The Nation 1925-10-07: Vol 121 Iss 3144

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The Nation Vol. CX XI, No. 3144 FOUNDED 1865 Wednesday, Oct. 7, 1925 The Failure of Prohibition Saklatvala writes on The Menace of British Empire ~ A Sketch of Saklatvala The Man Whom Coolidge Fears by Rennie Smith, M. P. Poincare’s Quilt in the War A Reply to France’s Ex-President by Harry Elmer Barnes Fifteen Cents a Copy Five Dollars a Year ‘ Published weekly at 20 Vesey St., New York. Entered as second-class matter December 13, 1887, at the post office at New York, N. Y., under the Act of March 3, 1879 Copyright, 1925, by The Nation, Inc.

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: Vol. 121, No. 3144 ii . The Nation [Vo

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<T ten! aj BRAHAM CAHAN, the distinguish- ed journalist and editor of the Jewish Daily Forward, author of “The Rise of David Levinsky”, OSWALD “Red and White Terror”, etc.. is now in Palestine to obtain a first- GARRISON hand, true perspective of conditions in that VILLARD country and the opportunities it may offer for the development of a Jewish Commonwealth.

in an article entitled “America’s Most Inter- esting Daily,” which appeared in an early issue of The Nation, refers to the Forward as “... the most vital, the most interesting, the most democratic o ay see oy No Jew, no matter what his political beliefs or tes rational aspirations, can afford to miss these, for che first time, true revelations of the real condi- tions in Palestine—now appearing in | JEWISH DAILY FORWARD * America’s Greatest On} y I V5 Jewish Newspaper MR. CAHAN’S ARTICLES ON PALESTINE ARE APPEARING ALSO IN ENCLISH EVERY SUNDAY IN THE FORWARD I a lp4-2 a Teewrre Dba ayy iN CINNNDIN | Teen 1 agri _ pons Ch ee. Mr, Cahan will visit Tel-Abib in Jerusalem; the various colonies and the “Chaluzim” (Pioneers) Camps. He wiil interview the friends and the opponents of a Jewish Homeland and wil? record his findings and impressions dispassionately, im- partially, in his own inimitable way, for the readers of the Jewish Daily Forward. ne At

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The Nation FOUNDED 1865 Vol. CXXI Contents EDITORIAL PARAGRAPHS ........cccccccccccccvcncccsseess meee 269 EDITORIALS: iii The Failure of Prohibition...............-ccceeeeeceerereeeerseens 372 Twin Military Trilla... 1... ccc ccc cc cccvcccrcccvecccccsessccssseses 374 “Wreptet Wael a8 Went. o.oc ccc 0000080ccs0nes bones ognese sss ssseeee 873 Se) Se rr re et oe aeten Se SEVEN YEARS AFTER: A LETTER AND ITS ANSWER. By 4 Nik nas ehaho ed ee cede soe? PEALE PEE YOST Te POET ee 375 THE ADVENTURERS’ WAR IN MOROCCO. By M. M. Knight....... 876 THE MENACE OF BRITISH EMPIRE. By Shapurji Saklatvala...... 375 THE MAN WHOM COOLIDGE FEARS. By Rennie Smith............ 379 POINCARE’S GUILT IN THE WAR. By Harry Elmer Barnes...... . 380 IN THE DRIPTWAY. By the Drifter... 0... ccccccscccsccccccocccces 384 65 651602006 4be 6004s 6800 Kb b SEU OT REESESERE ERO ES . 885 BOOKS AND PLAYS: mooie. . Tip Warne Bidear Galt. «0... sccccccccervvcsceseccccccesecs 387 The Lineage of Printing. By Nelson Antrim Crawford..... aeere ae A Great Physician. By Herrmann Blumgart.............-..-+-++: 387 The Long Journey. By Joseph Wood Krutch.......... Reine en 2, ne Talking of Taxes. By Henry Raymond Mussey..............-.+0e++ 389 Circumstance and Character. By Alice Beal Parsons............ .. 890 NE 0 eae hee er ee ee ee me tr Perr rer eee re ee 390 Drama: Second Flight. By Joseph Wood Krutch................. 390 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS SECTION: British Labor and the Empire. By L. Haden Guest............... 392 OSWALD GARRISON VILLARD, Eprror ASSOCIATE EpITors LEWIS S. GANNETT ARTHUR WARNER JOSEPH WOOD KRUTCH MANAGING Eprror Lrrerary Eprror FREDA KIRCHWEY MARK VAN DOREN CONTRIBUTING EprTors JOHN A. HOBSON LUDWIG LEWISOHN H. L. MENCKEN NORMAN THOMAS CARL VAN DOREN DAVID BOEHM, ADVERTISING MANAGER SuBSCRIPTION RATES: Five dollars per annum postpaid in the United States and Mexico; to Canada, $5.50, and to foreign countries of the Postal Union, $6.00. THE NATION, 20 Vesey Street, New*York. Cable Address: Nation, New York. Chicago Office: 38 So. Dearborn Street. British Agent of Subscriptions and Advertising: E. Thurtle, M.P., 36, Temple Fortune Hill, N.W. 11, England. UST AS THE FRENCH DEBT COMMISSION was reaching Washington Governor Blaine of Wisconsin sent an emphatic telegram to President Coolidge asking that as a prerequisite to any financial settlement the Presi- dent demand the ending of the wicked war in Morocco. All honor to Governor Blaine! We shall never be able to understand why American sympathy does not flow out to the gallant tribesmen who are holding their own in defense of their homes and their fields against two rapacious Euro- pean Powers. Their war is as much a war of liberation as was our war of independence. They are manly people who were being deliberately shoved by the French out of their chief granary. They are now facing famine, but despite grandiose reports they have, with 18,000 men against 200,- 000, kept the French at bay, and they have permitted the Spaniards to move only a short distance from the new joint base at Alhucemas. Meanwhile all the Moslem world is watching the struggle which will have its repercussions from Gibraltar to Shanghai. The participation of Amer- ican fliers helps to stamp us with the guilt of the French. It will be another indictment of the Western Powers when the inevitable day comes on which the Moslems will throw off the yoke of Europe. L_JISTORY MOVES MORE SLOWLY in France than elsewhere. The outstanding figures of French poli- tics fifteen years ago were Briand, Caillaux, and Poincaré. In 1925 they are still Caillaux, Briand, and Poincaré. NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 7, 1925 No, 3144 Meanwhile Poincaré has served a term as Prime Minister, cemented the Franco-Kussian alliance, retired to the com- parative obscurity of the Presidency to watch his war, re turned to the premiership to startle Europe with the inva- sion of the Ruhr, and retired again to await a new hour for trouble. Briand has steadfastly played his shifting role, slipping into’ power now with the Left and now with the Right. And Caillaux has played alone. Even when Prime Minister he negotiated with Germany alone, over the head of his Foreign Minister. During the war—after his wife’s shooting of Calmette had thrown him into temporary retirement—he thought and worked alone for a “white peace.” It was his loneliness which made it possible for Clemenceau, at the height of hate and power, to force an unwilling Senate to condemn Caillaux for indirect com- munication with the enemy. And today, though Caillaux holds the Ministry of Finance under Painlevé, he still acta alone. His success or failure will reflect credit or blame upon him alone. It is an extraordinary thing that the man called traitor in war time should today be France’s chosen spokesman to the New World. Yet it is even more extraor- dinary that the alternatives to Caillaux are men who were old hands in politics when Baldwin and MacDonald were still unknown names. HE ASSEMBLY of the League of Nations has met, talked, and adjourned. The ardent Geneva corre- spondent of the New York Times thus summarizes its session: The Sixth Assembly of the League of Nations ended its work today with three important accomplishments to its credit. First, it has brought about an agreement on the conditions under which a disarmament conference can be held and has ordered technical preparation to be made for such a conference. Second, it has agreed that a conference to study the economic maladies of the world which might lead to war should be held, and has ordered the Council to make an essential study for such a conference. Third, it has ordered commencement of the preliminary work es- sential to a conference for the control of the private manufacture of arms. Which, translated into plain American, means that the League, first, gave up the idea of doing anything about dis- armament now; second, decided for the present to do noth ing about M. Loucheur’s idea of working out a program for rationing the world in raw materials; and third, post- poned action looking toward checking the international arm traffic. In still other words, it did nothing. This, the cor respondent of the Times continues, “marks an important stride toward international understanding and _ good feeling.” NGLAND, AS A MATTER OF FACT, was largely re- sponsible for this negative record of the League. The British delegates opposed a conference on the arms traffic, opposed M. Loucheur’s world rationing scheme, and were lukewarm about disarmament. The French were still more opposed to a disarmament conference prior to agreement upon a “security pact” including military guaranties; they

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370 The Nation [ Vol. 121, No. 3144 still believe in wars to end war. The whole performance, however, is and must remain a hollow sham until the League includes Turkey, Germany, and Soviet Russia in its ranks. What is a security pact worth which leaves Rus- sia out of consideration? It would only make of the League an open alliance against Russia—and, to be sure, it has often enough acted as such. Until the passions born of war and revolution are sufficiently stilled to admit the great Powers of Eastern Europe into equal partnership, Geneva must continue to be a pompous stage drop, behind which France and England pull the controlling wires. O THE DELEGATES to the Union, holding its twenty-third meeting in Washing- ton, The They represent a fruitful endeavor to bring together the lawmakers of the nations—fruitful not because previous meetings have achieved concrete results, but because they have established a tradition of unofficial international friendship. These delegates are not, like those who confer in the League of Nations, appointed by governments to represent an official point of view. Any member of any party is welcome. In that provision for the expression of minority opinion this pre-war organization—nearly forty years old now—repre- sents an advance beyond the Geneva organization. Its tradition of freedom for all shades of opinion represented in any parliament is, of course, broken by the American exclusion of Shapurji Saklatvala because he is a Communist. The discussions of the union have value precisely because they have permitted opposition as well as government spokesmen to meet foreign legislators, and we hope the delegates will find an opportunity to let our Government know what liberal Europe thinks of our so-called freedom. Interparliamentary Nation extends its welcome. HE SALVATION OF THE REPUBLIC is at hand and honest Americans may sleep soundly in their beds with- out fear of the bomb-throwing, job-snatching, whiskery, and unassimilable foreigner. Immigration figures for the past year show a drop of 68 per cent over 1923-24. While in the latter year there was a net gain of 630,107 aliens, the most recent report for the year ending June 30, 1925, reports a net gain of only 201,586. A number of countries did not fill the quotas allotted to them by our immigration laws: Czecho-Slovakia fell 17 per cent short of its allowance; Ger- many, 11 per cent; Great Britain, where live white Nordics almost as good as our American brand, 12'% per cent; Italy, 10 per cent; and Sweden, 6 per cent. More significant still, 27,151 Italians returned to Italy as against 6,203 who came to America. Other nationalities show similar increases in emigration from America, and in general they are South- European countries from which in former years the tide of immigration to this country has been heavy. What can be the trouble with the land of the free and the refuge of the oppressed? Can it be that our attempts at Americanization are not favorably received? Can it be that our attacks on foreigners are noted by the victims themselves? If next year’s figures show a similar falling-off, our immigration will be somewhat less than nothing. What will happen then? Will superior white Nordics have to go to work in the steel mills, will they become intensive farmers in New England, will they take to the pick and shovel and other tasks now thought suitable only for hunkies? Perish the thought. It is all very well to save the country, but not at such a price. ‘ allied to the large corporations. OW HAPPY THESE DAYS for Big Business! The Government, after spending months of time and much money to investigate the merger of two of the great pack- ing concerns, has suddenly quashed the whole proceeding and announced that the amalgamation is quite legal. At the same time the Administration is openly letting it be known that it wishes the Interstate Commerce Commission to hurry up and approve the Van Sweringen railroad merger so that other roads can hasten the process of coming to- gether. It is going to work for repeal of the income-tax publicity clause and to insist upon reducing the taxes of the very rich, which means many of those particularly It wants to sell several government steamship lines to private corporations, and it has appointed, according to the daily press, one of the counsel for the Steel Trust to our embassy in Tokio, in succession to the late Edgar A. Bancroft. But there is one fly in the ointment. The Federal Trade Commission has dared to charge the Aluminum Company of America, of which the esteemed Secretary of the Treasury, Mr. Mellon, is chief proprietor and backer, with being a monopoly and a violator of the Clayton Anti-Trust Act. This the com- pany promptly denies. What an unfortunate lapse of taste for the Federal Trade Commission! Doubtless the Presi- dent will ask for somebody’s resignation. The commission is there, Mr. Coolidge has explained, not to hamper big business, but to aid it. HE GOVERNMENT OF NICARAGUA is showing a new spirit of independence and self-assertion which promises to give it greater respect in this country and more stability at home. This was exhibited at a luncheon given to the Nicaraguan delegates to the conference of the Interparliamentary Union by Toribio Tijerino, Consul Gen- eral in New York City. The delegates, including members of both major political parties, joined the Consul General in assuring representatives of the press that the long stay of our marines in Nicaragua had been unjustified and un- desired by the people and that their departure last summer had been the occasion for general rejoicing—so much so, indeed, that the date of the going of the troops, August 3, had been set aside as a regular national holiday. Mr. Tijerino added that the recent dispatch of United States naval vessels to Nicaragua was unnecessary and had not been requested by his government. With her railways and her national bank once more in her own hands, Nicaragua seems to be on the way to better days. What is most needed now from the standpoint of more satisfactory rela- tions with the United States is an adequate and impartial news service giving us the truth about affairs in Nica- ragua. According to Mr. Tijerino, the present correspond- ents of the Associated Press in Nicaragua are the High Commissioner and the Collector of Customs, both of whom are minions of our Department of State and of the foreign bankers to whom the republic still owes money. IFTY YEARS AGO there were incarcerated in British prisons 10,000 persons serving sentences of penal servitude and 20,000 convicted of lesser crimes; at present, there are 1,600 of the former and 8,000 of the latter class, with 1,100 juvenile offenders in addition. This marks an extraordinary decrease in the criminal population during a period in which the population at large was increasing something like 60 per cent. The number of prison institu-

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Oct. 7, 1925] The Nation 371 tions has diminished correspondingly from 13 penal-servi- tude centers in 1875 and 113 local prisons to 4 penal centers and 31 local prisons. The Home Secretary attributes this enviable record to several causes: better and more wide- spread education, an improved standard of living, the parole system, and a more enlightened treatment of prison- ers during their incarceration. We in the United States, who have a very different series of figures to contemplate, have bettered our living standards, have extended our edu- cational system, and have in some cases at least improved vastly our prisons and the treatment of prisoners. And still crime in the United States is on the increase and on January 1, 1923, there were in federal penitentiaries, State prisons, county and city jails and the like 108,939 persons, a percentage of the population three times as high as England’s prison class. It is time that we began a scientific investigation of crime in the United States, that we took a look into our prisons themselves and into the conditions outside them which keep them full; the “bandit,” the second-story man, the murderer, the “con” man, the get-rich-quick real-estate dealers, the lady adventuress— each can be explained by something in our national life. It is for us to discover what, and to start changing it. ELDOM HAVE WE SEEN a more black-and-white ex- hibition of the idiocy and waste of our present indus- trial organization than the agreement among a majority of the wholesale flower dealers of New York City not to handle any outdoor-grown blossoms, chrysanthemums ex- cepted, after October 1. As a rule field-grown flowers arrive in the city in abundance up to November 1, and the action of the wholesalers is expected to cut off asters, dahlias, and other low-priced outdoor flowers which bring to townspeople some of the gorgeous color of autumn in the country. The action of the wholesalers is frankly admitted to be in the interest of the owners of greenhouses. So that the profits of the latter on their investments may be larger the public is to be compelled either to go without flowers or to buy hot-house products at high rates. Proba- bly the action of the wholesale flower dealers is in violation of both the State and the national anti-monoply laws, but there is no prospect of any legal action in time to be effective. Meanwhile the agreement stands as a fine in- stance of the greed, incompetence, and tyranny of modern business. HE ACTION of the wholesale florists is especially de- plorable because already there is perhaps no city in the world where flowers are as scarce and as dear as in New York. Except at Faster time there are almost no flowers sold by sidewalk ov pushcart vendors, and the regu- lar shops do not sell wild blossoms at any season of the year. The prices charged make flowers an impossible luxury to the average New Yorker, wiio has to die in order to be surrounded with that kind of beauty. In many other American and in most European cities flowers are sold so generally and cheaply as to be within the reach of all. The long, gray London winter is brightened by blossoms for every month, while Paris has half a dozen markets given over exclusively to the sale of flowers, whence they find their way into every street. During the war there was a terrible hullabaloo in Paris because the street sellers tried to raise the price of a sprig of lily of the valley—which everybody wears on May Day—from two to four cents. The vendors had to capitulate. Unhappily New York City has no such spirit. “Say it with flowers,” urge the dealers, but if anybody tries to it costs him $5 a dozen “M *: ZERO” has seldom done the vagrant and the un- employed a_ better than he recently did them through the mere proc of defining the terr which they are popularly known. service ns by Among themselves they employ dozens of picturesque designations which would be unintelligible to the layman in his living-room. Laymen seem forever to be confined to three words: hobo, tramp, Zero and the International Welfare Association over whose meetings he and bum. And these three words, say Mr. presides, are sadly confused with one another i: irrent speech. The standard dictionaries, even, are helpless the task of differentiation. The hobo as “a tramp” merely, remarking that the origin of h title is obscure. Mr. Zero insists that the difference be petore “Century” dismisses tween the hobo and the tramp is that while the first is a traveling worker the second is a traveling shirker. This, if not exactly in line with normal usage, is neat—-and may yo back to the original meaning of “hobo,” which all diction aries agree comes out of Western America. Upon the bum Mr. Zero is if anything too easy, for he lets him go as “‘a stationary shirker.” The layman is truth when he prefixes the inevitable adjective “drunken.’ The word “bum” is a very old one, and one of it The “New English Dictionary’ traces it back to the year 1387 but says it is “not in polite use.” The “Century” is more eloquent when it defines the bearer of the name as “a drunken loafer; idle, dissolute life.” Mr. Zero’s determination to remove the bum to a had emi nence; though it will be difficult for him to establish the existence of a very wide gulf between the hobo and the tramp. nearer tne historical meanings ’ —as a verb—is “to guzzle.” 1 1 4 one who leads an At any rate few would quarrel with HE DEATH OF ADA LEWIS, one of the best char- acter actresses the American stage has produced, re- -alls anew the happy days when Harrigan and Hart were presenting their remarkable pictures of New York life “The Mulligan Guards,” “Reilly and the Four Hundred,” “The Last of the Hogans,” and all the rest of that admi- rable series of plays which in their artistry, their fidelity to life, and their incidental songs won the unstinted praise of the discerning. With Harrigan and Hart Ada Lewis for years portrayed the tough girl of the East Side with a skill that no one ever surpassed. When the end of that partner- ship came so prematurely Miss Lewis went to other fields —even to light opera—and always with success, in large part because of her training with the two men who better than any other actors understood and loved the life of a New York which has long since passed. It was the Man- hattan of the Irish and the Germans, a handful of Jews, and not many colored people. But it had its songs, and its sev- eral quarters had their individual existences. To live in Yorkville or Harlem then meant taking a pride in those sections which few feel today. The Nation has long hoped that some day these notable plays might be revived in the metropolis, but with the passing of years, the loss of nearly all the old company, and the vast change in the metropolis itself, it becomes more and more doubtful whether the public would appreciate or understand these pictures of a past life and whether artists like Harrigan and Hart and Ada Lewis could be found to play in them.

