THAT the British secret service acted with extraordinary vigilance during the American Revolution, as indeed throughout the Great war, is well known. But it comes with something of a shock to realize that in the person of a Yankee, Edward Bancroft by name, the Colonies harbored a traitor infinitely worse than Benedict Arnold. Queerer still, the man most betrayed by the spy was that shrewd and famous citizen, Benjamin Franklin. Not until the British archives were opened more than a hundred years after the treachery were the facts brought to light. Burton J. Hendrick assembled this astonishing proof in the research for his new volume, The Lees of Virginia, which comes from the press on October 4. ▵ Walter Hines Page employed much of his editorial acumen in an effort to improve the education within his beloved South. We wonder what he would have to say about the predicament of Wendell Brooks Phillips, who was born in West Virginia of purely New England ancestry. With an A. B. and an A. M. from Harvard, Mr. Phillips taught at Middlebury College in Vermont and at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, before beginning a ten-year service in the Hick College which had brought him up. Now he’s fired.

Born in Georgia and a graduate of the University of Virginia, Erskine Caldwell is known here and abroad for his short stories, his books, God’s Lillie Acre and We Are the Living, and his play, Tobacco Road. ▵ The credit of every American in business is directly dependent upon the credit of the United States, and the credit of the United States can only be maintained if its books balance. In the second of his five articles on fiscal reform the Honorable Lewis W. Douglas drives home a barbed argument which he hopes will stick in the mind of every conscientious American. Briefly it is tins: the average unemployed worker must realize that his chance of getting a job through the present policy of Government spending is something less than one out of ten. ▵ The French, surely one of the most self-contained peoples in history, are always something of a puzzle to the outsider. Leon Trotsky, the born rebel, had taken refuge in France at a time when another exile, Stavisky, had gone into hiding. Now from his retreat in Scandinavia he seeks to evalue France in terms of two of its personalities. ▵ Simultaneously, in his calm voice of authority, Havelock Ellis, the English psychologist, appraises the genius of another Frenchman, Marcel Proust. His essay will appear in a new volume, From Rousseau to Proust, which is to be published on October 29. ▵ Educated at Brenau College, Georgia, and at Columbia University, Sara Henderson Hay is a poet whose voice is being listened to with increasing pleasure. ▵ An American Negress, resourceful, spirited, and as honest as the day is long, Juanita Harrison has worked her way through twenty-two countries, being variously employed as a cook, housekeeper, and ladies’ maid. The Atlantic has examined her much-visaed passports and has relished the snapshots of her ‘in native dress.’ From the admirable letters of reference we reproduce one from George W. Dickinson, 112 West 9th Street, Los Angeles, California, explaining, as it does, the source of Juanita’s tiny income: —

Juanita worked for us for four years prior to 1928, which were prosperous years prior to the crash of 1929. Domestic wages were very high and we paid her $75 a month, including room and board; and, as you know, Juanita never spent a cent unless she absolutely had to and saved every cent that she could get hold of. She always made friends with whomever she worked for and a great many gifts were given to her in the way of dresses and clothes. From time to time we purchased for her a $900 trust deed (mortgage) that bore 8 per cent interest, a $450 trust deed at 8 per cent, a $650 trust deed at 8 per cent, and a $550 trust deed at 8 per cent. That made $51 interest quarterly, or $204 a year.

After the crash in 1929 the trouble commenced: we reduced the interest rates. Two of the trust deeds fell down entirely. Now, instead of having her money invested in what we supposed were good mortgages, drawing good interest, she has but little interest, with vacant lots that at the present time are an expense to her.

On his return from war, Henry Williamson withdrew to a tiny stone hut on the Devon moors, and from that hermitage began his exploration of Nature and his study of lives hidden to most men. Esme Howard (Lord Howard of Penrith) has indulged in that English propensity of living all over the map, and, wherever he was, converting the natives to a lifelong friendliness. Edward Weeks is an editor and reviewer who lives on manuscripts and milk. His book, This Trade of Writing, will he published in mid-October. ▵ Poet and novelist, Robert Nathan deserves our thanks for his Lender and provocative volumes, One More Spring and Road of Ages. Paul Hoffman edits by day in order that he may write by night. ▵ The Atlantic prints the first story of Maxine Einsterwaid with the understanding that there will he others as delightful to com. For three years in succession, 1928-1930 Plays of hers were prize winners. ▵ It has taken S. Foster Damon several years to complete his definitive biography of Amy Lowell. Readers are anticipating its arrival this fall. ▵ New York lawyer, John Foster Dulles prevails on us to think these things through quietly. It is one of the cussed contradictions of human nature that people who live the most peaceful lives at home are so irreconcilable, so hard to calm in times of national excitement.

