sand separate symbols, each a different word. It requires
the memorizing of at least three thousand word-signs to read and write
their language. The national phonetic script is made up of sixty
distinct characters that answer to our twenty-four. These characters
embrace every verbal sound of the language, and in combination make up
every word. The progress of China has been greatly hampered by this
want of an alphabet.

Coleridge says about the primary art of writing: "First, there is mere
gesticulation, then rosaries, or wampum, then picture language, then
hieroglyphics, and finally alphabetic letters,"--the last an evolution
from all that went before. But there is no more suggestion of an
alphabet in the sign language of the North American Indian than there
is of man in a crinoid.

THE REDS OF LITERATURE

A class of young men who seem to look upon themselves as revolutionary
poets has arisen, chiefly in Chicago; and they are putting forth the
most astonishing stuff in the name of free verse that has probably
ever appeared anywhere. In a late number of "Current Opinion," Carl
Sandburg, who, I am told, is their chosen leader, waves his dirty
shirt in the face of the public in this fashion:

"My shirt is a token and a symbol more than a cover from sun and rain,
My shirt is a signal and a teller of souls,
I can take off my shirt and tear it, and so make a ripping razzly
noise, and the people will say, 'Look at him tear his shirt!'

"I can keep my shirt on,
I can stick around and sing like a little bird, and look 'em all in the
eye and never be fazed,
I can keep my shirt on."

Does not this resemble poetry about as much as a pile of dirty rags
resembles silk or broadcloth? The trick of it seems to be to take
flat, unimaginative prose and cut it up in lines of varying length,
and often omit the capitals at the beginning of the lines--"shredded
prose," with no "kick" in it at all. These men are the "Reds" of
literature. They would reverse or destroy all the recognized rules and
standards upon which literature is founded. They show what Bolshevism
carried out in the field of poetry, would lead to. One of them who
signs himself H. D. writes thus in the "Dial" on "Helios":

"Helios makes all things right--
night brands and chokes,
as if destruction broke
over furze and stone and crop
of myrtle-shoot and field-wort,
destroyed with flakes of i