to regard these ships as worse than valueless and as not desired by naval authorities. As a matter of fact, they are desired, and whole-heartedly so, by naval authorities in this country, and not only

W

greatly desired but greatly needed. And if the very modest program now before Congress should be defeated or delayed by the creation of an unfavorable and altogether erroneous public opinion, the

whole spirit of the Washington Conference's 5-5-3 ratio would be annulled and the United States Navy condemned to hopeless inferiority as compared with that of Great Britain.

ALTER WEST, who was a junior in college, although he often wondered why, stood uncertainly for a moment, then walked to the magazine rack and selected a magazine which he knew he would not read. He sat down in an uncomfortable chair and gazed about the room at the occupants of the library. Not a face interested him.

Libraries had a depressing effect upon West. The rows of silent books, the uncomfortable chairs, the long polished tables, the angularity that seemed to characterize even the librarians, displeased him and made him feel ill at

ease.

The atmosphere of the place was disturbing. An artificial silence, as of conscious concentration, seemed to weigh upon the occupants. They seemed to be holding their breath as they would have done at a funeral. The lightfooted librarians hurrying about among the stacks with the complacent air of high priestesses of culture scared him. Librarians and street-car conductors had always oppressed him. He always handed a conductor his fare apologetically, as if the conductor were conferring a favor upon him by allowing him to ride without investigating the nature of his business. When he asked a librarian for a book, he always felt that he owed it to civilization, or something, to explain why he wanted to read the book. After a period of squirming about in his chair and wondering why those responsible for the appointments of the library had so inconsistently omitted hair shirts from their plan of equipment, West rose uneasily, placed the magazine on the rack exactly as he had found it, and glanced perfunctorily at a row of reference books. He had no idea of reading any of them. A text-book in a library absolutely repelled him. In fact, any book lost its charm the moment it received the library stamp. It assumed an official primness and became the disconcerting equivalent of the harmless citizen who donned the street-car conductor's cap.

But West loved books. He felt a very personal affection for every book in his own meager library. Some of them he had never read, many of them he could

not understand, but he loved them. Each one was an individual possession with a distinct personality. It was perhaps this appreciation of the personality of books which made him dislike library books. The moment a book became a member of a library it lost its distinction and degenerated into merely a part of the angular equipment. It became a part of an inventory. The fact that a book passed from reader to reader cheapened it in his subconscious estimation. To West a book was a personal possession, like a tooth-brush or a wife.

He turned from the shelf marked History C5, went to the cloak-room and selected his hat and coat from the fifteen or twenty others hanging dispiritedly from the hooks. Another thirty minutes in the library would have strangled him, he felt.

THE

HE fresh winter day washed over him and into him with a tonic effect. He felt as relieved as a man suddenly released from prison. The stronghold of culture was not for him. Classes were changing, and the campus was crowded with students, some hurrying and some loitering. He stepped from the walk to permit an unbroken rank of four girls to pass. Coeds irritated him. They always were throwing their arms around one another in public; they seemed to think the walks made for them alone; most of them were homely, but few of them knew it, and the pretty ones were vapid. None of them that he knew had any inclination toward usefulness. They went about with the air: "Look, we are women. Are we not to be admired for this wonderful achievement of ours?"

In the classroom they seldom knew what was going on. If a discussion arose, one of them could be depended upon to discourse earnestly on some trivial tangent which had no bearing whatever on the real question. The patient professor would then steer the argument back to the issue, and the girl would sit sublimely ignorant that she had wasted fifteen minutes of twenty people's time.

