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THE CONTRIBUTORS' COLUMN

John Fletcher Moulton was born in 1844. Educated at Cambridge, he was honored as Senior Wrangler and on 'going down' to London, became a Barrister of the Middle Temple. He received his baronetcy in 1912 and in that year became a Lord of Appeal in Ordinary, member of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. Chairman of the Committee on High Explosives at the outbreak of the war, he subsequently was appointed Director General of Explosive Supplies, in which capacity he rendered distinguished service. Officially and otherwise, Lord Moulton was a happy conversationalist and a most felicitous speaker. Singular as it may seem his speech as here given was impromptu and no changes whatever have been made in the printed text. The journal of Edward A. Wieck pictures industrial relations at the rock-bottom in so fair, manly, and trustworthy a manner as to confide us of their ultimate adjustment. Dhan Gopal Mukerji, who returned to his Bengal home after western wanderings, listened there with unaccustomed astonishment to the expressions of the younger and older generations of India.

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Following his graduation from Harvard in 1922, Douglas Burden made his way through the jungles of Indo-China and the Vale of Kashmir, collecting family groups of big game for the American Museum of Natural History. For others like ourselves, who can easily confuse a markhor with a red-headed parrot, we quote the following definitions.

Markhor: a goat of the mountains of northwestern India, reddish-brown in summer, gray in winter, having a black beard and enormous spiral horns.

Ibex: one of the various wild goats of the genus Capra. The European or Alpine ibex, or steinbok, is about two and one-half feet high, with horns curved backward, transversely ridged in front, and above two feet long in the male. It lives above the snow

line during the day, descending at night to graze. Capra sibirica of the Himalayas, with smoother and more divergent horns, curved inward at the tips, is a smaller species.

A versatile chemical engineer, Arthur D. Little, by means of professional foresight, has given us entertaining little look-offs into a near and dazzling future. Una EllisUniversity of London, who sends her first Fermor is an English poet, now at the contribution to the Atlantic. Ernest Poole, novelist of distinction, has recorded a tale such as one might hear from the lips of a wandering exile, so honest is its quality of Russian character and atmosphere. Many readers of Sarah N. Cleghorn's '1995' will wish to change places with their great grandchildren. For us, we accept our own lot and time with a new complacency.

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That the world still offers chances such as Robert M. Macdonald, adventurer and Australian prospector, describes will be pleasing news to most Americans. Alexander McAdie is director of the Blue Hill Observatory of Harvard at Readville, Massachusetts. For many years Amory Hare has been sending to the Atlantic poems beautifully interpretive of nature's mood. In this number her 'Lyrics,' of a somewhat different imagery, are marked each by its single vivid impression. Ever since the reign of King Cole, the fiddler has been beloved-though whether as the Lord's or the Devil's disciple who shall say? We find Paul Green's answer very appealing. Alice and Irene Lewisohn, patrons of the Neighborhood Play House, have followed the Little Theatre movement far afield. Their experiences and their unusually dramatic criticisms were taken from their picturesque letters. W. O. Stoddard Jr.'s account of Jonah draws a just line between jocularity and satire. Mr. Stoddard's father was private secretary to President Lincoln.

For fifteen years Samuel Guy Inman has traveled extensively and continuously in Latin America. With an array of trenchant observations Mr. Inman has taken a very strong position against the 'ever-broadening imperialism' of the United States. William Worth Hall's study of the oil industry and international politics is written not from casual observation but from six months of thorough and professional research. ¶A far sighted student of national policy, H. H. Powers has added moral weight and heavy responsibility to a phrase and an enactment which have been too lightly appreciated in recent months.

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Your January number was probably read in a number of queer and out-of-the-way places; but it is my belief that none of the circumstances can equal those under which that magazine was devoured on the twenty-first day of February, in a third-class car of the Canton-Hankow Railway.

Notice, please, that I not only mentioned the railway line but also make mention of the fact that I was in a third-class car. It is almost a hopeless task to explain just what that means. If you've ever been third class on a Chinese train you know something about it. If you have n't, it is very difficult to make you visualize it. My personal opinion is that the Canton-Hankow line is the worst in China. The third-class coaches on this division of the Chinese Government Railways are what might be called 'glorified freight cars.' The expression is hardly adequate because it implies rather too much. The 'glorification' amounts to cutting about a dozen holes in the sides of the cars to be used as windows, and putting benches along the walls, with double benches running down the centre of the car. Over each bench is a shelf, about eighteen inches from the top of the car. These are presumably for baggage. The rack in the middle is about three feet wide. At each end of the car is a door, leading into the next car, while in the middle of each side is a wide sliding door which provides the main avenue of ingress and egress for the car. In the winter time, when the car is unheated and drafty, and the roof leaks, and the windows are shut and the atmosphere reeks, it bears but little resemblance to any parlor car you have ever seen. And after all, you ought to take into consideration the fellow travelers who are apt to

swarm into the car. Knowledge of the mysteries of bacteriology is possessed by none. Cuspidors are unknown. And but what's the use?

