Contributors' Column--May Atlantic

Frank L. Schoell, a native of France, was engaged as a lecturer at the University of Chicago at the outbreak of the war, and returned at once to France, to join the colors. Wounded and made prisoner in January, 1915, while commanding a company in the Argonne,near Verdun,he passed several months at the Brüderhaus Hospital in Coblenz, and was finally interned at Neuchâtel, in Switzerland,whence he sent to the Atlantic the vivid and fair-minded account of his experiences in Coblenz, which we published over his initials in April and May, 1917, under the title, ‘At the Enemy’s Mercy.’ Professor Schoell has now returned to this country and resumed his teaching at Chicago. He writes: —

I do not think I need tell you what an extraordinarily interesting experience I had in being able to observe Ferdinand day after day, in all his moods, for about three months. Kings are getting scarcer and scarcer, and the sub-variety of tsars seems to be altogether extinct. That is precisely why I thought that the reading public of our two democracies — both interested in recent absolute monarchies because they have had so much to suffer from them — might find it entertaining. and even instructive, to pry into an exking’s holiday pastimes. Those pastimes were, of course, always half-political, and that made Ferdinand’s holiday travels so fascinating for me in 1910.

Our readers will welcome the return to our columns of Mrs. Elinore Rupert Stewart, whose earlier series of letters in the Atlantic, in 1913 and 1914, achieved immediate and unusual popularity. Both series, republished in book form, may be had of Houghton Mifflin Company. Katharine Fullerton Gerould of Princeton, needs no introduction to the Atlantic constituency, which, for ten years, has known her well. Romain Rolland, known the world over as the author of history of Jean Christophe, is living, like so many famous Frenchmen, in self-imposed exile in Switzerland. With respect to the subject of his present paper, he says:—

The name of August Forel is justly celebrated in European science; but he is not so popular in his own country as he deserves to be. One hears more particularly of the social activity of this great and good man, whose indefatigable energy and ardent conviction age and illness have been powerless to abate. But French Switzerland, which justly admires the works of the naturalist J. H. Fabre, does not sufficiently realize that she has the good fortune to possess an observer of nature who is not less penetrating, and whose knowledge is perhaps more complete and accurate.

The paper was translated for the Atlantic by Mrs. Helena DeKay Vanbrugh.

Olive Tilford Dargan is an American poet of rare and delicate qualities, who has here set down a record of the mountain folk among whom she loves to live. George W. Puryear, the concluding portion of whose narrative of his escape from a German prison-camp we print in this number, was at last accounts still in the Aviation service, stationed at Rockwell Field, California. Maria Moravsky is a young Russian poetess and journalist who came to America just before the war. In November last she contributed to the Atlantic ‘The Greenhorn in America.’

Amy Lowell, poet and student of poetry, has chosen for her theme the stark and terrible story which a generation ago held the attention of Tennyson. Of his ‘Rizpah’ she writes: —

I had a queer experience about ‘Dried Marjoram.’ I came across the incident in an old book about Hampshire, as a true fact, and I promptly wrote the poem. After I had got it written and typed, somebody told me it was the same subject as Tennyson’s ‘Rizpah,’ which I had never read. It was very funny to read it afterwards, and see how differently two generations treat the same idea.

But a still earlier generation has its own successful version. We refer Miss Lowell and others interested in literary tradition to the Second Book of Samuel, chapter 21. The voice of Rizpah has come down through the centuries, with that of Rachel weeping for her children.

Many of our readers will remember Cecil F. Lavell’s earlier paper, ‘The Man Who Lost Himself,’ in the Atlantic for November, 1917, wherein the author tells of his complete loss of personality following a physical breakdown, and of its recovery after several years. Mr. Lavell is now Assistant Professor of History at Grinnell College, Iowa. He writes us of several experiences not unlike his own which came to the knowledge of those who were searching for him while he was lost.

Thus, a New England judge was finally located stolidly loading fruit on a freighter at a Southern port. In another case, a student of the University of Michigan disappeared from Ann Arbor and turned up on a California fruit ranch, perfectly well and enjoying his work.

