The Contributors' Column

Frederick J. E. Woodbridge, since 1904 a professor at Columbia University, is Dean of the faculties of Political Science, Philosophy, Pure Science, and the Fine Arts. Charles D. Stewart, whose earliest contribution to the Atlantic goes back more than half a generation, is the author of The Fugitive Blacksmith, and other successful works of fiction, as well as of essays and literary studies.Katharine Fullerton Gerould, accomplished critic and story-teller, is the wife of a professor at Princeton University. Signe Toksvig, a new contributor, is a journalist of New York City.

Olive Tilford Dargan is a woman of letters, who spends most of her time among the mountain folk of Kentucky and the Carolinas. Montague Rhodes James, Provost of Eton College since 1918, was for many years Provost of King’s College, Cambridge, where he was graduated after a distinguished career. The author of many learned works relating to scriptural history and interpretation, his especial claim to the thanks of the commonalty rests on his delightful Ghost Stories of an Antiquary, which we hope our readers know, Wilhelmine Day is the wife of George Parmly Day, founder of the Yale University Press and treasurer of Yale University. Vernon Kellogg, scientist and administrator, still keeps Washington as his headquarters.

Bertrand Russell has recently, we now hope wrongfully, been reported dead in China. Gifted with a mind of extraordinary brilliancy, he gained early in life a great reputation as a mathematician. To the larger public he is known chiefly as a political philosopher of radical tendencies, whose intellect is never overridden by his sympathies: witness his extraordinarily candid little volume on the principles of Communism and Socialism. Mr. Russell is the grandson of Lord John Russell, and presumptive heir to the earldom of Russell. Grace E. Polk is the Probation Officer attached to the Juvenile Court at Minneapolis, Minn. MargerySwett sends this first contribution to the Atlantic from Chicago. E. Barrington is a British traveler and scholar. Alexander McAdie is Director of the Blue Hill Observatory of Harvard at Readville, Massachusetts.

Unless I am a miserable failure as a forecaster [he writes, speaking of the inspiration of this essay], we are in for a pandemic of Einstein and Relativity. And it is going to hit us hard. The suffering (mental anguish chiefly in having to listen to others trying to explain what they don’t understand) will be very great.
Since 1905, when the Professor of Mathematics and Physics at Berlin published his Principle of Relativity, more than 1000 books have been published on the subject; and 70 per cent of these (estimated) in the last year. And this is only the beginning of the flood.
Every physicist, of course, thinks it is ‘the thing’ in physics; all astronomers take to it, like ducks to water; all mathematicians are now happy, for, as Professor Eddington says, ‘a mathematician is never so happy as when he does n’t understand what he is talking about’; and finally, every philosopher and metaphysician will glow over concepts of before and after and the metaphysics of infinity and eternity.

John D. Willard is Director of the Extension Service in Agriculture and Home Economics at the Massachusetts Agricultural College, Amherst. William Archer, playwright, critic, and publicist, is known on this side of the water almost as well as in Great Britain. His earliest reputation was won through his confident introduction of Ibsen to the English-speaking world. Philip Hemenway Chadbourn had, during the war, a wide and varied experience in many lands. He took an active part in relief work in Belgium under Mr. Kellogg, and was in Petrograd, on a mission for this government, when the Russian Revolution broke out, in March, 1917. He is now in business in Smyrna, and was at Constantinople, awaiting orders to proceed to his permanent station, when his chief asked him to make the trip to the Crimea which is described in this letter. Chang Hsin-Hai is a student of Western civilization and culture. He holds the degree of A.M., and is now studying for a Ph.D. in Modern Languages at Harvard, ‘believing that Literature gives the best expression of the genius of the Western peoples.’ He was formerly editor of the Chinese Student’s Monthly. Samuel Spring, a member of the Suffolk bar, is an authority on taxation.

Can the Japanese be ‘Americanized ’ ? This report of a Japanese attempt toward Americanization, in the interior of Japan, may throw some light on the much-agitated question.

TOKYO, JAPAN,
February 7, 1921.
DEAR ATLANTIC MONTHLY, -
The following letter from a former pupil, who is now wife in the kind of Christian home and house any young American couple would be proud to have, is given as she wrote.
How delightful is the sense of humor, the give and take between husband and wife! Is not this the ‘acid test’ of the American spirit?
Yours truly, A. G. L.

