Photograph from Adachi First baseman of the Topknot Nine, a baseball team composed of professional wrestlers who cling to the traditional manner of dressing their hair the Lord of Grace, but also utterly impossible. For the Abbot of Higashi Honganji to suggest such a thing as a match game of baseball between his young priests and Christians was a good deal more than preposterous. It would have proved about the shortest cut to an insane asylum for the holy Abbot. THE HE eventful day came, and the Christian stalwarts marched through the great temple gate and on into the temple grounds. The sight that greeted them made most of them pinch themselves. They were not at all sure they were awake. What they saw was the Buddhist nine limbering up in a preliminary work-out. But that was not the thing which made their eyes impatient of their sockets. It was the sight of the holy Abbot. His Holiness was playing short-stop. Did somebody say, in a hasty, silly moment, that there is nothing new under the sun? The ball players of the Bible class did not need the assistance of a prophet to see the error of the old saying. For there was something entirely and unspeakably new under the sun, right in front of their noses-playing short-stop. The amazement of the Christians did not stop there. It kept right along as the game went on. Inning after inning came and went, and not a tally chalked up for either the Buddhists or the Christians. And for eight innings the faithfuls of the two world cults fought, raged, and chased like Indians for nothing more meritorious than a row of zeros. The onward-marching Christian warriors who had stepped into the holy grounds with a sunny idea of "eating 'em alive" could not understand it at all. The frame was quite as remarkable as the picture: The temple court of Higashi Honganji, where the ghosts of billions upon billions of whispered prayers of the faithful forever wander in the mellow echoes of its huge temple bell, was packed, and with the strangest ball fans the game had ever seen. They were the pious pilgrims gathered at the Buddhist Mecca from all the corners of the Em pire, bringing to the Lord of Grace their offerings of soft-murmured prayers a thousand times repeated. For centuries the temple court had been sacred to the pious imagination of Nippon-with no more jarring note to disturb its scented peace than the far chanting of Sutras. And now the sight and sounds at that historic game were enough to stagger the whole Buddhist world. simple unadorned score tells the story with equence all its own-neither side put a single run across the home plate for eight weary innings! Excellent enough for a major league record. Then in the first half of the ninth something chilled the spines of the Christians and fired the hearts of the thousand Buddhist pilgrims: a young shaven-headed warrior raced across the plate-for the first tally of the game. And for a good many minutes the sun went completely out of the Christian sky. In the second half of that thrilling ninth the Christians came to bat. Young Hara, a son of the President of the Doshisha University, the greatest Christian university in Japan, founded by the famous Niishima, swung as for a star-and drove a clean one to center. Then Mr. Shiverly, an American professor at the Doshisha University, lined to right. And that put two Christians on Buddhistic bases-on second and third. Another batter rapped one squarely at his Holiness the Abbot playing short-stop. And in spite of mountains of merits which surely must be his, the perverse ball sped between his wide-planted feet into the outer darkness of evil karma. And victory came over the ancient hills of Kyototo the Christian force; for the two men on bases chased home: Christians 2; Buddhists 1. IN October, last year, baseball achieved quite a social distinction in Nippon. The present reigning Emperor, Hirohito, who was then Prince Regent of the Empire, went out to the ball grounds of the Outer Garden of the famous Meiji Shrine to see one of the heated tussles in the Six-University League championship argument. The Prince liked the gameliked it so well that he donated a cup, the Regent's Cup. It is the Emperor's Cup now-no less. Henceforth and forever, therefore, the game is safe from silly noses turned up in jeer and derision at the "cheap rabble sport." And this act of the Emperor would carry the game a long way in the affection of the people as the new national game of Nippon. A By CHARLES L. BUCHANAN GENUINE cultivation should be capable of appreciating, each for its particular degree of individual, intrinsic merit, things widely, even totally dissimilar. Your true blueblood, to the manner born aristocrat of art should be as capable of perceiving merit in a pair of slap-stick comedians or the piano playing of Mr. Phil Ohman as he perceives it in Raquel Meller or Paderewski. The critic who turns up his nose at the