SHAFTS RE-AIMED

Like to like and Mr. Mencken to the wilds of Russia, not to undergo the taunts of the Bolsheviki, nor yet to spend a Siberian winter collecting Polar Beariana; but to see his mental meanderings mirrored in the village of Zitlieff. There the peasants, according to the current "Time", administer a justice, the physical counterpart of Menckenism.

It is well-known how Mr. Mencken sticks stray figurative pins into the viscera of the age. And in the pricking he seems sometimes to follow an aimless aim; which is perfectly all right because he himself will retort that most purposes are eminent purposeless. And what he says he believes to be true. That all too human adjective belies his paradox.

Yes, like the peasants of Zitlieff, Mr. Mencken aims for truth through the application of ordeal. He would delight to see the noble folk at sundown, beating their suspects into unconsciousness before the bar of justice. This is not the ordeal, however. The ordeal is to recover consciousness. And nothing could be more systematically fitted to the American critic's haphazard dicta than the impartially unjust manner in which the natives pronounce judgment. He who comes to his senses during the night is innocent; he who awakes at dawn is guilty.

"Splendid", would be the cry of the chronic sage, "These are my prototypes unperverted by reason, untrammelled by the age."