Here is Mel Koontz alone in the cage with four hundred and fifty pounds of lion. The huge lion crouches-then springs at Koontz. Man and lion clinch while onlookers feel their
"Iiisayit makesa differenceto mewhat cigarette I smoke"
says MEL KOONTZ to PENN PHILLIPS Camels are a matchless blend of finer, MORE EXPENSIVE TOBACCOS - Turkish and Domestic
nerves grow tense. Even with the lion's jaw only inches from his throat, Mel Koontz shows himself complete master of the savage beast. No doubt about his nerves being healthy!
"I guess you have to be particular about your cigarette, Mel. I've often wondered if Camels are different from other kinds."
uTake it from me, Penn, any one-cigarette'sas-good-as-another talk is the bunk. There are a lot of angles to consider in smoking. Camel is the cigarette I know really agrees wit h me on all counts. My hat's off to 'e m for re a l, natural mildness - the kind that doesn't get my nerves ragged-or make my throat raspy. 'I'd walk a mile for a Camel!'"
schooling a "big cat" for a new movie when Penn Phillips got to talking cigarettes with him. Perhaps, like Mr. Phillips, you, too, have wondered if there is a distinct difference between Camels and other cigarettes. Mel Koontz gives his slant, above. And millions of men and women find what they want in Camels. Yes, those costlier tobaccos in Camels do make a difference!
TOBACCO PLANTERSSAY
"I know the kind of tobacco used for various cigarettes,'' says Mr. Beckham Wright, who has spent 19 years growing tobacco -knows it from the ground up. "Camel got my choice grades this year-and many years back," he adds."I'm talking about what I know when I say Camels sure enough are made from MORE EXPENSIVE TOBACCOS."
Mr. George Crumba ugh, another ,,,_If> • well-known plant- \ p er, had a fine to- • , _ ba cco crop last {i'year. " My best yet," he says. "And the Camel people bought all the choice lots - paid m e more than I ever got before, too. Naturally, Camel's the cigarette I smo ke my se lf. Most planters favor Camels."
"I've grown over 87,000 pounds of tobacco in the past five years," says this successful plant er , Mr. Ceci l White, of Danville , Kentucky. "The b es t of my last crop went to the Camel people at the best prices, as it so often do es. M os t of the other planters around here sold their best grades to Camel, too. I stick to Camels and I know I'm smoking choice tobaccos."
"My four brothers and I have bee'l planting tobacco for 21 years," Mr. John Wallace , Jr., says. "Camel bought up every pound of my last crop that was top gradebought up most of the finer tobacco in this section, too. I'v e been smoking Camels for 17-18 years now. Most other planters are like me - we're Camel smokers because we know the quality that goes into them."
Copyright, 19 38, R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Co .• Winston.Salem. North Carolina
GEORGE SCHEER, Editor-in-Chief; J. H. KELLOGG, Richmond College Editor; LAVINIA
::1 WINSTON, Westhampton College Editor; STUART GRAHAM, PAU_L SAUNI~R, JR., ROYALL It tH BRANDIS MARTHA ELLIS MARIE KEYSER , EUGENIA JOEL, Assrstant Edrtors; R. M. C. ::1 HARRIS, 'JR., Business Ma~ager; JOHN S. HARRIS, MILDRED HARRELL, Assistant Business It ::1 Managers' 25c per issue; $1.00 per year. It ~¼ ¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼X
Seamen, Ships, and Shipowners
By ROY M. NEWTON
"Our Merchant Marine Smells to High Heaven." This is the title of an editorial by Bernarr MacFadden in a recent number of Liberty magazine. And such is the trend of innumerable attacks levelled at organized seamen by Senator Royal S. Copeland and other reactionaries through the medium of a kept press. By means of an intensive campaign of propaganda, the public is led to think of merchant seamen as a group of disorderly, riotous, drunken roughnecks who molest women passengers and rule vessels from the foc's'les.
Union leaders are charged with being Communists who plot to overthrow the government. A recent showing of "The March of Time," reviewing the Merchant Marine, pictured an obviously posed sit-down strike in which the sailors were demanding that the captain provide beer for them. This was supposed to be a typical case .BecauseI have been a seaman myself for the past year, I know that such charges, and many others, are absolutely false. My experiences and my knowledge of the situation enable me to throw a little light on the matter and to present the view of a nottoo-illiterate sailor.
When the President Hoover ran aground near Formosa, it was immediately charged that the crew was drunk and incapable of handling the life boats. Later, when the case was investigated, sworn affidavits were obtained from passengers who testified that the
seamen had been efficient and their actions highly commendable.
When the crew of the celebrated Al gic refused to risk their safety by working on deck while inexperienced longshoremen in Montevideo were handling the cargo, the incident was jumped on as a test case. The strikers were brought back to the United States for trial and condemned for "mutiny and attempt to deprive the captain of his authority." Most of the sailors were given jail sentences. Yet this strike took place while the ship was at anchor in a safe harbor. (Mutiny can take place only on the high seas.) The Al gic case has since been used as a precedent for similar cases.
Last summer the crew of the Scanpann staged a stayout in Gdynia, Poland, because the captain had been setting the sailing time ten to twelve hours ahead of the actual time that the vessel was ready to leave and had been requiring the crew to be aboard then. Nothing was done about this until the Al gic verdict was handed down. Then the crew of the Scanpann were brought up on charges.
Despite the glamor usually associated with the sea and the romantic conception of a sailor's life, the lot of the seafaring man has never been a happy one. In the oldtime ships men were out of port for months at a time, living in crowded, filthy, and wet foc's'les, eating the cheapest food and little of that, and working long hours at the mercy of hardboiled officers who enforced their orders with an iron belay-
ing pin. Since the advent of steam, ships are not at sea so long, and seamen, being in contact with the rest of the world, have tried to keep pace with labor ashore and to gain livable conditions aboard the vessels which they man. The only way to secure such conditions was to organize. But seamen's unions have had a hard struggle since the beginning. Naturally the shipowners fought. Better food, higher pay, and shorter hours meant increased operating costs and less profit.
Furthermore, an organization as unsettled as that of seamen was a happy hunting ground for labor racketeers who took money from the seamen with one hand and from the shipowners with the other and put both in the same pocket. Needless to say, these leeches did little to improve things for the seamen. As late as 1936 able-bodied seamen were working for less than $60 a month. While their working day properly consisted of two four-hour watches, they were likely to be called out at any time to do extra work with no extra pay. Ever so often there would be a "field day," when all hands turned to for chipping, painting, or " suji -muji"-washing paint work. This, of course, was in addition to the regular watch, so that a man might stay .on watch from 4 to 8 in the morning, work all day, and stay on until 8 in the evening. Then he might be broken out in the middle of the night to tie the ship up.
Many ships carried workaways, who sailed for their passage. The American Scantic Line every summer carried the minimum number of A.B.'s required and a dozen college boys who worked at no pay under a bos'n. It was a great thing for the boys and for the ship owners, but it left twelve professional seamen on the beach.
Until recently the quality of food served to the merchant crews was such that the only reason the men could eat it was that they ,had
worked so hard that they were hungry for anything. Imitation butter, putrid meat, and weevilly bread were common to most ships. Stewards were of ten given a cut on anything they could save on the feeding of the crew. It was no wonder that the steward's qepartment became the most hated group on every vessel. Crew's quarters are always placed in the least desirable part of a vessel, in order to have more passenger accommodations or cargo space. Generally crew quarters are in the stern, where they get the full benefit of the noise and vibrations of the steering engine and propeller. Men are crowded into these poorly ventilated and poorly heated rooms with scarcely space to hang the clothes they have on, let alone boots, oilskins, and other gear that a sailor must have. Linen was changed once or twice a month, and the sheets were blue, so that they would not show dirt and mold. Blue made the bedbugs less conspicuous, but these little shipmates generally made their presence known sooner or later. There would be one light in the foc's'le, so the men coming off or going on watch had to dress in the dark or wake the men sleeping. Portholes and water-tight doors had to stay closed in heavy weather, which made a foc's'le with ten or twelve men in it a pretty unpleasant place. Many ships had no shower for the crew. If a man wanted a bath, he drew a bucket of water, heated it on the end of a steam line, and threw it over himself.
Besides these physical discomforts, merchant crews were under a constant torrent of abuse from their officers. Ships' officers have never been able to get away from the disciplinary methods of the old school. While it is now a criminal offense for an officer to strike a man, there is no restriction on abusive language. Men are "logged"-docked some pay -as punishment for offenses. Disputes over [4}
such logs are taken before the shipping commissioner, but where there is the word of a sailor against that of an officer, the latter is more often believed, for he is an "officer and a gentleman.''
With conditions like these prevailing aboard vessels of the American merchant marine, one wonders why anyone sailed. There is an old saying among seamen that only two kinds of men go to sea, "those who don't know any better and those who can't do anything else." That was, in the main, true until recently, and ships' crews were made up of drifters, ne'er-do-wells, and adventurers who had been caught by the carefree, roving life. But, as industries ashore became crowded and unemployment increased, many young men from the higher walks of life turned to the sea for a living. These men, too, were dissatisfied with conditions on ships, but rather than accept the old attitude that "if you don't like a ship, you can leave it," they had the "revolutionary and Bolshevistic" notion that they should improve conditions for themselves and for the men who took their places. It was these men who were the backbone of successful organization.
The history of progressive unionism on the East Coast begins with the strike of 1936-37. For many previous years there had been in existence the International Seamen's Union, a dues-collecting outfit, which did little or nothing of benefit to seamen. At its head were Joseph Ryan and David Grange, who were afraid to let the membership take any job action for fear of bringing down the wrath of the ship owners, who, no doubt, kept the leaders' pockets well lined. Grange was a West Indian Negro, and at sea one still hears stories of his almost fabulous wealth-how he drove his immense car, sported enormous diamonds, and in his office had another Negro standing over him wielding a great fan.
Meetings of the ISU, when they were held at all, were rowdy affairs where no one who was not on the inside could speak. Anyone else trying to voice himself was drowned out by boos or bounced down the stairs by "gorillas." Books of the union were, of course, closed to investigation.
In 1936, however the "rank and file" of East Coast seamen, under the leadership of Joseph Curran, a young sailor who had learned from the West Coast what results might be obtained by united action, organized to oust the old officials and set up a committee of trustees to handle the affairs of the union. It was the rank and file who, when the West Coast seamen struck in the fall of 1936, joined the strike first in sympathy and ultimately to improve conditions in the East.
The two-and-one-half-month strike was a bitter struggle, in which practically every ship on the East Coast was tied up at one time or another. The old guard of the ISU gathered together what followers they could and tried to break up the rank and file. "Goon squads" of hired gangsters patrolled the waterfront, "dumping" rank and file pickets. The rank and file, lacking funds but strong in spirit, had their own "beef squads" who beat ISU "phonies" and "scabs." Shipowners in many ports had the cooperation of the police in breaking up picket lines. The owners were confident that the rank and file could not hold out over a long period of time and hired strike breakers from inland cities, inexperienced men who had never seen the sea. Shipping commissioners, siding with the owners, doled out rating certificates to anyone who would sail during the strike.
