The Nation 1927-06-22: Vol 124 Iss 3233

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Padlocked! A € "mes! by a ” He ndrik van Loon The Nation iL CXXIV, No. 3233 FOUNDED 1865 Wednesday, June 22, 1927 The Negro and the Flood by Walter White Shanghai—International Danger-Spot by Thomas F’. Millard The Flights and Commercial Aviation an Editorial Books, Verse, Drama Jean-Marie Carré’s Srsley Huddleston’s Rimbaud France reviewed by Pierre Loving reviewed by Thomas Compton These for Your Hurt Dramatic Summary by Herbert S. Gorman by Joseph Wood Krutch The Posthumous Sumner Red Love and Work by Lorine Pruette by Louts Fischer ifteen Cents a Copy Five Dollars a Year ublished weekly at 20 Vesey St., New York. Entered as second class matter Decem’»er 12, 1°87, at the post office at New York, N. Y., und the Act of March Copyright, 1927, by The Na

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ii : The Nation [Vol. 124, No. 334 Men This is a season when fathers would do well to pause in their business or professional affairs and give earnest thought to their sons. Authentic statistics disclose that com- paratively few high school graduates will go on to college. Not because they don’t wish to, but because family finances forbid it. And thousands of | grammar school boys and girls will never see a high school room for the same reason. If you have a young son or daughter and wish to make certain he or she receives a university education, you may do so by acquiring an Educa- tional Endowment Insurance Policy. Then, whatever happens to you, the fund will be there at a designated time. Ask your Prudential man about this or you may write direct to the Home Office | | | THE PRUDENTIAL | INSURANCE COMPANY OF AMERICA | EDWARD D. DUFFIELD, President | Home Office, NEWARK, N. J. | When writing to advertisers please mention The Nation “The Wealth of a Nation Is || RATIONAL LIVING The radical health monthly. B. Liber, y a on Dr.P.H., Editor. At last it begins to cessful. Our sacrifices have not been i; Vol. C) Splendid response. . . . No, we're in n ‘ —_—_—— of becoming popular; only intelligent , have sent in the many new subscriptior IF YOU’RE A WORKER you must know thing about health from your own view; IF A RADICAL OR REVOLUTIONIST you cant ; pone health until after the social revoly your efficiency in the work for your idea gDITOR! diminished through ignorance. ARE y gDITOR: HEALTH CRANK? You're blind to all points The view but your own; you must free you Thos from “health” prejudices and be rational. Has YOU AN INTELLECTUAL and think you know Flap) all? You have no idea how ignorant you »?ADLOC in real health matters, how you suffer thy tHE NE your ignorance and how your intellectual yw a NGI is hampered through handicaps which a SHA} i tional health viewpoint may prevent or cor lare ' Rational Living is a revolution in though 4 HOTE persona: life, hygiene and treatment of diseas \DELE, It contains ideas taken from everywhere, by N THE not fitting into any system, they form a ney “ORRES philosophy. A magazine published at a |oss 200KS No paid advertisements. No doctors, dry Thes institutions, curing methods to recommen. | One aim is to teach its readers to become «& The independent from them as possible. Riml JUNE ISSUE IS OUT. 50c. a copy. 3 month Fran trial subscription $1. Old sample copies f Love to new readers. Popt As A Doctor Sees IT, by B. Liber, an ele. A N gant volume of 173 poignant stories from ee as seen by a physician, and illustrated by th. Selec author, 200 pages, $1.50. Free with a fy sn 3 fatio avi i ~queste : subscription to Rational Living if requ TERN Address: RATIONAL LIVING Indi: Box 2, Station M, New York An | MANAI FREDA Real so Estate fb THE N. New Yc M. Cros A ds THE N n the . 7 I tionat pride, the pe terity high | ho or: n no tivilia which New this y —If you have a house or property to sell or lease, try The Nation classified advertising section. —If the experience ot! other advertisers of real estate is a guide, ‘augh ° ‘ xemy your advertisement in ‘ay The Nation will pay. for th | ne and b Write for rates to tema too, h Dept. R., The Nation.

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The Nation FOUNDED 1865 NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, JUNE 22, 1927 No. 3233 Contents EDITORIAL PARAGRAPHS EDITORIALS: The Flights and Commercial Aviation Those Balkans ceareen ; : Has Poetry Retired? Flappers Prefer - ca LOCKED! By Hendrik van Loon : HE NEGRO AND THE FLOOD. By Walter White =R-SPOT. By Thomas |! Mil- lard palaces ; os se 4, HOTBED OF Anonymous.. iDELE, AND THE SWAMI, AND I. By T. Swann Hardin; N THE DRIFTWAY. By the Drifter ; (ORRESPONDENCE \OKS AND PLAYS: These for Your Hurt. By Herbert S. Gorman One Against a Thousand. By Powers Hapgood The Posthumous Sumner. By Lorine Pruette Rimbaud. By Pierre Loving $ Scr France by a Journalist By Thomas Compton Love and Work. By Louis Fischer , Popular Race Science. By Florence Kiper Frank A New World of Science. By Maynard Shipley Books in Brief eee snonde ; cos Selections, Collections, Series, and Reprints Drama: Summary—II. By Joseph Wood Krutch NTERNATIONAL RELATIONS SECTION : India and China. By D. N. Bannerjea An American “Subject” in China. ; OSWALD GARRISON VILLARD, EprTor ASSOCIATE EDITORS LEWIS S. GANNETT DOROTHY GRAFFE VAN DOREN ARTHUR WARNER JOSEPH WOOD KRUTCH MANAGING EDITOR LITERARY EDITOR REDA KIRCHWEY MARK VAN DOREN =a CONTRIBUTING EDITORS JOHN A. HOBSON LUDWIG LEWISOHN H. L. MENCKEN NORMAN THOMAS CARL VAN DOREN DAVID BOEHM, ADVERTISING MANAGER SUBSCRIPTION RATES: Five dollars per annum postpaid in the United States ind Mexico ; to Canada, $5.50; and to foreign countries of the Postal Union, $6.00. THE NATION, No. 20 Vesey Street, New York City. Cable Address: NATION, York. British Agent of Subscriptions and Advertising: Miss Gertrude ‘ross, 13, Woburn Square, London, W. C. 1, England. THE NATION is on file in most public and college libraries and is indexed n the Readers’ Guide to Periodical Literature. magnitude, their spontaneous enthusiasm, their affec- ionate welcome, their demonstrations of justified national vride, have failed in Washington and New York to shake the poise, the simplicity, the modesty, and unaffected sin- - igrementeneg CELEBRATIONS unsurpassed in their erity of Charles Lindbergh. By no act has he lowered the high esteem in which all hold him. He has pretended to n0 oratory, assumed no universal knowledge, and indulged n no preachments, but he has appealed for the future of tivilian aviation along the lines of our leader of this week, which was, of course, written before his article in the New York Times. Hundreds of thousands have glimpsed this young man, drooping and bent with fatigue, who has ‘aught the youth of America some of the finest lessons ever xemplified by a single conspicuous individual. They have een him disdain wealth, accept honors not for himself but for the cause so dear to him, refuse to deck himself in the lonel’s uniform the army was so eager to have him don, ind bear himself precisely as a plain young American gen- “eman should. And like mother, like son. Mrs. Lindbergh, 00, has won the hearts of everyone by her modest refusal to illow herself to be exploited. Finally, the whole nation fas been quickened and uplifted by its ability to spend tself without a dissenting voice in a great wave of enthusi- asm for an individual, with no cleft of politics, or theology or class feeling, and no regret, as so often, that here was a hero who builded his fame on the death of multitudes HILE WE WERE ALL that, as Charles Evans Lindbergh typified the spiri came the news possible only in the United Stat REJOICI? Hughes from Missi American citizens—not foreign-born arrivals from “the slums of Europe” brothers, from the hands of the sheriff, graph pole, poured gasoline over the alive. the mob had a momentary impulse of humanity and tried Durned then Their screams were so terribl member of to beat out the flames. The sadi strained him. crime’’—rape. They were merely charged with having shot to death in a quarrel the white superintendent of a which employed them They were not seeking to escape; they were in the hands of the law. But, as usual, “the sheriff fired in the air.’ Equally as usual, “because of the darkness, the officers were unable to recognize any members of the band.” If Missis sippi does not find a way to identify the members of the mob and punish them then the argument for a federal lynching law once more becomes unan promptly re Their victims were not guilty of the “usual awmil] and they had not been proved guilty jwerabie T WILL SOON BE TIME to form a tection of Calvin Coolidge throw brickbats at him. Here is Will Rogers saying that most people who go to the Black Hills go to hide something or to get away from something, and that Mr. Coolidge has more to get away from than anybody else who ever went there. What can he mean by that? because Mr. Coolidge did not rejoice properly or quickly enough about Captain Lindbergh, and there are some per sons mean enough to say that it was outrageous to bring the great flier back and take him to Washington so that the President would not have to shorten his vacation by a single day. Then there is the Levine episode. When the Presi dent cabled his congratulations to Chamberlin he never men society for the pro everybody is beginning t Next there are growls tioned Levine and the Jewish press declares this economy of words was quite too parsimonious. Now the navy has a grievance. It prepared the great review for him and ninety seven men-of-war passed before him. The newspapers with their usual kindliness to the President told how he stood on the bridge and saw every ship roar its tribute and then sent his message “Well done.” But the report reads, afte: twenty minutes in the ster: “he left the bridge and retired to a couc} 1 of the boat, where for two hours he « ould neither see nor be seen.” The navy is furious. But we—well, we have a simple explanation. Our guess is that Mr. Coolidg: had merely failed to take a certain famous sea-sicknes remedy before starting on his cruise ‘ HE RICHMOND NEWS LEADER is another one of the skeptics as to the greatness of the “greatest Secre tary of the Treasury since Alexander Hamilton.” It points

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) 682 2 The Nation [ Vol. 124, No. 3239 out that the refunding of the second Liberty Loan on a basis of 3%, per cent has been made possible by the great acquisition of wealth immediately after the war, with which Mr. Mellon has had nothing to do. It admits that Mr. Mellon’s handling of our maturing government obligations has been good, but it calls attention to the record made by the Treasury immediately after the Civil War. During that struggle the government had to pay 5 and 6 per cent, even 7.3 per cent, interest in the dark summer of 1864. By 1874, however, only nine years after Appomattox, just ifter the dire panic of 1873, the government negotiated some demand loans of 3 per cent, had refunded part of the war debt at 4 per cent, and had issued $200,000,000 of 5 per cent bonds to take the place of higher loans which were called. More than that, in that same year the United States bonds stood at from 111 to 122. The average of the refunding in 1874 was 1 per cent less than on the original bonds. Says the News Leader: “Mr. Mellon has not been able to make a better record. . . . The average of the re- funding has not been as much as 1 per cent under the aver- age interest on the original bonds, which was the figure attained in the corresponding year after the war between ” the States. RIGADIER GENERAL JOHN H. RUSSELL, Ameri- B can High Commissioner in Haiti, is returning to Washington, the newspapers announce, with Dr. W. Cumber- jand, the Financial Adviser and General Receiver, to discuss with the State Department an irrigation project, sponsored by Illinois financier-politicians, which will open up 100,000 acres for “development.” The Chicago Tribune correspon- adds that General Russell is anxious to prove to Secretary Kel- logg the complete failure of Haitian justice, the administra- He declares that it is impossible at present for other for- eigners to conduct cases in the courts, and that they always lose because the judges and juries raise the color issue. dent not covered by treaty. Americans and tion of which is What more damning revelation of the lies of marine-corps publicity could be made? The Haitians are contented un- der American rule, peace and happiness reign, they say. But the Haitian judges and juries are uniformly anti- American. Every self-respecting Haitian is anti-American today. The Americans brought the color line with them, and of course it turns against them. Americans actually had the insolence to force Haitian hotelkeepers to refuse to receive their own dark-skinned countrymen in the main dining-rooms of the hotels! Today, all over Haiti, men are protesting against the Rodenberg Concession which Gen- eral Russell and Dr. Cumberland are sponsoring. Doubt- less some of them will be put in jail. Doubtless the editors of the protesting Port au Prince newspapers will be among And probably acts of its the jailed, as they have been in the past. ill continue to ratify the arbitrary ents and puppets in Haiti. The real test must come in Will Washington permit Haiti to free American marines landed Washington vw January. have a election then—the first since ve long years ago? **X TATION SHALL NOT LIFT SWORD against nation; a neither shall they learn war any more.” These are noble words and come from the Bible, ordinarily safe from censor, but Major Henry Adams, f 1 Veterans Board of Plainfield, N. J., the blue pencil of the hairman of the United ——— does not like them. They have been carved in bronze at + base of Plainfield’s war memorial, and besides agitating +} veterans in general they have moved Major Adams to th); expression of his disgust: It’s that line—“shall not learn war any more’—that we object to mainly. It just isn’t the kind of thing for t} younger generation growing up to read—it is pacifistic, that’s what it is. We stand for preparedness, the kind shown by our marines and sailors in China in this recent trouble. It is interesting to record, however, that the inscriptio; was selected by Edward Sacker, a young man who had a captain in the World War; the monument has been pre. sented to the City Council, subject to the approval of th trustees of the Crescent Avenue Presbyterian Church, owner of the plot on which the column stands. The Rev. Dr. Joh: J. Moment, pastor of the church, is quoted as earnestly hop. ing “that the City Council will not put itself in the ridi lous position of formally requesting permission change the inscription.” Here, then, is a soldier, Mr. Sacker. who learned something from the recent bloody conflict, and a minister who reads his Bible and believes it. It is the professional head-hunters, the irrepressible “patriots” wh will never learn from experience and who will not believe the evidence of their own eyes. T BOSWORTH the British Liberals won their third by-election in ten days. The election was fought on the issues of the Tory trade-union bill and the break with Russia, and the result surprised almost everybody. The seat had been safely Tory; but Labor, although running third at the last election, had hoped to capture it. Instead, the Liberal candidate nosed his way into first place by 271 votes, with the Tory more than 4,000 votes behind. Does this mean that British Liberalism, under the leadership of Lloyd George, is awakening to new life? At least it marks a halt in the progressive decline of that historic party. Labor, meanwhile, consoles itself with the fact that the Cooperative Union Congress, in a close balloting, voted defi- nitely to affiliate with the Labor Party. But Cooperative candidates have long acted in alliance with Labor, and while the congress vote may mean more funds for Labor it will hardly bring many new voters to the Labor standard. The Tories, too, have their consolation. Successive defeats at by-elections may prove their unpopularity in the country, but their majority in Parliament is still so vast and the Tory members are so docile and disciplined that the Gov- ernment can push through any measure it likes, whatever the wishes of the country. @-r HAS SHOWN little gratitude over the latest mark of British protection and generosity. Although the In- dian constitution cannot be changed until 1929, and Indians have often been told that it was useless to hope for any greater measure of independence before that time, the Bri + ish Parliament has just passed a bill which modifies that constitution to the extent of creating a national navy for India. Indian boys are eligible for appointment as officers at the rate of one a year. The Indians are ungrateful enough to point out that agreements for naval disarmament prevent England from maintaining as large a fleet as in certain circumstances she might wish in Eastern waters, and that this Indian navy, by the terms of the bill, can be used for imperial purpeses with only the consent of the Gov- slatu eria Lord to In ight symen form yhen than nse plea o: fable. me wh ments that, t amend edly, i persist Mercu: a test hibit / or ind presen ncial

