THE experience, the searching speculation, and the irony that made Dædalus the most discussed scientific book of the year have been again employed by J. B. S. Haldane in this new essay on the inevitable association of chemistry and peace. ‘ We have to get over our distaste for scientific thought and scientific method,’ declares the author. Surely there is no quicker way than by the study and enjoyment of such work as this. Mr. Haldane is the Sir William Dunn Reader in Biochemistry at Cambridge University. ¶Through the utterances of our own State Department Imogen B. Oakley proves the ignominious and divided allegiance which foreign laws have imposed upon naturalized Americans. Mrs. Oakley is the author of an authoritative history of civil-service reform. ¶Marking, as they do, days of fearful suffering and adversity, these leaves from the secret journal of Jane Steger are fired with such spiritual fortitude, joy, and devotion as ought to resolve us all for the New Year. ¶In this time of inquisitional examinations the actual and significant record of F. S. Broun should be an inspiration to boys who have their way to make in the world, and to those who would guide them. Phyllis Bottome, one of the most skilled and dexterous of English novelists, has created a character and a pathos deeply touching.

Morley Dobson, recently a student of Cambridge old and new, writes with a lyrical delicacy and grace that is reminiscent of his namesake, Austin Dobson. ¶Many readers will satisfy an old curiosity with this outspoken statement of a New York Publisher-Bookseller, in which no mystery of the book trade is held too sacrosanct for contemplation. ¶Moved by the meditations of a perfectly defined mother-in-law, which appeared in our September issue, a married daughter has composed her gracious reply. Reading this pretty tribute every Naomi in the land will rise up to call her Ruth blessed. Stuart H. Perry warns us that the present smugglers’ invasion of our shores is but the premonition of a more profound and dangerous conflict. His conclusions recall the old proverb that ‘those who come through the doors of birth shall break the doors of kings.’ Valeska Bari writes us what she terms ‘a simple tale of Tammany in Porto Rico.’ We could wish that politics were always so full of pleasant humor. ¶Reappearing in our pages after nearly a decade, the Reverend Reinhold Niebuhr of Detroit speaks his full mind with sense and eloquence.

From Raleigh, Tennessee, Anne Goodwin Winslow sends her song of gardens and ladies as fair as those of Charleston in the ‘old days.’ Elizabeth L. Cleveland’s letter is a prologue to the drama which she here records:—

DEAR EDITOR, — I am submitting a manuscript which relates an incident of Albanian mountain life, with which I became familiar during a stay of nearly two years in the northern part of that country.
Most of the incidents of the story happened in my presence. I have held faithfully to the spirit of the culture of this still mediæval race, so far as this can be done by an outsider. Their unquestioning obedience to their own law is an essential characteristic of mountain life. The spirit of the feud, which to European or American seems so frankly savage, is most convincingly otherwise as carried out. There is no violent motive such as anger. On the contrary there is an impersonality about the deed which to a foreign mind seems incompatible with the act of killing. It is as though the avenger were under compulsion; he appears influenced by something outside himself, inevitable, inexorable. He is driven, as Orestes, without choice.
Even Ndue’s personal feeling about his brother was rare, and only admissible on the score of his warm, volatile, and lively nature. He was not, as I have tried to show, a typical mountain personality; rather an existing rarity, who is nevertheless acting under the same harsh imperative as the rest. His love for his brother is irrelevant; he feels this, and it is not this motive but the motive of clearing the family honor which the other men respect.
Manners, as tribute to individual human dignity, are esteemed enormously important under such a culture. The stranger could not leave immediately on recognizing Ndue without grave insult to Imer, the host. As it was, he committed a serious (the word ‘social’ is too trivial) error in leaving early; though with his songs and self-enforced tarrying he partly compensated for the unforgivable rudeness of going before morning. Ndue could not molest him in liner’s house without involving Imer’s family for generations in a feud with his own, to say nothing of the implication of both their tribes in the trouble. Neither could he follow immediately after the guest, as guests continue under a host’s protection several hours after leaving the house. If this is not self-control, what is? It is this absolute and unflinching fidelity to tribal law which makes the hard life of the mountains livable. . . ,

Dr. Kuno Francke is Professor Emeritus and honorary Curator of the Germanic Museum at Harvard University. ¶’Mrs. Buckle,’ the delicious protégée of Elizabeth de Burgh, is a cousin of that‘Mrs. Bodfish’ who appeared in the Atlantic household in September. The pictures of these cousinly ‘chars’ may be found in any Belcher cartoon.

Ranging through Sisley Huddleston’s portrait gallery of French politicians, one may remark the faces which have launched the new Ship of State. ¶As a special correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor,Stanley High spent the past summer traveling far and wide throughout Russia. ¶An economist of serious reputation, Alvin Johnson has written a nimble account of a pretty and light-hearted excursion.

That the sincerity of Mr. X has struck a responsive chord in other sympathetic minds is shown in the many commentaries on his article, ‘The Jew and the Club.’ We quote from two letters and regret that we have no space for the score of other genuine expressions.