Of this second paper he writes to the Editor: —

It is the reaction to an experience that matters in this case, not my present or normal attitude. One curious thing that may interest you is that the remarks in the paper regarding the fading in my mind of the laborer’s attitude to life, and the regrowth of an academic attitude, are more than half true. When I sit back and think, think and remember, then the attitude of three years ago comes back. But the influence of convention and environment is a wonderfully powerful thing.

Thinking over my Colorado adventures again has made me realize afresh how enormously fortunate I have been. Three years ago I was still in Colorado. A year and a half ago I was still a convalescent, wondering whether my doctor’s permission to return to work would be of any real value beyond the relief to my mind. Yet when I did reënter the profession it was under ideal conditions— even the subordinate rank in the department being an advantage, involving a minimum of responsibility. There are some signs now of a revival of professional ambition. . . . Last year I even found energy enough to write the greater part of a book since published by Macmillan, Imperial England, and this year I found myself hard at work on another on the basis of reconstruction in Europe, that has sprung from a side job as Director of the War-Issues course here. Not such a bad record after so bad a breakdown is it? . . .

To some extent I have sympathy even with the Bolsheviki. But only in so far that the completeness and passion of the revolt seem to me perfectly intelligible. In the permanence and constructive value of the Marxian solution, however, I have no confidence whatever. The Socialists have my sympathy, but I think they are altogether on the wrong road. Up to date I am a convinced believer in straight democracy, as we know it, and in the cure of evils by education and reform. I do not mean simply education of the laborers, necessary as that is. I mean also education of the ‘upper’ classes.

The Honorable John Fortescue, son of the third Earl Fortescue, and brother of the present, peer, has been Librarian at Windsor Castle since 1905. He is a recognized authority on military history, and is the official historian of the British Army. Ivy Kellerman Reed, a graduate of the Ohio State University, and Ph.D. of the universities of Chicago and Berlin, is a member of the Washington, D.C., bar, She, together with her husband, has given much time and attention to the international language, Esperanto, and she is Director of the American School of Esperanto. Mrs. Fiske Warren is a poet not unfamiliar to our readers. Her volume, Trackless Regions, has been abundantly recognized on both sides of the water. Maurice Francis Egan, friend of all who know him, resigned last year, because of ill health, the difficult post of United States Minister to the neutral government of Denmark, which he had held since his appointment by President Roosevelt in 1907.

Arthur Ruhl, a graduate of Harvard in the class of 1899, has been connected with Colliers since 1894. He has recently spent a number of weeks in the Middle West, investigating conditions which he here interestingly describes. The author of ‘Bed-Rock desires to have her name withheld. Roland Hugins, Fellow in Economics at Cornell University, has been during the war a member of the United States Bureau of Efficiency. A volume by Mr. Hugins, entitled The Possible Peace, was published by the Century Co. in 1916. Simeon Strunsky has recently returned from his sojourn in Paris and Berne.

A correspondent, who chooses not to sign his post-card, informs us somewhat curtly that ‘further is not the comparative of “far,”’ and that ‘there is no such form as whomever.’ We venture to take exception to both of these ex cathedra assertions. As our correspondent does not refer us to the passage in which the word further occurs, we are unable to say whether we have (as is very possible) inadvertently departed from the Atlantic rule, which is to use the form farther, when actual physical distance is in question. But we may remark that there is abundant authority of the best usage for further, even in this sense. Says the New English (Oxford) Dictionary: —

‘The primary sense of further, farther, is ‘more forward, more onward”; but this sense is practically coincident with that of the comparative degree of ‘far,’ where the latter word refers to real or attributed motion in some particular direction. Hence further, farther came to be used as the comparative of ‘far’; first in the special application just mentioned, and ultimately in all senses, displacing the regular comparative farrer.

As to whomever, it, is, of course, the regularly formed objective case of ‘whoever.’ As the N.E.D., in its greatly retarded progress toward completion, has not yet reached the letter W, we cannot cite its authority; but the disputed form is recognized by the Concise Oxford Dictionary, ‘adapted from’ the larger work, and by the authoritative Century and Standard dictionaries. We throw down the gauntlet to the unnamed challenger.

