The Contributors' Column

A. P. Herbert, whose initials are a trademark of wit, is an editor of Punch, who tells us his recreations are writing, reading, and making friends — all happily combined in the present drama. ¶Statistician, economist, and author, Dr. I. M. Rubinow, a holder of three degrees (B.A., Ph.D., M.D.), is a middle-aged father whose children are now in college. ¶For eleven weeks M. M. W., a victim of sleeping sickness, lived, moved, and had her being in another world. Then, not only did she recover, but on her return to normal existence she brought with her a store of recollections as vivid as they are inexplicable. Psychologists, attention! ¶A happy discovery has brought to light the wide-ranging letters of the second President, John Adams, to Dr. Benjamin Waterhouse — letters covering thirty years and most of the subjects under the sun. Further portions of this correspondence will appear in a succeeding issue. ¶A member of an old Sussex family, Violet A. Simpson has written smuggling tales of that seacoast, as well as modern and historical novels of London.

An Englishwoman of letters, Dorothy Margaret Stuart makes her début in our columns. ¶Like his famous grandfather, Bernard Darwin has lived the life he loves. A great golfer, he has played for England against Scotland and against the United States, and has twice reached the semifinals of the Amateur Championship. And in the rigor of the game he has never lost the pleasure of it, as golfers know who for decades have followed his regular correspondence in the London Times. ¶Since his graduation from the Yale Divinity School in 1915, Reinhold Niebuhr has been pastor of the Bethel Evangelical Church of Detroit. ¶It is a pleasure to announce that Mazo de la Roche is the winner of the Atlantic Novel Prize of $10,000. Since the first of the year our office has been piled high with bulky manuscripts, which by the closing date had exceeded eleven hundred. By gradual degrees the number was reduced to six, then to three, and finally, by unanimous vote, to ‘Jalna.’ A young Canadian, Miss de la Roche had her first short stories accepted by the Atlantic a decade ago. First a writer of whimsical juveniles, she now comes into her own as a novelist of bold and original power. ¶Likewise a Canadian, Frances Beatrice Taylor is on the staff of the London Free Press, London, Ontario. Edith Ronald Mirrielees has contributed stories and essays to the Atlantic. ¶As Director of the Blue Hill Observatory of Harvard University, Alexander McAdie is on more intimate, more jovial terms with the elements than most of us.

In her many years’ residence in China, Nora Waln has learned the dialect of every province in which she has been stationed. An American by birth and the wife of an English Civil Servant, she was at her husband’s side through the hot days of the Nationalist uprising. Henry W. Nevinson, special correspondent to the world at large, has observed, over a period of thirty years, the outbreaks of war, famine, and turbulence that scar our globe. Of more pacific interest is his recent visit to the New Zion, where he passed several months. ¶Publicist and a solicitor of his native city, Cork, John J. Horgan has inherited and sustained an active interest in the Nationalist movement. His father was an intimate friend of Parnell, and his election agent in all his political campaigns.

We are sorry not to include this month letters regarding a paper which has been discussed with an intensity of feeling recalling few parallels in our experience. For publishing its analysis of the Sacco-Vanzetti Case, the Atlantic has been extolled and vilified, reasoned with and patted on the back.

We enter no defense for an article characteristic of the Atlantic’s continuous policy of seventy years; but it seems fair that critics who believe no evidence should be discussed while still within the jurisdiction of the courts should realize that the fortunes of Sacco and Vanzetti have been under such jurisdiction for six years, and that in such a case the single alternative to free speech lies in the subsequent publication of an obituary notice.

After all, under our happy American custom, criticism should be free unless the case against it is urgent and overwhelming. For the rest, we ask the privilege of quoting from an editorial in the Brooklyn Eagle: —

Those who think of the Atlantic Monthly as a literary magazine, and wonder that it gives space in its March issue to an article by Felix Frankfurter scathingly treating the nonjudicial attitude of Judge Thayer in trying the Sacco-Vanzetti cases, forget that eleven years after he had electrified New England with the Biglow Papers, first series, excoriating the Mexican War, James Russell Lowell became the first editor of the Atlantic, and that most of the poems of the second series, in which Civil War patriotism and reconstruction patriotism were the themes, were written at the solicitation of James T. Fields and published in the Atlantic. Lowell was then Professor of Belles-Lettres at Harvard. Felix Frankfurter is a Harvard Law School professor. Harvard and the Atlantic have nothing to do with politics. With dignified and earnest Americanism they have been identified for seventy years, ... In turning the big guns of the Atlantic Monthly on Judge Webster Thayer, the magazine’s management lives up to the highest traditions of the Atlantic. Professor Frankfurter does not use weasel words. Of the Thayer opinion denying a new trial he says: ‘The opinion is literally honeycombed with demonstrable errors, and a spirit alien to judicial utterances pervades the whole.’

