way of becoming literate.) The Citizens' Movement for Mass Education, of which Mr. Yen is executive secretary, ascertained by exhaustive tests the 1,000 most commonly used characters and presented these in little primers whose sale is now approaching the 3,000,000 mark. Books containing the second, third and fourth thousands according to their frequency of use are to be successively issued in the near future. The comprehension of a few thousand Chinese characters is not exceptionally hard, even for foreigners. How feasible then is the task for any normal Chinese who is already able to speak the language!

The movement has also sponsored and promoted short-term and night schools throughout China in which "mass meeting" classes have proved very effective. The characters have been thrown upon screens and identified in unison so that impressions from eye, ear and throat have combined to aid memory in a remarkable way. In the five years following the world war, the number of literate Chinese more than doubled; a doubling of this figure will probably be reached very soon.

The direct bearing of all this on the hope that an articulate public opinion may soon become an effective force in China is to be found in the fact that the numbers and circulations of newspapers and other periodicals are increasing proportionately to the increases in literacy. Meanwhile why do the Chinese continue to put up with and tolerate the political conditions under which they live? That question in one form or another appears constantly in "home-side" letters and editorials. My favorite answer to it is "For very much the same reasons, though in greater degree, as those with which an American would explain the failure of Chicago to stop its crime wave. The people with the longest experience and the highest capacity in self-government cannot maintain industrial peace; for similar reasons the Chinese are unable at present to end civil anarchy."

One does not therefore depreciate the Chinese nor despair for their future, immediate or distant. Far from it! For those able to see all sides of a situation and willing to wait with sufficient patience, there seems to me to be every reason to hope for the greatest things for China and for the Chinese.

I

Oxonian Gatherings

N January, so Crane Brinton writes, the Boston group of Rhodes
Scholars gave a dinner to visiting English scholars at the Har-

vard Club of Boston. "The dinner was quite informal, and there were no speeches. Thirteen Americans and thirteen English were present. After dinner we adjourned for coffee to a room not unlike a J. C. R. and talked in various groups, humanely, and with no mention of hands across the sea. The guests were: S. G. Gates, J. F. Whelan, M. A. Peacock, F. P. Chambers (Commonwealth Fellows); C. R. N. Winn (Choate Fellow); K. M. Capper-Johnson (Davison Scholar); D. W. Brogan, G. T. Jones, P. W. Duff, R. Y. Hedges (Laura Spellman Rockefeller Fellows); G. M. Pearce Higgins, C. H. E. Smyth, and E. E. Sikes, President of St. John's College, Cambridge (Visiting Lecturers). The Rhodes Scholars were: C. C. Brinton (Massachusetts and New College, '19), L. W. Cronkhite (Rhode Island and Worcester, '05), W. Y. Elliott (Tennessee and Balliol, '19), J. F. Fulton (Minnesota and Magdalen, '21), W. C. Greene, (Massachusetts and Balliol, '11), W. C. Holbrook (Massachusetts and Merton, '20), E. S. Mason (Kansas and Lincoln, '19), F. O. Matthiessen (Connecticut and New College, '23), L. R. Miller (Kansas and Merton, '16), C. E. Snow (New Hampshire and Magdalen, '13), H. B. Woodman (Scholar-elect, Wyoming), and J. W. Worthen (New Hampshire and New College, '10). [NOTE. Is Harvard superstitious? It appears from the list that one of the alleged thirteen Americans escaped.]

"I think it interesting," Brinton adds, "that so many Englishmen should be at Harvard at one time. There must be, if all American universities are counted, almost as many English Fellows in America as Rhodes Scholars in England."

On January 20 an Oxford Luncheon was held at the Faculty Club, New Haven, at which the following were present: W. F. Adams (California and Oriel, '21), C. A. A. Bennett (Queen's, '05), R. J. Brocklehurst (University, Commonwealth Fellow), B. H. Bronson (Michigan and Oriel, '22), C. F. T. Brooke (West Virginia and St. John's, '04) J. W. Burrough (St. John's, Davison Scholar), F. B. Carter (Delaware and Balliol, '18), M. F. Emeneau (Canada and

Balliol), Robert Fisher (Hertford, Commonwealth Fellow), E. R. Goodenough (Lincoln), C. Hopkins (Connecticut and Balliol, '17), E. D. Keith (Connecticut and Oriel, '10) R. Littleboy (Oriel, Commonwealth Fellow), A. Macdonald (St. John's, Cambridge, Davison Scholar), S. M. Pargellis (Nevada and Exeter, '18), J. M. Stokes (Scholar-elect, South Carolina). It was determined that monthly luncheons of the group should be held. [LATER. And so they were.]

W. C. Davison (New York and Merton, '13)

O

N January 21 Dr. Wilburt Cornell Davison, Assistant Dean and Associate Professor of Pediatrics at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, was elected Dean of the School of Medicine of Duke University. He will take up his new responsibilities in September, but, it is understood, will continue to live in Baltimore for another year, during which period Duke University will be engaged in transforming $4,000,000 into the new medical buildings and hospital, of which he will have charge.

