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On reading Emily James Putnam's narrative, 'Helen in Egypt,' which appeared in our April issue, there are doubtless many who shared her wonder that Helen could have stayed so comfortably in Egypt, leaving Troy untroubled. Mrs. Putnam tells us that Herodotus managed the sequel thus:

The Egyptians told Herodotus that an army set out from Greece in the belief that Helen was at Troy, and that they refused to believe Priam's denial of the fact, but fought until the sack of the city revealed that in fact she was not there.

Herodotus adds: 'I am myself inclined to believe their account from the following considerations: if Helen had been at Troy the inhabitants would, I think, have given her up to the Greeks, whether Alexander consented to it or no. For surely neither Priam nor his family could have been so infatuated as to endanger their own persons, their children, and their city, merely that Alexander might possess Helen. . . But the fact was they had no Helen to deliver, and so they told the Greeks, but the Greeks would not believe what they said.'

...

In Helen's last speech to Priam I tried to forecast this; Troy was doubtless destroyed by persons (probably Greeks) who wanted to control the trade-route from the Black Sea. This was Agamemnon's game, and he used the romantic tale of Helen as an emotional appeal to help his political aims. Helen is aware of this, and tells Paris he will have a war with the Greeks on his hands whether she is at Troy or not.

In the Column for March we printed an appealing letter from a reader who had found in our November article, 'GoodNight, All,' a situation touchingly similar to her own. The genuineness of this letter, which came to us unsigned, has evoked certain offers of friendly assistance from our audience which we shall gladly forward to the author if she will trust us with her identity.

Apposite in its relation to Mr. Sencourt's present paper on Mussolini is this account of the roots and growth of Fascism.

DEAR ATLANTIC, —

I have been interested in reading Mr. Murphy's article on Fascism in your December number, and also the answer to it in the Contributors' Column for March.

I don't think either of the writers has grasped the real significance of Fascism; they have not

gone far enough back to find the historical roots of the movement. When the Italian States became 'United Italy,' Cavour, the great Italian statesman, said: 'We have made Italy; now we must make Italians!'

His penetrating mind had at once seen that the citizens of the new Italy were not really Italians, and could not possibly become so for many years; in fact, it took more than fifty years and was then accomplished only by the profound influence of the Great War on Italians.

You must remember that for hundreds of years the inhabitants of Italy had feeling only for the small State (like Palermo, Tuscany, and so forth) in which they lived. These habits of mind are not to be wiped out in a few years. Long after United Italy was a political fact, its citizens had very slight bonds of union. The Great War, by mingling all classes of Italian men and men from all over Italy in one army against the enemy, accomplished the miracle of making a real Italian nation. After the Great War, the chaos that prevailed in Italy gave these new Italians a useful lesson in the need for a strong, capable, patriotic government that put the good of the united country before all private interests. Then Fascism appeared and the new nation of Italy was born. J. D.

In a paper entitled 'One Farming Problem,' by Glenn W. Birkett, which appeared in the February Atlantic, an unwitting injustice was done to the domestic-science classes in the Kansas State Agricultural College. Their statement, quoted in the article, that sustaining meals could be prepared for hard workers for twenty-five cents per day, was reprinted from a copy of their publication of over twenty years ago. The figure mentioned was obviously absurd.

In other respects the paper was applauded for its sound doctrine, as this comparison of the horse and horse power would indicate. CHICAGO, ILL.

Editor, the Atlantic Monthly
DEAR SIR:

I congratulate you upon the article entitled 'One Farming Problem,' by Glenn W. Birkett, in your February issue.

In this connection I may say that the presentday clamor for saving labor cost in farm operations too often results in an actual increase in financial cost. The small combine harvesterthresher which is now being urged upon farmers in the Central West is a good illustration of this. It costs about $2000, and even if we grant it ten years' life we have, to begin with, a depreciation

of $200 a year, then a repair cost of at least $200, and insurance on top of this amounts to $120 more, and taxes will be at least $20 more, bringing the annual expenditure from these items alone to $540, which you will frankly admit will pay for a good deal of farm labor.

Aside from this, these machines cannot be operated until the grain is thoroughly ripe and dry. The attempt to use such outfits east of the 100th meridian is too often fraught with heavy loss, for in holding off harvest until the grain is ripe farmers are very apt to encounter storms which beat down or shatter out the ripened grain. This is only one illustration of the danger of overemphasizing one feature at the expense of others.

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The response to my letter to you in your December 1924 issue was so gratifying that I venture to send some fresher details of life in the Solomon Group. My husband is at present away recruiting labor, and during these trips it is a most anxious time for me, as some of the islands visited by my husband are the most savage in the group, and the chiefs only recently offered the natives large sums of native money for the heads of four white men. This is for revenge; probably some of their natives have died by accident in some of the plantations. When a recruiter goes on shore at a village, it is always a bad sign if the women and children are not on the beach. A native never commits a crime in front of the women and children. Women are never allowed at the cannibal feasts.

The bushmen and salt-water men are always at war with each other, but one day in the week they hold a market, and this day they agree not to fight.

