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 like wise. 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

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.

S

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

turing. To-day we also seem to have with us a larger number of third- and fourthrate authors than any other nation on earth. For some reason, however, we find few literary artists of second rank, and almost none of the first rank, among our younger writers-those now under forty years of age. Yet, barring rare exceptions, the author who is really a creative artist should have won recognition from judicious minds ere reaching forty; at that age he should be sweeping ahead in the full tide of power toward rich maturity.

Why are we apparently lacking in this respect?

It is not because printed trash finds a wider market than does literary art, for this has been true ever since the multitude were accustomed to read freely. It is not because the United States is too young to have developed cultural atmosphere; for despite the ludicrous assertion of one selfsufficient "critic" that "American literature began in the year 1900," long before the present century arrived writers of both first and second rank had sprung from American soil. It is only necessary to recall a few of them-Irving, Bryant, Emerson, Hawthorne, Longfellow, Whittier, Holmes, Poe, Melville, Lowell, Stoddard, Stedman, Clemens, Bret Harte, Howells, Aldrich, Stockton, Henry James, Miss Alcott, Elizabeth Stuart PhelpsWard, Miss Murfree, Bunner, Janvier, Mary Mapes Dodge, Sarah Orne Jewett, Harriet Prescott Spofford, Marion Crawford, Thomas Nelson Page, Richard Harding Davis, Josephine Preston Peabody. Not a few others readily might be cited, including some of our older writers still living and occasionally publishing.

Perhaps we may obtain a clearer view of the matter by asking whence came the literary impulse of authors such as those just mentioned; what was their tradition, their training in letters; particularly, in what environment did these older men and women live during the plastic years of their youth.

It is interesting to remember that while Bryant spent only one year at Williams College, and Poe but little more than a year at the University of Virginia, yet Emerson, Holmes, Lowell, James were graduated from Harvard, and Hawthorne and Longfellow from Bowdoin. In their

day and generation, however, student life in the United States was very different from that which later it was to become. While Emerson was an undergraduate, for example, Harvard was not a university; not even a college, judged by modern standards. Brander Matthews describes it as "little more than a high school where boys recited their lessons," and reminds us that when Emerson was graduated, at the age of eighteen, he felt that "the regular course of studies had done little for him." Emerson's years at Harvard were of value, it seems, principally because he "strayed out of the beaten path to browse for himself among books in the library."

While some of the older New England group were attending college, and for many years afterward, scholastic pursuits and (to borrow a modern term) extra-academic activities did not preclude a leisurely existence which undergraduates of to-day scarcely could imagine, and they certainly did not prevent positive interest in matters literary, or weaken ambition for high literary attainment. The writing of books on which were lavished observation, abundant reflection, time, and care, was not looked down upon as a "superfluous occupation," of little value because of doubtful financial reward. Elective courses of study were not general, as at present; yet conditions as a whole served to increase rather than stifle the spirit of individual initiative. American life in college, as elsewhere, had not become standardized under the all but resistless pressure of mass-movement. Fashion-most implacable of slave-drivers-had not swooped down upon undergraduates, clubbing them into submission, forcing them to wear hats and caps of the same style, suits and overcoats of the same cut, collars, ties, hosiery, shoes of the same pattern; insisting that the undergraduate body do this, do that, refrain from doing the other thing-to think alike and to act alike.

Creative minds still were permitted to function, each in its own way, instead of being poured, by circumstance and surroundings, into a vast jelly-mould and there confined. Originality of expression, mental as well as physical, still was tolerated. Longfellow, Lowell, and young

literary aspirants of later decades could discuss books; frankly could plan their future careers as men-of-letters without running the risk of being dubbed "weirs." When so disposed, they could withdraw to field or woods, or back of oaken door, to read and muse; thereby refreshing body, mind, and spirit through that abstraction-imperative for every creative artist-which is termed "loafing" by practical, hard-headed men. These sometimes forget that cities have been builded or destroyed, that nations have risen or perished, because in the subconscious being of Youth, dreaming in solitude, ideas germinated which later were to have profound and lasting effect on the destiny

of mankind.

Bryant and Poe, as has been recalled, each spent about a year in college, and six others of the group were college graduates; at a period, however, when undergraduate life was so little trammeled by convention, so little burdened with "extra-academic" activities, as to have offered full play for spontaneous individuality. But how about some of the others? Irving did not go to college, nor did Whittier, Stoddard, Bret Harte, Howells, Stockton, Clemens, Aldrich, Cable, or Janvier. It is true that Stedman was graduated from Yale in 1853; but in this respect he seems to have been almost alone among those who later were his literary contemporaries and intimates. Crawford's student days at Harvard ceased nearly half a century ago. Thomas Nelson Page received his LL.B degree from the University of Virginia back in 1874. Undergraduate experience at Lehigh, and subsequent residence at Johns Hopkins, did not prevent Davis from writing such fiction as no other young American of his day provided for appreciative readers, beginning in the early Nineties, by which time college was well behind him that is to say, more than thirty years ago.

