The Nation 1925-06-24: Vol 120 Iss 3129

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eRIIICAL ROOF. [ Fen UNBRAL LIRRAK ‘ - ; pNER Se Mica Nature the> —— v Bertrand Russell ; CXX, No. 3129 FounpDED 1865 Wednesday, June 24, 1925 Emerging Mexico An Interpretation by Ernest Gruening Our Threat to Mexico We Incite War and Revolution The Morocean Adventure by Robert Dell Baiting the Alien—An Old Habit by Kimball Young Maxim Gorki at St. Agnello by Edward Alden Jewell Count Karolyi's Memoirs by Emil Lengyel — The Comic Touch in the Movies by Gilbert Seldes Fifteen Cents a Copy Five Dollars a Year Published weekly at 20 Vesey St., New York. Entered as second-class ma ecember 13, i887, at the post office at New York. N. Y., under the Act of March 2. 147 Copyright, 1925, by The Nation, Inc.

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The Nation [Vol. 120, No. 3129 — The CHILD The CLINIC and The COURT Another Dollar Book I‘ January of this year there was held in Chicago a most fruitful conference on juvenile delinquency. It was to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Chicago’s Juvenile Court, the first to be founded in the world. There were present in addition to the pioneer workers in delinquency, leading judges, psychiatrists and psychologists. The subjects dis- cussed ranged from methods and procedure in dealing with the delinquent, through the problems of clinical work with children, to the psychic fundamentals of human behavior. The extraordinary value of the papers presented was so apparent that their publication in permanent form was un- mistakably indicated. Here was assembled together really for the first time the competent spokesmen for the sciences andthe laws which are to lead us out of the ugliness and waste of youthful crime. Here was put forward for exami- nation the newest, the sincerest and best thought of the maturest intellects in every field bearing on child forma- tion. Glance at the list of articles at the right, and see who were there and what they talked about. You will be struck with the far-reaching importance and interest of these twenty-eight contributions. You will see that in no sense is this volume the proceedings of a conference, but it is the most competent and well prepared symposium possible on the varied aspects of youthful delinquency. The CHILD, the CLINIC and the COURT is the sixth title in the New Republic’s series of one dollar books. At this minimum price everyone wishing to participate in the tested scientific thought of today on child formation and youthful waywardness should buy and read these papers. Like YOUTH IN CONFLICT, by Dr. Miriam Van Waters, in the same series (which has sold 7,000 copies since January Ist), this book is scientifically informative, dramatic and, above all, useful. It is full length (350 pages) and bound neatly and attractively in paper covers. At bookstores or direct from the New Republic. Other titles in the New Republic series of dollar books are: 1 Social Discovery, by E. C. Lindeman. 2 The Story of Teapot Dome, by M. E. 3 The Labor Spy, by Sidney Howard. + Youth in Conflict, by Miriam Van Waters. 3 Education, the Machine and the Worker, by Horace M. Kallen. Ravage. CONTENTS THE CHILD 1 Introduction: Jane Addams. 2 When a Feller Needs a Friend: A. L. Jacoby, Director, Psyc. pathic Clinic, Recorder's Court, Detroit. 3 Youth in Conflict: Miriam Van Waters, Ph.D., Referee, Jur». nile Court, Los Angeles. 4 Some Emotional Problems Seen in the Superior Child: Af a,j), E. Kenworthy, M.D., Medical Director, Bureau of Children’, Guidance, N. Y. C. 5 The Psychology of the Situation: William Healy, M.D., D:ro, tor, Judge Baker Foundation, Boston. 6 Personality Trends in Children: Helen T. Wooley, Ph... D rector, Merrill-Palmer School, Detroit. 7 Our Responsibility for the Future: Herman M. Adler, \fD. Director, Institute for Juvenile Research, and Criminologis:, State of Illinois. THE CLINIC 8 The Contribution of Science to a Program for Treatment o{ Juvenile Delinquency: Augusta F. Bronner, Ph.D., Assistan: Director, Judge Baker Foundation, Boston. 9 The Function of the Mental Hygiene Clinic in the Schools and Colleges: Smiley Blanton, M.D., Director, Minneapolis, Child Guidance Clinic. 10 The Project-Program Method as Applied in Indeterminate Sen- tence, Probation, and other Re-Educational Treatment Thomas D. Eliot, Ph.D., Professor of Sociology, Nort/ ern University. 11 Trial by Newspaper: Nils Anderson, Author of “The Hob 12 A State-Wide rogram of Mental Hygiene: Elizabeth L. li Ph.D., State Psychologist, Wisconsin Department of Education 13 The Individual and Environment From a Physiologica! \ iew- point: C. M. Child, Ph.D., Professor Zoology, University 0' Chicago, Author of “Physiological Foundations of Behav 14 Self-Control and Social Control: C. Judson Herrick, P): Professor of Neurology, University of Chicago. 15 Growth and Development, Bodily and Mentallyggs Determined by Heredity and by Social Environment: rf Boas, Ph.D Professor of Anthropology, Columbia Univ y. 16 Socializing Human Nature: Ernest R. Groves, Ph.D., Professor of Sociology, Boston University. 17 The History and Development of Institutes for the Study Children: Joel D. Hunter, Superintendent, United Charities of Chicago. THE COURT 18 The Juvenile Court From the Child’s Viewpoint: Miriam |'a» Waters, Ph.D., Referee, Juvenile Court, Los Angeles. 19 Probation: Henry S. Hulbert, Judge, Juvenile Court, Detrow and President National Probation Association. 20 The Detention of Children as a Part of Treatment: Frederick P. Cabot, Justice, Juvenile Court, Boston. 21 Organization of Family Courts, With Special Reference to the Juvenile Court: Charles W. Hoffman, Judge, Court of Do- mestic Relations, Cincinnatt. 22 History of the Juvenile Court Movement Throughout the World Grace Abbott, Chief, Children’s Bureau, Washington, D. C. 23 Colorado’s Contribution to the Juvenile Court: Ben B. Lindse\ Judge, Juvenile and Family Court, Denver. 24 The Background of the Juvenile Court in Illinois: Julia C Lathrop, First Chief, Children’s Bureau, Washington, D. C. 25 The Early Days of the Juvenile Court: Mrs. Joseph T. Bowen Formerly President of the Chicago Juvenile Court Committee 26 The Chancery Procedure in the Juvenile Court: Julian W. Mact Judge, United States Circuit Court of Appeals, New York. 27 Origin of the Illinois Juvenile Court Law: Timothy D. Hurle: Judge, Superior Court of Cook County. 28 Institutions for Juvenile Delinquents: George W. Kirchwe: Professor of Criminology, New York School of Social Wor The New Republic, 421 West 21st Street, New York City. For the enclosed $ please send me the following titles from your series of Dollar Books. When writing to advertisers, please mention The Nation

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r, MD. nologist. ment of SSIStant etrou derick Poe WISE lia . * OWEN 1 it tee Mack rk. urle Iw) V ork EY. titles >4 r5 -—— ~ oa The Nation

FOUNDED 1866 vol. CXX NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, JUNE 24, 1925 No. 3129 Contents REAT NEWS, however, has at last come from Wash- _ —— ington. The country will be thrilled to learn that, mm 703 —— al at am ul , undaunted by the fact that its sugar report has been torn Dour ‘Threat SBI tanec rss <ereeseseeccesere res ers ' ae up by Mr. Coolidge, the United States Tariff Commission c e as BME PUB. oc cc cccccccccsecccescss esenes ver ‘ : . : , Improving Shakespeare gees Lpdekdudsmancaunnnesense” sseseesrens IGF has boldly issued the following public notice: fort | Se i i ‘ ‘ ‘ ae 7 . S . "HE MOROCCAN ADVENTURE. By Robert Dell.......... oP 709 The United States Tariff Commission, on this 19th NG OF RELATIVITY: a oe nee ees sene NM day of May, 1925, for the purpose of assisting the Presi- Tor. Nature the Anarchist. By Bertrand Russel].................. 712 dent in the exercise of the powers vested in him by section ING MEXICO: . ae" ; a Oe heel and Eanes Sy Deed Qramtag........................ 713 315 of Title III of the tariff act of 1922, and under the gORKI AT ST. AGNELLO. By Edward Alden Jewell............. .. 716 powers granted by law, and pursuant to the rules and Bee DENCE. BP GD BEINN. 2005 0eseeesonessorserseees. he regulations of the commission, hereby orders an investiga- OKs AND PLAYS: © tion of the differences in costs of production of, and of all Li BR. tS Co epenn ene nneeeeeeeeeeeeeEE other facts and conditions enumerated in said section with Count Karolyi’s Memoirs. By Emil Lengyel.................... -. 719 respect to, the following articles included within the class Novels by Two Brothers. By Clifton P. Fadiman.................. 720 - ; 2 P ssh : Petrarch the Individual. By Raymond Weaver.................... - 721 or kind of articles provided for in paragraph 711 of Title Soe tn Brief ee ence aa L of said tariff act, namely: Live bob-white quail, being Basegy BME ey 4 Deena whelly or in part the growth or product of the United INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS SECTION: : States, and of and with respect to like or similar articles Manifesto of Chinese Professors. ...0.20000.0! me Wholly or in part the growth or product of competing for- ee OD re rrr rare . 92 eign countries.

—— OSWALD GARRISON VILLARD, Eprror ASSOCIATE Eprrors LEWIS S. GANNETT ARTHUR WARNER JOSEPH WOOD KRUTCH MANAGING EDprror Lirerary Eprror FREDA KIRCHWEY MARK VAN DOREN CONTRIBUTING EDpITors JOHN A. HOBSON LUDWIG LEWISOHN H. LL MENCKEN NORMAN THOMAS CARL VAN DOREN DAVID BOEHM, ADVERTISING MANAGER

SUBSCRIPTION R. : Five dollars per annum postpaid in the United States and Mexico; to ©. $5.50, and to foreign countries of the Postal Union, $6.00. THE NATION, 20 Vesey Street, New York City. Cable Address: Nation, New York. Chicago Office: 38 So. Dearborn Street. British Agent for Subscriptions and Advertising: E. Thurtle, M.P., 36, Temple Fortune Hill, N.W. 11, England.

R. COOLIDGE HAS PAID his debts. The sugar men financed his campaign last autumn; and the sugar men have profited by his action—or inaction—on the sugar tariff. The last tariff law provides for “flexible schedules” ; the President may, if the tariff commission so recommends, increase or decrease tariff rates by as much as 50 per cent. Silas Bent’s article in The Nation for May 27 told how Mr. Coolidge had conscientiously raised rates whenever the com- mission so recommended, but that when it recommended lowering the sugar duty last July he held his peace. He held his peace, with the persistence for which he is noted, all through the storms of the election when William V. Hodges, lobbyist for the Holly Sugar Corporation, which owns beet-sugar factories in three States, was toiling as Republican National Treasurer, and all through the row which followed his nomination of Charles Beecher Warren, president of the Michigan Sugar Co., for Attorney General of the United States. At last he has spoken. After ten months of earnest meditation Mr. Coolidge has discovered (a) that to reduce the tariff on sugar would discourage the American farmers who are beginning to diversify their crops by planting beet sugar; and (b) that the price of sugar has fallen low enough anyway. So, he informs the American people, he has decided to overrule the tariff com- mission. We would like him better if he said frankly: “My friends, who are in the beet-sugar business, don’t want the sugar schedule reduced. So I won’t reduce it.”

The commission has warned al] interested to appear at some date to be designated after this notice has been adver- tised for thirty days. It proposes to protect our bob-white quail (in whole or in part) from the low-down competition of Canadian, Siberian, Mexican, and Cuban quail. Never shall it be said that any agency of this government has deserted the bob-white, wholly or in part, in its hour of need. Sooner would it pull down Old Glory itself. Pro- tection to the last tail-feather of Mr. and Mrs. Bob-White is to be the slogan of the commission as long as it shal! live. ENATOR BUTLER OF MASSACHUSETTS is a godly man, and his god is Calvin Coolidge. Calvin is in the White House, and all is well with his United States except the critics. Listen to the words of wisdom which Mr. Butler uttered in Boston’s Old North Church, com- memorating the anniversary of the Battle of Bunker Hill: We must not omit to demand respect for our tions and our Government. Our Government and our flag must not be defied by foe or snevred at by those who among us, whether they sneer from the heights of the lectual cynic or scoff from the depths of the radical dis- turber. Along these lines is treason; and treason to the Government and flag will not be tolerated. If Paul Revere’s ghost still haunts the pews of the Old North Church it must, when it heard those muttered the eighteenth-century equivalent of the modern “Gosh!” When the Battle of Bunker Hil! is celebrated by orators who demand respect for the constituted authorities and respect for the powers that be, whoever they are whatever they may do, it is high time for someone, from the heights of the intellectual cynic or the depths of the radical disturber, to demand a quiet moment for reflection upon the events of 1775 and 1776. institu- live nte}- words, Nave and ° 5 | _* er1cner HAT IS BEHIND or ahead of the present upheaval in China must, as usual in China, be guessed at. Unrest is widespread but the causes are various. engaged in a civil war, but the strike in Shanghai is defi- nitely anti-foreign. The Powers have shown themselves fear- Canton is

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704 The Nation ful and ready to go to any lengths to protect their interests. So nervous were the foreign police in Shanghai in the face of a student demonstration in May that the order was given, “Shoot to kill.” If the manifesto of the Chinese professors (printed in this week’s International Relations Section) viving the facts of the affair is accurate this was another Amritsar. The manifesto has been supported by several missionaries, and the Daily Worker (Chicago) reports that educators from twenty-two of the higher schools in Peking, including Leighton Stuart, American president of Peking University, have urged that the foreign legations instruct the consuls throughout China to “cease their barbarous acts.” Once before, during the civil war of last winter, missionaries protested against the action of the legations and refused the protection of American marines. Is there any meaning for the future China in this growing gulf be- tween the missionaries and the militarism of their own West? On the other hand the Powers will probably make every effort to quiet disturbances; they cannot possibly desire further clashes. We pointed out last week that noth- ing can be gained by the conquests of soldiers and guns. Were China conquered the Powers would only go to war over the division. Economic penetration is more profitable; for that the West needs to sit tight, keep things quiet, and retain the “rights” they have. If some concession is abso- lutely necessary, the commission on Chinese affairs, pro- posed at Washington in 1922 and never appointed because of French dalliance, may at last be appointed! gerne THOMAS, in the editorial service which he sends to labor papers from the League for Industrial Democracy, makes the Shanghai situation vivid: Suppose that in a time of American weakness Japanese, Chinese, British, and other foreigners forced upon this country treaties under which the port of San Francisco was turned over to them to govern. Suppose these various nationalities ran the city like a stock company with all Americans excluded from the franchise and foreigners themselves voting according to the amount of money they had invested. Suppose they then posted in the public parks signs reading “No dogs or Americans allowed.” Suppose they started mills and factories where the worst of hours and wages prevailed. Suppose that the long-suffering Americans employed in the Japanese mills finally struck and their lead- ers were railroaded by the alien government of capitalists to jail. Suppose then that Americans, led by students, con- ducted a great mass demonstration against the Japanese mill, but without firing a shot. Suppose that Indian troops in the employ of the British fired upon the crowd killing several of the student leaders—would you expect Americans generally to side with the foreigners or their own country- men? This is, he says, the case in Shanghai. He has seen with his own eyes the sign excluding Chinese and dogs from the public parks. And yet our papers tell us that the Chinese outbreak is all the work of “soviet agents”! HE KILLING of a striking miner in Nova Scotia, during a clash between police employed by the British Empire Steel Corporation (Besco) and pickets of the United Mine Workers, and the summoning of troops from Halifax to guard the corporation’s plant are the latest develop- ments in the coal miners’ strike which has been going on in Cape Breton and the Nova Scotia mainland since March 6. On June 11 miners attacked the company’s power plant at New Waterford. One of their number a was shot dead. The foilowing evening, despite the pr ence of troops, they destroyed the power house, and, yy}, 1 they were denied food for their hungry families, looted company stores and burned company property. Hungep is making them desperate, and further disorders are ,, pected. The strike followed the announcement by ¢h, company of a 10 per cent cut in wages that alread, ; aged only $14 a week—a cut which really amounted ¢ per cent when the removal of time-and-a-half and doybjc. time was considered. Twelve thousand miners walked oy: in protest. To force the miners into submission, their ere’ at the company stores was stopped. A conference wh; hb was finally arranged ended in nothing but an announcemey: by the company: “We are going out of this conferenc pared to do our dirtiest.” Since then one offer has hy, made by Besco—guaranteeing a wage of $15 a week!— which the miners refused. The owners have refyseg arbitration by the Minister of Labor. 15 M“* ANWHILE, starvation. Relief funds are running out. Many families depend for their only food on souy kitchens which serve them once a day. Misery is creeping relentlessly over thousands of homes while Besco sits tight and says, through its vice-president, J. E. McLurg, that the miners will submit eventually because they “cannot stand the gaff.” If they do submit, it means indefinite continua- tion of the state of half-starvation in which they have lived for years, as was pointed out in an article by Ben Legere in The Nation of April 1; they cannot see much choice between present and future starvation. So they fight on— and incidentally seek the answer to a question: According to their computations, coal mined at the new wage-scale would cost 77 cents a ton (of 2,240 pounds)» when it left the miners’ hands; a ton of 2,000 pounds costs the con- sumer $6. Where does the difference go? CURIOUS REPORT on aviation has been published in Washington as coming from a board of experts— names not given—and made for President Coolidge. Oddly enough, the finding of these anonymous gentlemen “sup- ports the policy of the Administration in opposing sub- sidies to commercial aviation”’—one wonders whether it would have seen the light of day had its findings opposed the Administration. From beginning to end the report is a laudation of the Government. As such it is entirely welcome if only one could have proof of the ability and the non-partisanship of its authors. It declares that the army and navy aircraft appropriations for the next fiscal year, $19,193,375, are quite sufficient to sustain the present aircraft industry; that the law passed by Congress at its last session authorizing the Government to contract with private enterprises for air-mail transportation, which it has begun to do, is to be commended. So far, so good. Wheu, however, the unknown investigators say we are turning out airplane engines of from 60 to 800 horse power which are better than those made abroad, that our airplanes are “not excelled in any other country,” and that some types “far surpass” similar ones abroad, we demand proof. Such statements are contrary to the belief of most military officers and smack entirely too much of the extravagant war-time boasting; so do the assertions that in no other country is there as large a number of civilian operators as in the United States and that all the industry now needs is federal regulation of commercial aviation and mor airways. [Vol. 120, No. 3129 oe we co

