Price, $50 complete, including carrying case. 4 Battle-front lesson HE sits at his Corona, typing his day's reports this It was in France that he learned Corona's value-its You, too, can gain profit and pleasure from this six-pound secretary. Make it a point to see Corona at your local dealer's or write us for free booklet. Back to America BY MARK SULLIVAN In his speeches here is not the peace but the permanence of the peace. in Europe he speaks with impatience, almost with something a little like scorn, about those who are intent on the details of the peace that is to be made during these coming months at Paris. The only thing he regards as of importance, the only prime thing you gather that he is going to permit his mind to be bothered with, is the permanence of peace-what he calls the permanent concert of powers to maintain the peace, meaning the League of Nations. As to those who are concerned merely with getting through with this present war, with getting the details of peace settled and the treaty signed, with getting our troops back to their homes, and, in general, with getting away, so far as is possible, from the discomforts and hardships, not to say dangers, of the present state of affairs-with all that President Wilson is imThat is all the patient as being a minor matter. mere day labor, so to speak, of statesmanship. The present war is over, and the details of liquidating it will be attended to somehow by somebody; what he proposes to occupy himself with is seeing to it that our grandchildren shall not need to fight another war. His concern, as he says in his speeches, is not merely with America, not merely with one nation, nor even a group of nations, but with humanity as a whole. In this attitude, if there is the quality of vagueness, there is also the quality of bigness and distant vision; and the statesmen, the newspapers, the intellectual leaders throughout Europe appreciate it. There is no mistaking the deference and applause with which Wilson's declaration of his purpose was received. PRESIDENT WILSON over here takes the view that the important thing come until long after you are comfortably dead. Also, the insurance of peace to our grandchildren lies largely in that world of abstract philosophy which is for Wilson the easier field, the field which he most enjoys and in which he most excels. As the London "Morning Post," giving complete sympathy to Wilson's purpose, phrases it: "President Wilson has treated the war and all it involves as a problem in philosophy; he has traced the origins of all wars, resolved them into their elements, and proposes a remedy to operate in the future." On the other hand, getting this present war over, getting the troops home, getting the débris cleared up and the wreck liquidated, is a concrete and prosaic business presenting many difficulties and attended with many discomforts. "We should get our soldiers home," says Mr. Sullivan in this article, written in Paris after a survey of the situation in France. "By all means let the American people and the American Government put their first energies on winding the whole thing up. Tie up the loose ends, ask for the bill; pay it-pay it with a smile, say good-by, and get home-back to work and marriage and children and normal life and normal associations."-THE EDITOR. Nevertheless there is always the problem of determining the precise boundary where a statesman's concern for humanity and the world at large should end and his concern for his own people and his own country should begin. There is always the problem of determining just where a statesman's concern for his own generation may properly end and where his concern for the generation of our grandchildren may reasonably begin-the just distribution of his time and thought between the pressing problems of to-day and the abstractions of a very distant to-morrow. Temptation is usually on the side of getting too far over in the direction of the grandchildren. For one thing, the test of success does not But the winding up of this present war is a thing which must be attended to, and it is not being attended to with either the speed or thoroughness that is not merely desirable but urgently necessary. No one would willingly distract a statesman engaged in so fine a task as the attainment of permanent peace; but getting a league of nations under way and getting all the things done that must accompany the inception of a league of nations will be a long, a very long business, as anyone readily sees who has been in touch with the conferences now being held in Paris. If there is not to be a return to normal peace conditions until there is first a league of nations, if the unsatisfactory neither-one-thingnor-the-other state of an armistice is to continue for a long time, if America and America's army must continue to be involved in the mess until stable government is restored in Germany and until the indemnity is collected or arranged for, that is almost appalling. Meantime there are some definite, practical tasks that urgently need to be done. In We should get our soldiers home. We should get them home at once. saying this I do not pretend to speak by any specific authority, but I am confident that I express the prevailing judgment and the ardent desire of the army, high and low. And even more than of the army do I express the uneasy concern of civilian observers over here. At home we are conscious of merely a sentimental wish to get the boys back to the home firesides; but when you come over here you are impressed every hour with serious, concrete reasons for haste. We don't want our soldiers to stay here a day longer than can be helped. We 6 don't want them to stay here long enough to lose the fine qualities of their Americanism. We don't want them to be kept here long enough to take on We don't the European attitude toward women. want them kept here long enough to take on the European attitude toward alcohol. We don't want them to become the barrack-room soldiers of tradition. So long as they were here for war there was little danger of this, and what danger did exist was As a matter of fact, a part of the price of war. there was practically no danger then. To soldiers war is a time of tonic duty and wholesome work. To the soldiers-certainly to the American type of soldier, enlisted for a specific purpose-war is a time of physical and mental improvement, of contented work and exalted spirits; it is peace that is really hell. And the American army in France is midway between war and peace. While it would not be accurate to say the soldiers are idle, it is a fact that what is mainly going on is an effort on the part of the officers to prevent idleness, killing time, drilling for the sake of drilling, conscious effort to find enough work to make the men physically tired at night. And our men are intelligent enough to see that that is what it is. Drilling for the sake of acquiring expertness in a war that was still ahead of them, drilling to acquire skill in a task they intended to do and were eager to do, was one thing. But the drill that is going on now, drill without purpose, drilling to kill time until the ship goes, drilling to keep the men out of the perils of idleness, is another thing. There isn't any mental state so insidiously disastrous to a man's mental and moral fineness as enforced waiting for something to happen which is beyond, his control, which he can't hasten by his own energy. And that is exactly what something over a million young Americans are doing in France to-day. I "Say Good-by and Get Home" HAVE no information as to how earnestly the work of getting those soldiers back is being pushed by those at home who have charge of it. I have not gone deeply into the question as to how many ships are being used, or how many more might be used if the matter were looked upon as what it is, an emergency calling for energetic action. The men were brought over at the rate of about 300,000 a month. It is assumed that that speed cannot be That may be so. duplicated in taking them back. Sixty-five per cent of them were brought over in English ships, and the English have other uses for their ships now. They have the Australians to take home. The Australians have been here for four years. They have the Canadians to take home. They have their own soldiers to bring back from Mesopotamia, from Egypt, and from Saloniki. All those are legitimate prior claims on the ships that England owns. But the English are also anxious to put their ships back on their old trade routes, to rebuild their shattered commerce. That is decidedly not a legitimate prior claim to getting our Americans home. I do not know the details of what can or cannot be done; but I do know that our Government ought to see it for what it is, an emergency calling for every energy and resource. It may be our naval vessels could help. Ask any American soldier billeted in a barn in a dreary French village where it rains twenty hours out of every twenty-four, and it is nightfall at four o'clock-ask him if he would be willing to swing in a hammock in the corridor of a battleship, and he would fall on your neck. Maybe merchant ships could be used. There is no conceivable hardship of ten days on the ocean equal to the deadly demoralizing dreariness of week after week of just waiting. The American army has done a big job and done it well and cleanly. Every soldier, from the private in the kitchen police up to the commander in chief feels that and is abundantly entitled to feel it. As the case stood on the day the fighting ended, every soldier had added a cubit to his own self-esteem and his pride in America. If they can go home now, at Collier's things that may come with idleness. By all means CLOS Let the Other Allies Police Germany towns. mans. our army goes about the work of policing Germany. The fact is our soldiers don't hate the German crushed as anyone need ask for, they treat the Ger- The answer is, let the French, British, and Belgians do the occupying. Release our soldiers from this work and let them come home. The Belgians are the ideal occupiers for Germany. The Belgians have an ingenious spirit in such matters. They kept all the orders, ukases, and verbotens that the Germans used to put up on the billboards in Belgium, and when the situation was reversed the Belgians just translated the orders into German, and wherever they are doing the occupying they treat the Germans to a dose of identically their own medicine. That is all right. If any or all of Germany is to be occupied, for a short time or a long time, let the other Allies do it; let our boys come home. As I have said, this is the judgment and the