Evening Star Newspaper, October 20, 1935, Page 61

ETHI By Mary-Carter Roberts. RIVALRIES IN ETHIOPIA. By Elizabeth P. McCallum. With an introduction by Newton D. Baker. New York: World Peace Founda- tion, (OPIA A PAWN IN EUROPEAN IPLOMACY. By Ernest Work. New York: The Macmillan Co. MEASURING ETHIOPIA AND FLIGHT INTO ARABIA. By Carleton S. Coca. Boston: Little Brown & Co. HESE three recent books on the world’s most menacing political volcano have all been written with an eye to the possibility of prompt eruption. After perusing them, the reader should be able to decide for himself whether or not he likes volcanos in the active state. The works are pretty dispassionate. They are chiefly taken up with collecting the facts, and letting them speak for themselves. The authors, for the most part preserve a dignified attitude toward what is, to put it most kindly, an undignified international situaticu, both in the past and the present. “Rivalries in Ethiopia,” published | by the World Peace Foundation, does, to be sure, deal a little in futures. Newton D. Baker, who, though kaown chiefly as a former cabinet member, is & man of scholarship able to write & polished prose, remarks in his intro- duction to this pamphlet that the Ethiopian situation forms the test of whether we learned anything at all out of our first World War. Our (and by the pronoun he mecas all civilized nations) behavior in the present sit- uation will answer the question, as he considers it. And, if the situation is not solved by peaceful means, he plainly implies that the answer is in the negative. A somewhat similar attitude toward | is expressed, | though in a different mood, by the | the present trouble author of “Measuring Ethiopia,” who is a physical anthropologist, and so not interested in political values at all, except as they interfere with his ork of measuring skulls. Says he: “All that Italy now lacks is a Kip- ling. * * * The chief trouble is, however, that Italy began 50 years too late; the civilized world is be- coming decadent, for it has now de- veloped what one may call a conscience.” A scientist’s way of putting it—such dry fellows they are, these men of quantities! For the most part, however, the books go right along. “Rivalries in niopla” is a compact exposition of what its author has deemed to be the pertinent facts. The past history of relations between Ethioplan and European powers is outlined, a factual but impressive description is given of | Ttaly's economic situation wherein seems to lurk the not entirely new strategy of making war abroad to avert discontent at home, while the factors which necessarily interest Eng- land, France and the United States are duly listed. The status of Ethiopia—its government, its much- deplored slave traffic, its economic condition and its traffic in arms are also dispassionately described. And lastly, the negotiations before the League of Natlons, up until September, are outlined. The book gives a good pocket-size story of the whole matter. Much the same ground is covered | in “Ethiopia a Pawn in European Diplomacy,” but in vastly greater detail. The author of this work, now & professor of history in Muskingum College, Ohio, spent some time in Ethiopia as a government official. He has examined in a thorough-going manner the documents of record and state papers which cover negotiations between Haile Selassie’s empire and various European countries from 1855 to the present, These documents make the basis of his book. He is pro-Ethiopian himself, but he utters only occasional ironies. For the most part he is able to produce, very aptly, an official paper that will be ironical for him. If there is any one today who greatly doubts that greed has been the motivating force of civilization in recent years, he had better expose his optimism to a perusal of this book. Not just Italy, but England, France, Germany, key, says Mr. Work (unfortunately proving it as he goes along) have broken the commandment against coveting where the hapless Ethiopians are concerned, and done it with the utmost complacence and righteous- ness. The chief reason, he seems to think, that Ethiopia has escaped so far has been in the circumstance that there were so many contenders. Throughout his book Mr. Work speaks of the Ethiopians as freedom- loving and courageous. While he ad- mits certain barbarities among them, he intimates unkindly that they are only more. obvious than our own. In view of the fact that he has lived in the country, this estimate of its natives is interesting, as con- trasted with that of Mr. Coon, author o “Measuring Ethiopia and Flight Into Arabia.” Mr. Coon spent only & short time in Addis Ababa, but he brought a scientist’s trained power of observation to bear while he was