshall in placing the blame for Lee's coming unexpectedly upon the Federals and having to light on the terrain chosen by them upon General J. E. B. Stuart's misinterpretation of his orders, which deprived Lee's army of its eyes. Marshall's testimony tends to prove also that even under this handicap Lee could have won had his orders been correctly and promptly carried out by his corps and divi- sion commanders. Colonel Marshall's story of the surrender at Appomattox is of course historical material of first importance, but that has, we believe, been printed before. His, and General Maurice's, interpretation of Jackson's highly successful maneuver at Chan- cellorsville he'ps to end another long controversy as to whether the credit for it belonged entirely to Jackson or to Lee. They Kan to Lee. But General Maurice points out how on several -i.'ns General Lee's failure to put his orders in writing or to make them entirely clear to his commanders was responsible for blcody and abortive attacks and lest opportunities that robbed Lee of decisive victories. Oswald Garrison Villard In a Fog My Heart and My Flesh. By Elizabeth Madox Roberts. The Vikutg Tress. $2.50. r\y HIS is one of the most beautiful books of our time — in *• spots. In spots it comes out into the open, it discloses a view to the mountains or down into the impenetrable valleys of the mind. And when the view seems especially superb, when the valleys are exposed most sharply, down over the scene floats a fog. a thick, syrupy fog of English style, style merely for its own sake, and life is obscured, the feel of flesh and heart is gone. There are sharp places in the book; there is the place where the mulatto half-sister of the heroine fingers the knife

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Nov. 30, 1927] The Nation 607 t- wrttarf* V-T^ wj DECEMBER SURVEY GRaPHIC "mrirtfc ilhii m mi i ifmmemm ARE FAMILIES WORTH the FUSS? THE INDESTRUCTIBLE k,HHWI'l'- IffiTWT Dorothy Canfield Fisher A. J. Muste Neva R. Deardorff W. F. Ogburn Eleanor Rowland Wembridge Rufus M. Jones Frederick M. Eliot Louis I. Dublin Mary Edna Mc Christie H. S. Jennings Mary Willcox Glenn Jessie Tatt Frank J. Bruno Gordon Hamilton Ernest R. Groves THE HOME HAS LOST ITS HALO 50 cents a copy DECEMBER, 1927 $3.00 a year fhis Special 5Gc. number SURVEY GRAPHIC, 112 East 19th Street, New York, N. Y. Send me the Family Life Number free and enter me for all J- l\i- yJL_> with a year's Subscription of 1928." I enclose ^'(special price) at the introductory rate of $2 (ordinarily $3). Nmve Another special number coming on: The Adventure of Growing Up Address N1130 When writing to advertisers pirate Mention The Nation

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608 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3256 with which she is about to kill her lover, when her voice and Theodosia's voice blend in a dreadful duet of death, when Theo- dosia will have the mulatto girl kill to avenge her own un- faithful suitor, when the song of their two voices rises above the fog and holds the reader bound and still. There is the old widowed aunt of Theodosia, living out her life in one room of her huge house, sitting all day by the hearth fire on which eight sticks of wood a day are all that is allowed, cooking coarse pones for the half mad old hounds that lie at her feet or stir about the empty house, and sleeping at night on a pile of rags in her storeroom so that her bed may be always un- disturbed. There are the pure-bred cattle at the end, Betty Hawthorne the prize milker, the young bull in his prime, strong, proud, his creamy coat covering the pink of his flesh; there is Caleb at the end, offering Theodosia Betty Hawthorne for her own cow, offering her himself, his fertile acres, his neat barns; and Theodosia, while she yearns toward him, thinking of Frank, in whose arms, unresisting, passive, she had lain. These scenes and others in the book are clear and unfor- gettable, but the story of Theodosia herself is not. She it is, perhaps, around whom the fog clings most closely. She never quite comes out, as her Aunt Doe does, as Lethe comes out when she holds the murderous knife. Men are said to love her but she is not lovable; she is a mummy wrapped in white wool, a mummy with thin hands and a half talent for playing the vio- lin, a mummy without passion, without even the fear of passion. Around her visible figu: es move; her Aunt Doe, her philander- ing father, her grandfather withering by his fire, her father's bastard daughters Lethe and Americy. But where Theodosia herself should have drawn them together, where indeed she is said to draw them together, to be the center about which they revolve, she is instead hidden in the fog of wool, lifeless, incredible. In "The Time of Man," with which this book will inevitably be compared, Miss Roberts wrote in her own particular way a magnificent symphony which had as theme the imposing figure of a woman in whom life ran richly. Her second symphony is confused. The harmonies are sound and lovely; the theme itself is blurred. And this is a pity; for when she can com- mand it, Miss Roberts wields as strange and compelling a prose as exists today; and when, on the other hand, it escapes her, the reader is left floundering in a blanket of words. Dorothy Graffe Van Doren A Referendum on War Give the People Their Oxon War Power. By Thomas Hall Shastid. Ann Arbor, Michigan: George Wahr. $2. "Y\7E have tried leaving the war power with the poli- ' * ticians," says Dr. Shastid, "tried it for ages, and they have made this world a hell and frustrated all the higher hopes of intelligent people." Therefore, he continues, let us now take this power away from the politicians and put it into the hands of the people, where it properly belongs. To this end our author proposes two amendments to the federal Constitution. The one declares, in effect, that neither in peace nor in war shall the United States nor any of its subdivisions or agencies give or loan any money to foreign Powers "without first submitting the question to a vote of the people" at an election especially called for this purpose. The other declares, in effect, that no war or wars shall be made or declared by the United States without the question being first submitted to a vote of the people as above described. The first few pages of the book are given up to exposition of the meaning of these amendments. The rest is devoted to an exhaustive series of questions and answers covering this and many other phases of the peace question. Dr. Shastid's writing is clear, direct, sincere. His thesis, once vigorously supported by the late Mr. Bryan, has recently taken on a new and greater dignity through its espousal by Ambassador Houghton in his Harvard commencement address last June. Persuasive as it is, as a frank appeal to democratic responsibility, the idea still leaves us cold. For we would take away the power to make war not only from the politicians but from the people as well! A war has never seemed to us to be any more moral or any less destructive because it had popular support. Make war a crime, never lawful nor right under any circumstances, and we may get somewThere. But our rejection of Dr. Shastid's program involves no rejection of his book. Any intelligent discussion aimed at getting rid of war is valuable. In this sense, "Give the People Their Ovm War Power" is a welcome addition to current pacifist literature. John Haynes Holmes Contemporary French Masters Since Victor Hugo. By Bernard Fay. Translated from the French by Paul R. Doolin. Little, Brown and Company. \ \7 HEN Mr. Fay published this work in 1925 under the title ' * "Panorama de la litterature contemporaine," I must own I was one of the many French critics who thought that his so- called synthesis was even more incomplete than ambitious. It was impossible not to feel that when he wrote those articles Mr. Fay had been more eager to point out a few individual figures than to give a full historical account of the evolution of French literature during the last fifty years. Taken as a general survey, the book was always superficial and frequently incorrect in its statements. The more modest title of the Amer- ican translation suits it much better; even then it must be used cautiously. Mr. Fay is always "authoritative"; but to produce evidence for his assertions would appear to him mere pedantry. I cannot decide if he may be believed when he speaks of "the anti-French review The Nation of New York"; I am sure he must not be trusted when he says that Taine "vulgar- ized" the ideas of Renan, and that "naturalism was a brief episode in our literary history," or calls Jules Romains "a brutal but gifted writer, who aimed to reveal the soul of the crowd, so dear to the naturalists, by the methods of the sym- bolist poet." "Since Victor Hugo" will however be useful to the Amer- ican student if he reads it as a collection of essays. The his- torical chapters about schools and general movements must not be taken too seriously; but the biographies of Rimbaud, Mallarme, Barres, Proust, Valery, and Gide are worth reading. To those masters Mr. Fay gives their due tribute of admira- tion and his essays may stand as valuable introductions to their works. As regards our contemporaries, his last chapters show what was the price of stocks on the Paris literary 'change, two years ago. On the whole it has not altered too much, though Dada and surrealisme have not yet brought to light that "discipline of a great epoch" Mr. Fay praised them for. Rene Lalou Modern Witchcraft The Place Called Dagon. By Herbert S. Gorman. George H. Doran Company. $2.50. "\ f R. GORMAN here attempts a strange and almost impossi- A *• ble task — the recreation in a contemporary New England environment of the malefic atmosphere of the ancient Salem witch-cults, a portrayal of the Dionysiac and insane urges that stir beneath the tight-lipped repressions of a group of New England farmers. The recent researches of Jane Murray which establish beyond doubt the actual existence of these witch-cults lend a certain air of scientific verisimilitude to this bizarre and dreadful tale. That Mr. Gorman has successfully concocted what is known technically as a "thriller" is undeniable. But

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Nov. 30, 1927] The Nation 609 e^TORY Philosophy By Will Durant ggS&Kfr. For 18 months now The Story of Philosophy has been in the first flight on all lists of best sellers. More than 175,000 persons have read this alluring and authori- tative story of the world's great lovers of wisdom from Socrates to Santayana— which John Dewey hails as the long-awaited humanization of philosophy. When we repeat this four-fold tribute of the world of ktters to Will Durant's book, we are presenting facts, not advertising slogans: —A delight for the heart —An adventure (or the mind — A liberal education in itself —A best-seller for the years. 592 exciting pag'-", indexed 21 full-page illustrations All Bookshops $5.00 Simon and Schuster, Inc. Publishers of Books 37 West 57th Street, New York LECTURES THE PEOPLE'S INSTITUTE Program December 2-10 AT COOPER UNION (8th St. and Astor Place) At 8 o'clock ADMISSION FREE Friday, Dec. 2 — Everett Dean Martin — "The Puritan and Yankee in American Life. From Cotton Mather to Horace Greeley." Sunday, Dec. 4 — Norman Angell — "The Crises in Democracy : Ways Out." Tuesday, Dec. 6 — John A. Lapp — "Some Cur- rent Fallacies Due to Propaganda." AT MUHLENBERG BRANCH LIBRARY (209 West 23rd St.. at 8 o'clock) Monday, Dec. 5 — Ernest Boyd — Ireland : The New Realists. Wednesday, Dec. 7 — Edgar Wind — "The Meta- physical Harmony Assumed by Common Sense." Thursday, Dec. 8— E. G. Spaulding— "Are there any Necessary Truths ?" Saturday, Dec. 10 — Mortimer J. Adler — "The many thorns of the mystic rose: aspects of immediacy." How many are 421,000 stockholders? An Advertisement of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company On October 15th, American Telephone and Telegraph Com- pany checks representing the 1520! dividend were mailed to its 421,000 stockholders. That is the largest number of stock- holders of any company in the world. The American Tele- phone and Telegraph Company is owned by a great investment democracy. Its dividend checks are cashed at banks in every state in the Union, by people representing all trades, stations and professions, No institution is more nationally or publicly owned than the Ameri- can Telephone and Telegraph Company, which in turn owns more than 9 1 % of the common stock of the operating com- panies of the Bell national System. The average holding is 26 shares, and no one person owns as much as 1% of the total stock. The Bell System was devel- oped in the interest of tele- phone users and is owned by the public that it serves. EDUCATIONAL TTRENCH, Spanish, Italian, German, English ; native teachers ; surprising results, 75c. PRIVATE SCHOOL OF LANGUAGES 1264 Lexington Avenue New York City THE SCHOOL FOR ADULT EDUCATION announces a double course giving the rudiments of philosophy and a synoptic view of modern psychol- ogy with special emphasis on their applications. First sessions begin soon. Also class and individual work in English, Mathematics, Public Speaking and the Sciences. A new method of teaching is used which makes it possible to deal directly with the individual. Telephone days 10-1, or write for further information. Chelsea 5264 — 1133 Broadway. When writing to advertisers please mention The Nation N< HEALTH SIMPLIFIED "O cult, no school, the good from all schools. Exposing healing quackery wherever found. Edited by a practicing physician experienced in health education. Rational Living, Box 2, Sta- tion M, New York. B. Liber, M. D.. Dr. P. H., Editor. — 6 months trial subscription $1. Sample copy free. — With yearly subscription the famous book "As A Doctor Sees It" free, if requested. CHILDREN'S CAMP FOR parents seeking exceptional environment for sensitive or artistic daughter, I have 125 acres and private lake in the Green Moun- tains. All land and water sports, rhythm, sun bathing, health diet, modern sanitary equipment. Progressive school methods applied to camping. Enrollment limited to 25. Camp Killooleet, Han- cock, Vermont. Marie A. Taylor, 172 Waverley PI., N. Y. C.

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610 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3256 the seriousness of his initial idea and the careful quality of his very distinguished prose indicate that he is trying to do much more than that, that he is endeavoring to effect in the reader that willing suspension of disbelief which is never created by the mere thriller. Herein he achieves but a partial, though con- siderable success. From the souls of his starved and smolder- ing New Englanders he draws strange and terrible things, things black and deformed — and one actually falls under the spell of his incantatory power. But that spell is too often broken by a Gothic over-plotting, a too-relentless and inclusive piling up of a Poesque atmosphere and the introduction of a rather irrelevant and unconvincing romance. Altogether a strange and original tale which it is difficult to lay down. C. P. Fadiman Books in Brief Bvffles in the Nipht. By Barry Benefield. The Century Com- ma ny. .-.-> The story of an old veteran's Platonic and noble protec- tion of Alice Kibbe, a heirless waif who was being thrust down dark paths. The strange pair struggle in New York and struggle in Brooklyn and have whimsical adventures even ir> ettings. Alice finds a curious lover, and her rtuamt old protector dies touchingly on the last page. The fantasy p.nd feeling in the book are commendable, but unfortunately a lif''»> overdone. Sir Pompey and Mcdnme -how and Other Tales. By Martin Armstrong. Houghton Mifflin Company. $2.50. Properly sneaking the writings of Mr. Armstrong are nof short stories at all. By tlvs is meant that Mr. Armstrong's gift is purely descriptive and that, although capable of being fanciful to extravagance, he lacks the power of imagination which can raise the narration of an incident to a revelation of life. In this latest volume, as in the others, he is uniformly successful in producing cleverly conceived and well-written sketches on a variety of themes: and yet the skill with which he carries each tale to its satisfactory conclusion cannot hide the lack of finality and authenticity in his work. Whatever ploas'-ire the reader finds in the book is obtained through watch- ing Mr. Armstrong start a happy conception out of the thicket of experience and chase it in concentric circles until it is brought down by one of his uncommonly felicitous ph Nothing more deeply emotional than the hunter's instinct is stirred by the performance. The Phir/ur ;,i Shaheftpeore's London. By F. P. Wilson. Ox- ford University Press. $4.25. Not all of the plagues which visited Europe found a caccio or a Defoe to keen their memory fresh. Seme passed quite uncelebrated by any remembered writer and two of those which visited England in 1C03 and 1625 received I treatment at the hands of the lively journalist, Thomas P who retains just enough interest for us to cause the repr of his plague pamphlets. The present study was begun with the purpose of illustrating these pamphlets, but gr small book in which contemporary theories, methods of ti tt- ment. etc., are described along with a brief account of the course of the plague and its effect upon the imagination of Elizabethan England. The book is agreeably written. oughly nted, and interestingly illustrated with re; tions of n'd documents and prints. NOTE. In Mr. Fadiman's review last week of mann's "Dusty Answer" appeared the words: "I ancholy anemia which is the keynote of her charac last word should have been "characters." Drama Pauline Lord OO extraordinarily vivid is the personality of Miss Pauline ^ • - yJ Lord that she renders it almost impossible to judge as a play any piece in which she happens to be appearing. She has created a character which has an independent existence apart from any of the roles which she is cal'ed upon to play; that character is one which is quite evidently an expression of her temperament; and she transfers it almost intact from play to play. She does not so much interpret as live, upon the stage at least, the character of a cl : c, tragically bewildered woman, and though she speaks the lines which the dramatist has assigned to her she seems to be enacting in an almost somnam- bulistic state some episodes in a dream-life of her own. In one respect her position in our theater is — if a sufficiently grotesque comparison be permitted — not unlike that of Charlie Chaplin in the world of the cinema, since, though her plays have no more connection with one another than his scenarios have, she is. like him, so much more vivid than any of the incidents she enacts that we are not only more interested in her than in her roles but even come to feel that it is all somehow a part of the life of the same personage in spite of the fact that neither logic nor chronology would permit us to consider it all one story. Nor is, indeed, the comparison quite so grotesque as it might at first sight appear to be. A certain persistence in pathetically frustrated impulses, a certain hopeless reliance upon desperately gay little gestures, makes the figure which Miss Lord has cre- ated a sort of tragic analogue of Charlie, and though it happens that the great admiration which I have for her is hardly to be compared with my very miid appreciation of him the fact remains not only that each has created a more or less fixed, legendary figure much more solidly real than any of the stories in which it is seen, but also that the two have in common a certain engage- ing, incompetent good-will at the bottom of their souls. The psychology of Mr. Chaplin's creation has often been called child- The rapidity with which he yields to impulses and the helpless, depreciatory gesture with which he gives himself up when he has been caught in any naughtiness has been com- pared with the espieglerie of some ultimate child and the com- parison is equally apt for that character which Miss Lord por- trays. She stems a child who. with no equipment except a child's gaiety, has been called upon to function in a hard adult world and upon whom burdens too great for her to understand, much less bear, have been laid. Perhaps, indeed, it is just here that we must seek the secret of the almost unendurable pity which she awakes. There are few adults who do not feel, at times at least, that they have grown up too fast, that they have not really changed so much with the passing of the years, and that they are merely compelled to pretend a maturity and com- petence which they do not really feel. Much of their own pre- dicament which they do not dare to admit they recognize in that figure which Miss Lord evokes and in pitying her they pity themselves. Never, I think, since "They Knew What They Wanted" has she appeared in a play in which she fitted so well as she did into it. and "Spellbound" (Earl Carroll Theater) is, except for her own luminosity, obscure enough. Said to be based upon a crime committed a few years ago, it tells the story of an unstable, imaginative woman who allowed herself to be married to a cold domineering man and who then, because of a certain inability to distinguish between day-dreams and reality, inspired her lover to free her by committing a murder which she did not really wish. It is continuously interesting, it has two or three scenes of great power, and it threatens at moments to explore an abyss c f pathological passion at the bottom of which lies the sadistic band in the arms of a perverted wife who fiercely relishes -une dark corner of her soul the tortures he inflicts. But

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Nov. 30, 1927] The Nation 611 WHAT does Trader Horn think about as he : Its at his ease — with his book earning $4,000 a week royalties? He writes his col- laborator, Ethelreda Lewis, with true generosity: "You can rest assured that all honour acrousin;; from the book- is justly yours; I think it the luckiest chum I ever pegged; You'v sure got your Discovery notice up right in the center of thebiggestliterrary Diamond mine you could dream of; Pros- pector's luck i call it." This book has sold over 80,000 copies, and all i dr- ies and readers proclaim it the most thrilling book they ever read. $4.00 Simon and Schuster, inc. Publishers of Books 3 7 West 57th Street, New York ^ -*- -^- -**, ■?«-» -**- -*- -* —In snatfeer 5* y««TS fSsss may mean cenfiasioo £©ar tBee tollman raso i Here is a .- ( artling book It looks squarely at a problem which hovers on the immediate 'ot.nzon threatening to cast confusion — perhaps annihilation — on the people:; of the vvorl ;. Xt is a brilliant manifesto addressed to all American readers. Everyone wiSS vrstsseZ to read tMs stississlaCfeig ' BY EDWARD ALS WORTH R09S An amazing exposition of the population problem which threatens the future of the rare. Dr. Ross fearlessly advocates the adopt: methods which can avert a fu- ture disaster. Both • be bitterly opposed and debated. One of them is Birth Control. on of Orient*! i ttion — not on any asrumpi ion c periority, b laws of population control. TheSurve book is .i n bl r, pu □ •a imulat :i cuss ion of ' he most ' problem modern to face. to reach na I in- fluence a At AS1 feso&seores S3.CO THE CENT URY CO, Publishers of Enduring Books Hi OPEN SHELF U$ CONTENTS Of the current issue of Rational Living, Bn> 2, Station M, New York: The Folly of VeyOOD CHEER COMRADES! Want to buy, sell, vJ or swap books, bronzes, old china, clocks, curios, etehings, lamps, paintings, prints, oriental rur 7 Bus, or stroll to Daca's, 63 Washington Sq.. So., N. Y. C. Books always 20 to 80% off. Open eves. THAT BOOK YOD 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. ^OYLES, 121 Chiring Cross Rs»d. LONDON, ENGLAND MARRIAGE and DIVORCE Bj MILTON IV S 1 IVY SI .00 prepaid A complete compilation of both the divorce and marriage laws of 4H States, with a comprehen- sive discussion of the evils and remedies of the , divorce laws in the United States. M ILTON IVESLIVY, ?33 Broadway, New Y»rk, N. Y j /^OMPLETE and unexpurgated translations of ^-/ Foreign Classics. Privately Printed and Illus- trated Editions. Rousseau's Confessions, Boccaccio's Decameron, Balzac's Droll Stories, the Heptameron, etc., $3.50 each. Catalogue upou request. Ameri- can Book Collectors' Service, 321 Broadway, New York. from The Inner Sanctum of SIMON and SCHUSTER Publishers . 37 West 57th Street . A'eic York jSome months ago The Inner Sanctum suggested to Carl Dickey, editor of The World's Work, that he ask eminent persons in all ranges of Ameri- can life, excluding only professional critics, to state frankly what books they were reading — and why. Thus originated a fascinating and spirited innovation in hook reviewing. And yet the idea is haunting and embarrassing The Inner Sanctum, for it seems to be working out like a Machiavellian publicity strata- gem for Simon and Schuster. (2MM}The October roll-call, for example, reveals live out of ten notables reading The Story of Philosophy — and in most cases featuring it first. Note the range of interests represented: Jnnv \\ inwoodReaoe Daybreak, by Arthur Schnitzler . . .) This was a particularly tur- bulent and thrilling day for The Inner Sanctum: in a few minutes we placed printing orders for 55,000 books, in- cluding: 20,000 moro Trailer Horn 18.000 more Story of Philosophy 10,000 more Transition 5,000 more ( ross Word Puzzle Book No. S J Printings on The Story of Philosophy now total 200,000 copies. trTtl'AY(A) 'cor Trader Horn the figure is now 92,000 copies. yrhe advance sale of Samuel Chotzinoff's forthcoming Beethoven biography, Eroica, is coining along staunchly, but it iook a sudden spurt this week when an astigmatic middle western dealer thought, he detected a "t" i't the middle of the title. — Essandess When writing to advertisers please mention The Nation

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612 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3256 the play never seems entirely certain of the impression it intends to convey, and one seems to see superimposed upon one another three separate unfuscd things: First, the outline of an actual crime; second, a conception of the author's never wholly de- tached from the real events which suggested it; and, third, that more or less fixed character which Miss Lord carries from play to play. But though one is never quite certain what the piece is about Miss Lord holds one fascinated. I spoke of that some- thing trance-like in her manner; it casts upon the spectator a simi- lar spell from which he cannot awake, so that he hardly cares to ask what the play is about so long as she is upon the stage. It would be easy to make out a logical case against Miss Lord as an actress, to argue that she tyrannizes over every role instead of interpreting it. But this is one of the cases where any such logical protest is impotent in the face of a power which merely brushes every objection aside. Whatever her rank as an actress Miss Lord's is the most extraordinary temperament to be seen in our theater. The events in the life of Samuel Pepys which are recorded in the comedy "And So to Bed" (Shubert Theater) are sup- posed to have taken place a few weeks after the close of the diary. The susceptible Samuel gets surprised by King Charles in a lady's boudoir, hides in a chest, leaves an incriminating flageolet behind, and, in general, comports himself as a farceur would have him. The atmosphere is well preserved and the piece is made charming by the introduction of several old songs, including Mr. Pepy's own much-beloved "Beauty Retire." It is acted acceptably by Wallace Eddinger as the diarist and bril- liantly by Yvonne Arnaud as that "poor wretch," his wife. "Nightstick" (Selwyn Theater) is a crook melodrama with more than the usual number of thrills. Joseph Wood Krutch □ THEATER □ □ THEATER Z JOHN GOLDEN THEATRE Matinees WED. and SAT., 2:30. DANA BURNETT'S and GEORGE ABBOTT'S JL/ i-/ C3 with MUNI WISENFREND STAGED BY GEORGE ABBOTT SEATS 8 WEEKS IN ADVANCE •THE THEATRE GUILD Presents- jil REPUBLIC Theat,\^est 42nd st Eves. 8.40 nees, Wed., Thanksgiving and Sat. 2.40 PORGY Extra Mat. Thanksgiving A FOLK PLAY BY DUBOSE AND DOROTHY HEYWARD THEATRE GUILD ACTING CO. BERNARD SHAW'S COMEDY THE DOCTOR'S DILEMMA PI III n THEATRE, WEST 52nd STREET UUILU Evenings 8:20. Mats. Thursday and Saturday 2:20 BOOTH I^S- Mats. Wed., Thurs. & Sat. 2A4T0 EXTRA MATINEE THANKSGIVING DAY (Thurs.. Nov. 24) f W1NTHROP AMES presents JOHN GALSWORTHY'S V FSCAPF — M™4 Kj %** JTlk M> JLj HOWARD . . V CHANIN'S p OVA I T? Eves. 8.30. Mats. W. 45th St. JTS.W I /AJL.L, wed. & Sat. 2.16 WINTHROP AMES GILBERT i! & 40th Street Mats. Wed. & Sat. 2.S0 INTERFERENCE By Roland Pertwe* and Harold Deardm with ARTHUR WONTNER, PHOEBE FOSTER, KATHLEJTE McDONELL and A. E. MATTHEWS "Is it entertaining? Does it hold you? To both ques- tion* I answer affirmatively." — Alan Dale in TK* American □ BALL —4 □ / The Gavest Event in the Literary and Radical Circles NEW MASSES WORKERS AND PEASANTS COSTUME BALL Friday Evening, December 2. 9 P. M. at Webster Hall, 119 East 11th Street Tickets: $1.50 in Advance $3.00 at the Door for sale. New Masses. 39 Union Square □ LECTURES □ =s1 The Sunday, November !7 11 A.M. — Morning Service COMMUNITY JOHN HAYNES HOLMES CHURCH "America and Russia: When Shall They Be Friends?" 8 P. M. — Community Forum OSWALD GARRISON VII LARD Park "Wanted — A Political Opposition" Avenue Thursday, December 1st and 8.15 P. M.— JOHN FARRAR 34th "The Literature of Futility" Street Admission 75c When u-ritntg to advertisers please mention The Nation

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International Relations Section China — Seen from Moscow By LOUIS FISCHER Moscow, October 5 FENG YU-HSIANG and Chang Kai-shek are styled "traitors" in the Soviet press and the Pravda prints its Chinese news under the title: In the Land of Counter- Revolution. The Chinese revolution, Moscow believes, has temporarily spent its force. Stalin and the Opposition are busily engaged in the game of placing the blame for the failures in China at one another's door. This placing of the blame assumes accept- ance of responsibility — one reason why the Russian view of the Chinese situation is so interesting and important. The Opposition was doubtful, it seems, about the wis- dom of the Cantonese drive to Hankow and Shanghai. Its result, they argue, has been the loss of Canton Province to the revolution. For two years or more the Kuomintang, Chang Kai-shek, and Borodin sat peacefully in Canton with- out organizing a real revolution among the mass of the peo- ple. Wampoa and a good army nucleus are fine things, they argue, but no sooner was Chang Kai-shek's military force marching north than the little and big tuchuns began to lift their heads and assert themselves as masters of the situa- tion. The Opposition answers: "That is because less atten- tion was paid to the internal affairs than to anti-foreign affairs" — an unspoken and perhaps unconscious charge that the Stalin majority neglected the proper development of the Chinese revolution in order more quickly to spike the British. Without the Northern drive, the "administration" in Moscow insists, the revolutionary spirit along the Yangtze would have lain dormant. The repulse of the reactionary militarists made the masses conscious of their strength, en- abled trade unions and peasant committees to spring up, and made it possible for Nationalist propaganda to take root. The Opposition's sharpest criticism centers around events after the capture of Hankow and Shanghai. Karl Radek, who is no longer rector of the Sun Yat-sen Univer- sity here, would have had the International Settlement at Shanghai occupied by the Chinese workers and middle classes without army intervention and with as little damage as possible to foreign property. With two million Chinese in the settlement itself, he thinks, no Sikhs or gunboats could have prevented it. That would have destroyed a source of reaction that has served to corrupt Chang Kai-shek. When Hankow was taken, Radek continues, the workers should have been armed with munitions from the Hanyang arsenal, next to Mukden, the largest in the country. Instead of allowing feudal, landowning officers to control the army, a real Red Guard should have been established. Above all, village and city Soviets should have been organized, and the Communists should have bolted the Kuomintang. Stalin and Bukharin still hope that at least the Left Kuomintang can be salvaged. Trotzky, Zinoviev, and Radek had despaired of the Kuomintang as early as April, 1926. Today the Opposition urges a frank Communist program in China carried out by Communists alone — this though the Chinese Communist Party is weak, lacks leadership, and has made innumerable serious mistakes. "If there can be a purely capitalist state in Manchuria," Radek said to me, "there is no reason why you cannot have a Soviet state in the South." Willy-nilly, the Communists in China will probably soon be forced to work independently. The Russian Oppo- sition insists today, and the administration will very likely insist tomorrow (when the Kuomintang has expelled the Reds), that the coming year or two in China must be de- voted to preparing the ground for the next stage of the revolution. Meanwhile, the feeling in Russia is widespread that China can never be united under a bourgeois regime. No one general can do it and no combination of generals will work effectively. The Soviet Government, however, wishes to maintain amicable relations with all Chinese governments and regrets its inability to send a prominent personality to Nanking, despite its suppression of the labor movement. Every Chi- nese government today is anti-imperialist; it has to be. Even Chang Tso-lin, the Manchurian war-lord, is not a mere Japanese puppet; he works with Tokio when he needs Tokio, but in matters of customs, internal revenues, and currency he is as anti-foreign as any zealot in the Kuomintang. It is the Communist thesis that anti-imperialism in China is today a product of unescapable, objective conditions. (Anti- imperialism alone, Radek interpolates, is not revolution.) Incidentally, the Bolsheviks silently hope that this fact will keep the Japanese from encouraging Chang Tso-lin to seize the partly Russian Chinese Eastern Railway. That — they believe, and hope the Japanese will fear — would whet his appetite for Japan's South Manchurian Railway. Russians believe that Japan's star seems to be on the ascent in China. "The Japanese," a Russian said to me, "will take the place of the British on the Yangtze." Tokio's relations with Chang Tso-lin are close and decisive if not cordial, and the Nanking group, who need support, cannot turn to the Americans (because they won't give it), or to the British (because trafficking with them would ruin their prestige), or to the Russians because of Nanking's perse- cution of the labor and peasant movements. The Japanese remain. Russia is still extremely popular in Nationalist circles, and not long ago Nanking publicly courted Moscow's good-will. Nor can Feng break with the Bolsheviks. Feng is a man of the North; his domain borders on Soviet terri- tory. As a matter of fact, he is regarded here as a good bet in the coming revolution. The ex-"Christian" general was never a Bolshevik, but he is a peasant and a son of the people. The Russian Bolsheviks place their greatest faith in the Chinese peasant movement, and perhaps the policy will now be to groom Feng as its leader, provided he con- sents to cooperate with the Communists at home. It is gen- erally admitted that Moscow has more reliable figures on the Chinese village than most people in China. According to these data, half of all agricultural land in China is rented by the peasants — in Kwangtung. Honan, Hunan, Hupeh, and Shantung the percentage is higher, in the North lower. Rentals vary from 50 to 70 per cent of each harvest. The landowners are usually merchants and officials living in the cities. This, the Communists submit, is the objective basis for the Chinese economic revolution which has not yet set in. The Nationalist-anti-imperialist-Kuomintang episode was only its prelude, if a very necessary one. And, say the Bol- sheviks, the cause of the hundreds of millions may take months and years to succeed but succeed it must.

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614 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3256 Nationalization of land, railways, and some pivotal in- dustries; Soviets; a workers' army; lower taxes, customs autonomy; encouragement of artisan production; and com- munist control — these form the program for China on which Stalin and the Opposition will probably agree before the iuxt chapter of the Chinese revolution opens. Contributors to This Issue Ezra Pound is an expatriated American poet living in England, and the author of "Antheil" and "Pevsonae: Collected Poems." G. Findu'.y Willison 's a New York m rman who has made a special study of insurance methods. Dorothy Parker is a regular contributor to the New Yorker, and the author of "Enough Ro Thomas Hornsby Ferril was winner of The Nation's poetry contest for 1927. W. E. Woodward is preparing a biography of General Grant. William Gruen is in the department of philosophy at the College of the City of New York. Dorothy Grai^fe Yan Doren, associate editor of The Nation, is the author of "Strangers" and "Flowering Quince." John Haynes Holmes is paster of the Community Church in New York. Rene Lalou is the author of "Contemporary Literature in France." BERTRAND RUSSELL Lectures On "Comp3nionate KSarriago" .' ' ompanioiiate marriage' Companionate Carriage" First time this subject has been publicly advocated by this distinguished phil- osopher in New York City! Introductory Speech by RUTH HALE, Chairman at MECCA TEMPLE 133 West 55th Street New York City SATURDAY EVENING, Dec. 3rd, 1927 Tickets on Sale at Box Office and at American Public Forum, Room 1006, 1650 Bro N. Y. City. Tel. Circle 4352. Reserved Seats: $2.75, $2.20, $1.65, $1.10. Owing to Navy Orders "G Rear Admiral i Magruder, the scheduled Magrruder-Russell Debate. "Should Navies d?" for Saturday Decembei is Canceled, and the Hon. Bert rand Russell's Lecture will bo delivered instead. LIFE BOOKS J list Out Just Out by MARY FELS The book that will prove the event of your life. All Bookstores $2.50 Postpaid $2.60 GEORGE DOBSEVAGE, Publisher 11 West 42d Street New York City THE EVOLUTION OF MAN, by Wilheim Boelsche A clear, strong, simple summary not only of Darwin's theory but of the work of a generation of sciei ng the lines Darwin opened up. Just what a busy man wants to trive him a bird's-eye view of Evolution. Cloth, illustrated, 60 cents by mail. Catalog free. Criarlea H. Ken & Co.. 347 East Ohio St., Chicago, III. REAL HARRIS HOMESPUNS ZFffJSl from the Mak er8 factarer'a Price Suit Lengths Cut to Order. Postage Paid NEWALL, 150 Stornoway, Scotland. Write for patterns Stalin? shades desired Erskine's ADAM AND EVE- Free gay wis-- book (a delightful Christmas gift) for one new subscriber to The side your immediate family. Address will be i Nation Department 11 The Nation 20 Vesey St. New York it Throw Away Your Glasses and SEE BETTER Perfect Sight Without Glasses By W. H. BATES, M.D. The author of this book presents evidence that all errors of refraction are caused by strain — and cured by rest and relaxation. A complete method of treatment is described so clearly that the reader can usually dis- card his glasses and improve his vision. So.'ii at all bookstores. Price fS. If uQm wea* glasses — read this book The CViiirtil Fixation Publ. Co. Dept, 5. 383 Madison Avenue, New York me a top>- of your bonk "Perfect Sight Wlthoii' I will gire the postman SS.OO plus potasre when it amies. If I ?.m no: ••■■minced of its talue in five days. I will return the book aad you « ill refund my money without question. Name Add r< s.-< : to advertisers pleas< mention The Nation

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The Nation FOUNDED 1865 Vol. CXXV NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 7, 1927 No. 3257 Contents EDITORIAL PARAGRAPHS 61B EDITORIALS: „,„ Peace or War? °J° The Negligible Graduate Student 619 The Norton Centenary °19 To Err Is Human °20 LOOT. By Hendrik van Loon 621 IT SEEMS TO HEYWOOD BROUN. By Heywood Broun 622 WAR IN COLORADO. By Frank L. Palmer 623 A SACCO REVOLVER EXPERT REVEALED. By Arthur Warner 625 WHAT BUSINESS WANTS FROM CONGRESS. By Laurence Todd 626 AMERICANS WE LIKE: FLORENCE E. ALLEN. By Emily Newell Blair 628 IN THE DRIFTWAY. By the Drifter 629 CORRESPONDENCE 630 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS SECTION: What Is Happening in China's Kuomintang. By Roy Cort 636 HOLIDAY BOOK SECTION .ALTER LIPPMANN, CONNOISSEUR OF PUBLIC LIFE. By Ben- jamin Stolberg 639 ON CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN FICTION. By Clifton P. Fadiman 642 PLASTIC AND TEMPORAL IN ART. By Joseph Wood Krutch 643 A HERO OF THE JEWS. By Norman Hapgood 645 SECOND ADVENT. By John Gould Fletcher 646 BOOKS: First Glance. By Mark Van Doren 646 Actor-Preacher. By W. E. Woodward 648 A Distinguished Editor. By J. A. Hobson 648 Thoreau. By R. F. Dibble 650 By Their Fruits. By John Haynes Holmes 652 The Case of Floyd Dell and Others. By Alter Brody 652 The Father of Footnotes. By Keith Hutchison 654 "Our Times." By Luther E. Robinson 656 The Primitive State. By Harold J. Laski. 656 Liberalism and Literature. By Lewis Galantiere 658 Sudermann. By Henry Brennecke 660 One Side of Heine. By Norah Meade 661 The Primitive Thinker. By Joseph Jastrow 662 Renaissance and Reformation. By Bartlet Brebner 662 Books in Brief 663 Music : Korngold's "Violanta." By Lawrence Adler 664 Drama: The Genius of Reinhardt. By Joseph Wood Krutch 666 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 HEYWOOD BROUN CARL VAN DOREN DAVID BOEHM, Advertising Manager Surscription Rates : Five dollars per annum postpaid in the United States and Mexico ; to Canada, $5.50 ; and to foreign countries of the Po stal 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. THE NATION is on file in most public and college libraries and is indexed in the Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature. PRESIDENT GREEN of the A. F. of L. and President Lewis of the United Mine Workers of America, with their respective committees, have called on President Cool- idge. One quarter of a million miners are on strike, they said; miners' wives and children are cold and hungry and homeless; thugs patrol the mines and beat up the strik- ers; coal mining at best is a wet, filthy, dangerous occupa- tion; at worst, when a living wage is not paid, it is not to be borne; and when, as now, the price of coal is being arti- ficially depressed an investigation into the industry as a whole is pressing. President Coolidge heard them courte- ously ; at the close of an hour's talk he turned to Mr. Lewis. "What town," he asked, "is the center of the mine strike?" Mr. Lewis named a town in Pennsylvania. The President touched a button at his desk; a secretary entered. "Bring my hat and coat and a traveling bag," the President said, "and come back in ten minutes prepared to go with me to X Pennsylvania." In fifteen minutes by the clock Mr. Coolidge stood up. "Will you accompany me, gentle- men?" He turned to the telephone. "Tell my wife I shan't be home for dinner." They followed him meekly into a waiting motor; they were mute as they boarded a train, as it sped through autumn fields. The President said noth- ing, apparently deep in thought; no one interrupted him. At their destination he turned to Mr. Lewis. "Come with a representative of the miners in this district to a confer- ence at eight o'clock tonight." He dismissed the motor and asked to be directed to the mines. Nor would he permit any one to accompany him. He spent the afternoon talking to strikers and their families, to police, to mine guards, and finally to the president of the mining company, breathlessly summoned by telegraph to meet the President of the United States. He was conducted through a mine, he sat down in half a dozen miner's houses. During the half day he spent thus he said little and listened much. AT EIGHT O'CLOCK he was ready for his conference. "Gentlemen," he said, turning first to the leader of the operators, then to the spokesman for the miners, "gentle- men, this strike must be settled and settled quickly. If you" — to the operator — "cannot run your mines and pay a living wage, the government will. You can doubtless confer more freely by yourselves although I am at your service if you want me. In seven days if you and your associates" — with a sweep of his arm he included miners and operators alike — "have not reached a decision, the government will inter- fere." He stood up and made as if to leave the room and then — and then we woke up! We shook the sleep from our eyes. There was no conference, there was no Presidential ultimatum, there was no personal investigation of the mine strike. The president of the American Federation of Labor and the president of the United Mine Workers of America had called on the President of the United States. But President Coolidge was not galvanized into action by the tale of the miners' troubles. He opined that perhaps the matter might be referred to the Interstate Commerce Com- mission or maybe to the Secretary of Labor. He passed the buck. And he will continue to do so. What is a President for, anyway? He shakes hands, he attends banquets, he makes speeches. He obeys the orders of big business. And for some reason which we are unable to ascertain, every- body— except the miners — seems reasonably satisfied. CONGRESS OPENS with a multitude of pressing ques- tions demanding attention. It is to be a short session because of the inevitable desire of the members to go to the Presidential conventions and to enter early the Presi- dential campaign. So the tendency will be to dodge impor- tant votes as much as possible. Some matters cannot, how- ever, be sidestepped — the Mississippi flood relief and pre- vention, reduction of taxes, aid for the farmers, Muscle Shoals and Boulder Dam, and probably the merchant marine and the return of the sequestered enemy property. Here are issues enough to keep Congress at work for a long time,

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616 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3257 in addition to the usual appropriation bills, and the seating or unseating of Senators-elect Vare and Smith. What Con- gress lacks, of course, is clarifying principles. Should there be government ownership of the fleet and not of the great power plants? Ought Congress not to declare itself as to this whole question of super-power and water-powers? Then there is evidence that the Interstate Commerce Com- mission will turn back to the national legislature the ques- tion of railroad consolidation. For seven years the com- mission and the railroad presidents have wrangled with this question without being able to reach any solution — the presi- dents cannot agree among themselves though warned that their failure to do so will give great impetus to the move- ment for government ownership of all railroads. Irrigation and immigration, the size of the navy — these are still other problems with which Congress must deal, and all the time its members will be thinking first and foremost of the elec- tions and their personal destinies. For the Progressive group the session brings a magnificent opportunity. We look forward with confidence to their embracing it. AS TO TAXES, the determined efforts to relieve business of more of its tax "burdens" — how light they would seem to a British or German business man! — will probably result in a decrease of from $225,000,000 to $250,000,000 in government income. That prospect has not satisfied that pestiferous organization of big business, the United States Chamber of Commerce, which has for some time past been working itself up to the point of believing that t ) it belong the functions both of the Executive and of Congress. Its demand that the reduction be $400,000,000 has had the ex- traordinary effect of drawing fire from the usually impassive Mr. Coolidge — we do not recall a similar outburst against Big Business since that gentleman entered the White House. The Democrats will demand more than the Republicans will be willing to grant, not because of principle, of course, but merely in order to spar for the position of being most friendly to the dear taxpayer. As for the inheritance taxes, the House Committee on Ways and Means has for the mo- ment scotched the movement to remove them, but the lobby will be heard from yet. It is reported to have fat-salaried agents at work arguing that the federal inheritance tax should go because it encroaches on what ought to be the special taxing ground of the States. This is a specious and dishonest plea and we are sorry, indeed, to see that Governor Smith has been beguiled into a reserved approval of the move. Of course, the intention is, first to persuade the federal Government to abolish the tax, and then to induce the individual States to follow Florida in abandoning it as an inducement to multimillionaires to live within their boundaries. The Nation wishes to go on record again as opposing any tinkering with the inheritance tax and any reduction of revenue at present. It believes the policy of reducing the national debt as fast as possible to be the sound and desirable one. POLISH-LITHUANIAN WAR THREATENED." the headlines say. Which indicates how easily we forget. For Poland and Lithuania have been technically at war since 1920; they have never made peace. Their war is one of the scandals of the League of Nations closet, and it is natural that the Great Powers should resent Russia's action in calling attention to the danger there. Under the auspices of the League Poland and Lithuania signed an armistice on October 7, 1920, settling their frontier. Vilna, her capital, was naturally left to Lithuania. On October 9 an inde- pendent Polish general, Zeligovski, seized the city. The Powers protested; the League summoned Poland and Lithu- ania to Geneva and announced that, under its own auspices, it would hold a plebiscite in Vilna district. It instructed Zeligovski to get out. But he did not, and Poland refused to oust him, though the League took steps to assemble an in- ternational army to put him out. The Poles calmly thumbed their noses at the League, and in the end the League pusil- lanimously backed down. Poland annexed Vilna; the League and the Great Powers recognized its act of violence. Year after year little Lithuania has gone to Geneva with fresh hopes, but each time her complaints have been referred to a committee for quiet burial. Recently there have been rum- blings indicating that Poland was preparing to pocket the rest of Lithuania. Pilsudski made a martial tour of Vilna; Lithuanian revolutionists admitted receiving help from Poland; the Polish arsenals worked on night shifts. Natur- ally and properly, since Poland's other neighbors were neg- lecting their duty, Soviet Russia voiced a protest. And France and England dare to call it a provocative act. INDEED, THE ATTITUDE of the Powers toward Rus- sia's participation in the Disarmament Conference is im- pudently amusing. Russia, the dispatches from London and Paris declare day after day, is going to Geneva to make trouble. She is allying with Germany, and horrible visions of a Russo-German bloc at the conference fill the news- paper columns. But what will this Russo-German bloc do? Apparently it plans to point out that Germany is dis- armed, that France has the largest army in the world, that England is spending more on armaments than before the war. It plans to denounce the French metaphysical plea that nations must have security before they can disarm, and to assert that disarmament makes security. In short, they plan to disturb the Disarmament Conference by boldly pro- posing disarmament! DOWN IN THE BALKANS there are more martial rumblings. France and Italy are playing for the bal- ance of power — and the result is a series of treaties of friendship which belie their names. France has long acted as the protector of Jugoslavia. Two years ago she pro- posed a tripartite Italo-Franco-Jugoslav peace pact. Italy refused it, apparently resenting France's assumption of a role in the Balkans. Instead Mussolini put through in December, 1926, the Treaty of Tirana which made Albania, theretofore a sort of no man's land between Italy and Jugo- slavia, almost an Italian province. France waited; finally, on Armistice Day, 1927, she signed a mild-looking "treaty of friendship and arbitration" with Jugoslavia. The French insisted that the treaty had been drawn up eighteen months ago, and was as innocent as her pacts with Czecho-Slovakia, Belgium, Poland, and Rumania. But the official communique added that the two governments were "in perfect agreement in all questions touching the two countries," and the Jugo- slav press frankly shouted that the treaty would put Musso- lini in his place. Mussolini is a man of action. Eleven days later he signed a new treaty with Albania binding it for twenty years to an "unalterable defensive alliance" with Italy — further asserting his de facto control of the moun- tain principality. And so it goes. Mussolini is now seeking to strengthen his alliance with Jugoslavia's northern neigh-

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Dec. 7, 1927] The Nation 617 bor, Hungary; and to defeat the French effort to bring Serbia and Bulgaria together. Meanwhile, both France and Italy are arm-deep in the Rumanian muddle. Yet doubtless, when the League meets at Geneva, the representatives of both countries will loudly proclaim their passionate devotion to the cause of peace. STRAWS IN THE WIND have been pointing to the weakening of the Bratianu power in Rumania. After the acquittal of M. Manoilescu, charged with Carolist plots, newspapers became so bold that the old, rigid censorship was reestablished; but not before all sorts of rumors had been carried across half a continent to Carol in Paris: Bratianu was ill and helpless; the people had cheered Manoilescu's acquittal; Bratianu had offered Carol any sum he would name to renounce the throne again, publicly and in writing, before his father's death ; Bratianu had refused the dying Ferdinand's request to see his son once more — so the rumors ran. And on top of them, with censorship clamped down over press and tongue, with a dramatic sud- denness that any political lion might envy, the lion, Bra- tianu, the strong man of Rumania, died. When dynasties crash, their falling timbers may crush a nation. So Ru- mania lies for the moment dazed and helpless. Smaller men scurry around to form a ministry, a regency. Carol in Paris must be filled with hope — if not immediately of the throne, then for a place on the Regency Council and a voice in the government. Jon Bratianu's brother is head of the ministry in his place, but little is expected of him. So desperate is the political situation that a council meeting was held on the funeral train which bore Bratianu's body to its rest. The future of Rumania, and with it the future of the Balkans, is in the air. So must the future always be at the end of a dictatorship. Which is one of the merits of that much-abused form of government — democracy. AGAIN THE STANDARD OIL of New York offends capitalistic decency by entering into another agree- ment with the Soviet Government for the purchase of Rus- sian oil. This contract, making the fourth between the two parties, calls for 60,000 tons per year for a period of six years. With it the Standard's total purchases will amount to approximately 1,700,000 tons. Distributed annu- ally the contracts call for about 400,000 tons of oil per year. These successive contracts and steadily increasing figures may be hailed as the signs of a coming rapprochement be- tween the Soviet Union and the United States as, indeed, they seem to indicate. But more important is the strength- ening of the credit position of the Soviet Government, mak- ing it more likely that it will be able to obtain capital in the United States. Sir Henri Deterding of the Royal Dutch-Shell, who has been bitterly opposed to any trade rela- tions (in oil) with Russia, has of course opposed these con- tracts of the Standard Oil. In fact, he has retaliated with a price-cutting war against the New York Standard in India, and threatens to extend it to other important markets. With this fourth contract, therefore, the Standard Oil simply widens the rift in the "solid" capitalistic front against Rus- sia. And to make matters worse for the Royal Dutch-Shell, Spain has now joined the ranks of defection, ordering one- half of her oil supply from Russia. For a while after the break with England things looked bad for Russia — as though Sir Henri might have his way — but now Mr. Stalin has some reason to smile. G 0 SOUTH TO TENNESSEE"— this is the slogan of the Tennessee Electric Power Company. In the Tex- tile World for November 12 it gives some interesting "facts and figures about labor in Tennessee" to encourage the southward migration of capital. We quote : Su}yply — Native Anglo-Saxon workers — the type that seeks to profit to the fullest extent through gainful occupa- tion rather than attempts to reduce the number of working hours per week. . . . Hours — Day and night operations are permitted in Ten- nessee mills for both male and female labor. Women may be employed a total of fifty-seven hours per week. Double- shift work reduces overhead costs. Wages — Latest data give average weekly earnings of textile operatives, male and female, as $13.63. Last census report showed $16.44 as the average weekly earnings of employees in 4,589 industries. Furthermore, one learns that Southern industries, besides paying a weekly wage nearly three dollars below the average of the country, "operate almost without exception on an open-shop basis." R AYNA PROHME was one of those flaming person- alities who leave a blaze of light behind them. Yet she groped, as most young Americans do in this erratic age; the University of Chicago, the literary coteries of American cities, meant little to her. She drifted to China with her second husband, William Prohme — and there she suddenly ceased drifting. She became a part of the rising tide of Chinese Nationalism. Beginning as subeditor of Eugene Chen's People's Tribune in Peking, she rose to responsibility. A slight wisp of a red-haired girl, she had the courage of her big convictions. One Chinese editor was shot; the others did not dare visit the office; Rayna Prohme produced the daily paper almost single-handed. When Chang Tso-lin's men threatened to suppress it, she moved the paper to her own home, and edited it under the extra- territorial protection of the American flag — extraterri- toriality never served a better purpose. Later, she went with her husband to Canton, and after the victorious north- ern expedition of the Nationalists, to Hankow. There again she edited the only English-language Nationalist paper in China.. Her last act as editor was to publish Madame Sun Yat-sen's despairing Appeal to the Chinese People (pub- lished in The Nation for September 21) against the orders of the militarist who was bloodily suppressing the labor and peasant unions. Then, with Mrs. Sun, she left for Moscow, where she died. Though ostracized by colonial-minded Americans of the Chinese cities, and distrusted by her own Government's officials, Rayna Prohme's passionate devotion will be remembered in China when consuls and ministers are forgotten. CHARLES F. DOLE IS A SAINT," John Haynes Holmes wrote in the review of "My Eighty Years" which appears in this issue of The Nation. "He will feel at home and enjoy congenial company when he gets to heaven." The words were prophetic; Dr. Dole has gone to meet that company since the lines were written. What Dr. Holmes wrote of the prophet in Jamaica Plain leaves little to be added. He lived an exciting life; unlike the novelists he found virtue interesting and made it infectious. Some thousands of us must be decenter human beings for our contacts with and memories of Dr. Dole.

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618 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3257 Peace or War? PEACE and war— the press is full of news relating thereto The Disarmament Conference of the League of Nations is meeting at Geneva with the Russians in at- tendance. The British press is still stirred by the cut in the Admiralty's building program and the extraordinary public manifestations of a desire that England shall disarm and keep out of dangerous foreign entanglements. Dis- armament." Ernest Marshall cables to the New York Times, "has been easily first among the week's topics. Speeches innumerable have been made about it both in and out of Parliament " The politicians, he says, "realize that a gen- eration which is still scarred by the wounds of war wants peace preserved and believes that the old Roman doctrine that being prepared for war is the best way of avoiding it was exploded in 1914." Mr. Marshall also reports that, in addition to Field Marshal Sir William Robertson's recent unqualified denunciation of war and his demand for dis- armament, another distinguished general who fought with honor in the World War is standing for Parliament as an advocate of universal disarmament. As for Lord Robert Cecil, he has not only resigned from the Cabinet on the dis- armament issue, he is constantly speaking on the question. Indeed, he has just stated in John Bull that war is "interna- tional madness"; that the world must "disarm or per- ish"- that delay is most dangerous, and that "every month we delay, the old vested interests, material md moral strengthen their hold." This weekly declares in a special issue devoted to disarmament and peace, that a million Brit- ish men ought to refuse to fight under any circumstances Yet Europe is shivering with alarm over the Polish threat to Lithuania, with its possibility of another war between Poland and Russia, the unsettled conditions m Ru- mania, and the continuing menace to peace which is Mus- solini—a menace little diminished by the new offensive and def i nsive alliance between Italy and Albania. Russia her- self is kept in a constant state of unrest because of her fear of an attack headed by the British. So the daily dispatches from abroad speak of "half a dozen" places in the Near East where hostilities may flare up at any moment. Lord Robert Cecil has thus the best of arguments for declaring that there is no time to lose, and Lloyd George has joined Foch in declaring that a new world war will be here within ten years if things continue as now. So apparent has been the menace to peace that a War Danger Conference has just been meet- ing in London and was addressed, among others, by General von Schoenaich, a former German army officer now an ardent pacifist, and, in the form of a communication, by Henri de Jouvenal, lately one of the French delegates to the League of Nations. Speaking to this conference, Francesco Nitti, the former Premier of Italy, declared that never had the nations "armed themselves in so mad a fashion as since the existence of the League of Nations." He. too. deems war inevitable if Mussolini remains ten years at the helm of Italy. That dictator's plan of making a great Italian empire Nitti characterizes as the creation of the "vanity of a madman." At this same conference America was de- nounced by Englishmen "as undoubtedly the most ruthless and aggressively imperialistic nation at present." and as "the source of the greatest danger of future wars." "They cry peace, peace, but there is no peace." And in this emergency where stands the United States? Well, President Coolidge has signalized the open- ing of the Disarmament Conference by saying that "there is no short cut to peace any more than to any other form of salvation." The Borah proposal to outlaw war is something to approach with fear and trembling, he is quoted as saying, the chief obstacle to the plan being in his mind that pro- vision in the federal Constitution which gives Congress the sole power to make war. Next, blowing hot after this cold draft, Mr. Coolidge is quoted as comforting himself with the thought that a treaty providing for the outlawry of war, "while it would amount to a declaration of policy [sfc], might be helpful in promoting the sentiments of peace." Here we have the characteristic attitude of the statesman in office toward any new proposal for exorcising war. He fears; he trembles; he vacillates; he wonders if public sen- timent will back him up; he hopes that it will help to strengthen the spirit for peace, but he sees constitutional or other difficulties in the way ; finally he issues a statement as confused as the one above. To take his courage in both hands and to insist that the obstacles shall be overcome and the definite advance toward peace made — that is beyond him. Naturally Senator Borah challenges the President's position, with all the weight of his standing as a high con- stitutional authority, and declares that the reverse of what the President says is true; that there is nothing in the Con- stitution to prevent the United States from entering into contracts with other nations to outlaw war. If the President were right it would then be his duty, in our judgment, to work for a constitutional amendment to legitimize the pro- posal which is one of the great steps toward peace that the world can take promptly. We do not claim for it that it will end all war. We do maintain that it is one of the steps to remove the evil which Lord Robert Cecil is correct in say- ing must be banished or it will destroy the world. We are aware, of course, that President Coolidge sin- cerely desires to achieve something notable for peace before he leaves office for good. Trustworthy information which comes to us from high sources makes it plain that he is talking and thinking a good deal about it. The danger lies in his timidity and in that ineptitude which made him ruin the tripartite naval conference at Geneva by failing to ascer- tain diplomatically in advance of its meeting what could be accomplished, and by selecting a second-rank diplomat and a belligerent naval officer to represent the United States. So, while he feels himself compelled to throw cold water upon Senator Borah's plan for the outlawry of war, he makes no mention of Ambassador Houghton's far-reaching and vitally important proposal to take the war-making power out of the hands of the "little groups of men" who constitute cabinets and governments and to put it into the hands of the people themselves by ordaining a referendum on war. Here is another constructive plan which, as we have already pointed out, is a great contribution to the dis- cussion. That Europe is so filled with talk of disarmament and war prevention is the most hopeful sign that the calam- ity may be averted. But why should not America sound the note of courage and of leadership instead of one of doubt and vacillation?

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Dec. 7, 1927] The Nation 619 The Negligible Graduate Student TIME was when the graduate student in America stood obscurely but definitely as a symbol of pedantry. It was he — the understudy of the professor — who represented "mere" learning, and who was thought to be the kind of man one could never get an opinion from without having first to listen to a confusing number of hems and haws and qualifications. He burrowed away in the stacks of uni- versity libraries, digging up data for a book which after appropriate delays would be published between gray paper covers and never cause a ripple in the stream of contempo- rary life — though eventually, perhaps, what he had dis- covered and recorded might influence other scholars. In a word, he was a scholar, and paid the penalties as well as reaped the rewards of being that. The world has ever been respectful of scholarship, even when it laughed at it, just as it has bowed to authority of any sort with some- times an embarrassed smile on its face. The world, even, has had its furtive admiration for pedantry, which it has never tried too hard to distinguish from scholarship — and which may not be so different from it after all, save with respect to the "value" of the thing that happens in the one case or the other to be the object of research. And who is to decide that question of value? Now all is different, if we are to accept the recent re- port of Frederic J. E. Woodbridge, Dean of the Graduate Faculties at Columbia University, to President Butler. Dean Woodbridge is speaking, of course, for Columbia; but he intimates that he may be speaking for other Ameri- can universities as well, and we believe that he is. He dismisses three-fourths of the graduate students under his charge as "negligible." And negligible to what? To life, as is the conventional charge? No, to scholarship itself. In other words, most graduate students are failing in the one thing the world has left to them to master. They lack the one thing which would justify their existence: a disinterested love of learning. Mr. Mencken has long been making fun of the American professor because he is not enough of a professor, because he tries to keep up with the merry world, because he wants to seem something else than the thing he is. Now the dean of the largest graduate school in the country adds his condemnation of the student who is not enough of a student to be content with researches which shall merely result in a contribution to knowledge. What three-fourths of the graduate students want to do, says Dean Woodbridge, is to improve themselves. In contemporary America this is by no means a strange de- sire— the strangeness, indeed, consists in someone's sug- gesting that it is insufficient. Are we not brought up on advertisements which remind us of our need to get ahead in society and which intimate that we can do so by becoming proficient overnight in French or in the art of after-dinner speaking? But here is an educator disapproving of those who believe that "more education will do something for them personally, make them happier or socially more promi- nent or effective." Here is a dean regretting that "study is regarded as an instrument for personal improvement rather than an inquiry into the nature of things." The nature of things! The words come strangely to the ears of a generation so skeptical about ultimate things that it does not even consider the necessity of examining the grounds on which those things are dismissed. They come strangely, but they should be heard. It is extremely im- portant that we should go on producing dispassionate scholars — or pedants, if one likes. It is necessary, now that so many academic subjects have become in Dean Wood- bridge's phrase "socially exciting and intellectually provoca- tive," that we should give a few men and women elbow-room in which they may devote to these subjects "competent study, wide information, matured judgment, and ripe experience." The amount of elbow-room now at their disposal is indi- cated by the fact that last year there were 3,439 graduate students at Columbia ; the other graduate schools of the country we understand to be proportionately crowded. This is of course too many. Dean Woodbridge's proposal for reducing the number is to eliminate from the departments of pure research all persons who do not want degrees, who cannot give all their time to their studies, who want to "learn a little more," or who want to "improve themselves." Such students can go into Extension or can read at home. An eminently practical proposal, in our opinion. The Norton Centenary IN Boston they have been celebrating the centenary of Charles Eliot Norton, long one of Harvard's most dis- tinguished and useful teachers, long one of the most vigor- ous patriots and critics of this country. This dual role of teacher and faultfinder is rarely easy to play; it was cer- tainly never so in Cambridge. But Charles Eliot Norton was an aristocrat, a "Boston Brahmin." He could speak his mind as he saw fit and no one dared to seek to oust him, not even in the troublous days of the Spanish War when he and others united to oppose that needless resort to arms and the subjugation of the Philippines. We had not then, as later, in the World War, broken with the historic tradition which permitted Americans to differ publicly with a war policy of their government, but the one hundred per cent patrioteers were already sufficiently numerous to assail the great Har- vard professor of fine arts. He gave them not as much attention as one bestows upon snarling ciu*s. His record was there and that of his family. Accuse him of treason one could not. But lesser charges were freely made — he was, they said, a silk-stocking, a thin-skinned, thin-blooded theorist, too far removed from the robust affairs of life to count. To the average undergraduate, Professor Norton was a phenomenon to be thankful for — his fine-arts courses were the easiest "snaps" in the curriculum — but a phenomenon not to be understood. For during his lectures Professor Norton talked about everything in the field of customs, morals, and politics that interested him, as well as of the arts. His admonitions as to what constituted the right American policies were heard too often by deaf ears ; the undergraduate of thirty or forty years ago was far less interested in politics and foreign relations than are the stu- dents of today. None the less the seed by no means fell wholly upon barren ground. There are plenty of Harvard graduates who acknowledge their great debt to him and honor his memory. They were not those who called him cynical or pessimistic or a "little American," for they re- sponded to his profound sense of injury when his govern- ment erred and turned its back upon its noblest traditions. Were he living today he would find tragic confirmation for

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620 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3257 plenty of his forebodings and for many of his prophecies. Beyond this Professor Norton was one of the members of the faculty who aided President Eliot most in carrying out those great scholastic reforms which meant so much not only to Harvard but the entire college world — even though he could not induce Mr. Eliot to see that Harvard was devel- oping a barbarous architecture under his leadership, or move him to plan for a harmonious physical development of the university. He would have been among those horrified by the great college lately erected upon the banks of the Charles for the deification of all the gods of business — and would generally find himself but little in sympathy with many of the university developments of the day. To his delightful house came scholars, artists, writers, men of affairs from all over the world, and to it also came for help many students who, if worthy, never failed to meet the courteous, considerate, generous response they desired. He was that greatest of teachers — a great, powerful, fear- less personality. As for The Nation, it could hardly have come to life in 1865 but for Professor Norton's support and wise counsel. If it was quite a different Nation from that of today, we are none the less bold enough to believe that much of what it is today would appeal to him, for his mind never grew old, and to the end he saw through the gaudy political tinsel of his day and tilted at the shams of the hour. Harvard does well to honor Charles Eliot Norton, for he will always be one of its priceless possessions. To Err Is Human JUSTICE is sometimes dumb as well as blind, and out- rageous blunders are made even in England, whose courts are generally believed to be the fairest and most accurate in the world. An amazing instance of fallibility has finally been officially acknowledged in the release of Oscar Slater after he had spent eighteen years in prison at Peterhead. Slater's conviction has been called England's Sacco-Van- zetti case, and the agitation over the latter was helpful in bringing to a successful head efforts which had extended over years to obtain the imprisoned man's release. But except for the fact that Slater's imprisonment enlisted the sympathy of a considerable number of prominent persons, among them Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, there is little simi- larity between the two cases. There was apparently no hysteria or prejudice to account for Slater's conviction, and fortunately no political or industrial pressure was brought to bear to prevent his release or make impossible an un- biased review of his case. Most fortunate of all, although Slater was found guilty of murder, his sentence of death was commuted to life imprisonment two days before the date set for the execution — because of doubt even at that time of his guilt — and so it was possible to free him when one of three identifying witnesses recently signed an affi- davit saying that she had not meant to identify him posi- tively as the man she saw running away from the scene of the crime. She had been influenced to do so, she said, by the prosecutor. In this we are leminded of the ugly work of District Attorney Katzmann in the Saceo-Vanzetti trial in inducing Captain Proctor, a firearms expert, to make a misleading statement to the jury. But whereas in England a recantation by one witness was sufficient to obtain Slater's release, in Massachusetts the repudiation of his testimony by Captain Proctor was not considered of enough impor- tance by the judicial machinery of the State to gain even a, new trial for Sacco and Vanzetti. Slater was arrested in 1909 in New York City as he stepped ashore from the steamship Lusitania. He was charged with the robbery and murder of an aged woman in Glasgow. Slater obtained the services of an American law- yer, William A. Goodhart, now practicing in Baltimore, but did not fight extradition, although United States Commis- sioner Shields, before whom he was taken, did not think the evidence presented was adequate proof of guilt. Mr. Goodhart had intended to represent Slater at the trial, but an unexpected moving ahead of the date of beginning made this impossible. Mr. Goodhart remained convinced of Slater's innocence in spite of his conviction, and wTent to work to unravel the mystery, learning that a brooch which his client was accused of having stolen from the murdered woman had in fact been pawned by the convicted man four months before the crime. With this and other clues in his possession, Mr. Goodhart obtained the aid of Conan Doyle in working for Slater's release, but progress languished until the Sacco-Vanzetti case stimulated the effort to get at the truth. The Slater case is only another of many convictions which have later turned out to have been unjustified, even in the unusually fair and accurate judicial processes of Eng- land. The false conviction of Adolf Beck has become almost as famous as that of Alfred Dreyfus and Jean Calas in France, the latter of whom was broken on the wheel although Voltaire subsequently established the man's innocence. Beck was falsely convicted twice, just as was probably true of Vanzetti. In 1896 Beck was sentenced to seven years' penal servitude for a series of robberies from women. He was released after five years, but in 1904 was convicted of simi- lar offenses. At the first trial Beck was "positively identi- fied" by ten women and at the second by five; in each case a handwriting expert testified against him. Yet eventually Beck's innocence was so conclusively established that the British Government indemnified him for his imprisonment to the extent of $25,000. An earlier case was that of Wil- liam Habron, sentenced to death in 1876 for the murder of a policeman. On account of his youth — he was only eighteen — Habron's punishment was luckily commuted to imprison- ment, and two years later a man convicted of another killing confessed also to the crime for which Habron had been im- prisoned. The confession was substantiated and Habron was released with $4,000 as compensation. Priscilla Bigga- dyke was not so fortunate. She was convicted in 1869 of poisoning her husband and was executed. Later, in a death- bed confession, a man admitted that he had entered Mrs. Biggadyke's kitchen, unknown to her, and put poison in a pudding which she was making. The possibility of an error which can never be rectified is one of the strong reasons for the abolition of capital pun- ishment. Even with the best judicial machinery there is a possibility of error in any single case and a certainty of it somewhere in the combined record of many cases. But even this certainty of error is only one of many reasons for put- ting behind us the savagery of civic murder. The practice of deliberate and complaisant killing by a community is de- grading and brutalizing to it. The effect is to weaken the respect for life, to accustom people to take it wantonly, and so to encourage the very crime which it is mistakenly de- signed to prevent.

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Dec. 7, 1927] The Nation 621 Loot

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622 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 325: h GENE TUNNEY and Upton Sinclair have recently spoken disparagingly of pessimism. "Satirists and cynics are seldom healthy," was Tunney's contribution while Sinclair in "Money Writes:" expresses the opinion. "All truly great art is optimistic." I differ with both fighters. Gene is a good heavyweight and Upton an excellent novelist, but neither approaches championship rank in criticism. "The individual artist," says Sinclair in support of his theme, "is happy in his creative work, and its reception by his public; the public is active and sound, occupied in mas- tering life and expanding the social forces. It is only when those forces exhaust themselves that the art public enjoys contemplating moral impotence, and that the individual artist does not know whether life is worth living. The fact that practically all great art is tragic does not in any way change the above thesis." But Sinclair's thesis is vastly damaged by the fact that it rests upon a number of assertions which are not possible of proof and which very likely are not true. If I said that Shakespeare was fundamentally pessimistic in his attitude toward life another might challenge my assertion and we could argue until daybreak. Even more time might be con- sumed in discussing the problem of whether he was happy in his creative work. Certainly an artist may blast himself for the sins of the people and get no more than a curious and morbid joy out of the sacrifice. I would not even say that it was any part of his business to expand the social forces. Much has been done in marble and on canvas which leaves the economic system of the world precisely where it was before. Upton Sinclair calls upon all the writers of the earth to p -oduce "a socialist novel" and if I read him correctly his definition is a tight one. I gather that among the mod- erns it includes none except himself and Theodore Dreiser. Theirs is the direct approach but a writer may go round about, though if he does Upton Sinclair will assail him as slacker in the great war of the classes and the masses. As excellent a revolutionary as Cabell is scorned by the man who did "The Jungle." To Sinclair "Jurgen" and the rest are "ivory-tower art" and "ivory-tower art consists of cruelty and sensuality." Indeed he expresses the opinion that " 'Jurgen' is one of the most depraved and depraving books ever published in America." Readily enough I will agree that James Branch Cabell left the Lees and the dregs of Virginia exactly where he found them and has not raised a finger to put the proletariat within the houses with white columns. But revolution can and must go deeper than faith in any economic system. In order to get about the business of making a new world there first must be acute and gnawing dissatisfaction with the one we have. Upton Sinclair promotes precisely that feeling when he endeavors to poinf out that our packers and our press men are corrupt, but I do not understand why he fails to recognize the fact that Cabell is essentially on his side. Indeed the Virginian is more thoroughgoing, for he says that life of this particular moment in the world's history seems to him so dull and dreary that he will have nothing of it but create instead a land of kings, pawn- brokers, and dryads. Very probably he does jeer at mar- riage as Sin-lair charges, but that, for good or ill. must be a part of any radical upheaval. There will not come, here or elsewhere, a state brand new and shining which con- fines the scope of its change wholly to wages, hours, and the ownership of factories. When gold bonds are no longer legal tender others will be loosed as part of the turmoil. With good reason Upton Sinclair feels that he himself will be raised high with kingdom coming. An appreciable measure of the revolutionary work has been his, while I can remember none in which I have engaged beyond split- ting a ticket to support a Socialist for president of the Borough of Manhattan. Still, tragically and ironically, it may happen that Upton Sinclair will fret more in Utopia than I. He is a member of that curious and numerous band of the rebellious Puritans. He would curtail the sufferings of man and also his pleasures. I fear the suburban para- dise which he fantasies for workers will not quite hold the spirit of an army unleashed from grinding labor. Saddest of all will be the fate of the collected works of Sinclair when all the wide world flows with milk and honey. When every wrong and every privilege is down who will care to read "The Brass Check" or even yet "The Jungle"? Quite possibly the emancipated worker will turn instead to the poems of Amy Lowell, despicable though they seem to Upton Sinclair. I assure him that beauty is there though he asserts he cannot hear it. As a matter of fact, anybody who writes poetry or paints a picture or sings a song is a rebel. The very act of embracing an art form for expres- sion is a denial of the sufficiency of things as they are. It is not necessary for the leavening of the world that all the blessed should deal articulately with slums and sweatshops. I think it is much better if they do not. Certainly Upton Sinclair has no right to toss upon the ash-heap of parasitism such writers as give to the world no definite program for the creation of an almost perfect state. He sneers at Ana- tole France, who surely was among the mighty who stirred the wide vats and set up fermentation. To be dogmatic, Tunney is wrong about his cynics and Sinclair about his optimists. In cruder terms this is the old argument about constructive and destructive critics. The man who tears down a house which totters cannot be denied some share of the credit by the architect who rears a new one. Many of the most inspiriting commentators upon existence have been those who said that life was not worth living. At this particular hour I happen to think it is, but it will not harm me, or Upton Sinclair, or any other to be asked every once and so often to stand and deliver upon the challenge of a searching "Why?" "Pessimism," Sinclair writes, "is mental disease. It is that wherever and under whatever circumstances it appears, in art and philosophy, as in everyday life. It means illness in the person who voices it, and in the society which pro- duces that person. If it continues unchecked in an indi-

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-ol Dec. 7, 1927] The Nation 623 vidual, it is a symptom of his moral breakdown; if it pre- vails in the literature, art, drama, politics, or philosophy of a nation it means that nation is in course of decay." All this is near-sighted nonsense. Most of the men who say "I was never sick a day in my life," are liars and if truthful highly unfortunate. A good rousing sickness is part of the necessary experience of persons who are ever going to amount to anything. Even better is the adventure of such as have been told "There is no hope ; you are going to die." Pessimism is the very food of striving. Indeed I would revise Sinclair's formula to read that any nation is in a perilous position if there are not many who go about and say that everything is wrong, always has been wrong, and always will be. There never yet came a messiah who was not preceded by an advance guard of gloomy prophets. To be much more specific, I would name Henry L. Mencken as the most invigorating publicist now writing in America. Mencken has given a lifetime of devotion to pointing out the unutterable follies of life in general and more particularly life in this land. If he has ever made a suggestion as to how conditions could be altered or even expressed the remotest hope of amelioration that paragraph escaped me. He is not ill and America seems to me as yet too unripe to be decaying. The pessimist plays upon a brassy bugle. His familiar complaint is, "I can't get 'em up." But after a while we do get up and it is the trumpet notes of despair and not of triumph which serve to wake us. War in Colorado By FRANK L. PALMER Walsenburg, Colorado, November 26 COLORADO again has paid in blood for the dominance in its coal industry of John D. Rockefeller, Jr. On Monday, November 21, some 600 members of the families of striking miners in northern Colorado marched to the Columbine mine, as they had gone every workday morning for three weeks, singing and laughing, happy in the success of a strike which had left only one mine in the whole district operating. They were convinced that they had the support of Governor Adams in holding a mass meeting wherever there was a post office, and they held this opinion with good grounds. There is a post office and a public school inside the Columbine fenced camp. The miners believed they had a right to go in; the guards might threaten but they would not shoot. So their leaders searched them for guns or knives and sent them out on the picket line assured of their safety. The new dominant stockholder, Miss Josephine Roche, had given orders through her representative, Merle Vincent, that the gates were to be left open and that there was to be no shoot- ing, even though the mine were destroyed. Governor Adams, hearing that machine-guns were there, had ordered them removed Saturday. Coal operator, State executive, and striker seemed united against violence. Yet at least five persons were killed (the strikers still claim another was slain) and some score of others were seriously wounded. The strikers charge they were shot down by the machine-guns; certain it is that the machine-guns were not taken out of the camp as ordered by Governor Adams, but were set up before, during, or immediately after the massacre. The guards had been ordered not to fire, yet they threw tear-gas bombs into the strikers' ranks, in- furiated them into throwing stones, and then killed them because they threw the stones. The guards charge that four shots were fired over the camp by striking snipers. There is no charge made that in the crowd of men and women who were fired on there were any who used weapons. The casualties among the State police consisted of three men hit by stones or fists and one man who had his finger cut. The killed and seriously wounded were all strikers. Immediately after the massacre thoughtful observers in Colorado began to ask why it should have happened at the Columbine. The Saturday previous the strikers had marched to the camp, met the sheriff who asked them not to go in, put him at the head of the parade, and marched back to town for doughnuts and coffee with him. The Rocky Mountain Fuel Company, which owns the Columbine, is almost the only company in Colorado which is dominated by such a person as Josephine Roche, with anything like liberal ideas. The I. W. W. leaders have constantly preached peace. It seemed that no one wanted trouble — yet it occurred. Why? Of course it is not true to say that no one wanted trouble. It is only true of the executive heads. Under Governor Adams, the State police are headed by Louis Scherf, former captain in the Colorado Rangers under the notorious "Pat" Hamrock, and thoroughly trained in labor- hating policies. Directly in charge of the force at the Columbine was Sam Lee, worse even than Scherf. Thomas Annear, chairman of the Industrial Commission appointed by Governor Sweet, had said that there would be no strike. Feeling the stigma placed on the commission by his com- plete failure to estimate the situation in advance, he had become frantically eager to get the men back in the mines at any cost. Yet nine days before the massacre he had said: "This is the most peaceful strike the State ever saw." After the massacre lie announced that Louis Scherf ought to have a gold medal for his "bravery"! The Indus- trial Commission had been saved, it seemed, and his charges against the I. W. W. had been proved. It is very significant that Mr. Annear, as the newspapers reported, "just hap- pened" to be at the Columbine that morning. Especially is this significant when it is known that the State police sent to Denver at midnight the night before for their steel helmets! Adjutant General Newlon of the National Guard had disagreed with the Governor for some time because the troops had not been ordered into the field, and later because martial law was not declared. He "happened" to be at the Columbine with Thomas Annear. So that, despite the Governor's apparent desire for peace, at least three men in his force at the scene of action wanted trouble. In the company group a similar situation existed. When Miss Roche gained dominance in the Rocky Mountain Fuel Company (she does not have complete control), she called Merle Vincent to represent her interests and be-

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624 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3257 come general manager. He discharged Walter Belk, one of the most notorious gunmen of the Ludlow strike, from his position at the Columbine. Vincent took the position as general counsel which had been held by Judge Jesse G. Northcutt, the man largely responsible for the fighting in the 1913 strike; and he removed General Manager Peart. General Manager Pearl's son, Ted Peart, was still superin- tendent at the Columbine. The Pearts, both father and son, belong to the old Northcutt-Belk days. Merle Vincent, who had ordered the gates left open and the strikers given access to the property for their mass meetings, was not present on that fatal Monday morning. Ted Peart was; though he resigned his position on the following Friday. Whether accurately or not, Miss Roche has been quoted as saying that she would "sell her stock for fifty cents if there were any bloodshed." The Denver newspapers have reported for some time that John D. Rockefeller's Colorado Fuel and Iron Company was eager to buy the Rocky Moun- tain Fuel Company. It is certain that the C. F. and I. wanted the militia in the field to help break the strike. From certain standpoints the Columbine massacre was a success. Undoubtedly suspicion has been thrown upon the principles for which Miss Roche and Merle Vincent stand within the Rocky Mountain Fuel Company; per- haps Miss Roche it, tempted to sell out her holdings and give up. The newspapers have made it appear that the Governor was wrong in refusing to send in troops and in ordering machine-suns away from the camp. The Indus- trial Commission is probably more firmly in the saddle and Thomas Annear's bitter attacks on the I. W. W. are apparently justified. Gaining control of the Columbine may be well worth the financial cost to the Rockefellers. And no Rockefellers were killed in the massacre. But of course there is always the danger that the truth will become known. For a year organizers for the United Mine Workers have charged that I. W. W. organizers were at work in the C. F. and I. camps under the company's protection. They have said that the company allowed them there to offset United Mine Workers activities, while the regular union organizers were driven out of the camps. They have warned that conditions were so bad in the mines that the companies might find themselves with an I. W. W. strike on their hands. Then in September came the notice of demands for a wage increase to the Jacksonville scale, the six-hour day, and better conditions, with warning of a strike. The work- ers made the same demands for the enforcement of already existing laws as were made in 1913. There is still almost no such thing as a properly elected check-weighman in Colorado, despite the law. And other laws are flagrantly violated. The notice was drawn up with the advice of two attorneys and was legal as far as the men knew how to make it so. After the thirty days required by law had passed and the Industrial Commissioners were still busy telling the miners not to follow an "illegal, un-American organiza- tion," and telling the State that there would be no strike — the men walked out. Two weeks later, the Attorney General pronounced the strike notice illegal. This makes it a crime to strike, to incite others to strike, or to do almost anything helpful to the strike. Of course the ruling is being ignored. It is interesting to note that among those who are asserting that the strike is illegal and is being led by outsiders, is William H. Young, the labor member of the Industrial Commission. He has forgotten that in 1919 a strike of steel workers in Pueblo was led by a printing pressman and that no notice of any kind was given the Industrial Commission. Yet this same William H. Young was that pressman. Before the strike was called I. W. W. organizers : bragged that 4,000 miners would walk out. Actually, 5,500 struck. And the strike spread. Despite the fact that the Scripps-Howard Rocky Mountain News has been saying for four weeks that the strike was almost over and the men were going back to work, new mines and new fields are closing. The Colorado Springs district was not affected until November 19. Now it is practically shut. Industries are closing for lack of coal. Only an unusually warm fall has kept Denver from suffering and. even so, coal is being shipped in from outside. One of the most important factors in the strike has been the constant campaign of the newspapers to connect the I. W. W. with violence. And there has been violence ' in the strike. The Saturday night before the strike was called Walsenburg business men met and decided to "run the wobblies out of town." With Mayor Pritchard leading, some 80 men marched to the I. W. W. hall, shot out the windows, smashed in the door, and took private records out and burned them. Newspaper reports naively said, after describing the incident, "So far there has been no violence." Neither Mayor Pritchard nor any member of his mob has been arrested. Later a group of the newly created State police went into a meeting and began arresting the speakers. Their tactics inflamed the crowd and there was a fight, with vari- ous reports of chairs and knives being used. No one was seriously injured. The violence at the Columbine is well known. Some mine property burned in the southern field; the fire was blamed on the I. W. W. until it was discovered that the burned property had been abandoned several years before. In short, there has been one mot> — of business men; there has been a massacre where police were hit by stones and one hurt his finger — while five strikers were killed and a score wounded; there has been a free-for-all fight over the right of free speech. "It has been the most peaceful strike the State ever saw." Back of it all lies the Colorado Fuel and Iron Com- pany and the Rockefeller Plan. The miners have been re- duced in pay time after time under the "plan" by the sub- terfuge of calling in their representatives in the company union and explaining that the wages would have to be cut or the mines closed — or that a wage cut would widen the sales field and give the men more day's work. Since they have worked an average of 184 days a year for the last six years, that is important. The wage cuts have come, but the number of days worked has not substantially increased. The miners are controlled by the "plan" and they know it. Real conditions are much the same as they were before 1913. The petty bosses instil fear by the threat of dis- charge or the offer of favoritism. The old phrase, made famous in 1913, "down the canyon," still strikes terror to the hearts of C. F. and I. miners. And it is no idle threat. The future of the strike will depend on food. The miners are standing solidly despite everything, but the cry of hungry babies is worse than the whine of bullets. Colo- rado is a long way from the sources of generous support and apparently not enough men and women have yet died to open purse-strings. Operators, the State, death cannot break the strike. Slow starvation may.

