READING RUMORS

This being an age of souvenir hunting, corner-stone laying, voice canning and record preserving, for the good of posterity, why not a museum for the conservation of mementos of present day American letters? The Reading Room suggests, by way of a starter:

A bit of the newspaper syndicate copy concocted by Sinclair Lewis and sold by W. E. Woodward in the days when Woodward was Lewis' boss.

. The sword used by Robert Nathan in a heroic attempt to train the clumsiness out of his fellowscribes by teaching them fencing. . . . The talis used by Lewis Browne as a practising rabbi. . . . The twoquart beer mug at Lip's in Paris that all American writers try, and Ernest Hemingway alone can handle with authority. . . . A letter of rejection written by Theodore Dreiser as editor of a popular woman's magazine. . . . The short trousers worn at Columbia by Lincoln Schuster, the publisher, you'd-be-surprisedhow-few years ago.

...

If it were practicable, we should like to add to the museum a bit of the heavy atmosphere in the crowded classroom where John Dewey taught Psychological Ethics, while Will Durant and Irwin Edman industriously took notes, and others slumbered or whiled away the hours with writing light verses.

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Readers of William Ellery Leonard's amazing poem "Two Lives" will want to see the supplementary group of sonnets-originally written

as part of the book, but left out to preserve the unity of the story-in "The American Caravan." Again Leonard sings of torture in tones of beauty.

And now comes Leonard's autobiography, "The Locomotive God." It's a morbid book, as it would have to be, telling the story of the mad, loving wife, of her suicide, and of the phobia that gripped the poet husband afterwards, holding him a prisoner within a tiny radius of his academic haunts at the University of Wisconsin. But, quite aside from its connection with "Two Lives," "The Locomotive God" is intensely interesting. It's that rare thing, a life-story told without reservations.

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Here is a London letter from one of the Reading Room's army of specially drafted correspondents, Stephen Graham:

"Arnold Bennett says his curiosity was satisfied after 100 pages of 'Dusty Answer.' 'Meanwhile' has been flogged in great style in the 'Empire Review' and copied with gusto into the unforgiving 'Daily Mail.' Upton Sinclair's 'Oil' is issued at ten shillings here-too dear for a socialist's novel, but it is being read more than any book of his since "The Jungle.'

"Wells has again collected all his short stories in a very fat volume, not going very well. G. K. Chesterton has collected his verses, and they make also a big book, but very entertaining. I think 'War Birds' is the best book I've read this year and I dreamed I was in aëroplanes for a whole night after it."

My dear Editor,

Just a word about THE CENTURY. We always find that magazine an excellent tonic. The articles and fiction are very entertaining. Also we enjoy your pithy comments on the contributors. The magazine never fails to hold us. In fact the Ancient Mariner holding the wedding guest had nothing on the way THE CENTURY now holds a reader.

Sincerely yours,
F. M. VAN NATTER

New Bedford, Massachusetts.

My dear Editor,

In the past few months it seems one cannot pick up a magazine, one of the better class, without finding some article either "razzing" the students in our universities until I wonder that they don't get discouraged and drop out of the running, or else finding fault with our most scholarly men and women in the country, the faculty.

I have just finished reading your article entitled, "What Does the University Think." I would certainly hate to believe several of Mr. Johnson's statements.

I am an undergraduate in my senior year in one of the larger Western universities. By Western, I mean Western, not the Middle West, which is commonly called West, in the East. I have worked hard since I enrolled in college, have been active in campus activities, and at present hold one of the most responsible positions for a woman in the university. I enjoy the social life, athletic contests and also have helped put myself through school, which is not an easy task. I consider myself a typical college woman, and capable of judging our universities from a student's standpoint.

I believe that the outsider does not give the undergraduate a fair chance. They judge us by our football games, by the campus days when classes are excused and we all devote our time to entertaining guests. Home-coming is another week-end when alums return and all study and seriousness is cast aside. These various week-ends I have mentioned are the unusual thing, not the regular proceedings. Why must we be "bawled

out" and criticized for our enthusiasm on such occasions?