An ignorant little thing who bothered him three times a week in one class

passed with three other girls without speaking. She glanced at him without betraying a quiver of recognition. A momentary anger subsided into indifference. He knew that at the next meeting of the class she would ask him to lend her his notes. It was not purely snobbery, he decided, that caused her to know him in class and not on the campus. It was merely her absorbing interest in herself and in the trivialities with which she was concerned. She was not so much heartless as headless. Her mind simply was not capable of reaction to anything outside the particular atmosphere she happened to be in. Doubtless an elephant in a china shop would not have surprised her, because she would not have seen it. She would have seen only the china, the conventional furnishing for a china shop. He wondered what finally would happen to her, if life would ever make an impression. Eventually she would marry. She would have a bridge club and her husband would tell her he was smoking too much, and thus she would have something to talk about. Then, of course, there would be the reminiscences of her college days, the figures of which would be only those girls with whom she had slept and those youths whose hats had contained the proper dents. She would marry, of

course, a man whose hat had always had, and always would have, the proper dents.

He passed King Hall, the gatheringplace of a certain type of bored students, male and female. Clustered upon the steps were girls smartly dressed and all wearing their rouge high upon their cheeks. The amount of self-confidence in the personal appearance could be estimated by the step upon which each was stationed. In the court below the girls were Hart-Schaffner youths wearing the same cut of clothing in precisely the same jaunty fashion, casting speculative. eyes at the exhibit on the top steps. West never knew what they talked about, nor did he know any of them except through surface conjectures. He always hurried through the crowd, and even preferred the library with its natural mummery to the almost bovine complacency of the fashionable group. The

latter stirred in him disgust, not only for the group but for the university. At

such times it seemed to be saturated with the spirit of insolent well-being. His resentment extended to the officials of the university, and even to the professors. It seemed to him that the university had become little but a preening place for well-fed young Robots whose vulgarity was displayed proudly, as evidence of culture. It was as if the university had thrown aside the robes of dignity, had donned bell-bottomed trousers, and crimped its hat with just the proper crimp. Education, he reflected, had become a matter of 120 hours' credit, a certain amount of suffering in the library, and the ability to wear an Ethiopian combination of colors with a clear conscience.

WES

As

EST despondently climbed the stairs to his room and selected a volume of Whitman which he could not understand fully but which always raised his spirits by its wind-blown vigor. As he shuffled the pages mechanically, he questioned himself: "You detest the placid college boys; but what do you know that they don't, and where are you going yourself?"

West had been reading about an hour when there appeared through the door an uncombed youth. It was Green, a sophomore who studied and slept in the room across the hall. He entered with the friendly, furtive air of a pup who knows he is trespassing, but who hopes by effusively wagging his tail to ignore the situation. He. and West were the only students in the house, and the latter suffered through the gregarious nature of the former. Green had a speaking acquaintance with more campus celebrities than any one West knew. To Green any one was a hero who received mention in the daily paper. He spoke familiarly of every member of the football and basket-ball teams. He knew to what fraternity each of them belonged, and during the course of any conversation was likely, upon hearing some one's name mentioned, to break in with, "Oh, yes, I know him. He's a Delt."

Green himself was not a social success, and it seemed too bad. He appeared to have most of the qualifications. He was enthusiastically orthodox. He took chapel speakers seriously and he accepted a pin on the vest as final indication that the chest that bore it breathed only the pure air of the elect. He studied religiously and mechanically and carefully preserved all lecture notes. He attended every football rally, was

jubilant at the winning of every game and downcast at defeat. He belonged to the glee club, and had never missed a rehearsal. He was a whole-hearted supporter of anything the school did or contemplated doing. He read those books. his professors recommended and said. they were good. In his class reviews of novels he always contented himself with sketching the plot. He was unable to run over a book of essays quite so glibly, and confined his reviews to a discussion of the life of the author. The immaturity of his mind was reflected in the callowness of his countenance. He bored West with his incessant references to campus life. He was not the type that stationed himself below King Hall. He was making his grades. He was loyal. He was a distinct asset to the college. But he was immersed in the externals, the mechanics of education. He was striving earnestly to be a good college student. If he had ever thought about the matter, he would have said that the college existed for itself. But he never thought, and he never would think. He would graduate into a job, and he would take the job seriously. He would become a successful alumnus whose interest in the welfare of the university would be revived every fall at the home-coming

season.

