The Contributors' Column--July Atlantic

Herbert Wilton Stanley is the pen-name of a well-known lecturer in St. Louis, whose earlier contribution to the Atlantic, ‘Bolshevism: a Liberal View’ (March, 1919), has provoked much comment. Anne Douglas Sedgwick (Mrs. Basil de Sélincourt), a writer of stories, as sensitive as she is accomplished, has long been known to Atlantic readers. Of American birth, she has passed her life abroad. For several years she and her husband have been working in a little French village; and after this long period of repression, her creative instinct is reasserting itself. Her next story, ‘Autumn Crocuses,’ which will appear in August, is, we think, a very perfect specimen of her matured art. Arthur Clutton-Brock, an English man of letters, lecturer, and essayist, who should be better known in this country, is art critic of the Times. His recent occasional volumes of essays, beginning with Thoughts about the War (1914), have had widespread influence. Henry Justin Smith is news editor of the Chicago Daily News, ‘ a title,’ he says, ‘which means everything or nothing.’

Alice Bache Gould, daughter of the distinguished astronomer, the late Benjamin Apthorp Gould, is a scholar of wide and varied attainments. Her principal interest is in higher mathematics, and during the war she has been teaching the theory of navigation to classes of naval officers. Before America went into the war, she lived some years in Spain, and the adventure which she here describes is an almost accidental by-product of a period of close and serious study. Engineer-Lieutenant William McFee, now Chief Engineer of H.M.S. Kharki, in Eastern waters, spent many months of the war as engineer of a refrigerating ship, making the dangerous voyage between Alexandria and Salonica. Three of the four corners of the earth he has dusted pretty thoroughly in the old days; and when you come to chronicles of the sea, who but Masefield in this generation can be set beside him? Frederic Irland is Official Reporter of Debates in the National House of Representatives. In reply to the editor’s query as to the genesis of his profound interest in the subject of his present paper, he writes: —

When I was a boy my father was deeply impressed by the articles written by Spencer and Huxley against the study of Latin and Greek and in favor of scientific studies. So he forbade me to study Latin, and selected for me such high-school studies as zoölogy, botany, chemistry, astronomy, geology. The teachers taught what was in the books. I never knew that a pterodactyl had wings on his fingers, though six months of Greek would have told me so; or that the word ‘botany ’ meant a plant, or that a ‘penumbra' was almost a shadow, or that ‘anhydrous’ meant without water.

The day after I left the high school I began work as a shorthand writer -— to transmute the dross of spoken words into the pure gold of the euduring page. For two years I studied medicine and surgery, to learn the nomenclature, so that, as the official reporter of a court, I might vanquish the expert witnesses at their own game; and for the same reason I studied enough law to admit me to practice in the Supreme Court of the United States.

It was not until years later that I determined to study Latin and Greek; and then I found that I had spent ten years in learning what would have explained itself — all scientific nomenclature — if I had had a few hours of Latin and Greek for three or four years when I was a boy.

I have read about everything that has been written against the study of the classics. I have read Dr. Flexner’s marvelous fairy tale about students who, in one evening’s coaching by a tutor, could master the terminology of an intricate technical subject, and pass a long examination the next day. I believe it could be done — in just one way. A boy who had read Homer and Horace could do it — and no other training under heaven could enable him to perform the miracle.

Suppose, as Dr. Flexner claims, that we do not know much Latin after we get through the high school. We do know some English, and that is more than can be said for those who study English twelve years.

The English language is a garden of glorious hybrid flowers. Nobody objects to the flowers, but there are cutworms who would destroy our knowledge of the roots.

Read the preamble to the Constitution of the United States. Every important word in it is from Rome via Hastings: —

‘WE THE PEOPLE of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this CONSTITUTION for the United States of America. ’

Hearty Earl Brown is an associate professor of English in the Kansas State University at Lawrence. Ruth Murray Under- hill, an old correspondent of the Atlantic, sends this sympathetic sketch from Italy. Dr. John Rickman is an English physician who, in the course of his practice, spent several years in the villages of the Buzuluk Department of the Samara Government in East Russia. Some of his experiences were recounted in ‘Commonplaces in Buzuluk,’ in the Atlantic for March, 1919.

