Mencken's Autopsy on Roosevelt

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RANDOM HOUSE · .20E. 57th St.' • N. Ye ii The AMERICAN MERCURY ~~1)!~@~~1)!~@~!~~1)~.~@~~1)!~@~~ ~- ~ e~ VOLUME TABLE OF CONTENTS NUMBER ~~ ~ XXXVII 147 !~ ~ March, 1936 ~ ~ THREE YEARS OF DR. ROOSEVELT H. L. Mencken 257 N ~ A BOXER CALLED PANTHER. Verse . Reuel Denney 265 ~ If>~ ARE THE CAPITALrsTs ASLEEP? . . Harold Lord Varney 266 ~ AN OPEN LETTER TO MR. JEFFERSON .. William M. Houghton 273 b) ~ THE MAN-GOD OF JAPAN. . Sydney Greenbie 277 ..~ m THERE Is No COMFORT Now. Verse. V. James Chrasta 284 '5 ~ A PENNY A WORD. . Anonymous 285 ~ l"~~ WINTER SONNET. Verse. . Townsend Miller 292 ~.~ tJ SAD DEATH OF A HERO. . Paul Y. Anderson 293 a ~n AMERICANA 302 ~".) 1f>,J. W. H. HUDSON . Ford Madox Ford 306 ~~ ~ Is PATRIOTISM NECESSARY? . . Struthers Burt 318 ~ ~ DEAD MAN. A Story . James M. Cain 326 .~ m THE STATE OF THE UNION: ~ ~ The New Deal and Prohibition . Albert Jay Nock 333 ~ ~ CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE . . Edwin Borchard 337 ~ ~ PORTLAND: ATHENS OF THE WEST. . James Stevens 344 ~ ~ THESE CLOUDS. Verse . . E. A. Richards 350 ~ ~ n THE FIRST MUNITIONS KING . Jack Rohan 351 ~~.) If>~ THIS SINGING BRANCH. Verse . Margaret Tynes Fairley 358 ~~ ~ THE CLINIC: ~ ~.~ The Senatorial Diplomats. . Royden J. Dangerfield 359 ~ ~ What Is a Reasonable Legal Fee? Harry Hibschman 363 ~ (" ~~ THE LIBRARY: ~ ~ Report on Rugged Proletarianism Ernest Boyd 367 ~ This Business of War . John W. Thomason, Jr. 369 What Is Mussolini? . . Lawrence Dennis 372 ~ The Brotherhood of Orpheus. . William Rose Benet 375 b) ~ Bertrand Russell's Searchlight . George Santayana 377 ~ ~ The Masculine Era. . Agnes Repplier 379 f:s: ~ Briefer Mention . 38 1 ~..dI r ~~ THE CONTRIBUTORS . 383 ~ ~ ~ CHECKLIST IV N ~ RECORDED MUSIC. Irving Kolodin XIV ~

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The American MERCURY

THREE YEARS OF DR. ROOSEVELT

BY H. L. MENCKEN

u ACKS are always friendly and in­ no one will complain save his orphans and gratiating fellows, and not infre­ creditors; if it be God's will that he should Q quently their antics are very amus­ get well, then he will sign a testimonial ing. The Hon. Franklin D. Roosevelt, that you cured him. Here, obviously, we LL.D., is typical of the species. There has have the basic metaphysic of the Nevv Deal. never been a more amiable President, not It began with a din of alarming blather even excepting the Martyr Harding, and about the collapse of capitalism, the ruin there has never been a better showman, of the Republic, and the imminence of rev­ not even excepting Roosevelt 1. He likes to olution, and it is ending with clairns that have confident, merry people about him, the failure of these catastrophes to come oft and to turn the light of a Christian Science has been due to the n1edicaments of Dr. smile upon the snares and ambuscades of Roosevelt and his Brain Trust. In neither his job. So characteristic is this smile that half of this imposture is there any truth when, after the Dred Schechter decision whatsoever. The disease, in fact, was not a last May, he appeared at a press conference tenth as bad as the patient was induced to with a Mussolini frown, the Washington believe, and the medicines administered to correspondents were so upset that they him were almost wholly fraudulent and in­ rushed out to ~pread the report that he had effective. If he now staggers toward recov­ gone mashuggah. ery, it is not because of them, but in spite But quackery, of course, also has its sober of them. The money that he laid out for side, and the principles thereof may be them was all wasted, and.the most he can traced back to the childhood of the human show for taking them is an empty pocket race~ First, scare your patient into believing and a demolished stomach. that the pain in his tummy is the begin­ Quacks, of course, enjoy very little prac­ ning of cancer, and then sell him some­ tice in contented families. There has to thing to warm him vvhile the vis medica­ be some failure of function in the regular trix naturce does its immemorial work. If practitioner before they get their chance. it be God's· will that he should die, then In the instant case that failure was large 2.57 THE AMERICAN MERCURY

and wide. The unfortunate Hoover went an infant moth, dazzled by its hrst flame" into the White House with the reputation Yet the Han. Mr. Glass, for all his congen­ of a profound philosopher; he left it with ital doubts, believed that Dr. Roosevelt the reputation of a wrecked engineer. really meant it, and especially the part re­ Both estimates of him were considerably lating to the chastity of the dollar. And so exaggerated, and it may be that the second believing, he rose from a sickbed to im­ was· more exaggerated than the first. He pregnate the air.with the happy news, and did set up the Reconstruction Finance Cor­ as a result the last argument for Hoover poration, the only agency of relief and re­ vanished, and Roosevelt was elected by an form that has ever shown any sign of work­ unprecedented majority. ing. It may be that if he had been Was Dr. Glass hoodwinked? Was he re-elected he would have thought of some taken for a ride, his shirt-tail flying in the other ones, and among them some good wind? It is, as I hint, hard to think so. In ones. But the speculation is vain, for his those days, in truth, Dr. Roosevelt was chance never came. The country was too probably full of a quite honest determina­ scared to retain him any longer. What it tion to give the country rational and con­ yenned and yowled for was the massive stitutional government, and to keep the reassurance of quackery,. and that is what maximso£ Benjamin Franklin hanging on it got. As Hoover went out the More his wall. There is plenty of evidence for it, Abundant Life came in. and very little· against it. His mood actually There is some reason for believing that lasted over election day, and even beyond Dr. Roosevelt, at the time of his nomina­ the end of the year. How else are you to tion, had a leaning toward what may be account for his choice of the Hon. Thomas called ethical practice. He had done plenty J. Walsh as his Attorney-General? Walsh, of quacking to get that nomination, but to be sure, passed publicly as a liberal, but now that he had it, he talked in highly he was certainly anything but a radical. On orthodox terms. The budget would have Sundays he served Yahweh as a pious to· be balanced. There would have to be a Catholic puritan, but his week-day fetish clean"ing out of useless jobholders - by was the Constitution, and he could no more moral suasion, if possible, but if not, then brook contempt of. it than he could brook with lengths of hose filled with BB shot. contempt of the Holy Saints. It is impos­ Above all, the dollar would have to be pro­ sible to imagine him conniving at any of tected, that Unde Sam might go shaving the non-constitutional chicaneries that were in the morning without blushing at his so soon to be brought to Washington by own face. the young professors. The very thought of Was all this mere campaign hooey, them would have set him to yelling murder, hollow buncombe, transparent hypocrisy? and he'd have combatted them with all the I think not. It would have been easy to horrible ferocity of an Irishman in a fool the newspapers and the general run shindy, and all the learning and eloquence of Americanos, for they were in a be­ of a really great advocate. lieving mood and· ready to swallow any~ If Walsh had lived for another year or thing, but how about fooling the Han. two, the Supreme Court would never Carter Glass of Virginia? There you "had a have had to swim ashore through those flinty old party whose mind reeked with greasy rollers of alphabetical soup. He skepticism. He was to a fox as a fox is to would have heaved every tureen of it out THREE YEARS OF DR. ROOSEVELT 2.59

of the window as fast as the pedagogues unusual severity seize them, sometimes and non-constitutional lawyers brought it fall into hysteria and panic, and get out in, and if the Fuhrer had sought to stay of hand. There is, commonly, no cure for him he would have resigned his portfolio, their distress save time, and they refuse to taken to the stump, and either intimidated wait, so the wise statesman resorts to the Administration into commonsense quackery, thus putting them at their ease and common decency or wrecked it out of until nature can do its work. Abraham hand. But Walsh's Sunday God, for rea­ Lincoln was not above this trick, and I sons that must remain inscrutable, had see no reason why we should burn Dr. business for him in Havana, Cuba, and Roosevelt at the stake because, in those on his way back from that insalubrious first phrenetic days of his Adm.inistration, port he departed this life. His exitus re­ he made use of it. leased the furies. Roosevelt reverted in­ It both worked and didn't work. The stantly to his natural and more comfort­ bank holiday, when its assets and liabili­ able quackery, and soon was shining be­ ties are counted up at last, will probably fore the world as the boldest and most pre­ turn out to have paid expenses and no posterous practitioner of modern times. more. There is no reason to believe that But here, I think, we had better be char­ the net loss of the bank depositors of the itable again. Isn't it possible to argue that, country would have been either larger or as things stood on March 4, 1933, no other smaller if the wobbly banks had been al­ course was feasible? I am willing to say so. lowed to bust, and the good ones had been The dying agonies of the Republican Ad­ let alone. There were banks that were able ministration had got the country into a to pull themselves out of insolvency dur­ really dreadful state of mind, and it was ing the moratorium, and there were others probably beyond help from the pharma­ that were shoved into insolvency by its copoeia. It craved and needed the larger attending rumors and alarms. The NRA, doses, the stronger assurances, the consol­ I incline to think, was clearly more success­ ing whoop-de-doodle of quackery, and if ful, at least in its early stages. The theory these had been denied, it might have come behind it, though unsound, nevertheless down with genuine fits. This situation is had a considerable plausibility, and to its certainly not unknown to the faculty of execution there was brought a degree of physic. There are times when a patient's demagogic talent seldom available to a demand for·medication runs well ahead Christian government on this earth. Part of the power of science to supply him with of that talent was Dr. Roosevelt's own: he rational remedies, and every textbook of reached, in the spring of 1933, his profes­ practice winks at the administration of sional apogee, his apex as a virtuoso. But placebos, which are substances "given for a great deal more of it was supplied by the purpose of pleasing or humoring the Brigadier-General Hugh S. Johnson, J.D. patient, rather than for their therapeutic - in private life only Barney Baruch's effect". The common placebo is a bread stooge, but in his public capacity a rabble­ pill, but I have known perfectly reputable rouser of magnificent and indeed almost resurrection men to prescribe Wine of Car­ incomparable gifts. dui or Peruna. The same device also has It is too bad that Mark Sullivan has its uses in statecraft. The plain people, closed his history of our times with the year when social and economic bellyaches of 1925, for the events of the summer of 1933 2.60 THE AMERICAN MERCURY would give him the most enchanting of all and spare underwear, and flocking en his volumes. The problem before the Gen­ tuasse to the mountain tops of the Medi­ eral· was to hustle, bump, and kick the terranean littoral, their mouths agape and great masses of the plain people up from their hearts aflame. the Slough of Despond to the topmost roof.. Unluckily, it couldn't last. The NRA gardens of the New Jerusalem, and to that was already sick before Christmas, 1933. patriotic· business he brought a technic so During 1934 its symptoms suddenly became stupendous that the historian can only con­ alarming, and the General discreetly template it in a boozy sort of silence, like cleared out, leaving the Han. Donald R. that of Cortez upon his peak in Darien. Richberg, LL.B.,· author of The Shadow Do you recall the glittering parades Men, In the Dark, and other such occult through the streets that hot August, with books, to stave off the inevitable coroner's bands braying, prominenti of all wings ex­ jury. On May 27, 1935, at the stroke of posing themselves in open autonlobiles, and noon, the Supreme Court slipped a silken the vulgar sweating hope from every pore? cord around the invalid's neck, and the Do you recall the General's thrilling yells., nine learned justices gave a mighty yo­ whoops, shrieks, bayings, bellowings, heave-ho. It was the end. snarls, barks, miaows, and other ejacula­ tions? Do you recall his threats against II backward-lookers - to crack down on them with icepicks, to kick them violently But men who die often leave children be­ in the pants, to chase them up the alley hind them, and so do sure-cures for all the and over the fence, to pursue them relent­ sorrows of the world. The. first success of lessIy to their sinister dens and there pull the NRA had been so vast, at least to out­ out their legs, bash in their skulls, and ward appearance, that it 'set the whole tone throw their carcasses to the clogs? of the Roosevelt Administration. Almost It was the World War all over again, overnight all rational plans for dealing with but with improvements born of experi­ the depression were abandoned, and re­ ence and the gradual unfolding of the course was had to the dizzy devices of pure

General's unparalleled genius. < Every les­ and unadulterated quackery. Nothing more ser quack in America was emancipated, was heard about such homely enterprises loaded with fresh gas, and turned loose as balancing the budget, getting rid of to help. The rhetoricians of Rotary supernumerary jobholders, and protecting emerged from cold storage, rubbed their the dollar. Instead, we began to hear of eyes, and waded in. The clergy began cat­ grandiose projects for Wiping out every erwauling as if the Kaiser were at large ache and blemish of civilization at one again, and ripe to be hanged again. The herculean swoop. Wizards of the highest newspapers all turned tabloids, with head­ amperage, it appeared, were at hand to lines reaching half-way down their front do the job, and they were armed with new pages. In brief, great gusts of the banal and. infallible arcana. They knew more lunacy called idealism rocked the country, about everything under the sun than any­ and hope became an endemic and zymotic body else under the sun; they were masters disease. Utopia had never come closer to of all the orthodox arts and sciences, and earth since that far-oft day when the early of a dozen new ones that they had in­ Christians began selling their kitchen ~ear vented themselves; their minds moved rna.. THREE YEARS OF DR. ROOSEVELT 2.61 jestic and imperturbed in the face of to his ruin they were soon bringing the chaos, like that of Omnipotence Itself. full force of the national government. These wizards, we were told, would solve There is no need to review their opera­ all the problems that harassed the country. tions in detail. To make a complete report They would give us a Planned Economy, on them, indeed, would probably be impos­ scientific in every detail, and out of it sible, for many of them have been carried would flow the More Abundant Life, with on surreptitiously, and are known only by everyone rich and happy, and the very vague rumor. No one can say precisely birds in the trees singing hallelujah. where they are in progress, or what they Well, what did these wizards turn out have cost. I shall content tnysel£ with a to be, once they had got into the ring? brief account of the embryology, anatomy, They turned out to be the sorriest mob of and pathology of a major Brain Trust en­ n10untebanks ever gathered together at one terprise, the Civil Works Administration, time, even. in Washington. The best of the predecessor of the current Works them were seen to be only professional up­ Progress Administration. The basic facts lifters and do-gooders, trained in no craft I take from the New Republic and the more respectable than that of cadging and Nation, both of them ardent heralds of the spending other people's money. And from New Day. The New Republic first: this maximum they ranged quickly down­ In the Autumn of 1933, after General ward to a miscellaneous rabble of vapid Johnson and his Blue Eagle had done their young pedagogues, out-of-work Y.M.C.A. part, business began rapidly to decline. secretaries, third-rate journalists, briefless On a train coming back from a social lawyers, and soaring chicken-farn1ers. In workers' meeting, Harry L. Hopkins and his .assistant, Aubrey Williams, discussed the ''\Thole outfit there was hardly a· man with apprehension the coming Winter. who had ever reached solid distinction in ... Hopkins said: "Let's take a real crack any recognized profession or trade. They at this. Let's give everyone a job." The were, at the top, poor dubs; at the bottom, title, the Civil Works Administration, was they were blatant and intolerable idiots. contributed by Jacob Baker. Their arcana were stale mixtures of all the And novv the Nation: quackeries vended in the backwaters of the It is characteristic of Hopkins that he country since the Civil War, from Free wasted no time meditating·upon the stu­ rev~ Silver to the Single Tax, and their meth­ pendous problems and conflicts such a 01 utionary scheme might engender. He ods were those of wart-removers at county talked it over with his aides - Baker, fairs since the time when the memory of Williams, and Corrington Gill - and from man runneth not to the contrary. their discussions there emerged an equally On one point only did they appear to brief memorandum outlining the scheme. agree, and that was on the point that With this memorandum in hand he trotted off to the White House one Wednesday any man who worked hard at some use­ afternoon in November. He went merely ful task, husbanded his money prudently, to enlist Roosevelt's interest. He expected and tried to provide some security for to be told to develop the idea and come his old age and some heritage for his back with a fuller outline. He still ex­ children was a low and unmitigated scoun­ pected that when he left the White House drel, with no rights in law or equity. This that evening. But it so happened that he had caught the New Deal Messiah in one fellow was the central villain of the ob­ of his periods of infatuation with the scene farce that they began to mum, and spending art, and I-Iopkins literally woke THE AMERICAN MERCURY

up the next morning to discover that on the spur of the moment, it was put into Roosevelt without further ado had pro­ execution without any attempt to deter­ claimed the CWA in effect. mine its probable effects and consequences - and it blew up within six months, re­ Read these quotations two or three times, turning millions to unemployment, and and then give sober consideration to what leaving the taxpayer to make good a deficit they have to tell you about the true na­ of more than $1,000,000,000. It would be ture of the prevailing Planned Economy. impossible to imagine a more dismal fail­ Two preposterous nonentities, one of them, ure, or a more reckless and wanton waste in secular life, a professional uplifter and of other people's money. The thing was the other an obscure newspaper reporter, completely asinine from start to finish. It are returning from a junket at your ex­ was conceived by quacks and executed by pense and mine. They 1011 comfortably in fools, and there was no more sense in it a club-car, munching peanuts and t~lking than you will find in a comic strip or a shop. Their sale business in life is getting college yell. > And when it flopped, what rid of other people's money, and their only was the next move of the Brain Trust? care is finding ways to do it. Suddenly one The next move was to. demand $4,800,000,­ of them thinks of a new plan. It is vast 000 to try it 'all over again, with the same and vague, but it will apparently dispose Hopkins once more in charge. But this of endless millions, so they embrace it with time he had an associate of flag rank to loud hosannas. A few days later they take help him - the celebrated Harold L. Ickes, it to the White House, expecting, ob­ LL.D., of Chicago, Public Savior NO.2. viously, to have to explain it, argue for it, Alas, the two were soon hauling and maul­ defend it. But no explanations are called ing each other in a furious manner, to the for: it is put into execution instantly, and distress of their old buddy, Dr. Raymond sight unseen. Within a week a huge or­ Maley, now working for Vincent Astor. I ganization of jobholders is scratched to­ quote from an editorial in Today: gether to carry it out, and by December Teamwork at Washington >has not been 1 more than 1,000,000 beneficiaries are on encouraging. ... The suspicion will not the payroll. By January 18 the number down that there is serious lack of co­ reaches 4,100,000. Meanwhile, press agents ordination, partly due to clashing personali­ work in eight-hour shifts to tell a panting ties and divergent views, partly to the in­ country what it is all about. The depres­ herent clumsiness of the present set-up. sion, it appears, is being given its coup de Lack of co-ordination? Clashing person- grace. In six months there will be no more alities? Diverging views? Inherent clumsi. unemployment, the wheels of industry will ness of the set-up? This in a Planned be spinning everywhere, and the More Economy? This in Utopia? This at the Abundant Life will be on us. The New hands of omnipotent and infallible wizards Deal has achieved its masterpiece, and who were to repeal all the sempiternallaws reached its perihelion. Brains have at last of human nature, abolish poverty from the conquered fear.. Republic, destroy privilege, reorganize in­ Here was the Rooseveltian Planned dustry, remake the government, and bring Economy in perfect flower: one could in the New Day? What Moley really says seaJch for days without finding a better here, of course, is that the wizards were specimen of it. The scheme was concocted only arrant and undiluted charlatans, and THREE YEARS OF DR. ROOSEVELT that their wizardry was and is only a clesiastics, small-town department-store ex­ rowdy struggle for power. And that is the ecutives, professors in bush league univer­ simple truth. There is not a man in the sities, and miscellaneous neighborhood whole outfit who is worth the powder it busybodies. But the most diligent search would take to blow him up. They are, one fails to reveal the three master-minds, and all, flagrant and incurable asses, and Baker, Williams, and Gill. All of them lie the higher their rank in the hierarchy of below the threshold of admission. There bqncombe, the more patent their asininity. is a Baker who is chairman of a patriotic The one character that really shines monument society, and another who is as­ forth from all of them is that which I sociate secretary of a Baptist board of edu­ have mentioned: their implacable hatred of cation, but the ineffable Jacob is non est. every man who is able to earn an honest There is a Williams who is a lady uplifter and decent living in the world, and has in­ down in the Corn Pone Belt, and another dustry enough in his bones to want to do who is a professor at a bucolic "uni­ it, and beyond that asks only to be let versity", but no Aubrey. Nor is there a alone. This man has been the special target Corrington among the Gills, though eight of their piratical forays and objurgations of that ilk are there, including one who is ever since Dr. Roosevelt dragged them out an Elk, a Knight of Pythias, and a Wood­ of their natural obscurity and set them in man of the W orld. In brief, the wizards places of power. He is the natural enemy of who concocted that crazy scheme to waste every college jackanapes who glows pinkly a billion of the taxpayers' dollars were and whenever a better man is passed over him, are of no visible dignity or standing at all. of every young Harvard LL.B. who hunts They are complete ciphers, judged by any for clients and doesn't find them, of every reasonable human standard, and in all professional uplifter who tires of cadging their manipulations of their fantastic power his salary week after week and longs for they have run exact!y true to type. a key to the Mint. One and all, these are Of such sort are the "trained experts" shabby fellows, toters of inferiority com­ '\tvho were to have brought in the More plexes, natural zeroes, and. one and all Abundant· Life. Their pretensions are as they hate their betters for being their bet­ utterly bogus as those of Lydia Pinkham or ters, and for no other reason whatsoever. Dr. Munyon. They possess no useful talent Let us examine, as fair specimens, the of any kind, and seem to be quite inca­ four who, according to the Nation and the pable of anything colorably describable as New Republic, were responsible for the sober judgment. To hand over to such in­ Civil Works Administration. They appear candescent vacuums the immensely difficult to be Hopkins, Williams, Baker, and Gill. and complicated problems which now con­ Only one of them is of sufficient bulk and front the country is as insane as it would beam· to have reached the very modest em­ be to hand over a laparotomy to a traffic inence of inclusion in Who's .Who in cop. They are completely incompetent, not America, and that one is Hopkins. Who's only for public affairs of the first magni­ Who is so hospitable to talent, however tude, but also for all save the most trivial meager, that it gives space in its current of private affairs. Hopkins, before his edition to no less than 31,081 head of apotheosis, was a collector for the Red Americans, male and female, including Cross, and after that a ballyhoo man for hundreds of one-book authors, fifth-rate ec- other such noisy organizations - jobs call- THE AMERICAN MERCURY ing only for the statistical fervor of a life ing the hard-earned money of the people insurance solicitor and the evangelical and relieving the! from their appalling smile of a Y.M.C.A. secretary. How the burden of taxatio , he has thrown away Salvation Army missed him I do not know. billions to no usef 1 end or purpose, and Wallace, another great star in the troop of has piled up a debt! that it will take genera­ jitney Marxes, was the unsuccessful editor tions to discharge. !(\nd instead of appoint­ of a farm paper. Ickes was a professional ing conscientious ~nd intelligent officials, public nuisance in Chicago. La Perkins he.has saddl.e.d the IIountry with a camorra was a lady uplifter, and a shining orna­ of quarrelling era kpots, each bent only ment of that appalling clan. Tugwell, as to upon prospering h s own brand of quack­ one half of him, was a member of the ery and augmentin his own power. There order of inferior pedagogues, and as to the has never been a m ment when he showed other, one of the kept idealists of the New any serious regard or the high obligations Republic. Descend to the lower ranks and lying upon him. he greatest President you come upon a truly astounding rabble since Hoover has c rried on his job with an of impudent nobodies, with a huge swarm ingratiating grin u· on his face, like that of of Jim Farley'sdeserving Democrats filling a snake-oil vendor t a village carnival, and the background. Not· all the "trained ex­ he has exhibited ~recisely the same sense perts", it appears, are Harvard lawyerettes, of responsibility in morals and honor; no crammed with a more scientific conception more. of the Constitution than the nine old vil­ If signs count f. r anything, the jig is lains on Capitol Hill. At least one of them, now nearly up. T ere has been a tremen­ it. turned out some time ago, owes his de­ dous shift in publi sentiment during the gree to a "college" of chiropractic! For the past year, and it egins to look probable job in hand, he is really the best grounded that not all the bi! ions of the late AAA, of them all. the WPA, and th rest of them, and not all the nefarious sc ence of Jim Farley, by III Tammany out of t eAnti-Saloon League, will suffice to sav the More Abundant The blame for this dreadful burlesque of Life next Novemb r. Whether Dr. Roose­ civilized government is to be laid at the velt himself is awar of this I do not know. door of the Han. Mr. Roosevelt, and at If a realization of i seizes him he may be his door alone. He is directly and solely trusted to turn his coat with great precip­ responsible for every dollar that has been itancy, as he did a the issues of Prohibi­ wasted, for every piece of highfalutin rub­ tion, sound mane , and government ex­ bish that has been put upon the statute penditure. There .s, to give it a polite books, and for the operations of every name, a fine resili nce in him; he keeps mountebank on the public payroll, from his principles fluid, ike the assets of a well­ the highest to the lowest. He was elected to managed bank. If e became convinced to­ the Presidency on his solemn promise to morrow that comi g out for cannibalism carryon the government in a careful and would get him the otes he so sorely needs, sensible manner, and to put only compe­ he would begin. fa~ening a missionary in tent men in office. He has repudiated that the White House bfckyard come Wednes­ promise openly, deliberately, and in the day. Having made: the mess, he will vol­ most cynical manner. Instead of safeguard- unteer heroically for the job of cleaning it A BOXER CALLED PANTHER 2.65 up. But my guess, strongly supported by a that, if they can beat him at all, which far from subconscious wish, is that the seems most likely, they can beat him with great masses of American freemen, includ­ a Chinaman, or even a Republican. ing even multitudes now on t.hc innu1ner­ The only issue is Roosevelt. Is he a hero, able doles, will decide by :r~ovember that as his parasites allege, or a quack, as I have some other scavenger - indeed, any other argued here? The answer will be heard scavenger - will be safer. There was a on election day. Every vote will be cast time when the Republicans were scouring either for him or against him. His oppo­ the country for a behemoth to pit against nent will be only the residuary legatee, the him. Now they begin to grasp the fact innocent bystander.

A BOXER CALLED PANTHER

BY REVEL DENNEY

HE girls who made that fighting body love T Remember how his biceps pushed the glove. He was the bloody scholar of hot speed, Footloose, shifty, quick to lead,

But swifter yet to dodge and weave the blows, Or pivot the lighted canvas on sure toes. Relaxing now his ruined tendons lie Whose art was calorie braided into eye.

Take up your hats and go, fat gentlemen, Those eyes will never judge the hooks again. Let you go back and yield up to your wives Your youth, your clerkish labor and your lives;

'Vhen Father Mike. has sped the lifting soul, Relight cigars, the subway is your goal. And wax will guard those level thighs again When you are lost within the city rain. Now ask about the body, as each goes- That handy frame on which you hang your clothes, And as you reach your own address and smile, Pause once, and listen there a while, As for a jaguar· roving on that stair, Death balanced on his eager haunches there. ARE THE CAPITALISTS ASLEEP?

BY HAROLD LORD VARNEY

OT since Great Britain, Mother of fully comprehended the confused state into Propaganda, let loose on pre-war which their capitalist enemies have fallen, N America that flood of crusading they would now be whooping up even gospel which was ultimately successful in more savage assaults upon the structure of bringing two million American fighting democratic government, in the name of men to her aid, has the voice of a purpose­ Karl Marx, the New Deal, and the More ful minority been so clamorous as is the Abundant Life. But the Comrades, of battle cry of our obstreperous radicals course, are not so astute. Nevertheless, their today. Never before has such a subversive propaganda continues to be the loudest, if ideology been listened to so soberly or not the most effective, in the political and broadcast so widely and with such little op­ economic arena today. If they never accom­ position. This current clamor for Utopia­ plish anything else, the radicals, basking in in-America would alone constitute a phe­ the refulgence of Dr. Roosevelt's Thirty­ nomenon worthy of the attention of every Billion-Dollar Smile, have succeeded in sober student of human stupidity, were it stirring up the most overwhelming din not for the even more extraordinary per­ ever to assail the eardrums of a country formance of the capitalist class itself. Al­ which is profoundly conservative at heart. though tarred and feathered daily since the There are several explanations for the crash of 1929, the average American cap­ strange controversial weakness of the con­ italist has consistently refused to lift a pro­ servative camp. First in importance may be test in defense of his abilities, his accom­ cited the capitalist's sublime confidence in plishments, or his traditions. The picture of the perpetUity of his system. To him there high-pressure capitalism as a powerful is no Left-wing problem. And, obviously, force ruthlessly directed by magnetic minds there is no necessity for defending the pres­ has proved to be only a katzenjammer of ent order if its supporters are happily un­ the radicals' imagination. No such domi­ aware that it is endangered. Living in a neering army, flaunting the banner of Big house of looking glasses, they are benignly Business, exists: its potential leaders are unconscious of the social and intellectual hiding under flower-pots in storm cellars, forces seething outside. Prior to the New and its panicky ranks have scattered be­ Deal, the majority of businessmen, on fore the onslaught of a ragged handful of those rare occasions when they cont~m­ Reds. plated their system, thought of capitalism Indeed, the ease with which radical as a vast self-balancing entity which, in its propaganda. has captured the publicity broader aspects, was virtually automatic. spotlight must have astounded the Left­ It was not something to worry aboUt or to wing chieftains themselves: for if they safeguard; it was not a topic for contro- 1.66 ARE THE CAPITALISTS ASLEEP? versy. Wrapped in this complacency, it was "capitalistic system". It is only the contin­ inevitable that business executives should uous usage of the phrase by radical think. feel nothing but contempt for their radical ers during the last four decades which has critics. Individually, the Reds were un- finally driven industry to accept the cate... important fellows, seldom encountered at gory. Instinctively, the businessman thinks clubs, business conferences, or social affairs. of himself in terms of steel, or coal, or The instinctive reaction of the average cap­ motor cars, or electric power. His energies italist, until the last few years, has been to are devoted to the aggrandizement. of the shrug his shoulders at mention of the rad­ specific economic group to which he be­ icals and to murmur platitudes about longs, often at the expense of other groups, bomb-thro\vers and cranks. and not infrequently at the expense of the The advent of Franklin D. Roosevelt, system as a whole. Such a step as general with his disorderly economic policies and mobilization in defense of a particular in­ his startling elevation of Utopian minne­ dustry under attack by the collectivists ap. singers to high office, did something to les­ pears, to him, to be almost fantastic. sen this assurance. Overnight, the New Beyond the passage of denunciatory reso­ Deal transformed the revolution from a lutions by such organizations as the Cham­ myth into a challenge. Unquestionably ber of Commerce of the United States or there is less arrogance and self-confidence the National Industrial Council, and half­ among American business leaders today hearted financial support of the Republican than at any time since the establishment party, there is little disposition on the part of the Republic. There is, too, less disposi­ of American business to interest itself in tion to deny the radical menace. But un­ anything outside its own bailiwick. fortunately, this state of mind has. done A sound illustration of this unconcern little to. further an honest comprehension was presented during the fight over the of social realities. Capitalists have become Wheeler-Rayburn utilities bill in the first more militant under the Roosevelt goad­ session of the present Congress. Anyone ing, but not more intelligent. The self­ familiar with the long campaign waged by confident executive who, a few years ago, such organizations as the Public O\vner... laughed at the suggestion that collectivism ship League, the People's Lobby, and the could ever seriously menace America, is National Popular Government League now prone to swing to the other extreme would comprehend that the proposal to and to talk pugnaciously about vigilantes bring all holding companies under federal and the suppression of radicals by law. But regulation was the first step in an elabo- he is still unwilling to face the fact that rate plan to detach the thirteen-billion... radicalism is an incalculable force in dollar utility industry from the free enter... America, and that it can only be halted by prise system and transfer it to the area of a capitalism which is intellectually capable collectivism. Whatever the past shortcom­ of pleading and proving its case before the ings of some of the companies, there could jury of American public opinion. be no question that an astute capitalism A second rnajar reason for the inaction would have rallied its full strength to halt of conservatives is the fact that the leaders this perilous New Deal program. Victory of business are by no means a unit in oppos­ for the government would surely constitute ing the collectivist drift. Few businessmen a precedent to embolden the collectivists to think of themselves as components of a further raids upon free enterprise. 2.68 THE AMERICAN MERCURY

Yet what actually happened? There was tom of radicals with the martyr complex, no militant invasion of Washington by Upton Sinclair, for instance, to lament business leaders to serve notice uponpoli­ loudly the power and malevolence of the ticians that the legislation was preposter­ "capitalist press". One of the most success­ ous. The utility men were left to }lght it ful platform tricks of the radical speaker out virtually unaided, and in the end, they is to protest tearfully against the censorious lost. It is illustrative of the parochialism of iniquity of capitalist thought-control. A American business that the one major force listener receives the impression that a cap­ which did rally against the Roosevelt pol­ italist monitor stands like Cerberus guard­ icies was the bituminous coal industry. But, ing the gate of every avenue of public characteristically, the motive of the coal information. But the irony of the situation operators did not concern the future of is that the propaganda power of the rad~ free enterprise. They attacked the New ical movement today is probably many Deal program because the encouragement times as effective as all the vaunted instru­ of hydro-electric power would narrow the mentalities of capitalism. It is true, of market offered by steam plants for bi­ course, that capitalist pressure can be con­ tuminous coal. centrated with devastating strength in the The timidity of many corporation ex­ face of specific situations - a threatened ecutives is largely the result of the passing local strike:, a national war crisis, a political from the modern scene of the promoter and assassination, etc. - yet there is no contin­ proprietor type of industrialist. The system uous vigilance on the.-part of capitalist pub­ has been virtually emasculated by the dis­ licity agencies to combat .the broader appearance of these vigorous, robust figures challenge of the collectivist drive. The who founded its units and became the sym­ counter-attacks are only intermittently ef. bols of American capitalism. The men now fective. Except in rare crises, capitalist prop· at the helm are primarily concerned with aganda is outgeneralled, outmanned, and the maintenance of their jobs by assuring outmaneuvered by its opponents on every an uninterrupted dividend to stockholders; front. It may seem paradoxical that a small their minds run to stabilization rather than radical minority could be capable of such to political struggle. It is inevitable that a feat. The explanation, however, is that such leaders should be disinterested in con­ capitalism fails to maintain a staff of pro­ troversy with radical propagandists. Pas­ fessional intellectual shock-troops compara­ sively, they may sympathize with the forces ble to the enemy propagandists. Instead, combating the socialist tide; but this sym­ it depends upon untrained and irrespon­ pathy is not translated into action or sible volunteers to combat talented men support. Confronted by a Left-wing and women who have devoted a lifetime movement of fanatical enthusiasts and to polemics. In short, it is the old and propagandists, capitalism, insofar as the unequal battle of the amateur against the typical corporation head symbolizes it, of­ professional. fers only an opposition of cold, spasmodic The capitalist position has become even ineffectiveness. more vulnerable as a result of the extent Resulting from these deep-rooted states to which most of the large corporations of mind is the third cause of capitalism's have encumbered themselves in recent polemic impotence-the fact that it has no years with high-salaried public relations staff of trained propagandists. It is the ellS- counselors who have entrenched themselves ARE THE CAPITALISTS ASLEEP? in posItIons of virtual control over' the say that the best natural propagandic abil­ publicity policies of American business. ity of the country is now gravitating to the There are few large industries which do various radical movements. Nor is it sur­ not carry a $30,000 or $40,000 a year vice­ prising that this has happened. YDung men president whose primary function is to and women who possess a flair for contro­ make publicity decisions. U n£ortunately, versy and emotional politics find little the influence of most of these pompous scope for their talents on the capitalist experts, the medicine men of modern cap­ side. On the other hand, they find the in­ italism, is debilitating - with certain no­ stitutions of radicalism ready and eager to table exceptions - rather than inspiring. By exploit their capabilities, immediately upon gathering into their hands the control of their exit from college. If they are writers public policies, the counselors have stolen or artists, a score of enterprising radical the power of quick decision, in political magazines are cordially receptive to their matters, from the executives of Industry. earliest contributions. If their ability is agi­ Most of them, eager to safeguard their jobs, tational or oratorical, there are subsidized have found that the line of least resistance platforms eager to present them. The show­ is the negative line. They encourage their manship of radicalism assures them quick superiors in that attitude of indifference and certain publicity. Talented young and political inaction which now paralyzes people who would struggle for years for the system. Because they are engrossed only public recognition in conventional pursuits in problems affecting their own specific in­ can frequently attain national reputations, dustries, their counsel is usually for com­ almost overnight, by radical posturing. promise and conciliation, rather than for Even those of mediocre ability find ad­ aggression. The measure of· their mentality vancement easy, thanks to the widespread rnay be seen in the fact that almost the log-rolling and back-scratching which is whole clan of public-relations wizards fell practiced by radicals in all the arts. for the preposterous General Johnson and An amazing number of Left-wingers oc­ NRA in 1933, and were largely responsible cupy key positions today in literature and for the narcotic submission of American journalism. They stand at the portals of capitalism to the Blue Eagle in that psycho­ intellectual advancement in many profes­ pathic interlude. While there are a few sional fields. There is scarcely a so-called broad-visioned tacticians among them, the capitalist newspaper whose stafF is not majority are merely personable hand­ honeycombed with con1munist messiahs shakers. So long as they control the public who exercise an unrecognized veto power policies of capitalism, nothing but silence over the treatment of news. The book re­ and retreat can be anticipated. view departments of the leading news­ papers and magazines are notoriously in II the hands of Left-wingers who extol the pink and red authors and damn the repu­ In the face of this confused planlessness of tations of those who are persona non grata modern capitalism, it is small wonder that to radicalism. In this connection, it is sy~p­ the junta of revolutionary borers-from­ tomatic that the featured book reviewers, within has invaded the most vulnerable John Chan1berlain and Le\vis Gannett, of intellectual sectors of the nation's social the two leading conservative newspapers of order. It is probably no exaggeration to New York City, the Times and the Herald 2.7° THE AMERICAN MERCURY

Tribune, are men of outspoken radical stories and editorials. On the campus, re­ sympathies. gardless of the richness or mediocrity of In the theater, the same situation is de­ his scholastic attainments, he will have the veloping. Such radical-sponsored organi­ vociferous support of every fellow-member zations as the' Group Theater, the New of the radical coterie. Theater League, the Theater Union, and, How this professional log-rolling oper.. to some extent, the Theater Guild, offer ates was illustrated in the much-misunder­ extraordinary opportunities for early recog­ stood Bergel case at the New Jersey Col­ nition to sophomoric playwrights. When an lege for Women in New Brunswick last amateur radical dramatist such as Dr. John summer. The case was commonplace: it Haynes Holmes writes an inexpert If This involved the discharge, after a year's ad­ Be Treason, he secures production by the vance notice, of the junior professor of the Theater Guild and enjoys a blare of pub­ German Department on the grounds of licity from radical and liberal dramatic incompetence and inability to work with reviewers which secures national attention. his fellow teachers. Such events often occur It is superfluous to ask if an inexperienced in educational institutions, and usually conservative playwright of equal talent pass without comment by the press or pub­ could command such notoriety. lic. But. what differentiated the Bergel dis­ In many colleges and universities a sim­ charge was the fact that he had identified ilar intellectual kangaroo court is rapidly himself with the Left-wing of the faculty. becomIng the real arbiter of advancement. Upon receiving notice of his discharge, he In some instances, the radical faculty fac­ called in the American Civil' Liberties tion, always a small minority, virtually Union with the plea that he was being per­ rules the campus. Its power derives from secuted for his radical convictions. He the fact that its members are supported by a went further, and with the aid of the rad­ clique among the radical students and stu·· ical and liberal press of New york or.. dent organizations which no conservative ganized a counter-attack against Dr. F. J. professor enjoys. The radical educator finds Hauptmann, head of the German Depart­ the columns of the liberal and Left~wing ment,on the ground that the latter was a magazines open to his articles, and the Nazi. By radical pressure upon the sensi­ radical reporters and sub-editors of the tive, politically-appointed board of trustees, daily newspapers eager to aid his career by he turned accused into accuser and suc­ giving free publicity to his lectures or ceeded in having Dr. Hauptmann himself extra-curricular activities. Should the'rad­ brought into the dock to answer charges ical professor overstep the bounds of good before an investigating committee. The taste and find himself facing discipline New York newspapers carried columns of from his university board, the radical sensational publicity concerning the case. forces martyrize him as a victim to ideals. Leaving aside the question of Dr. Haupt.. The American Civil Liberties Union will mann's "Nazi-ism", which, whatever its supply him with high-powered lawyers, truthfulness, was of course a red herring, who will harry the university authorities the point to be noted is that Dr. Berge!, by until the action is dropped. The radical virtue of his radical identity, was able to and liberal newspapers, .as well as conserv­ achieve a wide sensation over a simple case ative dailies, will give him national pub­ of discharge for incompetence. He secured licity in highly-colored and favorable news the support of the American Civil Liber... ARE THE CAPITALISTS ASLEEP? ties Union, of two powerful New York There are extenuating reasons for this evening newspapers, of the Socialist and passivity. The men involved have no de­ Communist movements, of the teachers' sire to entangle themselves in controversies union, and similar organizations. One has where the capitalists themselves may be the merely to ask whether a conservative first to abandon them. They realize that if teacher, placed in a similar situation, would they encounter reprisals, the conservative have commanded equal support. ..• press will be the first to sensationalize the In the light of such happenings, it is not controversy and to picture it as a noble surprising that scores of young men and effort of "liberal" professors to safeguard women in literature, the arts, and the teach­ the college against "fascism". They realize ing profession are turning eagerly to radi­ that there is no agency on the patriotic side calism. They have discovered that a Left­ similar to the American Civil Liberties wing reputation is almost an open sesame Union, or no group of polemic conserva­ to swift advancement. Conversely, there tive magazines to present the true facts of are many intellectual environments wherein the case to the public. They know further it is unsafe to be an avowed opponent of that a teacher or writer who draws fire as radicalism. Like Dr. Hauptmann, an out­ an opponent of. the radical clique will find spoken anti-socialist is in danger of being himself blackballed thereafter in numerous framed by the radical clique as a Nazi, a fields of intellectual opportunity. If an fascist,or worse. As a result, conservative author, he will be discriminated against faculty members discreetly allow theirop­ by radical publishing house readers, radi­ ponents to go unanswered. cal reviewers on the magazines, radical A reflection of this intellectual reign of book-buyers for libraries, and radical book terror occurred recently in one of the great stores. If a lecturer, he will discover that educational institutions of the East. An lucrative booking organizations are closed eminent faculty member had won national to all except pink or red speakers, and that attention through his speeches and writ­ the interdict is particularly crushing in the ings against some of the more irrespon­ instance of a conservative who has been sible experiments of the New Deal. As a classified in radical categories as a Red­ member of the American Liberty League, baiter. Among conservatives, he will find he had spoken frequently in its behalf. little sympathy and much censure. His Presently the League became interested in stand will be misinterpreted as an example establishing student chapters in universities of unnecessary trouble-making. His logical where radicalism was strong, to offset the supporters will be disposed to accept what­ Marxian influence. As an outspoken con­ ever version of the controversy appears in servative, the professor was asked to spon­ the press, and to shrug their shoulders sor the formation of such a group. But his irresponsibly at the consequences. prompt reaction was to decline vehemently and to urge that the League drop his par­ III ticular institution from its program. His usefulness, he explained, '\Tould be de­ In the face of such cynical unconcern, it is stroyed if he were drawn into a controversy small wonder that the conservative men with the Left-wingers on his own faculty: and women of propagandic talent have there would be immediate reprisals, mak­ little inclination to take up cudgels against ing his university position untenable. the Left. The unconcern of capitalist lead- THE AMERICAN MERCURY ership is driving the very men and women tual challenge of the Left is beneath reply. who might constitute its intellectual Prae­ They must realize that in an age of social torian guard into the enemy's ranks. Para­ controversy, the existing order cannot hold doxically, it is more profitable today for an respect unless it defends itself with argu­ intellectual, unless he is content to enter ments as well as policemen. Mr. Roose­ the non-polemic field of advertising, to be velt's little raids upon the profit system, radical than it is for him to be conservative. inadequate as they may seem to the ortho­ There is less money at present for writers dox revolutionary, would have found few who defend capitalism and constitutional­ supporters had not the intellectual soil been ism than for those·who make the attacks. prepared during the preceding years by Much of the conservatives' short-sighted­ the continuous campaign against capital­ ness arises from the instinctive disdain ism in the national mind. Capitalism must which many wealthy industrialists feel for train and support inspired defenders. It the impecunious intellectual. Men whose must learn to riddle the superficialities of standard of social measurement does not the radical appeal by presenting itself, not reach beyond income are unable to com­ as an acquisitive, but as a dynamic, social prehend the vast powers exercised in a lit­ order. It must find drama as well as statis­ erate democracy by the educated minority. tics in its case. It must touch the emotional They fail to perceive that the fate of cap­ springs of the people, and it must offer to italism must be determined, in the final its adherents the same stirring sense of con­ analysis, by the loyalty of the intelligentsia. flict for human uplift which animates the It was George Soule who pointed out in marchers in the radical army. It must see The Coming American Revolution that, beyond materialism, humanizing its ap­ throughout history, the first signal of the peal to reach the vast army of the under­ passing of a ruling class has always been the privileged who are now groping toward desertion of its intellectuals. The Bourbons non-capitalist horizons. lost France not in the days of the Conven­ Such a slashing counter-offensive cannot tion, but in the preceding generation when be launched by the depressing mumblers the Encyclopedists shattered the old faith. who speak today in the name of capital­ The Romanoffs fell in Russia when the in­ ism. It cannot be waged by the racketeer­ telligentsia swung over almost unani­ ing type of anti...Red organization \vhich mously to the revolution. Likewise capital­ has fastened itself upon the conservative ism, despite its present vitality, may not public in so many communities. It must long survive the apostasy of its intellectuals. be undertaken by men who understand the It cannot maintain its morale while it is impulses which·cause other men to become held up to scorn in novels and magazines, radicals, and who have the underlying feel on the lecture platform, on the stage, in the of the social situation which they seek to classroom, and in the pulpits, by the most control. They must be controversialists articulate bellwethers of the time. It can­ who have the intellectual temper to com­ not endure if it loses the allegiance of the mand the fear of the Left. And finally, younger generation. they must have the full and sympathetic In order to survive, its leaders must support of American capitalism, or all their, awake from their dream that the intellec- efforts will be written in water. AN OPEN LETTER TO MR. JEFFERSON

Thomas 'efferson, Esq., Valhalla.

