‘THE Forward View’ sounds a note of optimism and exciting prediction which draws virtue from the realistic experience and authoritative position of its author. Alfred P. Sloan, Jr., president of the General Motors Corporation of America, is one of the few leaders of industry who combine technical scientific training with large executive talents. Prophecy is often a thankless business, but your prophet is sometimes your true realist, as witness these pertinent lines from linger Bacon, written about seven hundred years ago: ’Machines for navigating arc possible without rowers,so that great shifts suited to river or ocean, guided by one man, may be borne with greater speed than if they were full of men. Likewise ears may be made — so that without a draught animal they may be moved with inestimable speed . . . and Hying machines are possible so that a mail may sit in the middle turning some device by which artificial wings may beat the air in the manner of a flying bird.’ ▵ Any reader who combines a love of poetry with a love of camping has run across The Gypsy Trail, an ant hology for campers, which Pauline Goldmark compiled with a friend some years ago. In it are many verses to carry as weightless baggage on tramps such as the Range trip which the Coldmarks took one glorious June day with that best of companions, William James. Josephine Goldmark, with the help of William James’s own words to her sister and others, recaptures in ‘An Adirondack Friendship’ those golden Adirondack summers. Albert Jay Nock is sui generis. Since Art emus Ward is one of his twin intellectual passions (Rabelais is in his other pocket), ‘Artemus Ward’s America’ is, even for A. J. N., an exceptionally acute and just criticism of the American spirit—such a criticism as Ward him sell might have expressed, in somewhat different language.

This was our introduction to Elizabeth Jay Etnier: ‘Since last September I have lived with my husband, Stephen Etnier, who is a painter, on a schooner (67 feet long). During that time I kept, a casual journal of our doings — and that is ‘We Live on a Schooner.’ At present the young Etniers are anchored at South Harpswell, Maine. ▵ ‘ Recognizing the Company Union,’ by George E. Sokolsky, continues a discussion of the labor questions which the Atlantic believes to be the most considerable obstacle in the path ahead. David Gomel Dejong (‘Home-coming’) came to America from the Netherlands in 1618, when he was thirteen years old. Educated at Duke and Brown universities, he has published several short stories and a novel, which will be followed by another next spring. Bergen Evans makes his iirsl appearance in the Atlantic. A student and teacher of democratic principles, he recounts in ‘Demos’ a recent actual experience. ▵ ‘ Prayer in an Evil Time’ is by Robert Nathan, who attained through his novel, One More Spring, the wide general notice he has Jong deserved.

’Theodore Roosevelt’s Washington’ concludes the excerpts we are publishing from Mrs. Winthrop Winthrop Chanler’s Spring. which will appear September 7 under the auspices of the Atlantic Monthly Press. Those who dip deeper into the Spring will appreciate how difficult was our task of selection. J. W. N. Sullivan’s unusually catholic outlook, as shown in ’Science and the Layman,’ is the result of unusually complete contact with life. His recent publications include not only his invaluable reviews of scientific books in the London Times Literary Supplement, not only Aspects of Science. History of Mathematics in Europe, and The Rases of Modern Science, but also Beethoven: His Spiritual Development, and an autobiography, But for the Grace of God. A September is the month which generally exacts the heaviest toll in motor accidents. To the attention of motorists we commend ‘ Rules of the Road.’ Curtis Billings is a member of the Public Safety Division of the National Safety Council. Bruce Barton, the man everybody knows, wrote us recently that be had just returned ’from a rather hurried but thoroughly delightful jaunt, around the world.

