The Contributors' Column--July Atlantic

We once heard a wise teacher thus address a young woman of unalluring exterior: ‘The plainer you are, my dear, the more intelligent you must be — and the better you must dress.’ This advice the Atlantic took to heart. Like the young person in question, this magazine was born plain, and has so remained. Consequently its dress, as well as its intelligence, have been matters of constant solicitude to the editor. This month, for the first time, we are making a change in the appearance of the magazine that is not dictated solely by desire to appear to best advantage. We are trimming our pages to the dimensions of the bound volume, and dispensing with the unusually ample margin which we have used to give distinction to the page.

Since the war began, paper has about doubled in value. More than that, it has grown scarce at any price, and the existing supply must, as a national precaution, be carefully safeguarded. Furthermore, the increased tax in postal rates gives the light magazine an advantage. But disregarding this latter saving, the slight clipping of Atlantic margins in our present large edition is no matter of cheese-paring. It saves nearly 600,000,000 square inches of paper a year, or a total of some 1100 reams. This is an item worth saving, and we should like our readers fully to appreciate our motives in saving it.

In September, 1914, the Atlantic published an appreciation of Maurice Barrès by Randolph Bourne, written in the first flush of the young American’s enthusiasm at discovering the tremendous impact of ideas in France. From this article a paragraph stands out as worthy of our attention now that the distinguished Academician speaks to us direct:—

‘The youth of Barrès himself was spent in the years of disenchantment which followed the great war of 1870, the war that was a spiritual as well as a physical defeat. The almost mystical confidence in the power of the French genius to triumph over brute force had disappeared before the mailed fist of the Prussian. Even the Utopian flame, the revolutionary enthusiasm which might have rejuvenated the spirit of the people, was utterly stamped out in the ferocity of the suppression of the Commune. The apathy and torpor of the younger generation in this atmosphere of defeat are faithfully pictured in “Les Déracinés,” based on Barrès’s own days at the Lycée. Here he found an education, built upon the philosophy of Kant and his German followers, as if France were making a pathetic attempt, in the same way in which the Orientals are acting to-day with regard to the western world, to absorb the ideas which had made the strength of her victor. But in these ideas, “les plus hautes et les plus désolées,” the youth of Barrès’s day found no fortification of soul. The atmosphere of detached rationalism, the divorce of pure reason and pure sensibility, so uncongenial to the personal and artistic French spirit, could only tear up the youth from their French soil, without transplanting them into the rich German ground. Such philosophy could only make those who absorbed it candidates for nihilism. Abjuring this, the thought of Barrès set itself, almost unconsciously, the task of reacclimatizing the French spirit, of restoring its faith in itself.’

These words go far to explain why the writings of M. Barrès have been one of the most important forces in bringing about that solidarity, that union sacrée, which has been the glory of France and the civilized world.

Since the outbreak of the war Paul Wharton has had unique opportunities to travel throughout the length and breadth of Russia and to learn the truth, so far as a foreigner may, concerning the most mysterious of countries. It was a happy chance which brought to the editor’s office, a few days ago, a bundle of the original proclamations mentioned by Mr. Wharton — great tattered sheets of cheapest paper, already disintegrating, the very ephemera of the Revolution, which were scattered broadcast throughout the city during those first tremendous days. A Russian acquaintance, happening in, released the portentous message of the sprawling Slavic characters. First came the Czar’s ukaz, with all its imperial arrogance: ‘We, Nicholas,’ and so forth, ordering the dissolution of the refractory Duma: then followed the Duma’s reply, simple and direct, refusing that dissolution. That was all there was to it. A touch —and the whole tremendous fabric of the Romanoff power and privilege vanished in a puff of smoke like Klingsor’s dream-palace.

The claims of Sidney Webb to prominence are dismayingly numerous, but none are stronger than his authorship of the classic ‘ History of Trades Unionism.’ For years he has been active as a Fabian Socialist and a constructive student of labor problems. From 1892 to 1910 he was a member of the London County Council. His paper richly rewards the Atlantic’s invitation.

No one of our British contributors is more warmly welcomed than Professor L. P. Jacks, Principal of Manchester College and Editor of the Hibbert Journal since its foundation. Sidney Low, another English author and publicist, has an international reputation as a student of British colonial problems in particular and weltpolitik in general. As Atlantic readers already know, Lieutenant Milutin Krunich is an invalided Serbian officer now convalescing in California, where he has found an able translator in Mrs. Leah Marie Bruce.

For the most part the first reactions of authors great and small to the stupendous fact of the war make strange reading today. In the midst of the hysteria of those earlier months, however, we occasionally hear the clear accents of a prophet. Such is Guglielmo Ferrero, most distinguished of modern historians of Rome. In November, 1914, he published an article in this magazine, ‘ The European Tragedy,’which contains notable phrases. He foresees that the one great issue of the war — the issue to which America pledges herself — is the downfall of Hohenzollern prestige and the democratization of Germany. Such vision lends added weight to his paper in the present number.