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June 22, 1927] The Nation — members, among them Mr. Pethick- rence and Lieutenant Commander Kenworthy, tried to that the fleet t of Indian waters without the consent of the Indian Leg- slature, and so that the expense when it was used for rial purposes should be borne by the rd Winterton declared that | Indian patriotism, which should not be deprived of the ‘ght to make a generous contribution, and so forth. So the mendments were overwhelmingly defeated. In its final ‘orm the bill contains one safeguard for Indian interests: shen the Royal Indian Navy is used for any other purpose than Indian defense, India shall not pay the bill without the nsent of both houses of the British Parliament! Te | a} _ r General. Labor the bill amended so could not be taken im- imperial treasury. this suggestion was an insult Negro Boy Runaway A small colored boy about 14 years old ran away from his home near Stapleton Jan. 4th. Anyone seeing him will please notify me and hold him untill I arrive. I will pay reward. I ob- ject to anyone useing him. Roy Haines, Stapleton, Ga. Rt. 1 Box 16 HE INTERESTING LITTLE ADVERTISEMENT printed above was not, devoted reader, taken from the Richmond Enquirer of, say, May 2, 1849, or even the Charles- n Courier of possibly April 16, 1855. One of those worthy sapers has long since gone to its reward, and the other has hanged its name. But on January 27, 1927, which, if we are not taking leave of our senses, is the current year, the leferson Reporter, a weekly, published at Wrens (popula- tion about 1,500), Georgia, carried, without comment, the tem we reproduce. It has been suggested that it was the lea of an irate father for his son, and as such faintly justi- fable. We doubt it. It may have been the request of some ne who never heard of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amend- ments to the Constitution of the United States. We doubt that, too. In Georgia, as in other parts of the South, these amendments are not unknown. But systematically, repeat- ly, in the most diverse and ingenious ways, and with a versistence that would do credit to a far better cause, they ire ignored. PTON SINCLAIR LOVES A FIGHT as well as any- body alive, and in his conflicts he never fails to be m the side of justice, liberty, and—paradoxically—even ace. This time he is fighting the Boston censors who have removed from sale his book “Oil” on the ground that it is bscene. Other books have been banned in Boston, notably Elmer Gantry” and “An American Tragedy,” but to date Mr. Sinclair alone has decided to fight for his rights as i. L. Mencken fought the suppression of the American Mercury. Two Sinclairs, father and son, are making “Oil” atest case, twenty-five-year-old David being offered as Ex- hibit A to prove that his father’s books are not corrupting or _ Indecent. Last Sunday on Boston Common the police esented themselves as Exhibit B, attempting to harass Mr. ‘inclair. Unfortunately, his permit to speak was in good order, the speakers were willing, to the delight of the crowd, to pus} I itomobile off the Common, thus not being guilty of driving it, and loud guffaws of laughter 4 eeted the policeman who pulled out his watch and yave the crowd five minutes to disperse or be charged t riot Mr nclair | the scene amid the chee! rs The police departed by the back door. It | with a man who so patently pine | nost Ke a en I f 1G must, if possible, be avoided OLAND HAYES famous Neyro tenor and « he most intere ties figure in the world of m has decided to build a school for his people near Call Georgia. With no family to support, with wealth rolling in upon him, he has hit upon this means of erecting a memorial to the mother who was so devoted to him, so feat ful that his taking up singing as a profession might i him into bad company and bad ways, who unfortunat died just before he became one of the foremost male sing of the world. He wishes, he says, to build a school enduring as her great gifts to me,” and he ishe make his tribute in the high standard of instruction | vided. There are plenty of Negro schools in th quately equipped with bricks and mortar, bedrooms and schoolrooms and trade-shops, and all the rest, but there ar far too few in which the standards are of the highest. For decades past we have longed for someone to appear who had the means to make a model rural school for N« an attendance of from hundred and fifty to dred children; who would not be compelled to going hat in hand to beg for doles to keep the school alive, but could make an institution physically particular, with the best teachers to be had. Such a si could exercise a tremendous influence all through the by setting standards for the managers of every undertaking, whether for blacks or whites. We do not know whether this is Mr. we do know that he has hit upon one of the finest types of memorials and one that does credit alike to his heart and to his head. one perfect in every nooi South Similar Hayes’s plan; HE CIRCUMSTANCES UNDER WHICH Grierson died in California are among the choly that can occur in literary life. Famous, the author of many useful and beautiful books, and the recipient of inter- national honors as a musician, Francis most melan- Francis Grierson his eighth decade—he poverty and virtual obscurity. Waldemar Tonner, his secre- tary for forty-one years, had struggled with him to the and doubtless he enjoyed some local repute as a after he had long ceased to have much to say; most part he was desperately alone. The tide which once supported him had ebbed away. His experience had been rich. Born in England, he had spent his boyhood in Illinois where he had heard Lincoln debate with Douglas and whence he went to serve as page to General Fremont in the Civil War. Then to Europe, where he achieved a name as pianist, literary critic, economist, and psychologist, and where he enjoyed the friendship of some of the greatest living men Then to America once more to serve as lec had yet passed the years of died at 79—in end, lecturer but for the turer, reviewer (for The Nation among other periodicals), and biographer of his hero, Lincoln. And now dead in Los Angeles lodgings. Until the Golden Age returns it seems likely that only the luckiest of artists will ever spend their last ye ars serenely

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684 The Nation [Vol. 124, No. 3233 Jun =m The Flights and Commercial Aviation HERE has been nothing in his whole attitude more praiseworthy than Charles Lindbergh’s continuous stressing of his belief that the importance of his achieve- ment lies not in what may be called his “stunt,” but in the effect of his trip upon commercial aviation. It is really a misfortune that his stay abroad has been cut short by the royal orders from Washington. Since he will hereafter speak on aviation matters with greater authority than any other American, it would have been all to the good could he have stayed and seen for himself how far ahead of us Euro- pean commercial aviation is. If he can finally be freed from public adulation and be allowed once more to take up a normal course in life it would be well worth while indeed if he could go abroad and watch the commercial flying for a time. No one else, not even the President, could do as much to draw the attention of Americans to their backwardness in this field. Mr. Levine, it is reported, desires to found a two- million-dollar company to institute transoceanic flying at once. That, it seems to us, is going too fast. Years of experimentation and study are essential to any such under- taking and above all a most careful examination of the records of the Imperial Airways, the great English com- pany, and the German Lufthansa, the most successful and the safest of European air companies. The development of the modern automobile did not come overnight; because of the greater risks to life and limb that of the airplane is bound to be slower. Progress can only be made if science and experience go hand in hand. We have learned much from the two transatlantic flights, but there is an enormous body of knowledge still to be acquired before anybody should start a regular transoceanic service. Take the ques- tion of sleet, for instance, that deadly menace to fliers which probably cost the lives of Nungesser and Coli. How is that to be met? By electrical devices, as Colonel Lindbergh is reported to have suggested to M. Blériot? But more than the question of any single hazard is the fact that, unlike France, Germany, and England, we have, outside of our mail service, no group of trained commercial fliers. A rush into transatlantic flying would attract the fool- hardy, but it might by a series of untoward happenings put back by years the actual coming of regular traffic. We would remind our readers that immediately after the sensa- tional first flight of Hawker across the Atlantic the New York Times said, on June 17, 1919: “We now know that any well-engined airplane can fly the Atlantic in clear and fair weather, with a competent pilot at the wheel. The task set inventors is to provide a plane that can get across in any but the most tempestuous conditions, and there will follow a regular air service.” How astonished that editorial writer must be to recall his words and ponder upon the fact that we have had to wait eight years for another non-stop Atlantic flight. The press at that time was teeming with announcements of the immediate coming of regular ocean In July, 1919, it was declared that a Zeppelin line would start in October. Vickers, Ltd., the great British arms company, was announced as the head of a huge Eng- lish combination of capital to start immediately trans- atlantic services and cross-European routes. That company went so far as to discuss the value of various American lines. Kk towns, such as Atlantic City, for air ports. Vickers eve; f set announced a provisional fare of $240 for a passenger from @§ part England to New York, with mail rates at 342 pence an @iront ounce, the service to be by airships of the Zeppelin type @Hacros: with a speed of sixty miles an hour. As the world is aware, Mjsaber nothing of the kind has happened. A year ago there was 2 Rui announced a Zeppelin service from Germany via Spain to M0 Po. South America, to be ready in the coming fall. That, t f seems to have died aborning. A number of American com. § Pe panies have been founded to maintain passenger lines jy (polo; this country—only to disappear. One has recently been Litvil started and two others have been functioning for some MM /and. time, but we are still far removed from such a service as Mor th that offered by the German Lufthansa. to Ru Yet we have no doubt that if American energy and @jraid | enterprise and capital will set themselves to this task we @§5ritis shall take the lead in this field precisely as we have in the @ed Ri automobile industry. But each particular problem must be M0 far studied by itself. For instance, it is a flying boat that is #jmay b needed for cross-seas traffic, and not a land airplane. An-@@! dil nouncement that the British Admiralty has perfected @§And, | flying boat, equipped with masts and sails so that it may @§sians’ keep the sea and progress on the water if its engines go out more norma of commission, may be a Jong step in the right direction. Again, in the London Nation, Oliver Stewart points out that besides the stability and safety of the engine there is still a great deal to be done for the comfort of the passenger. effect and R which He believes that the airplane has reached the hecessar H degree of safety and that the failure of the public to patron- @jperent ize the British air lines in large numbers is due to the un-§moke comfortable vehicles in which the passenger has to ride. He fM"ousl) declares that fourteen passengers are often compressed into @“ey 0 cabins suitable for only four, and adds that “one, two, or good s three hundred miles an hour are no paregoric for the strait- seriou: waistcoat seat and the coffin cabin.” Sir Samuel Hoare, the Me ha: British War Minister, who recently flew with Lady Hoare ' from London to Delhi, has pointed out that not only must™ milli the traveler seek a hotel every night, but that during the navy flight he is confined to his chair. Much experimentation isj must needed, and we again acclaim the generosity of Daniel Gug- of it genheim, who rec.atly donated a half million dollars t will | the Guggenheim School of Aviation at New York Univer- a sity. There, and at the Massachusetts Institute of Tech- — nology, problems of enormous importance to the future 0! hey " flying are being worked out, and invaluable data are being '"ce - collected and filed. 0 inv Indubitably we have made some progress. It is some- ‘peech thing to have an Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Com- Mussol mercial Aviation. The air mail has already paid incredibly "- large dividends in Chamberlin and Lindbergh. There is nogg"* Se seeing difficulty in finding young men to carry on the services that exist. None the less, we repeat that there is still a great release need of additional emphasis on the commercial airplane and j§*0ns, the flying ship. Everybody in America seems to wish togg¢ Int map out the remainder of Charles Lindbergh’s life for him."'y 1: We have no such ambition, but if we could earmark two orf her | three of his years we should dedicate them to propagandag'? Au on behalf of commercial flying. There is no country in th ap ore th world, save only Russia, that could profit more by it, {0 this remains the country of magnificent distances.

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June 22, 1927] The Nation Those Balkans YUROPE has been suffering a series of mild earthquake Ih shocks, and wondering whether they marked a process f settling down or indicated a new era of activity on the sart of the row of political volcanoes along her Eastern ‘ontiers. The Anglo-Russian break sent a war shudder cross the Continent; there followed another of Mussolini’s aber-rattling speeches, then a new Albanian crisis and , Rumanian coup d’etat; and now the Soviet Ambassador » Poland has been assassinated. Poland and Russia have speedily made up their minds ~ peace. Poland is loading the diplomatic couriers with apologies, regrets, and explanations; and Russia, despite Litvinov’s note, seems to be turning her wrath against Eng- and. England, the Soviet leaders say, is really responsible ‘or the current convention that ordinary laws do not apply ‘0 Russians. The defiance of law in the British-inspired raid on the Soviet Legation grounds in Peking and the British raid on the Soviet offices in London seems to have led Russian monarchists to believe that they could even go 3 far as to murder Russian officials with impunity. There nay be something in the theory; but it verges on the realm of diplomatic psychoanalysis, which is unsteady ground. And, if the reports be true, it is unfortunate that the Rus- sians’ nerves have been frayed to the extent of indulging in more political executions. All Europe needs a return to normal. Britain’s anti-Bolshevik spree nullified the good fect of Russian participation in the Geneva conferences; and Russia’s own excesses may still further deepen the gulf which separates her from the rest of Europe. However, it is in the Southeast of Europe, in that vrennial hatching-ground of wars, the Balkans, that the smoke conceals real fire. One never knows just how se- riously to take the words of a paranoiac like Mussolini; they may mean nothing more than a small boy’s excess of good spirits. But even if he does not mean his own words seriously, some of his nervous neighbors may take them so. He has just shouted: We must, at a given moment, be able to mobilize five million men, thoroughly armed; we must strengthen our navy; and our air fleet, in which I believe more and more, must be on such a large scale and so powerful that the noise of its motors will surpass every other noise and its wings will obscure the sun from our land. Then, when, between 1935 and 1940, we shall reach the vital moment of European history, we shall be able to make our voice heard and to see at last that our rights are acknowledged. Since Mussolini’s idea of Italian rights occasionally seems ‘0 involve restoration of the entire Roman Empire, such speeches are disturbing. A few days after this oration Mussolini was able to continue the Italian conquest of Al- tania. The Albanians arrested an interpreter attached to the Serbian Legation in their capital, Tirana; the Serbs, seeing behind this arrest the hand of Italy, demanded his release; Albania refused; the Serbs broke off diplomatic re- ations. Since the negotiation of the Treaty of Tirana (see the International Relations Section of The Nation for Jan- lary 12) Albania is no longer an independent nation; Italy is her guardian, and shares in any dispute she enters; and Sir Austen Chamberlain’s refusal, at the time of the last ltalo-Serb dispute, to permit this treaty to be brought be- fore the League, has given it an unusual sanctity. The net result of the recent outburst is that Italy has tightened her grip on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean. England is an exigent ally There are signs, however, that tiring of Mussolini. He is an uncertain friend and No one in Europe knows just what Sir Austen Chamberlain closetle d and M. Briand said to each other when they were together in London in May, but their meeting was too elabo rately staged, simultaneously with King George welcome to the French President, to be a mere And one cannot be friends, in Europe today, with A and France. A week after these meetings overturn occurred, and the Government whicl selling itself to Italy was replaced by one to France. Balkan politics are too involved for any understand them or for any two Europeans to a; them, but certain trends seem to be defining Hungary and Italy, both in the hands of irresponsit crats greedy for more territory, are drifting into a natural alliance. Rumania, hitherto Italy’s staunch ally, cannot friends with Hungary’s friends, and is returning to its old allegiance to the Little Entente, more or less under French inspiration. Italy is seeking everywhere for allies which may help it to dominate Southeastern Europe, and is to growl and shake a sword and even run the risk of war at any time that Mussolini sees any chance to gain a point or win prestige or limelight as a result of it. sought to destroy the growing Serb-Bulgar friendship, to hem in Jugoslavia and Austria by an alliance with the Hun garian despots, to win a new field for exploitation in Ru mania, and to expand its boundaries in North Africa at the expense of France. The Fascists regard French Savoy and French Tunis, as well as an indefinite area in the Balkan as part of Italia irredenta. With England’s support, they have just succeeded in one forward move. There is no tel! ing where Mussolini may break loose next. ready Italy has Has Poetry Retired ‘ RECENT editorial in the Saturday Review of Litera- ture expressed a representative opinion when it spoke of American poetry today as something which, after a brief period of eminence, had sunk back into furtive solitude. We hear this on every side, and we wonder what it means. The reference, of course, is to that “renaissance” which is sup posed to have befallen poetry around the year 1912, and which was marked by the emergence of such figures as RKob- ert Frost, Carl Sandburg, Vachel Lindsay, Edgar Lee Mas ters, Amy Lowell, and, considerably later on, Edna St. Vin cent Millay. Edwin Arlington Robinson had emerged mor: than a decade earlier and had stood for a time alone; but even Mr. Robinson began thenceforth to receive attention of the sort which no poet might have received between 1900 and 1910. T. S. Eliot was lurking in the background with “zra Pound, to steal forth after the war and become teacher around whom dozens of pupils should devotedly co! lect. Now, say the Saturday Review and other critical voices, a dearth is upon us. The poets of the great decad: are growing middle-aged, their juniors are merely piping to themselves in secret corners, and in general we are faced with the prospect of a period in which no major note will be struck. Intensity, beauty, and truth are conceded to cer- tain of our younger poets; but not the major note.