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The Nation [Vol. 121, No. 3144 The Failure of Prohibition ROHIBITION—so far—has failed: it has reduced drinking, but it has increased lawlessness. That is the conclusion, already firmly fixed in the popular mind, which is confirmed by the advocates of prohibition themselves— in a report upon The Prohibition Situation published by the research department of the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America. With a singularly honest mind the Rev. F. Ernest Johnson has examined the statistics compiled to prove the failure or success of prohibition, and other data, and his conclusions are as convincing as any summary of so enor- mous a situation can well be. He finds that prohibition has been most effective in the working class; social workers are almost unanimous in seeing an improvement in work- ing-class homes, but they also agree that there is more drinking among young people today than before the law was passed, and a far laxer attitude toward law enforce- ment. Prohibition reached its peak of effectiveness about 1920, and has been becoming slacker ever since—unless possibly the new attitude of Treasury officials is today effecting a slight turn for the better. Studies of crime, of hospital records, of death-rates from alcoholic diseases agree in revealing this backward trend. Records of sav- ings deposits throw no useful light on the question; nor, on the other hand, does the size of the California grape crop indicate as vast an increase in wine-making as cynical anti-prohibitionists assert. The evil today lies primarily in bootleg whiskey, not in red wine, or home brew, or even in the scandalously increased consumption of “sacramental wine.” 3usiness men are almost unanimous against the law— rather because of personal prejudice, Mr. Johnson believes, than because of reasonable study of the situation. Work- ing-class sentiment is also strongly against it. The young people drink more than they used to—which he thinks part of a general loose tendency in which the automobile plays a larger role than the hip flask. One student in a conservative denominational college earned his way by boot- legging. “Certainly,” the sage comment occurs, “the non- observance of the law by parents has a rather tragic effect on boys and girls.” The government has been lax in en- forcement, but Mr. Johnson—rightly, we believe—finds the major difficulty not in the weakness of officialdom but in the uncertainty of public opinion. Prohibition is a regime, he says, “at variance with the habits of the community, in the violation or evasion of which a very substantial part of the population is directly interested. . . . If infractions of the law incident to the retail trade in liquor should continue on the present scale nothing but a sweeping change in public opinion can prevent the effectual nullification of the National Prohibition Act.” And finally he declares: The crisis that has developed in the enforcement of prohibition calls for a frank facing of facts and a new assumption of responsibility. The federal government has announced a _ right-about-face in its enforcement policy. That is the government’s task. It is not its task to change the minds of the people. Religion and education must do that. There, we believe, Mr. Johnson puts his honest thumb upon the nub of the question. There is a vast improvement possible in law enforcement; but there is even more to be done in convincing people—rich men, poor men, judges, diners-out—that the law is worth enforcing. Prohibition will remain a failure if a great section—even if it be a minority—of the people does not want it. Bullying is not a convincing argument. The fact that the law is on the statute books, even were it better enforced, would not be enough. The anti-prohibitionists are lawbreakers, but they are not a criminal class. They are a substantia! body of citizens who believe that an unrighteous law has been “put over,” and who see no wrong in the drinking which the act seeks to stop. The task of education which culminated in the enactment of the Prohibition Amendment has never been completed. The old prohibitionists have talked much of the new generation. “Yes,” they have admitted, “the old drinkers still get their booze; but a new, drinkless generation is growing up which has never known the saloon and will not hunt out bootleggers.” As this report shows, that is a dangerous and false complacency. The young people are drinking; a new generation is growing up with even less respect for the law than its parents had. And that is a condition which, unless remedied, means the breakdown of government. Prohibition was not “put over” upon an unwilling peo- ple, but it received its large majorities in the hectic fervor of war time, and it is probable that it would receive no such sweeping indorsement today. The Nation is among those who believe that a considerable majority of the American people favored prohibition and still favor it; but it emphatically disagrees with those who regard disagree- ment with the law as a lesser form of treason. They are within their rights in agitating against it, and the arro- gant attitude of the prohibitionists has powerfully aided their opponents. They are within their rights again in de- manding a national plebiscite upon the question, and we believe that such a referendum would clear the air. In the long run, however, the question is not to be settled even by repeated counts of noses. A majority may well be wrong; if it is sure of its rights it will welcome discussion of its issue, meet facts with facts and argument with argu- ment, and consider its duty incomplete until it has not only defeated the minority at the polls but convinced a substantial part of it as well. And there we come back to Mr. Johnson’s campaign of education. “The fundamental fact,” he says, “is that a large part of our people are unconvinced with reference to the liquor traffic. The trouble is with the people more than with their government.” That is why prohibition is failing—because the prohibitionists have concentrated their battle upon law enforcement, assuming that their task with the people had been completed by the Volstead Act. The government should give such support to the law as to prove finally whether prohibition can prohibit; the prohibitionists should return to their old task of proving that prohibition should prohibit. Mr. Johnson’s pamphlet (which can be obtained at 105 East 22d Street, New York City, for 25 cents) should end a deal of ranting, obfuscating argument, but a long, long task of public education and discussion lies ahead.

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US be es, on Ot he be ey of ut ct er Oct. 7, 1925] The Nation 373 Twin Military Evils RECISELY as was to have been expected, the Secre- tary of the Navy, the Acting Secretary of War, the leading generals and admirals who have testified before the Air Inquiry Board appointed by President Coolidge have expressed complete satisfaction with the present organiza- tion of their forces and have declared that nothing whatever was wrong beyond the fact that Congress was not giving them enough money. Thus it is more than ever apparent that if there are to be any changes they can only be brought about by outside pressure. Both the army and navy are plainly going to “‘pass the buck” to Congress, their favorite occupation, and to insist that if only more millions were given to them everything would be well. Their personnel and equipment are, they say, superb—the Air Board was actually told that America led the world in flying, although every sane student of the problem knows otherwise. And the complacency of Secretary Wilbur hardly seems shat- tered when now, on top of airplane, dirigible, and sub- marine disasters, we learn that he falsified the record, that Commander Lansdowne was opposed to the Shenandoah’s last trip, and that the acting chief of naval operations, R. H. Jackson, on August 12 last overruled his recommen- dation in the following remarkable letter: Your recommendation to make the flight the second week in September has not been approved. By starting on September 2 the Shenandoah would fly over State fairs as follows: Columbus, Sept. 3; Des Moines, Sept. 4; Minneapolis, Sept. 4; Milwaukee, Sept. 5; Detroit, Sept. 5. This includes all the State fairs except that at Indianapolis. This proves beyond question the charge of politics made by Mrs. Lansdowne in her first outburst of grief, which she subsequently modified under official pressure. What has naval flying to do with State fairs? Politics and conservatism—these are twin evils of the military and naval services, and they have been so in Great Britain and the United States from the beginning of mili- tary history. Let us take some historic facts about the navy. Was the Monitor actually a government vessel when she steamed to Hampton Roads? She was not. Despite the fact that it was known in Washington that the Con- federates were armor-plating ships, the Monitor had to be forced upon the Navy Department and had actually not been definitely accepted when she stopped the victorious career of the Merrimack. Throughout the war the heaviest fighting thereafter was done by the Monitor, but when the war was over the Navy Department discarded this remark- able invention chiefly because of the lack of modern ven- tilating equipment and the fact that there was little deck space available in a sea way and none on which to parade the marine guard. When the war was over it sold to foreign countries its most modern monitors, forgot all about the Confederate invention of the submarine, did not bother further with torpedoes or mines, and let twenty-five years go by before really beginning to experiment with any of these instruments. Yet in the World War the Allies were compelled to build monitors. We invented the submarine sixty years ago and the modern submarine, too, but this boat was taken up and developed in England and Germany far in advance of any action by us. In 1915 the head of the submarine division of the Navy Department appeared before the House Naval Committee and demanded larger submarines on the ground that the Germans had them. On cross-examination it appeared that the only knowlede of these submarines in the possession of the Navy Depart- ment was the testimony of an American boy who had served briefly on one. We invented the airplane, but in its uses we have been far outstripped by the European Powers. As for the inevitable demand for larger appropria- tions, that is of course the invariable outcome of every maneuver and every inquiry and every other happening affecting either army or navy. Yet there is hardly a busi- ness organization in the world as loosely or as uneconomi- cally managed as is the army. Here are two concrete examples. Since the removal of the troops who were che custodians of the Yellowstone National Park the present admirable civilian management has saved hundreds of thousands of dollars in expenses besides giving far greater efficiency. Take the case of Colonel Mitchell. He gave his final provocative statement to the press and announced that he knew it would lead to his court martial. There was no mystery about it; he openly said that he was going to give the interview and then gave it. The War Department could not be satisfied with that. It could not send him a wire; it could not even ask the general commanding at San Antonio, nor the lieutenant colonel and assistant inspector gen- eral on duty there to inquire of Colonel Mitchel] whether he was correctly quoted. It had to send a colonel and an assistant inspector general all the way from Washington to San Antonio and return to find out officially what every man knew—at a cost of hundreds of dollars for railway fares and subsistence! There you have the evil at its worst, and that is why the presumption of being in the right is always on the side of men who finally kick over the traces and insist upon “starting something.” "Twixt Wood and Water WENTY years ago there was no such thing as fancy diving. There were stunts only. To be sure one tried for a reasonably symmetrical standing front dive, but all other configurations were somersaults which ended in a grand splash, front and back sittings on the board, leap- ings, jumpings, with arms and legs spread to the four winds; dares and the taking of dares. There were prob- ably not a dozen well-articulated spring-boards in the country. As why should there be? Any old plank that protruded over eight feet of water was good enough for the convulsions of the era. Then came Annette Kellerman. With her canvas tank on the vaudeville-circuit stage, and her board that was a board, she made the youngsters’ eyes pop from their heads and set many a swimming coach—already upset with this strange new stroke, the crawl—-to dreaming. As diving goes today, Annette’s repertoire was limited and still bur- dened with vestiges of stunts—as in her “standing, sitting, standing” dive. But who can forget the lithe grace of that superb body as it turned like a leaping salmon in the “half twist”? Stunts, yes, but also, and almost for the first time, beauty—authentic and challenging. Heaven knows how many youths and maidens retired to their chosen swimming holes, and on boards decrepit and stubborn tried for the first time to get some lilt, some form into that second and a fraction between wood and water.

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374 The Nation [ Vol. 121, No. 3144 Ever since, the soul of Annette has gone marching on. At pool after pool, the crazy flopping stunts give way to coordination and an aspiration for grace and form. As the body cleaves the air, one watches for entirely different sorts of things than one watched for a generation ago. In 1900 it was: Will he get in without landing flat on his back? Bravo! He did. In 1925 it is: Not enough arch, the toes are not pointed, but the line of the head is good. Perhaps in competitive diving some of the earlier joy- ousness has been squeezed out in the grip of a relentless ritual. There is beauty in plenty, but it is all so terribly serious. Judges now score for five distinct parts of every running dive: (1) Attention—the position of the body just before the attack; (2) the run on the board; (3) the “take off,” or leap from the board; (4) the flight through the air; (5) the entry into the water—to the disappearance of the toe or the finger. Number four, the flight, is still the mat- ter of major importance, but failure to meet the other standards is a heavy handicap in competitive scoring. Per- haps the board ritual is overelaborate, with its arms just so, and its chest just so—but who shall standardize a human body when it has launched itself into the wild free air? Ah, then must the diver save his own soul, wring his own shrill beauty from a dizzy pit of nothingness! How many stand, hands on hips, fingers down thighs, head up, body like an arrow, three paces from that dread end of oak, only to sag the arch in the air and “kick buckets” as the ankles slide beneath the surface. A shambling figure on the board is surely not to be tolerated, but it is the air, ye leapers, the air, where you must face your God! In competitive diving, and in the hearts of all who see in the art an outlet for creative beauty, it is no longer the difficulty of the stunt which claims first consideration but rather the flow and coordination of the body. And it fol- lows—as in dancing—that women by and large are better divers than men. Knotted muscles tend to hinder rather than to help. In the “swan” we have a body launched into nothingness, wp rather than out, to hang poised and still for an eternal segment of time, six feet above the board, back arched, head up, legs sewn together, arms flung wide and true—then the swift, breathless rush to the water, tilt- ing the body to perpendicular and bringing the arms to the front, the middle finger the first to touch the surface, the curved toe the last to disappear. A beautiful thing to watch, but how to be compared with the flying beauty in the doer’s heart? There are “jack-knives,” front and back, and there is the regular back dive, so easy in theory, so immensely difficult in practice. Up, not out, you beginners, with hands on hips until the climax of height is reached, and then the arms flung backward and the great curving arch as the body goes from sky to sea. For elective dives in competition one can take Miss Kellerman’s half twist; the heady “half-gainer”’; the once and one-half somersault, which ends in an arched front dive; the handstand from the board’s edge. Difficult some of these dives are, but no hint of difficulty must appear. The body line must never be broken with striving; each movement must flow into the next like chords in an anthem. Youth may be wild, skirts top the knee, parsons may roar, but surely degeneration is not the word to apply to youngsters who throughout the length and breadth of the land are diving and learning to dive with a mastery and a beauty which no previous civilization has ever approached. The Third Poet T takes some effort now to remember that the man whom most persons agree upon calling the third English poet had nearly as much difficulty with his public as Walt Whit- man had with his. Wordsworth was scorned and ridiculed at the very height of his career; as he descended the long slope of his later, less inspired days he found true followers, and was indeed proclaimed by most competent judges to be great; but it was not until three decades after his death that a bold and influential critic demanded for him the place among British poets which he now securely holds. Mat- thew Arnold performed no more valuable service as a critic than that which he performed when in 1879 he went to the trouble of selecting from Wordsworth’s grotesquely uneven works, abruptly elevated him to a rank far above Byron, Shelley, and Keats, and defined his quality. If in defining Wordsworth’s quality Arnold did not say the last utterable word the fault lay not with him. He went as far as it was possible to go, in a day when the ideas of Wordsworth still cast their spell, toward disengag- ing his poetry from his philosophy and insisting that the first was all but supreme on its own account. One would go farther today. Arnold still found it necessary to say in recommendation of his hero that he was a true artist be- cause he dealt in truth; that he was great because he oper- ated at the center of existence; that “his superiority arises from his powerful use, in his best pieces, his powerful ap- plication to his subject, of ideas ‘on man, on nature, and on human life.’”” One shies today at the declaration that Wordsworth’s subjects and ideas were “true”; true to whom, and of what? One is not so sure now just where the cen- ter of existence is, or sure, even, that it is important to know where it is. And one is likely to be distrustful of ideas. No, if one is the “disinterested lover of poetry” whom Arnold preferred above the mere “Wordsworthian” one is likely now to go the whole way and say that Words- worth belongs in the company of Shakespeare and Milton, and in their company alone, because of the sheer poetic art which he lavished upon his two or three dozen best pieces. It might be comforting to be able to agree with Arnold that poetic art consists, among other things, in ap- plying noble ideas to life. It would be most enlightening if any critic could prove that Wordsworth was a greater poet than Byron because he had a profounder nature. Bui both these things are as impossible as unnecessary. To a seasoned reader of English poetry, to one who goes back over the familiar ground again and again and again, Wordsworth will inevitably emerge abreast of Shake- speare and Milton by virtue of the incomparable felicity with which he wields his language. The test is in the rereading. As Shakespeare takes the breath with pas- sages one thought one already knew too well, as Milton moves the blood with harmonies not at all subdued by repe- tition, so Wordsworth consistently surprises his most inti- mate acquaintances by the power which leaps from his lines. It is not a quiet power, as is so often said. And it seems to have nothing to do with the thing being stated. Words- worth undoubtedly thought so, for he would state the thing again—not so well—and assume that he had succeeded again. A lesser philosopher than he knew, he was also a greater artist than he knew. Quite by accident, perhaps, he is one of the most magical of modern poets.