These savage boys are good workers on a plantation and, if well treated, they are quite happy and content. While my husband is away, I am here alone with a few native boys, as laborers. For every hour of the day there is something to be done. I do all my own household duties, cooking, and so forth, and growing coconuts requires a lot of care. They need constant cleaning, in order to secure them against both white ants and beetles.

The natives come to me with their various troubles, and I try to settle disputes. It is usually to do with native women. I attend to the natives also when they are sick and they come for miles in their canoes with the most impossible ailments. My will-power will often cure a case with a native believing himself to be sick with devil-devil. Many of them have their own crude bush remedies, but they seldom effect a cure.

To-night as I sit here the sea sounds very angry as it breaks on the reef. Excepting for the squawk of the night birds, there is perfect peace. EDITH E. SVENSEN

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Kiriti, in 'Participating in the Great Adventure,' in the March issue, rejects the belief in the survival of the soul as a natural instinct because its acceptance would necessitate the acceptance of the rest of the savage beliefs. Having rejected such nonsense for such a sensible reason, he then proceeds to build him a new religion on the doctrine of Jesus Christ: 'Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends,' and on Saint Paul's doctrine of 'faith, hope, and love.' Good doctrines, both; I know of none better. But if one cannot accept the belief in survival because such acceptance would necessitate the acceptance of the rest of the pagan beliefs, how can one accept such clear-cut doctrines of the Christian Church without feeling bound to accept all? If one cannot take part of one without taking all, how can one take part of another without taking all?

Kiriti is a nice man - to have about where fresh and salt waters meet; where sunshine is eternal; where one breakfasts long and comfortably. But Kiriti would be a poor stick to help the woman whose husband has run off with another woman and left her with three children; a poor stick to help a man with a sensitive conscience, sensitive enough to writhe under a long-standing habit; a poor stick to deal with the adolescent who is having his first struggles with the world, the flesh, and the Devil. Kiriti creates an atmosphere in the Atlantic; but as a parish priest called daily to deal with real souls in real difficulties he would be an abysmal failure. Experimental laboratory religion is, I imagine, a nice and an easy religion; and a logical one. The only difficulty is that it just won't work with souls in this workaday world; it will not stand the pragmatic test and Christianity will. Yours truly,

(REVEREND) CARL I. SHOEMAKER

[graphic]

Puritanism and Prosperity
The Price of Our Success
The Frivolous French

Leaves from a Mission Diary

Pagan Virtues and Christian Graces.
A Vision of the River. A Story.
Journalism and Morality
The Changes of the Times

The Black Cat. A Sonnet Group
Civilians and Soldiers

A System for the Conduct of War
Our Mortal Foe

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The Old Woman. A Story

Clear Evening. A Poem

Glandular Activity and Feminine Talent
A Reply to Dr. Leuba

Rubber: The Inquiry and the Facts.

"Is There Any Mail?'.

Child Drama. The Real Thing

The New World

A Plea for the Classics - My Rose Field in Hollywood - A Bridge or Two
The Contributors' Column

'Romeo and Juliet' in Modern Dress-Advice to a Bent Young Professor-
Between the Devil and the Christian General- Solomon and All His Thrift- New Uniforms
for New Thoughts- The Sahara of Utopia

The Atlantic's Bookshelf...

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JUNE, 1926

PURITANISM AND PROSPERITY

BY REINHOLD NIEBUHR

AMERICAN prosperity is rapidly becoming the most important fact and the most difficult problem in the international life of the Western world. Europe is so deeply in debt to us that she can repay our loans only by reducing the standard of living in the various nations for generations. Our wealth is so enormous that its power is making itself felt in the economic life of both Europe and South America in a way that practically defies every reasoned control. In spite of extravagant standards of living we are producing a billion dollars more wealth annually than we consume and are increasing our foreign holdings each year by that amount. An English economist recently prophesied that at the present rate of increase American investments in the outside world would exceed the combined wealth of Germany and France by the year 1950. However generous we may be with government debts, these foreign investments in private enterprise are bringing high dividends which will seem justified to the American by the risk involved, but which will increasingly appear from the perspective of impoverished Europe as the exorbitant tribute that a wealthy economic empire is pressing out of poor dependencies.

VOL. 137- NO. 6

A

I

Any cursory glance at the journals of Europe must convince even the most heedless American that tides of hatred, mixed with envy, are rising against us in the world, which bode no good either for us or for the peace of nations.

The development of sufficient social intelligence and moral imagination to control the vast and intricate economic relationships that modern inventions have made possible and inevitable is an urgent duty which the entire world faces, but of all nations it is most urgent for us; for our nation, which is economically most powerful, is also politically most inept. We are a land of industrial experts and political novices whose limitations are the more dangerous for being so little understood among us. When we insist that the problems of the modern world can be solved by a 'businesslike settlement' we are merely saying that we want a simple solution which does not take into account those complex and illusive factors with which politics deals and with which we, in our political simplicity of mind, are so impatient.

Our prosperity will increasingly become a primary problem in domestic morality as well as in international

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