popular appeal is analogous to the social climber who is fearful of being seen bowing to his chambermaid or of speaking civilly to his chauffeur. This is not meant in a sententious or didactic spirit, but merely as a prelude to the following deeply felt and sincere thesis. Which is, very loosely and imperfectly, something as follows: It is more or less a fact of life that merely that the last gesture of unmistakable, arresting originality that "art" music, so to speak, has had to give us is already thirteen to fourteen years old. What I am trying to get at is something like this: Our newspaper critics (all critics, for that matter) are still trained only (in so far as they are trained at all) to know their way about in the old worn-out, stereotyped ruts. To come down to hard-pan, and talk specifically and concretely, a newspaper retains a music critic, whose life is lived almost exclusively between Carnegie Hall and the Metropolitan Opera House, and a dramatic critic, who may know a good play when he sees one, but who is, in the very nature of the case, unqualified to perceive and appreciate merit if it is off the beaten track. human beings possess very little capac- Now the point is that merit to-day is ity for an instinctive, spontaneous appreciation of intrinsic merit. Merit must have a marriage license, so to speak, or a birth certificate. Place eight persons out of ten in the presence of an anonymous art manifestation, and the chances are they will be totally unable to appraise the matter with even an approximate degree of accuracy. All of which is as old as the hills. But here are one or two concrete examples of the way this principle works against much that, in its way, is potentially vital and oftentimes worthy of the highest praise. IT T is generally conceded to-day by persons sufficiently honest and courageous to risk social ostracism by running counter to dyed-in-the-wool, conventional opinion that the old forms of art have, at least temporarily, run dry. Mr. Winthrop Ames may dub as "morons" those of us who champion the motion. picture; but the fact remains that Mr. Ames and his Gilbert and Sullivan revivals are of far less importance in a progressive, living sense than even a fifty-fifty picture such as "Wolf's Clothing." It is hardly to be disputed that the theater of the present time has had nothing to show us comparable in progressive and potential significance to at least half a dozen pictures one could mention. Musically, nothing has come from the "art" musician since Stravinsky's "Sacre du Printemps." This does not disparage Ravel's "La Waltz" as a bit of exquisite, enticing sound; it means off the beaten track. We send our Mr. Gilman and so on to Carnegie Hall or the Metropolitan Opera House, where the deadly, dreary steam-roller of classic routine goes its circumscribed way year after year, or we send our rollicking, sagacious Mr. Hammond to the theater, which offers as its high-water mark an ineffectual, pseudo-scientific burlesque such as "The Silver Cord" or a charming but insignificant and technically infirm "Saturday's Children." Now all this time-to use 'a figurewhile these appraisers are sitting on the high stools of respectable criticism, the true creative impulses of our day are running about in little cracks and crevices beneath their feet. And there is no one to perceive, appreciate, encourage, exalt these infinite but always obscure rivulets of creative energy that have broken loose from the placid rivers of tradition and assured respectability. The actual results can be indicated fifty times over; although I despair at the effort; for the matter runs counter to your standpatter, your academician, your précieux. But, as I am already looked upon by the "best people" as a sort of village idiot, I jot down the following few illustrations. HE American musical show of to THE day, individually and collectively, projects an impact of propulsive, energizing sound that represents, not only a totally new force in music, but, precisely, the one living impulse in contemporary musical art. The persistent thump and thud of the "Black Bottom" number from "Scandals" is revolutionary. Go from here to Mr. Gershwin's "Oh, Kay!" and listen to the infinitely dexterous rhythmic ingenuities of Mr. Phil Ohman. Put Mr. Ohman on the Carnegie Hall platform and tell people that this is Stravinsky (a new Patroushka, for example), and they will have the time of their lives. Mr. Ohman is rhythm incarnate; and out of this environment have come the two compositions that we may properly look upon as "real stuff" "The Rhapsody in Blue" and the Piano Concerto of George Gershwin. But who is hailing this sort of thing? Who is directing attention to the unprecedented charm and technical value of music such as this? Our critics, who ought to be ratifying this sort of thing, are reviewing Mr. Deems Taylor's "King's Henchman," a nondescript