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making the libraries the home of effi- to such prophets as there may be to tell us what it portends.

ciency (its horrors along with its blessings), such a doubt does not exist, apparently, in the councils of the American Library Association. That body is to celebrate its fiftieth birthday this autumn; for fifty years its members have met annually, covering the length and breadth of the land in their conventions, enduring hotel beds and hotel food, and listening to thousands of addresses which have varied but slightly in the half-century. As with all such bodies, its members sat under endless repetition of generalities and platitudes for the sake of the occasional practical and useful speech. It has drawn up resolutions and appointed committees without number. There have been pleasant acquaintanceships which have had valuable results. Through all these years two exceedingly commendable objects have been kept in view, with a large degree of success: to foster the increase of libraries and their resources, and to make such libraries simple and easy of access. American librarians have been a trifle too much

inclined to pity the poor Europeans, with the rules and restrictions which hedge in their book collections, and to forget that this country can rarely match the foreign libraries in the value of their books or in the learning of their librarians. Yet on both continents libraries have developed according to the national spirit, and it is certainly in accordance with our beliefs that, if the choice has to be made, it is better to have a thousand good books, available to a thousand persons, than to have the same number of highly precious works, accessible to only two or three readers.

In the wide development of the free public library America has had a part for which it need feel no shame. When the American Library Association meets, fifty years from now, to celebrate its hundredth anniversary, perhaps the question will have been decided whether libraries should go on trying to increase and widen their use or prefer to improve the quality of their work.

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The cloud has come in the form of an
announcement from "Punch." It reads

briefly, "No advertisements for alcoholic
beverages will be accepted after the ex-
isting contracts expire." There was a
time when liquor advertisements began
to fade away from the pages of reputa-
ble American journals. The cloud of
disapproval grew until the heavens
opened and the rains descended.

What moves "Punch" to this action?
What will Johnny Walker and his con-
frères think of this exclusion from the

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pages of a journal which has long been to them a familiar home? Maybe the increase in automobile advertising in the pages of "Punch" may have caused the shutting of once friendly portals. Liquor and autos do not mix. Maybe it was the hope of increasing the American circulation of "Punch" which led to the decision-an increase, we may add, which we would witness with profound pleasure.

We do not know what the argument was; but if there be soothsayers in Great Britain they should be about their soothsaying.

"Have Faith in Indiana "
By LAWRENCE F. ABBOTT

Contributing Editor of The Outlook

NDER the above title Mr. Elmer Davis, a journalist who has achieved a current reputation for clever flippancy, contributes to "Harper's Magazine" for October a humorous article on the Hoosier State. Although a Hoosier himself, Mr. Davis looks at Indiana a little superciliously, a point of view which he perhaps acquired at Oxford, where he was a Rhodes scholar. Amusing as it is, Mr. Davis's scholar. Amusing as it is, Mr. Davis's article does not give the reader much of an impression of either Hoosier humor or Hoosier culture. Perhaps, however, this is not the fault of Indiana, but of Mr. Davis himself.

Fortunately, however-fortunately for me, I mean, for Indiana can get on very well without either my views or Mr. Davis's concerning its essential and worth-while characteristics-just after I had read the article in question there fell into my hands, by an odd coincidence, two pamphlets and some newspaper articles which disclosed a much pleasanter view of Indiana than Mr. Davis had succeeded in giving.

One pamphlet is the illustrated descriptive catalogue of an exhibit of the paintings of a Hoosier artist, John Elwood Bundy, in the Public Art Gallery of Richmond, Indiana. It was sent to me by Mrs. M. F. Johnston, Director of the Richmond Gallery, who has done a modest but far-reaching work in enabling the people of Indiana, and especially its school-children, to see fine examples of contemporary painting, both American and foreign. Mr. Bundy was born in North Carolina, but has been a

citizen of Indiana for more than sixty years. About ten years ago Mrs. Johnston gave the readers of The Outlook some account of his work. Like Diaz, of Barbizon, he has been especially a painter of trees, and the Richmond "Palladium" is not exaggerating when it says that he "has immortalized the beech woods of his home State.” There are some other Hoosier artistsOlive Rush and Theodore C. Steele, for example-whose pictures are worth seeing and thinking about.

This leads me to making a suggestion. Why does not the Indianapolis Chamber of Commerce engage one of the dealers' galleries in New York City and give an exhibition there, under its auspices, of the work of Indiana artists? In doing this the Chamber would not only "boom" an interesting and worth-while side of Indiana competency, but would make a much-needed contribution to the education of New Yorkers, who are extremely provincial and ignorant in their conceptions of the real values of the Mid-West. Why confine the exhibitions of the products of a great State to hogs, corn, and automobiles?

