teen, is filled with vague apprehensions. "He said evasively: 'I fancy it's going to rain.'" Later, "he was cowardly enough to pray for rain." Simplicity in dealing with elemental feelings is well enough, but a simpleton is a simpleton, nor should a good artist give needless occasion for the inopportune mirth of the sophisticated.

It is a pity that Mr. Booth could not have seen his way to vignette the story of Thursday Hardrip, instead of framing it, or indeed burying it, in an agriculturally naturalistic novel. Thursday is not a Tess of the D'Urbervilles, a figure around whom a drama of human destiny can well be woven. Her simple story can suggest no new idea of social ethics, nor even plead successfully for a more sympathetic understanding of the young. Her lover is a fool; her lover's mother is a fool; her father is a drunken oaf, the neighbors are clods. She alone has any real significance. A love child, despised, neglected, without moral defences or mental safeguards, utterly humble, Thursday is nothing but a woman altogether in love. Never was any woman in love more truly; in Thursday physical passion and selfless devotion are one thing. Nor is her simplicity cloying; rather is she full of unexpected charms.

Thursday Hardrip, as has been said, does not belong to the same class of literary figures with Tess of the D'Urbervilles. If one were required to classify her, one would be obliged to say that she is an example of the “beautiful soul" of the Romanticists-the soul so innocent that it cannot know evil or incur guilt. Despite differences of environment, she is more akin to Trilby than to Tess. But the point is that it is unnecessary to classify her. She is a real person; Mr. Booth knows his Thursday Hardrip. Perhaps no modern writer has done so well as he with a perfectly simple incarnation of womanhood-a type extremely opposite to that whose infinite variety time cannot wither nor custom stale. Thursday's charm would wither with age, her lover would weary of her. She has no "character". Such a personality few writers could have imagined with any vitality. Even Wordsworth, who loved simplicity, must needs have his women ladies, though they were Nature's ladies; but Thursday is not even Nature's lady. Moreover, she neither challenges our philosophy nor clamors for our sympathy. Simply we feel that her story concentrates something of the grace, the beauty, and the sadness that we see everywhere in nature. Nature! A mother who should have called Thursday away from nature with the simple words, "Come in now and wash your face", might have thwarted this tragedy. Yet the tragedy, swift, simple, and passionate is not on this account the less to be appreciated.

THE BLACK PANTHER. By John Hall Wheelock. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.

Mr. Wheelock in a certain unquietness of soul and an occasional jerkiness of thought appears to be quite modern and quite minor. Nevertheless one is disposed to regard him as a true poet. His thought is far more consistent,

less vague, less freakish, less purely personal, than that of most of those versifiers whose strange ecstasies or far-sought impressions or metrical experiments appear in print from day to day. More than most, he gives one the effect of measured strength of persistent effort toward a goal, of a true sense of intellectual form, and of a consistent and genuine emotional tone.

Thought and not mere vagary is his mistress, and though the thought never reaches a satisfying completeness, tending to resolve itself at last into a mood, there is always in evidence a sincere effort to grasp, to understand, to find a resting place for the spirit.

The poem, The Black Panther, is not indeed purely romantic:

There is a panther caged within my breast;

But what his name, there is no breast shall know
Save mine, nor what it is that drives him so,
Backward and forward, in relentless quest-
That silent rage, baffled but unsuppressed,

The soft pad of those stealthy feet that go
Over my body's prison to and fro,

Trying the walls forever without rest.

All day I feed him with my living heart;

But when the night puts forth her dreams and stars,

The inexorable frenzy reawakes:

His wrath is hurled upon the trembling bars,

The eternal passion stretches me apart,

And I lie silent-but my body shakes.

This is romantic, indeed; all the realization is a realization of undefined mystery; all the emphasis is upon the strangeness of the heart. And with the characteristic statement "My body shakes", the poem ends: it has not arrived. Yet there is here a restraint and an explicitness that make the effect almost classical. Here we have a romance grown truly reflective and almost possessed of insight.

Again, in Mr. Wheelock's "Sea Horizons" there is a perfection of form, a consistency of tone, that tends to impressiveness. The stanzas are interlocked in meaning, yet each makes its distinctive contribution to the progressive development of a coherent thought; each is a fresh and independent realization, a new and more or less inspired utterance, like the successive verses of the Psalms. The stateliness, the spaciousness, the cumulative feeling of this poem are not achieved by any mere romantic rebellion or need for self-expression. These qualities imply a certain degree of steadiness, wholeness, and restraint. They suggest a definite goal, a limit, a capacity for the classical emotion of resignation.

Mr. Wheelock seems modern and romantic, a poet of his time; but he is no mere creature of the time-spirit, no imitator or emotional opportunist. Rather, he appears to be a true poet working with and through the spirit of his age-reflective, critical, yet by the very nature of his poetic impressibility more romantic than either critical or reflective.

SIR:

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

EMINENT DOMAIN WITH INDEMNIFICATION

The February number of THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW dealing with Affairs of the World makes indeed an interesting suggestion of "World Wide 'Eminent Domain"". Does the able writer imply thereby an extension of the mandatory system with its confiscations contrary to the law and usages of nations from the Peace of Westphalia to the Treaty of Versailles; or does he mean eminent domain in the sense in which that term is used in American Constitutional law, by due process of law and with just and equitable indemnification? If that question were more fully developed, we would have the key to the central chaos of Europe. Already the "open door" doctrine, construed by some to insure the participation of American private interests in properties taken by confiscation in mandated regions, begins to shrink from the very real issue, when "the supreme law of the land", constrains the diplomatic (executive) authorities of the Federal Government.

