The Nation 1925-11-18: Vol 121 Iss 3150

Page 1

General Charteris Falsifies Again The Nation Vol. CX XI, No. 3150 FounpeED 1865 Wednesday, Novy. 18, 1925 Taxation by Misrepresentation by Louris W. McKernan Fall Books in Europe France. . . by Rene Lalou England . . . by HKdwin Mur Germany. . . by J. W. Krutch Mr. Coolidge’s New-Old Message by Frank R. Kent Fifteen Cents a Copy Five Dollars a Year / j 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. /

Page 2

ii The Nation [ Vol. 121, No. 3150 ANOTHER REVOLUTION IN RUSSIA IS GOING ON NOW UT of the muck of Paris “ifs” () and the “buts” and “maybes” that come from London and Riga—scraps and tatters of Russian news in the daily press that all of us read with our fingers crossed—comes not a word of the New Revolution. And yet, in a thousand villages the peasants have revolted. And are casting off the ancient bonds that chained them to their vil- lages—and seeking freedom from the puny methods and the lean, uncertain harvests of Individual Farming. Today these peasants are turning their backs upon the villages where, for generations, they have been herded together. And in little cooperative groups are going out into the country, pooling their resources, organizing their strength and abilities, combining their energies and equipment, and till- ing vast tracts of Russia’s fertile soil. These are the “arte/s” and Their Revo- lution is working miracles in Collective Agriculture. VA STuart CHASE, Treasurer Russian Reconstruction Farms, Inc. 156 Fifth Avenue, New York City and State.. Information and literature will be sent upon request. Russian Reconstruction Farms, an American organization, has a part in this New Revolution. Near Rostov- on-Don its first experimental farm of 15,432 acres, equipped with $80,000 worth of modern American farming machinery which it has bought and sent over, and manned by its own staff of 34 young Americans who are spe- cialists in their several fields of agri- cultural knowledge, is being operated as a Training School for an ever- changing group of young Russian peasants and farm managers and as a Model for All Russia. The Soviet Government, participating in this ex- periment, has 638 similar farm groups throughout Russia, which they plan to pattern after this American Model. This work, in no sense a charity, is a Practical Demonstration of Modern Agriculture and of International Good Will among Men. $75,000 in Capital Stock is now open to purchasers at $10 per share. I hereby subscribe for ............ shares of the stock of Russian Reconstruction Farms, Inc., and enclose my GO GO Biknassvensccsics in payment for same. It is understood that these shares are Non-Cumulative and Non- \ssessable. Signature . ide Tecate ene aie wee ag burg cae When writing to advertisers, please mention The Nation ee) ae ae

Page 3

The Nation FOUNDED 18665 Vol. CXXI Contents EDITORIAL PARAGRAPHS. ..........ccecceceees pa fukn pakaanee: ae EDITORIALS: : Governor Smith’s Victory..............-secesceceeees sch eid 562 General Charteris Falsifies Again............ . neat P 563 ee SP er Serr err errr res es NP . 564 College Undergraduates. ............-.-05+06: sorabere.siheare ; 564 Rte Ce THES. cio cccitcvcccccicctcseccecscvevesesensovseces 665 TAXATION BY MISREPRESENTATION. By Louis W. McKernan.... 566 A FRAGMENT OF WAR-TIME HISTORY. By Ellen Torelle Nagler.... 568 MR. COOLIDGE’S NEW-OLD MESSAGE. By Frank R. Kent.......... 570 IM TH DRIFT WAY. By the Drifter. .2.cccccescscccccccccvcscee ioe GS oi occa cccacccsecchstesssedeeecens Ae Ap pe Aes 671 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS SECTION: Women’s Suffrage in Belgium. By Anne Somerhausen............ 574 FOREIGN BOOK SECTION. Fall Books in France. By René Lalou...............0...eeeee: nae ae British Books: Autumn. By Edwin Muir............. oe caceuceee ce Pee Many Gentlemen. By Laura Riding Gottschalk..................... 678 Se I, IE WO BOON a on bk cdc ccterccessccccnsceseves 578 A French View of War Origins. By Max Montgelas............. -- OF From the German. By Joseph Wood Krutch.................... oa ae Comte Robert de Montesquiou. By William A. Drake............ .. 580 GEE ae peer ie eS ee rare 581 NE 5 bhb bas nbede eaeSAdw Ebb 604604045 66-0006 bre 8 6e0 we 581 eS a ad ho ch Cen ee Leb hhse0ti0 600s te knees eee 582 Drama: Tirocinium. By Joseph Wood Krutch..................... 582 OSWALD GARRISON VILLARD, EpitTor AssociaTEe Eprrors LEWIS S. GANNETT ARTHUR WARNER JOSEPH WOOD KRUTCH MANAGING EDITOR Lrrerary Eprror FREDA KIRCHWEY MARK VAN DOREN CoNTRIBUTING EpITors 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, ONG SINCE have we passed the stage of taking poli- ticians’ speeches at their face value. Yet we cannot but attach considerable importance to Austen Chamberlain’s excellent remarks on the Chinese situation at the Guildhall banquet on November 9, for the reason that it is one of several signs that the British attitude toward China seems to be changing, at least in London. Whether the British representatives in China have as yet sensed that and changed their own attitude is open to question; there are certainly many steps for them to retrace. But when the man to whom belongs most of the credit for Locarno goes out of his way at a jubilee over the success of that nego- tiation to ask a similar outcome for the Chinese entangle- ment, it is at least a great advance from those recent days when Mr. Chamberlain himself was declaring that the Powers would do nothing whatever until China had set her house in order and established all the domestic reforms the Powers wished her to undertake. Meanwhile, the Peking tariff conference is progressing as well as could be expected. The Chinese have modified their original demands; the stumbling-block for the moment is that the Japanese insist that, under Article 3 of the Washington Treaty, the surtax on imported articles of luxury cannot be increased beyond 5 per cent. This, the Chinese feel, they cannot accept if they are to abolish the likin taxes and institute other re- forms. None the less, the outlook at this writing is by no means discouraging. NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 1925 No. 3150 RANCE AND ITALY are both in the midst of critical financial negotiations as this issue of The Nation goes to press. Italian representatives are in Washington trying to agree with our Debt Commission upon a basis for funding (a polite word which means promising to pay in part) their war-time borrowings. The sum amounts to a little more than $2,000,000,000, or about half of the French debt to us. If an agreement is reached, it will probably be on a more favorable basis than was offered to France. Our Debt Com- mission must have learned something by the miscarriage of the French negotiations and, in spite of opposition in Con- gress to substantial concessions, the Administration is more likely to chance a rebuff there than to have chalked against it the record of failure to obtain even a paper promise of money from either of the countries which, Great Britain excepted, are our chief debtors. Meanwhile the franc is fighting for its life in France in what seems to be almost the last ditch. Premier Painlevé has advanced a bold and possibly effective scheme of taxation, including (under a softer name) a partial tax on capital. Some such plan is the only possible exit from a devaluation of the france likely to carry it presently to a collapse as complete as that of the German mark. Yet, in spite of impending national calam ity, the moneyed classes grip their purse-strings and oppose the Painlevé program. Like the aristocrats before the Revolution they prefer the deluge to any persona! sacrifice. HE TROUBLE IN SYRIA grows more serious rather than less so. The country seems to be aflame with resentment and revolt. Damascus is reported to look like a city under siege, with barbed-wire entanglements and other defenses, and the railroad to Haifa has been cut. The French have, or soon will have, 30,000 troops in Syria, but correspondents report that 10,000 more are needed. Beirut, on the coast, is out of the present zone of disturbance, and the dispatch thither of two American destroyers has no im- mediate significance except as a hint to France that the United States considers that conditions in the country are a danger to European residents. The appointment of a civilian, Senator Henry de Jouvenel, as High Commissioner in place of General Sarrail is a welcome change of policy on the part of the French Government, but it is a question if it has not come too late. When native feeling has been aroused as in Syria the sentiment is hard to change, even with the best of treatment. The French, in their own inter- est, should get out; otherwise the time may come when they will want to but cannot. UIETLY AND UNOSTENTATIOUSLY Persia has deposed its Shah. The ex-Shah was not in Teheran at the time, so he could not be deposed in person. He was busy playing in the gayer French pleasure resorts, but he shows no inclination to contest the matter and so will pre- sumably continue to play—as long as his allowance and the crown jewels hold out. The former Premier, Reza Khan, who urged his Shah two years ago to leave the country and give over the uncongenial job of ruling, has now taken the throne or, according to another dispatch, become the head

Page 4

560 The Nation [ Vol. 121, No. 3150 of a temporary government awaiting the final decision of the National Assembly. To all outward aspects this unob- trusive ending of a dynasty might be a mere palace revolu- tion—if it were not in Persia. But Persia is rich and on the high road to India. And control of the destinies of Per- sia is the need and aim of Russia and of England—who fought and schemed to get that control away from one an- other before a Soviet government was dreamed of in the land of the Czars. And so, when a Shah is deposed in Per- sia, the world may be sure that something more than per- sonal ambition or a court intrigue has ended his rule. This particular change is reported—by the London correspondent of the Chicago Tribune—as “another triumph for British diplomacy.” The former premier and present ruler of Persia is said to be a friend of the English, an anti-Soviet minister who is willing to play Great Britain’s game in Persia. If this is true, England’s Tory Government will have forged another link in a new chain of anti-Soviet states and helped to consolidate its strangle-hold on the East—both Far and Near. HE NEW YORK WORLD is responsible for the text of a secret treaty said to have been signed by representa- tives of Soviet Russia and Italy in 1924. If this is really in existence it reflects discredit on both the countries involved. The agreement relates to the joint interests of the two nations in Eastern Europe and primarily in Turkish terri- tory. It declares that the aims of the two countries are identical in Turkey, and that their interests in Eastern Europe “are not in the least degree contrasted.” In the Balkans “both states have therefore perfectly free hands; none the less each will study means to avoid doing anything damaging to the other’s interest. This holds good for Rumania as well as for Jugoslavia.” As for Jugoslavia, the Soviets not only recognize the special importance of Italy’s interests but “undertake to allow these interests free and full development without imposing upon Italy their own political views.” The Soviets are given a free hand in Rumania, which means that they will not be troubled by Italy if they decide to get back Bessarabia. More than that, in the event of an Italo-Turkish war the Soviet Government undertakes to send Russian troops against Turkey in Asiatic territory in the neighborhood of Erzerum, the Russian force to be in proportion to the Turkish force engaged, and there is also to be naval action in the Bosporus. In the event of a Turco-Russian war Italy agrees to hold herself aloof but to support Russia politically. Finally, complete secrecy is agreed upon. If this is a reliable document it must con- stitute a serious blow to the Russians’ contention of being opposed to imperialistic gains by force and to that of being engaged in a life-and-death struggle with the capitalist civilizations surrounding them. HE AMERICAN AVIATORS who have been engaged in the heroic enterprise of bombarding Riff villages in Morocco have quit for the winter, so it is reported, to return to France. We hope this will end entirely their misguided adventure. Whatever may be said about the ethics or wis- dom of this rather gaudy gesture, we have defended the right of these men to enlist in the French army if they desired to—and take the consequences; that is, forfeit the protection of American citizenship. But they have not done this; they have tried to carry water on both shoulders. They did not enlist regularly in the army of France but pretended in some way to be in the employ of the Sultan of Morocco (a figurehead in the French protectorate). In other words they were civilians engaged in making war and, according to international law, should have been shot if caught. They regarded themselves, apparently, as super- soldiers, fighting for France under American protection, and wore as insignia an eagle with a bomb in its talons. A recent exploit of the aviators was to land in Tangier (which is international, not French, territory) and then fly back to the war zone. These sophomoric glory-hunters have not stuck to the rules of either soldiers or freebooters, and we hope to hear no more from them. N MARKED CONTRAST to the results of the New York City election, the recent vote for Borough Councilors in London and in England at large resulted in a notable gain for Socialist and Labor candidates. The conservative par- ties attempted a campaign to “get out the vote,” and they were successful—except that the aroused electorate voted for somebody else. Unemployment is the great vote-getter, and the Labor Party is the gainer. In London alone, before the present election, Labor held 263 of the 1,362 Borough Council seats; and there is not a single Socialist alderman in New York City. The explanation lies partly in the fact, often pointed out, that in England it may be unpopular but it is not disreputable to belong to a socialist or a labor party. Does it not, for example, make our Stanwood Men- kens shudder to hear that not only G. Bernard Shaw, who though indubitably a gentleman is literary and hence a little queer, but Colonel Josiah Wedgwood, a former Cabi- net member, and the Countess of Warwick so far forgot themselves as to go bail for the Communists recently ar- rested on charges of sedition? Here, unless by chance the arrested Communists happened to be of gentle birth, they might languish in jail for the rest of their lives before any of our gentry would lift a finger to get them out. N INTERESTING INCIDENT of the elections on No- vember 3 was the defeat in Westchester County, New York, of the proposed new charter for remaking the gov- ernment of one of the richest rural counties in the United States. A commission labored for a long time to devise a governmental machinery which could supplant the hopelessly inadequate county government dating from colonial days. It finally brought forth a document which, besides many admirable features, concentrated tremendous power in the hands of one man. Curiously enough the charter was cham- pioned both by civic leaders of unquestioned public devotion and long records of excellent public service and by the domi- nating Republican machine of which William L. Ward is the sole boss. Every effort was made to win the electorate to it by a vigorous campaign of “enlightenment,” but the charter was defeated by about 5,000 votes of those who preferred the present poor government to the prospect of future efficiency plus autocratic control. This is an extraor- dinary example of intelligent voting, since Westchester usually does as Mr. Ward tells it. But gratifying as is the outcome, it does not solve the problem of how to govern “commuting counties” in the neighborhood of great cities. There are so many of these that it is a matter of national importance that there be soon the beginning of a new effort to draft a charter for Westchester which, let us hope, will find a way to combine efficiency with democracy.

Page 5

Nov. 18, 1925] The Nation | 561 AN FRANCISCO will soon follow in the wake of her Pacific Coast neighbors, Los Angeles and Seattle, in supplying electricity to her own citizens at cost. So much may be definitely counted on as a result of the election on November 3 which sent to the Board of Supervisors nine candidates of the “minority group” ticket, opposed to the Hetch Hetchy power contract with the Pacific Gas and Electric Company and favorable to the development of a municipal distribution plant. The facts back of the con- troversy over the power contract were set forth in The Nation of November 4: the grant of power rights at Hetch Hetchy by the federal government on condition that these rights would not be sold for private gain; the construc- tion by the city of a hydro-electric power plant at Moc- casin Creek; the failure of the supervisors to provide a municipal distribution plant; and the sale of power at whole- sale to a private corporation for resale to the people of San Francisco. The sequel to this tale was the rebuke delivered to the majority group of supervisors on Novem- ber 3. In taking the next step—the development of a city: distribution plant—the citizens have before them the al- ternative of purchasing the Pacific Gas and Electric Com- pany’s plant within the city or of constructing a new sys- tem. The power contract with the company has been de- clared by many lawyers to be in direct contravention to the terms of the government grant. Will it be canceled? Will it be modified? Or will it be continued until such time as the municipal distribution plant is ready for operation? HE PROPOSAL to add 300,000 acres to the Yellowstone National Park so as to include the superb Tetor Range, the western watershed of the Absaroka Range, and the watershed of the Upper Yellowstone River, is one that de- serves all possible commendation. The Teton Range, with the snow-clad Grand Teton, 13,750 feet high, is one of the greatest assets of the nation; under existing conditions it is certain to lose much of its charm and its wildness; for it is being opened up in a way to destroy that pristine beauty which makes of Jackson’s Hole one of the most impressive places in America. Under its present superintendent, Hor- ace M. Albright, the Yellowstone Park is an admirable exam- ple of efficient government management. It is visited by increasing tens of thousands who can either park in auto- mobile camps or go to the excellent hotels, seeing all the worth-while sights in the easiest possible way with the aid of well-informed and attentive guides. At the same time wild life is protected as never before, and beyond the main- traveled roads the fastnesses of the park are admirably preserved for the scientist or the naturalist or the camper who has time and leisure to penetrate where cars cannot go. Congress should lose no time in approving this recommen- dation to increase the park and to add 45,000 acres to the Grand Canyon National Park. Advice to do the latter has just been given by the President’s Commission on Recrea- tion after a careful study on the spot. PORT ENDS where cruelty begins. Hardly anybody will dispute that. But where does cruelty begin? When people in the East first began to hear of the rodeo it was as a kind of Western county fair chiefly for the amusement of the community in which it took place. Its feats of horse- manship and herdsmanship glorified and kept alive the skill and hardihood of the old frontiersmen—a fine spectacle for a younger and softer generation to contemplate. If there was some cruelty, it was incidental and a necessary survival of the old life. Then tourists heard about the rodeo and flocked to it; inevitably its character began to change. From a contest largely amateur in spirit, and for home consump- tion, the rodeo graduated into a circus, with a crowd of visitors and big gate-money as its chief ends. And soon after criticism of the rodeo began. There was considerable pro- test at the recent exhibition in Madison Square Garden, New York City; there was still more when the rodeo was intro- duced to England. Now it appears that the rodeo is encoun- tering opposition in its home bailiwick. Humane societies in the West are attacking it, and although their view is perhaps exaggerated they call attention to certain aspects which American audiences can hardly fail to condemn. E HAVE RECEIVED, for instance, a report from the King County Humane Society of Seattle, Washing- ton, in regard to the recent rodeo at Ellensburg. One steer had a leg and another a horn broken. In the course of three days ten men are reported as having been injured—probably only slightly; no details are given. This does not sound formidable. Horse racing, football, and many other sports have as many casualties. What impresses us most in the report is the following paragraph: During the time that I was near the chute all or at least most of the steers and wild mules had a white powder called Cowitch put on their back to make them buck. Sev- eral of the bucking horses were doctored up, too, with High Life, to make them buck. High Life is a liquid and is usually put in the mane. In questioning one of the riders concerning the use of the Cowitch powder he admitted the fact, and said it had to be done to make them buck. This is an exploitation of animals that goes beyond the bounds of sport; it is an unjustifiable perversion of the original conception of the rodeo. Similar practices on a race track, when known, result in severe discipline. If the original rodeo was somewhat rough, its justification was that it was a survival from real life. Now that the rodeo has become primarily a public amusement it must conform to stricter standards or find itself outlawed. TTO H. KAHN has come to the defense of the Metro- politan Opera in a pamphlet in which he examines at some length the various charges, most of them flimsy, as to the conduct of the finest opera in the world. For us no defense was necessary. We have never believed that there was any discrimination against American composers or artists because the general manager rejoices in the name of Gatti-Casazza. We are convinced that no new Ameri- can operas are being given because none are being written. The day America produces a composer with even half the talent of a Wagner, or one capable of writing a “Madame Butterfly,” the several American opera companies will] has- ten to honor him. The constant engagement of promising young Americans like Marion Talley and just now the former chorus girl Mary Lewis, is proof positive that neither pull nor social influence is a requisite to a hearing. At the same time we are glad that Mr. Kahn wrote as he did, if only because it gives us an opportunity to voice once more our gratitude to him and to his associates who meet the large deficits of what is a great and a pioneer American institution

