and the room looks as if a school examination were about to take place. What it looks like when election night is a thing of the past only the janitor knows. The floor is more convenient than scrap-baskets.

Each man is given the work he is most familiar with or that he is best adapted to do. Naturally the Washington correspondent and his assistant look after the Congress and Senate; the traveling correspondents are given the States they are particularly familiar with the Capitol correspondent, the Legislature, and so on. Each is also responsible for the "lead," the introduction to the table that tells the story in a nutshell.

The story of what happened during the day is written and ready for the copy desk practically before the polls are closed, so that the reporters are ready for their night assignments to cover the various headquarters, get statements from the prominent elected and defeated candidates, and anything else that may be of interest.

A clever reporter must be assigned to write the bulletins for the crowd outside the newspaper offices clamoring for news, and the art man must have any number of amusing pictures prepared to throw on the screen. Keeping up with the progress of the times, free outdoor moving pictures must be given to the crowds while waiting for the figures.

The simplest manner of making out certain tables is to print the name of each candidate, with his politics alongside, and eliminate those who are defeated, so that when closing time arrives the tables show merely the winners. This does away entirely with any new setting of type. The compositor merely removes the line or half-line not needed.

When the vote is to be recorded, the table is done in the same way, except that there is a blank left for the vote and the plurality. Then all that is needed is to set "straight copy."

In New York the police collect the election returns, which, because of their organization, simplifies the great problem of letting the result be known early. Practically all the New York newspapers are members of the New York City News Association, which "covers" routine news in all departments, and sends the facts without bias or color to its membership. Thus when election night comes these reporters are turned loose on election returns, and the machinery has been so arranged in advance that there is little or no friction.

Charts are prepared in advance showing

every election district's vote last year or two years ago or four years ago, as it is needed. When one, two, or one hundred or two thousand election districts report their vote this election day, a glance at the chart shows what these districts previously gave.

Thus shortly after the polls close the story of the vote comes into the newspaper office over specially put in telegraphic wires as follows:

President-300 election districts, Greater New York, give Wilson, D., 21.842; Hughes. R., 16,466; same districts four years ago gave Wilson, D., 20,142; Roosevelt, P., 12,184; Taft, R., 5,678.

Governorship-42 election districts, Greater New York, give Seabury, D., 3,154; Whitman, R., 2,860; same districts two years ago gave Whitman, R., 2,190; Glynn, 2,990; Sulzer, Amer., 82.

The Associated Press, the United Press, the International News Service, and like organizations, collecting the returns of the Nation, send in like bulletins reading somewhat similarly :

President Albany County,sixteen districts. missing, give Wilson, D., 16,825; Hughes, R., 23,892; same districts four years ago gave Wilson, D., 16,689; Roosevelt, P., 4,442; Taft, R, 19,987.

Governorship-Albany county, five election districts missing, give Whitman, R., 26,540; Seabury, D., 14,876; same districts two years ago gave Whitman, R., 25,600 ; Glynn, D., 13,765; Sulzer, Amer., 3,198.

These returns never cease coming in, minute by minute, hour by hour, until finally by midnight the election editors have a very good idea of the vote in every State of the Union.

These bulletins, prepared in advance, leaving blank spaces to be filled in by the actual figures, are placed in neat piles on the desk of the telegraph operator, so that when he receives the telegraphic sign for the President or the Governorship or whatever bulletin he is to write, he merely picks up the blank bulletin and in a few moments the bulletin is complete.

The idea back of these prepared bulletins is merely that they are time-savers.

When Chester S. Lord (affectionately called Boss" Lord) was managing editor of the New York "Sun," in the other days, he devised a chart which the "Sun" used on election nights year after year. It saved time when time was of the greatest value.

The purpose of the chart was to give at a

glance what the probable plurality would be when only a certain number of election districts reported and the balance were missing.

To make the chart required the finding of a key figure for a district according to the vote of the previous year or years. To get this key number any number of votes can be taken-500, 1,000, or 2,000-depending upon the accuracy desired for the forecast and the number of districts for any division in Greater New York, New York County, Brooklyn, or the State.

The whole idea of the chart is to do away with figuring and save perhaps ten minutes at a time when minutes are precious. To prepare the chart probably requires several days' labor, but if you can "beat" the other newspapers it is worth the great preparation that it costs.