wish of our army, high and low. It is also the judgment of civilians over here. Undoubtedly it is also the wish of our people at home. But just because Wilson is preoccupied by another thing, there is danger that the situation may be allowed to drag along. Congress ought to investigate, to take a position on the question, and see to it that America's will is carried out and her interest conserved. What About Russia? ALLIED to the question of using American soldiers to occupy Germany is the question of occupying Russia-or policing Russia, or conquering Russia, or whatever is the proper word for the thing that is to be done or not done in Russia. This is in many ways less easy to answer than the question of policing Germany. What to do about Russia is the one big international puzzle of the day. The more ready a man is to give an answer on this question, the surer you may be that he isn't qualified to give an answer. The biggest men at the Peace Conference are the men who tell you they have no confident judgment as to what the answer is to be. There are plenty of people who will give you an answer based on selfinterest of one kind or another. There are people who own Russian bonds and are interested in undoing the repudiation policy adopted by the present Russian Government. There are British, French, and others who own property in Russia which they think they may lose unless the Bolshevists are overturned. There are radicals who think the selfdetermination of nations includes letting each work out its own destiny in its own way, even if the way is as ruthless as the present Russian régime seems to be. There are others who say-and it is the expression of a fear -that if the Caucasian nations sia, Japan will. There are Russians hanging around the fringes of the Peace Conference -good men many of them seem to be-who want Trotzky and Lenine put down (Cont'd on p. 33) The Be BY CHESTRA once, they will forever have nothing but glorious memories of their great adventure. But if they are kept waiting for weeks and months, their memories will sour. At the best, every day they stay here is a day of anticlimax; at the worst, some of them may carry for a lifetime distasteful memories of sordid Paving The The Prince of Beulah City BY LUCIAN CARY ILLUSTRATED BY LUCIUS W. HITCНСОСК PHILIP FARADAY opened his eyes and saw the sunlight on the floor and felt the breath of June coming in through his open windows, and knew that this was the day to propose to Mary Taylor. He had been intending for a week to propose to Mary. But he had wanted everything to be just right—even the weather. Philip was like that. He had always had everything. He had always had everything so easily that he rather took having everything for granted. He was an idealist. It was seldom possible for him to make a concession; to accept a thing as good enough. In Philip's eyes things were either absolutely right or absolutely unacceptable. And this principle applied whether he was judging a breakfast egg or a suit of clothes or a day in June. It is really this principle that makes a prince. Philip was the Prince of Beulah City. PHILIP had never minded being called The Prince, even as a boy. A boy who wasn't a Faraday might have had doubts about being called The Prince; he might have been-secretly flattered and openly irritated; he might have hit somebody in the eye. But Philip was neither irritated nor flattered. He knew himself for a prince. His grandfather had been a king, a king of the Wisconsin woods who had floated his fortune of logs down the yellow flood of the Chippewa to Beulah City and the sawmills. Philip's father had begun, where Philip's grandfather had left off. Philip's father was a tall man with a white beard and heavy black eyebrows, who had been to London and Paris and Monte Carlo. He was the only man in Beulah City who had manners, and the only man with a beard who smoked cigarettes. In the Middle West of those days it was only bad boys and wild young men who smoked cigarettes; it was a common assertion of the middle-aged, especially of those middleaged persons who were always chewing tobacco when they were not smoking cigars, that cigarettes did something to the brain, so that a boy who smoked them could not tell the truth and would die before he was thirty. Philip's father was an awesome exception to this rule. He made his cigarettes himself, taking long golden shreds of bright Virginia tobacco from a flat silver box and rolling them up in very wide cigarette papers with the dignity and the grace of a gentleman of the Regency taking snuff. He was known to take a small glass of brandy with his coffee after dinner. Philip's mother had vices also. She read French novels, in a day when the French were known to be a decadent nation. She slept very late every morning, and she never got out of bed until she had had her chocolate. It was usually ten o'clock when she came downstairs to consult the cook, looking so pretty, so fresh, so amiable, that no servant could resent her. They were snobs, the Faradays. But they were such complete snobs that it never occurred to them to snub anyone. For the first few years Philip had grown up almost like other boys in Beulah City. He was required to be at home every night by six o'clock, in order to bathe and dress before dinner, whereas other boys received