Page 6

The Nation [ Vol. 121, No. 3150 GAIN Governor Smith has handsomely defeated the A Republican leaders in New York State. We do not, of course, refer to the municipal election in the metropolis. Any Democrat would have won that. The complete de- moralization of the reformers, many of whom joined the Walker forces because of their faith in Governor Smith, the lack of any specific issues, and the electorate’s recog- nition that the Republican machine is scarcely a whit better than Tammany’s, all made the outcome a foregone conclusion. In addition, the colorless campaign made by Mr. Waterman, the Republican nominee, added to the Republican disaster; never was there an election which showed more clearly the utter stupidity of trying to decide municipal questions under national party labels. Though this Democratic victory does add to the pres- tige of Governor Smith, his real achievement was the carrying of the State for the four proposed amendments to the constitution, especially one granting authority for a bond issue of $100,000,000 for a State building program. The biggest Republican guns were unlimbered to defeat this proposal. Mr. Hughes, Mr. Root, Representative Mills, and ex-Governor Miller all took issue with the Governor, but in vain. The enormous majorities in the city for the amend- ments defeated the opposition of the up-State Republicans, which, by the way, is clearest proof that if “Al” Smith wishes to be elected Senator from New York in 1926 he need only run, That this will increase the talk of him as candidate for the Presidency is beyond question. Indeed, inquiry in Washington shows that a number of Democratic Senators have come to the conclusion that Governor Smith’s nomi- nation for the Presidency is both desirable and inevitable. These men are Protestants, and they are quite aware of the growth of the Ku Klux Klan and the fact that it has transferred its activities to the North, is dropping the Jew and the Negro as targets for its onslaughts, and is con- centrating upon the Roman Cathclics. These Washington observers feel that the country is in for another bitter fight on the religious issue, that the Ku Klux Klan will become another edition of the A. P. A., and that the combat might as well be joined now as later. They are emphatically of the opinion that his religion should bar no man from the Presidency. They are rejoicing over the defeat of the Klan in its efforts to elect mayors in Buffalo and Detroit—its suc- cess in choosing its own mayor in Indianapolis surprises no one, for Indiana remains the stronghold of the organization, but even there the usual majority was considerably re- duced. The point is that Governor Smith has shown himself to be a fighter and to be a master of administrative detail; they have a childlike faith that he will be free from corporate influences should he reach the White House, and there is no one else in the entire party who can be called a national leader in the sense of being known to the country as a whole. Upon the wisdom or unwisdom of this position we do not today wish to pass. We would merely point out that if Governor Smith should be nominated for the Presidency other embattled groups besides the Roman Catholics would flock to his aid. More than that, Governor Smith ranks as Governor Smith’s Victory a wet and would so be regarded whatever adherence he might give to the existing prohibition status. Now New Jersey has just elected a wet Democratic Governor by some 40,000 plurality in a stand-up fight with a high-grade Re- publican candidate who was for prohibition—a remarkable overturn, since Mr. Coolidge carried New Jersey by the enormous plurality of 341,885. There can be no doubt that there is going to be a determined drive for a revision of the Volstead law in other States as well. There is thus a fresh temptation to the Democratic Party, lacking other issues, to take the wet side of the argument, which would again bene- fit the candidacy of Governor Smith. Of course, we hear it said that the South would go Republican for the first time in its history if the Democrats should nominate one who is both a Roman Catholic and a wet, but that threat has been made so often few people are likely to take it seriously. Indeed, anything that would make the South change its po- litical adherence, even in one election, would be so beneficial to political thinking and development in that section of the country that the nomination of Governor Smith might easily prove to be a blessing in disguise even though not in the sense expected or intended by the party leaders. All of this puts the Governor in a difficult position. He has positively said that he would not again become a candidate for governor, but as he has declined before and finally changed his mind under party compulsion it is by no means certain that he will not do so again. He must today be asking himself how his political fortunes would be affected by his running for the senatorship next year and, in the event of his election, playing a national role in Washington. If he is really bent on the Presidency it would surely be a mistake for him to retire to private life, for the public forgets much and the politicians still more in two years’ time. That he has a great opportunity no one will deny. The decay of the Democratic Party, the death of Mr. Bryan and of Senator Ralston, and the disappearance of other old-time leaders leave the field remarkably clear. Only Mr. McAdoo is at the moment also a contender for the nomination, and we cannot believe that the party or the public will stomach him. The fact that most of the im- portant offices in the country are held by Republicans mili- tates against the development of new Democratic leaders during the next three years. There is no other Democratic Governor and hardly a Senator who stands out against the mass of his party associates. It is not surprising, there- fore, that the party interest in “Al” Smith grows. To whom else can it turn? There is only one thing certain about the situation, and that is that if the Governor should be nominated we should have a campaign that would arouse the country, un- fortunately along wrong lines. It may, however, be neces- sary once more to fight out at the polls the question whether religious issues shall dominate our political life. We have no fear as to the outcome of such a contest. The waning power of the Klan speaks for itself. We cannot believe that the American people for all their love of being buncoed will put up much longer with the brand of bunkum offered by the Ku Klux Klan, with its bigotry, its sham patriotism, and its commercialization.

Page 7

1 ve NS ~ = Ww er WH —_— aa a —_—_— HF “ wor “ et ee le ~~ or CF = rm ae WS ff ae The Nation 563 Nov. 18, 1925] General Charteris Falsifies Again ENERAL CHARTERIS, the former head of the British Military Intelligence at General Headquarters in France, having arrived in London and been cited before the Secretary of State for War because of his speech in New York in which he playfully described how the abom- inable lie that the Germans boiled their dead to obtain fat was originated by him, announces that the aforesaid Sec- retary of State is satisfied with his denial of the story. “Let me say that I neither invented the cadaver story nor did I alter the captions of any photographs nor did I use any faked material for propaganda purposes.” In justice to him we print this statement, but we do not believe one word of it. Neither does the London Daily News. It points out that the New York Times reporter stands by his story and has reiterated his statement. More than that, General Charteris’s own lecture manager, James B. Pond, never thought of denying that General Charteris had told the story as it was printed, but declared that through a mis- understanding the reporter of the Times had printed some portions of his speech that the General preferred not to have see the light of day. If the British Secretary for War is satisfied to accept General Charteris’s denial without further inquiry, the War Office must have much to conceal. We are entirely of the belief that it has and that the British Government itself is as guilty as General Charteris and, in particular Lord Robert Cecil, recipient of the Wood- row Wilson medal. We base our belief upon the official record of the parliamentary debate of April 30, 1917: Ronald McNeill asked the Prime Minister if he will take steps to make it known as widely as possible in Egypt, India, and the East generally that the Germans use the dead bodies of their own soldiers and of their enemies when they obtain possession of them as food for swine. Mr. Dillon asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether his attention has been called to the reports widely circulated in this country that the German Government have set up factories for extracting fat from the bodies of sol- diers killed in battle; whether these reports have been in- dorsed by many prominent men in this country, including Lord Curzon of Kedleston; whether the Government have any solid grounds for believing that these statements are well founded; and, if so, whether he will communicate the information at the disposal of the Government to the House? Lorp RoBerT CEcIL: With respect to this question and that standing in the name of the hon. Member for East Mayo, the Government have no information at present beyond that contained in extracts from the German press which have been published in the press here. In view of other actions by German military authorities there is noth- ing incredible in the present charge against them. His Majesty’s Government have allowed the circulation of the facts as they have appeared through the usual channels. Mr. McNEILL: Can the right hon. Gentleman answer whether the Government will take any steps to give wide publicity in the East to this story emanating from German sources? Lorp Ropert Ceciu: I think at present it is not de- sirable to take any other steps than those that have been taken. Mr. Ditton: May I ask whether we are to conclude from that answer that the Government have no solid evi- dence whatever in proof of the truth of this charge, and they have taken no steps to investigate it; and has their attention been turned to the fact that it is not only a gross scandal, but a very great evil to this country to allow the circulation of such statements, authorized by Ministers of the Crown, if they are, as I believe them to be, absolutely false? Lorp Rogert Ceci.: The hon. Member has, perhaps, information that we have not. I can only speak from the statements that have been already published in the press. I have already told the House that we have no other in- formation whatever. The information is the statement that has been published, and that I have before me. “We are passing the great Corpse Utilization Estab- lishment of this Army group. The fat that is now here is turned into lubricating oils and everything else is ground down in the bones mill into a powder which is used for mixing with pig’s food and as manure. Nothing can be permitted to go to waste.” This statement has been pub- lished in the press and that is the whole of the information that I have. Mr. Ditton: Has the Noble Lord’s attention been drawn to the fact that there have been published in the Frankfurter Zeitung and other leading German news- papers descriptions of this whole process, in which the word “kadaver” is used, and from which it is perfectly manifest, and stated, that these factories are for the pur- pose of boiling down the dead bodies of horses and other animals which are lying on the battlefield [An hon. Mem- ber: “Human Animals!’] and I ask the right hon. Gen- tleman whether the Government propose to take any steps to obtain authentic information whether this story is true or absolutely false? For the credit of human nature he ought to. Lorp Rospert CEcIL: It is not any part of the duties of the Government, nor is it possible for the Government to in- stitute inquiries as to what goes on in Germany. The hon. Member is surely very unreasonable in making the sug- gestion, and as for his quotations from the Frankfurter Zeitung, I have not seen them, but I have seen statements made by the German Government after the publication of this, and I confess that I am not able to attach very great importance to any statements made by the German Government. Mr. DILLON: I beg to ask the right hon. Gentleman whether, before a Minister of the Crown, a member of the War Cabinet, gives authorization to these rumors, he ought not to have obtained accurate information as to whether they are true or not? LorD Ropert Ceci.: I think any Minister of the Crown is entitled to comment on and refer to something which has been published in one of the leading papers of this coun- try. He only purported to do that, and did not make him- self responsible for the statements. [An hon. Member: “He did!”] I am informed that he did not. He said: “As has been stated in the papers.” Mr. OUTHWAITE: May I ask if the Noble Lord is aware that the circulation of these reports—[Interruption ]—has caused anxiety and misery to British people who have lost their sons on the battlefield and who think that their bodies may be put to this purpose, and does not that give a reason why he should try to find out the truth of what is happening in Germany? To this, Lord Robert Cecil could make no reply, and he made none. What a disgrace to all concerned!

Page 8

The Nation [ Vol. 121, No. 3150 Coolidge and Coal S the price of coal goes higher and higher it is inter- esting to recall the emanations from the summer White House in Swampscott last July. The miners and the operators were in conference in Atlantic City, and the date for the stoppage was known. The country showed signs of being nervous, but real nervousness, under a Republican Administration headed by Mr. Coolidge who had a great reputation as a strike-breaker, was unthinkable. Hence from Swampscott came successive reassurances that all was well. On July 18 Secretary of Labor Davis, “after a brief conference with President Coolidge,” said that “the gov- ernment has decided upon positive steps to be taken in case of a coal strike.” A plan had been thought out “which President Coolidge believes will be effective in the event the miners and operators fail to reach a settlement by the end of August.” Ineffectiveness was impossible, for the undisclosed plan “had been carefully worked out by the Department of Labor and other government agencies at the direction of President Coolidge.” The next day the President was reported as “determined to prevent a coal strike. ... He has let the operators know that he will exert all the pressure possible to keep the hard-coal mines operating and prevent the condition of three years ago when the public suffered greatly.” On July 21 it was said that “there is no danger of a hard-coal strike, in the opinion of President Coolidge.” Soon, however, came intimations that the piece of Vermont granite might prove to be dynamite; “it is thought by those who know him well’ that the plan will be of “a revolution- ary nature.” If conceivably the Executive should fail—or decide not to act—there was the comforting assurance that the “strike cannot be of long duration.” On July 25 “Mr. Coolidge indicated” that he was giv- ing the coal situation “earnest thought” and that he “was prepared to exert the pressure of the federal government representing public opinion.” But as the negotiations neared their failure and the strike began, the tune of the Swampscott press agent changed. By July 27 the Presi- dent’s position was “that it would be premature to assume that this dispute is not going to be settled within the in- dustry.” For weeks Mr. Coolidge’s thoughts, plans, and hopes were the daily pabulum of Americans concerned over the price of anthracite. It was a campaign of lies, of a sort which has too fre- quently fooled the people—daily pictures of a strong Presi- dent about to prevent something which nevertheless hap- pens on schedule time. In this case it had this serious effect: it lulled the country into a false security. Almost without exception the newspapers aided what was an advertisement for the President at the same time that it was a sedative for the public. It is possible, of course, that real leadership would have failed to arouse the country and enable the President to force the operators and miners to accept a fair agreement. But a real Chief Executive, though he only wished to act up to the Boston myth, would at least have tried. Even Mr. Harding did that. Mr. Coolidge did nothing—absolutely nothing. In recent weeks, as is natural, the White House spokes- man has said nothing about coal. In marked contrast to the thundering at Swampscott, a Washington news service reports that “the President is apparently going out of his way not to mention the coal strike.” Whenever a question has been asked about the strike at the newspaper confer- ences the President has refused an answer. A special dis- patch to the New York Times declares that “President Coolidge sees no way at the present time in which he can take an effective hand in the situation despite its growing seriousness.” He feels, the dispatch continues, that “all he can do is to await the time when suffering as a result of the strike becomes so acute that public opinion will sup- port him in the exercise in some decisive way, even though it be beyond the letter of the law, of the prestige of his office to compel a resumption of anthracite mining.” There you have the great leader in all his nakedness. First, he thunders and fulminates as to what he will do if the issue presents itself. Then, when it comes, he runs away from it, as from every other vital issue. Next he threatens once more, this time that he will turn to illegal and lawless methods—but only when he is convinced that the suffering of the people is so great that it will forget to hold him responsible for acts which he admits are beyond his authority and are not within the duties covered by his oath of office. College Undergraduates HE last man in a modern university to know anything at first hand about the modern undergraduate is, it would appear, the president. The reason is simple enough —he is too remote from his humble subjects ever to see what they do or hear what they say in their characteristic moments; he is too busy with policies and appropriations to devote his imagination to their problems or even to re- member what undergraduates were like in older—gener- ally it is “better’—days. Hence the misleading remarks which we have come to expect from presidents when they are asked their opinion of undergraduate morality and mentality. President Lowell, for instance, was recently reported to have complained of a decline in scholarship at Harvard, and to have said: If we could make youth feel that scholarship was worth while, we would undoubtedly have more scholars. The question is, How are we to do this? One way is to get rid of the idea prevalent among undergraduates that a man studies hard for honors only because he wants to and does not care for anything else. As soon as students can be made to realize that examinations are not a test of an ability to grind and work unusually hard, but are rather a test of intellectual grasp, mental ability, and general taste, then they will show some interest and see that this kind of work is really worthy of effort. President Lowell forgets that scholarship has never been attractive to youth generally, and never can be made so. The scholar is one of the rarest of creatures, and one of the most unaccountable. Nothing outside himself ever made him “feel” that scholarship was worth while—nothing ex- cept the example of another scholar—and certainly the scholar was never made by being given to understand that hard work is unnecessary. The most obvious as well as the most profound thing about him is that he loves to work hard. He was not coaxed into his career by phrases