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686 The Nation [ Vol. 124, No. 3239 ——— What is meant by “major” here? We believe that it refers not to anything at all that has to do with poetry as I lappers Preter—— : such—if poetry can be “as such”—but to a special kind of subject matter which the poets of the renaissance were so gorennenny DREISER took third place in a recent . lucky as to discover. This was hopeful and positive subject tionnaire as the favorite author of certain young lad matter; it had a sociological tinge; and it was accepted as students at San Jose State Teachers College. And lest i: important because it was closely connected with the life of thought that he gave place to, say, Shakespeare and Mili institutions and affairs. It was of liberal or radical persua- it must hurriedly be admitted that Elinor Glyn stood firs; sion, but that did not matter, because the poets who em- with Michael Arlen as second choice. Then followed in ord ployed it did, after all, seem to say that American life was Shakespeare, Louis Bromfield, Katherine Brush, Joseph ( worth attacking and improving. Edgar Lee Masters was rad, Ethel M. Dell, Philip Gibbs, Peter B. Kyne, de Maupa bitter about Spoon Kiver, and in his epitaphs disposed for- sant, Margaret Pedler, and Booth Tarkington. It is evidey ever of the sweet village of late Victorian legend; but he from this list both that the younger generation has catho| talked also of Liberty, Justice, Virtue, and Truth. Carl tastes and that it reads widely. One suspects that Shake. Sandburg shouted approval of the new life he saw and heard speare ranked as high as he did more out of duty than ; everywhere in Chicago. Vachel Lindsay struck the cymbals of inclination. Common gossip has so long called him t; of joy as he prophesied the glory that should some day be greatest of English writers that even the younger genera. Springfield, Illinois. Now these men were good poets, and tion has heard of him. And in their frankly avowed pr still are. The point is that they were acclaimed by a crowd erence for Elinor Glyn we see a refreshing disregard of critics who did not care greatly for poetry, but who authority, which after all is the first mark of thought. thought they did, and seized upon volumes which dealt with Other marks of thought were contained in the qu big, newsy, recognizable themes as evidence that poetry had tionnaire’s replies: 93 per cent of the students favore; at last become “important.” Poetry, they said, had learned recognition of Russia by the United States, 89 per cent wer how to “grapple” with the “problems” of “real” American opposed to a war with China, and 85 per cent were agains: ‘life.’ In other words, it said what prose was saying. a conflict with Mexico. This is strange enough when t Edwin Arlington Robinson’s definition of poetry as periodical reading matter of the questionnees is considered something which says what cannot be said was doubtless un- for 21 per cent choose College Humor as their favorite maga- known to these critics, but it would have meant little any- zine, 16 per cent the Cosmopolitan, 13 per cent Good Hous: way. It happens to be an excellent definition, and it hap- keeping, 7 per cent the Atlantic Monthly, and 4 per cent eac! pens also to apply with particular accuracy to much of the the American, Whiz Bang, Vogue, and the National Gu recent poetry that the Saturday Review dismisses as minor. graphic. Duty cannot account for the political opinions « The word “minor,” incidentally, is a poor word to use in the pressed above; certainly the magazines listed cannot accou assessment of poetic ideas. It properly means lesser, which for them either. Possibly 100 per cent of the student bod in poetry means shorter, and should be resorted to only bootlegs The Nation. Wherever they get their opinions 7! when a distinction is being made between, say, epics and per cent accept the theory of evolution and 23 per cent lyrics. Epics, good or bad, are major poems because they themselves atheists. are long; Milton’s “Lycidas,” a good poem, is minor because In affairs of the heart the young ladies were not a it is short. But if the word must be brought in when ideas cynical as the modern flapper is popularly supposed to are being discussed, it is unfortunate that criticism should Seventy-two per cent believed that love continues after mai almost universally take the line that only happy or hopeful riage. And they wrote themselves down as seeking in th ideas are major. The trend in contemporary American man they would marry, first, personality; second, wealth poetry is so completely pessimistic, or at least so deeply third, looks. Even “petting,” that mooted modern vice, wa: skeptical, that criticism seems incapable of discovering the welcomed by 68 per cent of the young women, but was tol: ideas which express this pessimism and this skepticism. erated in nearly all cases only with the “right one.” And While a group of women poets, notably Louise Bogan, Leonie 91 per cent of the answers expressed a wish for, nay, a! Adams, Laura Riding, Edna St. Vincent Millay in one of expectation of, matrimony as a career. her incarnations, Babette Deutsch, Genevieve Taggard, All this shows conclusively that youth must be served Clinch Calkins, and Idella Purnell, are refining upon the or that our young people are going to the dogs, or that. themes of barrenness, frigidity, and locked, incommunicable after all, one generation of young ones is just about lik passion, men here and there are saying that there are no any other, according to one’s individual preference in th ideas in the modern world to support them as they exercise matter. If there seems to be a certain freshness and heart! the poetic faculty. T. S. Eliot, Hart Crane, Allen Tate, ness about these young persons, we, at least, find it attra Archibald MacLeish, John Crowe Ransom, and others reveal tive. They have minds of their own, they are not afraid a desolate waste land of the intellect—one so forbidding and they are willing to accept life as it seems to be and to make difficult that it is no wonder most critics dismiss it as un- a cheerful best of it. Has youth always been as fair and a: worthy of the muse. But it is not that. It is distinctly frank? Possibly. Possibly only middle age is reticen interesting, and these poets are doing rememberable work. crabbed, intolerant, lacking both the violent enthusiasm © So are others who, without turning to the contemporary youth and the acquiescence of old age. Ten or fifteen years confusion of ideas for their subject matter, more or less from now it will be interesting to inspect what remains 0! admit it by confining their efforts to intimate, out-of-the- the flapper of today. Will she still cut her hair and wa way matters of emotion. So, too, of course, are such men with a free swing; will she still be able to hold her ov as William Ellery Leonard and Robinson Jeffers, who hap- an argument, to manipulate a typewriter with one hand : pen to have written major poems; but “Two Lives” and a young hopeful with the other, so to speak? Or wil lamar” are pessimistic. still prefer Elinor Glyn to Shakespeare?

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June 22, 1927] The Nation eV7_ The younger generation of angels having been discovered flying about clad only in their wing the American Board of Censors has decreed that Heaven be padlocked for one year. Padlocked!

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The Nation [ Vol. 124, No. 3232 a The Negro and the Flood 3y WALTER WHITE NHOSE familiar with the history of the South would ‘I expect cause for complaint regarding the treatment of Negroes in the areas recently inundated by the Mississippi River—the more so because the flooded areas in Mississippi and Arkansas include few towns of any considerable size but are composed of great plantations employing scores or even hundreds of Negro laborers. A recent tour which I made through the flooded dis- tricts, however, brought many surprises, not the least of these being that there was a greater measure of fairness in the administration of flood relief so far as Negroes are con- cerned than reports had given ground for expecting. Inevi- tably, there were numerous minor causes for complaint by colored refugees, but on the whole Negroes were being given food, clothing, shelter, and medical attention little different from that given to whites. Army cots, for example, were often given to whites, first, and to Negroes only after the whites had been fully supplied. There were instances, too, where the choicest clothing was distributed in the white camps and the left-overs given to Negroes. The Red Cross, however, with commendable diligence had seen to it that Negroes should have an essentially fair deal. One enslaving custom more or less generally followed, however, is likely to do lasting harm. To understand this situation thoroughly one should know the background. As has already been said, the flood areas consist in the main of large plantations, owned in many instances by absentee landlords and worked on the share-cropping or tenant- farming system. Particularly in the States of Mississippi and Arkansas, where these share croppers and tenant farm- ers are Negroes, it is rare for Negroes to obtain fair settle- ments from their landlords. They live in a state of virtual peonage, and the flood situation has been used to strengthen Mains. [t is worth while recalling the famous riot in Phillips County, Arkansas, reported in The Nation for December 6, In 1919 the which they in the flood area today. through That county is there organized a_ society to pool their meager resources and to use the dues he members to retain a white lawyer to represent 1e courts in obtaining settlements for their crops. sent forth that these Negroes had organized in- “massacre white people and seize their land.”” Mobs » Phillips County, and, to quote the decision of Court, “a number of colored hurch were attacked and fired en, and in the disturbance that man was killed. The report of the killing xcitement and was followed by the hunting Negroes.” Seventy-nine vere arrested, given a farcical trial, and twelve of oting of many to death, while the remainder were yndemned ed to long prison terms. Subsequently the cases of these men were taken to the Supreme Court of the United es and there the convictions were reversed, and the men ventually freed. The case was a revealing picture of eonage conditions in this area. There enters into the flood situation, also, the great from the South during the past migration of Negroes decade. Drawn into the North on the one hand by ind trial opportunities, safeguarding of life from attacks mobs, and educational advantages, and on the other han) driven out of the South by oppressive conditions, some ty million Negroes have left the South. Plantation owners the flood area were highly apprehensive lest they lose the; Negro labor when the flood caused abandonment plantations. It is ia uandling of this problem of labor that lezit; inate ground for complaint is to be found. In many of t} refugee camps Negroes are carefully guarded, and when t! flood recedes and the land dries they are released only to th landlord from whose plantation they came. There is, example, the area from which refugees were placed in National Cemetery at Vicksburg. This area comprises part: of five Mississippi counties and all of four others in wh according to the United States Census estimate for 1923 there resided 173,000 persons, of whom 80 per cent wer Negroes. According to the Jackson, Mississippi, Daily N of April 30, General Green and Dr. Underwood on Friday detailed Dr. H. H. Boswell to visit several points in the delta order to hasten the evacuation of refugee camps by explain ing to the planters and business men that their labor wi be protected from labor agents in all authorized camps “General Green cannot be responsible for this matter unauthorized camps,” declared Dr. Underwood... . “It believed that the principal reason why so many refugi remain in small camps, where it is impossible to prot their health, is on account of the fear of the planters t! labor agents will seduce their labor to other parts of State. “This has been absolutely prohibited from the beg ning in authorized camps. All labor in authorized cam will be held and not allowed to go to other sections of | State, and after the flood danger has passed and conditior are such that they can resume work, they will be taken ba to their homes in the various sections of the delta fr which they came.” It is hardly necessary to add that the labor referr is Negro labor. When I was at Vicksburg, I talk length with General Green, who was most courteous to m General Green, in command of the Mississippi Nati Guard troops, with headquarters at Vicksburg, explain me the system by which a plantation-owner or his mai bearing credentials would come to the camp, identify Negroes,” and then take these Negroes back to the tation from which they came. At Cleveland, Mississippi, a meeting was held on 5 of the Executive Committee of the Citizens’ Relief mittee, with J. C. McMullen, director in charge of Red | Relief work at Cleveland. According to the Vicksburg L ng Post of May 5, .. the matter of parties, covering a wide range of delta section not overflowed, going to Cleveland with view and purpose of being permitted to remove fami from the camp and place them on their own plantations was thoroughly discussed and considered, with the result t the matter of releasing families or individuals to parti other than the one [with whom] they have previously c tracted for the year was placed in the hands of V V ever mat outs Pow Ame men

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June 22, 1927] The Nation 689 Thomas. Mr. Thomas was instructed by the committee not to release any family or persons from the camp except on written consent of the landlord from whose plantation the laborers came or on the personal request or authorization of the landlord. From a number of camps, among them that at the Fai: Grounds at Memphis, I heard of Negroes eluding guards placed around their Negro camps and escaping to shift foi :hemselves, choosing to forego food, shelter, clothing, and medical attention rather than go back to virtual slavery on the plantations from which the flood waters had driven them. These instances are typical of many. Those in imme- diate charge of flood relief, whether wittingly or not, are, | believe, permitting the relief organizations to be used by plantation-owners further to enslave or at least to perpetu- ate peonage conditions in many parts of the flood area. The higher officials of the Red Cross, notably men like Dr. William R. Redden, Chief Medical Officer for the Red Cross, are resolutely opposed to such use of the disaster. There was, for example, the problem of giving relief to sufferers after they had returned to their homes, where Negroes or whites voluntarily chose to go back to the plantations from which they came. Obviously, the most economical and effi- cient method of distribution of such supplies in cases where there are fifty or a hundred or two hundred people residing on a plantation would be to turn over the supplies for the whole number to the plantation owner. Negroes feared any such plan, knowing that some of the landlords would claim to have paid for these supplies and would charve against the Neyro beneficiaries all the had been given them. They took this ted Cross officials, and the res supplies be given in bulk—only Negroes in hundreds of cases were forced to the point of guns on the levees ertain the levees would break. Conscripted Neyro labor did prae tically all of the hard and danyerous flood. t the almost inevitable product are part of the normal picturs situation in certain parts of the jong alter it was Work in Harrowing as many of most significant injustice is in the denial to right of free movement and of the privilege services to the highest bidder. That, if persis recreate and crystallize a new slavery almost as the old. Shanghai—International Danger-Spot 3y THOMAS F. MILLARD Shanghai, May 14 HETHER Shanghai will continue indefinitely to be an international danger-spot is a question not likely ever to be solved by local authority here or by the Diplo- matic Body at Peking. A solution depends now on action uutside of China; on decisions of the major Pacific Ocean Powers, or, if diplomatic sensibilities are observed, of the American, Japanese, British, French, and Italian govern- ments. The situation provides an exceptional opportunity for remedial and constructive action of the Powers. At the annual taxpayers’ meeting of the Shanghai international Settlement held in April, 1926, a resolution to admit three Chinese members to the Municipal Council vas adopted without dissent. One year later, at the next nnual taxpayers’ meeting in April, 1927, that resolution vas mentioned only by implication and another conciliatory resolution of lesser consequence, to admit Chinese to public parks and open places of the municipality, was rejected. Speaking on an amendment to that resolution (to adopt it jut postpone its enforcement) one taxpayer said: “I look pon this amendment as a resolution of surrender and fear. At the present time we should face the Chinese with n ompromise.”’ In 1926 the attitude of our local government toward reign and Chinese relationships in this port was out- irdly one of compromise. In 1927 it openly was one of compromise. No compromise is deadlock. If the impasse s to be removed the home governments will have to do it. It is pertinent to repeat what I wrote in 1926 imme- liately after the taxpayers’ meeting of that year: It is a departure, and a significant one, when the tra- ditions of foreign position here are breached by inviting Chinese into the council. The action logically concedes two things: that the Chinese have a right to take part in government of foreign concessions are competent to do so. One knows that this proposal payers is not generous but was made serious consequences otherwise. ‘The ay payer in Shanghai no more believes now years ago that Chinese have a right to parti government of this settlement or that they are to do so. That resolution was proposed and ad gesture having two principal objects. One placate the Chinese temporarily strikes, boycotts, and other modern ism. Another object is to creat countries that the municipal authorities in their power to conciliate the Chinese, the Powers will back them up Adoption of the resolution was “ known beforehand that it would be p: also that Chinese would not accept the tation. This was common knowledge fo1 vious to the meeting. The day before the me Chambers morning the Chinese General representing Chinese opinion, published full-pag ments in foreign and vernacular newspay anything less than full racial equality in and representation on the council proportic by Chinese and foreigners would 1 Chinese. In pronouncements relating to i i was not altogether on the part of the fore; eigners were offering less than they will giv into a corner. The Chinese are demanding more th: will take at a real showdown. Leading Chinese have 1 me that they will be satisfied, for the while, with equal! representation. On the basis of the chambers’ published manifesto the Chinese would have probably a five t majority on the council. In this connection it is interesting to reconsider briefly how the settlement has been governed in the past and how

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690 The Nation [ Vol. 124, No. 32 erned now. After administration was taken over tish, American, and French consuls by a Mu- acting under “Land Regulations” (tanta- mount to a municipal charter) framed by ministers at Peking, it fell naturally under the domination of the system. A taipan is head manager of a foreign “hong,” or business firm. Separated by long distances from the home offices, taipans in China of the great mercantile houses, banks, and shipping companies wielded extraordi- nary influence and authority. They exercised a degree of control over their subordinates and employees that is un- it 1 vO from the Bri nicipal Council ‘taipan”’ usual in Western countries... . The International Settlement at Shanghai is today as much controlled by the taipan oligarchy as it was forty years ago. That statement probably will be contradicted, but it is true essentially. An analysis of candidates pre- sented at the last e:ection of the council shows plainly that, with one possible exception, all of them were nomi- nees of the taipans. Within the oligarchy in later years are a number of powerful local institutions having exten- sive real property and other investments and by conse- quence affected by municipal policy and developments like road extensions and transit facilities. . Therefore in Shanghai we know that when a resolution recommending that three Chinese will be admitted to the council was proposed and adopted at the annual rate- payers’ meeting it was because the oligarchy willed that action. Chinese know that also. may be overlooked in home countries) lution of the taxpayers cannot become operative until the Body at Peking, acting under authority of the home governments and in consultation with the Foreign Office, will revise the Land Regulations to meet the occa- sion. That resolution in fact does not give the Chinese representation on the council; it merely discloses the opin- ion of taxpayers here. So if dilatory tactics among diplo- mats at Peking or in the foreign offices hold up revision of the Land Regulations for a year or two or indefinitely, that resolution will mean very little. It might be an empty Chinese so regard it, I believe. They know further (which that such a reso Diplomatic gesture. The resolution passed in 1926 was duly forwarded to Peking, where it was pigeonholed. Nothing came of it, which probably is what was intended and expected by the government of this settlement. When so many Powers have a technical treaty interest in a matter like this it is hard to discover and trace diplomatic obstructive tactics. Revision of the Shanghai Land Regulations slumbers now in the Legation Quarter. The last revision was in 1881 and the Diplomatic Body at Peking did not approve it until 1898. I perceive a connection between that pocketing of reform of the Shanghai Land Regulations with measures taken by Chinese Nationalists since then to recover for- eign residential areas elsewhere in China. Chinese think it is futile to go on trying to accomplish those reforms by customary diplomatic procedure. In the International Settlement there is, on the Chi- nese side, an absolute-rendition party which demands that foreign authority here be abolished unconditionally. (That vociferous since the fiasco of Chinese administration at Hankow.) Then there is a party which Chinese membership on the Municipal Council in proportion to taxes paid by foreigners and Chi- There is a party which asks for equal representa- tion. And there is a conservative class which would be content if Chinese got three seats on the council to the foreigners’ six. There is no Chinese element satisfied to have things remain as they are. party, however, is not so advocates nese. On the side of the foreigners there is a standpat ment which bitterly opposes giving Chinese any part in ¢ ernment of the settlement. A minority of foreigners fa giving Chinese equal representation under limitations safeguards. Very few foreigners are in favor of abs rendition, although many believe that must be the outcom: An effort was made a few years ago to compromise with the Chinese on this issue by creating what was calle an advisory council. That advisory council was com): of Chinese selected by a Chinese taxpayers’ associatioy Although Chinese accepted that plan then to the ex: of appointing members, the advisory council’s connectio; with administration of the settlement was perfunctory, ang in a short time intelligent Chinese realized that they wer, in a position which seemed to give them representation jp government of the settlement without giving them an; power. Immediately after the shooting incident of May 30, 1925, the Chinese advisory council resigned in a body and it no longer exists except on paper. A proposal advocated by some Chinese is that Chines: and foreigners vote for all candidates for the Municips Council. That would be equivalent to giving Chinese con. trol, for Chinese taxpayers far outnumber the foreigners and by concentrating their votes they could elect an e) clusively Chinese council, or if the Land Regulations r quired the election of some foreigners they might elect « certain type of foreigner by Chinese votes. Objectors t that plan point out the possibility that with an overwheln ing majority of Chinese voters and a right of Chinese vote for foreign candidates, the administration of this settlement quickly would descend to the lowest level “graft” politics in Western cities. International sentimentalism has no place in my servations and conclusions about Shanghai. Nor do I favo: giving Chinese place and power in government of thes foreign concessions from any undue confidence in their administrative capacity. The existing administration these concessions has anomalies, incongruities, abuses, and some notorious corruptions; but the worst foreign admi! istration here is at the present time likely to be better tha: the best Chinese administration. Reform of administration here, like the entire questi of treaty revision with China, is a matter of political ex- pediency. It is a choice between disagreeable alternatives My prejudice is for the foreigners. But my political judg- ment is that in the long run the position of foreigners in China and the relations of foreign nations with this country will be improved by timely concessions to the nev Chinese Nationalism. One sees that in many instances the results of Chinese administration of modern publi institutions and facilities are disappointing and that for- eigners suffer along with Chinese (but in lesser degre from those failures. I do not conclude from some imme diate results of Chinese municipal administration at Han- kow and elsewhere that the broad course of events wil. change. Those results are due to conditions attending one phase of the revolution and are not characteristicall Chinese. Chinese stable classes deplore them as much a: foreigners do. If taken rightly the Communist episodes in municipal government can be made to react favorably in obtaining a satisfactory compromise at Shanghai. Presence of foreign troops and naval forces here is chiefly responsible for the change of local foreign attitud toward municipal reform. When thrown on its own ¢- in hand, ppea ) rea pre se] Chine When smoot T Chine Diplo n fiv Chine shall ing C ticipa provi: I at He Natio mont] of 1 me thai to t ine\ f l fan grout In an these Wats: A ] at las biliti night his f. joy a ‘ 4 artist True. sturd

