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tion. For years he struggled to find the proper niche in America, and at last went back to Poland, but dared not go to Russia. Practically all the Russians who came to us were well educated and of genuine ability, but a great many did not know how to turn their hands to the practical affairs of life.

America is by no means the only country where Russians of this kind abound. I was walking in the streets of Kobe, in Japan, one day, and wanted to inquire the way. I looked for some one who might perhaps speak English. Soon I saw a fairhaired, pretty girl of about sixteen with two small children, evidently English or American. I spoke to her in English, and she answered in that language, speaking very correctly except for an accent. She was a Russian who had lost her parents and was acting as nurse in an English family until she could save money to come to America. I know nothing more about her, but a brief talk while she walked with me two or three blocks was enough to show that she had the kind of ability which makes valuable citizens. In Constantinople my brother and sister tell of a Russian general who for some time served as a gardener, a countess who was a dressmaker, and others of high positions at home who were doing all sorts of menial tasks until they could find something better. I have received from Constantinople letters typed by Russian ladies who were acting as volunteer stenographers until they could perfect their English.

The straits to which the Russian emigrants have been put have led some of them into lives of crime. In Paris the Russian criminals are said to be giving the police no end of trouble. Various estimates are made of the number of Russians domiciled in Paris since the war. A police inspector is reported as putting the number at 100,000, but according to others, who ought to know, that is a decidedly short count. "Only the upper classes of Russians are resourceful in crime. The average lowbrow Russian is an exceedingly dumb individual, and his wrongdoing chiefly is snatching some article of food from a stand and running with it." But the upper classes of Russians in Paris and other foreign cities are relatively numerous, compared with the lower classes.

It is mainly the intelligentsia who have been crowded out of Russia and forced to make a living by their wits. I might go on to give many other instances, such as the charming Russian lady who teaches French in the school attended by my small boy. All over the world they are in evidence these Russians who thought that by some divine right they should be subject to laws different from those of the peasants.

Not all the Russians of the upper classes have migrated. Many have died. Here are some interesting statistics from the London Times of September 1, 1922. A despatch from Riga states that, according to official Bolshevist figures, the tribunal known as the Cheka executed 1,766,118 persons before being renamed the Supreme Political Administration, in February, 1922. All those people were done to death in a period of less than five years. Many more have been executed since. The total, as printed in The Times, includes 6,675 professors and teachers, 8,800 doctors, 355,250 other intellectuals. Besides this, there were 1,243 priests, 54,650 officers, and 12,950 landowners. This makes something like 440,000 persons, all of whom belonged to the upper classes. A large part of these, by right of birth or ability, had made themselves influential leaders. The rest of those executed comprised 59,000 policemen, 192,350 workmen, 260,000 soldiers, and 815,100 peasants. The policemen, workmen, soldiers, and peasants were not the most stupid and ignorant of their respective classes. On the contrary, it is safe to say that they were among the most intelligent, for they had the strength of mind and character to resist the Soviet rule. Thus, since the revolution, Russia has lost nearly 2,000,000 of her most competent people through execution.

The 2,000,000 who were executed by no means measure Russia's full loss. Those who have fled from Russia are probably at least as numerous as those who were executed. Part have found refuge in Siberia, but hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, are in foreign countries. Many have been through terrible experiences whose marks will never be effaced. Here are two stories told by a woman who herself fled from Russia. During the dead of

winter, after hair-breadth adventures, she escaped into Finland. While she was resting in a peasant's house safely beyond the border, some other fugitives were brought in. One was a woman, evidently of refinement and culture. Food was set before her, a dish of porridge, for she had long been hungry. She took from the table three dishes and served porridge in each. "There," she said, "is your dish, Ivan, and there is yours, Katrinka." There were no children there. They had perished, but her mind was gone and she did not know it.