The story was current in Norfolk last spring of a ship's needing an engine room crew. The commissioner selected a young man who was looking for a job. "Do you know anything about oiling machinery?" he asked.
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"Well," the boy said, "I used to oil the lawn mower back home."
"You go oiler then."
Mr. Commissioner picked out another man. "Hey, you! Can you read a water glass?"
"I read the glasses on the coffee urns when I worked at a lunch counter," the boy answered.
"All right, you go water tender."
Both of these jobs are petty officer's ratings, calling for at least eighteen months' service. Greenhorns like these manned the ships at strike wages higher than union seamen had ever dreamed of getting. They were put up at hotels while waiting for a ship, served beer aboard the vessels, and generally pampered like spoiled children.
But winter drew out, while the rank and file continued their picket watches, and shipping companies lost hundreds of thousands of dollars daily. Small companies who wanted to sign with the union were prevented from doing so by the Shipowners' Association. Hunger and cold made the seamen hate the owners more and tempered their determination to win their fight. The hardships they suffered "on the beach" bound the men into close comradeship. It was share and share alike for all hands. "Rank and file" became the slogan of a spirit that couldn't be broken. And it wasn't.
Contracts were eventually agreed upon, granting a ten-dollar increase in wages, better working conditions, and improved food and living quarters.
East Coast seamen had proved that they could get what they wanted by showing a united front.
Since the strike, American shipping on the Atlantic has been in a state of turmoil. Captains and officers of the old school, taught to think of seame~ as the scum of the earth, hedged around agreements, refusing to pay
overtime or have improvements made aboard ships. Seamen, unaccustomed to their new power and lacking leaders in their seagoing membership, made unreasonable demands and called unauthorized strikes. Rivalry between the increasing! y strong rank and file and the weakening ISU has been bitter.
After the strike, a Federal injunction, applied by Ryan and Grange, prevented the rank and file from using the name International Seamen's Union. Hence the new union was organized as the National Maritime Union of America. A constitution was adopted and an election held, favoring CIO affiliation. Leaders of the ~nion are for the most part young, progressive men who have the interests of the seamen at heart. Meetings are held regularly, both at sea and at union halls ashore. These meetings are orderly and democratic, and any man's voice may be heard.
When a vessel starts on a voyage, each department elects a delegate who holds meetings, compares overtime with the head of the department, and takes up with the proper authorities any "beefs" the men may have. The policy of the union is to discourage drunkenness and disorder and "quickie" strikes, for such things weaken the union.
The color question is one naturally arising in a group that includes as many races as does seafarers. The NMU is opposed to color discrimination of any kind. Whether a man is white, black, or yellow, if he is an American and a good union man, he is on equality with his fellows. Of course, it is impossible to free men from inbred prejudices, but that is the union policy. Besides the ideal of democracy, there is the practical standpoint. If Negroes, for instance, were excluded from the union, an army of potential strikebreakers would be built up to render less effectual any action the union might take.
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Hiring is done through the union hall in each port. When a man wants to ship, he registers with the dispatcher who gives him a card, bearing the time and date of registration. When a vessel needs a man, the dispatcher is notified. He calls out the job, and any man wanting it throws in his card. The oldest card takes the job, after the dispatcher has approved qualifications. Under the old system, shipping was done either off the dock, where anyone who chanced along at the opportune time got the job, or the companies had their own shipping masters. In the latter case, one might hang around for weeks and watch men who had just come in take the jobs. The best way to ship through these "crimp halls" was to slip the shipping master a bottle of liquor or a couple of dollars. Companies had blacklists of men whom they would not hire, because of previous union activities or minor offenses.
The eight-hour day has been established for all departments, with, in general, seventy cents per hour overtime pay for work in excess of eight hours a day. Overtime is granted in the deck and engine departments for all work unnecessary to the routine navigation of the vessel between 5 P.M. and 8 A.M. and on Saturday afternoon and Sunday, whether on or off watch.
The manning scale has been increased on the basis of the eight-hour day. This was particularly necessary in the Steward's department, where two messboys of ten had to serve an entire crew of forty or more men. Additional cooks, pantrymen, and messmen have been added to make it possible to get the work done in eight hours. Increased manning, of course, has also lessened unemployment.
Food has been improved on most ships, so that it is now quite enjoyable. Menus are sometimes submitted to the crews for approval. White linen is issued once a week and foc's'les
are usually disinfected after each voyage.
The new Black Diamond Line agreement is the most satisfactory one ever signed for seamen. It raises wages to $82.50 for A. B.'s., with eighty cents an hour overtime and much better working conditions than formerly. When this idea is followed by other companies, wages will be at a fairly good level.
There are still conditions aboard ships, however, which need a great deal of improvement. Chief among these are the living quarters. I might turn to my own experience to picture these on an American ship.
Last spring I made a trip to Chile on a tramp freighter. In the tropics, after the sun had beat on the steel sides of the ship all day, it was impossible to sleep in the foc's'le, even with wind chutes in the portholes and an electric fan turning. The next winter I made a Baltic run on the same type ship with an identical foc's'le. The room was so poorly heated that in it we had to wear the same clothes there that we had worn on deck. There was no ventilation, and portholes had to stay closed to keep out the seas. In the washroom, steam from the shower froze into ice on the bulkheads.
Admittedly, some conditions could not be changed without rebuilding the vessels, but many of them can be greatly improved with little expense. There are usually unused rooms on every ship which can be converted for crew quarters and thus prevent the crowding of eight or ten men into a single foc's'le; yet it is seldom that a captain will authorize the crew to use these rooms. They are always stalled off with some poor excuse.
Furthermore, few ships have a recreation room for the use of the crew, so that the only place to read or play cards is in the foc's'le, where someone is always sleeping, or in the messroom, where the men are continually in 'the way of the messboy. With no recreational [ 7 }
facilities aboard ships, it is not surpnsrng that seamen in port seek diversions of a rather violent nature.
The NMU has made rapid progress not only in improving conditions, but in obtaining membership and power. Its strength is now over 50,000 men. In the NLRB elections, held during the last fall and winter, the Maritime Union won almost every election as the choice for sole collective bargaining agency.
As the organization has gained strength, the opposition to it has increased. The press, controlled by capitalistic and anti-labor interests, has lent a ready voice to those who attack union seamen. The sea is a territory with which few people are acquainted. The public as a whole is ready to swallow anything it is told about seamen.
The first and most vicious enemy of organized seamen is Senator Royal S. ("Finkbook") Copeland, father of the Merchant Marine Act of 1936, one aim of which is to regiment seamen as they are regimented in foreign countries. His Continuous Discharge Book) or "fink-book," became one of the issues of the 1936-37 strike, and was finally made optional with the individual seamen. Copeland is the man who keeps asking Congress for appropriations of $10,000 or $20,000 at a time to carry on investigations of the Merchant Marine. From these investigations he publishes long and detailed reports crediting seamen with all manner of offenses. He charges them with poor seamanship, disobedience, insolence and disrespect to officers and passengers, and claims that ships are breeding places for Communism and disruption. He has witnesses and written testimonies to prove his statements. But the remarkable feature of the Senator's reports is not their bitterness, a bitterness which indicates more than disinterested probing, but the fact that
the testimonies are largely anonymous. Copeland's excuse is that the witnesses fear bodily attack from the seamen they testify against, but a statement, no matter how solemnly sworn, is not very convincing when signed by "Captain X" or "Mate Y." Furthermore, Copeland picks isolated instances of disorder and makes generalities of them, giving the impression that every seaman, excepting his own witnesses, is guilty of such offenses. Certainly, crimes and breaches of discipline occur at sea. Seamen are not plaster saints, and the nature of their calling and the life they are forced to lead does not bring out the best things in a man. If seamen were not tough, the ship owners would have killed them with work or starved them with poor food long ago.
The charges of Communism in the Merchant Marine are also exaggerated. Any labor organization is a field for Communists, and the seamen's union is no exception. The "Commies" have probably done more to help labor than any other political party, and Joe Curran has sense enough to use their support without letting them control the union. As he says, the union does not exclude anyone because of race, religion, or political beliefs. But "redbaiting" has long been the favorite game of the reactionary.
What the ship owners and their political and journalistic stool-pigeons do not seem to realize is that they are cutting their own throats by throwing dirt at the seamen. By publicizing the chaotic conditions among the personnel of the merchant marine they are frightening away passengers, shippers, and seamen. People now prefer to go abroad on European ships, American cargoes are shipped in foreign bottoms, good men who would like to go to sea are kept from doing so by stories they hear. Furthermore, the antagonism of the ship owners has increased the hatred of the seamen
[ 8 J
for their employers and developed a consciousness of themselves as a separate class. It is groups like this, possessing class consciousness and a hatred for the class in power, that provide the most fertile ground for revolutionary doctrines.
American merchant seamen have been oppressed and exploited from start to finish. When they kept quiet and did what they were told, they were overworked, underpaid, and made to live like dogs. When they organized to demand collective bargaining rights, they
were branded mutineers. The shipowners are out to break seamen and the owners' only recourse seems to be through Federal legislation. One plan is to prohibit seamen from striking; another is to make them a part of the navy. With their money and power, the shipowners may succeed, but if the ideals of American democracy and freedom are thus prostituted for the selfish interests of a minority group of grafting capitalists, the threat of Fascism is at our front door.
~ituatio _ tt Reoe'tsed
It fascinated me to look into your eyes,
But love I could never know; Thought you that I had dreamt of skies
And sunset's purple glow?
No-that was foolish, my dear , and na1ve; Life was too turbulent then, I thought of the things I could take-not give. Could I be so careless again?
How every gesture becomes more each timeI am growing older mayhap-
But you have grown wiser, and wine
Does not spill from your cup.
We grow far apart as the days linger on, Ashes alone will remain, embers die, And all the careless laughs and gestures will be gone; You will then laugh-and I shall cry.
KIRA NICHOLSKY.
[9]
PDE-Messenger PrizeStory-1938
By OTTO WHITTAKER
To BEGIN WITH, if Oak Park had had as much sparkle as Big Joe Ferry, maybe the whole thing wouldn't have happened.
There was Big Joe, a Pennsylvania Irishman who didn't give much of a damn for anything, lost in a dinky little military school thirty miles from the nearest city. By his own definition, he was hyper-average. He was the kind you expected to jump on a chair with a beer -glass in one hand, and lead songs with the other, and at the end throw back his head and laugh for the pure love of laughing. Hearty-I guess that's the word for Big Joe.
