A UNIVERSAL AMBASSADOR

The visit of Premier Ramsay MacDonald to the United States to meet President Hoover in a conference on naval limitation is significant, showing as it does, the importance being attached by statesmen to a reduction of the machinery of modern warfare. Is it not equally important, however, that the feeling of the intelligent citizenry of the world toward war be influenced and moderated just as much as the actual physical armaments of the nation?

One individual stands out preeminent in moulding world feeling about war. It is Erich Maria Remarque, author of "All Quiet on the Western Front." His novel is not pleasant reading. His theme is the horrors of war, the total futility of the conflict, and its deadening effect open a whole generation which can never forget the nightmares of the war years.

Remarque has taken a whole reading world into the front line trenches with him, and those readers have returned with the feeling that such horrors must not happen again. Probably no book of this type has ever created such a widespread impression or worked so profoundly for the cause of peace. In eight brief months, it has become a classic. Long since translated into English and French, it is now being published in twenty-four languages, so that those who have fought may recall the horrors of war, and that those who belong to the new generations may be forewarned.

Without setting out to be such, Erich Maria Remarque may be honored as a new type of international diplomat, an ambassador of peace to the people of all nations.