Page 9

—_ oe JY mo —_) ee od e t S 0 S Nov. 18, 1925] The Nation 565 about “general taste” and “intellectual grasp”—or if he was, and then advanced through his own efforts, he soon understood their hollowness. If Harvard is like many another American university today, and of course it is, certain young instructors there are well aware of what the president cannot know—that small groups of undergrad- uates are reading like mad this very moment, talking ex- citedly about difficult ideas, and thinking their heads almost off. They do not get into the newspapers, for they make no noise. And they do not come to consult the president. More or less brainless alumni come to him and talk ex- clusively of football, he complains—and straightway de- cides that football is all. The infant scholars, meanwhile, keep to their rooms and preserve without any encourage- ment the one academic tradition which is worth while. The papers may have quoted President Lowell inade- quately. It is to be hoped that they quoted the newly in- stalled president of Michigan with outrageous inexactitude. President Little, we believe, was discussing undergraduate morality. We do not know, but here are some of the flowers with which he said what he thought he had to say: In the day of highly explosive mixture of youth, gaso- line, and liquor borne swiftly on balloon tires to remote retreats; in an era of college comic publications and terpsi- chorean efforts, skating on the thinnest possible ice of in- decency, it would take Hercules himself to guarantee a fair substitute, and I believe he cheerfully would admit that the Augean stables were, in comparison, an early season practice game. Labor Combats Waste Social inequality, industrial instability, and injustice must increase unless the workers’ real wages—the purchas- ing power of their wages—coupled with a continuing reduc- tion in the nunsber of hours making up the working day, are progressed in proportion to man’s increasing power of pro- duction. . .. We oppose all wage reductions and we urge upon management the elimination of waste in production in order that selling prices may be lower and wages higher. To this end we recommend cooperation in the study of waste in production, which the assay of the Federated American Engineering Societies has shown to be 50 per cent attributable to management and only 25 per cent attributable to labor, with 25 per cent attributable to outside sources. HESE words formed part of the statement on wage policy, unanimously adopted by the 400 delegates at- tending the recent convention of the American Federation of Labor at Atlantic City. If tangible action is to follow the declared statement, it is impossible to overestimate its importance. Even as an official pronouncement confined for the present to the minute books, the importance is very great. For it means that the American labor movement has begun to realize that its immemorial slogan of a “fair day’s work for a fair day’s wage” is not enough, that along with organization, defensive strikes, and a solid front must go an understanding of the physical process upon which our economic life is based and a concerted movement to take an active hand in controlling that process on the engi- neering basis of maximum output with minimum effort. President Green followed the resolution with these words: This action places American labor in a most advanced position on wage theory. It is a position far beyond any position we have ever taken before. We are on the thresh- old of a great new era. We are in the infancy of a great power. A new condition is here, and we must meet it. John Stuart Mill once said that it was doubtful if all the labor-saving devices invented to date had lightened the load of a single human being. In the year 1925, within the confines of the greatest republic ever heard of, his words are perhaps not as true as in the fifties, but they remain in substance bitterly true for the two-thirds of the fami- lies in the country whose total earnings are less than the Department of Labor’s minimum budget of health and decency. Dire poverty is not widespread perhaps, but a shambling, miserable half life is the lot of the majority of our people. Meanwhile the arts of industrial invention and produc tion are accelerating at a rate unprecedented in human af- fairs. A machine can make nails 129 times faster than a village blacksmith can produce them; make cotton sheeting 106 times faster than a spinning housewife; make plows 82 times faster than hand labor. In the energy released by our dynamos and turbines we have the equivalent of the hand labor of three billion hard-working slaves. “The use of energy materials gives to each man, woman, and child in this country the equivalent of thirty servants,” say Gilbert and Pogue in “America’s Power Resources.” Power un- limited, machinery unbounded, a technical process capable of inexhaustible output—and seventy millions of us living on the goods and services which $1,500 a year, or less, per family, will buy. This is the paradox which transforms the whole struc- ture of business as usual—with its “pep,” its cleared desks, its conferences, its follow-ups, its “sucker” lists, its double- barreled “go-getters,” its adding machines, its protecto- graphs, its bank clearings, and its three million share days on the New York Stock Exchange—into a matter to tickle the ribs of the last god on Olympus and to keep the devil from eating his meals for fear of choking to death. It is akin to that felicitous system of torture whereby the chained victim was allowed to starve to death athwart a table laden with the choicest food. The reasons for this paradox are many and complicated, and most emphatically not to be dis- posed of on the naive theory of a resplendent plutocracy deliberately robbing a shivering proletariat. But the naked fact of the paradox remains, bound up with the fact that probably half of all our potential power of production is scattered and wasted. The wheels grind, the engines pant, the freight cars take their unending ways from East to West and from West to East—but out of the roar and the hubbub come to the majority of final consumers only suffi- cient goods of a dubious quality and workmanship to keep life in their bones, coats on their backs, and a jerry-built roof over their heads. Waste takes its toll along the whole line of march. The official policy of the labor movement hitherto has been to disregard this paradox in toto; to remain ignorant of the growth of the technical arts or of the possibilities of increasing the flow of sound goods and services. The battle has been in terms of money wages with no concep- tion of the physical and engineering factors which lay be- neath. But the coming of giant pu ver seems to have ended some of the old incantations. Labor has at last realized that if the good life is to be won at all, it must be won at the price of cooperating with management in the job of under- standing and controlling the industrial flow and clearing channels now choked with flotsam and waste.

Page 10

The Nation [ Vol. 121, No. 3150 M R. MELLON advances the flivver theory of surtaxes, that the lower the surtaxes the more can be sold to the surtax classes. Mr. Couzens, on the other hand, con- tends sturdily for the aluminum-trust theory of capacity to pay. And it is all on the assumption that the war is over, that is, the European War, for which we contracted a debt of more than twenty-six billion dollars. But, finan- cially speaking, the war is not over. More than half the budgetary expenditures of the federal government are directly in payment for the war and must continue so for at least twenty years. Paying for a dead horse is proverbially a dishearten- ing job. It is a job for George, if possible. During the period from April 6, 1917, to June 30, 1920 (the war period), the federal government expended the tremendous sum of $38,800,000,000. The receipts for this period were in excess of $16,000,000,000, more than 41 per cent of the expenditures—a remarkable exhibition of paying as you go—but that left $22,000,000,000 of the expenditures of the war years to be paid as part of the national debt. The total debt on June 30, 1920, was $24,297,918,411.53. That is the most expensive “dead horse” in history. June 30, 1920, is the basic date for purposes of tax discussion. At that time President Wilson was on his sick-bed; the country was in the control of a Republican Congress; deflation of the country’s business and agricul- ture from the war-time basis was an accomplished fact; the election of a Republican President—who turned out to be Warren G. Harding—was a certainty; the Victory Loan had been successfully floated; the great war expenditures of the government were at an end. Reduction of the national debt on a peace-time basis then began. Twenty- four billion dollars in round numbers was the amount of the national debt when the peace period began, and that fact should be clear before everyone, Democrat or Repub- licean, normal-taxer or surtaxer, in fact all who “pay the freight,” whether it be “Pittsburgh plus” or “Detroit minus.” Let us consider the debt reduction which has been accomplished since June 30, 1920. In the fiscal year end- ing June 30, 1921, the last year of the Wilson Adminis- tration, the public debt was reduced $321,871,000, making the gross $23,976,250,608. That was the debt burden inherited by Mr. Mellon. Today the public debt of the United States stands at $20,406,090,295, a reduction of $3,570,160,313, a great achievement. How has this been accomplished? Beginning July 1, 1920, the sinking fund established by the Victory Loan Act became operative. By that means a certain sum is applied each year to the reduction of the public debt. That application is by virtue of an act of Congress and is not dependent on the will or policy of any executive officer. For the Executive to claim credit for the reduction accom- plished through the sir‘.ing fund is, under the circum- stances, a piece of demagogic effrontery unparalleled since Mohammed claimed credit for the miracle of moving a mountain when what he did was go to the mountain instead of making it come to him. Taxation by Misrepresentation By LOUIS W. McKERNAN For the fiscal year 1920, as has been stated, there was no sinking fund. For the fiscal years since, the reduction accomplished through the sinking fund has been as follows: UE nein ss ie ialeoetcliores aieta tas $261,000,000 ER ry re err 276,000,000 PS wivisn Caeih.o's aibin oR ia eeaieee aes 284,000,000 ME e0s enennedvavecsh vaseens 296,000,000 BM sake eeidatenss cn eae S 306,000,000 WUD civsencsneverccndus $1,423,000,000 Accordingly, a reduction of $1,423,000,000 has _ been achieved since June 30, 1920, by virtue of this act of Con- gress, conceived by the Wilson Administration, and enacted shortly after the armistice. It was calculated at the time of its passage that the sinking fund would retire the war debt of the United States, minus the war loans to foreign countries, in about twenty-five years. By reason of an amendment to the original act, approved March 2, 1923, securities issues to refund the original war loans are also included, so that the original purpose of the act, the retirement of the war debt, minus foreign loans, is sure of accomplishment, and in a period even shorter than the estimate of twenty-five years. It was deemed a sufli- cient burden for this generation to pay the entire cost to the United States of the greatest war in history, a war which left the public debt of the country twenty-five times as great as it had been. But what has been done by the Treasury since June 30, 1920, has been far more burdensome to the taxpayer than the congressional program. While the Sinking Fund Act calls for a reduction in that period of $1,423,000,000, which has been accomplished in accordance with law, the actual reduction in the gross public debt, chiefly through taxation, has been $3,782,000,000. This means that, if the same policy is pursued in the future, and foreign coun- tries pay their war debts in a like period, the entire war debt will be retired in a period much shorter than twenty- five years. It also means that if twenty-five years is a reasonably short time within which to pay so colossal a war debt, this generation is having imposed upon it an unduly high burden of taxation, and that not by policy of the law-making body, which constitutionally controls the purse-strings, but by the policy of the Executive of mis- leading Congress into the creation of surpluses which are applied by the Executive in reduction of the public debt. During the five years from June 30, 1920, to June 30, 1925, the taxpayers of the county paid $2,359,000,000 more than was necessary to retire the war debt—exclusive of loans to foreign governments—in less than twenty-five years. And this in spite of the much-heralded tax reduc- tions of 1921 and 1924. How has this come about when we have an expensive Bureau of the Budget, headed first by General Dawes and now by General Lord, aided by the regular government departments, to estimate the revenue requirements of the government, and Treasury and tax experts to estimate what revenue given taxes will yield? For some reason, budget estimates year after year prove ee Cf aha 2h 42 ad

Page 11

Nov. 18, 1925] The Nation 567 too large and estimates of tax revenue prove too small. The result is that every year we have an unexpected sur- plus which is applied, with much gusto, by the Treasury Department to reduction of the national debt. This sur- plus—which is a surplus after sinking-fund requirements have been taken care of—in some years has reached tre- mendous proportions. The surpluses for the fiscal years 1921-1925 are as follows: Ee ee ee ere $87,000,000 EEE a eer 314,000,000 ERS Oe rr ree 310,000,000 SO ee rare nen panei rr 505,000,000 PO SicQesctensatarhcvemeny 251,000,000 PO, itt ceKs Heem aos $1,467,000,000 This means that the taxpayers of the country were com- pelled to pay not only the ordinary expenses of the gov- ernment, more than half of which are directly traceable to the war, plus $1,423,000,000 for the retirement of the public debt through the sinking fund, but also $1,467,000,000 to be accumulated by the Treasury as a surplus and applied to further debt reduction. Surely there is something seriously wrong when the Bureau of the Budget and the Treasury experts are so constantly in error in their estimates of revenue requirements and receipts. This goes to the vitals of tax reduction and tax reform. The strangest feature of the situation is that the discrepancies between revenue requirements and revenue produced have been greater since the Bureau of the Bud- get was established in June, 1921, than before, although one of the main purposes of the budget was to prevent such discrepancies and see to it that only the minimum amount of revenue required should be raised to run the government. Let us take some of the estimates. The Secretary of the Treasury in a letter dated January 24, 1922 (a half year after the inauguration of the budget), addressed to the chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means, with respect to the soldier’s bonus, said: “It appears from these statements that for 1922 the budget estimates indi- cate a deficit of over $24,000,000, and for 1923 a deficit of over $167,000,000.” The actual financial outcome of the year 1922 was, as we have already stated, a surplus of $314,000,000, and for the year 1923 a surplus of $310,000,000, a combined sur- plus for the two years of $624,000,000, instead of the formidable-looking deficit predicted by the Bureau of the Budget under General Dawes and used by the Secretary of the Treasury to defeat the soldier’s bonus. This of course was in the first year of the budget when General Dawes was saving money on the consoli- dated purchase of brooms. Better things might be expected of later years. However, in the annual report of the Secretary of the Treasury for 1923 appears this gem: Budget estimates at the beginning of the year indicated a deficit of about $822,000,000, and the fortunate result of turning an apparent deficit into an actual surplus was due, in large part, to increased revenues from internal revenue and customs, and in a lesser degree, to decreases in the general expenditures of the government. The “actual surplus” for the year was, as we have said, $310,000,000, making a small error of $1,132,000,000. It has been suggested that the demand for a soldier’s bonus had something to do with the estimates of deficits for the fiscal years 1922 and 1923, which so quickly turned into actual surpluses once the threat was past. In the fall of 1923 the Treasury decided to recom- mend tax reduction. The Secretary of the Treasury's letter of November 10, 1923, makes the following estimates as to the outcome of the next four or five fiscal years: After taking into account all these considerations and making the most conservative estimates about the yield of existing taxes and the possibilities of further reductions in expenditure, it appears that for this year, and for the next four or five years, there should be a surplus of something over $300,000,000 a year over and above all expenditures - chargeable to the ordinary budget, including the fixed-debt charges payable out of current revenues. The original budget estimate for the fiscal year 1924 had been a surplus of $180,000,000. This was later raised by the budget to an estimated surplus of $330,000,000. As we have seen, the actual surplus for the fiscal year reached the unprecedented total of $505,000,000. For the fiscal year 1925, with Adjusted Compensation on the statute books and the Revenue Act of 1924 as law, bringing an immediate reduction which was intended to exhaust the surplus, the Bureau of the Budget estimated a surplus of $68,000,000. The actual surplus turned out to be $251,000,000. With the progressive retirement of the public debt, the consequent reduction each year of inter- est charges, and the additional foreign-debt made since 1923, it would appear that his estimate for the fiscal year 1926 should be exceeded by even a greater amount. Such appears to be the case, even on the present estimates of the budget and the Treasury, the present prediction being a surplus of $290,000,000 for 1926. Curiously enough, the Secretary of the Treasury on October 29, 1925, went before the Committee on Ways and Means to make his recommendations for tax reduction without having an estimate for the fiscal year 1927, the first year which will be wholly dependent upon a new tax law. He said: “For 1927 the budget has not yet deter- mined the total of expenditures which will be necessary to run the government.” A remarkable situation! In the first week of Decem- ber the President of the United States will transmit the budget for 1927 to Congress, but on October 19 the budget is not able to give the Secretary of the Treasury even a preliminary estimate for statement to the Congressional committee drafting a tax bill, which cannot be even started intelligently without an absolutely accurate esti- mate for the fiscal year 1927. We have seen surpluses since June 30, 1920, totaling by July 1, 1925, the enormous sum of $1,467,000,000, in spite of tax reduction by the revenue bills of 1921 and 1924 and passage of the Adjusted Compensation Law, which were supposed and intended to distribute any pos- sible surplus. These laws were passed on the basis of budget and Treasury estimates, under which there would have been, had they been correct, not only no surplus for those years but even a deficit. That is, because of colossal misrepresentations in estimates, intentional or uninten- tional, the taxpayer has paid for those five years roughly a billion and a half of taxes which Congress never intended to levy. That sum would have allowed a reduc- tion in taxes of $300,000,000 for each year. Are we to be taxed through our representation in Congress or through misrepresentation by the Executive? settlements

Page 12

The Nation [ Vol. 121, No. 3150 [We are glad to preface this narrative with the in- formation that the verdict described below was overruled by the higher courts and the defendant was set free.) NDER the blaze of a July sun the dust lay thick in the cheerless streets of a little city in western Wis- consin where a criminal trial was about to be held in the federal court. A State official at Madison had been in- dicted by the grand jury for refusing to contribute to a Y. M. C. A. “drive” for war funds. Seemingly for no better reason than to make the trial as severe a drain on the defendant’s courage and financial resources as possible, the judge of the district in which the indictment was returned transferred the court action from the city of his residence to Eau Claire, two hundred miles distant. War fever ran high; the armistice, which was entered into some five months later, was not anticipated at this time, and every train which arrived from the East brought additional strangers to town, witnesses for the plaintiff, mostly, who was no less a dignitary than the Government of the United States of America! Before the day was over the lobby of the principal hotel swarmed with well-dressed people, men and women, who, if one judged them by their carefree appearance, might have been out for a holiday. The assemblage in the courtroom the next morning presented an equally animated appearance. Representatives of the various war-time organizations mingled with promi- nent citizens representing no announced organization, but whose presence probably was thought desirable by the prosecution for its effect upon the jury as well as upon publie opinion. Within the railing which inclosed the witness-stand and jury-box were gathered the plaintiff’s witnesses and their friends. A tall, narrow-shouldered man with color- less hair and pallid countenance was pointed out as the State secretary of the Y. M. C. A. He was dressed in a striped suit of blue and carried a heavily loaded portfolio under his arm. The well-groomed man who walked about with an air of importance was a deputy controller of the American Red Cross Society. The tall, fair-haired, fash- ionably dressed woman seated near the judge’s bench was the wife of a newspaper editor who had found the war financially profitable to himself and who exhibited an in- tense hatred of any person not in his entourage. Near the editor’s wife sat the elderly wife of a bank president who was the local representative of the Red Cross Society. At one of the tables sat a short, stout, thick-necked man whose drooping mouth and deep-set eyes betokened the bully and fighter. He frequently rose from his chair to look into papers and books on the table, and at such times it was seen that one of his legs was twisted or deformed. This man was B. R. Goggins, the special prosecutor, or special assistant United States district attorney; on him rested the responsibility for the success of the Government’s case. In a chair drawn close to that of the special assistant was the nominal district attorney, Albert C. Wolfe, a dark, thin, sallow-complexioned individual who unceasingly scrib- A Fragment of War-Time History By ELLEN TORELLE NAGLER bled or drew meaningless lines with a pencil on a paper be- fore him, while his assistant ground out the necessary and expected arguments from an all too meager supply of facts. Another table was reserved for the counsel for the defense. The most conspicuous figure here was small in stature and quiet in demeanor, but his white hair, his benevolent expression, his courtly bearing, and his unques- tioned ability won the respect of friend and foe alike. This was Burr W. Jones. Opposite him sat C. H. Crownhart, chief counsel for the defense. Both of these gentlemen were afterward elected to the Supreme Court of Wisconsin. The women within the railing carried bags of colored worsted and “purled” as they noted with apparent satisfac- tion the gathering crowd without. Just so the women of the French Revolution knitted as they counted the heads which dropped before the guillotine. A little white-clad child, the son of the defendant, got inside the railing and ran about, looking up with smiling face into the faces of the adults about him. But these faces bore no answering smile for him; only stern rebuke and condemnation. Presently a hush fell upon the courtroom. Two judges entered. One, tall and thin with straggly gray hair, took his seat on one of a row of chairs ranged along the rear wall of the platform. The other, a heavy-set man, who walked as if he were trying to conceal a limp, advanced to the front and took his seat on the bench. He was th« trial judge, Evan A. Evans, called in to aid the presiding judge of the district. Counsel for the defense arose and moved a genera! and special demurrer in the case. The judge listened with obvious displeasure, then answered gruffly: “Very well, interpose a demurrer and the demurrer is overruled.” A jury was then drawn from a horde of men collected in the room and swarming into the corridor. They seemed to take the situation humorously. Some of these men had served before on juries summoned to try cases under the Espionage Act, and they had learned their paces. Later it was charged by counsel for another defendant under the Espionage Act that the fifty-six jurymen selected for this term of the court had not been drawn in the manner pro- vided by law, but had been hand-picked by loyal members of the Councils of Defense. The panel completed, the judge charged the jury, em- phasizing the fact that this was a criminal case and that their minds must be kept free from prejudice. The trial was opened with a speech by the special government prosecutor, Mr. Goggins, who said in part: If it please the Court and gentlemen of the jury, hav- ing in mind what I said before, the statement I made, and so as to enable us to properly question you as to your qualifications as jurors, it won’t be necessary for me to add but little more. The jurors seemed to comprehend this as well as anything that took place at the trial. Then followed an extended address in which the de- fendant, L. B. Nagler, was exhibited to the jurors in all his wickedness as a State official who, after having been

