THE ASTOUNDING STORY OF A "MAINE CLEOPATRA" To the World She Was an Angel ••• To 8 Men She Was a Devill­ Her Father, Husbands, Sons, Lovers' BEN AMES WILLIAMS' NEW 70G-PAGE, $2.75 Best-Sellina Novel of a "Maine Cleopatra" as evil as she was beautiful! ENNY HAGER was so fascinating to al! men that when she was only four years Jold she caused dashing, gay-Lothario Lt. Carruthers to elope with her mother! She drove her father, Big Tim Hager, to drown himself in rum, in fear of his own unholy de­ sire for her! But as a child-bride, she brought banker Isaiah Poster a new zest for living-for all his seventy years! To Ephraim Poster, Isaiah's son, she showed her true nature more naked and shameless and merciless than death itself! For why would she taunt Eph to kill his father-then jeer at him for a coward when he accidentally caused the old man's death? Yes, she was more than a match for Ephraim, who had once boasted to his friend John Evered that "he saw a wanton in every pretty woman he met, and usually found it, too!" Eph tried to tell John the truth about Jenny. But the truth was be­ yond belief-and John, too, fell under her witch-like spell. Who wouldn't-after he had spent a bitter winter's night under a Cape Cod haystack with her? (CONTINUED ON NEXT PAGE) (CONTINUED FROM OTHER PAGE) BorHTHESEB£ST-SELLERS fREE Retail price of both In The Strange Woman you'll meet an utter­ bookss S3.'15 in the Publisher's ly amazing, human character at the heart .of 8 Edition rich, gaudy, full-bodied 'novel-and '8 character you'll: long remember. PLUSB~~R~:OO":NZOLA Including IINANAII Complete' Your second FREE volume Edna Ferber,· John Steinbeck, contains, with other Zola mas­ Vicki Baum, Nevil Shute, or terpieces, the·· famous novel Somerset Maugham -- selling which even Parisians bought everywhere for $2, $2.50, secretly, and carried home $3.00. The OTHER is the under their cloaks-the scarlet Collected Works of a great story of the harlot whom Zola writer. tookfrom the streets and made The volumes of Collected into the immortal NANAI Works are uniformly bound in PLUS the finest work of this cloth, stamped to simulate the French realist, all complete, beauty of genuine gold. They translatedfromoriginalFrench. grow into a handsome matched (Since this is a great classic for library. Other great authors your lifetime library you may whose works appear in this prefer. the edition bound in series include: Shakespeare, ~enuine pin seal grain leather. Poe, Oscar Wilde, de Maupas­ Just take your choice.) sant, etc. The Book League is the The Best ofIthe New ONLY book club that sends -And of the Old you the new best~sellers AND I!:ach month ONE of the best of the older master­ the Book League's selec­ piecesl The. TWO books sent tions is a modern best­ you each month are valued at seller by a famous au­ $3 to $4:. But you get BOTH thor like Sinclair Lewis. for only$1.39! 5·DAY TRIAL --NO OBLIGATION Send the coupon without money. Read THE STRANGE WOMAN and BEST KNOWN WORKS ORZQLA for five days. If they do not conviriceyou that thi$IS "America's Biggest Bargain Book Club," return them; pay nothing. Otherwise, keep them as a gift; your subscription will begin with next month's double-selection. And the Book League will protect you for ONE WHOLE YEAR against any rise ;~~;eT~om~~~ll~gOKo~ ~~I $~~6KMt~iG~~nb~ AMERICA, Publishers, Dept. A.M.1, Garden City, N. Y. BOOK. LEAGUE of AMERICA, Publishers I -------------------Dept. A.M.1 s Garden City, N.Y. Please send me....,FREE,...-The Strange. Woman (Retail I p. .!Jrice in the publisher's edition, $2.75) and Best Known Works of Zola. Within 5 days I may return them if I care I to, without cost or obligation. Otherwise I will keep them as a gift and continue to receive forthcoming ... monthly double-selections for a year-at only $1.39, plus few cents •I postage, for BOTH books. Mr. I Mrs ·•••••••••••••••.,. Miss (Please print plainly) Address•••••••••••...•••.•.•.....•...•.•••.••••••••• •I City••••••••••••••••••••••••...•State.•••.•.••••••• 0 • ~ Occupation•••••••• o. o.oo •••1f under 21, age please•• 00 I o HANDSOME· LEATHER BINDING: Check box if I ~~~u:~hp~o~~ara::~~: ~~~te:t:i~h ~~~ere~~~~?:::~f~~ ". only SOc extra monthly. -------------------(Sliehtly Bir;her in Canada-Address. 10il Bond St•• Toronto)" I THE AMERICAN MERCURY '~~~~~~~~~~~~~n~~ro~~~~ ~ VOt~F TABLE OF CONTENTS NU~:ER ~ .. January, 1943 ~~. Mistakes I Saw in the Pacific " Melvin J. Maas 5 ~ ~ A Voice In America, A Poem Matthew Biller 15 ~ Ruth Mitchell: American Chetnik, Mary Van Rensselaer Thayer 16 +~ ~. The Peoples of North Africa Edward J. Bing 24 ~ ~ STATB OF THB UNION: ~ ~ An Open Letter to Vice-President Wallace ......•........ .Eugene Lyons 31 ~ ~.. Music Between Two Wars Winthrop Sargeant 38 ~ ~ I Adopt an Ancestor, A Fable Sholem Asch 47 ~ ~ German Lies About Versailles George Creel 54 ~ ~ Two Poems•......