DEAR ATLANTIC, — I lived in a smalt Eastern city. My brothers and sisters and I were always sent to the schools, where we were among the few Jews, often the only ones. Our friends were as much Gentiles as Jews. We were invited to their parties, but seldom encouraged by our parents to go. When we gave parties, we were never allowed to include our Gentile friends. Our social life was circumscribed because our parents wished to protect us from two things which they regarded as imminent if we associated with Gentiles: insult, and the imagined catastrophe of intermarriage!
Judaism itself meant nothing to us. It was not a religion, not a precious tradition, but a heritage which meant no more than blue eyes or brown. We were brought up with the idea that Jews and Gentiles are different. Hundreds of times I have heard, ‘Oh, those Gentiles! You know how they live!’ It was perhaps a sincere effort to make us feel racial superiority. I did not see any difference in the way we lived from that in which my friends lived, but for sixteen years I took it for granted. Then I went to boardingschool, where I was one of four Jews; to a university, where I was the only Jew who had ever happened to live in the house; yet I found myself surrounded by ‘my own kind.’ We all acted, thought, dressed the same way, had the same manners. I remember my astonishment when, early in the year, I was asked to assume a responsible position in the class. My only response was, ‘ But you know I am a Jew,’ which I thought must end it. They laughed at me. Then I began to find out what a fetish I had been worshiping. Every moment of my university life was full and happy. There was nothing closed to me on account of my being a Jew; my friends were both Jews and Gentiles, one kind chosen with the same ideals in view as the other.
I have known more prejudice, heard more disparaging remarks, seen more unkindness to Jews from Jews than from all of the Gentiles in my acquaintance; and yet the cultured Jew, yielding to the group judgment, makes up his mind on scattered and unreliable evidence that he is not wanted here, there, and yonder, gives up his Gentile associates, and settles down into a group of Jews. If he is in a small city, he does not find among them his own kind in sufficient numbers to satisfy him, and so he either gradually sinks to the lower standard in order to answer his cravings for social life, or simply gives up social life entirely. In the large cities he may find a few congenial spirits among the Jews. These few perhaps form their own circle, and being refined, cultured people they make every effort to live their lives quietly and inconspicuously, dissociated in part from the larger circle of Jews.
The result is that Gentiles do not meet, do not know the best type of Jew, who is as different from the conspicuous, noisy, pushing, overdressed, nouveau-riche Jew as is his counterpart in Gentile social circles. It may well be asked how this can be done, but it is not so difficult. Let the Jew continue his childhood associations with his Gentile friends. In nine cases out of ten it is his own fault that they cease as he grows up. Let him talk frankly about the entire question, that his Gentile friends may know that he truly discriminates, that he, no more than they, will associate with the Jews who have neither the education, culture, nor manners to entitle them to a place among refined, cultured people. Let him take a sane point of view as regards intermarriage, and realize that unless he is willing to lose his group identity and become assimilated he cannot expect to be accepted as a part of another group whose whole excuse for being is to bring together those having common interests and ideals, perpetuating itself through the marriages of its members.
Faithfully yours,
S. M.

Surely aspiration is irrespective of race or class or color.

October 13, 1924
DEAR EDITOR, — I appreciated very much the article in your October issue, ‘The Jew and the Club,’ by X. Mr. X has written a very strong argument, though not intentionally, for all socially ostracized groups in America. He believes his appeal is only for the Jews, since he writes: ‘The Negroes belong mostly to the laboring class, with little of the social aspirations of the educated and cultured.’ Mr. X errs in thinking that the laboring class is without aspirations. Next, in not knowing that there is a fair proportion of Negroes, as well as ‘a large number of Jews,’ who ‘as regards breeding and education belong to the highest social strata.’
Negroes as well as Jews realize that life cannot develop freely when walls are erected between groups or individuals. In the case of the Negro, however, he has seven times seven walls to break down. It is not surprising then that he has not reached the innermost rampart.
If Mr. X will read a few Negro magazines and papers he will find an expression of a desire and a striving for social recognition. Better still, he may even glimpse a kindred spirit.
From One of the Laboring Class

It cannot be otherwise than moving to hear a voice from within ‘ the dark forest.’