On the other hand, there was Oak Park, small, ugly, a desolate spot just south of the Valley of Virginia. ("A wide spot in the road," Big Joe used to say, "clean of the taint and grime of the big, bad city. All the better to make momma's boy a fine, upstanding, Christian gentleman.") There were two filling stations on either side of a small, dry church with fenced-in, sunken graves in its yard. Across a dirt road stamped with hoof-prints and manure sat the little village's one brick building-a two-story, duplex affair which housed both the postoffice and a semi-defunct county bank. As a community center there was a huge, unpainted building with a sign, Sheppard's Gen. Mdse. Meal Ground Here, the upper story of which was furnished with desk and benches to be used alternately as a meet-
ing-place for the Farmer's Club, the Young Men's Bible Class (the church was too small), and the apparently decadent Committee for the Betterment of Oak Park. That was all, except for the school and a handful of houses. Sometimes giggling, gingham-clad country girls would sneak away from their mops and milk-pails and come, en masse, to the Academy to watch us drill, and Big Joe would flirt with them. Big Joe was the battalion supply sergeant, so he didn't have to drill, and while we marched around, sounding off and doing "by the right flank-march," Big Joe would be standing on the edge of the field with all the girls, pinching their arms and letting them wear his cap.
They were huge, big-boned creatures with calloused hands and skin toughened to leather by the home-made soap, but Big Joe liked them. "A girl's a girl," he would say in that tone of his, a tone that claimed a state of perpetual correctness, "all built alike. Don't make any difference to me whether she smells like buttermilk and f eatherbeds or cigarettes and perfume. Not to me. I have a good time whereever I go-a girl in every port. You fellows lie around and rust and get lopsided moping over some home-town pig who's out raising hell with another guy right now." But Big Joe wasn't satisfied with the country girls, and that's what this is all about.
You see, Captain Miller was an old duffer
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-fifty-five or sixty-who had taught Latin ever since he left college. He was tall, bald half-way back his huge head, and his belly oozed out from under his Sam Browne belt. He loved Latin with a Mr. Chips passion. His classroom was cluttered with Roman maps and statues and volume on volume of treasured Cicero and Horace and Martial; and its walls were visible only here and there between the scores of pictures of the Coliseum and the Trajan Forum and other Roman landmarks. He would say, "I love Cicero," just as a small child might say, "I love Jesus." And just as Cato centuries ago wound up each senate speech with, "Carthage must be destroyed," Cap'n Miller concluded each classroom recitation with, "Felix qui potuit cognoscere linguae Latinae."
And so you can see why the whole school was thunderstruck when one day Cap'n Miller returned to the school with a young girl, a tiny, home-made blonde, rouged, mascaraed, lipsticked, and perched precariously atop stiltlike heels, with a yellowish flush between fore and index fingers-and with pride and incredible friskiness introduced her as his wife.
II
At first I didn't believe the rumors about Big Joe and the Cap'n's wife. And then one day I was on the rifle range. My squad had gone there for practice with the .22 target tifles. My first shot was a miss; the sights were way off center. I set them and fired five rounds, then went to the target to count the score. Above the target, beginning in front with a tiny leaden smudge and ending behind with a larger rupture of splintered wood, there was a small hole where my first shot had struck and bored its way completely through the backstop, the wood of which was at least three inches thick. That was unusual for a .22 rifle.
I called the others and showed them, and they each fired with their rifles at the board. None of their shots went through the thick backing. Then I fired again with my rifle, and, sure enough, the bullet went through the board.
It was an unusual rifle I had-exceptionally hard-shooting, probably due to some compression-increasing narrowness in the bore. I can still see that little gun-there was a small, triangular splotch of olive-drab paint on the stock.
When we finished firing, we sat down on a shelter-half to clean the rifles, and while we were sitting there, bulling, a Pee-Wee came onto the range.
"Ya know where this guy is?" he asked.
"Mrs. Cap'n Miller giveittametagivetahim."
He handed me a sealed envelope bearing in woman-writing the name, "Joe Ferry."
III
The next day was Sunday. After the morning inspection, we marched downtown to the little church, sweating under the heavy woolen full-dress. Inside the church, flies were buzzing savagely in protest to two red-faced Deacons who were slapping at them with folded quarterlies, and fat women, panting under mail-order bonnets, fanned their streaming hides with hymnals and prayer-books. Occasionally an itching cadet would fidget, making his coatee-buttons screech shrilly on the pew-bench, and the preacher would roll ominous eves in the direction of the irreverent one. I
When we stood for the benediction and the heads around me were bowed (partly in exhaustion and partly in thanksgiving to an understanding God for bringing the sermon to a safe close), I looked up. Big Joe, in front of me, was motioning pantomimically to Mrs. Cap'n Miller, across the aisle, and an instant later she nodded back her answer. High up in
[ 11]
the choir box where he sang every Sunday Cap'n Miller saw and reddened. He ran a long finger under and around his high, stiff collar. And then a fit of coughing took him and he was obliged to leave the church.
IV
And then it was late-May and almost time for the Government Inspection. Each year the War Department detailed two army officers to make a detailed inspection of the Honor Schools in that Unit, to examine them on a military basis and make a report by which the Department could select the Honor Schools for the next year. The Commandant, in his first year at OPMA and frantically anxious to hold OPMA's rating, worked us-not like humans, not like animals, but like machines. We painted woodwork, waxrd lockers, polished brass, dug the wild onion off the campus, and at night lay in bed, too tired to stir, and studied the General and Special Orders.
On Friday before the Inspection the fellows on my end of the hall gathered in my room to clean equipment and hold a bull session. I was putting a Blitz rag to my mess kit; my Cuban roommate scrubbed his cartridge belt with a steel brush. Soon someone mentioned Big Joe and the Cap'n's wife, and my roommate sniggered wetly: "I see dem come back to thees place one night not early, you know?" So I told what I had seen in the church.
I was describing how Cap'n Miller's face had looked when he saw Big Joe motioning to his wife. "Like ripe liver," I said gleefullyand would have gone on, but someone behind us coughed, not a natural cough, but a choking one that had a rattle in its depths. Cap'n Miller was standing there in the doorway. His hand was tight around the door-knob and red, except at the knuckles, where it was an anemic white. He stood there for an instant, then
turned and went away without saying a word. Nobody stirred. The Cap'n's footsteps on the stairs were slow and painful to hear. My roommate whistled. "By dam'," he said, "I no know he standing there!"
On Saturday morning reveille blew early; breakfast was over and work well under way before the sun was safe in the sky. Bon Ami was thick on windows, newspapers guarded preciously-white floors against stains, sandpaper scraped furiously on rifle stocks, and down the hall someone cursed, "Jesus! Won't this damned paint ever dry?" My roommate mumbled thoughtfully: "My genn-rull orders ess: to wawk my poast een meel-ee-terry manner, to-to-what come nex', Sandy?"
"Look it up," I said, removing the last of the Bon Ami from the windows. Through them I could see the little town, lazy, leaning up against the steep hill topped by a thick cluster of woods. I opened the window, and the tinkling of a cow-bell floated in. Otherwise, no sounds came from the village. "A wide spot in the road."
While I stood there, grinning at the deadness of the village and its people, several noises, like an auto backfiring, violated the silence. Over the sloping campus and into the town I could see several men dash out of the bank into an automobile. Some got into it, and the others clung to the running board, pointing toward the town little sticks from which came more noises like the first I had heard. I heard the gears clash and heard the roar of the engine relapse into a purr and then become a roar again as the car gained speed. Then, for the first time, I saw a little band of men run after the car, shooting at it.
Just before the car reached a curve that would have put it out of my sight it swerved, righted itself, then skidded again and plunged across a ditch and through a fence. The men in
[ 12}
it scrambled out and dashed up the little hill toward the wooded crest. The townsmen saw the accident and took on new hope. They chased the bandits up the hill.
"Jesus!" I said, half under my breath. And then I turned and ran outside, toward the administration building. I wasn't the only one headed that way. Helmentoller, a sort of halfwit who hung around down town, came running up the hill. He looked like a marathon runner. His tongue was hanging out and his face twisted in breathlessness. Each step he took made him almost pitch on his face.
"Goddamighty," he panted. "Goddamighty! Did you hear 'em? Shootin' the bej esus outen th' place! Guns, I gotta git! Where's the man? Where's the Colonel?"
Everyone in the barracks rushed outside. My roommate stepped on an empty oil can, fell on his face, and skidded up to my feet.
The Commandant was talking excitedly to Helmentoller. "Sure," he said, "Sure! But where? This is Government Inspection time! Go back and tell 'em there isn't a single assembled rifle in the whole barracks! Tell 'em we haven't got 'em! These boys have their rifles in a thousand pieces!"
The runner gasped . "They said to git 'em. They said tell you they had two pistols and a shotgun. They said to hurry, too."
That's where Big Joe came in. He stepped up and saluted as calmly and smartly as if he'd been on parade. "Would the .22 target rifles help till we could get the .30's together, sir?" He turned and ran off toward the supply room without waiting for an answer.
In a minute he was back with five or six .22's. The Commandant grabbed them and shoved them onto the half-wit's chest. "Tell 'em to hold out with these until we can get the big ones to them!" And he shoved poor Helmentoller toward the village.
I hadn't noticed Cap'n Miller, but he was there. "Er, just a second there," he shouted to Helmentoller. "Er, if my services are needed," he explained, "why, why, I'll be only too glad to go along. Yes, indeed, I'll just go along!" And he snatched one of the target rifles from the half-wit and sighted along the barrel. "Come on!" he said, dramatically.
Big Joe detailed five of us to help him assemble as many rifles. In a few minutes we had them together. Big Joe took them and called me.
"Come on, Sandy, you go with me and carry part of these guns."
"Wait a minute, Ferry," the Commandant ordered. "Take your time. Take the rifles to the foot of the hill, but don't go any farther. If you can't catch that man, leave the rifles at the foot of the hill and come on back here."
"Yes, sir," Big Joe said, and we started out, running. The rifles were heavy. Bayonet studs and other sharp steel parts scratched my flesh. When we reached the foot of the hill I was tired, more than willing to put down the rifles, but Cap'n Miller and the half-wit were almost to the top of the other hill. Five minutes and they would be in the woods, where the bandits were trapped by the other townsmen.
We screamed until our throats burned, but the Cap'n and Helmentoller didn't hear us.
"Come on," Big Joe said, "we can catch them in a minute."
"Not me," I said. "You don't catch me going up that hill!"
Big Joe gave me a dirty look. He took the rifles from me. "Yellow!" he said and climbed over the fence.
"Now wait a minute, Big Joe," I said, trying to hold him back, "you better not! It's dangerous. I wouldn't if I were you. Besides, you know what the Colonel said."
He broke away and started running. I heard
[ 13}
him say, "If the Colonel was a ·man he'd be long time, but he didn't get up. I turned and here himself." went back to the school.