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June 22, 1927 | The Nation —_——ee nsive resources the oligarchy was willi to talk com Defended now by foreign forces at the expense home governments and taxpayers, compromise must not poken of. indications expect to remain makes conditions easier for reform. With them on sand, foreigners here and the home governments do not spear to be acting under compulsion or fear in agreeing readjustments. And after the reforms are operative the presence of troops will assure tranquillity and that radical ‘hinese elements will not attempt subversive measures. When the new regime gets organized and is running smoothly the troops can be gradually withdrawn. The treaties that created these concessions assumed ‘hinese participation in their government. In 1864 the Diplomatic Body at Peking declared a policy regarding them n five articles, and Article V stated: “There shall be a Chinese element in the municipal system to whom reference shall be made, and assent obtained to any measure affect- ing Chinese residents.” Demands of Chinese now for par- ticipation in government of the settlements revert to that provision. Dr. Manley O. Hudson, professor of international law at Harvard University and associated with the League of Nations, visited Shanghai lately and spent more than a month studying conditions here. On departing he said: mise. And yet, since the troops are here and b indefinitely, their pres- Y Much stress is now laid on the international character of the settlement. But my study of the situation has led me to think that its control is more international in name than in fact. The Consular Body has not enough authority to be called the real governing power. And it seems to me inevitable that the present degree of irresponsibility in the Dr. Hud own during many tual government oOllgarcny, whicn 18 by-laws (municipal! der which we live superior authority, and is so difficult that it seldom is tem] gets beyond Peking. I know of no case pealed to home governments or courts a decision as to legality of by-laws and re; here. Chinese taxpayers and responsible local organizatior now have a committee waiting for a propitious time cuss questions of municipal reform with the Council of the settlement or with the parently no one wants to talk with them. It is the oligarchy and other beneficiaries of the system fight reform with all their influence and power. But un! the home governments continue to provide troops to uphy Consular Bod certain the status quo reform is inevitable. There are several plans to readjust administration the foreign concessions at Shanghai. Some are visionary others are advanced to camouflage diplomatic motives, What is needed at once is for Powers to take firm charge of matters here and commissioners to work out, with the Chinese, an eq solution. are practical enough. These Modern Women A Hotbed of Feminists ANONYMOUS [We print herewith the seventeenth and last of a series f anonymous articles giving the personal backgrounds of a jroup of distinguished women with a modern point of view. In an early issue of The Nation we will publish analyses of these articles by Beatrice M. Hinkle, psychoanalyst, John B. Watson, behaviorist, and Joseph Collins, neurologist. | VAGUE smell of olive oil and mama in bed—this com- bination always meant a new baby. In our family it was one girl after another, which pleased me greatly, for I considered boys not only unaes- thetic but extremely unnecessary creatures. Not so my ather! Though fond and proud of his collection of incipient ‘rtists (they all drew as soon as they ould hold a pencil), e was always a little piqued at the non-appearance of a son. The sixth venture brought the desired result. A boy at last—a Muhr who would stay Muhr through all the muta- bilities of life and marriage! I remember father on the night of this event—running busily up and down the stairs, his face swollen with toothache, but radiant with ineffable oy and triumph. Now his family was complete! My father was too idealistic to face the fact that no artist could survive in a mediocre Middle Western village. True, New Swabia had a rich European background and a sturdy pioneer past, but the vitiating spirit of Main Street was already becoming evident, and after all that was what father had to combat. He painted and decorated houses for a living and kept us in modest comfort. On Sundays he painted pictures in our attic Malzimmer. My mother, and even the half-peasant uncles and aunts “down at grandma’s” had the aesthetic urge in some form or other—and I spent my earliest years in the serene belief that drawing and painting, like eating and sleeping, belonged to the universal and inevitable things of life. My mother, who was a natural iconoclast, arranged our hair in unusual ways, refused to burden us with starched clothes, and considered shoes and stockings unnecessary in hot weather, Sundays included. Our Sundays were gemiit- lich: The mingled smell of paints and a Sunday cigar drift ing down from the Malzimmer, Zimmtkuchen in the kitchen. and Sabbath chimes floating in to us from five directions The latter gave us a vicarious feeling of sanctity, for we never went to church. We were not even christened. My parents, both Catholic Bohemians by’ birth, had deserted their faith in early youth and were now “nothing,” as | was often forced to admit to my playmates. These children, safe in the folds of some church or other, informed me of our unfitness for heaven. I asked my father about it, and

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692 The Nation [Vol. 124, No. 3232

he said: “Nobody knows what will happen to us. Just do the best you know how and everything will be all right.” Somehow, we got away with all this. “It’s all very well for the Muhrs,” said the people, “because they’re artist’s children.” I had always regarded my father’s delicate constitution as something which went with his being an artist, much like his long slender fingers or his pointed beard. But as time went on, it could not be passed off in so romantic a fashion. It was easy to see that he was worried about it, too, and to make matters worse, after four years another child was born—a girl! Father was not much pleased. While mama was having the baby, he was in a neighboring town painting murals in a damp, unheated church. When he returned, he was forced to stop working and put to bed. On the baby’s first birthday he was buried. We felt dazed and helpless. Father had been unable to work during that last year—all we had was the house and his insurance amounting to a thousand dollars. ‘You'll have to take in washing,” mother was told, “and Senta, of ‘ourse, must clerk in a store and support the family.” But mother, after the strain of the past year, was too weary and ill to do even her own housework, and I could see that the few dollars | would earn as a clerk in a village store would never solve our problem. Besides I was needed at home to help with the housework and to take care of the baby. This I did, and by drawing place-cards and writing childrens’ stories which I illustrated I earned about as much as the store job would have brought. There followed years of struggle for us all. ” To me it was a jumble of housework, hungry children, endless wood- ‘hopping, “drawing-fits,” and adolescent sentimental moods and a yearning for oysters and butter. We determined that the title of the house should be <ept clear and that we The insurance money was made to stretch over six years, so even ons, and eight dollars a month which for groceries, there was rarely enough were never to get into debt. with occasional donat the county allowed us often pitiful—in retrospect, amus- there was the food. Our meals were ingly so. For instance famous “Dingle sup- } per.”” Dingle was an old baker who sold us I stale sugar- A dime bought rolls—having a rancid taste—very cheap. scanty supper, the sugar coating serv enough of tl ing as a substitute for molasses—butter and jellv were to ite Dingle rolls and nothing else. » the food fairly between us, unti we thought of n the basis of a game of chance. After makin al divisions (mother always took a smaller share with the excuse that she was not growing any more), o1 portions mentaily. Each hild chose random, and received the portion nted. As there was everybody had to be satisfied. no finding e’s own ¢]) e, who did the numbering It might be supposed that the on could juggle the portions to her advantage, but no one thought of questioning her integrity. There is no way in which I can describe our extreme sense of honor in this matter, swearing on the Bible being a pale oath bv com- parison. Among the donations we rejoiced in were other people’s cast-off clothes. I often went blocks out of my way to avoid meeting the person whose contribution I happened to be We soon learned to remodel them beyond recog- were criticized for wearing. nition, and became so expert that we a “dressing so swell.” I could not stop drawing and read. ing and was made to feel guilty for that. “Senta could fing something better to do than sit in the yard and read ang draw all the time.”’ We were finally completely crushed } these criticisms and regained our self-respect only when yw, were safely assembled in our funny tall house, where we drew, sang, and played games among ourselves. I think this self-sufficiency, in spite of our poverty, nettled the Ney Swabians. After a year and a half at home I came, not withou tears and fumbling, to an important conclusion. Things were looking hopeless, and it seemed to me that whether we were to swim and come out Muhrs, or sink and stay Ney Swabians forever, depended on a plunge—a high-school edy.- cation for us all. To have planned this for the rest and sacrificed myself to the noble cause would have been pre. posterous enough in the eyes of the natives; but brazenly t include myself was nothing short of selfish; and it was, in « way. I was eager to help the family, to be sure, but hoy much of me did they really need—all? How much did | belong to myself? To what extent had I the right to ignor myself—not the physical part that walked around and worked, but that fiery thing inside which was always trying to get out and which made me draw so furiously? That was something to be considered, too. Hadn’t papa told me His last conscious words had been in regard to this ver thing. “Senta,” he had said faintly and with that utter- artist look in his eyes, “what papa has left undone, you'l! have to do.” the sudden realization that he was dying and overwhelmed with the poignant drama of what was happening to me. Now then, was not this a justification of my course? It was more than that—a rich legacy, a coat of mail, som thing to fight the world with! A defiance flashed into birt Within me, “I must go to school again!” Mother was willing if I could see a way to do it. A few discerning people sa my point of view and even offered to help me. And so |! went to high school, earning more than my way by drawing and writing stories as before, and giving many a da) sides to household duties. After graduating I taught country school for a y: The autumn after that, my oldest sister Barbara was read to teach, which was fortunate, for in the meantime | won a scholarship and was sent away to art school—not the New Swabians, and not without the usual hints : my selfishness from some of them. One favorite criti “Why didn’t she go on teaching school? Here went and got a good education, and all for nothing!” Art school brought cavaliers and the question of n With my father as an example of one who had | to combine art and a family (and with his family sti! my hands!) I hesitated. My drawing fits were my greate: joy; and much as I[ liked men, I knew that art would always have to come first. I made the startling announcement tha I would marry no man unless he would promise to run t! house during my drawing moods and would excuse me fron scrubbing floors. At the Y. W., where I was staying, t! girls were horrified at my “unwomanly attitude” and thought I would make an unnatural wife. But the boys 2’ school were merely amused, probably because they thoug! I would forget all about it when I found the right man. During the next several years I had the good fortum to find another patron. I managed also to get friendly con- tributions for the family from various sources. Erda, the was: riage.

Juni —— third moth years peopl well-] offer woul accep yocak revol , missi ing t softe’ to th rroce was $ eing ] in co stim the h were thing know and f sent Barb: his ] fourt Erda. famil d 170Nn] woulc \ ) stern roing shy ¢ she ck lave Y i

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The June 22, 1927] Nation 693 [al +hird Muhr, had just started teaching when our weary mother, who had been fading away before our eyes all these years, died. We must have looked as forlorn as we felt, for seople really seemed to feel sorry for us. The children were well-behaved and rather pretty, and several childless couples fered to adopt them and give them “good homes.” This vould have simplified matters considerably but I could not xcept—for, although the term “bourgeois” was not in my vocabulary at the time, I felt its meaning instinctively and revolted against it. Then there were the Methodists who had long had a missionary eye on us and who finally saw a chance of rescu- ing the youngsters from my heathen clutches. In order to ften me toward their plan of taking the three youngest to their orphan asylum, they voted us five dollars’ worth of groceries. I withheld my negative answer until the food as safely in my hands, my ethics at that desperate stage eing that of the proverbial lioness and her cubs. Instead of thus giving the children a chance to grow up n comfort I made a plan, precarious perhaps, but in my timation not as “crazy” as people told me it was. I sold the house and moved the family to a big city. The children were delighted and said they would gladly put up with any- thing to get to a place where our poverty would not be known. We decided to use the house-money for rent, light, ind fuel during the next six years. I, who was about to be sent East on another scholarship, would send what I could. Barbara and Erda, since they were escaping room rent by his plan, would take care of the food and clothing. The fourth Muhr, just finishing school, would keep house; and Erda, who had a knack for such things, would manage the family budget. After coming to New York, I went through a long and gonized period of disillusionment. One fact after anothe pushed down my throat, and it seemed as though | The fact that one o! youthful love affairs was running into a somewhat sterner phase only bewildered me the more. What was one Homer, an incipient radical, was as Free love? The idea did not hock me, but it was hardly a solution if one planned to ave babies. Both courses seemed so extreme— “é would never get through swallowing. ing to do about it? of marriage as I was. was there no happy js the year of grace 1927, in the capital of this great re A public, aft ; of scientific progress, Adele and I heard the Swami. * generations of mental evolution and regard- » Swami held forth in the largest auditorium in t ited some four thousand. No miserly church auditoriun is. If you arrived at seven you | before the Swami appeared in his opulent orange robe ot rather a good seai. Bu eight there were no seats left at all and many had been ‘ned away sorrowful. It was Sunday night, but, work- against the combined competition of the movies, the itimate theaters, and the churches, the Swami filled this rmous hall with idolators, and had hundreds left over. These people wanted something; otherwise, it is reason- le to suppose they would not have been here. They got 4 Adele, and the tions for tion, progressive enlightenment—just medium? With my room-mate’s help I drew up an outline for a contract marriage, but I never even showed it t Homer and our problem remained unsolved. However, | lost no opportunity after that of asking the advice of almost everybody I met. Since most of these were men, | soon found myself in possession of an exceedingly liberal educa tion in regard to men, women, and sex ] pondered and wept over my new niormatior but there was no getting around “good old Mother Nature was merciless, selfish, and deceitful—and above all, cruel te women. I began to wish | had been born a mar About the ! physical disadvantages of being a woman nothing could he done; but there were certain privileges which men possesse¢ merely because of custom, and these it might be possible t 2antnroa 1 malo e’ea wr apture and make on own And babies? One da a vell-known art tf asKed me what kind of drawings I was most interested in d said promptly, “Children’s illustratior “Oh,” he said in mild disyust “Won drawing children.” It made me a little ang not much wit with myself. Wa ally maternal female I just another one of tl r Because I was interested in drawing and raising t cause I was curious to see what I would produce, and cause I wanted to reinvest my aestheti irge in anot human being. And how did these reasons sta t the one big urge to express myself in drawing and ting This difficult debate with myself lasted fo and ended with my conviction that if it choice I was more interested in creating aesthe lly thar physically. I am fond of men, and at first I wa raid that the new convictions might drive them away. I: neral, ho ever, I was pleased to find that most of the r not only willing to put up prefer this attitude in women. Our family struggles are not over yet, but managed to keep afloat and, I believe, are comi: it Mu If papa had only known what a hotbed of fen sts he starting, he need not have worried so about havi i bo for, with one exception, all his daughte bid fair to remai Muhrs through all the mutabilities of life and marriage! Swami, and !] } an 1 what tn Wanted; otne} Une ( [ tnis ft n wnen Ul! Ny l ig aire A i iO! at weel it Kn na f ag and ! i ed W it tine } is quite il r rl Adel racnel i Ke} i ( read Si1¢ inal ctu fam} iN il i I y ’ i it i ii usn in nt damn i I il oO it Was rather astoundll to me to witne surrender ¢ the Swam ‘ - } / . ! Surrender to tne owWamMmi. or sne urrendadered i f H » | ar iau Coll writ} 4 : + se bh ° A. j ‘ er lower jaw fell with the others; her eyes fixedly red 4} , 4 at the speaker; her face registered the appropriate emo Swami worship—adoration, adulation, satisfac like the other faces