NEW YORK CITY
DEAR ATLANTIC, — Mr. Charles Magee Adams has written a remarkable article on the psychology of blindness. It comes home to me personally because I lost my sight sixteen months ago. When one is exploring a new country it is helpful to hear the experiences of one to whom it is familiar ground. However, we have different points of entry, and that of necessity makes for different experiences. Mr. Adams entered the land of darkness at the age of eleven, when life was just beginning to unfold, with only the impressions and knowledge of a boy. As for me, I crossed its border after having lived a full life in many lands, and taking with me the experiences and accumulated interests and responsibilities of an average lifetime.
Blindness is not a problem in psychology to me: it is a study in human relations. It would be difficult for me to think of it in a cold, detached, scientific, and analytical manner. To treat blindness only from the psychological point of view is like thinking of one’s birthplace in terms of latitude and longitude. Blindness entails enormous disabilities and no persons know this so well as those who are called upon to face them late in life.
We are deprived of the sense which served us best in earning our living, in going about the world, in our daily contacts with our fellow men. We are cut off from many of our friends. We have to give up our hobbies, our pastimes, the reading which is so essential in business and so pleasant in our hours of leisure. Our movements are circumscribed; a long walk is rarely possible; even a short one has lost much of its interest. Travel is no longer desirable or profitable. We can follow the events of the day only with difficulty, and the discoveries and inventions of our marvelous age become more of a fairy story to us than a reality. I don’t think a blind man would have much use for a club — he cannot even play bridge. I have always been fond of sailing — now that I cannot trim sheets or handle a tiller, the pleasure is gone.
We have to reconstruct our lives, and cut our coat according to our shrunken cloth. It seems to me that loss of sight in later life needs be reckoned 50 per cent sense deficiency rather than 20, as Mr. Adams rates it.
Blindness shuts out a great many of the petty annoyances and less agreeable things of life. We are unable to see the ugliness so common in our cities. We do not readily notice untidiness which would have bothered us formerly. It is like enjoying the orchestra without being disturbed by the mannerisms of the conductor, or the performers.
It speaks well for our country that so many people should be willing to give so freely of their time and money to help the blind. Their interest is in itself a mitigant. An article such as Mr. Adams has written is valuable in clearing up many points which would ordinarily escape the observation of those who see. In making his appeal to the intelligence rather than the emotions, he brings the blind man’s world home to the seeing. No one could help being interested in it, as he charts it.
Yours very truly,
J. E. MACRAE

We welcome this lyrical lumberjack to a seat beside our hearth and we are sorry that we can find no place for his verse.

THREE LAKES, WASHINGTON
DEAR ATLANTIC, — Please do not discriminate against this from my having taken too seriously Ramsay Traquair’s remark that the Pacific shore is almost a foreign land having only faint, fond, fair memories of an all-but-forgotten ancestral Atlantic shore.
Voices of the Pacific have no medium of expression on this side of the continent anywise approximating the Atlantic. If the Atlantic is hospitable to those voices from these shores that reach its height, mayhap we ‘ll never need a Pacific counterpart of the Atlantic, because the Atlantic is a leisurely magazine, its worth unspoiled by five railroad days or two airplane days.
So, be hospitable to the voices from the Pacific, remembering that the Pacific Coast is growing like a mustard plant and that by and by we shall have an immense population, as our commerce grows with the awakened Orient, with resuscitated Russia, and with developing Alaska. Then, if the Atlantic shall have served us well we shall have no need to supplant it, but shall welcome its Pacific Coast edition, radioed from Boston.
However, I shan’t judge the Atlantic’s hospitality toward the Pacific by its treatment of my offering, should it be disdained. You see, I’m only a lumberjack out of a regular job and watching in a sawmill by Panther Lake on a Sunday, and though I may be bursting with lyric feeling up to my pencil’s point I have no just means of knowing how much, if any, of the lyric spills off and enwraps itself in my words. And yet, there are lyric strains in it — I can prove that to you.
Considering you’ve had laundry workers, janitors, and cooks in your columns lately, the motley array might squeeze over enough to let in a lumberjack, don’t you think? Well, anyway, Atlantic, I’m knocking at your door.
Sincerely yours,
ROY A. HOFFEDITZ

So long as there ‘s a new limerick left in the world, joy still resides in life.

BALLARD VALE, MASS.
DEAR ATLANTIC, — My scrapbook contains the following, which I have always admired from the standpoint of art for art’s sake. I quote from memory: —
She frowned on him and called him Mr.,
Because in merry sport he kr.;
And so in spite
That very night
This naughty Mr. kr. sr.
You may say this is not quite the standard limerick metre; but I guess the metre is as good as the ethics.
I have myself been inspired to the following unpublished one, which will be recognized as true to life by all who derive their conceptions of life from the comic cartoons: —
A gentleman wearing a bbl.,
For lack of all other appl.,
Was hailed, just like that,
With ‘Where is your hat?’
But he felt he had no time to qql.
STEVEN T. BYINGTON

Here’s a conundrum.

ST. PAUL, MINN.
DEAR EDITOR, — Please give me statistics on how much cash money it takes to raise a boy from birth to sixteen years, or put me in touch with those who are able to do so.
R. S. S.

His weight in gold, we think.

With sincere thanks to a generous public we announce that this complete edition of the Atlantic, 150,000 copies, is the largest in its history. On January 1, 1916, we printed 8000 copies. May the past foretell the future.

After a fashionable schooling in crossword puzzles one may be graduated to an Intelligence Test of Atlantic grade. See front advertising page 4 and look forward to a busy month.