I attempted no writing, but I did sat down a law observations regarding our foreign service.’ Hare they are — ‘Dollars and Diplomats.’ A ‘ Facing least’ is also the result of travel and study, ‘in most of the countries of the least, and of even more I thinking on the general subject.’ Edwin R. Embree is president of the Julius Rosenwald Fund. ▵ The story of Neal and Gay began appropriately as ‘Prelude to Love’ in our last December issue, leach is a separate story, but readers who remember the ’Prelude’ will savor the full poignanee of ‘The Pearl.’ Fur ten years Ogden Heath has been laid low by arthritis, but, as a friend wrote us, ‘he is the centre of an admiring group of friends and relatives, the life ol every one of whom is sweetened and enriched by his courage, his wide culture, and his tolerant point of view.’ A ‘Domestic Manners of the English’ is a chapter from a book which Margaret Farrand Thorp is writing with her professorhusband, dedicated inevitably to Mrs.Trollope. ‘Dornatis,’Daily Telegraph correspondent at The Hague and Doom, looks to recent events for the answer to the momentous question, ‘Will the Hohenzollerns Return?’

Does Gresham’s law apply to newspapers?

Dear Atlantic,—
As an obscure teacher of journalism I take my courage in both hands when I rise to protest against the brilliant Albert Jay Nock who would apply the well-known economic law of Sir Thomas Gresham to the publication of newspapers. This is not try any means the first time that the fascinating analogy between the circulation of dearer and cheaper money and the circulation ol highbrow and lowbrow newspapers has been pointed out. Many writers on sociology, notably Ross and Norman Angell, have dwelt upon the analogy, but they have generally contented themselves with some statement like that of Mr. Nock, ‘a glance at the nearest news stand will show,’ without pretending to offer substantial proof that there is any real analogy.
So long as human nature remains what it is, Gresham’s law will apply to currency, but that is no proof that it will apply equally well in the higher realms of art, literature, ethics, morals, and the like. In the first place, the analogy between the coinage of money and the. printing of a newspaper is not perfect. The newspaper is a medium of communication, not a medium of exchange. Instead of passing from hand to hand as money is meant to do, the newspaper stops in the hands of the purchaser. I’he. same instinct which leads ns to hold the good coin while we pass on the baser would lead us to choose lor our daily information not the poorer paper but the best.
Again, we realize that compulsory education in this country and elsewhere has provided a vast mass of readers whose I. Q. is not up to the standards of the highbrow newspapers. These barely literate readers will begin, no doubt, to read the tabloids and sensational yellows. But is there any proof that none of them ever rises to a higher level? Experienced editors show figures to prov e that multitudes do rise. On the other side of the case, has Mr. Nock any evidence that the highbrow papers are losing ground to the lowbrows? The fact that a certain unnamed ‘quality magazine’ published in 1874 has since deteriorated dot’s not seem a ‘substantial basis tor generalization.
One of the most encouraging evidences that the worst papers do not drive out the best came out prominently in the pressmen’s strike in 1923. On that occasion for a considerable time not one of the daily morning papers published in New York City was able to operate its plant. To keep from absolute stagnation eight of the great metropolitan morning journals combined to issue a joint paper. These papers were as widely different as the Progresso Italiano Americano from the Staats Zeitung or Hearst’s American from the Herald Tribune, all of which were included in the combined newspaper. But when the combined paper appeared it resembled no paper so much as the most highbrow of them all, the New York Times. It was a case of the survival of the fittest. And in accordance with that law of nature rather than Gresham’s law the newspaper will survive. PKDAGOGUS State College, Pennsylvania

Hail to Haines.

Dear Atlantic. — The story Must Plain Nuts’ seemed to me one of the best things you have published in a long time, not only for its intrinsic interest, but for its recognition of the romance and high courage involved in everyday services of which the ordinary man is hardly conscious. THOMAS T. READ Scarsdale, New York

Sic transit gloria.

Dear Atlantic, In order to ‘vitalize’ the study of classical languages, the New York Stale Education Department caused a new type of question to be used in the Regents Examinations this spring. Here is a question from the Latin III paper, and the answer given by one l>oy.
Question: Name a reform of Gains Gracchus similar to one that is now being advocated by President Roosevelt.