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694 The Nation The gentleman who introduced the Swami, a reformed Protestant minister, congratulated the audience upon its intelligence. Nor was he flattering. These persons were not mental riffraff in appearance. Instead, they were as irreproachable as the persons who attend recitals of classi- cal music, operas, scientific lectures, and serious drama. Then came the Swami. He was coppery dark. He was robust, “sweet” faced, much given to simplicity. It was un- fortunate that he waddled rather than walked. His figure displayed obese rotundities that bode ill for longevity. His long black hair seemed some strange, anomalous barbarism in 1927. But his orange robe was splendor itself. Here was no thin, lugubrious, desiccated mystic and saint. For the Swami was over-nourished; he was very happy and he told anecdotes, some of which were reasonably new. But his dark eyes flashed mystery; his singsong chant in a strange tongue invoked awe; his assumption of tapping the great sources of cosmic energy inspired vague, powerful beliefs. Like Dr. Crile of Cleveland, the Swami believes in the bipolar theory of life. The body is a battery. It is charged and rendered diseaseless, fatigueless, and successful by an inpouring of cosmic energy through the medulla oblongata. There is a minor difference in exegesis here, for Dr. Crile holds to the brain and the liver as the battery poles. But before the Swami revealed his secret method he very kindly consented to quiver for us. He held up his arms and could make either fore or upper arm vibrate rapidly like a motor. Ladies were invited upon the stage to feel his arms quiver. They quivered at the silent command of his will. His thighs and calves would also vibrate and gentle- men were invited to feel these. His abdomen—but he did not invite anyone to be convinced about that. He could hold a plain sheet of paper in each outstretched hand and the paper quivered, too. There were murmurs of awe. This quivering was to the onlooking spectator of secular or pro- fane mind decidedly analogous to the voluntary muscle jumping accomplished by certain females in our music halls and there called Oriental dancing. But it could not actually have been that. For parties of four were later invited to the platform to lay hands upon the Swami as he quivered, and lo they quivered also, but left him thereafter with a re- newed sense of well-being and of fulness of life, and vastly ‘ontemptuous of their husbands. But that happened later. Meanwhile the Swami spoke. He told interesting tales of his childhood and youth. He intimated that he was very iid. He explained that cosmic forces had at various times produced money for him. He expounded the fatigueless life of success achieved by concentration, by establishing com- munion with the great cosmic reservoir of energy. He told of miracles in far-off India—of walking on the water, of leaving lessons unlearned and later learning them by instan- miracle—some useful, some trivial accomplish- ments. Always he voiced those great, roomy generalizations within which the private aspirations of his individual hear- ers could crawl, lie down in comfort, sleep, and dream con- tentedly. He made vague statements. His audience suf- fused these statements with vital meaning of their own and credited him. taneous There was much talk of happiness, diseaselessness, material success, scientific law, God, Jesus, and the great cosmic source of energy. There was never once anything concrete, specific, detailed. But it was intimated that such marvels would be revealed to an inner circle with $25 each to enable them to meet for twelve intimate personal con- _— tacts with the Swami in the rose room of the most expen. sive hotel in the city. And meet they will. More generalities shall they have Nor will there be complaint or suspicion of cupidity or impotence on the part of the Swami. These students y assuredly get something which they sincerely believe to b¢ the thing that they want, and they will go their way joyfy and uplifted. Is that not enough to condone the Swami’ For there is a great yearning abroad. A civilizatioy which offers greed, success, desperate economic struggle, and material satisfaction, but which denies mysticism, does not offer enough. These Swami idolators are usually Protes. tants, or renegade Protestants. They are not Roman Catho-. lics. As the Protestant churches have gradually surren- dered the awe, mystery, supernaturalism, and passion for unity which are the red meat of religion they have lost their hold on the masses. These people have been driven to cheap fiction—ip movies or magazines—which offers a sugared sentimentality to contrast with the harshness and bleak coldness of every. day life. They yearn. People who love art and literature and science and music; people who think and create do not search out Swamis; do not venerate obfuscated metaphysics Nor are Swamis sought by people who adhere to dramatic, emotional, highly supernatural religions. But Protestant. ism, with its modernized austerity, has driven these poor souls forth to choose between movies and Swamis and yet it is cruel enough to want to close the Sunday amusements by law in order to compel these wanderers to return to the dismal sanctuary. Swamis have their place in the scheme of things. Let us hope they are sincere Swamis—sincerely thinking that their ludicrous muscular twitchings do attest an attunement with the batteries wherein are stored the great cosmic en- ergies. Let us hope that they actually cannot afford, for some occult but sound reason, to give their secret of life freely to the yearning multitudes who hang on their words and would have life more abundantly. Let us hope that they never laugh in their capacious sleeves at the credulity of these advanced, civilized, scientific Occidentals. But Adele has always viewed religious bigotry as a! surd. She has always rather pitied these dear, dogmatic people who tell her that this or that is the truth—I mean The Truth. And she has been inclined to twit them. So | thoughtlessly said, on leaving, something silly about mutual quivering as a guide to Truth. But Adele became offended at once. She declared that these were motor-like, health- producing vibrations, that the Swami was a dear, simple. altruistic soul with not an evil cell in his entire structur and that he had found The Truth. But you ask what is that Truth? I should refer you t Adele, because she heard all twelve of the Swami’s lectures and I but one. Yet he stated the Truth that Sunday night. Everyone said so. I heard it because I listened hard while I was awake. Yet all I can say is that you concentrate; ther you get in tune with the great cosmic forces; then your muscles twitch and quiver; then you are fatigueless, you have a high immunity to every disease, you have becom successful, and you know why you are on this earth and where you are headed. And, as Adele says, the profoundest truths are, after al! the simplest. See Pages iii, iv, and v [Vol. 124, No. 3233 | June i 2 >: his l vear roam punct one k yther car f contr disap his d wavil in hi: of al that lift t For t try sic is no societ a dis) i‘ men ¢ fog \ pilot men later a hes there guest his b ind | nowh 1 a.m thangs fully the \ not € drag; daug A fe mirré from direc or at and | roads herse she ¢ good insur liable self NT S yn t] him

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June 22, 1927] The Nation 695 In the Driftway 4UMMER having come at last the Drifter’s uncle who, >) unlike his nephew, is fond of automobiles, has taken is 1921 Buick touring car, for which he paid $147.37 a ear ago, out of its moth-balls and has begun his week-end roamings around the country. His net score to date is five punctures, one injured dog, and two mud-guards mashed, ne by a noisy gentleman in traffic on Broadway, and the ‘ther anonymously in the first garage in which he left his ear for the night. To his regret he again finds himself onfronted with a road problem which he hoped would have disappeared by this time—the hitch-hiker. Nothing tries his democracy more than to go sailing by men and women waving frantically for a ride when he has three vacant seats in his car—for he almost never allows himself the luxury yf a back seat driver. He cannot get away from the feeling that he has been supremely selfish in not giving a helping lift to the less fortunate who are pounding along the road. For the next two miles it spoils his enjoyment of the coun- tryside, but then his other self asserts its opinion that there is no ethical problem involved and that there ought to be a society for the stern suppression of hitch-hikers rather than a display of the slightest friendliness. * *% * *% * HE Drifter’s uncle admits that he was biased against hikers a number of years ago when he picked up two men on the road from Narragansett to Providence in a thick fog with rapidly increasing darkness, and asked them to pilot him to Providence since the main road was closed. The men piloted him with a vengeance and a couple of hours later he wound up in a dense wood, miles out of the way, in a heavily falling rain, stopped by a puncture. Then and there he recognized his folly. He was at the mercy of his guests on the back seat; they could have stripped him of all nis belongings—when the joke would have been on them— ind left him to spend the night there, twenty miles from nowhere. As it was he reached Providence safely about | a.m., thankful that his skin was unharmed and his small hange untouched. That experience came back to him force- fully when two friends of his told him of their touring in the West, and their picking up a poor old woman who did lot even signal for help. They could not bear to see her iragging herself along the road and so the mother and daughter stopped, placed her on the back seat and drove on. A few minutes later the daughter happened to look in the mirror only to find that the passenger had drawn a revolver from the bundle she was carrying and was pointing it lirectly at them as if in mortal dread of being kidnapped xr attacked. Mother and daughter kept their composure and after much discussion in French drew up at a cross- roads and asked their passenger to alight. Muttering to herself and still holding the revolver in her shaking hand, she descended. No hitch-hikers are ever taken in by those good women, and unnecessary are the warnings of their nsurance company that the courts have held the driver liable if there is any injury to a passenger who invited him- self into the car. * * * * * Agee the Drifter’s uncle recalls with pleasure long and \J interesting conversations with those he has picked up n the road, men, women, and children. They have given him delightful insights into their own mental processes; they have usually piloted him correctly when he did not know the roads, and they have added not a little to his knowledyve by their descriptions of the territory he and they were passing through. But of all these passengers who hav: inexpectedly found their way into his car, one, a woman stands out above all others. She stood at the foot of a long Devonshire hill, bent and old and worn, and carrying a huge parcel on her back. It was in the early days of aut ing when people still yelled “yet a horse” and threw stones and hated the motor-tourist for the dust he created. The driver was a fine young Englishman who was much shocked when told to stop and pick up the old woman. ‘Thereafter his pride came to his aid and he drove like the great artist that he was, swooping down one hillside at fifty miles ane roaring up the next incline, the road vbelny open and ne another car appearing for an hour at atime. The old lady who must have been terrified at such speed on her first ridé compressed her feelings until her destination was reached a high-lying village miles away. As the car slowed dow: for the main street the people rushed to the windows to se the new-fangled contraption, only to recognize a neighbor and a friend on the front seat—Maria Smith come to tov in the car of quality. Maria Smith said not a straightened up, threw her shaw! around her and assun the haughty and disdainful mien of a blasé beauty to whom a motor car was an every day affair. To not one vocal greet ing of the neighbors did she respond; to that she could not descend. Like a Queen of England, she bore herself wit! incredible dignity until the car stopped at the Grey Hor Inn. There she alighted, curtsied, and mumbled her thank THE DRIFTER word, but Correspondence Jugoslavia and Albania TO THE EDITOR OF THE NATION: Sik: The admirable and impartial article by Mr. G. E. R Gedye on The Albanian Peril in your issue of April 27 was a The curse of Balkan politics has always been interference by non-Balkan Powers. For half a century the rival policies of Austria and Russia kept the peninsula in a turmoil. The clear and unbiased statement of existing conditions. one thing they desired in common was to prevent a Confederation of the Balkan States. Such a miracle did, temporarily at least, come about when, under the influence of their common hatred of the Turk, Serbia, Bulgaria, and Greece made an alliance and 1912 took the field against the Ottoman Empire. If this Con federation could have been maintained and consolidated tl whole course of European politics might have been changed After the World War for the first time in their history the it Balkan states were, therefore, masters of their destinies. The Serbia of 1912, with its population of two and a half mil lions, had become the powerful Jugoslavia, with of nearly thirteen millions, nation in the peninsula. a populatior and took her place as the leading Jugoslavia saw the necessity of main- taining her complete independence at all costs and enunciated the principle of “the Balkans for the Balkan peoples.” Thi is the “Monroe Doctrine” of the peninsula and the Charta of the future existence of Jugoslavia, and Albania. Magna sSulgaria, Greece, Each undertakes to respect the independence the others and to bar the door to interference from without In the past month or two the legend has been put forward in certain quarters that Jugoslavia, unfaithful to this doc trine, has designs on Albania and is plotting to seize that coun- try. This is put forward as justification of Italy’s action in establishing an Italian protectorate over that countr; ¢ oT

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696 The Nation [ Vol. 124, No. 3233 There could be no greater mistake. Jugoslavia has no in- tention of taking over 800,000 people, alien to her in blood, language, customs, and mentality. The Belgrade Government knows that it would only weaken Jugoslavia to take over the turbulent tribesmen of Albania, 90 per cent of whom can neither read nor write, and whose various clans are split up by bitter blood feuds. Italy, on the other hand, plots aggression and aggran- dizement. It is her ambition to replace Austria in the Balkan peninsula and reduce the various peoples to the position of vassal states. To do this she will undoubtedly revive the old Austro-Russian policy of intrigue and disunion, setting people against people for the greater glory of Italian imperialism. New York, June 7 GORDON GORDON-SMITH Mr. Kallen and Mr. Edman To THE EDITOR OF THE NATION: Sir: A friend has sent me here a copy of The Nation of April 20, containing a review of my book “Why Religion,” by Mr. Irwin Edman. I have read this review with great interest. Mr. Edman makes it fully, I might say passionately, clear that he does not like my book and that he cannot understand it, and he asserts, of course, that the fault is in me. I am sorry. I wish I might have pleased him. I wish the argument of the book had been clear to him. It seems to have offered no intellectual difficulties to many minds that Mr. Edman would regard as quite inferior, and this fact might justify the in- ference that the obscurity was due not so much to the exposition of the writer as to the emotions of the reader. I will pass by the various remarks that may be due to emotional blindness or just ignorance—they are a reviewer’s privilege—to take a point of general interest that is raised by Mr. Edman’s animadversions on my diction. Mr. Edman as- serts that I say things in a complicated and affected way when { could and ought to say them in a simple and unaffected way. He declares that I don’t say what I mean: that I say “Judaist” when I mean “Jew,” “conventual”’ when I mean “conventional,” ‘formulary’ when I mean “formula,” “each development be- ome a condition and circumstance for the exfoliation of when I mean “one thing leads to another.” (hese different expressions mean to me different things. lo me a Judaist ji a person who believes in Judaism. Such ) person may or may not be a Jew. There are Jews who are ot Judaist nperhay Mr. Edman is such a Jew, and there Jews who are Judaists. If Mr. Edman were more sensi- ve t hadin in the meaning of English words he would al the difference between » suggestion of action in “con- entual” and the uggestion of inertia in “conventional”; he ld know that the almost preverbial “one thing leads to um i r pt er and more generalized content than » eX ion “each development, etce.,”” which indicates process, form f causation, and one certain manner—exfoliation. Only Oo and lazy habits of thought rationalized by a theory of which mistakes the easiest way for the clearest, the lea sublesome for the most precise, could make the astounding é atic Mr. Edman mal Year o The Nation printed an article, Style and Mean n which I pointed out that words were instruments of fication as well as of designation and that their func lie not in what they denote but in what they ‘Salt,” I said, denotes the same thing as “sodium ride” but does not ean the same thing. For “salt” put he familiar white powder in setting of shops and dining a syste of social and material relations quite other 1a e of the chemical laboratory, the drugstore, and the ke in which “sodium chloride” sets it. I trust I may be for- given for believing that what irks Mr. Edman in my style is not its pretense to elegance but its aim at precision. Moscow, Rus , Api 10 H. M. KALLEN On the Evolution of the Psyche To THE EDITOR OF THE NATION: Sir: A group of men and women here in New York hav been meeting weekly at the Women’s University Club for the past year or more, hearing and intensely enjoying a series lecture-discussions on the evolution of the psyche in mar Many of the students are college graduates, a few are elder); people, and some come from far out in the suburbs, weathe) never interfering. What are they all seeking, and what mai) tains this interest? The explanation is only in part the teacher remarkable woman though she is, and versed in the art and science of the East and the West. Fundamental in the study is a comparison of the principal world religions, with tl revelation of how perfectly they harmonize in their inner mean ings and how woefully they have been distorted in their out expression. No course could do more to adjust the individual within himself and to his fellow-men. We know there are many craving just such an antidot to the poisonous influences in the environment; many, too, wh are seeking deeper insight than their scientific or religiou: education has vouchsafed them. To those who have such inter ests we extend an invitation to communicate with the chairma: of the group committee, EDNA G. MULFORD Women’s University Club, New York, May 30 “*C. O.’s”’ in the Civil War To THE EDITOR OF THE NATION: Sir: “Conscientious Objectors in the American Civil War’ is the title of a study which I am making in the Graduat School of the University of Pennsylvania. It would be of great assistance to me to learn of any letters, memoirs, or diaries which are known to any of your readers and which might thro) additional light on this subject. Personal reminiscences would be of great interest if there are any who are willing to tak the time to put them on paper. Moylan, Pennsylvania, May 31 EDWARD N. WRIGH’ Contributors to This Issue WALTER WHITE is assistant secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. THOMAS F. MILLARD has been correspondent in China fot the New York Times and World. I. SWANN HARDING is a chemist who frequently contrib utes essays to the magazines. {ERBERT S. GORMAN is a poet, novelist, and critic. POWERS HApPGooD has worked in mines in the United States, Wales, France, Germany, and Russia. LORINE PRUETTE is author of a life of G. Stanley Hall PIERRE LOVING is an American critic now living in France: YHOMAS COMPTON is an English journalist. LOUIS FISCHER is The Nation’s Russian correspondent. FLORENCE KIPER FRANK is a frequent contributor to th magazines. MAYNARD SHIPLEY is president of the Science League of \merica. D. N. BANNERJEA is a distinguished Indian now living i Italy. See Pages iii, iv, and v ind haps whol grad engi deca year held In sc Mine posit of tl = 2 know studi dust Bruce Mine