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fully printed and illustrated booklet entitled "Bulletin No. 81," and is a manual on picture study to be used by Indiana teachers in elementary and high schools. If there is anything of the kind equal to it published by the educational department of any other State, I am not aware of the fact. Among other illustrations this Bulletin contains two full pages in color of canvases in the John Herron Institute of Indianapolis-one "Woods in Winter," by John E. Bundy, and the other "Gramercy Park," by Felicie Howell. There are other reproductions in black and white of some of the treasures of the John Herron Museum, notably Sargent's beautiful portrait of James Whitcomb Riley. I have just said that New Yorkers are provincial with regard to the Mid-West. I am a living example. I never heard before of John Herron or of the Art Museum that bears his name, but the next time I go to Indianapolis I shall steer

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straight for this gallery. It will doubtless be as refreshing as the Art Institute of Chicago.

I notice that a page of "Bulletin No. 81" is devoted to Claude Monet and that the high school students of Indiana are advised to become familiar, not only with the work of his brush, but with his almost revolutionary influence on modern painting. Monet specially interests me, and perhaps Miss Weyl and Mr. Sherwood will understand if I reprint here something that I said in The Outlook a year ago about him:

Monet is the greatest of the moderns in producing the optical effects of light through the medium of paint. I have a peculiar affection for Monet, because twenty-five or thirty years. ago he taught me to see the amazing streaks of color on a spring hillside— a beauty to which I had been before then almost blind. But it is not his gardens and hillsides that attract me to the Monet room. It is the three

fine examples of his Thames series, especially his "Waterloo Bridge," which, with its red and yellow busses rolling over it, emerges from a London fog as one gazes at the canvas.

The story goes that about twentyfive years ago Monet, exhausted by his work, determined to take a vacation in some spot where he would not be tempted to put a brush to canvas. He chose London. But when he got there, he found the foggy Thames, with its bridges and its massive Parliament House at Westminster, most seductive in its problems of light and color. So, hastily buying a painter's outfit, he began his studies which resulted in his notable "Thames Series" of pictures. Even soot and fog become beautiful under the hands of a master painter.

So the real beauty of Indiana might emerge from the fog which has clouded the eyes of Elmer Davis if he were to visit the Herron Art Museum under the guidance of Mr. Sherwood or his associate teachers.

Germany Joins the League

By ELBERT FRANCIS BALDWIN

HE event in this year's Assembly of the League of Nations at Geneva has been Germany's admission as member,

Somehow the real end of the war seems thus to have come. "Serbia had the first and now has the last word in that war," I thought, as day before yesterday, after the Assembly election, I heard its President, a Serb, declare: "The number of votes has been fortyeight. All states voted 'yes.' I therefore proclaim Germany's admission to the League of Nations by a unanimous. vote."

The feeling that this marked the real end of the war was emphasized this morning as, under the flicker of motionpicture flares, the German delegates took their seats in the Salle de la Réformation, and especially the burly figure of the first delegate, Gustav Stresemann, German Foreign Minister, mounted the platform, there to acknowledge the welcome given to his country.

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The Outlook's Editor in Europe

was, in general, rich, full, and sonorous. It dignified his well-written address in his own language. He read it in the painstaking, patient, rather monotonous German manner, without any pointing of periods by the use of his arms. did not use these save to mop his bald head, for the hall was hot and close.

He

On the other hand, Aristide Briand, French Foreign Minister, following the German, spoke entirely without notes. His appealing and beautiful voice had almost a violoncello tone. Now and then it was accentuated by some shake of the shaggy, leonine head or a more Gallic gesture of arms. The brilliant and timely speech was received with greater spontaneity of enthusiasm than I have ever witnessed at any League gathering, the whole assemblage rising and cheering lustily. Let it remember, then, the Frenchman's warning:

You can either come in a spirit of friendship and impartiality or you can come regarding the League of Nations as a place in which you are the champions of your country. That is the difference. If you regard yourselves as the champions of your country against any other country, you will raise again the spirit that breeds war, breeds evil, breeds suffering. . . . If you stir up the spirit of . . . national

pride, then nations are very often carried away, and they cannot work together as they should in the spirit of peace and of arbitration, which is now accepted by the nations. I know our friends from Germany, and, so long as I am a delegate for France, I can speak for France, and I know that we will resist that temptation, because that is the road which leads to the evil days of the past. It is the road which brings fire and sword and desolation.