American colleges for women are of comparatively recent development. Lack of college training, however, did not prevent literary achievement on the part of Mrs. Phelps-Ward, Miss Alcott, Charles Egbert Craddock, Mary Mapes Dodge, Harriet Prescott Spofford, Sarah Orne Jewett, Margaret Deland, Edith Whar

ton, Alice Brown. It is possible, of course, that one or another might have been benefited by four years in college. It is equally possible that their development as creative artists might have been arrested, weakened, obscured, by attending college even when leisure, simplicity, freedom of spirit were general in undergraduate life, forty, fifty, sixty years ago. Of our younger women authors who have made their mark as creative artists, Josephine Preston Peabody was a student at Radcliffe for about two years—in 18941896: Dorothy Canfield (whose short stories and descriptive papers reveal exquisite literary art) was graduated from Ohio State University in 1899, and five years later concluded studies at Columbia. These two instances also should be noted, as being, apparently, like that of Davis, exceptions to the rule.

Well, you say, what has all this to do with College and The Artist? Possibly a good deal, I venture to reply; inasmuch as we are wondering why so few American authors under the age of forty to-day are producing that which rightfully comes within the domain of creative literary art.

Even as recently as twenty years ago it was the exceptional boy, the exceptional girl, who went to college; and still more recently colleges of high standing did all they could, without loss of dignity, to attract more students-not a few, in fact, with the assistance of loyal alumni, conducting what in modern commercial parlance would be called aggressive sellingcampaigns. Since then, however, mighty changes have ensued in American life, some of which cannot be regarded without misgiving. A great wave of material prosperity swept over the United States, with but temporary recessions and the severe, though brief, deflation period in 1920-21. Thousands became wealthy, tens of thousands well-to-do, while hundreds of thousands found themselves with a comfortable margin of income over expenses. Almost overnight sprang up insistent demand for young men and young women trained in the first principles of commerce, transportation, engineering, manufacturing, salesmanship, advertising, forestry, accounting, etc. University after university added special courses, often excellent in themselves, to meet this demand; col

leges added schools of business administration and the like. Allured by prospect of employment at high-grade salaries immediately after graduation, young men and young women poured into such institutions until the problem of accommodating them became one of the most difficult and pressing which faced college administrators.

As a result of this overwhelming by sheer force of numbers, what has happened to one college after another where undergraduates formerly passed four years in leisurely study of literature, languages, history, together with more or less pure science and mathematics, in order that they might acquire a "liberal education"? Perhaps the training now offered is just as "liberal" as it used to be, and possibly much more practical for the majority of students. But that is not the point. We are concerned with present undergraduate life as it affects the young man or the young woman who is dreaming of a career in creative art. There may be small colleges, here or there, where still exist, undiminished, the cultural atmosphere and the unhurried years necessary for development of young poets and young novelists. There may be universities with so many thousands of students as to afford breathing space and browsing space for this small group or that whose members coalesce through the natural attraction of common interest; studio chatter being as needful for young poets as for young painters. We are not concerned with such unusual instances, however, satisfactory as it is to know they may exist. What we are endeavoring to perceive is the effect the average American college is likely to have on the youth of either sex who, at the age of seventeen or eighteen, goes there filled with longing to "do something worth while" in one or another field of art-to write fine novels, fine poems, dramas which will delight discriminating audiences; to paint portraits or landscapes worthy to be hung in recognized collections; to attain high distinction as sculptor, actor, musician, singer, composer.

If such a young man can sing agreeably, or intelligently read his lines in comedy or farce, or play some musical instrument; if he have facility in making pen-and-ink

sketches, for writing "snappy" paragraphs, a welcome practically is assured unless his personality is quite displeasing. Doors will be opened for him; he reasonably may expect to be pledged for a good fraternity, to serve on the staff of an undergraduate publication, to be invited to join college glee club, or band, or orchestra.

Then what happens? Usually he finds. that work on a college publication consumes far more time than he anticipated; that membership in glee club, band, orchestra, or dramatic organization means frequent rehearsals, concerts, week-end trips here and there-perhaps a long tour covering hundreds of miles in sleepingcars. An extensive undertaking of this nature promises plenty of excitement, plenty of fun, for light-hearted undergraduates; yet as a rule it is accompanied by the mental and physical fatigue incident to a long journey, irregular meals, lack of fresh air and accustomed exercise, constant practice, a round of dinner parties, the rendering of programmes often difficult for amateurs, and at conclusion of the evening performance a late dance, followed by breathless rush from ballroom to railway station.

Such extra-academic activities may not be harmful to a majority of husky young college students; in fact, the reverse may be true. The value of team work, the striving for a common purpose, cannot be unduly minimized, especially in this age of mass-movement, mass-action. Furthermore, it is a good thing for most young Americans to visit various parts of their own country, to meet new types of people, observe unfamiliar scenes and customs, attend delightful dinners and dances, and otherwise extend their social horizon. Once more, however, we remind ourselves that we are not considering the effect of college on the great majority of undergraduates, who inevitably will spend their future lives in commerce, finance, transportation, manufacturing, or in one of the more active professions such as engineering, architecture, medicine, the law. We still are looking at the influence which the average American college may be exerting upon the exceptional man whose whole being is alight with ambition to become a creative artist. Under competent professors and instructors he