I stood there, watching him pick his way up the little ravine. Sometimes he would go out V of sight, then he'd reappear later, higher. I was there when they brought Big Joe back. Cap'n Miller and the runner were almost in There was a small hole in the corner of his the woods-there was a bare, slim, almost im- right eye, bloodless, and a larger one behind possible chance that Big Joe would overtake his left ear, where the bullet had come out. them. One of the men who brought the body back
Then the Cap'n and the half-wit disap- pointed to the little hole and said, "One of us peared into the woods. Big Joe was a tiny done it, 'cause it's a .22. It was a accident. figure, climbing rapidly. Once he fell, but he Don't know who done it and best not to find got up quickly. I watched him until he reached out. It was a accident." the edge of the woods. Then there were sounds As far as I know there was only one .22 in of rifle fire, fast, and the noises of the pistols the whole school that could put a bullet and shotguns. The posse had the .22's. From through a man's head. That was the one Cap'n the other side of the ravine I could hear the Miller took when he went to join the posse. I bandits return the fire.1 , saw the little splotch of olive drab on the
Then Big Joe fell again. I watched for a stock.
1o /(eats
You are not dead, John Keats. Though men have marked A tombstone with the letters of your name, I know you never died. The burning spark Of endless Beauty pouring its rich flame Deep in your heart will live forever on. As long as thin moons lift their silver rims, And "noiseless noises" of the still dawn Play carelessly in leaves; as long as limbs "Of happy, happy boughs" are patterned still In loveliness-and nightingales still sing "In such an ecstasy": so long will lie Untouched, the rapture of your songs, and fill Earth's lonely heart-she knowing well your cry, "Beauty is Truth,"-and Truth, a deathless thing!
MARGARET CARPENTER.
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'Oevl! Wo.man
By JAMES M. FOGG
THE SUN HADJUST SET, and the sky was aflame with colors ranging from a brilliant red to a deep purple. Close to the line that separated the Bay of Panama from the sky was a flaming, but slowly dying, patch of scarlet. A few wisps of clouds just above this patch were like golden fire on their under side, and a royal purple on their upper. The sapphire sea reflected this riot of color mixed with its own blue, so that one would conclude a holy angel had spilled his pot of paint. Coming in, with their sails flapping lazily, were the small fishing launches which, set against this colorful background, looked like graceful birds that had just settled on the water to catch their breath before the next flight. Night was approaching rapidly from the east, devouring all these ever-changing splashes of color and posting the stars on their all-night vigil. Now that the sky was less brilliant, the beautiful Zodiacal Light could be seen. Rising from the horizon, a hazy triangular-shaped shaft extended into infinity. Throughout this column of celestial splendor there were bands of red, yellow, and blue light, making the shaft look like a Castillian comb. I was musing over the ancients' conclusion about this phenomenon when I heard a familiar voice. I turned, and my Jamaican friend, Harold Londos, was greeting me.
"Good evening, my friend, are you enjoying the sunset hour?"
"Yes, it certainly is beautiful. Look, see that shaft of light rising into the heavens? Do you know what the old-timers used to say about it?"
"N_o," he answered, and his eyes sparkled with mterest at the possibility of a story.
"Well, they said that when Vulcan had put the sun into his boat, after it had set, and he had started to row around to the east to cast it into the sky in the morning, he would n:iark the spot from which th'e 'sun had been taken with the feather of a beautiful peacock, so that he could find the sun the next night. Also, they said that if a young man could get that feather, he would receive the lovely daughter of the heavens for his wife."
"Yes, that is a great tale. It gives a young man something to work for. Look, there's the Southern Cross. Isn't it beautiful tonight? Say, that reminds me of a tale about the Cruces Trail. Would you like to hear it?"
"Don't keep me waiting, Harold."
Then I heard the wildest story of demonism that is known among these West Indians. But let Harold tell it in his own words.
* * *
Not many years ago, there lived a woman who was in league with the Devil. She lived in a large, lonely, tumbled-down house on the
edge of Panama City. Nobody knew what she did, how she made a living, or what she lived on, for the house was always dark and gloomy, with a death odor. Everybody was afraid to go by there at night. You could see lights and hear noises, and some of the most bloodchilling cries in the world came from her house at night, especially after twelve o'clock. All around it there would be balls of fire, eyes, shapes, and bats flying through the darkness. The big trees that stood in the yard seemed to glow with a green light, and they gave out groans and growls. At every midnight a rasping, raucous bell would toll. Then there would be voices, thunders, winds, lights, eyes, fireballs, and screams coming from that house.
Among many other corner loafers, Prince Ford was the worst. That man never did work, never will, but he always seemed to get along. Prince always boasted that he wasn't afraid of ghosts, devils, and all that nonsense. But he saw the day he wished he had never said that he didn't beli~ve in them, for they really exist.
Prince was walking along Calle del Escabeche on San Juan day. It was on this street that the Devil Woman lived. Everybody, even lazy Prince, quickened his steps when he passed her house. Prince was just about to pass the doorway when he saw the door open very slowly, and she called to him.
"Young man, do you want to earn some money?"
At the sound of the word "money," Prince lost all his fears. "Do I have to work for it?"
"Yes, but I want you to help me get out of Satan's hand."
"Oh, no thank you. Me and the Devil ain't good friends these days. No ma'm, I don't want devil money." He started to move on.
Then the Devil Woman's voice sounded like the hissing of a tea kettle, and she said, "Prince Ford, come here and do my bidding."
Prince stopped dead in his tracks and turned around and saw the evil eye. It was green! It was red! It was all colors! His jaw stuck as if frozen. Then he managed to stutter out, "Y-y-y-yes'm."
"Prince Ford, you go to the store and buy a white covered, brand new Bible, and a brand new hatchet, and get an iguana tail. You take these things and go out to the junction of the Sugar Mill and Las Cruces Trails. At twelve o'clock tonight you will see a ball of fire. When it comes near to you, put the iguana tail between your teeth, throw the Bible into the ball with your left hand, and chop at the ball with the hatchet in your right. When you do that, say, 1Mere mere tare tarn.' If you do that, I will be free from Satan."
So Prince, under the spell of the Devil Woman, went to the store and bought a brand new Bible with a white cover, a brand new hatchet, and several dried snake eyes for his nerves. On the way from the store he saw an iguana. He grabbed for its tail, and the lizard ran off, leaving its tail in Prince's hand. About half-past ten that night, Prince started for the junction of the Sugar Mill and the Las Cruces Trails. An hour later he arrived there. It was as dark as a tomb and just as ghostly. All around him the dense jungle seemed to be alive with spiritual life. Away off, on the Rio Juan Diaz, he could hear the alligators blowing. Around him were noises of many insects, loons, distant howling of dogs, and the sound of continual dripping. The jungle didn't seem to have its peculiar odor tonight. It smelled like death. Prince sat on a rock and took inventory of his omens. Soon a bell began to toll-that same unearthly bell that was heard at the Devil Woman's house.
Instantly the jungle became electric. Prince tingled all over. His eyes bulged from their
[ 16]
sockets, and his jaw seemed to freeze, for he saw a ball of fire coming up the Cruces Trail. There were voices, sound-like many waters -thunderings, flashes of light. Satan was coming. The earth rocked and trembled like a bowl of jelly. The ball was coming nearer and nearer. Prince felt as though great currents of electricity were going through him. What about the Bible, the hatchet, and the tail?
The ball of fire was not very far away when Prince put the tail between his teeth. He put the Bible in his left hand and the hatchet in his right. He turned his head away, unable to look at the ball because of its brilliance. Just as the ball was alongside him, he tossed the Bible into the ball and chopped at it with the hatchet, when he heard the terrible scream of a woman. He almost forgot to say the magic words, and then he shouted as loud as he could, rrMere mere tare tarn/1 1 Pandemonium broke loose. There was a howl set up so loup. that it reverberated to the bowels of the earth and back again. There were terrific flashes of lightning and thunder. Finally, the ball passed on and disappeared down the Cruces Trail. The quietness of a tomb settled on the jungle. Not even a cricket could be heard. Prince Ford was alone. He suddenly realized this and took to his heels for the city as fast as he could.
The next morning we didn't see Prince at the cantina, nor did we ever see him there
again. Later, we found out that he went to the Devil Woman's house to get paid for his work. When the Devil Woman answered his knock, the sight he saw took his breath away. She was the most beautiful Jamaican he had ever seen. She had a pretty blue dress on and she wore a jasmine in her hair.
"Come in, Prince," she said.
When he entered, she thanked him for his work and told him that he had cut her loose from Satan's hand. She said that she had been one of the drawers of his fiery chariot and that when Prince threw the Bible into the ball of fire, it landed on the Devil's lap. When Prince chopped at the ball, he cut her loose. She showed him the cuts on her leg. She told him that the iguana's tail was used to keep the Devil from getting him. It must have worked, for Prince had swallowed it in his excitement.
Well, the Devil Woman fell in love with him, and they were married and now live in the old house. But it's a real love nest now.
Harold finished his story and left me where he had found me, thrilled with the yarn. The western sky was dark. The Zodiacal Light had disappeared, and the moon shone through the royal palms. I suddenly shuddered, for I remembered that one night I had slept at the junction of the Sugar Mill and Las Cruces Trails.
[ 17 J
PDE Pulls Rabbit Out of Hat
RESPONSE TO THE SHORT STORY CONTEST sponsored by the local chapter of Pi Delta Epsilon, national honorary journalistic fra:ernity, was good, but many of the manuscripts were, we regret to report, rather poor. Of seventeen submitted, only four stood out for their excellence. The winning story, published in this issue, has a polish and sureness not found in any of its running-mates and serves to demonstrate, by its lack of them, the bad qualities of most of the other stories.
The author of "Splotch of Paint" obviously has his feet firmly planted on familiar ground. His story rings true; it is convincing. He feels his subject. So many of the other stories, about sixteen in all, told of conditions and events which could not, by the wildest flights of imagination, be included in the category of undergraduates' experiences and adventures. While a writer need not, of course, have firsthand information about his material, the collegiate fiction-writer has a better chance of producing a believable story if he does not go too far afield for his theme, his characters, and his atmosphere. It is easily conceivable that the author of "Splotch" attended a military school and knows whereof he speaks, but it is not conceivable that many of the other contestants-and they know who they are-have the remotest conception of the persons and places they present.
Second charge against the losing stories is the predominance of "stiff" writing. The difference between this kind of writing and the smoothness of such a story as the winning one is not easy to explain. Contributing factors in
lack of smoothness are: copy-book expressions, thesaurus-thumbing for synonyms (particularly for that inoffensive and highly effective word "said"), stilted language, and obvious laboring by the writer. There is no doubt in our mind that the lad who turned out "Splotch" sweated pints of brine, but the labor is not visible in the finished product. In other words, his story "flows." The beginning writer can avoid stilted language by w~iting his story as he would tell it orally, wh~ch would make us all happier and would give him a life-and-blood story instead of a freshman English theme. Somewhere, though, he has been taught, or has picked up the idea, that he must use "literary language" ( see John Lyly or Alexander Pope) to give his writing dignity. Our Professor Alton Williams will be glad to go into the matter fully. Just give him an opportunity.
