The Contributors' Column

George Byron Gordon is the Director of the University Museum of Philadelphia, whose field expedition in collaboration with the experts from the British Museum has been since 1922 uncovering Ur of the Chaldees, the city where Abraham lived and whence he started on the pilgrimage which his descendants have not yet completed. ¶Liquor is to-day the most advertised product in the United States, and if there is anything in the American idea of publicity every citizen is consciously or unconsciously occupied with the complex question of Prohibition. Dr. Frederick Ernest Johnson, Executive Secretary of the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ, conducted the most impressive investigation to which the Volstead Act has been subjected. Beside his conclusions we place those of Morton P. Fisher, for nearly three years a Federal district attorney of Baltimore. J. B. S. Haldane is the Sir William Dunn Reader in Biochemistry at Cambridge, with a war record of the utmost daring. Mr. Haldane has won in these last years a reputation as brilliant as that of any young chemist of Europe. He is a nephew of Lord Haldane, late Chancellor of the Exchequer. André Maurois, who is coming to America this winter, wrote and published Les Silences du Colonel Bramble during the war, and Les Discours du Docteur O’Grady, Ariel, Dialogues sur le Commandement, since. His latest manuscript, the half-ludicrous and wholly charming love-story of young Goethe, was begun in our January number and is concluded in this. The delicate task of translation has been well done by Mr. George L. Howe of Providence.

Louis I. Dublin, chief statistician of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, meets with eloquent facts and figures the arguments of the advocates of birth control, and meets them squarely with their chosen weapons from the arsenal of modern science. ¶A Chicagoan of three generations, Mrs. Louise de Koven Bowen has grown up with the city and has long been identified with its social and civic progress and with its pleasantest society. ¶From Pembrokeshire Wilfrid Gibson sent us his verses, so full of sensibility to poetic things and to the still deeper affections of the human heart. ¶The wife of a naval officer, Carol Haynes has followed her husband ‘east coast, west coast, all around the world.’ ‘When not engaged in meeting ships,’ she writes, ‘checking baggage, or settling for a short while in house or hotel, I have been writing poetry. “Travails with a Donkey” is my first attempt in prose.’ ¶In the present agitation over the control of crime John Barker Waite utters some cautioning truths. In his own experience Mr. Waite has seen why the arm of the law can seldom strike home.

Not thirty leagues from Broadway William Beebe proved that there were queerer fish in the sea than ever men lied about. ¶The irreconciliation of social and spiritual gospels, which since 1914 has distressed many Liberals, is described by an Anonymous minister in terms of poignant sincerity. Richard Le Gallienne is a versatile Englishman long resident among us, distinguished for his verse and prose as well as for his portrait by the incomparable Max. Edmund Wilson, a Princeton graduate, has found many subjects for lively criticism and conversation since his coming to New York City. ¶A member of the most traveled nation in the world, Alan Sullivan finds in his wanderings the bright and elusive threads for an admirable yarn. ¶For three and a half years Judith Sceva taught English in Tsing Hua College of Peking. We quote the following from her recent letter:—

It’s a bit startling, upon being called to account to you, to discover that my career consists of a long list of unrelated, futile, and sometimes uncomfortable items, — a journey by steerage, a job in a cigar factory, for examples, — each to no better purpose than to enable me to ' see what it’s like.’

For that reason, which appears to have been the ruling motive of my past, I went to China five years ago. Out of three and a half years there, I like best to remember such moments as those recorded in the sketches. I did n’t mention, therefore, in connection with the journey on the Grand Canal, that we lay at night between rows of incense — sacrificial offerings that we were — while a cloud of fierce and hungry mosquitoes waited above for a stick of incense to burn down, to be about their dreadful business. Neither did I remark how we bumped our heads to vertigo on the lintel of the cabin door, whose pigmy proportions we could seldom quite appraise. Nor how our journey’s supply of butter melted all over the deck. After all, these are the things one easily forgets.

Farmer, editor, and author by turns, Arthur Pound lives in the Hudson Valley, is an associate editor of the Independent, and is the author of The Iron Man in Industry.

Arnold J. Toynbee, the author of a Survey of 1924 for the British Committee of International Affairs, visited this country last summer to take part in the Williamstown Institute of Politics and later to lecture at the invitation of the Lowell Institute. ¶A Wisconsin dirt farmer,

Glenn W. Birkett acquired with his land an old account-book beginning in 1882, which has proved a valuable source for disproving certain accepted theories. ¶In an illuminating visit to Canada last autumn C. H. Bretherton, an editor of the London Morning Post, was moved to write about the future of that vast and wealthy Dominion.