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Books and Plays These for Your Hurt By HERBERT S. GORMAN These for your hurt—-the day the willows flung Their wild green arms above a world that died In my still eyes, and your unbroken pride Reared silently as some white shaft among The withered graves of hours that stay unsung; And that dead minute when we met dry-eyed By the old beaches where the white birds cried And found no speech in either trancéd tongue. These for your hurt, and for my heart’s allay— The memory of passion dark as blood, The travail of Time’s dubious delay, And hollow wash of that slow-mounting flood Of pain that broke the brain’s thin dikes and thrust Your face, your breast back to the senseless dust. One Against a Thousand The Rock Dust Remedy. By Harry Phythyon. Pennsylvania: The Belle Vernon Agency. $2. V R. PHYTHYON disagrees with the United States Bureau . of Mines and almost all the articulate element in the coal industry with regard to the coal-dust menace and the rock- dust remedy. The -Federal Bureau of Mines is generally re- garded as a scientific institution and as one of the most emi- nent authorities on the safety of coal mines. It was created by Congress primarily to study the causes of our mine explosions and to find preventives for them. The bureau very quickly advanced the theory, which its directors derived from Great Britain, that our bituminous mine explosions have been mainly due to the explosibility of coal dust. The principal remedy it proposed was to render the coal dust inert by means of water yr rock dust. Recently the bureau has centered its attention m the rock dusting of mines as the best method of preventing nine explosions and has waged a campaign to compel the rock lusting of all the bituminous mines in the country. It has been joined in this campaign by almost all the intellectual and articulate men connected with the mining industry, by the coal- mining journals, by the compensation-insurance Belle Vernon, companies, by organizations such as the American Association for Labor Legislation, and by the liberal magazines. Who, then, is this man who stands one against a thousand, ind why does he do so? Mr. Phythyon is surely entitled, per- iaps far more than many intellectuals of the industry with whom he disagrees, to the term of exnert. He not only is a graduate from college and from advanced schools of mining engineering, but has been a practicai mining man for several lecades. As a boy, before his college days, he worked for five years underground as a practical miner. Since then he has held positions as fire-boss, mine foreman, and superintendent n some of the most dangerous coal fields. He is today a State Mine Inspector in the bituminous fields of Pennsylvania, a position he has held for nearly fourteen years. Impressive as the odds were against him, he has given one of the most reasonable and scientifically complete discussions f the coal-dust theory and rock-dust remedy, so far as | know, that have appeared in print. He is familiar with the tudies of the Bureau of Mines and its experiments in coal- dust explosions at its experimental mine and laboratory at Bruceton. In his book he gives the case for the Bureau of Mines and then item by item proceeds to demolish it. He has not stopped, however, merely with destructive criticism. He has evidently written the book because, as it says, “the part played by coal dust in our mine explosions has been unduly magnified in the public mind to the negleet and discredit of He feels that “the coal-dust theory has served a long time as a smoke causes and remedies of greater practical importance trawman to defeat the purpose for which the creen and a 3ureau of Mines was created,” and that “when a mine explosior is blamed on the coal dust when it was due to faulty ventilation, operators are not prepared thereby to avoid other explosions.’ It is easy to see how the coal-dust the \ i be we in this country; it reduces the odium attached to coal operator who have explosions. Mr. Phythyon does not take the extreme position that coal dust can play no part whatsoever in mine explosion His p sition, as distinct from that of the Bureau of Mines, is that coal dust alone, in the absence trouble. While he admit burn under certain conditions, he makes a distinction betwee of dust which will not extend beyond the source of heat. It is generally understood of explosive gas, will not make " , 1. , . | that coal dust is inflammable and will an explosion and a mere conflagration that approximately 5% per cent of methane gas in « mine at mosphere, if ignited, is sufficient to cause an explosior Mr Phythyon believes that if fine, dry, bituminous coal dust 1s pended in a mixture containing less than 5% per cent of gas, an explosion may occur. His central idea is that coal dust helps to make a mine atmosphere explosive, when present, by lowering the explosive dust itself, suspended in the air, will serve somewhat to extend a mine explosion. But he shows conclusively that mine explo sions are not due to coal dust alone. some explosive gas is limit of gas; and that coal The main arguments that the author uses to sustain his case are taken from the source we would expect to furnish the best data—the coal mines. He gives a detailed history and explana tion of many of our great mine disasters and near the end of his book presents three main facts which are incompatible with the coal-dust theory. First, explosions in gaseous mines ars always started in the presence of explosive gas, and their e» tent and destructiveness are in proportion to the amount of ga that can reasonably be estimated to have accumulated when the explosion occurred. Second, mine explosions are nearly al local in character and die out in the presence of fresh air, whereas if coal dust were responsible one might reasonab!y pect explosions to reach the entire underground territory of mines where they have occurred. Third, in the entire mining history of Pennsylvania no major mine explosion has ever o curred in a strictly non-gaseous mine, although the non-gase mines outnumber many times the gaseous ones. It is significant that siiice the appearance of Mr. Phythyon’ book neither the Bureau of Mines nor the mining journa hat 4 were preaching the coal-dust theory and rock-dust edy ha taken issue with him. While they have not publicly indorsed th book, there is reason to believe that it has somewhat modified the views of some of them. of November 11, 1926, says: For instance, Coul Age in it “The change of attitude shows a of venti f defer ( general confidence in improved equipment and method lation, in permissible explosives, and in the last line rock dust.” dusting to a less important position than the last line of d ae Mr. Phythyon would certainly not relegate rock fense. He is not against rock dusting as such, but he insist that it should be kept in its proper place. In time to come, my opinion, Mr. Phythyon’s book will be considered as a clas in coal-mining literature. While it may appear to some as if it has merely served to cast a doubt over a brilliant advertising campaign of the Bureau of Mines, it must be pointed out that human life is at stake and that the acceptance of a mistake theory and the stressing of secondary defenses as against pri mary ones may be the direct cause of further loss of life. The

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The Nation [ Vol. 124, No. 3233 primary means of avoiding mine explosions is adequate and } liab la to prevent gas from accumulating in explo- e quan t The undue stress accorded to rock dusting in he bureau’s campaign not only induces neglect of ventilation but il me cases has evidently even tended to discredit it. The amazing quotation is taken from what may well be an authorized statement of the Bureau of Mines in the Salt Lake City Tribune for March 12, 1926. So far as I know this has not is con- been repudiated by the bureau: “The Bureau of Mines vinced that neither ventilation nor water will prevent mine ex- plosions. varticularly is ineffective, as tests have occur only when the dust is in motion, and ventilating fans therefore add to rather than diminish the danger.”” When a mine inspector like Mr. Phythyon squarely faces a government bureau which he thinks is endangering lives in the coal industry, the country should be glad that he has the Ventilation hown that explosions courage to express his convictions. POWERS HAPGOOD The Posthumous Sumner William Volume I. Graham Sumner and Yale University The Science of Society. By Albert Galloway Keller. Press. $4. N the whole literature of the magic can be there are few When William Graham Sumner was at work upon the volume which has be- wrote a chapter which ran “Folkways,” social science: books to which ascribed. come “The Science of Society” he away with him to the extent of 200,000 words. published in 1907, has run away with many a reader and has in these years established its claim as authentic magic. Sumner died in 1910, with his larger work still far from completed, leaving his notes, manuscript, and case material to his col- league, Albert G. Keller. The book, begun in 1899, is just now coming from the press in four large volumes, of which the first is here reviewed. The labor of love involved in working over the materials of a dead scientist is often an example of love’s labor lost. It is pleasant to record that Professor Keller has built up out of his original materials a structure that is both admirable and noteworthy. One of the distinctive features about anything Sumnerian is the solidity and naturalness of the approach. The reader is assured of the inductive method and he is assured of theories that can be traced to the basic phenomena of every-day life. The influence of Darwin and of Spencer is also to be counted on, and this first volume of the long-projected sociology does not differ in these respects from the other writings. “The Science of Society” assumes a knowledge of evolution and starts off with “adjustment” as a keynote. It seeks the sense of societal customs and institutions and studies their ex- pediency as adjustments in living, whether or not any conclu- ion can be drawn as to their origins. It starts out with two elements, man and land, and holds that the man-land ratio is at the basis of all society and itself determines the development of society. It is squarely against any instinct of the herd or yf sociability, holding that the tendency to associate is ac- quired rather than inherited through the germ-plasm, and that another of those long-standing usages which, like ‘natural rights,” are referred to “‘nature” because their origin s not known. Association has become a habit of mankind be- ause of its high survival-value in the evolution of civilization; required to rear an ac- issociation 1s liscipline and then more discipline ar« eptable member of society; men have to be driven to think n terms of society and very few come to do so. The child has to learn all those qualities which are indispensable to member- ship in society, and no form of association exists into which men can enter without sacrificing personal liberty. Neverthe- less, the utilities of association are so manifold and decisive that the formation of society was a winning expedient in the art of living. Brotherly love has nothing to do with ear association; men quarreled and fought unless they w broken or too cowardly. Only under civilization does the dividual get away from violence; societies have not yet ; away. Hostility and war are as primordial as poverty. Peac is not a natural boon, but a benefit to be striven for. Iiunger, love, vanity, and fear are the socializing fo: for they are the stimuli that drove men into society and hi them there. Those who developed association were the fit, by their survival it prevailed. These socializing forces ar also the war-forces; actually they are what impel men to a tion of any kind. Hunger is a long wave, imperative as other force is. Problems of self-maintenance are very near reality, and this is why adjustment of maintenance-way) quicker and surer than adjustment of those belonging to gratification, marriage, or religion. Sex-love is, compared wit hunger, unsteady, transitory, and violent. It is essential.) passing thing, and no enduring human relationships have bee formed upon it alone. Out of hunger develop the maintena: organizations of society, including the industrial, ana out love come the fundamental organizations of marriage and family. Human society may then be defined as a group human beings living in a cooperative effort to win subsisten and to perpetuate the species. But there are other huma: activities above those of maintenance which are not due t sex-love or ghost-fear. Such activities minister to self-grati! cation, and the impulses behind them are vanity and the desir for pleasure. Vanity and the desire for pleasure have not resulted massive institutions such as property, government, or religion, but they are significant and important. To vanity is attribut: war for glory, ornamentation, and much of ceremonial—what ever aims at the display of superiorities in the individual or the group. Art falls into this group, as well as various othe forms of catering to the senses, reducing boredom, and making life more interesting. Although such impulses are not indis pensable to society’s maintenance or perpetuation they are very strong and men may come to the point of overlooking neces- sities in the search for luxuries. However, the development of activities of self-gratification depends upon an earlier develo; ment of the maintenance-organization, for existence has to be assured before people can play or practice ostentation ver) much. Ghost-fear is like vanity, a typically human product dé pending upon association; it becomes a socializing force, for holds men together; it is not so primordial as hunger and love, for it cannot be explained by physiology. The fear of th supernatural causes men to develop joint methods of confront ing the supernatural menace, and these seem at times th: strongest influence in the life of society, but each of the four great forces is likely to appear strongest when it is being in- tensively studied. Proceeding from this basis in human impulses “The Science of Society” is divided into sections on self-maintenance, self- perpetuation, and self-gratification. Organization for self- maintenance appears the most complicated and important, be- ing based upon hunger and fear and resulting in industrial organization, property, regulative organization, and religion Self-perpetuation is of course concerned with marriage and thé family, and self-gratification comprises a variety of uncoordi nated forms of activity. It is to be regretted that where so much is excellent the chapter on sex-specialization in labor should be filled with such twaddle. That the Greeks derived hysteria from the word meaning uterus is no excuse for our ignorantly continuing such an association of ideas. To say that “the female nervous sys- tem is less stable than the male, being more affectable and susceptible to neurasthenia, hallucinations, hypnotic infiuences, and hysteria,” is almost as funny as to say that “one sex acts under high pressure, the other under low pressure; one revolts La | philc the - wilft afre: cross sumr yet, realn rank dies mizes ing 1 haps, these r J tries chaos verse will | for k of co nacio you 1 amaz is his may | teur, desert Mars\ and d I in the of his bard, of rey f the day n He w ing gi and i pertu

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June 22, 1927 | | comms monotony, the other takes naturally to routine; one shows restless pursuit of the new and untried, the other an conservatism.’ ” The ‘organic chapter reads as thougn it might have been written twenty-five years ago, wnen such generalization were in better odor among scientists than they are in the iter skeptical days. This first volume of the “Science of Society” | tudy through capital, property, and appropriation f fire, animals, and men, through war-groups and usages, de velopment of government, class distinctions, the antecedents of the group-control, and state. The volume next to folluw will be concerned entirely with religion, beginning with the very fruitful concept of the aleatory or “luck” element in human life. So far as the present volume goes we can see developing a carefully thought out, coherent, and useful system for inven- torying the activities of society. It lacks inevitably the magic if the “Folkways”, which is one of America’s truly great books, but it is a real achievement in coordination and analysis. Whether the entire work will advance sociology as a science is a question not tc be answered at this stage. The prebabilities seem against it. LORINE PRUETTE Rimbaud La Vie Aventureuse de Jean-Arthur Rimbaud. Carré. Paris: Librairie Plon. Par Jean-Marie $6 JE only know what we have made: the mind gathers knowledge only in the act of creation,” said an Italian philosopher, and this aphorism might well stand as a blazon for the poetry of Jean-Arthur Rimbaud. He was keen, cerebral, wilful, and he came to know the world because he created it afresh each time in his poems. He was bold, experimental, cross-grained—fumiste reussi, successful charlatan, was the summary epithet bestowed upon him by Frangois Coppée. And yet, in the light of what has happened since his death in the realm of French poetry, he belongs undoubtedly in the front rank. For first-rate poetry dies a curious kind of death, but it dies into something new, overshadowing, and strange, and alche- mizes, as it is itself in part altered by, the spirit of man brood- ing upon it. The great poem is never finished. It lives, per- haps, because it is always drawing collaborators to itself, and these collaborators are its audience from age to age. The present biography, although it starts out to be a novel, tries as it goes along to deal suggestively with the centrifugal chaos of the poet’s life which ultimately became order—a per- verse sort of order, it is true—in his poetry. Miss Lowell, it will be remembered, attempted to do something along this line for Keats; M. Carré is more detached, and there is no macula of contemporary fashion in his method. Rimbaud led a pug- nacious, varicolored, free-lance existence, but if you examine it you will find that it was really harmonious with himself and amazingly cool-blooded. Unparalleled in the history of genius is his evolution from a precocious lad of sixteen, writing what may be called poetic dynamite, to the Eastern traveler, colpor- teur, soldier of fortune who subdued African natives, crossed deserts, and at last died, Icnely, tended only by his sister, in Marseilles. He died in the arms of the church he had loathed and despised. Rimbaud was born in Charleville in 1854. He was educated in the Catholic schools of the town. The most formidable ally of his youthful dreams and aspirations was his teacher, Izam- bard, who was a republican. Rimbaud imbibed the principles of republicanism from him. He became ferocious in his hatred if the church and used to chalk up on the church-door on Sun- day mornings, just before the end of service, “Mort a Dieu!” He wrote feverishly. His earliest poems show a most astonish- ing gift for rabid imagery and a sense of rhythm that is harsh, and iconoclastic, but quite in keeping with the motion of his perturbed spirit. After the siege of Paris he sold his vatch and bought a ticket for H e of An eG 1 de oF On a secon I { an above yer f ‘ Ww a I t ‘ put it © ent al f r { of | u f y ‘ a car b r , 4 Later, he met Hugo, who Jid not deny t l e % site: another immortal phrase: “C's Kes pea enfa tle later a new Villon had come among u g Oddly enough, although Rimbaud had the most profound influence on both the life and work of Veriainé leranging former and enriching most phenomenally the latter), Ver on his part, wielded solutely no | I a) friend. Verlaine was an incurable sentimentalist, feeble and lachrymose, whereas, troubled in his own spirit and searching it drastically for crime, sickné knowledge, and superhumar strength, Rimbaud appeared in all outward things self-centered wilful, penetraiing, and remorsele almost to t point of humanity. He had a baiting scorn for the diligent as he once put it, starts out from the horizon which has long been exhausted by tne first-rate imaginative art Both “Bateau Ivre” and “Saison d’Enfer” attest the sort of purgation which comes only from some deep inner experiences There can be no doubt of this. , ime j t at times, rich to excess, Rimbaud yet writes “poetic autobiogra phy”; in “Saison d’Enfer” the prose is alive and burning. He was “ingenious,” Audaciou too, as has been frequently charged, and undeniable that he was touched with the been called “ingeniosité orduriére.” But there was also that his spirit which could offset the unsavory details of his t ous life. malady of what has imuitu PIERRE LOVING France by a Journalist By Sisley Huddleston. The Charles Scr:bner’s Sons. $5. France. Modern World Serie N the nature of Gaul Strabo saw proof of divine providence, and Sisley Huddleston, examining the same thing at thi later date, also finds himself convinced of something or other —exactly what it is is difficult to ascertain. In his desperat impersonation of Jekyll and Hyde, however, he doe in confirming a suspicion that the inkstained « historian. The book is divided into three parts: to the Second Empire, from Napoleon III to the World War, and from 1914 to the present day. It is difficult to understand how the writer of the latter sections produced the first part. title The Making of National Unity, is analytical history which never approaches harmony with the burden of its title, while the following portions belong to the “Mirrors” library and are a collection. The Making of National Unity lurches forward with all the dramatic intensity of “The World Almanac,” concessions being made, in form, to those of us who prefer their statistics in prose. We read: “In Algeria are nearly six million persons; in Tunisia two millions; in Morocco four and a half millions. ” And so on for a paragraph. However much effort one puts into the reading of these pages they refuse to live was not intended that they should I together in such a way that they are useless for reference. We are offered the scent of a topic and follow it a while only to be jerked off at a tangent and asked to peer through the gloom at something else. succeed yewitness is no Book I, under the rapidly increasing valuable acquisition by that pernaps it and yet they are slapped Dates, instead of being used as pins to tack the whole in place, are juggled back and forth, used for dec- oration, and repeated until they lose all significance. That the facts are painfully correct only adds to the pity of it ail.