The Reverend Mr. Parrish’s prophecy of the disruption of Protestantism has been received with mingled concern and repudiation. From the correspondence we have selected two letters as representative of the more tolerant opinion. That Mr. Parrish is not alone in his conclusions is clearly evidenced by the sermon recently delivered by the Reverend Harry Emerson Fosdick at Appleton Chapel.

FIRST CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH
WINCHESTER, MASS.
DEAR ATLANTIC, -
Every minister will understand the mood which, in all probability, prompted the writing of ‘The Break-up of Protestantism.’ It is the mood of a tired soul, as old as Elijah when he fled to the wilderness after his conflict with the Priests of Baal and Ahab and Jezebel, and wished to die, because he supposed he alone was left to defend the worship of Jehovah, I suppose every minister has written a sermon on substantially the same lines, after a long strain of work under peculiarly discouraging conditions. I hope one of Mr. Parrish’s parishioners will take him soon on a fishing trip.
Protestantism will not break up; neither will Catholicism. They may change organically, but neither Protestantism nor Catholicism is an ecclesiastical system only. They are types of temperament. There are Catholics within Protestantism, and Protestants within Catholicism.
If Luther had not initiated Protestantism, someone else would have. For the despotism of Catholicism was due for a revolt sooner or later. It was inherent in human nature. Any discerning, broad-minded Catholic knows that Protestantism helps to keep Catholicism alive. Left to run her course, Catholicism would become so despotic that she would again develop revolt. No man can be trusted with too much power, neither king, nor pope, nor priest. It is a matter of history.
A business friend of mine in New York has on his desk a motto which flashed into my mind as I laid down Mr. Parrish’s article: ‘Startling, if true!’ For instance, it is evident at a glance that in his outlook on the present-day Sunday School Mr. Parrish is writing from Episcopalian data. Many of the things he says are not true of the Sunday Schools of Nonconformist churches.
One of the elements of Elijah’s depression was that he thought he was alone in the fight. He discovered later that there were seven thousand others who had not bowed the knee to Baal. Perhaps a broader outlook on churches of other faiths might help to save Mr. Parrish from his pessimism.
With much of the article I am in agreement, especially the section on church finances. He is right. Another commendable thing about the article is its freedom from cynicism and bitterness. Most writers in such a mood are not so restrained. Mr. Parrish must be a stimulating preacher. His parish is to be congratulated upon having such a leader. He will not die of dry rot. He is thinking hard on fundamental things. If he thinks wrong part of the time we can forgive him.
His article will provoke much discussion, just as did that other article published by the Atlantic during the war, ‘Peter Sat by the Fire.’ Both unfair and one-sided, of course, but written at white heat and out of a passionate love for Protestantism. I hope we ministers will deal gently with Mr. Parrish.
HOWARD J. CHIDLEY

EUCLID AVENUE CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH-
CLEVELAND, OHIO
DEAR ATLANTIC, -
In an article in the Atlantic some years ago Reverend Willard Sperry spoke of the fact that ‘as a matter of plain ecclesiastical history there never was a time when the Church was not in collapse. The Church has always had to live, and indeed has succeeded in living for some hundreds of years, in the face of the combined and uniform judgment of the specialists that from all the symptoms she should be in her grave.’
I have often recalled this and I did so again after reading the article on ‘The Break-up of Protestantism.’ It meets quite exactly the specifications of the type which Mr. Sperry characterized. And one might turn from it with this comment. Moreover, the various statements might one by one be controverted on the ground that they are either gross exaggerations or positively fallacious. But after all the broad generalizations which might still remain are disturbing to anyone who takes an interest in modern expressions of Christianity, and one is prompted to ask if Protestantism is really a spent force.
To this may not the reply be justly made that the writer has permitted himself to be overwhelmed in pessimism because he has not recalled that Protestantism is not a system or organization or form, but an idea? Protestantism is, that is to say, the religions proposition that a man stands in immediate unhindered relationship with God and that no intermediaries, either persons or forms, are essential to finding the full value of that fellowship. This idea may associate with itself such things as an almost superstitious love for the Bible or any of the existing forms of government in Protestant churches. But these are mere accidents. They may all pass. Protestantism will never pass until that idea passes. Can anyone consider modern tendencies and not be sure that it has a far stronger hold on life than its only alternative, the idea that sacraments and peculiarly ordained persons are necessary channels of God’s grace? Protestantism will certainly outlive that conception, and when Protestantism passes, if it ever should, religion would be only a memory. But as well speak of air disappearing from a world of breathing men.
FERDINAND Q. BLANCHARD

Ghosts of the Past and Present.

