The Contributors' Column

THE Atlantic greatly regrets to report the loss of an old, most trustworthy contributor, Hans Coudenhove. A nobleman and an intimate of Viennese society, Mr. Coudenhove, at the age of thirty-six, sailed for Africa, where, beyond the farthest frontier, he spent the last twenty-eight years of his life, devoting himself to a study of the animal kingdom, and occasionally sending to us delightful accounts of this study. His essays, My African Neighbors, have been published this autumn by Little, Brown, and Company (an Atlantic Monthly Press Publication). In a recent letter to the author’s brother, Count CoudenhoveKalergi, there appeared this touching description of the burial: —

He left fixed over his bed a paper expressing a wish to be buried many miles away at Chicala, at the place where he had buried Rikki-Tikki, the mongoose on whom he had lavished so much affection. As he had often spoken to us of this and we knew how strongly he felt about it, the authorities carried out his wish. The spot was found and he was finally laid to rest about dusk on September 12, Father Delawney making the service.

I motored to Chicala to visit his grave next day.

After a climb of over a mile up the steep mountain-side, the grave is found under an enormous boulder of rock in the side of a deep gorge, shut in by great trees; it is a solitary and wild spot, where, it is probable, no other white man has ever been except himself and those who took him there to lay him in his grave. I think when he lived in Chicala he must have chosen the spot to sit in the shade and watch the habits of the baboons. He liked the calm and absolute solitude.

Andre Maurois, whose witty and discerning Ariel has made young Shelley live again, now finds in the young Goethe a susceptible figure for another dramatization. It is apt to recall Thackeray’s lyrical version of Werther’s sorrowful romance: —

But here is what really happened, told in prose as deft as Thackeray’s verse. Charles D. Stewart, of Hartford, Wisconsin, — speculative philosopher and good friend, — tells us, among other timely facts, that we are all four years older than we believe. ¶It is with gratification that we print this letter from Bernard M. Baruch, with its interesting reference to his gift of $250,000 wherewith to found a lectureship at the Page School of International Relations.

NEW YORK, September 21, 1925
DEAR ATLANTIC,
It may interest you to know that an article appearing in the Atlantic Monthly, by Mr. Sisley Huddleston, entitled ‘An American Plan For Peace,’ really spurred me on to this further effort. What I had in mind was to crystallize public thought on what those associated with me on the War Industries Board know to be a fact; and that is, if the organization which was functioning at the end of the war could be put into effect at the beginning of a war, no one would make as much profit in war as in peace. I think we have undoubtedly arrived at the point where we never will permit our young men to be sent to fight while others remain at home and profit unfairly during their absence.

¶In his Passage to India,E. M. Forster set about making the Indian understandable to the Englishman. Now he has thought fit to return the compliment with some characteristic notes on John Bull. ¶With dragnet, diving-suit, and binoculars, with a friendliness toward animalculæ that passeth understanding, William Beebe has explored a sea-land on which no Friday ever set foot, ¶It is fitting that a vigorous and modern American poet, Archibald MacLeish, should pay such poignant tribute to the memory of Amy Lowell, whose following verses are happily representative of her art. ¶From San Diego, California, Lyman Bryson has sent what one of our editors has described as a Dresden-china Barrie.

The essay of A. Lawrence Lowell, President of Harvard University, has a direct bearing on the mechanics of education which concerns us all alike — teachers, parents, pupils. ¶No one in this country — or in the world, for that matter — has studied womankind to more practical purpose than has Edward W. Bok. He has learned — to use a vulgarism of our countryside — to put a flea in a lady’s ear. ¶In the company of Lucien Price, lovers of Jean-Christophe will celebrate in this number the anniversary of Romain Rolland. ¶Professor of Psychology at Harvard University, Edwin G. Boring has detected in psychic research a paradox which, as in the Margery case, is the cause of personal bickering and extrinsic controversy. ¶In contrast to our exorbitant New Year’s Eve is Nora Waln’s pretty account of the chaste Chinese ceremony.

William Z. Ripley, Professor of Economics at Harvard University, has devoted serious study to the most significant movement in modern industry, the divorce of ownership from control. The responsibility for the management, both of public-utility and of private industrial corporations, is fast being removed from the owners and lodged in the hands of intermediaries beyond the control both of shareholders and of governmental supervision. The effect of this assumption of power on labor problems may not be inconsiderable.

We commend this paper of Professor Ripley’s to stockholders the country over. To every man who has a stake in industry, it is worth an hour’s time. Take, for instance, one company in which the editor happens to own shares. In June 1924, the capital stock of the Northern States Power Company of Delaware included $0,170,000 in common shares of $100 par value, and $30,450,000 in preferred shares, also of $100 par value. With the control of this stock went the control of the company. On July 1, however, of the same year a new stock was issued of no par value, entitled Class B Stock, to the tune of 500,000 shares at $10 a share. This stock carried voting privileges, and its ownership ensured control. On the last day of this same year, 1924, it is interesting to observe that of this issue 499,913 shares were in the possession of the parent company of the Northern States Power Company, the Standard Gas and Electric Company. A fairly complete transaction!

