an inviting mirage that suddenly appears on the distant horizon. Be not deceived by these intangible allures.

There is nothing more elusive than the mental limitations of the mass of readers. Profound indeed is the editor who knows these boundaries. I do not presume to phrase a definition as to what constitutes good fiction any more than I am able to define just what the public wants.

Born on the Nebraska prairies, I drifted west to the Pacific where I spent my youth in newspaper work. From that frontier of the covered wagon I crossed the continent to the Atlantic, making a survey of the space between. During a period of twenty odd years while I was serving as fiction editor of the Munsey publications, thousands upon thousands of good, bad, and utterly hopeless manuscripts passed through my hands. Millions of words were accepted, billions rejected. It is inconceivable that any one individual could have secured all that was best in this endless flood of contributions. take some consolation out of the fact that in that mass of material I found the earliest efforts of O. Henry, Mary Roberts Rinehart, Fannie Hurst, Montague Glass, Dorothy Canfield, Ben Ames Williams, Zane Grey, James Oliver Curwood, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Donn Byrne, Nalbro Bartley, Frank R. Adams, Konrad Bercovici, Octavus Roy Cohen, and many others sufficient in all to make up a noble company.

I

The formula through which I reached my decisions is simple indeed, to wit: If a manuscript interested me I bought and printed it. Indecision culminated in rejection. The business of selection is not reducible to an exact science. Probably when the world's greatest editor is discovered it will be revealed that he thinks like the people instead of for them.

2. John O'Hara Cosgrave

WHAT

HAT do people who buy the millions of periodicals and the billions of newspapers produced on the American continent do with them? Attention is limited by time. There are but twenty four hours in the day and one must sleep, eat, and work. The minor balance of minutes free thereafter must be devoted to sustain

ing the newer industries such as golf, health, motoring, the movies, phonographs, player pianos, and radio. When one's debt to a mechanical civilization has been discharged, there are bridge and the theatre but what span remains for reading?

A paradox lurks here. It is conceded that no one has leisure to read, but on all sides one hears of leaping and bounding circulations. Nowadays, periodicals that sell less than a million copies are derelicts. Authors are advertised like breakfast foods and are worried over their investments. Illustrators preside over baronial piles and moor fleets of motors in their garages. Guides point out the yachts and mansions of publishers to reverent subscribers. All this in the face of the phenomenal growth of golf links, the multiplication of motion picture theatres, Henry Ford's millions, Good Roads movements, loud spaakers, dance halls, and mah jong.

The mystery deepens. A small attention capital, already overextended, expands automatically to meet incessantly increasing drafts upon it. Limitation without limits. The miracle of the loaves and fishes diminishes in comparison. There must be an explanation since this is a scientific age. A few observers think daylight saving accountable, but this is superficial. An authority on physiology suggests that the discovery of the ductless glands

may bear on the problem. Sun spots, says an astrologer. Personally I prefer the solution offered by a newer and better Einstein who has confided to me a theory that is at least adequate, though I am bound to admit no learned society has yet sanctioned it. Since the beginning of the twentieth century, he says, time has changed. Like the German mark, it has been inflated. In some inscrutable fashion, the seconds of which the hours are composed have had their duration doubled, so that while the day contains only the old twenty four hours, in reality that is, attention space it has been augmented to forty eight.

The calculations on which this engaging suggestion is based have been carried by my friend far beyond forty five decimals and have brought grey hairs to the revered heads of six of the twelve mathematicians, capable of understanding relativity, who are.now checking the figures. At first glance, the idea seems fantastic, but so are the circumstances under consideration. We know that our national debt is some twenty times greater than it was in 1914, and that we have in the United States treasury more than half the world's gold. Why may not our time have expanded in proportion with our resources?

Until mankind is adjusted to this beneficial enlargement, it will continue to be obsessed with the delusion that it cannot do its daily dozen and read the morning paper, whereas, as the declining death rate clearly shows, everyone manages to perform his exercises and eat leisurely breakfast.