SOS.

Miss Margaret G. Emerson, 325 East 72nd Street, New York City, has information from Hilda Hose that she will he pleased to communicate to those who plan to send Mrs. Rose letters for the approaching Christmas.

Mr. Flexner stands corrected.

Dear Atlantic,—
My attention has been called to a slip in my paper in the August Atlantic. The sum of $5,000,000 dollars was raised for the University of lowa, one half contributed by the State, one half by the General Education Board. It was the University of Rochesler Medical School for which $10,000,000 was raised, one half contributed by George Eastman, the other half by the General Education Board. The effect, in the case of the University of lowa, was, however, precisely what the article states.
ABRAHAM FLEXNER Ontario, Canada

Rebuttal from the left of the hall.

Dear Atlantic.
I am wondering if yon would he inclined to print a letter of criticism from a reader who sees things rather differently from Abraham Flexner.
First. Mr. Flexner cites a number of institutions which, he claims, would never have come into being except under the ægis is of private philanthropy. I could point out the inavailahility and lack of utility of these institutions to the majority of the people of the country (unless possessed of considerable cash or connections). Compared to this I could poinl out the marvelous institutions of education and research erected in Moscow under the aegis of the people through their government, and the complete availability and utility of these institutions so far as is humanly possible to all the people regardless of their position in life or their connections.
Secondly, may I inquire as to the desirability of a system which through monopoly control of an industry is able to pile up huge surpluses of the people’s money and then gives back a portion of this surplus and thus arouses great approbation for these ‘great benefactors of mankind’ (not to mention a nice magazine article or two). I am reminded of a Ford worker who says that his fellow workers were literally forced to accept little gardens from the largesse of Mr. Ford no matter how inconvenient or costly it might be to operate said gardens. No doubt Mr. Ford will have, a nice article written about him, too.
How kind and generous of Mr. Rockefeller. Jr., for example, whose net income from the work of several millions of workers who buy gas, oil, and so forth, amounts to so much that he is able not only to live luxuriously and increase his net worth, but also, through the Rockefeller Foundation and General Education Board, and so forth, to give back some of the millions to the same people from whom he took them the meanwhile receiving the thanks of the populace for his generosity. I have in mind a local bigwig, giving with his right hand a negligible portion of what he takes with the left and claiming the plaudits of I he multitude.
Mr. Flexner is right in one respect: time will eventually determine the matter when the masses, educated in spite of the suppression of rights of free speech and press by the privileged, will assert their right to a decent standard of living. The shame is not that people are hungry, naked, cold, and sick in this country, but that, with planty all around it is so unnecessary.
DICKEY L. MITCHELL. JR.
East Chicago. Indiana

In praise of ’Bugle Ann.‘

Dear Atlantic,—
I marked ‘The Voice of Bugle Ann as one of the best dog stories known to me.
Asa follower of coon hounds in the older Missouri, and later a lover of the foxhounds,—more as a listener in the hills to the solos, quartettes, and sextettes, and the whole canine choir, to me ‘Bugle Ann’ is a dog classic.
In Clay and Platte counties, years and years ago. I followed a pack. The scent was poor on account of dry weather. As I stood with a hunch of men. an occasional sound carried to our ears.
‘That’s one o’ the Grooms’ pups, or from the Price litter. Wait for the old dawgs. then we can git agoin.’ Listen for Limpy Belle.’
Presently: ‘Come on, boys, that’s Limpy. She knows! Bound for Springs Hollow.
Afterward I learned that Limpy Belle was from a famous Kentucky farm of fox hunters, originally named as Belle of Limestone. Hurt as a puppy, she was brought to Missouri and taler, on her recovery, became familiarly known by the shortened name.
A lot of Clay County foxhounds in that section trace back to Limpy.
‘Bugle Ann’ brings it all back, and I want once more to follow the hounds.
PURD B. WRIGHT
Kansas City, Mo.