We wish that this letter may be widely read. We would sincerely eradicate the impression that the Atlantic does not believe in the single-minded and beautiful devotion of most evangelists. Occasionally we do permit ourselves to doubt whether the results of certain missionary work are what many people like to believe. Yet, as in all such issues, full justice must be done to the good on either side.

NORTH HELD, MASS.
DEAR ATLANTIC, —
I read you faithfully every month, and I notice letters at the back of you in modest fine print. I would like to be one of these.
I don’t like your articles on evangelism. I like everything else, but almost every religious article hits evangelism hard and paints a portrait of an impossible evangelist. This is n’t fair, and I have a right to portray my experience.
I am the daughter of an evangelist, and I married the son of an evangelist. To be sure, they were both pioneers in this field, and their type may be rare. However, the public should know that it does exist.
My own father was a prosperous business-man in Chicago. When he resigned from the Elgin Watch Company, the head of the company offered to double his salary if he would stay. My father then had a wife and two children, but he held firmly to his conviction that he had been called to be an evangelist, and from that time until his death he lived a life of absolute faith. He never allowed money to be spoken of in connection with his work. He took what God sent him and we never lacked for the necessities of life. Once in Ireland those in charge of his mission insisted upon taking a collection each night to defray expenses. This so grieved my father as a token of weak faith that he refused to accept a penny when he left that place after two weeks of preaching three times a day. There was an interesting sequel to this. When I was married a marvelous box of linen came from this committee in Ireland, with a message to the effect that they would be even with my father if I would accept this token of love for him as a wedding gift.
My father had a ‘ passion for souls,’ which is the requisite for every true evangelist. Every man, woman, or child whom he met at dinner, or traveling, or in meetings, was to him an immortal soul, needing his Saviour. The love of God was shed abroad in him by the Holy Ghost. It looked out of his face; it impelled his every action and word. He was never greater than during his last three years of terrible physical pain. Often he would have callers who believed in faith healing, and my father, a man of prayer, would have but one answer: ‘My brother, it takes more faith to suffer and believe that God loves you than to claim your healing.’
The last time the family gathered about his bed to partake of the communion he said: ‘ While you are all here with me I want to give you my testimony. I have never once doubted God’s love for me.’ Only those who had witnessed these years of his terrible agony could realize the power of his words.
I watched him like a cat all my early years. I proved him to be absolutely sincere and humble. For him, to live was Christ. He was always willing to apologize to his children when in the wrong, and so we never stumbled over him. ‘ I am sorry I spoke to you in anger. My Master would not do that. Will you forgive me?’ These are words which spoke to my childhood of the power of God.
There will be many in Heaven because of his faithful living and preaching a Saviour’s love.
My father-in-law was better known, though he could not be a better man. They were devoted friends and co-workers. It is true they were pioneers, and that since their day hundreds of evangelists have been made who possibly were not ‘called’ to give up lucrative positions and live by faith. Yet what I wish your readers might know is that there are still evangelists of power and sincerity.
In our small village we have just experienced a week with such a man. Our whole village has been stirred by a supernatural power. As Dr. Newton says in his article, in the December Atlantic, they have been making the discovery that religion is actually true and that to neglect it is for the race to perish. From every direction one hears appeals for a revival. Why, then, cast any disparagement over the medium for revivals whom God has used for that purpose since the world was — the evangelist?
MARY W. MOODY

Here is an identical education fostering two widely divergent creeds.

MONMOUTH, ILL.
DEAR ATLANTIC, —
I was born and reared in a county adjacent to the one in which Mr. Calkins, the author of ‘The Natural History of a Soul,’ spent his youth. In a near-by denominational college was received a training which has aided me in making a living, and contacts were formed which strengthened and enriched my character.
Many of the experiences of which he tells were duplicated in my life, but with entirely different reactions. While they left him uncertain as to whether there is a God or a future life, they built up in me a very definite and sustaining faith in a Power that is directing the universe, and a confidence that the best that is in humanity will go on living and developing throughout eternity.
The homely little churches, the revival meetings, and the Bands of Hope were a conserving force that has made these Middle-West communities good places in which to rear families and has produced men and women who are a stabilizing force in the midst of the unrest to-day.
M. C.

Faust and damnation.