Near the Rumanian border at that same time a young wife and her husband were separated. She was finally smuggled across the border, but kept seeking her husband. He was found and brought to her, but a year later her poor distraught mind was still seeking him, although they had been together all the time. Such tales as these mean not only that great numbers of the better classes of Russians have migrated but that many, especially the children, have perished. Moreover, because of the hardships and wanderings of the adults, the birth-rate among the upper classes of Russia, both at home and abroad, has inevitably been greatly reduced. Thus to-day, among the children who are growing up in Russia, the proportion who inherit the qualities which give leadership, and who belong in homes where they receive training in leadership, is extremely small.

This seems to me to be by far the most discouraging aspect of Russia's present situation. In one brief decade that country has done to itself what Spain did in many generations. In Spain, during the Middle Ages and well on toward modern times, vast numbers of the most thoughtful, competent, and strong-willed people were killed, imprisoned, or driven into exile by religious persecution. Many others of the same kind were reduced to such straits of poverty that they and their children languished and perished. Another great group of the most virile, energetic, adventurous, and alert Spaniards went forth across the seas to the new lands of America. Most of them married commonplace Indian women, so that their children had no great share of either the biological or social inheritance of

Spain. Probably no other country of Europe ever saw any such wholesale exodus or destruction of its ablest people until the Russian collapse in our own day. That seems to be one great reason for the sad contrast between the Spain of to-day and that of four or five centuries ago.

Biology is gradually teaching us that races are plastic and that wholesale selection of special types for destruction, or for preservation, cannot take place without altering the racial characteristics. Here is a well-authenticated example among animals. In a book called "The King of the Thundering Herd," the author describes the wholesale slaughter by which the millions, or tens of millions, of bison in the Western plains of America were practically exterminated in the space of about a dozen years, when railroads first penetrated the plains and crossed to the Pacific coast. Never in all biological history, so far as we have exact knowledge, has there been a more rapid weeding out and extermination of any species. But before the bison were exterminated old hunters noted a strange fact. According to them, two new species had come into existence. Down in the southern plains of Texas they found a rangy beast with uncommonly long legs, a variety, or a species as the hunters said, which was so fleet that it could find safety in flight instead of merely waiting for the enemy and trying to ward him off by sheer strength, in the old stupid, blundering way of most buffaloes. In the mountains of Wyoming quite a different kind of bison had evolved. This was a relatively short-legged beast, which was very agile on the hillsides and could quickly scramble out of the way and thus escape the hunter. The two types were so different from each other, and from the standard type, that if they had not been exterminated, they might actually have given rise to new species. The extermination of the animals had been so ruthless that only two particular types of variants had been able to survive. So long as such variants remained in the original herd, they interbred with the ordinary animals, and their peculiarities quickly disappeared. Being isolated, however, like bred with like, and the new types began to become fixed.

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This same thing happens with human beings. It has been happening in Russia, and it has happened many times elsewhere. In China, for example, certain especially poverty-stricken villages have for centuries been subject to a constant, though slow, loss of their more able people through migration. So incompetent are So incompetent are these villagers, and so scanty their land, that even in good seasons they cannot raise food enough to support themselves through the year. For a few months each winter they wander among the neighboring villages, begging, stealing, raiding, and occasionally working. They cannot work often, because there are no jobs for them. In fact, there are a score of men for every bit of work. The process of weeding out the more able people has gone so far that during the famine of 1922 the American relief workers came to the conclusion that, as a whole, the villagers were almost subnormal mentally. Apparently they do not have brains enough to better their condition, and therefore they live on and on for generations in growing misery. Yet strange to say, from that same general region, though not from those particular villages, there has been selected a group of Chinese who are actually European in their energy and ability. They have migrated by successive stages to the far north of Manchuria, and are said to be one of the most able groups of Chinese anywhere in the world.