The place becomes what you might call 'thick.'

On the twenty-first of this month I was on the train, undergoing the twenty-five hours of travel which are required to complete the 225 miles of this trip. The car was as full as usual. The train when in motion, which was little enough of the time, swayed and rattled and jolted along at the breakneck speed of about ten miles per hour. Garlic, cheap tobacco, and the evident need of baths all around made free breathing rather difficult. Down at one end of the car a mother, dressed in blue coat and trousers, was nursing her young son who was still gay in the red suit which he was wearing in celebration of the lunar New Year. Sitting on the end of a bench, gazing pensively out of the open door, was a gray-clad soldier, shoeless, but bulging with his three or four padded coats. He nudged the farmer next to him, borrowed his cigarette holder, took a box of matches from the lap of a satin-gowned merchant across from him, and gravely lit up. The train jerked and halted to a stop and the air became filled with cries and curses as passengers near the ends of the car tried to fight their way through the crowd between them and the door, while a pushing, fighting mob attempted to force its way in at the same time.

Was I being crushed under foot, buffeted about, dug with elbows and crushed by the ubiquitous bedding-rolls? I was not. In calm unconcern I glanced up a moment, gave an interested look or two at the fray, and returned to a perusal of 'A Conversation with Cornelia.' When the scene was reënacted at the next station, I gave it hardly more than a cursory glance, for I was deeply engrossed by the doings of the wily Sam. But lest you conclude that I must be either a liar or deaf-and-dumb, or both, permit me to explain the secret of this remarkable power of concentration. I was lying on my own unrolled bedding in the centre baggage-rack. The tumult and the shouting rose and died. The coolies and the soldiers departed and were succeeded by others of like kind. Tea was gulped and gurgled and the floor became unspeakable. But the Atlantic Monthly and I were above all that, and nothing disturbed us but the conductor and his five armed guards and two announcers who came for tickets and dragged me out of the fourth assembly of the League of Nations.

D. C. SMITH.

We imagine that the adage, 'Where there's a Will, there's a Way,' assisted

Elizabeth C. Adams's article in offering encouragement to these two readers and others who may share a resembling fortune.

DEAR ATLANTIC,

Only a few months ago you printed a very sane and helpful article entitled 'The Will to Love.' Since that time there has come into my life an experience which has led me to realize the great necessity of having a will not to love.

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A few years ago I was called upon to live through a great tragedy that of seeing my husband infatuated with another woman and finally marrying her. I then felt, that, had I been in his place and found myself infatuated with another I surely would have made every effort to control my affections, and have exercised my will not to love.

Now I myself am being put to the test! It is my duty to exercise my will, not to love; for rather suddenly I found myself really in love with one who, I believed, reciprocated my feelings. I have since learned that it is my dearest friend (who often makes her home with me) whom he really loves. It came to me as a real shock and is the more difficult to bear because circumstances demand that I entertain them frequently in my home, and of necessity am a witness to their happiness. It is only because I am making every effort to meet the test as I believe every man and woman should meet it, that I am able to keep out of three lives, the unhappiness which would result were I not willing to exercise my will 'not to love.'

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May the wife of the Will that is loved greet the author of 'The Will to Love,' and tell her that her article has been responsible for at least one exceedingly happy marriage?

Will and I have been friends from childhood. He tells me that when he was still in short trousers he used to include in his nightly prayer the petition that he might grow up to be worthy to marry me. However, though we were closely associated all through school and college days, our paths afterward led far apart, and we did not marry. In the years since then, he has been more or less in love with several women, but has never gone so far as marriage. I, on the contrary, was married in war time to a young scientist of unusual promise, and peculiarly sweet and radiant personality. The sacrifice of his life was one of the costliest that the war-monster demanded. He never saw our little son.

