Bichloride of Mercury

In bright green covers--an excellent contrast with the orange coat of its English namesake, The London Mercury--Alfred A. Knopf presented for the first time The American Mercury with H. L. Mencken and George Jean Nathan. Messrs. Mencken and Nathan have produced a different product, but of a sort allied to their last magazine The Smart Set.

The leading article of the first issue is by Isaac R. Pennypacker and is entitled The Lincoln Legend. It shows that until about 40 years before Abraham Lincoln entered public life, the Lincolns were a wealthy and distinguished family of ironmasters who spoke the king's English. By an accident--the fact that Lincoln's grandfather was killed by Indians when Lincoln's father was only six years old-- the President was born poor. The article then goes on to argue that Lincoln was a poor general, none too good a judge of men, a shrewd politician.

Besides this article there is some free verse by Theodore Dreiser; an article on Stephen Crane by Carl Van Doren; letters of the late James Gibbons Huneker; The Aesthete: Model 1924 by Ernest Boyd; an article on Hiram W. Johnson by John W. Owens of the Baltimore Sun; Two Years of Disarmament by "a man who, because of his official position, cannot sign this article"; The Communist Hoax by a member of the staff of the extinct New York Call (Socialist) ; The Drool Method in History by a professor of Smith College; Santayana at Cambridge by Margaret Muensterberg, daughter of the late Dr. Hugo Muensterberg.

In three departments of the magazine the editors make themselves completely at home: the editorials, "Americana" and "Clinical Notes."

From "Editorial":

"The aim of The American Mercury is precisely that of every other monthly review the world has ever seen. . . .

"In the United States politics remains mainly Utopian--an inheritance from the gabby, gaudy days of the Revolution. . . .

"The nobility and gentry are cautioned that they are here in the presence of no band of passionate altruists. . . . The editors are committed to nothing save this: to keep to common sense as fast as they can, to belabor sham as agreeably as possible, to give a civilized entertainment."

"Americana" contains three pages of items of this type--much resembling the bulletins of the American Civil Liberties Union:

"MARYLAND

"New zooelogical classification from the estimable Baltimore Evening Sun:

"Two men were sentenced to jail for 30 days and a negro for six months in the Traffic Court today.

"ALABAMA

"Final triumph of Calvinism in Alabama, Oct. 6, 1923:

"Birmingham's exclusive clubs--and all other kinds--will be as blue hereafter as city and State laws can make them. Commissioner of Safety W. C. Bloc issued an order today that Sunday golf, billiards and dominoes be stopped, beginning tomorrow."

From "Clinical Notes":

"Confessional--The older I grow the more I am persuaded that hedonism is the only sound and practical doctrine for an intelligent man."

"Outline of the History of a Man's Philosophical Knowledge from Early Youth to Old Age.--1. I am wrong. 2. I am right. 3. I am wrong."

"Having retired from journalism with a competence, I was the co-editor of a popular magazine. . . ."

Messrs. Mencken and Nathan were co-editors of The Smart Set until they began their new undertaking. Presumably The Smart Set is the "popular magazine" referred to above. In its January number The Smart Set has abandoned the Mencken-Nathan type of pyrotechnics and returned to pure fiction. The announcement of this fact is carried on the cover in words that might well be those of one of its former editors--that is, if the latter part of the announcement were in italics: WITH THIS ISSUE THE SMART SET BECOMES AN ALL-FICTION MAGAZINE AS IT WAS WHEN AMERICA'S MOST POPULAR MONTHLY.

Cobb

"The strongest writer of the New York press since Horace Greeley," were the words of Henry Watterson in describing Frank I. Cobb, editor of The New York World.

Mr. Cobb died last week at the early age of 54.

His history is simple. He was born in Shawnee County, Kan. He was educated at a Michigan normal school. At his majority he entered journalism. He rose by steady grades: reporter, city editor, political correspondent, editorial writer, editor. His service was with five newspapers: the Grand Rapids Herald, the Grand Rapids Eagle, the Detroit Evening News, the Detroit Free Press, the New York World.

It was in 1904 when he was editor of the Detroit Free Press, that he first attracted the attention of Joseph Pulitzer, the Great Pulitzer. The (health of William Henry Merrill, chief editorial writer of The World, was failing. The eyesight of Mr. Pulitzer himself no longer permitted him to serve in the full capacity of editor. Cobb was called East. He became Mr. Merrill's chief assistant. When Mr. Merrill died he became chief editorial writer of The World, and on Joseph Pulitzer's death in 1913, he succeeded to the title of editor.