. Lack of plot and misconception of short story form condemned several of the manuscripts entered in the contest. Tales, yarns, and bull-session narratives are distinguished from the true short story in the matter of structure, which is not at all complex and which is explained in hand-books on the subject. Among the contest pieces there were two or three sketches with very good writing and with sincerity, but they were, unfortunately, only sketches. In this connection, the matter of originality of plot need bother no one who wants to write, because there are no new plots. The best a young writer, or any writer, can do is to give the old plots new twists, new characters, different situations. If he recognizes this truth and stays away from trick endings and flowery language, he may, if he works and works and works, create a creditable story, as the author of "Splotch" has done, working with a well known and worn plot.
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All in all, the contest was a success. Some of the losing stories can be reworked and revised into usable material, if the authors are w illing to make a few changes. To all contestants and to PDE, our thanks We think the contest might well be repeated in future years. -f -f -f
Why So Seriously?
. The larger eastern American universities are educational institutions and they are, t oo, p laces to which young men go in search of knowledge, but the education and knowledge that the average young man gets from them has infinite! y less to do with Latin, Greek, epistemology, economics, the Purvamimansa system of Hindu philosophy and the Pali g rammar of Kachchayana than with Irving Berlin's latest fox-trot , the right kind of pleated trousers, the way to make drinkable synt h etic gin, the technic of what Scott Fitzgerald calls necking, athletic diversions, and the trick o f going to New York for a day without the fa culty catching on to it. . . . Ask twenty boys at one of these educational cabarets which they w ould rather know: the history of French literature or Ann Pennington's telephone number, and if nineteen do not answer the way I t hink the y would , I am a very unobservant beagle "
Critic George Jean Nathan thusly sketched college men some thirteen years ago. At regular intervals since, observers into the social p henomena of America have paused to add their page to the massive volume on youth at the crossroads. College youth seem particula rly well adapted to the role of guinea pigs Due in some measure, perhaps, to the truth of the matter, the trend has turned. Today it seems fashionable to picture college people as intensely serious, aware of and bowed to the
inexorableness of the economic and social system, hard-fighting and almost capable of working out their own salvation. The "crash of '29" and the resulting depression is cited as the cause for the rather sudden sobering of the rah-rah boys and their awakening to the responsibilities that lie upon them. This new school of social philosophers admit the everpresent levity in the collegian ' s point of view, but find him to be , withal, inclined to be dignified in his play and not too playful at that.
That's laying on the whitewash rather heavily, though, is it not? Our elders need not lean over backward being decent about this thing. Whether they are attempting to eradicate statements made in the heat of the Scott Fitzgerald-Floyd Dell age or have actually made a fresh inv~stigation, we are almost ready to tell them they' re off on the wrong foot once more.
Looking about us we fail to see evidence to support either Mr. Nathan's outdated criticism or the new, 1938 version. College youth today seem to us relatively serious and rather decent, it is true. And we are concerned with the materialistic question of employment on graduation; that, more than knowing for the pure sake of knowing, leads us to some study. But we have shied away from the sensationalism of the aforementioned Scott Fitzgerald-Floyd Dell age simply because it is out of style; we have merely substituted the "swingaroo" of B Goodman and T. Dorsey for the fox-trot. And we are trying to be practical, to use the little, common sense we have fallen heir to . Maybe college youth is growing up; but, more likely, we have sensed the folly of taking the world and our little spot in it too seriously. And our elders are disconcerting, in that they seem to be taking this whole matter of college youth much too seriously.
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By ALLIE W. MARTIN
I HAVE SUDDENLY become very much interested in my attic, not as the musty storehouse that it is, but as the treasure house that it might be. This attitude is the product of laborious yet fascinating hours spent in the library, reading about antiquarianism. I had dreaded the task at first, for the figure of the antiquary meant little more to me than one who passes his life compiling valueless historical records. I thought any antiquarian must be a rude, irascible, pedantic old man whose home was a dungeon, without sun or air, a cave filled with germs from tattered books, swords , and the like. I had heard of antiquarianism as a sixteenth and seventeenth-century pursuit, but the term had little significance, I believed, in our own century. I knew that there were collectors throughout the United States; I knew that the Rosenbach Fellowship represented the height of the art of collecting. But I had never correlated this group with the previous antiquarians with whom I had been associated in literature. I failed to realize that antiquarianism has been emancipated from the satire of the eighteenth century and is finding vital expression in our age as an art worthy of cultivation.
While browsing in the library I accident! y
came upon this quotation from the Anglican Prayer Book:
"The first collect for the day, the second collect for peace, the third collect for grace to live well."
That started some strange process in my mind. Why had I hidden all those things in my attic? A box of beads, I recalled. Another of buttons. Another of photographs. Still another huge one of school papers, Valentines, love letters, and paper clippings. Certainly I was not a speculator, I thought, and so I could not belong to the first class. Was I a Silas Marner, hoarding my treasure like those of the second group? No. Then I must belong to the third type, those who "collect for grace to live well."
That was exactly what my notes concerning the members of the Rosenbach Fellowship meant! That was what Christopher Morley had intended in his Ex Libris Carissimis; that was what A. Edward Newton had referred to in his Bibliography and Pseudo-Bibliography Surely my collections would rank me with these scholars, I decided. Scholars? Yes, the new era begun by Newton's Amenities of Book Collecting} published in 1918, has witnessed the continual growth of scholarship in antiquarianism, the attitude that, despite a costly apprenticeship, mastery of the art is worthwhile. But what had art to do with my possessions? I had saved anything, whether valuable or not. I had done it, perhaps instinctively, like the ten year old boy who clutches an
[ 20}
Australian stamp or an 1815 coin in his dirty little fist, or perhaps for sentimental attachment, like the Ph.D. who prizes a gold star won in the grammar grades. Had I collected from an acquisitive tendency, I wondered?
No, only rich dowagers or pessimistic hermits did that, only those who chased over the country looking for a Chippendale chair or a Shakespeare folio. I was not an antiquarian, nor did I care to be given that title. The only true antiquarians were those members of historical socieites, garden clubs, and ladies aids · who were somewhat doty on the Revolutionary or Civil War. Those so-called antiquarians had prevented the hotel manager from expanding his establishment, because they wished to preserve some Southern general's birthplace. Any antiquarian must naturally be opposed to progress, I thought. It was folly to claim that capitalists were depriving the nation of one of its strongest insurance policies against cultural, spiritual, and literary decay. Soon there would be a lamenting cry, because industry, rapidly expanding in the South, would deprive the romantic ante bellum city of Charleston of its beautiful historical associations. If that was what "antiquarianism" meant, I would stick to my hobby of "collecting." Surely that was not what the Rosenbach Fellowship was attempting to accomplish. Was that what it termed scholarship and art?
Jordan-Smith, speaking for the major collectors of today, stated in his work, For the Love of Books, their objective to be the "preservation of immortals from oblivion and the storing of delights for the future." Morley referred to Rosenbach as the scholar most familiar with the "luxuries of fine binding, of beautiful printing, and of desiderated editions"; moreover, Rosenbach had received his doctorate of letters under Dr. Schelling. What books would he think worthy of preservation?
About twenty-five years ago, at the sale of the library of Robert Hoe, he had paid $106,000 for a Gutenberg Bible, while Huntington had paid $50,000 for a copy. This Bible, I learned, was the most precious printed book, six times as valuable as a first folio of Shakespeare. Having been printed at Mainz before 1456, the Gutenberg Bible was discovered in the middle of the eighteenth century in the library of Mazarin. I could readily understand why a person would treasure the book, since there were only forty-two copies in existence. But what other books and documents did he prize? He possessed among other things the original certified copy of the Declaration of Independence, a letter written by Cervantes, Franklin's account book, the original manuscripts of the great poems of Burns, and the original documents of William the Conqueror. Rosenbach made his first purchase on the installment plan when he was eleven years old. It was an illustrated edition of Reynard the Fox, purchased in the auction rooms of Henkel.
I learned that he had been offered $5,000 for the first edition of the Prologue written by Dr. Samuel Johnson, which David Garrick delivered on the opening night of the Drury Lane Theatre in 1747; he paid $3.60 for the work. Another interesting story caught my eye. Rosenbach, knowing Amy Lowell's admiration for Keats, gave her Keats' own annotated copy of Shakespeare.
I wondered what other collectors, such as Morley, would have in their libraries. I discovered that Morley possessed an autographed copy of Conrad's Mirror of the Sea, the first copy of the poems of Rupert Brooke brought to America, and a first edition of The Wrong Box, signed by Stevenson's collaborator, Lloyd Osborne, and purchased for fifteen or twenty cents. Morley's most valued treasure was a copy [ 21 )
of Travels with a Donkey, which Stevenson autographed as from.Modestine herself in this manner: "From Modestine, per R.L.S." This work was given to Dr. T. B. Scott by Stevenson and was later obtained by A. Edward Newton, who gave it to Morley. What would I not give, I thought, to be able to find any of these among my attic friends?
Suddenly I knew that the figure of the antiquary was not truly conceived in the American mind. I knew that the ladies aids had been correct in attempting to preserve and restore mansions, churches, and battlefields. The members of the Rosenbach Fellowship were not interested in books merely because of their antiquity. A book illustrated by George Cruickshank or printed by Caxton, Wal pole, or William Morris might have an intrinsic value proportionate to a first edition of Milton, Dante, or Goethe. Even though the oldest books, such as the illuminated Book Kells, now in Dublin, or the Lindisfarne Gospels, now in the British Museum, are already in the hands of collectors, I might find still other fields. I might substitute rarity, beauty, or individual interest for antiquity. I might begin with a neglected field, American contemporaries, such as Glasgow, Cabel, Bromfield, or Wilder, for even English collectors realize that the demand for American furniture, pottery, and pictures, is but indicative of a growing tendency in this line. I might attempt to obtain the rare and valuable B ay Psalm Book of which Rosenbach has the finest copy. I might limit the field and join Lathrop Harper in the collection of American children's books. I might wish to obtain the very rare block books, the greatest collections of which are in the New York Public Library, the Morgan , and the Huntington Libraries. I might even become interested in a special type of Bible, such as "Breeches Bibles," "Vinegar Bibles," or "Leap-Frog
Bibles." I might search for the valuable 1903 first editions of The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft by Gissing. I might join the popular field of novel collecting. A copy of the first edition of Last of the Mahicans recently sold for $3,100 in New York. Or I might follow the lead of the Library of Congress in collecting dime novels, valuable for their representation of a phase of yellow journalism. Finally , I might decide to visit a well-known collector, Mr. Liggett, whose Grand Central Drug Store, Morley thinks a perfect delight.
