January 2, 1935]

The Nation

17

some dry fanatics has not materialized. It is a fact, however, that in almost every respect the prophecies of the advocates of repeal have proved inaccurate. Bootlegging still flourishes, crime has not abated a whit, drunkenness has notably increased, and despite all solemn promises, the saloon in effect is with us again. To be complacent, as Mr. Mencken is, under these circumstances, exhibits a detachment of mind which must be very convenient to a man who is on record as expecting so much from the repeal of prohibition.

LAWRENCE G. BROOKS, Special Justice,
First District Court of Eastern Middlesex

Malden, Mass., December 11

TO THE EDITORS OF THE NATION:

This fellow Mencken makes me tired. Some months ago there was a picture of him in the *Saturday Review of Literature* that hit him off just right. He was shown standing with a friend gazing with rapt awe at the picture of a brewery! If there ever was a half-intoxicated individual in the world, indebted with the spirit of his own verbosity, it is Mencken.

Take that article of his, One Year of Legal Liquor, which you foolishly printed: the first paragraph could have been written only by someone absolutely blind to the facts of the case. Take the record of all the great cities—from Portland, Oregon, and Los Angeles to Boston and Hartford—and you find that the increase in drinking is tremendous. Take the little village in which I live—and thousands like it; and the increase of drunkenness is appalling.

Last summer I traveled 8,000 miles across the country and back and saw dozens and dozens of towns and cities, and my own observation confirms the facts as given. Surely *The Nation*, at any rate, ought to be on the side of sobriety, for God knows we need sober reasoning in these days that are upon us.

Pittsfield, N. H., December 8

HARRY TAYLOR,

Minister, First Congregational Church

Japanese War Expenditures

TO THE EDITORS OF THE NATION:

An editorial in *The Nation* for December 5 says that the Japanese Diet approved "a record appropriation for the army and navy of over a billion yen, or 46 per cent of the annual budget." This common misstatement comes from the peculiarly complicated nature of our budgetary system, difficult for laymen to understand.

The Japanese budget is divided into General Account and Special Account, not a few appropriations appearing under both. Therefore, to figure out the percentage of military appropriations, we must first add up the appropriations in both the General and Special accounts, and then subtract from the total the items which overlap each other in the two accounts. The 1934-35 budget consists of a General Account of 2,143,000,000 yen and a Special Account of 6,883,000,000 yen, or a total of 9,026,000,000 yen. Deduct from this amount overlapping items totaling 2,368,000,000 yen, and the net estimated expenditure is 6,658,000,000 yen, of which the army's share is 449,000,000, or 6.74 per cent, and the navy's share 487,000,000 yen, or 7.31 per cent. The combined percentage of the army and the navy is 14.05, which shows a considerable reduction as compared with 17.32 for 1933-34.

In 1933-34 America's military and naval appropriations amounted to 17.51 per cent, England's 15.62, France's 23.36, and Italy's 20.88.

Washington, December 11

CAPTAIN T. YAMAGUCHI,

Japanese Naval Attache

[While it is true that the budgets of various countries are never exactly comparable, there would appear to be no basis for Captain Yamaguchi's claim that the Special Account should be taken into consideration in determining the proportion of Japan's budget which is devoted to war preparation. The Special Account compares roughly with the emergency and recovery expenditures of the United States and contains nothing, except possibly the sinking fund, which would be included in the regular budget of any country. We find, for example, the following to be among the larger of the thirty-four items listed under the Special Account: Government Railways, Rice Control, Post Office, Life Insurance, Receipts on Public Loans, Iron Works, and the Governments of Chosen and Taiwan. In fact, the only items in the Special Account which appear to belong in the regular budget are of a military nature, including appropriations for an army arsenal, a naval arsenal, a naval fuel office, and a naval powder mill.—EDITORS THE NATION.]

Not Crackpot but a Menace

TO THE EDITORS OF THE NATION:

The heading placed by *The Nation* over my letter in the issue of December 19, in which I indicated how the proposed new party would be made up of elements already showing fascist tendencies, is ambiguous, and does not reflect what I wrote. The heading could mean that I consider the idea of such a party "crackpot." I certainly do not. I consider it a menace of the most serious kind, as my letter indicated.

I said that the new party would be "recruited from liberal or left-wing elements of both the Democratic and the Republican Party, from right-wing Socialists, from Technocrats, Sinclairites, Utopians, Social Creditites, Farmer Laborites, supplemented by a general assortment of adherents to a variety of crackpot and social theories." I do not agree with the Democratic or the Republican Party, but in justice to my intelligence you should not suggest that I believe them "crackpot."

Such a heading lays *The Nation* open to the—I hope—unjust suspicion that it is so favorable to the proposed party that it seeks to ridicule any disparaging of such an enterprise.

New York, December 20

MAXWELL HYDE

Three Pishes for the Drifter and
Hurrah for Dr. Townsend!

TO THE EDITORS OF THE NATION:

In *The Nation* for November 14 the Drifter wrote an article about the Townsend Old-age Pension Plan, and I wish to say that whoever the Drifter may be he should be sure he knows what he is talking about before he has his articles published in a magazine that the gullible public are paying their good money to read.