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June 24, 1925] The Nation

705

HE PACIFIC MAIL Steamship Company out of busi- ness? Then another historic American institution as gone by the board. The five government vessels oper- ‘ed by it were recently sold by the Shipping Board to the ‘ollar Line, and this action, which was contrary to the acific Mail’s wishes, has led to the sale to W. R. Grace and “ompany of all of the ships now used by the company in its ster-coast services connecting New York, San Francisco, aa the West Indies. For more than seventy-seven years ‘is company has played a great role in the annals of jmerican shipping. Founded as the result of a law passed : Congress on March 3, 1847, authorizing the Secretary f the Navy to contract for a mail steamship service from New York to Astoria, Oregon, it regularly transferred its yassengers across the Isthmus of Panama from one of its chips to another. It began its career with three wooden yaddle-wheel steamers which transported among others the ‘oops that did duty in the Far West; in fact, the ships vere often commanded by naval officers on leave. The rush «o the California gold fields naturally brought great pros- serity to the company, but it usually had government aid 4s well and the Pacific Mail scandals of the late seventies were part of the indictment of the Republican Party man- agement in those years. With the coming of the continental railroad, the Pacific Mail naturally turned its attention in other directions and started its Asiatic line. It is an inter- esting index of our trade with China and Japan that down to 1898 its largest steamer had accommodation for only sixty cabin passengers. The disappearance of this company has given rise to rumors of other consolidations; it illus- trates anew the present unsettled condition of our merchant marine. HE NEW GROWTH of tolerance and liberalism among college students has been so swift even in the South that it is a shock to come upon the opposite spirit in an issue of the Emory Wheel, published at Emory University, Georgia. Hearing that members of the faculty and some students—the Y. M. C. A. was under suspicion—had invited a few Negro students of Morehouse College to a meeting at Emory to discuss the work of the Inter-Racial Commission, the entire law school passed protesting resolutions. They pointed out that a similar meeting had been held in April, that the “tine of separation” between black and white must be held unwaveringly, and they demanded that the “enter- taining” of Negroes on the campus be ended. Whether the doors of Emory are henceforth to be slammed in the face of all effort toward decent race relations is not announced nthe Emory Wheel. But it is mournful to think that this aw-school body, unanimously on the side of intolerance, should be men in whose hands lies the hope for future jus- tice and fair dealing for the Negro in Georgia. OW THAT MOST OF THE STATES have decided that 4‘ we do not need a federal child-labor amendment it 's well to keep in mind some of the consequences of State ‘egulation. Pennsylvania has a good child-labor law, there- ‘ore the children of Pennsylvania are shipped out of the State for temporary employment in the cranberry bogs of New Jersey. Russell Eldridge, State Director of Employ- ment, says: As to work hours and rest periods, I report that the usual period for all those employed, including every child, is ten hours per day. Rest periods are unknown, except

at the discretion of the parents. I observed none in effect. Children under the age of ten working on the farms formed 10 per cent of the total. The housing and sanitary conditions are often worse than ventilation, fire hazards, None of the children These migratory workers who are ! State are the re- sponsibility of no State and grow up without education in spite of the laws of the State to which they go and of the State to which they return. The only adequate method of dealing with this important problem is by the ratification of the federal child-labor amendment. Without that there measure of inspecting the Camden vania workers. those in city tenements, as to water, toilet, and cooking facilities. possessed an age or schooling certificate. } from moved lOVed state to is only the half-way ferries, the entering points for the litor of The Nation, 2 of this wee kly. A igment, and of per pee ate tnird ¢ | ewes LAMONT, the } man of exceptional ability, of rare jud sonal charm, he brought to his task qualities all too rarely found in this and other journalistic offices It is with great pleasure, therefore, that we record that in his mem- ory his brother, Thomas W. fessorship at Harvard University to which he has given not his brother’s name but that of Theodore William Richards, professor at Harvard and we should say the foremost ist in the university world in America. Thus two distin- guished men, both members of the class Harvard, Lamont, has founded a pro- cnem- of 1886 of have been honored by this graceful and yvenerous a Pro- fessor Richards must feel particularly gratified at this per- manent alliance of his name with Harvard while he is still actively at his post, and the university must be pleased, indeed, at this additional recognition of one of its yreatest teachers and leaders in the fields of science. Had Lamont lived, his unusually fine English style, whieh led President Eliot to appoint him to th» Enylish department at Harvard directly from a newspaper office in Seattle, must have carried him to an even yreater field of useful- ness than that in which he rejoiced in the office of this journal. LTHOUGH WARREN S. STONE, who died in Clewe- land on June 12, may be said to have belonged to the old school of labor leaders, he had a flexible and open mind which made him to the end of his career one of the most sanely progressive influences in our industrial life. He joined the Brotherhood of Locomotive Enyineers in 1484 and soon became active in its affairs, but it was not until! 1903 that he was called upon to be its head. At that time he had spent twenty-five years firing or behind the throttle and had a masterly knowledge of the practica! problems of his craft. The locomotive engineers have never insisted upon the closed shop, and have attained great strength without it; but it would be unwarranted to argue from the experience of this highly skilled trade that similar success could be obtained by the same method in every other branch of industry. Mr. mpers believed that, when necessary, labor should go into polities, and his organization was largely responsible for the La Fol- lette presidential movement of last year. vy Mr. Stone will be longest remembered as the man who put labor into banking—for if his was not the first labor bank its outstanding success was largely nomenal growth of this movement to give labor co its own capital. "4 : , - ’ : otone, unlike Samuel G Probah responsible for the phe- ntroi ¢ f

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The N ation HAT has come over President Coolidge that, so soon after his public reprimand of the war-mongering admirals, he should permit his Secretary of State to issue one of the most inflammatory and insulting documents which our Government has ever made public in time of peace? The strange prepared statement handed to the press repre- sentatives by Secretary Kellogg, along with the announce- ment that President Coolidge had approved it, lacks the niceties of diplomatic courtesy with which brutal inter- national ultimatums are usually disguised. It is a naked club, publicly brandished in the face of a friendly Govern- ment. It sounds like a public announcement to revolution- ary adventurers that the United States Government will encourage any attempt to overthrow the Calles Government in Mexico unless the Calles Government gives special pro- tection to American property interests. Such a document is a disgrace to the United States. Washington’s manner of publishing this provocative document was old-style saber-rattling. General Pershing, we were told, was to spend the week end on the Mayflower conferring with the President. Senator Borah had been called into conference at the White House. The implica- tions were plain; even the anti-imperialist Borah approved the threat, and General Pershing was planning a new in- vasion. We suspect that both announcements were mere stage-setting. General Pershing’s memory of the futile weeks he spent chasing desert mirages (but never finding Villa) must still be painfully clear; and Senator Borah’s character and record are such that we feel safe in asserting that he did not approve the form of this unfriendly act. What arrogance, what self-righteousness, what a brutal sense of power gleam from the phrases of this communica- tion to the newspapers: “We have been patient”; “condi- tions are not entirely satisfactory”; “unreasonable demands of labor”; “this Government will continue to support the Government in Mexico only so long as it protects American lives gy American rights”; “Mexico is now on trial before the + i”! “Why Washington should express surprise at Callewar:terpretation of this statement as an “insult” we cannot understand. These are not the words of friendly diplomatic intercourse; they sound like a sour-faced teacher reporting, to a bad boy’s father. They reveal no hint of understanding of Mexico’s social legislation, no sense of the liberating significance of her agrarian movement; only a smug certainty that we have a right to impose our own worship of private property upon our weaker neighbors. Readers of Ernest Gruening’s articles in this and other issues of The Nation know what has happened in Mexico. A native Government, interested in the development of the Mexican people in the traditions of their own Indian inheri- tance, has struggled to save Mexico from the curse of alien exploitation. It has had to make terms with the great for- eign capitalists who control the sub-soil wealth of Mexico, but it has succeeded in forcing them to pay taxes. It has sought to return the land to the people, and has passed what seem to many Americans radical agrarian laws. Almost every nation in Eastern Europe has done the same thing. Any country wherein a few individuals legally hold title to millions of acres, on which millions of human beings toil in virtual peonage, will sooner or later follow such a course. Our Threat to Mexico es It may be done under guise of law; if not, it will be by, riot and revolution. Mexico has had a little of both. 7), great estates have been divided up, sometimes fairly ano sometimes unfairly. The Government has promised com. pensation, but it has been poor; compensation has rare}, been forthcoming save in the form of worthless paper. Sometimes the people have not waited for the Governmen: to carry out the legal process of expropriation and haye seized the land themselves. In the course of this process bitter injustice has doubtless been frequent; but it is also true that the Diaz system in which the landowners ruth. lessly exploited their human victims was worse injustice. Many Mexicans have suffered; some Americans have |os: out. The Mexicans have had to grin and bear it; the Amer. icans have complained to their official representatives jy Mexico, and our agents have earnestly sought to protect these American property interests. This process has cop- tinued with little change ever since the revolution began, Secretary Hughes used to complain bitterly about the inat- tentiveness of the Mexican Government to our complaints: © and when the Mexican Government was recognized in March, 1924, Washington was perfectly well aware of ¢h state of affairs. There has been no change so far as we know in Mexico; there is nothing in Secretary Kellogg's published pronouncement to indicate that the Mexican Goy- ernment has altered its attitude. Mexico has not gone bolshevist; the Mexican Communists are bitterly attacking Calles for his dillydallying ways. The change of heart is in Washington. And the American people have a right to know what has caused this sudden, violent shift of front. What interests have made their complaints so effectively heard that our Government, which fourteen short months ago was blockading the revolutionaries and selling arms t Calles’s friend and predecessor, Obregon, is now threaten- ing revolution and intervention? have a right to know. There are indications that President Calles’s fearless defense of the right of Mexico to make its own laws has already alarmed the gentlemen in the State Department who so frivolously sent forth their bullying ultimatum. Secre- tary Kellogg, the anonymous dispatches say, has “said his say”; he has no further comment to make. We hope he wil have none; public officials never make apologies, and the only decent comment which our foreign minister could make would be an apology and expression of regret. “The Government of Mexico is now on trial before the world,” Mr. Kellogg said in his statement. President Calle: properly replied that all governments were on trial before their peoples and the world. But in a special sense the American government is on trial before the world. We are the world’s richest nation; we have in our soil a large pro- portion of its natural wealth, and circumstances have give! us an amazing proportion of its mobile capital. We are sending our dollars into all the five continents of the earth, and are tending to acquire in a score of countries the fina”- cial stranglehold which we have upon Mexico. we use that power? Do we desire to dictate the lin development of these foreign lands? them what laws they may pass, how they may allot ther land, what forms their government dare take? Or have _[Vol. 120, No. 3129) We do not know. We. How sha lg Do we intend to te! J

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be by The VY and cCOm- rareiy aper, iment have "OC ess 3 also ruth- ice, € lost \mer- eS in "“Olect con- egan. inat- ints; 7 d in E the S we ogg’s Gov- gone ‘king is in + +r It to ront. ively mnths is t aten- We | the headway of the ship of state. velieve that the American public would make no protest if ‘were proposed to crown Mr. Coolidge king. ‘uggestion might very well titillate the palates of the public Fune 24, 1925] -_ 4]) some faith in those slogans—‘“‘all men are created ual... inalienable rights . . . consent of the governed blessings of liberty’—upon which this nation was .ynded? These are questions of infinite moment to Amer- 4 and to the world. And Secretary Kellogg’s rampant ;sistence upon what he terms “American rights” in Mexico ;a sinister omen of the answer. Will the American people him have his imperial way? The Latin American legations, the New York Herald fribune reports, are in a state of unusual activity. Upos e subsequent course of our action in this crisis we shall y judged. Let Americans who care for the honor of their tion make their disgust felt in Washington. Keeping the Gas Tank Full RESIDENT COOLIDGE’S great reception in Minne- P apolis the other day, where as Vice-President, in 1922, addressed a crowd which rose and left soon after he ygan, is an interesting example of the whirligig of fortune. Ye do not doubt that a good deal of the enthusiasm with shich he seems to have been greeted he has earned since ‘hat unhappy appearance at the State Fair; some of it must, ‘owever, be attributed to the fact that the President of the ‘nited States is always a drawing card. If we should xcept the press accounts at par, they would be in line with yhat independent investigators have been reporting about nditions in the country at large. There is a weariness vith politics and issues which once stirred the whole coun- ‘'y and a complete readiness to leave everything to Calvin ‘oolidge, with cheerful hopefulness that he will find the yay out of every problem. Yet it is less an era of good eeling, or a personal tribute to Mr. Coolidge, than a readi- vss to let the other fellow do it, so that public attention nay be focussed on other things than politics. Some of these things Frank R. Kent, the able and fear- ess staff correspondent of the Baltimore Sun, has been reporting in a series of letters to his newspaper from the mall towns of the West. Of these the most important is the gas tank—we mean the receptacle at the back of an utomobile. Mr. Kent quotes an Indiana editor as saying, n explaining why he had dropped his Washington corre- pondence: “All that most people out here want is a full ank of gasoline.” And he further reports that for the first ime since Free State days Kansas “neither bleeds nor tries.” Literally, he declares, there is not a bubble to be een on the political waters in Kansas. One cannot get up political fight there. No one talks progressive policies or ay kind of policies. Not even does the mention of Wall Street arouse the passions of the Western public. Now if this constitutes a triumph of Coolidgeism, Mr. Coolidge and his political associates are entitled to make ‘he most of it. They can truthfully point out that the people are absorbed in making money and concerned chiefly with ‘heir radios and their automobiles. We are in a political Sargasso Sea, and the seaweed of materialism has checked There are those who In fact, the ‘san interesting morsel to vary the pictures of bathing eauties and gir: runners in the Sunday pictorials. The Republicans can certainly join Mr. Kent in point- The Nation 707 ing out that the Democratic Party has practically ceased to exist beyond the Mississippi and that there is in the Middle West hardly one progressive leader of real distinction. Whether this is a happy situation, except from the narrow Republican party outlook, is another question. The point is that today politics are taboo as never before in the recollection of men of mature age. We ourselves believe that this would have come about were Mr. Harding still in the White House, or if Herbert Hoover had succeeded him. It is not the man that has so captured America and drugged it into political apathy; it is still the aftermath of the war which we are feeling, and it constitutes a striking parallel to similar political apathy and indifference which marked much of the first fifteen years following the attempt to im- peach Johnson. Now it may well be that Mr. Coolidge has already planned to succeed himself and that the Minnesota trip was, as some people would have it, the opening gun in the cam- paign of 1928. We do not believe that. Mr. Coolidge is too shrewd a politician to begin his campaign so far ahead even if he has made up his mind to run again. We look to his trip rather as an effort to overcome the remaining liberalism in his party so that he may dictate policies and put through a program next winter. Of the latter we believe him incapable. He probably will reduce taxes further and make other savings, but when it comes to for- mulating constructive issues and putting them through we still feel, with William Hard, that the correct picture of Mr. Coolidge is of a man bounding across a prairie pursued by an idea from which he runs until compelled to and face it; then he often attempts to hit it between the eyes. Nor can we feel that this politica! indifference is going to last indefinitely. We cannot believe that the United States has hopelessly sunk in a morass of materialism and that we are never again to see a political partisanship in the best sense. There was a remarkable era of good feeling in the early days of the Taft Administration. Within two or three days the whole scene changed because of his scanda- lous decision in the Ballinger case and his Winona speech Mr. Coolidge could make a dozen Winona speeches today and get away with them, but he as we!l as anybody else knows that a continuance of this condition is unthinkable and that a single speech or an incident may arouse people once more. Meanwhile he is playing good partisan politics in trying to reduce taxes and keep the gas tank full. It is what the hour calls for. But what if it weans stil! further millions from all interest in balloting, and from concern in our whole political life? turn Improving Shakespeare HE best works of an author are sometimes written by the imagination of his readers. Many a pregnant phrase owes its weight to an interpretation which some individual or the gradual growth of tradition has put upon it, and not seldom its whole meaning is changed in the process. “A friend in need is a friend indeed” is said to have been originally a cynical phrase intended to convey the idea that people in need claim friendship with those who are unaware that such an intimate relationship exists; and that last refuge of fools, “The exception proves the rule,” undoubtedly used “proves” in the old sense of “tests”

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708 The N ation or “tries.” (‘Prove all things and hold fast to that which is good.”’) Even Shakespeare, though perhaps not often improved, is constantly either given a creative interpretation, as in the case of “The play’s the thing,” which is usually used in a sense which the text does not intend, or actually per- verted as in the case of “more honored in the breach than the observance,” which certainly means “which it is more honorable to break than to observe” and not, as commonly used, more often broken than observed. No phrase in all Shakespeare is, however, either more famous or more doubt- ful than that which is used by the hostess when she says, in describing the death of Falstaff, “a babbled of green fields.” No commentator ever discussed the character of Falstaff without enlarging upon this masterly touch which adds a striking note to the scene of mingled humor and pathos by revealing the fat knight returning in death to childhood memories and babbling of the green field of England. Yet it is by no means certain that Shakespeare ever wrote the words. They do not appear in the Folios; their place is taken by the apparent nonsense, “a table of green fields.” Theobald, hero of the “Dunciad” and first editor of Shakespeare’s works, suggested them as an emend- ation to correct what he took to be a printer’s error. His phrase is certainly appropriate to the scene, the letters which compose it are near enough to the original text to make them acceptable, and it has been generally assumed that his emendation is as probably correct as it is certainly brilliant. So much is common knowledge, but it has been recently pointed out by a correspondent to the London Times that the whole towering structure which begins with Theobald’s assumption of textual corruption and ends with the pane- gyrics of the critics upon Shakespeare’s genius as exhib- ited in this line may be wholly fanciful. The word “table,” he points out, was certainly used to mean the face of a clock and probably employed as “‘dial’”’ is employed in con- temporary cockney slang to mean a face. The Hostess, describing Falstaff’s appearance, has just compared his nose to a pen and, since the complexion of a dying man is conventionally regarded as green, she may very well have called his “table” “green fields” and been perfectly com- prehensible to her audience. Certainly this suggestion is reasonable enough to cast doubts upon the accepted reading. It furnishes a compre- hensible interpretation of the text exactly as it is printed and has consequently every presumption in its favor. There is nothing to be said against it except that it robs a famous passage of one of its best lines; for if Shakespeare did not use the famous phrase, he should have. It is in every way more significant than what he seems actu- ally to have written. This famous emendation is about the only claim to fame which the present day has allowed Theobald to have; and now that claim is taken away, but in its place may be put a much greater glory. If he did not emend Shakespeare he certainly improved him, and that is no insignificant title to remembrance. In one point at least in the reading of the play he rose to a greater height of dramatic imagination than its author, beating Shakespeare on his own ground. Scholars may prove him wrong, but no actor and no. editor will be found silly enough to prefer “a table of green fields” to the infinitely pathetic phrase which is now as essential to Falstaff’s ” sé story as Gad’s Hill itself. a, Worth Saving E do not often rise to champion new or increased appropriations for the Navy Department; we are not, generally speaking, ardent advocates of plans to spend money on warships. But every rule should be broken ¢ Ca. sionally, and at this moment we find ourselves lined up with a row of patriotic societies for the expenditure of ap, sum—no matter how much—that is necessary to maintaiy one of the vessels of the United States navy. The vessel we have in mind is no super-dreadnough: lately launched at the Brooklyn Navy Yard and undergoing speed trials off Cape Hatteras. It is a warship which took the ways more than a hundred years ago and is now r tting and wasting away in the harbor of Boston. It is the , frigate Constitution, victor over His Britannic Majesty’; ship Guerriére in 1812. Every American knows of Faneuil Hall in Boston ang Independence Hall in Philadelphia, and would not think of letting either fall into decay. Every American has heard of Mount Vernon, and if necessary would dig into his pocket to preserve this home of George Washington; most of ys know of and approve the effort to save and keep up th home of President Jefferson at Monticello, Virginia. Byt probably not one American in 10,000 knows that the old frigate Constitution is still afloat, and it doesn’t seem t occur to many of them that it is as authentic and valuable historically as any of the private houses and public halls of early days about which we are so jealous. When the War of 1812 began the United States navy consisted of twelve vessels, of which the largest were th: forty-four-gun frigates United States, President, and (on- stitution. The British fleet comprised 830 vessels, of which 230 were larger than any of ours. Naturally, the feat of Captain Isaac Hull of the Constitution in subduing the formidable Guerriére in about half an hour thrilled the country and stands as one of the important victories in our naval annals. We are only mildly interested, though, in preserving the Constitution as a memento of our fighting — history. What we think immensely more significant is that the Constitution is a living relic of our ship-building and ship-rigging in those pioneer days when America was ge? ting ready to take first place as a sea power not by virtue of guns and powder, nor by aid of subsidies or favors, but by the skill, the daring, the intelligence of the men that built, the men that manned, the men that directed the bus'- ness of our mercantile marine. If the old frigate wer smaller it would have been spoken for long since by somé museum. In the circumstances it might be possible make a marine museum of the ship. One would think that the navy would be keenly aliv to preserving the Constitution, but although it can plead fervently for millions for the construction of new battle- ships and submarines, it seems to be incapable of getting 4 few thousand dollars from Congress for preserving this old frigate. The Constitution has twice before been re- conditioned. She was saved from the scrap pile in 1553 when Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote his famous “Old [ror sides,” and again in 1874 she was rebuilt. Probably sh would be better preserved and more greatly appreciated if given up by the navy and taken over by some historica: association. If Independence Hall is a landmark, the Cor- stitution is a seamark—and equally worth saving. [Vol. 120, No. 3129 ’ ae