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Oct. 7, 1925] The Nation 375 Seven Years After A Letter and Its Answer HORTON By DABNEY New York, August 1 Dear D : Come with us over to Morocco this summer to enlist in the French Aviation Corps again to fight against the Riffs. They won’t put us in the Foreign Legion as simple soldats at five sous a day this time; we’re to be all lieu- tenants under Mike Sweeny in the Army of the Sultan of Morocco. The Sultan never had an army before, the French wouldn’t let him, but he’ll have one now. We sail for Bordeaux in two weeks, and they give us two weeks with pay in Paris. It sure will be great to swell around Maxim’s again. I hear Henri’s has reopened. Do you remember the day the Old Man gave the dinner for Lena Bogardi and we made anti-aircraft ammunition out of olives and the chandeliers were Gothas? I suppose you are broke as usual; we al! are, but you won’t have a cent to pay except your fare to New York, and maybe I can wangle that for you. The steamship com- panies will be glad to take us over free, though I suppose they are really sticking the French Government for it. Jimmie is going, and so is the Duke, about half a dozen of us in all. There won’t be any particular danger about this propo- sition. We heard that the Riffs have got hold of a couple of old-school Fokkers from some place and are trying to fly them. If they dare to fly them after we get there we'll simply make clay pigeons of them. You can land a plane almost anywhere in that part of Morocco, except up in the little foothills where these darned little Arabs live in their dug-outs. It would be great sport to be taken prisoner, though. The Riffs don’t dare do a thing to their prisoners because the French have got two or three villages full of their relatives and they know jolly well what would happen to them if they started anything. So drop whatever you’re doing and come along. We've got a place all saved for you. You won’t get another chance like this as long as you live. Just think it over; no other fighting planes dropping down on your back, no anti-aircraft, and no more being bullied around by a bunch of dumb French non-com flying instructors! You can pick up your flying again in a day or two. This is going to be just one big picnic, with martial music. Manon, les’ go, as you used to say. Yours in red britches, —_— Keokuk, Iowa, August 5 Dear G Before I got your letter asking me to go along to Morocco with you and be a little tin hero again I’d already seen an account of the proposed junket in the Sunday news- papers, with photographs of you and the Duke and Jimmie. Pardon my mentioning it, old fellow, but you looked a little bit fat in that photograph, a little too much like the arm- chair strategists in the caricatures and too little like the nervous-eyed kid I went to France with nine years ago to join the Lafayette Flying Corps. And I see you fellows are using the name Lafayetts Flying Corps to identify yourselves by. Well, that’s the American of it! Everything must have a good, snappy name or slogan. Sut why don’t you call yourselves the Young Sultans or the Houris’ Own, as you're nominally enlisted under the Sultan of Morocco, whoever he is? Don’t you get a free pass to the Mohammedan heaven if you get bumped off or poisoned by those funny things they drink south of Sidi Bel Abbes? Wouldn't you look queer up there in Mohammed's Paradise when you can't speak a word of Arab! I’m surprised that they don’t make you any more than lieutenants. Some of the boys that formed the Kosciuszko Squadron to help the Poles against the Bolos in 1919 were made captains; and that Brooklyn kid that went over to run the Esthonian Flying Corps to straighten out some other cafe quarrel was a colone!. You chaps under the Sultan ought to be generals at least. The lower down you get the higher rank they give you. As for the glory—well, I was very much tickled with my own little Croix de Guerre, until I saw in the paper that Foch had decorated a lot of Red Cross dogs with the same medal. But, then, the French like dogs. Fighting those Arabs with airplanes seems pretty poor sport to me. About as much sport as bombing fish in the Oise after the armistice. But we used to eat the fish Just what are you going to do? There won't be any fight ing planes to meet, nor any anti-aircraft guns tododge. The Riffians don’t build villages big enough to hit or compact enough to scatter. From what I’ve heard of Arab villages, the only way to get rid of them is to stop up the entrances to the holes and then drop poison down the burrow, as the farmers in lowa get rid of ground squirrels. You can’t do that in the air. I don’t believe that the roaring of your motors is going to frighten those little riding monkeys either. A lot of them fought with us in the Big Affair and that’s why they’re making trouble now. They’ve learned how to shoot from the saddle with modern rifles. Personally, I’ve al- ways had a fondness for those little fellows, riding along so merrily under those inordinately large, handsome tur- bans. And their bugle music, ending with a wild flourish and upthrow of the elbow, makes my blood tingle yet. There was a regiment of them at Verdun, and I used to slip over and drink coffee with them. They made wonder- ful coffee, and they had real cream too. Really, if I didn’t have a good job, and a family to look after—I mean to look after me—I'd accept a good offer to go over with you. But we’d separate at Bordeaux and I'd go over and fly with these same little Arabs. That might be a sporting proposition. But otherwise I reckon I'll stay here in Keokuk.

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376 The Nation [ Vol. 121, No. 3144 I don’t want to hurt your own feelings when I say that I’m not sure that all the youth and good looks of America is with you in this escapade. You say Jimmie is going. I hope they don’t have any bombing expeditions. Do you remember the day when he went out with a load of ninety-ones? He dropped them all at once and the machine nearly turned a somersault with the release of 500 pounds weight at one shot. Jimmie nearly turned a somersault, too, when he landed at camp and found that what he took for a little German town was dear old Bar-le-Duc, where the jelly comes from, and where Madame Jeulin used to scrub my back with a brush and hot water whenever I came in on leave. Isn’t Steve going along? I thought he was a real dare-devil. At least he got into the Sunday supplement with a yarn about being a volunteer to test the upper atmosphere by being fired out of a rocket. I believe he later repudiated it after a couple of bromo-seltzers. But it was a good yarn. It strikes me that this expedition is just another good yarn. But it isn’t as good a yarn as the one we went as pals in the first time. I suspect that this will consist of a big banquet in New York, several more after the twelve- mile limit is passed, much swaggering around Paris and Henri’s bar, a big reception at the Prefecture in Sidi Bel Abbes. After that, a few weeks of country-club life and occasional gipsy flying with an army background. When you get home again, if home still appeals to you, you will puff out your chest as we did shortly after the armistice and tell the home folks about it. But this time it won’t sound the same; it won’t ring true. And so, in the expressive language of Abe Potash: “You'll hafta ’scuse me, for I got it business I should attend to.” Wishing you the best of luck and a joyous hereafter in the Mohammedan heaven, I am, as ever, The Adventurers’ War in Morocco By M. M. KNIGHT AN-HUNTING has always been the big-game sport par excellence of the world. For example, American ambulance drivers, youngsters ambitious to fly, and even infantrymen for the Foreign Legion sought adventure in France between 1914 and the time when such conduct be- came compulsory. Many who frankly went in to see the show honestly believed at a later date that their motive had been to save the world for or from this or that. Yet the American volunteer contingent in France was not strictly a group of adventurers. Most of the men had never made war before. There is a vast difference between the man—every other one you meet—who thinks from a distance that he would like to try war once and the much scarcer type which knows war and still yearns for it. Out of the twenty-five million or so who fought the World War came enough trained and self-discovered adventurers to run the nineteen smaller conflicts which immediately en- sued. Death has removed some of these professional war- riors, but Europe’s economic doldrums have added to their number many who have no great objection to peace, if it would only yield them a living. But even the Moroccan war enlists some home talent —men who have to fight, which makes it impossible to separate the willing from the unwilling. For example, the Riffians. Your Riffian is a white man, burned reddish brown by his pitiless sun. To the original Berber stock, which in- habited these mountains before anybody in the world had learned to write, has been added Phoenician, Greek, Roman, Germanic Vandal, Arabic, Jewish, and heaven knows what other blood. The amount of new blood arriving in any one period has not been large enough, however, to change Berber civilization much. Rather have these people been driven back into their Riffian and Atlas mountains and made more conscious of their own ways. While they are proud, often fanatical Mohammedans, other Moslems look upon them as heretics. This is because they cling to an older fabric of laws and customs, far more like those of Europe than is the case with their stricter coreligionists who follow the Koranic law. None of this is visible to the enemy, any more than is the Riffian’s person. He has hunted and shot all his life in these hills or in the higher mountains to the northward. Often clothed only in a brown robe, the jellaba, and his thick-soled slippers, he melts into the landscape and can move for miles without being seen by his quarry—human or otherwise. In the hood of his one garment are parched grain or a loaf of bread, a few dried figs, a bottle of oil, and a hundred or two of cartridges to fit his modern re- peating rifie. If you show your head within a quarter of a mile of him he will fire once, and the bullet will usually go through the foolish object aimed at. Fly over him with an airplane, and you will probably come back—if you come back—with a hole or two somewhere in it. He has shot down more than a score of Frenchmen who thought from World War experience that they could fly over riflemen with impunity. His intermediate officers are largely adventurers. At the top are the two Krims, brothers, and their immediate following of Riffian nationalists. They have wisely availed themselves of European adventurers, skilled in the tech- nique of war, who train the lieutenants and “non-com’s.” Some of these foreigners are Turks, eastern Arabs, Egyp- tians, or Hindus, nationalists and Mohammedans with scores to pay as well as adventurers. Some are deserters from the French Foreign Legion, which is mainly German. Undoubtedly there are some Germans who have not been in the French service. “If you are captured by Riffian regulars,” the French officer will tell you, “you will be well treated. But if you should fall into the hands of some of Krim’s partisans, there is no telling what may happen to you.” No doubt many joined the Riffians because they seemed to be win- ning, and the chances for pillage would be excellent while

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Oct. 7, 1925] The Nation 377 this continued. The Jebala tribes themselves, Krim’s great allies in the west, are not always so nice to their prisoners, some of whom have been taken apart with barbaric in- genuity. There may be something in the French explana- tion that prisoners are of no use to them, whereas Krim can afford to handle his like fresh eggs because of their ransom and hostage value. It is well to have some soldiers so thoroughly hated by the enemy that they will never allow themselves to be captured. These Berber mountaineers have hated the black Senegalese for centuries, since the great Sultans began im- porting them to keep order at home and to extend the frontiers. France inherited this scheme with her North African possessions. Senegalese are particularly valuable for holding outposts. We need not be censorious about the custom of wearing amulets of ears and noses. As to their preference for knives over bayonets, that is a technical point on which many North Africans, on both sides of the front, agree with them. We may pass lightly over the French-trained Moroccan and Algerian troops which are bearing the brunt of the struggle from the south side. There is not much adven- ture in it for them—from the war standpoint, they are almost Europeanized. Their French officers are largely professional warriors, willing to take a dirty job rather than rust out. Decorations and promotions are the chins in this game, and they are more plentiful where there is trouble. Nobody need begrudge a French post-commander, with Senegalese under him, whatever honors and emolu- ments he gets out of it. At Ain bou Aissa, in the begin- ning of August, fifteen Senegalese under a native sergeant cut their way out after a shell had exploded the magazine. Of the lieutenant, who had been wounded already, no trace was found by the relief colvmn. For these officers and the other Europeans—notably the Foreign Legion—the summer climate of this war zone is literally hellish. The Riff range cuts off any Mediter- ranean breeze, but collects the sirocco or hot desert wind. Oftentimes the thermometer climbs to 115° or 120° in the shade. The desert wind, much hotter still, does not always die down even at night. Where the Riffians have artillery, holes and ditches must be dug outside the post, behind barbed wire. Crawling about these for weeks under a broiling sun, without water to wash or shave, their clothes cut to ribbons and crawling with vermin, even the officers come out looking like savages. No group is more interesting for one evening than the Foreign Legion. While those at the front are fearfully busy or dog tired, the units resting near some city in the rear can be interviewed at leisure. To avoid the constraint of a visit to their crowded camp, where there is unlikely to be any public room except the packed and noisy sutler’s store, it is perhaps simplest merely to go into the tender- loin district in the evening. These quarters of cities in French Morocco are safe and orderly. Two or three jour- nalists can drop in unobtrusively and see what might te called “the Legion at tea.” Legionnaires have little money, but dancing is free. One will be guiding some obvious person with all the grace of a royal ballroom, oblivious of the cracked notes of the phonograph or tin-disk music box. Another will whirl his partner about with almost American abandon. It is easy to collect half a dozen at a table and please the manage- ment at the same time by buying a couple of dollars’ worth of beer. On the whole, the Legion is quiet and well man- nered. One Dresdener of thirty-five speaks almost gaily of life before the big cataclysm of 1914. His voice and manner betray his gentle upbringing. The Berlinese next to him tells quite casually of their awful marches and the number of their dead—more than half. Their language, he says, is German, but it is a binding custom that no man shall understand a word of it if pronounced by an officer. They do not hate the French, nor do they “love France,” who, they think, might make their lives a bit less hard. Oftentimes the women have stories quite as interest- ing as those of the soldiers. Some will have been with the “B. M. C.” (literally, official army camp women) near the front, undergoing dangers and hardships comparable to those of the men they are sent to divert. I remember one village of them near a headquarters camp, on top of a barren hill, where the heat was terrible even at six in the evening and there was only a liter of water a day per person. The natives did not seem to mind it, but the Frenchwomen, like the European soldiers, were often (Il simply from the heat. I was told that in this service, as in the Legion, the eyes of law and order are closed ‘o faults committed at home, it being considered sufficient expiation to serve one’s country on the far-flung frontiers. The American Air Squadron (some unkind New Yorker has called it the “Hot-Air Squadron”) is another case of men who fight because they want to. All having seen at least one previous war, we might perhaps speak of them as the pure, high type of adventurer, as distin- guished from the callow youth with hankerings. Person- ally, the ones I met were fine fellows, boon companions for an evening. Nevertheless, this thing of advertising them as the “American aviators” has a serious side, as the State Department has found out. It makes us partisans in the war, whether we like it or not. Their excuse, as given in the Associated Press dispatch of September 21, is worse than none at all from our point of view. The very fact that they have taken no oath of allegiance to the Sultan and signed no enlistment papers means that they are fight- ing as Americans, with a special status as such. Let them fight if they feel like it. If we must have wars, the ideal situation would be to have them waged by those who like them, by the same stroke relieving civilian life of a lot of its enemies and problems. But let us make them enlist, and stop wearing any name, insignia, or mark which might tend to commit those who don’t want to be committed. Perhaps it is a curious mentality which seeks to class- ify one war as more barbarous than another. “How ter- rible!” exclaimed a French woman, when she heard of the commandant at Ain Maatouf, conducting the defense for seventeen days from a stretcher after he had been shot through both thighs. Yet he had anti-tetanus serum, dropped from an airplane, and all] the disinfectants and bandages he needed. A Spanish dispatch gloats over a battle in which five hundred Riffians were alleged to have been killed, adding that a thousand more died for want of medical attention. This is the atrocious thing about the blockade. How can any nation which wishes to be thought civilized cut off doctors and medicines from any people? Few are without guilt in this particular, but would not some good come of making it an issue every time that it occurs?

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The Nation [Vol. 121, No. 3144 The Menace of British Empire By SHAPURJI SAKLATVALA [This article was written by Mr. Saklatvala, member of the British Parliament, as explaining his views to Americans in advance of his expected visit to the United States as a delegate to the meeting of the Interparliamentary Union. The action of our Government in refusing to grant him entrance makes his views doubly interesting. | Y chief crime is my strenuous opposition to British imperialism and my steady insistence—which is gain- ing growing support in Great Britain itself—that the world has reached the stage when the British Empire must be dissolved in the interests of world peace, human happiness, and especially for the preservation of at least that standard of life which the masses in the Western countries have so far reached after a struggle of nearly two centuries, not unaccompanied by enormous sacrifices. The last war is held up as a cause for the rapid wiping out of the standard of life in Europe, but on a closer analysis of facts and opera- tive causes I unhesitatingly attribute this catastrophic re- sult to the powerful imperialism of Great Britain. I am not opposed to Britain’s sway in my country or elsewhere on a narrow nationalist basis of conceit or malice, but on the far broader basis of saving for human life what human effort has so far achieved. My bolshevism leads me to struggle along such lines where the highest results achieved by any group of workers—who are essentially the majority in all countries—are made applicable to all the weaker groups. The inevitable, even if pretending to be uninten- tional, tendency of British imperialism is to search for the lowest practicable standard of life and make it applicable to groups of workers with better standards by all the weight and gravitation of modern commercial competition. As I have officially stated in the House of Commons it is a pity that the voluntary association of Australia and Canada with Britain is designated under the all-covering term of British Empire along with the enforced subjugation of India, Egypt, Africa, South China, etc., and naturally my remarks apply to these latter only. I take the view that if genuine self-rule is in the hands of the Indians and if there exists a genuine Indianization of the Indian army, no Indian will be so despicable, just as no Britisher would be so despicable, as to say that he would hold that country and that army for the benefit of some The talk of the constitution and the alteration of the constitution, of a ten-year limit or a fifteen-year limit, these are nothing but details in the art of governing another nation by a sort of hypnotization. I tell my Indian friends, as I tell my British friends, that the same principles of life are in every European or Asiatic nation. The world wants peace not through sentimental piety but because the world needs peace. Britain points her hypocritical finger to Aldershot Barracks and claims to be a model of self-restraint in the number of her army. But the British raj in the East first means her capacity to produce three to four million colored troops as gun-fodder on any battlefield at any moment. France is following her footsteps with her black regiments. What European or Asiatic country dare to disarm with equanimity in the face people other than his own. of this possibility? Every industrial workshop in Britain has proved to be convertible into a most effective arsenal, and during the last war Britain was able to arm seven mil- lion Allied troops. Then comes the danger of British imperialism in peace time more devastating than in war. Her coolie labor, her Negroes, Hindus, Chinamen, and Mohammedans working in mines, docks, railroads, factories, and as individual craftsmen, and her hundreds of millions of enslaved and animalized peasantry tilling cotton fields, wheat fields, rub- ber, and tea plantations. They go to destroy hourly the life of nations in the West. Miners in Africa, India, China under range of British naval and aircraft guns are bringing coal to the surface from a dollar to a dollar and a half at the pit-mouth. Then German miners under military defeat and reparations are reduced to this coolie level by the law of competition. Then by the same law British miners them- selves have to succumb to it, and if they tamely did so, the American miners must fall next. British imperial masters have erected seventy-five jute mills in Bengal, where aver- age wages in the spinning department are five shillings per week and double that in the weaving department. Inevita- bly the Scotch lads and lasses in Dundee have to grade down to this level, which means the auction of souls of many innocent girls to keep themselves alive. How long will the American jute workers keep out of danger? British ships are repaired and painted in Bombay, Colombo, Hongkong, or Calcutta for twenty-five cents a full day of ten hours. What is the value of Western workers struggling to establish a minimum living wage in their countries? British patriot- ism, both of the Conservative type as well as of the right wing Labor type, talks glibly of “our Empire” and of the sunshine houses at Wembley, where the world is asked to see how Britain can soon produce all British raw mate- rials, cotton for instance. America can give sufficient cotton to Britain, but the soul of British royalty-loving and aris- tocratic merchants loathes the idea of having to pay the American cotton-grower his comforts of life. Therefore they look to Sudan, Rhodesia, Mesopotamia, central India, and southern China, where a few hundred millions of hu- manity are enslaved and work in the fields for ten cents to twenty cents per day, to be the lands that will produce all- British cotton. Then will follow the effective downfall of the American standard of life. And where cotton begins to grow well, and Britain rules at the same time, spinning mills do not take long to raise their heads. Labor on twenty cents a day is spinning and weaving in the East, under the benign British protection in over thirty cotton mills. An- other 300 more, with long-staple cotton growing in their backyard, and Europe and America will cease to work ex- cept on a coolie basis. Such are the glories and blessings of the British Empire and the Union Jack! I shall not conceal the satisfaction with which I am looking forward to this visit to your great country, of which one of my brothers is a citizen, not that I aspire to alter or modify your noted institutions, which I am not yet closely acquainted with, but because I shall get my first opportunity in life to study them first-hand.