there. He found the natives, in the capital at least, unreliable, dishonest, cowardly and generally unappealing. He would not, he says, trade 1 Riffian for 10 Ethiopians. Incidentally, he has written a previous work on the Riffians. Mr. Coon’s book differs altogether from the two mentioned above. He went to Ethiopia in 1933 to measure skulls. It seems that he likes to measure skulls. After many starts #t negotiations he fell afoul of au- thorities and they chased him out of the country. He lost & good bit ©of money and his disapproval of the customs of the land are comprehensi- ble. He gives, however. a well-told and highly interesting account of his misadventure and a picture of life in Addis Ababa which makes one wonder if Mussolini has been there. Surely not, if Mr. Coon's description is ac- curate. It must be, without excep- tion, the most depressing place in the world. The flight into Arabia, mentioned in the title of Mr. Coon’s book, is a delightful account of his sojourn in the kingdom of the Iman Yahya, King of Yemen, to whose realm the scientific party fled after leaving Ethiopia. The Iman turned out to be a grand fellow and ordered out his entire army to have their skulls Mr. Coon measured all day for weeks and enjoyed himself im- hesitantly | Russia and Tur- | mensely. When he was through the army obligingly offered to come back and be measured again, and so it will be seen that every one was happy. Just what he found out from his measurements, beyond the fact that they gave him a great deal of pleasure, Mr. Coon does not tell us. One wonders. Anyway, he has writien a very nice book. THE THEATER OF LIFE. By Esme Howard (Lord Howard of Penrith). Boston: Little, Brown & Co. LOED HOWARD, whom Washing- tonians remember as former Brit- ish Ambassador to the United States, writes his memoirs in this book and expresses a state of mind which seems in a fair way to become classic—so admired is it in our modern day, and 5o little practiced. It is that state of mind which we are indolently prone to sum up in the two words, “typically English.” One of its great stipula- tions, of course, is that it should never permit comment to be made on any- thing not perfectly obvious and one feels (in noblesse oblige) forced to emulate it, so it will not be made the subject of much comment here. But it gives the life to- Lord Howard's | book. Many men in many countries | might have had the same experiences. But only an Englishman would have used quite his staccato nonchalance in reporting them. The curious—and characteristic— thing about this nonchalance is that it deceives nobody. Lord Howard, ob- viously, drew the fullest appreciation from his wonderfully wide experiences, | but in writing about them he limits himself to a brisk surface manner. One has to learn to understand his appreciation through indirection. A particular example is in his ac- count of his conversion to the Roman Catholic Church. He does not take an attitude of real reticence toward an ex- perience which must have been a com= plete departure from all his previous thinking; he undertakes to explain, with apparent openness, the process of conversion. He writes several pages about it, but at the end one under- stands only that he asked his spirit- ual adviser two questions (one of which was why sin and suffering ex- ist) and then reread certain spiritual works in the light of the replies. He | is brisk and plausible about it, and one suspects a dread of admitting :hat anything was involved in the con- version more than a polite change of opinion, based on pure reason. However, the story of this life is absorbing reading. It includes chap- | ters on diplomatic service in Berlin |and Rome, on gold prospecting in | South Africa and service in the Boer War, of studies of the rubber indus- | try made in long journeys up the Amazon, and of excursions into Mo- rocco and the West Indies. It con- tains many impressions of great per- | sonalities—Bismarck, the Kaiser, | | Queen Victoria, Cecil Rhodes and & i host of others. And it has its due | proportion of good anecdotes, although they are tossed off as dryly as if they | annoyed their teller instead of amus- | ing him. Regrettably, it does not| treat of current times, for Lord How- ard ends his narrative with the year | 1905. | | JOHN JAY, DEFENDER OF LIB-| | " ERTY. By Frank Monaghan. In- | dianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Co. THE casual reader of history it | | may sometimes have occurred ! | that the lack of an adequate biography | | of John Jay, first Chief Justice of the | | United States, was a curious omission T in our records. Jay has been ranked with Washington and Hamilton for his part in founding the Republic. But | as compared to either of the