Monthly Archives: September 2006

World War 1 War Debts 1925

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EFFECT OF WAR-DEBT FUNDING ON FOREIGN BONDS

FRANCE, Belgium, and other European countries have recently been funding their floating war debts to the United States Government. It happens that these countries have also floated a number of government bond issues in the United States, and the bonds have been sold to American investors and are being actively dealt in on the Stock Exchange.  And more. bond issues are in prospect. Now comes the question, what will be the effect of the funding of the war debts upon the investment rating of the bonds of the nations concerned? This question, says Mr. George T. Hughes, in one of his Consolidated Press investment articles, is now a matter of great interest to the investing public, and he therefore thinks it proper to state his views briefly as follows:

The first reaction of the investor to the announcement that a foreign Government has recognized an obligation of this character and has agreed upon terms of payment is highly favorable. The credit of the Government concerned is at once raised. Private citizens are more ready to make new loans once they know that these older debts have been cared for. And in a measure there is justification for this, but it is not the only factor in the problem.

Whether or not a foreign government bond is a good investment depends upon two considerations, one the willingness of the creditor to pay, and the other ability to pay. Now the good faith of a foreign Power in recognizing its war-time obligations to the American Government, and in agreeing to make payments thereon, indicates its willingness to take a similar course with regard to other debts, but it does not increase its ability to take care of these other debts. That is a subject to which just as much if not more attention should be given by the individual who proposes to buy foreign government bonds as before.

Even tho payments on these war-time debts are spread out over a half-century, and even tho the interest rate is very low, it adds that much to the outgo, and by that much makes more difficult a balanced budget. This ought to be self-evident, but there is grave danger of being overlooked just now. Nothing is more certain than that the United States through private investors will be called upon for a long time to come to finance the needs of many foreign Governments. Many opportunities along this line will be at once safe and profitable, but many others will carry a good deal of risk which should be carefully appraised in all its aspects if the investment is not to be regretted.

Source: The Literary Digest for October 10, 1925

Status of Credit Unions 1925

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THE CREDIT UNION—”E PLURIBUS UNUM BANKING’

COOPERATIVE banking for the man of small means is being developed in this country by the credit union, which does for the small borrower for miscellaneous needs what the Building and Loan Association does for the home-builder. Credit unions have existed in Europe for three-quarters of a century. In this country they have existed for fifteen years in one or two States. At present there are said to be laws providing for the incorporation of credit unions in twenty-two States. The fact that bills providing for such incorporation are before the legislatures of twelve States and may possibly be brought before five more, brings a number of financial writers to consider the significance of this form of banking. There are now, according to the New York Trust Company’s Index, about four hundred credit unions with total assets of about $20,000,000. And this does not include a large number of associations which do a similar business but are not incorporated as such. The growth of credit unions, we are told, has been most marked in Massachusetts and New York. In Massachusetts there are 92 credit unions, with 55,000 members and $7,000,000 in assets. New York has 114 credit unions with about 80,000 members and $10,000,000 in assets. In general, adds The Index, American credit unions are of two types, urban and rural. As Mr. George T. Hughes points out in one of his Consolidated Press articles on investment, the credit union does not serve the general public—-The credit union is entirely cooperative and is organized within and loaned to a specified and limited group. To be a member of a credit union, one must own a share; to be a borrower, one must be a member, while all the profits go to the members themselves and none to outsiders. The credit union always begins on a very small scale, and the only resources it ever has is the money its members save. In this way the credit union becomes a great encouragement of thrift. Its members work out their own salvation, and the safety of the plan depends in great measure upon the personal acquaintance which the union officers have with their member borrowers. In addition they have the support which comes from supervision by the State Banking Department.

“E Pluribus Unum Banking” is what Roy F. Bergengren calls the credit union in a Survey article. As he states it:

The credit union is primarily concerned with these things: with thrift which recognizes small savings and makes of the business of saving a good habit; with credit which specializes in such small problems of credit that it can eventually not only eliminate usury but bring to the many the benefits of an intelligent use of credit; with education that recognizes the necessity that, in a democracy, the masses of the people should know something about the management and control of money.

It seems that the original credit union in North America, organized at Levis, in the Province of Quebec, has operated for twenty-four years without a bad loan. It started with assets of $26, and now has nearly a million and a half. Similarly the Skandia Credit Union of Worcester, Massachusetts has built up nearly a million dollars worth of assets in eight years. Mr. Bergengren adds to the information we have already given by noting that in the organization of credit unions—

Shares have a small par value—generally five dollars—payable in cash or in weekly instalments, the instalment unit being generally twenty-five cents; the emphasis is on serving the small saver and making saving habitual. Loans are made for provident purposes. The test is—does the loan promise to be of benefit to the borrower? Loans are repayable in weekly instalments, and interest rates are low. Twenty per cent. of the net earnings are annually appropriated to a reserve fund.

