The Contributors' Column

All that we are privileged to say of the author of ‘Beyond the Barrier’ is that this record of the illusions of delirium she so vividly presents is circumstantially and accurately true. Perhaps its publication may help toward a completer and more sympathetic understanding of the mental torture which physicians so often treat as unimportant in comparison with those physical symptoms in whose presence they feel less impotent. She writes us: —

As a result of work and deprivations ‘for the cause,’ I fought at the end of the war not only for my life but for my rationality. A victim of that sinister disease which is causing national anxiety, pellagra, I have the unusual fortune to have recovered my health and normality, while retaining accurate and connected memories of that awful double life of apparent rationality and extreme irrationality which the delirium of this disease produces. Because this land beyond the border is so little understood even by the physician and the psychologist, thanks to the merciful aphasia which ordinarily clothes its returning travelers, yet is of such universal and poignant interest, not only because of the wave of mental disability, unrest, and emotionalism which has followed in the wake of the war, but because its existence has always intrigued or threatened the lives of the majority of men, my husband, Dr. —, has persuaded me that I should offer my unique experience in the hope of winning thereby a clearer understanding of the abnormal, and a more intelligent and more kindly sympathy for the sad travelers in these unmapped regions.

Emma Lawrence, who contributes ‘The Floor of Heaven,’ writes us with the enthusiasm of the fanatic that ‘that is a good name for any hunting-country.’ Against the clatter, the nerve-fret, the speed of modern civilization, A. Edward Newton’s essay, ‘Change Cars at Paoli,’ breathes a spirit of calm protest. Mr. Newton is a well-known lover and collector of books, the author of Amenities of Book-Collecting and A Magnificent Farce. Jazz has been cheered with a mad delight and damned with infinite scorn and derision. We wonder if it has ever received a treatment at once so scientific and so human as in Dr. Carl Engel’s entertaining paper. The author is a composer, a writer on musical subjects, and the Chief of the Music Division of the Library of Congress. This paper was read at the Musical Supervisors’ Conference in Nashville, in March, 1922.

From the chorus of protest from Tulsa, which greeted the Atlantic’s May excursion into Oklahoma, we are delighted to select, by way of amende honorable, Philip Kates’s good-humored retort. Air. Kates’s paper is proof (to those who need it) that the pursuit of oil and the pursuit of letters are highly compatible. ‘Soul — Soul!' is the ringing title of a poem this month by Fannie Stearns Gifford, who has long been an Atlantic contributor. In the chapter of ‘Peasant Masters’ which we print in this number, Madame Emma Ponafidine continues her story of life under Bolshevist rule. She tells of the actual operation of government under the ‘Skhodka,’ the village governing committee, and the ‘ Tcheka,’ the Extraordinary Commission to suppress counter-revolution. Gertrude Marshall Geer, of New York, contributes her first story to the Atlantic.

In the second series of ‘Newly Discovered Letters’ of David Livingstone, increased light is thrown not only on the Dark Continent, but on the life and mind of that extraordinary missionary and Christian gentleman. Charles Rumford Walker contributes another chapter in ‘Steel,’ called ‘The Blast-Furnace.’ Mr. Walker, who is a college graduate, actually lived these workman’s experiences, and the paper has more the quality of a ‘picture from life,’ than of a treatise on labor problems. Margaret Sherwood, who gives us the poem, ‘ Reality, this month, is Professor of English Literature at Wellesley College, and widely known to Atlantic readers. ‘Nightfall,’ an essay, comes to us from an Australian friend, Ada Cambridge Cross. In her sixties, Mrs. Cross wrote a ‘Retrospect’ for the Atlantic. At seventy-six, she sends us ‘Nightfall.’ Two years residence in Vienna with her nephew, who is in the employ of the Austrian Government, has given Mary Valentine Stanley the background for ‘ Christine and the Princess,’ a story laid amid the extraordinary post-war conditions of that country.

Herbert Sidebotham, who has been military expert and ‘student of politics’ for the London Times, is generally recognized as the Prime Minister’s most intelligent ‘ voice ’ in journalism. E. T. Raymond, an English writer and student of politics, interprets, at our request, the British political scene through the character of its dominant personalities. To those who think that the League of Nations is long since moribund,— or should be, — Raymond Fosdick’s article, ‘The League of Nations After Two Years,’ presents interesting data and a suggestive thesis. Mr. Fosdick is practising law in New York. He was appointed UnderSecretary-General of the League of Nations, by Sir Eric Drummond, in May, 1919, but resigned when it became apparent that the United States was not likely to become an early member. Sisley Huddleston, who contributes ‘France’s Part,’ is an English journalist with a long record of liberalism, who did work of a high order at the Peace Conference while representing the Westminster Gazette.William Yale renews the discussion, carried on in previous numbers of the Atlantic, of the Jewish question. He sends us ‘The Non-Assimilation of Israel’ from Port Said.