The paper on Miss Willard is the fifth in Gamaliel Bradford’s ‘Portraits of American Women.’ To those interested in comparative portraiture, we would commend, in connection with this paper, the perusal of Mr. Lytton Strachey’s study of Florence Nightingale (in Eminent Victorians). The two women present startling likenesses, and the attitudes of their masculine delineators are not dissimilar. Sarah N. Cleghorn is an American poet and novelist whose work has long been familiar to our readers. Captain Louis Graves is still on duty at headquarters of the American Army of Occupation in Germany.

In the discussion of Russian affairs, which form one of the most momentous problems for Americans to make up their minds about, it is well to remember the importance of recent information. The situation shifts and changes, and it is far easier to recognize the general course of the current, if we look back through that long perspective of idealism and bloodshed, of realities and high hopes, which have succeeded in Russia the despotism of the Tsar. Colonel Raymond Robins, whose eloquent speeches and interesting articles have made a widespread impression, left Russia early in the spring of 1918, and the striking testimony which the Atlantic on two occasions has adduced from the letters of Madame Emma Ponafidine described conditions which vary almost from week to week. The author of the present Atlantic article, William Adams Brown, Jr., has very recently returned from his foreign service. Mr. Brown was sent to Russia as a member of the staff of the American Committee on Public Information, and for upwards of a year was engaged in the dissemination of American propaganda in many parts of Soviet Russia, and more recently in Siberia. His last post was Ekaterinburg in the Urals, just behind the front held by Admiral Kolchak, Here he formed a distributing centre of American information, publishing a magazine in the American interest, and keeping in close touch with newspapers and men of influence. Fortunately, Mr. Brown has a natural turn for the languages, and the exigencies of his position obliged him to learn Russian, with such success that during the last months of his service he was able to talk with perfect freedom in a tongue quite unknown to most Americans. It is interesting to add that Mr. Brown came to his present conclusions regarding Russia rather slowly, and it was not until the late spring of last year that he veered to a definite belief in intervention. This belief has been greatly strengthened by more recent opportunities of understanding present-day Russia and the Russians.

Victor S. Clark, for several years in charge of the division of Industrial History of the Carnegie Institution, is a member of the American Board for Historical Research. A close student of German affairs, he contributed ‘Germany in Solution’ to the January, 1919, Atlantic.Arthur Greenwood is an English economist and student of social problems. At one time Lecturer on Economics at the University of Leeds, he is now General Secretary of the Council for the Study of International Relations. H. Sacher, an able member of the staff of the Manchester Guardian, is the editor of Palestine, the recently established periodical devoted to the realization of the Zionist’s ambition. He is one of the closest students of the Zionist movement in Europe, and one of the most whole-hearted believers in the natural destiny of the Jewish race. When Vernon Kellogg became a professor, he certainly spoiled a star reporter. His Headquarters Nights remains, we think, the classic interpretation of German psychology, while his present papers, ‘A Post-Mortem of Central Europe’ and ‘Poland,’ give us accurately and clearly just the information we are hungry for. Gertrude Slaughter, wife of an eminent Latin professor at the University of Wisconsin, and daughter of the late Governor William S. Vilas of that state, is now traveling in Italy, whence she sends us this paper.