Dear Atlantic,—
Last night, before going to bed, I read ‘’The Voice of Bugle Ann.”I was so deeply impressed by it that I lay awake for at least two hours, afterward, thinking about it. It does my heart good to know that such tales can be written in these days when most story writers have forgotten, if they ever knew, what health and sanity of outlook mean. It must have warmed your heart when you came upon Kantor’s manuscript.
JAMES N. HALL Tahiti

Dear Atlantic, —
How you all up in Boston could know that MacKinlay Kantor’s ‘The Voice of Bugle Ann’ was the great story it is is unguessable to me. It seemed to me as I read that 1 became more and more the only man upon the earth qualified to know how indisputably the story attained to the greatness of immortality.
No mere literary man could fathom or appreciate the fox-hunting mind, the hound credo that holds in horror and contempt the farmer who could value a farm or fence or wife or worldly goods except as they served to promote the chase. No, it would lake a fox-and-hound man to appreciate and recognize the beautiful delicacy with which the story was shaded to the hunter’s outlook.
But no mere fox hunter could recognize or appreciate the genius that invented the clear-noted title, and the marvelously suggestive names such as Bugle Ann, Heaven Creek, Chilly Branch, Panther River, and others, including Springfield Davis.
Not the least of the niceties that characterized the author’s thoroughness was his mention of the Hunter’s Horn and Red Ranger and omission of the Chase. A greenhorn would have mentioned the bigger and swankier hound magazine and failed to mention the two smaller journals so dearly beloved by the true hunting hillman.
HENRY T. CHAMBERS
Bristow, Oklahoma

From another asylum.

Dear Atlantic, —
I am pleased to see that the Atlantic Monthly is taking an interest in the mentally ill, as evidenced by your publication of the fine study of dipsomania in ‘Asylum,’ by William Seabrook, in the July and August issues.
I feel, however, that while his article, in two installments, gives the general reader, without previous knowledge of sanitarium life, a very clear conception of routine in a sanitarium, it does not give the reader any real conception of the great variety of interesting types that may be found there. Mr. Seabrook missed a grand opportunity when he dismissed the paranoiacs, the schizophrenics, and manic-depressives in one curt paragraph which merely acknowledged their presence, because they form the group of most interesting and exciting cases.
I have just come out of a sanitarium for treatment of a schizoid form of the manic-depressive psychosis. The first diagnosis was ‘Schizophrenia-probably incurable,’ but then I fooled the doctors by effecting a cure in record time — three months. I believe the rapidity of my cure may be ascribed largely to my saving grace — a sense of humor.
Mr. Seabrook made one misstatement which annoyed me exceedingly because of its ignorance. He said that pleasant people are pleasant even when insane, and that it is only the naturally disagreeable people who are disagreeable when insane. What about the schizophrenic, the split or dual personality familiar to the general public as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde? I was a schizoid personality myself, and behaved like a Mrs. Hyde (if ever there was a Mrs. Hyde) for a good part of my stay at the sanitarium; yet I flatter myself that I’m a rather pleasant person when well.
Mr. Seabrook also mentions the difficulty of making an escape from a sanitarium. He is correct on that point, yet I did succeed in making an escape; I had most of the sanitarium staff and a bloodhound on my trail for four hours before I was brought back to the sanitarium. Eliza crossing the ice!
Incidentally, a week after my escape Hamlet, the bloodhound (it’s a very appropriate name for a dog who always looks as if he were trying to answer the question ’To be or not to be?’), decided to follow my example; he escaped from his kennel during feeding time. At the dinner table that evening I heard the doctors and head nurses discussing Hamlet’s escape; they were very much worried, because a good bloodhound is a very expensive animal. I piped up from my chair at a near-by table. ‘Why don’t you send me after Hamlet? It’s only fair, because you sent Hamlet after me!’ Needless to say, they did not accept my suggestion.
MRS. J. L. B.

In search of a national retreat.

Dear Atlantic, —
I read Dr. Bowman’s article, ’A Singer to Pioneers,’ in the July Atlantic with that immediate and complete concentration known as shock, a sensation sometimes induced by the best horror stories of Edgar Allan Poe.
It is hard to believe that the ghost of that cherished American, Stephen Collins Foster, who sang so lovingly of youth in a humble home, will be happy in a Gothic cathedral. Let us be thankful that George Washington was lucky enough to leave Mount Vernon intact. Otherwise some painfully misguided university might, perhaps, be constructing a memorial to him in the form of a Spanish cloister.
R. A. B.
Andover, Massachusetts

These ’intimations of immortality’ will, we believe, go home to many a reader.

Dear Atlantic, —
Your discussions of the future life have perhaps interested more people than the editors realize. With many, it is much more than an academic question. Some up-to-date ’intimations of immortality’ may be worth noting.
Former President Little of the University of Michigan, a biologist of note, makes this statement: ‘The death of my own parents within a day or two of one another completely wiped out preëxisting logical bases for immortality and replaced them with an utterly indescribable but completely convincing and satisfying realization that personal immortality exists. Such experiences are not transferable, but are probably the most comforting and sacred relations that come to any of us.’
Arthur Compton, University of Chicago professor and Nobel prize winner, finds reasons for believing that in spite of his physical insignificance man as an intelligent person is of extraordinary importance in the cosmic scheme. He thinks of the exercise and discipline of youth, the struggles and failures and successes, the pains and pleasures of maturity, the loneliness and tranquillity of age, us the fires through which a man must pass to bring out the pure gold of his soul. And —annihilate him? What infinite waste, exclaims this scientist.
William Allen White wrote after the funeral of his daughter, a high-school girl: ’A rift in the clouds on a gray day threw a shaft of sunlight upon her coffin, as her energetic little body sank to its last sleep. But the soul of her, the glowing, gorgeous soul of her, surely was flaming in eager joy upon some other dawn.’
Samuel Palmer Brooks, after twenty-nine years as president of Baylor University in Texas, faced death as the graduating class of 1931 were about to receive their diplomas. He had barely enough strength to dictate a last message to them. I stand on the border of mortal life,’ he told the students, but I face eternal life. I look backward to the years of the past to see all pettiness, all triviality, shrink into nothing, and disappear. The faith I have had in life is projected into this vast future toward which I travel now.’
Speaking of the death of Will Rogers, the comment is made by Columnist Mclntyre: ‘Consciousness after death is not a mere something to be hoped for with me, but a conviction — as certain and fixed as the scatter of stars at night.’
Said Paul to Agrippa: ‘Why should it be thought a thing incredible with you, that God should raise the dead?’
OLIER M. KEVE
Sioux City. Iowa

A friend sends us this interesting letter from a college graduate to a former teacher.

Dear Mr.—
I have made a great discovery. Of course it has been made hundreds of times before, but that seems personally unimportant.

I have discovered that women in business are a mistake! They don’t belong— not because they lack sufficient brains or education or ambition, but because their very temperament and emotional psychology until them. Even a fledgling like myself has observed enough examples to prove the point.
The best examples are attractive ones, hovering between the ages of twenty-five and thirty-five. They have been working from five to ten years and have gone sour. They snap and sputter and gossip, resenting each other, resenting themselves. Presumably they lead normal lives, but obviously they are incomplete. Friendships among them are few, twosomes flaring up here and there only to end abruptly through trivial misunderstandings. Everything about them seems bitter and thwarted. They work either because they have to or because there is nothing better lo do. A job has no intrinsic value for them, unless perhaps it serves to keep them sane. It means a salary, extra clothes, a bit of pride which comes from independence.
The newcomer info a business organization is a pitiable object, particularly if she is a college graduate and steps into a fairly respectable position. Unknown to herself, she is watched and suspected and damned without a chance. She, poor idealistic trusting child that she is, goes blithely along, liking her work, liking everyone and everything and smiling at the world and its occupants. One day her false world collapses. She learns in amazement that her clothes are too much so, her smiles condescending, her attitude superior. Instead of being liked, she finds that she is bitterly resented — herself, her job, her education, her background. In fact, anything she possesses which her associates do not is held against her. She is dumfounded. She actually likes them all, but they can never believe her. Nothing in college prepared her for this reception. Her degree suddenly becomes a positive burden, a definite handicap. She is hopelessly confused.
Women in professions are a different matter. Their interests and at least a part of their love are woven into their work. They can derive a certain real pleasure in the very doing of it!
Even so, the rule is comparatively general. Women in business are a mistake. At best, it is only a temporary arrangement of theirs, a filler-in. The moment it begins to take on the aspects of permanency, the world curdles for them. Everything they had hoped and dreamed begins to slip forever away, and no woman can possibly hide the bitterness such a realization plants in her heart. What is there for her to look forward to? Some day these so-called business women are going to repeal their emancipation and walk back into the kitchen of their own free will. Men are totally different. They always expect to work. An important half of their lives is entirely devoted to their work. All women prefer to work for and with them. So do all men. The point is obvious! You know all this. I am quite aware of that, but I wonder how many of the girls in your classes do. They are so wonderfully wise and ambitious. Work spells glamour and self-expression to most of them. Perhaps it would be useless to enlighten them. No one believes wholly what an older generation has to say. It seems too bad, though. College does such wonderful things to their minds, only to throw them into a world which ignores minds and demands hands. Stimulated minds -and no outlets! It’s a painful predicament that gets solved eventually, but all too often by letting the mind stagnate into a less painful state. I was carefully warned by a wellmeaning father. I did n’t believe it. I still don’t believe it—but I know it’s true.
I have no bright suggestions or solutions. This is just so much undigested matter which would n’t swallow easily. Lest you misunderstand! I myself am still a rather happy person. I like my work, my associates, my boss, my life outside the office, I do not yet belong to the class described above. But I sometimes wonder if I should n’t at the end of, say, ten years. I do not propose to wait and find out, but in the meantime I feel an uncontrollable urge to gel all this out of my system at the expense of some really sane person, I hope you do not object to the choice.
Sincerely,
ONE OF YOUR FOKVIER STUDENTS

Good food and good friends.

Dear Atlantic,
The recent gastronomical reminiscences in the Contributors’ Column have put me in mind of a dish of my childhood days, more delicious than hominy or switched, or the headcheese, friedcakes, et al., of flavorful memories.
We lived on a farm in Wisconsin three miles from the small village where the whole family without fail drove in the democrat wagon to church every Sunday morning. On hot days, before we started, Mother would take a six-quart pan of morning’s milk with the yellow cream rising over the top and break into it large chunks of rich, fragrant, sweet brown bread, crusty from its long baking Saturday afternoon. She left this in the cool pantry; no ice box was there. When we came back into the cool house from the heal and dust of the ride home from church, Mother would ladle out bountifully into the waiting bowls the delicious food and each would betake himself with it to his favored spot, on the stone kitchen step, or under the apple tree, in the swing, or possibly in the sedate ‘other room.’
Afterward some willing wight washed the bowls and spoons. Not Mother. This was Mother’s time to enjoy her Sunday leisure in an easy-chair or on the couch, luxuriating in the pages of the Atlantic, for by some means, in those pioneer days of scarcity, she nearly always managed to keep that coming monlhly. One of my earliest recollections is of its tan cover with the firm little wreath in black on the front, and the date is 1865.
(MRS.) ANNA B. WHITING Detroit, Michigan

In defense of missions.

Dear Atlantic,—
I was interested in Louis Wright’s and Mary Isabel Fry’s article in July, ’Puritanism in the South Seas.’ From their researches the writers will know that there is another side to the story of Protestant Missions in the South Seas which needs stating to make the picture true. The movement began with the great English Evangelical Revival which stirred a conscience for social reform in England as well as evangelization abroad. And it was the news of Carey’s work in India which started off the Duff and her missionaries to Tahiti.
Of course these early men in the South Seas were quickly disillusioned about converting the natives easily, and it is not surprising that some of them, in the enervating climate and circumstances, ‘went native.’ Far from getting early reënforcements. they had no mail for four years, went about in rags, and thought they had been deserted by the Society in England. The remarkable thing is that men like Henry Nott, John Jefferson, and John Eyre held on. even when the original company had been reduced to five!
The house they lived in on Tahiti had been built for Bligh of the Bounty, and there is no evidence that in ‘leasing land’ and ‘pursuing the arts’ they enriched themselves. These missionaries were the first men to go to the South Seas for the sake of the people themselves, and they, and the long list of their successors of the London Missionary Society, reduced the language to writing, started a literature, made roads, promulgated laws, and laid the foundation of ordered government.
The Professor and Miss Fry may not have seen the carefully drawn-up British Colonial Report on the South Sea Gilbert Islands Colony for 1929-1930, where successors to the Tahitian missionaries are now at work. “ Long before the government took an interest in these peoples missionaries were here preparing the way for peaceful administration. Under their guidance ... personal industry (the foundation of any sound economic state) successfully ensued. Schools were established wherein were taught to read and write those men who, afterwards, were used to build the first Government Service. Above all, the example of a few noble and self-sacrificing characters did eventually triumph over the savage sectarianism of the many. . .
May I add that I cannot discover that these early missionaries brought disease into the Islands or used firearms in their work. Disease germs spread with the ’kidnapping traders,’ and the whalers of Boston and Nantucket of later years.
I think you will infer from the above that you have an appreciative reader in this ‘Metropolis of the Midlands’ who has not forfeited his right to offer criticism!
H. F. KEEP Edgbaston, England

The Boston accent.

Dear Atlantic. —
A man and a woman came to our door the other evening and asked if they might come into our yard and sleep under the trees. They had a blanket, they said.
As my niece hesitated, the woman quickly added, ‘We’re all right — we’re from Boston.’
M. E. P.
Strongsville, Ohio