But to delve a little further into the Eleusinian mysteries of modern finance. This same parent company, the Standard Gas and Electric Company, realizing that the wide sale of its securities was spreading the control as well as the ownership of its stock, issued 1,000,000 shares of voting stock at $1 per share. These peculiarly priced shares, carrying absolute control of the company, were taken over bodily by the company’s promoters, H. M. Byllesby and Company. Thus, after realizing the market value of the shares of the Standard Gas and Electric Company and its subsidiary corporations, the original promoters purchased its continuing control at a nominal price.

They have eaten their cake, and they have it still, so it seems to a layman.

Rear Admiral William S. Sims is well qualified to discuss the recent series of accidents which have made the Navy Department and the public legitimately uneasy. Christian A. Herter, who has served in the State Department and as an assistant to Secretary Hoover, is now one of the editorowners of the Independent. ¶Through his long service in the Massachusetts Legislature, Robert M. Washburn, of Boston, distinguished himself as a witty and individual speaker. Political student and writer as well, Mr. Washburn is the author of a biography of President Coolidge. ¶Late Colonel in the United States Army, always a close student of international affairs, Henry W. Bunn has reviewed judgmatically the chief scenes and characters of the past twelvemonth.

We are glad to publish the following letter. Our readers, however, should understand that the sentence to which Mr. Houdini objects is merely a statement of facts. A number of observers did think that Mr. Houdini’s judgment, whether confirmed by subsequent investigation or not, was too summarily rendered.

NEW YOHK CITY
THE EDITOR OF THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY
DEAR SIR:
Permit me to congratulate you upon your courage in publishing ‘ Science and the Medium,’ and to thank you for that article, which is an echo, fundamentally, of my own report of the origin of Margery’s ‘phenomena.’
There is, however, in your note preceding Mr. Hoagland’s report, a reference to me which you would not have circulated had you been properly informed: You say, ‘Mr. Houdini, on what seemed to many people inadequate ground, charged deliberate fraud.’
May I ask in fairness to myself who the ‘many people’ were who insinuated dishonesty on my part? If they were normal, honest investigators at the séances, they are, no doubt, ready to apologize by now; if they were Margery’s accomplices, persons at large unfamiliar with the Margery case except through propaganda, or one-hundred-per-cent spiritualists, — who are mentally incapable of unbiased judgment, — YOU need not reply: their opinions are automatically discredited by fair men.
‘Many people,’ too, denounced me as being incapable of ‘scientific investigation.’ This was to befog the issue -with the intention of damaging the effect of my report. It is true that I am not a scientist, nor a metaphysician. I do not speak in technical or esoteric terms. My business in the seance-room is not with the soul and spiritual reactions, autosuggestion and results, nor with mental aberrations — it is with the muscles of the human body; it is to detect muscular movements. When I applied thirty-five years’ experience to Margery’s manifestations, it took me the same number of minutes, almost, to discover what it took Mr. Hoagland, Mr. Damon, and so forth, months to rediscover.
HOUDINI

Further impressions of the Moon, in a reminiscent manner.

NEW YORK CITY
DEAR ATLANTIC,
The enclosed was just written by an eight-yearold little girl, spontaneously and in all seriousness. Does it suggest a humorous take-off on any poet of your acquaintance?
Yours in laughter,
JOHN D. WRIGHT THE MOON
The moon is bright
Tonight
Where are the stars
In the wars
The sides are blue
The cows dont moo
The winds doth roar
What more
I dont know
I know
Come come
Hum hum