As rapidly as the bulletins giving various results are written in by the operator and as fast as the results are typed by the electric machines on which the New York newspapers receive much of their Associated Press matter, office boys distribute them to the proper desks. Reporters and editors practically do one thing on that night; as, for instance, the electoral vote by States, the total popular vote for President by States, the vote for Governor by counties, Congressmen-elect of every State, the vote in detail for principal State officers, the vote for members of the Senate and Assembly, newly elected Governors; out of this analysis comes another story telling what the vote means, which each man writes as soon as he can do so.

Hundreds and hundreds of bulletins must be gone over and tabulated to make a brief table that may not occupy in actual space more than two or three inches in depth, or, as they say in a newspaper office, a stick or two.

Pictures of principal candidates are all ready for the form, so that the appearance of the paper will be brightened against the background of figures.

Usually half the paper is devoted to the election, and these pages naturally are held open to the last. The back pages, which contain other news and advertising, are made up as early as possible, and as the election pages are completed the whole attention is devoted to the first page, which naturally is the last to go to the stereotypers.

Upon that first page must go the most important election news, and usually it is so complete that if a person received nothing else but

that first page it would tell him all that he wanted to know.

In fact, the headlines, usually run clear across the page, tell the whole story. It is a . great art to write these headlines, particularly if they can run through all the editions without change.

When the first returns come in, every light in the editorial rooms is shedding its rays where most needed, the crowds outside are beginning their din with noise-making objects, the telegraph instruments are clicking, telephone bells are ringing, visitors crowd the reception-room, and here and there specially favored ones are permitted to come within, but every one is so busy that most of them are shooed off to where the art man and the reporter are working together to amuse the crowd outside.

Correspondents of foreign newspapers drop in to get the results to cable to their newspapers, reporters from other newspapers ask for the views of the paper, messenger boys bring in hundreds of telegrams that the office wires are too clogged up to receive, and the managing editor keeps a stenographer busy answering telegrams from correspondents, newspapers, candidates, politicians, and others who have his ear on that night.

"Am I elected?" asks a Congressman from Kentucky, where he cannot get the returns to tell him what he wants to know; and the managing editor will walk along until he comes to the editor handling the Kentucky returns.

He'll win by about 400, I figure," says the editor, resuming his work.

And so Jackson, of Kentucky, learns his fate nine hundred miles away.

A reporter is assigned to answer telephone calls bearing on the result, and also to get interviews over the wire. An alert man is needed for this, because sometimes a gem of a story can be had over the wire.

When the hands of the clock have worked slowly toward the midnight hour, the feverish point is reached, for it is close to press time.

Boys," says the managing editor. we must have everything in this edition. We've got twenty minutes. Put a bit of steam on."

As the clock points close to composingroom time, the managing editor again admonishes the men. Five minutes more," he says.

1916

The last sheets go up and the men, as they do at baseball games in the seventh inning, get up to stretch their legs. It has been a hard grind.

Coffee and sandwiches are brought in, and down below in the basement can be heard the presses groaning.

The office boys rush in with papers wet from the presses. Every man is given one or as many copies as he needs. They are glanced over with the quick, trained eye of editors and reporters who can read a page at a glance and catch blunders.

Later office boys bring in the other newspapers, also wet from the presses. comparisons are made.

Quick

"Are you sure about the Legislature?" asks the managing editor, stopping at the desk of the legislative man.

"Yes," he replies.

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Look at that discrepancy," says the managing editor, and he places a rival newspaper on his desk.

The midnight luncheon consumed, the men, after gossiping about various results, return to their desks to revise the paper for the second edition, for the returns have not ceased coming in in the interim. The work is pushed forward; figures are increased or decreased according to the indications of the later figures.

The work of revision continues until it is time to go to press on the final edition.

Fine work," says the managing editor, holding the latest edition in his hand, appreciation of good work beaming on his countenance. Five minutes more on the city; hustle it and let's say good-night."

