POWER OF THE P. E. N.

The brothers and sisters of the P. E. N., who are holding their second annual convention in New York, are not alone in their desire to end war. Ever since the signing of the armistice, and even, in the instance of the Peace Ship, before it, this has been the aim of countless groups and societies in every branch of human activity. Each unit operates alone its own lines toward the same end, and beats a part of the enormous task of organizing public opinion.

The desire of the impressive gathering of celebrities now in New York, in whose ranks are poets, playwrights, editors, ossayists, and novelists, is wholly admirable but at present a trifle vague. If instead of aiming blindly toward the elimination of war, this group of intellectuals, trained to manipulate the force of the written word, could supply the leadership and be the centralizing power for other loss natively qualified workers, the cumulative effect of the universal anti-war sentiment would be preserved instead of uselessly scattered. The accomplishment open to writers and editors are in this direction unlimited, but so far their power in potential rather than actual.

If the members of the P. E. N. wish to do something more immediately useful, however, they can turn their attention toward remedying an evil which has just been exposed by another convention, one in which the P. E. N. should have a very acute interest. The newly launched crusade of the American Booksellers Association against the continued publication in enormous numbers of the "pot-boiler" type of novel will have the enthusiastic support of anyone who was tried to pick out a week-end book while trying to catch the last train out of town. Even though a part of the booksellers' protest may be answered with the statement that the tremendous in crease of public interest in literature is probably responsible for the flood of mediocre work now issuing from the press, the fact of its mediocrity must be admitted. If the brotherhood and sisterhood of the P. E. N. would divert some of the celestial fire which animates their search for the modern holy grail toward reducing the quantity and raising the quality or present-day reading matter they could render this country and the rest of the world a real and immediate service.