The Contributors' Column

MASTER of Calhoun College and Professor of English at Yale University, Arnold Whitridge (p. 133) knows at first hand the diffidence of American undergraduates. Speaking to them as quietly as he would in his study, he asks that inescapable question, ‘What do you really stand for? Educated at Groton and Yale, Mr. Whitridge completed his postgraduate work at Balliol College, Oxford, in the spring of 1914. As a volunteer in the Royal Field Artillery, he saw service in France from 1915 until 1917, when he was transferred to the Intelligence Section, First Army Corps, A. E. F.

T. H. Thomas (p. 138) minces no words in explaining the shortcomings in our armory of defense. Mr. Thomas served as an officer at the American G. H. Q. at Chaumont in the First World War; nor has he relaxed his study of military strategy in the Long Armistice since Versailles.

With the help of an old Atlantic friend, Ian Hay, we secured by air mail ‘Bartimeus’s’ (p. 145) story of ‘The Beaches of Dunkirk.’

Despite the tenseness and anxiety of this past winter Walter de la Mare (p. 152), the English poet, has written some of the loveliest lyrics that bear his signature.

A Southerner who would defend with his life democracy here and in England, David L. Cohn (p. 154) has repeatedly warned Atlantic readers of the futility of isolation and of what our apathy might cost us in the long run.

The Atlantic turns to John D. Black (p. 159) for his advice about the almost certain famine in Europe this winter. Chief economist of the Federal Farm Board in 1931-1932, and now consulting economist in the United States Department of Agriculture, Mr. Black brings to his teaching at Harvard an expert knowledge of the world’s food supply.

A peripatetic philosopher, Albert Jay Nock (p. 164) divides his time between the Players’ Club in Manhattan, the South County in Rhode Island, and the Connecticut River Valley. Brussels and Lisbon used to be his other ports of call.

American poets both, Marya Zaturenska (p. 168) is a resident of New York and the wife of Horace Gregory, the critic, and John Holmes (p. 169), friend and protégé of Robert Frost, teaches English Composition at Tufts College in winter and at the Harvard Summer School in the dog days.

It was on a visit to Germany last autumn that Oswald Garrison Villard (p. 170) first perceived the unmistakable signs of Germany’s military success. Editor of the Nation from 1918 to 1932, Mr. Villard has always been a fearless exponent of the American Way.

A New Yorker born and bred, Margaret Armstrong (p. 177) would rather live in the nineteenth century than today — and who could blame her! Two years ago she entertained readers with her illuminating biography of Fanny Kemble. Now we are privileged to draw some vivid pages from her new biography of Trelawny, the adventurer befriended by Shelley and Byron. The book itself will be published in the early autumn.

President Emeritus of Harvard and long a welcome contributor to the Atlantic,A. Lawrence Lowell (p. 189) reminds us of those efforts which America made twenty-five years ago to enforce the peace.

For fifty years ‘Jack’ Thorpe (p. 195) rode the Texas ranges. Born in New York, christened N. Howard Thorpe, and educated at St. Paul’s School, he cut out in his early twenties for the cattle country, where he lived until his death last spring. He had a true ear for the cowboy songs which he heard sung at many a roundup. The present manuscript was sent to us by Neil McCullough Clark, an Atlantic friend who often collaborated with Jack Thorpe in retrieving theelusive melodies of the cow camps.

Novelist and poet, Frederic Prokosch (p. 204) was last heard from in Costa Do Sol, Portugal, where he was working enthusiastically at a long novel, The Skies of Europe. Readers will remember his Seven Who Fled, the Harper Prize Novel for 1937.

To discard from weakness, says Robert S. Binkerd (p. 205), is the first responsibility of any railroad management, once it knows beyond question that a stretch of track has lost its economic usefulness. Mr. Binkerd was Assistant to the Chairman of the Association of Railway Executives (1917-1922), Vice Chairman of the Committee on Public Relations of the Eastern Railroads (1923-1927), and Vice President of the Baldwin Locomotive Works (1931-1938).

Connie Mack is the first citizen of baseball, and the Athletics of Philadelphia are his first and only love. With them he has won nine pennants and five World Series. Behind these achievements stands a tall, canny, warm-hearted figure, well characterized for us by John R. Tunis (p. 212).

Poet, critic, and novelist, Conrad Aiken (p. 217) has come back to Cape Cod after many years’ residence in Sussex. His Selected Poems was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for 1930.

Walter Van Tilburg Clark (p. 223) does his writing at Cazenovia, New York. ‘Hook,’ the story of an American hawk, is his first story to be published in the Atlantic, and his first novel, The Ox-Bow Incident, is scheduled for publication.

To the Atlantic for July, Kenneth C. Davis contributed an article describing the ‘Revolution in the Supreme Court’ which has taken place since 1937. Now, in his answering argument, Arthur A. Ballantine (p. 235) surveys the effect of this revolution in the field of American enterprise. Partner of a New York law firm, and Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in 1932-1933, Mr. Ballantine has specialized in law relating to public service corporations, business organizations, and taxation.

Ships have always played an important part in the life of C. S. Forester (p. 245), and it is of ships and the sea that he has written his best novels. With this issue we bring to an end his new novel, the serialization of which was begun in the May Atlantic.