The New Republic: A Journal of Opinion (August 11, 1920)
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. e - x oe ae eee Be be | ~~ hd Ne “<< St wire 4% o wae Ss vw 2 lee {So mo rae 3% * 22 V6 srthee ress : ahitgey heey, ae ; an s ‘ : 4 u i be ’ a i’, ; . - - i, wg ‘ ay . PA a , Now | REPUBLIC. A Journal of Opinion Voume XXIII ; ; | Contents Be Tha Wake ee 289 ‘ Editorials | Rey Ft Gab: SEA. icine eevee trae canis 292 | PRMERI eeetihin es bisa hd Ohitc aie cinine ah aw ee’ 294 f Pesce: by Contacte ys iii soiss wieis cbc asehe cs 295 j Harding and the Mexican War SS Rah tie: SN AOR wea 296 ] i WaReee CR SS he ec Oe. BEL ak 297 ® | General Articles | More News from the Times.............00. i eH Ge: Walter Lippmann and Charles Merz 299 4 Datel seg ciianciieeciice es sddeipuscacale Stark Young 302 i The Asia Minor Muddle...... Paxton Hibben 304 i British Labor in Conference...... Sidney Webb 307 World History According to Wells.......... Nei aw we SNe ava eprdleca al atP iad bun’ a Apa ke We ate Alvin Johnson 309 — Casnmemte ¢ Ferme) is cans ies U aves ss dake paihrek ale bees Frances Dickenson Pinder 312 The Bandwagon............ eR ee aE Ayn Ee 312 Reviews of Books | PANOGR | RPGISOMD as Sain ileesin ais Os ee nS 313 D. HH. Lavwerencti...s sce. esc Louis Untermeyer 314 Transitions........ Constance Mayfield Rourke 315 The Week & very much to turn the leadership of the Demo- tratic party over to Cox, without any other limits han those of Cox’s own right reason. And Cox, in taking over the leadership, would like to give eC plete satisfaction to the President, within the imits of right reason. But right reason is one of the most troublesome of limitations, because it ooks like one thing to one man and another to mother. To Wilson it means the League as the whole campaign issue. To Cox, or at least to seorge White, his manager and not too strenuous- y disavowed spokesman, it means the League as nN issue, not the chief one but one of the chief. Cox means to be loyal to the League, but he means lso to be equally loyal to many other things which Nilson would not mention in the same breath. I THIS is not altogether or chiefly difecencn in rinciple. There is an obvious reason why Wilson hould be stronger for a pure League campaign. ictory would mightily add to the prestige of the ‘ ague idea, and even defeat would not weaken New York, WEDNESDAY, AUGUST II, 1920 F RESIDENT WILSON would no doubt like NUMBER 297 it so much as its reduction to the rank of a sub- sidiary issue. Therefore if a League campaign ended in defeat, Wilson could accept it with fairly good grace. Defeat does not look so acceptable to Cox. Moreover, Cox has also a clearer opinion of the apathy of the electorate to the League issue. He has not had to content himself for eight months with such political information as might filter through the fingers of a Tumulty. He understands better what it means when the Republicans insist on holding him down to this issue. SENATOR HARDING has promised us “a formal and effective peace so quickly as a Repub- lican Congress can pass its declaration for a Re- publican Executive to sign.’ And a curious elect- orate demands just what—alliteration aside—a formal and effective peace may be. The answer hangs on that chameleon word “effective.” We know as well as the foreign offices of Europe what a formal peace is. But a formal peace is not al- ways an effective peace. Effective to what end? To achieve peace? The most rigorous command- ment of style would never persuade Senator Hard- ing to redundancy. To liberate the world? Senator Harding refuses to recognize the need of liber- ation. To make good our undertakings? They were Democratic undertakings. FORTUNATELY we are not under the necessity of guessing Senator Harding’s meaning from internal evidence alone. Senator Knox’s proposal for peace by declaration may be taken as a re- sponsible statement, so far as it goes, of the Re- publican interpretation of the phrase. He moved, first of all and by way of formal pacification, for the repeal of the joint resolution of war. Secondly, he proposed that we retain our hold upon seized German properties pending the conclusion of a treaty which should satisfy American claims. That, it would seem, is a provision looking to an effective peace. ‘The justification of such a measure we dis- cuss elsewhere in this issue.
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290 3 THE NEW NEW YORK Republicans quite clearly anticipate an easy victory for the party. Their candidate for governor, Judge Nathan L. Miller, will please the _ stand pat element, but his appeal to the progressive element is weak. Senator Wadsworth received a most magnificent endorsement, 988 votes out of 1,103. Evidently the Republican leaders feel that they do not need the vote of those suffragists who remember Wadsworth as one of the bitterest and most formidable opponents of their enfranchise- ment. It may be that the primaries will tell another story. Weare not, however, aware of any effective organization of the forces discontented with the results of the Saratoga convention. The party line- up may as well be taken for final. THE halting character of the negotiations for peace between Poland and Russia can be easily ex- plained in the light of the activities of an irreconcil- able and unscrupulous war party in both camps, eager at all costs to prolong hostilities.. There is no difficulty in identifying this party in the Allied camp. In England Winston Churchill and _ his: followers are doing everything they can to balk the peace negotiations. ‘They would like to organize a holy war against the Soviet government, and Churchill is even willing to enlist Germany for the _ work, granting her the privilege of rebuilding her — military forces so far as might be required. The French government as a whole appears to belong to the war party, but it is doubtful that it would go to such lengths as Churchill proposes. On the Russian side there must be a party that would wel- come the declaration of a holy war, believing that such a war would inaugurate the world revolution. How influential such a party may be we have no -means of knowing. That Trotzky heads it is fre- quently alleged, but no evidence has ever been ad- duced to prove a real conflict of ideas between Trotzky and Lenin, and Lenin, it is generally ad- mitted, would welcome peace. APPARENTLY there was nothing whatever in the reports from Paris that Moscow had ordered the taking of Warsaw, armistice or no armistice. The Russian forces keep pressing ahead, as an army always does until an armistice has been signed or its terms accepted in advance. The truth seems to be that the Poles accepted the idea of an armis- tice with the utmost aversion, hoping against hope that the British and French military parties might prevail and send armies to check the Russian ad- vance. who did not pass the frontier until July 30th and still had to complete a tedious journey before they could meet the Russian commissioners. Ac- cording to Warsaw reports, the powers of the com- ‘war. At last they sent forward commissioners, REPUBLIC dane II, , 18 ‘s missioners are strictly limited. They cannot accet pt terms involving a change of government, nor the surrender of positions Poland considers strategi- cally necessary to her defence. If we knew ill their other reservations, we should be able to judge whether or not they are sent for the purpose of making peace or merely for the purpose of throw- ing upon the Russians the onus of continuing he RESPONSIBILITY for Poland’s advance into. the Ukraine, which dissipated her resources, fired Russian nationalism and ultimately brought disaster upon the Polish nation is extremely hard to fix. Lloyd George certainly advised against it. Paris : reports state that the French military advisers in Poland tried to dissuade the Poles from so mad. an enterprise. Paderewski now declares that he was opposed to it. ‘Provisionally we have to hold Pilsudski to account for it, But he certainly would not have taken the risk without definite assurances! of help from western Europe, assurances probably” of the nature of those given by Winston Churchill to the representatives of Kolchak. ‘Porand went forward relying on promises that were never to be fulfilled. She has been betrayed, but exactly by whom it is as yet impossible to determine. 7 THE Allied questions to Russia on the condition under which trade could be carried on have received full and specific answers. The Central Soviet gov- ernment holds a monopoly of foreign trade, and there can be no dealings with private persons. The only contracts in external trade recognized as bind- ing are those made with the commissariat of for- eign trade and its organizations. Contracts will be made in form acceptable to both the Soviet gov- ernment and the foreign trader, and the whole force of the Soviet government stands behind them. Until peace has been established the Soviet govern- ment will not grant freedom of entry, stay and exit to foreigners unless their presence is considered. needful. It is asserted that there is now no inter- ference with personal liberty in Soviet Russia. Merchandise imported by authority of the Soviet commissariat remains. the property of the owner and cannot be confiscated without payment of its value. Concessions granted by the Soviet gove 1. ment for exploitation or production carry with them the right of the concessionaires to exchange their product with the Soviet government or to € Ke port them without restriction. : THERE has been great confusion as to the points at issue in the recent coal dispute between Franet and Germany. It was not so much a question to whether £ Sennany would deliver coal or not, bu as “ig
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dugust Il, 1920 a what price. The French wanted the coal at the Jomestic German price, and the Germans wanted three times as much, the sum to be credited to re- rations. The equities appear to have inclined ‘towards the German side. What the French de- “mand amounted to was a disguised tribute of some two hundred million dollars in addition to their re- “cognized reparations claim. ‘The compromise reached leaves the tribute to the French, but France is required to lend an equivalent sum to Germany, a sum which the future is likely to transform into an abatement of the reparations claim. Faces were 4 Beoved and a way opened for justice to be done— something new in European statesmanship. $ THE coal loan remains an issue in French domes- q _ tic politics. On its face the transaction looks like _a boon to Germany, and the French are not ready Dior deeds of friendliness, .A real burden to the | treasury is involved, because the government means to furnish the coal to industry at the artificially low “price originally set, and raise funds for the loan through general taxation. That is equivalent to a subsidy to industry. The French government “might defend its course on the ground that German ‘industry also enjoys artificially cheap coal, and ‘would gain a competitive advantage if French in- dustry had to pay for coal at its full value. It is, “however, to be borne in mind that neither Belgian { nor Italian industries, more directly competing with | the French, enjoy any such advantages. JAPANESE intentions in the matter of Northern “Saghalin are clearly revealed by Premier Hara in his reply to Deputy Hattori. ‘Hattori fears oc- “cupation of Russian territory might leave indelible ‘resentment on the part of the Russians. I share his fears, but think it impossible that Japan will do piatiioe to obtain satisfaction for a massacre in which seven hundred Japanese lost their lives, even ‘though action is taken that may be productive of Russian resentment.’ Hara means to keep Sagh- alin, and let the Russians resent to their hearts’ ‘content. The United States may inquire about the Matter, and receive comforting assurances, but a 1 fait accompli is a fait accompli. THE pretext of satisfaction for the massacre of Japanese subjects will deceive no one. Ever since the first landing of the Japanese in Siberia, they haye conducted themselves in a manner to provoke massacres. Nothing that the Russians have done | could match in cold blooded brutality the Japanese , eizure of Vladivostok after the departure of the American troops. The Japanese invited retaliation. They needed it in their diplomacy. | THE NEW the price prevailing on the world market, about REPUSLTIC 291 NOTHING can be said for the methods by which Japan seeks to establish title to Saghalin. Still, are we entirely justified in condemning utter- ly the transfer of this territory to Japan? North- ern Saghalin is practically uninhabited. It has considerable forest resources and a great wealth of minerals. Russia has done nothing with these resources, and for a long time will do nothing, because she has not the available labor power in that quarter. Japan could make use of them im- mediately. Saghalin is of great strategic import- ance to Japan, but not to Russia, Should there not be an international law of eminent domain, whereby such a maldistribution of the earth’s re- sources might be corrected without resource to force and fraud? MEXICO appears on the whole more tranquil today than at any time since the fall of Diaz. Villa has at last surrendered and has received amnesty, together with his folowers. The elections — for Congress recently held seem to have been con- ducted in orderly fashion. Propagandists for intervention, anxious to find revolutionary activity somewhere to be horrified over, are compelled to turn their eyes to Lower California, where Goy- ernor Cantu, as throughout the last seven or eight years, is maintaining civil order without the aid or consent of Mexico City. No doubt he is now, as he has always been, under grave suspicion at the capital for his affiliations with American business. To many patriotic Mexicans his extreme states rights position looks like a prelude to annexation. Lower California is not very firmly attached to the body of the Mexican state, and there are jn- . numerable Americans who would like to see it come the way of Texas. But the Huerta govern-, ment is likely to go slow in applying coercion to Cantu. | SOME increase in railway rates was inevitable, and it may be that the increases granted by the Interstate Commerce Commission, ranging from 25 percent for the Southern and Mountain Pacific groups to 40 percent for the Eastern group are no more than fair and reasonable, ‘The return under the new rates is calculated to permit a six percent yield on the capital invested in the roads, estimated for the purposes of this decision at $18,- 900,000,000. We say, for the purposes of this decision, but we are aware that this figure will acquire a binding validity with time, as the mini- mum upon which future railway valuations will be built up,-and as a basis for future rates, or for the amount of compensation that can be claimed when the government gets ready to nationalize the roads. Whether the railways will realize profits
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292 FHE according, to their expectations depends on the question whether the new burden, which is quite enough to be felt, discourages traffic in any marked degree. If it does the roads will soon appear again before the Commission with demands. for more. of the inefficiency of competitive operation. ° They Hit the ‘Trail HERE is being played today in Europe a great and intricate game of diplomatic chess. The area of operations is enormous. On a map of the world it is bounded approximately by the meri- dian of Greenwich, the International line, the Equator and the Arctic circle. The chief players are the cabinets at London, Paris, Rome, Berlin, Moscow, and Tokio. The great stakes are the eco- nomic future of Germany, the political affiliations of Central Europe and the Russian borderlands, the extention of empire in what was Turkey, Trans- caucasus, and Persia, the projection of empire from the Cape to Cairo and from Cairo to Calcutta, and the penetration of Middle Asia, of Eastern ‘Siberia, of China. The central position and what strategists call the minor lines are held by Russia. It is impossible to. reach a settlement without the consent of Russia. All agreements reached with- out her consent are temporary. Ever since the col- _ lapse of militarism in Central Europe this has been the master key to world politics. In one sense agreement with Russia is not dif- ficult. Soviet Russia differs from imperial Russia in that it is not inspired by the orthodox motives of imperialism. Its system of property relations is such that no class in Russia at present has political influence enough to secure government backing for the exploitation of a backward people. The natur- al resources of Russia so nearly approach self-suf- ficiency that there is not, as there is in Japan, for example, a strong popular motive to imperial ex- pansion. | The difficulty in reaching an agreement with Russia is fundamentally of another kind. Soviet Russia is feared because of the Third Internation- al. There is some ground for this fear, of course, for an organization aiming at world-wide revolu- tion is a much more poignant reality when the gov- erning members of a great power belong to it, than if it is a collection of rebels and exiles. But there is a deeper fear than comes from the threats and boasts of the Third International. It is the fear of the influence of an example of a communist suc- cess. All sensible people know that the agitators of the Third International ‘depend for their suc- NEW REPUBLIC cess or their failure on how far labor in any par That is simpler than attacking the problem ) Plunge a population into utter misery, and ¢ _ments, the men who by and large have reported th e news have lacked practical wisdom of history ar a \ Si Pg MeL Rare n oye a Ae { ‘ \ ~ > ‘ a: { a 0 P i> a August II, 192 ticular country is convinced that the Russian eX periment itself is a success. But success is a rek ative thing, And so really sensible people have I gued from the first that Bolshevism would 7 ; sufficiently successful to be worth imitating only if the existing order seemed hopeless and helpless. : change will seem a change for the better. Rais 2 a population to comfort, and it is immune to cata strophic revolution no matter how successful 2 violent change may have been in some other od | Revolutions are not imitated unless the causes of revolution are imitated. And finally, sensible peo ple have known what all history teaches, that m tyrdom obscures the faults of the martyr, that mys- tery is the mother of romance. The more Russia” was attacked, the more Russia was lied about, ne more inaccessible Russia became, the greater the glamor and the dream. The Russia of the wester . world has been largely a fiction, a horribles fiction to conservatives, a glorious fiction to rey lutionists. , The people who have had influence with gov ‘a ¢ of human nature. They have moreover been wil ri ly misinformed. ‘Consequently their policy has 6 en a perfect failure in three vital respects. They tried to strike down by force of arms a government which was stronger than any army they could raise to fight it. They tried to paint that government as so terribly black, and have been caught in . many lies, that from believing nothing good o} Russia there is a reaction towards believing notk ing bad. And to cap the climax-they have rail J. ed the intervention and the lie abroad with re action at home. % If human beings were not so human, Lord 1 Northclifile and M. Pichon and Mr. Winste : Churchill and Mr. Ochs and Mr. Colby would b standing up like men to confess their follies ¢ d ask forgiveness, ‘We meant well,” they would : say, “but we did not know how to go abou We know that thousands of men have died, tha children. have perished, that disorder has been 2g : gravated and peace delayed because we misjudge the facts and misled you in consequence. We on fess that we are failures in the greatest test ¢ our generation. You say that you are opposed to revolution and the dictatorship of the prole at We have fought revolution and the dictatorship 0 the proletariat in the only way we knew how & fight them. We are duds. Show another way i there is one; you cannot do worse than we hav done. See whether you can do better.” 4 \