The rich development of the great motion picture industry and the overnight growth of radio afford indisputable proof that more people are taking their newspapers seriously than ever before in history. If the maga

zines that issue, in uncounted millions, from the busy presses of the nation, were not perused to the last page, how account for the greater variety of the American complexion, the wider diffusion of smart dress models, washing machines, and vacuum cleaners? Throughout the length and breadth of our fair land, the belching chimneys of innumerable stately and hygienic factories offer tangible evidence of the deep influence of periodical literature on living.

Having thus triumphantly refuted those witch burners, the Intelligence Testers, whose gratification is in deploring the intellectual inferiority of our people, let us consider the editorial function, as practised among us by the Masters of the Craft.

Unlike poets, editors are both born and made. They are either the sons or appointees of publishers. Certain minor exceptions achieved their own greatness; but as every chicken presupposes an egg, somewhere in the background of the lives of even these men, a publisher must lurk. It is the obligation of an editor to generate the literary mortar which binds together the bricks of advertising on which our periodical edifices are are reared. Between him and the brick maker there is perpetual conflict, since he is disposed to rank his service as loftier than that of his fellow craftsman. To the merits of this contention the subscriber seems indifferent, but has been heard to declare that there is often more inspiration in the advertising pages of a publication than in the literary text which fringes them.

Comparisons are invidious, as ever, but success at editing is only another expression of the talent for entertaining, interesting, or inspiring people. It is a phase of the same capacity through which a theatrical manager or a vaude

ville impresario attracts thousands nightly to his show. Power of the same order as that which gathers a large audience for a magazine or a newspaper is exhibited by a popular orator, a spectacular preacher, or the chief of a great department store.

There are almost as many kinds of editors as there are trades and professions. Nowadays every occupation, cause, institution, and fraternity has its journal, and someone must be deputed to gather facts and developments arising at the centre and distribute them throughout the membership of the organism. However humble and unskilled, this service involves exercise of the faculties of formulation and selection which constitute the practice of all editing. There are degrees, of course, but the technique of summoning up the ingredients which, set and polished, are fused together as "The Atlantic Monthly", is the same as that which the editor of "The Grocer's Gazette" must follow in the assemblage of his own table of contents. There is this essential difference, however "The Grocer's Gazette" is published for the profit of its readers, whereas "The Atlantic" must be baited for their interests. One has a sustaining objective; the other is aimed at an invisible target which it must hit to live.

The editor may be promoter, showman, artist, or evangelist. In fact, he should blend all these rôles if he be heaven born. As a rule, he carries the lighter qualities and spreads them as far as his vitality and his publisher permit. He is limited by the motive of his instrument, since he must represent the purpose of which it is the voice. Depending on the medium, either he is conveyed by his subjects or cruises. under his own power. Coastbound freight or many cargoes on the Seven Seas.

However grandiose the approach, the initial problem of the editor is to gain an audience. It is soon made plain to him that the public issues no franchises for its instruction but lends a willing ear to entertainment. Yet if he takes the easiest way and is content with diversion merely, he finds himself limited to the patronage of the frivolous. But once the ear of his multitude is caught, he makes the agreeable discovery that it is as receptive of fact as it is eager for fiction, always provided the sterner issues are invested with the airs of novelty. As his exploration of the minds of his herd proceeds, it becomes clear that they will follow him to midAfrica, the moon, or into the depths of the fourth dimension, if only he is conjurer enough to make the way to these remote destinations a primrose path. There are no limits to the editorial privilege, so long as he who wields it remembers there is nothing a reader resents more deeply than being given information, or enjoys more utterly than acquiring it without pain or process. Nor must he ever introduce a new idea save in the disguise of an old friend.

An editor is marked by the company he gathers at his contents table. If wise, he will be resigned to the rôle of silent host; since he has furnished the banquet and the subjects, it is better form to let the guests speak the pieces. Even if one be bursting with eloquence, anonymity is in order. It is a penalty of the function one he shares with the entrepreneur, the playwright, and the composer, who must ever be heard by proxy.

This is not to contend that all the contents of the hosts of publications that color the newsstands of the nation are solely the fruit of an editor's planting. A publication type once established, innumerable contributors

adjust their themes to its inclination. For a periodical is also a market for writers' wares. The director's craftsmanship is in the selection and display of exhibits; his art, in blending a group of incongruous stories and articles into a harmonious, individualized entity.

Every publication is in the image of its maker. Into it, however unconsciously, he breathes and feeds his own identity. He can give no more than he sees and feels. If he be idealist, his book bespeaks preoccupation with the betterment of mankind and may halt by the wayside. If his heart beats in unison with the masses, he will circulate in millions and be called great, though he may know no better.

The prevailing magazine pattern is of the period of the "Follies", rather than in the mode of "Hamlet"; nevertheless, experience has occasionally demonstrated that convictions and knowledge are not insuperable bars to great circulations. There is a definition of good editing the identification and interpretation of tendencies. An editor may still be trail blazer and road maker. Here is a world in flux, awaiting a revelation. Its atmosphere is charged with grave and significant issues. A deponent energized with sincerity and vitality can still move the multitude. But he must remember always to invest his message with some flaming trappings of spectacle. Would Moses ever have persuaded the Children of Israel out of the wilderness save for those miraculous pillars of cloud and fire?

From all the foregoing, it is clear there are no immutable laws in the publishing world. Success, like gold, is where it occurs. It is inherent in the individuality of him whose gift it is; and if the possessor be an editor, the law is to follow his inspirations. The product he bears is truly the offspring of his own personality, and though he

may carry himself with the air of a prophet, he is only the child of his destiny.

3. George Jean Nathan

Ico

Sec

CONFINE these remarks to the editing of magazines. This editing seems to me to fall into three groups. First, we have purely commercial editing: that is, editing for circulation with profit from circulation and from advertising as the sole end in view. ond, we have so called Messiah editing: that is, editing that has as its aim the improvement of the condition of mankind and the uplifting of the cosmos in one particular or another. And lastly, we have editing for the pure fun and exhilaration of the thing, like riding a good horse, listening to good music, or drinking good wine. My personal experience in editing has been confined to the first and last groups. Of the second I know nothing, have never known anything, and, please God, shall never know anything.

My adventures in commercial editing belong to the dim past, along with my other youthful adventures. They were not without interest to me in a relevant and most acceptable commercial way, but this is not a financial report. I shall therefore leave this phase of the theme to my more experienced and doubtless very much wealthier colleagues. My more mature years have been devoted to editing for the sport of the thing the only kind of editing that interests me in the slightest. A magazine, to me and to my associate, friend, and partner Mencken no less is a toy, something with which to amuse ourselves and also, perhaps, a sufficient number of similarly minded readers to keep the mech

anism of the toy from running down. It provides us with the pleasure of unloading certain of our ideas upon the world, and sensing the reaction of other men to those ideas. Some of these ideas seem to us to be sound ideas; others seem to us to be still somewhat dubious; both, however, seem to us to be worth playing with and trying out. A new idea needs trying out, as a new tennis racket does.

As an editor, I have no program of reform, no wish to elevate my fellow man, no itch to make the world a better place to live in. The world is quite all right, so far as I am concerned, as it is. If the magazine of which I happen at the time to be coeditor diverts and entertains men who think about things much the way I happen to - and men, no less, who think about things in

absolutely the opposite manner — I am satisfied. All other considerations I am happy to leave in the hands of my esteemed confrères.

I do not now know, and I have never known, any set rules or theories of editing. In so far as I have any talent for editing, that talent consists merely in printing anything that interests me. What interests other people, I do not know. If what interests me happens luckily also to interest other people, I am given credit for being an astute and discerning editor which I do not deserve. I like to interest other people, it goes without saying, but I am not privy to the secret as to how this interest may be evoked. I simply gamble so much as I edit myself. This is doubtless no way to be an editor. I am very sorry.