Perhaps Atlantic readers are friendly enough to enjoy these letters from unknown friends.

MY DEAR ATLANTIC MONTHLY,-

You came into my father’s house with your first number and came with me to the Middle West. You are more of a person to me than the people I meet on the street. It goes without saying that I approve and like you.

I write to thank you for the loose binding with which you are put together. You lie open when I knit Red Cross socks — you hold in one hand, folded back, when I lie down. Your binding makes a world of difference to a rheumatic old woman, and adds greatly to her comfort, and I have thought ‘thank you’ so many months that I am impelled to say it.

March 14, 1919.
The Atlantic has brought much into my life here in Shantung, at the outskirts of civilization. Its arrival is a red-letter day — a day on which it is hard to continue work till the evening shadows bring leisure for reading. It has accompanied me on many a wheelbarrow trip through the country, and has lightened many a weary hour when the Chinese were omnipresent. As the barrow stops to rest, the crowds gather six and seven deep around me, asking my age, why my feet are large, would n’t I please open my mouth and show my gold teeth, etc., etc. Then I pull out the Atlantic and the questioning ceases instantly, and an awed whisper goes around: ‘She can read; don’t disturb her, she is going to read.’ Finally the barrow-men bring me back from Africa or India with a ‘ Please, Miss R— we are ready to go on now. And at the next trip it is repeated. A week’s trip finishes the magazine from cover to cover, and then there are three more weeks to wait for the next one. Please excuse me for bothering you with this, but it seems just plain lack of manners to enjoy a thing as I have enjoyed the Atlantic Monthly, and not say a ‘Thank you’ for it.
A pleasant note comes from the ‘provinces,’ on Franco-American literary relations:
Proceeds from the Atlantic essay ‘Our Village’ enable the writer to accept an election to the Société Académique d’Histoire Internationale, which otherwise would have been an unwarrantable luxury in the domestic budget.

It is not Atlantic readers alone who have their troubles. People who look like Atlantic readers have also to pay the penalty. A correspondent of the New York Sun thus unbosoms himself: —

SIR, — I remember once reading about a man in your home town who, you said, resembled a fish. I think it was a bullhead. I can recall another humorous and discerning spirit, Stevenson, who refrained from beating his balky little donkey because she looked like a lady who had been kind to him. Should I ever feel inclined to discipline a hippopotamus, I should have to desist for the same reason. And no doubt others would feel the same toward delinquent walruses and frogs. As for myself, I seem to have a different look, but quite as awful; in fact, an Atlantic Monthly expression. How do I know? Listen.

On the train I see the boy approaching with a leaning tower of magazines. I feel the lack of restraint of the traveling man away from home and resolve to do something rash. I will buy a movie magazine and ascertain the chest-measurement and color-scheme of my favorite screen-actor. But no — the boy tells me to be patient — he will find it in a minute. And then, from the depths of the gaudy pile at which I am so wistfully gazing, he finally extricates a worn, dog-eared Atlantic. Meekly I submit, and so, instead of the Snappy story I had contemplated, I am soon following a more decorous path and am a suitable spectacle for the trolley-car at home.

When no magazines are sold on the train, you will usually find me under the seat. This is not so much to avoid paying increased fare as to escape the sure-to-be-proffered Atlantic of the kind lady across the aisle. News-stand men thrust it into my hand when I only want a paper; and when it is not in stock, they beg to be allowed to order it for me! Indeed, I have been known to buy as many as four copies in a single month. It is a great financial responsibility, looking like a thirty-five-cent magazine. How does one go about it to suggest an intelligent fifteen-center, say the New Republic? F. W.

The tyranny of the younger brother, feelingly described by the author of ‘Dar’st Thou, Cassius? in the March number, has called forth other pleas for domestic enfranchisement.