January, 27.
MY DEAR MISS L——, —
I’m answering lots of letters and cards now I got at new years time. I could not write because I was sick in bed, now I am going to write you a few lines in English for a change as I have been thinking to write you any way. I was very thoughtless that I took medicine which did not agree with me. I took it because a friend of us told me that is good. I should have spoken about it to my husband; and then doctor told us that medicine poisined me. I never had such a hard time, — my thro light and mouth all swollen up, could not drink or eat or anything and had such high fever that every body was scared. My husband said that was punishment from God because I did not agree to M-’s new year’s plan.
That is this: (1) Mwants to change this house intircly into foreign house so he can walk in with dirty shoes.
2. He wants me to wear foreign dress intircly and children too.
3. He wants to change our language into English.
4. He wants to live more convient ways in every thing than now, he mentioned so many small things.
I abjected every one of them. Japanese house is convient for Japanese and specially our house is. I am more than thankful we have every thing we want comparing other Japanese house. This is made for two sides — Japanese and foreign, we can intertain Japanese guests or foreign guests and very convient for children. I am quite satisfied as it is. I don’t like the custome to walk in with dirty shoes, you know country people don’t know any better. If we allow them to come in with their own shoes, I have to clean our carpet every time people left and I don’t know how much trouble that is.
And then about my changing dress and children it is better for children even though it is trouble to get material as we can not buy in Tand I have to teach our country tailor how to make children’s dress beside I have to make over half dozen times in one dress. You can not make your dress in T— that is settled. If we get a tailor from Kyoto or some place it is twice much expensive than you get a man in your own town. Since I have plenty of kimonos it is too extravagant to wear foreign dress. I like it just for sporting and I have some for it. You know a monkey is a monkey, and can’t be looked nicer since she is horned as a monkey. I am fortunately or unfortunately Japanese but I am satisfied being Japanese and try not to show a goat as a sheep, if I can help it. Ha! ha! Of course I know we have to change Japanese kimonos but I suggest we must change inside part than outside part, I mean underwear part. And the language too. He wants me to speak in English to him and to children. I did not abject this as bad as others but you know I am not good in English and takes 3 times much of time and I canot not say half what I want to tell. You know I am such a poor head, I can not sat isfy my husband. He said ‘try and do it whether you can or not,’ He made me do it. I say this way when I have to Speak to him. Dear, um, um ... he says, What is it? and rest of that, I tell him in Japanese. English does not come out easily from my mouth. I report you our new year’s quarrel. I think no body writes you like that, but I tell you the truth it is better to tell such things to her trusted friend, perhaps she can tell better openions or suggest some new things, ne!
One of our twin girls is walking like a big girl the other was late 15 minutes when she was borne but she is later than 2 months. She still like a little animal but she is pushing chairs along. They like to pile up blocks and 3 children are good play mates, big boy Taro tries to help his sisters, but I have to watch them carefully. Yesterday I noticed he was feeding them sweet cakes which they still can not eat. They like to sing. I wish you would hear t hem sing in chorus. Every one of them sings different tone, and different meaning. Every morning they get up at 6 o’clock and they all go to the next room where papa sleeps and they all get into papa’s bed and they sing or clim on him or pushing all sorts games they can do. Papa does not welcome these industrious visitors. But he can not do anything with them. Poor papa! he is like a tamed lion to his 3 babies.
Say! I am writing almost too long. I did not think it was so long as I started in the beginning. Please excuse me. May he I took your precious time for such letter as this foolish writing. ‘Gomen nasai.’ This is all for to-day.
With love and trust as ever,
HARU.

DEAR ATLANTIC, -
Your Boston policeman reminds me of a pilgrimage when each dip of the paddle brought us nearer, in spirit as well as distance, to Stratfordon-Avon. As the environment grew on me, I was shocked to realize that so many Americans lived in Stratford. I ventured to express the thought to my companion, an Oxford professor. His reply has often brought joy to my heart: ‘Not Americans, Bostonians.’
Soon afterward, in London, dodging in and out of highways and byways, bent on locating the ‘Old Curiosity Shop,’ I finally came out on that part of the city known as the Gates of London. I approached a traffic Bobbie, whose great frame made my six feet seem diminutive, my eyes being on the same level with his South African campaign ribbons. I inquired if he would be good enough to direct me to the place I sought.
‘If you mean Dickens’s Old Curiosity Shop, I am sorry, sir, I am unable to do it.’
I remarked that that was rather strange, as I was sure it was in the immediate vicinity.
‘ If you mean the curiosity shop they keep for you Americans, I can direct you quite easily. I have been a student of Dickens all my life, and it is most apparent that it could have not been situated on the site of the present shop.’ The [outcome was that the policeman and I spent a couple of delightful afternoons at the curiosity shop.
Yours very sincerely,
K. H. A.