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Dec. 7, 1927] The Nation 625 A Sacco Revolver Expert Revealed By ARTHUR WARNER ON October 8, last, a bootlegger by the name of Ernest J. Yorkell was murdered in Cleveland. A few weeks later Frank Milazzo was arrested with a revolver in his pos- session. A detective sergeant who was instructed to trace the history of the revolver reported his belief that the weapon was the one used in the killing of Yorkell. The revolver was thereupon sent to an expert in New York City together with bullets taken from the dead man. The expert found that the bullets had been fired from the revolver, upon learning which the Cleveland police charged Milazzo with the murder of Yorkell. Milazzo presumably would have gone to trial and might have been convicted, but the Cleveland News suddenly con- founded the police with the information that the revolver in question had not been sold until November 3, nearly a month after the murder. This statement was confirmed by the records of the manufacturer and the retail dealer, the murder charge against Milazzo was dropped, and an inquiry was ordered into the work of the detective sergeant who had incorrectly reported the history of the revolver. Such a case, involving an inexcusable mistake on the part of a trusted police officer and a complete fiasco in the findings of a so-called ballistic expert, is important enough as it stands to deserve circulation through the country, al- though apparently it has received no publicity outside of the neighborhood of Cleveland. But the facts become immensely more significant when it is known who the revolver expert is. He is Major Calvin H. Goddard, a former military man, who last summer announced that he had determined by new and positive tests the guilt of Nicola Sacco. Major Goddard compared the revolver taken from Sacco when he was ar- rested with a bullet from the body of the paymaster's guard murdered at South Braintree, Massachusetts, and was con- vinced that the bullet had been fired from the revolver. Major Goddard conducted his tests on June 3, last, and com- municated the results to Governor Fuller and his advisory committee on the Sacco-Vanzetti case, but the findings were not made public until after the report of the Lowell com- mittee against Sacco and Vanzetti. Then, on August 10, they received wide circulation in the newspapers and must have had appreciable effect in confirming public opinion on the side of the Lowell report. Major Goddard described his method as follows : The instrument in question is nothing more than a highly perfected form of comparison microscope, employing optical principles long known. The model used was, how- ever, especially designed for investigations upon bullets and shells and, to the best of my knowledge, none other equally well adapted to this purpose has been constructed. Its function is to fuse into a single one the images of two bullets or shells so that in case they bear identical markings the composite picture produced will reveal, after the identical markings have been located and brought into proximation, what appears to be a single object rather than the fusion of two objects. Unless two bullets have passed through the same barrel, they can never be so fused as to present the appearance of a single bullet, the picture always revealing marked differ- ences in its two halves. This holds true also for shells which have or have not been fired in the same arm (those from the same arm matching, others failing to match). As a result of his tests Major Goddard reached the fol- lowing conclusions : 1. That Fraher shell No. 3 was fired in the Sacco pistol and could have been fired in no other. 2. That the so-called fatal bullet, being one of four from the body of one Berardelli, was fired through the Sacco pistol and could have been fired through no other. "Permit me also to add," recited Major Goddard, "that I conducted the tests outlined for the simple reason that I knew the comparison microscope would reveal with mechani- cal accuracy and in a manner which no human opinion could refute the facts in the case." Two days after the appearance of Major Goddard's find- ings in the press he issued a reply to certain criticisms, saying: As to . . . the soundness of my methods, I can only say that leaders of the bench, bar, and police, as well as men of the highest standing in the technical and criminological worlds both in this country and in Europe, have passed upon them. They have been inspected by the technical staff of a large government department and that staff has indicated a desire to apply some of them to its own use. The work has been described by former Deputy Police Commissioner Joseph A. Faurot, who is himself known as the "father of finger-printing" in the United States, as "a science as infallible, as practicable, as revolutionary, and as valuable as finger-printing itself." Two clarifications need to be added to this recital, one in justice to the Lowell committee and the other to Major Goddard. Although the latter's findings were submitted to Governor Fuller and his advisory committee, it does not appear that they weighed appreciably in the conclusions reached. William G. Thompson, counsel for Sacco and Van- zetti, said that he had been assured that the Goddard state- ment had not influenced the Governor or his advisers in their decision. Certainly no reference to it is made in the Lowell committee's report. On the other hand, the Goddard findings did have an influence on public opinion, publication taking place just at the moment when the newspapers were printing most on the case and when many persons, for the first time, were trying to get at the facts or reach conclu- sions in their own minds. The Nation received a number of letters inquiring about or discussing Major Goddard's findings. In fairness to Major Goddard it ought to be said also that he attributes the mistake in regard to the Cleveland crime to a possible confusion of bullets. After the revolver had been taken from Milazzo it went to the city chemist's office, where bullets were fired through it for purposes of comparison with those taken from the body of the slain bootlegger. Major Goddard suggests that the two sets of bullets may have been confused and he may have received as those taken from the dead body the ones that were fired through the revolver in the city chemist's office. The Cleve- land officials deny any possibility of confusion, but Major Goddard's explanation is given for whatever it may be worth.

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626 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3257 Where does this leave expert testimony? Does it dis- credit that kind of evidence in our courts or elsewhere? Not necessarily. This is a scientific and a technical age in which science and technology must be called upon to help wherever they can reasonably be employed. But the Cleveland epi- sode emphasizes the fallibility of all such methods and sug- gests that the community at large should be alert to check the claims of experts by its own reason and experience. The American method of employing experts in court trials plays especially into the hands of the know-it-alls. In order to earn a fee an expert has to take a stand on one side or the other — and be sure of it. There is no room for doubt or the more judicial expression of opinion in which the truth commonly lies. Probably few experts knowingly bear false witness merely to earn a fee, but in the long run they must take the stand or starve or quit. If we are to continue to employ experts in our courts — and undoubtedly we are — they ought to be called, as in some European countries, not by the opposing lawyers but by the judge; they should be selected because of their general repu- tation, and their opinions on the case at issue ought not to be known to anyone until expressed in court. What Business Wants from Congress By LAURENCE TODD Washington, November SO NO public competition with private investment : that, in substance, is the demand which organized business will make upon Congress in the session just beginning. Whether one examines the legislative program of the National Association of Manufacturers or that of the Cham- ber of Commerce of the United States, or looks into the activities of the compact new Joint Committee of National Utility Associations, or speaks to one of the hundred special representatives in Washington for some one industry, the inquiry brings this consistent reply. Business desires aid from the government, but it requires first that the govern- ment refrain from competing with private initiative Water-power is the spearhead of conflict, at the mo- ment, between the forces of organized business and the ele- ments that seek to adapt government to the service of the commonalty. Seventeen billions of dollars of investment, according to George B. Cortelyou, chairman of the Joint Committee of National Utility Associations, is represented in that body. Its chief component parts are the National Electric Light Association, the American Electric Railway Association, and the American Gas Association. Its director is Stephen B. Davis, former solicitor of the Department of Commerce under Mr. Hoover, and now vice-chairman, under Hoover, of the American Delegation in the International Radio-Telegraph Conference. Its counsel in Washington — described by Senator Hiram Johnson as its chief lobbyist — is Josiah T. Newcomb. What Newcomb asks of the new Congress is significant — the leasing of Muscle Shoals power plant to private interests, the abandonment of public con- struction of a power plant at Boulder Canyon on the Colo- rado River, and the shelving of the resolution offered by Senator Walsh of Montana, inquiring into the power trust and other recent rapid consolidations of investment capital. For several years past the National Electric Light As- sociation has sought to convince the American public that electricity is sold in this country by private corporations at a low cost. It has promoted the publication of arguments seeking to show that the publicly owned giant-power system operated by the Ontario Hydro-Electric Commission is not selling electricity at half the rates charged in the United States. Yet so rapidly has risen the t^'de of public interest in Ontario Hydro-Electric, and so firmly have the hopes of consumers been grounded upon declarations against the pri- vate-power monopoly by Governor Smith of New York and former Governor Pinchot of Pennsylvania that the Electric Light Association has joined forces with the street-railway and gas companies' federations, to deal directly and openly with Congress. It now proposes to stop the current of pub- lic enthusiasm for a government-owned giant-power system based on the Muscle Shoals and Boulder Canyon power re- sources. Moreover, it is determined that the Senate shall not look critically into the mergers, consolidations, pur- chases, recapitalizations, and other steps which have ad- vanced the General Electric group to domination not only of electric power but of the radio industry. Senator George W. Norris delivered a speech at a re- ception given in his honor, last spring, by the National Popular Government League, in which he declared for the Ontario plan and said that the government should proceed to develop a chain of power plants across the country, which would duplicate the Ontario performance. That is, they would cut in half the present charge to consumers for elec- tric current, and would correspondingly stimulate the elec- trification of industry, commerce, and housework. This speech created such anxiety in the offices of the power com- panies that Newcomb delivered an address on October 13, before the Southern Appalachian Power Conference at Chat- tanooga, devoted to denial of the existence of a power trust and declaring that "the progress desired and the solution of the problems presented" in the industry today "are con- stantly being delayed and obscured by government owner- ship projects. These schemes are inadequately prepared. Practically none of them is ever put through." That none of them shall be put through the new Con- gress is the practical task which Mr. Newcomb has set himself. To his aid have come the rival general organiza- tions for promotion of business measures before the national legislature — the National Association of Manufacturers and the Chamber of Commerce of the United States. In the resolutions adopted by the N. A. M. at its con- vention in Chattanooga in October the water-power issue is obliquely dealt with in connection with the problem of Mis- sissippi flood control. Federal action and federal responsi- bility for prevention of future floods are demanded, but if dams at reservoir sites are to be built, power plants in pub- lic hands are barred. Thus: "Such plan for control of our greatest and most dangerous river should be shaped with that single object in view and relieved from the handicap of any other plans or secondary proposals which interested groups or sections or partisan interests may seek to attach to it."

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Dec. 7, 1927] The Nation 627 The Chamber of Commerce is of opinion "that flood control of the Mississippi River is a work of such magnitude and urgency that it should be dealt with in legislation and administration upon its own merits, separate and distinct from any other undertaking." If there be ambiguity in these phrases, there is none in the further declaration by the chamber in its official cur- rent program issued on October 17, that In the National Chamber's confession of economic faith this principle stands paramount — that government scrupu- lously refrain from entering any of the fields of transporta- tion, communication, industry, or commerce, or any phase of business when it can be successfully undertaken and con- ducted by private enterprise. The chamber, to be sure, recognizes that the utilities, invested with a public interest, are subject to government regulation, but it insists that such regulation be so exercised that it become not burden- some as to cost and not palsying to that initiative without which adequate and efficient service is impossible. One of the second-rate powers in the world of business- representation in Washington is the American Mining Con- gress. Early in November it issued a press statement. Government ownership or control of business is opposed by three-fourths of the replies to a nation-wide questionnaire by the American Mining Congress which was sent to a selected list of 500 leading authorities on banking, taxation, industry, production, and transportation, as well as to edi- tors, economists, engineers, college presidents, lawyers, and clergymen. . . . During the past two years there has been much discussion as to the proposition for the invasion of the government into private industry. Its ramifications lead from municipally operated street-railway and lighting sys- tems into State-operated insurance and construction of pub- lic works by day labor instead of by contract; construction service by navy yards for outside parties etc. At a conference staged by the Mining Congress in Wash- ington for December 1 to 3, Phil P. Campbell, former Con- gressman from Kansas and now identified as counsel for oil interests, is scheduled to talk on Federal Control — the Bugaboo of Industry. If the power lobby appears certain to hold the center of the stage in Congress with its fight against the beginning of any public experiment in production and sale of elec- tricity, the shipping and railroad groups will be no less busy defending their sectors against the common foe. In the programs of the National Association of Manufacturers and the Chamber of Commerce is the demand that the Amer- ican merchant marine be developed as a private enterprise and that railroad consolidation be left to the railroad owners. The N. A. M. declares firmly against public ownership or operation of transportation facilities "wherever private ownership and operation is possible." The chamber is "un- alterably opposed to government ownership of land carriers as it is opposed to government ownership of ocean carriers." The chamber says that Experience of ten years of government in the shipping business has proved beyond cavil that American business has not that degree of confidence in a government marine that must prevail if the American marine is to meet commercial needs in peace time and defense needs in war time. The chamber, moreover, is opposed to a proposal coming before Congress for yet another costly experiment in government shipbuilding in furtherance of government ownership. But the chamber is not content with mere opposition. It is in support of sound measures to encourage private invest- ment in shipping enterprises. . . . Congress can assist in bringing this about and at materially less cost to the tax- payer than by supinely accepting the defeatist propaganda that government ownership is the only way to keep the American flag on the seas. Former Chairman Hurley of the United States Ship- ping Board has come forward with a proposal, which may possibly be in line with this declaration, that Congress pro- vide for a loan of $500,000,000 at 2V2 per cent interest, to private shipbuilders in this country. The ubiquitous Joint Committee of Mr. Newcomb, real- izing the need for general propaganda against the public ownership doctrine, has issued a pamphlet entitled "Govern- ment— Federal, State, Local — Fails in Industry." It begins with selected sentiments from Abraham Lincoln and Her- bert Hoover, enters into a misrepresentation of the degree of success achieved by public ownership in Ontario and else- where, quotes George E. Roberts of the National City Bank to prove government operation of railroads, navy yards, and mints inefficient, and finally comes to a symposium entitled Great Minds Speak. Calvin Coolidge is selected as the first great mind. The first sentiments quoted from an address delivered when he was Governor of Massachusetts are these : "The alternative to private ownership and control is public ownership and control. Broadly extended, this is communism." Other great minds, quoted in balanced statement, are William Howard Taft, Charles Evans Hughes, Herbert Hoover, Sen- ators Watson of Indiana and Fess of Ohio, the late Car- dinal Gibbons, and John Spargo. Spargo raises the question of a broadened capitalism: Unless I misread the signs of the times, the great need of the world, the fundamental requisite for economic rehabili- tation, is a vast strengthening of the capitalist system of the several countries. This requires a tremendous augmen- tation of private enterprise and the incentives to such enter- prise. It requires a great strengthening of faith in the secur- ity of investments and the opening up of all possible chan- nels for investment in productive enterprises. It requires the development of a vast army of investors in every country. This is the most effective line of opposition which lob- byists in Washington have found, in recent sessions, against sentiment for public ownership. Newcomb's organization will demand the private leasing of Muscle Shoals and the blocking of the Swing-Johnson bill for construction of the dam and power plant at Boulder Canyon, in the name of the "vast army" of shareholders and bondholders in public- utility enterprises. Newcomb has already suggested, at a luncheon given to a selected group of press correspondents in the capital, that investments in the industry should not be disturbed by the threat of government competition or by government inquiry into private business affairs. For this reason the public-ownership advocates, stub- bornly holding out against the "vast army" of investors, hopefully will quote the American Economic Review's dis- covery that, of the stock of a big railroad in the hands of "employees," 89 per cent is owned by officials, 8 per cent by higher-paid clerical employees, and only 1 per cent by engi- neers, conductors, and other manual workers. Wide diffu- sion of stock ownership, as a realization of public ownership under efficient private management, will be claimed by the spokesmen of organized business to be the most significant fact in American economic life today. The fact will be denied by the spokesmen of organized labor as well as by the public ownership specialists. And in face of that dis- pute as to fact the session will muddle through.

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628 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3257 Americans We Like Florence E. Allen By EMILY NEWELL BLAIR WHAT Judge Allen's quality T It C f i f t h is I do not find easy to say. Q £ & y g u n a j Some persons might call it serenity L or poise. But it is much more than that. It is the sort of calm that comes out of a perfect balance of all opposing elements, perhaps that old-fashioned thing, a soul — at any rate whatever it is that produces unity. To find this quality in any woman today, whether in a homemaker or a nun, would be surprising, but to find it in the woman who has pioneered in politics, in law, in journal- ism, the first woman judge of a court of general jurisdiction, legal and equitable, civil and criminal, the first woman judge in a court of last resort, a candidate for the United States Senate, is far more so. The struggle for success lays its mark on each human being who essays it, but it lays it even more cruelly on the women who seek competition on even terms with men pol'tically, industrially, in any way except emotionally — a strident voice, a hardness about the eye, clenched hands. "We're all," said one the other day to me, "a little hard-boiled with the process, you know." But Judge Allen is not hard-boiled. Her voice is thick and, even when raised in appeal, round. Her near-sighted eyes are whimsical and restful. Her hands lie flat and still. All around her is a little pool of peace. Yet she has cam- paigned a great State for two public offices. Perhaps this incident may give us a clue: When she ran for her present office, that of judge of the Supreme Court of Ohio, she had little money for campaign expenses and no time to make trips. But each week-end she went to some nearby town and spoke on Sunday morning in the local church. She did not make an appeal for votes. She discussed the subjects of the day and urged the attention of her congregation to them. She appeared to people, discussed matters before them, and left the candidacy to them. The League of Women Voters and other associations sent questionnaires to her, asking her stand on important issues. She answered them briefly but fully. The answers were already made in her own mind. To trim them, to arrange them so they would not offend or could be construed in several ways never occurred to her. She likes people. It was no trouble to shake their hands, smile into their faces, and listen if they had some- thing to say. That was all there was to it. Of course, had she tried to "win" them, to find out what they wanted, to flatter them, to put herself over — that would have been dif- ferent. But never in her life has Judge Allen set out to "charm" anyone, to capitalize herself, to "sell" her person- ality. She would not know how. She has her work. It is a big job, that of being a Supreme Court judge. It comes first. Her day's program is planned to make it effective. She rises early and does her exercises. She takes a long walk. She goes to her office, does her work, goes home. Then there i company, a little music, perhaps a party, but nine-thirty sees her in bed. Yet she is by no means a person of limited interests. For two years after leaving college she studied music in Berlin where she was musical correspondent for the Musical in a s c r i c s i t y p o r t r a i t s Courier and the Continental Times. For three years she taught in an exclusive preparatory school. At the same time she was working for her degree of Master of Arts in political science and con- stitutional law and conducting the musical column of the Cleveland Plain Dealer. While studying law she lectured on music and current political history for the New York Board of Education and before women's clubs in New York and Philadelphia. After her admission to the bar, of course, she practiced law. In a short time she was made assistant prose- cuting attorney of Cuyahoga County, Ohio. Then she was elected judge of the Court of Common Pleas and two years later was elected to the Supreme Court of Ohio. I received my first impression of Judge Allen at a suf- frage conference in Chicago in 1914 when the two suffrage associations were at loggerheads about the so-called Shafroth Amendment. One group, headed by Ruth Hanna McCor- mick, was sponsoring this measure as "opening wedge" leg- islation, while the other was urging concentration on the then apparently hopeless Susan B. Anthony Amendment. Mrs. McCormick had called in the leaders from the Midwest- ern States to explain her amendment. There was much feel- ing on both sides, some of the women regarding any question as to their leader's policies as treason and others attacking this position violently. A young woman arose. She analyzed the suffrage situation, gave a resume of its history, and assailed the wisdom and constitutionality of the Shafroth Amendment. Tactics she swept aside. There was our goal. There was a direct road to it. Ours to take it by the strength of our cause and of our faith in it. I cannot remember any other speech and my memory of hers is due not to the forcefulness of her manner or to the logic of her argument but to the sincerity which animated it, a sincerity so passionate that it placed her at once above all partisanship. I have never since been able to imagine her tied to or absorbed by any organization. She may work with it for a definite purpose but she will never be used by it or have it direct her. Beliefs she has, of course, even convictions, and in this day when they seem rare. But there are others who have both. What differentiates her from the other advocates of causes is the passion of her sincerity. This sincerity is something entirely apart from fanaticism, because it has its roots in reason rather than in emotions. One feels certain that she comes to her beliefs after much serious debate within herself, after weighing the pros and cons, with an ability to see both sides and judicially to weigh them and arrive at what is for her the truth. After she has done that, she serves these beliefs to the uttermost. My second impression of Judge Allen was also gained from a situation. I was campaigning with some officials of the Democratic organization in Ohio and we were speaking to a group of party workers. One of the women present asked the county leader what they should do about Judge Allen who was then running on the ticket for the Supreme

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Dec. 7, 1927] The Nation 629 Court. It was well known that she was a Democrat but she was running as an independent and there was another nomi- nee who was generally regarded as the Democratic candidate. The county chairman, new to women voters, told them in simple terms fit for the comprehension of political novices that Judge Allen had had her opportunity to run in the pri- maries and seek the approval of the Democratic organiza- tion, but, since she had preferred to run as an independent, no matter how fine a Democrat she was personally, all good Democrats should vote for the Democratic nominee. Then Judge Allen could enter the next primaries as a Democrat and they could vote for her. Although I was not familiar with the Ohio law, it had occurred to me while he was speak- ing that the law was possibly written to procure a non-parti- san judiciary and that Judge Allen was running under it and not under the "arrangement" whereby the political or- ganization sought to make it a dead letter. The women, who were Ohioans, did know the law. They also knew their Judge Allen and rallied to her support. For, though the politicians tried their utmost to make it appear that she was a wolf climbing over the partisan fence, these women knew, as did thousands of men, that here was a can- didate who went straight to the heart of the matter and, without excuses or explanations, acted on her belief that the judiciary should be non-partisan. Next to her sincerity I put this ability of hers to go to the heart of a question, past traditions, rules, habits, cus- toms, and the arguments of political sophists. There is no circumlocution about her. She thinks clearly as well as passionately. And she thinks clearly about vital matters — equality, honesty, peace, crime, justice. Perhaps most of her friends would place emphasis on her courage. It would take courage, one would think, to do many of the things she has done — give up a good position to study law, enter the practice of law handicapped as a woman, run against all popular traditions for a judgeship, run for the Senate against a most popular Democratic ex-Senator. But I doubt if it took courage for Judge Allen to do any of these things. I think that she sees so clearly what she should do, and has such a passionate desire to do it, that the question of whether it is easy or hard does not seriously occur to her. But I should never call her aggressive. An aggressive woman is one who exerts herself to get what she wants regardless of the claims of others. Judge Allen does not impress me as reaching so much as standing. The English phrase "standing for election" expresses her mental attitude toward public office and her method of campaigning. She does not run or seek. She stands. She does not exert her force. She merely presents it. An element of this force is her capacity for compassion — not pity, not even sympathy, but a deep sadness over the sufferings of the world. One feels this in every speech she makes. I do not think that it came to her after she lost her beloved brothers in the war. I cannot imagine Judge Allen basing any conclusion or belief on personal experience. She is too much the student. The way she attacked this subject of peace shows that. While she still had no influence, while there was nothing she could do for the cause of peace, she said nothing. But she spent most of her vacations studying the problems of peace, going to the League of Nations at Geneva, and traveling to various capitals in Europe to dis- cuss peace with students and statesmen. She made a thor- ough study of international law. But once having mastered her data and reached her con- clusions, she brought to her conviction for the outlawry of war such passionate sincerity, such directness of thought, such depth of compassion that a United States Senator, hear- ing her at an enormous meeting in Washington, wrote her speech next day into the record and, when I thanked him, said: "I didn't, in fact, know she was a Democrat but I knew it was the best speech I had ever heard on that subject, bar none, and I thought it should be preserved." I make her sound formidable. And she is not. She is the sort of woman to whom any child on a train would appeal for help. She is the kind to whom business girls flock with their troubles. She has a fine sense of humor. She asks no quarter because she is a woman. She yields no precedence because she is one. Not that she is unfeminine. As a matter of fact she is typical of the eternal feminine — the maternal. She would do to serve as a model for a statue of the Motherhood of the Race. One of the things hoped for by the suffragists of old was that suffrage might make available for public service specially gifted women, thus increasing the all too small supply of brain and character for that purpose. Here we have such a woman. Twice an electorate has recognized its opportunity. Once by making Florence Allen judge of the Court of Common Pleas, once by making her judge of the Supreme Court of Ohio. She was defeated for the nomina- tion for the United States Senate. But she will probably run again. Let us hope she does. She brings qualities to public life that are needed, although, if we are to judge by results, seldom desired. In the Driftway TO succeed in life as a stowaway one should not be fat. Of course there are other occupations in which avoir- dupois is no asset. It's no help to a man who is looking for a job as a living skeleton in a circus or to a debutante who is making her bow in society. But especially is fat to be shunned by him who would win his way as a stowaway, for a stowaway must be quick to take advantage of an opening — especially one the size of a ship's porthole. Ettore de Stefano and Joseph Smutney are entitled to a triple A rating as stowaways. Giovanni Sarni isn't — and all because they are lean while he is fat. All three came over in the steam- ship France a year ago — without visas and without tickets. They were detected, and when the ship reached New York they were handcuffed and locked up to be returned to Europe. But one night before the ship sailed Stefano and Smutney rubbed soap on their wrists, wriggled out of their handcuffs, climbed through a porthole, and swam to freedom. For they were lean. Sarni had to remain aboard and go back where he came from. For Sarni was fat and stuck fast in the porthole. ***** BUT though satisfactorily loan, Smutney was not equally wise. In a vest which he discarded in order to facili- tate his exit through the porthole he carelessly left the card of a man in Culver, Indiana. A detective of the French Line found the card, went out to Culver, and Smutney was taken back to New York and deported while the steamship com- pany recovered the $1,000 fine assessed against it for letting him escape. Smutney told the detective he thought Stefano had been drowned in trying to make shore from the ship.

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630 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3257 Smutney hadn't stopped to make sure. It's every man for himself in the profession of stowaway — as in most other callings. * * * -:•:- * BUT Stefano was not drowned. He got ashore, looked the landscape over for a few months, and then returned to Europe — probably in the same way in which he came over. But he had learned to love America, and a month or so ago he returned to New York in the steamship Paris— in the stowaway class, as usual. Again he was imprisoned aboard the ship for deportation. This time he had no convenient porthole, so he escaped by breaking a lock. The same detec- tive was called upon. This time Stefano had been careless. He had left a photograph of himself and a diary kept under the name Hector Stevens. The detective recognized in the photograph his man of a year before, took the trail, and finally learned that a Hector Stevens had been employed at the Hotel Biltmore but had left on account of a skin disease. The detective began a round of clinics and recently found Stefano at the New York Skin and Cancer Hospital. He was taken to Ellis Island and again, since the officials could think of nothing more original, ordered deported. ***** BUT Stefano knew a better trick than that. He stripped to his underwear, got out of his detention room at Ellis Island, and plunged into the frigid bay to swim to Jersey City. Probably he would have succeeded but a couple of tugs were inconsiderately using the same part of the bay at the time. They got between him and the pier he was heading for and, chilled to the marrow, he was obliged to give up. Stefano was once more put behind lock and key at Ellis Island, and as the Drifter has read of no further escape he fears this splendid young stowaway was this time shipped back to Europe. But not for long. Even now he may be on his way back to the golden land of opportunity — in his usual fashion. IF Stefano comes back — or rather when Stefano comes back — the Drifter thinks he should be permitted to enter without further molestation. In fact Mayor Walker should send a tug down New York Bay to welcome him. He has earned the right to enter. Doubtless immigration laws are necessary evils, but there should be some provision making exceptions for persons of special merit and achievement. The Drifter doubts if all of our recent transatlantic fliers have carried passports properly visaed for the countries in which they have landed. Yet none of them has been denied admission or summarily deported. Congress should amend the immigration laws so that anyone successfully smuggling himself into the country three times should be permitted to stay. That would accommodate Stefano upon his next ar- rival, which is as it should be. For Stefano is not only a great stowaway; he is in the making a great American. He has the qualities of daring, resourcefulness, and ingenuity which have made America what it is. We are letting in thousands of inferior individuals wmile keeping a man of Stefano's mettle out. Probably he would not be so adaptable for a job in a Ford factory as some of the others. But he would make a dauntless taxi driver, a fine movie actor, or a successful politician. A successful politician has to know above all things how to crawl out of a tight hole. The Drifter Correspondence That Fifteenth Amendment To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: About two months ago I mailed to every United States Senator a letter asking whether they considered the Fifteenth Amendment ("the right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servi- tude") less sacred than the Eighteenth; why Congress should appropriate $30,000,000 in one year to enforce the Eighteenth and not one cent to enforce the Fifteenth Amendment; whether they would support legislation to enforce the right of colored citizens to vote. I received in all six replies. Senator Borah WTites that the Fifteenth Amendment can- not be enforced on account of its phrase "by any State," which makes all the difference in the world between it and the Eigh- teenth Amendment. Senator Fletcher of Florida writes that no Negro in his State or any other Southern State has ever been denied the right to vote. The remaining four Senators are just as unequivocal and clear-cut in their views on this national problem. Newark, N. J., November 14 A. A. Golden From Mrs. Sacco To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: Right after the legal assassination of my husband and of Bartolomeo Vanzetti the press spoke — and is now speaking — of groups, of organizations born here and there, with the com- passionate purpose: some for the collection of funds for my maintenance and that of my children, made orphans by the plutocracy of the State; some for the collection and publica- tion of memoirs and writings of the two martyrs and of the various phases that characterized the seven years of persecution and torture; some for erecting to them a monument; and some more — as real jackals — using the names of Sacco and Vanzetti as an advertisement that would attract the multitude, for the sale of commercial articles, etc. Companions and friends from France write and send to me newspaper articles that mention subscriptions opened for the families of Sacco and Vanzetti. While I thank those who, in these years of atrocious Calvary, disinterestedly took to heart the fate of the dear martyrs and did not leave either me or my children deprived of assistance, I cannot remain in silence and therefore protest against whatever is speculation as an offense to their memory and to the principles for which they made the supreme sacrifice of their young lives. If the nobility and wisdom of many people of high standing had turned into a struggle against the present system and social order, in order to make impossible, in the future, the repetition of fearful crimes such as that accomplished on August 23 by the State of Massachusetts, they would have obtained the acknowl- edgment and applause of the good. But, since many of these people are at the same time backers of that same system of things that prosecuted, tortured, and assassinated my husband and his companion, Bartolomeo Vanzetti, this arouses disgust if not contempt. Always thanking the friends from France for their good intentions, allow me to say that the names of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti would be better remembered if action and work are dedicated to the defense of the persecuted and con- demned victims of class hatred, and to the restoration of rights and liberty of the peoples that in Europe — as well as in the rest of the world — are choked and ruined. Boston, Massachttsetts, November S Rosina Sacco

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Dec. 7, 1927] The Nation 631 When the birds fly So You, too, can travel with luxurious speed and comfort to a land of glorious sun- shine— a land of light and shadow, of romance and mystery, beauty and wonder. While winter rages here, with snow and rain driven by freezing blasts of wind— you can revel in the mellow sunshine of SOUTH AFRICA If you love the South-land, with glorious flowers and luxuriant fruits — If you enjov winter resorts — If comfort, beauty, gaiety, sports and motoring lure you— If majestic scenery thrills you and age-old mysteries awe you— come to SOUTH AFRICA. Here you find all these and many things you have never seen and only find in this ancient land famous for its legendary history. A number of luxurious "~^£=!£3&f cruises to South Africa have been arranged this winter. They offer you the oppor- tunity of a lifetime. Choose which of the beautifully equipped steamers you pre- fer. Every care has been taken to assure your comfort and pleas- ure. Each boat has been specially ar- ranged to insure ease and luxury, from the time you leave New York. Inde- pendent trips may be easily arranged, on fast modern vessels if you prefer. South Africa is a land of invigorating climate, where life is full of song and pleasure. Here modern civilization moves side by side with picturesque, quaint, dignified native Kraal life. Side by side with modern surgery, witch doc- tors still ply their craft. You will find striking animal life and luxurious, flow- ering vegetation of unique and interest- ing character. The beauties of the Kirs- tenbosch Botanical Gardens offer a strik- ing contrast to the primeval forests. You can use a ricksha pulled by a warrior Zulu or, if you prefer, an American You automobile is at your disposal, will find modern comfortable accommodations. You travel on swift modern railway trains, or over miles of iron stone motor roads ; while at eventide, if you desire, you enjoy the latest "hits" at the theatres or drink in the glory of the Victoria Falls by moonlight. There are many things in South Africa you can never see in other countries: hotel Great Diamond Mines Mile Deep Gold Fields Mysterious Zimbabwe Ruins The Magic Congo Caves Barbaric Bantu War Dances Quaint Kaffir Kraals The Mighty Drakensberg Moun- tains Wonderful Victoria Falls Speedy, Preening Ostriches Kruger Big Game Park and Glorious Cape Peninsula Surf Bathing on unrivalled sea-beaches. Sea angling from rock bound coasts for the finest sporting fish of the world. Trout fishing in Golden Rivers — the angler's paradise. Golf on sporty courses midst nearby towering mountains. Year round outdoor tennis on fast, true, ant-heap courts. The de luxe cruises to South Africa this winter are rapidly being booked. You will find this trip a pleasurable relaxation and enjoy scenes and activities which will always remain a delightful reminis- cence. Write for detailed information and free booklet, "South African Game Tours," or send 12c (to cover postage) for fully illustrated travel literature. GOVERNMENT BUREAU of SOUTH AFRICA Bowling Green Offices No. 1 1 Broadway, New York City %* When writing to advertisers please mention The Nation ts?

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632 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3257 The Perils of Paris To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: In your article from Paris dealing with the visit of the American Legion I was surprised to read some severe re- marks on their conduct here. I was not in close contact with them, but as I observed them in the streets and public places they seemed to be very well-behaved. I thought a good many of them were in low spirits. They used to hang about the sheds in the Cours la Reine in a disheartened sort of way. I think many of them probably realized for the first time since the war that nine years have passed since the armistice was signed. They were not prepared for the Paris of today — the hard, vio- lent city which is not only utterly different from the Paris be- fore the war, but from the Paris during the war, the Paris they knew more or less. Some of the legionaries drank wine on their visit, as they had a perfect right to do. The French would have been very much hurt if they had not. Personally, I never saw one of them drunk, or even in an exuberant mood. I should not suppose that, taken as a body, they spent much money here. The French commercial class, as shrewd a lot as there is in the world, had discounted their visit before they arrived. "The legion- aries are not the kind of Americans who spend money in Paris," was what the shopkeepers and hotel-keepers said. The French Government spent several million francs to entertain the Legion. I very much doubt if the money spent by the legionaries in Paris came near covering this outlay of the city of Paris for their entertainment. While on the question of conduct of Americans in Paris, I would call your attention to something very singu'ar. Many of your readers have heard Ambassador Herrick's celebrated remark about Lindbergh. "Lindbergh left Paris as pure as when he entered it." In fact, the "purity" of Lindbergh, and the danger for him in the temptations with which Paris is sup- posed— I don't know why — to be infested, received a good deal of attention from specialists in these matters. But now comes Miss (or Mrs.) Ruth Elder here along, and not a word have we heard about the dangers of Paris for her. There are now several American Protestant churches in Paris. On the Sunday Ruth Elder passed here I could not of course go to all of them, but I managed to go to three. I was much disappointed. There was some perfunctory allusion to the Elder performance, but not one minister thought fit to lecture her about the snares spread round her feet, or to enjoin her to leave Paris as pure as she entered it. Do they think Mrs. Elder is better able to take care of herself than a big, husky fellow like Lindbergh? And yet Lindbergh lived in Mr. Herrick's fam- ily, and went to bed at ten every night, while Mrs. Elder faces the crowd in pantaloons, with a man who is not her hus- band, and did not go near a church on Sunday. Do the min- isters think she is past saving? Or that she is in no need of advice? Anyhow, it is very strange that it is the young man who is so jealously guarded and sedulously kept on the right track and not the young woman. The New York Herald Tribune (Paris edition) which has become quite wowser of late years and runs the Rev. Dr. Cadman's advice on the editorial page, even suggested that she should see some of the "night life" of Paris — whatever that is. It is not the night life in the Salvation Army barracks, at any rate. It was as much as any one's life was worth to mention the word "night" in connection with Lind- bergh. I thought of sending him Young's "Night Thoughts," but counsels of prudence prevailed. Covering the Legion visit was a « tain amount of big melo- drama stuff. The ash-tray story, for instance. Some bright party got it into his head to manufacture and distribute an ash-tray with a picture of a legionary dancing with a naked woman. Nobody took much notice of it till it was spied out by a reporter of VCEuvre. Immediately Gustave Tery, the editor, loosened up his big batteries. The thing was an insult to the French woman, the French mother. Other papers joined in. The manufacturer .was hunted out, and as he proved to be a Swiss or German he was expelled. Yet the idea, after all, was harmless enough. It was simply a rather vulgar way of letting the Legion know that they were in for a great time. And who is to say that the woman was meant to be French? Every nationality, including Americans and Japanese, are to be found in the dancing and supping places nowadays. The night cabarets, which are, I suppose, the high spots the New York Herald thought Ruth Elder might visit, are often run by a Greek or other Levantine, manned and womaned by Russians and all varieties of Slavs who pass for Russians, as well as Persians, Armenians, Finlanders, and Magyars, with a Frenchman as landlord, and sometimes — though rarely — the cashier French also. As long as his rent is punctually remitted the French landlord does not trouble about what the "barbarians" do in his house. The English papers were much amused at the care the French police took to purify Paris for the Americans. But the truth is that the measures were necessary for the protection of the decent people of Paris. Paris, France, Xovember 3 Vincent O'Si'LLlVAN Through Sports to Peace? To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: For the first time I find myself in entire disagree- ment with one of your editorials. I, too, would feel gloomy about the peace mission of sports had I not participated in international contests in many countries. American school-children are drilled and trained to be biased and prejudiced in sports and this partisanship sometimes finds painful expression in international games, creating the impression abroad that Americans are not good sportsmen. During the first days of the Olympic games of 1920 at Ant- werp a group of American Boy Scouts were instructed to give an American yell before each trial, concluding with the name of the representative of the United States. The yell was repeated in a fortissimo after an American victory, but the boys were silent after a defeat. But the atmosphere changed rapidly; in those days many a prejudice was broken down and many friendships established across national and color lines. After the great explosion of a chemical factory in the Rhineland in the summer of 1921 the Groupement sportif — a sport association of civilian Frenchmen working in German occupied territory — organized a sports meeting for the benefit of those who had suffered. This meeting, attended by German and French civilians, and officers and privates of the French army, contributed substantially to a better feeling between Ger- mans and French. Football games between German and French civilian teams subsequently became an ordinary occurrence in the Rhineland. I regard the German sport movement also as an expression of revolt against the rigid regimentation of the old Turnvereine. Sport has helped to break down many class barriers in Germany and there more than anywhere else sport, with its international competition, is something approaching a "moral equivalent for war." Some years ago it was the custom to send warships as good-will messengers to other countries; today athletic young men fulfil such missions with greater effect. Many peculiar conceptions of Finland and the Finns have been dispelled by the visit to these shores of such splendid athletes and fine sports- men as Kohlemainen, Ritola, and Nurmi. Did not Lindbergh, Chamberlin. and Byrd and his companions prove themselves splendid ambassadors? Competitive sports in the United States of America are keen, hard, and ruthless. Great publicity, social prestige, scholarships, remunerative positions, "political jobs," all make losing hard. There is little sport for the joy of it. Fortunately in the rest of the world, where sports have not be«n commer-

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Dec. 7, 1927] The Nation WHAT DOES JEWISH SOCIAL WORK OFFER AS A CAREER? (5) Jewish social workers . . . are . . . in ti>tful information. — including the latest accepted vo- cabulary terms and important addi- tions to the biographical and Gazetteer departments — such entries as camoufleur, kinetophone, Latvia, Vimy, Hughes, Lenin. A Short Cut to Accurate Information .on for reading and study hours that will quickly make itself indispensable for its wealth ol ready information on thousands of pu/.'ling questions. 1.700 illustrations; 1.256 pages; printed on Bible Paper; bound in full leather with gold stamping. S7. 50; in flexible fabrikoid. gold stamped. $6; in Art Canvas, S5- Purch&se of your bookseller; send order and remittance direct to us; or writeforiniormation. Free spec- imen pegesif you mention this paper When buying — insist upon n "MERRIAM WEBSTER" G.&C.MERRIAMCO. SPRINGFIELD, MASS. NEW WORDS

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634 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3257 cialized to any great extent, people still can and do play, and that is why I can see an avenue through sport to peace. Paulsboro, N. J., November 9 Harry F. V. Edward Political Science To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: My son, a student at Hamilton College, writes me: Tuesday we took our political-science field trip into Utica. And what a raucous time we had! We certainly got all the first-hand details. I was sent to one of the polls to solicit Republican votes. No attention was paid to the 100-foot rule and we even had representatives inside the building. The chief function of the ward committeeman was to appear at stated intervals with a bottle of Scotch and disperse the same. Even the policemen came in for that. Votes were bought left and right, the top price being two bucks. Our man won, rather unexpectedly, and you should have seen the Republican Club that night! Most of the men were propped up against the wall, and I guess they had to pour some officials into bed. It's a great town. Albany, N. Y., November 25 William Pater For Greco and Carillo To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: In a recent editorial paragraph dealing with the Greco-Carillo case you said that I was chairman of an Amer- ican committee of defense. I am happy to announce that Ital- ians and Americans interested in the case have been able to set up one joint committee on which every radical am liberal group, party, or taction interested in the case has been able to unite. To those who know the strength of feeling that often divides us the achievement of this unity must seem a good omen worthy to rank with Clarence Darrow's consent to take the case. Nevertheless this is no time for false confidence. Those who demand victims, even innocent victims, to satisfy their lust for revenge for the murder of two Fascists in the Bronx on last Decoration Day are relentless and unscrupulous. Not for one minute do we suspect that the trial judge who will sit when the case begins on December 5 will be a second Webster Thayer. Unfortunately, in these cases involving a necessarily expensive defense it takes more than a fair judge to save poor, radical, alien workers from a frame-up. A conservative budget calls for $20,000. This must be raised. It is a small sum to deliver us from a repetition of such anguish as we knew in the Sacco-Vanzetti case and to save American justice from another such tragic blight. Of this united Greco-Carillo Defense Committee Robert Morss Lovett is chairman, Arturo Giovannitti vice-chairman, Marguerite Tucker secretary, Filipo Greco treasurer, and Stuart Chase auditor. We are happy to announce that the editor of The Nation is one of its members. Temporary offices are at 70 Fifth Avenue, where your contributions will be promptly acknowledged. New York, November 28 Norman Thomas "Liberty Under the Soviets" To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: Since writing my article on Liberty Under the Soviets I have learned of a half dozen cases in 1922 qualifying the general statement that no anarchists have been executed since the civil wars stopped. The executions were for "banditry" without trial in court, but the activities of these anarchists clearly had nothing to do with bandits. In the interest of accuracy in a difficult field of fact, this exception to the general statement is owed your readers. November 15 Rogsr Baldwin Texas vs. Denmark To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: I find myself caring less and less how it seems to Heywood Broun. From the greatness of his name when he was with the World, I was expecting something when he joined the staff of The Nation. But Bruce Calvert, from his Pigeon Roost, can utter platitudes with twice as much kick. I think The Nation got gypped. New Braunfels, Texas, November 1 Philip N. Rawson To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: Heywood Broun on prohibition is great! Copenhagen, Denmark, October 29 Gladys Southard To Readers in Chicago and Hamburg To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: Believing that readers of The Nation have a great many interests in common, a group of men and women in Chi- cago have formed a fellowship whose object it is to get together for the interchange of ideas on, and to stimulate an interest in, civic, political, and educational problems, and to meet socially. Will Chicago readers of The Nation, who feel that they may be interested in such a group, write to the undersigned, 7217 Yates Avenue, at once, as a meeting is to be held very shortly. Chicago, November 18 Claire P. GREENE To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: We want a group of live-minded people, readers of The Nation, to meet monthly at my home, Eilbecktal 56, Ham- burg 23, to discuss public matters. Fred Ruesch Hamburg, German]), November 11 This Unbelieving Nation To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: I do not write to The Nation with the least desire or expectation of having anything printed that I write but simply to satisfy myself. You interest me greatly and I read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest what you print, and do not believe one word of it. Why? Simply because you are on the side of the poor, the oppressed, and the exploited! For my part I hate the poor! Damn 'em, they only make me uncomfortable by their misery! Through all the ages the money question has lain at the heart of all social evolution. All history is but the story of the struggle between those who have and those who have not. I trace it through all the life of Israel, and the prophets are ever fulminating against the rich and pleading for the poor. Jesus, the last of the prophets of Israel, did the same. The primitive Christians and the apostles sounded the same note The Nation is sounding today, and it never amounted to a row of pins and never will. Nothing amuses me more than people who tell me that their objection to The Nation is that it is so unbelieving and skeptical. God save the mark! At heart you are a bunch of idealists, prophets, and primitive Christians. The mystery to me is where you get your courage for all this great faith you display! During your Sacco and Vanzetti spasms one would have thought that Jesus Christ or Saint Francis of Assisi was running your editorial pages. You drove some of my female friends on the coast here nearly insane with sympathy for those men. You were certainly the victims of a veritable hysteria that char- acterizes mystics. But it is no use! You live in the world of Calvin Coolidge, G. O. P., and the crowd that stoned and built the tombs of the prophets and crucified Jesus Christ. Charles Edward Stowe Santa- Barbara, California, November 1

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Dec. 7, 1927] The Nation 635 Sunday, December i 11 A.M. — Morning Service SYUD HOSSAIN "Islam's Contribution to Civilization" 8 P.M. — Community Forum PAXTON HIBBEN "Fascismo — Is Democracy Passing?' Admission Free Thursday, December 8 8.15 P. M.— JOHN FARRAR "The Literature of Propaganda" Admission 75c Wednesday, December SI 8.15 P.M.— JUDGE BEN LINDSEY "The Companionate Marriage" Reserved Sections 50c, 75c, $1.00 BERTRAND RUSSELL Lectures On "Companionate Marriage" First time this subject has been publicly advocated by this distinguished philosopher in New York City! Introductory Speech by RUTH HALE, Chairman At MECCA TEMPLE, 133 W. 55th St., New York City SATURDAY EVENING, Dec. 3rd, 1927 Tickets on Sale at Box Office and at American Public Forum, Room 1006, 1650 Broadway. N. Y. City. Tel. Circle 4352. Reserved Seats: $3.30, $2.75, $2.20, $1.65, $1.10. An Important New Book The Business of the Supreme Court A Study in the Federal Judicial System By Felix Frankfurter and James M. Landis of the Faculty of the Harvard Law School HpHIS is the first authoritative study of the origin, history and successive modi- fications of the Federal court system from the First Judiciary Act of 1789 to the Judi- ciary Act of 1925. It treats of the steady expansion of jurisdiction of the Supreme Court, the scope of its business and procedure, its political significance in the operations of the Union, and its place in the dynamic process of government. Practicing lawyers, students of political science, historians of American institutions, and thought- ful laymen will find it a valuable contribution to legal history by two eminent authorities. Obtainable at any Bookshop — $5.00 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW YORK J BOOKS/orXMA Give Books for Xmas. There are few gifts finer. By ordering them direct from us you can make your Budget take care of more friends/ 2 .59 POST PAID REG. $3.00 THAT MAN HEINE By Lewis Browne Napoleon, Revolt in the Desert, Tragic Bride, Reforging America, The Revolt of Modern Youth, The Companionate Marriage, Ad- ventures in Arabia, The Counterfeiters, A Short History of Women, The Next Age of Man, The Doctor Looks at Love and Life, TheRighttoBeHappy, Revolt of Asia, and any other $3 book. GENIUS and CHARACTER sy LudWlg Why We Behave Like Human Beings, This ^^ ftn Believing World, The Story of Music, Seven $*■ Mg Seals of Science, Genghis Khan, The Builders of America, Certain Rich Men, TheRomantick Lady, Cleared for Strange Ports, Desert Winds, and any other $3.50 book, REG. $3.50 ADAM & EVE JALNA $10,000 Atlantic Monthly Novel Barberry Bush, "It," Rebellion, Forlorn River, Strange Woman, Bugles in the Night, An Un- married Father, Now East — Now West, Caste, Now We Are Six, I Know a Secret, Chivalry, Peak, Fancy Lady, Lost Ecstasy, Mor- Almanack, Reg. $2.00 2 POST PAID Prof. Erskine's Latest Success Red Sky at Morning, Some- thing About Eve, Kitty, The Mad Carews, Gallions Reach, Elmer Gantry, Oil, Circus Parade, We, The Grandmothers, Power, The Cap of Youth, The Wayward Man, Zelda Marsh, Splendor, Bridge of San Luis Rey, Crude, Ladies of the Underworld, Navigator, Mes- senger of the Gods, Over the Boat- side, Right Off the Map, Arrogant Beggar, Dusty Answer, Death Comes for the Arch- bishop, Lazy Isle, Chains, Mother Knows Best, A Good Woman, Dream of a Woman, and any other $2.50 fiction. 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International Relations Section What Is Happening in China's Kuomintang By ROY CORT [The following article is by an American who was closely associated with the work of the Kuomintang until after the Hankow-Nankin;/ split. It gives an authoritative picture of the views of the Left Kuomintang, led by Mrs. Sun Yat-seu, which has been mistakenly denounced as "Communist."] I IT has been plain for a long time that the Kuomintang — the Chinese Nationalist Party — was a heterogeneous or- ganization into which all sorts of nationalist-minded Chinese have entered. They were, at first, even predominantly of the middle classes which wanted a unified China, an autono- mous China, a China free of foreign exploitation, a China whose tariffs could be used for Chinese industrial protection, whose tariff receipts would enhance the profits of Chinese rather than foreign banks. For this element in the party the socio-economic program meant nothing. They did not at first even understand it. But the Left Kuomintang did understand it, seeing clearly that the full Kuomintang pro- gram could win throughout the country only if it had a wide base of general popular support. In Hankow the sig- nificance of the Left program (up to that time, in fact, the real Kuomintang program, the Sun Yat-sen program) began to make itself apparent. Trade unions were officially encouraged and tremendous strides were made in their or- ganization and expansion. The peasants were organized and the troubles of the country-folk were explained to them in terms of landlord exploitation (which in the southern and central provinces is fact) and upon faulty financing which puts the peasant annually into the hands of usurers — the local moneyed gentry. strikes and disturbances, some characterized by ludi- crous demands and violent tactics, inevitably followed. All this, in foreign eyes, was "bolshevism" and "communism," the result of Russian influence. Any detached assay of the conditions and wages, to improve which these strikes were called, will result in admission that there was justification for them, even if not for the excessive demands or the often violent tactics. Equally far-fetched demands, equally ab- surd tactics, and as violent, characterized the early years of the trade-union movement in the West. They are the in- evitable concomitants of the first apprehension of power which comes to groups of men seeking to alleviate insuffer- able working conditions. Many even of the officials of the Wuhan (Wuchang and Hankow and Hanyang, the three cities at the junction of the Yangtze and Han rivers) Government became worried at this general condemnation. They did not see its essen- tially foreign source. They had no long-termed view of Kuomintang political policy, nor were they able to see that the disturbing phases of the economic policy must inevitably come to an end when the workers, "oming up against hard economic facts, would be forced to modify their program and tactics. (The facts of the whole strike period in Wuhan show that the actual results, for the workers, were not great, even though sufficient to show the trade-union movement in China that it can win something.) All that these leaders could see was that there was much criticism. Their friends, their relatives in business, and the land- owning gentry began to give warnings. It frightened these timid souls, among whom might be mentioned most of the men who came down from Wuhan in September to take their places in the "reconstructed" Nanking Government. The break first came in April, 1927, when Chiang Kai- shek smashed through the traces of party discipline and proclaimed his own government at Nanking. That was clear proof of the pressure of the foreigners' cry of "Com- munist! Communist!" For that cry was at its strongest in Shanghai. Here was the largest group of Chinese busi- ness men in constant contact with the foreign point of view, most amenable to its daily iterated expression. Up to that time, in Wuhan at least, the Left leaders controlled the official viewpoint and policy. But there had been subterranean whispers and criticism and head-shak- ing. The revolt of Chiang Kai-shek was all that the "mod- erate" (as they are improperly called) elements in Wuhan needed. There began a general shift to the Right, reaching its officially sanctioned climax in the tentative mandate of the Political Council of the Kuomintang on July 14 that there must be a "purging of the party." That meant a campaign against the so-called "Communists" and the Left- ists generally. Only Mrs. Sun Yat-sen and Eugene Chen took a stand in opposition to the mandate. Because of their opposition the mandate was not made official by the Central Executive Committee, but it was a sufficient cue to Gen- erals Tang Sheng-chi and Ho Chien, the chief military com- manders at Wuhan. They at once proceeded to act as if given official sanction by the highest authority. Indeed, they had, for the mandate did express intention. They closed the labor unions and quartered troops in their offices. They hunted trade-union leaders and executed "Commun- ists." Tang Sheng-chi had done this wholesale in Hunan in May and June without any mandate from the govern- ment. His own will had been sufficient. Mrs. Sun's statement, given out for publication July 17, made clear the schism that had come about. She pil- loried in burning terms the leaders who had "betrayed the policies of Sun Yat-sen" and had given way before the wills of unprincipled militarists. She especially made the whole question one between the leaders and their consciences, say- ing the crisis was a test of individuals as well as of opinions and principles. She made it clear that there was now no longer any difference between the personal government of Chiang Kai-shek at Nanking and the government at Wuhan. Both had alike turned their backs on the very classes upon which the whole Nationalist movement must be based. Both factions, she made plain, had definitely betrayed Sun Yat- sen's policies and she would have no further connection with either. She left Wuhan for Shanghai. She is now touring the world in the interest of the Left Kuomintang. When, on August 8, the details of the "Communist" revolt of Generals Ho Lung and Yeh Ting at Nanchang became known in Wuhan, all the Left members of the Cen- tral Executive Committee — except Mrs. Sun and Eugene Chen — were expelled. II The cornerstone of Left Kuomintang policy is this: that there can be no controlling the feudal-minded mili- tarists (who abound quite as numerously, it had developed,

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Dec. 7, 1927] The Nation 637 Tivo Good Guides To the Book Giver! CONGAREE SKETCHES By E. C. L. Adams With an Introduction by PAUL GREEN The scenes from negro life way down in de Congaree swamps of South Carolina are told in the remarkably alive dialect of the region, in the form of purest drama. The author has the courage and sense to let his material speak entirely for itself. And it does ! It will be a real discovery to the reader looking at it for the first time, and each Teading thereafter will be a rediscovery of something rare. Not a single critic failed to write enthusiastically of CON- GAREE SKETCHES, including the Manchester Guardian, the London Spec- tator, the 7Ven> Republic, The Nation, the Survey Graphic, the Saturday Re- view of Literature, and the leading daily journals of the United States. $2.00 AMERICA AND FRENCH CULTURE, 1750-1848 By Howard Mumford Jones Here in one volume are revealed a new method in the study of comparative cul- ture (every aspect of our relationship with France, from deism to egg ome- lettes, is considered), a point of view which gets away from the old formulae and literary cliches, and a style that fully accords with the vigor of the ideas pre- sented. $4.50 THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA PRESS CHAPEL HILL N. C. WHAT does Trader Horn think about as he sits at his ease — with his book earning $4,000 a week royalties? He writes his col- laborator, Ethelreda Lewis, with true generosity: "You can rest assured that all honour acrousing from the book is justly yours; I think it the luckiest claim I ever pegged; You'v sure got your Discovery notice up right in the center of the biggest literrary Diamond mine you could dream of; Pros- pector's luck I call it." This book has sold over 80,000 copies, and all crit- ics and readers proclaim it the most thrilling book they ever read. $4.00 \f t^i* Simon and Schuster, Inc. Publishers of Books 3 7 West 57th Street, New York ifr OPEN SHELF J& GOOD CHEER COMRADES! Want to buy, sell. or swap books, bronzes, old china, clocks, curios, etchings, lamps, paintings, prints, oriental rugs? Bus, or stroll to Daca's, 63 Washington So;.. So., N. Y. C. Books always 20 to 80% off. Open «vea. COMPLETE and unexpurgated translations of Foreign Classics. Privately Printed and Illus- trated Editions. 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A. hereby receives The Inner Sanctum's private Pulitzer Prize for the perfect simile, the perfect review and t he perfect tribute, all contained in the following single paragraph on Arthur Schnitzler's new novel Day- break: We could no more quit reading Daybreak before we had finished it, than say "Well, this is my last hand," when we were a terrific loser. The columnists are all coming out for Daybreak. Says Elmer Davis in The New York Herald Tribune: Schnitzler being a classic, publishers can afford to issue his short books at a reduced price. Read Daybreak and you are likely to emit a lusty roar at the next overstuffed novel that comes your way. MA _ Early prowlers in The Inner Sanctum yesterday might have found the sales manager and the editorial director huddled in earnest conclave. The pith of it all is contained in these solemn resolutions: a — That Schnitzler's new novel Daybreak was getting under way even faster than Fraulein Else, Beatrice, None But the Brave, or Rhapsody. b — That it was best to be absolutely frank with the reading public and feature Day- break as a novel of cards and women — which it is. c — That if the re-orders keep swirling in, giving the house a sixth best seller, and up- setting all our expensive five-out-of-ten- best-sellers advertising, we will just have to grin and bear it pliilosophically. Trader Horn forges far ahead in our own sweepstakes this week. Any members of the American Skeptics Society who challenged our recent an- nouncement that this book was earning §1,000 a week in royalties are hereby informed, not without a little gloating, that, on the first two days of this week alone orders for more than 3,100 copies were counted by our embattled adding machines. To-night the monastic breth- ren of t he sanctum forsake the lamp and the library to prowl about million-footed Mannahatta. It is not to be simply a plunge into night life but our first chance to behold the Daunting and many-hued "twenty-four sheets" posted up and down the isle proclaiming the glories of The Story of Philosophy and Trader Horn. __ Modest) is a shabby and para- doxical virtue if one calls too much at- tention to it, but The Inner Sanctum cannot resist the temptation to tell this one: Three months ago when we wrote copy for om outdoor advertising cam- paign, we calculated that by the third week of November Trader Horn woidd be in its 75th thousand and The Story of Philosophy in its 200th thousand. To-day Trader Horn is in its 92nd thou- sand and when our next printing order comes through (any minute now) The Story of Philosophy will be entering (we can scarcely believe it ourselves) its third hundred thousand. — ESSANDESS

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638 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3257 among the Nationalist commanders as among the North- erners) until there is a broad base for the pyramid whose apex shall be a civilian government under the Kuo- mintang. Since peasants constitute from 85 to 90 per cent of the country's population, and the workers constitute the major portion of the population in the cities, the Kuomintang pyramid must be based on the peasantry and workers. The support of these can be won only by giving them some- thing. Popular support for a political party can be won, in China as in America or Britain, only by answering the question: In what manner will it help us? The Kuo- mintang reply to this question was: Better wages and shorter hours for the workers; and for the peasants lower rents and no exploitation from the landed gentry, and a government-controlled system for financing the farmer with- out usury. To these specific replies were added the more general ones of an end to militarist exploitation and a period to the special privileges of foreigners in China. The masses of China are a force, a vast political force, which only the Left Kuomintang leaders realize, or have succeeded in using. And they had won the masses, not by the terrorism of bayonets but by the persuasion of an economic program. This program contemplates widespread trade-union organization in all trades and crafts, and a great and general improvement in the now admittedly bad conditions obtaining in all the large-scale industries in China. It contemplates a revolutionazw reorganization of the land system and, perhaps, a cutting-up of the larger holdings in some of the central and southern provinces. It contemplates a great reduction in rentals for peasant hold- ings and a new system for financing the peasant, a system which will end the usurious control of the farmer now ex- erted by the village gentry, who are not only the bankers for the peasants but their granaries and middle-men as well. It may be feared, in some quarters, that a definite attempt will be made to seize the land outright. This happened in Hunan Province in April and May, but on a very small scale, out of all proportion to the amount of publicity given it in the British press in China. But this will not be the policy of the Left Kuomintang. That policy recognizes ownership of land, but it will plan for an effective curb on the practical slavery of the working peasants which the present landlordism and gentry-banker system involve. All of this, enlightened Chinese leaders point out, will do nothing finally to affect adversely the position of foreign business in China. It will, beyond question, increase the cost of living in China. That is something which more level-headed and far-seeing foreign business men already recognize as an inevitability. And they welcome it — those who are looking at the Chinese field in terms of decades rather than months — for an increase in the cost of living will naturally mean a greater circulation of money. Ill What are the results, politically, o in of eftists and the coalition i Wuhan and Nanking elements? The masses, wiiost demonstrated, must be won for any finally \ is Na- tionalist movement, are quiescent and cowed. Their organs labor unions. orj aniza ganized," which is a euphemism for emasculated. leaders are chad or in hiding. The "reorganized'' aded by non-workers or non-peasants. They official or "fascist" unions and organizations. The : s and work Actually, in both country and city, the nuclei of the old unions still remain and, in underground fashion, function. The driving force of the Left elements is lost to the new government. The men who head it are, for the most part, elderly men who are as archaic in their ideas and methods as are the men of Peking. They are slightly pro- gressive mandarins, little more. Foreign influence in China, then, has been instrumental in bringing about the return to power of such leaders. IV I have not touched upon the effect the more active inter- vention of both the British and the Japanese had in bring- ing about the shift to the Right. Japan's armed interven- tion in Shantung had a marked effect (some believe decid- ing) on the Northern campaign beyond the Yangtze. This had its repercussion in Wuhan by making some of the lead- ers there believe in the need for reconciliation with Chiang Kai-shek and his Nanking group. The British intervention in Shanghai also had its effect on purely Chinese politics. I have here dealt with what are more nearly psychological factors instrumental in bringing about the breakdown of Leftist power. The other phases, the physical effect of the presence of foreign troops, make another story. Contributors to This Issue Frank L. Palmer, formerly editor of the Denver Labor Advocate, has been doing relief work in the strike field. Arthur Warner is associate editor of The Nation. Lawrence Todd is on the Washington Bureau of the Asso- ciated Press. Emily Newell Blair is a member of the League of Wo- men Voters and vice-chairman of the Democratic Na- tional Committee. Benjamin Stolberg, noted student of the American Labor movement, is a frequent contributor to The Nation. Norman Hapgood, well-known editor and author, has re- cently published a life of "Al" Smith. John Gould Fletcher is an American poet now living in England. W. E. Woodward, novelist and biographer, is the author of "George Washington." J. A. Hobson is an eminent British economist and a con- tributing editor of The Nation. R. F. Dibble is the author of "Mohammed" and other biographies. John Haynes Holmes is pastor of the Community Church in New York. Alter Brody frequently reviews fiction for The Nation. Keith Hutchison is an English journalist now living in New York. Luther E. Robinson is professor of history at Monmouth College. Harold J. Laski is professor of political science in the University of London and author recently of "Com- munism." Lewis Galantiere is an American critic and translator who has spent much of his time in Europe. Henry Brennecke is professor of German at New York University. Joseph Jastrow, author of numerous works on psychology, is a frequent reviewer for The Nation. J. Bartlet Brebner is assistant professor of history at Columbia University. Lawrence Adler is head of the Academic Department of the Curtis Institute of Music at Philadelphia.

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Holiday Book Section Walter Lippmann, Connoisseur of Public Life By BENJAMIN STOLBERG MR. LIPPMANN'S publishers do not have to scream that his "Men of Destiny" ' is the book since Plutarch's "Lives." They merely indicate that Mr. Lippmann is a man of consequence. He is a connoisseur of public life. He appreciates that social politics is the behavior of a culture, and he has civilized himself accordingly. His learning is not too heavy, it is well distributed and limber. His intel- lectualism is not the usual desperate effort but authentic. He is a natural journalist: a shrewd detective of private motives in public life. All of which makes Mr. Lippmann a man of conse- quence; of which he is quite sensible. He is not so much a professional journalist as he is a man of considerable im- portance. There is something in his temper which tends to make him, as the years go by, more prominent than signifi- cant. For fourteen years he has been writing books in social theory, each one a contribution of more or less dis- tinction. But what one remembers of "A Preface to Poli- tics," "Drift and Mastery," "The Stakes of Diplomacy," "Public Opinion," "The Phantom Public" is no more sub- stantive than these hazy titles. He is persuasive in the reading, but he blurs in retrospect. One comes to feel that he is more sophisticated and astute than wise, more com- petent than sound. Possibly he unwittingly resents this inversion in the scale of values. His urbanity protests a little: it is a trifle pompous. A certain condescension, a touch of civilized conceit defends his observations. The essays collected in "Men of Destiny" are no doubt intended merely as a passing show. The few papers on cur- rent issues are appropriately fugitive. Yet I think that this is Mr. Lippmann's most revealing book. For some of these "Men of Destiny" point the reason why Mr. Lippmann never quite satisfies. Mr. Lippmann is afraid. He is afraid to venture beyond sophistication to its conclusions. He is afraid to leave the noblesse oblige of the open mind. He is mortally afraid of landing on the soap-box, not be- cause the soap-box is a dangerous place but because it is no place for a connoisseur. And when the truth has to de- scend to platitude and insist that the difference between the old and the new Tammany is very large but largely un- important, Mr. Lippmann yawns: "Tammany is ... no worse . . . than other political machines." Or when the truth has to rant a bit and say plainly that the friend- ship between Wilson and House was a friendship of con- venience between a psychopathic egoist and a glorified po- litical fixer — disgustingly clear in "The Intimate Papers of Colonel House" — Mr. Lippmann writes twenty pages on Wilson and House to show that the truth is not quite so simple. Indeed, the whole book seems to indicate that the Wilsonian nausea left in Mr. Lippmann an anti-democratic complex rather than a revulsion against the Wilsoniad itself. With those "Men of Destiny" in whose destiny the Open Mind never had a stake Mr. Lippmann is free and easy. With them his acuteness is unhampered. He shows clearly 1 The Macmillan Company. $2.50. that Bryan never changed from his know-nothing radical- ism in 1896 to his know-nothing fundamentalism in 1925. To Bryan democracy was a show of hands within sight. He banked on the least common denominator of mankind, its most common ignorance. He died after gorging him- self with the heavy food of a know-nothing diet, symbolic of his democratic dogma. He was a martyr to his sterling ignorance. And Mr. Lippmann wrote his best obituary. In the essay on The Kellogg Doctrine its doctrinaire emerges as a simple and bewildered man. Mr. Kellogg al- ways looks on the verge of tears. As one of the leaders of the American bar he honestly believes that the United States Supreme Court, if it had the jurisdiction, would un- doubtedly declare the Mexican constitution of 1917 uncon- stitutional. And Nicaragua acts as though this were 1776. He is merely trying to protect the Calles regime from illegal excesses against Doheny and the Nicaraguans from fail- ing in their duty by the Seligmans and Browns. What's wrong with that? Mr. Lippmann explains to Mr. Kellogg. This essay is really a primer in the evolution of the Monroe Doctrine for the Kellogg mind. In looking into The Greatness of Mr. Mellon Mr. Lippmann is less patient. He takes Mr. Mellon's admirers at their word that their hero is comparable to Alexander Hamilton. He compares the two, which really is a dirty trick on Mr. Mellon. Both live in the eighteenth century. Both believe in plutocracy. And there the awful difference begins. "The difference is that Hamilton believed in plu- tocracy as a means to an end; Mr. Mellon believes in plu- tocracy as an end in itself." Hamilton wanted to build a nation by eighteenth-century methods. Mr. Mellon wants rich men to grow richer by the same methods. He is not bound by time. By 1985 he proposes to collect $22,000,- 000,000 from Europe. In the meantime he means to tax the poor more heavily than the rich, lest the rich lose their initiative in working the poor. Mr. Mellon "is a high pro- tectionist by birth." He has achieved an enormous for- tune. And he had greatness thrust upon him. He reminds Mr. Lippmann of Alexander Hamilton as much as Jack Dempsey reminds him of "Julius Caesar who for a time was champion of the world." With Messrs. McAdoo and Borah Mr. Lippmann is more affable and cautious. Hope springs eternal in the liberal breast, and both gentlemen have raised it now and then. To Mr. McAdoo, it seems to me, Mr. Lippmann is a bit too kind. Mr. McAdoo's worldliness, political sagacity, boldness, and high administrative gifts are shiftier than they appear in Mr. Lippmann's sketch. Mr. McAdoo's virtues are so dexterous that it is hard to see them. Senator Borah's virtues, on the other hand, are so in- dependent that it is hard to use them. The Senator is so innately and immediately independent that he is absolutely undependable. He is untrammeled even by the logic of his own convictions. The Constitution enjoins liberty, while consistent views encroach upon it. And so the Senator deems it unconstitutional to have such views. His Russian policy is typical. Most people are for Russian recognition,

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640 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3257 if they are, because it is good for revolution or for busi- ness. Mr. Borah is for Russian recognition because he does not care a hang for Russia. Mr. Lippmann points out that the Senator can afford such independence as a good-in-itself — what Joseph Pulitzer once called such indegoddampen- dence — because being famous for his independence he sheds luster on the obscure State which keeps him in it. On the whole Mr. Lippmann thinks he is a good investment. "You will find him very useful tomorrow." Who knows but what the law of averages may throw his views your way? But the most significant essays in this book, because they seem to me to contribute most toward the understand- ing of Mr. Lippmann, are those on Mr. Mencken, Governor Smith, President Coolidge, and Sinclair Lewis. Mr. Lippmann looks at Mr. Mencken through his "Notes or Democracy." He finds that they are "only a collection of trite and somewhat confused ideas." Then why is Mr. Mencken so tremendously effective? Because "his appeal is not from mind to mind but from viscera to viscera. . . . You have to judge him totally, roughly, approximately, without definition, as you would a barrage of artillery, for the general destruction rather than the individual shots." Mr. Lippmann illustrates: The most important books are often of this kind. Rous- seau's "Social Contract" and Tom Paine's "Rights of Man" were far inferior as works of the mind to the best thoughts of the eighteenth century, but they exerted an incalculably great influence because they altered men's prejudices. Mr. Mencken's book is of the same sort. [Italics mine.] The democratic phase which began in the eighteenth centary has about run its course. There is now taking place a radical change of attitude . . . toward the whole conception of popular government. In the United States Mr. Mencken is the most powerful voice announcing this change. In short, Mr. Mencken is the leader of a social revolution. Mr. Mencken, of course, is nothing of the kind. The "Notes on Democracy" are written in the swift and simple swing of a world-shaking brochure, but they are essentially a bur.esque translation of Mr. Mencken's personal preju- dices in favor of the Rabelaisian life into the form of a social manifesto. His revolution is for the highest possible personal civilization. The counter-revolution is democracy. Hence all democrats, without distinction, are swine and lice. The effect is a huge practical joke on the last century and a half in that highly civilized preposterous vein which is Mr. Mencken's genius. In effect, he traces the Congres- sional remarks of Messrs. Blease, Upshaw, and Blanton to Rousseau, Locke, and Jefferson. John Stuart Mill fought for the freedom of the Flatbush flapper. Adam Smith speaks to us through Roger Babson. Karl Marx is at the bottom of the graft in the building trades. And Luther's ghost, I take it, pens the daily piffle of the Reverend Cadman. All this, of course, is funnier than true. Democracy is not where the blah begins, for the blah began way back in the Neanderthal. There is nothing specifically democratic about social stupidity, which always parades under the pre- vailing dogmas. Else the prophets could not have been so clairvoyant about our business mer and bishops, Voltaire could not have had so much more fun even than Mr. Mencken with every one of our contemporary mourtebanks, and Chekhov could not have understood Sinclair Lewis's characters so infinitely better than. Mr. Lewis. In justice to Mr. Lippmann be it said that his perspi- cacity plays havoc with his revolutionary interpretation of "the holy terror from Baltimore." In one sentence Mr. Mencken is a new Tom Paine whose common sense rebels against our social order. In the next sentence he is a sophisticated Stephen Leacock whose uncommon nonsense enlivens social theory. The essay is divided against itself because Mr. Lippmann is divided against himself. For at bottom Mr. Mencken's joke on democracy is Mr. Lippmann's dilemma with it. The burden of all his books on the public mind since the war and of his two essays in this volume on The Causes of Political Indifference Today and Second-Best Statesmen is that democracy functions in fact as absurdly as Mr. Mencken writes of it in fun. Mr. Lippmann is obsessed by the liberal fixation that democracy is a "method" which "functions" to the degree in which everybody "par- ticipates" in it; which is like saying that the telephone company cannot function unless every operator is edu- cated in the physics of sound and electricity. The demo- cratic method does not differ from the social mechanism of any other social order, as Mr. Lippmann brilliantly shows in The Phantom Public: it is a fight between the "ins" and "outs" along the eternal right-center-left front; a hand- ful leads, a few more follow, and the rest don't care. The significant thing about democracy is not its method but its underlying purpose. And its contemporary purpose is that the sweat of John Doe's brow is John Doe's business. As a purpose it is quite as simple as the soap-boxer proclaims. The methods for achieving this simple purpose in our highly complex order range from schemes for "adult educa- tion" to a blind faith in a proletarian dictatorship. One may choose all the way from boosting the democratic ticket to getting oneself jailed in Leavenworth. The more tiresome liberal mind is content with watch- ing the democratic "experiment" as we are all being "edu- cated" to "function" in it, thus raising opportunism from a means to some ends into an end-in-itself. But Mr. Lipp- mann is never tiresome. He tries to escape the pragmatic predicament by raising opportunism not merely into an end- in-itself but by blandly calling it a revolution. And he sees in Mr. Mencken "the most powerful voice announcing" our "radical change of attitude" toward democracy because Mr. Mencken's revolution against near-beer and for Mai-Bock is Mr. Lippmann's revolution against the insipid Mr. Coolidge and for the colorful "Al" Smith. Mr. Lippmann is not con- tent with the perfectly intelligent belief that Governor Smith is by all odds the most intelligent aspirant for the Presidency in either of the two old parties. Some conscion- able maladjustment in him insists on glorifying this per- fectly sensible belief into a revolutionary faith. Smith is not simply a surprisingly good man for Tammany, but "A Man of Destiny" whose "fate" it is "to deepen" a "conflict [which] is the inevitable consequence of our history." We begin to smell in Tammany a new Jacobin Club, and in Smith a new Marat of the sidewalks of New York. Governor Smith, says Mr. Lippmann, represents the democratic urban civilization, the new immigrants who be- gan to come about 1850. "For seventy-five years, in spite of their vast influence in local politics, they have produced nobody who could fairly be considered for the Presidency. Now from their midst has come such a man. . . . And yet he is unavailable. By the unspoken and unwritten law he cannot be nominated by any national party (as of Decem- ber, 1925)." Obviously he is a revolutionary martyr. And he is a martvr not because he is Wet and Catholic. He is

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Dec. 7, 1927] The Nation 641 unavailable because the older America of town and country- fears "that strange and dangerous things will come out of Babylon." This older America likes Mr. Coolidge, whose face is his fortune. Mr. Coolidge is cool, thrifty, close-mouthed. He is canny in his sense of honor and parsimonious with his honesty. He administers the most powerful office in the world as though he were the boss of an aldermanic district. Most Americans, Mr. Lippmann observes, are spending furiously, are bent on pleasure, and administer a clerkship as though it were a great profession. Mr. Coolidge pro- vides "this generation, which is not virtuous in that simple, dry, shrewd sense, with an immense opportunity for vicari- ous virtue." He is our offering to the ancient homilies. To function as a totem of the seventies Mr. Coolidge works very hard. To do next to nothing in Caesar's job takes enormous industry and uncanny skill. It's not a cinch to get America to yawn over the oil scandal, to revive the spirit of Jay Gould in the days of Owen Young. It takes genius to inspire the headline: "Coolidge Wins Coal Victory; Denies He Interfered." In short, Mr. Lippmann points out through the per- sonalities of "Cal" and "Al" the difference between the older indigenous America of town and farm and the urban, mercurial, industrial, "new immigrant" America. And this difference, he indicates, is a social revolution. There was 1776, there was the Civil War, and now we have "to face the conflict" with the new Tammany. I think that the brilliance of these two essays consists entirely in the high persuasiveness of their half-truths. Mr. Lippmann's interpretation of Governor Smith undoubtedly explains the Governor's difficulties as a Presidential candi- date. His interpretation of President Coolidge undoubt- edly explains why it was possible to popularize him into a combination of the best features of Washington and Lin- coln, while in fact he combines the most characteristic de- fects of Buchanan and Arthur; only at the right time. Mr. Lippmann is quite right when he says that there is an ever-widening cultural gap between the industrial centers and the country districts. But neither Smith nor Coolidge represents the fundamental factors of this estrangement. Mr. Lippmann cannot explain the difference between Smith and Coolidge because, except in color scheme, there is none. Governor Smith represents the "new immigrants" merely in their adaptation to the old Tammany Hall under new con- ditions. He does not represent the urban worker excepting in so far as the reactionary trade unions misrepresent his interests in the urban Democratic machine. Governor Smith is undoubtedly above Tammany. His troubles with it indi- cate it. He is undoubtedly the best man in his party. But Governor Smith will win or lose the Democratic nomination on the Democratic platform, which is a facsimile of the Republican counterfeit of social issues. And President Coolidge is not President of the United States because his rent is $32.50 a month, but because he represents Big Business. Mr. Lippmann's suavity deserts him when he gets to Sinclair Lewis. Mr. Lewis's characters are not people but "stereotypes," whom he kicks and abuses with sadistic joy. His realism is a grotesque verisimilitude, dogmatic, vulgar, and unfair. His wit is mere malice which pursues poor foolish Babbitt into the privacy of his bathroom just to sneer at his pathetic pleasure at a fancy towel rack; which hounds poor Carol Kennicott, whose only fault is that she is weak and restless and dull and ashamed of her environ- ment, of which she is an authentic part, a little soul made less by a culture which gives her nothing to do since that's all she can do. "There is no truth" in the portrait of Elmer Gantry, writes Mr. Lippmann. Mr. Lewis simply stole a parson's picture from the Rogues' Gallery. When Mr. Lippmann is annoyed he is magnificently formidable. He cruelly shows that Mr. Lewis hates Babbitt because he is one himself. Lewis sees Babbitt with the half-crazed introspective clarity of a bitter consciousness of kind, as an anti-Semitic Jew sees his fellow-Jews. The extraordinary objectivity of his types is achieved because his predominant passion is hatred of his kind. His "laugh- ter is not comic, it is protective." He wants to be as civi- lized as Mr. Mencken, but he is merely "immature," raw, and adolescent. All of which is largely true. And all of which makes Mr. Lewis so important. He is Babbitt disgusted with himself, Babbitt ashamed of Rotary. Babbitt wondered for a few weak moments whether he had not better quit. Lewis at least tried to "find salvation by escaping" Main Street and Zenith City. "He has just arrived in the big city." He failed, for he made a "success" as an exhibitionist of "the provincial civilization of America. ... He takes it with him wherever he goes." None the less, he "has im- posed his conception of America on a very considerable part of the reading and writing public." The fact is, Mr. Lewis is a rebel. He is the only "Man of Destiny" in Mr. Lipp- mann's whole collection. Mr. Lewis is at least a little man of destiny because he undoubtedly has helped to break the path for more civilized critics who will stop picking on Babbitt; for, after all, Bab- bitt is merely the poor ape of a plutocratic order which robs him of his human dignity. They will stop hounding Carol Kennicott in her cheap unhappiness, the more tragic for its cheapness, and show her that the difference between her moon-calf liberalism and the liberalism to which she aspires is a step not worth taking. They will even have pity on the hairy Esau of an Elmer Gantry, and be more interested in the modernist Jacobs of the church who after all are cheat- ing him of his birthright in exploiting human ignorance. Conceivably, they may even show that Mr. Lewis's types are but the moron victims crowding at the right wing of a culture at whose enlightened left wing Mr. Lippmann sits as a connoisseur and critical apologist. We all have to live in the culture of which we are a part and to accept a good deal of the world in which we eat. Nor can there be a moral obligation to feel a sense of social justice. That Mr. Lippmann has become an apologist for the status quo is, after all, his personal affair. What is rather a;.noying about his views is that air of look- ing forward with which he posits them, insisting that the National Child Labor Amendment is even more dan- gerous to democracy than to the National Manufacturers' Association ; telling the world that "Al" Smith is the leader of a social revolution; solemnly warning Mexico that Mr. Morrow is not merely a most intelligent man, which is quite true and quite sufficient to make him an excellent ambas- sador under the circumstances, but that he represents the most progressive spirit in America, which is bunk; and suggesting a life sentence for Sacco and Vanzetti, ap- parently on the theory that a living tomb is a liberal com- promise with murder. Sophists aim to win while philosophers want to know

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642 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3257 the truth, said Socrates. Mr. Lippmann is a successful man whose observations current events constantly refute. He takes the democratic dogma of the eighteenth century and brilliantly finds it wanting under plutocratic corruption and hypocrisy; while the news columns of the paper whose editorials are in his charge report eveiy day the world war which is still going on "to make the world safe for democ- racy" with a vengeance — in Russia, China, the British Em- pire, on the continent of Europe, and even in the subways of New York. On Contemporary American Fiction By CLIFTON P. FADIMAN THE following remarks are intended not as an analysis of contemporary American fiction but merely as a tentative presentation of a general feeling which has grown up and is growing up among a goodly number of young writers and critics. That feeling is one of a rather puzzled dissatisfaction with the old-line American novelists, a sad inability to secure from them the intellectual nourishment which every younger generation has a right to expect from its elders. Whatever else it may be, to these younger people the standard American novel is not as exciting or vital as the book-review sections and the popular critics assure them it is. Whether their state of mind is entirely justifiable or not is difficult to determine; but of one thing I am confident: this attitude is motivated by no cheap cynicism, by no snob- bery, but by a sincere desire to discover the best in con- temporary literature and to cleave to and love that best. I offer, in a very gingerly manner, a few observations which may serve to explain their rather inarticulate and moody dissatisfaction. The first of them is concerned with what appears to me a fundamental weakness in our popular criticism. About fifteen years ago, directly following one of Lie most sterile and devitalized periods in American literature, there suddenly appeared a succession of inter- esting writers of fiction. Dreiser was accepted; then came Anderson, Hergesheimer, Willa Cather, Cabell, Lewis. The critics, comparing these sincere and relatively daring novel- ists with the faded pettiness of the previous generation, went wild with delight. They were too grateful for the phenomenon to be able to apply any absolute standards, to view these sudden apparitions against anything like a back- ground of eternity. Mr. Carl Van Doren, ordinarily the sanest of observers, wrote a laudatory book which still domi- nates the tone of literary judgment. In this bird's-eye view of the modern American novel, the author's honest enthusi- asm carried him so far as to make him expend on Booth Tarkington a perspicacity and penetration of which his sub- ject was almost humorously unworthy. The laudation to be found in this book, which must now be considered essen- tially as a pleasurable reaction rather than as a cold exami- nation, persists to this day. The general feeling is that the Mid Western novelists represent a definite renaissance of the art of fiction in America. Yet one forgets that this renaissance acquires a large portion of its glamor merely from its happening to follow upon a fortuitously inferior literary epoch. But this enthusiasm, unfortunate though it was. does not constitute the fundamental weakness in our popular criticism. The chief fault lies in confusing a sociological importance with an artistic one. What I mean is this. The novels of Dreiser and Lewis and to a lesser degree those of Hergesheimer, Anderson, and Cabell are the result less of a genuine aesthetic urge than of a series of important and disillusioning discoveries about the American social fabric. The American realistic novel is simply the symbol of the development of a national awareness, an awareness of money, of sex, of dulness, of corruption, of Puritanism, and of the role these things play in our life. These discoveries were sudden and, so it seemed, startling; and that sudden and startling quality reflected itself in the form and texture of the novels. It reflected itself in naivete, in incoherence, in youthful vagueness, in obstreperousness, in a belligerent liberalism, in a patriotic provincialism. These novels that embodied a valuable, if naive, criticism of modern American society were not novels in an inevitable sense. They did not possess that severe formal unity and beauty to be found in the Russians and the better Frenchmen. Many of them should have been tracts, others should have been poems, almost all of Anderson's work should have been an auto- biography, or better still a diary; a great many should never have been written down at all but remained interest- ing conversation. For a novel is not necessarily a great or even a good novel because it exposes the so-called national soul. Its aesthetic significance is proportional to the depth at which its soul-exploration begins; and at that depth purely na- tional or provincial discoveries become irrelevant. To use the stock illustration, a comparison of "Madame Bovary" with "Main Street." In these two cases the actual working materials of the authors are similar, the basic conception is the same; the rebellion of a second-rate woman against a fifth-rate emotional and social conformity. Now, when we Americans read "Madame Bovary" we undergo an aes- thetic experience, a feeling that we are confronted with a great wisdom and a great poetry. But when Frenchmen read "Main Street" it is because they wish to find out about the Street. The novel becomes a useful, satiric itinerary. Similarly, for a cultivated continental, the outpourings of Mr. Anderson are stimulating because they are the naive expression of a naive American soul; it does not occur to them, as it does to our professional enthusiasts, to speak of Anderson and Dostoevski in the same breath. The attitude of the continental appears to me a civilized one; the attitude of the editors of the Saturday Review, to name a representa- tive example, is simply an eager patriotism. The boy ad- mires the circus; but the adult cannot, without a slight feel- ing of shame, applaud it, But it will be urged that the realistic discovery of the national scene was a noble and praiseworthy thing in itself; that without the realistic viewpoint with which the older novelists have provided us it would be impossible to advance further. Though I refuse to admit that there is any valu- able realism in Mr. Anderson's lyric cry, I am willing to accept the conception which views these American novelists as a necessary bridge to something better. All I ask is that this secondary quality be kept in mind and that we should cease to treat them as if they were first-rate artists. All I plead for is some consistent and vehement destructive criti- cism and honest evaluation — a rather healthy order, for it would involve the immediate destruction of almost all our literary reviews and magazines.