In Massachusetts there are credit unions of postal workers, State and municipal employees, employees of factories, mills, department stores, neighborhood and community groups, members of church parishes, and many more. The credit unions of the State are leagued in a voluntary association. Mr. Bergengren tells of a small credit union composed entirely of women, in a Jewish section of Cambridge. It has seventy members and assets of $4,400. “The women are for the most part housewives, and their business is the business of keeping house; the money they have accumulated for the most part out of their household allowances.” The treasurer’s office is also her kitchen, and there the examiners come from the State Banking Department to examine her books.

The first rural credit-union law was enacted by North Carolina in 1915. The original Lowe’s Grove Credit Union of North Carolina started with less than $350 capital. The farmers in the group soon organized a cooperative buying society in connection with their credit union. In seven years, we are told, they have cooperatively bought supplies totaling over a quarter of a million dollars, with a saving of more than $30,000. It seems that “while the assets of the credit union have never exceeded $5,000, loans in addition have been made totaling over $70,000, at rates of interest which have never exceeded six per cent.” According to Mr. Bergengren, “extension courses in agriculture conducted in the credit union building by instructors from the State University, a library of agricultural books, and many other similar activities, have followed in natural sequence. Here, he adds, is “a hint of the possibilities of an improved agricultural system as applied to the small farmer—a system more worthy of a democracy than one which overburdens farms with usurious mortgages.”

Source: The Literary Digest for October 10, 1925

Nathalia Crane Child Poet 1925

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A POET AT TWELVE

NATHALIA CRANE IS CALLED “the twelve-year-old poet of Brooklyn.” Of course she can’t hold that title long, but her present guaranty is found in two volumes of verse and an election to the British Society of Authors, Playwrights and Composers, of which Thomas Hardy is president. Her first volume, called “The Janitor’s Boy,” has run into seven editions here and two an England. Our page of “Current Poetry” took notice of her when the book first appeared. The other volume, “Lava Lane,” made its appearance last month. She is apparently born to the ink-pot, so to speak, as she is said to be kin to the late Stephen Crane, author of “The Red Badge of Courage,” and the well-known publicist, Dr Frank Crane. She will find few compatriots in the Society in which the honor of membership has just been extended to her. This personal sketch of her appears in the New York Times:

“Nathalia is the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Clarence Crane of 145 Henry Street, Brooklyn. She declared to those who came to congratulate her yesterday that her poems, the diction and thought of which have. caused much comment, ‘just came.’ Ever since she can remember she has been writing little rimes, she said, and reading everything she could lay her hands upon. There are times when she feels something welling up within her for expression and she sits down at a small typewriter, her father explained, and croons out the words until they seem to fit her thoughts.

“Amazing words for one so young are in her poems: ‘ ciccatrice, dinosaur, parasang, sistrum’ and figures of speech which are seldom comprehended, let alone used, by any other child of her age.

“‘I read them, heard them, found them somewhere,’ Nathalia said, and spoke of ‘Ivanhoe,’ ‘The Jungle Books,’ ‘Arabian Nights’ and ‘ Pilgrim’s Progress.’ She has even read the encyclopedia at times, she gravely admitted, ‘just for fun.’ Often she put into a poem some word only vaguely remembered from her reading, her father said, and then goes to the dictionary to confirm or change it. Nathalia has lived all her life in Brooklyn, except for brief journeys.”

A poem in the recent volume is called “Love Lane” and refers to a little negro girl; schoolmate of Nathalia. Another poem is in the Current Poetry page:

In old Love Lane on Brooklyn Heights
There’s an ebony bob from Arabian Nights;
She sings each eve of the Tom Moore rose—
And the neighbors shut off their radios.
The people who pass through Henry Street.
They presently go with lagging feet,
For in old Love Lane a cantatrice shade
Is taking the thrills of Adelaide.
Shaking the sistrum—a blackberry bob,
Dulcing the treble and daring the sob;
Never a wonder that listeners perch
On the mansion steps near Plymouth Church.
They hear the birds by a waterfall,
They see the rose that was last of all;
The dim garages grow less profane,
For something with pinions is down in the lane.

Source: The Literary Digest for October 10, 1925

Edith Thomas Woman Poet 1925

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WHILE ONE STAR IN THE CONSTELLATION of women poets is rising, as noted elsewhere in this department, another went to its setting.

Miss Edith M. Thomas, whose verse appeared on occasions in our poetry page, died September 12 at the age of 71. Miss Thomas had for some years been connected with Harper’s Magazine, and she was active in this employ until almost the day of her death. She had published fourteen volumes of verse; not large, to be sure, as verse that comes of inspiration and not manufacture, is bound to be. Mr. Robert Underwood Johnson, in a letter to the New York Times, gives an appreciation that is best quoted almost in full:

“For nearly half a century, with an almost nunlike seclusion, she devoted herself to her chosen art. She had everything that goes to make enduring verse—a rare imagination that seldom fell to fancy; an exquisite sense of rhythm, vibrant and flexible; unfailing taste, noble standards of thought and expression, and what is becoming rarer in our verse, pervading spirituality. She was never academic in the objectionable sense of that word, being saved from such coldness by the warmth of her sympathies, and yet she was perhaps the most classical of the poets of her later years. She was, however, for one who wrote so much, one of the least known. Her slender volumes made little appeal to a public eager for novelties, and not a single quotation from her is cited in The Evening Post’s symposium of fine lines printed the day before she died. I count it much to the credit of the New York Times that her beautiful and original lines were so often found upon its editorial page, but even these do not show the range of her Muse. She had a penetrating and sympathetic feeling for nature, and interpreted it with surprizing flashes of revelation amounting to ‘second sight.’ Never boisterous, she often had what I may call a subdued boldness of expression that gave her the stamp of a discoverer. Her sonnets had distinction and virility. Those who found her lacking in emotion should read her philippics on the World War. The tenderness of her poems on children and on the dying Keats is, I venture to say, unsurpassed by her contemporaries of English verse. She lived a life of sacrifice to her art and once wrote with the accent of greatness: ’0 poverty, if thou and I must wed, I’ll surely try to sing thee into fame.’ Now that this beautiful spirit has gone into history, every school and college of the land should study her verse as a part of its regular curriculum, if for no other reason than to show, in these days of the loud pedal in everything, that the kingdom of poetry is not taken by violence.”

Her biography, as the press presents it, is not full of incident, but is a record of quiet scholarly pursuit:

“Miss Thomas was born at Chatham, Ohio. From her early days she was interested in poetry and the classics, and the classical note was perhaps the dominating one in her work. At the Normal Institute in Geneva she helped secure special classes in Greek for herself and two other girls. The present of a volume of Keats from an uncle widened her imaginative horizon and decided the form, the sonnet, into which she molded the greater portion of her poetry.

“Seeking a craft by which she could earn her living, if neces-sary, she chose type-setting, and by it earned her first $40. Some years after her removal to this city she remarked to a friend, speaking of her first sensations here: ‘I was drunk with New York.’ Visits to Boston and Europe led to friendships with American and foreign writers, among them William Dean Howells, Mrs. James T. Fields and Edmund Gosse.

“She was a member of the Greek-American Association and an occasional contributor to several Greek-American newspapers. She was one of the readers for the Century Dictionary, a work she declared to be a privilege rather than a task, since it meant so much delving among the poets in the old Astor Library, to verify quotations. In 1908, during the editorship of Henry Mills Alden, she became associated with Harper’s Magazine, and continued her editorial duties until two days before her death.”

Source: The Literary Digest of October 10, 1925

Tidal Waves 1925

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A STUDY OF TIDAL-WAVES by Professor Vaillaux, a French authority, is given in The World’s Health, the organ of the International Red Cross (Paris). Says this writer:

The determination of the causes of this phenomenon, which often produces terrible loss of life and property, is especially difficult in view of the difficulties of observation. Testimony of witnesses who have escaped from the calamity is natu­rally confused or contradictory. The seismograph and the barometer are the only instruments of value for scientific records, and the former can not function, of course, when earth tremors are absent.  Observations from boats at sea are almost always useless because of the relatively calm rise and fall of the ocean-level as the tidal-wave passes. The problem is further complicated by the confused terminology of description. Finally, the frequent minor oscillations of the ocean-level, aside from the daily tide fluctuations, need to be recorded and studied for the same reason that a record and analysis of the 30,000 annual minor earth tremors are as necessary in the work of the seismologist as that of the thirty or forty great earthquakes. The problem is of the greatest interest to the warmer, volcanically unstable, regions of the globe, and is confined for the most part between latitudes of 40 degrees north and south.

“A resume is presented describing about twelve of the most destructive waves about which records are available.  The scientific value of the reports on the Chilean wave of 1835 is of great interest, having been made by Darwin and Fitz-Roy, who happened to be on that coast at the time. One curious fact that these observers noted was that great flocks of birds flew in from sea more than an hour before the disaster oc­curred. The ocean first withdrew, leaving ships, which had been an­chored at a depth of seven fathoms, on dry land; this action was succeeded by a wall of water thirty feet higher than high-tide level; then came a higher wave, and finally a still higher wave.

“The records in gen­eral show that when the first wave is positive, it is almost invariably followed by a wave or waves of greater height and force. Frequently, tidal-waves are not pre­ceded by a negative undulation. South American populations, however, disregard warnings to flee until the ocean has first retreated. Much avoidable loss of life has occurred as a con­sequence.

“Other waves occur which are not of eruptive or seismic derivation. The Bay of Bengal particularly is subjected to waves produced by atmospheric depressions combined with winds of a cyclonic nature, possibly coinciding with exceptionally high tides. Tide-rips occur also and spread ruin. They are quite frequent on the western coast of France.”

Cuban Terrorism 1929

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THE DRIVE AGAINST CUBAN “TERRORISM”

MACHADO’S “REIGN OF TERROR” is what critics and political opponents of Cuba’s President call his government regime, involving Americans as well as Cubans in a “despotism” that respects neither property nor human rights, and since by treaty the United States holds an “intervention” club over the island Republic, Senator Borah’s Foreign Affairs Committee is led to make inquiry to discover what, if anything, we should do about it. Meantime the charges are vehemently called “false and defamatory” by Machado through his charge d’affaires in Washington, and the American Chamber of Commerce, as well as representatives of important American business firms in Havana, declare that Machado is neither a dictator nor unjust to Americans, and that Cuba is making rapid progress under his presidency.