Immediately, I began to have visions of a wonderful collection entirely different from that in my attic. There was only one obstacle; I was not a financier. I knew that the members of the Rosenbach Fellowship cared little for the monetary value of their possessions, but even they must have money to obtain these treasures. The keen competition among collectors, the demand of scholars for original sources, the constant absorption of books by university libraries, and the growth of book clubs such as the Grolier Club in New York and The Elizabethan Club at Yale have contributed to the increasing rise in prices. As an illustration, a copy of a first edition of Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress worth eighteen pence in 1678 brought 6,800 pounds in 1926. The letter writter by Washington, dealing with the surrender at Yorktown, which sold for $925 in the last half of the nineteenth century is now one of the prizes of the Pierpont Morgan collection . Even though Morley says he rarel y paid more than fifteen dollars for a book, the financial aspect still bothers me.
Another difficulty which I must face should I even become a financier, is the danger of forgery and exploitation. In book collecting , you must know the means of identification of editions, such as press devices, title pages , watermarks, and signatures. Although the [ 22}
armor furnished by the microscopic examinat ion of bibliographers and cataloguers will assist me, I know that even those who have rel iable art knowledge are often unable to detect fo rgeries.
Perhaps my first step, should I venture into t he true antiquarian field, would be to visit N ew York City , the center of the book mart. England, after the Napoleonic Wars was the crediting and, therefore, offending nation, but to day America claims that title. We are incessantl y transferring English manuscripts and r ecords to our own libraries. But broad-minded Englishmen do not combat this procedure. Instead, it has been commended by many as a mean s of making works accessible to scholars.
How the attitude toward priceless monuments has changed! In 1776 visitors to the British Museum were treated as potential thieves; those who wished to attend in April were patiently waiting for tickets in August. Today even the two greatest private collections in the United States, the Pierpont Morgan and the Huntington, are founded with the purpose of aiding researchers and scholars and of disseminating cultural knowledge. The Lockw ood Memorial Museum terms itself not a "mausoleum in which are preserved precious and untouchable relics of man's achievement," but an "active workshop." The American Antiquarian Society, founded in 1812, with headquarters at Worcester, Massachusetts, owns a library of approximately 100,000 volumes and has a fund of $ 100,000 for the work of its departments.
Antiquarianism is thus no longer an isolated occupation for the pessimistic hermit or the aristocratic lady whose genealogical history is well established. The antiquary is no longer characterized as a crude, guillible, pedantic person, comparable to the blinded mole. Scott's Jonathan Oldbush has dispelled Addi-
son's Tom Folio. Antiquarianism today enjoys a professional status capable of serving a strong social purpose.
And now thinking of my measley attic possessions, I wish that my Uncle Moses, like Rosenbach' s, had kept a bookshop on Commerce Street in Philadelphia, where I might have been introduced at the age of nine to the proper form of antiquarianism in an atmosphere created by such frequent visitors as Poe, Cooper, Bryant, Noah Webster, Melville, and Bancroft. I shall never forget my first impression, as a college student, of a second-hand book-shop. There was an intangible something within, which made me completely oblivious to time and to the materialistic world around me. I think of the eighteenth century coffee house and wish that we might utilize our bookshops in like manner to foster social intelligence. I wonder how many idle hours I might have passed in the cultivation of the art of antiquarianism that my attic might now speak for itself. I resolve that next year, as a teacher, I shall introduce the past to the smallest tot through a very concrete means, antiquarianism. It will be a fine manner of arousing interest and a pleasant method of studying. If my pupils can still see Charleston as it was in the sixties, rather than a mere photograph, they will want to learn the history surrounding it. If, like Morley, they can learn to know literary figures through the association of one book with another, if possessing a copy of Sidney Calvin's works may lead them to know Stevenson and Conrad, their antiquarian instincts will have been directed into the proper channels . At least, I shall introduce them to the term, antiquarianism, as an ancient work with a new significance that they may, if so inclined, aid financiers such as Henry Ford, Rosenbach, and Newton in the maintenance of the higher idealistic essence of life.
[ 23]
By ROBERT J.MARTIN, III
A SHEET OF RAIN obscured the sky and beat an imparti~l tatoo on the trees and grass of Texas. At the same time a similar rain was washing the streets of Chicago and pouring down the gutters of 12th Avenue. Across the span of time and space there was a bond linking the two. The thread of a life, which began to unwind in the gutter of Chicago, was twisted and snarled in the course of events until, finally, it was broken short in a little room in Texas.
A flash of lightning recalled the blinding rage which swept over Joey Laub when, in the back room at Eddie's on the South Side, he discovered that the upper half of a beer bottle made a very effective weapon. The ensuing battle made it expedient that he go into hiding. Everything would have been all right, but someone squealed, and Joey was sent away for a while as a guest of the state.
He had some friends though, some of the old gang whose indignation at the thought that a bunch of cops could do a thing like that to a resident of 12th Avenue might have been
mistaken by the uninitiated for neighborly affection. Whatever the motives which prompted it, the presence of a car outside the wall during a prolonged rain gave Joey just the chance he'd been waiting for, and according to pre-arranged plans, he made his unannounced exit through a sewer pipe which he "just happened to be fixing."
He was out but he was "hot." Too warm for local good, Joey headed South for his health As he confided to the crossties from the lower berth of a box car, he was "goin' down to Tamale country to see if he could pick up a few o' them Rio 'grands.'"
The fact that he was a criminal rested lightly on his shoulders, but what did disturb him was the occasional, always-surprising sight of his own face staring back at him from posters placed in conspicuous places. He learned to avoid post offices and to approach towns only at dusk, but always there was that gnawing dread of being recognized.
There had been a little trouble in Kansas City when an acquaintance of his from Leavenworth caught sight of him in a Free-Lunch Bar and had objected rather noisily to having a mug of beer dashed into his eyes. The fact that Joey didn ' t bother to hold on to the mug when he threw the beer enabled him to leave through the back door, elude his pursuer, and once again breathe the free air of the open highway.
More than once a grim smile spread across his face when he thought of the boys back home. Cheez, would they have roared if they could have seen him! But fortunately no one saw him and, as a result of his nocturnal excur -
sions into the near-by fields, he became quite adept at milking " Bossy" while her owner slept. If you'd asked him, he probably wouldn't have admitted that he was stealing, and if you'd done it yourself, you ·d most likely h ave agreed that it was earned by the sweat of h is brow. The big town was never like that, not for the gang from 12th Avenue at any rate.
Joey even worked, not often at first, but g radually he found that people who lived in fa rmhouses, if they didn't keep dogs, were u sually pretty easy touches . They seldom t urned you down, and the worst that ever happened was an hour-or-so's visit to the wood-pile.
By the time he ' d gotten as far as Oklahoma h is pale skin had begun to turn brown, and he found a ne w pleasure in flexing his muscles admiringl y, marvelling in a personal sort of w ay at the changes this new mode of life had b rought about.
Indeed, a casual observer, or even one of his old cronies, would have been hard pressed to i dentif y Joe y if he had suddenl y walked into his old haunts. It was a constant source of amusement to Joey to imagine the consterna tion it would have caused if he were to walk nonchalantly down the old street. He had visions of strolling, unrecognized, by the cop on the beat and of basking in the interested stares of the belles of the neighborhood.
As time went by, his thoughts turned less often to these entertaining speculations, for alth ough he w asn ' t aware of it, a subtle change was taking place in his outlook. By now he looked very much a part of the scene. Articles of clothing, contributed by a Monday morning laundry line , were typical of the transformation. Always adaptable, Joey soon picked up the accents of the natives , and with acquisition of this new language dawned a mild respect for the " hicks " by whom he w as surrounded.
What the outcome of this development might have been, no one knows, for a regretable incident brought the fugitive again within the focus of the eye of the law and stirred up the forces of restless pursuit.
It all came about because Joey was feeling too good As an occasional idiom betrayed his tenement background, so the years of existence on the East Side showed up in his thinking.
It may not have been wholly Joey's fault. It probably wasn ' t , but the fact remains that the sight of Clemore's one and only bank offered an irresistible lure to undertake an adventure which culminated in murder.
Everything went well, from one point of view, until Joey slipped . He'd gone about it methodically, opening the door with little difficulty, and was busily engaged in rifling the vault w hen he heard a noise at the door. Fearful lest he be discovered in the midst of his activities, he swept the remaining currency into his bag and silently opened the side door.
This time his favorite mode of exit was obstructed by the recumbent, dark-skinned form of a Negro who snorted and abruptly came to life when Joey stepped on him. The dark eyes sprang open, and, prudently, Joey didn't release his grip until they glazed and rolled back.
So he headed South again, this time on a stolen horse and flush. He didn't go as far as the border because he found what he wanted in southwestern Texas. A casual inquiry as to the nature of Texas geography started him for the Pecos and the safety of the Guadalupe mount ains.
He traveled mostly at night and avoided as much as possible any but small towns. It was one evening after several days traveling that he rode into the roundup camp of the Bella Donna ranch.
Since he was strong, and hands were needed , he w as hired on the spot. The work was [ 25 J
hard, but no questions were asked, and by watching closely he managed to stay in the background until he learned the ropes. He explained, however, as a precaution which covered his accent as well as his awkwardness, that he had just come from a farm in Iowa, and his story was accepted without comment.
Now, there are some who would draw deep moral lessons from the saga of Joey Laub, but one point is evident: the winding path of his life was crossed at various times by the forces of accident and each time was turned aside, perhaps as often for Joey's good as for his undoing, but apparently he was one of those scapegoats of fate destined to balance success with failure in the delicate scales of chance.
Joey's death occurred one night in the bunk house. The round up was over, and the hands had recovered from their celebrations. They were seated about the room, Joey among them, whiling away the time with cards and conversation. There was no indication of the impending tragedy in Joey's idle whittling. The foreman looked up from absently polishing his revolver when the door opened and an elderly, sad-faced man stepped inside. Everyone seemed to know him, and by common consent he was given a seat near the door. His gaze seemed preoccupied, and he spoke quietly as though waiting for something.
At last it came, and Joey was surprised at the stranger's response to the question, "Well, what's new?"
Joey didn't catch the first words of the peculiar soliloquy, because he was busy asking the man nearest him who the newcomer was.
"That's old Kearney. Listen!"
"-guaranteed to be free from harmful
preservatives. Net weight twelve ounces."
A puzzled look crept over Joey's face, as the old man droned on.
"What's he talking about?" Joey persisted. His neighbor turned and in a low voice explained.
"He used to be the boss of this spread, but he lost it. He got too old to work, and now he lives up in the hills by himself. He got kinda' lonesome up there, so he memorized everything readable in sight-can labels, boxes, old papers, seems to be a little doty. A little while ago he had an accident, and ever since then he comes down here about once a week and recites to us. He can go on for hours reciting things he learned before the accident without repeating."