NEW YORK CITY
DEAR ATLANTIC,
In ‘The Unconscious Humor of the Movies’ Agnes Repplier makes challenging observations concerning ‘Grass,’ a film record of a migration of the Baktyari, a production winch I edited for the screen. Miss Repplier’s specific complaint is about the advertising ‘in terms which are reminiscent of Barnum in the forties.’ Since that advertising was in spirit a reflection of the editorial treatment of the picture, it is relevant for me to consider her criticisms.
This same Barnuming which Miss Repplier holds ‘ to insult our intelligence ‘ did, none the less, favorably affect her judgment. A familiarity with film products does not permit me to agree with her that ‘Grass’ is ‘the most remarkable performance ever achieved by the camera.’ She has been Barnumed into that estimate. Further she asserts: ‘ It tells a tale of sober truth as adventurous as an epic.’ The fact is that the Baktyari are shown merely driving their cows over a mountain to pasture. They do it twice a year. It is a chore, not an epic, even if I did utter considerable typographical excitement on the screen about it. Miss Repplier also admits enjoying the ‘wealth of beautiful detail.’ She may have enjoyed it, but she did not see it. It was not in the pictorial negative. That beautiful detail was Barnumed into words calculated to speed the spectator past the camera’s omissions.
Since Miss Repplier is one of those relatively rare persons whose visual imagination is swiftly responsive to words, she has been led to believe she saw in ‘Grass’ things that she inferred from the captions.
Discussing motion pictures in general, Miss Repplier remarks, ‘ Even the captions seem written for the blackboard of a child’s school rather than for the “people’s university.”’ And, she continues, ‘If, as Current History tells us, “the movies are peculiarly fitted to the age in which we live,” what is the intellectual status of our day?’
Now in very truth motion-picture captions are written to the level of ‘ the blackboard of a child’s school.’ They have to be. That fact is not indictment of the intellectual status of our day, compared to other days, as Miss Repplier appears to fear. In discovering the motion pictures she has discovered what may be to her a new public. We have always had that public. It is one which never has had, does not want, and never will have anything more to do with the art of reading and writing and the printed word than can be avoided.
There is an amazing tendency among such intelligent persons as Miss Repplier to tremendously overestimate the literacy of the American population. The Federal statistics of illiteracy tell us nothing about it in a practical sense. The market for books and magazines of commonplace level is all likely within five to eight millions of our people. If to this Miss Repplier will total the gross circulations of the discriminating publications, she will have an interesting figure to compare with the fifty millions of the motion pictures’ circulation.
Until some evolution of motion-picture distribution makes it possible to serve the intelligent minorities at a profit it will be necessary to make films for the big majority with standards based on the great common denominator of understanding. Meanwhile it will be necessary to continue to write blackboard titles.
Sincerely,
TERRY RAMSAYE

Professor Brandon’s little essay has provoked wide comment upon the ‘business’ of teaching. Here is a suggestive letter from a distinguished engineer.

NEW YORK CITY
DEAR EDITOR:
My own belief and preachment for many years has been, and still is, that Industrial and Moral Value increases faster than Cost, that the wise impresario would rather pay $5000 a night to a Caruso than to pay $500 to a lesser light. This is one of the Universal Laws of Civilization and applies equally to Materials, to Equipment, and to Personnel.
Nevertheless, I dissent from Mr. Brandon’s argument presented in his essay, ‘Good Business,’ in the November Atlantic.
My father was a university professor on small salary. I was a state university professor at the age of twenty-three, having had fourteen years of special preparation, and after six years of intense work was receiving a small annual stipend of $1800. Then, leaving the university, I was promoted, but not easily, into a life that seemed to me of wider utility, and certainly bringing greater remuneration.
I helped settle the great West, I took an industrial part (not gold-seeking) in the opening of Alaska. I took up the great field of industrial wastes. At the age of seventy I went back to teaching, and am now directing, in many cases with personal contact, several thousand students. My life seems to me larger and more useful and accomplishing than it was fifty years ago.
When I left the university I considered what Franklin said: ‘There are two ways: either diminish one’s wants, or increase one’s means.’ I realized that it would be as hard to live on eighteen hundred dollars as to earn eighteen thousand, so I chose the latter, and, with fluctuations, I made good.
The butler or the chauffeur, paid more than the teacher, is at the top of his class, few butlers, few chauffeurs, earning as much. The young teacher is usually taking a postgraduate course, fitting himself for position in honor and in emoluments which the butler and chauffeur could never attain. Is it fair to compare the highest of the butler class (I have known butlers who conscientiously prepared during twenty years for the best positions) with the lieutenants in teaching? How rapidly are Army and Navy men promoted? How fast are civil servants and officials promoted?
During the last twenty years I have had to employ several hundred assistants and I did not find that university teachers were the best candidates. Five other qualities are needed besides ideals and competence.
My next dissent is from the proposition that the successful banker is under moral obligation to augment the stipend of the underpaid teacher. The worker should command his price, not beg for it as a charity. The banker is under no obligation to dispense with the butler or chauffeur in order to add to the teachers’ fund.
I am glad that Duke leaves eighty millions to found an institute of learning, yet better uses might have been made of the money. Mental training is only one of the seven moralities and perhaps of all of them the one most overemphasized at the present time.
I remember hearing a famous mathematician state that the higher mathematics had been developed at least a thousand years beyond any practical need or use. What we want, of course, is good teachers, but also good butlers, good chauffeurs, and good bankers. Let the best man win!
Yours truly,
HARRINGTON EMERSON

From veterans, parents, and grandparents have come scores of letters attesting the fidelity and courage of Miss Boylston’s Diary.