Page 13

Nov. 18, 1925] The Nation 569 thrice canvassed for a subscription to the Y. M. C. A. war fund, persisted in refusing to subscribe, with the result that he was indicted by a grand jury sitting at Madison, the capital of the State. The indictment set forth that on the occasion when the defendant was last canvassed he, in the course of a lengthy discussion, had used the following language, which, under Section 3 of the Espionage Act, was considered treasonable as calculated to obstruct the recruiting and enlistment service of the United States: I am through contributing to your private grafts. There is too much graft in these subscriptions. No, I do not believe in the work of the Y. M. C. A. or the Red Cross, for I think they are a bunch of grafters. No, sir, I can prove it.... I won’t give you a cent. The Y. M. C. A., the Y. W. C. A., and the Red Cross is a bunch of grafters. Not over 10 or 15 per cent of the money collected goes to the soldiers or is used for the purpose for which it is collected. ... Who is the government? Who is running this war? A bunch of capitalists composed of the Steel Trust and munition makers. During three weary days, beginning July 29, 1918, testimony was taken which showed conclusively that the defendant had not included the Y. W. C. A. nor the Red Cross in his condemnation, but had used some plain lan- guage, not the jargon of the indictment, in regard to the Y. M. C. A. Testimony also proved that his comment on the conduct of the war was wrung from him as a protest against attacks made by his interviewers upon members of Congress from Wisconsin who had opposed our country’s entry into the war, men whom he respected and admired, and whose opinions he shared. Senator La Follette and his attitude on the war were particularly in question. Tes- timony showed that the defendant was opposed to our en- tering the war, but that he had steadily counseled support of the Government after war was declared; that he was the first volunteer in Wisconsin for civilian war service (he was ineligible for military service) ; that he had always been a loyal citizen, a man of excellent reputation for hon- esty and morality in all dealings with his fellow-men, and a faithful public servant for many years; but he believed that the Government should support the war through taxa- tion, and that private organizations should not be permitted to collect funds in that way; financial “drives” by such organizations were wrong in principle and unfair in practice. All testimony for the defense was ignored or overruled by the court. A witness for the Government testified on cross-examination that in his presence the defendant had counseled a young man who asked his advice to volunteer and not wait to be drafted. This advice the young man followed and with the aid of the defendant was commis- sioned a second lieutenant. But this testimony was struck out by order of the court. Other testimony on behalf of the defendant was be- fogged by the interjection of long dissertations on the activities of the Red Cross and of the Y. M. C. A. While these dissertations had no bearing on the case as testimony they were interesting to the student of history. The deputy controller of the National Red Cross Society testified that Italy would have been lost to the Allies without the inter- vention of the Red Cross Society. “We went into Italy,” he said, “after the first German drive and organized the country for war against Austria. After that we kept Italy in the war by the establishment of soup kitchens, ‘colony’ formation, and the distribution of men and money to each and every hamlet and town throughout the land. This work,” he continued, “won for us the praise of the King of Italy and the War Premier, and it has been continued on an increased scale to the present time.” This testimony was a revelation to the thoughtful of the real function of the Red Cross. Its activities have been commonly understood to be limited to the relief of human suffering, but this national administrative officer of the society testified under oath that its chief function was to precede the armies into a country (Italy, in this instance) to organize the country for war, and then to keep the coun- try fighting. The significance of his statement that the American Red Cross Society also made Great Britain’s occupancy of Mesopotamia possible was lost upon the greater number of persons present. Today a knowledge of the presence of rich oil-fields there is general. The Deputy Controller waxed eloquent when he empha- sized the fact that only prominent citizens who were the possessors of great wealth were intrusted with the control of the American Red Cross Society. Eighteen bankers, grocers, or manufacturers, with former President Taft at their head, formed the executive committee during the war. Yet he deplored the fact that “profligate” methods were often employed in collecting money, as when great balls were given and only a small part of the money received was turned over to the society. The solicitors for the Y. M. C. A. war fund were not representatives of that organization but citizens engaged in various lines of work. The man who reported the de fendant’s unwillingness to contribute to the drive was an unsuccessful lawyer, who later became attached to the De- partment of Justice as a secret agent. He was unable to remember with any definiteness what had been said during the discussion which led to the defendant’s indictment. The regular Y. M. C. A. officials whom the prosecution brought on as witnesses had never seen the defendant nor had any conversation with him. The first of these witnesses was the State Secretary of the Y. M. C. A. He testified in regard to activities. The Y. M. C. A. operated in Italy, France, Mesopotamia, and Russia, and after the revolution (referred to by the witness as “the fall of Russia’) orders were given them to remain in Russia to cooperate with the “better” class of people. He admitted that since the Y. M. C, A. does not confer full membership upon Catholics, Unitarians, and Jews, a man belonging to one of these sects might right- fully feel disinclined to contribute money to its activities. Struck by the accomplishments of the Red Cross So- ciety and the story of the Y. M. C. A.; impressed by the lack of credence given the testimony for the defense by the presiding judge, who consistently overruled all testi- mony bearing on the intent of the defendant and refused to give the jury any instructions requested by the defense— the jury found the defendant guilty. A month later sentence was pronounced in his home city, where friends and neighbors might witness the attempt to humiliate him. In pronouncing sentence, Judge Evans said: “The judgment of the court is that you be imprisoned at the federal prison at Leavenworth for a period of thirty months, your sentence to begin at 12 o’clock today.”

Page 14

The Nation [ Vol. 121, No. 3150 Washington, November 6 F the bump of humor in the American people had not degenerated into a dent, a good many patriots in high public office here in Washington would certainly be laughed off the political stage. And if the popular lack of humor were not combined with a memory collectively crippled and dreadfully infirm, it would very badly cramp the style of some of our most serious and successful statesmen. Take, for instance, the present predicament of Mr. Coolidge over his forthcoming message on the state of the Union with which three weeks from next Monday he must greet the new Congress. That is, it would be a predicament if it were not for the before-mentioned traits of the com- mon people and an overwhelming and utterly non-critical press support. It is safe to say, for instance, that not one man in 100,000, including the erudite editors whose busi- ness it was to digest them, can today recall the recommen- dations made by Mr. Coolidge when two years ago he sent his first message to Congress. If they did remember clearly, it would very greatly add to his apprehensive em- barrassment now. The fact that they do not makes it rela- tively easy for him with customary solemnity to deliver another message which, however differently worded, in all vital respects will be identical with the one delivered two years ago. Of course there will be a few pestiferous persons to see and point out the old stuff in the new dress, but their carping voices will be drowned in the great Coolidge chorus of a united press, which so greatly contributes to the un- precedented presidential popularity. The truth is that the rushing tide of prosperity has swept from the public mind all things political save those implanted by the current propaganda or instilled by prejudice. To the few, however, who do recall the facts, the reason the second Coolidge message is bound to be identical in substance, though not in form, with the first is entirely plain. It can be stated in a few words—of all the recom- mendations made by the President in 1923 not a single one has yet been carried out. There have been two solid years of marking time. Exactly nothing has been achieved except a reduction in taxes, which every fair-minded man is compelled to admit inevitably would have occurred under any President and regardless of party. Right here it ought to be noted that the tax reduction made was not along lines recommended by Mr. Coolidge but along the lines he spe- cifically did not recommend; that the bill as passed was not the Administration bill and that he signed it with extreme reluctance. To make things clear it seems worth while to set down the outstanding recommendations of the Coolidge message of 1923, which of necessity must be remade in 1925 because nothing has been done to carry them out and their need has been enhanced by time. First—He asked for railroad legislation to render con- solidation of the roads possible, but Congress did not re- spond. He will have to ask again. Second—An ugly coal strike having just ended, he urged legislation that would prevent strikes in the future Mr. Coolidge’s New-Old Message By FRANK R. KENT and protect the public interests. The report of the com- mission upon which he based his 1923 recommendation only recently has been printed, but nothing has been done with it. We are now in the midst of another coal strike and Mr. Coolidge necessarily will renew his advice. Third—In the matter of agriculture he very strongly recommended the enactment of laws urged by the commis- sion named by him te study the subject, but not a single law was passed. His Secretary of Agriculture is preparing a new set of recommendations on this subject. Fourth—In 1923 he urged the Senate to adopt the World Court proposal, but the measure did not even come out of the committee. He, of course, will renew the recom- mendation this time. These four were the big recommendations of Mr. Coolidge in 1923. They constituted the bulk of his mes- sage. There were some minor recommendations concern- ing prohibition, veterans of the World War, and immigra- tion—not one of which, by the way, was carried out either —and there was considerable “apple sauce” about peace and prosperity, but these four constituted the vital parts of the message. They will also be the substance of the forthcoming message. There is no way to avoid it. In the new message there will, of course, be a lot of palaver about tax reduction, which unfailingly strikes a responsive chord in the bosoms of our high-bracket busi- ness Babbitts, and there will be much more about economy, in spite of the steady rise in federal expenditures, but it will be old stuff and mean little. On the subject of foreign debts unquestionably the President proposes to speak in solemn commendation of the “establishment throughout the world of the principle that nations must pay their war debts.” He proposes, too, I am informed, to highly approve the Locarno Conference, with which we had nothing at all to do, to speak well and kindly of the nations which have funded their debts and with sympathetic tolerance of those that have not. All that is obvious. He cannot avoid saying those things. What he will not say, however, is that as a result of our pressure on our foreign friends for payment in the face of our own overpowering prosperity, the mountain of con- centrated hate of the United States on the other side is higher than ever before in history. Nor will a tone of broad tolerance and an assumption of moral leadership, inevitable in the message, lower the mountain or dilute the hate. Another point not likely to be brought out is the passing of the initiative in world affairs which was our: up to the time of the Locarno Conference. Nor will it be stated that the only important foreign debtor from whom we have any real expectation of ever being paid anything except stage money is Great Britain. Mr. Coolidge’s job is so to word the new that its simi- larity to the old one will not be noted generally and all his recommendations can be renewed without seeming to con- fess futility. This is made easy for him by the forgetful- ness of the people and the friendliness of the press. [This is the first of a series of letters which Mr. Kent will contribute every other week during the winter.]

Page 15

Nov. 18, 1925] The Nation 571 In the Driftway N anonymous lady, writing in the London Spectator, points out certain painful truths with regard to men’s clothing. It is perfectly apparent that men’s clothes are awkward, hot, constricting, and bulky; what is, one had hoped, less apparent, she sets forth in downright terms: The truth is that man’s dress today conceals a multi- tude of weaknesses. Many athletes, even, look anything but their best in working kit. . . . Ordinary men in bath- ing costume look quite pathetically unimportant and un- impressive. . . . Their long trousers collect mud and dust just as women’s draggling skirts used to do. Their collars throttle the neck. . .. Their hats are hard and tight, in- ducing baldness. Their kidney-exposing waistcoats are ugly. Their braces and their thick underwear are as shameful and comic as women’s corsets and clumsy un- dergarments used to be. ...If it became customary to expose legs, then vanity would impel men to cultivate pleasing forms. * * * * * HIS frankness is deplorable. The Drifter himself, at sight of a worthy captain of industry in running trunks, or of a Methodist preacher in a modest bathing suit, has often shuddered at the unfortunate picture, but he shuddered with the comfortable thought that at least the more decorative and sensible sex was not present making comparisons. Evidently he was wrong, and certainly the anonymous lady is right. Man’s costume is ridiculous and man appears ridiculous in it only too often. The feeble attempts that are being made to remedy matters would be pitiful if they were not laughable also. A few bold spirits have permanently discarded the stiff collar; a scattering number refuse to wear a hat in summer, although all but the bravest of these few carry their hats in their hands. The stiff-bosomed shirt has almost disappeared, the heavy woolen suit in summer is going fast, although a man who discards his coat in hot weather and appears in a perfectly decent white shirt is frowned upon as an ill-mannered lout. But see what remains! On May 15, for example, man dons the most cunningly devised instrument of torture ever in- vented—the straw hat; on September 15 he discards it. If he chooses to keep this strange head-gear on until the day after the middle of the ninth month it may be knocked from his head. He slops about the streets in trousers that the snow has muddied and the rain has splashed. If he rolled them up, or better still, cut them off below the knee, young children would follow him with hooting and derision. Upon his head he perches a felt hat of ugly shape and sour color which he tries to improve by a piteous small feather. * * * * * ET in spite of all these undeniable reasons why man will never be called the fair sex, the Drifter finds himself a little reluctant to adopt the amendments suggested by the Spectator’s anonymous lady: the jumper blouse, the short fur coat, pajamas for the house in “green, bright navy, rust-red, or wine, with full and comely shirts . . . and light-weight flexible shoes of vivid leather.” No, some- thing better than this must be devised. Man must proceed slowly; possibly it would be better if, following woman's example, he began to discard his garments one by one. Then he could eventually see which was most useful and at the same time most decorative. THE DRIFTER Correspondence The Irreconcilables To THE EDITOR OF THE NATION: Sir: As an old and battered, even if totally uninfluential and insignificant, hanger-on of the old Battalion of Death of 1919, may I ask you why you do not give credit for this new magnificent Locarno Treaty to the Irreconcilables who in 1919 and 1920 saved this country from joining the League of Nations and saved Europe from having us Am: ins act ast arbiters of its destiny? According to the official intentions of that time, the Goths and Vandals of the Hudson and the M ippi and the Sacra mento were to stand with their threatening swords in th civilized vales of the Rhine and by their savage frontier might were to prevent the infuriated Teutons and the infuriated Franks from rushing upon one their mutual! destruction. The argument was: another to These Europeans want peace They yearn for peace. There is nothing that they want so much as peace. But they just simply will go against their own natures and burst unwillingly out into fighting one another unless the Americans prevent them. This role of preventing people from doing what they claimed they did not want to do we rejected. Ther to us to be something fishy in it. To some of us it seemed that it was an indignity, an insult, to Europe. Was the continent of Marcus Aurelius, of St. Francis of Assisi, of Kant, of Gladstone, of Tolstoi unable to refrain from shedding its own blood except under the mentorship of a child ish continent sprung from its own loins? Thank God, Europe may now say that it has recovered its own self-respect! All by itself, just out of its own resources, if it does not want to fight, it can say, with ite own lips and for its own reasons and purposes, and bound by its own guaranties, that it will not fight! It was the Irreconcilables that really respected Europe It was the Irreconcilables that really helped Europe the Irreconcilables that compelled Europe to seek within its own rich ancient self for its own richer future. It was the Irreconcilables that prevented the cradle of our civilization from becoming its subordinated and humiliated annex. It was the Irreconcilables that kept Europe Europe. Why net give us poor provincis] Irreconcilable Americans a little credit for having been the really best Europeans of our time? Washington, Octoher 25 4 med spiritual It was WitiiaM Harp Land of the Free! To THE EpiTor oF THE NATION: Sir: Jacob Riegel, born in Jugoslavia forty-two years ago, was refused citizenship papers by A. J. Pearson, a Cleve land common pleas judge, on September 17, because his prin- ciples would not allow him to subscribe to the oath to bear arms for his adopted country. “T will support the United States in any other way,” Mr. Riegel is quoted by local newspapers as saying, “but I do not believe in war and I cannot promise to fight.” When friends of Riegel protested to William T. Shockley, chief United States naturalization examiner, that many natu- ralized Americans have taken the oath with the mental reserva tion that they would not fight in defense of this country, that worthy official replied: “If we ever find them, we will revoke their naturalization papers.” Land of the free! Home of the brave! Cleveland, Ohio, September 18 CLARK KINNAIRD

