Nor was their political immaturity, amounting to a childish naïveté, any less detrimental to their fate than their utter military incapacity. (Once more, incapacity only from a strategical point of view!) I do not know whether Sultan Pasha himself believed in all that his adherents represented him as believing, but it seems to me quite probable that, at least as an encouragement to his own followers, the rumor was spread by himself that the English who since 1860 maintained a traditional friendship with the Druzes - would intervene in favor of the rebels. Sultan Pasha himself, however, spoke to me not a word of any help from England, but the simple Druzes did not fail to communicate to me secretly that Sultan Pasha felt sure of England's help if needed.

Now every student of Eastern affairs knows perfectly well that, at least since the Conference of Lausanne, England and France have only one common interest in Syria- that is, to see the anti-European movement in the Near East suppressed as completely as possible. The fact that some of the French press believed in this nonsense is only a black spot on the French press of the Right; it is no justification for the Druzes, whose business it was to understand Near Eastern questions better than the Echo de Paris. Unfortunately, Sultan Pasha did not understand them at all.

He explained to me his demands: 'We cannot accept the French conditions even if they grant us autonomy. We cannot accept them, not only because we do not want to pay any contribution, not only because we do not want to surrender any of the weapons we captured, but above all because we have no confidence in France. What it promises to-day it may deny to-morrow. Hence we do not accept its offers of a Druze governor, of amnesty, and so

'What do you understand by Syria, and what do you understand by independence, Pasha?' I asked.

He consulted one of the revolutionary deputies who had come from Damascus to Mejdel, the headquarters of Sultan Pasha, to prevent him from accepting the French peace conditions. After this consultation the Pasha repeated almost literally the same opinions and sentences I had learned a few hours before from the Syrian delegates in his camp. 'We ask freedom for the whole French mandatory area excepting the Lebanon. We ask for a government of our own, with a king or president as head of the State. We ask for a parliament elected by free and voluntary ballot, controlling its government. We ask for an army of our own, with supreme command of our own. If it is absolutely necessary, -I generally dislike foreigners, — but if it is absolutely necessary the French should have as many economic privileges as they want. They should be advisers of the various departmentsbut nothing more. In brief, they may play the same rôle that the English play in the Irak.'

IV

The unfortunate chieftain of the rebels was fooled by the delegates of the people's party of Damascus. He counted on the help of the Damascenes, and the Nationalists themselves were earnestly believing they would be able to come to his help and even to his rescue, and that they would beat the French at the very doors of Damascus. I did not believe in these exaggerated hopes and I was most unequivocal in the expression of my doubts. Since the fatal overthrow of Emir Feisal in 1920, in Damascus, I formed my opinion of the Damascenes- a people who, howa people who, however ready to prepare a Putsch at any time, are utterly incapable of fighting seriously. And these great warriors, the Druzes, were mistaken in sacrificing themselves for town-people who, generally speaking, did not merit the sacrifice.

But even the Druzes will suffer their fate not quite undeservedly. It is true, they are most chivalrous, like knights in the service of Sultan Saladin. If, for instance, two heroic Druze gangmen meet a horseman in their way, one will tell the other: 'Ride forth! I will attack the man you can continue your way.' It would be scandalous for them both to raid one single adversary. The captured French pilots whom I met at the castle of the Atrashes in Aereh they were privates, not officers! - were eating from the same plate as the Emir Hammad, together with me, the honored guest, and together with the respected French emissary to negotiate peace. And other captured French soldiers who could not be led under custody were sent home with: 'Give our regards to General Sarrail.'

-

The Druzes are warriors, but nothing else. Their rebellion against France was more or less the rebellion of the sixteenth century against the twentieth.

They are a small people, small and poor. Their feudal lords master them to-day even as they did nine centuries ago. Their history is only a history of quarrels between their noble families, under the secret influence of their religious leaders. I, for one, have the impression that the appointment of Christians to posts of teachers in the new public schools was one of the contributory causes to the rebellion, but I may be mistaken. They are, however, a lively and chivalrous and most hospitable people, for whom death spells no fear; for whom the words 'honor' and 'freedom,' which have lost their meaning elsewhere in the world, have still kept their significance.

