umstances change in such a manner as to affect his e will, as long as he is sane, alter his action so as to self to the change. If the weather becomes cold, he a fire, or put on more clothing, or both; and vice versa ther turns hot. If his income increases or diminishes, crease or diminish his expenditure accordingly. If a hat affects him is passed, he will alter his conduct so orm to it. As his children arrive at an educable age, e measures for their education. . .

l action is such as to adjust the relation between the e circumstances, either by altering the circumstances, e put on more clothes in cold weather; or by altering as when we learn a new language on going to a new or by altering our action, as when we stop at home and instead of going to business when we find ourselves rom fever. The relation between the self and the ces is thrown out of adjustment whenever there is a the self or a change in the circumstances, or a change ion of the one to the other, and every such change in 1 must be met by a readjustment. . . . Action which ut or maintains the due adjustment of the relation lf and circumstance is sane action, and sanity conion of this kind. Action which disturbs the relation lf and circumstances and throws them out of adjustoneous action, and may be merely sane mistake or d action.

is, therefore, a certain similarity between error and All mad action is erroneous, but erroneous action is rily mad, and it is very important to find the true between them, for in practise they are often confused. tion is this: a sane person who does a mistaken act by the, failure of the act to achieve his purpose, that s mistaken, and alters his mode of action accordingly. the refrains from pursuing that mode of action as ppears manifest that it will not achieve his purpose. in who does a mad act does that which is mistakenwill not achieve his ultimate purpose, that which ust or readjust himself to his circumstances or his es to himself and his requirements. But when his to achieve his purpose he does not change it. He it. . . . This is the important difference between e and madness. The one can be corrected by the

writes a letter to The American City (New York, October), telling how the thing is done in his own town. In the old days, New England towns simply floundered about in the snow until the ordinary traffic had packed it down. Laconia's use of a powerful roller simply hastens and systematizes the hardening process. Evidently the plan is not adapted to streets where there are trolley-tracks or to climates where the snow is soft or begins to thaw soon after it falls. Writes Mr. French:

"Because of the heavy falls of snow which occur in this climate, and the necessity of keeping our roads open for travel, Laconia has designed a snow-roller which serves the purpose admirably.

"These rollers consist of two cylindrical wooden drums, 6 feet 4 inches in diameter and 5 feet in length, mounted on an oak frame and surmounted by seats and tool-box as shown in the photograph..

"These rollers, which have been used by our department for several years with good success, have an effective snow-compacting width of about twelve feet. They are used mostly for breaking country roads and are sent out when there is a snowfall of four inches, or even less when it has drifted.

"One man drives the four or six horses, and other men are carried on the roller and sent ahead to shovel when drifts are encountered. The shovelers also level sliding places and chuck-holes, and when the roller passes over it compacts the snow so that it will hold a team, and the road needs no more attention until the next storm.

"In the spring, when the snow begins to thaw, some of the deeper drifts have to be cut out with a road-machine, which we mount on runners. It is surprizing to see how much is saved in hand-labor by this method.

"In the city, after the sidewalks have been cleared by the sidewalk plows, the ridge left at the edge of the sidewalk is spread over the street by means of the road-machine mounted on runners, and then rolled by the snow-roller. In cold weather we are able to use four-ton motor-trucks on these rolled snow-roads, but not when the snow is deep during a thaw. They are also much appreciated by the farmers and lumbermen, who find it much easier to haul larger loads on the firm, hard road left in the wake of the snow-rollers."

half of the men supplied with artificial legs have returned to the hospital with complaints that they do not fit. This is despite the fact that special hospitals have been organized to care for this branch of the work. The first fitting of an artificial leg, the writer tells us, is only the beginning. In almost every case the limb requires readjustment, within a few months, owing to alterations in the stump. These changes go on for some time, so that other successive adjustments are necessary, and then repairs, and finally replacement of the whole leg. All this work requires an elaborate organization and must be done by experts. Says the Lancet writer:

It is now generally acknowledged, the writer goes on to say, that the American type of artificial leg possesses a mechanical superiority over the older English type, and that only the problem of material for use in its construction remains. We read further:

"Perhaps the time has come when a single pattern of artificial leg might be adopted and all makers obliged to conform to this. The question of discarding an ill-fitting limb and constructing a new one would disappear, for makers would have no excuse for prescribing a new one of the same pattern as the old one. The use of one standard type, allowing always for variations in the level of amputation, would simplify the problem of readjustment and repairs, but not solve it. Much would remain to be done, chiefly, however, in the direction of education. Certain members of the medical profession must educate themselves in the fitting of limbs, and local makers must be similarly instructed in the repairing of the standard type and in refitting the buckets. The men themselves must be educated to know that when the limb becomes unsatisfactory or uncomfortable it is because it no longer fits, and the public, and employers in particular, must be made to understand that readjustment of artificial limbs from time to time is essential. All this can best be carried out at the large limb-fitting hospitals, which should become centers of education in all that appertains to artificial limbs."

