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HERE are three classes of people who always step boldly to the front of the platform when the subject of birth control is mentionedthe priest, the lawmaker, and the doctor.

If I were not able to smile at the thought of the discussion of that subject by a priest, I should cry from very rage. I will listen to a head hunter from Borneo on Paris styles, or to an Eskimo on the progress of invention, but I will leave even the confessional if the priest utters the words "birth control." The other two classes are not such great life offenders. I have no objection to their expression of their opinions. My complaint of them is of the form that their observations take. For instead of the help that they could (and should) give La the world in a medical and legal way,

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they invariably launch into a discussion the of the subject from an ethical standpoint, on which they have no more knowledge than any other citizen.

The curious fact is that in all the articles upon birth control which have appeared in The Outlook and other magazines recently the two classes of human beings who are most vitally interestedmothers and children-are never repreEsented. The children are neglected because they are inarticulate; the women because they hesitate to speak openly of their own experiences. It has been only within the last three or four years that birth control, probably the most important subject in the world, has not been considered a shameful topic for discussion. It is these two classes of citizens, for whom birth control is the most vital thing in life, that I am trying to represent in this article.

I

BELIEVE that most women want children. I have no statistics to prove this statement; only the words of the many women who have voiced their opinions to me. In my two years of homesteading life, where the coming of every baby means greater hardship, increased economy, and unrelieved suffer ing. I never heard of a woman who didn't want a family. "Pore little kid!" I heard a homesteading mother say when the fifth child was coming; "he ain't getting no square deal when I ain't even got a bed fer him." (The other four sleeping lengthwise in

children were

Birth Control

As Seen by a Mother

By

MARION HURD MCNEELY

In the pages of The Outlook a doctor has opposed birth control on physiological and humanistic grounds, a sociologist for economic reasons; a poet, a business woman, and a judge have discussed it in its relation to marriage. Mrs. McNeely feels that the class to whom birth control is the most vital thing in life has not been represented, and it is for that class-the mothers—that she undertakes to speak.

one of the two beds the sod house pos

sessed.)

sessed.) I knew another homesteader who, sensing the approach of her baby, walked four miles to the home of her nearest neighbor to get assistance. The kindly neighbor promised to come to her as soon as she had "kneaded down her bread." The homesteader walked back the four miles, and had hardly reached her empty house when her boy baby was born. She lay alone and without attention until her neighbor arrived. And her comment on the situation was: "I was skeered that baby'd take cold before they got him dressed. I'm glad he's all right. Ain't so lonesome on the prairie with a baby to look out fer.”

I have seen the eyes of a middle-aged woman whose only child died at birth thirty years before fill with tears as she spoke of its death. I have seen women, many women, without families, look hungrily upon children. I have heard more than one hard-boiled flapper remark, with modern frankness, that they wanted a family; that they hoped they'd have a lot.

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maternal urge cannot be overcome in a lifetime. The flapper wants a family, but she wants what she wants, and no more. And in her frankness that seems to the older generation almost brutal, she shows a tenderness and a consideration for her unborn that the past generation either lacked or dared not express.

Every married woman who possesses a conscience and a sense of responsibility finds herself faced with the same problem early in her married life. Without preparation, without either education or previous thought on the subject, she is confronted suddenly by the question of her duty to her husband as compared with her duty to her unborn children. This is not the problem of the unhappy woman; the more she loves her husband, the more tender and considerate he is toward her, the harder becomes her decision. Shall she consider him first? Or shall the children have first claim? Will they want to come? How many ought she to bear? Can she have as large a family as she and her husband desire, and still be untiring, loving, responsible enough to care for them? Can she supply enough health for their bodies? Enough lime for their bones? Enough patience for their upbringing? Ought she to run the risk of having children to whom she cannot give her best?

