Owen Lattimore (p. 1) is an American who writes with authority about the frontiers beyond the Great Wall of China. Now in his thirty-seventh year, he has spent more than half his lifetime in the Orient; he speaks Chinese, Mongolian, and the attending dialects, and has traveled widely and daringly in Turkestan, Manchuria, and Mongolia. He is the capable editor of Pacific Affairs, the author of five books about the past and present of China, and, last but not least, the only white man who ever visited the sanctuary of Chingghis Khan and there participated in the Birthday Celebration.

The son of Baron Carnock, Harold Nicolson (p. 11) was for twenty years in the British Diplomatic Service, where his appointments placed him on familiar terms with the Continent and the Near East. The husband of V. Sackville-West, he is an author and critic in his own right. Of his thirteen volumes, we remember most vividly Byron: The Last Journey; Lord Carnock; Peacemaking; and Dwight Morrow. His paper, ‘ The Meaning of Prestige,’ will be published in book form by the Cambridge University Press in association with the Macmillan Company.

Readers in quest of new talent will do well to keep an eye on William Maxwell (p. 20). His first novel, Bright Center of Heaven, was published in 1934. His second, They Came Like Swallows, was selected by the Book-of-the-Month Club this spring. Born and bred in Illinois, he now makes his home in New York City, serving in an editorial capacity on that most Manhattan of magazines, the New Yorker.

Laird Bell (p. 23) is a practising lawyer of Chicago and a partner in the firm of Bell, Boyd and Marshall.

Harvard graduate, teacher of English at Dartmouth and Brown, biographer of Conrad and editor of the works of Stephen Crane, Wilson Follett (p. 32) reminds us of a brilliant American, Ambrose Bierce, who is insufficiently appreciated to this day.

That the urge of kleptomania is irresistible our Anonymous (p. 43) contributor bears witness. That the disease is closely identified with an unstable nervous condition seems evident from the indisputable evidence in this particular case.

Poet, Pulitzer Prize winner, teacher of English Composition and Versification, Robert Hillyer (p. 50) has recently been elevated to the Boylston Chair of Rhetoric at Harvard University—a chair formerly occupied by Charles Townsend Copeland and before bun by a line of worthies ranging from Dean L B. R. Briggs to John Quincy Adams. In accepting Mr. Hillyer’s poem the Editor wrote:

In all your epistolary rhymes, I find none happier than here — no portraiture more just, no friendship expressed with more natural grace. Against it I can only urge that there are some who have not Harvard to look back to, and — if we may believe it — to whom the names of Briggs, Wendell, and Copey are unknown or quite forgotten. It took a number of years to rescue the Atlantic from the charge of parochialism, and I am wary, of course, of the dangers of too local an enthusiasm. But the thing is so good in itself that I must take it, and will do so.

Born at the turn of the century, Jean Prévost (p. 55) now wields as vigorous a free lance as any in Paris. Novelist, poet, epicurean, sociologist, and critic — in these and other guises he contributes to the Nouvelle Revue Française and Paris-soir. His paper has been translated by Howard C. Rice, a member of the French Department at Harvard University.

On a recent trip through Germany, An American Professor (p. 59), himself a lifelong admirer of the German people, observed what happens to those who resent the yoke of dictatorship.

A poet with four volumes of verse under her signature, Winifred Welles (p. 65) is now at work upon a book about her childhood in Norwich Town, Connecticut.

Director of the Research Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Professor George R. Harrison (p. 69) illustrates the many and welcome contributions which physics can make to the farm.

James Gould Cozzens (p. 81) made his first contribution to the Atlantic while he was still a student at Kent. Now a novelist with eight wellread books to his credit, he tells us of a July day differing in some respects from the oratorical effects of the Fourth.

Equally at home in London or Philadelphia, Logan Pearsall Smith (p. 92) is an American man of letters whose style and scholarship most Englishmen respect.

Of Russian ancestry, Sonia Raiziss (p. 99) was born in Leipzig, Germany, in 1906. Philadelphia became her foster home early in her childhood, and it was there that she began her studies. She took her B. S. at the University of Pennsylvania, her M. V. at Columbia, and then went on to the Sorbonne, where she did special work under the guidance of Professor Cestre. She is now the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship for Creative Writing.

An American and a Roman Catholic, Pierre Crabitès (p. 101) has presided for more than a quarter of a century as judge of the Mixed Tribunal at Cairo, Egypt. W hen he speaks of Palestine, he speaks with a knowledge of races and a love of peace. The author of a number of volumes (the latest of which, Unhappy Spain, was published in the spring of this year), Judge Crabitès is at present a special lecturer on law at the Louisiana State University.

