of the rival parliaments and presses. Two ounce gloves for the first, bare knuckles for the second."

Mr. S-B: I see your Britisher was a humorous fellow. This man was able to think for himself. The main thing, I believe, is to set people thinking. Couldn't much be done that way toward establishing perpetual peace?

NOBEL: My friend, I agree with what Taine has to say on the mental passivity of mankind, on their indifference and inertia. It is possible to stir the masses through pamphlets and fantastic ideas, but it is impossible to set them thinking. The modern proletarian is not a "political animal." I intend to leave after my death a large fund for the promotion of the peace idea, but I am skeptical as to its results. Wars will continue just the same until the force of circumstances renders them impossible. Mr. S-B: You are thinking of bankruptcy?

NOBEL: By no means. Neither the possibility of bankruptcy nor bankruptcy itself will ever prevent nations from waging war. A bankrupt nation can always wage war on paper money raised by internal loans, but we will hear the death knell of war on the day that the danger of figuring on the casualty list will be the same for general or soldier, when death will be hovering, impartially, over every man, woman, and child. Expose those at home to the same dangers as those who are in the field, and war will instantly stop.

Mr. S-B: How could such a miracle be accomplished?

NOBEL: The application of bacteriology to warfare is possible, and probable, considering the wickedness of mankind. Scientists are now studying the means of warding off epidemics. Some day they may set to work in an opposite direction, to find the most efficacious ways of spreading them. The reasoning of future generations may run as follows: "From the military point of view the killing of the greatest possible number of foes is the chief aim of war. Therefore, we cannot refrain from killing women and children if, thereby, the number of

adult male enemies can be reduced." I shudder when contemplating that pos sibility, remembering that 99 per cent of those stricken by the pulmonary plague, the one that is endemic in Manchuria, are hopeless cases. Imag. ine the possibility that even the germs of new infectious diseases, much more terrible than those we know, may be discovered. Imagine that mankind may make up its mind to wage war with the help of microbes. I see already the secret laboratories where great savants are busy preparing deadly germs. I see them bent on a task of finding a vaccine wherewith to preserve themselves and their countrymen from the deadly effects of the epidemic they are intent on letting loose on their neighbors. But they are not aware that the same spirit is rampant beyond the frontier. The results of such doings must necessarily be mutual extermination. I greatly fear that the perpetual peace of which Kant has spoken will be preceded by the peace of the cemetery. Wars in the future will act like a boomerang.

NOBEL (continuing): But there is one ray of hope, and a very bright one. The power to inflict mutually on themselves untold miseries must lead the nations toward compromise. Conditions will grow worse and worse. Consider the financial side of the question, the frightful situation that will result if nations continue to raise money by loans for armaments and for war, taxing not only the present generation but those to come, placing a great debt on the unborn. Consider the resulting social problems. The fatal end will be bankruptcy, but that will not keep nations from war. It has never prevented them, and it never will. Then with this new scientific warfare, this strange and deadly germ theory, whole nations will be wiped out. I am pessimistic about mankind. The only thing that will ever prevent them from waging war is terror.

DISTINGUISHED British surgeon

A said, in conversation, recently:

"After all, the greatest of human miseries, the most deadly of diseases, is one we cannot touch with a knife or save men from by drugs. I mean-boredom. There is more real wretchedness, more torment driving men to folly, due to boredom than to anything else. Men and women will do almost anything to escape; they will drink, drug themselves, prostitute their bodies, and sell their souls; they will take up mad causes, organize absurd crusades, fling themselves into lost hopes and crazy ventures; they will torment themselves and torture other people to escape the misery of being bored. Any one who discovered a cure for that would put an end to more misery, and tragedy than all of us doctors put together."

The conversation set me thinking along unexpected lines. I found that the distinguished surgeon was answering another question which I had been putting to myself fearfully for many years: Do we not all really enjoy disasters in which we are not personally involved? Do they not give a zest to the day's work? Is not the world on the whole better for them, less inclined to sloth, more alert, more expansive?

Of course, the rights or wrongs of the matter are obvious. We ought to be sorry over an Osgosh flood, to take a mythical instance; it ought to cast a real gloom over our day; we ought not to enjoy telling our friends about it. When we get down to the office in the morning, we ought not to feel that inward thrill of having something of tremendous mutual interest to discuss; We ought not, as we go about our morning's work, be conscious of looking forward to the latest news from

Osgosh. These things ought not to be. Yet they certainly are.

And so it continues for days: full accounts of the rescue work, firsthand stories, thrilling tales of adventure, the inevitable hero, the man and the hour in a grand meeting, a general rehabilitation of faith in the natural nobility of human nature. And then, later on, the pictures, and, later on still, the movies, and then the longer articles in the monthly magazines on flood prevention and editorials on them in the daily papers.

All the time, to countless thousands of people, there has come a great release from boredom; millions of jaded meals have had injected into them a new interest; family ties, strained to the utmost by sheer dearth of talkingpoints, have been relaxed and renew. ed; alertness and interest have spread themselves everywhere.