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a first step would be simple, if the powers that rule ‘were in a humble state of mind. It would consist [ i the order to make a complete peace with Russia. This would involve demobilization of the Red Ar- “mies and the White Armies, the opening of trade, the abolition of censorship, and freedom of travel. P It would be followed by the promotion to other oc- _ cupations of all diplomats, all reporters, and all which has failed that they could not dis e dust “port a new policy. _ This would clear the ground for constructive ac- ‘until public opinion has been cleansed of fictions _and bogies by therapeutic contact with honest and q “retell the main history of the Revolution. ‘So long as that history is a fable it will fester in the ' minds of men, and distort all their judgments. The mind of the western world, conservative and liber- eal, is neurotic about Russia, and needs a kind of psychoanalysis before it will be ready to deal with the new problems of Russia. Psychoanalysis for this purpose means a popular knowledge of the dif- erence between what has been believed and what should have been believed. It does not involve a detailed knowledge of the great intrigue, nor an in- timate acquaintance with soviet laws or communist theory, but it does mean a hard sense of how and why the bamboozlement took place, and of just ‘how it failed, and of just how it violated the ' American tradition in its finest form. _ Against that background the questioning of Rus- sia can begin. We assume diplomats and reporters who have been thoroughly debamboozled, We as- sume men who have read history to some purpose, ‘who have an eye for what counts, who are toler- ably i immune to social pressure, who can discrimi- “nate between the superficial boasts and threats and 'ideologics of politics and the forces which de- ‘termine its larger ends. For it is only these that matter to Americans. Weare far away from Rus- ‘sia, and are not concerned in the daily drama. The ‘details must elude us, and our policy like our ac- tion touches only the enduring elements of the Russian problem. For this reason the men who ought to go to sis as the eyes and ears of the American peo- ‘ple should preserve a real detachment from the gos- sip of capitols. For them an “understanding of the Russian situation’? means investigation of the great controlling influence. Their er peak read something like this: You will find out what commodities are most needed in various parts of Russia. a Pha.” Wee 4 Tote lp: MARTA {7 4 ete ; 4 f Be Cota Xe ; re ; ae ee ’ UES iss 4 ; +4 a 34 Pian . , s ‘ Pa dite ase 1 , ‘ - P Py . H a . . \ , , ’ f ere | August II, 1920 LHE NEW REPUBLIC , 293 _ That would be a chalenge worth accepting. The editors who are so deeply committed to the policy “tion. But no constructive action would be possible "relevant fact. Therefore it would be necessary to You will find out what surpluses there are in various parts of Russia. You will report the policy of Russia in respect to her undeveloped natural resources. You will report how far and in what way the external trade and the larger internal trade of Russia, are centrally controlled from Mos- cow, how far there is economic life indepen- dent of the government, how far localities are © autonomous. | You will report, not by guesswork, but by in- vestigation in the field, how far centralization is producing political opposition, and you will note evidence showing a tendency towards the centralization of power or the opposite. You will report the actual working out of land policy in different sections, and you will fix attention not on what ten peasants say, but on the obstruction or the assistance of the larger political organs to the prosperity of the peas- ants. A weekend ‘outside of Moscow will not give you this information. Probably the facts are different in different parts of Russia. ‘You will remember that Russia is larger than the United States. | You will report wages, hours and conditions in industry, and its productivity. You will watch the character of labor discipline and of work- ers’ control, and you will follow carefully the attitude of labor unions. | | You will report price levels, in cities and villages, for essentials. You will remember that the traditions and habits of politicians have not been suspended in Russia. You will, therefore, not take the speeches of politicians at their face value. The habit of talking big and doing little is not confined to Washington, D. C. | You will remember that the social condition of a people in the end determines its politics. You will remember that Russia is vast and comparatively inert, and that theory does not control all life. Above all you will remember that the place you are going to is Russia, not ‘‘Bolshevism.”’ You are to look at Russia, not the Russia of the emigrés, not the ‘‘true Russia” of Mr. Sack, not Romantic Russia, not Holy Russia, but Russian villages and Russian farms and Russian railroads and Russian factories. | You will, of course, report important govern- ment decrees and the decisions of the Third International. If these reports occupy ten per cent of your attention that will be enough. For nothing that you can report about them is intelligible until you have informed your-
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294 THE NEW self and us about the main conditions of daily life. Finally, you are to pretend that you are report- ing Russia to an adult people that does not need to be humored or protected. ‘There- fore, you will not have to prove every day that you are not a -Bolshevik. That will be taken for granted. ‘cCoxsure’’ OT so very many years ago, when the rural free delivery system was still young, travel- lers.through the country districts used to consider curiously the mail-boxes which receptive farmers had set up before their doors. In those days the boxes were new, and the words were still fresh and legible which informed the passer-by that the design of the box he was inspecting, in derision or dismay, had been ‘approved by the Postmaster General.’”’ What, the traveller often wondered querulously, as he studied these useful and grace- less receptacles, what upon earth could those mail- boxes have looked like which the Postmaster Gen- eral had failed to approve? | A similar wonder troubled the bosoms of such students. of style as were persevering and long-suf- _ fering enough to read Senator Harding’s speech of acceptance all the way through. Out of his first draft he had cut, so the newspapers reported, some three thousand five hundred words, What could they have been like, those discarded sentences, if their unexacting author deemed them unworthy to associate with the cryptic frishfrash he elected to retain? The condemned words must indeed have been blood-curdling offenders against clearness or sense or grammar, since the most clement of blue- pencil could not bring itself to spare them. Mr. George White, the new Chairman of the Democratic National Committee, is another pro- voker of the same brand of wonder. We quote from a Washington dispatch to the New York Times: “ ‘Peace, progress and prosperity’ will be _ the campaign slogan, Mr. White announced, while ‘Coxsure’ would appear as a cry in the campaign.”’ Mr. White’s first instalment of self-revelation is unfortunate. We had thought him, those of us who believe what we see in the papers, a man tem- pered and instructed by long exposure to Ohio poli- tics, a man with a hard head. And now we are suddenly confronted, no warning being given and no danger signal displayed, with this cry of the moron, this near-beer pun, this insipid “Coxsure”’ ! Did Mr. White deliberately choose it, after sitting up late and studying all the suggestions submitted? If so, the rejected suggestions ought to be publish- REPUBLIC. It must have a folk-sound. Tae 1 ed, in order that those who think ill of human abil ity may have the satisfaction of thinking worse 0 it than ever. Or did Mr. White, impetuous a) unassisted, coin this “Coxsure’”’ out of his own brains? Perhaps the witticism had just oc ured to him, and he couldn’t resist the temptation to give it to the press? May be. He may think up som ‘ thing not so bad if you give him time. Perhaps his us is l’esprit d’escalier, or cab-wit. If such be he case, Governor Cox had better lose not a momel nt in calling a cab for Mr. White, and having aim driven to the top of the longest staircase in Ohio. Time may conceivably do several things for Mr. George White. It may enable him to learn, by consulting any dictionary—e. g., the one we have just consulted—that his distinction between ‘ ‘cry” and “slogan” is unreal, since “slogan’’ means the gairm of the sluagh, the outcry of the host. a herd, as the psychologists would say, or pack, or swarm. ‘Time may even, barely conceivably, prove that Mr. White, when he invented or approved “‘Coxsure,”’ knew his business after all. In some ef doubtful state, the electoral vote of which will de cide the election, there may be a few thousand rather imbecile voters who would have voted for r Mr. Harding if Mr. White’s pun had not beguil- ed, entranced, captivated, seduced them, had not laid them under the spell of its fatuous beauty. What is the use of being dogmatic before the event? The prejudice against silly puns in poli- tics may for aught we know be as baseless as the prejudice which once existed against puns in adver tising, and which was attacked successfully, some SETA Ye years ago, by the inventor of “Uneeda Biscuit.” Moron may once more call to moron as effectively as deep ever called unto deep. 4 A good campaign cry is uncommon. Unless we judge them by their results it is not easy when we turn back to the cries that sounded through old campaigns to distinguish the good from the bad. — For Tippecanoe and ‘Tyler too—Tippecanoe and Tyler too; 4 And with them we'll beat little Van, Van, Van is a used up man; a And with them we'll beat little Van. In our ears it sounds fair to middling, yet our sing. ing and marching ancestors were convinced that it helped them to elect the first Harrison. Few ol us stand up and yell and smash our straw hats when we hear that etajne McKinley was “the adva ce agent of | prosperity.” We merely repeat that if a good campaign cry is uncommon the ideal cry 1 almost non-existant. For to attain the ideal cry must sound not only as if it were addressed te a crowd but also as if it had been born of a crowd, And it must not appeal to our self-regard
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\ dugust II, 1920. wishes only. What did one of the greatest natural eaders of men, what did Garibaldi offer his fol- Bers after Rome had surrendered and the only “hope left them was forlorn? He offered them fame, sete, murcie forzate, battaglie a morte. “Fortune,” he said, to give his speech in Mr. Tre- velyan’ s English, “fortune, who betrays us to-day, will smile on us tomorrow. I am going out from “Rome. Let those who wish to continue the war : “against the stranger, come with me. I offer neither “pay, nor quarters, nor provisions! I offer hunger, ‘thirst, forced marches, battles and death. Let him ® who loves his country in his heart and not with his lips only, follow me.” Such an appeal can be suc- ‘cessful in any country only when crisis is present and visible. It can seldom be made with success ‘in an American Presidential campaign. But there will always be a suggestion of self-sacrifice and ‘us Americans who have time to make a picture of ourselves. The ideal appeal suggests to those who hear it a thrilling and satisfactory blend of risk and ‘reward. Those who follow the leader of the for- orn hope shall find themselves on the loaded wag- ‘on. Loaves and fishes shall be the portion of them whose backs are against the wall. No wonder the ideal campaign cry is rare—rare as the poorest ‘on record, which we take to be Mr. White’s. Peace by Confiscation OTH the Republican and Democratic candi- dates for the Presidency propose to conclude a peace with Germany which shall perpetuate in economic terms the fact of American success in the war. The two proposals, in so far as they are articulate, differ in manner and method, but the spirit of American accession to the Treaty of Ver- sailles, and the spirit of Senator Harding’s “effect- ive peace” are in accord. They aim to secure to the United States the fruits of victory. Now the fruits of victory in the year 1920 are our national honor and eight hundreds of millions of dollars of German property in the hands of the Alien Property Custodian. And the vice in the promise of Senator Harding, as in the program of the Democrats, is simply that we cannot retain them doth. For one thing it is altogether inconsistent with the professions under which we entered the war that we should profit in vast material gain even at the expense of the enemy, For another it is at variance with the recognized and accepted usages of international law, as practiced for a hundred years previous to 1914, that we should confiscate fo our public demands against a foreign govern- ment the private property of citizens of that state. THE NEW ‘danger in the ideal appeal to any large body of REPUBLIC 295 On either ground our retention of the property now in the hands of the Alien Property Custodian vitiates our achievement in France. The past conduct of the Alien Prope Cus- todian’s office makes our disposition of these funds a matter of the utmost importance. We have al- ready progressed so far toward confiscation that only the most generous and liberal treatment of the German owners of seized property can save us from the charge of hypocrisy and bad faith. And it will not justify our action that the responsibility for confiscation falls upon the shoulders of Mr. Attorney General Palmer. The original act creating the ice of Alien Property Custodian, the Trading with the Enemy Act, was thoroughly in accord with international morality and the protestations of Mr. Wilson. In committee hearings Secretary Lansing, Secretary Redfield and Assistant Attorney General Warren described the act as designed only to suppress trade beneficial to Germany and German subjects. Said Secretary Redfield: The creation of an. Alien Property Custodian is a novelty and is in line with the same effort toward equity which impels us to indicate an earnest desire to show to the people with whom, unfortunately, we are engaged in war, that here is the opposite of confiscation and here is the opposite of requisition. The provisions of the act looked to sequestration of enemy property only, and gave the Custodian, Mr. Palmer, power to sell sequestered properties in the single case where sale was necessary to pro- tect the property. It was clearly the intention of Congress to create a custodian of private enemy property, a trustee in the true sense, who should at once prevent Germany from benefiting from American trade, and protect the German owner against violation of his rights in international law. Under this statute, and acting with extraordinary skill and perfect impartiality, Mr. Palmer built up the immense trust company of the Custodian’s ofice. But it soon developed that Mr. Palmer’s notion of his functions differed vitally from the conception of Congress. He thought of himself not as a trustee but as a member of the military forces of the United States. “Instead of per- mitting myself to become a mere conservator of enemy property, I have tried to make the Trading with the Enemy act a fighting force in the war.” He thought of the war as an economic struggle, he saw himself in a position to injure the enemy — financially, and he determined to inflict that injury. ‘To that end he asked for, procured, and acted on an amendment permitting him to sell German properties without the restrictions placed upon him as trustee. Whatever we may think of the ethics of this
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: | 296° step there can be no doubt that Mr. Palmer was proceeding in accord with the generally accepted theory of the war and that the campaign he pro- posed was good strategy. Economic compulsion was admittedly the most effective of war measures. But unfortunately for Mr, Palmer’s reputation as a statesman he out-economized the economists. He ' proposed not metely the present injury of German trade as a war measure: he proposed the permanent destruction of German trade in the United States as a measure of business advantage. Of course, I cannot speak for anybody except myself. The feeling is, I think, that the time has come when the ownership of some of these great German properties should be permanently separated from German capital, and that the enemy might as well know now that the connection which she has been able to maintain with American industry and commerce is broken, not simply during the war, but broken never to be resumed. And again: i . these great concerns financed by the Deutsche Bank, supported by the junker class... . are the kind we ought to Americanize. do with them. | It is worth noting in passing that we have here an authentic translation of the verb “‘Americanize,” from the mouth of its most frequent user. Mr. Palmer had; of course, other reasons for advocating so revolutionary a measure. The big German industries in America were potential “nests of sedition.” The measure was a proper act of reprisal for German liquidation of American in- dustries within the empire. Liquidation would be a positive kindness to the German owners because no one would trade with them after the war and their properties would be effectually confiscated if they were returned in kind. Germany must be made to suffer in her foreign trade in order that she might know she was defeated. | The Treaty of Versailles has attended to the disciplining of Germany, and the passage of time has reduced the confiscation argument to its es- sential absurdity. ‘There remain the justifications based upon sedition and reprisal. Of the former it is enough to say that Mr. Palmer as Custodian conducted certain German businesses without liqui- dation throughout the war. It has never been charged that a spy system flourished in these con- cerns unless it was the system operated by the De- partment of Justice. To the reprisal argument a sufficient answer is that Mr. Palmer seems to have been misinformed. In his report as Alien Property Custodian he refers to a German “measure” of March 4th, 1918, ordering the liquidation of American concerns in Germany, and assumes upon the basis of that law that liquidation was in fact THE NEW REPUBLIC That is what we ought to A ugust rr enforced. Germany has always eniphaticalig'l deni : this charge. American observers in Germany have denied it. And we have now the comment of tl ne Privy Councillor of the Department of Fo Be m Affairs, Wiedenfeld, upon the Custodian’s rep ne In point of truth it ought to have been knowl Mr. Palmer, since information upon the subject bl ll been repeatedly sent to America through neutral chan- nels, that though the German government from, ia to time, as American proceedings became knoll | cured authority to take measures of reprisal, never less, throughout the entire war, no American privat or business property was liquidated. ; . Whatever the validity of Mr. Palmer’s conten tions in March, 1918, the only justification fas our retention: of the proceeds of liquidated Germ : properties today is the argument based upon the | protection of American industries against Ge an competition. That argument is inadequate in th at it does not cover the property of private German citizens seized and sold. But in so far as it does apply it raises squarely a question of interna 7 morality of the first importance. Can we afford ¢ 0 write into international law a precedent for the de struction of enemy-owned industries in time of war? Can we so far repudiate the declared purpose of our entry into the war as to impose as a condition of peace the confiscation of private property? 4 Harding and a eRe War OW that the constitution has been valianth st defended by Mr. Harding, and now hat the ‘Ten Commandments have been duly celebrated by Mr. Coolidge, there remains just one question 3 on which a plain answer is due to the people of } this country. If Governor Cox is well-advised he will not permit Mr. Harding to escape without s ; ing where he stands on Mexico. On the recort Governor Cox can assert, and challenge Senato Harding to deny, that the dominant group in tl Senate, now the dominant group in the party, in tends to make war upon Mexico. He will be : within the truth if he insists that the election @ o Mr. Harding is equivalent to a declaration of w a war which all the world will call a war of bral conquest, a war that for long generations will dt stroy the possibility of friendship with Latin-Am ica, a war which army officers estimate will requi a half a million men and eight years to finish, 3 war involving a new “autocracy’ at the Whit House, more loans and more inflation, more taxe and probably more conscription, more bureaucrat and more censorship and more hate propaganda, The dominant group intend such a war. Who i ck