Our dangerous Club, ‘Telephone and Telaphib,’ has brought us this personal experience with ‘telephonic morality.’

Happy the man who has a contemporary Cynthia to telaphib for him. My own altercations on telephonic morality are held with my mother, whose standards date from the Age of Innocence and admit no compromise.

It was in April, 1917. One suddenly found one’s self on committees and subcommittees, varying from chairman to the unsung multitudes who bear no titles and do the work. Also, every line on one’s telephone system ended in a house that knew that one could be found at home each day from twelve to half-past, and at that time only.

One day I had left my luncheon four times to answer the thing. When the insane jangle sounded for the fifth time I passed my plate for more dessert.

‘Answer it, it’s for you,’ urged my mother.

‘I know it is, that’s the reason I ’m not answering it.’

‘Then I will.’

‘All right. Tell them I’m out, tell them I ’m ill, tell them I’m dead, tell them I’m selling Liberty Bonds on the Capitol steps, tell them I ’ve gone to France for a protracted sojourn and it may be for years and it may be forever, tell them — ’

But my mother was already majestically moving toward the telephone. ‘I will not lie for you,’ she said distinctly, as she reached for the receiver; ‘I will say I don’t know where you are.’

WALTER PEIRCE.

PARIS.

The ‘older’ and the ‘younger generation’ continue to break lances with one another.

Let the Old Grouch have a word with the picturesque Barbarian who tells us in the June Atlantic why the chaperon was done to death. Wherever in the world they came from, the flapper and her older sister, the flapperoid (by which I mean a moulting flapper whose plumage is changing with the advent of midsummer responsibility), have brought a vivacious, aromatic, and parti-colored joy into life. They are like shimmering butterflies in a field of clover, and the Grouch delights in their bobbed heads, and josephine raiment; their graceful agility, and amusing independence. They are the prettiest things going. But where your Young Barbarian strikes a wrong note is here. She speaks of the things that ‘keep us away from the older generation,’ ‘things which have made us forget the older generation,’ and so forth.

The Barbarian must be told plainly that the older generation is running this world; she must not make any mistake about this. She is attractive but in her present state she is nothing but a frisky bob-veal that has no value to the world. She is composed of legs, a rainbow, and a shocked head. Her boarding-school ‘education’ does not amount to a hill of beans. It is not what she is but what she is to be that justifies her. Just now she is of no more importance to the real welfare of the world than is an organ-grinder. In a few years she will become a persimmon, and then she will scowl at the audacious superflappers that follow in her train. But she may content herself with the assurance that her successors can never be more attractive and diverting than she is now. So the Young Barbarian must not fash herself over her desertion of the older generation.

THE OLD GROUCH.

We are interested to learn that the term ‘flapper’ originated in England, and how.

DEAR ATLANTIC, —
Re/‘Flapper.’ The term originated in England a good many years ago. Funk and Wagnalls give the same definition as Mr. G. Stanley Hall —a young bird unable to rise in flight. In England, however, it is specifically used for young wild duck and occasionally other game birds which can fly a fair distance but slow and clumsily. Only wild duck are shot at this stage when they can be put up from cover surrounding water by dogs or walking. Even in this sense the term is but moderately pleasing to describe the future mothers of the race; but the aptness is due to the potential, inseparable from the feminine, and it is preferable to ‘gawk’; Bud is no longer descriptive. This is nothing to be answered.
Sincerely,
L. OGILVY.

‘Deeper Misgivings,’ in the Atlantic for June, which analyzed the effect of the ‘New-Stock’ Americans on democratic institutions, has stimulated discussion on half a dozen angles of the subject. One of the most interesting is the effect of the ‘New Stock’ on religion.

Mr. Speranza, like nearly all modern writers, does not mention the church, or religion, Nevertheless, by the same method of observation, it can be clearly seen that our religious institutions are being vitally affected by theNew Stock. There is n’t a religious organization in America, with the probable exception of the Episcopalian, that is not vitally affected by the New Stock. This is particularly true of Methodism and Congregationalism. Though these are Anglo-Saxon in origin, they are unlike their sister organizations in the Empire in so far as they have been modified by the German, Scandinavian, and so forth. I am not alone in seeing this; many of my ministerial friends often comment upon the same fact.

The ‘American Woman’ is another element in our life that is already touched. Anyone who has traveled in Europe and studied the European women, and, besides, knows something of the real New England woman, can readily see what I mean. It is there; and there is something else to Flapper Americana Novissima than G. Stanley Hall has mentioned.

In the last place, what about the American Press? What is the percentage of editorsof the New Stock in America? This is very vital and important.

To a nonassimilable people like the AngloSaxon and to unassimilables like the Europeans, ‘Deeper Misgivings’ is of first importance.

