portunity for social contact with the foreigner favor a further restriction of immigration." This to me is the most striking sentence in her book. In asking for "an affirmative policy of protection, distribution, and assimilation," she asks for what the settlement itself has worked for. That is natural. But in bespeaking the foreigner, unrestricted, she pays the final tribute to that humanity for which she has labored and about which she has shown such indefatigable energy, such solicitude and such resource. It is as an executive Miss Wald impresses me. Her book has no particular mood. It is inexpert in its anecdotes of the neighborhood, somewhat commonplace in its style and somewhat temporizing in many of its judgments. But it is, for all that, a magnificent record of volition. What Miss Wald learned from her settlement was germinal. From single instances of Jewish or Russian or Italian misadventure in New York she extracted, time and again, the lesson that had communal application, and she never seems to have rested until she ordered the way for happier solutions. This kind of statesmanship deserves unbounded praise. There are people who talk blandly about the "survival of the fit," who are quite eager to detect some ordinance in the ways of nature, to eulogize the merry spark that accomplishes a forest fire. But the curse of septic midwivery, of trachoma, of needless illiteracy, of tenement factories, makes no "survival" appeal to the social worker. These things, as Miss Wald has shown, are hideous to their victims, eventually profitless to the world. They are not merely by-products of poverty. They are poverty. And in removing them Miss Wald has removed poverty, has made men and Americans of the despised. Other and wider devices undoubtedly remain. The social settlement is chiefly an experimental station. But the house Miss Wald and Miss Brewster founded was an experimental station of astonishing service to America. And it is well that Miss Wald has written, and Mr. Phillips so touchingly illustrated, such a thrilling story of immigrants understood, valued and given a stake in their community. F. H. hero's chamber where we are shown the maniac bending over the quilts to imprint a kiss. Toson Shimasaki is another one of those disillusioned writers of modern Japan. In his "House" he gave us a voluminous treatise on the family lineage of an author, in whom passion is thwarted. The hero comes in the end to hold his niece's hand, only to drop it soon at the sound of the footsteps of Conscience. Mr. Toson is now in Paris, listening to the distant shriek of German shrapnels. As in many things, Japanese experimentation in foreign literature ceases with experimentation. It is one thing to know how naturalism crept in among us and it is quite another to notice how Beauty silently folded her tent and stole away from us. When Doppo Kunikida wrote a story under the title of "A Bamboo Gate," in which a woman hangs herself after being discovered stealing a piece of charcoal, (does this remind you of de Maupassant?) naturalism had its virtue of sincerity. As a literary tendency it made modest pretensions to do away with the old homicidal instinct of Bakin, the grewsome tricks of Kioden, the impossible love-affairs of Shinsui, the suicidal mania of Chikamatsu, and as a moral influence it had no less a program than to demolish life-lies, tea-talks and stone-worshippings. In fine, it stood for a socialism of letters. That was some years ago. Then Guy de Maupassant died, Ibsen died, and our poor Doppo fell. In the meanwhile Japanese naturalists published an enormous quantity of books, in which they strangled Buddha, chopped the nose of Loa Tze, starved Confucius for the second time, and then brought back the homicidal, grewsome, eroto-maniac, suicidal method of the old masters in the name of human document. As a French novelist said, "Modern novels became a torture" for us. When we accepted naturalism in our literature we did it out of the same curiosity and courtesy as that we showed in giving our gold to a horde of Dutchmen for its corresponding weight in silver, and it seems we made poor bargain in both cases. Naturalism will not live long in Japan. And this all happened because we did not recognize the nonentity of the term naturalism, which was only an obscure refuge of the French journalist who was too busy to invent such technique as Flaubertism, Turgenieffism, or Japanese Literature of To-day Maupassantism. Even to this day some of our writers do our IN N their ardent pursuit of modern ideals some of Japanese writers have lost their