The Contributors' Column

FOR the first time since his retirement, Mr. Wilson gives written expression to his views of the profound social and economic questions that are agitating the after-war world. His power to embody vital thoughts in a great message is here displayed afresh.Philip Cabot, a former Atlantic contributor, has had a varied experience-as clerk, trustee, promoter and manager of publicutility corporations, as banker, and finally, it seems, as religious mystic. He has now turned his energies to the work of King’s Chapel, Boston. ¶Readers who went ‘Up Eel River’ with Margaret Prescott Montague (June Atlantic) may meet again that mythical and superhuman lumberman. Tony Beaver, in ‘The To-day To-morrow.’ Mary E. L. Hennigan is a Chicago schoolteacher, a graduate of the University of Chicago, and a former pupil of Robert Herrick. She writes: —

To give all sides of a situation as manyfaceted as that in Ireland at present would, even for the Atlantic, be quite impracticable. Yet I dared to hope you might print just one more point of view, that of the simple lover of the plain Irish. I have read and studied about Ireland since I have understood words of one syllable, visited it four times, twice in the last two years. I live in a suburb of Chicago, on three gorgeous acres of cherry, apple, pear, and plum blossom, with ‘Himself,’ three boys, and the baby, dogs, pigeons, chickens, ducks, and flowers. I take care of them all.

Samuel McChord Crothers is Minister of the First Church (Unitarian) of Cambridge. Massachusetts, and famous to Atlantic readers as essayist and philosopher. Margaret Sherwood, professor of English literature at Wellesley College, is an old Atlantic contributor. ¶From his post of observation in East Africa, Hans Coudenhove sends us the accumulated evidence of eighteen years concerning the status of woman in Nyasaland. Edward Yeomans is a Chicago manufacturer, the author of Shackled Youth, and a leader among the new thinkers upon education. ¶Author of ‘The Ship’ in this number of the Atlantic, and of ‘The Sailmaker, ‘ and his cat, in the July Atlantic,Arthur Mason is an old salt who in forty years of sea-faring has sailed on more than fifty ships. ¶Author, dramatic critic, and professor of dramatic literature at Columbia University, Brander Matthews has written many volumes on literary and dramatic criticism. Sara Teasdale has a secure place among American lyrical poets. She is the author of Rivers to the Sea, Flame and Shadow, and other volumes.

For a number of years it has been a part of the official duty of Archer Wall Douglas to keep in touch with business conditions all over the United States. He is one of the vice-presidents of the Simmons Hardware Company. Helen McAfee, associate-editor of the Yale Review, sends us expert criticism of the literary by-productions of the Great War. Elizabeth Choate is one of the younger generation of essayists becoming well known to Atlantic readers. Harvey Wickham, a traveled and a traveling essayist, confesses with both embarrassment and pride that he is the author of four books of detective stories.

Walter Lippmann, formerly associateeditor of the New Republic, and now on the staff of the New York World, sends us this carefully considered and keen analysis of Senator Borah’s plan to outlaw war. Ian D. Colvin is the leading editorial writer on the London Morning Post. He makes his first contribution to the Atlantic in this number. ¶Studcnt and critic of political forces, E. T. Raymond adds to his earlier Atlantic portraits these incisive studies of certain members of the new British Cabinet. Ralph Butler, already well known to our readers through his paper on ‘Little Missions,’ in the Atlantic for May 1922, is an Englishman and a member of the Reparations Commission. He writes from Berlin.

Mr. Arliss’s attractive paper has brought, us letters from a small multitude of people seriously interested in stage theory and practice. Every theatre-goer will, we think, wish to read the following comment from a famous critic and successful playwright, who lately paraphrased an old adage with signal discrimination when he hitched his play to a bright particular star.