T

HE English are putting a concentrated energy into the conduct of the war that leaves no national resource unused, but the novels from English hands show no falling off either in freshness or in vigor, no sense of weariness. Mr. Hewlett has written no story with a firmer hand, a more delightful ease, than Love and Lucy,” a brilliant comedy overflowing with high spirits and Mr. Phillpotts, who has put a long row of stories on the shelf, carries into Kent the same joy in the English country, the same feeling for landscape, that have made Dartmoor as familiar to a host of Americans as the counties they were born in. After writing a shelf-full of novels, in an absorbing crisis Mr. Phillpotts writes of Kent and its people with vivid feeling in The Green Alleys." 1 The title allures one into the hop-fields-the garden of England-and the growth of the vines which form the alleys is interwoven with human experiences with a skill that has lost nothing of its graphic power. In Mr. Hardy's stories the landscape is not a background, it counts with the dramatis persona; in the "Return of the Native," for example, the moor plays al

The Green Alleys. By Eden Phillpotts. The Macmillan Company, New York. $15).

most as great a part as the chief character. Mr. Phillpotts, who recalls Mr. Hardy without imitating him, has a kindred gift of bringing nature as an active agent into his stories. But he is not a fatalist, like the author of

The Mayor of Casterbridge; " to him Devon and Dartmoor and Kent are subtle and penetrating influences; they are not blind forces determining human destiny.

The genius of Mr. Phillpotts is not an expression of an intense individuality; it is rather the genius of intimate knowledge of and deep feeling for the processes which deal with nature and take on the color of environment. In “ Brunel's Tower," for instance, the shaping of pottery becomes a moral process; in ** Old Delabole" the quarry is a school of character and the fall of the great cliff is an event in the ethical history of a community. It is also the genius which is compounded of close observation, real thinking, and a thoroughness of structure which is hidden by a rare beauty of description. In The Three Brothers the interest rested obviously on very striking contrasts of character; in Green Alleys " two brothers are very skillfully drawn, but the story takes a broader sweep; the minor figures stand out with distinctness and the life of a rural

community moves before the reader in strongly drawn lines of character.

We are still in England in Mr. Wells's latest novel," Mr. Britling Sees It Through."1 Mr. Britling is a well-to-do Englishman of an ardent, sentimental, explosive temperament, who lives in modern English fashion in Essex, a very English county. To quote Mr. Britling: This country is a part of the real England-England outside London and outside manufactures. It's one with Wessex and Mercia or old Yorkshire-or, for the matter of that, with Meath and Lothianand it's the essential England still."

comes

Into this unchanged England Mr. Direck, visitor from America, and begins at once to modify his impressions. Mr. Britling is not in golfing tweeds; he is not reserved, "he sniffed at the heels of reality," he talked incessantly about all kinds of subjects; the square-looking old red brick house opens hospitably into a big, oak-paneled hall; luncheon is served out of doors with an absence of formality surprising to an American who did not know that, while the English on formal occasions are very conventional, they are most of the time the most informal and comfortable people in the world. Mr.

Britling is in the "Who's Who" of two continents and is a writer of growing reputation; interesting men and women are continually coming and going about his home, and they all talk with astonishing vigor and frankness. It was July, 1914, and Ireland was on the verge of civil war, and the warlike designs of Germany, which Mr. Britling refused to take seriously, were becoming ominously credi ble. There is much talk about the general situation, and the differences of opinion are sharp and very vigorously expressed. Then the storm breaks and slowly becomes more furious. Mr. Britling is swept from his moorings. England has been safe for a thousand years, it has become the symbol of security; there is no fear-as the Germans have learned, fear is not a British emotion-but there is bewilderment and confusion of mind and action.

supreme crisis of its history it stands alone in the literature of the world. It is a colossal tragedy told abruptly, unconventionally, with a kind of searching vividness, with a steadily deepening grip on the attention and the emotions. Mr. Britling responds to the demands of the great crisis; his thought becomes more serious, his sense of duty more acute and dominating.

Mr. Wells has been fertile, ingenious, aggressive, but his stories have moved on a materialistic plane; in this novel the anguish of personal loss, the sense of the fragility of hopes built on any kind of possessions, the consciousness of the deeps below deeps that open beneath the most solidly based prosperity, put behind the story a background of a kind with which Mr. Wells's readers have not been familiar. The reaction of the colossal struggle on character is reported as it has been reported in no other book, in heartbreaking detail and in wide perspective; and at the end a path opens through the mist to a future escape from the horror and futility of hatred. The narrative runs through a sea of talk which is often brilliant, witty, epigrammatic, and always interesting; reflecting the myriad aspects of the great tragedy and its effect on character.

Sir Gilbert Parker's "The World For Sale,' ," written before the war, takes the reader back to the days when it was neces sary to invent plots in order to create dramatic interest; since August 1, 1914, the daily journals have been printing a serial story that makes the old tales of adventure seem pallid and commonplace.