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Dec. 7, 1927] The Nation 643 In a country such as England or France, where the literary tradition is homogeneous and unbroken and the elementary discoveries about the national character were made long ago, good British novelists do not have to spend their time berating their middle-class public for its stu- pidity or the aristocracy for its snobbishness; nor do the Frenchmen have to write exposures of Gallic sensuality. All these things are taken for granted; or else it becomes the function of the essayist, the critic, or the political ob- server to deal with them. But over here we have to clear away so much rubbish before a novelist can really deal with essential novelistic material. We have to educate an audi- ence with a frontier mentality. I presume it is necessary to Mr. Anderson to discover for himself that respectable American business men get restless when they reach forty ; for Mr. Lewis to discover that most American preachers are hypocrites or fools; for Mr. Bromfield to discover that the dominating influence of women is occasionally a bad thing for the nation; for Mr. Dell to discover that it is difficult for a sensitive young man to live in an industrialized com- munity. Very good; all very true and useful; but let us not get excited about the artistic value of works which em- body only these sincere obviousnesses. The real trouble with such discoveries is that it does not require any great wisdom or intelligence to make them. One need not be much more than a cut above Babbitt to realize what sort of man he is; and Mr. Anderson has apparently shown that to record the vagaries of adolescence and the primary conflicts of naive souls one need not oneself be any- thing but adolescent and naive. The result is that our so- called best novelists are a pleasantly unsophisticated lot. Miss Rebecca West, speaking of Sinclair Lewis's latest work, made a very pugnant (and un-American) observation. In the novel there is portrayed, as a sort of counterweight to Elmer Gantry, a liberal clergyman — sincere, thoughtful, troubled by the inconsistencies and absurdities of the dog- mas he preaches. What Miss West objected to was the assumption on Mr. Lewis's part that this clergyman, instead of being an equally fit subject for satire, was really a rather fine and admirable character, the hero to Gantry's villain — all of which shows in Mr. Lewis, of course, nothing but the same sort of thoughtful innocence that is exemplified every day in the pulpits of liberal Unitarian churches. Our most sophisticated novelist is commonly held to be Mr. Cabell. Compared with a life-size artist like Gide or Thomas Mann he is almost tenderly unsophisticated. At most he has a single idea: all his legends but play naughty little variations on the theme of illusion. He is praised for his rebellion against the drab materialism of American life; but he is a one-dimensional rebel. His cynicism is so terribly easy. On the Continent intelligent men had begun to smile at Anatole France five years before his death; and even be- fore that he had been essentially the pet of the bourgoisie. But here Cabell is still accepted as a great ironist, though he goes on repeating his petit maitre cynicisms year after year without much variation to indicate intellectual or emo- tional growth. This naivete would not be so disheartening if it were not accompanied by a related phenomenon: an artistic pro- vincialism which is unparalleled in the rest of the world. Our established novelists are, in many cases, simply behind the times. They follow the Wellsian or the Galsworthian formula when the more alert young English novelists have themselves abandoned it, when their art might so easily be enriched by an attentive study of the best contemporary French and German writers. But how little attention is paid to such work! How many of our novelists are con- sciously and excitedly aware that the last two years have witnessed the American publication of two great European masterpieces, masterpieces from which one can learn, which contain formal advances, which pose aesthetic problems of an interesting knottiness, which stimulate the mind and raise it above any narrow preoccupation with a too purely American scene? Schiller's conception of the naive artist must be abandoned; one cannot create worthily by merely examining one's own moods, as does Mr. Anderson; or by examining one's own home town, as does Mr. Lewis; or by reading the works of Anatole France, as does Mr. Cabell. The novelist must be an extremely intelligent man, one of a world confraternity of intelligent men, sophisticated in the best sense, eager to tackle aesthetic problems because they are difficult, willing to learn from his contemporaries, stern in his rejection of what is obvious or transitory or pro- vincial, certain that his material is essentially novel mate- rial, not newspaper stuff, not personal moods, not cigarette- smoke irony. That we have at least the beginning of such an attitude is evident in the work of Hemingway, Wescott, Elizabeth Roberts, Aiken — and it is noticeable that each of these, in his or her own way, is revolting against the novelistic old guard. But this other side of Amsrican fiction deserves a separate and distinct treatment which is impossible here. Plastic and Temporal in Art By JOSEPH WOOD KRUTCH IN so far as Wyndham Lewis can be thought of as part of any movement, it is with T. S. Eliot and the other in- tellectualists that his thought allies him; but nothing could, on the other hand, be more unlike the costiveness of their minds than is the fluency of his. Ostensibly prophets of a new faith engaged in announcing the glad tidings of a sal- vation by abstract thought, a certain despairing lassitude has unreasonably enough fallen upon them and it is with the greatest difficulty that they succeed in squeezing from their minds two paragraphs of prose or one quatrain of verse per year. With him, on the contrary, the pen can never keep pace with the brain and one treatise is not half done before another is projected. Originally a painter, he has been led on from subject to subject and, plunging with enormous gusto into the midst of the abstrusest problems, he has emerged each time from a review of countless vol- umes with a great deal to say about everything. Within less than two years he has published three long, erudite, and passionate books, but he has the air of a man who is just warming up to his subject, and the latest ends, charac- teristically enough, with the statement that it is merely a prolegomenon intended to clear the ground for his own thesis by a criticism of prevailing theories. Like all of Mr. Lewis's books "Time and Western Man"1 includes almost too much for a single treatise and its method is highly discursive. Book One, "The Revolu- tionary Simpleton," offers perhaps the most interesting criticism which has ever been made of such leaders in con- 1 "Time and Western Man.1 Windus. 21 shillings. By Wyndham Lewis. London : Chatto and

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644 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3257 temporary "revolutionary" literature as Ezra Pound, James Joyce, and Gertrude Stein, along with incidental comment upon the world of what Mr. Lewis calls "High Bohemia" in which various artistic fads become fashionable; but Book Two, "An Analysis of the Philosophy of Time," brings him to the theoretical consideration of certain habits of thought which he regards as the ultimate cause of the failure of modern literature and which are the chief subjects of his book. Bergson, demoded though he is, Mr. Lewis considers to be the father of the contemporary time cult, and he traces through Russell, Einstein, Whitehead, and Alexander the growth of an orthodoxy within the limits of which all the leaders of contemporary metaphysics are comprehended by virtue of a common agreement that time is the ultimate reality, or, much more properly, that it supplies the aspect under which all phenomena may be most profitably re- garded. This "time-mind," generating as it does a venera- tion in the philosopher for mere flux as such and producing in even the popularizer a tendency to regard nothing im- portant except as part of a history or an evolution, Mr. Lewis attacks as fundamentally antithetical to the processes of art and hence as inimical to the development of any sat- isfactory human society. It reaches, he says, its ultimate absurdity in the misty lucubrations of Spengler, who seems to maintain that the Western World is dying because it alone has risen to a realization that nothing has any mean- ing except as history; and it transforms all those who have any aesthetic sensibility into what he scornfully calls "time- trotters" — people, that is to say, whose minds rush back and forth through the centuries "doing" the culture of this period and that much as the globe-trotter "does" the medieval cathedrals one summer and the civilization of India the next. "Plastic" is the adjective which Mr. Lewis chooses to describe that aspect of things upon which he prefers to concentrate his attention. It is a painter's word, and one may suspect that it is employed by him in such a way as to include not merely those relationships in space which are the el mentary concerns of the painter but also those which a metaphysician would call "logical" and which a mystic would describe as those perceived when a thing is seen sub specie aeternitatis. It serves, however, as well as any other to stand for all that is missed when we fall into the habit of assuming that we have plucked the heart out of a thing when we have traced its origin, its development, and its death as an evolution occurring in time; and we reach the crux of the matter in a passage cited by Mr. Lewis in high disapproval from Alexander's "Space. Time, and Deity." "It is, in fact," says Alexander, "the cardinal de- fect of universals as conceived by Plato or the Pythagoreans that they were changeless, immovable, and eternal. For not even the mind of Plato could be free from the habits of his age, one of whose tendencies was to seek the highest ideal of perfection in gravity of action and statuesque repose rather than in restless motion. ... It is claiming no great credit that for us universals should have from the beginning the form of motion, should be not merely spatial but spatio- temporal." Upon this patronage of Plato and his fellow-ancients Mr. Lewis empties the vials of his scorn. The thing to be noted is, he points out, the contrast implied in the fact that while the essential aspect of anything was. for the classical age, that static perfection toward which it was tending, it has become for us, living in a time-world, rather the history of the thing's evolution or even, at times, merely the nature of its origin. And against the assumption that this change of attitude represents a gain, that man can live better or more profitably as part of a flux which has no meaning outside itself, Mr. Lewis protests with all vigor. Though we may be children of time we want to be children of eternity, and though I am not sure Mr. Lewis would ac- cept this formulation of the dilemma it will serve never- theless to illuminate the direction of his striving. "What I am concerned with here, first of all, is," he says, "not whether the great time-philosophy that overshadows all contemporary thought is viable as a system of abstract truth, but if in its application it helps or destroys our hu- man arts. With that is involved, of course, the very funda- mental question of whether we should set out to transcend our human condition (as formerly Nietzsche and then Bergson claimed that we should) ; or whether we should transplant into human terms the whole of our datum. My standpoint is that we are creatures of a certain kind, with no indication that a radical change is imminent. ... I pre- fer the chaste wisdom of the Chinese or the Greek to the hot tawny brand of superlative fanaticism coming from the parched deserts of the Ancient East, with its ineradicable abstractness. I am for the physical world." The argument of "Time and Western Man," carrying though it does an immense burden of detailed criticism directed against the chief exponents of the time philosophy, is conducted with great acuteness and illuminated with flashes of maliciously humorous characterization like that in which Bertrand Russell, "whose mind is that of an ex- cited and rather sentimental amateur," is described as a man possessed of an entertainer's instinct which leads him always to take the "entertaining" or "exciting" side in a debate. Perhaps the discourse would be somewhat clarified from a metaphysical standpoint if Mr. Lewis would state more clearly than he does whether, in his championship of the "plastic" against the "temporal" view of reality, he attacks the latter as a falsely assumed "truth of reference" or merely as a conception functioning less fruitfully than the plastic view when each is considered merely as an als ob. But since he is chiefly concerned with art or with life-considered-as-an-art, and since in the realm of art the distinction between a "truth of reference" and a fruitful als ob inevitably disappears, this defect is not of great importance. Indeed the disappearance of this distinction is exactly the thing which differentiates art from life, and though the present book is only a prolegomenon it is easy to see that Mr. Lewis's line of thought must eventuate in a plea for the absolute and formal virtues of a "classical" literature, painting, or sculpture. May it not indeed be said that the entire contemporary renaissance of interest in "form" is the result of a longing for something outside of time which is closed and com- plete in itself — for something with a pattern in which each part is so joined to every other part that it returns upon itself instead of either leading on to something else or trailing off until it is lost in the dark boundless chaos? Romantic art had as one of its ideals a suggestive incom- pleteness, a deliberate imperfection intended to provoke rather than to satisfy and to suggest boundlessness rather than boundaries. The stories wmich it told are not stories with a beginning and an end but episodes, lifted almost at random, from an endless chronicle to which the imagination

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Dec. 7, 1927] The Nation 645 is led back again at the inconclusive conclusion and in which its thoughts and emotions as well as its events are left dangling. But the human mind wearies at length of expansion and inconclusion. It turns to art for the com- pleteness and the perfection which it does not find in na- ture, and it discovers even in rigidity a certain peace. It asks of art a pattern, something which can be regarded as a whole in itself, and it does not object to the absence of that inclusion of opposites aimed at by the romantics if it can receive in exchange a sense of equilibrium existing within the limits which the work of art, detaching itself from the stream of life, sets up. And it is just this which a classic art supplies. It leads the imagination not into life and time but out of both into a world so frozen as to seem to be seen sub specie aeternitatis because it exists, each part locked together with each other part, within the confines of a frame and hence is as complete and changeless for us as life itself has been fancied to be in the mind of that God for whom all moments are one. A Hero of the Jews By NORMAN HAPGOOD T N the long history of the Jews the supreme hero is Moses. J. Talk to the most cultivated and skeptical Jew of your acquaintance and if he is race-conscious he will thrill to that name. Moses led the Jews out of bondage and just failed to lead them into the promised land. Perhaps he would have succeeded had there not been an alarmist re- port from the majority of the committee sent ahead to report on the prospects and difficulties, only Caleb bringing a minority report that was optimistic. So the glory of leading the entry was reserved for Joshua. It is not to either of these chieftains that Theodore Herzl is to be compared — the prophet of Zionism in modern days. What his biographer * claims for him is that "in the long page of Jewish history he stands with Ezra and Simon the Maccabee — the two peaceful restorers of the Jew- ish state." It is a proud enough claim. A complete, authoritative, and readable story of the prophet of modern Zionism comes at an opportune time, since one of the results of the war that can be put down as favorable is the Balfour resolution and the commitment of the British Empire to carry out, on its political side, the Zionist dream. It was with the political side — in the deep, human sense — that Herzl mainly concerned himself, for he played chess with the rulers of the world in behalf of an escape for a people that during his career went through direst agony. Mr. de Haas, his dear friend, associate, and spokes- man, says that "among the Jews no other since the destruc- tion of Jerusalem sought to achieve so great a result and accomplished so much toward his end." The idea of a spiritual center, a home for an age-long culture, which appeals to many, including Christian Zionists like myself, was not what came first with Herzl. Nor had he sympathy with the financial Jews, like the Rothschilds, who looked upon him as too Jewish and wished to forget the past and put as little stress as might be on the racial line. This class in its culture was assimilating, * "Theodore Herzl. A Biographical Study, volumes. Brentano's. $10. By Jacob <le Haas. Two becoming in thought and feeling German, English, or, a little later, American. Herzl believed that the Jewish ques- tion must be solved not by drift but by action. He made no claim that the Jews were better than other people, and no concession that they were worse. The theological "mis- sion of Israel" was nothing to him. It was "the drum-beat that drowned out Dreyfus's plea of innocence" that shocked Herzl back to his origins. He had no Ghetto tradition to make him timid. He stood up audaciously and "took the sting out of the term Jew." We know the difference in America between the Jew who regrets the word and the one who takes it to his soul. Max Nordau one day at breakfast said to Herzl: "Were I a believer, and did I ordinarily use mystical phrases, I should say your appearance in these critical days of Jewish history is the work of Providence." In the crisis of 1895 and 1896 hope was at its lowest ebb. So harried were the Jews in Russia, Poland, and Rumania that migration was forced. Countries further west were anti-Semitic openly although less violently. The gates of America were begin- ning to close. At first Herzl sought only a Jewish state, anywhere, as an escape from horrors; later he became con- vinced that no place but Palestine would do. Palestine, as his imagination pictured it forth for the days to come, was a large area from Kantara to Beirut, from Jaffa to Hamann, with historic landmarks as jewels in a world evolved by modern machinery and science; a Nile canalized to make fruitful the Sinai desert; the Litani River joined to the Kishon so that both could water the plain of Esdrae- lon; the Jordan raised to irrigate the dry southland; tall chimneys and chemical works; industrial agriculture; the whole Near East a thriving center, with Palestine and its modern harbor forming a littoral. To his mind the Ghetto was a thing created artificially by the slow process of hostile law, and the normal direction was as pictured by his dream. He needed to do many things; his two greatest triumphs were his burning message to the suffering masses and his negotiations as an equal with Turkey, Russia, Britain, Italy, and Austria. He who was to lead the despairing and also to make use of potentates had need of an imperial nature. At the Congress of Uganda, in which Herzl presented, coming from Joseph Chamberlain, the first offer of the British government of land for colonization in East Africa, the site to be determined, there were 295 votes for Herzl, 177 against acceptance. The 177, who were for Zion or noth- ing, withdrew in protest to a smaller hall where they de- bated, wept, and gesticulated. At ten o'clock, after four hours, they were on the verge of hysteria. Men were begin- ning to sit on the floor and in the orthodox traditional manner to mourn for a Zion that was dead. When word of this hysteria reached Herzl at his hotel he rushed to the building and found that the dissenters had locked themselves in. He shouted his name, pounded until the door opened, strode dramatically through the delegates, and said : I found a world that had placed us in a false position. We Jews were condemned, despised, an untolerated minor- ity. I was born in that environment; so were my children. I have imposed my personality on the world in order to change that environment for myself, my children, and all those who will go with me. I have not changed and I shall not change. I see a way to victory. It is a roundabout way to Zion, but it will lead there, because I am deter-

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646 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3257 mined. I ask no man who cannot in good conscience fol- low me to go with me. I started alone and I can start again single-handed. At two in the morning the opposition yielded, without terms or conditions. . A great story means some happening which is full ot action and meaning, a hero who shines with power and character, and somebody who can tell about it all. Here we have all the elements. It is a tale filled with grandeur. Mr. de Haas stood on the right hand of the hero, and he has told the moving story as it should be told. He it was who closed the leader's eyes. Then he slipped into the gar- den and wept. Second Advent By JOHN GOULD FLETCHER At the bottom of a gulf of walls whose windows fire no life, Where the sun falls but once a year, where strife Of wheels goes on day after night, I saw again, In the close darkness cowering, three ancient men. One bore a broken biscuit-tin and one a bandbox and The third had a dirty birdcage clasped closely in his hand. They had halted for a moment; soon they were again to go Stumbling on felt-wrapped feet across the unshaken snow. One said, "It was not in Bethlehem that he was," "Nor in New York neither," muttered the second, frowning under his brows. "It was not in Park Lane that they laid him," said the liird; "But it was in Paris that they took from me my shining golden bird." Said the second, pointing to his bandbox, "This thurible once held Incense for him but the gas of the trenches dispelled It out upon the landscape." Said the first, "Myrrh was within my metal ere it burst." "But not on seas of flaming oil nor in jerry-built mudwalled lands Shall the Son of Man rise in glory to take these gifts from Man's hands." At the bottom of a gulf of walls whose windows were thick with dust, I left them muttering lonely; they were sharing their last crust ; Soon to rise up and totter to felt-wrapped feet again. And wearily wander onwards through the wan 'night upon the plain. First Glance CARL SANDBURG'S "The American Songbag" (Har- court, Brace: $7.50) is a collection of tunes and words if you like, or if you like it is something more. I choose to agree with Mr. Sandburg, who insists that it is a contribu- tion to American history. It is so, I think, in an entirely serious sense. "It will give." says Mr. Sandburg, speaking of the ideal book to which his is an approach, "the feel and atmosphere, the layout and lingo, of regions, of breeds of men, of customs and slogans, in a manner and an air not given in regular history [which is] to be read and not sung. And besides, such a history would require that the student sing his way through most of the chapters." Well, why not sing the history of America? Americans have always sung, and they have sung differently in different generations — though I suspect that the generations have been more alike in this respect than first appears, and that in the conserva- tism of song we have one of the best aids toward an under- standing of the fundamental American character, if there is any such thing. Any person knows ten times more songs than he ever realizes until such a book as this, or such a man as Mr. Sandburg met in the flesh and set talking, un- locks the treasure. Then he is likely to discover that his life is not at all the strictly, thinly contemporaneous thing he ordinarily assumes it to be. He finds national and racial memories lurking in the deeper portions of his mind, lying in wait down there to betray his reason and give him the feeling of being not thirty or forty but a hundred years old. This must be a good thing. Mr. Sandburg went over the country and collected these songs for the same reason that he wrote his biography of Lincoln: because he wanted desperately to get at the heart of a people, and because he did not feel that contemporary American poetry — even his own poetry, perhaps — was getting at it for him. There is significance in his quoting from Amiel a complaint that modern poetry "lacks feeling, seriousness, sincerity, and pathos." Surely it was in search of these qualities that he went to our folk poetry and our folk music, spending years in the North, in the South, in the East, in the West, talking to people high and low, sitting up all night with singers he had stumbled upon and did not want to lose, transcribing the tunes, jotting down the words. And now in the end he gives us several hundred songs, many of them never printed before and all of them introduced with characteristic, highly colored words be- speaking their editor's ceaseless enthusiasm. The Negro, the pioneer, the Irish immigrant, the Southern moun- taineer, the Great Lakes bargeman, the jailbird, the hobo, the section hand, the lumberjack, the soldier, the sentimen- talist, the college student yelling his "darn fool ditties" — these and more than these are here, singing in many cases songs we once had heard but never expected to see in a book. Sigmund Spaeth, successful with "Read 'Em and Weep" last season, comes out with a sequel called "Weep Some More. My Lady" (Doubleday, Page: $4) in which he collects further valuable specimens of the old-fashioned popular song. He admits in his preface that he "is less inclined to ridicule" than he was when he began the research. Hence the greater usefulness of his annotations now. His two books should stand with Mr. Sandburg's on the shelves of anyone who pretends to be interested in the people of the United States. Mark Van Doren

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Dec. 7, 1927] The Nation 647 ;»■»■ i»W" Tttitfar "ttf «r Tear -mar ar Ttiitr ip «r ar -marar tk ip th ip ar ar -m tp ar ar its ar Ttf -mar Tsar ~*PW "t£ «J tt Hou Mifflin Company SHELLEY By Walter Edwin Peck After seven years of research, Professor Peck has produced a life of "Mad Shelley" that "must take its place beside Amy Lowell's 'Keats' as a splendid example of American con- structive scholarship."-— New York Times. "He is singularly dispassionate and yet not colorless. He has opinions, but he does not obtrude them. His attitude to Shelley is kind, but not condescending. As a chronicler of great learning and lucidity, he is admirable. "- Virginia IVoolf in The New York Herald Tribune. Two volumes, illustrated. $12.50 Sir Ponipey and Martin Armstrong "Martin Armstrong is a master of the short story, successor to Kath- erine Mansfield." — Conrad Aiken. $2.50 Sale Amy Lowell This third posthumous volume of verse is "electrical with the many- faceted genius of that arousing woman." — New York Times. $2.25 Third Book of Jessie B. Rittenhouse A superb anthology of contem- porary verse containing the best work since 1919 of about one hun- dred and fifty outstanding poets. $2.00 The Art of Theatre- Going John Drinkwater The author of "Abraham Lincoln" discusses playgoers and the emo- tions of the theatre from his own long experience. $3.00 SOME PEOPLE By Harold Nicolson "A new attitude to biography. . . . Not fiction because it has the reality of truth; not biography because it has the artistry of fiction." — Vir- ginia Woolf in the New York Her- ald-Tribune. "The very best of fun."— Saturday Review of Literature. . . the most amus- 'South Wind."'— "Very swagger . ing book since The Dial. "A gorgeous book. . . . Not even Max Beerbohm has a wickeder eye for civilized merriment. I have read nothing so amusing in years." — Christopher Morley in the Satur- day Review of Literature. The Education A popular Edition of "one of the most entrancing books of the year and of the century." — Ne<ui York Tribune. Formerly $6.00; now $2.50 Seven Strings Eliz. Schermerhorn The romantic life of George Sand, her seven chief lovers, and her unending search for a perfect love. Illustrated. $4.00 The Letters Of Vincent Van Gogh A series of 458 letters from the great artist to his brother, illus- trated with 146 hitherto unpub- lished drawings. 2 vols. $15.00 Spanish- American Frontier Arthur P. Whitaker A study of Indian alliances, seces- sion plots, fur-trading interests, diplomacy, and intrigue. With maps. $3.50 Edited by Odell Shepard "In the present form, the journals have the aptitude and pungency of 'Walden' itself and must soon rival it for those lovers of Thoreau who like to have him always conveniently within reach." — Lewis Mumford in the New York Herald Tribune. These deftly selected extracts from the fourteen volumes of Thoreau's Journals reveal one of the most interesting minds that America has ever produced. $3.00 to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to :^ When writing to advertisers pliaxe mention The Nation

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648 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3257 Actor- Preacher Henry Ward Beecher: Av American Portrait. By Paxton Hib- ben. George H. Doran Company. $5. TUf R. PAXTON HIBBEN'S brilliant study of Beecher is the * ' picture of a powerfully emotional actor who got into the pulpit of a church by mistake. The mistake was one of environ- ment. In old Lyman Beecher's household everybody, including the small children, agonized over soul salvation, wept and prayed, and thought of God as one might think of a rather cranky and cruel police magistrate. Hell-fire was as real to all of them as the red-hot coals in the grate. And so from this chrysalis of childhood a preacher instead of an actor emerged. Imagine Edwin Booth entangled in such topics as Blood of the Lamb, sanctification by grace, and the more austere portions of the Puritan credo — and you have Henry Ward Beecher. But he was not all Edwin Booth, for Booth — like a true tragedian — was always lofty and tragic. Not so with Beecher. At times his mirth was unseemly; an analysis reveals a substratum of the humorous qualities of DeWolf Hopper, and more than a trace of Billy Sunday and Elmer Gantry. Mr. Hibben has shown the pathetic strain that ran through Beecher's enormous success. He was always trying uncon- sciously to break the intangible bonds that held him to his strait-laced career. In building Plymouth Church he discarded the pulpit entirely and erected a stage to take its place; a stage that ran like a tongue down through the auditorium so that he might be seen from all sides. And probably it was his sub- conscious itch for the forbidden footlights that made this born play-actor stand on his own stage and flame out against the theater. "It is notorious," he declared, "that the theater is the door to all the sinks of iniquity. . . . Half the victims of the gallows and the penitentiary will tell you that these schools for morals were to them the gate of debauchery." Consecrated to moral purity as he was, he could not keep his mind away from girls. He called a female Bible class his "bevy of girls." In this pious garland of beauty there was one he called his "handsomest" girl; another was his "dearest" girl; and another was his "girl with the sweetest disposition." Such a man is bound to get bogged up to the neck in girl-trouble even- tually— and that is what happened to Henry Ward Beecher. The reverberating scandal in which Beecher was involved with Mrs. Tilton and her husband is set down by Mr. Hibben with consummate literary skill. His understanding of person- ality and motives is clear; his judgment is penetrating; his facts are convincingly presented, and he does not allow himself to become heavy-handed. Yet there is to my mind one flaw in this clarity of judgment. I do not think that Mr. Hibben has a real perception of Tilton's character. He makes Tilton out as a sort of saintly cuckold, when it was common knowledge that Tilton had neglected his wife for inamoratas of his own. The fact that Beecher managed to extricate himself, in a measure, from this brazen Beecher-Tilton triangle is an evidence of his personal force and popularity. He seems clearly to have been guilty of adultery, yet the jury disagreed. John Bigelow said: "The amount of Beecher's innocence must be uncommonly great if one may judge by the time and trouble it takes to prove it." Bigelow voiced the cynical opinion of his well-informed contemporaries. Notwithstanding this, when Beecher went back to the crowded and enthusiastic Plymouth congregation he was given an ovation. He always found a seat in the bandwagon of any popular movement if he could catch it in time, but his native shrewdness kept him from entering the vehicle until it was well on its way — and followed by cheering crowds. In the early Abolition days he was opposed to any agitation against slavery and thought William Lloyd Garrison a bad and dangerous man. But before it was all over he was in the front of the Abolition movement, with the spotlight falling on his powerful, sensual face. He came very near missing the Lincoln bandwagon. When the Illinois railsplitter was a candidate for President, Beecher said that Lincoln was an "unshapely man," born low, without education or refinement, and wholly incapable of being the head of a nation. Later, in the disastrous first year of the war, he went around with an I-told-you-so air and declared that Lincoln had not a spark of genius or an element of leadership. Then the Northern armies began to win; and when Congress adopted the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution Beecher had caught up with the procession. A little breathless, it must be said, but he was there, nevertheless. Lincoln appeared at a window of the White House to receive the applause of the popu- lace on the adoption of the amendment, and Beecher stood by his side, bowing and smiling. No doubt the common herd thought Beecher had assisted largely in the great work. I have gained the impression from Mr. Hibben's book that the foundation of Beecher's success was laid by admiring women. This does not mean that he lacked capacity. He was an orator of immense power, a man of magnetism and emotion, the equal — perhaps — of Patrick Henry in the art of influencing men and women by spoken words. His difficulty, and his tragedy, seems to be that he spent his life trying to be moral and a Christian, when in fact he was by nature simply an amorous, shrewd, convincing male go- getter. Mr. Hibben has written a great biography, and one of last- ing value. It is not merely interesting; it is profound. But its historical scholarship does not lie like a leaden weight on the book, for Hibben's style is graceful and delicate, sometimes almost gay. He is so saturated with Beecher knowledge that he writes without effort. In reading it one feels that Paxton Hibben understands Beecher better than anybody else has ever understood him, and that his book is a permanent contribution to American history. W. E. Woodward A Distinguished Editor Life, Journalism, and Politics. By J. A. Spender. Frederick A. Stokes. Two volumes. §10. 'T^HESE two volumes are written in an easier vein than was ■*■ the grave treatise upon "Public Life" which Mr. Spender gave us a couple of years ago. The autobiographical chapters show a most engaging personality, with various interests and enthusiasms and a capacity for securing the friendship and con- fidence of all sorts of people that proved of immeasurable value for the life of journalism into which Mr. Spender naturally flowed after leaving Oxford. He came, as he tells us, of a writing family, and the impulse to write was coupled, as is not always the case, with a marked ability for clear and forcible expression. His great work lay in the editorship for many years of the evening paper the Westminster Gazette, which held a unique position of influence in the formation of liberal opinion and policy during the later nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries. Indeed, for many readers the chief interest of this book lies in the revelation of the close relations between the higher journalism and practical statecraft. The Westminster stood for "heavy politics" addressed to "the serious reader," and though this attitude precluded both profits and a large circula- tion, it "paid" in the higher sense of that term. For Mr. Spender's candid account of his personal relations with the political chiefs, and with the great diplomatists and adminis- trators, shows not merely that he was privy to all the im- portant moves of interior politics but that his judgment counted heavily in their counsels. This, however, was due not chiefly to the power of the press, always recognized by modern politicians, but to the wisdom, discretion, and acute judgment of the edi- tor's personality. There are probably only two other journalists of the age who have played so influential a part. How seldom it is possible to keep journalism on so high a level we realize

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Dec. 7, 1927] The Nation 649 Uncle Joe Cannon By L. WHITE BUSBEY "The book is lively and buoyant, and makes better read- ing than almost any biography since Boswell." — The New York Times. "It is bound to take its place as one of the most in- teresting of political reminiscences in years." — Boston Transcript. Illustrated $5.00 Three Plays By WILLIAM ARCHER "Martha Washington," "Beatriz Juana," and "Lidia" are in this volume. Bernard Shaw has written a long appreciative foreword. $2.50 Stuff and Nonsense By WALTER DE LA MARE A collection of verses which shows that humor, in the hands of a creative artist, is still material for verse. Capricious satire and buffoonery imbued with beauty. $2.00 Calamity Jane And the Lady Wildcats By DUNCAN AIKMAN The amusing story of Calamity Jane, who was born in the hoopskirt age, but was nevertheless the pioneer of all the flappers, a true Western "Heller." Illustrated $3.00 Dusty Answer By ROSAMOND LEHMANN "An honest and charming performance. The story is enveloped in a still, midsummer-like beauty." — A . Y. Evening Post. "A book that is glowing with life ; a book to which one abandons oneself, knowing instinctively that the author can be trusted to carry her story with a fine and delicate assurance." — Saturday Review of Literature. $2.50 The Knowledge of English By GEORGE PHILIP KRAPP Reduces to intelligible order the tangle of opinion and of unconscious habit which is present in the minds of English- speaking persons in the practical command of their native idiom. $3.75 The Public and Its Problems By JOHN DEWEY "In these lectures Professor Dewey brings a cooling intel- ligence to play upon exaggerated conceptions of the importance of the state. — Henry Neumann in the Sur- vey Graphic. $2.50 Man's Quest for Social Guidance By HOWARD W. ODUM "The author attacks modern problems with intelligence and with emotion as well, and in the heat of his crucible he has brought forth truth." — William Allen White $4.50 The Science of Social Relations By HORNELL HART "It is a remarkably stimulating and practical text. I am particularly pleased with the abundance of concrete prob- lems."— Professor Charles H. Cooley. $4.50 A Short History of the Drama By MARTHA BELLINGER "It is a remarkable achievement to present so clearly and concisely the whole history of drama from dancing and play acting in the earliest period to the most modern art of the twentieth century. It is a valuable book of refer- ence."— Dean Alice ll'aite. $3.50 Principles of Abnormal Psychology By EDMUND S. CONKLIN "Professor Conklin's book, written in a popular style and rich in material, appeals to students and general readers alike. The chapter on spiritual phenomena is sure to attract wide attention." — Boston Transcript. $4.50 HENRY HOLT & COMPANY One Park Avenue, New York When writing to advertisers please mention The Nation

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650 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3257 when we learn that, during the thirty years of its life as an evening journal the Westminster lost about half a million pounds. What could be expected when it added to its serious politics columns for the competitive translation of English poetry into Latin and Greek! When we turn to Mr. Spender's political positions and principles, we are caught at once by his frank acceptance of the epithet "smoother" applied to him in criticism by the full- blooded radicals of his time. He honestly believed that the Liberal Party, and the continuation of its historic function of gradual reforms, was of such paramount importance that every effort must be made to preserve its unity, and this at a time when imperialism threatened to disrupt the party on an issue of the first magnitude. Thus he gave a discriminate support to the Boer War, though he was critical of the aggressive policy it expressed, because the "insolent ultimatum" of Kruger left us no option. He was largely instrumental in healing the break, s< that after the Liberal victory in 1905 the two sections of his party sat amicably together in Campbell-Bannerman's Gov- ernment. But new difficulties arose, partly of policy but mainly of temperament, and writing of "the men of 1906" Mr. Spender observes that "the clash between him [Lloyd George] and Asquith seems to have been inevitable from the beginning." It was the difference between a bold opportunist plunger and a "wait-and-see" man, and through the next twenty years it was destined to weaken, divide, and even disrupt the Liberal party. A good deal of the second volume is naturally concerned with the World War, and Spender tells some interesting stories of great soldiers, sailors, and statesmen. At a banquet given by the King at Buckingham Palace on the occasion of Presi- dent Wilson's visit in 1918, "Wilson spoke for about half an hour without looking at a note, and never dropped a word or hesitated for a moment between one sentence and another. The King, talking afterwards to his guests, commented on the ex- traordinary accomplishment of this performance. 'But then,' he added modestly, 'I am no orator, which is perhaps a good thing for a constitutional ruler. My cousin, the German Emperor, was a great orator.' " In a chapter on War Guilt he makes the interesting premise: "The truth is that in the world in which we were brought up the crime was not to make war but to make it un- successfully, and so it had been from the beginning of time." Brushing aside, not as irrelevant but as of secondary importance in determining British participation, the invasion of Belgium and other incidents and atrocities, Mr. Spender states, in lan- guage strictly accurate, the real attitude of English leaders of the older parties "that, if Germany had been incontestably in the right and her conduct in the war irreproachable, the reasons compelling this country to take sides against her would have been just as strong, and its position just as perilous if it had failed to do so, as on the contrary assumption. Whatever the issue on which she fought, a victorious Germany, in possession of Belgium and the Channel ports and commanding all the fleets of Europe, must have been a deadly menace to the British Empire, and according to the accepted principles of power- politics she would have been entitled to assert her supremacy over it in any way she chose." Can any statement of "power-politics" be more damning than this? But true as this diagnosis is, it does not go deep enough into the roots of "power-politics." In foreign affairs Mr. Spender never seems to have discovered the determinant part played by economic interests, especially in that imperial- ism which breeds little and great wars. The Boer War was not a struggle between a benighted Krugerism and an enlight- ened Rhodes-and-Milnerism. It was fi st and chiefly a conflict carefully matured by business men bent on mining gains. So, ;too, deeper analysis will disclose the World War as caused by lusts and ambitions more economic than political. Mr. Spender does not grasp the large element of truth in the doctrine of the economic determination of history. His statecraft condemns ■the very existence of a Labor Party, as if it introduced some irrelevant and tainting influence into pure politics. Though personally sympathetic with many causes of "social reforms," he does not appear to appreciate the inherent injustices of our economic system in its bearing on the income, work, and life of the laboring classes, or the large part which the state must necessarily be called upon to play in redressing these grievances. This obliquity of vision he shares with the other leaders of the party of whose principles and policy he is so able an exponent. J. A. Hobson Thoreau Henry Thoreau: the Cosmic Yankee. By J. Brooks Atkinson. Alfred A. Knopf. $2.50. Walden. Illustrated with Wood Cuts by E. F. Daglish. Hough- ton Mifflin Company. §8. The Mooyi. By Henry D. Thoreau. Houghton Mifflin Company. $4. The Heart of Thoreau' s Journals. Edited by Odell Shepard. Houghton Mifflin Company. $3. ^THHE most important question about these books is not what *■ we think about them but what Thoreau himself would have thought of them. As to that one can only speculate, of course; but, like all speculation about Thoreau, it is quite fascinating. He would have enjoyed "The Cosmic Yankee" chiefly, perhaps, for what it does not say about him; one doubts whether he would have recognized his homely features in more than a score or so of its pages. And yet Mr. Atkinson has written as well on Thoreau as almost anyone could write. The trouble is that the peculiar aged-in-the-wood flavor remains, despite all the efforts of the critics, in his pages and must be enjoyed there and there alone — who, for example, wants to read about Pepys? This "Walden" and this first edition of "The Moon," I am posi- tive, would have stirred Thoreau's Yankee choler — if the value of a man is not in his skin that you should touch him, how about the value of a book? What an ironical commentary these two over-elaborate, excessively expensive "collectors' items" are upon the reception granted the works that were actually published while Thoreau lived! Nauseated at the sight of these costly "items," I turn to that passage in the "Journal" where Thoreau recounts how he toted upstairs on his back the 700-odd copies of "A Week," which, published at his own expense, had sold only some 200 copies in two years; then, sitting down and contem- plating this huge total of his "works," he wrote perhaps the noblest passage that ever came from his pen: "Nevertheless, in spite of this result, sitting beside the inert mass of my works, I take up my pen tonight to record what thought or experience I may have had, with as much satisfaction as ever." One can well afford, then, to overlook the first three vol- umes; but, blase and sophisticated moderns, if you would read a book, buy "The Heart of Thoreau's Journals." For in it, care- fully culled by the loving and yet critical hand of Mr. Shepard, are to be found the choicest fruits of Thoreau; and they have a tang and a tartness that make the finest plums of our con- temporary devotees of the pungent phrase and the peppery epi- gram seem flat and insipid. It is sometimes said that the surest test of a book is whether, having finished it, one wishes to read it again; but an even better test is whether the reader involun- tarily pauses, leaps up, and darts around to find someone to whom certain passages must be read immediately. Since criti- cism is inevitably a personal matter, I confess that, on reading this epitome of Thoreau, I frequently halted and, there being nobody handy to read to, bounded from my chair and stalked about the room literally yelling certain lines aloud — for, like Thoreau, I feared "only lest my expression might not be extrava- gant enough." For he must be read and reread, and then read again. There is little new to be said about him — indeed, there never was — and if one makes the attempt one is likely to discover that Thoreau himself has already said it and in a far better

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Dec. 7, 1927] The Nation 651 gvd SCRIBNER BOOKS FOR CHRISTMAS GIVING <ws MARK SULLIVAN AMERICA FINDING HERSELF by Mark Sullivan The story of "OUR TIMES" through the years immediately fol- lowing "The Turn of the Century". Powerful personalities and the average men and women of the early 1900's people its pages; their fads and fancies, songs, books and other diversions find a place in it. Two hundred and four illustrations from contemporary cartoons, sketches and photographs add to the fascination of the book. "It is one glorious riot of facts, reminiscences, recollections, events . . . written by a well-informed man who recognizes the spectacular and significant in current 00 MEN WITHOUT WOMEN by Ernest Hemingway Fourteen superb stories by the author of "The Sun Also Rises". "He shows himself master in a new manner in the short story form." — New York Times. $2.00 CLEARED FOR STRANGE PORTS by Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt, Sr., Mrs. Kermit Roosevelt, Richard Derby and Kermit Roosevelt High adventure in many lands, the product of a family group. Of espe- cial interest and charm is Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt, Sr.'s contribution, "The Odyssey of a Grandmother". "The stories they tell are well presented and filled with enthralling incidents and detail." — The Boston Globe. With illustrations from photographs. $3.50 THE GREAT DETECTIVE STORIES Collected and Edited with Introduction by Willard Huntington Wright The best stories of the great masters of mystery fiction in all languages from Edgar Allan Poe to A. Conan Doyle and G. K. Chesterton are here presented in a satisfying collection. $2.50 THE ROMANTICK LADY: The Story of an Imagination by Vivian Burnett The biography of Frances Hodgson Burnett by her son. "A very entertaining book full of good stories and amusing letters." — The London Times. Illustrated. $3.50 THE WORLD CRISIS: 1916-1918 by the Rt. Hon. Winston S. Churchill 'An enthralling narrative . . Supple, sinewy, masterful — Harry Hansen in the New York World. THE NEW REFORMATION: From Physi cal to Spiritual Realities — by Michael Pupin writing." — London Observer. Two volumes, REMINISCENCES OF ADVENTURE AND SERVICE by Major-General A. W. Greely "A record of sixty-five years that is as entertaining a piece of non-fiction as one can find upon the book-shelves." — Louisville Courier Journal- Illustrated. $3.50 THROUGH THE WHEAT by Thomas Boyd A new illustrated edition of a War classic. The many illustrations are by Capt. John W. Thomason, Jr., who wrote and illus- trated "Fix Bayonets!" $3 00 TURNPIKES AND DIRT ROADS by Leighton Parks, D.D. A delightful biography picturing life in the old South before and during the Civil War. $3.00 THE PORTRAIT OF ZELIDE by Geoffrey Scott The final popular edition of "the best fictional biography that has been published in English." $2.00 10.00 From the jacket design of "The ftomantick Lady" In his latest book the author of 'From Immigrant to Inventor' forces religion and science to meet in his laboratory. . . and resolve their differences." — St. Paul Dispatch. $2.50 THE REMBRANDT DRAWINGS AND ETCHINGS by John C. Van Dyke, author of "Rembrandt and His School" "Professor Van Dyke's preface, in which he comments upon his system of identification is an exceedingly valuable essay, and the various chap- ters of the book itself are of the greatest possible interest to any reader, with a genuine feeling for art." — Hartford Courant. Profusely illus- trated. Limited to 1,200 copies printed from type subsequently distributed. $12.00 WASHINGTON SPEAKS FOR HIMSELF by Lucretia Perry Osborn The Father of his Country here speaks for himself through a collection of actual letters and documents so arranged and connected as to give a complete life story in his own words. $3.50 CASTLES IN SPAIN: And Other Screeds by John Galsworthy "This collection of essays and studies . . . reveals once again the fiii*- humanistic spirit, the sane philosophy uud the (lawless style of the author of 'The Forsyte Saga'." — Buffalo Sunday Times. $2.00 DEMOCRATIC DISTINCTION IN AMERICA byW.C. Brownell In this \ oluraeof political, social, and aesthetic criticism Mr. Brownell affirms tin- compatibility of democracy and distinction, particularly the American variety of each. $250 JOHN SARGENT by the Hon. Evan Charteris, K. C. The authorized and definitive Life of Sargent. "A well written . . . account of the great American painter, Ins beginnings, his studies in Italy and France, ami his rise to fame." — Harry Hansen in the New York World. Profusely illustrated with reproductions of paint ings and drawings. $6.00 COW COUNTRY by Will James "There are in all eight stories in t lie col lection, some about, wild horses, all aboul cowboys, and cow boys engaged in all sorts of occupations from branding to love-making. The book is most like Mr. James's 'Cowboys, North and South' and 'The Drifting Cowboy] and if you liked them, get this one " — Herschel lirickell in the N. Y. Evening Post. Illustrated by the author. $3.50 MARCHING ON by James Boyd The great American novel of the Civil War. "A serious and competent study of the South asit went into its war." — Capt. John W. Thomasonjr. $2.50 | MICHAEL STROGOFF by Jules Verne The latest volume in the Scribner $2.50 Classic series is the work of a master of narrative, a famous story of thrilling adventurein < '.z.irist Russia. It is superbly illustrated in color by N. C. W'ycth. $2.50 from "Cow Country" 0 o D CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, 597 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK When writing to advertisers please mention The Nation

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652 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3257 way. No writer ever knew his own strength and weakness bet- ter— dozens of passages might be cited to illustrate the point. For more than anything else — "a mystic, a transcendentalist, and a natural philosopher to boot" — he was primarily a writer and he knew it. "My work is writing. ... I know that no subject is too trivial for me . . . the theme is nothing, the life is everything. All that interests the reader is the depth and intensity of the life excited." And no writer ever wrote more wisely about the art of writing. "Nothing goes by luck in com- position. . . . Every sentence is the result of a long probation." From hundreds of passages — "kinked and knotted up into something hard and significant" — which I have marked I give these few. "My Aunt Maria asked me to read the life of Dr. Chalmers, which, however, I did not promise to do. Yes- terday, Sunday, she was heard through the partition shouting to my Aunt Jane, who is deaf: 'Think of it! He stood half an hour today to hear the frogs croak, and he wouldn't read the life of Chalmers.' " "How earthly old people become — moldy as the grave! Their wisdom smacks of the earth. There is no foretaste of immortality in it. They remind me of earth- worms and mole crickets." "I doubt if Emerson could trundle A wheelbarrow through the streets, because it would be out of character." "One never knows his neighbors till he has carried a subscription paper among them." "Most were not aware of the size of the great elm till it was cut down." "A truly good book is something as wildly natural and primitive, mysterious and marvelous, ambrosial and fertile as a fungus or a lichen." This is such a book. R. F. Dibble By Their Fruits My Eighty Years. By Charles F. Dole. E. P. Duttor and Com- pany. $5. HERE is a survivor of what has been discovered to be the most ignorant, the most insincere, the most vapid, the most ridiculous, the most altogether useless period in human history — the Victorian Age. Mr. Dole flourished through "the dreadful decade," the seventies, "the mauve decade" running from the eighties into the "gay nineties," and the whole inane period of "our times" now being so absurdly memorialized by Mark Sulli- van. Born and reared in a Puritan family of the strictest type, he nt v'er underwent the liberating experience of "self-expres- sion." Married in 1873, with no preliminary and precautionary "companionate" relationship, he has lived with one woman for fifty-four years, with not a single "affair" to vary and enliven the drab monotony of such an existence. Never claiming or even imagining a "right to happiness," he has plodded along through all these eighty years in the simple pursuit of duty. "I can scarcely remember a time," he writes, "when righteous- ness of conduct — that is, an ideal of duty, obligation, faithful- ness, responsibility to do my share in whatever had to be done — was not in my mind." He does not smoke or drink; he has been for half a century an ardent reformer, and is still a professional preacher of religion; he has broken none of the Ten Command- ments, reveres the Golden Rule, worships God as the universal Good-Will, and believes in service as the rule of love. What a life! Yes — wliat a life.' How many of our smug sophisticates will be able to match it, in terms even of their own standards of joyful living, when they come to tell the tale of their eighty years? And how many in that eighth decade will have reaped a harvest of . . . that which should accompany old age. As honor, love, obedience, troops of friends which will begin to match that gathered and stored away by this good man? Mr. Dole's book is a simple, guileless, genial confession of his works and days — boyhood in a typical New England home and town, study at Harvard College and Andover Seminary, a brief period of teaching and "drifting," a three years' pastorate in Portland, Maine, a forty years' pastorate in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, marriage, children, happy vacation months in Maine, foreign travel, books, public service, and now the quiet but still busy years of retirement. In and around this unexcit- ing thread of narrative is woven the mellow philosophy and pure religion of the author, who is revealed, in spite of his own instinctive and ingratiating humility, as one of the wisest as well as the best of men. Here is a hard-headed Yankee, inde- pendent, even "sot," in his opinions, going his own free way in politics, religion, and social experience. Here on the other hand is a mystic who discovers the presence of a divine Good-Will in the world and feels himself bound in conscience to exemplify this good-will in his own conduct. The result is that rarest of com- binations— a bold, free-thinking, rigorously conscientious non- conformist who is at the same time tolerant, sympathetic, tender- hearted, companionable, and forever kind. Mr. Dole has seldom been able or willing to get along with institutions or organized partisan groups. In politics, "beginning as a party man, . . . [he has] been fairly compelled to be an Independent." In reli- gion he has had little reverence even for so liberal a church as the Unitarian. But he has always been able to get along with men. No force or compulsion or hatred here; only the sweet persuasions of intelligence and sympathetic understanding! War is impossible, "unholy," to Mr. Dole, primarily because it is an infraction of the law of love one for another. All his life he has practiced "the spirit of the Golden Rule," and thus has stirred easily in other hearts the love within his own. It is not difficult to imagine what Mr. Dole thinks of this mechanistic, imperialistic, vulgar, self-assertive world. Not even such a spectacle, however, can disturb his serenity, dim his faith, or embitter his good humor. And why should it? For this man has discovered the magic of good-will, can wait, as God waits, for other and weaker men to make the same dis- covery. Charles F. Dole is a saint. He will feel at home and enjoy congenial company when he gets to heaven. John Haynes Holmes The Case of Floyd Dell and Others An Unmarried Father. By Floyd Dell. George H. Doran Com- pany. $2. TT^LOYD DELL presents the curious spectacle of a novelist r who understands his characters altogether too well for their health as fictional beings, and incidentally for his own health as an artist. Add to this misfortune a natural fluency of expres- sion, a hand dexterous at plot-steering, and a mind shrewdly informed on all aspects of what the literary critics call life and the scientists divide into biology, psychology, and sociology — and it is apparent at once how handicapped Mr. Dell is as an artist, however useful these things may be to him in other respects. For it seems to me that it is an essential convention of art to pretend that life is mysterious and unintelligible — meaningful, but never clear. The artist is a Peeping Tom who feeds his fancy with fleeting glimpses of life caught through the aperture of a narrow vision. He must not permit himself to know too much. If he is ignorant — so much the better. If he is unfortunate enough to have become infected with knowl- edge, he must hide it as best he can. At all costs he must remain superficial. He must have faith in the appearance of things, without asking for explanations. Therein lies his sal- vation. For the surfaces of life, the phenomena of things are eternal — the explanation varies from age to age. It is this intensive superficiality that one misses in the novels of Floyd Dell. He is far too sensible to be taken in by life. He will not be awed into accepting the apparent finality of things. Life is not a mystery to him, and he will not pretend it. He knows all about his fictional children — what ails them, what they want, what they ought to do to be happy; and even though he try to hide it from them they feel it before long, become self-conscious, and resolve to behave like sensible people

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Dec. 7, 1927] The Nation 653 THE RIGHT BOOKS FOR THE CHRISTMAS SEASON GALLIONS REACH By H. M. TOMLINSON A novel of the Sea and Jungle "A mature and beautiful balanced work of a r t." — William McFee, New York World. " 'Gallions Reach' is another turn in the spiral of per- fection." — Rebecca West, N. Y. Her- ald-Tribune. $2.50 GIANTS IN THE EARTH by O. E. ROLVAAG "The fullest, finest, most powerful novel that has been written about pioneer life in America." — The Nation. $2.50 The Harper Prize Novel The GRAND- MOTHERS By GLENWAY WESCOTT "It is an event in con- temporary fiction." — Burton Rascoe in the Bookman "The most im- portant event in American fiction since Dreiser." — Ernest Boyd. $2.50 AS I KNEW THEM From Grant to Coolidge By HENRY L. STODDARD Former Editor of the N. Y. Evening Mail "Of high importance and strong appeal to every American. Facts newly disclosed against a background of first hand knowledge acquired by experience and illuminated by im- partial analysis." — H. M. Anderson in N. Y. Sun. $5.00 THE RIGHT TO BE HAPPY By MRS. BERTRAND RUSSELL A sensational plea from England for sex freedom. "The Right to be Happy" breathes a spirit of deep sincerity. No one has written more beautifully of sex and parenthood since Edward Carpenter (author of "Loves Coming of Age.") — The Nation. $3.00 ESSAYS LITERARY BLASPHEMIES By ERNEST BOYD Academic dust swept from Shakes- peare, Milton, Whitman, Hardy and others. $3.00 CITIES AND MEN By LUDWIG LEWISOHN An appraisal of striking literary fig- ures. $2.50 HARPERS ESSAYS Edited with an introduction By HENRY SEIDEL CANBY A collection of the essays of many famous contemporary writers, re- flecting important phases of the life of the past twenty-five years. $2.50 POETRY COMPLETE WORKS OF EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY The King's Henchman A Few Figs From Thistles The Harp Weaver and other poems Renascence Second April Cloth, $2.00 each. Leather, $3.00 each. WORK OF COUNTEE CULLEN Color $2.00 Copper Sun __.$2.00 Caroling Dusk $2.50 By the Author All Chicago is Discussing THE AMERICAN ADVENTURE A History of the United States By DAVID SAVILLE MUZZEY, Ph.D. Professor of History, Columbia University In language that interests, and with an understanding that illuminates, the author of the American adventure has reconstructed a story which is in- evitably fascinating to the whole world and to Americans in particular. The ideal gift book. Illustrated. Two Volumes $10.00 PAGES FROM MY LIFE By FEODOR IVANOVITCH CHALIAPIN "This book may justly claim for it- self one of the leading places in the autobiographic literature of this sea- son both for the literary qualities of its pages and the picturesqueness of the life unfolded in them." — N. Y. Times. Illustrated. $5.00 HARPERS LITERARY MUSEUM Compiled by OLA ELIZABETH WINSLOW From rare old books, magazines, and newspapers the compiler has drawn her material for this "compendium of instructive, entertaining, amusing matter selected from early American writings." $4.00 FICTION AVARICE HOUSE By JULIAN GREEN Praised on two continents. "One of the truly important novels of our day." — Harry Hansen, N. Y. World. $2.50 THE CREAM OF THE JUG Edited by GRANT OVERTON An anthology of the best humorous stories printed in the past few years. $2.00 THE SECRET OF FATHER BROWN By GILBERT K. CHESTERTON A new series of adventures solved by the skill and quick wit of Father Brown. $2.50 STANDARD AUTHORS MARK TWAIN'S WORKS A handsome new edition with blue cloth binding. $2.25 and $2.75 per volume. Huckleberry Finn — Holiday edi- tion with 174 original Kernble il- lustrations. $3.50 THE WORKS OF THOMAS HARDY An edition with thin paper and leather binding, $2.50 per volume. Standard edition, $2.25 per volume. HARPER & BROTHERS Publishers since 1817 NEW YORK When writing to advertisers please mention The Nation

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654 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3257 worthy of their intelligent progenitor instead of drifting about like irresponsible artistic creations. This, of course, does not prevent "An Unmarried Father" from being an original and absorbing book. Amusing, too, though here again Mr. Dell is too sensible to be provoked into laughing outright at his hero's plight and exploiting the inher- ent comedy of the situation he has conjured up. And if it is a problem novel, never was a problem so delightfully presented. It is a book that the Elizabeth Ann League would do well to circulate in conjunction with "The President's Daughter." Mr. Dell takes the pathetic plight of the Unmarried Mother, inverts the situation by a cleverly arranged chain of plausible events, and you have an Unmarried Father. Here for the first time is a painting entitled Bachelor and Child, done in the reverent tradition of the Madonna and Child. It is the unscrupulous woman-in-the-case (alias man-in-the-case) who, confronted with the result of her folly, deserts it for the sake of her career; whereas the hapless bachelor is hard put to it to remember that he is a male and keep from yielding to his natural instincts and becoming a wet-nurse. The spectacle of the deserted bachelor adrift in the world, with the child in his arms, is good farce; but Mr. Dell's mien throughout is so serious and earnest that one is not quite sure whether it is good form to laugh. And whereas the happy ending of the tale, when the parents are unexpectedly reunited, might bring some other novelist under suspicion, in Mr. Dell's case one merely feels that he is a conscientious psycho- logical surgeon ,vho *vill not let his patients undergo any more pain than his fictional operation warrants. Somewhere in his novels every novelist has a character who is his intellectual deputy on the scene. Dr. Martha Zerneke, the sympathetic but business-like obstetrician in whose hospital the unnatural mother is confined, is Mr. Dell's character-at-large. One has a feeling that he sees life through her eyes and handles it through her deft, aseptic fingers. His vision is of a sane, sanitary, well-lighted world, swept by reason and knowledge, in which there are no dark corners where ignorance might breed disease — a world in which sex and the other secretions and excretions of life, far from being tabooed, are so intellectually sterilized that they can be handled freely, without distaste, like specimens in a laboratory. Such a world is not without a cer- tain beauty — to an artist who can keep from understanding it, and see amber-colored tubes instead of diabetic symptoms. Alter Brody The Father of Footnotes The Greville Diary. Including Passages Hitherto Withheld from Publication. Edited by Philip Whitwell Wilson. Doubleday, Page and Company. Two volumes. $10. \\T HEN Charles Greville came of age he had no visible means * * of support. But his social standing was of the best and a ducal grandfather generously provided him with an income at the public expense. Two offices were found for him, one the Secretaryship of Jamaica, a complete sinecure. The other was the Clerkship of the Privy Council, a position to which were attached some slight duties. It was a bad piece of jobbery but the ways of Providence are inscrutable, and we of a later gen- eration have reason to be thankful that the taxpayers most unjustly provided Greville with the leisure to write his incom- parable diary. Nobody could have been better placed to observe the politi- cal and social events of the age. His family connections and his official position brought him into contact with everyone that mattered. Recognized as a man of falent and wide informa- tion, he wielded considerable influence behind the scenes. Prime Ministers consulted him and intrusted him with delicate nego- tiations with newspapers; great ladies confided in him. Into his journal went everything he saw and heard — political and diplomatic secrets, court gossip, society scandal, notes on men and manners at home and abroad. In his later years, contemplating the many volumes he was leaving to posterity, Greville censored many entries "that I may not needlessly do mischief." But Henry Reeve, his colleague and literary executor, considered it necessary to suppress a great deal more. Even then the diary caused a great sensa- tion when it was published in 1874. The Queen was extremely vexed. She wo-ote indignantly of "the dreadful indiscretion and DISGRACEFULLY bad taste of Mr. Reeve" in publishing this "scurrillous journal without eliminating what is very offensive and most disloyal towards the sovereigns he served." This new edition of the diary is the result of the recent discovery of the pages suppressed by Reeve. Mr. P. W. Wilson in his task as editor was evidently faced with a dilemma. He wanted to produce a readable volume, unburdened by footnotes, without omitting any interesting material. A complete reprint of the diary as it stood would have been an enormous work chiefly valuable to students. One day's entry often covers half- a-dozen unrelated subjects, and the only order is thus a chrono- logical one. Moreover Greville often heard only part of a story. Further details would be forthcoming months or perhaps years later. Mr. Wilson has therefore rearranged the diary in chap- ters according to subjects, joining the Greville jottings together with brief explanatoi-y sentences of his own. The outcome of this very arduous piece of editing is on the whole eminently satisfactory, except where, in his attempts to be popular, Philip Whitwell Wilson the historian is overshadowed by P. W. Wil- son the journalist. Some of his interpolations, for instance, are rather cheaply topical. His comment: "The Cato Street Conspiracy was what has since come to be called direct action" is wholly unnecessary and historically inaccurate. Mr. Wilson only occasionally calls attention to entries pre- viously suppressed, but one can make fairly accurate guesses at the passages on which Reeve's blue pencil fell. The young Queen is described as "an obstinate girl who takes fancies into her head and loves to have her own way." Lytton Strachey has emphasized Victoria's obstinacy but he also pictured her as completely under the sway of her husband in the latter part of her life. Greville, quoting Baron Stockmar, tells another story: "The Prince was completely cowed and the Queen is so excitable that the Prince lived in terror of bringing on the hereditary malady and dreaded saying or doing anything that might have a tendency to produce this effect." There is much more in the diary of an equally unflattering nature about England's great and good Queen, but it was her uncles for whom Greville reserved his most stinging criticisms. Summing up on George IV, he writes: "There have been good and wise kings but not many of them. Take them one with another they are of inferior character, and this I believe to be one of the worst of the kind. The littleness of his character prevents his displaying the dangerous faults that belongs to great minds, but with vices and weaknesses of the lowest and most contemptible order it would be difficult to find a disposition more abundantly furnished." Greville had no more illusions about his own class than he had about royalty. He was too near a witness of their crimes, follies, and stupidities, accounts of which fill many pages of his journal. Yet he remained the complete patrician and his attitude toward "the lesser breeds" is amusingly demon- strated by his patronizing description of the American Minister in London in 1829. "Maclane is a sensible man with very good American manners, which are not refined." (My italics.) His comments on the increasing demands of the working- classes are equally typical. Occasionally eloquent over their sufferings, he was more often aghast at their pretensions. "Universal suffrage," he wrote contemptuously of the Chartist program in 1849, "is to pick out the men fit to frame new constitutions and when the delegates thus chosen have been brought together — no matter how ignorant, how stupid, how in every way unfit they may be — they expect to be allowed ... to break up at their caprice and pleasure all the ancient founda- tions, and tear down the landmarks of society; and this havoc,

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Dec. 7, 1927] The Nation 655 Biographies Francis Joseph Emperor of Austria King of Hungary By EUGENE BAGGER "A record of not only the whole of Austria, but the whole of nineteenth century European politics. Cleverly written, minutely documented." — The New Yorker. Illustrated. $5.00 Robespierre By HILAIRE BELLOC A keen character analysis of the hard-headed and un- scrupulous philosopher. "A brilliant, analytical study." —Philadelphia Ledger. $5.00 Talleyrand By ANNA BOWMAN DODD "A remarkably fine piece of biographic writing. Written with a warmth and intimacy entirely removed from effort or sentimentalization." — New York Sun. Illustrated. $5.00 Louis XVIII By J. LUCAS-DUBRETON By the author of SAMUEL PEPYS: A PORTRAIT IN MINIATURE The history of a pathetic French monarch, the last rem- nant of Bourbon royalty, standing out as a lonely figure on a troubled horizon, a monarch of the salon, rather than of an army or of a people. $3.50 Certain Rich Men By MEADE MINNIGERODE "Mr. Minnigerode has the talent for catching the es- sence of a dead age in a few graceful sentences. Every- one of these brief biographies is clear, convincing, dra- matic."— Elmer Davis in the N. Y. Herald Tribune. $3.50 Palmerston for The Statesman Who Defied a Queen By PHILIP GUEDALLA "Mr. Guedalla does not merely tell us about Palmers- ton. We live with the man himself. Like drama, it is life foreshortened. But it is real life." — New York Times. Illustrated. $5.00 Wilhelm Hohenzollern The Last of the Kaisers By EMIL LUDWIG "A dramatic biography so powerful seldom gets into print in any language." — New York Times. 28 Illustrations. $5.00 For sale at all booksellers or at the Putnam Store Gift s Adventure Across Asia's Snows and Deserts By WILLIAM J. MORDEN This expedition, under the auspices of the American Museum of Natural History, traversed Central Asia by a trail untrod since the days of Marco Polo. Illustrated. $5.00 Camels! By DAN STREETER "In this rollicking tale of adventure the thrill and fas- cinating lure of the jungle are ever present." — Philadel- phia Ledger. Illustrated. $2.50 Dragon Lizards of Komodo By W. DOUGLAS BURDEN An expedition to a lost world of the Dutch East Indies in search of giant lizards. Illustrated. $3.50 GalapagOS: World's End By WILLIAM BEEBE A new popular edition with the same text as the original, and forty-eight specially selected photographs. Only $5.00 Roosevelt's Hunting Adventures in the West Hunting Trips of a Ranchman and The Wilderness Hunter in one volume. An entertaining record of Roose- velt's more strenuous days. $2.50 Fiction Caste By COSMO HAMILTON The romance of a love pilloried by modern America's opposing racial aristocracies — Jewish and Gentile. $2.00 Are You Decent? By WALLACE SMITH A group of tales about the world backstage with its glittering "stars," sleeper jumps, one night stands, its children of the "small-time" — the "good troopers" of theatrical legend. $2.50 . 2 West 45th St., just zvest of 5th Ave. New York G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS London When writing to advertisers plasr mention The Nation

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656 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3257 and ruin, and madness are dignified with the fine name of con- stitutional reform." It seems unnecessary to continue quoting one of the most quoted books in the world. Greville might almost be called the father of footnotes, for every historian of his period, every biographer of men of his time, refers to him again and again. His diary is an indispensable sourcebook. At the same time the layman who picks up this attractive new edition and opens it at random can always be certain of rich entertainment. Keith Hutchison "Our Times" Our rimes. By Mark Sullivan. Vol. I: The Turn of the Cen- tury. Vol. II: America Finding Itself. Charles Scribner's Sons. $5 each. THE appraisal of Mark Sullivan's "Our Times" turns upon the author's success in making contemporary history inter- esting. The first volume showed at once that the whole work is not intended to fill the role of formally written history, even for its period. History professionally written would not employ a method and a manner of statement so plastic; it would give more formality to its narrative and would comprehend a wider range of source materials. Moreover, it would be likely to select and assess a more restricted area of events for record and comment. But the fust volume was written in a form so refresh- ingly personal and original that the reader looked forward to a modern American diary covering the first quarter of the twentieth century, always with an eye single to matters of pub- lic interest and importance. Well removed from academic or- ganization and perspective, the book is a highly readable report of matured journalistic observation, practicing well what Macaulay preached when he maintained that history should por- tray, among other things, religious sects, changes in literary taste, manners, dress, repasts, public amusements, and similar social phenomena. The new volume brings the record down to 1905, and every- where in the twenty-eight chapters the author is led forward by his interest in finding the American mind. Were he writing a philosophical treatise he would be able, no doubt, to use the same materials to discover how the American mind is made. Tw live chapters are wisely employed to describe the influences that gave its patriotic bent to the American temper during the earlier century and entered positively into the making of the nation's leadership as late as the turn of that century. These influences were the subjects taught in the common schools. Foremost of all, perhaps, was the McGuffey series of readers, which Mr. Sullivan discovered, by means of a wide investiga- tion, to be still cherished with affection by many survivors of the rural school era. The games of the schoolyards, the com- munity singing and dancing, and the elocutionary instruction of the time helped to create a nation-wide social solidarity. The influence of the common schools was everywhere democratic. Mr. Sullivan thinks that its critics have not always been fair. Typical of the criticism of the nineteenth-century common school was the conviction of Henry Adams that the education of the "American boy of 1854 stood nearer the year 1 than the year 1900," and that for the later period "he had no education at all." Mr. Sullivan points out that Adams could appraise the needs of the twentieth century after it arrived. His teachers could not do this. We may not expect teachers to be prophets or demand that they educate pupils for conditions not yet in sight. Probably many of the presenf generation, with a differ- ent vision of the school, would contend for a different view of the teacher's obligation. Historically, the school system has been more conservative than industry and certain of the pro- fessions, though less so than the religious establishment. Dur- ing much of the last century it was content to follow traditional instruction, even in the midst of obviously changing conditions. Professional teachers may reasonably be expected to introduce their pupils to the major contemporary tendencies by providing a range of knowledge sufficiently wide to make adjustment easier to opportunities both present and ahead. Mr. Sullivan, however, would indorse Henry Adams's main conclusion ; as a historian, he limits his purpose to a survey of education as it was actually given. The larger part of this volume contains a vivid resume of those years of the 1890's which witnessed the growing irritation of the public mind over the labor question and the rapid stimu- lation of big business. An account of Markham's poem, "The Man with the Hoe," and of its inspiration by Millet's painting, furnishes an attractive introduction to this mood of the times. The poem was symptomatic, perhaps, of industrial labor's in- surgency as well as of the appearance of Bryan and Roosevelt as the more prominent champions of social and political reform. The poem became the incentive of numerous editorials and uni- versity lectures on the ominous capitalistic development of the day. It was called the "cry of the Zeitgeist," as timely as Hood's "The Song of the Shirt." Politicians divided into two antagonistic groups over the outstanding economic question be- fore the public — whether business should follow its spirit of enterprise upon the comfortable theory of laissez faire, as the "barons" of the day presumed, or submit to some form of gov- ernment regulation. The problem was complex. It involved the Standard Oil Company, railroad mergers, sugar refineries, the packers, pure food, and coal strikes. A new economic vocabu- lary came into vogue. The Senate was the storm center of the controversy precipitated by President Roosevelt as leader of a new program for democracy. The suggestion of government interference in capitalized industry was not novel. The author gives the highly interesting bit of information that in 1842, when the country had but 2,000 miles of railroad, Governor Seward of New York advised the legislature to consider supervision of the roads of the State respecting "accommodations afforded the public, the fares re- ceived, the profits realized," and urged continuance of the char- ter policy which stipulated the right of the State to take over the railroads when deemed necessary. From 1887 the Interstate Commerce Commission existed, but with less power than later on. The story of Roosevelt's policies, the genesis of the trust and its expansion upon the Dodd model, Carnegie's disdain of cooperation, and the President's final success in the Northern Securities case and the coal strike are reminders of perplexing problems peculiar to the turn of the century which Mr. Sullivan surveys so admirably. The volumes of "Our Times" will be read by many men with pleasure, and then placed among their most highly valued books of reference. Luther E. Robinson The Primitive State The Origin of the State. By R. H. Lowie. Harcourt, Brace and Company. $1.50. IT would be insolent in one who is not an anthropologist to praise Professor Lowie's book. Hence, therefore, I will only say that his expressed hope that it will be useful to students in related fields receives an ample fulfilment in the case at least of one reader. I have found it extraordinarily suggestive, and, for the most part, it carries conviction to a soul as ignorant of the evidence as I. What Professor Lowie's fellow-anthropolo- gists will have to say of his selection from the vast field of evidence I do not know; but if what he gives is a fair and random selection, the importance of his thesis is beyond all question. It is, briefly, that the state is universal even though its form is not unilinear. There has always been a coercive organ exercising control over the inhabitants of a contiguous terri- torial area. That organ is superior to associations within the area, and it is the instrument by which the unification of the

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Dec. 7, 1927] The Nation 657 George Washington The Rebel and the Patriot [Vol. II] [ 1762-1777] By R U P E R T HUGHES The Virginia planter becomes the unwilling com- mander of the rebel armies. Out of those stirring times there emerges a new and heroic Washing- ton— all the more lovable for his human weak- nesses. Fascinating new material makes this a complete picture of the man and the soldier through the battle of Trenton. $5.00 Religious Liberty The Great American Illusion By Albert C. Dieffenbach Spiritual intolerance in this country and how it came about. "Has succeeded admirably in his treatment of one of the most vita] problems of our present day." — Brooklyn Times. $1.50 The Builders of America By Ellsworth Huntington and L. F. Whitney The Americans of the future : where will they come from ? "Arrestingly entertaining as well as significant comment on contemporary condition." — Time. $3.50 Navigator The Story of Nathaniel Boiuditch By Alfred Stanford Old Salem in the Golden Age of "Iron Men and Wooden Ships" "Mr. Stanford contrives, through some sort of patient inner excite- ment that is the secret of his own gift, to keep the book whole and rich with masculine feeling." — Stark Young in The New Republic. S2.50 WILLIAM MORROW & CO.. 303 Fifth Ave., New York HHBKESBEB i I The Collected "Poetry o f Edwin Arlington Robinson (*7*?HIS is the first complete edition of one VJyof America's great poets, the surpassing quality of whose work has won for him twice the honor of the Pulitzer poetry prize and, this year, the unprecedented popular acclaim re- flected in the sale of 50,000 copies of Tristram — a poem which is included in this collection. The poetry which has achieved such distinction is now given a proper setting in this handsome edition of five volumes. Beautifully printed and bound, the set is an appropriate gift for the lover of poetry and enduring literature. Price of the Set: Leather $15.00 — Cloth $10.50 The Macmillan Company New York I i Ten of the Best Sellers ^'•y» ■» y Have you seen tke beautiful new illustra- ted, catalogue of our Fall feooks? Y© u can peruse tliis at your leisure. Why siot !>r©wse fee- fore you buy? ■ To E. P. Dutton & Co., 5 0o I I 6S1 Fifth Ave., N.V. Please tend me your New Fall Catalogue. Name Address N. All published by Dutton When writing to advertisers please mention The Nation

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658 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3257 community is achieved. In a word, the answer to the question of the origin of the state is that it is born of sovereignty. From that conclusion many consequences follow. It does much to fortify the Marxian theory of the state for which, in a special form, Dr. Franz Oppenheimer has so stoutly con- tended. It does much, also, to explain the hostility of Leviathan to voluntary associations. These are the natural enemies of the enforced unity it is seeking to impose; and we can then understand why the idea of freedom of association is so late in historical development. Professor Lowie makes the point that in early society associational development will not issue into a national state. Nor will it, we may add, in later. Its necessity and value in the modern time is that it prevents the over- exclusiveness of the unity for which the national state stands; and it permits the growth of organs of protest against the per- version of the state-purpose by its instruments. I could wish, indeed, that Professor Lowie had given us his reflections upon a theme which seems implicit in his essay. The state, as I understand him (my ignorance may well have led me astray), is the outcome of a need to protect the territorial community against the excess of the individual or the group. The group, today, is necessary for the protection of the individual against the excess of the state. What, in primi- tive society, is the root of that excess? Is it the effort, as Dr. Oppenheimer thinks, of a class to exploit another for its benefit? Certainly, today, no analysis of the state is realistic which does not make this a major theme. The purpose of all groups and classes is the capture of the state for a purpose which coincides with an interest each seeks to promote. Baptists seek to cap- ture the legislatures of the Middle West lest Darwinism lead the young to damnation. Wall Street seeks to capture (or to maintain as its prisoner) the Presidency lest its dominion be threatened. The K.K.K. seeks to hold the political citi.del against such unholy forces as the Jews, the Catholics, and the Negroes. The struggle for power is clearly central in the political prob- lem. Each seeks to obtain that, so to say, ultimate right to proclaim martial law which gives it victory over its enemies. In the modern state it holds the army and navy to that end. I cannot find in Professor Lowie's fascinating illustrations the primitive analogy to these instruments. But he convinces me (and I hope greatly will convince other students) that the light his science can cast on the problems we confront is profound and ihat the sooner we seek to grasp the central results of anthropological research, the better for their understanding. Harold J. Laski Liberalism and Literature Cities and Men. By Ludwig Lewisohn. Harper and Brothers. $2.50. T IBERALISM is the fine art of falling between two stools. •*— i It is the yearning to have one's cake and eat it too. The liberal, seated in the center, between the reactionary on the right and the radical on the left, wastes his breath in futile protest against the authoritarianism of the first and the anarchy of the second. He does not believe in God, but he is no atheist. He thinks the French Revolution a significant event for the pro- motion of what he calls progress, but he deplores the Reign of Terror. He hates Napoleon, but he regrets his defeat by the Coalition. He is skeptical of revealed religion, but he is credu- lous of the dogmas of nineteenth-century science. Most liberals spend their lives wondering if now is not the moment to throw off all liberal pretense and go over to the extreme left. In art and letters the liberal tends to seek refuge in the camp of romanticism. That is as it should be. Romanticism rejects tradition, and tradition, one of the props of reaction, is anathema to the liberal. Romanticism exalts the individual and denies the claims of authority, and the liberal is not only anti-authoritarian but egocentric. Romanticism despises reason and deifies instinct, and the liberal, who knows himself too mud- i.TC«);WI:Wri:ST OUT OF THE ORDINARY Henry Ward Beecher: An American Portrait by PAXTON HIBBEN The most eagerly read, widely praised biography of the year. "By all odds the most important American biography of the year." — New York Sun. Illus. $5.00 An Unmarried Father by FLOYD DELL This great modern's amusing novel of a young man's dilemma is described by the St. Louis Democrat as being "Floyd Dell at his best." ' $2.00 D. L. Moody: A Worker in Souls by GAMALIEL BRADFORD A masterly and distinguished critique-biography of America's great man of religion. Illus. $3.50 New York Nights by STEPHEN GRAHAM "A glowing, detailed guide" is Harry Hansen's opinion of this unusual guide to New York after the magic hour of midnight. Illus. $4.00 ■NO*, Jeremy at Crale by HUGH WALPOLE Lovable, adorable Jeremy is now introduced in all the glory of boyhood. "Belongs in a great tradition." Regular Edition $2.00 Uniform Author's Edition $2.50 Vestal Fire by COMPTON MACKENZIE Daring, satirical, scintillant — a great novel by the author of FAIRY GOLD. $2.00 The Vanguard: A Fantasia by ARNOLD BENNETT A flashing novel exhibiting the whimsy, the fantasy of which he is famous. Uniform Author's Edition $2.50 .No*, Oliver Cromwell: A Character Study by JOHN DRINKWATER A scholarly and unique biographical study of a dominant his- torical enigma. Frontispiece $2.50 City of Bread by ALEXANDER NEWEROFF "Something to ponder over, this tremendous, sweeping epic of new Russia."— Paxton Hibben. Illustrated by THEODORE NADETEN. $2.50 Sir Arthur Sullivan by HERBERT SULLIVAN and NEWMAN FLOWER This great definitive biography immediately becomes the final source. A vivid and fascinating study, based on heretofore un- published material. Mus. $5.00 GEORGE H. DOR AN COMPANY - NEW YORK PTft^frMMttfl ■ ■Ml H'Aoi writ ng to phase mention The Nation

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Dec. 7, 1927] The Nation 659 die-headed to rely upon his reason, is happy to make instinct his ultimate authority. Mr. Lewisohn is a liberal, but a particularly shrewd one. Desiring to deal telling blows at reaction and tradition, and being well aware of the weakness of the romantic's position, he builds himself a new platform from which to send his shot. This invention he calls the "autobiographical tradition" (it is hard to escape the word tradition), and into his ranks he shang- haies a body of poets and thinkers whose shades must protest vehemently at fighting under his flag. In the camp of "the autobiographical instinct, the Judeo-Christian, Protestant, Ro- mantic and saving speech and protest of the free man" he has the effrontery to place Dante, Lucian, Augustine, Montaigne, and Goethe, beside such egolaters as Rousseau, Hazlitt, Shelley, , and Whitman. They belong under his banner, we are told, because their works were "one long confession," they alone "looked in their hearts and wrote." When I say "they alone," I mean merely that Racine, Bossuet, Santayana, and La Bruyere (whom Mr. Lewisohn rejects) are presumed either to have no hearts or not to have looked into them. The distinction is a little bewildering (as are all liberal distinctions). Granted that Shelley and Montaigne both looked into their hearts, is there not a prodigious difference between the first, who mis- took his heart for the universe, and the second, who observed man and the universe in the light of his reason and his heart? Can the wild-eyed, neurotic, blubbering Rousseau be placed in the same category with the serenely skeptical Goethe? Has not Goethe really more in common with that magnificent psycholo- gist, La Bruyere, than with the undisciplined torrent called Whitman? Bossuet, who unhappily revered authority, wrote: "Dire Je crois, c'est plutot en nous un effort pour produire un si grand acte qu'une certitude absolue de l'avoir produit." Is this to look into one's heart, or not? But the muddle of liberalism is an unending swamp. "What," asks Mr. Lewisohn, "is it to be classical but to have ease of form and to repeat the moral and intellectual patterns by which the state has found it easy to keep men in subjection in both peace and war?" And elsewhere he says: "Christen- dom means the great tradition of patriotism and war and vic- tory." Which is a point of view. But how are we to reconcile it with the statement that romanticism — an anti-classical and anti-Christian phenomenon — "has been his [msn's] undoing — romanticism that discovered the epics, the myths, the songs of the various nationalities, that, in fact, discovered those various nationalities, next identified them with race, next with certain territories, next with power and dominance. . . . The Continent is sodden with romanticism, with a false and virulent historical- mindedness." After this, one would not be surprised to hear Mr. Lewisohn extolling the Christian internationalism of the Middle Ages and pleading for a return to the temporal power of the Papacy. In any man not a liberal it would be amazing to find a writer so fundamentally wrong in his ultimate concepts and so agreeable and penetratingly right in his estimate of individual instances. Mr. Lewisohn writes with unobtrusive scholarship and a certain charming suavity on a variety of subjects. His sympathies range over most of Europe. He keeps his temper cheerfully and humorously when such Tories as Saintsbury and Santayana are his subject. He communicates to us feelingly and informingly the sense of great and grave poetry in his essays on Rilke and Dehmel. The little chapter on Baudelaire is particularly intelligent, and the survey of Cocteau's verse (the first I have seen in English) is sensitive and just. His Unknown Poet is an act of Christian kindness of the sort we always intend to perform and never find time for. On Vienna, and on Catullus in Verona, he is fluid and graceful and tender. His restatement of the Heine case, his evaluation of Georg Brandes, and his introduction of Martin Buber will be read with the greatest interest. Mr. Lewisohn seems to me at his best in the realm of pure literature, and there he is all that we desire him to be. Lewis Galantiere Gift Suggestions from the McBRIDE LIST SOMETHING ABOUT EVE A Comedy of Fig-leaves By JAMES BRANCH CABELL "Told a little more expertly and a little more beautifully than even Mr. Cabell has ever told a tale before." — Frances Newman in the New York Evening Post. $2.50 GENGHIS KHAN The Emperor of All Men By HAROLD LAMB "Fascinating, not only in its text, but in fore- word, afterword and notes." — Harry Salp"t<*r in the New York World. Fifth Printing $3.50 COMMODORE VANDERBILT An Epic of American Achievement By ARTHUR D. HOWDEN SMITH "By all means the most unusual attempt in American letters to give us a picture of a man rather than an obituary." — Brooklyn Eagle. Illustrated $5.00 NOTHING BUT THE EARTH By PAUL MORAND A smiling and disillusioned chronicler, Paul Morand follows the trail of Twentieth Cen- tury confusion around the world. $3.00 GREAT SHORT NOVELS t°he WORLD Edited, zvith Introduction and Notes By BARRETT H. CLARK An amazingly fine collection of complete short novels, chosen from the literature of all periods and all countries of the world. Over 1300 pages. Cloth, $5.00. Half morocco, boxed, $10.00 SHERWOOD ANDERSON By CLEVELAND B. CHASE A new volume in the series of Modern Amer- ican Writers edited by Ernest Boyd. $1.00 ROBERT M. McBRIDE & COMPANY 7 West 16th Street New York When writing to advertisers please mention The Nation

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660 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3257 Sudermann Der tolle Professor. Ein Roman aus der Bismarckzeit. Von Hermann Sudermann. Stuttgart und Berlin: J. G. Cotta'sche Buchhandlung Nachfolger.1 Hermann Sudermann. Sein Werk und sein Wesen. Von Kurt Busse. Stuttgart und Berlin: J. G. Cotta'sche Buchhand- lung Nachfolger. ''"T^ER tolle Professor," Hermann Sudermann's most recent -L' and most sustained effort in the field of fiction since "Es War" and "Das hohe Lied," is essentially a political novel. In this chronicle of the tragic career of the Mad Pro- fessor of Konigsberg Sudermann manifestly seeks to epitomize the decline of German liberalism during the Bismarckian era. In mood, individual characterization, and motivation the novel rests on the solid foundation of Sudermann's experience as a student in the university of Konigsberg in 1875. Although veiled in a charitable anonymity not a few of its sharply etched portraits of university dignitaries, including that of the Mad Professor, are drawn from life and with sardonic veracity. In the face of a petulant school of criticism which persists after more than a generation in quavering a batrachian chorus against Sudermann and all his works, we venture to record here that the animating idea of "Der tolle Professor" has been conceived with sincerity and authority and that its dom- inant theme has been executed in the main with that vibrancy and verve of diction which distinguish a not inconsiderable portion of Sudermann's writings. "Der tolle Professor" is an ambitious attempt to depict the confusion and despair which may engulf an individual of bold and independent habit of thought who finds himself at odds with the popular will during a period of sociai and politi- cal transition. Dr. Sieburth's deplorably indiscreet mode of life and his equivocal position on burning questions of the day contrive to bring about his ostracism from the circles of re- spectable academic society. And at this fateful moment in his career the Iron Chancellor becomes his special Nemesis. The popular triumph of Bismarck's imperial policies disturbs Sieburth profoundly. In his solitude he falls prey to a dan- gerous mood of indecision and self-analysis. His original skeptical attitude merges into a fatal relaxation of the will and an all-encompassing pessimism. He is caught in the grip of a cruel preoccupation with the problem of the multiplicity of the phases of truth. In the end his recognition of the in- stability of reason, of morality, and of the social order becomes an insidious mental disease which devours the very fiber of his mind and culminates in his self-destruction. Kurt Busse's "Hermann Sudermann, Sein Werk und sein Wesen" is a refreshingly spirited and timely piece of literary criticism. The book is an unabashed "vindication" of Suder- mann, but its argument is unusually convincing. In the cre- ator of such dissimilar things as "Frau Sorge" and "Sodoms Ende," "Das hohe Lied" and "Litauische Geschichten" Busse professes to discern not a purveyor of prurient sensationalism but a conscientious artist and a sincere interpreter of mod- ern life. Busse attacks the problem of a revaluation of Suder- mann from the ethnological and geographical point of view. For him Sudermann is irrevocably the East Prussian, wilful and intellectually tough-fibered, sensual but self-controlled, in- telligently practical and realistic rather than imaginative and poetic, the son of sturdy pioneering peasants and the child of wind-swept plains and marshes. The salient qualities of his personality are the factors which determine his literary style and his position in German letters, liusse is justified in term- ing Sudermann a continuator of the traditions of Spielhagen, Freytag, and Gottfried Keller rather than an exponent of the consequent naturalism of the nineties. His analysis of Suder- 1 A translation of thi under the title "The JIad Professor'* will be published by Boni and Liveright in the spring. LIPPINCOTT BOOKS for Gifts ■ ■ .: ■ NAPOLEON, THE LOVER! Startling, almost sensational, disclosures that bring to life a new and absorbingly human Napoleon. Napoleon and His Women FriendS By Gertrude Aretz Translated from the German by Eden and Cedar Paul Fascinating in the extreme are the stories — gay, intimate, intensely personal — of his many love affairs, of his hours of passion, beguilement and tender dalliance. No Napoleonic library is complete without this book which is compiled from indisputable historic sources. 16 Illustrations. $5.00 Lord NorthcMffe By R. Macnair Wilson Author of "The Beloved Physician. Sir James Mackenzie." Xorthcliffe — the man who influenced the minds of men and of kings. Few realize the forcefulness — the humanity — the constructive strength of this man. Dr. Wilson, an intimate friend of Northcliffe, here gives a vibrant picture of the great statesman and journalist. Frontispiece. $5.00 The Cap of Youth £X£S£?£Z£. By John A. Steuart "A glowing addition to the personal literature of genius. There is fire in it." — Phila. Inquirer. $2.50 An Artist in the Tropics By Jan Poortenaar Foreword by Frank Brangwyn An art journey by one of the best known younger artists through Java, Bali, the Celebes, Borneo and Sumatra. The author's magnificent full-page color plates and black and white sketches are vivid with all the magic glamour of the East. 56 Illustrations. $7.50 That Mind Of YourS By Daniel B. Leary, Ph.D. The most interesting story of today — the story of YOUR OWN SELF — told in popular, non-technical style. This com- pact volume gives the cream of the New Psychology. $1.75 The Practical Book of Italian, Spanish and Portuguese Furniture By Harold Dona'dson Eberlein and Roger Wearne Ramsdell For the first time the furniture of these three countries is treated comprehensively in one volume at moderate cost. Covers every phase from the Renaissance to the early Nine- teenth Century inclusive. 374 Illustrations. $10.00 Old Trails and Roads in Penn's Land By John T. Faris Dr. Faris traces these enchanting old trails and footpaths through historic towns and villages and past glorious land- marks, opening up unsuspected beauties to the traveler. 62 Illustrations. ' $5.00 Hawkers and Walkers in Early America By Richardson Wright "A veritable encyclopaedia of vagabondage. There is hardly a page without its curious fact or fancy. A delightful and informing book — one not only to read but to dream over." — Atlantic Monthly. 68 Illustrations from old sources. $5.00 J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY PHIUADELPNia LONDON When writing to . advertisers please mention The Nation

