racy, and especially the good will and courtesy of our people, had made a distinct impression upon him, even though he could not see why we were so crazy as to call neve "snow." Why, why call it snow, which meant nothing to him? But he was grateful, very grateful, for the opportunities which America had given his two sons; they were very successful out there in Ohio, they were men of property and position in the new land, and he understood why they would not come back to Italy with the family. "But," he added, slowly, as his dark, Moorish eyes looked out on the ocean as upon unescapable fate, “ritorneranno, certo ritorneranno; they will certainly come back." Yes, they all "come back," some perhaps only in spirit, but they all come back "to the race;" they all eventually cast off the new idols, and think in the old, old ways. And the old man gave me the history of his town, an ancient history of which he was proud. "My paese was first called Aquila, but an earthquake destroyed it hundreds of years ago; over its ruins a new town was built, and this too was destroyed by an earthquake, all except a church where there were wonderful pictures of the nativity of the Virgin. But after this second earthquake a great prince who

lived in Palermo and was our feudal lord gave all his holdings in our part of the island to the people because he had an affection for them; and the prince's brother, who was a very learned monk, planned a new city, a marvelous plan such as had never been thought of before-a hexagonal city! And the people wished to call it the town of Michele, for that was the prince's name, but the monk, who was a holy man and saw visions, said: 'No, call it rather Gran Michele, for I know it will grow into a great city.' And the prophecy came to pass, for the town grew and grew, always in large hexagons, until now it counts all of thirty thousand souls." I asked if the people were happy. "Yes," he answered, gravely; "they are all well-to-do Americani, and own land, and have the best schools in Sicily, and eight churches, and good water."

into our standards of living. This latter form of Americanization is, even in the second generation, the thinnest of veneers, which rubs off under a very little wear and tear; it is a veneer which even when thoroughly worked in and highly polished, as in the case of our Germanic population, gets pretty badly cracked under severe knocks, as we have seen on some occasions during the war. It may be urged that the other kind of Americanization is too altruistic and too ideal for practical and political purposes. Yet it has created in certain parts of Europe, and notably in southern Italy, "spheres of American influence" such as no diplomacy under the old dispensation, and no mandate under the new, can ever hope to achieve. These returned immigrants, these ardent Americani, have made us known in Italy as no propaganda, no exchange professors, and no diplomatic "penetration" could have done. And it is the simple, direct, every-day human knowledge of our ways and of our views such as these immigrants bring home that constitute

understanding which is the only basis for and the only real assurance of international peace. Naples, Italy.

I'

T is greatly to be regretted that we do not know the name of the man who boldly declared that "Grover Cleveland was the greatest master of platitude since George Washington." It would be amusing to inquire whether he meant this for a compliment to Cleveland or for a reproof to Washington. It would be interesting to ask him also whether he was prepared to allow that a practical politician at the head of the commonwealth ought to be a master of platitude. If the unknown utterer of this pregnant saying was willing to admit this, he would find himself in the comfortable company of that shrewd student of affairs Walter Bagehot, who held that a statesman was likely to be most useful to the community when he combined common ideas and uncommon ability.

One of Cleveland's more recent successors in the Presidency of the United States was accused of talking about the Ten Commandments just as if he had received them as a direct personal revelation to himself. Now there is no denying that Theodore Roosevelt was wont to talk in this fashion. And why not? As a matter of fact, the Ten Commandments had come to him as a direct personal revelation; for so they must come to every one of us who is ready to receive them and to take them to heart. In the case of Roosevelt, as in the case of Washington and Cleveland, that

BY BRANDER MATTHEWS

which was foolishly meant as a reproof turns out to be really a compliment. There can be no more imperative duty for the chief of state in a democratic republic than to reiterate the eternal verities. It is his privilege also to profit by the megaphone which destiny has put at his lips to cry aloud these imperishable truths and thus to force them upon ears that might otherwise refuse to listen. It may be charged that when a leader of men is insistent in asserting again and again that honesty is the best policy he is lowering himself to the inculcation of the obvious. But if this is just what he believes to be needful at the moment, he has no right to shrink from saying once again what many have asserted before him. Stevenson hit the center when he suggested that, "after all, the commonplaces are the great poetic truths."