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The Nation AKLATVALA has, in Great Britain, two kinds of uniqueness. He is the only representative of com- munism on the floor of the British House of Commons. He is the Communist Party there in his own person; he is his own whip, his own office boy. He is also the only Indian in Parliament. For the moment it is Saklatvala the Communist who is on the stage. That it is the Communist who is on the stage is largely of Saklatvala’s choosing. But the world should understand, as he himself should understand, that it is not as a devotee and an exponent of the Russian doctrine of force that the core of his personality is revealed. Sak- latvala is an Indian at a most critical stage of India’s his- tory. Saklatvala is an Indian—a lonely Indian—in the Brit- ish House of Commons. The real man, the essential life- force and qualities of Saklatvala, can lie only in interpret- ing to one another and influencing these two great civiliza- tions of the East and the West. He has the chance, such as has no other man in the British House of Commons, of assisting and guiding the great movement for the po- litical and economic freedom of India. If he ends in tragedy it will be because Saklatvala the Communist has eaten up Saklatvala the Indian. The moment he enters the House of Commons he is a man apart. His pale, tanned skin, dark eyes, protruding nose, the dark color of his hands when he throws them out in declamation, all these mark him as a member of another race. He is the circumference of the empire drawn into the center. He is India, ironic, mocking; he is India, hating, passionately appealing and declaiming—there in the heart of London. 7 The first thirty years of his life were spent in India, with Bombay as his birthplace. Rich family connections; ample opportunities for widest culture; he is in no sense by his ancestry and affiliations a proletarian. Through relations on his mother’s side with the Tata family, which has developed in the last forty years a great iron and steel enterprise in India, he was able in the course of his own activities to share in the early stages of industrialism in India. He was able to watch the migration of British capi- tal to India; to see railways established, to see the begin- nings of modern forms of large-scale production, to see all the first fruits of urbanization and industrialism on a vast and complex Indian population. With a mind hypersensitive to human suffering, the iron entered his soul as he contemplated the new capitalist cities of the East, and especially his birth city. Those who wish to appreciate the last touch of his bitterness, his invective, and the depth of his rebel temperament must absorb for themselves the knowledge of how child labor has been treated in the factories of Bombay, how women fare, how wage-earners are housed and treated in the pro- duction of industrial wealth. Such knowledge begets charity. It yields a new understanding for the wounded spirit which lies behind wild utterances, behind the de- moniacal torrential speeches that flow from him at times like a volcano in action. It is twenty years since he first came to London and The Man Whom Coolidge Fears By RENNIE SMITH made it his home. His wife is English and brings the benefit of an English climate into his Oriental and rebel- lious temperament. During this whole period in London Saklatvala has entered into the full tide of workers’ politics; he has championed the cause of the Indian worker; he has en- couraged Indian trade unionism; he has brought the whole story of low-grade living among the inarticulate masses of India steadily before the notice of all who would pay attention to him; he has taken his position on the extreme left in his advocacy of the cause of Indian freedom. It is many years ago since first I heard him speak in an annual Independent Labor Party conference. His plea was for an international outlook. With strong, incisive words he insisted that the standard of life of the British worker was determined not on the banks of the Thames but the Ganges. The condition of the Indian worker was the inescapable self-interest of the British worker. It was hung round his neck like a millstone. Such a theme I heard coming from the mouth of a thin, wiry man, with long, clever fingers; a man dipped in a poet's flame of eloquence, enriched by indigna- tion. At the same time, something fanatical, authorita tive, hard, and, as the Germans say, is the man as he first impressed me. irning core of truth poured out of a rich, cultured, musical, and rebel nature—a premature force (in one aspect) of the world’s mind and conscience. At the same time an un- sincerity, made somber by entweder-oder That Here Was at comfortable man to listen to. An eloquent man, rather than a logician. His eloquence runs away with him. That is why his recorded speeches contain so many contra dictions. Since those early years I have met him often, heard him speak often. In the House it has been his this session to emphasize his representation of the Com munist Party. He goes out of his way to do it. I have fancied that his rebel spirit finds some spiritual satisfaction in this emphasis upon his communistic loneliness in the House. The House has a reputation for fair play. The House tends to empty when Saklatvala speaks. It does not suffer him gladly. The House has a deep aversion to what is called the hurling of brick-hbats, sob-stuff. That is the man who is refused admission to the Interparliamentary Conference at Washington. As a Com munist he can make no reproaches. His own philosophy is put across him. But the world of man lives and thrives by other foods than the doctrine of force. It has other dialectics than the prevention of individuals from going down to the sea in ships. It has other methods than the stopping of human mouths with the deadly dust of unintelligent ages. In the meanwhile I like to remember that one of Saklatvala’s qualities is his power of silence. There dwell in him, too, the powers which have given the world the distinguished succession of Indian mystics. I should like to hear the melodies, the dreams, and the thoughts of which his silence is composed. practice in demagoguery, and

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The Nation [ Vol. 121, No. 3144 Poincaré’s Guilt in the War By HARRY ELMER BARNES HIS article is intended as a specific and explicit reply to M. Poincaré’s pronouncements upon war-guilt in the October Foreign Affairs, and not as an attempt at a systematic and logical resummary of the question. An understanding of this fact is necessary in order to explain the order and sequence of the material, which would be far different if we did construction of our views on war-guilt is the polemic pam- phlets of Lenin, Trotzky, Bela Kun, Ludendorff, Von Tirpitz, and the Kaiser. In fact, the German documents were pub- lished not under the auspices of the friends of the Kaiser and his regime but by their enemies, who enthusiastically hoped to prove thereby the guilt of Austria and Germany. If the German documents not contemplate a point- by-point refutation of the distinguished French Statesman. Poincaré fires his opening guns by citing the views of Richard Grelling, Maximilian Harden, and Prince Lichnowsky in favor of the view of German re- sponsibility for the war, and in charging that the revisionist historians are consciously or uncon- sciously victims of Ger- man and Soviet propa- ganda and dishonesty. Is it possible that the power of a lie is even greater than it is pictured as being in the fine book of the Nor- wegian novelist, Johan Bojer? Its power sometimes dis- heartens those who seek to defend and bear witness to the truth. Those who have been closely connected with great events and who remember them in their minutest details feel that the truth must be obvious to any fair-minded per- son. But when they see the imagination of some and the dishonesty of others distorting facts out of all semblance to reality they feel inclined to withdraw into themselves, to give up counting upon any man to refute such calumnies, and to wait for time in its wisdom to reestablish the balance. This is a mistake. For falsehood is thus given an oppor- tunity to outdistance truth and legend is allowed to take the place of history—RAYMOND POINCARE IN “FOREIGN had been garbled at all they would have been garbled against the Ger- man monarchy and Aus- tria and not in such a way as to favor the white-washing of Ger- many. The German docu- ments were edited by scholars from both the progressive and conserv- ative camps in Germany, and no reputable author- ity has ever questioned their authenticity. The same holds true with re- gard to the Austrian documents; no _ serious AFFAIRS,” OCTOBER, 1925. Richard Grelling at the outbreak of the war pub- question has ever been raised as to the compe- lished a savage attack upon the German Government as responsible for the war, entitled “J’Accuse.” Having committed himself in a vio- lently dogmatic fashion to the question of German guilt before any of the valid documentary evidence was available, he had neither the honesty nor the scholarship to look into the question and revise his views, but, like M. Poincaré, has rehashed the dogmas of 1914. His recent book has been pulverized by Count Montgelas. Likewise, Harden estab- lished his reputation for a generation upon the basis of being a “Kaiser-baiter”; like Grelling he has a vested inter- est in maintaining the thesis of German guilt. No one sus- pects him of competence as a historian of war-guilt. Lich- nowsky’s views were expressed between 1912 and 1914, when he could possess none of the cogent evidence since uncov- ered, which establishes the Franco-Russian guilt. The ques- tion of war-guilt, however, cannot be settled by the opinion of any single man, but solely by recourse to the authentic documents. Poincaré would scarcely be pleased to have the Crown Prince cite the opinions of Gouttenoire de Toury as those of the one “honest Frenchman” whose views could be accepted as absolutely definitive on the question of war- guilt. The allegation that the revisionist scholars have either been duped by or have consciously sold themselves to the propaganda of Germany and the Bolsheviks is ridiculous. Revisionist scholars worthy of the name have founded their reconstructed views not upon controversial publications but upon the authentic documents in the foreign offices of Vienna, Berlin, and St. Petersburg. Poincaré would lead the uninformed reader to believe that the basis for the re- tence, thorough scholar- ship, and honesty of their editor, Dr. Roderich Gooss. Poincaré’s case against the Russian documents is even weaker. We have, in the first place, the Siebert collection, which embodies the exchanges between London and St. Pe- tersburg from 1908 to 1914 and was compiled by an aristo- cratic landlord years before the Soviets came into authority. The first two important editions of the exchanges between Paris and St. Petersburg were both made by Frenchmen, namely, by M. Laloy and by M. Marchand, the latter of whom prepared the “Livre Noir.” Subsequently another edition of the Russian documents was prepared by a Ger- man scholar, Professor Stieve. No important discrepancies are to be discovered in these separate editions, and no in- formed scholar suspects forgeries or other garbling. What has been proved, however, is that the Russian “Orange Book,” published in 1914 to clear the French and Russians of the charge of war-guilt, was most notoriously garbled, leaving out or distorting the incriminating evidence against Sazonov, Izvolski, and their French collaborators. If M. Poincaré believes that these Russian documents describing the Franco-Russian relations are inaccurate and misleading, why did he not throw open the French archives so that the allegations in the “Livre Noir” might be discredited? Why did he find it necessary, moreover, to have the French “Yel- low Books” officially edited, with the damaging sections deleted? Why did he not turn over this task to reputable scholars? These questions become daily more pertinent and relevant since England has given consent to the publica- tion of her pre-war archives under the editorship of the distinguished scholars G. P. Gooch and Harold Temperley.

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Oct. 7, 1925] The Nation 381 Poincaré appears to derive great satisfaction from a speech of former Premier Herriot in the Chamber of Depu- ties, contending that there is nothing in the “Livre Noir” in any way establishing even partial guilt on the part of France with regard to war responsibility. Certainly no scholar would accept a political speech as a verdict upon the facts of history, least of all that of a French politician be- fore the Chamber of Deputies. Let us see how a perusal of the “Livre Noir” affected a dis- tinguished scholar, the late Baron Serge Korff, himself a vigorous enemy of the Bolsheviks: We find [says Dr. Korff] new light thrown upon the pre- war attitude of France, strange- ly but constantly connected with one big name—Poincaré. Pi- chon, Barthou, and many other familiar names are frequently mentioned, but none seems to have played any such promi- nent role in the building up and strengthening of the Franco- Russian alliance as Poincaré; and besides, with a very evi- dent object—steady prepara- tion for the coming conflict with Germany. The reader will put aside this volume with the in- evitable conviction that Poin- caré long before 1914 had one idea on his mind, the war with Germany. These documents give a most vivid picture of the French pressure exerted on Rus- sia with that one object in view, pies sao eos 1914 the statistics show not only that in the spring of French were possessed of a larger army and a better mili- tary equipment in proportion to their population than was Germany but that the French army and equipment were greater than the German, in spite of the fact that Germany was nearly twice as populous as France and surrounded by powerful enemies. And France was not scared into the army bill of 1913 by Germany, as France’s bill was drafted before the French knew the na- ture of the impending German army act. Further, Poincaré’s reference to the constitutional procedure of France and the re- sponsibility of the Cabinet to the Chamber possesses no. relevance in the matter of war responsi- bility in 1914. Whatever the theory, in the crisis of 1914 Poin- caré’s Cabinet did not consult the Chamber of Deputies at all Poincaré persistently refused to submit the question of the de- termination upon war to. the Chamber; he and his Cabinet took full personal responsibility for the decision, and after the war was on they relied upon the censor ship, war psychology, and the as- sassination of Jaurés to induce the Chamber to approve their action. ninitt ‘rite vine In the matter of the decision up ttt t on war in 1914 the action of tttt Sazonov and the Czar was in no sense more irresponsible and auto- cratic than that of Poincaré, Vi a war with Germany. At times the Russians were even losing pa- tience with the French, so little did the latter mind the Russian interests; they were willing to lend the Russians money, but only on condition that Russia would increase her army and build new strategic, but otherwise quite useless, railways. Those who desire detail and documentation in regard to this charge by Dr. Korff may well consult the excellent, if severe, book of Gouttenoire de Toury, “Jaurés et le Parti de la Guerre.” Rhetorically once more Poincaré pleads that the very fact that a great number of nations were allied against the Central Powers proves that the latter were necessarily in the wrong. This assertion breaks down when one inquires why these various countries joined the Allies. Their action was determined by the relative advantages of prestige, ter- ritory, or spoil to be obtained by entry into the war. Even the United States did not come into the war because of what Germany did in 1914 but because of her subsequent actions. Poincaré seeks immunity in the allegation that Presi- dent Masaryk has contended for the superiority of the French system of government as over against the German system of 1914, and has alleged that France was characterized as much by a love of peace as was Germany by a desire for war. The point at issue, however, is not the relative excellence of the French republic or the former German monarchy—a de- batable matter—but the military policies and aggressive acts prior to August 3, 1914, which brought on the war. French WAR From ['Humanité viani, and Messimy. And from 1912-14 many millions of francs were supplied by the autocratic Russians to lubricate the constitutional machinery of liberty-loving France. As to “open diplomacy” in France, the French Chamber in 1914 was not yet aware of the terms of the Franco-Ruassian agreement of 1891-93. With respect to 1870 and the German peace terms Poin- caré at least frankly admits that Prussia was not solely re- sponsible for the declaration of war. But it is absurd to hold, as does Poincaré, that the Republicans never cherished the hope of revenge or of the recovery of Alsace-Lorraine by force. In fact, in an address to university students Poincaré frankly declared that “I could not for my generation any reason for existing unless it were for the hope of recovering our lost provinces.” Certainly one as familiar as M. Poincaré with European politics and inter- national relations could not have supposed that they could have been recovered except by force. Surely, Poincaré can scarcely believe that none of his American readers have ever witnessed the ceremony of draping the Strasbourg statue in Paris. The high point of Poincaré’s demagogy and rhetoric is to be found in his calm assumption that by definition the Triple Alliance and all other German negotiations were offensive, while the Triple Entente and all international] agreements of any members of the Entente were purely pacific and defensive, designed to “free Europe and the world from German domination.” How about the Franco- see

