he School
O PHASE OF EDUCATIONAL EXPERIMENT has
been so rich in suggestion as the attempt to restore
the community to the school. At bottom no other
effort has been so poor in accomplishment. The
educational system of New York or Boston or Chi-
cago is still a self-contained unit, revolving within
that wider system called the educational world; and
at best the grammar schools have only treated the
word "community" as another element in their
program which must be parsed and defined and
exemplified and—endlessly talked about.
Nevertheless, both in America and England, small
educational groups have supplemented the cut-and-
dried dietary of formal education with a fresher
and more appetizing kind of educational fare, culled
from the contemporary workaday community. It
may be worth while to examine definitely the nature
of these experiments before attempting to appraise
their weakness in bringing about any large scale
renovation comparable to that which is now going on
in industry.
In America the attempt to bring the community
into the school has taken the form of making the
school itself a miniature community. The Gary plan
for work, play, and study throughout the day is an
example. The school plant itself is treated not as
something apart from the book and paper equipment
of the classroom but as a genuine educational equip-
ment in its own right. Repairs are made in the
building, its heating plant kept up, and its grounds
are groomed in the interest of the learning pupil
as well as by reason of practical necessity. The new
school is really a justification of the educational in-
sight of Mr. Squeers; for apart from the purely
fortuitous brutality of Dickens' villain his chief
monstrosity consists in having been born out of his
due time. In the Porter School described by Evelyn
Dewey (New Schools for Old; Dutton) the at-
tempt is made to bring about the direct participation
of the adult community, so that the mechanical par-
tition between the school and the family, between
academic work and "real" work, between study
and life shall be broken down. While making con-
tacts with the common stock of all lands and age?,
the school absorbs itself in the activities of the com-
munity and acts as a meeting point for local and
universal interests. Thus by turns, as demonstrators
and lecturers in agriculture and the domestic arts
were brought into Porter township, the school be-
came the community's farm, its kitchen, its work-
shop, its forum.
In both the examples of Gary and Porter the
essential point is the realization that the community
itself is richer in educational resource than the
school. The extent to which a child can live a
well-rounded life during his school period is de-
pendent upon the ability of the school to provide
him with the cultural background of a complete
community. Irt essence, the grammar school of
Renaissance tradition was simply a devitalized com-
munity, with its educative elements leached out.
The magic of special subjects, apart from their value


1919
245
THE DIAL
in use, is now recognized as the myth of a leisure
class, and the effort of the modern school is accord-
ingly to substitute for the fake discipline of formal
education the genuine discipline of real work in a
community. Up to the present the drill subject has
remained in the school largely for the reason that
drill itself has remained in the army: it is a means
of killing time in the intervals that precede the per-
formance of active duties. When you do away with
these preparatory exercises you have only to thrust
the student into an organized community and he will
find it necessary to occupy himself with tasks of
high educational importance, and the interests that
these tasks awaken are the only stimuli needed to
give the teacher his opportunity to guide and demon-
strate and coordinate and direct. Where drill itself
is justified the Gary teachers have shown how it
may be coupled to a non-academic task.
This emphasis upon the group life, from which
the school, with its armory of arts and sciences, has
sprung, affects the technique of teaching, the equip-
ment of the school plant, and the development of the
curriculum. The last two items are of especial note,
for apart from experiments like those at Fairhope
and Gary, the methods of elementary teaching, under
the influence of such institutes as Columbia, have
vastly improved during the last generation. In the
modern school the old quarrel between the advocates
of the fixed curriculum and those who favored elec-
tives loses its last vestige of reality when the condi-
tions and needs of the community rather than those
of the school system are taken into consideration.
This is recognized in the report of the Commission
on the Reorganization of Secondary Education,
authorized by the National Education Association.
(Bulletin No. 35, 1918; Bureau of Education.)
The committee which brought in the report found
that the seven main objectives which should deter-
mine all education were: Health, command of fun-
damental processes, worthy home membership, voca-
tion, citizenship, worthy use of leisure, and ethical
character; in short, as Dr. Snedden has suggested in
a criticism, health education, vocational education,
and social education. (Snedden: Cardinal Prin-
ciples of Secondary Education; School and Society,
IX, 227.) This implies a point to point correspond-
ence of the student's functions with those of the
community.
Considering merely the curriculum there remains
a question as to how much of the community can
be brought back into the school, even with such a
wide use of the school plant, and such an extension
of the equipment, as is required in the Gary method.
A New York school may run a bank of its own to
vivify the problems of accountancy, but it cannot
possess the Stock Exchange; a Pittsburgh school
may have a foundry, but it cannot operate a rolling
mill; a Chicago school may have a leatherworking
shop, but it cannot run the stockyards; a Vermont
school may be built on a vein of marble, but it can-
not work a quarry. Yet it is safe to say that the
operations I have mentioned are each and all full
of educational interest, and that an understanding
of them is peculiarly essential to anyone desirous
of functioning intelligently within the region where
they are dominant. In addition to this broad
industrial environment, in which the large cities
have so much to offer, every community has par-
ticular resources, natural and cultural, which can
never be completely engrossed by the school, and
which it would be folly to attempt to duplicate. In
spite of routine trips to museums and zoos this
larger environment has been neglected in America.
Nowhere has the school begun to exploit the insti-
tutions of the community. Whereas American
initiative is responsible for the experiment of bring-
ing back the community to the school, it is to Great
Britain that we must turn for example as to the
method of taking the school out into the community.
The use of the community in extending and deep-
ening the interests embraced by the school is con-
nected in England with the movement for regional
survey. Before the war the survey method as an
educational instrument was developed in Edinburgh,
Lambeth, and Saffron Walden under the inspiration
of Professor Patrick Geddes, the biologist, sociolo-
gist, and educator. (A discussion of its application
may be found in a memoir on Alasdair Geddes, pub-
lished first in the Town Planning Review, April,
1917, and later in the series of Papers for the Pres-
ent, Headley Brothers, London.)
The aim of the regional survey is to employ the
immediate region as the starting point of the stu-
dent's inquiries into the arts and sciences. Instead
of letting the student begin his studies with names
and definitions the regional surveyor insists upon
prefacing this thin, verbal and symbolical knowledge
about "subjects" with a thick, first-hand, intimate,
concrete acquaintance with his environment. This
acquaintance with the crude data of the arts and
sciences is something the drill school, at all its levels,
takes for granted. It relies upon casual acquaint-
ances and intimacies to furnish the substantial
ground pattern upon which it embroiders its abstract
interpretations and studies. Hence, for example, the
student of chemistry in a New York school may
"know" the atomic formula of clay before he has
felt clay in his hands, or has connected it with build-
ing, or has watched the barges of bricks float down
the Hudson, or has examined the conditions under
which it is worked, or has attained the dimmest
sociological insight into the life of a river village


246
September 20
THE DIAL
that has claymaking as its sole industry. Or at
another period the student may study the develop-
ment of America after the Civil War, and read
about the influx of immigrants and the numerical
growth of cities, without even faintly associating
this with the huddle of loft buildings in the lower
part of Manhattan and the congestion of population
in the adjacent East Side. The failure to subor-
dinate book knowledge to immediate observation
and experiment is notorious. It results in a thinness
of mental imagery which makes for looseness and
vagueness of thought. By embracing, not the arts
and sciences considered abstractly as subjects, but
the actual synthesis of the arts and sciences as ex-
pressed concretely in the life-processes of the com-
munity, the regional survey seeks to repair this
deficiency.
In America indeed Dr. Flexner has pointed out
how many institutions in the city might be utilized
for educational purposes by the modern school. (A
Modern School; General Education Board, New
York.) What is emphasized in the regional
survey is that the city-region as a whole may be
treated as an educational institution, and that every
phase of its existence may be utilized to vivify every
part of the school's curriculum. The technique
of utilizing this wider environment has yet to be
elaborated. Experiment along these lines, however,
cannot proceed far until the method itself is widely
explored under test conditions—with teachers of
normal training and classes of mean size. This
leads us back to our original point of departure:
the paucity, not of initiative, but of application.
It appears that the prime elements that stand in
the way both of the American scheme of bringing
the community into the school, and the British plan
of taking the school out into the community are
two: the strength of the traditional educational
system itself, considered as a machine, and the self-
centeredness of the adult population, both at home
and in the shop. In new communities like Gary,
and in small ones like Porter, the vested educational
regime is too infirm to entrench itself against inno-
vation. In Gary, accordingly, the initiative of Wil-
liam Wirt effected an easy transformation of the
school program and equipment; and in Porter the
active support of the community played no small part
in bringing in an experimentally disposed teacher
and affording her an opportunity for carrying out
her plans. But where instead of an active and re-
sponsible guild of teachers there is a centralized
bureaucracy, and instead of an interested and pur-
poseful community there is merely the apathetic rab-
ble of individuals that makes up a city tenement dis-
trict, the introduction of any genuine educational
advance is seriously hindered. Unless public opinion
can be formulated through active Parent's Associa-
tions and professional opinion through Teacher's
Associations, the most sober advances will be seri-
ously hindered; for the reason that they call for
difficult adjustments in the education machine—and
indeed in the very organization of the industrial
community. The use of the community by the school
implies the active cooperation of the community in
the school.
Obviously then if our educational experiments
are not to languish and to die in isolation they must
connect themselves with the interests of active occu-
pational groups. That is why the organization of
teachers' unions in our larger cities, weak though
the impulse yet remains, is the most promising
sign on the educational horizon. If the teacher
is able to reestablish his economic and intellectual
position in the school he may be able to gain
a new place for the school in the community.
The opportunity deliberately to utilize the com-
munity for educational purposes will follow.
Lewis Mum ford.
A t Perneb 's Tom b
Soul of Perneb.
Let me pass that narrow door!
"Your tomb," say you?
Not at all, proud dignitary!
This tomb was purchased honestly by the Museum
From the Egyptian Government,
Was bought and paid for;
It is their property,
And I am welcome here!
I fear you not—
In your curled wig and beard
And stiff-starched kilt—
Nor yet those rows of friends and relatives
Gesticulating there upon your scribbled walls!
This is not Memphis,
Nor the Fifth Dynasty,
Old Perneb.
But Fifth Avenue,
And little old New York,
Nineteen-nineteen!
Leonora Speyer.


igig
247
THE DIAL
American History Anglicized
A he editor of The Dial sends me two books
and writes, " Please review." I read the two books—
Elizabethan Sea-Dogs, by William Wood, and
Dutch and English on the Hudson, by Maud Wil-
der Goodwin, being Vol. 3 and Vol. 7 of the Chron-
icles of America published by the Yale University
Press. Then I sent word to the editor of The Dial
and said, " Please allow me to decline the honor."
Wrote the editor of The Dial, "Why?" And
I answered, " Because you will not like what I want
to say. Besides it may cost me twenty years in jail."
Whereupon the patient editor remarked "that ac-
cording to the courts of West Virginia the war
ended when the Armistice was declared" and
gave me full power to state, write, and declare what
I have intended to state, write, and declare since
many years.
A few weeks ago there was a delegation of South
African Boers in this town. We had speech together
and we discussed affairs in the old independent Re-
publics of the Black Continent. We exhausted all
arguments pro and con and Anally I asked, "What
makes for the dislike between Boer and British?"
The leader of the delegation puffed his pipe medi-
tatively and then said, "I don't want to be too
sensitive. But the reason for the continued dislike
is the following. Language and habits and customs
have really nothing to do with it. It is not a ques-
tion of race or economic status. But the Englishman
simply cannot treat us as an equal. He probably
tries to be pleasant. He never gets over an attitude
of amused patronizing. We Boers feel it. We are
made to feel it all the time. We despair of changing
the English character. Therefore we want to go
our own way."
That is the reason why I did not want to review
these two books. History, like all teaching, has been
(speaking very broadly) the privilege of what is
sometimes called " the New England school ma'am."
With all due respect for the integrity, intellectual
honesty, and purity of historical purpose of the
aforementioned New England school ma'am, she
never learned languages. England and English
scholarship were the fount of her perennial in-
formation. That same undefinable but very con-
crete method of settling all foreign aspirations
to glory and fame by a slight smile and a
prolonged "Ah, very interesting indeed" was ap-
plied to history with a result exceedingly disastrous
to all foreigners. It was duly accepted that these
United States, notwithstanding a slight difference
of opinion during the last half of the eighteenth cen-
tury were a sort of intellectual colony of the British
mother country. That Magna Charta, sublimated
into the constitution of the great Republic, was the
foundation of all further democratic development.
That Anglo-Saxon virtue accounted for everything
that was good on this vast continent. Of course
there were certain foreign influences which had con-
tributed towards folk-dancing and amusing little
restaurants in Greenwich Village. But these were
quite negligible compared to the greater blessings
carried across the ocean in English bottoms. And
the sooner the "foreigner" accepted this fact,
dropped his strange notions of cultural equality, the
better for him and the prosperity of his children. For
a moment, the Lafayette myth, a by-product of our
war-enthusiasm, threatened to obscure the deeds of
the Knights of Runymede. M. Clemenceau's atti-
tude at the peace table will soon cause a revision of
this incident and the English tradition will again
rule supreme.
These two little books, neither of them a contri-
bution to the subject of early American settlement
from a scholarly point of view read to me like an
expression of that regretable attitude. Maybe—
very likely even—my old Dutch prejudice makes me
unfair. But I get everlastingly, profoundly, and ir-
ritatingly tired of Drake's exploits in "clipping the
wings of Spain" when said Drake ought to have
only fifty per cent of the glory; of the great epic of
glorious Queen Bess, when this distinguished Lady
ought to suffer a fifty per cent reduction of
her fame; of the endlessly repeated story of the
Armada which hogs the happy result of that moment-
ous battle entirely for the benefit of British valor,
British seamanship, and British pluck. I have the
greatest respect for these three phenomena of the
British character. But please! give the other fellow
a chance. The low countries along the banks of
the North Sea had a popular representative system,
guaranteed by seigneurial writ, long before an Eng-
lish commoner dreamed of demanding the right of
representation exercised by a small score of nobles.
The Armada was defeated with the help of God,
the British fleet, and a highly efficient Dutch Squad-
ron which blockaded the Duke of Parma and his
auxiliary ships and troops in the harbor of Dunkirk
until Sidonia's galleons were ready to be slaugh-
tered. As for the clipped wings of Spain, why
create the impression that this much-needed task was
entrusted by Providence exclusively to the seadogs of
Queen Bess?
It is the same with the volume on the Dutch and


248
September 20
THE DIAL
English on the Hudson. The very least one can ask
of an author writing about Dutch subjects is such a
rudimentary knowledge of the-Dutch language that
at least one out of every four quotations shall be
spelled correctly. At this late date it is quite futile
to hope that the harm done by the Knickerbocker
History of New York will ever be undone. The
early settlers of New York will go down in history
as funny lethargic Burghers with immense steins of
beer and long Gouda pipes. Miss Goodwin's book
avoids this error and on the whole tries to give a
fair deal to the risky investment of the West Indian
Company. But again, on every page one feels the ut-
ter lack of comprehension of the Dutch background.
Speaking in a general way that does not matter very
much. Just now, nothing matters very much except
the Smolny Institute and Versailles. But a century
from now, when the world runs again in its quiet
and peaceful groove, we hope that our American
writers (I am not speaking of our scholars) will sec
a new light. The role of the small nation in the
concert of nations has been persistently misunder-
stood. Just as the League of Nations offered to
run the affairs of the world by an executive council
of five big powers (and mind my prophetic words,
O ye Lords of Versailles! you cannot do it), in the
same way our amateur historians have provided a
certain conception of history which teaches our chil-
dren that the real work of growth and development
was performed by the Big Empires while the small
fry filled out the little gaps in the imposing edifice
of human civilization. The reviewer sees these
things fundamentally different. Hence he repeats
his request. "Let some one else review these books."
Hendrik Willem van Loon.
Fashions in Conspiracy
At is just as well not to look for romantic
thrills in scholastic monographs, for heart-sickness
would surely follow on hope long deferred. Yet
Professor Vernon Stauffer has provided them in
"Whole Number 191 " of the Columbia Univer-
sity Studies in History, Economics, and Public
Law. (New England and the Bavarian Illum-
inati; Columbia University Press.) It is not
easy to explain why the book is so interesting, for
a brief summary is no more exhilarating than the
imprint, or the title, or the pale blue tint of the
paper binding.
Boiled down to lowest terms and served up in a
saucerful of negations the story of the play amounts
to this: I. After the Revolution New England
was deeply disturbed and demoralized—yet not so
deeply as it might have been (141 pages). II. The
Bavarian Order of the Illuminati founded in 1776
was a secret, radical organization of immense poten-
tial influence—but it was crushed before it had
reached full power (87 pages). III. The menace
of a supposed revival toward the end of the cen-
tury produced a near panic among New England
conservatives—but the whole episode was really a
tempest in a teapot (116 pages). Curtain—that is,
bibliography.
To the objector who says that this is a sheer
sequence of anti-climaxes there is only one reply.
The man who must have something happen in even'
story will lay this one aside in contempt; he had
better not bother with it at all. Yet, of course,
objective adventure amounts to nothing in itself.
Except for the attending emotions, an event is like
a ship at sea sunk without a trace; but the frustra-
tion of a plan to sink, ships "spurlos" is as big
with emotional significance as the loss of a Lusi-
tania. Every lively reader is a bit like Wilde's
Gwendolen when she says, "The suspense is ter-
rible ... I hope it will last."
Seen in this light, the Stauffer monograph has all
the lure of a penny-dreadful, and all the learning
that does credit to its solemn auspices. It is docu-
mented at all points and featured on every page
with "an angry little pack of footnotes barking
at the text." But it is humanly and dramatically
Interesting because it is a well-written chronicle
of human hopes and fears. The first part, on the
undermining of Puritan standards and institutions,
is a fresh and well-considered statement of what is
familiar to every student of American history. The
grip of the Church was relaxed. Education for the
ministry was no longer the chief mission of the col-
leges, and the students inclined toward radicalism
of thinking and adopted it as a cloak for license.
Not only were the strictest amusement taboos lifted,
but gambling at the card table and the racetrack,
heavy drinking, and sexual license were on the in-
crease. The alarm was widespread that these vices
were natural resultants of religious radicalism and
skepticism.
The sections on the European Order of the Il-
luminati, and on the subsequent Illuminati agita-
tion in New England, are fresh fields for most
readers. The almost absolute control which the


1919
249
THE DIAL
Society of Jesus had contrived to secure in Bavaria
led to an inevitable revolt in the period of the
Aufklarung toward the end of the eighteenth cen-
tury. Under the lead of Adam Weishaupt (1748-
1830) a secret association was founded in 1776 to
outwit the enemies of reason throughout the world.
Its members were to be trained and learned laborers
for a new civilization. An exhaustive study of
mankind and the development of a skilled propa-
gandist method were to result in a moral trans-
formation of human society. The design was thus
to carry out an enlightened and bloodless revolu-
tion. Unfortunately jealousy and ineptitude re-
tarded its growth at first, and later treachery com-
pleted' the revelations which official vigilance had
begun. By 1784 the organization was quite com-
pletely smashed; but its real influence was greatly
increased. The repressive measures boomeranged
as they always do, ultra conservatism became queru-
lously shrill, officialdom began once more to jump
at its own shadow, and every radical thinker was
cheered by the gratuitous advertisement given to
his cause and was encouraged by the rumors of its
strength. Even at this, however, the whole II-
luminati movement might have sunk into oblivion
by 1798 as Weishaupt himself had done, if in that
year there had not appeared in Edinburgh a volume
by John Robison containing "Proofs of a Con-
spiracy against All the Religions and Governments
of Europe, carried on in the Secret Meetings of the
Free Masons, Illuminati and Reading Societies."
Seven editions of this soon ran their course in Eng-
lish, French, German, and Dutch and a very pretty
panic was restimulated. According to Robison the
Illuminati had brought about the French Revolu-
tion under "specious pretexts of enlightening the
world," and emboldened by their success were
working secretly in all the countries of Europe.
It was not to be expected that in the fallow. New
England ground so fruitful a rumor should fail to
scatter seed. By fast-day of 1798 the warning was
solemnly uttered, and within the next two years
pulpits and pamphlets had presented circumstantial
evidence of active conspiracy. These proofs may
have proved something besides the solicitude of the
men who advanced them, though they do not seem
to have done so. This is important in estimating
Professor Stauffer's monograph as a historical
document; but if we consider the monograph as a
document on public opinion, it is a negligible
matter. What Macaulay wrote about popular
faiths is equally true of popular fears: "Logicians
may reason about abstractions, but the great mass
of men must have images." Radicalism.was in the
air; the body of conservative thinkers needed to
account for the unrest. They could not concede
that it sprang from the essential wrongness of
human conditions, for that is in itself a radical con-
tention. The inclination to disturb the good old
ways must be accounted for by the exercise of some
fell conspiracy. So "the Illuminati, the Free
Masons, and the Reading Societies" were set up
as the straw men.
The Illuminati could not be embarrassed by such
an agitation, for the simple reason that specters and
hobgoblins are not subject to courts of inquiry.
The scattered and unrelated reading rooms were
little disturbed, because no case could be made
against them. But the Freemasons furnished a
beautiful target for miscellaneous bombardment.
They were secret—and hence had something dread-
ful to conceal. They observed rituals of their own
—which were doubtless anti-ecclesiastical and prob-
ably anti-religious. On the other hand they were
exclusive, and hence undemocratic and perchance
reactionary. They pleased no one outside their
ranks, and were hard beset until, with the mourn-
ing for George Washington, his membership in a
secret order gave the Masons a bill of exemption
before the court of public opinion. So the excite-
ment waned, and the Bavarian Illuminati, who had
never been terrible except in the imaginations of
the ultra-conservatives, ceased to be accused of an
influence that they had never been strong enough
to exert.
It is a quaint and significant piece of history, and
furnishes a striking parallel to the rumored dangers
and the reactionary alarums of today. With the
closing of one chapter in the struggle for democ-
racy, the cry was raised against its "desolating
effects," and conservative America began to chant
the hymn of prudential patriotism. Hail Columbia
was a by-product of the agitation, written on re-
quest in 1798 by a son of one of the signers of the
Declaration. It sounds as paltry now as it must
have then, but its sentiments are still being pro-
claimed with the same tremulous fervor:
Let independence be your boast
Ever mindful what it cost,
Ever grateful for the prize
Let its altar reach the skies.
Firm, united let us be,
Rallying round our liberty,
As a band of brothers joined,
Peace and safety let us find.
Of a truth history repeats itself. The story of New
England and the Bavarian Illuminati is amazingly
up-to-date.
Percy H. Boynton.


5°
September 20
THE DIAL
The Mood of the Morning After
A he end of the war will presumably also close
a prolific phase of literary activity, the production
of war books, which a recent writer has divided into
four groups: the impressionistic, the episodic, the his-
torical, and the technical. With Leonhard Frank's
Der Mensch 1st Gut (Rascher; Zurich) we might
add another type, the inspired—or, shall we say?—
the prophetic. This last will depend on the sort of
lesson that the present and the future generations—
to whom Leonhard Frank dedicates his book—will
have learned from the world war. No better text-
book could be found to teach man the ways of peace
and to point out the true deadliness of militarism in
its effect on the mind and spirit of man. A nation
thoroughly drilled in militarism is no longer respon-
sible for its actions, he says; it no longer consists of
human beings, but of soulless, irresponsible automa-
tons, incapable of thought. We have readily be-
lieved this of the Germans, but signs of apprehen-
sion must deepen in view of the dark cloud of uni-
versal military training, as a permanent institution,
that is hovering over our own country.
The book consists of five sketches: The Father,
The War Widow, The Mother, The Lovers, and
The War Cripples. The style is unusually vivid
and gripping, and the psychologic penetration and
descriptive directness cast a spell over the reader
that would almost inevitably bring him to his feet to
rush out into the street and join the crusaders, if he
were near the scene of action.
The Father of the first sketch is a commonplace
hotel waiter. Dazed by the news of his son's death
"on the field of honor," he ruminates listlessly for
weeks on that word "honor." Honor, honor, the
field of honor—what is this honor? It is no field,
no acre, no surface, neither mist nor air—it is ab-
solutely nothing. Slowly the truth begins to dawn,
and slowly, deliberately he prepares for the " leap"
that he knew he must take some day. A laborers'
convention, at which he officiated in the capacity of
water-carrier to the speakers, and a toy gun fur-
nished the occasion. He held up the gun which he
himself long ago had presented to his little son, re-
called the toy-soldiers, drums, and uniforms, and
said: " I am a murderer." And you, who have also
brought up your children on toys like these, who have
connived at all this ghastly masquerade, who in your
misery have rejoiced when it was the enemy's son, or
husband, or father, or sweetheart that was killed and
not your own, you all are murderers. There is not a
person in Europe today who is not a murderer, and
we are murderers, because we have forgotten love.
T" insane delusion we think we see the foe outside of
us, in the Russian, the Englishman, the Frenchman,
because the real foe, who is within us, is something
that is not there—the absence of love. Cringing
obedience to authority, unthinking worship of suc-
cess, money, and power, and sixteen thousand kilo-
meters of corpses, because we have the courage to kill
men but not the courage to love them, that is our
civilization. Words like these fall naturally and
simply from lips that have been trained only to ob-
sequiousness. Man is good.
The War Widow is a tour de force of psychologic
analysis. She too went about her business and
walked the streets like an automaton—her eyes dry,
her heart empty but for the hatred that barred it to
grief, her brain in a chaos. The phrases: a hero's
death, the field of honor, the altar of the Fatherland,
a million other women, were jumbled together with
the high prices of coffee and eggs, all equally mean-
ingless. This lasted for months, and her features
settled into hard lines when the hotel waiter's words
pierced the crust, opening her heart to grief and her
eyes to a new and wonderful light.
Somewhat different was the lot of the Mother.
Her whole life is merged in the life of the son at
the front. Her solicitude makes her clairvoyant. She
spends her days and nights in agonizing appeals to
him to fire or to desist from firing, according as her
fear for her son's life or her anguish at the vision
of the other mother in Paris gains the upper hand.
When the inevitable news reaches her she darts out
into the street and runs aimlessly, silently, till the
cry of anguish breaks forth and pierces the air. The
cry of anguish of the European mother. At last,
snatching a crucifix from the altar of a church, she
heads a procession of mothers and joins the multi-
tudes led by the hotel waiter.
In The Lovers the philosopher, in spite of his
gloomy survey of a people calloused, thoughtless,
over-organized, drilled by machine and musket to
the point of fatalism, a people whom nothing but
naked hunger can arouse to revolutionary protest, is
at last shaken by wild love and compassion at the
thought of the unborn soul of his sleeping wife, the
symbol of the unborn soul of the people. Instead
of choosing suicide for the second time in response
to the military summons, he resolves to plunge into
the midst of the blood-soaked presence and the
blood-soaked masses and to join those who have been
saved from the poison of organization in an attempt
"to talk the people out of that which has been talked
into them for decades."
The War Cripples reveals the gruesome spectacle
of the "slaughter house," as the field hospital is


1919
251
THE DIAL
called. The field-surgeon, who literally saws till he
drops, awakens from the swoon into which he has
sunk from over-fatigue, into a great illumination.
For three years he has sawed off soldiers' arms and
legs; henceforth his life is dedicated to the preven-
tion of the necessity for sawing off arms and legs.
There are no seismographs that record an earthquake
before it has become a fact. But there are seismographs
of the soul, men who feel when the moment has come
when the hardened petrified woe of an entire, suppressed,
inconceivably tormented people suddenly melts and bursts
the dams of organized force, power, falsehood, authority
and misconceived duty.
At that moment the field-surgeon opened the doors
of a new age with his procession of cripples. Twenty
thousand, fifty thousand, a never ending throng, on
crutches, and on trucks they come, with artificial
limbs and artificial features—the blind led by the
halt. The light of a new day of the brotherhood of
man transfigures the face of the most hopeless of
them all, the armless and legless trunk. And he, the
nameless one, who has been walking beside the hotel
waiter, enters the halls of the old regime, and the
old regime disappears forever.
The vision is Leonhard Frank's Revolution, stalk-
ing through the world perhaps. Is it going to pro-
claim international brotherhood? Or will the new
impetus towards nationalistic development, the old
possessive impulses, the old industrialism, not set up
new barriers between man and man on the ruins of
the old autocracies? Whatever the immediate out-
come, the internationalist has nevertheless come to
stay and Leonhard Frank is one of the prophets of
the true goal of human progress.
i
Emma Heller Schumm.
I
Nietzsche—Without Prejudice
know of no book on Nietzsche that even ap-
proaches the excellence of Nietzsche the Thinker,
by William Salter (Holt). The motive and
character of Nietzsche's thinking, the passion of his
manner, and the shock and challenge of his phrase
are all so intimate, so idiosyncratic, as to call forth
from his critics and commentators discussions equally
idiosyncratic, with personal bias and divergent per-
spectives. All, from Vaihinger and Lichtenberger to
Thierry and Huneker, draw portraits of the mind of
Nietzsche which reveal their authors far more than
their subject. That (as the psychologizing critic
modernly assures us) this observation holds of all
criticism makes no matter; there are degrees. Some
critics are more translucent than others and some
subjects more luminous. And Nietzsche seems to
have been a writer who has influenced his readers
more through heat than through light. He has
warmed or fired many of both his opponents and his
admirers into good writing down of themselves, but
never of a true vision of the Nietzsche that was.
Rarely has there lived a man so irrelevant to the
ruling passions of his time and so provocative of
them. With the effect that what the public reads
and says about him is the substance of an interna-
tional myth, none the less potent because it is a myth,
while what he was and thought in himself goes un-
observed and forgotten.
It is the great merit of Mr. Salter's book, cer-
tainly the best book on Nietzsche in the English
language and perhaps in any language, that it disre-
gards the myth and attains to the Nietzschean mind
itself. Few men of letters have had so self-effacing
and pellucid an interpreter, who so conscientiously
and with such detailed and workmanlike skill has
brought together all their utterances on any given
theme, and exhibited concept after concept in its
intricate intellectual pattern with all the reserva-
tions, nuances, shadings, and stresses of all the dif-
ferent times and places of their deliverance. Nietz-
sche surely never had such an interpreter before.
You are made to feel as in no other book that the
content of Nietzsche's whole mind is really and
truly there and its contact with what you have
yourself read in Nietzsche and what you have read
about him is dramatically poignant. Yet, after
a while, you find accompanying this realization also
a discommoding sense of uncertainty and unreality.
You know that this account of Nietzsche shows you
the substance of his mind and that others do not, but
you cannot help feeling that the cohesive force which
holds together simultaneously the countless parts of
this remarkable mosaic of ideas, the center of life
and feeling which holds them in mutuality and or-
ganic relevance, is not that of Nietzsche. The sense
of values the ensemble of this book awakens in you
and the sense that you attain from a reading of
Nietzsche's works in the order in which he wrote
them are as a sense of sugar and salt. Not only do
they not fuse, they repel one another; and the
harsher and more true is closer to the Nietzschean
myth than to the Nietzschean fact. In a word, Mr.
Salter's portrait of Nietzsche's mind is marvelously
accurate,' but it is not a true portrait. It is not a
true portrait perhaps just because it is so accurate.
The complex of impulses and repressions which
were Nietzsche's life, its central elan, that found its
fulfillment, gratification, compensation, or diversion


252
September 20
THE DIAL
in one after another of the succession of ideas that
are the portrait, is itself missing from the portrait.
The rhythm and pulse of it are as little Nietzsche's
as the ideas are completely Nietzsche's. This lack is
rendered inevitable by Mr. Salter's method, which
is structural rather than genetic and which postu-
lates that a thinker's mind is a thing apart from his
heart. In view of the method, Mr. Salter's achieve-
ment is all the more remarkable.
It is an achievement in exposition without ex-
planation, and the separation of the two is inherent
in the structural method. From the genetic point of
view they cannot however be separated. After all,
men are men before they are philosophers, and they
are born with appetites, passions, impulsions, and in
stincts whereas they only acquire ideas. Their tem-
peraments are the foundations of their minds; their
feelings supply the power and dictate the goals of
their intellects. Regarding a thinker so idiosyncratic
and spontaneous as Nietzsche, this is particularly
true. All theories of life are personal, and his was
more so than most. That he had inherited a neuro-
pathic constitution from his father's side of the
family, that he was deeply devoted to his mother,
that scarcely a day passed without acute physical
pain or discomfort, that he was always under great
physical strain, that he was celibate, that he at one
time added to his involuntary pains those of self-
inflicted bodily penance—all these expressions of his
diathesis must be taken into consideration if his out-
look upon the nature and destiny of man is to be
rightly understood. Against the background of this
constant battle with weakness and weakening, the
description of his philosophy as a " recipe and self-
prepared medicine against life-weariness" becomes
easily intelligible; so does his self-glorification, as in
Ecce Homo; so does his passionate and bitter rejec-
tion of all the standards and conventions of the
society with which bis weakness was associated, to
which he attributed it, which he identified with it,
and which he repudiated and rejected by his demand
for a "new morality" that was after all nothing
more than a projection of his own pain and struggle
upon the cosmos, and a justification thereof. From
the standpoint of his emotional life, his philosophy
was partly a compensation for, partly a projection
and rationalization of, his condition and its impli-
cated temperament. It is the pathetic fallacy of a
brave sick man, who had learned, or who perhaps
did not need to learn, to take a masochistic joy in
his sickness.
The material which was reshaped and thrown
into new and tonic patterns by the selective action
of the dominant impulsions of Nietzsche's tempera-
ment came from three sources. The primary and
=t colorful was his varied and discriminating
knowledge of the world of classical antiquity. It
was not so great as that of many another man—
Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, for example—nor so ac-
curate. His idiosyncrasies of emotion made him,
however, sensitive to aspects of it which men of
more usual diathesis never saw. These he selected
and wove into the justification and sustainment of
his bitter, brave existence. They grounded his con-
ceptions of tragedy and of the origins of morality
and enabled him to carry on. Schopenhauerian
voluntarism and the Darwinian hypothesis supple-
mented this aid and comfort. In his earlier days
he had accepted the quietistic upshot of the former,
had found satisfaction in its doctrine of self-efface-
ment through art and religion. But as life and pain
grew more difficult to endure he rejected the quiet-
ism and cursed it. Being and pain and tragedy grew
to be synonymous for him, and art ceased to be an
escape and became a fulfillment of them: "in
tragedy the warrior celebrates his Saturnalia."
And, of course, the movements and interests current
in the social organization of his time moved him to
vivid resentment. He selected for particular be-
littlement its hunger for ease, comfort, and pleasure.
The Christian virtues filled him with revulsion and
the Christian beliefs with disgust: they involved the
abolition of pain. The national and socialist move-
ments seemed to him degrading and signs of de-
cadence, just because they invaded the necessary and
desirable loneliness of the voluntary sufferer, and
his scorn of the Germans and their paternalistic im-
perialism knew no bounds—" the meanness of a
German hinders digestion." His goal of life—moral,
intellectual, esthetic—is self-immolation. The "su-
perman," indeed may be said to have been con-
ceived in the very ardor and ecstasy of self-immola-
tion. Although the conception is shot through with
certain ideas of excellence absorbed from the Greeks,
and Nietzsche could plausibly be argued to have de-
fined the aim of life as the spreading of a greater
and firmer pedestal of the most powerful, the
"best" type of beings, it is significant that this best
had not, in Nietzsche's mind, either the definiteness
or articulation which the classic conceptions all had.
It exists rather as a rationalization of the process
of becoming, which is all pain, all sorrow, all lone-
liness; which is self-destruction. Since man is to
superman what ape is to man, the best life for man
can be nothing other than this process of self-de-
struction. "Destroy yourself," says Nietzsche to
his followers, "and your neighbor as yourself, in
order that something better than you may come to
be." All the while, however, the good to come is
something unknown and unknowable; and the good
that is, is your destruction.
H. M. Kallen.


igig
253
THE DIAL
When Good Fellows Get Together
XX T the last reunion of our class there were, of
course, the usual number of surprises. For in-
stance, Gerald Braithwaite, who was at one time or
another president of nearly all the college clubs and
societies, a star actor in almost all the plays, some-
thing of a singer, and good for a point or two in the
high jump, has quieted down. Gerald is super-
intendent of schools in some Middle-Western city.
I suspect that Gerald blossomed out too soon, as
plants are said to do when they are not adequately
watered. But when I saw Gerald he suspected noth-
ing, v He liked his title and was sorry for me when
I told him that I was still experimenting with life
and had no steady job.
Nearly all the rest had followed the paths of least
resistance, not as any of us could have foreseen them,
but as they could have been foreseen by any one
familiar with American civilization fifteen years ago.
Jackson, like Braithwaite, was one of our prominent
men. He came to college from some country town,
a shy, reserved, idealistic youth who had never ridden
on a street car until he graduated from high school.
Jackson rose by degrees, beginning with the Y. M.
C. A., where his early religious training made him
at home, becoming its vice-president, and emerging
from it by way of atheism at the end of his second
year. In his junior year he was treasurer of his
class, and at the end of the year there was a sur-
plus of nearly eighty-nine dollars—an unheard of
thing in our college. The year after that Jackson
became advertising manager of the college monthly
on a percentage basis. After "he left college he went
into real estate. When he came back to the re-
union he had lost the soulful look and most of the
wavy chestnut hair which had once made it easy
for him to get dances at the proms, but he had a dou-
ble chin and owned a controlling interest in a town
of forty thousand inhabitants.
The boys who went into law seemed the simplest
to make predictions about, but the simplicity was
deceptive. Jim Burnham, who was said to be the
most brilliant man of his time, is still brilliant, but
it is now an old-rose, Persian-carpet brilliancy. I
caught in his conversation at the reunion little be-
sides echoes of 1903. Jim had an uncle who was
counsel for the Coast and Mid-Western. He came
to the reunion in an expensive touring car, and
thought that there was not much moral difference
between Bolshevism and government control of the
railroads. Culver drifted into politics, but instead
of being governor or United States senator he was
an assistant district attorney. He talked like Mr.
Serjeant Buzfuz. Ed Bilkins, the inconsolable
radical of his class, whose quarrel with the present
order of society extended even to a refusal to wear a
dress suit to the senior prom, went into journalism.
He has become managing editor of a newspaper in
a medium-sized Ohio city, and gets along famously
with the owner and the advertisers. His wife is
trying, not without success, to get into really good
society.
We had looked to Theodore Blackwood to give
the class literary standing. Theodore stayed on at
college after the rest of the class had gone away—
I believe because he could not think of anything else
to do. He is now teaching English in a fresh-water
college. It has been nine or ten years since he
wrote any of that glowing, rebellious verse which
used to excite admiration among the elect when it
was printed in the Spade (our little modernist semi-
annual, reserved for those who felt themselves of
too fine clay to be appreciated by the general college
public), but he has a new interpretation of the fifty-
sixth line of Scene Five, Act II, of As You Like It,
which is said to find favor with Shakespearean schol-
ars. He told me that he was shortly to issue a
new edition of Euphues, with critical notes.
I see that I have said nothing of the part our
class played in the war, but this is not because any
of us were slackers. We were nearly all too old for
front-line service, but a few of us did get to the front,
and most of the rest took government contracts, got
into the Red Cross or Y. M. C. A., took part in the
Liberty Loan campaigns, or at least cut down our
personal expenditures. There is a grave or two
in France to which our chairman referred in what
seemed to me the only unaffected words he spoke.
They had not been prominent men in college. One
had worked his way through by waiting on table.
Few of us had even known them. But now they
were ours.
Everything went off pretty well as long as we
all kept together. Most of us were able to sing the
songs, with a little prompting, and Burnham made
a good toastmaster. It was when we began to split
up that conversation became trying. After Jack-
son had tried to sell me a lot, and Burnham had got
me into a corner to explain what a good idea it
would be to make the Espionage Act permanent, I
made my escape and walked up and down in the
moonlight—the same moonlight, God forgive us!—
trying to figure everything out. My classmates re-
minded me of nothing but clothes, possessions, so-
cial relations, business and professional positions.
Most of them, when they were in college, had been
interested in subjects which had nothing to do with


254
September 20
THE DIAL
their personal welfare. On occasion they would
throw off even the foolish garments of “college
spirit" and “tradition" and analyze the educa-
tional scheme of which they were a part. I had
discussed religion, art, music, and Socialism with
some of them until two in the morning. Now they
would not discuss anything. It was as though the
world contained for them no more doubts and mys-
teries, or perhaps as though their opinions were
balanced so precariously, and so intimately asso-
ciated with their positions in the world, that they
were afraid to think. -
Was this merely the result of growing older?
could not see why it should be. The age of specula-
tion does not terminate normally at twenty-two or
twenty-three. No, something had intervened to
harden my classmates in their shells, like so many oys-
ters growing encased before their time. Then I saw,
or thought I saw, what the trouble was. Our col-
lege had prided itself on preparing men for their
“places in the world.” A great point had been
made of convincing the boys who passed through
the mill that they were to become “leaders.” The
college was proud of those of its graduates who had
been successful, especially if they had made money!
successfully. We were trained to use the world,
not to understand it. Our whole academic tradi-
tion and environment had worked toward accustom-
ing us to forms and formulas. The president's
colonial mansion on the hill had been a symbol of
success, the assistant professor of Greek doing the
family washing on the back porch a symbol of at
least relative failure. Instead of being urged to
keep our intellectual curiosity awake we had been
fairly compelled to direct it into narrower and nar-
rower channels, and to apply it to definite ends
which were measured at last by the amount of
money they brought in. We went out ashamed
to be poor. I remembered some splendid words of
William James: “We have lost the power even of
imagining what the ancient idealization of poverty
could have meant; the liberation from material at-
tachments, the unbribed soul, the manlier indiffer-
ence, the paying our way by what we are and not
by what we have, the right to fling away our life
at any moment irresponsibly.” Had any of us ex-
ercised that right? Yes, our service flag answered
that question. But that sacrifice had been an acci-
dent of history, performed in the teeth of our edu-
cation, a breaking away from the environment in
which we had been taught to be at home—and to
be imprisoned by—not a development out of it.
As I went out to get my hat and coat I met Peter
Brant. When he was in college Peter Brant had
been passionately interested in beetles. As I talked
with him I saw that he was still interested in them,
though more in people and travels. He had been
hunting specimens all over the world—in China,
Siberia, Siam, India, Africa, South America, and
the East and West Indies. He had made, he told
me, one of the most complete beetle collections in
the world, though as he had no income of his own
he had had to earn his way around by selling his
collection to a museum. From his pocket, how-
ever, he drew a cigarette box, opened it reverently,
and showed me a tiny black object. He had picked
it up in Nigeria, and it was named after him. There
was not another like it in any collection in the
world. For the rest he had stories of out-of-the
way ports, sleepy tropic rivers, and half-forgotten
towns and people, out of the main currents of civ-
ilization, and a confession about a girl from Indiana,
with whom he had fallen hopelessly in love
in Cairo. He had wanted to marry her, but marry-
ing meant settling down, and perhaps giving up bee-
tles. He was on his way to Australia, and hoped
he would get over it.
I left Brant, rather reluctantly, at the door of a
second-class hotel, and went off to catch a train.
Some words quoted in John Richard Green's His-
tory were running in my head: “I have given up
my whole soul to the Greek learning, and as soon
as I get money I shall buy Greek books—and then I
shall buy some clothes.” But I doubt if Brant had
ever heard of Erasmus.
Robert L. DuFFUs.
His Friend to His Enemy
There are not seasons neath the sun
To undo the work you have begun
Or let you ever leave behind
His echo jingling in your mind;
For he did weave him cunningly
In every beauty you can see,
And in your pool of whimsey cast
A tint that never will flow past.
He put a light in some friends' eyes
You cannot help but scrutinize,
And blotted on your page a doubt
He'll never trouble to rub out.
MoRRiss Gilbert.