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~2 3129) Pune 24, 1925] The Nation 709 = The Moroccan Adventure By ROBERT DELL Paris, May 22 HE Western Pact, German disarmament, the evacuation T of Cologne, and all the other problems with which ?rance is concerned are for the time being overshadowed by +e war in Moroceo. For France is once more at war— such to the dismay of the French people. The public shows stense nervousness. Morocco has sinister associations in he French mind. The crises of 1905 and 1911 are not for- »tten and there is a growing and justified belief that the Yorocean adventure was one of the principal causes of the var of 1914. Nobody, of course, now fears complications ‘ith Germany about Morocco, but the French people feel hemselves to be on an ad- of which ‘hey cannot see the started yenture nd. CG, : -. NO ee z —_-—g The Commun- sts are exploiting the popular feeling against war for any reason—not without - — “aise x * oa a > atte Oat, making is alone an achievement. It might not be easy to define the advantages that France derives from the protecto- rate over Moroceo—it is perhaps an expensive luxury—but there is no doubt at all Without question the Moors thev were before. It is not about its advantages to Morocco. are happier and better off than the least of Marshal] Lyautey’s papers have sometimes Moors. Whether the doubtful. They d of assimila- merits that French Nationalist accused him of being too kind to the French will permanently hold Morocco is certainly will not if they adopt there the meth tion that they have adopted in their colonies, which Marshal Lyautey has avoided. The Moors belong to the white Euro- and are a robber baron of the Middle Hu- grotemjuely Ages, although some success. If the es cehy\ ay [aR * President of the ampaign in Mo- °e, aren ay PES: ain Republie of the rocco goes on much « ORAS i+ Py ) ae Riff,” which has ne onger, there may Agee al . stern eXCeD ! 9 a very serious ( nunist imagina agitation and a gen- tier ral demand for ee In this as «) peace at any price. “, na! ther matter Public nervosity has ain France is paving f men increased by “°° ~ eel een Reet teenies ao the m™ R: the absence of any a ee ad P are, the information about IN POSSESSION lisastrous 4 e- the French casualties quences of te —due, I understand, to the refusal of Marshal Lyautey to his country become more and r nt H I rive such information. The Government fully appreciates the sensate hatred of England and eqnally insensate j3t situation and is as anxious as the public to end the war in of domination led him to allow, if he did not actually Morocco, for which it is not responsible. The daily accusa- promote, the defeat of the Spaniards in tt a ‘ion of the Communist organ, l’Humanité, that the present ‘abinet and M. Caillaux in particular are engaged in an aggressive war for imperialist aims or to please the bankers —who have no sort of interest in the matter—is monstrous I have known M. Painlevé for years and know ‘hat he is incapable of such conduct. Besides, the facts are plain. Abd-el-Krim had already invaded the territory under French protectorate when the Painlevé Cabinet came into fice. He was inciting the tribes in French Morocco to revolt and some of them had responded. The only alterna- tive to resisting him by force was the evacuation of Morocco. ’Humanité is no doubt prepared for that course, but the French people are not. Moreover, the French have done good work in Morocco. Marshal Lyautey has shown himself to be the greatest olonial administrator of our time. Without bloodshed he 1as established a regime which has given the country order and prosperity. The material progress has been remarkable What has been done in the way of road- lonsense. n so short a time. deed, either Abd-el-Krim or his brother came to Par 1923 and negotiated through intermediaries with Poi: There is reason to Abd-el-Krim was supr —s . pelleve tnat with arms from France for his war against Spa any case it is certain that Poincaré refused to blockade the Riff and allowed supplies and arms to enter it fre The idea was that, when the Spaniards had been d : Riff, the French would occupy it and thus be able to thr Gibraltar. Naturally, England would have resisted a French occupation of the Riff even at the t of war, but Poincare was reckless. When the Spaniards pract driven out, Marshal Lvautey, who was certair in agree- ment with Poincaré’s policy and aims, blockaded the Riff. It is possible, although I cannot affirm it, that this step was taken with the deliberate intention of inciting the tribes of the Riff, who were thus cut off from their food supply, to invade French Morocco and thus give an excuse for a French invasion of the Riff. In any case it was undoubted!y the chief cause of Abd-el-Krim’s incursion.

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710 The Nation [Vol. 120, No. 3199 Such was the situation which the Painlevé Cabinet inherited. Short of the entire abandonment of Morocco, there was no other possible course than that of defending the French protectorate against the attack. Negotiations with Abd-el-Krim, flushed with his victory over the Span- iards, would have extended the incipient revolt to the whole of Morocco. I have reason to believe that the French Gov- ernment is quite prepared to negotiate with him as soon as that can be done without conferring on him a dangerous prestige in the eyes of all the Moors. He must first be put in such a position as to make it quite plain that France is not yielding to superior force and it will not be easy to put him in such a position without Spanish cooperation. It seems indeed necessary that Spanish consent should be obtained for the French troops to cross the frontier into the Riff, for otherwise Abd-el-Krim can always escape by retir- ing behind the frontier and then begin again at the ¢,. opportunity. That would mean a long and costly war. \ ¥ the French people would not stand. The French are nati alist, but not imperialist, and they have no love for ¢o| nial adventures, as Jules Ferry learned to his cost. The French Government is thus in a very difficy); ; tion. The tendency toward a revolt in the Carte) de Gauches against the Moroccan policy of the Governme, has been checked by Herriot’s declaration of complete cons. dence in Painlevé at Grenoble yesterday. Nevertheless. the Socialists must take account of the strong opposition on the part of the workmen to any colonial adventures. The, saa not afford to let the Communists appear to be the only opponents of militarism. Should Spanish cooperation be obtained the Moroccan affair may be rapidly liquidated, | not, it is impossible to say how it may end. + «@ ! Baiting the Alien—An Old Habit By KIMBALL YOUNG LONG with religious intolerance, economic violence, and the misuse of the indigenous Indian, the agita- tion against the foreign-born resident is almost as old as the United States itself. Following the days of the Alien and Sedition Acts, when there was a good deal of popular indignation concerning alleged intrigue by European agents in this country, there came a period of conflict with Great Britain which took up our excess energies for atime. After 1812, and especially at the close of the Napoleonic Period in Europe, there was considerable mi- gration to the United States. There was, at the same time, a large movement of our own population to the Ohio Valley, and the immigration from Europe began to fill up the gaps left by those who moved over the Alleghanies. About 1817-18 certain fervent newspapers began com- menting on the increasing immigration. The Tariff of 1816 had enhanced the need of cheap labor in our cities. The various immigrant aid societies which assisted the newcomers to settle here were unfavorably regarded. By 1817 the total annual immigration had reached over thirty thousand. One-half of this number was Irish. The older population began to view the situation with alarm. Thus the American Daily Advertiser remarked: Let us not forget, before it is too late, what motive brings these people to our shores. Let us remember that it is cheap lands, high wages, food in plenty, and freedom from military service; not a love of our institutions, or a belief that our form of government is better than they have. Let us remember that they come with all the preju- dices which are the result of race and early training, and that in welcoming what seem to be the oppressed of other lands, we may really be taking an adder into our bosom. Already in 1817 the notion had arisen that it was love of governmental forms, love of liberty in the abstract, which incited the mass of early colonists to come to Amer- ica. Men apparently can not admit, in retrospect, that they are motivated by “cheap lands, high wages, food in plenty, and freedom from military service” in their migra- tions. Rather they prefer to prattle about “love of insti- tutions” and other abstract virtues. During this first flare against the immigrants, Congress passed a resolution instructing the national executive ;, furnish that body, periodically, with the names of al! goy- ernmental employees, with ages, birthplaces, and lengths of service. The object of this order, of course, was to dis- cover if foreign-born citizens were usurping Federa] offices. A storm of protest went up. Certain postmasters actually had the audacity to refuse to submit the data, and one government printer in Ohio openly defied the orders by refusing to print the blanks upon which the information was to be given. Subsequently the govern- ment rescinded the requirement and this early attempt to sift and classify people failed. During the early thirties local nativist societies began to form. In 1835 a group calling themselves The Demo- cratic Association of Native Americans pledged their sup- port to Harrison in the presidential maneuvers of that year. So, too, in 1836, in the local mayoralty elections i: New York and New Orleans, political organizations under the name of Native American societies had candidates in the field. In the following year national units began t arise. In July, 1837, some seven hundred citizens of Wash- ington, D. C. initiated The Native American Association of the United States. Its platform advocated the repea! of the naturalization law, the exclusion of foreign-bor citizens from political offices, the prevention of any Euro- pean influence in Federal affairs, and the fostering of native American sentiment throughout the country. Taking the lead from the Washington group other associa- tions were founded elsewhere. As a result of this renewed agitation the first actual violence occurred between the two groups. June, 1837, a serious street fight took place between 4 party of native American firemen and a crowd of Dublin ers on their way to a funeral. Only the militia was able to quell the disturbance. In the bank riots of Cincinnati. a year or so later, which grew out of the monetary debacle of the “shin-plaster banks,” the nativists blamed the German population for the mob-spirit, although there was little or no foundation in fact for this accusation. | During 1838 and 1839 petitions to Congress continueé to come from different sections of the country. The ¢'t! ifs = oe —- & at

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on june 24, 1925] The Nation 711 = ,z of Sutton and Millbury, Massachusetts, for instance, ’ eil sked Congress to inform them, among other things: Whether there are not designs against the liberties of our country by means of this great influx of foreign emi- eration? Whether the character of many of the emigrants does not augur a vast increase of pauperism and of crime in our land? Whether there is not a foreign conspiracy existing against the government of this great republic and measures adopted and plans now in operation i for its execution? Here one discovers the universal battle cries: designs, onspiracies, foreign powers. Our attention is today jirected to more recent arrivals, but the formulae of sttack remain the same. It was in Philadelphia that the most violent conflict en- sued. In the City of Brotherly Love the streets literally ran with blood from early in May, 1844, until the late summer following. The origin of the trouble lay in dif- ferences of opinion about the voting privileges of the im- migrants and especially it concerned itself over the ques- tion of the Bible in the public schools. The Protestants had forced Bible-reading into the regular educational diet of the children of the town. The Catholics did not oppose this, but did request that their children be given permis- sion to use a Catholic version of the Scriptures. Meetings to discuss the question brought matters to a focus. The opposing camps began to hector and to dis- turb each other at their respective gatherings. On the sixth of May the storm burst in such fury that befecre the day was over several persons had been killed or wounded and property of considerable value destroyed by fire. In the rioting that followed more people were killed and several Catholic churches and schools were burned. Both sides became more and more enraged, although impartial historians are inclined to compliment the Catholic clergy for their self-control and efforts at mediation. Out of such conflict legends are sure to arise, as they have arisen in all history, large and small. So, in this local struggle, a martyr was found. One is tempted to say “had to be found,” so universal is hero-worship. He turned up conveniently in George Shiffler, a youngster of eighteen years, the traditional son of a poor widow, who, so the story runs, was shot down by an Irish mob as he was “defending the American flag.” The scene of his death was painted on the banner of the Native American associations. A hose company which was organized shortly afterwards proudly took his name. And a popular blind rhymester of the day, J. J. Sproul, wrote a poem about him which was sung by the nativists to the foreign tune of Auld Lang Syne. Americans attention give I’ll sing a solemn lay, In memory of a much loved one, Slain on the 6th of May. I die! I die! he nobly said, But in a glorious cause; In exercise of Freedom’s right, My Country and its laws . Protect your country and her laws Come to the rescue, come; And put all foreign influence down, Arise, protect your home. Our flag’s insulted, friends are slain, And must we quiet be; No! No! ! We'll rally round our flag, Which leads to victory. Between the opening of the Mexican War and the rise of the Know Nothing Party the political activity of the nativists was inconsequential, but the spirit cf the move- ment was kept alive by such non-political groups as The Order of United American Mechanics, The American Protestant Association, and The Order of United Ameri- cans. These were anti-Catholic and anti-foreigner, yet their concern was rather economic and religious than political. The Know Nothings came into political notice about 1852 with a platform advocating free schools, the Bible in the schools, and native Americanism. The organiza- tion was strictly secret. When any member was ques- tioned as to his possible membership, he declared he knew nothing about the society. Thus the name “Know Noth- ing’ arose. An individual to be eligible to initiation must be a native-born American and “not in any way either personally or by family ties connected with the Roman Catholic Church.” The order consisted of three degrees of glory. The first of these included the great mass of adherents and to them the actual name of the organiza- tion was not made known. The second degree was made up of those members who were considered fit for office in the society. These persons knew the real name of their organization which was “The Supreme Order of the Star Spangled Banner.” The third degree consisted only of those who were thought capable of holding political office in local, state, or national government. The Know Nothing movement, like similar organizations since, reveals the tremendous appeal wh.ch secret orders with their ritual, regalia, and fantastic wordiness have upon us all. McMaster reports that the members “recog- nized one another by signs, grips, pass-words, signals of distress, test questions, and rallying cries.” Any mention of the name of the society or of its activities was for- bidden. When meetings were called or candidates were to be supported, the whole business was managed by the use of curiously shaped or colored papers distributed to members or scattered in the streets or posted in con- spicuous places. Naturally this aroused the curiosity and fear of the general population and doubly enhanced the power of the Know Nothings, just as the masked, clan- destine functions of the present Klan often incite terror in the hearts of innocent people. A letter from Lincoln to his friend Speed, in 1855, fur- nishes an incisive comment on the whole movement. Lincoln wrote: I am not a Know Nothing, that is certain. ... can any one who abhors the oppression of Negroes be in favor of degrading classes of white people? Our progress in degeneracy appears to me pretty rapid. As a nation we began by declaring that “all men are created equal.” We now practically read it “all men are created equal, except Negroes.” When the Know Nothings get control, it will read “all men are created equal, except Negroes and for- eigners and Catholics.” When prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretence of loving liberty—to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and wi base alloy of hypocrisy. In the end, the Know Nothings and their imitators were lost in the great civil strife which engrossed the country after 1860. It r*inained for another century to raise the same old banners over new cohorts with new names. The soul of Hundred Percentism goes marching on. How it comes to this, I shall thout the

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712 The Nation es IV. Nature the Anarchist HE philosophical consequences of relativity are neither so great nor so startling as is sometimes thought. The theory does not say that everything is relative; on the con- trary, it gives a technique for distinguishing what is rela- tive from what belongs to a physical occurrence in its own right. Nevertheless, when the ideas involved in Einstein’s work have become familiar, as they will when they are taught in schools, certain changes in our habits of thought are likely to result and to have great importance in the long run. One thing which emerges is that physics tells us much less about the physical world that we thought it did. Almost all the “great principles” of traditional physics turn out to be like the “great law” that there are always three feet to a yard; others turn out to be downright false. The conserva- tion of mass is one of those that have had to go. Mass used to be defined as “quantity of matter,” and as far as experi- ment showed it was never increased or diminished. But with the greater accuracy of modern measurements this is found to be not the case. One would suppose that if you have four one-pound weights and you put them all together into the scales they would together weigh four pounds. This is a fond delusion; they weigh rather less, though not enough less to be discovered by even the most careful measure- ments. It is only when things can be packed together very tight that the defect becomes noticeable. Four hydrogen nuclei put together in one helium nucleus weigh measurably less than they did before they were put together. The mass of a body has turned out to be a portion of its energy, but not a strictly constant portion. The conservation of energy is not false, but is a result of our conventions of measure- ment and nomenclature, not a genuine law of nature. Tra- ditional physics, broadly speaking, has collapsed into two positions, tautologies and geography. There are, however, newer portions of physics, such as the theory of quanta, which do not come under this head but appear to give gen- uine knowledge of empirical laws. The world which the theory of relativity presents to our imagination is not so much a world of “things in mo- tion” as a world of events. It is true that there are still electrons and protons which persist, but they are to be con- ceived as a string of connected events, like the successive notes of a song. It is events that are the stuff of relativity physics. Between two events which are not too remote from each other there is, in the general as in the special theory, a relation called “interval” which is independent of our ways of measuring; the formula for it becomes a little more com- plicated than in the particular case dealt with by the special theory, but the same kind of considerations apply. This one relation of “‘interval” takes the place of the two relations of distance in space and lapse of time which common sense and the older physics believed in. Strictly speaking, the “inter- val” is only definite when two events are very near together. There are many ways of traveling from one event to an- other; you may part from a friend at Victoria, go round the world and meet your friend at Euston on your return, The A BC of Relativity By BERTRAND RUSSELL he having stayed at home all the time. If your life and };. meanwhile were both divided into a number of little bits a). the intervals represented by these bits were added uy + would not come to exactly the same amount, though i: cases the total would be very nearly represented by the |a; of terrestrial time. If you could travel very much fastey. the difference would become greater. Bodies left to them. selves travel from one event to another by a route wh makes the total interval a maximum, in the sense that » other route not differing very much from the one chosey would give a smaller total interval. But there is not ay one quantity which can be called the total interval betwee, two distant events without regard to the route chosen. |; is only when two events are very near together that there js such a relation as the interval between them. The whole . relativity physics, in fact, is a much more step-by-step mat- ter than the physics and geometry of former days. Euclid’. straight lines have to be replaced by light-rays, which ay not quite straight when they pass near a heavy body like | sun. The sum of the angles of a triangle is still thoug! be two right angles in very remote regions of empty spac but not where there is matter in the neighborhood. Propo- sitions which used to be proved by reasoning have now be- come either conventions or merely approximate truths veri- fied by observation. It is a curious fact that, as reasoning improves, its claims to demonstrative power grow less and less. The collapse of the notion of one all-embracing time, in which all events throughout the universe can be dated, must in the long run affect our views as to cause and effect, evolution, and many other matters. The poet speaks of One far-off divine event To which the whole creation moves. But if the event is sufficiently far off, and parts of creation move sufficiently quickly, some parts will judge that the event has already happened, while others will judge that it is still in the future. This spoils the poetry. The second line ought to be: To which some parts of the creation move, while other parts move away from it. But this won’t do. In the Einsteinian world there is more individualisn and less government than in that of Newton. In Newton’: theory of the solar system the sun is a monarch whose be- hests the planets have to obey. In Einstein’s theory ¢ planets never notice the sun, but adopt the easiest course at each moment, like water running down hill. This is in accordance with what is called the “Principle of Least Ac- tion,” a kind of law of cosmic laziness, according to which every body does as little as it can. The word “dynamic” has come to mean, in newspaper language, “energetic and bustling”; but if it meant “illustrating the principles of dynamics” it ought to be applied to the people in hot cli- mates who sit under banana trees waiting for the fruit to drop into their mouths. It has been customary for people to draw arguments from the laws of nature as to what we ought to do. Such [ Vol. 120, No. 3129 F