IR: It occurs to me that a report to you production, wouldn't it? Buggies are made on the state of the Union from some­ now mostly in regions of the Deep South Sone not seeking the political favor of where the condition of the roads is still your saintly patronage might lighten the discouraging to the motorist. The volume boredom of immortality. In any event, with of their sales depends on cotton prices. Is the progressive disintegration of a curious this recent increase not rather amusing in organism which we politely call the New light of our President's notion that it is the Deal under the blows of the Supreme destruction of the aforementioned New Court (remember?), the occasion for such Deal that is bringing back the "horse-and­ a report seems propitious; while in ad­ buggy" era? dressing it to you I shall escape the emo­ I am happy to inform you that the tional response which would be sure to President has refrained from greeting the follow its receipt by mere mortals. No recent decision against another of his doubt from your long and intimate ex­ favorite creations (AAA) with further perience of popular psychology in this reflections against this era of yours. His country you can recall periods when any rather petulant slur when the Supreme attempt at rational discussion of public af­ Court condemned that masterpiece of fairs was bound rather sooner than later to bureaucratic architecture (NRA), if it was bog down in a swamp of personalities and communicated to you in your retirement, prejudices. This is a period of the kind, so must have given you whatever passes for a I am asking that you, who can neither re­ pain ·in Valhalla, coming as it did from fute nor ridicule my discourse, lend me one who, by profession, is your disciple. an ear. Perhaps Mr. Roosevelt has since sensed the My excuse for picking on you among natural outrage to your feelings for which the heroes of our national infancy must be he was responsible, but I am afraid that fairly obvious. You were the actual in­ other reasons for his recent reticence pre­ ventor of the leather buggy-top which is dominated. Which brings me to a consid­ still the characteristic feature of that ster­ eration of current economic history. ling vehicle, and you are, therefore, with­ You must know, then, that following the out question the true father of the "horse­ demise and embalmment of NRA, the dire and-buggy" era. Incidentally, it should predictions of industrial chaos were not interest you to learn that buggy sales have fulfilled. On the contrary, shortly after the been increasing since 1932. One buggyman.. tragedy, business entered upon a beneficent ufacturer sold 900 last year. In your day spiral which, as I write, has not yet at­ that would have been considered mass tained its peak. Virtually all indices have 2.73 2.74 THE AMERICAN MERCURY shown improvement, including those for debt of $100,000,000 on which the govern­ the heavy industries, for employment, for ment paid interest to the "rich and well wholesale and retail trade, for security born". What do you think of one above prices, for car-loadings, for the consump­ $30,000,ooq,00o, most of it funded in tax­ tion of power and - well, I need hardly exempt securities which not only pay inter­ amplify the list. The taste of freedom from est to the "rich and well born" but provide the bureaucratic grip seems to have brought them with a means of escape from the tax­ to the body economic a mild intoxication gatherer? Instead of reducing the national which has found expression in the popular debt as you did by ((applying all the pos­ demand that if this be the "horse-and­ sible savings of the public revenue", the buggy" era, let's have more of it! That gentlemen in power today, who call upon sounds logical, doesn't it, Mr. Jefferson? your name to sanctify their policies, have Presidents, as you know, are supersti­ about doubled it, and the end is not yet. tious. It is quite conceivable that Mr. Roose­ Sounds a bit fantastic, does it not? velt associated his offensive remark with Meanwhile, if you think your friend its aftermath and hence feared to repeat it Hamilton managed to complicate the gov­ lest agriculture, released in its turn from ernment's bookkeeping "until the whole alphabetical harness, should duplicate the system was invo~ved in impenetrable fog", performance of industry. Suppose the vol­ kindly consider its condition at present, a ume of buggy sales in the South should condition which defies the penetration even increase again - wouldn't that supply the of those who devised it. You told Gal­ crowni.ng touch of irony to the President's latin you wanted to see "the finances of the reference? Union as clear and intelligible as a mer­ It grieves me to have to call to your at­ chant's books, so that every man of any tention the vast expenditures and prolifera­ mind in the Union should be able to com­ tion of federal bureaus voted by a Congress prehend them, to investigate abuses and under the domination of the party which consequently control them". The only man swears allegiance to your name. I am fa­ of any mind in the Union currently capa­ miliar with the fact that you began your ble of their comprehension is Dr. Albert administration by reducing governmental Einstein, ,but he is devoting all his energies expenditure and persisted in this course to other fields of astronomical research. until you had virtually cut it in half. You The apostasy of your disciples in these abolished the excise and various forms of respects is overshadowed, however, by their direct tax so that by· the end of your first stubborn efforts to control from Washing.. term you could say to your countrymen: ton the entire economy of the nation, to "It may be the pleasure and pride of an dictate the wages and hours of labor and American to a.sk what £ar~er, ,,,hat me­ the prices

BY SYDNEY GREENBIE

N THIS age of confused and visionary ment, known as the Black Dragon and political experimentation, when each the Blood Brotherhood and soshi, whose I nation is formulating its own peculiar ambition has been to bring the world back concept of the perfect state, when a jour­ to Oriental civilization. In the past sev­ nalist assumes the trappings of Caesar, enty years, she has not only achieved ab­ when a house-painter grasps at the mysti­ solute inner regimentation and a goodly cal dignity of a culture-hero, and when overlordship of a vast part of Asia, but the centuries of Romanoff rule culminate she has dreamed of world hegemony" in a military despot masked as a Comrade, physical and spiritual. As early as 1858, there is one nation whose belief in omnip­ five years after the Japanese door was otence is not wholly transient. Wielding opened by America, Lord Hotta declared over the mass-mind the power to which that "among the world's rulers (aside the current European dictators can only from Japan) there is none noble and aspire, Japan can point to seventy years of industrious enough to command univer­ majestic survival, during which it has su­ sal vassalage", and spoke of the "power perimposed upon a semblance of fascism and authority deputed to us by the Spirit the compulsions of a supreme but earth­ of Heaven". Similar statements have rung bound divinity. If the dictators of the down the years in ever-increasing paeans hour hope that in some future era they of self-praise, and have been instilled into will be revered as gods and their descend­ Japanese children from kindergarten age ants canonized, the Japanese are far ahead upward, so that the veriest infants feel of them: they have their god already that the Spirit of Heaven is actually resi­ made. Theirs is no dummy despot with dent amidst them in the person of their a ferv years' enthronement behind him; Emperor-God. Belief in him as divine is their Emperor is a godhead who disdains taught as fact, and the recalcitrant receives dictatorial privileges, for his claim to punishment that is sudden and telling. power is immemorial. Against it no voice What is required is not merely political of liberal or radical is seriously raised. Ja­ obedience to an absolute dictator, but vol­ pan is the one civilized country in which untary spiritual obeisance. It is not patriot­ there are virtually no political liberals, for ism alone; it is adoration of the Host. even the wisest and sanest, like the church Unless this religio-political sentiment is fathers of old, believe that reason should ab­ understood in all its ,implications of beauty, dicate before faith - faith in the unques­ wonder, and peril, Japan's ambitions and tionable divinity of the Emperor. achievements cannot be comprehended, Japan has her unofficial Ogpu and her nor can any contract made with Japan by Storm-Troopers and her Youth Move- the nations of the world be valid. Without 2.77 THE AMERICAN MERCURY it there can be no meeting of minds in fore the woodland shrines at Ise, sacred anything that concerns the land of the to the Emperor, seeing only the thatched Tenno. roof above the wall, in that face you read Here, without question, is one of the an experience which cannot be read in most extraordinary phenomena of the the skeptical face of the Chinese, the fanat­ nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Kings ical face of the Mohammedan, or the bel­ and emperors, ruling only by divine right, ligerent face of the fascist, frantic with have crashed from many thrones. Moham­ inner doubt and fear. Beneath this fanati­ med's sword. has grown dull. The Pope cism and divine fantasy, there is a asserts but slight temporal authority. Dic­ restrained self-abnegation, an exquisite tators banish priest and prophet, and only sadness that touches the most arrant unbe­ half-daringly exact obeisance as infallible; liever. One may stand in that still forest even Mussolini uses both King and Pope place,where, every twenty years· for twen­ as crutches to his power. But the Tenno ty-five centuries, the simple wooden shrine of Japan holds in his hands the lives of containing the most precious treasures in seventy million subjects, their souls and all Japan - the sacred sword, the mirror, their ancestors, not by divine right, but as and the jewel-has been rebuilt in exact divine power incarnate. Beauty, worship, replica of its first primitive model, and murder, repression, suicide, aggression­ there one may watch the thousands come, seventy million tongues of praise, seventy pause, and stare with wonder that the million hearts of worship, seventy million gods could have been so beneficent as to lambs of absolute submission, seventy mil­ allow them to see this with their own lion pigments of pageantry, seventy million eyes. One may stand in the square before swords of pride - a nation unified as no the Emperor's palace in Tokyo, lost in nation has ever been unified before in the reverence for the beauty of the scene - the person of one living man. No statesman's moat, calm and tranquil, upon the waters life is safe except in adoration.of the Em­ of which lie the sacred leaves of the lotus, peror who is god in a land that has no the mist spreading a heavenly unreality word for God; no man's life is worth any­ and weaving twisted pine and giant cryp­ thing to him except in the grace of that tomeria into a fretwork of incomparable Emperor. Though this story has trickled loveliness; the sound of a bugle in the far through to the Western world in innumer­ interior of Mikadoland, so gracious, so an­ able items, the full-sized portrait has never cient, so divine. Singly and in small yet been shown in all its might and mag­ groups, the Japanese come, stand bowed nificence. in prayer, and move on. Lost in the scene, Only he who has lived under the re­ the spectator is startled by a shrill whistle. fulgent glare of Tenno-worship can under­ The policeman, a block distant, has seen stand the power and the pathos of this one place a foot, unconsciously, on the submission. One looks into a withered, base of the wall, and furiously waves the wondering face of a Japanese, a face that offender away. And so the spectator has known perhaps little besides hunger, ~wakes to political realities. sweat, and a·beautiful landscape. It has For on this centuries-old sentiment of seen few marvels except such as sprout in the people for the Tenno, the present gov­ the rice paddies, or emerge, red and kick­ ernment builds a blind, fanatical, violent ing' from the womb. But as it stands be.. adoration, reinforced by every modern THE MAN-GOD OF JAPAN 279 mechanical means of propaganda and pun­ There is only a tip of the balance between ishment, and takes instant punitive meas­ adoration and self-sacrifice. The annals of ures against whoever even unwittingly Japan cry aloud with tales of self-n1urder. slights its Emperor-God. It has been de­ When a switchman delayed the train of creed that a newspaper which prints Im­ the Emperor two minutes, he committed perial Household without capital letters hara-kiri to atone for his crime. When, on shall be suppressed. No man, or stone im­ the way to the station, a tire of the Em­ age of a man, rnay be placed where either peror's motor car blew out, the chauffeur might be above the level of the Emperor committed suicide in penitence. Even the if he is passing. When the Emperor's car name of the Emperor is something to die goes by, all blinds must be. drawn in for. The name itself is so sacred that it is homes, no one may remain on balcony or not generally mentioned, and often has roof, workers on steel structures must not even been. known to the public; so scurry to the ground, blinds in streetcars when it chanced that a Japanese mayor must be drawn, and no person may stand named his son Yoshihito and it was dis­ upon even .an eight-inch doorstep. A covered that he had pre-empted the name striker once set himself atop a smokestack. of the Emperor, a protest arose which and nothing could bring him down until forced him to resign and to kill himself warned that the Emperor was to pass be­ in atonement. Suicide has even been re­ low and he would be washed to earth with sorted to in order to keep this god from a firehose if he did not descend. wandering abroad to lesser lands. Only Unlike the rest of the world, which puts once has any Japanese ruler left the sacred the faces of its rulers on its coins and islands of Nippon. When the present Em­ stamps, the Japanese believe that the coun­ peror, as Crown Prince, decided to repay tenance of the Tenno is too holy to be the visit of the Prince of Wales, people fingered by the multitudes. So sacrosanct prayed that the decision be revoked, and is the portrait of the Emperor that it may many committed suicide in an endeavor not be exposed to the public gaze; hence, to keep the Sacred Person safely at home. until recently, pictures of their Majesties were covered with tissue paper at all II stores. In schools the royal portraits are kept under lock and key, curtained with This Sacred Person dwells in Chiyoda Pal­ velvet, to be revealed only on state occa­ ace in Tokyo, sequestered within three sions when all must bow before them as moats and walls, and protected by a regi­ the national anthem is sung and the Re­ ment of soldiers. Until the reign of the script on Education is intoned. So sacred present Emperor, the Inner Court ,vas are these portraits that worshippers have without trace of foreign influence, contact rushed into burning buildings to save with mortal man being proscribed. Be­ them. Once, when a Japanese found him­ cause fire is no respecter of gods, there self unable to escape alive from a flaming were, in the bitter winters of Tokyo, no building, he cut himself open, inserted the stoves and no general heat except the ubiq­ portrait in his abdomen, and was found uitous hibachi; there were no electric dead with the sacred likeness safe within lights, no beds, except the straw mats of his blistered and blackened body. This, to the floor; no plumbing, no comforts - a the Japanese, 'Vvas heroism supreme. life dingy and drear for all its riches. It 2.80 THE AMERICAN MERCURY has been traditionally a world of women, Western frockcoats and uniforms the terri­ hundreds of them, ladies-in-waiting, wives, fied tailor has to take measurements by and concubines, though monogamy was de­ perspective, like an artist painting a pic­ creed in 1889. Every day, the maids must ture. In fact, so sacred is the Imperial undergo a process of purification and Person that when an accident occurred to must repeat it if thoughtlessly they have the Empress's carriage, a coolie who touched their own lower limbs. In and rushed to her aid and thereby touched out, between the sliding paper doors, over her hand was sent to prison for his gal­ the soft padded floors, they move in per­ lantry. fumed silks, on their knees, their hands The icy formality that surrounds the life gloved in silk. Rising at six, they dress of the Emperor is unbroken. Here and and purify themselves before entering the there impressive items are published about August Presence about ten o'clock. There his personal preferences, his interests, his is lunch at eleven, refreshments at three, tastes, but so long as his life is smothered dinner at five, games and recreation until in religious mystery, the world is privi­ ten, and then to bed. The maids never leged to doubt as well as to believe. Ac­ leave the Inner Court, and no one is ad­ cording to report, he is fond of music mitted from the outside. The world that and chess, follows the work of scientists, moves along so furiously beyond the pal­ and maintains his own laboratories; the ace walls passes them as furiously by. Yet Empress likes outdoor sports and is an ac­ around this inner essence, like a tough complished musician, with a taste for shell, are spacious apartments in foreign Beethoven and Chopin. We are told that style with all the comforts and appurte­ at the Peer's school, the Emperor showed nances of the palaces of ordinary kings­ mentality above the average, yet who guards, offices for ministries of state, tele­ would dare give him a lesser grading! graph, and post office, power plant and Swathed in mystery, seen by no one ex­ waterworks, stables - all the necessities of cept his official world, royal edicts promul­ a self-contained imperial town. gated with which he may have little to The life of a god who dwells within the do, history garbled to suit the fiction of inner circle must of necessity be painfully divinity, he leaves to the outside world the restricted. If it is impossible for a carpen­ function of a doubting Thomas. ter or plumber to touch the sacred walls Though the Emperor, as God Incarnate, of this sanctuary, how much more un­ is primarily concerned with the world of touchable the person of the Emperor. So spirits, his temporal power is tremendous. sacred is the Presence that it has been the One of the richest potentates on earth, his custom for the court physician to diagnose domain consists of some 4,000,000 acres ailments only at a distance. If the Tenno valued at $325,000,000; other properties, runs a fever, the doctor is hard put to de­ buildings, cattle, agricultural implements, termine the cause, for he cannot take the are worth perhaps another $4°,000,000; be­ Imperial pulse or insert a thermometer sides, he owns shares in the largest banks except with hands covered by silk gloves. of Japan, in the Nippon Yusen Kaisha Matters are even more difficult for the steamship company, and the Imperial Ho.. tailor. While Japanese court costumes are tel to the sum of $15°,000,000; while theo­ so ample that a yard or two more or less retically, all Japan is legally his very own. makes little difference, when it comes to This does not take into account public THE MAN-GOD OF JAPAN 2.81 funds spent on his behalf, for coronation, married, murdered one another, and exer­ shrines, and all that goes with pomp and cised simple tribal rites. piety. The pageantry of a thousand years, This is the legend, but historical re­ re-enacted at the last coronation, cost ~>250'­ search cannot go back more than a thou­ 000,000. Over streets that had been puri­ sand years with any degree of certainty. fied and dressed with sand, the Emperor \Vithin this period, emperors have been rode through lines of squatting people, deposed, removed at maturity, and eclipsed twenty deep, not a cheer, not a sound, by military shoguns. The 96th Emperor, heads bent at his approach and lips mov­ Go-Daigo, was hounded from his capital. ing in prayer. Such is the kingdom, and The I03rd Emperor died in ISao, and his the power, and the glory, for ever and body lay for forty days awaiting the money ever...• for burial, while his successor, also lacking cash, did not ceremoniously ascend the III throne for twenty years. Another em­ peror was so poor he earned his living by Such wealth and prestige were seldom the copying poems and signing autographs; happy possessions of the Emperor's ances­ still another dwelt in a thatched hut, not tors, ,vith whom he still lives in constant proof against the rain. For 800 years the communication. To understand the differ­ Japanese never even saw their emperor. ence between emperor-worship as an an­ In the face of poverty and eclipse, the cient tribal practice and the imperialistic rulers maintained succession by diverse ,vorld power which it is today, it is neces­ methods which no Western dynasty would sary to indulge in historical retrospection. recognize. Emperors who had no sons A Connecticut Yankee in the Mikado's adopted sons. Given ample opportunity to Court would have to go back more than sire heirs, since they had no lack of wives a thousand years beyond King Arthur. He and concubines, they still raised the sons would find himself in an island just born of these ladies to the throne without strict - the crystallization of the union of the inquiry into their paternity. In the light god and goddess,· Izanami and Izanangi, of this, one reads with astonishment the who together created the Land of Nippon. absurdities with which the Japanese em­ Then he would behold a tribal chieftain, bellish accounts of their dynasty and their Jimmu, arrived from no one really knows patriotism - an "unbroken line" of em­ "vhere, but now said to be the first of the perors, a dynasty "co-eval with the ages living gods who still reign over Japan. eternal", "2500 years of history", and such Jimmu held court under the open trees folklore. Not content, some have latterly and carried· with him the sacred symbols taken to rounding out the figures to 3000 of his divine parents - the mirror, the years. With such methods, any line can sword, and the jewel at the Ise shrines. As be kept unbroken. the centuries passed, the descendants of For the 250 years immediate!y preceding Jimmu shifted their capital from Nara to the arrival in Japan of Americans in 1853, Kyoto, subjugated the native Ainu, and the emperor was practically forgotten, ex­ built their simple, shack-like shrines and cept by one or two scholars, and the land introduced the arts. Although they never was ruled in his name by a military dic­ forgot that they were gods, they took the tator called a shogun. Then came the day human way of perpetuating themselves, when the Western strangers knocked at THE AMERICAN MERCURY

the door. An upstart little Republic across There is, of course, an intrinsic capacity the Pacific, needing coal, demanded the in the Japanese commensurate with this rights of nations, and with black ships modern passion for patriotism. No doubt, puffing smoke forced the Hermit King­ having come later into the capitalistic dom to yield. For a number of years the world, Japan was able to make the transi­ country was in confusion, in terror. Its tion from feudalism to industrialism with shogun in Tokyo was weak and helpless; less confusion; but this she was able to do there was no authority in the land. Hur­ largely because of the semi-fascist, semi­ riedly a few young men rushed out into communistic philosophy inherent in em­ the world, whither for three centuries Jap­ peror-worship. The Japanese government anese had not been permitted to go, has a constitution, but it is the gift of the hunted about for political forms, examined Emperor. Whenever translations are made the governments of Europe and America, of'the Constitution or even of the Impe­ and returned convinced that the German rial ordinance dealing with the coronation system was the most suitable. But how ceremonies, the words "The Emperor amalgamate the divergent elements? The shall" are used. "Then the Emperor shall answer came promptly. The Emperor! The leave the hall" and so on, but this is a seri­ Emperor, almost forgotten, young and in­ ous error on the .part of the translators, experienced, would be the unifying force. almost a grave case of lese majeste for But the people had almost forsaken Shinto, whic~ some one may yet lose his head, for the emperor-worshipping cult, in favor of there is no power in the land to make the Buddhism. Well, revive it. And revived it Tenno do anything he does not will to do. was. So for sixty years, this theology has It took a year for the Japanese to accept been spoon-fed by prime ministers and the Kellogg Peac;e Pact because implicit the government, has been given oxygen by in that pact was the pre-eminence of the a mechanical pressure which few states will of the people. Only last year, Professor have ever dared to exert, until it has now Minobe, author of Essentials .01 Constitu­ become a first-class religion, wielding tional Law, for thirty years a standard text power over nearly two hundred million at the Imperial University, and himself a people. From a mere figurehead, forlorn member of the House of Peers, was ac­ and forgotten except by a few, or at most cused of lese majeste because he holds that regarded by the masses as a vague deity, the throne is an institution of the nation, the Emperor has grown with his Empire; whereas the theory of the government is the cult of which he is the titular deity, that the Emperor and the nation are one. whose simple shrines and temples had rep­ In this dispute, Baron Eda explained that resented the pathetic faith of a primitive in Japan "soldiers fight to die, not for people, has been turned into a state re­ the country, but·for the Emperor". ligion. And to the man who, by strange The Cabinet is not responsible to the chance, is also a god, has been given wealth Diet, but to the Emperor. If the Diet de­ beyond the dreams of avarice. It is as if clines to vote new appropriations, the bud­ Jesus Christ had founded a kingdom and get of the preceding year remains in force, a family, and had left heirs whom a great making of· political Japan an inclined rail­ modern power regarded as Emperor and road that can only go up. Yet the steps Pope and whose destiny its people devoutly of petitioners to the throne are beset with believed to be the rulership of the earth. insurmountable obstacles. The Emperor is THE MAN-GOD OF JAPAN never brought into political disputes. The innocently different, the question of inter­ minister who inadvertently does so, loses national relations becomes involved. In his political- and sometimes his cranial 1891, Nicholas II, then Czarevitch of Rus­ - head. War and peace are in the hands sia,was visiting Japan. He was to return of the Emperor, and the army and navy by way of Siberia, where ground was to are responsible to him alone. Above the be broken for the new Trans-Siberian Diet and the Cabinet is the Imperial Re­ railroad. Russia and Japan were tense, script, whereby laws are prom.ulgated by but the latter was helpless. The Czarevitch Divine Will. If this fact is not accepted was feted and shown the islands, and by the people, voluntarily, then all the taken to Lake Biwa near Kyoto. Pausing force of government is brought to bear at a monument raised on the spot where upon high or low to exact it. Even the Emperor Meiji had once stood, he inno­ most intelligent person, whose essential cently put his foot on the base. From be­ patriotism is beyond dispute, cannot es­ low, a policeman saw the desecration. cape the irrational blows of fate. When the Czarevitch returned to his rick­ In 1889, upon the day when Japan was shaw, the policeman slashed out with a preparing to receive the Constitution, a sword, seriously wounding him. But for the liberal Japanese, Viscount Mori, Minister coolie puller, who threw himself upon the for Education, was murdered. The assas­ policeman, the Bolsheviks would have had sin was promptly hailed as a martyr be­ no Nicholas to assassinate, there might cause two years before, Mori had defiled have been no Russian Revolution, Russia the sacred shrines at Ise by carrying along might have waged war on Japan and with him, as he crawled to the altar, a clipped her wings before she was strong walking stick. In 1918, the attempt upon enough to win in 1905. The complications the life of Yukia Ozaki was a repercussion of this attack on the Czarevitch appeared from the campaign in which he had said: so serious that the Emperor emerged from "Suppose you dreamed that Japan adopted his sanctuary to visit the victim, condo­ a republican system of government, a Mit­ lences were dispatched to St. Petersburg, sui or a Mistubishi would immediately and the assailant was slated for a ride to become the presidential candidate." He meet his ancestors. But despite the wishes was forced to resign from the Cabinet and of the Cabinet, the head of the Supreme the Ministry fell. In a touching valedic­ Court, Judge Kojima, insisted that the po­ tory, written in 1933 in London because liceman be tried by due process of law. he felt it was unsafe to write it in Japan, The Prime Minister urged precipitate ac­ Ozaki catalogued a long list of friends and tion, the Judge was commanded into the colleagues who had been assassinated for presence of the Emperor, a curtain was no more serious indiscretions. "These were drawn aside, and Kojima fell to his knees. useful public men and their death has Now the meaning of all this was quite greatly hindered the progress of Japan," clear - but for once in the history of mod­ he wrote. Yet he closed his appeal to the ern Japan the unexpressed wishes of the world with: "He who in sincerity would Tenno were ignored. The fact that the destroy me for love of his country, may policeman had risked his life to revenge a also be considered noble." slight on the Emperor weighed with the When this fanaticism fails to take note country even against international compli.· of foreigners, whose point of view may be cations. THERE IS NO COMFORT NOW

This, then, is what happens when a Aware of this, Japan's violent determina­ country has enjoyed the blessings of dicta­ tion to secure unity at home is really an torship for a thousand years. Place behind admission of the fear of disintegration the simple, naive faith of the people the rather than real confidence in homogene­ power of modern machinery, of modern ity. If in the Emperor as God, the Japanese naval and military establishments, of the seek this voluntary solidity, the West need radio and the press, and the fates produce not quarrel with them. But when they use an international force of incalculable dan­ religio-political power for both internal re­ ger. When the creators of modern Japan pression and external conquest, when in set out to remake their Empire, they had the name of that power they plan world not the faintest notion of what seventy hegelnony, as so many of Japan's outstand­ years would bring. The Frankenstein Em­ ing spokesmen freely admit, then must the peror-God in modern dress is a power Occidental nations measure it in relation with which they have yet to play safely. to every contract entered into with Japan.

THERE IS NO COMFORT NOW BY V. JAMES CHRASTA

HAVE seen the winter come and the bent. bough's pain, And the last leaves marking the lower ground I With a strange, discolored stain.

Pity and terror walk wide in the nights again; Hearing, we stand with our hands locked tight Back of the windowpane.

We shall be safe, and never more safe than now, Sleeping the cold, drear nights in comfort, But aware of the breaking bough;

Aware that no form will stand at the beaten glass, Weeping the long nights through in pity, In terror·for sounds that pass;

Knowing no heart will break, sensing the brittle cries, Sensing the spent boughs breaking Under unfriendly skies-

This comfort we know is not for the living tree, Though the frost break the bark and the small stem, We must not hear or see. A PENNY A WORD

ANONYMOUS

HAVE killed a thousand men. In the The pulps, I learned, dispensed day­ dark alleys of small towns I have way­ dreams to hordes of Americans too unim­ I laid and slugged them; on the foggy aginative to dream for themselves. Some streets of sleeping cities I have clubbed and five million of these morons paid willingly knifed them; in the dens of the tenderloin each month for their canned dreams, and and the hideouts of gangsters I have shot the manufacturers were hard pressed to them in cold blood; on the rolling pampas meet the demand. I heard naught of of the Argentine I have murdered them "craftsn1anship", "atmosphere", "sociologi­ with my bola; on our own Western plains cal significance", or any of the lofty gen­ I have fanned my six-gun; aboard ships on eralities that had enveloped literature, for every sea, in waterfront dives of every port, me, in an awesome aura. I was told that in tall city buildings and in quiet suburban I had only to "get in touch with an edi­ homes, I have wrenched from my victims tor", "learn the formula", and "bang it their last agonized cries, watched expres­ out". The greedy mavv of the pulp indus­ sions of incredulity spread across their tor­ try would devour all I could write, and tured faces. I have killed all these men in thus I would be earning money while I all these places - for a penny a word. served my literary apprenticeship. This diabolical career was entered upon Nothing could have sounded simpler. I willingly ten years ago, yet it is difficult to would acquire through this hack writing a decide at whose door the blame should be sense of story construction, an easy facility placed. Certainly Sinclair Lewis and H. L. with words, a valuable working knowledge Mencken are not free from guilt: but for of public taste, and a confidence that would their anti-Babbitt cult, which embraced me never come to a lonely garret dweller sub­ upon my emergence from college, I would sisting on rejection slips. Thus convinced have followed my friends into sedate, estab­ that a pulp apprenticeship was an excellent lished business, and no doubt·· would now stepping-stone to artistic fame, I eagerly be­ be enjoying the tranquil boredom of a sub­ gan mastering the literary craft by "knock­ urb, the pleasant security of $10,000 a year, ing out" stories for the cheap magazines and the occasional exercise of golf. Instead, which ,,,ere springing up overnight. I joined the optimistic literary migration to Facility (of a kind) I certainly acquired, New York, fleeing all the comforts of home as well as confidence, i. e., the confidence to in a quest for self-expression. But the quest write blandly on almost any subject under led me in a strangely devious direction ­ the sun. I wrote sea stories, although my into the pages of the pulp-paper magazines longest boat trip had been from Cape whose lurid scare covers I had seen shriek­ Charles to Norfolk; I wrote stories of war ing at me from the railroad newsstands. in the air, although I had never been within 28 5 2.86 THE AMERICAN MERCURY

fifty feet of a military aeroplane; I wrote down at his typewriter and wrote the piece a series of pampas thrillers on the basis of himself before morning. reading one travel book; and I turned out This feat, however, was not a record in Western thrillers without reading any pulp writing. I once knew a serial writer book. When the editors wanted gangster who retired to his hotel room with several stories, I produced them; and· pseudo-sci­ quarts of whisky, and, between late Friday ence stories, too, and horror stories, voodoo afternoon and early Monday morning, stories, Northwest Mounted Police stories, wrote 60,000 words which he sold before and even one thrilling gem for an ill-fated noon. Such speed, while it may mean tem­ publication called Submarine Stories. Turn­ porary enrichment, binds the pulpster even ing occasionally to the love-story pulps, I more securely to his trade. Veteran hacks would draw backgrounds and characters are addicted to the one-draft method of pro­ with regard only for the editors' desires: duction; they never even glance at their Broadway or Hollywood, racetrack or polo copy after it leaves the machine. This of field, Newport or Shantytown - they ·all course makes a slap-dash style inevitable­ became the same for me. and irremediable. Thus we seldom manage I have written stories for drunken authors to improve our lot by making the better who sold them under their own names; I magazines, or slicks, as they are known to have had other writers turn them out for the trade. Occasionally I have put aside two me when I was so sick of plots that they weeks - all the time I can spare from the tasted like castor oil. I was actually one of grind - in which to attempt a slick maga­ the writers in a strange literary chain which zine story: but before the fortnight is over I has since become a famous gag, to be in­ always discover ingrown pulp habits in lIly cluded in the "pulp play" that every pulp-­ work that would require months to eradi­ ster dreams of writing some day. A friend cate. Then, discouraged by the enormity of telephoned me one afternoon and offered a the new task and the possibility of no im­ cent-and-a-half a word if I would deliver a mediate remuneration, I gratefully return story to him by three o'clock the following to the trough. afternoon, so that he could send it to his There are writers who do escape, but the regular two-cent market later in the day. percentage is depressingly low. A number By the time I had the plot worked out in of current popular authors who once wrote my mind, my wife returned ·with some for the pulps act as unwitting decoys to friends who were to spend the evening. So I pulpsters, for the latter fail to realize that phoned another pulpster, offering a cent­ there has been a vast change in the craft and-a-quarter if he would write a story for since the early days. The modern pulps are

I me by two o'clock the following afternoon. collateral descendants of the dime novel. He agreed, but became involved with con­ Most of them have lowered the age-level of vivial companions and phoned still another their audiences; some appeal frankly to writer, promising one cent flat if delivery mental juveniles. Published at less cost than of the manuscript was made by noon. For their predecessors, while none enjoys the some reason this man gave up the job and circulation of the old days, their profits ac­ at midnight telephoned the original writer crue from mass production. With lowered with a three-quarter cent offer. The creator financial risks, new companies have entered of the chain had some fiery and uncompli­ the field with sweatshop methods and low mentary words for the lot of us, but he sat standards. The pulps are now an industry, A PENNY A WORD

separate and complete, and the breach be­ rnotion, no chance capturing of the public tween them and other literary enterprises fancy. There are no features to carry the has become correspondingly enormous. reader; no circulation losses for advertising The writers who fail to escape face sorry profit; and but few subscriptions. The mag­ prospects. First, the rates of payment are ex­ azine's problem is one of cash newsstand tremely low: the average pulp pays from sales, depending solely on the entertain­ one to two cents a word; some less than a ment value of its fiction. If a writer's prod­ cent. A few writers receive more than two uct sells the magazine, his stuff is bought; cents: they are the successes, and they earn if the stories don't appeal to the morons, he from five to fifteen thousand a year­ is out of luck. The check-up on the writer while they last. But they are surprisingly is immediate and final. few in number. An average writer will "make about four 1 know 1 have never made anything like markets", or find four magazines receptive that much money - and I have sold hun­ to his work. If he sells a 6ooo-word story to dreds of thousands of words to almost each every month, or one story a week, he every important pulp market: Blue Book, will earn ninety dollars a week - in theory. Popular, Munsey's, Street and S~nith, But in practice he will bump into the law Standard, Dell, Clayton, Butterick, Faw­ of averages in rejections. It is virtually im­ cett, Macfadden, and lesser outfits whose possible for a writer to turn out weekly sto· names 1 have forgotten. My career started ries of equal quality. The myriad human ten years ago, and I am still working for the factors which upset his writing machinery same magazines. My stepping-stone became - illness of himself or his wife, toothache my highest step. Here I am, God help me, or eyestrain, moving or vacations, domes­ still a pulpster. tic troubles, visits from out-of-towners or friendly dropper-inners, hangovers from II parties, the dreaded staleness which visits every writer - any of these will prove suffi­ I struck my stride, in the gatne of hacking, cient to halt production temporarily or in­ early. What little there isto learn is appre­ definitely. And 'iVhen production stops, hended quickly or not at all. The tools of earning stops. my craft are: (I) an ability to manipulate The greatest hazard outside the writer indefinitely a given number of arbitrary sit­ himself is the constant change in editorial uations into different plots that narrate the policies. A few magazines enjoy something same basic story; (2) a knackin diction and of a stable audience because they are estab­ prose that gives movement and vividness lished and have become a habit with read­ to action sequences; (3) a certain energy or ers: but even they must vary their standards vitality that endows mechanical concoctions to meet fickle public taste. Most of the with spurious "life". (1 mention this last others are new and depend solely on imme­ tool as distinct from the quality which en­ diate appeal: they must serve precisely what dows all fiction with life, because the pulp the pulp-reading public wants at precisely writer has fewer symbols of reality to work the right time. As a rule these policy with, relying chiefly on the vigor of the changes are of such fine distinction as to he writing itself.) There is a minimum of luck imperceptible to the outsider. But to the in selling one's output. There are no log­ writer they are drastic. rolling cliques, no reviewers, no sales pro- For instance, about ten years ago an en- 2.88 THE AMERICAN MERCURY tirely new type of story bloomed overnight villain, or the old-school, fast-shooting law­ - the war story. George T. Delacorte, Jr., giver. The reader must be able to identify operating a shoestring outfit, was first in the each on his first appearance. field with War Stor£es and several com­ In detective fiction it is much the same. A panion books. He· made a fortune and novelette was once returned for revision to founded a successful publishing house. But a successful pulp writer because it con­ the war fever is over now. Delacorte has not tained two leading characters who, the edi­ a single war magazine, and all of us hack tor said, diffused the interest. One was a writers who learned the phraseology and plodding, honest young lawyer, the other a background of battlefield horror have been suave magician: the first used his fists as de­ forced to enter new fields of which we fense, the second his .mystic powers. The know equally little. Adventure stories, once writer was ordered to rewrite his opus, play­ big sellers, now barely support a few long­ ing down the lawyer.and building up the . established pulps. Several years ago the de­ magician. The novelette comprised 20,000 tective story was revolutionized almost words, but in two days the author returned overnight by Dashiel Hammett and Joseph it, rewritten: he had given the lawyer's Shaw, who introduced the hard-boiled pri­ scenes to the magician by the simple process vate dick. Deduction in criminology be­ of transposing their narnes. In the climax, came a blight. Every hero had to be tough when they were both fighting in an under­ and strong, had to bull his way into the ac­ ground hideout, the magician also was cumulation of a few clues mainly by conk­ given the lawyer's fists - again by asubsti­ ing and being conked. It was an easy style tution of one name for the other. to acquire and soon developed into a blue­ But the most important variations are to print formula. Unfortunately, the hard­ be found in the plots. Strongly plotted sto­ boiled dick is now on the wane and as soon ries, developing complicated situations that as some bright editor starts a new pattern, build genuine suspense, must keep their we will all have to learn something else. situations as plausible· as possible; they de­ But whatever the style of the story, the mand but little action and this must appear pulp reader has rigid likes and dislikes credible; the idea is always primitive. On which must be catered to. In the first place, the other hand, in the story with enough he objects to any and all characterizations, plot only to hold sequences of action to­ on the ground that they slow the action. gether, the situations are implausible, the Character mutations are anathema to him: action wild, bloodthirsty, and often ridicu­ he wants types which are instantly recog­ lous. We have to watch the constant con­ nizable. In Westerns, the hero is invariably trast in emphasis between these two ex­ tall and wiry, with eyes that can be blue as tremes of plot. In the writing itself the flux the desert sky or twin slits of steel. He is is from simplified, straightforward pulp­ grim but he can laugh, usually just a quirk prose to an effusion of hyperbolical cliches. on one side of his tight lips. He pronounces As for the taboos of editors, they are multi­ doom in colorful terms and can deliver it ple and varied. Yet with all these variations, with fist or six-gun. The villain must be changes, and taboos, we must be glibly fa­ large, florid, and powerful, or the small, miliar. When a magazine's policy changes crafty type; he is sneeringly boastful and we must adapt ourselves to another. Always possesses no trait to endear him to society. it is difficult, sometimes impossible. At best The sheriff is either a henchman of the we lose time and momentum. A PENNY A WO.RD

Of course there is one feature of policy I have mentioned. They are cumulative, change over which we have no control ~ and over a decade prove tremendous. As the mortality of editors, which is high. For I grow older it will be progressively more each editor has personal, idiosyncratic pref­ difficult for me to adapt myself to new erences or hates, usually too petty to make policies. Past forty, it will be as hard to public. A pulpster must be familiar with learn a new approach as for a ham come­ these. When he is so aware, he will have a dian of the same age to become a dramatic "swell market with So-and-So". But when actor. that editor is bounced, the writer will have to build up another. Frequently he will not III again be as successful as with Old So-and­ So. In such ways are writers killed off Except for the outstanding successes, we through sheer wear and tear. pulpsters have not earned enough to secure The pulpster does not earn more money our years past the point of diminishing util­ by trying to secure higher rates: he must do ity - and no one has ever advocated old­ it by selling more words. The damnedest age pensions for writers. Certainly the desk lure ever devised for committing a man to offers us no sanctuary, for the plight of the suicide is the contract for a monthly book­ editor is equally gloomy. Several times I length novel which may pay as high as have sought refuge from the writing strain $1000, or as low as $300. Some authors write in an editorial office. As assistant, or editor one, some two a month. But at the rate of of one or more magazines, I have worked twenty novels a year, it is obvious that only for the companies I sold to, and have giants can last. And there are few giants. bought millions of words for them. I've had Without the book-length novel bait, a magazines fold under me. I've seen young \vriter going at full speed will produce a hopefuls enter offices for jobs with the same million words a year. This incessant output delusions that snared me. They see the of imbecilic rubbish is ruinous. Even a con­ pulps as the fringe of their desired world, genital pulpster, whose brain is not affected, the passageway to the land of literary self­ becomes mechanical. His sole object is to expression. They tell me of the prominent turn out the stuff rapidly; any pride in magazine editors who have served pulp ap­ craftsmanship is lost. Naturally the springs prenticeships, but they will not listen in of energy dry: the mechanical concoctions turn when I tell them of the very few who become tired and dated. Then the writer escape. descends the scale of rates and magazines For the pulp editorial worker is trained until he is supplanted by younger men. for pulps and nothing else. These maga­ Because of this influx of enthusiastic new­ zines are an entrance to a blind alley, a comers the relatively steady seller is always stepping-stone to oblivion. The editor lacks crowded by rivals. As an average writer, I even the advantage of the writer's mobility have no security. I can never pause to rest. and whatever satisfaction may lie in indi­ No matter how I feel, I must keep at the vidual creation. Hence his obscure slavery machine in relentless, merciless, deadening in the privies of literature is even more ig­ toil. The toll on my energy will be inevita­ nominious, and the volume and incessancy bly fatal to my work, as it has been to of his pulp impressions more stultifying. others. Added to this, making my future Such men edit in the same mass production more uncertain, are those minute variations manner in which their authors write. Most THE A~IERICAN MERCURY of the staffs are snlall. If a magazine is editor jealously guards the door of the pub­ edited by one man, he will be without lisher's office against any bright ideas of his assistance, and will produce the book sin­ underlings. And the editor is the only one glehanded, from reading manuscripts to who knows the value of the assistant's checking foundry proofs. He writes his work. The latter's outlets for advancement own blurbs for forthcoming features, his are only two. If he has stuck to his poorly own advertising copy for house magazines. paid, humble, and harrowing post long But usually he will have two or more maga­ enough to bring hilnsel£ into the publisher's zines, and assistants. One man I know edits consciousness, he may get a chance at the more than ten magazines at the same time. editor's job when the editor leaves; or else, Publishers as a rule prefer young men as by a fortunate contact, he may make a con­ editors. Their enthusiasm and fresh ambi­ nection elsewhere as editor. Or, finally, he tion will more than compensate for lack of can do what I have done several times­ experience; they will work for little, and abandon his grimy security for the uncer­ are capable of great effort. The older editor tainty of free-lancing. But assistant or edi­ is less adaptable: by the time he reaches his tor, the mortality is high, the risk great, the middle forties, even though a congenital pay poor. I saw a man come in one day, ar­ pulpster, he can hardly retain judgment, range his desk, gather supplies, and dictate discrimination, and enthusiasm for new letters announcing his new connection. The policies, after reading the billionth repeti­ next day he was fired. tion of the same hoary asininity. The fine The assistant starts at $25 or $30 a week, edge of enthusiasm and freshness has been rarely achieves over $50, averages $35. The blunted forever, usuallyduring his appren­ editor begins at, say, $45, rarely earns more ticeship as an assistant. There not only than $100, averages around $65. His reward must he read several hundred stories a is that if he slaves diligently and is fortu­ week, but out of the selected group he must nate, he may not lose his job. The pay is not

edit copy on those already purchased; later I commensurate with the training and ability he reads proof on them and, as a final test brought to the job, and the responsibility in­ of his love for his work, checks them in vested in it. Further, when a ,house is ex­ foundry. Try that process on even your tremely successful, the editors of the maga­ favorite author sometime, and imagine the zines are not paid a fair proportion of the effect of ten years of tripe. money their ability has earned. Publishers But the doom awaiting younger men in assert that salaries are low because of the some way could be forestalled if there were nature of their investment. And it is true not the ever-present specter of losing the that profits are slim on single magazines job. Every change of policy means a new and depend on mass production. The cost editor; every poor guess by a publisher of the average pulp is around $5000 on a means a new editor. Whenever a magazine print order of 125,000 copies. This figure which the publisher thinks should sell, fails varies to a low, in some cases, of $3500; and to do so, there is an.immediate cry for an to a high of $7000 or more. A ten-cent mag­ editorial shake-up. The incumbent is fired, azine, which grosses the publisher a little usually with brief notice. The assistant's better than six cents, must sell 85,000 copies plight is even worse. The first cut in over­ to break even: if it sells 100,000, the pub­ head expense falls on him. He does the lisher nets $1000 an issue. Four months of dirty '''ark, and derives no glory; often the the year are poor ones for newsstand sales; A PENNY A WORD

in this period half the yearly gain may be dreams which do not develop the brain or lost. Thus the publisher may pock~t about ennoble the character. The best writers and $4000 .a year on a fairly good magazine. the best editors are those whose cultural But one issue of a flop will wipe out the level most closely approximates that of their margin, as will yearly returns on an un­ readers. But unfortunately, there are a popular magazine. Therefore the wise p~b­ number of toilers in fiction's back-alley, par­ lisher carries from. six to a dozen titles. If he ticularly among editors, who are not mo­ publishes say five, the losses on two-fifths rons. I know a clas,sicist in the pulps who will counter-balance the profits on two­ retires to his exquisite apartment after his fifths: the remaining one-fifth, selling per­ day's labors, and reads Santayana over a haps 200,000 a month, will net him from glass of Madeira. He is past fifty, a li£e­ fifty to one hundred thousand dollars. hater, a reviler of aspirations. He is, I ad­ Why does he not eliminate his unprofit­ mit, something of an extreme - chiefly be~ able pulps? Economics. The more maga­ cause he has lasted so long. But twenty zines he prints, the less the overhead on any years from now I will count myself for­ one. Paper and printing and office and edi­ tunate if I have accumulated an apart­ torial costs are all reduced proportionately. ment with Madeira and Santayana, and The more magazines one house issues, the have retained enough sanity to appreciate better authors it can procure, because more them.... of their work can be purchased. It is worth­ Some of my colleagues have become re­ while to carry a magazine which only signed, turning to esoteric literature or gin breaks even, in order to procure exclusively for solace. Others have become resigned for the successful books the work of sev­ without a solace; fear rules their destiny. eral popular authors. Also, bulk circulation They are a servile, pitiful lot. Some have be­ wins favoritism from the distributor, and come embittered and, deliberately layering can procure from advertising as much as their souls vvith callouses, are striving to get $25,000 a year net profit. . all they can out of it while they last. Others And then there is always the danger of have distorted themselves into an unhealthy the lead magazine going into a decline. adaptation, by turns deluding and reviling Many of the recent big successes are now themselves. They defend their positions fa­ dead. The publisher must have a sound natically against outside attack and bemoan business, producing at least a small profit, their fate amongst themselves. I myself am to carry the house while a new winner is one of a group of writers either unadaptable being developed. Hence his ruthless atti­ or unresignable, all of us grimly deter­ tude toward his workers. mined to fight our way out. We do not al­ But editors, young or old, with wives and Iowa pulp-paper magazine in our homes; children, do not view the loss of their jobs we refuse to talk shop;· we make every ef­ in the broad economic aspect. I have seen fort to forget the whole business when we them go from job to job, each becoming cover up the typewriter. Our group of mal­ warped after his own fashion, each cursing adapts is not typical, however. I know pulps in his own dirty, dreary cubicle. many men who are still young enough or Hopeful and hopeless, bitter and pathetic, stupid enough to believe they are serving determined and resigned, we are, writers an apprenticeship out of which they will and editors, in the main a cynical lot. We graduate into better work. I know others have for too long purveyed primitive day- (of a relatively small group) who have WINTER SONNET found their ultimate career in the pulps and to the pulps for training. While we are writ­ who actually give themselves airs of impor.. ing this daydream in which some potential tance on the basis of their achievements. two-fisted barroom fighter or glamorous The largest single. group is composed of captivator or gunslick bronco-buster can congenital pulpsters: but they, too, are dis­ identify himself, we must believe it at the satisfied; even though fitted by mentality moment. We must inject some enthusiasm and temperament for pandering rubbish, to give it false vitality and spurious reality. their desire for security makes them uneasy It is working oneself into this alien mood, for the future. this primitive emotional and cerebral pat­ What finally becomes of worn-out pulp­ tern, that poisons the brain like a drug, sters is a mystery into which none of us atrophies the perspective, .and dulls the dares delve. We prefer to believe that some­ spirit. how we will beat the game. Weare occa­ And yet I myself have become a depend­ sionally encouraged by literary contribu­ able purveyor to those five million morons tions from our more erudite friends, on who pay a few nickels each month for their newspapers and in advertising agencies, mechanized dreams. I am one of the camp­ who believe they can write salable pulp followers of the writing profession, the rag­ stories any time they are pressed for money. tag and bobtail of the fiction parade, who, But the most illiterate hack would be for a bare subsistence, scavenge in the gar­ ashamed of what they turn out. For success bage heaps of literature. I am one of those in the pulps is not, as many think, a matter disillusioned hack authors whose hopes· lie of "writing down". somewhere back in the dim golden years That is the real tragedy for us who came when everyone believed in self-expression.