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August 11, 1920 the senator who has “investigated”? Mexico for them? Senator Fall of New Mexico. What was a _ the character of his investigation? An unconcealed ' effort at propaganda for war. What are Senator | Fall’s views about Mexico They are embodied in ' the Fall Report. In their ruthless imperialism _ they go beyond the demands presented to Serbia . by Austria-Hungary in 1914. They are the exact - equivalent of a declaration of war, Let Senator _ Harding disavow that report if he dares. If the _ Democrats know their business they will compel him either to disavow it or to approve it. It is the declared purpose of that senatorial group who are to govern the country for Mr. Harding. But be- fore he disavows the Fall report, Mr. Harding will have to explain away the keynote speech of his ' Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee. Mr. Lodge is for war with Mexico. Mr. Harding is either in harmony with Mr. Lodge and Mr. Fall or he is against them. ‘There is no wriggling out of that choice. : Mexico is the most concrete issue at stake in this _ campaign. If that war is undertaken everything else that is being talked about, the League, taxes, _ decentralization, labor unrest, will be engulfed. _ The American people have not yet forgotten what fo a war is like. A war is never a side issue. It is always the only issue, and since one of the parties proposes war, that is the only issue worth discuss- ing till the position of every party is perfectly clear. For when the army takes the field, when volunteer- ing or a draft begin, when the manufacture of muni- tions is given priority, when the railroads are con- centrated towards the Mexican border, when the hunt for Mexican spies begins, when American sol- _ diers are ambushed and slain, everything else will be forgotten. There will be no talk of “normal. cy” then, It isn’t only Governor Cox and the Demoerats who are in honor bound to smoke out Mr. Harding on the issue of Mexico. Progressive Republicans _ are even more thoroughly obligated. Mr. Ray- mond Robins is bound. Mr. William Allen White is bound. Governor Frazier is bound. Mr. Ogden and Senator Capper and Senator France are bound. Perhaps they believe in a war with Mexico. That is not the point. ‘The point is that the voters of this country have a right to know before election just what the Republican party intends to do. It is clear that Mr. Harding intends to evade if he can. But Mexico is one subject on which he shall not evade. If he refuses to commit himself that is a committment to war. No candidate would be _ afraid to declare for peace. If he is afraid to de- _ clare himself, it is because he has declared for war. W REPUBLIC. bor, the Clayton Act. _ Mills is bound. Senator Borah and Senator Johnson, ee st — -_ eee oe Fe eee Soe Cee te i ee Oe ae, Bho t Nek Bs ee oe bo tah Siri a eae ah reno ag, las MONS ELST ORE Foe. te Pa sy Wer ty os vi bi ii WT vanes uo ig a 4 are bets ay hau, a a ap py ER 8 hs ah a Poa ¢ oF a ER eda Saeen b > 4 Oy ' sat 4 AS Ts (dba frag Vb, }- “ Magna Charts y I is a usual vice of platforms to avoid reference I to matters of present importance, but it is rare- ly that a past achievement is omitted from the roll. The capitalization of history is the chief asset of the two great parties, and to ignore any one of the innumerable ciphers that multiply the total would be a business error of the first magnitude. Yet, the Democratic party seems to have been guilty of just such an omission. Neither in its platform, nor in the public utterances of its candidates, has it ad- vertised its great reform measure, hailed by Mr. Gompers as the Magna Charta of American La- The platform of 1916 was not so negligently drawn: 3 We have lifted human labor from the category of commodities and have secured to the workingman the right of voluntary association for his protection and welfare. We have protected the rights of the laborer against the unwarranted issuance of writs of injunction, and have guaranteed to him the right of trial by jury ~ in cases of alleged contempt committed outside the pres- | ence of the court. This is a truly imposing sum calculated to im- press the most sceptical and cautious of small de- — positors. What then has happened in the last four years? Is the small depositor no longer consider- — able? Has the Democracy discounted these obli- gations so soon? Has the debasement of the cur- rency left them valueless? And Mr. Gomper’s attitude is equally myster- ious. Mr, Gompers has been recently engaged in showing cause for labor support of one or the other of the traditional parties. He has carefully com- pared the demands of labor with the labor profes- sions of the two platforms. He has found slight divergencies. He has weighed the little more against the little less. And he has concluded that the neutrality of labor should be thrown to the Democratic party. Now presumably Mr. Gompers considered something more than the promises of the two platforms. Presumably he considered the — probability that the promises would be redeemed. The best evidence of that probability would be found in the records of the parties. And in the record of the Democratic party was written the Magna Charta of American Labor. Why then did Mr. Gompers not base his decision on that great document? Why did he couple with his brief reference to the act the statement, “‘there is no specific condemnation (in the Democratic plat- form) of the abuse of the writ of injunction in la- bor disputes”? It had been supposed that the im- portance of the Clayton Act lay in its regulation of that very abuse. Mea malign sh UL) be Pir ade ae iN) 6 ice” r TERR SRE or % me hed BTS, ris | SUSk ae ed: My, Bae ne 4 ch Pee LY
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ete OT ee or seer ee ate ees fee ee ONS ee ed he, sie ahs Lula Sis (cc vars WIR | wr Stee! eee eS oak oe essay Kae a Ree sri) ~ \ Sh * ’ yaw Ty The truth is that both Mr. Gompers and the Democratic party realize that the Clayton Act isn’t the charter of liberties it used to be,—and that it never was. So far back as 1916 we argued that the act in its major provisions altered in no way the law applicable to labor disputes, and that it was. so drawn as to intend no alteration. It sanctioned the existence of labor unions under the Sherman Law, but their legality under that law had never been doubted. It exempted the (lawful) opera- tions of labor from anti-trust legislation, but the lawful operations of labor had always been so ex- empt. It forbade federal injunction in labor cases “unless. necessary to prevent irreparable injury to property,” but strikes necessarily injure property rights and it is the prerogative of equity to find that property losses are irremediable at law. And we contended that the courts must inevitably con- strue the law as nugatory and hold Jabor unions - liable to injunction after the act as before. The contention has been most thoroughly and unhappily justified in the event. The courts have construed the labor sections as codifying existing law, and leaving the unions where they were in 1914. The act as a charter and bill of rights is dead, as dead as it was when it was passed. In the Kroger Case, decided in the Eastern District of Missouri, March, 1918, the court said of the prin- cipal labor section (§20)} “It is a mistake to sup- pose that by these provisions of the act any act or acts which were unlawful at the time the act was passed, were legalized.” In Stephens vs. Ohio State Telephone Co., Judge Killits said of the same £ section, “The statute but enacts the position which courts have universally taken; there is nothing new in it....’” The District Court of Massachusetts drew the same inference in reference to section six in the case of United States vs. King. And Judge Sanborn, in the case of United States vs. Norris in the Northern District of Illinois reduced the whole matter to epigram in the statement, “I think that section twenty was intended to legalize lawful strikes.” The Act has not been passed upon directly by the Supreme Court, but the dissenting opinion of Mr. Justice Pitney in Paine Lumber Co. vs. Neal in which Justices McKenna and Van Devanter concurred has been understood by lawyers, and by so eminent a judge as Judge Rogers, to represent the interpretation put upon the act by the ma- jority of the court. Indeed, Mr. Justice Holmes in stating a position opposed to that of Justice Pitney says that he finds himself there in a minor- ity. Justice Pitney declares of section six (the italics are his) that it “safeguards those organiza- tions while pursuing their legitimate objects by law- bsnl Sih Ona ides dig x ae ia OTs ss =i Hae eha en or a Sree vs ry) ite AE : any q aay ‘THE NEW ‘REPUBLIC jects of such an organization or its members, or hy ais ful means,” and he adds that there is no indication in the committee reports nor in the language of th section of a “purpose to render lawful . . . anythin that before the act was unlawful whether in the o the measures adopted for accomplishing them.” In other words, at least three members of the Supreme! Court, and presumably a majority of that body, find that the Congress did not accomplish, and did not intend to ee the purpose — it avowed. _ Against these decisions stands the opinion of Judge Hough, concurred in in part by Judge | Learned Hand, Judge Rogers dissenting, in the case of Duplex Press Co. vs. Deering, Judge Hough admits the blindness of the statute, but concludes from a study of legislative proceed. | ings and contemporary history that ‘‘the designed, | announced and widely known purpose of section twenty . . . was to legalize the secondary boycott, — at least in so far as it rests on, or consists of, re- fusing to work for any one who deals with the prin- — cipal offender.” In so far as his conclusion saves him from the absurdity of holding that Congress enacted a law which meant nothing at all Judge © Hough is undoubtedly fortunate in his interpreta- — tion. But it is unfortunate that he builds it upon — “the cesspaed, announced and widely known pur pose” of the section. That announcement was not | intended for court consumption. 4 It is abundantly clear then that the silence of thei Democratic platform was advised. And the atti- 4 tude of Mr. Gompers i is likewise explicable: there are occasions when it is painful to remember one’s — enthusiasms, But it is still open to wonder wha new and persuasive guarantee of good faith has — convinced Mr. Gompers that he may now trust the 4 professions of the Democratic party. | a ‘ REPUBLIC eM a A Journal of Opinion. PUBLISHED WEEKLY AND COPYRIGHT, 1920,..N THE UNITED |] _ STATES OF AMERICA BY THE REPUBLIC PUBLISHING COMPANY, } — INC., 421 WEST TWENTY-FIRST STREET, NEW YORK, N. Y. |] ~ HERBERT CROLY, PRESIDENT; ROBERT HALLOWELL, TREASURER |} EDITORS HERBERT CROLY CHARLES MERZ FRANCIS HACKETT WALFER EIPPMANN ee JOHNSON HILIP LITTELL P. SIGNE TOKSVIG, Assistant Editor YEARLY SUBSCRIPTION FIFTY-TWO ISSUES, FIVE DOLLARS IN ADVANCE, SINGLE COPIES FIFTEEN CENTS, CANADIAN SUB- SCRIPTION FIVE DOLLARS AND FIFTY CENTS PER YEAR IN ADVANCE, FOREIGN SUBSCRIPTIONS FOR COUNTRIES IN THE POSTAL UNION, SIX DOLLARS PER YEAR IN ADVANCE; REMIT- TANCE TO BE MADE BY INTERNATIONAL POSTAL MONEY ORDER, ENTERED AS SECOND CLASS MATTER, NOVEMBER 6, 1914, AT [} _ THE POST OFFICE AT NEW YORK, N. Y., UNDER THE ACT OF || = MARCH 3+ 1879- “*
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' of news reports in the New York Times. happened. Lloyd George has opened negotiations Those negotiations have ripened into the exchange of peace notes between Great _ Britain and Russia. q lapsed. For the first time a British statesman with Krassin. ee en PT TE TET gE RN Tae Bo ey satis ha Peer tee Tee, August 11, 1920. news about Russia was desirable, it was desir- able in the months just passed. Much has 3 F ever an accurate and impartial reporting of The Polish offensive has col- talks about “the re-establishment of normal con- ditions.” iA week ago the New Republic published a study Those reports were on various aspects of the Russian - Revolution. 1917, to March, 1920. es Ge ae . fa aT eee SRSA EERE A are ee _ has been injected as optimistically as ever. - June 4th, a few days after Krassin’s arrival in ' London, the Times carried a dispatch from Mr. Tihey covered the period from March, This was the conclusion reached: that on every essential question the net effect of the news was almost invariably misleading. Beyond March, 1920, this study did not go. But the last two months are critical. What sort of ; news, in this later period, has the Times been pub- lishing? In the study published a week ago it was pointed out that one of the major themes in the news from Russia was prophecy that the Soviets were totter- - ing. Not once or twice—but ninety-one times— _ inthe two years from November, 1917, to Novem- ' ber, 1919, it was reported in the Times that the _ Soviets were nearing their rope’s end, or actually _ had reached it. left its effect upon the reader, attitude of laissez-faire. Naturally this steady repetition It nourished an Creating the impression that a few days more might see the smash of Soviet _ power, it helped postpone from month to month : an insistence that in the face of definite fact the _ Allied statesmen must revaluate their policy of in- _ decision, intervention, and blockade. Into the period of the Krassin negotiations— the period of the last two months—that same note On ‘France believes,” said Walter Duranty in Paris. _ Mr. Duranty, speaking for the whole nation, “that _ the sands of the Bolshevist régime in Russia are fast running out.” Why dicker with a government q soon to fall? A special dispatch from Washington, _ published two days later, reported the surprise of “everybody in influential quarters” that Lloyd George should want negotiations: The fact of the matter is that not only those who are hopeful for the overthrow of the Soviet system of government and social philosophy, but everybody in influential quarters is surprised over the initiation isa seals 5 Sik pO ah 5) Tes “THE NEW REPUBLIC ro reekr: ene ae ies eae Td ina go gl ea tt PRT Soro DUNE emer Le) Dae oe in Pa een - y b ne? og nigh. Spe Dae nes me i ape Nia SOON ida te 2 =. Aus ’ ‘ Tams abt, Mec’ sou 3 a More News from the Times of preliminaries to such negotiations by so important a government as that of Great Britain, and even more by the reported pompous manner in which Krassin was received in London by representatives of © the Lloyd George Cabinet. . .. The best information reaching this country, which undoubtedly has also reached the British Cabinet, is that there is now complete disintegration of the Soviet system. .... The fate of Soviet control over Russia is considered sealed. Hence the amazement, in well-informed circles here, over the news that negotiations, involv- © ing important political and moral issues should have been at such a juncture initiated with representatives of a body which had almost become a cadaver. The cadaver was to arise, shortly, and smite the Polish army hip and thigh. But no suggestion of such a future permeated to readers of the Times. Reports of Soviet difficulties and of possible Soviet collapse continued coming with a fair show of regularity.™ _ For readers of the Times there was another thing which may have heightened the impression that it was folly to talk peace with a government near collapse. This was the way in which news from the Polish front was handled. When Krassin arrived in London, the Poles still held Kiev—four hundred and thirty miles away from Warsaw, and more than two hundred miles east of the boundaries marked out for Poland by the Peace Conference. Despite the eastern drive, various dispatches in the Times during the period from January, 1919, to February, 1920, had pictured Russia, and not Poland, as the aggressor. Instances of this fact were given in the supplement published by the New Republic a week ago. How the Polish campaign against Russia gnally , ended there is no dispute today. Polish troops, — within the space of a few weeks’ time, were beaten back hundreds of miles to their own borders. And when it was all over—July 28th—the Times had * Not the least interesting thing about these reports of impending Soviet collapse is the way they often contrast with warnings of a world-wide menace. ‘Thus, on the day after a special dispatch from Washington had de- scribed the Soviet regime as one “almost become a cadaver,” Mr. Edwin L. James cabled from Paris news of a great Soviet effort to push “revolution in France and other countries.” (Times, June 7.) Presumably no human in- stitution can simultaneously be both cadaver and world- wide menace. But that is not to reckon with the practice of playing the news both ways. The Times, recently, has published many warnings of Red Peril—one of them (July 28) necessitating the devotion of 1000-words’ space to the utterings of General Eric Ludendorff, “the famous German war leader.” A curious spectacle—this German junker invoked to show the. world the way to peace.
