The Contributors' Column
Hilda Wetherill’s Trading Post letters were addressed to her cousin, Miss Ruth Jocelyn Wattles, of California and Colorado, who describes the author as follows: —
Mrs. Wetherill and I grew up in Southwestern Colorado, where we were in contact with cliff-ruin excavations, Indians, and Indian legends. Hilda married into the Wetherill family, a family much interested in Indians, both living and historic. After a few years on the Pacific coast, Mr. Wetherill decided to return to the Southwest, and there he took charge of the Navajo trading post at Black Mountain. The Indians were not new to him, but living among them in their own country was very new and very interesting to Mrs. Wetherill. When her husband first went to Black Mountain, Mrs. Wetherill was advised that no woman could live in the house there. She insisted that she could, and she did. The wives of most of the traders on the Navajo Reservation fear and despise the Indians; Hilda made the most of her opportunities to know them — even made the opportunities. Her attitude was, hardships cease to be hardships if contacts are interesting.
Dr. Moritz J. Bonn has long been a professor of economics at Berlin. He has traveled and lectured all over the United States and written a book about us called Geld und Geist. His political convictions are of a distinctly liberal order. Eleanor Risley made her bow in the July Atlantic, where she gave us some account of her recent vicissitudes and adventures. Writing from her poultry farm in Arkansas, she vouches for the accuracy of ‘Snake Night up Posey Holler’ in these words: —
When I wrote that the sketch was ‘ sincere, ’ I used the wrong word. I meant ‘actual.’ This experience is actual in sequence and in each detail. The names and places are real. Alas, the people will never read my sketch. The conversations are given verbatim. Much that is written of these people seems to us written from too great a distance, and even their speech seems fabricated. The mountaineers are a reserved people, and only our poverty and our fiddle, perhaps, put us in close touch with them. While they are socalled lawbreakers, they have evolved their own ethical code toward law, sex, marriage, and all. I have read that there is a law against Snake Night, but they observe it as they do the law against moonshining. Perhaps the only interest these simple sketches may have is that they are actual experiences in this our America.
In a previous Atlantic paper Professor Salvador de Madariaga expounded his theory that the Englishman is the man of action, the Frenchman the man of thought, and the Spaniard the man of passion. His book, Englishmen, Frenchmen, Spaniards, will be published in this country by the American branch of the Oxford University Press this fall. ▵ It is hard to tell, but we wonder whether the ‘Sonnet Sequence’ of R. S. will not inherit permanence. There is no anthology on our own shelves which they would not ornament. ▵ As weekly essayist in the New Statesman and book reviewer for the London Daily News, Robert Lynd fills an important place in English journalism. ▵ The second installment of letters from the Marquis de Barbé-Marbois to his fiancée is memorable not only for its shrewd interpretation of the young republic, but also for its reference to ‘the vast college of Princeton, erected in favor of the Presbyterians.’ A College Professor has taught for a full generation at one of the larger Eastern universities. Walter Henderson Grimes tells us he is ‘a business executive equipped with some rather unusual tools.’ He holds a variety of university degrees, and understands from first-hand experience the tribulations of the laboring man. Pernet Patterson, a native of the Old Dominion, not only understands the negro, but appreciates him. Here is what he has to say on the subject: —
My negro mammy, whom I adored and who nursed me and stayed with us till I was ten, was a genuine conjure woman. She worked spells of love, hate, life, and death on the scores of negroes living about us. She held them in the hollow of her hand. Don’t laugh! But she actually, and I believe it to-day, had some power of spells and prophecy. I was born with negroes literally about me. I played only with them; fought them; loved and hated them. I earnestly believed in all their superstitions, their conjures. I myself actually made conjure ‘hands’ and ‘ticklers’ under Mammy’s directions, and purposed a limited practice of conjure tricks myself. At ten I ‘seeked’ religious conversion in the darky’s silent way, and mastered his ritual of conversion — actually ‘got over,’ I thought, in my boyish emotional fervor. During my period of ‘seeking,’ my mother thought me verging on some illness. My silence disturbed the whole family — but they never knew. My old negro friends come to see me now, and I go to them — mostly in their troubles. They love me deeply, and I them. The negro is a poet, a lover of the beautiful, an emotionalist. No better character reader lives. His senses are most keenly atune — to a hair trigger — to the white man’s moods and characteristics. Talking about ‘psychological approaches’! Why, the high-powered white salesman does n’t know even the A B C’s of it. The darky is a musician, an artist, a dramatist, and a born story teller. Crises and climaxes come to him, in their proper time and order, as naturally as breathing. His love for his sweetheart, wife, and children, hidden under a stoicism and brusquerie, is deep, deep rooted, and of a self-sacrificing kind.