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Dec. 7, 1927] The Nation 661 mann's works from "Im Zwielicht" to "Der tolle Professor" is both sympathetic and penetrating. The appended biograph- ical sketch and chronological list of Sudermann's writings add to the value of the volume. IIknry Brennecke One Side of Heine That Man Heine. A Biography. By Lewis Browne. The Mac- millan Company. $3. ONE is tempted to believe that Mr. Browne chose this ugly title with a certain deliberation, as if to fit the mouth of a man who might say with justifiable and deprecatory emphasis: "Oh! that fellow, Heine!" Every crime of which the great lyricist and satirist was ever accused is accepted here as proved against him. He lusted, he lied, he bragged, he abused his friends, and he lacked bravery. That last charge in particular sticks in the craw of those who have sorrowed with the poet during his eight years on his "mattress grave," who have de- lighted in the wit he kept alert and the pen he kept so busy then and the tenderness with which he cared for the two women who, according to Mr. Browne, most plagued him during his life — the mother who would have made a millionaire of him in his youth and the wife who squandered every cent he earned before his death. Mr. Browne, in truth, does not love his Heine. But it is only fair to admit that he appreciates in full measure every side of his work and every phase of his development. Also he is letter-perfect on his theme — a matter for which stu- dents should be thankful — even though one may quarrel over the particular letters he chooses to reproduce. To call this a complete biography of Heine, however, is to take for granted something not acknowledged by others plying Mr. Browne's biographic trade. Surely a life-history, to be complete, should be completely rounded off, and this is one-sided. We see Heine as a sensitive soul socially suffering from Juden- schmerz in a country that forced every Jew to become Chris- tian if he wished to enter an honorable profession by way of a university. We see a Hellene or Pagan fighting a Nazarene or Jew within himself — a still more devastating conflict for a genius. We see a mystic fighting realities; a tortured creature torturing others in his turn; a freedom-lover taking arms against German Junkerdom; an unsuccessful lover bewailing his evil fate. Mr. Browne is capable of saying: Had he been possessed of a healthy mind, he would not have felt the need to flee at every crisis to his fantasy world. He would have been able to meet the harshest exig- encies without a tremor and would have at least tried to vanquish them in reality. Is the world richer for poets who refuse to flee to their fantasy worlds? One rather thinks of this as the counsel given to highly strung soldiers, driven by national necessities to shouldering a gun. There is no relief in this book for those to whom the picture of continuous mental and moral struggle is harassing. We do not see the audacious young student who, knapsack on back, strode away from boring Gottingen, "famous for its sausages and university," to write his inimitable "Harzreise." We do not see the borrower from banker Uncle Solomon who, given four hundred pounds purely for "window-dressing" purposes with London bankers, promptly cashed the check to pay old friends and then had the impudence to inform the same uncle that he must pay something for the honor of bearing the borrower's name! A horror to his enemies, devastating as vitriol to those who offended, Heine yet had friends; but Mr. Browne shows them only as people to whom the poet went in his need to beg. Heine, of course, lacked the aristocratic dash of Shelley, but yet he had a dash all his own, and we miss it in this biography. Mr. Browne takes for granted much gossip about Heine's relations with women. Was it necessary for anyone as good- The Ten Princes Translated from the Sanskrit By Arthur W. Ryder "... one of the most cele- brated Hindu romances. . . . The adventures are erotic, picaresque, romantic, yet withal valorous and refined." — W. Norman Brown in Books. $2.00 Jesus A New Biography By Shirley Jackson Case "A book of the first importance . . . the best book now available on the life and teachings of Jesus." — The Nation $3.00 The Nature of the World and of Man By Sixteen University of Chicago Scientists "For a personally conducted tour of the universe." $5.00 The Old Testament f i \ f I An American Translation By J. M. P. Smith, Theophile J. Meek, Alex R. Gordon ami Leroy Waterman . . . this is the first of the several American revisions which can claim undisputed literan distinction." — The Forum. Cloth. $7.50 Leather. $10.00 More Contempo- rary Americans By Percy Holmes Boynton "... he enters with uncommon in- sight the various worlds of Melville, Bierce, Sherwood Anderson, Herge- sheimer, and Sinclair Lewis . . . ." — Van Wyck Brooks. $2.50 These books are at all bookstores The University of Chicago Press When writing to advertisers please mention The Nation

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662 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3257 looking, as talented, and as distinguished to pick prostitutes indiscriminately off the streets? Was it possible, granted he did so, that he could contract from such contact a spinal disease so disastrous to his frame and so innocuous to his brain? As Michael Monahan points out in his much more sympathetic book, Daudet and Maupassant suffered from the same nervous trouble, but in their cases it was ascribed to the sensitive organ- ization that accompanies outstanding genius — which Heine had. No, Mr. Browne's picture of Heine is by no means complete. We get, so to speak, only one side of his face. Still, Mr. Browne's book is important for Heine lovers. That anyone should go so deeply into Heine lore is something to be grateful for. Heine has been neglected despite his status in German literature, perhaps for the very reason that Mr. Browne has so completely shown. His was a complex character, racially, politi- cally, even poetically. Much of what the biographer ascribes to Judenschmerz in Heine's youth was probably simply Welt- schmerz, that disease from which even Gentiles suffer. He, too, had to pass through his "Sturm und Drang" period, as even Schiller, the pious, had. Mr. Browne has painted the despised Heine, the hated Heine (hating even himself) , the Heine who de- served often to be ostracized, the Heine of the caustic tongue and acid pen. The trouble is that the book is as easy reading as the lightest fiction, with the result that those who do not know and love the poet for his poetry and the satirist for his wit may get a wrong impression — and never read more than Lewis Browne. Norah Meade The Primitive Thinker Primitive Man as Philosopher. By Paul Radin. D. Appleton and Company. $3. DR. RADIN presents an arresting and radical thesis. We have learned that the cave-dwellers of southern France in remote prehistoric times were skilled artists, that the skull capacity of the Cro-Magnons was as ample as our own; we are now presented with the evidence that lo! the poor Indian was, and remains, a philosopher. The false view of primitive man is due to the different centering of his interests and consequent pursuits or cere- monies and to the prejudices of the ethnologists committed to find'ng the mentality of primitive people inferior to their own. Primitive life stresses the world of sensation and action, from which the academic mind has freed itself in behalf of a logic suited to its pursuits. It is prone to regard as superstitious any procedures diverging from its own standards. When a poisoned arrow is discharged along a deer-trail to bring good hunting, that "magical" rite is but part of the total action; the selection of the proper trail at the proper season being quite as essential a part of the practical ceremony. Ration- alists like Voltaire may explain in sophisticated satire that incantations together with a sufficient amount of arsenic will kill your neighbor's sheep. The primitive man is content with the result and hesitates to omit what he may regard as the superstitious part of the total procedure. According to Dr. Radin our whole picture of the primitive mind is askew. The error started with Tylor and his doctrine of "animism"; Levy-Bruhl's correction of a pre-logical men- tality and the doctrine of "psychic participation" to explain the relation of doer and (ceremonial) deed was still wide of the truth. The primitive man, like the peasant, is practical- minded, and will not ask rain from a cloudless sky during the dry season. The magical content, when it is introduced, is so much added stimulation toward his goal, and it is nothing more. We fail to appreciate how adequately sensations, emo- tions, and intuitions may function in determining choice of conduct including the ceremonial, and may be not pre-logical or illogical but on a par with our cherished forms of analysis. Primitive man is as good a thinker as the rest of us; he has his own way of applying his mental powers. Primitive man lives deeply in the present; he lives as an individual, though accepting the social structure of his tribe. Like the Oriental weaver of rugs, he follows his tribal pattern but with an individual touch of design. He may depart, with- draw, protest, or venture at his own risk; and the chief risk he runs is that of ridicule. He may exercise undisputed the right to be foolish. He accepts with the same directness the validity of his subjective life. In defending and extending this thesis, Dr. Radin makes an added point. "Among primitive peoples there exists the same distribution of temperament and ability as among us." As among us, only the few intellectuals do much thinking, and the amazing autobiography of the Winnebago "Crashing Thunder" which Dr. Radin has presented is the record of one such most exceptional "primitive" man. But this very desire for glory or career is a common primitive trait preparing the way for self-expression and a hero's part. Tui'ning next to myth, proverbs, parables, poems, reflec- tions, there appears an authentic literature to corroborate the philosophic trend. But personalities, virtues, systems, cos- mogonies, religious precepts as theistic as our own, skepticisms and critiques here play a part quite familiar to the mental fauna and flora of w7hat we regard as more cultivated regions of culture. The social relations, the family ties, the consid- eration for women, the tenderness toward children which pro- hibits their physical punishment, the sense of equity and fidel- ity, the respect for the experienced, the calm imperturbability in disaster — these suggest a tribally regulated world, conducive to wholesome adjustment and content. In disaffected mood over the glaring shortcomings of our own social conditions, one may well reflect: "Almost thou persuadest me to be a Win- nebago!" The documentation of Dr. Radin is formidable enough to upset the complacency of the orthodox version of primitive man. It is a rose-colored picture of an enthusiastic defender of the cause of the aborigines, perhaps over-colored by the impressiveness of exceptional examples. Men in the mass have rarely been inspiring; great periods occur when they yield to great leaders. But the evolutionary view of mind in the mak- ing may still be maintained, when due allowance is made for Dr. Radin's drastic corrections of our preconceptions. Joseph Jastrow Renaissance and Reformation The Social and Political Ideas of So-yn-e Great Thinkers of the Renaissance and the Reformation. Edited by F. J. C. Hearnshaw. Brentano's. $3. rT,HIS series of popular lectures delivered at King's College, * University of London, is introduced by the principal, Ern- est Barker. On the whole the lectures, with the possible excep- tion of that on Thomas More, stand the transformation into literaryr essays quite well, but if those which deal with Nicholas of Cusa, Luther, and Calvin are "popular" lectures, London audiences are of tougher intellectual fiber than ours. Perhaps it is natural that the two Englishmen, Sir John Fortescue and Sir Thomas More, fare best. At anyT rate those two lectures combine fresh interpretation with genuine interest for the inex- pert, and to their select company should be added a particularly charming, original, and convincing lecture on Erasmus. The editor is responsible for the introductory7 lecture on Renaissance and Reformation and for another on Machiavelli. He reveals a mastery of popularization, but as much cannot be said of his interpretations. The introductory lecture referred to contains a number of swift generalizations whose brilliance is dimmed by their inevitable inaccuracy, and, while the lecture on Machia- velli is markedly ingenious and performs a real service in its emphasis on its subject's interest in the art of w-ar, it becomes involved in an explanation of Machiavelli's political theory which will not easily hold water. Those who read it will at

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Dec. 7, 1927] The Nation 663 least be driven to reread "The Prince," but not many of them will agree to the argument that "Machiavelli's sympathies were wholly republican; one of the finer traits in his cynical and repellent character is his faith in the people — "a faith," remarks the author, "not very easy to reconcile with his pessimistic esti- mate of individual human nature." It would be still more diffi- cult to reconcile it with the pervasive tone of "The Prince." Arguing from the democratic enthusiasm of the "Discourses on Livy" makes necessary a number of not very convincing solu- tions of paradox. The lecturers are the Editor, E. F. Jacob, Miss A. E. Levett, A. W. Reed, J. A. K. Thomson, J. W. Allen, and the Reverend W. R. Matthews. Disregarding variation in literary charm, the lectures of greatest historical interest would appear to be those on Nicholas of Cusa, Sir John Fortescue, Erasmus, and Luther. Bartlet Brebner Books in Brief The Unbearable Bassington. By "Saki" (H. H. Munro). The Viking Press. $1.50. The Chronicles of Clovis. By "Saki" (H. H. Munro). The Viking Press. $1.50. The first two volumes of a projected edition. "Saki" was the sort of literary phenomenon that is produced only by the very highest reaches of a typically English journalism. A trenchant and rather over-pitiless wit, a dandiacal elegance of phrase, a brilliant knowledge of the more useless elements of the British upper middle classes — these gifts he brought to a series of novels and stories whose dry, satiric flavor still stimu- lates the palates of a faithful "Saki" cult. Tfie Bullfighters. By Henry de Montherlant. Translated from the French by Edwin Gile Rich. The Dial Press. $2.50. The most astonishing volume of this Gallic Chesterton. Montherlant, himself a bullfighter of considerable renown and the inveterate enemy of the French "cerebralistes," here de- votes himself to a fictional evocation of the most sanguinary of passions. It is not hard to see why Montherlant's subtle primi- tivism should have pricked the jaded emotions of the Parisians: his pictures of the bull ring, his unhesitating self-identification with the souls of strong animals, his powerful apotheosis of physical struggle will hold any reader who is willing to forget that Montherlant's themes are slight, his characters laughably romantic, and himself just a bit of a histrion. Moor Fires. By E. H. Young. Harcourt, Brace and Com- pany. $2.50. Those fortunate readers who experienced a calm delight in the reading of "William," Mrs. Young's first novel to be pub- lished here, will be slightly disappointed with "Moor Fires." The calm is there; but much of the delight is gone. The humor is less continuous, the plot more obtrusive, and one misses the central dynamic quality provided by the unforgettable hero of the earlier book. Mrs. Young remains, nevertheless, the in- evitable novelist for intelligent middle-aged parents who are not too "literary" and like to stay at home evenings with what used to be called "a good book." The Exile. By Mary Johnston. Little, Brown and Com- pany. $2.50. A historical novel of the future, delicately done, written with beauty, but nevertheless with a thinness and an unreality that make it almost dull. Dream of a Woman. By Remy de Gourmont. Translated from the French by Lewis Galantiere. Boni and Live- right. $2.50. Two tangled love romances analyzed by the epistolary method. De Gourmont's intellectualized sensuality dates so •NORTON BOOKS New Best Sellers Among Non-Fiction Books Bertrand Russell's PHILOSOPHY "There is no more vigorous and acute philosophical thinker than Bertrand Russell living today ; there is none more honest; there is none of his standing who writes in a style half so limpid or unpretentious. And this volume is the most mature and most com- plete statement of his philosophy that he has given us." — Henry Hazlitt in New York Sun. Second Large Printing $3.00 ABOUT OURSELVES Psychology for Normal People By H. A. OVERSTREET Author of "Influencing Human Behavior" This new book is written out of the conviction that we "normals" need to know a good deal more about ourselves than we ordinarily do. Professor Over- street reveals ourselves to ourselves in the light of knowledge gained through the past fifty years of psychological research. $3.00 WWNORTON&COMPANY1NC 70 fifth avenue New York jhe Christmas BOWMAN The richest, handsomest, largest number The Bookman lias ever issued. The new Book- man's first Christmas is one worthy of the season. Get a copy today before your newsdealer is sold out. Or use the coupon below for a subscription. (Note: the yearly price of The Bookman goes from $4 to $5 on January 1.) The Bookman's circulation has more than doubled since Burton Rascoc became the editor three months ago. He has made it a magazine yon can't afford to he without. THE BOOKMAN 452 Fifth Ave. NEW YORK Please add my name to The Bookman's subscribers. I enclose □ $4 for one year ; □ $6 for two years. Name Address When writing to advertisers please mention The Nation

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664 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3257 obviously that one is forced to read this volume in a mood of tender reminiscence. It makes one start and say to oneself: "Is it possible that there is less than a generation between De Gourmont and Gide? How they have grown, these French- men !" Shelley: His Life and Work. By Walter Edwin Peck. Houghton Mifflin Company. Two volumes. $12.50. This biography was reviewed in The Nation for June 1, 1927. It is noted again because it has now a new publisher. On the Steppes. By James N. Rosenberg. Alfred A. Knopf. $2.50. Mr. Rosenberg had enough material for a fair-sized article and he has written a book of more than 200 pages. His facts are substantially true although somewhat sugared. Jewish colonization in Russia is a success. It is accompanied, however, by a good deal of suffering that is entirely unnecessary and could easily be avoided if our rich American Jews would only consent to delve somewhat deeper into their pockets. The Joint Distribution Committee is doing very good work in Russia, but it is not doing enough. The Soviet Government is doing most of the work and the J.D.C. is getting most of the credit. Mr. Rosenberg's work will not have been in vain, however, if it should convince the J.D.C, of which Mr. Rosenberg himself is vice-president, to devote larger funds toward the colonization of the so-called declassed Jew in Russia. Why Rome Fell. By Edward Lucas White. Harper and Brothers. $3.50. Edward Lucas White, the well-known author of "El Su- premo" and "Andivius Hedulio," is the last of a long line of courageous men to attempt an explanation of why Rome fell. Mr. White has read most of the literary sources and has pulled out many an argumentative plum that less imaginative scholars have missed. He can also write with a vigor and pungency that only H. G. Wells among historians — if he be one — would undertake to match. The demonstration of how the great Wall of China effected the Roman Empire we should welcome in an examination paper if only because of its ingenuity. The indict- ment of Christianity as the chief culprit would certainly satisfy Nietzsche, though scholars will doubtless ask for confirmative doc ments. It is a misfortune that one who can write so enter- tainingly should not have known something of the inscriptions and papyri that every serious student of Roman society has at his command. But who wants facts in a history? The readers who know enough about Rome to comprehend where Mr. White abandons the available data for romancing will know how much to accept, and the rest would do well to enjoy the book as a sequel to "Andivius Hedulio." The Playgoer's Handbook to the English Renaissance Drama. By Agnes Mure Mackenzie. The Macmillan Company. A brief critical discussion of the chief Elizabethan and Jacobean playwrights intended for the layman interested chiefly in the plays from the standpoint of a present-day playgoer. The comments are sensible and the author's point of view may be illustrated by his general estimate of the literature with which he is dealing: "A great part of Elizabethan drama, like a great part of any other age's drama, is rubbish. A good deal more of it is rather dead. Yet there remains a body of tine imaginative work, at the best of it white-hot with fiery energy, deep-reaching and far-reaching, with a strong, noble beauty ami profound humanity." The Architect in History. By Mart, a S. Briggs. Oxford Uni- versity Press. The medieval architect has been much praised for his self- less anonymity. The author of the present volume summarizes the good reasons for believing that this architect was merely a victim of the same habits which lead people today to ask the name of the author of a book or a symphony but to accept a building as something which merely occurred; and he has at- tempted to remedy the ignorance of even educated persons by throwing as much light as possible upon the personality, train- ing, methods, and professional status of the architect from ancient times through the nineteenth century. His book is both solid and entertaining. Italian Primitives at Yale University. Comments and Revi- sions. By Richard Offner. Yale University Press. A handsomely illustrated study of a relatively little-known collection which possesses no great names but is rich in paint- ings of great historical value. The author is professor in the history of fine arts at New York University and a very capable exponent of technical criticism in the manner of Berenson. Sliakespeare and Demi-Science. By Felix E. Schelling. The University of Pennsylvania Press. $2.50. This volume comprises a dozen essays dealing with Shake- speare or with Elizabethan and Caroline literature. When Professor Schelling is a scholar — as he is on nine pages out of ten — he is very, very good, but when he is facetious — as he will be on the tenth page — he is awful. Selected Papers of Bertrand Russell. Selected and with a Spe- cial Introduction by Bertrand Russell. The Modern Library. Ninety-five cents. In his introduction Mr. Russell offers an autobiographical account of how he passed from an interest in logistic and mathematical problems, culminating in the "Principia Mathe- matical' 1910, to an almost exclusive preoccupation with social and political philosophy — and practice! But in the order of the excerpted writings, the reader is made to pass from the most sentimental expression of Mr. Russell's earliest Weltschmerz (e.g. "The Free Man's Worship," 1902) through the various stages of his idealistic reconstruction of the social and economic order (e.g. "Why Men Fight," "Proposed Roads to Freedom," "Education and the Good Life") to reach finally, after a trip to China, concluding sections concerned with epistemology, symbolic logic, and pure mathematics ("Our Knowledge of the External World," "The Analysis of Mind," and the "Introduc- tion to Mathematical Philosophy"). Does this order mean that Mr. Russell wishes his readers to proceed, unlike himself, from the social scene to the horizon of pure theory? Or does he hope, perhaps, that by conducting the reader in this manner he may enjoy vicariously a regression to the serene contemplation in the days before the war cut his academic umbilicus. There is a philosophic paradox also in the fact that in 1914 Mr. Russell lectured on our knowledge of the external world, and yet it was at that date he began to find it impossible to shut the world out of his thoughts when he entered his study. However, two new books come from his pen this year, and we shall see. Note. The Nation lias discontinued its annual poetry con- test. The Midwinter (February) Book Number, however, ivill as usual place an especial eniphasis upon poetry. Further an- nouncement will be made later. Music Korngold's 'Violanta" IX these days of cerebral outpourings, when music has to a certain degree become the handmaid of an over-neurotic age, it is quite refreshing to find a young composer of opera who boldly chooses melodrama as his libretto and attempts to gild its creaking hinges with the glamor of his muse. For a diluted variety of melodrama the librettist of "Violanta" has un-

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Dec. 7, 1927] The Nation 665 D THEATER □ JOHN GOLDEN THEATRE Matinees WED. and SAT., 2:30. DANA BURNETT'S and GEORGE ABBOTT'S WALLS with MUNI WISENFREND STAGED BY GEORGE ABBOTT SEATS 8 WEEKS IN ADVANCE CENTURY THEATRE Central Pk. W. Evenings $5.00 to $1.00 Matinees $3.50 to $1 00 Gilbert Miller presents MAX REINHARDT'S REPERTORY SEASON See the Daily Papers for Current Play Matinees Friday and Saturday Evenings at 8 Sharp Matinees at 2 Sharp BOOTH w;JBth«.fo- Matinees Wed. & Sat. ,AJ„ Eves., 8:40 /WINTHROP AMES present* JOHN GA ESCAPE 2:40. LSWORTHY'S With LESLIE HOWARD / IOLANTHE CHANIN'S DfYVAI 17 Eves. 8.30. MaU. W. 45th St. *VV^ I M.1-E, Wed & SaU 2.16 WINTHROP AMES GILBERT & SULLIVAN OPERA CO. EACH MONDAY NIGHT ONLY TTJES., WED., FRI. & SAT. MUfAnn NIGHTS. ALSO WED. & SAT. MAT.1T11IvnL'v^ EACH THURSDAY NIGHT ONLY PIRATES OF PENZANCE TTTVi T->TI? J? Thea. B'way. ft 40th Street JilVl r ±.l\..C Evening 8.80. Mats. Wed. ft Sat. M0 INTERFERENCE By Roland Pertwe* and Harold Deardtn with ARTHUR WONTNER, PHOEBE FOSTER, KATHLENE McDONELL and A. E. MATTHEWS "Is it entertaining T Does it hold you? To both ques- tion! I answer affirmatively." — Alan DaU in Tha American VANDFRRII T THFATRF 48th st • E of B"way> Evenings 8.30. vnixL/crvDiLi 1 nc/\ 1 i\c Matinee8 WED. and SAT_ 2.30. ANOTHER DIFFERENT i«ADl/ T-lir A ¥XT>0 MUSICAL COMEDY MARK TWAIN'S A Connecticut Yankee Adapted by FIELDS, RODGERS and HART MONEY FOR THEATRE TICKETS Do you go to the theatre as often as you would like? You could, easily. Many Nation readers are earning extra money for extra pleasures. Why not you? Write to The Nation Department 11 20 Vesey Street New York □ THEATER □ ■THE THEATRE GUILD Presents- RPTPI JDI |p Theatre, West 42nd St. Eves. 8.40 rVLrUDLl^ Matinees, Wed., Thanksgiving and Sat. 2.40 PORGY Extra Mat. Thanksgiving A FOLK PLAY BY DUBOSE AND DOROTHY HEYWARD THEATRE GUILD ACTING CO. BERNARD SHAW'S COMEDY THE DOCTOR'S DILEMMA PT JIT ]~) THEATRE, WEST 52nd STREET Evenings 8 :20. Mats. Thursday and Saturday 2 :20 □ LECTURES □ Brooklyn Academy of Music- Atlantic Ave. Station Sunday, December 18, 8.15 P.M. Symposium R i. of Modern evolt the Woman SPEAKERS Fanny Hurst Texas Guinan Eva Le Gallienne Mrs. Will Durant Elizabeth Marbury Tickets 50c, $1.10, $1.65, $2.20, $2.75 at the Box Office, Rand School, 7 E. 15th St., Columbia University Book Store, and Gray's Drug Store, 43rd St. & B'way Contemporary Forum BERTRAND RUSSELL will lecture on "Why Men Fight" at the BROWNSVILLE LABOR LYCEUM 219 Sackman Street, Brooklyn, N. Y. Friday Evening, December 9, 1!>27 Reserved Sections : $.75, $1.00, $1.50 Symposium "Peace or Freedom, Must the World Choose?" Morris Hillquit Norman Thomas Bertrand Russell Community Church, 34th St. and Park Ave. Wednesday Evening;, December 14, 1927 All Scats $1.00 At the Rand School, 7 East 15th Street, N. Y. C. BERTRAND RUSSELL will lecture on THE SCIENTIFIC OUTLOOK Friday, December 2, at 8.20 P. M. Admission, $1.50 NEW SCHOOL FOR SOCIAL RESEARCH 465-7-9 West 23d St. New York City □ DINNER □ Reserve the Date Friday Evening, Jan. 20, 1928 at Seven o'Clock LABOR TEMPLE SCHOOL DINNER Particulars later For information in regard to Labor Temple School, write office, 242 East 14th St., New York City. When writing to advertisers please mention The Nation

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666 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3257 doubtedly provided, and only an occasional vein of fantasy saves this headlong Venetian play from falling into the realm of the tawdry and commonplace. To a youth of seventeen such a libretto no doubt offered a sufficiently ardent challenge; unfortunately, however, Korngold was not a musical entity when he wrote "Violanta," and con- sequently he falls violently on to the horns of a dilemma. The play demands the same sort of stark realism of treatment that Puccini employs with signal success in "Tosca." Such a process, however, Korngold adopts in too unconvincing a fashion, and consequently we have tragedy that struts rather than sweeps. Moreover, this over-sophisticated youth cannot allow himself to become frankly melodious; inwardly he is continually longing for lyricism, outwardly he is inhibiting his own desires. As a result we have music that is weak-kneed and badly patterned, at times even falling into the deadly category of the non- descript. And all this because, psychologically speaking, the composer evidently does not know himself. He has something that is thoroughly his own to express, and cannot find it. And so we have a style of dramatic recitative that is essentially based on Puccini and the modern Italians, and an orchestration that takes its full-blooded cue from the best Wagner-Straussian traditions, with an explosive bit of Korngold thrown into the bargain. In spite of these obvious deficiencies, "Violanta" has merit of a sort. It is superbly picturesque as a bit of Venetian tapestry, and not all its blatant theatricality can mar a certain largesse of emotional outline and mood. The opera is exceed- ingly well mounted, thanks to Mr. Urban's skill, and the cast was more than adequate. Madame Jeritza made a stately if sinister Violanta, and her glorious voice added fire and endless color to a part that might have easily become artificial and monotoned. Dramatically she found it somewhat difficult not to fall into some of the exaggerations of manner that the libretto and Korngold's score almost demand — only a super- human artist could avoid such pitfalls. When all is said and done it is to be questioned perhaps whether the addition of "Violanta" to the Metropolitan reper- toire will be of permanent value. It may be remarkable as the product of a boy of seventeen, but can it take its rightful place becide many notable contemporary works unknown as yet to our public? Might it not interest our opera management to produce such a master work as Gabriel Faure's "Penelope," not to mention many examples of the modern Russian school that have not seen the light on this side of the water? Lawrence Adler Drama The Genius of Reinhardt TV/f AX REINHARDT and his company, brought to this coun- 1»I try by Gilbert Miller, began their season of repertory at the Century Theater with a performance of "A Midsummer Night's Dream." This is essentially the same production as that with which Reinhardt startled Berlin in 1905 and with which he established himself as the most-discussed of all theatri- cal directors. Twenty-two years is a long time as theatrical stage history goes; one grows rapidly accustomed to revolution- ary methods, and the general conception of the present produc- tion is no longer one by any means wholly unfamiliar. It remains nevertheless as beautiful and impressive an example as one could hope to find of what ma, be accomplished when one thinks of the theater in terms of spectacle. Reinhardt is a man of enormous energy, a bcrn entrepre- neur, who loves to undertake large and complicated enterprises. One year he opens the colossal Grosses Schauspielhaus in Berlin; then he rushes off to Vienna to restore the ballroom of the Im- perial Palace as a theater, buys an archepiscopal palace, stages "Everyman" in front of the Salzburg cathedral, and, sandwich- ing the American production of "The Miracle" in between, he initiates the annual festival of Salzburg with Hofmannsthal's "The Great World Theater." Whatever calls for a nice coordi- nation of large, apparently unmanageable machineries fascinates him, and much of his temperament is reflected in his methods of production since in his hands a theater becomes, not an inti- mate group like that of the Moscow Art Company, but a vast, circus-like organization with an army of diverse technicians and a regiment of supers at the head of which he stands, like a general in supreme command, bringing all his various forces to bear upon a single enterprise. Others may boast of their economy in the use of means and of their power to work through suggestion; he rejoices rather in the complexity of his means and his effort is not to suggest but physically to realize. He makes lavish use of whatever devices money can buy or ingenuity devise — of gorgeous cos- tumes, impressive pageants, and, most particularly, of that mod- ern instrument of magic, the electric light. He seems to wish to ask of the audience as little and to give them as much as possible; and it is the essence of his method rather to stun the senses than to appeal to the imagination. Thus though "A Mid- summer Night's Dream" was written for a theater mechanically so simple that it could make an adequate appeal to the ear alone and though much can be said in favor of producing it in a man- ner as nearly as possible to that which its author intended, Reinhardt is content with nothing less than a complete realiza- tion of every all-but-impossible suggestion of the text. The enchanted wood must actually be filled with incredibly magic lights and shadows; fairies, appearing from nowhere, must dance with an agility hitherto existing only in Shakespeare's imagination ; and, in short, the whole poem must be translated into visual terms. In Reinhardt's hands the play, ceasing to be merely a play, becomes an elaborate, highly synthetic spectacle — a thing of swelling music, shifting lights, gorgeous pageantry, the delirious ballets taking place upon an immense stage which seems boundless because its boundaries are hidden in gradually deepening shadow and which, as it is played upon by different lights coming from all directions, seems constantly dissolving and reforming itself as the occasion demands. It is unfortunately true that many of the means which Reinhardt uses have been cheapened by their uses in vulgar spectacles and revues, that there are even moments when certain towering head-dresses and certain torch-lighted processions carry an unfortunate suggestion of Mr. Ziegfeld's "Follies" or Mr. Shubert's "Winter Garden," but in general this is not true for the simple reason that Reinhardt manages to make his produc- tion a harmonious whole in the presentation of which the most spectacular means actually perform their function instead of obtruding themselves as mere "stunts" upon the spectator. It is in this ability to synthesize devices which have, after all, be- come property of those who produce spectacles that one finds one of the chief evidences of his genius; it is in his development of a style of acting actually suitable to his methods of produc- tion that one finds another. The tendency of so vast a stage and such impressive surroundings is not merely to dwarf the size of the actor but to rob him of his vitality as well. How- ever vivacious he would appear in an ordinary theater he would be lost in this one, and no ordinary movement would get him over such great distances without making him appear to crawl like an ant upon a table top. Reinhardt's actors have, however, heroic voices and the agility of acrobats. They so fit into the perspective that one is scarcely aware of the fact, but in actuality they bound across the vast stage and thus they people it with life*. Shakespeare would be amazed to see his own play. I am not at all sure that he would not be delighted with it since the simplicity of the Elizabethan theater was not in the least de- signed but merely faux de mieux and Reinhardt's production is an amazingly delightful thing no matter what one's ultimate opinion may be of the aesthetic principles upon which it is founded. Joseph Wood Krutch

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The Nation FOUNDED 1865 Vol. CXXV NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 14, 1927 No. 3258 Contents EDITORIAL PARAGRAPHS 667 EDITORIALS : A Marvel of Chemistry 669 Russia Leads the World 670 Mr. Lamont's Duty 671 Down with the Critics ! 671 "Strut, Miss Lizzie !" 672 1927. By Hendrik van Loon 673 ■ IT SEEMS TO HEYWOOD BROUN. By Heywood Broun 674 COVERING WASHINGTON. By The Unofficial Spokesman 675 EXECUTIONS: THE NEW SPORT. By Edward Stevenson 676 THE BOSCH MAGNETO CASE COMES TO COURT. By Percy Musgrave 677 ANXIETY IN SOLITUDE. By Helene Mullins 678 THE KING IS DEAD. By Margaret Marshall 678 IS GERMANY EXTRAVAGANT? By Frederick Kuh 682 IN THE DRIFTWAY. By the Drifter 683 CORRESPONDENCE 684 BOOKS AND PLAYS : Before Winter. By Lynn Riggs 686 First Glance. By Mark Van Doren 686 A Good Word for California. By James Rorty 686 The Quality of Grace. By Clifton P. Fadiman 687 Tragic Biography. By Ernestine Evans 687 Gauguin's Letters to His Wife. By Michael Fraenkel 688 Books in Brief 688 Drama : Papa Shaw. By Joseph Wood Krutch 690 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS SECTION: Peace Out of Russia 692 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 HEYWOOD BROUN 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. THE NATION is on file in most public and college libraries and is indexed in the Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature. CONGRESS IS IN SESSION and begins work by grap- pling with the cases of Senators Vare and Smith who were denied their seats and oaths at the opening of the Senate. With all respect for those who maintain that an American State should be allowed to send to the Senate anybody it sees fit, providing he is duly elected, we earnestly hope these men will not be seated. We are aware that this will create a precedent which may be abused — the precedent already exists, for the House of Representatives once refused to seat Victor Berger because it deemed him unpatriotic. But the offense of Smith and Vare in buying their elections (in primary or election) makes them as unfit for the Senate as was Senator Newberry, forced to resign because of the expenditure of moneys small, indeed, beside those con- tributed to the Smith and Vare campaigns by their politi- cal and big-business backers. Something must be done to stop the rising tide of corruption, and this is a first step. We are glad that the Progressive leaders will leave no stone unturned to bring this about. As for the rest, the Democrats who could have organized the Senate with the aid of the Progressives refused to do so. But the Pro- gressives started well by their strategy in the cases of Vare and Smith and it is obvious that their holding of the bal- ance of power will inure to the benefit of the people throughout this session of Congress. GOVERNOR SMITH has at last spoken out on the pro- hibition issue, to the following extent: He correctly and properly maintained the right of citizens "to organize to oppose any law and any part of the Constitution with which they are not in sympathy"; he denied that he had ever preached nullification or that he favored it; he held that "enforcement of the law and obedience to the law were the very corner-stone of governmental structure," and he declared that the State needs no more laws to enforce pro- hibition. The last statement was in answer to the criti- cisms of him for having signed the State enforcement law. He also declared that he was one of the two governors who, returned from Mr. Coolidge's conference on prohibition en- forcement, called the State-enforcement officers together and warned them to enforce the law. That is doubtless true, but he must confess that his warning accomplished nothing and that he has, so far as we are aware, punished nobody for official derelictions. As for his remark that prohibition enforcement is not a State question but one for every local community to deal with, that is nonsense. "Pass- ing the buck" to villages and towns means that there will be no enforcement whatever. BOSTON IS RECOVERING. A Boston jury sensibly acquitted nine of the "Death Watch" who marched in front of the State House on that fateful August day when Governor Fuller let Sacco and Vanzetti die. Some of them were accused of "sauntering and loitering," others of ob- structing traffic; but the simple fact that they walked briskly single-file along an eight-foot sidewalk impressed a jury released from the hysteria that stirred the police in August. Only the police superintendent, Crowley, main- tained the passionate excitement of those days. Testify- ing in the trial of Powers Hapgood, charged with "inciting to riot," Mr. Crowley naively gave his own case away. In his attempt to make it look as if a riot had threatened, he recalled that, after the police had hauled Hapgood and Cosimo Carvotta from their soap-box, someone in the crowd shouted "Kill them." Did he attempt to arrest the man guilty of this incitement to lynching? asked Hapgood's attorney. Arthur Garfield Hays. Crowley had not thought of that. The Boston police, his evidence showed, was less interested in preserving order than in punishing Sacco- Vanzetti sympathizers. The jury refused to convict Hap- good except upon a technical charge of speaking without a permit. Some day Boston will recover its balance so far as to hold Memorial Day meetings for Sacco and Vanzetti on Boston Common, and it may yet happen that a successor to Alvan Fuller will be the chief orator. RUSSELL TREMAINE IS HOME AGAIN! By an order completely reversing the inferior court, Judge Edward E. Hardin returned to his parents the twelve-year- old boy who for two years has been kept in a detention home or boarded out as a prelude to adoption because his parents

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668 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3258 would not permit him to join in the flag salute at school. In an editorial in The Nation for November 30 the facts about the Tremaines, members of a non-resistant religious society, were set forth. It was pointed out that, at the risk of a slight loss of face, the State of Washington would do well to return Russell to his parents without more ado, as the most sensible and merciful procedure possible. Partly as a result of the admirable publicity campaign waged by Robert Whitaker of Los Angeles, who first brought the case to The Nation's notice, the State of Washington has done just this. Russell is to be sent back home; he is to be under the recog- nizance of the Juvenile Court judge of the district in which he lives, who will see that he goes to school. But he need not go to public school; he can attend a school where he will not be required to salute the flag if his parents do not wish him to do so. The Tremaines probably will not insist on the letter of their demand — that Russell be allowed to attend public school and at the same time be permitted to abstain from the flag salute. After all, the Government, with end- less delay, has done the decent thing in this particular case; and it will take time to wipe out of the public schools the absurdity of an enforced ritual of patriotic devotion. OPPONENTS CF BIGOTRY and violence in Alabama have not lost their fight merely because the attempt to prosecute floggers has failed for the moment in Cren- shaw County. Attorney General McCall has shown courage and true patriotism in his course. Originally an officer in the Ku Klux Klan, he resigned from that organ 'zation and began an earnest effort to convict perpetrators of the numer- ous floggings attributed to members. Indictments were returned against thirty-four persons at Luverne, but after the acquittal of three in succession Mr. McCall dropped further prosecutions, charging that State law-enforcement officers had shown "a frenzied desire to assist the defense instead of assisting prosecution officials." He disclosed a letter said to have been written by the Grand Dragon of the Klan in Alabama to the Cyclops of the Luverne Klavern in regard to an effort to bring the Attorney General "to his senses." But one county is not all of Alabama. In spite of the attitude of Governor Graves, a Klan officer, there is a commendable movement in the State against the especially cowardly form of thuggery manifested in these floggings, an opposition assisted by influential newspapers like the Birmingham News and Age-Herald and the Montgomery Advertiser. We are more hopeful because of this awakening than discouraged because of a temporary set-back in one county. THE DETERMINED EFFORT of certain groups to dis- gust aliens in the United States with all its institu- tions by subjecting them to various irritations, humilia- tions, and injustices is likely to be renewed at the present session of Congress, and should be watched by all who be- lieve in a more generous Americanism. Some ten or a dozen objectionable bills which were proposed at previous sessions either have or will be reintroduced this winter. The McClintic and the Sosnowski bills both propose com- pulsory naturalization, while the Holaday measure, which passed the House in 1926, provides for the deportation not merely of a person convicted of a crime involving "moral turpitude" but of any one serving sentences totaling eigh- teen months. Such a measure, obviously, could be used against trade-unionists arrested in strikes. The Aswell bill is even worse. It not only proposes compulsory registration of aliens but contains a clause empowering the President to require all aliens to report at such times and places as he shall fix. By this means it would be possible to clear a strike area of all alien strikers. Whether one believes in more restriction or greater freedom of immigration, he ought to support the National Council for Protection of Foreign-Born Workers in its opposition to legislation which turns such aliens as are with us against our government and ideals. WAGES ARE "HIGHER than anywhere else in the world or than at any other time in world history," and the American worker is more prosperous than ever be- fore— according to Secretary Hoover's report for the fiscal year of 1927. Mr. Hoover divides the total amount paid in wages by the average number of wage-earners. Perform- ing this very simple operation for the year 1925, the Secre- tary finds that the average annual wage for that year was $1,280. Never before, he concludes, has the American worker enjoyed such golden prosperity. A different view of the worker's status in America is presented by Professor Irving Fisher, who declares in the New York Times that although the national income for 1926, estimated at ninety billions of dollars, surpassed all previous records, figures of distribution indicate that More than 93,000,000 people out of 117,000,000 living in the United States in 1926 had about $500 of income apiece. These ninety-odd million people comprise the combined "pooi'est" and "lower middle" classes — they are 65 per cent and 15 per cent, respectively, of the whole population. . . . The "poorest" class alone, comprising 76,000,000 people (65 per cent of the total) receive about 38.6 per cent of the national income, or $34,740,000,000, less than $460 per per- son. . . . For the standard family of five out of this group of 76,000,000 "poorest" people there would be $2,300 in- come during 1926. This income is $132 below the budget of $2,432 prepared by the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics, which represents a "minimum of health and decency below which a family can- not go without danger to physical and moral deterioration." And this is our most prosperous year! It makes President Calvin Coolidge's warning that the "test which now con- fronts the nation is prosperity" rather more than humorous. A SERIES OF ARTICLES in the New York World promises to show that a League of Nations committee report on the white-slave traffic has been doctored so that it will not hurt the feelings of the nations concerned — and, apparently, not interfere with business! The committee appointed by the League to investigate the traffic in women and children has drawn up a report on findings covering a period of two years. Part of the report rests on data col- lected in response to official request from the various gov- ernments; the more interesting and significant part is the result of some very neat sleuthing by the committee and the volunteer workers it was able to employ. Under the pre- tense of being themselves engaged in the white-slave trade, investigators were able to gain many interesting facts never before made public — facts which, if they are known to gov- ernments, are hid carefully under a bushel. These data were included in Part Two of the committee's report — and Part Two, the World alleges, has been suppressed by the

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Dec. 14, 1927] The Nation 669 League. If this is true, and if the League cannot think of a better explanation for the suppression, the world will be forced to conclude that the League is seeking to protect an illicit and obscene trade or — more charitably — that it is afraid to antagonize powerful interests which protect such a trade. The latter is probably nearer the truth, but it is not much more creditable. IT WAS THE NEW YORK TIMES which in 1919 and 1920 reported the fall of Petrograd — which never fell — six different times and its burning twice, while the number of times it reported the Soviet regime collapsing has never been calculated. The Times, we understood, had become sensitive; it went to the extreme length of sending Walter Duranty into Russia, with the result that its Russian news was for some time the best in the world. Then, on No- vember 30, 1927, the old, familiar habit-patterns reasserted themselves. A double-column spread in the feature position on page one, fully equipped with a map, gave Navarre At- kinson's account — from Bucharest, Rumania — of the latest debacle. "Five Thousand Killed in Ukraine in a Revolt Suppressed after Three Months Fighting," read the head- line. Place-names and dates — all the details were there. A few days later, on an inside page, the Times printed Mr. Duranty's report from Moscow. The German and Polish consulates in the Ukraine, he said, had not heard of any revolts; the daily trains from Odessa — scene of one of Mr. Atkinson's uprisings — brought no such news; the represen- tatives of the Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, whose colonies spread like a network through the very counties which Mr. Atkinson washed in blood, offered the daily re- ports of loan banks to indicate that there had been no dis- turbance whatever — save in the mind of the Bucharest cor- respondent and the foreign news editor of the New York Times. THE JOKE OF THE YEAR has been played on the sober, serious-minded city of Winnipeg, Manitoba. Some time ago, as these pages duly noted, a competition for de- signing a cenotaph held in Winnipeg was won by Emanuel Hahn, a young sculptor who had lived most of his life in Canada but who — sh ! horrors ! — had been born in Germany ! As most Winnipegers could see with half an eye, this dread- ful fact rendered Mr. Hahn's design unfit for a memorial to British dead who had fought against Germany in the Great War. It was a delicate situation but the more stalwart patriots of Winnipeg did not hesitate, and they won over the protests of the weaker-minded. Mr. Hahn received the prize money, since he had been adjudged the winner of the competition, but his design was declared unsuitable and another competition was held, limited to natural-born citi- zens of Canada. Designs were submitted; the judges sat, and gave their judgment. A woman won the prize this time, a woman born in Canada, but a woman rash enough to be the wife of a naturalized citizen who had been born in Germany — indeed, none other than the wife of Emanuel Hahn! Winnipeg thus finds itself in a pretty pickle. It is forced either to keep on endowing the Hahn family with prize money, while refusing their designs, or to accept a design from the hands of one who has so far forgotten her Canadian heritage as to have married a Hun. We shall not be unkind enough to say that this is a lesson to overzealous patriots who show themselves lacking in ordi- nary horse-sense. But really, isn't it? A Marvel of Chemistry FRANCIS P. GARVAN, president of the Chemical Foundation, is the genius who as Alien Property Cus- todian decided to filch some 4,500 chemical patents from their rightful owners, in violation of every precept of de- cent government and American tradition, and to turn them over to American chemical industrialists. This was called "Americanization." By a "broad" construction of the pow- ers of President Wilson, who was imposed upon by Palmer, Garvan, and the chemical industry, the Supreme Court sus- tained this egregious confiscation. What the Europeans had spent years of research and millions of dollars in de- veloping, for which patent protection had been lawfully ob- tained, certain American chemical industrialists acquired by a simple process of theft, employing government officials and the shoddy cloak of "patriotism" to perpetrate the act. Then, in order to prevent the true inventors and discov- erers of these products of science from again seeking to sell their inventions and discoveries in the United States, the chemical industrialists persuaded Congress, after the war, to impose an embargo against the foreign products. Salvarsan, the American patent for which is worth millions, cannot be introduced into the United States from Germany, because an embargo protects the American manufacturer, operating with a filched patent. The duped American pub- lic must accept an inferior product. The European owners, desiring to save something from the wreckage and to win back the rewards of their brains and research, have decided to pool their interests and en- deavor to reacquire what they had previously built up. The American market is still largely closed to them by artificial tariff barriers. Now let us note how Mr. Garvan, the public official and industrial agent who "Americanized" 4,500 Austrian and German patents, greets the resurrection of the European competition in foreign markets, now promised to the milk- fed and patented American chemical industrialists: Is there an American whose soul is so dead as not to thrill at such a threat and menace as this combine makes against the safety and independence of our national defense, our national health, and our national industrial progress? The extent of the danger is easy to comprehend. . . . Don't make the mistake of thinking this is a dye fight, or a nitrate fight, or a rayon fight, or a fight for Asiatic or South American markets. No, it is a fight to reassert European . . . supremacy in chemistry and chemical progress, and that means German military supremacy and German indus- trial supremacy, and German supremacy in drugs and po- tential necessities. . . . Enlightened American industry, en- lightened American opinion, and enlightened American legislation will not allow our betrayal. Well, our soul only thrills with disgust that bunk and piffle of this kind can lie perpetrated on the country, and that those who acquired 4,500 patents by second-story methods have the effrontery to produce such nonsense. Had the patents really been deemed important in the national interest, they could have been acquired honestly by eminent domain and compensation. But the chemical in- dustry seems to prefer a cheaper, if less honorable, method of acquiring vast benefits for itself, imposing the ignominy on the United States and cajoling the American consumer into the belief that his burdens in higher costs are borne for the benefit of the nation.

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670 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3258 Russia Leads the World THE way to disarm is to disarm. This was Mr. Lit- vinov's bold challenge to the governments of the world assembled in the Disarmament Conference at Geneva. He dared them to wipe out armies and navies and air forces; to destroy all weapons, fortresses, military supplies, and all means of chemical warfare; to end forever all military training, and military ministries and general staffs; to pro- hibit military propaganda and military education. In other words, he proposed a clean sweep of the whole damnable, murdei-ous business of teaching and preparing human be- ings to kill each other. He dared the nations to prove that they were really sincere when they called upon each other to disarm, and not merely bent upon the hocus-pocus of striking off one class of ships here or reducing an army by 15 or 20 per cent there. He dared them to abide by the commandment: "Thou shalt not kill," and to prove them- selves Christians. To the Allies his demand was that they prove the sincerity of their pretentions that the last conflict was "the war to end war." [The full text of his proposal appears in this week's International Relations Section.] Thus he took the ultimate position, and he has encoun- tered exactly the fate which inevitably comes to a radical who desires to go to the root of things, to cut to the bone. He has been ridiculed, abused, denounced, and cartooned as bringing a Trojan horse to Geneva. The half-hearted spon- sors of peace, the compromisers of the daily jiress who admit that war is hellish and then but a dozen buts so that there shall be no far-reaching reform, the embattled mili- tarists and their followers who find themselves facing the possibility that they may lose their jobs, the defenders of war as an end and a glory in itself — all have joined to deride this preposterous suggestion. Litvinov, they say, is obvi- ously insincere; does not the Soviet regime exist only be- cause it uses military force against its enemies? He is again insincere in thus challenging the nations because he knows that what he suggests is a counsel of perfection, an impractical, visionary proposal which no one would or could accept — he would be the first to have his withers wrung if it were accepted. It was a skilful dialectician's trick to put the other nations in the wrong. It was a superbly clever piece of propaganda to put Russia into the forefront at Geneva and it was at the same moment an incredibly stupid act, because it immediately united against her once more all the nations around the Council. It was an idle gesture and, having made it, Litvinov might now be expected to get down to business and join in the task of lopping off a battleship here and a regiment there. Thus run the comments — and so they would run if in any other field of action the Russians or anyone else should produce a plan which really meant something, which really struck seriously at vested interests. That this is what the armies and navies have become was stated clearly by Lord Robert Cecil — we quoted him last week as saying that "every month we delay, the old vested interests, material and moral, strengthen their hold." Of course they do. Each month the great economic inte- ^sts encourage the up- building of armaments and carry on the trade rivalries that lead directly to war. They are the great propagandists against disarmament; they fan the flames of nationalism even while they organize international trusts and con- sortiums; they demand large standing armies in order to maintain the social and economic status quo; they want to be armed against any domestic uprising. They want armies to protect themselves — as if arms would help against the Russian economic doctrines. If Russia disarmed by herself, a large part of our press would still be picturing the Soviets as planning some night to murder our women and children in their beds. Why not? The press is largely in the hands of the masters of capital whom Woodrow Wilson termed the "masters of America." Why should it not have greeted Litvinov's proposals precisely as it did? Exactly the same would its reaction have been if Jesus Christ himself had appeared at Geneva to read this radical peace proposal to the conference. He, too, would have been portrayed as a designing long-haired Jew, or at best as a wild-eyed fanatic, dangerous to the world because he preached the impossible. Do not all who demand the ideal make far more difficult the paths of the "practical" statesmen who, with their feet on the ground, seek to ap- proach each goal by one "rational" step after another, not, as the cant runs, "going too far and too fast for public opinion"? Well, for ourselves, we care little for these critical comments, and we care at this hour very little for the motives of M. Litvinov. It may all have been a clever trick. It was a clever maneuver, but we deem it a very great service to humanity. It is always dangerous to let loose a new idea in the world, and there are millions of people, many of them bearing upon their bodies the scars of the last conflict, who will never forget that one great government has made this proposal of complete and abso- lute abolition of the obscene institution of war. They will continue to ask themselves why this ideal is not attainable. They will find no other answers to their question but the stubbornness of those vested interests, the army and navy and the munition-makers, and the other profiteers by war, and the masses of compromisers and casuists who year in and year out throw cold water upon any proposal which would advance the interests of the masses of mankind. Litvinov has shot one of those arrows into the air that fall no man knows where. The Disarmament Conference can never meet again without having the ultimate goal plainly in view. They may trim and compromise and shilly- shally all they please, but whether they like it or not the final objective will be there before them and they cannot gainsay it. It is, of course, too much to hope that in this Christian America there will be an articulate body of opin- ion to support so radical a demand. From all sides we hear that the whispering campaign against the Russians gains ground day by day. In women's clubs, meetings of the Daughters of the American Revolution, and elsewhere there is, we learn, an almost sadistic dwelling upon the horrors of Bolshevik rule. Before us lies a screed from a citizen of Washington, D. C, declaring that England, France, and Germany have all been won over by the Soviets to a secret agreement to destroy the United States! To such as these the Litvinov move will be but the voice of Jacob. For ourselves we welcome with all our hearts the Rus- sian proposals. It is our deliberate judgment that if per- sisted in they will give to the Soviets the moral leadership of the world.

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Dec. 14, 1927] The Nation 671 Mr. Lamont's Duty MR. THOMAS W. LAMONT, of J. P. Morgan and Com- pany, accompanied by Martin Egan of the same firm, and Jeremiah Smith, Jr., sailed for Japan in September. Business, they told the New York Times, had nothing to do with the trip, there were no loans involved, and social activi- ties were to take up all of their time in Japan. But before they were on shipboard rumors began to fly. While they were engaged in social activities the rumors soared and roared around the China Sea. Mr. Lamont was insisting up- on America's equal right with Japan to finance new rail- roads in Manchuria; Mr. Lamont was negotiating loans to finance Japanese expansion in Manchuria; Mr. Lamont was to help develop Japanese hydro-electric power; Mr. Lamont was supporting a Japanese plan to crush Russian influence in Northern Manchuria — there was hardly any Far Eastern program with which some rumor-monger did not identify Mr. Lamont. Upon his return to America the newspapers carried re- ports that Mr. Lamont had visited the State Department to inquire whether it had any objections to his lending $40,- 000,000 to the South Manchurian Railway; and it was indi- cated that the State Department had none. It would object to any proposal to assist the Japanese in closing the Man- churian markets, but so long as the open door was main- tained it washed its hands of Mr. Lamont's private business. The State Department was in a difficult position. Its policy of visaing loans gets it into ever deeper water. It could not veto Mr. Lamont's loan proposals without seeming to commit an openly unfriendly act against Japan; yet it can- not wash its hands as clean of the loan as it wishes. Willy- nilly, its failure to veto must seem to mean approval of the proposed loan, and it thereby commits the United States in perilous fashion. Manchuria is the battlefield of a silent diplomatic war in Asia, and gloomy prophets predict that it may soon be the field of open international war. Mr. Lamont may think that his actions as an individual, or as partner in a banking firm, or as trustee for investors, do not commit his country ; unfortunately, an international banker is sometimes more significant as an emissary than the appointed ambassador. All China is united in protest against the loan proposal; and it holds the United States Government responsible. Issue of the loan, the Nanking Government says, would be an unfriendly act; and Yang Yu-ting, chief of Chang Tso- lin's staff, second most important man in the Northern Gov- ernment, says that "the Chinese people will consider it a provocative act and will hold the American Government and people responsible." This may seem much ado about a commercial loan. But the South Manchurian Railway is more than a commercial institution. It dominates Manchuria, and the Japanese Gov- ernment owns 50 per cent of its stock. It owns the Fushan collieries, whence Japan draws six million tons of coal each year — nearly half of China's total production. It owns the Anshan iron works, of which Japan has high hopes. It maintains an elaborate system of schools and hospitals, and the Japanese Government polices the railway zone with its soldiers. In recent years it has financed and managed some extensions of railway lines for the Chinese, and conducted others on its own initiative. Some of these are commercial; others are largely strategic — intended to facilitate cutting the Trans-Siberian railway in case of war with Russia. This railway's president, who is the highest Japanese gov- ernmental official in Manchuria, has just said that Japan has in Manchuria her first line of defense. She does not want war, in fact she is eager to preserve peace; but stra- tegic reasons form one benefit which she derives from her presence in Manchuria. Japanese statesmen have lately been loud in proclaiming Japan's "special position" in Manchuria — a phrase unpleas- antly reminiscent of the talk of her diplomats in the years preceding the annexation of Korea. Recently she has been objecting to the construction of Chinese railway lines parallel to the South Manchurian, on the ground of an alleged secret protocol to the 1905 treaty, the text of which has never been published and the authenticity of which is denied by the Chinese. To lend money to such an organization, in the present inflammable state of the Far East, is almost an act of war. It is an insult to China and a provocation to Russia. No matter what the size of the loan, whether it be used for refunding operations, for repair of old lines or construction of new ones, its psychological effect will be immediate and sure. Whatever the State Department and Mr. Lamont may say, such a loan will be regarded in Japan, China, and Rus- sia as notice to the world that the United States supports the new "positive policy" of Japan in Manchuria and that we are abandoning our long support of the principle of the territorial integrity of China. In this matter Mr. Lamont cannot act as a private indi- vidual. Mr. Coolidge has declared that Our government has certain rights over and certain duties toward our own citizens and their property wherever they may be located. The person and property of a citizen are a part of the general domain of the nation, even when abroad. He and the Administration, by their active support of for- eign investors, have bound Mr. Lamont's hands. He can- not act without committing the United States. In these cir- cumstances, he has a patriotic duty to perform. He and his firm owe it to their country to drop the South Manchurian loan. Down With the Critics ! IT appears that this year the dramatic critics of Paris have been more cantankerous than usual. They have shown a remarkable unanimity in damning everything that comes upon the boards, and the theatrical managers, more interested in profits than in art, are talking rebellion. Why, they ask, should they entertain such ungrateful guests or give free tickets to men who do nothing except en- deavor to persuade others to stay from the theaters? First- nighters, they say, should be abolished, but with character- istic French humor they suggest that the critics shall come to the fiftieth performance of every play that continues to exist long enough to have one. Thus the duties of the re- viewer will be lightened and, of course, the public will already have decided for itself whether it likes the per- formance or not without the benefit of advice from the pro- fessional and theoretically jaded critic. Now the opinion which the business man of the theater holds concerning the value of dramatic criticism is neither very fixed nor wholly dispassionate. One year he may al-

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672 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3258 most succeed in persuading the public that all play re- viewers are fools or worse, but next year when Smith of the Morning Scandal says (as he is pretty certain to say) that somebody or other is the American Duse, then the manager cannot resist the temptation to nullify all he has previously said by proudly flaunting the "authoritative" opinion of Mr. Smith in the face of the public. Mr. Nathan, if memory serves, was once and for a time barred, i.e., refused free tickets, from certain theaters but though Mr. Nathan is notoriously the most rough-spoken of all American critics there is not a manager in New York who would not treasure and exploit any phrase of his which happened to be laudatory even if it had to be extracted from a column of vituperation and slightly misquoted to boot. Whatever managers say, they always act as though criticism were im- portant, and they will not persuade the public that critical c'isparagement is nonsense as long as they treat critical praise as significant. The truth of the matter is, of course, that half the theaters in New York would have to close down if the newspapers and magazines stopped talking about plays. The commercial theater exists largely by virtue of the fact that it is a recognized social institution and, like baseball, it is a recognized institution because the newspapers as- sume that it is. The most important thing that the man- ager gets in money value in return for his free tickets is general publicity for the theater as an institution and he could not possibly get along without it. In half the indi- vidual cases the critics may do his play more harm than good. In half the others he might have been ju^t as suc- cessful if the individual play in question had never been mentioned by the press. But if plays in general were not talked about or written about, people would not go to the theater one-half as much as they do. The critics take plays seriously, the newspapers and magazines give the critics space in which to express their opinions, and the general public is not allowed to forget that the theater exists. Popular opinion to the contrary, damnation is not "good advertisement" for the play that the critics damn ; but in the long run such damnation is good advertisement for the theater as a whole. ( i Strut, Miss Lizzie! ? ' THE international event of the moment is not. we regret to say, the Russian proposal to disarm instead of talk- ing about it. Editorial writers may be stirred about such matters; diplomats may consider them solemnly or other- wise over their cigars. But the people — the people in Osh- kosh and Hoboken, in Sauk Center, in San Francisco and New York, the people in China and Japan and London and Paris are agog over the new Ford car! Never was publicity story so adroitly managed. A dozen times during the past few months alleged details about the new car slipped out and were duly featured on the front pages of the newspapers. Each time solemn de- nials came from Edsel Ford, from the Ford plant in De- troit, from the great man himself. Yet the stories per- sisted: the car was to have a standa. J gear-shift and four- wheel brakes; it was to look just like the old one, only funnier; it was to be equipped with every sort of modern trick and contrivance; it was to double its price. It was rumored that behind a ten-foot fence in Detroit managers of the Ford plant were tearing around at sixty-five miles an hour; a fortnight ago pirated pictures of the new car were printed in the New York papers, pictures obtained by stealth by the enterprising editor of the Weekly Argus of Bridgeton, Michigan. And Edsel merely shook his head or his finger and refused to be quoted. Yet it is doubtful if any amount of publicity, managed by ever so masterful a hand, could have produced the enormous interest that the plain people feel in the new car. Fifteen million of them have bought Fords. They have driven the old bus downhill past Packards and uphill be- hind everything else ; they have driven in rain and snow and over the thawing roads of March; they have mended a door with a piece of string, they have cursed at side-cur- tains that never came near to fitting, they have thrust a nail in to hold something that an honest bolt would have held better; they have loaded the old Ford high with farm produce, mattresses, baby carriages, 300-pound hogs, and with whatever handicap they have managed to get from where they started to where they wanted to go. It has been pointed out that men called the Ford car "she." Only when a tool with which man is served comes very near his heart does he deal with it so familiarly. The sailing ship, proud under its white canvas, was "she", the old horse plodding through mud or sun; "she's a nice blade," says the woodsman of his favorite ax ; and a pet cat or dog, what- ever its sex, may be "she." Out of this affection born of common use it is not strange that all America should be breathless to hear the real details at last, or that 375,000 advance orders for the new car should have been placed. But when we read in the China Weekly Revieiv (Shanghai) that the new Ford will not be ready in October as previously announced or when we hear that buses are running up to London to places where the cars are on exhibition (admission 1/6) we realize that the whole world is cocking a respectful ear in the direction of Miss Lizzie Ford, U. S. A. And for all our rough fa- miliarity with Lizzie, for all the jokes that have been cracked at her expense, and all the abuse she has suffered from the owners of "real cars," there is something colossal in the spectacle of a little man in Detroit, Michigan, who out of his own head, whatever else may be lacking in that same head, drew an idea which has won the hearts of mil- lions. Henry Ford did not invent the automobile; but he made it a success as no other man in the world has done. Incidentally he has made money by the hundred million; but only incidentally. The money can mean little to him — there is too much of it and his ideas of how to spend it are too elementary. But he has his fun all the same. And because of it, we have ours. During the last quarter of a century machines have been carried to the farthest village in the country. Tele- phones, the telegraph, mechanical devices for the home and the barn. Yet what man thinks tenderly of his cream separator? And who looks on a telephone except with im- patience and contumely? Henry Ford went with the ma- chine wave that washed from one end of the country to the other and spread across two oceans, east and west. He alone won the hearts of his customers ; and his product, even radically altered, is welcomed eagerly and affection- ately— even though it means standing in a long line in the pouring rain to get the first sight of it, as last week it did — instead of with the suspicion and distrust that greets most new-fangled mechanical devices.

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Dec. 14, 1927] The Nation 673 1927

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674 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3258 Id THERE was the tragedy of Tilden, and later many wept for Dempsey when he tried to come back and faltered in mid-journey. But my tears are reserved for Capablanca. I could endure the fact that Alexander Alekhine is now chess champion of all the world. It was the reasons given by the old master for his downfall which wrung my with- ers. "We are not," he said in writing for the New York Times, "as strong as we were a few years ago, although we know more and play with greater confidence. ... It is evi- dent to us that in the future if we wish to succeed in any such enterprise we shall have to enter the arena fully pre- pared both physically and mentally and lead the kind of life that will keep us in the best condition, since we possess no longer . . . the great resisting power that formerly car- ried us through on so many occasions." Pity is a kind of recognition; the defeat of this old man I could take calmly enough as long as I had the image of a palsied one who reached for the queen and in myopia seized a bishop. It was a later biographical note which set his tribulations at my doorstep: "Jose Raul Capablanca," I read, "was born in Havana, November 19, 1888 — ." Come! come! a few murrains and perhaps perdition! Tie man is my senior by precisely eighteen days. Straightway I leaped from bed and sought to touch my toes one hundred times. Jose Raul Capablanca has said it. We are not the men we used to be. But all this is a tragedy so distinctly personal that I should scarcely mention it but for attendant implications. At thirty-nine the taller Alps, chess, and the Channel must be abandoned. As the flesh fades a gem-like joy of purest spirit rises. At least so I have been told by sages who were ancient. But no! A skinny hand waves me away and mockingly an icy voice says, "Check." I quote again from Capablanca: "Of late we have lost a great deal of the love for the game because we consider it as coming to an end exceedingly fast. . . . The artistic part of chess — the com- bination— has been practically killed by the enormous strides made in the technical knowledge of the openings, generally leading the game into types of position similar to one another, where the lines of play to assure equality are somewhat similar." In other words it is folly to be wise. Perfection is a path which leads to stalemate. And I had planned to spend my declining years in doling out bright dimes from an in- vested wealth of knowledge! But now it seems that every well-considered step brings the wayfarer that much nearer to the rainbow's end where lies futility. Schopenhauer was right. And so is Dorothy Parker. This concept of wisdom as a withering ailment leads on directly to the ultimate in blasphemy. One pictures the Lord on high as looking down upon the loftiest of human aspirations and saying, "Oh, that old gambit," before he sends an angel to decline it. However, in all this there is food for fundamentalists. Once it seemed to me that there was petty tyranny in the law which made forbidden all fruit upon the Tree of Knowl- edge. Now I see more clearly the logic of the cosmic plan. Shakespeare wrote "Hamlet" because he was not the per- fect playwright. "Is this pretty good stuff or am I crazy?" he said to himself as he set down "The rest is silence." Not being sure, he could feel the moving finger on his spine when audiences clapped hands together. Fortunately for him he was not Bobby Jones who knows where every mashie shot will fall immediately he hits it. I doubt if he — or Ber- nard Shaw either — has much fun. Possibly some subtle philosopher might find that Waterloo was the greatest mo- ment of ecstasy in all the campaigns of Napoleon. When he saw the battle go against him he must have had a poignant realization that up to that time he had been pretty good. There is nothing fantastic in the prediction of impo- tence among the masters through an excess of wisdom, as the final standing in the recent contest proves. Thirty-four times Capablanca and Alekhine joined issue and twenty- five times the score was 0-0. All Argentine stood agog as one or the other fought with his back against the goal posts but each rush of the aggressor was stopped without a gain. "Hold 'em, Alekhine!" Indeed, even the games which Capa- blanca lost depended upon some slip which could be traced to his advancing years. In the beginning of the match he won, but then he was a younger man. From the chess mas- ter's table one fetches nothing save at the rare moments when he crumbles. But we don't have to be masters. By dint of will we can avoid it. Even Capablanca can remem- ber back to the time when chess was way up town. "We purposely abstained from investigations and publications," he explains, "because we feared it would shorten the life of the game." As things stand, he believes, "The game evi- dently needs to be modified for contests among great mas- ters." After all these centuries man has caught up with chess and conquered it. The new rule which I advocate is that whenever the king comes into any kind of danger the player may remove the piece and put it in his vest pocket. This would introduce strategy beyond anything now known and victory could be obtained only by the man ablest to sneak up upon his adversary unawares. However, out of the whole tragic business I have learned my lesson and herewith I make the firm resolve never to be too good at any art or pastime. Possibly Calvin Coolidge is acting on the same theory in quitting the Presi- dency now for whittling. And when I find it is dangerous for me to go on longer with the task of creating literature I can return to painting in comparative safety. There is a story of a gallant chess player who suffered not at all from Capablanca's complex. The captain of a ship, he went through all the cabins to find a passenger who would accept his challenge. At last there came a small man who timidly accepted. The board was set, the crew and all stood round to watch the struggle. Deeply the captain bur- rowed into his chair and filled a huge pipe to sustain him. The little man thrust out a pawn two paces while the cap- tain gazed at the move in horror. One deep puff he drew and then he swept the pieces to the floor, crying out "That beats me."

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Dec. 14, 1927] The Nation 675 Covering Washington The Nation's Bi-W eekly Washington Letter By THE UNOFFICIAL SPOKESMAN Washington, D. C, December 5 IT is doubtful that the present session of Congress will be hymned in history for the legislation enacted or the statesmanship revealed. Nevertheless, it is full of rosy promise for the fat boys who acquire their Cadillacs by acquainting Congress with the will of the people. The unctuous gentlemen who do their work in hotel suites and around the House and Senate office buildings, and are known variously as legislative agents, lobbyists, and fixers, may well smile and lick their lips when they contemplate the calendar. There are huge power grants to be sought, inheritance taxes to be repealed, annoying investigations to be blocked. There are Vare and Smith to be shoved over, and other succulent objectives to be gained, if possible. Two years ago it became the will of the people — that is, of the people who had just inherited large fortunes — that the estate tax should be retroactively reduced. Accord- ingly, the distinguished services of former Republican House Floor Leader Frank Mondell, of Wyoming, and for- mer Senator Augustus Owsley Stanley, of Kentucky, were obtained. As ex-members, they had the free run of the House and Senate chambers, which was no disadvantage. In consequence of these and other labors, some $80,000,000 in taxes was handed back to that class of taxpayers which could, above all other classes, afford to pay them. ***** JUST when organized business seemed ready to com- plete the apotheosis of Coolidge and Mellon, a strange hush falls upon the Te Deums led by the United States Chamber of Commerce. It is a hush of bewilderment and chagrin, mingled with a feeling that Calvin and Andrew are betraying the simple faith reposed in them by the men who draw down the big dividends. They are more than shocked; they are scandalized. The cause of the break between the chamber on the one hand and Messrs. Coolidge and Mellon on the other, is easily stated. Mr. Coolidge wants the tax reduction limited to about $225,000,000, so there will be no difficulty in bal- ancing the budget even though the Congressional pork barrel should bulge fatter than usual on the eve of election. The great minds of the Chamber are determined upon a cut of $400,000,000, even at the risk of a deficit. Among the perplexed and patriotic great minds, the suspicion is said to be gaining credence that the insidious influence of Bolshevist propaganda emanating from Mos- cow has succeeded at last in corrupting Coolidge and Mel- lon. It is a horrible thought, but how else can they explain this inexplicable refusal of Calvin to sign on the dotted line? ***** MR. COOLIDGE will win if he wants to and if the 1 regular Republicans in Congress can be induced to stand firm against the beseeching and threatening of the bankers and merchants back home. Certainly the Progres- sives who hold the balance of power in the Senate will give no aid to the efforts of business, already overloaded with profits beyond all dreams of prosperity, to escape carrying its just share of the remainder of the $26,000,000,000 war debt that weighs down the shoulders of the American people. In the end, of course, the joke will be on the Demo- crats, who apparently are quite willing to play the game of the United States Chamber of Commerce. And when it comes time to pass the hat for the 1928 campaign, the great majority of the chamber members will drop their contri- butions into the Republican derby with a couple of merry ha-ha's at the dull-witted Democratic leaders who thought to gain their support. ***** AMONG the lesser camp-followers who have arrived for the session are some familiar faces. There is, for example, the face of the celebrated Blair Coan, who was sent to Montana three years ago by the secretary of the Republican National Committee to "get" Senators Walsh and Wheeler in reprisal for their activity in investigating the official acts of Albert B. Fall and Harry M. Daugherty, and who actually did succeed in having Senator Wheeler indicted. Despite the exposure of this frame-up Coan is still at liberty and now blossoms out as a newspaper cor- respondent. Setting up quarters in the Wardman Park Hotel, he has circularized newspaper editors as follows: "The real news of what is happening, as you know, seldom is told in news dispatches, but it is WHAT IS BACK OF THE NEWS that is interesting." This lasciv- ious and inviting background he offers to supply in "daily, weekly, or semi-weekly" news letters at the astonishing rate of one dollar a week. This bargain offer has given rise to some speculation. It has been argued by real news- paper correspondents that no man could make a living on such a schedule, and hence that the ineffable Coan must have other sources of revenue in view, perhaps in connec- tion with his news service. Perhaps that is why rumor connected him with the Vare camp. Squeamish the Vare gang is not, but apparently it has some sense of dignity left, because prompt and emphatic denials were issued that Coan had been, or would be, retained to further "Boss" Vare's cause in the Senate. Similar reports have connected him with the power trust, but thus far evidence is lacking. It will be interesting to scan the Coan news letters to see what causes are supported and what measures advo- cated. The first letter has already been published and con- tains such gems of wisdom as the following: "For four years Russia has had complete control of Mexico. There are those who will go as far as to say that the laws con- fiscating property were drafted at Moscow, but be this as it may surely everyone knows that the law prohibiting religious worship is copied from the Soviet code." Or this: "Madam Kollontai, arch sorceress of the sordid social order which holds Russia in the palm of its dirty hands, was the ambassador from the Soviet Republic to Mexico. . . . She it was who persuaded President Calles of Mexico to squan- der all the finances in the Mexican treasury. . . ."

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676 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3258 PURGED of his sins by breakfasting at the White House with the President, Bill Lorimer, once the Blond Boss of Illinois, is planning now to return to the Senate seat from which he was expelled in 1912. The evi- dence presented on that historic occasion showed that his election had been purchased by the bribery of members of the Illinois Legislature with a juicy jackpot raised by cer- tain big corporations which expected to profit by it. The Senate put the boot to Mr. Lorimer by a vote of more than two to one, and for a decade he stood as the personification of all that was putrid and corrupt in politics. Times have changed, and we are now in the era of the New Morality ushered in with the inauguration of War- ren Harding, Calvin Coolidge, and the Ohio Gang. The other day Lorimer came back to the capital as a cheer leader in Big Bill Thompson's noisy flood-control ballyhoo. Ihe hospitable White House, always ready to welcome dis- tinguished party men from the Middle West, lost no time in extending Lorimer an invitation to have sausage and buckwheats with the President. Lorimer went, and with him went Big Bill and Illinois's Governor, Len Small, who recently paid back half a million which he had unlawfully taken from the State Treasury. What a quartet that must have been around the breakfast table— Blond Bill, Big Bill, Len Small, and Calvin! Thus anointed and sweetened with Vermont maple syrup, Lorimer went back to Chicago full of determination to come back to the Senate. Perhaps he will be available for the seat which will be made vacant by the Senate's refusal to seat Frank Smith. And why not? Lorimer bought only a legislature; Smith and Insull corrupted the electorate of the whole State. Under the circumstances, Blond Bill could easily qualify as the reform candidate. Executions: The New Sport By EDWARD STEVENSON TLE other night New Jersey executed four men. Four! Even Massachusetts's pride must be wounded when it reads of Jersey's astonishing program. These men died for the murder of one man — not four — last July. They were Italians, so it may be supposed they felt no pain. As one complacent white-collar man remarked: "They ought to send all the wops to hell. They'll keep Sacco and Van- zetti company." Theoretically these men died to expiate a horrible crime: actually they died to provide amusement for a gang of excitement seekers who now attend executions with all the gusto of undergraduates at a major football game. In fact, executions have become games. Invitations are given to those who desire them; and if we may believe the stories there are many who desire them. Executions are attended by the same class of persons who attend a burlesque show supposed to be particularly obscene. They are blood cou- sins to those who crowd courtrooms during sensational di- vorce cases; they are related — and not distantly — to those who toss ticker tape and scrap-paper upon the heads of vis- iting celebrities. Those who canno' attend the executions witness them vicariously through the pages of the tabloid press. The New York Daily News gave a headline of an inch and three-eights to the execution of four men. To effect a reform? To cause a wave of revulsion against legalized murder? One has only to read the inside of the paper to discover its purpose, the purpose of a newspaper which believes justice is not done unless there is an execu- tion as an epilogue to a murder. "What Has Happened to Justice?" it cries each Sunday, citing cases in which mur- dered persons have gone unavenged. Sometimes it changes its cry to "When Justice Triumphed," licking its chops as it relates the expiation of murder by murder. Yet in this Jersey affair the News has performed a public service which even the uncynical might believe unin- tentional. It has shown legalized murder in all its barbaric rottenness. For that we can thank it. Mr. Lowell Limpus, "member of the News staff who witnesses executions," makes the usual shocked reference to "the morbid curiosity of the witnesses." Then he takes a deep breath and plunges into morbidness. Mr. Limpus says: "Every one of the quartet swore he was innocent, from Big Joe, who greeted the packed-in audience with 'Gentlemen, I am going to my death as innocent as God Al- mighty' to Capozzi, whose last words to the public were: 'I die with a smile — and I am an innocent man.' " Mr. Limpus continues: The death-chamber was jammed like a rush-hour sub- way train. ... A crowd of 150 invited witnesses had shoved and almost fought to enter the small room, until it was split in half, and some seventy-five forced to wait outside in the prison yard. They grumbled as they were informed they must miss half the "show." It [the crowd] shoved for- ward against the ropes that held it away from the squat unpainted chair. After proclaiming his innocence and declaring he was framed, Big Joe was executed. Mr. Limpus says: The gray-haired executioner, Robert Elliott, who per- formed a similar service for Sacco and Vanzetti, spun the wheel on the control board, just behind the chair. It was in plain sight of the spectators. There came a sizzling sound. The curious pressed forward again, commenting aud- ibly. . . . Men cursed each other because they could not see the clay in the chair . . . [Details] . . . Big Joe was car- ried out and the crowd argued and struggled for better positions. The next man died pleading his innocence, accusing the Newark detective chief, Brex, of framing him. After the two were executed there was an intermission while the old audience was put out and the new audience admitted. Mr. Limpus goes on: The curious resisted desperately. They hadn't seen all the show yet. . . . Men fairly ran to be near the grisly chair. They joked and greeted friends. The odor of whiskey floated in the air, to mingle with the scent of scorched flesh. Lynchings are terrible enough; but they are usually more or less surreptitious ; they are carried out in anger and prejudice. The lynchers usually have a personal interest in the lynching; they may even think that by doing away with a Negro who has run amuck they are making the world that much safer for virgins. The witnesses at legal executions have no such motives or excuses. Their attend- ance is motivated solely by a desire to be in at the kill, to watch poor wretches writhe in their death agony, to experi- ence a new emotion. We shudder at the brutality of the Spanish bull-fights; we make spectacles of the slaying of human beings. We weep when we think of cannibals: cannibals kill humans for food ; we do it for amusement.

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Dec. 14, 1927] The Nation 677 The Bosch Magneto Case Comes to Court By PERCY MUSGRAVE AT last the famous Bosch Magneto Company case has President Wilson permitting the Alien Property Custodian arrived in a courtroom. Before Arthur Black, the to seize the patents as the property of Robert Bosch, an son of ex-Governor Black of New York, as referee, the suit enemy alien under the terms of the Trading with the brought by the Government against the Bosch company for Enemy Act. There were only two bidders at the sale, one more than five million dollars is being heard in Boston. For being Harry Fisk, acting for the John Willys interests, who five and a half years it has lain dormant, although some bid up to $4,100,000. To Howard D. Griffiths as agent for nationally important figures are involved and although, Kern the property was knocked down on a bid of $4,150,000. aside from the large sum at stake, the inquiry may at last The Government claims that the real worth of the company lead to an official uncovering of some of the methods of two was $9,685,564.07. Alien Property Custodians in handling German property. But Kern and Murray did not wait for this actual sale Nearly twenty defendants will appear before Mr. Black, to lay their plans. With George A. MacDonald, a Spring- among them being A. Mitchell Palmer, the former Alien field, Massachusetts, banker and later a director of the new Property Custodian and later Attorney General of the United company, they made an arrangement with Hornblower and States; Francis P. Garvan of Chemical Foundation fame, Weeks under which this firm (of which John W. Weeks, the successor of Palmer as Alien Property Custodian; Martin late Secretary of War, was originally a member) agreed, in E. Kern of Allentown, Pennsylvania, and other places, case Kern got the company, to underwrite a new concern, the purchaser of the Bosch Magneto property; his friend, the American Bosch Magneto Corporation, with a capital Arthur T. Murray, now president of the new American stock of 60,000 shares of a nominal value, and 7 per cent Bosch Magneto Corporation; Hornblower and Weeks and serial gold notes to the value of $1,800,000. Of the capital the Chase Securities Corporation, both of which acted as stock 45,000 shares was to be sold to the syndicate at $60 underwriters to a syndicate which purchased the assets per share and in turn offered to the public at $65. The notes of the old Bosch Magneto Company ; Joseph F. Guffey, an were to be sold to the syndicate at 98 and offered to the pub- important Democratic politician in Pennsylvania, a warm lie at 100. Both the notes and capital stock were oversub- friend of Palmer, and former director of the Bureau of scribed. The remaining 15,000 shares were to be distributed Sales of the Alien Property Custodian, who was indicted in as a bonus in the following proportions: the Southern District of New York for embezzlement of Hornblower and Weeks 3,500 shares more than $400,000 (his case has not yet been brought to Chase Securities Corporation 3,500 " trial), and various other persons. A bill of complaint alleg- Martin E. Kern 2,667 " ing a conspiracy to defraud the Government of the amount Arthur T. Murray 2,667 named was filed in Boston in September, 1926. The bill George A. MacDonald 2,666 had been drafted and presented to Attorney General Sargent for approval and signature some time in the early part of 15,000 August of that year, but the Attorney General delayed hav- To MacDonald were originally allotted 3,100 shares, for ing it filed until a few days before the time limit had ex- which he paid $5 per share. Why this was done is not clear, pired. As a result of this interesting negligence a United but in the final distribution the number of shares was sub- States judge in Boston ruled that several of the defendants stantially in the ratio shown above. Kern placed his shares had not been served within the time set by the statute of in the name of his mother, Mary Kern, while Murray had limitations. his issued in the name of his father, Thomas S. Murray. A The Nation's readers will recall that the Bosch Magneto million dollars was thus made by the insiders through this Company was sold to Martin E. Kern, whose past history is bonus stock, without anyone's putting up a cent. It is cer- extremely varied and interesting, through his agent and tain that Kern and Murray did not sell their bonus stock at associate, H. D. Griffiths of New York. A. Mitchell Palmer's $65 per share. A short while afterward the stock jumped friendship with Kern began when the former was counsel to 130 and then these men are alleged to have "cleaned up." of the Bethlehem Motors Corporation — he has also been in- The next figure of importance upon the stage of this dieted for having sworn falsely that he was a citizen, in order extraordinary play is J. Harry Covington, who resigned as to obtain a passport — of which Kern and Arthur T. Murray a Supreme Court judge of the District of Columbia shortly were officials. Kern claims that he induced Palmer to seize before the sale of the Bosch Magneto Company. Also a the Bosch Magneto Company as enemy-alien-owned and to warm friend of Palmer's, he received a fee of $1,000 for put Murray in as manager of the company for the Govern- legal work in connection with the Bosch company for the ment. It is charged that the directors' fees were at once vendor, namely the Government, and also acted as counsel raised from $20 to $100 a meeting in addition to their for Kern, in the purchase of the company, for which Kern expenses, that there was a great writing down of assets, gave him a fee of $25,000. The legal fees paid by the Gov- and a similarly great increase in expenses. The sale of the ernment in this case were more than $80,000. This neat pnperty was first scheduled for November 27, 1918, but it sum was for Americanizing the concern, but in addition had to be put off until December 7 because of a sudden large salaries were paid to the temporary government offi- doubt as to whether the more than one hundred patents be- cers of the company. longing to the company had been legally seized by Palmer. Next there appears on the boards Joseph F. Guffey, This was finally remedied by an executive order issued by Democratic National Committeeman from Pennsylvania,

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678 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3258 quite as eager as Mitchell Palmer and Woodrow Wilson to save the world for democracy. His plum, as Director of Sales, was handling more than $150,000,000, the proceeds of sales of enemy-owned property. Instead of treating these funds in a fiduciary capacity, he mixed them up in one bank after another in which they earned interest running from 2x/t per cent to 3 per cent, aggregating in all $406,000. By a curious lapse of memory, when he remitted the principal of these funds to the Alien Property Custodian he seems to have neglected to send the accrued interest. For this lapse a United States grand jury, as already stated, had the unkindness to indict him for embezzlement. In the Harding Administration when Colonel Thomas Miller, who has himself been convicted of conspiracy as Alien Property Custodian, was in that office Guffey was forced to pay over fhis interest to the Treasury. Being bankrupt at the time, he is said to have borrowed the money from friends. Curi- ously enough, Mr. Guffey has never been brought to trial, and there are attempts being made even now to have the in- dictment dismissed. It is a great pity that the case is not pressed as it might throw some light on the loaning to him or to his private companies of several millions of dollars by the very banks in which he deposited the receipts from alien property cales. If it is gratifying that the case against the manipu- lators of the Bosch Magneto Company is at last under way, it is time that the Government woke up to the necessity of pushing the Guffey case as well. The blackest page in the war scandals remains the Alien Property Custodian office. The statute of limitations has unfortunately intervened in some cases, and the hesitancy of the Harding Administration to go after Wilson officials has protected others — both Repub- licans and Democrats had their hands in Uncle Sam's pocket during this period. Hence this Boston case is of importance second only to the oil scandals. Anxiety in Solitude By HELENE MULLINS This evening I await an elegant young gentleman Who has known me a number of years, and sometimes reads my verse. He has avowed to me, not once, but again and again, That he thinks me an honest poet, and is sure there are many worse. I have this day finished a lyric he has not seen before. I am, with it, like a queen with a gem that has cost a fabu- lous sum, Yet sitting here and awaiting his knock upon the door, I am ill at ease, I twist my hands, I pray he forget to come. I begin to fear the evening will be rather droll ; Somewhat between regret and a furtive dismay. He will carefully keep his emotions under control, While squeezing me into a niche where he hopes I will stay. He will long to regard me with te.iderness. Yet think! What can he feel for me, excepting compassion. Whose poetry is charming, but whose fingers are stained with ink, And whose gown is not very bright and not of the latest fashion? The King Is Dead By MARGARET MARSHALL I ENTERED the Empire Room at the Waldorf-Astoria to attend the private showing of the new Ford. Near the center of the room a group of people circled, looking down at something — like mourners viewing a corpse. Somewhere an orchestra was playing bad, sad music. Or perhaps it was the velvet hangings and the cut-glass chandeliers and the noiseless young men in tuxedos and stiff white fronts who hovered about and murmured softly in one's ear : "It has a miniature Lincoln transmission"; "They're going to make 12,000 a day"; "100,000 orders already from Greater New York" ; "No parts of the old Ford are interchangeable with the new." Then I noticed that the spectators were all dressed up in fur-trimmed evening wraps and raccoon coats and high- heeled pumps — so I knew it wasn't a funeral. The circling crowd was looking down at the new chassis from Detroit, so I looked too. I passed on to the new sedan, and the new coupe, and the new sport model, all arrayed in the refined new colors — gun metal, blue, dawn gray, Niagara blue, Arabian sand. Standard gear-shift, four-wheel brakes, foot throttle, gasoline gauge on the dash, speedometer — only a vestige of the old crank that required profane strength to spin — merely a hole, covered by a round shiny plate. "Now we'll see how I look in a Ford," said a stringy dowager in evening dress. At one end of the room the anatomy of Model A was laid out on a blue velvet tripod trimmed with gold braid. It was all very refined and quiet and a bit plushy. * * * Model T was one of the unpleasant facts of life. The family bought and confronted me with it one spring when I came home from school to spend the summer on the ranch. My brother, in overalls, backed it out of the shed and paraded in it up and down in front of the ranch-house. For a background there were the log barns and a wheat-field and then gray sagebrush in the distance, sweltering dry in the sun. The sound of hens cackling and a dog's bark and that funny Ford horn are bound together in my memory. I hated Model T. I said I wouldn't ride in the ugly thing, sitting high and tinny on its four wheels. But 1 was young then. Soon I found — like several million others — that it "would go anywhere." It would, and did. It chased antelopes in African deserts — and farmers herded cows with it. Ditches, ruts, mountain roads, mudholes, high centers did not matter. "It took you anywhere and brought you back." And for a while that was enough for most people — so most people bought a Ford. Then they wanted to be "smart." They were not so much interested in going anywhere as they were in being seen going some- where. Model T was sturdy, strong, brave. But it cer- tainly was not smart. Mr. Ford was wise. He knew Model T was done for. He had a problem, but it was rather simple. He merely made a car to order — price and all — to suit the predominant desires of present-day America. Model A is here, irrevocably. "No parts of the new Ford are interchangeable with the old." Of course not. The king is dead.