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The Nation [Vol. 121, No. 3144 If Franco-Russian Italian and Anglo-Japanese alliances? relations had been purely defensive France would not have had to go to war against Germany in behalf of Russia in 1914, as it was Russia which took the initiative in mobiliza- As to his assertion that the “Yellow Books” contain all of the Franco-Russian understandings, the burden of proof is on him until France throws open her archives. In fact, in several cases scholars have already been able to discover damaging documents which have been excluded. Poincaré’s interpretation of the Morocco disputes is equally remote from the facts. German manners in both 1905 and 1911 are certainly open to question, but that Ger- many had both moral and legal right on her side cannot be doubted. In 1905 she gave notice that Northern Africa could not be partitioned without taking some notice of German rights and interests, and in 1911 she protested against violations of the Act of Algeciras by France and Spain. Judge Ewart, after a careful examination of all the evidence, including that recently set forth by Thayer and Bishop as to the part played by Roosevelt, concludes: tion. Germany was within her rights in insisting in 1905 upon a reference of her dispute with France concerning Morocco to an international conference. President Roose- velt was of that opinion. He warmly congratulated the Kaiser on his success in that regard. And the result of the proceedings of the conference—the Act of Algeciras— was to a large extent a declaration in favor of the Ger- man contention for international equality in Morocco, and a denial of the claim of France and Spain to exclusive domination. French and Spanish military operations in 1911 were subversive of the chief principle of the Act of Algeciras, namely, “the sovereignty and independence of His Majesty the Sultan.” France so regarded the Spanish actions, and Spain so regarded the French. Germany, as a party to the act, was within her rights in objecting to these proceedings. The contention that France was always a restraining and moderating influence upon Russian activity in the Bal- kans and Turkey is belied by a large mass of incontroverti- ble documents. From 1912 to 1914 Poincaré worked hand in hand with Izvolski in encouraging the growth of a strong and alert Russian interest in the Near Eastern question. By 1911 Izvolski had become convinced not only that the securing of the Straits should be the pivotal element in Russian foreign policy but also that they could not be obtained short of a European war. Poincaré moved to re- strain Russia in the Balkans only when it seemed possible that France might get involved in such fashion that the crisis would not be capable of exploitation in the interest of the recovery of Alsace-Lor- raine. Poincaré was for peace in 1912 because the Russians were not prepared for war and the French people had not yet been converted by the bribed press to a grave concern over the Balkans. On the other hand, France fre- quently urged Russia on to more vigorous and challenging policies than the Russian Govern- ment was willing to undertake on its own initiative. Sir Edward Grey worked for peace in 1912-13 by the same methods he refused to follow at Germany’s suggestion in 1914. Poincaré says nothing of the decision of the Russian Crown Council in February, 1914, to await an imminent world war in which to take From l’Ere Nouvelle Joseph Caillaux the opportunity to seize Constantinople, or of the Russian bribery and encouragement of Serbian officials and plotters. Perhaps the most inevitable, but also the most discredit- able, phase of Poincaré’s lame defense is his attack upon the departed Izvolski. The absent are always wrong, and the dead are very absent. He ridicules Judet’s edition of Georges Louis’s diary as being “dialogues of the dead,” but he does not hesitate to indulge in a monologue at the ex- pense of the dead. Poincaré gives the impression of him- self as a person unwillingly dragged about by a man whom he hated and whose policy he opposed. Professor William L. Langer, bibliographic editor of the very journal in which Poincaré’s article appeared, happens to have worked over Stieve’s edition of Izvolski’s communications to which Poin- caré refers his readers, and concludes: But the gods were with Izvolski and against humanity. Everything changed as in a dream when, in March, 1912, Poincaré succeeded to the premiership. It was a disas- trous event, for Poincaré, convinced of the inevitability of war with Germany, agreed entirely with Izvolski that the Entente must be strengthened and that the Central Powers must be shown that the days of their dictation were over. After the first conversations with the new premier, Izvolski felt like a new man.... The story is a long one, and not very edifying. Poin- caré seems to have disliked Izvolski personally, and both appear to have distrusted each other. But in political matters they made an ideal team. There was no diver- gence in their views. And so they were able to cooperate, supporting and assisting each other in the attainment of the “great solution.” Together they intrigued against the pacific French ambassador at St. Petersburg, Georges Louis, and Russian funds were put at the disposal of Poin- earé and Klotz to enable them to silence the opposition and even to bring about Poincaré’s election as President. And where they could not cooperate they supplemented each other. It was Poincaré’s opposition that wrecked the agreement between England and Germany and it was Poincaré who effected the naval agreement between Eng- land and Russia in 1914, after Izvolski had already brought about the Russian-French naval pact of 1912. Poincaré not only “put up” with Izvolski personally; he also cooperated with him in “putting up” several million francs of Russian money to bribe the French press to carry editorials or news designed to convert the French people to the support of the new and aggressive Franco- Russian policies in the Balkans. Izvolski wrote to Sazo- nov concerning his interview with Poincaré in July, 1913: From this interview I was convinced that M. Poin- caré is in every respect in accord with us, con- siders the moment has finally arrived to realize the century-old aims of our traditional policy (“a réaliser les aspirations séculaires”), and thereby restore the European balance of power by the return of the stolen provinces of Alsace- Lorraine. He anticipates the greatest difficulty on the part of the social radicals who are averse to any war, primarily on financial and business grounds, but especially to a war which begins in the Balkans. This party has very capable leaders: Caillaux, Herriot, Painlevé; it has at its disposal a considerable number of Deputies and newspapers. M. Poincaré believes with me that for this purpose a very great sacrifice on our part is

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Oct. 7, 1925] The Nation 383 necessary. I scarcely dare name the amount, namely, 3,000,- 000 francs, of which 250,000 francs alone is for the Radical, the organ of Senator Perchot. When we take into consideration how insignificant such a sum is in comparison with the world changes which we expect to bring about thereby, perhaps you will undertake to submit this suggestion to the Cabinet for immediate action. Poincaré suggests that Izvolski grossly misrepresented him in the communications published in the “Livre Noir.” But why, then, did not Poincaré vindicate himself by order- ing the publication of the French documents? Poincaré’s attempt to dispose of Georges Louis’s damaging revelations is as disingenuous and unconvincing as his assault on Izvolski. Perhaps the most striking sentences in the whole ar- ticle mark Poincaré’s admission that, after all, the real causes of the outbreak of the war must be sought in the events after the assassination of the Archduke. “I do not claim,” he says, “that Austria and Germany, in this first phase [July, 1914], had a conscious thought-out inten- tion of provoking a general war. No existing document gives us the right to suppose that, at that time, they had planned anything so systematic.” This is ungracious to Poincaré’s friends like Simeon Strunsky, who have rather grudgingly admitted that while France and Russia pre- cipitated the war in August, 1914, they were justified in doing so because of what Germany had brought them to in the period from 1905 to 1914. Now Poincaré admits that what happened prior to the last days of June, 1914, is, after all, irrelevant. Poincaré even concedes that there was no Potsdam Conference. Poincaré’s presentation of the events of the last fatal month begins by a footnote implying that Renouvin’s recent book is a vindication of his article, something grossly mis- leading. In stating the circumstances with respect to the Serbian crisis he gives no hint whatever ef the long-con- tinued and menacing Serbian intrigues against Austria, of the German restraint of Austria in 1912-13, or of the most crucial fact of all, namely, the full official Serbian complicity in the plot for the murder of the Archduke. He does not admit at any point that Austria had a legitimate grievance or that past Austrian experiences with Serbia constituted grounds for Austrian skepticism as to the reliability of Ser- bian promises. : Poincaré severely criticizes the Kaiser for giving Austria a free hand in regard to Serbia on July 5, but this is exactly what Poincaré soon gave to Russia in regard to the same issue. And while the Kaiser actually disap- proved of a punitive war believed essential to the con- tinued integrity of the Dual Monarchy, Poincaré encour- aged the aggressive intervention of Russia in a situation which did not concern her safety or integrity, and, if persisted in, was bound to involve all Europe in war. When the Kaiser saw that this proposed local war was likely to endanger Europe he put the strongest pressure upon Austria to desist and negotiate with Russia; when Poincaré saw that the Russian action threatened war he urged Russia on to more rapid and far-reaching military preparations. Poincaré’s assertion that Germany favored the Austrian declaration of war on Serbia is flatly false. Whether rightly or wrongly, the Kaiser and his Chan- cellor believed the Serbian reply a satisfactory basis for negotiations and they strongly criticized the opening of hostilities. Poincaré’s picture of the German attitude from July 28-31 is wholly misleading. He denominates the vigor- ous German pressure to restrain Austria as “a slight change in attitude just at the end.” Poincaré falsifies the situation further in declaring that on the 30th Germany re- linquished her pressure and once more favored war. The German pressure on Austria grew stronger on the 30th and 3lst, and at the very end Austria unwillingly agreed to negotiate with been destroyed by the premature and unjustifiable Rus Poincaré's tussia, but the possibility of peace had sian mobilization which France had encouraged. statement of Bethmann’s attitude toward the telegram of George V is grossly inaccurate. Sophistry, error, and evasion exude from every sen tence of M. Poincaré’s French mobilization and the question as to whether Rus- sian mobilization was equivalent to war. He represents the Russian mobilization as essential to the very safety of the Russian Empire. It was in no sense so. Even Sazonov admitted that he was convinced that Austria did not contemplate territorial aggression at the expense of Serbia; yet if she had done so Russia could with little propriety have objected, as she had been willing to sug- gest the annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1908 when she expected to gain something at the expense of Serbian aspirations. There was no threat directly at Rus- sia at all. Germany had not mobilized in any way, and Austria had merely mobilized twenty-two divisions against Serbia. But as early as July 29 Russia mobilized fifty- five divisions directly against Austria. The only thing which was menaced by the Austrian intervention in Serbia was the greater Serbia program of Russia and France. Months before the murder of the Archduke Sazonov had become convinced that Russia could get the Straits only through war, and 1914 was the year of all years for the war from the Franco-Russian viewpoint, as the success of the Anglo-German negotiations in June, 1914, seemed likely to reduce England’s interest in the Triple Extente. Mathias Morhardt has shown by quotations from their writings that not only Generals Obruchev and Boisdeffre, who concluded the Franco-Russian military convention in 1893-94, understood clearly that Russian general mobiliza- tion meant war but that Alexander III, Nicholas II, Wil- liam II, George V, Poincaré, Dobrorolski, Paléologue, Vi- viani, Sir Edward Grey, and Lloyd George were equally clear and certain that it did. Far from determining upon war before knowing of the Russian mobilization, as Poin- caré asserts was the case, the German Government did not declare war even after it learned of Russian mobiliza- tion, but endeavored to induce the Russians to suspend mobilization. Under the circumstances of the Russian prior mobilization against Germany, France was not obli- gated by her agreement with Russia to come to the aid of the latter, and hence it would not have been necessary for France to “tear up her defensive alliance.” What actually held France in line with the aggressive Russian action were Poincaré’s promises to Izvolski before 1914, his unqualified promise of French aid on his St. Peters- burg visit, and the secret French encouragement of the Russian preparations and mobilization after he had re- turned to France. Poincaré is doubtless right about the impatience of Moltke and the German General Staff, but he openly confesses the same impatience on the part of discussion of the Russian and

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384 The Nation [Vol. 121, No. 3144 General Joffre and the French General Staff. Poincaré makes much of the formal German declaration of war in 1914, but he says of 1870 that “it is vain to say that it was Napoleon III who declared war.” Poincaré’s case for France’s desire to delay and defend herself against German aggression does not hold water. The fact that the German ambassador at Paris could report on July 29 that peace was honestly desired in Paris simply shows how successful Poincaré, Viviani, and Mes- simy had been in deceiving him. The French authori- ties knew that Russian mobilization meant inevitable war; they knew that the Russian preparations were proceeding and mobilization was contemplated; and they knew that if forced into war Germany desired only a defensive war against Russia. Yet the French authorities made no effort whatever to restrain the Russians, but secretly urged them to speed up their preparations. But the most damning element in the whole case against France is to be found in the date of the official French determination upon war. Of this there is no doubt. At 1 a.m., August 1, Izvolski sent the following telegram to St. Petersburg: The French War Minister informed me, in hearty high spirits, that the Government has firmly determined upon war, and begged me to indorse the hope of the French General Staff that all of our efforts will be directed against Germany, and that Austria will be treated as a quantité négligeable. This decision must have been arrived at some hours be- fore Izvolski reported it to his home government, but even his telegram was sent sixteen hours before Germany de- clared war on Russia and two and a half days before Germany declared war upon France. France was, thus, the first country in Europe decisively to declare itself for war in the diplomatic crisis of 1914. Poincaré makes much of the refusal of the French Government to grant Joffre’s original request for mobilization, which Izvolski explained to Sazonov thus: It is very important for France on account of political considerations relative to Italy, and most especially Eng- land, that the French mobilization should not precede the German one but form an answer to the latter. Even Poincaré does not dare to assert that the French military preparations were not proceeding rapidly in secret in spite of the temporary withholding of the formal order for mobilization. It is most astonishing that Poincaré should once more bring up the ten-kilometer withdrawal order of July 30 as a proof of defensive policy on the part of the French authorities. This has been riddled not only by historians but by both Viviani and Messimy. Poincaré asserts that this withdrawal order was a weakening of French military strength and was vigorously opposed by the General Staff. Both Viviani and Messimy denied this explicitly in speeches before the French Chamber on January 31, 1919, and Viviani admitted that diplomatic considerations were solely responsible for the withdrawal order. Messimy also in- formed General Joffre explicitly on this point in a telegram sent to him on August 1 at 5 p.m. These “diplomatic con- siderations” were the creation of a favorable impression on England, Italy, and the French people themselves by endeavoring to demonstrate that France was contemplating a defensive war. M. Poincaré’s “gates of hell” may not prevail against the fabric of Entente mythology and propaganda, but the much more relevant and substantial documentary facts of diplomatic history not only will prevail against them; they have already done so. In the Driftway HE Drifter is happy to announce that, contrary to common rumor, romance, even in a materialistic age, is not dead but alive and flourishing. In Italy a royal princess weds, with appropriate ceremony, a royal prince. Her train is four yards long and is borne by two little girls with golden hair; a king, two queens, and innumerable princes attend the marriage; twenty carriages of flowers do homage to the happy pair; the chapel in which the cere- mony is performed is lighted by fourteenth-century can- delabra, and the bride and groom kneel on crimson cushions before six crucifixes at the altar. These details, while unimportant to some, are of moment to the Drifter because they prove either that newspaper reporters are more given to reading fairy tales than he would have supposed pos- sible or that a king and queen, in arranging the mar- riage of their daughter, are well enough versed in the tradition of fairy lore to do the thing up properly. It is only necessary to add that the young man who was in this case to win the royal princess, though himself a prince, is without either goods or kingdom, and the tale is complete. * * * * * HERE are those who do not look for romance in present-day Russia. But even there a fairy god- mother has spoken; the Soviet Minister of Education has issued a decree abolishing all homework for school children henceforth. The Drifter well remembers the ogre of home- work which the Soviet Government has now so obligingly slain; he recalls certain notebooks in which, in a painful, round hand, he wrote over and over some word of three syllables, some meaningless sentence, some simple problem in arithmetic; he remembers the gold stars for excellence which dotted some notebooks, although conspicuously lack- ing on his own. How welcome such an official order as that of the Soviets would have been to him in those days. If, as he sat licking his pencil under the lamp and from time to time making damp, deep marks on the lined page before him, he had heard such a release pronounced for him he imagines that the world could barely have contained his joyful spirit. That the same joy is rising in the breasts of Russian boys and girls he cannot doubt. Homework is not a national matter; it is as abominable in one language as another. To abolish it was certainly as important as the slaying of the Gorgon by Perseus, or as any number of fire-breathing dragons disposed of in a suitable manner by the proper hero. * ¥ * * * INALLY there is romance in the United States. We are not all given over to porcelain bath-tubs and the radio; there is at least one American citizen in whose heart trust in his fellow-men burns like a fire. William H. Anderson is in need of $45,000; he requires this sum not to further any great national movement but to free him “from personal burdens” which hinder his life work. And what does Mr. Anderson, this incurable romantic, do in Yo onlhlUce)h oetlUelC ClUMrOO ll ee Oe ee ee a ee ere rn nn oe | me