Page 16

572 , : The Nation [Vol. 121, No. 3150 Prohibition To THE EpiTror oF THE NATION: Sir: The intellectual confusion with regard to the en- forcement of prohibition seems to be ineradicable. The article in the last number of The Nation [October 7] says: “Pro- hibition—so far—has failed: it has reduced drinking, but it has increased lawlessness.” But if prohibition has reduced drinking, it has no concern with decreasing lawlessness. Apply the same phrase to stealing and observe the result. I am vice-chairman both of the National and the New York State Women’s Committee for Law Enforcement, which includes representatives of temperance and church organiza- tions, and the only criticism which has reached me is to the effect that the report of the Federal Council of Churches strikes a more defeatist note than the contents warrant. How- ever, we take it for granted that this was done merely to emphasize the necessity of a campaign of education, a neces- sity of which we are entirely conscious. No service can be more important than the clear placing of responsibility upon the Treasury Department and the recog- nition that misused permits for the manufacture of industrial alcohol are the greatest source of the illicit supply. This understanding will clear the ground for all our future work. We hope that this inquiry will be continued and that it will include a study of the following points: First, the effect of State-wide prohibition on the points raised by the inquiry. Second, the effect on women of the control exerted through a public opinion as rigid as law which effectively debarred one sex from a prevailing indulgence. I believe that the intellectual confusion is created by the assumption that the majority of the support which the pro- hibition law has received comes from those who believe that a moral improvement should be effected by it. I believe that any inquiry would show that the favorable majority which has been secured for referendums in California, Ohio, and, lastly, in Massachusetts was made up of persons who sup- ported this legislation as measures of health and public safety. There also appears to be an extraordinary confusion as to the definition of crime. Does anyone believe that a crime can be created by the passage of law? Drinking, in my opinion, should be classed with the taking of other habit-forming drugs. While neither, perhaps, can be classed as a crime in itself, bdth are a source of crime and of indescribable misery. New York, October 7 MARGARET NORRIE Binding the Filipinos To Tur Eprror or THE NATION: Sir: Representative Charles Underhill has been to the Philippine Islands and has come back and been interviewed. He expresses the opinion, in very positive terms, that General Wood should be made an autocrat-—given a free hand in the Philippines, “without the impossible restrictions and irritations imposed by the independence propagandists.” He declares: “The Philippines are not ready for independence and will not be for many years.” Most drastic methods have been used to make and keep them unfit for independence. To kill, imprison, terrorize, tor- ture, and in all possible ways suppress its advocates is as sure a way to unfit a people for independence as the “Blessings-of- Civilization Trust” can devise. (For above naming see Mark Twain’s To the Person Sitting in Darkness, the first article in the North American Review, February, 1901.) And so Mr. Underhill says Congress should immediately “pass legislation depriving the Philippine legislature of the power to interfere with the executive and judicial branches of the government.” Mr. Underhill doesn’t mention them, but of course there would be proper pains and penalties provided for any inde- pendent spirit objecting to this new tyranny. As Mr. Under- hill doubtless foresees, this move would give occasion for new “rebellions” and America’s protecting guns would then have excuse for killing off some more “independence propagandists” and so keep the islands “not fit for independence.” When I went to the Philippines it was my opinion that we should get rid of the islands at any price. But [ quickly changed my mind. It would be unpatriotic, un- civilized, and un-Christian to give the islands their inde- pendence and plunge those people back into barbaric, internecine conflicts. Mr. Underhill isn’t going to allow those barbarians to kil! each other. If any killing is to be done—and no doubt that under Mr. Underhill’s regime there would be good and plenty— it is to be done by nice, patriotic, civilized, Christian Americans. Immediately following the blessings-of-civilization talk we are told: “Moreover, we need the Philippines in connection with our industrial development and as a commercial outpost in the Orient. . . . We could grow enough rubber in the Philippines to make us independent forever of rubber sources controlled by other Powers.” ; And now comes the last paragraph, still further illuminat- ing Mr. Underhill’s change of mind: “The Filipino inde- pendence agitators so far have blocked the establishment of rubber culture on a large scale by American interests, realizing that if we develop a rubber supply there we will never get out.” Denver, Colorado, September 28 CELIA BALDWIN Miguel de Unamuno To THE EDITOR OF THE NATION: Sir: Writing as a subscriber who enjoys the many ex- cellent reviews that appear in The Nation, I beg leave to say that the review by Mr. Eliseo Vivas, in the issue of Sep- tember 23, of the volume of Unamuno, translated under the title of “Essays and Soliloquies,” seems to me—although the reviewer is familiar with his subject—singularly inept. Why hurl the epithet “unscientific” at one who (though never dis- puting the achievements of science) glories in his contempt for “scientificism”? And why urge the lack of practical con- clusions against one who has already proclaimed (in this book) : “And I will tell them, once for all, that if it is solutions they want, they can go to the shop opposite, for I do not deal in the article’? Readers of your review are likely to picture Unamuno as a poet and dreamer, buried in the past, oblivious to the present, innocent alike of science and of modern thought, and unaware of the pitfalls that await him. They would be surprised to learn that he is a person intensely alive, and vastly read, no less in the literature of the present than of the past, who, moreover, has very explicitly anticipated his reviewer. Your reviewer disposes of Unamuno’s ideas about immor- tality by explaining that Unamuno—professor of Greek at Salamanca for thirty years or so, who took his doctorate at Madrid in letters and in philosophy—fails to see that the pos- sibility of immortality involves the question of the transcen- dental nature of the ego. I think that no instructed reader of Unamuno will doubt that he has had his course in the trans- cendental ego—and graduated. This transcendental ego of medieval metaphysics is possibly the most typical representa- tive of that “scientificism” which he explicitly rejects. And this should be enough to suggest that, intellectually at least, Unamuno is far from archaic; he is possibly the most modern of the moderns. And, above all, in the fact (evidently not grasped by your reviewer) that he refuses to permit his point of view to be described as a system of philosophy. Nor has he “set himself to solve” any “problem” of immortality; nor, least of all, to demonstrate the fact of immortality. Unamuno’s “problem,” which he never expects to “solve,” is primarily the problem of grasping and communicating the quality and mean- ee a a ee ee ee PS a ae a 2a a & 06elClU

Page 17

Nov. 18, 1925] The Nation ing of this mortal life. And his doctrine of immortality, so far as it involves any positive assertion, is only (but this is much) that any vital interest in life—this life—is inevitably an inter- est equally vital in immortality. Whether this be true, is a question not for science but for you and me. Meanwhile, I fear that the readers of your review will get from it no inkling of what the compiler and translator of this anthology has been at such pains to offer—an opportunity to sample the magnificent flavor of the man, of the man Unamuno; to note his wonderful power of expression amidst a careless informality of style; his abundant, exuberant, even boisterous vitality; his trenchantly clear vision and never- failing sense of humor, along with a terribly tragic grasp of the facts of life and a preoccupation with the thought of death. Princeton, New Jersey, September 26 WARNER FITE Concerning France To THE EDITOR OF THE NATION: Sir: In your last issue to hand, in three editorial para- graphs and one article, The Nation continues its prolonged offensive against France. Do you ever find anything good to say about the French? Anyhow you don’t say it. But you are a great lover of the poor, downtrodden Germans, once more goose-stepping under Von Hindenburg. How is it that a man conducting a journal of civilization (as, I nevertheless admit, The Nation is) can be afflicted with such an incurable prejudice against that people who lighted the torch of civiliza- tion in an otherwise dark world and have kept it aflame for more than a thousand years—a prejudice emphasized by a gushing infatuation for their militaristic neighbor? Or is the latter emotion the cause of the former? Although convinced that it is, I shall, for its many other good features, not cease to read The Nation, bearing in mind, however, that your expressions concerning France will be but the garden variety of Nordic propaganda. San Diego, Cal., September 10 Epwarp H. WHELAN ‘‘Hobo’”’ and ‘‘Gay-Cat’’ To THE EpiTorR OF THE NATION: Sm: As to the definition of “hobo,” be it remembered that the first strict definition put before the public was that given by Josiah Flynt. Flynt professed to have had his doctrine most particularly from a hobo who declared that the proper spelling was “haut beau.” His account was that “hobo” is the distinctive name for such a tramp as will not in any case work, while a tramp who will accept work upon occasion is known in the language of the road as a “gay-cat.” Now you are promulgating a directly opposite limitation for “hobo.” My conclusion is that “hobo” has as yet all the indefiniteness of slang, and that if it is ever to be established as a word with a precise meaning this possibility belongs altogether to the future. Ballard Vale, Mass., October 28 STEVEN T. BYINGTON Sauce for the Gander To THE EpiTor oF THE NATION: Sir: Is there any reason in law or morals why the Chinese nation should not take up with the American Government the recent outrages upon the Chinese in Cleveland and elsewhere and demand reparation and an apology? Chinese military weak- ness has no bearing, as practically all nations are turning from war to law, at least in desire and hope. Particularly would this demand be fitting as these evil deeds were the official acts of men appointed by the State to maintain civil order. Strictly, an honorable government would voluntarily apol- ogize and offer satisfaction. Bryn Mawr, Pa., October 18 JAMES A. TOWLE A COMPLETE TECHNIQUE OF IMPERIALISM DOLLAR DIPLOMACY By Scott NEARING AND JOSEPH FREEMAN This astounding record of America’s foreign activities is a unique lesson in Empire-Building. Readers ot The Nation know many of the separate episodes: marines in Haiti, “oleaginous diplomacy” in Mexico exploitation in China, financial gymnastics in Europe. Mr. Nearing and Mr. Freeman have made a candid study of each of these and many more, from their origins to the present, and correlated them in a sig nificant pattern. The picture is startlingly impressive, full of the dramatic interplay of diplomacy and high finance, the fates of small nations, and the new destiny of the United States. It will prove revealing and stimulating even to those acquainted with the separate facts. Illustrated with 11 Maps and Charts. 270 pp. $2.50 THE VIKING PRESS B. W. HUEBSCH, Inc. 30 IRVING PLACE NEW YORK More Nation Dinners December 10 Is Man a Machine? Speakera CLARENCE DARROW HENRY SLOANE COFFIN Chairman JosepH Woop Krutcu Associate Editor, The Nation Tickets to Nation subscribers and their guests, $2.50. A ticket to the dinner with The Nation for a year, $6.00. January 7 Subject to be announced February 4 Wages for Wives March 18 Is Literary Criticism Important? Series tickets for the four dinners, $9.00, sold only to Nation subscribers and their guests. With The Nation for a year, $13.00. The Fifth Avenue Restaurant, 200 Fifth Avenue, 7 P. M. The Nation, 20 Vesey Street, New York. pT Ek eae Send me The Nation for a year and reserve ............ Places at the . dinner (or the series). SE ee When writing to advertisers, please mention The Nation

Page 18

International Relations Section Women’s Suffrage in Belgium By ANNE SOMERHAUSEN HE question whether women should vote at provincial elections has interested Belgian politicians during the past summer and may rouse them once more after their re- turn to the Chamber and Senate on November 18. Dramatic incidents will perhaps occur, for “each time motions with regard to women’s suffrage have been laid before this House,” declared the president of the Chamber, “and when- ever an attempt was made to merely find a place on the agenda for discussions of such motions, we have seen the Chamber become a prey to the utmost agitation. . . .” Why? Because progress or defeat of the various po- litical parties in the Belgian Parliament depends upon women’s suffrage! Party considerations keep Belgian legis- lators from voting upon this just reform. There are no objections of principle. Most Belgian politicians admit that the one million women who work and pay taxes should be entitled to determine the laws under which they toil, and that family interests will be better taken care of when women voters cooperate with men. No objections of principle, indeed. The Clericals, Bel- gium’s tories, made women’s suffrage a party issue after the Liberal and Socialist parties had become their powerful rivals; during the thirty-five years of uncontested Clerical rule before the war, however, the Clericals did not happen to think of women’s rights. No objections of principle: the Labor Party, too, carries woman’s suffrage on its program. In fact, this party was the first to propose the enfranchise- ment of women. Unfortunately the Belgian women’s trend during clericalism augured so ill for Labor that the party decided to oppose women’s suffrage “‘for the present” and a widely known Socialist minister broke his pledge to enfran- chise women. The Liberal Party, small now but still de- cisive, fights women’s suffrage for electoral reasons. When, in 1920, these three parties gave women the right to vote in communal elections, it seemed logical to enfranchise women entirely during the next few years and to grant them suffrage first for provincial, then for national elections. The communal and provincial legislative bodies, moreover, are complements in Belgium; life in the com- munes is greatly influenced by the decisions of the nine provincial councils. On the other hand, the provincial vote plays also its part in national politics because the provincial councils elect nearly half of the country’s Senators. For this latter reason the enfranchisement of Belgian women has been delayed. Is women’s vote conservative? The Belgian Socialist and Liberal parties are convinced of it. They quote the ex- periences of Germany and Holland; they attribute Mac- Donald’s fall to the votes of women; they cite the results of their own communal elections in which women participated; Ghent, an industrial city where thousands of women work, had 45 per cent Labor votes during the legislative elections, but only 35 per cent such votes at the communal elections, which shortly followed. Even Vandervelde—up to last July an unyielding cham- pion of women’s suffrage—conceded: “If tomorrow the women voted in the provinces, I admit the results would be worse (for the Labor Party) than if men voted alone.” That “by the grace of women” at the provincial elec- tions the Clerical Party would not only obtain a majority of seats in the Senate but destroy the Socialist majority in the Red provincial councils of Hainaut and Liége has not been denied. If we are to believe gloomy Socialist statis- ticians, women’s suffrage at national elections for Chamber and Senate would give a majority of 400,000 votes to the Clericals and would plunge the country for a hundred years back into clericalism. “To give women the provincial vote now is an adven- ture full of perils,” declared most of the Socialists when, in 1921, 125,000 women asked for the right to vote in the provinces and when the Clerical Party upheld them. “Quite the contrary; give women political rights, and they will mature politically,” a few Laborites maintained, and seemed willing to grant women the provincial vote if the Clericals, in turn, were ready to make certain conces- sions to the Left. Vandervelde, then Minister of Justice, proposed a fair bargain: the Clericals were to consent to a couple of urgent reforms, such as universal suffrage for men in elections for the Senate and a salary for Senators, while a sufficient number of Socialists and Liberals was to guarantee the victory of women’s suffrage for the provincial elections of 1925. A more tempting compromise could hardly have been found. The Clericals felt their mouths water when they thought of the victory women would assure them in 1925, and the parties of the Left rubbed their hands about the electoral advantage which men’s universal suffrage for the Senate was certain to give them at the polls in 1921. All agreed to the bargain, the Socialist Party solemnly per- mitting a score of its deputies to vote for women’s suffrage against the majority of their own party in order to help put any suffragist bill through in Parliament. Twenty- eight parliamentarians signed the compromise, and among them Vandervelde rejoiced: “From now on it is certain that there will be a majority in both houses to see to it that women vote at the provincial elections in 1925.” From 1921 to 1925 Belgium had a Clerico-Liberal coali- tion government in which the Liberals opposed so violently the very discussion of women’s suffrage that their Catholic partners dared to bring up but one timid bill in its favor. Parliament at once banished the bill to the end of its agenda. It was certain, and the Liberals emphasized it frankly, that an extremely grave misunderstanding would arise within the parliamentary majority on which the Gov- ernment rested if any suffragist bill was voted upon in either house. Consequently the Clericals remained during four years the platonic lovers of women’s suffrage, realizing that, with the 1921 compromise in their pocket, they might demand women’s provincial vote at any opportune moment. “Opportune” is a relative term. When, last spring, the Clerico-Liberal Government was replaced by a Clerico- Socialist Cabinet certain Clericals thought matters ripe for a women’s suffrage bill, while the majority of their party believed it inopportune. In fact, the situation had changed but little. Again the Government was based upon a majority which, in regard to women’s suffrage, was utterly divided. This time it was the Socialist Party which, with the exception of its few consecrated suffragist deputies, threatened to abandon the oo rm we - FFT ~ > or oo Qo «za g n b

Page 19

Nov. 18, 1925] The Nation Government if women were allowed to vote at the provincial elections. Nevertheless, a number of ultra-conservative Clericals, whom their party’s alliance with the Socialists piqued considerably, insisted upon introducing a suffrage bill and demanding a vote upon it. They knew that this bill was bound to be successful if all Clericals and the score of left-wing pro-suffrage parlia- mentarians voted for it. They also knew that the coalition Government would have to fall if the bill succeeded. They hoped probably that then the way would be free for an unadulterated Clerical Cabinet. The life or death—to put it dramatically—of the Clerico-Socialist Government depended upon those few So- cialists who, in 1921, had pledged themselves to vote for women’s suffrage. Were they going to keep their word in the face of this grave situation? Were they willing to save the Cabinet by a breach of promise? What followed in Parliament was rather piquant. The Vandervelde who, as a minister of justice, had declared before the Senate in 1921: “I like to remember that, in 1895, I was one of the first to propose women’s suffrage. I am convinced that the intervention of women in politics will have a salutary influence from all points of view”; the Vandervelde who, in 1920, made a Socialist party council adopt a resolution favorable to women’s suffrage; the Vandervelde who, in the name of his twenty suffragist partisans, affirmed at a Labor congress in 1923: “We have engaged our word of honor. Nobody can release us from it. This congress can dispose of our mandates; it cannot dispose of our political honor”—this same Vandervelde and his followers (with two or three exceptions) broke their pledge to support women’s suffrage and voted last July against the Clerical bill. Also under the pressure of the Socialist discipline Madame Spaak, the only Belgian woman parliamentarian, announced she would not be a puppet in Clerical hands, but would vote for women’s suffrage only “when the reform should be introduced as a measure of justice, not as a party-political trump.” Scandal! Scenes of incredible uproar, particularly in the Chamber. Insults. The president calls for order and cannot dominate the tumult. Vandervelde starts seven times his declaration that he feels not bound by his promise, since the regular date of the 1925 provincial elections is past. After chaotic debates a close majority relegates the suffrage bill to a committee which will meet after the vaca- tion of Parliament, on November 18—and the provincial elections are scheduled for November 8. Women’s provincial suffrage is buried for four more years. Vandervelde tries to be soothing: “T hope that the next elections in the provinces, in 1929, will not pass without our legislation having finally regis- tered the political equality of the two sexes.... When the time comes we shall energetically defend the universal suf- frage of women for the elections of 1929.” Belgian women will have to resign themselves to the status quo. In vain do they protest against “a dishonesty without precedent in Belgium’s parliamentary history, a dishonesty which harms the dignity of the national legis- lature and which is liable to destroy respect for a freely given word of honor.” Their rights will continue to be no more than an ace in the party-political game until the Left believes women sufficiently educated to resist clericalism. Contributors to This Issue FRANK R. KENT has been vice-president and Washing- ton correspondent of the Baltimore Sun. He wrote the article Mr. Coolidge, in the American Mercury for August, 1924. Louis W. MCKERNAN is a New York lawyer, for several years a member of the War Loan Staff of the United States Treasury. ELLEN TORELLE NAGLER is a biologist, formerly on the faculty of the University of Wisconsin. RENE LALOU is the author of a standard critical volume, “Contemporary French Literature.” EDWIN MuIR is writing a series on modern British authors for The Nation. He has just published a volume of verse, “First Poems.” LAURA RIDING GOTTSCHALK is soon to have a volume of poems published in London and New York. CouNT MAX MONTGELAS is author of ‘The Case for the Central Powers” and co-editor of “German Documents on the Origin of the War.” WILLIAM A. DRAKE is foreign editor of Booka. ANNE SOMERHAUSEN is a correspondent of the Christian Science Monitor in Brussels. The Nation considers the present Chinese situation so serious that it has sent one of its editors, Lewis § Gannett, to China for several months to study it at first hand. Mr. Gannett sailed from San Franctsce on November 10. During his absence The Natior will have the services of Stuart Chase, author of “The Tragedy of Waste,” as one of its editorial writers. :: Where to Buy Books :: ANY BOOK IN ANY LANCUAGE B. WESTERMANN CO., Inc. IMPORTERS—PUBLISHERS 13 WEST 46th STREET NEW YORK CITY SPECIAL LISTS, including bargains and : second-hand books, upon request: 7 ) i 11. “American Topics for the Diacrim inating.” 12. “Germany as She Ils Today.” (Established in 1916) 13. “German Books.” 16. “Judaica.” (Incl. polemic, pro and con.) 459 FIFTH AVE. 10a. “Deutsche Heimat-Graphik.” (Germany's picturesque nooks and corners in origi- NEW YORK nal etchings.) “WE MODERNS” by Edwin Muir with a lengthy introduction by H. L. Mencken First Edition Published at $2.00, our special price $1.00, postpaid. ‘One thing is certain, no utterances more tonic, more bracing, have ever rent the sultry firmament of contemporary literature.’’—Freeman. Send for our book bargain catalogue No. 7, which lists hundreds of other books. SEIFFERS, National Book Sellers, 832 Westchester Ave., New York. When writing te advertisers, please mention The Nation é: : Book Gifts for Christmas Your choice or ours, sent in holiday garb postfree anywhere. Send for suggestions in our Xmas Book Notes. THE POST-BOX BOOK SERVICE _ 25 West 42nd Street, New York