Metropolitan papers published the charges against Machado in the form of lengthy resolutions said to have been presented to Senator Borah’s Committee, but their source remained “mysterious” even to Washington correspondents. Mr. Borah declared that they had not come before the Committee, whose inquiry was due to receiving individual complaints. Secret session conferences were to be held with Secretary of State Stimson before proceeding further with organized inquiry. The first conference, according to press reports, came short of developing grounds for intervention. The charges, briefly summarized, include—

Assassination and forcible exile, confiscation of property, profligate extravagance that has produced governmental bankruptcy, suppression of freedom of the press, speech and assembly, the existence of a military dictatorship, illegal elections and courts of justice that have become a farce. It is alleged that opposition to President Machado in the Cuban Congress is stilled by bribing Senators and Representatives with concessions in the national lottery; that each Cuban Senator gets annually from the lottery concession about $30,000 and each member of the House of Representatives about $15,000. Finally, it is declared that bankruptcy and political unrest will force the adoption of insurrectionary measures by the inhabitants, inevitably entailing the loss of life and the destruction of property, of both Cubans and Americans, thus again compelling the military intervention of the United States.

Such startling charges arouse lively discussion in the press in view of our special “protective” relations to Cuba. Inclination to look with suspicion is quite general, and is exprest by the Syracuse Standard, which is “tempted to ask: What American ‘ nigger’ is in the Cuban woodpile”? General press acclaim had followed President Hoover’s appointment of a new Ambassador to Cuba, Mr. Harold F. Guggenheim, of the Guggenheim Foundation, which is contributing to the development of aerial communication with Latin America, but the Senate holds up confirmation pending inquiry.

Washington correspondents appear to agree that the case of Mr. Joseph E. Barlow, an aged American citizen whose claim of some $9,000,000 for a land development in Havana has not yet come through the Cuban courts, is one of the chief precipitating elements in the situation. Correspondent William Hard, of the Consolidated Press Association, sees “the biggest cloud on our whole foreign horizon,” because American liberal and labor forces are clashing with American sugar and other big-business interests in Cuba. The latter stand for Machado’s government while the former accuse him of allowing importation of “Haitian savages” to tend the sugar fields, and say he connives at exile and assassination of Cuban labor leaders. Furthermore, Mr. Hard tells us that prominent political opponents of Machado offer to come to Washington to testify that they are prevented from organizing an opposition party, can not form an army to fight Machado under our State Department’s policy of furnishing arms only to put down “revolutions,” and must make public appeal to the Senate for a change of policy by the United States to restore political liberty to Cubans. Of these opponents Col. Carlos Mendietta, conspicuous in the war of liberation from Spain, is said to be leader, with Rafael Iturralde, ex-Secretary of the Interior and War Departments, and other ex-Senators and ex-representatives as associates.

Iturralde issued a statement to the Associated Press naming four editors of Cuban papers who had been “assassinated under mysterious circumstances after campaigns unfavorable to the Machado government,” as well as other editors forced to flee the country. He added that “no one can deny that Machado reelected himself without opposition; that no election had been held for members of Congress now holding office, and that hundreds of citizens have been murdered, while, wide-spread terrorism prevails.” Executives of four newspapers in Havana, however, unite in declaring that the press is free in Cuba, that there is no reign of terror, and that the Machado administration gives American business complete protection.

Where there is so much smoke there may be some fire, appears to be the point of view taken by the American press as a whole. It is time for action to learn the truth, according to the Manchester Union. “It is fortunate that the American Government has been unresponsive to the Cuban demand for freedom from oversight by this country,” observes the Detroit Free Press. A demand that those behind the charges come out into the open is voiced by the Brooklyn Eagle, which says:

“The terms of the Platt amendment are broad. Under them we have previously intervened in Cuba. Under them a pretext for intervention now might conceivably be found. Those behind the Senate resolution should come into the open; such information as they have at their command should be made public, and the result of Mr. Stimson’s examination of the charges should be fully spread upon the record. A move for intervention is so serious that there should be no secrecy about its origin.”

One of the first important papers to attack Machado unreservedly is the Washington News, of the Scripps-Howard chain. It declares that if Mr. Guggenheim, the new Ambassador, “sees clearly and reports fearlessly, there should be a reversal of the Administration’s policy toward Machado very soon”:

“The new Ambassador is going to represent a democracy in a country curst with one of the worst dictatorships in an age of dictatorship. That would not be so difficult for the Ambassador under ordinary circumstances, for the internal affairs of the foreign country would be none of his business. Cuba is different. It is a United States protectorate. The Machado dictatorship destroys life, property, and individual liberty. Many of Machado’s political opponents have mysteriously disappeared, their bodies found later in prison or washed up by the sea. He has violated property rights of Cubans and Americans, and in the latter cases has defied court rulings and State Department protests. What is the United States going to do about its obligation to preserve those Cuban liberties?”

