Publishers and Pelf

...But Captain Wright thought otherwise," he continued, "and I am sure the jury will feel that Captain Wright at least was convinced his opinion was correct...

...In any event, it is dear that unless we become so standardized as a people that we are mere machines, the total duration of these processes will vary widely...

...Some will require a dispropor- tionately long or short time for one stage of this process, some for another...

...For instance, what relationship can be established between the coun- try church supper, and the rise of the Ku Klux Klan...

...The imperious master who was issuing these decrees was past sixty at the time...

...OLD YOUNG AMERICA T HE youngest of the great nations, and the most progressive, according to curent material stand-ards, is "run" by old men...

...He is too young...

...To some- one busy making the near past seem venerable, or decrepit anyway, we offer the suggestion...

...Speaking recently at a dinner of the League of American Pen Women, she declared it was the mis- take of the ministers of religion if they did not realize that morality depended on the right use being made of the right foods...

...meanwhile, Sir Rennell, as he complains in a letFebruary16, 1927 THE COMMONWEAL 399 ter to the London Times, has had his reputation smirched and is completely deprived of all means of redress...

...A little later another man attracted his attention and, after the same inquiry as to identity, he ordered: "Discharge him...

...Sometimes it seems that the house's name was no accident, and that its existence at the heart of the imperial city, with its promenade, sleek, secret, and horrible, during the hey- day of imperialism which lasted roughly from the first jubilee until the great war let light and air in upon it, was no unfit by-product of imperialism itself...

...Even the children have got into it now...

...95 THE COMMONWEAL February I6, 1927 has changed, may be due in some measure to the reso- lute defense offered by skilled Catholic spokesmen, but must be attributed in the first instance to the circum- stance that the facts in the case really precluded con- troversy...

...But it is fair to ask in this connection who is old now and whether the time has not come for a realignment of the popular view on the question of the border-land between maximum and declining efficiency...

...Father Martindale is himself a convert and --for this reason, perhaps---has more than the usual Englishman's flare for logic...

...Her case was similar to that of Jasper K. Elmer, who came from Yugoslavia two years ago entirely ignorant of the English language and who, ten days before Dora was graduated, appeared as valedictorian of his class in a public school at Reading, Pennsylvania...

...I want you to go down the line and quietly advise some of our numerous centenarians that they are nearing the retirement age...

...third, to achieve recognition of his powers...

...Besides, there is every sign that the average duration of life will keep on advancing, since science appears to be only on the threshold of the greater discoveries which will hold the principal bodily diseases at bay...

...The problems of everyone who aspires to climb the steep hill of promotion in any vocation are, first, to obtain a fundamental equipment, educational or other- wise...

...By the beginning of the present century, the aver- age age of the people who died had ascended to forty- nine years and the average for those who died in 1925 was fifty-five years...

...That a verdict against Captain Wright speedily followed was, of course, to be expected, but it can hardly have brought real solace to the Gladstone family, the innocent victims of mercenary publishing...

...Thus one who was beginning to get old at forty when he had exceeded the average span by seven years, cannot be said to begin to get old now until he is sixty- two or more...

...But the alarm- ingly sinister feature of the court disclosures in connec- tion with The Whispering Gallery, and Portraits and Criticisms is that publishers of standing should have been found not only to accept these volumes of malicious libels and unsupported suggestion of scandal, but to assist in the perpetration of fraud...

...The temptation to "easy money" for writers whose equipment and sense of discrimination were about equal to their sense of decency, was obvious...

...MANY and marvelous are the explanations given for the general lowering of moral standards in Amer- ica, but to Mrs...

...and, fourth, to translate this recognition into actual preferment...

...Ida Bailey Allen, a recognized author- ity on diet and cooking, must be awarded the palm for a revelation of causes which is both definite and succinct...

...But if the case of Sir Rennell Rodd is to be deplored, what shall be said of the situation of the Gladstone family, brought about by the readiness of a publishing house to produce for money-making purposes a volume in which the vilest accusations are made against the character of one of the greatest of British prime min- isters because somebody had told somebody else who had told the author that such charges were true...

...As it must be conceded that the judg- ment and poise which ripe experience brings are of great value when conjoined with a continuation of the vital powers, as in a normally healthy person, those whose angle of observation has predisposed them to consider men becoming useless at forty must not con- sider them becoming useless until sixty-two in this year of grace...

...One may close the eyes and imagine a picture of an American industrial captain a half-century hence, who has a fancy for imposing arbitrary age distinc- tions, saying to his principal sub-captain: "John, we are allowing useless timber to accumulate in our estab- lishment...

...It is related that a newspaper owner, now dead, once entered with his general manager the office of a paper which he had just acquired and, pointing to one of the staff, asked: "Who is that man...