THE DIAL
t A FORTNIGHTLY
The Old Order and the New
The Plume PLAN will be Mr. GoMPERs' test.
While the President of the Trade Unions is no less
loquacious than the President of the Republic, Mr.
Gompers is not advertising his difficulty in advance.
Mr. Wilson, operating in the field of politics,
gambled on the insufficient vision of the average
voter to recognize the corrosive effect of suppressing
the efforts of a foreign people to establish self-gov-
ernment. He gave the people whom he represented
the lie, without taking serious chances. But this is
not possible in the labor world. Mr. Gompers
knows that at the present moment he has no such
margin in which he can play a fast and loose game.
The Plumb Plan has fired the imagination of the
labor world and precipitated a drive of immeasura-
ble force because it marks a consummating step in
the long preparation of labor toward participation
in the control of industry. Mr. Gompers has al-
ways declared that labor would never be satisfied;
that it would continuously ask for more and again
for more. While the gains made by the unions thus
far have amounted in reality to little more than a
gesture, the expectation of actual or net increase is
the raison d'etre of membership. The function of
the trade union officials is to keep expectation alive;
and for the most part sops to Cerberus have, until
now, sufficed. As a matter of fact sops were about
all that could be had while the mass of workers be-
lieved as their officials and their employers did that
the production of wealth is a game of exploitation,
where no one gives or shares more than he is forced
to; that the business of all is simply to get. As
labor people were obviously less qualified to play the
game than their employers or the financiers, the
leadership of the general enterprise also obviously be-
longed to these men. While the A. F. of L. has
basd its organization on the recognition of that in-
dustrial leadership, there is an insidious idea back
of the trade union movement which employers have
instinctively feared, and with good reason. Any
organization or movement that is fed on anticipation
must, out of psychological necessity, have its periods
of consummation. Here lies the force of the Plumb
Plan, and no one knows this better than Mr.
Gompers. The dilemma for the old man is that
he has accepted a place in the middle of the stand-
pat map. His place there, and his reason for ac-
cepting it, are not forgotten by labor. They recog-
nize that he deserves generous credit for having
kept the trade unions alive during those black years
of blind opposition and against the thunder of the
employers that they would run their business to suit
themselves. They know that the place Mr.
Gompers holds is the sign that the standpatters were
forced to acknowledge the existence of the unions.
But in accepting a place among the standpatters,
Mr. Gompers has had to straddle the fence and play
up to the anticipatory desires of the exploiters on
each side. Neither Mr. Gompers nor any one else
clearly saw until the war was over that the game of
exploitation had about run its course; or those who
anticipated it had no alternative mode of operating
industry which would make an appeal of universal
significance to the common people. As the Brother-
hood plan for industrial reorganization is founded
on the idea of ability and service it offers the oppor-
tunity for functional satisfaction; it offers perhaps
the first real sense of consummation in the long jour-
ney of preparation. However, the reason that the
men are rallying to this plan as they have never
rallied to the support of any other radical proposi-
tion, is that the Brotherhoods are thoroughly organ-
ized and are ready to name men competent to put
the plan into effect. It is not necessary to remind
Mr. Gompers of this last fact; he knows who will
succeed him if the transition is made. And if at the
conference which Mr. Wilson has called, Mr.
Gompers decides to support the policy of the Presi-
dent, let no labor man have any sentimental regrets
about turning to new leadership. The desertion
will not be labor's, but Mr. Gompers'. Mr.
Gompers in his old age will have made the choice
of old-age associates. And somewhere there will be
found a comfortable place to which the two presi-
dents can retire together, and together regale them-
selves in a flow of never ending words.
No one can yet state positively JUST WHAT
canny Sammy will do but it is fairly certain that the
new psychological elements in the industrial world
will be too much for him, in the long run. He has
never been strong, to be sure, in economics. Labor
has been bought and sold under his nose during his
full term of presidency and he will reiterate to the
end that labor is not a commodity—with a com-
placent assurance equal to that of Mr. Wilson when
he tells the American people that his imperialism is
self-determination. As for psychology, Mr. Gompers
has been conversant with one or two sets of reac-
tions—those which have to do with preparation and
obstruction. He is entirely unfamiliar with the
reaction of the consummatory process. When he
backed Mr. Wilson's plan for breaking the railroad


256
September 20
TttE DIAL
strikes, he knew that with his endorsement Mr. Wil-
son could call out the army and man the trains and
break the strike without suffering from any ex-
pression of resentment from the lesser officials of the
trade unions. But the army is of no earthly use as
an obstruction to the railroad reorganization plan
of the Brotherhoods, for military maneuvres are
without power to stem the new psychological
processes which the plan has already released. The
power of these processes to undermine obstructions
and set creative forces free has been dramatically
illustrated in the United States arsenals turned
over at Captain Beyer's suggestion to the manage-
ment of the workers. Experience in these plants
is the best demonstration that could be had of the
power of the Plumb Plan to set free, for creative
activity, both ability and desire. When the arsenal
reorganization plan was published in the press, the
announcement was immediately followed by another
reassuring business men who had taken fright that
the old autocratic scheme of management was still
actually in operation and that the managers' were
simply playing with labor participation—with the
kind of participation, you know, that the Chambers
of Commerce endorse. But if any one wants con-
clusive proof that the participation at the arsenals is
genuine it is only necessary to point to the fact that
the arsenals now offer to make "optics" for the
government at a cost of $20.74, against an outside
bid from business of $55. The cry of alarm over the
arsenal announcement was occasioned by the fear
that the advantage of labor management over busi-
ness imposture would be disclosed.
Not only is labor becoming increasingly
conscious of the possibilities of labor participation
in management, but business is realizing that the
old wage incentive is losing its effect as a production
drive. When a perfectly good manufacturer who
has employed collective bargaining and used the
union label for a generation wakes up to this fact,
as one did the other day,-it is late indeed for union
officials to ignore the change that is taking place
among their own people. Especially late is it for
the A. F. of L. Executive Council, when a closed
shop manufacturer in the interests of his business
passes from collective bargaining to contracting col-
lectively with his workers, paying them union rates
and dividing profits and costs under their direction
and management. The collective contract with pri-
vate owners cannot in the nature of the case have a
long life because the workers under the collective
contract will discover shortly that they are the quali-
fied leaders of industry, and that the owners whose
only qualification is ownership may just as well be
sloughed off. And when labor discovers that it can
sell the commodities it produces without selling
itself, the laborers will be ready for a new unionism.
Already they are feeling out, in some cases grop-
ingly, in come cases intelligently, for new forms
of organization. Whether or not twenty-three
thousand ship's carpenters, on the Pacific coast, who
have refused to acknowledge the jurisdiction of the
A. F. of L. are ready to assume industrial respon-
sibility, we do not know. But it is a matter of
common knowledge that the leaders of the newly
organized Amalgamated Textile Workers, recogniz-
ing as they do that the responsibility for production
must be assumed by the organized workers, have been
able in six months to build up an organization of
50,000 workers, skilled and unskilled, in ten cities
including in all sixteen local unions. They are
succeeding in a field where both the I. W. W. and
the A. F. of L., stressing abstract rights or economic
claims without assumption of responsibility, have
so far failed.
In Germany the acid test of the Russian
problem has been applied in full measure, and al-
ready, in a society lately subjected to the solvent of
war and revolution, the forms familiar to the his-
toric past are crystallizing again. Domestic turmoil
in Germany has temporarily obscured the differences
between the bourgeois liberals and the Junker barons,
but in the duality of Teutonic relationships with
Russia the old antagonism has become as obvious
as it ever was in the heyday of the spiked helmet.
The Junkers, deprived now of the control of the
German state, have found that they have much in
common with certain sometime-subjects of the Tsar.
In their eastvyard movement these Junker imperial-
ists march not alone, but as the latest comers in a
great historic procession. Charlemagne himself
began the " drang nach Osten "; in the later Middle
Ages the Teutonic Knights carried the fear of the
German name around the bend of the Baltic; Prus-
sian kings and German emperors were the proud
heirs of a policy of eastward expansion which
found late expression in pre-war efforts to plant
Teutonic farmers upon the soil of German Poland,
and in the subsequent attempt to dominate Ukrainia
and the whole of Great Russia. It is precisely this
historic aspect of the Imperial Germany's Eastern
policy that is now proving most disconcerting to
the leaders of the Russian counter-revolution. The
help of German Junkers against the Bolsheviki is
indeed acceptable. And if reaction once gets the
upper hand in Russia, men enough can be spared to
give the Junkers a very respectable backing against
the bourgeois government at Berlin. But will the
Germans then consider themselves paid in full? Or
will these kinsmen of the Teutonic barons of Lett-
via and Esthonia claim the Baltic shore as the price
-of their friendship? Perhaps it is an affirmative
answer to some such question as this that has
prompted Kolchak to leave von der Goltz's Baltic
army for the time being in the position of an unoffi-
cial member of the Holy Alliance—an active if not


1919
257
THE DIAL
an acknowledged partner of Britain, France, and
America in the work of counter-revolution. And
now, while we are making common cause with the
militarists we so devoutly damned a few months
ago, the German revolutionists who drove these
same militarists out of the Fatherland are drifting
farther and farther away from'Allied paths on a
Russian road of their own. The press dispatches
that deal with the Russian comedy of errors refer
freely to the Junkers and the other reactionaries
now of our party as counter-revolutionists; and
these same dispatches bring news of increasingly
friendly relations between Social-Democratic Ger-
many and Soviet Russia — unequal partners in
revolutionary progress. It is reported that Ger-
man agents are establishing commercial connec-
tions here and there in the Soviet Republic;
and—better yet—it is " even rumored that Ger-
man goods are finding their way into Russia by
devious routes through Poland, Czechoslovakia,
and the Ukraine. This is the sort of peaceful com-
mercial expansion that we recommended to Ger-
many before the war. And now, despite our
alliance with the German party that would be con-
tent with nothing less than imperialist military ex-
pansion, Germany is practicing what we preached.
The only legitimate way to meet this trade competi-
tion is to trade on our own account—and to begin
in a hurry before Germany actually succeeds in es-
tablishing a,monopoly of the Russian market. Per-
haps our business men will see the wisdom of this
course. If they do, we will have bourgeois Ger-
many to thank for it that the blockade has been
broken. If they do not, there is every hope that the
German-Russian commercial alliance will become
strong enough to protect the Soviet Republic from
destruction by Allied, German, and Russian mili-
tarism. Thus the German revolution, despised and
incomplete, may yet be the means of saving Europe
from a holocaust of reaction.
The complacent amplitude of the words
"All-Russian "—appropriated now by the forces
of reaction—must tempt the curious mind to impose
a test of applicability; perhaps to ask just what pro-
portion of Russia's humanity is politically "All-
Russian" today. Now it is obviously impossible
to answer this question so long as every party to the
Russian controversy claims that by its own acquisi-
tions of territory the inhabitants are delivered from
a previous unwilling allegiance. However, with
the aid of the latest census of Russia by provinces,
supplemented by a wall map upon which current
military information has been entered, it is possi-
ble to arrive at a rough estimate of the strength of
the populations now controlled by the several con-
tending parties. According to the most recent es-
timate of the Russian Central Statistical Committee
(1915). tne population of the Empire is more than
182,000,000. Examining first the new nationalistic
enterprises, we find that some eleven millions of
people live within territories now occupied by
Ukrainian troops; in view of the long history of
Ukrainian nationalism, the unconfirmed report that
this country has abandoned her independence as a
condition of her alliance with Denikin is hardly to
be credited. Poland claims sovereignty over the
twelve million inhabitants of Russian Poland, and
is attempting also to dominate the seven million
people of Minsk and Volhynia—provinces which
have recently come within the sphere of Polish
military operations. Farther north, the several Bal-
tic states now control a territory inhabited by about
twelve million people, distributed approximately as
follows: Lithuania, 6,000,000; Lettvia (Livonia
and Courland), 2,500,000; Esthonia, 500,000; Fin-
land, 3,300,000. Thus the various small nations
carved wholly or in part from the Empire actually
control today about fourty-four million people—
not quite one-fourth of all the former subjects of
the Czar. Coming now to deal with the popula-
tions subject to Kolchak we find that the inhabitants
of North Russia number about 1,600,000, those of
the Denikin area in South Russia 15,000,000, and
those of Siberia 10,375,000; twenty-seven millions
all told—about one-seventh of the population of
imperial Russia. There remain now several regions
which are for the present of little military sig-
nificance, as their inhabitants are taking no very
definite or active part in the struggle for the mastery
of Russia. These regions are nevertheless located
behind the Kolchak lines and are presumably acces-
sible to his forces: Cis-Caucasia, 5,700,000 in-
habitants; Trans-Caucasia, 13,200,000; the Steppes,
4,000,000; and Turkestan, 6,700,000. Finally it
may be noted that Roumania has seized Bessarabia,
thus eliminating the 2,700,000 inhabitants of this
region from the Russian melange. Now if Kolchak
is credited with a fairly active control of one-sev-
enth of the population of Russia, and with the po-
tential control of another sixth, the maximum popu-
lation of "All-Russia" still stands at less than a
third of the strength of the old Empire. The ad-
dition, on the basis of an unconfirmed report, of
the entire population of the area occupied by the
Ukrainian armies raises the total to a little more
than a third. If the evidence of these figures is
accepted and if due weight is given to the reports
of Bolshevist activities in Siberia and the Caucasus,
to the historic dissonances of Roman Catholic, Greek
Orthodox, Mohammedan, and Armenian religions,
Tartar and Slavic stocks, tribal quarrels and na-
tionalistic ambitions, there will be no further dif-
ficulty in determining why it is that Kolchak, at
the head of this hetrogeneous mob, can make no
headway against the solid block of nearly eighty mil-
lion people now united in the Soviet Republic—'
the real All-Russia.


258
September 20
THE DIAL
Casual Comment
r REQUENTLY THE DEFEAT OF MILITARY TRAIN-
ing in schools carries with it the defeat of all organ-
ized physical training. So it is encouraging that the
movement for physical education has received new
momentum, and perhaps a new direction, from our
wartime experience. Military statistics have dis-
closed in vivid fashion the scale of our national de-
ficiencies in health. At the same time we have
had an object lesson in the benefits of system-
atic physical education from our training camps,
which—however clumsy and inappropriate theii
methods, and however baneful their effect on indi-
vidual initiative and responsibility—have, on the-
whole, converted the flabby in health into the ro-
bust, and the lackadaisical in spirits into the exu-
berant. The proponents of universal military train-
ing base much of their plea upon this physical trans-
formation. If it can be secured to our youth through
other means, we shall hear less about the supposed
advantages of that regimen in terms of obedience
to authority and the like. To secure it through
compulsory measures in the public schools, the
Playground and Recreation Association of America
has established a national Physical Education Serv-
ice to spread information and stimulate legislation.
The Service does not put forward compulsory phys-
ical training as quite the millennial panacea that the
militarists profess universal military training to be.
They mention " good housing, good food, and sane
regulation of juvenile labor" as "equally neces-
sary" to the production of a sound citizenry; but
they hold that a proper physical education will
stimulate the development of these corollary agen-
cies. By proper physical education they seem to
mean—and here appears what promises the new
direction in the movement—something more than
perfunctory setting-up exercises and irrelevant imi-
tations of the manual of arms. They talk about
"individual physical examinations at sufficiently
close intervals to secure an accurate record of the ■
child's development" and about "provision for the
correction of deficient bodily conditions that impair
health." They cite new French legislation that
inaugurates outdoor colonies.for physically defective
children, reorganizes the school medical inspection
systems, and aims at simplification of curricula,
"which are frightfully overloaded and tend to de-
stroy energy." They report the reorganization of
the English educational system to admit compulsory
training and athletics between the ages of six and
eighteen, with special provision for physical exami-
nation, for the treatment of mental and physical
defectives, and for the establishing of baths and
swimming pools. In short, their discussion en-
visages measures at once preventive and corrective.
But it should be obvious, even to the state
legislature, that measures which will prevent and
correct such conditions must be very different
from the routine "physiology" and impersonal
"drills" at present inflicted on our already over-
driven school children. Once more the American
educational establishment has an opportunity, and
the assistance of European models, to provide a
humane system that will discriminate between indi-
viduals and work flexibly to attain its ends. If once
more we succumb to our national vice of standard-
ization and merely erect an additional machine to
which pupils must adapt themselves or be broken,
we shall only be worse off than before war showed
us how badly off we were.
If the wives of statesmen, befriended by the
Carnegie annuity, have any knowledge of the work-
ings of the Carnegie Pension System for the ad-
vancement of teaching they will not accept the be-
quest until they look their gift-horse rather carefully
in the mouth. Professor J. McKeen Cattell's essay
on Carnegie Pensions (Science Press; New York)
supplemented by extracts from 214 academic letters,
contains words of prudent counsel for those who
habitually forget the destination of the road paved
with good intentions. Mr. Carnegie's ten million
dollar foundation seemed an imposing bequest at
the beginning. But as soon as the foundation
started to operate its retirement benefit plan,
it found itself in the distresing situation made mem-
orable by the bookkeeping of Mr. Micawber,. its
outlay proved greater than its income, and since
that time the officers of the foundation have trimmed
the sails of their educational policy continually and
have sought to hide their own lugubrious lack of
financial foresight by animadversions on the defects
of free pensions upon human nature, in a manner not
calculated to "encourage, uphold, and dignify the
cause of higher education." (As a matter of fact,
the foundation at length became insolvent in all but
legal status, and was forced to apply to the Carnegie
Trust for further financial relief.) From year to
year the purpose of the Fund has been shifted and
twisted. At first it was a reward for good work and
an incitement to scholarship, then a relief of disa-
bility, and now in its final form it has lost all tincture
of the founder's brilliant philanthropy, and has be-
come a shabby mechanism whereby the Butlers and
Pritchetts of the educational world may bully their
colleagues into orthodoxy and propriety. The
new pension system is a simple life insurance
scheme, compulsory to every member of the
teaching staff of the university that accepts it. It
is at last a sound business proposition perhaps, but
in that case it offers no greater satisfaction than
regular commercial insurance, and the college
teacher has a sense of being cheated by a promise
unfulfilled without being benefited by the offer of
a substitute. A centralized, compulsory pension
system has, dangerous possibilities of limiting
academic freedom, and while a system of insurance
on this basis may rob death of its sting it may equally
well rob life of its virtue.


1919
259
THE DIAL
T HE AVERAGE NEWSPAPER OFFICE STILL REMAINS
a stronghold of cynicism when it comes to " colleges
of journalism." Despite the best intentions in the
world, the embryo newspaperman displaying a uni-
versity label is apt to find that his credentials win
him nothing but a skeptical smile. He may be a
good reporter, but it remains to be proved—that is
the usual attitude of the veterans of the "city
room." His successes are heavily discounted.
And the worst of it is that the prevailing attitude
of doubt has a considerable basis in fact, and un-
doubtedly will continue to have so long as pro-
fessors of journalism are recruited from the ranks of
editorial wool-gatherers instead of reportorial news-
gatherers. Our colleges and universities have fallen
into the practice of filling their professorships with
out-dated newspapermen capable by the old
standards and traditions, but more or less com-
pletely out of tune with the aggressive, resourceful
methods which prevail in metropolitan offices. These
men, who have gradually slackened pace and
dropped into editorial chairs, are naturally attracted
to an opportunity to teach. In many instances, the
call comes from their own alma mater. They are
partially reabsorbed in the college atmosphere, and
unconsciously they drift further and further from
the mad current of the daily press. They teach
journalism out of the fullness of their textbooks.
Engrossed in vague reminiscent aspects of "news-
paper ethics," they sometimes lose their grip on the
common or garden variety of newspaper ethics—
the ethics of " sticking to the sheet," the ethics which
may allow you to damn your paper verbally, but
which makes you work like a Trojan to beat the
other fellow to the news, doggedly determined not
to "fall down," or—what is far more odious—
"lie down" on a story. No real reporter, raised
from a cub, would ever try to justify himself if he
did what one professor of journalism did recently,
while " filling in " during the summer months on a
metropolitan daily. On the night of a primary elec-
tion, he was assigned to the board of elections with
instructions to telephone the returns at half-hourly
intervals. Now there is an unwritten law in the
newspaper world that everybody works election
nights, regardless of whether he has been on duty
during the day or not. However, around eleven
o'clock that evening, returns from the board of
election suddenly ceased, and inquiry developed
the fact that the professor had "left a long
time ago." A telephone call to his residence
revealed that he had gone to bed. A brief con-
versation, in which the professor affirmed that
he "wasn't going to work day and night for any-
one" and asked "what did they take him for?"
brought the hot retort that he was " fired." When
the professor revises his admirable textbook on jour-
nalism one wonders what use—if any—he will
make of this episode. Might it not serve as the text
for a new chapter, to be called. Ethics Versus Eight
Hours* Sleep?
There was a time when tub natural scikncks
were everywhere hampered by the type of religious
prejudice that brands as heresy any interpretation
of new data that runs contrary to the pre-estublished
dogmas of orthodoxy. Today, however, scientific
discussion of worlds-from-star-dust and niun-from-
the-amoeba arouse no more than the echoed thunder
of an old resentment. It is not to be supposed on
this account that human sentiments and emotions
are no longer sensitive to the scientific challenge.
What has really happened is this: the feelings
that formerly clung to the church are now in
large measure clustered about two other sacro-
sanct institutions—private property, and the national
state. In consequence, while the biologists go their
way in peace, the social scientists arc menaced with
all the hallowed spooks that did service when man
was in the first agonies of accepting the monkey.
It just happens that by some perversity of fate
the last five years have brought forth a mass of eco-
nomic and political data that demands analysis, and
have at the same time produced a psychological com-
plex that makes a scientific handling of this material
well nigh impossible. The serviceability of political
nationalism has been pretty severely tested by the
war. Some men dared to question the theory
of private property. Partisanship runs high, and
science groans under the double strain of super-
abundant material and const riding emotions.
Science—but not always the scientist—to use the
term most loosely. Charles Downer Ha/.en, for
instance, comes joyously to the task of defending
man against the monkey. His Fifty Years of
Europe (Holt) offers fifteen chapters of tolerably
unbiased history, written before the war when it
wasn't very hard to be unbiased, as a preface to one
chapter of excited propaganda finished on armistice
day, when cool heads were few and precious. If
Mr. Hazen had waired till the Allies got through
with Germany, he might have been willing to drop
some of the adjectives we find attached to the Teu-
ton name; of course he would not in any cav have
considered placing these colorful modifier* to the
discredit of any other nation. Hit arraignment of
the Bolshcviki will probably be accepted a* authori-
tative for some weeks to come.
EDITORS
Martyn Johnson
Oswald W. Knalth
Robert Morss Lovett
Helen Marot
THORSTEIN VeBLEN
Anociatet
Clarence Britt>.n
Lewis Mumford
Ceroid Robinson


260
September 20
THE DIAL
Communications
The Struggle of Struggling Russia
Sir: Kolchak's chief press agent in this country
is hurt by my last articles on Russia. He has under-
taken a series of personal attacks on me in the pages
of Struggling Russia. My literary and revolution-
ary record gives me the right and carries with it an
obligation to write all that I know on Russia, but
at the same time does not require me to answer
aspersions of personal character from hired agents.
1 am glad only that the facts, which I referred
to are "repudiated" in a very peculiar manner.
Let us give a few examples, since it would be im-
possible to analyze Mr. Sack's prolix articles in
entirety.
1. Struggling Russia writes (August 23, 1919):
Bashkirov is the accredited representative in this coun-
try of the Siberian Union of Creamery Societies and had
every right and reason to sign the pro-Kolchak proclama-
tion.
I wrote and 1 repeat again: Bashkirov is not a
cooperative man, he was never elected regularly and
is therefore not a lawful representative.
2. Struggling Russia denies that the Allies are
the main support of the Russian "loyal" Govern-
ments.
Even the New York Times reports that the
British fleet bombards Russian cities and—Mr. Sack
is not aware of it!
3. The editor of Kolchak's magazine does not
answer at all to my statement that the " high com-
missioner of the Omsk Government" in Washing-
ton, Mr. Okoulich, was expelled by the representa-
tives of the Russian Cooperatives from London, be-
cause of his close connections with British capitalists
who aimed economically to colonize Russia.
4. Struggling Russia keeps silent about the
pogromist Platon. Twice (in the New Republic
and in The Dial) Platon was denounced and I
asked why Mr. Sack is putting Jewish leaders in
touch with a pogromist of the Czar? No answer
followed. Only after the Nation wrote openly that
that fact is known in some circles, Mr. Sack an-
swered: "Metropolitan Platon does not need our
defense" (sic) and further: "Prominent repre-
sentatives of the American Jewry visited him to
express to him their sympathy." 1 emphasize that
these lines were written by Mr. Sack only after he
was compelled to do so by the American liberal
press and he still tries to convince the Jewish leaders
that Platon is a democrat and then shows his reader
that Platon is a democrat because the Jewish lead-
ers came to his house. They did not come, they
were deceived and brought by Mr. Sack.
5. Struggling Russia asserts that there is in
stenographic reports of the third Duma a statement
in favor of Platon "which never was repudiated."
I could not find anything of this nature in the
stenographic reports, but suppose for the moment it
is true! So much the worse, because Mr. Sack
again deceives the American public, since the third
Duma is known as the pogrom and reactionary
Duma. The few liberals who were there were help-
less before the forces of the black majority. The
same Duma adopted a resolution (after a motion
of Bishop Mitrophan) in which the liberals were
called criminals and in which the Duma protested
against calling the Czar only monarch, and left him
die name of "Czar and Autocrat of All-Russia,"
whose power comes from God and cannot be re-
stricted by any institution. (See stenographic Teport
of the session of November 13, 1907). The third
Duma was guilty in the famous white terror and
the shameful process of Beiliss, whose main organ-
izer, Lamislovsky, was the leader of the Pogrom and
Octobrist majority of the third Duma and who
worked in May 1907 with Platon and others near
the Czar in their plot against the Duma itself.
Struggling Russia began with Breshkovsky: I wrote
then that Sack was abusing a great name. Now it is
evident. He defends the pogrom makers, the
Czarist people, the Black Hundred, here in this
country. It is easy to infer what his chiefs are doing
in Siberia.
With these lines I finish my answer and will not
reply any more to Mr. Sack because I cannot reply
to a man who speaks democracy and shakes Platon's
hands, which are to my mind still dyed with Jewish
blood. _ „,
Gregory Zilboorc.
New York City.
An Open Letter on Mexico
Sir: Mexico, on declaring her independence of
the motherland, established a republican govern-
ment and was -unfortunately betrayed by her ad-
miration of this country into the adoption of a fed-
eral system, for which no foundation had been laid
in her previous history. From this cause, added to
her inexperience in self government and to the want
of intelligence among the mass of her population,
her institutions have yielded very imperfectly the
fruits of freedom. The country has been rent by
factions, the capitol convulsed by revolutions, and
the chief office of the state been secured by the
military to popular chieftains.
The emigrants from this country (the United
States) . . . went with open eyes, with full
knowledge of the unsettled state of affairs, into this
region of misrule and agitation.
That they were not always wisely governed, that
their rights were not always respected, who can
doubt? What else could be expected? Mexico is
not wise. Mexico is not skilled in the science of
human rights. Her civilization is very imperfect,
as we . . . have always known, and a good
government is one of the slowest fruits of civiliza-
tion. In truth a good government exists nowhere.
The errors and vices of rulers entail on every state.
Nothing is easier than for any and every people
to draw up a list of wrongs; nothing more ruinous
than to rebel because every claim is not treated with.


1919
261
THE DIAL
respect. A colony emigrating from a highly civilized
country has no right to expect in a less favored state
the privileges it has left behind.
. . . (They) must have been insane if on
entering Mexico they looked for an administration
as faultless as that under which they lived. They
might with equal reason have planted themselves
in Russia, and then have unfurled the banner of
independence near the throne of the Czar, because
denied the immunities of their native land.
I now proceed to consider the real and great
causes of the revolt.
The first great cause was the unbounded unprin-
cipled spirit of land speculation. To show the scale
on which this kind of plunder has been carried on,
it may be stated that the legislature of Coahuila
. . . in open violation of the laws of Mexico
were induced "by a company of land speculators,
never distinctly known, to grant them, in considera-
tion of twenty thousand dollars, the extent of five
hundred square leagues of the public land." This
transaction was disavowed and the grant annulled
by the Mexican government.
Great numbers in this country have nominal
titles to land, which can only be substantiated by
setting aside the authority of the General Congress
of Mexico, and are, of consequence directly and
strongly interested in severing this province from
the Mexican Confederacy.
They looked abroad, and to whom did they look?
To any foreign state? To the government under
which they had formerly lived? No; their whole
reliance was placed on selfish individuals in a neigh-
boring republic at peace with Mexico.
Modern times furnish no example of individual
rapine on so large a scale. It is nothing less than
the robbery of a realm. The pirate seizes a ship.
The colonists and their coadjutors can satisfy them-
selves with nothing short of an empire. They have
left their Anglo-Saxon ancestors behind them. It is
from a well ordered, enlightened Christian country
that hordes have gone forth, in open day, to per-
petrate this mighty wrong.
Does it consist with national honor, with national
virtue, to receive to our embrace men who have
prospered by crimes which we were bound to repro-
bate and repress?
The United States have not been just to Mexico.
Our citizens did not steal singly, silently, in dis-
guise, into that land. Their purpose of dismember-
ing Mexico and attaching her distant province to
this country was not wrapt in mystery. It was pro-
claimed in our public prints. The government,
indeed, issued its proclamation, forbidding these
hostile preparations, but this was a dead letter.
Are we willing to take our place among robber-
states? As a people, have we no self-respect? Have
we no reverence for national morality? Have we
no feeling of responsibility to other nations and to
Him by whom the fates of nations are disposed?
William Ellery Chaining.
To Henry Clay, Boston, 1837.
Reconstructing the Classics
Sir: The interesting article by Royal Case
Nemiah in your Spring Educational Number seemed
to me to be less an argument for the reconstruction of
the classics than for courses in comparative literature.
Indeed, such schools as the University of Wisconsin
in its department of comparative literature and the
University of Texas in its school of general litera-
ture are offering precisely the course in epic poetry
which Mr. Nemiah unwittingly outlined.
Mr. Nemiah bases his reform upon the high
school. "In the secondary schools the main object
must always be mastery of the formal and syntactical
elements of the language..." he writes, but he
adds "inasmuch as this discussion has to do with
university problems it is permissible to pass over
those which have to do with elementary instruction."
This is precisely what is the matter with the classics.
High school students who have to devote themselves
to grubbing out Latin verbs are not likely to develop
a passion for Virgil. It is at least instructive to
imagine what would happen if the high schools
should read the classics in translation; postponing
the mastery of the formal and syntactical elements
of the language until the students have had an op-
portunity to see the forest without being perpetual-
ly troubled by the trees.
Mr. Nemiah seems to argue that a knowledge
of the language is necessary to an appreciation of
the literature of Greece and Rome. I hesitate to
thresh old straw; but we have respectable authority
for translation. Emerson, it will be recalled, pre-
ferred to read his classics in English, that broad sea
which receives all rivers in its bosom; and Keats,
the most purely Greek of all our poets, could not
read the tongue of Homer. We do lose in transla-
tion; the question is how much can we afford to
lose? Here we may make a distinction. Lyric, poetry
is, for instance, too intimately bound up with the
genius of the language to be readily translatable.
The sorry " translations " of Heine are evidence of
the immalleability of his Lieder. But with epic
poetry and drama the loss is less; and with prose
it reduces itself to a minimal quantity. The study
of general literature proceeds upon the pragmatic
theory that it is better to have read Homer in Eng-
lish than not to have read him at all. I confess
that for the general student this seems to me to be
the wise attitude.
In short, I trust that university reconstruction
will involve an increasing importance for the study
of comparative literature. The students should be
linguistically equipped if they can be; but if they
must read translations, let them read the best rather
than not read at all. I confess that the sunset
stealing over Greek and Latin seems to me ineluct-
able; we cannot, like Joshua, bid the luminary
stand still; and this being the case, we need courses
in general literature as the next best substitute.
Howard Mumford Jones,
Missoula, Montana.


262
September 20
THE DIAL
Notes on New Books
French Educational Ideals of Today.
Edited by Ferdinand Buisson and Frederic
Ernest Farrington. 326 pages. World Book
Co., Yonkers-on-Hudson.
Here is a volume on education that contributes
nothing to the discussion of the comparative values
of basket weaving and the three R's, football and
calisthenics, stenography and the ' Gallic War.
Rather it shows the French Republic face to face
with a problem the existence of which has hardly
been acknowledged in America—the problem of
moral education. In America public education pro-
ceeds for the most part on the comfortable assump-
tion that the Church still looks after this sort of
thing. France can nurse no such delusion. The re-
lation of the Republic with the Church is not one
of casual indifference but of positive enmity. The
Revolutionary tradition of human dignity, the free-
dom of the will, and the rights of man prepared
France to dispense with the spiritual counsel of the
Church, but on no account could moral education
be allowed to remain in the hands of an institution
thus alienated from the State. Spiritually the chil-
dren of France might be Catholics if it so pleased
them; morally they must be citizens of the Republic.
"Since the Revolution," says Gabriel Seailles, one
of the contributors to the volume under considera-
tion, "national unity no longer rests upon sectarian
unity, and this implies that civil society finds in
itself, in its own conscience, if I may use the word,
the principles which permit it to organize and to
maintain itself . . . Society is capable of
giving and is obliged to give its members an edu-
cation whose elements are based upon its own re-
quirements and its own aspirations." It is with
the profound problems created by this situation that
Julus Ferry, Ernest Lavisse, Jean Jauras, Georges
Clemenceau, Ferdinand Buisson, Emile Durckheim,
and most of the other contributors to this anthology
of French educational thought are chiefly concerned.
One does not attempt to brief the contributions to
such a discussion. One recommends simply in all
earnestness that they be read.
The English Elementary School. By
A. W. Newton. 299 pages. Longmans, Green.
Comparative Education. Edited by Peter
Sandiford. 500 pages. Dutton.
The English Elementary School is an informative
book. Its author, as inspector of schools, has had
the opportunity to gather the materials for a com-
plete educational Baedeker, a cross between a his-
tory and a guidebook. Types of schools, the makeup
of school boards, the appointment of teachers, and
the methods of finance—in short, the administrative
side of the school is what occupies Mr. Newton's
attention. The broader aspects of his subject the
author does not touch upon. Nevertheless there
are points of immediate American interest. The
New York school teacher will note with satisfaction,
for example, that the system of ratings which ties
them hand and foot was discarded in England many
years ago. The freedom of the English school unit
becomes evident, again, in the examination of various
national school systems brought together under the
editorial direction of Mr. Sandiford. English
teachers, it appears, suffer less external control than
those of any other nation, and there is plenty of
elbow room for experiment and local adaptation.
But England is still at heart aristocratic, or at least
oligarchic, and the school system also has followed
caste distinctions, a dividing line being drawn be-
tween the "public" schools and the traditional
Public Schools. For democratic practice the ex-
ample of Denmark is most pregnant, an example
not sufficiently taken to heart in our rural regions.
The Danish folk high school has turned depressed
country louts into intelligent cooperative farmers,
and has checked the drift from the land to the cities
by offering the farm workers the cultural advantages
of citizenship. The Danish school system does not
stop at an artificially determined "school age":
it is a meeting place for the entire adult community,
and it provides an atmosphere of song, gymnastics,
and play which surrounds all the "practical"
work of instruction. •
Letters to Teachers. By Hartley Burr
Alexander. 253 pages. Open Court; Chicago.
Problems of the Secondary Teacher. By
William Jerusalem. Translated by Charles F.
Sanders. 253 pages. Badger, Boston.
Both Professor Alexander and Professor Jerusa-
lem are philosophers and humanists, and they are
both concerned with the methods and aims of teach-
ing. But at this point their similarity ends; for
educational tradition in Nebraska is still in the mak-
ing, and Professor Alexander is concerned that
it should be formed in the spirit of liberalism and
the humanities, while in Vienna education is stiff
with the precepts and the precedents of the drill-
master and the administrator, and Professor Jeru-
salem's suggestions at their most daring pitch only
hint how the weight of the burden may be borne
with a little better grace. If the teacher wishes an
insight into the workings of the German educational
system, as it impinges itself on a mind that has
sought freedom within its limits, Professor Jerusa-
lem's text will serve admirably; but if he seeks
inspiration and criticism and personal suggestion for
dealing with his own day-to-day problems he will
find that Letters to Teachers is a book to be placed
on the same shelf as those Talks to Teachers; whose
place in the literature of education is now well-nigh
hallowed. Professor Alexander is concerned to com-
bat the spirit of regimentation, of administrative
centralization, of an illiberal curriculum, of stand-
ardization, of servility to texts and methods, in short


1919
263
THE DIAL
of the dangers that threaten every good institution
■when the forms dominate the spirit and subdue it.
Those who talk glibly of a National System of
Education would do well to ponder Professor Alex-
ander's criticism. Is the gain of a universal stand-
ard throughout the nation worth the risk of empha-
sizing system to the neglect of education? A glance
at Professor Jerusalem's book should confirm the
negative reply!
New Schools for Old.
337 pages- Dutton.
By Evelyn Dewey.
Miss Dewey tells a story of a remarkable revolu-
tion which was accomplished in a farming district
in Missouri. The heroine of the story is the teacher
of the little district school. Mrs. Harvey went to
the school with a plot but no plans. While a
teacher in the Kirkwell Normal School she had
come to understand why the school failed to in-
terest the pupils although it had introduced a
curriculum consonant with modern school practice
and related to rural life. The trouble with this
school was that it treated rural life in the abstract
and passed by the actual problems of the particular
community for which the school was established.
Mrs. Harvey wertt to the Porter School with the
determination to discover what the problems of the
district were. The second spring after her arrival
the blister beetle appeared. The school, with the
advice of farm bulletins, helped in the extermina-
tion of the beetles. After an investigation of the
best preventive measures in use the school took the
lead in heading off the hog cholera. Mrs. Harvey
did not enter the district as a disciple of scientific
agriculture, but the result of her entry was that the
practice of the community in dealing with its prob-
lems was supported by the scientific technique which
the school introduced. The problems were no
longer isolated personal affairs but matters of gen-
eral interest, and because of this they received all
the time and attention which their solution required.
There is no graduation day at the Porter School,
as there is no separation between school and com-
munity interests. And what is final proof for the
farmers that Mrs. Harvey had wrought a revolu-
tion is that the young people for the most part
remain in the district. Miss Dewey's story por-
trays a succession of developments which are rich
and stimulating in suggestion for all people who
are interested in education, problems of coopera-
tive effort, and rural life.
The Colleges in War Time and After.
By Parke Rexford Kolbe. 320 pages.
Appleton.
Dr. Kolbe, as a special collaborator in the United
States Bureau of Education, is well qualified to
compile statistics on collegiate participation in the
nation's war program. His bookj one of the
Wickware series on problems of war and recon-
struction, shows the marks of extensive inquiry and
investigation, and represents the accumulation of
many pertinent figures and facts. Although one
cannot always accept his deductions without a grain
of salt, yet one must be grateful to him for the mate-
rial which he presents. The book does not propose
to be a scientific consideration of reconstruction
problems for the colleges and universities of Amer-
ica. It is simply a record of their unanimous
response to the call of war, of the adjustments which
they were sometimes eager and sometimes com-
pelled to make, and of their almost universal suc-
cess in maintaining themselves through the trials
and difficulties of a dangerous period. It is true
that Dr. Kolbe occasionally theorizes concerning
significant problems of higher education which the
war has poked out of a somewhat dormant state of
discussion, but his main purpose is not the solution
of these, only their presentation. He forecasts a
growing nationalization of the universities, the four-
quarter plan of curriculum, a well-justified increase
in the pay of college instructors, new intensive train-
ing courses modeled after the Army and Navy types,
the substitution of Spanish and French for German,
a great demand for college-trained women, and a
rapid popularization and democratization of all
institutes of higher learning. He advocates a Sec-
retary of Education to have a place in the Presi-
dent's cabinet, an acceptance of some kind of mili-
tary training, an Intercollegiate Intelligence Bureau
for the proper placement of college products, and
the liberal expenditure of government funds in the
promotion of college research for the public good.
Nor does he forget to say, " It should be the solemn
duty of the colleges to encourage classical study in
every possible way in the years to come, so that its
humanizing influence may not be entirely lost to
our modern civilization."
It is readily seen that he has nothing new to
offer. His most startling recommendation is the
establishment of a constitutional Department of
Education, which has been discussed and advocated
for many months by the N.E.A., the Bureau of
Education, and other pedagogic institutions. He
is much too kind to be acceptably honest. He
camouflages the practical failure of the S.A.T.C.
with a thick coat of gentle apologies and good-
hearted explanations; yet it was that very S.A.T.C.
system which laid such a heavy burden of financial
loss and internal adjustment on the colleges and
universities of the country that it almost broke the
backs of many. His record, however, is built in
general on undeniably accurate information, since
it comes from the institutions themselves, and his
appendices present a complete list of all military
units authorized, the regulations and curricula of
both R.O.T.C. and S.A.T.C, and important data
on the actual war contribution of six large repre-
sentative universities.