Perhaps there is small risk in declaring that we Americans have a lust for novel ideas; and we listen with jaded credulity to all who get up in the market-place to proclaim a new gospel. Yet we are all aware that what is new is not likely to be true and that what is true is very likely to be old. We all know this, and yet we are often impatient with those old fogies who abide by the ancient landmarks. We are prone to laugh at the mossbacks brave enough to risk the reproach brought against the katydid, which has the habit of saying

"an undisputed thing in such a solemn way." The undisputed things are always in danger of being neglected, and they need to be said afresh to every generation in the special vocabulary of that generation and with whatever of solem nity we can command. The wisdom of the fathers must be restated for the benefit of the children, and yet again for the guidance of the grandchildren.

Just as it is a certain evidence of juvenility to shriek out an accusation of plagiarism whenever two plays happen to have a casual resemblance of situation or whenever two poems chance to have a superficial identity of phrase or of cadence, so it is an assured sign of immaturity to sneer at the political leader who reasserts the principles which he deems permanent and essential for the common weal and to scoff at him as a dealer in platitudes and as an expounder of commonplaces. No commonplace can be staler than the plain statement that two and two make four; and yet on occasion there may be wisdom in reminding the public that two and two cannot be forced to make either more or less than four. "Commonplace," said Lord Morley (in words that sound almost like an echo of Stevenson's), "after all, is exactly what contains the truths which are indispensable."

The brief speech which Lincoln delivered at Gettysburg nearly sixty years

ago is now accepted as one of the masterpieces of English prose, withstanding comparison with the address on a similar occasion that Thucydides put into the mouth of Pericles. It is as perfect in its lofty dignity of sentiment as it is in its lapidary concision of style. But there would be little difficulty in proving that it contains nothing new, since the thoughts that sustain it are as selfevident as they are sincere. They are the ancient thoughts which demanded to be voiced again then and there. The stones of this sublime structure are commonplaces, recognized as such long before Lincoln was born, long before Columbus set sail on the Western ocean. These well-worn blocks Lincoln chose for his own use with his unerring skill; and he cemented them together once again by his own personality.

Hamlet's soliloquy, "To be or not to be," is a mosaic of sentiments and of opinions familiar to every one of us from our youth up and already phrased in all sorts of fashions in every tongue, living or dead; nevertheless that monologue, compounded as it may be of commonplaces, bereft of all novelty, glows and burns with the inner fire of Hamlet's soul at that awful crisis of his fate. It propounds, once for all, the mighty question we cannot help putting to ourselves when we also find ourselves in the valley of the shadow. And when the time comes for any one of us to face those questions we shall not cavil at their antiquity, for then they will erect themselves in front of us with a newborn challenge.

It may be acknowledged frankly that the Gettysburg speech and Hamlet's soliloquy are extreme cases. The savor of a stimulating individuality is likely to be lacking from compositions as fundamentally unoriginal as these two are seen to be when they are reduced to their elements. A commonplace is effective, and therefore not merely to be pardoned, but even to be praised, only when it is a personal rediscovery of the speaker, when he unhesitatingly believes himself to be speaking out of the fullness of his own feeling. At the moment he may not know, and he surely does not care, whether or not the things he is called upon to speak have ever been uttered before; and he is well aware that this does not matter at all, since these things have come to him fresh from his own experience, hot from his own heart. Then the platitude is redeemed and transfigured by poignant personality, as when the fabled Scotchman asseverated earnestly that "Honesty is the best policy," adding by way of explanation, "I hae tried baith." What can be more commonplace than "honesty is the best policy"? It is the tritest of truisms, but it came to the mouth of that man from the depth of his own soul. He had no doubt but that he was lighting a torch for the feet of those that wander in darkness.

Deprive commonplace of this note of rediscovery, by which the old is made

new of its own accord, and it is the abomination of desolation. A sequence of platitudes peddled from a platform by an uninspired speaker who refuses to rely on his actual feelings, who never had an idea of his own, and who is seeking to say only what nobody will dispute this cannot fail to be stale, flat, and unprofitable, even if every single commonplace of which it is compacted may contain an immitigable truth. It is the prevalence of speechmaking of this sort, so threadbare and so colorless that it seems insincere, which revolts those who demand that a man shall reveal some evidence either of emotion or of cerebration before they will listen to him. This attitude is natural enough, but it brings with it a double danger. First of all, it tempts us to disregard the truth which may be clothed in the most offensively insipid commonplace; and, second, it allures us away into the primrose path of paradox.