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Dec. 14, 1927] The Nation 679 The Unimpeachable Gift James Harvey Robinson writes "I know of no other book which is likely to be so funda- mentally enlightening and exciting to so many people on so important a matter as this." A SHORT HISTORY OF WOMEN by John Langdon-Davies "Not only valuable but fascinating." — Isabel Paterson in the New York Herald Tribune. "By all means read A SHORT HISTORY OF WOMEN, for it will prove twice as fascinating as 'The Story of Philosophy.' " —Brooklyn Daily Eagle. $3.00 THE VIKING PRES Harry Hansen in The World: "Miss Roberts is as close to the earth as Sherwood Ander- son. She writes in beautiful prose — often it is poetry, in- spired by a fine sensitivity." MY HEART AND MY FLESH by Elizabeth Madox Roberts "It moves with the rhythmic beat of a great symphony, swell- ing to the breaking point of anguish, then resolving itself ma- jestically into quietude." — Mary Ross in the New York Herald Tribune. $2.50 NEW YORK CITY Three Great Discoveries THE GRANDMOTHERS By GLENWAY WESCOTT The Harper Prize Novel "About 'The Grandmothers' I find it difficult to remain calm. It is an event in contemporary fiction." — Burton Rascoe in The Bookman. "The most important event in American fiction since Dreiser." — Ernest Boyd. $2.50 GALLIONS REACH By H. M. TOMLINSON " 'Gallions Reach' is one of the most exciting tales that was ever written. It has real power and a sort of jungle magic about it." — Chicago Tribune. " 'Gallions Reach' is another turn in the spiral of per- fection."— Rebecca West. N. Y. Herald Tribune. $2.50 THE EARTH GIANTS By O. E. ROLVAAG "The fullest, finest, most powerful novel that has been written about pioneer life in America." — The Nation. " Giants in the Earth' is a book Walt Whitman would have rejoiced in. . . . Remarkable power. ... It is new to American fiction." — Henry Scidel Canby in the Satur- day Revierv. $2.50 Boxed together for Christmas HARPER AND BROTHERS — New York jfie Christmas The richest, handsomest, largest number The Bookman has ever issued. The new Bookman's first Christmas is one worthy of the season. The ideal Christmas present: a year of the new Bookman, starting with the Christmas number (or January). $4 for one subscription, $2 for each additional. Note: the yearly price of The Bookman goes from $4 to $5 011 January 1. The Bookman's circulation has more than doubled since Burton Rascoe became the editor three months ago. THE BOOKMAN, 452 Fifth Ave., New York When writing to adi'rrtisrrs please mention The Nation

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680 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3258 The Unim How the Great Became Great! ©MIL I/UDWIG Author of "Napoleon," etc. GCNIU3 T) RILLIANT biographies of some of the world's most interesting men. "Bound to be one of the most discussed books of the season."— Chicago Tribune. "He produces a number of pictures which cannot be forgotten." — N. Y. Times. "Interesting and stimi lating." —Joseph coluns, A7. Y. Evening Post. Translated by KENNETH BURKE Illustrated, $3.50 Harcourt, Brace & Company @fe 383 Madison Avenue New York Mr. Oliver M. Sayler has broadcast the unanimous opinion ot the press, the critics and the reading public. "Milne has already won his secure right to be known as the Robert Louis Stevenson of this generation. He has ail the metrical genius and variety of William S. Gilbert tosetherwith naive simplicity of Stevenson." Seventh Week,Sixty-tirst Edition Total Sale 180.000 Copies Published by DUTTONS A gift book for everyone from baby to Grandfather. including the sophisticated uncle . . S2.00 Boxed with "When We We . L>8ry Young" S4.00 Boxed with "When We Were Very young" and "Winnie the Pooh" .... $6.00 This book has broken ail records in the publishing business. 'THE ADDITION OF A DISTINGUISH THORNT< THE BRIDGE "FILLY CONFIRMS THE PROMISE ALBERT & CHARLES BOM HIGHLIGHTS OF MANHATTAN1 By WILL IRWIN Illustrated by E. H. Suydam The high places, hidden regions and furtive corners of Bagd on-the-Subway. "Will Irwin knows his New York, loves understands it." — N. Y. Evening Post. "He knows his city < has written well of it." — Knickerbocker Press. A beautifi illustrated gift book. $6.00. FATHER MISSISSIPPI By LYLE SAXON "A vivid yet balanced knowledge of what the river did and h and why it did it." — A*. }'. Times. "A particularly brilliant i able picture of this mighty river in its good and bad moods. Illinois State Journal. "The author knows his river." — Amen "No phase of the glamorous story is overlooked." — IVilming News. "Every American should read this book." — Los .Inge Saturday Night. Illustrated. $5.00. THE CENTURY CO., Publishers of Enduring. Boc At all booksellers. Illustrated, $5.00 GEOR< The woman who, as Heine revered, is presented as a n reverse the traditional jud{ "Our time has found its pei wise, charming, whimsical by Published by THE JC When writing to advertisers please mention The Nation

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Dec. 14, 1927] The Nation 681 chable Qift TO RANKS OF AMERICAN WRITERS." -Isabel Paterson, N. Y. Herald-Tribune GILDER'S 5AN LUIS REY THE CABALA." Illustrated, $2.50 TH AVENUE — NEW YORK AMERICA by Hendrik Van Loon Author of THE STORY OF MANKIND "There is no resisting its jolly flings, or its dra- matic word paintings of men and their ways." William MacDonald, The Nation. "It is a noble and a wise book — thought-provoking, enter- ning." Walter Yust, Philadelphia Ledger. 2nd large edition. Octavo. With more than 100 illustrations by the author. $5.00 MY LIFE by Isadora Duncan She finished this book just before her tragic death. It is the most intimate book ever writ- ten by a woman ; it has the frankness and courage that only a great mind is capable of. It is worth vol- umes on the psychology of genius, and it is absorbing and inspiring for it is the story of one of the must in- telligently adventurous and, in some ways, the most fateful lives literature has record of. Octavo. Illustrated. $5.00 GOOD BOOKS : BONI & LIVERIGHT, N. Y. SAND The Search For Love rorld on fire," who was ridiculed, loved, hated and born a century too soon in a book which promises to character. r of George Sand in Marie Jenney Howe . . . this 3k."— Floyd Dell. JENNEY HOWE COMPANY, 25 West 45th St., New York The Art Book of 1927 GEORGE W. BELLOWS HIS LITHOGRAPHS With an Introduction by Thomas Beer An art book for every American as well as every lover of the graphic arts. The fruit of nearly three years' devoted collabora- tion, it exceeds the hopes of even those who have worked most faithfully toward its production. Here, for the first time, are repro- duced all the one hundred ninety-five lithographs of Bellows, from "A Stag at Sharkey's," known to thousands who never bought a picture or entered an art gallery, to "The Last Count," from the one copy in existence. Here, for the collector of Bellows litho- graphs, is an authoritative and definitive index, soundly, beautifully made. Here, for the rest of us who cannot afford to be collectors, are superb reproductions of all the lithographs that we have coveted. Here is, incidentally, the first edition of a brilliant piece of critical-biographical writing by the author of The Mauve Decade. And here, for any who have overlooked the most vigorous of modern American realists, is a revelation which will seem almost too exciting to be real. Quarto, bound in natural linen stamped in black, with gilt top; contained in a slide. Printed on Dejonge Art Mat; the text set in Poliphilus. $15.00 AT ALL BOOK AND MANY ART SHOPS Alfred A. Knopf Publisher, N. Y. JOHN PAUL JONES MAN OF ACTION By Phillips Russell Author of "BENJAMIN FRANKLIN" FROM THE CRITICS ON THE HIGH SEAS "Wonderfully interesting and. like the hero, full of action." (Capt. Berry, S.S. Celtic) "A most enlightening biography." (Capt. Marshall, S.S. Olympic) ''A splendidly written book." (Capt. Holme, S.S. Homeric) 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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682 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3258 Is Germany Extravagant? By FREDERICK KUH Berlin, November 25 WHEN an American correspondent picked up a Com- munist daily in Berlin last October, saw a vague reference to a new, critical memorandum which Parker Gil- bert, the Reparations Agent, was addressing to the German Government, and tersely cabled this item to the New York Times, he was blissfully innocent of revealing a secret which was to open a new chapter in German history. The Times editor at home, who buried this news dispatch on Page 8, was no less guileless. It remained for the German press to realize, also tardily, that something important had hap- pened and that it behooved them to find out what. Actually, the German Government and people were be- ing confronted with an ultimatum, giving them the choice between keeping their standard of living down, existing within their modest means, and enjoying a fair chance of lightening the heavy hand of foreign creditors or else bor- rowing and speeding indiscriminately at the risk of per- petuating their subserviency. For a long time Mr. Gilbert had been hinting, then flatly asserting to Dr. Heinrich Koehler, the German Minis- ter of Finance, that German financial policy was unsound. His first objections, imparted to the Berlin Government in September, 192G, and directed against the loans which the several states of Germany were obtaining abroad, were not divulged to the public. In fact, as far as paying any atten- tion to Mr. Gilbert's words goes, the Government might have been as little aware of them as the public. This spring the Reparations Agent protested at the Gov- ernment's postponement of the measures which were to put in order the confused relations between the Reich and its component states. This protest, too, fell on the deaf ear of Gtrman officialdom. Secret economic diplomacy prov- ing unavailing, Mr. Gilbert used the report he published on June 10 as a trumpet to sound a public warning against the prodigious foreign borrowing and spendthrift policy of the German states. Although the tone of this report would have jarred an ordinary minister out of his cabinet seat. Finance Minister Koehler received it with bored but well- bred silence. For months Mr. Gilbert continued his solilo- quies in the presence of the German Government, and noth- ing was done. Suddenly the Prussian state loan, now ready to be thrown on the American market, was blocked. If the German Government had not heeded Mr. Gilbert's criticism. the American bankers had. Then Dr. Heinrich Koehler, Minister of Finance, stopped, looked, and listened. Since Dr. Koehler's concern, even then, threatened to subside. Mr. Gilbert suggested that he might keep it alive by presenting a written note, embodying his criticisms. The upshot was the delivery of the Gilbert memorandum, courteously humil- iating, and the German reply, conceding the justice of some or Mr. Gilbert's arguments, refuting a couple of them, and evading most of them. All the points at issue, numerous and often technical, cannot be chronicled and examined here. But the cardinal points are clear : First, Mr. Gilbert points to the increase of expendi- tures in the German budget, amounting to 7.444 million marks in 1925, 8,543 million in 1926, and 9,130 million in 1927 — a rise of nearly 1,700 million in two years, of which only 607 million went for reparations payments. The Ger- man Government argues that more than half the budget outlays were devoted to paying off war debts at home and abroad. This is true. But it would be difficult to name the government of a single nation, which was engaged in the war, in whose budget the payment of internal and for- eign debts does not play a predominant role. Second, the Reparations Agent deplores the financial arrangements, or lack of them, between the federal adminis- tration and state governments. Fixing of the responsibil- ity between them for tax-collecting and public expenditures, he says, is becoming continually less clear. Dr. Koehler, without attempting to refute Mr. Gilbert's criticism, an- swers that a clear-cut, lasting settlement of financial func- tions between the Reich and the federal states is impossible as long as the German agricultural situation remains poor (despite a 20 per cent increase in this year's harvest over 1926, the value of the crops is said to be 20 to 30 per cent below the pre-war level), and while German industry is not thoroughly adapted to post-war production and marketing conditions. The German reply also suggests that undue interference by the federal Government in the finances of the states would be unconstitutional. This is an admission that the particularist interests of the states are allowed to conflict with the interests of the country as a whole. Third, the Gilbert note points out that the Govern- ment's salaries-reform bill for the civil service was stated last July to entail approximately 10 per cent increases, while it is now officially announced that the increases will range from 18 to 25 per cent. However necessary and de- sirable these "raises" for state employees may be, the Government parties are aware that the next German gen- eral elections are but a few months distant and that several hundred thousand civil-service workers might be persuaded to vote for those parties which raise their salaries. Mr. Gilbert estimates the cost of these salary increases at 1,200 to 1,500 million marks, while the Government, in its re- sponse, places the amount at about 1,250 millions. Despite Dr. Koehler's assurances to the contrary, Mr. Gilbert in- sists that the money for the increased salaries can be derived only from higher taxes. Finally, Mr. Gilbert takes exception to new expendi- tures for the proposed educational-reform law (which en- visages a reorganization of the school system on the basis of religious instruction) and to the plan to compensate Ger- man citizens for losses and damages suffered through the war. Mr. Gilbert again emphasizes that he will not approve the marketing of the preferred shares of the German state railways to obtain revenues for these or any other outlays. Dr. Koehler replies that the financing of the school reform will not be felt for several years; but Mr. Gilbert evidently believes that coming years cannot be ignored, even by a Finance Minister. Now it is odd that the Reparations Agent, the brunt of whose attack is leveled against the German budget, should insist that he cannot interfere with that budget. When I

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Dec. 14, 1927] The Nation 683 talked to Mr. Gilbert a few days after the publication of his memorandum, he desired me to understand that he ex- ercises no veto over the German budget or its separate items. "I do not enjoy the prerogatives granted to the for- eign finance controllers of Austria and Hungary, who could block budgetary expenditures if they deemed it necessary," he said. Mr. Gilbert is a modest man. If it is literally true that he possesses no legal right to dictate the German budget, it is significant that he did not remind me, as he had reminded the German Government and people, that he wields a far greater power in his ability to influence the sources of credit for Germany. Germany has many potent creditors and Mr. Gilbert is their agent. Neither bankers nor their agents are accustomed to let legal etiquette dic- tate their behavior toward a debtor. The world's bankers and especially Wall Street, where Germany has borrowed hundreds of millions of dollars in the last three years, are quick to react to a word from the Reparations Agent. Mr. Gilbert requires no formal veto power over the German budget as long as he wields an informal veto over foreign credits for Germany. Moreover, it is reasonable to suppose that Mr. Gilbert would not insist on vital changes in German financial policy unless he were confident that he could enforce his demands. Even the German Government admitted the justifica- tion of many of his criticisms. Mr. Gilbert denounced the loans floated abroad by German states and municipalities as "unproductive." He is treading firm ground here. The president of the Reichsbank, Dr. Hjalmar Schacht, has de- clared that the cost of swimming pools, parks, athletic stadiums, and theaters, erected by German cities in recent years, almost equals the total amount of money which the German cities borrowed abroad. It is fair to say that these loans have been diverted from channels more vital to a country engaged in rebuilding a war-shattered eco- nomic system and paying off 6,700 million marks of internal and foreign debts contracted since the war, besides repara- tions. Germany answers that many of these municipal and state loans went to construct electrical, gas, and water plants, port facilities, and agricultural improvements. Many Germans wondered whether the Reparations Agent had as- sumed that because such public utilities are privately owned in America the money invested in them became "unproduc- tive" in Germany, where the utilities are municipally owned. The German Government, while promising a new regime of economy in general terms, failed to describe how and when these economies are to be enforced. Mr. Gilbert's curiosity is left unsatisfied as to how the Government will obtain the vast sums needed to reimburse German claimants for their war-time losses. Nor is the source of credits revealed, from which Germany's extraordinary budget shall be covered. Whence is the money coming to meet increased reparations payments, 1,250 million marks of salary in- creases annually, the costs of carrying out the school re- form? Although Mr. Gilbert suggested that these sums might be obtained by a far-reaching administrative reform, cutting down the expenses of federal, state, and communal government and reducing the subsidies which the Reich grants to the states and cities, there are no signs that this wholesale slashing of the cost of government is to be attempted. "Germany will scarcely be able effectively to protest against the unfair pressure of reparations payments," wrote the Frankfurter Zeitung, "while critics at home and abroad can point to the waste of huge sums in government ad- ministration." Germany's reply to the Gilbert memorandum was a disappointment. Its logic is occasionally amusing. Re- ferring to the improvement of German economic conditions, the German document says, "The amount of goods pro- duced grew more rapidly than prices rose." This reminded the German economist, Gustav Stolper, of the familiar riddle: "A ship is 117 meters long. How old is the captain?" There is nothing in the German declaration which will embarrass Mr. Gilbert in reviving his entire criticism in the annual report which he will issue early in Decem- ber. The German reply included the summary of an irrele- vant speech delivered by the Finance Minister before the Reichstag budget committee. The German analysis of the Reich's budget, which experts regarded as less competent than the analysis Mr. Gilbert had made in his June report, contained no reference to the increase of 250 million marks for German military expenditures within three years. On the other hand, one critic pointed out that Mr. Gilbert made no mention of the several hundred million dollars' worth of German pre-war property, still held in sequestra- tion by the United States. In connection with Mr. Gil- bert's objection to indiscriminate German borrowing abroad, it was suggested that some of this borrowing would have been unnecessary if the sequestered property had been released. One cannot suppress a suspicion that the underlying motive of the Gilbert memorandum is not to be found in his detailed, technical criticism, and that, in a candid, un- guarded moment he might have said: "The Dawes Plan will enter into full swing after Sep- tember 30, 1928, when the 'normal' 2,500 million marks annuities will be exacted from Germany for the first time. There is reason to doubt whether the transfer of immense sums of currency from Germany to her former enemies will be accomplished without endangering the stability of German currency. Germany is bound to do her utmost to facilitate the transfer of reparations. But German finan- cial policy is unsound and, when difficulties in the execution of the Dawes Plan arise, I may be constrained to place the responsibility upon Germany and to recall the warnings which I issued as long ago as 1926 and 1927." In the Driftway BEFORE the season for summer reminiscences closes the Drifter wants to tell what a nice city is Portland, Maine. Most vacationists use it merely as a lodging house for the night while whizzing through by automobile or as a place to change trains in. The Drifter arrived there last summer with some such program in his own mind, but liked the town so well that what was to have been a visit of hours stretched into days. What he liked best was the friendly and interested way in which he was treated by everyone from whom he sought information. It is a positive pleasure to be a stranger in Portland ask- ing the way about. Everyone seems pleased and able to give you directions, and — oddly enough — they generally turn out to be right. There is no officious boosterism in evidence.

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684 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3258 AT the official information bureau the Drifter came upon the folder of a camp which he must surely visit some day. "We have no bathrooms, tennis courts, or golf course," read the announcement. "The camp cannot be reached by automobiles or motor boats." * * * * * PORTLAND has some sedate and beautiful old houses, some ancient and sky-scraping elms in its streets, and a delightful lack of conventional "sights." Chief among the latter is the old Longfellow home. As a rule the Drifter does not visit such places — they bore him. But the Long- fellow house proved a pleasant exception. It has been made as little of a museum and kept as much of a home as pos- sible. The furniture is disposed about the rooms much as it must have been, and the visitor can wander about at will. It is true that an attendant tracked after the Drifter, pretty close at his heels, but there was doubtless something about his looks which suggested he might walk off with a four-poster bed or a wood-burning stove. He felt sus- picious of himself. Anyhow he enjoyed the visit and he came away with an enhanced respect for him who in Port- land is spoken of simply as "The Poet." There is an atmosphere in the home of the finest and fullest old New England gentility — and, say what you will, this was some- thing pretty fine. ***** MEMORANDA on the walls of orders for groceries in- dicate that they lived well in the Longfellow house- hold and were not such teetotalers as some peoole nowa- days might like to believe. There seem to have been more bottles of brandy ordered than could possibly have been used for strictly medicinal purposes. And speaking of medicine there wasn't much money in it in those days. A faded bill recovered from Longfellow's parents shows that Dr. Shirley Erving in 1807 received $5 for assisting the stork to bring young Henry into the world. No wonder they had large families in those days. ***** TI .'HEN the Drifter was in Portland there were only V V two daily newspapers issued, one in the morning, the other in the evening — and both under the same owner- ship. In the last few weeks a new daily has made its appearance, the Portland Evening News, under the editor- ship of the Drifter's old friend and former fellow-worker on The Nation, Ernest Gruening. Portland is on the way to becoming a finer city than ever. THE DRIFTER Correspondence Symphony in the South To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: A mob-proof jail and park streets were until recently all that Macon, Georgia, could flaunt; it could hardly brag (though it did) of the accident of Sidney Lanier being born here and eventually finding himself at Baltimore. But when a group of its provincial inhabitants perform Beethoven's sym- phonies of a Sunday afternoon to a crowd of three thousand, the event deserves notice. What was it Mencken said in his better days — "As scarce as an oboe-player in the South"? Macon has an eighty-piece symphony orchestra. To be sure, there is a clamorous need for a harpist, a bassoon player, and an exponent of the Cor anglais, but these things will come. Yet — how long can a local symphony orchestra last if set down among the cotton-fields and peach orchards of Georgia? Macon is perhaps not typical. The presence of a liberal newspaper, which is bombarding the local buyers and money- lenders with propaganda on the trade-getting magic of a weekly free concert, is something which the average Southern city would lack. Last summer the Birdsey Flour Mills responded with a sum large enough to support the ensemble through the hotter part of the year. Now, however, both the weather and the ears of local merchants are apparently turning cold. To meet this exhaustion of revenue the orchestra sponsored a bene- fit performance of "H. M. S. Pinafore," succeeding, by a hurri- cane of publicity, in getting fairly good audiences, but the net results will pay for only one-and-a-half concerts; and the presentation of half a concert would be an awkward affair. What can a small Southern — or Northern — city do with a resident symphony orchestra? Macon, Georgia, November 23 Geo. A. Pindar What Is a Bar Association ? To the Editor of The Nation : Sir: In January I was the flattered recipient of a letter from a State director of the American Bar Association's mem- bership committee. It began: "It is a pleasure to join most heartily in the inclosed invitation presented to you by the presi- dent of the American Bar Association." The director could not know how compelling his mere invitation was, so he pro- ceeded to reason why. "Membership in the association," he continued, "is really indispensable to every lawyer who has at heart the maintenance of the ancient standards of honor and dignity of the profession and the promotion of the administra- tion of justice." The State director in closing his gracious let- ter expressed the hope that I could find it agreeable to sign at once the inclosed card of application and give him "the satisfaction and pleasure of proposing you for membership." This hope found echo in the accompanying invitation from the president, Charles S. Whitman, who said in part: "I extend to you a most cordial invitation to join this large group of your brothers at the bar, and to give us the advantage of your ex- perience and ability, working with us to maintain the high traditions of our profession." Needless to say, I applied. But why have I not been ad- vised of the disposition of my application? My correspondent must have proposed me, as he attached no condition to his promise to do so except that I return the card of application. The membership committee, composed in part of Moorfield Storey, Frank B. Kellogg, Elihu Root, Hampton L. Carson, John W. Davis, and Charles E. Hughes, would certainly not deny me the indispensable privilege of membership. During the months that I have waited I have wondered wherein have I failed to measure up. Graduation from the law school of the University of Pennsylvania and practice as an attorney for four years in West Virginia under a license from the Supreme Court of that State would probably entitle one to be considered a lawyer. My conduct as a practicing attorney has never, to my knowlege, been questioned. There has — but wait! At the foot of the application-card was this question — "Are you white, Indian, Mongolian, or Negro?" But what has my being a Negro got to do with it? Welch, West Virginia, November 1U Leon P. MILLER Pound for President? To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: "Norris for President" or anyone else? The Ameri- can intelligentsia have as yet no effect on running the country, but that is no reason against a man's saying what he wants. In forty years' time no one will accept Mr. R. S. Baker's blah about Wilson. The one-and-one-half cent postage stamp will not be adorned by the effigy now printed upon it; starched

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Dec. 14, 1927] The Nation 685 fronts that inquire not whether justice is done, but whether formalities are complied with, will not be honored, even in public schools. For next President I want no man who is not lucidly and clearly and with no trace or shadow of ambiguity against the following abuses: (1) Bureaucratic encroachment on the indi- vidual, as the asinine Eighteenth Amendment, passport and visa stupidities, arbitrary injustice from customs officials; (2) Arti- cle 211 of the Penal Code, and all such muddle-headedness in any laws whatsoever; (3) the thieving copyright law. No man who has not sense enough to understand that these things are unnecessary evils, is fit to sit in the White House, however low the prestige of that dwelling may have been driven by recent incumbents. And no man who has not guts enough to take effective action against these evils is fit for that job or any other job in the government. Rapallo, Italy, November 15 Ezra Pound Why Harlan Dismissed Walt Whitman To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: The recent republication of "The Good Gray Poet," W. D. O'Connor's vindictive assault upon James Harlan, be- cause of his removal of Walt Whitman from a clerkship in the Interior Department, calls for at least a brief restatement of the facts in the case. Senator Harlan was President Lincoln's last appointee to a seat in his Cabinet. When President Johnson urged Harlan to accept the Secretaryship of the Interior, the Senator reluctantly consented with a clear understanding that all supernumeraries were to be dropped from the departmental pay roll. In my "Life of James Harlan," published by the Iowa State Historical Society in 1913, I briefly state the facts in the case. I quote: Among the many clerks and supernumeraries who re- ceived their dismissal from the Interior Department during the general clearing-out process instituted by Secretary Harlan was the famous poet, Walt Whitman, and prob- ably no other similar dismissal brought down upon Harlan such a storm of censure. Whitman had earned the grati- tude of the government by his devoted services to sick and wounded soldiers in the Washington hospitals, and had been given a clerkship in the Indian Bureau in recognition of those services. He "had been a favorite with the chief clerk in the bureau, and had been given a good deal of latitude," and "whenever the duties were not pressing, he was at work upon his manuscripts." That his work was not commensurate with his salary or with the services of those who were carrying the actual burden of clerical labor in the Indian Bureau is admitted by most of his biographers. As has been noted, Secretary Harlan early determined on a policy of economy, including the dismissal of every clerk not deemed necessary to the efficiency of the depart- ment. The rule was rigidly enforced and as many as eighty removals on a single day were reported. On June 30 occurred the dismissal of Walt Whitman, along with several others who had been holding their offices simply as rewards for past services. A number of Whitman's friends, chief among whom was W. D. O'Connor, a brilliant writer, resented the poet's dismissal and took up cudgels in his behalf. O'Connor charged Harlan with having gone to Whitman's desk at night and taken therefrom the manuscript of "Leaves of Grass," on which the poet was working at the time. Fur- thermore, O'Connor alleged that Harlan had read suf- ficiently far in the manuscript to convince himself that it did not meet his idea of decency, that he had then returned the manuscript to the desk, and immediately thereafter dismissed Whitman from the service. Secretary Harlan removed Whitman on Commissioner Dole's report recommending that he, with others, be dis- missed, and for a reason virtually conceded by the more candid friends of the poet to be a valid one, namely, that his services were not essential to the successful operation of the Indian Bureau. The fact that an indiscreet friend unduly pressed Whitman's claims for reinstatement chiefly on the ground of his service in the hospitals and his lit- erary achievements, and that Secretary Harlan saw no reason why the author of "Leaves of Grass" should be longer pensioned in a department devoted solely to bus- iness, is the only discoverable foundation for the O'Connor charges. Johnson Brigham State Library, Des Moines, Iowa, November 10 To Teachers To the Editor of The Nation : SIR: This is an appeal to all teachers who are Nation read- ers and not members of the Teachers' Union. It is true that teachers have grown suspicious and tired of the so-called betterment organizations and their out-of-town conventions. But the union has already proved itself a real service to us. Whether the issue relate to salaries, pensions, professional rights, or educational ideals, the union comes ac- tively to the fore. Unionism is an inevitable development in any democratically run institution. For an accurate summary of the union's history and work, write to the Teachers' Union, 70 Fifth Avenue, New York City. New York, November 27 Marion Z. Popper Who Are the Poor? To the Editor of The Nation : Sir: It has been brought to my attention that under date of June 29, 1927, you published an editorial giving certain statistics concerning this society. There was an error in these figures that I should like to correct. Of the 3,891 families under our care last year the largest single nationality group consisted of 1,133 native-born white families, or 29 per cent of the whole group. This means that the foreign-born still make up the majority of the families that came to our attention. It is true that of the foreign-born only 5 per cent had been here less than five years (showing it to be a fallacy that the very recent immigrant is our chief pi-oblem) but the foreign-born as a group have always been our chief concern — and still are. New York, November 25 Helen I. FiSK, Statistician, New York Charity Organization Society Contributors to This Issue Under the title Covering Washington The Nation will print a biweekly Washington letter. Percy Musgrave is the pseudonym of a New York jour- nalist. Margaret Marshall is on the staff of the New Masses. Frederick Kuh is Berlin correspondent of the United Press. Lynn Riggs, poet and playwright, is author of "The Big Lake" and other plays. James Rorty, author of "Children of the Sun," lived for some years in California. Ernestine Evans is a frequent contributor to magazines. Michael Fraenkel, a New York business man who has quit business for literature, is planning a book on Gauguin.

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Books and Plays i Before Winter By LYNN RIGGS Winter again is sealing with a seal His white imperious edict. It will behoove Men, who are careless of their minds that move Through rain and sun, to garner as they feel. Flower and maple may not end their song At its bright crest, nor any risen thing Escape the woe of stream and blackbird's wing Alike congealed and held as by a thong. You too, who most of all that summers quicken Sprawled in the sun, obey the grim design Imposed on brow and lip. Now, lest I sicken For its remembered beauty, I make haste To cheat the winter and the general waste And set, like this, upon your mouth a sign. First Glance "r^CHOLAR, poet, historian, archaeologist, art critic, O mountaineer, explorer, gardener, naturalist, distin- guished servant of the State, Gertrude was all of these, and was recognized by experts as an expert in them all." So writes Lady Bell of her stepdaughter, the late Gertrude Bell of Arabia, whose "Letters" she has edited for a respect- ful and curious world (Boni and Liveright; two volumes: $10). The Uncrowned Queen of Arabia who was the sub- ject of so much rumor and report during and after the war, and who remains perhaps the principal competitor with Colonel T. E. Lawrence for the distinction of having had the most amazing career of all those persons devoted throughout the war to service in outlying places, becomes very knowable indeed in these large volumes. We see her from six to forty-six as a girl in England, as an eager stu- dent at Oxford, as a learner of many languages including Persian and Arabic, as a traveler to Persia and an exca- vator in Asia Minor, as a climber of the most formidable of Alpine peaks, and as almost every other thing save, let me say in passing, a woman in love. We see her at forty-six drawn into the war, which took her eventually to Bagdad where because of her languages and because of her genius she was made Oriental Secretary, assisted brilliantly in the creation of the Kingdom of Iraq and the settlement of the crown upon Feisal, and died at fifty-seven from too much labor for the Museum of Antiquities. We see her always as a brisk, courageous, enthusiastic, affectionate woman whose character is no less astounding than her story — whose char- acter, in fact, is her story. Gertrude Bell of England and Arabia — for she re- mained an Englishwoman even in the midst of her efforts for Feisal and in spite of her passion for Persian, Baby- lonian, and Arabian antiquities — was very decidedly pos- sessed of a mind, but she is most ir^eresting for the activity of her life. Hers was the sort of activity that we have learned to expect every few years from some memoer of her race — endless activity, passionately directed but inspired I suspect by a touch of desperation. At twenty-one she wrote: "I love talking to people when they really will talk sensibly and about things which one wants to discuss. I am rather inclined to think, however, that it is a dangerous amuse- ment, for one 's so ready to make oneself believe that the things one says and the theories one makes are really guid- ing principles of one's life, whereas as a matter of fact they are not at all. One suddenly finds that one had formulated some view from which it is very difficult to back out, not because of one's interlocutor but because the mere fact of fitting it with words engraves it upon one's mind. Then one is reduced to the disagreeable necessity of trying even involuntarily to make the facts of one's real life fit into it, thereby involving oneself in a mist of half-truths and half- falsehoods which cling about one's mind do what one will to shake them off." Making due allowance for those fifteen "ones," there is a fine paragraph. But it is not the expres- sion of a contemplative or even of a practical soul. It is the mark rather of one who will go many times around the world in search of the whole truths of experience — and never, of course, quite find them. Such a one was Gertrude Bell; and I doubt whether a more perfect example has re- cently come on record. Mark Van Doren A Good Word for California Lands of the Sun. By Mary Austin. Houghton Mifflin Com- pany. $3. T N New York and in other great cities one meets people 1 who live as though they recognized no kinship with forms of life outside the human family; as though creation really started on the sixth day and all the rest were irrelevant and unnecessary. Such people scurry in and out of restaurants and theaters, bob up and down in office-building elevators — they are as active as cockroaches in a drain. "This is the life!" they seem to proclaim — indeed they will so proclaim if you ask them. A kind of life I suppose it is — a life in time but scarcely in space. Such people have about as much spatial poise and content as the tick of a watch. For them the concert of nature is played on two strings — themselves and the barren asphalt they walk on. Surely there is an appalling egoism about such lives, and also, I think, a progressive insanity. This urban robot I am describing hasn't even sense enough to say, when he meets you, "It's a fine day," or "It looks like rain," observa- tions of some color and pertinence as compared to his empty "Hello" or "How's the boy?" Alas, he is so tragically full of himself he hasn't even room enough for the weather. Whom the gods would destroy they first make insensitive. Not to the meek, exactly, but rather to the sensitive, belongs the earth and the fulness thereof. They win their inheritance simply by being aware of it. Mary Austin is one of these inheritors. Both for herself and for her readers she has widened the dimensions of life and increased its content by the record of what she has seen and felt in the beautiful places of her native West. "The Lands of the Sun," like "The Land of Little Rain," is a book not merely to be read but to be owned and referred to. Such books, it seems to me, represent the necessary ground- work of a culture — the spiritual possession of the soil. Not enough of this work has been done — for the West especially. John Muir, Robinson Jeffers, Mary Austin, and perhaps George Sterling — on the work of these four California might base a culture, and probably won't if present portents hold. Mrs. Austin came to California in 1888, before, as she remarks in her preface, "It was preempted and overrun by the most impotent — culturally and spiritually impotent — society that has ever gotten itself together in any quarter of the

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Dec. 14, 1927] The Nation 687 United States." Her interest is primarily in the landscape; where the human adventure enters it is California's earlier epic which impresses her: "men contriving against the gods for the possession of the earth;" this rather than the contem- porary enigma of sun-kissed fatuousness. In California every prospect pleases; but in this continu- ous beauty there is a certain troubling redundance and ex- cess. Curiously enough Mrs. Austin's style seems to have caught a little of this infection. Frequently I found myself urging her not to make a literary conquest of this country but to let the mountains, the valleys, the trees and flowers and birds speak with their own clear voices. Nature invariably re- jects the too-possessive suitor; a tree or a flower is its own symbol, its own significance. Thoreau and Muir both knew this; so does Mrs. Austin, I suspect. It is merely that occasionally she is betrayed by the impulse to make nature provide the visual pattern for her own subjective desire and need. For the rest, one cannot acknowledge too gratefully the richness and precision of her observation, the devotion with which she has compiled her historical and botanical data, and the genu- ine emotion which lifts and colors her picture of this land which, for all its human faults and natural faultlessness, one remembers always with wonder and enthusiasm. James Rorty The Quality of Grace The Bridge of San Luis Rey. By Thornton Wilder. A. and C. Boni. $2.50. THERE exists a certain minor prose quality which, in its purest form, seems to have eluded the most eminent of our present-day fiction writers: I mean grace. Grace, unlike other literary virtues, such as sincerity or strength, is a thing learned. Perhaps it is always the product of a continuous tradition, of a devotion to the masters. In America the absence of a homogene- ous fictional tradition may partially account for the fact that our most widely advertised stylists are deficient in this very quality of grace. The elements of grace are almost moral: purity and modesty and quiet. Mr. Cabell, Miss Wylie, and all those other practitioners whom good sense (or snobbishness) has caused to revolt against the school-boy vulgarity of our standard literary idiom, have none the less failed to capture these elements. That is because pure grace is incompatible with mannerism or whimsicality; it is the serene steering of a middle course between the Odyssean rocks of artificiality and rugged- ness. In our own time it is almost unexampled. Possibly our pioneer prejudices have laid too much emphasis on what is called a masculine style. Perhaps we have no one to learn from in our own tradition. Then there is another deterrent: the real- istic ukase which bids our writers transform themselves into dictaphones for the recording of "sinewy native American speech." Finally there is the fear that so delicate a note as pure grace may be lost amid the blatant and monotonous trumpetings of our contemporary American prose. Mr. Wilder's very beautiful book, then, possesses an extrin- sic as well as an intrinsic value. Intrinsically it is a remark- ably confident evocation of the secret springs of half a dozen men, women, and children. But in addition it proves to us that an American, if he be willing to exercise rigorous selection, un- derstatement, and a measured observance of the prose styles of the masters, can create a novel instinct with a pure grace. To achieve this unique limpidity of style and feeling Mr. Wilder has taken careful thought and made many careful avoid- ances. The first thing he does is to obviate the possibility of there arising in the reader's mind any vulgar or hackneyed associations. This is effected by a removal of the scene of his novel to an eighteenth-century Peru just barely touched with a gentle unreality. No land of the imagination, this Lima of 1714, for that trick would be too obvious; merely a modest de- vice for arousing in us that sense of purification which is lent by historical remoteness. Then, as grace is not associated with large effects or the complication implicit in a numerous dramatis personae, he reduces his characters to a scant seven or eight — the five who perish when the bridge of San Luis Rey falls, the Perichole whose passions and perversities link delicately the fortunes of those five, and two or three more static personalities to balance the dynamic action of the protagonists. But this mere numerical simplicity is not enough, for grace is achieved through a certain unity, even monotony. It is not generally effected by the depiction of too many emotions. Consequently Mr. Wilder simplifies his feeling-pattern. Though his charac- ters are projected completely and organically, they are for the most part motivated by the single passion of love. There is no schematism here, for this passion expresses itself in almost every conceivable form (except romantic affection) from the almost religious idolatry of little Pepita to the inverse effects of love frustration in the Perichole. A locale free from impure associations, a parsimonious list of characters, a simplified and coherent emotional material — there is still another device employed by Mr. Wilder to convey a sense of purity. There is a moment in which the love-careers of his five characters reach a psychic turning-point; at that moment they fall from the bridge. Accident? Divine inten- tion? The ruminative and Jesuitical Brother Juniper thinks the latter, but Mr. Wilder does not say. His art knows that to indicate the metaphysical implication underlying his tale is to deepen the sense of mystery. To stress it is to destroy the quality of grace he has so surely built up. He assembles ma- terials so apt for the purpose that he might very well be tempted to furbish up his story and present it as a profound philosophi- cal novel, thus gaining the plaudits of the columnists. But his pen is tipped with the pure gold of an exquisite tact — another word for grace. Just as the simple reticences of his individual sentences offer exactly the correct amount of stimulation to the reader's sensibility, so is his basic conception clothed with a beautiful restraint, lending to his work that gracious and stately modesty we meet with in the old fables of La Fontaine. Mr. Wilder is not yet an important novelist; but it may be that he decreases the. significance of his work by a self-imposed series of limitations. His projects are not ambitious; he refuses to set a complicated or turbulent human scene. Yet there are a sureness, an ease, and an emotional power in this book that indicate more inclusive and far-ranging abilities. There are few young Americans writing today whose development will be watched by the discerning critic with greater hope and confi- dence. Clifton P. Fadiman Tragic Biography The Life and Death of Sacco and Vanzetti. By Eugene Lyons. International Publishers. $1.50. T^ELIX FRANKFURTER'S analysis of the evidence in the * Sacco-Vanzetti case was until August 22 the one competent book dealing with the trial. The rest were pamphlets, written in a mingled atmosphere of threat and supplication, telling the story, it is true, but written — for the story was unfinished, and it is unfinished still — with an eye to the diverse elements of money, social force, and legal device to be recruited for the battle. August 22 having passed, there are those who see no need for a retelling of the story. The New York Times spent five pages the day after the legal murder in relating and sum- marizing all the circumstances. August 22 having passed, there are those who know that, however gallant and thorough was Mr. Frankfurter's book upon the subject, another was needed, as careful in its relation of the legal drama but so setting that drama in the society of our times that the case should be clear for what it was, a minor episode in a world-wide conflict and

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688 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3258 a symbol to the nations of the narrowness and injustice that can prevail in what to the workers of the world was once the land of the free. No one could have been better fitted than Eugene Lyons to retell I he story. As a young newspaperman he was sent to Italy early in the case to examine witnesses for the defense and to meet the Sacco and Vanzetti families in Torremaggiore and Villa Falletto. With an artist's selection and compression he has indeed described the lives and deaths of the two men, their childhoods, their reasons for migration to the legendary America of food and freedom, the work they were able to do in the New England of today. I find in this book, depicting two very simple and heroic human characters, something that no novel of the fall can offer me; and when it becomes necessary to tell of their slow dying against a background of international agitation and protest Mr. Lyons manages, somehow, to analyze the conflicts between liberal and radical opinion among the sympathizers in a style that is not exposition but is free and running narrative. Mr. Lyons never believed that the case was "a New England con- spiracy." He does not write about it in that way. In one slim volume he has written another "American Tragedy," one which is now part of history and from which lessons can be drawn for history in the making. The book has already, fresh from the English presses, been translated into German, Spanish, Russian, and Italian. It has been seized upon for translation because it tells the story of immigrant adventure in the New World as Latin America, Italy, Russia, and Dawes-plan Ger- many recognizes that world. Ernestine Evans Gauguin's Letters to His W'fe La Vie sentimentale de Paul Gauguin. Par Jean Dorsenne. Paris: L'Artisan du Livre. THERE are those admirers of Gauguin who in their naive enthusiasm would have us believe that the man woke one morning and found himself in the throes of an incurable passion to paint. Whereupon he betook himself to that mysterious island in the Pacific where, under perennially blue skies and freed from the vile necessity of having to provide for wife and children, he gave himself up entirely to his genius and his art. They would have us believe that inspiration came upon him suddenly, and that he followed the gospel exhortation with respect to home and kin in all its strict literalness. Nothing can be further from the truth. In the first place, there is no doubt that from 1873, two years after Gauguin entered the employ of Bertin, brokers at Paris, to 1883, when he resigned, he served a serious appren- ticeship as a painter, utilizing every spare moment in the study and perfection of his art. So that when at thirty-five he finally decided to devote himself entirely to painting he was thor- oughly convinced of his capabilities and had no doubts about his future success. Indeed, one of the most remarkable things in the artist's life is that through all those harrowing years of want and distress that followed he never lost sight of the real value of his work, never doubted his genius. The desire to paint, then, did not come upon him suddenly; it grew up with him over a period of ten years in the noisy, stuffy atmosphere of the Bourse. Secondly, contrary to the notion that Gauguin upon quitting Bertin never so much as gave a thought to his family, which would make of him either a man possessed of unusual powers of detachment or a downright scoundrel who abandoned wife and children for a Tahitian strumpet and "un batard cafe au lait," the intimate letters of Gauguin to his wife now show clearly with what profound and touching concern lit followed the fate of his family from the time he was compelled to leave them at Copenhagen to the time of his death. The truth is that the hope of sometime rejoining his family and regaining his wife's esteem was the one thing, next to his art, to help him support all the mental and physical suffering that was his. He touches on it again and again in his letters. It is the latter phase of this myth which romantic admirers are pleased to spin about the artist — his utter indifference to family ties — that the author undertakes to explode. The story of his development as an artist, which was, to be sure, a gradual process, he leaves out of consideration, touching here and there upon some aspect of it only in so far as it throws a strong light on his family life. For instance, he reserves a chapter on the notebook which Gauguin especially prepared for his daughter Aline but which, alas ! the poor girl did not live long enough to see. (A beautiful limited edition of the original "cahier" has just been printed in Paris.) The book consists for the most part of excerpts from the painter's letters to his wife, but these are ordered and arranged with such fine psy- chological sympathy that one gets something like a complete picture of the truly human side of the artist in that long struggle against poverty and disease. He takes her into his confidence about his art. He has no doubt about his future or his genius. "I am a great artist," he writes from Tahiti, "you are right. . . . It's because I know it that I have endured so much suffering in order to realize my end; if not, I wTould have considered myself a brigand — that which I am anyway for many people." Thus Gauguin continues to unburden himself to his wife until the last crushing blow reaches him — the news of the death of his favorite child, Aline. The bitterness it precipitates is too much for husband and wife to bear. His last letter was so hard and inhuman that she never replied. With this tragic rupture is severed the last tie that held Gauguin to Europe. Michael Fraenkel Books in Brief A History of the Life and Death, Virtues and Exploits of General George Washington. By Mason Weems. An American Bookshelf. Macy-Masius. $2.50. So here is the ever-living Parson Weems again. This time handsomely printed on smooth clear paper, and bound in a cloth cover spangled with golden stars on a blue background. There is an unquenchable vitality in his mess of legends and myths, and their appearance in this latest edition is another proof — if another were needed — of the sickly fragility of truth as compared with the obstinate perseverance of romantic false- hood. But, of course, no one takes Parson Weems seriously nowadays. This edition comes out, doubtless, as merely the reprint of a curious book which many people will want to add to their libraries. In it you will find the hatchet-and-cherry- tree story and other myths of the immortal Geoi'ge. Amusing and interesting, the book is; but, nevertheless, it is a rather depressing object to authors. Why? Because its literary his- tory shows the futility of effort, truth, and research. Parson Weems was not even a passable wrriter. He was a preacher and a peddler, but his book still lives. On the other hand, Joel Barlow, who lived at the same time as Weems, was a writer of education and culture. He spent his life in writing; he tried to set down the truth as he saw it; he was a man of imagina- tion and feeling — but who has ever heard of Barlow today, outside of a few professors of literature? Farm Income and Farm Life. A Symposium on the Relation of the Social and Economic Factors in Rural Progress. The University of Chicago Press. $3. This volume constitutes the report — in symposium form — of a joint committee from the American Country Life Associa- tion and the American Farm Economics Association, appointed to study the relations of social and economic factors in rural progress. The conclusion, that economic and social factors "are interesting functions of rural society," is less interesting than are the nearly fifty articles, chiefly by agricultural econ-

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Dec. 14, 1927] The Nation 689 C^TORY Philosophy By Will Durant 0&£$^ For 19 months now The lf^ C\ Story of Philosophy has >^f&t X been in the first flight on ^%bj^g/ all lists of best sellers. '^ More than 200,000 persons have read this alluring and authori- tative stoty of the world's great lovers of wisdom from Socrates to Santayana— which John Dewey hails as the long-awaited humanization of philosophy. When we repeat this four-fold tribute of the world of letters to Will Durant's book, we are presenting facts, not advertising slogans: — A delight for the heart —An adventure for the mind —A liberal education in itself —A best-seller for the years. 592 exciting pages, indexed 21 full-page illustrations All Bookshops $5.00 Simon and Schuster, Inc. Publishers of Books 37 West 57th Street, New York 'vc^r— * | . — *JV --i^"T^r— w*y»- OPEN SHELF GOOD CHEER COMRADES.. Want to buy, sell or swap books, bronzes, old china, clocks, curios, etchings, lamps, paintings, prints, oriental rug3? Bus, or stroll to Daca's, 63 Washington Sq., So, N. Y. C. Books always 20 to 80% off. Open eves. EXTRAORDINARY BARGAINS COMPLETE and unexpurgated translations of Foreign Classics. Privately Printed and Illus- trated Editions. Rousseau's Confessions, Boccaccio's Decameron, Balzac's Droll Stories, the Heptameron, etc., $3.50 each. Catalogue upon request. American Book Collectors' Service, 321 Broadway, N. Y. PRESIDENT'S DAUGHTER. $4.26; That Man Heine, Browne, $2.35 ; Story of Philosophy, $3.90; Dark Laughter, Anderson, $1.00; Thunder- storm, G. B. Stern, $1.00; Way of All Flesh, Butler, $.75 Write for Free catalogue. Hermes Library Service, 81 Nassau St., New York City. ARE books ; First Editions ; Authors Inscribed copies ; Old Coloured Maps ; and Costume Prints. R Catalogues gratis. Antiquarian Book Company Birkenhead, England. Ife Net curl h A vci iUe Nt ts- Vcfti City Nio>'fvmth Do You Want the Right Gift For Your Child? Toys and books selected to meet the psychological need of children of various ages. Blocks and constructive play material our specialty. Worthwhile gift boxes arranged. Send for our catalogue A. Mail and telephone orders given care- ful attention. Children's Book and Play Service 235 Fourth Avenue Gramercy 5583 H. L. MENCKEN says:— "I actually ran until 1:50 last night reading your blasphe- mies. A capital book, you say things that ought to be said, and you do it with powerful directness." about ERNEST BOYD'S >LITERARY^ BLASPHEMIES The most modern and most brilliant of the younger crit- ics sweeps the academic dust from Shakespeare, Milton, l Whitman, Hardy,and others. .$3. HARPER & BROTHERS i MARRIAGE and DIVORCE By MILTON IVES UVT fl.OO prepaid A complete compilation of both the divorce and marriage laws of 48 State*, with a comprehen- sive discussion of the evils and remedies of the divorce laws in the United States. MILTON IVES LIVY, 233 Broad*.T. New Tork, N.T. from The Inner Sanctum of SIMON and SCHUSTER Publishers . 37 West 57th Street . New York Now that the new Ford is out we can all get back to reading again, and usher in the American Renaissance on a gear-shift basis. _|To forget its editorial labors, The Inner Sanctum finally took its plunge into New York night life and actually went to a show — which one, is our secret — only to discover most of the audience reading Sidney S. Lenz on Auction Bridge in the theatre pro- grams— and Merryle S. Rukeyser, another Inner Sanctum author, on how to invest their bridge winnings, accord- ing to the sage counsel given in his new book Financial Advice to A Young Man. If you are tired of the "in- side" shop-talk about best-sellers in the word business, we're afraid you'll have to be excused from this week's lesson . . . But, thus far, it has been our ex- perience that the reading public can't get nearly enough of it. l For a change, we shall refrain from quoting our old beacon-light, the Baker and Taylor list. Once a month the book-sellers themselves prepare a list of their own by sending in their confidential and impartial reports to Publishers' Weekly. In the list just, announced 107 booksellers in 91 cities, representing every nook of the Re- public, list the following as the ten best-sellers in the field of general lit- erature. 1 . Trader I turn 541 % 2. "II." 156% 3. Napoleon 379% 1. Mother India 323% f>. What Can A Man Believe .. . . 249% 6. The Story of Philosophy - 7. Revolt in the Desert [71% ii. The Glorious Adventure.. 131% for the book-sellers that the Houston Dispatch refers to it as Transaction. — ESSANDESS \" HEALTH SIMPLIFIED JO cult, no school, the good from all schools. sing healing quackery wherever found. Edited by a practicing physician experienced in health education. Rational Living, Box 2, Sta- tion M, New York. B. Liber, M. D., Dr. P. H., Editor. — 6 months' trial subscription $1. Sample copy free — With yearly subscription the famous book "As A Doctor Sees It" free, if requested. When writing to advertisers please mention The Nation

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690 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3258 omists and sociologists, on such topics as the farmer's standard of living, types of agricultural production affecting expenditure and culture, and the economic aspect of rural education. The articles range in type from statistical analysis to agrarian oratory, but very few are without at least suggestive value, and a number contribute significant data to current agricul- tural discussion. The format of the book, regrettably, is below the standard which one expects in the work of a university press. Adam and Eve. By John Erskine. The Bobbs-Merrill Com- pany. $2.50. Mr. Erskine continues his witty crusade against the Ameri- can realistic novel. His latest effort indicates an observable sharpening of his conversational technique, but his stoical ex- clusion of eccentric characters such as the gatekeeper in "Helen," plus the almost complete avoidance of action in favor of dialogue, produce an occasional sense of devitalization. Mr. Erskine has lost none of his satiric edge and irritating reason- ableness, but it is probable that the potentialities of his unique method of presentation are approaching exhaustion. It may be that a swift change to a modern background and the aban- donment of a slightly schematized legendary material would lend new impetus to his art. The Vanguard. By Arnold Bennett. George H. Doran Com- pany. $? Mr. Bennett trots out his usual impossible millionaire from the Five Towns to serve as the protagonist in a tosh-tosh piece of hammock fiction. Mr. Bennett is the man who once wrote a book called "The Old Wives' Tale." Note. Wyndham Lewis's "Time and Western Man," re- viewed by Mr. Krutch in the Holiday Book Number of The Nation, will be published here by Harcourt, Brace and Com- pany in February. Drama Papa Shaw FOR more than one reason I am loath to admit that "The Doctor's Dilemma" (Guild Theater) affords a pleasant but not an exciting evening. In the first place I approve heartily of the Guild's habit of producing each year one of its author's plays which most of us have had few opportunities to see upon the stage; and in the second place I am far from lacking in piety toward Papa Shaw, for I do not expect ever to for- get the day when, as a freshman in college, with a hearty and tough-minded contempt for the Thomas Carlyle and the Matthew Arnold of English 1, I stumbled upon "Man and Superman." Since our study of literature began with the Victorians and proceeded from them slowly backward in the general direction of "Beowulf," it is not likely that I should ever have heard of Shaw from my mentors, and if Providence had not taken a hand I should probably have completed my education by pain- fully construing "Hwaet we gardena in geare-dagum — " and speculating as to the letters which are missing from the scorched edge of MS Cotton Vitellius A. 15. But the hand of God led me to Shaw. When I came to the end of Act One in "Man and Superman" I closed the book for a moment to give thanks, but I did not pause again until I had read all the plays which its dazzling author had then written. It was not I think that Shaw was changing ray ideas — one does not take so eagerl to a writer who is per- forming that painful process — but rather that he was confirm- ing them. I was amazed to discover that any one allowed to get into print could say such mischievously pertinent things, and I longed to go forth and beat most of the people whom I knew over the head with his collected works, since that day I have grown more tolerant of other generations, and though Carlyle still merely irritates me I can now even understand what Matthew Arnold is talking about. But there were many things that had to be got settled before I could take time to understand the thoughts of others, and Shaw said them for me. It was only from that day forward that I could take literature seriously or believe that an author was being candid with his reader. Obviously, then, I am not lacking in piety toward the author of "The Doctor's Dilemma"; but neither my own piety nor the skill of the Guild company, long practiced in interpret- ing Shaw, can make it a very good play. Alfred Lunt plays the painter right up to the hilt; Lynn Fontanne as his wife gets all there is to be got out of a rather flimsy part; and Ernest Travers seems, as he always does, Shaw's middle-class Englishman come to life; but they cannot make the play either very rapid or very shocking. The satire on the doctor is rem- iniscent of every satirist who ever lived, and as to the thesis — that a talented rogue is more worth saving than an amiable mediocrity — one accepts it too really to become very much aroused. This painter would have to be very unpleasant indeed to constitute a real problem, and the difficulty is simply that Shaw is too much of a gentleman ever to make any of his scoundrels very convincing. The trick which he employed in "The Devil's Disciple" when he made his hero turn out to be a disciple of God after all is not really a trick but something which answers the needs of something fundamentally tender- minded in Shaw himself — to the same something which made him refuse to admit that Don Juan was a sensualist, which made him suddenly transform Mrs. George into a misunder- stood woman, and which leads him to whitewash every villain. What, after all, is so appalling about the hero of "The Doc- tor's Dilemma"? He has not been brought up according to the gentleman's code, and being poor he borrows money whenever he gets a chance; but that is about all. When the time comes for his villainy to roar he roars you as gently as any sucking dove. He doesn't even frighten the ladies, and therefore there is no real dilemma. Perhaps English audiences felt in 1906 that a man might conceivably deserve the death penalty for not playing cricket according to the Eton rules, but a generation which has learned to stomach the hero of "The Moon and Six- pence" finds no cause for making a great pother about a man as fundamentally decent as Shaw's painter. It is will- ing to forgive genius a great deal more than he is guilty of, and when it considers how pure all the people in Shaw's plays are it is almost ready — this would be the most unkindest cut of all — to accuse him of respectably shrinking from what used to be called "the facts of life." If he should ever write a play about Sodom and Gomorrah he would probably tell us — as the old lady told the Sunday-school scholars — that the sin of the citizens of the cities of the plain was playing cards and sitting up late at night. None of the other recent dramatic events call for much comment. "The Racket" (Ambassador Theater) is a good melodrama, somewhat confused by its references to Chicago politics; and in "The Marquise" (Biltmore Theater) Billie Burke, piping her childish treble, flutters her way through the three acts of Noel Coward's unsuccessful attempt to be delicately naughty. "Take the Air" (Waldorf Theater) is a tawdry, tasteless musical comedy in which Trini loses most of her flavor in the effort to conform to the American taste. I can, however, recommend the new edition of "Artists and Models" (Winter Garden). This has become a standardized product, but one is always sure of getting one's money's worth in expert dancing, lavish ensembles, and slightly off-color jokes. The new edition is even rather better than usual. Correction: In a previous issue an unfortunate inter- change of names was made. Constance Collier, not Margaret Anglin, is appearing in "John," and Miss Anglin is appearing in the "Electra" of Sophocles. Joseph Wood Krutch

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Dec. 14, 1927] The Nation 691 □ THEATER □ JOHN GOLDEN THEATRE Matinees WED. and SAT., 2:30. DANA BURNETTS and GEORGE ABBOTT'S WALLS with MUNI WISENFREND STAGED BY GEORGE ABBOTT SEATS 8 WEEKS IN ADVANCE •THE THEATRE GUILD Presents- nrpi TDT Ip Theatre, West 42nd St. ■Ml.rUDl-l^ Matinees, Wed. and Sat. 2.40 PORGY A FOLK PLAY BY DUBOSE AND DOROTHY HEYWARD Eves. 8.40 THEATRE GUILD ACTING CO. BERNARD SHAWS COMEDY THE DOCTOR'S DILEMMA C] ITT n THEATRE, WEST 52nd STREET UUILL/ Evening* 8:20. Mats. Thursday and Saturday 2:20 CENTURY Gilbert Miller presents ce^ramPw. MAX REINHARDTS "JEDERMAN" Matinees Friday and Saturday Evenings $6.00 to $1.00 $3.50 to $1.00 December (Everyman) Evenings at 8 Sharp ,n-12 "DANTON'S TOD" J??^ BOOTH S^ljfc Matinees Wed. & Sat. £J0 /WINTHROP AMES present* JOHN GA ESCAPE 40. LSWORTHY'S With LESLIE HOWARD / CHANIN'S PfYVAI 17 Eves. 8.80. Mat». W. 45th St. **■*-* I /\L.tr Wed. A Sat 2.11 WINTHROP AMES OILBBRT & SULLIVAN OPERA CO. EACH MONDAY f/Sl A MTU 17 NIGHT ONLY IV/LiAll 1 11 IL, TUBS., WED., FRI. & SAT. IV/I lif A riO NIGHTS. ALSO WED. & SAT. MAT.1TliIV/^1-^v-' EACH THURSDAY NIGHT ONLY PIRATES OF PENZANCE TTA/f PTR T-T Thea. B'way. & 40th Street JZ,l\ir 1I\..L> Evenings 8.30, Mats. Wed. & Sat. 2.30 INTERFERENCE By Roland Pertwee and Harold Dearden with ARTHUR WONTNER, PHOEBE FOSTER, KATHLENE McDONELL and A. E. MATTHEWS "Is it entertaining? Does it hold you? To both ques- tions I answer affirmatively." — Alan Dale in The American VANDERBILT THEATRE gftjjj VbS^^Sa^ III: THEcoMSVreme MARK TWAIN'S A Connecticut Yankee Adapted by FIELDS, RODGERS and HART □ DINNER □ Hendrik Van Loon Author of "America," etc., will speak on "History and a Sense of Humor" at The League for Mutual Aid Dinner The Irving Plaza — 17 Irving Place, cor. 15th St. December 15th — 6:30 P. M. Sharp Captain Paxton Hibben Author of "Henry Ward Beecher" — Chairman $2 Reservation — Send to Room 411 — 70 Fifth Ave. Phone Algonquin 4772 □ LECTU RES □ Sunday, December 11 11 A.M.— WILLIAM LYON PHELPS The "The Freedom of Virtue" COMMUNITY Admission Free 8 P.M.— MME. ROSIKA CHURCH SCHWIMMER "Rumors, Whispers and Allied Arts of Propaganda" Admission Free Thursday, December 15 Park 8.15 P. M.— JOHN FARRAR "The Religious Angle on Current Avenue Literature" and 34th Admission 75c Wednesday, December SI Street 8.15 P.M.— JUDGE BEN LINDSEY "The Companionate Marriage JOHN HAYNES HOLMES, Chairman Reserved Sections 50c, 75c, $1.00 R —Brooklyn Academy of Music Atlantic Ave. Station Sunday, December 18, 8.15 P.M. Symposium ! of Modern eVOlt the Woman SPEAKERS FANNY HURST TEXAS GUINAN MRS. WILL DURANT EVA LE GALLIENNE ELIZABETH MARBURY Tickets 50c, $1.10, $1.65, $2.20. $2.75 at the Box Office. Rand School. 7 E. 151'. St., and Gray"s Drug Store, 43rd St. & B'way. -Contemporary Forum. BERTRAND RUSSELL will lecture on «! 'Why Men Fight" at the BROWNSVILLE LABOR LYCEUM 219 Sackman Street, Brooklyn, N. Y. Friday Evening, December », 1927 Reserved Sections: $.75, $1.00, $1.50 Symposium "Peace or Freedom. Must the World Choose?" Morris HiUquit Norman Thomas Bertrand Russell Community Church, S4th St. and Park Ave. Wednesday Evening, December 14, 1927 All Seats $1.00 At the Rand School, 7 East 15th Street. N. Y. C. When writing to advertisers please mention The Nation

Page 713

International Relations Section Peace Out of Russia THE Soviet Disarmament Proposals were offered on behalf of the USSR by M. Litvinov to the League of Nations Preparatory Disarmament Commission at Geneva on November 30. The text of the proposals and M. Litvinov's resolution, which we print by courtesy of the New York Herald Tribune, follow: The Government of the Union of Socialist Soviet Repub- lics, having been unable to participate in three sessions of the Preparatory Commission for a disarmament conference, has intrusted its delegation to the fourth session of the Preparatory Commission with the task of making a declaration covering all questions connected with the problem of disarmament. The Soviet Government adheres to the opinion it has al- ways held, that under the capitalist system no grounds exist for counting upon the removal of the causes which give rise to armed conflicts. Militarism and big navies are essentially nat- ural consequences of the capitalist system. By the very fact of their increase they intensify existing differences, giving a vast impetus to all potential quarrels and inevitably convert these into armed conflicts. The peoples of all countries, however, enfeebled and im- poverished by the imperialistic World War, are imbued with a determination to struggle against new imperialist wars and to guarantee peace between nations. This is precisely what makes it possible for the Soviet to accept the invitation of the League, the latter having expressed itself in favor of disarmament. In so doing the Soviet Government demonstrates before the whole world its will to peace between nations and makes clear to all the real aspirations and true desires of the capitalist states in regard to disarmament. Despite the fact that the World War was called a "war to end war," the whole history of post-war international rela- tions has been one of unintermittent and systematic increase of armed forces in the capitalist states and of a vast increase in the general burden of militarism. So far none of the solemn promises of the League has been even partially fulfilled, while in all of its activities in this regard the League has systemati- cally evaded setting the question in a practical light. All of the work done by the Preparatory Commission in this regard has been purely of a decorative nature. Indei League only approached the question of general disarmament in 1924. It decided to call a conference on general disarmament on May 1, 1925, but to the present not only has the matter of disarmament not advanced a single step, but no date for a conference has even been fixed. Likewise, the League has been fruitlessly engaged upon the question of the limitation of war budgets since 1920. Re- luctance to put into practice the policy of disarmament, both on the part of the League and individual imperialist states, was manifested both in the methods adopted and the alterna- tion of the questions of disarmament and general guaranties, while simultaneous attempts are made to sum up in detail all the factors determining the armed power of the various coun- tries concerned. Such a setting of the question, evoking endless and fruit- less arguments on so-called military potentials, affords oppor- tunity for an indefinite postponement of the fundamental and decisive question of the actual dimensions of disarmament. There can be no doubt that by settirg the question thus at the coming disarmament conference not only will it be impossible to achieve a curtailment of existing armaments, but the states belonging to the League may even receive legal sanction for increasing armaments. The Soviet has systematically endeavored to get the ques- tion of disarmament definitely and practically formulated. Its endeavors have, however, always encountered determined resis- tance from other states. The Soviet Government, the only one to show in deeds its will to peace and disarmament, was not admitted to the Washington Conference of 1921 and 1922, de- voted to questions of the curtailment of marine armaments. The proposal for general disarmament made by the Soviet delegation at the Genoa Conference was rejected by the con- ference. Despite this opposition, the Soviet never has relaxed its determined endeavors in regard to disarmament. In Decem- ber, 1922, a conference was called at Moscow by the Soviet of representatives of the border states for a joint discussion of the problem of the proportional curtailment of armaments. The Soviet agreed to a considerable diminution of armaments, despite the fact that this would not affect many of the Great Powers, always ready, whether under obligation of treaties or not, to come to the assistance of the other countries represented at the Moscow conference should these be involved in conflicts with the Soviet. A definite and thorough scheme for a diminution of arma- ments was proposed at that conference by the Soviet. This was, however, rejected. Despite the skeptical attitude of the Soviet toward the labors of the League, it accepted the invita- tion of December 12, 1925, to attend the coming disarmament conference and only the Soviet-Swiss conflict evoked by the assassination of Vorowsky and the subsequent acquittal of the assassin by a Swiss court has prevented the Soviet from attend- ing the previous sessions of the Preparatory Commission. In now sending a delegation to the fourth session of the Preparatory Commission the Government has authorized it to present a scheme for general and complete disarmament. The Soviet delegation is authorized by its Government to propose the complete abolition of all land, marine, and air forces. The Soviet Government suggests the following measures for the realization of this proposal: A. The dissolution of all land, sea, and air forces and the non-admittance of their existence in any concealed form what- soever ; B. The destruction of all weapons, military supplies, means of chemical warfare, and all other forms of armament and means of destruction in possession of troops or military or general stores; C. The scrapping of all warships and military air vessels; D. The discontinuance of calling citizens for military training, either in armies or public bodies; E. Legislation for the abolition of military service, either compulsory, voluntary, or recruited ; F. Legislation prohibiting the calling up of trained reserves; G. The destruction of fortresses and naval and air bases; H. The scrapping of military plants, factories, and war industry plants in the general industrial world; I. The discontinuance of assigning funds for military pur- . both state budgets and those of public bodies; [No "J" is indicated]; K. The abolition of military, naval, and air ministries, the dissolution of general staffs and all kinds of military ad- ministrations, departments, and institutions; L. The legislative prohibition of military propaganda, the military training of populations, and military education both by state and public bodies; M. The legislative prohibition of patenting of all kinds of armaments and means of destruction with a view to the removal of the incentive to the invention of the same; N. Legislation making the infringement of any of the above stipulations a grave crime against the state; 0. The withdrawal or corresponding alteration of all legis- lative acts, both of a national and an international scope, in- fringing the above stipulations.

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Dec. 14, 1927] The Nation 693 The Soviet delegation is empowered to propose the fulfil- ment of the above program of complete disarmament as soon as the respective convention comes into force in order that all necessary measures for the destruction of military stores may be completed in a year's time. The Soviet Government con- siders that the above scheme for the execution of complete disarmament is the simplest and the best conducive to peace. In the case of capitalist states rejecting the immediate abolition of standing armies the Soviet, in its desire to facili- tate the achievement of a practical agreement, proposes a pro- gram of complete disarmament to be carried out simultaneously by all the contracting states by gradual stages during a period of four years, the first stage to be accomplished in the course of the coming year. Under this proposal national funds freed from war budgets are to be employed in each state at its own discretion, but ex- clusively for productive and cultural purposes. While insist- ing upon the views just stated, the delegation is nevertheless ready to participate in any and every discussion of the ques- tion of the limitation of armaments whenever practical measures really leading to disarmament are proposed. The delegation declares that the Soviet Government fully subscribes to the convention on the prohibition of the applica- tion to military purposes of chemical and bacteriological sub- stances and processes and expresses its readiness to sign the convention immediately. While insisting on an early date being fixed for ratification by all states, it considers that, in order to insure the practica- bility of the convention, it is necessary to raise the question of the establishment of control by the workers in those chemical industries capable of being rapidly converted to war purposes in states which have a highly developed chemical industry. M. Litvinov then offered the following resolution: Whereas, The existence of armaments and their tendency to growth by their very nature inevitably lead to armed con- flicts between nations, diverting workers and peasants from peaceful and productive labor and bringing in their train count- less disasters, and Whereas, Armed force is a weapon in the hands of the Great Powers for the oppression of peoples of small and colonial countries, and Whereas, Complete abolition of armaments is at present the only real means of guaranteeing security and affording a guaranty against the outbreak of war, this fourth session of the Preparatory Commission for Disarmament resolves: 1. To proceed immediately to the working out in detail of a draft convention for complete general disarmament on the principles proposed by the Soviet Union delegation, and 2. Proposes the convocation not later than March, 1928, of a Disarmament Conference for the discussion and confirma- tion of the terms provided in Clause 1. t> Throw Away Your Glasses and ^ I? K R F T T K R "Perfect Sight Without Glasses By W. H. BATES, M.D. The author of this book presents evidence that all errors of refraction are caused by strain — and cured by rest and relaxation. A complete method of treatment is described so clearly that the reader can usually dis- card his glasses and improve his vision. Sold at all bookstores. Price $i. If you wear yUieass — read tkie book The Central Fixation PubL Co. Dept. ft, 383 Madison Avenue, New York GenUemen: Please eend me a copy of your book "Perfect Sljrht Wlthovt Glasses." I will give the postman $3.00 plus postage when It axrltee. H I am not oonrinced of Its value In fire ilaya, I will return the book and ycr will refund my money without Question. Name Addrem RAND SCHOOL, 7 E. 15th St. Mondays, 8:30 P.M.— JOHN MACY: Dec. 12, "The Victorian Age' "Recent American Writers." Dec. 19, Tuesdays, 8:30 P.M.— MORRIS HILLQUIT: Dec. 13, "The Awakening of the East"; Dec. 20, "The League of Nations and the New Imperialism." Saturdays, 2 P.M.— N. BRYLLION FAGIN: Dec. 10, "The Work of Eu- gene O'Neill"; Dec. 17, "E. E. Cummings, Poetic Rebel." Judge Ben B. Lindsey iuthor of "Revolt of Modern Youth," and "Companionate Marriage" will lecture on a NEW MORALS FOR OLD it COOPKR TNTON, 8th St. & 3rd Ave. Thursday evening, December 22nd All seats reserved, 50c, 75c, $1.00. Tickets for sale at Young Peoples Socialist League, 7 E. 15th St., Mail orders filled promptly. REAL HARRIS HOMESPUNS STyj^^^SS Suit Lengths Cut to Order. Postage Paid NEWALL, 150 Stornoway, Scotland. Write (er pattern* stating shades desired I EMBIMIIIhll..MMa«aa»»HMMT 1 1 ■ II ■ I !■ I ■!■ ■HB— Bt THE EVOLUTION OF MAN, by Wilhelm BoeUche A clear, strong, simple summary not only of Darwin's theory but of the work of a generation of scientists along the lines Darwin opened up. Just what a busy man wants to give him a bird's-eye view of Evolution. Cloth, illustrated, 60 cents by mail. Catalog free. Charles H. Kerr & Co., 347 East Ohio St., Chicago, III. A QUirtatma*. (Sift uritfj a fitttg nf i&inrmtji Could we suggest that Slir Mft\vc\]t$ttt (Smtristmt WEEKLY might solve the problem that always comes at Christmas time — the problem of an appropriate gift to lhal dear friend of yours? Christmas comes but once a year but TlIE MANCHESTER Guardian WEEKLY will be a constant reminder each week throughout the year of your interest and affection. 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694 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3258 IFiZZ Durant's New Book iAYAYA) Ernest Sutherland Bates in the Saturday Review of Literature says: Has Mr. Will Durant, after writing t lie most virile history of philosophers that has been produced in our period, now also written :he most vital autobiog- raphy? It seems so, to one reviewer ftt least. _ John Haynes Holmes in the Herald-Tribune says: I picked it up with groans on a night when I was sick in bed with a headache, sore throat and 104 degrees fever, and finished it with shouts before the bed- lamp was extinguished. 30ih Thn,.»!>E.J_S3.C0_a« all Bookstores Simon and Schuster 37 West 57th Street Publishers New York SPECIALTY SHOPS WE have a new collection of patch-work and applique quilts from $16. up which are very suitable for Christmas gifts. At 5 Christopher St. Ann-Seley's Spring 2810 New York City TV/TARITZA. of 172 West 4th St.. has a wonder- •^'-1 ful selection of Gifts that are different for Christmas giving. — Russian toys, boxes, tea, cig- arettes, bowls, and also Russian smocks that you'd love. NURSERY SCHOOL U TILL parents in Brooklyn Heights who are in- terested in starting a small nursery school, communicate with McC. Box 984, ''. The Nation. SHARE APARTMENT COLLEGE girl wishes to share her completely furnished kitchenette — two room apartment with college woman or girl. References exchanged. Rent $55 month. Write for appointment to inter- view, or phone before 9 :30 A. M. Cathedral 0100. TWO young professional women will share their well-furnished housekeeping 4-room apartment with a responsible one or two persons. Fifth Ave. and Central Park location. Convenient traveling. University 9408, after 6 P. M. FURNISHED APTS. TO RENT Xl^ILL sublet sunny attractively furnished eleva- ♦ V tor apartment near park, L. 6 months, longer, $120. Two bedrooms, kitchen, living room. C nsider selling reasonably. Duval, 115 West 104th St., Apt. 61. Academy 4572. "I X rRITER'S charmingly furnished apartment — V\ large living room, large bedroom, bath and kitchenette, two fire-places, four exposures, seventh floor, elevator, on West Tenth Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues — to sublet for January, February and March, at $120 a month. References. Call Algon niin 0447, mornings. WINTER RESORTS THE LAKE VIEW^ It OFFERS EVERY COMFORT OF THE LARGE WINTER RESORTS WITH THE HOMINESS OF A NOT-TOO-BIG HOTEL. Splendid cuisine — Moderate rates. 303 Forest Avenue. Phone Lakewood 287. LAKEWOOD, N. J. For relaxation, hunting, skiing, skating, good food, beautiful country, 1 Y2 hours from New York. $25.00 a week, Hil-Bert House. Lake Mahopac, N. Y. H. Friedberg, Prop. Mahopac 15-J SPEND CHRISTMAS IN THE COUNTRY. TOPSTONE FARM will welcome you— in the Connecticut Hills — real country, with woods and ponds and brook, isolated — only 1V> hours from Grand Central. A good place for tramp- ing, skiing, coasting, skating, riding, or just loafing : with your friends or by yourself. Com- fortable, with all conveniences. We accommo- date only a limited number of guests. Make Holiday reservations now. Phone Ridgefield 39, Ring 5. Address Topstone Farm, R. F. D. 4, Ridgefield, Conn. MANHATTAN BEACH HOTEL, N. Y. LIVE in a modern, fireproof hotel by the sea- shore, for lees than in the crowded city. $12 per week for two ; homelike comfortB ; outdoor •port* ; maid, valet and telephone service ; 87 min- utes from Times Sq., BMT. (Brighton Beach Sta- tion). Phone Sheepshead 8000. TOURS wm EfjKtiora] 200 All Expense Tours $195 op. Booklet Frss. Mediterranean and Scandinavian Crnisen. $39C ALLEN TOURS. Inc. 154 BoyUton Street. Bostoa ROOMS TO RENT r-OMFORTABLE, newly furnished room for gentle- ^ man, adjoining bath, in musician's home. Near Prospect Park, Brooklyn Museum, subways. 20 minutes to Times Square. $8.00 weekly. 336 Park Place, Brooklyn. Nevins 1518. TjUSINESS woman will rent, unfurnished or fur- ■*-' nished room in cozy, convenient apartment in Sunnyside, L. I. Will consider couple or young lady. Box 990. r. The Nation. POSITIONS WANTED "DUSSIAN-GERMAN translator. knowledge of -IN French and stenography. Well recommended by present employer. Permanent position. Box 987, r, The .V at ion. /^ULTURED woman— French, English. German. ^— ' would like to act part time as companion to a married lady interested in arts — literature. No sal- ary but refinement essential. Ideal companion for someone going to Europe soon. Box 9SG. '' , The Sat ion. AN American woman, middle aged, considerable experience plus college training in agriculture and floriculture. dependable, progressive, seeks work where these qualities are needed. Box 985, '', The Nation. T7XPERIENCED stenographer desires part time -*— ' position evenings. Box 983, ''■ 'The Nation. /"CAPABLE stenographer-secretary. has taught ^— ' medical subjects, some college training, wishes connection where writing talent can be utilized. Box 9S9, <V The Nation. HELP WANTED A UTHOR desires modern man or woman as liter- **■ ary secretary. Opportunity travel abroad. In replies please include intellectual or artistic back- ground, philosophy of life, books read in past year, recreational activities. Give telephone number if any. Box 980, <"c The Nation. SOCIAL Director wanted for high class Jewish Camp for adults in the Adirondacks. Excellent remuneration for right man. Reply giving former experience to "Camp" Room 1090, 11 West 42nd St.. N. Y. EDUCATIONAL THE PEOPLES INSTITUTE Program December 16-22 AT COOPER UNION (Sth St. and Astor Place) At 8 o'clock ADMISSION FREE Friday, Dec. 16 — Everett Dean Martin — "The Dream of a Greek Democracy. From Cal- houn to Jefferson Davis." Sunday— Dec. IS— E r n e s t Boyd— "Dreiser, Cabell, Anderson and other Contemporaries." Tuesday, Dec. 20 — Joseph Jastrow— "Thinking and Feeling." AT MUHLENBERG BRANCH LIBRARY (209 West 23rd St.. at 8 o'clock) Wednesday, Dec. 21— Edgar Wind— "Science versus Common Sense." Thursday, Dec. 22— E. G. Spaulding— "Is there such a thing as Will?" 7P,, FRENCH. SPANISH. ITALIAN, y ")P GERMAN ^- Per Lesson Native Teachers Short Course Surprising Results PRIVATE SCHOOL OF LANGUAGES 1264 LEXINGTON AVE.. NEW YORK Established 1906 Between S5th and S6th Sta. THE SCHOOL FOR ADULT EDUCATION announces a double course giving the rudiments of philosophy and a synoptic view of modern psychol- ogy with special emphasis on their applications. First session begins soon. Also class and individual work in English, Mathematics, Public Speaking and the Sciences. A new method of teaching is used which makes it possible to deal directlv with the individual. Telephone days 10-1, or write for further information. Chelsea 5264—1133 Broadway. CHILDREN'S CAMP "L7OR parents seeking exceptional environment x for sensitive or artistic daughter, I have 125 acres and private lake in the Green Moun- tains. All land and water sports, rhythm, sun bathing, health diet, modern sanitary equipment. Progressive school methods applied to camping. Enrollment limited to 25. Camp Killcoleet. Han- cock. Vermont. Maria A. Taylor, 172 Waverley PI., N. Y. C. RESTAURANT -Eat Your Way to Health- Your Diet Problems Solved by Our Scientific and Delicious Preparations of Fresh Vegetables and Fruits. Also food for diabetics. "0 West 40th Straot 153 West 44 tb Street 522 7th Avenue N. W. East of Broadway Cor. of 38th Street PERSONAL MUCH traveled, self-educated, well-read young man, 30, without friends or connections, wants part or whole time employment in interesting place among interesting people. Correspondents will be referred to one of the editors of The Nation. Bos 988. 'V The Nation. MISCELLANY TOOTHSOME HEALTH-FOODS FOR THE HOLIDAYS Luscious Candied Fruits in Xmas Gift Boxes, $1.25 to $10. prepaid. Pure Honey. 100% Brown Rice and Whole-Wheat Flour. Italian Olive Oil. Sun-Dried Black and White Figs ; Prunes, Raisins and Nuts. Highest Quality, Lowest Prices. Send $1 for Assorted Sample Order. Machinery' Home-Baked Genuine 100% Delicious Whole-Wheat Bread. Health Foods Distributors, West Norwood, N. J. Phone: — Closter 211. Use Ions distance calls to savs trips, te est things done. Yon'U be surprised how little they cost. BELL LONG DISTANCE SERVICE When u-riting to advertisers please mention The Nation