264
September 20
THE DIAL
The Mental Hygiene of Childhood. By
William A. White. 193 pages. Little,
Brown; Boston.
The Child's Unconscious Mind. The
Relations of Psychoanalysis to Education. By
.Wilfred Lay. 325 pages. Dodd, Mead.
The reader of this book feels that Dr. White's
experience with children and adults who have failed
from difficulties in mental adjustment must be of
great value for those who have to do with children
who may yet be saved from failure. Unfortunately
the message is not presented in a manner that will
reach the very people who have greatest need for it;
namely, the masses of parents without technical
training, or without special ability in translating
concentrated abstractions into practical conduct. Dr.
White emphasizes the sexual elements in the child's
impulses, and the normal antagonisms between
parents and children—two sets of forces that have
been obscured by convention but that continue to
do their work in spite of society's disregard of them.
The chapter on The Family Situation is excellent,
and if the reader started with this one, much of the
earlier part would be more intelligible. It is to be
hoped that Dr. White will write another book that
will make his substantial contribution to this field
more generally available.
We are in great need of books that will effectively
introduce teachers and parents to the subject of
the child's unconscious mind. As in all other de-
partments of thought and education, the ordinary
classroom teacher is a generation behind the in-
vestigations that should furnish the essentials of his
method and his subject matter; and anything that
will bring the school's procedure and the results
of research a little closer together deserves hearty
commendation and encouragement. The person who
has not yet had his first introduction to the modern
analytical psychology will hardly find in Dr. Lay's
book the means for overcoming the usual prejudices
and resistances, although the presentation is here
much simpler than he is likely to find elsewhere in
an English treatise. From a pedagogical view-
point the work is very uneven. The treatment of
introjection, for example, is lucid and helpful; the
treatment of rationalization, which has such great
possibilities for the teacher, and the treatment of
the partial trends, are far from satisfactory. The
author sees social and educational possibilities in
exhibitionism; but sees only tendencies to repress in
the others. He has a real appreciation of ambiv-
alence; but unless the reader already understands
what to do about it, this book will hardly help him.
Dr. Lay rightly emphasizes the need for bringing
the work of the classroom closer to the realities of
the outside world; the school is still too much a
cloister. But his own suggestions of reality strike
one as verging on the academic, to say the least.
His introduction of the spelling bee method as a
means of getting immediate rewards and punish-
ments for training for adult life is characteristic of
his interpretation of realities. Thus, he emphasizes
the importance of giving special consideration to the
exceptional children who are the seeds of the future's
progress (children who are not going to be helped
if the ordinary teacher learns that they are called
"neurotics ") ; yet he insists that the efforts of the
teacher be directed toward fitting the children to
living in the late-Victorian era of commercial com-
petition. Again, he attributes the low efficienq^ of
industrial workers not trained in modern scientific
standardized motions to the "unconscious wish " to
keep down production. Here the author uncon-
sciously tells us what newspapers he reads.
But Dr. Lay has written the first book we have
in this field, and we shall have to use it until a
better one comes along.
Applied Eugenics. By Paul Popenoe and
Roswell Hill Johnson. 459 pages. Macmillan.
This book on eugenics has all the weight of ex-
ternal authority, because it is written by Paul
Popenoe, the editor of the Journal of the American
Genetics Association, and Prof. Roswell Hill John-
son of the University of Pittsburgh, in such skilful
collaboration that it is hard to tell where one begins
and the other leaves off. Unfortunately it tries to
preserve an even balance between the followers of
Mendelian research and the biometric school of Karl
Pearson, and in so doing it inevitably does injustice
to those who believe that heredity is a matter of
biology and not of logarithms. It is true that ex-
treme statements of the Mendelian school need
modification, and the terminology of this new
method needs clarification, but the hope of students
of heredity lies in this approach to the problem. In
The Progress of Eugenics, published in 1910, Pro-
fessor Caleb W. Saleeby said of the Eugenics
Records Office that it "has applied the principles
of a new department of knowledge to the study of
human heredity and has added more to our exact
knowledge of that fundamental subject, in the last
four years than all preceding time could record."
A prophet is not without honor save in his own
country, and the authors make only two slighting
references to the Eugenics Records Office. There
is no summary of the Mendelian law, although it
should be explained for the benefit of the lay reader;
yet there are several plates and diagrams to
illustrate the Pearsonian doctrine, although they
would be better fitted for a textbook on mathe-
matics. /
While it is disappointing to find such lack of
perspective in the chapters which deal with the
theoretic aspects of eugenics, the rest of the book
covers the ground very thoroughly, and contains
much new matter. The Kallikak family and the
Jukes are given somewhat of a rest, which must
ease them of the burden of being the stock example
of eugenics. There is ultimately discussion of segrc-


1919
265
THE DIAL
gation, sterilization, and other social remedies for
defective germplasm, and the authors discuss Social-
ism, Prohibition, the Single Tax, Religion, and
several other social themes, clearly but rather arbi-
trarily with reference to their bearing on the
eugenic problem.
The Starling. By Juliet Wilbor Tompkins.
267 pages. Bobbs-Merrill.
There is no novelty in the theme of The Starling
—the pathetic repressions which may be inflicted by
home environment upon a child—but the author
has handled it with such insight and such artistry
that it seems almost new. The central character,
that of the daughter of a professor who wraps his
sensitive feelings in the mantle of a domestic martyr
in lieu of some more human dressing-gown, is
sketched with deft strokes and with a freedom from
mawkish exaggeration. One is permitted to watch
the development of character with' a certain detach-
ment, but with the sympathies constantly alert. In
a word, the author's pen has kept pace with the
story wi^Jjput prodding it. The most successful por-
tion of the book is the earlier chapters, in which the
child reacts most keenly to the cramping personality
of a father who must not be disturbed and whose
wishes are mandates of isolation. These pages are
marked by imagination and restraint. Toward the
close of the story, the author falls into well-worn
grooves of conformity, and the love interest is ren-
dered in the conventional molds. The style, with
its undercurrent of tolerant humor, is smoothly
adapted1 to the narrative.
Oxford Poetry, 1918. Edited 5y T.W.E.,
E.F.A.G., and D.L.S. 55 pages. Longmans,
Green.
It is a curious gift of the English, a part of their
literary tradition that their merest balderdash is
written with a style that Americans are content to
admire without being able to imitate. One has but
to eompare the output of Oxford with the stuff pub-
lished in various American counterparts of this
university anthology to find in the former a quality
of its own. In the latest annual, however, this
quality is strained to its thinnest. The verse is
unhappily literary, full of those echoes common to
youth, and of the mild clamor over love and death
incident to the same season. It is the more dis-
appointing partly because one expects more from
rhe youth of England, partly because previous years
have made a better showing. The war, which must
have shaken Oxford deeply, seems hardly to have
touched her vocal men. Even Robert Nichols is
represented by such a stale, if technically careful,
piece of writing as Closing Lines from "Poly-
phemus His Passion": A Pastoral. The poem is
much like its title. T. W. Earp, whom one has
learned to look for, retreats to the cloister in some
pretty lines addressed to Our Lady of Light. One
sonnet is sufficiently occasional to prick interest: it
is called The Journalist, and denounces the unnamed
Northcliffe as one who " forged a chain to lead the
people by " and " pulled the strings that shook their
statesmen down." Margaret Leigh, who is its
author, made similar angry stabs at a diplomat and
a profiteer, respectively, which can hardly hurt
them, since the poems are epitaphs. Nor are they
the sort that echo in dead men's ears. The two
things worth consideration are a poem on a praying
idiot, by L. A. G. Strong, which is simple and vivid;
and the evocative, if not completely successful.
Incompatibility, by H. C. Harwood.
The Nemesis of Mediocrity. By Ralph
Adams Cram. 52 pages. Marshall Jones,
Boston.
The Great Thousand Years and Ten
Years After. By Ralph Adams Cram. 68
pages. Marshall Jones, Boston.
The Sins of the Fathers. By Ralph
Adams Cram. 114 pages. Marshall Jones,
Boston.
If you build Gothic churches on Fifth Avenue or
otherwise try to make modern life into medieval
molds, and if you find that the two sets of things
make a total failure of their partnership, you can
either find fault with the attempt to unite them or
you can find fault with modern life. That is what
Dr. Cram does in his three recent books. He does
it very well indeed; few people could read these
essays without finding themselves in frequent agree-
ment with the writer, for his arraignment of our
period is the result of careful study and is well
documented. But it is one thing to see an evil
and another to propose an effective remedy for it.
With all the interest that attaches to the author's
account of The Great Thousand Years, he is un-
convincing when he states that "the base of opera-
tions for the regime will be, so far as man can
make it, the base established by the era we call
Mediaevalism." Doubt comes into one's mind,
however, if only because of the length to which he
goes in his claims, as when, a few lines below, in
speaking of the period between the years 500 and
1500, he says: "Beside its ideals, its impulses, its
achievements, all that went before seems tentative,
all that follows—shall I say it?—slightly ridicu-
lous." We all like to listen to a man who has
enthusiasm for his subject, but when it warps him
away from a balanced judgment of life as a whole,
he forfeits all right to serve as a guide.
How can one read The Nemesis of Mediocrity
with that secure feeling which one has in following
the logic of an impartial writer, when one remem-
bers that it is a sort of party pamphlet, designed to
turn votes to a certain group of candidates in the
race for world leadership? If one does not remem-
ber it, the author reminds one of the fact by such


266
September 20
THE DIAL
devices as making the " protagonists of modernism"
offer as the leaders of thought in our time " Edison
and Marconi and Krupp; Sage, Rockefeller, Mor-
gan, Carnegie and the great Hebrew financiers of
Europe. They will offer Ford, Harmsworth,
Hearst; the packers of Chicago, the mill magnates
of New England, the coal and iron barons of
Pennsylvania." Had Dr. Cram been a little less
explicit, with his Fords and his Hearsts and his
Chicago packers, he might have more chance of
convincing the reader that the "modernism" he is
on the track of is a successful working out of what
is essential in our time.
He does not know our time; he does not know
the relation of one epoch to another, else he could
not write: "Certainly there is something in vers
libre and post impressionism and the products of the
cubist sculptors that escapes one in Browning and
Burne-Jones and Saint Gaudens. . . . But when it
is assumed that they take their place, the argument
needs fortifying by something other than either the
dictum itself or their own accomplishments." Dr.
Cram might again have made out a stronger case
for the preceding decades had he known to choose
better representatives of it than Burne-Jones and
Saint Gaudens. There is no proof in questions of
art, so that the fortifying something which is to go
beyond present-day achievement, and our opinions of
it, cannot be given until posterity delivers its judg-
ment. Aside from all the " modernistic " conviction
one may have that Matisse and Duchamp-Villion
are immeasurably better artists than those cited by
Dr. Cram to drive home his idea of the mediocrity
of today, there is his more demonstrable error as
to the men of one period taking the place of another.
Do the Gothic artists beloved of Dr. Cram and
everyone else "take the place" of the Greeks?
Not even he would be apt to claim that. They
lived their lives, sublimely creative, sublimely free
from a past with which they had no concern. That
he does not see this as the real example they have
to offer us is proof that Dr. Cram has yet to get
deeper into,the meaning of their period.
Saul. By Corinne Lowe. 347 pages. McCann,
New York.
"Can any gentile really understand Jewish
traits and characteristics well enough to embody
them in a novel which portrays an intimate idea
of the development of the Jewish character?" asks
the jacket of Miss Lowe's book. If Saul is the
answer, it must be "no." The author* has caught
practically everything except that au-dela, lacking
which the spirit fails. She has evidently studied
the garment trade quite carefully: she knows the
legitimate and the dubious intrigues, which make
business a kind of sordid game; she understands the
interplay between wholesaler and retailer; she is
reasonably right in her dialect. But these things
are bare externals; what she is avowedly trying for
is the Jewish character. Her idea of it is the
familiar one of a blend of commercial bravado and
artistic sensitiveness. But her treatment of it is
that of an amateur who uses all the ingredients the
cook-book demands, and curiously fails to obtain an
edible mess. One is painfully aware of the author
watching her water boil, and measuring out her
spices. The book is readable enough, as the com-
mon run of novels go in this novel-reading and
novel-writing country. But it is American cooking;
the Jew wants something richer and fragrant with
a more intimate national savor.
Museum Ideals of Purpose and Method.
By I. Gilman. 434 pages. Museum of Fine
Arts, Boston.
This book, though a reprint of occasional papers
dating mainly from the last fifteen years, would
appear to be the product of a lifetime devoted to
museum work by an almost restlessly alert mind.
The essays, printed originally in journals of art,
education, science, and architecture, range from
the most glittering generalities of esthetic theory
to the concretest directions how to bind a "gal-
lery book" or to fold a "skiascope"; but, though
so diversified and of so scattered origin, they form
as a whole an extraordinary exposition of theory
on collecting for art museums; on housing, install-
ing, and interpreting such collections to the public;
and on administering such institutions efficiently.
Since the great royal collections of Europe were
nationalized, still more since the recent American
collections were formed, museums have felt under
increasing obligation to reach the public fp/ which
they exist. The appropriation of public faxes to
modern municipal galleries (the Boston museum
is still, however, privately supported) has increased
this obligation, so that museum workers seem to feel
that they must select and install, so far as is possible
without sacrifice of artistic standard, for the man
in the street. Indeed some sentences in Mr. Gil-
man's book almost imply the obligation to go into
the byways and hedges and compel, or at least
entreat, the man in from the street. There is an
infectious and apostolic fervor in this faith that
beautiful things express an ennobling gospel, and
that a burden is laid upon the museum to preach
it. The museum, as Mr. Gilman puts it, may
not longer remain "gardant," but must become
"monstrant" and even "docent."
This aim must not, however, conflict with the
dominance of the right, esthetic purpose over the
mistaken, educational one. Upon no idea is Mr.
Gilman's discussion more insistent, urging a com-
plete abandonment of the conceptions and interests
current in the latter years of the last century and
influential upon the larger public art museums
then established. Through the Victorian era taste
centered upon the intellectual content of works of
art, which were mainly paintings of portraits or
literary or religious subjects. Of the ethical or the
narrative and anecdotic strain in British art the


1919
267
THE DIAL
EDUCATIONAL BOOKS
Everyday Greek: Greek Words in Eng-
lish, Including Scientific Terms
By Horace A. Hoffman, Professor of Greek in Indi-
ana University. $1.25, postpaid $1.35. A handbook
Bhowlng the derivation of English words of Greek
origin. A valuable reference book for professional
men. May be used as a textbook.
General Psychology
By Waltdb 8. Hunteb, Professor of Psychology in
the University of Kansas. $2.00. postpaid $2.15.
The book is written from the biological point of view.
Much attention is given to the description of experi-
mental methods and results. Gives a bird's-eye view
of the science, and does not limit itself to the sub-
ject-matter of the normal adult psychology. Com-
prehensive and concrete.
Current Economic Problems
A Revised Edition)
Edited by Walton H. Hamilton, Professor of Eco-
nomic Institutions, Amherst College. $3.50, postpaid
$3.75. A selection of readings from
the widest range of sources. The
revision will present new material
made available as a result of the
war, and the new point of view
brought about by the war in many
lines of thinking 0* economic sub-
jects.
Correlated Mathematics
for Junior Colleges
By E. R. Bbeslich, Head of the
Department of Mathematics In the
University of Chicago High School.
$1.25. postpaid $1.10. For Junior
colleges and the first year of the
college course as well as for senior
high school classes. This book com-
pletes the series of textbooks em-
ploying the principle of correlation.
The Religions of the World
(Revised Edition)
By Professor George A. Barton, Bryn Mawr College
$1.50, postpaid $1.65. The author has added two
new chapters. AJ1 great religions considered. Com-
bines the virtues of popular presentation and schol-
arly accuracy. Presents in an interesting way a
large number of facts little known to the general
reader.
The Spread of Christianity in the Mod-
ern World
By Edward Caldwell Moobb Plummeb, Professor of
Christian Morals in Harvard University. $2.00,
postpaid $2.15. A survey of the history of missions
since the beginning of the modern era. A good anti-
dote for religious pessimism.
NEW
REVISED
AUTHORITA
TIVE
A Manual of Style
(New Fifth Edition Completely Revised)
By the Staff of the University of Chicago Press.
$1.50, postpaid $1.65. An invaluable handbook for
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yers, printers, publishers, proofreaders—for all who
need guidance on matters of propriety in style.
A Manual for Writers
By John M. Manly, Head of the Department of1 Eng-
lish, the University of Chicago, and John A. Powell.
$1.25, postpaid $1.40. A book designed to aid au-
thors and all others who are concerned with the
writing of English. It alms to answer the practical
questions that constantly arise in the everyday ex-
perience of individual writers, business houses,
schools and colleges, editors, secretaries, etc.
The Origin of the Earth
By Thomas C. Chambeblin, Head of the Department
or Geology, the University of Chicago. $1.50, post-
paid $1.65. The book sets forth the
disclosures that led to the rejection,
one after another, of the older views
of the origin of our planet, and the
construction of a radically new view
based on a new dynamic foundation.
The later chapters of the book treat
of the early stages of the earth and
the way its leading processes took
their start from their cosmogonic
antecedents.
Food Poisoning
By Edwin Oakes Jordan, Chair-
man of the Department of Hygiene
and Bacteriology, the University of
Chicago. $1.00, postpaid $1.10. This
book presents in an interesting and
readuble manner the results of a thorough investiga-
tion into the extent of food poisoning. Housekeep-
ers, nurses, physicians, as well as the victims of
organic "attacks of indigestion," will find in the
pages of this volume material of great value.
Publications in Religious Education
Constructive Studies. The best graded lessons for all
ages from kindergarten to the adult department.
Outline Bible-Study Courses for Adults. Guides for
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268
September 20
THE DIAL
Tate gallery is a monument; and it was encouraged
by the moralizing criticism of Ruskin; In Amer-
ican taste a more naive expression appeared in
Hawthorne's discussions in The Marble Faun, which
may be strikingly paralleled from the letters and
journals of Washington Allston. But two counter
influences arose toward the end of the century: the
revival, associated with the name of William
Morris, of decorative art, which almost ignores
intellectual content and appeals through line, area,
form, and color; and the rise of appreciation of
Japanese art, which so strongly subordinates the
representative motive. So long as this .intellectual
appeal of artistic productions remained dominant,
the art museum filled an educational function: its
collections aimed at continuity or completeness as
a history of the arts; its installation considered
mainly historical or biographical relations. Evi-
dently these must frequently conflict with a purely
esthetic ideal, of showing only the most beautiful
things beautifully installed. The synthesis of these
two interests is the task of the museum- today.
The History of England and Normandy.
By Sir Francis Palgrave. 2 Vols. Putnam.
Presumably Sir Francis Palgrave discusses Eng-
land in the latter part of his four volume work: for
in the two volumes under review he confines him-
self to a study of Western Europe during the ninth
and tenth centuries. Of all the epochs of European
history this is certainly the most anarchical, the most
• devoid of all central authority. It is equally far
removed from the Roman Empire and the modern
state. The grandiose realm of Charlemagne, which
united Europe from the North Sea to the Mediter-
ranean and from the Elbe to the Ebro, fell to pieces
soon after the death of its founder. No Hildebrand
had yet come to regenerate the medieval Papacy and
raise it to a position where it could assume the
powers and responsibilities of an international high
court of justice. The historian of this dark and
troubled era is confronted by several obvious dif-
ficulties. He has no dominant motive of national
development or imperial expansion to guide him;
he has no Tacitus or Thucydides to give a vivid and
intelligible interpretation of the spirit and person-
alities of the time. Instead he has to grope his way
through a maze of inchoate states, whose boundaries
change overnight with bewildering rapidity. For
his sources of information he must rely upon monk-
ish chroniclers, who are often prejudiced^" usually
ill informed, and always dull. At the same time an
historical genius could certainly make a great deal
out of this period of flux and transition from ancient
to modern civilization. The curious mixture of
Roman and Teutonic laws and customs, the various
peculiar features of the feudal system, the first signs
of budding French and German nationalism, all
these themes and many others offer promise to the
investigator whose scientific accuracy is touched with
a certain measure of imagination. Sir Francis Pal-
grave, however, scarcely rises to his opportunities.
He has a great deal more to say about the
genealogical tables of the Carlovingian family than
about the life of the peoples whom they misgov-
erned. His work is a purely political chronicle; it
ignores the cultural and economic factors which
alone make a political chronicle intelligible. Sir
Francis' volumes provide a large quantity of detailed
information for the special student of medieval
history; otherwise their appeal is distinctly limited.
The Five Republics of Central America.
By Dana J. Munro. 332 pages. Oxford Uni-
versity Press.
The author spent some two years in these
countries and derived his information as far as
possible at first hand. It is the fairest presentation
of conditions and problems yet made and is indis-
pensable to everyone in the least interested in die
Isthmian lands. After a brief description of the
Isthmian region as a whole, Munro sharply dis-
tinguishes the three parts into which it actually
separates— Guatemala, Salvador^Honduras-Nica-
ragua, and Costa Rica. The large, northern re-
public of Guatemala has always had a dominant
influence. In Spanish times it was the center of
administration. Too rich and powerful to be will-
ing to subordinate itself in a society of nations, it
has always been the chief obstacle to every plan of
union. With a population three-quarters made up
of pure Indians, it has been a land of large estates,
the successful development of which has depended
upon the worst kind of peon labor. The three
middle republics — Salvador, Honduras, and
Nicaragua—have much in common. The popula-
tion is almost wholly mestizo—mixed blood—there
being few pure Indians. In Nicaragua and
Honduras there is much undeveloped land and a
scant population. Turbulence and revolution have
been conspicuous. Salvador is, in many ways, the
most interesting part of the Isthmus. It has the
densest population in any American country, yet is
the smallest republic of the New World continents.
It exhibits an industry and enterprise beyond its
neighbors and has ever been notable for advanced
and liberal ideas in politics. Natural community of
interests, general similarity of population, and
geographical position unite it, however, with the
other two; and there is no good reason why the
three should not combine into one aggressive and
devoloping nation, with Salvador as leader. The re-
public of Costa Rica has always pursued a rather
independent line of development. The Indian is of
no importance in her present population; the tur-
bulent mestizo is less in evidence than in the three
middle republics; Spanish blood is present in larger
proportion than anywhere else in Central America.
Land is chiefly in small holdings and the owners
have been more inclined to occupy themselves in its
development than elsewhere. The people have been
ambitious, but politics have been sane; revolutions


i9i9 THE DIAL 269
THE NEW SCHOOL
FOR SOCIAL RESEARCH
will open October first for the study of current economic and govern-
mental problems. The work will be conducted by a group of well-
known writers and teachers, among whom are:
Graham Wallas of London Thorstein Veblen
James Harvey Robinson A. A. Goldenweiser
Thomas S. Adams , Wesley Clair Mitchell
Harold J. Laski Dean Roscoe Pound
Leon Ardzrooni Horace M. Kallen
Harry E. Barnes Moissaye Olgin
Charles B. Davenport Emily James Putnam
Frederick W. Ellis Leo Wolman
Charles A. Beard and Members of
the Bureau of Municipal Research,
Robert Bruere and Members of
the Bureau of Industrial Research
THERE will be late afternoon and evening lectures and confer-
ences to permit the attendance of those engaged in regular pro-
fessions. No academic degrees will be required, but the standard of
postgraduate work will" be maintained. There will be general lec-
tures and discussion for larger groups and small conferences for those
equipped for special research.
Courses will include lectures on:
Economic Factors in Civilization
Public Finance of War and Reconstruction
The Development of the United States into a World Power
The Historic Background of the Great War
Modern Industrialism
Business Cycles
Social Inheritance
Eugenics and Public Health
Recent Tendencies in Political Thought
Problems of American Government
Social Forces in Modern Russia
Habit and History
Registration will begin September twenty-second.
Announcement will be sent upon application to
THE NEW SCHOOL FOR SOCIAL RESEARCH
465-469 West Twenty-third Street
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270
September 20
THE DIAL
have been few; though tenacious of her rights, Costa
Rica has largely left her neighbors to themselves.
Munro studies the problems of Central America
in detail. That the five republics might wisely
unite has been recognized from the first. Almost
immediately after their bloodless revolution against
Spain, they did unite into a nation of Central
America. That has not been the only attempt at
union. Not only have general unions of all been
attempted, but many efforts have been made to com-
bine two or three of the middle republics. Revolu-
tions have been so common in Central America as
to become a byword. Still, where they have
not been instigated by outsiders, there has usually
been some actual principle or legitimate tendency
involved. Wars between the republics have been
frequent and unfortunate. Our own interference
in Central American affairs has done little good
and has been chiefly effective in arousing distrust
and hatred. The Conference of Washington in
1907, held at our instigation, gave promise of re-
sult by the neutralization of Honduras and the
establishment of the Central American Court and
the International Office, but the influence of these
has been more than destroyed by our inexcusable
interference through years in Nicaragua and our
defiance of the decisions of the Court when they
are adverse to our schemes. There has been little
of self-determination for the Central American re-
publics since 1909, and our interference—dictated
purely by commercial policies—has been continuous
and selfish.
English Literature During the Last Half
Century. By John W. Cunliffe. 315 pages.
Macmillan.
This volume, which is neither oppressively erudite
nor superficially popular in style, discusses the chief
figures in English literature during the past fifty
years or so. Professor Cunliffe, who is a professor
of English in Columbia University and Associate
Director of the School of Journalism, has met the
need for accessible and accurate information con-
cerning the life and works of the more recent
writers, some of whom, indeed, are still actively
producing books. Hence his study has for its pur-
pose more the giving of helpful information concern-
ing the authors of the period, than ex cathedra
utterances as to their literary precedence. This is
an extremely useful handbook for students and an
excellent reference work for libraries. The critical
estimates and theories are sound and sane, so that
the uninformed reader would not go astray in fol-
lowing the ideas expressed. The style is careful yet
easy, and while for the most part reserved rather
than impassioned, it has passages of happy sympathy.
From among the authors now dead, Professor Cun-
liffe selects for analysis George Meredith, Samuel
Butler, Robert Louis Stevenson, and George Giss-
ing. Of the living, he takes up Hardy, Shaw,
Kipling, Conrad, Wells, Galsworthy, and Bennett.
In addition, there are interesting chapters on The
Irish Movement, The New Poets, and The New-
Novelists. The new poets whom he treats of are
Masefield, Rupert Brooke, Wilfred Wilson Gib-
son, William H. Davies, Walter de La Mare, and
Lascelles Abercrombie, while the present-day novel-
ists to whom he assigns places of prominence are
Hugh Walpole, Gilbeit Cannan, Compton Macken-
zie, and D. H. Lawrence.
Dictionary of the Apostolic Church
Edited by James Hastings. 2 Vols. Scribner.
Hastings' Dictionaries in various branches of the
field of religion appear with marvelous fecundity.
The latest manifestation features its debut with the
apologetic explanation that it is a companion to the
earlier Dictionary of Christ and the Gospels, car-
rying the history of the, Christian Church to the
end of the first century and forming a complete dic-
tionary of the New Testament. These last volumes
maintain the high standard of the previous Hastings
works in neatness of appearance, order of arrange-
ment, completeness of scope, and character of
articles, which are by leading scholars in the New
Testament field. The tone of the individual
articles is predominantly that of scientific biblical
criticism. But because of their assumption of the
knowledge of materia critica—languages, technical
terms, and so forth—on the part of the reader, they
make the dictionary essentially one for scholars.
This may do for British clergymen, but will not
meet the need of the average American Protestant
pastor. There is still a great need for a dictionary
conveying the results of critical scholarship with a
simplicity and perspicacity compatible with the train-
ing of the American ministry, and not confining
itself exclusively to critical problems.
Elements of Constructive Philosophy.
By J. S. Mackenzie. 487 pages. Macmillan.
Professor Mackenzie's erudition is immense,
and his learnine; is no more unusual than his clear-
ness of presentation and his admirable spirit. He is
.scholarly and interesting without fi suggestion of
the "hieh-brow " or a touch of the dilettante. His
book is an illuminating illustration of the riches
connected by the term scholarship. From the Greeks
down through the contemporary neo-realists and
pnitrmatists he has read and meditated his way,
learning much from this long history of specula-
tion, but bowing to no philosophic dogma. What-
ever one may think of the author's philosophic
method (which is essentially that of Descartes),
whether one accepts his revised Hegelianism or not,
one appreciates the thoroughness with which he did
his work. The author is evidently one of those
rare people who do not grow old, so that his book
has lost nothing but superficiality for being begun
over a quarter of a century ago.
In my judgment, Elements of Constructive
Philosophy should be in every public library.


919'
271
THE DIAL
New College Texts
How to Write Special Feature
Articles
By WILLARD G. BLEYER
The author of Newspaper Writing and Edit-
ing and of Types of News Writing now applies
the methods of these two successful books to
the writing of the special feature article. The
book analyzes current practice in the popu-
larizing ' of material for magazines, Sunday
newspapers, and farm and trade journals.
$2.25
Expository Writing
By MERVIN JAMES CURL
"I consider it a remarkably sane and well-balanced
book. It is a book that can be taught,—and of
how few books now can that be said! It is prac-
tical and it is based on sound pedagogy. I nave
lieen looking for Just such a text for years." Fred
Lewis Pattee. Litt.D. $1.25
Sentences and Thinking
By NORMAN FOERSTER and J.
STEADMAN, JR.
M.
A new approach to Freshman rhetoric is offered
in this book,—new in that the freshman is not
asked to master "rules," but to think out the
reasons behind the rules. $0.75
An Introduction to the Industrial
History of England
By ABBOTT PAYSON USHER, Ph.D.
This text considers England's continental back-
grounds, treats the Industrial Revolution with un-
usual thoroughness, discusses the great problems
of labor and social unrest, and devotes* particular
attention to present conditions. For Fall Publi-
cation. $2.50
Human Psychology
By HOWARD C. WARREN, Ph.D.
The new behavior concept is combined In this
book with the older introspective theory. For
Fall Publication.
Professional
Cubberley's PUBLIC EDUCATION
THE UNITED STATES. $1.80.
IN
Sears's CLASSROOM ORGANIZATION
AND CONTROL. $1.75
Monroe's MEASURING THE RESULTS
OF TEACHING. $1.60.
Houghton Mifflin Company
BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO
Ireland in the Last
Fifty Years
By Ernest Barker
This volume, now in its second edition,
enlarged to include a section on the his-
tory of Ireland during the present war,
has already won its spurs as an impartial
and carefully written summary of what has,
as well as what has not, been done toward
accomplishing Home Rule and the intricate
problem it involves.
Net $1.25
Oxford University Press
American -Branch
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NEW YORK


An Important New Dial Reprint
Collective Bargaining
—or Control?
By Geroid Robinson
•fl there is no place in trade-union
theory or practice tor the par-
ticipation of labor in the control
or industry.
t| but the American Federation or
Labor has indorsed the Brother-
hood Railroad Plan.
C| does this mean that the old-line
unionism preached by Samuel
Gompers is a thing of the past?
If a reading of this analysis of the
labor situation will help you to
answer this question.
24 pages. Single copies, 10 cents; lots oj 100, 7 cents;
lots of 500, 6 cents; lots of 1000, 4 cents.
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272
September 20
THE DIAL
There are few problems which engage the attention
of the more serious minded which would not be
illuminated by a reading of sections devoted to the
topic in question. I mention at random such ques-
tions as, the nature of personality, the question of
immortality, the conception of value, the significance
of social consciousness, the problem of human free-
dom, as well as more technical subjects, such as,
causation, the structure of the universe, the nature
of truth and reality, and so on. Incidentally the
author is a demonstration of the fact that one may
join the pragmatists in their demand that philosophy
be a guide of life instead of a dialectical ring around
the rosie, and yet refuse to accept their dictum that
only the problems which they find interesting have
meaning and significance. Professor Mackenzie
revels in what the pragmatists call dead issues,
while all the while his central interest is Life.
In common with many teachers who have devoted
years to their subject, he takes for granted a great
deal more in the way of specialized background than
his readers are prepared to supply. This defect is
to some extent made good for those who intend to
specialize in philosophy, by continuous reference to
a wide variety of well-selected philosophical litera-
ture, but for the rest the discussion remains too
fragmentary to accomplish the result the author aims
at. Nevertheless, to college students seriously, in-
terested in philosophy, and to any one willing to
devote some years of more or less continuous study
to the achievement of a comprehensive Weltan-
schauung, Professor Mackenzie's book may be
recommended as an excellent guide. And one may
fairly promise the student who thus associates with
Professor Mackenzie, what Protagoras promised
those who came to him: he will return home the
first day a wiser and better man than when he
came, and wiser and better on the second day than
on the first.
Second Marriage. By Viola Meynell. 380
pages. Doran.
A cumulative sense of dissatisfaction attends the
reading of Miss Meynell's latest book—the first, by
the way, of her several successful novels to be
brought out in America. Not that the book is
bleakly uninspired—quite the contrary—but the
flashes of inspiration are so fitful that the failure of
the author to come through to large accomplishment
is disappointing, the inevitable consequence of larger
promises unfulfilled. Like one of her characters,
Arnold, Miss Meynell is perpetually defeating her-
self because of her vagrant interests. She is unwill-
ing to concentrate—to let her keen superficial
observations of personality deepen into sound knowl-
edge of character—lest in so doing she lose, for her-
self and us, even one passing acquaintance, one
transient scene. Yet Second Marriage is capably
written, and should Miss Meynell ever come to
brood intently upon her characters, she would prob-
ably produce a novel at once significant and full.
Books of the Fortnight
Bolshevik Aims and Ideals (90 pages; Macmillan) pre-
sents two papers which appeared originally in The
Round Table, and—incidentally—adheres to_ that
journal's annoying tradition of anonymity. With an
air of judicious detachment the author draws a fine
distinction between the "tyranny" of Lenin and the
"firm" policy of Kolchak. Then, having empha-
sized the fact that "in its present form Bolshevism
must either spread or die," he offers to the Allies the
choice between neutrality and intervention, peace and
war. This, as if the choice were yet to be made!
Intervention in Mexico, by Samuel Guy Inman (243
pages; Association Press), faces very frankly the
difficulties of the Mexican situation, and suggests as
a remedy, not intervention, but the development, with
the financial aid of the United States, of a program
of educational, social, literary, and medical activi-
ties designed to build a Mexican citizenship fully
capable of self-government Review later.
China of the Chinese, by E. T. C. Werner (309 pages;
Scribner), offers an historical study of Chinese domes-
tic, ceremonial, political, and ecclesiastical institu-
tions, prefaced by a short summary of the country's
political history. Review later.
French Ways and Their Meaning, by Edith Wharton (1+9
pages; Appleton), is an intimate and interesting com-
mentary, with wisdom enough in some of its single
sentences to furnish the raison d'etre of a more pre-
tentious volume. Review later.
Government Organization in War Time and After,
by William Franklin Willoughby (370 pages; Apple-
ton), as a matter-of-fact survey of Federal agencies
not even dimly forecast in the Constitution, may well
serve as a basis for a political analysis of a com-
pletely mobilized state.
American Foreign Trade, by Charles M. Pepper (350
pages; Century), blows the call to " a new era . . .
an era of competition," when the American business
man will find himself "a world business man" and
the United States will be the exemplar, in the foreign
field, of the economic individualism which has proved
so highly salutary at home.
After-War Atlas and Gazetteer of the World, edited by
Francis J. Reynolds (364 pages; Reynolds Publishing
Co., New York), combines a multiplicity of maps,
both of cities and of countries—including the bound-
aries established by the first treaty of Versailles—
with a commentary on the war and a digest of state
motor laws. A book that lives up to American
standards of mapmaking.
The Heroic Record of the British Navy, by Archibald
Hurd and H. H. Bashford (303 pages; Doubled ay,
Page), is a thoroughly British appraisal of the pan
that maritime power played in the war. Its bias may
be judged from its claim of the Jutland affair as a
great victory for the English fleet. The war itself
is held to have been a sailors' triumph.
Frederick the Great, by Norwood Young (433 pages;
Holt), purposes to throw new light on the career
that Carlyle so worshipfully interpreted and to this
end introduces new material. Review later.


1919
273
THE DIAL
r» e w
b o o K by
James Branch Cabell
the hi^h and mirthful adventures of
J
u r
&
e n
A swaggering, light-hearted tale of the wander-
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clever fellow, and of his search alike In his own
past and throughout the universe, for justice. It
tells of his journeyings In curious places, even to
the hell of his fathers and the heaven of his
grandmother, it tells of the women he loved, and
the men he encountered, and of his prowess with
each. And It tells of these things with a richness
of fancy and a mastery of words that will be-
wilder even as it delights you.
Jurgen is not merely vastly entertaining. To
those who can perceive it there is In this story a
hint of something more—a mocking but not un-
kindly philosophy, which makes of this Milesian
tale a penetrating satire upon man's eternal searcn
for unattainable things and which, in the belief of
the publishers, will assure the story an honored
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A piquant and fascinating collection of tales,
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THE GREAT DESIRE
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la it love, honor, fame, money—
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MICHAEL FORTH
By Mary Johnston
A great novel, done masterfully
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THE LITTLE MOMENT
OF HAPPINESS
By Clarence Budington Kelland
The biggest problem, the most
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FROM THE LIFE
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274
September 20
THE DIAL
The Napoleon of the Pacific, by Herbert H. Gowen (326
pages; Revell), recounts the life-history of Kame-
hameha I, called the Great, who ruled, one hundred
years ago, as emperor of the mid-Pacific islands now
ignominiously devoted to the production of sugar,
ukuleles, and comic opera atmosphere.
Employment Psychology,by Henry C. Link (440 pages;
Macmillan), applies the technique of the psycholog-
ical laboratory to the selection and training of work-
ers. The tests devised by Dr. Link were developed
under actual factory and office conditions. A scien-
tific work, not to be confused with the pseudo-
psychology of character reading to which many
"practical" business men have become addicted.
Review later.
The New Science of Analysing Character, by Harry H.
Balkin (249 pages; Four Seas Co.), is a familiar
attempt to put phrenology to work for business profit.
The futility of explaining the complex combinations
that make up an individual character in terms of
these abstract formulae is no less evident in this
book than in its numerous predecessors.
How to Teach Religion: Principles and Methods, by
George Herbert Betts (223 pages; Abingdon Press;,
treats the content of religion as identical with that of
ethics, and indicates how this material may be u>e!
effectively in classroom work. Its perception of values
is not keen enough to differentiate the instincts of
wonder and self-abasement from the conventional
attitudes of religiosity.
Industrial Nursing,by Florence Swift Wright (179 pages;
Macmillan), addresses itself to industrial, public
health, and pupil nurses, and employers of labor. It
discusses the history of industrial nursing, the train-
ing needed, the routine of the day's work, and the
interrelation of the nurse and the employment office.
Towards Racial Health, by Norah H. March (320 pages;
Dutton), endeavors to provide parents, teachers, and
social workers with the means of guiding the mental
and sexual life of the adolescent. The soundness of
the author's biological background is attested by Pro-
fessor J. Arthur Thomson's commendatory foreword,
while her willingness to deal with delicate practical
difficulties betrays the sympathetic understanding and
intimate personal knowledge of the teacher.
Social Games and Gronp Dances, by J. C. Elsom and
Blanche Trilling (illustrated, 258 pages; Lippincott,
Philadelphia), is the most useful collection of "ice
breakers" yet elicited by the community movement.
Town Improvement, by Frederick Noble Evans (261
pages; Appleton), is evidence of this publisher's gen-
erous interest in municipal improvement rather than
of the author's ability to add any new elements to a
phase of city planning which the works of Nolen,
Robinson, Zueblin, and Lewis have fully explored. A
new and more searching investigation of the nature
of cities is needed, rather than a simplification of
facts and formulae already notorious.
New Towns After the War: An Argument for Garden
Cities, by New Townsmen (84 pages; Dent, London),
begins with a recognition of Great Britain's shortage
of 1,000,000 houses and shows how the situation may
be turned to advantage by building new garden
cities—at least a hundred of them—on the Letch-
worth plan.
The Housing of the Unskilled Wage Earner, by Edith
Elmer Wood (321 pages; Macmillan), examines the
provisions for housing and housing legislation in both
the United States and Europe. A contribution much
needed in a field where the only similar volume,
Veiller's Handbook, is now almost a decade old.
Farm Management, by Jacob Hiram Arnold (243 pages;
Macmillan), describes with clarity and conciseness
what the modern farm is, how it functions, and what
its relations are to business and the State. Apart
from university courses in agricultural economics the
student of rural problems would look in vain for any
single treatment of the subject to equal the present
one.
The Evolution of the Dragon, by G. Elliot Smith (il-
lustrated, 234 pages; Longmans, Green), has all the
virtues and most of the vices of scholarly specula-
tion in a field where the investigating scholar is not
professionally at home. While the Professor of
Anatomy at Manchester has tracked the dragon with
provocative enthusiasm, daring conjecture, and un-
remitting ingenuity, he has also out-anthropologized
the most doctrinaire anthropology in support of his
persuasion that religion had a single source, from
which it spread over the earth, and he has permitted
himself enough disorder, repetition, and, discursive-
ness to weaken confidence in his methods.
A Handbook of Greek Vase Painting, by Mary A. B.
Herford (125 pages; Longmans, Green), a compre-
hensive study, fully illustrated, is calculated to de-
light any reader capable of being interested in one
of the most significant forms of antique art and in
its relations to the life of the period. The author's
contagious zest makes fascinating a subject which
would otherwise attract chiefly students of art and
archaeology.
Violin Mastery, by Frederick H. Martens (292 pages;
Stokes), is a symposium of interviews with twenty-
four violinists—from Ysaye to Toscha Seidel—in-
troduced by biographical notes and decorated with
photographs. Yet this bushel of professional chaff
■ will yield the pupil many a sound kernel of advice.
Canoeing, Sailing and Motor Boating, by Warren H. Mil-
ler (351 pages; Doran), is a wise and racily written
treatise for the not- too green amateur waterman.
The author has evidently had broad experience in all
three sports and, what is more unusual, has reflected
upon his experience. His genuinely helpful advice
has the assistance of many excellent photographs and
plans.
How Animals Talk, by William J. Long (illustrated in
color, 303 pages; Harper), bolsters its pseudo-scien-
tific convictions with romance and conjures up more
engaging reading from such materials as "Chumfo,
the Super-Sense," "The Swarm Spirit," and "Natu-
ral Telepathy" than fact permits the more scientifi-
cally-minded authors of animal books, who may
recognize in this one a belated addition to their
nursery shelves.
Bass, Pike, Perch and Other Game Fishes, by James A.
Henshall (410 pages; Stewart & Kidd, Cincinnati),
is a comprehensive manual by a veteran fisher, its
scope indicated by the title and its text supplemented
with numerous illustrations. A readable guide for
the angler, whether with bait or artificial fly.