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LLP TS MET TY Nae pee PT a Me Tey ae te ae ~ cil ka a ai i i ia ame ae ne ; wee? lcs ia ais i Peay Bai ha Abs 3 » eee sa) Ih By iat a ae Ay — this atesction for its readers, i in a igecls! cable sent by Mr. Duranty from Paris: | Although the hatred of all parties of the Russians for the Poles has undoubtedly given intelligent of- - ficers to the Red Army and brought forward re- cruits and increased its strength, efficiency and morale, the real cause of the Polish debacle has been the inefficiency of the Polish commanders, and in many cases the unreliability of the troops. M.utinies occurred at many points on the front, already too great to be held other than thinly by the Polish forces. ‘The Red cavalry swept through the gaps thus caused, and the whole Polish line was rolled up. Inefficiency of commanders, unreliability of troops that did not want to fight—so reads the explanation after the event. What of the news before? Up at the front with the Polish army, not three weeks before that army was in flight, Mr, George Renwick cabled to the Times: There can be no doubt the Polish troops are splendidly equipped, enthusiastic and in earnest. Everyone to whom I have spoken is certain that the union of Poland and the Ukraine, “The Entente Cordiale of the East’ as it is called, is the instrument _ to bring Bolshevism to its end. This dispatch of Mr. Renwick’s was published ‘on the 1st of June. Three days later the Soviet armies began a counter-offensive against the Poles _on the southern end of the line. But Mr. Renwick, in a dispatch from Warsaw dated the 5th of June, sent word that— | In the south the Poles continue to batter away at the army of General Budenny, one of Denikin’s opponents. A large number of his men have come — over to the Poles, and it is reported that the General himself has given up hope of success on that front. | About this time, to be sure, Mr. Duranty cabled - from Paris that there had been “ a striking change for the better in the Soviet Army during the last two months, according to a French officer just re- turned from the Polish-Bolshevist battle front.” (Times, June oth.) But two days later headlines in the Times proclaimed— BOLSHEVIST ARMY ) FACES DISASTER “Everywhere,” said the dispatch which followed— -a special cable from Mr. Renwick—Russian troops were “yielding gradually to Polish pressure.” “As the Soviet forces are driven further towards the end of the corridor [towards the Dvina] with their backs against the broad river, their prospects of considerable disaster increase. .... In Ukrainia, between the Dnieper.and Dniester rivers, the de- feat of Budenny’s army is now regarded as com- Victory on every front—north, south, and plete.” centre—not a word, anywhere, of approaching weakness or collapse, of inefficiency of commanders or unreliability of troops that did not want to fight. And yet, a single week later, the Polish army had THE. NEW REP Li _ two sentences were: been driven out of Kiev and fifty miles hep on Three weeks more, and that army was within fi a miles of the Polish border. Another fort at and the Poles—soldiers weary of holding a bat a) - line far beyond their national frontier—had givel up the ghost. ‘The Polish campaign was ended Just as correspondents of the Times had never realized—or at least had never admitted in ie dispatches—that the strength of Kolchak, a and Yudenitch was a paper strength, so in the cas ¢ of Poland was optimism sustained until the very eve before the crash. That may be loyalty to the cause. It is not gathering news. a Turn now, with this background of totteri : Soviets and advancing Poles, to the reporting of the actual negotiations between Krassin and Lloye George. : q That the Times approached these negotiations ‘ in something other than an impartial mood is su gested by one editorial, unimportant in itself, pul b- lished on the 21st of June. This aah bore the caption “Soviet Injured Innocence.” Its fest 4 M. Krassin, the Soviet agent now in London, had promised to do no talking in public and to give no — q newspaper interviews. Such a self-denying Seti 4 however, appears to be too cruel for any Bolshevik, — and accordingly M. Krassin cleansed his bosom of | its perilous stuff in vate columns of a French news- q paper. : a Krassin—like a uu N ew York Times Bolshevi k —had broken faith. But editors of the Tir must have missed a dispatch from Paris published in their own journal four days earlier. It beam un this way: a Paris, June 15.—That the policy of the Allies in waging war on the Bolsheviki has been a large factor in maintaining the Soviet régime is the de- claration made by Krassin, the Moscow Envoy in 4 London, in an interview published this afternoon by — the Liberté. The Liberté’s correspondent says he ’ met Krassin through a mutual friend and discussed _ pending questions between Russia and the Entente _ nations. a He says that Krassin forbade him to publish his — declarations on the ground that Premier Lloyd George had exacted a promise from him of no inter- — a views. ‘The correspondent declares he believes his 4 duty to his readers is greater than his duty to main- 4 3 tain. Krassin’s promise and so he will reproduce the ~ Russian’s ideas in a series of articles, the first of — which is published today. a Someone had broken faith. Was it Kral Krassin arrived in London on the 27th of May He had not been there three days before dispatche 5 in the Times began minimizing the results which might be expected from his mission. It is clear . now, that the London negotiations led to a generz discussion of peace, to the writing of a British nol which proposed not only trade relations but a con- : 9 she
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August ‘II, 1920 THE NEW } ference to “deal with matters in dispute between _ the Governments of Soviet Russia and the Allies, 4 Fand the re-establishment of normal conditions be- ' tween them.”* Yet on June ist, before Krassin had had time to unpack a bag in London, the Times - carried an Associated Press dispatch reporting that _ “in wellinformed Russian quarters” the “belief persisted” that England would not “utilize these discussions of trade affairs for the introduction of _ peace feelers.” Once more those little coteries f ' emigré and ex-noble, far removed from the scene _ of action, were dubbed “well-informed Russian _ quarters,” and once more they were wrong. , That nothing would come of the Krassin negoti- ations was a prophecy often made during the month _ of June. “The French Foreign Office,” cabled _ Mr. James on June roth, “quite frankly believes _ that the Krassin mission has reached the turning point and that the Seviet envoy will achieve noth- - ing.” In perfect harmony with this statement, the - Washington bureau of the Times reported the _ same day that “Great Britain is thoroughly familiar _ with the complete unreliability of any Bolshevist _ promise as well as with the actual inability of Russia to carry on international commerce.” Krassin was - doomed to failure. In the columns of the Times, - in June, there was no hint of any other possible outcome of his mission. Headlines on July 1st announced : KRASSIN PARLEY IS BROKEN OFF _ BOLSHEVIST COMMERCE MINISTER TO LEAVE LONDON TODAY TO CONFER WITH SOVIET TRADE MISSION A BLUFF Krassin was going home. Did his failure surprise “official circles” in our own capital? Not at all. That same day a special dispatch from Washington reported: ‘In fact, there is ground for the assertion that Government officials here from the outset have not expected a successful conclusion to Lloyd George’s move... .” But écatiidieal for all that, were not broken off. What sent Krassin back to Moscow was not Lloyd George’s refusal to let other questions than mere trade relations be discussed, but his insistence that such broader questions in fact be taken up. For Lloyd George was out to re-establish peace in Eastern Europe, if that could be managed without too loud an uproar on the part of those who still _ want war. A new note appeared in the news, about the middle of July. Mr. James, who less than a - month before had reported the French Foreign Office convinced that Krassin’s mission would “achieve nothing,” now cabled that “Allied re- * Note read in the House of Commons on ‘July 29th. REPUBLIC presentatives, on the one hand, and the Moscow Government, on the other, are about to enter into a peace contract, by the terms of which neither side will fight the other and commercial negotiations will be opened with Russia.” (Times, July 1oth.) Four days later, Mr. Bonar Law read to the House » of Commons a note which definitely disproved the theory that the Krassin negotiations had led no- | England, this note declared, wanted a where. conference in London ‘‘as soon as possible’ to ‘‘re- store peace to Europe.” Editorially, on July 21st, the Times admitted what its news columns had thought absurd: “The negotiations between Lloyd George and Krassin were nominally about trade. In salty, it 1s now evident, they had to do with peace.” That such negotiations have at last been opened is in itself an important thing. That is true, no matter what happens next. The Times today is filled with forebodings: Russia’s pacifism is a fake; the armistice will not come off; further conferences will show that Russia chooses war; Red Peril never was so imminent. Now all of this may be true. Who save a cock- sure Bolshevist patriot is prepared to say, for in- stance, that military success will not intoxicate the Soviets? Who can say that the new flock of Generals will not get out of hand? Who knows that the Soviets will have an acceptable definition of what it means to keep out of the affairs of other nations? These are important questions. But they are questions of the future. They have nothing to do with the news of past events. Not the honesty | of the Soviets but the accuracy of Russian news is the question that has here been raised. There is no need of trying to measure that accuracy by con- trasting news accounts in the Times with any other account which pretends to be the “‘real truth.’’ The reliability of the news may be tested by a few fundamental and decisive happenings about which no doubt is raised whatever. factswhich no one in the world would dispute today: That the Polish offensive was a tragic failure; That it was built on the dream of Great Poland ~ rather than on an actual reverse of power; That the Krassin negotiations, instead of leading nowhere, led actually to the exchange of a series of peace notes between Russia and Great Britain; That the Soviet Government survived June and July with strength enough to execute a remarkable | campaign against the Polish armies. Accurate information on each one of these four points was important to the American reader. And accurate information, it seems sol to say, the Times did not supply. WALTER LippMANN and sepa: Merz, 301 List four important ©
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302 Dogtish LL my first week, when I was in Italy this time, I kept hearing of the pescecani. The pescecani that, the pescecani this. People came back to the pension luncheon table telling how they had seen a Fiat of pescecani that morning on the Lizza and speeding up the Via Citta. ‘They saw them handed in at the Aquila Nera with mounds of luggage; saw pescecani buying hats; pescecani buying fountain pens; pescecani buying chocolates at 31 lire a pound. At first I thought it was some Italian word that I had never seen. Obviously the literal meaning was dogfish. But obviously also it was being used otherwise. I de- cided that it was another word for canaglia, the riff-raff, canaille with money. But that seemed not always to fit so well. I took courage and asked. | Then I learned that pescecani was a term coined by the socialists in the last years of the war. It meant the newly rich, the profiteers, those who had made money out of the war. They were called pescecani because they went about like dog- fish with their mouths open, gobbling up every- thing, they saw. I too soon learned to look out for the pescecani with happy malice. I remember one morning a party of them in the _ Via Citta. They came into Mosca’s, two men and two women. The men had goggles and gauntlets and caps; the women long veils and furs and gold mesh-bags, like the very richest Americans who could possibly tour Europe, The motor waited at the door, the valet and the chauffeur handling piles of rugs and skins. They sat down at a table and, without looking at a card, ordered liqueurs and cakes and anything that came into their heads. - The ladies took out little gold cigarette boxes and began to smoke; quite the new thing in Italy—before the war ladies did not smoke in public. And when everyone had enough of it they rose, with rattling chains, lorg- _ nettes and gold bags and furs and veils, and passed out. One of them stopped at the desk. He threw down a large banknote and carelessly lit a cigar- ette while the change was being counted. ““E quanto spendo io?” he asked, with definite languor. Italians usually know how much they spend. They made a strange sight in Siena, these furs and chains and speedy regalias, against those high walls and austere old fourteenth century palaces. I was walking with an American gentleman who lives in Siena when I saw these four again, this time in the Campo, at the foot of the Mangia tower. | “Look at them,”’ my companion said, despairing- THE NEW REPUBLIC —_ August 11, 198 -even heard that there was a kodak insurrection at ; the Joan of Arc Celebration in St. Peter’s itself. ly. “Do you suppose, could it be said — rica has taught the world this vulgarity?” a “No, I should call that unfair,” I answered. | should say that America with its resources and its usual energy has simply made a thing hum hie has always appealed to certain kinds of people everywhere. All that was needed was a god. chance.”’ h ‘As an American,” he said, hopelessly, “I sup. pose that ought to comfort me. But as a member — of the universe, well it’s universal pessimism I call it. And damn these pescecani!” But Siena is a little feudal city whose inhabitanill pride themselves on their restraint and taste, and whose resources are such that restrained tastes are all that one can afford. It was not till I began : to go about the larger »laces that I saw the pesce- cani in their glory. Rome was full of them. It} : took hours to find a room; for every hotel was crowded, There was dancing every night, Paris — gowns, uniforms, flowers. The galleries were 3 full, the cabs bright with modish ladies and gentle. men. Venice was like one great resort. You — heard German and the Scandinavian tongues on 4 all sides, but the rest was Italian. ie The Italians had taken to touring. America ‘ was avenged; the Cookies were avenged. The least malicious of us had to take a little comfort. © Everywhere I saw how they had understudied = these despised Americans who had been laughed © at all over Europe for their vulgar ways, their money, their curiosity and culture hunting. There © were the same veils, the tailored suits, and even . the kodaks. The guides were busy again, except — that now they spoke languages that they could understand themselves. They were explaining © everything, who the nine muses were—no, Signora, — there were twelve apostles—and in the Vatican — Gallery they were explaining that Aphrodite was the same as Venus, whom we all know. And that — fine generality, Antico, which has served simpler — Italians to indicate the ages of all things from Caesar’s time to the last of the Doges, was being J replaced by seicento, trecento, and so on, definite — centuries, even dates. Kodaks were being levelled — on the house fronts in Pompeii in the traditional — manner, and on the portico of San Giovanni. I} I was told that people had got on benches andl pushed and stared and were shoved by guards. _ It was all so perfect that one forgot the war and seemed to see the good old days when our " own countrymen were swarming everywhere on that velvet road laid out for them from one. end of Italy to the other. Now there was a little more a
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August 11, 1920 splendor, lace, diamonds and pearls on the ladies, and the gentlemen were a little more magnificent, and kept to their tight gaitered womanish shoes. ' Nevertheless, it was clear that the pescecani had mastered the touring art. And the Italians had taken to buying antiques. _ Aristocrats buy them because the old things are - cheaper and finer than the new for gifts and pre- sentations. The pescecani buy antiques because rich Americans have bought them, and because that it is one of the ways you know a great house, a famiglia, when you see it. America was avenged again. I used to hear, when I said to an antiquary that a thing was a _ fake, that it was no matter, they'd sell it to the _ Americans. This year in a shop on the Via Tornabuoni I saw a cabinet that was a horror of the most effulgent type, roccoco, gilded, painted, twisted, ' garlanded, glass, ormulu, and brocade. I asked _ the dealer what he could ever do with it. He ' looked at me and smiled: - “Tt’s the worst thing you'll see this year,’’ he _ said. “But what does that matter. The pescecani - will buy it.”’ _ - “Really?” “As a matter of fact this one I sold this very ' morning. A pescecane from Bologna came in and - took it as soon as he saw it. He ordered a room- - ful of Louis Quinze and wants it right off.” { “But what will you do. Can you find a roomful - of Louis Quinze like that?” ' Of course he could, he had a pattern book and ' his workmen could make anything, and the pesce- - cani don’t know. He had an ancestral portrait that was just being — - finished. A pescecane had brought in part of a picture that he had picked up somewhere. Most _ of the important part was there, he had said, the ' dress, the hands and so on. He wanted them to put the paint back in the face and to make the ' picture into a larger dimension to match another ancestral portrait that he had bought in Vicenza. _ The picture was being cleverly spliced into a worth- "less old painting, in order to keep the same texture of antique canvas, and it looked very well. _ “JT have just sold this to a dealer in Turin,” an old friend of mine on the Borgo San Iocopo ' said to me, pointing out a majolica Virgin with a ' wreath of flowers and fruit. ‘‘He has asked me to burn in a little umber here, as you see, and a little acid there on the leaves. Then we will chip ‘it a little with the hammer and crack her nose, only a very little. He will sell it to the pescecani 1 for an antique. Of course, the original is on the tower outside my door, but the pescecani will not THE NEW and carriages of the pescecani. to everyone near. 303, iesisaanin it is not I that REPUBLIC know that, caro Signore. is selling it as an antique.” ‘He was a very naughty member of those “lying and lascivious nations of the South.” But how sweet all this to an American heart! But touring, jewels, Fiats, antiques, kodaks and fine clothes do not make the poor pescecani be- loved. It would be hard to tell who hates them worse or wishes them more ill, the peasants and tradesmen or the nobility. The peasants and working people hate them for setting themselves up as something and going about with so many fine airs. Whereas everyone knows that they are no better than the plain people, they have merely been lucky, or rascally, and have made fortunes. But all we have to do is to wait, the first revo- lution or anything like that, we should see what we should see. ‘These beasts will be the first to catch it. It’s enough to have the noble families living off us, but it’s too much for one of our own kind to be trying it. The government pretends to be taxing their fortunes out of them, but really, Signore, we all know the government is afraid of them. Besides, taxes or no taxes, things can be managed. 3 The nobility’s hatred is more perfect. ages of culture behind it. A conte of one of the oldest families in Italy was telling me how he had been walking that day in the Piazza San Marco with a friend who had become ill. He saw three carriages in front of a restaurant, Inside he saw the cabmen, they had finished their luncheon and were having a cigar- ette. ‘There was a lady outside who needed a carriage at once, he said to them. The cabmen replied that they did not work during the noon hour, this was their recreation; he must look else-« where. | ‘‘Now this I can stand,’’ said the conte to me, “it is the times changing. These people must have their day and we have got to adjust ourselves. But what I can’t bear is this pescecani business.” “Yesterday, at the Cascine, I went to the races. You could not see your way for the motor cars That swine of a Borroni was there. His wife had diamonds all over her and the daughter had paradise birds on her hat and two or three young fellows hanging around. Borroni’s pockets were bulging with cigars at five lire apiece and he was offering them You know who he was? He had a little cloth factory out here near Prato, had a dozen workmen perhaps. Now he has four hundred. There are three brothers of them. One of them is in the penitentiary for profiteering. But they don’t worry about that. One of them has to It has