For nearly four years my boy and I have carried on, as cheerily as might be, together. Each year at Christmas-time has come 'Uncle

Will,' from a distant city, and each year the small boy has welcomed him more joyously, and crept closer to his heart. After the Christmas visit this year, the thought of our old love, and the possibility of bringing old hopes to fulfillment, arose. We discussed the matter pro and con, but, neither of us feeling quite certain that the past had left us enough to offer each other, and our distance apart making it impossible to further test out our personal reaction, we had about decided to abandon the idea.

Then, in the February Atlantic, came "The Will to Love.' It impressed us both profoundly. Will wrote: ‘It has set my mind operating in a new groove. I am eager to give the theory an immediate trial. As I understand it, we are making a wager with fate that we can deliberately enter into the marriage relationship and make a success of it, in spite of the fact that circumstances have kept us physically apart for many years, so that we have no way of knowing from recent experience just how, without some voluntary control, we shall react upon one another in daily contact. It may seem like a wild leap in the dark, but I should not propose it if I did not have high hope that it will ultimately lead to much real happiness for both of us.'

We were married late in February. It took less than a day of married life to show us how beautifully complete our response to each other really was. A few weeks later my husband said that he believed he loved me at least four times as much as when he had asked me to marry him. As to the little boy, who has found at last a living meaning for the name 'Daddy,' and the childless man who has opened wide his heart in welcome, I cannot imagine a finer happiness than has come to both of them, and to me because of their mutual joy.

Will carefully laid aside a copy of our marriage service with the February Atlantic. "There,' he said, 'are the constitution and the by-laws.'

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1603 by what was technically the annexation of England by the assumption of the English Crown by James the Sixth of Scotland after the death of 'that bright Occidental Star, Queen Elizabeth, of most happy memory.'

On two separate occasions the English (I use the word in its restricted sense) repudiated the Scottish kings, but in both cases reverted to the Stuart dynasty. To-day His Britannic Majesty, George the Fifth, derives his right to the British throne from his descent from the Scottish Stuarts. R. D. D. IRVINE.

***

From one Victim to another.

DEAR ATLANTIC,

MASSACHUSETTS.

I read, with intense hope, the 'victim's case' of the American Malady in the April Atlantic, but alas she merely mentions the finding of the 'Source of Joy,' and she does not tell us what it is. I wonder if there would not be a large number of persons to acclaim her if only she would give us the treatment as frankly as the diagnosis.

May I ask if one must wait ten years for the vision? I have spent about half that time in a small New England village, which may be much worse than any city. When I came here I was delighted with the beauty of the country and I had long enchanting walks with my husband. But, after reveling in the fairyland of a winter morning, I was introduced at a 'Main-Street' party as 'the lady who goes walking in snowstorms.' I discovered that, in all dignity, one must not run down the hills. One cannot go skating on the school pond without being looked at askance. Like the other victim I find plenty of clubs, too many for a village, but they stir no least bit of interest or enthusiasm; they only bore. Domesticity is deadening to the mind, and I find one may live very respectably by spending only a small fraction of one's time thus. One can read widely and long, but there must be something more. What has she discovered won't she please tell us other victims?

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In this article on "The Preacher's Handicap,' Mr. Horwill doubtless took into consideration the devastating possibility, from the preacher's point of view, of the entire congregation leaving en masse during the ten minute interval suggested between service and sermon, with only a handful, or perhaps no new recruits at all, enlisting for the sermon. A lapsus linguae by a preacher, which I once enjoyed hearing, and which may have been induced by the boredom of having to sit through a programme of the usual banal sacred music, would aptly describe the situation. The preacher in question wished to announce that a pile of leaflets would be found at the rear of the church, which the congregation could obtain as they passed out at the close of the service. As actually made the announcement was as follows: "The congregation can obtain the leaflets as they pile out at the close of the service.'

ALFRED B. YEOMANS.

We have clipped this charming apology from the letter of an oriental admirer.

TRAVANCORE STATE, SO. INDIA.

In the meanwhile I implore your mercy in the shape of a request that a relative of mine who is entirely in the grip of deep potation posted to the Atlantic Monthly a bundle of papers, which is nothing but a net-work of his deranged brain. I knew it, only the 3rd day, while I accidently stepped into the Post office. I hope you will open your basket of sympathy, and do full justice to my prayer.

I am really at a loss to comprehend anything that are contained in those papers. If you could kindly re-direct it to me, I shall be thankful to you, and will destroy the scamp unquestionably. As I am your dutiful and obedient Servant, I feel confident that my humble request will not go in vain.

K. P. KASAVE-DASS.

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