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199 june 24, 1925] eV7—_ nerely slavish. But if nature is to be our model it seems nat the anarchists have the best of the argument. The shysical universe is orderly, not because there is a centra! -vernment but because every body minds its own business. two particles of matter ever come into contact; when ‘ey get too close they each move off. If a man were had »» for knocking another man down he would be scientifi- ally correct in pleading that he never touched him. What happened was that there was a hill in space-time in the gion of the other man’s nose and it fell down the hill. The notion of “force,” which used to be prominent in iyvnamics, has disappeared except as a fiction which is some- ‘mes convenient. Between bodies there are occurrences, such as light-waves; we know something of their laws, just 79 much as can be expressed in mathematical formulae, but sothing of their nature. What we know about the physical world is extremely abstract, far more so than people used ‘o think. We naturally interpret the world pictorially, but in fact we only know certain general characteristics of its changes. We do not know what changes, or what are its various states; we only know that changes succeed each ther periodically, or spread with a certain speed. Even rguments seem to me a mistake; to imitate nature may be The Nation 713 now we are probably not at the end of the process of strip- ping away what is merely imagination in order to reach the core of true scientific knowledge. Abstraction is difficult, but is the source of power. A financier can deal in wheat or cotton without needing ever to have seen either; all he needs to know is whether they will go up or down. Similarly, the physicist knows nothing of mat ter except certain laws of its movements, but this knowledge is enough to enable him to manipulate matter. At the end of whole strings of equations which dea] with things whose intrinsic character can never be known to us we arrive at a result which can be interpreted in terms of our own per- ceptions and utilized to bring about desired effects in our own lives. For aught we know to the ntrary, a dynamo may be a colony of souls, as Leibnitz thought. reason to think so, but there no reason to think the opposite. All we know about it is the rules acc: which it produces perceptions in The final con- clusion is that we know very little, and vet it is astonishing that we know so much, and still more astonishing that little knowledge can give us so much power. [This is the last of a series of four articles that have There is no is equally rd ne to ourselves appeared in successive weeks. Emerging Mexico By ERNEST GRUENING [There was no hint of the present strain in Merxican- American relations when the author wrote this series after a visit in Mexico last January, but the articles interpret the present situation. The series will be concluded next veek. | III. Land and Labor N his way back to Mexico to assume office after a three months’ trip abroad, President-elect Calles passed through Washington last November. After luncheon at the White House he was strolling through its grounds flanked by his host, President Coolidge, and by former President Taft. A motion-picture man, eager to record this unique occasion, darted ahead. “A little closer together, please,” he called, as the three—past, present, and future Presidents —came down the path. “Do you think it quite proper,” ex-President Taft said to President Coolidge, “for us to be squeezing Mexico between us in this fashion?” Whereupon all three chuckled. It was President-elect Calles who related this incident to me. I heard an echo of General Calles’s speech to American business men last fall in which he had pointed out that his program of raising the Mexican masses’ standard of living should commend itself to their self-interest. In New Orleans the chairman of a delegation from the Chamber of Commerce addressed him as follows: “Mr. President- elect, I want to say to you, sir, that speech of yours in New York was the most inspiring address I’ve ever read. No nobler idea was ever conceived by mortal man than to raise up ten million people to the point where they got a purchasing power.” And he pledged the support of his organization. As for the great mass of Americans it was they who led the way in a spontaneous development of good-will to- ward our neighbors to the Soutn. Republican platform made intervention imminent. Albert Fall was in the Cabinet. Secretary Mexico what it must do in order to bask in the sunshine of his favor and be recognized. Now no one dreams of discussing whether Calles should or should not be recognized by our State Department. The question then naturally arises, Can President Calles keep on friendly terms with American business and with our Administration and still fulfil his revolutionary pledges? The answer, it appears to me, is in the affirmative He is doing both, and can increasingly do both. The two courses are not only not incompatible—they are actually interdependent. I have pointed out that while the Mexican rev concept which aims to bring about fundamental changes in Mexico is not “bolshevist” in the current use of the word, its translation into reality has been grievously defective President Calles inherits an agrarian mess that is desper- ately tangled. Communities that should have land haven't it. Others have land that is so sterile that it is useless. Others have land but lack the implements and seeds to make it properly fruitful. Still others which do not want land have had it thrust upon them, are not cultivating it, and are furnishing ammunition for propaganda that nv desire land. On the other hand, estates that were furnishing the country much-needed foodstuffs have been damaged productively to the detriment of the entire nation—for Mexico must import at higher prices what she cannot grow. New agricultural activity has been rendered timid not know- ing whether the agrarian reform would follow the be guided by the whims or acquisitive propensities public official. Payment for expropriated land has been Four years ago the Hughes was telling natives law or of some

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714 The Nation made in very few cases. Given the Mexican situation it was a mistake to promise it in the first place, but the dif- ference between promise and performance may be said to be typical. Mexico’s need from the standpoint of every class or group is to have the agrarian problem settled once for all as quickly as possible. In its present chaotic state it is merely a hindrance to progress of any sort. Everyone, including those land-holders whose property is affected, wili be grateful for a prompt settlement of this question, and no one, if the program is carried out properly, need be seri- ously damaged. President Calles’s determination is to settle it, and he is moving as rapidly as he can. He has reorganized the entire Ministry of Agriculture to eliminate politics and fraud. He cannot of course directly control the judiciary, though he is taking steps to raise it above the low level of corruptibility to which it had sunk, or the state governors, though with the latter he has potent indirect methods of exerting his influence. Both judiciary and state govern- ments have been important factors contributing to the agrarian debacle. There is labor. The Calles Government has been spoken of as “a labor government.” It isn’t one, strictly speaking. Organized labor has only one representative in the Cabinet and a minority in both houses of Congress. These facts, however, do not mean much in the present state of Mexican democratic development. The Government is a labor and agrarian government because Calles believes in both movements; because both before and after election he declared himself a candidate of the workers and is de- termined to carry out his pledges of improving the economic condition of the working classes. He has just established a new world precedent by appointing labor attachés to the Mexican embassies in Washington and Rio de Janeiro and the legations in Paris, Berlin, and Buenos Aires. Military, naval, and commercial attachés are now part of the diplo- matic machinery of nations, but Mexico’s labor attachés, whose functions will be both to watch over the welfare of the Mexican worker in each country and to study labor legislation and organization for the benefit of the Mexican Government, represent a significant innovation. Labor has demanded little enough in the revolutionary program, and it has got even less. In the earlier years there was some wild talk stimulated by syndicalists from Barcelona and Italy. Proletarian internationalism was the note. Some Communists drifted in and augmented the con- fusion. Some of them are still at it. A few factories were seized—and given up. The red and black flag became labor’s symbol. The national ensign—the red, white, and green “flag of the three guaranties’”—had guaranteed the toilers only heartbreakingly hard work, long hours, and small pay, with death as the penalty for attempted protest. Now labor marches, cheers, waves flags, strikes often and easily, and enjoys its spiritual release. Yet economically it has got little. It is only partially and with a few excep- tions very loosely organized. The social program outlined in the Constitution of 1917 is achieved only in a handful of places. Wages have increased, but not in excess of living costs. In parts of rural Mexico the daily wage is still twelve cents and a measure of corn. The American worker, though he has gained no political victories, has done far better in the last fourteen years than the Mexican. But in the few places where labor in Mexico has had its way completely it has fared even worse. Vera Cruz — is an illuminating example. The port workers got e¢o»:,,) of the city and became so exorbitant in their charg... pe irresponsible in their strikes (strikes because a official laughed, strikes when a stevedore was caught ¢:¢.). ing and his discharge was demanded, strikes “for ¢,, 1 jurisdictional strikes, strikes over inter- and intra-y, wa politics), so careless of the community’s welfare—ine}\4\,, their own—that they have nearly killed the goose wit}, the golden egg. ; Felipe Carrillo, the martyred governor of Yucatan, tho most sterling figure the revolution has produced, found the same difficulty with the port workers of Progreso, the state's only harbor. He found that their strangle-hold was strap. gling the state. “We should worry,” was their attitude Reason, appeals to revolutionary idealism and solidarity, to patriotism were so much wasted breath. He had deter. mined as a last resort to build another port and man it with Indians from the interior; he had already completed a new road to the coast for that purpose. It should be remem- bered that the “class-conscious” Progreso longshoremen were damaging not a hostile or reactionary administration but the most enlightened, progressive, the most truly revyo- lutionary state government in Mexico. These conflicting problems of the labor movement now confront the Calles administration. Of what good are strikes which are lost? Workers, industry, and nation alike suffer. Of what good are strikes which are won—if the traffic is more than the industry can bear and it shuts down? Of what good is labor control in a certain region or industry if it uses its power so stupidly and so selfishly that the rest of the country has to pay the price? The railroads for instance, the property of American bondholders, taken over by the Mexicans during the early days of the revolution, have been running at a deficit. The railroad men were highly organized—though their organi- zation was badly shattered by the De la Huerta treason and the discovery that many of the leaders were secretly on his pay roll. The organization secured contracts with the Government which included excessive wages, the double time for overtime of Article 123 of the Constitution, and “full crews.” Conductors were not allowed to take tickets— a special category of “auditors” did that. The car shops were run analogously. In a word there were a lot of useless employees. It has been sought to justify this trade-union concept in the United States as a protection against a ruth- less employer, or indeed against an economic system that considers labor a mere commodity. But these A. F. of L. tactics have furnished no defense for the workers when the industry, cracking under the strain, went to the wa!!. In his agreement with the bankers De la Huerta very unwisely agreed that the Mexican railroads should at an early date be returned to the management of their American bondholders under conditions to be arranged. Interest pay- ments on the bonds were resumed with the understanding that should they be interrupted the bondholders could step in immediately and exercise their owners’ rights. The payments did cease, of course, after the De la Huerta rebel- lion, but the bankers’ committee, understanding Mexico's embarrassment, made no move, and the agreement may be said to be temporarily suspended—not abrogated. Mean- while the unwisdom of allowing these national arteries to return to the hands of private foreign capital is apparent. Such a status would inevitably produce dissatisfaction for both owners and workers and greatly increase the possi- 39 hip’y [Vol. 120, No. 3129) Jul -_ wr ol

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June 24, 1925] The Nation 715 jjity of international friction. Mexico should of course wn her railroads. But any move in this direction in- olves the necessity of purchasing them. The par value ¢ the bonds and notes alone exceeds two hundred million iollars. It is highly probable that their holders would sore than welcome the opportunity to dispose of them and nat Mexico could buy on highly favorable terms. But fore Mexico can dream of purchasing the roads they must be made efficient and self-supporting. In the past the Mexican Government footed the rail- ads’ annual deficit. The country paid it also in another way, indirectly, through excessive freight rates. Now President Calles has decided to put the railroads on a busi- ness basis, to cut every cent of needless expense, to pay all charges out of earnings. If the railroad men oppose him he sees himself confronted by the necessity of turning the roads back to the owners. But the men are falling in ine. It is now estimated that one-third of the railroads’ sersonnel can be cut off without impairing the roads’ operat- ing efficiency and that still other economies can be effected. All this wins the applause of business men both in the United States and in Mexico, but can it be doubted that the entire population of Mexico will profit? The same situation affects other industries. Calles made a master-stroke in naming Luis N. Morones, the head of the Confederacion Regional Obrera Mexicana, as Secretary of Commerce, Industry, and Labor. The appoint- ment is a guaranty, were one needed, that labor will receive not only just treatment but fulfilment of the program of economic emancipation just as fast as conditions permit. But Calles and Morones realize today that this fulfilment depends on the natural working out of certain economic laws. I do not mean alleged economic laws which through spurious propaganda rapacious capital strives to maintain in order to justify or conceal vast profits at the expense of its workers. But the last few years in Mexico have shown that you cannot create high wages and short hours by legislation or executive fiat, although these have their uses in indicating a goal to be attained. Article 123 pro- vides for three months’ pay when an employee is discharged. But he doesn’t get it. He doesn’t get it from the federal, state, or municipal government—not one of which would assert that it was not “revolutionary.” The clause is used as a Club to get something, generally much less, from pri- vate employers. And most of these get around it by hiring all their men as “temporary” help. Either the three- months clause is sound and ought to be enforced every- where, and the Government should naturally lead the way, or it ought to be scrapped or modified. The same applies to other social legislation. The present habit of “constitu- tion-waiving’” merely perpetuates disrespect for law, in- creases unrest and uncertainty, and delays real economic progress. In Mexico under the auspices of Morones conferences are under way in the textile and other important indus- tries to see just what their economic situation may be. Can a given industry, for instance, pay higher freight rates for its raw material, more for this material because of de- creased production at home, increased taxes to meet the government’s deficit, increased wages, and the additional cost of hospitalization, pensions, compensation, and other wholly proper measures at one and the same time—and survive? And if it does not survive what becomes of the “Take over the factories,” say the radicals, wage-earn._rs? which, assuming that the workers had the technical skill to run them—which they have not as yet in Mexico—is like expecting a cow to live off its own milk. The deficit will still be there; only the government—which means the whole people—will again have to pay it. So for the first time in fourteen years of revolution we find the Mexican Government worrying about business. And quite properly for the sake of its own revolutionary pledges. And, of course, business is pleased, will be in- creasingly so, will begin reinvesting in Mexico, will again start the wheels of its industries and of new ones turning. It is what Mexico needs—economic rehabilitation, physical reconstruction, an increased national income. But is this dangerous to Mexico? Not in the least. Revolutionary Mexico has established its position both internationally and internally. The Diaz days of ruthless exploitation are gone forever—the days when government troops were at the service of the industrialists to shoot down strikers in cold blood. The defense mechanisms have been fully erected. The issue today is no longer defense but cooperation— to view the industrial problem as a whole, to tace the fact that in this closely linked Western commercial world even a revolutionary regime must be evolutionary, and that the Mexican worker needs specialized education hand in hand with, and as a means to, economic betterment. It is be- coming clear that in the labor movement, as in nearly all else in Mexico, foreign doctrines cannot be imported ready- made and be expected to fit. Mexico’s labor problems have their own very special peculiarities, and their solution will have to be found by experiment on the ground. The C.R.O.M., which dominates the labor movement and will do so increasingly, has already found this out. It has re- tained some of the phraseology of its earlier days and the red and black flag. I expect to see those disappear when the Mexican synthesis, in the economic, as in the racial and cultural field, has progressed further and when the Mexican tri-color really becomes—what it never has been—the oriflamme of a free and united people , P : Contributors to This Issue ROBERT DELL is The Nation’s correspondent in Paris KIMBALL YOUNG teaches sociology at the University of Oregon. BERTRAND RUSSELL’S four articles, The tivity, concluded in this issue, will be published form by Harper and Brothers. ERNEST GRUENING has been Nation and the New York Tribune. EDWARD ALDEN JEWELL wrote The New Irish Crisis in The Nation for April 10, 1924, and The Lost September 19, 1923. . STRONG is an English poet, author A B ( of Rela- 1 , In DOOK managing edits of The Japan, if “Dublin EMIL LENGYEL is a Hungarian journalist. CLIFTON P. FADIMAN was graduated from Columbia Uni- versity in the class of 1925. RAYMOND WEAVER wrote “Herman Melville, Mariner and Mystic.” HENRY B. FULLER is a Chicago novelist, author of “The Cliff Dwellers,” “On the Stairs,” ete. GILBERT SELDES, author of “The Seven Lively Arts,” writes a monthly article on movies for The Nation.

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716 The Nation [ Vol. 120, No. 3194 y

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Gorki at St. Agnello By EDWARD ALDEN JEWELL A. PROPHET without honor in his own land, Gorki—nis i mind still vigorous and keen—has turned to the sun- shine of the South. I found him far from home, living the life of a political exile in the tiny village of St. Agnello, near Sorrento. He was now of course a man well on in years, yet far from old—tall, lean, sinewy, firm. There was power in him, one felt, and there was gentleness. His face was sharp-featured, with a high square brow, salient cheek bones, and deep hollows. The eyes were blue, candid; his handclasp was finely personal. Then he smiled; and some- thing was instantly established between us—something which made me feel I had known him before, and known him well. It was the smile, at once strong and shy and sweet, of a man who has suffered. He would not talk about contemporary politics. For me to’ launch upon the present Government in Russia would therefore be useless—though parenthetically I remembered his having once referred to Rikov as “a genuine Slav type, and consequently a good Maximalist.” I resurrected the word. ‘“Maximalism.” What did it mean? Bolshevism, concerning which a few years ago nobody knew anything at all but about which everybody now talks so glibly, has given place to a new “national philosophy.” I asked him to define it, and he replied at once: “Maximalism is thirst for perfection—a desire to see man, and the world, in perfect, ideal conditions.” I began to understand why Gorki was not interested in “politics.” “The individualist,” he went on, “considering that man possesses as yet only the germs of precious spiritual quali- ties, demands absolute freedom for the development of these qualities, disregarding the interests of social character and acknowledging the state only so far as it secures this abso- lute freedom of thought and action for the individual. V. Rosanov, a disciple of Dostoevski, says: ‘After committing a crime, and therefore sinking amid his surroundings, the criminal, in one particular way, rises above them.’ This is the maximalism of an individualist which entirely exhausts the psychology of modern rulers of the world, with their mad intoxication with power. “The socialistic point of view,” Gorki continued, “has been expressed by Dostoevski in his famous ‘Legend of the Inquisitioner.’” The Inquisitioner, having locked Christ up in prison, asks him: ‘Is it that you value alone some ten thousand great and strong men, while the other millions, numerous as the sands of the sea, are merely to serve as material for the great and strong?’ “In this question lies buried the source of the struggle between the ‘called’ and the ‘chosen’; between the lord, who knows no limit to his power, and the slave, who is tired of slavery. Both these maximalisms, taken at their sharpest edge, are forever irreconcilable. They will always be the crux of the struggle between man and society. And all the horrible compromises which develop are capable only temporarily of lessening the tension of the strife. “Besides,” he pursued, “to my mind these compromises are much more a proof of weariness than of a genuine growth of social wisdom. For the class struggle, which is, at its heart, the struggle of individualism and socialism, has acquired already a stormy character. It is clear, there-

— fore, that neither fascism nor such organizations as thg ew Ku Klux Klan can aspire to any really lasting success.” and “Do you mean,” I asked, “that these ‘compromises: you call them, are at war with what scientists and phijos. ophers term the sociological plan—a plan which humanity, iAn ag without realizing it, follows through the ages?” lail “I look upon them,” he answered, “as attempts to }), ck jprio the way which history has predestined for humanity to ¢,), |8™ low on its journey from the anarchy of capitalism to mora s0r perfect forms of life. Obstructions such as these cannot and permanently stem the turbulent course of events. At tha |‘? core of things they only help to revolutionize the macec< lval and, convincing them of the righteousness of violence, pre- we pare unpleasant days for the violators. 1400 “Let me repeat. To my mind, the class struggle is fog “alt by the eternal urge toward individualism, toward the free. wh) dom of individual development. Life will be all the more |" beautiful, wise, and inter. Lav esting as people aspire i work for their individyalj- the zation.” Rus It here occurred to me the to ask what position Tolsto; | °°” would likely have taken, | '28 had he lived, as regarded the Russian Revolution. ; “Tolstoi? He would | ™ of course have adopted a negative attitude toward the the social revolution of 1917, just as he had done the -in 1905. But there is | Fa equally no doubt that this attitude would have altered Id

\ nothing in the course of the \ the revolt of the masses. anc wo ae ay The domain of social mat- 7 ters abounds in the most hac MAXIM GoRKI monstrous crimes; but it nov admits no miracles.” me “Are there in Russia today many who still subscribe rep to Tolstoi’s principles?” not “There never were many ‘Tolstoians’ in Russia. Nor cen did they ever exert much influence.” “Out of this insurrection of the masses, is a new aris- tocracy likely to arise or has autocracy vanished forever?” “The old aristocracy,” Gorki answered, “has indeed wr gone. A fresh type is now evolving. Not,” he quickly added, “an aristocracy of the nouveaux riches, but one of pre spirit.” lat “What part are Russian women playing in the new We culture?” q wo “A very great part. And as for their share in the political life of the country, that is exemplified by such his- wr toric names as Sofia Perovskaia, Vera Figner, and Vera wh Sassulich Breshko-Breshkovskaia, who lives at present in ty Czecho-Slovakia and works on a Russian paper, Dui, pub- Ba lished in Berlin.” or “Is this great new vitality you speak of a direct out - ile

come of revolution?” I inquired. “The growth and development of individuality is 4” ev uninterrupted process. Revolution increases its speed, thereby accentuating its necessity. The growth of indi- ° ° ° * ° ° aff aft viduality in Russia is further witnessed by the dozens 0!