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ho, lee 1) Oy a Ne PN eee ee BA | Wa) z eas Ae rl cal We. Ga ° x err > "h) 4/ "Pea i 2" Ye oy Ning us Caan Ey '. 5° ¢ as. of a fee ‘ bs Y OP See Tos ey 28, Mere a ADO er gee Bigs PY my ht i : f 4 as : + . Prt ery eee anes Beh ye git ary coe aid 8 Mh ‘ ‘ } iF nt hy oe ane Yea ee Sh ah Ri} \ 304" pay for the bold game they played. But they are getting him out this month, I hear. They have bonght sixteen farms and have gone in for dia- -monds and pearls as safe investments.” — “But just what is the difference,” I asked, “be- tween the pescecani and your class? They have had all the wealth too, haven’t they?” “Oh, all the difference in the world,” the Conte answered, with polite patience; “the pescecani have held on to their money, while the aristocracy have built hospitals and monuments.” - T remembered that the most famous hospitals in Italy are already three centuries old, and that the -pescecani have had only three or four years to’ establish themselves. But I said nothing. “When Italy went into the war,” the Conte added, “I gave the government my automobile. I could sell it today for 80,000 lire. Now I walk. The Asia Minor Muddle P HERE was something refreshingly direct in the head under which the Evening Sun reported the news of General Gouraud’s entry into Damascus: New Kryc orf Syria CHOSEN BY PARIS FOREIGN OFFICE. , No nonsense here about self-determination or no right existing anywhere to hand peoples about from sovereignty to sovereignty. Feisal’s brief kingship ended not at all because the Arabs did not want him as their sovereign or because he was a bad king. He had simply made the mistake of overlooking the French taxpayer. Ever since last October, the French have main- tained, at considerable expense, a large force in Asia Minor which has been unsuccessfully trying to occupy and hold some part of the territory in which France “established its special claims’ by the Sykes-Picot agreement of 1916. But the dis- astrous adventure had ended in complete and de- cisive defeat: the annihilation of the garrison of Urfa, the surrender of Hadjin, the abandonment of Marash, the defeat of the force sent to relieve _ Aintab, and the siege of Adana and Tarsus, with the loss of the Cilician railway to the Turkish Nationalists, had given French prestige in the Near East a body blow. The best they were able to save out of the wreckage of their campaign in Lesser Armenia had ‘been an armistice by which they had kept their own skin whole by sacrificing their allies, the Armenians, and the American Near THE NEW REPUBLIC Yaad 46 eM ss iS yet ema SRT Ie RT a ye oe Raho? Pri eau OF pinto inaae a r ei ; August Il, 19: “I What did the pescecani do? Looked out for | themselves.” | fi “And what do you think when you hear that the immense Strozzi Palace is vacant now, with a 0 on the first two floors, and the Prince Strozzi’s. family are living in a pension in the Piazza inde pendenza, while these Borronis go to their sixteen farms and who knows how many villas. What I'd — q like to see would be an insurrection where we'd — cut the throat of every pescecane, their wives and — their families, down to the smallest baby in the house!” a To all this hostility around them the pescecani, so far as I could tell, were wholly indifferent. The — cynicism of an ancient race is behind them. Men talk much, ale say, but ey do very little—most | men. fv STARK Younc. — a East Relief workers who had tended their — Under these circumstances of humiliation and failure, Feisal chose a peculiarly inappropriate moment to proclaim himself king of a land which had become French spoils of war by agreement — with the British. His coronation address was dignified and conciliatory. He quoted President” Wilson at length (a course calculated to enrage the French had he known it) and referred to the fact that Arabia’s “allies, England and France, published a proclamation on February 7, 1918, wherein they confirm to us the independence of the Arabs.” It was all very proper and in scrupulous | accord with fact. But back in France the tax- payer was saying to himself: “We do not seem to be able to hold Cilicia, and now Syria proclaims’ its independence, What do we get out of the: war, anyhow ?”’ | So on jJuly 14th, Giuierad ‘Camand presented King Feisal a twenty-four hour ultimatum de- manding that (1) the Arabs accept a Fre 7 mandate over Syria; (2) that the French language e and (3) French currency be adopted as the official speech and coinage of the Arab kingdom. At. expiration of the twenty-four hours, he mar ed on Damascus. On July 25th, the French < entered the city and the reign of Feisal ended. As a fitting climax for the French taxps yer Leon Bourgeois, apostle of peace, paid “a tribute to the soldiers of the orient army and their chicls, ‘ the French Senate placed the seal of its appt : on French subjection of Syria. q
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onage yay : cia “i 4h 0 " ee ey ie oe Me ‘ it ¥ 8 ite Pt ap iea ib? es 7 A tent ha \v Pia ul DG enue hs \ b, * ugust I, “1920 | “4 iy Bi sa tly bg is simae Aan Mere ene Rs Rea pe rl ba t The pathetic part of all dice is that the loss is not the Arabs’; ; it is the loss of the self-styled civilized nations that have “given specific pledges in support of Arabian independence” and then broken them. Interpellated on this head, Mr. Bonar Law replied that the promises of Arabian independence made during the war were “‘not in- compatible with the mandate.” It may be doubted if the Arabs will comprehend this distinction. Feisal retired without serious resistance to the French, keeping his army intact. Observers re- port that he has fifteen well equipped divisions to Gouraud’s one. It is possible that the Arabs are no more conquered than were the Turkish Na- tionalists in Cilicia. Certainly there is no reason to believe that they are convinced of the kobe altruism of the European powers. A similar result has followed the much heralded Greek campaign against Mustapha Kemal Pasha from Smyrna. On January 5, 1918, Mr. Lloyd George, ‘after full consultation with all parties,” made a declaration which he himself called “specific, unqualified and deliberate.” He said: We are not fighting to deprive Turkey of its capital or the rich lands of Asia Minor and Thrace, which are predominantly Turkish . . . . while we do.not challenge the maintenance of the Turkish Empire in the hands of the Turkish race with its capital at Con- stantinople. | On June 21st the announcement was made that Mr. Venizelos had “received permission to throw 90,000 men against the Turkish Nationalists” in the Smyrna region, and at once the Athenian com- muniqué mill began to grind out reports of victories in which whole Turkish divisions were annihilated, and thousands of prisoners taken, daily. Mr. Venizelos, at Spa, declared that “Greece will win a complete victory over the Turkish Nationalists much quicker than the world thought possible.” Protected by an Allied fleet, the Greeks made _ various landings along the coast of Asia Minor and seemed to be advancing victoriously inland. _ To the north, with a British fleet at Mundania to cover them, they progressed as far as Brussa, _ eight miles from the coast and 450 miles from 1 Then | the advance halted. Directly east of Smyrna, they _ extended their line some 83 miles inland—and 600 _ miles from the Nationalist stronghold. _ course of these operations, the London Morning ' Post reports that the Greeks “executed 1,000 _ Turkish prisoners on the ground that they were _ bandits.” Yet on June 27th, Mr. Lloyd George had “declared that the Nationalist army was re- _ cognized as a combattant army, subject to the laws ' of war.” Mustapha Kemal’s headquarters at Sivas. In the yee. Tee ee ee a. Ree ee OO” Hid | Oey be ane 9) tiirid) MOL eau eed v4 Oe ‘bu r Hate ty el Cd eee mea ae CAN x Ree t 7 ee | Pe LS 8 yh Lo ae ON. i ae) ‘ ee Re Aa roe rl ; r REPUBLIC. Me i # i ¥ » x OS) a 3 5 s ‘ r On July goth, the famous Greek campaign to — crush Mustapha Kemal was declared ended. The Greeks were reported as digging themselves in on their new line. A great many late members of the A. E. F. have learned from practical experience, however, that when a pursuing army stops and begins to dig itself in, it is because it cannot ad- vance any further, and for no other reason. Never- theless, the Greek legation in Washington was. jubilant. According to it, the Greeks had “ac- complished their principal purpose and demon- strated that the military organization of Mustapha Kemal Pasha was little more than a shell.” As if in ironic comment on this view, Turkish aeroplanes at Ushak dropped challenges on the Greek lines, daring them to come as far as Afium Kara-hissar, the one really important point on the Bagdad rail- way, and fight. In justice to the Greeks it must be admitted that there was serious opposition to the Smyrna adventure, not only in France and England, but among the Greeks. The suggestion attributed to Mr. Lloyd George that the Greeks might be given some sort of occupation of Constantinople in re- turn for doing the police work of the Entente in Asia Minor was received with hostility in France, especially, ‘With the Greeks holding Constantin- ople, it is really Great Britain in control, with her incontestibly established as mistress of the Turkish Empire,’ La Liberté protested on July 16th. Another Paris dispatch referred to Greece as “completely under the British thumb, financially.” As far back as last December, General Sarrail, for © two years commander-in-chief of the Allied Orient Armies, writing in La Revue de Paris, said: ‘When I left Saloniki in December, 1917, Venize- list Greece had become simply a British dominion with a do-nothing king, under a grand master of ceremonies.” Many Greeks felt that with Eng- land mistress of the seas an extension of Greek empire in Smyrna would mean merely another British colony under nominal Greek rule. In England the opposition to the Smyrna enter- prise was quite as marked, albeit on other grounds. The Evening Standard, even before the campaign was undertaken, objected to pooling British and Greek interests and defending them jointly: We think the British public, which is watching the situation with equal anxiety and puzzlement, is ab- solutely certain on one point. It objects to a single British soldier being killed to subserve Greek ambitions or to prove the theories of State-makers. If the Turks attack us, we know what to do with them. But we simply have not the men nor the money to undertake another war for interests not clearly our own. Neither, one might remark, has Greece, and it has never been certain what interests were clearly
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copy ciate rari Saas Sa re SSeS A Diela, ce ) ie Gon atl aca ak eo ity i i es wer i ihc i ag nL sa ie isa bh i ahh nal ry Jeu ieee Raa , vg soe sabi on piss: ety) her own. Mr. Venizelos had assurances Greece would serve by undertaking extensive military” _ operations in Asia Minor. None of these objections, however, applies to Thrace. Of course, Thrace was included in Mr. Lloyd George's ‘“‘specific, unqualified and deliber- - ate’ pledge of January 5, 1918; but pledges made in war time do not seem to be of much value once the danger is passed. If some disposition other ‘than leaving it to the Turks is to be made of Thrace, the claims of Greece are as good as those of anyone else, and certainly far better than those of France who first insisted upon retaining Eastern Thrace. The population of Thrace, like that of the greater part of Macedonia, is overwhelmingly neither Greek nor Bulgarian, but Turkish. Greek rule over Thrace will mean a Moslem peasantry working for the ruling Greek, who will live in the cities or along the coast. A Bulgarian Thrace would be a Thrace peopled by small Bul- garian landowners. But then, Bulgaria lost the war. Moreover, the occupation of Thrace by the Greeks presented no military difficulties. Jaffar Tayar Bey in command of Adrianople was com- pletely isolated from any possibility of assistance from Mustapha Kemal Pasha, and disposed of only a few comitadjis as his main force of re- sistance. With no hope even of moral help from Constantinople, the Turks of Thrace were unable to make a stand, and the Greek advance was bound to be in the nature of a parade, as it proved in fact. Unlike Smyrna, Thrace is contiguous to the Macedonian accretions which Greece received at the close of the Balkan wars, and may there- fore be defended by land, ‘The objection appli- cable to Smyrna that Greek sovereignty would de- pend upon England’s good will does not, in con- sequence, affect Thrace, and there was no Greek - opposition to the Thracian campaign. As the only other non-Turkish claim to Thrace was France’s, there is no British criticism of the Greek occupa- tion. President Wilson stands alone in his hos- tility to the disposition agreed upon, and now effected. | The moment has seemed propitious to Mr. Politis, Minister for Foreign Affairs of Greece and spokesman of Premier Venizelos, to make a declaration for American consumption remarkable principally for its naive assumption of a large credulity on the part of the American public. speaks in touching terms of the paternal solicitude of the Greeks for the Turkish subjects of Greece, and the contentment of the Turks under Greek rule. He refers to the great riches of poor little bankrupt, mortgaged and financially hopeless THE NEW “REPUBLIC. ’ no elections in Greece for over five years, nor why — May. 1st, the New Statesman states the case frank- He | Hellas, and sketches pmbicions plans for publem improvements in which, he says, he is surprised — to find that American business men seem hesitant — to invest their capital. It is a passion with the — Greeks thus to picture their country as a vast, in; — credibly rich empire and themselves as men of © great projects. Unhappily a visit to Saloniki dis- — closes no respect in which the second port of Greece has benefited by seven years of Hellenic © rule, and the Greeks of Smyrna are already bitter ~ against the Greek occupation because, they assert, — all the business of Smyrna has gone to the political — supporters of the present Greek administration — who hurried from Athens the moment the Greeks — landed in Asia Minor. } “It is untrue,” Mr. Politis declares, ‘‘that | Premier Venizelos is a dictator.’ But he does not — explain how Mr. Venizelos came to Athens at the © call of the French High Commissioner in 1917 — and was made Premier on the High Commission- er’s order; nor does he say why there have been — martial law has been in effect ever since Mr. — Venizelos assumed the power, nor why press — censorship, prohibition of free speech and arbi- trary passport regulations are still the order of © the day under the “liberal” rule of Mr. Venizelos, | the greater part of whose political opponents have — been sentenced to long terms of imprisonment by — military courts. It is not so long ago that Vic-_ toriano Huerta languished for want of recognition © by the United States for acts less arbitrary than © those by which Mr. Venizelos has maintained him- — self in control of Greece. What may be hoped, then, from this huge new 9 empire to which Greece has aspired and which 9 Mr. Venizelos seems in the way to worry out of § the Entente Powers by sheer audacity and per- § sistence? Possibly it would be fairer to cite an ¥ European estimate than to venture my own, On ly, if mot particularly delicately for sensibilities : Greek > The Greeks have got their empire, and the important question is what they will make of it. We do not find it possible to be optimistic. We are not prejudiced against the Greeks. In the peace, if not in the war, they have been out for all they could get; but unhappily neither we nor any European people have any right to” preach to them on that account. Their past record j of persecutions and “propaganda” in the Balkans is not a very nice one; but neither are those of their neighbors. .... If their chauvinism is to be worked against the Turks (they are boasting already of a 100,000 men whom they will contribute to Foch’s divisions for enforcing the Turkish treaty), then their new Greece will come down like a house of cards. PAXTON HIBBEN.
