By special invitation Ivy L. Lee addressed the American Association of Teachers of Journalism on the general subject of publicity and propaganda. One half of his furrow, "Publicity", is this address; and the second half is his address, delivered before the American Electric Railway Association, which dealt with publicity as applied to public service. Glancing down this furrow, one can see that the essential evil of propaganda is failure to disclose the source of information.

With the field plowed, harrowed, and planted, Joseph Anthony has gathered a rich harvest, so to speak, in "The Best News Stories of 1923". In the preparation of this volume he invited some 400 newspaper editors to submit examples of their best news stories. In this and other ways he tried to give every newspaper full opportunity to offer entries. The stories selected seem to prove that the difference between journalism and literature is simply a matter of classification.

By way of a postscript I might add that Mordecai Soltes spades up interesting material in "The Yiddish Press". Making a special study of some 1,500 editorials, he found that two thirds of them dealt with American issues. He announces the somewhat startling fact that constant readers of these editorials are found, for the most part, among the laboring class. He calls attention to the large amount of space given in the Yiddish press to a discussion of industrial problems. He believes that the Yiddish newspapers will disappear when other papers print more Jewish

news.

In the limited space at my disposal I have had to write in headlines in order to cover the ground. The mere number of books which are published on different phases of journalism is rather a positive proof of the interest of the

THE

his name - who is today idly and rather impatiently turning the pages of Upton Sinclair's "Mammonart". He is about eighteen years old, and he knows that he is going to be a writer some day. He is in rebellion against the world in which he lives, but he does not understand the nature of that rebellion; or rather, he interprets his emotions according to the aesthetic fashion of the moment. That is to say, he thinks of himself as a rebel against Puritanism, not against Capitalism. His defiance of tyranny would never conceivably take the form of getting arrested for joining with striking waiters to picket a restaurant; it takes the form, rather, of paying excessive prices for teacupfuls of bad gin in such restaurants. He is indifferent to economics, scornful of politics, and utterly bored by moralists of all sorts. He is an artist. He feels within himself great powers struggling to come to utterance. And he is right in thinking of himself as an extraordinary person.

He has been endowed with sensitive perceptions, deep emotions, and the gift of expression and these are rare. He is among those who will be our American writers of the immediate future. He has not written much of anything yet, except perhaps a few things confessedly imitative, a tribute to the newest influences in the literary world.

The truth is, he has not yet found himself, and his mind is in a muddle. He doesn't quite know what he wants to do. It is a symptom of his secret uncertainty that he finds himself reading "Mammonart" today instead of "Ulysses". He is rather ashamed to be reading "Mammonart"

almost as

much so as if it were the Family Bible. He would not like to be caught reading it by his sophisticated friends. He had always understood that Upton Sinclair was a "propagandist", and what is worse, a Puritan. He is only condescending to read it now because he has seen it praised in ridiculously enthusiastic terms by somebody like Floyd Dell who, though apparently become sadly reactionary in his middle age, nevertheless did write a novel which was suppressed by the censorship, and is therefore entitled to some respect from the young. . . But, reading "Mammonart", the boy shakes his head, and yawns. "This will

never do!"

It is true, the boy reflects, the book has gusto, and a turbulent, reckless humor a kind of cosmic satire which has its affinities with Anatole France in his later period. It might be, but for its obvious animus, a scandalous masterpiece, this irreverent history of literature and its makers, in which unmentionable matters are mentioned in plain terms, and the part played by them in the lives of some of our eminent men of letters not glossed over; yes, and

hypocrisy and cowardice exposed in plenty among the dwellers on Parnassus. But the book is so directly purposeful the author is not doing this for the sheer fun of it, “as an artist should", nor even to shock the bourgeoisie. Upton Sinclair has a theory, a very disturbing theory about the relation of art to economics; and finally, he has a purpose in life, to which he wants to convert everybody in general and young writers in particular. "Upton Sinclair is too Puritanical, that's what's the matter!"