1919
27i
THE DIAL
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him, but appeal to him as natural and interesting accompaniments of his unfolding world.
The school plan embraces all-day activities, hot lunches, afternoon trips. There is a
large double-roof playground, carpentry shops, an auditorium for music and dancing.
Curriculum includes outdoor nature study, modeling and drawing, spoken French, science.
The children are developed in small groups to assure a maximum of personal attention.
The activities of the younger groups are carried on largely out of doors.
The teaching staff consists of carefully selected specialists in their several fields. It
includes Dr. Hendrik Willem Van Loon, the historian, formerly Lecturer in History at
Cornell University, and M. Ernest Bloch, the noted Swiss composer.
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276
September 20
THE DIAL
Tales of Fishes, by Zane Grey (266 pages; Harper),
presents a novelist wielding pen and rod simul-
taneously, thereby banishing a host of preconceptions
concerning the sedentary nature of angling. To one
unacquainted with tuna fish except in salad, the
narrative becomes a revelation of adventure. Sword-
fish, shark, and dolphin yield zestful chapters.
The Hand of the Potter, by Theodore Dreiser (209
pages; Boni & Liveright), a "tragedy" in four acts,
should suffice, by its incredibly inept construction, to
remove the last doubt whether its author is capable
of mastering any existing technique. Upon an
authentic background of East Side family life he
has presented a courageous and understanding pic-
ture of a certain kind of erotic pathology—and then
has squandered his materials in a sensational plot
that is as clumsy melodrama as it is arbitrary
tragedy.
The Will of Song, devised in cooperation with Harry
Barnhart by Percy MacKaye (70 pages; Boni &
Liveright), a "dramatic service of community sing-
ing," is intended for use as a two days' festival.
The poet continues to heap allegory on the heads of
the people; he is a crusader trying to set up America
as his holyland. Review later.
The Seven Who Slept, by A. Kingsley Porter ((96 pages;
Marshall Jones, Boston), is a mystery play so_ mys-
terious that the thirty-three page introduction is not
sufficiently long and certainly not sufficiently exposi-
tory.
Flowers in the Wind, by G. Murray Atkin (58 pages;
Kennerley), is a slender sheaf of verse, sensitive and
poetic in conception, graceful and delicate in imagery,
but not always with a sure grasp of cadence. Mr.
Atkin does not, at any rate, drape the garments of
poetry upon the effigy of his own affectations.
Poems, by Theodore Maynard (169 pages; Stokes),
"represents the author's own selection of such of his
published verse as he wishes included in a permanent
collection." The permanence of the collection will
be less fostered by the poems than by the valorous
and undeviating wrongness of G. K. Chesterton's
adulatory preface.
Simla,by Stanwood Cobb (145 pages; Cornhill), is a
narrative in verse in which the author seeks to "solve
simply and well the mystery of sex" through a some-
what superficial amalgam of Oriental asceticism and
"the New World love of action and love of life."
Complexities of rhyme and perplexities of philosophy
have been assiduously ironed out.
The Story of a Lover, Anonymous (201 pages; Boni &
Liveright), is one of the extraordinary pieces of
literature of recent years. Those interested in the
newer literary tendencies will find in this intimate
analysis of the emotions and reactions of a man
toward his wife, his wife's lovers, and his own
mistresses a depth of understanding that separates
it widely from ordinary erotic literature. As an in-
vestigation of the nuances of human relationships it
is an invaluable psychological contribution. Review
later.
Mary Olivier: A Life, by May Sinclair (380 pages; Mac-
millan), is a searching and adroit piece of work, in
which the author traces the subjective development of
a woman from earliest childhood to middle age.
The book deals sanely with a precocious, rather
morbid mentality. Review later.
The Old Madhouse, by William De Morgan (567 pages;
Holt), was completed by Mrs. De Morgan from notes
left by the novelist The art with which his lazy
pages convey an intensive knowledge of the lives
and motives of a small, intimate group of well-to-do
English folk becomes evident only when it is replaced
by her concluding narrative. Review later.
The Position of Peggy Harper, by Leonard Merrick (296
pages; Dutton), adds this study of stage success via
brainlessness, pulchritude, and good luck to the
handsome definitive edition of the novelist's works.
Sir Arthur Wing Pinero's reminiscent introduction
trades chiefly on the instinct for recognition. The
novel itself was reviewed by Ruth Mclntire in The
Dial for June 6, 1918.
The Old Card, by Roland Pertwee (274 pages; Boni &
Liveright), follows the career of an old-school actor
through the more interesting episodes of his life. It
is crisply written and offers unusually good enter-
tainment to those with a taste for the stage. Inci-
dentally, its picture of the theater in the English
provinces is excellent realism.
Little Houses, by George Woden (275 pages; Dutton),
brings to attention a new English writer of genuine
ability. Cast in the mood of the Five Towns the
story follows the general plan of _ Arnold Bennett
and Gilbert Cannan in their happier early period.
Against the drab background of an English mining
town in the eighties this drama of small lives runs
a vivid course sparkling with humor, deep in rich
human sympathy and only slightly overcast with
tragedy. There is in it an individuality and fresh-
ness which cannot fail to satisfy the reader seeking
reality in his fiction.
A London Lot, by A. Neil Lyons (279 pages; Lane), •
makes one regret afresh that the Cockney classics
of this author are so little known in America. This
story, adapted from a play by the author, has to do
with one Cuthbert, who left his barrow in care of his
girl Cherry while he went to fight for King and
Country. What Bairnsfather did in another me-
dium Mr. Lyons has done here. It is well worth
the reading for more than one reason.
The Qnerrils, by Stacy Aumonier (354 pages; Century),
is still another fictional portrayal of an English family
and its reactions to the war. The novel has some
fresh themes—for instance, the essential selfishness of
a general studied unselfishness within a close group-
but is almost devoid of the compact architecture and
dry style that have characterized the best of the
author's short stories.
Mirabelle of Pampeluna, by Colette Yver (177 pages;
Scribner), is a charming story of French life, caught
up for a while in the mad rush of war, then settling
again to the gentler ways of the deliberate past
The Secret of the Tower, by Anthony Hope (305 pages;
Appleton), is a breathless mystery story, unusual in
theme and bizarre in plot It starts briskly and
develops rapidly; the climax is startling and un-
canny. Amid the suspense, the author finds space
for adept character portrayal and flashes of humor.
The Best Ghost Stories, introduction by Arthur B. Reeve
(217 pages; Boni tc Liveright), embodies a super-
natural assault to chill the blood on a wintry night.
The collection ranges from De Foe and Bulwer-
Lytton to Kipling and Blackwood.


1919
277
THE DIAL
LEO TOLSTOY'S
The Pathway of Life
(In Two Volumes). Translated by Archibald J. Wolfe
"THE PATHWAY OF LIFE" Is Tolatoy'a posthu-
mous message to a war-torn suffering* world. It Is
the Gospel of right living and right thinking and offers
the great philosopher's panacea against world wars
and misery, helping mankind to eradicate all those
false feelings, desires and doctrines, personal, social,
economic and religious, which are responsible for the
present plight of humanity. Pries St.00 sack volume.
International Book Publishing Co.,
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LECTURERS ON RUSSIA
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tions, etc., on different phases of the Russian question.
Requests received will be transmitted to those known to us
as having first-hand knowledge of conditions In Soviet Russia
and Siberia—former Red Cross officials, T. M. C. A. and
T. W. C. A. secretaries, civil and military government offi-
cials, Journalists, etc.
Available for this service are men holding different atti-
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advocating self-determination for Russia, lifting of the block-
ade and in desiring to spread before the American public the
facts as to actual conditions In present-day Russia.
Address communications to
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SPENT JULY IN GERMANY
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278
September 20
THE DIAL
Yellow Men Sleep, by Jeremy Lane (343 pages; Cen-
tury), is a barefaced thriller, lurid and illogical, but
with inventive and descriptive vigor so neatly applied
that the momentum of sheer curiosity carries one
past even the author's assurance that persons fatally
stabbed become "quite dead."
Partners of the Out-Trail, by Harold Bindloss (344 pages;
Stokes), is the routine story of adventure originating
in the Canadian wilds. It approximates reality about
as authentically as the scenic railway in the amuse-
. ment park approximates nature.
Their Mutual Child, by Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
(284 pages; Boni & Liveright), roHs art, eugenics,
finance, and domestic complications into one pellet
and coats it in a brisk, humorous narrative style.
And whenever the somewhat conventional material
threatens to lag, Mr. Wodehouse understands how to
freshen it up with caricature.
Just Jemima, by J. J. Bell (190 pages; Revell), is another
of the author's dialect stories. A Scotch servant in a
boarding house tells about herself, her love affair,
and the guests. Jemima's personality hovers between
the necessity for being dull enough to be menial, and
the compulsion to be humorous enough to be readable.
Cake Upon the Waters, by Zoe Akins (224 pages; Cen-
tury), is all about a light-hearted, irresponsible widow
with three suitors and an inheritance. To complete
her conquests she captures a nice burglar and re-
forms him in five minutes of chatty dialogue. A
fluffy romance, smoothly powdered.
Lo, and Behold Ye!, by Seumas MacManus (290 pages;
Stokes), jocular Irish folk tales colloquially told, are
monotonously dependent for plot on trickery and wit
of a primitive sort.
Mr. Dooley on Making a Will and Other Necessary Evils
(221 pages; Scribner), enables that immortal Irish-
man, whose tongue has lost none of its cunning, to
make too tardy acknowledgement to Mr. Hennessy—
"a man who cud listen."
On Uncle Sam's Water Wagon, by Helen Watkeys Moore
(222 pages; Putnam), is adequately disclosed in the
title. It contains five hundred soft drink recipes. It
may appeal (o those who find stimulation in numbers.
In the Sweet Dry and Dry, by Christopher Morley and
Bart Haley (168 pages; Boni k Liveright), puts an
antic disposition on the present dispensation, and like
the old lady in the Barrie playlet, cherishes the cork
in lieu of the liquid. The humor is broad—a brew,
rather than a distillation—but a heady libation to the
gods of absurdity.
A Selected Educational List
The following is The Dial's selection of the
most notable fall issues and announcements in the
theory and practice of education. Reprints, new
editions, textbooks, very technical books, and works
of reference have been omitted. The list is com-
piled from data submitted by the publishers, and it
covers the season from July i, 1919, to January 1,
1920. The references between brackets are to
notices in this issue:
Letters to Teachers. By Hartley Burr Alexander. 253 pages.
Open Court Publishing Co.. Chicago. [Page 262].
New Schools for Old. By Evelyn Dewey. 337 pages. E. P.
Dutton Co. [Page 263],
Comparative Education. Edited by Peter Sandlford. 500
pages. E. P. Dutton Co. [Page 262].
_v>« English Elementary School. By A. W. Newton. 298
->ages. Longmans, Green Co. [Page 262].
French Educational Ideals of Today. Edited by Ferdinand
Buiwjon and Frederic Ernest Farrington. 326 pages.
World Book Co. [Page 262].
Problems of the Secondary Teacher. By William Jerusalem.
Translated by Charles F. Sanders. 263 pages. Richard
G. Badger. Boston. [Page 262].
Carnegie Pensions. By J. McKeen Cattell. 203 pages.
Science Press. [Page 268].
Principles of Sociology with Educational Applications. By
Frederick R. Clow. Macmillan Co.
Introduction to Vocational Education. By David Spence
Hill. Macmillan Co.
Human Factors In Education. By James Phinney Munroe.
Macmillan Co.
Public Education In the United States. By Ellwood P. Cub-
berley. Houghton Mifflin Co.
Education in Ancient Israel. By Fletcher H. Swift. Open
Court Publishing Co., Chicago.
Administration of Village and Consolidated Schools. By Ross
L. Finney and Alfred L. Schafer. Macmillan Co.
Teaching Home Economics. By Anna M. Cooley, Cora M.
Winchell. Wilhelmlna H. Spohr and Josephine A. Mar-
shall. Macmillan Co.
Teaching by Projects. By Charles A. McMurry. Macmlllaa
Co.
The Young Man and Teaching. By Henry Parks Wright.
Macmillan Co. .
Nursery School. By Margaret Macmillan. E. P. Dutton Co.
The Intelligence of School Children. By Lewis M. Terman.
Houghton Mifflin Co.
The Future Citizen and his Mother. By Charles Porter. E.
P. Dutton Co.
The School in the Modern Church. By Henry Frederick
Cope. George H. Doran Co.
Towards Racial Health. By Norah H. March. E. P. Dutton
Co.
Contributors
Frederick John Teggart was born in Belfast, and
is now Associate Professor of History at the Uni-
versity of California. He is the author of various
dissertations on history, one of which, The Process
of History (Yale University Press) was reviewed by
James Harvey Robinson in The Dial for July
26, 1919.
Benjamin Glassberg is a graduate of the College
of the City of New York and was a teacher of his-
tory in the New York schools for seven years. At
one time he was Associate Editor of the American
Teacher. Mr. Glassberg was suspended in January
1919 for saying that we were " not getting the truth
about Russia." He was later found guilty and dis-
charged.
Emma Heller Schumm is a native of Wisconsin,
and a graduate of the University of Wisconsin.
She has translated several books from German into
English, and has been an occasional contributor to
radical journals.
Maxwell Anderson received his bachelor's degree
at the University of North Dakota and hisMnaster's
at Stanford. He has taught in various institutions,
secondary and collegiate, and he is now on the
editorial staff of a New York newspaper.
Morris Gilbert, after graduating from Union
College in 1917, served as Ensign in the United
States Navy, and is now engaged in relief work
in Armenia. He has published a volume of under-
graduate verse and has contributed poems to several
magazines.
The author of the paper on Industrial Educa-
tion in the Arsenals is an official who has been con-
nected with the experiment.
The other contributors to this issue have pre-
viously written for The Dial.


i9*9
2/9
THE DIAL
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YALE TALKS
Addresses to young men delivered at all the larger
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■1-00
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Education and Autocracy In Russia
By Daniel B. Leary, Bro/essutr of I'syrhology
Offers a basis for a clear understanding of the pnst
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This issue has been delayed
on account of the confu-
sion in the printing trade.
Japanese Liberalism
THE DIAL

A FORTNIGHTLY
VOL. LXVII
NEW YORK
NO. 800
OCTOBER 4, 1919
John Dewey 283
Liberalism in Japan ....
1. The Intellectual Preparation
The Passing of the Frontier .
Why and How the Prices Change
The Little Back Room
Service Accounting .....
Bolshevism and the Vested Interests in America
. 1. On the Danger of a Revolutionary Overturn
Two Solitudes . ......
Wardom and the State
A Moment of the French Mind .
Evangels. Verse \ .
The Old Order and the New •
Casual Comment
COMMUNICATIONS: The Russian Reaction to the Japanese—Baseball and Rivalry.
NOTES ON NEW BOOKS: Sylvia and Michael.—Storm in a Teacup.—The Oxford History
of India.—India in Transition.—Letters to the People of India on Responsible Govern-
ment.—The New Elizabethans.—Set Down in Malice.—Uncensored Celebrities.—Scenes
from Italy's War.—The Taker.—Architecture and Democracy.—The Tragedy of Labor.—
Religion and Culture.—Self-Government in the Philippines.—Musings and Memories of
a Musician.—French Ways and Their Meaning.—The Dickens Circle.
Books of the Fortnight ........
. j?<WV% Hamlin Garland
'/'fyjfa. J. Davenport
Stella Benson
Robert L. Duffus
Thorstein Veblen
Babette Deutsch
. Lewis Mumford
William Ellery Leonard
Elizabeth J. Coatswr-th
285
287
291
294
296
301
303
305
306
307
310
312
314
324
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282
October 4
THE DIAL
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THE DIAL
A FORTNIGHTLY
0
Liberalism in Japan
I. The Intellectual Preparation
ne heard the word frequently from the
mouths of Japanese fellow travelers as one
crossed the Pacific—De-mo-kras-ie. The ani-
mated, cultivated man, who after wearing the
baggiest clothes of the ship blossomed out one
day in a general's uniform with rows of medals,
and turned out to be one of the heroes of the
Russo-Japanese war, confided in you that he
was on his way back from France to explain
to his countrymen the new world situation and
preach the gospel of democracy. An ardent
returning student told you of an interview
with a distinguished American educator in
which the latter had said to him that the future
relations of Japan and the United States were
secure if both followed the same principles,
and who added on his own account, "Yes, the
same principles. We have had enough ex-
change of compliments and fine words. We
need to adopt American principles of democ-
racy." And he avowed his intention of becom-
ing an apostle of those principles. The day
after landing, another returned student tells
you that when he landed just a year before it
was not safe to utter the word democracy, as
it might send you to prison, but that now
everybody was talking it, even coolies and
ricksha-men. And the American educator who
has lived in Japan fifteen years says that'there
has been more alteration in the spirit of Japan
in the prior six months than he had seen in the
whole fifteen years of residence.
But the Japanese tell you that their opinions
are unstable; that they are mercurial, easily
aroused to follow the last intellectual fashion;
that they catch readily but superficially at the
latest trend of ideas only to turn to another,
even its opposite, when something more "up-
to-date" comes along. So Nietzsche had given
way to Eucken, the latter to James, and James
to Bergson in the realm of those who coquet-
ted with philosophy—all in the last few years.
Germany had been not merely ingloriously
defeated but had collapsed in internal revolu-
tion. America had come out with fine words
and had surprisingly made its words good in
deeds. Autocracy out of fashion, democratic
styles were in. Was the change anything
more than this?
As one remained and became somewhat bet-
ter acquainted with the currents of thought—
not an easy thing where the language is un-
known and where every intellectual is a spe-
cialist and assumes similar specialization of
interest on your part—one realized that the
change was not so sudden as it seemed on the
surface. All during the years of the most re-
actionary conservatism—and they were much
more reactionary than the present writer at
least had ever dreamed of—there existed gen-
uinely liberal thinkers and teachers. The in-
filtration of the best Western ideas had been as
steady if not as bulky as that of Western
shoddy, physical and intellectual. The defeat
of Germany had not so much brought about a
sudden and superficial change as it had re-
moved the lid. It became possible, almost
popular, to say out loud what liberals had been
saying quietly and steadily in* the class room,
or in the public press in language sufficiently
veiled to pass the eye of the police. The
change of fashion was a fact, was indeed a
large part of the situation. But it operated
mainly to depress the prestige of the reaction-
ary bureaucrats and to increase that of the
liberals so that men were willing, and even
glad, to listen to them.
The seemingly abrupt alteration was in
largest measure the appearance above the sur-
face of a movement that had been long matur-
ing—assuredly a much healthier state of
affairs. All during the war the lines had been
drawing. Even before the final defeat of Ger-
many there were a courageous few who dared
to take the view that the War was between two
systems and that Japan would remain in an
anomalous position as long as she was the foe
of Germany in war, but her disciple and fol-
lower in government and educational methods.
On the other hand, even in the midst of war
against Germany, influential voices were
raised defending German institutions, German


284
October 4
THE DIAL
thought, and German ideals, and explaining
that since Japan had made these her own and
built her greatness upon them she was an
enemy of Germany only in a military sense,
and even that only for certain specific pur-
poses. I was among those who heard Baron
Ishii denounce German propaganda as respon-
sible for alienation of feeling between the
United States and Japan, and like many more
of my countrymen I was much moved thereby.
But when I reached Japan I marveled. For I
found that intellectually, morally, and polit-
ically an active German propaganda had been
carried on during the war by Japanese offi-
cials. I learned that in the army the conscript
recruits had been systematically got together
and taught the superiority of German institu-
tions to those of the Allies, and especially the
superiority of German militarism and the fact
that it could not be defeated. I learned that
on the very day when the armistice was de-
clared an important intellectual figure was
billed for a public lecture on Why Germany
Cannot Be Defeated.
These facts are not mentioned to rake up
grounds of offense. They help explain the
courage of the liberals who when the war was
still undecided had said that Germany must be
defeated not merely to oust her from the Far
East, but because she was autocratic and mili-
taristic, and begged the Japanese to eliminate
from their own government and administra-
tive methods all that Japan had borrowed from
Germany lest Japan should in the end find her-
self also at odds with the whole world. And
the fact that the lines had been so openly and
stringently drawn made the final defeat and
still more the spectacular collapse of the in-
vulnerable state a sensational victory for the
liberals against the bureaucrats. It gave lib-
eral and democratic ideas a vogue which they
would not have had if there had not been dur-
ing the war itself a struggle between the
partisans and the opponents of German ideals
and an application of the controversy to do-
mestic politics.
The highest wave of democratic sentiment
in Japan has apparently receded since the win-
ter and early spring months. The Japanese
are quick—often too quick—and they have not
failed to take home to themselves the lesson
of the failure at Paris of the fine words which
President Wilson flourished when he took the
United States into the war. It may be that the
racial discrimination issue was raised at Paris
as a smoke-screen to obfuscate the Shantung
question—diplomats other than Japanese have
been known to raise a moral question when
they wished to gain a material point. But
there can be n© doubt of the immense pop-
'arity of the issue in Japan. The interest was
clearly in part "accelerated" by politicians of
light conscience, like Marquis Okuma, but
there is no question of the popularity of the
response. When the newspapers gave next to
no attention to other problems of the Paris
Conference they gave columns to this one.
And the defeat of the proposal to insert a rec-
ognition of the principle of equality of nations
in the Preamble, to the League Covenant was
a blow to liberal thought. For it made it easy
to assert that all the democratic professions of
equality and humanity of the AHiesVduring the
war were part of a hypocritical propaganda.
At the last, the Japanese proposal was
whittled down to a Platonic and almost Pick-
wickian statement. The more those who op-
posed it believed that it was not offered in
good faith but for ulterior purpose, the more
willingly' they should have favored it—if only
as a sop to sentiment and a slave to pride. Its
rejection was worse than inhumane; it was
stupid. To have accepted it would have been
to create good feeling and also a frank and ob-
jective basis for a discussion of immigration
as an economic and political question, free
from entanglements with the question of racial
prejudice. As it is, the two questions are still
entangled, and the supporter of restricted im-
migration on economic grounds (and political
also till Japan has radically changed its form
of government) is hampered by the bad con-
science that comes from giving to Japan an
opportunity to inject the question of race and
color discrimination into the discussion. But
for present purposes the consequence chiefly
of importance is that the action of the Confer-
ence gave a great tactical advantage to the
Japanese upholder of things as they were and
dampened the ardor for democratic ideas.
The other leading force in giving liberal
thought a temporary setback is the raising of
the Chinese issue. "Patriotism" is more acute
in Japan than in any country of the globe, and
the press is more recklessly irresponsible than
that of any other country of the globe. And
the political consciousness of the people is still
immature. Consequently the intelligent and
critical discussion of foreign relations, hard
enough in any country, is unusually difficult
in Japan. In fact one of the ablest of the in-
tellectual liberals in Japan said in spite of his
democratic beliefs he dreaded the time when
diplomacy should come in Japan more under
popular influence, for the professional diplo-
mats were much more enlightened, much more
cosmopolitan, more sympathetic with Western
ideas and ways than were the people, who are
still blindly chauvinistic—as was indicated in
the riots that protested against the mildness
of the terms of peace with Russia and that con-
stantly clamors for a stronger foreign policy.


1919
285
THE DIAL
Anyhow, it was an easy matter to lead the
mass of the Japanese people to think that there
is a conspiracy to thwart the true national
destiny of Japan in Asia and that nominally
democratic countries, especially the United
States, are at the bottom of this plot. And
the militarist party has not been slow to point
the moral or to hold up Japanese liberals as
embryonic traitors who would weaken and
destroy the national cause. It was not Japan
that originated the motto "Our country right
or wrong" or that originated the psychology
which is sure that our country is always right.
Consequently the Japanese liberals who wish
to tell the truth about conditions in China—
and there are a good number of them—at the
same time temporarily handicap the liberal
cause because they seem to be identified with
an unpatriotic and anti-nationalistic cause.
If the situation can develop in a reasonable
normal way, there is no doubt as to where ulti-
mate triumph will lie. It was European im-
perialism that taught Japan that the only way
in which it could be respected was to be strong
in military and naval force. Not its art nor
the exquisite courtesy of its people nor its
eager curiosity gave Japan the rank of one of
the Big Five at Paris. And none of these
things brought triumph to its diplomats there.
Until the world puts less confidence in mili-
tary force and deals out justice internationally
on some other basis than command of force,
the progress of democracy in Japan will be
uncertain, because in Japan more than any
other country the strength of political reac-
tionism centers in the army, in the ideas which
it breeds and in the 'officials who come, will-
ingly or unwillingly, under its influence. But,
barring outside events, two great forces are
working on the side of liberal ideas and in-
stitutions. Onei is intellectual, the other eco-
nomic. Japan is trying, under the leadership
of its present rulers, an impossible experiment.
It recognizes its dependence on the West for
material, technical, and scientific development,
and welcomes the introduction of Western
ideas and methods so far as they concern these
things. But it is trying at the same time to
preserve intact its own peculiar moral and
political heritage; it is claiming superiority in
these respects to anything the West can give it.
It is another chosen nation, unique in origin
and destiny. With extraordinary toughness
and tenacity it has managed somehow to con-
serve the feudal and even barbarian morale
and politics of the warrior, while it has bor-
rowed wholesale the entire scientific and in-
dustrial technique of the world. But no nation
can enduringly live a double life; Japan shows
everywhere the strain of this split in its life.
Nor can the Japanese, even with all their power
of resistance, indefinitely shut out the entrance
of genuinely Western ideas and aims. These
have crept in and are expelling the traditional
ideas in spite of the most incredibly reaction-
ary system of primary education the world
has ever known. The first fruits of this creep-
ing in is that release of liberal ideas which ac-
companied the defeat of Germany. As one of
the intellectual leaders of the new Japan put
it, the change that has come over Japan in the
last year is not describable in words; it is in-
tellectual, moral, even metaphysical.
John Dewey.
The Passing of the Frontier
J. hat Emerson Hough and Stewart Edward
White belong to different generations of the
Middle West will be at once apparent to the
reader of their contributions to the Chronicles
of America Series, even if the personal history
of the authors is unknown. Hough, who is a
man of sixty or more, writes in the spirit of
one who was a part of the life he describes and
longs to recover, while White remains the
keen-eyed reporter of the facts as he finds
them recorded.
In Hough's Passing of the Frontier (Yale
University Press) there is much good history,
but it is written in the wistful mood of the
plainsman who hunted the buffalo, rode the
long Texas trail, and camped beside the name-
less mountain stream. In The Forty Niners
(Yale University Press) White remains hu-
morously critical throughout, assembling his
evidence against his heroes quite as readily as
in their favor. His story is delightfully clear
and very concise in statement.
For example, he gives quite bluntly the
actual record of John C. Fremont's exploits,
and describes in a few pages the discovery of
gold and the curiously haphazard founding of
San Francisco, all in the calm spirit of histor-
ical investigation. He strips the whole era of
its falsely romantic atmosphere — he even
doubts the "idyllic character" of the Spanish
occupation of California—or at least he seems
to think the facts of that life have been highly
idealized. Nevertheless his temper remains
admirable and his statements, being properly
documented, are entirely convincing. Though
a novelist, he has always observed for himself


286
October 4
THE DIAL
and in this book he has stated his conclusions
in his own way. He shows keen interest in the
giants of those days but he is not emotionally
partisan. He is neither accusing them nor
apologizing for them. There is loss as well as
gain in this method of approach. His book
convinces and informs, but fails to move his
reader, admirable as his pages are.
Hough on the contrary feels his subject
deeply and .dwells lovingly on certain of its
phases. He betrays a reminiscent, youthful
admiration for the men who rode bronchos,
hunted bison, and led ox-trains across the
plains; and in this retrospective glow he com-
poses, somewhat as a poet might do, sentences
which march and sing. The beauties of the
oldtime plain, the epic sweep of settlement
and the stern battles of the border, are indi-
cated with a fervor which is not customary in
the mere historian. One of the most striking
and eloquent passages in the book reads thus:
The chief figure of the American West is not the
long-haired fringed-legging man riding a raw-boned
pony but the gaunt and sad-faced woman sitting on
the front seat of the wagon, following her lord
where he might lead, her face hidden in the same
ragged sunbonnet which had crossed the Appa-
lachians and the Missouri long before. That was
America, my brethren I There was the seed of Am-
erica's wealth. There was the great romance of all
America—the woman in the sunbonnet.
In The Passing of the Frontier the trails and
the trail makers, the wars of the sheepmen and
cattlemen, and the ultimate triumph of the
small farmer are the large events which are
treated in brief chapters. The coming of wire
fences, the effect of railways on the migration
of game as well as on the habits of the red
hunter, the changes in the shipment of stock,
all these are arranged as parts of a colossal and
colorful drama in which the author had some
part and for whose picturesque side he per-
mits himself to utter a frank expression of
admiration. One might almost say The Pass-
ing of the Frontier is a threnody, so deeply
colored is it by the somber meditation of the
gray-haired man yielding himself to a resurg-
ing love of the stirring days of old. The men
were full-sized and red-blooded in those days,
he says, and in his reminiscent joy I am able
in some degree to share.
In the beginning of one chapter he makes
the very pertinent observation that there were
in fact many frontiers, and that the Western
movement (at least after 1840) proceeded by
leaps and sudden rushes rather than by a regu-
lar advance like an army on the march. There
was a Middle Border, a Southwest Border, a
Mountain Border, and a far-flung California
Border as well. The cattle industry, the fur
trade, the mining of gold, and the settlement
of free lands on the plains each had its
'"ttes, its columns which split and at times
almost lost all sense of formation in their ad-
vance. My own experience was with the
Middle Border as it moved from the Miss-
issippi River across Iowa and Minnesota on
into Dakota and Montana. My father and I
followed close upon the Indian and the bison,
but took no active part in their extinction.
All these frontiers, as Hough points out, are
now gone, utterly gone. America no longer
has a region of mystery, of untracked spaces,
and something fine and strong and free is pass-
ing from our national life—something the man
of the East Side tenement cannot imagine,
much less understand; something which
helped to make our fathers the unconquerable
individualists they were.
As in California the spirit of the Forty Niner
(which was akin to that of the trapper and
cowboy) has passed into something far less
inspirational even if it seems more stable, so
the plainsman has passed. The range has been
plowed and billions of hens and hogs are
swarming where the coyote and the prairie
chicken sang. The plains are fenced; the red
men are struggling with the plow. Hough
mourns for the oldtime West and I, rejoicing
in the fact that I was born early enough to
know something of its inspiration and much
of its charm, join in his lament:
Always it has been the frontier which has allured
many of our boldest souls. And always just back
of the frontier, advancing, receding, crossing it this
way and that, succeeding and failing, hoping and
despairing—but steadily advancing in the net result
has come that portion of the population which
builds homes and lives in them, and which is not
content with a blanket for a bed and the sky for a
roof above.
We had a frontier once. It was our most price-
less possession. It has not been possible to elimi-
nate from the blood of the American West, diluted
though it has been by far less worthy strains, all
the iron of the old home-bred frontiersman. The
frontier has been a lasting and ineradicable influ-
ence for the good of the United States. It was
there we showed our fighting edge, our unconquer-
able resolution, our undying faith. There, for a
time at least, we were Americans.
We had our frontier. We shall do ill indeed if
we forget and abandon its strong lessons, its great
hopes, its splendid human dreams.
To this warning I add whatever force my
signature may carry. Over against the bitter-
ness which springs from the congestion of
great cities I like to place the faith in which
my pioneer sire wrought for over eighty years
—a faith in the open spaces which enabled him
to think of reform without violence and of the
prosperity of others without bitterness or hate.
In a sense the frontier of American progress
will never pass. So long as we have faith in
the future and in the transforming effect of
our winds and skies the gate of the sunset is
open to the intellectual pathfinder, the trail-
maker, the gold-seeker.
Hamlin Garland.


1919
287
THE DIAL
Why and Honso the Prices Change
I
.t is not more than an axiom that the larger
the fraction taken as its share by business
enterprise out of the total product of industry
the smaller must be the other shares. These
are days of wide margins for the entrepreneur
class—gr.eat profits, high dividends declared,
or high undivided profits for later declaration.
A certain rubber company has just reported
that "surplus earnings for the years 1917 and
1918 were equivalent each year to about thirty
per cent on the common stock; for the first
half of 1919, substantially the same." In Octo-
ber the common stock will go to an eight per
cent dividend basis, and an extra dividend is
promised early next year. The volume of busi-
ness increased from 83 millions in 1914 to 215
millions in 1918. The capital is about to be
increased from 110 to 280 millions.
Profiteering? It may be. But it is not an
especially extreme case. The four months'
boom in the stock market has had its basis in
a general increase in earnings over practically
the entire field of established enterprise. This
means that margins are wide between costs
and selling prices—wages and the other costs
lagging behind the prices of products. The
prices of products for consumption have been
going up appallingly—and are still going up.
But the returns on corporate securities have
to increase in number of dollars correspond-
ingly with the changing prices, else the invest-
ment share in the aggregate national product
must have declined. In fact, this share has
more than maintained itself. But the dollars
accruing to bond and preferred stockholders
do not increase in number, and continue to
fall in purchasing power. Here is further
room for a rise in dividends at the expense of
the Senior security holders without prejudice
to the public.
But still there may have been and may now
be profiteering at the expense of consumers.
While general prices have something less than
doubled, business margins have more than
trebled—from something like 3 billions in 1914
to 11 or 12 billions in 1918.
Only, what is profiteering? Is it significant
that for two years the rubber company men-
tioned has been behind its orders and that
practically all producers are reporting a sim-
ilar inability to meet the demand for goods at
ruling prices? It looks as if all might be get-
ting still higher prices, imposing thus a fur-
ther acceleration in the rate of rise. It is in
any event clear that in this current inability
to keep up with orders is the guaranty that
prices are going still further to rise.
Is there no end to it? And what good—or
evil—cause is there for it all? What strange
thing is hidden in the present situation to
make it all so new and perplexing—so good
for dividends and for offered jobs, so bad for
the consuming public? Clearly enough, it is
not the Trusts. We have had them for a long
time—or they us. We have merely the same
Trusts, operating now in a period of rapidly
rising prices. The Packers may be grasping
people; are probably in a combination. But
in this also there is nothing new. Have the
Trusts been doing something recently as to
meat prices—fixing these prices in any new
sense—or have they been merely taking all
possible advantage of the new price oppor-
tunities that the new situation offers? Pos-
sibly the margins are outrageous—probably
they are. But, in any case, they are an insig-
nificant fraction of the retail selling prices of
meats. Never in fact have they been small.
But now, when meats have risen twenty cents
per pound, the cancellation of all these pack-
ers' margins, the justified with the wicked,
would leave a rise of 19 cents for buyers still
to pay.
Or the middlemen? They are a problem
also, both tragic and comic in its seriousness.
But they present no new problem excepting
in the sense that now the middlemen are active
in a period of rapid increase in prices. Nor is
there reason to suppose that their exactions
are now an increasing per cent of their turn-
over. The toll is a scandal, the expense load-
ing in retailing outrageous. But so it long has
been. At present the rate of gross profit, the
percentage of charge, is probably rather sub-
normal than supernormal. In truth, in terms
not of dollars of gain but of wKat the dollars
will buy, the retailer is probably suffering
with the rest of us. Such is, indeed, the nature
of the process of rising prices. Retail prices
lag behind wholesale—rise later and less. The
dealer fixes his selling prices on the cost-plus
basis. He figures his margins by percentages.
In large part, therefore, it is the old and lower
price that rules the present price. Not rarely,
as now in the clothing trade, the dealer's sell-
ing price is little above the price that he will
have to pay for his fall stock of goods. Doubt-
less the retailers may do some intermediate
marking up, making thereby some small book
gains on the rising prices of the stocks. But
these are gains that are neither great nor real.
The new and higher book capital will swing
a smaller rather than a larger business. It is
turnover that tells. The retailer has to keep
up his stock.


