On The Rack

The Cornhill Magazine had its day, and the Yellow Book, and the Little Review; with tear in eye one will soon add the American Mercury to the list of extinguished balls of fire. The October issue contains only two contributions from Mr. Mencken; rumor bath it that he has withdrawn from its financial camorra, and the assumption is that a man's purse liea nearest his heart. Yet without even a Mencken editorial the magazine manages to decline gracefully. To the college student an article by one E. H. Orr on "The Impossibility of Education" is the piece do resistance. Mr. Orr's ideas are not new, and his dialectic is not impeccable, but his thinking is of a type calculated to keep the cloistered uncelibates hereabouts "regular." "Lady Cops in Cap and Gown" is an article about the successors of the Red Indian in the West which should awaken some doubts concerning The Other Half. There is one contribution by a Harvard man, Mr. Gerge R. Leighton, which is a bit too painful for treatment; Mr. Leighton is advised to try the Alumni Bulletin the next time he feels symptoms--It is distinctly better to keep these things in the family.

From James M. Cain, a veteran of the days when the Mercury was indeed a sole refuge in a plague-ridden land, there come comments on Hollywood which reiterate the thesis repeated ad nauseam by this writer in these columns, viz., that movies cannot be good, but are excellent considering their number, audiences, and mode of production. For those who road and believe not, subscribe to Consumer's Research and buy not, an article by Mr. Sayre, late of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, dispels many puffs which inflate the current nonsense about streamlined horseless carriages.

But the delicacy of the issue is Mr. Mencken's thin contribution. By a series of magnificent obiter dicta he manages to make reviews of works by Messer Herbert Agar and Will Durant pinch-hit for his missing editorials. The first of these reveals in a few well-chosen words the editor's reaction to N. R. A. and all that; the second says a few words on the Slav Utopia (Mencken's phrase for Red Russia) which should be prescribed reading to every member of the Harvard Socialist-Liberal-Club-Students'-League Knights-of-the-White-Kamelia organization. Further than this there is not hide nor hair of H. L. to be found, and this commentator believes that the man should be told by his best friend, G. J. Nathan perhaps, that it is time for Mr. Mencken to come to the aid of his country, even though he feel as lazy as an Indiana farmer in February.