work which merely parallels respectable tradition. Another instance. Has any one called attention to the cinema score of "The Big Parade," one of the most astounding and inexplicable bits of musical psychology I know? I will guarantee to specify a half a dozen moments in this score that can stand comparison with the most vividly apt illustrative music of all time. For example, the development of the love theme touches hands with Wagner at his best; the "Buddy" theme on the trumpets in the shell-hole sequence is as haunting a passage of atmospheric music as music has to offer us; and for the music accompanying the advance through the woods-despite its obvious derivation from "Parsifal"-there are no words of praise strong enough. And yet -with the exception of the present writer-this pre-eminent example of what music can do in association with the cinema's magnified and acute appeal to the sense of sight has been totally overlooked. What is the answer? Probably because nobody technically familiar with music goes to see "The Big Parade." Heaven knows, as sheer picture alone, "The Big Parade" has been almost totally unappreciated, despite the fact that it is the greatest dramatic manifestation of this age. In view of this, we can hardly expect that the marvelous eloquence of its musical accompaniment should receive recognition. because it is not on the beat, so to speak, of the official patrolmen of criticism. Some of my respectable friends have expressed anxiety over my future because of my repeated commendation of the present tendency towards conglomerate and grandiose forms of entertainment. I do not wish to give them pain; but it is an infirmity of mine to be compelled to give the devil his due. Recently, for example, Mr. Rothafel (our "Roxy") gave the people of this city an entertainment for which they paid fifty cents and at which they obtained three numbers that paralleledexceeded, as a matter of fact-anything of a similar nature on view in this city to-day. I refer specifically to the Javanese dance, the silhouette dance, and the cabaret scene. This last is paralleled This last is paralleled only by the "Figgity Feet" and "Clap Yo' Hands" numbers from "Oh, Kay!" but the difference is that the Roxy theater gave this to the public for fifty cents, whereas "Oh, Kay!" gives it to you at three dollars and thirty cents. Mr. forms of expression will suffer; whether it be the music of a Victor Herbert or a Gershwin, the piano playing of a Phil Ohman, an epochal and authentic art work such as "The Big Parade," or a colossal and original showman such as Rothafel. Levitsky's encore the other day at this What I am trying to get at is the fact that merit is too often unrecognized when it is found in places where it is unexpected. Obviously, the press cannot retain a half-dozen specialists in criticism; and only once in a thousand years have we a man of comprehensive appreciation capable of hitting the nail of genuine merit on the head, irrespective of whether he comes across it in a Broadway motion-picture house or the Metropolitan Museum. But as a result the more or less hybrid, in-between greater alertness on the part of the average person. Let him learn, if possible, to appreciate merit on its own, so to speak. For the critic merely follows the beaten path. Take him out of his rut, and present him with a good jazz band, a "Big Parade," a Phil Ohman, or a Roxy spectacle at its best, and he is incapable of competent reactions. Art to-day is overflowing the banks of oldfashioned tradition. Its manifestations are changing in conformity with our present vast, precipitant, synthetic age. Under the circumstances, we have greater need than ever before of adaptability and breadth in our critical viewpoint. Wanted-A Plan and a Billion Dollars C Special Correspondence from New Orleans, by DIXON MERRITT Much of the land, in a wild state, would not bring twelve dollars an acre ONTROL of the Mississippi River is possible. But it constitutes no easy, quick, cheap job—to-day. such, for instance, as was the digging of the Panama Canal. That is the firm belief of practically everybody in the inundated area of the Lower Mississippi Valley. They know that control of the river is no cheap job. They have learned that lesson from levee building-which never has controlled the river, and which unaided, they now believe, never will control it. Every running foot of levee costs from one dollar to five dollars and, on the average, has to be rebuilt once in seven years. Since the flood of 1882 the people of the area subject to flood have paid out of their own pockets something over one hundred and sixty million dollars for levee construction and levee repairs. That is, roughly, eight dollars an acre, not merely for land fronting on the river, but for all land subject to overflow, some of it eighty miles from the river; not merely for improved land, but for all