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Oct. 7, 1925] The Nation 385 such an emergency? Why, he does what any believer in fairy godmothers would do. He appeals to the public; he requests manna from the skies; he, in short, sends out a circular to whom it may concern asking that sufficient sums be sent him to release him from this unwelcome obligation. Who shall say that the manna will not fall? There will be ravens, there will be water from the rock, and the way out of the wilderness will be opened for him. The Drifter does not doubt that this fouching faith will be rewarded. Romances must have theif happy ending. THE DRIFTER Correspondence Palestine or Russia? To THE EpiTor oF THE NATION: Str: Your columns being always open to anyone who pleads in a good cause, you will perhaps permit me to voice a warning of the most tragic import in a matter that concerns the fate cf an entire people. My morning paper brings me, through the Jewish Tele- graph Agency, the news that the Joint Distribution Commit- tee of American Jewry proposes to raise $15,000,000 for the assistance of Jews in Russia and other European countries. The Telegraph Agency adds a brief interview with Mr. Louis Mar- shall. I must take this interview as it is reported. In it Mr. Marshall is quoted as saying that this great drive will not inter- fere with Zionist activity in the United States but that he objects to the claim of the American Zionists that Palestine should have priority, on the ground that no benevolent activity has the right to a monopoly. I am not a member of the Zionist organization. never paid my shekel and I don’t think I ever will. I want to keep both my mind and my hands free. But after a fairly long and fairly thorough study of the Jewish situation in both Europe and Palestine I feel it my duty to protes€with all possi- ble vigor, with all possible urgency against the investment of one penny of Jewish money anywhere except in Palestine. No more disastrous, no more tragic error could be made. I am not impugning the good faith of the Soviet authorities in their scheme of settling Jewish farmers on Crimean lands. I impugn the conscious good faith of no one. I assert that there is no hope in Europe. It does not matter whether the regime is a red tyranny or a white, a capitalistic oligarchy tinged with mon- archism as in Germany or a military despotism masquerading as a republic; it does not matter who are the “ins” or who are the “outs.” At the first sign of popular tumult, whatever its cause, whatever its character, the people, whether in Soviet Russia or elsewhere, will rise up and smite the Jews. Promises count for nothing, the good faith of liberals is powerless, treaties are scraps of paper. If these Jews of today are not slaughtered, buried alive, crucified, shot, their children will be tomorrow. To spend one penny on keeping a Jew in Eastern or Central Europe is to subsidize murder. Palestine is not one form of benevolence among others. It is not benevolence at all. It is the only hope, the only duty, the only salvation. Yesterday they pulled the beards of all the Jews on the streets of Riga; today they acquitted Hakenkreuzler in Silesia for destroying a synagogue. The Poles have made a gesture of peace. They want an American loan. If they get it they will reverse the gesture. If they don’t get it they will blame the Jews. In Germany prices are rising. The people are told to smite the Jews. If France is other-minded, why does she not sneak one word to curb the bloody Poles? If Italy is other- I have minded, whence these intrigues that seek to cripple us in the Near East? A thousand details could be gathered daily, nay hourly. And let not my American friends believe that there is or can be an exception. There is none. Did they themselves believe that the gates of America would ever be closed on the distressed of Israel? And if that could happen, what do they expect of Europe? The causes of the hopelessness of the European situation are intricate. Yet they are clear when once they have been grasped. Christianity has never changed the real character of the pagan world. There are a few instinctive Christians everywhere and there are numerous Gentiles among them. But the broad masses of mankind are pagan barbarians, delighting in war and force, diverted by slaughter, instinctively wreaking irritation, discontent, or the mere playfulness of drunkenness on the weaker, the pacific, the minority, the different. To imagine that they have either gallantry or honor is as gross a superstition as to suppose that war can be anything but gruc somely relentless. Wherever the Jews must remain a small minority among a European people, there is no security nor health nor hope. The excuses of the majority differ from cen- tury to century. The Jew is not a Christian. an Aryan. The Jew is not... TheJewis... ble mass of lies and self-deceptions. The Jew is in a minority. The Jew is a Jew. He has been murdered; he is being mur- dered; he will be murdered. There is no hope. No hope—except in Palestine. We have the pledged word of the nations; we have the pledged honor of Britain that there we may some day become an effective if not an actual majority With $15,000,000 we could come within sight of our goal. Cri mean villages may be overrun by another Petlura or Denikin. Do our American Jews not remember that trail of blood? They have not seen, as I have, the children in Palestine who saw their fathers and their brothers buried alive. They have not seen, as I have seen, the whips and scorpions of Poland and Hungary. With $15,000,000 for Palestine we could so fortify and accelerate our work and make it so effective for the welfare and the civili- zation of the whole of the Near East that Britain may be tempted—as she needs but to be tempted—to include within the limits of the promised homeland the great and scarcely peopled tracts of Trans-Jordania with which our historical connection is hardly less clear than with the country from the Jordan to the sea. With $15,000,000 ... But my imagination is staggered. For I can see Nahalal in the valley of Jezreel multiplied an hundred times, or Balfouria, or the lovely suburbs at the foot of the glory of Carmel. It was a Jew who said: “Man does not live by bread alone.” He lives by an immortal and inexpugnable idea. The Crimean settlements will not flourish even while they are undemolished by Cossack or Tartar. There will be no health in them. It is useless to give bread to the Ghetto of Vilna. The bread will wither in the mouths of them that taste it. There is an idea alive today—an inspiration, an unquenchable, indomita- ble hope. Its name is Eretz Israel. I see outstretched hands of millions—stretched out not after the sour bread of charity, not after the cold clods of an alien and forever embattled land, but after the peace of Jerusalem and the excellency of Carmel. Vienna, September 5 LupWiIG LEWISOHN The Jew is not An inextrica To THE EpiTor oF THE NATION: Sir: A momentous gathering of American Jewry concluded a two-day session in Philadelphia on Sunday September 13. Leaders of all shades of opinion, radical and conservative, Zion- ists and non-Zionists, were present to consider the plan worked out by Dr. Joseph Rosen, representative of the Joint Distribu- tion Committee in Russia for the last four years, for the settle- ment of thirty to forty thousand Jewish families in the Ukraine. It was at Dr. Rosen’s suggestion that the J. D. C. had in 1924 allotted $400,000 as an experiment for settling 1,000 families on some of the most fertile land in southern Russia. Five thousand families were actually placed on some 500,000 acres of land furnished gratis by the Soviet Government. The success of this

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effort convinced Dr. Rosen of the feasibility of widening and extending this back-to-the-land movement. Of the 3,000,000 Jews in Russia 70 per cent are without means of earning a live- lihood, in large measure because of the government policy of restrictions on private trade. Now that immigration to the United States is practically shut off, the hope of Russian Jewry, he felt, lay in removing as large a number as possible from the cities and towns to the land. This would make them econom- ically independent and at once confer complete citizenship rights upon the settlers with three years’ exemption from taxation and military service. There was manifest at the national conference, held to raise $15,000,000 in three years to carry out Dr. Rosen’s plan, a division of opinion as to its wisdom. Objection came principally from Zionists who feared that it would deter immigration to the Jewish homeland and in withdrawing financial assistance from the Zionist cause. The issue was squarely joined between the Zionists led by Rabbi Stephen Wise and the proponents of the plan led by Louis Marshall, who met the objections raised and the fears expressed concerning the attitude of the Soviet Gov- ernment. On the assurance of the J. D. C. leaders that there was no intention to discourage the resettlement of Jews in Pal- estine, and that they were united with the Zionists in the up- building of the Jewish homeland, Zionist opposition to the Rosen plan was withdrawn. Philadelphia, September 14 BENJAMIN GLASSBERG French Colonies and Debts To THE EpiTor OF THE NATION: Sir: The cession of lands by France in connection with the liquidation of the war debt is not brought to your atten- tion as a new thought—as you know it has been discussed both in French and American publications—but as an expression of a growing consciousness of many Americans of our need of larger tropical colonies for the production, under our own flag, of a larger part of our rapidly growing imports from the tropics and the need of naval harbors in the Pacific in relation to the Panama Canal and for better communications with the Philip- pines. In this connection let us consider the colonies held by France and how much territory she acquired as a result of the war. The area of the French colonies is approximately: In Asia 310.075 square miles In Africa ‘ 5 245.725 . « In America 33,165 In Oceania 9,170 Total . 5.598.135 The territory acquired by France from Germany as a result of the war is: In Africa Alsace-Lorraine 290,400 square miles 5,605 = a Total 296,005 For comparison let us also recall that France proper has an area of 212,660 square miles and a population of a little more than 39,000,000, practically at a standstill; the United States, including Alaska, an area of 3,560,920 square miles and a growing population of more than 112,000,000; and that the tropical colonies of the United States including Hawaii, Porto Rico, Guam, Samoa, the Panama Canal Zone, the Virgin Islands, and the Philippines have a total area of 125,365 square miles. With the large colonial empire indicated in a previous paragraph, for which she has not the population nor the finan- cial resources for development within a reasonable period, it would appear that France, without suffering any loss of na- tional prestige or prospects of future greatness, to the mutual advantage of both contracting countries might cede part of

her colonies to the United States as part payment of her debt. I refer to the following countries: ren HN) 6 6 cds cece tddncue 32,000 square miles Pree Wet BIOS. 6 occcivseccens 1,665 Ee wa icin ido te aa 1,520 Snead wa We dahe seamed ine 7,650 PE. Novia e ches chbeecesa<eae 228.000 BD ives ae cawdvshaewkeeean 270,835 For these lands the United States could afford to pay a liberal price, the acquisition of which would enable this coun- try to grow a large part of her imports of tropical vegetable products which now amount to approximately $1,500,000,000 per annum. Again, by the possession of the Marquesas and the Society Islands she would gain control of excellent harbors of great strategic importance in relation to the Panama Canal and strengthen her communications with the Philippines. Their value as colonies to France is negligible from whatever point of view. The advantage accruing to France from this arrange- ment would consist not only in relieving her of direct pay- ment with attendant financial strain, but the cession of these lands would strengthen her finances by lessening her ad- ministrative expenses, which exceed the revenues by a con- siderable margin in most of her colonies. Finally, as a recog- nition of the value of American intervention, without which France probably would have been reduced in area and lost part of her colonies instead of adding thereto and sharing in the indemnity paid by Germany, the cession of these lands would cement the traditional friendship between the two great republics which may stand her in good stead in another war— and France still would be in possession of a colonial empire of 5,327,000 square miles, most of it contiguous territory within easy reach of the mother country. In its bearing upon the future the arrangement indicated might well rank in impor- tance with the Louisiana purchase, without which the United States would not have been the deciding factor it was in th« last war. Rochester, Minnesota, September 21 P. J. WESTER The Massacre of the Innocents’ TO THE EDITOR OF THE NATION: Sir: Three hundred children are killed every year by auto- mobiles in the City of New York. In Chicago 250 are killed annually. Thus we have a total of 550 children killed every year by automobiles in these two cities alone. By a simple cal- culation we may estimate that more than 7,000 children perish annually in this horrible manner in the whole of the United States. How many children did King Herod slay in the massacre of the innocents? What should we say if the Turks were to massacre 7,000 Christian children every year? What should we say, and do, if the criminal classes in the City of New York murdered 300 children every year? Have we no pity? Are we Christians? Are we civilized? It is a recognized fact that more than half of the auto- mobile fatalities are due to excessive speed. At least half of these children might be saved from an agonizing and dreadful death, from extinction in the very beginning and dawn of their existence, by automatically limiting the speed of all automobiles to a point more consistent with public safety (say twelve miles an hour). This is in our power, in the City of New York, at least. Let us ask for a city ordinance requiring that every automobile in the City of New York shall accept and use a speed controller, limiting its speed automatically to a maximum of twelve miles an hour. I am aware that such a city ordinance would interfere with the amusement of speed lovers; but I main- tain that human life should have the precedence. Chicago, September 9 BERTRAND SHADWELL

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Books and Plays Ironies By WYMAN SIDNEY SMITH These are the smooth bent pins of life— That we shall love and not be loved, And see love killed by the mere turning of a rose petal; That we shall live and miss ambition by a penny; That we shall gain life’s secret And lose it at an evening’s argument; That we shall dream and see a thorn On an old rose bush prick the dream. Some lose their lives because a pulley slips; In other days the dew made climbing dangerous, Or wind dropped cocoanuts on heads from high palm trees. Accidents? How so? Ironies are monkeys in us still. The Lineage of Printing The Invention of Printing in China and Its Spread Westward. By Thomas Francis Carter. Columbia University Press. $7.50. The Literature of Papermalzing, 1390-1800. Chillicothe, Ohio: The Author. $30. HE history of our civilization might be written in terms of the development of printing. For our civilization is essen- tially a book—and periodical—civilization. After the fashion of the Sultan who is alleged to have pronounced, following a most incredible story by one of his courtiers*“Now that I be- lieve, because I read something of the sort in a book,” we reverence the printed page. In America at any rate we have exalted literacy above all virtues. Yet in spite of our devotion to the printed word we have given inadequate attention to its By Dard Hunter. history. To the relatively scanty literature of the subject Professor Carter and Mr. Hunter have made two notable contributions. For his work, the first Occidental history of Chinese print- ing, Professor Carter has tapped the resources of the globe. Archaeological researches, hundreds of books in Oriental lan- guages, and personal conference with scholars in all parts of the world furnish the sound basis for a volume which carries its learning lightly, is filled with human interest, quiet humor, and illuminating illustrations, and is informed with that sense of the vital unity of all human affairs which alone makes scholar- ship a living thing. Its method affords a lesson to the research scholar on the one hand and to the entertaining but inaccurate writer of special articles on the other. Professor Carter brings to Occidental readers new and strik- ing personages in the history of printing: Ts’ai Lun, who in the second century A.D. invented paper, making it from bark, hemp, rags, and fish nets; the Empress Shotoku, who gave enor- mous impetus to printing by having a million charms printed in order to prolong her life but who died while the last of the charms were being made; Wang Chieh, the first known printer of books, a work of his having been found with the date 868; Féng Tao, the prime minister under whose direction the Chinese Classics were printed in 130 volumes between 932 and 953; Wu Chao-i, responsible for making literature available to the com- mon people; Pi Shéng, the first experimenter with movable type. Figures like these emerge as builders of a cultivated civilization while most of Europe was in barbarism. As to the possible line of descent from Chinese to European printing, Professor Carter finds the transmission of paper across Asia into Northern Africa, and then to Spain by means of the Moors, unquestionable. Also there is every probability that European block printing, first found in playing cards prints, came from China. There is only a mere possibility that the movable type of China and Korea—not so important to printing there because of the form of the languages—actually influenced European typography. Professor Carter believes, however, that reports of travelers as to the great diffusion of books in the Orient must have been a marked incentive to typo- graphical invention in Europe. Of as great significance as the facts in the book are two deductions. One relates to the parallelism of the human mind in East and West. As the author says, refuting popular notions of mysterious inscrutability in the Orient, “Given similar condi- tions, the two ends of the world have done similar things.” An amusing concrete example is found in the fourteenth-century Chinese woodcut entitled Beauties Who from Dynasty to Dynasty Have Overturned Empires. The other deduction concerns the religious motive as everywhere the impelling cause for the advance of printing. The earliest printing in practically every country has been religious printing. It is human inconsistency that the very forces which have invariably stimulated the means of expanding human knowledge have fre quently, as in our day, striven to prevent the dissemination of fact and opinion. Mr. Hunter’s contribution is a companion piece to t volume, “Old Papermaking,” which was the first book ever pre pared exclusively by one man, from the through the designing of the type, the making of the composition, and finally the press work itself. His new work, prepared in the same way, is an equally beautiful piece of print ing and an equally sound pioneer study. It lists the European and American works from 1390 to 1800 which deal with papermaking. The title-pages of the more important vol umes are reproduced, each on paper as nearly like the original as possible. Moreover, the books listed, many of which are ex tremely rare, are described and summarized with so much insight and selective ability as to turn bibliography, dullest of subjects, into pageantry. NELSON ANTRIM CRAWFORD nd image a commentary upon eariier writing of the text paper, tne eventy A Great Physician The Life of Sir William Osler. umes. Oxford University Press. “NOLIDLY grounded in science, alive to the social implications \7 of the medical discoveries of his day, and gifted with a compelling charm, Sir William Osler exerted an influence on the medical profession that has been equaled by few characters in the history of medicine. Born in 1849 of pioneer parents at Bond Head, Upper Canada, he early exhibited an exuberance of spirit combined with a certain roguishness and ingenuity “Father” Johnson, his teacher at Weston, Ontario, was an omnivorous naturalist interested not only in the gross behavior of his young students but likewise in the microscopic appear- ance of whatever chanced to cross his path—whether delicate aquatic larvae or the molar of an old cow killed on the railway track. It was Johnson who first fired the imagination of Wil liam Osler and developed in him that power of observation which involves something more than seeing. It is not wholly surprising that Osler, the son of a clergy- man and the favorite pupil of Father Johnson, entered Trinity College with the expectation of following the ministry. There, however, he fell under the dominant influence of James Bovell, 3y Harvey Cushing. Two vol $12.50.

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388 The Nation [Vol. 121, No. 3144 dean of the Institute of Medicine and professor of natural theology. Although Bovell was in the process of changing from medicine to the ministry his pupil at the age of twenty ferried in the reverse direction. Bovell became Osler’s spiritual father: “I will honor as my father the man who teaches me the art.” Two years abroad in the clinics of London, Vienna, Paris, Berlin, and Munich successfully cross-fertilized Osler’s mind so that on his return he was well equipped to assume the duties of professor of pathology at McGill. Charming in manner, prodigious in energy, enthusiastic in his work, he soon became the leader of a scientific renaissance. In 1884, at the age of thirty-four, while revisiting Europe he accepted a call to the professorship of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. In Philadelphia as in Montreal Osler proved “a potent ferment,” developing teaching in the wards and arousing the spirit of re- search in the laboratory. Then with the creation in 1889 of the Johns Hopkins Medical School he was called to Baltimore as chief. The Baltimore years proved to be the flowering of Osler’s career. Firmly grounded in the fundamentals of medicine, in love with his work and beloved by his students, he was also a prolific writer, turning out in those days a great proportion of the seven hundred and thirty titles of his bibliography. Osler realized his greatest joy and chief pride, however, in reviving the old-fashioned method of bedside instruction on the wards. As he once said: “I desire no other epitaph than the statement that I taught medical students in the wards.” His depth and breadth of learning found even fuller fruition in his “Text Book of Medicine,” a work that has been the unques- tioned standard in the field ever since. The crisp style, the humble confession of the gaps in medical knowledge, the pre- cision of thought helped to intrigue the interest of the Rocke- fellers in medical matters and played no small part in the evolution of the Rockefeller Institute of Medical Research. But greater than his tangible work was the impalpable effect of Osler’s engaging personality on the medical profession of his day. In a period of momentous scientific advances he immediately perceived the full implications of recent discov- eries with regard to tuberculosis, syphilis, malaria, and typhoid fever, and possessed the personality and literary ability to en- liven the profession to its full social duty. Such prodigious expenditure of energy took its toll, how- ever. When, therefore, the call to the Regius Professorship at Oxford came Osler seized the opportunity to limit his consult- ing practice and to devote his attention to the more scholarly aspects of medicine. He was not wholly successful in this, for his talent for leadership was inevitably recognized and utilized to the full. So widespread was the affection in which he was held that virtually every possible honor of the British medical profession was bestowed upon him. His home in Oxford, ap- propriately nicknamed The Open Arms, was constantly filled with English and American guests. On December 29, 1919, died “one of the most greatly beloved physicians of all time.” Such is the story which Dr. Cushing unfolds, or rather allows his subject to unfold, in fourteen hundred pages. For Dr. Cushing has entirely effaced himself, utilizing Osler’s letters, Osler’s speeches, and Osler’s acts to construct a mosaic which is virtually autobiographical in nature. In fact, he has almost exceeded the limits of commendable modesty. That his scholar- ship and medical eminence were not the only grounds on which the biography of Osler was intrusted to him is indicated by the touching last chapters of the book. It is interesting that in an age characterized by profound discoveries Osler, who made not a single fundamental contribu- tion, should nevertheless be one of the great medical figures. His gifts were of the clinic rather than of the laboratory. Probably no physician of his day was more learned in the struc- tural basis of disease, but he utilized his pathology to fortify a rare clinical acumen. The stern sense of reality engendered by his early training never allowed him to become a thera- peutic faddist. The work is bulky, but as a cyclopedia of Osleriana it will form an invaluable source book not only of the man but of the medical generation which he tends to symbolize. The excellent index and page headings will greatly enhance its value. The work is illumined by Osler’s never-failing wisdom and charm, his sharp wit and gentle humor, and it is everywhere informed with Dr. Cushing’s own literary skill and devotion to a great task. The “Life” constitutes a noble memorial. A biography, however, that will critically evaluate the contributions made by Osler to the science and art of medicine has yet to be written. HERRMANN BLUMGART The Long Journey Wanderings. By Robert Herrick. Harcourt, Brace and Com- pany. $2. N 1895 Robert Herrick, then a young American idealist, published his first essay in fiction. Since then he has come a long and sorrowful journey, marking in novel after novel the stages of his increasing bitterness and disillusion until now in three of the four short novels which constitute “Wander- ings” he has reached an ultimate pessimism. None of his works has achieved absolute greatness, none is sure of a perma- nent place in American literature; and yet, taken together, they form an impressive record of the life of a man who has spent his years in a serious effort to understand his age and who has found it less and less good. Their pages contain many an accurate picture of American life, many a shrewd comment upon it; and between the lines may be read an even more inter- esting story of the gradual embitterment of a passionate personality. Mr. Herrick was never, to be sure, a facile optimist. En- dowed with an austere, almost puritanical passion for rectitude and integrity, he was never one to see in the growing power and wealth of his country any palliation of the questionable means by which this growth was furthered. In novel after novel he described the rise of some business or professional man and set down with grim honesty the details of the bar- gains which he made. He never failed to show how commercial success was purchased at the price of sharp dealing or how professional advancement was achieved at the expense of pro- fessional integrity; and he never failed to make clear his opin- ion that, considered as a whole, the history of his generation was a history of the process by which honor, intellectual honesty, and the feeling for spiritual values were bartered for wealth, position, and power. Yet the sharpness of this criti- cism was, as such sharpness generally is, but the corollary of a passionate belief in the possibility of those things whose ab- sence was so resolutely pointed out. Born of an idealism, Mr. Herrick’s criticism revealed by the very vehemence of its pro- test against one tradition of life its belief in the possibilities of life itself; and he was, by the very fact that he chose usually to deal with sociological themes, constantly confessing his faith in mankind, since to discuss the evils of a social system is to assume that human nature is itself somehow capable of the good, the beautiful, and the great. Step by step, however, his bitterness has grown. With increasing disgust he has watched the spectacle which his age affords, and his disillusion, growing deeper and deeper, has led him to question not merely his country and his time but ex- istence itself. “Wanderings” is for him a new departure be- cause it is the first of his major works in which his theme is not primarily sociological; in it he turns his back upon society and its problems, gives up, as it were, any hope of finding an adequate explanation of life’s acrid flavor in the study of institutions and traditions, and gives himself to the analysis of characters and emotions which are operating in a social

