in cans, which serve the dining-room during the winter. Winter gardens are also maintained, so that the students have fresh vegetables the year around.

Pupils who graduate from the consolidated schools come to the County Agricultural High School. Some of the consolidated schools add one or two years of high school work, but the main high school work of the county is done by the County Agricultural High School, at Poplarville.

This school functions throughout the entire county because the special officers above enumerated make their headquarters at this school and their work radiates from it. Mr. Jacobs, the principal of the Agricultural High School, knows the whole county, as indeed do all of the teachers, for they visit the consolidated schools, co-operate in their work, and become acquainted with the people through community schools,

which are held from time to time and which are attended in large numbers by the parents.

I visited some of these schools one day and spent some hours at the County Agricultural High School. There I met a woman who was teacher of the domestic arts. She told me of the beginnings of her work. She came to her task after graduation from the excellent State College for Women at Columbus and after a year's work at Teachers College in New York. On arrival, she asked herself: "What good will it do the people of this county if I simply teach here at this school the things which I have learned at the two excellent institutions where I got my own training? I must first know Pearl River County." She then secured a leave of absence in order that she might live in the county, boarding around for some months. She thus became acquainted with the people and

learned the exact condition of domestic arts in the county. Among other things. she learned that there was great infant mortality, that people who were ill suffered more from the discomforts of the sick-room than from the disease, that wells were ill located, that food was limited in variety and not always cooked in such a way as to conduce to good health. By going about she gained the confidence of the people, the most difficult thing being that of convincing mothers that she could teach them anything about the care of babies. Finally, she found a mother ill of tuberculosis with a young babe in her arms. After caring for the mother, screening the windows, showing how to protect the family against infection, providing a better bed, and prescribing a diet, she said, "May I have the baby?" And the mother with great joy gave her babe into her care. She brought this child to school, where she taught her class of forty girls how to wash and dress the

baby, how to prepare its food, how to care for its little ailments, and how to love it. The thing was spectacular and attracted attention all over the county, for the baby became strong and lusty. On Saturday afternoons mothers came from all over the county for counsel and advice. The teacher, knowing her own limitations, secured on certain Saturday afternoons the presence of a trained child doctor who conducted at Poplarville a clinic for mothers and babies. As a result of the success of this venture, the advice of this teacher and of other teachers regarding rural life was sought by people throughout the county, so that, as the State Superintendent says, "the school is more and more becoming a laboratory for solving all community problems."

A hospital bed was set up at the school and the girls were taught how to make a bed with the patient in it, how to assist in the offices of nature, how to prepare and serve food for invalids, and

659

the people of Sally's street and shop mates.

Mr. Swinnerton is not emotional or sentimental, and he cares little whether his readers are shocked or not. He is bent on getting the lines of his picture true to nature and life. Whether we like the picture or approve its characters is to him a minor matter. Sally neglect, ignorance, ambition, arrogance, lack of any moral sense, combine to make a strange little scamp, not lovable or admirable, but singularly natural and consistent.

In

"Shallow Soil" was written long before Knut Hamsun's "Growth of the Soil." It probably will rank next to that work, for it seems to go deeper into human nature and character than "Hunger" and to be simpler and clearer of literary fog than "Pan." Its subject is that epoch (or episode) in Norwegian development when the success of its dramatists and poets had gone to the nation's head, so to speak-when plain commercial honor and political integrity were despised by the new temperamental aristocracy. As a Norwegian critic remarks, it not only gives the "best description available of life in Christiania toward the close of the century," but it is "a book of exquisite lyric beauty, of masterly psychology, and finished in artistic form, rich in idea and life."

The true-heartedness and manliness of the merchant who sees his fiancée lured away from him is admirably contrasted with the tempter, a despicable poet of genius but of no honor, a patronizer of those he is not fit to shake by the hand, a sycophant and a vainglorious egotist. The novel appeals honestly but not sentimentally to one's sympathy. It has not only good art, but fine human feeling.

A romance quite unlike these three modernistic examples of fiction writing is Mr. Sabatini's "Scaramouche." This is a tale of the early days of the French Revolution. It has dash, action, and incident. Withal it is excellently written. The author is careful to make history his background only and to keep his characters well to the front. His André Louis Moreau is all the better for not being a perfect person. Indeed, he plunges into the fight against the nobles not from any sympathy with republicanism but because one noble (who, by the way, turns out to be his own father) has killed his dearest friend. Once in the struggle, his fervid oratory creates such a sensation that he has to flee for his life. He becomes a wandering actor with one of those odd companies of dramatic improvisators still extant in France at that time, and thus he gets his nickname "Scaramouche." Later he becomes a pupil of a famous fencing master, so that when he is elected to the

French Assembly his skill in the duel is

his greatest asset.

The tale is simply alive with incident. It is as brilliant a specimen as we have had for years of the "sword and cloak"

RAFAEL SABATINI

fiction. It will appeal to those readers who sometimes lament that they cannot longer find books of the type the elder Dumas poured forth so brilliantly.