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S tha o> 310g June 24, 1925] The Nation 717 jew names which have emerged in the realms of science ind literature.” | had recently read in one of the Naples papers a com- nent by Gorki on the young literary movement in Russia. sn astonishing number of brilliant novelists and poets, he laims, have arisen from the lowest class—a class which orior to the revolution was inarticulate. A war veteran |.amed Soschenko has written a book of short tales which ‘orki describes as a work of startling vigor, full of color snd profound psychological insight, “telling much in small space.” There is also a working-man named Vsevolod lyanov, Whose volume entitled “The Blue Sands” paints civil var @ Siberia with “consummate artistry.” Another isborer, Kasin, has revealed himself a really great poct, “although he knows but imperfectly how to read and write’; while Leo Leuz, the son of a humble apothecary, has pro- voked “passionate discussion” with his drama “Outside the Law.” Interestingly enough, however, Gorki told me, the “young” literature of Russia, if essentially an outcome of the revolution, tends to follow in the footsteps of the older Russian writers. “It embraces reality, remembering always the true traditions of the race; never glorifying the actual ‘conditions of life, but seeing them as they are, and treat- ‘ing them with what at times appears an excessive criticism.” With the achievements of the Moscow Art Theater in mind, I asked what special qualities make Russian actors today perhaps the finest on the stage. Gorki’s reply proved the reverse of what I had expected. “Your question surprises me. I do not agree with the thesis. The greatest artists of the stage, such as Salvini, Facconi, Duse, Tina di Lorenzo, Talma, Sarah Bernhardt, Mounet Sully, Possart, and Irving, were not Russian; and I do not know what Russian artists I would name with these—except Mockalov and Shchepkine, both long dead, and Ermolova, who nowadays is rarely seen on the stage.” Talk turned to Gorki’s own literary production. I had seen it somewhere stated that he was at work on a novel of which the scene is laid in England. Could he tell me something about it? With a trace of amusement, “The report, I’m afraid, is untrue,” he answered. “In fact, I am not writing a novel at all—that is still to come. I have re- cently finished a book of short stories.” “Which do you consider the best of your books?” “My best book? It has not yet been written.” “Whom do you look upon as the greatest living writers?” “There are two wonderful writers in Europe at the present moment, Romain Rolland and Knut Hamsun. The latter’s books, ‘Growth of the Soil’ and ‘The Women of the Well,’ are the most perfect productions of the art of the word that have appeared in the last twenty-five years.” All his life Maxim Gorki has been engrossed in the written word. In his memoirs we see him a young student whose passion was books—who read everything from Mon- tepin to Gogol, from Pushkin to Beranger, from Scott to Balzac, from Dickens (his special idol) to the Goncourt brothers. “Books revealed to me the immensity of the earth. They beautified it with great and noble cities, with pleasing women, with men exemplary both in good and evil—heroic men. The more I read, the more my empty and useless life became unbearable to me.” On the way to the door, remembering that I had heard of Gorki’s fondness for fishing, I turned to inquire if that the favorite pastime of this gentle prophet and exile. Again the unexpected retort. “I don’t really care for passive conditions of any sort. In one of my last stories it is said of the hero: ‘He liked fishing. This occupation, better than any other, allows a man to forget who he is and where he is; helps him to avoid wondering what he is there for.’ But I have no desire to forget who I am or where I am, and I am not afraid of wondering why I am here at all.” In the Driftway DEBATE raged in the French Senate the other day which showed again what a supremely civilized people the French These legislators, realizing the relative unimportance of such matters as the national debt or the trouble with the Riffs, spent an hour and a half discussing Roquefort cheese. The manufacturers of the cheese of Gruyeére had tried also to manufacture the genuine Roque- fort, that cheese which Pliny praised as a Gallic delicacy and which has appeared in more than one king’s charter which sought to protect its rights. Such an impositi: not to be tolerated; Roquefort was Roquefort. are. NM Was * * * * * HE Drifter does not propose to join the argument Roquefort is certainly Roquefort and should remain so; but, on the other hand, there are times when Gruyere offers more of felicity than its maligners would have on: believe. Gruyere belongs in that class of yventle, soothing, smooth cheeses which, with something equally mild to wash it down, is a perfect prelude to an evening’s conversation. The Bel Paese of Italy is another, and the Drifter’s favorite Port du Salut a third. With any one of these the climate softens, and life takes h n Roquefort is sometimes a little brash, a trifle pu i ~~ ~ a] 4 na rosy anc color. li ing and insistent by comparison, and besides it has to be mixed with butter to make it just rig ind that takes time and strength. It takes less time, however, than to dig out from its marble-like shell a cheese of Holland whict has been allowed to wander too far from its native heath— say to America. In Edam the Drifter has he uses the word advisedly—of smooth, vé He has passed warehouses where round cheeses inted the thousands stood in rows on the shelves. With the mem- ory of this happiness green within him, he has been so mis- taken as to buy an “Edam” cheese in America, and whe: he has, with the aid of knife and hamm very sharp hatchet, succeeded in dislocating a piece « top, he has spent hours prying futilely at the incorrup* insides with ice-pick, pen-knife, or any other handy instru ment that was both sharp and heavy. The result, a few poor scrapings that flew out from time to time, was far from the Edam cheese of his dreams eaten hunks low sunshi: er, or preferably + * ¥ * * HE Drifter does not like to be arbitrary, but in tro- vertibly the Swiss cheese that in America from skimmed milk, with the consistency of rubber (although supposedly the counterpart of Gruyeére), is fit only for a door mat and should never, on any condition, be taken into the human stomach. There is a time for all cheeses: spring for green sage; after dinner for Pont l’Evéque or Gorgonzola; any time in the world for the altogether delec-

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718 The Nation table Petit Suisse, rolled up in its neat paper. But for a rubber door mat—never. Those persons who like the above- described Swiss cheese also are fond of tripe and onions. They have specially constructed digestive systems which can also take care of ten-penny nails, bits of match sticks, coffee grounds, and bones. They gnaw bones and then they crack them and eat the marrow. The Drifter is certain that each of his readers has seen such a person at one time or another. They pretend to be human like the rest of their fellows, but in reality they are not. They are specially contrived machines to whom the digestion of a sheet of rubber, is no trick. They encourage the production of a vitiated and vicious product which has undersold and put out of business our earlier and better cheeses. They ought rather to support the cheeses of, say, Connecticut, where every old house had and has still its enormous, heavy cheese press; they would taste something really delicious and would not encourage a domestic article which would be better off under foot. THE DRIFTER Correspondence Georgia and Evolution To THE EpiTor oF THE NATION: Str: In Miriam Allen de Ford’s article in The Nation of May 20, “The War Against Evolution,” occur the following statements: “The Georgia legislature recently held up an appropriation for maintenance of a State library on the avowed ground that books on evolution might be found there.” “Bills against the teaching of evolution in State-supported schools are about to be presented in Mississippi, Georgia, etc.” Miriam Allen de Ford has been misinformed, or has based her first statement on ill-considered rumor. The appropriation for the maintenance of the State library in the Capitol at Atlanta (and this is the only State library of which I know) has been passed every year as a matter of routine. The chief librarian, Mrs. Maude Barker Cobb, who has been in charge of this library for many years, is given entire liberty in choice of books, and as far as I can discover after consultation with the Speaker of the House there has never been any discussion of the theory of evolution in connection with the appropriation for the State library or the purchase of books for this library. As for the second statement, it is impossible to predict at this time whether or no the anti-evolution bill will be brought up in the legislature of this State this summer. Such a bill was recommended last year, but such a prompt and vigorous fight was put up against it by the Columbus Enquirer-Sun, the Macon Telegraph, the Savannah News, and the Atlanta Constitution that it never came before the House. If it should be revived this year, these same papers, I believe, may be counted on to fight it again. Certainly I can vouch for a determined fight against it on the part of the Enquirer-Sun. It is true that there are many things awry in Georgia, but the State should not be saddled with offenses of which it has not yet been guilty. Columbus, Georgia, June 2 JULIA COLLIER HARRIS American Loans and European Policy To THE EpDIToR OF THE NATION: Sir: The comment of The Nation in its issue of April 22 on Count Karolyi’s statement in Canada is just as disappoint- ing as the speech itself. Why is it necessary to account for the gag by the fact that the Hungarian Minister’s wife was Gladys Vanderbilt or that there was insidious propaganda con- ducted over tea cups, or even by the expulsion of the Karolyis) from Italy? And what hope can there be in appealing to +), bankers, as Count Karolyi did, to abstain from lending to the Horthy Government because that government may start a War to recover territories inhabited by Magyars? Just peruse, please, as not entirely irrelevant, the follow. ing list of loans to Hungary and the three neighbors agains whom she may war that have been floated in Americg: i 1. Hungary: Sinking Fund 7% per cent Gold Loan of 1924. 2. Jugoslavia: Secured External Gold 8 per cent Loan of 1922. Seven-Months 6 per cent Treasury Gold Notes of 1994 Six-Months 6 per cent Treasury Gold Notes of 1995 (offered as recently as March 27). 3. Czecho-Slovakia: External 8 per cent Loan (Series A) of 1922. External Sinking Fund 8 per cent Gold Loan (Series RB) of 1924. 4. Rumania: 5 per cent Sterling Treasury Notes of 1920. 4 per cent Consolidation Loan of 1922. 4 per cent External Loan of 1922. Almost $100,000,000 of American investments are involved here. Would the bankers countenance a war among Hungary, Jugoslavia, Czecho-Slovakia, and Rumania, even if Hungary in post-bellum Europe did not find itself far inferior in size, population, and resources to any one of its foes, not to speak of an alliance of all three of them? And is not a democratic idealist like Karolyi merely a disturber of the status quo and not an aid to American investors at a time when one loan (that of Jugoslavia) is being consummated and the sinking fund for the redemption of another (that of Hungary itse)?) has just begun to be accumulated (since February 2, 1925)? New York, April 20 Louis SILVERSTEIN Politics in Macedonia To THE EpiITor oF THE NATION: Sir: I have read with interest the letter of Mr. Kisselint- cheff which appeared in your May 153 issue. Mr. Kisselintcheff says that “‘no split exists in the Macedonia organization.” The absurdity of this statement must be apparent to anyone who has read the daily papers for the past year. During this time numerous leading Macedonians have been assassinated—and by whom? By Macedonians. Since when has fratricide been a symbol of harmony? There are two well-defined organizations working for Macedonian independence, and, furthermore, there are many Macedonians who do not belong to either faction but are working just as hard toward the same end. In a letter signed by Mr. Kisselintcheff and published in the New York Times of May 10 he states that the Macedonian Organization of the United States and Canada, with its offices in Indianapolis, is “free from any revolutionary ideas and inten- tions,” while in the letter published in The Nation he acknow- edges the leadership of the great revolutionist Todor Alexan- droff. If Mr. Kisselintcheff stands for an independent Macedonian state, I would suggest to him to take to heart the attitude of the United States toward war, murders, revolutions, or any kind of violence, and to advise the organization for which he is the coun- sellor to say plainly and definitely to those Macedonian patriots abroad, as Ambassador Houghton has said to the European chancelleries: “Bury the hatchet and its animosities, and unless this is done we are not going to give you any kind of help or sympathy.” New York, May 29 GEORGE PIERRE DE GHITZINE [Vol. 120, No, 3199). i | kK pre: i enc hou wall Los’ ider mat sug wit and F Tin

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Books and Plays ™ A Song By L. A. G. STRONG You, I tell you, you Have never walked in dream, Nor any treasure brought Under the secret beam And rafter of your thought, But I went beside you: Believe it, believe it, Never can you hide you, Never, slipping through My soul’s fine mesh, Elude me, surprise me, So tenderly I weave it. Turn your head away: Nay, I hold you now— And keep the only stay That I have not denied you. Here, flesh to flesh, Let all men witness how You baffle and despise me. First Glance IN his recent essay on Edith Sitwell, Edwin Muir had | much to say about the monotony which is inevitable \'n the poetry of a mystic. For the mystic will see, or fail ‘) see, one thing and one thing only; and nothing will induce him to sing of another subject. It is interesting, ‘hen, to find Mr. Muir a mystic in his volume of “First Poems” (Huebsch: $1.50), and to observe that he holds with remarkable purity of purpose to a single theme. This theme, or rather the image for it, is light—the light that once lay over the world and now is not to be seen there save in rare, surprising moments. Mr. Muir begins, as mystics often do, with reminis- scences of a childhood wherein light came strong and fine. |He recalls “the still light on the sand” below his father’s ‘house; the air was clear and tranquil then, and the child }walked “in joy.” But the title of his second poem is The | Lost Land, and all of the poems which follow lament the loss Of something that will not come again. Even his identity with that youth who played on sunny hills is a matter of doubt. It was not I from morn till noon who went The white road’s length to the white noisy town So many years ago. That light is spent, And he who saw it long since fallen down. ss occasion he can remember the “bright and fearful presences” which filled his infant days, and random gleams suggest if they cannot bring back a scene that was solid with brilliance. Light now is only something which comes and goes along the edges of a world tortured by thought. For the earth is dumb and emoty, and no weight, Save the shut sky, curved steep, a stone-smooth tomb, Weighs on it, and no ground upholds its great Load of tired land and sea save empty doom. Time now stands still, and space, the silent monster, has no meaning. Matter shuts us in between landscapes that leer at us like sphinxes. I think of thousand-citied, distant races, The hieroglyphic silence of old places Our listening makes more taciturn and strange; Of oceans, deserts, rivers, forests, mountains, Seen but by vacant night, incurious day; Deserted temples, palaces, gardens, fountains, Left lying like wrecks of interrupted play. Why in our lonely, swiftly-ended passion Should we o’er such gigantic pathways move? Stretch featureless space around us as a fashion, And feel the fathomless tides of hate and love? We know not Him Who stretched in rapture o’er us Mystery and Beauty; and with fear is fanned Our trembling memory of the hour which bore us, And shut us ’twixt the bastions of the land. Our limbs locked, our eyes chilled, we stand and stare at what is not to give us comfort; we shall never be at home. The tiny cries of distant men, marching along white roads and entering houses, come clearly up to us; yet they are alien to us, as we to them. Mr. Muir says more than this—I have not spoken of the two extraordinary poems Betrayal and Grass, or of the six ballads at the end—but I think he says at least this. It is no slender accomplishment. Readers of his rather stiff, old-fashioned quatrains will have to feel either that he has done a great deal or that he has done nothing at all. Which is as much as to say, he is a poet. MARK VAN DOREN Count Karolyi’s Memoirs Fighting the World. The Struggle for Peace. Karolyi. Albert and Charles Boni. $6. [* is only occasionally that a cry of despair interrupts the harmony of this first volume of Count Michael Karolyi’s memoirs. The author is conscious of the superhuman task he is facing. His impulsive nature and the memories of his suf- ferings in exile drive him now and then to recriminations and expressions of bitter hatred; but he soon becomes aware of his historic responsibility and slows down again to analytic nar- rative. Nevertheless, for one who reads this book without rancor and with no preconceived ideas as to the author’s sub- sequent activities, it must appear an intensely human document; an outward reflection of the soul of one who believed in an idea, fought for it, and gradually became conscious that inevitable historic determinism had marked the object of his aspiration to an early doom. This gives to the book its tragic undertone. Two considerations were foremost in Count Karolyi’s mind, he tells us, when he was opposing Hungary’s prolonged par- ticipation in the World War. Because he regarded the Mon- archy’s ultimatum to Serbia as unjust and provocative he could not believe that the war on the part of Austria-Hungary was defensive. As a pacifist he was therefore bound to fight it. Secondly, he feared that if Germany should win Central Europe would become a “single enormous barracks.” Hungary would be at the mercy of both Germany and her virtual vassal, Aus- tria. The alternative was not alluring, either; but at least it promised social progress because “the Entente was fighting more and more under the banner of ‘Democracy’ and was de- fining its prime object in the war as the destruction of mili- By Count Michael