Very truly yours,

FRANK HANCOCK.

DEAR ATLANTIC, —
Do you accept love stories for publication? If so, what restrictions do you place on them as to length and kind? Is one with seven thousand words too long for your acceptance?
In anticipation of a favorable reply, I remain,

Perhaps some knowing ones of the younger generation can tell us just how long a ‘love passage’ can be without losing a thrill?

Of the many letters we have received on the opium question, we are sorry to have space only for the following.

As an American who has long been interested in the drug problem which is menacing our civilization, I have read with deep appreciation the article by Miss La Motte, published in the current issue of the Atlantic Monthly. The accompanying article by Mr. Bajpai leaves unanswered important issues which he, as representative of the Government in India, can ill afford to leave unanswered.

Throughout his article, Bajpai speaks of the Indian Government as though it were the Government of the people of India. In any discussion of Indian affairs, it should always be borne in mind that the political and economic policies of the country are not Indian but British.

Mr. Bajpai makes no reference to the fact that the British Government encourages opium-producers by loaning money without interest to opium-planters. According to the figures presented by Miss La Motte, for the years 1918 and 1919, 532 tons of opium were consumed by the people of India alone, and 741 tons of opium were produced for export. When the actual medical requirements of the entire world are not more than 3 tons per annum we wonder why it is necessary for the Indian Government to further assist the opium production.

After the many opium wars, it is true that China and the British Government finally came to an agreement whereby China might rid itself of the drug evil without foreign interference. It is further true that in accordance with that agreement no opium has been openly shipped from India into China since 1917. But practically no reduction has been made in the production of opium in India to meet the decreased demand through the elimination of the Chinese market. And Indian opium and its by-products (morphine, and so forth) are successfully smuggled into China.

We know that abolition of opium and liquor traffic is on the programme of Mahatma Gandhi and his followers. The people of India do not want to be victims of drugs nor do they want to be agents to drug other nations.

SELMA C. MAXIMON.

The twentieth-century student at the University of Bologna still preserves his cinquecento flavor.

DEAR ATLANTIC, —
My interest in Professor Abbot’s very just and yet very sympathetic paper, ‘The Guild of Students,’ was considerably quickened by the fact that I have spent the winter in Bologna, attending lectures at the famous old University. I can say with some confidence that the University of Bologna has not lost, by a good bit, the controlling action of the students; and yet, on the other hand, there is a very sad lack of the activities and the social life fostered by our American ' Guild of Students.’
Early in the fall came Matriculation Day. The whole affair went off with great vim and, for the entire afternoon, the students owned the city of Bologna with a seriousness and a pomposity that was delightful to see.
As it broke up, I happened to find myself moving behind a group of students, including the chairman of the day. How familiar his words sounded! I could put their very emphasis and jargon over into our college boys’ slang. ‘I tell you, fellows, we want to get together earlier on affairs like this. To-day was all right, in a way, but organization is what we want, organization! Next year we ought to put over something pretty fine.’
The average Bolognese student attends lectures spasmodically, studies by spurts, rises very often near midday, and is in no personal touch whatever with professors—they do not even know his name, unless he really is a scholar. One professor says that they average about five scholars out of every hundred students. Surely in America we can show as high an estimate, although I grant you that the five Italian scholars will probably be of finer calibre than many we produce. The world over, humanity is not craving great learning, but will accept some learning coupled with sociability and friendship; and it seems to me that our method does impregnate the mass of students with more real knowledge and culture than this European method. And after all, ‘friendships formed at Yale’ are very precious, and there are so few of the like in Italy.
I do not think that lack of student activities is, however, entirely responsible for the spasmodic attendance of classes. A student can take his degree independently at any time during the year, and can come up for examinations in a subject he has hardly frequented. This method may be a very perfect one for the live scholars; such liberty may be conducive to achievement and originality of thought such as we rarely attain in America; but the ninety-five other students need the props of prescribed hours, prescribed terms and years, if they are not to degenerate into sitters by the wayside in the sun or, as Professor Masso suggests, strikers.
We have had this year a strike for Fiume, a strike because a certain professor was to be transferred to another university, and a third strike because another professor was advanced. Altogether we lost more than three weeks in strikes. University boys patrolled all the schools of the city and would allow no sessions. During the interregnum, between the fall of one Italian ministry and the formation of a new one, lessons were resumed very logically, as the students said, ‘There is at present no Government against which to strike.’ Just now lectures are closing down the fifteenth of May, although they usually continue until the fifteenth of June, because the students have decided that they have had enough. They say they really have not time to go to lectures now as they must study for examinations. Did the students at Bologna in the Middle Ages have much more power?
A SMITH COLLEGE WOMAN.

We believe in a certain colloquialism in literature, but feel that after all there are limits. However, we are very glad to print the following poem by a well-known scholar — because we like it.