To see men as trees walking is not such an aberration after all, when one knows as much about them as Charles D. Stewart. Those who recall his illuminating papers on bees will be prepared for the temper of mind which is scientifically ready to accept an explanation at its full worth, but humanly alive to the limits of explanations at their best. ▵ Men express their individuality in the vacations which they choose. Earnest Elmo Calkins finds relaxation from the responsibilities of a national advertising business in motor journeys through France and Italy. ▵ A pilgrimage through the Ozark Mountains in search of health has led to the remarkable series of encounters and adventures among the hill folk which Eleanor Kisley records. Readers will be interested in the following paragraphs from a recent letter we received from Mrs. Risley: —

The flus have ravaged our mountains. No physicians and no nurses. Insufficient clothing, lack of nourishing food, pneumonia, and so many new graves in the dripping rain on Concord Hill....
A year ago no one had even heard of the Atlantic. In I—last week they were eagerly borrowing the last number from each other. The postmaster was waiting for the second Socratic Dialogue. At the little cream station two women were talking of the Puka-Puka story, and Hilly at the blacksmith shop wTas discussing the philosophy of Joseph Krutch. How far the Atlantic throws its beams! (They read my own stories with but languid interest, hut admire my checks!)

Five years ago Robert Dean Frisbie opened a store on a remote atoll for a South Seas trading company. He kept the establishment for four years, until it was sold by the owners. He is, at this writing, on his way to America. Miss Repplier is now in Europe. Geoffrey Johnson is a young English poet. ▵ Formerly an English civil servant in India, Charles Johnston has studied the thought of the East and felt its influence. He has traveled extensively, has translated Eastern, Russian, and German writings, and is the author of several books of his own. Marjorie Nicolson is an associate professor of English at Smith College. In sending us her manuscript, she writes as follows: —

I have waited in vain for someone else to do this, and so finally I have done it myself! Although magazines have talked a good deal this year about the vogue of detective stories, no one seems to have pointed out the remarkable extent to which they are becoming the fare of the supposed ‘intellectual.’ You probably know that Professor Kittredge is supposed to be the great champion in the field; and that Professor Lowes is not far behind him. Professors of philosophy are perhaps the most omnivorous—Professor Lovejoy of Johns Hopkins and Professor Singer of Pennsylvania have almost unique collections. I am willing to wager anything that when the Modern Language Association begins its convention at Toronto this week more time will be devoted to the subject of detective stories than to any other one form of art. As a matter of fact, I think the real reason many of us never miss a meeting is that we are afraid we might miss the latest detective find of the year.
I know this article should have been written by a man — for the detective story is, of course, a man’s story preëminently. My only excuse must be that most of my associates at M. L. A. will vouch for the fact that I am recognized — for a woman — as being close to an authority on the subject! We all admit the reservation; a scholar whom I greatly admire is kind enough to say that, considering the disadvantages of my age and sex, he thinks I may some day be worthy to be ranked with the really great readers of the detective story!

President of the American office of Revillon Frères, one of the largest furriers of file world, Captain Thierry Mallet writes from first-hand knowledge of the life of the fur trader in the far North. ▵ The recent death of C. E. Montague, who was prominent on the staff of the Manchester Guardian, deprives English letters of an essayist and novelist whose loss none can make good. ▵ A lover of the Irish people, Mary E. L. Hennigan writes with reality of cruel episodes. Paul M. Angle is executive secretary of the Lincoln Centennial Association of Springfield, Illinois. The editor of the Atlantic, after talking with him in Chicago, in the course of an extended investigation of his own, gave Mr. Angle the information he had acquired and invited him to contribute the reasoned estimate which appears in this number. Readers especially interested in the many fascinating phases of this discussion may readily compare the facsimiles of documents in the Minor collection which appeared in the December and January numbers with easily accessible examples of authentic Lincoln writing in Carl Sandburg’s The Prairie Years or other familiar biographies.

Salvador de Madariaga, now professor of Spanish Studies at Oxford, was formerly Chief of the Disarmament Section of the Secretariat of the League of Nations. His paper represents the general thesis, greatly condensed and applied especially to America, of a book which will treat comprehensively the difficult problems and proposed solutions of the world question of disarmament. Bernhard Ostrolenk is experienced both as an economist and as an agriculturist. He has served as Director of the National Farm School at Doylestown, Pennsylvania, and as lecturer on Agricultural Finance at the University of Pennsylvania. He has organized several community and coöperative associations. ▵ From his headquarters in Cairo, Captain Owen Tweedy has traveled widely in the Near East and in Africa.

For those who may have missed an installment of Mazo de la Roche’s sequel to Jalna, we print a brief synopsis: —

The story up to this point is concerned with the struggles of young Finch Whiteoak to pass his examinations for college, and at the same time to follow his strong musical and artistic leanings. A successful venture into amateur theatricals wins for him the warm friendship of Arthur Leigh, a boy some years older than himself. From Leigh’s family, consisting of a younger sister and a widowed mother, Finch gains the sympathy and encouragement denied him by his own more vigorous relatives. His strong desire for money to spend on concerts and a radio induces Finch, without the knowledge of his family, to join a group of young men in the neighboring town in forming a small orchestra, with Finch as pianist, playing occasionally at cheap restaurants and dances.

Many have enjoyed Mr. Gilfillan’s accounts of sheep herding, and many letters have reached us from persons who have undergone a like experience and found in his narrative a picture of episodes in their own lives. Much of the tenderest pastoral literature has gathered about lambs, and we are glad to quote from a letter which describes lambing time on the range.

