Back of Billy Sunday, by John Reed. _The Metropolitan_, May. The Old Woman’s Money, by James Stephens. _The Century_, May. Quack Novels and Democracy, by Owen Wister. _The Atlantic_, June. Can You Read——? (_In this column will be given each month a resumé of current cant which, as an intelligent being, you will go far to avoid._) Fiction reviews by Llewellyn Jones in _The Chicago Evening Post_. A typical literary judgment from _The Dial_: “But, in the main, his wholesomely harsh utterances ought to be, and must be, in some degree, tonic and bracing and curative.” An editorial from _The New Republic_, a journal of opinion whose function, we believe, is to circulate ideas: During the past ten months the German Ambassador at Washington has done nothing to promote a better understanding between his own government and nation and the American government and nation. He is consequently all the more to be congratulated upon his behavior at a moment of acute and dangerous contention between the United States and Germany. He has on his own initiative and perhaps at his own risk intervened on behalf of a possibly peaceful solution of the differences between the two governments. He has sought by means of a frank talk with President Wilson to break through the barrier of misunderstanding which the exchange of notes was building up between the two governments and to re-establish a genuine vehicle of communication. The conversation may not lead to agreement, but at the top of a peculiarly forbidding crisis it has at least made an agreement seem not impossible. Everybody who detests war, everybody who hopes that the friendship between the United States and Germany will not be involved in the wreckage of the hideous conflict, will be grateful to Count von Bernstorff for his enterprise. The Reader Critic _Mrs. Jean Cowdrey Norton, Hempstead, Long Island_: