The Contributors' Column--December Atlantic

Following a convention, unquestioned and well-nigh universal, the Atlantic has for sixty years published semi-annually in December and June an index designed for the convenience of readers who bind their magazines. This index with title-page occupies six pages; and while of great service to a couple of thousand subscribers and to a few hundred libraries, it is to eighty-odd thousand readers merely a dead and cumbersome weight. This month, therefore, we are breaking sharply with tradition, and restoring to the reader six pages of reading. In order that this great gain to the many may not be counterbalanced by inconvenience to the few, we are printing the index in its usual form, but in a small edition, and as a separate pamphlet, and hold ourselves ready to send it to any reader who applies for a copy within thirty days of the publication of this magazine.

This change will involve the saving of a paper-wastage of over a million and a quarter pages per annum — which is an item in these days of extravagant prices. And the saving is not, the reader will understand, in paper, but merely in paper wastage.

The Elderly Spinster, who in this introduction to her series of Tales of a Polygamous City opens a window upon an India little known in history or storybook, was for many years a volunteer worker in a hospital in Northern India. Thrown into relations of peculiar intimacy with Indian women of all castes and kinds, her acquaintanceship with many of them grew to the closer forms of friendship; and in these stories of hers the actual truth of what she saw and learned is veiled only so far as to preclude the possibility of the identification of any of the characters she describes. In conformity with what seems a judicious suggestion of hers, we venture to give the reader the following hints concerning the pronunciation of various Indian terms occurring in the text: —

‘Sikh’ is practically sick; ‘Pathan’ is not Pay’than, but Pa-tań, the first a as in what, the second as in father, the h being practically silent.

‘ Pindi’ is Pĭdee; ‘Multan’ is Multän; ‘Lahore,’ Lahōŕ; ‘Delhi ’ is not Del-hĭbut Dĕlĭ; ‘Ambala ’ is Amba’la, the first and last a’s as in what; the middle one as in father. As to Jullander, lot homines, tot sententiœ: four authorities spell and pronounce it in four different ways.

Says the writer of ‘ A Family Letter,’ ‘The letter is genuine. I wish it were n’t. I wrote it to let off steam in my relations to my brother, which threatened an explosion. My brother is absolutely loyal but passive.’ The family relations of Rudolf Heinrichs are set forth in the letter sufficiently to show that it was no simple matter for him to adopt the attitude of wholehearted, militant patriotism to which he gives such eloquent and moving expression. We have an abiding hope that his example may prove an inspiration to many of his fellow Americans of German blood who have much less excuse than he could, if he chose, put forward for — let us say — dividing their allegiance.

Courtenay DeKalb, after long practice of his profession of mining engineer in the United States, Mexico, Central and South America, is now Associate Editor of the Mining and Scientific Press, San Francisco. He is a member of many foreign scientific societies. A correspondent writes of Miss Jean Mackenzie: ‘ I hardly know whether to admire most the sweet reasonableness of what she says, or the piquant charm of the way she says it. I miss her these past few months. She touches the heart as few writers can.’

The first three installments of the novel,

‘ Professor’s Progress,’ which began in the September number, may be summarized as follows: —

Professor Latimer, an elderly, full-fleshed, city-dwelling scholar, has, to use his own words, been very hard to live with since August, 1914. The war has shaken the very foundations of his comfortably ordered life. His pet theories and formulæ have been shattered, and after three years of argument and Vain attempts to readjust his philosophy he stands on the verge of nervous collapse. He finally leaves town, under doctor’s orders, for a walking trip up-country. War and all topics connected with it are taboo. The starting-place of his Odyssey is the hamlet of Williamsport, where his sister Harriet has her home — and hence the Professor finally sets out alone on the highroad, in search of peace of mind.

Before he has gone far, he accidentally makes the acquaintance of Glady Winthrop, a ‘movie queen’ and her entourage, and the next stage of his pilgrimage brings him to the headquarters of the Intercontinental Film Corporation, where a great drama of Mexican life is being staged. At the moment of his arrival Juanita Alvarez (otherwise Gladys Winthrop) is struggling unsuccessfully with an emotional scene which is being spoiled by the bad acting of the man impersonating her father. The disgusted manager, spying the Professor’s seigneurial whiskers, urges him to take the part of the hidalgo; Latimer, carried off his feet by excitement, assents, and plays the scene triumphantly. Acting for the movies, however, makes no appeal to him as a permanent career, so, bidding his new-found friends farewell, he takes once more to the road.

He next encounters an ex-journalist, turned market-gardener, who describes amusingly his experiences in newspaper work, and his abandonment of the profession on the outbreak of the war. A lively discussion on the subject, ‘How God is coming out of the War,’brings their brief first meeting to a close.

Francis E. Leupp, journalist, author, publicist, civil servant, and civil-service reformer, has contributed to the Atlantic many papers of timely interest on political subjects. William A. Ganoe, who makes his first appearanee in these columns with ‘Ruggs’ R.O.T.C., ‘a story of one of the ’ Plattsburg ‘ officers’ training camps, is a captain in the Regular Army, stationed now at West Point. George Boas is a former member of the Faculty of the University of California, now in the military service of the United States.

Miss Nan Moulton is a ‘ newspaper woman’ in Winnipeg, and an occasional contributor to magazines in this country and Canada, ‘ It has been hard to write the last three years,’she says, ‘ our lives have been so broken and torn up and terribly hurt. But I am truly going to try and do some work this winter if I can stay — how shall I say? — held down.’

Mr. A. D. MacLaren’s well-considered paper on the war was written in response to an invitation sent him immediately on reading his excellent book, Germany from Within. As may be surmised from his patronymic, Mr. MacLaren is a Scotsman. For many years he lived in Germany, but now makes his residence in London. ‘ The Great Expectancy ’ is the last of Miss Montague’s War Notes sent to us from her West Virginian home on the edge of the ‘Big Draft.’ John Drinkwater is well recognized among the cleverer of the younger British poets.

In the third of his informed and authoritative papers on the menace of the PanGerman scheme, M. André Chéradame devotes himself more particularly to the part played by the ‘ vassal-allies ’ of Germany, and to the assured advantages to be derived by her adversaries if they shall make the most of the ‘ state of mind ’ of the enslaved peoples upon whom Germany has so ruthlessly bent her will — Czechs, Jugo-Slavs, etc., confined in the very heart of Pan-Germany, who look upon the Allies as their destined liberators. To most Americans these trumps of M. Chéradame’s are new cards in the pack. Dr. William T. Porter, of the Harvard Medical Faculty, was sent by the Rockefeller Institute to France in July, 1916, to seek a remedy for shock in surgical cases. Dr. Porter’s previous work along similar lines enabled him to make the best use of the extraordinary opportunities which were offered him by the authorities in the prosecution of his task, and on a subsequent visit to France during the course of 1917, he was able to discover a radical remedy which has completely revolutionized the practice in such cases, and has saved life and reason for thousands of Allied soldiers. the reader would never guess it, this is the first time that Dr. Porter has written an article for an audience other than a professional one.

James Harvey Robinson has been professor of history at Columbia since 1895. Among the significant books (to use a term much cheapened by the publishers) of later years must be reckoned his New History. This is Professor Robinson’s first contribution. For Albert Kinross the Atlantic feels far more than an editorial friendship. For years before the war, with Lieutenant Kinross the editor of this magazine had a long and warm correspondence; and although the vicissitudes of the past three years have taken him first upon one military mission and then upon another, Lieutenant Kinross has been a singularly devoted correspondent. Originally a writer of stories, novels, and essays, Kinross enlisted in the first rush, and served in France, first in the fighting line and then in the commissariat. Later, in Salonica, he was for a time editor of the Balkan News, and was then retransferred to active service. His paper from Salonica was published in the Atlantic for October, 1916. He writes under a recent date:—

Your letter of May 7, and two Atlantics . . . reached me at a lovely camp near Lake Doiran. I was lucky to spend even a part of the summer there. . . . ‘ A House in Athens’ [April Atlantic] was familiar. It’s the Kalopathakis house. I was there in 1906, and it was pleasant to come across it again. The Greeks, by the way, look like really doing something at last. Salonica, as you doubtless know, has been burnt down. . . . It’s not much loss (except to the natives), and I’m wondering how many bedbugs perished in the fire. Salonica is a dirty hole at the best. Perhaps they ’ll put up a decent city now.