288
October 4
THE DIAL
So far, then, there is little to hope for from
the folk at Washington that are enacting pop-
gun bills and instituting pop-gun prosecutions.
Good political strategy these things may all
be, but they are sheer delusions for purposes
of remedy—promises that will never be liqui-
dated. They are a part of the same uncom-
prehending talk and fret that attended the rise
in prices in the Revolution days of the French
assignats; that was rife with the debacle of
the Continental currency in our early history;
that went on over the price-kiting of the Civil
War—the same buzz and chatter that pre-
vailed in Russia and Austria till the money
had depreciated into practical disappearance—
the same angry beating against caging bars
that is now general in France and Italy and
England, where the prices still go up and
where nothing avails to stop either the prices
or the flow of denunciation about them.
Then it must be the speculators, the ware-
house men and the cold-storage men? Proceed
we, then, against the speculators. But, after
all, if these speculators will not sell the goods
to us now—buy them now to hold for sale to
us later—it must be that they expect us later
to be willing to pay more for the goods than
we are willing to pay now to get them. They
have no notion of taking the goods away from
us, but only of letting us have them at another
time. It is the purpose of their buying now
to supply us later at the higher prices that we
can then be induced to pay. Their bidding
away the goods from us now by raising the
price offers us our sole hope of a supply later
at any price. No doubt they are buying now
dearer to sell later still dearer. And no doubt
they buy the more keenly and push up prices
the more rapidly as they see that prices are
now in process of going up the more rapidly.
But this brings us back to the same old ques-
tion: what makes the prices in general rise?
And what makes these speculators and en-
grossers and regraters and rascals-at-large so
sure that prices are still further going to rise?
These men are profiteers. But just this is
what all men are in business. Profits are still
the motive power. Why should the specula-
tors be so exceptionally keen now to bid up
prices against one another, in the lively expec-
tation that good profits will still be left out of
the later and still higher selling prices?
Whence this confidence in a general price ad-
vance—all of the speculators proceeding on
the assumption of advancing prices—the bears
merely expecting a lesser rise? The only
thing novel about the present speculation is
that it is a speculation in times of rapidly rising
prices and in the expectation of a still further
and rapid rise. What offers the bull operator
the rising prices that are a special invitation
"" his speculative activities? Is he himself the
^er of the prices on the basis of which and
through the lure of which he speculates, and
out of which he draws his gain—the prices get-
ting higher merely because he expects them to
and decrees that they shall? But it is still open
to anyone to speculate for a fall if he thinks
well. No sane man so thinks.
It is, of course, obvious that if the storage
man gets the eggs now, ybu and I must so far
go without them now. The eggs cannot now
be freezing for some speculator to supply for
some later breakfast, at the same time that
they are boiling for someone's present break-
fast. Now or then, not now and then. If no
one stores now, there must next January be a
shortage of eggs for everyone's breakfast. The
extreme of spring or summer plenty goes only
with the extreme of winter dearth. Next Jan-
uary we shall need the storage man and be
glad to pay him his profit rather than have no
eggs. He is a redistributor of consumption in
point not of space but of time, determining
not so" much that there shall be more or fewer
eggs per year—the hens have that in charge—
as that there shall be less at one season and
more at another, a restricted consumption
when there is a relative plenty, to the end that
there shall be a less restriction when the cur-
rent supplies are small.
It would, in fact, go extremely ill with us if
there were nowhere either storage men or
storage women. If the warehousing and stor-
ing profiteers are eliminated, the housewives
will have to take charge: regrating and fore-
stalling will have to go on with pickle jars and
water glass and cold packing. No doubt the
skilful housewife and the other sort of ras-
cally speculators differ in this—that the spec-
ulator is holding to self again to later users
while the housewife is holding for the later
use of her family. And precisely thus it comes
about that when prices are rising the specu-
lator may overdo the storage business as mat-
ter of general welfare, and may yet make the
thing pay him a good profit, solely because of
the rising prices. So in times of falling prices
speculative storage is too far limited from the
point of view of the general good. Falling
prices—rising dollars—discourage holding for
a later sale, and thereby penalize society by
future dearth for the instability of its currency.
With currency moving toward depreciation—
cheaper dollars, rising prices—speculative
over-storage penalizes society for a reverse
instability of its currency. Speculation has
imperatively important functions. But it for-
feits much or all of its serviceability if it must
include in its operations not only the ex-
changeable goods but the media for their ex-
change. Speculation on the dollars' side of
things is bad. Standards, to be standards, need
to be stable.
But to decree clearing out cold-storage


1919
289
THE DIAL
plants and the warehouses and elevators is not to
provide a substitute service but merely to impose
a substitute disease. Present prices are curbed and
present consumption fostered on terms of imposing
a later dearth and a more than offsetting advance
in prices. This is merely the improvident post-
ponement of an inevitable reckoning—the best that
is to be said of it being that probably it will come
to nothing much anyway. But if something does
come of it in the direction of eliminating the spec-
ulator, it will be for the authorities that have dis-
placed him to find something with which to replace
him. To disregard at present the requirements of
the future is to invite disaster. Price control, not
a helter-skelter clearance, is the logical substitute
for speculation. Rationing, in turn, is the logical
and imperative supplement to price restriction.
Artificially limited prices mean a stimulated pres-
ent consumption—speculatively enhanced prices, a
restricted present consumption. In part, therefore,
it is due to the stimulated consumption of last year
and in part to the undue speculative restriction of
this year that the stock of wheat on June 1 was
nearly three-fold that of a year ago, of rye four
and a half-fold, barley three, buckwheat four, cured
beef two, frozen pork three, frozen fowls four.
To the rising prices, then, have been due the
swollen profits and the restricted real wages. To
the rising prices are also due the occasionally ex-
ceptional exactions of the monopolies. To the ris-
ing prices again is due the unusual and excessive
activity of speculators. But to what are due the
rising prices?
All the current glib talk about an increasing de-
mand and a decreasing supply is sheer nonsense as
explanation of a general rise in prices. It can be
only an increasing supply of currency or a diminish-
ing demand for it that can explain cheap dollars.
General prices are a question of the ratio of the
goods to be exchanged through the media of ex-
change—the volume of currency—to the volume of
the currency intermediate through which the
exchanging is to be done. Only as relative to the
volume of currency with which to buy goods can
an increasing or decreasing general supply of goods
affect general prices. To talk about the diminish-
ing supply or the increasing demand of any one
good is of use in explaining the rising price of
that good. But it is a different matter for all
goods taken together and set over against the money,
or currency through which, as medium and stand-
ard, they are all to be exchanged. The ratio
becomes then solely one of the total supply of goods
to the supply of media. Only through a diminished
supply of goods against media, or through an
increasing supply of media against goods, is a rise
in general prices to be accounted for. Excepting,
indeed, in the sense of this ratio of the aggregate
of goods to the aggregate of media for their ex-
change, all talk of a generally increasing demand
for goods or of a generally diminishing supply is
incompetent as bearing on general prices. Goods
exchange against one another, with currency serv-
ing merely as intermediate. Thus it is only an
increase in the supply of goods in general that can
furnish an increase in the demand for goods in gen-
eral and for an intermediate through which to
exchange them. Demand for one commodity—
through money—exists only by virtue of the sup-
ply of other commodities offered for money. Sup-
ply of one commodity is demand for other com-
modities. An increased output of products involves
'an increase in the volume of exchanging to take
place—an increased general demand being merely
a different way of reporting an increased supply.
All supplies are demands and all demands are sup-
plies—the total output of goods reporting at the
same time the total demand for goods and the total
supply—demand and supply being merely different
aspects of the same commodities, according to
the way they are thought of in relation to one
another. When wheat is exchanging against shoes,
either good is demand against the other, either is
supply against the other. Exchanging goods are
equally supplies against supplies or demands against
demands. There is no such thing as a general
shortage of goods relative to one another, or of a
general increase of demand relative to one another,
or of a general rise in prices relative to one
another. Goods in general can rise or fall in
price only through the relation of the supply of
goods to the medium through which as intermediate
all get exchanged against one another.
But the exchange of each particular good for
another good divides into two steps. Instead of
exchanging wheat for shoes, one sells his wheat
for a price and with that price buys shoes. What
is it that has made both the wheat and the shoes
go up in terms of the intermediate? The demand
for each particular thing presents itself in terms of
money, the currency that other things were
exchanged into, and that is now being offered as
purchasing power for the particular thing. Why
is more money now offering for each thing? Or,
to push it a step back, why did all of the other
things command more money when they were ex-
changed into money, so that now more money is
offered for each particular thing? In whatever
way it is approached, the problem always finally
presents itself as one of the ratio of the supplies of
goods in general to the supply of the media of
exchange, the price thing, the standard, the •Miey


290
October 4
THE DIAL
thing, the currency. Why is this thing becoming
so relatively and increasingly plenty that it has to
go the way of all other things that get relatively
plenty—it gets cheap? Why does everything now
buy more money, money less of everything? Why
are general prices high?
Most questions are half answered in getting
rightly stated. The world production of goods
has fallen. Even without a currency inflation, in
the absence of any deflation, world prices would
somewhat have risen. Our production probably fell
off during the war. There was room in this for
some small rise in general prices in America, even
had we not inflated. Now, however, our produc-
tion has become phenomenally great. But the fact
that we are expanding bur currency faster than
we are increasing our production keeps prices still
going up. The prices that rise faster than the
costs leave the margins high, dividends generous,
stocks booming. That costs are rising less rapidly
than products is merely one way of saying that
wages are not maintaining their purchasing power.
Hence one of the stimulations to strikes. Even
where wages have kept up with prices, the laborers
interpret this higher money wage as due to them-
selves, irrespective of the general price situation,
as rightly won and held on grounds of particular
merit or good fortune, and regard the concurrently
rising prices as a malicious intervention to rob
them of the vested rights of victory. The gen-
eral equity breaks up into what seems a hydra-
headed wrong. So again, the creditor class, the
holders of the bonds and preferred stocks, the an-
nuitants, the fixed salariat, and the commission-
regulated folk, are all suffering, and wonder and
gasp and pray—where they are not intelligent
enough to swear. The middlemen do their good
best to keep in step with the upward swing of
prices and lag not far behind. The speculator,
making way as best he can at his double-headed
problem—on the one hand his adjustment of prices
to relative future needs; on the other hand, the
speculative lure of cheapening money—brings
earlier the rise in price that will be later due and
thereby unduly restricts the supply of goods avail-
able for present use.
Meanwhile Washington busies itself with
denunciations of the wrong man and with reme-
dies for the wrong thing. Governor Harding ad-
mits the inflation—32% billions of bank deposits in
1918 as against 1814 in 1914, a 14 per cent increase
in national bank deposits in the last year—but thinks
we can do nothing with it so long as prices keep
rising; explains the inflation by the prices, not the
prices by the inflation; and defends the inflation
1 a necessary policy in caring for business in view
of the trend of prices. But what, then, did actually
cause the rising prices? The rising costs? All
along they have been lagging behind the prices,
else there had been no widening margin of profits.
The profiteers? They merely recognize the prices
that are. The speculators? They recognize the
forces behind the situation that will ultimately fix
the prices. They are the servants of price—
merely accelerating what they foresee, bringing it
earlier, and preventing it from later going higher
still. The Trusts? Their expanding gains are
typical of business in general rather than excep-
tions to it—and are inconsiderable for the purpose
of explaining the present situation.
But what about the great demands from foreign
peoples, who, lacking equally goods to use or goods
to sell, appeal to us to sell them goods and offer
only promises to buy with? They must also be
contributors to our continuing inflation, as must
likewise be every other demand, foreign or
domestic, governmental or private, that gets dis-
counted by the banks into circulating deposit credit.
The price inflation is the direct arid the certain
result of the inflation of bank credit—30 odd
billions of it now to do the exchanging that 18
billions used to do. The rise in prices will not
stop till the banks stop expanding their deposit cir-
culation through extending discount or purchase of
private and public obligations. And the banks will
not stop till somebody or something stops them. No
one of them can stop the others, and there is no use
in any .one's stopping if the others are to go on.
Washington sees no reason for intervening—since
surely the banker must be informed of whatever pub-
lic emergency exists. Governor Harding stands
ready with the rediscounting facilities of the Federal
Reserve Banks—reserves being still redundant—to
supply to the limit of possibility such new reserves
as the member banks may require for the further
extension of their accommodations and of their
deposit liabilities.
But fortunately this process, to which there is
nowhere any human wisdom to prescribe a limit,
will shortly prescribe its own limit. The greatest
of the Reserve Associations is near to the end of its
credit tether—its reserves approaching shortage.
What, however, is to happen when the blank wall
of inelasticity is reached no one can confidently fore-
tell. Clear it is that the Reserve Associations
will have inflated themselves out of that credit
elasticity which, for the safeguarding of business
enterprise, industrial efficiency and financial sol-
vency, it is their primary function to provide and
maintain. rr T „
H. J. Davenport.


igig
291
THE DIAL
The Little Back Room
O
'nce by mistake I rented a little room in the
Brown Borough, London, about the size of a billiard
table. When I say by mistake I mean that my orig-
inal object had been to rent a rather larger front
room, which happened to be ideal for the Shop
which I had in mind. It was only when the nego-
tiations were far advanced and I was looking for
a reason for the rather high rent demanded, that
the agent broke to me the news that a little back
room was inevitably included, like a baker's make-
weight.. It was a very dirty little room indeed,
looking out on to a backyard of such dirtiness that
I could not write of it on this clean paper. The
walls were freely perforated, there was no need to
open the door in order to examine passing fellow
lodgers in the hall. This was almost a blessing, ia
view of the fact that the window had forgotten
how to open. Several of the window panes were
made of wood instead of glass, which again had
advantages, since wooden panes need no cleaning.
Not that former lodgers had apparently wasted any
energy on window cleaning; there was very little
difference in transparency between the glass panes
and the wooden ones. There were three missing
planks in the floor of that room, and there was a
fireplace which you could really light, if you were
very careful not to disturb its balance. Of course
if you lighted it roughly with a coarse wooden match
and an ordinary tough Sunday paper it naturally
fell out into the room. I don't know whether the
game of Spellicans is universally known; I hope so,
for I feel that the practice I have had in lighting
my fire has given me a reasonable chance for the
world's championship in Spellicans. My tongue
sticks out yet—a sign of exquisite caution—when I
think of building that fire. Only the lightest Even-
ing News, skilfully shredded, would do, and fire-
wood split and split again, and an edifice of tiny
coals, and the most fairylike touch of a
match. . . .
"Pore people like dirt and bad repair," said the
agent. "Why bless you, they wouldn't know them-
selves without a bug or two in the wall to keep the
'ome together and an 'ole in the winder to let in
the sun to dry the clo'es by. Why I've known 'em
come to me cryin' because there wasn't no vermin in
the place for them to make pets of. Under the circs
I might 'ave a lick or two of paint on the wood-
work, and a yard or two of paper on the 'oles in
the wall—more than that I'm not authorized to
see to."
A few little square patches of seagreen paper were
therefore pasted about my grey wall, as a conces-
sion to the circs, and my table, chair, and bookshelf,
which had been waiting expectantly elsewhere,
moved in. I had left the back room as a blank
sheet in my plans, as all my intentions were centered
in the business to be born in the front room. I
installed a table, chair, and bookshelf as articles
sufficiently ambiguous for any development.
Monsieur Jacques, the antique-chair maker in
the basement of the house, who was a former friend
of mine, met me on the threshold with much pride
on the morning of my humble moving, to show me
a wonderful patchwork of various coloured oilcloth
which he had nailed all over my floor in the night.
Some of the warmer coloured patches had almost the
effect of sunlight on the floor. Monsieur Jacques was
a good friend to me; the one flaw in our friendship
was the fact that I was always finding myself en-
tangled in his complicated family affairs. He had
by some mischance acquired two wives, the first
English, the second of his own race. The first,
though she had indeed no wish to regain possession
of him, was fond of employing me as a messenger
in regard to the affairs of their son, a poilu in the
French Army. Messages concerning this first fam-
ily were anything but music in the ears of Monsieur
Jacques, but he was always very patient with me.
Sometimes the messages were of so heated and diffi-
cult a nature that I committed them to paper only,
and pushed them under the basement door. Mon-
sier Jacques and I never referred to these by word
of mouth; we met again with unbiased manners.
The second Madame Jacques, a lady who, I
imagine, had never ceased talking long enough to
learn any tongue but her own, never seemed to feel
any coldness towards me as an intermediary, al-
though the whole affair was known to her. My
native Brown Borough friends could never take the
French tongue seriously. They used to listen with
benevolent smiles to the loud noise of Monsieur and
Madame Jacques and me, talking all at once. The
Babel' was supposed to be a sort of concerted joke
between us, and Monsieur Jacques' curious English
was also accepted as a further example of his unfail-
ing facetiousness.
For the first few weeks I used my back room as
an Arts and Crafts School. I happened to have a
good many friends among applewomen, and other
hangers-on of barrows in the city. Wartime and
wintertime are bad times in which to be old and
unskilled, times too when dry fruit is elusive game
and yields good hunting only to the most agile.
Now I had passed a certain amount of my young
life in a schoolroom overflowing with handicrafts,


iuaauautiMhaEaaBM
292
THE DIAL
October 4
and I was more or less skilled in the production of
objects of a value artistically doubtful and commer-
cially more than doubtful. Bazaars, however, afford
tolerant custom, and custom that flourishes espe-
cially in wartime. In these I put my trust. Into
my little back room every evening I fitted, with
jigsaw exactness, two old apple ladies, one young
miscellaneous-barrow lady, one girl over school age,
another just under, and occasionally a wounded
coster soldier. All these people I instructed in the
art of making baskets of a uniquely useless kind in
raffia of many colours. The piebald walls of my
little back room became saturated with song, scan-
dal, the frequent sound of laughter, the occasional
sound of tears, and other social intercourse. The
senior "Granny" was often drunk and generally
cheerful; the junior one always fresh and moist from
some dreadful stroke of fortune; the young barrow-
lady almost too full of energy to be safely contained
in the classroom; the older schoolgirl bubbling with
immoral anecdotes about the downing of parents,
teachers, and guardians; the younger girl, aged five,
industrious and cynical. The wounded soldier was
too ill and too tired to contribute much to the talk.
• After a while the barrow business looked up again,
and the non-barrow pupils became skilled enough
to work alone at home, so my little back room was
left empty. I let it as a lodging.
My first lodger was Albert, nephew of Monsieur
Jacques, also in the antique chair trade. His ten-
ancy was short, owing to the fact that from the first
he was wanted both by the military authorities and
the civil police. Finally he disappeared with some
nimbleness. Monsieur Jacques maintained a neutral
silence on the subject of his errant relative, but
Albert's mother, who was English, called to ask
why die Shop (myself and partner) hadn't put trie
police on him right away, for—" Though I ses it
as per'aps shouldn't, Elbert's the most evil chap this
side of the Mile End Road." She seemed to be
rather unlucky in her children, for she came shortly
afterwards to ask the Shop's advice as to what she
should do with her daughter, aged fifteen, who,
after "pushing in" the parental eye, had disap-
peared. The Shop judicially asked what had been
the girl's provocation. It appeared that the mother
had simply threatened to lather her, calling her
a , and had forbidden her to set her foot inside
the door again. The Shop withheld advice.
In the meantime the little back room was occupied
by Miss Elizabeth M., a spinster with an almost
alarminely respectable past. Her present, however,
was of a different character, and I first made her
acquaintance at a time when, inspired by secret
brandy, she had stormed my Shop, and played havoc
with my property and my partner, who, being a
cripple, had not been able adequately to defend
herself. Miss M., on emerging from the lock-up,
regretted this accident very deeply, and at her re-
quest I prevailed upon her former employer to pay
for a six months' visit to a Salvation Army inebriate
home. On the day of her release from this excellent
institution she celebrated the occasion by giving a
little party to herself and a bottle of gin, after which
she renewed the attack upon my Shop. But this
time I was there. The noise of the argument be-
tween the Shop and its caller drew quite a crowd
to the window. The argument ended when we put
Miss M. to sleep it off on the floor of my back
room. When she woke up, sad and sober, she and
I decided that she should be the next occupant of
the, little room, to see if its atmosphere helped her
at all. It did not. She was drunk daily, although
the Shop tried to distract her mind with lightsome
talk whenever it saw her in the act of disappearing
to the " London Apprentice." I called on the Sal-
vation Army. A saint in navy blue told me that I
was "one of little faith," which indeed I was, in
the circumstances. The saint received the sinner
again, albeit with arms a shade less open than
before. As Miss M. disappeared, she winked be-
hind the saint's back. The latest news of her is not
inspiring. She sent for me to visit her in a Work-
house Infirmary; she said that she was now saved,
and was it true that the price of spirits had gone
up again "outside."
I forget the name of the next applicant for my
back room, but I remember her face. I did not
understand her expression and I did not under-
stand her tactics. I did not like either very much.
I never asked for references from lodgers, but
this lady sprinkled me with little bits of paper in-
forming me of the address of parsons and district
visitors, none of whom, on being appealed to, could
produce any information about her. Her explana-
tion that they might have known her under other
aliases did not seem to strengthen her case much'.
Again, I only asked for a very small rent, but the
mysterious applicant, bent on arousing my interest,
showed me a little dirty bag containing thirty pounds
in gold, which she wore attached to her neck. There
was, of course, no gold in circulation in England
then, and I tried to enlist the hoard in the war sav-
ings service, but to no avail. While I was still won-
dering whether I would place my innocent little
room at the mercy of one so mysterious, she began to
move her furniture in. Among the rest of the fur-
niture a husband, hitherto unmentioned, was in-


1919
293
THE DIAL
stalled. I protested against the secret and crooked
appearance of these proceedings. Although she
tried to reassure me by pointing out the happily
impermanent nature of her domestic ties, I declined
to be her landlady. I even turned the first detach-
ment of her property out on to the sidewalk. She
moved it back into the room. I removed it again.
It was a battle of wills. Lodger and landlady wore
a strong silent look about the house for some days,
and then a stormy interview ended the transaction.
My next lodger was a boy called Willy, aged
sixteen, sent to the Shop by his employer wk. .ranted
to keep him out of the clutches of an undesirable
mother. Willy paid his rent regularly, kept early
hours, and seemed to be the ideal lodger. Then
the Shop broke up for its vacation, leaving Willy
a little money-box to put his rent into every Satur-
day. The day before the Shop was due to resume
business I received a courteous, if involved, letter
from Willy, asking what he should do about the two
families of kittens with which the Shop cats were
apparently about to be blessed, as he himself was
leaving before my return, taking with him the
money-box for safety. I came back to find the back
room empty but for a welter of starving cats and
newborn kittens. Neither Willy nor the money-box
was ever seen again.
I then let the room to a lady called—apparently
—Mrs. Mum. The name sounded somehow un-
likely, but as she could not write, and could not
remember ever having seen the name written, we had
to take it on trust. She was a young broadfaced
smiling person, with a laugh of stunning volume,
and a two year old son called Charley. Charley
had one joke. Like other humorists similarly situ-
ated, he was helpless until somebody paved the way
to his joke. Prompted by Mrs. Mum, the accom-
modating friend would say—" Why, Charley,
where's your Daddy?" The reply, delivered in a
succulent and triumphant voice was—" Killing
bluggy Germans." Mr. Mum I never met, but I
acquired a sympathetic interest in him when I dis-
covered that Mrs. Mum's behavior was modeled on
the maxim that " a man in the hand is worth two
at the Front." By unremitting effort the Shop
managed to keep the image of the absent Mum
fresh before his wife's eye for six weeks, and then
she and Charley eloped with a more accessible ad-
mirer, after punctiliously paying their rent.
My last lodger, the one who even now occupies
the back room, has also been the most difficult. I
have known Dolly D. for some years and she has
this summer reached the age of sixteen. To call
her half-witted would be perhaps unfair. Three-
fifths witted might be a juster estimate. Most dogs
can boast a better home life than that which the D.
family enjoys. They lived six in one room, before
Dolly left them. The father is never sober to my
knowledge—or perhaps he is sometimes, during
sleep. The mother, although by incessant and heart-
breaking work she manages to support her family
on fifteen shillings a week (nearly four dollars),
the fruit of painting toys with more or less unhealthy
paint, is not really in full possession of her intellect.
Dolly was never a worker. "Somehow," she says,
"I'd just as soon do nothing as work," a not un-
common feeling, which most of us occasionally try
to overcome. Dolly had for the last two years
possessed a young man, said to'be as much as eighteen
years old. I had thought him rather a fine boy, and
had felt secretly sorry that romance should draw
him along such an unpromising path.
In due course Dolly "got into trouble." Her
father, apparently feeling that he had given his
children enough advantages to justify him in high
expectations, righteously turned his daughter into
the street. She moved into my back Toom without
any possessions except two little framed seaside
views. Such additional luxuries as clothes and a
bed were left to the Shop to provide. It met the
emergency by begging from its aunts. But on the
subject of Dolly's future the Shop was for once
divided against itself. My plan was that she should
remain, a spinster, in seclusion in the back room
until the " trouble" culminated in the hospital round
the corner. But my partner was determined that
Dolly should marry her boy, in spite of the fact that
years of discretion and the normal allowance of wits
were both obviously lacking. Dolly and the boy
had no views on the subject, but after a few talks
with a large number of neighbors, they did save up
for a license, and, with the help of a few lies about
their age, they got married. Immediately after the
ceremony the boy broke to us the news that his real
age was sixteen, and that he was only employed as
a Boy Round The 'Docks, a profession not con-
spicuous for its opportunities of advancement. The
effort of getting married seemed to be too much for
them. The husband at least now shows some energy
in playing marbles with his friends on the side-
walk, but Dolly, though in goo'd health, cannot
even muster up enough vitality to enable her to
hem the borders of necessary provisions laid in by
the Shop against her future. She will not do up
her hair or even dress herself, except in two sacks
and a little string. The local authorities have
offered her free meals, but Dolly would rather
starve than dress up in her new Shop-provided


2.94.
October 4
THE DIAL
clothes and walk two blocks to a good meal. The
boy brings home a bloater at night, when his earn-
ings run to it.
When I said good-bye to Dolly, on leaving my
Shop, she looked like a cave-dweller, wrapped in
shapeless things and with her matted hair about her
eyes. But I doubt if the cave-dweller would appre-
ciate the comparison; after all he was progressive
enough, in his own way. The march of civilization
is not a particularly well organized procession;
sometimes it almost seems as if the stragglers out-
number those who keep in step. At any rate, in
the Brown Borough most of us are content to linger
on the long road, even though it be dark, and though
there be no lights to lead us, and no flowers to make
lingering worth while. In the van of the march
the music brays confidently, wearying the ears of
heaven with its brazen boastings of progress, but
no echo of that music reaches us or cheers us, strung
out wearily as we are along the forgotten miles.
Perhaps Heaven only hears the boasting, perhaps
Heaven has washed its hands of us, perhaps after all
we are but dirt and deserve nothing better.
StellA BENson.
Service Accounting
T. TIME was, before America went into the
war, and even as late as the day of the armis-
tice, when to have the word democracy in a con-
venient place in one's vocabulary was as good as to
be a democrat and do democratic things—and of
course easier. This is not a blow at a President
who is already busy enough dodging brickbats; it
is the truth about all of us, all the idealists, all the
dreamers, all the talkers and theorists, all the poli-
ticians, all the a priori reasoners, all the Aunt Ples-
singtons, Theodore Roosevelts, Woodrow Wilsons,
Charles Edward Russells, Trotzkys and Lenins,
the whole tribe, from light pink to violent red, who
have been going into the silence to produce a
theory and coming out of the silence to foist it
upon an unregenerate civilization. The world has
been full of talkers and disputants, without dirt
on their hands or grease on the knees of their
trousers, and without any conception of the in-
finite complexities in which the wheels of produc-
tion revolve. The attempt has been to apply ideas
to industry instead of finding out what ideas in-
dustry has been generating within itself. Democracy
has been treated as a qualitative thing, whereas the
only way to make democratic progress under the
machine system is obviously to apply quantitative
methods. What are the statistics of democracy,
in dollars, hours, and units of product? Does it
run counter to the machine system or in harmony
with it? Does the machine system, which is a blind
instrument of production, tend of itself to breed
democracy? If it does not the theories and the
dreams will be of little avail.
These reflections are induced by the reading of
H. L. Gantt's little volume on Organizing for
Work with which a new publishing house (Har-
court, Brace and Howe) has made a promising
debut. Mr. Gantt began by being, not a democrat,
but first a manufacturer and then a production en-
gineer. His theories are the residuum of workaday
experience. He has an insatiable yearning for pro-
duction; idle machines or men, inefficient fore-
men and superintendents, wasteful methods in any
department are his nightmares. If democracy in
industry meant fumbling, confusion, and waste Mr.
Gantt would be against it. Like Emerson and
Taylor he preaches efficiency; and he is more con-
cerned in proving that efficiency is democratic than
that democracy is efficient. Yet he does both. In
him and his increasing group of followers and—
if the word is permitted, parallelers—the two
schools which were parted at the time of the French
revolution come together again. Handicraft bred
its defenders of human rights, who were, after
all, defenders of efficiency; now machine in-
dustry has done the same. The instinct of work-
manship and the instinct to be free, responsible, and
self-respecting are again shown how to run in team.
The reader of this little treatise will understand
it better if he realizes that in going through it he is
exactly reversing the mental processes of the man
who wrote it. Mr. Gantt literally arrived, by way
of shop, factory, and cost sheet, at his conclusions;
the reader, perforce, must set out from them. What
might be dogmatism in a theorist is a matter of ac-
curate measurement with Gantt. The first princi-
ple is neither new nor complex; it is simply that
“reward should be dependent solely upon the
service rendered.” Here is a sentiment with which
an orator may win applause from any audience,
but as a sentiment it is worth even a little less than
nothing. The Gantt method of industrial man-
agement consists of an accurate and really
effective system of applying it. When Gantt has
charted a factory or an industry he knows, and
everyone who can read a series of simple


I919
295
THE DIAL
charts knows, exactly how much every workman,
every machine, every department, and if necessary
every factory is doing, exactly how this compares
with what each ought to be doing, and exactly how
large a price ought legitimately to be charged
against the product. His system enables those who
use it to sort out the serviceable from the unservice-
able. In so doing he puts a finger on the crucial
point in the price problem. “The business man
cannot continue to get big rewards unless he ren-
ders a corresponding amount of service.” More
than that—and this is where pure doctrine enters
into the argument—he cannot rightly receive any
reward whatever for services not rendered. If
he is unable to make use of more than one-third
of his factory he may not ethically charge the con-
sumer with the overhead charges on the other two-
thirds.
Our cost accounting system, to meet the present and
future emergency, must not content itself with charging
to the product all expenses, but must charge to the prod-
uct only that expense that helped to produce it, and must
show the expenses that did not produce anything, and
their causes.
This sounds harsh. Shall not the Steel Corpora-
tion, running at two-thirds of its capacity, take
from the consumer the cost of maintaining the
other one-third in idleness? Can it remain solvent
if it does not? Perhaps not, replies Mr. Gantt.
If not let it perish of its own incompetence. Let
us at least not reward incompetence by permitting
men to capitalize and draw dividends from it. The
rule is summed up as follows:
The indirect expense chargeable to the output of a
factory should bear the same ratio to the indirect ex-
pense necessary to run the factory, at normal capacity
as the output in question bears to the normal output of
the factory.
If this were his sole contribution Mr. Gantt
would have to be added to the innumerable army
of worthy but rarely effective critics who have made
the fairly easy discovery that the present system of
production and distribution is immoral. But his
belief that it is wrong to reward those who have
rendered no service is secondary to his discovery
that most men like to render service and can be
shown how to do so, and his evolution of a technique
which can be but hinted at in a small book and
only mentioned in a few paragraphs. It might be
called service accounting, and on it something like
that system of earned rewards of which all social
reformers have dreamed might be made to rest.
Even within the limits of this present and not nearly
perfect generation it could easily furnish security
and prosperity for the factory owner with faith
enough to apply it; indeed it has done so. Restric-
tion of output is not a problem for Mr. Gantt.
Workingmen in factories where his system has been
installed do not diminish their product as their
wages are increased. He says:
With an efficient management there is but little diffi-
culty in training the workmen to be efficient. I have
proved this many times and so clearly that there can
be absolutely no doubt about it. Our most serious trouble
is incompetency in high places. As long as that remains
uncorrected no amount of efficiency in the workmen will
avail very much. *
Pursued to its logical limit service accounting
scrutinizes not merely every factory but the rela-
tions between factories and between all the ele-
ments in production, and it will weigh even insti-
tutions on its terribly exacting scales. The scientific
credit system “must not only be able to finance
those who have ownership, but also those who have
productive capacity, which is vastly more im-
portant.” The rights of property must justify
themselves (and there is no saying they will not),
or, presto! there will be no rights of property.
Privilege must be abolished, since it is in every case
the privilege to be incompetent, or, which comes
to the same thing, non-productive.
The necessity in this instance is not political but
economic. That nation which produces most has
the best chance for survival. If democracy is ef-
ficient and efficiency is democratic that nation which
is most democratic will have the best chance of
survival. Here, if Mr. Gantt's conclusions are
sound, is a new iron law. It is not a moral code.
“Unless it can be shown,” he declares, “that a busi-
ness system which has a social purpose is distinctly
more beneficial to those who control than one which
has not a social purpose I frankly confess that there
does not seem to be any permanent answer in sight.”
But: | -
We have proved in many places that the doctrine of
service which has been preached in the churches as re-
ligion is not only good economics and eminently prac-
tical, but, because of the increased production of goods
obtained by it, promises to lead us safely through the
maze of confusion into which we seem to be headed, and
to give us that industrial democracy which alone can
afford a basis for industrial peace.
Others beside Mr. Gantt are upon the trail of
these conclusions, though few have set forth so
clearly all their implications. What if this be the
destined way of progress, sure, steady, and almost
independent of political revolutions and counter-
revolutions? For men will not be enslaved under
the machine system if the machines can be operated
efficiently only when they are free.
Robert L. DUFFUs.


296
October 4
THE DIAL
Bolshevism and the Vested Interests in America
I. On the Danger of a Revolutionary Overturn
B,
• olshevism is a menace to the vested rights of
property and privilege. Therefore the guardians
of the Vested Interests have been thrown into a
state of Red trepidation by the continued function-
ing of Soviet Russia and the continual outbreaks of
the same Red distemper elsewhere on the continent
of Europe. It is feared, with a nerve-shattering
fear, that the same Red distemper of Bolshevism
must presently infect the underlying population in
America and bring on an overturn of the established
order, so soon as the underlying population are in
a position to take stock of the situation and make
up their mind to a course of action. The situation"
is an uneasy one, and- it contains the elements of
much trouble; at least such appears to be the con-
viction of the Guardians of the established order.
Something of the kind is felt to be due, on the
grounds of the accomplished facts. So it is feared,
with a nerve-shattering fear, that anything like un-
colored information as to the facts in the case and
anything like a free popular discussion of these
facts must logically result in disaster. Hence all
this unseemly trepidation.
The Guardians of the Vested Interests, official
and quasi-official, have allowed their own knowl-
edge of this sinister state of things to unseat their
common sense. The run of the facts has jostled
them out of the ruts, and they have gone in for a
headlong policy of clamor and repression, to cover
and suppress matters of fact and to shut off discus-
sion and deliberation. And all the while the
Guardians are also feverishly at work on a mobiliza-
tion of such forces as may hopefully be counted
on to " keep the situation in hand" in case the ex-
pected should happen. The one manifestly con-
clusive resolution to which the Guardians of the
Vested Interests have come is that the underlying
population is to be "kept in hand," in the face of
any contingency. Their one settled principle of
conduct appears to be, to stick at nothing; in all
of which, doubtless, the Guardians mean well.
Now, the Guardians of the Vested Interests are
presumably wise in discountenancing any open dis-
cussion or any free communication of ideas and
opinions. It could lead to nothing more comfort-
able than popular irritation and distrust. The
Vested Interests are known to have been actively
concerned in the prosecution of the War, and
-*--»»£ is no lack of evidence that their spokesmen
have been heard in the subsequent counsels of the
Peace. And, no doubt, the less that is known and
said about the doings of the Vested Interests dur-
ing the War and after, the better both for the pub-
lic tranquility and for the continued growth and
profit of the Vested Interests. Yet it is not to be
overlooked that facts of such magnitude and of
such urgent public concern as the manoeuvres of
the Vested Interests during the War and after can
not be altogether happily covered over with a con-
spiracy of silence. Something like a middle course
of temperate publicity should have seemed more
to the point. It may be unfortunate, but it is none
the less unavoidable, that something appreciable
is bound to come to light; that is to say, something
sinister.
It should be plain to all good citizens who have
the cause of law and order at heart that in such
a case a more genial policy of conciliatory prom-
ises and procrastination will be more to the pur-
pose than any noisy recourse to the strong arm and
the Star Chamber. A touch of history, and more
particularly of contemporary history, would have
given the Gurdians a touch of sanity. Grown wise
in all the ways and means of blamelessly defeating
the unblest majority, the gentlemanly government
of the British manage affairs of this kind much
better. They have learned that bellicose gestures
provoke ill will, and that desperate remedies should
be held in reserve until needed. Whereas the
Guardians of the Vested Interests in America are
plainly putting things in train for a capital opera-
tion, for which there is no apparent necessity. It
should be evident of slight reflection that things
have not reached that fateful stage where nothing
short of a capital operation can be counted on to
save the life of the Vested Interests in America;
not yet. And indeed, things need assuredly not
reach such a stage if reasonable measures are taken
is avoid undue alarm and irritation. All that is
needed to keep the underlying population of Amer-
ica in a sweet temper is a degree of patient am-
biguity and delay, something after the British pat-
tern, and all will yet be well with the vested rights
of property and privilege, for some time to come.
History teaches that no effectual popular upris-
ing can be set afoot against an outworn institutional
iniquity unless it effectually meets the special mate-


1919
297
THE DIAL
rial requirements of the situation which provokes
it; nor on the other hand can an impending popu-
lar overturn be staved off without making up one's
account with those material conditions which con-
verge to bring it on. The long history of British
gentlemanly compromise, collusion, conciliation, and
popular defeat, is highly instructive on that head.
And it should be evident to any disinterested per-
son, on any slight survey of the pertinent facts, that
the situation in America does not now offer such
a combination of circumstances as would be required
for any effectual overturn of the established order
or any forcible dispossession of these Vested Inter-
ests that now control the material fortunes of the
American people. In short, by force of circum-
stances, Bolshevism is not a present menace to the
Vested Interests in America; provided always that
the Guardians of these Vested Interests do not go
out of their way to precipitate trouble by such meas-
ures as will make Bolshevism of any complexion
seem the lesser evil,—which is perhaps not a safe
proviso, in view of the hysterically Red state of
mind of the Guardians.
No movement for the dispossession of the Vested
Interests in America can hope for even a temporary
success unless it is undertaken by an organization
which is competent to take over the country's pro-
ductive industry as a whole, and to administer it
from the start on a more efficient plan than that
now pursued by the Vested Interests; and there is
no such organization in sight or in immediate pros-
pect. The nearest approach to a practicable organ-
ization of industrial forces in America, just yet, is
the A. F. of L.; which need only be named in order
to dispel the illusion that there is anything to hope
or fear in the way of a radical move at its hands.
The A. F. of L. is itself one of the Vested Interests,
as ready as any other to do battle for its own
margin of privilege and profit. At the same time
it would be a wholly chimerical fancy to believe
that such an organization of workmen as the
A. F. of L. could take over and manage any ap-
preciable section of the industrial system, even if
their single-minded interest in special privileges for
themselves did not preclude their making a move
in that direction. The Federation is not organized
for production but for bargaining. It is not organ-
ized on lines that would be workable for the man-
agement of any industrial system as a whole or of
any special line of production within such a system.
It is, in effect, an organization for the strategic de-
feat of employers and rival organizations, by recourse
to enforced unemployment and obstruction; not
for the production of goods and services. And it is
officered by tacticians, skilled in the ways and means
of bargaining with politicians and intimidating em-
ployers and employees; not by men who have any
special insight into or interest in the ways and
means of quantity production and traffic manage-
ment. They are not, and for their purpose they
need not be, technicians in any conclusive sense,—
and the fact should not be lost sight of that any
effectual overturn, of the kind hazily contemplated
by the hysterical officials, will always have to be
primarily a technical affair.
In effect, the Federation is officered by safe and
sane politicians, and its rank and file are votaries
of "the full dinner-pail." No Guardian need
worry about the Federation, and there is no other
organization in sight which differs materially
from the Federation in those respects which would
count toward a practical move in the direction of
a popular overturn,—unless a doubtful exception
should be claimed for the Railroad Brotherhoods.
The A. F. of L. is a business organization with a
vested interest of its own; for keeping up prices
and keeping down the supply, quite after the usual
fashion of management by the other Vested Inter-
ests; not for managing productive industry or even
for increasing the output of goods produced under
any management. At the best, its purpose and ordi-
nary business is to gain a little something for its
own members at a more than proportionate cost to
the rest of the community; which does not afford
either the spiritual or the material ground for a
popular overturn.
Nor is it the A. F. of L. or the other organ-
izations for "collective bargaining" that come in
for the comfortless attentions of the officials and of
the many conspiracies in restraint of sobriety. Their
nerve-shattering fears center rather on those, irre-
sponsible wayfaring men of industry who make up
the I. W. W., and on the helpless and hapless
alien unbelievers whose contribution to the sum
total is loose talk in some foreign' tongue. But if
there is any assertion to be made without fear of
stumbling it will be, that this flotsam of industry
is not organized to take over the highly technical
duties involved in the administration of the indus-
trial system. But it is these and their like that
engage the best attention of the many commissions,
committees, clubs, leagues, federations, syndicates,
and corporations for the chasing of wild geese under
the Red flag.
Wherever the mechanical industry has taken
decisive effect, as in America and in the two or
three industrialized regions of Europe, the com-
munity lives from hand to mouth, in such a way
that its livelihood depends on the effectual working


298
October 4
THE DIAL
of its industrial system from day to day. In such
a case a serious disturbance and derangement of
the balanced process of production is always easily
brought on, and it always brings immediate hard-
ship on large sections of the community. Indeed,
it is this state of things—the ease with which indus-
try can be deranged and hardship can be brought
to bear on the people at large—that constitutes the
chief asset of such partisan organizations as the
A. F. of L. It is a state of things which makes
sabotage easy and effectual and gives it breadth and
scope. But sabotage is not revolution. If it were,
then the A. F. of L., the I. W. W., the Chicago
Packers, and the U. S. Senate would be counted
among the revolutionists.
Far-reaching sabotage, that is to say derangement
of the industrial system, such as to entail hardship
on the community at large or on some particular
section of it, is easily brought to bear in ^ny country
that is dominated by the mechanical industry. It is
commonly resorted to by both parties in any contro-
versy between the businesslike employers and the
employees. It is, in fact, an everyday expedient of
business, and no serious blame attaches to its ordi-
nary use. Under given circumstances, as, e. g.,
under the circumstances just now created by the re-
turn of peace, such derangement of industry and
hindrance of production is an unavoidable expedient
of "business as usual." And derangement of the
same nature is also commonly resorted to as a means
of coercion in any attempted movement of overturn.
It is the simple and obvious means of initiating any
revolutionary disturbance in any industrial or com-
mercialized country. But under the existing indus-
trial conditions, if it is to achieve even a transient
success, any such revolutionary movement of recon-
struction must also be in a position from the outset
to overcome any degree of initial derangement in
industry, whether of its own making or not, and to
do constructive work of that particular kind which
is called for by the present disposition of industrial
forces and by the present close dependence of the
community's livelihood on the due systematic work-
ing of these industrial forces. To take effect and
to hold its own even for the time being, any move-
ment of overturn must from beforehand provide for
a sufficiently productive conduct of the industrial
system on which the community's material welfare
depends, and for a competent distribution of goods
and services throughout the community. Other-
wise, under existing industrial conditions, nothing
more can be accomplished than an ephemeral dis-
turbance and a transient season of accentuated hard-
ship. Even a transient failure to make good in the
^aeement of the industrial system must immedi-
ately defeat any movement of overturn in any of the
advanced industrial countries. At this point the
lessons of history fail, because the present industrial
system and the manner of close-knit community life
enforced by this industrial system have no example
in history.
This state of things, which so conditions the
possibility of any revolutionary overturn, is peculiar
to the advanced industrial countries; and the limita-
tions which this state of things imposes are binding
within these countries in the same measure in which
these peoples are dominated by the system of
mechanical industry. In contrast with this state of
things, the case of Soviet Russia may be cited to
show the difference. As compared with America
and much of western Europe, Russia is not an in-
dustrialized region, in any decisive sense; although
Russia, too, leans on the mechanical industry in a
greater degree than is commonly recognized. In-
deed, so considerable is the dependence of the Rus-
sians on the mechanical industry that it may yet
prove to be the decisive factor in the struggle which
is now going on between Soviet Russia and the
Allied Powers.
Now, it is doubtless this continued success of the
Soviet administration in Russia that has thrown this
ecstatic scare into the Guardians of the Vested In-
terests in America and in the civilized countries of
Europe. There is nothing to be gained by denying
that the Russian Soviet has achieved a measure of
success; indeed, an astonishing measure of success,
considering the extremely adverse circumstances
under which the Soviet has been at work. The fact
may be deplored, but there it is. The Soviet has
plainly been successful, in the material respect, far
beyond the reports which have been allowed to pass
the scrutiny of the Seven Censors and the Associ-
ated Prevarication Bureaux of the Allied Powers.
And this continued success of Bolshevism in Russia
—or such measure of success as it has achieved—is
doubtless good ground for a reasonable degree of
apprehension among good citizens elsewhere; but it
does not by any means argue that anything like the
same measure of success could be achieved by a revo-
lutionary movement on the same lines in Amer-
ica, even in the absence of intervention from
outside.
Soviet Russia has made good to the extent of
maintaining itself against very great odds for some
two years; and it is even yet a point in doubt
whether the Allied Powers will be able to put down
the Soviet by use of all the forces at their disposal
and with the help of all the reactionary elements in
Russia and in the neighboring countries. But the
Soviet owes this measure of success to the fact that