The commonplace is not always to be accepted at its face value. It may not be true now, whatever it has been once upon a time; and it may even never have been true, but only plausible and specious. There is no virtue in the commonplace itself, and there may be vice in it. Its value resides wholly in the truth which it may contain and which each of us must appraise for himself. But, as the truth is not necessarily inherent in a platitude, neither is it necessarily inherent in a paradox. Even Mr. Shaw and Mr. Chesterton, if pushed to the wall, would probably be willing to admit that there are some paradoxes which are not true. They might be ready to accept the definition of a paradox as a truth serving its apprenticeship.

That is what a paradox may be, no doubt; it may be a peremptory challenge to a commonplace which has ceased to sheathe the verity, even if it has not yet worn out its welcome. The paradox of this quality, however, is not really a paradox; it is only a psuedo-paradox, it is a new shape of truth; and by that very fact it is condemned to become a commonplace in its turn, whenever it shall have ousted the platitude it is attacking. This pseudo-paradox, which sooner or later will inevitably issue from unthinking lips as an impregnable platitude, is never merely a commonplace reversed. To turn a truth upside down is not to turn it inside out. stand a truism on its head is profitless; and there is no stimulus to clear thought in the glib suggestion that "dishonesty is the best policy" or that "procrastination is the guardian of time." An infelicity of phrase-making like this may have an evanescent glitter, yet it is but the crackling of thorns under a pot. It may amuse babes and sucklings for a little season to be told that the devil is not as black as he is painted, since he possesses at least the Christian virtue of perseverance. Verbal fireworks are attractive only to the very young. The writer whose pages coruscate with un

То

expected inversions of accepted beliefs and who exhibits himself as a catherinewheel of multicolored paradox is likely soon to sputter out in dark and in silence. If Mr. Bernard Shaw has any abiding value as a stimulating thinker, this is in spite of his flamboyant method of expressing himself and not because of it. Sincere thinking is likely always to utter itself simply and modestly.

A French critic has asserted that men may be grouped in three classes so far as their attitude toward the truth is concerned. First of all, there is the immense majority, assured that the wisdom of the past will be the wisdom of the future and glad always to hear again the accepted commonplaces. Second, there is a youthful minority, weary of these traditional statements and avidly relishing any. paradox which seems to pierce the crust of convention. Third, there is the little knot of those who are in the habit of doing their own thinking and who are ever ready to receive a novel idea on probation, to weigh it cautiously and to test it thoroughly, with willingness to accept it ultimately and to make it their own thereafter if it approves itself. It is from this small company that new ideas come into being and get into circulation. The members of this third group have to be won over before any novelty has a valid chance of acceptance; and when at last they have been taken captive the members of the first group will slowly, very slowly, and after violent opposition, follow in their wake. The chosen few carry the flag to the front; and trailing after them comes the immense majority which gives solidity to the body politic, changing its mind only by almost imperceptible degrees. And the second group, the youthful minority, with its delight in disintegrating paradox, is almost negligible, because it lacks intellectual sincerity. Its puerile protests against the platitudes which buttress the social organization merely irritate the immense majority, while they evoke only tolerant contempt from the wiser men who do their own thinking. The youthful minority is puffed up with pride at its discovery that elementary truths are commonplace. But bread and beef are the commonplaces of diet, none the less wholesome, and indeed none the less welcome, because they lack the spice of novelty. Man cannot live by paradox alone. If the staff of life chances to be contained in any paradox, then this is not a true paradox, and then also it is on the way in its turn to become a platitude. It was Boileau who remarked that "a new thought is a thought which must have come to many, but which some one happens first to express," and this is perhaps the source of Pope's "What oft was thought, but ne'er so well exprest." If we insist on escaping from the fenced field of the commonplace, we cannot complain if we find ourselves landing in the thorny hedge of freakish unreason.

HERETIC (THE).

FICTION

The

By J. Mills Whitham. Macmillan Company, New York. $2. The author presents a singular character in Raymon Verne; as a boy he is a "natural bone-setter" and becomes a manipulative surgeon, to meet with fierce opposition from the regular profession. Later his genius turns into other directions, but success never crowns his ideals. The novel has originality and intellectual force, but is not definitely planned.

HIS GRACE GIVES NOTICE. By Lady Troubridge. Duffield & Co., New York. $1.75. Clever in its early pages and in the character of the footman who is a duke, commonplace in the later working out of plot.

HOUNDS OF BANBA (THE). By Daniel Corkery. B. W. Huebsch, Inc., New York. $1.50.

Nine short stories by an Irish writer new to America. Mr. Corkery belongs to a generation younger than that of the exponents of the Irish renascence, and this book is concerned with the life of contemporary Ireland. Specifically it treats of Ireland in revolution, and of life in the Republican army. Despite a finely dispassionate attitude toward political issues, perhaps even because of it, Mr. Corkery has given the noblest interpretation we have yet received of the current of thought and feeling in Ireland to-day. It is not, however, for this that his book is notable. Its true distinction lies in a poetic beauty and an exquisite artistry that flood each brief narrative.

Charles Hitchcock Sherrill. Illustrated. The George H. Doran Company, New York. $2.50.

No less than fifteen Prime Ministers and four Presidents of European countries, four British Dominion Premiers, and eleven eminent statesmen and diplomats of Japan cross the stage of the present volume.

Mr. Sherrill is a keen observer and is able often to describe a man in a very few words-for instance, the Rumanian Take Jonescu. He is, we read, "a clever writer and a keen judge of just how political cats are going to jump. . . . He is certainly a most engaging talker, and in the easy flow of his remarks one frequently sees through to a rock-bottom of studied wisdom, in which, however, he seems to take less pride than in his skill at deft turns of policy. There is no denying that Rumanians of this type are unusually pleasing in manner, and especially is

this true of Jonel Bratianu, more than once Prime Minister." Such a book should have had an index, for its value as a book of reference is even greater than its charm as a volume of description of notable men.

Aside from the personal element, two impressions gained by General Sherrill in his journeys are of wide interest. One is that, in the opinion of every European* politician, "all his country's woes, economic or otherwise, would be cured by giving it a piece of neighboring territory." Another impression is that "all of Europe west of a line, so drawn as to leave to the westward Great Britain, France, Spain, and Portugal, has no effect upon the vote in America, while the countries to the east of it, from the North Cape to the tip of Italy, strongly affect our vote."

may examine its weaker parts definite proposals are made for correction. While there is not the slightest suspicion of distortion in order to establish a predetermined result, their book is based upon circumstances which are assumed as actual and perhaps known, but to which not all the spectators may be inclined to agree.

In setting forth their programme of policies, the authors declare that domestic production must be increased in every country, that balanced international trade and the gold standard must be restored, that international budgets must be balanced.

To this end what must Europe do? The authors reply: "Reduce reparation demands and cancel inter-European war debts, eliminate tariff and trade barriers, and restore international transportation

IMAGE AND OTHER PLAYS (THE). By Lady Augusta Gregory. G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York. $2.

Of the four plays contained in this volume, three are in the genre, lying midway between comedy and farce, that Lady Gregory has made distinctively her own. Her art, despite a deceptive surface of simplicity, is the product of a sophisticated observation and a facile dramatic technique. She writes of Irish peasant life as one keenly aware of its incongruities, its humor, and, occasionally, its pathos, but conscious always of an amused superiority to the characters who people her plays. The fourth play draws upon spiritualism for its theme in an effective but unconvincing fashion.

HISTORY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY AMERICA AND THE BALANCE SHEET OF EUROPE. By John F. Bass and Harold G. Moulton. The Ronald Press, New York. $3. This work of collaboration deserves wide reading. To Mr. Bass are due, no doubt, the elaborate and painstaking assemblage of facts and figures and the large amount of first-hand observation one might expect from a foreign correspondent whose reputation for trustworthiness is first rate. To Professor Moulton is probably due the credit for the systematic arrangement of the text, the thorough editing of the volume, and the proper presentation of material upon which discussion and argument may be based.

The present volume seems tinged with pessimism. Not that its pessimistic interpretations are necessarily destructive. On the contrary, where the authors tear down the present structure of international economic relations so that they

national combinations for export trade and foreign exploitation; repudiate the bulk of the issues of paper currency and domestic bonds." What must the United States do? The authors reply: Cancel European indebtedness to us, lower our tariff duties, contribute part of our gold reserve to maintain the European gold standard, make loans for purely reconstructive purposes, and finally, reduce armaments.

TRAVEL AND DESCRIPTION ITALY OLD AND NEW.

By Elizabeth Hazelton Haight. E. P. Dutton & Co., New York. $2.50.

The somewhat commonplace title of this book fails to do justice to the lively, imaginative, and pleasantly learned style of the author. Her book is full of the joy of the devoted lover of Italy and of the famous characters of Roman and later Italian history. The book will be a delight to discriminating visitors to Italy.

LABRADOR. By Wilfred T. Grenfell. The Macmillan Company, New York. $2.50. A new edition of an authoritative book about a land that increasingly attracts the attention of explorers and prospectors. Dr. Grenfell's new chapter about the conservation of Labrador's resources is interesting and timely. TRANS-MISSISSIPPI WEST (THE).

By Car

dinal Goodwin, D. Appleton & Co. $3.50. Professor Goodwin gives us in this book a detailed and impersonal record of the Western expansion of the United States from the time of the Louisiana Purchase to that of the Mexican Cession. These fifty years constituted a vital period in the growth of the country, and this period is here succinctly described.

POETRY

WILLOW POLLEN. By Jeannette Marks. The Four Seas Company, Boston. $2. This is Miss Marks's first volume of verse, and it is a most excellent entrance into a field wherein she assuredly deserves a place if not by strength of thought and inspiration at least by verbal felicity and a delicate feminine touch that is always distinguished and

His

year by year looms as his helping hands world's essential in Chemical Engineer... strange mingling of

come into the world's new personality that larger in importance reach deeper into the dustries. He is the and truly he is a abilities... a coupling

of the man of science with the manufacturing expert... a chemist who has forsaken his test-tubes for the lathes and vats of the world's industrial plants.

This is the man who, more than any other, has crowded the highways of commerce, and in the past generation made the Zulu and the Eskimo brothers in the world's market-places. For it is he who has brought to the manufacturer's assistance, in a practical way, the chemist's slowly-won mastery over Nature's elemental substances. It is he who, applying chemistry's discoveries, has made available new substances, new uses for long-used substances and uses for products that once were waste, and has invented processes less costly and less wasteful. It is he who has intensified the world's production, lowered costs and driven the carriers of commerce to the far corners of the earth seeking the raw materials industry needs, or carrying to market its finished goods.

*

...

HOW the Chemical Engineer has quickened the pulse of commerce is well illustrated by the history of the du Pont Company. For a century after its founding in 1802, the du Pont Company was a manufacturer of explosives... nothing else.

But its founder, Eleuthere Iréneé du Pont de Nemours, was himself a chemist, and the making of explosives, even in his day, called for the services of the chemist. As dynamite was invented and other high explosives came into use, increasingly higher types of chemical knowledge were needed. So it was only natural that in the early years of this century the du Pont Company came to have a very extensive chemical staff.

It was a staff of Chemical Engineers, men who knew manufacturing as well as chemistry, and so in the course of research looking to the improvement of du Pont explosives, they came upon other products alike in their chemical structure, that might be manufactured from the same or similar basic materials or by machinery and processes with which the du Pont Company was familiar.

And the results are sometimes surprising to those who look only at the products, which seem so unrelated, and do not consider the origin of these products. "For," says one, "what have dyes to do with explosives?" What, indeed, except that the raw materials from which explosives are made, are the same that are needed for making dyes! So, too, for the same reason, the du Pont Company came to make Pyralin for toilet articles and numerous other things; and Fabrikoid for upholstery, luggage, book bindings and half a hundred other uses-for these products contain many of the same raw materials. Paints and Varnishes now carry the du Pont Oval, because this field of effort is also one in which the knowledge of the Chemical En gineer can be effectively applied.

The du Pont Oval also guarantees the purity and excellence of many chemicals, some of vital importance to industry, others invaluable in modern surgery and medicine.

This is one of a series of advertisements published
that the public may have a clearer understanding of
E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Co. and its products.