To THE EDITOR OF THE ATLANTIC
DEAR MOSES (See Exodus, XVIII, 22, 23): — A very wonderful woman has written an article in your magazine about something she can’t do. I always wanted to know a woman like that. We generally bear it in silence. Did she graduate from the lawn to the Atlantic, Monthly, or did she try lecture halls first?
I ’ve tried everything. I can’t help trying, but I have a husband who pulls me out just as I am able to float a little. He dives in among the breakers, sets my feet upon a rook (just where I don’t want them), and says, ‘My dear, that lawn looks safe, but it is really many miles beyond your depth.’
When I get to heaven, I shan’t stay there. I’ll ask to be led to the Millionaires’ Club where my husband gambols with the stocks, and there I shall watch his hand; and just as he is about to rope in another million, I’ll say, ‘That’s dangerous, dear. These kind gentlemen will show you a safer deal.’
If I were not married I should look up your writer’s younger brother; but the devil has united me with the other sort; and whom the devil hath joined, God cannot, put asunder, if the League of Nations is to be run by the Ladies’ Aid Society.
Yours in Truth,
PHŒBE MCLEAN.

My husband’s name is Peter. He likes to walk on the water when I am securely tied in the boat. Just now he’s lost. If you find him. tell him I ’m doing something exciting. That brings him home early.

He thinks God united us, but not firmly enough to keep me safe; so we recite the marriage ceremony every morning after breakfast, when he’s home. We got a clergyman out of work for a butler, who is awfully convenient, he thinks.

No puzzle column rewards Atlantic readers, but perhaps we may offer as an unpretentious substitute the earnest request of a lady who asks us to find for her a poem printed by the Atlantic ‘forty-five years ago, on the left-hand page near the top of the first column.’ The poem itself was a translation from the Greek, expressing in some twenty lines the grief of a mother over the death of her son, with touching mention of his empty garments.

The query stumps us, but perhaps somebody knows the Atlantic better than we do.

We have received an earnest communication from a gentleman describing himself as British by birth and nationality, who criticizes somewhat severely the Atlantic’s ‘ treatment of the Balkan question,’ on the ground that ‘the articles concerning this important and rather ignored question have all been decidedly pro-Bulgarian, and most of them very anti-Serbian and anti-Greek.’ Further, he declares Mr. James D. Bourchier to be ‘the more dangerous exponent of Bulgarian demands, because he knows his subject very thoroughly, and the statements in his article in your March issue are due . . . not to lack of correct data on the subject.’

Certainly Mr. Bourchier’s data are correct. His reputation as a correspondent of the highest class has been secure for twenty years. His deductions, like anybody’s else, are open to argument, and we are quite willing to let his pro-Greek and pro-Serbian critic state the ease against him. He says, —

During the Balkan Wars the London press was decidedly Bulgarophil (and largely owing to the ‘Jewish influence’ which Mr. Bourchier mentions in his article); but while the Balkan Peace Conference was sitting in London (December 1912 to April 1913), the Bulgarian delegates proved so intractable—the Serbian, Montenegrin and Greek delegates were on the best terms with one another, and even the Turkish delegates were quite conciliatory—that they were distrusted and disliked by all the Englishmen, including Sir Edward Grey, who came in contact with them. Mr. Bourchier is correct, in stating that the Entente could have at one time obtained Bulgarian support during the present war; but he does not add that this aid would have been at the cost of their valiant Serbian allies, and that it would have absolutely prevented Greece from joining them; and while the Greeks did not help the Entente at first, their later help was so efficient that they bore a most important part in utterly routing the Bulgarians, and thus hastening the end of the war on the Near Eastern and Western Fronts. But it is to Mr. Bourehier’s Bulgarian claims that I take especial exception, and particularly to his suggestion that the Carnegie Commission should again report upon the Balkan question. Of course, all Balkan matters are now being equitably adjusted at the Paris Conference; it is rather that I wish your readers could have other views than these very Bulgarophil ones, and I trust that the Atlantic will soon publish something giving Serbian or Greek views on this interesting subject.

In reply to scores of inquiries we are glad to announce that Mrs. Cornelia Parker’s life of her husband, the late Carleton H. Parker, of which less than half has been published in the Atlantic, will be ready in the latter part of May. The volume may then be had of the publishers, the Atlantic Monthly Press — price $2.00. Orders will be filled in their sequence.