of smoke by the passage of an electric spark.

A second line of experimentation promising well has been carried out under the supervision of Warren and Bancroft, backed by the Army and Navy. Here sand of fine mesh, carried aloft by airplanes, is discharged by a blast from an electrified chute. Thus far the voltages have been moderate, and far below the desired values. When the sand is scattered on the top surface of a cloud, the effect is marked, and that portion of the cloud disappears. There seems to be little doubt but that, with improved apparatus, dramatic results will follow. We seem

to be in a fair way to succeed with the practical problem of clearing fog from flying fields, thus making good the airman's boast that every harbor is an open port.

IV

It may be that ultimately the more difficult problem of artificially producing rain will be successfully solved. Seemingly it is far in the distance.

Congress once interested itself in rain-making, and appropriated $10,000 to prove that high explosives could produce rain. The result put a quietus on a widely held belief that rain always followed big battles. Across the Potomac, not far from where the Unknown Soldier now rests, on one memorable muggy night in August 1891, half a ton of rackarock - trade name for dynamite - was exploded at intervals. The writer well remembers that night of misery and noise. Years later he had

to listen to the barking of Big Bertha, and he has no hesitation in awarding the palm to the rain-makers as champion distributors of the 'blows of sound.' There was constant uncertainty as to what a Big Bertha noise would do next time, yet the Parisians remained calm. The good people of Washington, whose chandeliers crashed down in the small hours of the night, were not noticeably calm. The band of rain-making sleep-robbers discreetly fled to Texas and thus escaped lynching. Later they fled even from Texas.

was.

There is no scientific basis for associating sound waves with coalescence of fog particles. Benjamin Franklin, in 1749, thought that there He wrote extensively on rain-making, holding that the 'concussion or jerk given to the air, contributed to shake down water.' The ingenious and illustrious Philadelphia philosopher on this occasion was wrong. We know that concussion waves do not shake down raindrops from the sky.

Finally some friendly Thomas will inquire, 'What about rain-stopping?' Rightly he will ask, 'If you can dissipate fog, can you not stop an ill-timed downpour?' That problem physicists have yet to tackle. Undoubtedly rainstoppers are needed! Even more than rain-makers! Long, long ago there was a flood. Doubtless Noah's wife, sons, and daughters-in-law annoyed the Ark's skipper by asking all too frequently, 'When will it stop raining?' As there were no morning papers with official forecasts, it is hard to see how he could hope to answer truthfully.

fied, reasoned with and patted on the back. We enter no defense for an article characteristic of the Atlantic's continuous policy of seventy years; but it seems fair that critics who believe no evidence should be discussed while still within the jurisdiction of the courts should realize that the fortunes of Sacco and Vanzetti have been under such jurisdiction for six years, and that in such a case the single alternative to free speech lies in the subsequent publication of an obituary notice.

After all, under our happy American custom, criticism should be free unless the case against it is urgent and overwhelming. For the rest, we ask the privilege of quoting from an editorial in the Brooklyn Eagle:

Those who think of the Atlantic Monthly as a literary magazine, and wonder that it gives space in its March issue to an article by Felix Frankfurter scathingly treating the nonjudicial attitude of Judge Thayer in trying the Sacco-Vanzetti cases, forget that eleven years after he had electrified New England with the Biglow Papers, first series, excoriating the Mexican War, James Russell Lowell became the first editor of the Atlantic, and that most of the poems of the second series, in which Civil War patriotism and reconstruction patriotism were the themes, were written at the solicitation of James T. Fields and published in the Atlantic. Lowell was then Professor of Belles-Lettres at Harvard. Felix Frankfurter is a Harvard Law School professor. Harvard and the Atlantic have nothing to do with politics. With dignified and earnest Americanism they have been identified for seventy years.

In turning the big guns of the Atlantic Monthly on Judge Webster Thayer, the magazine's management lives up to the highest traditions of the Atlantic. Professor Frankfurter does not use weasel words. Of the Thayer opinion denying a new trial he says: 'The opinion is literally honeycombed with demonstrable errors, and a spirit alien to judicial utterances pervades

the whole.'

FIRST CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH WINCHESTER, MASS.

DEAR ATLANTIC,

Every minister will understand the mood which, in all probability, prompted the writing of 'The Break-up of Protestantism.' It is the mood of a tired soul, as old as Elijah when he fled to the wilderness after his conflict with the Priests of Baal and Ahab and Jezebel, and wished to die, because he supposed he alone was left to defend the worship of Jehovah. I suppose every minister has written a sermon on substantially the same lines, after a long strain of work under peculiarly discouraging conditions. I hope one of Mr. Parrish's parishioners will take him soon on a fishing trip.

Protestantism will not break up; neither will Catholicism. They may change organically, but neither Protestantism nor Catholicism is an ecclesiastical system only. They are types of temperament. There are Catholics within Protestantism, and Protestants within Catholicism.