MY DEAR ARLISS,—
I have just read with pleasure and substantial agreement your article in the Atlantic Monthly. It pleased me none the less for including a most effective puff of my ‘ Playmaking.’ The anecdote would have been all the more telling if you had added, ‘the author of which had never written a play’ — which would have been true to all intents and purposes. Who was the actor-dramatist, by the way? The author of ‘The First Year’? I forget his name.
While we are on the subject, the title of my book is not How to Write a Play. I should have regarded that as far too dogmatic. ‘Playmaking’ suggests, I hope, a discussion rather than an ex cathedra deliverance.
I am entirely with you in thinking that the modern young man, with his symbolism and expressionism, and all the rest of it, is butting into a blind alley. All such movements (to change the metaphor) are mere eddies in the current. They alter the surface aspect of things for a moment, but don’t make the Mississippi run backwards or flow into the Atlantic instead of the Gulf of Mexico. Such stuff as Six Characters in Search of an Author has no future. It is freak work of momentary interest, if any — it had none for me. I think it’s quite likely that there will be a large departure before long from our current three-or-four-act technique. I have myself written an historical play in seven scenes, instead of acts. But such matters as act and scene division are wholly nonessential. The great point is that there is no symptom of people being permanently attracted by any play which does not tell an interesting story through the medium of recognizably human characters.
I think you are inclined to exaggerate the element of convention inseparable from the best stage-work. The true glory of the modern stage is precisely that it has reduced convention to a minimum. I should say your own acting was a case in point. The fact that it is minutely studied and adapted to the optic of the theatre does not render it conventional. Perspective, in painting, is not rightly called a convention; the convention is in the willow-pattern plate which ignores perspective. Champions of the soliloquy and the aside (I don’t seriously accept you as one of them) are fond of saying, ‘You can’t get rid of the great convention which removes the fourth wall of a room; therefore there’s no good in boggling at any minor conventions.’ But this is awful rot. There is no convention in the removal of the fourth wall. Nature, in forgetting to provide us with eyes in the back of our heads, has effectually ‘removed the fourth wall’ of any given room for us, at any given moment. In a modern interior set we see exactly what we are seeing every day of our lives. That is why it at once strikes us as ludicrously incongruous if a gentleman walks into such a room, and says, ‘ Ha! this dear old drawing-room! How glad I am to see it again after seventeen years’ absence as a tea-planter in Assam; and there, over the mantelpiece, exactly where it used to be, is the portrait of my old dad in the uniform of the Blankshire Yeomanry! I have a strong suspicion that he did not die a natural death, but was poisoned by my wicked stepmother, now Marchioness of Carabas. Ha! here she comes! I must dissemble.’ (Enter the Marchioness, back C.)
Of course, I am not denying that there is an element of convention even in the most delicately faithful modern art. But it is a pity to admit too much vis-à-vis the latter-day paradoxist — for if you give him an inch, he will take an ell.
On the question of dialect parts, I, as a Scotchman, must venture, with some slight reservations, to disagree. To carry the war straight into the enemy’s country: I appeal to you as a Londoner, to say whether we ought to have had Watkins played by an American actor? Of course, it is possible to lay on dialect too thick, as your actors seem to have done in The Professor’s Love-Story. There are some Scottish dialects which I myself could not understand. In Barrie’s plays the dialect, must be generalized; but any reasonably skillful Scotch actor can do that. Is not Harry Lauder comprehensible all the world over? I shall never forget the torments I endured in listening to the ‘Scotch’ of the actors in Barrie’s Little Minister as done by Maud Adams in 1899. True, it went down all right with the Brooklyn audience; but it would have been easy to find Scotch actors who would have made the unskillful laugh just as much and would not have made the judicious grieve. Several English actors have been fairly good at Scotch, but none, I think, quite convincing. And when you come to Ireland — conceive The Playboy of the Western World acted by an English or American company! How intolerable is the Ameriean-stage Englishman, and the English-stage American! As for stage Frenchmen, it is no doubt true that the conventional type will go down at least as well with the average English audience as the genuine article. It is a case of the public which applauded the man who imitated a pig’s squeaking, and hissed the man who had a real pig under his cloak. But I can recall one or two Frenchmen who were very effective in French characters. Surely you must remember Mons. Marino at the old Strand.
I don’t believe in the revival of incidental music (in serious plays) any more than I believe in the revival of the soliloquy and the aside; but I can give you a striking instance of the power of music (any music) over the emotions. In 1918 I went to Évian on the Lake of Geneva, to see the rapatriés from the occupied districts in the north of France reënter their native country. They came in in two daily batches of many hundreds in each, and immediately on their arrival were marched down to the great hall of the Casino where a simple meal—bowls of coffee, rolls, etc., awaited them. I sat in the gallery and watched them. Every place at the long tables was occupied by the dead-weary, listless, one would have said quite unemotional, crowd. But, after ten minutes or so, a band struck up some military march. I did n’t know it, but it was a lively air, and I am sure it had no special emotional appeal. Yet before ten bars of it had been played, every soul at these tables (except the children) was in tears! It was one of the most curious effects I ever saw. This was the evening arrival. I was again present at the entertainment of next morning’s crowd. This time a choir of girls sang the Marseillaise; but it had n’t anything like the same appeal. There was perceptible emotion, but not universal. Evidently the great effect of the previous evening had lain in the mere instrumental tone.
You must thank for this long screed the interest of your article.
Ever yours,
WILLIAM ARCHER.

In February we began a discussion of Japan’s recent attitude toward armament, entitled, ‘Japan: A Sequel to the Washington Conference.’ The discussion still continues. We are glad to print a letter from David Starr Jordan, Chancellor Emeritus of Leland Stanford Jr. University, critical of that article.

Dear Atlantic,—
Without questioning a single statement of this well-informed author, I think that the publication of this article, with its implication of bad faith on the part of Japan, is most unfortunate. This discussion, with similar statements from less competent authors, has tended to revive the feeling of suspicion toward Japan—for the time allayed by the Washington Conference — and the notorious sequence of suspicion is fear, hate, and open move toward war. There are but two powers in the Pacific, and in each the war authorities speak of the other as ‘the enemy’—impersonally of course, but there is no other ‘enemy’ to be considered. Our habit of discussing ‘the enemy’ has been the main support of militarism in Japan since Russia abandoned the unpleasant rôle.
This much is clear. The letter and spirit of the Washington Conference has been more fully respected in Japan than anywhere else. Japan, as a nation, has no longings for the Philippines — would not and could not take them even as a gift; if she wastes money in fortifying her own off-shore islands, Bonin, Amami-Oshima, or the Riukiu, it is her business not ours: her people as a whole crave the closest friendship with the United States; on both sides considerate treatment and a civil tongue in the Foreign Office are worth more than battleships; for us to allow international questions to be decided by local referendum is a dangerous policy; nations like nervous dogs flare up after ill-considered barking; and, finally, war in the Pacific for any cause would be a world calamity of the first magnitude. To us there could be but one catastrophe more awful than war with Japan, and that would be war with Great Britain.
Every dollar spent sincerely for peace counts more for ‘security’ than a thousand spent on munitions. There will be no war in the Pacific unless we force it.

