A

QUARREL that threatens the peace of eastern Europe-and consequently of all Europe-is

up before the Council of the League of Nations for settlement. Poland and Lithuania are to defend before this jury of their peers in Geneva their claims to the city of Vilna and the region around it.

However limited the powers of the League as an international organization, however it may represent the unreadiness of the nations to surrender the right to determine their own interests so far as they can, it still is the only continuous. agency for dealing with such disputes as this before they become wars. And in this way it has done a great deal to check those small blazes that might grow

-as the Austrian controversy with Serbia did in 1914-into Continental conflagrations.

So this conflict over Vilna will interest Americans aware of the concern of this country with the peace of Europe. Lithuania, it may be recalled, claimed Vilna as her capital. Poland wanted it, mainly as a junction on a strategic railway, and seven years ago the Polish General Zeligowski annexed it. Since then Lithuania and Poland have been technically at war. Lately there has been a confusion of charges and counter-charges of mobilization on both sides. These have issued in an agreement to take the case to the League. It will be a test both of the statesmanship and the authority of the body at Geneva which is the main. bulwark of such tranquillity as Europe has.

By MALCOLM WATERS DAVIS

S

tourist expenditures, immigrant remittances, and other items-are greater even than the amounts payable annually on European debts. The difficulty seems to be that the taxes by which Europe would have to pay these debts are often equally invisible-at least in the receipts of some European treasuries.

OVIET RUSSIA is making a significant economic drive both for American interest and for American technical aid in building up her industries. The Moscow Government has just placed with Percival Farquhar, of New York, a contract to build a large steel plant in southern Russia. This is in line with the Communist policy of developing industries as a means both of national independence and of strengthening the class of factory workers, the mainstay of Bolshevik power in Russia. To be sure, some of the financing seemingly remains to be completed, and I note reports that attempts are being made to secure capital in Germany, through banks that co-operate with certain powerful New York houses. But the project appears to be strongly backed. And at the same time the State Department has announced that it will not oppose longterm credits for purchases of American goods for Russia.

The Soviet Government, finding foreign gold not easy to get, is planning to mine more of its own. It has sent a commission of engineering experts to study American methods in California, Nevada, and other mining States.

Finally, it proposes to enlarge substantially its export of oil. Two American companies the Standard Oil Company of New York and the Vacuum Oil Company, a Standard Oil subsidiarydispose of a large part of the Russian oil output. They do so against the protest of the powerful Royal Dutch-Shell group of oil interests in Great Britain

and Holland, which object to dealings with the Soviet Government. The Standard Oil Company of New Yorkwhich, oddly, is opposed also in this policy by its sister company, the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey-has con'cluded a new contract for the purchase of Russian petroleum products to supply its markets in the Near East.

Lu

UIS MORONES has quit his post as Minister of Industry, Commerce, and Labor in Mexico, and that means an end of Mexican opposition to the oil and mining property claims of United States citizens in Mexico, according to a "prominent Mexican" close to President Calles. This "prominent Mexican" arrived lately in San Antonio, where he said that Ambassador Morrow had convinced the Mexican Government of the necessity of changing entirely its policy towards the United States. If Morones is out of politics, it is highly significant news. As leader of the Mexican Labor Party, he was largely responsible both for putting Calles in office and for the Government's attitude on oil property rights.

RELAND is to get her first loan in the

IRELA

United States. The Free State Government has arranged with New York bankers to float a bond issue of $15,000,000, which the Americans secured in competition with London banking houses. This first external financing of the Irish Free State is part of a national development program which will call, in all, for about $75,000,000.

George Bernard Shaw recently uttered a characteristic warning against sending money to Ireland, on the ground that she is "an incorrigible beggar." But this is a case in which even he would probably coin no epigram of protest.

I

T is always interesting to know what great men read. Sometimes the knowledge discloses a vein of common humanity that runs through great and small alike. I once surprised a⚫ distinguished, dignified, and highly intellectual professor of philosophy read ing Anita Loos's "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes." He was so absorbed that I thought he must be perusing Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason" in the original tongue-which he was perfectly capable of doing. He looked a little guilty to be discovered in such companionship. But, instead of decreasing my respect for him, his light-hearted act raised him in my esteem. "He is a true philosopher," I thought, "for he recognizes Philosophy in whatever garb he finds her." For a moment I felt lifted out of my commonplace atmosphere into the empyrean of philosophic thought. For I had regarded "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes"-although I had never dared to say so before this incident-as a little masterpiece, probably to become a classic like Xavier de Maistre's "Voyage autour de ma Chambre" or Gilbert White's "Natural History of Selborne." And now it had the cachet and I the confirmation of a philosopher. A book of philosophy it certainly is, not, however, of what could be called the Platonic school.

But I have strayed a long way from my title. I started out to report the views of two distinguished contemporary statesmen on books and reading, not my own unimportant opinions.