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700 The Nation [ Vol. 124, No. 3233 We thought that Bagehot, for one, had traced the con- nective tissue of history and shown that all civilizations must run their infancy, childhood, and adolescence in proper order; finally developing into something rather remote from the heart’s desire. Attacked by periodic illness they recover to gain additional strength or are left permanently scarred. “L’histoire des peuples est une échelle de misére dont les révolutions forment les différentes degrés” was how Chateaubriand summed it up. In God’s good time the feudal rash breaks out and is scratched till it irritates. A few generations and it has con- centrated in the great purple boil of royalty which, in time, is pricked for the good of the constitution and the general health of the body politic. And so on. We thought all this was recognized, and yet here is Sisley Huddleston gaping in amazement when he finds traces of it in the history of his beloved France—the acknowledged prototype. Is it fitting, in this day, to adopt the feigned surprise of a conjurer in pointing out that without Julius Caesar the France of today would be something else, that feudalism as a means to an end justified itself, or that Louis XIV really served a purpose? Le Roi Soleil, in forging the tool which sharpened the point of Sieyés’s “L’état c’est nous” alone, vindi- cated himself completely. How obviously the inconsistency of the contemporary stands out! How forbidding are individual trees in the modern end of the forest! We are told that from time to time in the story of France the call has been for a Man. In the glorious days gone by we find that some obliging, if sometimes inade- quate, individual graciously responded; Henri IV, Richelieu, and Napoleon among others. If this has been so why scorn the possibility that the present day will produce a similar article to satisfy insistent demands? If France is not decadent —the which he insists—why is it so absurd for her to howl now for a Judge Landis? Thus till times within the ken of living man. Here Mr. Huddleston is on his chosen ground as eyewitness, journalist, and gossip, and he satisfies. His thumbnail sketches of con- temporary Frenchmen are worth the first two hundred pages and more. When “I write with personal knowledge, for my duties took me to France and kept me there in an exceptional post of observation .”’ he scores on every page and we feel that we are in the midst of it all. With him we rub shoulders with statesmen, politicians, musicians, artists, and writers and him that that company offers good reasons for high feel witl ope THOMAS COMPTON 7 Love and Work Lowe By Alexandra Kollontai. The Seven Arts Publish- g Company 2.00 Sigg s the eternal tragedy of the triangle with a Soviet Russian dressing The modern Bolshevik background with ie emerging new woman against it adds interest to what might tnerw have been oniy another novel. V: 1 i young active Communist. In the early days if the revolution she falls in love with Volodya, a sparkling American” anarchist, who has made peace with the Soviet and works for them. Theirs is the love born of broad mutual nterest, of intense common labors, and, last and least, of sex. Vass 1 is a woman, but so devoted to the cause as to have » time and energy to be the woman Volodya needs. Periods graphical separation intervene. He has “affairs.” She always the comrade and friend; sometimes the wife. But e loves Nina Constantinova, the very reverse of Vassilisa, amorous, bourgeois, unsocial, selfish, luxury-loving. For a period Volodya, who has become the well-paid and quite un- Communistiec Soviet business manager, lives on with Vassilisa Vasya suspects, then knows, and is jealous. but loves Nina. Vasya goes (Communism hasn’t changed such matters yet.) back to her own provincial town. She discovers that she is pregnant, is glad, and decides to bring up the child herself with the aid of the state. Vasya, absorbed in her party work, discovers now that the bond of affection with Volodya is broken and, convinced that under such circumstances she has no claim on him—not even to support her baby—she writes in the true bigness of her spirit to Nina giving her benediction to the may riage of her former husband to his former mistress. This is all very good, but I don’t get the point. Judged as a literary production, “Red Love” surpasses expectations There is some really fine writing in it which the translation has not spoiled. But why did Kollontai print such a thing? The most revolutionary doctrine she preaches is that of volun- tarily giving up one’s partner in marriage when love has dis- appeared. Of course, Kollontai has a philosophy of sexual re- lations which comes better to view in the original Russiar “Love of Working Bees,” where one finds the present story with two shorter ones. This philosophy is brought out some- what too generally in a foreword—actually a postscript sent in from Mexico City. Love and family, Kollontai argues—and as one of Europe’s leading feminists she merits as much at- tention as any suffragette—are sideshows in a man’s life. H: is judged by his job. The ambassadress advocates the same measuring-rod for women. A woman ought to be considered “good” or “bad” not because she does or does not conform to a certain set of bourgeois morals but according to whether sh; serves humanity and society. There is a life for women out- side the kitchen and nursery and beyond love. Fine. But Kollontai has presented a bad illustration, for Vasya loves less the more she works. It need not be so. LOUIS FISCHER Popular Race Science The Pulse of Progress. By Ellsworth Huntington. Charles Seribner’s Sons. $5. V R. HUNTINGTON assists, through innumerous books and 4 magazine articles, in educating the mind of Demos by means of the popularization of science. Here he writes o1 migrations, farms and cities, nomads, weather and civilizatior the effect of climate on history and on racial temperament, th fact of the social suicide of Russia, and the manner in whic! races are created and perpetuated; and finally he gives résumé of all Jewish history, a sort of Haldeman-Julius Graetz, with the addenda of biologic, geographic, and an thropologic footnotes. “The one thing at which we have aimed has been to give an example of how geography, migrations, ar racial selection combine with genius, sociology, politics, religior and other phases of human culture in explaining human histor Only by combining all these factors with even-handed impartia ity can we understand the true philosophy of history.”’ Yet with all Mr. Huntington’s large intention his under standing of the true philosophy of history is not, one suspect always come at with quite the even-handed impartiality tha‘ he suggests. He makes it easy for himself, for instance, assuming without controversy the superiority of the dominan' white civilizations. The increasing complexity of mecha inventions is equally taken for granted as the criterion progress. His analysis of Russia’s “suicide” is based on tale of the two million executed—the flower of the country and the more than two million that have fled the land sinc the war. This credulous acceptance of the statistics of th London Times as basis for a sociological study is, for a entist of Mr. Huntington’s repute, not quite good enough. No! his hypothetical selection of four racial groups who are to b¢ dumped on equal terms in the plains of northwestern Argentina —used evidently as a poser to prove that the London-breé Englishman will demonstrate his inherited racial superiorit) by coming out on top. Ju ma Ser mij the on the bec Mr ren ter tem Ma do, thre Agi pos pas: tian Mr. ers ther and exp! sele chat diffe stat men This Gold ever Thor their war] if a empl ions, volut the u weak in ts eff ilities result where t Morex and up wi

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June 22, 1927] The Nation In spite of Mr. Huntington’s predilection for the tool- making, inventive male Nordic he confesses also to a fervent pro- Semitism—a psychic mechanism so rarely found that its analysis might prove of value. Mr. Huntington’s Jewish chapters are the outgrowth of some talks given to Sunday-school teachers yn the geography of Palestine. The geographer believes that the Jews are the greatest of all races and that they have become so by a process of rigid racial selection. According to Mr. Huntington, the Jewish Jews have from the remained within the fold and have bred toward the religious temperament, attracting to their number non-Jews of a like temperament; the non-Jewish Jews—such perhaps as Heine, Marx, Felix Adler—have left. Just what Mr. Huntington would io, on this theory, with the streams of racial infiltration acquired through the spoliation of the Jewish women I do not know Again on the basis of selection the author explains the sup- posed change from the ancient militaristic Jewish spirit to the passive and commercial one that has obtained during the Chris- tian epoch. This radical divergence has been occasioned, says Mr. Huntington, by the fact that the Jews who were the fight- ers managed, by the very fact of their aggressiveness, to get themselves killed, whereas the ones who were not, emigrated and raised families. Surely this ought to be a simple enough explanation for anyone determined to apply the natural- selection theory to races. Mr. Huntington gives a chapter to the “evolution of racial tharacter.” Those who question the existence of biological differences in the mentality of races he dismisses with the statement that they are ‘a relatively small group of scientific men, especially those who belong to races that are not dominant.” This thrust—despite Palestine!—is evidently meant for Boas, Goldenweiser, Fishberg, Sapir, and some others. What, how- ever, will Mr. Huntington do with Woodworth, Ripley, Haddon, Thomas? For these men, whatever their differences, agree in their skepticism as to “race types” and “race culture”; are wary, in view of the relatively small amount of verified data, ff any sweeping generalizations on race; and are inclined to ‘mphasize other factors. beginning FLORENCE KIPER FRANK A New World of Science Plasmogenia. 3y Alfonso L. Herrera. sarcelona: Casa Editorial Maucci. } \R. A. L. HERRERA, head of the Administration of Biologi- i) cal Studies of the Mexican Government, is the Columbus of new world. For twenty-six years or more he has been work- ng on the problem of the origin of life, his researches culmi nating in the experimental production of artificial cells which lisplay nearly all the salient characteristics of living protozoa. lo the system or department of science resulting from these ex- ] + eriments he has given the name plasmogeny, and in his latest rk—an impressive and beautifully illustrated volume of over four hundred pages—has developed it to cover its ramification n almost every department of thought. Postulating a “protobial realm” between the organic and inorganic, a region in which life, given the necessary cond! ns, will arise from the non-living, Dr. Herrera traces thi lution of all living beings backward to the original stuff of universe. This he calls the her, and here lies veakness of his scheme; in physics he is not so firmly grounded in biology, and his estimate of the theory of relativity and s effect on the ether theory takes too little account of the actu- ities of the case. He sults of the recent experiments of Professor Dayton Miller, whereas still more recent researches tend to confirm Einste seizes eagerly on the anti-Einsteinian and to render the ether of the older physicists unnecessary. Moreover, Dr. Herrera’s entire system could as easily be built 1p without the luminiferous ether as with it. It is a fascinating story he tells as he relates plasmogeny to organic, inorganic, and biological chemistry; cytology, his tology, physiology, mineralogy, botany, and biology In astron omy, as in physics, the conclusions are clouded by the depend- ence on a material ether. But the fine N of the author’s account of the lil pnical id 80 It may achievement biooms in hi ciological aspects of his theory system which makes all life an unbroken « complete revision not only of cosmology an but even more of our religious, phi science ' viewpoints. Thoroughly free from myst supernatural atavisms, and hearti seeking to civilize,our so-called civilizz ‘ a scientific } background and ju who dream of a world it ing power. There is nothing dogmatic or speculations; he he has discovered, drawing the whole for the considerat These strange beings of his, under simple, easliy repeatable irritability, and reproduce, like mals, challenge the world. The City contains the only complete e) have been photographed and de languages, by himself and other with a wave of the hand; they and their creation is based upen a thoroughly trained and compete: explained—or accepted. “La Plasmogenia” has not yet been tran But for th reader none too well grounded in that tongue though it should be. reader Spanish is clear and simple—here is one of volumes yet presented to the inquiring and recep MAYNARD Books in Brief the Jew. Maurice Samuel. pany. It will be recalled that Mr. Samuel lished a violent polemic, “You Gentil Harcou) the Jewish Problem and the relatior tile in bitter and uncompromising for the polite amenities of the cult of He declared that Jew and Gentile con lived in two iu ually exciusl\ was such that a posse comitatu Mr. Samuel! in hand. Hi ridiculed as in plain contradiction of commor - « .° oe | organized to take all, counter to all the implications of comes forward with a ue] i evolution of his ideas. He 1 the scientific ideal f it for his soul’ Vot+r } rev ie fina llx inaily guide through problem ment but that it He offers an and that these mysteri Importance elaborate Among them presumably is the grow the survival of the Jewish people. Samuel, now having rationalized his irrati his own satisfaction, will rest content. O Jewish people, but Mr. Samuel is singular in had to abjure science to do so.

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702 The Nation [ Vol. 124, No. 3233 Roman Architecture. By G. T. Rivoira. Oxford University Press. $35. The Oxford University Press has again put us all in its lebt by making available, for the first time in English, the late G. T. Rivoira’s monumental work on Roman architecture. Surely, there are few books in which intensive knowledge so tri- umphantly emerges from the fog of a literary style severe to the point of baldness, or from the haze of purely technical in- formation that, handled less surely, would have been staggering. It is as if there were behind the writing of this book a pas- ionate fire—not the fire of emotional or poetic inspiration but a kindred brilliance and heat of archaeological curiosity. Rivoira trips Roman architecture to its starkest skeleton. Not a word is here of Roman decoration, carving, painting; only Roman construction, Roman masonry bonds, brick stamps, vaulting methods, and in particular Roman domes. And as the history of a growing skill in masonry-vault technique unfolds in mag- nificent illustration and bald, crude language, it grows some- how itself exciting, takes on an epic quality, the story of man’s conquest of a new kingdom. Yet Rivoira is not always to be be- lieved uncritically. Behind his learning is a parti-pris, behind his archaeological passion the passion of the missionary. His knowledge is the servant of his ideals, his dreams; his dreams and his ideals are a confused shouting of the names Rome and Italy, Italy and Rome; no other part of the world shall be allowed credit for inventiveness; no province except an Italian province ever taught Rome. His is a learning arrogant with the same modernistic nationalism that has inspired D’Annunzio’s later life. History of the Origin and Establishment of the Inquisition in Portugal. By Alexandre Herculano. Translated by John C. Branner. Stanford University Press. Alexandre Herculano, native of Lisbon, enjoys an enviable reputation as a scholar in his own country. His treatise on the Portuguese Inquisition was first printed in 1852 in three vol- umes. It clearly demonstrates that the Holy Office was intro- duced into Portugal in 1532 largely in order that the fanatical King Joao III might have an effective instrument at hand with which to wring moneys from the Jews. It tells the unedifying story of the bitter struggle which ensued between the King ind the Pope over the contro] of the Inquisition—a struggle which terminated in 1547 by the firm establishment of the fread tribunal under royal control and without restrictions. No less scathing than Lea’s is Herculano’s verdict upon the Iberian Inquisition as “the most atrocious, most anti-Christian nstitut hat human wickedness could invent.” The trans- lator has rend 1 the cumbrous Portuguese into readable Eng- lish. Students of Hispanic history will welcome this substantial addition to the scanty literature in English concerning Portugal. The M | Stuart Sherman. Charles Scribner’s Sons. $2.50 The t collection of critical essays by the late editor of Books, this volume show at Mr. Sherman was continuing his vigorous and sensitive scarech for ground in American life and uuld stand. That he has not found it from being rich with the critical letters upon which he c loes not prevent these e iaracter he had for years been forming. With a Preface and Foot- Foreword by Annette Town- The Diary of Elbridge Gerry, Jr notes by Claude G. Bowers. end. Brentano’s. $2. The dehghiful journey of a Vice-President’s son through Middle Stat in 1813 is here restored to the record. Hea ind Walkers in Early America. By Richardson Wright. J. B. Lippincott Company. $4.50. \ wealth of information concerning itinerants of the pack ind other denizens of the road, both in New England and The Feast of the Cannibals. By Barukh Jonas. Maumee, Oh The Author. $2. Mr. Jonas, who blue-prints his books and sells them him- self, insists here, as everywhere throughout his work, upon th: importance of the intellect in the affairs of man. He looks about him and finds very little mind being used, and so in his satire takes the hide off humanity for what he considers its own good. He is a direct and stimulating writer who seasons his amateur discourse with much true salt. Selections, Collections, Series, and Reprints Cicero: Tusculan Disputations. With an English Translatio: by J. E. King. Polybius: The Histories. Vols. V-VI Translated by W. R. Paton. Hippocrates. With an Eng- lish Translation by E. T. Withington. Vol. III. Loeb Classical Library. G. P. Putnam’s Sons. $2.50 each. Letters of Voltaire and Frederick the Great. Selected and Translated by Richard Aldington. The Broadway Librar, of Eighteenth-Century French Literature. Brentano’s. $5 The House of the Green Shutters. By George Douglas Brown Some Chinese Ghosts. By Lafcadio Hearn. The Modern Library. The Modern Library Publishers. 95 cents each Drama Summary—II ig all probability the future of the theater belongs to som form of drama capable of appealing to the imagination wit! a greater force than is possible within the limits of the realistic: form. Ibsen, Hauptmann, Shaw, and their contemporaries see! to have come nearer to exhausting the possibilities of the expos tory play than either they or their earliest admirers supposed and it is a significant fact that no successor has equaled them No dramatist who has emerged since their appearance cou! possibly be called better except in so far as he was radical]; different, and that fact alone is sufficient to suggest that th: form received in their hands its highest possible developmen Shaw himself has told us how the first touches of realism whic! he saw in the London theater produced in him a sense of elati: and many others could testify that when naturalism was new had, paradoxically enough, a certain air of romantic darin; which made things glamorous for the very reason that no fact tious glamor was permitted to invest them. But the theater at its best is capable of more than a mere literal fidelity to lif and a mere intellectual integrity. Realism does not utilize thos: capacities for producing illusion which constitute the theater’ chief claim to consideration as a separate art; it does not pr vide either the actor, the director, or the designer with his most fruitful opportunities; and it may well be that future student will look back upon it as something whose chief value consiste: in a certain discipline which it exercised. Thanks to it t were replaced by something which was at least entitled to int lectual respect, and the theater could once more be regarded as a possible medium for artistic expression. But only rar¢ since that rehabilitation, has it risen to the heights of which it is capable, even though in the plays of O’Neill as well as certain productions, notably those of the Theater Guild and th: not wholly absurd the hope that we may some day have her dramatic art comparable in amplitude and sweep to that of t Elizabethans or the Greeks. During the season just past we have not had either a play from O’Neill or any production equal in poetic richness to “Th Dybbuk.” Franz Werfel’s “Juarez and Maximilian,” performed by the Theater Guild Company, and “The Witch,” translated by

