The Contributors' Column

William M. Bray (‘ Do Women want the Vote ?’), after graduating from Northwestern University and Harvard College, engaged in the lumber business in Wisconsin. Always interested in politics, Mr. Bray has of recent years played an active part in his State Legislature, serving as a member of the Assembly in 1908 and subsequent years, and since 1914 representing his native city of Oshkosh in the State Senate. The significant investigation into the political desires of the women of his senatorial district is in this article set forth accurately, and the Atlantic has in its possession a sworn statement of the figures. Since this constituency is not untypical of a very large portion of the Middle West, the figures cited seem of importance. The discussion which rages about the question whether women want the vote is commonly subjective in its value, expressing with more emphasis than information the wishes of the several disputants. The facts given in this article seem to invite very profitable speculation.

Joseph H. Odell (‘ The Economic Crime of the Protestant Church’) is one of the too small number of American clergymen who have had the experience of’mingling with laymen in the world of secular affairs. Born and educated in England, Mr. Odell came to this country as a Presbyterian minister and soon undertook the pastorate of the Second Presbyterian Church at Scranton, Pennsylvania. Later he played an active part in journalism, serving as editor both of The Tribune-Republican and Truth, and afterwards joining the staff of the Philadelphia Public Ledger.Mr. Odell is at present pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Troy, New York.

William Jewett Tucker (‘The Crux of the Peace Problem’) was in his earlier manhood pastor of the Madison Square Presbyterian Church of New York, and afterwards, for nearly twenty years, was President of Dartmouth College. Retiring in 1909, Dr. Tucker has used his leisure steadily and wisely in the public service. The philosophy of his later life is best expressed in ‘The New Reservation of Time,’ an essay which readers of the Atlantic still like to remember and which, we are glad to say, will soon be republished in book form.

Madeleine Z. Doty (‘Little Brother’), sister of the present editor of the Century Magazine, is living in New York. A letter in reply to the Atlantic’s query as to how she came by this story, deserves quotation here: —

‘The story, “Little Brother,” is perfectly true. This last summer I went abroad with Miss Jane Addams, as delegate from New York, to the Woman’s International Congress at The Hague. Dr. Aletta Jacobs, President of the Woman’s International Congress, who entertained Jane Addams, told me the story in the presence of Mrs. Pethick Lawrence and, I think, of Miss Addams herself. Dr. Jacobs and some other women, it seems, had charge of one of the refugee camps, and it was she herself who received the little boy when he appeared with the three days’ old naked baby tucked in his coat. It was several hours before Dr. Jacobs could win his confidence and get his story. When I myself was at The Hague, the boy was still in the Belgian refugee camp, destitute, without father or mother. It is possible that since then he has been adopted, but of this I have no information.’

‘Oddly enough,’ continues Miss Doty, ‘just after Dr. Jacobs told the story, several of us were walking on the outskirts of The Hague when we were startled by a child’s shriek. It was a little Belgian refugee boy hiding in the bushes, sobbing with fear because the Dutch soldiers were coming down the road. The little incident gave fresh and painful realism to the story which had just been told.’

Wilfrid Wilson Gibson (‘Firelight’), one of the most conspicuous of the younger British poets, was unable to join the army on account of his health. Next January he expects to come to this country, to lecture and read in public from his poems. Thomas Whitney Surette (‘The Opera’) is now lecturing before large and enthusiastic audiences in Texas on the ideas which he is setting forth in his Atlantic series.

George W. Alger (‘Preparedness and Democratic Discipline’) is a New York lawyer and publicist. Atlantic readers still remember Mr. Alger’s long series of valuable articles dealing, for the most part, with one phase or another of social justice.

Lewis Worthington Smith (‘The New Naïveté ) is professor of English in Drake University, Iowa. Before writing this criticism (his first Atlantic article), Mr. Smith has given hostages to fortune by publishing two volumes of his own verse, ‘Ships in Port’ (G. P. Putnam’s Sons) and ‘The English Tongue’ (Four Seas Company of Boston).

Cornelia A. P. Comer (‘Poetry To-Day’) was educated at Vassar and, before her marriage, was engaged in journalistic work in the Middle West and subsequently in California. She is now living on a lovely wooded island in the harbor of Seattle and occasionally permits the Atlantic to profit by her leisure.

Charles Caldwell Dobie (‘The Failure’) is another new contributor to the Atlantic. He lives in San Francisco.

Abraham Mitrie Rihbany (‘The Oriental Manner of Speech’), who preaches from the pulpit long occupied by James Freeman Clark, is still linked by family ties with the Syrian country where he was born and bred. His old parents and his brothers are subjects of the Sultan, and the rare letters in Arabic script which come from them are so cut and blotted by the censor that little remains except the assurance of their continued existence and their pressing need occasioned by the terrifying conditions of Turkish rule.

E. Nelson Fell (‘The Pominka’) tells this true story from his reminiscences of the years spent as an engineer in the Kirghiz Steppes. Bliss Carman (‘An April Morning’) is an American poet whose music is at variance with the modern manner.

