The Contributors' Column

G. Lowes Dickinson, teacher, publicist, and man of letters, has long been one of the most helpful members of the pacifist movement. As President of the Society for Democratic Control, a British association working actively for the principles advocated in this article, Mr. Dickinson has become a conspicuous object of attack by militarists; but at a time when protracted peace has become first among the world’s needs, it has seemed vital to the Atlantic to debate the question of public control over a nation’s foreign policy, and Mr. Dickinson’s article comes in response to our request. Under our own republican form of government, the adjustment of foreign relations to the sober opinion of the nation offers one of the most difficult problems for which democracy demands a solution. Mr. Dickinson’s article does not aim to be conclusive, but it is certainly suggestive. Oddly enough, the Atlantic, two years ago, had arranged for a similar article to be written by a prominent member of Parliament, when the opening of the Great War put a temporary quietus on the idea.

Mrs. De Selincourt is now in France, doing hospital work.

Even in these painstakingly liberal days, the mention of George Moore’s name does not always have a soothing effect. In addition to the army of his thick-and-thin admirers, there is a vast, shy reading public — lovers of the conventional reticences — which has been frightened off by his ardent following of certain exotic literary gods. Both classes will agree, however, that when Mr. Moore chooses to talk on Art, it is worth while for every one within earshot to lay down his work and listen. For the past half-century he has been in the tumultuous vanguard of the great literary and artistic movements of France and Ireland; their leaders have been his closest friends. In ‘ The Dusk of the Gods,’so self-effacingly recorded by Mr. Balderston, the talk is richly broidered with reminiscence. Readers of ‘ Hail and Farewell,’who recall how unflinchingly Mr. Moore dips his brush into the colors of realism, even for the portrayal of intimates, will not be surprised to find him speaking his mind about his Egeria, the Gallic Muse.

Meredith Nicholson, one of the most popular of American romancers, is not a complete romanticist in politics. In Indiana, where most men are in literature and all are in politics, they class Mr. Nicholson as a Democrat of independent mind. Early in the present Administration, the President offered to send Mr. Nicholson as Minister to Portugal, but, true to Hoosierdom, our author rated Lisbon below Indianapolis.

Regarding Alexander Aaronsohn, particulars were given in this column last month. It suffices to add that the editor, who remembers well meeting Mr. Aaronsohn at a Washington dinner-table a year or so before his adventures, and who since his return has often seen him here in Boston, sitting and chatting like the rest of us, feels it a fit commentary upon the topsyturvy world in which we live to realize that this story of adventure, which might have come out of the story of Ivanhoe, is a sober recital of contemporary fact.

Sadly enough, Arthur Symons has of late years been almost mute. In an Atlantic criticism of his delicate impressionism, published two years ago, Professor Urban said : —

' The cessation of Mr. Arthur Symons’s writing has brought poignantly to mind the fact of a peculiarly self-contained and self-conscious æsthetic personality. As a perfected instrument for impressionism he was unique, perhaps, among writers of English. To have used that instrument is to have made ourselves debtors to his wisdom — and still more at times to his divine folly.’

William Charles Scully is an English traveler and naturalist who has chronicled his remarkable adventures in Central Africa and other remote parts of the world, and who now, at the Atlantic’s request, makes his first contribution to an American magazine. Ellen La Motte will be remembered as the American nurse who wrote for the Atlantic the dramatic episode of the shelling of Dunkirk by a monster gun twenty miles away. The Reverend Paul Revere Frothingham is minister of Dr. Channing’s old church in Boston. Miss V. H. Friedlaender is an English writer who has contributed other light and agreeable stories to the Atlantic.Lucy Elliot Keeler still cultivates her garden and her leisure on the shores of the Ohio.

Alice Meynell, essayist and poet, has written verse more poetic and more interesting than any English woman since Mrs. Browning. Together with her husband, Mr. Wilfrid Meynell’s, her name will always be associated with that of Francis Thompson, whose friend she was in the hour of his utmost need. Henry Osborn Taylor, whose Mediæval Mind is a monument of contemporary scholarship, is one of the few American scholars unconnected with an institution of learning.