"Very few medical men have sufficient experience of limbfitting, and it is to be feared that many instrument-makers who describe themselves as limb-fitters have no real experience of the work. The results are already to be seen in the complaints that appear in the press of the unsatisfactory nature of the limbs supplied. It may be confidently stated that on the whole the artificial legs that have been supplied to soldiers and sailors in this country are as good as any that can be obtained, and that in the first place the fitting of the limbs has been satisfactory. In almost every case if the limb becomes unsatisfactory it is because it no longer fits. Unfortunately, when such an ill-fitting limb comes before a medical man, he, being inexperienced in the work, may be led to believe that the limb has been wrongly designed and constructed, and he is sometimes supported in this belief by a local limb-maker, who can not be acquitted of the desire for a condemnation of the original limb and an order for an entirely new one of his own make. It is to be feared that this trade interest has up to now entered to some extent into the reports upon limbs given by the small local makers."

Moreover, the rat is no fool, and efforts to get rid of the uninvited guest must be cunningly devised, and boldly carried out, to be successful. He and his wife not only stay, but they raise large families in brief spaces of time. This is what has happened in the trenches as it has happened in cottage and mansion. The moral is, we are told by Prof. P. Chavigny in the Revue Générale des Sciences, that we should beware of leaving waste food about-which is just what Mr. Hoover has been telling us. Says Nature (London, September 19) in a review of Professor Chavigny's article:

"Soon after trench warfare began the trenches were invaded by immense numbers of rats, which caused great damage and almost intolerable annoyance at night. Various measures, such as the use of poisons, infective virus, traps, terriers, etc., were taken to destroy the rats, but with very poor success; and it is shown that this was due to a lack of knowledge of the natural history and habits of the animals concerned.

"The rat which invades trenches is nearly always the ordinary brown or Norway rat, but in the case of dry trenches the black rat may be present. These rats sleep in places of retreat or holes during the day; it is at night that they cause all the trouble. The intelligence which they display in overcoming obstacles and avoiding traps, poison, etc., is extraordinary; and it is evident that they possess some means of communicating their knowledge to one another, since any particular means of killing them soon becomes of little use. Professor Chavigny lays special stress on the fact that they live on exactly the same food as man, and cooked in the same way. Of raw food they can make scarcely any use. For instance, they simply starve if given raw barley. They will gnaw and destroy almost anything that their teeth can penetrate, but what they actually live upon is simply the ordinary human food which they are able to reach, and particularly the remnants from meals. A rat consumes about thirty to fifty grams of food daily, and starvation kills it in about forty-eight hours. It neither lays up stores of food nor hibernates in winter.

"As ordinary brown and black rats will not breed in captivity, most of our knowledge as to their rate of reproduction is derived from observations on the albino variety, which breeds readily

1 rate.

DISASTROUS EMOTIONALISM

AT "THE EMOTIONAL TEMPERAMENT has en responsible for most of the great disasters from ich the human race has suffered" is the conclusion of al writer in The Hospital (London, August 10). The person, we are told, exaggerates to the point of ex; he is untruthful, a natural demagog, lacks selfin too great a hurry, "boils over" easily, lets loose he can not control or direct, and so is "the most person in the world." He has been responsible alike rors of the Spanish Inquisition and for the financial f the latest stock-jobbing scheme. Our cousins overead this indictment with complacence, for the writer to assure them at the outset that the English are the otional persons in the world, and he holds up for our the butler in the story who performed his duties he dinner-table and then went home to save his house ames which he had known all the time were devourhether a little emotionalism might not have been he house here, even tho at the expense of the dinner, arguable. But hear the English physician's indictotion:

n is exprest mainly in speech and in action, and in the emotional person expresses his emotions readily, m, and with exaggeration, often running into exIn speech, he is prone to the use of strong exd superlatives. Emotional persons are perhaps more man they used to be, and form a larger proportion of on; at any rate, the misuse and degradation of strong tive expressions are become much more frequent of possibly because of the permeation of the country by the Celtic fringes. Such words as awful, pertely, absolutely, frightfully, and so on have been so d vulgarized that they have lost their intensitive nd have almost lost their meaning altogether. The erson uses them perpetually. . . . but his emotion in talk, and his performance falls far short of his ention. He is apt to say more than he means, and than he will stick to.