Page 20

Foreign Book Section Fall Books in France By RENE LALOU S last winter’s publishing season stretched out till the end of July, it is no wonder that publishers have not yet resumed their offensive and that no official candi- date has appeared for the Goncourt cup. One new firm has emerged meanwhile, Les Arts et le Livre; and calcu- lated indiscretion, that food of journalism, prompts one to disclose in this a new venture of Georges Crés, the well- known publisher, who has left the old firm he founded and led to such success. To vindicate the name he has chosen, he is going to publish a series of illustrated books on art and life, ranging from Rops and Daumier to Rowlandson and the Japanese, as well as a series entitled Les Prix Littéraires, an anthology of literary prizemen including Giraudoux, Carco, Mac Orlan, and Estaunié. One of the chief features of present French publishing is the increasing number of translations. Some editors proceed at random, translating things that are not worth translating; others pursue a definite program: Gallimard (Nouvelle Revue Francaise) stands for Tagore, Conrad, Pirandello, Chesterton; Kra for Unamuno, Ferrero, Piran- dello, Symons, Dostoevski; Stock for Strindberg, Tagore, Bunine, Moore; Rieder for American authors such as Sandburg and Waldo Frank. Two promised studies by Lucie Delarue-Mardrus (Plon) and Camille Mauclair (Michel) testify to a renewed interest in the work of Edgar Poe. The coming publishing season will also see many books dealing with social problems, especially with bolshe- vism; two books by Alain, “Elements d’une doctrine radi- cale” (Gallimard) and “Le Citoyen contre les pouvoirs” (Kra), will set forth a new theory of political individual- ism; “Nouvelles Aristocraties” (Kra) will be a study of social forces by Lucien Romier, and “Comme je les vois” (Kra) a gallery of French statesmen painted by Jean Piot; while Giraudoux will offer in “Bella” a picture of the Poincaré and Berthelot family feuds. Interest in Jewish problems is also steadily increasing; Gallimard will pro- duce “Jacob,” Bernard Lachace’s first novel, and Grasset the Letters of Henri Franck with a long introduction by André Spire. Lastly, under the title “Judaisme,” Rieder has just started a new series of texts and essays which will run parallel to his “Christianisme.” Plon-Nourrit, on the other hand, is the stronghold of Catholic authors and academicians, and this firm will honor its tradition by publishing Henri Bremond’s new work, “Le Roman et |’Histoire d’une conversion.” At the same time it is beginning the issue of a new series, Le Roseau d’Or, aiming at what is called “a spiritual revival,” and this golden reed will bear without breaking not only works by Ramuz, Max Jacob, and Belloc, but a “Défense de 1’Occi- dent” by Henri Massis, the neo-Thomist pamphleteer, and the first part of “Le Soulier de Satin,” a drama in the free vein of Shakespeare and Calderon, written by Paul Claudel during his embassy in Japan. Pure literature is naturally to be expected from the Nouvelle Revue Francaise. Two works of Stéphane Mallarmé will be published by this house—“Les Dieux antiques,” an original interpretation of old myths, and a recently discovered tale, “Igitur,” presenting many anal- egies with the famous poem, “Un Coup de Dés,” which will also appear in a new edition. “Albertine Disparue,” a new part of Proust’s prose epic, will be accompanied by the 1923 “Hommage” in book-form and a pamphlet by Louis de Robert on Proust’s first experience with pub- lishers. Then one of the events of the season will be “Les Faux-Monnayeurs,” which André Gide describes as his first novel, quite different from anything in his former work. Jacques Riviére’s posthumous book, “A la trace de Dieu,” with a preface by Claudel, will probably raise many controversies. The series Une C£uvre, un Portrait aims at revealing young talent, and Kra has dedicated his Cahiers Nouveaux to the same purpose. In the last-named series Pierre Girard, René Jouglet, Antonin Artaud, Marce! Arland, René Crevel, and Robert Desnos will propound im- pressionism, Freudian complexities, “Surréalisme,” the new “Mal du Siécle,” and other modern romanticisms. The firm of Stock continues to concentrate on a few chosen writers. In addition to many translations, they will issue several unpublished works by Léon Bloy and Apollinaire, among which the letters of Bloy to Maritain and “Anecdotiques,” a miscellaneous mirror of Apollinaire’s wanderings through modern art, should be particularly noteworthy. Under the significant title of “le Rappel a l’Ordre” will be arrayed the collected essays of Jean Coc- teau—the landmarks of his journey from what he called anarchy to what he is pleased to call order. Bernard Grasset is the chief publisher of novels. His program for the winter season is as copious as usual, and includes “Battling Malone,” by Louis Hémon; “la Revanche,” by André Thérive, and “Quand on conspire,” by Raymond Escholier. Further, “En Joue,” by Philipp: Soupalt, and “l’Apprenti Sorcier,” by André Obey, wii! show that those established novelists have competitors in the rising generation. Then Grasset has a knack of dis- covering a new promising youth every year; and this time it is André Chamson with “Roulé Bandit,” who will bear the colors of the firm through the literary contests. The Cahiers Verts are nearing their completion: the last ros« of their season will be a book by the Comtesse de Noailles, a prose work poetically named “Ciels.” A series of studies on the great monastic orders has also been begun by this same firm under the management of Edouard Schneider, whose first contribution is a fine life of St. Benedict. Modernity and cosmopolitism are the key-notes of present French thought, from the literary impressionism of Mac Orlan, who is going to publish “Aux lumiéres de Paris” (Crés) and “Images sur la Tamise” (Kra), to the collective survey of general problems which will be at- tempted in “Enquétes” by writers and sociologists. But the past is not really forgotten. Escholier will publish (Crés) the drawings of Hugo, which will throw a new light on the mind of the great poet. Two unpublished works by Sainte-Beuve will appear this winter: a kind of anthology, “Apercu sur l’histoire de France,” and a diary with the minatory title of “Arsenal de mes Vengeances,” which is awaited with much curiosity (Plon). Another striking feature is that three series of famous lives are simultaneously advertised by Gallimard, Grasset, and Plon. In every case the author has chosen his own par- ticular hero; Paul Valéry will write about Descartes, Fabre-Luce about Talleyrand, Carco about Villon, Benda about Spinoza, Hermant about Plato.

Page 21

Nov. 18, 1925] The Nation 577 British Books: Autumn By EDWIN MUIR [‘ works of imagination this season has not been pro- lific, and from the announcements does not seem likely to be so. A respectable, orderly, but mediocre stream of books, neither very full nor very rapid, has been flowing since the beginning of the season, and if any surprising acceleration is to set in it cannot happen now until the spring. The section of literature auxiliary to fiction and poetry—criticism and belles-lettres—has not quite the same bareness and moderation. But where the publishers’ lists are rich is in memoirs, reminiscences, and books of travel: a class of reading very often interesting, but only rarely and by a lucky chance literature. There seems to be at present a fairly keen public taste for this kind of reading, and at the same time, naturally, a ready disposition on the part of all sorts of people to supply it. What further this may connote it is hard to say; perhaps a poverty of crea- tive imagination, perhaps a fresh current of interest in all purely human affairs, which in its turn may give a new impetus to the imagination. Time will tell. A very good sign is the growing number of anthropological and psy- chological works. These are being produced tirelessly, and a great number of them are valuable, while almost all are interesting. They should not be ignored by the general reader. He will find them infinitely more interesting than most contemporary fiction, and also more profitable. In fiction there have already appeared Mr. David Gar- nett’s “The Sailor’s Return,” a repetition of his two for- mer successes, but all the same a repetition; Mr. T. F. Powys’s “Mockery Gap,” a very fine novel, probably the best he has written; Mr. F. M. Ford’s “No More Parades,” also a remarkable work; and Princess Bibesco’s “The Whole Story,” in which this author’s sensibility and wit are seen at their best. Among novels which are still to appear are “Portrait of a Man with Red Hair: A Romantic Macabre,” by Hugh Walpole; “Broken Ties and Other Stories,” by Rabindranath Tagore; “The Mulberry Bush and Other Stories,” by Sylvia Lynd; “The Dinosaur’s Egg,” by Ed- mund Candler; “The Madonna of the Barricades,” a first novel by the experienced and versatile editor of The Spec- tator; and “Old Pairs,” a collection of short stories about the English countryside, by Laurence Housman. In poetry there are a few volumes of the greatest in- terest. First of all there is Mr. Thomas Hardy’s new collection, “Human Shows: Far Phantasies: Songs and Trifles,’ a volume which cannot but be important. Only less interesting is the “Collected Poems” of Mr. T. S. Eliot, in which will be contained, the announcement says, certain pieces no longer obtainable (among these “The Waste Land,” which is out of print), and some not pre- viously collected. There are also the “Early Poems and Plays” of Mr. W. B. Yeats; “Parables,” by John Gould Fletcher; “A Poet’s Alphabet,” by W. H. Davies; “Poems, Brief and New,” by Sir William Watson, and “The Lon- doner’s Chariot,” by Wilfrid Thorley: a small harvest, but some of it likely to be excellent. The most noteworthy volume of criticism to appear thus far has been Mr. Middleton Murry’s “Keats and Shake- speare.” Still to come are “Books and Theaters,” by Gordon Craig; “Critical Essays,” by Osbert Burdett; ‘Modern Poetry: A Study,” by H. P. Collins; “Kabuki: The Popular Stage in Japan,” by Zoé Kincaid, with an introduction by Laurence Binyon (which should be an invaluable work, since the author has exhaustive knowledge and several years’ experience of the Japanese stage); “Some Contem- porary Musicians,” by Ernest Newman; and the Collected Essays of the late W. P. Ker in two volumes. But travel, biography, and memoirs occupy the center of the scene. In the latter two classes there are (among a host of others) the “Life and Letters of W. T. Stead,” by Frederick Whyte, in two volumes with illustrations; “Melodies and Memories,” by Dame Nellie Melba; “Mon- archs and Millionaires,” by Mme Vandervelde, the wife of the well-known Belgian statesman; “The Letters and Memoirs of Sir William Hardman, 1863-1864," by S. M. Ellis, containing adventures during a continental tour and impressions of Meredith, Shirley Brooks, and other well! known figures; “Ghostland,” by Elliott O'Donnell, an a count of occult experiences; “Later Days,” by W. H Davies, a continuation of his “Autobiography of a Tramp,” and “Adventures of a Scholar Tramp,” by a new writer, Glen Mullin, with an introduction by Mr. Davies; “On the Panel; General Practice as a Career,” by (conceivably interesting); and a memoir of Br Young, by M. R. Werner, which traces the origina of th Mormon movement. From literally hundreds of book travel I have picked out three or four, whether better than the others I do not know. There are almost the ia] number of books about Russia, among which “The New Russia,” by Dr. Haden Guest, M.P.; “The Reforging of Russia,” by Edwin Hallinger (which claims to be a first hand account of life under the Soviet Government), and “Beyond the Baltic,” by A. McCallum Scott, appear to be the most promising. “The Little World: Sketches of Travel! in Many Lands,” by Stella Benson, is a volume whose in- terest will not be chiefly that of its subject matter. And, probably most fascinating of all, a long-expected volume, “The London Perambulator: Impressions and Ideas of Lon- don Life and Scene,” by James Bone, with collotype illus- trations by Muirhead Bone, is shortly to appear. There remain a few volumes, perhaps the most signifi- cant of the lot, on anthropology and psychology. The most exciting of these is the first volume of Sir James G. Frazer's “The Worship of Nature,” dealing with the worship of the sky, the earth, and the sun. Also obviously important is “Ritual and Belief in Morocco,” by Dr. Edward Wester- marck, based on the author’s seven years’ experience of the natives of that country. “Art and the Unconscious: a Psychological Approach to the Problem of Philosophy,” by J. M. Thorburn, is bound to be interesting if it fulfils its program, which is to estimate the value of the work of Freud and Jung toward a theory of art; for that is what we are waiting for. “The A B C of Relativity,” by Ber- trand Russell, sounds fascinating, as do the three new volumes in Messrs. Kegan Paul’s History of Civilization. These are “Mesopotamia: The Civilization of Babylon and Assyria,” by Professor L. Delaporte; “The Aegean Civiliza- tion,” by Professor G. Glotz; and “The Peoples of Asia,” by S. H. Dudley Buxton. Professor Glotz’s picture of Aegean life is based on the discoveries of Schliemann and Sir Arthur Evans. In Mr. Buxton’s book the peoples of Asia are described, and some of the larger racial problems of Asia considered. Altogether this is the most impressive division of reading that the season’s announcements offer. a Panel Doctor

Page 22

578 The Nation [ Vol. 121, No. 3150 Many Gentlemen By LAURA RIDING GOTTSCHALK Many gentlemen there are born not babes. They will be babes, they will be babes In the shades. They will dribble, they will babble, They will pule in pantomime Who were not babes in baby time. Of such infant sorrow Will they whimper On Aspasia’s bosom In the shades tomorrow: Many gentlemen, many gentlemen frowning, But not Socrates simpering among these, Who was well weaned of her honey In his prime and needs no pap now, Having long ago with baby eyes Smiled upward to her learned brow. —ye First Glance LBERT BIGELOW PAINE had a humbler motive for writing the life of Saint Joan than Mark Twain had, and in “Joan of Arc, Maid of France” (Macmillan: 2 vols., $10) he has produced a humbler work. It has virtues of its own, chief among these being a kind of dogged fidelity to the documents in the case, so that for the first time in a popular biography of the maid we get her whole story as nearly as possible in the words of herself and her contem- poraries. But it has not the virtue which makes the ‘“Per- sonal Recollections,” if hardly, as both Mark Twain and Mr. Paine have gone on record as believing, its author’s best work, at any rate one of his most passionate and gal- lant. This virtue in the older book is not necessarily a result of the fact that Mark Twain worked hard at writing it—“I have never done any work before,” he said, “that cost so much thinking and weighing and measuring and planning and cramming, or so much cautious and pains- taking execution.” Nor does it follow by any literary law from the fact that he performed all these labors “for love.” The significant circumstance is simply that in the story of Joan he found one more key that would unlock the gates of his great eloquence; and this was because he was touched at a point that was of the profoundest importance both for his thinking and for his feeling. As a boy in Hannibal he had been strangely moved by a fragment of the tale which he found on a piece of paper in the street—his sympathy for wronged virtue had been awakened. As a man, grow- ing every year more closely acquainted with those defects of the human animal which in the end so bitterly impressed him as to make him write “The Mysterious Stranger,” he continued to be interested in Joan; and it is clear to me that when he began the “Recollections” he conceived his heroine as the one historical spot of perfect white against a background which experience was painting always darker. Hence his worship of “the noble child, the most innocent, the most lovely, the most adorable the ages have produced.” Hence the beauty and the power—whatever may be the extravagances—of the “Recollections.” Anatole France approached the subject in a mood scarcely less exalted, for he declared Joan to be “the sweet- est, most ingenuous, the daintiest and most generous being that ever lived upon this earth.” And Mr. Paine himself is not without his moments of ecstasy—as when, specu- lating upon the possibility that Joan’s armor still exists, he muses: “It could be identified; there would be a patch on the shoulder, a break in the cuissard, the contour of the cuirasse would conform to the feminine outline. What a quest to seek for it! Second only to the search for the Holy Grail.” But this is bathos, and the reason is that Mr. Paine has for the moment strayed out of his path, which, as I have said, is a humble one. Without the moral pas- sion of Mark Twain, without the erudite curiosity of Ana- tole France, and without any such generalization in his mind as moved Mr. Shaw to set forth in “Saint Joan” the eternal opposition between the individual and the organized will, Mr. Paine has been content for the most part to tell a conventional story, adding only the bits of topographical information which as a pilgrim to Orleans, Rouen, Dom- remy, and the other places he has industriously collected. Not for him to hint—what Mr. Shaw seems to have demon- strated—that the members of the Inquisition which tried Joan could have possessed both virtue and intellect. His indignation at them, like his love for Joan, is the standard article. MARK VAN DOREN A French View of War Origins Les Origines Immédiates de la Guerre, 28 juin—4 aott 1914. Par Pierre Renouvin. Paris: Alfred Costes. OR some years Professor Renouvin has been lecturing at the Sorbonne on the origins of the World War. As a result of his careful study of the diplomatic crisis of 1914 he now presents the students of this vexed problem with a well-informed and most readable book. It may well be called the sanest and most up-to-date volume which has come out of France. These are the most important of the facts which, owing to the evidence produced by Renouvin, must be considered henceforth as indubitably established: 1. The Serajevo attempt was plotted and organized by Colonel Dragutin Dimitrijevich, chief of the Intelligence De- partment of the Serbian General Staff. The indirect com- plicity of the Serbian Government is proved by their toleration of the Pan-Serbian agitation against Austria-Hungary. One can hardly doubt that the eminent French scholar would have admitted as well the direct responsibility of the Belgrade authorities if he had known the latest revelations made by Ljuba Jovanovich, Minister of Finance in the Pachich Cabinet. 2. At the Potsdam conference on July 5 “The European War seems not to have been part of the program.” It goes without saying that the myth of the Crown Council is com- pletely repudiated. 3. The Wilhelmstrasse did not join the Ballhausplatz in working out the ultimatum to Serbia. In Berlin they knew only the probable contents of that fatal document, and it must be borne in mind that the Entente cabinets also had succeeded in obtaining pretty exact information. 4. In the beginning Chancellor von Bethmann, relying on the reports received, was entitled to believe that England and France would not be opposed to the “localization” of the con- flict. Grey’s first proposal of médiation a quatre between Aus- tria and Russia “suited the main thought of Austro-German policy, as it did not imply any interference with the Austro- Serbian issue. Bethmann-Hollweg was ready to accept it.” This disposes of the legend that Grey’s first proposal contained the idea of a conference in London, and of the accusation against Germany that she rejected the médiation a quatre.