The more conscientious the mother, the more she thinks upon these things. To whom may she go for help? Neither her religion nor her education offer her any solution. Her family physician not only cannot help her with the moral question, but is forbidden to give her any information about the physical. Her priest, if she is a Roman Catholic, comes to the front with a solution that is as absurd as it is absolute: If she desires but three children, she must deviate from continence three times in the twenty-five years of her married life. I have heard more than a few "good Catholics" express their opinion of that advice. So she fights it out alone. In this greatest of problems, in which men and women need all the help that science, that religion, that psychology, that experience can give them, there is no source of help. A stock raiser may write for a United States bulletin on every subject pertaining to the production of

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EN and women who a few years ago gave no thought to flying as it affected them personally are now giving serious consideration to commercial aviation as a means of saving time, extending their business and social activities, and increasing the pleasure of travel. These people are told by various agencies and in numerous ways that flying is as safe as ground transportation. However, they are not infrequently subjected to the more or less disquieting accounts of airplane accidents and casualties.

Those connected with aviation attribute these accidents mainly to unairworthy planes and incompetent pilots. Such things, they say, do not happen to good machines and good pilots. These men speak with perfect honesty and a full knowledge of what they are talking about. "But," asks the prospective air passenger, "how can I tell whether the plane is safe and whether the pilot is competent? Do I have to take that chance too?"

The Air Commerce Act and Regulations give the Department of Commerce control of all inter-State air commerce and supervision of all air traffic. That is, all airplanes must observe the Federal flight regulations-the rules of the road. of the air-whether engaged in interState or only intra-State commerce.

By MILBURN KUSTERER

or property in inter-State commerce must have a transport pilot license. This is the highest credential given by the Department.

The transport pilot must have at least two hundred hours of solo flying and pass examinations on the theory of flight, rigging of airplanes, air traffic rules, meteorology, and engines. He must be able to fly in emergency maneuvers, doing spirals, sideslips, and recovering from stalls. His fitness for crosscountry flying under all conditions must be demonstrated. He is subjected to a rigorous medical examination. His mental and moral fitness to be intrusted with the lives of others is ascertained. In every sense, the transport pilot is an allround pilot and is entitled to pilot any type of licensed plane anywhere. Among the transport pilots of this country are the finest and most able fliers in the world. Colonel Lindbergh was a transport pilot long before he was an international hero. Air-mail pilots, since they are engaged in inter-State commerce, have to be transport pilots. This fact accounts in part for the fine performance and safety records of the air-mail lines.

There are other classes of pilots-limited commercial, industrial, private, and student. The limited commercial pilot must have fifty hours of solo flying in contrast to the transport pilot's two hundred hours. They are allowed to carry passengers for hire only within a limited, designated small area. They cannot carry passengers or property for hire or reward outside the areas denoted in their licenses.

Pilots may be divided into two classes: those who are licensed by the Department and those who are not. Commercial airplanes may be differentiated in the same way. Pilots are licensed according to their skill, experience, knowledge, and in relation to the particular work in which they may engage. The pilot who carries passengers

surveying. He must have fifty hours of solo flying. The physical and other examinations given the applicants for limited commercial and industrial licenses are not as rigorous as those which must be passed by transport pilots.

Private pilots are non-commercial pilots. They are not permitted to carry passengers or property for hire. Private pilots designated as student pilots are

licensed only to pilot a licensed airplane while receiving instruction. The student pilot is restricted to a definite, small

area.

The only licensed pilots who are privileged to carry passengers for hire are the transport and limited commercial. Neither can carry pay passengers in an unlicensed aircraft. The person who is going to fly can easily assure himself of the status of the pilot by asking to see his license. This may prove a wise precaution, even though the passenger is going to take only a short hop. It is the getting up and coming down that count; not the distance flown, but the distance to the ground in case of a mishap. It may be safer to fly from coast to coast with one pilot than to take a three-minute hop with another. It is not enough to know that the pilot is licensed. The cautious person also should know his class.

L AST year in New York State there were seventeen airplane crashes. Fourteen of these planes were not regis tered and thirteen of the pilots held no licenses. Records show that accidents. are more frequent with unlicensed planes and pilots. Department of Commerce statistics for 1927 show that 80 per cent of airplane fatalities occurred in unlicensed machines and that of the total of 681 licensed planes, 665, or 974 per cent, operated throughout the year. flying millions of miles without a single fatality. In air-mail operations there was but one fatality to 1,413,381 pilotpassenger miles. In air transport operations the ratio was 1 to 1,413,330 miles.