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Oct. 7, 1925] The Nation 389 void. In these new stories his heroes have, like himself, sur- rendered the attempt to live in any close association with their fellows. They have abandoned the market-place and the street in the hope that in some remote and primitive corner of the world they could live uncorrupted lives, but even there they find existence inevitably bitter. Specifically, the stories deal, in a mood not unsuggestive of D. H. Lawrence, with baffled passion, with the inevitable frustration of that desire for com- plete understanding and complete union which produces the agony of love, but they have more than this specific significance since they constitute for Mr. Herrick a new order of problems and mark his acquiescence in a genuine pessimism. His stories have generally, it is true, been stories of dissonances, but here for the first time he devotes a volume to the study of disso- nances which are unresolvable because of something inherent in life itself. Ceasing to be a sociologist who believes that it is in society that man can find the chief source of his mystery, he has become a psychologist intent upon understanding the profounder predicament in which the gods placed him when they fashioned him as he is. This long journey which Mr. Herrick has come is the same which is commonly made by both races and individuals. They begin with the feeling that their lives or their societies have merely gone strangely and temporarily wrong; they are sure that they may somehow be made to go right as the lives or the societies of other times have gone; but as their criticism penetrates deeper and deeper, as they proceed from disillusion to disillusion, they come upon those dissonances which no manipulation can resolve, and whether they accept them with the wail of Thomas Hardy or the shrug of Anatole France they feel in them rather than in the details of time or place the real materials of philosophy and art. If in recording this journey as he made it Mr. Herrick has failed of the absolute greatness which he seemed as a young man to promise it is because, I fancy, he has not been completely frank nor told quite all he had to tell. Almost from the beginning there was in him a bitterness which his study of American society did not wholly explain, some more personal pain which helped bridge the gulf between the disappointed Mealist which he was and the embittered recluse which he has become. Doubt- less pride and delicacy have restrained any impulse to portray more intimately his emotions, and these are understandable things, but he has paid a price for his fastidiousness. His books, always interesting, seem always not quite complete expressions of the mood which produced them. JosEPH Woop KrutTcH Talking of Taxes Taxation and Welfare. By Harvey Whitefield Peck. The Mac- millan Company. $2.50. Public Finance. By Harley Leist Lutz. pany. $4. The Economics of Taxation. By Harry Gunnison Brown. Henry Holt and Company. $3. The Taxation of Unearned Incomes. (Second edition.) By Harry Gunnison Brown. Lucas Brothers. $2. The Social Significance of the Inheritance Tax. Rignano. Alfred A. Knopf. $1.75. HE flood of tax books continues unabated. How high ought taxes to be? As low as possible, says the practical business man. As high, says the impractical theorist, as is required for the best division possible, from the standpoint of welfare, be- tween public and private spending. Recent British studies sug- gest more public, as opposed to private, expenditure. Mr. Peck’s interesting and useful volume is a reasoned attempt to show that state expenditure should increase faster than national in- come. Taxes, generally speaking, ought to rise, and ought, in the general interest, to be paid increasingly by the rich. D. Appleton and Com- By Eugenio Mr. Lutz has added another to the long succession of dreary general texts on public finance. On the whole, it is one of the least bad of the lot, and it is likely to prove very useful to harassed teachers in this parched field. Safe and conservative in point of view, and traditional in arrangement, it brings the available information down to date, besides settling, by rather pontifical pronouncement, various questions which might other- wise occasion the student hours of troublesome thinking. It is always helpful to have difficult problems settled right. Mr. Brown’s two books are of a different sort. “The Eco- nomics of Taxation” is a careful deductive study, from the standpoint of fairly orthodox theory, of the incidence of taxes. A clear, excellent, and straightforward piece of work, it might well be commended to Secretary Mellon and those other obscur antists who cheerfully and invincibly believe that the consumer pays the tax, anyway. For lack of clear thinking, as Mr. Brown points out, much tax discussion is pure obfuscation. Not till we know who ultimately pays the various taxes can we decide which ones we want, on the basis of the results we hope to achieve. The question of what taxes are preferable Mr. Brown rigidly and properly excludes from this book; but in “The Taxation of Unearned Incomes” he gives scope to his pre- dilection for a tax on land rent (or value) as the chief source of government revenue. It was full time for some competently equipped economist to take up the cudgels in behalf of the eco- nomically tenable parts of Henry George's doctrine. Mr. Brown has done it with zeal, and on the whole with skill. Of course this puts him outside the fold of the safe and sane economists, and the vigor of his onslaught has already occasioned some little fluttering in the academic dove-cotes. But say what we may, land does differ significantly, for purposes of economic analysis, from factories and railroad trains and other things that men make. The true economic scientist, then, if he is going to devise tax systems, must take account of those differences, and not simply foam at the mouth every time the single tax is mentioned By the same token, Mr. Brown ought not to foam at the mouth every time he mentions the socialists. Notwithstanding his lame defense of inheritance in pretty much its present length and breadth, his objections to private receipt of income from land rent lie almost equally against private receipt of income from interest on inherited capital. He has not demonstrated, and cannot demonstrate, that such receipt performs an essential economic function in the second case any more than in the first The right of transmission to descendants, says Mr. Brown in effect, is essential to capital accumulation. So be it; but even though I will not save except for my children, yet even so it is unnecessary for their descendants to reap five per cent per annum to all eternity on the fruits of my abstinence. So comes Mr. Rignano with the ingenious suggestion that inheritance taxes be graduated, not only, as at present, according to size of estate and degree of relationship of beneficiaries, but also ac- cording to number of testamentary transfers of the various parts of the estate. At a man’s death, what he has accumulated himself might be subject only to the present tax; his father’s accumulation, which the man has inherited, might pay 50 per cent, for example; what has already been twice inherited, say, 100 per cent. Under such a scheme I can leave property to my son untroubled, and he can hand on half of it to my grandson; but my great-grandson must work for his own living, unless my son and grandson in their turn work and save for him. It is an ingenious turning of the tables on those who maintain that we cannot interfere with inheritance without discouraging work and saving. The device has difficulties enough; yet any plan of this sort offered to the American public with even the care- fully guarded blessing of as wise and cautious a scholar as Pro- fessor Seligman deserves the attention of that great body of students who wish to preserve the benefits of private manage- ment and initiative and who yet realize the incompatibility of political democracy with cumulative economic inequality. HeNnRY RAYMOND MussgEy

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390 ) The Nation [ Vol. 121, No. 3144 Circumstance and Character By Paul Bousfield. E. P. Dutton and Sex and Civilization. Company. $5. ee HE condition of the sexual energies in civilized society, as it affects the relative position of men and women, and especially our conception of masculine and feminine ideals” is the object of his investigation, Dr. Bousfield tells us. And so, half a century after John Stuart Mill wrote shrewdly that we could predicate nothing about women’s innate mental traits and emotional attributes until we had carefully studied the laws of the influence of circumstances on character, one of the first beginnings of such a study is made. Whether the individual reader will think it fortunate or otherwise that so much of the pioneering work in this impor- tant and curiously neglected field should be done by scientists who are frankly preoccupied with one only of the various motivations of character, and are concerned to elucidate and extend theories so highly debatable as some of those grouped under the general heading of psychoanalysis, he cannot fail to recognize the valuable contribution they offer. Perhaps the best way to describe the impression this book has made on me is to confess that although it often seems irritatingly diffuse and didactic, and although many of the psychoanalytic tenets adduced as the basis of the feminist argument do not gain my belief (the castration complex in particular seeming to me fantastically untenable), the book has won half a dozen rereadings from me in the last few months. Among the various speculations it starts, possibly the most interesting is started by Dr. Bousfield’s central theory as to the creation of sex traditions—suggested in part, as he can- didly explains, by Dr. Beatrice Hinkle’s previously published statement that instead of thinking of people according to sex she had substituted type, and in part by the Vaertings’s theory of the dominant sex, but nevertheless his own. Certain at- tributes and qualities, he says, come at a given time and place to be considered as belonging to the sex then dominant. When the male sex happens to be dominant, these qualities are called masculine; when the female sex is dominant the same qualities are called feminine. Since the male has now been dominant in Europe for many centuries, the qualities that have therefore come to be called masculine seem to us innately masculine. The theory is open to the objection that the Vaertings eventually may not be sustained in their thesis, but nevertheless it has positive value. I rather fancy that Dr. Bousfield hit upon the valuable core of this notion as a result of personal observation and speculation, and that he thereupon quite unnecessarily but- tressed it with an elaborate and possibly not entirely sound an- thropological argument. One of his most valuable contributions he shares with Dr. Hinkle, the discovery that the attempt on the part of many individuals to have, or to pretend to have, the characteristics quite arbitrarily assumed to belong to their sex, and only those, has been productive of much unfortunate warping and strain- ing, and so of individual unhappiness and social waste. His main argument is equally valuable. The repression of sexual instincts dictated by society to girls, he says, often results in an unconscious and diffused sort of sexuality that saps their energy and results in sexual perversions which may involve permanent maladjustments. It will be remembered that Freud, and in fact the generality of untechnical writers as well, believe this diffused sort of sexuality to be as normal in women as it would be abnormal in men, and therefore one of the marks, as one of the causes of their inferiority. Dr. Bousfield makes out a vigorous case for its being abnormal, with the corollary that therefore the physical inferiority resulting from it is artificial. The book is of interest to the layman, and it is indispensable both to the analyst of human behavior and ALICE BEAL PARSONS to the feminist. Books in Brief The Secret of the Coup d’Etat; Unpublished Correspondence of Prince Louis Napoleon, MM. De Morny, De Flahau!t, and Others, 1848-1852. Edited with an Introduction by the Earl of Kerry and a Study by Philip Guedalla. G. P. Putnam’s Sons. $3.50. Karl Marx once said of the coup d’etat of 1851 that it was perpetrated “in order to pay off the debts of the Bonaparte family.” Marx, however, wrote just after the coup d’etat and based his judgment on little more than a prejudiced suspicion that the numerous studies written since his time have not con- firmed. This collection of letters—which parades under an entirely misleading title—exchanged principally between the Count de Flahault and M. de Morny, two important partici- pants in the coup d’etat, lends no further evidence in support of Marx’s contention. And yet one rises from the reading with a feeling that the proponent of the materialistic interpretation of history was right. Flahault and Morny, father and illegiti- mate son as they were, expressed themselves much more can- didly in their letters to each other than in statements intended immediately or ultimately for the public ear. One hears, there- fore, amidst all the usual cant regarding the saving of society, love of country, and fidelity to a cause—in which both gentle men undoubtedly considered themselves thoroughly sincere— the occasional chink of silver and the rustle of banknotes. The true secret of the coup d’etat will be revealed only when we learn more about the actual motives impelling the various conspirators. It may be that the intuitive insight of Marx revealed to him what the scientific incumbrances of historians have concealed from them and that he alone perceived the secret of the coup d’etat. But it may be, too, that there was no secret, after all, and that the coup d’etat was nothing more than its historians have maintained. The Scientific Study of Human Society. By Franklin Henry Giddings. University of North Carolina Press. $2. In his latest book Mr. Giddings elaborates his fundamenta] thesis that society can be studied scientifically through an analysis of what he calls “societal patterns and societal vari- ables.” With an understanding of the patterns and the vari- ables he couples case-counting and the statistical method, and especially dwells on the significance of casual groups and their relation to the fundamental patterns. Despite the fact that this is essentially a technical book for serious students of sociology, Mr. Giddings has not escaped from giving a number of acute generalizations on -present-day society. For advanced university courses the work should prove a valuable text, and all students of society will find it a definite contribution to the methodology of their field. Drama Second Flight IME and circumstance conspired to aid Messrs. Anderson and Stallings in achieving their first great success. Cir- cumstance saw to it that one of them should be sent to gather his material in pain and peril, while time prepared the mo- ment of robust cynicism which served to generate their mood and to prepare the understanding of their audiences. They themselves are doubtless fully aware of the fact that what- ever god looks over the fate of playwrights made an impor- tant third in their collaboration; and it was not, for this reason, to be expected that in their second effort they should be able to begin where they left off before. “First Flight” (Plymouth Theater) is, indeed, no unqualified success, for it lacks the force and the speed as well as the timeliness of