Church and Politics 1929

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CAN THE CHURCH KEEP OUT OF POLITICS?

MUST POLITICS BE GIVEN OVER TO THE DEVIL, so far as the Church is concerned? Or should the Church enter the devil’s own parish, as some are apt to characterize the field of politics, and fight him on his chosen field? The question has long been a matter of dispute among theologians, and between theologians on the one side and laymen on the other.

Among the latest advocates of confining the ministry to the spiritual field is Dr. Caleb R. Stetson, rector of Trinity Episcopal Church in New York, quoted in these pages August 24. Dr. Stetson, it will be recalled, urged that the Church should concern itself with the spiritual welfare of the individual and not with political activity. Now comes the Pittsburgh Christian Advocate, asking why the Church should not concern itself with both? “They are not exclusive of one another,” says this Advocate, “The Church ought to cultivate, of course, the personal character of its members, but that does not make its political activity impossible, or its social responsibility less heavy. We had supposed that this was a commonplace of present-day religious work.” How, we are asked, is a Church that refuses to turn its thought and time to such subjects as “world peace, disarmament, the liquor traffic, and other nefarious kinds of business, the soul-cramping conditions under which many men, women and children labor, the causes of blighting poverty and despair under which multitudes struggle—how is a Church that ignores these problems, whose solution is so vital to human happiness, to defend its character as a Christian institution? ” As the Pittsburgh weekly sees it:

“We are in a world where public conditions, social systems, political acts and international relations affect for weal or wo the life of every individual. The Church wants, we may fairly say, the life of every individual to be the best and happiest possible—every individual, Christian or non-Christian, church member or outsider, worthy or unworthy—every human being, no matter where. The Church has the power, through political and social action that is perfectly legitimate and Christian, through stirring public sentiment and creating international brotherhood, through encouraging law enforcement and rebuking the forces of injustice, to save and bless the individual.

“This is not only the business of the Church; it is her glory. Statesmen, publicists, writers, labor leaders, passionate lovers of humanity, who are mostly indifferent or antagonistic to the Church, snatch away the wreath that Christ offers His Church. The multitudes will always look with larger hope to these secular forces than to an institution, however holy it may call itself, that has only a parish instead of a world for its field.”

Source: The Literary Digest, October 5, 1929

Soviet Fear of Religion 1929

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GOD AGAINST MARX—that is the great duel going on in Russia to-day, for it is the fear of religious success, Paul Hutchinson tells us, in effect, that has driven the Soviet State to inaugurate a reign of terror to eradicate the last vestige of vital religion from Russian life.

Mr. Hutchinson, who is managing editor of The Christian Century (Undenominational), had just come out of Russia, and was in Warsaw, Poland, when he penned a letter to his magazine to tell what he had observed in “two crowded weeks” in Russia. He is afraid to mention names or places or dates, for he had been warned that any specific refer-ence would be tantamount to signing the death-warrant of those immediately concerned. But he tells his readers that they must take his word for it that he has personal knowledge “that the Soviet Government is to-day closing churches wholesale; sending hundreds and probably thousands, of persons to jail for the sole crime of religious activity; reverting to the old G. P. U. (secret police) terror, under which persons are arrested, tried and sentenced without public trial, the employment of counsel, and frequently without letting even the families of the accused know where they are confined or with what they are charged.” Why this terrific assault on religion? As Mr. Hutchinson sees it:

“In the first place, the Soviet Government has been astonished, and badly frightened, by the success of the reforming religious movements in Russia. This has been particularly true of the Protestants. Numerically, Protestants are still lost in the Russian mass. But the rate of growth in recent years has been phenomenal. In the past two years this growth had begun to reach respectable figures—figures in the millions. If this rate had been maintained for another five years, the Protestant constituency would have been numbered in the tens of millions. A government committed to the establishment of an atheistic nation could not regard such an outlook cheerfully.

“In the second place, the Government has been aroused by the success of the Protestant churches in organizing the young people. It was asserted by Bukharin at the last convention of the Communist party that the membership of Protestant young people’s societies had passed that of the Comsomols—the ‘teen age organization of Communists—and that the rate of growth was much more rapid. There was probably some exaggeration in this, in an effort to secure party action forcing governmental suppression of the church societies, such as followed. But it is undoubtedly true that the young people’s societies of the churches were growing at such a rate as to excite the apprehension of the Communists, who place their hopes for a communized Russia so entirely in the coming generations.”

Christians in America can do nothing to help their brethren in Russia, thinks Mr. Hutchinson, because the Soviet Government is under a mental war strain, believing that the rest of the world is in combination to crush it. Recognition, he believes, would relieve this strain, and he writes:

“Once this strain is eased, the Government will feel less necessary the stern repression of certain elements. Out of that might quickly come a lessening of the drive against religion. But that is all something that might come to pass, and in a future that I fear is still remote.