EXETER, ENGLAND
February 18, 1927
DEAR ATLANTIC, -
Does this not seem to you a pretty bit of Time’s irony? Yesterday, after supper in my new ‘home town,’ I, of now and Iowa, walked down from the hill the Danes fortified, where the American War prisoners of 1776 were herded, across the railway bridge over the valley around the hill the Normans topped with a castle, up the street almost to the police station with the Roman pavement at its entrance, in the Celtic part of town near the Cathedral, to the Civic Hall to hear an Australian lecture on ‘How to Get Rid of War,’ for the League of Nations Union. There some fifteen hundred people, the worshipful mayor wearing his golden chain, with a war orphan or a war widow in every row, sitting in the county of Plymouth, twelve miles from the ‘desp’rate winter sea,’ sang a hymn fervently, quite unconscious, apparently, of its origin: —

What do you make of that? I’m sure no one but me connected J. R. Lowell with the Atlantic Monthly.
MARGARET WILSON

Is Heaven — like Boston — a state of mind?

RICHMOND HILL, L. I.
DEAR ATLANTIC, -
It seems strange to me that the author of ‘The Modern Temper’ in the February Atlantic should consider atheism modern. Over twentythree hundred years ago Greek thinkers taught an uncompromising materialism. ‘There is nothing,’ said Democritus, the Atomist (460 B.C.), ‘but atoms and the void.’ Lucretius, the Epicurean (98 B.C.), wrote his famous ‘Essay on the Nature of Things’ to establish the theory of the mechanical origin of the universe. Hegesius, the Cyrenaic (about 450 B.C.), preached suicide as the only solution to life’s riddle so effectively that many of his hearers hanged themselves. And what modern pessimist could outdo Marcus Aurelius, the Stoic (121 B.C.), who said: ‘Soon, very soon, thou wilt be ashes, or a skeleton, and either a name or not even a name; but a name is only sound and echo. And all the things which are much valued in life are empty and rotten and trifling, like little dogs biting one another.’ No, atheism is not exclusively modern.
Modern atheism, then, can hardly be called the temper of a mature humanity discarding the myths of its infancy. Science tells us that if we liken the period of time during which life has evolved on this planet to twenty-four hours, man has been on the scene about twenty minutes. Are we not a bit conceited, then, to consider ourselves already grown up, or even adolescent? It seems likely that this recurring atheism is, in relation to the entire life span of humanity, more like a mood than a stage of growth.
Mr. Krutch’s difficulty seems to lie in an inability to find in the world of nature any equivalent to the world of consciousness. But the world of nature is the world of consciousness! All any man can possibly know is his own consciousness, and if that were changed, then were the universe changed also. Suppose, as some philosopher has suggested, that our present sense organs enabling us to respond to light and sound were replaced by sense organs responding to magnetism and electricity. Behold, a new universe! A new universe, that is, for us. ‘Things as they are’ (whatever they may be; Mr. Krutch evidently feels himself to be on familiar terms with them, but no philosopher does) would presumably be unchanged.
Mr. Krutch distinguishes between facts and myths by labeling as facts those things which appear to come to him from outside, and as myths those which seem to come to him from within. Thought and emotion, he says, morality, religion, and art, exist only within ourselves. So, also, does everything else. In the last analysis a tree is no more external than a hope. What we call a tree is a mental image made up of sensations of sight, sound, and touch. Whether the tree is an actual entity, a thing-in-itself, no man can say. As any student knows, the world we see is a tiny image on the retina of the eye, an internal image; but we have learned to project that image and perceive it as outside ourselves. Perhaps man will learn some day to project his thoughts as well as his sense perceptions, so that they too will seem external. Then the materialist will be forced to grant that they have ‘reality,’ that they are ‘things.’ (This, by the way, would almost seem to be accomplished by present-day experiments in telepathy and thought photography.)

Mr. Krutch urges us to curb our ’transcendental cravings’ and learn to be content with ‘things as they are.’ Emerson’s term, ‘things as we are,’ is far more accurate; and if we are not content with them, then let us change ourselves. Mr. Krutch complains that the universe is alien to himself. Does he know what he means by ‘himself’ ? Pythagoras called the universe the Great Man, and man the Little Universe. It may well be that understanding of the universe lies through self-knowledge. It is true that science has searched the outer universe for God and Heaven in vain, but it has not searched the universe within, and that is where the great religious teachers have told us we would find them: not up among the suns or down among the protons; not right or left, or behind or before — but within. This idea that consciousness expands in a direction unknown to physical senses is presented in a way to appeal to the scientific mind in the theory of the fourth dimension, or ‘higher space,’ but it is far more beautifully presented by the great religious of the world. ‘Look inward, thou art Buddha,’ say the followers of the Enlightened One. ’I am the Self seated in the hearts of all beings,’ said Shri Krishna. ‘ The kingdom of God is within you,’ said Christ. In other words, Heaven — like everything else — is a state of consciousness.
WILMA HOLT

Having the neighbors in.