It is a thousand pities that this nation has no leaders, at this critical moment, who could understand that 55,000 people could not go to war against Europe's great military power. It is a pity that the same leaders who a few months ago led the people into an unexpected victory have led it now into a most humiliating defeat. Sultan Pasha, however, understands only how to win a victory, not how to make the best use of it. He exploited his victory neither in the military_sense - else he would have attacked Damascus - nor in the political sense else he would have paid the five thousand pounds contribution, would have returned the arms, and would have concluded peace as a victor.

When I said good-bye to the Pasha and to Emir Hammad, I gazed at the dim and sad-looking Sultan, with his thick, black moustache, and at the fair, young, almost childlike Emir, with his little brown moustache over his sharp lips. They looked serious, but not at all weary and not at all peaceful. I came to like these brave men in the few days I spent with them. I know that I shall probably never see them again, for over them hangs France's sword.

OLDENBURY HOLLOW

It was in a little bookshop on a tenement street in the West End of Boston that I found it, a little shop kept by a scholarly Jew, shelves full of highexplosive intellectual contraband Portraits and Protests, by Sarah N. Cleghorn. And the first verses the book opened to were 'The Oldenburys.'

Fifteen years ago Miles Bradford and I, just out of college and poorer than the proverbial barnyard fowl of Job, were dwelling in an East Boston garret. The nearest restaurant was three miles away. Each evening we climbed a high hill with a superb view of the city and harbor, and, perched on its scarp, near a nunnery surmounted by a statue of the Virgin Mary with its halo attached to a lightning rod which ran down her back, ate half a loaf of

stale bread and three bananas apiece.

That was dinner. And here it was that Miles produced a copy of the Atlantic containing, in its Contributors' Club, two lyrics, "The Oldenburys,' and "The Sigourney Circle,' saying, 'Here is something good.'

And good they were:

Turn again into the wooded Hollow

By the fabled Tory-hunter's well,
Where the strange and bookish Oldenburys
On their wasted patrimony dwell.

houses? We promptly learned both lyrics. And the next year, when I was so rash as to take Miles to my little home town, I incurred years of chaffing to the tune of:

But the clocks are slow in Oldenbury Hollow, Where they chime with the voices of the past.

We fell to watching for Sarah Cleghorn's name on the magazine indexes. Always some pensive or touching sketch 'Of Country Places and the Simple Heart.' Then she disappeared.

The earth swallowed her. What had become of the sweet songstress of Vermont villages? At last, where on earth should she turn up, where but in the pages of The Masses before the war, under the editorship of Mr. Max Eastman. And bless us, what a transformation! What had become of sunbonnets and old-fashioned garden flowers? What Saint Joan's voice was

this, ringing with wrath and pity in that burning lyric, 'Comrade Jesus,' beginning:

Thanks to Saint Matthew, who had been
At mass-meetings in Palestine,

We know whose side was spoken for
When Comrade Jesus had the floor,

and on through a poem that is all one thrill of love and pain.

Soon after came her novel, The Spinster, and the story was clear: one more chapter of that agony which comes over the finer spirits of the middle class at the sight and sense of the injustice of their kith and kin to the class just beneath. But why had one heard nothing of this little volume of verse? A glance at the title-page date explained - 1917. How could these shy strophes of the hermit thrush be

heard above the cannonades of that evil year? And yet, here in these pages is the now famous four-line lyric:

The golf links lie so near the mill
That almost every day
The laboring children can look out
And see the men at play.

That innocent little quatrain gave child labor a black eye that no amount of cosmetics has ever been able to efface. In another lyric she reproaches herself with cowardice. And yet I seem to remember calling on her with Miles Bradford in the summer of 1917 -utter strangers both, but in sheer need of talking with someone who spoke another language besides that of hatred and death- and finding her wearing publicly a small red badge on which was inscribed this legend: 'Love your enemies.' That was a time when a San Francisco woman found herself in trouble with the police for putting in her window a placard plagiarizing Moses to the extent of "Thou shalt not kill.'

On that same journey, while the Jouncing Jess, as Miles's motor truck was affectionately known, jingled past a weather-rusted farmhouse under the lee of Windward Mountain not half a mile from Miss Cleghorn's dwelling, Miles, noting a farmer in shirt sleeves reading a book on the front verandah, murmured:

Where the strange and bookish Oldenburys

On their wasted patrimony dwell.

Just to rig him, I told Miss Cleghorn of the remark. 'Oh,' said she, 'that was the Oldenburys. They are my cousins.'

