Skip to main content

The Green-Room


ISSUE:  Summer 1941

“Here’s a marvellous convenient yhcc for our rehearsal,”

Alihbral himself, Ai.hkht Vitox invites fellow liberals to overhaul their views on the evils and benefits of imperialism as an institution in our leading article, “After Imperialism —What?” Mr. Viton, a member of the Department of Political Science at Northwestern University, is the author of “Great Britain: An Empire in Transition,” which appeared in the spring of 1940. In 1933 he went as a newspaper correspondent to Germany, where he had the distinction of being arrested by the Gestapo and ejected from the country. After a sojourn in the Balkans and in Italy, he left in August, 1935, for the Near East and remained there until 1938. Much of Mr. Viton’s study of British imperialism has been done at first hand and the conclusions to which he comes and the provocative questions which he asks in his article are based on practical observation as well as on theoretical studv.

He is now at work on a book to be entitled “The Peace We Seek.”

As Minister of Foreign Affairs of the legitimate government in Spain before nnd during the Civil War, J. Alvarez del Vavo was known as the “right arm” of Premier Caballero. Mr. del Vavo also served his country as Ambassador to Mexico and as its representative to the League of Nations. It was while he was in Berlin as a newspaper correspondent, where he was President of the Berlin Society of Foreign Correspondents, that he made the acquaintance of the American Ambassador William E. Dodd, the significance of whose career he reviews in the article, “An Ambassador of Democracy.” This is Mr. del Vayo’s first contribution to the Virginia Quarterly. His latest book, “Freedom’s Battle,” was reviewed in the Autumn, 1940 number of this magazine.

Walter Van Tilhuro Clark is the author of a distinguished first novel. “The Ox-Bow Incident,” which was published in the autumn of last year. By profes-

sion a teacher, Mr. Clark draws on his experience in the western part of the United States for the background of his novel and also for that of his story, “T|ie Anonymous,” which marks his first ap. pearancc in the Virginia Quarterly.

On March 8, 1941, we wrote as follows to Thomas Mann: “The Virginia Quarterly Review would like to publish, and would feci greatly honored in doing so, an article by you in German. This will be the first, and perhaps the only time this magazine will ever have published anything in a foreign language without an accompanying translation. It is a gesture which we wish very much to make—with your assistance.” Dr. Mann replied: “Your kind letter of March 8th was indeed a happy surprise to mc. The idea of publishing at this moment in your review a contribution in Gcrmnn has something moving for me. And I certainly accept your invitation with particular pleasure.” The resulting essay, “Dcnken und I.eben,” which, incidentally, does not mark the first appearance of Dr. Mann’s work in the Virginia Quarterly, is a scries of reflections on the disconnection between philosophy and life in modern Germany and on the dire results which will come to any country in which such disconnection is permitted to continue. These “reflections upon the duties of Philosophy to the realities of life” were prompted by the motto, “Philosophy, the Guide to Life,” engraved upon a small golden key, presented to Dr. Mnnn in March of this year by the Phi Beta Kappa chapter at the University of California. The novel suggestion that Xictaschc, if he were alive, would in all likelihood be an exile in this country and perhaps the recipient of a Phi Beta Kappa key himself becomes less surprising when wc arc reminded that on the death of Emperor Frederick III, the liberal Anglophile, Nietzsche wrote that the hope of German freedom went with him to the grave

.Short stories nnd poems by the disthv

*

It guishcd English poet and novelist, Walter de la Mare, have frequently appeared in the pages of this magazine from its inception in 1925 to the present. In this issue he is represented by three characteristic poems. Mr. de la Mare’s most recent volume, issued in the spring of this year, is entitled “Collected Poems.”

During his forty-five years’ connection with the English Department at the University of Chicago, Robert Morss Lovett became the author of many works of scholarship and criticism, including the invaluable “History of the Novel in England,” written in collaboration with Helen Sard Hughes. It was also during this time that he became the friend of the late Sherwood Anderson, about whom he contributes an article both reminiscent and critical. Mr. Lovett is a former editor of The Dial and a former member of the editorial board of The New Republic. He resides at present in the Virgin Islands in the post of Government Secretary.

Lawrence Fernsworth, as correspondent of The London Times in Spain for nearly ten years, witnessed the life nnd growth and death of the Spanish Republic. He has visited all parts of Spain and its Mediterranean possessions and has written about them extensively in a number of British and American periodicals. During the Spanish Civil War he frequently traveled with the British fleet in Mediterranean waters, having been issued an admiral’s pass casually scrawled on the back of an envelope. Five destroyers on which he cruised have since been sunk by enemy action. In the course of his work, Mr. Fernsworth met Winston Churchill and had a number of conversations with him. This spring he has published a book, “Dictators and Democrats”; the work on which he is at present engaged, a book on Winston Churchill, is scheduled for early publication. His first contribution to the Virginia Quarterly, the article entitled “The Vatican in World Politics,” was published in the Autumn, 1910 number.