emotional person is by nature untruthful. He is n both ways-that is, he says carelessly and unwhat is not in accordance with fact, not recognizing itting the desirability of truthfulness, not caring at he says is true or not; and besides this, and no ecount and by reason of this, he often lies in the r. Johnson's senses. He lies, and he knows he lies.

His assertions are, like all his expressions, exaggerated; and they are variable. He is constitutionally inaccurate. You can not believe a word he says.

...

...

"But his use of emotional speech is so frequent that he is fluent. . . . and his fluency often rises into eloquence. The emotional races, the Irish especially, are renowned for their eloquence. We are far from saying that eloquence is restricted to the emotional temperament. Were we to say so, the single case of John Bright would be enough to refute us; but undoubtedly eloquence and even oratory are frequent among the emotional, infrequent among the self-controlled, and the selfcontained. The emotional orator easily becomes a demagog.

"In action, the emotional person is impulsive. Wanting as he is in self-restraint, he does not wait to act until he has balanced the advantages and disadvantages of action. He is wanting in circumspection and deliberation. The path from feeling to action is short-circuited. As the emotional can not bear pain without howling, so they can not bear suspense, which is a kind of pain, without a struggle to relieve it. They can not wait. Accustomed to express their emotion as soon as it is felt, they must express it so in action as well as in words, if it is susceptible of expression in action. They want results at once, and they think that, even in the most complicated affairs, results may be attained immediately. They rush direct for their goal, not recognizing that in complicated affairs, and especially in social affairs, direct action is usually the direct route to failure. They are too impatient to think out in detail an elaborate scheme requiring time to bring it to maturity, and needing scrupulous attention to detail to insure its success, so they rush at some crude project, and are content to take credit for good intentions, and to lay the blame of failure upon those who have to execute an impossible task.

"Emotional people act upon impulse. This does not necessarily mean that their action is sudden or abrupt. . . . The mark of impulsive action is not suddenness or abruptness, but want of due estimation of the advantages and disadvantages of the act. The emotional person is impatient. His emotion burns to express itself in action. He is long accustomed to let his emotion boil over in action, and he can not wait to consider, so his action is immediate and direct. The emotional person

is, in fact, very generally out of his depth. With a light heart and an ignorance of consequences he lets loose forces that he can not control or direct. He launches crude and undigested schemes that produce all kinds of results except that which he intended. The most dangerous person in the world, the fertile source of incalculable and innumerable mischiefs, disasters, and injustices, is the well-intentioned enthusiast who is also an emotional person.

"Enthusiasm is the great motive power of humanity, and without it no great unselfish project was ever carried through. Enthusiasm held in hand by self-restraint and guided by sound judgment has given us every great discovery, every difficult invention, every new religion, almost every great benefit that humanity has received, from geometry to porcelain, from the theory of gravitation to the steam-engine, from natural selection to electricity; but the unrestrained and unguided enthusiasm of the emotional temperament has been responsible for most of the great disasters from which the human race has suffered."

MINING THE WAR-ZONE-Europe's battle-fields, says an editorial writer in The Mining and Scientific Press (San Francisco), have been showered with steel and iron and brass from shells, exploded and unexploded, and from hand-grenades. He goes on:

"Much of this metal will be removed as a necessary preliminary to the resumption of peaceful pursuits. The quantity of metal is so great that it would be a source of annoyance, and even of danger to the tiller of the soil. A systematic sweeping, so to speak, of all the bombarded regions will be necessary. A French engineering journal describes an apparatus which, though created for this special purpose, can be applied to other uses, for it will indicate the presence of steel and iron not too deeply buried in the soil. This, however, is a slow way to proceed where long-continued bombardment has literally filled the soil with metallic fragments. Methods of salvaging are contemplated that involve passing the soil through plants for recovering the metal, and returning the soil to its place leveled and ready for tillage. It is also pointed out that the concentration of fixed nitrogen in these battle-field soils, resulting from the enormous quantities of explosives used, will make these areas exceptionally fertile."