POMONA COLLEGE
CLAREMONT, CAL.
DEAR ATLANTIC, -
Wallace Thompson’s plea (in the March Atlantic) for a Mexican policy based on invincible good will strikes a responsive note in the heart of every friend of peace and of our Mexican neighbors. In the early border days and in Western melodramas of the stage and screen, the Mexican was a greaser, a bandit, and a villain. But to-day the vast majority of Americans within two hundred miles of the border have a kindly feeling for the peon laborer and a genuine admiration for the more cultivated Mexican who is taking an active part in his nation’s renaissance.
To find an outlet for this vast reservoir of good will — which seems to be completely shut off by our State Department under its present Secretary — private institutions should do what they can. Especially should it be the privilege of educational institutions to extend the hand of friendship to Mexican educators who are opening for their people a thousand new schools a year.
To initiate this friendly interchange Pomona College has maintained a conference of Friends of the Mexicans, and last summer entertained as guests of the college and of the Mexican Government, which coöperated, a group of principals and teachers from the northern provinces of Mexico. In addition the exchange of students with the National University of Mexico was initiated.
This adventure in friendship proved so valuable for both nationalities, not only in the general development of good will, but in very specific training in conversation and understanding of things across the border, that the opportunities are being extended this coming summer. On the campus Pomona College will entertain thirty or forty picked Mexican educators and provide special studies for them in English and for our American students in Spanish; while the exchange students will form the nucleus of a Pomona College travel party to the National University of Mexico.
WILLIAM S. AMENT

‘The identity of opposites.'

LONG BEACH, CAL.
DEAR ATLANTIC, -
I am whole-heartedly in accord with the Atlantic correspondent of several years ago who eagerly looked forward to the hereafter as affording the leisure to spend æons in rereading back numbers of that delectable magazine, the Atlantic. For even its controversies are in harmony—extreme views meet amicably, and teach the truth of the ‘identity of opposites.’ Mr. Kenneth J. Saunders’s essay, ’The Christ and the Buddha,’ in the February number, is an acceptance of L. Adams Beck’s ‘The Challenge,’ of May 1926. These two are examples of the fine art of conflict.
But the dust of battle between these two antagonists seems more like incense than otherwise. With twenty years or more of interest in the art and philosophy of the three most spiritually minded nations, — India, China, and Japan,—the writer is of the opinion that the teachings of Christ and Buddha are more complementary than Mr. Saunders’s instances of difference indicate. He states, for example, that ‘so far as transmigration goes, it is never mentioned but once in the Fourth Gospel and here we see Jesus rejecting it,’ Now, how about Jesus’ doctrine of ‘rebirth,’ of ‘being born again, and the beautiful anecdote of the sore-troubled Nicodemus going to Jesus stealthily at night and the advice of the Master? For what is being born again, but the doctrine of transmigration?
And then his reference to the cross as the Christian symbol; the unsullied lotus, that of the Buddhists. Is not the cross the symbol of purification through suffering? ‘Even though it be a cross that raiseth me.’ Does not the cross suggest the lotus rising out of the mire, pure and transformed, as a beautiful parallel, instead of a conflict of meaning as he infers?
T. R. FLEMING

A heady tonic.

GREENCASTLE, IND.
DEAR ATLANTIC, -
You’re positively dangerous!
It was just seven days after the dear specialists had removed that portion of my anatomy which they felt was responsible for certain things most unpleasant to remember. My husband came in for a brief visit after lunch. He brought a belated February Atlantic. ‘Thought you might be able to read a bit.’ I tucked it under my pillow.
Just after lunch each day I rest. Three hours of it! And with the ‘No visitors, please’ on the door this sinking into nothingness works wonders. But to-day — Ah! Nurse would be gone. If I needed anything, would I please turn on the light? Need anything? To-day? I could scarcely wait until she was gone, and I am fond of her, too.
I know now how Boy feels when he sneaks things to bed with him. I was trembling gloriously when I pulled that Atlantic from under my pillow. I was in the midst of — oh, well, what difference does it make? They entered so suddenly after knocking that I could n’t possibly hide it. And I thought that doctors always did their calling in the mornings! So I was caught red-handed, or orange-handed, or — what color are you anyway, Atlantic?
Then, my doctor speaking: —
‘By all means you must not read the Atlantic Monthly. I have asked that you remain quiet for some time and you cannot do so if you read that magazine. If you don’t agree with what it says, it excites you to argumentation. If you do agree, you become too enthusiastic, and either process is very exhausting to you now. The Atlantic is positively not a magazine for an invalid. It makes you think and feel too much.'
So there you are! Or, at least, here am I and there on my dresser lie two Atlantics! For my husband brought me the March issue that night!
Convalescingly yours,
N. O’H.