THE VIRGINIA QUARTERLY REVIEW A NATIONAL JOURNAL OF DISCUSSION VOL. 3 JULY 1927 No. 3 Entered as second-class matter, March 16, 1925 at Charlottesville, Va., under the Act of March 3, 1879. Published quarterly at the University of Virginia, University, Va. THE GREEN-ROOM (Continued from page 11) JAFFÉ, a graduate of Duke University, is editor of The Virginian-Pilot, Norfolk, Virginia. JOHN HYDE PRESTON, who discusses in this issue the poetry of Edna St. Vincent Millay, and in the "Discussion of New Books" three other American poets, is familiar to our readers through his paper on Walter Pater in January, 1927. "Can England Change?" is the question which PHYLLIS BOTTOME answers in "This England." Grant Overton has said of PHYLLIS BOTTOME, speaking of her novels "The Dark Tower" and "Old Wine", she "goes deep into her people; she is not afraid of emotion." "The Belated Reckoning" (Doran) is MISS BOTTOME's new novel. "This England"—the title is from Faulconbridge's speech in "King John”—is, of course, an English writer's discussion of her own country addressed to American readers. It is from another point of view that Professor RAYMOND TURNER of the Johns Hopkins University shows how the British Empire has changed. MR. TURNER wrote the article "Locarno" in the October, 1926, number. His latest book is "The Privy Council of England" (Hopkins Press). The theme of ERNEST BOYD's paper suggests the need of a new kind of literary ambassador to the country of William Shakespeare. MR. BOYD'S study of de Maupassant is reviewed in this number of the QUARTERLY. ERNEST BOYD himself has been one of the ablest interpreters of continental literature to American readers. In the poetry of this issue, the deliberate attempt has been made to present diverse representatives of contemporary American verse different from most of the poetry hitherto used by the VIRGINIA QUARTERLY. MILDRED WHITNEY STILLMAN is now in New York City. JOHN BRYAN lives in Asheville, N. C. His volume of verse, "The Spider in QVARTERLY VOL. 3 JULY 1927 No. 3 THE DEMOCRACY AND AL SMITH T BY LOUIS I. JAFFE I HREE years ago this July the Democratic party drew up a thumping statement of principles and then for nearly half a calendar month applied itself to a war over personages. The personages, it is true, had themselves a very definite identification with issues of powerful appeal, but they were issues fearfully, knowingly, and intentionally excluded from party cognizance. The issues were prohibition and religious egalitarianism and the personages were William G. McAdoo and Alfred E. Smith. At the end of one hundred and three ballots these four vital elements of the 1924 Democratic equation were factored out in the name of harmony. What was left after the factoring was a platform containing a ringing charge of corruption, a desperate straddle on the League, and forty more or less ingenious platitudes; and a standard-bearer ably and aristocratically aloof from nearly everything that the groundlings considered worth discussing. Thus led and provisioned, the national Democracy achieved a defeat even more distinguished than the one that it suffered in the triumphant emergence of Harding and Normalcy. For more than two years after this event the national Democracy lay stunned, too sick to think, too confused to plan. Then, with the approach of the penultimate year, its leaders began with one accord to utter admonition and prophecy. Now we are in the midst of the great coming back to consciousness. There is great confusion, but already there are a few things that can be discerned with reasonable clearness. One of these things is that the drama of July, 1924, with immaterial changes in a few scenes and lines, is scheduled for a return engagement in 1928. The mise en scène is likely to be the same, the basic conflict is likely to be the same andmost important of all—the leading protagonists are likely to be the same. There are ancestral voices prophesying party suicide unless prohibition and religion are excluded from next year's convention by the elimination of McAdoo and Smith from the list of presidential contenders, but no means of accomplishing this elimination, save by the meat-cleaver methods of three years ago, are even remotely in sight. The factions may again celebrate the two-thirds sacrament and lay the bodies of both major prophets on the altar of a bogus peace, but from this prospect most of the Democratic best minds now recoil. Nothing is more certain than that another paix plâtrée would mean another national defeat, and the best minds want victory. The effect of all this-the dread of repeating the Battle of Madison Square Garden, the apparently immovable candidacies of the two principal adversaries of three years ago, and the hunger of the party leaders for a return to national power is the emergence of a Democratic situation charged with extraordinary interest. For the student of party evolution the chief interest lies in the possibility that the campaign of 1928 will jar loose some of the sectional and ideo |