"Hello, West, old man," he said, cheerfully, seating himself on an edge of the trunk and preparing to work gradually back to a more comfortable position during the confusion of the conversation, "Hello," responded West, without enthusiasm.

"Watcha readin'?"
"Whitman," replied West.

"Say, is that the book that's got that hot stuff in it?" he inquired with sudden interest.

"What do you mean, hot stuff?" asked West, coldly.

"I don't know exactly. I heard some one say that Whitman wouldn't do to read to a mixed crowd."

"No," replied West, reflectively, "I suppose it wouldn't do to read him to a mixture of prudes and perverts."

"Whatcha mean by that?" "Nothing at all," answered West, indifferently. "But there is nothing here that would interest you,” he added.

"Say, West," Green remarked, "you ought to see the game to-night. It's goin' to be some game. Brown is playing forward, and that boy sure can toss 'em in."

"All right. Maybe I'll go," replied West, with the air of concluding the business for which Green had called. He

picked up the volume of Whitman and began turning the pages. Green slid reluctantly from the trunk and departed.

THAT

HAT evening West attended the game. There seemed nothing else to do, and he enjoyed a good basket-ball game occasionally.

As he always did, he felt out of place in an assemblage of college students. He felt an immediate antagonism toward the crowd. On the faces of the youths was an arrogant sophistication born of an intimate knowledge of externals and an utter lack of comprehension of things not obvious. They were smug, content to be at ease in their own world, and endeavoring to bring into it a gesture from the outer world of which they knew nothing. The women, as usual, were posing for the benefit of whoever might be looking. They passed along the aisles self-consciously to friends in the crowd.

The team entered, and at the agitated insistence of a white-trousered cheer leader the crowd rose and emitted the college yell. West tried to get into the spirit of the thing, but was unable to keep his eyes from the dapper figure of the white-trousered, white-shirted boy below. His spotless clothing fit with a self-satisfaction that irritated West. His hair reflected sliding half-moons of light. His face wore an expression of worried vacuity. The mechanical perfection of his attire, the automatic intelligence of his movements, filled West with an almost blind rage. The cheering was perfunctory. West got considerable satisfaction out of that. His respect for the spectators rose when he discovered that they refused to enthuse at the direction of the imbecile in front. As well regulate the cheering by a system of traffic signals, he decided.

He turned to the youth next him, "Why in hell don't they get a cheer leader?"

The boy looked at him suspiciously and refused to commit himself.

"That bird," went on West, goaded out of his usual taciturnity, "couldn't lead a bunch of fish to a swimmingpool."

His neighbor appeared startled at the novel idea of fish going to a swimmingpool, but managed a feeble grin.

At the end of the half West left the building. He felt that he would commit murder if he had to gaze at the cheer leader any longer.

He wandered along a winding campus path. The spire of King Hall was outlined against the night, straight, aloof,

alone. West loved the campus at night. It was silent and deserted. It seemed to him that at night the spirit of the university came back to hover over the buildings. There was a beautiful dignity at night that was lacking in the chattering confusion of the day. The thought that the spirit of learning returned to visit the campus at night lingered with him. The first speeding automobile of morning would drive it away, he decided. Some time he would get up early, before sunrise, to see if it were still there.

T

HE next evening at eleven o'clock West sat smoking on the steps of the library. The advent of young Green and a helpless tired feeling that prevented his acting with the necessary rudeness had driven him to a movie. The movie had offered a callow insult to his intelligence, and he had fled it in desperation.

A cow-eyed hero about whom centered the thoughts of three-fourths of the national feminine intellect dresssuited gracefully through several hundred feet of life and love. Illiterate caption writers had placed in the mouth of the languishing heroine sentiments that an infant parrot would have disdained to learn. A great problem of upper-class conduct was introduced, manhandled and solved to the apparent satisfaction of an audience of bakers, bankers, teachers, milliners, students, shoe clerks, and coeds. Meanwhile a temperamental organist had interpreted deftly the mood of the picture by playing the "Marseillaise" when the hero started to war, and "Carolina in the Morning" when the maid brought in a bouquet of sweet peas. Thus the sensibilities of the spectators were conducted through an elaborate course of emotions surely, and with the unerring precision

like you'd get enough of the campus in the daytime."