Herschel Brickell, who discusses the work of Ellen Glasgow and John P. Marquand in this issue, writes that he is a Mississippinn by birth “with a Virginia background by heredity nnd a New

England background by residence.” He has taught the writing of criticism and of fiction for several summers in the writers’ conferences held at Bread Loaf Vermont, and Durham, New Hampshire, For twelve years, Mr. Brickell wrote a daily column on books for the New York Evening Post, and is still actively engaged in reviewing for The New York Times nnd other periodicals.

Walter- Prichard Eaton is professor of playwriting in the Department of Drama at Yale University, having in 1933 succeeded the late George Pierce Baker, Mr. Eaton was a dramatic critic in New York during the first two decades of this century nnd later wrote plays and lectured extensively on theatrical topics. Since 1910 he has made his home in the Berkshire Hills in Massachusetts, and devoted much time to gardening, to wild life preservation, and to essays in appreciation of nature. Among his books are “In Berkshire Fields,” “On Yankee Hilltops,” nnd “Wild Gardens of New England.” He says that teaching at Yale now keeps him out of his garden five days a week, but that nothing can keep him from periodic trips to the Western deserts and mountains, “not even the dimensions of a teacher’s salary.”

The reviews in this issue, covering as they do n wide range of topics of both current and scholarly interest, reflect the considered opinions of a number of men who are recognized authorities in their respective fields. Henry H. Cummino,’ as a newspaper correspondent and as a student of international affairs, has spent many recent years in Europe nnd the Near East. He is the author of the volume “Franco-British Rivalry in the Post-War Near East,” and is now engaged on a study of Franco-British diplomacy in the Rhine area from the period of the beginnings of the national states system to the present. Ralph Barton Perry, for the past thirty-eight years a member of the Department of Philosophy at Harvard University, in 1988 won the Pulitzer Prize with his volume “In the Spirit of William James.” His latest work. “Shall Not Perish from the Earth,” is n challenge to Americans to fight f<” the survival of democratic institutions.

Mr. Perry hns been chairman of “American Defense—Harvard Group” since its formntion in June, 1940. James Orhick is a Southerner by birth and education who lias spent much time in England; in recent years he has lived in New York. He has contributed reviews to most of the leading periodicals of this country. The first contribution of Alfred Kazin to the Virginia Quarterly was his article on Theodore Dreiser and Edith Wharton in the Winter issue of 1941. His critical history of American prose from 1890 to 1940 is scheduled for early publication.

The editor of The Infantry Journal, Major Joseph I. Greene, makes his first appearance in the Virginia Quarterly with his review of General Wavell’s biography of Allenby. Carroll Mason Sparrow has been an Advisory Editor of this magazine since 192(5 and has contributed to it many reviews and articles. Edwin P. Lehman, one of Virginia’s leading surgeons, ban been for some years

Professor of Surgery and Gynecology in the School of Medicine at the University of Virginia. Hen Belitt, who has often contributed poems to the Virginia Quarterly, is a former member of the editorial staff of The Nation and is now teaching’ English at Bennington College. W. T. Couch is Director of the North Carolina| Press at Chapel Hill. Lewis M. Ham-mono is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Virginia. HardvC, j Dillard is Professor of Law and Direct tor of the Institute of Public Affairs at I the University of Virginia. Articles by! Peter F. Drucker have frequently ap-| pcarcd in this magazine; his latest was| “What Became of the Prussian Army?” j in the Winter number for 1941. An I Austrian by birth, Mr. Drucker was for! five years a newspaper writer in Germany, For the last four years he has been a free-lance journalist nnd teacher in the United States. He is the author of “The ] End of Economic Man,” published in 1939,

THE VIRGINIA QUARTERLY REVIEW

Edited by Archibald Boiling SheppersoH William Jay GoU^ Managing Editor

Advisory Board

John’ Calvin Metcalf  James Southall Wilson <

i

Garrard Glenn  Hardy C. Dillard

R. K. Gooch  Carroll Mason Sparrow

Ashley G. Davis, Secretary

A National Journal of Literature and Discussion published since 1925 on the fifteenth of March, June, September, and December. Subscription rates: one year, $3.00; two years, $5.00. Canadian and Foreign: one year, $3.50; two years, $6.00. Single copies, 75 cents. Indexed in The Readers’ Guide to Periodical Literatm and in Public Affairs Information Service. Title page and annual index available in November.

Manuscripts must be accompanied by postage for return and addressed to The Editor. The magazine does not assume responsibility for the views expressed by contributors of articles.

>

All letters relative to advertising and other business matters should be ad’ dressed to The Managing Editor.

editorial and publication offices: one west ranoe, charlottesville, vir0in1a

0 Comments

CAPTCHA
This question is for testing whether or not you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.

Recommended Reading