Stanley Washburn, an American journalist and war correspondent of large experience, has represented the London Times in the Near East almost from the beginning of the present war. His dispatches from the various fronts have been regarded as among the most trustworthy. When the Root mission was sent to Russia, the rank of major was conferred upon Mr. Washburn, and he was detailed to accompany the party on account of his recognized information regarding the eastern theatre of the war.

That a prophet is not without honor even in his own country appears de toute évidence in the following communication to the editor from a colleague of Mr. Kellogg in the faculty of Leland Stanford Jr. University: —

The face value of the extraordinary articles of Vernon Kellogg in your August and September numbers is great enough. Their revelations of conditions in Belgium and Northeastern France under German control bear the stamp of the scrupulous scientist, who weighs conscientiously all his statements and rather withholds what could not under challenge be verified at first hand, The analysis of the mental attitude and even the mental makeup of that individual highgrade German official and scholar is the work of one who is used to handling scalpel and forceps and microscope. . . .

But the force of these articles is increased enormously to those who have long known Professor Kellogg. Here is a man who has been marked from youth by equanimity and self-control, notwithstanding a keenness of perception and an alertness of judgment almost Gallic. I recall the boyish private secretary of the University Chancellor, — left in charge while his chief conducted a scientific collecting expedition, — meeting and hearing the complaints and demands of professors from whose classes he had just emerged; adjudicating claims upon the emergency budget; composing rivalries; passing discipline upon students,—and all with modest straightforwardness and a cheerful smile, while waiting to get out to the tennis court. For years I have watched the man who, though gifted for literature, for editorial duties, for diplomacy, for almost anything, persistently pursued the Mallophaga until he stands foremost among the scientists of America in his field. To take such a man out of himself. to shut away for the time the fascinations of all the delightful things he could do, and even the call of his vocation; to overcome his natural balance and judicious temper and to transform a long established fondness for Germany and things German into this terrible — terrible because so calm and so repressed — this terrible Last Judgment upon German policies and character,—to accomplish this, we know, must have required long and repeated demonstrations of brutality and stupidity beyond what war is apt to reveal in every nationality when given irresponsible control of the sword, and beyond, far beyond, what language can portray or Mr. Kellogg’s discretion permits him to recite.

W. A. CARRUTH.

The following letter, interesting, among other reasons, for a certain novel point of view, was sent to the Atlantic by a friend of the writer, a member of a prominent family in the Belgian nobility, now in the Belgian army by transfer from the Canadian cavalry. He was graduated at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; later, he became a naturalized Canadian, and was a ranchman in the Dominion at the outbreak of the war.

MY DEAR —

. . . For several months I have been a dispatchrider attached to the staff of an infantry regiment. It is not an overworked job, most of the time. I am of course riding a motor-cycle, a sport which, although I had not done it for 8 years, I had not forgotten. I suppose riding and breaking ‘cayuses’ kept me in condition. . . . My machine can do near 50 m[iles] p[er] h[our] (on good roads). The war-traffic has spoilt most of the famed high roads of France and made worse, if possible, the evil-famed roads of West Flanders. Nowadays, in what were ‘way back’ little districts of Flanders, traffic policemen, imported from London, are directing endless streams of British motor vehicles, and this is repeated in Belgian and French sectors.

Being [now] in the country we are fairly quiet, but the Channel ports in the neighborhood are very much bothered, by air-raids. ... As a rule no military damage is done and casualties are mostly civilians and that makes the horrible part of it. . . . However, sometimes mistakes happen. Lately, by moonlight, a German plane saw a column of troops on the road; he successfully dropped two bombs, killing 39 men and wounding 41. It was a fine shot, all the more so that the column of troops were German prisoners [being] led back from work. The British gave them a nice military funeral, with all their German prisoners made to attend. . . .