style and mental equipoise, the former being more important for literature than the latter. A writer of the type of Yoshu Mizuno writes as though he was an Andreyeff in Hades, and others adapt the caustic style of Guy de Maupassant without the Frenchman's sensuality and other merits. Japanese naturalism! What a queer combination of two incongruous words! They almost remind me of "Wagnerian harmony." Well, the fact remains that a majority of Japanese writers are now naturalist. And to be naturalist means to them to write a stiff, cold sentence with an awkward English word injected here and there, to treat their characters as part of the furniture regardless of their toothache or heartache. Katai Tayama, Hakucho Masanune, Shusui Tokuda, these three prominent novelists of naturalism publish their numerous short stories now in the leading magazines of Japan. Katai's masterpiece, "The Bed-Quilts," would tell you all the surface details of a man who was deserted by his dear sweet wife, planned and executed with the minuteness, accuracy, and intelligence of a surgeon in literature. So tormenting is the mad longing of the poor devil that the bedquilts of his wife become a divine object of his piety and spiritual adoration. Mr. Katai stealthily leads us to the not realize that naturalism died with the author of "Une Vie." Let Theocritus weep, we are still proud of having one Democritus with us. Soseki Natsume did not come back empty from his study abroad. The tradition is that Japanese literature very seldom smiles. "I Am a Cat" by the aforesaid writer appeared in our literature to relieve the long strain of lachrymose history with a thoughtful, cynical smile-a smile, at any rate. It is the biography of a nameless cat residing in the home of an absent-minded professor. The cat is baptized in a gutter of Tokio and saves himself from the hands of a brusque student with an enormous stomach and a big stick trying to pay him a compliment, which marks the first episode of the feline career. He goes into the professor's house and observes the ingenuity and prejudice of that somnolent specimen of humanity, and there he stays in spite of his tastes and philosophy, and the story runs on agilely until he dies, poisoned like a Socrates. Cats are not as smilable creatures as dogs, so the difference between Soseki's book and that of M. Anatole France lies mainly in the nature of their smile, the difference of mewing smile and barking smile. Soseki is a passable scholar of psychology and lately showed a Paul Bourget in kimono in his "Heart." Shoken Kamitsukasa is one of those able writers who can be classed in England as a gloomy writer, in America a pessimist, therefore a humorist in Japan. His latest important work is a story, "My Father's Marriage," the title telling the tale little better than the author. There are many original writers in Japan, if writers can be original; among them, we have strong faith in such men as Miyekichi Suzuki, Kioka Izumi, and Sohei Morita. Mr. Suzuki's debut, "The Story of Plover," had won him a title of neo-romanticist, which meant he was a plausible artist. Mr. Suzuki has his whimsicality, he has those wafting colors and warm touches which make a book artistic and readable. It is an island tale starting with the languidness of a dying day, just from the moment when a deaf-and-dumb girl shows her pearly teeth against the setting sun, yawning. The readers begin from Onaga's yawning and finish the book with a sigh, the intricate, exquisite love-affair letting them forget their tea-cups. But Mr. Suzuki is naturalistic when he tells the tale of "The Lambs" and "The Red Bird." Kioka Izumi is a transcendentalist with a color-pot. His best story is "The Sage of Koya." An acolyte goes a-pilgrimaging to the famous temple. He meets a Japanese Circe there and several gnomes of impossible description, which are her victims enchanted by her beauty. This enchantress is an old temptation in disguise; monks do not like temptation in any form; there begins a terrific struggle. And the story ends in the style that they always end in any Buddhistic country. In things grotesque, fanciful, ultra-daimonic and beautiful Mr. Kioka's talent is unexcelled. Sohei Morita is something half between a naturalist and a romanticist. He describes the heart of geisha-girls with a considerable skill. After naturalism drove away beauty from their camp, several new writers pitched a tent for her and kow-towed her in. These are the decadent and symbolist tribe and the students of the Mita-Literary Journal. To-day, as you walk on the streets of Tokio, you will