Evening star., 1938-10-23

last time it can be reused with
chance of preventing war, or with
chance of coming through to victory
should our efforts to prevent war
fail -"
But, says Mr.. Churchill, closing on
4 note of un-Cassandra-l hope
land, anyway, he seems a rather
cherubic type for Cassandra) it
still can be done, if action is taken
quickly. Or. in plain terms, if Eng
land goes into an armament race,
she can still maintain Europe's GUS
tomary armed peace. For, of course,
the essential Of an armed peace is
that all sides be armed There can be
no pacifists-they only make war. The
reviewer is inclined to think that
Americans do not celebrate Columbus
Day with sufncient piety. 1t would
seem that it has as much to do with
our national existence as the Fourth
of July and, as time goes on, it may
have more and more significance to us.
In the November Esquire, now on
the stands, Mr.. Ernest Hemingway
has story. It is called THE Denun-
ciation": it is on Spain. 1t is a good
story. 1t has beginning and an end
and in between it goes along You
read it without tagging interest. But
you can read lots of stories.
The reviewers understanding was,
when Mr.. Hemingway went to the
troubled peninsula, that he was going
to write simply apocalyptic stuff when
he came back. That was what num-
bers of critics said. They told us that
Mr.. Hemingway was doing something
pretty heroic in going at all; that he
was risking his life for the sake Of
an ideal, and that when he came home
again he would bring with him such
vivid picture of the Spanish struggle
that the Nation would be reused to
some sort of action or other and that
the tragedy of the civil war would be
immortalized in his words.
Well. Mr.. Hemingway is now back.
He has written some pretty good ar
ticles, some pretty good stories and
an inferior play. He has made it per-
fectly clear that he considers the right
of the war to be with the loyalists,
and he has given some good reasons
for his opinion. As much of the Ma
ton as reads knows that But has it
affected the state of the public con-
science out in the back country? Have
the farmers, getting in their crops,
hastened their labors in order to re-
turn to their f1resides and read Hem
ingway on Spain? The reviewer fears
not. Spain, as treated by Mr.. Hem
ingway or as treated by any one, has
given Mr.. Warwick Deeping and Mr.
Lloyd Douglas very little competition
on the best seller lists. And it isn't
q patch on the world series.
AS far as rousing the Nation goes,
1t would seem that Mr.. Hemingway's
labor is lost. But he has gotten
some very nice copy out of it. The
magazines seem perfectly willing to
buy what he has brought home. The
Esquire story in the November issue
is the first of three. the editors tell
US. If the other two are as good,
Esquire will have lost nothing on its
bargain.
How about writing your own idea
OF sophistication?" asks q correspond
ent. After all, you started this thing.
And, frankly. think you are getting
nowhere with it. How about calling
it of by putting yourself on the
record?"
Well. the reviewer cannot admit that
she got nowhere. To be sure, she
did not find out what interested her,
which was the meaning the word has
IN the minds of those who toss it about
lightly. The correspondents who wrote
to give their definitions have not been
Of that kind: they have been serious
and have been concerned with formu-
lating serious meanings.
When the reviewer called for en-
lightenment she was thinking of the
way IN which she had heard the word
used by young college students, by
individuals Of considerable social ex-
perience, by salesgirls offering goods,
by her maid. You might say that
there is so wide a difference between
these groups that any word used by
them would partake Of that difference,
and so that quest for the meaning
Of "sophistication," as handled by
people so separate, must be doomed
aforetime But 1t was precisely the
fact that there was Q Likeness in the
way all these groups used the word
that interested the reviewer.
The saleswoman who said that such
and such a hat was sophisticated
model" had exactly the same express
sion when she spoke as did the maid
who conflded to the breathless and
trusting reviewer that dem people
down de hall has sho got sophisticated
ways" Now, II you want to md out
what people mean by such usage you