Those guides to correct living, the conductresses of the columns of personal advice that adorn the more chaste corners of our daily journals, deserve the thanks of parents everywhere. Here is an admonition from one of them — Miss Harriet B. Elliott — which comes home to us.

DEAR MISS ELLIOTT, - I have a tall lover, who wears heavy glasses and reads the Atlantic Monthly. He is dreamy most of the time. He attends college, where he stars in some courses — history and literature — and flunks mathematics. Children like to have him toss them into the air, and dogs follow him. He seems lazy, as he is satisfied just to go to college and live a simple life. He does n’t know what he wants to do when he gets out. His head is full of poetry and ideas about politics, which I like to discuss with him. I love him — that is not my problem. Will he amount to anything?
HELEN.

Yes.

Later in the year, we hope to publish a more comprehensive series of papers on the negro. Meanwhile, we are glad to give space to a distinguished friend of the race — the President of the Slater Fund.

DEAR SIR, - Without waiting to see what else Mr. Snyder has to say, doubtless many readers of his frank and well-written article in your February number have felt the spirit move them to utter a word of more or less protest.
Several months ago, on the same day, in the same smoking compartment of a Pullman, I heard one group of talkers, in the morning, agree that ‘negroes have no gratitude, no matter what you do for them,’and another group assert, in the afternoon, no less sweepingly, that ‘there is one thing can be said for negroes, they are grateful for any consideration or kindness you show them.’ Here we have the futility of general statements about any race or set of people. The fact is, that the black people of the South differ among themselves just as much as the white people, in gratitude as well as in industry and other traits. If Professor Shaler was right, the blacks may he said to have a right to differ more, because the various people of Africa from whom they are descended differ, he claims, more from each other than do the various people of Europe, from whom the whites are descended. Whatever the cause, the fact remains that you can no more safely make sweeping statements about the blacks than you can about the whites. When Mr. Snyder generalizes, therefore, we should be careful to note the fact that he is writing of those whom he speaks of as ‘my negroes,’ on his plantation. If all negroes were as ignorant, as thriftless, as primitive, as those whom Mr. Snyder describes, how could it have come about — to speak of property alone — that the colored race in the South owns more than twenty million acres of land, and property values of all kind estimated at one and a quarter billions? To my mind the most unchristian thing about our attitude toward the negro people as a whole is our ignorance of them. I am tempted to say that it is worse than lynching.
What Mr. Snyder’s article shows, as the prefatory note well says, is the need of the extension of public education. But docs it not show more? Is not his article somewhat in the nature of a boomerang? Does it not strengthen the criticism that the plantation system, even with a beneficent master, is an inevitable drawback to education and improvement? Now, I am perfectly well aware that plantation systems are not to be done away with overnight; but I believe it is true that the improvement of the poor folk of the open country, white or black, is inversely proportional to the prevalence of the plantation idea, the atmosphere of which is very much the same whether in Mississippi, in Mexico, or in Czecho-Slovakia. Only a few days ago, I heard a recently returned traveler speak of the ignorance of peasants in certain parts of Europe in almost the same terms which Mr. Snyder uses in regard to the negroes on his plantation.
I am sure Mr. Snyder would have written quite differently had he known the conditions among other than plantation negroes.
Very truly,
JAMES H. DILLARD.

Another letter — this from Virginia — is well worth printing.

