The Contributors' Column--July Atlantic
Victor S. Clark, for several years in charge of the division of Industrial History of the Carnegie Institution, is now a member of the National Board for Historical Research. That Madame Ponafidine’s letters were so obviously not written for publication adds to their peculiar effectiveness as credible testimony to the exact condition of affairs in rural Russia to-day. In a prefatory note to the letters we have identified the various persons mentioned, and to intensify the picture, we subjoin a few extracts from letters to another correspondent, which reached us too late to be included in the text of the magazine.
Here, so far, matters have not been so bad, but it is daily getting worse. . . . The 10 cows I have are hungry and give little milk, for in front of them, in our woods and fields, goes a village herd of over 40 cows, 30 sheep and pigs!
Not content with that, they are putting them in the rye-fields, where the young grain is up; and as the continued rains make the ground boggy, a herd, while getting little to eat, kneads up the ground, and we won’t have bread next year. There is no one to appeal to, or rather, there are many committees to go to, but no one pays any heed and anarchy reigns. I have no hope of a good ending. If we escape with our lives it is the most we can hope for, and there is no place to put any savings, nor can any one leave the country.
This last coup d’état has given us some pretty bad days. . . . We are now living under circumstances unparalleled even in the French Revolution. No laws, no government, complete stagnation in all business, banks closed, posts half working (for over a week we had no post or telegram), robberies, incendiaries, domiciliary visits, arrests, murders, lynching — and no one to appeal to. Above and over all, gaunt famine coming closer and closer. In to-day’s paper our government of Tver is officially recognized as one of the ‘starving’ governments. . . .
It seems that our silent Alec almost lost his life as the consequence of a fiery speech he made, calling on his men to be true to their allegiance. He had come in from duty, taken off his sword and revolver, laid them on the bed, and sat down to his tea with the table between him and his arms. Suddenly a hand was laid on his shoulder, and a voice said, ‘ You are arrested in the name of the revolutionary government.’ He sprang for his arms, but a revolver was held at his head. As they marched him off, he saw the orderly of one of his friends and shouted to him to tell his comrades that he was taken. The soldier did not hear the words, and the escort told Alec they would shoot him if he called again; but he risked it, and the fellow rushed headlong to the mess.
Alec was taken to a sort of court-martial to be tried, the long narrow hall guarded by a double row of men with bayonets. Here he found two privates of his company, also under trial. In the middle of it there was an awful row, breaking of doors and windows — his chauffeurs, unarmed, trying to liberate him. He shouted to them that he gave himself up and did not wish any bloodshed, and begged them to wait patiently. He was finally taken off somewhere, but the chauffeur of the automobile refused, though a revolver was held at his head, to take Alec (his chief) till Alec himself told him to. Those days, as one of the newspapers expressed it, the road to the fortress was the ‘Officers’ Golgotha.’ Many were torn to pieces on the road, others shot, and a few arrived at their destination.
Alec fully expected execution, but he said it had no horror for him in the great dread of lynching. To his great surprise, he was very soon let off, and such an ovation as they gave him in the regiment!
William Beebe, Curator of Ornithology at the New York Zoölogical Park, has since the outset of the war devoted himself to aviation, and has recently visited the French and Flemish fronts, to study flying conditions there. Margaret Baldwin contributed to our issue of December last ‘ The Road of Silence,’ which evoked an unusual manifestation of interest among our readers and correspondents. Of the heroine of ‘A New England Portrait,’ she writes: ‘While I am sure enough her faith is far removed from modern liberality, I also feel pretty sure that it is far removed . . . from the Jonathan Edwards type. I have gathered this from things she has said in letters, and from the fact that she works hard on many a Sunday. She has said she was ashamed to, but never says “afraid to.” But this woman’s happiness, whether she knows it or not, I am convinced comes from work.’ Kirtley F. Mather, A.B. of Denison University, Ohio, and Ph.D. of the University of Chicago, is Professor of Historical Geology and Palæontology at Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario. William Charles Scully is an English hunter and explorer, who makes his headquarters in Cape Colony. At last accounts he was ‘going diamond-digging for a few months,’ under orders to lead an open-air life.
Claudia Cranston, a new contributor, is a young Texan, now connected with a New York magazine. In the past she has made her living in various ways, sometimes teaching music, again as a government clerk in Washington, and yet again teaching school at a saw-mill settlement in the great timber belt of Texas. A recent letter of hers vividly recalls that saw-mill yard, ankle-deep in white fine sand, with teams of sweating saw-mill mule perpetually straining across it, the whirr of the ‘planer,’ the creak of the log trains, the yellow. washed-out faces of the women who lived in the slatternly two-room huts built by the Company, the dirty bare feet and dirty faces of the children, with the white blank sheets of their minds waiting there for somebody to write the future on.