Readers of this magazine have enjoyed a long and delightful intimacy with William Beebe and his work at the Tropical Research Station at Kalacoon, British Guiana. No one is better fitted to speak with authority on the pressing problems of food conservation than Eugene Davenport, dean of the College of Agriculture of the University of Illinois. Amory Hare, a young Philadelphia poet, will be welcomed by readers who have enjoyed the delicate charm of her earlier contributions.

William Aiken Starrett comes of a remarkable American family. Our readers will take a sympathetic interest in the following paragraphs written to the Atlantic by his mother, Mrs. Helen E. Starrett of Portland, Oregon.

‘ William Aiken Starrett,’ writes Mrs. Starrett, ‘ is the youngest of five brothers who thirty-five years ago were little, barefoot boys in the small home of a Presbyterian Home Missionary in Kansas, struggling with painfully straitened circumstances. All of these sons are now either the heads of, or otherwise importantly connected with three of the largest building construction firms in the United States. The Thompson-Starrett Company, founded by my oldest son, has built over one hundred of the largest sky-scrapers in New York City, as well as the beautiful Union Station in Washington, D.C. The George A. Fuller Company, of which my second son is president, built the Pennsylvania Station in New York, the Northwestern Station in Chicago, and the Union Station in Kansas City.

‘ The writer of the Atlantic story began at the age of nineteen as time-keeper in one of his brothers’ firms. This position, but once removed from a day laborer’s, was given him partly as an expression of their disappointment that he would not finish his college course at Ann Arbor. From the first he was intensely interested in the men who did the hard manual labor; in the men who dug and laid the foundations; in the hoisters of steel; in the riveters who put together the great steel skeletons and especially in the tremendous competitions in building these great structures in a race against time. “ Marked ‘ Shop,’” his first story, had its inspiration in incidents that occurred during the building of the great Union Station at Washington, he having then risen to the position of superintendent of construction. He wrote it at one sitting — from seven in the evening till four o’clock the next morning —■ being, as he said, unable to stop till the story was finished.’

We are still at a loss to understand that slip of the pen in the June Contributors’ Column whereby Professor Paul Shorey was cavalierly assigned to the faculty of the University of Illinois. Professor Shorey, as everybody knows, has occupied the chair of Greek at the University of Chicago for many years.

Professor Shorey is far too militant a defender of the classics to receive the assaults of his foes behind the fortifications of his new university library. His sallyport wide open, in this brilliant foray he carries the war into the heart of the enemy’s country. To the editor, these timely papers of Professor Shorey seem to belong in the illustrious tradition of the classical method. Nothing could be better calculated to destroy, for one generation at least, the legendary stigma of ‘the anæmic scholar’ hurled at the classicists by their red-blooded critics. Such a defense of the learning inherited from our fathers deserves a longer life than the fragile covers of the magazine have to offer, so the Atlantic has combined both papers in a little volume advertised elsewhere in this magazine, which will, we trust, be the first of a series of short but important monographs borrowed from the Atlantic’s pages, and reprinted in attractive and permanent form. This book may be had on remittance of the price, sixty cents postpaid.

Lisa Ysaye Tarleau, who lives in New York, made her first contribution to the Atlantic in June. We are divulging no military secrets when we say that Lieutenant James Merriam Moore sent his baffling story from the army post at Fort Sill, Oklahoma.

Bertrand Russell, whose thought is familiar to readers of this magazine, has been the object of much comment, temperate and otherwise, because of his determined stand in favor of trial for ‘conscientious objectors’ in England. Beatrice W. Ravenel, whose name places her as a Charlestonian, is a newcomer in the company of Atlantic contributors. The many activities of Charles Moreau Harger, editor, author and business man, whose home is in Abilene, Kansas, fit him to interpret sympathetically and accurately the temper of our great West. Joseph H. Odell, who has served as the influential editor of several important newspapers, is pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Troy, N.Y. Frank Perry Olds, one of the ablest of the younger journalists, lives in Milwaukee, where, as every one must admit, there are exceptional opportunities for obscuring the activities of the GermanAmerican press. His thought-provoking conclusions have been drawn from a wide and impartial reading of papers in the German language. We believe that his article is well within the established facts.

Mr. Olds’ indictment of the GermanAmerican press is so disheartening, so amply sustained by facts, that we are glad to have reassuring evidence that another and better aspect of German-Americanism exists, and is not afraid to assert itself. This comes in the shape of a letter to the Editor, enclosing a note written in far from literary German, both of which we reproduce here: —

DEAR Atlantic: — I know you will be interested in the letter I enclose. They used to say that ‘Heaven was not a place, but a state of mind.’ Germany seems more and more resolving itself into a ‘state of mind.’ There is the American-born German depicted in your last issue, who goes stark mad over kultur though he ‘knows not the land.’ There is the German-born American, as of a staunch old New England family that I know, who renounces family and friends and even changes his name to German to fight for the Kaiser. And there are German-born Germans like the lad who writes this, who after less than three years in America enlists as a soldier and declares that he ‘freewillingly’ volunteers ‘für Amerika das beste und freieste Land zu kämpfen und wenn Gott will bin ich auch bereit for the Old Glory zu sterben.’