T

through their art tell us something of the ferment of Russia, which indulges in all kinds of topsy turvydom. Prokofieff, the musician and composer, and Boris Anisfeld, the painter, are here with notes and pigment to shake us out of all ordinary and commonplace habits of esthetic emotionalism. It is perhaps fitting that when Anisfeld's pictures were set on exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum a week ago, Prokofieff should be on hand to assist at the inauguration with performances of his own compositions, and, too, that Adolf Bolm, formerly of the Diaghileff ballet, should dance to the broken measures of this new rhythmic to show that old laws, whatever the medium of expression, are held in defiance. Prokofieff is still in his twenties, but as long ago as 1913 he was said, so Frederick Martens tells us in Musical America (New York), to have "tweaked the ear of the pedagog and warmed the cockles of the progressive musician's heart." More than that, his "Scythian Suite' drove Glazounoff from the hall in which it was being performed," and raised the cry of "futurist," "barbarian," "enfant terrible." Mr. Martens favors us with introduction:

"If Serge Prokofieff be an enfant terrible, he is at least a most engaging one. Of the blond Slav-not Turco-Slav-type, tall, slender, distinguished, with honest gray eyes and a forceful, spontaneous manner, there is something prepossessingly direct and genuine about this composer in his twenties. When the writer made his acquaintance at the home of Adolf Bolm-who knew every one worth knowing in the prerevolutionary Petrograd world of art and music, and to whom temporary exiles from what might now be called 'Unholy Russia' naturally gravitate when they reach New York-he found no difficulty in inducing Mr. Prokofieff to talk of present-day musical conditions in his native land."

These conditions seem to be among the redeeming traits of Bolshevism, Mr. Prokofieff told Mr. Martens:

"Russia is a land of paradoxes. While the state of affairs in general grows darker and darker, and the whole social and economic equilibrium of the country has been overturned, one might think that the present Government, which I am convinced can not endure, and which is part and parcel of the existing chaos, would be the last to give time and money to the arts. And there we have one of the paradoxes in question. It is the Bolshevik, Government, under which a clean collar has become a symbol of imperialism and the hall-mark of a bourgeois, and under which I found it necessary to wear a red shirt in Petrograd to show that my heart was not black-from its point of view-that is providing liberally for Russian art and artists. "The Bolshevik Government keeps all the ex-Imperial theaters running in Petrograd and Moscow, and pays the artists and musicians well. The former 'Court Orchestra' plays on Sundays in what used to be the Imperial Chapel as before, under the name of the 'State Orchestra,' Kousswitsky directing, tho the Imperial Intendant, General Count Stachelberg, has disappeared. While I was in Petrograd last year during the season, there were sometimes as many as three important concerts given in the same hall the same day, and I had to wait a month for a hall in which to give a piano recital.

"Yes, these same Bolsheviki who seem to regard cleanliness and the little decencies of life as the sinister stigmata of reaction, are paying distinguished artists big salaries, 10,000 to 25,000 rubles; are paying for the production in sumptuous style of new operas, ballets, dramas; have made the famous painter Benoit an unofficial Minister of Fine Arts-for they say that artists work hard and are a genuine source of national wealth and glory. Their political principles and the application they make of them I can only condemn, but with their views regarding the fine arts I am heartily in accord. Of course, this active musical and theatrical life is more or less intermittent; and there were months when, during party struggles for supremacy, all theaters and concert-halls closed at nine, and the entire absence of police control exposed any one who ventured to use the streets much after that hour to robbery and assassination. It is a pleasure for me to think that the very valuable library of old music, much of it in manuscript, at the Petrograd Conservatory, has been safely removed to various central towns, where it is preserved."

them among us.

Prokofieff, "fantasy composer," as the Boston Transcript calls him, might well help introduce Boris Anisfeld, "fantastic painter," also driven from Russia by the disorders of political revolution. Their long pilgrimages across Siberia and the Pacific merit for them whatever tranquillity their art allows Anisfeld's presence may help to recall what was perhaps but lightly noticed at the time that he shared with Bakst in designing scenery and costumes for several of the Russian ballets disclosed here. Anisfeld, as quoted by Mr. Christian Brinton in the exhibition's catalog, disclaims belonging to any school "I strive not to be original, but merely to be independent, and to express myself in the most congenial manner of which I am capable." The public in Russia no longer laughs when he exhibits, "for we have to-day in Russia many artists who are more extreme than I. We call them, as

sm:

the current exhibition you will be able to follow in its aspects the esthetic evolution of Boris Anisfeld. You se its formative stages wherein he pays tribute to the e Whistler and the serene, sumptuous masters of the ance such as Il Tiziano. You will see its more advanced wherein he recognizes-as most modern have been compelled to do the rigortraction of Cézanne and Picasso. You you are so disposed, trace the gradual of the artist from a more or less free intion of fact to a purely inspirational conof form and color. Responsive tho he is which attracts him in the production of present, the achievement of Anisfeld offers pendent contribution to the shifting pano

contemporary painting. At its best it a chromatic opulence as rare as it is pernd a sense of rhythm which is typically and individual.

pite its seeming complexity, there is somerect, instinctive, and elemental in the work Anisfeld. It displays to an uncommon deunity of mood and manner without which etic expression must assuredly fail of effect. is a product of emotion rather than reason rvation. Typically Russian in their mysd power of psychic evocation, there is a rnivalesque quality to these freely brushed

syntheses and these gleaming little lor panels. Lacking, if you choose, that nd sobering, stolidity to which we are ned, these paintings appeal primarily to tive and imaginative sensibilities. It is contend that a certain proportion of this antastic in character, that it has no basis fact, yet you can not deny that it pose secret of suggestion, that it makes for and aspiration.

confronting the production of Boris and kindred apostles of the new school ative idealism, it is well, for the time forego reality and resign oneself to the tency of the spirit and the senses. The

AR

GOOD WAY TO JUDGE the mentality of the German and French armies is through the imaginative quality of their slang. In our issue of October 5 we saw that this quality was mainly lacking in words so employed by the Boche. A carefully compiled selection of the argot of the poilu shows that the French reputation for intellectual keen

h endures longest is that which, other elements being splays the superior measure of emotional intensity. can scarcely charge the latter-day Slavs with being in emotional intensity."

-UP STAGE WAR-VILLAINS-The progressive stimuli ar have been such that the writer of a 'war-play in Mr. Walter Melville, does not trust his vehicle without tance of five villains. That the war must be near its s to be evidenced by the way material in the shape of spies is being used up on the stage. The London peaks of the latest Lyceum melodrama, called "The Hun":

n Number One was a butler, with the suspiciously name of John Brown, who only survived through one shot as a German spy in the second. Villain Number a terribly dull person who gave himself away at every was lucky enough to be allowed to continue his villainy last act. Villains Numbers Three and Four, apparently German submarine, wandered at random about the ast at dead of night. But Villain Number Five, the Hun,' was Mr. Melville's superb creation. A tall, e person, she dominated the proceedings throughout unfortunate moment at the end of the third act, when shot by her own husband, a British general, a very t person, whom the Secretary of State for War visited untry seat at midnight to discuss with him a plan of Despite his rows of ribbon, the general was one of the ucky persons in the Army. To have his wife and his nounced as German spies within the space of half an st have been a blow, but it is a tribute to the British d its chiefs that not even these disasters broke his rit."

ness is not misplaced. The book that gathers up these words of the trench claims more reliability than the earlier lists much bruited in newspapers. These words, the French soldier protested, were "the invention of the civelots"-a word that the London Times thinks in itself one of "sterling formation, if ever there was one." The French soldier, it observes, is a "civilized being, not a strange animal speaking by miracle a strange tongue." The author of this new book, "L'Argot de la Guerre," is Albert Dauzat, who has "consulted the soldiers themselves, not his imagination and the most recent dictionary of prewar argot." He resorted to the novel method of applying to the soldiers through the Journal de Suzette, the name given 'to the Bulletin des Armées, and from them received some two hundred more or less comprehensive vocabularies. With the soldiers' own glosses and definitions, and, continues The Times, "on the basis of this most valuable evidence, he has given us the first scientific account of a phenomenon which will, without doubt, profoundly modify the French language in the future." We read on:

"In one respect his analysis confirms the protest made by the soldiers against the invention of the armchair journalists. Tho one-third of the words with which he was supplied are certainly new, these are in the main multiple surnames for new things. The traveling kitchen, the steel helmet, the gas-mask have, for instance, each been baptized some twenty times. These nicknames are often extremely witty, but they are too witty to become real. words. And perhaps the only real words among all these names are the simplest. La cuisine roulante becomes simply la roulante, as the name for soup is la bouillante. The element which makes the thing new and important is thus immortalized. On the other hand, of the manifold names