A friendly aviator, who has seen much service in France, comments upon the

quaint and racy slang — almost a language of its own — the argot, of those master jesters, the mecanos. Rich in curious figures of speech, it is sometimes obscure, often vulgar, always picturesque. The following [he avers] might have been overheard at any French aerodrome: the returning pilot who hastens to the bar to tell of his adventures:—

‘J’ai un gros coup à expliquer! J’étais à cinq mille deux, attendant le Fritz, de onze heures. À onze heures quinze, coups de canon au nord. Je mets pleine sauce, et dans dix secondes je l’aperçois — un beau Fokker. Je fiche un renversement; je coupe: je pique à mort . . . à cinquante metres je lui seringue une giclet — je vois mes lumineuses qui rentrent dans sa carlingue. Je trouve que je le possède, mais il envoie une chandelle fantastique, ce cochon-là! On tourne en ronde, et tout-à-coup il est derrière moi — c’est un As, qui me possède à son tour . . . des incendiares qui passent partout — fichtre! il va fort! Clac! — une belle dans mon moulin: ca bafouille, raffut formidable. Il exaggère, mon Boche — il cherre un peu! Il faut bien le plaquer. Mon moulin tourne toujours un pen; je pousse sur le manche — je pique à la verticals — je le laisse tomber avec un bruit metallique. Je le sème dans la crasse . . . Oui, je prendrai un Porto blanc.’

Mr. Frank Place, who was bred in New York and knows a thing or two, seems to spot an old friend in the subject of the request made in this column for light on the whereabouts of an old Atlantic poem. His communication follows: —

From: Me.

To: You.

Subject: Where to find a poem on a mother’s grief over her son’s death, a translation from the Greek, in the Atlantic of 1874. (Contributors’ Column, May, 1919.)

DEAR ATLANTIC, —

Let the old Reference Hound be heard.

From much following of false scents he arrives at the following conclusions: —

The poem (?) you seek is from 15 to 25 per cent more remote in time than you think; it is not on the left-hand page, or if so, is at the bottom of the second column; it is not from the Greek; it is a rather long poem (if it is a poem) and may possibly be on the subject assigned to it; and, finally, is without doubt NOT in the Atlantic.

When found make a note on’t and see if the old Reference Hound is not a prophet in his own country.

Yours in a Sherlockian sense.

Changes of address are promptly made in this office, and the writer of the following may be quite sure of his next Atlantic: —

FOR HEAVEN’S SAKE!

Don’t send any more mail to

Lieut. C—— A. F——,

——th Field Artillery,

American E. F., Germany,

A.P.O. 710.

I’m coming home and — oh, boy! — never again. I’m a home and fireside bird from now on. You can have all of the east-bound ocean passage I’m entitled to, you can buy my Baedeker, and you can have my advice, but — as for me — I ’ve discovered why all of the Irish and French and Dutch and Swedes who go to America never use their return tickets. In the meantime, my address is: —

Lieut. C—— A. F——

75 Greenfield Street,

B——

New York,

U.S.A.

Happily yours,

C—— F——

Founder and President of the Society Opposed to Travel in Europe.

Friendly readers of this column will remember that about a year ago a Mr. Ernest Hart (what a name to sign a sonnet with!) submitted to the Atlantic Monthly a paper which had already appeared in the Atlantic’s pages, by our distinguished contributor, Mrs. Allinson. On being asked to explain this naïve proceeding, Mr. Hart expressed the utmo st concern and surprise, and stated that the article had been given to him by his friend, Mr. Lewis May, who had also improved the opportunity by borrowing a little money on account of the transaction. Mr. Hart stated that, in spite of every effort, he was unable to find Mr. May’s whereabouts.

So much for the old story.

The present sequel is entertaining. Quite recently Mr. May called at our New York office, and said that the letters regarding Mr. Hart had just been brought to his attention by a friend in Washington. He stated that he had met Mr. Hart at the Allerton House in New York, and that the articles he had given him were fifteen dollars in U.S. currency, lent at the earnest request of Mr. Ernest Hart.

If Mr. Hart chances to see this paragraph, and is still seeking Mr. May, we shall be glad to oblige him with his friend’s address.