Joey turned his attention to old Kearney again.
"-best proven pancake flour. Certified full five ounces net." Kearney took a deep breath and continueq. "Wanted for bank robbery and murder, Joey Laub, five feet, ten inches, dark hair and eyes, last seen-"
Joey turned pale and started to his feet. Kearney's eyes were looking right at him. The old man never hesitated in his description, as Joey leapt forward, his whittling knife raised. A look of astonishment crossed the old man ' 5 face, as the roar of a revolver filled the room , and Joey dropped, dying, at Kearney's feet.
The stunned silence was punctuated b y Joey's labored breathing. Kearney turned his face down toward the upturned face of Joey, but he never saw the man he had just described, for the very accident which was responsible for Kearney's being there that night had left him blind.
Comih~~tote ( ~ei~land)
Shelves stuffed. Tables mussed. Men squat, chase tots, Talk together about the weather.
Stove sloping, continues smoking. Floors bare. Smoky air Like a giant is defiant, Fills the room with misty gloom.
Lazy hours pass, then at last The bell quickly tells Store is closed.
Brown coats Buttoned tight, Merge into night.
But time
Moves more quickly than the sickly Mind of man, who is grand In his smallness and his aweness; For a God he thinks in a wink Can push the store and much more Into eternity.
Death shall come to every one, But the store and much more Will endure.
By DONALD E. TRUMP.
[ 27]
By GEORGE SCHEER
THE STORY rs TOLD of a cub reporter sent to cover the complete destruction of a town by a catastrophic flood. He went over the ground and was duly impressed by the magnitude and horror of the power of the waters. He telegraphed his lead: "God sits brooding in the hills over-stown tonight. ... "The cub's city editor wired back: "To Hell with the flood story. Interview God and get pictures " Today, many would have us believe, that cub would have unlimbered his "minnie" and
ing "candid" shots has taken on singular importance; it threatens to go so far as to involve amendments to the existing libel laws.
To understand the nature of the problem one must understand what is meant by candid photography and candid cameras. There has been a general misconception of both, especially of the word, candid, as applied to cameras. Candid photography is simply what the phrase says, a true representation of the object viewed. "True representation" may again be broken down to evolve got pictures.
The rapidity with which the advent of the candid camera created a "great American problem" is astounding. Until only recently the can-
So they bring you lifebut maybe you're one who doesn't want it ...
did camera was used exclusively by highly specialized photographers and amateurs. News photographers relied almost solely upon the old Speed Graphics, bulky, conspicuous, but dependable. Now every camera fan and freelance-and thousands are being swept along with the tide of sudden popularity that is making photography the first rival of miniature golf in capturing the imagination of the public-has either a candid camera or the semblance of one, and every large paper has at least one "minnie" expert on its photography staff. Due to expert handling of the candid camera and its wide-spread adoption, the problem of how far the press should go in publish-
[ 28]
other aspects. Should the camera report or interpret? Some say report, others, interpret. A can of crackers photographed by two men intent on genuinely re-
porting the box of crackers may appear in the two final prints as antipodean as black and white, however. For every reporter} no matter how conscientious in his attempt to remain detached and thoroughly objective, inter pre ts the barest news item in his sight of it.
In an orthodox sense an interpreter of the President of the United States, on the other hand, would endeavor to give him the majesty becoming the Chief Executive. A reporter would picture him in his shirtsleeves, licking mustard off his fingers at a baseball game. The differentiation between reporting and interpreting in this case is unquestioned.
But two men covering the ball games as re-
porters might see two Presidents, one, a disgusting, well-fed, bourgeois American, one of the shirtsleeves-and-wide-suspenders boys; the other may see a "great guy," one of the boys. So for the sake of clarity let's call a reporter a reporter and an interpreter an interpreter.
A candid cameraman should report, doing his best to make the camera catch what the eye sees; the interpretive cameraman for this discussion might be said to correspond to the feature writer.
A candid camera need not necessarily be, as is often supposed, a tiny, highly-sensitive, fivehundred dollar job. Broadly speaking, any camera might be a candid one, if successfully used for candid work, unposed portraits and quick, as-it-is shots. Even the narrowest view cannot confine the term, "candid camera," to the invisible "minnies," but must be made to include such affairs as a variation of the large Grafl.ex, the National Grafl.ex, which is all of three by three by six inches in size, closed. Assuming the middle course, then, we will consider the candid camera one that is used for candid work.
A hue has already been raised against the vulgarity that has resulted from the flagrant prostitution of the candid camera in news coverage. Unfortunately all publishers and cameramen have evoked the wrath of John Public, and everyone in the business is blamed for the release of such pictures as that of three, battered, young rape victims, featured in a national picture magazine recently. This was not a picture of national importance or significance. It is utterly unfair to those supporting the candid camera to judge this photo on the same basis that studies of the new justices of the Supreme Court of the United States or candid studies of the Peace Council at Geneva w ould be considered. In publishing it, an edito r did one of two things: he either satisfied
his readers' demands or showed rather poor taste. Editors are forever showing poor taste, but few of them fail to satiate readers' demands. Obviously, the editor in question wasplaying up to his circulation.
Objections have been voiced to pictures like the classic of ex-President Herbert Hoover, napping at a formal banquet-was it a Stanford University commencement? - on the grounds that they tend to undermine the dignity of high officials. If it is undignified, as well as somewhat rude, to snooze through after-dinner speeches and Mr. Hoover made the faux pas of doing so, he lacks dignity. Parson Weems, that good gentleman who preserved for us, posterity, the beautiful and convincing story of young George and the cherry tree, would have called out the militia had anyone even inferred that of George -Washington. But it is to be seriously doubted that the Hoover photograph lowered his prestige or gave rise to the supposition that he is undignified or rude It was a true representation-and, further than that, sincerely human. No one would believe that Mr. Hoover makes a practice of sleeping at banquet tables.
Although there has been a marked reaction against muckrakers of late, the trend toward news veracity is steadily advancing. Americans, always prone to hero-worship, make Gods of not only the faultless Father of Our Country but the man who drinks more beer than anyone else at one sitting and the man who packs the most terrific wallop of them all. It is a healthy indication to see pictures of the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, laughing heartily at a joke told in an informal gathering. We have everyone conceded that "kings" are human after all; there should be no squeamishness about photos that show them thus.
Even "horror" photographs have a place in
[ 29]
news. The best piece of anti-war propaganda this writer has seen in years was the now famous shot of a Chinese baby, badly burned, screaming, alone, on the shattered platform of a bombed Shanghai railway station. It has been charged that some astute cameraman posed the picture. Perhaps, he did. That a child was cruelly hurt in the bombing cannot be obscured. Certainly, if not entirely true, this photograph comes nearer the truth than the stories that came out of Belgium during the World War. Propagandists would have the world believe at that time that German troops marched through with Belgian babies wiggling on the ends of their bayonets. The one Chinese child, seen in the camera eye, is a symbol and. a truth and a cry against conflict.
In an article in Readers DigestJ December, 1937, called "The News Camera on Trial," Lauren D. Lyman of The New York Times is quoted as giving this example of the limits to which cameramen will ignore decency and courtesy to obtain a "scoop" shot:
"Not long ago as little Jon was being taken by automobile from his school to his home, a large car containing sevrral men came close alongside and crowded the Lindbergh car to the curb, forcing it to stop.
"Men jumped down. A teacher accompanying the boy clutched him tightly. Suddenly a camera was thrust into the child's face and clicked. Then the visitors jumped into their machine a_ndsped away, leaving a badly frightened teacher and little boy."
This episode occurred before the use of the candid camera was widespread, and the cameraman guilty of so manhandling his subjects was of the staff of the New York Mirror. Such invasion of privacy has become worse lately with the turn toward candid photography, the author of the article, H. L. Smith, claims.
Perhaps the invasion of privacy has become
worse, but the introduction of the candid camera did not mark a break-down of the rudiments of common, civilized manners. A man who would handle his picture assignment as the Mirror man did would be equally uncouth regardless of the type photo he sought or of whether he were covering a similar story as a reporter. He is typical of the Hollywood-fiction type newsman, anything for a scoop-a dramatic, highly romantic, absolutely fraudulent portrait of a reporter created in the popular mind; these flippantly crude, hat-on-theback-of-the-head, carousing reporters are rare , scarcely a true-life type.
Mr. Smith admits that the "cameraman himself cannot be blamed. He is ordered to get pictures first and argue later." It is true that many assignments call for almost impossible feats in order to obtain pictures; none condone brutality, however.
Still another phase of writer Smith's argument is that, while the candid camera might have become a legitimate tool for the pictorial journalist, "it soon became evident that many editors were more interested in catching important personages in embarrassing positions than in showing them in their true light. No longer was it necessary to risk libel suits by making sly remarks for the purpose of damaging a political candidate. It was much safer to take his picture in an unguarded moment. "
The whole matter, then, seems to devolv e upon one salient point: the discretion of the photographer and his editor. A yellow journalist will be a yellow journalist with or without the candid camera. He will not always, as the writer of "The News Camera on Trial " contends , seek to hide behind photos of personages taken in embarrassing moments t o avoid suit for libel; though his style may b e "cramped," he will propagandize pretty thoroughly without the camera if so inclined.
[ 30}
And a sensible editor, used to fair play and d ecency in his news coverage, addressing an intelligent audience, will use the candid camera to present as true and complete a report of events as possible.
Truth is the backbone of good newspapers. One need merely cite The New Yark Times to p rove that statement. And the candid camera might well help bring truth to the newsroom.
The tumult and shouting now directed indiscriminately against the candid camera or candid photography should be brought to bear on the ancient boogeymen of the newspaper and publishing game, the profiteering dictatorpublishers and the yellow journalists. The candid camera has not bred a new school of
iconoclasts and dangerous debunkers; it has only revamped the old, all too obvious methods of the same men who were always with us.
Doubtlessly, the candid camera must be restricted, just as all publications are restricted by intricate libel laws. But should heated vituperation be heaped upon the candid camera without regard for its users, the boogeymen will again escape and a great innovation, a tool of inestimable value will be decried and stunted in its growth. By all means, the candid camera should be allowed to flower luxuriantly, it should be used honestly and realistically in the press, and it should be judiciously restricted, not allowed to be crushed by a few unscrupulous editorial policies.
Wind~Da~
In a whirlpool of angry thoughts, We sat together yet apart, Above the madly rushing waves, Which stilled the beating of the heart.
I'm glad the day was storm and clouds, That wind was strong and blew the spray, We would have parted there forever, Had it but been a quiet day.
But the wind tore your angry shout, Blew hair in frenzy o'er your face; We fought a force greater than ours, Our foolish words were lost in space.