All Quakers [she writes in answer to the editor’s questioning] know each other; on Sunday they still ‘go home with each other to dinner’ after meeting, and it was a few Sundays ago that the story [‘A Thin Day’] was recounted at our house, having been told in meeting that morning at the old Gramercy Park Meeting House. So, in essentials, the story is quite true.
Harold Goddard Is Professor of English in Swarthmore College, Pennsylvania. George Edward Woodberry accomplished alike as poet, essayist, and critic, lives in Beverly, Massachusetts. Dallas Lore Sharp, Professor of English at Boston University, is a frequent contributor to our pages of familiar essays upon many subjects. Robert Wade sends to the Atlantic his first contribution, ‘Capt’n Tristram’s Shipbuilding,’ from Bradford, Massachusetts. From his earliest years he has been steeped in traditions of salt water. ’Harriet Beecher Stowe’ is the second in Gamaliel Bradford’s series of Portraits of American Women, others of which will appear in later issues. The first of the series, ‘Abigail Adams,’ was published in the Atlantic for September, 1917. At Mr. Bradford’s suggestion we print the following brief chronology of the important dates in Mrs. Stowe’s life. She was born Harriet Beecher, in Litchfield, Connecticut, June 14, 1811; married Calvin E. Stowe, January 6, 1836; wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin in 1851; visited Europe in 1853, 1856, and 1859. She died July 1, 1896. Laurence Binyon, keeper of prints in the British Museum, is an English poet, of a quality long since abundantly recognized.
Mrs. Winifred Brooke Irvine, whose narrative of her experiences in two munition factories pictures the war from a fresh angle, writes to the editor: ‘My story is absolutely true in every detail. I worked first of all in a shell-factory owned by the Canadian F. M. Co., and then in the H. and M. Fuse-Factory of Toronto,’ Wallace Notestein, Professor of English History at the University of Minnesota, was recently a member of the Committee on Public Information, and is now engaged on other work for the government.
One of the first prizes of life is the chance a man sometimes has to read his own obituary. We offer, then, to Captain James Norman Hall these spirited lines, absolutely expressive of the feeling of every Atlantic reader on the announcement of Hall’s death, and before the happy anticlimax of the tidings of his internment as a prisoner of war.
IN MEMORIAM — JAMES NORMAN HALL
Of your adventures high, your conquests bold,
Your sailings through the skies, beyond our ken,
The stories of the clouds which once you told.
For freedom and the truth, you told it well;
So well, it made us see and know the right
And move in spirit with you, through your spell.
We almost took them too, most felt the air
Rush past our cheeks, saw star-dust shift and move
Up in the blue; we traveled with you there.
Beyond our posts, within the foeman’s lines;
Believe it not; on eagle’s wings your way
Led to the skies, up, up, by God’s designs.
And blessedness and hope; your wings are sure;
With the great ‘missing’ of all time you cease
Your work; forever shall that work endure.
You downed the Boche, you led our banners on;
An ace at both, you won a glorious name
With gun and pen, your days a living dawn.
NEWARK, N. J., May 8. 1918
Thomas H. Dickinson, of the United States Food Administration, is at this writing on his way to France. Madeleine Z. Doty is a young woman who has just made an extraordinarily interesting trip around the world in war-time. We have seen no returned traveler who brings back a larger fund of picturesque and highly valuable information. To the Atlantic Miss Doty is a friend of several years’ standing, and readers will readily recall her paper on conditions in Germany just before our entrance into the war.
Echoes of the friendly duel between Mr. Scully and Colonel Roosevelt concerning the ways of the African ostrich have begun already to reach this office. The correspondent to whom we are indebted for the following letter brings a new element into the discussion of the question whether the ostrich is a suitable bird for a man to encounter.
CORNELLE UNIVERSITY
May 28, 1918
To THE EDITOR:—
MY DEAR SIR, — Having lately been Professor of Zoölogy at the University of the Cape of Good Hope, I take a lively interest in the ostrich controversy between my friend Mr. Scully and Colonel Roosevelt.
In general my money is on Mr. Scully, because he has lived over forty years in South Africa, and been stationed at magistracies in the wild deserts of Nema qualand and elsewhere, and can tell weird, tragic, true stories that will make your blood run cold — like that of the doctor in the opium trance tossing the hissing puff-adders.
Still, I admit that the Colonel scores many good points in the ostrich controversy; but I beg to point out a serious flaw in his argument, and to rise to Mr. Scully’s defence.