WINTER SONNET BY TOWNSEND MILLER

HINKING all winter in a quiet place, From long interrogation of the stone T I see that such perfection never was Except it be unuttered and alone. Brave hearts who speak but braver at the last Who keep in silence the sufficient word And learn of snow that eloquence is most When the full hour is inner and unheard.

o whiter muse, take refuge in the rock And dream the ages out with marble eyes; D\vell here for ever by the endless sea Whose wave no moon shall lift nor tempest shake. Yea, here in peace and casual of the skies Compose your wing against eternity. SAD DEATH OF A HERO

BY PAUL Y. ANDERSON

D HEA COUNTY COURTHOUSE nestles in idolized by millions. The other, cold, im­ .1.'-. the lap of a fat and luxuriant Ten- passive, profound; the greatest criminal nessee valley, flanked by green, lawyer and the most invincible debater of flowering hills. Its red brick walls are his generation. Upan that rough platform dingy with age. Giant maples canopy the they grappled, and as implacably and im­ generous lawn. An ordinary summer personally as a rock crusher closes upon afternoon discovers a few farmers and the yielding chunk of limestone, one old fruit-growers loitering in the shade, dis­ man ground the other to ignominious cussing crops and the relative merits of dust. It was stirring and it was pathetic: Brown's Mule and Picnic Twist for chew­ Early in the spring of 1925, a bill had ing. Teams doze at the hitching rail. The been introduced in the lower house of atmosphere is lazy and restful. The main the Tennessee General Assembly, thus: excitements in prospect are the county elec­ Be it enacted by the General Assembly tion and the annual Baptist revival. of the State of Tennessee; That it shall But on a crude platform erected in the be unlawful for any teacher in any of the center of this rustic lawn was enacted universities, normals, and all other public one of the most men10rable dramas of schools in the State, which are supported in whole or in part by the public school modern times. The date was July 20, 1925. funds of the State, to teach the theory that The event was the cross-examination of denies the story of the divine creation of William Jennings Bryan by Clarence Dar­ man as taught in the Bible, and to teach row, in the closing hours of Tennessee's instead that man has descended from a celebrated Monkey T·rial. It was the best lower order of animals. story this writer ever covered or ever The sponsor of this measure was one hopes to cover. The entire business lingers John Washington Butler, a farmer by vo­ in memory as the perfect answer to a re­ cation and a reformer by avocation, and porter's prayer. It had everything. anyone who studies, or even observes, its The issue was the centuries-old conflict grammar, syntax, and verbiage, will be between science and religion, and over disposed to accept his stout claim that he that issue two old men, each recognized composed it all by himself. Its extraordi­ as the champion of his respective cause, nary lack of legal exactness and definition met in what proved literally to be a bat­ was, in fact, the principal target of the tle to the death. Two old men, both bur­ attack afterward made on it. For it did dened with age and honors, but each at become law - in precisely that form - on the peak of his powers. One, eloquent, March 21 of the same year. No one was magnetic, passionate; three times his more surprised than John Washington party's candidate for President, and still Butler by the furore which ensued. THE A.MERICAN MERCURY

On the outskirts of Dayton resided Dr. the State. Clarence Darrow and Dudley George Rappleyea, a chemist and a "fur­ Field Malone, no shrinking violets either, riner". As a scientist he was interested promptly rallied to the defense. And the in the new law. Among his friends was stage, which had been arranged for a John Thomas Scopes, a youthful biology bucolic farce,· became the setting for a teacher in the Dayton High School. Rap­ drama which was to fascinate the civilized pleyea ascertained that Scopes was using world. a textbook which might be construed as The presiding judge was John T. Rauls­ violating the statute - providing the stat­ ton, a local product who afterward lec­ ute could be construed. Next he ascer­ tured for the Ku Klux Klan. On the tained that the American Civil Liberties opening day of the trial he revealed his Union would finance a test case, and he judicial balance by announcing that each persuaded Scopes to serve as the guinea session would be opened with prayer. pig. Finally, by prearrangement, he swore When Darrow, after listening to a couple out a warrant,· and the 24-year-old peda­ of these fiery fundamentalist harangues, gogue was indicted for teaching evolution. protested, His Honor exclaimed that Up to now the affair had been purely surely "Colonel" Darrow would not de­ local and entirely friendly. Most any eve­ prive the court of divine guidance. Subse­ ning would discover the prosecutor, the quent events indicated that the court had prosecuting witness, and the defendant properly appraised its own needs. gathered with other local lights over their Although the jury played an incon­ "cokes" and vanilla milkshakes around a spicuous part in the trial, an intimation table in Robinson's drugstore, chuckling of the atmosphere in which the case pro­ about the cozy little tableau they were ceeded is afforded by the following ex­ planning to stage. But they failed to cerpt from Darrow's examination of Mr. reckon on the alertness of the press. Jim Riley, who eventually became Juror Within a week the story was on the front Number Three: page of every metropolitan paper in the Q. - You have heard that Scopes here has country. Inside a fortnight the townspeo­ been indicted for teaching evolution? ple were startled - and somewhat flat­ A. - Yes, sir, I have heard that. tered - by an invasion of reporters from Q. - Have you no prejudice against it.? New York, Chicago, Baltimore, St. Louis, A. -I don't know the man - wouldn't Washington, and Cleveland, to say noth­ know him if I met him in the road. Q. - Do you feel that it is a wrong ing of points South and West. William teaching? Jennings Bryan, never one to shrink from A. - Well, I haven't studied much about publicity, had been in virtual eclipse since it. the preceding year, when delegates and Q. - Ever hear any sermons on it? visitors to the Democratic National Con­ A.-No, sir. Q. - Ever hear Mr. Bryan speak on it? vention in New York jeered him off the A.-No, sir. stage at Madison Square Garden. The Q. - Ever read anything he wrote about presence of so many reporters at Dayton it? drew him as fried chicken and apple pie A. -I can't read. draw a Methodist circuit rider. Although Q. - Then you can be a fair juror? A. - Yes, sir. his talents as a prosecutor were relatively The Court - Take a seat in the jury box, untried, he lost no time volunteering for Mr.. Riley. SAD DEATH OF A HERO

If the twelve good men and true ac­ everyone gives it a different interpretation. cepted jury duty in the expectation of The effect of this canny piece of strategy having front-row seats at the big show, was to force the prosecution into the posi­ they were doomed to sad disappointment, tion of holding that the Bible means ex­ for they missed practically all the fire­ actly what it says - in short, that it must works. The defense had summoned a be interpreted literally. Whereupon the formidable array of scientists from the defense undertook to show that a literal leading universities of the country, and interpretation reduced the Bible to ab­ would place, say, a Harvard professor of surdity, and invalidated the statute on the geology on the stand, offering to prove ground of "unreasonableness". by him that the earth is millions of years old; Judge Raulston would rule the testi­ II mony inadmissible, whereupon the de­ fense would demand its undeniable right Throughout the early stages of the trial to place the testimony in the record for Bryan had fared badly enough in his the purpose of showing the higher courts clashes with Darrow - on the stump un­ what it would have proved had it been doubtedly he would have shown to bet­ permitted; Judge Raulston would excuse ter advantage, but in the infighting of the the jury, and the professor would proceed courtroom his brief flurries of oratory to give his testimony in affidavit form. were ineffective against the biting sarcasm And so with the noted anthropologist, the and corrosive wit of his opponent. But famous paleontologist, the eminent ar­ it was not until the beginning of the after­ chaeologist, the celebrated philologist, and noon session of July 20 that the duel the illustrious ethnologist. All testified, finally approached its climax. On that day, and virtually everyone heard or read their as soon as the principals had arranged testimony except the luckless jurors. themselves on the outdoor platform, and It has been charged that, throughout the the 125 visiting correspondents had set­ trial, the defense attorneys were merely tleddown at the long makeshift press putting on a show. There is some truth table, Darrow startled the gathering with in the charge, in the sense that the defense the announcement that he desired to call appreciated that the moral consequences Bryan as a witness for the defense. Judge of the case transcended its legal outcome, Raulston's eyes goggled, and the Com­ and therefore strove to dramatize the moner's palm leaf froze in his hand. whole business. But it should be remem­ "Por what purpose do you desire to bered that, under the Tennessee Constitu­ examine Colonel Bryan?" inquired the tion, a statute to be valid must be plain Judge. in its meaning, and must he "reasonable". "We are calling him to testify as an The defense seized avidly upon this point. expert on the Bible," was the reply. "For The statute prohibited the teaching of years he has syndicated a weekly Sunday any theory which "denies the story of the School lesson in the newspapers and re­ divine creation of man as taught in the ligious periodicals. His reputation as .an Bible". But, asked the defense, what does authority on Scripture is recognized the Bible story mean? Everyone, the de­ throughout the world. We do not believe fense pointed out, is free to interpret the anyone, including Mr. Bryan, will chal­ Bible story as he chooses, and alrnost lenge his qualifications." THE AMERICAN MERCURY

Attorney-General Stewart, who had to call it· a congregation. But under Dar­ shown himself a thoroughgoing witch­ row's withering fire he gradually became burner from start to finish, but who never­ desperate. Cornered,· tormented, wounded theless was a cagey trial lawyer, protested in his pride, he fought back spectacularly, bitterly, and Judge Raulston solicitously at times rising from the witness chair to asked Bryan whether he objected to-being harangue the crowd. He hurled the epithet a witness. Thus, all unwittingly, he put "atheist"; he shouted that he was "fight­ his hero on the spot. On the grass below ing for God's Word"; he stirred his the platform a thousand fervent funda­ hearers to roars of approval and tempests mentalists were waiting prayerfully for of cheers. Darrow remained cool, cruel, the Great Man to demolish the Infidel contemptuous. And in the end, to the Darrow for good and all. The correspond­ utter dismay and consternation of his ents of a thousand newspapers were supporters, Bryan wilted and virtually poised to tell the world whether Bryan conceded defeat. had accepted or declined the challenge. Darrow began with Jonah. "When you He had no choice. The Judge could have read that the whale swallowed Jonah - do saved him by ruling flatly that his testi­ you interpret that literally?" he asked. mony was inadmissible. But, doubtless, Bryan replied: "When I read that a big the court still believed - indeed, said­ fish swallowed Jonah, I believe it. I be­ that Bryan was quite able to take care of lieve everything in the Bible should be himself. Arid thus the Commoner went accepted as it was written. I believe in a to the slaughter, propelled by circum­ God who can make a whale, and make a stances which had got beyond his control. man, and make both of them do what His task was plain enough, but its ac­ He pleases." complishment was terribly diff1cult- nay, "Now, the fish swallowed Jonah, and as events proved, impossible. Unless he in three days spewed him up on dry land," was to undermine the State's position fa ... proceeded Darrow. "Are you prepared to tally, he must hold resolutely to the doc­ say the fish was made especially to swal­ trine that the Bible should be interpreted low Jonah?" literally. Otherwise, it was open to any... "The Bible doesn't say, so I am not one's interpretation, the statute was mean­ prepared to say," came the answer. "Let ingless, and the cause was lost. Darrow me add that one miracle is just as easy had planned his attack carefully. In the to believe as another." Bible which lay before .him, he had "It is for me," Darrow grunted. marked oft dozens of highly allegorical "It is hard for you, but easy for me," passages, mostly in the Old Testament, Bryan rejoined. such as the story of Eve and the Serpent, "Would it be easy for you to believe Noah and the Flood, the Tower of Babel, that Jonah swallowed the whale if the Joshua and the Sun, and Jonah and the Bible said so?" ( Whale. "If the Bible said so," was the firm To the opening questions Bryan re­ reply. sponded with a series of stout affirmations, "The Bible says Joshua commanded the in which he was repeatedly encouraged by sun to stand still for the purpose of pro­ the fervent "Amens" of his supporters in longing the day. So you believe that?" the audience - it would be more accurate "I do." SAD DEATH OF A HERO

"Is it your belief that the sun went "You can have latitude and longitude," around the earth at that time?" Darrow grinned. "No, I believe the earth goes around "These gentlemen didn't come here to the sun." try this case," Bryan shouted to the audi­ "Well, .did the man who wrote that be- ence. "They came here to try revealed lieve the sun went around the earth?" religion, and I am here to defend it against "I believe he was inspired." their attacks." "Can't you answer my question?" The crowd whooped encouragement. "You cannot measure the length of my "Applause fron1 the bleachers," Darrow answers by the length of your questions," remarked. Bryan flared. "From those whom you call yokels," "No," Darrow drawled, "except I al­ Bryan retorted. "This is the bigotry, the ways know the answers will be longer. ignorance, of Tennessee. These are the But answer the question - if the day was good, God-fearing people whom you in­ lengthened by stopping either the sun or sult." the earth, it must have been the earth "And you," growled Darrow, "you in­ that stopped, wouldn't you say?" sult every man of science and learning in "I suppose so," was the resigned answer, the world who does not subscribe to your "but I see nothing improper in protecting fool religion." the Lord from your criticism." The courthouse yard was a bedlam. At­ "I suppose He needs it. Now, Mr. Bryan, torney-General Stewart was bellowing at have you any idea of what would have the top of his voice, like a man struggling happened if the earth had been stopped to separate combatants. "This has gone in nlid-flight?" beyond the pale of a lawsuit," he stormed Surprised, Bryan said he had not. at Raulston. "I have a duty to perform "Don't you know it would have been under my oath, and I demand that the converted instantly into a molten mass of Court put a stop to this." matter?" "To stop it now would not be fair to "I believe the Lord would have taken Colonel Bryan," was the placid answer care of that, too." of Judge Raulston, seemingly sure of a "You believe the story of the Flood to turn for the better. be literally true?" Darrow plodded on. "I do, sir." "Mr. Bryan," he said, "the Bible says Stewart, writhing in his chair as he saw every living thing that was not taken on how the tide was turning, burst in with the Ark with Noah was drowned in the a vehement objection to further question­ Flood. Do you believe that?" ing along this line. But Judge Raulston, "I do." still serenely confident of Bryan, over­ "Including the fishes that were left be­ ruled. hind?" "I want him to have all the latitude he Bryan winced, but replied: "It says ev­ wants, because I intend to have some lati­ ery living thing, and I am unwilling to tude when he gets through," interposed question it." Bryan, evidently laboring under the de­ The thought of fishes being drowned lusion that he would be permitted to cross­ startled the loyal fundamentalists. They examine Darrow in a return match. glanced furtively at each other and were THE AMERICAN MERCURY quiet. Asked when the Flood occurred, Darrow inquired whether Bryan had Bryan consulted Usher's Bible Concord­ any idea how many languages are spoken. ance, and gave the date as 2348 B.C., or Bryan replied he did not, but he knew 4273 years ago. Did not Bryan know, the Bible had been translated into more asked Darrow, that Chinese civilization than five hundred, and no other book had had been traced back at least 7000 years? been translated into so many. The sweating witness conceded that he "In all your life," Darrow continued, didn't know. "you have made no attempt to learn about "Have you any idea at all how old the the other peoples of the earth, how long civilization of Egypt is?" Darrow con­ they have existed, how old their civiliza­ tinued. tions are, what manner of customs they "I have not," snapped Bryan, flushing. followed, what religious rites they prac­ "Do you know whether the records of ticed ?" any other great religion contain any men­ "No, sir," was the reply, "I have been tion of a flood at the time you give?" so well satisfied with the Christian re­ "The Christian religion has always been ligion that I have spent no time finding good enough for me - I never found it arguments against it." necessary to study any competing reli­ "Were you afraid you might find gions." some?" Under Darrow's relentless pounding "No, and I am not afraid that you will Bryan testified to his belief that all human show me any." and animal life now existing on earth was "So long as you have Moses and the directly descended from the occupants of Prophets, you feel you don't need any the Ark, although he could name no sci­ other information?" entists who shared that belief. He admit­ "I feel. that I have enough information ted that he had read very little concerning to live and die by." the origins of ancient religions. He knew "You don't care how old the earth is, nothing about Confucianism or Buddhism, how old man is, how long the animals except that a visiting Englishman once have been here, or how long life has ex­ told him that "the most important thing isted on this globe?" about Buddhism is that you don't have "I am not much interested in those sub­ to believe anything to be a Buddhist". jects." Darrow turned to the story of the Tower "You· have never made any investiga­ of Babel. tion of them?" "Do you believe," he asked, "that prior "No, sir, I never." to that event every human being on earth "Mr. Bryan, you have used language spoke the same language?" all your life, and good language, too. Did "I believe that is a fair inference from you never study the science of languages?" the Scriptural account," Bryan replied. Bryan muttered that he had not. He "And you believe that all the languages had never heard of Max Muller's works and dialects now spoken on earth date on the subject. from the confusion of tongues at the "Can you tell us how old the earth T ower of Babel?" is?" Darrow went on. Bryan said he did. He was growing "I might guess as accurately as the scien­ more uncon1fortable. tists, but I don't care to try." SAD DEATH OF A HERO 2.99

Darrow asked him whether he could I am not trying to put anything in the name one scientist whom he respected, and record. I am simply trying to protect the Bryan named a man whom he identified Word of God against the greatest atheist as a teacher of geology "out near Lincoln, in the Uruted States. I want the newspa­ Nebraska". Under further questioning, pers to know· that I am not afraid to face however, he couldn't recall what this him and let him do his worst." teacher taught, although he remembered "Your Honor," Stewart pleaded, "it is agreeing with him. Finally it came to him in your discretion to determine how much that the teacher held that human life be­ of this is necessary to make a record for gan after the last glacial age. the Supreme Court. We, as taxpayers, feel "When was the last glacial age?" Dar­ that it has gone beyond all reason. They row asked. have put in affidavits as to what other "I don't know," answered the laboring \-vitnesses would swear; why not let them witness. put in an affidavit as to what Mr. Bryan "Do you believe the earth was made in \vould swear?" six days?" "God forbid!" ejaculated Bryan, thus "Not in six days of twenty-four hours eliciting his first sympathetic laugh from each." the press table. "Doesn't the Bible say so?" But he had wilted. His fire was gone. "I think not," was the reply. Succeeding answers to Darrow's questions Darrow and the defense stared incredu­ were given in a resigned manner, and lously, and the crowd sat in stunned some were inaudible a few feet away. The silence. Again Attorney-General Stewart crowd sensed it, and lapsed into fearful intervened desperately, demanding to be silence. Like the mills of the gods, Darrow told the purpose of the examination. Pale continued to grind. and trembling, Bryan arose, and shaking "Mr. Bryan, do you believe Eve was his fist over his head, shouted in a hoarse the first woman?" voice: "Yes," was the faint response. "The purpose is to hold up to ridicule "Do you believe that she was literally every person who believes the Bible, and made out of Adam's rib?" I am perfectly willing to have the world "I do," in still lower tones. know their purpose." "Did you ever discover where Cain got "Our purpose," Darrow grated, "is to his wife?" prevent bigots and ignoramuses from con­ "No, I'll leave you agnostics to hunt for trolling education in the United States. her." That is all, and you know it." "The Bible says that Adam and his Bryan, terribly agitated, was haranguing family were the only people on earth, but the crowd. He seemed to have forgotten Cain got a wife. You don't know where that, technically at least, he was in a court­ she came from?" room. "No." "I am glad to have brought that state­ "Do you believe the story of the ternp­ ment out of Mr. Darrow," he declaimed. tation of Eve by the serpent?" "I want the world to know that the affi­ "I do, sir." davits of these scientists were put in here "And you believe, as the Bible says, that for the purpose of discrediting the Bible. because of Eve's sin all womankind was 300 THE AMERICAN MERCURY doomed thenceforth to endure the pains III of childbirth?" "That is what it says, and that is what The remainder is anti-climax, but for I believe." those who have forgotten or never knew, "And you believe," continued the im­ it may be advisable to tie the tag ends placable Darrow, "that God punished the together. Indeed, some deserve repetition serpent by condemning snakes forever for the comedy they provided. The de­ after to crawl upon their bellies?" fense having accomplished its objects, and "Yes, I believe that," Bryan mumbled. the prosecu~ion being heartHy sick of the "Well, just how do you suppose snakes whole affair, both were ready to quit. got around prior to that time?" rasped There remained the' little item of a ver­ Darrow. dict. Both sides, but especially the defense, The startled" gasp of the crowd was desired a verdict of guilty. Since the de­ drowned in a mirthful bellow from the fense had been permitted to present virtu­ press table. It was the last straw. Drooping ally no evidence to the jury, this seemed a with exhaustion, unable to control his simple matter. But both sides betrayed a trembling hands and quivering voice, strange lack of faith in the perspicacity Bryan got slowly to his feet. of Mr. Jim Riley and his eleven colleagues. "Your Honor," he said, "I think I can They even seemed to question the court's shorten this examination. I will answer ability to make' its instructions understood. all Mr. Darrow's questions at once." I-Ience it was agreed that Darrow and In a final effort he turned his face to Stewart should address the twelve good the audience, and brandishing clenched men and true. fists high above his head he cried hyster­ As the jurors filed in it was plain from ically: their faces that they realized they had been "I want the world to know that this tricked, cheated, and betrayed, and even man who does not believe in God is using this final moment of glory could not com­ a Tennessee court to cast slurs on Him. pensate them for their loss. They shot en­ I am not afraid-" vious glances at their neighbors in the Darrow broke in. audience. In the simplest language Darrow "I object to that statement. I am simply explained that the real purpose of the case examining you on the fool ideas that no was to have the constitutionality of the intelligent Christian in the world believes." statute tested in the Supreme Court. This "Court is adjourned till nine o'clock to­ end would be defeated if the defense en­ morrow morning," called Judge Raulston, tered a plea of guilty, but it would also be upon whom it had finally dawned that defeated if the jury returned a verdict of Bryan was not doing as well as expected. not guilty. Therefore, the defense was Bryan, his palm leaf limp at his side, not asking for such a verdict. This seemed looked down wistfully upon the congre­ plain enough, but the lawyers were tak­ , gation. Two or three pastors came for­ ing no chances with the jury. ward to shake his hand, but the great "What Mr. Darrow means," explained crowd of fundamentalists eyed him uncer­ Attorney-General Stewart, "is that he tainly, and slipped away. He looked very wants you to find Professor Scopes guilty, tired, and very old. Four days later he so he can appeal the case to a higher court. was dead. He can't say so outright, because that SAD DEATH OF A HERO 3°1 wouldn't be proper, but that's what he ists for refraining from profiteering. In means. You don't need to have any doubt bowing, however, he fell o.ff the bench. about that." It remained for the ineffable Raulston Judge Raulston repeated the same thing to be caught in one last blunder. When the in several thousand words, and finally the case reached the Tennessee Supreme jurors were told to return a verdict. They Court it was reversed, not because of any responded with magnificent celerity, and element of constitutionality, but because Judge Raulston passed sentence. Judge Raulston had fined Scopes $100, But His Honor simply could not bear whereas the maximum allowed by law the thought of allowing the great event was $50' This was too much, even for to end. He asked if anyone had anything Rhea County, and the ,,,retched Raulston to say. Malone thanked the Court, the was defeated for re-election. When last I prosecution, and the community for the heard of him, he was exhorting the Klux­ courtesy accorded defense counsel. "fhat ers in Indiana - and that was several years started something. A man who ,vas not ago. employed by any kno,vn newspaper or They buried The Commoner in Arling. periodical thanked Dayton and the Court ton National Cemetery. On that last day, in behalf of the press. A Canadian corre· the heavens, to which he had so often spondent got up rather unsteadily and lifted adoring eyes and supplicating arms, spoke feelingly of the accord between sis­ seemed to close against him. A dismal ter commonwealths, thus eliciting lusty rain fell pitilessly from clouds so low and cheers for the sentim.ent of hands across black that the street lamps of Washington the border. As he sank back into his chair were turned on in mid-afternoon, as the an unidentified man climbed on a bench last note of taps was swallowed by the fog and thanked Dayton in behalf of all tour- above the Potomac. ~~fk~ @~~ ~K~~!~~!~~~~J~ ~ AMERICANA ~ ~~~J~~~~~®~~~ij~®®~~~®~j~~~

CALIFORNIA Although WPA officials are not aware of it, Locke School, at Arlington, Middlesex IN THE pages of the academic Mind Maga­ county, Mass., is about to become one of zine, one Baird T. Spalding relates a fas­ the most thoroughly renovated institutions cinating bit of family history: of learning in the country. In a forty-page press release of Massachusetts projects that My great-grandfather met Emil soon after have been officially approved, the follow­ he first went to India, and became very ing items appear: intimate with him.because of an incident. On page 7: "Arlington - Renovate My great-grandfather was in an expedition Locke School building, $374." going along a regular highway. A man On page 10: "Arlington - Renovate rode up and .suggested that they turn off Locke School building, $1,202." the main highway onto another route. My On page 15: "Arlington - Renovate great-grandfather thought this was pecu­ Locke School building, $453." liar but asked no questions, following the On page 19: "Arlington - Renovate suggestion of this man who accompanied Locke School building, $944." them. A few days later the news came Says the WPA by way of alibi: "State that a bandit band had come down on administrators sometimes send these proj­ the highway they had been following at ects to us piecemeal that way in order to a time and place where they would have get more money out of us. We are sup­ been had they followed their original posed to catch these repetitions, but we course. Because of that incident my great­ can't always do it." grandfather kept in touch with the man and my fami! y has kept in touch with him ever since. That man is over five hundred ILLINOIS years of age. My fami! y has a record of him for over three hundred years. The ART for Art's Sake receives a nasty set­ records show him to be over five hundred. back from the Chicago elders, according If a man can live five hundred years he to the United Press: can live five thousand. Emil does not look to be a day over forty. Six outraged women artists sat in a bor­ rowed studio today and dabbed viciously with their brushes on their prize canvases. STARTLING obiter dictum from the pen of a The girls were painting shorts over the gifted columnist on the Los Angeles middles of plump nudes. The new decora­ Times: tions on their paintings were really sports shorts such as women sometimes wear I do not remember 'ever to have heard when bicycling, but the girls called them a dirty story told in a newspaper office. "pants." "Pants" also was what the board of South Park commissioners called them in an DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA order requiring that .all paintings of nudes must be clothed before they can be ex­ How the New Deal paymasters handle the hibited next Saturday at the open-air art citizens' hard-earned money, as reported fair in Grant Park. from Washington to the New York Sun: "No person may ,go nude in Grant 3°2. AMERICANA

Park," the comnl1SSloners said, "and no MISSOURI paintings may do so either-even in the name of art." THE respected Charleston Enterprise­ Courier carefully reports the newest ad­ MARYLAND FREE STATE vance in the science of astronomy:

PONTIFICAL pronunciamento off the chest Somewhere in the Bible it says, "Ye shall of the Hon. Howard W. Jackson, Lord see signs and wonders in the sky," and, ap­ parently, this is true for at least five Mayor of Baltimore, as reported by the Charleston people bear proof that they be­ illustrious Baltimore News: held one of the most wondrous and in­ George Washington and Abraham Lincoln spiring sights transpiring in the skies last were, of course, among the greatest men Wednesday night that probably any human this nation has ever produced. But it is being has ever beheld since that time when my opinion that posterity will rank Will Judean shepherds watched by night. Shortly Rogers as one of the greatest men in after nine o'clock, Glenn Swank was sit­ America's history. ting on the front porch at his home, Mrs. Swank and an older daughter having gone AN AROUSED Marylander writes in to the to prayer meeting. Shortly afterwards, they conservative Washington Post: came home, accompanied by Rev. and Mrs.' John Fleurdelys, the latter remaining in The cruel and degrading persecution of the car talking a few' moments before con­ the starlings, costing besides pain for the tinuing on to their home. While thus birds and degradation for the human op­ engaged, Glenn says he saw what he pressors, much money squandered away thought at first was shooting stars and annually, is as futile as it is cruel when the called the attention of the others to the increase is not under control. Use that phenomenon. Directly though, it was ap~ inoney instead for humane control of the parent that these were not ordinary fall­ increases in congenial shelters that the birds ing stars, and soon took the shape of angels would eagerly seek of their own accord, or giant birds with outspread wings in and the problem would be permanently flight. The even more wondrous aspect and humanely solved. was the fact that their bodies, even to the The former superintendent of parks, Col. tip of the wings, were illuminated, not U. S. Grant, arranged in an attic in Rock with a glowing effect but with a light that Creek Park a shelter for pigeons, where, in brought out their forms in distinct relief accordance with my suggestions, the in­ against the darkened sky. The forms ,vere crease was thus under control. Along the several feet apart and passed in quick suc­ walls were pigeon boxes and the first time cession from the west to the east, fading the birds left a box after eggs had been laid into space one at a time, the lead one dis­ therein, the caretaker took the eggs, boiled appearing first and so on. them and put them back and the birds were 11r. Swank's report of the unusual hap­ pleased to sit on them in a sheltered place pening is substantiated by Rev. Fleurdelys, till of their own accord they withdrew his wife, and Mrs. Swank, all of whom without disappointrn.ent. beheld the sight. 1 Ruth Swank, who had Why could not humane societies and bird gone into the house ahead of her mother, lovers put a better exampIe before the came out in time to see the last figure be­ people by arranging many such places to fore it faded into space. All the figures which pigeons, starlings, sparrows and were flying at a rapid rate. other birds would By of their own accord to get relief? Such work would be en­ nobling, whereas the attack work is de­ NEW JERSEY grading and prevents social progress. MARIE GUNDER.SEN. DISTURBING indication of monarchial tend­ Brookmont, Md. ency in choosing the name of a hotel, from THE AMERICAN MERCURY

an advertisement in that Torch of Com­ one section. .•. If we succeeded in hav­ munism, the New Masses: ing a line of 200 babies in their carriages, children up to three years, it would surely When in Lakewood, be sure to visit your be something to talk about..•• I think comrades at their rendezvous, there should be one uniform piece of gar­ HOTEL ROYALE ment-maybe a white cap for the baby. ... Of course there should be slogans, NEW YORK and I suggest a large one with 'Our Fu­ .. ture Fighters'. And pictures taken of these How American business executives spend babies will find their place·in many a fam­ their spare time, as chronicled by the cele­ ily album as a memory of his or her first May Day Demonstration." brated Schenectady Gazette: Urdaneta Lair, 7, Military Order of the CONTRIBUTION to the distinguished profes­ Snakes, held the annual roll call and instal­ sion of editing, from a letter by the busi­ lation of officers Wednesday night. The offi­ ness manager of The Spinners: cers installed were: Garrett B. Dunbar, Gu Gu; James D. McI-Iugh, Datta; Frank M. Since your work qualifies you, we should Warner, Thrice Infamous Inferior Gu Gu; like you to become one of our editors, as­ Daniel Knowlton, Lord High Keeper of the sociate editors, or contributing editors, de­ Sacred Apafadiam; Caius vVeaver, Clarence pending solely on whichever office is most Burke, John T. Hill and Roy Gessler, Slick suitable.... The prestige of The Spinners and Slimy Keepers, and Daniel Sammons, guarantees a staff member a distinguished Grand Gu Gu. position in the poetry world. Like other verse journals, however, we require patron­ age in order to put forth a splendid bi­ . INDICATIoNLthat the Comrades are turning monthly; with our yearly subscription only against their Big Pal in the White House $r, this patronage is especially needed. We and may yet bite the hand that feeds them, request, therefore, that the staff assist in as versified in the erudite Daily Worker: this subsidy. Editors are required to donate $79 yearly towards our budget, associate ed­ 'Twas Christmas eve in the police station. itors $39, and contributing editors $r7. w. P. A. workers all were there, Payments may be made in convenient in­ Waiting for checks in hungry prostration, stallments, if desired. There are no other From Won't-Pay-Anything deal so responsibilities. square. "Roosevelt's doing all he can," said one. SIMPLE illustration of communist logic, "Yes, he promised a lot, but what has he lifted from the columns of the New Masses: done?" When up spoke a toiler with Daily Worker Our recent droughts and dust storms are unfurled, witness to the defeats our capitalist disunity "We won't depend on promises, in a has brought upon us; the extraordinary sci­ Worker-Farmer world!" entific advances in the Soviet Union are wit­ nesses to the victories possible to planned, A COMRADE shamelessly suggests the em­ collective campaigning. ployment of an old bourgeois idea, in a letter to the same fearless journal: OKLAHOMA A father is greatly enthused by Mrs. P. M.'s PRESIDENT Ollie Evert Hatcher, A.B., B.S., idea of a baby section in the coming May M.A., LL.D., of Northwestern State Teach­ Day parade. Mr. "T. M." writes: "... By ers College, writing in the Alva Review next May· Day, we will have a six-months­ old baby. What an impression it will make Courier, pulls out all the stops, takes a to have our future fighters all together in deep breath, and cuts loose: - AMERICANA

The college that you see in the sunlight Republican Organization (a Good Speech of a summer's day, that is scrupulously for a Republican Leader). guarded by a star-lit heaven by night; lo­ Are We Coddling Criminals? cated out West where the gentle breezes' Cultivating a Love for the Beautiful lingering caress· kiss the colors of no school through Paintings. that surpass> it in beauty, held high in the Speech for Retiring President of Kiwanis sky on the bosonl of the plains, where Club. heaven and earth Ineet, the college that Address at Presentation of Prizes to Bowl~ bewilders all with her glory, and forever ing Teams. steals a warm place in the inner recesses Address at a Banquet of Volunteer Fire­ of the heart of sons and daughters of man, men. that delights old age with the fragrance Why Did Not America Go to the Aid of of the incense of memory, that intoxicates France in the Franco-Prussian War? youth with vision, and blesses mankind with a wholesome environment, that gives WISCONSIN to Oklahoma strong men and graceful women, and sheds the light of learning on THE New Freedom - with the taxpayer's the world no pen can tell the story. North­ money - as illustrated Out Where The western ... where, in a money-getting Votes Are Needed, according to the ob­ age knowledge is more prized than material servant New York Sun: wealth; where the poorest pauper might be­ come a mental aristocrat, a prince of learn­ The town of Ojibwa, Wisconsin, has a pop­ ing; where being kind to a little child ulation of only 293. Despite that, President becomes a fixed habit, respect of old age a Roosevelt has approved a project there call~ virtue; and courtesy a necessity ... North­ ing for the creation of navigation pools at western should be a mecca, she leavens the a cost of $16,760, an expenditure amount­ loaf of living, to know her thoroughlyis to ing to more than $57 for each man, woman know the beauty·and romance of life. and child in the village. The WPA explains that the purpose of a navigation pool is to provide facilities for canoeing, rowing and PENNSYLVANIA fishing. In this way the inhabitants may re­ THE Public Speakers Society of Harrisburg ceive enough to buy the necessary canoes, row boats and fishing tackle in addition to comes manfully to the aid of timid orators enjoying, presumably, the free use of the with the following prepared addresses, pool. The New Deal is spending nearly which may be purchased for as little as $75,000 more on similar navigation pools five cents a copy: in three other Wisconsin towns that are so small that even the Rand-McNally atlas The Door to Success Is Labeled Push. fails to list them. Patriotic Address at a Convention (of any kind). IN OTHER UTOPIAS Life Is What We Make It. Addresses of New President of Woman's ENGLAND Club with Flo'wery Tribute to Retiring PASSING of a great statesman of the type Officers. (Good for any Club.) A Short Talk by a Ne'w Member When rarely seen in America, as noted in the Admitted to a Grange. straight-faced London Times: Address of a Toastmaster at a Stage Hand The House of Lords has lost, at the age of Banquet. 91, one of its most picturesque personali­ Ladies' Democratic Speech (A Flowery Ad­ ties in the Earl of Morton. He had a great dress ). gift for silence, and during all the years Resolved, That the Mental Capacity of that he attended at Westminster as a Scot­ Woman Is Equal to that of Man. tish representative Peer, his voice was never Grit and What It Will Do. heard in debate. w. H. HUDSON

BY FORD MADOX FORD

N THE, days when, there were, still gods passant and H uysmans and Mendes and - and that was indeed far away and Monet and' Manet and Maeterlinck and I long ago, for if you ran a thousand Sisley and Turgenev. And if Belloc came years with the speed of the victor of Ata.. bustling in and Conrad was there the noise lanta you would never discover that van.. would grow to exceed the noise of Irish ished place or overtake those receding fairs when shillelaghs were in use. Because minutes - in those days, then, there was Mr. BeHoc with his rich brogue and burr Hudson. And also in London, in Gerrard would loudly assert that his ambition was Street, Soha, there was a French restaurant to make by writing four thousand pounds called the Mont Blanc where, on Tuesdays, a year and to order a monthly ten dozen of the elect of the city's intelligentsia lunched Clos Vougeot or Chdteau Brane Cantenac and discussed with grave sobriety the social ... and this to Conrad who would go rigid problems of the day ... under the presi.. with fury if you suggested that anyone, not dencyof Mr. Edward Garnett, who has for merely himself, but any writer of position, so long been London's literary - as if Non.. could possibly write for money. So they conformist - Pope that I cannot remember would go to it: you might have imagined when he was not. But now and then imag.. yourself for the moment at the famous inative writers would drop in at the Mont Thursdays at Brebant's with Flaubert shout.. Blanc and the atnl0sphere would grow ing abuse at the young Henry James for more excited. There would be Conrad and speaking disrespectfully of Merimee, and Galsworthy and W. B. Yeats and Mr. Hi.. Turgenev doing his best to divert the thun­ laire Belloc and Muirhead Bone, the etcher, ders from the young American. And then and Sturge Moore, the poet, and others that suddenly, in a silence, you would hear the the world has forgotten and yet others song of birds, the wind in the green boughs whom I have forgotten. Then voices would of the New Forest in Hampshire. ... begin to raise themselves a little. For the An immensely long form would be lean­ thin beer or barley water of ordinary days ing in the doorway that separated the upper gave place to a Bordeaux that had never rooms pf the Mont ,Blanc and the effect seen the slopes of the Bordelais - a sort of was just the same as that which was said to pinard, from, I should think, the slopes of be produced when Turgenev came into the the Canton de Vaux in Switzerland but dining room. of Brebant's. After a pause of labeled St. Emilion, which is the drink par almost breathlessness we would all of us excellence of the English literati and gentry. exclaim "Hud •.. son" - all except Mr. It was heady, too, and when a little of it had Garnett who, as his discoverer, permitted been consumed you would begin to hear himself to say "Huddiel" and Mr. Belloc theshouted names of Flaubert and Mau- who, respecting nobody, would perm.it him- 306 \V. H. HUDSON self to say: ItYiens, Ie voila encore," and go Sorneone Inade a protest in favor of the on eating his soup.... Rhondda Valley. One day Mr. BeHoe was recounting the "Nonsense," said Mr. BeHoc. Hudson had fabulous legends of his service in the French just come in behind his back. "Sussex, my .Army. Mr. Belloc was in those days - as I birthplace. The only glorious county. Glori­ do hope he remains still - the spoiled child ous. ... More and more gloriousI" and of the· fortune-bearing fates who look after swept his hair in several different directions the garden of the muses. Orator, poet, tra­ whilst he drank a bumper of pinard from gedian, comedian, censor of manners, the only remaining flower vase. guardian of public finances, Defender of All the while, towering above him, with the Faith, and Geographer Royal to His his air of looking into a strong wind, his Majesty's Army, he was possessed of at least eyes all screwed up and his beard-point ten birthplaces, thus exceeding Homer. He sticking forward ... all the while Hudson was also Member for Salford and enfant watched that Sussex-born French-mounted trois fois terrible of the House of Commons. Alpinist with the expression of an Atlas Ah, you should have seen the Mr. Belloc of Mountain lion, inspecting from a high those daysI vVell, with his golden, burred, boulder the gyrations below him of an acro­ and triumphant organ and with his impas­ batic precursor of Mr. Charles Chaplin. I sioned gestures that were accompanied by don't mean that Mr. Belloe resembled Mr. the tinkle of glasses as he swept them off Chaplin, but that Hudson looked like a the table, Mr. Belloe was telling what he lion looking at that star. said to the adjutant. An adlutant is not the '.'Glorious county," Mr. Belloc began same as an adjutant, but something much again. "Not another like it in the world. worse ... worse than the toughest sergeant­ The Downs, the sea ... why, when I am major you ever imagined. And Mr. Belloc in the Midlands and the day is left behind had gone on to tell of how, when on parade, ... only think ... you can ride from the the troop-horse thre\v him ... and here Crystal Palace to Beachy Head with only Mr. Belloc made as if to disappear under four checks." the table ... threw him vvith such violence Then for the first time the voice of Hud­ that he vanished into the dust of the parade son, solemn like a great bell, boomed across ground and was not discovered for several that place of inferior refection. days. That necessitated another dramatic "Five!" it said. interview with the virulent adjutant, the Mr. Belloe spun around with intense en~ charge being absence from parade... . ergy and cried out: Though how, I remember "rondering, could "Nonsense. You're wrong. Four. Four he be charged with absence if he was ac­ only." And he began ,vith the violence of a tually present and why, since as we all un­ man who wishes to mutilate himself to bend derstood he honored with his service the back with his right the fingers of his left Diables Bleus, the famous Alpine regiment, hand. "There's Cucking and Wucking. could he have been drilling on a horse? And Hitching and Pitching." Then Mr. Belloe made as if to emerge "Five." In the deep silence where we all from under the table, brushed the hair from listened fascinated, boon1ed the voice of the his eyes, and with a new voice exclaimed: watcher of birds. "Glorious county, Sussex. Most glorious "Good God, fellow!" shouted Mr. Belloc county in the world!" \vith the desperate energy of a strong man THE AMERICAN MERCURY who is being drawn into a bottomless pit by with Mr. Belloc, for I am equally capable an irresistible force. "You're a Yankee, or a of being inspired with such enthusiasms for Guatemalan, or a Tierra del Fuegoan; you certain parts of the earth so that I can work never came to England till you were ninety­ myself up to the belief that, morally at least, seven.... And you propose to dictate to I was born there. Indeed, when I come to me, a Sussex man Why, when I am think of it, in my last book I proved to my in the Midlands " own satisfaction - and I am sure to that of That silent, stone figure from Sunday my readers - that I was almost born in Island continued to lean a little forward Aries.... And I could do as much for with the fixed expression at once good­ Colmar in .Alsace, or Bettws..y-Coed in humored and sardonic of the Atlas lion that North Wales, or Vienna, or Cracow. Or is going to eat Mr. Chaplin! even Staunton, Virginia. And no good man "I tell you; I tell all these good people. can tell how 111any steps lead up to his front ... Only four.... There are Cucking door which he goes down from ten times a and Wucking, and Hitching and Fitch­ day in a complete calmness, much less can ing...." he tell how many checks there will be in a Again the breathless pause. Hudson's good gallop when he is excited. level, remorseless voice brought out the syl­ lables: II "West," and after a long time, "Dean!" A death rattle sounded from Mr. Belloc's But Hudson had that type of tranquil mind. throat; he threw up his hand with the ges­ He once proved to me that he knew better ture of a dying gladiator; his almost mania­ than I what bushes I had in my own hedges, cal voice exclaimed: though I had brushed· them over and over "By God! ... This man comes from again and I did not know that he had seen Quilmes in the Argentine. I know all about them at all, he having called on me when I Quilmes. It is a country of an ineradicable was out. And similarly he proved to the inaccuracy of mind. ... Yet he comes from Gauchos - who, though they can tell a man there and looks like a don of the·· sixteenth from an ostrich at seven miles' distance, century and talks to me about Sussex..... are singularly unobservant in small matters And I ... I who was born on Chancton­ and can never be brought to see the differ­ bury Ring which is the highest point in ence between an m and an n - he proved Sussex; from it you can see the whole of to the Gauchos of the pampas that the grass Sussex; I who have galloped a thousand of the plains over which they galloped all times from the Crystal Palace the sixty day and the ombu trees under which they miles to Beachy Head ... with only four spent all their siestas and night hours, were checks; I who have hunted the red fox in not solid masses of green, like billiard cloths the storms of winter, the freshets of spring, or the painted leaden trees that shelter tin the torrid heats of summer when the mirage soldiers. They had never noticed that and runs all along those Sussex Downs ... I could not see it until he lent them his read­ who was born in Lewes Castle and have ing spectacles. Then they fell off their never in my life been out of Sussex ... horses in amazement. So Hudson appeared I, moi qui vous parle, must needs forget to be full of the queerest knowledges, and West Dean!" as he penetrated into the most unusual and My sympathies, I must confess, were all dissimilar places his range of those knowl- w. H. HUDSON

