Mr. Allen did not express an opinion as to the probable effects on literature of the war. He said: "Now, the North and the South in the renascence of the short story after the Civil War divide honors about equally. But it is impossible to speak of the Southern short story, or indeed of Southern literature at all, without being brought to the brink of a subject which lies back of the whole philosophy of Southern literature." Mr. Allen paused for a moment. Then he continued, speaking with an intensity which reminded me of his Southern birth and upbringing: "Suppose that at the end of the present European war Germany should be victorious and France defeated. And suppose that in France there should not be left a single publishing-house, a single literary periodical, a single literary editor, a single critic, and scarcely even a single buyer of books. "And suppose that the defeated French people wanted to cry out their soul over their defeat and against their conquerors. And suppose that in order to do this every French novelist, short-story writer, or poet, unable to keep silent, should begin to write and begin to send his novel or his short story or his poem over into Germany to be read by a German editor, published by a German publisher, and sold in a German bookshop to a German reader. What kind of French literature of the war do you think would appear in Germany and be fostered there? "But this is exactly what happened after the war between the North and the South. "The few voices that began to be sent northward across the demolished battle-line could only be the voices that would be listened to and welcomed on the other side. That is the reason why that first literature was so mild, so tempered, so thin, so devitalized, that it seemed not to come from an enraged people, but from the memories of their ghosts. "As a result of finding war literature inexpressible in such conditions, the young generation of Southerners dropped the theme of war altogether and explored other paths. So that perhaps the most original and spontaneous fragments of this new Southern post-bellum literature are in the regions of the imagination, where no note of war is heard. "It is not beyond the bounds of possibility that if Joel Chandler Harris, a young Southerner, had possessed full freedom to wreak his genius on the war, the world might never have heard of 'Uncle Remus.' The world might never have known that among the cotton-plantations there dwelt a brother to AEsop and to La Fontaine." _SOME HARMFUL INFLUENCES_ HARRY LEON WILSON From the Pacific Coast--from what is enthusiastically termed "the Golden West"--from that section of the United States which is large and chivalrous and gladly suffers suffrage--comes a voice, replying to my question: "What is the matter with contemporary fiction?" And the voice says, "_Cherchez la femme!_"