“In the meantime, gentle women and noble men—Orthodox, Protestants, Zionists, and of many other groups—are being sent by the hundreds, perhaps by the thousands, to the loneliness of exile in Siberia, in central Asia, in the Caucasus, because they have dared to preach or profess a religion that you and I take too much for granted.”

 Source: The Literary Digest for October 5, 1929

Problems in Palestine 1929

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DIVIDING THE BLAME FOR PALESTINE BLOODSHED

THE ARROGANCE of the so-called Zionist Revolutionists is doubtless a causative factor behind the Moslem outbreaks against the Jews, says The American Hebrew (New York), in apportioning the blame among all those immediately concerned in the blood-letting in Palestine.

Primary responsibility is placed on the British authorities for permitting the opening of the blind end of the Wailing Wall area “to an inflamed and frenzied Arab mob,” but the “unscrupulous Moslem agitators” come in for a share, “and what we say of the Arab malefactors,” continues The American Hebrew, “we apply also to the Jewish agitators in Palestine. The bravado with which they claim Jewish Palestine against the Arabs, the aggressive zeal with which they demand an exclusive Jewish nationhood in Palestine, the inflammatory political harangues with which they demonstrate their foolhardy assertiveness, are in no little measure to blame for the ill-will and recurrent clashes between Moslem and Jew in the Holy Land.” This criticism applies, of course, only to the radical element among the Zionists, for in a later editorial pleading for a better understanding between Moslems and Jews in Palestine “for the sake of Palestine,” it is stated that “the Jews of the world would not desire a homeland for their brethren in Palestine if it is to be won and held at the point of a bayonet.” Rabbi Isaac Landman, the editor, calls the attention of the Moslems to the purpose of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, enunciated by Dr. Chaim Weizmann speaking for the Zionists, and Felix M. Warburg, speaking for non-Zionists, both of whom have declared that the objective of the Jews in Palestine is to create “a work of peace” that will benefit Moslems, Christians, and Jews alike. The editor thinks that this work of peace can be achieved mutually by Arabs and Jews, if the former, like the latter, would create an Arab Agency for Palestine on the lines and with purposes similar to those of the Jewish Agency.

Thus we have a reapportionment of blame for the latest tragedy which has afflicted a long-suffering people, and from Jews themselves a generous appreciation of Arab sentiment. Here again, tho he places primary responsibility for the murderous outbreaks on “the entire British policy,” Victor Rine, a Jewish journalist who is a close student of Eastern affairs, and who has made five trips to Palestine as an observer and student of events, apportions some of the blame on both Zionist and Arab leaders. Writing in the New York World, he tells us of the reverence in which the Arab was wont to hold the Jew, and then recites:  

“The sad changes observable in the Arab attitude to-day are the inevitable results of definite causes, of fallacious policies, malicious incitements, and arrogance on all sides. They have led steadily through misunderstanding to hatred, murder, and plunder.

“Arab propagandists are not without responsibility. They, too, have been willing to interpret the Balfour Declaration as some Zionists interpret it, and they have stirred up their people with the argument that their homes have been taken away from them.

“They have been willing to ignore the plain fact that Jewish colonization has brought to all Palestine, including the 80 per cent. of the population which is Arab, a prosperity which has not been known there for many centuries. The millions of dollars which are collected every year by Jews all over tho world for Zionism are largely spent in Palestine, and the Arabs for the most part are the recipients.

“Land prices have risen to heights which no Arab land-owner had ever dreamed of before. The colonists are compelled to use Arab labor, and the wages of the workers, low enough by all European standards, let alone American standards, are still much higher than in the days of the Turk. Sanitation, hospitalization, all the comfortable influences of civilization are benefiting the Arabs as never before.

“But some of the Arab leaders speak of these things only as a warning of increasing Jewish influence which will one day deprive the Moslem of his heritage. The argument is strengthened by those Jews who deny the validity of that heritage, who regard a thousand years of Arab occupancy as a usurpation, and claim the whole country as their own.”

A Roman Catholic view-point of the tragedy is furnished us by The Commonweal (New York), which criticizes the British Government for withdrawing the garrison from Palestine, and says it “should have long ago defined and defended the right of the Jews to worship in their immemorial holy places.” Tho it has ” no wish to deny that certain sections among the Palestine Jews have supplied their share of provocation in the present feud,” The Commonweal believes “their right in the holy places is anterior to the Moslems’ in history; and, speaking as Christians,” holds “that their right is spiritually superior, as well.”

Remarking that “naturally, American newspapers and politicians are inclined to emphasize the sorrows of the Jews, wantonly attacked by barbarous hordes of fanatical Moslems,” The Reformed Church Messenger observes.

“This is a popular view—and it must be remembered that the Arab vote in America is pitifully small, nor are the Arabs able to give large patronage to advertising columns. Of course, the Hebrew people, with their higher culture and a faith more akin to our own, seem considerably closer to us than the followers of Mohammed. Nevertheless, the Arabs are greatly in the majority in Palestine, and we wonder if they are to be blamed for not wanting to turn over the country they call their own to a rather uncompromising minority, backed by the material force of a British Mandate. It is a pretty complicated situation. and we can only hope that an enlightened British policy will see to it not only that peace is preserved, but also that substantial justice is done.”