R. D. TOWNSEND.

THE NEW BOOKS

HISTORY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY EVOLUTION OF THE BUDGET IN MASSACHUSETTS, 1691-1919. By Luther H. Gulick. (Special Studies in Administration.) The Macmillan Company, New York. $2.50. Mr. Gulick's scholarly volume records the events leading up to the present budget system in Massachusetts. At this time, when National budget reform is a household word, the publication of this book is distinctly timely.

WAR BOOKS

SEABORNE TRADE. (History of the Great War Based on Official Documents.) Vol. I. By C. Ernest Fayle. Longmans, Green & Co., New York. $7.50.

This book, the first of a series of three volumes, constitutes a section of the "History of the Great War" prepared in England by direction of the Historical Section of the Committee of Imperial Defence. As a contribution to history

it marks a new departure in that it is purely a study of the effect of naval operations on trade. Although the attack and defense of sea-borne commerce has in every war been one of the primary objects of naval effort, in the Great War the ability to maintain the uninterrupted flow of both import and export trade was the index of success or failure, especially in the case of Great Britain.

Mr. Fayle gives us a brilliant study, based to a very large extent on unpublished material in the files of the Britof Shipping, and various intelligence ish Admiralty, Board of Trade, Ministry sections, of the effect of naval activity

on the flow of sea-borne trade. He traces the effect of Germany's attack on Allied commerce during the period when that attack was carried on chiefly by cruisers in remote waters, in losses of ships and cargoes, delay and dislocation

of commerce, and analyzes its effect in shortage of supplies and rising prices. A detailed account is given of the effect on world commerce of Great Britain's activities in naval protection and in the various measures, such as the state insurance scheme, which tended toward the maintenance of the necessary import trade.

BIOGRAPHY RECOLLECTIONS OF THE REVOLUTION AND THE EMPIRE. By the Marquise de la Tour du Pin. Edited and Translated by Walter Geer. Brentano's, New York. $5. NAPOLEON THE THIRD.

By Walter Geer.

Brentano's, New York. $5. Madame de la Tour's interesting diary, put into English by Walter Geer, especially the description of her experiences in America, is far more intimate and vivid than is Mr. Geer's own necessarily soberer account of the days of the Second Empire. Both volumes should be read to gain a proper survey of the France of a troubled century, crowded with events important in shaping the world's history. The two books cover the period between 1770, when the Marquis de la Tour du Pin was born, to 1873, when Napoleon III died. Mr. Geer is not blind to the Emperor's faults, but he insists on the man's genuine imperial qualities. Napoleon III stands forth in these pages neither an overrated hero nor an impossible demon.

DAYS BEFORE YESTERDAY (THE). By Lord Frederic Hamilton. The George H. Doran Company, New York. $9.

The author writes with simplicity and sincerity. He is chiefly occupied with telling us about his mother, whose portrait is the appropriate frontispiece to the book. She appears holding her grandson's grandson. We enjoy the accounts of her life in those days when she and her husband drove their own carriage across Europe and when the traditional ties between high and low in England were not marred.

ESSAYS AND CRITICISM BATTLE OF THE BOOKS IN ITS HISTORICAL SETTING (THE). By Anne Elizabeth Burlingame. B. W. Huebsch, New York. $2. A study of the development in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries of a critical attitude toward the classics and a record of the intellectual emancipation from their authority in science, philosophy, and literature. Miss Burlingame has skillfully brought together selections from Montaigne, Bacon, Galileo, Descartes, Hobbes, Temple, Bentley, Swift, Perrault, and Fontenelle and sketched the struggle of the modern mind toward liberty. With great discrimination and high scholarship the author has recorded one of the most dramatic and far-reaching episodes in the life of reason.

LOVER OF THE CHAIR (A). By Sherlock Bronson Gass. The Marshall Jones Company, Boston. $2.50.

A series of essays dealing with art, literature, and life in a charming and occasionally humorous vein and illuminated by the philosophic questioning of a central figure who by a process of distillation finally achieves an integrated philosophy.

THE CHILD AND THE

"W

MOVIE

HAT is it you don't like about the movies?" I asked my neigh bor's thirteen-year-old lad, who had just finished saying that he didn't care for the things they were showing at the local picture house. "Why, it's this way," he began. "The little children can't read the headings fast enough to make head or tail out of them, and so do not understand what it is all about; then the serial pictures are too exciting-many of the kids go home and dream about the episodes at night; and those old foolish love stories!" One could read the disgust on his face. "They never show us the things we would really like."

"Oh, mountain climbing, stories of adventure, funny pictures that make the children laugh, fairy stories. But not fairy stories like 'Jack and the Beanstalk," he hastened to add. "Mother took us to see that, and I closed my eyes during part of it."