land. The Federal Government has spent an additional sum sufficient to bring the total per acre up to twelve dollars. And that does not include anything of the cost, borne by the landowners themselves, of draining the land back of the levees, its natural drainage cut-off. The people of the flood basins have Consequently, the Lower Mississippi THE HE people of the flood country, however, are not squeamish as to the basis upon which the country recognizes this problem as National. They want recognition on any basis. A thing more surprising is that there are very few persons left in the Valley wedded to any particular plan of protection. They are genuinely convinced that nobody knows an adequate plan. They believe that it will take the ablest minds of America working together, and perhaps for a long time, to find the plan. What they want is to see the ablest minds put upon the task, under Government sanction. They are inclined to be insistent upon just one detail-that not all the minds shall be the minds of Army engineers. For the moment, at least, they are somewhat disgusted with Army engineers. They say it is a part of the code and creed of the Corps of Engineers that nothing done by the corps shall ever be proved wrong, and that therefore adherence to the system of levees alone has continued after it has been proved a fallacy. N this contention there is, no doubt, more than a grain of truth. The Army engineers have not believed in spillways the feature on which the mind of the Valley runs just now. But there are other reasons why nothing constructive has ever been done about spillways. One of those other reasons is that the leaders of the section have not been in agreement about it. Perhaps a majority of them have been convinced for some time that spillways should be constructed, but they have disagreed violently as to where they should be constructed. Somewhere else—not here! That has been the attitude of every locality with regard to spillways. Consider the extreme point of the delta, that neck of land below New Orleans that bends far out to the southeast. The question of opening the levees was no new one when, before the height of the recent flood, it became necessary to make an artificial crevasse at Poydras. For a long time informed persons had known that some of the water must be let out of the river above the sprangled mouths. It is not possible-has not been possible for some time-to build the levees there any higher, any heavier. Already their weight is all that the muck soil will support. Piling more dirt on top of them would not result in raising them, but in sinking them. For some time the necessity for a spillway there has been appar ent. But when the question arose of where to make it, whether higher or lower, east side or west side, there was no agreement. Everybody wanted it somewhere else. FA ARTHER up the river the question is not new either. The necessity for a spillway on the east side, the Mississippi side, has been urged, and even somewhat generally recognized for years. But Mississippians have always objected on the ground that to construct such a spillway would be to injure seriously the Mississippi coast, that string of Gulf ports and Gulf-side resorts from Pascagoula through Biloxi and Gulfport to Bay St. Louis and Pass Christian. New Orleans has argued that those towns, while in Mississippi, are really one great suburb of New Orleans and that, as the safety of the parent city depends upon the spillway, the children towns ought to be willing to submit to some small measure of inconvenience. But this argument has never, until just now, convinced the Mississippians. Indeed, it did not convince them just now. They were convinced by the flooding of all the low-lying western part of their State, the magnificent delta country that is their pride and boast. Their Senator, once strong in opposing any east side. spillway, has recently said that if a spillway there is necessary it must, of course, be constructed. has taken the conceit, not to mention the stubbornness, out of a great many people. Almost it seems that the Valley has found the jewel of unity in this toad's head of adversity. Preconceptions have been got rid of, too, by leaders of public opinion not residents of the Valley. Gifford Pinchot, former Governor of Pennsylvania, first Chief Forester of the United States, pioneer in forestry in this country, was in the flooded area when I was. One day John M. Parker, former Governor of Louisiana and flood relief dictator for that State, sent the two of us out with one of his scouts to look at a threatened levee. It was such a day of rain as those confined to less humid regions may never have seen. We worked our way up into that neck of land between False River and the true Mississippi. We turned into a dirt road, slippery as soap. The automobile slid easily into a ditch and rolled painlessly onto its side. We