SANTA ANA, CALIFORNIA
DEAR ATLANTIC, —
Being one of those who have tasted the joys of college and sheep herding, I was especially interested in Mr. Gilfillan’s article, ‘This Is the Life!’ in your last December number.
However, I do think Mr. Gilfillan omitted one of the most interesting of all experiences: that of lambing. Upon this event the good or bad fortunes of the sheepman are hung. In Wyoming lambing usually takes place in the latter part of April or the beginning of May, depending entirely upon the facilities on hand, such as cover, feed, and so forth. Some ranchers ‘lamb’ on the range, others in sheds; and since I am more familiar with the latter, I shall describe it.
The sheep, preceding lambing, are brought in from the range, where they have been wintering, and all the wether (male) lambs, bucks, if any, and yearling ewes, including the old-timers, are cut out, leaving only those heavy with lamb. These ewes are formed into a drop herd, one or two, depending upon the number of sheep in the original bands.
Lambing in sheds means protection for the sheep, and every sheepman must conduct his campaign along those lines which are most adapted to his range and other general local conditions. In this case two large sheds were used: one, a so-called night shed; the other, a day shed. During the day the herder grazes his sheep within a reasonable distance of these two places. He is at all times followed by two lambing wagons, long boxes divided into two sections, each one allowing enough room for nine ewes, thus making eighteen in all. On both sides of this wagon are small compartments in which the lambs are placed. It is the job of the lambingwagon driver to follow the herd and whenever a lamb is dropped to capture it with its mother, which incidentally is no small job. To accomplish this task he makes use of the proverbial sheep crook. In most cases the ewe will not leave its young and therefore can easily be hooked by a skillful crooker, but occasionally one encounters a ‘ wild woolly ’ and reenforcements are necessary. The herder, on horseback, is then called into action, and a race rivaling those at Tia Juana follows until one or the other drops from exhaustion, usually the sheep, which is then crooked amid much profanity and finally placed on the wagon with its lamb, each having been tagged for identification. Such a wild woolly usually recuperates quickly and with one wild leap escapes to freedom, another chase ensuing, and so on, until she, much to everyone’s delight, is finally safely lodged in a small compartment in the shed. Thus, in time, all the lambs and ewes are brought under shelter.
In the shed there is a man who might be termed a sheep doctor and with whom patience is a virtue. It is his duty to guard, protect, and care for these first-born lambs. Those that are weak must be suckled, those that are cold must be warmed. For this last purpose he has invented a baking oven, a steel box overhanging a stove, into which the shivering and nearly dead lamb is placed and allowed to bake like a potato. Usually such a lamb is stiff and can scarcely blat, but fifteen minutes of such a process will so warm him up that one can easily imagine the oven turned into a radio with excessive static on the air. Suckling a lamb involves many principles: first, that of patience. Sometimes the lamb, although weak and hungry, refuses to drink; sometimes the ewe insists upon being stubborn and can hardly be milked. Can it be wondered that anybody in such a position is easily able to invent new ‘cuss’ words and generally berate such a sheep from its ancestors down? The sick ewes and lambs must be doctored. Those internal organs which have been strained must be readjusted, while the lambs having a bard time in birth must be assisted.
A sheep claims its young entirely by smell for the first two or three weeks, and thus it is possible to give orphans mothers. For example, suppose a dead lamb is born. The mother of this dead lamb has plenty of milk and is anxious to have a live one of her own. On the other hand, there is another ewe with twins* who, on account of her condition, is scarcely able to feed one of her offspring properly. The dead lamb is skinned and the hide is made into a jacket which is slipped over the head and back of one of the twins, much to his disgust and humiliation. The mother of the dead lamb is then brought and placed in the same pen with this jacketed lamb. She at first can scarcely believe this peculiarlooking animal to be hers, but upon approaching and smelling all doubt is removed, and she at once claims him as her own. Such a procedure is usually sure to work, although sometimes, because of the lack of the correct precautions, it does fail. One rather extraordinary case comes to my mind while writing. It involves the case of a lamb at least two weeks old who had unfortunately lost its mother. This lamb was huge and very troublesome, imagining any of us who happened by to be his mother, and making more noise himself than an elevated train in New York City. This fellow, because of his bothersome vocal abilities, forced us to seek for him a mother. Finally we were able to do so by skinning a lamb which had just been born dead. The hide was made over into a jacket and slipped over the head of the would-be son. The hide, however, barely covered his shoulders, and he resembled a half-clad child, one who had his shirt, but had forgotten his trousers. The mother was then brought, and promptly refused to claim him. The lamb, however, was large enough to have his own way, and managed to get his dinner notwithstanding the other’s efforts to prevent him. Thus we have a lamb claiming a mother without her consent.
PAUL E. SPAETH

While we are speaking of sheep, a reader in Germany lias this to say of their service to the art of music.

STUTTGART, GERMANY
DEAR ATLANTIC, —
I am merely an Innocent Abroad and not a Benvolio. To date, nobody has said to me: ‘Thou hast quarrell’d with a man for coughing in the street, because he hath wakened thy dog that hath lain asleep in the sun.’ But in spite of my pacific penchant, I feel tempted beyond my power of resistance to try a tilt at Dr. Bunk, who appears in your November Contributors’ Column. He dwells provokingly on the ‘most unromantic portion of the feline anatomy, in relation to violin strings. But Cat and Fiddle have never come together except in a certain publichouse sign, a corruption of Catherine la fidèle, who made her home in St. Petersburg long before it was renamed Leningrad. The members of the ‘Modern Truth Association,’ I take it, should have refuted Dr. Bunk at once, asking him: ' What can you have of a cat hut her skin? ’ Telling him that violin strings are not made of catgut, that being a playful misnomer, but that it is the entrails of sheep, horses, donkeys, et al. that are made into strings for the various orchestral stringed instruments. Even Shakespeare knew of it, to wit: ‘Now, divine air! now is his soul ravish’d! Is it not strange that sheeps’ guts should hale souls out of men’s bodies?’
Very truly,
OSCAR GUNKEL

A Prohibitionist speaks.

UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS
DEAR ATLANTIC, —
Without disrespect to President Lowell, I submit that the backbone of his argument on Prohibition is a fallacy. His comparison of the Eighteenth Amendment to the amendment for negro suffrage is a false analogy. The two are unlike in essentials. They seem alike, if each is deemed a premature enactment of a theoretical good. But the prematurity of negro suffrage was so deadly a factor as to render the law theoretically evil for its day. Therefore the more the law was enforced, the worse the results. But the more Prohibition can be enforced, the better the results (that is, the objective results, which are sufficient to show the two laws not analogous). My argument is not that Prohibition will succeed, but that no predictions can be based on the failure of negro suffrage.
Why did that colossal blunder of Reconstruction dazzle the majority for so long? Because an eternal right, Emancipation, towered beside and far above it, whence it caught a specious glory. Emancipation is the true parallel to Prohibition; it differs from Prohibition in magnitude, not in principle. Both were born of the exigencies of war into an unready world; both enjoined a good on some who were blind to it; both occasioned lawlessness. But the chaos following Emancipation did not kill it off like negro suffrage in President Hayes’s administration. Why need the disorders of to-day kill off Prohibition, if it is right?
The ‘if’ is the crux. President Lowell states that lawyers would class a violation of the Volstead Act under malum prohibitum, an act not generally esteemed immoral, but forbidden by legislation. This statement, though true, is unfortunate if taken as final. If, as many believe, the harm of alcohol is a fact, even mild indulgence ought eventually to be regarded as a malum in se, an act intrinsically wrong.
In testimony of the latter belief, let another eminent Harvard name be heard. Charles W. Eliot, in 1917, became a total abstainer. His reason, publicly stated, was as follows: —
‘When the United States in the spring of 1917 went to war, you remember that with the support of all the best civilian authorities, and of the officers in the army and navy, our Government enacted a prohibitory law for the regions surrounding the camps and barracks where the National Army was being assembled. The Act proved to be effective and highly beneficent.
‘Then I said to myself, “If that is the action of my Government to protect our soldiers and sailors preparing to go to war, I think it is time for me to abstain from alcoholic drinks altogether.” It is only since 1917 that I have been a total abstainer; but that is now six years ago, and I want to testify here, now, that by adopting total abstinence, after having had the opposite habit for over seventy years, one loses no joys that are worth having, and there is no joykilling about it. On the contrary, I enjoy social life and working life more since I ceased to take any alcohol than I did before.’
President Eliot believed in National Prohibition of all liquors and in no halfway measures. He said, ‘ I learned [from past results in Massachusetts] that the sale of distilled liquors in saloons licensed to sell light wines and beer cannot be prevented. Nobody should advocate the repeal of the Volstead Act except those who believe in the unrestricted sale of alcoholic beverages.’
CATHARINE BANCROFT BEATLEY

Telegram from the School of Citizenship, Syracuse University.

WISH TO USE FOUR HUNDRED AND FIFTY COPIES PRESIDENT LOWELL’S PROHIBITION ARTICLE WITH FRESHMEN IN COURSE ENTITLED INTRODUCTION TO RESPONSIBLE CITIZENSHIP

It strikes us that certain of these documents in Japanese ought to be as interesting as Mark Twain’s Jinn piny Frog in French.

LOS ANGELES, CAL.
DEAR ATLANTIC, —
I am wondering if you knew that your series of articles on ‘Lincoln the Lover’ is being translated into Japanese and running in serial in the Rafu Shirnpo here in Los Angeles.
JUSTIFICUS

From a Christian and a fellow editor.