If Luther had not initiated Protestantism, someone else would have. For the despotism of Catholicism was due for a revolt sooner or later. It was inherent in human nature. Any discerning, broad-minded Catholic knows that Protestantism helps to keep Catholicism alive. Left to run her course, Catholicism would become so despotic that she would again develop revolt. No man can be trusted with too much power, neither king, nor pope, nor priest. It is a matter of history.

A business friend of mine in New York has on his desk a motto which flashed into my mind as I laid down Mr. Parrish's article: 'Startling, if true!' For instance, it is evident at a glance that in his outlook on the present-day Sunday School Mr. Parrish is writing from Episcopalian data. Many of the things he says are not true of the Sunday Schools of Nonconformist churches.

One of the elements of Elijah's depression was that he thought he was alone in the fight. He discovered later that there were seven thousand others who had not bowed the knee to Baal.

Perhaps a broader outlook on churches of other faiths might help to save Mr. Parrish from his pessimism.

With much of the article I am in agreement, especially the section on church finances. He is right. Another commendable thing about the article is its freedom from cynicism and bitterness. Most writers in such a mood are not so restrained. Mr. Parrish must be a stimulating preacher. His parish is to be congratulated upon having such a leader. He will not die of dry rot. He is thinking hard on fundamental things. If he thinks wrong part of the time we can forgive him.

His article will provoke much discussion, just

shopkeepers' tills by force, of swoopings down by night to secure the savings of many years. But they said it was better that things should continue as they were, even with the Yunnanese making such trouble, rather than that there should be civil war again, with the future uncertain.

'This new party echoes winged words of freedom - but how are we, the people, to know the future? Since 1911, by the republican calendar, we have heard many golden words and been "dolls of yellow gentian." Change is not good. It is best always for life to continue in the ways of the past, and then when disaster occurs it is disaster to which we are accustomed.'

As fast as opportunity came, the refugees moved on to Hongkong, to wait there until the future should be revealed to them.

In the brilliant moonlight, about ten o'clock on Sunday evening, the Radicals opened fire. On Monday defenses were organized on Shameen as a precaution against a rush of refugees from whichever side might lose. Tuesday and Wednesday occasional bullets whizzed across the island, - one of them cutting a hole in our neighbor's chimney, - but with no decisive victory on either side. On Wednesday afternoon three Soviet Russian women, wives of men said to be in charge of the Radical army, came to stay at the Victoria Hotel on Shameen.

So far, the Chinese gunboats had manœuvred aimlessly up and down the river, taking no part in the conflict. On Thursday morning my gardener told me that the 'navy' had been bought at a good price, paid in silver coin, by the Radicals. Walking along the Bund just before lunch, I saw a Russian man in civilian clothes summon a sampan to the French Concession steps and go out to a Chinese gunboat in midstream. The boat got

up steam and entered into the firing against the Conservatives.

On Friday, June 12, I was awakened from my afternoon nap by our old Chinese nurse shaking the foot of my bed violently. I sat up and stared at her face, which was overspread with a greenish-yellow pallor.

'Kuan Yin have mercy on my ten parentless children in Peking, she wailed. 'The Radicals have control of the City of Rams. We Chinese know that the Cantonese mass will now rise up and butcher all the Chinese of other provinces found here. The anger of the populace has seethed for many months against the strangers within their gates - they will not distinguish between the Yunnanese and Chinese from other provinces. Murder and death! Ai-yah, ai-yah -'

Unable to stop her wails, I rose and began to dress. I opened the door of a wardrobe and found fat three-year-old Chung Hung, son of my cook, wrapped up in the filmy mass of my favorite chiffon dress. As I went through the house I discovered most of the Chinese members of the household crouched in fear in dark corners. Chou, the cook, had pasted thick brown paper over the glass door and windows of the kitchen. Chang had laid tea in the stuffy tightly closed dining room and refused to move it to the usual cool corner of the verandah.

'The Cantonese loves only himself' was the refrain. There was no interest in the theory, which I presented in the kitchen, that perhaps it was a natural thing for the Cantonese to dislike the Yunnanese who had bled their city.

I pushed open a shutter and went out on the verandah. A hundred yards away in the Pearl River floated a badly mutilated body. I heard my husband enter the front door and speak to Chang in his usual quiet voice, asking him to tell the servants that they were all quite safe so long as they did not leave the place until the trouble was over. I saw Lee, the gardener, come around and fasten the high garden gates, with the double bolts. My husband said nothing as we had our tea, but I knew by the slight twitching of his face that he must have walked through hell on his way home from his office in the centre of Canton city.

From three o'clock that afternoon until Monday morning the Cantonese massacred the 'strangers within their gates' with the unrestricted cruelty of mob insanity. The Yunnanese surrendered their arms when the Radicals defeated them in battle. They cast aside their uniforms at once to hide their identity, but in the arena of the masses this did not save them from death. All 'strangers' alike were the prey of the maddened crowd. Only those who could speak the native dialect were passed over. A victim beseeching mercy was cornered, and while he kotowed the persecutors pierced holes in his head with nails on the end of long sticks. They shrieked with crazy delight at the welts which rose on bambooed flesh. They vied with each other in dexterity with sharp-cornered stones. Women and children screamed wild approval when a can of oil was poured over a man and a match set to his trousers. The mob secured flat-bottomed boats and carried on their massacre drifting before my verandah. They flung dying men into the Back Creek, allowed them to strike out for the Shameen shore, then gently pushed their heads under water with broad boards.