"I do too much," returned West. "Won't you sit down and tell me about the campus at night?"

The old man sat down with the appearance of reluctance and filled his pipe.

"Well, there ain't nothing to tell about the campus at night. Except that long toward mornin' it gets mighty tiresome."

"Would you rather work at night or in the daytime?" asked West. "That is, work on the campus."

"I dunno," confessed the old man. He turned to West in sudden frankness. "Looks like a man'd be a fool to want to work at night, but you know there's something about this place at night that something about this place at night that ain't like it is in daytime. Dunno what it is. Reckon, of course, it's the quiet. It ain't so bad, though. Take this here buildin'. It don't look the same to me in daytime as it does now." The old man puffed reflectively. "Looks bigger some way."

That was it, he admitted. But he was not at rest. More nearly, he was a boat tossing in a choppy harbor. Morosely he tabulated facts about himself. He was a university student, but not a university man. He disliked the conventionalities of middle-class existence, but loved its luxuries. He detested the use of the word "class," but scorned the hypocrisy that ignored its existence. He felt no duty toward humanity, but shrank from a parasitical existence. He desired knowledge, but felt that knowledge brought unhappiness. Unhappiness he considered senseless. He hated those who were self-complacent, but did not pity those who were afraid.

He felt a contempt for those whom he knew to be his superiors, without losing his own self-respect. He felt a contempt for those he believed to be his inferiors, without diminishing his hatred of snobbery.

He jeered at the ambitious, but respected their ambitions.

"Yes, I reckon I do."

The two talked until twelve o'clock. West tried to explain to the old watch man what it was about the campus at night that drew him. He tried to tell him how he felt about the university, about the students, and about life. The old man listened soberly, nodding his head occasionally to indicate that he understood. When West rose to leave, the old man remarked, thoughtfully: "I reckon you happened to git born at the wrong time. You should a growed up with me, when things wasn't goin' so fast."

He appreciated the callowness of cynicism, but sneered at the innocence of sincerity.

He sorrowed for those who had no philosophy, believing that life must be hopeless without one; he was unable to formulate a philosophy for himself. He despaired of meaning in his own life, but still he felt the futility of all philosophy.

He was a pragmatist who scorned the results.

He scoffed at morality in the abstract, but loathed those who were immoral according to his conceptions. He approved

and went to his room.

He was decided in his hatred of big

when the hero sighed manifestly at the moon; no one shuddered when the jovial cook intercepted an inadvertent pie. The picture was a success, but it drove West to the campus.

into executive session with himself-he reviewed his college career. The evidence seemed to indicate that he did not belong. He determined to quit school, but when he came to the question of what he should do he was defeated. There was nothing that he wanted to do. Nothing. It was not that he wished to do nothing, but there was nothing that he wished to do. He decided that he was a youthful George Gray. He read the lines.

A boat with a furled sail at rest in a harbor.

In truth it pictures not my destination

But my life.

ance.

I

The process of unfreezing Washington -as Owen Wister called it-has been going on for many years, with gratifying results. It will be surprising if he, like all the heroes of the past, does not fall into the hands of biographers who look with so much contempt upon calling a spade an agricultural implement that they jump in the other direction and refuse to give it any other name than a damned shovel. The great success of Lytton Strachey's ironic and masterly life of Queen Victoria has raised a swarm of Stracheys, who are greeted with cheers by certain critics and readers, and viewed with alarm by others. The cheers are perhaps a little too loud, and the alarm is almost always unnecessary. The new biography, it seems to me, is for the most part a wholesome sign and an asset to literature. First of all, it is, with occasional exceptions, an honest attempt to tell the truth as the truth appears to us to-day. Second, it arouses an interest in men of the past who would otherwise be neglected by many younger readers. Even if the elders are a little shocked by seeming examples of irreverence, it is better to have fresh lives of great men than to have them forgotten.