Julian Hawthorne gives a tender account of his sister, who embraced the Roman Catholic faith and devoted half her lifetime to ministering to the sick in a hospital which her own genius created. Dorothy Leonard’s forbears were among the charter members of the Oneida Community, and she herself was born in Connecticut a few years before the Community disbanded. Captain Eustace Maude was born in Kent in England in 1848. For more than twenty years he served in the Royal Navy, which he entered as a cadet in 1861. His experiences included two years on the Royal Yacht Victoria and Albert, as well as more hazardous action in most quarters of the globe. After retiring from the Navy, he came with his wife to America, and now lives in British Columbia. ▵ At the present time a lecturer in banking in Columbia University, Ralph West Robey has served with the National City Bank in New York, has performed research work for the Federal Reserve Board, and has been ‘almost constantly involved,’ as he writes us, in some kind of financial investigation.
Just as the Federal Trade Commission is investigating the finance, engineering, and management of public utility corporations, Maurice R. Scharff points out some of the reforms which leaders of the industry will do well to adopt if they would avoid eventual nationalization. He himself is a consulting engineer with a long experience in the very business he discusses. ▵ Everyone knows who General William Mitchell is and what he has done in behalf of an efficient American air force. Having protested in this issue against our futile naval programme, he makes this disturbing and prophetic warning: —
Aside from the national defense phases of it, our Federal bureaucratic system needs revision. As at present constituted, there are so many departments, bureaus, boards, and commissions that it is impossible for the Executive to keep control of them, to know what is going on in them, or to have a uniform system of administration throughout. Inefficiency is increased, and the chance for dishonesty in administration becomes greater each year, because the heads of these bureaus and separate departments are practically turned loose to their own devices, without anyone to check up on them. With the increased centralization of power in Washington which has come about during this administration, we have this system run wild. It really means an oligarchical government in the end if allowed to continue.
At various periods in his distinguished career, Francesco Nitti, former Italian Prime Minister, has held most of the half dozen or so cabinet posts that his archenemy Mussolini now occupies.
Quakers and Catholics — two horns of one dilemma.
DEAR ATLANTIC, —
In recent months much attention has been paid both in public and private discourse to the religious qualifications of the Democratic candidate for the Presidency, but little or no attention has been paid to those of the Honorable Herbert Hoover.
That the religious issue is one that not only will play a large part in the coming campaign, but also is at present receiving more than its full share of attention, cannot be denied. Subtly or openly it is going the rounds of drawing-rooms and cigar stores. Only to-day the writer received a letter from a layman of influence in which is indicated the pressure that is being occasionally put upon Protestant ministers. This letter reads: ' I am at a loss to understand how any Protestant minister can extol the virtues and advocate the election of the Democratic candidate. If anyone should be against him, it would seem to me that it should be the leaders of the Protestant faith.’