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The Nation FOUNDED 1865 Vol. CXXV NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 21, 1927 No. 3259 Contents EDITORIAL PARAGRAPHS 6% EDITORIALS: Mr. Coolidge and the English Language •'■ ' Governor Smith— Penologist "° The Forgery as to The Nation b-u HOOVER TO THE FORE. By Oswald Garrison Villard 700 THE ANGEL OF PEACE IN MODERN DRESS. By Hendrik van Loon 701 IT SEEMS TO HEYWOOD BROUN. By Heywood Broun 702 THE PASSING OF TROTZKY. By Louis Fischer 703 AMERICANS WE LIKE: NORRIS OF NEBRASKA. By Frederic Bab- cock 705 MAINE'S WATER-POWER FIGHT. By Earl Sparling 710 IN THE DRIFTWAY. By the Drifter 711 CORRESPONDENCE 712 BOOKS, ART, PLAYS: Introduction. By Charles A. Wagner 713 First Glance. By Mark Van Doren 713 A Tale for Children. By Joseph Wood Krutch 713 Horace Porter. By Oswald Garrison Villard 714 Without Benefit of Rotary. By Alter Brody 715 Three Poets. By Lenore G. Marshall 715 Fiction in the Flat. By Angus Burrell 716 Books in Brief 716 Art : Jacob Epstein. By Rose Lee 716 Drama : Poet Laureate. By Joseph Wood Krutch 718 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS SECTION: VUna and the League. By Matilda Spence 719 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. KOBSON LUDWIG LEWISOHN H. L. MENCKEN NORMAN THOMAS HEYWOOD BROUN CARL VAN DOREN DAVID BOEHM, Advertising Manager Subscription Rates: Five dollars per annum postpaid in the United 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. THE NATION is on file in most public and college libraries and is ini in the Rit'ders' Guide to Periodical Literature. A BILLION DOLLARS for the navy— thai is Economy Calvin's opening demand of the new Congress. Four new battleships, at $60,000,000; 26 cruisers of the 10,000- ton type, at $15,000,000 each; 3 airplane carriers, 5 fleet submarines, and 18 destroyer leaders — this is the Admin- istration's five-year program. It is larger than the 1916 naval program — the largest in United States history. A billion dollars is a round figure; higher prices are likely to make the cost still greater. And this in the year of peace 1927, six years after the Washington Disarmament Conference, two years after Mr. Coolidge's Omaha speech declaring that "it is our purpose in our intercourse with foreign Powers to rely not upon the strength of our fleets and our armies," one year after we sent our representatives to Geneva to persuade Europe to disarm. Certainly nothing could be wilder, stupider, better calculated to persuade the world that the United States is headed for a rampage, and to stimulate the atmosphere of fear and suspicion that makes for war. We do not believe the American people have any desire for such a program of militaristic expan- sion, and we call upon them — individuals, women's clubs and men's clubs, churches, civic organizations— to over- whelm their representatives in Washington with an ava- lanche of protest. BRAVE MEN AND WOMEN are the 128,770 British subjects who have signed Arthur Ponsonby's "peace letter," declaring that We, the undersigned, convinced that disputes between nations are capable of settlement either by diplomatic negotiations or some other form of international arbitrage, hereby solemnly declare that we will refuse to support or render war service to any government which resorts to arms. Doubtless the signers will be denounced as traitors for resolving that they will act on Benjamin Franklin's discov- ery that "there never was a good war or a bad peace." But they are ambassadors of the future; and a future perhaps not so remote as we tend to believe. It may not be many decades before war will seem to all as silly a fashion of settling international disputes as the medieval system of testing a witness's honesty by asking him to walk through fire. Then the conscientious objectors will be as respected and forgotten as the early Christian martyrs are today. , WIGHT MORROW'S HAM-AND-EGG DIPLOMACY must be startling to some of the brethren in official circles, but it seems to work. This product of J. P. Morgan and Company began his post-graduate course in inter- national relations by warning the American expatriates in Mexico City that they were guests of Mexico; he continued by traveling with the President of Mexico and sharing with him the most widely advertised ham-and-egg breakfast in history. His next adventure in friendship was to invite the inimitable Will Rogers to fool his way south of the bor- der; and now he has persuaded Lindbergh to undertake a good-will flight across the arid mountains where Pershing once sought Villa — a new kind of Mexican expedition for a colonel of the United States army. Mr. Morrow seems to be in a fair way to make the United States popular in Mexico and Mexico popular in the United States — a work nius after a decade of blunderbussing. If he con- cludes by persuading American firms to accept Mexican laws, and Mexican officials to trust American business men, he may start a movement to reform the State Department by turning it over to the bankers. Unfortunately, we fear, Dwight Morrows are as rare in Wall Street as in the dip- lomatic service. ^OVERNOR FULLER of Massachusetts has just re- V-ir turned from a little trip to London and Paris where, he said, he found no evidence of dissatisfaction with Amer- icans over the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti. Whether or not this was due to the fact that Mr. Fuller traveled under the name of Peter Bond we do not say, but the fact stamps him as a coward of a kind new in our political life. If he escaped from the Sacco and Vanzetti case while he was abroad, it met him almost at the dock on his return in the form of the annual report of the Massachusetts Judi- cial Council, filed for the Governor's inspection. In the report the council recommends no less soul-shaking a change than a revision of the Massachusetts appeal system to make it correspond with the methods of appeals in New York Stale. Thus, if the recommendations are followed the Mas- sachusetts Supreme Court will in due time have the power

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696 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3259 of reviewing in full the acts of a trial judge, including deci- sions on motions for a new trial on the ground of insuffi- cient or newly discovered evidence. Thus, in short, a repeti- tion of the Sacco-Vanzetti tragedy need never happen. This, of course, is locking the stable door after the horse has been stolen. Massachusetts justice can never catch up with Sacco and Vanzetti ; but those well-wishers of the world, now dead, would be the first to welcome any change that might be of benefit to the people of Massachusetts. OKLAHOMA IS INDULGING in another of her periodic civil wars. Her temperamental governor, H. S. Johns- ton [see Mr. Blake's Oklahoma Goes Rosicrucian in The Nation, for September 14], refused to call the legislature into special session in order that it might impeach him, and a majority of the legislature decided that it had an inherent right to convene, and met. Its deliberations were, as was expected, displeasing to the Governor, and he called out the National Guard to keep it out of the State Capitol. Inevita- bly this little war is obscuring the issues which began the conflict — Governor Johnston's personal government through his transcendental, star-reading secretary, and the curious legal tangle of the Owens case. 0. 0. Owens, a member of the legislature, criticized the Supreme Court of the State in an oil case in which he was the defendant, The judges brought personal damage suits against him and he was sen- tenced to serve a year in jail — although under Oklahoma law contempt is a misdemeanor carrying a maximum pen- alty of thirty days. Owens applied to the Crin inal Court of Appeals for a writ of habeas corpus, and it issued one, but the Supreme Court hastily got out a writ of prohibition against the Criminal Court and cited one of its judges for contempt. The sheriff, served with conflicting papers from the two courts, refused to release Owens. The Governor sided with the State Supreme Court, but the federal Circuit Court of Appeals took jurisdiction and upheld the Criminal Court. The next act of this curious Supreme Court was to decl'ire in an obiter dictum that the legislature was without inherent or implied power to convene upon its own motion. All of which leads one to conclude that the gloomy gentle- men who have pronounced funeral orations over "the last frontier" should buy tickets for Oklahoma City. ONE OF THE MOMENTOUS DECISIONS of 1927 is the unanimous verdict of a special court of three fed- eral judges in the St. Louis and O'Fallon Railroad case, up- holding in effect the Interstate Commerce Commission's valuation of the railroad on the basis of 1914 prices. Al- though this particular case involves only $226,880, it has been called "the biggest lawsuit in history" because it is regarded as a test to determine whether the final valua- tion of the nation's railroads will be what the railroads want it to be— about $33,000,000,000— or the $23,000,000,000 set by the Interstate Commerce Commission — and accordingly what amount of excess earnings (one half of earnings above 6 per cent) the Government may recapture. The suit arises because of the ambiguous phrasing of the Railway Valua- tion Act of 1913. This instructed the commission to find the value of the railroads but did not define "value" or designate any means of determining it, Subsequently the commission put a constructive interpretation upon this in- struction and based its calculation on a prudent-investment theory embodying the level of 1914 prices as a yardstick. The railroads have contended that their valuation should be based upon the cost of reproduction today which would give them approximately $10,000,000,000 above the commis- sion's figure and enable them to collect at least $500,000,000 additional annual revenue. While the controlling opinion, written by Circuit Judge Kimbrough Stone, does not discuss the methods of valuation, District Judge C. B. Faris, in a concurring opinion, approved the valuation methods of the commission, stating that "it reached the valuation found by it in the only possible way in a situation as difficult as that." The case will be appealed to the Supreme Court, but the unanimous verdict of the lower court is impressive. POLAND AND LITHUANIA, in the persons of their premiers, Pilsudski and Waldemaras, jointly declared before the Council of the League of Nations that they both wanted peace, and the declaration was hailed with a curi- ous outburst of applause as a great moral victory for the League of Nations. The trouble is that they both also want Vilna; and Vilna, as Miss Spence's record, printed in our International Relations Section this week, shows, is the cajjse of all the talk of war. It is because Poland has Vilna, Lithuania's capital, that the technical state of war has per- sisted these seven years, and Pilsudski's histrionic triumph in demanding of Waldemaras whether he wanted peace or war does not change the Polish administration of the city or the Lithuanian desire for it. Little Lithuania of course cannot fight against overgrown Poland; the threat of open war has come from Poland's ambition to annex even more than Vilna, just as the technical state of war has persisted because of the Polish grab in 1920. It is a crime to legalize such outright acts of theft; and a double crime to conceal the continuing wrong done to Lithuania by loudly shouting "Peace!" The Vilna question will not be settled until it is settled right. THE NEW YORK TIMES did a handsome thing when it printed on its first page a dispatch, headed Revolt in Ukraine Was Exaggerated, correcting the sensational but false story to which we referred last week. The Times cor- respondent in Rumania, Navarre Atkinson, still thinks that he and the Rumanians know more of what is happening in the Ukraine than do Associated Press and other correspond- ents who have the advantage of being in the Ukraine, but he modifies his early vaporings, and the Times honorably gives his retraction a prominent position. UNCLE SAM IS ONE of the world's great publishers, and among his best humorous periodicals is the weekly, Reports, issued by the United States Board of Tax Appeals. Its news is belated, but pungent. We learn how Mr. Albert M. Briggs, the patriotic father of the American Protective League, pleaded with the Government — in vain — to deduct from his taxable income the money he spent organizing "captains" and "inspectors" and "chiefs" and other titled snoopers who worked out their war-time fervor in harassing Hungarian steel-workers and German-born watch-makers. We learn, too, of the ingenuity of the munitions-makers who did their bit turning out artillery on cost-plus contracts — Symington, Anderson and Company, for instance, who contracted to turn out 3.000 guns, at a meager profit of $390 per gun. This corporation, founded for the express purpose of fulfilling a single contract — by the terms of which the Government paid for its building and machinery — sought to charge off the "loss" it suffered when

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Dec. 21, 1927] The Nation 697 the end of the war cut short its opportunity to make the profitable guns. "None of the assets paid into the corpora- tion, for stock or otherwise, cost Symington anything," the unsympathetic tax board pointed out, and it refused to admit that the firm had lost a million dollars which it had never had. The patriots behind the company felt that the artistry of obtaining their contract had a cash "good-will" value — but what has good-will to do with the manufacture of munitions? We recommend the Report to students of the psychology of patriotism, and to readers who want a change from Life and Judge. THE NOBEL COMMITTEE did well not to give its Peace Prize to any of the temporizing statesmen who explain the impracticability of disarmament at Geneva. They voted it instead to two university professors, veterans of the world-peace movement — Ludwig Quidde of Germany and Ferdinand Buisson of France. Quidde is sixty-nine years old; Buisson eighty-seven. Quidde drew public atten- tion by his "Caligula, a Study in Caesarean Insanity," which sent him to prison for lese majeste soon after the Kaiser mounted the throne; Buisson won his first oratorical success at a peace congress in 1867, where Garibaldi shared the laurels. Throughout the war and since he has been the leading figure in the League for the Rights of Man, which from Dreyfus days has represented in France the spirit of true liberalism — somewhat like the American Civil Liberties Union in the United States. His was one of the first voices raised in France for reconciliation after the war, and Quidde, as historian, editor, member of the Reichstag, and determined democrat, has been in hot water constantly for more than thirty years — during the war he was arrested. Already the Hugenberg press — which expresses in Germany today the intolerant nationalism with which Northcliffe once polluted England — is honoring him with denunciation. SEVENTY-FIVE YEARS of service with one organiza- tion is an amazing record for two generations, but for that long the Charles Loring Braces, father and son, have administered the Children's Aid Society of New York. This organization, founded by the elder Brace in 1853, was based on the then entirely fresh and surprising idea that institu- tional care was less desirable for the great majority of dependent children than rearing in private homes. He suc- ceded in placing thousands of children in homes on farms or in villages away from the city streets and safe from the regimentation of the orphan asylum. For many years a con- troversy between the Children's Aid Society and the advo- cates of orphan asylums must have made Mr. Brace's life trying. After thirty-seven and a half years of unremitting labor, not lightened by controversy, Mr. Brace turned over the work to his son, then a young engineer fresh from the university. And after the same length of time, that same son has relinquished the secretaryship of the organization to Owen Lovejoy. The Nation can heartily second the words of the society's president, William Church Osborn, who said : I cannot overestimate the great work which Mr. Brace has done for the children of New York. His distinguishing characteristic has been his constant recognition of the inter- est of each child as a separate person. ... I feel, however, that with the selection of Mr. Lovejoy the devoted spirit of the Children's Aid Society will be continued and its work will expand with the needs of the children of the city. The Language of the President HERALDED to the Cyrus K. Curtis newspapers as be- ing "the most vigorous and dynamic message that he has issued to the Capitol in the four years and four months that he has been in the White House," the President's message to Congress appears to us lame and weak, with as little evidence of courageous leadership as usual. It is to the New York Herald Tribune a document rounding out "with exceptional vigor and felicity his political program," expressing "appealingly his political philosophy." If that is the case, then Mr. Coolidge's political philosophy must be to face no issue until compelled to do so, to content himself with stating problems without seeking to solve them by more than temporizing measures. Only when he touches on the question of tax reduction does he hit from the shoulder. Evidently the Chamber of Commerce of the United States has touched him and Secretary Mellon upon the raw. For the first time in his Administration, to our recollection, he assails an organization of business men. Here is his rebuke: If special interests, too often selfish, always unin- formed of the national needs as a whole, with hired agents using their proposed beneficiaries as engines of propa- ganda, are permitted to influence the withdrawal of their property from taxation, we shall have a law that is un- balanced and unjust, bad for business, bad for the coun- try, probably resulting in a deficit, with disastrous finan- cial consequences. This is the solemn truth. What a pity it is that the Presi- dent cannot see that it applies to other special-interest groups, most strikingly to those manufacturers who rush to the Treasury to obtain special tariff legislation as a sort of government guaranty of their profits. To the tariff Mr. Coolidge continues his unshakable devotion. Yet, curiously enough, he goes out of his way to prove that 65 per cent of our imports come in free and that, of the remaining 35 per cent, 23 per cent are luxuries and only 12 per cent are goods which can be classified as "manufactures and merchandise." This produces about $560,000,000 in income. Thereupon he makes this cryptic remark — with that "exceptional vigor and felicity" of which the Herald Tribune speaks — "While this amount duty-free would be large enough seriously to depress many lines of business in our own country, it is of small importance when spread over the rest of the world." We confess that this is beyond us; we do not know what the President means. The President declares against naval competition, yet announces that "we should retrain from no needful pro- gram." He declares one moment that "we know now that no agreement can be reached [ with other nations] which will be inconsistent with a considerable building program on our part," and the next moment, speaking of treaty limitations, declares that where there are none, "the size of the navy which America is to have will be solely for Amer- ica to determine" — as if this had not always been the case. Then he declares that if we had come to an agreement with Japan and Great Britain we should still have found our- selves facing "the necessity of continuing our building program." So we are not to compete in armaments, but we are to show to all other nations that we shall do what we please without foreign dictation, and we shall promptly build a large number of ships, which we should have built

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698 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3259 anyway if the Geneva Conference had been successful. This is, indeed, "exceptional felicity" of statement. As for the vital question of agriculture, the President suggests the establishment of a government board to lend money from a revolving fund to aid cooperative marketing. Beyond this, he opines that "any sound and workable pro- posal to help the farmer will have the earnest support of the government." In other words, in place of bread the farmer again gets a stone. As the New York World says, the message "is vague to the point of sheer unintelligibility on practically every contentious issue about which Mr. Coolidge knows that action of some kind is necessary." The whole document confirms us in our belief that one of the President's great weaknesses is his inability to use the English language properly. There are passages in it which for confusion of thought, lack of clarity, and misuse of words would shame a high-school boy. Were Mr. Cool- idge able to use clear and concise English he could surely have made a far better case for himself and his philosophy, such as it is. The clearest example of the injustice the President does himself by his misuse of words remains, of course, his "I do not choose to run for the Presidency." At any time he could have clarified this. It is his own fault if people have believed that he did not mean to withdraw and have credited him with duplicity. The So- ciety for the Prevention of Waste in Industry — if there is one — ought carefully to compute the saving in ink, paper, and brain labor there would have been had Mr. Coolidge used the words in which Charles E. Hughes has just re- affirmed his refusal to run: "I do not wish my name to be used in any contingency. ... I would neither seek nor accept the nomination." Governor Smith— Penologist f"^\ HEAT fluttering and raucous cries from the nests of \_J the eagles of the daily press — Governor Smith has laid impious hands on the sacred robe of Justice! He has had the temerity to suggest that there might be a better way of determining the penalty to be imposed on a convicted felon than to leave it to the puzzled discretion, the whim, or the caprice of the trial judge. He proposes that the State Crime Commission should take a year to study the question, and ho wonders if it would not be better to confine the court to its primary function of trying the question of the guilt or inno- cence of the accused and to set up a separate tribunal, a board composed of well-paid experts — psychiatrists, physi- cians, lawyers, etc. — to make a careful study of the con- victed offender and, upon the basis of the knowlecl gained, to determine what should be done with him. In order that this study may be made with the requisite thor- oughness, the Governor suggests the establishment of a clearing-house to which the convict shall in the first instance be committed and where he shall be kept under close obser- vation until all the facts relative to his mental condition and his criminal propensities have been established. Upon this diagnosis the board will then commit him to the type of institution and for such length of ^ime as the public interest shall seem to require. "Fantastic," "futuristic." "revolutionary" are some of the terms employed by the startled editors to characterize the Governor's bold conception. One editor describes it as a proposal to "turn our criminal administration upside down": another begs to remind us that "Albany is not the capital of Utopia." These critics were probably unaware that Gov- ernor Smith's proposal is in line with the main current of criminological thought ever since Beccaria. 164 years ago, demanded that the judges should be deprived of the arbi- trary power of determining the kind and amount of suffer- ing that should be inflicted on the convicted felon. Let us hope that, in the course of the year that Governor Smith has wisely allowed for the study of the question, these lead- ers of public opinion will have led the public to agree with the Governor's view that his plan provides "a sensible, mod- ern, up-to-date way of treating criminals." The proposed plan is neither novel nor revolutionary. "It would deprive judges of the power to sentence persons convicted of felonies." exclaims the horrified editor of the Times. This sounds pretty awful until we recall how little is left of this venerated judicial power. Our legislatures are forever curbing it by prescribing and changing maxi- mum and minimum sentences below and beyond which the judges are forbidden to go. Much of the legislative activity of the last two years in this country has gone into the enact- ment of mandatory penal statutes whose sole object has been to restrict still further the sacred prerogative of the courts in sentencing persons convicted of felony. It is in connection with the indeterminate sentence (and in some of our States all sentences to State prison are inde- terminate) that we have become familiar with the practice of having a non-judicial body— usually the prison board; sometimes, as in New York, a board of parole — invested with the function of determining the actual duration of the sen- tence. In several of the Western States, notably in Cali- fornia, the court has practically ceased to function as a sentencing agency. The legislature fixes the maximum and the minimum limits of the sentence to be served for a given crime. The jury finds the culprit guilty of that crime, the judge commits the convict to prison, and the prison board, after a study of the prisoner, determines the sentence to be served. This has now been going on for many years, and the skies of California still bend lovingly over her amiable sons and daughters and her temples of justice still stand. Now, what Governor Smith proposes is, in effect, to provide a thoroughly competent study of every person com- mitted to a State prison before a decision is reached as to the disposition to be made of him. The survey of prison inmates made by the Sing Sing psychiatric clinic in the years 1916-1918 disclosed the appalling fact that, mingled indiscriminately in the prison population of, say, 1,500 men, there were not less than 180 who were definitely insane, 260 irresponsible psychopaths, and more than 400 feeble-minded. The courts had neither the specialized knowledge nor the facilities to ascertain these facts. These wretched creatures were all thrown promiscuously into the same human ant- heap together with some 700 men of normal mental facul- ties. Is it too much to say that under any decent, not to say humane, system of criminal administration, these un- happy and incongruous elements of the prison population would be weeded out and committed to institutions adapted to their care and treatment? (The splendid hospital erected a few years ago at Sing Sing Prison was built as the first step in the development of such a clearing-house as Governor Smith suggests.) Perhaps before our year of grace is up we shall all give thanks to a just but merciful God for a Gov- ernor who refuses to tolerate the chaos in criminal adminis- tration which we have so shamefullv endured.

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Dec. 21, 1927] The Nation 699 The Forgery as to The Nation A seal which says: Estados Unidos Mexicanos Presidency of the Republic General Staff ON the cover of this issue of The Nation we print in facsimile a document submitted on November 10 to the editor of this journal by a representative of William R. Hearst. On its face it purports to be a warrant, signed by President Calles, for the payment to the editor of $25,000 from the secret expenditure fund of the Department of Industry, Commerce, and Labor "for subscriptions and propaganda in favor of the Government of Mexico." Mr. Hearst's representative was informed at once that no moneys had ever been paid to The Nation or to its editor by the Government of Mex- ico, or any citizen of Mexico, for subscriptions or propa- ganda, except for legitimate advertising so marked, and that he would immediately take legal steps if the Hearst publications printed this document. Later in the day the representative of Mr. Hearst telephoned that "no publication will be made." None the less, on the second of December, the New York American resorted to the cowardly subterfuge of printing the warrant with the name of the editor and that of this journal blocked out. Two other letters were printed in facsimile purport- ing to show that one other American publication re- ceived $25,000, and that $50,- 000 was paid to an American newspaper syndicate — with the names blotted out in each Translation of the Facsimile Dot case — for the same purpose of creating "sentiment in the United States favorable to Mexico." Why did Mr. Hearst delete the names of the two publications and of the newspaper syndicate? If the docu- ments were genuine, he need not have feared to publish them in full. Plainly, Mr. Hearst did not believe in his own evidence. Mr. Hearst did not stop there. He next charged that he had documents proving that $1,215,000 was paid to four United States Senators to work for the interests of Mexico, and he again showed his contemptible cowardice in deleting the names of the four Senators. This had immediate con- sequences. On Friday, December 9, the Senate, on motion of Senator Reed of Pennsylvania, voted an inquiry into the charges, to begin December 14, Senator Reed correctly stat- ing that as long as the charges were unsifted "the honor of every member of this body is at stake." Besides Senator Reed, the committee comprises Senators Jones of Washing- ton, Johnson of California, Robinson of Arkansas, and Bruce Subject: Issuance of pay order to the Fi- nancial Agency of Mexico in New York. PRESIDENTIAL ORDER You will please order the Citizen Financial Agent of Mexico in New York to issue a pay order for the sum of $25,000 (Twenty-five thousand dol- lars) in favor of Mr. Oswal G. Villard, Editor of the weekly review "The Nation," as payment for subscriptions and propaganda in favor of the Government of Mexico. Charge the item corresponding to this order to secret expenditures of the Department of In- dustry, Commerce and Labor, obtaining the rela- tive documents from the same department. SUFRAGIO EFECTIVO NO-REELECCION The National Palace, Mexico, D. F., Oct. 21, 1926 The President of the Republic P. Elias Calles (Hand-written) ARCHIVES Treasury Department Rubrico NOTED: SG/PEC/RL Rubrico To the Citizen Secretary of the Treasury of Maryland. Already the question has arisen whether the committee can subpoena the Mexican Consul General and fiscal agent in New York or whether that official may claim diplomatic immunity. Mr. Elias, the Mexican Consul Gen- eral, has declared that he will not stand upon a technicality, but will come forward to cooperate with the committee to sift this matter to the very bottom. And we trust that the Senate will not limit its inquiry to the charges in re- gard to its own members but will investigate the allega- tions as to the press and to all other individuals. Honor is as dear to editors as it is to Senators. We are aware, of course, that the Senators look upon the entire series as impudent but unskilled forgeries and that they joked about them, Senator Borah inquiring where the money was that he should have received as chairman of the Senate Com- mittee on Foreign Relations. It is pointed out that the Spanish of the documents is faulty, that the Hearst forces changed the date of one dis- patch three times in three consecutive editions, and that no officials of any govern- ment which disburses secret funds for corrupt purposes are so stupid as to commit anything to paper. Some of the allegations, that Calles was contributing large sums to revolutionists in China ument Appearing on the Cover and strikers in England to "bolshevize" political and economic movements in those countries, are too absurd to arouse even a smile. Since there is, however, the possibility that the publication of these documents is likely among the unthinking to arouse antagonism to Mexico, their falsity ought to be exposed, and the suggestion that they have been used to filch sums from the Mexican treasury, adjudicated. The Nation's reputation of sidy-two years' standing, and that of its editor during his thirty-one years of jour- nalism, surely make unnecessary any formal denial of the charge. Everybody knows that its opinions are not for sale and that its ardent support of smaller nations seeking to achieve economic and national independence is always freely forthcoming. The facts are set forth here for purposes of historical record. As insistently as the Senators whom Mr. Hearst has clouded with suspicion, we demand — and in this the American press will join us — that Mr. Hearst print the names and tell the facts — where he got his documents and what members of his staff believed them authentic. Copyright, 1927, by The Nation, i\ .

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700 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3259 Hoover to the Fore By OSWALD GARRISON VILLARD Washington, December 11 R. HOOVER has been elected President of the United States during the last few days by various of the Washington correspondents who write with much prestige upon national affairs. The withdrawal of Mr. Coolidge and Mr. Hughes has so impressed them, and their personal fond- ness for Mr. Hoover is so great, that they see nothing to the Presidential contest now except the nomination of Hoover nd Smith, with Hoover winning in an easy canter. It is even being said that Hoover can defeat Smith in New York. Well, this is a bit astonishing since those who concede Hoover's nomination are veterans in the reporting of poli- tics and as such must know that any candidate who is in the lead at this early date invites the united opposition of the field. It is true that sometimes in a horse race the leader is so far ahead that there is no overtaking him, but it is a long way from December to June, and not even the fact that the National Committeemen for Texas and Maryland have apparently come out for Hoover insures his nomination. A good deal is going to happen in the next six months, and there will be a greater chance for plain speaking and a fight on the floor of the convention than there has been for years. There is Senator Borah, for instance. He is a figure to be reckoned with, and he is going into that convention to make the fight of his life, both in the Resolutions Committee and on the floor of the convention for the purpose of making the party toe the mark on the prohibition issue. That fight will bear considerable relation to the Presidential nomination. Again, even these veteran correspondents who have decided that Hoover is the man will not deny that the out- going President is in the position to prevent the nomination of anyone he does not like, and the correspondents generally are saying that it is Secretary Mellon who will name the candidate. It is perfectly clear, too, that the Administration and Mr. Mellon are not sitting up nights cheering for the present Vice-President of the United States, and arranging to have the black Southern delegations voted for him. There is, however, no clear proof that the President and Mr. Mellon have committed themselves to the Hoover candidacy. Should they do so the Hoover cohorts might well throw their hats into the air. It would all be over except the shouting. But the relationship of the President to Secretary Hoover is one of the puzzles of Washington. It is known that he has constantly sent for him, and it is positively stated that he has unloaded on Mr. Hoover's shoulders many things which a President ordinarily takes charge of himself. This may be the reason why it is reported that various members of the Cabinet have at times gone to the President and pro- tested that Mr. Hoover was butting into their affairs. But while it is true that the President has repeatedly intrusted matters of great moment, like the supervision of the Missis- sippi Valley flood relief, to Mr. K >over he has also on sev- eral occasions shown what amounts to animosity to his Secre- tary of Commerce, or at least he has shown marked personal feeling. Three of these instances readily suggest them- selves. On July 20 Secretary Hoover appeared at the Presi- dent's offices at Rapid City, South Dakota, to report to him as to the relief work for flood sufferers. Mr. Coolidge treated him with such marked coldness that it was the subject of dispatches. Last winter when the question came up of a possible successor to Secretary Kellogg, Mr. Coolidge went out of his way, again with considerable show of feeling, to tell the correspondents that one man would never be ap- pointed Secretary of State by him and that man was Herbert Hoover. Again, when Mr. Hoover made an admirable state- ment that in his opinion loans should not be made to foreign countries for other than economic purposes, thereby slapping at the Department of State and the President for the then recent loan to the Nicaraguan Government for the purpose of buying American arms and ammunition, the President took occasion within a few days to disagree emphatically. Secretary Hoover may be the nominee, but there will be a hard fight against him. The question of his eligibility under the constitutional clause requiring fourteen years of consecutive residence will be brought up against him, and so will the fact that in 1918 he called upon Americans to vote for Democratic candidates for Congress and to defeat the Republican Party. In 1920 he was for taking us into the League of Nations lock, stock, and barrel, and he upheld the World Court most enthusiastically. A veteran Senator has just said to me that if Hoover can qualify to run on a Republican platform he will have to eat more of his own words than any man in generations who has been a candi- date. His friends tell me that Hoover is quite a reformed character, that he is no longer for the League, and that he has seen the light in the matter of the World Court. Cannot a man in public life change his opinions? they ask. Of course he can and does, precisely as Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson changed their respective views on woman suffrage, the initiative, the referendum, the recall of judges, William J. Bryan and a cocked hat, and innumerable ques- tions. But the fact that a man can change so readily, that in 1918 he can be a good Democrat opposed to all the Repub- lican policies and in 1920 refused to say whether he was a Democrat or a Republican until he found out which party was more likely to nominate him for the Presidency, cer- tainly stamps him both as a politician and an opportunist. A letter of his written in 1920, expressing his doubt as to what he was at that moment, was shown in facsimile to members of the Republican National Committee at their recent meeting in this city. If I were a sporting man I should be inclined to bet some money on the proposition that the Republican nominee for the Presidency may be a man who has not yet figured in the news. It can hardly be Longworth for certain reasons, though Longworth is highly popular and comes from the traditional President-making State of Ohio. One thing is true: The professional politicians are not for Hoover. In so far as this is due to the fact that he has stood them off where they should be stood off, he deserves credit for it and it will help him. It is their fear, too, that if Hoover is elected President he will be the President. He will be, there is no doubt about that; he will be as autocratic a one as we have had, and, if elected, what he thinks and plans while in the White House will in considerable degree be known by just one person — Herbert Hoover.

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Dec. 21, 1927] The Nation 701 The Angel of Peace in Modern Dress Presented at Geneva by the Soviet Government on November SO, 1927

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702 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3259 iETWEEN issues of The Nation I celebrated my thirty- ninth birthday quietly. There was no public demon- stration of any sort and I myself might have overlooked the occasion but for a letter from a life-insurance agent who jogged my memory and asked whether it would not be wise for me to take a larger policy before it was too late. None of this is set down in petulance, and I should scarcely an- nounce the approach of senility except for the fact that I have fashioned an excellent resolution to be most studiously maintained from now till I turn forty. For an entire year I promise to use no labels in regard to men or measures. "Radical" is out; "conservative" and "liberal." Very likely I will refer to none as "artist" or sneer at things "Victorian." Along with all the rest goes "modern," "pro- gressive," and "glamorous." "Intriguing" and "arresting" I swore off last year. Instead of saying that I'm a "paci- fist" it will be enough to stipulate an opposition to all wars. I mean all wars. Those who allow a willingness to fight at Concord or Bull Run let down their guard. There never yet was any conflict which did not seem in its first days quite similar to Armageddon. In quitting "pacifist" I am not frightened off by that old puzzler about my grand- mother and the alien grenadier. If that comes up I'll handle it. "Box him, Granny, use your left," would be my counsel while I slipped out in back to call a traffic cop. The new and momentous decision to eschew definitive words was not arrived at in cold blood. For speaking ill of Soviet terrorism I have been slated by publications which favor Russia thick or thin. My words, they say, illustrate the working of a "liberal" mind. But I don't want to be a lileral even without the quotation marks. It is an adjec- tive much coupled with the New York Woild and yet I find myself miles away from that paper on the question of dis- armament. The leader in that journal says the Russian proposal is propaganda for the cafes. "For Mr. Litvinov to come to Geneva and pretend that Russia is run by non- resistant pacifists is a very poor joke," declares the World. I cannot find any part of his proposal which says that. 1 see more grim and sorry humor in bleeding and bankrupt nations arming against each other. Had the World, or any other American newspaper, gone to the trouble of reading the Soviet proposal in full it might have found this sentence: "While insisting upon the views just stated, the delegation is nevertheless ready to participate in any and every discussion of the question of the limitation of armaments whenever practical measures really leading to disarmament are proposed." I take this to mean, "If you don't like our scheme, suggest a better one." To my ear the language is quite as clear as anything coming from Mr. Coolidge. If anybody says that it will hs difficult to effect com- plete disarmament I agree readily enough. But difficult things are not necessarily impractical. Judging by results, every move made so far by the practical politicians in the matter of reducing armies has been whollv visionary and fantastic. The complete abolition of armaments can hardly be accomplished without extended discussion, but after all the Russians did not name next Tuesday and set the hour at 9 a. m. No camel with a broken back can be restored to health by the removal of one straw. The world needs not a lighter load but none at all. The Soviet delegation set up an ideal, and if there is no hand steady enough to hit it square why can't we aim and come as close as possible? For the sake of my grandmother, already mentioned, I would prefer to have each nation still retain a federal police force. This can easily be attacked as a quibble. There would have to be discussion as to the equipment of such forces and their number. But quibbles are better than curt refusals. I don't like police and I prefer them to sol- diers. Patrolmen very likely would object to being sent to Nicaragua. And in the police there are no major generals. My own pet scheme is simpler than that of Lit- vinov. The current Congress could pass a law making it a felony for any officer of the United States army or navy to write for the magazines, speak at public dinners, or give statements to the newspapers. I would not even permit them to tell funny stories. They should go home with the coffee. Few will contend that any good has come from speeches by service men. They are by nature strong and silent. Let these excellent qualities be preserved. And before leaving the question of publicity I am con- verted back to the old notion that reticence is becoming to still another profession. Doctors once thought it was in- famous ever to mention medicine in the presence of laymen. That has all passed. No longer is the physician content to express himself upon a prescription blank in the brief space allotted beneath the letterhead announcing "Blank's drug- store has the finest soda fountain in the city." The doctor has taken up the pencil, the pen, and the portable. All current lists of books are filled with scale drawings of the esophagus and reviewers are now privileged to read them- selves to sleep with chapters on diseases of the liver. And naturally there has leaped up, like Jack long repressed with- in his box, the medical humorist. He jests at scars who has himself made the incisions; give him gout to play with and you'll find the fellow antic. But I like their jokes better than their attempts to frighten people. The press of the country is conducting at the present time a drive concerning cancer. In medicine I am wholly regular and have no faith in any form of heret- ical healing, and yet I think the method of educating the public against a dread disease shows the fundamental and shameful ignorance of doctors in the matter of human psychology. I quote from the New York Times: The lash of fear is now being openly used in the anti- cancer campaign being conducted by the New York Com- mittee of the American Society for the Control of Cancer to drive both potential and actual victims of the disease into the examining rooms of physicians and surgeons. Ac- cording to leaders in the campaign the end justifies the

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Dec. 21, 1927] The Nation 703 means, as fear of cancer is only ignorance which education will overcome. In the broad sense of the word everybody now alive is a potential cancer victim. The doctors are saying that in order to save a few many must suffer. Nor is this suffer- ing merely a temporary thing. Fear is a disease and one of the most stubborn. Any fool can frighten a patient and possibly there are a few dozen doctors in the country com- petent to cure him. I honestly believe this estimate is high. Ten is more like it. The doctors are moving upon the theory that it is necessary to infect the entire nation with phobias in order to handle an ailment which is still a disease of a considerable minority. In this there is no soundness. And there is room for debate about the propaganda to have each one of us, no matter how he's feeling, go and submit to examination each six months or every year. Without question the doctor may find something insidious, but unfortunately many of these hidden maladies are still beyond the powers of his therapy. Certainly in such cases it is better not to know. Nor can I think of any better way in which to recruit the growing army of the neurotic. The man who feels all right may still be sick, but let him not tamper with his luck is what I say. My birthday came and went without the aid of any doctor, but I am among other things a little superstitious. If any sudden ill befell me soon, or now, the paragraphs I've written could be used against me by the apostles of medical preparedness. I do not want to run the risk of serving as a horrible example. The advice I gave is excel- lent but it is too late for me to take it. I did not get exam- ined on my birthday but I went twice last week. The Passing of Trotzky By LOUIS FISCHER Moscoiv, November 16, 1927 THE passing of Trotzky may become one of the classic ironies of history. On the tenth anniversary of the revolution to which he contributed so much his picture was torn down in the streets of Moscow. A few days later he was expelled from the Communist Party and thus divorced from participation in the conduct of the revolution and of the Soviet Government. To some, the tragedy of Trotzky testifies to the in- gratitude of humanity and the cruelty of fate. It is sad to think of him as down and out, eating out his heart in the conviction that others less able than he are blundering. This is unfortunate, yet events may take a still more unfortunate turn. For any attempt on the part of the Opposition to continue its activities may land it in jail. Those who talk of a Putsch or a military revolt are ignor- ant of conditions in Russia and harbor a completely false impression of the lengths to which even a distressed, em- bittered Opposition may go at present. But the Central Committee or Ceca (not Cheka) of the party will give no more democratic freedom to the expelled Opposition than it does to Mensheviks or Social Revolutionaries, and if Trotzky and his followers try to take that freedom they will court arrest or some other form of silencing. Yet it is safe to prophesy that there will always he an opposition. Trotzky, Zinoviev, Rakovsky, Preobrazhensky, Kamenev, Smilga, Peterson, Bakaev, Evdokimov, Muralov, Radek, and all other spokesmen of the present Opposition may be removed from the political scene. But another faction will rise in its stead. The present policies of the majority of the party will not go unchallenged. The other day a fairly intelligent Communist said to me: "I detest the Opposition not alone because it stands for certain doctrines abhorrent to me but because of its Left influence on the party." At no time in the last two years had the Opposition the remotest chance of gaining control of the party organization. If it were to remain in the ranks now its chances would be as small. Yet it has been an important factor in stemming the majority's slow move- ment to the Right. Many of the Opposition planks have been lifted and nailed into the Stalin platform, sometimes in veiled, often in undisguised form. "Right" in this con- text does not mean reaction. It is perhaps best trans- lated "the road of lesser resistance." It means conces- sions to the peasantry, moderation at home and abroad, and less active interest in world revolution. Conditions in the Soviet Union demand such policies. This is the strength of the Stalin majority. The Ceca's second pillar of strength is the growing prosperity of the country. Even admitting the Opposition's contentions regarding the mistakes of the majority, the fact remains that the material welfare of the greatest number has been furthered by the present administration. Such success undermines the position of the Trotzky faction. Any opposition, moreover, starts under a handicap, for unity is a fetish in the Communist Party. This is a pro- duct of the party's disciplined past as well as of the neces- sity for concerted action at all times. Factionalism is ana- thema to the Communist, and Trotzky has been defeated as much by the argument that he is attempting to disrupt the party a;; by criticism of the basic principles he advances. Many adherents of the Opposition, though convinced i justice of its claims, left its ranks when they felt that the tactics employed — the secret printing press, clandestinely distributed petitions, relations with non-partisans, and si reel demonstrations constituted a danger to the "mono- lithism" of the part}.'. Another weakness of the Opposition is the personality of Trotzky. Though Lenin stood several cubits above him in political stature, Trotzky undoubtedly is the greatest liv- ing figure of the revolution. His magnetism, oratory, cul- ture, brilliance of mind, tongue, and pen, his fire, honesty, and sincerity make him a born leader. Hut he is no poli- tician. Throughout the entire length of his remarkable career in the Socialist-Communist world he has stood out as an individual. He can never organize his following, though he is capable of mobilizing the Red Army and re- organizing the railroads. He antagonizes by his apparent vanity and capriciousness. (Stalin calls him an actor.) It is his dazzling light but not his warmth which attracts. He is capable of spectacular action but not of subtlety. Leon Trotzky, moreover, has been guilty of numerous

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704 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3259 political errors. He was mistaken in regard to the Brest- Lit. »vsk peace where he differed with Lenin. He was wrong in his trade-union controversy with Lenin in 1921. Sub- sequently he opposed the fiscal reform on the ground that inflation would help industry. But developments have shown that a stable currency can be the rock on which the entire economic system of the country rests. S years ago he proposed industrial "concentration," which would have involved the closing of some of the largest plants in Russia, the Putilov works in Leningrad, for in- stance. Yet more recent events have proved that not only are all prerevolutionary units necessary but new factories must be built. Besides, Trotzky became a Bolshevik only in 1917. Theretofore he fought Lenin almost uninterruptedly. To be sure, he was on the spot at the hour of need, in the 1905 abortive revolution and in the successful effort of ten years ago. Nevertheless, his Menshevism prior to the revolution makes him more vulnerable to the charge of Menshevism today, and the Stalin majority is not slow to exploit this weakness. Records of the past, Trotzky's personality, Communist worship of unity, the adherence of Zinoviev and Kamenev, the "strike-breakers of 1917" '—all these are used against the Opposition and frequently serve to obscure the issues of the present struggle. What are these issues? The subject is extremely in- volved, but the core of the dispute is, and always has been, the peasant question. The Opposition maintains that the village is a capitalistic organization, that its dynamics are capitalistic, and, above all, that the kulak or rich mujik is growing wealthier at the expense of the poor and "middle" peasants. In 1925 the party legalized the renting of land and the hiring of agricultural labor. Since then the area rented has doubled. The Opposition maintains that this vitiates the nationalization of land. Renting of land in Soviet Russia means the transfer of land usufruct from the poor peasant who does not possess the equipment or the live stock indispensable to cultivation to the rich peasant who does. The kulak holds more than his proportionate share of cattle, machinery, land. As a result, according to official statistics, 58 per cent of the country's agricultural surplus was in the hands of 6 per cent of the country's peasant households on April 1, 1926. Since then the per- centages have increased the advantage of the well-to-do upper crust. A sharp differentiation of classes, the Opposition says. is taking place in rural districts. The middle peasant, con- stituting the bulk of the peasantry, is losing ground. Some of its members are rising into the kulak class. Others are sinking into the bedniak or poor class. This was not the intention of the revolution. The kulak is filtering into the cooperatives and capturing control of some Soviets. What is especially important, the rich peasants today hoard no less than 800,000,000 poods of grain. Consequently, cereal exports have not increased nor bread prices fallen despite three successive good crops. The Central Committee does not deny the growth of the kulaks. But it denies that the "middle mujik" is being destroyed by the movements of the upper and lower mill- stones. On the contrary, the middle class is receiving re- cruits from the bedniaks who are improving their status, 1 See my article, Lenin versus Trotzky, in The Xation of January 21, 1925. though it is admitted that some poor peasants are drop- ping into the class of "proletarianized," landless agricultural workers. The Ceca says there are fewer bedniaks; the Opposition that there are more. Now it will be recalled that the recent jubilee manifesto of the Soviet Government, in addition to proclaiming an impending seven-hour day, exempted 10 per cent of all peasant households from direct taxes, thus rais- ing the number of such households from 25 per cent to 35 per cent of the total in the Union. On the face of it, at least, this step confirms the Opposition's thesis. Indeed, the Opposition claims that the 10 per cent increase is a leaf from its book and points out, with justifiable satis- faction, that in April, 1926, Stalin stigmatized as "anti- peasant" the Opposition's demand that the number of tax-exempt households be raised from 25 to 40 per cent. Here is the crux of the controversy. If the number of kulaks is really growing, the Opposition is right, and the Government should seek to check the economic and political power of the rich peasantry. This the Stalin Ceca now pro- poses to do. The Opposition replies that it is late, though not too late, that this is its plank, and finally that the new policy must be expressed in deeds, not words. Further- more it adds that if the middle peasants are becoming either kulaks or bedniaks the Government cannot base its policy on the bulk of the peasantry, but must expect village sup- port only from the poor and proletarian elements. There- fore it must prevent their exploitation at the hands of the upper crust by imposing heavier taxes on the richer peas- ants. Such a check would mean more money in the coffers of the Government, hence more money for the industrializa- tion of the country and a speedier equalization of the bal- ance between the city and village. (This is one phase of what Trotzky called the "permanent revolution.") Besides, if the village is capitalistic, you cannot build socialism in a land that is predominantly peasant and indus- trially backward. The Opposition accordingly protests against the national self-sufficiency of the Stalinites. It argues that the revolution in Russia cannot be an ultimate success unless the world revolution eventuates. (This is another phase of the "permanent revolution.") Concretely, the Oppositionists are "super-industrial- ists," as their enemies call them. The majority, too, favors and furthers industrialization. That is recorded in years of achievement. But the Opposition believes that Stalin approaches industry from the point of view of the require- ments of the peasantry rather than as a thing in itself and as the only guaranty of a successful revolution. The Opposition would exploit the village for the sake of the city. The Ceca wishes industry to serve the village. These, in outline, are the policies of the two groups. In practical every-day politics, the differences express them- selves thus: the Ceca proposes to reduce prices on manu- factured articles so that the peasants may buy more. The Opposition objects; formerly, it even advocated higher prices. The Ceca countenances the reduction of all taxes in the village. The Opposition suggests heavier taxes on the kulak, no taxes on the bedniak, and complains that the peas- ant is being taxed less and the worker more. Stalin pro- claims the dawn of a seven-hour day. Trotzky replies: this is bluff and a sop to the proletariat which would prefer more rubles to more leisure. The Opposition advocates a forced bread loan in order to compel the rich peasant to give up his surplus grain.

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Dec. 21, 1927] The Nation 705 I never like to deal with the future. Yet there is a temptation to have one peep. The Opposition has been descrying the beginnings of new phenomena in the Soviet Union. If these assume larger proportions, some kind of opposition, within or without the party, legal or illegal, will not be downed, be the fate of the Trotzky faction what it may. It will be a city or proletarian opposition against too pronounced pro-peasant tendencies in the party. The personal fate of the present Opposition leaders? I do not know. If they "behave" they can remain at liberty in the country, and live in the Kremlin as Raclek does, for instance, though he holds no office or job of any kind. They Lipport themselves — for no government bureau will employ them — by writing on non-political subjects. But will they consent to such passivity when the revolution, in their opinion, is suffering? Americans We Like Norris of Nebraska By FREDERIC BABCOCK * ' T AM on the downhill side — some- The Eighth 1 times, I think, traveling rapidly. Q , personaH The end cannot be very many years ' in advance. I think I have, to a great extent, run my race. If I can do some good while I am traveling over the balance of the road I want to do it, be- cause I realize I am going over it for the last time. "I am not conscious of having a single selfish ambition. Neither money nor office holds any enchanting allurements. ... I could not always have made this statement truthfully. There have been times in my life — and I presume it is true of most public men — when ambition, and I think an honor- able ambition, caused in my heart great concern about such things. But I have lost all that. I have received all the honor I can ever expect. I should like to repay the people by an unprejudiced and unbiased service in their behalf. I have no other ambition." Those two paragraphs, contained in an intimate and informal letter to a personal friend, reveal, much better than could any outsider, the character of George William Norris, senior Senator from Nebraska and possible candi- date for the Presidency in 1928. They tell why the liberals of America have been drawn to him as they have been drawn to few other men in modern times. It is difficult for me, a self-expatriated Nebraskan, to give an accurate view of George Norris. I admit I am prejudiced. He was my boyhood idol. I have worshiped him ever since the day, at the height of the war fever, when it seemed that the whole country had joined Woodrow Wil- son in denouncing him and his associates as "that little group of wilful men," and when he came home, told the truth, confounded his critics, and emerged unscathed. A homespun man is Norris, a man entirely lacking in political, personal, or intellectual vanity. He is quiet in his manner. His face is open, frank, almost sad, but friendly. Structurally, he is strong, deep-chested, with wide shoulders. That, of course, comes from his breeding. Born of clean American stock in a farming community in Sandusky Coun- ty, Ohio, he lived as a child among eighty acres of stumps. His father died when George was four years old. The elder son was killed in the Civil War. The mother was left with ten daughters and the one son. The family was in strait- ened circumstances. "I have battled, battled, for everything I ever got," Norris once told an interviewer. The slow tragedy of dull poverty and toil was his in his younger years. He knew what it was to fight for a living. His whole life has been a record i n a Scries °f modest triumphs. He has fought . r, . • . his way inch by inch. But it is tii Portraits . J,. ,, , :. ,,. , , -' axiomatic that if things had come easier for him he probably would not be where he is now. In his manner, in his processes of mind and his mode of living he is still as simple, as plain, as direct, and as unassuming as when he was on the upward climb. He knows more, of course, than he did then. His mind is more mature and has broadened. His convictions, however, for the most part are based on what he has person- ally known and seen, rather than on deductions from wide reading. He is not afraid to think and do for himself. He first appeared on the national scene in 1903 as a member of the House. And he first had the spotlight thrown on him when, in the Sixty-first Congress, he led the fight for the overthrow of Cannon and Cannonism. He has been an insurgent since there has been any notable insurgency in the House. From the start, he declined to become one of those glorified political peons that are lightly worked, care- fully clothed, highly paid, and accorded every privilege save that of independent thought and action. He did not rebel against the authority of the Cannon group because of senti- ment in his home district. It was the other way around. At that time, as in a number of more recent instances, he has had to educate his constituency to accept his views. "I saw men on either side of the political fence follow blindly the dictates of their machines," he says. "Even when there was no question of party fealty concerned, they would vote as their bosses ordered, dumbly, stupidly, like a lot of sheep or geese. I believed in the absolute freedom of thought and action, and, cherishing feelings of this sort, it did not take me long to become an objector — an insurgent." The war came along, and with it hysteria. In the Sen- ate Norris voted against the armed-neutrality legislation demanded by President Wilson, and later braved the con- demnation of most of the country by voting, with others of the "wilful" group, against the resolution of war. The storm of denunciation centered on the West; the full force of it swooped down upon La Follette and Norris. The pseudo-patriots and the "stand-by-the-President" boys licked their chops and prepared for the killing. Norris outmaneuvered them. Before they could get to him he offered to resign. He called upon the Nebraska Governor to ask the legislature to provide for a special elec- tion to choose his successor. "If the verdict is against me," he told the Governor, "I shall at once place my resignation in your hands."

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706 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3259 While the matter was still being debated he left Wash- ington and came to Lincoln. There was no welcoming com- mittee at the station. As I recall it, he was left almost alone. A raw reporter, I called on him at his room in the old Lindell hotel. He gave me all the time I wanted, answered fully every question I put to him concerning his extraordinary actions at Washington — and he told me plenty. The following day he addressed a joint session of the legis- lature and that night he hired the city auditorium, intro- duced himself to the throng — and once more told plenty. Hut a peculiar thing took place at that night meeting. The thousands present did not ask him for any explanation of what he had been up to or why he had defied the Presi- dent. They did not wish any explanation. They showed him when he first appeared on the platform, and all the time he was speaking, and at the close of his address, that they were strong for him, that they would stand by him. Again and again they rose to their feet and cheered. Norris went back to his duties in the Senate, and the talk of forcing him out of office became less than a whisper. The common people, the people among whom Norris was raised and still moved, had convinced the politicians that it was no use; that they would never stand for his being be- trayed. They have been repeating the performance at inter- vals ever since. Of that "wilful" Senate group Norris alone remains. La Follette of Wisconsin, Stone of Missouri, Lane of Oregon, and Gronna of North Dakota are dead — hastened to their graves, their friends insist, by the venom heaped upon them during the days of the great insanity. Vardamrn of Mis- sissippi has long since retired. Norris, weary of it all, but with no tone of defeat in his voice or words, still holds the fort. He said, in a "ten-years-after" interview: We went to war to make an end to militarism, and there is more militarism today than ever before. We went to war to make the world safe for democracy, and there is less democracy today than ever before. We went to war to dethrone autocracy and special privilege, and they thrive everywhere throughout the world toctay. We went to war to win the friendship of the world, and they hate us today. We went to war to purify the soul of America, and instead we only drugged it. We went to war to awaken the American people to the of liberty, justice, and fraternity, and instead \vi m only to the mad pursuit of money. All tins, and more, the war brought us. It is our har- vest from what we sowed. You ask me if I would vote again today as I voted ten years ago. The answer is I would. His record since the war is fresh in the minds of American liberals. They rememb 'ully, among other things, his fights for the preservation of Muscle Shoals; against the water-power combine; for a constitutional amendment doing away with "lame-duck" congresses; to abolish the electoral college and for the direct election of the President and the Vice-President; for the exploited farmers of the West and the rights of the oppressed throughout the country; for a recognition of the aspirations of the underdogs of other nations; his refusal to bow to the rule of patronage; his amazing attempt to defeat the Vare- ism of his own political party — all these are at last known to the public. His third term in the Senate expires in 1931. Then, as he announced some time ago, he will become a candidate for Governor of Nebraska. His standing and prestige there are such that his election is virtually assured. It has been his wish for years to assume some day the leadership in a move- ment for the reform of State government. He favors a one- house legislature of about twenty-five members, the consoli- dation and cutting down of State elective offices, the ap- pointment of all employees on a strictly civil-service merit basis, and the nomination and election of the members of the legislature and the officials on a nonpartisan ticket. What a Utopia! But what a man to bring it about! Meanwhile, the people back home have organized a Norris-for-President Committee. The attitude of Senator Norris himself (he has tried to withdraw from the race, but Nebraska will not hear of it) was expressed in these words to one of his friends : I do not intend to take any part in the primary. In fact, I rather feel as though no active part ought to be taken in the campaign, even by my friends. I have been weighed in the balance so often — have been on the firing line so long. If the people do not want the kind of a man I am I want them to get somebody else. I do not want any money spent in my behalf. But if the campaign against me needs attention because it is unfair, I should like to see such matters completely met. That's Norris of Nebraska ! Everybody in the State, I believe, knows where I stand on practically every public question, and I think they know me so well that if some proposition arose that never had been thought of or discussed in a campaign most people, if they understood the question itself, would be able to tell where I would stand on it. . . . It is a discouraging thing to continue to fight losing fights. Say what you will, a man is so constituted that, once in a while at least, he wants to win, and when a small body of us fight over and over again the same old battle with the same old result, working, as we believe, for the benefit of all the people, and always meeting with defeat, there comes a time when the spirit as well as the flesh weakens. . . . Upon the death of his great colleague, Robert M. La Follette, Senator Norris said: His was the voice of justice and humanity, calling God's common people to battle for righteousness. He blazed the path through the wilderness of suspicion and doubt, leading the way to a higher civilization, a nobler life, a hap- pier day. His life was one continuous struggle in behalf of the downtrodden and the oppressed. He met upon the field of governmental combat the advocates of monopoly, of greed, and never once did he compromise or surrender. To those who loved him and followed him and believed in him there will always be the happy knowledge and con- solation that even his bitterest enemies never once accused him of infidelity to the cause of righteousness as he saw it. Defeat meant to him only new determination for the next struggle. He turned a deaf ear to those who even suggested the possibility of compromise for his personal advancement, and in answer to suggestions from the enemy that a different course might bring him power and popu- larity we can hear him now, with all the strength of his tremendous power and all the vitality of his courageous soul, crying out aloud his refusal. Those words stand as a tribute to a magnificent man. They apply equally well to the magnificent man who uttered them.

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Dec. 21, 1927] The Nation 707 The Unimpeachable Gift James Harvey Robinson writes: "I know of no other book which is likely to be so funda- mentally enlightening and exciting to so many people on so important a matter as this." A SHORT HISTORY OF WOMEN by John Langdon-Davies ''Not only valuable but fascinating." — Isabel Paterson in the Netv York Herald Tribune. "By all means read A SHORT HISTORY OF WOMEN, for it will prove twice as fascinating as 'The Story of Philosophy.' " —Brooklyn Daily Eagle. $3.00 Harry Hansen in The World: "Miss Roberts is as close to the earth as Sherwood Ander- son. She writes in beautiful prose — often it is poetry, in- spired by a fine sensitivity." MY HEART AND MY FLESH by Elizabeth Madox Roberts "It moves with the rhythmic beat of a great symphony, swell- ing to the breaking point of anguish, then resolving itself ma- jestically into quietude." — Mary Ross in the New York Herald Tribune. $2-50 jMSfc YORK CITY e erican urama From the Civil War to the Present Day By ARTHUR HOBSON QUINN The theatre — the most vital, active form of literary expression in this country — and its his- tory from Augustan Daly to Eugene O'Neill is presented in authoritative and picturesque manner in this new beautiful work. The Ideal Gift for the Person of Taste, 2 volumes, boxed, $10.00 HARPER & BROTHERS, NEW YORK ^yhe Christmas BCDK^AN The richest, handsomest, largest number The Bookman has ever issued. The new Bookman's first Christmas is one worthy of the season. The ideal Christmas present: a year of the new Bookman, starting with the Christmas number (or January). $4 for one subscription, $2 for each additional. Note: the yearly price of The Bookman goes from $4 to $5 on January 1. The Bookman's circulation has more than doubled since Burton Rascoe became the editor three months ago. THE BOOKMAN, 452 Fifth Ave., New York When writing to advertisers ptru.80 mention The Nation

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708 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3259 The U As Vivid as a Conrad Novel" — Chicago Daily News By W. B. SEABROOK "Worth a whole shelf by itself. I get a better appreciation of the Arabs from Seabrook than I do from T. E. Lawrence." — Harry Hansen. "No other American has written so entertain- ingly about the Arabs." — Review of Reviews. "One of the few travel books worth its price." — The Foni)i). "Belongs on a shelf near Law- rence and Doughty."-— North American AY- vieiv. Illustrated, $3.00 HARCOURT, BRACE & CO. 383 Madison Avenue NEW YORK The Best Selling Book in the U. S. Mr. Oiiver M. Sayler has broadcast the unanimous opinion of the press. the critics and the readingpublic. "Milne has already won his secure right to be known as the Robert Louis Stevenson of this generation. He has all the metrical genius and variety of William S. Gilbert togetherwith naive simplicity of Stevenson." Seventh Week.Sixty-first Edition Total Sale 180.000 Copies Published by DUITOirs A gift book for everyone -from baby to Grandfather. including the sophisticated uncle Boxed with "When We W.re Very Young" Boxed with "When We Were Very Young" and "Winnie the Pooh" . S2.00 $4.00 $6,00 This book has broken a!i records in the publishing business E. P. DUTTON & CO., 681 Fifth Ave., N. Y. 'A NEW NOVELIST HAS ARRIVED I V E N T U R I N the long stream of nove refreshing to find Max Ea a strong young man who love life is a whole lot harder to Hi up the effort. He is still at i At ALBERT & CHARLES BOM HIGHLIGHTS OF MANHATTA J By WILL IRWIN Illustrated by E. H. Suydam The high places, hidden regions and furtive corners of Bagd on-the-Subway. "Will Irwin knows his New York, loved understands it." — N. Y. Evening Post. "He knows his city i has written well of it." — Knickerbocker Press. A beautifl illustrated gift book. $6.00. FATHER MISSISSIPPI By LYLE SAXON "A vivid yet balanced knowledge of what the river did and 1 and why it did it." — N. Y. Tunes. "A particularly brilliant able picture of this mighty river in its good and bad moods Illinois State Journal. "The author knows his river." — Amer "No phase of the glamorous story is overlooked." — IVilminc News. "Every American should read this book." — Los Ang Saturday Night. Illustrated. $5.00. THE CENTURY CO. Publishers of Enduring Bo< At all booksellers. Illustrated, $5.00 GEOR The woman who, as Heine revered, is presented as a n reverse the traditional jud; "Our time has found its pe: wise, charming, whimsical by Published by THE J( When writing to advertisers please mention The Nation

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I Dec. 21, 1927] The Nation 709 hable Qift WIT AND WISDOM.'— Upton Sinclair h x A S T M A N ami frustrated characters, it is i gay and exciting story about I into trouble on all sides. Real ght it was, but he doesn't give I k ends. 2-5° TH AVENUE — NEW YORK II AMERICA by Hendrik Van Loon Author of THE STORY OF MANKIND "There is no resisting its jolly flings, or its dra- matic word paintings of men and their ways." William MacDonald, The Nation. "It is a noble and a wise book— thought-provoking, enter- ning." Walter Yust, Philadelphia Ledger. 2nd large edition. Octavo. With more than 100 illustrations by the author. $5.00 Y LIFE by Isadora Duncan She finished this book just before her tragic death. It is the most intimate book ever writ- ten by a woman ; it has the frankness and courage that only a great mind is capable of. It is worth vol- umes on the psychology of genius, and it is absorbing and inspiring for it is the story of one of the most in- telligently adventurous and, in some ways, the most fateful lives literature has record of. Octavo. Illustrated. $5.00 GOOD BOOKS : BONI & LIVERIGHT, N. Y. SAND The Search For Love rorld on fire," who was ridiculed, loved, hated and born a century too soon in a book which promises to character. r of George Sand in Marie Jenney Howe . . . this x>k."— Floyd Dell. I JENNEY HOWE COMPANY, 25 West 45th St., New York The Art Book of 1927 GEORGE W. BELLOWS HIS LITHOGRAPHS With an Introduction by Thomas Beer An art book for every American as well as every lover of the graphic arts. The fruit of nearly three years' devoted collabora- tion, it exceeds the hopes of even those who have worked most faithfully toward its production. Here, for the first time, are repro- duced all the one hundred ninety-five lithographs of Bellows, from "A Stag at Sharkey's," known to thousands who never bought a picture or entered an art gallery, to "The Last Count," from the one copy in existence. Here, for the collector of Bellows litho- graphs, is an authoritative and definitive index, soundly, beautifully made. Here, for the rest of us who cannot afford to be collectors, are superb reproductions of all the lithographs that we have coveted. Here is, incidentally, the first edition of a brilliant piece of critical-biographical writing by the author of The Mauve Decade. And here, for any who have overlooked the most vigorous of modern American realists, is a revelation which will seem almost too exciting to be real. Quarto, bound in natural linen stamped in black, with gilt top; contained in a slide. Printed on Dejonge Art Mat; the text set in Poliphilus. $15.00 AT ALL BOOK AND MANY ART SHOPS Alfred A. Knopf Publisher, N. Y. JULIUS CAESAR AND THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME By Victor Thaddeus "The author, with the honest vision of the historian, sees the true demagoguery and debauchery of the epoch. In a prose as lucid and powerful as anything the great Julius wrote, he gives us Caesar the bandit- adventurer. Few biographies are more authentic or more fascinating. The times live for us; the man is re-created." — (The Jewish Forum.) A 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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710 The Nation [Vol. 125. No. 3259 Maine's Water-Power Fight By EARL SPARLING Portland, Novembi i FOR two years Samuel Insull, the Chicago power and political magnate, has been battling in Maine for what is called the greatest water-power prize in New Eng- land. Mr. Insull did not start the quarrel. He only in- herited it. But the voters of Maine, of whom there are still a few, are beginning to realize just what that means. The voters were asked with some ceremony on Octo- ber 18 last to vote their voting privilege into limbo. The irony of the request did not go unnoticed. About 30 per cent of the voting population reported to the polls, and the proposed abolition of the State's direct-primary system was defeated by a vote of something like two to one. The attack on the primary system was waged by poli- ticians known to be favorable to the power interests. Mr. Insull personally kept out of the picture, but the attack was applauded by his lieutenants in Maine. From the nation as a whole, not. to mention the 70 per cent of Maine voters who remained at home with the cider, the referen- dum received an enthusiastic inattention. But lack of audience is not always indication of a poor show. Behind Maine's referendum lies one of the most interesting politi- cal upheavals since the rise of what Dr. Charles A. Beard refers to as American civilization. Since 1917 a small group of men in Maine have battled furiously to protect the State's title to its hydro-electric resources. Originally two questions were involved: one, whether power companies should be allowed to ship hydro- electricity out of the State ; two, whether the State should retain title to its few remaining lake reservoirs. More recently has arisen the more important question of whether Maine's great wealth of water-power should not be used primrrily to give Maine people electricity at the lowest cost possible. The latter question is tending to become paramount since the advent two months ago of the Portland Evening News, a new paper independent of the power in- terests and edited by Dr. E. H. Gruening. Maine is thus today one of the chief battle-fields in the rapidly developing national war for cheaper electricity. The Maine power fight actually started in 1909, but it gathered momentum after Mr. Insull began to buy up Maine power properties two years ago. Mr. Insull today controls companies reputed to own two-thirds of the State's total developed water-power. And today the Republican Party in Maine is divided into two opposing camps. The fight for and against the primary has been one of the chief results of this split. Percival P. Baxter, then a State legislator, got on the Maine statute-books in 1909 a law prohibiting exportation of Maine's hydro-electricity, on the theory that, if kept in the State, the power would attract industries which other- wise might settle elsewhere. The law caused little trouble at first, but when Baxter, after eight years in retirement, returned to the legislature in 1917 and took steps to strengthen the prohibition or exportation, the war was on. Baxter's new proposal was that every power-company charter granted by the State should carry a clause prohibit- ing each company specifically from exportation. A State-wide advertising campaign, in which thousands of dollars were spent, was opened the next year by sixteen associated power companies and large power users, the hitter being paper companies directly interested in power development. The apparent purpose of the advertising cam- paign, according to Baxter, was to defeat reelection of him- self and his associates and "thus forever end water-power discussion." From that day to this water-power has been inextricably involved in Maine politics. The fight led Baxter from the lower house to the State Senate and thence to the governor's chair, and as he rose he became more and more determined. As Governor he elabor- ated his program by proposing in 1923 that a valuable dam site on the Kennebec River be not deeded in perpetuity to the power companies but leased for an annual rental. The legislature had passed a bill deeding the site as usual. Bax- ter vetoed the bill. The legislature repassed it over his veto. The Governor carried his fight to the people, calling a ref- erendum on the issue. The legislature backed down, repeal- ing the bill before the referendum could be had, which was at least one time that the power of the voters stood directly in the way of the power companies. Samuel Insull, through his Middle West Utilities Com- pany, a great holding organization, entered Maine just about the time Baxter was retiring from the governorship. Baxter was succeeded at Augusta by Ralph O. Brewster, who as a State Senator had opposed the wishes of the power owners just as consistently. Brewster had been elected only after a bitter campaign and a recount of the votes. Soon after Governor Brewster took office a petition was presented for a referendum on the abolition of the direct- primary system. The legislature passed it to Brewster who promptly threw it out, alleging that it contained some 4,000 questionable signatures. The petition had been circulated by Fred O'Connell, a Republican leader who was later to work strenuously to elect Arthur R. Gould, a power- company owner, to the United States Senate. Baxter announced his candidacy for the United States Senate in 1926 and Brewster ran for reelection to the gov- ernorship. Things looked bad for the power owners in Maine. Brewster was successful. Baxter was not. Baxter was defeated for the Republican nomination by Arthur R. Gould but even in victory the direct primary proved an embarrassing institution. Hardly were the congratulations over before Governor Brewster charged officially that from $50,000 to $100,000 had been spent illegally in Gould's behalf. The direct- primary law limits expenditures to $1,500. Brewster's allega- tion still stands despite a subsequent State hearing which exonerated the Gould organization. It is common talk in Maine that Brewster considered that hearing to have been a farce and that he has a wealth of evidence to present to any United States Senate committee that cares to investigate the matter. Events came fast in 1927. J. Martin Insull, brother of Samuel, broadcast through the State that the Insull organization stood ready to invest $50,000,000 in Maine should the exportation measure be repealed. The State

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Dec. 21, 1927] The Nation 711 legislature passed a bill for a referendum on the matter. Brewster used his veto. And to make matters worse, the power companies felt it necessary at last, after four years of discussion, to accept a lease on the Kennebec River dam site instead of the desired deed. Then came a double attack on the primary law. Rep- resentative Robert Hale introduced in the legislature a bill to modify the $l,500-campaign-fund law and allow candi- dates to spend money for newspaper advertising without limit. O'Connell introduced a new petition for a referen- dum on abolition of the primary. Hale is a member of a Portland law firm, the head of which is president of the Insull company in Portland. O'Connell was apparently unconnected with the power interests except that he had worked strenuously to elect Gould, his fellow-townsman, to the United States Senate. O'Connell, however, soon took a back seat in the primary attack. An organization was formed to work toward abolition of the primary. The president of this organization was former Governor William T. Cobb, who had been in charge of the power-company advertising campaign in 1918. One of the vice-presidents was Mrs. Guy P. Gannett, wife of the largest newspaper publisher in Maine. Gannett owns or controls four out of Maine's eleven daily newspapers. His morning and afternoon publications in Portland were with- out opposition until the arrival of Dr. Gruening and the Portland Evening Nezvs. Gannett was formerly a large power owner and sold his common stock in the Central Maine Power Company to Insull in 1925. Whether Gannett still owns any other power-company stock is not known, but he is still a banking partner of Walter A. Wyman, presi- dent of the Central Maine Power Company and Insull's chief lieutenant in all New England. Needless to say, Gannett's newspapers worked strenuously for the abolition of the primary. The primary was saved mainly because of the efforts of Dr. Gruening's Evening News and of Brewster and Baxter. These two men stumped the State to save the primary. And the end is not yet. Both have aspirations for the United States Senate. Both view Mr. Insull with alarm and the feeling is probably mutual. They seek [says Baxter] to use our natural resources as a link in the great chain they are forging to control the electric industry from the Atlantic to the Mississippi, from the Canada line to the Ohio River. The methods used by the Insull interests have been disclosed in the United States Senatorial primary in Illinois, in which, according to the newspapers, Mr. Insull admitted having expended upwards of $125,000 to nominate his favorite. Out of it all Maine people may get cheaper electricity. Undeveloped resources in the State represent about two- thirds of the undeveloped water-power in all New England. Maine people are beginning to wonder why this wealth of water-power has not resulted in lower costs for electricity. They are beginning to wonder why, if the Insull interests are willing to transmit Maine power to Massachusetts with all the expense that involves, they are not able to sell the power far more cheaply in Maine. With electricity a looming issue in the coming Con- gress, the upheaval in Maine is one of the most important phenomena in the land. For one member of Congress it is especially important. It has reopened the embarrassing question of just how Senator Arthur R. Gould managed to get there. In the Driftway TAMMANY Hall on Fourteenth Street has been sold, and the sachems of the metropolis are to hold their powwows in a new meeting-place the location of which, at this writing, is not known to the Drifter. The old Wigwam which for sixty years has been the center of New York's political life — whose walls keep the secrets of Tweed, Croker, Murphy, and lesser bosses — is to be torn down or made over into a business building. THE abandonment of Tammany Hall about completes the dismantling of what was once one of the smartest and most important streets in New York. Tammany Hall's near neighbor, the Academy of Music — full of historic as- sociations— was recently sold for business and the old Van Buren house, farther west, has suffered a similar fate. A few stores of substantial reputation still remain on the thoroughfare, but they are lost among dingy buildings hous- ing even dingier business. Garish lights in shop windows call attention to displays of cheap gewgaws inside, but the life fled from the street years ago. * * * * * THE Drifter has no space to recall here the history of Tammany Hall or of Fourteenth Street, to write of the dead glories of Koster and Bial's or Tony Pastor's amusement halls, to remind his readers of what Union Square used to be. It is enough to note that the former editorial offices of the Century Company, on the north side of the square, are now lost among the foreign-name signs of the wholesale textile trade, while the old Tiffany build- ing on the west — once the glittering mecca of the wealthiest Christmas shoppers — is the home of the Amalgamated Cloth- ing Workers. When the Drifter first knew Fourteenth Street, more than twenty years ago, it was the southern outpost of the department-store trade by day and of the Tender- loin by night. Department stores lined Sixth Avenue from Fourteenth to Twenty-third Street in an almost unbroken phalanx of sober dignity. Crowds jammed tli.1 sidewalks all day. At night another crowd paraded Fourteenth Street from Union Square to Third Avenue along a highway bright with lights and filled with strident music from a score of dance halls and saloons. THE Drifter's own most vivid memory of Tammany Hall is of one Election Day night when he was sent there to cover the news by a New York newspaper for which he was working. The returns were slow and the Wigwam was dull. So the Drifter strolled across the street and was standing on the sidewalk in front of Tom Sharkey's then famous saloon. The crowd was dense and presently a boun- cer for Sharkey's place told the Drifter, in scarcely polite tones, to move on. In even less polite tones the Drifter asked the bouncer if he owned the sidewalk. A strong right arm flashed out and a second later the Drifter rose from a heap in the street some ten feet away. He didn't approach that right arm again. Instead he sought a police- man and made a charge of assault. The policeman eyed the Drifter critically, and then: "I don't see no mark on yer face," said the majesty of the law. "I won't arrest no- body fer assault on a night like this without he leaves a mark on the other fella's face." The Drifter

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712 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3259 Correspondence Al Smith To the Editor ok The Nation: SIR: Mr. Villard paints an interesting and attractive pic- ture of a man for whom many will be glad to vote. But he says: "As for the prohibition issue, Governor Smith must tell the public exactly where he will stand if elected, whether . . . he will determinedly uphold the Eighteenth Amendment." lias not his conduct already answered that question? Has he not advocated the repeal of the New York enforcement law? Had he not more to do with the repeal of these laws than any one else? If, as Governor of New York, he would nullify the United States Constitution, what would he do as President? By what sophistry can a Governor say "I will uphold the con- stitution of my State but not the Constitution of the United States; I will have repealed the laws of my State which help to uphold the Constitution of the nation, so that I will have no prohibition laws to enforce and my conscience will be clear; if ever I am a candidate for President I will assure the voters that I will enforce the laws, if elected"? If the whole nation were as thirsty and as lawless as New York, Governor Smith might be elected President, but the West and Middle West do not want a "wet" President. Columbus, Ohio, December 5 Frank M. Raymond To the Editor of The Nation : Sir: Mr. Villard's portrait of Al Smith, while true in most details is misleading in its total effect because of serious omissions and still more because of wrong proportions. Gov- ernor Smith is an able and attractive man who kno ;s the busi- ness of New York State inside out. If progr-essivism means anything he is not entitled to progressive leadership. In two paragraphs near the end of his article Mr. Villard makes ad- missions which prove that fact and for the thoughtful reader quite counteract the panegyrics of the preceding pages. He is an extraordinary national progressive leader who has no na- tional program, no real political philosophy, no fierce indigna- tion at the election frauds of his own political organization, and no hostility toward or from Wall Street. Moreover there are some important facts that Mr. Villard does not record. Governor Smith was pledged to the hilt to the ratification of the child-labor amendment. So was his party. Yet under pressure of the opinion of leaders of his own church and of the Protestant Democratic South he side-steppc ratification issue by one of the neatest political maneuvers in recent times. Only recently he delighted the heart of the big bankers by coming out for the abolition of the federal inheri- tance tax in 1931. Now look at State affairs. Governor Smith's celebrated housing program has so far been a complete failure for reasons which have little to do with the omission of the housing-bank feature to which Mr. Villard refers. While, especially in his earlier years, he has formally declared for many progressive measures he has fought only for his water-power law and for certain rather routine welfare measures. His water-power pro- gram is weak because it does not deal adequately with the dis- tribution of power after it is generated. He has led no real fight on the injunction evil and his recommendations on that issue have been better calculated to catch labor votes than to get results. Mr. Villard quotes the Governor's rather ancient 1920 declaration for municipal operation of public utilities. In spite of that declaration the Goverr^r is pretty generally re- garded in investment circles as more friendly to the New York transit companies than Mayor Walker is at present. Some of his closest political friends, for example Lewis Nixon, whom he once made a public service commissioner, and Dr. Berry, the present comptroller of New York City, have opposed munici- pal operation of subways and the five-cent fares. Now in spite of these facts one may be enthusiastic for Al Smith, but it will not be because he is a progressive. It is a sad commentary on the lack of faith among the alleged pro- gressives that they are so willing to accept the Governor's rec- ord for administrative ability' and his somewhat spotted liber- alism as sufficient qualifications for a leader. The truth of the matter is that men love or hate Al Smith without much refer- ence to his stand on economic matters because of the interest theyr feel in the three R's of present-day American politics — rum, race, and religion. On these issues I understand the sup- port for Governor Smith and even feel some sympathy with it. But even if I were a progressive rather than a Socialist I do not believe I should forget my progressivism in my excitement about these three R's. Nor should I inconsistently give Gov- ernor Smith credit for all the "reformed" Tammany's dubious virtues while holding him innocent of all responsibility for the unpunished milk scandals, Jimmy Walker's very suspicious bus- franchise awards, the Queensborough sewer graft, the degrada- tion of the city judiciary, and the frauds of the last election, as bad as the worst efforts in Philadelphia and Chicago. Netv York, December 6 Norman Thomas To the Editor of The Nation : Sir: Mr. Villard's incisive, objective study of Al Smith as a Presidential possibility is by far the ablest I have read. But those of us who have followed Mr. Smith's public career from its inception as a member of the New York State Legislature in 1903 and have seen him approach and fearlessly solve the questions of social legislation, of tax reform, of admin- istrative and bureaucratic changes, with an open, yea, even an unprepared mind, find in his lack of both training and views on the subject of foreign affairs one of the greatest assets he pos- sesses as a Presidential possibility. When we view the history of international affairs that led to the Great War and its unhappy sequels, we must reach the determination that what a public man, especially one in the office of President of the United States, needs most of all at the present time, in guiding him in dealing with other nations, is a total lack of predetermined opinion. The type of training which has hei-etofore been most char- acteristic of statesmen, consisting primarily in a knowledge of diplomatic niceties, of international finance, and of hackneyed legal phraseology^, Al Smith is better off for not possessing. Al Smith, in his work on the factory commission and on the commission to inquire into the subject of widows' pensions, on which body' I had the honor to serve with him, brought about greater social reforms through legislation than had been known in any State of the Union; in his labors as a delegate to the Constitutional Convention of 1915 he grasped clearly the need for administrative reorganization of the government of our State; in his subsequent work as Governor of the State of New York he has been able to breathe the spirit of humanity into the interpretation of the financial statements of our State govern- ment; and he will unquestionably approach international affairs in the same human, progressive, and socially minded spirit that has characterized all his efforts of almost a quarter of a century. Voltaire once aptly declared that "we care most for those portraits in which we find ourselves." It might be similarly said of Al Smith that we care most for him because in him we find the same lack of cant, of hypocrisy, and of an irrational adherence to the status quo that are characteristic of the plain peoples of the world, combined with that extraordinary common sense that has been the guiding light in all his deliberations. The United States, which has come to be the strongest World Power, economically, that civilization has ever known, with a distaste for both militarism and imperialism, can well find leadership in its effort to humanize international relations, in the militant and virile, yet unfettered mentality of Al Smith. New York, December 7 William Irving Sirovich, Member of Congress, Fourteenth Congressional District, New York

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Books, Art, Plays Introduction By CHARLES A. WAGNER The hard limbs of the trees Are rocking in a yellow hammock Deeper than the summer sky. Walk with me and talk with me. You were a grain of space Searching the rock of a brown continent. Your limbs are made softer by a syrup of rebellion Encircling your shining phrases and brittle words. Walk with me and talk with me. Tell me who you are and why our hands are warm And how many times the stars have pulled at your dresses. Born in fire we die in fire And in between is fire also. I am sun, sin, and song And that is my name and address. I weigh twenty centuries, and my height Is a circle that goes up at my head And returns to my feet through this park pavement. Long ago I married two eyes and a mouth. One eye was the sun, the other the moon, And the mouth I married was the lightning That slit the heavens into lavender ribbons And blackened the earth with fear. Walk with me and talk with me, It can do no harm, and I can whisper How beautiful you are. First Glance THE best thing said for Blake in this year of his cen- tenary is said by himself in a complete edition of his prose and verse which can be dropped into an overcoat pocket. The Nonesuch Press has condensed its bulky and expensive "Blake," edited with exhaustive care by Geoffrey Keynes, into a single volume of 1,140 thin pages (Random House: $5) — and this by sacrificing none of the material. The variorum apparatus is gone, but all of Blake now known to exist is here. The curious reader has in a com- pact and graceful book the lyrical poems, the prophetic books, the "Descriptive Catalogue" and other documents re- lating to Blake's exhibits, the miscellaneous prose, the epi- grams and fragments, the letters, and the marginal com- ments on Lavater, Swedenborg, Bacon, Berkeley, Words- worth, and Reynolds. Few publications have been more needed or more welcome than this one which Mr. Keynes in his preface calls "a sufficient monument" to Blake as poet and philosopher. There is now a volume in Everyman's Library (Dutton: eighty cents) which contains almost all of Blake that the average reader would want. When this reader wants more he has Mr. Keynes to go to. The pity is that the average reader has little or no chance to see Blake's texts as in many cases Blake intended them to be seen — as integral portions of engraved designs. His famous method of "illuminated printing" was to etch both text and design in relief on copper and to color the prints of each page by hand. The result was something which it is indeed no esotericism to define as indispensable to a knowledge of Blake. Blake definitely conceived his words as pictures, his pictures as words, and only one who has never seen an example of the illuminated books will deny their importance. Naturally the copies that have survived from Blake's own hand are few and widely scattered among the collectors of the world. But this year of the centenary has seen some attempts at fascimile. Earlier in the season the "Songs of Innocence" and the "Songs of Experience" were reproduced in a limited edition in England. And now come 300 copies to America of "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, reproduced in facsimile from an original copy of the work in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge," with a note by Max Plowman (Dutton: $10). It is a book not only to own and display but to read. For the passion of these satanic proverbs ("The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom;" "Prudence is a rich ugly old maid courted by incapacity;" "He who desires but acts not breeds pestilence") and the terrible annunciation of this poetry — Now the sneaking serpent walks In mild humility, And the just man rages in the wilds Where lions roam . . . have thrice their old effect when come upon in pages illumi- nated by Blake's hand and by his glory-hunted brain. The only pity, as I have said, is that more than 300 Americans cannot see Mr. Plowman's edition. Mark Van Doren A Tale for Children A History of the American Drama. From the Civil War to the Present Day. By Arthur Hobson Quinn. Two volumes. Harper and Brothers. $10. T T AVING published some time ago a one-volume history of * *■ our drama from its beginnings to the Civil War, Professor Quinn now completes the story with two volumes more. He is one of the ablest of the small group of scholars who have de- voted themselves to the rather barren field of American dramatic literature, he has shown an indefatigable industry in rummag- ing for the manuscripts of unpublished plays, and by confining himself rather strictly to dramatic literature as distinguished from stage history he has managed to achieve a fairly com- plete account within reasonable limits. Here, in a word, is somewhat more than most people will care to know about the plays which have delighted audiences from the time of our fathers down to the present day; and the record is one, it must be confessed, which is vastly depressing. Professor Quinn himself is gifted with that tolerant ca- tholicity of Laste which is doubtless necessary to sustain any- one who has made a heroic resolution to devote his life to a critical study of thii-d-rate works of art; and he sees the his- tory of the American drama in terms of a "progress." James A. Hearn marks an advance in reausm; Clyde Fitch in delicacy of perception; William Vaughn Moody in depth of feeling. And so, in a sense, they do. But an advance, alas, over what? Over nothing except the incredible artificiality, obtuseness, and superficiality of their predecessors. It is only in comparison with midgets that they can be made to seem gigantic, and though they were great men in our theater they would have been great men nowhere else. The best of them is supremely unimportant when thought of in connection with any first-rate writer, and the sad fact remains that less intelligence, less sensitivity, and less sincerity of purpose have gone to the mak-

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714 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3259 ing of our native drama than have gone into any other Ameri- can enterprise except the movies. With the exception of a few- plays written within the last fifteen years there is not a single one of our dramatic "masterpieces" which does not seem pain- fully tawdry in comparison with any of a score of American novels or essays written during the nineteenth century, and there never was a time when a considerable proportion of the audience in any first-class theater was not intellectually su- perior to the fare it was offered — when, that is to say, it did not read books reflecting vastly maturer views of life than any it saw presented upon the stage. In the Autobiography of a Play, a well-known essay by Bronson Howard, that skilful purveyor to the popular taste of his time described how one of his dramas was constructed. Professor Quinn quotes several pages from it, apparently with approval, and since Howard exposed with masterful clarity lethods of the stage carpenter he may be used here to - how why most American drama has been contemptible. In the course of the essay Howard explains just why each event in his play was made to occur as it did, but one quotation will be sufficient to reveal his method. A play must be [lie says] in one way or another "sat;s- factory" to the audience. ... In England and America the death of a pure woman on the stage is not "satisfactory" except when the play rises to the dignity of tragedy. The death, in an ordinary play, of a woman who is not pure. as in the ease of "1 rou-Frou," is perfectly satisfactory, for the reason that it is inevitable. . . . The wife who has once taken the step from purity to impurity can never reinstate herself in the world of art on this side of the grave; and so an audience looks with complacent tears on the death of an erring woman. But Lillian had not taken the one fatal step which would have recom led an audience to her death. She was still pure, and everyone left the theater wishing she had lived. I yielded there- fore to the sound logic, based on suund dramatic princi- ple, of my New York manager Mr. A. AI. Palmer, and the piece was alt' red. Now of course Howard was right so far as his elementary principle is concerned. Not only every play but every other work of art must be in some sense "satisfactory" to its audi- ence and must be so not merely for the commercial reason that it will have no audience if it is not, but because the power of art t> make things — even painful things — "satisfactory" is the power by which it constitutes itself art. But the things which are "satisfactory" to a mature intelligence are not the same as those which are "satisfactory" to a child. Conclusions other than that in which the prince and the princess live happily ever after become acceptable to us. We learn to perceive har- monies where an undeveloped sensitivity would find only dis- cord; wisdom and experience teach us to perceive, for ex; the patterns which irony can make and we crow up to tr We become sick of hearing the same few major chords end- lessly strummed and we ask that the artist shall perceive the infinite variety of life and that, as we grow more and more aware of its dissonances, he shall keep pace with our needs by more and more subtle resolutions into the harmony of art. Every great dramatist, like every great artist of any kind, is consciously or unconsciously aware of this fact, and his effort is not so much to alter his material until it can be made to fit the already existing emotional patterns as it is to make new patterns by means of which his material can become "satisfactory." Bronson Howard did not, of course, invent the method he described; he merely formulated the principles underlying the practice of the American dramatist. ,nd thus unwillingly ex- posed the reason why neither he nor any of his fellows ever wrote a play which any critics of literature can respect. He boasted of his skill in perpetuating emotional cliches — "the wife who has once taken the step from purity to impurity can never reinstate herself in the world of art on this side of the grave" when even the man in the street was already outgrowing them. According to his professed principles the art of playwriting is not the art of rendering life as we know it "satisfactory" but merely the art of constructing fables according to the prin- ciples of child-psychology. All through the nineteenth century the American dramatist was telling nursery tales to a people which was beginning to grow up in spite of its theater, and that is the reason there is no history of the American drama really worth the telling. Joseph Wood Krutck Horace Porter .4/? American Soldier and Diplomat: Horace Porter. By Elsie Porter Meade in Collaboration with Henry Greenleaf Pear- son. Frederick A. Stokes Company. S3. HORACE PORTER was one of the fine group of West Pointers, graduated just before the Civil War, to whom came honors and the playing of great roles while they were in their early twenties. Porter, a member of a distinguished Pennsylvania family, was seized upon for staff duty as soon as he was allowed to leave Watervliet Arsenal where he was on ordnance duty when hostilities began. Trained officers were scarce, and so Porter became chief of ordnance of McClellan's armies in July, 1S62, when twenty-five years old. Later he served as aide to General Rosecrans and in 1864 to Gen- eral Grant himself, whose favorite staff officer and most devoted friend he soon became. At Chickamauga, Porter had displayed the highest personal heroism in trying to rally the disorganized Union troops, which act was witnessed and reported by the Assistant Secretary of War, Charles A. Dana. With Grant he took part in all the terrible battles of the Wilderness in the complete confidence of his chief, and he was one of the fortu- nate group of officers who were with Grant in the McLean House at Appomattox when Lee surrendered his army to Grant — suiely one of the greatest moments in American history. General Porter remained with General Grant as his aide even when he became President, and did not resign from the army until 1872, late enough to have shared some of the glories and some of the scandals of Grant's first Administration. There- after he went into business, becoming in 1896 the first Ameri- can ambassador to France where he served with distinction for eight years, doing useful service for the Administration in favorably influencing the French government during the most needless of wars — our struggle with Spain in 1898. All of this story is remarkably well told by the joint authors of this volume — especially the Civil War episodes, which are often vividly and movingly portrayed. Mrs. Meade has kept well within bounds her justifiable admiration of her father, and Professor Pearson has added the scholarly touch to be expected of one of his experience in biographical writ- ing. To him, we presume, goes also the credit for the valuable notes and index. Notably well done is the touching picture of General Grant in his last days as seen through the eyes of a young girl, the bowed and broken and bankrupt ex-President, stricken by the fatal malady, yet pushing his pencil over pad after pad to write those admirable memoirs which went so far to rehabilitate the family fortune or at least to pay off debts. In those days General Porter was his old chief's staunchest friend and helped, with General Badeau, in collecting the ma- terial for Grant's narrative. Horace Porter was a handsome man of superb carriage, a public speaker of great ability who concealed under a some- what austere presence, humor, affability, and shrewd observa- tion. Politically he was wedded to the Republican Party and through his business affiliations to the type of government represented by McKinley and Hanna. On the subject of war and peace he blew hot and cold. A delegate to the Hague Con- ference in 1899, he raged at the idiocies of the professional diplomats and said : "If some of those fellows at the Hague had been through four years of battles like the Wilderness and Cold Harbor they'd be mighty anxious to stop war at any cost."