In case pilots who are licensed get frisky and break rules, the local Department inspector investigates and reports to Washington. If action is necessary, the pilot may be "grounded" for a time, his license suspended or revoked, or a fine may be imposed.

Any airplane engaged in inter-State commerce must be licensed by the De partment, as must any plane flown by a licensed pilot who is carrying passen gers for hire. No plane can be licensed until its type of structural design and details of manufacture have been ap proved by the Department engineers Federal inspectors from time to time

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visit the factories operating under this

plan to see that work is up to standard I and that the approved specifications are being followed,

Airplanes not engaged in inter-State commerce must register with the Department and receive a number, even though they do not apply for a license. This number is for identification only and is carried on the top and bottom wing surfaces in the same places as the numbers on licensed planes. The registered but unlicensed plane may be easily distinguished from the licensed plane. When there is no letter preceding the number, the plane is merely marked for identification. There is no assurance by the Department as to the structural safety of the plane or its general condition. It has not been approved and the Department inspector has not examined

it. It may be safe and it may not. Licensed aircraft show the Department's credential in the form

beof a letter preceding the registration number. Capital "S" means "State," and is used on planes engaged solely for Governmental purposes and belonging to some political division, such as city, county, or State. Capital "C" means "commercial" and precedes the number on all other licensed airplanes except that special symbols are assigned to aplanes engaged in racing or experimental work. The letter "N" denotes that the plane is used in foreign air commerce.

HE system of numbering gives the THE system of numbering gives the Department a check on all airplanes whether licensed or not, and infractions of rules can be accurately reported. Here are some of the ways in which the layman can tell if a plane is breaking the air traffic rules: if it swoops down to within one thousand feet of a public gathering, such as a ball-game crowd; if it performs stunts over a crowd at any altitude; if it stunts over a city or over an airport or within one thousand feet horizontally thereof. It is against regulations to drop objects from an airplane without permission from the Secretary of Commerce, or to fly acrobatically with any passenger for hire even if the passenger so requests.

Aircraft licenses may be suspended or revoked for violation of the Air Commerce Act or Regulations. Revocation may also be imposed for operating planes in excess of the authorized load

and for changing equipment or remodeling airplanes after they have been licensed. In case of a serious crash, the airplane cannot be flown after reconditioning until it has been inspected by a Department representative.

The prospective air passenger, however, asks, "With all this regulation, how is it that unlicensed planes and pilots do fly and carry passengers?"

The answer is that they are engaged in intra-State commerce, over which the Department has no control. William P. MacCracken, head of the Aeronautics Branch of the Department of Commerce,

says:

"The result is that unless some action is taken by State authorities, or the Air Commerce Act is amended to require the licensing of all aircraft and airmen, there will be a certain percentage of planes operating in this country that have not been inspected, and they will

be flown by pilots who have not passed any examination, either as to their ability, physical fitness, or mental capacity to fly."

Some States have affirmed the Federal laws and require all pilots within their boundaries to have Federal licenses. Their planes are likewise required to have Federal licenses. New York and Virginia recently passed such legislation, urged upon them by Colonel Lindbergh and Commander Richard E. Byrd.

Flying in licensed planes flown by transport pilots is as safe as flying can be with modern equipment and skilled personnel. Every passenger is entitled to these safeguards and should demand them. The reliable and leading operators offer them. The others are gradually being forced out of business by competition.

10 any one who watches the drift of current fiction with interest, the metamorphosis of the Southern novel during recent years has been a phenomenon of striking significance. There was, before 1914, a genre known as "Southern," a trade-mark as definite in its implications as "Western" when applied to a movie today. It called for certain lay figures, properties, and even foods, and was a composite of a Dixie belle, Colonel (Confederate, of course), a mammy to whom the Emancipation Act was the original "scrap of paper," a colonial house, preferably dilapidated, wherein the inhabitants subsisted chiefly on a diet of beaten biscuit. and mint juleps (frosted by the heroine). The villain was a Northerner, pronounced "damyankee," unless the author was unusually reconstructed, when, as likely as not, the hero himself hailed from north of the line and-plague on both their houses!-claimed the Southern beauty as his bride in a last chapter foggy with "tears and love for the blue, love and tears for the gray." This type was especially popular at the time of the Spanish War, when the sentiment of the country voiced itself in the song,

One lies down near Appomattox,
Many miles away,

Another sleeps at Chickamauga,
And they both wore suits of gray,

In a trench at Santiago....