Mr. Scully says, that for a man to meet up with a wild ostrich in the wilderness is as dangerous as to encounter a lion. By no means, the Colonel retorts. All the man has to do is to lie down and the ostrich will merely sit upon him. Pray tell us, Mr. Scully, is that all a wild lion will do? Does a hungry lion only sit upon a man ?
The reader thinks, ‘Aha, the Colonel has got Mr. Scully now!’
But there is a weak spot in this seemingly forceful argument — a very weak spot: it is the patience of the ostrich.
I happen to have an Afrikander friend who was sat on by an ostrich. He told me about it It began early one morning. In a lonesome spot of the camp he saw a very cross cock bearing down upon him. He dropped, face down, and played dead. Mr. Ostrich sat upon him, making himself very comfortable. Then every little while he gave a vicious peck to the man, to try to rouse a sign of life. The man knew that, if he stirred in the slightest degree, he was done for. There he had to lie all through the morning, through the burning sun of midday and stifling heat of afternoon, absolutely motionless, hardly daring to breathe. At times the bird got up to stretch its legs, and sauntered around with a nonchalant air, as though tempting the man to rise and show a sign of life. Then Mr. Ostrich returned to his seat, gave a good peck and a dig or two with his claws, and settled down for a nap. He was in no hurry. His patience was as unflurried as in the early morning hours. It was not till late evening that the man was found by a searching party. He said he never should forget that experience. Nor does he ever venture alone to the distant camps. And he always carries a forked stick, of which, Afrikanders say, ostriches are deadly afraid, knowing how easily their necks can be broken by such a weapon.
Now in the wilderness, when will the ostrich’s patience exhaust itself? Remember, if the man stirs, he will be instantly killed. All the ostrich is waiting for is a sign of life. How long can the man lie motionless, almost breathless, on the burning sands, and with no water? Might not the brief agony of the lion’s spring be more merciful?
CORNELLE UNIVERSITY
May 28, 1918
To THE EDITOR:—
MY DEAR SIR, — Having lately been Professor of Zoölogy at the University of the Cape of Good Hope, I take a lively interest in the ostrich controversy between my friend Mr. Scully and Colonel Roosevelt.
In general my money is on Mr. Scully, because he has lived over forty years in South Africa, and been stationed at magistracies in the wild deserts of Nema qualand and elsewhere, and can tell weird, tragic, true stories that will make your blood run cold — like that of the doctor in the opium trance tossing the hissing puff-adders.
Still, I admit that the Colonel scores many good points in the ostrich controversy; but I beg to point out a serious flaw in his argument, and to rise to Mr. Scully’s defence.
Mr. Scully says, that for a man to meet up with a wild ostrich in the wilderness is as dangerous as to encounter a lion. By no means, the Colonel retorts. All the man has to do is to lie down and the ostrich will merely sit upon him. Pray tell us, Mr. Scully, is that all a wild lion will do? Does a hungry lion only sit upon a man ?
The reader thinks, ‘Aha, the Colonel has got Mr. Scully now!’
But there is a weak spot in this seemingly forceful argument — a very weak spot: it is the patience of the ostrich.
I happen to have an Afrikander friend who was sat on by an ostrich. He told me about it It began early one morning. In a lonesome spot of the camp he saw a very cross cock bearing down upon him. He dropped, face down, and played dead. Mr. Ostrich sat upon him, making himself very comfortable. Then every little while he gave a vicious peck to the man, to try to rouse a sign of life. The man knew that, if he stirred in the slightest degree, he was done for. There he had to lie all through the morning, through the burning sun of midday and stifling heat of afternoon, absolutely motionless, hardly daring to breathe. At times the bird got up to stretch its legs, and sauntered around with a nonchalant air, as though tempting the man to rise and show a sign of life. Then Mr. Ostrich returned to his seat, gave a good peck and a dig or two with his claws, and settled down for a nap. He was in no hurry. His patience was as unflurried as in the early morning hours. It was not till late evening that the man was found by a searching party. He said he never should forget that experience. Nor does he ever venture alone to the distant camps. And he always carries a forked stick, of which, Afrikanders say, ostriches are deadly afraid, knowing how easily their necks can be broken by such a weapon.
Now in the wilderness, when will the ostrich’s patience exhaust itself? Remember, if the man stirs, he will be instantly killed. All the ostrich is waiting for is a sign of life. How long can the man lie motionless, almost breathless, on the burning sands, and with no water? Might not the brief agony of the lion’s spring be more merciful?
Copies of ‘Neighbor Hans’ are still in active demand, though upwards of one hundred thousand already have been distributed.