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Dec. 21, 1927] The Nation 715 Yet he was inconsistent enough himself — and admitted the incon- sistency— to be both president of the belligerent militaristic Navy League and a vice-president of the Andrew Carnegie Peace Society. When the World War came on he completely forgot his great leader's "Let us have peace," which he had had chiseled on Grant's tomb (for the completion of which General Porter deserved all the credit), and threw himself into the pre- paredness campaign, believing in those greatest of delusions that armaments ward off war and that war can cure war. Nevertheless General Porter was a striking type of his class and period. This biography thoroughly deserves its place with those of the other loaders of the armies of the republic. Oswald Garrison Villard Without Benefit of Rotary The Promised Land. Translated from the Polish of Ladislas Reymont by M. H. Dziewicki. Alfred A. Knopf. Two vol- umes. $5. LODZ, the Manchester of Poland, is the setting of Reymont's newly translated novel. The setting is interesting enough. By X-raying the factual outlines of it hidden under heavy layers of paint in Reymont's overcolored work, and by duly discounting the author's naively unconscious racial prepossessions, one can reconstruct for oneself a laissez-faire society beside which its nineteenth-century English original seems like a Home for the Aged. There is no doubt left but that the Lodz of that period was sadly in need of Rotary and the Application of the Golden Rule to Business. But such a reading of the book would be in the nature of research. Purely as fiction the work is tedious when not outright laughable. Imagine Elinor Glyn and Michael Gold in collaboration — the former doing the love scenes, the latter writing up the factories. The former providing such passages as: "Oh, how I have dreamed of this moment! For how many months have I longed for you! For how many years have I waited — waited in sorrow! Oh, kiss me — kiss me with all your might and main! — Ah," she cried wildly, "I'd willingly die this very instant!" The latter providing the emotions of a foreman on beholding the remains of a worker that was crushed to a pulp in the machinery: He, seeing the workers idle and crowding around the remains, cried out from the doorway: "Back to the ma- chines. . . . Confound it! So much good stuff spoiled!" The foreman cursed at the sight of the percale goods spotted with gore. With equally bold strokes does he draw his chief protag- onists, the Jews, Poles, and Germans who form the industrial aristocracy of the mill town — particularly the Jews and the Poles. Not that the author is intentionally anti-semitic. But he accepts it as one accepts a law of nature that Jews are uncon- scionable knaves — mean, cowardly, avaricious, and generally in- capable of any other pursuit in life than that of amassing wealth; whereas the Poles are hopelessly honest, noble-minded, generous, and incurable idealists. Daringly and iconoclastically the author tries to break through these axiomatic limitations in an effort to achieve psychological originality for his characters, but his efforts are foredoomed to failure. He makes of his Polish hero, Charles Boroviecki, a ruthless careerist, a close rival to his treacherous Jewish partner in his villainy, letting neither love nor honor stand in his way of achieving a fortune. One who deserts the high-born Polish sweetheart of his youth, embezzles her dowry, and finally marries the daughter of a boorish German mill-owner for her millions. One who, when confronted by the frantic husband of the beautiful Jewess with whom he is carrying on an amour, swears without compunction on the sacred image of the Virgin of Chenstohova that the child she is bearing is not his. But somehow his avarice and his duplicity do not ring true. Because all the time we know he is a Pole, and of course incapable of such things. We sus- pend judgment; and sure enough, after he has acquired his mil- lions he repents and signifies his intention of building a Home for Workers' Children. On the other hand, the only Jewish character in the novel who succeeds in developing a soul is flatly accused of being Polish by her mercenary Jewish suitor. "The Promised Land" is an early work and it may be un- fair to judge the author of "The Peasants" by it. It seems to me, however, that its weaknesses are not mere immaturities, but Reymont's intrinsic limitations. Neither in this work nor in the work which won him the Nobel Prize is there exhibited any feel- ing for psychologic contour. He wrote when Poland was politi- cally still a part of Russia, but if he is representative of Polish literature, it would seem that Poland had little to do with Rus- sia artistically. Unlike his fellow-Slavs, whose characters spring full-grown on the first page so that the reader knows them intimately long before he learns to pronounce their names, Rey- mont lets his people remain for hundreds of pages mere bizarre typographic arrangements. If he has any affinity with a Rus- sian, it is with the painter Verestchagin, with his vast landscapes peopled with dramatic tableaux. On the huge outdoor canvas on which "The Peasants" is painted, individuals merge naturally and inconspicuously into the landscape. "The Peasants" was an epic of the soil in which Fall, Winter, Spring, and Summer were the principal characters; there Reymont's descriptive power showed to advantage. In the urban background of "The Prom- ised Land," where the landscape is psychological, he is at his worst. Alter Brody Three Poets The Pale Woman. By Sara Bard Field. William Edwin Rudge. $4. The Evergreen Tree. By Kathleen Millay. Boni & Liveright. $2. Happy Ending. By Louise Imogen Guiney. Houghton Miffiin Company. $2.50. THE minor poets in a great phalanx swing valiantly along the highway, each chanting his own justification. Actually the column hardly moves; it is only the few leaders and the laggards who give the illusion of motion. The leaders stand out here as individuals, but the main massed body must be followed as a whole. Its variations merge and almost disappear, as they do in a line of uniformed soldiers who are differentiated by the sunshine on a helmet, the twitching of a muscle, or the dust on a pack. The minor poets have their many variations also: here a man whose song is dulcet, here a man of strident plaints, here one with a thundering basso, there a timid voice with sweet drowned notes in it. We listen; but we listen to the chorus more than to the single voices. The burdens of music are those eternal verities that never cease to move the human heart: love joined, love sundered, death, fortitude, peace, or the color of a violet, the spell of the moon. But these are themes that have been encompassed by the mighty poets; the lesser writer of verse can clasp only a fragment of the whole. It is not that the great masters have said all that can ever be uttered, but that they have left a fusion of truth and form as a tall measuring rod against which each new poetic utterance must stand. So that, when one differentiates among the minor poets, it is again the sun on a helmet or flecks of dust that are seen. Sara Bard Field writes fastidiously, has produced a volume of feminine, sensitive, trite verse. There is about her a coiled bitterness that never unwinds and fully shows itself, a fine thinness and yearning. Her words are incisive whether in a poem like Crescendo, an appealing series of lyrics, or in as brief and simple a quatrain as Load: She is big with child again Though never her body so arrow-slim. The dead are not carried in sight of men! Heavy grows her heart with him.

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716 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3259 "The Evergreen Tree," by Kathleen Millay, is a collection of swift-singing, facile, almost epigrammatic stanzas. Music and sincerity are in these lines, but they are too easily articulate and of too lilting a rhythm to avoid glibness. In contrast, the reprint of "Happy Ending" reveals richly the maturity and mel- lowness and passion of Miss Guiney's work. Here are the intricacy and glow of old tapestry, concrete images compact with beauty, a variety of form, a vitality of spirit. Within a smallest span, In fury, to and fro and round and round, The routed leopards of the lightning ran. Such lines are worth keeping. Out of the featureless ranks of the minor poets Miss Guiney has emerged with a shining loveli- ness and a fragile strength. _ _ _, Lenore G. Marshall Fiction in the Flat A Victim of Circumstances. By George Gissing. Houghton Mifflin Company. $2.50. /^HEKHOV and a few other short-story writers have realized ^ that fiction may distort reality when too great stress is placed upon those moments which men have naively believed are most significant. When people make money, or marry, or divorce, or buy a ticket to Europe, nothing — for the purpose of essential characterization — may be happening. On the other hand, a man trying to read a newspaper in the train might offer to the story-teller a moment which if actually revealed would be valuable indeed for fiction; for such a moment might be much richer in tension, stress, drama, than one more active or more spectacular. George Gissing understood this. And this is the outstanding virtue of the present new collection. It is Gissing's usual defect that he fails to infuse his well- chosen moments with the passion that seems so obviously in- herent in them ; fails to make them yield their own vivid story. If D. H. Lawrence were using some of the situations in these stories (as he might) the people would really love and fight and evade; would live to an emotional limit either for adjust- ment or for tragedy. Four stories recall Mr. Lawrence. In The Schoolmaster's Vision the quiet pedant's flare-up when he sees the beautiful won. an would with Lawrence be a conflagration, as one feels the author meant it to be. The final crystallization of hypocrit- ical pedantry Gissing does exceedingly well; he writes best always of frustrated people. In The Honeymoon there would bitterness of the struggle between the egos of husband and wife; the momentary surrender to sex, and the recurring antagonisms. There would be Lawrence's "blood rhythm," which is probably a good image for suggesting the rhythm of life. Any such implication is lost in Gissing. In Lou and Liz, these two loyal Londoners (both unlicensed mothers) have abun- dant vitality; and Gissing has presented them with more than his usual degree of spirit, insight, even humor. Yet there is still something lacking of convincing reality. Lou and Liz remain shadowy. One remembers Lawrence's Tickets Please, and knows how much Gissing misses of his characters' possi- bilities. And, finally, js s0 , Lawrence's sort of thing than Gissing's. The story tells of Hester's refusal of the man she really desires; of her race in the early morning across London to hold her man at Waterloo Station. The deep motivations (which one feels Gissing hoped to achieve) are lost sight of in the race itself. Comparisons are often neither pertinent nor fair. They are offered here to sustain the cha, ;e that Gissing works in gray, flat, quiet tones. Just how gray and how quiet is clear by comparison with Lawrence. Yet these stories sh^v Gissing as a writer who knew what to choose for fiction even if he lacked the courage or the power to be in his fiction as passion- ate as his characters give him the chance to be. Angus Burrell Books in Brief Journal of Katherine Mansfield. Alfred A. Knopf. $3.50. As a record of tragic suffering and frustration this jour- nal makes almost unendurable reading; the sensation of en- croaching on the privacy of a too sensitive soul is constant and embarrassing. It is only when one forgets Katherine Mans- field's heartrending fate and her bitter recriminations and concentrates on the many fascinating revelations she makes of the artist's temper and the artist's method that one secures from this book anything more than the simple emotions of sorrow and sympathy. Patriots off Their Pedestals. By Paul Wilstach. The Bobbs- Merrill Company. $2.75. This supposedly jolly tome attempts to recount every guf- faw, snort, and snore that eight of the best-known revolution- ary worthies ever let loose. It is based upon the engaging theory that there "actually was a lot of fun in the dear old boys," who, we are informed, are much more inspiring when shown with wrinkled pants than with wrinkled brows. Each depedestaled "old boy" furnishes the material for a fairly strong concoction — the several chapters might well serve as a substitute for home brews — but the book won't do at all for those who like to take their heroes straight. Carlyle at His Zenith (181,8-1853). By David Alec Wilson. E. P. Dutton and Company. $5. The fourth volume of Mr. Wilson's biography covers the period of "Latter-Day Pamphlets," "The Life of John Sterling," and the beginnings of "Frederick the Great." Carlyle is at the height of his powers, but feeling premonitions of age. His fame has attracted a multitude of observers friendly and hostile, with the result that we know him more intimately than in the preceding volumes. Especially clear are the heterodoxy of his private religious views, and the essential democracy of the man- ners and attitudes of this contemner of republicanism. Mr. Wilson is a self-effacing biographer, supplying just sufficient historical background to make intelligible the parodoxes of Carlyle's opinions and actions. Art Jacob Epstein - k A RT should be straightforward," Epstein said one day. ■**• "Even if it is clumsy — that does not matter so much. The worst thing of all is to be slick!" Most of his models have been women, whom he represents with direct and intimate realism. There is nothing slick about those strongly modeled heads. Andrea, Oriel, Meum, Dolores, Zeda, Miriam, Amina — their names read like some pre-Raphaelite choir of the blessed, though doubtless not many of them would aspire to such pious fellowship. Epstein has transformed them into hard-bitten bronze, whose color and texture vary accord- ing to the nature of the portrait. The Mask of Meum, with its subtly curving mouth and eyelids, its slender, decadent purity of line, is in a pale metal, half brassy and half golden. The flowing mold of Andrea — "a model that Ingres would have loved" — shows the brown of old apple-wood, warmly colored as if by centuries. Epstein is interested in these women not as decorative figures, but as expressions in form of mood and character. Thus he avoids the expected nude, preferring to concen- trate upon a head. Even where the figure rises from the waist, as in Zeda or Dolores with ear-rings, the head emerges with an effect of massive climax, weighted like life and charged with personality. The hair falls heavily, or swirls back violently from the face: it is only slightly conventionalized. The eyes are frankly expressive, an unusual thing in sculpture. Due partly

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Dec. 21, 1927] The Nation 717 to the treatment of muscles and eyelids, partly to their set- ting, partly to the deeply cut-in iris, the eyes become a focal point in Epstein's bronzes, just as they do in the human face. The skin is a broken surface, vibrating to the light. The curve of a nostril or the twist of a mouth is accentuated, according as it brings out an essential trait. The asymmetry of human features, a fact ignored in Grecian sculpture, is emphasized by Epstein. His favorite plane is the diagonal one, as in the Gothic arch or the flame-like upward leap of an El Greco painting. Usually he works slowly and deliberately, always with care- ful reference to anatomy and the balance of masses. Formerly he even measured out dimensions with compasses and ruler, but now he says with a smile: "I trust my eye." He studies his models closely, sometimes over a period of years, making from them repeated experiments in form. Several of his most appeal- ing pieces have been done from members of his own family: Peggy-Jean Laughing and Peggy-Jean Asleep; the Mask of Mrs. Epstein or the Head of Mrs. Epstein, with tiers of veiling dropping like stalactites around the downcast face. With pro- fessional models he goes to great pains to secure the ones who interest him and to keep them at hand until he has plumbed their values. A striking instance of that was the Hindu beauty, Amina, and her son, Enver — the kingly little boy of the hooked nose and the Byzantine forehead and eyes. During more than a year Epstein made various portraits of them both, and it was their presence in the studio which gradually suggested the conception for his lovely Madonna and Child. This group was shown for the first time at the Ferargil Galleries, the only monument among a collection of Titanic heads. It is a piece apt to rouse the churchly to wrath or to bewilderment, combining as it does the Earth Mother with the Virgin. The knees flexed and far apart, the immense breadth of hips and shoulders, the sensual richness of the folded draper- ies give a sense of something full and primitive, something far removed from any immaculate conception. It is what Epstein calls a "frontal" work, a mask-like monument made to occupy a niche, and the primitive idea is reinforced by a definite relation to primitive forms in art. The base is wide and elaborately stylized, working upward in triangle form, with a growing agitation in the draperies, to the deeply human heads. Accord- ing to the artist, it was the relation of these two heads that formed the starting-point for the whole complex composition. They are set exactly on a diagonal, a line that is continued in the arm of the Christ-child, outstretched like a narrow branch. It is a composition remarkable for volume and depth, for design and feeling exactly harmonized. Persons who complain of a restlessness pervading much of Epstein's work will find here a satisfying quiet, the sweetness born of strength. This is reli- gious art, in the profoundest and tenderest sense. It conveys an emotion kindred to that in the almost forgotten lines of Hopkins: Because the Holy Ghost over the bent world Broods with warm breast, and with ah! bright wings. Childhood and maternity are subjects that interest Epstein greatly. His male heads, in very dark bronze, are successful for their massive form, their variety of surface, their psycho- logical honesty and acuteness. But the feminine heads, apart from any more obvious attraction, correspond, I believe, to the emotional strain in Epstein and to a certain feminine sweetness in his own nature — das ewig Weibliche in the sense that Goethe intended it. For many people the emotional quality of Epstein is too pronounced, just as it seemed a generation ago in Cezanne and Van Gogh. It is an even more daring thing in sculpture than it was in painting, with the example of the Greeks per- petually before us. It is, in largest measure, the "controversial" element in Epstein's work, and it has been present in him from the beginning. It may be seen in the drawings made by a boy of twenty on Hester Street, to illustrate a volume of Hutchins Hapgood called "The Spirit of the Ghetto." It must have existed in the student working almost without instruction at Julien's in Paris. It persists in the man of forty-five who, without masters or dis- ciples, has evolved through vorticism and abstraction, through distortion and simplification to a sure technique of his own. In one or two of his present-day works, like the Weeping Woman or the slightly overdecorated Eva, the effect of transfixed emo- tion just escapes being grotesque. And yet, whatever the theo- rists may say about "self-contained art" or "abstract form" the bronzes by Epstein — usually built a little over life-size — have an intense vitality that by contrast makes living flesh seem faint and dead. Rose Lee H. L. MENCKEN says:— "Iactually ran until 1:50 last night reading your blasphe- mies. A capital book,you say things that ought to be said, and you do it with powerful directness." about ERNEST BOYD'S OJTERARYi BLASPHEMIES The most modern and most brilliant of the younger crit- ics sweeps theacademic dust from Shakespeare, Milton, Whitman,Hardy,and others. L$3. HARPER & BROTHERS i NATION "ADS" are seen, read, and responded to. Do You Want the Right Gift For Your Child? H Toys and books selected to meet the psycho- logical need of children of various ages. H Blocks and constructive play material our specialty. (1 Worthwhile gift boxes arranged. Mail and telephone orders given careful atten- tion. J Open Saturday afternoons. Children's Book and Play Service 235 Fourth Avenue Gramercy 5583 LUDWIG LEWISOHN DISTINGUISHES HIMSELF AGAIN IN CITIES and MEN Culture: the eternal, individual human voice — Goethe's' 'Gab mir ein Gott zu sagen was ich leide." liarbarismf'The epic, objective, anonymous, balladesque that rests upon uniformity, law and rule." A brilliant book that challenges as well as charms — a real con- tribution to the criticism of modern thought. £2.50 HARPER & BROTHERS When writing to advertisers please mention The Nation

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718 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3259 A Drama Poet Laureate T least since the days of J. M. Synge and his "Playboy" the rising Irish dramatist has been expected to prove his worth by demonstrating his ability to provoke a riot. The theatergoers of Dublin are a patriotic lot and they like to applaud any ringing rhetorical tribute to the beauty of old Ireland; but as everybody knows patriotism can never he fully expressed except in a fight, and the Irish playwright who really wishes to endear himself to his people will not fail to give oc- casion for that exhilarating exercise. If one of his first nights is signalized by vigorous boos and a reasonable number of bloody threats we may confidently speak of his "promise," but if the missiles actually fly and a few broken heads are the fruit of the evening then the lucky author is a made man. Italy crowns her poets with laurel, Ireland with brick-bats. Sean O'Casey, once a member of the Citizens' Army and now the brightest particular star in the dramatic firmament of the North, rose to fame in the usual way. The first two of his plays to attract attention — "The Shadow of a Gunman" and "Juno and the Paycock" — were the occasion of no more than somewhat heated discussion but "The Plow and the Stars" (February, 192fi) had a real Irish success. When the third act began twenty women rushed from the pit to the stalls and two of them succeeded in reaching the stage, where a general melee took place. The curtain was lowered, an infuriated group tried to pull it down, and when it was raised again a youth dashed to the stage and got into grips with the actresses who were beginning the scene. Two actors, rushing to the aid of their fellow-thespians, pushed him off, but by this time an- other had mounted and was only disposed of after he had been hurled to the stalls by a punch in the jaw. Pandemonium, not quieted until the arrival of the police reserves, then broke loose and it was not until a considerable portion of the audi- ence had been got out of the theater that the play was allowed to proceed. Under the circumstances who could doubt that the fanatic interregnum which had lasted since the death of Synge and the desuetude of Yeats and Lady Gregory had come to an end, and that O'Casey was king? From the stage Yeat, himself announced to the howling mob: "You have once more rocked the cradle of a reputation. The fame of O'Casey is born tonight. This is apot'n Last season we in America had an opportunity to see "Juno and the Paycock," and this season the Irish Players themselves have brought "The Plow and the Stars" to the Hudson Theater. No riots have occurred, but that is not my chief reason for believing that the genius of this author has been somewhat overestimated. As a critic I am compelled to apply other cri- teria of excellence, and even if the theater had been com- pletely demolished by his happy compatriots I should not have considered even that enthusiasm wholly convincing. No one can deny that O'Casey has an extraordinary gift for racy dialogue or that he can hit off the foibles of Irish character with malicious wit, but his plays lack form, lack movement, and in the last analysis lack any informing purpose. They bustle with characters, generally amusing enough in them- selves, but the series of sketches which go to make up one of his dramas is strung upon the skimpiest thread of melodramatic action, and though each of his plays has its moments neither of the two seen here produces any unified or lasting effect. To this day I do not know just where the author's sympi lie, and I defy anyone, after six moni is have passed, to recall the play in any form except that embodied in a jumbled mem- ory of rather confused events. Each has a little drinking, a little fighting, and a few tragic deaths; but that is about all that can be said. Even to an outsider it is evident that O'Casey has to a remarkable degree the national gifl ing quarrels with hi and that he bar right and left to all parties with a fine impartiality. But that gift by itself does not — outside Ireland — constitute a man a great dramatist, and when I see one of his plays I have the uncomfortable feeling of being in on a row which does not really concern me. The real fun must lie in taking a side in order to crack someone who takes the other over the head, but I haven't the slightest idea which side to take. In "Fallen Angels" (Forty-ninth Street Theater) Noel Coward tells a slight tale of two respectable married women who are put all in a flutter by the threatened reappearance of an ex-lover. It has its moments. Don Marquis's "Out of the Sea" (Eltinge Theater) has also its moments, but it is too determinedly poetic ever to rise to poetry. "The Centuries" (Cherry Lane Theater) and "2 2=5" (Civic Repertory Theater) are "experimental" dramas. The first, by Em Jo Basshe, is a chaos from which I could extract nothing; the second a fairly amusing but rather pointless satire translated from the Danish. The sets by B. Aronson, who is now holding an exhibit at the Anderson Galleries, are its most interesting feature. Margaret Anglin in repeating the "Electra" of Sophocles at the Gallo Theater continues a great play with a very uneven company. The high moment is high and terrible indeed, but much of the rest is tamer than it should be. Joseph Wood Krutch □ LECTURES n y s .Brooklyn Academy of Music Atlantic Ave. Station Sunday, December 18, 8.15 P.M. Symposium evolt of the Modern Woman SPEAKERS FANNY HURST TEXAS GUINAN MRS. WILL DURANT EVA LE GALLIENNE ELIZABETH MARBURY Tickets BOc, $1.10, $1.65, $2.20, $2.75 at the Box Office, Rand School. 7 E. loth St., and Gray's Drug Store, 43rd St. & B'way. .Contemporary Forum. The COMMUNITY CHURCH Sunday, December 18 11 A. M. JOHN HAYNES HOLMES "Forgotten Christs" -m'.jh free 8 P. M. STANTON COIT "World Politics and American Isolation" Questions and admission free JOSEPH WOOD KRUTCH Dramatic Critic of the Nation Park Avenue will deliver a course of lectures on CONTEMPORARY DRAMA Thursdays— 8.15 P. M. and 34th Street Jan. 5 — "Yesterday and Tomorrow" Jan. 12 — "Modern Comedy" Jan. 19 — "Modern Tragedy" Jan. 26 — -"The Popular Drama" Single Admission 75c $2.50 for the course of four lectures '

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International Relations Section Vilna and the League By MATILDA SPENCE AFTER four years of frustrated efforts the small repub- lic of Lithuania has at last succeeded in getting a hearing before the Council of the League of Nations on the subject of her lost capital of Vilna. Apparently there will be many rounds before a final decision can be given. It will be recalled that ever since the Conference of Ambassadors assigned Vilna to Poland by their decision of March, 1923 — a decision bitterly protested by Lithuania — the Kovno Government has consistently refused all dip- lomatic relations with Poland, has kept the entire Polish- Lithuanian frontier closed, and considers a "state of war" to exist between the two countries. In the last year or two there have been apparent efforts on the part of the Polish Government to create an im- pression that the Lithuanian Government was coming to see the folly of its way and that amical relations were im- minent. That this point of view is not shared by Lithu- anians may readily be concluded from following the Lithu- anian press here and abroad. On October 9 of this year, Lithuania's official day of mourning for what she considers her lost capital of Vilna, although seven years have passed since that October 9 upon which General Zeligovski at the head of Polish troops seized that city, greater demonstra- tions than ever before took place throughout the entire country. All schools and shops were closed, flags were at half-mast, and meetings of protest were held everywhere. In many American cities Lithuanian papers on that day appeared heayily bordered in black. To understand what Vilna, or Vilnius as the Lithu- anians call that city, means to the Lithuanian people, it is necessary to turn back the pages of history to that time in the fourteenth century when, under the leadership of a long line of gifted warrior princes, the grand duchy of Lithuania had become a vast empire extending from the Baltic Sea nearly to the Black Sea with Vilnius as its capital. In 1386 when the Lithuanian prince, Jagiello, married the young Polish queen, Jadwiga, the hitherto pagan Lithu- anians adopted the Christian religion and it was in Vilnius according to their historians that over 30,000 were bap- tized. Later under Lithuanian rule were laid the founda- tions for the great cathedral of Vilna which today is one of the architectural treasures of that part of Europe. All that is essentially and uniquely Lithuanian — their arts, their religion, their culture, and the memories of their days of independence and supremacy — are for Lithuanians forever enshrined in the beautiful city of Vilna. In the 1880's when began that spirit of national or racial awakening, later designated by the phrase "self- determination," it was in Vilna that Lithuanians secretly gathered and by word of mouth, in spite of the then crush- ing Russian rule, kept alive tales of their grand dukes and the then forbidden Lithuanian language, an entirely non- Slavic tongue closely akin to the ancient Sanskrit of their Aryan forefathers. Then came the war, and when in 1918 the German military power broke it was in Vilna in February of that year that the Lithuanian National Council proclaimed the Republic of Lithuania and for the first time in over five centuries established an independent Lithuanian state. The Lithuanian National Government in Vilna after nine months in power was driven out by the Bolshevik forces. The Government retired to Kaunas (Kovno), a for- tified city further up the Niemen River. An effort was made to organize a Lithuanian army to drive the Bolshevik forces out, but the Poles reached Vilna first and occupied the city in April, 1919. In July, 1920, Lithuania concluded a peace treaty with Soviet Russia (Treaty of Moscow) in which the Vilna ter- ritory was recognized as an integral part of Lithuania. Poland, however, retained possession of Vilna. In August the tide turned and Poland, then engaged in warfare with the Bolshevik army, was forced to evacuate Vilna, and the Lithuanians on the strength of their treaty with Russia again established their government in their former capital. Later in the same year the Poles, in a new attack against the Bolsheviki, came into territory occupied by the Lith- uanian troops, and grave danger of hostilities arose. It is at this point in the long story of Vilna that the League of Nations first appears. On September 5 the Polish Charge d'Affaires telegraphed the League asking its intervention to stop bloodshed. Three days later the Lithu- anian Charge d'Affaires in London also asked that the mat- ter be placed before the League. On September 8, 1920, the Polish-Lithuanian dispute was officially placed on the agenda of the Council's meeting. The League at once appointed a commission of military control to establish a line of demarcation between the Polish and Lithuanian forces. Negotiations to this end began on September 30 and continued until October 7 when an agreement was signed by representatives of both govern- ments (the famous Suwalki Treaty) by which both sides agreed to accept the "Curzon line" as a provisional line of demarcation and to continue it in an easterly direction, leaving Vilna and its surrounding territory to Lithuania. Two days after Poland's signature of this Suwalki Treaty, when everything seemed propitious for an early settlement, the whole situation was completely altered by the action of the Polish General Zeligovski who at the head of Polish troops seized the city of Vilna and proclaimed a "government of Central Lithuania." Lithuania immediately protested this violation of the Suwalki Treaty and called upon the League to intervene. The Polish delegate before a meeting of the Council in Brussels in the same month officially repudiated General Zeligovski's act, declaring that he had acted as a rebel without sanction of the Polish Government. These asser- tions were not accepted either by the Lithuanians or by the League of Nations. Both claimed to have conclusive proof that General Zeligovski acted in connivance with the Polish Government, from which they allege he received sup- plies of munitions, food, and further contingents of troops. In spite of this no steps of coercion were taken by the Council, which did nothing more than send a strong note of disapproval condemning Zeligovski's illegal act. This failure of the League to exact respect for its authority from one of its members — Poland — was in the opinion of many close to the situation at the time the cause of all its subsequent inability to solve the dispute.

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720 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3259 An attempt made by the Council to hold a plebiscite in the Vilna territory had to be abandoned because of the impossibility of holding an impartial vote in a district under military occupation. Lithuanians assert also that a wholesale importation of Poles was begun and that Lithu- anians were forcibly driven out. Direct negotiations were then opened before a League committee meeting in Brussels under the presidency of Mr. Hymans. After weeks of futile discussions with no satis- factory agreement Mr. Hymans drew up, to be used as a basis of further negotiations, his preliminary draft scheme, the vital part of which was the incorporation of the Vilna district in a proposed Lithuanian federal state. Thus in the second important act of the League in this dispute, as in the first— the Suwalki Treaty— the Vilna territory was definitely recognized as Lithuanian. The Lithuanian Government immediately agreed to ac- cept this draft scheme provided it be also accepted by the Poles. They, however, predicated their acceptance on a request that the population of Vilna be represented on a footing of equality in all further negotiations. Throughout the remainder of the Council's attempts to solve the dispute, Poland insisted on the granting of a decisive voice to rep- resentatives of Vilna. This created the impasse beyond which neither side would go. Lithuanians pointed out that no impartial representation could be obtained from a dis- trict under military occupation and demanded the with- drawal of the Zeligovski forces. The Poles with equal persistence refused to withdraw Zeligovski and held out for Vilna representation. No compromise could be reached. In January, 1922, at the Council meeting in Paris, the president announced his decision to withdraw the Commis- sion of Military Control. He advised the establishment of a provisional line between the two neutral zones set up by the commission. News of this contemplated withdrawal of the military commission came as a blow to Lithuanians who at this time were much concerned by rumors that Poland intended hold- ing elections in the Vilna territory now for almost two years under Polish occupation. They saw in this an effort to legalize the status of General Zeligovski. The Lithuanian delegate speaking before the Council, in anticipation of the imminent withdrawal of the military commission, asked for the appointment of a high commissioner from a neutral country to act as intermediary. lie further re- quested the Council to refer the dispute to the Council of Ambassadors which, as he pointed out, was empowered by the Treaty of Versailles to determine the eastern frontier of Poland and therefore had authority to act in the present impasse between Lithuania and Poland, "taking into account the engagement of that state toward the Lithuanian stale and the vital interests of Lithuania." He stated that the Lithuanian Government would willingly intrust the solution of the dispute to the Court of International Relations. All of these requests were refused. At this time came word from Poland that the Diet of Warsaw had voted to annex Vilna. On February 10, 1923. over the protest of Lithuania acting as a member of the League of Nations, the Council adopted a resolution laying down the so-called provisional line of demarcation by which the city and terri- tory of Vilna remained on the Polish side, thus virtually approving the Zeligovski occupation of Vilna. This act of the Council was bitterly criticized by 1 anians, primarily on legal grounds. They officially refused to accept it and asked that the competence of the Council to take such arbitrary action be referred to the Permanent Court of International Justice for an opinion. In vain. In Paris on March 15 the Council of Ambassadors for- mally recognized as the Russian-Polish frontier that fixed by the Treaty of Riga — the peace treaty of 1920 between Poland and Soviet Russia. At the same time it recognized as a boundary between Lithuania and Poland that same line of demarcation established by the Council on February 10, 1923, which had been strongly protested by Lithuania — a line by which the city and territory of Vilna were included in Polish frontiers. This decision, which was widely her- alded as a diplomatic triumph for Poland, caused the deep- est resentment throughout Lithuania. On April 20, 1923, the Government addressed a note to M. Poincare as presi- dent of the Council of Ambassadors refusing to recognize its validity. Two main points were made: first, that the Council of Ambassadors had overstepped the authority given it under the Treaty of Versailles by which its jurisdiction was only absolute in the case of former enemy territory. The Vilna territory had formed a part of the former Rus- sian Empire and by the Treaty of Moscow of 1920 had been formally ceded to Lithuania by Russia. The Council had no right to dispose of such territory without consultation wTith and ratification by both parties concerned. Second, it was pointed out that the Council of Ambas- sadors in making its decision referred to the fact that Lithuania had voluntarily submitted the Vilna dispute to it for settlement but omitted entirely to mention that in the Lithuanian request the Council had been asked to employ those powers given it under Article 87 of the Versailles Treaty to fix the eastern frontier of Poland, "taking into account the engagement of that state toward the Lithuanian state and the vital interests of Lithuania." The decision of the Council completely ignores the existence of the Suwalki Treaty signed under the auspices of the League of Nations. Four years have elapsed since Lithuania lodged these protests but in that time the Government has never deviated from its course. Today, as it was four years ago, the entire Lithuanian-Polish frontier is closed and under guard; no diplomatic or consular relations exist. Seven years have served to increase rather than diminish the determination of the Lithuanian people never to relinquish their claim to their ancient capital. Contributors to This Issue Louis Fischer is the Nation's correspondent in Russia. Frederic Babcock is doing newspaper and magazine work in Chicago. Earl Sparling is on the staff of the Xew York Telegram. Charles A. Wagner is author of "Poems of the Soil and Sea." Alter Brody frequently reviews fiction for The Nation. Lenore G. Marshall reviews fiction and poetry for the literary journals. Rose Lee has made a special study of Epstein's sculptures. Mathda Spence was formerly director of the Baltic- American Society.

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The Nation FOUNDED 1865 Vol. CXXV NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 28, 1927 No. 3260 Contents EDITORIAL PARAGRAPHS T21 EDITORIALS: "The Sewer System of American Journalism" 724 Selling Jesus 725 Railroading or Stock Jobbing? 725 Women and Artists 726 RHYTHMS OF THE AGES. By Hendrik van Loon 727 IT SEEMS TO HEYWOOD BROUN. By Heywood Broun 728 COVERING WASHINGTON. By The Unofficial Spokesman 729 SIRE OF THE EAGLE. By Lynn Haines 730 RUMANIA FREE FROM THE LION'S PAW. By G. E. R. Gedye 732 A CHALLENGE TO MR. ROCKEFELLER. By Morris L. Ernst 733 THE WHITE TERROR IN CHINA. By Scott Nearing 734 IN THE DRIFTWAY. By the Drifter 735 CORRESPONDENCE 736 BOOKS. MUSIC, PLAYS: Black Magic. By Elias Lieberman 738 A Warning. By Emma L. Hawkridge 738 Many Stories. By Clifton P. Fadiman 738 An Approach to "The Counterfeiters." By Dorothy Brewster 739 People of Inconsequence. By Lewis Galantiere 739 Jack London via Moscow. By Alter Biody 740 Art Young Sees Trees. By Glen Mullin 740 God's Messenger. By Lewis S. Gannett 741 Books in Brief 741 Music: Yehudi Menuhin. By Oswald Garrison Villard 742 A Letter from Madame Zimbalist 742 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS SECTION: Parties and Politics in Rumania. By Aureliu Jon Popescu 744 Progress Under the Soviets 746 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 Contriruting Editors JOHN A. HOBSON LUDWIG LEWISOHN H. L. MENCKEN NORMAN THOMAS HEYWOOD BROUN 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 Poslal 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. THE NATION is on file in most public and college libraries ami is indexed in the Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature. NO ONE CAN SAY how long six men in a water-tight compartment of submarine S-4 can withstand the horrors of dark and cold and the desperate fight for air. As we go to press, hundreds of men above them are work- ing as they never worked before, diving into icy water, buf- feted by wind and cold, employing every device known to science to help their comrades fast in the grip of the sea. And the sea waits. The sea can always wait; it is secure, strong, without conscience or justice. It is a force that men have wrestled with for thousands of years; if occa- sionally men seem to win in the unequal struggle, the sea has only to stretch out a finger, to breathe in its sleep — and the victory is turned to defeat. At no time do man and the resources of modern science seem so helpless as in a battle with the sea. If we could speak to the six trapped in the ship, we could say only: "Courage — and wait!" To the workers outside it is idle to say : "Courage — and hurry!" The sea is waiting. THE "HOLIDAYS" ARE HERE once more. Christmas has come back to a world of coal strikes and million- dollar incomes, of salt pork at ten cents a pound and turkey at sixty, of trips to Cuba in order properly to observe the season by obeisance to Bacchus and of midnight carols over the radio, in which millions of persons are asked to join. Christmas comes to tables laden with every sort of eatable and drinkable and to a bare board on which charity has spread a meager meal; winter stars will shine on Soviet Russia on Christmas night, on a boy king of Rumania, on England struggling with the problems of a dole and a diminished Eastern trade, on a prosperous America— where if there are those who will go hungry they will have the decency to hide the fact in a land of plenty. Mussolini, in Italy, will pay his duty to the Queen of Heaven; mission- aries in China will pay theirs, surrounded by hundreds of millions of yellow men and women who have never heard of her. President Coolidge will keep Christmas, and Mr. Wil- liam Randolph Hearst, and Mr. and Mrs. Blumberg in the Bronx and Mrs. Vere de Vere on Park Avenue and the cus- tomers at Mr. Zero's Tub will receive an extra-sized piece of pie and the national bird will be a burnt offering from one end of this country to all the others. Men will worship a baby born in a stable, they will recall an ancient festival far more than two millennia old, they will take advantage of an opportunity to eat more than is good for them, they" will hang glass balls on a young evergreen cut from the living forest, and separate children fighting over Christmas toys. In that section of the world described as "Christian" hardly a person but will pay tribute to Christmas with hand or heart or breath. A mad world. Merry Christmas to it! MUSSOLINI HAS FORBIDDEN officers in uniform to dance the Black Bottom; Mussolini has decreed that there are too many feast days and holidays in Italy and some of them must be abolished; Mussolini has ordered that half of all the music played in public places in Italy must be Italian— including concert halls, movie houses, and dance halls. Mussolini has finally demanded that both officials and private individuals refrain from sending him Christmas or greetings. It is witb the greatest good-will, there- fore, with singing hearts and happy voices, that we do not wish Mussolini a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! Nor are we sending our best wishes for the Christmas season to the Amoskeag Manufacturing Company of Man- er, New Hampshire. A 10 per cent reduction in wages has been decided on by that organization, to affect everyone in the shop from the highest official to those at the very bottom. For the latter, 10 per cent is a considerable slice lopped off their weekly stipend, and the compensatory reduc- tion of 10 per cent in rent for the company's tenements by no means equalizes matters. However, reductions in wages do occur, particularly among textile workers. At the mo- ment, we do not complain so much of the reduction itself, as of the extraordinary lack of imagination on the part of the officials who considered it necessary. It goes into effect on December 24. December 24 is Christmas Eve. JUST AS TWO ARE NEEDED to make a quarrel, so two are necessary to effect a peace. At the conference called by Secretary of Labor Davis to consider the coal situation,

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722 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3260 representatives of the miners were present in full force — and representatives of the operators were largely absent. The principal operators in the Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia bituminous coal-fields failed to appear at the con- ference. The conference went on without them and, as might have been predicted, failed to reach any definite deci- sion. Various expedients were suggested, among them the appointment of a "czar" for the industry — a Will Hays of the mines or possibly Old King Cole himself. But nothing really happened. The Secretary, according to the New York Times, "followed the usual methods of mediation, meeting the mine owners present and the officials of the miners' union separately." We submit that no business was ever settled with the participants calling each other names in adjoining rooms. Secretary Davis is quoted as saying that if public opinion shbuld be aroused the Government could "compel action for the national good, however distasteful that action may temporarily be to the parties immediately affected." But the operators knew that public opinion is asleep, that the miners in their tent colonies are cold and hungry, and that this Administration prefers talking to taking action. HOSPITALS IN COLORADO are demanding payment for miners, victims of the machine-guns of the State militia; meetings are forbidden; peaceful picketing is pro- hibited. Frank Palmer of the miners' relief committee has been arrested, although no charge has been preferred against him, and a friend telegraphs The Nation that Palmer cannot write in jail the second article on the Colorado strike which we had been expecting from him. A Pittsburgh university professor reports that 7,475 miners near that city are liv- ing in barracks — some of them in sight of the boarded-up homes from which the companies evicted them. Colorado has its shivering tent colonies. It is a grim Christmas for the miners. A few friends have sent them Christmas gifts through the Emergency Committee for Miners Relief, 156 Fifth Avenue, New York City, and we cordially commend the committee to the attention of readers who have Christ- mas spirit and Christmas pennies to spars. HENRY L. STIMSON has been named to fill Leonard Wood's vacant post as Governor General of the Philip- nines. Mr. Stimson was a close friend of Governor Wood's; he proved his executive ability as Secretary of War under President Taft; he showed another kind of ability when President Coolidge sent him to settle the mess in Nicaragua. There at least he grappled with the facts with both arms. He established a kind of peace, although he did it by main- taining a beaten President in office and buying off the bulk of the Liberal army. The Marine Corns, left in power, still has tough problems to solve. The Filipinos can hardly be treated as cavalierly, nor, indeed, do we believe that Mr. Stimson would care to do so. Pie is no political featherweight, but a 1; if high standing has at times approached statesmanship. At one tin advocated a program of giving the Fili] irliamentary responsibility, hoping, apparently, to prepare them for a status similar to that of Canada v\ .thin the British Empire. still holds to that view lie will find a light task ahead of him. The Filipinos are not — not yet, at any rate — anti- American, but they resented, as any people would resent, General Wood's attempt to thrust them back into less free- han they had attained and enjoyed. OKLAHOMA'S DOGFIGHT has stopped for the Christ- mas holidays. That is sensible, but it is doubtful whether the holiday spirit will affect the spirit of the con- testants. The House of Representatives, meeting after midnight in a hotel bedroom, has preferred charges against the Governor, and the Senate has convened as a court of impeachment to hear them. The Governor has withdrawn the militia whom he ordered to keep the legislators out of the State House, but he has not yet indicated any intention of replying to the indictment. To the original charges of maladministration has been added in public the allegation which has been whispered from the beginning — improper relations with his competent confidential secretary, Mrs. 0. 0. Hammonds. Readers of The Natioyi will recall Aldrich Blake's illuminating discussion of her astrology and politics in our issue of September 14. The legal right of a legislature to call itself into session is a matter for the courts to decide; but the layman would expect a gover- nor who believed that he had done his duty to court rather than oppose investigation of his official acts. NATIONALIST CHINA has broken off relations with Soviet Russia, while the conservatives of the North continue doing business as usual. The obvious explanation of this ironic fact is that Russian trade is an important part of the business of North China, while the consulates in the South have little trade to attend to and become in- evitably centers of propaganda. But there is more than this. The capital of the Nationalist Government — which has recalled Chiang Kai-shek from his voluntary exile in an effort to win new strength — is at Nanking, within gunfire of the Western battleships, and it is within gassing distance of that center of all that is poisonous in China, Shanghai. It cannot exist in that area without the good-will of the Britisli and other foreigners who control the Yangtze, and its expulsion of the Russians is in part an effort to win such good-will. It is also in part an expression of class differ- ences within the Kuomintang, the Nationalist Party. In its youth that party succeeded in combining Chinese cap- italists with Chinese labor and peasants. Today the gulf is deep between them, and the alliance of generals and bankers which has won control of the party organization is willing to go to any length to suppress proletarian move- ments among their fellow-countrymen. Scott Nearing's article, elsewhere in this issue, tells the past of the story. The present chapter is being written in blood at Canton. In suppressing an attempt by labor forces to overthrow the local general thousands were killed, hundreds in cold blood after the battle was over — among them sixty women whose revolutionary crime was that they had bobbed hair. STUDENTS ON THE LOOSE are never a pleasant sight. When they stop shows or throw chinaware they are a pest; when, as in Rumania, they engage in anti-Semitic and anti-Hungarian riots in which numerous victims are killed and many others badly injured they become a national menace. At a recent Rumanian national congress in Oradia Mare, a frontier town, student delegates from Bucharest killed at least four persons and wounded about forty, and at the same time looted newspaper offices, shops, and the residence of the local rabbi, who was beaten into insensi- bility. On the way back to the university the student group continued its depredations on property and its attacks on Jews and Hungarians and injured an American citizen.

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Dec. 28, 1927] The Nation 723 Local police made little if any effort to stop the raiders, and not until several days later did the Rumanian Govern- ment admit that the riots had really been the work of Rumanians. However, when Bucharest newspapers reported that various European and American firms had threatened to withdraw credits from Rumanian industry as a result of the student excesses, the Government decided to act. When the student delegates returned to Bucharest several hun- dred of them were arrested ; a court martial for thirty-three of them has already begun; and delinquent police officials have been replaced. It is impossible to say how effective these punitive measures will be. Students who live in a country where government authority rests in the hands of a tyrannical few will not easily learn tolerance. PARKER GILBERT'S third report as Agent General of Reparations is an optimistic document. He notes that while there were two million unemployed in Germany last January there are less than half a million today. The cost of living is rising, but an economist may regard that as an indication of a growing internal market. Virtually half the 1927 reparations payments were made in cash, as against two-thirds paid in kind last year. Mr. Gilbert still sees a need for caution and for administrative reform, but he credits the Government with good-will. He insists that reparations are a first charge on Germany, and that commercial loans have a secondary security; and he makes one pregnant remark, suggesting that there will be no final solution "until Germany has been given a definite task to perform on her own responsibility, without foreign super- vision and without transfer protection." In other words, he wants the total of reparations finally fixed, and the responsibility for payment left entirely upon Germany's shoulders. He wants to abolish his own job and eliminate all suggestion of coercion. The French take this hint mildly, because they see in another phrase a suggestion that concurrently the whole question of inter-Allied debts should be reopened. THE FLOOD-STRICKEN STATES of the Lower Mis- sissippi Valley can find little consolation in the state- ment of President Coolidge that they are expected to bear part of the cost of future flood control. Adequate flood control will cost at least $200,000,000. Should the local communities be asked to pay a third of the total cost, their share would amount to approximately $07,000,000. To de- mand this vast sum from virtually bankrupt communities — in which the flood losses have been so great that State and local taxes have had to be remitted — is plainly to demand the impossible. On this score the United States Chamber of Commei-ce has taken issue with the President, advocating that the federal government assume the whole cost of con- trolling the Mississippi. The additional confusion which President Coolidge creates by connecting flood control with Western land reclamation is plainly due to a complete mis- understanding of the fundamentals of the situation. A READER IN MINNESOTA, Viggo Justesen, notes our commendation of William B. Munro for his protest against "bawling at the voters," and writes to suggest a law making voting necessary under pain of losing the franchise. He proposes a constitutional amendment like this: Every qualified voter in a democracy has the duty of suffrage placed upon him when he accepts the privilege. If he shirks his duty he shall also be denied the privilege. If he fails to avail himself of his opportunity the opportunity shall be taken from him. For his first failure to vote his rights shall be revoked for two years; for the second failure, four years; for the third, eight years, etc. Our correspondent thinks that with such legislation the electors who do not vote — reaching up to 50 per cent — would do so. Of these non-voters he says : Many of them fail to vote now merely because they feel they do not have time to become informed on political mat- ters and consequently they will not cast an uninformed vote. That they will always vote wisely is highly improbable, but they are at least open to conviction. . . . There are enough of them to change the entire government if they saw fit. They could defeat Coolidge, and if shown him as he is, they would. Australia recently passed a law under which a qualified elector who fails to vote is fined $10. In consequence the vote in 1925 was 90 per cent of the possible total instead of 60 per cent as in the last previous election. But we are un- aware of any effect other than a larger number of ballots. COMPULSORY VOTING, or any similar plan, would change politics in the United States as little, we be- lieve, as "bawling at the voters." Indeed it is merely turn- ing from persuasion to force. Our correspondent says of the 50 per cent of non-voters : "They could defeat Coolidge, and if shown him as he is, they would." But what is there in any kind of compulsory voting that would reveal Coolidge "as he is"? Such a revelation, if profound enough to be im- portant, would also disclose our political system as it is; it would lay bare the deceptions and futilities of both of our major parties. When we plead to "get out the issues" we have in mind such a revelation, such a revaluation, of our political problems and possibilities. It is our contention that no substantial progress is to be expected from either the Republican or the Democratic Party as now constituted. Their platforms are equally evasive of realities and their candidates are alike indifferent to the welfare of the ma- jority of the people. An exceptional candidate here and there cannot alter the general character of his party and tends only to preserve the beliefs of the public in an out- worn system. Our two major parties have degenerated into window-dressing for the control of the country by a priv- ileged minority. The average man sees this more clearly than he is sometimes believed to do. But either he thinks him- self powerless to effect any change or else he prefers to take a gambler's chance for one of the big prizes instead of working to establish a more just system for all. In either case why go to the polls? Hope lies, not in persuasion or compulsion, but in more understanding, more courage, and more humanity. HENRY NOEL BRAILSFORD, who is on his way to the United States, is an odd recruit in the army of English lecturers. He despises bunk; he does not soft-soap his own empire; he dares to criticize his own party. His editorship of the New Leader made it a force in interna- tional thinking in three continents; and his realistic analysis of post-war Europe has been a force for sanity. The New School for Social Research does itself honor in inviting him to lecture to its students. What Mr. Brailsford has to say of British labor, of the disrepute and future of democ- racy, of Europe's role in Asia and America's in Europe, will be worth hearing.

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724 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3260 "The Sewer System of American Journalism" MR. HEARST'S character, or lack of it, has long been known of all men who cared to study him. His jour- nals have portrayed it in yellow and black, year in and year out. It is not often, however, that he paints himself as a journalist as clearly as he did when called before the Senate Committee on December 15 to inquire into his charges that $1,240,000 was taken from the Mexican treasury ostensibly to line the pockets of four United States Senators, together with other sums to procure the editor of The Nation, an- other editor as yet unnamed, and a newspaper syndicate likewise unnamed, for the Mexican cause. On the witness stand, under oath, there ensued the following colloquy: Q. Now, Mr. Hearst, when did you get the papers which contained the names of United States Senators? Were they in the first batch? A. They were in the first batch. Q. What investigation, if any, did you make to ascer- tain whether payments actually reached Senators as hinted at in these documents? A. We could not make any investi- tions without" entirely disclosing the documents. Q. Well, did you make any? A. No. Q. Did you interview any of these Senators to find out their side of the transaction? A. No. Q. Did you make any investigation to find out whether the money mentioned in certain telegrams here had actually been transmitted by telegraph to New York? .4. I think we tried to make such investigations. . . . Q. Have you obtained any evidence which indicates any Senator accepted any payment mentioned in these let- ters? A. No. Q. Have you any reason to believe that any Senator did accept any such money? .4. I have no reason to believe it at all. As a matter of fact I do not believe it. I believe they did not. That is my personal opinion. Q. Have you any evidence or have you heai'd of any evidence to show that any of these Senators knew anything ajout this transaction? A. No. Q. How much did you pay in all for these papers, Mr. Hearst? A. I imagine about $15,000 or $16,000. Q. That was paid in instalments as the letters came along, was it? .4. Yes. We here have Mr. Hearst confessing that he printed documents falsely assailing the honor of American public men although he did not believe in their truth, admitting that he did not make any investigation whatever, so far as the Senators were concerned, to ascertain what the Senators themselves had to say about these charges. His pretense is that he published them with the names deleted, as he printed that affecting the honor of The Nation and its editor, in order to force a Congressional investigation. He was willing and ready to set afloat thereby a host of rumors which filled the lobbies at Washington and affected far more men than the four Senators named — in order, he says, to clear the honor of our public men! It is too thin. Honor and Mr. Hearst have too long been strangers to make it appear that they are now bedfellows. He printed those documents be- cause he had paid $15,000 or $16 000 and did not want to lose his investment. He was after sensations to increase the circulation of his journals, and he took a chance of escaping libel suits by blotting out the names of the men he was willing to traduce. We do not believe that in the history of American journalism there has been more das- tardly conduct in the responsible owner of an American newspaper. He has shown himself, as the New York World points out, unfair, cowardly, without scruple, and beneath contempt. These adjectives and more besides he would merit if his publication concerned only the honor of the men directly affected. He deserves a still worse branding because the matter profoundly affects two great nations. The whole series of these documents which began with an attempt to show that Mexico had been taking sides against us in the Nicaraguan imbroglio was as if planned to injure the friendly relations between Mexico and the United States. For years past Mr. Hearst's course as to Mexico has been tortuous in the extreme. On May 3, 1916, he wrote over his own name: "Our flag should wave over Mexico as the symbol of the rehabilitation of that unhappy country and its redemption to 'humanity' and civilization. Our right in Mexico is the right of humanity." But on February 7, 1922, this devil a monk would be. He then asked plaintively a question particularly apropos in view of his latest per- formance: "Every human interest that appeals to a nation calls on us to do justice to Mexico — politics, diplomacy, business, national defense. . . . Why inflict conspiracy and injuries on a government that is trying to be friendly and from whose friendship we can derive only benefit?" Now he prints doctored documents, the dates of one of which he alters and "touches up" between editions, and seeks to spread abroad the belief that Mexico is bent upon corrupting for her own purposes the public men of America. We do not know if he was moved to this because of anger over his failure to have the titles to his Chihuahuan lands confirmed, as is alleged by the head of the Mexican government news agency, or not. He admitted on the witness stand that he feared the libel law if he printed the names of those in- volved and he sought to break the force of this admission by asserting that he, as a great property-owner in Mexico, had much more to lose by printing these documents. They might, he suggested, lead to hostilities against him in Mexico. Well, they ought to lead to hostilities against him wherever decent men are assembled, wherever men have some regard for the honor of their country and the integ- rity of their public men. We have enough admitted sins by American public officials to answer for, heaven knows, with- out having baseless suspicions set on foot without the slight- est attempt at an adequate inquiry. As a matter of fact, wherever we have heard the case discussed there has been only one opinion voiced — that the Senate Committee should sift the entire matter from top to bottom and find out the motives behind it, and that if any law exists against such scandalous journalism that law should be applied to Mr. Hearst himself, not to his tools and hirelings. We believe that there will be universal agreement with Senator Norris's public letter to Mr. Hearst in which he declares that Hearst's record in this case is sufficient to place your publications in disrepute in the minds of all honest men, and it demonstrates that the Hearst system of newspapers, spreading like a venomous web to all parts of our country, constitutes the sewer system of American journalism.

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Dec. 28, 1927] The Nation 725 Selling Jesus THE Bible, Mr. Bruce Barton has told the world, is the book nobody (except Mr. Bruce Barton) knows, and Jesus is the man nobody (except Mr. Bruce Barton) knows. But his publishers, and the Review of Reviews Corporation, which offers Mr. Barton's books cheap with an eighteen months' subscription to their magazine, intend that every- body shall know what Mr. Bruce Barton knows. They in- tend to "sell" Jesus — or Mr. Bruce Barton's picture of Jesus. "The Discovery of Jesus," they head their circular. Mr. Barton, it appears, discovered Jesus. He was dissatis- fied with the elder version ; he studied the texts ; he got the dope. Hence the books — and the advertising copy. We quote : Jesus ... a killjoy? He was the most popular dinner guest in Jerusalem. He was criticized because He enjoyed society too much. A failure? He picked up twelve men and forged them into an organization that conquered the world. When the business man finished reading [Jesus's own words], he exclaimed "This is a man nobody knows. Some day someone will write a book about Jesus. Every business man will read it and send it to his partners and sales- men, for it will tell the story of the founder of modern business." Bruce Barton, we learn, was the business man, and finally he wrote the book himself. Perhaps he also wrote the advertising copy for it. We quote again : Jesus was a real executive ... a great advertising man. . . . The parables are the greatest advertisements of all time. The principles of modern salesmanship are all brilliantly exemplified in Jesus's talk and work. The story, the copy-writer says, is "the most exalted success story of all time." "Barton found that Jesus de- veloped three rules for gaining success in any business." "Only strong, magnetic men build great organizations. He built the greatest organization of all." (The copy-reader should have looked up the history of St. Paul.) "Every em- ployer in the United States," we learn, "ought to send copies of these books to the ten most valuable men in his organiza- tion." (Why only ten?) "They would give them a new thrilling conception of modern business." But it is in the accompanying mimeographed letter that the copy-writer reached his peak. Once more we quote: Dear Reader: Jesus Christ "the founder of modern busini Jesus a master of efficiency in organization, a born executive? Jesus a sociable man, a cheerful, bright companion with a pat story on His lips . . . wording the best adver- tisements ever written? . . . Barton's two books interest and aid the rich and powerful; they help any cub salesman to get orders for shoe polish — and to work on principles that lead him toward riches and power. Riches and power — and orders for shoe polish. There was once a man who talked differently. "Blessed are the meek," he said. "Why take ye thought for raiment?" "Ye cannot serve God and Mammon." "Go and sell all that thou hast, and give to the poor." "Verily I say unto you that a rich man shall hardly enter into the Kingdom of Heaven." "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the Kingdom of God." And in one terrible passage: "Woe unto ye, scribes and Pharisees. . . ." Railroading or Stockjobbing? WITH the country at the threshold of important rail- road consolidations and groupings, authorized by the Transportation Act of 1920, it is vital that the Interstate Commerce Commission shall insist that these new oppor- tunities be used in the public interest, as the law provides, and not to stifle competition or pile up profits through specu- lation in stocks for railway officers and bankers. The Trans- portation Act does not repeal the Sherman and Clayton anti- trust laws which forbid a railroad to acquire control of a competing line through stock ownership. The newer legis- lation merely empowers the Interstate Commerce Commis- sion to suspend the provisions of the older acts when it thinks this would be in the public interest. But railroad attorneys and bankers have stepped way beyond this. They have interpreted the Transportation Act as giving one road a right to acquire anything short of a majority ownership in a competitor before applying to the Interstate Commerce Commission, on the ground that otherwise the price might be raised to a prohibitive point. This looks like a clear violation of the anti-trust stat- utes even if the purpose be legitimate — which is doubtful. Practical control of most companies can be obtained through holding less than a majority of the stock. It is just as effective usually to hold 49 per cent (or somewhat less) as 51 per cent. It is bad enough if a railroad, having violated the law in advance of its application to the Interstate Com- merce Commission, obtains the approval of that body for its acquisitions, but it becomes doubly dangerous if the pro- posed arrangement is disallowed. A striking example is found in the recent history of the St. Louis Southwestern Railway Company, which operates about 1,000 miles of rail- road between St. Louis and Shreveport, Louisiana. The St. Louis Southwestern, popularly known as the Cotton Belt, has been out of the control of its stockholders— and in that of its competitors — for nearly three years, most of this time subsequent to denials by the Interstate Commerce Commis- sion of applications to acquire the road. Five months ago Walter E. Meyer, a minority stockholder in the Cotton Belt, asked the commission to proceed under the Clayton Act to compel the railroad's competitors to divest themselves of its stock, but no action has been taken. In March, 1925, Edwin Gould, then in control of the St. Louis Southwestern, sold his interest to the Rock Island. That railroad then applied to the Interstate Commerce Com- mission for permission to do what it had already done — acquire stock control of a competitor. The application was denied the following August as against the public interest. Thereupon the Rock Island sold its holdings to the Kansas City Southern — another competitor of the St. Louis South- western. The Kansas City Southern, headed by L. F. Loree, had previously acquired a third of the stock of the Missouri, Kansas and Texas, popularly known as the Katy. Mr. Loree arranged to have the Katy take over the Kansas City Southern's 155,000 shares of Cotton Belt stock and later asked the Interstate Commerce Commission to O. K. his plans. On May 3, last, the application was denied by the commission as against the public interest, the following

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726 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3260 passage in the decision revealing the intricate financial methods resorted to: Between January 27 and February 26, 1926, and after the Kansas City Southern had thus acquired pi-actical con- trol of the Cotton Belt, the latter company purchased 100,- 000 shares of the common stock of the M. K. & T. Witnesses for the applicants stated that this purchase was in pursu- ance of a plan for the control of the M. K. & T. by the Kansas City Southern and Cotton Belt jointly, with the ob- ject of distributing the financial burden, but that as their counsel advised that there might be some question as to the legality of such control, it was decided that these 100,000 shares should be transferred to the Kansas City Southern. At the annual meeting of the stockholders of the M. K. & T. on April 9, 1926, the number of shares voted was 893,047 or 82.15 per cent of the total. Of these the Kansas City South- ern voted as owned or through proxies 557,134 shares, in- cluding apparently the 100,000 shares owned by the Cotton Belt, or 51.25 per cent of the outstanding stock and 62.39 per cent of the total shares voted, and, as Loree testified, "the Kansas City Southern took control of the property, electing representatives from the group that had thereto- fore spoken for it under agreement." He further testified that a majority of the M. K. & T. directors were elected at the instance of th< Kansas City Southern. The record also shows that the ten directors present at the meeting of the board of the M. K. & T. held on July 21, 1926, at which the resolution authorizing the company to acquire the 155,000 shares of Cotton Belt stock was adopted, held only 200 shares of the preferred and 1,310 shares of the common stock of the M. K. & T., of which 70C shares of common stock were held for account of the Kansas City Southern. But according to the brief submitted to the Interstate Commerce Commission last August by Mr. Meyer, in behalf of himself and other minority stockholders, the situation was even worse than indicated in the commission's state- ment. Mr. Meyer said: The total outstanding capitalization of St. Louis South- western consists of 198,936 shai'es of preferred and 163,561 shares of common stock; both preferred and common have equal voting rights. At the time of the annual election [the day after the commission's adverse decision] Kansas City Southern and Missouri-Kansas-Texas owned 135,000 shares of St. Louis Southwestern preferred and 20,000 shares of St. Louis Southwestern common. Messrs. Kuhn, Loeb & Company and Ladenburg, Thalmann & Company, banking advisers of the Kansas City Southern, owned 40,- 000 shares of the common. Thus, the roads in control and their banking advisers were the owners of 195,000 shares out of the total of 362,497 shares outstanding capital stock, amounting to over 51 per cent thereof. The opportunities for stockjobbing and profits for in- siders in transactions like these are obvious. It may be impossible to prevent railroad officers from speculating individually in the possibilities arising through changing control, but they stand to lose if the Interstate Commerce Commission disapproves the plans. On the other hand, if railway officers commit their companies to the purchase of stocks, these men guarantee their speculations at the ex- pense of the shareholders if the purchases result in losses. In its recent report to Congress the Interstate Commerce Commission asks for wider powers in connection with con- solidations and stock acquisition among the railroads. It may need more power, but it appears to have sufficient authority already to end such flagrant abuses as those here described. Why not use it? Women and Artists ONE thousand of the foremost musicians and music- lovers of New York came together on December 18 to rejoice in the fiftieth anniversary of Marcella Sembrich's first appearance on the stage. Whom did they praise? A great artist, of course; but a greater woman. For here is one who, born in the simplest of Polish peasant homes, has possessed beauty and charm as well as musical genius, but never in her long life was she ever deprived of poise or swollen to conceit by her great fame and success or by the applause of a united musical world. Her charm, her sim- plicity, her inborn kindliness and unselfishness — these are today as fresh and untainted as her rare artistry itself. Unwilling even now to indulge herself by ease, unable to detach herself from her o'erweening passion for struggling musicianly youth, she teaches in winter at two great musical institutions, and all summer at her Lake George studio, with all the enthusiasm of her art. Throughout the audience were past and present pupils bringing to her a devotion and a love such as comes only to the greatest teachers. Thirty years on the operatic stage, of which twenty-five were spent at the Metropolitan Opera in New York; ten years upon the concert stage; and now another ten as a teacher — such is the record of Madame Sembrich. She was of the galaxy of artists which opened the Metropolitan in 1883, and pictures of her in no less than twenty-nine oper- atic roles adorned the program of the dinner in her honor — a record surpassed in length by others, but surely by none in versatility. Mistress of the Italian art of coloratura sing- ing, she turned, as one of the speakers said, from the oper- atic stage to the deeper art of interpreting the great death- less songs of the European peoples with a success that would alone insure her permanent fame if she had not secured herself a lasting place in musical annals by those exquisite, winsome, and charming appearances in opera which raised to the highest point the standards required by modern audiences in every role she essayed. Now they call her the greatest of teachers, a true mother to her pupils. She still cannot bear to hurt an aspirant for musical honors. Once she sent, without previous consultation, to another teacher a student who bawled so abominably that there seemed no hope whatever for her. "Madame X will tell you what I think," said Madame Sembrich. Madame X guessed when the pupil came, but decided to try what could be done. Two years later when she and Madame X met for the first time thereafter Sembrich's first question was for the girl who had seemed so hopeless. Next to Madame Sembrich sat another wonderful vet- eran, Ernestine Schumann-Heink, a true American who has repaid a thousand times in her patriotic devotion what America has done for her. There again the great woman and the great artist united in a sturdy character, united in kindliness. She is retiring now after fifty-one years of public appearance — still pleasing and stimulating at sixty- six. And abroad is living, and teaching at seventy-nine, Lilli Lehmann, in memory still a part of musical New York. What giantesses, what admirable examples of great woman- hood on the stage, what fountains of energy and power! What proof that to artistic supereminence may be coupled simplicity, sweetness, modesty, selflessness, the ardent desire to pass on one's art to others, and a deep sense of public responsibility in return for wonderful gifts of nature.

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Dec. 28, 1927] The Nation 727 Wherever I go I hear learned Marxian scholars explain that "the trouble with our time is ..." or ancient fossils telling each other "that the trouble with our time is ... epffiffijj __. ™>\ Mcmnvhile the real "trouble with our time" is simple. Every age had its own rhythm. There was for example the pleasant rhythm of the Greeks; ilU~djajiu~dJ~a. ^LJ^LT^J^LTiU'lU^U^LJlLrcUlU'U^, there was the less pleasant but efficient rhythm of the Romans. t^l - *u The pious Middle Ages had a rhythm all their own. The ponderous seventeenth century had an awkward rhythm, which was followed by the gay rhythm of the eighteenth century; V->

■ but our own time has no rhythm; it borrows a little from all previous ages. Give us a rhythm of our own and we sluill all be happy. l(UjUL.lfc^ui^ Rhythms of the Ages

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728 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3260 YEHUDI MENUHIN, the violinist, is ten years old and concert managers are offering him $5,000 for each concert. My own son is rounding nine and has not earned a penny. Naturally, the twenty-five cents which he gets on Saturday for taking cod-liver oil is not set down as sheer profit since that comes out of my own pocket. Under the circumstances I might be expected to wag my head in the direction of Yehudi and express concern that one so young should be deprived of childhood's heritage. But this I can- not do. It seems to me that infancy is much the hardest stage within the life of man. The years until sixteen are very largely wasted. When I see little ones romping and shouting at their play my emotion is largely tinged with sorrow. Not for lost j outh do I weep ; no, not a single bucket. It makes me sad to watch folk fevered by the pursuit of pleasure. If fun came easily to children they would not work so hard in chasing it. Supposedly age brings weari- ness and loss of all illusions, but I will match a child shut in by rain against the world's severest cynic. "But there isn't anything to do" is not an adult whine. I had long curls and was well fed and played with friends and neighbors. Looking back it seems to me the games were not enthralling. Most of the diversions of child- hood are based upon the existence of some small Stephen who is made to bear the brunt of merriment. He who gets slapped finds tag a dreary pastime. I know a hundred grown-up activities more interesting than being a captive at prisoner's base. Our hide-and-seek was based upon the principle that all except the blind-fold boy retired to some yard and let him snoop about disconsolate till supper. In theory this evens up but I was "it" so often that I aban- doned faith in the law of averages and Santa Claus with simultaneity. Were Yehudi what is called a normal boy he might be in the streets muttering "All my sheep gather in a heap for I spy the woolly, woolly wolf." Or, perhaps, "Red Rover, Red Rover, let Isadore come over." Instead young Menuhin is playing the Beethoven Concerto. I have never played Beet- hoven but if half the pleasant things I've heard of him are true he offers far more entertainment than one horse cop or shinny. "He was," one critic wrote about the young maestro, "happy, playing with entire sincerity and enormous enthu- siasm." What more could any parents desire for their child? And still another commentator spoke of Yehudi's "languor- ous passion" and his "white-hot emotion," which gives him quite a start on most of the tots of ten. And yet he is not spoiled, for when the interviewers came his father said, "Yehudi, g ) into the next room, please, and read your book." Obediently he trotted off, "Les Miser- ables" tightly clutched against his middy blouse. At that same age I was reading "Dick the Newsboy," by Horatio Alger. I believe that there is more in Hugo for a young and ambitious musician. At one year Yehudi heard a symphony. At four he started on the violin and learned each day as much as most can cover in a month. Maybe he missed fantasies about some doggie with his patty-paws and Johnny Skunk and Peter Rabbit. For him there were no bedtime stories about great, big, enormous Mr. Moon. Instead he dozed off to some little thing by Wieniawski. A boy who can do Tar- tini's Devil's Trill (the G minor sonata) might well be rest- less if told much about Winnie-the-Pooh and think of Mr. Milne as pretty silly. For such a precocious child Santa Claus must have been companionate and divorced at an early age. At this point great bearded men may be found bathed in tears and mur- muring "Poor little chap." A slow and trusting child, I stuck to Santa Claus past my eleventh birthday and each minute of fundamentalism I now regret. If my life were in my hand to live all over I would choose to be enlightened at the age of two or earlier. Santa Claus is a big bully devised to entertain the cousins, aunts, and uncles. Few children find comfort in the myth. They took me to the store and let me see him. Next to the journey I made to the Chamber of Horrors in the Eden Musee to celebrate my being five I can remember few early contacts more terrifying. "And how are you, my little man?" said the big yegg in the white whiskers. I said that I was very well and tried to get my hand away while he held on and inquired whether or no I had been a good boy. And that I answered affirmatively, dreading all the while the lightning. My sled depended on faultless conduct and so naive was I that perfection passed me only by a very little. Well, I got the sled. It was not quite the model but neither was I. Late years have proved it was infectious with inhibitions. Santa Claus, that perambulating Puritan, had set his mark upon me. Conviction came that desirable things were to be obtained only by complete submission of the will to others. All this happened back in the nineties but the results are not yet washed away. A thousand sleds could be purchased with the money I have given to psycho- analysts to bring back lost self-assertion. At times I take a stand both brave and right but when editors and idiots press me close there comes to some dark kingdom of my mind the sound of sleigh-bells worn by reindeer. The old pattern reaches out like an octopus. I am the slave of Santa Claus. He who must be placated is abroad again and wait- ing at the chimney top. For full stockings you must yield obedience and I am not designed to stand on empty ones. The old habit of conformity prevails. "Perhaps you're right," I say to the beefeater in authority. Heywood is a good boy once again and will not lack his orange. I will waste no pity on Yehudi because he did not long believe that presents were carried to him by contented rein- deer. What if he never heard the sky-bells on some frosty morning? Give a boy Brahms, Beethoven, and Mozart and Santa Claus is properly reduced to playing second fiddle.

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Dec. 28, 1927] The Nation 729 Covering Washington The Nation's Biweekly Washington Letter By THE UNOFFICIAL SPOKESMAN Washington, D. C, December 19 LESS than three years have elapsed since the Old Guard, bloated with pride over the 1924 landslide, voted to banish the Senate Progressives to political Siberia. The ceremony of expulsion was con- ducted with that unctu- ous air of superior vir- tue invariably associated with the names of George Wharton Pepper, William M. Butler, Sim- eon D. Fess, and other high priests and Pharisees of ortho- doxy. Standpat newspapers throughout the land acclaimed the deed in editorials sometimes tinged with regret that the punishment of the radicals had not been made more drastic and painful, if not with firing squads or boiling oil, then at least with tar and feathers. That was the way to extermi- nate Bolsheviks — kick them out and hammer them over the head if they tried to return. Then the party, purged of their malign influence, could go forward to new triumphs of reaction. ***** ALAS, what a tragic reversal occurred last week when the Senate undertook to organize itself into a legis- lative body! Victorious in the elections, the despised radi- cals were all back in their seats ; worse, they were back with reinforcements. On the other hand, several seats were con- spicuously vacant among the Old Guard, notably those form- erly occupied by Pepper, Butler, Wadsworth, and Lenroot. Deprived of the services of two distinguished Senators-elect, to wit, Vare of Pennsylvania and Smith of Illinois, the Old Guard found itself two shy of even a paper majority, and wholly incapable of doing any business whatever without the help of the spurned Progressives. Under the circum- stances there was only one thing to do — frankly acknowl- edge that the Progressives had regained the balance of power, and give them their rightful places and whatever bonuses in addition that were necessary to obtain their co- operation. The proud and ancient boast that the Old Guard dies but never surrenders was exposed as just another myth. #***•:•:• NINE committee chairmanships are now in Progressive hands, including some of the most important. Borah heads Foreign Relations; Norris has Judiciary; Couzens, Education and Labor; Norbeck, Banking and Currency; Nye, the Public Lands; Frazier, Indian Affairs; Howell. Claims; Johnson, Immigration; and McNary (who at least is Progressive once in three times) has Agriculture. More- over, on every important committee, excepting Finance and Privileges and Elections, the Progressives can join the Democrats to form a majority, and on Finance Couzens can produce a deadlock by voting with the Democrats. In ad- dition, the Progressives wrung from the suffering Old Guard a pledge to permit a vote on three questions which clamor for attention: farm relief, restriction of labor injunctions, and investigation of our Latin-American policy. Not even in the heyday of the elder La Follette have the Progressives ever been so strongly intrenched to influence legislation. * * * * * THE greatest disappointment which Senator Walsh of Massachusetts has suffered in a long time came from the announcement that Chairman William M. Butler will not run against him next year. This means that Walsh will be only fairly certain of keeping his seat, whereas if Butler had chosen to run he would have been absolutely certain. Butler is Walsh's favorite opponent; he wishes he could have him every time. Butler was made to order for Walsh. Butler is slow; Walsh is quick. Butler is stupid; Walsh is keen. Butler is stiff and offish; Walsh is supple and in- gratiating. Butler knows what the Union League Club thinks; Walsh knows what the voters think. A meeting be- tween them is like a meeting between a Baptist parson and a piece of fried chicken — the outcome is never in doubt. ***** BUT if Butler has renounced further honors for himself, there is no sign he has renounced them for his chief. Mr. Coolidge probably is sincere in his efforts to say that he does not mean to run again, but Butler, in his fumbling, obvious way, undoubtedly was trying to set the stage for the "draft" act when he put the screws on the Southern Com- mitteemen and made them vote for Kansas City for the con- vention. Secretary Hoover being the leading candidate for the nomination, Butler sends the convention to the center of the anti-Hoover belt and to the home of Hoover's bitterest critic. Thus he envisages a convention deadlock out of which the "unanimous demand" for Mr. Coolidge may come. The writer does not believe that Mr. Coolidge can be drafted. Calvin may not be a statesman, but he knows how to look after himself. He knows what would happen to his reputation in four more years. Now, after six years of trivialness, he can at least retire with a magnificent ges- ture. And with $400,000. * * * * -:■: CHAIRMAN BUTLER'S main achievement, in addition to sending the convention to Kansas City, was to stir up the nastiest kind of a feud among the Committeemen. Never was his hopeless ineptitude better demonstrated. The Missouri politicians didn't want the convention, and made it perfectly clear that they were merely echoing half- heartedly the Chamber of Commerce ballyhoo back home. For them it means only endless work and worry. The West- erners really wanted it for San Francisco. They regarded Butler's intervention as unwarranted, improper, and gra- tuitous, and they departed from Washington with blood in their eyes and mayhem in their hearts. To arouse so much acrimony under circumstances so propitious to harmony re-

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730 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3260 quired the full exercise of the only talent which Butler pos- sesses — that for doing the worst possible thing in the worst possible way. ***** ALL those critics who were so indignantly denouncing Senator Wheeler three years ago for his methods in exposing the Department of Justice under Harry M. Daugherty have fallen strangely quiet since the publication of Colonel Charles R. Forbes's narrative in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and the New York World. Forbes, just out of Leavenworth, where he expiated his part in the Ohio Gang's activities, piled detail on sordid detail to expose what was already known in general terms about the Harding era. He proved that Wheeler was right in contending that only crooks could testify to what went on under Daugherty, be- cause only crooks were in on it. The chief protest recorded thus far against the publication of Forbes's "memoirs" came from the eminent journalist and business man, David Law- rence, who pronounced it "an outrage" to publish such slan- ders on such slight basis. Mr. Lawrence was not so squeam- ish a year ago when he sent out a syndicated article under his signature denouncing the correspondence between Sena- tor Borah and President Calles regarding the Mexican oil laws, and declaring it unprecedented in the history of the Government. After sending it out, he took the trouble to ask Senator Borah about it and found out that it was not only precedented but had been quite common for more than a century. Perhaps Mr. Lawrence has grown more fastidi- ous with increasing prosperity. ***** THE scarcity of able, independent, and courageous men in the Senate is graphically emphasized when Senators Walsh (of Montana) and Norris come down ill at the same time. At once the fight against the power trust languishes, and the bloated power trust lobby begins to have things its own way. Reed (of Missouri) and La Follette are busy with the Vare-Smith inquiry, and Borah has the Latin- American mess on his hands. The sad truth is that there aren't enough good men for the big jobs — not even one for each job. Sire of the Eagle By LYNN HAINES THE world once more is agog over Charles A. Lind- bergh: his 35,000-mile flight over the Uni ,ed States, his journey to Mexico through fog and rain make him more than ever his country's hero, the "Ambassador of Good- Will." And though the world saw his father very differ- ently, "like father, like son" was never more perfectly il- lustrated than in Charles A. Lindbergh, senior and junior. No two could be more thoroughly alike. One chose states- manship, the other aviation; that was the only difference between them. It proved a tremendous difference, however. The very qualities of character which bring the world to one's feet in aircraft will place one beneath the feet of the world in statecraft. Lindbergh the younger demonstrates a sur- passing courage, whereupon multitudes surge about him to do him honor. Lindbergh the elder was equally courage- ous and independent, but the masses he had to face were American mobs. The father was tall and straight, a fine figure of a man. His face was outstandingly strong, alert, frank, and kindly. He was always calm and impersonal. He used no liquor nor o. I never heard even the smallest "cuss word" pass his lips. He cared nothing for social life. If he had been asked to dance he would have made the same answer as does his lionized son: "I never learned how." To work was his greatest joy. If a task were important he liked to do all parts of it. For example, he had stenographers — and did most of his own typewriting. Probably nine-tenths of the many communications I have had from him were his own handiwork. As everybody knows, Congressmen write their own autobiographies for the Congressional Directory. That con- tributed by the father of the world's most famous airman was the briefest, I think, ever published. Here it is: "Charles A. Lindbergh, Republican, of Little Falls." The world marvels at the modesty of the son. It is not at all inexplicable to me who knew the father's remarkable selflessness. Just once in the long period of our acquaintance- ship did Congressman Lindbergh voluntarily refer to a personal matter. He was an attorney — a good one, of the Lincoln type; his honesty was unquestionable. Years be- fore he had handled a Minnesota case for an Eastern mil- lionaire. When this client died it wTas found that Lindbergh was named administrator of the big estate; and the will provided that no bond should be required for the execution of the trust. That unusual confidence in his integrity pleased him. He told me about it. It was the nearest to boasting that he ever got. His industry was prodigious. Undoubtedly he was the hardest-working man ever in Congress. It was his daily habit to reach his room in the House Office Building before five o'clock in the morning. Once I asked him how and why he did it. "I must have three or four hours each day by myself for study and writing. After nine there are always inter- ruptions." That was his answer. His outstanding characteristic was his courage. I re- member one morning when he called me up and said: "Come over to the hospital at ten and visit with me while the doc- tors fix me up." "What's the matter?" I asked. "Oh, a little operation," he replied. It was not a little operation, and he went through it without an anaesthetic. The ordeal lasted more than an hour and he never gritted his teeth or even gripped my hand, except for a few seconds, when the surgeon's knife pierced the abdominal cavity. All through that episode we talked about international banking. I had discussed big public problems with him many times, in his office and at my home, but I do not re- member an occasion when his mind was given more unre- servedly to a serious subject. There was no hint of a dis- traction. He seemed utterly unmindful of any suffering. He continued with his exposition of a particular point after

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Dec. 28, 1927] The Nation 731 being taken to his room. Not once did he mention the surgery, except indirectly, when he apologized for having subjected me to an unpleasant experience. For ten years he was a Congressman from Minnesota, representing the Little Falls district. If, at any time dur- ing that decade, this district had attempted secession there would have been no civil war over it. The powers that be, both Republican and Democrat, would eagerly have sacri- ficed even a larger territorial part of the Union to get rid of Lindbergh. A question naturally arises: Why did they not go out and defeat him? They tried, repeatedly. I once asked an Old Guarder why they did not succeed. His ex- planation was interesting, and possibly had some signifi- cance. "We spent so much money," he said, "trying to lick Lindbergh that the district became too prosperous to care about a change." He first got in, I suspect, because he was a likable and honest lawyer. His integrity was known to every man and woman in that section of the State. When Lindbergh was admitted to the bar, having graduated in the law class of the University of Michigan at twenty-three (1883), he sub- scribed most thoroughly and conscientiously to the oath of an attorney. He regarded his profession as an official part of the judicial machinery. As a lawyer he acted ac- cordingly. A guilty client did not interest him. It became a tradition in central-eastern Minnesota that he was con- cerned only in helping to find the exact justice of every controversy. In Congress he was a radical of the advanced, uncom- promising type. He tackled the biggest and politically most dangerous national issues. Therefore he was hated and misrepresented more bitterly perhaps than any public man of his generation. "Socialist" was among the mildest of the epithets hurled at him. His enemies accused him of being unsocial. They implied that he shunned functions because of a "crudeness" that was embarrassing to him. Nothing could be further from the truth. He was thor- oughly a gentleman, both by birth and breeding. He cared nothing for the social life of the capital, preferring to be studiously by himself, but when it seemed a duty, because of his position, to attend some social event he did so. So- cial life, aside from its unattractiveness, did not at all fit into his Congressional habits. He could not consistently be about his work at five in the morning if the midnight hours were given to sociability. It would not have mattered to the orthodox politicians how much he made a slave of himself, but the results were troublesome. He was better prepared on serious subjects than any "bolshevist" ever encountered, either before or after bolshevism became a well-recognized bugaboo. The "money trust" was Lindbergh's chief obsession. Not many Congressmen are friends of the "money trust," but few of them at that time ardently desired to stir it up. "Let sleeping dogs lie," was quite generally the Congres- sional policy. Lindbergh, however, persisted in keeping the dangerous animal thoroughly awake. Moreover, he wanted to kennel it, and put the key in the people's pocket. He demanded an investigation of the "money trust," and got it, although others took the credit. Lindbergh introduced his resolution for a Congres- sional inquiry in July, 1911. At first it was not taken seriously. But those five o'clock study periods quickly began to show their results. He made out so strong a case that it could not be ignored. The Democrats were then in control of the House. Lindbergh was nominally a Republican, although that party regarded him as an undesirable alien. It was not good politics for those in power to permit any kind of a Repub- lican to sponsor so big a thing as the "money trust" in- vestigation. Other resolutions were presented by Demo- crats. Henry of Connecticut was the author of one; Pujo of Louisiana of another, the latter's being adopted on Feb- ruary 24, 1912. From a beginning in which he stood practically alone, Lindbergh saw this inquiry approved by the House with only eight dissenting votes. Among these dissenters were four famous Republican names — Cannon, Dalzell, Gillett, and Til- son. So the Pujo Committee came into being. It was Lind- bergh's work. It ought to have been the Lindbergh Com- mittee. Senator Norris, then a Congressman, demanded that Lindbergh be given the credit, but that was not to be. It is doubtful if Lindbergh cared who got the credit so long as an investigation was made. This "money-trust" fight was continuous until Lind- bergh voluntarily left Congress, March 4, 1917. The in- vestigation was no sooner under way than he turned his attention to the Glass-Owen bill, which created the Federal Reserve System. He opposed that measure with a vigor and determination rarely exceeded in public life. However one may regard the now existing system, then created, Lind- bergh's first speech in that debate was a marvelous ex- position of the history and economics of financial legisla- tion. His research had been amazing. He presented docu- ments of which most Congressmen had never heard. Of course the Glass-Owens bill passed, and is now the law of the land. He did not quit. He kept on studying currency and credit. His vigilance in watching the Federal Reserve System was unceasing. Four years later, shortly before the end of his Congressional career, he arose and said: Mr. Speaker and the House of Representatives, I, Charles A. Lindbergh, the undersigned, upon my responsi- bility as a member of the House of Representatives, do hereby impeach W. P. G. Harding, governor; Paul M. Warburg, vice-governor; and Frederick A. Delano, Adolph C. Miller, and Charles S. Hamlin, members, each individu- ally as a member of the Federal Reserve Board, and also all of them collectively as the five active working members of said board, of high crimes and misdemeanors. There followed fifteen counts of an indictment, each of which, he said, "I stand ready to prove." He asked the House not to dispose of the solemn pro- ceedings "by a motion to lay on the table. It would not be doing justice to the country if done in that way." He said: Either I am right in presenting these articles of im- peachment or I am wrong. If I do injustice to the House, if I do injustice to the country in preferring articles of im- peachment which ought not to be preferred, then it is the duty of the House to discredit me for doing that thing. I do not, however, expect to be discredited, though undoubt- edly powerful influences will be used to prevent favorable action on the articles of impeachment. The matter was referred to the Judiciary Committee and, of course, no action was taken. A confidential talk I had with him about this impeach- ment of the Federal Reserve Board can now be told. As a publicist, I was interested in knowing what was back of it. "Will the House act on your charges?" I asked. "No," he answered; "I don't expect any result like that."