It isn't that he believes in conventional morality for he doesn't; his ideas on sex are as radical and subversive as his ideas on politics. But he isn't tolerant! He doesn't believe, as a genuinely freeminded person must nowadays, in letting everybody go to hell in his own sweet way. No, he believes in something, and wants young writers to believe in something; he wants them to be courageous about their beliefs. He wants them, among other things, to respect themselves because they are writers; to understand what their relation to society is, why they have their difficulties, and why nevertheless they must go on telling the truth in what they write. In a word, Upton Sinclair wants them to behave like heroes, instead of like bums. He is eloquent and savage and funny and grimly sad about the matter. It seems to hurt his feelings to see the persons who can as he thinks interpret life's best values to the world, idly proceed to entangle themselves in the very sillinesses they despise, and eventually destroy themselves with meaningless dissipations. Upton Sinclair does not hesitate to speak of "virtue" and of "religion": "Let me put it briefly," he says, "that some day there will be yet another generation, which will realize that no man can get along

without a religion, least of all the creative artist. It will not be the Methodist religion, but it will be something that gives young geniuses a reason for taking care of themselves and their gifts."

The young writer-to-be shuts the book and tosses it aside. "Too earnest! too moral! too Puritanical!"... No, I am afraid "Mammonart" will not make much of an impression on the young writer-to-be of 1925. I wish it could. I am rather sorry for that young writer-not so sorry as Upton Sinclair, perhaps, nor so indignant; that boy will serve, for me, to exhibit year by year in his own career some of the most interesting symptoms of that decaying society in which I live and which I find so fascinating; and I shall be grateful to him for making a pathetic, funny, tragic, and beautiful spectacle of himself, in his bewildered struggles to adjust his artistic ego to a world that he does not understand for I too am sufficiently a child of my time to have a touch of that damnable "art-for-art'ssake" heresy which Sinclair deplores, and I can take an æsthetic satisfaction that he can't in such spectacles.

But, as Upton Sinclair says, there will be another generation; I think it will soon be due. In the year 1935 or thereabouts, a boy of eighteen, who feels in himself the stirring of great powers, will turn the pages of this old book, found perhaps in his prowlings in a second hand bookstore; and at the end of these pages, over which he will have laughed uproariously, and even perhaps unashamedly cried a little, and been stirred to the core of his heart, he will lift up his head and say: "By God, this is the stuff!”

Mammonart: An Essay in Economic Interpretation. By Upton Sinclair. Published by the author.

MUSSOLINI STATES HIS CASE

By Alice Rohe

BSERVERS of the political phe

The

nomenon Fascism, with the change of its founder Benito Mussolini from Revolutionary Socialist to Supernationalist, will find an interesting revelation in the pages of Mussolini's "My Diary, 1915-1917". As a thrilling war diary the book offers nothing spectacularly new in the account of the Italian soldiers' difficult mountain warfare. But the story of the man Mussolini in these pages is the unconscious psychoanalysis of Europe's most sensational premier in the making. essential interest in this day-by-day chronicle lies in the continued reflection of one dominating idea. From the first paragraph, this former editor of the Socialist "Avanti", whose paper "Il Popolo d'Italia" was instrumental in Italy's entering the war, is ever the archpatriot. Every page reveals the single ideal of a united, resurgent Italy, and points the way toward the culminating political experiment - Fascism. In the dedication to his fellow soldiers of the Eleventh Bersaglieri the note of faith in his race sounds clearly:

You demonstrated that the Italian stock is not worn out but that it holds in its vitals the precious material of everlasting youth.

Here is a man, to use a florid figure of speech, who entered the war with the red of internationalism still on his hands. He left it, bathed in the blood of his own personal sacrificial patriotism. He entered the war a common soldier, a Bersagliere, strong of courage and spirit and body. He came out of it, after fifteen months' active service, a torn and bleeding wreck, lacerated with frightful wounds, but with a spirit stronger and more purposeful than ever. For those who watch the weaving

threads of destiny the visit of Italy's king to this supposedly dying hero is one of the significant details of the war's chronicles.

Mussolini's reactions to the big and little happenings of trench life are equally indicative of his character. When his colonel suggests that he remain with him and write the history of the regiment, he requests that he be permitted to stay with his companions in the trenches. And to these surprised comrades he explains: "I have come to war to fight, not to write."

There is his joy at finding proletariat workmen friends fighting at his side. He sees the message of a greater Italy in such incidents as this:

Here no one says: "I am going back to my home town." They all say: "I am going back to Italy." Perhaps for the first time Italy has come to take her place in the consciousness of her sons as a living reality, as the united nation.

These lines seem interpretative of Mussolini's own character:

This state of mind and spirit which we express by the general term "morale" is the fundamental coefficient of victory, of far greater importance than the technical or mechanical elements. He wins who wills to win. He wins who has the greatest store of mental energy, of will power.