edges was extraordinary and disconcerting fore the Declaration of Independence. On and made him a person very dangerous to his mother's side he was, however, of very argue with. old United States descent. In any case his You walked .beside him, he stalking youth and young manhood had been passed along and, from far above you, Olympianly in Spanish-American countries and that no destroying your theories with accurate doubt gave him his gravity of behavior ... dogma. He was very tall, with the im­ and of prose. For he remained always an mense, lean frame of an old giant who has extraordinarily closed-up person and the for long stooped to hear men talk. The legends that grew up about him could muscles of his arms stood·out like knotted hardly be distinguished from the little bio­ cords. He had the Spanish face and peaked graphical truths that one knew about him. gray beard of a Don Desperado of the The truths always came in asides. You Spanish Main; his features seemed always would be talking about pumas. For this slightly screwed together like the faces of beast he had a great affection, calling it the men looking to windward in a gale. He friend of man. He would declare that the paused ahvays for an appreciable moment puma would follow a traveler for days over before he spoke and \vhen he spoke he the pampas or through the forest, watch looked at you with· a sort of humorous an­ over him and his horse whilst he slept, and ticipation, as if you were a nice cockatoo drive away the jaguar •.. \vho was the whom he expected to perform amusing enemy of man. He said that this had hap­ tricks. He was the gentlest of giants, al­ pened to him many times. Once he had though occasionally he would go astonish­ been riding for t\VO months on the pampas, ingly off the deep end, as when he would sleeping beneath the ombu trees that seem exclailn violently: "I'm not one of you to cover half a county, and three times a damned writers: I'm a naturalist from La puma had driven off a jaguar. It had been a Plata." .This he would put over with a period of drought. For a whole week he had laugh, for of course he did not lastingly re­ not been able to wash his face. One asked sent being called the greatest prose writer what it was like not to wash one's face for of his day. But he had a deep, dark, per­ a week and he would reply: "Disagreeable. manent rage at the thought of any cruelty ... Not so bad ... as if cobwebs touched to birds. you here and there." You would say that Hudson was born of American parentage that must have been a disagreeable week all in a place called Quilmes in the Argentine, the same and he would slip out: "Not so about 1840, and coming to London in the bad as a week I've known ... when Mrs. 'Eighties of the last century, he was accus­ Hudson and I passed a whole ten days in a tomed to declare - in order to account for garret with nothing but a couple of tins of his almost impassioned love for the English cocoa and some oatmeal to eat." countryside - that no member of his fam­ And gradually it would reach your con­ ily had been in England for over two hun­ sciousness, by means of a lot of such asides, dred and fifty years. After his death his in­ that, after he first came to England, there dustrious and devoted biographer, Mr. had been a long, dragging series of years in Morley Roberts, ferreted out that Hudson's which he had passed through periods of father had been born in the State of Maine near starvation, trying to make a career. It about 1814, his paternal father having gone was almost impossible to realize; he seemed there from the West of England a little be- so reluote from the usual vicissitudes, with THE AMERICAN MERCURY

his hidalgo aloofness and his mind set on The pampas •.. that is to say, an im­ birds. And there was no one - no writer mense plain of rolling grassland which has - who did not acknowledge without ques­ no forest, its only trees being the ombu, tion that this composed giant was the great­ which, however, in its solitude, appears as est living writer of English. It seemed to he large as a forest by itself ... and Hudson implicit in everyone of his long, slow move­ had certainly never been in the hinterland ments. of Venezuela. Nevertheless it was in the When his life was nearIy done his book hinterland of Venezuela that the scene of Green Mansions had an enormous sale in Green Mansions was laid. But Green Man.. the United States. I was astonished to hear sions'differs from I-fudson's other master... from Mr. Alfred Knopf the other day how pieces -:. The Purple Land, E1 Ombu, Na... great that sale was. It kept I-Iudson in com­ ture in Downland, and Far Atvay and Long fort for the rest of his life. But one never Ago - in that it is a projection of a passion. heard about it from him and it made no The Purple Land is Romance; it is Ro­ difference in his manner of Iiving. ... mance as it was never before and never He \vas, at any rate in England, a writer's again will be put·into words. But, like El writer. I never heard a lay person speak of Ombu, its situations are got in by rendering Hudson in London, at least with anyen­ redolences of the soil, of humanity and hu­ thusiasm. I never heard a writer speak of manity's companion, the horse, and of him with anything but a reverence that was man's plaything, woman. It is full of laugh.. given to no other human being. For as a ter and broad stories and the picaresque writer he was a magician. He used such spirit and hot youth and reckless fugitive simple means to give such gorgeous illu­ passions. sions. It was that that made him the great If I have heard one, I have heard twenty imaginative writer that he was. If you read of Hudson's rivals, from Conrad to Maurice his Green Mansions you feel sure that he Hewlett, or from Galsworthy to the much.. had an extraordinary intimacy with the life too-much-forgotten George Gissing, say of tropical forests and, indeed, once you had that T he Purple Land is the supreme - is read it you couldn't, when you met him the only ~ rendering of Romance in the next, fail to believe that he was the child English language; and if I have heard one I of some woodland deity. You could not rid have heard twenty say that Green Mansions yourself of the belief even when he snapped is Anglo-Saxondom's only rendering of at you half contemptuously that he had hopeless, of aching passion. There was, never been in a forest in his life. That was therefore, as Hudson felt with his sure in­ probably a fact, for he said over and over stinct, no need for localization; indeed, top­ again that, until he came to London at the ographical exactitudes would have been the age of forty, he had never been off the pam­ fifth wheel on a coach that was the story of pas except to go - but very rarely - to a man's passion for a voice that sang in the Buenos Aires.... And this because of a green house of a tree's boughs ... and , weakness, real or supposed, of a heart that nothing else. And his instinct for covering nevertheless contrived to do its work until his tracks, for retaining a veil of secrecy he was eighty. over his past, was also a motive for setting his story in a wilderness of forest that had Buenos Aires - patria hermosa­ Tienesu Pampa grandiosa: never been explored. And no doubt there La Pampa tien' el Ombu. were material reasons for the change of the W. If. llUDSON

locale because there is also no doubt and no der that, brought up amongst peons and reason for preserving secrecy as to the fact peasants who had all seen the Liberator in that Hudson had once, far away and long the flesh, Hudson should be able to convey ago, nourished an intolerable passion for a to you the idea that he too had ridden with being who had had a beautiful voice and Bolivar and known the rollicking life of a sang from the gleaming shadows of the heroic spurred~and~saddled pampas era. green mansion of an ombu. It had eaten And it was that faculty above all that into his life; it had made him take to ex­ made Hudson take his place with the great pressing himself; it had driven him from writers. He shared with Turgenev the qual­ the limitless plains of his manhood and ity that makes you unable to find out how youth to the sordid glooms and weeping he got his effects. Like Turgenev he was gas-lit streets of ... BayswaterJ utterly undran1atic in his methods, and his T he Purple Land on the other hand was books have that same quality that have those a projection rather of other people's reck­ of the author of Fathers and Children. less lives in a revolutionary South. He was \Vhen you read them you forget the lines obviously not old enough to have ridden and the print. It is as if a remotely smiling with Bolivar, but in his boyhood all South face looked up at you out of the page and America rang with fables of the exploits of told you things. And those things become the Liberator. And his anecdotes of that part of your own experience. It is years and heroic theorist were so vivid that you ac­ years since I first read Nature in Down­ tually saw him galloping a black horse into land. Yet, as I have already said somewhere the smoke from the lines of.the Royalists. or other, the first words that I there read You saw it yourself and, as not until long have becorne a part of my o,vn life. They after his death was the date of his birth ever describe how lying on the turf of the high established, you thought him a hundred sunlit downs above Lewes in Sussex, Hud­ years of age. And it all added to the roman­ son looked up into the perfect, limpid blue tic Hudson legend of the frequenters of the of the sky and saw, going to infinite dis­ Mont Blanc. tances one behind the other, the eye picking Actually Bolivar the Liberator was an up one, then another beyond it, and another inspiring theorist of liberty, rather than a . and another, until the "vhole sky was popu~ hat-waving horseman - a thin, nervous, lated •.. little shining globes, like soap Spanish revolutionary of genius. And his bubbles. They were thistledown floating in personal ambition was so small that when an almost windless heaven. by the middle 1820'S he had liberated the Now that is part of my life. I have never vvhole of South America from the European had the patience - the contemplative tran­ yoke and was going on to the founding of quillity - to lie looking up into the heav~ the confederation of Latin America, he sud~ ens. I have never in my life done it. Yet that denly resigned his power. He was too sensi­ is I, not Hudson, looking up into the heav­ tive to stand the possible accusation that he ens, the eye discovering more and more tiny, aimed at dictatorship. He was born in 1783 shining globes until the whole sky is filled - about the year when Hudson's paternal with them. I feel like a woman I heard grandfather came to the State of Maine, and lately lamenting in Brooklyn. She had died in 1830, eleven years before Hudson spent many years in Paris and had lately was born. But such a man leaves after him returned to that East River Rive Gauche. such an aura of legends that it was no won~ She was at the moment reading Georges 31 2. THE AMERICAN MERCURY

Simenon's Guinguette aDeux Sous which propriate that it should be about his beloved itself is a minor work of genius. She read birds. For Hudson ~latched birds with a how Inspector Maigret, following a clue, passion that exceeded anything that he gave was strolling down the Boulevard St. to any other beings ... except to Rima of Michel and down the Rue Guynemer be­ Green Mansions. neath the trees that shade the fountain of The old coots would stand on the floating the Medicis. And she cried out suddenly: weeds and preen and preen their plumage "He has no right to write about those by the hour. They were like mermaids streets. They're my streets." Similarly, those for ever combing out their locks and had thistle-seed globes seem to be my globes. the clear stream for mirror. The dull­ brown, white-breasted young coots, now For that is the quality of great art - and fully grown, would meanwhile swim about its use. It is you, not another, who at night picking up their own food. The moorhens with the stars shining have leaned over a were with them, preening and feeding and Venice balcony and talked about patinas one had its nest there. It was a very big of bright gold; you, not anyone else, saw and conspicuous nest, built up on a bunch the parents of Bazarov realize that their of weeds, and formed, when the bird was on it, a pretty and curious object; for wonderful son was dead. And you yourseH every day fresh, bright green sedge leaves heard the voice cry Eli, Eli, lamma sabac­ were plucked and woven round it and on than£! ... because of the quality of the art that high, bright green nest, as on a throne, with which those scenes were projected. the bird sat. ... And when I went near the edge of the water ...

III Don't you wish you knew what came next! ... And don't you see the extraor­ That quality Hudson had in a supreme de­ dinary skill with which the picture is built, gree. He made you see everything of which and won't that picture be a permanent part he wrote, and made you be present in every of your mind's eye from now on? I don't scene that he evolved, whether in Ven­ suppose you would ever take the trouble ezuela or on the Sussex Downs. And so the to wade through rushes to the edge of clear world became visible to you and you were water and stand for hours watching water a traveler. It is almost impossible to quote birds in their domesticities. I know I never Hudson in petto. He builds up his atmos­ should, though I am never happy if I have pheres with such little, skillful touches that not wild birds somewhere near me. But I you are caught into his world before you have that picture and know now how water are aware that you have even moved. But birds comport themselves when, like men you can't, just because of that, get his at­ after work sitting before their cottage mospheres fully without all" the little doors, they take their ease in the twilight. touches that go to make them up. The pas­ And indeed, before I had half-finished tran­ sage that follows I selected by a process scribing that passage, I knew what was com­ akin to that of thesortes Virgilianae of the ing. I cannot have re-read Hampshire Days ancients. I went in the dark to the shelf since just after it was republished in 1923, " where my Hudsons are kept, took the book a year after Hudson's death. But when I my hand first lighted on, and. pushed my had got as far as "and had the clear stream index finger into the leaves until itstopped for mirror" I knew what was coming­ on the passage I have written down here. the high mound of the moorhen's nest It is from Hampshire Days and it is ap- decked out with bright green leaves. w. H. HUDSON

Conrad - who was an even more im­ you can not discern a single whole passioned admirer of Hudson's talent than phrase ... As to art my feeling is that am even I- used to say: "You. may try ... and then three lines scratched out for ever to learn how Hudson got his ef­ and two illegible; then the words money fects and you will never know. He writes value and, in the middle of the last para­ down his words as the good God makes graph on the page, in August, and three the green grass to grow, and that is all you lines lower may develop, which I know will ever find to say about it if you try he afterwards changed into may become, for ever." because I saw it in the proofs of the That is true. For the magic of Hudson's article which he wrote for one of the talent was his' temperament, and how or heavier magazines. ... And the curious why the good God gives a man his tem­ thing is that I can hardly remember at perament is a secret that will be for ever all what the article was about, except that hidden ... unless we shall one day have it contained on the side some reflections all knowledge. It is easy to say that the on the value of the Arts to the public: yet picture is made for you when those words I remember perfect!y well his making that "and had the clear stream for mirror" change - or rather seeing that he had are written. But why did Hudson select made that change. that exactly right image with which to I am glad that the question of Hudson's get in his picture? His secrets were too attitude towards the Arts has come in well protected. thus almost accidentally, for most writers lance or twice went through his proofs about Hudson - and Hudson gave them for literals after he had gone through ground enough for the idea - have writ­ them himself and was not feeling well, ten that he cared nothing about the Arts when I had called to take· him for a walk as arts but considered himself, as so many in the park. And you learned nothing Anglo-Saxon writers do, a man of action from his corrections. He would substitute before he was a writer. I am convinced for the simple word grew the almost more that this is wrong. It was with him a sort simple word were. When the hedges of humility; he was, as it were, as aston­ were green for when the hedges grew ished that the writers of the Mont Blanc green, not so much with the idea of avoid­ should take him seriously as a writer as ing alliteration as because there is an ac­ they were that he should notice anything tual difference in the effect produced as dingy as that poor imitation of a Paris visually. You do not see hedges grow, but bistrot and its occupants. Because one's you do see that they are green. And I astonishment every time that he appeared suppose these minute verbal alterations, there gave place in the end always to the meticulously attended to, did give his feeling that he would surely never come projected scenes their vividness. I fancy there.again. But if at the end of three or too that his first manuscript drafts may four hours' conversational labor one had have been rather florid, as if he made in convinced him that he was really a very them a sort of shorthand of his thoughts great writer, he would express a sort of immediately after seeing something that grim and sardonic satisfaction, wrinkling interested him. But I was never able to up his nose more than ever and from make out even a few words of his first far above your head letting out humph­ drafts. From a whole scratched-out page humphs and ,vell-wells. And would then THE AMERICAN MERCURY contentedly listen to a great deal of praise. I said: "It isn't. Art is clarity; art is It would go like this: economy; art is surprise. Hang it, sup.. "It's .the simplicity of your prose," I pose you want to drive an ox. You tickle would protest. "It's as if a child wrote his hide with a sharpened stick; you don't with the mind of one extraordinarily stand away off from hin1 and flick' a fly erudite." off him with a twenty-yard sjambok." He would answer: "You've hit it. I've He would reply: "I should have thought got the mind of a child. Anyone can write that that was what art was ... showing simply. I just sit down and write. No off in some sort of way. But I never want doubt what I write about is important. to show off. That's why I'm not an artist. I try to make it so. It's important that . .." And I would throw up my hands the chough should not be exterminated in despair and begin all over again. by those Cornish brutes. The chough is a I used to write him tremendously long beautiful and rare bird and it's important letters as to points in technique and he that beauty and rareness should not be would answer them by letters as long. It driven from the world. But it's simple must have been a nuisance to him. enough to write that down." Heavens, the letters I used to write in "You know it isn't," I would protest. those days when I was trying to get the "Look how you sweat over correcting and English to take some interest in how to re-correcting your own writing. Look how write! ... I have just been shocked by you went all through Green Mansions be­ reading in print a letter I wrote about that fore it was published again. You took out date to Galsworthy, who was then a every cliche.••." neophyte. It occupied three pages of a very "Why, I was a very young man when large book and the writing is like that of I wrote the book. It was full of sham the proverbial cacher de fiacre. He bore genteel words. I took them out. That isn't it like a hero. difficult." But the longest and most voluminous "It is," I said, "so difficult that if you correspondence I had with Hudson was can do it, you become an artist in words." about caged birds. I was then emerging He exclaimed still violently, but weak­ from a nervous breakdown and, acting on ening a little: "That's not reasonable. I'm the advif;e of the n~rve specialist in But­ not an artist. It's the last thing I should ler's T he Way of All Flesh, I had had the call myself. I'm a field naturalist who glass taken out of my bedroom window writes down what he sees. Yau're a stylist. and replaced by small meshed wire net­ You write these complicated things that ting and I had let loose in the room a no one else could. Bqt it's perfectly simple half-dozen African wax-billed finches· and to write down what one has seen. You parakeets. They seemed to flourish and to could do it if you wanted to. With your be quite happy, and my nerves were im­ eyes shut." mensely soothed by lying in bed and I answered: "I .can do it for an hour. watching them fly about. I won't go into An hour and a half. Then simplicity bores the argument. It was the usual one be­ me. I want to write long, complicated tween .bird-lovers and those who find cadences. .. ." solace from keeping birds in captivity. "Well, that's art,." Hudson 'brought out And finally I brought it to an end by say­ triumphantly. "I told you so long ago." ing that I should keep the birds and go \v. H. HUDSON on keeping them. Besides: what would King of Scotland is an incomparable be the sense of turning African waxbills writer of English and an unsurpassed and parakeets loose in London? ... At rider of the plains, whether of Maghreb el that he came to see me and stumped up Aqsa or the pampas itself. And as all these the stairs to inspect my bedroom. rIe people had about them too the airs of looked for a long time at the birds which romantic adventures and loves and gal~ were perfectly lively. Then he recom~ lopings, the odd bits of information that mended me to have some large mirrors they communicated about Hudson enor.. set into the walls with perches in front mously enhanced his aura of forests, ro­ of them. And to hang about bright sil­ mantic loves, lianas ... and a fantastic vered balls from Christmas trees, and scar~ longevity. let ribbons. Birds, he said, loved all bright Conrad would dilate with enthusiasm objects, and the mirrors gave them the about this capataz of the Revolution who illusion, with their reflected images, that had a wife as tiny as he was romantic. they were in great crowds of birds. Then "You know," he would say, "she's so tiny he said: "Humph", and stumped dcwn that when she stands on the floor she the stairs and never to me mentioned the cannot look over the edge of the dinner subject of birds in captivity again. table. Extraordinary!" And Mr. Garnett would add information about Mrs. Hud~ IV son's exquisite voice; about her having been the rival of Jenny Lind and of Well, that was I-Iudson the writer. As a Malibran of I-Ier Majesty's opera, and of great, tall, Spanish-looking man he had her having wilfully refused to sing a note his legends of a romantic past; and he had after he married her " .. so that there them, as I have said, in the most desper­ was the tragedy of Rima of Green Man­ ate atmospheres, for he penetrated into sions all over again ... and there was the most dissimilar households. You the legend of the Mont Blanc. would meet him one afternoon at Sir Ed~ And a day or two later you 'iVould go ward Grey's, where he was regarded as and spend a night or t\VO under the an impassive don with a past of lashings thatched roof of his hidehole on Salisbury of women and cavalcades now become a Plain in that curious long village of bird-watcher, for Sir Edward Grey, whilst thatched cottages where, on one side of holding the balance of all Europe, loved the street, all the women were dark as birds almost as passionately as Hudson. Spaniards and beautiful and blue of eye, And next day you would meet him at the and on the other they were all blonde Mont Blanc where other legends gathered Anglo-Saxons, buxom and high-colored about him. The legends were deduced and slow. And there he was, as legendary rather than set about for the most part by and as much at home as on Carlton I-Iouse Mr. Garnett, but innumerable verificatory Terrace and Gerrard Street, Soho, ",here details would be added by Conrad, who the imitation French restaurants swarm. had sailed the seas, by Charles Doughty, ... There he was, a gypsyish man who ,vho wrote Arabia Deserta, by Wilfred had been in foreign parts but knew the Scawen Blunt, who bred the Arab mares, pedigree of every shepherd's dog on the by Mr. Robert Bontine Cunninghame Plain and the head of game that every Graham, who besides being the legitimate the hole every vixen. THE AMERICAN MERCURY and the way every dog fox took when at ing feet and eager, restless minds who live night he went ravaging at a distance ... apart in monstrous, crowded camps like for the fox never takes poultry near h~s wood ants that go not out to forage for themselves - six millions of them home. Not he! For fear of retribution. crowded together in one camp alone! I And you may see the fox cubs play in the have lived in these colonies,years and sunlight with the young rabbits from the years, never losing the sense of captivity, next burrow.... Hudson had told the of exile, ever conscious of my burden, tak~ in~ villagers that and they recognized how ing no. interest in the doings of that numerable multitude.••• true it was. And he knew all about all the dead and gone folk of the Plain, and all His wife then - and it was at least true the living good-looking women, and he that in her day she had been a celebrated was a h~aler who brought yoU: good luck singer - kept a boarding house. She was merely by looking at you.... twenty years older than Hudson and did And there that great tall man would not come up to his elbow. And it was sit by the shepherd's table, drinking the more or less true that after her marriage terribly strong tea out of the thick cups to him she sang very little, because her and eating the fleed-cake and the poached voice was leaving her. But otherwise she rabbits. And the tiny little black-haired, was very normal and quick-witted, if a blue-eyed girls caressing their insteps with little quick-tempered and not a good busi­ their shoe soles and visiting his great ness woman. For all the great money she gamekeeper's pockets for the candies they had earned in her day had gone and were confident of finding there ... as shortly after their marriage her boarding confident as the tame squirrel of finding house went bankrupt too. It was then that nuts ... and there were always orange they had known days of real starvation flowers in an earthenware mug on the and it is not the least romantic part of table, the flower that is just a weed in Hudson's career, the desperate and cou­ English gardens but is cherished above all rageous efforts he made to keep them others in the winter flower beds above going. He was a stranger in London with the Mediterranean. nothing to earn a living by but his pen; and And then the great, long figure would it is curious to think that one of the ways arise, brushing the beams of the cottage by which he did earn money was by fer­ ceiling with his hair, and stroll down the reting out genealogical tables for Ameri­ broad· valley. And smy for many minutes cans of English origins. Then he also did watching the colony of rooks in the trees hack-work descriptions of South Ameri­ that still stood a hundred years after the can birds for scientific ornithologists who manor house that they had sheltered had had never seen a bird. And then maga­ fallen to the ground. And so to the sta­ zines began to commission him for arti­ tion and back to the strangest home of cles about birds; his wife inherited a all those that sheltered him. fantastically gloomy house in the most , sooty .neighborhood of London and a How the townsman, town born and bred, small sum of money with which she set regards this flower - the marigold [he up a boarding house that this time did says in A Shepherd}s Lite] - I do not not fail. And it was touching to see how know. He is in spite of all the time I have spent in his company a comparative stran~ Hudson made another gentle legend for ger to me.•.. A pale people with hurry- himself amongst Shetland-shawled old w. H. HUDSON maids and broken down Indian colonels. dingy streets that led fron1 that Bayswater And then he was granted a pension on boarding house to Paddington Station ..• the King's Civil List, and then fame came slowly beside Hudson and his wife who to him in London and money from New would be going away towards English York. And he and his wife lived together greennesses, through the most lugubrious until she died, a little before him, at the streets the world could imagine, let alone great age of a hundred years. ... That know. And Huddie would be expressing too was Romance. theories as to the English rain and far I am ashamed to say that I did not below him his tiny wife would be inces­ see it at the time and I disliked the at­ santly telling him that he was going the mosphere of the boarding house so much wrong way. that whenever I could I used to insist on Hudson had lived in that district for Hudson's coming out with me to Ken­ forty years, continuing to stay there after sington Gardens. He was not a good fortune had a little smiled on him - be­ walker in those days in spite of the fact cause it was near the great tern1inus of that he had spent the greater part of his Paddington and they could slip away from life on his feet, watching birds. We used there to the country without attracting to pace very slowly up and down beneath attention by their singular disproportion the tall elms of the Broad Walk and in in size. In spite of this they never could front of the little palace, amongst the go to that exit from London without her children of the wealthy. We would watch telling him that he was going the wrong the gray squirrels that had come from "vay ... I suppose because she had lived New York and that were monstrously at there for nearly a century. And she would home in the Gardens, having bitten off the keep on and on at it, bickering like a tiny tails of all the aboriginal red squirrels. wren threatening some great beast ap­ And he would talk of how the Liberator proaching her nest in the gorse. Her great carried his whip and reviewed his troops; age only affected her coloration so that she and of the birds and herds and great seemed to recede further and further into trees of the pampas, far away and long the mists of St. Luke's Road until she was ago. And Far Away and Long Ago is the almost invisible. But her vivacity was un­ most self-revelatory of all his books. conquerable, and appropriate. It was as if I do not think that I would much like having framed that romantic giant, the to recapture many of the atmospheres of force of nature could go no further, and to my own past. The present days are bet­ frame a fitting mate must compound for ter. But I would be glad indeed if once him that singular and elfish humming again I could walk slowly along the bird. IS PATRIOTISM NECESSARY?

BY STRUTHERS BURT

HER,E has never been in history, so fa, r mocracy while denying the ideal itself­ as I can make out, a country equally added to all these, coloring or discoloring T great as America, whose artists, either them, has been for years a curious and willfully or through ignorance, have baffling phenomenon, a phenomenon that so misinterpreted it, whose intellectuals, can best be described as a strange lack in with their mania for being clever at all the American mind of that central idea costs, have so betrayed it, whose mass pop­ which, in other countries, underlies the ulation, for the most part leaderless, has mental processes of the intelligent citizen, thought so little about it, or whose business­ no matter how varied his personal expres­ men have used it so ruthlessly as an inex­ sions of that idea may be. A lack of that haustible gold mine. In their progress across emotion which promotes a sense of the the continent Americans have marched like land, a love of it, apart from whatever Huns, looting and destroying, debauching generation may be inhabiting it at the themselves with easy wealth, treating their moment. A lack of that sentiment which country as a sadist treats a harlot. Had it predisposes a man to think of his country not been for the land itself, its amazing as an entity by itself, but at the same time and patient" fecundity, its adaptability, its an entity to which he belongs and which tenacity, long before this we would have belongs to him - an entity that can be, as arrived at a parting of the ways, forced any individual can be, wounded or healed, to choose, as we are now being forced to honored or disgraced, made absurd or choose, between good citizenship and the magnificent, not alone by his own small old defiant plundering. efforts and opinions, but by the efforts and But then, more than any other great na­ opinions of all those who have to do with tion, with the exception of pre-Soviet Rus­ the entity. In short, a lack of that tender­ sia, the United States for a long while has ness which unexpectedly, suddenly, when presented a puzzling, bewildering, and alone with the land or when thinking of frequently uncomfortable spectacle, not it in a foreign country, wrings a man's alone to the sympathetic foreign observer heart. but even more so to those Am~ricans striv- No sensitive Englishman confuses Eng­ 'ing to arrive at a just estimate of them­ land with the antics of ignorant leaders. selves and of their country. Added to a No Frenchman who loves France confuses score of confusing factors - vast size, a it with what venal or corrupt Frenchmen sprawling population, immense variations may do while in temporary control of in climate, the intricacies of state and fed­ events. Even the pre-Soviet artist or intel­ eral, sovereignties, the American's determi­ lectual did not misinterpret his country; nation to observe the outer forms of de- and the mass of the population as well had 31i IS PATRIOTISM NECESSARY? a deep love of Russia, however dulled and pseudo-patriotism is not only the scoundrel's inarticulate that love might he. But the last refuge, but above all, it affords him the Russian upper classes - and here the par­ opportunity to use his countJ y for his own and with America is disclosed - despised disingenuous purposes. No wonder, then, their country, considering it to be savage that following periods of national or world and uncouth, and as much as possible disillusion, even wise men and women re­ lived away from it and avoided all re­ gard all manifestations of patriotism. and sponsibilities. They only began to love nationalism with suspicion. In just so Russia with a bitter tenderness when it much do they cease to be wise, and in was taken away from them. just so much do they join hands with the This then, to sum up, would appear to stupid and, \vhat is more dangerous, with be the present situation in America: In the mal-intentioned as well. common with the rest of the world we The last thing in Dr. Johnson's mind have suffered the disillusionments of war was an attack upon intelligent patriotism, and the false prosperity that follows always which, like intelligent Christianity, has not upon ,,'ar. In common with the rest of as yet been wide!y enough tried to be the world, or that portion of it with any condemned out of hand. Furthermore, the claims still left to liberal civilization, we last country in the world that can risk, suspect and dislike all the cruder forms save at extrerne danger to itself, a misin­ of patriotism. Yet unlike the other nations, terpretation of Dr. Johnson's axiom is except pre-Soviet Russia, these successive America. No people are so thoroughly pre­ shocks have further damaged a foundation pared to think ill of themselves as Ameri­ already insecure, a foundation neglected cans. In this we are aided and encouraged for many generations, and which in the by our characteristic love of exaggeration last two decades has been subjected to a and lack of perspective. Before the Amer­ continuous and furious bombardment of ican can even attenlpt to make of himself domestic criticism. an intelligent patriot, he must reconstruct When Dr. Samuel Johnson remarked in his mind the record of his nation. His for posterity that "patriotism is the last ref­ pride in it, legitimate or false, has been uge of a scoundrel", he knew, as he usu­ largely taken away from him. He is today ally did, exactly what he was saying. What a mafl without a country, in the sense of he did not know was that his apothegm, a just tradition of his country's past. caught up and repeated by Boswell, would Where intelligent patriotism is concerned, be more misquoted, misinterpreted, and America, as I have said, has always had, misused, and with increasing emphasis, es­ except at its very beginning, a curious and pecially at present, than almost any other dismaying history. pertinent saying in the English language. Yet that the apothegm holds true in any II period in which aggressive and unthink­ ing nationalism is to the front, goes with­ For the first roo years Americans were out saying. And this applies even more to pioneers, forced to cultivate pioneer vir~ peace than to war, for the villainy of peace tues with their attendant vices. Then, as is more subtle than the villainy of war. this initial obligation grew less peremp­ Even sensible men may for a while mistake tory, for another roo years"'- for some a scoundrel for a patriot; in such periods forty-five years of colonial history, and 32.0 THE AMERICAN MERCURY through the Revolution, and, roughly by himself. He is useful and functions well speaking, up to the time of Andrew Jack­ ~nly under certain circumstances, and his son - we were a congeries of self-con­ mentality and point of view, essential in tained, aristo-democratic, landholding prov­ various eras in history, are antagonistic inces or states, each with its peculiar and by and dangerous to that settling down, that no means to be despised civilization. And deep and stark yet tolerant thinking which then, once more, around the fourth decade must accompany emergence into a more of the nineteenth century, this compara­ crowded civilization. The pioneer is by tively static civilization was disturbed by nature, and of necessity, an opportunist, further visions on the horizon, and as a an individualist, a jack-of-all-trades, a per­ nation we set out again upon our pil­ petual amateur, an egotist, a scorner of grimage, a pilgrimage that did not end his fellow men, an obstructionist once he until 1910, and the influence and traditions has obtained what he wants himself. A of which are still with us to our confusion quick and not a profound mentality is and misfortune. This is, or should be, required. In brief, the pioneer is what common knowledge. the average American has been for the But one of the most curious products of last eighty years, and the point is, the our lack of perspective is the general as­ necessity having passed, the American can sumption that America began in 1775. no longer afford to be such. Between the America, as a matter of fact - the eastern American of today - or perhaps better, of portion of it - is more than 300 years old. the immediate past - and the American of It began at Jamestown in 1607. Four gen­ the seventeenth century, there is more erations of Washingtons had settled, had similarity than between the American of prospered, and were leading a spacious the immediate past and the American of and comfortable life before George Wash­ the time of Washington. ington became a rebel- a reflection which Furthermore, until very recently, into fIlay enhance the vision, courage, and au­ the principal stream of American pioneer­ dacity of the modern American. The nation ing there have been pouring subsidiary has had, if this interests anyone, eight streams of European immigrants, essen­ kings and queens, not including a Lord tially pioneer in spirit. The majority of Protector. For good or bad, the American these people did not join the main body is three centuries old, and whether he is of American frontiersmen, but were con­ aware of it or not, he can no more escape tent to remain in the cities and along the the impact of those first ISO years than he Eastern seaboard, transforming our cities can escape the impact of the years that and the East, just beginning to compose followed. Twice in his history the Amer­ themselves, into semi-barbaric areas once ican has been, because he had to be, a more. It was the vague realization of this pioneer; once in his history, between 1740 necessity for a metamorphosis from pioneer and 1840, roughly speaking, he was a po­ to thoughtful citizen that first turned our litical and social philosopher, and also,· it honest critics toward a re-examination of should not be forgotten, an artist. American history and toward a scolding " I have said that the influence and tra­ of the laggard citizenry. And the guide­ ditions of this second epoch of pioneering post that directed them was the Battering are still with us, to our confusion and mis­ nonsense which, save for a few fine voices fortune. So they are. The pioneer is a man like Mark Twain, Frank Norris, Stephen IS PATRIOTISM NECESSARY?

Crane, and even William Dean Howells, a few years earlier. At all events, they had for three-quarters of a century told had courage and imagination, and they the pioneer what he wanted to hear and did a job, however wasteful, that has what, in his busy life, he had leisure to enabled their descendants to become mor­ hear. The pioneer lived a certain kind of alists, idealists, and - if desired - mem­ realism. What he wanted to hear was a bers of the intelligentsia. There is about fairy tale. But the American critic was these pioneers nothing more shameful, also an American, and so to some ex­ nor more admirable, than there is about tent a pioneer himself, and in his honest the heroes of the Iliad and the adyssey. revolt he exhibited the pioneer's lack of That they have left behind a pretty ket­ perspective, the pioneer's impatience, his tle of fish is another matter. Adventur­ love of exaggeration, his love of newness, ers and pioneers always leave kettles of and his ability to see everything as black fish for those who follow them. So, or white. For three-quarters of a century as a matter of fact, do moralists and America suffered from indiscriminate flat­ idealists. So, in truth, does every genera­ tery; for two decades it has suffered from tion. indiscriminate abuse. For three-quarters Reinforcing the curious American habit of a century America was fed food for of judging men out of ,their times is the children; for two decades, it has been equally curious America!n tendency to re­ fed food for swine - (1 am speaking, of gard anything old, and therefore different, course, only in relation to the point of as ludicrous. America is the only country view of America that has been given). where men who wrote novels in the '80'S, Neither of these diets is sustenance for '90's, or 1900'S are condemned because they adult man. No wonder the average Amer­ did not write like Caldwell, or Faulkner, ican suffers from mental and historical in­ or Hemingway; or where immediate digestion. laughter greets the sight of ancestors upon Swinging from the provincial notion a motion-picture screen. After all, it was that to breathe a word of criticism against out of the loins of the Gay 'Nineties that America was to commit' high treason, the most of us were born. average intelligent American now enter­ All periods of national expansion are tains the equally provincial notion that to corrupt and ruthless, no matter how much say a word in praise of America is to it may suit the purposes of those who live confess himself a mental defective. Nowa­ in them to cloak their real intentions with days it is only necessary to mention the surface morality. There is an apt parallel name· of an American pioneer of the land, between the England of Dr. Johnson and or of business, to bring a look of pained, the America of the pioneers in all save or amused, disgust to the face of almost this surface morality. The outstanding any member of the American intel­ hero of Dr. Johnson's eighteenth-century ligentsia, and there is hardly anyone so England was John Churchill, Duke of humble that he cannot commit a nuisance Marlborough, a hero of whom no virtue, upon their graves. And yet in their times, private or public, was asked except the and according to their lights,. these were virtue of adding to England's martial, and no small men, and they behaved more or therefore material, glory. There is an less exactly as the majority of their critics equally apt parallel between the period of would have behaved had they been born America's greatest expansion and the time THE AMERICAN MERCURY of Napoleon, with its swarm of marshals, tury just past the maJonty of first-class corrupt politicians, and venal entrepre­ American artists went into pioneering, neurs. But no intelligent modern Eng­ where, considering the circumstances, the lishman is ashamed of' English history majority of first-class artists would be because of John Churchill, or the thou­ likely to go. It is not difficult'to prove a sands like him, or is unaware of the fact connection between pioneering" and the that the Churchills, in their own peculiar material of which an artist is made. By fashion, added mightily to the sum total nature the first-class artist, the first-class which is England. Nor does this imply citizen, is a dogged and passionate man, that the intelligent modern Englishman not to be put oft by surface unpleasant­ wishes a return to the lack of morals nesses or disagreements. Nor is he de­ which made of Churchill a universally luded by the belief that any man can popular figure. And I doubt if any civi­ successfully deny his birthright. lized Frenchman admires Napoleon as a To attempt to resign from your coun­ man, a husband, a citizen, or for what he try is like attempting to resign from life, did to France, any more than he admires or your parents, or a university from Catherine de' Medici as a wife, a mother, which you have graduated. An inescapable or a queen. But all this does not prevent fact has occurred, and you' must make the him from regarding both as marked best of it. There is only one way out, and threads in the tapestry of history, as, mov­ that is suicide. I do not mean the spiritual ing, if terrible, figures in the pageantry suicide that all expatriates sufter; but of France. Marathon is no less glorious be­ actual suicide. And even then your na­ cause the majority of the ancient Greeks tionality will be written on your tomb­ were notoriously dishonest and quite stone. Nor, when I use the word calmly pederasts. expatriation, have I in mind the necessity The sensitive American alone has chosen for changing your citizenship which often to think otherwise where the panorama accompanies immigration, but a mental of his country, past or present, is con­ attitude, which is altogether ditferent. cerned, and it is here that the narrow es... I would like to dwell a little more on cape from colonialism has played its the question of expatriation, especially major role, a role quaintly summed up where the artist is concerned, for it is an in the extraordinary illscription on the important one and germane to the dis­ tomb of Lord Cornwallis in Westminster cussion. I have implied that from 1840 Abbey: He defeated the Americans with onward, the majority of first-class Ameri­ great slaughter. It was not until the last can artists, that is, the men,/ who might war that the American artist and inte!... have been first-class artists, went into lectual discovered that this inscription was pioneering, and that those who didn't, wrong, and even today numerous mem­ like Mark Twain and Walt Whitman, bers of the upper classes, especially the fe­ stayed at home.l think this can be proved male members, are still engaged in mak­ by the inevitable' defeat, artistic and spir­ ing up their minds. itual, that overtook the American artist But it is safe to say, I think, that the - Sargent, Abbey, Whistler, Henry James, more imaginative American, artist or Hudson, Edith Wharton, to mention only otherwise, resisted this unconscious, inher­ a few.:- who renounced his country; a ited lure of colonialism. During the,cen- defeat repeated in the unhappy young IS PATRIOTISM NECESSARY? people who in the early 1900'S crowded the pressions of the Victorian period were Left Bank of the Seine and annoyed the world-wide. We have Thackeray's own French. Less than any other national can words for this, even if we didn't have the an artist afford to renounce his birthright unanimous testimony of Victorian litera­ for a mess of pottage, however palatable ture. We also know the history of Ma­ the pottage may appear to be. If he at­ dame Bovary in Victorian France. tempts this spiritual gluttony, inevitably When the American recovers from the he w~l1 suffer a dimming of that passion, selfishness of the pioneer and the humble­ that sense of reality, which is essential to ness of the colonial, he will be at last the artist. It is interesting to note that equipped to become, once more, an intel­ Sargent toward the end· of his life re­ ligent patriot. Artistically he is already well turned to paint the Rocky Mountains, and on the way, although in the very fierce­ that these sketches were his most essential ness and roughness of his revolt there is work. You will also note, in reading still a trace of the colonial, afraid lest he American history, the curious truncation be mistaken for someone else. I admit that in American art which occurred during America is often a large and lonely and the '40's and '50's of the last century when ruthless country; but I also protest that the frontier began again to engage the tal­ in many of its aspects, and throughout a ents of the country, a truncation similar great deal of its territory, and quite as to that which all over Europe cut short often, it is a highly civilized, comfortable, so many church towers when the Medieval and gentle one as well. impulse was arrested by the impulse of the Reformation. III Unlike the great Victorian outbursts of France and England, the promise of I have already called attention to the need Washington Irving and Hawthorne, of for a higher form of personification; a Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson, the personification which enables a man to promises of admirable schools of architec­ regard his country with the same subjec­ ture, painting, and craftsmanship which, tive objectivity with which he regards during America's fairly static period be­ those nearest and dearest to him; a sub­ tween 1740 and 1840, reached a high de­ jective objectivity which bids a· man with­ gree of perfection, were interrupted for out further thought sacrifice his own almost three-quarters of a century, except selfish desires and pursuits when it is a in isolated cases. It is my contention that question of the welfare of these people or this was not the fault of the American of his country. But beyond this there is temperament, but the fault of the ever­ something else, a trace of that mysticism present epic lure of the frontier, and that which is part of every ideal, and of all in­ because he heeded this lure the American telligent practical action. showed himself a better artist· than most. You have the physical manifestation of The assertion of Van Wyck Brooks, and your land and its present; the sum total, other critics, that the American artist who that is, of yourself and of all those who stayed at home, resisting both the lure of are living, and all the present aspects of colonialism and the lure of the frontier, your country. You have also the sum total was unduly subjected to repression, has of all the ideas concerning your country, long since been proved a fallacy. The re- its traditions, and ideals. But you have also THE AMERICAN MERCURY the sum total of the past and the future; he uses imagination, analysis, common­ of every breath, every action, .. every sense, and historical perspective. At least, thought; every horror and every joy of all that is what the intelligent heir, or trus­ the men and women who have lived· in tee, does, and the intelligent citizen uses your country, white, black, or red; or exactly the· same set of mental tools. If who will live in it. The sum total of all the average American took as little these men and women, dead, living, or as thought to his business as he does to his • yet to come, who have wondered, and are country - its past, present, and future­ wondering, and will wonder; who have we would be a nation of bankrupts. worked, and are working, and will work; The heirs of a democratic ideal have who have despaired, and are despairing, especial cause to be wise and foresightful. and will despair, but who have gone on Of all political and social machinery to again, and are going on, and will go on. date, that of democracy is the most power­ And back of this is the sum total of· all ful and the most useful, and, potentially, the American dawns, and noons, and the most dangerous. It is built on the be­ nights; the American winds, and calms, lief that all men - at least, the vast ma­ and horizons, and foregrounds. jority - are to some extent intelligent This sense of the past, present, and fu.. mechanics, or can be made so, and these ture of your country - this trinity -lies have access to the machine through univer­ at the very beginning of any attempt at sal education and universal suffrage. You intelligent patriotism. No matter how cannot keep them away from the machine; preoccupied a man may be, he must, at all you can do is to see· that they have wise intervals, take time to reflect upon this foremen, and every opportunity and safe­ past and this future, or he. will find guard that will make them what they are neither safety nor satisfaction in the pres­ supposed to be. If those who are already ent. He must use the same mental proc­ wise mechanics fail to do this, some day esses, the same analysis of v.arious factors, the machine will. explode. Since the initial many contradictory on the surface, that assumption of democracy is universal lib­ he uses in making an investment. The erty, the democrat above all men has need United States is not 1936; the American to be wide awake. citizen cannot live entirely in the present. But this awareness is not merely a keen The men who came to this country, and working knowledge of what is going on. those who subsequently made the United It is not even a working knowledge of States, had definite ideas and definite the present plus an adequate .reference ideals. We are their heirs and cannot back to the past. It is more than that. Two escape the inheritance. But every heir is are required for a bargain. The good also a trustee for the future. Taking into citizen must constantly search his own consideration all that he knows of the mind and scan his opinions to see if he past and of the present, and using these himself is also in alignment with the ideals in an attempt to read as well as he· can upon which this country was founded. the future, he discards whatever poor in­ Not only must his own hands be clean, vestments have been made, retains and but they must be those of a man who has adds to what are good, and leaves, if pos­ soberly considered what America means, sible, a better estate for his descendants and then, having made up his mind, has than the one he received. In doing this, with equal sobriety decided that. whatever IS PATRIOTISM NECESSARY? else he may have to do, his main objec­ mental vein, of Washington and Lincoln; tive, his paramount thought, is the good of all the men like them. He would walk, of his country. because of this, carefully and proudly, and Differences of opinion cannot be eradi­ also humbly, lest he fail them. And, with cated. What seems good to one man may a keen sense of the present and the future, seem bad to another. But honest men with he would say to himself: "I am an Ameri­ the same end in view, however much they can and therefore what I do, however may differ as to methods, usually in the small, is of importance." end find a modus operandi. The causes of Never in history have the times been irreconcilable conflict are ignorance, prej­ more ripe for a sober discussion, a deep udice, anger, an,d selfishness. The Declara­ contemplation, of the kind of patriotism tion of Independence and the Constitution I imply. The American citizen is no were signed by men of varied surface longer a frontiersman; he can no longer political and social beliefs, but their fun­ make a million here and lose it there, and damental passion was America. The Eng­ go on and make a million somewhere else; lishman of every political belief has one and meanwhile let his country take care fundamental passion - England. There is of itself. Circumstances are forcing him no finer political phrase extant than the into a deep, straight form of thinking. English phrase, "His Majesty's opposition". Pseudo-patriotism may be the last ref­ Were I to have a vision of a full-fledged uge of a scoundrel, but it is beginning to American it would be something like this: be apparent that before long, real patri­ with sufficient knowledge of the past, he otism, as so often before in history, will would walk fairly constantly with the be not only the first, and only possible, thought that he was blood-brother, if not refuge of the intelligent and far-visioned by actual race then by the equally subtle citizen, but also his sword, his rallying method of mental vein transfusing into cry, and the emblem of his advance.