The same type of reasoning is found among folk of every walk of life, a reasoning which is as one-sided as it is unsportsmanlike. This is a land which prides itself both on its religious liberty and on its spirit of fair play, a land which demands that opponents be evenly matched when they enter the ring; and yet for some reason true sportsmanship seems lacking in this great political battle. One man goes into the arena with an arm tied behind him by the bands of religious prejudice, and no voices are raised to demand the application of the same handicap to the other. In the name of American sport, let this be done.
It is plain to be seen by those familiar with the tenets of the Society of Friends, commonly called ‘Quakers,’ that the holding of the Presidential office by a man who is loyal to Quakerism can be fully as dangerous to the safety of the country as by a man of the Roman Catholic obedience.
First of all it should be stated that Hoover permits himself to be described as a Quaker, accepts the congratulations of the Palo Alto Quakers, and attends the Friends Meeting of Washington.
Secondly, although the subject matter of this letter was sent to him in brief on June 22, there has as yet been no reply, and no reliable denial of his Quakerism has been published to my knowledge up to this time.
That the Society of Friends is pronouncedly pacifistic in its teaching cannot be denied. This is one of their cardinal doctrines. For its sake, rather than to perform military duty, Friends have suffered persecution and imprisonment not only in ancient times but as recently as the late war. During it there were Quakers who would not even ride on trains because of the war tax on tickets, the payment of which would have been to them a compromising of their religious faith.
Is Herbert Hoover, who is now desirous of becoming the Commander in Chief of the American Army and Navy, going to repudiate his religion, or is he going to apply its principles to our national policy? One or the other must be done if he is elected to that de facto position next November.
In Faith and Practice, a volume published in 1926 officially by the Society of Friends of Philadelphia, the following pertinent statements are to be found: —
Page 30. A quotation from the London Yearly Meeting Epistle of 1744: ‘We entreat all who profess themselves members of our Society to be faithful to that ancient testimony, borne by us ever since we were a people, against bearing arms and fighting.’
Page 30. Quoting from ‘A Declaration from the Harmless and Innocent People of God, called Quakers, to King Charles II in 1660’: ‘We utterly deny all outward wars and strife, and fighting with outward weapons, for any end, or under any pretense whatever. This is our testimony to the world.’
Page 31. From the London Yearly Meeting Epistle of 1804, in reference to the same subject: ‘Our testimony loses its efficacy in proportion to the want of consistency amongst us.’
This page also records as an example to Friends that ‘in 1650 George Fox, the Founder (of Quakerism), replied to a troop of soldiers in the Parliamentary army, who insisted on choosing him as their captain: “I replied to them that I lived in the virtue of that life and power that took away the occasion of all wars.’”
Furthermore, this same page continues: ‘These statements representing more than two centuries of testing and experiences are characteristic of the Peace testimony which the Society of Friends has held with unbroken consistency and clear faith from its origin.’
Is Herbert Hoover, if the occasion arises, to shatter that record? During the late war he did not, but rather in a distinguished way conducted himself in accordance with Quaker principles.
Would he refuse ‘for any end,’even the internal peace of our land, to call out and use an armed force?
It is not only a question of foreign wars but of domestic safety. Could Herbert Hoover as a loyal Quaker have met the situation which confronted Lincoln as he met it? Or that which faced Roosevelt during the coal strike of 1902, when he made all preparations to send Federal troops into Pennsylvania? Or that which confronted Governor Coolidge of Massachusetts during the famous police strike?
These are questions fully as important as any papal claims. They are vital to our national well-being.
However, the horns of the dilemma in all fairness must not be too sharply drawn. There have been men known as ‘fighting Quakers.’ The history of these is interesting.
During the American Revolution, no longer desiring to be called Tories as were their coreligionists, these men gave up all hope of making their faith and action agree. They thereupon withdrew from the Society of Friends and formed a new society. This was known as the Society of Free Quakers and met, unless memory fails, at Fourth and Arch Streets, Philadelphia.
Others lacked the same degree of conviction and loyalty to Quakerism. During the Revolution and subsequent wars they did not withdraw. Consequently they were manfully ‘read out of Meeting.’ The records are quite full of such cases.