often notice a café under a dreamy willow-tree, built alongside a temple with an old sloping roof. You will wonder why the great glass windows are lit so ostentatiously by electricity and you will remark how a bottle of absinthe stands beneath a sanguineous onslaught of Futurist portraits, while the innumerable relics of feudal age still sing a confused medley around the house. Your wonder becomes a mild reproach when you discover so many of them in all parts of Tokio. These cafés are the Quartier Latin of Japan, the new abode of the native muse. From one of those windows you will sometime hear a poet chanting his own poem. It might happen that you will hear Mr. Hakushu Kitahara reciting his "Kiss:" A woman came, a woman, flushing, breathless! But a firm, moist hand held me tight, With a horrible kiss on my lip. The grasses stir not, and a tiny grasshopper, Under the sultry drying sun, takes a joyous fright. Italian physiologists always deny that the Japanese practice this Occidental etiquette between lovers, but we cannot hide that many strange things are happening in this hazardous time of European conflict beneath the sacred Fuji. TIFFANY & CO. JEWELRY OF PROVEN VALUE AND QUALITY FIFTH AVENUE AND 37TH STREET NEW YORK Said Oscar Wilde: "All art is immoral." True, it always is. But in the case of our writers they seem to translate his epigram upside down and read aloud: "All immorality is art." Kafu Nagai, Jinichiro Tanizaki, Osada, are those who mischievously imported the new aestheticism. Where naturalism failed they professed to amend, even restoring the lucid charm of Yamato language by dipping it in their rose-madder. They are extremely delicate, fastidious, sensual, and you may be assured that their adventures are the dreamy explorations in the realm of rouge and blood, principally laid in the gaol of the past, Yedo, where realists and naturalists hold no key. A few other profiles: against the disturbed background of hasty literary hara-kiri and aesthetic nirvana the clear feature of the old craftsman Rohan Koda stands with something of a Mephistophelian smile. His first masterpiece still lives with us. "An Artful Buddha!" A typically Japanese tale, lofty, sympathetic and clean in handling. A sculptor falls in love with a flower-girl on his way to Nara, but on the point of their marriage news arrives from Tokio telling that the girl was the daughter of a count. Unlike some Japanese women, she leaves him and marries a prince. The morose artist takes to carving her image on a block of wood. Finally, the woman in the wood speaks to him as in a dream. He is already stiff and cold among the shavings when the innkeeper helps him up. Mr. Rohan is old; lately he received the degree of Doctor of Literature from the government, and that is the true sign of senility in Japan. Besides Rohan there are several novelists to whom the coming and going of naturalism does not concern much. Raymond-Whitcomb To Cuba, Jamaica, Panama and Three luxurious 24-day Cruises Each Cruise includes stops at many wonderful ports in the Caribbean which no traveler would willingly omit and which cannot be and are not combined on any other plan offered to the public without change of steamer. Exceptional side tripe, offered only on the Raymond-Whitcomb Cruises, including journey through Cuba by railroad and automobile, two days' automobiling in beautiful Jamaica, unique rafting trip down a tropical river, and many other comprehensive trips on the utmost scale of comfort and luxury. THE ONLY CRUISES THIS WINTER Splendid, specially chartered steamships, sailing under the Amer- Departures from New York, South America Semi-private parties for remarkable and comprehensive Tours of two to five months. January 5, March 4 and 25. 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Write for illustrated literature about the STEINWAY STEINWAY & SONS, STEINWAY HALL 107-109 EAST FOURTEENTH STREET, NEW YORK Subway Express Station at the Door They are Fuyo Oguri, Kenjiro Tokutomi, Ogai Mori, Shoyo Tsubouchi, and Gensai Murai. Fuyo is one of the able disciples of the late Koyo Ozaki, the first realist in Meiji. Fuyo's field was that where the newcomer naturalists ravaged and devastated. His "Renbo Nagashi" and "Transient Love" almost remind one of some of Turgenieff's love-stories. Kenjiro Tokutomi lately published "The Foolish Gossip of an Earth-Worm" which runs now into the fiftieth edition. It is nothing but a collection of the diaries of his rural life as a practical Tolstoian. The whole book can be reduced to two words: "WorkLive," but what attracts the Japanese