1919
299
THE DIAL
the Russian people have not yet been industrialized
in anything like the same degree as their western
neighbors. They have in great measure been able to
fall back on an earlier, simpler, less close-knit plan
of productive industry; such that any detailed part
of this loose-knit Russian community is able, at a
pinch, to draw its own livelihood from its own soil
by its own work, without that instant and unre-
mitting dependence on materials and wrought goods
drawn from foreign ports and distant regions, that
is characteristic of the advanced industrial peoples.
This old fashioned plan of home production does not
involve an " industrial system " in the saipe exacting
sense as the mechanical industry. The Russian in-
dustrial system, it is true, also ruhs on something of
a balanced plan of give and take; it leans on the
mechanical industry in some considerable degree and
draws on foreign trade for many of its necessary
articles of use; but for the transient time being, and
for an appreciable interval of time, such a home-
bred industrious population, living close to the soil
and supplying its ordinary needs by home-bred
handicraft methods, will be able to maintain itself in
a fair state of efficiency if not in comfort, even in
virtual isolation from the more advanced industrial
centers and from the remoter sources of raw ma-
terials. To the ignorant,—that is to say, to the
wiseacres of commerce,—this ability of the Russian
people to continue alive and active under the condi-
tions of an exemplary blockade has been a source of
incredulous astonishment.
It is only as a fighting power, and then only for
the purposes of an aggressive war, that such a com-
munity can count for virtually nothing in a contest
with the advanced industrial nations. Such a people
makes an unwieldy country to conquer from the
outside. Soviet Russia is self-supporting, in a loose
and comfortless way, and in this sense it is a very
defensible country and may yet prove extremely
difficult for the Allied Powers to subdue; but in the
nature of the case there need be not the slightest
shadow of apprehension that Soviet Russia can suc-
cessfully take the offensive against any outside
people, great or small, which has the use of the ad-
vanced mechanical industry.
The statesmen of the Allied Powers, who are now
carrying on a covert war against Soviet Russia, are
in a position to know this state of the case; and not
least those American statesmen, who have by popu-
lar sentiment been constrained reluctantly to limit
and mask their cooperation with the reactionary
forces in Finland, Poland, the Ukraine, Siberia, and
elsewhere. They have all been at pains diligently
to inquire into the state of things in Soviet Russia;
although, it is true, they have also been at pains to
give out surprisingly little information,—that being
much of the reason for the Seven Censors. The
well-published official and semi-official apprehension
of a Bolshevist offensive to be carried on beyond the
Soviet frontiers may quite safely be set down as an
article of statesmanlike subterfuge. The statesmen
know better. What is feared in fact is infection of
the Bolshevist Spirit beyond the Soviet frontiers, to
the detriment of those Vested Interests whose guar-
dians these statesmen are. And on this head the
apprehensions of these Elder Statesmen are not alto-
gether groundless; for the Elder Statesmen are also
in a position to know, without much inquiry, that
there is no single spot or corner in civilized Europe
or America where the underlying population would
have anything to lose by such an overturn of the
established order as would cancel the vested rights
of privilege and property, whose guardians they
are.
But commercialized America is not the same thing
as Soviet Russia. By and large, America is an ad-
vanced industrial country, bound in the web of a
fairly close-knit and inclusive industrial system.
The industrial situation, and therefore the condi-
tions of success, are radically different in the two
countries in those respects that would make the
outcome in any effectual revolt. So that, for better
or worse, the main lines that, would necessarily have
to be followed in working out any practicable revo-
lutionary movement in this country are already laid
down by the material conditions of its productive
industry. On provocation there might come a flare
of riotous disorder, but it would come to nothing,
however substantial the provocation might be, so long
as the movement does not fall in with those main
lines of management which the state of the industrial
system requires in order to insure any sustained
success. These main lines of revolutionary strategy
are lines of technical organization and industrial
management; essentially lines of industrial engi-
neering; such as will fit the organization to take
care of the highly technical industrial system that
constitutes the indispensable material foundation of
any modern civilized community. They will ac-
cordingly not only be of a profoundly different
order from what may do well enough in the case
of such a loose-knit and backward industrial region
as Russia, but they will necessarily also be of a
kind which has no close parallel in the past history
of revolutionary movements. Revolutions in the
eighteenth century were military and political; and
the Elder Statesmen who now believe themselves
to be making history still believe that revolutions
can be made and unmade by the same ways- and
means in the twentieth century. But any substantial


3°°
October 4
THE DIAL
or effectual overturn in the twentieth century will
necessarily be an industrial overturn; and by the
same token, any twentieth-century revolution can
be combated or neutralized only by industrial ways
and means. The case of America, therefore, con-
sidered as a candidate for Bolshevism, will have to
be argued on its own merits, and the argument will
necessarily turn on the ways and means of produc-
tive industry as conditioned by the later growth of
technology.
It has been argued, and it seems not unreasonable
to believe, that the established order of business
enterprise, vested rights, and commercialized na-
tionalism, is due presently to go under in a muddle
of shame and confusion, because it is no longer a
practicable system of industrial management under
the conditions created by the later state of the indus-
trial arts. Twentieth-century technology has out-
grown the eighteenth-century system of vested
rights. The experience of the past few years teaches
that the usual management of industry by business
methods has become highly inefficient and wasteful,
and the indications are many and obvious that any
businesslike control of production and distribution
is bound to run more and more consistently at cross
purposes with the community's livelihood, the farther
the industrial arts advance and the wider the indus-
trial system extends. So that it is perhaps not
reasonably to be questioned that the Vested Interests
in business are riding for a fall. But the end is not
yet; although it is to be admitted, regretfully per-
haps, that with every further advance in techno-
logical knowledge and practice and with every
further increase in the volume and complexity of the
industrial system, any businesslike control is bound
to grow still more incompetent, irrelevant, and im-
pertinent.
It would be quite hazardous to guess, just yet,
how far off that consummation of commercial imbe-
cility may be. There are those who argue that the
existing system of business management is plainly
due to go under within two years' time; and there
are others who are ready, with equal confidence, to
allow it a probable duration of several times that
interval; although, it is true, these latter appear, on
the whole, to be persons who are less intimately ac-
quainted with the facts in the case. Many men ex-
perienced in the larger affairs of industrial business
are in doubt as to how long things will hold to-
gether. But, one with another, these men who so
are looking into the doubtful future are, somewhat
apprehensively, willing to admit that there is yet
something of a margin to go on; so much so that,
n,*Lrring accident, there should seem to be no war-
rant for counting at all confidently on a disastrous
breakdown of the business system within anything
like a two-year period. And, for the reassurance of
the apprehensive Guardian of the Vested Interests,
it is to be added that should such a break in the
situation come while things are standing in their
present shape, the outcome could assuredly not be an
effectual overturn of the established order; so long
as no practicable plan has been provided for taking
over the management from the dead hand of the
Vested Interests. Should such a self-made break-
down come at the present juncture, the outcome
could, in fact, scarcely be anything more serious
than an interval, essentially transient though more
or less protracted, of turmoil and famine among the
underlying population, together with something of
a setback to the industrial system as a whole. There
seems no reason to apprehend any substantial dis-
allowance of the vested rights of property to follow
from such an essentially ephemeral interlude of dis-
sension. In fact, the tenure of the Vested Interests
in America should seem to be reasonably secure, just
yet.
Something in the nature of riotous discontent
and factional disorder is perhaps to be looked for in
the near future in this country, and there may even
be some rash gesture of revolt on the part of ill-
advised malcontents. Circumstances would seem to
favor something of the kind. It is conservatively
estimated that there is already a season of privation
and uncertainty in prospect for the underlying
population, which could be averted only at the cost
of some substantial interference with the vested
rights of the country's business men,—which should
seem a highly improbable alternative, in view of
that spirit of filial piety with which the public offi-
cials guard the prerogatives of business as usual.
So, e. g., it is now (September, 1919) confidently
expected, or rather computed, that a fuel famine is
due in America during the approaching winter, for
reasons of sound business management; and it is
likewise to be expected that'for the like reason the
American transportation system is also due to go
into a tangle of congestion and idleness about the
same time—barring providential intervention in the
way of unexampled weather conditions. But a
season of famine and disorderly conduct does not
constitute a revolutionary overturn of the established
order; and the Vested Interests are secure in their
continued usufruct of the country's industry, just
yet.
This hopeful posture of things may be shown
convincingly enough and with no great expenditure
of argument. To this end it is proposed to pursue
the argument somewhat further presently; by de-


i9i9
301
THE DIAL
scribing in outline what are the infirmities of the
regime of the Vested Interests, which the more san-
guine malcontents count on to bring that regime to
an inglorious finish in the immediate future; and
also to set down, likewise in outline, what would
have to be the character of any organization of in-
dustrial forces which could be counted on effectually
to wind up the regime of the Vested Interests and
take over the management of the industrial system
on a deliberate plan. „ ..
Thorstein Veblen.
J
Two Solitudes
BAN de Bousschere is one who makes illimitable
demands. But he exercises the same high discern-
ment, the same strict excellence, in the magic of his
gifts. Both are to be found in his L'Offre de Plebs.
The poem is a dialogue between the Misanthrope
and Plebs, who comes to make his "offre unique,"
"mon offrande substantielle, c'est l'ami." But the
Misanthrope rejects him. Plebs promises all things:
here is a friend who is a virgin and an atheist, who
is faithful ("dix annees il eut un ami,") a friend
who will be the Poet's slave. But the Poet, the
Misanthrope, laughs with rage. And Solitude, who
knows the heart of the Misanthrope, tells Plebs that
he has lost. "Ton masque est plus cruel que mon
panier!" says Solitude. The Misanthrope has the
last word: ,
Je ne veux pas d'un esclave;
Je veux qu'il ait un Dieu.
II faut que' cela soit moi.
Je veux d'un ami qui soit un Dieu.
Et -qu'il goute des memes herbes que moi,
Et qu'il trempe ses mains au menu sang,
Je veux qu'il me suive;
Et qu'il embrasse ma tete coupee.
Here is the inexorable perfection which genius de-
mands. It is the cry of every artist. It is the
simple, unanswerable desire of the seekers after
reality in all its manifolds.
The war, shaking to their roots the realities of
our familiar life, stirred this ancient impulse. Con-
temporary poetry is loud with the clamor for its
satisfaction. Any preoccupation with imperma-
nence is rather an acknowledgment of devastating
change than of delight in seme frivolity or lament
over a single lost beauty. Examine the recent work'
of such various men as Sandburg, Hueffer, and
Aiken. These are individual and significant fig-
ures; each represents not only a personal reaction
but a distinct poetic tenor. Each dwells, with more
or less passion and intensity, upon the escaping
actualities of our life, upon the recurrent tides of
war and empire, upon the vivid moment which dies
in the hand that captures it.
Those who stood aloof from the war, in the sense
that they were involved in a personal struggle
against it as bitter and disillusioning as any horrors
of the trenches, were peculiarly fit to sympathize
with de Bousschere's Misanthrope. Bertrand Rus-
sell's philosophic detachment, Eugene Debs' isolated
rebellion, however remote from the literary quarrels
of the esthetes, yet bear a definite relation to the
loneliness of him who wants a friend who is God,
who declares with Solitude:
Ne parle pas d'un homme qui ne soit beau,
Ni d'un homme moins pur qu'une fleur fermee,
Ni moins souverain que I'image d'un palmier dans le
desert.
Something of -this detachment, this rebellion, is
expressed by James Oppenheim in his latest volume,
The Solitary. The book is dedicated to Randolph
Bourne, and more than a hint of this bitter-sweet
anthem of death is to be savored in all the
poems that follow. It will be remembered that the
dedication appeared in The Dial for January II,
1919; it is fairly typical, in its achieved lyrism, as
well as in its striving after an authenticity that
Oppenheim's too wistful rhythms barely evade.
In his always engaging, if curiously uneven, out-
put this poet is distinguished by three dominating
interests. From the beginning, the ideal of democ-
racy fascinated him. It is present even in the banal
stories of his altruistic youth. His vision of it clari-
fied and deepened, as did his feeling for the work
he was doing; until the social worker emerges into
the passionate propagandist, and the preacher into
the poet. How far his democratic sympathies led
him toward Whitman, how far his adoration of that
barbaric yawper fired the flame of his democracy, is
not clear. Certainly the two currents flowing to-
gether fed the stream of his poetic impulse. The
second obvious influence is the rich Hebraic imagery
in which he is steeped, and the more complete his
surrender to it, the more glorious is his poetic fervor.
Finally, but of enormous importance in any con-
sideration of his development, is Oppenheim's abso-
lute capitulation to the theories of the psychoanalysts.
Among all contemporary American poets, Aiken in-
cluded, there is perhaps no other so deeply intrigued
by the work of Freud and Jung, especially the.
latter.
Oppenheim's latest book does deviate from this
supreme interest. The long opening poem, The
Sea, which runs to over thirty pages, is a characteris-


3°2
October 4
THE DIAL
tic reiteration of the Christian, Nietzschean, Freu-
dian doctrine of the lonely conquest, of the loss of
the whole world to gain one's own soul, of the Soli-
tary who can become part of the crowd only after
he has been apart from it.
Oh loneliness, who has sung your song, who has known
your dark music?
Only the stripped soul knows you, only the naked self
has tasted your salt. . . .
Fluid in its large resurgent rhythms, filled with a
richer music than Oppenheim has attained hereto-
fore, this somewhat too didactic poem is one of his
finest achievements. The worst charge that can be
brought against it is that its author's critical
faculty is so unhappily far behind his creative power
at its best. In spite of bombastic exaggeration, in
spite of passages that astonish by their very dullness,
The Sea is a fresh interpretation of an old miracle,
a moving picture of the Solitary, looking "upward
into the abyss ":
Standing on two legs against the turning lump of Earth
With upraised face against the wheeling of the worlds
in unsheltered night . . .
I, a man, stand as self-contained and solid in my
littleness,
As you, in your vastness. . . .
Of the remaining poems, those contained in the
section called Songs Out of Multitude hold most
worth remembering. The recurrent elements ap-
pear here again, most vividly and most powerfully
in The Song of the Uprising, with its strong echoes
out of the Psalms. Oppenheim is still the incor-
rigible optimist, as witness his invocation to My
Land. His solitude is alive with unhuman voices.
He is not really a misanthrope, even though the
friend whom he accepts is not the gift of Plebs, but
rather his own selfhood, vocal and aflame with
rhapsodic anticipations.
This invaded and conquered loneliness of his,
contrasted with Witter Bynner's Beloved Stranger,
offers an illuminating paradox. For the latter poet,
divorced alike from solitude and multitude in the
lover's unique citadel, conveys a stronger sense of
the ultimate isolation of the human spirit. The
poems which originally appeared in Reedy's Mirror
as Songs to an Unknown Lover have been pub-
lished under the equally mystic title of The Be-
loved Stranger. It is a commentary on the work of
both Oppenheim and Bynner that the titles of their
books might have been interchanged with little loss
of meaning. The Solitary is nothing if not aware
of a Beloved Stranger, be it his own soul, or the
folk to whom he would confide it. Whereas
Bynner's songs are the outcry of that profound soli-
tude which the plummet of love itself only begins
*>und.
There has been more or less ironic questioning as
to whether his latest work comes from the pen of
the author of Grenstone Poems or from that of
the intransigeant Emmanuel Morgan. In fact,
what began as an esthetic jest over a ballet program
and a cocktail bids fair to conclude as an esthetic
program not a little intoxicating. These songs
achieve what the Spectrists merrily toyed with.
Within strict compass, moving in lyric rhythms,
they are like prisms whose colors are the broken
lights of the poet's emotion. Metaphors are as false
as are generalizations. The quality of these poems
is due to the fact that they are not the beautiful, dis-
torted fragments of emotional experience so much
as they are concentrated reflections of it.
There are several obvious faults. The images are
not seldom so awkward as to be funny:
The look in your eyes
Was as soft as the underside of soap in a soap-dish . . .
The straining for rhyme spoils or interrupts an
otherwise lovely fluency. But these poems are at
once incisive and wistful, reminiscent and provoca-
tive. Such brief bright ecstasies as Singing:
What is this singing that I hear
Of the sun behind the clouds?
It is not long before you shall come to me,
Beloved.
And that is the singing that I lean to hear
In my side,
Where your bird is.
Such stop-short effects as A Sigh:
Still must I tamely
Talk sense with these others?
«
How long
Before 1 shall be with you again,
Magnificently saying nothing!
Such clear flashes as Lightning:
There is a solitude in seeing you,
Followed by your company when you are gone.
You are like heaven's veins of lightning.
I cannot see till afterward
How beautiful you are.
There is a blindness in seeing you,
Followed by the sight of you When you are gone.
These things are luminous evidence not merely of
Bynner's firmer touch, and more lucid vision, but
of that sense of echoes and overtones, of poignant
simplicities and announcing silences, which is the
secret of Oriental literature.
Bynner's Beloved Stranger may be his lost mis-
tress, or an unknown god. Whoever it is, it is one
who gives him the perfection of withheld things.
For the sake of that perfection, the artist must re-
main the Solitary, owning no friend who is not
comely, pure as a flower that is shut, and sovereign
as a palm tree in the desert.
Babette Dbutsch.


1919
3°3
THE DIAL
Wardom and the State
JLhe war has been brought to an end, but war
itself still threatens the remnant of our civilization
with extinction. Before any other political problem
can be seriously considered we must think through
the difficulties which we so blandly neglected in the
decades prior to 1914. We cannot rest content with
a statesman's " peace " unless we are ready to follow
that "peace" to its inevitable conclusion—another
statesman's war. Upon this much we are all agreed,
and- the long shelf of recent books upon the prime
problem of internationalism, the peace of the world,
points to a preliminary unanimity which at the least
is a common anxiety.
But there are as many approaches to this problem
as books. Thus Dr. T. J. Lawrence (The Society
of Nations; Oxford University Press) takes inspira-
tion from the gradual growth of international society
on the basis of international law. He sees the
League of Nations as an instrument for carrying
this process to higher levels of more conscious par-
ticipation. In the whittling away of independent
sovereignty as defined by the Austinians, Mr.
W. T. S. Stallybrass (A Society of States; Dutton)
sees the possibility of establishing genuine cooperation
between states. Mathias Erzberger invokes the prin-
ciple of compulsory arbitration as "the way to the
world's peace" (League of Nations; Holt). Some-
what nearer to economic fundamentals, H. M.
Kallen relies upon the formation of international
commissions for commerce, finance, armaments, edu-
cation, hygiene, undeveloped countries, and labor as
the means whereby a league of nations may operate
against the sources of conflict (The League of
Nations Today and Tomorrow; Marshall Jones,
Boston).
The conscientious attempt of these representative
scholars and publicists to provide constructive ways
and means for achieving international comity is
wholly admirable. But beneath their several
expositions is a common weakness: a refusal to
examine the nature of states before discussing the
terms of their pacification. They largely deny the
efficacy of the statesman's peace, but they are not
prepared to question the validity of the statesman's
state. Because the state in modern times has been
the unit that waged war, the political theorists have
uncritically assumed that it is this unit which must
be used in erecting the structure of a lasting peace.
The League of Nations is to be a league of more
or less sovereign states.
It appears that at bottom our publicists have
sought the best possible solution of this "quite
insoluble and impossible problem,"—given a world
of states to produce a peacedom from their united
action. They have been in quest of a legal mechan-
ism which shall absorb the shock of conflict between
political institutions ever in danger of collision: they
have not sought to establish the sort of political
society in which the possibilities of collision would
be removed. Peace has meant to the international-
ist the absence of warfare in a world community
constituted much like the present one. He has
failed to see, as William James and Patrick Geddes
and Thorstein Veblen have from various angles
pointed out, that a society organized like the pres-
'ent one is constitutionally in a state of warfare.
What we have ambiguously called peace is only pas-
sive wardom.
Now, one of the most potent sources of conflict
between states is the nature of the national state
itself. It is a limited territorial organization. It
arose out of military conquest and perpetuated itself
by command'over military agencies. It claims the
military allegiance of every person born within its
frontiers, and it seeks to extend its frontiers in order
to gain in military strength by commanding the
allegiance of the annexed population. With respect
to other nationalities the national state is imperialist,
for in order to integrate its own subjects it is com-
pelled to disintegrate lesser nationalities. By a
strange paradox, therefore, the national state is
inimical to the principle of nationality. Even when
the national state concerns itself with the support
of commerce and industry, with the encouragement
of the arts and sciences, it goes forward with a view
to obtaining that mechanical unanimity of purpose
which an Eastern observer, Tagore, has found to be
the very attribute of Western nationality. Its immi-
gration laws and its tariffs are assertions of exclu-
siveness. To restrict the free circulation of men and
~ materials and ideas is the jealous privilege of the
state, for it can maintain its own sacred union (in
the face of an invading pack) only by resisting in
times of "peace" those processes that work tor
generalization and universality. The state seeks to
justify its own existence by denying the existence of
a common humanity.
The ability to enforce its privacy and exclusive-
ness by force of arms is the very criterion of state-
hood. This is what differentiates it from a city, or
from an administration district. The inhabitants of
Jersey City, for example, could move en masse to
the Bronx without stirring New Yorkers to any
other activity than speculation in Bronx real estate.
Should Tokyo move a single shipload of its citizens


3°4
October 4
THE DIAL
to San Francisco the result would-be armed conflict.
Thousands of lives would be sacrificed to confirm
the principle of sovereign, independent exclusiveness.
"Keep yourself to yourself" is the essence of
national statehood. It is the antithesis of the counsel
of peace: " Be ye members one of another."
It should be now a little clearer what makes the
current projects for a League of Nations so abortive.
So long as the component national states remain
intact, the League can preserve its authority only by
promoting the interests of each separate establish-
ment. The partition of unorganized territories by
mandataries witnesses this. Nominally the backward
regions are to be under the surveillance of the
league: actually they have been allotted on the basis
of their seizure and occupation by separate national
groups, precisely as though no league were to come
into existence. Even where the guardian states do
not stand greatly to benefit by control (if there is
such a case) an equality of trading privileges is
granted only to other members of the League. In
this case it is plain that if the League have any
political reality apart from the constitutions of the
Great Powers this international state will have the
same characteristics of an exclusive, territorial asso-
ciation. Thus its members eschew to some slight
degree the privilege of waging warfare among them-
selves only for the purpose of obtaining dominion
over the rest of mankind. Such a coalition will not
rid the world of wardom. The underlying native
populations of the subject territories are too large,
too self-conscious, too disaffected, and in the end too
powerful. Universal peace on such terms would be
synonymous with universal exploitation. To break
through the obscene crust of such an arrangement
the volcanic eruption of war would be a welcome
release.
The state, then, is not an instrument adapted to
international functions. Not until honesty can be
produced in a world of thieves will peacedom be
possible in a world of national states. To place
reliance upon current diplomatic, military, and gov-
ernmental agencies to create effective organs of inter-
national intercourse and control is to discount our
political hopes from the beginning and to put a pre-
mium on disappointment. To allow these national
establishments free play within a world organization
will probably, as a few months of experiment already
indicate, only broaden the area of conflict. In so far
as the league becomes a working institution it raises
again on a large scale the problems of sovereignty
and authority, the national aspects of which Mr.
Harold J. Laski has so brilliantly analyzed.
Now there are no checks within the organization
of the state upon its own powers and dispositions:
*■'■- American experience with the checks and balance
doctrine is exemplary proof. If we are to find a
method of curbing the League from an attempt at
world dominion and world exploitation for the
benefit of the several great powers we must utilize
the same methods in dealing with the international
organization as have proved valuable in dealing with
the separate national state. We must employ, that
is to say, the great industrial, professional, and civic
associations deliberately to challenge the sovereignty
of the state when it steps outside its purely pacific
and administrative sphere. For in the growth of
voluntary associations, linking across frontiers, lies
the possibility of diminishing the strength of those
compulsive military organizations which still,
whether in isolation or in alliance, threaten the peace
of the world.
These voluntary associations divide into two
classes: those that have, and those that do not have
economic power. The second kind of association
was thriving before the war; it comprised the scien-
tific societies with international affiliations, the insti-
tutes of hygiene, medical research, and town plan-
ning; and the purely professional associations like
those of lawyers, doctors, and so forth. The
International Institute of Bibliography at Brussels
was naturally deposited by the current of world
interests which seemed visibly before 1914 to be
bringing about a unity throughout western civiliza-
tion. With proper encouragement it may yet <
develop as a world center for scholarly research—a
clearing house for the intellectual transactions of
mankind. The great universities likewise, through
their exchange professorships, were recovering some
of that humane cosmopolitanism which characterized
them at their best during the Middle Ages. What
has been lacking so far is the definite and purposeful
attempt to build up a community in thought and
purpose which shall run Counter to the narrow,
partisan, incomplete, and ultimately military pur-
poses of the national state.
Associations for international contact and inter-
course are necessary in order to supply a favor-
able atmosphere in which the economic associations
of the first type may function. Among the latter we
may place the national trade unions like the British
Triple Alliance, international unions like the Amal-
gamated Ladies' Garment Workers, and consumers'
associations of national range like the -British, and
Russian Cooperatives. Within these several kinds
of associations, with their deepening international
affiliations and their growing realization of power,
lies the opportunity for a truly federal world-organi-
zation which shall begin with the local production
or consumption unit and ramify outward in increas-
ing disregard of formal national boundaries. It is
obvious that current national divisions are inimical


1919
305
THE DIAL
to functional economic adjustments. The national
state is out of joint with that Great Society whose
framework has been erected during the past century.
The Belgian worker who commutes every day to a
factory in Lille where he works as an alien and
retires at night to a village in Belgium where he
sleeps as a citizen is surely an anomalous figure: but
his position typifies the incongruity of industrial and
political facts in the modern world. To abolish fake
political divisions is the first step in building up a
community in which the development of the arts and
sciences of peacedom shall play a greater part than
the maintenance of the military unity and the bellig-
erent isolation of the national state.
There is no short cut from the statesman's nega-
tive "peace" to the active and positive state of
peacedom. It requires more than a lawyer's cov-
enant: it demands a new civilization. This new
civilization must accommodate itself to the technique
of the Great Industry. The national State works
at cross purposes with the Great Industry, for the
reason that it seeks to isolate that which is in fact
the joint product of the world community. That is
why, albeit the national state is strong, the communi-
ties that have already passed beyond national state-
hood, however incompletely—like the United States
and Great Britain—are stronger. That fact will
seal in the long run the doom of national states, with
their almost rythmic alterations of passive and active
warfare. And in the death of this military organi-
zation lies the hope of a new order.
Lewis Mumford.
I
A Moment of the French Mind
t is not only the world that the Great War
has divided in two. Its line of flame has cut across
time as well as space, and given a new before and
after to man's calendar of years. Already the events
of a decade or two ago seem far and unfamiliar, and
the books have already the quaintness of old-school
things. It is presumably not a momentary mood;
not merely the reaction to painful stress and to fierce
absorption in abnormal aims and activities; not
merely the disgust with old civilization through ex-
haustion of emotion and intelligence in works that
negate all civilization, paradoxically undertaken to
save civilization. But the war has left us with new
values, has created for us new centers of interest,
not as yet altogether defined, coming to most of us
for the present perhaps chiefly as a sense of estrange-
ment from old values and interests.
This deep division of before and after strikes us
too in contemplating the lives of individual men.
It has struck me particularly in reading Professor
Lewis Piaget Shanks'' study of Anatole France
(Open Court, Chicago), as skilfully devised and as
sympathetically written a "how-to-know-him"
volume as one need hope for when psychological
biography and literary interpretation of seventy long
years must be compressed for the reader into twice
seventy minutes. The Anatole France of Professor
Shanks ends with the outbreak of the war. It is
essentially a story of la vie litteraire: Anatole
France is " the monk of letters." There are Rabe-
lais, Racine, Voltaire, Renan, Leconte de Lisle,
Flaubert in his fifty and more volumes—for those
wise in such matters a record of the literary forces
dominant for the last half of the century in the na-
tion whose name he bore with such symbolic pro-
priety. There are Vergil, Lucian, and Sophocles—
with indeed that same passionate response to the
classics which so often has marked the Romanticists
in letters, to the confusion of critics who have sun-
dered apodictically the classical from the romantic
spirit. There is the wistful charm of childhood—
essentially, though, of a literary childhood. There
is the imaginative preoccupation with bygone ages
in bygone crises of culture—the Pagan-Christian, the
Medieval, the French Revolution—the delight in
psychological reconstruction and artistic exercise.
There is the skeptic and the Epicurean, likewise
artistically conditioned as artist's matter of art as
well as artist's matter of philosophy. There is the
satirist of society, who, like Byron in Don Juan,
mockingly employs his own earlier literary mediums
—as, for instance, historical tale and saint's legend
—for ironic criticism and fantastic burlesque. Pro-
fessor Shanks has coordinated the curiously diverse
phases of Anatole France's long literary activity
with what must seem to us who have dwelt less
with the master than he has a quite adequate analysis,
a useful contribution to the study of personality,
though here and there a significant detail of his
make-up, like his propensity to sly sex-psychology or
his quiet power to tickle us to a chuckle, seems not
sufficiently stressed. It is a literary story of a shelf
of golden books, of refined tastes and unerring taste,
of art and artistry, of the brilliant dilettante who
never tires of his own moods, his own fancies, his
own pen. It is not the story of a fiery soul, gripped
by the woe of the world or a prophetic vision of a
new earth. The notes of artistic cleverness and


306
October 4
THE DIAL
spiritual frivolity, intermingled though they be with
pathos and humor, and psychological thinking, are
all but characteristic notes. Let one who demurs
read France's Garden of Epicurus and then Nietz-
sche's Human, All Too Human, each a volume of
intimate meditation on "first, middle, and last
things "—to borrow the grim phrase of a seven-
teenth century theologian. The exercise will almost
bear out Arnold's insistence on the primacy of high
seriousness in letters. Again, his was an individual-
ism, a subjectivity, "the cult of the self." The
phrase is Professor Shanks'; and in the same para-
graph, the last in his book, he notes, as we are all
noting, that "a new age is upon us, an age whose
first reaction will be toward Life."
This was the Anatole France whom they elected
to the Academy. But he had begun to change—as
of course, Professor Shanks has remarked—before
the great dividing years. He had begun to find
new uses for old gifts, as his life-long insight into
sham and shams, his intimacy with history, his ten-
derness and mirth, his craftsmanship in phrase
deepened in their ethics and broadened in their
humanity. He had begun to feel the terrific forces,
rumbling through Europe before the earthquake—
perhaps from the day when he left his golden books
to stand in the market place for justice and Drey-
fus, beside Emile Zola, whom he called "un mo-
ment de la conscience humaine." That phrase, like
the shot at Concord, was heard round the world.
And now when we think of Anatole France, we
think not of the Academy or the salon or the book-
stalls on the Quay, but of the shouting streets of the
metropolis, down which march the workers, honor-
ing Jaures dead—in their midst the grey old man
whose lips have been touched, like Isaiah's and
Whitman's, with living fire.
For he is now become the voice of France.
Clemenceau, that other old man, has redeemed his
vow of forty years ago. Foch hoists the tricolor
that flaunts in the winds that blow toward the
Rhine. The Bourse obtains new markets for old.
But neither Clemenceau, nor Foch, nor the Bourse
is the voice of France. Anatole France is the voice
of France, and a new and nobler symbolism crowns
the nom-de-plume of fifty years. Hear a few words
of that voice, as it rang out at the Congress ot
Teachers' Institutes at Tours in August, reported
in l'Humanite, and translated in The Nation:
No more industrial rivalries, nor more wars: work
and peace. Whether we wish it or not, the hour is come
when we must be citizens of the world or see all civiliza-
tion perish. My friends, permit me to utter a most ardent
wish, which it is necessary for me to express too rapidly
and incompletely, but whose primary idea seems to me
calculated to appeal to all generous natures. I wish, I
wish with all my heart, that a delegation of the teachers
of all nations might soon join the Workers' Internationale
in order to prepare in common a universal form of edu-
cation, and advise as to methods of sowing in young
minds ideas from which would spring the peace of the
world and the union of peoples.
Reason, wisdom, intelligence, forces of the mind and
heart, whom I have always devoutly invoiced, come to
me, aid me, sustain my feeble voice; carry it, if that may
be, to all the peoples of the world, and diffuse it every-
where where there are men of good will to hear the
beneficent truth! A new order of things is born. The
powers of evil die, poisoned by their crime. The greedy
and the cruel, the devourers of peoples, are bursting with
an indigestion of blood. However, sorely stricken by
the sins of their blind or corrupt masters, mutilated, deci-
mated, the proletarians remain erect; they will unite
to form one universal proletariat, and we shall see ful-
filled the great socialist prophesy: the union of the
workers will be the peace of the world.
Has he not become, too, the voice of all nations?
Or shall we in America fail to hear—still pleasantly
hypnotized by a voice we have too dearly loved and
too faithfully believed?
William Ellery Leonard.
Evangels
He painted on the rocks of lonely highways
"Jesus is coming."
The clouds across the mountains swept up like chariots of the Lord;
The little strawberry-breasted linnets sang hallelujah! hallelujah!
The sagebrush flowered praise.
"Jesus is coming! Jesus is coming!"
Said the black paint against the side of the pot as he walked.
Then one day he saw where someone else had written
"The wages of sin is death,"
And considering it, he lost touch with his revelation
And straightway the universe was strewn with the wrecks of his paradise
Like eggshells.
Elizabeth J. Coatsworth.


THE DIAL
A FORTNIGHTLY
The Old Order and the New
It is reported that Boston's Commissioner
Curtis gave the policemen to understand, when they
filed their complaints and demands, that it was a
matter of comparative indifference to him whether
or not they struck; that he was the man who was
responsible for public safety in Boston and he would
show them and the city that he was competent to
fulfill the duties of the office without their assistance.
We have not verified the report that such a confer-
ence between the Commissioner and the men took
place, but the conduct of the Commissioner verifies
the conception that the only responsible office in the
Department of Public Safety is the office of Com-
missioner. We have learned , that the direct or
immediate event which precipitated the strike was a
bill introduced in the Massachusetts legislature at the
instigation of Commissioner Curtis, denying police-
men the right of review in case of transfer or dis-
charge. The bill gave the Commissioner autocratic
power over the administration of public safety,
which could not be questioned by a member of the
force except under the penalty of discharge. In a
very thorough fashion the Commissioner undertook
to live up to the reputation of responsibility which
was attached to his office. The policemen also
carried out in thorough fashion the tradition of
irresponsibility attached to the office of wage earner;
the public is under obligations to the Boston Com-
missioner for bringing out in clear relief that this
office, whether manned by men in public or private
service, is one of irresponsibility. A wage earner
may be fired or may quit his job without disconcert-
ing an industry or a service; either can get on with-
out him and suffer no serious loss—and in any case
its getting on is no concern of his. He is paid to
do a specific job; the continuation of that job, its
interruption, its assignment are distinctly matters
that some one else must determine. His worry-
ing over the job availeth nothing; then why
should he worry? Why should any of the workers
worry, when there are special men who have
assumed the job of worrying, or others who have
been deputized to do the worrying for the boss?
The worrying job, like riveting bolts, under the
modern scheme of dividing labor is specially assigned
and provided for in any well-organized scheme. And
woe to the riveting man who steps across the line.
Moreover we may believe the boss and his deputies
when they say that they take their worries home,
that they cannot sleep at night for worrying. Who
would not worry if he had in charge a small or a
large group of men who had been hired on the
explicit condition that they were there to attend to
nothing except the detached end of the enterprise
assigned them; men who were there on the under-
standing that the relation of their job to others, its
value in the enterprise, and the conduct of the enter-
prise as a whole were matters in which their judg-
ment was ruled out?
It is the first sign of dawn that wage
earners are beginning to suspect that bearing respon-
sibility must be a diverting as well as a lucrative
pastime, since those who assume the position hold to
it with peculiar tenacity. In no case are they ready
or eager to share. Sharing responsibility with the
worker is the last bit of ground that the governing
class will surrender. Before employers will recede
so far they will pay union wages, adopt the closed
shop, share their profits, and submit to government
"interference." The proposition of the railroad
workers for the administration of transportation
along the lines of functional responsibility is the
present challenge to the trades unions and the labor
world that the time has come for the adoption of a
new industrial policy, a policy of labor responsibility
in productive service. The experiment in the United
States arsenals as well as the cooperative experi-
ments abroad, in agriculture in Italy and in other
industries elsewhere, have already demonstrated that
common laborers in conjunction with production-
technicians might be entrusted, with high profit to
themselves and the community, with full responsibil-
ity. It happens that railroad transportation is so
organized that the trust could be transferred at once
with immediate returns to all; it is also evident that
a few other highly organized industries are overripe
and waiting to be taken up; that practically all
municipal, state, and federal activities could be
rescued from the corruption of political administra-
tion and the service vastly improved if the employees
made themselves responsible for the service as a
whole. As wage earners with few exceptions refuse
to assume the responsibility, what can and cannot be
rescued is beside the point. But it is clear to the
whole world that the labor-union movement has
reached a place where a new policy, a policy of
industrial responsibility, must be adopted if the
union is to continue to function; and that the day
of the collective bargain must make way sooner or
later for the day of the collective contract.


3o8
October 4
THE DIAL
We should like to suggest to the unions
that they may well begin at once to prepare for a
time when industrial responsibility can be trans-
ferred to men who are technically competent—begin
by throwing the responsibility for strikes back, on
the shoulders of employers, who under present
arrangements hold the position of responsibility for
production and public service. Let us take up some
of the issues which arise in industrial relations—
wages, hours, and, at times, economy in adminis-
tration. First, the case of wages. The organized
workers of a shop, when considering wage rates,
might send their representatives to the boss to
inform him that they were in search of facts, that
they were in the dark as to costs and the financial
resources of the enterprise, and that they could not
consider the question of wages intelligently unless
they had access to all the financial data possessed by
the management. It is needless to observe that the
request for light would be refused as an untoward
impertinence; but the refusal of men to continue
working without light would have a retroactive
psychological effect on the present processes of indus-
trial manipulation which would be altogether bene-
ficial. In the case of hours of work, the employees,
without the assistance of the boss, but with the help
of the production expert, could make a study of
short and long shifts. Other questions of production
organization, such as a new coordination of the
working forces in the shop, a new method of routing,
a better selection of material, the possibility of buy-
ing and selling in other markets, new methods of
accounting, would inevitably become shop issues if
the workers assumed the position of production
responsibility.
Having made their studies and drawn their plans,
the workers should submit them to the test of pub-
licity and examination. Convinced of the validity
of their conclusions, they would be prepared to act
on them; to work on the hour schedule which they
had determined was best for all concerned; to put
into operation the methods of shop organization
which they believed experience would prove alto-
gether good. They would not, of course, get beyond
the presentation of their case before they would find
themselves on the street. That however is where
the unions are at home in case of an issue. The
difference between the new method and the old
would be that the workers would have a case of
particular interest to the public, instead of a case of
special interest to a comparatively small group of
men. Moreover if, instead of striking, they under-
took actually to put into operation a scheme of
organization which promised increased economy and
better service, they would be on the street because
the owner of the plant had locked them out. The
fight of organized workingmen for more light, for
responsibility, for an intelligent and highly efficient
service would be met as the manufacturers are now
meeting the effort of the workers in the arsenals.
It is a dangerous precedent, the manufacturers
'eclare, for the workers to be given responsibility,
for them to use their intelligence, for them to under-
bid business. A Senate investigation is demanded.
In a short time the arsenal experiment will be killed
and the government will subserviently pay the price
for optics, saddles, and so forth which responsible
business men in their infinite wisdom pronounce to
be just and good. They may kill the experiment in
the arsenals, but they cannot kill the once-aroused
desire of labor to function productively. If that
desire is to assert itself in the near future the burden
of preserving labor's irresponsibility will have to be
borne by the politicians and the business men. Let
us suppose, for instance, that a city's firemen, well
organized for purposes of assuming the responsibility
of fire prevention, undertake to introduce a scheme
for improving team work in the fighting of fires, and
that the Fire Commissioner discharges them for
their pains. The Commissioner, not the firemen, is
responsible for the prevention and control of all fires
during the period of the lockout. If, instead of
striking, the Boston police had taken in hand the
administration of the Police Department, Commis-
sioner Curtis, with the assistance of the militia,
would have locked them out, and would have
appeared before the public as incompetent as he
actually is to assume the responsibility for Boston's
safety. We submit for the consideration of all
intelligent laboring men the proposition that there
is no better time to begin preparation for the assump-
tion of responsibility than now, when the whole
world is sensing the fact that those who now hold
responsible office in the nature of the case do so on
bluff. While the present situation is fostered by
keeping the mass of men in the position of irresponsi-
bility for quality and quantity in output and service,
strikes are inevitable. While this situation endures,
the question of the right of men to strike is
immaterial, and the ethical query as to whether or
not strikes of public employees should be supported
is impertinent.
It will take a complete victory for reaction
in Russia to prove to all parties that the only thing
the anti-Bolshevists have in common is anti-Bol-
shevism. Nevertheless there are already in hand cer-
tain items of evidence that point to this conclusion.
As far as the anti-Bolshevists are pro-anything, they
are pro-private-property. With the menace of social-
ization once out of the way, the business of being
pro-private-property will lose its significance, for the
time being at least, and all the divisive tendencies
now submerged by the Great Fear will show up
again. In this connection it may be noted that besides
being a reactionary, Kolchak is an imperialist. And
it is precisely at the moment of reaction's triumph
that imperialism will become really significant. In
the matter of Ukrainia, for instance. It is reported
now that Ukrainia has abandoned her political inde-
pendence and has decided to leave to the much
promised All-Russian Constitutional Assembly the
matter of settling her final status. Can there be


1919
309
THE DIAL
any uncertainty as to what the Assembly's decision
will be? Or any hope that Ukrainia, having once
tasted freedom, will abide by this decision? The
ultimate answer is not far to seek. Nor will Deni-
kin's deal with Petulra, the Ukrainian chief, be
without its effect in the Baltic region, where a fed-
eration of new states has opened negotiations with
the, Soviet Government. Under these conditions, is
there any possibility that Lithuania, Lettvia, and
Esthonia will eventually vote themselves into Kol-
chak's empire for the privilege of fighting Kolchak's
battles? Finland's aloofness has established a dif-
ferent precedent. And as for Kolchak's imperial
retainers: Will Japan demand all of Siberia—or
half? Will the Trans-Cauqasian provinces recom-
pense France for the loss of much-coveted territory in
Asia Minor? And will England be satisfied with the
Baku oil region—the natural hinterland of Mesopo-
tamia and Persia—or will Russian Turkestan be-
come a necessary buffer for Persia and Afghanestan?
What about the Murmansk coast, where Americans
landed to save war-material from the Bolsheviki,
and found that they were expected to carve up Rus-
sia for the British? To what lengths of cruelty
must Kolchak go to maintain himself in that portion
of Russia which foreign forces conquer for him and
are generous enough to leave to him? If history and
logic mean anything, they mean that the triumph of
Kolchak will bring not only the destruction of indus-
trial democracy in Russia but the partition of the
nation itself among the spoilsmen now joined in the
service of reaction.
A HE WAR THAT BINDS TOGETHER THE PARTISANS
of Kolchak has likewise served the interests of gov-
ernmental centralization in Soviet Russia. Victory,
whether it comes to Lenin or to Kolchak, will entail
not only the elimination of the defeated leader, but
the partial or complete disintegration of the forces
of the champion. To choose intelligently between
the one triumph and the other is td choose between
two types of confusion—with an eye to ultimate
results. With Kolchak once in power, wars with
the small nations and quarrels with imperial allies
wilTcreate a condition of affairs exactly suited to the
maintenance of a reactionary regime. Victory will
turn the Dictator's allies into enemies, and throw
upon Russia a burden of foreign complications that
can be met only by a highly centralized and militar-
ized government. The pro-Bolshevist alliance on
the other hand is made up of men of many parties
held together for the time being by a common fear
and hatred of reaction. The only answer of these
pro-Bolshevists to criticisms of the severe and dicta-
torial methods of the Bolsheviki is the answer of the
French Revolution—Fatherland in danger! During
the last two years America herself has seen what
an unreasonable measure of power the authorities
may assume in the face of war. And for us at our
safe distance the war was hardly worthy of com-
parison with the rending horror that has attached
itself to the body of Russia. Any truly logical
believer in Bolshevism at its worst should be
highly pleased with the measure of Allied help
now extended to Kolchak—just enough to make
the Bolshevist dictatorship necessary, to maintain
violence at the frontiers and justify violence at the
capital. Once relieved of Allied pressure, the Soviet
Government could probably compose its differences
with the small nations and completely crush the
Kolchak forces in six months. Then, with peace,
the pro-Bolshevist group would fall apart into its
elements—not quarreling nations or jealous empires,
but political and economic parties, aroused to intens-
est activity by the socialization of property, concerned
almost entirely with the problems of industrial and
political democracy .... Disintegration?
Yes—the eager confusion that means progress.
A he President has toured the country. He
has spoken a great many times, but he has not added
to our stock of knowledge. He has asserted that
the League of Nations is as harmless as a lamb, but
he has not bothered to prove it. Why? We do not
know. We want to be shown. On the one hand
the President reproaches us for not wishing peace as
ardently as himself. On the other he appoints
Judge Gary and Mr. Rockefeller to represent the
public at his industrial conference of October 6.
Some lesser lights, mostly from the banking fra-
ternity, and two renegade Socialists complete the list.
Of them all—and there are twenty-two—only Ex-
President Eliot and Mr. Gay inspire confidence.
Now at last we knqw the names of the persons
President Wilson has in mind when he tells us that
he voices the sentiments of the American people—
about peace or the League or anything else. We
have only one fear: with the capitalists all pledged
to support the public interest, who will look
after the just claims of capital? We note that the
ablest labor leaders have not been snatched away
from their personal interests and impressed into the
service of the general public; and we recommend for
careful consideration the sacrifice the President has
required of the largest employers of labor in the
United States. But our Administration is not con-
tent even with this display of its hand in the indus-
trial game. Against all the aces and all the trumps,
what' can one do? Secretary Baker has endorsed
General March's plea for a standing army of half a
million men, and compulsory training for all the
youth of the country. The President's friends report
that he approves the plan. This indicates the kind
of peace that is to follow the signing of the Treaty.
General March's argument that universal training
will ensure peace sounds strangely familiar. If we
remember rightly, it was "made in Germany."
There even comes now the report that our navy has
outstripped the British. And Japan is wrought up
over the naval demonstration in the Pacific. We
slide and slide—whither? Is it towards the better
world for which we fought?


