Poetry and Criticism in Monthly

"Meeting the Jingoist" by R. W. Chubb, the leading article in the Monthly for April, is a short critical review of Norman Angell's recent war book entitled "The Great Illusion" and of Kirkpatrick's "War--What For." Using widely different arguments both writers make a plea for disarmament. Mr. Chubb praises them both although inclined to award first prize to Mr. Angell, who scores the most perfect record."

In "Longing" by E. E. Cummings we have a poet's description of sunrise, noon, sunset and night written in a martial strain.

Arthur Wilson in "Once from a Window" entertainingly describes an early spring dream of a very young bachelor and philosopher. The scene is among the roof tops surrounding Charles street jail. The heroine is seen but once and the "chatter of her blown hair" is "untranslatable".

In the "Poppy Song," another poet, R. S. Mitchell, writes in a lighter vein and in pleasing cadence of dreams under the poppies.

This is followed by "The Facts Concerning Owen Preston," by C. C. Whiting, in which the author tells in a very interesting way a story of occult power exercised by a man, once a Harvard student, over a young girl by means of a locket in the man's possession but which had belonged to the young lady.

In "Melancholia" Thacher Nelson depicts the poetic sadness of a November day.

"Two Unrealists: A Contrast," by J. S. Watson, Jr., is a learned dissertation on various forms of fiction writing including aliegorism, satirism and unrealism with special reference to the writings of the two English unrealists, Wells and Chesterton.

Now comes a third poem, "In Autumn," by Robert Hillyer, descriptive of youthful love in nature's setting.

The Monthly closes with an editorial on "Electing Failure" in which it is contended that by the present system in force at Harvard "an infinite amount of concentration" is required accompanied by "an irreducible minimum of distribution." It is also explained why President Lowell is a Montessori father.