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August rT, -1920° “THE. NEW : Y British Labor in Conference RITISH Labor is in a paradoxical position. : The labor movement has never been any- thing like so strong as it is at present: On i the other hand, the capitalist forces are in com- _ plete possession of the House of Commons, and, _ through this dominant capitalist majority, of the _ government; whilst the government, though almost universally unpopular, is immune from overthrow ' because of the absence of any alternative cabinet _ which the nation will accept. If no difficulty oc- curs during the next two and a half years that the _ ingenuity of Mr. Lloyd George cannot overcome, his government, and the present House of Com- ' mons, will now endure for that period, losing by- _ elections but impossible to displace; and many hun- _ dreds of millions of pounds will accrue to “big _ business” at the expense of consumers generally. On the other hand, something unexpected may hap- _ pen at any moment to precipitate a general elec- tion, with the result of an unpredictable shifting of ' the political kaleidoscope. The annual conference of the Labor party which : has just been held at Scarborough was, in every _ respect but one, the most successful ever held. The _ membership of the party has increased during the _ year by half a million to the truly remarkable total of 3% millions. It is now organized in nine-tenths of all the 580 constituencies of Great Britain. It _has already nearly 300 Parliamentary candidates in the field for as many constituencies; and the _ prospects are that, when the general election comes, it will, as by far the best organized opponent of the coalition (by that time nakedly conservative) _ fight as many as five hundred seats. To Scarbor- - ough there came just upon 1,200 delegates, more - than ever before, in greater unity of spirit, show- ing more sober steadfastness of purpose, and with - a higher degree of mutual cordiality than at any _ previous occasion. The Chairman, Mr. W. H. _ Hutchinson, of the Amalgamated Society of En- { gineers, had no presidential gavel or bell. _ maintained throughout the week almost perfect or- der, even in the most exciting discussions, on the hottest of summer afternoons, merely by tapping his pencil against his glass of water. The one ' drawback to the conference was the enforced ab- sence, for the first time, of Mr. Arthur Hender- son, undergoing a serious operation, from which he is reported to be recovering as satisfactorily as could be expected. The unique position which Mr. Henderson holds, as the outstanding figure in the British labor movement on its political side, was Binade very manifest at the conference, both in the gap in council which his absence «revealed, and in Oe ee = ie ee He. R LE P U B is i e 307 the almost breathless reception by the delegates of the periodical reports from his bedside. He is in the hands of one of our greatest surgeons; and the conference, had it been necessary to consult it on the point, would have voted any amount of money that might be necessary to ensure a nappy restora- tion to health. | The outstanding feature of the corifenenes was the prominence given to foreign affairs, if we in- clude in this term those of Ireland, India and Egypt. Three out of the four morning sessions, and part of two of the four afternoon sessions were given to these subjects, as if to emphasize the fact that the Labor party is in no sense a class party but one of citizenship, differentiated from the other parties by opinions and principles having no con- nection with the relationship of employer and em- ployed. And no unbiassed person can have read the memoranda issued by the Labor party, and listened to the discussions at Scarborough, without realizing that, whether on the peace treaties, on the relations with Russia, Hungary and Germany, on our policy in India and Egypt, and even on the almost insoluble entanglement of Ireland, the Labor party is both better informed and filled with a larger vision of statesmanship than is manifested either at London dinner-tables or in college com- mon-rooms, let alone the corresponding confer- ences of the Liberal party or of the Unionist party. In fact, foreign affairs, far from being the weakest point of our Labor politicians, is, relative- ly to the analogous members of the Liberal and Unionist parties, one of their strongest points. It is not that they know more about the subject, though they may well do so, for the ignorance of the average Liberal or Unionist Member of Parlia- ment about foreign affairs is abysmal; and the Labor party has what no other party possesses, an able, active and exceptionally well-informed Ad- visory Committee on International Relations, which feeds the party with a continuous stream of memoranda, far superior to anything supplied to other members. But the labor movement has — proved to be, during the last five years or so, more enlightened and more uniformly justified by the event, as regards foreign policy, than on any other subject; or than any other party on this subject, ; - [ attribute this marked superiority in statesman- ship in a most difficult field to three qualities which - distinguish the British Labor party from the com- mon run of Liberal or Unionist members of the House of Commons. The Labor party, in inter- national affairs, instinctively bases itself on princi- ple as it conceives it. It is disinterested in that,
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. td al eh fa ree 4 ib ny ea a Rae wi ge cide rte . alone among our present parties, it is not swayed, consciously or unconsciously, by persons who are pecuniarily interested in foreign investments or foreign trade. It is humane, really caring for mankind, even alien or colored men, women and children, unaffected by the scepticism or cynicism which saps the strength of the best intentioned of Liberal or Conservative leaders. And so, without in any way approving of Bolshevism, the confer- ence was emphatic and unanimous in demanding peace with the Soviet government of Russia, and the immediate resumption of trade and friendly relations. It denounced the secret support which Brit- ish capitalism and the British governing class have been giving to reaction in Hungary and . Germany and to the absurd nationalist aggression of Poland. (The British labor movement, in fact, has had a triumph unknown to the conference, in compelling the Hungarian government, not only to moderate somewhat its atrocious persecution of Hungarian labor and socialism, but even to invite the Transport Workers’ Federation to confer with it as to the conditions on which the international labor boycott of Hungary can be withdrawn.) The conference was equally emphatic and unanimous in its repudiation of the civil and military repres- sion of Indian nationalism, which culminated in the massacre at Amritsar, The labor movement also laid down the policy of the internal independence of Egypt, with responsible self-government and the withdrawal of the British control of Egyptian administration, which (unknown to the confer- ence) Lord Milner is now actually negotiating with the Egyptian Nationalists. And on Ireland the conference—whilst prudently avoiding any indorse- ment of an Irish Republic—rejected by a small majority an amendment declaring for the immedi- ate grant of complete “Home Rule within the British Commonwealth,” in favor of a resolution calling a free constituent assembly for Ireland en- titled to frame its own constitution in any way that it chose, with all the British troops withdrawn; in confident reliance that such an appeal to the imagination of the Irish people would, even after a declaration of independence, lead to a free al- liance between Great Britain and Ireland satis- raeeory to both nations, No less significant were the decisions with regard to the International Labor and Socialist Congress. The conference would have nothing to do with Lenin’s Third International, which was rejected by a nine-tenths majority. It refused by more than two to one to withdraw from the existing Second International, which meets at Geneva on July 31st. And it listened very sympathetically to the strong “THE NEW REPUBLIC | significant. It checked the new impulse for national ing majority its old policy of local option (which — the League of Nations. — Re appeal of Camille Haan’ the sccomplis Secretary of the International, that the Britis a labor movement should take over the International _ 4 Secretariat and the conduct of the whole movement when this is proposed at Geneva. a Outside these international questions, the confers ence did little of note. It was absolutely unanimous _ in raising the affiliation fee by fifty percent, in order to enable the political organization to be more effectively carried on. It reaffirmed, some. = times with greater emphasis and determination, the — proposals embodied in Labour and the New Social Order. Only on the drink question were its votes — a a prohibition by rejecting this policy by a six-sevenths majority. By a narrow majority it rejected also state purchase, to which many temperance advo- a cates object, and from which it was scared by the — fear of having to pay 1,000 million pounds as — compensation. And it reafirmed by an overwhelm- — is to be tried in Scotland next December). In these, © as in all its other votes, the conference showed it-— self sober, restrained, responsible and singularly — united in substance; taking itself very seriously as a political party preparing itself to furnish an alter- native government not for a class, but for a ma- jority of all the citizens, as soon as this can be 4 secured. It remains to be said that at no previous © conference was the intermixture of social classes ‘ in the Labor party so apparent. With all this, and with a corresponding 1 increase | in trade union membership (which is, today, well FE on the way to eight millions for the whole United © Kingdom), and in trade union funds (which are now approaching twenty millions sterling), the government is, on economic and industrial ques: | tions, steadily being driven, by its solid capitalist majority, further and further into reaction. It has — refused to carry out Mr. Justice Sankey’s Coal Commission report (except as to the immediate advance of wages and reduction of hours), The Federation of British Industries will not allow it” even to, nationalize mining royalties or municipalize — the distribution of coal (on which the commission — was unanimous) ; and has forced it to reverse Me Lloyd George’s own decision to nationalize the © railways. It cannot produce the Eight Hours bill to which its own joint industrial conference une animously agreed. It is being prevented by the shipowners from carrying out the decisions as to seamen of the International Labor Conference 18 e It has failed, and is a failing, to provide the million new houses that it undertook to get built in the United Kingdom as a whole; very largely because it has been compe a > ah 4
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\ | August Il, 1920 SOF RN eS 6 EN RO, LE ee es ee ee ng Pe ee oe TS? Pee ee eT ae Pa iD ee » political bent as Wells? _ Germany or France. 4 past politics, or economics, but in its inspiration it ment. . by the big tise interests to dete the capital levy, _ and even the taxation of “War Time” of wealth. There is every prospect of a couple of sessions of reactionary legislation, interspersed _ with a few small demagogic measures; leading, in increments due course, to a dramatic overthrow at the next general election, or the next but one. This is the British way. But the unexpected may inter- vene. Its name may not improbably be Ireland, where THE NEW REPUBLIC 309 things go from bad to worse; or very serious labor — troubles in the coming autumn, when the miners may be resisting a bad new Mines act, and many other trades may be fighting against the expected employers’ attempt to lower wages all round; or even a “‘No Rent Strike,” which is threatened in Scotland against the exaction of scarcity rents ow- ing to the failure to provide new houses. On the whole, quiet is unlikely; and at any moment “all the fat may be in the fire.” SIDNEY WEBB. World History According to Wells ‘ ), YHEN it was first announced that H. G. Wells proposed to write a history of the | world, every one who had the least trace of the academic spirit in him lifted his brows. World history: what could that be but an artificial collection of episodes, each one of which remained uncertain as to its meaning, and indeed, as to its salient facts? And if some one must write a world history, why not a trained historian, instead of a novelist and essayist, even one with so definite a These seemed at first like questions damaging to the whole enterprise. But on further reflection they appeared less perti- nent. Examine any group of histories written by men not so near you as to express exactly your own prejudices: you are sure to find in most of them a point of view and a purpose originating in party or class or national aspiration, and not at all a necessary consequence of the recorded facts. ‘They argue, more or less subtly, for Conservatism or Liberalism or Socialism, for America or England, History may pretend to be is pretty sure to be present propaganda. And the modern endeavor to make history scientific and ob- jective has not greatly abated the propagandist tendency, Indeed, when one surveys recent his- tories of the Balkans and Poland and the Rhine valley one is almost tempted to say that the prac- tice of objectivity, in killing the soul of history, has made out of her a camp follower of extremely easy virtue. That is of course too harsh a judg- Nationalism requires nationalistic history; capitalism requires capitalistic history, and the his- torians meet the requirement honestly, feeling na- tionally or capitalistically. The war has brought home to every intelligent man a realization of the _ fact that neither national nor class formulae can _ offer salvation to humanity. The time is ripe, then, for a propaganda for the human race as a whole, and the historians must furnish it. Where shall we find the abilities to meet the réquirements ? For the time, at least, not in those best trained to marshall historic facts under the older formulae, but in those most keenly conscious of the need. I can think of no living man better qualified in this respect than H. G. Wells. What all the thinking world feels, more or less vaguely, Wells feels viv- idly. What all the thinking world would like to do, if it had time, Wells sets himself energetically to do. Everybody would like to read the books that offer a more or less definite account of the successive phases of human development from the time of Pithecanthropus down to our own age which all but destroyed its civilization in the great war. Wells has read those books and. digested them, and offers his results in the Outline of His- tory now appearing in fortnightly instalments from the press of George Newnes, London. You may question a great share of the facts presented by Wells, and reject many of his inferences—though before you do so you must allow for the fact that such competent scholars as Mr. Ernest Barker, Sir H. H. Johnston, Sir E. Ray Lankester and Gil- bert Murray advised and assisted the author in the preparation of the text.' But however much you may hesitate to accept the work in detail, you are bound to admit that as a whole it gives you not only a broader and saner view of the past, but a more intelligent conception of the current problems of world policy and a more courageous attitude to- ward the future. The work opens with a record, swift and im- pressionistic, of prehuman life on this planet, fol- lowed by an equally swift account of prehistoric — man, which, apart from its almost romantic inter- est, helps to make us realize the insignificance of the periods of time that usually seem to us the whole of human history, the persistence of human
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310 purpose through periods of disaster and confusion in comparison with which our recent agonies are dwarfed, We pass on to an account of the races of man, which is not so devoid of traces of the pro- paganda for the white race and the dolichocephalic blond in particular as to offend our ineradicable prejudices. The story of the early ‘‘dark white” _. Mediterranean civilization is brilliantly told, and a curious eye is cast upon the unknown North, where the Aryan marauders were forming their character behind a long inland sea, extending from the Balkans far into Turkestan. Then we hasten through a geologic era in which the elevation of Southeastern Europe broke up the inland sea into the Black, Caspian and Aral seas and dried up the intervening marshes, opening the way of the Aryan invaders to India, Persia and Asia Minor, to Greece and Italy. At this point you almost expect Wells to forget his purpose and become the thing that he is not and that the time probably does not need, an objective historian, interpreting all Eu- ropean history from, say, five hundred years be- fore the siege of Troy as a process opening with the painful amalgamation of the dark whites of the South and the light whites of the North, in which the sessile and pacific peoples of the South, lovers of art and slaves to dark, mystical religious impulses, are physically subjected to the nomadic, warlike peoples of the North, peoples without defi- nite or active artistic instincts and, for religion, content with half credited Olympians and denizens of Valhalla. Later in the process the culture of the South succeeds partly in dominating the con- querors settled among them. But one people re- tains more northern militancy than another and seeks to extend the process of domination, while fresh incursions from the North increase the tur- moil and confusion. An objective historian might have followed out this clue and might have inter- preted the Great War as a late episode in a drama opening before the siege of Troy. Wells is a prag- matist, and proceeds instead to read all subsequent history for its light upon universal unification, the brotherhood of man and the constitution of a world state. : The historian cannot escape his temperament and that of Wells is essentially politically rather than ethical. He wishes to hold an impartial po- sition between the brotherhood of man and the ‘world state; indeed, he wishes to see ethical and political community as two aspects of the same thing. But as the work develops under his hand, he stresses more and more the facts bearing upon political unification, The empires of Mesopotamia and Egypt gain a heightened importance to him be- cause of their tendency to bring heterogeneous peo- THE NEW REPUBLIC ples under their rule, although the fact seems to be 4 bf that-an empire made up of various peoples unified ¢ was never the conscious object of their policy. — Both Egypt and the Mesopotamian Empires wish- — ed to safeguard their trade routes and dam up ~ Hence the — constant preoccupation of both with the Syrian lit- — the sources of barbarian incursions. toral, up to the Cilician Gates, and the preoccu- pation of Egypt with the Sudanese hinterland, of Did anything like a con- ception of ethical, or even civil unity penetrate — Oriental policy before the time of the Persians? — Where we do first find ~ ethical community indubitably developing is in * Babylonia with Armenia. I know of no traces of it. The brotherhood of the Hellenes exhib- Greece. ited its potency in the Persian wars; afterwards it — gave rise to a remarkable system of relations be- tween communities politically independent which, though not tough enough to contain the forces of rivalry between Athens and Sparta, did neverthe- — less make all intelligent Greeks regard strife among Hellenes as civil war. But Wells apparent- ly takes no interest in those institutions, nor in the great stock of ideas generated by the Greeks, ideas which have served as the better part of the foun- dation of western cultural unity. Politically Greece was hopelessly particularistic; to Wells a sufficient reason for subordinating her part in world history. Aristotle, to be sure, receives credit as the founder of science. Plato is approved, but one infers that Wells thinks much less of him now than when he > . wrote his Modern Utopia. And—portent of liter- ature—Wells half justifies the condemnation of Socrates, ‘His method was profoundly sceptical, he believed that the only possible virtue was true knowledge; he would tolerate no belief, no hope that could not pass the ultimate acid test. For himself this meant virtue, but for many of his weaker followers it meant the loss of beliefs and moral habits that would have restrained their im- q pulses. These weaklings became self-excusing, self- One of these scoundrels — indulging scoundrels.”’ was Critias, who became one of the Thirty Tyr- ants, another was Alcibiades, the adventurer and q traitor, a third was the son of Anytus, a devoted ~ disciple who became a hopeless drunkard. Must we suppose that Wells has never heard of the great development of Sophistic teaching, which did ine — deed release the clever young Greek from all ree straints, and the part of Socrates in reestablishing — Is 4 Wells sure that none of his own enthusiastic ad- — mirers will become political bosses, traitors or _ drunkards, even in dry and Puritan America? L@ Pos- I sibly Wells was too much irritated by the volume 4q virtue upon a solid intellectual foundation? cannot account for this treatment of Socrates.