For most of us, strawberries mean graduation exercises, hot audiences, and pink ice cream, but for Della T. Lutes (p. 108), author of The Country Kitchen, they have a very special meaning.

Herbert Dingle (p. 116) is Assistant Professor of Astrophysics at the Imperial College of Science and Technology, London.

It is marketing controls such as have figured in the recent history of copper that encourage offsetting government controls, maintains H. B. Elliston. Financial Editor of the Christian Science Monitor, in the Financial Column.

Those who recall Professor Leacock’s contribution to the DecemberAtlanticwill read the following with mixed feelings.

Dear Atlantic, —
You remember ‘My Fishpond’? The outraged God of Ponds took v engeance on my scoffling. The ice carried away the whole ‘damned’ pond! When it Went out a trout was found!!!
STEPHEN LEACOCK Orillia, Ontario

‘The same old individualist exploitation we find in America.‘

Dear Atlantic, —
I was much interested in Mr. Chew ’s article in your February number entitled, ‘Save America First,’ but I must take exception to his analysis of the soil conservation problem in China. The conclusion that pressure of population has forced the Chinese to cut their forests and cultivate easily eroded hill land is not a correct generalization. To quote from the article: ‘ Recent investigations do not bear out the idea that the Chinese destroyed their forests and allowed their soils to wash away through ignorance. . . . But what could the Chinese do, when between 1743 and 1920 their population increased nearly threefold? There was only one thing possible, since they were confirmed individualists — to push cultivation up the mountains.’
This picture of a dense population being forced to utilize every bit of available land, even though realizing the consequences, is not true to the facts. In the loessial regions of northern China and in the Yangtze Valley, Mr. Chew’s observations may hold, but not for large areas of central and southern China. There, in an area roughly equal to the whole of our American Southern States, the population is largely confined to the river deltas and valleys. Cultivation has not been pushed up the hillsides even though the people could well afford to utilize much of this hill land. There is no evidence to show that vast areas of this type of land have ever been used for agriculture.
In Kwangtung Province, approximately the size of the state of Georgia, and with a quite similar climate, the Chinese farmer has no conception of the value of land conserv ation. Some 75 per cent of the land area is literally waste land, owing to the destructive practices of the farmers. First the forests are cut down, then the farmer from the valley sets fire to the hillsides in the belief that his lowland paddy fields will be fertilized by the ash washed down from above. I stood on Loh Fan Mountain at four thousand feet elevation last fall and saw smoke rising from hundreds of acres of hill land. These fires burn off the tree reproduction and much of the shrubby and herbaceous vegetation, with resulting widespread erosion. The consequences of such practices are not considered at all. I would say that the Tennessee mountaineer who cultivates corn on 80 per cent slopes with the knowledge that he will have to move somewhere else in a few years because of soil erosion is much less ignorant of the situation than the Chinese peasant. Yet Mr. Chew would tell us that the Chinese regret the necessity of doing this while the Americans do not.
In this connection the Chinese farmers have seldom been ‘good foresters’ as Mr. Chew suggests. While Lowdermilk may have seen some forest practices here and there in central China, and it is true that the monks have preserved small forested areas around their monasteries, the Chinese is no more a conservator of the forest than the American. In southern China, in marked contrast to Chinese practices, the aboriginal tribes who have moved in from Indo-China and Siam do carry on a simple form of forestry and raise lumber for the market. The Chinese who live near these tribes have taken over their practices to a certain extent.
The Chinese people are individualists like the Americans. Over much of their country it has not been population pressure which has caused land denudation and soil erosion, but the same old individualist exploitation and destructive practices which we find in America.
DONALD D. STEVENSON
Lingnan University, Canton, China

Were you inclined to doubt Captain Outerson’s story?

Dear Atlantic, —
By a coincidence the enclosed item appeared in the San Francisco Examiner the day after I read Captain Outerson’s story, ‘Fire in the Galley Stove,’ in your May issue.
Captain Outerson’s story seemed to me to be a very original explanation of that old sea mystery, the Marie-Celeste catastrophe. And this clipping seems to bear out the possibility of the theory.
MARJORIE B. CRAWFORD
San Anselmo, California

LEGEND COMES TRUE Ship Battles Gaint Stingray

LONG BEACH, April 30 (AP) — An ancient Mexican sea story, heretofore considered a legend, had official confirmation to-day When sailors in a freighter, heavily laden with steel, described a two-day battle with a giant stingray.

