Puslapio vaizdai
PDF
„ePub“

THEY DON'T HANKER AFTER US

Shall the United States take over the French and British West Indies in part payment of war-debts to us? It is a live question, now, the affirmative hotly supported by a member of Congress, whose insistence has attained front-page prominence in the newspapers.

Almost unknown to us, it has long been the subject of debate in the islands themselves, as Harry A. Franck found, when "Roaming Through the West Indies." In that book he makes it clear that the proposal to come under our flag would be received with highly mingled and by no means unanimous feelings. It would be passionately opposed by the French, by many of the British, and not overwhelmingly popular even among those who have some good words to say for it. There are those who would rather like to see it come about, but nevertheless are dubious and lukewarm. The reason? The great, big, important, final reason?.. Prohibition! We are about as popular with those who love the easy joys of life, just now, as an aggressively puritanic missionary on a South Sea Island.

WOODROW WILSON ON FRANKLIN

Among the various centenaries in which America is indulging, that celebrating the two hundredth anniversary of the arrival of Benjamin Franklin in Philadelphia (the opening of his career) ought to be especially popular. Franklin's personality has always appealed to many and diverse types.

Woodrow Wilson has perhaps characterized him as well as will ever be done in his critical introduction to the Autobiography in the Century Classics series. We print a few fragments of what is a most interesting critical appreciation of his chief traits and his place and significance to America:

"Half peasant, only half man of the world, philanthropist, scientist, man of letters, his broad, plain, sunny nature, fertile in every part of what is fit to nourish and be serviceable to the race. . . And yet there is nowhere any note of distinction. . . . It

[blocks in formation]

Professor Walter B. Pitkin, author of "Must We Fight Japan?" does not assume the thankless rôle of prophet, but he asserted many weeks ago, when his recently published book was still in preparation, that Japan would gladly accept an offer from the United States to consider a program of naval disarmament. Now, at this writing, the papers are full of Japan's urging of this very subject upon our attention.

It is Professor Pitkin's belief that we ought to have taken the initiative in the matter, in order to prove to Japan that we are not in imperialistic mood, and do not threaten Japan's natural development in the East. He hopes that we shall soon consent to enter on a program of disarmament with Great Britain and Japan, and it is clear that the nation that has ruled the waves for centuries is more than ready at least to discuss the question.

But, as his book sets forth, neither good will among men nor the financial burden and economic waste of huge naval establishments is the chief reason Professor Pitkin sees for advocating a propitiatory attitude toward Japan. He has carefully looked into the probabilities of a war with that nation, his facts being to a large extent derived from documents in our own War Department, and he is convinced that we cannot inflict a decisire defeat upon the island empire without a quite inordinate expenditure of treasure and time,

[graphic][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][ocr errors][subsumed][ocr errors][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed]

to say nothing of blood. Japan's navy is greatly inferior to our own, but she holds a wonderfully strong strategic position. Her islands lie along the far coast of Asia in such a way that she could easily maintain a food transport from the mainland; her waters are capable of being mined so that a fleet operating there might be destroyed piecemeal if it attempted any aggressive attack on the islands, without being able to provoke any major sea battle.

Neither could Japan ever conceivably conquer the United States. Then why multiply such useless threats as more and more naval armament?

Since each nation must be insane to attack the other, why not find a modus vivendi?

Professor Pitkin finds it in some rather startling suggestions, which become steadily less and less startling the more one examines the background of fact upon which he bases his conclusions and

tions.

sugges

"The way I came to write the book," he says, "was almost accidental. I had been asked for some articles on the JapaneseCalifornia question, and when I began to look into the material available, I found it

was all propaganda. Positively, everything I touched in my search

BETWEEN CANCER AND CAPRICORN

Frederick O'Brien, author of "White Shadows in the South Seas," has finished overseeing the filming of that grown-up fairy book (which has so satisfied the avid dreamlife of our over-civilized day that it is now in its eleventh large printing), and will soon go to the South Seas again. He will join the yacht Wisdom II and a party of young scientists who are on a three-year cruise around the world between the tropics of Cancer and Capricorn, to observe the customs, folk-ways and speech of little-known

WALTER B. PITKIN

Author of "Must We Fight Japan?"

for facts, was pro- or anti-Japanese in character. I made up my mind to get behind all this, and started for Japan, via California and Honolulu. I found so much right on our own Pacific coast which the American people ought to know now, without any delay, that I began to think of my book, and to prepare it. I shall carry out my plan of going to Japan, though, next spring or early summer, and if I find facts as important and as little known or appreciated as I did in California, there may be another book."

Professor Pitkin does not believe we should admit any more Japanese to the United States, but he sees other ways in which we can help them solve their really desperate over-population problem.

peoples in out-of-the-
way islands. They ex-
pect to enter the harbor
of Los Angeles, from
which they sailed, in
time for Christmas,
1923.

AN AUTHOR OF
DISTINCTION

Enid Bagnold, author of "The Happy Foreigner," has been in this country recently. with her husband, Lord Roderick Jones. She was married some six months ago, in England. Her book is the reflection of an extremely rare personality, and the result of impressions acquired in actual war work, like that done by her unconsciously daring and undefiantly challenging heroine.

KALEEMA'S EAR-RINGS WOULD
BE STYLISH NOW

The hair-dressers of America, massing and meeting as a national organization in Boston, have decided and therefore decreed that hoop ear-rings shall be worn in this land of the brave and the fair; also that the ears shall be left, at least partly, uncovered by the hair. Poor "Kaleema," the heroine of Marion McClelland's recent stage novel of the same name, was, in the author's imagination, born too soon; for one of her passions which intervened between her and her husband was that very one of wearing hoop ear-rings. She did n't think them stylish, and he thought them devilish, but she just liked them.

[graphic]

THE CENTURION.

THE

CENTURY MAGAZINE

APRIL

1921

[graphic][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed]
« AnkstesnisTęsti »