Very much has been said of this being a ‘war of nations,’ but very little has been done according to that idea. The war has been entirely conducted by the military and according only to a military standpoint. The sole aim has been to get as many men as possible in the army, while the sensible plan would have been, ‘not the strongest possible army, but the strongest possible nation.’ For instance, if two mechanics at the rear are supplying ammunition to ten soldiers, by putting those two men at the front, you have twelve combatants, but with a very much smaller fighting strength. This of course is a very crude illustration, but similar things happen all the time. Many men could do more harm to the Boches by being at the rear than in trenches. This is true of all men connected with industrial, mining, agricultural, or transportation work. Also, it is well known that services under military rules have a much lower efficiency than under civilian control. One of the reasons the British Army is so efficient is because it is run by men who were civilians and were successful business men. And for this reason we hope much of the 1918 G.A.R. I think all that is well understood on your side, but it should not be lost track of As a rule, no man of any value for intellectual work should be put or even allowed to go and dig trench or load railroad cars or anything, where he is not used to his full efficiency. Make and keep the war a strictly business proposition; keep the sporting element out of it, and don’t allow any politicians near it.

Now, to another subject: with true American tolerance, you have left the German-American press very free. As I make it out, they are not taken seriously over yonder. But reproductions of Hearst and similar papers are used on this side (and not in Germany only) to create the feeling that the U.S.A. are very much divided on the subject of war. You must remember that most of the people here have very hazy notions about the U.S.A

I have been in Paris on leave lately and saw several U.S. soldiers there (have seen them elsewhere too). I even saw what I would have deemed incredible a few years ago: two American military policemen patroling the Boulevard des Italians. People over here are enthusiastic about the age and ‘huskiness’ of the American soldiers that they have seen so far. . . .

A lady who first contributed to the Atlantic more than a generation ago, and who has been a reader of the magazine for more years than the editor can remember, sends us from her Californian home this pleasant message in a letter enclosing a subscription for a friend who is ‘engaged about 11 hours a day in a very splendid form of war-work.’ Quoting her friend as follows:—

‘This is not a letter to be answered—just a little Atlantic note, because I could n’t browse in such happy content over my dear yellowy-brown homelike-looking treasured books without telling you I’m doing it,’ [she adds,] ‘Of course you must get piles of tributes to the joy the old Atlantic, in its renewed youth, is giving. But this little tired woman rests her soul with an hour over it when she has the hour to spare. And then she pauses it on! But she says she takes them back again “for keeps.”’

The editor has received the following from the votaress of a sister art: —

DEAR SIR, — If t he purpose of a magazine is to stimulate ambition, then the Atlantic is full of purpose as far as I am concerned. I read it and like it; and, after each article, I have a desire— sometimes not to be repressed— to go and do likewise. I’m leading you towards Dr. Crothers’ article in the November number, ‘Every Man’s Natural Desire to be Somebody Else.’ I read it and became imbued with an ambition to be Somebody Else — a Critic— instead of a writer of Moving Picture Plays. Dr. Crothers says: ‘But has the man whose working hours are so full of responsibilities changed as much as he seems to have done?’ How would Dr. Crothers have finished out that sentence? Are we to understand ‘. . . done changed ’? Or what? Should it read ‘as much as he seems to have done changed‘? . . .

Now please don’t be out of sorts at me. I’m just trying to be a critic for the moment. Now I’ll go back to the Motion Drama. I’m to do a Super-Feature by night—8 reels; 60 scenes to the reel; every scene a thriller. Wish me luck!

We do wish you luck; but, dear lady, your luck will fail you if you tackle Dr. Crothers. Before attempting it, you should have slipped into the library and looked up Do in the New English Dictionary, the last and most complete autocrat of English authority. There you would have found that, in the category of things that Do can do, No. 24 gives the verb this license. ‘24. Do put as substitute for a verb just used, to avoid its repetition.’ And — to drive the nail home — Dr. Goldsmith agrees with Dr. Crothers. ‘I chose my wife,’says the Vicar of Wakefield, ‘as she did her wedding gown.’

It is an interesting fact that eleven writers make their first appearance before the Atlantic constituency in this number of the magazine.