•....................................KingsleyTufts 63 ~ San Francisco - Boom Town De Luxe Lucius Beebe 66 Enough For All!. ...............•.................Dorothy Thompson 75 '.. The Scandalous Silver Bloc Elliott V. Bell 80 ~ ~ You Can Pull Out Any Time, A Story Chenoweth Hall 87 ~..dI ~+ Must America Go Hungry? James Staniford 92 .~ THE THEATRE: ~ ~ Yes, We Have Some Bananas•••••••••••.•••••• •George Jean Nathan 102 ~ DOWN TO EARTH: W The Mind ofthe Wild. .•.............•.......••........Alan Devoe 109 ~ Woodcut by Frank Utpatel ~~ THB LIBRARY: ~ Literary Signposts . .........•...•.•......•....•..William Y. Tindall 114 f"~ CHECK LIST ••••••••••.••••..•.••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• 120 ~ ~ OPEN FORUM •••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• '.' ••••••••••••••••••.• •• 122 W ~ ~::::h;: ~; ~~d' K~k~: S~a;; F~~;d~"E~i~' ~i: E;i~ 'p~~~~: ~~d' Co~~ ~ ~~fJ1~~®~~~~fJ1ii®~~~ii;S;~ii fJ1~i~~~ Published monthly by The American Mercury, Inc., Mexico, and all other countries participating in the at 25 cents a copy. Annual subscription, $3.00 in U. S. International Copyright Convention and the Pan­ and possessions, and in the count.ries of the Pan American Copyright Convention. Entered as second­ American Union; $3.50 in Canada. Foreign sub­ class matter atthe post office at Concord, N. H., under scription. $4,00. Publication office, Concord, N. H. the Act of March 3, 1879. Five weeks' advance notice Editorial and General offices. 570 Lexington Avenue, required for change of subscribers' addresses. Indexed New York City. Printed in the United States. Copy­ in The Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature. The right 1942 by The American Mercury, Inc. All rights, American Mercury, Inc., accepts no responsibility for includingtranslation into other languages, reserved by submitted manuscripts. No article may be reprinted the Publisher in the United States, Great Britain, in whole or part without permission. Lawrence E. Spivak, Publisher Eugene Lyons, Editor John Tebbe!, Managing Editor; Mildred Falk, Associate Editor; J. W. Ferman, Business Manager 2 IT MAY he the "holiday season" - but war needs the wires that you used to use for Christmas calls. Long Distance lines are loaded with urgent messages. Extra lines can't be added he­ cause copper and other ma­ terials are needed for the war. So - this Christmas p1eflse don't make any Long Distance calls to war-husy centers unless they're vital. WAR CALLS COME FIRST BELL TELEPHONE SYSTEM B WILLIAM BRADFORD HUIE THE FIGHT FOR AIRPOWER The titanic struggle against apathy and obstruction­ ists-a book that will excite the nation. $2.50 LEOPOLD SCHWARZSCHILD WORLD INTRANCE "An arresting book ••• World in Trance is one of the . first 'new histories', if not the ve~y first, to interpret the experience of our times in the light of the wisdom which weare now acquirin.9 at· such a sickening cost." -WALLACE R. DEUEL, N. Y. Times. $3.50 L. B. FI SC HER, 381 F0 U RT H A V E., N. Y. VOLUME LVI JANUARY, 1943 NUMBER 229 The American MERCURY MISTAKES I SAW IN THE PACIFIC A Plea For Unified Command By REPRESENTATIVE MELVIN J. MAAS TALKED long and earnestly with and to subsist partly from captured I General MacArthur at his Aus­ Jap supplies. 1talked with many ad­ tralian headquarters; with Lieu­ mirals and generals in the Pacific tenant General George Kenney, and the views expressed in this commander ofthe Army Air Forces article are in essence the views of in the Southwest Pacific; and with most of them. Nearly all urged me Admiral Nimitz at Pearl Harbor. I to do two things when I reached was ashore with the Marines at Washington: Guadalcanal when they were forced I. Fight for the creation of a to·fight around the clock for weeks truly.unified command, and AN AIRMAN and a colonel in the Marihe Corps Reserve, Representative Maas returned recently from four months ofactive duty in the Pacific. He was at­ tached to the naval command during the early operations at Guadalcanal and later a{:companied our troops during the Port Moresby and Milne Bay bat­ tles. Colonel Maas enlisted as a Marine private in the first World War. He has represented the Fourth Minnesota District for fourteen years, is the ranking minority member of the House Naval Affairs Committee, and he is generally regarded as among the best informed men in Congress on military matters. - THE EDITORS. 5 6 THE AMERICAN MERCURY 2. Tell the facts about our mili­ It is with a keen and uncomforta­ tary situation in the Pacific, so that ble sense of this background that J sufficient emphasis may be placed proceed, nevertheless, to argue for on this arena. more intelligent military organiza­ The two things are closely re­ tion. I do so as a matter of duty as lated.