commandeered a Negro who happened to be in the neighborhood with a wagon and team of mules. He hauled us for three miles. It was just as well that the car was in the ditch. It never could have gone over that road. When the wagon could go no farther, we got out and tramped. All the way, riding, bumping, walking, Forester Pinchot's eyes were caressing the magnificent live-oaks. His love for the trees would, temporarily, crowd down his interest in the flood situation. IN N one of those bends where the Mississippi has eaten up hundreds of acres of plantation land we found a force of men under the command of a sturdy planter of Scotch stock trying to tie the veins in a bleeding levee. Forester Pinchot was Citizen Pinchot, attentive to every detail of the heroic effort to save an area from inundation. The boss of the gang said that the effort would be successful. We started for a telephone, several miles away, to report to the Director. Another gang of levee workers had lifted our car out of the ditch. When we were in it, Governor Pinchot said: "I sincerely believe that reforestation at the head-waters of the streams would go a long way toward preventing this sort of thing. But I am a forester. I may be unduly enthusiastic for forestry. as a preventive. I am willing to lay all that on the table. What I want to see is a comprehensive plan, worked out by the best mind of the Nation, including everything that is necessary to insure THAT is typical of one of the things the Valley against destruction." that the recent flood has done. It That is typical of those who have thought deeply into the problem. No man believes that he has the solution. All men want to see the best of American intellect applied to finding it. THE people of the Valley, too, are thinking of reforestation, though it must be mainly done in areas far removed from the flood territory. They do not believe that reforestation is itself the solution. They recall that one of the worst floods in history, that of 1796, occurred when the forests had hardly been touched, and that another, that of 1844, came when there were more forests along the tributaries of the Mississippi than can ever be, within reason, replanted. They are thinking of impounding water in the upper reaches of the tributaries, but they are not looking to that alone as the solution. They say that impounded water would inevitably be released sometimes when it would increase rather than diminish the flood. But they are looking to reforestation and impounding and other things to take a little of the crest off of the floods, so that the keeping of the water in bounds. along the lower reaches will not be a task so utterly impossible. They are thinking more of levees than of anything else, but they are convinced that these levees must have outlets. They do not believe that any levees that man could build would hold all the way to the Gulf all the water that came down this spring. If the levees through Mississippi and Arkansas had held, they argue, holding in all the water that overflowed those States, nothing could have controlled it when it rolled down upon New Orleans. They are thinking of outlets-spillways-by which certain bayous may be permitted to take away as much of the water as they will. In that connection, they are thinking of abandoning some of their lands, permitting them to revert to swamp. They are thinking, also, of creating artificial flood basins, inclosed by lateral moles and the terminal hills, in which flood water may be impounded. They know that there is a question as to whether spillways can be made effective, know that they may fill in with silt or else break beyond control. But none the less they are thinking strongly of spillways. And they are thinking of a different kind of levee, one made largely of concrete and slanting far down the bank, what engineers call revetments, that may force the river to scour its channel deeper. They are thinking of straightening the river at some places, though they know that when the bends are taken out B Ohio into the Tennessee. The latter seems the larger stream and in more direct line of the combined channel. And the Tennessee does a strange, a seemingly unnatural thing. After having flowed south for a long distance to a point along the line between Alabama and Mississippi, it flows north across Tennessee and Kentucky. There are few other streams in the United States that flow north. Why should not the Tennessee flow south from that point on the AlabamaMississippi line and, being turned back upon itself, bring the Ohio along with it -a repetition on a grand scale of what was done with the Chicago River to make the drainage canal? From the point where the Tennessee turns north as it now flows a comparatively short canal would connect it with the Tombigbee, thus taking all those Eastern waters into the Gulf at Mobile. THE people of the Valley are thinking of all