We sat and listened to the wind, And watched the waves run up the beach, You were subdued-I, alone, lost, Although you were within my reach.
KIRA NICHOLSKY.
[ 31)
{! /(now
-Oh dear! I've lost it. '
-You know, Helen, that list of magazines I had. I want to send in some of my poems, and I need the address of a poetry magazine.
-Well the last time I saw it was W ednes- ' dav, I think. I'm not sure. It may have been J Tuesday. .
-How do you expect me to remember when I last saw it, anyhow? I've got so many things to do. Please help me find it. I've simply got to have that address tonight.
-Why? Oh, just because. Look on the dresser, will you, and in the top drawer? I'm going to turn my desk inside out. Come on, be a pal.
-What? Oh, I know! We've done all this so many times, but do it for me just once more. This is the last time I'll ever ask you to look for anything for me. Honest.
-On the mirror! I don't remember putting it there. Here, look in the top drawer. I think I may have put it in there.
-Three of them! Well, read them out to me. "Conrey Allen Pomeroy Lud-'' Not that one! That reminds me though, I've got to make a hall president's list. Let me make a note of that. Where is that first list you found? May I have it please? . . . Have you found any more? ... You have? Well, what does that one say? "telephones . . . radio room . . . new buil-" Those are editorial subjects. I need that one, too. I've found one, too. Let's see "watch . . . glasses . . . Span-" Things I want to
tell Dad in my next letter. . . . Here's another "write an American parody know Shakespeare's life ... reading rep-'' That's for English. ''Mary Austin in New Mexico ... More Letters of John Jay Chapman . ... " What is that one? Oh yes . . . for my next reading report. What, Helen? Oh , you've found another one? . . . What does it say?
-Read it again. "John ... Henry ... Dad Louise. " Those are people to whom I owe letters. Let me have that, too, will you? ... Here's one . . . "who wrote The Waves . . . Yozmg Felix? ... who is Middleton Murry.? ... " English, again I can hardly read this one. It looks as if I stood on my head and wrote it. "take charge of writer's bulletin b-" Still more English . . . "return books to lib-" No! ... What did you say, Helen?
-Oh, it isn't hopeless either. Keep on looking, and we'll find it soon You've found one more? "toothpaste soap gloves ... han-" There's another one I've been looking for! Those are things I want to get downtown tomorrow ... I've got another, too. rrThe Seven Who Fled . .. Bon Ton . .. The Citadel 11 Books to read! Let me see . . . "see Stuart about vacancy on staff ... see Marg ... " No, that's not it either. Helen it must be here somewhere! I've got to ' find it What did you say?
-Well, how can I keep them all in one place if I just write them down whenever I happen to think of them? I know, I know! -I should learn to be neater! You have told me that a million times . . . One more? . . . AT LAST! That's it!
-Oh, Helen! did you see where I put that bunch of poems I was going to send in ? . . . oh, please don't go . . . I need you again! NATALYET. BABCOCK [ 32}
SONG ON YOUR BUGLES. By Eric Knight. Harper and Brothers New York. 404 pp $2.50.
A man of the people arises, looks into the stark r eality of life, sees masses of men and women as they toil, barely eking out on existence, and tries to r emedy in small part the great errors in life This is the story of Song On You r Bugles.
A grim description of actual living conditions in England is given here No fanciful tale-this; it is a book that seeks to present purely and simply the facts, distasteful as they may be. Yet in spite o f all of this, the appeal that makes a book interesting lies in it. There will always be something about humans that forces them to follow the thread o f one man's life That is why the average reader w ill eagerly scan these pages; he will want to discover the end for which the characters are shaped
The book ends as abruptly as it begins. Building up to a great vision, suddenly the author drops down the veil of life on his hero; it is hard to reconcile this to actual life . The conclusion is too swift, to o fantastic to adhere in thought to the rest of the piece The pattern ends before the plan is done. D isillusioned, unhappy , and hopeless , the new g eneration faces an existence that contains no silver lining. And that is the note of ''.hope " and sympathy that Knight offers a generat10n that certamly needs spiritual uplifting . .
Many scenes in the book are done ~n fine s~yle and are highly interesting. In a touchmg portion , Ernest, the painter who has been a man o~ the peop le all his life, meets a girl of higher sooa; s~rata T hey fall desperately in love, find that their mterests are mutual and wish to marry. All seems set w hen Ernest is' told by his mother that he , an illegitimate child , is the girl's own broth~r . All of the pathos and sorrow these two feel is brought out with finesse.
With the tale of an individual, the author seems to be telling the story of something much larg~r - life itself He shows how the man who earns his living by the sweat of his b~~w feels. So o~ten treated as inanimate nonentities, these millions are overlooked but this book takes them as its theme. Their l1opeless struggle ' for existence is shown. Man and wife work to get ahead of an ever increasing expense account. Worn and broken,
they are forced to send their children to work at too early an age to support them until they shuffle off life ' s mort a l coil. The children , in turn, repeat the cycle, making the rut of squalor even deeper.
Yet these people are human; they know fun; the home has its hearth fire of already burnt ashes, and children, too young to be serious, play idly with chunks of carved wood . People marry, have children, and die. All in all, they are folks with feelings and a bit of homely philosophy that is simple, yet unfathomable. They, when they have no food to eat, can always hitch their belts a little tighter and say, "Something will turn up "
Finally, in sheer desperation, in this story, the w orkers are driven to strike, howe ver. Their only weapon turns against them , and its bitter edge deprives them of their jobs and food Struggle an? toil again! Labor is not to blame; the employer is not to blame . He, in his small community, cannot regulate the price of coolie labor in China or stave off competition of foreign nations He must produce goods to compete with all other products What then can the individual do? He is an infinitesimal part of a great system that disregar?s a;l but profit. But profit for w horn? That quest10n is never answered. The answer is left with each individual. And that problem Knight leaves with the reader.
The book is well done. The descriptive passages are highly artistic, the people are our friends We feel at home. The story may be too fatalistic for the present spirit of independence in America - but who knows? Never before has a book been written that has portrayed with such force the plight of the marginal man. BEN McCLURE . f f f
STRONG MAN OF CHINA. The Story of Chiang Kai -shek . By Robert Berhov. Houghton Mifflin Company. Boston. 384 pp Illustrated. $3 00.
While he may be an opportunist-all wise men are opportunists - Chiang Kai-shek , China's Strong Man , is no rapidly risen , flash-in-the-pan war lord His has been a steady, determined advancement from a lowly state to a substantial position in the Chinese military and political machinery The world initially felt the impact of the man in his deft handling of his country's present great crisis ~nd now that the Oriental war has assumed proportions and the trim, quiet generalissimo has shown his strength and will, wonder has sprung up about the man, Chiang , himself. .
[ 33]
Chief of the U. P. at Shanghai, Robert Berhov
writes the first biography of China's Chiang; it is a terse, timely piece of reporting, not a "quickie," but _of rea~ value. Unfortunately, its shortcomings are immediately apparent and evidentially unavoidable. Overcoming the fundamental difficulty pre~ent~d by the fact that one author was quite correct m his statement that it is impossible to write the biography of a living man, Mr. Berhov would have still been faced with more, less common difficulties.
Chiang Kai-shek is not spectacular. Therefore legends have not blown about him. His very simplicity has, however, given him an aura of mystery. And he is contradictory. Few men who know him are not reluctant to commit themselves on his character and aims. He, himself, is reticent, self-effacing. Furthermore, Chiang speaks no English, has to speak through an interpreter, usually Madame Chiang. Foreigners, then, have not, with the possible exception of Donald, come to know him intimately or share his ideas and opinions.
So Mr. Berhov has done the best he could under the_circumstances. He has outlined the history of Chma for the last 51 years and placed Chiang Kaishek in it. Since, Chiang and China have been rather closely related, Strong Man of China evolves a valuable commentary. It is a concise handbook on recent Chinese history, as well as a running story of the career of the generalissimo.
One impression carries through the work: Chiang Kai-shek, despite some rather dirty aspects and questionable dealings which Mr. Berhov does _ not attempt to whitewash, is a big man, a dominant power, strong, clever, and, withal, admirable.
There is a thoroughness about Chiang and infinite patience. It is to this that Mr. Berhov lays Chi_ang's disregard of the threat of Japanese invas~o_n,rather than to his desire to strengthen his political stand. And, of course, the decision to bide his time until China was prepared to face Japan has been the biggest single thing in his long, varied career. Mr. Berhov does not offer much evidence to substantiate the opposing view that Generalissimo Chiang had too much at stake to enter war.
In many actions, Chiang's personality, ideals, ambitions reveal themselves. It is only through these revelations that readers of Mr. Berhov' s book will know Chiang Kai-shek. Robert Berhov has done a clean-cut, lucid sketch of all these things, resulting in an account of the Strong Man and an epitome of the story of the Chinese Republic.
GEORGE SCHEER.
One afternoon during Spring vacation several of us foregathered in town. We ate candy and drank stuff and bulled and played an old-fashioned music b?x. And quite incidentally selected the prize-winnmg PDE-MESSENGER short story. Since we were unable to interview the author, all we know of OTTO WHITT AKER is that he writes prolifically and well and is a Richmond College sophomore
Each time ROY M. NEWTON came into the office to work on his "Dry-cleaning the Merchant Marine," we swung our sole, hanging lamp in wide arcs and had one of the lads toss a bucket of water against the outside of the windows, in order to make "that sailor," as Newt was characterized by one of Miss Keller's girls, feel somewhat at home . For the last year or so, he has been at sea on tramp steamers, and we wonder how long it will be before he'll be off for foreign ports again. . . . JAMES M. FOGG is another contributor fond of the adventuresome life, having spent the seven years since his graduation from high school in Central and South America, where he came to know some of the more primitive peoples. "Devil Woman" is reproduced as accurately as possible from an actual conversation with one of his Latin acquaintances : ALLIE W. M!-,RTIN'S article on antiquarianism sent us scurrymg off to the nearest old book shop for a pleasurable afternoon; it sent Pete, able staff assista?t, off to the nearest encyclopedia with equal alacnty. As she brought out in "Quest for the Original," Miss Martin's interest in the scientific collection of old things is new, and her story ?1ere~ytouches the surface of a vast subject, but her idea is s~und. There is both truth and joy in the preservation of yesterday. And we share in he r hope that "Quest for the Original" will serve in a small measure to arouse additional interest in antiquarianism as an art.
ROBERT J. MARTIN , III, has, we think, successfully tried the short stor y form in "Rolling Stone," a simple and readable yarn.
GEORGE SCHEER describes himself as having "been forced to satisfy myself with th e crumbs in the kitchen of the newspaper business fo r some five years for the simple reason that I've neve r been good enough to eat with the family. But I still get as fighting mad as the family when the very people who 'eat up' news photos condemn everybody for one editor's methods or the stuff his circulatio n makes him print."
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