Let us, therefore, create a real spirit of collaboration based on friendship and not on war. . . . It is in arbitration and in the acceptance of the reign of law that hope lies for the future and for the peace of the world. . . .

This day will go down to history as one on which something concrete was done for the peace of the world and the peoples of the world.

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the treaties of 1919. From them have resulted. . . many divergences between the League and Germany [he was doubtless thinking particularly of the Polish corridor, Danzig, Upper Silesia, and the Saar]. I hope that a discussion of these questions will be rendered easier in the future by our co-operation within the League. Mutual confidence will, from a political point of view, be found to be a greater creative force than any other method. ... Germany desires to co-operate on the basis of mutual confidence with all nations represented in the League.

What the speaker naturally did not do, however, was specifically to point out a few cherished, definite German political ambitions in joining the League.

For example, Article XIX of the League Covenant provides for the consideration of the revision of treaties found to be inapplicable. Taking advantage of this, the Teutons expect to bring about a lessening of foreign military dominion in Germany through the transfer to the League of the general supervision of German armaments, a supervision held by the Interallied Commission of Control,

She will also continue her propaganda for the security of her eastern territories against hostile (?) oppression, for which read Poland,

She will urge greater self-determination for German minorities outside her borders.

Finally, remembering the recent statement of President Schacht, of the Reichsbank, that "the fight for raw materials now plays the most important part in world politics" and that "Germany's only solution is her acquisition of colonies," she will make the inevitable demand for the recognition of her fitness to act as a Mandatory Power if and when occasion arises.

The political value of all these points is doubled by their commercial value. In the opportunity to develop old (note the approaching conclusion of the Franco-German commercial pact) and to create new markets Germany naturally sees immense possibilities of prestige, even enough indeed to efface the memory of defeat in the war. As Herr Stresemann said, "The restoration of the traditional exchange of goods must be our task."

Yet-and this is vital-as he also said, and said well:

There is something far transcending all material considerations, and that is the soul of the nations themselves. There is just now a mighty

Courtesy of the proprietors of "Punch"

Ave Atque Cave

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League of Nations: "Delighted to welcome you in our midst, but just one word of advice: Don't rattle your-er-ploughshare too much"

stirring of ideas among the nations of the world. We see some that adhere to the principle of self-contained national unity and who reject international understanding because they do not want to see all that has been developed on the basis of nationality superseded by the more general conception of humanity. Now I hold that no country which belongs to the League of Nations thereby surrenders in any way a national individuality.

It cannot be the purpose of the divine world order that men should direct their supreme national energies against one another, thus ever thrusting back the general progress of civilization. He will serve humanity best who, firmly rooted in the faith of his own people, develops his moral and intellectual gifts to their highest significance, thus overstepping his own national boundaries and serving the whole of mankind.

Germany's admission to the League is greeted in Germany as "a diplomatic defeat" by the Nationalists, but by the rest as "the greatest moral success of our foreign policy."

So much on the German side. On that of the League (despite the sore loss of Brazil and Spain, which may, perhaps, prove to be only temporary), no more notable step has yet been taken looking to the ideal of universality, to which the League naturally turns, than is found in the entry of Germany. Indeed, the London "Times" proclaims it "the most important step in the development of the League since its foundation."

What is of equal moment, by this act the Locarno treaties now enter automatically into force and, with them, additional power to make their signatories stay "hitched."

Geneva, September 10, 1926.

J

OHN STAYHOME sits, after sundown, in a hickory armchair and looks out across his field of corn.

If his eyes go beyond the picture that he has painted through months of labor, with help of plow and harrow and horse, they rest upon the range of far blue hills -so far and blue that they blend, almost, with the sky when it is clearthat bound his inland basin. They are the frame, never changing, for his picture that changes every day and every hour of every day.

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Whatever lies beyond that range of hills John Stayhome's eyes have never seen. For him the cities, with their splendor of lights and laughter, are as the tales men tell-true, no doubt, but strange as those of Marco Polo. The endless reach and roll of oceans do not exist-unless, at dusk or dawn, he sees them shimmer and darken and break in white-topped waves along that cloudheaped line where sky and far hills meet. John Stayhome never left the place where he was born. He never even planned to go. No Will o' the Mill is he, but plain man from plain boy grown -ready always for whatever called him, go or stay. He would have gone if chance had chosen him; but it chose, instead, the other seven, and left him behind with the old folks, who in the fullness of time were called, but not of chance. And now men pity John Stayhome-men, that is, who have wandered far and seen much with the fleshly eye -as he looks out at sunset across his field of fruited corn.