But not even in war time could a writer bring himself to have a Southern hero fall in love with a girl from the North. It was taken for granted that all Southern girls were supremely charming. The characters were not born of the author's spiritual travail; they were delivered complete by the theatrical costumer-the heroine's curls and crinolines, the Colonel's old gray hat and white Van Dyke as ordered for this fancy-dress party which was the novel of the South. And, more's the pity, this bal masque was often contrived by an author of genuine gifts graceful style, romantic feeling, and even humor, which, alas! he had to sacrifice too frequently to the blue laws limiting his metier. By any other name, these books smell ever so faintly of "Elsie Dinsmore."

Towering above his contemporaries was George W. Cable, who was to Louisiana and her Creoles what Hawthorne

By MARY SHIRLEY

was to New England, lacking perhaps some of Hawthorne's tragic intensity, his compactness of method, but with every quality of a great interpreter of a people. Upon re-reading his work with the expectation of finding color, romance, and exotic charm-finding all of these-one is amazed at his detachment and the breadth of his humanity. It must be recalled that "The Grandissimes," his most important novel and his own favorite, was written nearly fifty years ago. It is interesting to have the authority of his daughter, Mrs. Chard, for Mr. Cable's attitude toward his own work, which explains to a degree his remarkable faculty for "perspective." He at one time said to a friend that he liked to have at least fifteen years' contact with his subject, and then fifteen years' absence from it, before he began to write about it. With such preparation, it is not surprising that more recent writers have failed to supplant him as pre-eminently the novelist of the South. His fame is as secure as Hawthorne's or Henry James's.

Thomas Nelson Page, of Virginia, with an undeniable gift for telling a tale and a polished style withal, never broke through the conventions governing the Southern novel and had apparently no temptation to do so. In a preface he frankly says that he writes of people who are the products of a system it is now the fashion to speak of only with condemnation. Of the merits of that system he seems to have been convinced, though sentiment, and not conviction, motivates his work. It is inevitably the Lost Cause which receives the heart's allegiance. Was there ever any one in the worldexcept perhaps the late William Jennings Bryan-who did not love a Stuart better than a Roundhead, especially after cutting off Charles's head?

James Lane Allen, of Kentucky, after writing "The Choir Invisible" and several other fine novels in the tradition, suddenly confounded his admirers by going modern! Only in those days they called it "advanced," and it meant, my dear, being just horrid! He wrote a simple and harmless enough tale, wherein the head of a family had a frightfully the head of a family had a frightfully wild time, as he sat before the Christmas tree, ruminating on the quite scandalous

origin of Christmas trees in the days of the Druids. His speculations lured him to some unorthodox views of his marriage vows. (People get that way when they begin to think about Druids.) The upshot of all this was that Mr. Allen was told in effect that Druid oaks and firs were no trees for his Kentucky Cardinals. These birds must never perch on the Golden Bough!

John Fox, Jr., another Kentuckian, contributed his "Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come" to the annals of the mountaineer, and a little later Henry Sydnor Harrison's "Queed" was knocked down by the "pleasure dog," spilling his apples all over the street! "The pleasure he has given me is negligible if not non-existent." How that phrase has kept up our morale on occasions not highly felicitous! All these novels, as expected, contained confections for the literary sweet tooth, but it would be ungracious as well as pedantic to belittle the delight such books have given us in the past. In many instances the pleasure was by no means negligible or non-existent.

Delightful as many of the Southern tales were, and even true to some limited phases of life in the South, there was little attempt to probe deeply into the secret motives of the human soul or to present any of the universal problems of common humanity. Of stories dealing with the Negro, from "Uncle Remus" down to "Porgy" and "Black April." there is no opportunity to speak in this article, for they belong in a class apart, in the nature of things, just as the peculiar and unhappy heritage of the Negro himself makes him a figure of tragic isolation in the midst of our civilization.