The amazing fact is true that the most terrible excess is necessary before the great spectacular disaster ceases to have its stimulating and happifying effect upon life. Any one who has been brought into intimate contact with disaster knows how true this is. Did any one ever see a picture of refugees camping out after some great fire or flood or earthquake where every last refugee was not smiling?

The man who walks ten miles with all the joy of the open road in his heart, might walk the next ten with an increasing sense of hardship, and the next ten through the mists of impending disaster. The man who tackled his first plate of ham and eggs with feelings of good will might look upon his second with a distinct disfavor, and upon his third with loathing. It is all a question of degree.

The other day I was reading an account of the San Francisco earthquake and fire and came across this passage:

"Every city and town and hamlet in the land gave unstintingly. As the destruction of San Francisco surpassed comparison, so the relief, springing spontaneously, almost without appeal, from every corner of the land, far exceeded everything of similar sort in history. Before night Secretary Taft had started army tents and supplies on their way to San Francisco. Congress put aside its legislative work and hastened to make the necessary appropriation.

"Commonwealths, municipalities, individuals every one forgot the things customary in a dominant wish to give. The railroads carried all supplies free, and gave the right of way over all regular traffic to the relief trains... The world had known nothing of sorrow so vast in all its history, and the heartstrings of the nation vibrated to it."

The whole nation was suddenly lifted "out of the common round of affairs." Imagine the exhilaration with which Secretary Taft started his cargoes of tents and supplies, and talked it all over with Mrs. Taft in the evening. Imagine the positive lust of relief with which Congress "put aside its legislative work," and the joy of the commonwealths, the m' nicipalities, and the individuals as hey "forgot the things customary in a dominant wish to give." And ith what sheer relief from the boreuom of the ordinary, did the Issengers in the side-tracked limited look out of the windows and watch the relief trains go by!

And all the time, in the "stricken" city, what was the tone and the temper? There was suffering and misery enough, but that was only among the few. The vast majority of San Franciscans got the kick of their lives out of it; and today, in retrospect after 20 years, they are still getting kicks out of it.

It is a notorious fact that so great was the stimulus afforded by the earthquake and the fire, so widespread the interest, so complete the mental readjustment demanded and enforced, that the hospitals were emptied, people

who had been ailing for years forgot their ailments, and for months the doctors had little or nothing to do. So desperate indeed was the position that many doctors were on the point of leaving the city when the timely ad vent of the bubonic plague early in the following year saved the situation.

Well, at this point I shall perhaps be reminded of the war. I shall be asked

if the war, the greatest of all calamities, really brought happiness to the vast majority of the human race. With no little diffidence and profound respect, I would answer, yes. The same argument holds good as in the case of the comparatively small calamity of the Osgosh flood.

In the war's early days, in most countries, the vast majority of people ate their first dish of ham and eggs amid wild songs of rejoicing and ring. ing of bells. Great numbers, a greater number than ever before, were forced to take a second and third and even a fourth helping until their souls loathed it. That is all.

war as

But even today countless millions of people look back upon the years of the a time wherein they found themselves, as a time wherein they could wake in the morning with the consciousness of having a man's or a woman's work to do, as a time wherein they forgot themselves and their littleness and found their real self and its greatness.

It seems to be true that, if we call an end to hypocrisy, we shall have to admit that there is a tremendous tonic effect in disaster, in every kind of disaster, from a dog-fight to a deluge; that we are cheered by it, and, to put the matter classically, thoroughly "pepped up" by it. What is the explanation? I instinctively and inevit ably go back to the remark of the dis tinguished surgeon: "Men and women will do almost anything to escape the misery of being bored." Perhaps the day may come when in the place of the tonic of disaster will be found the tonic of life.

A

N excellent new novel is Miss Tiverton Goes Out. It is a story of contemporary life in England and for some strange reason the woman who wrote it refuses to divulge her name. In an age when scores of writers ought to be ashamed to sign their productions, this beautiful work of art is by Pictor Ignotus. Whoever wrote it knew her business; it is a good family history, exhibiting really extraordinary power of characterization, plenty of humor, original observation, and an uncanny sympa. thy with the imagination of children. One cannot read three pages without feeling the intellectual grasp of the author. Although a different and in some respects more subtle piece of work, this new book takes its place alongside The Constant Nymph and The Hounds of Spring.

Arnold Bennett's Things That Have Interested Me will perhaps not interBest everybody, but it reveals the intense joy the author has in his meals, in his new clothes, in the business of living. Like all men who were forced to economize in youth, Mr. Bennett's ordinary routine in prosperity is widely exciting. Boldly to order a "room with bath," to know that he will receive a cordial welcome from bankers, shopkeepers, and tailors gives him a chronic flooding happiness that religion and art-well, why not?