Answer: Al that time (about 140 B.C.) Rome, which had grown up through its various regimes to a position of power and influence in the world, found itself tottering in the last stages of the republic. It was run by its officeholders instead of its citizens, who found conditions very had.
Although the resources of the republic were great, the people did n’t have enough to eat and were clamoring for food and good prices for their products, especially the farmers.
Gains Gracchus spiked the price of grain and built storehouses to hold the large amount which the government bought of the farmers. He also built good roads. But soon things got worse and they had dictators. After this Rome finally folded up and went into the Middle Ages. Altogether Rome existed as a good place to live for a relatively short time compared to its whole life. It was a poor place to live as soon as the officeholders had to try to support the country instead of the country supporting the ofliceholders. This began about the time of Gains Gracchus, when Rome was nearly through.
President Roosevelt’s policy of spiking prices of farm products and trying to chase the jobless back to the farms to raise more products to spike the prices of is a good deal like G. Gracchus’s. Our country has lasted through a monarchy and a republic about as many years relatively as Rome did. And here it is 1934. HENRY V. BUTTON Waterford, New York

The ‘Alternate Vole’ plan.

Deaf Atlantic,-
It is a serious defect in our elective system that it permits a minority (plurality) candidate to win. The Southern states require a majority to nominate. but tills is accomplished by the expensive second primary between the two highest.
Lloyd George’s ‘Alternate Vote’ plan, which he got through the. House of Commons, accomplishes majority rule much more simply. The text of this bill follows: —
1 (a) A voter at any election may indicate the candidate who is his first choice by placing the mark X on his paper ballot opposite the name of that candidate, and any ballot paper so marked shall be counted as a first-preference vole given to that candidate.
(b) He may also place the figure 2 opposite the name of the candidate whom he would prefer if the candidate who is his first choice cannot he elected.
2 (a) If on the counting of the votes a candidate receives an absolute majority of first-choice voles, that candidale shall be declared elected.
(b) If no candidate has receiver! an absolute majority of first-preference votes, the candidate who has received the smallest number of first - preference votes shall be excluded, and each ballot so far counted for him, which indicates a second choice for one of the other candidates, shall be transferred to and counted as a vote given to that other candidate, and the candidate who receives an absolute majority of the votes reckoned at that count shall be declared elected.
(c) If still no candidate has received an absolute majority of the voles, the process of excluding the lowest candidate shall be continued until one candidate receives an absolute majority of the votes reckoned at the count.
As our two-party system seems now to be breaking down, the importance of electing candidates bv majority vole greatly increases. Before we abandon democracy let us make it more democratic by electing candidates by majority vote instead of by a mere plurality, which often may consist of little more than a third of ihe electorate. GEORGE STEWART BROWN United States Customs Court New York City

In memory of a contributor.

Dear Atlantic,—
I have just received word of the death of Mrs. Edith Svensen, your correspondent from the Solomon Islands. About ten years ago you published a letter from her telling about her life on Kokomuruki Island, Guadalcanal, British Solomon Islands, and saying that she would he glad to answer anyone who cared to write to her, as letters were her only pleasure. At that time my sister, Lucy Davies, wrote to her, and in due time received a very nice letter from Mrs. Svensen. Mr. and Mrs. Svensen proved to he charming people, talented in many ways, and keeping up a brave heart against terrible odds. Their chid dependence was on the sale of copra, and some three or four years ago the bottom dropped out of the market, and they have had a very meagre living ever since. Our last letter from Mrs. Svensen, written about New Year’s, was, as usual, cheerful and uncomplaining, though she spoke of her anxiety for Mr. Svensen’s health and said she herself had had a bad fall and was not feeling very well.
Yesterday I received a letter from Mr. Jack Svensen, her husband, telling us that Mrs. Svensen died on March 20, 1934, at the government hospital at Tulagi (Solomon Islands) of broncho-pneumonia following influenza. We are very much saddened by the news, and feel sincerely sorry for Mr. Svensen, alone on his little island, with only a few natives near him. I hope it will be possible for him to make other plans for his life, but of course I know nothing about that. Since Mrs. Svensen counted the Atlantic among her dearest friends, I thought you would want to know about her death. EDITH R. DAVIES Dayton, Ohio