Davison was born in Michigan, educated at Princeton, and elected Rhodes Scholar from New York. Three states thus claim him, besides the two of his subsequent adoption. He studied medicine at Oxford with distinction and won a Senior Demyship at Magdalen. Returning, he took his M.D. at Johns Hopkins and then served for two years (1917-1919) as Captain in the medical corps of the American Expeditionary Force. He has been teaching pediatrics at Hopkins since 1919 and has been Assistant Dean of the medical school since 1924. We observe with regret that the headline artist of a Baltimore paper, the morning Sun, calls him the "Pediatric Professor," which may increase his haste to leave that city; but the editor of the sister luminary, the evening Sun, offers consolation in the form of the following tribute:

"A man whose reputation rests on solid achievement in his field, and not on affability, political astuteness, and rhetoric. Davison is a doctor, not a courtier of politicians, a fawner upon millionaires, nor a charmer of hypochondriacal old women. His appointment indicates that Duke intends to have a medical school, not a seminary of fancy practitioners or quacks."

Could anything be finer or better deserved-except for the slur on his affability?

T

Vinerian Scholarship for Sheldon Tefft

HE Vinerian Scholarship in law has this year been awarded to Sheldon Tefft (Nebraska and Exeter, '24), who took a First Class in Jurisprudence last June. The Vinerian, which is tenable for three years, is the most valued distinction open to students of law at Oxford. Other American Rhodes Scholars who have held it are M. F. Woodrow (Kentucky and Christ Church, '07) and C. S. Brice (South Carolina and Lincoln, '10).

O

Guggenheim Fellowship Awards

N March 21 announcement was made of the appointment of fifty-five John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellows for 1927-28, besides the reappointment for another year of eight Fellows now holding awards. Four former Rhodes Scholars appear on the new list, as follows:

Dr. Ford K. Brown (Washington and Exeter, '19), Associate Professor of English, St. John's College, Annapolis, Md.—for a study, in England, of the ideas and life of Mrs. Hannah More, an unusual representative of conservative English thought from 1780 to 1830.

Dr. John Andrew Rice, Jr. (Louisiana and Queen's, '11), Associate Professor of Classics, University of Nebraska—for an investigation of the authorship of The Tale of a Tub, based on newly discovered evidence, and of other questions connected with the Tale.

Dr. Bernadotte E. Schmitt (Tennessee and Merton, '05), Professor of Modern History, University of Chicago-for research into the origins and responsibility for the World War.

Dr. J. Walter Woodrow (Iowa and Queen's, '07), Professor of Physics, Iowa State College-for a study of the phosphorescent, chemiluminescent and photoelectric properties of cod liver oil and other sub

stances.

Professor W. O. Ault (Kansas and Jesus, '07), of Boston University, who was granted an award last year, left in February to spend eight months on researches in England.

Fandango: Ballads of the Old West. By "Stanley Vestal" (W. S. Campbell). Houghton Mifflin. $1.75.

HE ballad is a hard steed for moderns to ride, and quite as hard, apparently to corner in the corral of a definition. Professor Ker happily begs the question in suggesting that "A Ballad is The Milldams of Binnorie and Sir Patrick Spens and The Douglas Tragedy and Lord Randal and Childe Maurice, and things of that sort." Professor Wendell urges that the quality of genuine ballads is "the wonderful robust vividness of their artless yet supremely true utterance; it is the natural vigor of their surgent, unsophisticated human rhythm." And Campbell, our fellow-commoner of Oklahoma and Merton ('08), gives us to know in the Foreword to this present volume that "the charm, the naiveté of the form lies less in diction and meter than in a certain large objectivity of the materials— a quality rarely achieved unless those materials are authentic." Moreover, one may presume to add, the worth of the production is enhanced in proportion to the historical or social significance of those materials.

In the various respects thus indicated Campbell succeeds with the twenty ballads of the Old West of Kit Carson and the Santa Fe Trail contained in his glowing Fandango; succeeds soundly and delightfully, in a manner to catch the ear of those who are listening for something original in the treatment of Western, and indeed of American, matter. The objectivity is there. The emotions are enlisted as they should be, not by meretricious sentimental and heroical embellishment, but by the stimulant human value of the ideas. No sweated handful of phthisical thumbring posies, this. The net result could not have been obtained by any brain-cudgelling process, however thoroughgoing. The author's truth, sincerity, and interest in the things he is relating are apparent in every verse-within the conventions of the form he is reproducing, which is to say, that of the mediaeval English ballad proper.

Is it worth while, then, to recapture that form and adopt it to the material presented to the derring-do of Kit Carson the gentleman, to the guile and ferocity of the Apache, the wildness of the Comanche,