Would it not be much more proper, more fair and more to the point to judge the campus during the weeks when classes are in session? I'm sure that some of these alums who get so wrought-up over the carrying on of the undergraduates, their light-headedness and superficiality, would receive somewhat of a shock and surprise, for college students do study, and study a great deal. Why don't they look under the surface instead of merely skin-deep? Their judgment is so superficial!

If outsiders would play fair with the students and judge us squarely I'm sure they would find us twice as worthwhile as their present opinion manifests.

I am writing this merely to get a load off my shoulders and I already feel relieved. I sincerely feel that I am voicing the opinion of many university students.

Eugene, Oregon.

My dear Editor,

Sincerely,
MARIAN BARNES

In the October issue of your magazine I have read with deep interest Henry Cowell's article called "The Impasse of Modern Music." I have followed this young composer-pianist-scientist for several years and know no one more entitled to a hearing on the subject of which he writes. He is starting a magazine called "The New Music Quarterly" which, judging from the way subscriptions are pouring in, has already stirred the musical world, especially abroad. It will publish not articles about music, but music itself. The first issue will give Carl Ruggles's orchestral work “Men and Mountains." Can any one suggest a more magnificent beginning?

the "Dial." A while back in one of its issues I accidentally stumbled, as one would say, across a certain story called "Cane River," by one Lyle Saxon.

I found this story so rich in positive creative talent, and full of such genial humor, and significant and touching beauty, as to be met with only at occasional intervals and then in work of the most consummate artistry, that I fell to wondering who this Lyle Saxon could be. I had to be content with a short notice to the effect that he is a Louisianian, was born in 1888, and lived on plantations. However, it gave me some satisfaction to learn that his story was included in a selection of the best short stories for the year-the O. Henry collection, I think. That for some time was the last I heard of him.

I must with candor say that for some unknown reason I never took much notice in the past of your magazine. But it was in July that in glancing casually at a few magazines on a news-stand my eye caught the name of Lyle Saxon on one of your covers. "Well!" I said, and purchased a copy. I immediately read his contribution, something about the late flood in the South, written in that genial style peculiar to the writer, and by a man who takes his profession seriously. I watched for subsequent numbers, reading all Mr. Saxon's matter with eagerness.

Yesterday I bought the October number and opened the page directly to the story, "The Long Furrow." I held my breath in astonishment at the sheer lyrical beauty of this composition. Because of its deeper pathos and more vital significance, and because written with more touching sympathy, this story even surpasses "Cane River"—and that is quite an achievement.

I have given this story to at least a dozen friends to read, and not one but gave it unstinted praise, and felt I had not over-estimated its importance.

There is a tonic quality in his humor. It is that kind of humor that of necessity is interwoven with the texture of the man's style and personality, incidental to it and striking one as a happy accident -not that type that deliberately sets out "to see the funny side of things" in the words of your correspondent, J. A. McLay, who is disappointed in finding our old American humor gone and discovering that our country is not a circus of zanies, "as it was in the good old days." For my part, whenever I attempt to read a man reputedly funny, I anticipate his seeing the "funny side of things" with a bottle of smelling-salts. Mr. McLay suggests securing material from naval and military

...

officers in "out-of-the-way" places. A man's province of experience can be circumscribed within the narrow limits of a cellar or a refuse-can, and yet if he is a poet or artist, his story will bear some mystic relation with the stars. Why out-ofthe-way? We want familiar things, . . your plow, your mule and this good black earth with green things growing in it," as Mr. Paul in Lyle Saxon's story so well understood. These familiar things as sung by poets and artists, who with the music in their souls will contribute their small genuine dulcet voices to the diapason of our national life.

Woodhaven, Long Island.

My dear Editor,

Respectfully yours, HAROLD BERMAN

May I call to your attention, and to that of the author, the wrong construction placed upon President Roosevelt's phrase, "weasel words," in the first two paragraphs of "Oily Words" by Frederick Adams Woods in the September CENTURY.

In one of his characteristically vigorous criticisms President Roosevelt used the term to characterize a qualifying expression which followed a strong declaration, and seemed, weasel-like, to suck the meaning out of what went before.

This was one of Roosevelt's many similes drawn from natural history. Not only does the weasel suck eggs, it sucks the blood of its victims, and only reluctantly eats their flesh when the blood does not satisfy its appetite.