The story was told by Captain F. Fink, skipper of the S. S. Lewis Luckenbach, and J. E. Ahern, first engineer.

Off the southern coast of Mexico, Captain Fink said, the freighter suddenly slowed to a third of her normal speed. At the same moment, the lookout saw a huge white surge of water roll over the bow.

Sailors peering into the depths saw the monster wrapped around the prow. Jabbing and prodding with boat hooks, the crew attempted without success to dislodge the beast.

The next morning engineers rigged up heavy grappling hooks attached to huge steel cables, and these were connected with a steam winch. Not until late afternoon was the monster torn loose.

A California doctor wishes to authenticate the recollections of Major David N. Walker, C. S. A., which appeared in the May Atlantic. Will those south of the Mason-Dixon Line please verify?

Dear Atlantic, —
The Atlantic of May contains ’After Appomattox.’ This has a number of historical errors that should not go unchallenged. I am not prepared to say that Major Walker’s men did not cheer Lee, as stated in his first sentence, but I doubt it. Few knew of the surrender for some hours. The Army of Virginia was too hungry and depressed for such an exhibition.
Briefly, what happened is this. Grant and a few of his staff started to ride to Wright’s corps, now commanded by Crawford. About ten or ten-thirty they were overtaken by Babcock, while changing saddles in a clearing, bringing Lee’s last note asking Grant to meet him at Appomattox to surrender. The man living there piloted the party some twelve miles to the village. On entering the town there was a house to the left, and in the yard was a Confederate cavalryman holding three horses. When asked if Lee was in the house, he said he was.
The party rode over a broken-down fence to the porch and dismounted there. They were met at the door by General Lee, and all entered the left front room. They were introduced all around and then Grant asked Lee to step across the hall to the front room for a chat. The conversation was about forty minutes long and its subjects were never disclosed by either.
Lee had with him Colonel Marshall, his chief of staff, and was in full uniform, including the sword presented to him by the State of Virginia. Grant’s party was Rawlins, Babcock, Parker, Cadwallader, and possibly one or two others.
Upon their return, Grant asked Parker to write down the terms of the surrender at his dictation. This was done on cheap yellow paper furnished by Cadwallader and with a pencil loaned by Babcock. Incidentally, I have the pointed half of this pencil. As he dictated, from time to time Grant referred to Lee for corroboration. When finished, both signed it . In the back of the second volume of Grant’s memoirs is a facsimile of this document.
As they arose Lee turned to Grant and asked if it were possible to have rations issued to his men, for, he said, ’they are literally starving.’ Grant ordered Rawlins to see that this was done and added, ’I am sure that the quartermaster has many broken-down horses and mules which are of no further use to the government and I will have them issued to your men. They can be used to plant a late crop.’ Lee’s eyes filled with tears, the first sign of the position he was in, and in a voice which choked he said, ‘This is more than kind.’
The parties separated at the door. Grant and Lee never met again.
R. CADWALLADER
San Francisco, California

‘Let King Cotton die,’ says this correspondent, moved by David L. Cohn’s description of ‘Share-Cropping in the Delta,’ which appeared in the May Atlantic.

Dear Atlantic, —
In my humble opinion, if this country would give up raising cotton and buy it from the Brazilians, Chinese, Egyptians, and Indians, who are willing to work for starvation wages, it would be better off. This should be done gradually, so as not to dislocate industries of the South. If the South refuses to produce fewer bales of cotton, at least it should have the gumption to produce them on fewer acres. We get from a bale to a bale and a half of cotton to the acre in the Southwest, and the South can approximate that output.
If the South will rotate alfalfa, or other legumes, with cotton; if it will contour or terrace the land; if it will plant only the more level lands to cotton, between strips of legumes; if it will plant the sloping land to grass or trees, it can produce about twelve million bales of cotton on twenty-five million acres, It might even produce fifteen to twenty-five million bales. The fifteen million, or more, acres taken out of cotton, plus still more acres planted to legumes or food crops, should supply most, or all, of the feed and food the South now imports. These additional crops would increase the South’s income. But, even if the South should do all that, it would n’t be paradise, as cotton-growing fosters other evils.
If the South is to cease being the poorest, most backward part of the nation it will have to diversify and rotate its crops, and develop new industries. That never will happen unless its children are kept in school and kept out of the cotton field. Cotton has been the cause of many evils. It was the principal cause of bringing Negro slaves here, of slavery, and, consequently, of our Civil War. Cotton keeps white and black men in slavery to-day. First our Negro slaves, and now our black and white slaves, have led a wretched existence. There are no more miserable people in Europe than our black or white share-croppers or field wage workers in the cotton South.
I hate cotton, because of what it does to people. I hate it because it is the only crop that is harvested chiefly by women and children and, with sugar beets, that is largely thinned by them. It keeps children out of school for three months of the year, so they remain illiterate and with almost no chance to better themselves in life. To supplement the miserable wages paid to their parents, little children are sent into the fields to engage in the back-aching, backbreaking, finger-splitting, hand-swelling work of picking cotton, and that is an infamous outrage. King Cotton has been a hard taskmaster for the South, and a sorry scoundrel, so let him die.
GRENVILLE T. CHAPMAN
El Paso, Texas