It is interesting to recall here that two years ago Dr. Harry Emerson Fosdick, pastor of the Riverside Church, New York, predicted that blood would flow in Zion unless the chauvinistic and arrogant attitude attributed to certain Zionist leaders was abated, and a more tolerant and sympathetic attitude toward the sons of Ishmael observed. In his “A Pilgrimage to Palestine,” written after a four months’ trip in the Near East, Dr. Fosdick asserted that Zionists them-selves contributed largely to make a bad situation worse. For instance, we read that “one of the most prominent Jews in the world, in his exuberance over the new hopes of Zionism, told the Arabs to ‘ trek along,’ and the repercussions of that phrase are heard wherever Arabs live to-day. Zionism to the Jew is an idealistic movement; seen from the Arab side it is predatory, and one who gains entree to the Arabs’ confidence will hear bitter words expressing their desire to convert the Jewish national home into the Jewish national cemetery.”

“Meanwhile, the Zionists themselves are displaying two attitudes, one tending to mollify the Arabs, and the other to infuriate them. On one side stands the unwisdom and arrogance of Dr. Eder, former acting chairman of the Zionist Commission in Palestine. Publicly before a court of inquiry on Jewish-Arab disturbances in Jaffa, he said in 1921, as the report of the commission reads: There can be only ‘one national home in Palestine, and that a Jewish one, and no equality in the partnership between Jews and Arabs, but a Jewish predominance as soon as the numbers of that race are sufficiently increased.’

“This is typical of the madness with which some Zionists have rushed into trouble. They have profest their determination that ‘ Palestine should be as Jewish as America is American and England is English.’ Even in The Palestine Weekly, published in Jerusalem itself, they have insisted that as between the two portions of the Balfour declaration, the first promising a national home for the Jews, and the second promising that the rights of previous inhabitants shall not be invaded, ‘the principle of the British policy for Palestine lies not in the second but the first.’ The upshot of all this has been disastrous.”

Dr. Fosdick is not entirely critical of the Zionist project. He lauds it as one of the most ambitious racial struggles in history. But, he declares, “if it would be successful it must be unselfish. It must count Arab welfare as precious as its own. It must center its efforts on creating in the Holy Land a cultural expression of world-wide Judaism.” If Zionism will thus clean house, Dr. Fosdick concluded, “then success may come. But if the partizans of political Zionism, as now seems probable, are allowed to force the issue, I am willing to risk my reputation on prophecy: Zionism will end in tragedy.”

American Drama 1916 Part 2

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WHAT was needed to remake the theater was not better managers, better actors, better playwrights, but—fore and aft— that same sixth sense, a “national consciousness” that would enable us to distinguish the better ones when we saw them. We needed to think “theater” in America, not solely as a place for entertainment, but also as the home of an art which has the composite power of all the arts combined to amuse and stimulate and edify and charm. We needed—a great many of us at the same time—to want good plays of all kinds, good comedies and farces, tragedies and melodramas, slices of earth and flights of imagination, pictures of our own life as our own artists saw it, and of the life of neighbor nations whose people are a part of us, as the best foreign artists wrote of it. When we wanted all of this enough to pay for it, there would be no problem of the theater in America.

It was on such a theory as this that the Drama League of America began, six years ago, to “organize an audience for the best drama and to educate an audience for the future that should not need to be organized.” Everybody said that it was doomed to failure by its very name. The average American considers it “highbrow” to talk of the “drama” at all, that is to distinguish the shows which are meant merely to amuse from the more formal, even if equally entertaining, works of serious artists. Drama, to him, implies something unpleasant and lacking the happy ending. To suggest that Moliere was one of the world’s greatest dramatists would mystify him beyond measure—that is, if he knew Tartuffe. And when you assure him that “Shore Acres” and “Seven Keys to Baldpate” are drama as truly as “Ghosts” or “The Weavers,” he wonders why you are fussing about getting an audience when he is willing to pay speculator’s prices for almost anything on Broadway.

The average American laughed at the Drama League and so did a great many wise and good people, seriously interested in the drama, to whom the thought of booming an art was vain nonsense.

Yet the League continued its work, issuing bulletins appraising the best plays as they appeared and urging attendance during the early critical days of the run; publishing study courses, reading courses, library lists and bibliographies, lists of plays for juniors, for high schools, for adult amateurs; holding conferences and public meetings where all kinds of dramatic theories and practices were discussed; starting Little Theaters; helping to create a reading public for printed plays; encouraging playwrights, managers and actors who were doing good work; making mistakes and gaining wisdom.

Each year, new cities were added to its list of “centers” and more and better names to its body of active workers. A year ago the society decided to make a test of the success of its propaganda by proposing a national celebration of the tercentenary of Shakespeare’s death. For the first time in the history of America there was evidence of a “national consciousness” toward the drama. From one end of the country to the other, in the schools, clubs, colleges, churches, settlements and professional theaters, there were dramatic festivals of some sort to honor the memory of the artist who is every man’s dramatist. In New York City alone, there were over two thousand separate celebrations, ending with the great community Masque in May.

In the entire celebration, there was evidenced that spirit of cooperation and mutual understanding between professional workers in the drama and amateur drama lovers, that there has always been between musicians and music lovers. The spirit was too big and rare and sincere to be dissipated without constructive use; and the New York Center of the Drama League, always with a weather eye open to the ultimate purpose of the society, saw and seized the opportunity to put all the energy and enthusiasm which had been aroused at the service of American drama.

IN the spring a committee was formed whose purpose it is “to make Nineteen hundred and seventeen American Drama Year as Nineteen hundred and sixteen has been Shakespeare Year, to bring to the public some knowledge of the men and plays who have made its history, and of the younger men and movements on which it counts for its future.” The Committee has neither the hope nor the expectation of revolutionizing the theater by its endeavor. It desires simply to be the soil and the sunshine for every good American dramatic effort, professional or amateur, acted or printed. The personnel of the Committee is an illuminating comment on the success of the League in its missionary work for an organized interest in American drama. Mr. Winthrop Ames is the Honorary Chairman, and among its sixty members are playwrights, managers, actors, critics, publishers, teachers, lecturers, amateurs prominent in dramatic societies and a few well known patrons of the arts.

The plans of the Committee to focus attention on the history and the future of the drama in America are so many and various that everybody, young and old, who is at all interested, may have a part in one of them. The New York City Public Library is a most zealous supporter of the campaign, and, besides continuing the use of its branch libraries as centers for the discussion of plays bulletined by the League, it is planning to hold a two-months’ exhibition illustrating the growth of dramatic literature in America. The exhibition will consist of five hundred of the most important and typical American plays (from the time of “Androborus,” the first play printed in America, to the present day), of manuscripts, first editions, playbills, stage models, costumes, photographs of playwrights and famous players. At the time of the exhibition, and probably through the year, the Library will also have a specially selected group of reference books on the subject.

Mr. Arthur Hopkins, with the cooperation of Mr. Robert Jones, the young decorator whose interesting work is a feature of the new dramatic movement, has undertaken as his share of the work of the American Drama Committee, to produce a matinee of scenes from typical American plays, illustrating the growth of playwriting and play production, from “Pontiac” to the plays of our own time. Since a great majority of the plays which have been successful on our stage have never been published, even those of our best known dramatists, such as Bronson Howard, Steele Mackaye, James Herne and others, and there is no way for a person interested in them to know or to revive their style or form except from the old manuscripts and prompt-books, this production is looked forward to with the greatest interest by both the older and the younger generations of theatergoers.

The Committee has arranged a special series of three lectures by Montrose Moses, Walter Prichard Eaton and Dr. S. M. Tucker on “The History of the American Theater,” and a long list of single lectures on American Drama and readings from American plays. Several colleges, including Vassar and the Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute, are cooperating with the Committee by including a new course on American Drama in their curriculum. Four volumes of American acted plays of literary and historical importance are already an-nounced for publication during the year.

TO create a larger reading public for plays in America, as there is on the Continent, is to be one of the chief endeavors of the
Committee; and the men whose plays are consigned to the bookshelves because they are “too good for Broadway” are those who may have the most direct returns from the year’s work if the Com-mittee’s plan to issue book bulletins like the League’s bulletins of acted plays materializes. That there are printed American plays to bulletin is due to the enthusiasm of publishers who are doing pioneer work in the field. But printed plays make friends slowly, and it is doubtful if many, even among the drama’s best friends, know the Drama League Series, or Edwin Arlington Robinson’s “The Porcu-pine” and “Van Zorn,” or Hermann Hagedorn’s “Heart of Youth,” or Alice Brown’s “Children of Earth,” or the one-act plays of George Middleton, or the Wisconsin Plays, or Mrs. Cheney’s “Nameless One,” every one of which is worth reading.

At the office of the League there is to be a book shop where plays and books about plays will be for sale, and a Bureau of Information where any one who desires to give an American play, masque, school, club, church or settlement festival, program or lecture may come on Saturday mornings for advice and suggestions, not only as to available material, but as to accompanying music, costumes, scenery and dancing. The names of talented young play directors, costumers and decorators will also be kept on file and the Committee hopes to secure for many their first hearings. The Bureau is to be in charge of Miss Evelyne Hilliard, who conducted a similar one for the Shakespeare Committee, and since it was there that most of the two thousand supplementary Shakespeare celebrations were planned, the Committee has great hopes of the Bureau as an outlet. If this effort of the Committee meets a response which shows a real need, the Bureau will probably develop into a permanent link between the unacted dramatist and the public, a place where American plays which are either too good, or not quite good enough, for professional production, according to accepted standards, may, by special recommendation, be recorded and taken by amateur or semi-professional companies for “try-outs” and special performances.

With all this advance interest and enthusiasm in the plans and progress of the Committee, it requires but little optimism to believe that American Drama will find its place in the sun at last.