I hope that some one with better memory than I will cite a reference to the article where this explanation was made by President Roosevelt. Yours truly, ARTHUR BELL CHATWELL

Vol 115

No 3

66

"A

FTER the end of the Thirty Years' War," wrote Balzac, "hearts were on the rampage like battalions." Almost a decade after the World War the same thing might be said of Europe's youth. Confusion of ideas, inner disharmony and a deep sense of spiritual unrest pervade. Its emotions are chaotic, its faith insecure and its ideals uncertain. Even the seeming stabilities of the past exist no longer; politically, economically, socially, the old absolutes have vanished and in their place are change and the rumor of change. Out of this state of things arises an attitude toward life in general which is highly experimental and, what is even more important, consciously so. For no values to-day seem so wellfounded, whether in the field of practical politics or of speculative philosophy, that men feel they can turn to them with the assurance that these at least will escape the generally devastating epidemic of doubt. As a university teacher in Germany summed it up, "We are resolved now to question everything." This is the attitude prevalent even among ma

ture and seasoned minds. It is hardly surprising then to find that European youth is woefully confused in mind and troubled in spirit. For it has inherited a difficult and dangerous world, a world shattered by four terrible years of conflict and little healed by the decade of precarious peace that has followed. How will it deal, one wonders, with its inheritance.

Complete and final answer to the question cannot be made now. There are too many incalculable factors, too many unforeseeable events which will affect the final outcome. But there are signs and portents and these may be read and understood. They are to be found in many quarters, but nowhere so clearly as in the life and thought of Europe's youth itself. For therein are foreshadowed the thought and life of the Europe of the next thirty or forty years. Indeed, if one is to understand the Europe of to-day and, even more important, the Europe that is in the making, it is necessary to understand something at least of Europe's youth, its background, its energies, its

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hopes, its fears. With this in mind, I welcomed the opportunity of a spring and summer abroad to be spent in contact with young people of various lands, with the possibility it would afford of learning something of what was going on in the minds and hearts of Europe's younger set. I would not go as a tourist, prepared to accept the stereotyped official impressions which custom in some lands and governmental policy in others seek to leave with the visitor. Nor would I go as a spy, testing out the enemy's position, mindful only of his own nation's gain. Rather as a traveler in the old sense of the word, as one who would study the life and thought of other peoples in friendly intercourse, eager to interpret his own country abroad, and, above all, anxious to bring home a sympathetic understanding of lands which, though distant in space, are yet bound by strong and subtle ties to his own!

Of difficulties in the way of such a venture, some of them insurmountable, there were many. And I shall ease my conscience of attempting to deal with so large and important a subject in so restricted a way by speaking at once of the many limitations by which my task was surrounded. My object was to come to understand the spirit of Europe's youth. The elementary physical difficulties are at once apparent. In a few months' time it was manifestly impossible to cover the vast areas, and to meet with the many groups which a real survey would necessitate. There was the question of language, the impossibility of grasping the subtler shadings of problems and of ideas, which must always harass one not completely at home in a strange

tongue. There was the constant danger of accepting too readily the things told to one, of confusing superficial observations and momentary appearances with fundamental reality.

But far more perplexing, for me at least, was the difficulty involved in the nature of the task itself. My field was Youth, youth taken as a body, as a whole: the implication being that there was such a thing as Youth in general, that a common denominator, even of classification, could be found for the almost diametrically opposed types of European youth, sometimes poles apart in purpose, in outlook and in spirit. But again and again, after an hour spent with some highly individualized young man or woman, I would be forced to ask the question, “Can one honestly speak of Youth at all?” Or, "Is there only an infinite variety of youthful persons each representing a little world of ideas and feelings and each misrepresented as soon as one attempts to classify or label him or her?" The latter seemed to me more nearly the case, and yet, despite the thousand differences of type and mood and manner, something at least I surely saw and learned of the outer and inner life of European youth. That something may be fragmentary and inconclusive. Very often it appears and perhaps is, self-contradictory. And yet I believe that it at least points to some of the more important trends of thought and sentiment generally prevalent among youth. It suggests the directions in which the leading currents of post-war European life are tending, and explains some of the alternatives faced by the leaders of that new life.