Like The World, Cobb was a strong Democrat, but he was as fearless in criticizing Democratic leaders as he was ardent in his politics. Of late years his editorial page was recognized as one of the few vigorous examples of its kind still surviving in America.

Ralph Pulitzer, son of Joseph, wrote in tribute: "He thought simply and hated sophistry. He wrote simply and hated florid phrases. He lived simply and hated fuss and feathers. He succeeded simply and became a power and a personality in the United States, writing editorials he did not sign in a paper he did not own."

Some extracts from his more famous editorials:

Aug. 4, 1914: "In the very vanguard of the 20th Century in most respects, Germany has straggled back into the 17th Century politically. The curse of mediaeval government has hung over her noblest achievements. At a great crisis of their history the German people are deprived of that power over their own political institutions without which the English speaking peoples have justly come to regard life itself as intolerable.

"Having begun the War, German autocracy now finds itself practically isolated. Germany and Austria are left alone to fight the battle of autocracy and pay the bill in blood and treasure and prestige. In this war they have no sympathizers even among neutrals. The enilghtened opinion of the whole world has turned against the two kaisers as it did against Napoleon III when he sought to make himself the autocrat of Europe.

"What was begun hastily as a war of autocracy is not unlikely to end as a war of revolution, with thrones crumbling and dynasties in exile."

Nov. 8, 1916 ("Hughes elected"): "In the midst of the gravest crisis known to modern history, the United States is making a most dangerous political experiment. It is changing its government without knowing what new policies of government it has adopted, and it is trusting to blind luck to muddle out of the difficulty that it has created for itself.

"What it will all come to, no man is wise enough to see, least of all Mr. Hughes, who is only the nominal leader of forces that he can never control."

Nov. 9, 1916 (Wilson reelected): "The West has indeed spoken, and nothing better has happened in a generation than this shifting of the political balance to a section which still maintains the old ideals of the Republic, which is not owned by its pocketbook, and which has never made a god of its bank account. To elect a President without the sordid assistance of New York, and the hardly less sordid assistance of Illi- nois, would be a double triumph. Even to lose the Presidency by a small margin in such circumstances would be a moral victory that Mr. Wilson could always remember with pride. The cash-register patriotism of New York has been spat upon by a virile American West that is keeping the faith of the fathers."

Feb. 14, 1917: "Honored and protected by the United States Government, Count Von Bernstorff, late German Ambassador to the United States, will sail today for home. Beyond the three-mile limit he will be honored and protected by the navies of Great Britain and France.

"He and many who have sought passage with him will have many an hour on the Atlantic to reflect on questions of vital concern to civilization. In their persons, safeguarded in accordance with ancient usage, there is given to the world a profound lesson in international law. A thousand hostile commanders, any one of whom might send them to watery graves and boast of it, if actuated as the German Admiralty is actuated, will see them safely home, as in honor bound.

"We wish Count Von Bernstorff and his suite a safe journey homeward with nothing more tempestuous than their thoughts and no perils except those of the conscience that sometimes makes cowards of us all."

Nov. 12, 1918: "What is soon to happen at the Peace Table will depend more upon the fibre of the conquering nations than upon Germany and its beaten vassals. It ought not to be difficult for people who have suffered so much to realize that the lustful spirit now seemingly exorcized from Germany, prevails everywhere more or less and that humanity is to gain nothing lasting by all its sacrifices if, on any pretext, greed, ambition, and injustice are again to be enthroned in other places."

March 4, 1921: "The great outstanding figure of the war, Mr. Wilson remains the great outstanding figure of the peace. Broken in health and shattered in body, Mr. Wilson is leaving the White House, but his spirit still dominates the scene. It pervades every chancellery in Europe. It hovers over every capital. Because Woodrow Wilson was President of the United States during the most critical period of modern history, international relations have undergone their first far-reaching moral revolution.

"No man ever sat in the President's chair who was more genuinely a democrat or held more tenaciously to his faith in democracy than Woodrow Wilson, but no other man ever sat in the President's chair who was so contemptuous of all intellect that was inferior to his own or so impatient with its laggard processes.

"No man was ever more impersonal in his attitude toward government, and that very impersonality was the characteristic which most baffled the American people. Mr. Wilson had a genius for advocacy of great principles, but he had no talent whatever for advocating himself."