John Koren (‘Government and Prohibition”) seems, if we may judge from our correspondence, to have attracted the attention of every living prohibitionist. As we have already told many inquirers, the Atlantic, after determining to print a series of papers on the liquor question, selected Mr. Koren, who was at that time unknown to us, on account of his work as secretary of the Committee of Fifty, whose memorable report was written by him, and especially because he was strongly recommended to us by an authoritative advocate of temperance and reform. The prohibitionist who believes that beer and light wines must be condemned precisely as the saloon in its present form must be condemned, will find himself, not unnaturally, in sharp opposition to the belief expressed by Mr. Koren that light alcoholic beverages offer to society its best protection against the abuse of distilled liquors. In this whole vexed and difficult question, the Atlantic finds itself in close agreement with the following statement which wc quote from an excellent observer, the Honorable Andrew D. White, whom our least temperate critics will possibly absolve from any direct complicity with the liquor interests:—

‘It is my earnest conviction, based upon wide observation in my own country as well as in many others during about half a century, that the American theory and practice as regards the drink question are generally more pernicious than those of any other civilized nation. . . . The best temperance workers among us that I know are the men who brew light, pure beer, and the wine-growers in California who raise and sell at a very low price wines pleasant and salutary, if any wines can be so.’

Gustavus Ohlinger (‘German Propaganda in the United States’) is a lawyer of Toledo who has through many months been gathering the evidence which forms the basis of this article. The paper has been prepared, not to expound American opinions concerning German-American activities, but to set forfh quite plainly the German-American record from GermanAmerican sources. The question at issue is not a matter of prejudice, but purely of fact, and to forestall much blackening of white pages the Atlantic desires critics to be so good as to consult a few printed sources of information before accusing the magazine of any malignant purpose. Investigators should, in the first instance, examine the official records of the National German-American Alliance. A chronicle of the activities of this organization, in abbreviated form, has been published from the office at 419 Walnut Street, Philadelphia. This small official pamphlet will serve as a convenient key for further research. Serious inquirers may be referred to the following publications:

Books and Pamphlets

RUDOLF CRONAU: Drei Jahrhunderte deutschen Lebens in Amerika. PROFESSOR RIEGELSBERGER: Japan und Deutschland — Ihre Kulturellen und politisehen Beziehungen und die japanische Gefahr für China, Amerika und Europa. DR. HANS ROST: Deutschlands Sieg Trlands Hoffnung. PROFESSOR KARL LAMPREGHT : Deutscher Aufstieg 1750-1914. PROFESSOR EDUARD MEYER: Nordamerika und Deutschland. DR. MAGNUS HIRSCHFELD: Warum Hassen uns die Völker. DR. ROBERT JANNASCH : Weshalb die Deutsehen im Auslande unbeliebt sind. DR, HERMAN ONCKEN: Deutschlands Weltkrieg und die Deutscliamerikaner. KARL JÜNGER : DeutschAmerika mobil. . . .!

Periodicals

Preussische Jahrbücher. Der Türmer. Der deutsehe Vorkämpfer. Velhagen und Klasings Monatshefte.

Society Publications

Allgemeine deutsehe Schulverein zur Erhaltung des Deutschthums im Auslande. Alldeutsche Verband. Kaiser Wilhelm Dank Verein der Soidatenfreunde. Deutschamerikanische Nationalbund.

The list might be indefinitely extended. It should not, of course, include such ‘authorities’ as ‘The Fatherland’; the admission of such evidence should constitute actionable libel on the decent Germans in this country.

Lewis R. Freeman (‘Sharks of the Air’) is an experienced American correspondent to whom most of the earth’s surface has long been tolerably familiar. In chatting at lunch with the editor of the Atlantic, Mr. Freeman took from his pocket a fragment of light metal which when struck with the tines of a fork gave out the clear, silvery note indicative of the highest tensile strength. It was a bit of a Zeppelin bomb which Mr. Freeman had picked up still hot on a London street the night of a great air raid. The vivid story here told grew out of the questions asked and answered over the lunch-table.

An American Correspondent (‘Meissner Pasha on the Egyptian Adventure’) is well known to the editor of the Atlantic, who can offer assurance of the accuracy of the conversation given in this article, which has for nearly four years been hidden away in the correspondent’s note-book. Meissner Pasha, as many of our readers know, is the distinguished German engineer to whose initiative and skill the Bagdad Railway owesits existence, and who has recently been sent back to Turkey and placed once more in charge by way of the possible attempt of the Germans to attack Suez.

James Norman Hall (‘Kitchener’s Mob’) told his story in the Atlantic office soon after his return to America, following his honorable discharge from the British service, and, at our request, has written it in great detail for publication in successive issues of the magazine.

The Atlantic’s articles on the Great War continue to call forth a vast number of partisan letters. The following extract comes from an entirely typical letter which we should gladly print in extenso were space available:—

‘Finally, even if the Germans DID stir up the whole conflict, and even if they are militantly aggressive as a nation, the iniquity of the war has never been fully explained to me. Your British sympathizer says the poor soldier got his feet wet, or ten of them did, or a thousand, or he got his arm shot off, or a thousand did, or ten thousand of them were killed instanter, and look at all the weeping women, etc. But just a minute, just a minute — are we interested in the individual or the species, and (2) has there ever been a great war after which civilization did not ADVANCE BY LEAPS AND BOUNDS? In replying to the Germans on this question, the English give us gallery plays, and appeal to the emotions. Looking back through history, I suggest that the question has not yet been adequately thrashed out — coldly and scientifically, and that, revolting as it may seem, the Germans really do seem to be right — even the worst of them, if for no other than this simple reason, that that portion of the species which is farthest advanced will, as a rule, conquer in war and drag the rest of the species up with it, or exterminate them. For after all, is n’t it the species — our thousands of future descendants — that we must work for and plan for, and what matter if some of us do get a cut finger or a broken head in the present? Those of us that tend flowers never hesitate to root out the weaklings — and — neither does Nature.'

About the advance of civilization by ‘leaps and bounds’ through the methods now employed in Europe, the Atlantic would like to be iess skeptical.