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June 22, 1927] The Nation John Masefield from the Norwegian and played briefiy at the learned in tt rreenwich Village Theater, stand out as the two plays of the fundamenta year having the largest appeal to the imagination; but neithe arger ij ; supremely great or entirely satisfac waged and the extent t ; which we must still depend upon realistic pictures of contemp: ry life for the masovity of our more profitable evenings in the theater is illustrated by the fact that the two most completely ealized efforts at playwriting which the season revealed were Maxwell Anderson’s ‘“Saturday’s Children” and Sidney How rd’s “The Silver Cord.” Both might be easily belittled from the standpoint of either the protagonist of imaginative — or the more exacting even hough friendly critic of the realistic school. Both deal in a fashion primarily argumentative with a contemporary social problem, and both reveal traces of a facile, shallow technique | 5 THEATRE GILBERT MILLER Presents ———The Theatre Guild Acting Company in Ep The Conte Wie ||| THE SECOND MAN AT MAXINE ELLIOTT’S THEATRE Mats. Tues., Wed. & Thurs. No performances Saturday. Published by George H. Doran By W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM GUILD THEATRE 4, GILBERT MILLER Presents Week of June 13—MR. PIM PASSES BY HOLBROOK BLINN “ « « 20—NED McCOBB’S DAUGHTER in — Play’s the Thing ech GARRICK THEATRE &..: %° y FERENC MOLNAR OF a Adapted by P. G. Wodehouse a AT HENRY MILLER'S THEATRE Week of June 13—NED McCOBB’S DAUGHTER Mats. Wed. and Thur., 2:30 tite Published by Brentano’s ea to Garrech June “ « « 26THE SILVER CORD GILBERT MILLER and A. H. WOODS present JOHN GOLDEN ite iS: fiact Fm JEANNE EAGELS it in ‘‘Her Cardboard Lover’’ By JACQUES DEVAL Adapted by Valerie Wyngate and P. G. Wodehouse EMPIRE B’way & 40th St., Eves., 8:30 Little THE GRAND Mats. Wed. & Sat., 2:30 Th t STREET Poy oO oO T Hi 45th St., W. of B’way. Eves. 8:30 44th Street West of Broadway Mats. Wed and Sat. Evgs. 8:30. Mats. Wed. at special prices FOLLIES clever deas, more fresh And on Sat. also MAXWELL ANDERSON’S COMEDY . ne cannot ded anywhere in New York SATUR DAY’S CHILDREN satire or more nerve."—Joseph Wood Krutch “Best American play of the year.""—Gabriel, Sun. JANE COWL ° ‘6 99 JUNE CONFERENCI in “The Road to Rome LEAGUE FOR INDUSTRIAL DEMOCRACY P] h 48th St., E. of B’way. Eves. 8:30 CAMP TAMIMENT, near Stroudsburg, Pa. ay ouse Matinees Wed. & Sat., 2:30 Thursday, June 23, to Sunday, June 26, 1927 Topic: “PROSPERITY” CON FERENC ow much have we of ’ [> THEATRE Tel. Chickering sigglfeaecs: Baty? CHANIN’S BILTMORE West 47th St 5161 ethan gee CHARLES L. WAGNER condgiuons " (In Association with Edgar Selwyn) presents ae ng es Lange ; os . . The BARKER ee eh ee eee Se Stuart Chass y A idler Jacob By KENYON NICHOLSON A tuart Lee, McAlister Coleman, Chas with WALTER HUSTON lor further mformation Mats Wed. & Sat, 2:30. Eves. at 8:30. League for Industrial Demecracy, 76 Sth Ave., New York When writing to advertisers please mention The Nation

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International Relations Section India and China By D. N. BANNERJEA - EN March, 1927, Lord Irwin, the Viceroy of India, dis- | allowed, in the exercise of his prerogative under the Government of India Act of 1921, the moving in the Indian Legislative Assembly of a Swarajist resolution on China. The resolution asked that Indian soldiers shall not be called upon to fight the Chinese on their own territory, and that the Government shall not thus seek for armed intervention in the internal affairs of a country striving to put its house in order. Apprehensions were also entertained in political circles in India that apart from the violation of Chinese neutrality implied in the dispatch of troops, the Indian Exchequer might be burdened with the cost of what in well-informed quarters is regarded as an unwarranted ag- gression. Fears have since been allayed by Lord Winter- ton’s declaration in the House of Commons, in answer to the questions put by Labor M.P.’s, that no part of the expenditure incurred by the movement of the Indian army would be charged to Indian revenues. Large sections of public opinion are inclined to believe, however, that the saving of expenditure does not and cannot atone for India’s loss of honor. For what indignity, they all point out, can be more humiliating than to be compelled to mobilize the soldiers of the country against a people with whom we have no direct or indirect ground of controversy? And it is idle for the Government of India to pretend that they are unaware of a new spirit abroad in the East. We are fully aware that the Imperialist may retort that troops are being sent to protect the life and property of British and Indian nationals in the International Settle- ments and not to wage war with the Chinese people. Our reply is that the same plausible reasons were given on previous occasions when the task of “protection” quickly degenerated into massacres of the Chinese, mulcting of their territory, and loot of their valuable property. Nor are we aware that any Indian merchants and business men have asked for the protection of troops. We run great risks in sending armies to the soil of another country. Trivial incidents or minor provocations on either side may unloose the flood-gates of passion and call out the vilest instincts which in the course of wars disfigure the annals of history. The ideas and sentiments embodied in the Swarajist resolution were not the claptrap of political rowdyism as certain London papers tried to make out. On the contrary, they reflected a great deal of political sanity and of sym- pathy with the arduous struggles of the Chinese people for independence and national sovereignty. Nor let us forget that in all the indefensible opium wars against China, in the course of which concession after concession was wrung from the country at the point of the bayonet, Indian troops have invariably been employed by Great Britain for the promotion of her imperial ambitions in that unfortunate land. The capture of Hongkong, the annexing of Weihai- wei, “the International Settlements of Hankow and Shang- hai” were all effected by the assistance of Indian soldiers. Stripped of all diplomatic verbiage this means that the citizens of a country herself in a state of tutelage have been compelled to fight at the bidding of England to destroy the freedom of other countries with which India has had no direct ground of dispute. Such a process might hav: been tolerated when the flame of nationality burned low in India, but with the growing realization of political na- tionality there the attempts to use her troops beyond her borders will continue to be bitterly resented. India’s inte)- lectuals have lost all sympathy from countries which her soldiers have been called upon to subjugate or overawe at the instance of Great Britain. But it is not only the emphatic repudiation of im- perial adventures and armed intervention in the affairs of another country that is being energetically voiced in Indian political circles today. There are more fundamental and valid grounds of protest. In the first place there is a wide- spread opposition and revolt against the hegemony of Euro- pean nations over Eastern countries, and for this reason the vicissitudes of the Chinese struggles are being watched with breathless interest all over the Orient. This interest is being enhanced and is gathering momentum because of the universal desire among the self-conscious elements in subject nationalities to rid themselves of what Mr. Asquith called “the intolerable degradation of a foreign yoke.” India is not alone in assuming a critical attitude toward the dispatch of troops to China. Japan has protested against the billeting of British troops in certain areas in Shanghai. The British Labor Party has denounced the policy of their own Government. Lord Parmoor has been suggesting a recourse to the League of Nations, on whose Council sits a Chinese delegate. If the Pekingese delegate has not proper credentials, another could be appointed who might be an authorized spokesman for his people. The distinctive and essential elements in the Chinese struggles for unity and independence are not only the desire for the establishment of a central government with plenary authority but the abolition of all foreign privileges and control in their territory in the shape of capitulations and extraterritorial rights. The Chinese struggle for the abolition of these rights is being watched with a great deal of interest in Egypt and India. In Egypt, after the grant of partial independence, foreign European residents pay no taxes, though they have built up considerable fortunes in Cairo and Alexandria; they enjoy all the benefits of citizen- ship and in legal proceedings are tried by their own consular courts or by mixed tribunals. In India public men are deported or interned for long periods without charge or trial under Regulation III of 1818 and other archaic repressive measures legalized by the passing of emergency acts. And yet if a single Eng- lishman of the commercial or professional community were deported or interned without the aid of counsel and without a public trial, the agitation which would follow might threaten to shake the foundations of British rule in that country. The reason consists in the assumption that laws are to be administered in one way for the Oriental and in a radically different manner for privileged European oli- garchies destined by high heaven to wield the scepter in the East. Speaking from his place in the Legislative As- sembly in March, 1926, Pandit Motilal Nehru, the leader of the Swarajist Party, pointed out that “some of the noblest sons of India had been shut up in jails” without charge or trial. The reference was to political prisoners interned in the Mandalay Jail on police suspicion. These were origi- nally 120. Some have gone mad, a few died in prison, Jur othe veill the | gent retu Gove have lege Pan gre: with walk argu state Chat The stan abso of ri only tonol in EF weig need resis Gand penil Indie Mane pape! and | pervs the t versa of th gles politi ] venti quite serve undot conte attem exter! in al conse: \ ideals toar and seems a rea Leagu tion 4 and d lieve only | freedc the E Europ as fri

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June 22, 1927] The Nation others have been released to be kept under police sur- veillance, while a great many still lie interned, including the chief executive officer of the Calcutta cooperative. This gentleman, an honor graduate of Cambridge, has since been returned unopposed to the Legislative Assembly. Still the Government declines to release him, though the Swarajists have charged the Government with the violation of privi- lege in keeping him away from his place in the Assembly. Pandit Nehru warned the Government that unless it took great care it would find the whole country honeycombed with secret societies. On the conclusion of his speech he walked out of the Assembly with all his followers. On this occasion, as on previous ones, the Government argued that a state of emergency existed analogous to a state of siege, when constitutional guaranties, Magna Charta, and the writ of habeas corpus must be suspended. The difference between the official point of view and the standpoint of all the political parties on this question is absolute. But these debates and discussions, the assertion of rights and demands for the redress of grievances are only incidents in the formulation of the demand for au- tonomy and self-determination. The days of foreign rule in Eastern lands are numbered. Imperialism has been weighed in the balance and found wanting. Only time is needed to seal its doom. There is not the shadow of a doubt that the passive resistance and non-cooperation movement of Mahatma Gandhi had appreciable repercussions in China. And hap- penings in China are galvanizing hopes and aspirations in India, as they have done ever since the downfall of the Manchu dynasty. One has only to read the Indian news- papers as they comment on the advance of the Cantonese and on the program of the people’s party to realize how pervasive this influence is. One has only to pass through the bazaars and market-places to hear the scraps of con- versation carried on even by the uneducated. The burden of the subject is the same, a lively interest in the strug- gles of an Eastern neighbor for emancipation, social, political, and economic. But what will happen in the event of a military inter- vention by the great Powers in China? The answer is quite simple. Not only will such an ill-starred attempt serve to unite the Pekingese and the Cantonese, but it will undoubtedly fan into a flame the smoldering fires of dis- content in India. Such a policy will be interpreted as an attempt to continue that ascendancy over the internal and external affairs of Oriental countries which is becoming, in an increasing measure, intolerable to the Oriental consciousness. Whatever the defects and shortcomings in the political deals of Japan, the country has at least fought through to a recognized place in the comity of nations. With China and India politically stabilized and emancipated, there seems to be a high degree of probability that we shall have a real league of nations in the East, as Europe has a League of Nations in Geneva. Behind this cultural federa- tion and this political alliance will be the desire for peace and development and not for war or aggression. We be- lieve that prophecies of yellow peril will be proved to be mly figments of the imagination. We also believe that freedom will contribute to the enriching of the cultures of the East, and that to an independent and adolescent East BOTH GRAVE and gay The War On Modern Science $y MAYNARD SHIPLEY lent, TI ‘a Les ‘ A terse, authoritative, complete of what the powerful Fundamer has accomplished, in each suppression of the free tea Struggles and Triumphs, o1 THE LIFE OF P. ]. BAR? Written by Timself Edited, with an introduction, by Geo G.S. B.”). An illustrated de will be mailed on request Illustrated , hy Uw ww % at PRON LN ee LONDON PERAMBULATOR by James Bone, with drawings by Muirhead Bone; and THE PERAMBULATOR IN EDINBURGH by James Bone, with drawings by E. Lumsden Each, $ AMERICAN OPINION OF FRANCE FROM LAFAYETTE TO POINCARI by Elizabeth Brett White $4 THE WORLD POLICY OF GERMANY, 1890-1912 by Otto Hammann, former Chief of the Press Division of the Ger man Foreign Office. $5.00 MARCEL PROUST: His Life and Work by Léon Pierre-Quint THE GEOGRAPHY OF WITCHCRAFT by Montague Summers, author of The History of Witchcraft and Demon ology. Illustrated >/ Pa he Oe Fwn wars Lanes of am iees by George S. Hellman A veteran collector’s reminiscences among books pictures, manuscripts, and men. Critic after criti has called it “delightful.” “A delightful volume,’ says The New York Times, “to pick up for a few minutes, to carry on a journey, to spend an evenir with.” Ilystrated $4.00 [AT ALL BOOKSHOPS] Alfred A. Knopf 730 Fifth Ave. Publisher New York Europe and America will be welcome as asters = os ore 2 P c . not as masters but $e aa 6a ‘Torey a3 B63 eS (IS as friends. When writing to advertisers please mention The Nation

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The Nation [ Vol. 124, No. 3233 ——— An American ‘‘Subject’’ in China | SCUDDER MIDDLETON PEXHE letter, extracts from which are printed below, was luthor of “Streets and Faces” and “The New Day” written | an American resident of Shanghai and appeared in the Briti h-owned and controlled North China claimed by mtemporary Verse as “one of the , p ; ° : : ‘hime finest and most neglecte f first-rate : ican Daily News. It is now being reprinted throughout China. irst-rate America e#ts The following remarkable letter is by the head of an im- ; erican firm in Shanghai. While we withhold names, ts expressed are undoubtedly shared by the over- | IPPER NIGH T of Americans in China.—[Editor North China is his new book of Poetry. “Authentic poetry. \mong the best things of the season.”—The New Republic. $2.00 ‘ans doing business in this country creating oods, we had cause to expect protection » pursuits, but we received a very severe , 7 : : 5 | One Park Avenue HENRY HOLT & COMPANY N present difficulty first became acute in ew York vas very evident necessity for protection was made that troops be sent to protect our ts. In reply we were informed by the American Con- sulate that if it became necessary for Americans to evacu- (7 ate China, the Government would provide transportation to OR, a either Japan or the Philippines. RY" { OS Imagine for one moment our feelings; the United ti mation in the world telling her subjects [sic) that it might PERFECT SIGHT WITHOUT GLASSES nation in the world tellir ght ary for us to evacuate China. What disposition By W. H. BATES, M.D. (} at Wacshinct — oles ‘ : i : ials at Washington expect en to make of = The author of this book presents evidence that all errors s? Did they expect us to turn it over to a howling of refraction are caused by strain—and cured by rest and This attitude on the part of our Government held relaxation. The complete method of treatment is described so clearly 2 ; , that the reader can usually discard his glasses and improve n this part of the world, and not until very urgent demands his vision we made upon our Government for protection did we receive At leading bookstores Price $3 Postpaid any assurance that same would be given. . e e o iter it was unofficially announced that Senator Borah Central Fixation Publishing Company 383-N Madison Avenue New York City >) us up to ridicule by the subjects of other Powers interested followers were dictating a policy of non-interference , with the result the President and the Secretary of Sta ere in a political deadlock with the Borah faction. It is very regrettable that Senator Borah is the senior Sena- tor on the Foreign Ways and Means Committee [sic] for his policy and radical utterances are a serious menace to the people of the United States, and most especially to its When you are tired of subways, skyscrapers, Bab- manufacturing interests and manufacturers interested in bitts and machine made civilization generally, come foreign trade. . . . This individual should be banished from and look at MT. AIRY (Croton-on-Hudson). It is active political life back to his Idaho wheat ranch and for a beautiful place and conveniently located. A fine the remainder of his natural life... . social life can be created there. One thing to remem- It is pitiful the lack of knowledge that our would-be ber, however, is that the people are liberals, radicals, tatesmen have regarding affairs of the moment in China. artists and thinking people. Do you belong? Senator Borah and others have made such ridiculous state- Enquire Harry Kelly, 70 Fifth Ave., Tel. Chelsea ments about the unjust treaties existing between China and 0432. other Powers that the people of various parts of the world and more especially the United States, are led to believe that we are treating the Chinese unjustly and holding them l down, preventing them from enjoying their national aspira- CO BOOKS O | tions, which » far from the facts, and the actual situa- tion 1 irectly contrary to these statements. Senator Borah may know how to run a wheat ranch in Idaho and MT. AIRY COMMUNITY Marx’s CAPITAL = ] vail ‘ » him hack the United States The most epoch-making of ali works on economics; a critical analy- alk its people into sending him back to the United States sis of the processes of capitalist production and distribution. Marz Senate vear after year, but he knows absolutely nothing has done for social science what Darwin did for biology. ; O1 ntal aff wf Cloth, 3 volumes, 2,586 pages, $7.60 postpaid. ibou ‘ental afiairs. ——— : : : ; . : ‘ Charles H. Kerr & Company, 347 East Ohio St., Chicago Great Britain now has in the neighborhood of 10,000 | 3 stationed in the city of Shanghai, and I assure you a TL At tind ; ee the first contingent of Indian troops arrived here just War se pon hy SS a me, for there is no question but what this city would Patriotism ™ 2's laughed, but the people : A 4] x 1p . by Red ] . paid heavily with blood and treas- * been taken by the radical Reds, fostered DY re Rus- Peac ure. Will the world heed Tolstoi now? His agents As an American with considerable interests powerful i ber mg against the Great Mad- ~ e ° e ness are now availabDie in one spiendik volume, I surely feel grateful to Great Britain for the protec- *War—Patriotism—Peace.”” Send for this book at ae ge : . Only 55¢ aid—clotht 1 size, which we enjoy, living in the settlement guarded by her pars ag a, a6 aa vonmonnd This is a very pitiful situation that subjects of titles at the same amazing price. VANGUARD PRESS, Inc., Dept. 33 80 Fifth Avenue, New York City t ed States should have to depend upon protection yn government. _ When writing to advertisers please » m The Nation

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