Of American-Italians and their morale he says: "It is true the soldiers from America are among the best at the front." When told of the throngs besieging the Consulate begging permission to fight for Italy, he comments: "I can understand this. Thousands of Italians, particularly the southerners who have emigrated to all parts of the world in the past twenty years, know, through sad experience, what it means to belong to a country which is disparaged from the military and political points of view."

Those who think of Mussolini as a fiery eyed dictator will glimpse in these pages the poetry, the love of beauty, the sensitiveness, and the great courage which are in this man's soul. They will discover what every unbiased observer should know, that here is no ego mad dictator lusting for power, but a man burning with a single flaming passion Italy.

He writes:

I pass by the Isonzo again. Beautiful blue river! Italy was born on the banks of the Tiber; on the banks of the Isonzo she is reborn.

Again:

Today is Christmas. The date means nothing to me. In order to feel any of the poetry of the occasion I have to go back to the days of my childhood. Today one's heart is as hard as these rocky cliffs. Modern civilization has made us into machines. The war has carried this mechanical process of European society to a most exasperating extreme. Twenty-five years ago I was a punctilious and violent child. . I remember the Christmases of those days very distinctly. Very few people in the town stayed away from Christmas mass. My father was one of these. The trees and the white-thorn hedges along the road to San Cassiano were covered with silver hoar frost. . . . I remember I followed my mother. The church was filled with candles, and in the centre of the altar, in a little flower-bedecked cradle there was the infant Jesus. . . . How many years, how many centuries have passed since then? A gunshot recalls me to reality. It is a war Christmas. There is silence in the trenches, full of secret nostalgia.

The book is translated by Rita Wellman. The preface, which gives an intelligent light on Fascism and Mussolini, is by Nancy Cox McCormack, the American sculptress for whom Mussolini posed.

My Diary, 1915-1917. By Benito Mussolini. Translated by Rita Wellman. Small, Maynard and Co.

even to extent of

(Century), has written one of the most thoroughly enjoyable, veracious, and interesting autobiographic narratives we have recently read. Here indeed is the realistic Odyssey of a "bum" smells, dirt, rags, panhandling, hunger, hardship, excitement experienced by a university man who roamed the country as an authentic hobo in the company of hobos. He rode the "rods", the "sidedoor Pullmans", the "decks" of freights, from Chicago to New York, from Portland, Maine, to New Orleans, from Texas home again to his starting point, in four crowded months of incessant wandering. It is all told with perfect candor and a rare, irresistible sense of humor, a great part of the latter flowing from the rich vein of hobo vernacular which is reproduced here cusses and all - in the picturesque drollery of the original.

Apparently you are to prove yourself of superior calibre if you read "Tales You Won't Believe" by Gene Stratton-Porter (Doubleday, Page) and believe them without visioning the nature wonders for yourself, for at the beginning of the book this scriptural quotation is to be found: "Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed." The cecropia moth, however, did not see well. Nor was she ready to be led. For she would have none of the handsome mate Mrs. Porter chose for her, but took a "frowsy little ragged-winged male" instead. Personally we admire that moth for choosing for herself. The book is chatty, nature informing, autobio

sidered she had keen hearing.

Another Borgia! This time Rodrigo, father of the iniquitous Cesare and the "more sinned against than sinning" Lucrezia, and, according to his biographer, the principal character of the Borgia family. The Most Reverend Arnold H. Mathew, D.D., whose voluble study will tempt those who have a penchant for murder, sedition, lust, and intrigue on the printed page, is no Borgia apologist, nor does he endeavor to gloss over the gross profligacy of the Papal Court at the time when the voice of Savonarola made itself heard in an unsympathetic wilderness. He sets himself out to follow the precepts of Pope Leo XIII: "Let writers of history remember never to dare to tell a lie nor to fear to tell the truth." Therefore we find in "The Life and Times of Rodrigo Borgia" (Brentano) no attempt at vindication, but an impersonal and objective study of the conspicuous fifteenth century figure who, by bribery and flattery, brought about his own election as Pope Alexander VI. The volume affords an excellent cross section picture of these turbulent times and contains valuable historical data. In purposing, however, to reproduce the entire European scene, the author gives undue attention to the military exploits of Charles VIII of France, and the Borgias are all but forgotten while the reader is plunged into a succession of wars and rumors of wars. Evidently published for general circulation, the book could have been made more acceptable through judicious pruning.