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720 The | Nation [Vol. 120, No. 3199 tarism. ... This belief was strengthened when President Wil- son proposed, not only to the world but to the Entente Powers, a greatly conceived, detailed pacifist program.” Such was the key-note of Karolyi’s wartime policy. It is not for the present generation to decide whether or not Count Karolyi’s line of argument was sound. But it is certain that at the time he embarked upon the execution of his peace program some of the Monarchy’s most representative men were not averse to letting him make his experiments. One of the piquanteries of the present volume is the descrip- tion of Count Ottokar Czernin, Foreign Minister of Austria- Hungary, as a promoter of his peace missions and a silent partner in many “ideologic revolutions.”” Count Czernin, our author tells us, had his fits of pacifism mostly when the Mon- archy’s armies were facing an ordeal threatening them with destruction. As soon, however, as the Monarchy overcame the crisis he hastened to disavow Karolyi’s unofficial peace overtures, The imperial tragedy on which the last curtain was rung down in Madeira elicits deep sympathy from Count Karolyi. Several times he had been summoned to audiences by the last wearer of the crown of Saint Stephen, King Charles, who, feel- disaster, cast everywhere about for an avenue of escape. “The new ruler took every opportunity of declaring his pacifist views,” says Karolyi. Often he would endorse Karolyi’s views as to the means of securing a separate peace. But then he would suddenly realize the consequences of his opposition to the court camarilla—anxious to go jusqu’au bout—and would back down, humiliated. Other writers of contemporary Hungarian history have already brought out the fact that the October revolution had come wholly unexpected and that its so-called leaders had not the faintest knowledge of its imminency. Professor Jaszi, in his “Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Hungary,” and Wil- liam Boehm, in his “Kreuzfeuer Zweier Revolutionen,” speak with much amazement of the spontaneity of the revolution. Count Karolyi, too, declares that he was completely taken back by the news of its outbreak. “We did not want to size power; we wanted first to organize our forces,” he says. On the first night of the revolution Professor Jaszi assured Sigismund Kunfi, the leader of the left-wing Socialists, who was lying sleep- less beside him on the floor of the Hotel Astor: “We shall probably all hang at dawn.” “I expect so,” Kunfi answered. “These young officers have gone too fast.” What made Karolyi join the ranks of the malcontents? With his immense wealth and his social standing he could have, in due time, captured the highest public offices in his country. If anyone could have been expected to be satisfied with the existing social order it must have been the owner of the second largest entailed property in Hungary. He enumer- ates the reasons of his conversion. He charges Count Stephen Tisza with having destroyed his political past. Tisza’s handling of the Hungarian people and the Parliament provoked his bitter criticism and shook his confidence in the ancien régime. Only a people’s Parliament could remedy the situation, he ing the impending declared. The national cause must be identified with demo- cratic aims. When the war came, what Professor Jaszi calls Count Karolyi’s natural and ingrained tenderness of heart came into play. The suffering he had witnessed in war-swept Central Europe swayed him into the camp of militant pacifism. Much of the later animosity against his stewardship was directed against an allegedly weak and sentimental touch in his admin- istration. And finally, a harmonious married life is accounted by Count Karolyi as a co-determining factor in molding his adhesion to democracy. The tribute he pays to his wife makes one of the most arresting chapters of the memoirs. “She began to become the criterion of all my activity, for I felt that that alone was right which won the ready consent of her pure, strong, young heart ...I felt how my marriage helped the better side of me to win through. ...I owe her much; the courage to be myself. It was largely, perhaps mainly, due to her that I achieved harmony between my };; ee ie and my principles.” % EMIL LENcyr, | Novels by Two Brothers Ducdame. By John Cowper Powys. Doubleday, Page Company. $2. Mr. Tasker’s Gods. By T. F. Powys. Alfred Knopf. $2.59 S old, as strong as the summer sun is the theme of 4 “Ducdame,” dealing as it does with the ineluctable influenc, which the dead exercise upon the living. The problem of the continuance of the House of Ashover in the county of Dorset, England, is objectified by showing an exhausted aristocracy which has substituted for the calm and easy vigor of centuries of noble ancestors a fatal emotional sensitivity, corroding eroticism, a fatigue of soul and spirit that strug. gles in vain against the unspoken commands which issue fron the graveyard and the tomb. The story, slow-moving, perhaps too deliberate in tempo, catches in its convolutions Rook, Lord of Ashover, a sufferer from the withering cerebral detachment that seems to have established itself as an integral element in the modern novel: Lexie, his diseased brother, clutching with a satyr’s eagerness at all the manifold colors and forms of the life so surely ebbing from him; Lady Anne Gore, primitive with that bru- tality which ever distinguishes the complete patrician, bent on bearing a child to Rook; Netta, Rook’s mistress, loving simply, without motive, submerged finally in the decadent complexity of the Ashover love-moods; and Nell, shadowily drawn, the victim of a yearning for romance. Against the craving for life, ever more life, that bursts out of the regal Anne, the wasting Lexie, and his monomaniacal mother, set the more vivid Chillingworth-figure of Nell’s husband, ¢ Reverend William Hastings, hermit, metaphysician, and no- sayer in whom works madly some dark drive toward extinction The fascinating material which Mr. Powys has dredged up out of his memories of England and the consciousness of his family (much of the novel is obviously autobiographical) does not, however, appear to have nerved him to the profound effort it really demands. A tale of this kind should be impregnated with two things—passion and wonder, both to be struck from the contemplation of that terrible struggle waged between living beings who are drifting to death and ghosts who with subtle power penetrate into the land of the living. “The Re turn,” by Walter de la Mare, is a masterpiece of this genre; “Ducdame,” while consistently interesting, is a piéce manqué. Mr. Powys’s grip on his characters is intermittent; he vitiates the organic strength of his story with purple patching; some- thing perhaps of the decadent weariness that flows through Rook Ashover has entered its pages. But two things of beauty thrust “Ducdame” forth from the ruck of contemporary novels: first, tne tender and daring treatment of the love between Rook and his brother; and sec- ond, the swiftly evocative rendering of various aspects of nature, of rain, dampness in the air, starlight, the movement of water, the delight of flowers, country smells and noises, moods of sun and air and earth. It is to be regretted that this finely poetic sensibility must be admired as a quality rather distinct from the book itself. The fire that makes for fusion and splendor does not blow through it. To turn to “Mr. Tasker’s Gods” is to step into another and radically opposed cosmos. The scenes of both books are laid in Dorset; the resemblance ends there. To the strange mind of Theodore Francis Powys the spectacle of the fine but withering flower of English aristocracy would pose no prob- lems that are not anachronistic or intrusive. His world as projected in this novel (for it is a world that he describes, no lille iThe the | ovel | prel | gen to k stor | res) an we hu up pa mc

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© her rnapg (EI -) 129 7 the other hand of men and women of a une 24, 1925 ] The Nation — story that he tells) is compact on the one hand of goatish ergymen, lecherous old women, and brutish patricides, and simple Tolstoian iness. These latter people seem lit by an interior sun; they e highly simplified Prince Myushkins made intelligible at all 1 Essentially this book is an ndy of the varieties of religious experience. time 1ate gods of the men and women with whom Mr. Powys is et pr In Mr. Tasker’s case these gods are pigs. The »yerend Turnbull and his sons believe in a god who furnishes ;em with comfortable church livings and the opportunity for ixciting encounters with servant girls. To Neville and Molly | Henry, on the contrary, God is a mystical giver of calm. jThes y spoke of religion rather as an aged housekeeper would have spoken, with great dignity and quiet and peace.” Out of \, he T seed play of these twin forces of moral indignation and systical fervor have arisen Mr. Powys’s five published vol- mes. “Mr. Tasker’s Gods” is the finest of these. For the arthly, gnomelike humor which characterized “The Left Leg nd “Black Bryony” there has been substituted a teralness of statement which is as biting as vitriol and as insing as carbolic acid; and this is applied to the most un- tterably horrible incidents (and what a genius he has for nventing them!). The time has surely come for T. F. Powys’s great gifts to more widely recognized. There is prophecy in him, and ich indignation, and a knotted, ugly wisdom. It is difficult to understand why he should be characterized as a “nasty writer,” or he is almost surgically clean-minded. In him is that pain- ‘y] uprightness of soul that distinguished his favorite author, ohn Bunyan. It is this very fury of moral salubrity that ‘rives him, as it does James Joyce, to delineate a universe of she septic. While it removes him irrevocably from the Fran- ‘ean tolerance which is now for some of us beginning to feel 9 tepid and literary, it furnishes him with an inhuman, bur- tished clarity of objective vision. Only the soft-skinned will avil at the result. Genius travels many strange roads. Mr. ?owys, bearing his own light with him, treads a unique and ‘ascinating path. CLIFTON P. FADIMAN ironical contribution to the It examines the ” caustic Petrarch the Individual The Life of Solitude. By Francis Petrarch. Translated with an Introduction by Jacob Zeitlin. University of Illinois Press. | igre is a beautifully made, substantial, and forbidding vol- ume. Except to scholars, Petrarch is in his grave; and to the quick he has long been well dead. The title of the book, more- over, must sound foreign to this age; and to any Protestant nose it must smell monkish and medieval. Yet even the most com- jprehensive ignorance cannot annihilate the fact of the long generations of conflict and agony which have brought the present It birth; and the “Life of Solitude” is one of the neglected mile- | stones along the line of march toward individual liberty and self- respecting integrity of the human spirit. The importance of Petrarch’s book appears only when it is read in its historic context, and then it is revealing of a man, age, a civilization. It must be seen against its medieval background, and in relation to Petrarch’s other works. And this is the splendid service performed by Mr. Zeitlin’s comprehensive and informing introduction. When Petrarch was born, Europe was sick. According to Aristophanes there was in the beginning a race of humans with four legs, four arms, and two heads—a race of astounding might and insolence. Of such insolence, indeed, that the very gods were instigated to drastic surgery. Each of these original humans was cut in half, and since then the race has been made up of fragments, mere halves of people, each insufficient and pathetically searching for its other half. Aristophanes was moved to exhort all men to piety lest through further disobedi- we be split up again and suffer the catastrophe st fear Aristophanes proved ence to the gods of a universa!] quartering. In this la himself a major prophet. For with the failure of nerve that marked the death of classical civilization divorce was made between body and soul, and the human mutilated, with the guilt of original sin, was cruci and the will. Man was torn bet and the Devil; heaven and earth; the soul and state; the contemplative and the active life. founded fron each man in his orthodoxy declared to be founded on th: spirit, disinherited, and blackened fied between the members God chureh ween a double allegian body; ethics and the was without—dict that on obedience to dictates ates word of God. Commanded to love his neighbor as himself, and taught despise himself, he projected his self-accusations upon his fellow-men and was obedient in perfect hatre Petrarch, born to this inheritance, rebelled. Not all the fulminations of the Martyr nd the | joctors ‘ould uite 1 y i liking f or wholly overwhelm him with guilt becau ly humanly what they were. The weight of org : was against him; yet he never quite succeeded in nvincing himself of his errors. True, he did his best to believe that the herd judgment, as against his own native impulses, was right; and by a most persuasive rehearsal of the medieval point of view, in volume after volume, he tried to convert his unassent ing heart. Therein he was the spokesman of his age, and his contemporaries awarded him the widest acclaim. By no hypo risy in his own nature, he was most famous for those writ nys he least believed. His “De Remediis Utriu-que " example, the most popular of hi rope, has now not a spark of real vitality; but it was trans- didactic works throug it Eu lated into all the principal tongues of Christendom and enjoyed an enormous v que for centurie I nreality of er formance was declared by Petrarch ! elf in a letter of | old age in which, while complacent over the success of his work, he admits that personally he had never proved the efficacy of the remedies he had proposed. As for the austere pieties and higher reaches of the j to strive to attain. He contritely professed his weakne , and this without great agony of self-debasement. His was a nature to suffer doubts in any age; and it is but natural that with the mystic vision, these he never pretendec law and prophets against his personal intimations he should suffer long and deep misgivings. But to the end he had the cour- age of his weaknesses; therein lay his sanity and h trengtt In temperament and essential healthins f spirit very similar to Montaigne, he fell upon evil times. And his colossal vanity but bespeaks the need he felt for some bolstering of self-assur- ance in an age when a man was unique in Christend m dared defend his right to his personal tastes and inclinations against the concerted authority of the rest of the world. “The Life of Solitude,” now translated for the first time into English, is such a defense. As Mr. Zeitlin has introduction, Petrarch’s work follows a long line of disquisitions by ancient moralists and Christian doctors on the relation the duties of the active life to the ideal of contemplat Whether from the point of view of philosophy or of religi two were treated by the predecessors of Petrarch as mutually indispensable ingredients in the composition of the perfect life But in Petrarch we become aware of ided departure the traditional attitude. There is the old confusion of tenden- cies, the old medley of ideals; yet it is not difficult to distinguish between the vivid revelations he makes of a sincere menta tude and the avowal, however sincere, thought. His purpose, beyond lip-service to much conventional sentiment, was to celebrate the beauty and delight of a life of leisure, retired from importunate worries and interruptions, and devoted to reading, literary creation, peaceful brooding, and the society of a few chosen friends. In his attitude there of Horace and Epicurus than of the Christian moralist or mys- tic. He alleges frankly a greater interest in himself than in his neighbor—“We know,” he says, “where a well-ordered charity a dec of an accepted mode of more

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722 The Nation [ Vol. 120, No. 31: begins”; and in his retirement from the world he is interested more in self-realization than in abnegation. Specifically, soli- tude is recommended as meeting the needs of the student and the man of letters, and particularly of that student and man of letters known as Francis Petrarch. The argument takes shape finally not as a counsel of perfection to be generally applied but as a vindication of the right of one man to regulate his life ac- cording to the disposition and humor with which nature has endowed him and without any reference to the claims of his fellow-men upon him. At the present time “The Life of Soli- tude” has little beyond a historic interest. But that it has emi- nently. Elsewhere Petrarch gives fuller expression to nis indi- vidual emotions, elsewhere he goes more deeply into the analysis of his moods; but in the “De Vita Solitaria” he comes closest to announcing in philosophical terms principles which have gov- erned the expansion of the human intelligence in Europe since his day. RAYMOND WEAVER Mr. Egan’s Best By Maurice Francis Egan. George H. Doran Com- Recollections of a Happy Life. Introduction by Henry van Dyke. pany. $4. HIS amiable composition begins pianissimo with a picture (painted con amore) of unpretending life in the Philadel- phia of the fifties; continues in Washington with a similarly vivid pictures of life in the early seventies; gives glimpses of a few academic years in the Middle West; rises in pitch during a decade of diplomatic experiences in Copenhagen; climbs to a climax during the turmoil and uncertainties of the World War; accomplishes a graceful diminuendo through a season or twe of retirement and ill-health back in America; and reaches its end but a few months before the writer’s death. Thus this life not only was “happy” but was allowed to become complete. The volume is full of charm and interest for the general reader. In particular it should serve as a valuable handbook for any American intent on a diplomatic career in the Old World. Mr. Egan was active as a sort of amateur diplomat in Washington for some years before taking actual official rank abroad; being much in “les coulisses,” as he is fond of ex- pressing it, he had some opportunity to understudy his part before beginning a real performance in full public view. He had other advantages; he seems to have possessed from the start a decided slant teward gentility and a keen appreciation of the good things of life. His pages yield an unabashed pres- entation of enjoyment in food and drink. Such items were fortunate, since the ambassador and ministers congregated in the Danish capital were sharps as to wine and were not to be put off with anything less than the best. Also a fur-lined overcoat was necessary if one expected to hold one’s own against the glory that was Russia and the grandeur that was Great Britain. A good third of the book is given up to pre- war diplomatic society: an absorbing, even compelling matter, if one is in it, yet a barren affair if one is out. Among our minister’s minor experiences were the negotia- tions for the purchase of the Danish West Indies. As neither England nor France liked the idea, a slow, wary, circuitous approach was necessary before the sale could go through. Even more ticklish, perhaps—for the absurd is a dangerous eremy to official prestige—was the situation produced by the advent in Copenhagen of Cook, the “discoverer” of the North Pole. Mr. van Dyke pronounces Mr. Egan’s treatment of Dr. Cook to have been strictly and diplomatically correct. Our representative claimed no exact scientific knowledge, accepted the conclusions of the Danish authorities, and joined in the welcome to the wonderful explorer from Brooklyn. “At the time,” says Mr. van Dyke, “he could not have done less. Later,” he adds shrewdly, “I guess he was glad he did no more.” Mr. Egan writes throughout as a conscious Catholic. In- deed, both with the University of Notre Dame, at South p., and with the Catholic University of America, at Washingt, he was employed as an instructor of Catholic youth. py; hi was a liberal mind, and he could look at things with the eya of a man of the world. His pages show a strong sympathy with Archbishop Ireland and with the idea of adjusting Cathe olic practice to American needs. Discord within the churcly was largely due, he sees and says, to “the attempt on the part of many sincere people to apply outworn and inapplicablg methods in a new country.” But the best things in the book are neither diplomatic nog ecclesiastical. Mr. Egan has cast an alert, genial glance oyep the wide and varied field of a developing America, andj thg multitude of small matters touched upon, almost incidentally, depict our general social advance. Philadelphia in its pre. war simplicity, Washington in its post-war crudity, Indiana in its democratic rusticity, New York emerging from its agg of innocence—these are some of the phases of the national |ifa that we are enabled to reconstruct. Mr. Egan’s last book— the end of the long list of writings that fills a concluding page —is his most valuable and his best. HENRY B. Futier Books in Brief Beggars of Life. By Jim Tully. Albert and Charles Boni. $3. No leisurely Arcadian mood informs this tramp avtobiog- raphy. It contains no dreamy vagabonds reclining beside purling brooks extolling the poetic and philosophic advantaves of the gipsy trail. Instead the tramps are fighters and strenu- ous train-riders, boozers, dope-fiends, and thieves. The writer dredges the lower depths with neither cynicism nor sentimental- ity; he is content merely with vivid pictures and stirring action. The narrative covers his early years as “road-kid” an, “blowed-in-the-glass stiff,” introducing the reader to various typical tramp characters. One, Oklahoma Red, is the most picturesque of these. Two women who figure in the book, Edna, a seductive prostitute, and Amy the Beautiful Fat Girl, are more sharply drawn than any of the men. Many incidents stick in the mind. The amusing horseplay of the Kangaroo Court is one of these, and the adventure of the tramps in the burning boxcar. Then the author’s wild ride across the country on the roofs of express trains, his body consumed by fever, his brain beset by hallucinations, is not easily for- gotten. “Beggars of Life” is a genuine hobo document, an interesting contribution to a growing body of literature dealing with a unique phase of American life. Sun Yat Sen and the Chinese Republic. By Paul Linebarger. The Century Company. $4. The title of this volume arouses fake hopes. It is over twelve years since Cantlie’s biography of Dr. Sun appeared, and the great and far-reaching events in which the Chinese leader has since taken part would amply justify a new estimate of his share in the making of the Chinese Republic. But Judze Linebarger almost ignores this later period. He has gathered some new material on Dr. Sun’s youth and has then drawn largely upon his own imagination. The resulting volume is 4 gesture of devotion to the author’s hero, but it can make no your claim to consideration either as critical biography or as history Men Seen: Twenty-four Modern Authors. By Paul Rosenfeld. The Dial Press. $2.50. Mr. Rosenfeld continues to paint the portraits of radical contemporaries. Your Voice and You. A Practical Application of Psychology ‘ Singing. By Clara Kathleen Rogers (Clara Doria). Boston: Oliver Ditson Company. $1.75. More singing and less psychology would have made a bet'er combination. The psychology is of the inspirational sort. The practical advice to singers is excellent. June ow Amer nore f the grou! wise. perm) pe Frent graph comiy archi stud) of u stuff AnI face Men a li Alth expe him the dedi Nar ) ito 1 mys to | acct fres this ven fea! cult