WASHINGTON, D. C.
DEAR ATLANTIC, —
There was very much to interest me in your issue of November, particularly the article by Earnest Elmo Calkins, entitled ‘The Natural History of a Soul.’
Just before leaving far-off Bucharest, where I had been for the past four years as an attaché of the American Legation, I beguiled one lonely evening in setting down the following — from my own experience: —
Are there any limits to what a boy can be made to suffer by an ancestry compounded of approximately equal parts of Dutch Puritan, Scotch Covenanter, and Irish Primitive Methodist ancestry? I am not denying that there are also benefits and satisfactions — these show themselves much later. I am now speaking of the boy himself, as a boy.
It was a dreary, dour creed to which we were bidden to subscribe, and might have been summarized something like this: All natural desires are wrong and must be suppressed.
I recall an occasion when my young soul, though ‘ cabined, cribbed, confined,’ showed that it had dynamite enough to explode under pressure. For a Christmas present I had received a large fine new writing-slate and pencil. How I yearned to use them! But Christmas that year had come on Sunday and, though our presents had been given out that day, we were not permitted to enjoy them. Sunday morning at ten o’clock all the older folks were at divine service. I had been excused only because I had a sore throat. As the moments slipped by, the temptation finally became too strong to be withstood. I must write on that slate. I marched to the door of the room in which lay that precious slate. Then I paused. The game must be played fairly. My training prompted me that the Power about to be flouted must be warned. That was only fair and just. Therefore I paused. Then I saluted and spoke, firmly, if somewhat fearfully: ‘Now, God, I ‘m going to do it!’
The joy — forbidden, sinful joy — was worth the price. Moreover — a break had been made. I was never in quite the same fear afterward lest thunder and lightning might follow upon a violation of the Sabbath-keeping regulations.
One outstanding feature of my religious life in early days was its very partisan and sectarian character. The boys of my set were all bitterly anti-Catholic. The young Catholic boys of the neighborhood, of course, were just as antiProtestant. Both sides must have afforded the community a very unlovely exhibition of the beauties of Christlikeness.
My grandfather was horrified when I told him that I had been to service in one of the beautiful Roman Catholic churches of the neighborhood. On the other hand, I recall vividly how one day, when I had succeeded in persuading an Irish boy friend (less bigoted than his parents) to go with me to a Methodist Sunday School, his people came near to disowning him. He told me the priest had imposed a severe penance, How times have changed!
Incidentally, I must not neglect to record how thankful I have always been to my stern grandfather (the Scotch-Irish Puritan aforesaid) for having compelled me to learn by heart long passages of Scripture. During the years from eight to fifteen I committed to memory almost one half of the English Bible.
In my boyhood our Sundays were very sombre periods. Six times during that ‘Day of Rest’ we were conducted (I had almost said driven) to religious services: —

9:30 — Sunday School
10:30 — Morning Preaching
12:00 — Class Meeting
2:30 — Temperance Meeting
5:00 — Epworth League
8:00 — Evening Preaching

Besides these, there was midweek prayer meeting and Christian Endeavor meeting.
For seven long years this programme was adhered to rigidly. Then the weariness of the flesh began to react on the spirit. Vague feelings of dissatisfaction, of imprisonment, arose in me.
The end came when, at twenty years of age, I was a ‘Steward’ of the Methodist Church in one of what were then suburbs of New York — now in the greater metropolis. It was actually proposed to bring me to trial — with expulsion as the penalty — for attending a performance of grand opera. I had heard and seen Faust. Human nature rebelled. I withdrew from the Church. And this event was my intellectual and (I say it reverently) my spiritual emancipation.
I traveled much; I visited many of the holy places of the world — Palestine, Greece, Rome. I saw the cathedrals, the mosques, the synagogues, all the temples and shrines of men’s faith and aspiration. In all I found God—meaning by God the embodiment of the highest, finest, and most lofty conceptions of which the human soul is capable.
I do not know what is the meaning of the extraordinary changes in our morale as a race which have come about since the Great War. As a man of fifty, I fear some of them greatly. But we are, at least, more frank and less hypocritical and petty than we were when I was a boy.
Very truly yours,
LOUIS E. VAN NORMAN

A prettily turned compliment from Mr. Arthur Peter of Louisville.

AN APPRECIATION OF THE DECEMBER ATLANTIC

Dr. Walcott, the professor from the Middle West who attended one of the Margery séances at Cambridge, feels that his part in the proceeding was incorrectly described. Dr. Walcott is a sincere investigator. We are glad to print important excerpts from his letter and to ask the reader to remember that the ‘impulse’ which he acknowledges below was — despite its annoyance of Walter — instrumental in solving the problem of Margery’s ‘teleplasmic arm.’