• DEAD MAN A Story BY JAMES M. CAIN

E FELT the train check, knew what it trick that would defeat the detective, and meant. In a moment, from up to­ thus, even at this ignoble trade, give him a H ward the engine, came the chant of sense of accomplishment, of being good at the railroad detective: "Rise and shine, boys, it. He had slipped into the gond not in spite rise and shine." The hoboes began dropping of its harshness, but because of it; it was off. He could hear them out there in the black, and would give him a chance to hide, dark, cursing as the train went by. That and the detective, not expecting him there, was what they always did on these freights: might pass him by. He was nineteen years let the hoboes climb on in the yards, mak­ old, and was proud of the nickname they ing no effort to dislodge them· there; for had given him in the poolroom back home. that would have meant a foolish game of They called him Lucky. hide-and-seek between two or three detec­ "Rise and shine, boys, rise and shine." tives and two or three hundred hoboes, with Three dropped off the tank car ahead, the hoboes swarming on as fast as the de­ and t~e detective climbed into the gond. tectives put them off. What they did was The flashlight shot around, and Lucky held let the hoboes alone until the train was sev­ his breath. He had curled into one of the eral miles under way; then they pulled three chutes for unloading coal. The trick down to a speed slow enough for men to \vorked. These chutes were dangerous, for drop off, but too fast for them to climb back if you stepped into one and the bottom on. Then the detective went down the line, dropped, it would dump you under the brushing them off, like caterpillars from a train. The detective took no chances. He twig. In two minutes they would all be first shot the flash, then held on to the side ditched, a crowd of bitter men in a lonely while he climbed over the chutes. When he spot; but they always cursed, always seemed came to the last one, where Lucky lay, he surprised. shot the flash, but carelessly, and not He crouched in the coal gondola and squarely into the hole, so that he saw noth­ waited. He hadn't boarded a flat or a re­ ing. Stepping over, he went on, climbed to frigerator with the others, back in the Los the box car behind, and resumed his chant; Angeles yards, tempting though this com­ there were more curses, more feet sliding on fort was. He wasn't long on the road, and ballast on the roadbed outside. Soon the he still didn't like to mix with the other train picked up speed. That meant the de­ hoboes, admit he was one of them. Also, he tective had reached the caboose, that all the couldn't shake off·· a notion that he was hoboes were cleared. sharper than they were, that playing a lone Lucky stood up, looked around. There hand he might think of some magnificent was nothing to see, except hot-dog. stands 326

• DEAD MAN

along the highway, but it was pleasant to closed on a spike, sticking an inch or two poke your head up, let the wind whip your out of the tie. The detective jerked, the spike hair, and reflect how you had outwitted the pulled out of the hole, and Lucky resumed detective. When the click of the rails slowed his unwilling run. and station lights showed ahead, he squatted "Lemme go! Why don't you lemme go?" down again, dropped his feet into the chute. "Come on! Hide out on me, will you? As soon as lights flashed alongside, he I'll learn you to hide out on Larry Notd" braced against the opposite side of the "Lemmo go! Lemme -" chute: that was one thing he had learned, Lucky pulled back, braced with his heels, the crazy way they shot the brakes on these got himself stopped. Then his whole body freights. When the train jerked to a shriek­ coiled like a spring and let go in one con­ ing stop, he was ready, and didn't get vulsive, passionate lunge. The spike, still in slammed. The bell tolled, the engine pulled his hand, came down on the detective's away, there was an interval of silence. That head, and he felt it crush. He stood there, meant they had cut the train, and would be looking down at something dark and form­ picking up more cars. Soon they would be less, lying across the rails. going on. "Ah-ha! Hiding out on me, hey?" II The flashlight shot down from the box car. Lucky jumped, seized the side of the Hurrying down the track, he became aware gond, scrambled up, vaulted. When he hit of the spike, gave it a toss, heard it splash the roadbed, his ankles stung from the im­ in the ditch. Soon he realized that his steps pact, and he staggered for footing. The de­ on the ties were being telegraphed by the tective was on him, grappling. He broke listening rail, and he plunged across the away, ran down the track, past the caboose, ditch to the highway. There he resumed his into the dark. The detective followed, but rapid walk, trying not to run. But every he was a big man and began to lose ground. time a car overtook him his heels lifted Lucky was clear, when all of a sudden his queerly, and his breath first stopped, then foot drove against a switch bar and he went came in gasps as he listened for the car to flat on his face, panting from the hysteria of stop. He came to a crossroads, turned shock. quickly to his right. He let himself run The detective didn't grapple this time. here, for the road wasn't lighted as the He let go with a barrage of kicks. main highway was, and there weren't "Hide out on me, will you? Treat you many cars. The running tired him, but it right, give you a break, and you hide out eased the sick feeling in his stomach. He on me. I'll learn you to hide out on me." came to a sign that told him Los Angeles Lucky tried to get up, couldn't. He was was 17 miles, and to his left. He turned, jerked to his feet, rushed up the track on walked, ran, stooped down sometimes, the run. He pulled back, but couldn't get panting, to rest. After a while it came to set. He sat down, dug in with his sliding him why he had to get to Los Angeles, and heels. The detective kicked and jerked, in so soon. The soup kitchen opened at seven fury. Lucky clawed for something to hold o'clock. He had to be there, in that same on to, his hand caught the rail. The detec­ soup kitchen where he had had supper, so tive stamped on it. He pulled it back in it would look as though he had never pain, clawed again. This time his fingers been away. THE AMERICAN MERCURY

When· the lights went off, and it came He sat at the rough table with the others, broad daylight with the suddenness of dipped his bread in the soup, tried to eat, Southern California, he was in the city, and hut his throat kept contracting from excite­ a clock told him it was ten minutes after ment and he made slow work of it. He had five. He thought he had time. He pressed ,vhat he wanted from Shorty. He had fixed on, exhausted, but never relaxing his rapid, the day, and not only the day but the date, half-shuffling walk. for it would be .the same date as the big It was ten minutes to seven when he got Shriners' parade. He had fixed his name, to the soup kitchen, and he quickly walked with a little gag. Shorty wouldn't forget past it. He wanted to be clear at the end of him. His throat relaxed, and he wolfed the the line, so he could have a word with piece of meat. Shorty, the man who dished out the soup, Near the soup kitchen he saw signs: without impatient shoves from behind, "Lincoln Park Pharmacy," "Lincoln Park and growls ·to keep moving. Cafeteria". Shorty remembered him.· "Still here, "Which way is the park, Buddy?" If it hey?" was a big park, he might find a thicket "Still here." where he could lie down, rest his aching "Three in a row for you. Holy smoke, legs. they ought be collecting for you by the "Straight down, you'll see it." month." There was a fence around it, but he found "Thought you'd be off." a gate, opened it, slipped in. Ahead of him "Who, me?" was a thicket, but the ground was wet from "Sunday, ain't it?" a stream that ran through it. He crossed a "Sunday? Wake up. This is Saturday." small bridge, followed a path. He came to "Saturday? You're kidding." a stable, peeped in. It was empty, but the "Kidding my eye, this is Saturday, and a floor was thickly covered with new hay. He big day in this town, too." went in, made for a dark corner, burrowed "One day looks like another to me." under the hay, closed his eyes. For a few "Not this one. Parade." moments everything slipped away, except "Yeah?" warmth, relaxation, ease. But then some­ "Shriners. You get that free." thing began to drill into the back of his "Well, that's my name, Lucky." mind: Where did he spend last night? "My name's Shorty, but I'm over six feet." Where would he tell them he spent last "Nothing like that with me. I really got night? He tried to think,.hut nothing would luck." come to him. He would have said that he "You sure?" spent it where he spent the night before, "Like, for instance, getting a hunk of hut he hadn't spent it in Los Angeles. He meat." had spent it in Santa Barbara, and come "I didn't give you no meat." down in the morning on a truck. He had "Ain't you going to?" never spent a night in Los Angeles. He "Shove your plate over quick. Don't let didn't know the places. He had no answers nobody see you." to the questions that were now pounding at "Thanks." him like sledge-hammers: "Okay, Lucky. Don't miss the parade." "What's that? Where you say you was?" "I won't." "In a flophouse." DEAD MAN

"Which flophouse?" "Just went in there, seen the elephants, "I didn't pay no attentiQn which flop­ and bedded down with them?" house. It was just a flophouse." "I thpught they was horses." "Where was this flophouse at?" "You thought them elephants was "I don't know where it was at. I never horses?" been to Los Angeles before. I don't know "It was d~rk. I dug in under the hay. I the names of no streets." never knowed they was elephants till morn­ "What this flophouse look like?" ing." "Looked like a flophouse." "How come you went in this place?" "Come on, don't give us no gags. What "1 left the soup kitchen, and in a couple this flophouse look like? Ain't you got eyes, of minutes I came to the park. I went in can't you say what this here place looked there, looking for some grass to lie down like? What's the matter, can't you talk?" on. Then I come to this here place, looked Something gripped his arm', and he felt to me like a stable, I peeped in, seen the hay, himself being lifted. Something of terrible and hit it." strength had hold of him, and he was going "And you wasn't scared of them ele­ straight up in the air. He squirmed to get phants?" loose, then was plopped on his feet and re­ "It was dark, I tell you, and I could hear leased. He turned, terrified. them eating the hay, but I thought they was An elephant was standing there, explor­ horses. I was tired, and I wanted some place ing his clothes with its trunk. He knew then to sleep." that he had been asleep. But when he backed "Then what?" away, he bumped into another elephant. He "Then when it got light, and I seen they slipped between the two elephants, slithered was elephants, I run out of there, and beat past a third to the door, which was open it." about a foot. Out in the sunlight, he made "Couldn't you tell them elephants by the his way back across the little bridge, saw smell?" what he hadn't noticed before: pens with "I never n0ticed no smell." deer in them, and ostriches, and mountain "How many elephants ,vas there?" sheep, that told him he had stumbled into a "Three." zoo. It was after four o'clock, so he must have slept a long time in the hay. Back on III the street, he felt a sobbing laugh rise in his throat. T hat was where he had spent the He brushed wisps of hay off his denims. night. "In the elephant house at Lincoln They had been fairly new, but now they Parle" were black with the grime of the coal gond. "What?" Suddenly his heart stopped, a suffocating "That's right. In the elephant house." feeling swept over him. The questions "What you giving us? A stall?" started again, hammered at him, beat into "It ain't no stall. I was in the elepha~t his brain. house." "Where that coal dust come from?" "With them elephants?" "I don't know. The freights, I guess." "That's right." "Don't you kno,,, it ain't no coal ever "How you get in there?" shipped into this part of the state? Don't "Just went in. The door was open." you know that here all they burn is gas? 33° THE AMERICAN MERCURY Don't you know it ain't only been but one "Just taking a walk for nothing." coal car shipped in here in six months, and "What's your name?" that come in by a misread train order? "Hook's my name. Oscar Hook." Don't you know that car was part of that "Thanks, Mr. Hook. But I'm coming train this here detective was riding that got back. I just got a idea I can talk myself into killed? Don't you know that? Come on, out a job. I'm some talker." with it, WHERE THAT COAL DUST "You're all of that, kid. But don't waste COME FROM?" your time. I don't need anybody." Getting rid of the denims instantly be­ "Okay. Just the same, I'll be back." came an obsession. He felt that people were He headed for the center of town, asked looking at him on the street, spying the coal the way to the cheap clothing stores. At Los dust, waiting till he got by, then running Angeles and Temple, after an hour's trudge, into drugstores to phone the police that he he came to·a succession of small stores in a had just passed by. It was like those dreams Mexican quarter that were what he wanted. he sometimes had, where he was walking He went into one. The storekeeper was a through crowds naked, except that this was Mexican, and two or three other Mexicans no dream, and he wasn't naked, he was were standing around, smoking. wearing these denims, these tell-tale denims "Mister, will you trust me for a pair of with coal dust all over them. He clenched white pants and a shirt?" his hands, had a moment of terrible con­ "No trust. Hey, scram." centration, headed into a filling station. "Look. I can have a jo~ Monday morning "Hello." if I can show up in that outfit. White pants "Hello." and a white shirt. That's all." "What's the chances on a job?" "No trust. What you think this is, any­ "No chances." way?" "Why not?" "Well, I got to get that outfit somewhere. "Don't need anybody." If I get that, they'll let me go to work Mon­ "That's not the only reason." day, I'll pay you soon as I get paid off Satur­ "There's about forty-two other reasons, day night." one of them is I can't even make a living "No trust. Sell for cash." myself, but it's all the reason that concerns He .. stood there. The Mexicans stood you. Here's a dime, kid. Better luck some­ there, smoked, looked out at the street. where else." Presently one of them looked at him. "I don't want your dime. I want a job. If "What kind of job, hey? What you mean, the clothes were better, that might help, got to have white pants a white shirt a mightn't it?" hold a job?" "If the clothes were good enough for "Filling station. They got a rule you got Clark Gable in the swell gambling house to have white clothes before you can work scene, that wouldn't help a bit. Not a bit. I there." just don't need anybody, that's all." "Oh. Sure. Filling station." "Suppose I got better clothes. Would you After a while the storekeeper spoke. "Ra! talk to me?" Is a joke. Job in filling station, must have a "Talk to you any time, but I don't need white pants, white shirt. HaJ Is a joke." anybody." "What else would I want them for? Holy "I'll be back when I get the clothes." smoke, these are better for the road, ain't DEAD MAN 33 1 they? Say, a guy don't want white pants to Is six dollar ninety-eight cents, then is a ride freights, does he?" service charge one dollar." "What filling station ? Tell me that?" All of them laughed. He took the "service "Guy name of Hook, Oscar Hook, got a charge" to be a gyp overcharge to cover the Acme station, Main near Twentieth. You trust. He nodded. "Okay on the service don't believe me, call him- up." charge." "You go to work there, hey?" The storekeeper hesitated. "Well, six "I'm supposed to go to work. I told him ninety-eight. We no make a service charge." I'd get the white pants and white shirt, "Thanks." somehow. Well- if I don't get them I "See you keep a white pants clean till don't go to work." Monday morning." "Why you come to me, hey?" "I'll do that. See you Saturday night." "Where else would I go? If it's not you, ((Adios." it's another guy down the street. No place Out in the street, he stuck his hand in his else I can dig up the stuff over Sunday, is pocket, felt something, pulled ivout. It was there ?" a $1 bill. Then he understood about the "Oh." "service charge", and why the Mexicans He stood around. They all stood around. had laughed. He went back, kissed the $1 Then once again the storekeeper looked up. bill, waved a cheery salute into the store. "What size you wear, hey?" They all waved back. He had a wash at a tap in the back yard, He rode a streetcar down to Mr. Hook's, then changed there, between piled-up boxes got turned down for the job, rode a street­ and crates. The storekeeper gave him a car back. In his mind, he tried to check over white shirt, white pants, necktie, a suit of everything. He had an alibi, fantastic and thick underwear, and a pair of shoes to re­ plausible. So far as he could recall, nobody place his badly-worn brogans. "Is pretty on the train had seen him, not even the other cold, night-time, now. A thick underwear hoboes, for he had stood apart from them in feel better." the yards, and had done nothing to attract "Okay. Much obliged." the attention of any of them. The denims "Can roll this other stuff up." were burned, and he had a story to account "I don't want it. Can you throw it away for the whites. It even looked pretty good, for me?" this thing with Mr. Hook, for anybody who "Is pretty dirty." had committed a murder would be most un­ "Plenty dirty." likely to make a serious effort to land a job. "You no want?" But the questions lurked there, ready to "No." spring at him, check and recheck as he His heart leaped as the storekeeper would. He saw a sign, "s-Course Dinner, dropped the whole pile into a rubbish bra­ 35 Cents". He still had ninety cents, and zier and touched a match to some papers at went in, ordered steak and fried potatoes, the bottom of it. In a few minutes, the den­ the hungry man's dream of heaven. He ate, ims and everything else he had worn were put a ten-cent tip under the plate. He or­ ashes. dered cigarettes, lit one, inhaled. He got up He followed the storekeeper inside. to go. A newspaper was lying on the table. "Okay, here is a bill, I put all a stuff on a He froze as he saw the headline: bill, no charge you more than anybody else. "L. R. NOTT, R. R. MAN, KILLED." 33 2 THE AMERICAN MERCURY IV red lights of the police station - glowing. He looked away quickly. A queer feeling On the street, he bought a paper, tried to began to stir inside him. He wished the open it under a street light, couldn't, tucked driver would hurry up. it under his arm. He found Highway 101, Presently he went back to the headlights caught a hay truck bound for San Francisco. again, found the notice, re-read it. He rec­ Going out Sunset Boulevard, it unexpect­ ognized that feeling now; it was the old edly pulled over to the curb and stopped. Sunday-night feeling that he used to have He looked warily around. Down a side­ back home, when the bells would ring and street, about a block away, were the two red he would have to stop playing hide in the lights of a police station. He was tightening twilight, go to church, and hear about the to jump and run, but the driver wasn't look­ necessity for being saved. It shot through ing at the lights. "I told them bums that air his mind, the time he had played hookey hose was leaking. They set you nuts. Sup­ from church, and hid in the livery stable; posed to keep the stuff in shape and all they and how lonely he had felt, because there ever do is sit around and play blackjack." was nobody to play hide with; and how he The driver fished a roll of black tape from had sneaked into church, and stood in the his pocket and got out. Lucky sat where he rear to listen to the necessity for being saved. was a few minutes, then climbed down, His eyes twitched back to the red lights, walked to the glare of the headlights, and·slowly, shakily, but unswervingly he opened his paper. There it was: found himself walking toward them. "I want to give myself up." L. R. NOTT, R. R. MAN, KILLED "Yeah, I know, you're wanted for grand The decapitated body of L. R. Nott, 1327 larceny in Hackensack, N. De Soto Street, a detective assigned to a J." northbound freight, was found early this "No, 1-" morning on the track near San Fernando "We quit giving them rides when the station. It is believed he lost his balance New Deal come in. Beat it." while the train was shunting cars at the "I killed a man." San Fernando siding and fell beneath the "You - ? ... When was it you done wheels. Funeral services will be held to~ morrow from the De Soto Street Methodist this ?" Church. "Last night." Mr. Nott is survived by a widow, for­ "Where?" merly Miss Elsie Snowden of Mannerheim, "Near here. San Fernando. It was like and a son, L. R. Nott, Jr., 5. this -" He stared at it, refolded the paper, tucked "Hey, wait till I get a card.... Okay, it under his arm, walked back to where the what's your name?" driver was taping the air hose. He was clear, "Ben Fuller." and he knew it. "Boy, do they call you "No middle name?" Lucky? Is your name Lucky? I'll say it is." "They call me Lucky." .. He leaned against the trailer, let his eye "Lucky like in good luck?" wander down the street. He saw the two "Yes, sir. •.. Lucky like in good luck." ~~!ID~~~~(}1~~~!ID~(}1~~!ID~(}1~~ ~ THESTATEOFTHEUNION ~ ~ BY ALBERT JAY NOCK ~ ~~~~fr~~~fr~~~~fr~~~~ T he New Deal and Prohibition

BELIEVE that when the historian looks war to make the world safe for democracy I back on the last· twenty years of Amer­ - and look at democracy now! They took ican life, the thing that will puzzle him on the war debts, and financed the "recon­ most is the amount of self-inflicted punish­ struction" of Europe - and now they are ment that Americans seem able to stand. holding the bag. They fell for the "new They take it squarely on the chin at the economics" of blessed memory, and took a slightest provocation, and do not even wait handsome fling at jazz-and-paper in the for the count before they are back for more. 'Twenties. They went in strong for Prohibi­ True, they have always been good at it. For tion; and then, even before they came out instance, once on a time they were compara­ from under that nightmare, they threw tivelya free people, regulating a large por­ themselves body and soul into the fantastic tion of their lives to suit themselves. They imbecilities of the New Deal. had a great deal of freedom, as compared What a spectacle! There is no use, none with other peoples of the world. But appar­ in the world, of pretending that the pr~­ endy they could not rest until they threw torian guard dragooned, cajoled, or hum­ their freedom away. They made a present bugged the people of this country into tak­ ofit to their own politicians, who have made ing up with all this appalling nonsense, and them sweat for their gullibility ever since. at the same time pretending that the coun­ They put their liberties in the hands of a try is a republic in which the people are sov­ pr~torian guard made up exactly on the old ereign. Yau can not have it both ways. Ifthe Roman model, and not only never got them professional politicians, who are known of back, but as long as that pr~torian guard of all men to be pliant mountebanks when professional politicians lives and thrives­ they are not time-serving scoundrels, and which will be quite a while if its numbers ar~ usually both - if these have power to keep on increasing at the present rate - they herd the people headlong into such bizarre never will. rascalities and follies against their will and But though Americans have always judgment, then the country is not a republic known ho"v to make the old-time Flagel­ but an· oligarchy built on an imperial lants look like amateurs at the business of model, and its people are not citizens, but scourging themselves, it is only in the last subjects. If on the other hand itis a republic twenty years that they have really shown and the people are sovereign, then the mis­ what they can do. The plagues of Egypt, the feasances of the professional politicians run flies, frogs, hail, locusts, murrain, boils, and straight back to the people who elected blains, are as nothing by comparison with them. When Golden Rule Jones was Mayor the curses they have brought down on them­ of Toledo, a man wrote him for help, say­ selves in that time, all of their own free will ing that whisky had been his ruin. Jones and accord. They diddled themselves into a answered his letter, saying: "1 do n~t believe 333 334 THE AMERICAN MERCURY whisky has been your ruin. I believe it was the outrage provoked. State prohibition was the whisky that you drank." in force then, and somewhere down South The reader may take his choice between a posse of state officials boarded a train and these alternatives. No matter which of the slashed open the suitcase of a through pas­ two is right, the fact remains that the indi­ senger who had stood on his rights and re­ vidual citizen, or subject, has lost the best fused to unlock it. That incident went the that was in him~ Whether he surrendered length and breadth of the land, and was it or whether he let it be confiscated is not talked about in good plain language, not what I am so much concerned with at the by a few doctrinaires, but by Tom, Dick, moment - although the question is impor­ and Harry on the streets. Yet, as Mr. Whit­ tant enough and ought to be ventilated­ lock said, .in the America of twenty-five as I am with the fact that it is gone. Not only years later, such a thing would not even be his liberty is gone, but something much news, and nowhere would there be a breath more valuable, his belief in liberty and his of indignation against it. Mr. Whitlock love of it, his power of quick and effective died, as an honorable man would wish to resentment against any tampering with the do, before he could see the upshot of most principle of liberty by anybody. This is as of the policies which the people of Prohi­ much as to say that his self-respect, dignity, bitionist and post-Prohibitionist America his sense of what is due to him as a human have inflicted on themselves in the name of being, has gone, and that is exactly what I good government. Many of us, indeed, ap­ mean to say. It has gone into the keeping of pear or pretend not to see it even now. persons most notoriously unworthy of such I think, for instance, that no one has ade­ a trust, or of any trust; persons capable of quately remarked the ease and naturalness deliberately conniving, and who do con­ of the transition from Prohibition to the nive, at the temporary ruin of their country New Deal. Some one may have done it, but for political purposes. I say this with respect if so it has escaped me. There is a complete to no particular party or faction, for how­ parallel between them. They are alike in ever many nominally there may be of these, their inception. They are alike in their pro­ there are never actually more than two. As fessed intention. As for their fundamental Mr. Jefferson said, "The nest of office being principle, they are so far alike that the one is too small for them all to cuddle into at once, a mere expansion of the other. They are the contest is eternal which shall crowd the alike in respect of the quality of the people other out. For this purpose they are divided who support them, alike in respect of the into two parties, the Ins and the Outs." kind of apologists they attract to their serv­ In the last conversation I had with the late ice; and finally, they are alike in their effect Brand Whitlock, a few months before his upon the spirit and character of the nation. death, we spoke of the remarkably rapid Alike in their origin, both were brought dwindling of the sense of self-respect in about by a coup d'etat, the work of a de­ America, and he asked me if I remembered termined minority at a time when the coun­ how thoroughly the country was worked try was writhing in one of its recurrent up by a little incident that took place only spasms of discreditable and senseless funk twenty-five years before. I remembered it - or, I should rather say, when it had passed well, because we had happened to be to­ beyond its norm of imbecile apathy and gether at the time, and we had commented gone into the stage of vociferous idiocy. Not on the wholesome general resentment that long ago I had a letter from a French friend THE STATE OF THE UNION 335 who remarked that quand les Americains in Egypt in Moses' day - saw a great starv­ se mettent it etre nerveux, ils depassent tout ing-time ahead of them, and when the New commentaire, which is indeed true, so I im­ Deal was broached they fell upon it with agine that what I have just said is perhaps yells of joy, as one who comes upon an oasis the best one can do by way of describing of date-palms in a trackless desert. Their the country's state of mind. Prohibition dearth was miraculously turned into plenty. came when we were "making a business of Faced with a dead stoppage of their ma­ being nervous" about the great cause of chine from lack of money to keep it going, righteousness that we were defending they suddenly found themselves with more against the furious Goth and fiery Hun. money in their hands than they had ever The New Deal came when we were mak­ imagined there was in the world. ing a business of being nervous about the Prohibition and the New Deal are alike depression; that is, nervous about having to in their fundamental principle, which is the pay collectively the due and just penalty of principle of coercion. Prohibition proposed our collective ignorance, carelessness, and to make the nation sober by force majeure, culpable greed. and incidentally to charge a thundering Prohibition and the New Deal are alike brokerage for doing the job. It said to us, in their professed intention, if one may put "This is all for your own good, and you it so, to "do us for our own good". Both as­ ought to fall in line cheerfully, but if you do sumed the guise of disinterested benevo­ not fall in, we will make you." The New lence towards the body politic. In the one Deal proposes a redistribution of wealth, case we were adjudged incapable of setting and is charging a brokerage that makes the up an adequate social defense against the janizaries of the Anti-Saloon League look seductions of vicious rum-sellers; in the like pickpockets at a county fair. The na­ other, of defending ourselves against in­ tional headquarters of the New Deal has a juries wrought by malefactors of great slush-fund of something over four billion wealth; therefore the State would oblig­ dollars to blow in between now and next ingly come forward and take the job off November, and about 700,000 devoted heel­ our hands. In the case of Prohibition we ers on the job of seeing that it is spent where can now see what those professions it will bring the best results. All this, we are amounted to, and we are beginning to see told, is for our own good, and we ought to what they amount to in the case of the New appreciate it, but whether we appreciate it Deal; and in either case we see nothing or not, we must take it. but what we might have seen at the outset The two enterprises are alike also in re­ - and what some of us did see - by a brief spect of the quality of the people who sup­ glance at the kind of people engaged in pro­ port it. There are some statistics available on moting both these nostrums, and a briefer this. About four years ago - in November, glance at their record. We see now that the 1931, to be exact - Mr. Henry L. Mencken promotion of Prohibition was purely pro­ published in this magazine the results of an fessional, and there is nothing to prevent elaborate statistical study which he had been our seeing that so was the promotion of the making in collaboration with Mr. Charles New Deal. In 1932 the local politicians and Angoff in ordef to determine the relative the political hangers-on who together make cultural standing of the forty-eight states. up the "machine" - and of whom there He tabulated his findings in the form of a are more in America than there were lice list of the states, arranged in the order of THE AMERICAN MERCURY

their appr~ach to civilization, and he has are exactly the states that inflicted the Eight­ stated publicly that his table has never been eenth .Amendment on us, and most of them successfully challenged. are still dry. Also they are the states whose In 1932 Mr. Mencken compared his table people still believe by large majorities that with the returns of the Literary Digest's poll William- Jennings Bryan was a profounder on Prohibition, and found that they fitted scientist than Darwin, that any man who precisely. Nearly all the states that turned pays his debts is an enemy to society, and in heavy majorities against Prohibition that a horsehair put into a bottle of water stood high on his table, and nearly all that will turn into a snake". supported it stood low. In the Baltimore As for its moral effect upon the nation, Evening Sun of January 13, 1936, he made the New Deal simply carries on Prohibi­ a similar comparison with the Digest's poll tion's work of making corruption and hy­ on the New Deal, and got a similar result. pocrisy respectable. Both enterprises are The more nearly civilized states are against bureaucratic, both are coercive; and, as Mr. it, and the more uncivilized states are for it. Jefferson said, the moral effect of coercion He says: is "to make one-half the world -- fools, and the other half hypocrites; to support roguery In the five most civilized of American states, according to the Angoff-Mencken and error all over the earth". And what has table, the percentage of voters voting for Prohibition had to show by way of offset? the New Deal is but 32.32; in the five least Simply nothing. What has the New Deal to civilized states it is 67.68, or more than show, so far? Can anybody point to a single double.... Of the states giving the New one of its policies that has really worked? Deal less than 30% of their votes (seven I know of none. No recovery in business is in number) all are among the first twenty­ two; of those giving it more than 70% due to it. It has as many unemployed on its (two in number) both are among the last hands as it ever had, and as many derelicts. three. Of those giving it less than 35% Its agricultural policy is -said to have (thirteen in number) all are among the worked, but, as the Supreme Court ob­ first twenty-eight; of those giving it more served, that simply amounted to the expro­ than 65% (four in number) all are clumped together at the bottom. Finally, priation of money from one group for the of those giving it less than 40% (twenty­ benefit of another; in other words, it two in number) all are among the first amounted to larceny, and official larceny thirty-three; and of those giving it more always works. The unofficial practitioners than 60% (eight in number) all are of that art who are now in Sing Sing were among the last eleven. simply at a disadvantage. From this it may be seen that, precisely Prohibition and the New Deal, in short, like Prohibition, the New Deal, as Mr. breed straight back to the incredible appe­ Mencken concludes, "makes its most pow­ tite of the American people for self-inflicted erful appeal, not to the intelligent and en­ punishment. One wonders -how long they lightened moiety of the American people, can take it, and how hard; and above all, but to the -ignorant and. credulous. It is, in one wonders, when the New Deal has gone truth, demagogy pure and simple, quackery the way of Prohibition, what more dismal undiluted.... The states shat show a ma­ and depraving form of self-torture they will jority for it, including the anomalous Utah, turn to next. CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE

BY EDWIN BORCHARD

IRCUMSTANTIAL evidence, because of dence of facts, but it must also draw con­ the continued prevalence of sensa­ elusions from them; and in doing that, may C tional criminal cases in this country, be led by prejudice or partiality or other has again become the subject of widespread state of mind to make hasty or false discussion and dispute. Numerous articles deductions. have been written designed to prove that it The fact is that circumstantial evidence is is infallible and worthy of greater cre­ rarely the only evidence upon which a con­ dence than direct evidence. An old familiar viction is obtained. It usually appears in as­ phrase has even been resurrected: "Wit­ sociation \vith an erroneous. identification, nesses may lie, but circumstances cannot." or "expert" testimony, or a prior criminal It is wise, however, to be cautious in such record, or suppression of evidence, or per­ matters. For, while it is true that circum­ jury, which influences the jury to give un­ stances are often convincing and conclusive, due weight to the circumstantial evidence they may also be misleading and unreliable. and to draw false inferences from it. If any Since the publication in 1932 of my book, major signpost in the trail of evidence lead­ Convicting the Innocent, a number of strik­ ing to the desired goal is misread by the ing cases have occurred which show again jury, it is pretty certain that the wrong road the danger of blind dependence upon this will be taken and the wrong destination type of evidence. reached. If the jurors strongly believe in the It is perhaps not the circunlstances them­ truth of some major premise, such as the selves which lie, for they are usually inani­ presence of the accused at a crucial place at mate, but the conclusions which human a certain time, the rest of the circumstances beings draw from them. In other words, will in their minds take on a color consist­ circumstances can lead to correct as well as ent with that primary conclusion; whereas incorrect results, depending in turn upon if the major premises have been miscon­ other circumstances, such as gullibility, ea­ ceived, the circumstances would assume a gerness, passion, accident, and the sheer fal­ different aspect and lead to a different in­ libility of human nature. ference. Circumstantial evidence thus rarely Circumstantial evidence is supposedly en­ appears in isolation; and any number of at­ titled to special weight because it derives tendant or collateral facts or emotions or from several connected sources and is thus beliefs can serve to color it and falsify its less likely to be falsely prepared or to be true significance. tinctured by perjury or error. But its vul­ I have gathered together a half-dozen nerability, as Chief Justice Shaw of Massa­ cases which illustrate these axioms. Here chusetts once said in a celebrated case, is they are, just as they occurred in various that a jury must not only weigh the evi- sections of America: 337 THE AMERICAN MERCURY

Four Years on the Chain Gang and recommended to the Legislature the appropriation of $2500 for his' relief. But Robert E. Coleman, twenty-two years the innocent man had already served four old, came home one night from his work as years. a salesman of picture frames, and (he later claimed) found on the floor of his bedroom Convicted and Acquitted the battered body of his eighteen-year-old wife. The police answered his frantic tele­ Not greatly dissimilar was the case of phone call and promptly placed him under William R. Carver, whose wife and baby arrest, charged with murder. His dazed and a young Negro manservant named and harassed condition made him a poor Whitehead were found slain in their Seb­ witness. The fact that the.woman had ap­ ring, Florida, home. Carver maintained parently been killed about the time Cole­ that Whitehead had murdered Mrs. Carver man usually went to work in the morning; with a hatchet and knocked out the baby's that the death-dealing weapons used - a brains against the crib. Coming upon this poker, a flatiron, and a piece of wood­ scene of horror, Carver claimed that he had were in the house; the fact that the overalls shot and killed the Negro youth. The State in which Coleman worked around the maintained that Carver had killed the three house were found newly washed, with sus­ to collect a $20,000 insurance policy. picious stains clearly visible; that he left the Carver, a Yankee from Philadelphia, had house that day earlier than was his habit, incurred the dislike of some of the towns­ and seemed excited; that he was shaken men, and the newspapers were none too and nervous when the police questioned friendly. A jury found him guilty. But, af­ him - these factors were sufficient to con­ ter many vicissitudes in which a fortune vince a jury. Coleman's violent denials in­ was spent, Carver succeeded in getting a jured rather than helped him. The jury rec­ new trial and a change of venue, and then ommended mercy and the prisoner was obtained a prompt acquittal. While it is vir­ sent to the chain gang for life. tually certain that he was innocent, the cir­ 'Inasmuch as Coleman could supply no cumstantial evidence was interpreteddif­ better explanation of the murder than the ferently by two juries, and possibly the first one essayed by the prosecution, it is perhaps jury still thinks that it was right. Possibly it not unnatural that the jury believed the was. This case shows again the unreliability only story submitted to them. It is not al­ of circumstantial evidence which, while ways safe to be the first to find a dead body. often convincing, is just as often totally But for the fact that a series of new mur­ misleading. ders were committed in that region over the years following, the truth might never A Dead Man Tells a Tale have been revealed. These new murders led, however, to the apprehension of one The Reverend Ernest Lyons, a Negro James Stark, a professional killer, who not preacher of Reid's Ferry, Virginia, was con­ only confessed the Coleman crime, but con­ victed· of the murder of his colleague, the vinced an investigating body appointed by Reverend James Smith. The two were ri­ Governor Talmadge that he alone commit­ vals, Smith, the pastor of the flock, having ted it. The Governor "pardoned" Coleman, to compete with the growing popularity of publicly deplored the miscarriage of justice, his assistant, Lyons. Smith lived in the CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE 339

Lyons home; they were known to quarrel; ney that he had in fact committed the crime and Smith was suspected of intimacy with but that the parishioners who had testified Lyons' sister-in-law. Both were to attend a against him had participated in it also. regional church conference at Suffolk, Vir­ When the resulting panic among the breth­ ginia, and Smith was entrusted with the ren had subsided, the officials again de­ contribution of $45 which had been pain­ clined to believe Lyons, and he was taken fully assembled by the little congregation. to the penitentiary to begin serving an It was said that during a quarrel that day, eighteen-year sentence. Lyons had threatened to kill Smith. They But an amateur sleuth, the Clerk of the left the church together on the evening be­ Court, was not satisfied that justice had fore the conference,and the next day Lyons been done, even if the law had spoken the arrived at Suffolk. But not Smith. Lyons last word. He made it his business to visit stated that he had come alone and that round the neighboring countryside. After Smith had said he would follow. Nothing some years he was rewarded by finding more was heard of Smith or of the $45. Smith, alive and well, preaching to a con­ Lyons became the pastor of the church, gregation in North Carolina. The supposed but Smith's friends were unconvinced by dead man was induced to return to Suffolk, Lyons' story of their last separation, and where he was produced before the judge, when the corpse of a large Negro, in a state admitted that the $45 had been too much of of decomposition, was found in the river a temptation, and that he had decided to near the church, their suspicions were con­ make tracks for North Carolina. He had a firmed. The body, about the size of Smith, ring exactly like the one on the corpse. was buried. But various friends identified "Witnesses may lie but circumstances can­ as Smith's articles of clothing found on the nod" body, and to make it certain, a woman par­ ishioner who had not seen the body stated A Confessed Crime that if it were Smith's, there would be found, on the little finger of the left hand, a John A. Johnson was successfully accused ring with a purple setting. The body was of opening a window in the house of Mar­ exhumed, and a ring exactly fitting the de­ tin Lemberger at Madison, Wisconsin; kid­ scription given was found on the little fin­ naping the sleeping seven-year-old daugh­ ger. of the left hand. A doctor testified that ter, Ann; killing her by a blow on the head; the man had died from a blow upon the and throwing the body into Lake Manona, head and had been thrown into the river, to which spot it was traced by bloodhounds. dead or dying. At the time of the crime, Johnson, a neigh­ All this circumstantial evidence was pre­ borhood loafer, had been held on suspicion. sented to a trial jury together with testi­ After an all-night questioning he had been mony that Lyons had told a number of con­ released, but was rearrested when the au­ flicting stories about the disappearance of thorities discovered that he had previously Smith, some of which were indeed shown suffered two commitments to insane asy­ to be obviously untrue. Although he had lums for taking liberties with young girls. throughout the trial vigorously protested Johnson's alibi, that he was at home on the his innocence, after the verdict of guilty fatal night, was disbelieved, and a private was rendered Lyons, moved either by hys­ detective, in order to force a confession, tak­ teria or a desire for revenge, told his attor- ing advantage of the prisoner's terror of 34° THE AMERICAN MERCURY lynching, staged a mob scene that so preyed on the check and on known forged checks upon Johnson's feeble mind that he con­ was the same; seventeen witnesses took the fessed the crime and pleaded guilty, on a gtand and identified Andrews as the bad­ promise that he would be hurried away to check passer; Inspector Conboy insisted Waupun Penitentiary out of reach of the that he had never made a mistake in forty mob. years of police service; and so Andrews was It was observed, however, that a watch­ convicted, after spending what little mon,ey dog in the house had not made a·sound at his family could muster for his defense. the time of the alleged kidnaping. It be­ Only the fact that Earl Barnes, the real came known also that a card party, accom­ forger, continued to pass the same kind of panied by heavy drinking, had taken place checks after Andrews had reached the peni­ at the Lemberger home that night. And ten tentiary, aroused suspicion that perhaps In­ years later some members of the party dis­ spector Conboy had made his first mistake closed the real facts .. Little Ann had come and a bevy of other people had similarly into the kitchen for water. She had been failed. When the two men, Andrews and asked by her drunken father to hand him a Barnes, stood at the bar, the dissimilarity poker. She couldn't find it. In a fury he between them was striking. The State ad­ struck her behind the ear with a beer bottle, mitted its error, but that was all. Andrews and she fell against the stove unconscious. was released; only the thoughtfulness or Lemberger carried her to bed, where her carelessness of Earl Barnes in continuing to mother found her dead. The panic-stricken pass bad checks had saved him. family hid the body in the basement, and the next night threw it into the lake. The At the Last Minute story of the kidnaping had been invented so that circumstantial evidence might have its In one of the most sensational cases ever day in court. Johnson, "pardoned" by Gov­ tried in the South, nineteen-year-old Will ernor Blaine after serving ten years, had to Purvis of Mississippi, a member of a sort of wait thirteen additional years before the Ku Klux Klan called the W~itecaps, was State of Wisconsin recognized its obliga­ convicted of murdering a fellow-member, tion to indemnify him. A few months ago Will Buckley, who had complained to the an act was passed setting up a trust fund authorities of the flogging of his Negro serv­ of $5000 from which Johnson, now 72 ant and threatened to expose the secrets of years old, will be supported. the Whitecaps, thereby incurring their en­ mity. As a result of Buckley's evidence, an Handwriting UExperts" indictment was voted against three White­ caps. While Buckley was on his way home Herbert Andrews of Boston signed a from the meeting of the grand jury, accom­ check for goods purchased, but the fact that panied by his brother and the flogged serv­ the merchant failed to deposit it for some ant, all on horseback, they had to pass weeks resulted in its return from Andrews' through a forest road. Will Buckley was in bank with the notation "no account." Thus the lead. As they approached a stream, a it reached the police. A. wave of bad checks shot rang out and Buckley fell out of his was then passing over the city; here at last saddle, dead. The assassin and his accom­ was a clue. Andrews was taken from his plice fired at the others also, but they home; experts agreed that the handwriting spurred their horses and escaped. CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE 34 1

The road 011 which Buckley was killed a United States senator from Mississippi, ran by the house of the Purvis family. It promised, if elected, to commute Purvis' was generally known that young Purvis sentence to life imprisonment. On his elec­ was a recent member of the Whitecaps. tion, Purvis was surrendered and the prom­ Suspicion was thrown on him by an en­ ise carried out. vious neighbor, who had repeatedly tried to Two years later, Buckley's brother, the acquire the Purvis farm. Two days after the State's star witness, voluntarily conceded to tragedy, bloodhounds after much coaxing the authorities that he might have made a picked up a cold scent which led them in mistake in identifying Purvis and offered the direction of the Purvis home. That was to retract his testimony. A further investi­ enough for the mob, and when the victim's gation led the Governor to conclude that brother identified Purvis as one of the as­ Purvis was wrongly convicted, and a full sassins, of whom he could have caught no and unconditional pardon was granted. more than a fleeting glance, a jury readily Purvis married, became a prosperous convicted. Purvis' alibi, substantiated by a farmer and the father of seven children. witness of known integrity, was disbe­ But he had never been completely vindi­ lieved. cated, becauser"the murderers of Buckley A crowd of 5000 assembled to witness the had never been apprehended. hanging. Purvis, given a chance to say a fi­ Twenty years later, the truth was re­ nal word, made a moving plea of his inno~ vealed. An aged member of the commu­ cence, and added that there were people, nity, Joe Beard, at a revival meeting, unbur­ possibly present, who knew who commit­ dened himself, confessing that he and his ted the murder. The rope was adjusted accomplice, Thornhill, had been chosen by about the boy's neck. The executioner lot to kill Buckley, and narrated the entire sprang the trap. But the rope's knot, in­ circumstances. Meetings of the Whitecaps stead of tightening around its victim, un­ had been held to determine upon Buckley's twisted, and Purvis fell ~o the ground un­ assassination, but Purvis would have noth­ hurt. ing to do with these meetings. Before Beard Horror shook the spectators. It looked and Thornhill could be indicted, Beard like the intervention of Providence. The of­ died, and Thornhill escap~d trial through a ficials were about to proceed to hang Purvis technicality. A new investigation by the again when a leader of the crowd ha­ Mississippi Legislature resulted in a formal rangued them not to permit it. The sheriff, vindication of Purvis and a grant of $5000 feeling helpless, returned Purvis to the jail. for the suffering he had endured. The issue now became both legal and politi­ cal. The Supreme Court of the state de­ Conviction Reversed cided solemnly that Purvis had not been hanged and a new date for the execution Only recently Attorney General Cum­ was fixed. The night before the proposed mings asked the Court of Appeals of the execution, friends removed Purvis from the District of Columbia to reverse a conviction jail, and threatened to keep him until as­ of arson that had been obtained against two sured that his life at least would be spared. young fraternity brothers in the trial court. Whether Purvis, if caught, should be These young men, president and treasurer hanged became a campaign issue. The can­ of the George Washington University didate for governor, A. J. McLaurin, later Chapter of Sigma Chi, and roommates, THE AMERICAN MERCURY were charged with having set fire to their exclude every reasonable hypothesis of in­ fraternity house at 4:10 A. M. with gasoline nocence and must be consistent with the hypothesis of guilt alone. purchased from a garage, and then to have left the house on a motor trip in an old The conviction was reversed. Ford, which carried them sixty-seven miles to New Freedom, Pennsylvania, by 5:30 fury Refuses to Believe A. M. The assumed motive was the desire to burn the books of the fraternity because Captain Lancaster, an aviator, was re­ of an alleged shortage in accounts. A wit­ cently tried in Miami for the murder of ness testified that the two young men had Haden Clarke, a writer, his rival for the purchased a ten-gallon can of gasoline, and affections of Mrs. Jessie Keith-Miller, avi­ gasoline odors pervaded the house. A can atrix. The jury, showing an intelligent sus­ was found in the garage, partly empty. Al­ picion of the strength of circumstantial though the fire had apparently come from evidence, declined to convict Lancaster, the lower halls, the wastebasket in the notwithstanding the clear motive; threats young men's room was found on fire. This made by Lancaster against Clarke; the fact was supposed to show that the fire w.as that the two men were the only occupants their handiwork.. The jury convicted. of the room where the death occurred; that Before the appeal was heard the Attorney Clarke had been killed with Lancaster's General had an investigation made, includ­ gun; thatLancaster had purchased the gun ing a trip over the road taken by the young in St. Louis only a few days before, saying, men, and came to the conclusion that the "I'm going East and end it all"; and, worst supposed identification of ,the young men as of all, that Lancaster admitted he had the purchasers of the can of gasoline was forged Clarke's name to two suicide hotes unreliable; that the identity of the can it~ which were found on Clarke's bed. Lancas­ self was doubtful; that the origin of the fire ter testified: was pure assumption; that sparks from be­ I was awakened by the sound of a shot. low could easily have started the wastebas­ Clarke was dying in his bed. I knew I ket fire; that men in a defective car could would be accused of killing him. I wrote not possibly have covered the sixty-seven the two notes on a Corona typewriter that miles - with proved stops - in one hour was on a table at the foot of the bed. I and twenty minutes; and that their own ac­ tried to arouse Clarke; I tried to get him to sign them; I couldn't arouse him so I signed count of their movem'ents that night was them myself. straightforward and doubtless correct­ namely, that they had left Washington at The jury accepted Lancaster's testimony 3:10 A. M., had spent the day in New Free­ that Clarke had committed suicide, al­ dom with friends, and knew nothing what­ though the circumstantial evidence indi­ ever about the fire until the next night cated otherwise. when they returned. The Attorney General then made this statement to the court: II The evidence tending to connect the de­ A writer in the N eNJ Yorker, Edmund fendants with the crime is entirely circum­ Pearson, evidently a believer in the death . stantial. The law is well settled that where circumstantial evidence is relied upon to penalty, seeks to talk down the evidence ad­ prove guilt, the circumstances proved must duced in my book by intimating that only CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE 343 sixty-five cases such as the above could be to shatter any man, no matter how much found by the most diligent search; that, af­ time elapses before the truth is discovered. ter all, innocent persons are rarely executed; N or do the cases in· which the state admits that the error was in most cases discovered that the convict was innocent exhaust the within a reasonably short time after con­ cases of palpable error. Governors are often viction; and in one case he thinks· the loath to admit publicly that such mistakes innocence somewhat doubtful. To these al­ have been made, and prefer to rest the legations it should be answered that the six­ pardon on grounds not conceding the de­ ty-five cases were selected from among a fectiveness of the machinery of justice. number almost twice as great; that the brief There is no suggestion advanced that in research merely scratched the surface and most cases justice does not function prop­ was not intended to be exhaustive; and that erly, or that many morally and legally the purpose of bringing about certain re­ guilty persons do not escape punishment. forms in the law was thought to be ade­ And when the wrong man is convicted, it quately served by the publication of a few is not always attributable to the malevo­ cases of varying type. Since 1932, a consid­ lence of prosecuting officials, but rather to a erable number of new erroneous convic­ mistake of witnesses, to perjury, ane to cir­ tions, impregnably authenticated, have been cumstantial evidence, all of which misleads disclosed. the jury. The administration of justice is in The reason why more executions of inno­ human hands, and in spite of the safe­ cent men are not known is because public guards which surround the accused, errors interest in establishing the truth usually will occur. ceases after death makes the inquiry aca­ What makes circumstantial evidence in­ demic. It is a strong argument for the aboli­ accurately point in the direction of guilt tion of the death penalty, certainly in cases rather than innocence is usually the pres­ affected by any shadow of doubt. In eight ence of collateral facts or circumstances: the of the murder cases recorded in my book, previous record of the accused, the proved no crime had been committed at all. No error of an alibi, erroneous assumptions as one was murdered. In six of them, the al­ to motives, misplaced reliance upon wit­ leged murdered person turned up hale and nesses or "experts", erroneous identification, hearty after his supposed murderer had en­ and a variety of minor contingencies, in­ tered upon his sentence. Only the merest cluding public hysteria and demand for a accident and rare good fortune saved many victim. These tend to turn the inferences of these men from execution. Presumably, from one direction into another, and once if they had not had such hairbreadth es­ the hypothesis of guilt is formed, circum­ capes - as in Purvis' case, where the hang­ stances will, if possible, be interpreted as man's rope providentially broke - their ex­ sustaining this hypothesis. To determine ecution would have proved that they were who is right is then often a matter of weigh­ guilty and not innocent. Most of them were ing probabilities, and of guesswork. In spite convicted on circumstantial evidence, in of the utmost care and good faith, prosecu­ whole or in part. The error was often dis­ tors and juries make mistakes. The assump­ covered only after years of incarceration, tion that circumstantial evidence is infalli­ but the mere sentence to life or long impris­ ble, or more likely to be infallible than onment on an unfounded charge, with no direct evidence, is hardly sustained by ex­ prospect of uncovering the truth, is enough perience. PORTLAND: ATHENS OF THE WEST