MILWAUKEE, WISCONSIN
DEAR MISS BOYLSTON,
Why did you do it? Do you want to make us all more homesick than ever, remembering again? And yet there must be some painful things we hold tight to us, for I read every word and can hardly wait for the next. So often were your experiences and reactions the same as my own that at times I felt I was the girl writing the diary. I am glad you found time for one. I did n’t, though I started one; and later it seemed one could not even begin to preserve those days in print. But you ‘ve done it, and thank you! Since the war, however, I’ve written — verse, stories, and fairy tales. Anything. You see I tried to work something out of the days that were gone, the days when we lived, if ever young people lived!
Yes, the memory of the old hills! I was in a Flying Field near the Front. I was Red Cross, but without training, so I was only Canteen. But after one has had tea or lunch and danced with all sorts of people, from Foch to Pershing and a bootblack, after one has fed a long line of patient boys, after one has seen suffering and bravery in hospitals and out, it’s hard to find exactly the same interest in bridge and clothes and table linen.
Perhaps you’ve found your way out. I have two children and a veteran husband, who feels as I do. And in a sense we’re happy. We are camping now, and I have nothing but my typewriter — no ink. So you’ll forgive this method of writing. For I felt I must write.
I envy you for being able to be a nurse. You gave real service.
Sincerely and gratefully,
H. M. T.

MEDIA, PA.
DEAR ATLANTIC,
My wife, who is reading an old Atlantic, has been giggling and now her eyes are filled with tears, so I know Pat is dead.
Are we not to have more of Nurse ‘Troub’? Her Diary is a relief to one when harassed and tired.
Yours truly,
WARD A. BATCHELOR

CAPE MAY, N. J.
MY DEAR MISS BOYLSTON:
My only excuse for writing this letter is that I am old and have seven grandchildren, which will, I think, acquit me of the charge of freshness.
When I read the first installment of your Diary in the September Atlantic I felt an almost irresistible impulse to tell you how much I enjoyed it. When I read the second installment yesterday — and had reread it three times in order to extract from its pages every bit of its subtle wit, philosophy, and literary sparkle — the impulse held in leash for a month became absolutely dictatorial, and here I am.
I want you to know that at least one of the Atlantic’s regular readers (and I believe that thousands of them will agree with me) considers ‘Coming of Age’ by all odds the finest thing the magazine has printed in recent years along the line of human documents. Both its thought and its language are so human, so delightfully personal, so clean, and so intriguing that I cannot imagine anyone reading it without wanting to look you in the eye and tell you how good it is.
Admiringly yours,
ALFRED COOPER

From a Reading reader in foreign parts comes this tale of how to beat the Dutch.

GENEVA, SWITZERLAND
DEAR ATLANTIC,
‘Born an’ raised among the Dutch,’ as we say in Pennsylvania’s Lancaster County (my people ' came over ‘ very early in the seventeen-hundreds from Switzerland), I enjoyed both Frances LeFevre’s ‘The Victor — Who?’ and reading J. E. H.’s letter about it. But I have two objections to make to the latter.
In the first place, if — as I ‘ve no doubt — J. E. H. really did hear one of our lads say of a passing freight-train that ‘when the little red car goes by it’s all,’ then that boy must have been the great-grandson of the first youngster to say it, for I’ve heard the story told throughout the State during all the forty-odd years of my life. With one exception! Your true PennsylvaniaDutchman would never say ‘ when the little red car goes by’ — he’d unfailingly say: ‘ When the little red car goes past’ — and he’d flatten his a.
I wonder if your readers know another old Reading story, dated from the happy days when Volstead was still in Norway. A ‘drummer’ from Boston was entertained by a local merchant. The former marveled at the latter’s beer ‘combasity.’ Said the merchant: ‘That’s nothing. — Jim!’ One of the hotel’s hangers-on appeared. ‘Jim,’ continued the merchant, ‘I’m going to make a bet with my friend from Boston that you can drink a bucket of beer without taking the bucket from your lips — can drink it in one swallow.’ Jim hesitated: ‘Will you jes’ wait a minute yet?’ He went out. Presently he reappeared and acknowledged himself ready for the test — and passed it successfully. As the Bostonian handed over the lost money, he inquired: ‘Jim, I’d just like to know one thing. Why did you tell us to wait a minute — why did you go out before making the attempt?’ Jim was candid: ‘Well,’ said he, ‘your frien’ here’s a frien’ of mine, an’, as I ‘d been drinkin’ considerable a’ready to-day, I did n’t want to lose him his money yet. So I jes’ went out to the bar an’ had ‘em fill me a first bucket o’ beer, to see ef I could really trink it. Then, seein’ I could, I comed back an’ had the ozzer.’
REGINALD WRIGHT KAUFFMAN