3io
October 4
THE DIAL
Casual Comment
A Department of Foreign Affairs which
sought to promote international understanding
would be a diplomatic anomaly. But a journal of
this name came into existence lately, and that is its
avowed purpose. It is the official organ of the
Union of Democratic Control, a British organiza-
tion which numbers on its executive committee such
names as J. A. Hobson, Charles Trevelyan, and C.
Roden Buxton. In its anti-imperialism and its anti-
militarism Foreign Affairs is in the direct line of the
Victorian liberal tradition—one remembers Hob-
son's sympathetic study of Cobden, the International
Man (reviewed by Robert Morss Lovett in The
Dial for April 19)—but the Union of Democratic
Control has added to its corporate policy the social-
ist bias of the later Victorian period, that of Messrs.
Macdonald and Snowden. The September issue of
Foreign Affairs contains articles by the Austrian,
Friedrich Hertz, the Korean, K. Lee, and the Eng-
lishmen, Trevelyan, Pensonby, and Murray. In
the article of Murray in defense of pre-war
diplomacy lies the promise of a vigorous contro-
versy, while the varied nationalities of the other con-
tributors is an earnest of Foreign Affairs' desire to
act as a clearing house for international political dis-
cussion. The condemnation of the Covenant in its
present form by the executive committee of the
Union of Democratic Control proves, in spite of the
tameness of the British labor parliamentarians in
accepting the Treaty, that liberal forces abroad are
no less keenly aware of the defects of the present ar-
rangements than we are, even if they have proved
less effective in opposition. The Union allies itself
boldly with the Clarte group in France, which is
soon to issue a monthly review, and thus it forms
the intellectual base for a persistent and unified
movement against those national forces whose chief
purpose seems to be that of working at cross pur-
poses with other nationalities. Left to themselves
these peace organizations would probably not be
more effective than those of Cobden's period; but
the Union is deliberately seeking the support of
labor groups, and is thus gaining a powerful ally of
which the capitalist bias of Cobdenism, and the
weakness of mid-Victorian workers' associations,
robbed the earlier movement.
AVhat literature, and particularly poetry,
has gained from the war may be footed up by our
children: of what it has lost we have the evidence
all about us. Walter Adolphe Roberts is one of the
poetic craftsmen whose promise it has, so far, al-
most canceled. He has no little ability; if inclined
to be facile, he is always metrically sound; without
marked originality, he nevertheless has a keen feel-
ing for the appropriate word. But to make litera-
ture out of the war, one must either have been dis-
passionately above the tumult, like Romain Rolland,
or in the midst of it, like Nichols and Sassoon and
Aldington. Mr. Roberts was neither; the war
came to him, as to most of us, strained through
the censorship. In Pierrot Wounded, and Other
Poems (Britton) it is France heroic and embattled
that he has tuned his lyre to sing. The impulse
which he has followed had similar results on poets
as dissimilar as Amy Lowell and Lurana Sheldon,
the bard of the Times editorial page. This much
however is individual to Mr. Roberta—that the
France which he loves is the nation of eternal re-
volt. The war itself he envisages as another Com-
mune, a revolt of dernocracy against the White
Terror of the Kaiser, and he adjures the armies
as stout revolutionaries to "tear up stones for the
barricades." It is indeed true that Revolutionary
France was at war with Germany. The disillusion
of a reactionary victory however has. put Pierrot
Wounded a trifle out of date. Published three
years ago, when the country was ringing with Ver-
dun, and Clemenceau was editor of an Opposition
paper, it would have been an immediate success.
A fallacy long endemic in the minds of
American artists and public alike is that one must
go to France to learn to paint. The student re-
turns home spoiled and unsympathetic, with no in-
clination to observe the life he has striven to forget,
and spends his days repeating the mannerisms of
Gallic painters and spreading the superstition that
the French hold the great secret. Commercially it
is an advantage, but intellectually it is ruin. America
is matured; she can learn from France just as she
can learn from Russia; but it must be in an adult
fashion and not in the spirit of childish romance.
Our younger men, instead of trying to fathom
Cezanne's extraordinary mastery of form and his
dynamic use of color, have mistaken his crudities
for accomplishments, his most obvious faults for
virtues, and are flooding the galleries with eccen-
tricities which bear no relation to the structural
unities aimed at, if not always realized, by their
master. Picasso's pictures, which were born of a
dissatisfaction with his limited achievements in ob-
jective form, virtually exhausted the possibilities of
Cubism. And yet our galleries continually exhibit
imitations that are utterly without meaning, that
are ignorantly conceived and often offensively ab-
surd. American Cubism is the simple and super-
ficial process of drawing planes at random. In much
the same way Matisse's distorted nudes have been
misapprehended; and Gauguin's decorations; and
the work of many lesser figures who have derived
from the Persians and primitives. On the other
hand, Renoir, unquestionably a master, is not fre-
quently plagiarized: he is not shocking; he is dif-


1919
11
THE DIAL
ficult to understand; and his technical methods are
inimitable.
In spite of the tendency to worship foreign idols,
there is hope. America abounds in talent; and, in
so far as technical skill enters into the problem, our
artists need not defer to the French.' It is, in a
measure, not unreasonable for them to look to
Europe for stimulation and appreciation: Americans
cannot continue to put every obstacle in the way
of their artists and then expect them to turn out
masterpieces. The American painter is practically
dissociated from his public, which is confined to a
handful of tired critics, a, few dealers, and oc-
casional visitors to the galleries. As a result he lives
a feckless and incomplete life; he is too much alone;
he is generally unfamiliar with the world around
him and boastful of his aloofness. His canvases are
but confirmations of his dwarfed existence. The
work of the most promising young men, the men
in whom we must place our hopes for distinguished
and enduring productions, is well painted, often
surpassingly executed; it is clever; more likely than
not it is richly colored; but the most of it falls flat.
It bears the stamp of the studio, and the French
studio at that. The painter of still-life has become
a nuisance, the abstractionist a bore. What the
American artist needs above everything else is to
get close to nature in the largest and profoundest
sense; to relate himself to the plangent American
life that envelops him; to study it, absorb it, and
understand it. Only when he has done this will he
begin to create. He cannot remain an eremite re-
lying upon a color theory, an adoration of Cezanne,
and a penchant for second-hand metaphysics, and still
do organic art. It is worth remembering that when
Michael Angelo ceased to return to nature and be-
gan to depend upon scientific formulae his work im-
mediately lost much of its strength and structural
power.
American painters of the "New Move-
ment" seem to have come to a full stop. They are
showing signs of vacillation and are beginning to
drift into their appropriate pathways. In order to
get their bearings, some have momentarily ceased
to paint; some have fallen back on illustration,
which once they deprecated so noisily; some guilty
apostates are gradually creeping into the folds of
the academically respectable; only a few are prose-
cuting their talents without fear or compromise.
Now, as Clive Bell has said, bad modern art is no
worse than any other art that is bad; but it affords
the old-fashioned critics an opportunity to cackle
over the failure they so strenuously predicted and so
arrogantly tried to compass. Meanwhile, to the
sympathizers with new and vitalizing forces, it is
in no sense a failure but a temporary depression, a
natural reaction. In the main the modern heretics
were right—it was courageous and commendable to
fight against the inanities of the Academy and all
other forms of stupid copying, whether of nature or
of the old art. The present stoppage of significant
productivity in America is due rather to a certain
want of understanding. The first requisite to crea-
tive work is a definite and precise knowledge of the
desired end: unfortunately most of our younger
painters, when asked about their intentions, are un-
able to give adequate or even intelligible answers—
they shift the responsibility to Rousseauism, pro-
claiming their right to "express themselves." But
expression no more makes art than a child's howling
makes music, and it is doubtful if their canvases are
now even sincere expressions. It was easy to imitate
the most startling idiosyncrasies of Cubism and
Futurism; it was exhilarating to shock the public;
but now that these schools have ceased to be shock-
ing, our painters must use their own brains or
perish—they may profit by the aggregate good of
the new movement but they cannot go on imitating
its manifestations and expect an audience.
John G. Neihardt's The Song of Three
Friends (Macmillan) begins with an uncomprom-
ising question:
Who now reads clear the roster of that band?
Alas, Time scribbles with a careless hand
And often pinchbeck doings from that pen
Bite deep, where deeds and dooms of mighty men
Are blotted out beneath a sordid scrawl!
And one would perhaps read no further for the
poetry did one not recall the epic of Hugh Glass.
In Hugh Glass the story held the attention and the
poetry quickened the pulse. This Three Friends,
which is designed to introduce Hugh Glass and form
the first of a cycle of poems dealing with the fur
trade period in the trans-Missouri region, neither
interests as a narrative nor stimulates as verse.
There are indeed passages where spring tingles and
a Southwest summer scarcely breathes; but there is
no Jamie section and no Crawl section, and the
primitive beauty that flourished in the earlier poems
blooms here only in intermittent patches.
EDITORS
Martyn Johnson
Oswald W. Knauth
Robert Morss Lovbtt
Helen Marot
Thorstein Veblen
Associates )
Clarence Britten
Lewis Mumford
Geroid Robinson


312
October 4
THE DIAL
Communications
The Russian Reaction to the Japanese
Sir: If what Mr. Joshua Rosett says in The
Prussians of the Eastern World in The Dial of
August 9, 1919 concerning the conduct of the
Japanese Army in Siberia is true (and it must be
true considering the fact that they shoot strikers of
their own country now and helpless innocent peas-
ants in Korea) then the Russians, especially the
Siberians, are right and just in hating the Japanese,
who have invaded Siberia against their wishes.
Japan, in landing her troops in Vladivostok,
declared that she would not interfere with the
internal policy of the Siberians (so did other powers)
but Japan has been interfering right along directly
with the internal policies of the Siberians under the
pretext first of helping the Czecho-Slovaks and then
of keeping peace and order along the Siberian Rail-
road, which is under the sole control of the U. S. A.
I do not defend any act of the Japanese army
in Siberia. I am against militarism, espYcially the
Siberians' intervention, and condemn their brutal
and inhuman conduct, but the acts of officers in the
matter of the hospital, which Mr. Rossett has so
graphically given in the said article, are the direct
result of Japanese Militarism.
I do not agree with Mr. Rosett in saying that
Japan led the Allied Powers to the aid of a dis-
tressed and helpless neighbor—Russia—when the
tidal wave of Bolshevism swept from European
Russia into Siberia; Japanese troops weeding out
the Bolsheviki and the moral backing of the Japan-
ese had induced the Czechoslovaks to put the Bol-
shevik Soviets out of business in Siberia, thus en-
abling the regularly elected organs of democratic
government to take their proper places. Mr. Rosett'
tried to find causes of Russian hatred against the
Japanese; why the Russians hate the Japs in spite
of this. Here Mr. Rosett made a grave mistake;
the Russians hate the Japanese not in spite of these
services of the Japanese army, but directly on
account of these. I can say this from the result of
the election at Vladivostok just after the Czecho-
slovaks ousted the Soviets.
The present hatred of the Russians is not the
continuation of the hatred that started at Russia's
defeat in the Russo-Japanese war of 1904 but the
direct result of the unjust intervention of the
Japanese army in Siberia. The majority of the
Siberians are now the Bolsheviki and they became
so on account of the Allied intervention. Mr. A. R.
Williams said that the landing of the Japanese
troops at Vladivostok made all Siberians Bolshevik.
The present deadly hatred of the Japanese on the
part of the Russians is not entirely racial, as Mr.
Rosett thinks. No, their present hatred against the
Japanese is on account of the armed intervention
by the Japanese; so it is almost entirely on account
of fear of the Japanese Militarism. I know the
noble characteristics of the Russian—so eloquently
does Mr. Rosett present them. "The whole world
knows the Russians to be a patient and hospitable
people, quick to appreciate an act of kindness and
never slow to forgive an offense." It was shown
also to the Japanese all over Russia, during and
after the present war until the unjust interven-
tion. This was one of the chief reasons why Uchida,
former Ambassador to Petrograd and present for-
eign minister, was strenuously opposed to the
Siberian intervention. During the war, the Jap
Red Cross workers who served among the Russian
army never encountered any antipathetic feeling on
the part of Russian soldiers, including the Siberians.
We know that there are many Russians who do not
consider the Jap subhuman, with a little tail. The
Lenin and Trotsky government extended a cordial
hand of international fellowship to the Japanese
people and workers, as expressly enunciated in the
Oriental policy of the said Government printed in
the New York Volkszeitung, December 8, 1918.
Mr. Rosett's statements are too sweeping and
too prejudicial and amount to inciting a racial
hatred between the Russians and Japanese. I can
say with the support of the Russian comrades
that the Japanese workers are not hated by the
Russian Communists. They do hate, of course,
as every socialist does, the militarism and im-
perialism of Japan and of other countries, includ-
ing the U. S. A., when these exist. The Japanese
Socialists have the most cordial and really dynamic
relations with Russian Socialists and Bolsheviki that
were first established during the Russo-Japanese
War of 1904. But if Mr. Rosett says that he is
only speaking for the Russians who support the
Kolchak Government and other reactionary powers
in European Russia and Siberia, then he must say
so and not speak in such general terms.
Mr. Rosett is mistaken in saying that Japanese
women are harnessed to wagons by ropes and
dragging burdens. They must have appeared
repulsively brutal, but such is not the case. The
Japanese woman is an independent worker in this
case, just as her husband; they work together and
enjoy together the result of their own labor. They
can rest any time, any length of time, and anywhere
they wish. They own the wagon they pull and in
many cases they carry their own goods. My mother
used to do the same kind of work, but she gave me
a strong healthy body. She never complained of
her work—so many do not even today. They are
working of their own volition. They must not be
compared with the mules of the South that are
driven by the whips of the colored people. The
custom may appear cruel to a foreigner, but from
the actual experience of life their lot is far better
than those spinning girls who work in the cotton
factory—just as their sisters do in the American
cotton factories! Mr. Rosett's judgment of the
Japanese women workers is utterly superficial and
wrong—he did not take into consideration the eco-


1919
3J3
THE DIAL
nomic structure of Japanese society. What is eat-
ing up the very vitality of the Japanese workers
is not what Mr. Rosett saw in the rice fields or on
the wayside passing by, but in the very system of
industry imported from his own country or the
other Western countries.
Mr. Rosett seems to put great faith in the old
Czarist army officer who is the enemy of the Bol-
sheviki of Russia. I wish to call Mr. Rosett's
attention to the fact that the Bolsheviki of Russia
today consist of the vast majority of Russian
people, with a stable government at Moscow that
has existed since November, 1917. That govern-
ment and its people no doubt hate and fear the Jap
militarists and the army under their command in
Siberia, but they do not hate the Japanese people
and especially the workers. On the contrary, they
are inviting the Japanese workers to Russia. Under
the Bolshevik rule no Russian hates or fears a for-
eigner, for as long as they are workers, they are
comrades. „ „
Sen Katayama.
New York City.
Baseball and Rivalry
Sir: One always hesitates to differ with one's
teacher. Especially must one be careful in assum-
ing to express a disagreement with a teacher who
introduced one to philosophic thought. It is there-
fore only with reserve that I offer a word in criti-
cism of the article of Professor Cohen in the Dial
for July 26 on Baseball.
Professor Cohen quite correctly finds in Base-
ball the expression of religious emotions. Although
I am not myself a devotee of the game, I am yet
convinced by my friends who are, that it is a truly
religious enthusiasm which grips one in witnessing
a game. There is a "mystic unity with a larger
life of which we are a part." But the mystic being
in Baseball is the city. We have then a deep enthu-
siasm to see our city vindicated, its "honor" upheld.
If it is true that the "truly religious devotee has
his soul directed to the final outcome" it is because
he feels that " his" city is to rise or fall according
to whether or not her sons succeed in maintaining
her prestige. I pass over the fundamental false-
hood of the underlying premises, for in almost every
case the city's team has nothing in common with
the city, in no way represents it, save that it uses its
name. There remains the basic question: Can a
spirit that makes for contention be compatible with
the establishment of a Church Universal " in which
all men may find their, brotherhood in the Infinite
Game"?
There is in every human breast an instinct of
self-assertion. This usually takes the form of a
desire to stand out, to be noticed. This instinct
need not, however, necessarily make for rivalry. It
is not essential that A be pushed into the back-
ground in order that B may stand in the foreground,
just as there is no need for the enslavement of A in
order that B may be a lord. There is room enough
for all in this world. It is only in its depraved
stages that the instincts of self-assertion seek
"honor" rather than responsibility, only in their
abnormal functioning that they are not satisfied with
the love of the near but demand the fear and the
respect of the distant. It is then that they degenerate
into ambition and become an overpowering passion.
The spirit of rivalry between individuals is easily
transferred to communities and to nations. From
wishing myself to be the Mayor of my city, and the
President of my land, I easily come to desire to see
my city the foremost in the iand and my people the
most powerful on the globe. I want to have its in-
fluence felt, and this desire is translated into a wish
into having it feared abroad. For this purpose I
vote it heavy armaments. I rejoice in being told
that mine is the richest country on the globe, not be-
cause that makes me or anyone else any happier, but
because my country stands out and is more powerful
than the rest. I want New York to be the largest
city, not for any benefit that will accrue to anyone
from such a state of affairs, but because she happens
to be my city. . . .
Anything that makes for contention cannot be
ennobling. It is a false doctrine that rivalries and
aspirations of nations must find some outlet. It is
as untrue as the belief that we can avert sex-
depravity by introducing sensuous negroid dances or
Arabic tales into our civilization. The truth is that
these only help to deprave an instinct otherwise quite
useful. And similarly, games that call for conten-
tion help to arouse emotions that make for the de-
generation of the self-assertive instincts. . . .
Professor Cohen seems impressed with the democ-
ratizing influence of Baseball. He forgets, ap-
parently, that this democracy is inherent in all move-
ments which emphasize the emotional aspects of life.
During a political campaign the most aristocratic
will often forget his theories and take a smoke or a
drink from one of the commonplace with whom he
might ordinarily disdain to speak. . . .
We cannot expect to rise by appealing to base-
ness, we cannot develop social feeling by appealing
to anti-social instincts. The war against war should
have taught us the fallacy of such a contradiction in
terms. Paradoxes may sometimes be true, but the
criterion of truth cannot be the paradoxical formula-
tion of a statement.
The less of rivalry that we have, the less we in-
sist on the self, whether it take the form of the ag-
grandizement of one's individuality, one's nation or
one's race, the nearer will we approach our ideal.
Cooperation should be the goal rather than victory,
cooperation in an attempt to gain the mastery of the
universe. It is the infinite game between mind and
matter. Louis Finkelstein.
Brooklyn, N. Y.


3*4
October 4
THE DIAL
Notes on New Books
Sylvia and Michael. By Compton Mack-
enzie. 323 pages. Harper.
It is no narrow background that Compton Mack-
enzie has chosen for his latest novel; he does not
confine himself to the four walls of a house or to
one city or country. With Sylvia and Michael the
headlong action of the movies establishes itself
among the consecrated ranks of the young English-
men. The story opens in Paris, moves rapidly to
Petrograd, where it halts for sixty-odd pages, and
for the remainder of the volume flashes from Kiev
to Odessa to Warsaw, from Bucharest and
Avereshti to Nish, and finally closes in a calm
Samothracian pastoral with the promise of contin-
ued action in a future novel. New characters are
brought before us constantly, are painted vividly
and unforgettably in a paragraph or a chapter, and
disappear, probably forever. No book comes easily
that has described so well the kaleidoscope of Rus-
sia and the Balkans in 1915, although one is re-
minded slightly of John Reed and The War in
Eastern Europe.
The vivid characters, however, are restricted to
their various paragraphs, and the background re-
mains background. The whole action is centered
around the adventures of Sylvia Scarlett, the fascin-
ating, brilliant, erratic, but always charming Sylvia.
"To satisfy a whim," says the notice on the cover,
"she throws away a big career. She makes her
way alone through dangers that would terrify most
men." All this she does, and more, but she remains
little more than a wooden doll, the limbs of which
Mr. Mackenzie has set into violent motion, and the
mouth of which he has formed to repeat the speeches
which he writes for her. The more rapid the ac-
tion in which she is engaged, the more profound
her musings, the more does she lose versimilitude.
It is the misfortune of Compton Mackenzie that
after half a dozen excellent novels, he has lost the
power to visualize his heroes and heroines. When
he devotes his hand to miniatures or landscapes, he
is still the accomplished artist, but his portraits are
failures. He can no longer make them live.
Storm in a Teacup. By Eden Phillpotts.
303 pages. Macmillan.
By the title, the English novelist defines the scope
of his newest story, but leaves to the reader the dis-
covery of the stinging strength of the brew. Phill-
potts withholds the lump of sugar; he is not so spar-
ing of lemon. For a leisurely novel, which shuns
briskness as a plague, it nevertheless imparts a pun-
gent acid flavor—as though, perhaps, a few drops of
rum had been added at the last moment. Storm in
a Teacup is another study in Phillpotts' established
locale—" with Dartmoor flung in a dim arc be-
yond." The story centers about the workers in a
paper mill, and woven through the chapters is a con-
secutive exposition of that tedious, fascinating
process, deftly linked up with the major concerns of
the three outstanding characters. There is, more-
over, a colorful gallery of figures in the background,
emerging and receding, each one weighing somehow
in the scales which Phillpotts examines so de-
liberately and with such insight.
He starts with a rather highly strung woman,
married to a light-hearted, unhorizonized mill-
worker—a man of sound sense but lacking the
requisite aura of mystery. The wife, thinking she
sees quite through him and finding his soul bare of
disquieting symptoms, jumps to the conclusion that
he is dull, and forthwith runs off with another. The
successor, who had been a rival suitor before her
marriage, is one of those beings with a mission to
uplift their fellows, but with a woefully wooden
interior in the face of romantic crises. He insists
upon an unconsummated elopement, pending the di-
vorce. The husband finally punctures the bubble
simply by refraining from the necessary legal steps,
and in the end, a chastened wife is restored to him.
This skeleton is inadequate to suggest the delicacy,
the humor, and the incisive bits of character draw-
ing which Phillpotts has put into the framework.
The woman's discovery that a husband who is trans-
parent may not be nearly so dull as a man with only
one idea—even an altogether admirable moral one—
is very subtly, threaded into the texture of the story,
and the philosophic warp is felt, but never insisted
upon. Phillpotts chooses to interpret life with the
labels removed.
The Oxford History of India. By Vincent
A. Smith. 816 pages. Oxford University
Press.
At the conclusion of a long and distinguished
career in the Indian Civil Service as an adminis-
trator, as well as in the capacity of a careful and
enthusiastic student of India's past, Mr. Vincent A.
Smith has now given us his definitive history of In-
dia. His previous works on the Fine Arts of In-
dia and Ceylon, on the early relations between East
and West down to the time of Alexander the
Great's invasion, to say nothing of his studies of
the lives of the " Great Mogul " Akbar, and of the
Constantine of Buddhism, the emperor Asoka, were
valuable preparation for this succinct and compre-
hensive survey. Well might the author have chosen
as motto for this last work, completed in his retire-
ment: Finis coronat opus.
When Master Ralph Fitch, one of the earliest
travelers in India, closed his entertaining pages with
the satisfaction that he had had "to declare some
things which India do bring forth " he little realized
the demand that would some day arise for such
knowledge, both in the Bureau of Commerce at
Washington and in the American public libraries.
Yet in the early nineteenth century how intimate was
our contact with India! Those were the days when


1919
3*5
THE DIAL
our fast clipper ships from Salem and other New
England ports were outsailing the heavy, teak-
built East Indiamen that plied between Gravesend
and Surat, fighting the Portuguese, Dutch, and
French, and arriving in the Thames when hope had
vanished, to have their rich cargoes sold by the light
of a candle. According to custom all bids for these
rich cargoes were accepted while a candle of of-
ficial length burned. All this trade the swifter
Yankee craft fell heir to because of finer shipwrights
and speed. Even within the memory of the re-
viewer there stood at Bombay the old American
Ice -House, where New England apples, and ice
from little Wenham Pond near Boston, once were
sold to the homesick Europeans, this being the bal-
last that the wily Yankee brought so as to return
laden with silk, calicoes, and tea. We do not doubt
that an older generation of Anglo-Indian punch
drinkers had their experience with the wooden-nut-
meg from Connecticut.
From the rich material of Mr. Smith's work it
now remains for some embryo Doctor of Philosophy
to write an American history of India. As Mr.
Smith reminds us in these pages, the critical period
of British supremacy in India coincided with the
revolutionary wars in America. British cabinets
and parliaments came to power or fell solely upon
their Indian and American policies. Today East
and West are one. This story of India's glorious
past is essential if we are to understand the political
future promised India by the recent Montagu Bill,
coming so close upon our own Jones Bill in the
Philippines. Whether or not we assume any man-
dates for folks dubbed in Kipling's silly rhetoric
"half-devil and half-child," America's provincial
detachment is gone. There is enough food for re-
flection if we recall that American statesmen formu-
lated those two epoch-making policies, The Open
Door and Self-Determination.
India in Transition. By the Aga Khan. 310
pages. Putnam.
His Highness, the Aga Khan, once the symbol in
India of reactionary associations, stands before the
public today as a reformer. He is a man of wide
culture and far travels. He is the religious head of
the Ismaili Mahomedans scattered over India, Cen-
tral Asia, and East Africa. He has been created a
first class Prince by the British Raj, and is entitled
to eleven guns. He is immensely wealthy, and has
rendered a great service to India by trying to estab-
lish a Mahomedan University at Aligarh. Per-
haps the government opposition to his noble scheme
has partially opened his eyes to the real motives of
British rule in India. The author wholeheartedly
repudiates the British educational policy in India,
and he even makes bold to say: "There is no
running away from this need for education diffusion
since it is a question of life and death for India.
No compromise as to providing this essential ground-
work of national development can be tolerated." It
is however exceedingly amusing to see the author
straddle. It is almost tragic. All through the book
there is a feeling of suppressed resentment. Thus
he speaks, of Great Britain's educational and econ-
omic achievements in India: "Britain has been
criticized and rightly criticized for having allowed
the twentieth century to dawn and grow without
having grappled fully and successfully with the
illiteracy general in India, and with the unsanitary
environment of the masses, so bad that avoidable
deaths are counted by the million every year." But
like his fellow home-rulers, the Redmonds and T. P.
O'Connor's of India, he stands for the perpetuation
of the system he condemns, and renounces the
claim to complete autonomy in the admission that
"Englishmen are in official position in India be-
cause, after her chequered and tragic history, she is
not able to satisfactorily settle her own affiairs
without the cooperation of people from happier
lands."
Letters to the People of India on Re-
sponsible Government. By Lionel Curtis.
211 pages. Macmillan.
The author of the book under review, Mr. Lionel
Curtis, is a Knight of the new British Round Table
of imperialism, and his policy of liberalism aims to
counteract the growing movement for India's com-
plete independence. Nevertheless this book frankly
exposes some of the present awkward anomalies of
the British administration in India. Writes the
author:
So far as the Indian and Provincia-1 governments are
concerned, responsible government has no place in the ex-
isting constitution. . . . The legislatures consist part-
ly of officials, who in the Governor-General's Council only
are in the majority, partly of non-officials, mostly Indians,
appointed by the Government, and partly by members,
alnx.st entirely Indian, who do not hold their seats by
Government appointment. From the latest returns it ap-
pears that the Imperial Council consists of 68 members, 27
of whom are elected. Of these 18 are elected to speak
for sectional interests, either landholders, Mahomedans,
merchants, or manufacturers. The remaining, indirectly
elected by non-official members of the nine Provincial
Councils, are presumably intended to voice the views of
the people at large. . . . Educated Indians are ac-
cused of seeking an oligarchy under the guise of self-
government .Here, in a law made by ourselves, the image
of oligarchy is stamped on the system.
We are now in a position to trace the electoral chain
by which a member of the Imperial Council is supposed
to represent a voter in one of these divisions.
1. The primary voter returns a member to the Dis-
trict or Municipal Board.
2. The Board returns members to an Electoral College.
3. The College returns a member to the Provincial
Council.
4. The non-official members, including sectional mem-
bers are those appointed by Government, return a member
to the Imperial Legislative Council.
The system is one which destroys any real connection
between the primary voter and the member who sits on
the Legislative Councils.
Whenever there is a talk of political reform in
India, the enemies of progress in that country in-


316
October 4
THE DIAL
variably talk of India's social evils like the caste
and other kindred topics, as though India were the
only country where social evils are prevalent. Even
the minds of intelligent Americans have been
affected by propaganda of calumny and misrepre-
sentation of conditions in India. But here is a
Briton who seems to understand the problem. He
says:
I have often heard it said that, before Indians ask for
political powers, they ought to devote themselves to the
task of social reform. If Englishmen will think of the
social reforms effected in their own country, they will
realize how unfair and impossible a condition this is.
What great social reform has ever been effected in Eng-
land without legislative action? How could the employ-
ment of women and children in industries and mines,
the status of married women, or the sale of liquor, have
been reformed without the enactment of a new law? Id
India the need for social reform largely arises from cus-
toms which have been crystallized by decisions in the
courts, under the rigid legal system which we ourselves
introduced from the West.
Then the author points out how Mr. Bhupend-
ranath Basu's Marriage Reform Bill was killed by
the British government, though the Bill was sup-
ported by men like Gokhale, Raja of Dighapatia,
Jinnah, Madholkar, Dadabhoy, and others. "The
whole corps of British officials were ordered by the
Governor-General and his council to march into
the lobby and vote the measure down." And it
was done. Similarly Mr. Gokhale's Primary Edu-
cation Bill, introducing free and compulsory primary
education in India, was voted down by the Gover-
nor-General and his council—and this in the en-
lightened twentieth century.
The New Elizabethans. By E. B. Osborn.
311 pages. Lane.
Set Down in Malice. By Gerald Cumberland.
286 pages. Brentano.
Uncensored Celebrities. By E. T. Raymond.
244 pages. Holt.
The intent to discover a single lofty chord, re-
curring in the lives of more than a score of young
men who met death in the war, and to set it vibrat-
ing as a sort of overtone to the spirit in which they
lived and died, has guided Mr. Osborn in preparing
his brief memoirs. Despite an occasional over-
emphasis and a somewhat too-frequent recourse to
superlatives, the collection is of considerable value.
The list is predominantly insular, but includes the
Americans Alan Seeger and Harold Chapin. There
is a brief outline of the life of each fighter, followed
by a survey of his work. In the task of appraisal,
the tendency is toward over-statement, but it is pos-
sible for the reader to make the necessary reserva-
tions. The style becomes a bit feverish at times, as
in this reference to the boyhood of Seeger in New
York: "The clangorous life of the pent city's life,
which ever grows skyward, entered into his soul;
his greatest joy was to follow the rushing fire-en-
gines which are seen every day in her street-canons."
Set Down in Malice and Uncensored Celebrities
present sprightly pictures of individuals about whom
the dust of controversy still flies. Both volumes
conceal their authorship under pseudonyms. The
former book is so vigorous in its opinions, so merci-
less in its thrusts, and so altogether charming in its
arrant pin-pricking that one lays it down with the
utmost difficulty. Its author is an undisguised
poseur, but he has acquitted himself so well in his
self-imposed effrontery, that he deserves forgiveness
—and a wink. Mr. Raymond's racy volume, facile
in skill and engaging .in wit, contains sketches of
thirty-two leading figures in English politics, with
the English-born Gompers appended. Its rank is
that of high-grade journalism.
Scenes from Italy's War. By G. M. Trev-
elyan. 240 pages. Houghton Mifflin.
This volume supplies a sample of the kind of
writing that may well reduce American literary men
to despair. The sureness and dignity that charac-
terizes the best English quarterlies is present here
in large measure; considered language gives to the
narrative something of the processional unity that
the events themselves possessed.
Historical judgment is another matter. Al-
though in the introduction the author assumes no
other obligations than those that belong to a nar-
rator of individual experiences, a reading of the
book reveals the fact that personal reminiscences
are used only as they become serviceable to a tol-
erably well organized history of Italy's part in the
war. Even so, it is perhaps too much to expect
that an Englishman, writing in the closing days of
the conflict, would be bold enough to see the sim-
ilarity between the bargain by means of which
Buelow and Erzberger attempted to buy Italy's neu-
trality, and the Treaty of London, which named
the Allied price of her participation in the war. The
author's defense of Italian sincerity has lost some-
thing of its force through the publication' of the in-
formation that the Triple Alliance was vitiated
seventeen years ago by a secret convention between
France and Italy. On the occasion of King Em-
manuel's visit to Paris last winter, the Temps
made it known that in 1902 an agreement was
reached which provided that neither of the two
countries should take part in any aggression against
the other, and that neither should participate in any
war against the other, even though self-declared, if
this war was imposed by the will of the enemy (Le
Temps, Paris, 22 December 1918). Villainies of
one sort and another, from the secret diplomacy of
Delcasse to the latest grand opera gesture of d'An-
nunzio, have so blurred the political aspects of the
situation that one turns with something like relief
from this phase of the war to the author's more
than readable account of straightforward pre-
armistice fighting.


1919 THE DIAL 3^7
The Life and Letters of
JAMES MONROE TAYLOR
President of Vassar College 1886 to 1914
By ELIZABETH HAZELTON HAIGHT
ThU timely volume is at once a contribution to the history of education in America, a memorial for all those who love
Vassar, and the personal portrait of a great man.
Professor Haight, Professor of Latin on the Vassar faculty and collaborator with President Taylor in his history of Vassar,
has here added that chapter of personal history, of the influence and inspiration of a great educator and leader, which
was necessarily omitted from the formal history of the college at that time. She has brought together his letters
sermons and speeches, including correspondence with such educators as Benjamin Ide Wheeler, Lyman P. Powell
Edmund Gosse, President Fliot, and many others. But for those who knew him, the value of the letters which revea
him as a man will be even greater than that of the more formal compositions. Net, $3.5
Comparative Education Edited by PETER SAND I FORD
A Survey of the Educational System in Each of Six Representative Countries
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New Schools for Old By EVELYN DEWEY
The book is an Interesting account of the application by Mrs. Harvey of community Ideals to the regenera-
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starting-point for the development of a healthy community spirit It Is-the record of one of the most Im-
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Towards Racial Health By NORAH H. MARCH
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Labor and Reconstruction in Europe By ELISHA M. FRIEDMAN
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The Science of Labour and Its Organization By JOSEFA IOTEYKO
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3o8
October 4
THE DIAL
We should like to suggest to the unions
that they may well begin at once to prepare for a
time when industrial responsibility can be trans-
ferred to men who are technically competent—begin
by throwing the responsibility for strikes back on
the shoulders of employers, who under present
arrangements hold the position of responsibility for
production and public service. Let us take up some
of the issues which arise in industrial relations—
wages, hours, and, at times, economy in adminis-
tration. First, the case of wages. The organized
workers of a shop, when considering wage rates,
might send their representatives to the boss to
inform him that they were in search of facts, that
they were in the dark as to costs and the financial
resources of the enterprise, and that they could not
consider the question of wages intelligently unless
they had access to all the financial data possessed by
the management. It is needless to observe that the
request for light would be refused as an untoward
impertinence; but the refusal of men to continue
working without light would have a retroactive
psychological effect on the present processes of indus-
trial manipulation which would be altogether bene-
ficial. In the case of hours of work, the employees,
without the assistance of the boss, but with the help
of the production expert, could make a study of
short and long shifts. Other questions of production
organization, such as a new coordination of the
working forces in the shop, a new method of routing,
a better selection of material, the possibility of buy-
ing and selling in other markets, new methods of
accounting, would inevitably become shop issues if
the workers assumed the position of production
responsibility.
Having made their studies and drawn their plans,
the workers should submit them to the test of pub-
licity and examination. Convinced of the validity
of their conclusions, they would be prepared to act
on them; to work on the hour schedule which they
had determined was best for all concerned; to put
into operation the methods of shop organization
which they believed experience would prove alto-
gether good. They would not, of course, get beyond
the presentation of their case before they would find
themselves on the street. That however is where
the unions are at home in case of an issue. The
difference between the new method and the old
would be that the workers would have a case of
particular interest to the public, instead of a case of
special interest to a comparatively small group of
men. Moreover if, instead of striking, they under-
took actually to put into operation a scheme of
organization which promised increased economy and
better service, they would be on the street because
the owner of the plant had locked them out. The
fight of organized workingmen for more light, for
responsibility, for an intelligent and highly efficient
service would be met as the manufacturers are now
meeting the effort of the workers in the arsenals.
It is a dangerous precedent, the manufacturers
"•dare, for the workers to be given responsibility,
for them to use their intelligence, for them to under-
bid business. A Senate investigation is demanded.
In a short time the arsenal experiment will be killed
and the government will subserviently pay the price
for optics, saddles, and so forth which responsible
business men in their infinite wisdom pronounce to
be just and good. They may kill the experiment in
the arsenals, but they cannot kill the once-aroused
desire of labor to function productively. If that
desire is to assert itself in the near future the burden
of preserving labor's irresponsibility will have to be
borne by the politicians and the business men. Let
us suppose, for instance, that a city's firemen, well
organized for purposes of assuming the responsibility
of fire prevention, undertake to introduce a scheme
for improving team work in the fighting of fires, and
that the Fire Commissioner discharges them for
their pains. The Commissioner, not the firemen, is
responsible for the prevention and control of all fires
during the period of the lockout. If, instead of
striking, the Boston police had taken in hand the
administration of the Police Department, Commis-
sioner Curtis, with the assistance of the militia,
would have locked them out, and would have
appeared before the public as incompetent as he
actually is to assume the responsibility for Boston's
safety. We submit for the consideration of all
intelligent laboring men the proposition that there
is no better time to begin preparation for the assump-
tion of responsibility than now, when the whole
world is sensing the fact that those who now hold
responsible office in the nature of the case do so on
bluff. While the present situation is fostered by
keeping the mass of men in the position of irresponsi-
bility for quality and quantity in output and service,
strikes are inevitable. While this situation endures,
the question of the right of men to strike is
immaterial, and the ethical query as to whether or
not strikes of public employees should be supported
is impertinent.
It will take a complete victory FOR REACTION"
in Russia to prove to all parties that the only thing
the anti-Bolshevists have in common is anti-Bol-
shevism. Nevertheless there are already in hand cer-
tain items of evidence that point to this conclusion.
As far as the anti-Bolshevists are pro-anything, they
are pro-private-property. With the menace of social-
ization once out of the way, the business of being
pro-private-property will lose its significance, for the
time being at least, and all the divisive tendencies
now submerged by the Great Fear will show up
again. In this connection it may be noted that besides
being a reactionary, Kolchak is an imperialist. And
it is precisely at the moment of reaction's triumph
that imperialism will become really significant. In
the matter of Ukrainia, for instance. It is reported
now that Ukrainia has abandoned her political inde-
pendence and has decided to leave to the much
promised All-Russian Constitutional Assembly the
matter of settling her final status. Can there be


1919
309
THE DIAL
any uncertainty as to what the Assembly's decision
will be? Or any hope that Ukrainia, having once
tasted freedom, will abide by this decision? The
ultimate answer is not far to seek. Nor will Deni-
kin's deal with Petulra, the Ukrainian chief, be
without its effect in the Baltic region, where a fed-
eration of new states has opened negotiations with
the, Soviet Government. Under these conditions, is
there any possibility that Lithuania, Lettvia, and
Esthonia will eventually vote themselves into Kol-
chak's empire for the privilege of fighting Kolchak's
battles? Finland's aloofness has established a dif-
ferent precedent. And as for Kolchak's imperial
retainers: Will Japan demand all of Siberia—or
half? Will the Trans-Caucasian provinces recom-
pense France for the loss of much-coveted territory in
Asia Minor? And will England be satisfied with the
Baku oil region—the natural hinterland of Mesopo-
tamia and Persia—or will Russian Turkestan be-
come a necessary buffer for Persia and Afghanestan?
What about the Murmansk coast, where Americans
landed to save war-material from the Bolsheviki,
and found that they were expected to carve up Rus-
sia for the British? To what lengths of cruelty
must Kolchak go to maintain himself in that portion
of Russia which foreign forces conquer for him and
are generous enough to leave to him? If history and
logic mean anything, they mean that the triumph of
Kolchak will bring not only the destruction of indus-
trial democracy in Russia but the partition of the
nation itself among the spoilsmen now joined in the
service of reaction.
A HE WAR THAT BINDS TOGETHER THE PARTISANS
of Kolchak has likewise served the interests of gov-
ernmental centralization in Soviet Russia. Victory,
whether it comes to Lenin or to Kolchak, will entail
not only the elimination of the defeated leader, but
the partial or complete disintegration of the forces
of the champion. To choose intelligently between
the one triumph and the other is td choose between
two types of confusion—with an eye to ultimate
results. With Kolchak once in power, wars with
the small nations and quarrels with imperial allies
will'create a condition of affairs exactly suited to the
maintenance of a reactionary regime. Victory will
turn the Dictator's allies into enemies, and throw
upon Russia a burden of foreign complications that
can be met only by a highly centralized and militar-
ized government. The pro-Bolshevist alliance on
the other hand is made up of men of many parties
held together for the time being by a common fear
and hatred of reaction. The only answer of these
pro-Bolshevists to criticisms of the severe and dicta-
torial methods of the Bolsheviki is the answer of the
French Revolution—Fatherland in danger! During
the last two years America herself has seen what
an unreasonable measure of power the authorities
may assume in the face of war. And for us at our
safe distance the war was hardly worthy of com-
parison with the rending horror that has attached
itself to the body of Russia. Any truly logical
believer in Bolshevism at its worst should be
highly pleased with the measure of Allied help
now extended to Kolchak—just enough to make
the Bolshevist dictatorship necessary, to maintain
violence at the frontiers and justify violence at the
capital. Once relieved of Allied pressure, the Soviet
Government could probably compose its differences
with the small nations and completely crush the
Kolchak forces in six months. Then, with peace,
the pro-Bolshevist group would fall apart into its
elements—not quarreling nations or jealous empires,
but political and economic parties, aroused to intens-
est activity by the socialization of property, concerned
almost entirely with the problems of industrial and
political democracy .... Disintegration?
Yes—the eager confusion that means progress.
A he President has toured the country. He
has spoken a great many times, but he has not added
to our stock of knowledge. He has asserted that
the League of Nations is as harmless as a lamb, but
he has not bothered to prove it. Why? We do not
know. We want to be shown. On the one hand
the President reproaches us for not wishing peace as
ardently as himself. On the other he appoints
Judge Gary and Mr. Rockefeller to represent the
public at his industrial conference of October 6.
Some lesser lights, mostly from the banking fra-
ternity, and two renegade Socialists complete the list.
Of them all—and there are twenty-two—only Ex-
President Eliot and Mr. Gay inspire confidence.
Now at last we kno.w the names of the persons
President Wilson has in mind when he tells us that
he voices the sentiments of the American people—
about peace or the League or anything else. We
have only one fear: with the capitalists all pledged
to support the public interest, who will look
after the just claims of capital? We note that the
ablest labor leaders have not been snatched away
from their personal interests and impressed into the
service of the general public; and we recommend for
careful consideration the sacrifice the President has
required of the largest employers of labor in the
United States. But our Administration is not con-
tent even with this display of its hand in the indus-
trial game. Against all the aces and all the trumps,
what can one do? Secretary Baker has endorsed
General March's plea for a standing army of half a
million men, and compulsory training for all the
youth of the country. The President's friends report
that he approves the plan. This indicates the kind
of peace that is to follow the signing of the Treaty.
General March's argument that universal training
will ensure peace sounds strangely familiar. If we
remember rightly, it was "made in Germany."
There even comes now the report that our navy has
outstripped the British. And Japan is wrought up
over the naval demonstration in the Pacific. We
slide and slide—whither? Is it towards the better
world for which we fought?