Edward Bok's America Give Me a Chance! is a version for youthful readers of his two autobiographies. With the skill of the super-journalist Mr. Bok knows how to make every anecdote significant and diverting. And beneath the surface of his stories there is an earnest, passionate eagerness that every person should make the most of what talent he has.

For good summer reading I recommend three mystery tales of adventure:

The Flying Emerald, by Ethelreda Lewis; The Gleave Mystery, by Louis Tracy; and The Red Ledger, by R. L. Packard. These three carry my guarantee.

Our leading American novelist, Edith Wharton, publishes almost simultaneously a book on the art of creative writing called The Writing of Fiction, and an illustration of it called Here and Beyond, consisting of short stories from her own fine hand. Verbum sap.

Thomas Beer's The Mauve Decade is a volume which author and publisher have combined to make a work of art. The author's style is a finished product of beauty, preci on, and grace. I by no means share a of Mr. Beer's views, but I find such "enging wit healthily stimulating. auvise those who still love a well-w itten book to read this one.

I recommend the novel The Bat, made from the popular mystery play by Mary Roberts Rinehart (to whom I owe many hours of delightful reading) and Mr. A. H. Woods. I well remember the excitement in the theater when The Bat was going; well, the novel is fully as absorbing, and a previous knowledge of the play detracts nothing from the book. This is indeed a ripping story.

Another powerful antisedative is The Man Who Knew, by Patrick Ley. ton. An ingenious story of crime.

Three interesting little books on religion, are My Religion, by Arnold Bennett and others, These Sayings of Mine, by Lloyd C. Douglas, and Intellectual Vagabondage, by Floyd Dell. In the first Messrs. Bennett, Hugh Walpole, Sir Conan Doyle, Phillips Oppenheim, Compton Mackenzie, J. D. Beresford, I. Zangwill, H. de Vere Stacpoole, Henry Arthur Jones, and Rebecca West, give their individual

views on this eternal theme; various English bishops then reply, and I rejoice to see them firm in the faith.

Mr. Douglas's book, These Sayings of Mine, is a valuable, wise, and inspiring exposition of the teachings of Him who knew more about the human heart than Shakespeare. This is a volume I unreservedly recommend.

Floyd Dell will be somewhat surprised if by any choice he should see this page and find his Intellectual Vagabondage classed among works on religion. Yet it really belongs there. It is written with frankness, honesty, and literary skill; and is unconsciously one of the strongest arguments for religious faith I have ever read.

Among the new books that will be widely read, long remembered, and frequently consulted, is Mark Sullivan's Our Times, of which the first volume, The Turn of the Century (1900-1904), a tall copy with 610 pages and scores of invaluable illustrations, has already filled me with information, food for reflection, pleasant and poignant reminiscence, and a powerful admiration for the author's mind and method. This book is important, both for its intrinsic interest and value and for its revolutionary manner of writing history. It is absurd that "history" should mean merely battles between armies or politicians, and omit the inventions of science, the development of art, the habits, recreations, and fashions of the average citizen, as expressed in clothes, sports, songs, and slang. Mark Sullivan has not only written the history of an epoch, he has written an epoch-making book.

Another work of prime importance is The Intimate Papers of Colonel House: Arranged as a narrative by Charles Seymour. These two volumes, prepared by a man who combines scholarship with common sense, make an important contribution to political and military history. The hero is unique because his ambition was unselfish. It is easy enough to throw things at him, now that he has stepped out into the limelight. But the fact remains that he was actuated by patriotism, and that he is in his heart

of hearts an international pacifist. I cannot recall any other character in history who played such a role in such a way.

A third important book of the last few months is Carl Sandburg's Life of Abraham Lincoln. This biography closes with the departure of Lincoln in February, 1861, for Washington, and it is the early years, the formative years, of Lincoln's life that are given to us as only Mr. Sandburg could have given them. I regard this as one of the most important biographies of the century. It is invaluable, not only in the detailed information it gives but in the clear light it throws on the personality of Lincoln.

Dr. Wilfred T. Grenfell, one of the most useful men in the world, has written for the American Library As sociation a small pamphlet called Religion in Everyday Life. It is char acterized by that combination of spir ituality and practical wisdom that we rightly associate with the man him self. It is the 20th volume in a series published by the American Library Association, called Reading with a Purpose. Every booklet in the series is written by an authority, and the whole, taken together, offer a liberal education.

Ring W. Lardner has done it again in a series of short stories called The Love Nest. They are works of art, in which a knockout blow is delivered to many popular idols. Mr. Lardner is altogether too original to follow the popular trend of satire and hit the mythical rotarian complex. No; he transfixes the prizefighter, the profes sional baseball player, the hospital nurse, the motion-picture magnate, and the motion-picture actor. The wellknown fluency of barbers is turned to artistic advantage in the narration of a tragedy called Haircut. I look upon Mr. Lardner as the true successor in our fiction to O. Henry; and mean it as a compliment, for my admiration for that man of genius has not been lessened by time. If you who see this page feel that O. Henry was not a man of genius, please reread The Furnished Room.