...It was opened in the late 'eighties, as a home for ballet of an intricate and often very beau- tiful order, and sensational gymnastic "turns...

...Because he received the Duke of Marl-borough into the Church and had for some time previ- ous been familiar with the entire situation, the Rev- erend C. C. Martindale is eminently well qualified to discuss the affair, as he does in this issue of The Com- monweal...

...Its legitimate attractions, however, paled before the re-nown of its famous "promenade," whose reputation, carried to the ends of the earth, made it a household word in African jungles, Chinese treaty-ports, Indian cantonments, the Australian bushmin a word, wherever the British flag flew or English was spoken...

...This opens up many new fields for investigation and for speculation...

...This is the conclusion to be drawn from a survey of the executive control of leading business and industrial organizations in the United States, made in the Wharton School of Finance and Commerce of the University of Pennsylvania...

...PUBLISHERS AND PELF T HAT Lytton Strachey as an intimate historian should be followed by an army of imitators of a distinctly lower order of talent, was perhaps inevitable...

...IT IS enough to make the blood of every IOO percent Nordic patriot boil to consider what some of the utterly unassimilable from countries with strange names, are doing to steal a portion of that American heritage which belongs to him, and is his exclusively by divine right...

...Yet this astounding lack of evidence to support the scandalous charges made against a great public servant does not appear to have troubled the publishers in the slightest degree...

...For example, when Allen Lane, the head of an old and justly famous publishing concern, was under cross-examination in the Pearson case, he testified that he considered he had only told "a harmless little lie" in order to push the circulation of The Whispering Gallery when he wrote in a newspaper advertisement that he could vouch for the authenticity of the book...

...When the average duration of human life was thirty-three years not so long ago, a man engaged in a productive occu-pation might have been said to be old at forty...

...They released the book and it was with difficulty that Viscount Gladstone and his brother were able to bring the author into court to dis- close the utter lack of confirmation for the abominable charges...

...It is helpful to review a matter when the stage of public calm has been attained, for the reason that one sees again, and very clearly, how easy it is to arouse clamor and how little good can be accomplished by raising it...

...THE passing of the Empire Theatre in London, which visiting Americans will remember as a landmark of lighter entertainment, and at which few American vaudeville artists of the higher-paid class have not per- formed, need not cause much regret, though a New York Times correspondent tries to steep it in the glamour of the past by informing us that the theatre "coincides with Dundreary whiskers, horsehair sofas, and peg-top trousers...

...Indeed, no further than a few generations back, men were considered to be at least elderly when they reached that age...

...Upon receiv- ing an answer, he commanded: "Discharge him...

...What evidence exists that Judge Ben Lindsey supped every night on Welsh rarebit, fried oysters, and mince pie while preparing The Revolt of Modern Youth...

...It is significant that in opening the case in court for Cap- tain Peter Wright, the author of Portraits and Criti- cisms, his counsel admitted that in the judgment of his biographers and those with whom he was brought into closest relationship, William Ewart Gladstone was a man of the highest moral character...

...He is too old...

...Such a situation in this land of golden opportunity--for selected immigrants only--is little short of a scandal...

...A jury decided that Pearson was not guilty of obtaining money under false pretenses in selling his screed and he goes free...

...When Wright himself took the stand and began to support his "opin- ion" by telling what he had "always understood" and what someone had told him had been told by someone else, the judge was moved to remark: "I always under- stood that a man educated at the bar knew something of the laws of evidence, but I am beginning to doubt it...

...What dishes are served at the luncheons of a certain board dedicated to moral reform and staunch sup-porter of poisoned liquor and government speakeasies ? It looks like the only way the ministers are going to be helped out of a hole is by the adoption of another con- stitutional amendment, with a food schedule attached...

...If a man is not relatively older now at sixty than he used to be at forty, it may be that in a few generations more the limit will be pushed up to seventy, eighty or beyond...

...Those who care to know what thoughts a man who is at once a literary artist, a philosopher, and a believer, can carry away from such a place, are referred to certain pages in Mr...

...The Empire coincided with nothing of the sort...

...Compton Mackenzie's Carnival for an adequate description of the Empire promenade...

...Here, for instance, is Dora Martin, sixteen years old, who came with her mother from Costa Rica two years ago, unable to speak a word of English, forc- ing her way into the position of honor as valedictorian of her class at Public School Number 54, at Amster- dam Avenue and xo4 Street, New York...

...second, to acquire a sufficient experience of life to test out his equipment...

...This "harmless little lie" gave authority to the rumor that a distinguished diplomat, Sir Rennell Rodd, was the author...

...The results of the survey, announced recently, indicate that sixty years is about the average age of those who guide the largest enterprises in the fields of construc- tive effort which are most distinctive of America, and which therefore make the most exacting demands upon the wisdom, initiative, and general powers of those who direct them...