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732 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3260 "Why, then, did you make the indictment?" There followed an hour of prophecy — which seemed almost inspired in view of what happened. He pointed out what this federal agency could and would do after the war, especially with respect to agriculture. He predicted the manipulated deflation of 1920, which squeezed from twenty to thirty billions out of the farming industry, leaving it hopelessly crushed and broken. Lindbergh took part in the revolt against Cannonism. That was just a flurry for most of the insurgents. Charac- teristically he kept on fighting after the others had quieted down. The House rules were not reformed as a result of that Cannon controversy. So as late as the Sixty-fourth Congress he made a lone effort "to break the power of the bosses." He staged a one-man filibuster, objecting to all "unanimous consent business," seeking thus to force the masters of the House to act on four remedial amendments he had presented. He did not succeed, because it was physi- cally impossible for a single individual to stay on the job every minute for the weeks that were needed to win. Charles A. Lindbergh did not stand for reelection to the House in 1916. The World War was raging. We had not entered "the hell-storm," as he called it; but he foresaw our participation and the reaction it would bring. That meant bigger, more vital struggles for him. He could re- turn to Congress but the issues would have to be fought out in larger election contests in order that more people might be reached. The governorship of Minnesota or a seat in the Senate was what he must seek — unselfishly, I think. He was anti-war, from start to finish. "Probably I'll go down," he said to me, shortly before the war vote was taken and he was defeated by a narrow margin. He returned to Minnesota, and spoke his convictions wherever he went. He was mobbed more than once, by the war-fren- zied. But he was not in the least afraid. The supremest test of courage comes when one con- fronts the unknown. Charles A. Lindbergh, Sr., was above all superstition. He faced death, as he did life, with abso- lute fearlessness. Pioneers are much the same the world over. Lindbergh the elder was as truly a trail-blazer as is his son. The boy, fortunately, tackled something that could be demonstrated at once. The father had ideas which were a generation ahead of the popular capacity for comprehension. Rumania Free from the Lion's Paw By G. E. R. GEDYE Bucharest, December 2 " A BRATIANU," they say in the cafes of Bucharest, ili "has always a king to do his will" and so, since the father of Jon Bratianu fetched Carol I from Sigmar- ingen, it has always been. No wonder that foreign observers, seeing the country deprived of both Bratianu and king, foresee disaster for the state. True, there is an industrious financial pedant bearing the name of Bratianu, as there is a child bearing the title of king, but the one is as well fitted as the other to fill the vacant places. For good or ill, a chapter in Rumanian history closes with the death of Jon Bratianu. The efforts of the Liberals, with Vintila Bratianu at their head and M. Duca, the Min- ister of the Interior, furnishing such driving force as they possess, are directed toward picking up the threads of the story in the new chapter; those of Julius Maniu, the leader of the National Peasant Party, toward making the last chapter the end of a volume. Jon Bratianu was a great man and a gifted personality. He was no mere figurehead like Pilsudski, no "pocket Mussolini" like General Averescu or like General Pangalos in Greece, but a full-blooded, authentic dictator in his own right. I well remember the superb gesture with which I saw him sweep aside the entirely righteous protests in Parliament of Julius Maniu against his (Bratianu's) arbi- trary regulation of the succession. It was at the first sitting of the Chamber after the death of King Ferdinand. Maniu set forth at length the long series of violations of the constitution through which Bratianu had secured the power to exclude Carol, to make httle Michael king, and to appoint a Council of Regency obedient to himself. The Opposition leader concluded with a ringing declaration that his party — which everyone knew even then to possess the confidence of the vast majority of Rumanians — refused to recognize the new settlement. Bratianu, who had listened with growing impatience, disdained a reply worthy of the name. In half a dozen crisp sentences he conveyed to the Deputies that what he did was right, that black was white if he said so, and that he desired to hear no more of these futile and querulous protests. Gathering up his papers he turned on his heel and left the Chamber. The President immediately suspended the sitting. Thus ruled Bratianu. Yet there is much for which the country had to thank him. Throughout the earlier years of the war he bar- gained cautiously, first with the Allies and then with the Central Powers. Had either side realized how far he had gone with the other, his territory would have been invaded. The Central Powers in particular cast longing eyes on the grain and oil of Rumania, but refrained from taking it by force because Jon Bratianu succeeded in making them believe that he was on the point of selling it to them at his own price. He concluded his bargain with the Allies at last and, at a moment when his country was almost entirely surrounded by their enemies, declared for the Allied cause. His realization that despite all outward appearances the Allied side was going to prove the winner was an instance of the man's sagacity not to be discounted because his country was immediately overrun by the enemy. Caring little what the Allies might desire, he preserved his capital intact by refusing to defend it, and so arranged matters that the greater part of the devastation wrought in the country — the destruction of the oil wells — was done by the Allies who, unless his entire calculations were wrong, would have to pay up promptly. What else stands to his credit? Certainly the nationalization of the land, on which Greater Rumania is founded. The expropriation of the owners of unwieldy latifundia was vitally necessary to preserve the country from sheer anarchy. This fact has to be weighed against all protests of the Hungarian landlords, who still demand that they alone should be

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Dec. 28, 1927] The Nation 733 exempt from the measure while native-born Rumanian landlords suffer under it. Should the careless drafting of the Treaty of the Trianon really secure them this immunity — and there is much reason to believe that a strict interpre- tation of the treaty's clauses will do so — the treaty-makers will be responsible for creating another intolerable situa- tion in Europe. The nationalization of the subsoil — which means, of course, of the oil supplies — was another wise measure of Jon Bratianu, and everyone will approve of his action in abolishing the laws limiting the franchise to a few rich landowners and in conferring universal suffrage. The Liberals propose to erect a statue to him bearing no name, but having these words inscribed on the pedestal : "Greater Rumania, expropriation and redistribution of land, universal suffrage." The hypocrisy of the inscription is exposed by the simultaneous proposal of his brother, Vintila, to the Peasant Party of M. Maniu to hold elec- tions from which the peasants are to emerge with 45 per cent of the seats! The proposed inscription on the statue of Jon Bratianu would be justified if the reverse side bore the words : "Alienation of the liberated Rumanians, employ- ment of expropriated land and mineral wealth for purposes of political corruption, nullification of the franchise by a perfected system of violence and fraud." There is much to be said in defense of Jon Bratianu's conduct of affairs in the past; there is nothing to be said for the desire of the Liberal Party to perpetuate this bribery and corruption which is slowly but surely destroy- ing Rumania. Julius Maniu has admitted to me that at the end of the war the whole country was behind Bratianu, particularly his own people, the Rumanians of Transyl- vania, who thanks in part to the clever bargaining of the Rumanian Premier had been released from the merciless oppression of Hungary. Bratianu was a man of the Orient — one cannot, if one wishes to understand Rumania, hear too often that only fifty years ago all that before the war was Rumania was sunk in the degradation of Turkish mis- rule. This Oriental province Bratianu ruled with the absolutism, corruption, and bribery to which the East is accustomed. His great mistake was that, while posing as the Prime Minister of a Western Power and refusing indig- nantly to admit even that Rumania was a Balkan state be- cause of the admixture of Latin blood in the veins of her people, he encouraged a system which he should, even in Little Rumania, have tried slowly to abolish, but which in Greater Rumania should not have been tolerated for a day. But the Liberals were less a party than a consortium of bankers who under the cloak of politics had laid all the Regat (Little Rumania) under tribute to themselves and who proposed to secure still greater spoils in the vast new territories which had been acquired. No effort was made to consolidate the country, to create merely Rumanians out of the orientalized inhabitants of the Regat, the Austrianized people of the Bukowina, the Magyarized Rumanians of Transylvania, and the Bessarabians, who are still unpersuaded that they are not Russians. Thus Julius Maniu, who had devoted the first half of his life to resist- ing the tyranny of the Magyars and in struggling toward unity with the Rumanians of the Regat speedily found him- self compelled to devote the second half to combating the corruption and dishonesty of the Regat with which his country had been united. There is, of course, no looking back to the past. M. Maniu emphasized to me that the misgovernment of the minorities in Rumania by M. Bratianu could not in any way be compared with the tyranny of the Hungarians when they ruled in Transylvania, and declared that not one Rumanian could be found who considered the Hungarian propaganda for a revision of the Treaty of the Trianon as anything but mischievous. The liberal press of Bucharest rings with appeals to M. Maniu to be patriotic and to recognize that the country needs a united government. I do not think that the bril- liant and clear-sighted Transylvania lawyer is likely to compromise with unrighteousness. Vintila Bratianu's finan- cial policy of the past six years has been a complete fail- ure. The leu is still unstabilized, the cost of living is still rising. Jon Bratianu's diplomacy won him distrust abroad, and foreign capital fights shy of the lesser brother. The Liberals are as discredited as any party could be, and they have lost their powerful head. Behind them stands nothing but the power of the banks. Worst of all, they have no leader. There is no other party in the country. General Averescu will hastily attach himself to the winning side when the issue is decided — if they will have him. There is no Carolist party, though Maniu preserves an open mind on the question of the return of the Prince, and after he has attended to more urgent matters is likely to sanction it if the Prince will accept the strict conditions which he intends to impose. The country itself is enormously rich and capable of development, requiring only an honest and efficient regime. The apathy of the people is a drawback, but this is often exaggerated. The peasantry in many parts of the country is hard-working, and this does much to counteract the in- dolence of the city population and of other sections of the peasantry. Despite the display of uniforms on every hand, the Rumanians are not a military people, and a period of external peace is certainly essential. Given that, the tragic death of the greatest Rumanian, Jon Bratianu, may yet prove the salvation of the country which he had created but was conducting slowly to ruin.* A Challenge to Mr. Rockefeller By MORRIS L. ERNST r~T!HE NATION has been running a series of articles A called Americans We Like in distinction to the equally accessible list of Americans We Detest. If it ever gets around to the more complex group of Americans Who Dis- appoint— being a cross between the other two — I wish to nominate John D. Rockefeller, Jr. During the past month when opportunity arose he twice failed to earn the Dis- tinguished Service Medal — an award for service outside of the realm oi duty. His wealth and his control of industries segregate him from the ordinary run of men. In conse- quence his duties to society commence at those zones which describe the bounds of other men's obligations. As a human he must be likable and kindly. I speak from no personal knowledge. Acquaintance with some of his more liberal advisers, the simplicity of his bequests, and his sincere recognition of a social responsibility form the basis of this guess. He gives money with finesse. He can- not give in the sense of making a personal sacrifice, but * An article by Aureliu Jon Popescu, describing the programs and rela- tionships of the various political parties in Rumania, appears in the Inter- national Relations Section of this issue.

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734 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3260 measured against others who own the earth — George Baker, Morgan, Ford — his benefactions make them appear miser3. And yet what a disappointing score he has made dur- ing this past month. As to failure number one, I submit the following: He is reputed to be the leading factor in the American oil business. His resources, financial and spiritual, could be a dominant factor in the business out of which he and his father made that money which, via foundations, is being contributed by American gasoline users to medical patients in Palestine or typhus sufferers in Poland. Sin- clair and Doheny have been stamped by the Supreme Court of the United States as corrupt. They tried to cheat the government. I assume that Mr. Rockefeller, Junior, read the scorching words of the highest court. I assume that he knows that the Petroleum Institute is the trade association of the oil industry created for the benefit of the industry but not necessarily organized to work against the best inter- e ts of this nation. Doheny and Sinclair came up for re- election as directors and were in fact elected. John D., Jr. remained mute. He was not at the meeting — the representa- tives of his companies answered the roll instead. In his defense it is said that he doubtless urged the defeat of Sinclair and Doheny at the directors' meetings of the com- panies in which he owns large interests. That may be enough for an ordinary man; it is not for a man with his vast stockholdings — and vast responsibilities. And even if he cannot speak officially, why not as the churchman and the giver? Must his income outstrip his courage? The second regret of lost opportunity arises over Colo- rado. In that State habeas corpus is dead. Civil liberty in wide areas has been destroyed. The merits of ..he work- ers' demands are small issues as compared to the lawlessness of mine owners and public officials. I do not share in the common belief that the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company union plan is the sole cause of this unhealthy mess. The experiment known as the Rockefeller plan indicated at least a desire to try to work out the industrial problems of the Rockefeller mines. That I judge it a weak and hasty make- shift is aside from the point. The only important fact is that the present warfare started at or near the Rockefeller mine and spread to the areas where murder and the military still ride. And Mr. Rockefeller makes no statement. Friends of Mr. Rockefeller explain that the Rockefeller mines are separate from the present areas of un-American distress. This is not a satisfactory alibi. Mr. Rockefeller is the leader in the Colorado mining area. No longer can any member of an industry claim an isolation from trade responsibility. Much less can Rockefeller, the richest, desert his crowd — he must mix and share with them and he can gain distinction by leadership in froni rather than silence on the side. The workers march with song and spirit, start- ing at the Rockefeller gate. Their feet may take them far away but even from a distance they will picket him. He cannot avoid them by silence. No American has as many opportunities for Distin- guished Service Orders as Mr. Rockefeller. No one has disappointed more often. Baker, Morgan, Ford havi out no wordy hopes for ethical and moral leadership. Their rule is only in the counting house. Mr. Rockefeller, with one eye on the altar, raises hopes of moral courage and spiritual leadership. One sentence of moral indignation from him directed against Sinclair and Doheny or against the impairment of old-fashioned American civil liberty in Colorado would be equal to a lengthy speech by silent Cal. The White Terror in China By SCOTT NEARING [Since Mr. Nearing wrote, cables from China report "s< veral thousand Reds" executed in Canton, and more killed in Hankoiv and Shanghai.] Moscow, i a route for China, November 25 CHINA is not a pacifist country. Its recent history con- tains many instances in which thousands of people have paid with their lives for opposition to an established order. The closing months of 1926 and the early months of 1927, however, wrote a new record of Chinese executions. Drastic as were the suppressions under Yuan Shih-kai, only military tribunals or duly constituted courts could sen- tence persons to death. During the present year every local military commander seems to have included the right of death sentence among his other prerogatives. Chang Tso- lin has never hesitated to execute those who opposed him. But he usually gave the semblance of a trial. His oppo- nents were arrested, spent some time in jail, inquiries were made into their cases, some opportunity was given for de- fense, and there was at least a decent interval between their arrest and execution. Several scores of revolutionists have been arrested and executed by Chang Tso-lin during the last two years. It is difficult to say exactly how many. Arrests have been fre- quent and among those arrested a considerable portion have paid the death penalty for the slightest of charges, such as "carrying on propaganda subversive of army discipline"; "suspicion of Communist activities"; "propaganda for the Kuomintang." South China and the valley of the Yangtze furnish the real seat of the White Terror during 1926 and 1927. It was there that the danger to established Chinese institutions and the need for suppression were most obvious. After the Kuomintang convention of 1924 there was a sharp division in the party between those who were in favor of cooperating with Russia and of admitting Communists into the Kuomintang and those who were opposed to such a policy. Sun Yat-sen was in the former group. The "West- ern Hills" leaders were in the latter. Chiang Kai-shek was one of their adherents. When the Nationalist armies moved north in the spring and summer of 1926 they carried with them a wave of mass sentiment that expressed itself in strikes and peasant uprisings that seemed to threaten the established order in China. The strikes of 1926 were directed in the main against - ese industries. The peasant uprisings of 1926-1927 were, of course, directed entirely against the Chinese gen- try. Thus the revolutionary movement which swept north through China after the summer of 1926 constituted a di- rect threat to the economic and social position of the Chinese industrialists and the Chinese landlords. Already in January and February the terror had begun. The Chinese Relief Organization has compiled figures show- ing that between January and March. 1927, 1,174 persons were executed without trial. The courts, not including courts martial, condemned 2,286 persons to death during these three months. Shanghai fell into the hands of one of Chiang Kai- shek's generals on March 21, 1927. The Nanking incident occurred three days later. The split in the Kuomintang organization which had begun in January, 1924, culminated

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Dec. 28, 1927] The Nation 735 in the bloody White Terror of April, May, and June, 1927. It was not the generals who took Shanghai. The armed workers of the city drove out Sun Chuan-fang as the Na- tionalist army approached. Chiang Kai-shek's first action in Shanghai, however, was forcibly to disarm the workers and to destroy their organization. In the course of these operations a considerable number of workers lost their lives. During the next week the reign of terror began. In the Yangtze Valley and throughout Southern China Commun- ists and members of the left Kuomintang group were ar- rested and executed by thousands. Some were tried. Many were shot within twenty-four hours of their arrest. The Chinese Relief Organization has compiled these figures cov- ering South China, including the Yangtze Valley: April, 1927 Condemned to death by court 215 persons Executed without trial 346 Injured 999 " May, 1927 Condemned to death by court 158 Executed without trial 822 Injured 134 June, 1927 Condemned to death by court 246 Executed without trial 1,974 Injured 758 Among those executed 2.2 per cent were women; 5.8 per cent were merchants; 12.7 per cent were intellectuals; 14 per cent were soldiers; 23.3 per cent were workers, and 39 per cent were peasants. Since June, figures are lacking. The papers do not publish details and official figures are not available, but the reign of terror is still going on. Most of the known Communists have already been hunted down. How many Communists and members of the left-wing Kuomintang lost their lives between February and October, 1927? It is difficult to say. Conservative estimates place the number well above 5,000. Many of the Chinese revo- lutionary leaders claim that it has exceeded 20,000. What- ever the number, the Chinese reign of terror has accom- plished three purposes: 1. It has destroyed the immediate revolutionary ef- fectiveness of the left-wing movement by depriving it of some of its most competent leadership; 2. It has driven the Communist and left-wing move- ment from the field of open political activity to the field of underground revolutionary organization; 3. It has convinced the leaders of the Chinese revolu- tion that they have nothing to hope from legal action. The foreigners of the imperialist Powers played a di- rect role in the White Terror; in a number of instances they turned over to Chiang Kai-shek members of left-wing organizations who were found in the foreign Concessions. The Chinese bourgeoisie also played a direct role in the White Terror; it was only after he had captured Shanghai and made his alliance with them that Chiang Kai-shek launched his campaign of murder. The Chinese gentry di- rected the White Terror against the peasantry; they be- lieved that their property holdings were at stake and they stopped at nothing to defend their privileges. The Chinese White Terror adds another to the long line of instances occurring during the last ten years, in which the members of the privileged class have jailed and murdered indiscriminately whenever they have felt that their position was really threatened. In the Driftway IT is disappointing to salt-water cranks like the Drifter to reflect that much dust is likely to lie over the Fisher- men's Cup before it is pulled down from the shelf and rubbed up for another competition. The loss of the schooner Co- lumbia last summer eliminates the most important conten- der for the trophy in the United States and adds to the im- probability that the disagreement which broke up the last contest, that in 1923, will be straightened out in the near future. Gasoline is becoming more important than sail to the Down East fishing fleet. * •;:- -x- * # THE loss of the Columbia went almost unnoticed by the public because it is a tale that never has been and never can be told. There was no story for the newspapers and so no obituary in them. The Columbia simply went out and — did not come back. She was last sighted off Sable Island on August 23. The next day a terrific gale snorted and bellowed along the coast, driving scores of vessels to harbor and tumbling others as wreckage on the granite- plated shores that are so beautiful to summer tourists and so grim to distressed seamen. But there was no fear for the Columbia. She did not run ashore and, until some weeks had passed, was believed to be busy catching and stowing away a cargo of fish. Gradually the idea grew that the schooner might have gone down — then that she probably had. Finally, when stories came to Gloucester in early October of the finding by life savers near Sable Island of dory planks bearing the Columbia's name, the schooner was chalked up to the unpaid and unpayable account of the sea. * * * # * AN article in the Boston Globe suggests that a jinx hangs over Gloucester's champions in the fishermen's races. It almost seems so. Two of the four have been lost, while a third went aground the day she was launched. The Esperanto, which beat the Nova Scotia schooner Dela- wana in the first contest for the Fishermen's Cup, in 1920, struck a submerged wreck near Sable Island the following year and was a total loss, although the crew escaped in dories. Now the Columbia has gone down, probably in the same locality. The Henry Ford ran ashore near the mouth of the Essex River the day she was baptized, but got off only to be outsailed by the Bluenose in the races for the in- ternational trophy in 1922. In addition, three candidates for the job of upholding Gloucester's reputation in the cup races — although not actual contestants in them — have met disaster. The Mayflower, specially built as a cup de- fender in 1921, was ruled out on the ground that she was a racing craft rather than a bona fide fisherman, necessitating the sending of the diminutive Elsie to certain defeat by the big schooner Bluenose. The next winter the Puritan was laid down as a cup contender from designs by Burgess. She never got the chance; she, too, was wrecked the following June on Sable Island, "the graveyard of the Atlantic." In- cidentally the Columbia, also a Burgess-designed craft, came near losing her chance in the races too. She hardly had left the ways in 1923 when she had a serious collision with a French trawler. Fortunately she was repaired in time for the races to choose Gloucester's contender for the cup. She won these but had a stiff competitor in the Elizabeth

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736 The JNation L voi. izo, ino. azw Howard, known around Cape Ann as the White Ghost. A few months later the White Ghost, gone astray in a white fog, grounded near Halifax and went to pieces, all her men but one escaping. * * * * * THE Fishermen's Cup races of 1923 ended in a tiff which has prevented any competition since. The Bluenose won the first encounter. The second was a failure for lack of wind. In the third the Bluenose crossed the finishing line first but was disqualified for passing a buoy on the wrong side. Another race was ordered, but Captain Wal- ters of the Bluenose sulked in his tent, or wherever a dis- gruntled skipper retires to sulk. Captain Pine was then invited to sail the Columbia over the course for the cup but, declining any such empty victory, headed back to Gloucester. This and previous disagreements in the com- petition for the Halifax Herald's cup suggest that, if the contest is to be revived, its character should be changed. Fishermen who spend their lives in a vital fight with the sea have no stomach for the fine rules and the specialized seamanship of a harbor regatta. They need a bit of open water and more than a puff and a half of wind to stir their blood so that they will forget to wrangle. An open ocean race, too, would banish the temptation to build any more pea- pods like the Mayflower. The Drifter Correspondence Save- the- Men Movement To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: A movement has begun in this city to prevent men from contaminating girls with the cigarette habit. Two in- stances of this have been observed. When I was working last spring for George H. Doran Company, publishers, 244 Madison Avenue, since merged with Doubleday, Page and Company, I noticed that all the men in the office smoked pipes. My boss, Alan Rinehart, occasionally took a whiff at a cigarette after looking about furtively. Upon ina'iiry I discovered that Mr. Doran forbade the men to smoke cigarettes as the girls were smoking too. Now the girls smoke in the washroom. Feeling economical I went to the Y. W. C. A. cafeteria on Abingdon Square for lunch one day recently. There were many more men than women in the room. Several men were smok- ing cigarettes so I lit a cigarette. Presently the elderly woman cashier came up to me. "Girls are not permitted to smoke here," she said. "But the men are smoking," I remonstrated. "Yes, but they can only smoke at lunch time. Girls don't come here for lunch." Then she added benevolently: "But as this is the first time I've seen you here I guess there's no harm done." Neiv York, December 19 Margaret H. Speer Christmas in Old Age To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: At this Christmas season your readers will be inter- ested to learn of, and perhaps help, one of the most important movements recently undertaken to provide an honorable and self-respecting means of caring for our worn-out t >ilers. The problem of old-age dependency in the United States is growing more serious every da . Many employers today refuse to give employment to men and women after the forties. But even at this time of stagnant public sentiment a vigorous and powerful movement in behalf of old-age pension legislation is developing. Six States and the Territory of Alaska have already enacted such laws on their statute-books. Local com- mittees urging this legislation have been organized in many States and a drive for such legislation launched. Sponsoring and stimulating this movement is the American Association for Old Age Security with offices at 104 Fifth Ave- nue, New York City. This association was organized about a year ago and is headed by Bishop Francis J. McConnell of the Methodist Episcopal Church and A. Epstein, author of "Facing Old Age." It is made up of representatives of labor, the churches, and various other civic bodies. It aims to promote adequate security for the old people of our community by means of State and federal legislation. In order to carry on this move- ment most effectively, the association is badly in need of finan- cial help to meet its modest budget for 1928. I am certain many of your readers are sufficiently inter- ested in this humane cause to place the American Association for Old Age Security on their Christmas gift-list. Elisabeth Gilman, Vice-President Baltimore, December 15 Boulder Dam and Arizona Culture To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: The Swing- Johnson Bill proposes the construction by the federal government of a large dam in the Colorado River at Boulder Canyon. The dam is not to be wholly on Arizona soil, as Mrs. Austin states in The Nation for November 9; on the contrary, it is to be erected on public lands of the United States; half of it within the political boundaries of Arizona and half in Nevada. The power-house will be in Nevada. The reservoir created by this dam will completely solve the major problems of the lower river — it will control the floods, store water, remove silt, and, incidentally, develop power to pay for the project. The essence of the solution of the problem of the lower Colorado is large storage because the river is character- ized by great fluctuations of flow. Nowhere else on the lower river can this large storage be obtained so cheaply. The delegates from the State of Arizona who appeared before the Senate and Congressional committees in opposition to the Boulder Canyon Project urged that the dam be built farther up the river, at Bridge Canyon. This dam would create a reservoir of about one-tenth the capacity of the Boulder Can- yon reservoir and would therefore be useless for flood control or storage purposes. It would cost twenty million dollars more than the Boulder Canyon Dam. It was argued by the Arizona delegates that if the Bridge Canyon Dam were built high enough, a diversion could be made to a so-called "high-line canal" to irrigate a large area in Arizona. This "high-line canal" plan would require a tunnel 75 miles long without shafts or adits, and the total length of the canal would be some 520 miles. The cost has been roughly estimated at $300,000,000. At the Denver conference the "high-line canal" project which, according to Mrs. Austin's article, is to develop a cul- ture in Arizona wholly different from that in California, re- ceived very little attention from the delegates from Arizona. At Denver Governor Hunt proposed that Arizona be paid an annual tribute of one mill per kilowatt-hour on all electrical energy developed at Boulder Dam in exchange for Arizona's ratification of the compact. This "hush money," as it has been called by Mayor Bacon of San Diego, would amount to 35 per cent of the total gross revenue which it is estimated that the dam would produce. Although the proposal was not accepted, it received favorable consideration from the delegates of some of the upper States who are influenced by the power interests. Any plan that would embarrass the government project at Boulder Canyon would please the power companies. Governor Hunt returned to Arizona with trumpets blaring. He announced triumphantly that the upper States had con- ceded Arizona's right to tax the power at Boulder Dam (the "high-line canal" was conveniently forgotten), and that the

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Dec. 28, 1927] The Nation 737 tax would result in a saving to Arizona's taxpayers of $10,000 a day — about one-third of Arizona's total tax levy. There is nothing culturally peculiar to Arizona in a Democratic poli- tician using the tax-reduction formula to win advancement; Republican politicians have resorted to the same trick. But what of the compact which Arizona is ready to ratify for cash? The compact is merely an attempt to substitute an agreement between the States for the stupid litigation which has been a part of every major river development in the West. The Santa Fe conference at which the compact was formulated is not to be compared with the present informal meetings. The Santa Fe conference was called in pursuance of a special act of Congress permitting a compact to be entered into between the States (the Constitution forbids interstate treaties without such special permission), and at this conference all the States were represented. In fact, Arizona's commissioners signed the compact; but its legislature failed to ratify it. The compact allocates water to two divisions of the Colo- rado River Basin, 7,500,000 acre-feet to the upper and 8,500,000 acre-feet to the lower. This agreement does not allocate water to the several States — it divides the average flow between the two basins, and the charge that by ratifying the compact Ari- zona would surrender water to California is baseless. Mrs. Austin justifies the proposed tax on power for the benefit of Arizona on the ground that this interstate stream is one of Arizona's natural resources. On this theory, the States bordering the Mississippi might collect a tax on naviga- tion. However, the Roosevelt Dam across the Salt River in Arizona, and the Laguna Dam across the Colorado River at Yuma, both of which are government structures, are not re- garded as sources of revenue for Arizona's tax coffers. More- over, it is a little difficult to understand how the Colorado River can in any sense be considered a natural resource of Arizona. The water comes from the mountains in the upper States. Of the water to be impounded in the Boulder Canyon reservoir less than 5 per cent will be contributed by Arizona! There is a misconception in Mrs. Austin's article as to the function of the Boulder Dam. There is no diversion from the Boulder Canyon Reservoir to California. The proposed diver- sion for the domestic water supply for Los Angeles, which is no part of the Swing-Johnson Bill, has its intake 200 miles below the Boulder Dam. This diversion may be made under the appropriation laws whether the Boulder Dam is built or not. A similar diversion out of the watershed for a water supply for Denver is planned in the upper basin. The Swing- Johnson Bill proposes the construction of a canal wholly on American soil to supply water to Imperial Valley, but this canal has its intake at the Laguna Dam, 300 mil'-s below the Boulder Dam site. However, no water in addition to Imperial Valley's present perfected water rights will be required for this canal. With respect to this feature of the bill. Mrs. Austin infers that because Californian capital is invested in Mexican lands, California regards the use of water for Mexi- can lands complacently. In fact, the bitterest animosity exists between the settlers in Imperial Valley and the Los Angeles capitalists who own the Mexican lands. The proposal to build a canal wholly on American soil (known locally as the All- American Canal) is the outgrowth of this antagonism. There are four valleys contiguous to the river on the Arizona side below the Boulder Dam site — Mojave, Parker, Ci- bola, and Yuma. Only one of these valleys, Yuma, is at pres- ent intensively developed. The construction of the Boulder Dam will permit complete development of all four of these val- leys; the plan suggested by the opponents of the Boulder Dam proposes the construction of a flood-control dam at Topcock which will completely submerge the Mojave Valley. The inun- dation of this fertile Arizona Valley of 30,000 acres is regarded with serenity by the Arizona politicians, probably because it is for the most part Indian Reservation. Indians don't vote! Further development of areas contiguous to the river in California is limited to extensions to the Palo Verde and Im- perial valleys. But such development in no case will require water in excess of the present perfected water rights. The Boulder Dam insures to these valleys a uniform water supply and safety from the menace of floods to the same extent as these benefits accrue to Arizona. There are no new areas in California susceptible of irri- gation from the Colorado River except the Chuckwalla Valley. A valley of about the same area exists in the Parker Project in Arizona. Development of either of these areas is not affected in a single particular by the compact. Nor is it true that the Boulder Dam subordinates the needs of irrigation to those of power. The power companies have fought the Boulder Canyon project, because generation of elec- trical energy is incidental to river regulation. And the reve- nue from the sale of power will pay for the entire project — the Government will get its money back! Mrs. Austin may be justified in her romantic conception of the future culture of Arizona; but the methods of the po- litical group opposing the construction of the Boulder Dam are so much like those of other politicians who capitalize cheap 5ocal prejudices for their own aggrandizement that a Martian strange to our political ways would hardly find any difference between the cultural activities of the politicians of Arizona and those of the mayor who promises to keep the "snoot of the King of England out of Chicago." Banning, Cal., November 25 Paul M. Entenman To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: I have carefully read the criticism of my Colorado River article without finding anything in it to which I feel bound to reply in particular. What I set out to do was not to cover all the ground of that controversy, and, as I explicitly stated in the article, many facts were omitted partly from want of space, and partly because many of these alleged facts are not strictly to be called facts but are assumptions which may be proved erroneous when the courts get down to rulings on many points of law which have not yet been brought to judgment. Another reason for omitting many facts, was that they cancel out with other facts which my critic does not mention. But to show how that works would necessitate my writing another article as long or longer than the first. Moreover, I had no intention of doing more in that first article than covering sketchily the ground traversed at the Denver Conference. I explicitly stated that I would not take up the questions involved in the Swing-Johnson Bill, as these had not yet come before the Conference, of which I am still a member. Perhaps I shall be willing to say something of that after the matter has been fully canvassed before the representatives of the seven States. I am glad to have the article arouse discussion. I make no claim to superior judgment in the matter, and would will- ingly stand corrected on any detail in which my own judgment failed, but I must protest against being brought to book in the business of the Swing-Johnson Bill and the Boulder Creek Dam site until I have fully expressed myself about it. I think you can do no better than to publish whatever seems to you per- tinent to the whole people, regardless of whether it contradicts or controvi rts what 1 have said or not. There is much in the spirit and the approach of the present critic which 1 felt 1 would rather not say, and yet am satisfied to have said. Santa Fe, N. M., December 6 Mary Austin Gifford Pinchot on The B< mlder Dam Controversy in an early issue of The Nation

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Books, Music, Plays Black Magic By ELIAS LIEBERMAN A host of words rode, black with ink, To fight the devil's fray ; And men who once said, "Let me think Now drool, "I read . . . They say . A Warning By EMMA L. HAWKRIDGE Some day, from beings that are meekly dumb, Revolt from our autocracy may come And men in guilty fear of them will cower When vegetables realize their power. Reflect — if things with roots could walk about, Gesticulate with leaves, and hoarsely shout, "Hey, dandelions, rise in revolution Against tho bourgeoisie of evolution!" And fly, flap-flopping in our faces, and Entangle with their roots a wrist or hand, And say, "The way these people multiply One can't keep valleys green, or hilltops high!' Determined dandelions! we'd be sorry then We'd strutted and uprooted things as men. Many Stories The Best Short Stories of 1927. Edited by Edward J. O'Brien. Dodd, Mead and Company. $2.50. Samples: A Collection of Stories. Boni and Liveright. $2.50. The Man Who Sa>c Through Heaven and Other Stories. By Wilbur Daniel Steele. Harper and Brothers. $2.50. Yell w Gentians and Blue. By Zona Gale. D. Appleton and Company. $2. The Best British Short Stories of 1927. Edited by Edward J. O'Brien. Dodd, Mead and Company. $2.50. ,V/| R. O'BRIEN'S latest collection indicates that the American ' * short story is struggling valiantly to free itself from the conventions on which it was nourished — "plot," melodrama, local color, and sentimentality. Two practitioners, at least, have definitely broken through — Mr. Hemingway and Mr. Anderson. The first-named has created a style so firm, honest, and clarified that it is simply impossible to express by means of it anything spurious, melodramatic, or artificially complicated. Mr. Ander- son, on the other hand, achieves an equally genuine effect by an elementary lyrical method. He is an honest man under the influ- ence of a mood — and in this condition he merely puts down what comes into his head. The result is often obscure; yet it is frequently beautiful and never magazinish. Mr. O'Brien reveals one or two other free spirits: Mr. La Farge, Mr. Roark Brad- ford, whose Child of God is a strangely moving fantasy, and Meridel Le Sueur. The latter's Persephone is possibly as sensi- tive a piece of short prose as the year has produced. Here the roll of honor comes to an abrupt close. Almost all of the remaining fifteen tales be. .• the mark, more or less distinct, of the magazine machine. Five of them, even at this late date, employ the 0. Henry snap ending. Two extremely clever stories, Mr. Wister's The Right Honorable the Straw- berries and Mr. Burman's Minstrels of the Mist, proceed beauti- fully and then, at the very end, let one down with the exhibition of a last-minute mawkishness. Yet, on the whole, this anthology is an encouraging phenomenon. In at least half a dozen stories the bonds, though still apparent, are visibly weakening. And there is one other thing. Mr. O'Brien with his customary mod- esty states in the preface: "My selection does not imply the critical belief that they are great stories. A year which pro- duced one gi'eat story would be an exceptional one." It is my critical belief, then, that this has been one of these exceptional years. Mr. Hemingway's The Killers, the star of the collection, is patently a great story. The anthology entitled "Samples" is lighter and less inter- esting than Mr. O'Brien's collection. The tales of Hemingway, Anderson, and Galsworthy are obviously superior and deeply felt. Miss Cather's Coming Aphrodite, intrinsically a beautiful idea, is too drawn out. Mr. Dreiser's rambling character sketch fails to satisfy, while the more clearly typical American stories, those by Fannie Hurst and Thyra Samter Winslow, are frankly vulgar. Should one desire to observe a writer apparently breaking every law of the machine and actually, with a really marvelous ingenuity, availing himself of every one of them, there is Mr. Wilbur Daniel Steele. The basis of Mr. Steele's art is melo- drama— but melodrama so subtly stylized and refined, so out- wardly unconventional, as to be hardly recognizable. Mr. Steele has been everywhere and has picked up so many bits of color, so much realistic detail that he is capable of conveying almost any effect, be it tragedy, horror, or passion. Yet, when one thinks it over one realizes that this is exactly what he has done: given us the effect and nothing more. Some years ago there was another story writer very much in the public eye — John Russell. Mr. Steele, like the now eclipsed Mr. Russell, is past master of a complicated bag of tricks. Of the actuality, the terrifying closeness of a Katherine Mansfield he is quite incapable. It is something of a relief to turn from the fervent com- plexities of his plots to the simple, jagged little life-stories which constitute Zona Gale's slim volume. There are, it is true, two painful throwbacks to the early sentimentality of "Friendship Village," in The Woman and The Two Souls. The other sketches are sharp reductions of tragic careers, purged of every tincture of adventitious local color. Sincere and occasionally moving as they are, one feels nevertheless that they are too compressed, too bare, too manifestly the skeletons of possible novels. Their quality is distinguished but it is not the quality of a short story. It is upon turning to Mr. O'Brien's English collection that one feels most keenly the divergence from the American machine- made product. The editor intimates that he has purposely excluded from his anthology many stories, otherwise creditable, which appeared to have been written with one eye to American requirements — those, for example, of Somerset Maugham and Arnold Bennett. The result of this exclusion is, on the whole, a happy one. One story, but only one, The Sheep by Mary Somerville, betray? a hint of the saccharine. The others are, for the most part, written with a quiet, light-fingered, satiric touch which is the despair of American writers. None of the purely English tales is very ambitious; the subject matter is never very original. Six out of eighteen deal, in variant ways, with the problem of snobbery and offer an interesting reflection of the process of social restratification now visible in England. There is a certain courtesy and restraint and evenness in these narratives, a complete avoidance of melodrama; but, compen- satingly, the tragic note is rarely struck and the delineation of sexual passion is tentative and oblique. In the Irish tales one hears an occasional overtone of mystery and tragedy; the Irish are not a formally polite people. Only two English writers, H. E. Bates and Elizabeth Bowen, catch anything of Katherine Mansfield's immediacy and horizon-opening quality. One misses, also, the magic hand of the greatest of all living artists in the short story — A. E. Coppard. His surrogate, David Gar-

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Dec. 28, 1927] The Nation 739 nett, is master of his fantasy but is sadly lacking in the depth and wonder which distinguish every line Mr. Coppard has written. Clifton P. Fadiman An Approach to "The Counterfeiters" Si le Grain ne Meurt. By Andre Gide. Paris: Editions la Nouvelle Revue Francaise. "rriHE COUNTERFEITERS" appears in English just as we A learn that M. Gide has withdrawn the original edition of his memoirs, "Si le Grain ne Meurt," to be reissued later perhaps in a revised form. Whatever light these memoirs throw on the intelligence that created "The Counterfeiters," now is the mo- ment for the illumination. The connection between the two is close, as the Journal of "The Counterfeiters" testifies. M. Gide was working on them concurrently, turning to the memoirs when the difficulties of the novel held him up, turning back to the novel when he was impressed by the fact that intimacy, penetration, psychological probing could in certain respects be pushed further in the novel than in "confessions." This he observes after noting that he had just completed one of the most important chapters in the memoirs, the account of the Algerian interlude in his early manhood, when he and Paul Laurens set forth to "normalize" themselves. It is precisely this part of the memoirs that M. Souday, in his recent study of Gide, calls repugnant, yet almost insignificant. Nobody was asking about M. Gide's private life; why display its least de- fensible caprices? But if everything he has chosen to say about his private life, as he traces the stages of his self-dis- covery, reveals the pattern of "The Counterfeiters" as a clear product of the temperament analyzed in the memoirs, how can that be insignificant? Every artist sees life in his own peculiar way. Why? Those who like this question answered will understand M. Gide's delight as a child in experimenting with the mechanism of his kaleidoscope, rearranging the parts, and discovering that even when the resulting effects were not so beautiful and surprising as the original ones, it was fascinating to comprehend the "why of pleasure." It is fascinating to comprehend the "why" of M. Gide's highly individual viewpoint when we are trying to relate it to all the other viewpoints contributed by the novelists who subtly influence our interpretations of human experience. The reading of many novels calls for an effort of reconstruc- tion similar to that M. Gide asks of us in "The Counterfeiters": "I wish," he says in the Journal, "to have its events related from different angles by the actors on whom the events have some influence; I wish these events, as they tell them, to ap- pear slightly distorted; a certain interest results for the reader from the sole fact that he has to reestablish; the story requires his collaboration." Memoirs like M. Gide's decrease our be- wilderment in the face of all the slightly distorted accounts of life that significant novels offer us. "Si le Grain ne Meurt" is one of the most troubling auto- biographies since Rousseau. "To disquiet," to quote the Journal again, "is my role. The public always prefers to be reassured. There are those whose business that is. There are only too many of them." This book is enlightening, but not reassuring. M. Souday would not have called essential parts of it insig- nificant if he had felt really comfortable about it. It offers the usual interest of any good autobiography: scenes, people, vividly and variously realized. It has also the interest belong- ing to the memoirs of a writer — that of tracing back to his personal experience episodes, characters, emotions later trans- muted into fiction. There is no doubt that M. Gide possesses the gift of cashing in on his own experience. But the deepest interest is in the man himself. When he went to Algeria he left his Bible behind because it had become indispensable to him, and he always felt the secret need to defy his own nature. "I am a being of dialogue; everything in me combats and con- tradicts itself." His belief in the moral code by which he had lived up to that time had been gradually yielding to a vision of life that was more iridescent. Perhaps God himself had a horror of that uniformity against which Nature protested, but toward which the Christian ideal tended, in aiming to subdue nature. He persuaded himself that each being — or at least each elected one — had a role to play resembling no other; and to submit himself to the common rule was the unforgivable sin by which he lost his precise, irreplaceable significance, his "salt," which could not be restored to him. (Of his Huguenot ancestors, Gide says that each one thought it was said to him personally: "You are the salt of the earth.") Forcing himself into the mold of the puritanism which he had been taught had secured only a profound disorganization of his whole being. Perhaps this discordant dualism could be resolved into har- mony. To seek that, he embarked for Algeria in 1893, and there he found his "normal." But it seems as if he did not like to abandon the possibility that the Evil One might be laughing at him from the shadows; as if he were at once urged by the desire to justify his own tendencies, and to get the utmost possible thrill out of transgression. His answer to that would be that there is "no way of looking at the moral and re- ligious question or of behaving in the face of it which at some moment of my life I have not known and made mine." He would like to reconcile all, even the most diverse points of view, excluding nothing and "ready to intrust to Christ the solution of the case between Dionysus and Apollo." "Memoirs are never more than half sincere, however great the concern for truth. Everything is always more complex than one says it is. . . . Perhaps one approaches nearer the truth in the novel." To approach "The Counterfeiters" by way of the memoirs may be to approach the complex truth of Andre Gide. Dorothy Brewster People of Inconsequence Some People. By Harold Nicolson. Houghton Mifflin Com- pany. $2.50. j\4 R. NICHOLSON, the biographer of Verlaine, of Tennyson, ^ * and of Byron, has been trifling with autobiography. His nine sketches, a composite of imagination and half-truths (as he is careful to say in a prefatory note), are written in a gay, confidential tone with little hints of scholarship, geography, in- ternational politics, good form, and other agreeable elements of a career in the Foreign Office. We arc left with the impres- sion that no career could be more delightful than this. One grows up in the charge of a Miss Plimsoll (who does not come off very successfully in the first of those sketches) ; one is sent to a public school, the kind whose head becomes Bishop of Nor- wich and cites Virgil entrancingly; one goes on to Balliol where are to be found aesthetes like Lambert Orne and candidates for the Paris (as if there were any other!) Jockey Club like the imbecile Marquis de Chaumont. Thereafter one is sent here and there about the Continent to learn languages — to Paris, to Hanover, to Florence. . . . And finally one is attached to Con- stantinople, the Paris Conference, the F. O., Teheran . . . with Rome, Tokio, Washington, and the rest of the world as prospec- tive stations. Such people as ourselves (Gerry and Tommy and Reggie and Eustace) can leaim French only from Jeanne de Henaut who looked like Theodora of Byzantium superimposed upon the Queen of Spades, and who believed sincerely that God had granted to her the mission to coach young Englishmen for the diplomatic service, and her flaming faculty of self-deception had invested this mission with a gigantic import. She was an uneducated woman. The foundation of her learning was the encyclo- pedia of Larousse. . . . And yet with all this she had an amazing sense of the French language . . . knew instinc-

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740 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3260 tively just the sort of phrasing and idiom which would convoy to the examiners the impression that one possessed "toutes les aisances de la langue Franchise." This old maid and her mother, in their flat high up in the rue de la Pompe, with its odor of simmering fish, are portrayed with humor and acumen and an absence of sentimentality that is entirely excellent. Professor Malone, another of Mr. Nichol- son's subjects — an omniscient, sort of Doctor Dillon expert — has his hide torn away with a tranquil cruelty beautiful to watch. Nor does Miriam Codd, the American behaviorist, fare much better. For one thing, there is her diabolically apt name (far better than Paul Morand's Irene Sidedish, funny though that was) ; for another, this picture of her: She was small and mild and gentle and wrapped in a series of blue silk scarfs that matched her eyes. One felt that for forty-five years she had eaten expensive candy, and drunk a great deal of iced water, and had at least 34,000 baths, and worn very clean and fleecy underclothing. Nevile Titmarsh X—, known as "Titty" and the butt of the Diplomatic Service, is the subject of an almost perfect frag- ment, spoiled by a rather meaningless sentimental turn at the end. But it is the late Lord Curzon and his sottish valet, Arketall, who furnish Mr. Nicolson his perfect sitters. This drunken valet was a source of worry to everybody but the Marquis, who was delighted when Arketall confessed that he was both "very ill and very drunk," and even more charmed when the Marchese Garroni mistook the valet for Sir Roger Keyes, "seized both his hands, and assured him in a torrent of Genoese French how great a debt, how unforgettable a debt, Italy owed to the noble and generous British navy." Curzon walking majestically on a railway platform "as if carrying his own howdah," and promising, in gratitude for Nicols-»n's finding the trousers hidden by the dismissed valet, to give a private performance of "my celebrated imitation of Tennyson reciting 'Tears, Idle Tears'"; Curzon saying: "You are observing the simple squalor of my bedroom. I can assure you, however, that my wife's apartments are of the most unexampled magnifi- cence"— this Curzon is a most sympathetic figure. Incidentally, here is Mussolini: "... a small brown gen- tleman in a brown suit and very white shirt-cuffs. He carried a brown bowler in his left hand and his right was thrust into his waistcoat. The iris of his eyes was entirely surrounded by white, a phenomenon which I had hitherto observed only in the photographs of distinguished mesmerists." There are other nuggets in this deftly written and ex- tremely pleasant volume. Lewis Galantiere Jack London via Moscow Wutnre. By Max Eastman. Albert and Charles Boni. $2.50. T ACK LONDON is very popular in Russia. That is a rather *' roundabout way of getting at Max Eastman's first "venture" in fiction, but I can't think of any other clue. Truly there is nothing like going back to the classics for inspiration. Not the least important achievement of contemporary criticism lias been the excavation of some of our buried literary treasures. Mel- ville has thus come into his own, and Whitman, and Emily Dick- inson, and Stephen Crane. In fact, there is the horrible bility that our appreciation of these pre-Dreiserian anaks may go down as the chief literary contribution o But Jack London is neither ancient enough, nor was he neglected > in his day, to stand rediscovery. That is why, for all its puffing virility and swell of pneu- matic biceps, "Venture" sounds like a belated anachron echo. They are all to be met here again — the familiar London motifs, particularly the pseudo-Nietzscheanism of ''The Sea- wolf" and of "The Iron Heel." An American brand of Ni scheanism not so dissimilar to the muscular Christianit: Bruce Barton. And somehow, though the poet-hero of "Ven- ture" is from a higher rung in the social ladder, one is reminded irresistibly of "Martin Eden." He is certainly cast in the Lon- don mold. In the opening paragraph, with his very first breath so to speak, Mr. Eastman hastens to assure us: Jo Hancock was healthy. He was the strongest man in his class in college ... he was sensitive, but like many other sensitive people fond of a fight. His nerves were high-strung, and if you jumped out at him in the dark and said "Boo!" he would spring about four feet automatically, but he would spring at you instead of away from you. With such a dangei-ous lack of motor control it is not sur- prising that Jo should get into mischief. He does. He takes to writing poetry, and lest we should doubt it it is quoted copiously throughout the book. But it stands him in good stead, and when he is bounced from college for some student prank he finds his way to Greenwich Village and sets up as a fashionable "por- trait poet." This is one of the most original ideas in the book, and is worth developing — not fictionally but commercially. So is Jo's other inspiration — that of delivering fresh-roasted coffee for breakfast by way of the milkman. In fact, one cannot but help reflecting that Jo would have made a much better captain of industry than his mentor, the class-conscious capitalist Machiavelli, George Forbes, who seems to have no other occupa- tion but spouting Nietzsche. Jo's ideas are less grandiose than Forbes's, but more practical, whereas Forbes would have found it easier to express himself in poetry than in business. It may be necessary for some people to envisage a capitalist conspiracy to capture these United States, as it is for others to conjure up a communist conspiracy, but after all the capitalists are in control. They are sitting pretty, so why should they rhapsodize about it? If George Forbes were more entertaining and original one might do him the honor of a comparison with Shaw's super- capitalist, Andrew Underschaft of "Major Barbara." As it is, one is merely again reminded of Jack London in "The Iron Heel." But that is stressing unduly the intellectual preoccupations of this novel. "Venture" is no sop for our morbid thin-blooded intelligentsia. It is a he-man's book that should appeal to every red-blooded American, tired unto death of the elaborately spun, soul-tripping subtleties of contemporary fiction. A book full of stirring adventure, plots and counter-plots, society ladies and silk-strikers, love and life. With it its versatile author has added to his poetic laurels, and has proved that it is possible for one and the same person to be a modernist in politics, a classicist in poetry, and a romanticist in fiction. Alter Brody Art Young Sees Trees Trees at Night By Art Young. Boni and Liveright. $3. ' •^"'REES at Night" is a book of drawings in black and white ^ recording a series of fantastic discoveries made by a surprised artist who under cover of darkness has strayed into a world of elementals. The trees of the forest are inhabited by gigantic misshapen beings whose presence is revealed only at nightfall. Grotesque visages, nodding and grimacing, appear in the shifting foliage, and weird animals rear themselves in sil- houette against the sky, the desperate and tragic embodiment of human moods. Whether sadly gay. forlorn, or threatening, these creatures parody humanity and like the Canterville Ghost they yearn to be observed. Thus Mr. Young in portraying them has done them a service. And not only a service to them! Those whose zoological researches have been confined to the cloudy pages of the sky on a windy summer's day may now thank Mr. Young and turn to the forest at night for a bestiary less remote and more bizarre. Few of us, however, will be able to discover for ourselves a forest populace as strange and various in silhouette as Mr. Young's; for only an extraordinarily eager and fertile fancy may evoke such apparitions as these. And, furthermore, with-

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Dec. 28, 1927] The Nation 741 out Mr. Young's arcane gift for spirit photography the casual observer would have only a wandering and distracted tale to tell to his incredulous auditors. Mr. Young's evidence, though, is recorded spontaneously and, with but a few lapses, convincingly. The Man in the Moon drops down into an earthly furze bush heavy with potential faggots and lugs it off on his shoulders, a toiling mortal bearing his burden through all eternity. Out of a tangle of dead and jagged roots a devil's orchestra pipes its litanies of unimaginable sins. A winged cupid drifts across the sky in a leafy barge towed by swans and serpents. A bevy of old, gnarled apple trees, their thin sap turned to hard cider, go suddenly mad with ecstasy. In a tumult of boiling clouds wild horses stream out of panic-frenzied tree tops, a passionate revolt of earth-bound spirits. An ivy-wreathed stump stricken with the pathos of vanishing loveliness casts autumn leaves upon the gale and mourns all the summers beyond recall and all the sum- mers yet to be. These are only a few of the silhouettes to be found in Art Young's enchanted forest. But they furnish a clew to the alle- gorical significance of trees when in the moonlight their spirits are free to come forth and with appropriate gestures enact in dumb show the tragi-comedy of human life. Glen Mullin God's Messenger American Policy in Nicaragua. By Henry L. Stimson. Charles Scribner's Sons. $1.25. ¥ T AVING, with the aid of the Guaranty Trust Company and * *■ the marines, bought peace in Nicaragua, Henry L. Stim- son reported to the American people through the Saturday Evening Post, and his articles have been made into a book. Mr. Stimson pictures himself as a kind of holy ghost, the alter ego of the divine State Department, dispensing justice through its only begotten son Don Adolfo Diaz, aided by the Marine Corps. Yet it is possible that even a Yankee god and the Marine Corps may, in a Latin-American country, make mistakes — mis- takes all the more dangerous because of the placid conscious- ness of divine inspiration with which they are made. Doubtless Mr. Stimson did nothing in Nicaragua without a sense of being God's messenger, but mortal weakness crops out at least in this report to the American people. His book, Mr. Stimson must be aware, is a piece of special pleading, a campaign document, cal- culated propaganda. The United States has occupied Nicaragua twice — the first time after American interests had precipitated a revolution and made a series of unwarranted loans to their favored candi- dates. Mr. Stimson mentions the presence of the marines in 1912, but not the bankers and their loans. Nor does he mention the scandalous terms of the loan granted the puppet Diaz Government last spring, to enable it to buy off the Liberals, although he does include his own letter informing the Liberals that he would arrange a payment of $10 for each gun turned in and send the Marine Corps to collect undelivered arms. His account of the intervention of 1926-27 is a careful selection of the less disgraceful facts. That intervention began, ostensibly, as a mild effort to "pro- tect American lives and property." Before we got through we had more marines in Nicaragua than there were Americans to be protected; and since Mr. Stimson penned the statement that the oppositionists had been "practically dispersed" the marines have killed six hundred more of them. While the State Department was lying to the American people, stating that we were not intervening, the Marine Corps was establishing neu- tral zones wherever the Liberal troops were in force, on occasion seizing their arms and dumping them in the river. These facts again Mr. Stimson disingenuously omits. When Mr. Stimson went to Nicaragua, he made his headquarters in Diaz's capital, and his only effort to see President Sacasa was an offer of a safe conduct to the capital of the rival President. Yet he pictures himself as an impartial judge! On one page he pleads that he could not ask Diaz to resign because the Nic- araguan constitution stood in the way; on another page he reveals himself calmly instructing Diaz to replace judges whom his party had removed and to hold new elections where dis- honest ones had been held. Because Diaz was a whipped man, able to sit in the Presidential palace only when aided by United States marines — and was therefore willing to request whatever he was requested to request — Mr. Stimson excuses American intervention as "requested by Nicaragua." One would never guess from his narrative that financial interests had anything to do with American interest in Nicaragua; one would barely suspect that some of the gentlemen at Washington regarded Nicaragua quite as Germany regarded Belgium in 1914. He has the impudence to say, after summarizing his own dictation, that the United States has "in no way transgressed upon the sovereignty and independence of Nicaragua." All that this country of Insull and Vare wants, he indicates, is to make sure that Nicaragua has honest elections. Mr. Stimson, as the fruit of his Nicaraguan adventure, has been appointed Governor General of the Philippines. The Filipinos too have had difficulty in understanding the kinship between God and the American army. Lewis S. Gannett Books in Brief The Modern Development of City Government in the United Kingdom and the United States. By Ernest S. Griffith. Oxford University Press. Two volumes. $14. Mr. Griffith's two volumes are a study of comparative municipal government. He traces historically and analytically city government in the United States and in the United King- dom. Mr. Griffith's main conclusion is that the government of cities should be comparatively free from central control and that local taxation of real property should be based on its capital value rather than on the annual income. On both of these features American cities excel the British. His account of present-day municipal experiments in the United States may be roseate, yet it undoubtedly devastates some preconceptions. He rightly recognizes the blighting effects on English local life of the deep-rooted class distinctions as contrasted with the freer atmosphere in the United States. Education for status which rigid class distinctions imply is abominable, for it as- sumes the inherent justice of existing inequalities. The author is conversant with governmental structures, but, unlike many of his coworkers, is also able to refer technique to ultimate criteria. However, in his faith in the mysterious potentialities of the "Nordic instinct" he is less than profound. The book is heavily annotated and has a comprehensive bibliography and appendices containing relevant material. It is competent and meritorious. Samuel Butler and His Family Relations. By Mrs. R. S. Garnett. E. P. Dutton and Company. $3.75. This book is a curiously informal addition to our informa- tion about Samuel Butler. Mrs. Garnett, whose mother was a cousin of Butler's mother, started out to rescue Butler's parents and sisters from the terrible life beyond life that he had conferred upon them in 'The Way of All Flesh." With the aid of letters, a diary, family reminiscences, and old photo- graphs she has pieced together an authentic picture of what Butler's family looked like to well-disposed outsiders, but in that charmingly domestic picture — as Mrs. Garnett came to realize — there is nothing inconsistent with Butler's version in "The Way of All Flesh," so far as that version may be regarded as history and not fiction. With a certain reluctance she shows how a family of well-meaning, decent, and generally likable bigots can make life a perfect hell for an affectionate, gener-

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742 The Nation [Vol. 125, No. 3260 ous, but self-willed child. Mrs. Garnett also establishes that Butler's conduct toward his relatives, however bitter his feel- ings may have been at times, was unvaryingly kind, thoughtful, and conciliatory. Samuel Butler. By C. E. M. .Toad. Small, Maynard and Com- pany. $1.75. Art Historical aud Critical Review of Sam- uel Butler's Literary Works. By W. G. Bekker. Rot- terdam: Nijgh & Van Ditmar's Uitgevers-Maatschappij. Samuel Butler— Critic and Philosopher. By P. J. De Lange. Zutphen: W. J. Thieme & Cie. These three studies are evidence that Butler is still suf- ficiently alive to be worth a fresh examination. Mr. Joad, in a breezy little book, outlines Butler's life and chief ideas and tries to show that Butler has exercised a widespread influence on contemporary thought. Unfortunately, the proofs of that influence do not exist. It is true that the old Victorian icono- clast did cherish certain notions that strongly resemble the mire elaborately worked-out ideas of such variegated men as Bergson, Shaw. Eucken, William James, and Bertrand Russell; but it would be impossible to show that any of them, except Shaw, owes anything to him. He was in fact a popularizer rather than an originator of ideas, and even as a popularizer he accomplished little until long after his death. The two Dutch studies (written in English) are doctors' dissertations. For some reason Butler is a favorite subject for academic in- vestigations. Mr. BekWs volume is invertebrate in structure and pedestrian in tone, but contains some valuable facts and observations. Miss De Lange has produced a colorless but useful analysis of Butler's thought and done all that very well can be done to reduce it to a system. Those Quarrelsome Bonapartes. R. Gordon Anderson. The Century Company. $2.50. There is no special reason for this book. Mrs. Barrington in "The Thunderer" has covered the same ground with more vivacity. Napoleon's life story, however, is too tremendous a thing to cover within the narrow grounds of a romance, and Mr. Anderson's light, sentimental, slightly old-fashioned style seems very inadequate. Perhaps this book will make the best reading for boys and girls of high-school age, for it is enter- taining enough, and incidentally fairly accurate. Meanwhile, for those who are interested in the real Napoleons the original source, still seem the most romantic. Music Yehudi Menuhin To thi of The Nation : Sir: It may interest you to know that Yehudi Menuhin loves his weekly Nation next best to his violin. It is upon his request that I am now asking you to see to it that we do not miss any copies. The Nation is of a great help to us to give Yehudi a liberal education. We prefer to teach him privately at home. He has not reached his tenth birthday. A few days ago. while on a hike with his best friend through the Golden Gate Park, prior to hi with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra as soloist in the Tchaikovsky Concerto. I overheard their heated debate about Debs. His friend told him that the high-school teacher had called Debs "a downright law-breaker"; to which Yehudi answered that on the contrary Debs was "not only a lover of humanity but also a lover of human indi- viduals. . . ." San Francisco, Dcccmhcr IS. 1926 Moshe Menuhin HP HIS letter, printed a year ago, gave us our first knowledge * of the ten-year-old boy who stood upon the stage of Car- negie Hall in New York on the evening of December 12 and thrilled one of the most representative audiences that ever crowded that historic place. No one who heard but left believ- ing that he had looked upon and listened to genius. Critics were there to pick flaws — of course. They found that his into- nation was at times faulty, that occasionally — very rarely — there was a slip which they admitted was immediately com- pensated for by a wealth of tone, a power, a maturity of feeling and interpretation that left them astounded beyond words. They criticized the length and difficulty of his program; he played five of the most difficult compositions written for the violin with complete confidence and marvelous skill and after four encores he played a fifth with as much vigor and beauty as ever. Beyond that they could only indulge in adjectives of praise and declare that the overworked and misapplied word "genius" applied this time. Indeed, there were many who left declaring their belief in reincarnation. It was impossible, they said, for a mere child not only to have acquired such extraor- dinary technique but to have played like a virtuoso of thirty years of professional and mental development. Perhaps the letter cited above helps to prove the maturity of this child. Yet Yehudi Menuhin is no forced hothouse plant, no mere prodigy driven to his tasks by exploiting parents and masters. A nice, normal, rather chubby boy, looking like a boy and not a freak, he faced the audience fired by its presence but calm and unconcerned, and between pieces turned to his teacher so nat- urally and eagerly as to betray a sweet and trustful nature. He began by playing with breath-taking virtuosity that "Devil's Trill" Sonata of Tartini which was for years and years deemed beyond the power even of first-class violinists because of its extraordinary difficulties. It was a show-piece of Paganini whose mastery was explained by his physical deformity — due to abuse, starvation, neglect, and the torture of endless hours of practicing forced upon him by inhuman parents and teachers. Yehudi played it as calmly and as easily as if those really devilish double trills were a matter of course, so easily that few of the audience could have realized its vast difficulties. Next he came out to play for twenty minutes, without accompaniment, the Chaconne of Bach. Standing there alone, he attacked this "supreme test of a violinist" with amazing confidence, with a purity and power of tone incredible for one so young whose instrument is only three-quarter size. Endless variations he played with unflagging tempo, with a maturity as if he had known and studied this great master throughout a long life; and he finished unfatigued, with the same cool delib- eration which marked the beginning. And that great audience of thousands again cheered and clapped and clapped, having been led by a child into the highest realms of musical art. There followed Mozart's Concerto in D Major, only once before heard in New York, Chausson's "Poeme," and Wieniawski's familiar "Souvenirs of Moscow." The "Poeme" revealed again extraordinary maturity of romance, and deep emotion; it was played in superb and moving tones, and with a finished legato that a Heifetz or a Kreisler could be proud of. The famous harmonics of the Wieniawski, which even great artists have been known to slip up on, went as faultlessly as could be desired. Here is a marvel, indeed, to prove that talent and genius are not outlawed in this machine age. If his wise parents, who are opposed to all overdoing, carry on as they have begun the bur- den of their terrific responsibility, there is no question that this little Nation reader will in a brief space of years stand with the violin leaders of today. Indeed, it rests only with his teach- ers whether he will not lift the art of violin playing one notch higher than it has gone as yet. Oswald Garrison Villard A Letter from Madame Zimbalist To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: It may have been Dickens who cast the first stone at child prodigies. The portrait of the infant phenomenon in "Nicholas Nickleby" must have been, at any rate, the author's sardonic reaction to a common exploitation of clever children by

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Dec. 28, 1927] The Nation 743 equally clever parents. Dickens's infant phenomenon is a cari- cature, of course; a violent burlesque but one constructed on authentic data. This little girl prodigy is the wonder of her parents and of the smaller provinces of England. Her famous dance with the Savage, billed, if I remember, as the Child and the Savage, was the piece de resistance of the theatrical enter- tainment with which Nicholas found employment. However, just as the reader is about to lose himself in wonderment at the talents of the grotesque child he is brought up sharp with the insinuation by the author that the Phenomenon retained her infant stature by having constantly at her disposal an unlimited supply of gin and water. I wonder what Dickens would have made of little Yehudi Menuhin, the child violinist who set the town by the ears recently with his amazing performance of the Beethoven Con- certo; for the genius of this little boy is as obvious as the Infant Phenomenon's was spurious. The Beethoven work is held to be the severest test of the musicianship of a grown-up violinist. That a child of ten should attempt it was startling in itself. But Yehudi did more than tackle a grown-up job; he played the concerto with the poise of one who had always lived in the most rarified altitudes of music. Light-heartedly, Yehudi nimbly scaled steep musical inclines which mature artists tread with pain and labor. It was evident that the little boy had done a lot of practicing, but no amount of finger work could have given him that insight into the mysteries of musical beauty which his playing so clearly evinced. One is rather apprehensive of what time will do to this extraordinary baby. Experience may add passion to his playing but it will, in return, rob him of the divine unconsciousness, the tender nobility of his art. As he is now, he looks at music as one of Raphael's child angels looks at heaven — with absolute trust. It were a pity for time to destroy that attitude. Alma Gluck Drama Holiday Suggestions fPHE week of December 11 was a blank in theatrical history * so far as New York is concerned. I seize the opportunity of submitting the following list of current productions which I remember with pleasure and which I recommend to the atten- tion of those bound theaterward. The choice is catholic and the list is printed in alphabetical order. No "hold-overs" from last season are included. "An Enemy of the People" (Hampden Theater). Walter Hampden's entertaining revival of the Ibsen comedy. "And So to Bed" (Harris Theater). Mr. Pepys disports himself in appropriate fashion. "Artists and Models" (Winter Garden). The standardized revue at its best. "The Baby Cyclone" (Henry Miller's Theater). Wholly conventional but really laughable farce. "The Command to Love" (Longacre Theater). Suave and amusing comedy in spite of a persistent and successful effort to be naughty. "A Connecticut Yankee" (Vanderbilt Theater). Mark Twain's romance set to music. "Coquette" (Maxine Elliott's Theatre). The tragic story of a modern girl who does not fit the traditions of Southern Chivalry. "Escape" (Booth Theater). Galsworthy's slight but inter- esting play showing what an escaped convict learned about English society. "Four Walls" (John Golden Theater). The story of a crook who learned that stone walls do not a prison make. Highly melodramatic but interesting. "Funny Face" (Alwin Theater). Gershwin musical comedy made more lively by the dancing of the two Astaires. "The Good Hope" (Fourteenth Street Theater). Eva Le Gallienne's beautiful revival of a naturalistic study of Dutch fisherfolk. Max Reinhardt's Company (Century Theater). Various productions by the most famous of all stage directors. "The Mikado" (Royale Theater). An almost perfect pro- duction of the Gilbert and Sullivan opera. "Porgy" (Republic Theater). The Theater Guild's produc- tion of a play taken from Dubose Heyward's novel of life among the Negroes of Charleston. Remarkable for its fine and exciting stage effects. "The Shannons" (Martin Beck Theater). An hilarious piece of hokum written by James Gleason for the purpose of exploiting the personalities of himself and Lucile Webster. "Taming of the Shrew" (Garrick Theater). A "modern dress" production of Shakespeare which is one of the most amus- ing things now on Broadway. With Basil Sydney and Mary Ellis. "The Trial of Mary Dugan" (National Theater). Prepos- terous but novel and exciting melodrama all taking place in a courtroom. Joseph Wood Krutch D LECTU RES n The COMMUNITY CHURCH Park Avenue and 34th Street Sunday, December 25 11 A.M. JOHN HAYNES HOLMES "The Christmas Legends: Have They Any Meaning?" Special Music — All are invited 8 P.M. JOHN COWPER POWYS "Charles Lamb and the Christmas Spirit" Questions, discussion — admission free JOSEPH WOOD KRUTCH will deliver a course of lectures on CONTEMPORARY DRAMA Thursdays— 8.15 P. M. Jan. 5. — "Yesterday and Tomorrow" Jan. 12. — "Modern Comedy'' Jan. 19. — "Modern Tragedy" Jan. 26. — "The Popular Drama" Single admission 75c $2.50 for the course of four lectures Wednesday, January 11. S.li M. COUNT HERMAN KEYSERLING "Is the Institution of F ious Mar- riage Destined !o Endure?" John Haynes Holmes, Reserved Sections Chairman $1.00, $2.C0 D D I N N D You are cordially invited to the Annuai Dinner ol the Thursday Evening, December 29, 0:30 P.M. IRVING PLAZA, 17 Irving Place, New York City Subject: POLITICAL PROSPECTS FOR 1!>2S Speakers: Senator GERALD P. NYE of North Dakota NORMAN HAPGOOD MAX EASTMAN NORMAN THOMAS Chairman: ROBERT MORSS LOVETT Tickets at $2.50 may be obtained at Leatrue for Industrial Democ- racy, 70 Fifth Avenue, New York City. Admission to b ilcony at S :30, $1.00. For information regarding Students' Conference of L. I. D., New York City. December 28-30, 1927, write Harry W. LaidUer, Executive Director of the L. I. D. When writing to advertisers please mention The Nation

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International Relations Section Parties and Politics in Rumania By AURELIU JON POPESCU BEFORE the war Rumania divided her political life be- tween two parties — the Conservative and the Liberal. The Conservative Party represented the latifundiary land- lords and the Liberals the upper and lower middle classes and the economic and financial institutions which they created. It has been asserted that liberalism in Rumania has had no political reality. I do not share this opinion. Through the dissemination of liberal ideas the Liberal Party was the master builder of the Rumanian civilization of the second half of the nineteenth century, continuing its progressive activity down to 1914. Then came the World War and the Russian Revolution and under their pressure two long-due and promised re- forms were precipitated in Rumania, a political and an economic one: universal manhood suffrage and the agrarian laws. The latter resulted not only in a nominal transfer of land to the peasants but also in a redistribution of wealth at the expense of the landlords, who received for their land only one-twentieth of its real value. The price of the ex- propriated land was fixed according to the price obtaining in 1919 and previously, bonds being given to the landlords, and when after 1919 the Rumanian currency (as well as the bonds in terms of money) fell in value, as a result of the post-war inflation general in Europe, no government dared to tamper with the settlement already made. To have altered it would have been extremely dangerous in view of the close proximity of Soviet Russia. Both reforms were carried out in Rumania without bloodshed or revolution. But these reforms as well as the union with the new provinces have upset the pre-war political balance. The large estates still remaining (about 15 per cent of the total area of the country) have lost their former political priv- ileges on account of the universal franchise and have been reduced to simple properties equal with the other forms of property on which the Rumanian Liberal Party has always been and is still based. The Conservative Party has con- sequently disappeared while the conservative groups have more and more been drawn into the Liberal Party, which, in its turn, under the simultaneous attack of peasant rad- icalism and socialism, has become a conservative force. On the other hand the peasant element, propertied and awak- ened to political life through universal suffrage, has been pushed toward a political organization of its own interests. Hence the appearance of the Peasant Party. Because it has taken the place and grown from the roots of the old Conservative Party, from the agrarian estates, many people have assumed that the interests of the large estates would coincide with those of the small estates and have drawn the unjustified conclusion that the Peasant Party is a conservative party. In reality this party is on the left wing of Rumanian politics vacated by the passing of the Liberal Party to the right. In fact the program of the Peasant Party is little more th .n a series of liberal claims, some of which have long since been carried into effect in England (the chief source of inspiration of this party), others of which have arisen out of economic and social conditions in Rumania. The leaders of the Peasant Party have not embraced radical doctrines fanatically but have adapted them to the needs of the country. Politically and economically the Peasant Party may be considered a liberal party. It stands for individual owner- ship of land but strongly favors the development of peasant property through cooperatives for the marketing and buy- ing of agricultural produce and implements (80 per cent of the Rumanian population are peasants). It further stands for local government and administrative responsibility (both for public officials and ministers) thus departing from the traditional droit administratif which has occasioned so much abuse. In the matter of tariff policy it is strongly opposed to protection for industries having no natural eco- nomic basis of development; the only protection that it sup- ports is that given to infant industries having such a basis. As for the "Liberal" Party's program — the name is now a misnomer — it is scarcely different from the usual conserva- tive platform, representing the interests of big business and finance. In Rumania today there is normally no room for more than two large governing parties crystallizing opposite in- terests— on the one hand a conservative party (whatever its name) supporting the interests of the large industries, financial and commercial groups with powerful tendencies toward trusts, monopolies, and high tariffs, and on the other a left party representing the interests of the thou- sands of small peasant holdings, with tendencies toward cooperation and the protection of the producer. It is these two currents that will shape the modern life of Rumania. The political changes which have occurred in Rumania since the war are in agreement with the spirit of post-war Europe. In Western Europe, liberalism, the pre-war agency of political reform, is being replaced by the evolutionary Socialist parties which continue the political reforms and begin seriously to press a series of social reforms. In Eastern Europe, especially in Rumania, Czecho-Slovakia, and Jugoslavia, the peasant parties continue the work of the old liberal parties. What has been liberalism in the past is conservatism today. What is liberalism today will be conservatism in future decades. And so each party is fated to play this double part of progress and conservation : demolishing or transforming old institutions in order to change them into new ones which it will defend later on against the attacks of the new parties that will inevitably appear. The two opposed political creeds have developed their strongholds in the Old Kingdom. The contribution of the new provinces in the political sphere has been in personnel rather than in political ideology. Bessarabia, radical as a result of the Russian upheaval, has almost totally turned toward the Peasant Party. In Transylvania the National Party is the direct descendant of the old regional party which conducted the fight against Austro-Hungarian tyranny. In 1926 this party fused with the Peasant Party, forming the present National Peasant Party, the leadership going to Mr. Julius Maniu, head of the former National Party. Several factors have militated against a quicker amalgamation of these groups: first, the lack of homo- geneity in the National Party, whose Transylvanian wing represented a moderate liberalism but whose Old Kingdom wing was conservative and could not collaborate effectively

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Dec. 28, 1.927] The Nation 745 with the political personnel of the Peasant Party; second, the lack of effective leadership; third, the bitter opposition of the Liberal Party to the fusion of the opposition groups. The Liberal Party leaders realized the need of a second party but desired that it should be weak and subordinated and standing on the right with no roots in the masses of the people. Consequently the Liberals encouraged the forma- tion of an ultra-conservative party (Averescu's People's Party), nursing it in the dark under the warm and protec- tive wing of the palace camarilla, and at the same time they fought to a finish the Peasant Party, naively hoping for its destruction. The People's Party was organized by General Averescu in 1918 — on the basis of his then great popularity — as a reformist party with an opportunist program. It was founded at about the time that the old Conservative Party fell to pieces. Having entirely spent his popularity in his first term of office from 1920 to 1922, Averescu turned to- ward the Liberal Party and since then has assisted it in ruling Rumania on conservative and industrial lines. He has not attempted any agrarian policy, although he promised to do so, and has reaped the rewards of servility. He has been brought into power by the Liberal Party and has been turned out of power without even the elements of political decorum which might have been observed in deference to the General's old age and success as a war leader. To understand how it has been possible for the Liberal Party to rule Rumania uninterruptedly from 1918, whether nominally in power or not, the following facts should be kept in mind: According to the Rumanian constitution the Crown has the power to nominate and recall its ministers. As the late King has been closely associated with the Liberal Party and especially with Mr. Bratianu who dominated him, he has invariably called to the palace and intrusted with the power either Bratianu or his nominees who, once in power, proceeded to the formation of a majority by the wholesale manipulation of elections. Granted free elections, as in England or Czecho-Slovakia, the power of the king would at once become nominal. In Rumania, on the contrary, the royal prerogative has so far been used in an absolute man- ner. It is customary neither to follow the English system of calling to the palace and intrusting with the formation of the new government the largest parliamentary group, nor to follow the momentary currents of public opinion. Con- sequently, as the elections have been so far engineered, the Crown can impose on the country any government it desires. Thus the Rumanian monarchy, though nominally constitu- tional, in practice is absolute. As a result of this the Peasant Party as the exponent of liberalism and agrarian interests has been kept out of power and a type of industrial legislation has been forced on the country which has been universally criticized: in- stinctively by the peasants and scientifically by economists and sociologists as unsuited to Rumanian needs. It has been contended by the Opposition that the first effort of post-war reconstruction should have been the scientific organization of agriculture, and that only after an internal market had thus been created should attention have been given to those industries that have a natural basis of development. The whole political history of Rumania from 1919 to the present day revolves in fact around the conflict between agrarian and industrial interests and around the formation of an agrarian party. On the other hand the supremacy of conservatism and WHAT IS SOCIAL WORK? "(1) ... a new ami developing profession ... a professional substitute for the alms of former (lays. . . ." (See Pamphlet, p. 2.) The Training School for Jewish Social Work Offers a fifteen months' course of study in Jewish Family Case Work, Child Care, Community Cen- ters, Federations and Health Centers. Several scholarships and fellowships ranging from $250 to $1,500 are available for especially quali- fied students. For information, address The Director THE TRAINING SCHOOL FOR JEWISH SOCIAL WORK 210 WEST 91ST STREET NEW YORK CITY □ DINNER □ LABOR TEMPLE SCHOOL ANNUAL DINNER at Aldiiie Club Rooms, 200 Fifth Ave. Friday Evening, .January 20th, 11)28 at 7:00 o'clock SPEAKERS Hey wood Broun G. F. Beck John Cowper Powys Edmund B. Chaffee John Haynes Holmes SUBJECT: — "The Lecturer — and the Future of America." Tickets at $2.50 per cover may be obtained at the Labor Temple Office, 212 E. Mth St. r BOOK Throw Away Your Glasses and c eg BETTER "Perfect Sight Without Glasses" By W. H. BATES, M.D. The author of this book presents evidence that til errors of refraction are caused by strain — and cured by rest and relaxation. A complete method of treatment is described so clearly that the reader can usually dis card his glasses and improve his vision. Sold at all bookntoret. Price S3. If you wear glass** — read this book The Central Fixation Publ. Co. Dept ft, 883 Madison Avenue, New York Oentlvinen ; Please eend aie a cops of your book "Perfect sight Without Glauses." I will gl»e the postman S3 00 plus postage when It arrlfea. If I am not convinced of Its ralue In Atc .lays. I will return the book an. je» will refuutl my money without aueatlun. Nairn Address When writing to advertisers please mention The Nation

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746 The Nation of its leader Bratianu has perhaps been unavoidable during this post-war period of rapid changes and new creeds" /!'uin,1f?'T,PerhapS m°re than in an*'thing else, the secret of the late Premier's power, although his dignified bearing simplicity of life, and breadth of culture added to his popu- larity. For good or evil, and in spite of his efforts to avert it, Bratianu's invisible dictatorial policy has helped tremend- ously to bring about the return to the two-party system and he creation of the National Peasant Party by showing the hopelessness of a disunited front against him. In the dynastic question as such the Peasant Party is not interested. It has repeatedly declared that the solution lies not in the replacement of one crowned head by another but in the adoption of constitutional methods and free elec- tions. The National Peasant Party aims to introduce mod- ern constitutional methods in Rumania and as such it will on no account support the present regime. This is the reason why it has refused to collaborate with the Liberal Party, demanding the dissolution of the Chamber and new and free elections. Nobody can predict what the future has in store for Rumania but one thing can be predicted: whatever changes ake place will be along evolutionary and not revolutionary hnes, n spite of the fact that during the last three years nTce? uZ f °nS rhaVG bGen ann°UnCed in that —tially peaceful country. fc a revolution should be made it would W to emanate from one of the existing political partTes Peasa„ P artv t 7 f ? * reV°luti°n While the N^onal On thl h! y, S f°r l6gal meanS and constitutionalism. On the basis of past political history, it would appear that andmaanrlrnatr°aCh?g * ^^ °f ltS '«"»* ^ £ life tZ nMmal COnstitutiona' methods in its politi- for I Llf f ♦ mean g0Vernment ^ the Peasant Party, ml? +v I! IeCtl°nS' the part^ wou'd probably obtain httle less than 90 per cent of the votes The Regency will have to decide soon whether it thinks it more beneficial to the country to continue the o inter pretation of constitutional powers or to adopt the modem English interpretation as demanded by public opinion Upon this oecision will turn the immediate future of Rumania Progress Under the Soviets /JIBE statistics printed below were compiled from official I reports of the Soviet Government, and show in tabu la. form he advance made by the USSR in education and SvSSS ^ ^ ^ ^-^etenyearofthe [Vol. 125, No. 3260 Education (1011-1914) Number of elementary school pupils for each 100 population Educational institutions : Elementary schools Pupils """ Secondary schools ' p"pils Vocational schools .... Pupils Universities and colleges .Students Educational institutions' f or' grown-up's Schools for the liquidation of illit- eracy none 4.5 104,610 2,87' 267,000 97 110,000 9 1926 5.6 100,933 ,434,000 1,690 710,000 4,329 531,000 13S 162,000 50,925 Students „ General educational courses for grown-ups Students „ Party schools, political courses, and Communist colleges (excl. of the Ukraine and the Caucasian Fed- eration) tt Students „ * * * * Percentage of illiteracy in the army. 27 Daily newspaper circulation (in round figUres) 2,500,000 Agriculture and Industry Agriculture and stock raising. Value of production in prices of the year 1913 (in millions of rubles)...* ino9. Forestry 1U'J25 Fishing and hunting. . Vf Industry (total output in millions" of rubles at pre-war prices) Large factory industry 6 354 Small plants and home industry! .' ! 1*39^ Building industry (new construction) . 1 274 Transportation ' Railways (length of the system in kilometers) -0 ... t„„j. .. ' 58,o00 Loadings (in million tons).. ,„ Electrification U2A Capacity of existing power stations in kilowatts Regional stations 185000 Factory stations.. „Search, light on Congress." G. E. R. GeDYE, who writes regularly for The Nation from Central Europe, was formerly Central European corre- spondent for the London Times. Morris Ernst is a member of the New York Bar Scott NEAKiNC. radical economist and teacher, is return- ing from China via Moscow. Aureuu Jon PopESCU has done research on Rumanian politics and economics, was editor of the Independenta Econovuca, and is now in this country, Dorothy Brewster is in the department of English at Columbia University and coauthor of "Dead Reckonings in Fiction." Alter Brody is soon to publish a volume of plays. Glen Mullin is author of "The Adventures of a Scholar- 1 ramp."

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