Mr. Cohn and the Editors of theAtlanticsue for pardon.

Dear Atlantic, —
Your article on ‘Share-Cropping in the Delta’ interests me — especially the reference to Miss Willie Sue Blagden as a ‘ plump, middle-aged woman holding her skirts high above her knees.’ I do not know about the skirts, but I do know that Miss Blagden is definitely not middle-aged. At least she was not when I saw and talked with her a month ago. I should describe her as youthfully rotund, a bit boyish in appearance, and possibly aged thirty but looks younger — though she might be anywhere from twenty-seven to thirty-five. Is this middle-aged?
ETHELEA MACWILLIAMS
Syracuse, New York

Pats on the back for the man who had to ‘cover Lindbergh.’

Dear Atlantic, —
For whatever prize there is for the best magazine article of the year I nominate ‘“Formidable!" — Lindbergh at Le Bourget,’ by Henry Wales in the June Atlantic.
Certainly it is the best newspaper story I ever read. Ask any reporter who has had a big assignment to cover.
B. F. FELT
Boston, Massachusetts

Dear Atlantic, —
Although I have been a reader of the Atlantic for many years (I hope that last suggestion does not date me with George Ticknor) I have been so good a sailor that never before have I tried to be a contributor to it, but —
I was thrilled with the story in the June issue of the splendid work the Tribune man did on the Lindbergh landing. As a newspaper man myself, I went each step with him in the account he portrayed.
What struck me most forcibly is the lesson he taught to men in any profession in that there was no question of ‘could he make good.’ The job was there and the only thing to do was to do it.
The whole number, I think. was more than ordinarily fine. That was a whale of a story about the wonderful luncheon in the Paris suburb. Mrs. Fisher made me voraciously hungry although I had just finished dinner when I picked up the magazine.
As a newspaper man (raised originally by Curtis Guild on the old Commercial Bulletin) and also a parson, I am the religious editor of the World-Telegram, and as all of us newspaper men are crazy or we would n’t remain newspaper men, you can understand the present screed I am inflicting on you.
Fraternally yours,
WILLIAM A. NICHOLS
New York World-Telegram

An American living in England sends us this realistic comment upon the obstacles in the way of pure neutrality.

Dear Atlantic, —
Does Mr. Bernard Baruch believe that a cash-andcarry export with title passing upon delivery at the port will remove the danger of our being involved in the next war? Suppose the belligerent — let’s assume it is Britain, as she has displayed the liveliest opposition to our desire for neutrality — shortly after the outbreak of war discovers that the demands upon her merchant fleet for transportation of military forces, and so forth, preclude her from allotting the tonnage necessary for shipping of our produce; not being able to carry it away, she would of course cease to purchase it. In view of our experience from 1914 — 1917 and of the Gilbertian situations arising in the Spanish situation from considerations of trade, one would be bold to deny that in such a case the producing interests, plus the shipping interests, could force our government to allow our ships to transport the accumulating products of our factories and farms. From this point, everyone is agreed that facilis est descensus Averni. This procedure would not only be possible, but also probable!
I venture to suggest that if the war were of some duration — and the enormous advantage to the defense points that way — England might also persuade us that she could n’t pay cash for her purchases; or, benefiting from the experiences in the last war, she might simply refuse to pay cash. Certainly past experience is no argument that we would not thereupon make the necessary loans to her to enable her to make the purchases of those products. Propaganda can do wonders, and those of us who remember 1914-1917 are already more than a little restive at the reappearance of the same technique.
Our salvation lies in adjusting our agriculture and manufacture now so that under no circumstances can there exist an interest important enough to give the government an apparent justification for abandoning that neutrality which has as its aim, not the splitting of fine hairs of International Law, but the avoidance of war for us.
E. E. KERN
Oxford, England