The London "Times" recently reported an address by the Prime Minister of England, Mr. Stanley Baldwin, in which he disclosed some of the boyhood reading that had influenced his subsequent career. There were in his bill of fare Scott's novels and poems; Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress;" the "Chronicles of

By LAWRENCE F. ABBOTT

Contributing Editor of The Outlook

Froissart;" Grimm's "Fairy Tales;" Lamb's "Tales from Shakespeare;" Dickens, whom he "reverenced in some ways as the greatest genius England ever produced" a bold statement for a Prime Minister who cannot want the Thackerayites to join the Laborites in their attacks; and, finally, Mark Twain's "Tom Sawyer." Mr. Baldwin believes that hearing the English PrayerBook and the King James Bible Sunday after Sunday in his boyhood was in itself a liberal literary education. The Premier is not especially concerned about books for children. "I was left to myself to find my own provender in the library," he says. "If you do that with a child, he will always take the nourishment suitable to him."

Mr. Baldwin must have read Ruskin as well as Scott and Dickens, for Ruskin said more than sixty years ago-in "Sesame and Lilies," if my memory is reliable that a young girl turned into a library will eschew the bad books as a fawn in a field eschews the noxious weeds. But that was in the era of the jeune fille and before the modern day when the young girl is supposed to see, hear, read, and know everything, and neither chews nor eschews in gulping down her literary diet, the nutritive calories of which she is inclined neither to measure nor consider.

Mr. Baldwin is, of course, a Britisher and a Tory. Now, according to that noble patriot Mayor Thompson, of Chicago, British Toryism is the greatest danger this country has to face. It must be perfectly evident to all 100 per cent Americans that the British Prime Minister put Mark Twain in his list of books as a mere bait to tempt them to read Dickens, whose "American Notes" are a burning scandal. This will make every true American distrustful of his literary advice in any respect. Let us turn from

him, then, to another statesman, an American liberal, with whom we shall probably be safer.

At about the date that the London "Times" reported Prime Minister Baldwin's attitude towards books and reading, the New York "Times" printed an interview with Senator Borah during which he gave some account of authors that have influenced him. He is not to be inveigled by the current vogue of the "best-seller." "At the risk of being called an old fogy," he said, "I still follow Carlyle's example and each time a new book is published I read an old one." He enjoys novels, but, as "the. majority of modern novels might be better classified as text-books of physiology and psychology," he turns for relief to Hawthorne, in spite of his "morbidity;" to Balzac, in spite of his "monarchistic ideas;" to Dickens, in spite of the fact that "he is given a little too much to caricature;" and to Thackeray, in spite of his being "a little too English to appeal to a Middle Westerner."

For poetry Senator Borah turns to Shakespeare, Milton, and Dante, "whose works," he says, "I read and re-read so often that I can quote pages from them ; so, you see, in some things I am not as radical as I am painted."

For imagination and humor Mr. Borah likes Swift, although he does not wholly approve of the cynicism of the author of the "Battle of the Books" and the "Tale of a Tub." But of all the authors he mentions Senator Borah evidently feels a greater sense of indebtedness to Emerson than to any other. In this admiration and gratitude his bookloving countrymen will join. Emerson's star is in the ascendant. The figure of the gentle, pungent, clear-thinking, truth-speaking sage of Concord is looming larger and larger as a man and an artist on the stage of English literature.

Erskine Repeats the Dose

T

HE comic strip provides an accepted picture of mankind. Mr. and Mrs, and their fellows represent what men and women think of one another and how they act toward one another. Male and female, if you do not fit into this picture, you are suspect and strange. The man is always browbeaten; the woman is always restricting and clinging the "ball and chain;" the other woman is always independent and wise. John Erskine has again selected the comic strip as a springboard from which to leap, with agility and grace, into an amusing and best-selling book.

In "Helen of Troy" the treatment, if not the theme, was fresh. In "Adam and Eve" the theme again appears, and by this time the treatment is rather too familiar to engage by its originality. The philosophical dialogue, a Greek form, is again used as a vehicle for clever and trite comment upon the everlasting relation between the sexes. The philosophy of this relationship which Erskine expounds is somewhat similar to that of Cabell in "The Cream of the Jest." Helen is Helen until she is possessed; every Eve is somebody's Lilith, etc. But Cabell speaks of poets; ErWhen skine, of arrow-collar men. "Helen of Troy" appeared, it was welcome. There was good medicine in the sugar-coated pill, useful for American women to swallow and digest. seems as though there could be few left undoctored, The complaint is not against the value of the dose, but against its continued use.