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Oct. 7, 1925] The N Jation 391 “What Price Glory”; yet it is no discouragement to those who look to its authors for many important contributions to the American stage, since it shows that they are, even when un- aided, capable of breaking new ground. Their play is not great, but it is the first native historical drama which is neither merely a stately tableau nor a mildly galvanized wax-works. Taking Andrew Jackson as their hero they have managed to escape the curse of dignity which falls upon nearly all who attempt to treat a historical personage, and they have sought to capture the peculiar atmosphere of his times in the full realization that it had nothing to do with the stateliness of history. Somehow they have managed to grasp the fact which ought to be obvious to every one who can read, but which somehow no writer has ever fully grasped—the fact, that is to say, that the dominant characteristic of the remoter States of the American Federation was simply the grotesque me- lange of barbarism and dignity which the spectacle of their life afforded. Actually, the citizens of these communities were inhabiting a wilderness, actually, their family estates were, in many cases, at least, the rude dwellings of frontiersmen, and their customs were those of any savage community where personal prowess is the deciding factor in any dispute. But because they had lived for no more than a generation or two in these primitive conditions they had not wholly forgotten the traditions of another life. They pretended that settlers who had lived for twenty years in the same spot constituted a landed aristocracy; they spoke of the blackleg lawyer who had read a few books in the intervals of coon hunting as though he were a second Blackstone; and they began with the cere- mony appropriate to a court ball a dance in a log cabin which would end before morning in a free-for-all fight. Oratory rolled from their mouths in such sonorous phrases that the leader of an Indian raid became, as his health was elaborately drunk in corn liquor poured from a jug, second only in gen- eralship and historical importance to Hannibal himself; and oratory was a habit of life as well as speech. By the license of rhetoric the Free State of Franklin was transformed into an ancient and sovereign Power comparable in wealth and polish at least to France in the days of le Roi de Soleil. Perhaps there was nothing ever quite like it before, per- haps no such band of courtly backwoodsmen ever existed in any other community, and certainly nothing else in all the his- tory of America was quite so uniquely picturesque. No his- torian could ever do it justice: he would be too grave. No patriot could ever really picture it: he would be too much impressed. But someone with enough gusto to enjoy its vigor coupled with enough irony to relish its contrast could make it something superb, and the authors of “First Flight’ have— well, come close enough to suggest that they may sometime be able to realize the opportunity which they deserve great credit for having at least perceived. Their evocation of the atmosphere is excellent and their drawing of character, while not so distinguished, highly satis- factory; but there is in the action of the play an unmistakable drag, which is, perhaps, the result simply of the fact that in their eagerness to treat only a single, self-contained incident the authors have not allowed themselves sufficient material. Actually their story ends at the close of the second act, and they are faced with a good three-quarters of an hour to fill. The average playwright, I fear, would have given us an Inaugural Ball in tableau or something almost as banal, and though the present authors have done nothing quite so bad as that they have, nevertheless, sent the young Jackson back for an extended love scene which is not only tame but which involves, also, a disastrous change in mood from the roystering to the sentimental. On the whole the play is one which pre- sents many points of interest to the critical spectator, but it is not a “good show.” When writing to advertisers, please mention The Nation English actor his season, revealed thoroughly interesting slides almost im- tragedy. The material slight, it easily dexterity in the first of three plays by the “The Vortex,” Noel Coward to be produced in New York t itself at Henry Miller’s Theater as a begins as satiric comedy and into something piece which perceptibly which it employs is have become entirely trivial, but handling which keeps it What Mr. Coward has to offer is not very near actually rather might there is a always alive and always engaging profundity and not any remarkable strength but a certain freshness of personality which he is able to communicate not only through his acting but through his writing as well Both the character of the humor and the method by which the tale gradually unfolded reveal a touch sufficiently individual to impart to each a fresh ness too slight to analyze but sufficient to make the play stand out among the usual banalities of the theater. “The Vortex” is, indeed, among the two or three plays of the new season indisputably worth seeing “The Pelican” (Times Square Theater) provides Mar garet Lawrence with a series of situations of the sort in which emotional actresses always delight. The playwright has seen to it that the heroine of the drama, a much enduring mother, shall be called upon to make an impressive series of sacrifices and though it is pretty obvious that most of them should never have been made, she is given every opportunit for nob suffering; and such, I take it, was his chief purpose JoserH Woop Krutcu | ! THEATER ' Kvenings (except Monds 4-30 sharp ‘Slieene Sat The Grand Smrect Follies of 1925 $2; Balcony, $1.50 panne, / All Performances—Orchestra, BAYES Theatre, 44th St., W. of Broadway. LACKAWANNA 6566 EVENINGS, 8:30 MATINEE SATURDAY, 2:30 The Yiddish Art Theatre Players in "Ki S | Maurice Schwartz Production of A Biblical Drama by Paul Heyse Complete Synopsis in English with Program LECTURES | DEBATES OO V. F. Calverton “Social Interpretation of American Literature” Fridays, 8:30 P. M., Oct. 2 to Nov. 6 Joseph M. Osman “The Psychology of Personality’”’ Tuesdays, 7 P. M., Sept. 29 to Dec. 22 Marius Hansome “A Critical Approach to Sociology” Tuesdayze, 8:30 P. M., Sept. 29 to Dee. 22 RAND SCHOOL 7 E. 15th Street NATIONALISM Six Lectures on the most important World-problem today By Carlton J. H. Hayes, Ph.D., LL.D. Professor of History in Columbia University In the COMMUNITY CHURCH AUDITORIUM Park Avenue and 34th Street On Thursday evenings, Oct. 15, 22, 29 Nov. 5, 12, 19, at 8:15 o'clock Course tickets, $3.50, can be secured in advance at the Community Church, 12 Park Avenue Single Admission, 75 cents office of the

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International Relations Section British Labor and the Empire By L. HADEN GUEST I T the 1922 and 1923 general elections in Great Britain very little was said of the empire from Labor plat- forms and when Labor came into office in 1924 it found itself confronted with the test of the governance of a world dominion. It is true we had men of knowledge and experience in empire affairs in our party and we conducted an empire policy at least as well as, and in some ways better than, other parties in the state. The Labor Gov- ernment’s scheme for migration to the dominions, its ad- ministration of tropical dependencies, its understanding of the greatness of the problems of empire politics showed its fitness for government in no uncertain way. But the Labor Party did not have a generally agreed upon and ac- cepted empire policy, a policy which would help us to apply to the empire as a whole ideas of the same general order as we have applied to our own policy in home affairs. That policy we are now setting out to create, and interesting steps can be traced in the annual reports of the British Labor Party for 1923, 1924, and in the agenda for the annual conference in 1925. In the 1923 report there is some vigorous language about imperialist exploitation of lands overseas; in the 1924 report there is the record of an important resolution of bulk purchase of food, largely from the dominions, moved and seconded at the 1924 annual conference by George Lansbury, M.P., and Tom Johnston, M.P. But in the pre- liminary executive-committee resolutions for the annual conference in 1925 there is presented for the first time a series of resolutions dealing comprehensively with the Labor attitude on empire policy from the point of view of a democracy in control. II The first attempt to gather together a conference of Labor parties in the British Commonwealth of Nations was made in 1924, but so few delegates were able to attend that only a series of informal meetings and conversations took place. But this year, 1925, a conference met on July 27 and the five following days in the rooms of the Em- pire Parliamentary Association, Westminster Hall, London. Its agenda included the discussion of migration within the empire, the Geneva protocol for the pacific settlement of international disputes, international labor legislation and the question of the ratification of the eight-hour day, an- thrax, white-lead, and other conventions, inter-dominion trade relations, including, of course, trading relations with Great Britain, conditions of Indian labor in British colo- nies, and industrial legislation and labor protection in man- dated territories. Representatives from Australia, Canada, South Africa, Newfoundland, Ireland, India, and Palestine were present, a fraternal delegation of the International Federation of Trade Unions, and strong contingents from the executive committee of the national Labor Party, the general council of the Trades Union Congress, and the Parliamentary Labor Party. The fact that this conference met in the year of the twenty-fifth British Labor Party Conference gives an in- dication of the rate of growth of labor as a political power in the empire as a whole. How often the conference will meet in future years is undecided, but it has already been determined to make such conferences periodical, and a reso- lution affirming this principle appears on the preliminary agenda of the British Labor Party Conference for Sep- tember. What the influence of such a conference will be also remains for the future to determine, but with Labor taking an increasingly important share in the dominions and in India, with a growing recognition of the first-rate importance of labor problems in the mandated territories and in the dependent empire it is certain that there exists a great role for this conference to play in the affairs of the British Commonwealth of Nations. Politically these conferences link up the Labor parties of the British Commonwealth of Nations more closely with the general labor movement of the world and with one an- other, but their main work, of course, is economic. They face one of the greatest difficulties in the economic organ- ization of the world as a whole—the conflict of the standards of life of white and colored labor. It is possible to have a policy of a white Australia. It is not possible to have a policy of a white empire without cutting the empire in pieces. What the solution of the conflict of standards of life will be, or whether there will be any solution, is, of course, not possible to say. But at least we are working toward a solution when Australian experience meets the South African. In South Africa the demarcation of work between white and black, the “color bar,” and race questions are in the very forefront of po- litical and social questions. This problem of the conflict of differing standards of life has forced itself to the front of British Labor politics also. During the present session of Parliament the Parliamentary Labor Party has ap- pointed a special committee to consider its policy toward “sweated goods.” The practicability of the exclusion of goods made under sweated conditions is being carefully considered. Similar economic reasons have forced on the British Labor Party the consideration of the policy of im- perial preference, and a recent division in the House of Commons when nineteen members voted for imperial pref- erence and twelve others, compulsorily absent, expressed their support of the principle shows how acute the question has become. Among those supporting were Mr. J. H. Thomas, Labor Colonial Secretary, and the Clydeside group, including Mr. Wheatley. One result of the conference will inevitably be the broadening out of the conception of Labor throughout the empire. It is recognized that it is necessary to have not a British policy or an Australian policy or a Canadian policy but a policy for the British commonwealth as a whole. And it is no longer a question of theory or of some far-distant date. In 1924 a Labor Government was in office in Great Britain, at an early date a Labor Common- wealth Government will be in office in Australia, in a year or two more a Labor Government may again be in office in London—presumably aided by an effective majority. That is to say, in a few years—and a few years more or less are of no great importance to the historical and political significance of the event—Labor will be in power over the

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Oct. 7, 1925] The Nation 393 British commonwealth as a whole, and in effective power because backed up in Australia, in New Zealand, in Canada, in South Africa, and other regions of the empire either by majorities supporting governments or by strong mi- norities vitally influencing opinion. Labor ruling the whole dominion of the British Commonwealth of Nations will have to face the most difficult tasks of the world, for all the great problems the world is called upon to face are found within the British Empire. Labor has been preparing for this task for many years. The problems of the govern- ment of Indian have been as much the subject of earnest thought as the problems of the government of Great Brit- ain. In the impending discussions of Indian policy it is certain that Labor will take a leading share. The same consideration applies to the problems of the tropical terri- tories in Africa, where over 300 different black races, speak- ing widely separated languages and with customs ranging from cannibalism to complex Moslem civilizations, present a bewildering array of detailed tasks. Nor must we forget the tasks of empire in the West Indies or in South America or in the East Indies. And to the preliminary consideration of these great responsibilities Labor in Great Britain is now calling into conference Labor in the dominions. Truly a change from the time, twenty years ago, when those of us who are now working in the great world-wide movement were standing on orange-boxes or borrowed chairs at street corners speaking of the need of the industrial and political reorganization of the workers for the bringing about of socialism. There was truth in our words and a power greater than we knew. III When the Labor Government found itself in office in 1924 and in a difficult position representing a balancing minority, we were at once faced with tremendous tasks. But our line of approach to our tasks was in most cases quite clear—on foreign policy we were in no doubt, in in- dustrial affairs our line of action was clearly mapped. But with regard to the British commonwealth as a whole our policy was not sufficiently determined. The problems of a world-wide federation of nations demand closer study than any party has yet given them. Despite flag-wagging and sentiment the Conservatives and the Liberals were as un- certain of this policy as Labor. Nor could this be other- wise. For example, the problems of tropical Africa are only fifty years old, the problem of Kenya is only ten years old. And not before the Labor Government came into office was a special commission sent out to East Africa to study conditions on the spot and to report on policy. Mr. Ormesby- Gore, the Conservative, Major Church, the Labor, and Mr. Linfield, the Liberal representative, went to East Africa, and their report is a historic document of great interest and one which will have an important effect on policy. The reaction of Labor in facing unknown problems was to demand knowledge. And while the commission in East Africa did its work and a delegation visited South Africa and later on Jamaica, the Labor members in the House of Commons especially interested in empire affairs joined together to form a group for study and discussion called the Labor Commonwealth Group. We elected Mr. Royce, Labor M.P. for an English agricultural district, as our first chairman, but he unfortunately died when gov- On his death George Lans- ernor-designate of Tasmania. bury was elected chairman. The present writer has been secretary of the group since the beginning. From small beginnings the group has grown to over ninety members in a party of 150, and our discussions have ranged over Canadian, Indian, South African, and Australian affairs, with latterly a very great deal of attention being given to the consideration of imperial preference and possible so- cialist alternatives to fiscal preference. This study of empire affairs has already exerted great influence in the Labor movement in this country and it has exerted it by the spread of knowledge and the force of facts. At an early stage the group expressed a strong view in favor of the setting up of the Imperial Economic Committee and influenced opinion in the parliamentary party very consid- erably. When the imperial-preference resolutions came up for discussion in the 1924 Parliament Party’s term of office five members of the group, including myself, supported preference against the front bench, which was free trade. This year the division of opinion was more pronounced, so that the vote on the imperial-preference resolutions in the budget was left as a free The significance of this vote will be misunderstood if it is thought to indicate an opinion in favor of taxation preference in principles. What it means is, first, a si desire to cooperate with the dominions, and, secondly, a de- sire to do the one thing possible at the moment to help the dominions. A full alternative to preference is not yet worked out. But it is intended to give by organization of marketing facilities, by cheapening of transport, by bulk purchase and similar measures assistance to the dominion of even greater financial] advantage than those given by preferential duties as such. There is now in the Labor Party as a whole an over- whelming support for the policy of closer economic and political relationship with the dominions. Those membere of the Labor Party who opposed preference as well as those who supported it made this abundantly clear. Such mat ters as exclusion of “sweated goods,” licensing of imports, and financing of “pools” have all come up recently for earnest discussion inside the Labor Party. And while these things are not taxation preference they are equally certainly not free trade in the old sense. In the internal affairs of Great Britain the rise of the Labor Party has meant the transfer of attention from the shopkeepers’ and consumers’ to the producers’ point of view. No member of the Labor Party in Great Britain would tolerate bad conditions here on the ground that a change would cause a rise in prices. While the party remained to a certain extent igno- rant of conditions of production in other countries it was possible to concentrate attention only on cheapness of im- ports without respect to what that meant elsewhere in the world. Labor has, of course, always been against sweat ing in every part of the world and vigorously protested against it. But now Labor recognizes the need for organ- izing against it, and whether by tariff preferences or by more complicated and more thoroughgoing methods is the only question in dispute. Certain older members of the Labor Party who have got themselves stuck in well-marked ruts of thought con- sider that the new move in the Labor Party toward do- minion coordination is a sign of decadence. Younger mem- bers believe that the new movement is an attempt to apply intensive during the Labor vote. ncere

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394 The Nation [Vol. 121, No. 3144

GRRBSBBSESEBERBESBESBERS

ization. Some of us even cherish the hope that in the years to come when Labor is in power over all the great British To know the theatre es | urgent is to know all the flict of races and standards of life which menace our future. As David Kirkwood said in the House in the last pref- those who are not?’ But if by knowledge, intelligence, other Art than the Theatre which in- be able to make the better contribution to the solution of the whole world’s problems the dance, poetry, pathos, sal +t humor, tragedy —the sum- In Each Issue the ideas of socialism to a great problem of world-organ- RARAAAARSAARALUSSSASRARSOSARSAASAAARBASARSRARSARSASAAOAD Commonwealth of Nations we may be able to lead the world in the solution of those urgent questions of the con- erence debate: “If we cannot understand those in the world who are our own kith and kin, how shall we understand IND, if you can, an- and good organization we can lead our own commonwealth to security, to high standards of life, and to peace, we shall cludes painting, sculpture, design, costume, music, ming up of life and the history of life.

RRC oe SERB RR GoD

Reviews of the cur- rent New York stage Theatre Arts Monthly is —One-act plays by the standard authority and significant dramatists : —Studies of leading guide on the arts, the tech- taney ieee nique, the personalities and tila Sey grees the practical work of the gy, every department theatre in every civilized of theatre arts. All country. To read it is to for $4.00 a year or know all the arts better. Fifty Cents a copy. THEATRE ARTS MONTHLY 7 EAST 42ND STREET NEw YORK phat Contributors to This Issue DABNEY HorRTON is instructor in English at Ohio State University. He served for thirty months during the war in the Lafayette Flying Corps. M. M. KNIGHT has been assistant professor of economics at the University of Utah and assistant professor of history at Columbia. He is author of the “Dictionnaire Pratique d’Aéronautique” and co-author of “Taboo and Genetics.” He has served with the French, Rumanian, and American armies, and has recently returned from Morocco. SHAPURJI SAKLATVALA is an East Indian member of the British Parliament, representing the Communist Party. The United States Department of State has just refused him entrance to this country. RENNIE SMITH, a Labor member of the British Parlia- ment, is in the United States to attend the Interpar- liamentary Conference and deliver lectures. Harry Eu_mer Barnes, professor of historical sociology at Smith College, is a recognized authority on the causes of the war. WYMAN SIDNEY SMITH is at the University of Wisconsin. NELSON ANTRIM CRAWFORD is director of information for the United States Department of Agriculture and author of “The Ethics of Journalism.” HERRMANN BLUMGART is on the staff of the Thorndike WEBSTER’S COLLEGIATE Z Memorial Laboratory of the Boston City Hospital and B DICTIONARY : is assistant in medicine at Harvard University. The Best Abridged Dictionary Henry RAYMOND Mussey, formerly managing editor of ‘ ' The Nation, i | ies at Wellesley It is based upon Webster’s New International The Nation, is professor of economics at Wellesley revi ical SEP : sj This handy book is indispensable. 106,000 entries, and many v luable College. q sections, including General Vocabulary; Pronouncing Gazetteer; : . : 3, Pronouncing Biographical Diction ; Foreign Words and ALICE BEAL PARSONS recently resigned as business man- . eases Sane to Punctuation, Use of Capitals, etc. ; Abbre- § ager of the World Tomorrow to devote her time to me and Printing; 1700 illustrations; and E writing. an G New Words—_p, you know the meaning and pronunciation of a L. HapeN Guest is a British physician and Labor mem- S dactylogrem, escaarille, Hooverize?—the identity of Cabell, J ack, Cecil?—the location of the Far Eastern Republic, Chemin ber of Parliament. 4 des Dames, Monte Adamello? These are but a few of the up-to- date entries in Webster's Collegiate. p THE AUTHORITY FOR CROSS-WORD PUZZLERS L The thin-paper edition is especially Th e Fa ] ] Book Nu mber te handsome and convenient to handle. ‘ ue ier ose, Art Canvas binding, $5.00; Febri- of The Nation =“ Ria ae 2 koid, $6.00; Leather, $7.50. i= eee TRARARAARRRRRRRRARRARRERRRRSRRAARORSRAORRERERARARARBRRRRGRERBRSRRRAARAAR EA I LRBSBRETRBABEBEBREKD ER HERRRRE ARLES)

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; : : tg oe eee = Purchase of your bookseller: or sen will contain an article on James Joyce by Edwin Mi tis cates aod vouepiae dante Muir, Ludwig Lewisohn’s chapter in the series on ; pF neg te artists in America, and articles, verse, and reviews is Same ase — “is periodical. by H. L. Mencken, Harold J. Laski, Henry W. Nev- hy wy epi ss G. &C. inson, Genevieve Taggard, Lola Ridge, M. T. Mc- G7 Se Zh 3 ao Merriam Co. Clure, Samuel C. Chew, James Rorty, Anna Louise 4 ‘em 7 ations" Springfield Strong, and others. <ON. VWeew eine Bae es Mass. Next Week. cep BS GUNS SSH SHS,

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