n't he?" asked the man with
the electric-blue cap.

"He started to go there," replied the former speaker, "but he only got
as fur as Little Rock; then he come on back home, and the old man bought
'im a wireless-telegraph plant. Yeaup! That boy gets messages right outa
the air--from Washington, D.C., and Berlin, and every place. The
Govamunt don't allow 'im to tell you much of it. He tells a little,
though--just to give you a notion."

So, through the five-hour ride the conversation ran. Several times the
talk drifted to politics and to the European War, but the politics
discussed were local and lopsided, and the war was all too clearly
regarded as something interesting but vague and remote. On the entire
journey not one word was spoken indicating that the people of this
section had the least grasp on any national question, or that they were
considering national questions, or that they realized what the war in
Europe is about--that it is a war for freedom and democracy, a war
against war, a war to prevent a few individuals from ever again plunging
the world into war. Nor, though the day of our entry into the war was
close at hand, had the idea that we might be forced to take part in the
conflict so much as occurred to any of them.

They were not stupid people; on the contrary, some of them possessed a
homely and picturesque philosophy; but they were not informed, and the
reason they were not informed has to do with one of the chief needs of
our rural population--especially the rural population of the South.

What they need is good newspapers. They need more world news and
national news in place of county news and local briefs. In the whole
South, moreover, there is need for general political news instead of
biased news written always from inside the Democratic party, and
sandwiched in between patent medicine advertisements.

CHAPTER XLI

A MISSISSIPPI TOWN

It was dark when, after a journey of one hundred and twenty miles at the
rate of twenty miles an hour, we reached Columbus, a city which was
never intended to be a metropolis and which will never be one.

Columbus is situated upon a bluff on the east bank of the Tombigbee
River, to the west of which is a very fertile lowland region, filled
with plantations, the owners of which, a century ago, founded the town
in order that their families might have churches, schools, and the
advantages of social life. As the town grew, a curious but entirely
natural