those things, and of many others. They do not know what any of them is worth. But they want them considered for what they are worth by the ablest board that can be found in the United States or in the world. They are thinking, roughly, that it will take from three-quarters of a billion to a billion dollars to do the work necessary to the control of the Mississippi River. The Book Table Edited by EDMUND PEARSON The Price of Books By CARL L. CANNON OOKS increase in importance as news, and the books which get large headlines are volumes which first saw the light a century or more ago, or else are insignificant pamphlets which appear in auction catalogues baited with such tantalizing notes as "only two other known copies." The fact that the proceeds realized from their sale often equals that of important parcels of real estate or the cost of a seagoing yacht is a good reason why these books qualify as news, but probably a still more important one is that new records are constantly being "hung up,' and this gives a new auction of old favorites all the gambling thrill of a sporting contest. If a first folio Shakespeare brought $13,000 in 1911, what price will another copy bring at the sale just approaching? This is the question that brings to an auction-room hundreds of collectors who follow the game like racing enthusiasts. There is small wonder that with the growth of large fortunes in the United States book collectors should multiply, for the pursuit of rare volumes has all the features that give zest to a rich man's hobby. Research and scholarship are rewarded in the collection of book rarities as in no other field. The number of authors which the world is not willing to let die is simply enormous, and the number of titles belonging to some of them makes the rounding out of a complete "set" the pleasure of a lifetime. It must further be remembered that every one of these numerous titles has its "points," many so fine that only a meticulous collector would notice them. Thus the book collector regards his hunt as a distinguished pastime. For there are more points of importance about books than about stamps, though many books are intrinsically not worth the price paid for them. The most that can be said for a stamp is that it is rare, while a book may be, and often is, rare, and of supreme historical or literary importance. The collecting of masterpieces in oils may be, though this point is disputable, more exhilarating, but the number of first-class pieces appearing for sale is rapidly diminishing, while the prices fetched by the most desirable canvases put them beyond the reach of all save a handful of financiers. The bibliomaniac enjoys, first of all, his "mint" copies. He has "firsts" and first issues of "firsts," "missing maps," tricky editions with the unsuspected misspelled word, fourth line from bottom page twenty, "uncut" copies (that pitfall for the uninitiated), large paper and limited editions, association copies, and annotated copies in the author's own hand, besides many more obscure distinctions which enable the knowing ones to display erudition and scholarship. Your true collector and his agent, the dealer, will follow the history of ownership in a famous book with all the zeal of a genealogist tracing his family tree. But while collecting the richest prizes is reserved to wealthy men, the widening field of interest in books makes it a game that a clever amateur, with limited resources, can play with both amusement and profit. Witness the prodigious prices paid for the "firsts" of authors still alive (a first of Kipling's "Echoes" fetched $1,150 at the Quinn sale three years ago), for authors still in their late twenties or early thirties (a special edition of Edna Millay's "King's Henchman" was offered at $25 by the publisher), or, indeed, for books scarcely cold from the press. And, despite the growing knowledge of booksellers, the chances of an unexpected "find" has not altogether disappeared. altogether disappeared. A few weeks ago an innocent collector picked out of a pile of pamphlets in a Brooklyn shop the fourth known copy of Poe's "Tamerlane," and for a few cents became the possessor of a treasure which he disposed of a fortnight later, according to newspaper reports, to the tune of $15,000. When such stories become generally known, a swarm of elderly people appear in public libraries carrying books picked out of a chest of family relics. Most of the titles bear a name famous in literature, but turn out to be "pirates," "seconds," or worse. Old family libraries yield a surprisingly meager number of valuable books. The tentative beginnings of auction selling offers an amusing contrast to the prosperous condition with which we are familiar to-day. In 1676 the library of Lazarus Seaman was sold by William Cooper, bookseller of Little Britain, under the following announcement: "Reader, it hath not been usual here |