Every evening since early spring he has done that, and every sunset has shown him a different picture that his hands have made.

It was on a sunny day of March, the wind roaring among the hilltop trees while the lowlands lay asleep, that he geared Old Lady and Buckskin Boy to the plow and turned a furrow around the field-one narrow shifting ribbon binding the broad acres of timothy sod just shooting "a green gleam through the grayness." Bluebirds had come home to their nesting sites in the fence posts and a few adventurous robins, faring farther north, stopped for a wayside

By DIXON MERRITT

lunch among the fresh-earth fragrances. As Lady and Buck warmed to the collar and the plow sheared deeper into the sod the ribbon broadened until, at last, the field was one wide cloth of velvet sheen, dark brown as mahogany or old walnut, light as amber or hammered. brass, according as the sunlight fell into brass, according as the sunlight fell into the folds of the land.

After a May day of warmth and rain, the cloth began to be streaked with green and John Stayhome, from his armchair at twilight, could see the stripes run clear three ways to the farther fences-lengthwise, breadthwise, crosswise. Now was the time of the artist's ceaseless labor for art's sake; for gain's sake, too. Every artist sells his gain's sake, too. Every artist sells his sweat. John and Lady and Buck wet their feet in the dew of the dawn and washed the midday dust from them again in the dew of the dusk, cultivating, over, and back, and over again, seeing only a little of the pictures they made as they made them. They were too close and worked too hard upon them. Only John Stayhome, after sundown,

saw.

Silent pictures but now, at last, they began to speak to the artist as he worked. The lush young stalks were waist high, dark green as the trough between waves at sea, and as the team pushed through the arched blades the young corn spoke its thanks, its hopes, its promises of the fall and of barns filled full at frost. The season of damp days and hot nights had come, and the corn was visibly taller each morning than it had been the night before.

And now, toward the end of an afternoon at the last cultivation, the cornfield broke into song. The day had been hot, steaming, motionless but for the shimmer of the heat waves. Slowly, a little breeze came down the hollows of the hills and spread out over the fields, too slight to make a stir among the leaves of the trees or even to fan the face of the laboring artist, but it stirred the corn-field into melody-not loud at all, but very soft and very sweet, a song of secrets sung in whispers for no ears but those of the man who labored there. Perhaps no man has really heard it save

those who work with the corn from seed ear to seed ear again; perhaps of those who have heard not many have given it conscious heed; but men bred to the fields long for the song of the corn as David did for the well of his youth.

Summer was at high tide, and John Stayhome's picture required no more painting with plow points. He went to his other canvases, leaving it to grow new pictures every day. It flowereddouble-flowered, indeed, in a glory that belongs to corn alone. Silk and tasselmid-stalk, a wealth of maiden's hair, flaxen, golden, auburn, the color that the grains will be; and away at the top, waving free, the feathery plumes. From his hickory chair John Stayhome looked out upon a flower garden acres broad and breathed its fragrance from afar. Seek the fragrance of the corn flowers, and you shall not find it. They are scentless flowers upon close approach, but they give, in their season, their fragrance to the countryside, all-pervasive, free to all. With its song the corn rewards alone the man who made it; with its fragrance it blesses all whose homes are round about, even those who pass along the highway with no understanding of what delights them.

And now the ears are full and dry. The blades are turning yellow. John Stayhome, as the twilight deepens, rises from his chair, feels along the sill under the eaves of the porch, takes down a knife, runs his thumb along the edge. One more picture he must paint upon the changing canvas.

To-morrow what was a brown-velvet cloth all striped with green, and then a singing sea of green young stalks, and then a great grown garden of flowers and fragrance will begin to be a tented field. John Stayhome's knife will whack and the tepees of the corn will rise, first along the rows nearest the house, then farther and farther, clear to the boundary fence. Yellow-green at first in the daylight and black in the light of the moon, they will change as the season cools and frost creeps down from the north until they will be brown in the sunlight and gleaming white in the moonlight. And then, one twilight, as

John Stayhome sits in his hickory chair, pulling his coat closer, the wind will die down at dusk and the western sky be apple green and all the trees stand straight and still. And John Stayhome, turning to the welcome warmth of indoors, will think better of it, go to the barn and scoop an extra measure of oats for Lady and Buck.