In this article it is asserted that under the Townsend Plan any woman or man over sixty accepting the pension of $200 a month must renounce any private income he or she might have. This statement is untrue. The people back of this Townsend Plan have explained over and over through the newspapers, by articles in magazines, and over the radio that it is not the intention of the Townsend Plan to take away any of the accumulated wealth or possessions of anyone, especially of those who agree to come under the provisions of the Townsend Plan. And I say "pish" to the Drifter for making a statement apparently intended to mislead the public.

The Drifter also says he could not spend as much as $200

The Nation

[Vol. 140, No. 3626]

a month. Couldn't he buy diamond necklaces for his dog, as some of the millionaires have done, while people less fortunate have not had the money to buy shoes for their children? Perhaps, though, the Drifter would call shoes and food for the laboring people "gewgaws."

"Pish" again to the Drifter for his reference to Chaucer, Milton, Jane Austen, and the rest. In their day people were old at sixty years. In our day "life begins at sixty."

Haugan, Mont., December 13

E. COLEMAN

## Our Public Schools

TO THE EDITORS OF THE NATION:

I read the article by John K. Norton on Educational Finance in *The Nation* of December 5 and am in complete sympathy with the views expressed therein; yet there is a further question to be raised about the returns that are realized for the tax dollars spent on the present school system. I am a product of the public-school system, have taught in the high school, and have sent four children through the public schools. I am not unappreciative of what the public schools have done for America and of the devoted work of many of our teachers, but it seems to me that the time has come for a very marked change from the old system and an adaptation of it to the needs of modern life. The educators themselves are groping for a new and better plan of popular education, but I wish some standard periodical like *The Nation* would lead in a study of this vital problem. To a large extent our present school system develops a parasitic psychology. If children were taught to share in the work of the world and to render public service, this would be changed.

I agree' that the nation ought to maintain the schools, but it is also entitled to a different product from what it is getting.

Kellogg, Minn., December 6

ROBERT H. DUEL

## A Ray of Light from Germany

TO THE EDITORS OF THE NATION:

May I through your correspondence columns call attention to the underground movement in Germany? These illegal activities are more difficult and dangerous than they were in czarist Russia or are in fascist Italy; nevertheless they go on. Prague is the center of the struggle against Hitler. The most important weapon is the printed word, in flysheet, newspaper, or pamphlet. It is impossible to satisfy the demand for it. Even within Germany production goes forward. Most of those engaged in illegal activities are unemployed. There is a perpetual lack of money. There is lack of printing presses, typewriters, duplicating machines. Funds are scraped together penny by penny. The most illegal publication is the *Socialist Action*, an eight-page newspaper published every fortnight. A single copy weighs barely an eighth of an ounce. During its first year two million copies were distributed.

The titles of the pamphlets are interesting. "Plato's Feast" and "Do You Take Care of Your Hair?" are miniature

Next Week
**Huey Long**
by Raymond Gram Swing
and

**An Article on the Power Fight**
by Frank P. Walsh, Chairman of the
New York State Power Authority

editions of the *Socialist Review*. The paralyzing spell that first lay on the masses of the population has disappeared. A wave of discontent is spreading. Slowly but unflinchingly those opposed to Hitler are pushing ahead with their work of sapping and undermining, like moles, the walls of the Third Reich. They are fighting to bring back the civilized Germany that was.

Chicago, December 11

JAMES M. YARD

## Jacques Romain

TO THE EDITORS OF THE NATION:

Jacques Romain, poet and novelist of color, and the finest living Haitian writer, has just been sentenced at Port-au-Prince, Haiti, to two years in jail for circulating there a French magazine of Negro liberation called the *Cri des Nègres*. Jacques Romain is a young man of excellent European education, formerly occupying a high post in the Haitian government and greatly respected by intellectuals as an outstanding man of letters. He is one of the very few upper-class Haitians who understand and sympathize with the plight of the oppressed peasants of the island, and who have attempted to write about and to remedy the pitiful conditions of 90 per cent of the Haitian people, exploited by the big coffee monopolies and the manipulations of foreign finance in the hands of the National City Bank.

As a fellow-writer of color, I call upon all writers and artists of whatever race who believe in the freedom of words and of the human spirit, immediately to protest to the President of Haiti and to the nearest Haitian consulate against the un-called for, unmerited sentence to prison of Jacques Romain.

Carmel, Cal., December 1

LANGSTON HUGHES

## George Herbert Palmer

TO THE EDITORS OF THE NATION:

The undersigned will be very grateful for any interesting data—letters, notes of lectures, personal reminiscences—concerning the late Professor George Herbert Palmer of Harvard University. All material received at 465 West Twenty-third Street, will be safely returned to the owner.

New York, December 10

FRANCES LEE PANCHAUD

## Contributors to This Issue

LOUIS FISCHER is the Moscow correspondent of *The Nation*.

CARL BECKER, professor of European history at Cornell University, is the author of "The Heavenly City of the Eighteenth Century Philosophers."

HAROLD J. LASKI, of the faculty of the University of London, is the author of many authoritative works on political science. His latest book is "Democracy in Crisis."

ROSE M. STEIN is research secretary of the League for Social Justice of Pittsburgh.

EDA LOU WALTON is associate professor of English at Washington Square College, New York University, and the author of "Jane Matthew, and Other Poems."

LIONEL TRILLING is a member of the English Department of Columbia University.

AGNES SMEDLEY is the author of "Chinese Destinies" and "China's Red Army Marches."

ROBERT MORSE is a New York artist.