In comparatively recent years, Quakerism having experienced a serious decline in membership, a third class of fighting Quakers has appeared. These bore arms, did not voluntarily withdraw, and were not cast out. Perhaps they were rather distantly connected with the Society. Perhaps Quakerism lacked some of its old robustness, or perhaps the Society had forgotten that those concerned were Friends. In any case there was no change on the part of the Quakers of their teaching, for which might be said by some, ‘All honor to them.'
If, then, Herbert Hoover is a ‘fighting Quaker,’though his records in the war with Spain and the World War do not show it, to which of these three classes would he prefer to belong? To those who withdrew, to those who were ‘read out,’ or to those who were forgotten or ignored? And, again, would the Society of Friends care to ‘ read out of Meeting’ a President of the United States who as Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy might be said to cause their testimony to be lacking in efficacy? Could he after all be ignored?
If the Democratic convention gave us one religious predicament, the Republicans were not far behind.
Governor Smith has given us his answer. Let Herbert Hoover not hesitate to do the same. It will show us just what kind of Quaker he is, whether his religious principles are entirely secondary and easily set aside, or whether his Quakerism is real.
Possibly, then, each man will have one arm tied, and the best one win in a fair fight. Anyhow, let us hope so.
JOHN W. GUMMERE
Charles D. Stewart’s ‘Pastor of the Bees,’ in the July Atlantic, is responsible for this exchange of letters: —
PHILADELPHIA, June 29, 1928
DEAR ATLANTIC, —
One day, emboldened by the presence of a visiting bee man, I opened a hive in order to destroy superfluous queen cells and came upon an amazing incipient tragedy just in time to avert it. We had taken out the first frame and had found there the beautiful queen bee in the direst distress, fighting for her life against the wickedly treacherous attacks of a half dozen of those who were usually her devoted slaves. We both knew enough of the habits of bees to realize that this was probably the rarest scene that can be enacted in beedom. Of course we instantly flecked away her enemies and then, with delight, watched the gallant queen recover her powers. For a few moments she indulged herself — to judge from the convulsive swaying and heaving motions of her long, graceful body — in muchneeded, panting breath; then, swept back to duty by that mysterious compelling force that makes of every bee a tiny fury of action and accomplishment, she pushed to the forefront of her working subjects. Before we had demolished all the queen cells but one and hurriedly closed the hive, she was darting here and there as if nothing had happened.
I at once began to regret volubly the fact that we had n’t been able to put an end to the murderers, but the bee man insisted that even if they already had reëntered the hive they were ‘scattered’— and as incapable of getting together again as they were of deliberately planning a renewed attack. According to nature they would, he declared, return instantly and unconcernedly to frenzied work, as their queen had done.
Why did they attempt the atrocity? Who knows? Made mad, perhaps, by the intense premature heat? Or angry because they wanted to swarm and their queen would n’t? As no cell containing an unhatched queen showed even a hint of coming life, there was no apiarian excuse that either of us knew for the deed so nearly consummated. Probably but a half minute had stood between the shining bronze lady and a deplorable death that would have left the hive without a leader — and in another half minute I should have missed a sight that I am certain would have been a rare treat even for Henri Fabre and that many a bee expert has never witnessed at all!
In the animal and insect worlds, the creatures — less modest than we — accept the miracles that continually happen to them as the natural results of their own instinct and ability; they recognize no supernal interference or assistance even in such a totally unexpected life-saving rescue as we accomplished on behalf of the helpless queen bee.
I wish that Mr. Stewart would tell me if her predicament or her rescue (or both) was due to my bungling neglect or to a sufficing measure of skill? Or would he say that the untoward situation occurred entirely by chance and that its satisfactory outcome was equally haphazard?
I admit, however, that I yearn to have some modern Pastor of the Bees assure me that we two, the bee man and I, came down the ages to arrive at last — together — at the exact moment to save purposefully the life of one of God’s creatures!