EDITOR OF THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY SIR, - The article by a Mississippi planter in a recent number of your magazine was extremely interesting, treating as it did, of a very vital matter; and I believe it is correct. His lot has certainly fallen among negroes of a very low type, and there are several very definite reasons for their degraded condition, one of which he suggests, viz.: the indifference of the white of that section to schools for the blacks. There is no avoiding the fact that, for several generations to come, we shall have to play the 1 Big Brother,’ and see to it that there are adequate schools for the negroes.
Our fine Big-Brother pose with reference to Haiti, Santo Domingo, and the small Central American republics is highly amusing when viewed in the light of our utter indifference to the weak ‘brown brother’ within our own frontiers. We are fostering an ulcer by our neglect, which may one day prove dangerous. So let the white man provide schools, and see to it that the children obey the law by attendance on them.
‘ Obey the law. ’ There is another point the planter hinted at. There are, presumably, laws against cruelty to children, and other misdemeanors; but they are never invoked unless the crime is against a whiteman, and then the chances are that the whites will break the law themselves by flogging or lynching the black, rather than allowing the law to punish. How can you expect the negro to have any respect for laws which they see broken every day of the year by the whites? A law in the South (or, at any rate, in Virginia, where I live) is not meant to be kept; it merely stands on the statute book, so that it can be ’pulled,’ like a gun or a knife, on anyone against whom you have a grudge.
The negro is docile and imitative, and can be trained away from cruelty and filth, and into a moderate energy, and respect for the law, by seeing the whites obey the laws, and seeing that laws apply equally to blacks and whites.
There are two other reasons for the low type of negro in Mississippi, which take us back to old slavery days. One is that the plantations in Louisiana and Mississippi were enormous, so that, consequently, the slaves came very little in contact with the whites, and it was only by assocition with ‘de fambly’ that they learned manners and whatever morals the family had. The fieldhand always remained more primitive and savage than the house servant, because the field-hand saw only the overseers, who were more or less brutal, but always brutal. So well recognized in the old days was this reputation for brutality ‘down South,’ that the threat by a master in one of the more northerly Southern states to ‘sell him South’ would nearly always reduce a refractory negro to terms.
This brings me to the third reason for the low type of negro found in Mississippi, and that is that they are the descendants of the unruly, hopelessly unmanageable negroes sold South. The awful story of those droves or slaves on their way south is one you never meet in the ‘ slush ’ literature poured out by Southern writers, who would have us believe that the relations in the old days were a roseate dream of affection and loyalty and kindliness. I am a Southern woman, and know the negro by experience and tradition, as all my forebears were slave-holders — a fact which is not true of all Southerners, although Northerners have a vague impression that everyone living in the South counted his slaves by the dozen, at least, if not by the score: an impression rather nurtured by Southerners. I can testify that the path of neither owner nor slave was an easy one. Some years ago I said to my mother that I was going to discharge a certain maid, as I could not stand some fault she had, to which my mother replied: ‘You are fortunate that you can get rid of her: I had to stand such things, and worse.’
Their laziness, again, is partly temperamental and partly the result of example. They know that work is despised by the Southern white, who is quite as lazy as any negro ever born; and now that they don’t have to work under the whip, they simply don’t work. When the Southern white man learns that work is honorable as well as necessary, you will see the negro learning the same lesson. No American likes to work; so why in the name of sense, should we quarrel with the negro because he does n’t, either?
Since smoking came into fashion among ‘white ladies,’ I one day saw a young negro woman walking along the road, smoking a cigarette, and laughingly told a neighbor of it, who scornfully remarked: ‘What imitative creatures they are!’ ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘ they are just what we make them; so you see our responsibility/
We in the more northerly Southern states have our own problems; but, in Virginia, at least, wre have no such general condition of degradation to handle, and the reasons for the difference I believe to be, that all the children go to fair schools, and that it is understood that the law’ will punish a crime against a black pest as quickly as a crime against a white. And still a third reason is that with us, the ‘gun’ is not considered as essential as his cravat to a man’s correct attire.

For those who deplore the insensibility of the age, we print the following.

DEAB ATLANTIC, -
Do you buy short stories for your magazine? I would like to have this one I am working on published, but did not know what company to place it with.
‘The Mother-Love’ will be the title.
Honor the dear old mother, time has scattered the snowy flakes on her brow, Time has plowed deep furrows on her cheek, but is she not beautiful now?
If you do not accept writings of this kind, perhaps you will be kind enough to give me the name of some one you think would accept it. Thanking you in advance, I remain --.

The startling increase in crime has reached a climax in Oak Park, Illinois. We quote from a local organ.

Crime — Atlantic Monthly Stolen!!

Oak Park police station chronicles record many varieties of thefts, but none as remarkable as that recently brought to light at the Public Library. Two copies of Atlantic Monthly have been stolen from the reading room, and in consequence no one may obtain a copy except after being identified.