Page 23

Nov. 18, 1925] The Nation 579 5. The Serbian answer can be judged very severely. In Renouvin’s opinion, a close examination of the note shows that it contains many “conditions and restrictions.” 6. Grey’s sudden proposal of a conference on July 26 was designed to settle the Austro-Serbian, not the Austro- Russian quarrel. 7. On July 27 the Berlin Cabinet agreed to direct conver- sations between Vienna and Petersburg and transmitted to Count Berchtold Grey’s proposal to accept the Serbian reply either as satisfactory or as a basis for discussion. But next day, the Wilhelmstrasse having got a favorable impression of the Serbian reply and Austria having launched her declaration of war, Germany on her own initiative advised Vienna to limit her military operations to Belgrade and the neighborhood. 8. The highly interesting chapters on the mobilizations in Russia and Austria completely overthrow what has hitherto been the common opinion in the Entente countries. Founding his narrative on a minute inquiry into all of the available evi- dence, Renouvin demolishes the very basis of the Versailles im- peachment by his pitiless chronology. Renouvin’s account suf- fices to stigmatize forever the main war lie that Austria’s general mobilization was anterior to Russia’s. 9. Chancellor von Bethmann made vigorous efforts to arrive at a peaceful solution by diplomatic means at a time when in Russia military arguments were overriding all other considerations. 10. On the other hand, censure is due the way in which Austria carried on her direct conversations with the Peters- burg Cabinet. She should have accepted Grey’s last proposal; and General von Moltke, who quite rightly insisted on Austria’s mobilization, mistakenly meddled with diplomacy by telling the Austrian military attaché in Berlin that Vienna had better not accept Grey’s suggestion. 11. What finally does Renouvin think about Germany’s declarations of war? Even here his thesis does not agree with French and English war propaganda, for he writes: “It seems to be the point of view of [all] the general staffs and of [all] the governments” that declaration of war is “a mere formality.” All this has been well known for a long time to impartial historians. The novel thing is that it should be frankly accepted by a French scholar who is lecturing on the origins of the Great War in what may be called a semi-official] position and who is not afraid of contradicting the fabulous composi- tions published by French and British statesmen or of reveal- ing the falsehoods of the French Yellow Book. It must be added, however, that history will not in the same degree approve of Renouvin’s last chapter containing his “conclusions.” There he says that the Central Powers “re- mained tenaciously faithful to the plan of localization” and that Germany, by permitting Austria to declare war upon Serbia, “accepted voluntarily the possibility of Russian inter- vention and of a European war.” Those statements overlook the facts that Germany renounced the program of strict locali- zation as early as July 27 by transmitting to Vienna the English suggestion to treat the Serbian note either as satisfac- tory or as a basis for discussion, and that on the very day of Austria’s declaration of war the Berlin Cabinet made the pro- posal to “Stop at Belgrade,” which is universally considered to have been the sanest expedient under prevailing circumstances. Dealing with the Russian general mobilization, Renouvin dares not squarely draw the conclusion that it meant war. He admits that the negotiators of the Franco-Russian alliance in 1892 had openly declared: “La mobilisation, c’est la declara- tion de la guerre.” But he adds that this referred to the mobilization of Russia’s and France’s adversaries, not to their own. The author may be reminded that he himself has said that Russia’s mobilization “could not but provoke a reply from Germany.” This reply could be no other than German mobili- zation. If Russian mobilization necessarily provokes German mobilization, and if German mobilization is equivalent to a “declaration of war,” then Russian mobilization, too, must be equivalent to war. Renouvin further criticizes the hasty actions of German diplomats after the receipt of the official news that the whole of the Russian army and navy had been mobilized. Nobody will deny the blunders committed in those days in 3erlin, but if Russia’s mobilization meant war the course of events would have been the same without those blunders. Finally, Renouvin says: “In July, 1914, the military pro- vocation was the result of a diplomatic provocation; Austria’s declaration of war (on Serbia) is the link between both.” It must be observed that the origin of the catastrophe doves not lie in any diplomatic action in July but in the murder in June. With regard to that crime so much fresh evidence has come to hand that the opinion about responsibility must be revised Professor Renouvin has done so much toward clearing the way for truth that it may be hoped that loyalty not make him shrink from drawing the inevitable MAx MONTGELAS to his country will conclusions. From the German Faber, or The Lost Years. By Jacob Wassermann. Translated by Harry Hansen. Harcourt, Brace and Company. $2.50 The Island of the Great Mother. By Gerhart Hauptmann Translated by Willa and Edwin Muir. B. W. Huebsch and the Viking Press. $2.50. Frdulein Else. By Arthur Schnitzler. Translated by A. Simon. Simon and Schuster. $1.50. $¢ 1 ABER,” the latest of Jacob Wassermann’s novels, is the shortest and the most restrained of the four which have reached America. The three hundred and fifty pages of ordinary type which serve to tell its story contrast strikingly with the huge bulk of “The World’s Illusion,” and a similar restraint is evident both in the conception of the characters and in the handling of the plot. A simple narrative replaces the com- plicated chronicles embodied in previous books and the gigantic figures which formerly peopled his pages have shrunk nearer to ordinary human proportions. something has been lost in the process, for Wassermann's novels owed a part of their impressiveness to the largeness of their scale. An energy of imagination commensurate with their bulk animated them and the grandiose stature of their protagonists suits well the fundamentally mystical temperament of their creator. In an age when most current fiction contained little of the heroic there was something peculiarly exciting in the work of a man who saw contemporary life not as the mean intrigue it appeared to most of his fellow-realists but as the battlefield of vast spiritual forces, and who created tumultuous p::antas- magoria replete with passion. Now, in “Faber,” he does scarcely more than repeat on a smaller scale and in a some- what more subdued manner what he had done before. The hero who returns after six years as a prisoner of war and attempts to orient himself in a world which he no longer knows is the same seeker after the ultimate spiritual verity who has appeared before, and the mysterious Princess who has exercised what he believes to be a baleful influence over his wife is the symbolic embodiment of the same ideal of complete humanitarian self- abnegation which is the implied perfection for which Wasser- mann’s characters are always searching. She is, to put it briefly, that which the central character of “Gold” most conspicuously was not, that which the hero of “The World’s Illusion” became, and that which the statue of “The Goose Man” was. Indeed, as the increasing number of Wassermann’s novels makes it possible to judge him comprehensibly as an artist, his essentially unvarying pattern becomes evident and suggests that his limitations are narrower than one might have been His sense of the contrast between the thirst for Robert Nor is it possible to deny that led to expect.

Page 24

580 The Nation [ Vol. 121, No. 3150 power on the one hand and mystical self-effacement on the other is so strong as to exercise a positive tyranny over his mind and to make it impossible for him to see either characters or events save as part of the universal struggle between these forces. Every human relationship seems for him significant only as it tends to pull the parties concerned toward one side or the other and every character appears chiefly as the repre- sentative of the one tendency or the other, with the result that his world, in spite of all the multiplicity of its details, is curi- ‘ ously simplified. Thanks to the passionate strength of his con- victions his novels produce a powerful impression, and thanks to their apparently comprehensive sweep they seem to suggest that their author is a man capable of grasping modern life in something like its full complexity; but his tendency to schema- tize it becomes increasingly evident and his vision is seen to be less comprehensive than one was led to hope. “Faber,” though it contains scenes of great power, clearly reveals this central defect of its author’s work. As long as its problem is held in solution, as long as one is searching with Faber himself for the secret of the fascination which the Prin- cess exercises over his wife, one shares in the emotion which masters him; but no sooner is the secret revealed than it seems somehow inadequate. To manage a house of refuge for mis- treated children is doubtless a noble work, but it is not a unique undertaking; and it does not seem to promise an imme- diate solution for all the ills of mankind. Simple humanitarian- ism does not burst upon us as a new revelation, and we see no reason to believe that one of its many practitioners would appear, as the Princess does, to be a light from Heaven which would illuminate for Faber all the dark corners of his soul. The solution is too familiar and too commonplace, and it says something of the mind which conceived it. Wassermann has great artistic gifts but he is intellectually a little naive. Unfortunately neither Hauptmann’s “The Island of the Great Mother” nor Schnitzler’s “Fraulein Else” seems more likely than “Faber” to add much to the permanent reputation of its author, for though the second is said to be a European best-seller and both are the work of obviously competent writers both seem to me, nevertheless, more characteristic of the weak- nesses than of the strength of the German and Austrian schools. Hauptmann’s story of an island matriarchy finally wrecked by the insurgency of the males and the sexual hunger of the ruling women is vaguely mystical and, unless its intention escapes me, rather pointless, while Schnitzler’s somewhat lurid novelette is in mood a little closer to the sentimental scabrous- ness of “True Stories” than is grateful to my taste. Its rather tearful picture of the young girl who went mad and committed suicide because an old roué demanded a sight of her beautiful body in payment for a certain sum of money which she had to have seems to me quite unconvincing and its elaborate psy- chology false. Undoubtedly there is skill in the telling and every precaution is taken to disguise the banality of the inci- dent, but it remains, however dressed or undressed, a silly story. JOSEPH Woop KruTCcH Comte Robert de Montesquiou Les Pas Effacés. Mémoires de Robert de Montesquiou. Three volumes. Paris: Emile Paul. OBERT DE MONTESQUIOU was without doubt the most accomplished poseur of his generation. Barbey d’Aurevilly, who died in 1899, was a pigmy as compared with this prodigy; Oscar Wilde a twittering imitation, and Maurice Barrés only a fop. Montesquiou alone had an authentic genius for the absurd, and the effrontery to carry off his poses in the manner they deserved. The sire and child of all the extravagances of symbolism, the original of the Des Esseintes of “A Rebours” and the Charlus of “A la Recherche du Temps Perdu,” the most lavish, fastidious, and original entertainer in Paris, he was a figure which it took eight centuries to produce and the like of which our century is not likely to know again. The mystery with which he habitually surrounded his person; the apartments of his earlier years, embellished with all the strange richness of the Orient; his later establishments in Versailles, Le Pavillon des Muses and Le Palais Rose, decorated in ex- quisite taste; his perverse affectations—the cult of the hydrangea, the symphonies of liqueurs and perfumes, the jewel-incrusted tortoise, the astonishing wardrobe; his mon- strous and indefatigable literary activity; his associations with the whole aristocracy of France and the most celebrated liter- ary and artistic figures of his time, and his outspoken con- tempt of both; his entertainments, unmatched for sheer elab- orateness and ingenuity since the Florentine Renaissance; his sympathetic view of himself as a great poet neglected by the stupid public—it may be said that Robert de Montesquiou- Fézensac spent his life in the diligent labor of creating his own legend and in the effort to live up to the celebrated por- trait which Whistler painted of him and which hangs in the Salon du Champs de Mars. Although Montesquiou published in his lifetime thirteen volumes of verse and seventeen of prose and assiduously culti- vated literary society and esteem, he will perhaps be best remembered in literary history as the first patron of that exquisite poet, Marceline Desbordes-Valmore, and as the pro- tagonist of Huysmans and Proust. Yet it must be admitted that his poems are totally unlike anything else that has ever been written. Let us quote the two quatrains made famous by Mr. Arthur Symons, who remarked of them that, though their composition may not have required thought, it could hardly have failed to demand labor: Terreur des Troglédytés, Sur leurs tapis de Turquies, Et de tous les rats de tes Batrakhomyomakhyes, Homére: Méridarpax, Voleur de portioncule; Troxartés et Psikharpax, Par qui Péléién recule. “Les Chauves-Souris” was Montesquiou’s first book; it was published thirty years ago, in covers of violet velvet, and contains some five hundred pages of poetical enigmas of which the above is only an average specimen. For years artistic Paris had been waiting for this book. Montesquiou had let it be known that he was writing symbolist poems compared with which those of Mallarmé would blanch into a puerile simplicity; the fable grew, with its author abetting it; but Paris was probably not prepared for the shock it received when the formidable volume finally appeared. Paris was flab- bergasted; it did not know what to make of this strange poet whom it was so ready to admire. The apparently rigid divi- sions into which the poems are grouped and the prose com- mentary in which the poet attempts to explain them would argue that Montesquiou actually aimed at some intangible end; but that any one ever surmised what this might be is very doubtful. Despite the commentary, the poems are so many words—great, gorgeous, flowering, monstrous words, to be sure; words that Phoibos Apollo might have flung at Ares to shame the hot-headed god with his ignorance of Greek roots, but words without the slightest meaning. His subsequent poems only repeat this original obscurity, which no one has thus far taken the trouble to penetrate. Rémy de Gourmont pretended to believe that the vagueness might after all con- ceal a mystery, but one can see all too clearly the quandary of this affable critic, who wished to encourage even at the risk of insincerity. Extraordinary and memorable as he was as a man, as a poet Montesquiou will probably have to wait long for that celebrity of which he was so certain. “Les Pas Effacés” is in many ways Montesquiou’s best

Page 25

Nov. 18, 1925] The Nation 581 gift to that posterity, for it reveals a remarkable character in whose consciousness converged the richest social and artistic streams of his half-century. The last survivor of an ancient house, of the first nobility of France, rich, strangely gifted, and determined to reduce every detail of his life to the precious delicacy of a fine art, Comte Robert was by his very nature a romantic figure. A royalist stubbornly demanding all the rights of precedence observed before the revolution, and at the same time an artist avid for the society of writers, painters, and actors, his social situation was unique. He could look down on his aristocratic friends and relatives as bores; he could look down on his artistic associates as boors. He did both. Literature has probably never known a greater snob than the protagonist of “Les Pas Effacés,” who adored the earth trodden by the foot of Gabriele d’Annunzio and intro- duced the poet to Ida Rubenstein, but could never quite forgive him for his humble origins. He is at his best when writing of his illustrious ancestors, and he does so often and at great length. One remembers Des Esseintes when Montesquiou writes of his family, as one remembers Monsieur de Charlus when he writes of art. And his malignity is incredible. He quarreled, literally, with everyone with whom he came into intimate contact throughout his long life (he was born in 1855), from his tutors and the members of his parents’ household to his friends in Versailles. His intolerance was equaled only by his egotism, and when we have said that, we have not said all by any means. He was even capable of regarding Marcel Proust, whom he knew intimately over a number of years, with an indifferent patronage; and he undoubtedly fancied himself to be the intel- lectual peer, if not the superior, of the most famous of the illustrious throng that frequented his receptions in his Pavillon des Muses. WILuIAM A. DRAKE Books in Brief German Books. A Selection from the Most Important Publi- cations of the Years 1914-1925. Columbia University Press. Between 1914 and 1925 there were published in Germany about a quarter of a million books. From this number the German Publishers’ Association has selected a list of 15,000 representative works for exhibition in this ‘country. The exhibition at Columbia deservedly attracted general attention. For this catalogue, a volume of some 700 pages, makes it clear that the collection offers indeed a remarkably comprehensive conspectus of the German scientific and literary output during the last decade. The bulk of the volume covers, in an ad- mirably systematic and perspicuous arrangement, the whole field of the mental, natural, and technical sciences, with a comparatively brief appendix on belles-lettres and editions de luxe. J. G. Fichte Briefwechsel. Kritische Gesamtausgabe von Hans Schulz. Zwei Bande. Leipzig: H. Haessel. Since, in 1830, Fichte’s son brought out his father’s “Life and Letters” numerous additions to Fichte’s correspond- ence have been published here and there; other letters remained in private hands. All of this material, together with the revised text of the original collection, is brought together in this, the first truly authoritative and adequate record of the great philosopher’s intimate life, prepared with remarkable circumspection and accuracy by the librarian of the German Supreme Court. Of the character revealed in this record a glimpse is given in the following passage from a letter written in 1807, during the occupation of Berlin by the French: “People here are near utter despair, and it is hard to see what is to become of us during the approaching winter if these guests are not going to leave us. I, locked up in a lonely garden house and thereby exempt from quartering any soldiers, am doing my best not to let any sound of that despair or of the insults which cause it cross my threshold, so that I may preserve the freedom of my spirit to think out principles of a better order of things.” This was the state of mind from which came the “Addresses to the German Nation.” Wanderungen mit Kaiser Wilhelm 11. Leipzig: Verlag K. F. Koehler. Like the earlier books written under his own name, this defense by the Kaiser dictated to one of his former staff officers deals in large part with his treatment of the great but irritat- ing Iron Chancellor. “The Germans,” once said the French journalist Paul de Cassagnac, “are not a great people. If Bismarck had belonged to us Frenchmen, not the Pantheon, not the vault of Heaven itself, would have been large enough to do justice to him.” Which is all very fine when it is merely a question of tributes and honors, although it would have been more than ambitious young blood could have stood to dance long to Bismarck’s peremptory piping, especially since there is no reason to believe that the old autocrat could have bellowed a growing and discontented populace into submission many years longer. We are strongly inclined to agree with the ex-Kaiser that Bismarck, unless he had become a very different Bismarck, had served long enough for his own glory and nearly long enough for Germany’s. “The years 1896 and 1813, 1866 and 1871, 1914 and 1918 were real crises in Ger- many’s history, but not the year 1890,” says the former Kaiser very justly. But why not add to the list of years of decision the year 1878, when the passing of the first anti-Socialist agi- tation marked the open declaration of a class war which was but a symptom of Germany’s swelling growth, ambition, and impatience? Students of the Great War and its causes would do well to start with that year. By Alfred Niemann. Aids for Editors Survey of International Affairs for 1920-1923. Toynbee. Oxford University Press. $9. This invaluable volume includes a summary of eighteen international predecessors of the Locarno Conference, a record of the League’s work, a short history of reparations; country by country is covered systematically, concisely, and—curiously —interestingly. Extracts from documents and bibliographies dot the text. Harassed editors will find it and its successors more useful than the “World Almanac.” Naturally Mr. Toyn- bee is at his best in Western Europe. Neither Lenin’s nor Gandhi’s name appears in the index. Asia and Africa appear only when Europe—or Europe and America—attempt to legis- late for them. By Arnold V. The World After the Peace Conference. By Arnold V. Toynbee. Oxford University Press. $1.75. A preface to the Survey of International Affairs, which grew into a book. A few of Mr. Toynbee’s pages remind one of the fact that he was the most plausible of British propa- gandists during the war. The French Debt Problem. By Harold G. Moulton and Cleona Lewis. The Macmillan Company. $2. A Washington jest says that this book cost the United States billions of dollars. Certainly no one who reads it will expect large debt payments by France to the United States. It is a mine of facts on public finance of France, exposing the dishonest budget-juggling and virtual bankruptcy of that coun- try. France’s chief difficulty is in paying her internal debt charges, and the authors recommend a flat reduction of interest to 2 per cent. Without some such form of capital levy they see scant hope. The dogmatism of some of their conclusions is excused by the effective assemblage and analysis of difficult data. An editor who has not studied Moulton has a poor right to write on the debt settlements.