Henry W. Nevinson is a veteran war correspondent, and a man whose friendships reach to all corners of the world. He has seen service representing the Daily Chronicle, the Manchester Guardian, the London Daily News, and the London Nation. As an observer of war and politics, and as a judge of social conditions, his large knowledge and liberality of mind give him a position unique, perhaps, in his profession.

Henry Sheahan, as we have chronicled in an earlier number, has recently returned from lending an American’s aid to the French Ambulance Service. He saw much of the earlier fighting about Verdun. Lewis R. Freeman is a Californian comfortably at home anywhere in the world. He secured this story at the suggestion of the Atlantic, for whom he has busied himself in gathering romantic stories from various theatres of the Great War. Herbert Sidebotham is the naval expert of the Manchester Guardian. For this essay, which the Atlantic has long been anxious to secure, we turned to Mr. Sidebotham, as we desired a view of the intricate situation as dispassionate as a belligerent country Could hope to offer. Cyril Campbell was for many years a correspondent of the London Times. During the last year he has seen personal service under General Botha, and later joined General Smuts in his East African campaign. T. Lothrop Stoddard, son of a father long famous to the lecture-going public, has for many years made a close and detailed study of the tangled skein of European politics.

A letter in strange and interesting corroboration of Kitchener’s Mob, recently published in the Atlantic, comes to us from an English friend: —

‘ My three boys are now within twenty miles of each other on the French front. I live in a perpetual state of marvel that all three are so far almost scatheless. The battalion of my eldest son was cut to pieces in the attack on Loos, and that of the second had 121 casualties in a recent French fight.
‘ The eldest was home for a few days’ leave recently and read your Kitchener's Mob article in which Loos is described. It had a curious effect upon him. He told me that until he read that article he could not remember what had happened to him on that day. But the article brought it all back, He said he was sorry to recover the memory; he had hoped it was gone forever. The horrors he went through beggar description.
‘ Many of them are like that. My sons tell me that after an action some men have not the faintest idea of what they have been doing and even forget their own names. This latter is not uncommon after a big bombardment.’

Dr. Flexner’s challenge in the June Atlantic is taken up by a school teacher in the Middle West, who writes a letter which may be interesting to teachers: —

June 27, 1916.
To THE EDITOR OF THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY:<BR/> As a Latin teacher of fifteen years’ experience, I read with the keenest appreciation the article on ‘Parents and Schools’ in the July Atlantic. For two years I have made a point of asking scholarly professors of Latin at various universities to state their reasons for advocating the study of Latin. Always this reply: ‘To appreciate and enjoy Latin literature.’ Recently I made bold to say to one of these scholars: ‘ I do not know a single individual who can be said to read Latin for enjoyment or for the sake of the ideas therein expressed.' I went on to state my own views, which have been clarified within the year by my talks to eighth-grade students upon the advantage of electing Latin when they enter high school. I give them quite a different reason from the Latin professor’s, and at the same time I am aiming to teach in such a way as to prove my point : First, that Latin makes the best foundation for all language study ; secondly, that it helps us to understand English. My first point I strengthen by the statement of our Spanish teacher, that she wishes only students who have had two years of Latin. The professor took issue with me at once, saying that I was too practical; that we ‘ torch-bearers’ ought not to take up the catch-words of this practical age, but should maintain our culture ideals, though the appeal fall upon deaf ears.
If the proof of the pudding is in the eating, I can point to the year just closed as the most successful I have known. For my six large and enthusiastic classes, representing the four years of high school Latin, I have worked up a course which aims to show the relation of Latin to a proper understanding of the mother-tongue. In every class we have systematic word-study, from the first day with the Freshmen to the lost Senior recitation. The weekly supplementary lesson is a new idea, I think, but has proved most satisfactory. The Freshmen have enjoyed Mythology, the Sophomores have gained some insight into Roman History, the Juniors have drawn plans of a Roman house and of the Forum in Cicero’s time, have learned of Roman weddings and funerals, of games and banquets, of Pompeii, the Coliseum, the Forum as it appears to-day; the Seniors have given a dozen programmes in connection with their lessons in Latin literature.
I contemplate classes in Virgil henceforth who will understand mythological and historical allusions, will realize that Cæsar, Cicero, and Virgil are not the only Roman names to conjure with, who will feel a lively interest in the meanings of words.
The year’s work has been almost exciting in its variety. By vocabulary drill and sight-reading we are trying to reduce to a minimum the time spent in preparing the daily lesson. That Latin helps one to understand English is illustrated in class daily by clippings from the Atantic Monthly, the Outlook, and even from the daily paper. I am convinced that a large part of our best literature, whether we read Shakespeare or presentday English, lacks its full meaning to one who has never studied Latin. Personally I have long resented our subjection to college entrance requirements, which insist upon as many pages of translation as in the days when the most conscientious Latin teacher did not consider it within her province to devote any time to word-study, or to the supplementary work so closely allied with Latin.
I am rather proud that I have my answer ready for any parent who says to me of Latin: Cui bono?