As might have been expected, Mrs. Gerould’s ‘Lafayette’ has been the subject of a vast deal of correspondence. An analogy to the magic wrought by Lafayette’s name is offered, on a very small scale, in an interesting letter which comes to us from a friendly scholar: —

I recall [writes our correspondent] that, some years ago, in a miserable village of Bœotia, I blessed the name of Samuel Gridley Howe, American, in that it secured me a night’s hospitality with the Demarch, who wished to show his gratitude to America for what Howe had done for Greece seventy years before — my ignorant self hearing of it for the first time. Of course, the Demarch was pathetically illogical; but I do not recall that I exposed him in the pages of the Atlantic. Also, a few months ago, the London papers reported how some English prisoners of war in Bulgaria owed the sparing of their lives to some long-dead Englishman who had befriended a Bulgarian orphan boy, now become the officer who had the prisoners in charge — another instance of ‘incommensurate rewards’ going to the wrong persons, an ‘absurd’ injustice as much to be deprecated by the intellectuals as lynching the wrong person.

We are far from subscribing to the validity of this reasoning by parallel against the logic of Mrs. Gerould’s brilliant paper, but it is encouraging once in a while to recognize that the good some men do not only lives after them, but grows to illogical proportions.

In this column, a month or two ago, there appeared a letter, written by an American, speaking right out in meeting, regarding a certain conceit visible here and there, owing to the recent ‘ lessons ’ we have taught Europe. From our Expeditionary Force comes this interesting criticism in confirmation: —

In the issue for April appears a letter from ‘an American of the old New England stock,’ taking our people thoroughly to task for their conceit and blindness. I do not write to protest. I write to approve. And I come from exactly the same sort of stock, and am proud of it. Enlisted in the National Guard, May 23, 1917, I saw the fronts of Alsace, of the Château-Thierry-Vesle, of Juvigny (with the French, under General Mangin), and Montfaucon — to name the most prominent. I went through Luxembourg and into Germany with the Army of Occupation — beyond Coblenz. As a result of this experience, with a bitterly remembered ride on those ‘Hommes 40, Chevaux 8,’ I emphatically bear out the author of that letter in every statement.

Many and many a time I have had a hot argument on my hands to prove — not assert, but to prove — that we were not better loved in Germany than in France, and that, if we were better housed, it was by the assumption of our rights as victors — co-victors — while in France we were taking, sharing, the common lot of all. . . .

In Germany, in spite of specific and strictly enforced regulations to the contrary, there was quite a bit of ‘fraternization’ with the enemy. But more and more the true, the apparently unalterable character of the German people showed itself, until I could not bear patiently the sound of the barbarian tongue, and never spoke it myself, except in emergencies. When I left the Army of Occupation, to study in Paris, I left no German friends behind, but still I treasure the memories of the days in Alsace, and still I write to the dear friends in the family where I was quartered.

. . . Daily there was the argument that was always cropping up again on the lips of outside men: ‘We’re treated decently here; we don’t have to live in the holes we had in France, and the people are glad they have us instead of the ‘Frogs” or the “bloody British.” As though the same phrases were not mouthed in the other armies! ‘We’re glad we have you French, and not those crude devils of Yankees. I know. I’ve talked with French and British from their Armies of Occupation. It’s the same story.

And the winning of the war! That rot is still voiced. I suppose all America is full of it now, with the army flowing back. Our hard-shelled provincialism that even war could not crack. Ah, some saw beauty. I remember the uplifting sense of space and grandeur among the mountains of Alsace (Massevaux), the untouched beauty of some of the valleys and hamlets we passed on our way from one front to another, the magnificence of the stately châteaux, the silencing splendor of the cathedrals. I remember, remember and treasure these things I saw of life and beauty in the midst of fire and mud and death. Oh, even in destroyed villages some touch of it remained. And a picture comes to my mind of the strange mysterious browns and grays and reds that blended on the furrowed hillsides around shattered Avocourt, when we withdrew from Montfaucon for a brief breathing-spell. And others saw, too.

But so many laughed, and would not see. What is the cure?

It is not in any spirit of ranting or sneering that I underline with emphasis the letter appearing in your April issue, but as one whose head has often been turned quickly aside in shame at the acts and speech of my friends and comrades.