BY JAMES STEVENS

REGON is the 'only state in the Repub­ In Salem, the capital, Colonel E. Hofer . lie that has ever reveled in the serv­ led the rush with his immortal Lariat, a O ices of an official Commissioner of poetry magazine. Other yearling literary Literature. This attempt to prime art with periodicals swiftly hit the trail for ··Artand a political pump was made in the roaring Old Oregon. Every village yielded at least days of Chicago poetry and Greenwich one poetry group to the cause. Job printers Village prose. When the noise of these became book publishers over night. In movements began to thunder nigh the Portland two contributors~ to the pulp Pacific, the editor of the Portland lournal magazines were admitted to the Rotary was infected with the idea of boosting Club and the golfing set, and they gave home literature into a commodity equal­ generously of their knowledge to the serv­ ing Willamette Valley prunes, and the ice luncheon and the booster banquet. bald-faced beef of Harney County. The Thus Oregon was made conscious of the selected slogan was "Make Oregon the literary endeavors within her borders. Indiana of the West!" Journalists and club Men and women of humble callings were secretaries in all corners of the state be­ inspired to dream. Loggers, fishermen, gan to whoop it up. ranch-hands, and cascara-bark-strippers­ One lofty result of the booster cam­ I was one of the host - took up the pen paign was the creation of a literary de­ and went to it. Painters and sculptors ap­ partment by Governor Walter (Tax­ peared from all parts, to roll up their Buster) Pierce. The new commissioner sleeves and pitch in. Embryo musicians was a lady who had to her credit a book also claimed their innings. There was a entitled Tilly of Tillamook, a romance in riotous rash of Little Theaters from Wal­ which the bucolic virtues and the cream Iowa Valley to Coos Bay. All Oregon cheese of Tillamook County were impar­ throbbed. tially extolled. Madame Commissioner Small wonder that Alfred Powers' re­ was going great guns, bombarding East­ cently-published History of Oregon lit­ ern editors with explosive blurbs about the erature runs to more than six hundred authors of the state, when the Republicans pages, or that it differs so vividly from the supplanted the Tax-Buster with a pious usual academic tome. For Oregon cul­ salmon fisherman, and the literary office, tural movements have had red blood· in alas, was crowded out to make room for them. They began with the fur-traders, deserving Prohibitionists. with the like of Ewing Young, who But the boosters of regional art were packed a two-volume Shakespeare over undismayed. The state-wide stampede the Oregon Indian trails. They boomed they had launched could not be headed. with the wagon-train pioneers of the early 344 PORTLAND: ATHENS OF THE WEST 345 'Forties, who had a literary society going excursion is rewarded by at least one lilt­ full blast at Oregon City, the territorial ing lyric of gay abandon, such as: capital, and were publishing a literary No one knows where I came from, newspaper - Edwin Markham's mother None cares where I am bound; contributed poems' to it - while Califor­ For I'm just a human tumbleweed, nia was yet a Mexican province. So the Tumbling along on the ground. Oregon art movement of the nineteen­ Portland supports a publishing house, twenties was a sort of regional renais­ the Metropolitan Press, which prints re­ sance; Portland was its capital; and West­ gional books and sponsors local poets on ern boosterism was its animating spirit. the radio. Portland has, also, her N orth­ The best brief example of this spirit west Literary Review, a periodical that that I recall was in an editorial which ap­ serves as a meeting ground for writers peared in the crusading Tournal. Califor­ and readers the area. Even the trade nia, the writer claimed, had stooped to ot magazines of the town print poems and the perfidy of shipping Oregon prunes to book reviews. When I was a sawmill la­ the East under a California brand. Then, borer in Portland I used to sweat ballads worse, when the Oregon George Olsen for the 4L Lumber News in my free and his dance orchestra made a huge suc­ hours. I even had several lumber-mill col­ cess in New York, California claimed the leagues, one the P. L. Chance who wrote popular musician as a product of the the undying: Golden State. "California is not content with stealing credit from Oregon prunes," N ow our mothers and wives can go, brooded the editorial somberly. "She has And get theirselves a seat now gone the limit by robbing Oregon In our motion picture show, Without setting next t~ a Greek. Art of its rightful glory." By such means the temper of a holy But in my early Portland years the war was pumped into the movement, and going was comparatively hard for strug­ it could not fail. Thus today, Portland's gling literary men, as I lived there before major claim to metropolitan distinction, the boosters had taken over the arts. In aside from her boasted communal moral­ my time the Webfooters - as the natives ity, is in her artists, especially the liter­ of the Portland region call themselves­ ary, and in the public attention that is took their local literary produ'cts as a mat­ lavished upon them. No Portland per­ ter of course. They were proud of the sonage, excepting the city's bishops, is poetry of Sam Simpson, the editorials of more generally venerated than BenHur Harvey Scott, and the novels of Eva Lampman, the. veteran poet and nature­ Emery Dye, but they did not celebrate writer of the Morning Oregonian. Dean them vociferously. Their main concern Collins, poet and radio dramatist of the was the commercial war they were losing Tournal, ranks close to Lampman as a on all fronts: the trans-Pacific trade that favorite son. Both newspapers hire poetry was going to San Francisco; the inland­ editors, as well as book-page conductors. empire traffic that was increasingly routed Every week Oregon bards sVvarm to the over the mountains to Seattle; the Alas­ Sunday papers, to twitter and sigh from kan monopoly of the latter port; the rise veritable forests of poetry colullfns. The of Tacoma as a lumber capital; Califor­ shrewd reader never misses them. Each nia's new gold discovery - the tourist in- THE AMERICA~N MERCURY dustry. Even in the World War boom, glittering banners and led by bands. They Portland lost ground. Seattle and San replaced the port developers, power-dam Francisco hogged the richest shipbuild­ promoters, rose gardeners, realtors, high­ ing contracts. Tacoma and other coastal way builders, timber barons, fruit-grow­ ports grabbed the government's airplane ers, and reclamation messiahs of the years spruce contracts. Portland tried to smile of defeat. San Francisco was again defied, over large orders for army prunes. and a new challenge roared for Puget The smile was brave, but forced. The Sound. The bards marched, flaunting the gloom of a Willamette Valley fog lay be­ booster badge of enameled tin. The battle hind it. As the 'Twenties boomed on, with cry, "Make Oregon the Indiana of the prosperity roaring in golden torrents for West!" reverberated from the Pacific foam Puget Sound and California, the Webfoot to the Nevada sands. loyalists were ready to give up. They did abandon the Portland Rose Festival, as II Pasadena's Tournament of Roses flour­ ished into a national event from the There was some mutiny in the artists' stimulus of championship football games. ranks, and a few were guilty of outright They were about to fall back on the rock desertion, but most of the authors proved of community piety, Portland's unques.. to be good soldiers. First captained by tioned mark of supremacy among Pacific Madame Literary Commissioner, then by Coast cities, when they became culture­ Colonel Hofer, lionized by the Parent­ conscious. The Webfooters awoke to na­ Teachers Association, decorated by Ro­ tive literature, and -hoped anew. In Old tary, the authors of Oregon were in clover. Oregon the spirit of Athens was reborn. Portland yielded them a variety of spe­ It was by no means an artificial boom. cial privileges. A corner was furnished for The art spirit had been fertilized by the poets in Gill's giant bookshop, with many young devotees of beautiful letters, lounges and chairs, shelves of books, an who had toiled happily on, untroubled by inscribed fireplace, and paraphernalia for the civic neglect. Poets and novelists were literary teas. The Portland Press Club, discovered over all Oregon, once the housed in a pioneer mansion, offered food boosters caught the scent and bayed forth. and beds to writers at low rates. Before Up at The Dalles, in the famed orchards of Repeal, properly-introduced authors got Hood River, in the remote sagebrush of free liquor from an official Portland Harney County, on the Prineville and Pen­ source, which I, a beneficiary, must leave dleton ranges, they found the litterateurs nameless: There were several wealthy sweating at their toil. In the metropo­ Portlanders who bestowed their summer v lis itself there was an author for every cottages on poor poets and painters, from rose garden. Such a prodigious literary crop autumn to spring. Trips to logging camps, was not to be ignored. There were daunt­ river voyages, scenic motor excursions, less men of vision among the forlorn boost­ and even aeroplane rides· were lavished on ers of Portland, and.in Oregon literature writers by the Chamber of Commerce. they saw a hope. They lifted a fighting yell, Finally the organized Webfoot authors and went to it. Thus the astounded Web­ received the ultimate in American public foot authors found themselves pushed to attention: Portland· politicians began to the fore of a gigantic campaign, under compete for the literary vote. PORTLAND: ATHENS OF THE WEST 347 Portland, which was almost named coast, and the ranch towns east of the Boston by the pioneers, was Athens at Cascade Mountains, were far more hos­ last. Culturally, Seattle was reduced to pitable than Portland to men in quest the rank of a provincial town. San Fran­ of what Northwesterners call a hi-yu time. cisco, yet holding supremacy in Pacific Today, when the sporty Portlander goes commerce, lost ground to Portland in on a spree, he heads for such outland literary production. Colonel Hofer, in the orgies as the Pendleton Roundup. Lariat, could proudly print graphs which Thus the Webfoot boosters of the revealed a consistent rise in the gross feet 'Twenties, who had privately mourned of iambic pentameter produced in the such sacrifices to piety, found consolation Willamette Valley. The California poets in their new literary culture. Some of began emigrating to Portland. Novelists them hoped that Portland's authors would and dramatists from all points west of bea liberalizing influence. At service club the Rockies converged on the Oregon luncheons, salesmen who had been around Athens. A golden age dawned like talked of Telegraph Hill and Greenwich thunder. .Village, and prophesied a comparable col­ But soon there were clouds on the ony. There were even dreams of a Port­ horizon. One rose from the militant right­ land Bohemian Club. But too soon they eousness of the general Portland popula­ faded. The generals of the campaign were tion. This spirit is an inheritance from all belligerently pious - were Webfooters the Oregon pioneers, who named their first and Athenians afterward. Colonel new capital Salem. Ever since the days Hofer, on his recruiting tours, promised of Marcus Whitman and of Joab Powell, to purge American literature of the evil the Portland region has produced pro­ influence of Dreiser, Cabell, and Ander­ digious gospelers. Here Rabbi Wise and son. The Portland Oregonian, guardian the Rev. J. Whitcomb Brougher were of the region's morals, not only hurled boosted into holy fame. Here Dr. Clar­ editorial abuse at Hofer's villains, but put ence True Wilson became a Methodist the scarlet letter on every local writer hero. Portland was the late Dr. Billy Sun­ who did not conform to Webfoot Puri­ day's golden town, the starting point of tanism. The Portland Telegram de­ many pilgrimages to the apple-ranch sanc­ nounced a performance of Ibsen's G,hosts. tuary of the evangelist. And so the com­ The lournal urged the local literati to mon life of the metropolis has always "keep clean" as ardently as it pushed the been lethargic and humdrum, compared demand to "Boost for Old Oregon!" to that of San Francisco and Seattle. The There was scant resistance among the best that Portland offered the womanless literati and kindred artists. One architect men who roared in from the winter work did go so far as to emblazon the fa~ade camps of an earlier era was .restricted of a new downtown building with a brothels and tough saloons in the North frieze in which stone maidens revealed End. So the majority of frontier laborers hewn breasts and thighs. The Oregonian took their winter stakes to San Francisco, erupted in a volcano of moral indigna­ and the Barbary Coast. The bully boys tion. All the artists in town scuttled for of the Inland Empire headed for Seat­ cover. Standing alone, the architect and tle and the glittering dives of the Skid­ his builder hoisted the white flag, in the road. The smaller lumber towns on the shape of a drapery over the frieze. It THE AMERICAN MERCURY bore, however, a parting shot. On it, in more than that they advertise Old Oregon giant letters, was painted, HONI SOIT favorably in their works. The pride of QUI MAL Y PENSE, and the legend the town is a fictioneer who can write was left to perplex the passing Presbyte­ one story on the typewriter, dictate a rians until the stone maidens were chiseled second one, and listen to plot ideas from into oblivion. visitors, all concurrently. The boosters Another example, among scores, was an are proud to ballyhoo such word factories, immigrant poet, who had received an because they themselves have failed to academic appointment as patronage. One outpace San Francisco and Seattle in night he entertained literary guests until other fields. And· Webfoot art never fails dawn. The party was as alcoholically dry them. as an Epworth League social, and it lasted all night simply because several folksong III addicts were present with guitars, and stayed until the ballads were exhausted. Yet there are, as I have said, smudges The college authorities, however, pro­ on the golden dawn. It needs more than nounced the affair an orgy, and the luck­ a badge of enameled tin to constrain the less poet was not only fired but black­ jealous heart of the poet, more than a listed in the state. His successor got on Rotarian creed to keep. fictioneers irt gen­ famously with the Webfooters, for he at­ tle' brotherhood. The literary frays of·the tended .church regularly, was a Lion in Webfoot country are not bloodless, nor good standing, and invented the slogan, are they mere tea-table contests of ,old "Produce Pecuniary Prose". ladies, male and female. It must be' re­ The effect of all this, of course, was to membered that Oregon Regionalism is a silence the few yearning boosters and the movement which was democratically in­ meek majority of artists. All conformed spired, that the people's press, the poli­ to Webfoot Puritanism, at least in lip serV­ ticians, and civic leaders conspired to ice. Some of them finally fled the region, make a go of it, and that all artists were as Edwin Markham, Joaquin Miller, and invited to pitch in. Cowpunchers, sheep­ Charles Erskine Scott Wood had done herders, salmon fishermen, lumber-hook- before them. H. L. Davis did not·stop ,ers, applekno~kers, loggers, and other such until he was in the deeps of Old Mexico. brawny men were the main body of male The last I heard of Albert Richard Wetjen recruits. The ladies came in mainly froin he was in the South Seas, and still going. the hop and berry camps, the veneer fac­ Such free-spirited novelists as Vardis tories and plywood mills, the laundries, Fisher and Nard Jones kept great open lunchrooms, and boarding houses, and spaces between themselves and the Port­ from sagebrush homesteads. Oregon lit­ land literary pillories. Only one heretic erature is of the people. That is why the of consequence lingers on the Willamette, hosts of Portland authors are commonly and he has lately appeased the bishops by submissive to the bishops and the business­ giving up strong drink. men: as plain laboring folk they learned The submissive authors who remain in devotion to such authority. They are also Portland - and they are great in num­ accustomed to family brawls, and art has bers - produce a stupefying quantity of not softened them. words. The civic booster demands no I recall but one Portland literary fray PORTLAND: 'ATHENS OF THE WEST 349 which was characterized by intellectual a stuffed tomato at the chairman's open subtlety instead of raw force. The fight mouth. It hit the mark, and in the next started at an annual banquet of the au­ moment chairs were crashing and legs thors. The feast was followed, as usual, were being wrenched from the tables. The by several hours of readings and inspira­ police passed, the ruckus by. They were tional oratory. Some of the poorer poets used to literary riots, and knew it was at the board had indulged too grossly best to let the aroused authors go to it in the dishes that Henri Thiele, Portland's and work off steam. peerless chef, had prepared. It was one When the noise of. such affairs gets to of these minor bards who was guilty.of the public ear, the bishops are dismayed the incident that led to battle. The poet and the boosters are chagrined. At odd of the evening, an ex-prune-picker whose times the civic leaders have lost faith, and works had been honored by quotation in turned to arts other than literature. Thus Chamber of Commerce booklets, sighed they once brought on Willem van Hoog­ the last line of his reading. At the closing straten to create a symphony orchestra of his lips he was rewarded by the con­ which would rival the best on the coast. ventional heaves of ecstasy that were his The effort succeeded, but it cost a pile of due. Handclaps should have followed, but money. So did efforts with grand opera they failed. For in the thick of the pre­ and the drama, which also suffered rigor­ liminary plaudits, the gorged minor bard ous censorship. In all similar enterprises, toppled to the carpet, and vomited. which included the art museum, the re­ Ordinarily such an incident would have turns were too small for the expense in­ been glossed over. Present, however, was volved. Besides, musicians, painters, sculp­ the arch rival of the prune-picker. He tors, and actors were artists of special laughed, and his clique raucously followed training, and could not be picked up in his example. The banquet broke up, and any sawmill or sheep camp, while the the next day the arch rival celebrated the Webfoot Regionalists had clearly demon­ incident in a satire entitled A Gastrologi­ strated that anybody who wanted to could cal Critique. The war that followed was become a writer. waged on that high plane. For weeks the So the Portland literary folk are steadily literary atmosphere of Portland roared rising in power, despite desertions and with explosive sonnets and lyric blasts. mutinies. They realize, at last, the pitiful More typical of internecine conflicts was dependence of the boosters upon them. the bloody battle which broke out among California continues to yield the winter the brawny fictioneers when they gath­ tourist a sweeter climate, and to steal ered in banquet formation for the pur­ credit for Oregon prunes. Every summer, pose of plotting a newspaper serial. Each Seattle hauls in more Alaskan travel, and author was to do a chapter. By this time San Francisco triumphs in Oriental trade. Portland boasted such a host of story­ The bully men of the outdoor industries writers that a chapter from each one still avoid Portland when they quit work would have kept the serial in publication for sprees. Tacoma and Aberdeen stand for seven years. Selection was in order, at the top of the lumber industry. The and the chairman of the meeting picked Chinook salmon of the Columbia trails some sixty favorites for the job. One of far in the wake of the Alaskan sockeye. the rejected fell into a passion and hurled And so it goes in all departments of 35° THESE CLOUDS Northwest life, until the literary business dream of putting up the venerated Lamp­ claims attention. Then, and then alone, man for mayor, and of winning over does Portland take a lead in quantity pro­ Dean Collins of the Journal to his rival's duction. / cause by promising him the post of chief But the Webfoot Regionalists are no of police. longer satisfied with mere patronage and The boosters, of course, smile at such applause. There is discontent in Athens, talk. But so did the pursy burghers of the forbidding shadows of the time to come. German Republic smile at the gabble of Grave talk is heard at the inner council the Nazis in the Munich beer-halls. The tables of a literary putsch, to restore the Portland literati swell in numbers, and author of Tilly of Tillamook to her former they are fighting folk. They will bear glory. The poets have even ventured to watching.

THESE CLOUDS

BY EDWARD A. RICHARDS

HE high sun is gone that m.ade dark shining Along the backs of slow-winged crows, TAnd burnished the late oak leaves lining The meadows where the slow brook flows.

The brook, too choked with leaves to capture The blue of heaven if blue there were, The smokibg sky, too gray for rapture, The smitten trees - all say defer-

Defer - wait - till the swing of weather Again shall show you color and height, And heaven and earth are drawn together With wings across the dawn, and light.

But never for us the sly refusing Of time that gives the days their pace; These subtle days are not bemusing That breathe slow mist upon the face.

One never need to look for heaven Or having it need wonder why. This misty earth is ours, and even Out of these clouds we make our sky. THE FIRST MUNITIONS KING

BY JACK ROHAN

CIENCE and invention have changed the genius, skill in organization, and excep­ status of many trades and professions tional business ability, led the arms trade Sin the last century, but none has been out of the desert of hand-to-mouth profits so adversely affected as that of the ar­ into the lush pastures of big business. morer, who has become, under technologi­ There it remains today as the target for cal classification, a "munitions baron". those persons who believe that, consider­ The primitive man who discovered that a ing its nature, it is too sleek and comfort­ stone fastened to the end of a stick could able, and belabor the industry stoutly, per­ be thrown farther and harder than the haps in the hope of driving it back to the bare stone, undoubtedly was set above his hungry desert whence Colt rescued it. But fellows by common consent. At least he surely Colt himself would be at a loss to was not branded as a menace to the safety understand such an attitude. He held a of his tribe. Even churchmen saw nothing profound conviction that the competent unchristian in the conduct of the Rev. Al­ arms maker was a tower of strength to his exander Forsyth, minister of the Parish of country and deserved amicable treatment. Be1helvie, near Aberdeen, Scotland, when, His own wealth he considered no more in 18°7, he invented the percussion cap, than his just due for having provided thus marking the first major improve­ America with the greatest arn1S factory of ment in firearms in 200 years and paving the day, in spite of many setbacks and dis­ the way for modern rapid-fire weapons. couragements. In past years there were always deter­ Born in 1814, seven years after the Rev­ mined folk who disapproved of the busi­ erend Forsyth had perfected the cap which ness of forging weapons, but although made the revolver practical, Colt was arms makers were numbered by the thou­ eleven years old, and apprenticed to a sands, among them a few master crafts­ farmer at Glastonbury, Connecticut, when men who became famous because of the he turned to the invention of a weapon superiority of their work, there was no in­ that would fire several shots without re­ dividual who produced lethal weapons in loading. His early experiments were dis­ sufficient quantity to acquire a great for­ appointing. Lashing several gun barrels tune, and to stand forth as the symbol at together he managed to fire them in suc­ which pacifist brickbats could be hurled. cession by an electric spark, but the It was not until Samuel Colt of Hartford, weapon itself was too heavy and clumsy Connecticut, invented the revolver and de­ for practical use. After a year or so on the veloped the machinery to make it cheaply Glastonbury farm, the boy inventor went and in quantity that an armorer was in to work in a textile factory at Ware, Mas­ position to reap wealth. Colt, by inventive sachuset1s. His repeating firearm, for the 35 1 THE AMERICAN MERCURY time being, had given place to a submarine Thus Sam soon found himself back at mine, and toward the end of June, 1829, Ware, with scant prospect of ever procur­ the people of Ware .. were informed by a ing enough money to purchase working crudely-lettered handbill that "Sam'l Colt models from a competent gunsmith. Yet, will blow a raft sky-high on Ware pond, having acquired some knowledge of the July 4, 1829". properties of laughing gas, he set out on a The advertising brought a crowd. Sam tour of .the country as a traveling show­ produced the explosion, but, unfortu­ man, making the customers provide nately, the raft had drifted from its an­ amusement for one another by their antics chorage above the mine. A great spout of while under the influence of the harmless muddy water spattered the spectators, to but intoxicating fumes. In this fashion he the detriment of their holiday finery· and paid for the manufacture of the first re­ young Colt's popularity. Soon afterward volver to function satisfactorily. Then,by he left Ware to attend Amherst Academy, borrowing, and evading creditors, he fi­ where he brought himself to the verge of nanced a trip to England where, while expulsion because one of his experiments living on a shilling a day, he obtained his set fire to school property. As a result of first patents. He was 22 years old when he this incident, he packed up and went home returned to America. to his father in Hartford. Convinced that Papers in hand he organized the Patent attempts to educate his son were useless, Arms Manufacturing Company, with a the elder Colt sent the boy to sea as an factory in Paterson, New Jersey, and an apprentice on the brig CorIo, to Calcutta authorized capital of $230,000, only a frac­ and return. But the lore of the sailor held tion of which was ever paid into the com­ scant interest for young Colt. He was still pany treasury. This firm failed after nine determined to invent a gun that would years of precarious existence, marked by shoot five or six times without reloading. frequent clashes between Colt, who lacked With the Corio drifting lazily in the the money to acquire control, and the fac­ Indian Ocean, Colt watched the helms­ tions which from time to time were in man swing the wheel and noticed that power. The management refused to per­ each spoke came directly in line with a mit the installation of machinery for mass clutch set to hold it. His imagination re­ production, as proposed by Colt, and placed the wheel with a bored cylinder, would not allow him adequate funds for revolving so that its chambers came suc­ advertising and sales promo~ion. Govern­ cessively in line with a gun barrel. At last ment officials were cold to his invention, he had solved his problem. By the time and the War and Navy Departinents'.ex­ the voyage was ended he had whittled out perts ruled that his revolvers were "un­ of a ribbon block a model of his revolver, suited to the needs of the service". When and returned home convinced that he car­ the company finally was thrown into bank­ ried the key to riches. He· was to be dis­ ruptcy,Sam's patents reverted to him appointed, however. His father, in thrifty under the terms of his contract. Aside New England fashion, refused to pay the from these, all he had to show for his prices demanded by first-clas,s gunsmiths, work was the fact that several thousand of and had the working models manufac­ his revolvers had found their way to tured by a jack-of-all-trades who so botched Texas, where they were highly esteemed them that they failed to function. by belligerent Lone Star patriots. THE FIRST MUNITIONS KING 353 Although convinced that if the world dium .for the use of his waterproof cable. knew of his invention it would beat a He urged upon Morse his theory that the path to his door, Colt had no means of best way to string telegraph lines was to broadcasting the information, so he turned bury them in the ground or lay them to another phase of armament. Relations along the beds of streams. Failing to con­ with England were strained and Colt be­ vince the inventor of this method, he pur­ lieved that the American government chased the right to use Morse's patent in would welcome another of his inventions the establishment of lines designed to his with enthusiasm. This was a development own ideas. Laying his cable on the bed of of the boyhood toy with which he had be­ New York harbor, he set up an observa­ spattered the populace at Ware in 1829. tion station on Coney Island and linked it He called it the Submarine Battery and by telegraph with an office in Manhattan, was able to explode it from a distance by so that he could deliver to a group of sub­ using a waterproof cable, which he had scribers news of ships as soon as they were invented to carry the electric spark. With sighted, and place messages aboard them this infernal machine he guaranteed to when weather permitted. Inasmuch as the protect any and all harbors from hostile information he offered gave merchants fleets "without endangering the life of a who possessed it a distinct advantage, he single American". found no lack of customers and was soon By judicious distribution of stock in the showing a profit. Submarine Battery Company among poli­ A small telegraph business, however, ticians of influence, and by playing on the was not the goal of Colt's ambition. He imagination of the public with spectacular wanted a fortune from his own invention demonstrations which threw up great and set about organizing other telegraph waterspouts, he managed to obtain sub­ companies which would use his water­ stantial appropriations from Congress for proof cable. He was promoting an "offing" the manufacture of his new device. Three telegraph organization in Boston when the obsolete ships were given him and he Mexican War started, and was recalled to blew each of them to fragn1ents as they New York by an urgent message from drifted over the mines. In all he received Captain Samuel Walker of the Texas in cash and materials about $100,000, but Rangers, who sought conference with Colt so soon as the danger of an armed clash on "important government business". with England had passed, interest in his invention faded and he found himself II equipped only to manufacture a weapon ,vhich no one wanted. Walker had been authorized to place an "Stupid politicians," he wrote to his fa­ order for one thousand revolvers, at Colt's ther, "take no thought for the safety of the price, to be delivered with the utmost country until war is upon it. Then they speed. General Taylor had been impressed have no means of defense because the in­ with the effectiveness of the revolvers now ventors with the ability to provide it have used by many Texans, and had sent been starved to death by neglect of gov­ Walker to Washington to demand a sup­ ernment." ply of them for his own troops. But Sam Colt was not minded to starve, Colt did not possess even a sarnple of for he saw in the Morse telegraph a me- his revolver. Walker had left his own 354 THE AMERICAN MERCURY

weapons with a friend on the firing line demanded a higher price than the govern... in Texas. Together they combed New ment was willing to pay. But the proposal Yorkin vain for a sampIe. They next ad­ to curtail the use of revolvers by troops vertised for one, but without success. All brought a roar of protest from officers in the guns manufactured at Paterson appar­ the field and from their friends at home. ently had found their way to the South­ This controversy, in the midst of war, at­ west. Sam pointed out that had the gov­ tracted world-wide attention, and set the ernment formerly given him support, it heads of various governments to wonder­ would now have a supply of revolvers ing about the properties of the weapon available. Although grumbling, he lost lit­ which could cause such disturbance. tle time in finding a way. To Eli Whitney, Refusing to give Washington any in­ who owned a first-class machine shop, formation concerning his profits, Colt took Colt let a contract for the barrels and the occasion to remind the public that the larger parts of 1000 revolvers. Other parts government had forced him, as a patriotic he obtained elsewhere, and then assem­ duty, to abandon his telegraph business bled the weapons in a small plant of his "to save the army from the penalties of own. He had a two-fold purpose in em­ previous governmental incapacity". Mean­ ploying this method. One was to test his while, the Mexicans were being soundly theory of standardized production, the whipped by American forces of inferior other to keep Whitney from learning what numbers. Although there were not enough it cost to produce the completed arm. revolvers in both the Texas and American While the first revolvers were being forces to have affected the campaign so made, Colt established a small factory in decisively, Sam had no qualms about Hartford, taking option on additional claiming the credit, and the Mexicans, space although he did not deem it prob­ glad of any excuse for their pitiful show­ able that he would ever need the entire ing, did not contradict him. Indeed, as building. His past experience with the soon as the war ended, every Mexican who government led him to the conviction that could beg, borrow or steal the price of a as soon as the Mexican trouble was ended, Colt revolver wanted one, and somewhat national defense would be neglected and to his surprise Sam did not have to close orders for revolvers suspended. His esti­ his factory when, as expected, the govern­ mate of the future course of the gov­ ment ceased its purchases. Foreign coun­ ernment was correct, but a set of cir­ tries placed small orders, presumably to cumstances - some of which he found see if Colt would fill them. At the same annoying at the moment - combined to ad­ time, pioneers and gold seekers, West­ vertise the value of his invention through­ ward-bound, provided him with a lively out the world. A group in Congress - Colt domestic market. Affluent for the first time charged they were inspired by Whitney­ in his life, and forced to expand his plant, raised a clamor that Colt's price of $28 Sam halted his promotional activities long each for his revolvers was exorbitant. They enough to gaze over the world and take demanded that the government 'either stock of the arms markets. manufacture its own pistols or cease using He studied the policies of Louis N a... them. President Polk explained that the poleon in France, of Cavour in Sardinia, government could not make the arms and of the British, Austrian, and Russian without Colt's permission, and that Sam governments. He decided these' policies THE FIRST MUNITIONS KING 355 would inevitably lead to armed strife and, mitted a bid to the Ordnance Department while he had no mind to promote war­ for muskets, explaining that if given an his invention being "an instrument of de­ order for one million pieces he would fense for nations and of protection against supply them for thirty shillings each. thieves and robbers for honest men" - he Now it was bad enough for him to foist deemed it sound patriotism to profit from a newfangled shooting iron on Her Maj­ the quarrels of foreigners so that he might esty's subjects, but when he tried to divert maintain a factory for his country's future the manufacture of the regulation infantry needs. Forseeing the Crimean War, he set arm from loyal Britons, it was not to be about providing himself with a plant that borne. Such a cry arose that a parliamen­ could be expanded at short notice. I-Ie tary investigation was ordered, its object bought a great tract of land on the Con­ to discredit Colt and establish the claim necticut River, erected a huge dyke to that British-made arms were superior. But keep out the spring floods, and built the by the time Colt had finished explaining first unit of the factory on the spot where his methods of production, the transcript the arms bearing his name are still made of the inquiry read not unlike a testi­ today. Then he went to Europe. monial for Samuel and his products. The After visiting all the capitals he finally British themselves did not know exactly reached Constantinople, "'There, by judi­ what to do, so they did nothing until the cious use of money, he obtained an audi­ Crimean War was upon them. Then they ence with the Sultan. After presenting the were forced to buy such arms as Colt ruler with a pair of richly-engraved revolv­ would supply at his own prices. ers, Colt inadvertently let fall the infor­ Sam was always the epitome of neutral­ mation that the Russians were outfitting ity. At least one consignment of revolvers their forces with six-shooters. He neg­ made in his British factory was delivered lected to mention that they were buying to Russia while the war raged. The RuSr.­ revolvers because they had been informed sians also were willing to buy muskets if the Turks were doing so. Thus he carried they could place one of their own inspec­ substantial orders from both nations when tors in Hartford. But this they felt was he returned to Hartford. impossible .with the British navy in con­ The London situation, Colt felt, needed trol of the seas. Colt, however, admitted more delicate handling. He suspected that no such obstacle. Let the Russians find the British arn1Y would frown upon any him an officer of German countenance weapon, regardless of merit, if it was not and speech, and he would guarantee to made in England. So he opened a factory transport him to America. One Colonel in London and attempted to man it with Golluf was produced and after parading British workers; but these artisans refused him about London for a fortnight, Colt to have anything to do with standardized landed him safely in Hartford. Golluf, production and Sam was con1pelled to im­ posing as Sam's valet, had excited no sus­ port his own master gunsmiths from I-Iart­ picion in London. The British were ford. This system, ho"vever, stirred openly amused by the airs which that discontent among the British, who re­ Yankee bounder, Colt, was giving him­ garded him as a Yankee interloper, by no self, when everyone knew that a few means equal to the British anns experts. years back he was living on a shilling a He intensified this hostility when he sub- day.... 35 6 THE AMERICAN MERCURY The Russian contract rounded out the There is ample documentary proof that neutrality of the Hartford production the Know-Nothings feared the Irish schedule. The factory already was manu­ planned to seize the government and set facturing arms for the Sultan, the King of up the Pope as king. When they learned­ Sardinia, for Austria, and for Prussia. So in some manner best known to Sam Colt Sam 'next concerned himself with develop­ - that their enemies were buying revolv­ ing an outlet to warrant full production ers, they set about arming themselves. after the Crimean War ended. Since his For the trade, Colt provided a handy own government refused to provide for pocket revolver of .31 caliber, weighing national defense, it behooved him, he felt, about a pound, and although the arms to keep his factory in operation. were fated to rust in the pockets of their Turning his eyes toward the Orient, owners, it is probable that Colt sold as Colt reasoned that the Asiatic peoples many weapons to the Know-Nothings, eventually would resent interference by fighting a chimerical menace, as he did to foreigners. He predicted that even Japan King Victor Emmanuel, who stripped the would provide a market for revolvers in Popes of temporal power. time. So when Commodore Perry pre­ One transaction caused him twinges of pared to sail for the Far East, to open the conscience, although he insisted he was door of Nippon, the Hartford arms master not responsible for a result he had no provided him with an assortment of pres­ means of foreseeing. Finding himself entation revolvers. There is no record of with obsolete muskets on hand at the the reception accorded the weapons by the . close of the Crimean War, he disposed of Shogun, nor is it known whether any of them to traders in the Northwest Terri­ them found their way into China, but the tory, with the understanding that they King. of Siam sent Colt gifts in acknowl­ should be sold only to peaceful Indians. ocIgment of his offering. However peaceful the Indians may have Members of a rebel Cuban junta pur­ been before the muskets (and probably chased revolvers, and Colt promptly sent some firewater) came into their posses­ to the governor of the island a presenta­ sion, they soon suffered a change of heart. tion piece, with the hint that inasmuch as The Snakes, Sioux, Cheyennes, and Ara­ Colt could not prevent rebels from buying pahoes took the war path and started the arms, it might be well for the gov­ hunting paleface scalps instead of beaver ernor to know what manner of weapons pelts. The government was forced to send his enemies possessed. Another rebel cavalry into the territory, and found it ex­ group whose purchases opened a new pedient to arm the troopers with revolvers. market was composed of Irish refugees, Colt regretted the Indian uprisings, but most of them members of the Fenian argued that had the government main­ brotherhood, sworn to harass England. tained proper garrisons in the Indian All these purchases were for shipment to country, they could have been averted. He Ireland - where Sir Robert Peel was held similar views regarding Kansas forced to arm his police with revolvers as where anti- and pro-slavery partisans were a matter of course. murdering one another - as often as not Next came the Know-Nothings, a soci­ with Colt revolvers. Any government ety bitterly hostile to Roman Catholics, worth its salt, Sam declared, would have which appeared in New York in 1853. halted the Kansas outrages. Not that he THE FIRST MUNITIONS KING 357

disbelieved in republican institutions. He he did everything in his power to prevent revered them, as well as the principles of it, spending money lavishly to elect candi­ democracy, but he had a low opinion of dates who he believed could avoid a clash the officials elected to operate the machin­ between North and Squth. Sooner than ery of popular government. His views of most, however, he realized war was in­ public servants are forcefully set down in evitable and began preparing his factory to a letter to his half-brother William (with supply arms to the Union. a fine disregard of grammar) : When the war came, Colt was crippled with rheumatism. With most of the na­ To be a clerk or office holder under the tion's munitions in Southern arsenals, his pay and patronage of the government is to stagnate ambition and hope. By heavens, plant promised the one source of supply I would rather be captain of a small for Northern troops. Lincoln turned to boat than to have the biggest office in the Hartford arms maker and Colt the gift of the government, and secre­ dragged himself from a sickbed to drive tary of state says in all his diplomatic in­ his factory and his workmen to the utmost tercourse "by direction of the President of the United States I do so and so". The - not sparing even himself. His predic­ very language is that of servitude and the tion that the plant would be sorely needed soul that can do it is a slave. I have never one day now having been vindicated, he forgot a saying, almost the first that I re­ next advised Lincoln to prepare for a five­ member in life, at least among the most im­ year war, with one million men under pressive - "It is better to be at the head of a louse than the tail of a lion".... arms. The public's reply to this prophecy Don't for the sake of your own good name was that illness had affected Colt's mind think again of being a subordinate officer - everyone knew the conflict could not of government. You had better blowout last six months. Nevertheless, Colt started your brains at once and manure some expanding his plant at top speed in prepa­ honest man's ground with your carcass than to hang your ambition on so low a ration for a long war. His exertions peg. brought on an intensive attack of his chronic ailment, which ended in his death III on January 10, 1862; but his factory was in such condition that had it been re... Sam had traveled a long way from the quired to do so, it could have armed all writing of that letter to the day a decade the Union forces, although more than two later when a British sloop of war was an­ million men finally were called to serve. chored off his plant, awaiting a consign­ Never before had a nation, much less an ment of revolvers for South Africa. individual, possessed a factory capable of He had built for himself overlooking his turning out arms in such quantity. Yet the factory a rococo mansion surrounded by very genius which made of Colt the great... extensive lawns, with ponds, statuary, and est arms master also made of him the last. fountains, not to mention a deer park, Aside from the fact that only a group of which was the envy of his contemporaries. shareholders could provide the vast cap'" Yet there is little doubt that his heart was ital needed for operations in the Colt man­ in the factory and not in the strongboxes ner, there was also the certainty that men which held his cash. He foresaw the Civil who combined in their own persons - as War, and in face of the fact that it promised did Colt - unusual inventive, financial, to make him the richest man of his day, executive, and merchandising talents, ap- THIS SINGING BRANCH pear but seldom. Thus the only logical business in America. When the last mas­ successors to Colt were corporations ter arms maker passed on, bequeathing to which, in addition to utilizing collective his corporate successors the first real pros­ capital, could distribute among a group of perity the craft had ever known, it was executives the functions a genius had ex­ inevitable that the armorer's prestige should ercised himself. The development of Colt's pass with him, a votive offering to those system by wealth was certain to arouse the ancient arms smiths who too often felt popular dislike and distrust which have the gnawing of hunger as they hammered been the lot of every large and profitable the temper into a Crusader's sword.

THIS SINGING BRANCH BY MARGARET TYNES FAIRLEY

TOVE me not unless that love is part L Of some unmeasured thirst I could not fill, Although the day-spring fountains in my heart And in my speech. Oh, let a lightning skill

In loving nerve our cloudy sky with clean Precision, light its face with such alarm Of beauty that the revelation seen One moment stays to strengthen and to warm.

Love me not unless that love is grafted Deep on the tree that faces east and west, . Whose fruit. no mortal man has tasted, Then sunk into a dull and wordless rest.

Oh, let my love be like a singing branch Where four winds meet and argue with the year; And growth and danger and unmindful chance Rounds a fruit that lives on fact, not fear.

