boys during the war!" Europe tested American education by its fruits, and did not find it wanting.

The experiences of the lady in question were by no means unique. They are, however, hardly typical. More significant is another result of the war in regard to education. Few people know that at the outbreak of the war American psychologists found their offers of assistance to the United States War Department received with derision. Later on,

these men, among other important work, developed the Binet intelligence tests to a high point as a means of determining the fitness of men for military service. When peace came these clever devices for avoiding the uncertainty and unfairness of examinations were further elaborated for the use of American schools. At the present time there is widespread study and application of these tests going on in England and in France.

It is not only in such work, chiefly meant for elementary schools, that Europe is interested. American higher institutions of learning likewise attract more and more attention. The enormous strides made here since 1875 are coming to be widely recognized. Thus American visitors to English universities, particularly the newer municipal foundations such as Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, and others, the schools which have revolutionized English higher education in the past generation, find themselves plied with questions as to the methods in vogue in America. A French professor in an American University, on returning to his native country, found himself besieged with requests for articles on the American educational system, especially that of the universities. This attitude is not theoretic; it leads to practical results. Thus a professor of history and appreciation of music recently went on a lecture tour in France. As a consequence three French universities are now inaugurating departments of music similar to those that are familiar to us in America. The University of Paris has a Professor of American Culture, who studied at Harvard, and an American scholar has been invited to lecture on American literature in a group of Italian universities. When Europe imitates our educational methods, and institutes courses in our civilization, it is clear that it is no longer fair to

describe us, as Lowell did, as the "most common-schooled and least cultivated people in the world." We have begun to repay our heavy debts to the Old World.

American literature as well as the American university system is coming into its own. It is a long time since the Edinburgh Review asked with crusty insularity, "Who reads an American book?" Already a year or two before the war the Tauchnitz "Collection of British Authors," which contained some 10 per cent. of American books, seemed to become conscious that its name was a misnomer. Americans may now beguile the slow hours in European railway-trains with the white paper-backed volumes of the Tauchnitz "Collection of British and American Authors." Europe has long known Longfellow, Cooper, Poe, Whitman, Emerson, Bret Harte, and Henry James. Before the war, and even more after it, one heard in London and in Paris the names of the vigorous Jack London, the whimsical O. Henry, the penetrating Edith Wharton. That idyl of bygone New York, the Age of Innocence, for example, was translated into French within a short time of publication, and Upton Sinclair's 100%, aus dem Amerikanischen übersetzt, is seen more frequently in Germany than in the United States. It is novel, however, to notice Galsworthy's approving comments on the work of the daring and incisive American critic Mencken, or to read H. G. Wells' frequent references to the classic excoriation of provincial America, Main Street. The Illinois poet of swinging lyrics, Vachel Lindsay, was received in London with a cordiality second only to the wild exuberance that greeted the returning Londoner, Charley Chaplin !

The interest in America indicated in the wider diffusion of our literature finds expression in European letters also. The subjects of more and more European works are sought in America. Brieux' Les Américains is perhaps not very remarkable as a play. It is remarkable, however, for its subjectthe lives of Americans in France during and after the war. Perhaps the greatest success of the English stage since the war is Drinkwater's Abraham Lincoln, a sympathetic portrayal of the great American. The latter play indicates, moreover, the new light in which American political life is viewed in Europe.

A more extensive though somewhat dubious influence of America in connection with literature is that of American moving pictures. Many of the best English writers-such men as Barrie and Kipling-have been supervising the production of their works by American film corporations, and the playwright, Henry Arthur Jones, made a journey to America for this

purpose.

Curiously enough, the cinematograph has not only brought Englishmen to America, but it has also carried American slang to England. The English formerly had to translate the legends interspersed between the various episodes of the film drama into the King's English. Of late, however, the need of translating Americanese into Britannic is said to have disappeared.

One cause of this change is the fact that the American soldier carried with him not only his American vocabulary but the ability to make it respected. The brevity, freshness, and point of our slang are now appreciated throughout the English-speaking world. English people constantly exclaim, "How quaint the American expressions are!" Music-hall actresses affect an American accent, and far-off Australia has invented a name, "half-pay Yankee," for the tongue of New York in the mouth of Melbourne. One sees advertisements in London omnibuses declaring that a certain shoe-blacking is "Some Polish!" British lips no longer disdain to say "pep," "make good," "Gee Whiz!" "He is some fellow!" Now, the borrowing of words has the same purport as the borrowing of money. It means that the debtor feels that the creditor is richer than he is. The British Empire has begun to pay such a tribute to the linguistic affluence of the United States.

It is a far cry from the chaste diction of the Constitution of the United States to the crude slang of the "buck private." Nevertheless every sign-post on the road we have traveled points the same way. In politics, as in economics, in mechanics, as well as in science, in education, literature, and language, Europe is our debtor to a degree hitherto unheard of. So clear is this situation that a certain Englishman who had spent two years abroad returned in 1921 to his native land and wrote an article in a London newspaper on the "Americanization of

England." There can be no question that this gentleman exaggerated. Neither England nor the rest of Europe has been Americanized. The traits that have made Europe what it is, for good or for evil, are not going to be effaced. There is, however, a beginning of a new epoch. The war has fostered and revealed to the world the results of years of sincere and unostentatious cultural activity. Europe is dimly conscious that the torch of civilization is passing to the West. American independence and originality are commencing to be recognized. America is being discovered.

Gandhi and the Hunger-Strike in India

W. NORMAN BROWN

The Johns Hopkins University

Terence MacSwiney starving himself to death in Brixton Prison, a Kentucky minister refusing food until his daughter joined the church, the memory of the suffragettes and "forcible feeding"-all seem to indicate a widespread belief that grievances can be righted through the agency of a "hunger strike." Now comes Mahatma Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, leader of the Non-coöperation movement in India against the British, and adds his name to the list.

But Gandhi's hunger-strikes have peculiar features. In the first place, they are directed not against the British, his designated enemies, but against those of his own followers who, by resorting to riot and bloodshed, have violated his doctrine of peace and passivism, the cardinal principle of his propaganda. Even more astonishing is the fact that to date he has invariably been successful. With only a few days of his "solemn fast" he has won his way-until the next time.

Quite naturally we ask what prompts Gandhi to adopt this means of imposing his will upon his recalcitrant followers. On its face the hunger-strike seems a childish instrument, a device of those who are weak both mentally and physically, employing neither reason nor force, a strange weapon for a man who is great enough to stir the imagination of hundreds of millions of his fellows.

And what is the rare potency of his hunger-strikes that makes them effective? Is it merely that his opponents yield easily because they are his fellow-workers and professed wellwishers? Or is there a more compelling reason? If there is, it would have repaid the Sinn Feiners to learn it.

It has been suggested that Gandhi took the idea from Occidental reformers and revolutionists; but the fallacy of this suggestion is patent, for his very success flies directly in the face of the old adage that an imitation cannot be better than its original. On the contrary, hunger-striking is an ancient and widespread custom. Those who know their Bible will