We Westerners sought to intercede in the unequal conflict, and one man brought three wounded Yunnanese on to the island; but the consuls, knowing the grave danger of Western interference in native affairs, forbade participation in the trouble.

On Shameen, nerves were taut as violin strings. Unable to succor the afflicted, we threw ourselves into artificial activities as a means of escape from thought. There was a nervous whirl of dancing, bridge, and high poker stakes. Cocktails fomented laughter. Men dreading to be alone filled the Club Bar.

Chang, our faithful old boy, who had served my husband loyally for eighteen years and twice saved his life, went raving mad and attempted to assassinate all three of us. Frothing at the mouth, he attacked my little daughter with a pair of long scissors, cut me through the cheek, and struggled desperately, slashing right and left, before my husband could control him. He had to be sent away to an insane hospital, babbling that the Cantonese were after us in ten motor cars.

On Monday morning, June 15, a proclamation was issued from the Government Buildings, announcing that a new government had been formed and that peace and order were now restored for the good of the people.

The massacre stopped. Crowds dissolved. The city waited with empty streets for the first move of the new government.

II

The Government announced that it consisted of two parts: National and Provincial. Hu Han-min, a returned student from Japan, later replaced by Eugene Chen, was Minister of Foreign Affairs. Liao Chung-kai, born in San Francisco and well known as a leader of the Canton Labor Party, was Minister of Finance for both divisions. Later Sung Tze-ven, educated in the United States and a brother-in-law of Dr. Sun, became Minister of Finance. Hsu Sung-chi, later replaced by Chiang Kaishek, was Commander in Chief of the Army. Hsu Him, a teacher at Canton College, headed the Supreme Court. Hsu Sung-ching, a returned student from Japan, headed the Department of Agriculture. Sun Fo, son of Dr. Sun, was announced as head of the Department of Reconstruction and thus left free to make himself generally useful. Chan Kung-pok, a returned student from the United States, headed the Department of Labor.

All remained quiet in the city. On the morning of the eighteenth I spent two or three hours roaming about the streets, as is my custom when I have nothing else to do. I stopped to listen to an ardent youth of about fifteen years, wearing foreign clothes, who stood on an overturned fish tub making a speech. He wore his hair pompadour fashion and kept tossing it out of his eyes as the violence of his oratory disturbed its arrangement. His remarks were a stirring appeal to the citizens of China to unite against the 'Imperialistic Foreign Devil.'

At six o'clock on Sunday morning a small Cantonese boy came into my kitchen court with a red paper ordering all my servants to cease work and march off the island at nine o'clock, and stating that a general strike had been ordered by the Labor Department. Chou, fearing the treachery of the Cantonese, brought the paper to me.

That morning a general strike of employees on Shameen went into effect. In long rows the strikers paraded through the avenues and went into the city, leaving kitchens and warehouses empty. My 'helpers,' since they were Pekingese, hid themselves in a dark storeroom and refused to come out even for food. I carrried rice and tea to them twice a day.

On Tuesday forenoon Chou, realizing that I was cooking for a household of twelve, with the heat at ninety in the shade, volunteered to come from the storeroom and cook as usual if I would

move the oil stove and necessary utensils into an inner hallway. We sat down that day to a delicious lunch. Amah insisted upon changing the plates to prove her devotion equal to that of her husband. They refused my offer of help with the dishes.

At lunch there was much laughing banter about a Chinese procession rumored to pass along the Shaki Bund at two o'clock. One of the men who lunched with us was of the Volunteer Corps assigned to afternoon duty. He went to his post on the Back Creek with unloaded rifle, according to orders. I settled down to read The Divine Lady, which had arrived from the States the day before.

I had quite forgotten China and her civil wars when I found a British marine shaking my arm. He ordered me to get my household together and join the women and children who were to be carried by naval launch out to the American gunboat Ashville. Then I became conscious of the sound of battle - the rapid snap-snap of rifle fire and the rumble of machine guns. My servants pushed through the door. 'The Cantonese are on Shameen!' they wailed hysterically.

My little daughter sat up wide-awake and pulled the old nurse down on the bed, admonishing her to be quiet. Not trusting Amah, I gathered my child up on one hip, thrust a bag, which stood packed and ready, into Amah's left hand, grasped her right one, and sped down to the waiting launch at the foot of our steps. While bullets splashed in the water we dashed across to the Ashville. Not until we were on board did I notice that Chou held my skirt tight in his fist - and thus was safely quartered with the women and children.

On the Ashville we waited for real news of what had happened. A ship's officer came aboard with a report that