It was not until 1915 that the bonds of tradition were finally cut by a slim flashing blade, when James Branch Cabell published "The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck." Taking his text from that ineffably lovely story by Hans Christian Andersen, "The Shepherdess and the Sweep," Cabell made the porcelain figure of the Mandarin the symbol of the Old South. Once Grandfather could nod his head, but when broken into bits, though more fortunate than Humpty-Dumpty, he was put together so clumsily that his neck remained quite rigid. It has been said that Cabell did to Virginia what Cervantes did to Spain (Please turn to continuation, page 116)

It was early autumn, and it was in the city of Nashville. The great campus of Vanderbilt University was arrayed in gold and scarlet, looking like a stage for a mediæval romance. The very sunshine had a touch of refinement about it.

But I did not enjoy a game of tennis the that day, somehow. I could not say anything viler than that of any day in the calendar. The professor of Hebrew in the Theological Department licked. me, and licked me good. The thing struck me as greater miracle than the raising of the dead. I saw another miracle, though, even greater than that, at the dinner table. That dinner tasted to me like a lot of old bits of newspaper seasoned with sawdust. I went to bed, and on the following morning I could not think of any attraction strong enough to drag me out of it.

"Hustle out of there, now, you goodfor-nothing old" My kindly room

mate did not finish the complimentary greeting. For just then his eyes happened to fall upon my face. His eyes got round and rounder, but he did not

waste another adjective, and rushed out of the room.

The

The doctor came and stuck a fever thermometer under my tongue. college physician was a jolly old body, popular with the boys. After he had

looked me over I wondered just what it was that had ever made me think him jolly. The only story that his old thermometer told me was 103°. And I couldn't see anything in that that would make a man half as glum as the doctor seemed to be.

By ADACHI KINNOSUKE

Thealthy little animal all of which 1 although, upon the brightest of my

was in those days-the least little trouble with his body makes him jump straight to the conclusion that he is going to die the very next moment. I knew all about this fundamental fact in human psychol ogy. And at that time-all the while the doctor was looking so glum-I did not feel like stepping right off, or anything like it. I told the doctor all this just to cheer him up a bit. He didn't even crack a smile. When he did speak,

honor, I did not do a thing to keep him. But he left in the end. Left alone, I devoted myself to the easiest thing I could do: I looked up at the ceiling and kept right on looking at it as minutes and hours marched on in their pilgrimage to eternity. As I looked that old whitewashed ceiling took on all the life and drama of the silver screen, although that was years before the movie was even the dream child of its inventor.

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OMEWHERE I had heard that a man's soul reviews his entire life at the gate of the Shadow World even as the Emperor reviews his army at the Aoyama Review Ground. Could it beas the doctor seemed to think that I was really seriously ill? I looked at the ceiling. The parade continued, as if in answer to my query.

And suddenly I felt-not sick, but lonely. I never felt so lonely in all my life. The universe was utterly emptypositively painful in its exaggerated void. I was alone, I knew that. If a countryman or countrywoman of mine happened to be within a thousand miles of me, I knew nothing of him or her. And the crowded parade on the ceiling kept unrolling steadily. And the more it unrolled, the lonelier I got. Perhaps the doctor was right. There are times when even doctors are right, I told myself. And without fuss, without violence or melodrama of any sort, everything took on the tinge of dull blue-including the parade on the ceiling. I actually thought of turning my face to the wall with the common human refrain, "This is the end." Perhaps I did do just that. For after continuous, unanimous, although not enthusiastic sinking of a considerable length of time, I was suddenly startled out of the mire of desolation as from a nightmare.

IT

T was a knock at the door that did it.

It came again. I did not take the trouble of answering it. Everything seemed to me like yesterday's newspaper -curiosity was dead and cold within me. The knock came for the third time and spoke to me in a tone that proved the folly of fighting it with indifference. So I said, "Çome in." "One of the boys dropping in," I thought, and did not take the trouble of turning my head to find out who the visitor might be. But why doesn't the fellow say something? Just then I heard a noise no student is guaranteed to make. It sounded like setting down a heavily laden tray of some sort. It meant food.

"Dar, now," I heard a full-chested contralto say, "Mis' Marshall, she say her compliments. She say"- The sentence was never finished. For just then the eyes of the plump colored maid fell upon my face for the first time. And