this punishment but once a week. He lived in a great rectangular wooden house with a mansard roof and a cupola on top; a house with a broad lawn sloping down to Grand Boulevard in front; and, behind, a barn, a pasture lot, and a large garden; and the whole so populated with cooks, housemaids, coachmen, and gardeners that it was almost impossible to make a fort of the cupola on the roof, or dig a cave in the front lawn, or build a fire in the lee of the barn. And at the party with which his birthday was regularly celebrated he was compelled to wear a wide stiff Eton collar, a dinner jacket, silk stockings, and patent-leather pumps. But though the boys of the Fourth Street public school expressed their contempt for these restrictions upon Philip by calling him The Prince, they early recognized his genius by making him a member of their gang. His genius was for throwing. He had an arm-it happened to be his left arm-made on purpose for throwing snowballs. No other boy in Beulah City was so thoroughly hated or so futilely pursued by outraged teamsters. By the time Philip was fourteen the Fourth Street school had almost ceased to think of him as The Prince. They called him "Lefty," or, in moments of particular affection, "Old Southpaw," and fondly prophesied a future for him in the pitcher's box. The next year Philip, protesting violently, went east to boarding school. The Faradays were usually in New York during the Christmas holidays; they spent their summers at Lake George, unless they were abroad; and Philip did not see Beulah City for ten years. Then he went home to live in the Faraday house and to prepare himself for his succession to the Faraday fortune. He did not want to go home. He preferred Paris by now. But he found himself liking Beulah City on second acquaintance. His father was no longer the only man with a beard who smoked cigarettes, nor his mother the only woman who breakfasted in bed, nor his house the only establishment that contained a butler. Beulah City had a country club, with an excellent nine-hole course, and an attractive group with the money and the leisure for the graces of life-the "younger crowd." Beulah City had been acquiring the ways of wealth. Not that the town had caught up with Philip. But Philip found people who were sufficiently sophisticated to appreciate him. They were ready, as their forbears had not been, to follow a prince. Indeed, they revived the old nickname as an expression of appreciation. And Philip was neither irritated nor flattered. knew himself for a prince. He PHILIP'S work as manager of the Faraday lumber business was not onerous; his subordinates were too competent to ask much of him. But the duty served to occupy his attention for several hours a day for several days a week, and thus to keep him the keener for his avocations. He made the country club as popular in the winter as it had been in summer by introducing, in addition to the locally acclimated sports of skiing and skating, an iced slide with fast bobsleds such as he had known at St. Moritz. He backed Pierre Ladoux in a little inn twenty miles up the river, to fill the need of a place to go. When Pierre, becoming successful, would have introduced American hotel fixtures, Philip compelled him to preserve the Old World charm of the low-raftered room, with its wide fireplace, its shining copper, and its sanded floor. Thus Philip found himself pleasantly useful in Beulah City, and princeship grew on him. And at the moment when his ingenuity in making life amusing had begun to fail he met Mary Taylor. HE E was walking down Main Street at the epochal moment. In front of Hood's department store he saw Tom Jenkinson. He had seen Tom only twice since the days of the Fourth Street school; Tom did not move in the country-club crowd. He hailed Tom joyously. And then he saw that Tom was not alone; Tom was talking to a girl-an extraordinarily pretty girl. Philip was quite certain he had not noticed the girl before he noticed Tom. "Miss Taylor," Tom said, "I want to introduce The Prince." Tom affected to stammer-"I mean Mr. Faraday." "How do you do, Mr. Faraday?" said Miss Taylor, and shook hands with him frankly. For the first time in his life Philip was speechless. It wasn't just her prettiness; it wasn't just her voice; it wasn't just her clothes. It wasn't anything that he could name. But Philip walked all the way home wondering who she was and how he could see her again, and why no one had ever introduced him before. After dinner he asked his mother if she had ever heard of a Miss Taylor. Mrs. Faraday looked up from her novel and knitted her brows. "She's a perfect beauty," Philip went on; "you couldn't have forgotten her if you had ever met her. The fact is, she's just a little too perfect for Beulah City." "Where did you meet her?" "In front of Hood's-" His mother smiled. "Naturally. She has charge of the glove counter at Hood's." "Oh!" said Philip. That explained why he had never been introduced to her. "Are you sure?" he asked. "She was-so well turned out, you know." "She is very charming," his mother said. "And she has taste." Philip glanced at her sharply. He saw that his mother was teasing him, pumping him. He resented the fact. "She is the most charming girl I have ever met," he said roundly. "I am not sure but you are right," she said amiably. |