Yours sincerely,
ELIZABETH STANLEY TROTTER
HARTFORD, WISCONSIN
July 5, 1928
DEAR MRS. TROTTER, —
From all that I have ever heard in song or story, I would hazard the guess that these bees made a mistake, but that there were causes of excitement which led to such a remarkable mistake. It was possibly a summer’s day when robbing was going on; a strong, piratical colony was sacking this hive and there was much anger and consternation; in this juncture the queen, always of a timid disposition and easily frightened, acted in such a way that some of the bees, in their blind fury, took her for a robber. Anyone who acts like a suspicious character is likely to get into trouble in any community. This is a rare occurrence, quite contrary to all the rules of bee conduct — but yet it has happened, and so I hazard this diagnosis of the case.
It may have been due to your ‘bungling,’ as you suggest, as, for instance, if you left some honey about the place, or some drippings of comb, especially at a time when nectar was scarce; and a colony, getting a taste of this something-for-nothing, turned freebooter and began war upon another colony. As you have had some familiarity with the bees, I need not tell you that robber bees are one of the constant hazards of the profession, and the beekeeper has to be careful. Getting something without honest labor seems to demoralize a bee completely and upset her morals.
I may add that this conjecture is not an ingenuity of my own, but is backed up by an experience of Langstroth, as edited by Dadant, in which he speaks of the excitement in time of robbing and says, ‘We have known bees to ball their own mother in such circumstances, for queens are of a timid disposition and easily frightened.’ But it is an unusual thing and almost unheard of in bee life.
You further inquire whether you and the visiting bee man came just in the nick of time to save the queen; whether, in fact, you ‘came down the ages to arrive at last — together — at the exact moment to save purposefully the life of one of God’s creatures.’
This question, somewhat Calvinistic in its trend, requires that I speak a little more learnedly, and lengthily, about bees. As you are probably aware, no bee in the swarm will use its sting to kill or harm a queen bee. When they want a superfluous or intruding queen killed they let another queen do it. They never raise their hands, so to speak, to royalty; for such a high act of killing is the prerogative of royalty itself.
If, for instance, two new queens hatch out at the same time from queen cells, the other bees will allow them to settle the supremacy by a duel, the successful queen finally inserting her specially constructed sting under the corselet of the other. And the victor then goes and runs her curved scimitar through all the queen cells which have not hatched, thereby cutting off all future queens in their cradles. It is a merciless affair. No common bee would undertake this function of stabbing a queen. But yet the common herd resent the intrusion of a stranger and do get rid of her by the process of ‘balling.’ Consequently, if you have sent away a dollar or two to get a tested Italian queen from a queen raiser, you must be careful, and indeed diplomatic, in introducing her to the swarm. She will probably come in a little cage of wire netting so small that the bees can reach in and touch her. And you will do well to keep the caged queen in the hive for twenty-four hours or longer, so that she will have time to take on the odor of that particular swarm and the bees may have time to grow accustomed to her. Otherwise they will ball her. This consists in forming a close, tight cluster about her in the form of a ball ; and, as they keep this formation persistently, the strange queen dies of hunger or lack of air.
Here you will find an answer to your query as to whether you arrived at the exact moment, the very instant in all time, to save the life of the queen. I would say that in so thinking you draw the line a little too close, a little too Calvinistic in trend. But you arrived at the right time in a more general way. What you have related is exceptional and rare. I hope that my unfavorable report on your final query will not dampen your ardor for bee study or seem to detract from your interesting letter.
Respectfully,
CHARLES D. STEWART
In the July Atlantic Ian Colvin gave his version of a poem by Tsin-Tsan embodying the Chinese belief that the spirit actually leaves the body in dreams. One of our readers sends us Cramner-Byng’s sensitive translation of the same piece of verse: —
vague light breath of Spring
Came wandering and whispering, and bade my
soul take wing.