I know some of the objections to enlistments of this sort, and I know, too, more than the papers have been free to disclose, as to what has happened as the result of such enlistments. Of the writer of this letter I know nothing but what the letter says. I had heard that he was very iil in hospital, and had sent a few trifles and a friendly word. But accustomed as you are to weigh words, knowing as you do how the spirit shines through words and how hard it is to deceive by them, I know that you will accept this simple little letter as the genuine expression of a lofty resolution and a dear love of liberty, — as above suspicion.

There follows a translation of the young soldier’s letter:

DEAR MADAM: I have received the package, and I cannot help sending you my heartfelt thanks, although you wrote me not to take the trouble. I have been very sick, but am now on the way to recovery. Thank God, there are still people who know what it means to be sick and far from home. I came to America June 28, 1914, when I was 17 years old. I have lost my father, and three brothers in the war. Whether my mother is still alive I do not know, for I have not heard from her for 2 1/2 years. When I learned that America had been forced to enter the worldwar I enlisted as a volunteer to fight for America, the best, the freest country, and if God wills I am ready to die for Old Glory. Down with the Kaiser and long live America! (Als ich hörte das Amerika gezwungen wurde in den Weltkrieg einzutreten war auch ich ein Freiwilliger am für Amerika das beste und freieste Land zu kämpfen, und wenn Gott will bin ich auch bereit for the Old Glory zu sterben. Nieder mit dem Kaiser, es lebe Amerika!) I am very sorry not to be able to write you in English, but I can’t do it well. When I landed in America I could not write English or speak it. Again I thank you — and permit me, although I am a stranger, to send my best wishes.

How many readers of M. Chéradame’s astonishing paper on ‘The United States and Pan-Germanism.’ which appeared in the June Atlantic, fully realize its truth! After all that the last three years have taught us of the full meaning of pan-Germanism, good-natured America is still incredulous that the apostles of those extreme doctrines, which are the negation of everything which we believe essential to international comity, are the actual arbiters of German destiny to-day. You hear everywhere easy-going talk that Germany, of course, does not really mean to keep Belgium. The bitter truth is that to-day Germany does mean to keep Belgium. She means to keep Serbia as her vassal. She means to hold consolidated Middle Europe as a cohesive unified military state. She means to keep the Poland which she won by right of theft, and to create of Russian Poland a buffer state subject to her own will. She means to sell to war-ruined France the right to rebuild French homes on French soil in return for an indemnity fabulously great, and the retention of border fortresses. For more — much more —than this she hopes. But these are what she means to have. They are great stakes, and the rulers of Germany are bold players. Let the American people fully understand the world-game which lies on the board before them.

The Atlantic has been the subject of debate in Parliament more than once since the Great War began. In respect to Mr. Nevinson’s famous article on Sir Roger Casement, we are glad to say that, pursuant to a Parliamentary inquiry, the author has received the following note from the Home Office: —

The Home Secretary has now completed his inquiries concerning your article entitled ‘Sir Roger Casement and Sinn Fein,’ which appeared in the ‘Atlantic Monthly’ in August last, and he wishes me to say that he is fully satisfied that you acted properly in the matter of the transmission of your article to America.

There is no trace of the minor key in the following letter, though the charges it brings against the Atlantic seem to us a trifle Alexandrian. Our critic prefers to remain anonymous; we suspect him, however, of being a near relative of that Mr. Squem whom we introduced to our breathless audience last month. The letter, which enclosed a list of American recruits whose names bore evidence of heterogeneous origin, runs as follows: —

EDITOR OF THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY

DEAR SIR: -

I love to read, day by day, the list of American names of men who have joined our army and our navy. I wish you would read ’em too and discover what American names are like. It might broaden (if not deepen) you. The old feminine sissified American mostly runs to school teaching now; if it were not for the emigrants they’d support themselves by teaching each others’ children. Where are those good old Anglo-Saxon words ‘hale, hearty and blunt’?

Why not do your bit to remove all this New England squeamishness, nicey-nice, perfect lady business and help the older N. E. stock to be human beings? A split infinitive is not the worst of crimes, and high spirits and virility are not essentially vulgar. Don’t cater to the old-maidish side of older N. E. What if you lose a few subscribers? Come out and join the mixers. Meet the newer New Englanders half way; they are not half bad.

As salve to our feelings, we cannot resist the temptation of handing ourselves this charming bouquet of Southern flowers: —

May I take this occasion to express my appreciation of what I consider your wonderful magazine? I use the word ‘wonderful’ after due deliberation, and consider it justified, particularly when I think of the magazine for the past three years. I feel the greatest sympathy with the old man at the newsstand who trusted his customer simply because he wished to buy an Atlantic. Whenever I see the familiar yellow cover on some one’s table, or notice it on a train, or subway, I am at once sure that the reader thereof is a person worth knowing. While I may not agree with the person who said ‘that though all rich and aristocratic people were not Episcopalians, still all Episcopalians were rich and aristocratic,’ yet I am certain all persons of real discernment and taste read—and therefore love — the Atlantic. The President is doubtless right when he urges every one to economize, but I think even he would not advise us to begin on the Atlantic. Meat is much less important.