No

Here is the opinion of an average American boy of thirteen whose taste has not yet been ruined by the lurid realism of the movies and who has a definite idea as to what he wants. A great deal is being said and written on the subject of motion pictures, and some there are who contend that the children want just the things that are being shown at the movie theaters; that they want exciting serial stories, love stories, the vulgar comedies, and so on. greater injustice could be done our American kiddies than this gross misrepresentation of the truth. An interesting experiment for those wishing a spontaneous expression from the children on the subject of motion pictures would be to perch themselves outside of a public school, say, at the noon recess, when the children are joyously piling out of the school, and as they run by you halt one or two of them and ply them with a couple of questions on the subject. Before you are through a crowd of kids will have congregated on the scene, and you will be astounded by the revelations of the mental processes going on in the minds of these youngsters.

It is said that over thirteen million people-men, women, and children-attend the motion-picture houses daily, and over two million dollars are collected daily in box-office receipts. What do these thirteen million souls see on the "silver sheet" each day? If a statistical record could be made of the nature of the pictures shown, it would undoubtedly reveal the fact that the bulk of the filmed stories are nothing more nor less than the adventures of the Diamond Dicks and Jesse Jameses of twenty years ago, vitalized and visualized for vastly larger audiences than ever could have been reached by the paper-covered detective and wild West stories of those days.

There isn't a motion-picture house where a mother can safely take her

children at random, or even when a supposedly good children's picture has been advertised, without risking the danger

of having some impossible, foolish, hair- STEPH

raising picture thrown in.

And are the pictures that are often advertised as being good for the children always dependable? How many people have gone to see a classic, with happy memories of the book and author, and found, to their sad disappointment, immortal scenes and situations desecrated and mutilated beyond recognition! How many mothers have sorely regretted taking their impressionable eight and ten year olds to see Robert Louis Stevenson's "Treasure Island"! A similar experience was in store for those mothers who hopefully trotted their youngsters over to the theater to see "Jack and the Beanstalk." A child's sense of justice may be satisfied at having the giant's head cut off, but the effect of visualizing this on the screen proves quite disastrous to its mental equilibrium.

How many times, mothers, have you found yourselves sitting in a motionpicture house, with your youngsters beside you, absolutely ashamed of being there unable to give your child a satisfactory explanation of what the picture was all about? You and Dad wouldn't talk of these things in the presence of your children-would you? You want your children to grow up with wholesome concepts of life. You want them to have faith in simple, every-day values. You face the problems of sex tremulously. You yearn to instill your children with a reverence for sacred relationships. As they grow older, you become ever more anxious to guard your boys and girls from the pitfalls that surround adolescents.

The evils are so apparent to all that argument on the question seems almost unnecessary. What is the solution?

For the child there is an immediate solution. There is one fundamental, important change that can and should be worked out at once. It is the recommendation contained in the report of the special committee of the New York State Conference of Mayors, adopted by that Conference at Albany, on Febru ary 24, 1920. "Special performances," says the report, "for children and young people are the only permanent solution of a community motion-picture problem."

Through the efforts of various groups in the community (with the co-operation of the local motion-picture house where possible) special, carefully selected programmes for children should be arranged. This is not an idle dream. It is practical and can be worked out at once. It needs but the combined efforts of parents, teachers, and all public-spirited citizens to get together and work out a plan whereby the children of the community, rich and poor alike, may be provided with a clean, wholesome, artistic, and joyous form of visual entertainment.

DOROTHY C. Fox.

CONTRIBUTORS'

GALLERY

TÉPHANE LAUZANNE, editor of the Paris "Matin," has contributed frequently to The Outlook.

BEVERLEY NICHOLS

is a student at Balliol College, Oxford. He entered the army in 1917 at the age of eighteen. and became a lieutenant of infantry. He has recently made an extensive tour of the United States as secretary to Sir Arthur Everett Shipley, Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge.

HARLES HENRY MELTZER has had a long and varied career as foreign correspondent for the New York "Herald," and has contributed frequently to The Outlook.

L

YMAN ABBOTT is Editor-in-Chief of The Outlook.

ENRY W. KINNEY

Hlives in Tokyo,

where he is assistant editor of the "TransPacific Magazine." He was born in the Hawaiian Islands, was graduated from the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, and did graduate work at the University of California.

R

OBERT D. TOWNSEND is Managing Editor of The Outlook.

W

ALLACE BUTTRICK, President of the General Education Board, is a graduate of the Rochester Theological Seminary and of the University of Rochester. He is a member of the Rockefeller Foundation, International Health Board, and the China Medical Board.

RANCIS ROGERS has been a singer and

FRANCIS ROGERS nie since 1898. Under

the auspices of the Y. M. C. A., during the war Mr. Rogers by his singing and his wife, Cornelia Barnes Rogers, by her recitations, rendered a wide and useful service to the men of the American Expeditionary Forces.

ANNAN

JAAFERS lives in

Summit, New Jersey. He is a graduate of Hamilton College, and has held school principalships in New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts, and Vermont. He was formerly with the Education Depart

ment of the Century Company.

WINFIELD BROWN writes out of his

W experiences as a master at Middle

sex School, Concord, Massachusetts.