SAN FRANCISCO, CAL.
DEAR ATLANTIC, —
Please allow me to express to you my deep appreciation of the splendid services you are rendering to the education of our American citizens in the essential matters of religion, through your numerous articles on the various aspects of religion and morals, such as these of President Bernard I. Bell, Dr. Herbert Parrish, and the late Robert Keable. To some these articles seem inconsistent and some are offended, as is illustrated by the recent editorial, ‘Pitch or Pearls (as purveyed by the Atlantic Monthly),’ in the Living Church. But with your diversified clientele of readers it. is your privilege and duty to publish the various religious attitudes, so long as they are stated in a respectful and tolerant spirit. Mr. Keable is not the only one who has defended the traditional Jesus. Although we do not have to endorse the details of Mr. Keable’s exegesis, in establishing bis position toward the traditional Jesus, let me quote the following extract from a recent editorial in the Modern Churchman, defending the position of the traditional Jesus.
‘It is possible, I think, to believe in the essential truth of each of these doctrines (the Incarnation, Atonement, and Resurrection) without believing in an historical Jesus. I will not argue that point now, but there is something to be said for it. I would merely remark that we have no difficulty in believing in the profound moral and spiritual truths set forth in the parable of the Prodigal Son because it is parable and not history. But the test of the Christian life is doing the will of God, and would the fact of the discovery that Jesus had never lived affect our conception of the will of God, or the sense of obligation to strive to do it? I think it would not for most thoughtful people. But would such a life be really entitled to be called Christian? Yes, it would. Christ’s test was the test of works: the test of conduct and character; those words of his which ring in our ears, “Why call ye me Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say? ” “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me,”would pass no condemnation on such a life, of which the dominating ideal was obedience to the Divine Will as set forth in the Synoptic Gospels. Such a form of the Christian religion, although its adherents had no belief in the actual historical Jesus, would yet be a great moral and spiritual force in the life of the individual and in the life of humanity at large.
‘We do well to realize this, for some people speak as though if we lost the historical Jesus to-day we should also lose the Christian religion. I doubt it. We should still have a form of Christian religion which could find its realization in love to God and love to men — the fulfillment of the Two Great Commandments; we could still seek the blessings contained in the Beatitudes; we could still pray the Lord’s Prayer. And these, let us not forget, are the very heart of the religion of Jesus. Would it be a small thing, either for ourselves or for mankind, to promote as the ideal of human life the love of God and Man? Would it not be within our power, even if there were no historical Jesus, to realize one of the most profound Christian experiences, as expressed by the writer of I John? “We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brethren.” ’
We must be all things unto all men if we are to be the ambassadors of the eternal truths as contained in the assertion of facts in our historical creeds as well as in the Jesus of tradition indelibly written upon our loving hearts.
With best wishes, I am,
Faithfully yours,
BRITTON D. WEIGLE
Editor, the Pacific Churchman

Unsuspected virtues of the politician.

WASHINGTON, D. C.
DEAR ATLANTIC, —
I do not wish to seem intrusive upon editorial functions and I rise only to ask for a discussion in some future Atlantic of ‘the politician as a social shock absorber.’
Between our will to do our kind of good, vi et armis, to our neighbor, and his equally compelling urge to do as much for us, the politician stands and, by his realistic methods, deflects into quiet channels the surging floods of uplift.
Picture life were we allowed to wreak upon each other, unhampered, our good intentions. Society exists, imperfect as it is, only because of the politician’s skill in neutralizing our earnest endeavors not to leave one another alone.
No more maligned and less defined figure functions in our civilization. Let us give these drawers of herring their due. They keep for us our throats unslit, and that civilization endures longest which has the most skillful and unprincipled of them; if we believed in politicians more and political faith-healers (a quite different profession) less, our national expectation of life would be much more favorable. They are the only people who do not intend ‘to do something about it,’ and even when they say they do, we remain comforted in the knowledge that they will not. But they are most useful in thwarting those who are trying to hasten the coming of that pandemonium which they have mistaken for the millennium.
No advocatus diaboli could have an easier task.
Sincerely yours,
FREDERIC II. POWELL