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Pe Ar ne ial, iis 4 ge? August II, 1920 T H E ‘N E wo of literature you have to read about Socrates without finding any direct light on the world state. _ Still less does Wells do justice to the later phil- osophers of Greece, the Epicureans and Stoics. They are consolation philosophers, which suffices for contempt. ‘That they laid the basis for the later Roman ethical and Jegal development which gradually substituted the conception of government by rational rule for government by arbitrary will and brute force means nothing to Wells, who con- fesses himself temperamentally disqualified to see any good in Roman law, or in law and lawyers gen- erally. But if Wells does scant justice to classical Greece and Greek civilization in general, he does more _ than justice to Philip of Macedon, who unfied _ Greece with his phalanx, and to Alexander, who extended unification over the domains of the Great King. Did romantic interest run away with Wells in this case? His Macedonian pages are written with the zest of a Herodotus. Whether they mean much for world history is immaterial to the lover of good literature. If Philip and Alexander were to count for gris _ figures in world history on account of their work of unification, what sort of glory should be assign- _ ed to Caesar and the Romans, who for all their vices, did succeed in bringing imperial authority nearer to the mass of the people, who did come nearer creating a real imperial government, ‘not merely a tribute taking military autocracy, than any one before them? You will never guess what Wells has done to the Romans until you read and reread him. They seem admirable to him down _ to the Punic wars and the brutal destruction of Car- thage, a state they should have kept alive to co- operate in the civilizing process. (Was the anal- ogy, Rome against Carthage, Germany against England, over active in his mind when he wrote these pages?) After the destruction of Carthage Rome was a nightmare of discordant passions un- til Caesar came. As for Caesar, Wells considers him an immensely overrated man. Think of the time Caesar wasted in Egypt making love to Cleo- patra. And he was fifty-five years old and bald as a billiard ball. Rome a second Periclean Athens, even his sound project for subjugating the Germans by a flank attack through the Russian plain, Wells dismisses as inventions of Caesar’s admirers. Apparently he never happened upon the statement of Suetonius that Caesar was,accused of wanting to remove the seat of empire from Rome to Ilium, where accord- _ ing to Wells the seat of empire should have been. _ Caesar was not so superlatively great as his ardent Rea Te eee Sot PERS TS A th Te Nae ete ge UN GeN, 8 ye gee wy ah ; i { not even curious about geography. _ish administrator in Egypt. ‘All Caesar’s plans for making REPUBLIC hs admirers have claimed, but why does Wells make him out so little? Perhaps for the same reason that Shaw found him great. Caesar was a dispas- sionate rationalist, who used to say, as Shaw might say, “The State is a word, a fiction, not a reality at all.” This grudge of Wells against Caesar transfers itself readily to the whole Roman empire and its people. They had no scientific interest. They were They bought their philosophers and poets in the Greek slave market. In all this there is a grain of truth, but not much more. ‘Tacitus excuses himself from writing about the geography of Britain because other writers had sufficiently handled the subject. Perhaps he meant only Caesar and the Greeks, but perhaps there were other accounts that did not survive the wreck of Roman civilization. Wells taxes the Romans because they left no account of — what manner of people the Picts were. ‘Tacitus does tell us, however, that the people of Scotland, no doubt on the east coast, had blond hair and huge bodies and were probably of German origin; that the Welsh had red cheeks and curly hair like the Iberians while the people of the South and East of England were like the Gauls. That is about as close observation as we might expect from a Brit- And if Tacitus is not altogether to be relied on in his account of the “Germans, there was no reason Wells should have disregarded it completely in his search for infor mation about the barbarians destined to swamp Rome in the end. No doubt it is true, as Wells insists, that some- thing bigger than Rome was going on in the East, where Chinese emperors built up a state vastly more extensive, more permanent and mote civiliz- ed. The history of the East has a direct bearing upon that of Europe if it is true, as Wells suggests, that it was the barrier of a powerful Chinese king- dom that thrust the nomads westward toward the plains of Russia and hence gave the migratory im- pulse to the Slavs and Germans. In East and West, political unification was, after a fashion, progressing. As to the ethical unifica- tion, Wells draws to his aid the great religions, — Buddhism, Christianity, Islam. The account of © Buddhism seems admirable, and the account of Christianity is suggestive and stimulating. It will help to dispel the notion which still prevails that — the early Church borrowed nothing from the sur- rounding religious medium, but grew up naturally out of its original religious inspiration. Probably even Wells underestimates the influence of the en- vironment. I can not, however, understand his extraordinary deference to Islam. He says that é RN Gash athe gio ef rn AK aE be "en
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TINT Re URRY AMINE | Gh Rey) A) ote ah ON Gere « the words of Mohammed “created a society more _ free from widespread cruelty and social oppression than any society had ever been in the world be- fore.” Islam ‘“‘was the broadest, freshest, and cleanest political idea that had yet come into actual activity in the world, and it offered better terms than any other to the mass of mankind.” Those terms, as Wells admits, were Islamize or die by the sword. After Islamizing, however, one was equal to the Caliph, was he not? Only before God. What this fresh, clean idea did was to overwhelm the decayed communities to East and West, and create some sort of a common Mohammedan ci- vilization, under which the arts and sciences flour- ished. But did they flourish on account of Islam, or because the infantilism of its doctrinal apparatus drove men of ability into free thinking and free thought? | But in thus indicating abst: it seems to me, Wells has run off on false tracks, I am uninten- tionally doing an injustice to the greater part of his work, which proceeds in a straightforward manner to its proper end, always interesting, usual- . ly illuminating, This book, let us hope, is only a first essay in a field that in time will have a whole array of brilliant cultivators. For mankind, if it is _ to escape repeated disasters like the late war, must come to a consciousness of common destiny and it will never come to. such a consciousness without a common culture in which world history bulks large. : ALVIN JOHNSON. Magic Casements. Oh, it’s a wet white morning on the Zuider Zee, And the little sails come stealing, two—and three— Till the pale mist folds them as they slip to sea— What is that you’re saying ?— That the tropic sun, instead, Drains the shrunken pools of shadow, Mocks the dusty river bed.,,. Even so, beyond them © ‘There’s a secret window wide - Upon a world where wet gray sails Go seaward with the tide. ,,. But if you cannot see them, . Could I show them, would I dare? Winds of doubt might shatter, scatter My sea-petals on the air— For it’s a wet white morning on the Zuider Zee, And up through the misty dawning I can see Little sails that never were and yet shall ever be! Frances DicKENSON PINDER. ai a a ee a anes i cere eae i cag ie hs ms i 4 tf ‘ THE NEW REPUBLIC. i sical ts sisi ee) aN : August 13) | 0 The Bandwagon First Orricta, PorcH REcEPTION Marion—JULyY 31 MEN AND Women. tilts all the deprecation I cannot bring myself to a accept the notion that the inter-relation among our men : and women -has departed. DIAGNOsIS I. feel myself almost a part of Richland County. ‘RIGHT TO THE POINT. Pardon the diversion. I am recalling the old-time owe level of prices to recall at the same time the people’s in- ability to buy, and to remind you that mounting farm prices, mounting wages, mounting expenditures all are in-— 4 separably linked, and a grim mutuality will ultimately as- — sert itself, no matter what we do. But a mindfulness of — 4 this mutuality will spare us the inequalities and the grievances which come of forced adjustment. ; Tue NATURAL Law. There is a growing tendency to look to Government — for all remedies, forgetting there are natural laws that — will operate to correct evils if given a fair chance. Of : times wellmeaning laws defeat the very object they are designed to accomplish. BoLDER THAN USUAL. I would gladly recommend a change [in excess profiel taxes], but I am not yet prepared to suggest an equit- able substitute, though I should have no hesitancy in ohn a Congress to seek the earliest possible solution. of Tue Int Wind.” a .One could underwrite the good fortunes of mankind : if he could guarantee in prosperity that fraternity—that common interest—which is born of adversity. 4 PROGRESS. There is no living today or tomorrow according to thea standards of yesterday. Every normal being is looking — forward. We collect more Federal taxes in one year than the entire wealth of the sp dsgnei a century ago. 4 a a NEED BotTH FarRMs AND FACTORIES. a We cannot promote agriculture alone, because the face tory is necessary to the making of a market. We canno e foster the factory and ignore agriculture, because the fa is our base of food supply. OnE Goop DEED Eacu Davy. I sometimes think in this busy, work-a-day world we © neglecting those little acts of neighborliness that make life sweet and worth while. ke
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THE NEW REPUBLIC | August 11, 1920 313 consider nineteenth century ideas is like asking us, after a Honest Doubters Freethinkers of the Nineteenth Century, by Janet E. Courtney, O.B.E. New York: E. P. Dutton &* Com- _ pany. T first sight the world that Mrs. Courtney takes us back to seems strangely archaic. The scene is Lon- don, early in the eighteen-fifties. The Rev. Frederic Den- ison Maurice is professor of English literature and also _ of theology at King’s College. For several years he has _ been attacking the Christian doctrine of an everlasting _ material hell. pa He has made the college authorities very uneasy. At last they crack under the strain. “After long and anxious deliberation,” so they say, they have come to the conclusion that Maurice’s opinions “regarding the _ future punishment of the wicked and the final issues of _ the day of judgment are of dangerous tendency, and cal- _ culated to unsettle the minds of the theological students _ of King’s College.” _ tinuance in the faculty of the college “would be seriously _ detrimental to its usefulness,” and proceed to show him _ the door. _— a a = +2 pee ~~ . es 5 sl Te ae Peet So they vote that Maurice’s con- Or the scene is Oxford, 1860, the year after the publi- cation of the Origin of Species. The orthodox have put up Bishop Wilberforce to combat evolution. Now the Bishop knows little of science, but he is a good talker, somewhat frumorous. “He adopted,” Mrs. Courtney says, _ “a light and scoffing tone. ‘There was nothing in the idea _ of evolution. Rock-pigeons were now what rock-pigeons _ had always been’ (apparently ever since the original pair _ entered Noah’s ark!). Finally he turned to Huxley, seat- _ ed on the platform, and begged to know whether he claim- _ ed descent from a monkey on his grandfather’s side, or _ his grandmother’s?” Nowadays, when we read the bis- _ hop’s playful question, our first impulse is to quote Dr. _ Johnson’s remark to Boswell! _ sons is mighty offensive.” In 1860, although Wilberforce _ was addressing a meeting of the British Association for _ the Advancement of Science, many of his hearers thought he had made a good joke and a good point. “This merriment of par- Mrs. Courtney’s nineteenth century freethinkers are _ six—Maurice, Matthew Arnold, Huxley, Bradlaugh, Les- _ lie Stephen and Harriet Martineau. _ centenary article on Charles Kingsley, written in a dif- _ ferent key. Her six were chosen, very wisely, because _ they interested her. “Is there any other way of selection,” _ she asks, “except by recalling the leaders in those differ- _ ent fields of free thought who have meant the most to _ oneself?” It was the war that suggested her book. Free- _ dom was what the younger generation were fighting for. _ “Who were the spiritual teachers and masters from whom _ the generation now grown to maturity had learned its _ love of freedom?” ‘The book, in other words, is an act of _ piety, willed in an hour of insight, fulfilled in an hour of _ gloom, for Mrs. Courtney is evidently a liberal who sees _ the peace treaty as a mockery of the high hopes of many She has added a soldiers who fought in the war. What Mrs, Courtney gives us is not a costume play of _ ideas. The ideas of the middle nineteenth century are not _ old enough for that. We are too near them to feel very vividly, unless we can make an arduous imaginative effort, _ anything except the oldness and the oddity of their fashion. _ Greek ideas may strike us as no longer credible, or as alive _ and refreshing still, or as an inheritance that still cramps our thought. But they don’t seem old-fashioned. An in- _ vitation to think them over again is an invitation to bathe _ in fountain Arethuse or Aganippé well. To ask us to we've dried ourselves and had an alcohol rubdown, to get back into the bath-tub we had forgotten to. empty. Mrs. Courtney is aware that such a state of mind ex- ists, aware of its lazy naturalness, of its unimaginativeness and futility, of its ingratitude. “It needs some mental. — effort,” she says, “to look back to a time when Sunday walks and indifference to college prayers were regarded as serious signs of a dangerous secularizing tendency.” She is “tempted to regret that Huxley gave so much time and thought to the Gadarene swine,” which he discussed on and off for a couple of years. “When such a story as that about the Gadarene swine is placed before us,” he wrote, “the importance of the decision, whether it is to be accepted or rejected, cannot be overestimated.” Of Brad- laugh she says: “He was no philosopher; he was merely — a fearless sceptic. But he was a great fighter. He may not have advanced men’s thought, but he vindicated their right to think, and no freethinker of them all in the nine- teenth century knocked off so many fetters from the shackled human spirit.” And in many a passage Mrs. Courtney shows her realization that the “painful inches” our immediate ancestors gained are always being lost and must be gained again. The form of bigotry changes, the spirit abides: ‘So dangerous was it both then and now —witness the Conscientious Objectors—to attack an es- tablished opinion.” One thing Mrs. Courtney does not made us realize, does not, except in the case of Harriet Martineau, herself realize enough, is the individuality, the uniqueness, of each of her six freethinkers. Her book reads a little as if Matthew Arnold, Leslie Stephen and the others were files of old newspapers, from which she has been diligently and judiciously clipping. But the clippings, it is only fair to add, are connected by a well-informed and easy — narrative, and each whole is a story told with tolerance and humor and a pleasant contagious gratitude. “Those thirsty eyes, those portrait-eating, portrait-paint- ing eyes of thine, those fatal perceptions’—the words might accurately be spoken to Mr. Lytton Strachey, alone — among living biographers, and it is idle to blame Mrs. Courtney for not having a pair of eyes like these. But would not her book have been the better, all the more be- cause her subjects were less remarkable as thinkers than as persons, if she had been more the biographer, more sharply on the watch for those angles and edges and spots of color that give feature to character? ‘Take Frederick Denison Maurice, for example. As a freethinker he is not interesting today, nor even uninterestingly significant. But as a puzzle he ranks high. How could a man of Maurice’s intellect, who died not fifty years ago, believe so unwaveringly that his was a prophetical mission? He studied the past and the present patiently, minutely, in order to fit himself for prophecy, and he believed the Hebrew prophets had submitted themselvés to a like dis- cipline. Modern in his distrust of logic, his life was nevertheless one long hunger and thirst after unity. He was an eager and open minded examiner of new beliefs and fresh knowledge, yet R. H. Hutton could say of him: ‘He changed his opinion as to the practical ad- visability of enforcing subscription to the Articles on the undergraduates of Oxford and on the clergy of the Church; and he was at the close of his life quite prepared ta give up the Athanasian creed in the services of the © Church, ardently as he still held by that creed. Apparent- ly he even modified his dislike to the form of government known as democracy. . . . But these are the only excep-