So shall our love grow from the larger love Of living, and in its boughs the eagle Nest, and storm and sunny stillness prove A measured strength, green-leafed and regal. T he Senatorial Diplomats

By ROYDEN J. DANGERFIELD

HO controls the foreign policy of the numerous select councils organized W the United States? In 1919, Wood­ during the early years of the new govern­ row Wilson assumed it to be the preroga­ ment for the consideration of treaties, for tive of the President; but in 1920 it was with no precedents to guide it, the Senate evident he was mistaken and that the had experienced considerable difficulty in Senate actually was in control during the giving advice and consent. It had tried period of the attempted ratification of the verbal conference with the President, with Treaty of Versailles. Henry Cabot Lodge the result that Washington stalked from seemingly insisted that, while foreign re­ the Senate chamber in sullen dignity and lations might be a duty of the Department remarked that he would be damned if he of State, a very important control must ever returned. Failing to find a magic reside in a handful of senators. The formula, the upper house adopted the ex­ framers of the Constitution, while failing pedient of referring treaties to select com­ to answer the question definitely, provided mittees. Because they had become familiar that the President, with the advice and with the problems involved, certain sena­ consent of the Senate, should make trea­ tors were placed upon one select group ties. From that constitutional arrangement after another until there actually was can be drawn a justification of Wilson's born a small coterie of men who, to all stand, as well as an equally strong case intents and purposes" constituted a stand­ for the contention that the Senate occu­ ing council. pies a co-ordinate role. Thus, the struggle The Committee on Foreign Relations for control, beginning with Washington's did not assume the position it now holds administration, has continued to the re­ until the early 1840'S, and even then its cent defeat of the Roosevelt-sponsored power was rudimentary when compared WorId Court protocols. It has been a bit­ to that it enjoyed during the period fol­ ter fight with few rules and no finesse. lowing.the Civil War. The accretion of Out of this long conflict between Presi­ authority has come about through con­ dent and Senate has emerged an institu­ tinuing personnel, and the preservation of tion of government that is often forgotten tradition and sacerdotal prerogatives. As because it constitutes the somewhat hid­ battles with the Chief Executive in the den but most articulate part of one of field of foreign affairs have been won by the combatants - the Senate Committee on the Senate, it has become the peculiar Foreign Relations. function of the committee to preserve the The committee was born in a Senate gains made and to insure that return en­ resolution adopted in 1816, setting up gagements do not result in a loss of eleven standing committees. It grew out of ground. 359 THE AMERICAN MERCURY

Consisting originally of five members, reduction of committee representation. In the committee retained that size until 1918, Senator Joseph T. Robinson was 1857, when two more were added. Until assigned to the committee, but the Repub­ 1900, it never boasted more than eleven lican landslide of 1918 resulted in a reduc~ .members and consisted of from eight to tion of Democratic strength and Robin­ twelve per cent of the total Senate mem- son was not reassigned in 1919. In 1924, . bership. At the present, nearly twenty-five he was once more appointed, and has per cent is to be found on the list. This remained a member since that time. Sen­ growth is significant, since the size of the ator Bronson Cutting was assigned in council is determined by the demands of 1931 and reassigned in 1932. Then the senators for seats thereon. The demand, of Roosevelt victory reduced the Republican course, has increased in direct ratio to the strength and Cutting was not reassigned political importance of the committee in 1933. Yet in 1935 he was once more members. placed on the committee and remained At first, members of all Senate com­ there until his death. mittees were chosen by secret ballot, the Just as the Senate committee system senator receiving the largest number of evolved through an unconscious conform­ votes being designated as chairman. It ity to a particular method of handl~ng was not until 1826 that the rule was legislative and executive matters, so has amended so as to insure committee chair­ there also evolved an unwritten rule of manships to the majority party. Later, the seniority. Under this custom the chair­ power of selecting committee members man of the Committee on Foreign Rela­ was given to the presiding officer. From tions almost invariably is the representa­ 1826 to 1845, the committees were some­ tive of the majority party who has served times named by the presidents pro longest in the council. Since 1850, there tempore, the vice-presidents, and some­ have been seventeen chairmen. Senator times by ballot. Lodge served twenty-four years before In 1845, a bitter struggle ensued over the being named; Key Pittman, the in­ selections, and a new method was inaugu­ cumbent, served eighteen years. He came rated. The majority party, in caucus, named to his present office by virtue of the fact the majority members of each committee, that, politically or otherwise, he survived and the minority caucus named the minor­ all his Democratic predecessors other than ity members. These two slates were merged Senator Swanson, who was elevated to the and the whole Senate designated the Cabinet. personnel. This method has been followed During the past century, committee since that time, each party being granted seats have been occupied by one hundred the same ratio of committee member­ and ninety men. Three-fourths have held ship as it has of the total Senate voting degrees from accredited colleges; ninety .. strength. per cent have been members of the bar. Once assigned, a new senator remains Before assignment to the Committee on upon the committee until death, resigna­ Foreign Relations, these legislators have tion, or electoral defeat removes him. In a served an average of nearly three years in few instances, members have been dropped the House of Representatives and nearly when their party strength in the Senate five in the Senate. Their ages have varied declined so perceptibly as to necessitate a from thirty-five to seventy-six years, the THE CLINIC average being fifty-four. They have served interpretation; (3) asks the defeat of the for terms varying from one to thirty treaty. A survey reveals that only in one­ years, with an average of five and two­ third of the cases has the Senate failed to thirds. follow committee advice. Fifteen treaties The question has been raised as to have been rejected, IS0 have been whether these members have been ade­ amended. In a great majority of cases the quately trained and equipped to handle Senate merely followed the committee's the particular tasks of their office. To this, recommendations. Since one-third of these there is no satisfactory answer. A careful instruments did not succeed of passage, it study of the personnel of the committee, is evident that the action of the committee however, leads to the conclusion that it produced serious results. In a few instances, would be difficult to select, from persons the committee has disliked the original in public life, so large a group of well­ phraseology and substituted its own. trained men. There is little doubt that Infrequently the committee has at­ such legislators as Clay, Webster, Sumner, tempted to initiate pacts through resolu­ and Lodge may be termed as able and tions in the Senate, urging the President well-informed as any in the annals of the to open negotiations. This procedure was Senate. followed in the arbitration treaty with The handling of treaties, of course, re­ Great Britain, proposed in a resolution of mains the most spectacular function of 1890. Senator Borah was responsible, in the committee. Here the power of the part, for the calling of the Washington committee is most apparent. It not infre­ Arms Conference and for the Kellogg­ quently happens that the chairman.is able Briand Pact. Moreover, acting as an agency to postpone, for long periods, the con­ for the formulation of public opinion, the sideration of a treaty. And, even though committee has been able to conclude nego­ the chairman is desirous of having a pact tiations which have resulted in treaties. stand on its merits, the committee may On at least two occasions, it has discussed refuse to take any action and thus with­ proposed international agreements with hold the document from the Senate. In foreign diplomats. In an effort to secure his List of Treaties Submitted to the Sen­ Senate approval of the treaty of 1867, ceding ate Which Have Not Gone into Force, the Danish islands to the United States, Hunter Miller has revealed that between General Rassloff, the Danish Minister of 17.89 and 1931, there were ninety-four War, testified before the committee. In pacts upon which the Senate took no 1914, the Nicaraguan minister was invited action. to appear for discussion of a proposed In reporting a treaty, the committee treaty with that country. Here the com­ sometimes offers no suggestion as to the mittee definitely usurped the function of action the Senate should take. But in the negotiation which belongs properly to the greater number of cases the document is Department of State. returned with definite recommendations. With its position as an agent in foreign These include: (1) the committee pro­ affairs well established, the committee has poses approval by the Senate of the treaty attempted to expand its role through as signed; (2) urges passage of the in­ enunciations of policy. In 1858, there was strument with certain changes which may proposed a resolution, adopted by the Sen­ be made by amendment, reservation, or ate, declaring that United States vessels THE AMERICAN MERCURY on the high seas were not subject to search Theodore Roosevelt came to the Presi­ in peacetime. In 1912, the committee re­ dency. The struggle grew more intense to­ ported out the famous Magdalena Bay ward the end of the period, leaving in its resolution, which declared that any at­ wake the defeat of the Treaty of Versailles. tempt on the part of a non-American cor­ During the Harding administration the poration to secure a harbor near the specter of a militant committee chairman United States would be viewed "with - Lodge - definitely marked the foreign grave concern". This resolution was di­ policy of Secretary of State Hughes. Dur­ rected against the proposed sale of a large ing the Coolidge and Hoover adminis­ tract of land in Lower California to a trations, foreign relations were conducted Japanese syndicate. The resolution was with one eye on foreign powers and the and is a cause for Japanese-American other on the chairman - Borah. The av­ friction. In bringing about its passage, erage Frenchman might not have known the committee virtually dispatched an the name of the American Secretary of ultimatum. State, but he was most eager to learn It is evident that the committee's im­ Borah's opinion. The peak of the Ida­ portance has varied with its chairmen. It hoan's influence was reached when Pre... ,is even more evident that changes in the mier Laval visited President Hoover in Presidential office have altered its position. 1931, for it was not to the White House, Under the chairmanship of Senator Sum­ nor to the State Department, but to the ner, the committee first reached a position office of Borah that the thirty accompany­ co-ordinate with the Department of State ing French journalists flocked. There in formulating and limiting foreign pol­ Borah told them a rectification of the iey. This was due to the congressional re­ Polish-German border was necessary. Two pudiation of President Johnson. The pe­ days later, he lectured the Premier on the riod of dominance came to an end during inequity of the peace treaties. Certainly the Grant administration with the ousting Borah invaded the prerogatives of the of Sumner from his post. A revival of in­ President. Moreover, there is little doubt fluence was produced by the close politi­ that he did so with the full consent of cal division in the nation which often the American people. Here was diplomacy aligned Congress against the President, carried on by the chairman of the com· and placed the committee in an excellent mittee with such gusto and effrontery as position for playing party politics. This to steal the show from the President of period of prominence lasted until the turn the United States. of the century. Since the Roosevelt landslide of 1932, The bitterest conflicts between the Pres­ the Administration has been able to con­ ident and the Senate occurred in the pe­ trol its preponderant majority of the com­ riod 1899-1919. These two decades wit­ mittee and its acquiescent chairman. As nessed the emergence of the United States a result, the control of foreign policy seems from the status of a secondary world to have returned to the White House and power to that of first rank. The conflicts to the Department of State. But it is not were produced by an effort on the part absolute by any means, for the Senate may of the Executive to regain complete con­ show its teeth without warning, as indeed trol over foreign policy. The committee it did in the case of the WorId Court was challenged by a strong executive when protocols. THE CLINIC

What Is a Reasonable Legal Fee?

By HARRY HIBSCHMAN

HE pickings of certain lawyers, favored allowed the firm of Hays, Podell, and Tof fortune and of big business, have Schulman and associates $477,773 for their been so rich of late as to fill less lucky services in a suit of stockholders of the melnbers of the profession with envy, and National City Bank and its subsidiary, the the man on the street with resentment. National City Company, against a group The latter reads, for instance, of such cases of directors. This was approximately one· as that of Arthur l\1ullen, attorney and fourth of the amount recovered. So, if high politico of Nebraska, who demands the judgment had been twice as much, $175,000 of the PWA for services rendered the lawyers would have been entitled on in connection with two irrigation projects the same basis to almost $1,000,000, while in his home state; he recalls how he him­ if the recovery had totaled $100,000, their self had first to qualify for home relief fee would have been a mere $25,000. Yet before being allowed to earn even $17 the labor performed in either case would weekly; and he asks, what stupendous have been precisely the same. Now, asks tasks do these legal moguls perform that the lay.man, is there any reason to this? their services for a few months' labor are Of course, there are occasions when a worth more than those of a thousand learned judge is called upon to decide ordinary citizens? In fact, he may well what constitutes a reasonable fee, this pro­ ask is the time of any man, professional cedure offering the sole recourse for clients or otherwise, worth such a vast sum? who feel they are being overcharged. As If, ho\vever, the bewildered layman ap­ recently as October 23, 1935, Federal peals to a lawyer for information, he re­ Judge Alfred C. Coxe in New York City ceives only evasive generalities. For the ruled against "vicarious generosity" with truth is that of all the mysteries of the stockholders' money and against payments law, one of the most profound is that to a "multiplicity" of lawyers and commit­ which involves the basis for computing tees. In his decision, he drastically reduced legal compensations. Thus, according to nearly all claims in the receivership of the testimony offered recently before the Sen­ Paran10unt-Publix Corporation. Of the ate Interstate Commerce Committee by $3,239,828 asked by fifty-three petitioners, the elusive Hopson and others, scores of including some of the most prominent the country's most eminent barristers were legal firms in Manhattan, Judge Coxe employed to fight the enactment of the allowed only $1,026,711, or less than one Wheeler-Rayburn utilities bill, and re­ third. He reduced fees for services from ceived retainers of from $12,5°0 to $75,­ $2,841,031 to $766,426, and expenses from 000. The above-mentioned Mullen of Ne­ $398,796 to $260,284. Eighteen claims total­ braska was paid $25,000, while John W. ing $8r5,750 were denied entirely. Includ­ Davis, erstwhile candidate for the Pres­ ing $458,029 previously allowed, the total idency, was expected to charge more than cost of the proceedings amounted to $r,- $50,000 for an opinion that the act was 484,739. unconstitutional. At about the same time, Fifty years ago, there was a case some- Mr. Justice Dore of New York City what similar to that of the N ationa! City THE AMERICAN MERCURY

Bank, in which the amount recovered beginning with the modest sum of $3.62 Y2. from the trustees of a defunct bank was for a retainer and ending with $3.75 for $115,000, and the plaintiff's attorney was arguing a case. But there is this to be said allowed twenty per cent of that amount in the committee's favor - they had def­ as his fee; but he had been compelled to inite ideas regarding. standards. What was prosecute eleven separate actions to earn fair pay for the blacksmith or the farmer it. Still nlore interesting is another New should be fair pay for the man of law. York case of 135 years ago, involving ap­ But this is not the standard adopted by proximately the same sum, in which Al­ lawyers and judges today. As to what that exander Hamilton and Aaron Burr ap­ standard is supposed to be, the editors of peared together for the plaintiff. They Corpus Juris, the most stupendous legal won, and Hamilton's fee was $15°0 and commentary ever printed, could not for­ Burr's $29°0. Hamilton was then head of mulate the rule more specifically than in the Manhattan bar, yet that fee of $1500 these words: was the highest he ever received. Fourteen years after Hamilton's death, The amount of an attorney's compensa­ tion, when not fixed by the terms of his the exactions of lawyers in New York contract with his client, is measured by State had become so onerous, in the opin­ the reasonable value ot the services ren­ ion of citizens of Ontario County, that dered, not by what the attorney thinks is the latter petitioned the Legislature. The reasonable, but by the price usually paid Senate appointed a committee to consider to the profession for such services. No reg­ war measure of value can be fixed. the grievance, and that committee reported as follows: But that leaves the matter as much of They are constrained to say that they have a riddle as ever. If reasonableness is to be a strong conviction that the fees of at­ determined "by the price usually paid to tornies, under the present law, are unrea~ the profession for such services", then it sonable and extravagant; that the labor of becomes necessary to find out what is attornies bears no relation to the amount; "the price usually paid"; and the difficulty that strong reasons urge upon your com­ here is that there are no prevailing scales. mittee the necessity of reducing their fees when they are compared with the same In fact it is extremely difficult to ascertain amount of labor of other professional what lawyers are in the habit of charging, gentlemen; that when comparison be made and it is only when they testify in behalf with the mechanic or the farmer, the con­ of some brother suing for a fee, or argue trast would go to prove that such disparity for an allowance in their own behalf, that could not long be tolerated; that its con­ tinuance must depend on the secrecy of they reveal the rules by which they profess the fact or the ignorance or slumbers of to be governed. the people; that unless those costs are re­ It may be noted that little light comes duced there is reason to apprehend that a from criminal cases, first, because the in­ great portion of the wealth and its con­ formation about the fees is hard to obtain, comitant blessings will be engrossed by and, second, because there are virtually the gentlemen of that profession. no instances in which the courts have been It is somewhat difficult at this distant called upon to fix fees, the Hauptmann day to see how the existing circumstances case, in which Edward J. Reilly is seek­ justified such strictures, for the law at ing to recover $25,000, being an exception. that time fixed a fee for every legal act, Although John B. Stanchfield is said to THE CLINIC have received $800,000 some twenty years the latter was entitled to $1500 a day for ago to defend August Heinze, the Mon­ 171 days - the "long" days - and $750 tana copper king, against a charge of mis­ a day for 125 normal days, or a total appropriation of funds of the Mercantile of $35°,250. For the city, former Justice National Bank, and 1vfax Steuer is reputed Jeremiah T. Mahoney testified that Craig's to receive a minimum trial fee of $1000 a services were worth not more than $75­ day, Delphin M. Delmas traveled from 000. Justice Edward J. Glennon, who had San Francisco to New York to defend the task of reconciling this conflicting tes­ Harry K. Thaw for the sum of $25,000. timony, gave Craig judgment for $125,000. Clarence Darrow received $100,000 in the Craig appealed, but the Appellate Divi­ Loeb-Leopold case, yet there were many sion of the Supreme Court decided that years when his total inc01.1!e "vas not more Justice Glennon had allowed him all that than a tenth of that. Earl Rogers, the Los he was entitled to; and that sum is what Angeles criminal la\vyer of a decade or he received, plus interest and costs. two ago, averaged only $100,000 a year. Another fee to puzzle the layman is the The writer himself once defended and one allowed Martin Conboy for advising cleared a prisoner charged with attempted Franklin D. Roosevelt when, as Governor murder, and received for his services $50 of New York, the latter had before him the and a shoulder of venison. removal proceedings against James J. Seeking an instance in which the reason­ Walker as Mayor of New York City. Con­ ableness of a fee was judicially determined, boy \vas retained by Roosevelt as special it would be difficult to find one more per­ counsel and was brought into the case on plexing than that of the late Charles L. June 13, 1932 • Walker resigned on Sep­ Craig against the City of New York for tember 1. All told, therefore, the number services rendered in litigation \vith the of days devoted to the case by Conboy Interborough Rapid Transit Company was only eighty. During this time he over the five-cent fare. As comptroller, studied the record, attended twelve hear­ Craig had been happy to serve the city ings, and gave the Governor the benefit for a number of years at an annual salary of his advice. And for this he received of $25,000; but for his services as the city's $25,000 from New York City. Roosevelt special counsel he demanded $350,000 for received that amount annually for serving eighteen months' work. The city rejected the state as its Chief Executive, and Con­ his claim and he brought suit. Among boy soon afterwards accepted the position the witnesses for Craig was the eminent of United States District Attorney in New Ne,v York lawyer, Martin Saxe, who tes­ York City at a salary of a mere $10,000 tified that the former's services were worth, a year. for elements other than "time and labor", What the United States Supreme Court $100,000, to which he added $1000 a day considers a reasonable fee rnay be gathered for the 200 days when Craig said he had from a decision rendered in a case grow­ worked as much as fourteen hours a day, ing out of the misadventures of the Okla­ $500 each for 218 days when he worked homa Indian, Jackson Barnett, who by merely a normal number of hours, and the grace of God and a liberal flow of oil $250 each for 137 days while just "standing on his allotted lands became a millionaire. by", making a total of $443,25°. Edmund Barnett had been adjudged incompetent L. Mooney, also testifying for Craig, said and a guardian appointed by an Okla- THE AMERICAN MERCURY homa court. But, having been inveigled In the Jay Gould estate, for instance, the into matrimony and out of the jurisdic­ total amount allowed the lawyers was tion of the Oklahoma courts by a clever $2,7°3,635. Of this sum, Leonard and white woman, he was induced to part Walker, attorneys for Frank Jay Gould, with securities worth over $1,000,000. His received $580,315, while Judge Samuel Sea.. guardian thereupon brought suit in the bury, as counsel for the same gentleman, Federal Court of the Southern District received $529,999. William Nelson Crom­ of New York for a return of the securities. well and associates were tendered $569," The guardian won, and then arose the 864, and the Coudert brothers, $151,9°9. question of the amount to be allowed his In the Henry B. Plant will case, William attorneys. The district court judge set it D. Guthrie was allowed $800,000; and in at $184,881.08. But the federal government the Commodore Vanderbilt will case, was dissatisfied, and appealed to the Cir­ Henry L. Clinton received $4°0,000. cuit Court of Appeals, where the amount One of the most searching inquiries was reduced to $100,000. Still not satisfied, into the subject of fees was conducted by the government carried the case to the Judge Otis of the United States District Supreme Court, and that august body Court at Kansas City in the Loose will held that $50,000 was sufficient. In the face case. The question at issue was the validity of these facts, where can a bewildered of a provision in the will of Harry Wilson layman, or a groping lawyer, look for Loose establishing a charitable trust, valued guidance? at $4,000,000. Nine relatives attacked this Nowhere, however, is the lack of a de­ provision, but the court sustained it. Follow­ pendable measure for .determining fees ing this litigation, Judge Otis was called more apparent than in receivership and upon to determine what compensation bankruptcy cases. In a recent proceeding should be allowed the numerous attorneys. before Judge John P. Nields of the United The judge appointed a com·mittee of three States District Court at Wilmington, Dela­ prominent lawyers. The total asked was ware, His Honor shaved nearly seventy.. $15°,000. The total recommended by the five per cent off the sums asked by the committee was $4°,000. trustees for the National Department But Judge Otis still had different views. Stores and their attorneys, and he reduced He decided that four firms were entitled the claim of Jacob S. Demov of New York to be paid out of the funds of the estate, City, associate counsel for the trustees, and to them he awarded $34,000, $20,000, from $295,000 to $35,000, pointing out that $2000, and $1000, respectively. In support he had already been paid $25,000, and that of his conclusions he wrote an elaborate on a basis of $30,000 a year, which should opinion. Referring to the contention that be ample, the sum mentioned would com­ > the time devoted to a case by an attorney pensate him for his work, covering two must be considered, Judge Otis said: "In years. that connection, one must consider also More lucrative than receiverships and what time was reasonably necessary for the bankruptcies are will contests and litiga­ services rendered." In other words, the tion over estates. Many a barrister has be­ question is not how much time the par.. come financially independeQt by some ticular lawyer spent on the case, but how lucky turn that brought him a client with much it would have been necessary for a a claim to the estate of a wealthy decedent. competent lawyer to devote to it. Report on Rugged Protetartantsm

By ERNEST BOYD

THE GREAT TRADITION, by Granville literature, touched again and again with a Hicks. $2. 6 x 9; 340 pp. New York: Mac­ passion for brotherhood, justice, and intel­ millan. lectual honesty," Mr. Hicks explains­ PROLETARIAN LITERATURE IN THE UNITED STATES: AN ANTHOLOGY. though it is difficult to conceive of a liter­ Edited by Granville Hicks and others. ature in Christendom of which this could $2.50. 5% x 8)1z; 384 pp. New York: In­ not be said. Such characteristics are neither ternational Publishers. peculiar to American nor any other liter­ FROM THE KINGDOM OF NECES­ ature, and cannot, therefore, be said to con­ SITY, by Isidor Schneider. $2·50. 5* x 8)1z; 450 pp. New York: Putnam's. stitute its specific tradition. Nor is that tra­ A SIGN FOR CAIN, by Grace Lumpkin. dition in any of the world's literatures the $2.5°.5% x 7%; 276 pp. New York: Lee inevitable precursor of what the author and Furman. his fellow-Marxists mean by proletarian. MARCHINGl MARCHING! by Clara Some inkling of this obvious thought ap­ Weatherwax. $I.90. 5% x 8)1z; 256 pp. parentIy occurred to Mr. Hicks, for he New York: John Day Company. added: "That the writers of the past could HEN Mr. Granville Hicks first issued not have conceived of the revolutionary W The Great Tradition, of which this literature of today and would, perhaps, re­ is a revised e~ition, Mr. John Strachey de­ pudiate it if they were alive, makes no dif­ clared that "the American revolutionary ference." By starting out with this false movement has just had the signal good for­ premise of a tradition of protest as being an tune to have been endowed with a large­ essential and indispensable part of Ameri­ scale work of literary criticism from a fully can literature, the author, of course, finds Marxist writer", from which we may safely himself at every turn criticizing or dismiss­ conclude that Comrade Hicks is obediently ing writers who failed to be what they were, toeing the party line in his "interpretation not because they neglected to live up to his of American literature since the Civil War", arbitrary test of excellence or merit. to quote his subtitle. So that one reads the Furthermore, while great literature has book to discover precisely what bright light frequently criticized greed and has often a "fully Marxist" critic can throw upon the been touched with a passion for justice, subject. It turns out to be the light of a there has been great literature wholly un­ strange confusion, for the in1plication is concerned \vith these subjects. Still this that the great tradition of American litera­ book insists, in every chapter but the last, ture is a revolutionary one. "Ours has been that American writers have .fallen short of a critical literature, critical of greed, cow­ such a proletarian ideal. But if one com­ ardice, and meanness. It has been a hopeful pares even the contemporary figures whom 367 THE AMERICAN MERCURY

Mr. Hicks belittles in his first eight chapters Robinson, Amy Lowell, Carl Sandburg, with those whom he hails as proletarian Vachel Lindsay, Robert Frost, James Hun­ geniuses in the ninth, it becomes evident eker, H. L. Mencken, Joel Elias Spingarn, that salvation by Marxism is a matter of and Van Wyck Brooks, not to mention pure faith rather than good works. Eugene O'Neill, Scott Fitzgerald, and Irv­ Just as the author, towards the end of his ing Babbitt. Mr. Hicks was clearly a bit book, becomes conscious of a certain non staggered when he saw how much he pro­ sequitur in his theory of the great tradition, posed to throw out the window, so he so at the outset he cannot help but antici­ kindly concedes that such names from the pate the objection raised by his fundamental 1912-1925 period look very much like an thesis. Thus he writes of Emerson, Haw­ American renaissance.of letters. But these thorne, Melville, and Thoreau: "It is idle, writers were all "frustrated", and so have of course, to reproach them for not being done nothing for the emancipation of the something other than what they were; arid working classes. ... yet it is only by understanding what they Mr. Hicks has fulsome praise and maud­ might have been that we can realize their lin approval, however, for those transcend­ short-comings and appreciate their failure ent geniuses who have so signally avoided to inspire their successors." And so Mr. the deficiencies which mar their capitalistic Hicks dismisses as failures "these four men, predecessors. The Comrades are greeted the finest perhaps that our literature can enthusiastically in Proletarian Literature.in boast.". Whitman, on the other hand, who the United States. Here, then, the names of "came from the common people, liked those who will presumably be remembered them, kept himself close to them", found no when all those hitherto listed in this article audience for his proletarian yawp among are forgotten: Michael Gold, Grace Lump­ them, and owed his fame to the devotion of kin, Isidor Schneider, Josephine Herbst, a group of British college dons. Evidently Jack Conroy, Albert Halper, Horace Greg­ the appreciation of literature is not to be de­ ory, Alfred Kreymborg,' Clifford' Odets, termined by sociological rules of thumb, Alfred Maltz, and Robert Forsythe, to men­ but by people of literary interests who are tion a few of those most in favor. In the endowed with critical and aesthetic judg­ anthology these and many others are repre­ ment. sented by stories, poems, plays, and literary It is, however, when Mr. Hicks comes to essays. They range from very, very bad, to the writers of the present century that he fair and middling. The reporting selections throws all critical discretion to the winds. are the best, and show that good sob-stuff is Having no established names to deal with, the surest basis of effective propaganda. he simply wields the executioner's axe in Yet at their best, not one of the writers in the sacred name of Marx. The high-water this collection, which has the nihil obstat of mark of his belittling of writers who set out the six grand panjandrums of the Marxist to accomplish something not prescribed in literary world in New York, is superior to the Gospel According to Karl is the chapter his predecessors in the non-proletarian field, in which the following authors are set aside and very few of the actual newcomers even as negligible: Edith Wharton, Theodore merit comparison with the average of the Dreiser, Sinclair Lewis, Sherwood Ander­ "frustrated" generation. It is not necessary son, Willa Cather, James Branch Cabell, to have any illusions or predilections to Joseph Hergesheimer, Edwin Arlington realize this. It is an obvious matter of or- THE! LIBRARY dinary literary judgment. Perhaps the an­ and the like can appreciate this kind of thologists were in too great a hurry to pro­ thing - well and good. 1presume to doubt claim their victory over all other schools of it. Obscurity, combined with the technical modern American literature. This volume jargon of lumber camps, and the usual tale merely proves that there is no Marxist lit­ of frame-ups, wage cuts, stoolpigeons, and erary criticism; therefore, no literary stand­ strikes, with a drooling, sexual cn~tin for ard. A vast amount of utterly naive log­ pathological titillation - of such is com­ rolling serves instead. Otherwise, From the pounded the first proletarian prize-winning [(ingdom of Necessity, for example, would novel. If this is a foretaste, may our public not have been received by the Comrades libraries be spared the Revolution. with such loud hosannas. It is quite typical, an exceedingly long-drawn-out story of the rise and struggles of an,East Side Jewish boy, not up to the level of the now much­ T his Business of War anathematized Abraham Cahan's The Rise of David Levinsky, and constantly marred By JOHN W. THOMASON, JR. by platitudinous editorial passages. Miss Grace Lumpkin's A Sign for Cain is written WAR IN THE MODERN WORLD, by with a more skilled hand and with less em­ Newton D. Baker. $1. 6 x 9; 63 pp. Bos­ phasis on the propaganda use of class-con­ ton: Houghton Mifflin. WAR: NO PROFIT, NO GLORY, NO sciousness. But once again it is not easy for NEED, by Norman Thomas. $r.so. a reader who is not indoctrinated with 5% x 7~; 234 pp. New York: Frederick Marxism to single out this perfectly average A. Stokes. piece of fiction from the general run of the THE COMING WORLD WAR, by T. H. ~ mill. Wintringham. $2.50. 5 x 8; 256 pp. New York: Thomas Seltzer. It is even more difficult for the uncon­ verted to read Marching! Marching! by ERE are three studious books upon the Clara Weatherwax, much less to conceive H subject which, along with Love, has how any jury of literate people could single engaged the greatest part of the attention it out as a prize novel, proletarianism or no of mankind throughout history. Both War proletarianism. If I had not carefully studied and Love, as institutions, have been func­ the newcomers in the aforementioned an­ tioning a long time. And yet it does not thology, I might have said that it is impos­ appear that anyone has been able to do sible to believe that when the New Masses much about mitigating either. prize was offered, no better manuscript Mr. Baker's War in the Modern World than Miss Weatherwax's was received. But is the reprint of a lecture for the Alumni - judging from such evidence -I suppose 11emorial War Foundation, delivered it was hard sledding, and that this mon­ last year at Milton Academy. It is an strosity consoled the doctrinaires with its able, closely-reasoned, and dispassionate Marxism for its total inability to tell a story, study of the subject, such as might be ex­ for its painful lack of literary quality. This pected from a gentleman of Mr. Baker's lack is further exacerbated by the author's distinguished attainments. When von Hin­ effort to be obscure, oblique and as Joycean denburg in his Aus Me£n Leben says "The as Joyce at his Joyciest. If the millions of Americans understand war", .he means workers who delight in True Confessions that Newton D. Baker understands it, for 37° THE AMERICAN MERCURY Mr. Baker was a very great Secretary of is no glory in war, he quotes from English War. His work places him beside Carnot, sweet-singers of the Siegfried Sasoon Napoleon's organizer of victory, and with school, and he takes the usual falls out of Stanton, Lincoln's demented but exces ... the poor professional soldiers, who do sively effective aide against the Southern nothing about a war except fight it, after Confederacy. Yet Mr. Baker, in addition their masters, the politicos, have brought to his manifest administrative gifts, pos... it about. He has a tear for Sir Roger Case.. sesses something that neither Carnot nor ment, and honorable mention of the the furious Stanton had: he is a versatile Messrs. Sacco and Vanzetti, Mooney, and and articulate gentleman, accomplished in Billings. To show that there is no profit, the arts of peace as well as war. He is the he draws upon authorities as far apart as master of a polished, incisive prose, and the historian of the Chou Dynasty, in his periods read beautifully. Here he can... ancient - very ancient - China; from the siders in the historical sense the inherent poet Virgil; and from Mr. Kirby Page's causes and objects of War as an institution; summary of the direct costs of the last and·no fault may be found with his facts. war: that is, the World War. But there , He sees the strongest hope for the preven.. have been twenty-odd formal wars in the tion of war in an. agreement like the Pact world since that November day in the of Paris: that is, the abandonment of war rainy forest of Senlis when the Germans as an instrument of national policy. He signed certain papers in a railroad car. He closes, after sixty-odd mellifluous pages, devotes considerable space to the question, upon an optimistic note: The ingenuity Why Men Fight. He does not, for a min.. of man, which has expanded and adorned ute, consider the obvious answer: which is, his life along so many lines, may be de.. because they want to fight. Otherwise, they pended upon to find expedients other than wouldn't be aoing it all the time. war for the settlement of his disputes. Most of his theses are too high for me, The date of Mr. Baker's lecture is April, or I miss the connection. A simple profes­ 1935. In that month, Benito Africanus had sional soldier myself, I find only one point not yet disclosed his complete intention within my province, and that is in his list towards the King of Kings; nor had the for the cure of war. He outlines this im.. full beauties of the Japanese design in portant matter in his final chapters. First, North China been unveiled. Yet his major he considers, the President and the Con... premise holds good. War is the weapon gress should declare as national policy that of decision which men take up when their the United States will not supply, nor per.. milder arguments fail· of achievement. In mit its citizens to supply, arms, munitions, their relations, they have used it for a or financial support to belligerents or pros... long time. They will continue to use it pective belligerents. In a measure, Mr. until self-interest, no less than altruism, Thomas has been anticipated by the em.. impels them to devise a better way. bargo directive of the last Congress, to Mr. Norman Thomas is one of the lead.. meet possibilities arising out of the Ethio­ ing messiahs of the Republic, deriving from pian emergency. How the thing will work the ancient line described in the Bible, who remains to be seen. It will be interesting to cry Peace, Peace, when there is no peace. observe the reactions of our stalwart and His book, as its frantic title indicates, is necessitous traders when this embargo is on the emotional side. To prove that there extended to cover wheat, cotton, crude oil, THE LIBRARY 37 1 scrap metal, and the other raw materials bluewater fellows come along and knock that belligerent nations wish to buy. The them off? The very essence of a navy lies ethics involved are beautiful. But the in the ability to give battle on chosen practical working of such schemes, under terms, to deliver blows as well as to re­ the corrosive acids of human nature, is quite ceive them; in a word, to be able to oper­ likely to be sOluething else again. ate under terms favorable to its ends and His second point is: "The largest measure unfavorable to the adversary. A navy may of disarmament that the public can be - and the American navy probably always persuaded to accept"-looking, you con­ will be - employed along the lines of de­ ceive, tOvvards total disarmament. Here fensive strategy. But in war, offensive tactics again the United States,. through its repre­ are the only tactics from which decision sentatives duly created, has anticipated may be expected. There is no second prize him. In the Washington Naval Treaty of in battle. A second-best navy never wins. 1922, and as recently as the London Treaty The Germans built a magnificent navy. of 1930, this Republic affirmed its devo­ Their great ships were perhaps the stanch­ tion to the principle of naval armament est that ever went to war. But there were not limitation. To bring ourselves within the enough of them, and, most fatally for the ship categories established between the German cause, they were employed both naval powers in the former covenant, we strategically and tactically as a defensive sank and scrapped a number of magnifi.. navy from first to last. The skill of their cent units, and abandoned fine war vessels designers and the valor and discipline of then building, some of them as far as ninety their officers and men were alike wasted per cent completed. We then sat idle, in in the outcon1e. Either a navy adequate pious conten1plation of our virtues, while and competent to meet the demands im­ the other signatories to these instruments posed upon it by national policy - or no industriously built their naval establish­ navy at all. In a word, Mr. Thomas' state­ ments level with the treaty limits, so that, ments and conclusions are very widely two years ago, we were very dangerously open to argument. behind our own commitments. The pres­ The Wintringham discussion of the com­ ent energetic building program, which ing WorId War is both informed and Mr. Thomas views with distaste, is re­ sensible. It is a calm book, without ex­ quired to bridge the gap of those neglectful clamation points. No one knows exactly years. We have gone far enough along the what the next Armageddon will be like. road of altruistic experiment to discover Certainly it will be more mechanized than that it is a lonesome road. There can be no anything within our experience, and all compromise in national security. the staffs are doing their btst to read the But Mr. Thomas' idea is to build a signs aright. There will be more gas than defensive navy, and I single out that point in the last conflict, and more tanks. The as being within my .limited range of ex­ air forces will playa greater part than they perience. What is a defensive navy? Does did in 1918. The average of discomfort and Mr. Thomas mean a navy of small units, nastiness will doubtless be very high. Mr. designed with such limited cruising radius Wintringham has his eye fixed on the Far that they will not be able to go far enough Eastern theater, and discusses it intelli­ from home to get into trouble, but must gently. But another focus may develop: the wait close to our seaports until some rude current world is an unsettled place. 372. THE AMERICAN MERCURY

I find most interesting his consideration lini's type to save them, no matter how of the relation between Labor and War. badly they needed saving. Instead of being He shows how the development of the used by the bankers and industrialists of complicated devices with which modern Italy, as the communists have insisted, war is waged demand a personnel cor­ Mussolini, it seems to me, has been using respondingly skilled to manufacture and bankers and big businessmen both in and operate them. And he adduces significant out of Italy. The myth that the Duce incidents in the recent conduct of such is the white hope of the propertied classes personnel. His chapters are thoughtful and is due to two false assumptions: First, that sound, too good to be summarized and whatever is not capitalism is not law and offered without their context. Not only order. Second, that whatever constitutes every soldier, but every citizen, should law and order must be capitalism. To prac­ read them. tical businessmen and politicians, who Before War can be abolished,' it must have neither the time nor the aptitude to be controlled. Mr. Newton D. Baker's apprehend the ideological content and thought may serve as a guiding principle. social meaning of fascism, Mussolini's law But it is by data, rather than denuncia­ and order achievements, until recently, tion, and through proper deductions from meant that he was sound, and that Italian data assembled, rather than in hysteria, that 7's were an excellent buy. men will find their way to the solution of To the practical businessman, before the problem. 1929, communism connoted anarchy. He could not imagine an orderly (regimented is now the word) social regime, with armies operating more precisely than the What Is Mussoltni? empires of the Insulls or the Kreugers, but having among the principal objectives of By LAWRENCE DENNIS all this superb order the orderly shooting of businessmen and the orderly expropri­ MUSSOLINI'S ITALY, by Herman Finer. ation of property. Back in 1922-25, the $3.75.5% x 8%; 564 pp. New York: Henry newsreels failed to present close-ups of the Holt. Soviet armies goose-stepping on parade, SAWDUST CAESAR, by George Se1des. $3. while the newspaper cartoons of that 6 x 9; 459 pp. New York: Harper's. period featured a wild-eyed fellow labelled HAVE never been able to see eye to eye "Bolshevist", running around in aimless I with the banker intellectuals who used circles with a knife in one hand· and a to sell fascist seven per cent bonds and Mus­ bomb in the other. But all this, of course, solini,or with the communist intellectuals was before the rounding out of a Soviet who sell world revolution and Marx, when, Five-Year Plan or a Capitalist Five-Year from divergent viewpoints, they proclaim Depression. The point now is that both that Mussolini is the instrument of conven­ communism and fascism can maintain law tional capitalism. My knowledge of bank­ and order quite as ,veIl as liberalism. This ers and big businessmen, which is not they do - in the one case eliminating pri.. based fentirely on distant observation, told vate rights in productive capital, and in me from the start that big businessmen the other, the fascist case, modifying the would not select a personality of Musso- legal regime of private ownership and THE LIBRARY 373 management to such an extent that the Italian fascism is a dynamic social system result may no longer be called the old sys­ rather than the perpetuation of a static tem of liberalism. economic system. Professor Finer's book, Today, Mussolini stands forth as one of therefore, is especially helpful, for, while it the most dynamic and dangerous chal­ gives comparatively little statistical data, it lengers of the status quo in the world. His makes a penetrating, even if hostile analysis rivals for first rank are Hitler and Stalin. of the philosophy of fascism. Professor What makes Mussolini so dangerous in Finer makes it the major thesis of his work, this stellar role is just what our business­ as indicated by the title, Mussolini's Italy, men most admired in him a few years that fascism is Mussolini and must perish ago, and what made them think that he with him. Perhaps this contention may was a God-sent savior of capitalism for prove correct, but it is the sort of prophecy Italy, namely, his genius for order. Our about the future which can never be sus­ capitalists and statesmen who applauded ceptible of proof by the facts of the present. Mussolini in 1925, and who favor economic A similar prediction about Napoleon and sanctions against him today, might well his system might well have been made the have engaged a student of history, philos­ morning after vVaterloo - and Mussolini ophy, and politics, such as Professor Her­ has not yet met his Waterloo - still, few man Finer of the University of London, students would say today that the N apole­ author of Mussolini's Italy, to ascertain onic system perished with Napoleon. It is for them what fascism was all about, or to too soon to make such appraisals of Mus­ explain that it was more than a matter of solini, and the attempt to substantiate them running Italian trains on schedule, preserv­ detracts from the merits of any study which ing public order, or adding. zest and color pretends to be. impartial or scientific. to Italian politics. They might have learned The author has striven to center all this that Mussolini was a lifelong socialist; social philosophy in the mind and will of that, when he was expelled from the Mussolini; but it requires more than a Socialist Party in 1914 for his nationalistic crisis in public order to produce a leader support of Italy's entry into the World stating as his conditions for Italy: a single War on the side of the Allies, he cried out political party, a totalitarian state, and a to the Socialist Congress: "One remains a will to live in a period of highest ideal Socialist even when one's membership card tension. This third condition never im­ is taken away, for Socialism is something plied, as most American admirers of Mus­ which grows into the roots of the heart." solini supposed, mere bluster to keep the Professor Finer now thinks that "that cry rabble interested. Its meaning must be is the dominant note of Mussolini still and sought in a view of the situation of the that all the rest is polemical". They might Italian people in the light of a will-to­ have learned that the Fascist State owns power philosophy. The situation, of course, about three-fourths of the bonds of the is that of an under-privileged and over­ national industries; that it has developed populated nation confronting a world of an efficient set of mechanisms for govern­ rising tariff and immigration barriers, with ment· ownership and control which are all that these trends imply. progressively taking over business, as the Professor Finer deplores the universal day to day result of depression and war craze for a high standard of living which, emergencies. They might have learned that in the case of under-endowed Italy, he 374 THE AMERICAN. MERCURY recognizes to he fraught with greater dan­ wicked or mad. The purpose of stirring. gers for peace than in the cases of richer up a war against Mussolini's Italy, and no countries, such as the United States· or the other, is rationally served by Sawdust British Empire. But, while everything he Caesar. This fact, no doubt, explains why says in criticism of Mussolini, fascism, and the author and publishers were recently war will be read with wide approval in informed that the British Foreign Office this country and the British Empire, had withdrawn a formerly expressed ob­ nothing he says about lowering immigra­ jection to the publication in Great Britain tion bars will command applause. The of this envenomed expose of Mussolini. It Finers make out a splendid case for so­ is most significant as war propaganda cialism, but, after more than fifty years rather than as libel. of preaching such doctrines, they cannot Another trouble with any sort of "Hang control the administration of any large the Kaiser" preachment, besides that of city, let alone a national government, provoking people to a holy war, is that, while, within t\venty years, the Mussolinis a£ter such propaganda has started, waged, and Hiders have swept into complete con­ and won the holy war, it leaves a climate trol of vast nations. In·these facts bristle of feeling and opinion in which no durable a whole series of profound questions about peace can be made. War propaganda, human nature and social control which such as·· we . were fed during the late Professor Finer's critique leaves not only world struggle and such as Mr. Seldes is unanswered but even unmentioned. now serving up, can only mean one holy Anyone seeking to understand fascism war after another, which is not a cheerful or Mussolini, however, will find little help prospect, even assuming that the British in Sawdust Caesar by George Seldes. This and the angels win every such conflict. book is merely a newspaperman's attempt Dragon-slayers like Mr. Seldes and the to smear the Duce by the publication of propagandists of the late war, simply the fruits of diligent research for unfavor­ will not mar their convincing picture able facts. Professor Finer credits Musso­ of the personal devil of a Mussolini, a lini with some social ideals and achieve­ Hitler, or a Kaiser· Wilhelm by compli­ ments: Mr. Seldes simply treats Mussolini cated and dull analyses of underlying as a wicked madman. There is, of course, clashes of national interests in which these an obvious inconsistency in any thesis personal devils are but symbols. It never which tries to make a man out to be both seems to occur to the dragon-slayers that a lunatic and a sinner. And the trouble the real devil may not be a person, but the with the thesis that a fascist leader is feelings of an entire people toward an insane and that the people of his country intolerable status quo. Yes, the real devil also have gone crazy is that its proof, on may be, quite simply, the desire of the paper, still leaves the nations of the world Italian people for an international New the alternatives of trying to get on pleas­ Deal., It is this popular desire and not the antly 'with the leader and nation so char­ peculiar qualities of Mussolini which, after acterized, or else of declaring war on them. all, make Italian fascism a mighty force, Proving such a thesis, then, can serve but whether ·for good or for evil. The Duce's one rational end, namely, that of promoting show of the past thirteen years, which to war. It cannot serve the ends of good rela­ Mr. Seldes is an incoherent mixture of tions with that nation to prove its people egotism, bestial cruelty, and monkey- THE LIBRARY 375

shines, has been a preparation of Italy to era but a long succession of literary devel­ assert effectively this desire. Surely the im­ opments since then. And yet it does n.ot portant thing is this national desire, not seem peculiar to me that books are still the matters Mr. Seldes stresses. Call this being written concerning the lives of Shel­ desire an envy of the more privileged, call ley and Keats and Byron, or that the it a will to power, or a will to live, it is slightly later life of Edgar Allan Poe, per­ something in peoples which was not born haps America's purest poetic genius, is with anyone great military dictator of the still being assayed. Aside from their indi­ past and which has never died with one. vidual literary achievements, the lives of Whatever happens to Mussolini or Hitler, all these writers held elements of romance it is safe to predict that this will to live, and drama that seem only to be height­ to be great, and to expand, felt by the ened in continual retrospect. They exist for Italian and German peoples, will not perish us today in the youth of the life of poetry, with either of these leaders. Nor will it die even though just behind them loom, as with any conceivable triumph of British elder contemporaries, such figures as Col­ or League of Nations righteousness, i.e' J eridge and Wordsworth, and back of these the present status quo. . - with all due respect to certain major talents of the eighteenth century - the af­ terglow of that great unfading age of Gloriana's, its Hesper and Phosphor, of course, being the star of Shakespeare. T he Brotherhood 'of Orpheus The dawn of the nineteenth century was, however, a sunrise of new great By WILLIAM ROSE BENET names - though none approached the THE ROMANTIC REBELS, by Frances marvelous playwright's planetary emi­ Winwar. $3.75. 6 x 9; 507 pp. Boston: nence. In the long perspective through Little, Brown. which we now look back, many values BYRON: THE YEARS OF FAME, by have shifted; but Keats at his best, as the Peter Quennell. $3.50. 6~ x 9~; 320 pp. New York: Viking Press. pure poetic artist, remains living and glow­ THE LETTERS OF JOHN·KEATS (Sec­ ing; Shelley at his best a crystalline lyrical ond Edition with Revisions and Additional voice such as we have not found again; Letters). Edited by Maurice Buxton For­ and Byron the creator of inimitable satiri­ man. $5. 6 x 9; 561 pp. New York: Ox­ cal ron1ance. ford University Press. THE STRANGE LIFE AND STRANGE To pitch upon a year when "great spirits LOVES OF EDGAR ALLAN POE, by on this earth" began, or had already be­ Emile Lauvriere. English version by Edwin gun, their sojourning, we may single out Gile Rich. $3.50. 6 x 9; 422 pp. Philadel­ 18°9, in. the spring of which this country phia: Lippincott. was publicly notified that, due to the vir­ HE passage of over a century and a tue and firmness residing in Jefferson and Tquarter has made and unmade great Madison, the difficulties with England reputations in English poetry, to say. noth­ were now quite settled (so settled, indeed, ing of the profound changes wrought in that they resulted in the War of 18121), poetry's theory and practice. Between and that American mariners and the Wordsworth's time and ours lies, of American flag would hereafter be accorded course, not merely the whole Victorian nothing but respect upon the high seas THE AMERICAN MERCURY