So the little book came out in 1917 and was lost in the symphony of discords and the Christmas oratorios of hate. Is it too late to review? Very well; then let me tell a few friends what a choice keepsake of homely truth and beauty is laid away in the sweet lavender of these unpretentious verses. No highfaluting, no pose, no rhetoric;

but something lacking which so much contemporary verse limps - skill of versification, haunting phrase, and, above all, genuine and passionate thought and a heart burning with love of her fellow creatures. For all this, I wonder if it is not worth while to direct the wayfarer to

Turn again into the wooded Hollow. . . .

PRIMITIVE WINTER

WE had been having perfect winter weather. The snow lay deep in the valley, clean and white. The lake was covered with ice, transparent green and blue except where a wind-blown mass of flakes reflected a thousand diamonds. The trees bent under their crystal burdens, which only served to emphasize the pure, rich green of their needles. In the sheltered glades the bright red of the kinnikinic berries added a dash of color, and the waxy green of the Oregon grape made one wonder if winter really were here. The stars shone in a never-ending cold brilliancy all their own, and the aurora borealis played through the long nights.

For weeks it had been one glorious holiday season. Long sleigh-rides, tucked in warm hay under heavy skins; moonlight parties, where the skates rang loud and clear and mingled their song with the laughter of the lighthearted participators, or the long toboggans flew over the icy surface, perhaps to dump their occupants in a waist-deep drift, perhaps to go skimming far out on the shining lake; skiing, with flying coats and mufflers, down the long, smooth slopes or over the breath-taking jump-offs; snowballing amid merry shouts, even though the weapons did sometimes hit hard, or again sent a shower of frozen particles down one's neck; snowshoeing back in the woods, where the deer leaped from cover and were gone, where

But it ended, as all things end. The moon shone all one bright day with a ring around it. 'Blizzard coming,' the old-timers said, and we were all glad of the big woodpiles near at hand and the well-filled cellars.

The blizzard came. The morning was still, clear, freezing. The thermometer started dropping at ten. At two the signal whistles on the mill began blowing, and in school we children could not see to read. At two-thirty it was forty below, and the snow and ice were coming from the north in a solid sheet, tearing down the valley. The janitor fired the furnaces as much as he dared, and we all huddled in a room on the most sheltered side of the building, waiting for the men to come after us. The school was in the direct path of the storm.

At three-thirty they came, ten men who had risked all in that journey of an hour and a half to reach their children. An hour and a half - and town less than a mile away! We waited for the storm to slacken and the men to thaw ears, noses, and fingers. At fourthirty there was a lull, and we hastily bundled up and started for home.

There were only two men and four children in the group that went to Sunshine Hollow. Our way lay through the lumberyards. It was a few hundred yards to the piles, but the rest of the distance was fairly well protected. By the time we had covered the open space it was storming hard again, with a shifting, whirling wind. We could see only a few feet before us, and our

track was soon obliterated. The men took turns breaking a path. It was a killing job. Some places the snow was packed hard, but not hard enough to bear our weight. Again the underneath crust held the trail-maker and broke under those who followed. On the sheltered side of many of the piles it was sifted so fine that a trail would not hold, and here it was necessary to carry a child and wallow through. Some of the lumber was completely covered, and the surface blown smooth. Here we attempted to cross on the boards. Once the leader stepped off the edge into eight or ten feet of snow, but luckily we were tied together and he was drawn back to safety.

It was soon pitch-dark and every inch of the way had to be felt, but since it had quit snowing and was not so cold, the handicap was balanced. The last quarter of the way, the men carried us inside their mackinaws while breaking trail. Sometimes the man who followed carried two. We must make time, for time was life. The man who had fallen into the drift continually stumbled. Twice he dropped his burden. At last he fell full length, apparently spent. The other man went ahead a few paces. He stumbled and fell uphill. It was the road! Across the little ridge was home! That imparted new energy, and we were soon over the crest, with the welcoming lights shining from every window in the Hollow, for all were keeping watch with the anxious mothers.

How long that trip had taken us, we children were never told. The man who had fallen was carried home, and spent a delirious week going over and over the terrible journey. When he recovered, his hair was white, and he had lost two toes and a finger. The rest of us were more fortunate. Careful thawing meant much pain at the time, but no succeeding damage.