312
October 4
THE DIAL
Communications
The Russian Reaction to the Japanese
Sir: If what Mr. Joshua Rosett says in The
Prussians of the Eastern World in The Dial of
August 9, 1919 concerning the conduct of the
Japanese Army in Siberia is true (and it must be
true considering the fact that they shoot strikers of
their own country now and helpless innocent peas-
ants in Korea) then the Russians, especially the
Siberians, are right and just in hating the Japanese,
who have invaded Siberia against their wishes.
Japan, in landing her troops in Vladivostok,
declared that she would not interfere with the
internal policy of the Siberians (so did other powers)
but Japan has been interfering right along directly
with the internal policies of the Siberians under the
pretext first of helping the Czecho-SIovaks and then
of keeping peace and order along the Siberian Rail-
road, which is under the sole control of the U. S. A.
I do not defend any act of the Japanese army
in Siberia. I am against militarism, esp'ecially the
Siberians' intervention, and condemn their brutal
and inhuman conduct, but the acts of officers in the
matter of the hospital, which Mr. Rossett has so
graphically given in the said article, are the direct
result of Japanese Militarism.
I do not agree with Mr. Rosett in saying that
Japan led the Allied Powers to the aid of a dis-
tressed and helpless neighbor—Russia—when the
tidal wave of Bolshevism swept from European
Russia into Siberia; Japanese troops weeding out
the Bolsheviki and the moral backing of the Japan-
ese had induced the Czecho-SJovaks to put the Bol-
shevik Soviets out of business in Siberia, thus en-
abling the regularly elected organs of democratic
government to take their proper places. Mr. Rosett
tried to find causes of Russian hatred against the
Japanese; why the Russians hate the Japs in spite
of this. Here Mr. Rosett made a grave mistake;
the Russians hate the Japanese not in spite of these
services of the Japanese army, but directly on
account of these. I can say this from the result of
the election at Vladivostok just after the Czecho-
slovaks ousted the Soviets.
The present hatred of the Russians is not the
continuation of the hatred that started at Russia's
defeat in the Russo-Japanese war of 1904 but the
direct result of the unjust intervention of the
Japanese army in Siberia. The majority of the
Siberians are now the Bolsheviki and they became
so on account of the Allied intervention. Mr. A. R.
Williams said that the landing of the Japanese
troops at Vladivostok made all Siberians Bolshevik.
The present deadly hatred of the Japanese on the
part of the Russians is not entirely racial, as Mr.
Rosett thinks. No, their present hatred against the
Japanese is on account of the armed intervention
by the Japanese; so it is almost entirely on account
of fear of the Japanese Militarism. I know the
noble characteristics of the Russian—so eloquently
does Mr. Rosett present them. "The whole world
knows the Russians to be a patient and hospitable
people, quick to appreciate an act of kindness and
never slow to forgive an offense." It was shown
also to the Japanese all over Russia, during and
after the present war until the unjust interven-
tion. This was one of the chief reasons why Uchida,
former Ambassador to Petrograd and present for-
eign minister, was strenuously opposed to the
Siberian intervention. During the war, the Jap
Red Cross workers who served among the Russian
army never encountered any antipathetic feeling on
the part of Russian soldiers, including the Siberians.
We know that there are many Russians who do not
consider the Jap subhuman, with a little tail. The
Lenin and Trotsky government extended a cordial
hand of international fellowship to the Japanese
people and workers, as expressly enunciated in the
Oriental policy of the said Government printed in
the New York Volkszeitung, December 8, 1918.
Mr. Rosett's statements are too sweeping and
too prejudicial and amount to inciting a racial
hatred between the Russians and Japanese. I can
say with the support of the Russian comrades
that the Japanese workers are not hated by the
Russian Communists. They do hate, of course,
as every socialist does, the militarism and im-
perialism of Japan and of other countries, includ-
ing the U. S. A., when these exist. The Japanese
Socialists have the most cordial and really dynamic
relations with Russian Socialists and Bolsheviki that
were first established during the Russo-Japanese
War of 1904. But if Mr. Rosett says that he is
only speaking for the Russians who support the
Kolchak Government and other reactionary powers
in European Russia and Siberia, then he must say
so and not speak in such general terms.
Mr. Rosett is mistaken in saying that Japanese
women are harnessed to wagons by ropes and
dragging burdens. They must have appeared
repulsively brutal, but such is not the case. The
Japanese woman is an independent worker in this
case, just as her husband; they work together and
enjoy together the result of their own labor. They
can rest any time, any length of time, and anywhere
they wish. They own the wagon they pull and in
many cases they carry their own goods. My mother
used to do the same kind of work, but she gave me
a strong healthy body. She never complained of
her work—so many do not even today. They are
working of their own volition. They must not be
compared with the mules of the South that are
driven by the whips of the colored people. The
custom may appear cruel to a foreigner, but from
the actual experience of life their lot is far better
than those spinning girls who work in the cotton
factory—just as their sisters do in the American
cotton factories! Mr. Rosett's judgment of the
Japanese women workers is utterly superficial and
wrong—he did not take into consideration the eoo-


1919
3X3
THE DIAL
nomic structure of Japanese society. What is eat-
ing up the very vitality of the Japanese workers
is not what Mr. Rosett saw in the rice fields or on
the wayside passing by, but in the very system of
industry imported from his own country or the
other Western countries.
Mr. Rosett seems to put great faith in the old
Czarist army officer who is the enemy of the Bol-
sheviki of Russia. I wish to call Mr. Rosett's
attention to the fact that the Bolsheviki of Russia
today consist of the vast majority of Russian
people, with a stable government at Moscow that
has existed since November, 1917. That govern-
ment and its people no doubt hate and fear the Jap
militarists and the army under their command in
Siberia, but they do not hate the Japanese people
and especially the workers. On the contrary, they
are inviting the Japanese workers to Russia. Under
the Bolshevik rule no Russian hates or fears a for-
eigner, for as long as they are workers, they are
comrades. _ T,
Sen Katayama.
New York City.
Baseball and Rivalry
Sir: One always hesitates to differ with one's
teacher. Especially must one be careful in assum-
ing to express a disagreement with a teacher who
introduced one to philosophic thought. It is there-
fore only with reserve that I offer a word in criti-
cism of the article of Professor Cohen in the Dial
for July 26 on Baseball.
Professor Cohen quite correctly finds in Base-
ball the expression of religious emotions. Although
I am not myself a devotee of the game, I am yet
convinced by my friends who are, that it is a truly
religious enthusiasm which grips one in witnessing
a game. There is a "mystic unity with a larger
life of which we are a part." But the mystic being
in Baseball is the city. We have then a deep enthu-
siasm to see our city vindicated, its "honor" upheld.
If it is true that the "truly religious devotee has
his soul directed to the final outcome" it is because
he feels that " his" city is to rise or fall according
to whether or not her sons succeed in maintaining
her prestige. I pass over the fundamental false-
hood of the underlying premises, for in almost every
case the city's team has nothing in common with
the city, in no way represents it, save that it uses its
name. There remains the basic question: Can a
spirit that makes for contention be compatible with
the establishment of a Church Universal " in which
all men may find their-brotherhood in the Infinite
Game"?
There is in every human breast an instinct of
self-assertion. This usually takes the form of a
desire to stand out, to be noticed. This instinct
need not, however, necessarily make for rivalry. It
is not essential that A be pushed into the back-
ground in order that B may stand in the foreground,
just as there is no need for the enslavement of A in
order that B may be a lord. There is room enough
for all in this world. It is only in its depraved
stages that the instincts of self-assertion seek
"honor" rather than responsibility, only in their
abnormal functioning that they are not satisfied with
the love of the near but demand the .fear and the
respect of the distant. It is then that they degenerate
into ambition and become an overpowering passion.
The spirit of rivalry between individuals is easily
transferred to communities and to nations. From
wishing myself to be the Mayor of my city, and the
President of my land, I easily come to desire to see
my city the foremost in the land and my people the
most powerful on the globe. I want to have its in-
fluence felt, and this desire is translated into a wish
into having it feared abroad. For this purpose I
vote it heavy armaments. I rejoice in being told
that mine is the richest country on the globe, not be-
cause that makes me or anyone else any happier, but
because my country stands out and is more powerful
than the rest. I want New York to be the largest
city, not for any benefit that will accrue to anyone
from such a state of affairs, but because she happens
to be my city. . . .
Anything that makes for contention cannot be
ennobling. It is a false doctrine that rivalries and
aspirations of nations must find some outlet. It is
as untrue as the belief that we can avert sex-
depravity by introducing sensuous negroid dances or
Arabic tales into our civilization. The truth is that
these only help to deprave an instinct otherwise quite
useful. And similarly, games that call for conten-
tion help to arouse emotions that make for the de-
generation of the self-assertive instincts. . . .
Professor Cohen seems impressed with the democ-
ratizing influence of Baseball. He forgets, ap-
parently, that this democracy is inherent in all move-
ments which emphasize the emotional aspects of life.
During a political campaign the most aristocratic
will often forget his theories and take a smoke or a
drink from one of the commonplace with whom he
might ordinarily disdain to speak. . . .
We cannot expect to rise by appealing to base-
ness, we cannot develop social feeling by appealing
to anti-social instincts. The war against war should
have taught us the fallacy of such a contradiction in
terms. Paradoxes may sometimes be true, but the
criterion of truth cannot be the paradoxical formula-
tion of a statement.
The less of rivalry that we have, the less we in-
sist on the self, whether it take the form of the ag-
grandizement of one's individuality, one's nation or
one's race, the nearer will we approach our ideal.
Cooperation should be the goal rather than victory,
cooperation in an attempt to gain the mastery of the
universe. It is the infinite game between mind and
matter. Louis Finkelstein.
Brooklyn, N. Y.


3J4
October 4
THE DIAL
Notes on New Books
Sylvia and Michael. By Compton Mack-
enzie. 323 pages. Harper.
It is no narrow background that Compton Mack-
enzie has chosen for his latest novel; he does not
confine himself to the four walls of a house or to
one city or country. With Sylvia and Michael the
headlong action of the movies establishes itself
among the consecrated ranks of the young English-
men. The story opens in Paris, moves rapidly to
Petrograd, where it halts for sixty-odd pages, and
for the remainder of the volume flashes from Kiev
to Odessa to Warsaw, from Bucharest and
Avereshti to Nish, and finally closes in a calm
Samothracian pastoral with the promise of contin-
ued action in a future novel. New characters are
brought before us constantly, are painted vividly
and unforgettably in a paragraph or a chapter, and
disappear, probably forever. No book comes easily
that has described so well the kaleidoscope of Rus-
sia and the Balkans in 1915, although one is re-
minded slightly of John Reed and The War in
Eastern Europe.
The vivid characters, however, are restricted to
their various paragraphs, and the background re-
mains background. The whole action is centered
around the adventures of Sylvia Scarlett, the fascin-
ating, brilliant, erratic, but always charming Sylvia.
"To satisfy a whim," says the notice on the cover,
"she throws away a big career. She makes her
way alone through dangers that would terrify most
men." All this she does, and more, but she remains
little more than a wooden doll, the limbs of which
Mr. Mackenzie has set into violent motion, and the
mouth of which he has formed to repeat the speeches
which he writes for her. The more rapid the ac-
tion in which she is engaged, the more profound
her musings, the more does she lose versimilitude.
It is the misfortune of Compton Mackenzie that
after half a dozen excellent novels, he has lost the
power to visualize his heroes and heroines. When
he devotes his hand to miniatures or landscapes, he
is still the accomplished artist, but his portraits are
failures. He can no longer make them live.
Storm in a Teacup. By Eden Phillpotts.
303 pages. Macmillan.
By the title, the English novelist defines the scope
of his newest story, but leaves to the reader the dis-
covery of the stinging strength of the brew. Phill-
potts withholds the lump of sugar; he is not so spar-
ing of lemon. For a leisurely novel, which shuns
briskness as a plague, it nevertheless imparts a pun-
gent acid flavor—as though, perhaps, a few drops of
rum had been added at the last moment. Storm in
a Teacup is another study in Phillpotts' established
locale—" with Dartmoor flung in a dim arc be-
yond." The story centers about the workers in a
naper mill, and woven through the chapters is a con-
secutive exposition of that tedious, fascinating
process, deftly linked up with the major concerns of
the three outstanding characters. There is, more-
over, a colorful gallery of figures in the background,
emerging and receding, each one weighing somehow
in the scales which Phillpotts examines so de-
liberately and with such insight.
He starts with a rather highly strung woman,
married to a light-hearted, unhorizonized mill-
worker—a man of sound sense but lacking the
requisite aura of mystery. The wife, thinking she
sees quite through him and finding his soul bare of
disquieting symptoms, jumps to the conclusion that
he is dull, and forthwith runs off with another. The
successor, who had been a rival suitor before her
marriage, is one of those beings with a mission to
uplift their fellows, but with a woefully wooden
interior in the face of romantic crises. He insists
upon an unconsummated elopement, pending the di-
vorce. The husband finally punctures the bubble
simply by refraining from the necessary legal steps,
and in the end, a chastened wife is restored to him.
This skeleton is inadequate to suggest the delicacy,
the humor, and the incisive bits of character draw-
ing which Phillpotts has put into the framework.
The woman's discovery that a husband who is trans-
parent may not be nearly so dull as a man with only
one idea—even an altogether admirable moral one—
is very subtly-threaded into the texture of the story,
and the philosophic warp is felt, but never insisted
upon. Phillpotts chooses to interpret life with the
labels removed.
The Oxford History of India. By Vincent
A. Smith. 816 pages. Oxford University
Press.
At the conclusion of a long and distinguished
career in the Indian Civil Service as an adminis-
trator, as well as in the capacity of a careful and
enthusiastic student of India's past, Mr. Vincent A.
Smith has now given us his definitive history of In-
dia. His previous works on the Fine Arts of In-
dia and Ceylon, on the early relations between East
and West down to the time of Alexander the
Great's invasion, to say nothing of his studies of
the lives of the " Great Mogul " Akbar, and of the
Constantine of Buddhism, the emperor Asoka, were
valuable preparation for this succinct and compre-
hensive survey. Well might the author have chosen
as motto for this last work, completed in his retire-
ment: Finis coronat opus.
When Master Ralph Fitch, one of the earliest
travelers in India, closed his entertaining pages with
the satisfaction that he had had "to declare some
things which India do bring forth " he little realized
the demand that would some day arise for such
knowledge, both in the Bureau of Commerce »t
Washington and in the American public libraries-
Yet in the early nineteenth century how intimate was
our contact with India! Those were the days when


1919
3*5
THE DIAL
our fast clipper ships from Salem and other New
England ports were outsailing the heavy, teak-
built East Indiamen that plied between Gravesend
and Surat, fighting the Portuguese, Dutch, and
French, and arriving in the Thames when hope had
vanished, to have their rich cargoes sold by the light
of a candle. According to custom all bids for these
rich cargoes were accepted while a candle of of-
ficial length burned. All this trade the swifter
Yankee craft fell heir to because of finer shipwrights
and speed. Even within the memory of the re-
viewer there stood at Bombay the old American
Ice -House, where New England apples, and ice
from little Wenham Pond near Boston, once were
sold to the homesick Europeans, this being the bal-
last that the wily Yankee brought so as to return
laden with silk, calicoes, and tea. We do not doubt
that an older generation of Anglo-Indian punch
drinkers had their experience with the wooden-nut-
meg from Connecticut.
From the rich material of Mr. Smith's work it
now remains for some embryo Doctor of Philosophy
to write an American history of India. As Mr.
Smith reminds us in these pages, the critical period
of British supremacy in India coincided with the
revolutionary wars in America. British cabinets
and parliaments came to power or fell solely upon
their Indian and American policies. Today East
and West are one. This story of India's glorious
past is essential if we are to understand the political
future promised India by the recent Montagu Bill,
coming so close upon our own Jones Bill in the
Philippines. Whether or not we assume any man-
dates for folks dubbed in Kipling's silly rhetoric
"half-devil and half-child," America's provincial
detachment is gone. There is enough food for re-
flection if we recall that American statesmen formu-
lated those two epoch-making policies, The Open
Door and Self-Determination.
India in Transition. By the Aga Khan. 310
pages. Putnam.
His Highness, the Aga Khan, once the symbol in
India of reactionary associations, stands before the
public today as a reformer. He is a man of wide
culture and far travels. He is the religious head of
the Ismaili Mahomedans scattered over India, Cen-
tral Asia, and East Africa. He has been created a
first class Prince by the British Raj, and is entitled
to eleven guns. He is immensely wealthy, and has
rendered a great service to India by trying to estab-
lish a Mahomedan University at Aligarh. Per-
haps the government opposition to his noble scheme
has partially opened his eyes to the real motives of
British rule in India. The author wholeheartedly
repudiates the British educational policy in India,
and he even makes bold to say: "There is no
running away from this need for education diffusion
since it is a question of life and death for India.
No compromise as to providing this essential ground-
work of national development can be tolerated." It
is however exceedingly amusing to see the author
straddle. It is almost tragic. All through the book
there is a feeling of suppressed resentment. Thus
he speaks, of Great Britain's educational and econ-
omic achievements in India: "Britain has been
criticized and rightly criticized for having allowed
the twentieth century to dawn and grow without
having grappled fully and successfully with the
illiteracy general in India, and with the unsanitary
environment of the masses, so bad that avoidable
deaths are counted by the million every year." But
like his fellow home-rulers, the Redmonds and T. P.
O'Connor's of India, he stands for the perpetuation
of the system he condemns, and renounces the
claim to complete autonomy in the admission that
"Englishmen are in official position in India be-
cause, after her chequered and tragic history, she is
not able to satisfactorily settle her own affiairs
without the cooperation of people from happier
lands."
Letters to the People of India on Re-
sponsible Government. By Lionel Curtis.
211 pages. Macmillan.
The author of the book under review, Mr. Lionel
Curtis, is a Knight of the new British Round Table
of imperialism, and his policy of liberalism aims to
counteract the growing movement for India's com-
plete independence. Nevertheless this book frankly
exposes some of the present awkward anomalies of
the British administration in India. Writes the
author:
So far as the Indian and Provincial governments are
concerned, responsible government has no place in the ex-
isting constitution. . . . The legislatures consist part-
ly of officials, who in the Governor-General's Council only
are in the majority, partly of non-officials, mostly Indians,
appointed by the Government, and partly by members,
almost entirely Indian, who do not hold their seats by
Government appointment. From the latest returns it ap-
pears that the Imperial Council consists of 68 members, 27
of whom are elected. Of these 18 are elected to speak
for sectional interests, either landholders, Mahomedans,
merchants, or manufacturers. The remaining, indirectly
elected by non-official members of the nine Provincial
Councils, are presumably intended to voice the views of
the people at large. . . . Educated Indians are ac-
cused of seeking an oligarchy under the guise of self-
government .Here, in a law made by ourselves, the image
of oligarchy is stamped on the system.
We are now in a position to trace the electoral chain
by which a member of the Imperial Council is supposed
to represent a voter in one of these divisions.
1. The primary voter returns a member to the Dis-
trict or Municipal Board.
2. The Board returns members to an Electoral College.
3. The College returns a member to the Provincial
Council.
4. The non-official members, including sectional mem-
bers are those appointed by Government, return a member
to the Imperial Legislative Council.
The system is one which destroys any real connection
between the primary voter and the member who sits on
the Legislative Councils.
Whenever there is a talk of political reform in
India, the enemies of progress in that country in-


316
October 4
THE DIAL
variably talk of India's social evils like the caste
and other kindred topics, as though India were the
only country where social evils are prevalent. Even
the minds of intelligent Americans have been
affected by propaganda of calumny and misrepre-
sentation of conditions in India. But here is a
Briton who seems to understand the problem. He
says:
I have often heard it said that, before Indians ask for
political powers, they ought to devote themselves to the
task of social reform. If Englishmen will think of the
social reforms effected in their own country, they will
realize how unfair and impossible a condition this is.
What great social reform has ever been effected in Eng-
land without legislative action? How could the employ-
ment of women and children in industries and mines,
the status of married women, or the sale of liquor, have
been reformed without the enactment of a new law? Id
India the need for social reform largely arises from cus-
toms which have been crystallized by decisions in the
courts, under the rigid legal system which we ourselves
introduced from the West.
Then the author points out how Mr. Bhupend-
ranath Basu's Marriage Reform Bill was killed by
the British government, though the Bill was sup-
ported by men like Gokhale, Raja of Dighapatia,
Jinnah, Madholkar, Dadabhoy, and others. "The
whole corps of British officials were ordered by the
Governor-General and his council to march into
the lobby and vote the measure down." And it
was done. Similarly Mr. Gokhale's Primary Edu-
cation Bill, introducing free and compulsory primary
education in India, was voted down by the Gover-
nor-General and his council—and this in the en-
lightened twentieth century.
The New Elizabethans. By E. B. Osborn.
311 pages. Lane.
Set Down in Malice. By Gerald Cumberland.
286 pages. Brentano.
Uncensored Celebrities. By E. T. Raymond.
244 pages. Holt.
The intent to discover a single lofty chord, re-
curring in the lives of more than a score of young
men who met death in the war, and to set it vibrat-
ing as a sort of overtone to the spirit in which they
lived and died, has guided Mr. Osborn in preparing
his brief memoirs. Despite an occasional over-
emphasis and a somewhat too-frequent recourse to
superlatives, the collection is of considerable value.
The list is predominantly insular, but includes the
Americans Alan Seeger and Harold Chapin. There
is a brief outline of the life of each fighter, followed
by a survey of his work. In the task of appraisal,
the tendency is toward over-statement, but it is pos-
sible for the reader to make the necessary reserva-
tions. The style becomes a bit feverish at times, as
in this reference to the boyhood of Seeger in New
York: "The clangorous life of the pent city's life,
which ever grows skyward, entered into his soul;
his greatest joy was to follow the rushing fire-en-
gines which are seen every day in her street-canons."
Set Down in Malice and Uncensored Celebrities
present sprightly pictures of individuals about whom
the dust of controversy still flies. Both volumes
conceal their authorship under pseudonyms. The
former book is so vigorous in its opinions, so merci-
less in its thrusts, and so altogether charming in its
arrant pin-pricking that one lays it down with the
utmost difficulty. Its author is an undisguised
poseur, but he has acquitted himself so well in his
self-imposed effrontery, that he deserves forgiveness
—and a wink. Mr. Raymond's racy volume, facile
in skill and engaging .in wit, contains sketches of
thirty-two leading figures in English politics, with
the English-born Gompers appended. Its rank is
that of high-grade journalism.
Scenes from Italy's War. By G. M. Trev-
elyan. 240 pages. Houghton Mifflin.
This volume supplies a sample of the kind of
writing that may well reduce American literary men
to despair. The sureness and dignity that charac-
terizes the best English quarterlies is present here
in large measure; considered language gives to the
narrative something of the processional unity that
the events themselves possessed.
Historical judgment is another matter. Al-
though in the introduction the author assumes no
other obligations than those that belong to a nar-
rator of individual experiences, a reading of the
book reveals the fact that personal reminiscences
are used only as they become serviceable to a tol-
erably well organized history of Italy's part in the
war. Even so, it is perhaps too much to expect
that an Englishman, writing in the closing days of
the conflict, would be bold enough to see the sim-
ilarity between the bargain by means of which
Buelow and Erzberger attempted to buy Italy's neu-
trality, and the Treaty of London, which named
the Allied price of her participation in the war. The
author's defense of Italian sincerity has lost some-
thing of its force through the publication' of the in-
formation that the Triple Alliance was vitiated
seventeen years ago by a secret convention between
France and Italy. On the occasion of King Em-
manuel's visit to Paris last winter, the Tempi
made it known that in 1902 an agreement was
reached which provided that neither of the two
countries should take part in any aggression against
the other, and that neither should participate in any
war against the other, even though self-declared, if
this war was imposed by the will of the enemy (Le
Temps, Paris, 22 December 1918). Villainies of
one sort and another, from the secret diplomacy of
Delcasse to the latest grand opera gesture of d'An-
nunzio, have so blurred the political aspects of the
situation that one turns with something like relief
from this phase of the war to the author's more
than readable account of straightforward pre-
armistice fighting.


»9'9 THE DIAL 3J7
The Life and Letters of
JAMES MONROE TAYLOR
President of Vassar College 1886 to 1914
By ELIZABETH HAZELTON HAIGHT
ThU timely volume in at once a contribution to the history of education in America, a memorial for all those who love
Vassar, and the personal portrait of a great man.
Professor Haight, Professor of Latin on the Vassar faculty and collaborator with President Taylor in his history of Vassar,
has here added that chapter of personal history, of the influence and inspiration of a great educator and leader, which
was necessarily omitted from the formal history of the college at that time. She has brought together his letters
sermons and speeches, including correspondence with such educators as Benjamin Ide Wheeler, Lyman P. Powell
Edmund Gosse, President Fliot, and many others. But for those who knew htm, the value of the letters which revea
him as a man will be even greater than that of the more formal compositions. Net, $3.5
Comparative Education Edited by PETER SANDIFORD
A Survey of the Educational System in Each of Six Representative Countries
"The chief lesson taught by all the papers in this volume taken together is to shun the example of Germany
In making education an instrument with which to enslave a great nation."—New York Sun. Net, $4.00
New Schools for Old By EVELYN DEWEY
The book is an Interesting account of the application by Mrs. Harvey of community Ideals to the regenera-
tion of the Porter School, a run-down, one-room country school in Missouri. Its problems were used as the
starting-point for the development of a healthy community spirit. It is the record of one of the most Im-
portant and successful educational experiments of the century.
"Should be read by every country preacher and then loaned to the school teacher."—Social Service Bulletin.
Net, $2.00
Towards Racial Health By NORAH H. MARCH
A handbook for parents, teachers and social workers on the training* of boys and girls; with an Introduction
by Dr. Evangeline Wilson Toung of Boston. The author emphasizes the duties of educator and parent, not
seeking to minimize the difficulties, but explaining wisely and sympathetically what must be known on the
subject of sex by the child and the best way In which it may be taught. Net, $2.00
Creative Impulse in Industry By HELEN MAROT
"It Is a proposition for every Intelligent person for the simple reason that the creative impulse Is native to
every one and lies at the very root of character building. The philosophy here propounded Is so common-
sense-like, so true to the real nature of things, that It must inevitably appeal to all thinking and responsible
people."—flomiletic Review. Net, |1.60
Labor and Reconstruction in Europe By ELISHA M. FRIEDMAN
"It seems to me that you have performed a real service in putting In the hands of those interested the
facts in the reconstruction work In Europe. . . . There Is much food for thought In your chapters for
America. ... I congratulate you upon the thorough piece of work you have done and upon the broad-
minded view which you have taken of the needs and requirements of all countries."—A. Barton Hepburn
to the Author. Net, $2.60
The Science of Labour and Its Organization By JOSEFA IOTEYKO
A consideration of certain points In industrial psycho-physiology by a recognized authority on the subject
In France and Belgium, where before the war the technical schools were the best in the world.
"Such studies as these . . . furnish the facts for the development of social science and the basis for
future labor legislation."—The Public. Net. $1.60
Modern Germany: Its Rise, Growth, Downfall and Future
By J. ELLIS BARKER
The author has rewritten and enlarged his study of Germany, her people and her government, to Include
studies of modern Republican Germany, and of her probable future. The accuracy of his previous fore-
casts, which were fulfilled In the world war, measures the soundness of his judgment and the exactness of
his information. * Net, $6.00
Germanism from Within (New Edition Revised) By A. D. McLAREN
On the basis of seven years of close and intimate acquaintance with the masses of the German people, the
author analyzes the psychology of the average German citizen, in peace and In war, showing his reactions
to the events concerning which the outside world has wondered. Particularly valuable is the final chapter
added In this edition on "The Mind and Mood of Germany Today." Net, $6.00
Labor in the Changing World By R. M. McIVER
A study of the place of labor In the Industrial world, aiming at bringing about such a co-operation as shall
prevent the accumulation of excessive wealth on the one hand and the existence of dangerous dependence on
the other. Ready thortly.
POSTAGE EXTRA. ORDER r 1> niTTTfiM 9 fAMPANV 681 FIFTH AVENUE
FROM ANY BOOKSTORE L. I. DUllUil & LUlurAll I NEW YORK
When writing to advertisers please mention Tbi Dial.


3"»
October 4
THE DIAL
The Taker. By Daniel Carson Goodman.
346 pages. Boni & Liveright.
As a rule, a novel in which the basic theme is
egoism—and particularly egoism of which the im-
pelling force is sex—may lay claim to the initial
assumption that it aspires to serious consideration.
In fact there are but two reasonable approaches to
such a theme—either in the mood of the toler-
ant, satirical- shrug of Schnitzler, or of downright
earnestness, as in Dreiser. The book that does not
cleave to one or the other of these fashions becomes
ludicrous—or stupid. The Taker becomes the
latter. This is not to question the author's serious
intent, however. There can be no doubt of Mr.
Goodman's wish to be serious, but he has merely
succeeded in piling one morbid incident upon another
—with no discernible sense of form, of style, or of
character analysis. When he is most in earnest, he
makes his hero merely foolish. It would be dif-
ficult to match some of the supposedly illuminating
speeches of the central character. They are witless,
hollow:
"I thought when I married you, that the mental and
physical beings were entirely separate and independent
of each other. That was the real reason for my marry-
ing you. But I've learned, regardless of my fight against
it, that one only reveals and completes the other.
"One is the breath of life to the other. It's just like
the new-born babe. It has a body and all that, but
breath must be put into it before there is lift.
"Maybe life is just like a cigar, Mabel—it takes a
mighty good cigar to make us enjoy a smoke, yet the
better the cigar the worse the after taste. So if we
have just a little happiness then we have only a little
suffering."
Mr. Goodman has attempted the impossible. He
has drawn a character with no other aim in life
than the successive physical conquest of many wo-
men, and then tried to throw a philosophic halo into
the picture. On top of all that, he has attempted
to make his pursuer aware of a cosmic urge, as
though that explained everything. Altogether, a
shoddy novel with nothing artistic to redeem it.
Architecture and Democracy. By Claude
Bragdon. 213 pages. Knopf.
The author of Architecture and Democracy is a
many-sided man, and there are many ways of ap-
proaching his work. The architect and the mathe-
matician, the layman and the mystic, will each find
a portion of Mr. Bragdon's book to which he may
respond with complete sympathy. The criticism of
pre-war architecture, with its pretentious " period"
facades and its imbecility in design, the contrast be-
tween arranged architecture and organic, should
doubtless be familiar to members of the profession
who are acquainted with the literature of non-
academic criticism from Ruskin to Mr. L. March
Phillips. But the call to forget the solutions of
other ages and to confront the problems of one's
own has not been adequately heeded, and it is well
that architects should hear this exhortation from
such eminent work-fellows as Mr. Bragdon, and his
master, Louis Sullivan. And the task of the inno-
vators will be lightened if a sense of past deficiencies
and future possibilities is implanted in the public
whom the architect incidentally serves. Those who
felt strangely moved by the restrained novelty of the
decorations for the Song and Light Festival held in
Manhattan in the autumn of 1917 will be interested
to note that the designs were derived from the pro-
jection of the fourth dimension on a plane. Thus
Mr. Bragdon exhibits his ability to put his text into
action, for instead of leaning upon ancient forms he
derives his decorative motifs from those mathe-
matical discoveries which have had so large a part
to play in the development of the art of engineering,
the copartner of all that is new and virile in modern
architecture. By wrestling with the lessons of
science Mr. Bragdon has shown how esthetics may
gain strength in its endeavor to refine and spiritual-
ize the activities of democracy.
The Tragedy of Labor: A Monograph in
Folk Philosophy. Bv William Riley Halstead.
107 pages. Abingdon Press.
With the world in industrial ferment, and the at-
tention of statesman and layman alike focused upon
epoch-making social experiments; with governments
eagerly seeking for something that will offer the
hope of avoiding the seemingly inevitable death
struggle between capital and labor over the wage
system, it is a rash impertinence for any man to offer
his personal preachments in lieu of 9ome method
whereby a peaceful reconstruction of society may be
accomplished. The author of The Tragedy of La-
bor drops every discussion just where the curtain
of revelation should rise. That the reconstruction
of the world in more than a physical sense has al-
ready begun, Mr. Halstead is blithely unaware.
And where an earnest exposition of "folk-philos-
ophy" is eagerly looked for, he gives us a jumble of
impressions that is neither philosophy nor economics.
In discussing the wage system, we learn that
man has not learned a better economic way. The plan
of it has become an industrial axiom. // is only questioned
by those <uiho put themselves under a strain to find out
some nevi thing.
Of course, the man who would write that has
the sweetest sympathy for the poor Poor. He is so
sure that the world is just as lovely as it can possi-
bly be, despite its many evils, which he admits, that
he has the assurance to write:
There can be no social arrangement made to relieve
incapacity and lack of wit from the distress of itself
To the indigent and helpless belong the humanities,
which must be administered to them aside from the trade
equities.


1919
3*9
THE DIAL
NEW HARPER BOOKS
LUDENDORFF'S
OWN STORY
We can say unequivocally that Luden-
dorff's revelations will startle the
world. It la not a defense or Justifica-
tion of the German crimes. It Is a
frank confession in detail of the most
colossal failure.of might against right
In the world's history.
Maps and Illustration*, t vols. $7.50
FROM THE
LIFE
By Harvey J. O'Higgins
Here are nine Americans—an author,
an actress, a moving picture star, a
promoter and so on—each done "from
the life." So convincing Is each story
that during magazine publication, let-
ters to the author poured in, each in-
sisting that such and such a story had
been founded on the writer's own
career.
Illustrated. Post 8vo. Cloth. $1.50
THE THEATRE
THROUGH ITS
STAGE DOOR
By David Belasco
At last this master of the theatrical
art has called "curtain up" and let
the uninitiated into the secret of one
of the most fascinating professions of
the world. Illustrated. $9.50
THE LITTLE MOMENT
OF HAPPINESS
By Clarence Budington Kelland
The biggest problem that any Ameri-
can novelist baa recently tackled la
found in this new book. A young
American lieutenant of Puritan up-
bringing falls in lore with a little
French girl who has had a past. Can
they marry? Frontispiece. $1.60
MICHAEL FORTH
By Mary Johnston
A great novel, done masterfully on a
large and colorful canvas. The period
—that dramatic period of reconstruc-
tion following our civil war. $1.75
THE BROKEN
SOLDIER AND
THE MAID OF
FRANCE
By Henry van Dyke
Out of the beautiful myth that the
soldiers of France have often been led
and inspired on the battle-field by the
vision of Joan of Arc. Dr. Henry van
Dyke has woven a tale of a rare spiri-
tual quality.
Illustrated in color. Post 8vo. $l.ts
Illustrated. jo mo. 60 cents
THE GREAT
DESIRE
By Alexander Black
Is It love, honor, fame, money—what
are people after, anyway t That was
the question Anson Grayl asked of
New York when be came to that "city
of the successfully single." What an-
swer did he find?
Post 8vo. Cloth. $1.75
THE CHARM
SCHOOL
By Alice Duer Miller
Women, according to Austin Bevan's
theory, were born to charm. And so.
when he inherited a girls* school, he
decided to run it himself on the afore-
said theory. The result is chronicled
In this delightful tale.
Illustrated. Post 8vo. Cloth. Ii.',i>
COMMON SENSE
IN LABOR
MANAGEMENT
By Neil M. Clark
Here Is expressed the belief that the
time has come when the attitude of
capital toward labor and business In
general must be revised. No longer
can the captains of industry bold the
idea that the workers are the commo-
dity. Crown 8vo. Cloth. $1.00
HARPER & BROTHERS
Established 1817
An Important New Dial Reprint
Collective Bargaining
Or Control? BY Geroid Robinson
CJ "... in the Iron and Steel in-
dustry . . . the international
craft unions have pooled their
interests to a degree hitherto
unheard of in the history of
American trade-unionism ....
As far as this recruiting cam-
paign is concerned, the National
Committee tor the Organization
of Iron and Steel ^A^orkers
constitutes an industrial union.
Pages 25-26
^ What does this mean for the
future of American trade-
unionism?
24 pages. Single copies, 10 cents; lots of 100, 7 cents;
bis of 500, 6 cents; lots of 1000. 4 cents.
THE DIAL PUBLISHING CO.
152 Wert 13th Street New York
New Poems by Amy Lowell
PICTURES OF THE
FLOATING WORLD
A new collection of highly original and beau-
tiful poems by one who has already written some
of the best contemporary English poetry. Here
are short poems done in the manner of the vivid
Japanese hokku, love poems, poems of nature and
of war, as well as a brilliant group of fantastic
epigrams. It is a book full of variety and
enchantment, revealing the new spirit in Ameri-
can poetry. $1.50
Other Recent Books by Amy Lowell
CAN GRANDE'S CAS-
TLE $1
MEN, WOMEN AND
OHOSTS $1
SWORD BLADES AND
POPPY SEED $1
A DOME OF MANY
COLOURED GLASS $1
"Not since the
mastery of words
50
.50
50
TENDENCIES IN MOD-
E E N' AMERICAN
poetry. Illus-
trated J2.50
SIX FRENCH POETS.
.50 Illustrated $2.50
Elizabethans has suck a
been reached in English"
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY, PuWi'he"