‘It will interest you,’ writes a Southern friend, ‘to know that our little city, located in the pine belt of South Mississippi, has gone over her quota in this second Red Cross drive more than eight times, and the reports are still incomplete. I believe that “Neighbor Hans” was a potent factor in our victory.’ Send for more copies. The Atlantic Monthly Press will tell you that they cost ten cents each, or $5.00 a hundred.
Do our readers remember the name of Ernest Hart? With a wandering gentleman of this name, we had a singular correspondence, which we published in June. It will be recalled that this Mr. Hart sent, for our editorial consideration, an essay copied from the Atlantic, which was returned to him with a letter expressive of our feelings toward the profession of which we took him to be a member. In gentle expostulation Mr. Hart wrote us that the paper had been given to him by a friend in need — one Mr. May — for whom he is now looking diligently, having advanced him, in the trusting manner common to literary impostors, the sum of $20.00. Mr. May, it seems, has not been found, and the merry chase is on. Meanwhile, we have another story to tell.
Ernest Hart seems to be a name made for romance. As early as October, 1915, a certain ‘Doctor,’ or ‘Captain,’ Ernest Hart made his appearance. This physician or soldier, whichever he may have been, had once been in Russia, and it seems that in those days of the ancien régime he described himself as a captain in His Majesty’s Army, and an official of some importance in the British Red Cross. Armed with warm letters, he ingratiated himself with the American colony in Russia, and busied himself collecting recommendations, and, possibly, funds, with the idea of lecturing on American hospitals in Russia. He was making friends with extraordinary rapidity, when Sir George Buchanan, British Ambassador at Petrograd, made certain sharp inquiries regarding him. In consequence of this, the British Consul at Bergen was requested to withdraw recommendations which had been given. On October 28, 1915, Dr. Hart arrived in America.
For the sake of friends of the Atlantic who may fall in with him, we may say here that Dr. Hart is a man apparently about fifty years of age, five feet, six inches in height, and weighs about 125 pounds. His build is slight; his hair light brown; his face smooth as his manners. His nose, which we hesitate to call parrot-shaped, is very prominent; his eyes are blue, his face thin and drawn. His right hand shows the effect of some serious accident, and if you ask Dr. Hart, he will cheerfully tell you that, while hunting in West Africa, a careless black servant allowed his gun to explode, so that his master suffered bodily injury.
Let us now give other glimpses of Dr. Hart’s busy life. In the early part of 1915, he was wont to walk the streets of Moscow, dressed in khaki uniform and wearing, not without appearances of satisfaction, the badges of an officer of the Red Cross Society. In reply to inquiries, he stated that he had come recently from the Red Cross unit at Warsaw, and had worked in conjunction with Princess Bariatinsky and other ladies and gentlemen of her high circle. To the British Embassy at Petrograd he gave no information, but the British Red Cross unit in Poland had denied that Dr. Hart had anything whatever to do with them. Moreover the British Red Cross Society in London denied that Dr. Hart was known to them. In consequence of these reports, Dr. Hart was not allowed to connect himself with any charitable movement in which the British colony at Moscow was concerned.
But to return to Dr. Hart’s travels. On his arrival in this country, he came to Boston, where he gave lectures on Russia and the Red Cross. Thence he went to Bar Harbor, Maine, and remained there from December, 1915, until the very last day of July, 1916. So far as known he was writing for the local newspapers and lecturing in the interests of the Allies, and, incidentally, of himself. It seems to have been a poor way of knocking a living out of this hard world, and so our warrior, letting bygones be bygones, and saving for future use the money which should have been used for board and lodging for four months past, set out for pastures new.
It is an interesting comment on his undiminished social aspirations, that during his short stay in New York he attempted to secure election to the Century Club, but was not successful.
As we understand it, no specific charges have been made against Dr. Hart except regarding this trifle of board and lodging, and of posing as a Red Cross officer. For a time he was in the employ of a well-known publishing house in New York, and curious investigators may be interested in a contribution on Miss May Sinclair, which may be found in the literary files of the New York Evening Post. His claim to be considered a captain or a doctor was never substantiated. His present address is unknown.
So much for the stories of these Ernest Harts. We have never seen them together or separately, and speak from hearsay only. But it is interesting to know that both ‘Captain’ and ‘Doctor’ are: (1) Probably between forty-five and fifty; (2) About 5 feet, 6 inches — not taller; (3) Of lean and meagre aspect; (4) The right hand of each has been seriously injured, and each has been in the habit of wearing part of a black glove to conceal his misfortune.
To Red Cross workers throughout the country, we suggest that, if either ‘Doctor’ or ‘Captain’ Hart makes his appearance, he be watched with some care.