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Another case of this same kind is the Parsees. Long ago, at the end of the sixth century of the Christian era, the Zoroastrians of Persia had been through a period of great distress and commotion. În 651 A. Ď., on the fall and death of the King of Yazdagird, a number of these people, as the ancient chronicle puts it, "abandoned their houses and gardens and palaces for the sake of their religion and lived in Kohistan for one hundred years.' There, too, they suffered, for in those days the Mohammedan Arabs came into the land. So the Zoroastrians, to quote the chronicle again, "became anxious for their religion" and went to the city of Hormuz, on the shore of the Indian Ocean, in A. D. 751. There they lived for fifteen years, but, being harassed by the Arabs, they set sail for India. Perhaps there was only a single boatload of them. At

any rate, the number of migrants was small. They landed at Div, on the shores of Kathiawar, just east of the mouth of the Indus. Apparently they were not welcome there, for, after staying nineteen years, they sailed eastward to Gujarat, and reached Sanjan in 785. There they were allowed to form a permanent colony, with liberty to follow their own religion, provided they adopted the language and customs of the country. Later they migrated to Bombay, where most of them now live.

There are two extraordinary facts about the Parsees. The first is that originally they were a very highly selected group of people. They were selected partly by their strong religious convictions, partly by their tenacity of purpose, which made them prefer hardship and migration rather than apostasy to their religion. They were chosen also because of their courage and physical vigor, for without these qualities they would not have been able to face the difficulties and privations of migration after migration in the face of hostile neighbors. Moreover, they were not selected from among the peasants or common people, but from among the upper classes-from among those having houses, gardens, and palaces, and from those who either practised various handicrafts or were leaders in the life of the community.

The second remarkable thing about the Parsees is that to-day, in proportion to their numbers, they are the most competent people in all India aside from the British. The Parsees of our day number only about a hundred thousand. They are largely merchants, but they are keenly interested in preserving and purifying their old religion. Theirs, indeed, is almost the only religion in India, aside from Christianity, which actually inculcates and insists upon a high moral code as well as upon charity and altruism. In spite of their small number, the Parsees have many leaders in business, philanthropy, and politics. Two of them are the only natives of India ever elected to the British House of Commons. Their women are freer and more respected than those of any other set of people in India except the British; and both boys and girls are better educated than the average

boy or girl in any other native caste or race of India.

Why do the Parsees thus excel? Largely because they were not only a highly selected group at first, but they have kept themselves unmixed, although completely surrounded by Hindus. The caste system of India has helped in this, and the strict rules of the Parsees have done likewise. Although their women are freer than any other women in India in one sense, yet they are very carefully protected, and marriage by either Parsee men or women with other castes is prohibited. Not even if other people wish to become Parsees is it allowed. When a Parsee married a French lady who was ready to adopt the religion of her husband, the Parsee officials, after long argument, decided that although the creed of Zoroaster theoretically admits proselytes, their admission is not consistent with the practice of the present day in India.

The point of all this is that, in spite of all the arguments to the contrary, different stocks or races are unmistakably different in innate ability. They are becoming differentiated before our very eyes, just as were the types of bison a generation or so ago. The facts here set forth are perhaps chiefly significant because of their relation to the future of Russia. Russia to-day has lost a large part of its leaders. The peasants are a dull, inert set of people. The vast majority are like kindly, faithful Mikhail who served me on a long journey in Persia. "What do you think about as you ride along on horseback day after day?" I said to him once. "Oh," he answered, "sometimes I think of the people at home and wonder whether the hay is harvested and whether the cows are well, but mostly I think of nothing." Such people may till the ground, but they can never build up a great nation unless they have leaders. Russia has lost most of her leaders, and the chances are that relatively few real leaders are now growing up. How shall their places be supplied? Some will come from Siberia, for a good many intelligent Russians have taken refuge there. A smaller number may in due time return from foreign countries, but the prospects in this respect grow less and less as time goes on. The most competent of the emigrants have

become established in foreign lands, and are losing their desire to return. Thus relatively few of the exiled Russian leaders will return, and the proportion of their children who go back to Russia will presumably be far less.