Dickens, we find, wrote about ‘The Experience of Dying’ long before Dr. MacKenzie’s paper in the May Atlantic and asked a question which the philosophers have n’t answered yet.

DEAR ATLANTIC,—
I have just been reading Dr. MacKenzie’s article on ‘The Experience of Dying,’and it has brought back to my memory the first time I read Our Mutual Friend — not many years after its publication — and a question Dickens asked there of which I have often been reminded since. When Rogue Riderhood’s body had been fished out of the river and carried to Miss Abbie’s house, they were working over it to see if they could bring it back to life; and while the result was still doubtful the author asks, ‘If you are not gone for good, Mr. Riderhood, it would be something to know where you are hiding at present. This flabby lump of mortality that we work so hard at, with such patient perseverance, yields no sign of you. If you are gone for good, Rogue, it is very solemn, and if you are coming back, it is hardly less so. Nay, in the suspense and mystery of the latter question, involving that of where you may be now, there is a solemnity even added to that of death, making us who are in attendance alike afraid to look on you and look off you, ‘ etc.
You will remember that they did finally revive him, but where was he in the meantime? Was he in the same place or state or whatever you choose to call it that he would have been if he had not been rescued from the water? Where was Dr. MacKenzie in those periods which he describes so vividly? Can the question be answered?
EDWARD ROBINSON.

‘And since I never dare to write as funny as I can,’ wrote a famous counselor of the Atlantic. The author of the happy burlesque in a recent issue of the Club may well make a like resolution after considering all that the National Trade Extension Bureau of the Plumbing and Heating Industries has to say: —

GENTLEMEN,—
In the ‘Contributors’ Club’ of your April 1923 issue, you give publication to an article entitled ‘The Plumber in Residence.’ Where in the world the authors of such things get their ideas from is a matter of wonder. The facts are all entirely in conflict with the impression of the plumber, which things such as this present.
Out of a nation-wide contact with the trade, and as a result of exhaustive research into the facts and figures of the business itself, it is clearly proved — first, that the usual plumbing dealer or heating contractor, considering capital investment, technical knowledge required, and time spent on business, reaps a smaller return than the general run of business men; second, that the grievances charged up as faults of the plumber are 999 times out of 1000 the faults of the householder or property-owner.
A careful reading of this particular article, and a logical analysis leads irresistibly to the conclusion that the plumber is not only a necessary, but a praiseworthy servant of the community. The unfortunate fact exists, however, that the average reader is neither logical nor analytical. Consequently the impression that the average reader gains from this thing is going to be along the line of contrast between the plumber’s Buick and the householder’s Ford; or between the plumber’s superiority and the householder’s condition of helplessness.
As a matter of truth the plumber is not the incompetent bungler that he is so often pictured as. On the contrary he is the highly skilled mechanic and designer who invents, installs, and maintains the intricate and efficient means of sanitation, without which the modern community would be impossible. He is not the conscienceless profiteer who is so often held up to scorn. On the contrary, he is too often the man who, through modesty or a lack of financial acumen, fails to charge his customer at all adequately for the result of that customer’s own ignorance and stupidity.
Under the circumstances, we would appreciate some indication from you of the reaction to this communication. In it we hope we have seemed as dignified and courteous as we have tried to be. Some small published amends in your magazine would undoubtedly be gratefully received and noticed by the industry we represent. Cordially yours,
THE NATIONAL TRADE EXTENSION BUREAU.

As ever the plumber is at the community’s service. We advise no one to attempt to dispense with him.

An irresistible impulse impels us to reprint from the Erie Railroad Magazine, this successful thrust at an Atlantic ‘pote.’ Railroading gives a background for literary criticism we had n’t expected.

A pome in the February Atlantic contains this line: —

Of the dim places where the moonlight burned.

Well, we have seen the moon from a vantagepoint in the Bad Lands; from Good Ground, L. I.; from the top of Laramie Peak; from a ranch in the Jim River Valley; from the Prado and the Malecón at Havana, Cuba; from a distillery roof in Louisville, Ky., and a brewery in Milwaukee; from the top of the Chicago Annex and a lumber pile at Escanaba, Mich.; from a ship of the Ward Line in the Caribbean; from Skowhegan, Oshkosh, Kalamazoo, Oostburg, Sarnia, Pewaukee, Oconomowoc, Kewaskum, Painted Post, and Skaneateles; also from Hoboken, N. J. — but we never saw it burn, smoke, or even smoulder.