A hundred moonlit miles away the Chiang crept to sea; O keeper of my heart, I came by Chiang’s ford
to thee.
It lingered but a moment’s space, that dream of
Spring, and died;
Yet as my head the pillows pressed, my soul had
found thy side.
Oh! Chiang Nan’s a hundred miles, yet in a moment’s space
I’ve flown away to Chiang Nan and touched a
sleeping face.
Yours very truly,
CHARLES W. DAWSON
With Señor de Madariaga again in our midst we seize the opportunity to quote from a letter written us by one of our Parisian subscribers. Inhabitants of the American Heaven ought to be in a strategic position to check up on some of this gentleman’s theories and may even be excused for getting in a dig at the countrymen of Beethoven, Goethe, and Baron von Huenefeld.
DEAR ATLANTIC, —
As you have perhaps remarked, there is sometimes more wisdom to be found compressed within the discarded baggage of a careless, halfforgotten proverb than between the covers of a bright, intense new book.
Acent ‘ Englishman, Frenchman, Spaniard,’by Salvador de Madariaga, which I read with keen enjoyment in your April issue, there is an old French saying which goes, —
Je parlerais;
Le latin à Dieu,
Le français à toi,
L’anglais aux oiseaux,
L’espagnol aux femmes,
Et l’allemand à mon chien!
All of which would seem to bear out Señor de Madariaga’s contentions concerning the three races, if language can be thought of as an indication, or outgrowth, of the character of a people. Your author minimizes the helpfulness of language as a keystone to understanding. To me it seems to be much more than a surface thing.
‘If I knew many languages, I would speak Spanish to the ladies.’ And who has not thought, while listening to its soft, gracious cadences, how admirably suited it is for love-making? The Spanish are predominantly passionate, says our critic. They sit by and passively allow life to flow through them, become a part of them. Thus it is that their language is like the refrain of a far-away song — a life song, with bold, round vowels; but always, and above all, a tender song, as the beginnings of love and life must ever be.
‘I would speak English to the birds.’ This, perhaps, needs more than a transient explanation. At first glance it might seem to quarrel with the idea that our Englishman is a man of action, yet it is not an entirely contrary point of view. He is a man of action, true, but a sociological, self-restrained one. The author best explained the Englishman’s heart when he said, ‘Thus, under the armor of self-control, the strong passions of the Englishman live a secluded life — if anything, stronger for their seclusion.’ Poets find the English language unrivaled for the expression of verse, with its vast wealth of words, borrowed or coined, with its swing and its cadence, and, most of all, with its wide elasticity, which fits with equal aptitude the mood of a storm, the beating of waves, or the song of a bird!
‘If I knew many languages, I would speak French to you ’ — because it is the language of friends. Just as the Frenchman is essentially a man of thought, theoretical to the point of definitely defined and mathematically ordered regulations for living, his language is reasonable and well suited to discussion. In fact, with the additional virtue of its frankness, its naïveté, it is charming for conversation. Perhaps that is the reason the grands salons have almost always accepted it as the common tongue. It may be because of his mental freedom that the Frenchman has evolved a language which is the universally accepted ‘intimate’ form of expression. At any rate, like the sum in addition, there it is!
You see that Senor de Madariaga is in entire agreement with my old French proverb concerning the Englishman, Frenchman, and Spaniard. It only remains now for him to diagnose ‘mir — und Gott.’
Always your stimulated reader,
SUSANNA S. MOODY
A contemporary Juvenal, traveling in the West Indies, seeks (and finds) inspiration among Uncle Sam’s happy Virgin Island subjects:—
SERENADED BY ST. THOMASANS
Playing tunes on cullenders,
Pots and pans and glistening glass,
Few orchestras could surpass —
When they are not shooting craps,
Shoot such kindly folk as you
For the old Red, White, and Blue.
EDWARD JAMES IRVINE