public about him is his sincerity, emotional life, truculent spirit that seeks the final issue of life bravely. His are what Americans call "the best-sellers" of Japan. Ogai Mori took his last shelter in the present mêlée of letters in writing back the emotional history of Japan. We Japanese always provide some work for old writers, while they may become bankers or bankrupt in America. So follows Shoyo with his semi-educational dramatic institution and his semi-classical dramas! And as to the last-named gentleman, a venerable writer with a felicitous spirit and unreadable novels, Mr. Gensai Murai! Well, he is compiling a cook-book. HEROICHIRO K. MYDERCO. ... One Determinant Civilization and Climate, by Ellsworth Huntington. New Haven: Yale University Press. $2.50 net. T HE relation of the physical to the psychic, of matter to mind, is a question of paramount importance. Professor Huntington of Yale, author of "The Pulse of Asia," has contributed much to define the environmental considerations involved. In his latest work, "Civilization and Climate," he takes up the case of environment in its climatic aspect. It is a well-known fact that Europeans and Americans, unaccustomed to tropical regions, find great difficulty in keeping their performance at the normal level of excellence. This, however, is vague, and Professor Huntington in his search for more convincing proof of climatic influence adopts a statistical method. He has collected data on the efficiency of some five hundred factory operatives in New Haven, New Britain and Bridgeport (Conn.), of 3,0004,000 operatives in southern cities from Virginia to Florida, and of 1,700 students of the United States Naval Academy at Anapolis, and the Military Academy at West Point. The results of this survey, supported by similar data from Denmark and Japan, indicate that the winter and the summer are not the periods of highest efficiency, but the spring and the autumn, and that minima of efficiency occur at certain periods in midwinter and midsummer. It also appears that certain combinations of heat, cold, dryness and humidity are highly favorable, while others are less so. Changes in atmospheric conditions from day to night, and from day to day, at frequent intervals, seem to be most stimulating. Thus the concept is reached of an ideal climate, based on certain elements of temperature, seasonal changes and storminess. Human energy, then, is subject to variation, and these variations are to a large extent controlled by climate. Encouraged by these results, Professor Huntington plots a map of the distribution of human energy on the basis of climate. The map embraces all the continents. The next problem is to secure a graduated scale of the civilizations of the world. This is achieved by means of a questionnaire containing a list of one hundred and eightyfive regions to be classified according to the degree of their civilization. Fifty contributory answers are received from correspondents, representing geographers, anthropologists, globe-trotters, of whom twenty-five are American, seven British, six Teuton, seven Latin, while five are Asiatics. Professor Huntington proceeds to plot a map of the world representing the civilizations of the various regions and based on the opinions of his international collaborators. The two maps, one of energy, the other of civilization, reveal general as well as rather striking special agreements. Human civilizations are distributed as they would be were they based on energy, and were energy based on climate. A special text increases the verisimilitude of the map. The energy map for the United States is found to agree fairly well with one based on vitality statistics, while the map of civilization for the same region, with the individual states as units, appears in general agreement with one based on educational data. Here a criticism must be met: How about the great nations that arose in regions where the climate was not stimulating? The answer is based on the theory of "climatic pulsations." The assumption is made that periodic changes of climate, such as were associated with the coming and going of the several glacial periods, have also occurred within historic times. Professor Huntington plots a curve of such changes based on an analysis of the architectural remains of the civilizations of western Asia. Here, however, the data are lacking for a chronological interpretation. To supply the need careful measurements are taken of the yearly rings of growth on the trunks of several hundred California sequoia trees. Many of these prove over 2,000, some even