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The Nation June 24, 1925] imerican Homes of Today. By Augusta Owen Patterson. The Macmillan Company. $15. The title is misleading. “Show Places” would have been yore appropriate. But such a title would suggest, on the part of the author, a critical understanding of the sociological back- ground of architecture in America. This Mrs. Patterson yisely does not claim. Her code of architectural aesthetics rmits acceptance of a baronial hall on Long Island, a Swiss ‘illage for farm buildings in Rhode Island, and a formai french drawing room in a Pennsylvania suburb. The photo- graphs, the meat of the book, would furnish a less superficial commentator with excellent material for a study of domestic architecture since the Mid-McKinley Renaissance. © ’ Washington Irving, Esquire: Ambassador at Large from the New World to the Old. By George S. Hellman. Alfred A. Knopf. $4. Because of the many new documents which it contains, this study of Irving the lover, the ambassador, and the gentleman is of unquestionable value; but between its handsome covers is stuffed a great deal of fatuous writing. An Introduction to the Study of Heredity. By W. E. MacBride. Henry Holt and Company. $1. An amputated and anemic textbook with the advances of the last ten years left out and the technical terms in black- faced type left in. A glance at general biology, a glare at Mendelism and mutations, a squint at statistical methods, and a lingering gaze at the inheritance of acquired characters. Although the author has not tested this veteran slogan by experiments of his own, his energetic support of it distinguishes him from most other biologists and has singled him out as the one English-speaking scientist to whom Kammerer could dedicate his recent volume. Narcissus, an Anatomy of Clothes. By Gerald Heard. E. P. Dutton and Company. $1. To preserve one’s humor along with a scientific attitude; 'to be learned and laughing at the same time; to attack the mysteries of evolution with keen eyes and tongue in cheek; to be master of a smiling and satiric dignity—these are rare accomplishments. It is by virtue of their rarity and delightful freshness that Gerald Heard is able so merrily to sail through this wise little book without pedantry. Whether he is uncon- ventionally castigating the Greeks because facing life they feared death, or praising the early Cretans because their culture produced corsets, or commenting upon the fact that the eross-barred patterns of primitive carpentry still persist in the clothes of “such backward people as the Kelts,” or tracing a clear and iconoclastic path through the costumes and cultures of the Middle Ages (which he sees, without a halo, as merely one of many human phases), or prophesying he day when self-conscious humanity will evolve out of clothes and finally out of bodies, Mr. Heard is always clear, always interesting, always a master of the delight of the unexpected. One need not agree with either the analysis or the conclusions to enjoy the ever-present stimulus. Early Connecticut Artists and Craftsmen. By Frederic Fair- child Sherman. New York: Privately Printed. $7.50. A check-list of colonial and early nineteenth-century work- ers in twenty different crafts. The volume is slight in bulk, and contains the minimum of commentary; but it will prove convenient for amateur and professional collectors of old silver, ivory, wood, glass, pewter, iron, brass, and paper. By Clement Wood. E. P. Dutton and Com- Poets of America. pany. $3. Taking a running start through Poe, Whitman, Adah Men- ken, Lanier, Emily Dickinson, and a few others, Mr. Wood devotes three-fourths of his space to our contemporaries. As history his book is spotty and inconclusive, as almost any other is always dog- matic, frequently It is only occasionally lucid; Mr. Wood writes like a prophet, crypti- cally, and does not stay for an answer. Had he pruned his text of its rhetorical flowers his opinions would be better worth debating. The Comic Touch in the Movies By GILBERT SELDES [* there is one thing our producers of movies hold certain it is book on the subject would be. As criticism it provocative, and seldom convincing. that their patrons want comedy. Not “comedies,” be- cause the great producers look down on the slapstick of the One would have thought, then, movies, but the comic touch. or, and that that to provide this would be their endless endeay they would have studied all the ways and means of producing smiles and laughter. I have already noted the light touch in King Vid duction of “Proud Flesh”; it is a further pleasure to record that Malcolm St. Clair, director of “Are Parents People?”, and James Cruze in ‘“‘Beggar on Horseback” both managed to keep most of the comedy issuing from the characters or the plot In the former the other type of laugh was also created, the gag laugh, interpolated into the run of the picture without regard to either of the natural sources, and exactly as effective as a gag laugh in the theater; a young man, walking barefoot through his darkened room, steps on peanut shells. In “Zander the Great,” with Marion Davies doing excellent light comedy acting in spots, the real comic scenes were the wholly irrelevant ones in which a group of bandits got their hair cut. In “The Desert Flower” Colleen Moore’s talent for comeay was not utilized and the laugh laid right into the frying pan. I do not know whether the movie actor Alice Duer Miller’s original story; as “Are developed on the screen he had a definite place in the action, since his attraction for the heroine was to r’s pro- came from an egy which a hen naracter In People?” Was ac Parents create the serious plight intended to bring her parents to a reconciliation. There fore the long scene in which, to the boredom and amazemer of the mother, he insists upon acting out his favorite role was humor of situation, enhanced by the misunderstanding of the husband who sees him making, as it appears, love tot wife. There was a sufficient amount of hokum humor in this picture, but with the help of Florence Vidor and Adolphe Menjou it was often translated into humor of character. Ir deed the director’s only failure in the picture was his handling of Betty Bronson, who became famous in “Peter Par She is an extremely attractive young girl, with a gift of ; antomime quite unusual; but I was unhappy to note that already she is being allowed to imitate other screen actresses and to do the conventional, and by now inexpressive, thing “Beggar on Horseback” was a big job for any director not that it is wrong material for the screen, for on the ¢ side the rapid change of scene and the dream fantasy on the spiritual side are both perfect film stuff. But the trick-drear which is only an excuse for not following a theme to its con- clusion has spoiled the audience, and the lack of fantasy ir most of our films has not prepared them. So mu credit, of course, to Cruze and to Famous Players for “Beggar on Horseback” appear very much as it apr the stage. The pantomime was wisely shortened; fi: scene in which the hero recognizes that the bars behind which he has labored are no barrier was played, but—I do not know why—the meaning was left obscure. The trouble with film “Beggar on Horseback” is that the part before the dream was far too long, and a grave mistake was made in making the Cady family fantastic before the dream begins. Mr. Cady sells stock by the half-million before the dream-—one would have thought a smaller number would do; and the Cady house, which is to be changed into the architectural orgy of the dream, wr rc . ettineg letting eared or the fine the

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is an orgy all by itself—comically true to the de Mille mil- lionaire houses in all other movies. The technical stunts in the dream were excellent. Almost all these scenes were played on what seemed to be a platform existing without support some- where in the air; off these platforms people with superb noncha- lance disappeared into the void. The parade of the waiters made a quite satisfactory ballet effect, and the coming and going of the small crowds were mad and effective. The set- tings, and some of the movement, suggested “Caligari,” of course; but after one has wondered publicly for five years why no director has taken the lesson of “Caligari” to heart, one In fact, Cruze’s adaptation seemed to me extremely good and, considering that his public so violently objected to the original, extremely daring. “Beggar on Horseback” is being shown in New York un- der a shower of apologies. The producers know it is good and would like to have it succeed; they must know that the movie has to branch out eventually. So there is a spoken play pre- ceding the picture, and in the same satiric tone; the advertising has been seductive, and the electric signs warn you a hundred times that this isn’t what you think a picture is. For that reason, perhaps, it comes so near to being what you think a does not complain. picture ought to be. Drama Summary II EERE can be no question that the best new plays of the T past season were all by native dramatists. No American, to be sure, has ever written anything so good as, for example, “The Wild Duck”; but nothing sent us for the first time this year from England or the Continent was comparable to “What Price Glory,’ “They Knew What They Wanted,” “Desire Under the Elms,” or “Processional” in freshness and power. None of these plays resembled the other, none save the last could be said to imitate any particular European school; and yet each, in addition to being eminently actable, possessed qualities which gave it an intellectual interest. Behind the four plays were men of quite diverse temperaments who were yet alike in that each, though possessed of considerable technical com- petence, obviously regarded the theater not as a complicated game but as a means of expression and that each, alive to the intellectual life of the times, was able to make a contribution to it. War, vagrant passion, and Puritanism are eternal phe- nomena, but a living literature is one which is engaged in the general process by which such things are constantly revaluated from the point of view of the age; and each of the plays men- revaluation. None could have been ago, and yet now so accordant of the times as to audience to comprehend and to acclaim. Probably all critics would agree that the best of the season’s plays is included in this list of four, but there is room for a legitimate disagreement in the attempt to assign pre- eminence to any one. The Pulitzer jury gave its prize to “They Knew What They Wanted”; the largest measure of popular success has probably been accorded to “What Price Glory”; but without denying the great merits of either I should be inclined to consider O’Neill’s play as the most fundamentally important. It is obviously not so “well made” as the first of those just mentioned, nor is it externally so striking as the second, and its long run, partially the result of the advertising which the District Attorney accorded it, does not indicate a popular approval equal to that given to either; but it is the most powerfully original of the three. Whatever its defects may be, whether or not it correctly represents either the New England dialect or the superficial manifestations of New Eng- land character, it reveals an imaginative grasp upon an alien philosophy of life which endows it with a vigor not matched such a ten mood undertook even tioned each is find an written here years with the The Nation [Vol. 120, No. 319g)

in the American drama outside the works of its author. contemporary writers have pictured with derision or amaz ment the Puritan creed in action, but no other has so comp)... caught its fervor or exhibited its mainspring. Accust medi through life to hardship only, O’Neill’s central charactor ;.. come, as from his experience he well might, to see God as one who delights in tribulations; and he worships in the only appropriate way by mastering the difficultjo< Jthem hagl

ch eflyy A Nis God 4 sets and by imitating the dourness of his spirit. The lacth a great speech of this character, in which, broken and defeate | a he justifies himself by comparing his own character with thell we character of the God whose ways he has so long observed, “a hat prophesies the ultimate defeat of those who, turning fr mi Phely his ways, seek ease in a world which the Creator has madep #24 hard, rises to magnificent heights. Writing a play which js. in jesse a way, a glorification of those whose passion defies the Puritan $$0¢ God, O’Neill has nevertheless given Puritanism one of its great. he s est spokesmen—a magnificent figure risen from the gray. ‘J ssut tell an alien generation what spirit moved its ancestors and vith how they generated the fierce exultation which seems to oon so magnificent and so terrible. wip Like all works whose chief virtue is their power “Desjro “d Under the Elms” was not pleasing to all people. It drive: Nor home its points with such vigor that they cannot be dismissed, estal and its flavor is so strong that it cannot but seem either bit. who terly stimulating or violently distasteful. To me it is the res most admirable play of the year, to others it is doubtless the Vise most hateful; but our judgments are not, for all that, so very Vige discordant, since the difference between us is more a difference om of temperament and philosophy than of literary judgment. Lore No other play could stir us to so warm an admiration or so Mir passionate a dislike. The three new productions of the week call for but little + comment. At the Fifty-second Street Theater a visiting group dole from Washington is giving for a series of special matinees a ishe pantomime, “The Bird Cage,” which has some moments | Pepe charm. At Daly’s a revival of “Charlie’s Aunt” lasted jrepe long enough to demonstrate that this famous farce is still, | in spite of the fact that it is neither witty, original, nor credi- — ble, genuinely laughable. “Spooks” is a commonplace mystery | anit farce in which Grant Mitchell is appearing. atl JOSEPH Woop Krutcu vane the ——— — troll [- 0 THEATRE 0 | | | self _ —_ lam just : = ticiy R S : Holbroo Judith Empire _ & y_ BLINN ANDERSON os : B’way, 40th § the : in Eves. at 8&8 wit} i. C H “THE DOVE” Matinees We : and Sat. A C i By Willard Mack of t E 22 | diffi S S : j fe C : “7 - DIE S Lyceum | The - S ; ieeake West 45th gro O E: OF THE a, a 6 app 5 S| EVENING” meee od ARTHUR HOPKINS presents - “WHAT PRICE GLORY” | mer A new Play by Maxwell Anderson and Laurence Stallings trol PLYMOUTH THEATRE terme Ge ursday and Saturday fur

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all /group.... International Relations Section ° ° = — Education in East Africa FRICA is at present revealing itself to Europeans as A a land which must be dealt with in a scientific rather yan a haphazard manner. Darkest Africa is becoming the normal Africa of economic wealth, beautiful scenery, and yman potentialities.” It is in this spirit of friendliness ‘hat there has been carried out under the auspices of the Phelps-Stokes Fund a study of the sociological, economic, snd interracial conditions below the Sahara. Dr. Thomas ‘esse Jones, who was the chairman of the commission, was ssociated for nine years with Hampton Institute and made he study of Negro schools in the United States which was ssued in 1917 by the United States Bureau of Education. Vith him on the commission to Africa was James Emman ‘wegyir Aggrey, a native of the Gold Coast who had served ‘or many years as a professor at Livingstone College in North Carolina and is now on the faculty of the recently established Achimota College on the Gold Coast. Others who served on the commission include Dr. James H. Dillard, president of the Jeanes and Slater Funds; Major Hanns Vischer, formerly Director of Education for Northern Nigeria and now secretary of the official British Advisory “ommittee on Native Education in Tropical Africa; C. T. Lloram, member of the Native Affairs Commission in South Africa; and the Reverend Garfield Williams, educational ecretary of the Church Missionary Society. The British Jolonial Office created the Advisory Committee and estab- lished Achimota College following the commission’s first report in 1923. The following excerpts are from the official jreport: | The broadening conception of cooperation is revealing both inew units of collaboration and the possibilities of still other units that can participate in the opportunity to develop a conti- nent and its people. In the earlier periods of colonization there were the European governments to control, the traders to exploit, the missionaries to offer salvation, and the natives to be con- ‘rolled, exploited, and saved. The right to determination and self-expression advocated in behalf of all peoples, often to the lamentable extremes of license and futility, has been largely justified in the recognition of the right of all at least to par- ticipate in the processes of their own salvation and development. Thus the natives are gradually being allowed a place in the scheme of things. Public opinion is shifting its approval from the method of working for people to that of willingness to work with them. Recent years have witnessed an increasing colonial interest of the people in the “home” or western countries. It would be difficult to exaggerate the value of this interest to the sound and effective development of Africa and other parts of the world. The motives have varied from time to time and from group to Nowhere is the evolution of human society more apparent than in the growing determination to extend the areas of fair play, the “square deal,” and the differentiated contribu- tions of other peoples. .. . THE MANDATE SYSTEM Still another unit of cooperation came dramatically into the colonial world through the mandate system of the covenant of the League of Nations. The full significance of this remarkable unit is only beginning to be understood. Through this arrange- ment even the conceits and conventions and authority of a con- trolling nation may be scrutinized and tested according to the standards of the charitable mind, seeking the good of all and furthering the selfishness of none. The British Government, the largest of all colonial Powers, has officially proclaimed that: “As in of trusteeship for the natives, no less than in the mandated ter- LU gand: P tectorat nk ' ( t rip le _ ganda tf rotectorale, sv in ncnya MODY, Like pralle pat 17. 9» unasSalliabie. Humanity wil! of Tanganyika, is This is the Magna of colonial policy. ritory Charta upon the realization of this fundamental principle throughout the colonial w« British French Africa, Belgian Africa, Portuguese Africa, and Italian Africa must all pass the in the service of Africa and increasingly insist rid. Africa, examination if they would remain Africans. Nor will the world remain indifferent to conditions in Abyssinia and Liberia even though they have a measure of self- determination. The only self-government that can be perma- nent is good government. Trusteeship, mandates, and inde- pendence are equally answerable to the tests of human welfare. THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA The most recent possibility in cooperation for Africa is that of a country ‘ike the United States of America, a nation with no governmental responsibility, much less a right to participate in any African movement, and yet with many potentialities that could be of great value to the country and the people. Already the educational experience of America has been cordially wel comed by colonial vovernments, missions, economic groups, and native Africans. The school activities organized in America needs are of for extensive rural areas with their vast agricultural obviously more like those required in rura! Africa than those urbanized Europe. The emphasis on the training of the masses of people widely distributed in America has its significance for the schools for the masses in Africa. The educational responsibility of America for more than ten million people of African ancestry, living as neighbors in a very real sense, has given to the United States one very intimate interest in Africans not as yet fully understood either ir America or in Europe. IN THE AFRICAN COLONIES However worldwide may be the distribution of the forces of cooperation, the center of collaboration must be in the Afr colonies. The supervisory interest of the League of Nations; the public opinions and legislations of European peoples and parliaments; the altruisms, philanthropies, and educational ex periences of America must ultimately find expression and rea zation through the colonial government econor organizati missions, and native life of African areas. Statistically the elements of population are in striking contrast with each othe Numerically the European and Asiatic groups are in every ce: negligible as compared with the great people. In authority and influence the Europeans are deter mining factors in every area except Abyssinia. Even in tha’ inland empire their influence doubtless far exceeds the outward forms of government. The Asiatics have made a substant contribution to colonial development in East Africa, and their influence is among the permanent factors in East African lif Reference to the paragraphs on European influer masses of the native colonial chapters reveals the remarkable achievemen‘s go" ernments and the noteworthy activities of settlers, organizers, and commercial agents... . Kenya Colony, with about 2,500,000 natives, 10,900 Euro- tive peans, and 36,000 Asiatics, is at present midway in its na policies between the tropical areas and Southern Rhodesia and South Africa. Every effort is being made to train the natives for skilled occupations. The natives have both the advantages and dangers of a vigorous, capable, determined European popu- lation mastering the natural resources by the machinery and methods of a progressive civilization. There are also the Asiatics, three and a half times the number of the Europeans, who are bringing to the Africans their Asiatic heritage of tra- ditions, characteristics, bartering and ] ll, and commercial ski numerous other influences too difficult to understand The

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meeting of the Occident and the Orient in Kenya, with the native masses at present largely on the side-lines of the game, seems to typify much of the immediate future of East Africa and stimulates excursion of thought into the more distant future of that remarkable country. Hitherto the influences and even the competitions of the two groups have been much more of help than of hindrance to the African millions. There is adequate ground for wonder and possibly even for anxiety as to future developments. Certainly there is a vital need for statesmanship to assemble the multitude of facts and to order them into poli- cies that will command the approval of international justice and guarantee the goodwili of the civilized world. THE UNION OF SOUTH AFRICA The Union of South Africa is far and away the most inter- esting and significant unit of possible cooperation in all Africa. In some respects its potentialities are more real and arresting than those of even such great colonial peoples as those of Great Britain and France. That a million and three quarters people of Dutch, British, and other European stocks now inhabit and control the most potent part of all Africa is stupendous in its meaning. The future of East Africa cannot be understood without a real appreciation of this impressive fact... . If South Africans can surmount the narrow appeals of class and race, if they can believe that the differentiation of race should be the basis of respect rather than of hatred, if they can follow the example of the Dutch missionaries in Central Africa, they will realize their destiny and become a determinant of far- reaching significance not only to East Africa but also to the Southern Hemisphere and possibly to the vital cooperations that must ultimately develop between the Occident and the Orient. RECOMMENDATIONS To prepare the African natives for their part in the cooperative plan which the report recommends Dr. Jones outlines a basic educational program related to the obvious needs of a backward people rather than based upon the formal conventions of the Oxford and Cambridge tradition which still dominates education in the British colonies. In place of the usual pedagogical nomenclature he lists four essential “simples” of education for the African natives. These are: (1) health and sanitation to counteract the appalling infant death rate and the general high mortality; (2) training to make effective use of the physical resources through agriculture and industry; (3) imparting an under- standing of the decencies and safeties of the home to a popu- lation which herds with its fowl and domestic animals around the central fires of one-room huts; and (4) healthful recreations and amusements to replace the sexual orgies which undermine the physical and moral well-being of the various tribes. The machinery recommended for making this curriculum effective is largely based upon the develop- ment of the Hampton-Tuskegee idea of education as per- fected in our own South. It is pointed out that the great bulk of the education must be supplied by the small “bush” schools started in the villages by natives who have received their inspiration and a smattering of knowledge from the central mission schools. Teachers for these outpost schools must be more adequately trained and then must be encour- aged and helped by visiting teachers in much the same way as the Jeanes Fund teachers support the regular teachers of our own rural schools for Negroes. At the same time the Educational Commission recog- nizes the need for training native leaders to meet and work with the leaders of the various cooperative units from the outside. This training Dr. Jones would provide by estab- lishing higher schools at points geographically strategical,

sinking political boundaries and denominational lines for ; he greater good of adequate provision for collegiate and gradu ate education. Manifesto of Chinese Professors MANIFESTO has been issued by the professors of tha Government University of Peking, giving an aceoyn: of the outbreak of the disturbances in Shanghai on May 30. This statement differs greatly from the newspaper accounts received in this country. According to the New York World it has been corroborated by several missionaries and edyca- tors who have declared the police unjustified in firing. The manifesto is reprinted from the World of June 10. The tragedy which has taken place in the internationa! settlement of Shanghai has filled the Chinese Nation with horror and indignation. However, facts have been invariably distort by different agencies for different purposes. Seeing that misrepresentations would not only aggravate the injustice done to the dead and the living but may alsw tend to ferment other grave conflicts between the Chinese and for- eigners, we feel it our duty to give the facts for the information of the world at large. Those who think with us that inter. national harmony and justice are desirable will not fail, we trust, to pay due attention to the matter. The facts are clear enough. Strikes of Chinese workers, demanding increase of wages, had been going on for some time in the Japanese cotton factories at Tsingtao and Shanghai, and a striker was shot and kil'*< by the Japanese without any justi- fiable cause. Against thi brvial act some Chinese students, who were merely young boys id girls, paraded as a manifestation of protest in the streets of Shanghai on May 30 last. They were armed with nothing more than pamphlets and handbills. The police of the international settlement, which are prac. tically under the complete control of British officials and consul, not only saw fit to prohibit the demonstration but also arrested a number of the students taking part in it. Then the rest of the students went to the police station demanding the release of their fellow students. The police ordered them to disperse. As they refused to go, a British police inspector ordered, “Shoot to kill.” Six of the boys were killed on the spot and over forty were seriously wounded. This did not, however, prevent the defenseless stu- dents from repeating their demonstration, so the firing of rifles and machine guns continued by the British-controlled police for at least six days. The exact number of casualties is still unascertainable, but most reports show that at least 70 were killed and 300 wounded. They are all Chinese and not a single British or any other national appears on the casualty list. Would any right-minded people regard these boys and girls as rioters and treat them to rounds of machine-gun bullets? Could their manifestation be reasonably interpreted as “ foreign” or “Bolshevised,” as some foreign-owned news agencics suggested? Were not the acts of the authorities deliberate'y committed, considering the fact that they did not cease for 4 period of six days? Why did not the British and Japanese Min- isters in Peking give instructions to stop the killing immediate'y if they did not approve or countenance it? These are the questions we want only to submit and not ‘9 answer. The people in Europe and America might think ‘ unbelievable that officials of civilized governments could ever commit or countenance such infernal acts, but explanations can be easily found if one realizes that foreigners in China have |on¢ been privileged by stipulations of unjust treaties and thereby have lost such sense of moral and legal responsibilities as thr fellow-men hold in their home lands. Now bitter feelings prevail among al! classes of the Chinese » antle [Vol. 120, No. 3194)