Such a claim would seem to be premised on a subsisting national interest, whose definition must precede the guaranty, if any be possible, of these very special private interests. To the extent of that public interest of the United States restitutions should ensue, the discretion of Congress being limited by the law of nations as understood in this Country; "in the light of the purpose of the Government to act within the limitations of international law", to use the words of an opinion in which, if my recollection serves me correctly, the Secretary of State himself concurred when an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. "By the law of nations we certainly are bound." Constitutional authorities must, in the absence of positive statute, be interpreted by the common law, and the eminent domain of this nation, wherever it may be exercised, where national interest implies jurisdictional power, implies equitable indemnification.

Followed to its logical conclusion by American diplomacy, this principle would have averted the present crisis in the Near East and elsewhere. An equitable trust of all mandated properties with a reasonable reversionary interest to former owners or indemnification thereof by gradual amortization under international law, would have permitted a real open door in economic development thereof, security for reparation payments, and a means of liquidating interallied debts, and yet have consisted with the spirit and letter of the acknowledged laws of nature and of nations.

We went to war, so I understood, to defend our rights by the law of nations; and if precedent and decision in the law and practice of this country be re

garded, the obligation and duty of America is to demand the right to exercise her eminent domain in accordance with international law wherever there is a mandate. I think the demand would be promptly allowed.

New York.

SIR:

JOSEPH WHITLA STINSON.

"IMMORTALITY AND THE NEW PHYSICS"

With a keen feeling of an anticipation disappointed I completed the reading of Mr. Charles Kassel's paper on Immortality and the New Physics in a recent issue of THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

It is not my belief that the mental attitude of the human race can be rigidly separated into the two categories commonly understood as spiritualistic and materialistic, yet each type should be provided some modicum of satisfaction from Mr. Kassel's dissertation, if it is to accomplish more than a demonstration of his excellent literary expression. As I read Mr. Kassel's paper I find meat for neither type as far as his thesis is concerned, despite his excellent review of certain phases of modern physical thought.

The spiritualistic type of mind may find a consolation in the knowledge that there exist aspects of matter and force that we have only cursorily glimpsed to date, and that the aggressive surveys of the borderland of knowledge by our research physicists assure us of fertile fields across the chasms we must somehow bridge. But does Mr. Kassel's marshalling of the facts of science provide the token "that a supersensual world of organized life is possible"? One can scarcely discern where new evidence of the faith of the spiritualist is adduced.

It is easy to appreciate fully Mr. Kassel's evident desire to reconcile the differences that have separated the ideas and ideals of those of us who must always seek the further truth that exists behind, between and under the apparent truth, and those who accept in fullest faith as final the truth they clearly see, and fill in the gaps and crevices with an opinion and tradition they absorb with the same faith. To make the acceptors of tradition understand that the truths they believe will persist, if they are truths, despite the inquiry of others, is a God-sent mission that has been seeking its missionary, while all of humanity will benefit if the questioners of things as they are can be persuaded to keep their doubts in their own circle until the confirmation is forthcoming.

Criticism of Mr. Kassel lies principally in that the title of his article does not belong to his discussion, and it would be desirable to have further discussion from him to indicate what evidence he can find that suggests even the most spiritual phases of life as existent in "the supersensual universe, or series of universes, interacting with the material fabric we know". EDWARD N. WENTWORTH.

Chicago, Illinois.

SIR:

POETRY AND "MORAL BEINGS"

Mr. Gilman reviews Prof. Sherman's book, entitled Americans, in your issue of March, and quotes this question of the writer, concerning the Spoon River Anthology: "Does it fill one with a sentiment of one's importance as a moral being and of the greatness of one's destiny?" Mr. Gilman says, "It does not;" and adds, "But does Macbeth 'fill one with a sentiment of one's importance as a moral being,' etc?"

I have nothing, just now, to say about the Spoon River Anthology, but as to Macbeth-yes. Unlike Mr. Gilman, when I read Macbeth, when I see it acted, when I follow its rhythms of thought and sound, I seem to be drawn, by its haunting echoes of phrase and of idea, through vast spaces of action, of cause and effect, which only a moral being could tread, yet among forces which a moral being can control-at least, to some extent.

Mr. Gilman's tone often seems to me to imply a half-conscious contempt for the function of the "moral being" when that "being" has to do with poetry. But what is it to be a "moral being" but to be one who has control over "the conduct of life"?

Newtonville, Mass.

SIR:

LILLIE BUFFUM CHACE WYMAN.

BOOKS ON THE CAUSES OF WAR

I have read with much interest Major Miles's article about The Problem of the Pacifist. I must confess I am amazed at the statement that the writer had not been able to discover any books published by pacifists dealing with the causes of war. There are numbers of such books. In my opinion the best are (1) Ten Years of Secret Diplomacy, an Unheeded Warning, by Edward Morel. This book is a criticism of French and English policy in Morocco. (2) How Diplomats Make War, by Francis Nielson. The writer was a Member of Parliament from 1910 to 1914. (3) The War of Steel and Gold, by Henry Brailsford. (4) Why War? by Frederick Howe. Why Men Fight, by Bertrand Russell, and The Great Illusion, by Norman Angell, are also useful, but the former is a philosophical treatise about the motives which lead men to fight and the latter is an attempt to prove that war does not pay. LUCY P. EASTMAN.

New York.

[Major Miles was writing about the studies and publications of the great peace societies, and his citation of the titles of the works issued by one of them fully sustains his criticism. The same may indeed be said of the books mentioned by our correspondent. Not one of them can be truly called a “thorough and scientific investigation and study of the causes of war". Our correspondent's own description of them makes that plain. What has "a criticism of French and English policy in Morocco" to do with the fundamental causes of war?THE EDITORS.]