This does not mean that all the new biographers have outgrown freshmen tricks. They pride themselves upon their tolerance, their honesty, and their liberal attitude toward human weakness. But some of them are very intolerant toward conservatism, besides being less honest than they think themselves. They are liberal toward human weakness, but are singularly bigoted about virtue.

"Ah, he was a splendid fellow," they seem to say about the subject of their biography; "he got drunk every Saturday night."

But if it turns out that he remained sober every Saturday night these liberals. become cold and suspicious, and begin to mistrust his statesmanship as humbug, or deride his books as trash. It is safe to assert that fifty per cent of the enthusiasm which is expressed by professional "liberals" for Poe's poetry would subside if the discovery were made that Poe had actually been a teetotaler. The fact which has recently been unearthed that Wordsworth had an irregular love affair in his youth has made his poetry neither better nor worse, but it would be characteristic of some of the critics, upon learning this fact, enormously to increase their admiration for his work. The number of hours spent by a few writers in the last two or three by a few writers in the last two or three years snooping around keyholes in the domestic establishment of Robert Louis Stevenson is typical, not only of extreme juvenility, but of a most painful lack of any sense of humor.

This season has produced two new books about George Washington.' Of these the one by Mr. Woodward is undoubtedly the more popular and readdoubtedly the more popular and readable; that by Mr. Hughes appears more sedate, careful, and scholarly in the old sense. Mr. Hughes's book deals only with Washington as a young man. It covers the first thirty years of his life, and is part of a complete biography. Professor Hart has assailed both books as inaccurate. Mr. Woodward is bluff and vigorous, but he has been bitten by some tarantula of modernism which occasionally makes him do curious things. An example of this is his criticism of a passage in the diary of the very youthful Washington describing an Indian war dance. Mr. Woodward applies to this record, written by a young colonial scout, methods of criticism which would be appropriate in a sophisticated modern writer discussing a new school of poetry.

Yet a great man emerges from both of these books, and Mr. Woodward is oldfashioned enough to end with the solemn words of the burial service as the hero is carried to his tomb at Mount Vernon.

Mr. Russell's "Benjamin Franklin" " is further described by the author's term "the first civilized American." It is a good piece of work; very readable matter, presented with admirable clearness both by author and by printer. One is led to the faint suspicion that the word "civilized," in Mr. Russell's terminology, means not only Franklin's cosmopolitanism, his curiosity for knowledge, and his alert intelligence, but even more his fondness for all the good things of life and his friskiness, even in his old age, toward ladies. All the qualities which made Franklin a good fellow are emphasized rather than slighted, but Mr. Russell is not the first in doing this, nor is he quite so daring as he seems to think himself. He prints one of Franklin's "facetious" tracts, and I am glad that he did so. It is much better to print it than to whisper about it around corners. But he correctly estimates another of them as too Rabelaisian for modern taste, and so he omits it. This again is wise. It would also be well if the author did not make quite so many references to the prudery and Puritanism of his forerunHe is bound by the taste of his day. Aren't we all? Were not the writers of the past? Even of the priggish Victorian past? Consequently, is it

ners.

fitting for us of to-day to stick so many feathers in our own caps as we pat ourselves upon the back and boast of our own courage?

Mr. Gorman has written an honest and painstaking life of Longfellow. It is a little surprising to learn that he and his publishers believed that many readers wished to read so fat a book about the poet who was probably as good and certainly as gray as Walt Whitman. Mr. Gorman's irony is delicate and goodmannered, and his pictures of life in Cambridge in the golden past are thoroughly attractive. The flavor of the freshman hangs about him in only one trait: his unnecessarily patronizing man

2 Benjamin Franklin, the First Civilized American. By Phillips Russell. Brentano's, New York. $5.

3A Victorian American: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. By Herbert S. Gorman. The George H. Doran Company, New York.

$5.