other | | members of the triumvirate, he has !been sadly neglected. Elementary | | histories scarcely mention him and | | undergraduate courses seldom give | | him more than nominal attention. | Mr. Monaghan, author of the pres- | | ent biography, explains to some degree | how this neglect has come about. Tae papers of the Jay family save until | recent years been closed to students. | Earlier biographies were written by | | members of the Jay family who were | either too prone to idealize or too limited in material. Such Jay cor- | respondence as has been published has | | been far from complete. Jay's name | | has lived but somewhat as a legend. | [Actunll_v, there has been a vast col- | lection of documents relating to his | life and work in the possession of the Jay and Iselin families. Mr. Mona- ghan has had access to these libraries, and has worked over the papers for five years. His book is the result of his studies in this hitherto unpub- | lished material. - i He has given a live, vigorous portrait of the so long-neglected Founding Father. To read his book is literally to plunge into Colonial times. The tangled skeins of the various parties (vastly more tangled than simple patriotic perspective allows us to be- lieve) the ambitions of the various | leaders, the niceties of negotiations | with three foreign powers, the almost disastrous affair of the 1794 treaty— all these, duly expounded, make of this book & broad picture of its day, even while it succeeds very well in showing Jay as a person. If its author set out, as he says, to rescue a great statesman from neglect, he has done that and considerably more. He has given us an excellent picture of our political beginnings. His book must needs be regarded as a valuable work, from both points of view. WAR: NO PROFIT, NO GLORY, NO NEED. By §orman Thomas. New York: Frederick A. Stokes Co. ’I‘o THE steadily increasing number of books against war, Mr. Norman Thomas adds his protest, writing, one gathers, more as an individual than as the leader of his political party. The ground which he covers is familiar. There really is nothing very new to be said on the subject, anyway. ‘War, except for defense, is idiocy to all but those who profit by it. To them it is very good sense. Mr. Nor- man Thomas explains all this in five chapters. In his sixth chapter he discusses the cure for war, as do most of the authors of these works. It is only on this aspect of the question that there Is any scope for originality in treating the subject—the rest being merely record. Mr. Thomas, coming to chapter six, tells us that “the struggle for peace is a struggle for other methods of conflict than the method of war.” thereby, apparently, admit- ting that we must fight, but suggesting | monkey to the roof of his cgstle; Hol- ) of the 5 | THE SUNDAY STAR, WASHINGTON, D. C, OPIA OCCUPIES AUTHORS SCAN WAR SCENE A Former Cabinet Officer, a Woman, a College Professor and a Skull - Measuring Scientist Size Up the Situatiqn in Africa—Sir Esme Howard Writes of Busy Life. that we do it other ways than phy- | sically. Alas, alas for Nietzsche! Those undergraduates of yestryéarg-where are they now? He then discusses some of these higher methods of combat, as the non- violent protest advocated by Tolstoy and Goadhi, which might, he thinks, take an effective form in the general strike; the outlawing of war, as ex- emplified in the Kellogg-Briand pact, which unfortunately did not work but would have been “beautiful” if it had; | the League of Nations, which, to his | mind, has not worked either; refer- endum before war, which would only | be effective if it came out on the peace | side (and it might not); disarmament, which is impossible; embargo on war materials, to which there are two major objections; and, getting here | onto his home ground, the discontinu- ance of “imperialist policies which are the logical product of this stage of capitalism.” One does not doubt Mr. Thomas' | sincerity, and one dislikes even the appearance of irreverence. And yet— the answer does seem to be, “so what?” And for the answer in turn to that cynical popular query, we may, | as things now are going, lock meekly to | Rome and Geneva. Meanwhile, the | Italian Army continues to advance. | OUR LORDS AND MASTERS: KNOWN AND UNKNOWN RULERS | OF THE WORLD. By the Unofficial | Observer. New York: Simon & Shuster. ’ N THIS work the Unofficial Ob-| server, whose identity certainly is| no mystery, skates merrily over the | strface of what Don Marquis’ friend, | the Old Soak, used to call the “known world” and merrily tells us why, how | and who. Nothing could possibly be more obliging. { It is a book about two things—situ- ations and personalities. The Anu-l ations are the financial, political, | military, journalistic (and .o on) fac- | tors and combinations of factors which make the “knowr. world” what it is. rIhe personalities are the men who sometim:s control the situations and sometimes find themselves playing the role of slave to the lamp. | As far as the information on world conditions goes, it is unlikely that the Observer has given us much that even a casua) reader does not know. He writes very persuasively and seems sometimes to be dealing in truly eso- | teric knowledge. But that is his man- ner. Actually his summations are broad generalities and, stripped of | their sharp verbiage, they remain On | the end. One may sum up by saying | translation. | the common level of the many Works | that the Observer is persuasive, but |so good in the original that it proved | on similar lines which are coming in | that his book is not. That seems about | impossible to convey it in another a growing torrent from our presses. | Personalities, however, are more | distinctly in this author’s field. He! assembles the great men of every country and —rites of their careers, | origins ana gods. He is at times l: brilliant paragrapher and many of | these characterizations are amusing. | It is difficult to forecast the popu- | larity of a work ike this. Clearly it is intendec. for Lopular consumption and yet, if it achieves that good for- tune, it will be by its author’s unde- niable skill in bright writing, rather than by its content. And that would | *e a great tribute to his skill, indeed. | For the book is formidable in size and | pearance. Smart as its paragraphs | re, they will need all their cleverness | THE LBy OCTOBER 20, ? By Josephine Miles. F OR covering earth’s skeleton the night is useless. . Its shadow will not lie over bones. It floods into the hollows, furs the shallows, Bares the bones. All small machinery is wrapped in velvet, But starlight scrapes the surfaces of peaks. The earth is ribbed, is poled, is angular and cold; And creaks. Prom “Trial Balances”—The Macmillan Co. (Copyright, 1835.) An enigma to the white man for centuries, the Indian at last may become comprehensible through a government. to cover it. A FOOL OF FAITH. By Jarl Hem- mer. Translated from the Swedish by F. H. Lyon. New York: Live- right Publishing Corp. 'HIS is a prize-winning Swedish novel, and one of those tremen- dous, serious, sincere books that Scan- dinavian authors seem to produce. | When they come off, they are probably the best novels in the world. When they don’t, they are just tremendous, serious and sincere. They are un- handy to review, in that case. One does not like to be unkind to them. It seems somehow indecent. One hopes, in the case of “A Fool restoration of his ancient form of Perhaps the book was | tongue. But whatever it was, truth | compels one—the English version is ! more t, s and s, than anything else. In its more than 300 pages there seems to be material for one good dramatic short story. Possibly the author did his writing at night, and the book was produced in the Swedish Winter. It is the story of a clergyman who did not live very admirably and who finally came to serve as chaplain in a prison camp where he allowed him- | self to be executed in order to save & man who had a child to support. Most of it is concerned with the cleric’s | questionings as to the validity of this or that theology. He is not popular | | elther with church or civil authori- | |to (rax the plain citizen through to ! of Faith” that the trouble is with | ties, but he dies like & hero, Three “Writing Ruths” Hold Fir ! | Madame Minister Is Back| From Tour of Scandi- navian Countries. N THE intimacy of her own family, “Mme. Minister” Ruth Bryan Owen, envoy to Denmark, is one of three Ruths, all writers. ‘They've been having a brief re- union—and William Jennings Bryan's daughter Ruth, and her daughter Ruth, ané her daughter Ruth, all had neat and alluring manuscripts to read to each other. Granddaughter Ruth is only 11 years old. but the children’s page .of & Florida paper has been publishing her stories and poems since she was 6; and her hand-printed output has a decidedly professional air. Mme. Minister made her travel book. debut last year with “Leaves of a Greenland Diary,” vivid, impression- istic tale written day by day as she voyaged about that little-known island. Its popularity brought a call for another such story—and another sea voyage on her annual leave to this country gave “Denmark Caravan” its start. For American boys and girls of 12 to 15, or thereabouts, it is de- signed to capture the romance of old A hundred small sketches by Hadvig Collin, Danish artist, will help these o Mrs. Ruth Bryan Owen, photographed during her teailer tour of Denmark. ger Danske, ‘who could bend an iron