Page 26

582 ‘ The Nation [Vol. 121, No. 3150 International Economic Policies. By W. S. Culbertson. D. Appleton and Company. $3.50. An unusual book by an unusual man, treating of dis- criminatory tariffs, international tariff bargaining, the “open- door” imperial preference, foreign loans, monopoly of raw materials, coastwise shipping regulations, with the intimate knowledge acquired as a member of the United States Tariff Commission and a broad but strictly pragmatic international outlook. It includes valuable data on the tariff systems and treaties of other countries. The Permanent Court of International Justice: Its Constitu- tion, Procedure, and Work. By Alexander P. Fachiri. Oxford University Press. $5. This is a scholarly, documented account of the organiza- tion, procedure, and work of the World Court, summarizing in some detail the decisions of the court in every case that had come before it by the end of 1924. Written objectively by an Englishman, it is the most useful account of the court available. A Handbook to the League of Nations. By Geoffrey C. Butler. With an Introduction by Viscount Cecil of Chelwood. Longmans, Green and Company. $3.75. An Englishman explains the League in glowing terms. A convenient chronological table summarizes the work of the various League assemblages down to March, 1925. The Governments of Europe. By William Bennett Munro. The Macmillan Company. $4.25. This is a useful routine textbook, most of which might well have been written before the war. The author’s feet are safely planted in the past, and the trend of his mind is indi- cated by the fact that he devotes 375 pages to Great Britain, 211 to France, 74 to Germany, 35 to Italy, 27 to Switzerland, 22 to the succession states, and 21 to Russia (14 of these to Soviet Russia). Russia Today: The Official Report of the British Trade Union Delegation, 1925. International Publishers. $1.25. The most comprehensive report yet issued by any group which has visited Soviet Russia. An enormous task of friendly research lies behind the chapters on politics, finance, industry, religion, education, health, organized labor, and cooperation, which are followed by an effective exposure of the forged Zinoviev letter which played so large a part in the last British election. Problems in Pan Americanism. By Samuel Guy Inman. George H. Doran Company. $2. Dr. Inman writes of Pan Americanism and American im- perialism with a human touch born of personal contact with Latin Americans. He understands their point of view. This is a new edition of a book widely used in college courses and church classes. Opium as an International Problem: The Geneva Conferences. By W. W. Willoughby. Johns Hopkins Press. $4.50. The documents in the case, assembled with discrimination by the able scholar who was counselor to the Chinese delega- tion at the conferences. The Nation’s Poetry Prize HE NATION offers an annual poetry prize of $100 for the best poem submitted by an American poet in a con- test conducted by The Nation each year between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day. The rules for the contest in 1925 are as follows: 1. Each manuscript submitted in the contest must reach the office of The Nation, 20 Vesey Street, New York City, not earlier than Tuesday, December 1, and not later than Thurs- day, December 31, plainly marked on the outside of the envelope “For The Nation’s Poetry Prize.” 2. Manuscripts must be typewritten and must have the name of the author in full on each page of the manuscript submitted. 3. As no manuscripts submitted in this contest will in any circumstances be returned to the author it is unnecessary to inclose return postage. An acknowledgment of the receipt of each manuscript, however, will be sent from this office. 4. No more than three poems from the same author will be admitted to the contest. 5. No restriction is placed upon the subject or form of poems submitted, which may be in any meter or in free verse. It will be impossible, however, to consider poems which are more than 400 lines in length or which are translations or which are in any language other than English. Poems arranged in a definite sequence may, if the author so desires, be counted as a single poem. 6. The winning poem will be published in the Midwinter Literary Supplement of The Nation, to appear February 10, 1926. 7. Besides the winning poem, The Nation reserves the right to purchase at its usual rates any other poem submitted in the contest. The judges of the contest are the editors of The Nation. Poems should in no case be sent to them personally. Drama Tirocinium [* some dim and distant past when the soul was still adoles- cent it learned the subtle chemistry which enables it to unite the hard fact of physical passion with the tender idealism to which this passion so mysteriously gives rise, and since that day every individual adolescent has been called upon to repeat the miracle under penalty of leading a per- petually jangled life if he should be so unfortunate as to fail. The first vague aspirations toward an unknown beauty ecme with the first current of warm blood in the veins, and woe to him who in his helplessness and his ignorance sets them warring one with another instead of uniting them in the marriage which nature intended. Doubtless the secret, learned so long ago, reveals itself of its own accord when it can, but all the bungling pedagogic theories of two thousand years have been the result of a consistent attempt to make the miracle as difficult as possible. In the interests of morals, of innocence, of discipline, and of God knows what every effort has been made to set the “higher” and the “lower” natures one against the other, to widen the gulf between the two, with the result that youth is normally at war with itself and that the man, emerging from the battle, is more often than not either the dull ascetic or the cynical sensualist instead of the strangely harmonized and strangely beautiful creature which he can sometimes become. When a youth is brought by some crisis to realize that all the carefully inculcated ideology of his boyhood is false, that the repulsive imagery of his dreams and the whispered jokes of the street corner are not the antithesis but the artificially distorted complement of his romantic aspirations, then and only then can he triumph over his education and achieve an adjustment to life. Of all the institutions which have ever been devised for the purpose of making this adjustment difficult the typical English public school is probably the most efficient. By the complete monastic isolation from life which it affords, and by the elaborately artificial system of activities, interests, and standards which it provides, it makes learning from observation almost impossible, while by herding together a large group of boys who have only themselves for companions it encourages

Page 27

Nov. 18, 1925] The Nation 583 ENGLISH EDITIONS OF BOOKS not published in America. * és * FOLLOWS a selective list of books which are not available in American Editions. The prices given include postage, but do not include import duty. - THE DIARY of PRINCESS LIEVEN Harold Temperley Madame Lieven was the friend of Metternich, Palmerston, Welling- ton, Guizot, and in fact all the leading figures in European politics in the early nineteenth century. $3.15 net A POET’S ALPHABET W. H. Davies Twenty-six new poems with decorations by Dora M. Batty. $0.95 net IXION IN HEAVEN Benjamin Disraeli A reprint of this famous tour de force with decorations in colour and line by John Austin. $1.90 net THE baleen OUROBOROS . R. Eddison ‘An author whose cunning handiwork and sense of the genuinely romantic are impressed on every page. His language is consistently and inevitably beautiful.’’—Manchester Guardian. $3.85 net SHAKESPEARE’S SONNETS A Facsimile Photographed from the original in the Grenville collection in the British Museum, with a recently discovered portrait as frontispiece. $1.90 net HERBERT TRENCH Collected Works Herbert Trench, who died in 1923, long since won for himself a distinctive place i in contemporary poetry. These 3 volumes contain several poems hitherto unpublished in book form and the splendid chronicle play, Napoleon. 3 volumes. $6.50 net Selected Works Herbert Trench’s literary executor, Mr. Harold Williams, has here, with one or two exceptions, followed the author's own choice’ $1.20 net. All the above obtainable from the Publishers JONATHAN CAPE THIRTY, BEDFORD SQUARE, LONDON ENGLAND NBOo) KOE) THE LIFE OF SIR WILLIAM OSLER By HARVEY CUSHING 2 Vols. Net $12.50 “My advice regarding this life of Dr. Osler is definite and un- qualified. ‘Read it.’ From the reading . arose refreshed, strengthened, inspired to better living.”"—Robert M. Yerkes, International Book Review. WINDOWS OF NIGHT By CHARLES WILLIAMS Net $2.25 “He manages to inject a sincerity into his work that is un- mistakable. The sonnets in the book are finely turned and well reward reading.”’"— ‘New York Evening Post SIDELIGHTS ON ELIZABETHAN DRAMA By H. DUGDALE SYKES Net $4.20 “Mr. Sykes’ work is interesting and satisfying. His studies may be recommended to any one who desires to become ac- quainted with the methods and results of what may be called literary connoisseurship.""— New York Herald- Tribune A BRIEF HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION By JOHN S. HOYLAND $1.50 Library Edition. Net $3.25 “The text is vivid and interesting but is no more interesting than the illustrations.""— New York Evening Post. THE DIALOGUES OF PLATO Translated into English with Analyses and Introductions By B. JOWETT Five volumes, cloth. Net $25.00 Owing to a regrettable incident of the war the electro-plates of Jowett’s Dialogues of Plato were lost, with the resu't that the book has been out of print for some time and very high prices have been charged for copies. THE WANDERING SCHOLAR By D. G. HOGARTH A vivid picture of life and adventure in the Near East. $3.00 AUSTIN DOBSON An Anthology of Prose and Verse. With a Foreword by EDMUND GOSSE Net $1.50 A reissue in the well-known series of Oxford Standard Authors. All Austin Dobson’s works are now in the hands of the Oxford University Press American Branch. THE LIFE OF WESLEY AND THE RISE AND PROGRESS OF METHODISM By ROBERT SOUTHEY Edited by M. H. FITZGERALD One volume on India Paper. Net $5.00 2 vols. each Net $1.59 Coleridge described the life as “the favourite of my library armone many favourites, the book that I can read for the twentieth time when I can read nothing else at all.’ A BIBLIOGRAPHY OF SAMUEL JOHNSON By W. P. COURTNEY and D. N. SmitH Wet $10.00 A reissue of the edition of 1915. Illustrated with facsimiles. A NATION IN MAKING By Sir SURENDRANATH BANERJEA Net $6.50 Being the reminiscences of fifty years of public life in India. At all Booksellers or from the Publishers SE Ee RI ee EN EE Ae ee ee OE Mr SSDS IES SLE EIS ELIE EEE STAN ST SA EE CE REE OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS. c4merican Branch =. ,. 35 WEST. 32nd STREP YORK ee When writing to advertisers, please mention The Nation

Page 28

584 The Nation [Vol. 121, No. 3150 the most luxurious development of puerile obscenities. Yet strange as it may seem the tendency of the soul to achieve a normal growth is so strong that even graduates of these English public schools have been known who were neither brutes nor prigs, and even within the walls of these institutions of learning it is sometimes possible that something may be learned. So much at least seems to be admitted by John Van Druten, author of “Young Woodley” (Belmont Theater), for in his play, bitterly critical of the whole system, he never- theless tells the story of one boy who was able, at the expense of much unnecessary agony, to come through. It is now nearly a century since the gentle Cowper wrote his sarcastic couplets advising the father to send his son to a public school where a tavern waiter His counselor and bosom friend shall prove And some street-pacing harlot his first love, and several novels dealing with school life in a manner very different from that of “Tom Brown” have recently been pub- lished; but no work taking the school as its scene has, I think, shown a more tender insight into the soul of the adolescent or achieved a more genuinely artistic effect than the play at present under discussion. Against an admirably sketched back- ground it tells the story of a tortured boy, unable to disengage his romantic impulses from the filthy associations of the school- yard, who finds his salvation in the love of a House Master’s young wife. Their relations, which have developed no further than an impulsive embrace, are discovered; the boy is ex- pelled and the wife, realizing how fantastic is the situation into which she has drifted, bids him goodby. But the little drama has liberated his soul; he has learned what he needed to know—that passionate love is not necessarily of the gutter— and thus he has triumphed over his education, for he has achieved in his own person the fusion achieved by the race so many centuries ago. Incidentally the fact that the play was forbidden by the censor in England affords another example of the way in which censorship operates chiefly against ideas rather than against the indecencies which it is supposed to prevent. As most admirably performed here by Glenn Hunter and Helen H. Gahagan the piece is poetically delicate and completely in- offensive. Its frankness is not half so brutal as that of dozens of plays which pass unchallenged, and whether or not the censor was aware of the fact it was not any indecency which offended him. The public school is a revered institution, and censors are a good deal more sensitive to the criticism of revered institutions than they are to any mere impropriety. Three other plays of the week are unusually successful in achieving their diverse aims. “The Carolinian” (Harris Theater), an honest swashbuckling melodrama taken from Sabatini’s novel, is excellent in its way and affords Sidney Blackmer an admirable opportunity to be handsomely heroic, while Owen Davis’s hundredth play, “Easy Come Easy Go” (Cohan Theater), enables Otto Kruger and Victor Moore to provoke a good deal of uproarious if not particularly search- ing laughter from the story of the adventures of two crooks who seek asylum in a Health Farm. An English comedy, “The Man with a Load of Mischief” (Ritz Theater), has, how- ever, the touch of literary distinction to which neither of the two plays just referred to aspires. Its scene is laid in that heyday of dandyism, the first quarter of the nineteenth century, and it manages to achieve a very distinct flavor by the artful blending of romance and irony. Ruth Chatterton, with her mannerisms considerably chastened since she last appeared, gives a delightful performance and she is ably seconded by Robert Loraine and Ralph Forbes. “Princess Flavia” (Century Theater) is a lavishly pro- duced operetta with tuneful music by Sigmund Romberg. It is well sung, but the book, taken from “The Prisoner of Zenda,” is neither novel nor brilliant. JosEPH Woop KrutcH ‘= TH EATER oO | MOROSCO "SBATS®. Fat 20 Geen, Src, 900 THE DRAMATIO SENSATION CRAIG’S WIFE By GEORGE KELLY vit CHRYSTAL HERNE CTORS’ Theatre presents for a limited return engagement Shaw’s “CANDIDA” at Comedy Theatre, 41st St., near 6th Ave., Penn. 3558. Mats. Wed. & Sat. A NEW but still superb cast includes Peggy Wood, Morgan Farley, Harry C. Browne, Richie Ling, Helen Tilden and Frank Henderson. Staged by Dudley Digges. LAST THREE WEEKS Eves. (Except Mon.) 8:30. Mat. Sat. 2:30 # GRAND ST. FOLLIES ~ 1925 including “Hamlet, the Well-Dressed Dane” Tel. Dry Dock 7516 Orchestra, $2; Balcony, $1.50 Early in December, “The Dybbuk” by Ansky === 0 LECTURES O Herman Epstein “The Ring of the Nibelungen” R ND Tuesdays, 8:30 P.M. August Claessens “Elements of Social Progress” SCHOOL Thursdays, 8:30 P.M. Leo E. Saidla 7 E. 15th Street “Main Tendencies in Modern Literature” Fridays, 8:30 P.M. NA TIONALIS SIX LECTURES ON THE MOST IMPORTANT WORLD PROBLEM TO-DAY By Prof. CARLTON J. N. HAYES, Ph.D., LL.D. Professor of History in Columbia University In the COMMUNITY CHURCH AUDITORIUM, Park Ave. and 34th St. On Thursday evenings October 15, 22, 29, November 5, 12, 19 at 8:15 P. M. Course tickets, $3.50, can be secured in advance at the Office of the Community Church, 12 Park Avenue. Single Admission 175 cents. LABOR TEMPLE SCHOOL 7 ae 14th Street, Lewis Mumford: Architecture in New York—5 Tues., Nov. 10-Dec. 8 John Macy: Five Ages of World Literature—5 Thurs., Nov. 12-Dec. 10 Julius Moritzen: Scandinavian Literature—5 Fris., Nov. 13-Dec. 11 Will Durant: A System of Philosophy—Weds., Nov. 18-June 23 Will Durant: Poets, 1800-1925—5 P..M. Suns., Nov. 15-June 27 All but last at 8:30 P. M. in new building. Phone Stuyvesant 6266. Single admission, 25c. and 50c. LABOR TEMPLE SCHOOL Sse Problems of Race: a Symposium. Sats. 8:30 P. M. Nov. 21—Dr. A. Goldenweiser: “‘What Is Race?” Nov. 28—Dr. Wm. E. B. Dubois: “The Future of the Negro Race” Dec. 5— Dr. Lothrop Stoddard: “Is the White Race Doomed?” Dee. 12—Dr. Sidney L. Gulick: ‘‘East and West” Dec. 19—Dr. Will Durant: “Race and Environment” Single admission, 35c. When writing to advertisers, please mention The Nation

Page 29