over 3,000 years old. The size of the rings varies with climatic conditions. A curve is plotted representing the fluctuations in the sizes of the rings, and it is found that the curve agrees in a general way with the one standing for the climatic pulsations in western Asia. A final hypothesis follows, advanced somewhat tentatively, to account for the variations in climate. It is known that the multiplication of sun-spots recurs in cycles of eleven years' duration. It is accompanied by an increased number of cyclonic storms. A curve representing fluctuations in sun-spots between the years 1750 and 1910 suggests that the minor eleven-year cycles are included in major cycles of one hundred years' duration, more or less. The assumption is that as the minor cycles are correlated with climatic changes, so are also the hundred-year cycles, and the still greater hypothetical cycles synchronous with the climatic pulsations referred to before. A rapid final survey leads to the conclusion that "favorable [climatic] conditions appear to have prevailed in each of the great countries of the past at the time when it made its most rapid progress." While this work is principally concerned with the effects of climate, Professor Huntington is fully cognizant of the existence and importance of other factors, such as racethe significance of which is probably exaggerated by the author-historic facts, and the presence or absence of special cultural features. There is certainly room for criticism of method and assumptions, though not in this review. Such criticism is excluded without regret, however, for Professor Huntington has succeeded in that hardest of tasks confronting the speculative scientist: the task of stimulating the imagination, while remaining within the bounds of credibility. For this the author deserves our respect and admiration. A. A. GOLDENWEISER. AN be more conveniently arranged and more comfort ably undertaken through our universal Travel Service. Tours and Tickets Everywhere, with or without Hotels, etc, as desired. Plans of travel and estimates submitted, Steamer, Pullman and Hotel accommodation reserved in advance. Tours de Luxe now being arranged for California, SPECIAL CRUISES TO THE TROPICS by United Fruit Company's "Great White Fleet" Send for Program Desired THOS. COOK & SON 245 Broadway, New York Boston Philadelphia San Francisco Chicago Montreal Los Angeles Toronto UKRAINE'S CLAIM TO FREEDOM An Appeal for Justice on Behalf of a Great By Edwin Björkman, Simon O. Pollock, Michael Hrushevsky, Otto Hoetzsch, Yaroslav Fedortchuk, and others. Presenting the cause of the 35,000,00 Ukrainians ("Ruthenians") of Russsia and Austria, numerically the sixth people of Europe; their sufferings, their problems, their aspirations. A symposium by the principal American, English, German, Swedish, Russian, Austrian, and Ukrainian authorities on the subject. Of great importance to everyone who would understand the complicated East European question out of which the war sprang and through the solution of which alone wars can be prevented in the future. With Maps etc. Cloth, 125 pages Published by the UKRAINIAN NATIONAL ASSOCIATION, 83 Grand Street, Jersey City, N. J. In the pages of THE DIAL the new books are dealt with upon their merits, without fear or favor, by able and competent critics, most of them specialists of recognized standing, and the signatures of these writers, appended to their work, are a guarantee of authority and responsibility. To cover the field of current literature with dignity, intelligence, authority, and honesty, has been the unswerving aim of THE DIAL during the thirty-five years of its existence; that it has succeeded in this endeavor beyond any other journal of its class is generally conceded. A three months trial subscription (6 issues) will be sent to any reader of The New Republic on receipt of 25 cents. THE DIAL, 632 Sherman St., Chicago The National Journal of Social Service CIVICS INDUSTRY • HEALTH What Shall We Do With Patriotism By Max Eastman A searching of the elements of patriotism and a questioning of many theories we have come to take for granted. Race Suicide By Edith Houghton Hooker The second article in the series LIFE'S CLINIC. Mrs. Hooker while acting as a nurse saw the suffering youthful license brings to men, women and children. She cared for them when physical agony bared the pain in their souls. The tales are vivid indictments of certain phases of our civilization. The Social Worker By Mary Van Kleeck A study of opportunity in this field with special attention to salary and training required. |