HAMLINE UNIVERSITY
ST. PAUL, MINN.
EDITOR OF THE ATLANTIC,
DEAR SIR: —
In your issue for November 1925 is an article by Mr. Hudson Hoagland entitled ‘Science and the Medium,’ which unwarrantably impeaches my integrity. . . .
On page 675, left-hand column, the writer says: ‘Now it so happened that the visitor from the Middle West had, during the course of the evening, said certain things that greatly annoyed Walter, though he had come with the understanding that he would not deliberately offend Walter or the Crandons.’ The term ‘deliberately’ is wholly unwarranted. . . .
In regard to blowing the so-called ‘doughnut,’ I will say that I did so the first time wholly impulsively, without any deliberate intent, and then stopped, fearing that I might have violated my pledge, but later repeated the attempt, urged on by those sitting near me and by the medium herself, as I think the dictagraph will show. . . .
Very truly yours,
GREGORY D. WALCOTT

What ‘Good Business’ cannot buy.

NEW YORK CITY
DEAR ATLANTIC, —
It hardly seems probable that the banker in ‘Good Business’ of the November issue died from shock, for the article contains nothing really new, although the facts as stated cannot be denied. Yet, anyone familiar with the real values of life knows that there are some compensations which are above even ‘Good Business’ and which money cannot buy.
The banker did not talk Horace with his English butler, nor did he put into the hands of his head chauffeur his rare collection of early editions. He paid them each a salary for services rendered. There was, on the other hand, a nonnegotiable bond between the banker and ‘the humble instructor’ which was tied up with the genial wit and lyric grace of a poet.
As I write this, I am on a train which is bearing me away from a university town, where for eighteen hours I have seen the culture and the charm that ‘Good Business’ can never buy. The contacts reach out from that quiet, scholarly group of people to the ends of the earth; and the international, understanding minds, which will some day save ‘Good Business’ and America, are there being developed and conserved.
N. P.

In all fairness to other Atlantic contributors who may go tramping, we publish this warning from the Shotgun Belt.

LITTLE ROCK, ARK.
DEAR EDITOR: —
Permit me to call attention to the article of one Paul Ernest Anderson in the December issue of the Atlantic, entitled ‘Tramping with Yeggs.’
In the concluding paragraph of his article Mr. Anderson states, ‘In the end, perhaps, only darkest and most backward Arkansas will be left as his (the tramp yegg’s) sole hunting-ground.’
This statement is so misleading that one comes to suspect that the whole article is rather worthless; nevertheless I feel it must not pass unchallenged.
For the information of Mr. Anderson and his yeggs, it is a fact substantiated by the insurance companies that there are fewer bank-robberies in Arkansas than in most of the states of the Union, New England excepted. Moreover, the records of these companies are more likely to be precise than are the statements of any of Mr. Anderson’s associates. It is well to note here, for the benefit of Mr. Anderson’s friends, that in practically all the cases of bank-robbery, whether daylight or yegg method, the criminals have been apprehended and are now serving sentences of from twenty-five years to life duration.
Mr. Anderson would impress his readers that the knights of nitroglycerin are accustomed to hold the entire population of ‘yokels’ at bay by simply firing a few shots over the heads of the citizenry, which reduces them infallibly to a state of abject terror. I wonder if Mr. Anderson ever read the story of the Siloam Springs Bank robbery?
Yes, Mr. Anderson, this is the Bible Belt — but it is also the Shotgun Belt.
Yours sincerely,
J. P. FISHER

Here is a challenge for someone who understands Einstein.

SIR!
I beg to report the finding of geometric explanation of why twice two is four.
I use ‘positive geometry and logic’ originated entirely by myself, after thirty-two years of effort.
By results of this finding, I offer to disqualify the current ‘Theory of Relativity’ which I understand to be postulated by one Einstein as a universal condition; such disqualification to be accomplished in not more than two hours, before a competent jury.
I shall criticize or suggest nothing; the jury is to make its own conclusions.
Being without education whatsoever, I command no scientific credit whatsoever. Reasons for disqualification of the ‘theory’ are unprecedented and of utmost importance to future actual civilization of mankind in general and of white race in particular.
Your good offices or return of this letter with or without comment are requested by,
Yours truly,
R. A. SEDLACEK