H T" he F ormi epub he ct 1 princi Exple of the RSFS Sovie prole' aboli: cia state and natio to tl depu All-] in tl cons from pror opin capi all 1 pap! ante asst Sov and ant

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{ the ’ 30. Ints orld ica- The nal Tor ate nd or- ion er- Wwe “june 24, 1925] The Nation ~] te ~j

— Strikes in British and Japanese factories and boycotts gainst British and Japanese goods are spreading throughout * patrons The ministers and consuls of Great Britain and apan are still trying and may continue to try to uphold their -estige by their rifles and gunboats, but would their fellow-men - home allow them to go on with this kind of atrocities? Would ot the common conscience of mankind demand to have the ongdoers punished and the wrongs righted? PROFESSORS OF THE NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF PEKING nle. €0} A New Constitution for Russia HE Twelfth All-Russian Congress of the Soviets held T in Moscow early in May adopted a new constitution for +e Russian Socialist Federated Soviet Republic in con- ormity with the new status of the RSFSR as one of the epublics making up the USSR. The basic principles of he constitution are embodied in the following preamble: 1. The present constitution of the RSFSR is based on the srinciples of the Declaration of the Rights of the Laboring and Exploited Masses adopted by the Third All-Russian Congress of the Soviets and on the principles of the constitution of the 2SFSR adopted at the Fifth All-Russian Congress of the Soviets; it has undertaken to guarantee the dictatorship of the sroletariat with the aim of suppressing the bourgeoisie, of ibolishing the exploitation of man by man and of establishing gcialism under which there will be no class division and no state coercion. 2. The Russian Republic is a socialist state of the workers and peasants which is built on the basis of a federation of national soviet republics. All power within the RSFSR belongs to the soviets of workers, peasants, red army, and cossack deputies. 3. The supreme authority in the RSFSR is vested in the All-Russian Congress of the Soviets and, between congresses, in the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of the Soviets. 4. In order to insure for the toilers actual freedom of conscience the church is separated from the state, the schools from the church, and the liberty of religious and anti-religious propaganda is recognized for all citizens. 5. In order to insure for the toilers actual freedom of opinion the RSFSR abolishes the dependence of the press upon capital and transfers to the working class and the peasantry all technical and material means for the publications of news- papers, pamphlets, books, and other printed matter and guar- antees their unobstructed circulation throughout the country. 6. In order to insure for the toilers actual freedom of assembly the RSFSR recognizes the right of all citizens of the Soviet Republic freely to organize meetings, processions, etc., and places at the disposal of the working class and the peas- antry all premises suitable for public gatherings. 7. In order to insure for the toilers actual freedom of association, the RSFSR, which destroyed the economic and political power of the propertied classes and thus removed the obstacles which hitherto in capitalist society have prevented the workers and peasants from enjoying freedom of organiza- tion and action, helps the worker and peasants to unite and organize, 8. In order to insure for the toilers effective access to _ knowledge the RSFSR sets before itself the task of providing |

them complete, universal, and free education. 9. The RSFSR recognizes work as the duty of all citizens of the republic. 10. In order to safeguard effectively the conquests of the great workers’ and peasants’ revolution the RSFSR recog- nizes it as the duty of all citizens of the republic to defend their socialist country and therefore establishes universal mili- tary service. The henorable right of bearing arms in defense of

ca > > ™ PD PY r mr >) . ~~ OS ~\ DD ‘4h , att — * fh, fh, th rid gti, fee 4 (4. al “al ewe 7 “ww —_— 4 — ~~ ell, a oom 2! Hi All é mat ervey Allen’s A D i. rs ie Z| | Earth Moods |= Lt,| —~ | Ad Le T will require but the reading of ~- pe A ww Ze | a few pages of ‘Earth Moods’ to a — convince one that in Mr. Allen is met | = — - 4 — a poet of great breadth of thought |= ‘ : At — coupled with unusual strength and |c~ — originality of expression,” said Percy | g Wherever Books Are Sold, $2. 7y wf, — <2.| Harper & Brothers, Publishers |< i), | . ws See Harper's Magazine for Announcements ad — of the Better Schools and Colleges. ent = } ~ | As, D Jb, fb De . fh) th, Ld, fd, 2, Le - ! JUST PUBLISHED | By J. A. SPENDER ! t A brilliant discussion of international affairs of the last half century and of the “great’’ who have attained prominence in public life, written by the | famous student and authority on British politics. | The political structures of England, the United | States, France and other countries are penetratingly examined. Readers of Lord Bryce’s “The Ameri Commonwealth” will find this book equally thoughr- provoking. | Two volumes, $10.06 | Publishers FREDERICK A. STOKES CO. New York }

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728 The Nation [ Vol. 120, No. 31: the revolution is accorded only to workers. Non-working ele- ments are to be given other military duties. 11. The RSFSR extends all the rights established by the constitution and legislation of the republic for the citizens of the RSFSR to the citizens of all other soviet republics residing in the territory of the RSFSR. Recognizing the solidarity of the workers* of all nations the RSFSR extends all political rights to foreigners working within the territory of the RSFSR and belonging to the working class or to the peasantry and not employing hired labor as provided by the resolutions of the supreme authority of the USSR. 12. The RSFSR grants the right of asylum to all for- eigners persecuted for political activities or religious convic- tions. 13. The RSFSR, recognizing the equality of all citizens, irrespective of race or nationality, declares it absolutely con- trary fundamental laws of the republic to institute or tolerate any (direct or indirect) privileges and any suppression of national minorities or the limitation of their equal rights; it recognizes the right of separate nationalities to form, upon decision of their congresses of the soviets and confirmation by the authority of the RSFSR, autonomous socialist soviet republics or provinces. The citizens of the RSFSR have the right freely to use their mother tongue at congresses, in court, ans, and in public life. The national minorities right of instruction in their own to the supreme in administrative org are insured the languages in school. 14. In the general interests of the working class the RSFSR deprives individuals and separate groups of any rights which might be used by them to the detriment of the socialist revolution. 15. All lands, forests, underground mineral wealth, waters, as well as factories and works, railways, waterways and air transport, and all means of communication are declared the property of the workers’ and peasants’ state on the principles regulated by special laws of the USSR and by the supreme authority of the RSFSR. CAMP TAMIMENT, FOREST PARK, PA. Make Your Vacation Reservations Early. The Camp In the forest and of the forest on the shore of Lake Tamiment, this camp has set a new standard, inaugu- . rated new methods, established a higher plane. The Food and camp enjoys an enviable reputation for delicious Housing food. It shelters its guests in 90 “tent-bungalows” of logs with curtained sides. Sport Fifteen Tennis Courts, Handball Courts, Basketball, SP $s Baseball, all water sports, daily “gym” class, saddle Dances — horses. Mailly Hall, with fully equipped stage ac- Dramatics commodations for five hundred persons, is used for dances and other diversions. P , Among the lecturers for 1925 are August Claessens, ectures V. F. Calverton, Clement Wood, Herman Epstein, Marius Hansome, Isabella Kendig, Vernon Loggins. CAMP TAMIMENT New York Office: 7 East 15th Street TELEPHONE 3094 STUYVESANT THE LATEST DUTTON NOVELS Victory By LEONIE AMINOFF Fifth in the Torchlight Series, which, by a succession of por- traits of Napoleon against detailed backgrounds, are producing a panorama of the greatest historic value. $2.00 The Rational Hind By BEN AMES WILLIAMS, author of “Evered.” A powerful story of how love and pride of family may become its greatest menace. $2.00 Lorenzo the Magnificent An authentic “western” by DANE COOLIDGE Exciting adventure in the famous sheep-and-cattle war on the borders of New Mexico and Texas. $2.00 E. P. DUTTON & CO., 681 Fifth Ave., New York Specially Inscribed and Autogranho, Copies of LA FOLLETTE’S Autobiography Opportunity Is Limited O many pe ple have written the Magazine for ay autographed volume of Senator La [uj- lette’s Autobiog. raphy that a plan has been formulated to comply with such requests. Of course, the number of copies necessarily will be limited. But for the time being Senator La Follette will spe- cially autograph to each friend order- ing a serially num- bered copy of his autobiography. Those desiring autographed copre should send tn their orders at once. Miss Zona Gale the distin guished American authoress, says that this “Auto- biography will be a storehouse of treas- ure to the student of politics.” Dartmouth and other colleges and universities use La Follette’s Autobiography in their classes. Six editions have been published. Each inscribed and autographed copy will be a keepsake every progressive American will treasure. Price of Autographed Book, $2 Prepaid Or, if you will send $2.50 today we will extend your present subscription to La Follette’s Magazine f one vear and send you prepaid an Tlebeapbed volume. THIS IS A RARE OPPORTUNIT\ Address, LAFOLLETTE’S MAGAZINE, Madison, Wis. e When writing to advertisers, please mention The Nation June (ih)

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31: ) June 24, 1925] The Nation ec | 4 | if | | Th, for prospective Nation readers. Next SIXTIETH week ANNIVERSARY articles and ISSUE letters verse and drawings by: Sinclair Lewis H. L. Mencken Carl Van Doren Henry R. Mussey Zona Gale Ludwig Lewisohn Oswald Garrison Villard Art Young Hugo Gellert Bertrand Zadig Countee P. Cullen Max Eastman R. F. Dibble | H. W. Nevinson i . John A. Hobson Harold J. Laski Bernard Shaw Ramsay MacDonald Edouard Herriot Plutarco Elias Calles is will be a good in troductory tssue Re- duced rate for ten or more copies. Order now from The Nation 20 Vesey Street, New York Anniversary subscription: six months for $2 | ‘7 ee Le —~-- When writing to advertisers, please mention The Nation THOMAS JEFFERSON IV rote Much And Said More HOMAS JEFFERSON, the third President of the United States, is said to have been the 7 1 . ° ‘ rreatest letter writer whoever lived in the ] ‘ , , ; | louse. A rece € er oO etterson White career states that the penman of the Declar on of j Independence wrote as twelve thousand many as lonzhand letters a vear, which is why vou can buy ; : ; - a an occasional one today for as low as $5, while a letter in Warren G. Harding’s handwriting will cost you anywhere from $250 to $1,000. This should not be taken to mean that what Jefferson wrote was cheap. Every piece of his writing left to posterity scintillates with wisdom, abounds in deep thought, and looks ahead,—yes, Presidentia! freckled faced statesman who sat in it from 1801 to 1809, so it is not surprising that during his second term looks ahead. Few occupants of the chair had the vision of the red-haired, he should embody in one of his communications— “Tt is to the future, our minds should at all times be directed.” Life Insurance was not established in this coun at that time, but had Jefferson intended he could not have written a better text for those interested in the second greatest business in the United States l the present today. Such of you as are living in with loved ones dependent upon your foresight, may profit well by the advice of this great American. THE PRUDENTIAL INSURANCE COMPANY OF AMERICA Epwarp D. DvuFrFte.p, 'lome Newarr President If Every Wife K» Every Widow 2) r elnsured —~— « ~— 4 ak _} Led

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iv The Nation [ Vol. 120, No. 31

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yne 24, 1925] The Nation v — = — Reon UL TuC LA eck MR Ee ee a OM LM I ISU] the : - aad 100 peer F YOU KNEW A MAN who had traveled to the world’s = AN S farthest corners, would you like to hear the stories he ap aie) [ay Xs P) pee GS could tell: If this man had such a passion for liberty that he felt he belonged wherever freedom was contested— If he could still watch the comedy of human affairs with detach- ment and irony— a If his reading covered every subject in the world— a J ° ° ° If his friends were the pioneers of the day, the men and women = ER} —————}} COCR CDEC ROLE TOD CROD UEC DUDER TRE DEDEE EEE ECE REC CECT EOE OCDE EEOC ee SYSNNSHANTOSESMOTGUTOSTSOUSETOEOO MESES ASE ARIAS RS ST who push out the boundaries of knowledge and human experience— Would you like to have a talk with this man about people and books and the news of the world? This man, unfortunately, does not exist. But his personality exists, 1f we may believe a certain enthustastic reader. Tle writes that The Nation is Ais only friend, and describes its character in the terms we have quoted. Wouldn't you enjoy this intellectual companionship too? With Tue Nation for a year: What I Believe, by Bertrand Russell*......... $5.00 Arrowsmith, by Sinclair Lewis*.. 5.25 Mammonart, by Upton Sinclair*. 5.00 The American Mercury......... The Nation for six months, $2.00 *Contributor to THe NATION. THe NATION, 20 Vesey Street, New York. I want your company once a week ( for a year ) \ for six months j | EE ee a ere G6 68 6 6S 6 O66 6.0.68 & 6.4 ©.6 0.60060 0 $5.00 a year; Canadian, $5.50; Foreign, $6.00 If you already subscribe to The Nation, please show this page to a friend. mi. SUCEUEECCGUEECAETOO Di Gite CODEC EROCTE COR EOCE SCARE ECS ONCOntOD rae opeenaenevonnrcueenteraatream SPL A | tagaesite PET nan SL AT ET

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The Nation [ Vol. 120, No.3 Conrad—the master novelist. now running in The Saturday Review of LITERATURE “Suspense” is a story of such tremendous interest, and a literary event of such magnitude, that The Saturday Review feels justi- fied in presenting “Suspense” as the first work of fiction to ap- pear in this publication. “Suspense” is different from all other Conrad Novels. It is not of the sea. It is laid in Italy in the era immediately following Napoleon’s exile. The shadow of the Emperor moves through the entire story. Plot and counterplot, romance involving an adventurous young Englishman and the wife of a half savage soldier of fortune, conspiracies, a whirl of incidents, and then—the strange, perplexing, speculative end of the manuscript, which readers the world over will discuss and wonder about. You can start “Suspense” now and enjoy it all summer, in The Saturday Review of Literature. And in addition, you may win part of the $1000.00 IN PRIZES The Saturday Review offers $1000.00 in prizes for the best essays on how “Suspense” should end. When you have finished the story as Conrad left it, write your opinion of how Conrad would have concluded it, had he lived. Your essay should be about 500 words, although it may run to 2000 words. For the best sug- gestion for a characteristic Conradian ending, (written by any- body) we will award $500.00. Second prize (open only to non- professional writers) $250.00. Third and fourth prizes $50.00 each. Fifth prize $25.00. And fifty other prizes of any single volume of Conrad the winners may designate. The judges will be Joseph Hergesheimer, the novelist; William Lyon Phelps, Critic and Professor of English Literature at Yale; and Capt. David W. Bone, close friend of Conrad and Captain of R. M.S.“Tuscania”. FREE! If you send your subscription for one year at @ once, we will mail to you immediately, without cost, those issues of The Saturday Review of Literature containing instalments of “Suspense” which already have been published. | The Saturday Review of Literature Edited by Henry Seidel Canby celebrates its first anniversary by in- viting you to subscribe at the special Charter Subscription rate for those who become subscribers during the Saturday Review’s first year. The Saturday Review lives for the goodly company of the readers of good books. Rarely, if ever, has such a group of writers been gathered together as those who are contributing to The Saturday Review. Among them are Walter De La Mare, William McFee, St.John Ervine, Hugh Walpole, James Harvey Robinson, Edna St. Vincent Millay, JohnDewey, Willa Cather, H. L. Mencken, May Sinclair, Garnaliel Bradford, Stephen Graham, James Branch Cabell, William Lyon Phelps, Sinclair Lewis, John Masefield, Mary Austin, Vachel Lindsay, Walter Prichard Eaton, John Drinkwater, Edith Wharton, Zona Gale, Robert Frost, Frank Swinnerton, Walter Lippman. Send your subscription today and be among the first to read Conrad’s last novel, the literary event of the year. i “Who will miss it out of the sky---?” | TRANGELY prophetic were these last words written by Joseph For, when the old boatman in Conrad’s story passed on, and his guiding star faded from the sky, another great soul was soon to follow. Conrad died without writ- ing another word. But he left an epochal story—one which will be read with widely varying emotions and discussed as long as Conrad’s work endures. A revealing story—a tremendously significant story —the immortal Conrad at the pinnacle of his art, striking boldly into new fields; Conrad romantic, imaginative, mysterious, thrilling. Read His Last Novel, *‘Suspense”’ owen ee ee ee aeor me. rire: RAPS YAS SL, RT Be See ee maT .s TART OPP OER Me SPOe races wea Ceres “i Sorc "EP 4 7.4 Se 02 Lie Oe TS ue -_= SIGN AND MAIL TODAY The Saturday Review, CN 236 East 39th Street, New York, N. Y. Gentlemen:—Enter my subscription at once for one at the Special Charter Subscription rate, and year, enroll m as { a Charter Subscriber to The Saturday Review of Literature. | Also mail to me, without additional cost, previous issue containing instalments of ““Suspense”’. | Lenclose $3 ( -—— . When writing to advertisers, please mention The Nation . Send me a bill ( )

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