But something else will happen. A land as rich as Russia and Siberia holds out a beckoning hand to all the nations of the earth. Again and again our papers are full of the importance of Russian trade. Who will go in and capture that trade? The answer is: "A few English, a few French, a few Americans, a few others, and a great many Germans." Germany, to be sure, suffered in the World War like all the combatants. But in Germany there was no such tremendous weeding out of leaders as in Russia. In fact, the German upper classes on the whole perhaps suffered less than the lower classes. And Germany is still overpopulated. Her people are still energetic and capable. They still have the power of leadership in business, in science, and in politics. With all this they are nearer to Russia than is any other great and powerful nation. What is more natural than that they, with their power of achievement, should gradually spread into Russia? In the past this has happened to such an extent that many of the old Russian families bore German names. This was especially true in the Baltic provinces, but far away in Central Asia I have more than once been entertained by leading citizens who called themselves Russians, but who bore German names. If this could happen in the days when the Russian intelligentsia were still numerous and able, and when Russia had a good supply of leaders of her own, how much more likely is it to happen on a vast scale in the future?

Thus, from the biological point of view, the Soviet régime seems to have skimmed from Russia a large percentage of her leaders and to have doomed Russia to generations of stagnation and backwardness, unless leaders pour in from Germany or elsewhere. Perhaps in the end this elimination of Russian leaders will make for the peace of Europe. At least it gives Germany an almost unprecedented opportunity for expansion. Germany will presumably rule Russia because Germany still has leaders, while Russia has selected her leaders for elimination.

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College and the Artist

BY HENRY ROOD

EVERAL months ago a professor of English in one of our larger universities was talking with an acquaintance concerning some of the younger American authors whose verses and short stories flood popular magazines, whose longer stories, in volume form, are sold from coast to coast-most of them to be discarded in six months; forgotten a few months later. The talk veered around to related matters not without a measure of interest; in certain aspects, important.

Whence came the writing impulse of these young people? What is the literary tradition or ancestry evidenced by this one or that, though for the most part feebly? What training in letters have they had? In what environment did they live during plastic, formative years while trying to express themselves through the printed word?

Finally the professor's acquaintance ventured to ask: "Do you think a young author ought to go to college?"

The professor might have felt justified in deeming this question preposterous; but he merely dismissed it with a deprecatory smile, as if it were not intended to be taken seriously. From another standpoint, however, the inquiry and the suggestion implied therein cannot thus be dismissed. They concern not the future journalist, nor the future writer on economic or other "practical" topics; but young men and young women who might compass real achievement as creative writers were they wisely guided instead of being choked off, shunted to some sidetrack by force of circumstance, laughed out of their divinely appointed destiny, or driven to depart therefrom by a species of terrorism founded on the belief that, as regards pecuniary reward, the artist's career is highly precarious, therefore highly undesirable.

Go where you will, into almost any lo

cality of the United States, and there you may find youth or maiden dreaming of days to come when one or another will be recognized as poet, novelist, playwright, painter, sculptor, musician, singer, actor, composer. Hundreds of such young people live in our largest cities; scores in cities of lesser magnitude; they are present in every town and village and countryside of this great continent. . . . And Tragedy lies in the fact that because we, of this Twentieth Century, dwell in a state of civilization so distorted as to be unreal as well as absurdly impracticable, most Americans born to be creative artists quite early have their precious sensibilities weakened, then benumbed, then all but atrophied. A spark may remain: it often does-but usually a spark of appreciation for the work of some other, some exceptional man or woman in whom the instinct for creative art has persisted in spite of all obstacles, all interference with Nature's plan for such individual.

The United States has a population twice as large as that of England, or France, or Italy-even after deducting from our total some ten or eleven million negroes, and millions of immigrants come hither from foreign peoples who, for the most part, still are in an arrested state of development. Few other lands, if any, have secondary schools, high schools, colleges, universities, public libraries so widely scattered as here, so easily accessible to all classes and conditions of citizens, including residents of small or remote communities. In no other country, at no other period of history, have so many private benefactors given such large sums of money to preparatory schools and institutions of the higher learning. It is probable that we have produced, and still are producing, our full share of able military and naval commanders, great engineers and business executives, eminent surgeons, physicians, chemists, physicists; men of high rank in finance, commerce, agriculture, transportation, and manufac

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