(maugre the successful machinations of for the Mother-Mistress in older women­ Napoleon!). Probably in the beginning of all of these constitute extraordinary stories. that year of extreme ingenuousness on the All three men, as men, were what the part of the United States, a small, charm­ world calls unbalanced; Shelley's deep and ing, and unfortunate actress, then in Bos­ sincere humanitarianism being a nobler ton, gave birth to a son whose name hap­ characteristic than any possessed by either pened to be Edgar Poe. At much the same Poe or Byron. And yet these latter, for time an English boy named John Keats, in all the ravage wrought by their dark an­ school at Enfield, was immersing himself gels, could demonstrate lofty motives. in the Greek mythology of Tooke's Pan­ Nothing, of course, could he more oppo­ theon; another youth of England, Percy site than Poe's tenderness to Virginia and Bysshe Shelley, of bluer blood, was doubt­ Byron's remorse-goaded spasms of fury less at work upon his first romance, Zas­ against Annabella. As for Shelley, he was trozzi, yet to be published before he en.. constantly sublimating the natural· desires tered Oxford; and that same summer the of man into extraordinary platonic rela­ Lisbon packet bore George Gordon Noel, tionships. Lord Byron, on his first voyage to foreign Of the books before me, the most re­ lands. markable single achievement seems to me Of the above poets, Poe was to live the to be Peter Quennell's Byron. It should longest, dying at forty; Byron endured to easily, but for its time-limits, replace that the age of thirty-six; Shelley was thirty of Maurois. It is notable for concision and when he was drowned; and Keats per­ balance, presenting what seems very close ished of consumption at twenty-six. The to the whole man in the years of fame; death of each was dramatic: Poe's a hu­ discussing the man as poet less perhaps miliation and disaster, Byron's that of a than might be desired; yet always it ap­ romantic warrior fighting for Greek free­ peared that Byron regarded his practice of dom, Shelley's on the Spezzian gulf in poetry as an avocation. A very slight tinge storm, and Keats' a wasting away in Ital­ of snobbishness is the only defect I can ian exile. Of the lives they lived, that of discern in this otherwise admirable biog~ Keats, despite his hopeless passion for raphy. The treatment of Byron just after Fanny Brawne, may be called the calmest his marriage, with the recurrence of Au­ - but the lives of Shelley, Byron, and Poe gusta and the martyrdom of Annabella, is were all involved with affairs of the heart masterly; and the summation of causes for of various complexity. Shelley at nine­ the ruptured marriage precisely accurate. teen married to the hardly-more-than-child In Miss Winwar's T he Romantic Rebels, Harriet Westbrook, out of juvenile quix­ this chapter of Byron's life is even more _ otism - then his strange elopement with electrifying, though no more impressively Godwin's daughter, and the still childlike presented. Miss Winwar is writing a book Harriet's tragic death; Byron's many af­ of the popular type - a book, frankly, of fairs, his almost undoubtedly incestuous less distinction than Mr. Quennell's. But relationship with his half-sister, Augusta her material is so well organized and her - his marriage. to the strong-charactered sense of romance and drama so keen, that and badly-treated Annabella Milbanke this is one of the most readable volumes who so maddened him; Poe and his dying of biography of the year. The interweav­ child-wife, Virginia Clemm ~ his search ing of the three lives of Byron, Shelley, THE LIBRARY 377 and Keats, particularly of the two former, Stranger non-sexual union never existed. along with such lesser lives as that of Its conditions undoubtedly contributed to Leigh Hunt, is done with a sure sense of the aberrations of Poe's imagination. But pattern. Glance at Miss Winwar's bibliog­ without the aberrations, where would the raphy, and note how many books have poetry be? It is not necessary to wish for treated of these poets, although she does a poet lives like those of Coleridge and not list them all. Hence the freshness and Poe and Francis Thompson, in order to vigor of her narrative seems to me even admit one's unwillingness to spare such more worthy of remark. I would far rather poems as Kubla Khan, The Haunted Pal­ read of these lives than dally with most ace, and The Mistress of Vision. The bit­ novels. They present almost every facet ter waters of the dark tarn rose to Poe's of the artist's story. lips; but by some strange law of compen­ The greatest stock of sheer common­ sation he has left us moonlit verse of sense - for all of youth's "green-sickness" an inexplicable - but ineluctable ~ magic. upon which he made famous comment­ And, looking upon his portrait, never was a was possessed by John Keats. This is again more asymmetrical countenance more rev­ evident in the new edition of his letters elatory of a frantic struggle between two edited by Maurice Buxton Forman, who, natures. Recently, at a party, a layman lev­ in his preface, gives proper credit to Harry eled at me point-blank the question, Buxton Forman, and then to Sir Sidney "What is a poet?" I can only say here Colvin, for "gathering and arranging the that some of our greatest - inscrutably mass of Keats' correspondence". Evident enough - have been such "men possessed". also, in the poet's most poignant love­

letters, is a i brave delicacy; and his inten­ sity does not completely forswear the hu­ morous touch. Bertrand Russell J s Searchlight As for Lauvriere's life of Poe, I cannot commend a translation which too fre­ By GEORGE SANTAYANA quently seems to me most awkward. The title of the book is sensational, the French RELIGION AND SCIENCE, by Bertrand biographer diffuse. Rather turn back to Russell. $2. 5% x 8%; 271 pp. New York: Hervey Allen's lsrafel. One cannot, of Henry Holt. course, excuse much of Poe's conduct to­ HY should a mind of the highest dis­ ward his guardian, Mr. Allan, no matter W tinction, in the van of science and how badly the latter appears. There is no social reform, stop today to repeat the com­ doubt at all that Poe was quite without monplaces of anti-clerical propaganda, and scruple toward him. As for his love affairs, inform us again that witches and heretics they seem to me largely pathetic. Gazing were burned and that Galileo was impris­ upon the forbidding countenance of Elmira oned? Lord Russell, I need hardly say, tells S. Royster Shelton, Poe's Loft Lenore, one the old story admirably. He is no less scath­ marvels indeed! In his struggle against ing and witty than Voltaire, with an occa­ penury and his life with Virginia and Mrs. sional touch of his own merrier humor, or Clemm, one cannot but take his part, how­ candid despair. Thewhole is refreshed with ever, no matter hovv many times he a wealth of instructive facts and acute criti­ strayed from the straight and narrow path. cisms, and reduced, in its converging lines, THE AMERICAN MERCURY to an impressive simplicity. Too great a gards as diabolical) than are the majority simplicity, perhaps; because of the moral of reformers; yet I can't help feeling that springs of religion, its poetic splendor or there is something thin and fanatical in his symbolic wisdom, there is not a limit. The doctrinal keenness, as if the· warld were es.. defense of it, in its purified form, is com­ sentially a debating society and history a mitted to Dean Inge and the Bishop of rabid conflict of· theories. Doubtless nobody Birmingham.. Nor does science fare much is quite sane; but nature, against our reason­ better; the authority of its obvious discov­ ings and expectations, continually redresses eries and inventions by which mankind the balance, killing off the worst fools; and rnay judge it, recedes before certain fine­ the non-theoretical strain in us keeps us spun, haH-psychological speculations in alive, with only our more harmless illusions. which the author is interested. He admits I think this is the case in pure philosophy, that the ground here is insecure. New in­ no less than in politics and morals. Specula­ tolerant "religions" have arisen in Russia tion "must build on conventional assump­ and Germany, threatening to stamp out tions, or it would have nothing to build free thought; while industrial technique, upon. Lord Russell's eye is mobile and ac­ based on the science of sixty years ago, fills curate. It sweeps the universe like an in­ governments and big business "with a sense tensely concentrated searchlight, but it sees of limitless power, of arrogant certainty, only a small patch at a time. Out of these and of pleasure in the manipulation even separate self-evident patches - for. what of human material". else can the eye see? - he thinks the uni­ Weare warned; and the purpose of this verse is composed. Yet we duller people, little book becomes apparent. Religion is less absorbed in the absolutely obvious and safely dead: the Bishop.of Birmingham and logically certain, may suspect that each of Dean Inge, like a pair of cheerful under­ those luminous patches is lighted up. only takers, are duly expediting the funeral. But by the combustion going on in the reflector, the hydra has many heads and tyranny is and is limited only by the width of the lens; reviving in another quarter. An appalling and from our conventional point of vantage possibility begins to grow insistent and ar­ we may easily trace the natural continuity ticulate. As at the dissolution of the ancient between the substance lighted up by that city-states an extraordinary delusion called ray and the eagle eye of the observer. Yet Christianity took possession of the .public all this great engine of nature, coming mind, masking there the new chaos of mi­ round full circle from the opaque object to grations and wars, so perhaps the dissolu­ the light-breeding organ, is non-existent for tion of Christendom and the advent of a that instant of vision and for a willful skep­ mechanical age may now be masked for a ticism. Thus a scrupulous scientific genius time, among lay prophets, by that individ­ might successively see a prodigious number ualistic, liberal, humanitarian enthusiasm of phenomena with a prodigious degree of which Lord Russell inherits; because for all clearness, and might not understand any­ his intense intellectual originality and mo­ thing. dernity, he is rooted morally in his grand­ I happened just now to use the word sub­ father's principles. stance; but I find on page 118 of this volume This is in many ways an advantage. He that substance is a notion derived from syn­ is better educated, more conversant with tax, the implication being that grammar is the ways of the great world (which he re- the only source of that notion, and that the THE LIBRARY 379 structure of language is not based on the and the problem would only be to discover structure of thil}gs. I suppose human dis­ some sense in which ·such absolute events criminations are indeed no index to the could be called contiguous or successive. total contents of the universe or its total These are commonplaces in technical form, or to the infinitesimal texture of mat­ criticism: but philosophers, like fish, move ter. Only human reactions to gross objects often in schools, and each sect is bittedy on the human scale are likely to be tran­ exclusive. Every wave of enlightenment ex­ scribed into human grammar. Such reac­ tinguishes some lights. This I am sure Lord tions might suggest the distinction and con­ .Russell would be the first to deplore, being nection between subject and predicate; as he is the most perceptive and most lib­ because an object like an apple, known to erty-loving of men. Yet a certain partisan be one by its movements under manipula­ zeal has riveted his attention on evils to be tion, may be indicated by several different abated, and his passion on preventing suf­ sensations of sight, smell, and taste; indica­ fering, extirpating error, and abolishing tions which language then treats as attri­ privilege. I am myself convinced that the butes of the apple. But this grammatical absence of evil is the fundamental good, usage is very far from being the sole ~c­ which returns at last to every creature; but casion for the category of substance. Objects this is not the supreme good, nor a guide to suffer transformation, and there is a notori­ good of any other kind. Brave nature in ous continuity and limitation in the quan­ each case must first choose her direction tity, quality, and force of their variations. and show her colors. Man in particular is So much grain yields so much flour, and of not a grazing animal, and he would never such a kind; this flour yields so much stay long in a paradise where everybody bread; this bread keeps alive so much has four meals a day and nothing else ever muscle and blood, and so many eyes ca­ happens. pable of looking and seeing colored patches. The matter or energy which can suffer these mutations and insure their continuity is their common substance. Substance is a name for the dynamic reality of things, as The Masculine Era opposed to their spectacular aspects. Yet By AGNES REPPLIER this. is not all: something even more funda­ mental and indubitable imposes that notion NANCY SHIPPEN: HER JOURNAL upon us. BOOK, compiled and edited by Ethel ~ We may discard the word substance; Armes. $3.50' 6 x 9X; 349 pp. Philadel­ phia: Lippincott. but whatever we recognize in our phi­ losophy to exist in itself will be the sub­ URROUNDED by lovers, I could at first stance of our universe. If colored patches S see you without great danger," wrote could exist without eyes to see them, or ob­ M. Louis Guillaume Otto, afterwards jects to emit and to reflect light, then col­ Compte de Mosloy, to Miss Nancy Shippen, ored patches would be substances; and if aged sixteen; and, reading·his words, we events could occur discreetly, without in­ are irresistibly reminded of Lydia Bennet, heriting anything from the past or trans­ aged fifteen, "tenderly flirting with at least mitting anything to the future, then each six officers at once". The close of the eight­ event in its isolation would be a substance; eenth century, whether it was closing in THE AMERICAN MERCURY

England or her colonies, saw little to fill absolutely in their own domain, and to as­ a girl's mind but costumes and lovers, fol­ sume the responsibilities thus entailed: lowed in the course of time by marriage and domesticity. "I was formed for the To take the burden, and have the power, And seem like the well-protected flower. world, and educated to live in it," said Nancy a few years later, when her world There was a great deal of chivalrois speech was shrinking and darkening, and when (it was the fashion of the time); and be­ the three hours consumed in dressing for a hind it a hard masculine sense that had "bride's visit" seemed no longer worth the nothing in common with the deep senti­ while. mentality of our day. And what did it mean to be educated for Nancy Shippen Livingston was to find the world in 1779? Miss Shippen at fifteen this out to her cost. Her husband made no could playa little on the harpsichord, sing great effort to compel her return to him; a little "with timidity", speak a little but insisted firmly that the child should be French, dance creditably, and embroider placed under the care of his mother, Mar­ very well. While still at school she worked garet Beekman Livingston, the only per­ a set of rumes for General Washington, no son in the confused narrative who com­ easy task as, in the absence of lace, the mands our unfaltering respect. It is a threads had to be drawn to give them a relief to turn from unreason and emo­ filmy look. She does not appear to have tionalism to Gilbert Stuart's masterly por­ been very intelligent, but she was good­ trait of this unpretentiously great lady; to tempered and docile, and she married the the firm mouth, the amused eyes, the wealthy man who was her father's choice serene repose of a woman who understood rather than the agreeable young attache to life, and conquered it. Her generous sup­ the French Legation who was her own. port of her daughter-in-law is the best as­ Generally speaking this was a course to surance that the unhappy young woman be commended. Fathers have longer sight deserved more sympathy than she got. and clearer vision than do girls under To seek a divorce was so unusual a pro­ twenty. But in this particular case, prudence ceeding in 1789 that Nancy's uncle, Mr. failed to justify itself. Colonel Henry Arthur Lee, considered her desire for free­ Beekman Livingston had everything to dom as a joke; a joke in very bad taste, he recommend him save the kind of char­ admitted, but none the less absurd. That acter and disposition which would have -mysterious crime, mental cruelty, which enabled a wife to live comfortably by his has today been stretched to cover any action side. Nancy was not long suffering. After which an ordinarily human husband might two years of profound discomfort, she took perform in the course of twenty-four hours, herself and her baby daughter back to her was still a hundred years off. It would father's home in Philadelphia, thus start­ have provoked ribald laughter from a ing the endless complications which, in hard-headed eighteenth-century legislature. that staid and conventional era, beset the Henry Livingston was as safe then (he defiant wife. For Colonial America was a did not deserve safety) as he would be de­ man-made world. Unmarried women had fenseless today. It is indicative of the de­ far more liberty, according to French vis­ cency of Colonial America that the word itors, than was good for them; but, once alimony was never mentioned by his sup­ married, they fell into line, content to reign porters or by his wife's. THE LIBRARY

The rest of the lournalBook, which is though Klaus Mann's novel is not an authentic the raz'son d'etre of Miss Armes' massive masterpiece, it has elements of nobility and emo­ volume, is filled with pictures of social and tional splendor. The author is as yet somewhat immature, he is occasionally too prodigal of ir­ domestic life in the days which charm us rel~vant material, but if he lacks the ultimate by their seeming serenity, but which must detachment and spiritual serenity which are the often have been empty and dull. Dull cer­ stuff of world-tragedy, his book is nevertheless tainly for young Mrs. Livingston who genuinely moving in its presentation of the im­ loved frivolity and could not get enough of mediate. personal tragedy of Joan, the young, "not entirely Aryan" German girl who dedi­ it; who hated the country which grew cates her life to her fellow-exiles for the Cause "more disagreeable" to her every day she after an interlude of idyllic passion during a lived in it; who tried hard to read Blair's summer in Finland. The peculiar beauty of that "excellent sermons"; and who wept copi­ Northern landscape - the shimmering birches, the golden moor-water, the silver-white Baltic ously over the Sorro/us of Werther. "There nights - is given poetic significance. As all the is luxury in some kinds of grief," she re­ world probably knows by this time, Klaus Mann marks with unwonted sapience. Always in is the son of Thomas Mann, but it is unneces­ the offing is the good-looking Compte de sary to compare his work with that of his Olym­ Mosloy who would gladly have espoused pian parent in saying that he has written a book his early love had she been free; but who of considerable power and promise. filled up his time by marrying two other

women, who made him reasonably happy. PERISH IN THEIR PRIDE. We have no doubt that life today is too By Henry de Montherlant. Knopf crowded, too noisy, too assertive, too pre­ $2.50 5 x 8; 275 pp. N~w York tentious in matters of the intellect, too com­ Far from perishing, the poor and degenerate bative about material things. Standards are but still proud characters of M. de Monther­ lowered year by year to meet the demands lant's novel leap into three-dimensional life of mediocrity. Yet out of this welter through the medium of Thomas McGreevy's flexible translation, which apparently has pre­ emerges clear and plain an effort to aid served all the wit, gaiety, and Gallic malice of the uneasy human beings who know only the distinguished Frenchman's work. De Mon­ that things go wrong. We are all pushing therlant is the enfant terrible of the Faubourg harder than is seemly, but perhaps we push St. Germain, for, unlike Proust, an outsider and to some purpose. The Sorrows oj Werther social opportunist, he belongs root and branch to that diminishing, obscure, and dingy group echoed "the dim-rooted pain of thinking of old regime aristocrats whose inadequacy he men"- hard to heal, but comparatively presents with such ironic finality. Pitiful and easy to forget. absurd anachronisms like the "Count de Coan­ tre," whose linen was dirty but invariably marked with a coronet, are made dynamic in their vacuity by the vigor of his art, a vitality the more notable in contrast to the anemia Briefer Mention which has overcome so much contemporary French fiction. In this tragedy of futility, it is FICTION stimulating to find that the author has amply fulfilled the promise of such early work as The JOURNEY INTO FREEDOM. Bullfighters, that brilliant crystallization of his By Klaus Mann. Translated by Rita Reil. Knopf own adolescent experience as an amateur of the $2.50 5 x 8; 296 pp. N~w York bull-ring. Perish in Their Pride received a prize The Great Purge of the Nazi regime may yet from the French Academy, and also the Heine­ provide the catharsis of great literature. Al- mann literary award.

( · THE AMERICAN MERCURY

THE BALCONY. poet attempts to free himself, usually in vain. By Adrian Bell. Simon and Shuster Apart from the originality of torte, Miss Rukey- . $2.50 5 x 7~; 248 pp. New York ser has something vital to say. Her poetry is In limpid prose, Adrian Bell has written one revolutionary in the best sense: it does not re­ of those nostalgic stories of childhood which peat the shibboleths of either poetry or politics; English men of letters so often ,find the con­ its thoughts and its symbols are definitely mod­ genial medium for their highest talents and ern, but neither are used arbitrarily for modern­ most intimate self-expression. A.t times, the istic effects. It is the very absence of straining world is tempted to wonder whether the lives to be effective which makes her work impres­ of adult Englishmen are so lacking in emotional sive. The title poem, with the airplane as its and spiritual compensation for the joys of child­ logical symbol of freedom, the moving three­ hood that they should so frequently yearn for part "The Lynchings of Jesus", and the appar­ the particular Heaven which lies only about in­ ently autobiographical "The Blood Is Justified" fancy. Let the reader, then, look at London are, perhaps, the most arresting poems in this through the iron grill of The Balcony, with the book, but the others are scarcely less notable. small boy of Mr. Bell's novel. In his search for It is ironic to observe with what hot haste the lost times, the author has produced a fragile, critics have lately rushed to acclaim the emer-, though tenuous story of a child's emotional con­ gence of three English poets and how few sciousness as it unfolds from babyhood to school hats have been thrown in the air for a young days. American, whose first venture has not only more promise but more power than the com­ bined first books of Spender, Auden, and Day EXTRAVAGANZAS. Lewis. By Ronald Firbank. Coward-McCann $2 5 x 8; 204 pp. New York AMY LOWELL. There is little in Ronald Firbank's posthu­ By S. Foster Damon. Houghton Mifflin mous volume to support his admirers' conviction $5 6 x 9; 773 pp. Boston of a great loss to literature. The two stories in­ cluded are The Artificial Princess and Concern­ Although Mr. Damon did not use all his ing the Eccentricities of Cardinal Pirelli. Mr. material --- could not, in fact, for he was deal­ Firbank's last work is precisely dated by his ing with one of the most voluminous figures mah-jongg playing courtiers. Stylistic arabesques of the period - this will probably be the defini­ serve to veil triviality, but cannot mitigate the tive biography of Amy Lowell. It contains all essential dullness of stories in which the weary the facts of her life, a complete record of her shades of Oscar Wilde and Aubrey Beardsley controversies and publications, which were have been invoked once too often - as well as staged with the thoroughness of a military too late. campaign, and some of the more significant correspondence from and to her. One wishes that the book were a little less comprehensive POETRY and a little more critical; the volume would have been far more valuable had Mr. Damon THEORY OF FLIGHT. curbed a few of his gasps of wonder, and By Muriel Rukeyur. Yale University Press checked, or at least reserved, the overstatements. $2 6% x 9~; 86 pp. New Haven But this, he might reply, is a chronicle and Muriel Rukeyser's Theory of Flt'ght is a neither a critique nor an attempt at valuation. strange and startling first volume. But it is The autobiography which Amy Lowell might more than merely startling; it has solid author­ have written would have been far more self­ ity, an authority amazing in a girl of twenty­ revealing. Lacking that work, this is an im­ one. The strangeness comes from the almost mense labor and precious source material, total absence of derivations; except for an occa­ whether' one is more concerned with the poet sional echo of Auden, the author is already or the theorist, or the personality that surpassed clear of those influences from whicl.:h the young either. ~~~~~x~~~~x~~~{~~S{~~~~~x~ ~I THE CONTRIBUTORS ~ ~~®~~~~®~.~ij~®~j~~~®~j~~~

PAUL Y. ANDERSON (Sad Death of a REUEL DENNEY (A Boxer Called Panther) Hero) has for many years been an able corre~ was born in 1913 in New York City and was spondent of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. At pres~ graduated from Dartmouth College in 1932. He ent, he is in charge of the Washington bureau has contributed verse to Poetry and other maga~ of that newspaper. zines~

WILLIAM ROSE BENET (The Brotherhood MARGARET TYNES FAIRLEY (This Sing­ of Orpheus), the poet and critic, is a contribut~ ing Branch) is a resident of Cambridge, Massa~ ing editor of the Saturday Review of Literature. chusetts, where she is a member of the Cam~ I-{is latest volume is Golden Fleece, Poems and bridge Poetry Forum. Ballads Old and New, (Dodd, Mead). FORD MADOX FORD (W. H. Hudson) is EDWIN BORCHARD (Circumstantial Evi~ the distinguished British novelist and critic. Fur~ dence) is a professor of law at Yale University, ther essays from Mr. Ford will appear from and the author of Declaratory Judgments and time to time in THE MERCURY. Convicting the Innocent, (Garden City). SYDNEY GREENBIE (The Man-God of ERNEST BOYD (Report on Rugged Prole~ Japan) spent many years in the Orient as a tarianism) , one of the Republic's leading critics newspaper correspondent and editor. He is the and men of letters, was born in Dublin in 1887. author of several books concerning Japan and He has lived in New York City since 1920• the Japanese.

STRUTHERS BURT (Is Patriotism Neces­ HARRY I-IIBSCHMAN (What Is a Reason­ sary?), author, poet, and historian, was born in able Legal Fee?), a member of the Washington Bal timore in 1882. He now makes his home at State bar, now lives in New York City. Southern Pines, North Carolina. Mr. Burt's books include The Delectable Mountains, (Grosset) WILLIAM MORRIS HOUGHTON (An and Festiz/al, (Scribner's). Open Letter to Mr. Jefferson) is an editorial writer on the New York Herald-Tribune. JAMES M. CAIN (Dead Man), a frequent contributor to THE MERCURY, is the author of IRVING KOLODIN (Recorded Music) is a The Postman Always Rings Twice, (Knopf)· music critic on the staff of the New York Sun.

V. JAMES CI-IRASTA (There Is No Comfort H. L. MENCKEN (Three Years of Dr. Roose~ ranch~ Now) is twenty-four years old and a velt) was editor of THE MERCURY from its found~ worker in Idaho. ing in 1924 to the close of 1933. He reappears.in this issue for the first time as a contributor only. ROYDEN J. DANGERFIELD (The Sena~ Since his retirement from the magazine, Mr. torial Diplomats) is an associate professor of Mencken has given part of his time to travel, government at the School of Citizenship and but most of it to a complete rewriting of The Public Affairs, University of Oklahoma. American Language, first published in 1919, and revised in 1921 and 1923. The new version, tTIuch LAWRENCE DENNIS (What Is Mussolini?) larger and more comprehensive than any of its is the author of The Coming American Fascism, predecessors, is now on the press, and will be (Harper's), published last December. published shortly by Alfred A. Knopf. THE AMERICAN MERCURY

TOWNSEND MILLER (Winter Sonnet) was Columbia, and is now an associate director of born in St. Louis twenty-three years ago. In education at the latter university. 1933 he was graduated from Yale, and at pres­ ent is a .. candidate for the degree of doctor of GEORGE SANTAYANA (Bertrand Russell's philosophy at that university. Searchlight), the eminent Spanish philosopher, was born in Madrid ih 1863, and taught phi­ ALBERT~)AY NOCK (Th~ New Deal"and losophy at Harvard University from 1889 to 1911. Prohibition) is an authority on past and present He now makes his home in Italy. His most re­ problems of American government. Mr. Nock cent book is The Last Puritan, (Scribner's). will be a regular contributor to these pages henceforth. JAMES STEVENS (Portland: Athens of the West), a frequent contributor to these pages, is at present living in the rural.deeps of Indiana, AGNES REPPLIER (The Masculine Era) is gathering material for a novel on art among one of America's best-known essayists and bi­ laborers. ographers. JOHN W. THOMASON, JR. (This Business JACK ROHAN (The First Munitz'ons King) of War) is a major in the United States Marine has been a newspaperman and writer for thirty Corps, stationed at Washington, D. C. His latest

years. His biography of Samuel Colt, Yanke~ i book, The Adventures of General Marbot Arms Maker, (Harper's), was published last Oc­ (Scribner's), was published during the winter. tober. HAROLD LORD VARNEY (Are the Capital­ EDWARD A. RICHARDS (These Clouds) ists Asleep?) is the well-known writer, lecturer, has taught English at Amherst, Rochester, and and political commentator.

THE MERCURY'S ESSAY CONTEST

The winner of the $500 prize contest for the Harvard; Walter H. Johnson, Colorado; George best essay on the present state of the Union writ­ Kirby, Jr., Louisiana; William L. Langer, Up­ ten by an undergraduate of an American college sala; David McCutcheon, Pittsburgh; Maurice or university is E. FRANCIS CAVE, a student at E. McMurray, Iowa State; Edith Patterson, the University of Maryland. Honorable mention Florida State; Sonya Sirotick, Syracuse; is awarded to the following entrants: John A. Owen S. Stratton, Idaho; Leroy Tate, Bethel; Boyle, Bates; John Caldwell, Michigan; Mark H. Bill Beach Truehart, Houston-San Jacinto; Wil­ Clutter, Wichita; Herbert Goldhor, Dana; Eugene son E. Williams, Fisk; and Melvin Yost, Jr., Hill, Missouri School of Mines; Leavitt Howard, Indiana. THE AMERICAN MERCURY

The Bell System now extends to all day after 7 p.m. and all daySunday. Theyapply, Sunday the same reduced rates which have in general, on calls on which the day sta­ been in effect on long distance station-to­ tion-to-station rate is more than 35 cents. station calls after 7 p.m. each evening. The The discount on most person-to-person reductions apply to most calls on which the calls is the same in money as on station­ day rate for three minutes is more than 35 to-station calls between the same places. cents, and range from about 10 per cent on In both social and business affairs, these some of the shorter calls to 40 per cent or newSundayand night rates offer more on distant calls. you a broader service at a lower The Bell System also now offers reduced cost. They widen your tele­ rates on person-to-person calls every night phone's usefulness.

TYPICAL T H RE E- MIN UTE RAT E 5

Station-to-Station Person-to-Person FROM Sunday and Sunday and Da, Rale Night Rate Reduclion Day Rale Night Rate Reduction

New York to Philadelphia $ .50 $ .35 $ .15 $ .75 $ .60 $ .15

Pittsburgh to Cleveland .70 .40 .30 1.00 .70 .30

St. Louis to Chicago 1.25 .75 .50 1.65 1.15 .50

Detroit to Boston 2.55 1.40 1.15 3.25 2.10 1.15 3~50 Washington, D. C. t to Kansas City 1.90 1.60 4.50 2.90 1.60

Miami to Boston 4.50 2.50 2.00 5.75 3.75 2.00

Denver to New York 6.00 3.50 2.50 7.50 5.00 2.50

Washington, D. C., to San Francisco 8.50 5.00 3.50 10.75 7.25 3.50 BEL L SYSTEM

ix THE AMERICANMERCURY

"1 'VE made many Check /jfl of NEW BOO KS sea voyages .•• and believe me the Great White Fleet (Continued from page vi) cruises win my vote! Ports aplenty ... a INTERNATIONAL ECONOMICS AND DIPLO­ MACY IN THE NEAR EAST. fine crowd ... and the ships are run By Vernon T. Puryear. Stanford Press ~ ~; the way I'd run 'em $3.25 6 x 9 264 pp. Stanford

myself. II There is very little historical literature on the development of commerce in the Near East. Travel veterans/especially/ endorse our cruises ... Although covering only a short period of time, the. spotless white liners/ personalized service and from 1834 to 1853, this book does much to fill thoughtful hospitality afloat and ashore. Outdoor swimming pools/ sport decks/ dance orchestras/ in the gap -largely because of the depth of delicious meals. treatment. Using Great Britain as a focal point, FROM. NEW YORK-A wide selection of Mr. Puryear examines in turn the Anglo-Rus­ cruises of 10 to 18 days-variously to HA­ VANA. JAMAICA,' B. W. 1., PANAMA, sian political rivalry of 1834-38, the Near East COLOMBIA, S. A., COSTA RICA. Rates from $135 to $200 minimum. Sailings Thurs­ situation as a whole in 1838, the establishment days and Saturdays. No passports required. Similar "Guest Cruises" to the WEST INDIES and the of free trade in Turkey, 1838-39, the Turco­ CARIBBEAN from NEW ORLEANS, LOS ANGELES, Egyptian War of 1839-41, and the final closure SAN FRANCISCO. Apply any authorized lravelagencyor UNITED FRUIT of the Straits to foreign warships. The book CO•• Pier 3, North River, or 632 Fifth Avenue, New York; closes with a discussion of the British com­ III West Washington St., Chicago; 321 St. Charles St., New Orleans. mercial policy and the Crimean War. At that time, Russia was the greatest opponent of Brit­ ish economic imperialism in the Near East, while Great Britain herself had entered upon a new phase of her industrial life. Russo-Tur­ kish rivalry, furthermore, was renewed. And ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~o~~~ with the defeat of Russia, "not only was India

~.. . ~ preserved but British imperial policies were so ~ BBLLOWS 8: COMPANY 3 developed as to make possible a preponderance r> f~ and~~in ffine '1r~ 3 in the markets of the Near East for the re­ mainder .of the nineteenth century". There is ~ f!A~ndie4~ ~~iei and o~ ~u 3 ~ g a foreword by Robert J. Kerner, Professor of 8 BUSINBSS BSTABLISHBD 1830 8 Modern European History at the· University of o g California; also a bibliography and an index. ~ INEXPENSIVE WINES ~ o g S It is our practice to seek out, directly 3 CRADLE OF THE STORM. ~ from the producers abroad, sound 8 By Bernard R. Hubbard. Dodd, Mead ~ wines of fine vintage and honest 8 $3 6 x 8%; 285 pp. New York ~ growth which -can be offered at 8 Barring some feeble pulpit-pawing ~bout the ~ prices permitting regular use rather 8 immortality of the soul, this is a stirring nar­ ~ rative of adventure in the Far North among than as a luxury. We are pleased to g volcanoes, mammoth bears, and Arctic storms. ~ announce the following charming 8 With a courageous band of men and dogs, ~ and authentic wines, suited to any ~.Q) Father Hubbard, the celebrated "glacier priest", g table, at the price of $12 per case. 8 set out from Seattle upon a new expedition of discovery in Alaska. He scaled the Aghillen Et> BORDEAUX ROUGE SUPERIEUR 1928 gQ Pinnacles, crossed the Valley· of Ten Thousand 8 BORDEAUX BLANC SUPERIEUR 1928 g Smokes, catTIped in the crater of an active vol­ cano, passed through the Ghost Forest where ~ .9"~",..,.. ~t ff~ ~ grotesque trees, dead for years, mark the spot .9"beet which was once a verdant forest of cotton­ ~ .A/e0 qv~ ~~ 3 woods, and crossed the Katmai Pass. There are ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Q~~~~~~~~~~~g numerous illustrations from photographs taken x THE AMERICAN MERCURY ~~!ID~~ The Check /Jft of NEW BOOKS GARDEN ROUTE • Tour the "Garden Route" of South Africa, with its 700 miles by the author, and a preface by Father Francis of scenic thrills! This stretch of Talbot, the literary editor of America. Indian Ocean coastland is a veri­ table showplace of nature, lav­ ishly strewn with a gorgeous suc­ NARRATION. cession of mountains and forests, By Gertrude Stein. University of Chicago Press rivers, awesome gorges, and won­ $2.50 7 x 9 x; 61 pp. Chicago derful winding passes. That Gertrude Stein has something original and provocative to say to the literary public, KaimanJ both here and abroad, is a fact which has for Gat many years been appreciated by the judicious. But whether that something is of sufficient im­ portance to warrant its being said ungram-. matically, repetitiously, incoherently, and banally, is a question which remains to be answered· truthfully, and in Miss Stein's favor, by any but literary faddists and outright charlatans. The present volume is made up of four lec­ • En route are Mossel Bay, pictures ue old tures, delivered last year at the University of world town; George, with its ancient oaks Chicago, in which Miss Stein discusses the and delightful homes and gardens; the Wil­ derness, utterly contrasting with its name and differences between prose and poetry, the dis­ exquisite in its natural beauty- similar purposes of art and journalism, the re­ lationship between author and audience, and the homogeneity of a nation's literature.. Stein's writings are like puffed rice: a whole package of her inflated dicta yields a bare spoonful of substance. Thornton Wilder's introduction, char­ acteristically enough, says nothing.

THE TEXAS RANGERS. By Walter Prescott Webb. Hougllton Mifflin $5 61i x 91i; 583 pp. Boston Here, between the covers of a forthright, hon­ est book, is compiled the history of one of the • Then the water­ world's most famous' law-and-orcler organiza­ fall at Kaimans Gat, tions. Webb, the historian of the Southwest, T ooverwaterspoort pass,. the confesses that, in his estimation, there was never jewel-like Lagoon, the "Heads," such a body of hard-shooting, fast-riding gen­ and Coney Glen at Knysna-all captivating in their loveliness. Through glorious Montagu tlemen as the Rangers, and proceeds to tell a Pass you reach Oudtshoorn, a town of rare stimulating story of adventure, interwoven charm in the ostrich country-and nearby closely with the history of the Lone Star State. are the world-famous Cango Caves. Not content with mere research among old Plan now to take the glorious SOUTH books and mellowed archives, Webb, in collect­ AFRICAN tour, including a visit to The Em­ ing his material, went out on the plains to live pire Exposition at Johannesburg in Septem­ with the Rangers, to camp and work with them, ber, coinciding with the fiftieth anniversary to ride and hunt with them, to hear their own of the "CITY OF GOLD." stories from their own lips. The result is not only one of the most comprehensive accounts of its kind ever presented, but a fine historical SOUTH AFRICA work. If it falls somewhat on the chauvinistic For full information call at or write to Thos. Cook &. side, it is because Webb, a Texan himself, has Son-Wagons-Lits, Inc., 587·AM Fifth Avenue, New York, N. Y., or any of their branch offices; or come under the romantic influence of the riders any of the other leading tourist and travel agencies of the purple sage. There are photographic illus­ throughout the world. trations and an index. xi THE AMERICAN MERCURY

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THE AMERICAN- MERCURY 570 Lexington Ave. New York, N.Y. xii THE AMERICAN MERCURY

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xiii THE AMERICAN MERCURY

Artur Schnabel's importance in the world of. the phonograph is plainly demonstrated":"'- once again, one might add - by this month's release of the obscure B Flat Piano Concerto of Beethoven (RCA­ Victor, four 12-inch records, $8.). Save for the for­ Newl Higher Fidelity Recording of tunate presence of such an artist as Schnabel, with the prestige and the popularity to effect the fulfill­ STRAWINSKY'S ment of his desires, it is likely that this work would have remained as unknown to record collectors as FIRE~BIRD it is to concert-goers. Except as part of an occasional THE Beethoven cycle, one can recall no performance of it in America's music-capitals during this generation, by Leopold Stokowski and it is scarcely heard more frequently abroad. The legend has always been that its position as the and the Philadelphia Orchestra first of Beethoven's existing works in this form (though it bears the designation No.2) carried with The low strings set the scene of an enchanted it evidences of complete juvenility - that it was night, and at once you become aware that here not worthy of association with the composer's more is the real Fire-Bird suite-warmly alive-and mature works. To both of these contentions the glittering with every facet and cadence that dazzle present set of records offers eloquent refutation. The Concerto is by no means a major work, nor is it you when you sit in the actual presence of the consistently indicative of Beethoven's later develop­ Philadelphia Orchestra. Seductively mysterious, ment, but there is considerable charming music in the music lures on the young Tsarevitch, until he both the first and second movements. The finale sights a strange glow among the trees ... and is definitely weaker, a mere workmanlike approxima­ now the orchestra breaks into a shower of brittle, tion of high spirit. The quality of it all is sufficiently good to renew one's surprise at its utter neglect, iridescent tone as the wondering eyes of the especially in view of the occasional performances of Tsarevitch blink at the glory of the Fire-Bird. In the later C 'Major (which was published as No.1). a charmed world, Strawinsky unro~ls the entire Schnabel's playing is of the first order, particularly scroll of human emotions. in the slow movement. Also an unfamiliar work - though for quite other For the first time, in any recording, all the reasons - for solo instrument and orchestra is the glowing color of The Fire-Bird Suite has been Prokofieff Violin Concerto, which receives authori­ caught. Hear the new Victor Higher Fidelity re­ tative treatment from Joseph Szigeti and the London cording of The Fire-Bird Suite at your dealer's. Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Sir Thomas Recorded on 3 12-inch Red Seal Victor Records, Beecham (Columbia, three 12-inch records, $4.50). If there is a more difficult violin concerto in the 5 sides. The sixth side contains a new Stokowski­ literature, the mind does not call up its name Philadelphia Orchestra recording of the Prelude readily. No doubt its complexities are emphasized in A Flat by the world-famed young Russian by the slightness of the musical material, which composer, Szostakowicz. Album, complete with seems scarcely worth the labor necessary to exhume explanatory booklet, $6.50. it from among the scales, arpeggios, trills, etc., with which it is bedecked. The plausible lyric theme of the first movement soon vanishes from hearing, and the scherzo is melancholy musical thinking. To the list of promising vocalists introduced to America by way of records in the last few months - Marjorie Lawrence was one, Miliza Korjus an­ other - there should also be added Alessandro RCAVictorDivision,RCAManufacturing Co.• Inc.• Camden,N.J. Ziliani, a tenor whose repute thus far is largely Italian. How old Ziliani is, or what his qualities may be in the theater, one cannot say from the xiv THE AMERICAN MERCURY

RECORDED MUSIC

records, but they offer the impression of a young and fresh voice of the true Italian type, generally well-used. He is represented by two discs - Che Gelida Manina and 0 Soave Fanciulla from La Boheme (Victor, one 12-inch record, $2.), and Donna non Vidi Mai from Manon Lescaut and Amor ti Vieta di no Amar from Fedora (Victor, one 10­ inch record, $1.50) - which well match the quali­ ties of any tenor heard in such music during the last decade. The soprano in the duet from La Bo­ heme is Mafalda Favero, also of La Scala, who does her task efficiently. Though this is indicated as the first side of the record, it succeeds, in the opera, the Racconto on the reverse side. Franco Ghione and an orchestra from La Scala are heard in both recflrds. Rather a different sort of vocalism is to be heard in the set of records offered as A Song Recital by Lotte Lehmann. This is phonographese for a series of five records, devoted to as many composers - Mo­ zart, Schubert, Schumann, Brahms, and Wolf (Victor, five la-inch records, $7.50). These include both the recondite Mozart's Die Verschweigu,:rg, Schumann's Die Kartenlegerin, and Brahms' Therese, and the familiar Schubert's Ungeduld, Schumann's Waldge­ spriich, and Wolf's Anakreon's Grab. Though Mme. Lehmann has no longer the sheer vocal strength to manage such a song ~s Ungeduld or Waldgespriich STAY at the Roosevelt. It is readily ac­ with the purity of tone to delight the fastidious, cessible to any part of Manhattan and in there is no song among these which is not stamped with her extraordinary personal qualities. Thus, both the very center of the mid-town business Ungeduld and Waldgespriich compensate in vitality of district. Roosevelt service is quiet yet spirit for what they lack in suavity of outline; and the slower songs, such as· 1m Ab'endrot, Anak,'eon's swift and efficient. Folks tell us that our Grab, and In dem Schatten Meiner Locken are superb on both counts. The recording, for which Erno Balogh rooms make grand offices, and many of plays able but not distinguished accompaniments, our local friends take one by the day, just preserves a substantial amount of Mme. Lehmann's vibrant personality. to get away from their own telephone Berlioz-fanciers will find material to reward them and finish up a pressing job. in an excerpt from Les Troyens a Carthage (Inutiles Regrets) sung by Georges Thill (Columbia, one 12­ inch record, $1.50). Also, music lovers who know Berlioz principally as the composer of the Rakozcy March or the Carnival Romain overture will find A much to astonish them in this eloquent and dramatic UNITED aria from the third act of the opera. When M. Thill HOTEL was in America a few years ago, his powers as a lyric tenor were deteriorating; but he has apparently transformed himself into a dramatic singer with fairly successful results.. It is not singing of great euphony, but it is intelligently accomplished. The orchestra and chorus are conducted by Eugene Bigot. Also away from the usual in tenor arias are W ohin Seid lhr Entghwunden from Tchaikowsky's Eugene Onye­ gin, and Tageslicht Langsam Erlischt from Borodin's Prince Igor, both sung by Charles Kullman (Colum­ bia, one 12-inch record, $1.50). Neither of these is as good as previous efforts of the same singer, but the deficiencies are not enough to offset the musical value of the material itself. An unidentified orchestra and conductor are a conspicuous asset. xv THE AMERICAN MERCURY

The Fifth Avenue Buses Merit Your Careful Consideration When You Are Making UpYour List of Advertising Media Fifth Avenue bus passengers come from the highest-income sections of New York City. In addition to residents of the better class districts of New York, the Fifth Avenue buses carry a large number of visitors from all parts of the world. The Fifth Avenue buses are the most convenient means of reaching the Fifth Avenue retail shopping center and the mid-town business district. A survey made by the Fifth Avenue Coach Company a few years ago showed 'that, based on a month)s tabulations, the busesdelivere~ to

Lord &, Taylor's ...... 378,000 passengers per year Altman's . 423,000 McCreery's Fifth Ave. Entrance 233,400 " Best &. Co. • ~ .... 184,500 " " Franklin Simon &, Co.... 134,700 " " John Wanamaker ....• 284,294 " " " Advertisements in the Fifth Avenue buses reach these people at a logical time. Bus advertising space is the only Hpoint of purchase" advertising on Fifth Avenue-the greatest shopping center of the world. Fifth Avenue bus passengers- pay ten cents for a seated ride,in preference to a five cent fare on other transportation lines. All passengers are seated. No standees are allowed. 6,300 passengers are carried downstairs, in each Fifth Avenue bus in a month. The advertising rates are as follows: Six Months or Over One to Six Months *Full Run, 1 card in each of 400 coaches $800 a month $920 a month Half Run, 1 card in each of 200 coaches ... 400 a month 460 a month Quarter Run, 1 card in each of 100 coaches 200 a month 230 a month Minimum, 1 card in each of 50 coaches .. 100 a month 115 a month 20% discount on a five-year uncancelable contract *Jackson Heights buses are nofincluded in a "full run." AGENCY COMMISSION 15%-CASH-OISCoUNT 2% Bills are re.ndered the first of the month of service.

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The MAZDA lamp was an achievement. If tonight's illumination had to be produced with the carbon-filament lamps of 1904, our nightly lighting bill would jump $5,000,000. But the G-E scientists who perfected it, in the Research Laboratory in Schenectady, N. Y., were not satisfied. They were already following the trails opened· by lamp research. One trail led to the high-vacuum tube and all its applications-radiobroadcasting, sensitive radio reception, the host of services that tubes perform. Another led to tungsten points for automobile ignition, saving motorists millions of dollars each year. Others produced new safeguards for health - new weapons against disease..For these and other discoveries, the lamp was a starting point. Dr. Willis R. Whitney, Vice President in Charge of G-E Research, sees in the future the promise of yet greater things. "Discoveries and inventions are not terminals,)) he says, "they are fresh starting points from which we can climb to new knowledge." Fresh starting points, new trails, paths to greater usefulness-these are the goals of the G-E research that has saved the public from ten to one hundred dollars for every dollar it has earned for General Electric. 96-183 GENERAL.ELECTRIC The Franee You Love IS. in Her Books The outstanding new French book each month, as selected by a committee of sixteen distinguished French critics, can now be obtained here at the same time as in France ,,, At a cost of only $1 a copy,

....Jouvelle Se­ The books you will receive as' a and theBook­ subscriberare the familiar French nClubinNew paper -bound editions, except _ .. ·1 'fork have become associ­ that a far higher grade of paper • Z , ated in a project to make is utilized in all Sequana editions. available immediately in For libraries and others who this country the outstanding new wish their books in a more last­ books as they are published in France. ing binding - a leather bound This service is designed chiefly for those edition is also available at an who speak French fluently, for those for­ unusually reasonable price. tunate mortals whose pleasantest merno­ Cost Is Less Than in France ries go back to France-to heady days of youth in Paris, or to the unforgettable life Subscribers will receive ten books and scene of some lovely spot in the during each calendar year, no Provinces. It will enable them to be in books being shipped in June France always, in spirit, when they can­ or July. The regular price of the not be there in person. For truer it is subscription for the paper-bound than of any other'land-the France we edition will be $12.00 a year.. love is in her books. But to Charter Subscribers in the first year, there will be given two months' additional service free. In Translations Are Poor Suhstitutes other words, their subscriptions Notoriously, even the best translations of will extend overfourteen months, French books are unsatisfying to those instead of twelve. This means who can read them in the original. The they will pay an average of $1.00 traditional elan, lucidity and economy of a copy. (The price ofnew French French style, seem impossible except in books) paper-bound, is 15 to 18 the rarest cases, to carryover into another francs; here they usually sell for language. Often only a bare suggestion $1.50 a copy.) Rue de Venise-Paris Photograph by Odiorne © of the peculiar quality of the original The regular price for a year's Retain Your Facility in French will be found in the translation. Too subscription to the leather·bound edi­ frequently it is pure desecration. As a tions is $ 21.00. Charter Subscribers will It is a common experience among per­ sensitive reader, often you must have receive twelve such books over fourteen sons who have at one eime spoken French been aware of this in reading a transla­ months, making the price per copy with fair fluency, to find themselves tion ofsome book by a new writer whom $1.75, which is markedly lower than the growing sadly rusey in the language. the French critics were all acclaiming. price of such books in France. Reading a French book every mooch is an excellent means of retaining your FrenchWritersYouMayHave.Missed A Simple Solution facility in French. Writers like Andre Malraux, Andre Gide, If you are one of those (or whom this Thesystem now devised solves this prob­ Roger Vercel, Andre Maurois, Blaise interesting project is designed, will you lem simply and with economy_ The Cendrars, Franc;ois Mauriac,)ulian Green, not give it your early support by enroll· Societe Nouvelle Sequana, for many years Colette, Georges Duhamel, Paul Morand, ing as a Charter Subscriber? As such you now, has gathered together a committee Paul Claudel,)ean Schlumberger,)acques will receive not only the two months' of sixteen distinguished French writers Bainville, J. and J. Thauraud, Princess de extra service mentioned above, but other and critics. Once a month, regularly, Bibesco,)acques Chardonne-to mention conveniences of value which cannot be the group'meets and chooses by v()te a only a few-continue to keep French outlined here for lack of space. It is not single book which, in its opinion, is the writing as variegated and alive to the necessary to send payment with your most meritorious to be published in the times as it has ever been. New talent is subscription. Simply fill out and mail month. Copies are shipped to New York continuously appearing, old talent broad­ the form below. A bill will be sent and mailed at once to the individual sub­ ening. How well in recent years have you with your first book. scribers, who receive them at the same time been able to keep up with these rich FRENCH BOOK-OF-THE-MoNTH CLUB, Inc. they are put on sate in France. developments? 386 Fourth Avenue New York, N. Y.

FRENCH BOOK-OF·THE·MONTH CLUB, Inc. 43 386 Fo'urth A~enue. New York, N. Y., Please enroll m~ as a Charte~ Subscriber, to re­ ceive twelve books over 'the next' fourteen months. (Bill will be. sent with the first book.) Please indicate edition wanted o Paper-hound edition, 12 copies over 14 mos. •_• $12.00 o Leather-bound edition, 12 copies over 14 mos. •• $21.00 Name .." .. Address __ ._ _ .. Cit'V State