Now it

In "Adam and Eve: Though He Knew Better" Adam investigates Eden and makes the acquaintance of the animals. He finds Lilith, and learns about love. He finds Eve, and learns about marriage. That is all. The best of the book lies in the tender mirth which colors Erskine's picture of his hapless protagonist. But this is mostly lost under the mass of his clever comment on the ladies. In the first chapter is a paragraph which makes a promise for the book which, in this reviewer's opinion, is not kept:

"I never question an old story myself, not when I like it, and least of all when it recurs daily under my eyes. Adam is not yet at peace. He can reconcile himself neither to be lonely, like

a god, nor to be completely mated. On the whole, he favors the angels but prefers to be a little lower. His naming of the animals, what is it but a parable of He knows the the scientist in him? name of a thing at sight. Later he tries to find out what it is."

After those wise and moving words, come a few chapters, the pleasantest of the book, which tell with delicate wit of Adam's experiences among the animals oi Eden. Then comes his meeting with Lilith and their life in Paradise together -the first companionate marriage. After that Eve; clothes, separate bedrooms, regular hours for meals, finally the baby.

Praise be, Adam gets some comfort out of the baby. Nobody contradicts him when he says, contemplating his

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The Inevitable Leeway

THE LETTERS OF GERTRUDE BELL. 2 vols. Boni & Liveright.

The talents of the Englishwoman of breeding are often a source of surprise and envy to her American sisters. The colonel's lady and Judy O'Grady and Mrs. Gasunkus of Newark may be sisters under their skins, but in outward and visible manifestation they are far from it. The cultured Englishwoman is a poised and gracious hostess, a conversationalist to an extent quite incredible to most Americans, a correspondent (in spite of what Jane Austen's smug Mr. Tileny says) of wit and fluency. She seems to have absorbed and assimilated background and education. More than this, she has a gift for public affairs. Women in public life in this country show a painful tendency to become hysterical or dictatorial. They have mislaid, perhaps deliberately, their most effective tool. The pressure of indirect influence in public life was still to be seen in operation in the much-mocked nineties. Now it is rare. But not in England.

An arch-type of Englishwoman, whose letters to her family over a period of years have just been published, was Gertrude Bell, of Arabia, with which the English reading world has Burton and Doughty and Lawrence, and now Gertrude Bell for points of contact. She was a gentlewoman of scholarly attainments in the fields of history and archæology, whose gusto for life swept her out into the dangerous whirlwind of Near Eastern politics. She who has been to some a name and a legend with the appearance of these letters becomes to many an astonishing actuality. The English are the world's travelers, and she was true to her blood. Travel was to her not an escape from business. It was business. Reporting her first meeting with Colonel Lawrence, whose Arabian adventures are everywhere known, she wrote, "He will make a traveler." But her own travels ended physically when her knowledge of Arab affairs and her sympathetic understanding of the Arab mind made her so useful a public servant that her national Government commandeered her services-willingly given for the work of establishing some order out of Mesopotamian chaos. She became a king-maker in Irak.

However slight may be one's interest in the Near East, in archæology in Asia Minor, in Arab customs and character, in travels like Gertrude Bell's, her letters have qualities to interest all readers. She was not a stylistic writer. She was a reporter with a fluent and graphic pen, and her detailed accounts of her experi

ences are exciting and vivid. About a secret ceremonial preceding a raid upon an enemy tribe, she writes:

"At the top, on the edge of the castle moat, we found a group of Druses, men and boys, standing in a circle and singing a terrible song. . . . Over and over again they repeated a single phrase. Then half a dozen or so stepped into the 'circle, each shaking his club or his drawn sword in the face of those standing round. 'Are you a good man? Are you a true man? Are you valiant?' they shouted. 'Ha! Ha!' came the answer and the swords glistened in the moonlight."

The sense of reality she managed to put into her letters-managed without effort, because spontaneity is their most conspicuous literary quality-carries the reader along in her seven-league bootsteps to the climax of her romantic ca

reer.

Gertrude Bell had a scholar's equipment and mental detachment, but she could not maintain the scholar's aloofness from life. Her unabashed love of her fellow-men and her desire to serve them at any personal cost kept her in the midst of tumult, activity, dangerous political intrigue. Foregoing, perhaps from temperamental disinclinations, the most abiding consolations of a woman's life, she yet retained her magnificent femininity, and used her essentially feminine qualities at all times and for all causes. With her subtle gifts of understanding she fathomed the Arab mind; with her tact she conquered the suspicious Arab heart which distrusts the foreigner and despises women. With her energy and courage for living she inspired every one with whom she came in touch. Her genius was for friendship. It is not commonly permitted to be a woman's grace. As an index to character her letters are complete. Brave, romantic, and inspiring as are the tangible events of her life, it is in the richness of her intangible personality that she shines. One speculates with interest upon what a psychological biographer would make of her. This reviewer hopes he will leave her alone, to let her splendid letters speak for themselves.

THE

'HE editor of this department will glad to help readers with advice and suggestions in buying current books, whether noticed on this page or not. If you wish guidance in selecting books for yourself or to give away, we shall do the best we can for you if you will write us, giving some suggestions, preferably with examples, of the taste which is to be satisfied. We shall confine ourselves to books published within the last year or so, so that you will have no trouble in buying them through your own bookshop.

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