A friend writes us from ‘somewhere in Flanders.’

A battered copy of a couple of years ago is the only one I have seen here at the front. It had a tonic effect upon me. We are submerged in piffle so far as the magazines go. Everything here twangs our emotions; and we need something to make us think — along cool, impersonal, universal reaches. The other night we passed eleven hundred casualties through our reception room into our wards. The Huns walloped us — for the once. To-day we are licking them here in this unbelievable Ypres salient; and another flood of casualties is pouring in. So, you see, our feelings are screwed up to highest tension; and our need is of thought, meditation on things apart from the present. Indeed, I shall be grateful for any old copies of the Atlantic.

The Atlantic is not prone to hand itself bouquets in public, but a compliment which comes to us to-day is so prettily timed that we print it for our reader’s pleasure.

To THE EDITOR: —<BR/> I am sending four new subscriptions to the Atlantic Monthly. Why ? Because I am grateful to its pages for many of the durable satisfactions of life. There is little enough in the way of gratitude that is tangible; little that is tangible that is not tinctured by self-interest.
Times change, but the eternal nature of us remains. My maternal grandmother would have heaped the parson’s bin with winter apples. No such picturesque avenue for our gratitude is open to us to-day; they were closed at the death of the picturesque people.

Mr. William Nelson Taft has been advertised by the Atlantic to his heart’s content, and for us the topic has lost its charm, but he seems quite capable of other adventures under other names. We publish an inquiry which some of our readers may be able to answer.

EDITOR ATLANTIC MONTHLY<BR/> DEAR SIR: <BR/> As an old contributor to the Atlantic, — too busy now to write, not disqualified by overplus of identities and literary amnesia, — I have been amused and interested in your Tolan-Taft episode. The July number gives priceless additions in the two epistles from the National Press Club.
It is because the letters, like ‘Thirty Fathoms,’ give me spasms of ingrowing memory and textual criticism that I am writing you now. Is it at all possible that William Nelson Taft is also a creation of malicious animal magnetism, not the Ding an sich? The stuff sounds so characteristically like a fishy genius now disporting himself up here in the coal regions, who describes himself as a writer of plays and dramatic criticism, among other pretensions. He also professes himself a newspaperman, but has a wonderful way of getting commissions out of charity balls, benevolent funds which he press-agents, and the like; in fact, he will do anything for money, nothing for nothing. He dawned upon our startled gaze for the first time late last October or early in November, but is absent for a few days at a time on ‘literary errands’ at intervals. But our towns do not know him as Herbert T., nor yet as William. But, oh! he has all of Herbert-William’s traits! Sheer human curiosity makes me write to ask if you know anything about W . N. Taft’s physical presence in a Washington Post job, whether he is an absentee contributor, or a daily visible reporter. If there seems to be ground for it, I will send you information about the person we have up here.