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At sunup the tents of the corn will be all white with frost; moist when the sun has thawed them, and pliant for hauling. Forth to the field, home to the barn, forth again to the field, all day long, that day and other days, John and Lady and Buck will cluck their old wagon. And John Stayhome, one twilight, will look again upon a clear green

canvas- a field young and fresh with rye for winter cover.

Men pity John Stayhome-men, that is, who have wandered much and seen strange things with greedy eyes. But of all those who have gone away few have seen such pictures as he has painted, and none has painted such pictures as he has seen.

The German Giant

ERMANY is a giant bound with a considerable amount of rope, it is true, but a giant all the same, and a giant whose ropes every one realizes will some day loosen. When that day comes, what will happen? one asks. What is the present state of mind of this colossus? Has Germany experienced any marked change of heart since 1918? Has there been a softening of the old martial spirit? What do the people, as distinct from the Government (whose expressions are consistently op portunistic, fashioned to fit the exigencies of the moment), think about the future and about their neighbors?

THE

HE feature that first strikes an American upon arriving in Germany to-day is the profound revolution that has taken place since the Armistice in popular attitude toward the United States.

At a moment when the United States and things American are probably at a lower ebb of approval throughout Europe than they have been at any time. since President Wilson returned from Versailles, the United States to-day leads all foreign nations of the world in general popularity in Germany. In the country, in other words, that owes its defeat and present humiliation so largely to the activities of the United States eight years ago, America is now more beloved than in the countries she helped to victory!

From Hamburg and Hanover, from Berlin to Frankfort-on-the-Main, as I traveled through Germany recently, I found the utmost good will toward America. All traces of the war feeling had gone. And I talked with members of all classes: merchants in their shops, cab-drivers, professional people, officials, laborers, chance acquaintances on the streets, fellow-diners in cafés and beer halls. Eyes lit up with genuine pleasure

By EDWIN W. HULLINGER

when I announced the country of my
origin. Smiles clearly innocent of design
welcomed mention of the word America.
People went out of their way to show me
courtesy because I was an American.
One would have thought there had never
been a war.

West of the Rhine, America lies under
a cloud to-day. The British Foreign
Office is vigorously pro-American, and
the British nation is actively assimilating
many American ideas and methods. But
throughout the Kingdom there is a wave
of anti-Americanism that no measure
of diplomatic camouflage can conceal.
Newspaper editors in London told me it
was one of the realities of public senti-
ment at the moment against which they
were powerless. Throughout England
America has the reputation of an "inter-
national Shylock.' France is openly
and frankly peevish. Italy is relatively
friendly-we have given her liberal
terms in the debt settlement-but Italy
is also temperamentally fickle. Not long
ago Americans were scarcely more popu-
lar than Germans south of the Piave.

Such is the irony of the times; our recent enemy is to-day our most fervent admirer!

This paradox was due, I found, to several outstanding causes. First of all came America's relief program in Central Europe immediately after the war. When the history of American foreign policy during the first decade of peace is written, it will be interesting to see what place is given to the activities of the American Quakers. Certain it is that in central and eastern Europe this small band of Friends played an extremely important part in influencing public opinion and in forming popular attitude towards the United States. It is significant that it was nearly always the first factor that was cited to me when I asked for causes of the feeling for the United States.

To many Germans America's charitable efforts appeared as nothing short of epochal, marking a new era in international dealings. The spectacle of an enemy nation promptly brushing aside the heat of war passion in the interests of humanitarianism struck them as something as unheard of as it was heroic. It took the stolid Teutons off their feet. And it was an act sufficiently concrete, of course, for all minds to grasp and act upon.

The second factor was what appeared to the Germans as a very surprising spirit of objectivity motivating the political actions of the United States in Europe, a circumstance which, I found, had won for our Government the trust and confidence of the entire German nation.

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In the words of the editor of a prominent Hanoverian newspaper, “Germany became convinced that America was not trying to take unfair advantage. have come to feel that whatever America may think of us-and we who have followed events have no illusions about popular sentiment toward Germany in America-we can trust the United States Government to act in a way it thinks is just, irrespective of friend or foe. We think America has made mistakes. We still have difficulty forgetting President Wilson. But we feel that, whatever she may do, America will do what she thinks is right. She will not take unfair advantage.

"The United States is the only great world Power," he continued, "that has lived up to the standards of ethics expected of an individual during the interval since the Armistice. The United States is the only world Power that seems capable to-day of political objectivity."

This "remarkable objectivity" of the United States was cited to me by thinking Germans in all parts of the country

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