DA

HON. WALTER CLARK, LL.D.

David Graham Phillips.

AVID GRAHAM PHILLIPS, the author of Light-Fingered Gentry, one of the most notable novels of the season, is a fine type of the serious-minded, patriotic young literary men upon whose shoulders more than perhaps any other class the future of democracy depends. Mr. Phillips is a native of Indiana, the state that has been termed the Massachusetts of the Middle West, owing to the number of gifted writers she has given the nation in recent years. He was born in Madison, Indiana. His father was a prominent banker of the town, but a man the antipodes of the "light-fingered gentry" so vividly described in Mr. Phillips' latest novel. He was one of the old-time honorable and conscientious citizens who strove to live worthily and thus honor his state and the great Republic. He was a life-long Republican in politics, but possessed none of the narrow spirit of partisanship that marks so many citizens. He did not wish to warp or unduly influence the mind of his son. One day the father took the boy into his great library and showed him his books. "Here is the library and here you will find many fine works. In this section are the histories

of the world, and you will find histories one of the most valuable kinds of work to carefully read." He left the boy to feast in this fine storehouse of the best literature. Like the most sensible Americans, he gloried in our common schools and sent his son to them. Later David went to Du Pauw University, and from there he went to Princeton College, from which he graduated. He then entered journalistic work, first in Cincinnati, and later in New York, as an editorial writer on the Sun and the World. He is the author of a number of popular, interesting and thoughtprovoking novels. His style is bright and free from suggestion of affectation. He has no plots in his novels, but his stories are so true to life, his characters so real and convincing, that the reader's interest, awakened in the opening sentences, is held throughout the entire story. And the high purpose, that noble seriousness that marks the writings of men who value their own manhood, gives dignity and worth to all his work. Yet he is too much the journalist to weary his reader with moralizing or preaching. He states facts, uncovers evil conditions with rare power, and makes the narrative teach the lesson or point the moral he has in mind. Elsewhere in this issue we review Light-Fingered Gentry.

SAINT NIHAL SING.

HERBERT QUICK, Author of "The Broken Lance."

interest in an absorbing manner while vital truths are being presented that must be recognized if the Republic is to be preserved a free, just government, without the shock, waste and ruin of a forcible revolution. This volume is so strong and rich in interest, especially to friends of social advance, that it calls for a more extended notice than it is possible to give in the present issue. In an early number of THE ARENA, however, we propose to review The Broken Lance at length.

The Red Reign. The True Story of an Adventurous Year in Russia. By Kellogg Durland. Fully illustrated from photographs. Cloth. Pp. 533. Price, $2.00 net. Postage, 16 cents. New York: The Century Company.

DURING the year 1906 Mr. Kellogg Durland traveled through Russia, Poland, the Caucasus and a part of Siberia, in an effort to acquire, as he himself says, as nearly as possible an accurate picture of Russia in revolution. That he has succeeded no one can doubt who reads The Red Reign. His picture of present-day Russia is vivid, fascinating as romance, inevitably gloomy in its

details, yet vibrant with a note of optimism, of hope for the future of the Russian masses, that is distinctly encouraging.

Mr. Durland's long years of training as a journalist connected with leading periodicals in America and England, together with his previous exhaustive studies into political, economic and social conditions both in the Old World and the New, make him peculiarly well fitted for the task he has undertaken. During the summer of 1901 he spent four months as a working miner in Fife, in order that he might study at first hand the condition of the coal miners of Scotland, and later he embodied the results of his investigations in book form. In 1902 he made special investigations into the condition of the anthracite coal miners of Pennsylvania, and his revelations in regard to child-labor did much toward stimulating reformative child-labor legislation in this country.

In preparing the present volume Mr. Durland traveled over 20,000 miles, meeting and mingling with all classes of Russian society, including the "intellectuals," the revolutionists, the members of the military organization, the "terrorists," and the peasantry. Everywhere he found conditions which

KELLOGG DURLAND, Author of "The Red Reign."

render revolution inevitable; everywhere the loss of faith in the Czar and his ministers is increasing every day. In summing up the situation in Russia at the present time Mr. Durland says:

"A state eaten with official rottenness; an emperor attempting not only to rule but to do the thinking for 142,000,000 of people; an economic condition of such a character that annual famine falls like a pall over vast areas (in the winter of 1906-7 taking within grasp 30,000,000 of men, women and children); an army spotted with disaffection; a navy almost chronically mutinous; a people held in artificial tranquility, through the terrorism of martial law which now spreads over fourfifths of European Russia; a critical financial situation, impending bankruptcy within and the largest foreign loan in history to eventually meet, these are some of the elements of the Russian situation of the present time which must be met by reforms involving changes so complete as to amount to revolution."

The thing which more than anything is forcing upon the Russian masses the conviction that a new form of government must be inaugurated, in which the people themselves shall have the determining voice, is the widespread famine which is prevalent among the peasantry throughout nearly all the provinces of Russia. In speaking of this condition Mr. Durland makes the following observations:

"The most terrible part of it all, to me, is that famine in Russia is largely unnecessary and preventable. There is land enough in the country for all of the people-if it were only differently divided, and even a part of that which is now lying idle were placed at the disposal of the people who could and would cultivate it. There is water enough in Russia to defy any drought-if it were only conserved and guided through channels and ditches where it would reach the now dry and parched dessiatines of starving peasants. But so long as the government persists in staving off this vital issue, famine will be recurrent. The attitude of the government toward this great question is, perhaps, more directly responsible for forcing the country toward civil war than any other one thing. The measures suggested thus far by the government do not relieve the situation materially. The only possible solution to this agrarian difficulty is to allow the peasants more land, and to teach them intensive