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» vice.” (314 tions . . . to the statement that Mr. Maurice’s mind was ruled by the same class of convictions, expressed in almost the same form, at the close of his life, by which he was ruled when he first devoted himself to the Church’s ser- Speaking of his monotonous habit of self-depre- ciation, another old friend, Llewelyn Davies, suggested, as a partial explanation, that Maurice’s “fellowship with the Righteous Father, as it grew continually closer, made him only the more conscious of personal unworthiness.” His’ perfect tolerance, as J. H. Shorthouse declared, did not interefere with his “most entire certitude of convic- tion and teaching.” . By quoting these contemporary wit- nesses and by quoting some of the more striking. passages from Maurice’s own Prophets and Kings of. the Old “‘Testament—which is an able defense of his belief in his own prophetical mission—Mrs. Courtney might have made him more vivid as a puzzle and a prophet than she has succeeded in making him as a freethinker, as one of the early workers for the better education of women and workingmen, as one of the earliest Christian Socialists. D. H. Lawrence ‘HE pathos of D. H. Lawrence is the tragedy of immanence at war with impotence; a radiance of white-hot intensity struggling with an agonized frustra- tion. Lawrence’s world is a world of lurid landscapes, troubled country-sides pitted with collieries; a world of stumbling, driven men and tortured women drooping be- neath an almost unbearable sultriness. Days drag on in an apathy of heat. Nights consume themselves in their own dark fires. There are no winds; the air stifles. Sometimes there come storms. Clouds gather suddenly from nowhere, faint rumblings rise, the atmosphere swells and grows taut; lightnings plunge and fierce rains trample _ the earth. But nothing clears, nothing is lifted. The tains draw off leaving the sun steaming in a haze with the air heavier than before. When, in the rare extremities of season, the torpor vanishes, a cutting heat stabs and ice burns with an even greater persistence. Nothing is allowed to rest easy or remain casual; self is thrown back upon unhappy self. ‘There is no escape. Not that Lawrence despairs of finding a haven; his work is a twisted search for a path through, a way out. The novels, the short stories, the poems, even his ruminat- ing notes of travel are a record of seeking and losing and hoping against hope. Examining his work in retrospect, one sees how hard Lawrence tries to rise above his tor- ments, how the body with all its glamor betrays his pur- pose, and even Beauty, luring him on, arraigns itself against him; a constant promise and a fresh defeat. De- feat is the answer, defeat and the darkness of failure. Frustration is the keynote of all his work; the three major novels, with their mournful cadences unite in a dissonant paean of surrender. The Trespasser, an early work, tells the story of an illicit holiday beginning in pain and ending in nothingness. Yet in it is condensed not only 'Law- rence’s baffled eroticism but the whole tragic conflict of love; the elemental clash between that passion which flowers directly from the blood and the deeper, almost opposed desire which is detached from the individual and is abstract, over-exalted and full of impersonal fantasy. Sons and Lovers amplifies the theme and adds to it the further tortures of an inhibited and mother-sapped spirit. Finally, in The Rainbow, possibly the most poetic and THE NEW REPUBLIC poignant novel of this decade, the dominant strain is giv en its fullest sweep. Lawrence’s need drives him to create richer backgrounds, greater and wider beginnings. Where The Trespasser dealt with a fortnight and Sons and Lovers with a lifetime, The Rainbow covers three gene: r ations. Like Lawrence, all his characters are harried seekers, seeking some sort of rainbow behind the storms plunging with febrile energy and perplexed hunger tow: H some mystical consummation. Here, as in those tense short stories that twitch and tremble in. The Prussian Officer, the question returns upon itself. Can there be spiritual exaltation merely in natural beauty? Is — no fulfillment through the flesh? eS And so he comes to a baffled aloneness; a thwarted e solitary in whom the physical turns metaphysical, a half liberated protagonist who, torn between a thousand sen aly a delights and a sudden distrust of the flesh, is tossed from negation to abnegation. Passion offers no way out; religion is a crumbling refuge; art a desperate and futile” sublimation. “There remains only ‘The Self-or the decision 4 not to be. And Lawrence can not make the choice for himself or his characters. He sees their blundering, and a shares their puzzled self-destruction. For it is not merely frustration that poisons him; it is the insistent awareness — of this frustration that torments him so. Back to life it drives him, to the gestures of the body with a new bitters sweetness, a starker self-consciousness. Here in a de scription of peasants carrying in the hay during a stream i ing thunder-rain (a fragment from cana in Italy) ; is an epitome of this intensification: a The body bent forward ial the earth, closing round on itself; the arms clasped full of hay, clasp do round the hay that presses soft and close to the breast and the body, that pricks heat into the arms and ea skin of the breast, and fills the lungs with the sleet . scent of dried herbs: the rain that falls heavily and wets ~ the shoulders, so that the shirt clings to the hot, firm | skin and the rain comes with heavy, pleasant coldness : on the active flesh, running in a trickle down towards” the loins, secretly ; this is the peasant, this hot welter of physical sensation. And it is all intoxicating. It 1s intoxicating almost like a soporific, like a sensuous drug to gather the burden to one’s body in the rain, to sturhhieg across the living grass to the shed, to relieve cne’s arm: of the weight, to throw down the hay on to the heap, | to feel light and free in the dry shed; then to return” again into the chill, hard rain, to stoop again under the rain, and rise to return again with the burden. a It is this continual rousedness of physical sensation! which radiates from Lawrence’s prose and finds its flushed. : climax in his poetry. Huge passages in the novels se mn like unfinished sketches waiting to be cast in the harder mold of poetic form. The cherry-picking episode in Son and Lovers is perfected and fused in the three quatrains called Cherry Robbers; Miriam and Paul among he flowers take a tremendous proportions when they meet in that triumph of raw neuroticism, Snap-dragons. Fron n Love Poems (first published in 1912) to the latest Ney we Poems, Lawrence suffers from the same pre-occupation and his inability to free himself from it. He is not me ely sex-driven, he is self-crucified on a cross of flesh. Fa more autobiographical than his prose, his four volume of verse are almost direct transcripts fcoga the unconsciou . Sometimes, as in New Haven and Earth, he no le ger tries to control the random current of his thought, _ ’ 7 becomes unintelligible. More frequently, in Manifes 0 and the longer introspective poems, he attempts to act 4 ew
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; and in inseparable conjunction, THE. NEW _farrator and interpreter, and the resultant confusion : _ makes one wonder whether he is trying to talk as patient or analyst or both at the same time. The smouldering ay ire Look! We Have Come Through! is a particularly aaa II, 1920 _ Pathetic and illuminating example—even the title is a _ passionate and despairing wish-fulfillment. The succeeding New Poems, showing how sititully _ Lawrence has failed to come through, lack the fusion, the j instinctive unity of the preceding collection. But ‘cher _ have a muffled light of their own. If they contain nothing so nakedly brilliant as The Ballad of a Wilful Woman, as fiercely knit as One Woman to All Women or as _ terrible as Rabbit Snared in the Night, there is the tearing nostalgia of Piano, the shuddering restraint of Intime, the grave and magnificent Seven Seals. These solemnly ecstatic lines prove finally that it is not desire itself that : sways Lawrence (as so many of his critics have contended) _ but the hunger for complete fulfillment, the ratification and immortality of the body which leaves one free, clear, beyond self. It is this that uplifts him—this shattered _ dream, this vision of the perfect mating—of two radiantly ‘ isolated identities held in the circle of love, moving like _ two separate stars within a larger orbit; unutterably apart | Ricaie the dream will _ not merge into reality, Lawrence loses himself among his _ own fantasies, wandering from distorted sentimentality to _ distracted sadism. His lines thicken with pain, grow harsh with passion, rage, bleed, and vanish in a storm of frenzied ' imagination. How vividly his images rise may be surmised _ from such scattered snatches as: The morning breaks like a pomegranate In a shining crack of red. And all day long, the town Roars like a beast in a cave That is wounded there And like to drown; While days rush, wave after wave, On its lair. The wind comes from the north, Blowing little flocks of birds Like spray across the town. Bare stems of street-lamps stiffly stand At random, desolate twigs, To testify to a blight on the land _ ‘That has stripped their sprigs. _ The moon-mist is over the village, out of the mist speaks the bell . ... As I hear the sharp, clear trot of a pony down the road _ Succeeding sharp little sounds dropping into silence, _ Clear upon the long-drawn hoarseness of a train down the valley. The dawn was apple-green, The sky was green wine held up in the sun, The moon was a golden petal between. | _ And here, in a rhapsodic apostrophe to the sea, Lawrence ascends to a height where music and meaning are indis- _ solubly one: _ You who take the moon as in a sieve, and sift _ Her flake by flake and spread her meaning out ; | p You who roll the stars like jewels in your saltn: So that they seem to utter themselves aloud; REPUBLIC 315 You who steep from out the days their color, Reveal the universal tint that dyes Their web; who shadow the sun’s great gestures and | | expressions So that he seems a stranger in his passing; Who voice the dumb night fittingly; Sea, you shadow of ait things, now mock us to death with your shadowing. It is only when Lawrence turns pamphleteer (vide the Preface to New Poems) that he exhibits an erratic and illogical conduct of thought. In his eloquent tribute to free verse as “the insurgent naked throb of the instant moment,” Lawrence loses himself in the rush of his ardor and forgets that no moment of time is unrelated, that the immediate present does not exist by itself. Lawrence writes: ‘Free verse has its own nature. It has no goal It has no finish. It is wholly the instant; the quick..... It is not of the nature of reminiscence. It is not the past which we treasure between our hands.” And every one of Lawrence’s backward-turning lines is a cumulative con- tradiction to his prefatory theorizing. For inta every effort to hold the moment in its “windlike transit,’ Law- rence—and, for that matter, every poet— must use word- patterns, images, symbols that have associations as old as the race; with every syllable he summons the accretions of his experience, he reanimates his memories and draws upon the very past which has shaped him so he might cope with the rushing present, “the very plasm of the self.” It is the effort to find the Self beyond selfhood that makes Lawrence seem another ineffectual angel beating his bruised wings; a darker Shelley of the senses. Sex storms about him. The lightning energizes, the rainbow arches to heal him. But he is not part of them. Plunging be- yond bounds into the unfathomable, he seeks assurance if not fulfillment of his vision: the final union of swift blood and swifter spirit; the glorious if impossible fusion of lightning and rainbow, sons and lovers, men and women. Louis UNTERMEYER. \ Transitions Peace in Friendship Village, by Zona Gale. New York: The Macmillan Company. Miss Lulu Bett, by Zona Gale. New York: D. Appleton and Company. Rema significant phases of the American novel and tale are plainly reflected in the work of Zona Gale. The typical Friendship Village story is also a typical American story. Calliope Marsh, who is made to do most of the telling, is an own sister of those many dealers in maxims who have adorned our literature. Up- lift is her purpose; she wants improvement. But her tone is the familiar tone of content with our American life. The stories which she often quite unnaturally sets forth are full of a factitious optimism, with an occasional dash of native wit, and a general air of provincial blessedness overspreading all. Calliope always finds the sweet and wholesome and good. Rose Pink is the title of one of her stories, and for the most part this popular color wraps the flimsy manufactured episodes like masses of tissue paper and yards of ribbon. Still, in the last of the volumes of Friendship Village, there are a few tales which lead away from contentment. The note of uplift remains but it Is less assured. Certain considerations as to immigrants, naturalized foreigners, idle women who are losing the solace of the Red Cross, are advanced with the sharp note
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y+ , coat 2 316 of satire. Certain juxtaposition of event and character are pungent. ‘The change in Calliope Marsh may be taken as significant. In Rose Pink she is a dainty little lady, an unbelievable Dresden figure. In the later stories she appears, at least by implication, as a plain, downright village women, a capable executive, given to rocking chairs and a wrapper in her leisure moments. But even after this hint of change one is wholly un- prepared for Miss Lulu Bett. This last story of Zona Gale’s teaches no lesson and holds no brief. It is written almost bitterly. Drastic and severe, it presses home every _ advantage in situation after situation, driving past a sur- face satire to the last ironic possibility open to the un- flinching observer. Its situations—or its one closely knit situation—are thoroughly American. But contentment has fled. Dwight Herbert Deacon, his wife Ina, Di his older daughter, the child Monona, doddering old Mrs. Bett, are ruthlessly drawn; and at every turn they are made to betray the looseness of fibre, the tedious facility _ of thought and speech and action, the basic conventional- ism, which characterize much of our native provincial life. Yet the book is something more than drastic. It has its -narrowly limned beauty, and this, too, is native. In Lulu Bett herself, the obscure drudge in the Deacon home and the center of the story, Miss Gale has created a character which she would be right in saying is completely American; and it is not simply that Lulu, like the Deacons _and like her mother, belongs to the States by every accent. She has something of that sure and delicate innocence of spirit, village old maid that she is, which Henry James was so fond of portraying in young women of quite dif- ferent character and surroundings and which he somehow contrived to present as a growth from our soil. ‘This luminous central quality Miss Gale shows without a trace of sentimentality or even of sentiment; she reveals it almost without tangible means. Nor is the tortured pathos of Lulu, as she is caught in the mesh of the Deacon family, ever directly commented upon; and Lulu’s slow, spasmodic climb to self-assurance, her fronting of the. magnified situation in which she finds herself, are drawn simply with clarity. 7 | - It would be interesting to know the road by which Miss Gale travelled out of Friendship Village into the greater world in which this last story lives; but this is her own affair. Whatever its antecedents, the book stands as a signal accomplishment in American letters, and it may also be a portent. If a single story-teller can pass from the empty slipshod formalism which has marked so much American narrative into something deep-cutting like Miss Lulu Bett, there may be a chance that our narrative art will emerge into a firmer growth. It must be hoped that we shall develop something of Miss Gale’s later intensity. Much of our writing, even our better writing, has been loose-lipped and uncertain like much of our speech. In Miss Lulu Bett not a verbal stroke is missed, yet there is no mechanized precision. Its style is close, astringent, and it remains unobtrusively American. | ConsTaNcE MayrieLtp Rourke. Contributors STtarK Younc, professor of English at Amherst College, is the author of Addio Madretta and other plays. Paxton Hispen ‘was staff correspondent of the Asso- ciated Press from 1915 to 1917 in Europe and has recently returned from Transcaucasia where he was special correspondent of the Chicago Tribune. THE NEW REPUBLIC August II, 1920" A Week of Life Last year it cost us $5 to give a week of decent country sur- -roundings to one of the mothers, babies, old women, blind women and girls we cared for. This year it costs $7.50. And the names turned over to us by the Y.W.C.A., Big Sisters, Red Cross and Charity Organization Society far exceed our ability to help them. Sweltering summer is already upon us— and our means are exhausted. Will you not contri-— bute something, no matter how little, to show that you realize what a week of fresh air means to overworked mothers and little children. Do it now—already the heat is taking its toll of lives. NEGRO FRESH AIR COMMITTEE 131 East 66th Street, New York City (Make checks payable to Negro Fresh Air Committee ) POSITION WANTED: as Employment Manager; Gradu- ate Harvard Divinity School, Congregational Minis- ter; Chaplain U. S. Army; Advisor U. S. Federal Board Vocational Education; State Secretary impor- tant Western State in Interchurch Cooperation. - Athletic, trained in psychology, four years’ experi- ence as business manager; thirty-five years of age. Perfect health, established character. Address Box 59, New Republic, 421 W. 21st St., New York City.