Gilbert Parker writes about the Northwest with the graphic skill which is born of firsthand knowledge and vital sympathy. His latest story has a vigorously drawn background and is full of adventurous incident; it "begins with a rush and ends with a bang," to quote a publisher's announcement. A brilliant hero who has the qualities of an empire-maker, a girl as daring and beautiful besides, a frontier villain, an Indian chief, the head of the gypsies of the world, the rivalry of two ambitious towns, are the elements which Gilbert Parker mingles in an old-fashioned romance. The interest does not flag, but the story is artificial, and much below the standard of the author of " Pierre and His People."

In a wholly different vein, Miss Margaret Sherwood's "The Worn Doorstep" has the

The World for Sale. By Gilbert Parker. Harper & Brothers, New York. $1.35.

1916

charm of sincerity, of deep feeling, and of a tender and beautiful skill. It does not pretend to be a novel, but it has the interest of an experience which is essentially tragic. An American girl loses her English lover “ somewhere in France" and takes her sorrow to an old cottage in a little English hamlet and opens her door to refugees, in whose care her grief loses its bitterness. The remaking of

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the little house, the garden, the country round about, the rustic neighbors and the servants, invest the quiet narrative with human interest, while behind it the appalling drama of war is quietly but vividly brought on the stage as its immediate victims come and go. "The Worn Doorstep" is a work of art by a writer whose sensitive conscience is matched by her skill.

E

VEN before the whole edition of last week's issue of The Outlook, containing the "Open Letter" which an*nounced the advance in price from three dollars to four dollars, and at the same time told of the new form in which The Outlook will appear on the 3d of January, was in the mails, we received, in answer to our personal communications to our subscribers, the two letters which follow. That we have not received one word of protest at the advance in price is as gratifying as is the promptness with which these two expressions of opinion have come to us from subscribers who had, when they wrote, no knowledge of the prospective improvements in the form and dress of this journal:

The charge, four dollars, for the coming year will not in the least degree militate against my renewing my subscription for The Outlook.

On the contrary, I have always wondered why you charged so little for it, while you gave so much in return. Four dollars is not too much, whether paper is scarce or abundant. St. Paul, Minnesota.

C. W. L.

I can readily understand why you are compelled to advance your price on account of the material that goes into the magazine, and you certainly are entitled to advance on that account.

I would not be without The Outlook if it cost twice the amount. Your articles, boiled down without any superfluous opinions, have earned the right to be considered authority, and your fair statements on all questions appeal to all thinking readers of your magazine. L. B. B. Hillsboro, Ohio.

Our readers, we think, will also be interested in reading the following letter which has come to us from a subscriber of German ancestry, and which, it is needless to say, we greatly prize:

The Worn Doorstep. By Margaret Sherwood. Little, Brown, & Co., Boston. $125.

It is a pleasure to inclose check for the renewal of my subscription.

You need only look at my name to believe that my ancestry is almost entirely German. My father was born in the so-called "Vaterland." There was a time when many of your articles upon the war and kindred topics aroused my opposition considerably. But such incidents as the case of the Lusitania have completely changed my attitude toward the war. It seems to me that on occasions certain articles in your pages were too passionate, but I can hardly blame you for that, because The Outlook does not champion any cause without an honest conviction that it is right. You are right in saying that one cannot be neutral in regard to this war. I have long since become pro-Ally, thereby incurring the surprise and opposition of many friends and relatives also of German descent. The invasion of Belgium was a grave crime. I believe with you that the Allies are fighting the cause of democracy against a dangerous military autocracy. Because I take a certain pride in them, I admire your unbiased appreciation of the invaluable contributions by which the German race has enriched humanity. But to force their "Kultur" upon the world by the sword is to make it at once a curse. I do not believe that a man is necessarily much better or more industrious or more honest because he happens to belong to a certain race, and am fairly disgusted with such invidious comparisons.

Your insistence upon the elimination of the "hyphen" is most praiseworthy. Ex-President Roosevelt's speech at our City Club last May upon the subject of " Americanism "thrilled me with enthusiasm both for the man and for his theme, though it made many foes for him in St. Louis. My fellow-citizens of German descent have a perfect right to sympathize with Germany's cause if they wish, but when it comes to issues between our own country and Germany there can be no question which side is entitled to their support. I hope you are right in saying that most of these citizens are loyal.

St. Louis, Missouri.

E. C. L.