bar with his handshake, and that amazing castle where 20 maiden ladies nobility live as guests of & A Queen who died 300 years ago. Mrs. Owen’s daughter, Ruth “Kitty” Owen Lehman, wife of 1:sbert Lehman of New York, had her first slender » LITE 1935—PART FOUR. will be tried out in the United No other political get-up on earth pattern of the North American In- By Thomas R. Henry. NEW form of government soon A States. It might be called the “big circle republic.” is quite like the modified constitu- tional republic fitted into the social dian which is provided for in the con- stitutions being framed by the Bu- rean of Indian Affairs in co-opera- tion with various groups of Sioux | Indians in the Dakotas. Here, it is hoped, will be found at last the foundations of a satis- factory form of self-government for | the native races of North America. | Moreover, it is an experiment which | may have far-reaching effects in the | whole field of political science. For | the first time an effort is being made to provide a governmental system which fits into the framework of In- dian political thinking. The units of this government will be, in the words of John Collier, commissioner of In- | dian affairs, “Indian realities.” The political realities of the white man Books Received Non-Fictjon. TRAILING CORTEZ THROUGH MEXICO. By Harry Franck. New York: Frederick A. Stokes Co. THIS BUSINESS OF EXPLORING. By Roy Chapman Andrews. News York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons. WILD LIFE OF THE SOUTH. By Archibald Rutledge. Frederick A. Stokes Co. FORTY YEARS FORTY MILLIONS: The Career of Frank A. Munsey. By George Britt. New York: Farrar & Rinehart. STEEL - DICTATOR. By O'Connor. New York: Day Co. THE LAYMAN'S MUSIC BOOK. BY Olga Samaroff Stokowski. New York: W. W. Norton & Co. | PLAY. By Austen Fox Riggs. M. D. Garden City: Doubleday, Doran & Co. LAWN TENNIS MADE EASY. By | “Bunny” Austin. New York: The Macmillan Co. PUZZLES FOR PARTIES. By Gladys Lloyd. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Co. HOLD FAST THE MIDDLE WAY. By John Dickinson. Boston: Lit- tle, Brown & Co. THE COLLAPSE OF COTTON TEN- ANCY. By Charles S. Johnson, Edwin R. Embree and W. W. Alex- | ander. Chapel Hill: University of | North Carolina Press. “IN GOD WE TRUST"—AND WHY NOT? By William H. Ridgway. Boston: W. A. Wilde Co. BEHIND THE SCENES OF BUSI- NESS. By Roy A. Foulke. New York: Dun & Bradstreet, Inc. | CHARMED CIRCLES. By Hobart C. Chatfield - Taylor. New York: | Houghton, Mifflin Co. | THE IEDISCOVERY OF WORDS- WORTH. By Cornelius Howard Patton. Boston. The Stratford Co. FLOWER ARRANGEMENT. By F. F. Rockwell and Ecther C. Grayson. New York: The Macmillan Co. | THE COLUMBIA ENCYCLOPEDIA. New York: The Columbia Univer- sity Press. st Reunion Stories, Poems and Travel Books' Included in Work of Trio. Harvey The John book of short stories, “As the Wind Blows,” published last Summer. Into her first tale she poignantly put the England she had known as a school girl in prose that was almost poetry in its smoothness. With it she com- bined a clever twist of plot. Alto- gether, it caused the critics to recall her grandfather had been called ver-tongued.” Mrs. Lehman’s daughter, Ruth of the thick golden hair, writes sturdy, swash-buckling stories of wild flights in the dark of lonely castles; heroines who ride rashly into the desert to be caught by Mexican bandits, and the doings of superintellicent animals she has known. But she can also point & moral to womankind, and one of her own favorites probably would find favor with many husbands. It concerned a “Missis Orange” who had “run out of hats.” “She had fell in love with the new | styles, the hats thac cover your eyes and all that sort of junk,” the young author narrated. She told of the trip | of Mrs. Orange to a millinery store | where “she saw a hat it had like ears on each side of it. She tried it on, but alas, it was much too big, it covered her whole face. Mrs. Orange | was next to heartbroken.” Other de- | tails of the hat hunt were given with | this observation, “I shouldn’t be sur- prised if she tried on every hat in the shop.” To a tea next day, “Misses Orange” wore ine of several purchases, but r-lentless Author Ruth described “A big sie was got rid of the idea of new hlh‘. and stuck to ber own.” B have been, to the red man, almost meaningless artificialities. The basis of the new system is the almost accidental rediscovery of the Sioux “tioshpaiya,” which will be the political unit of the new system. Just what this tioshpaiya is can- not be told simply, because its counter- part does not exist in the Caucasian scheme of things and hence there is no synonymatic expression for it. {Even & Sioux would have difficulty explaining to himself just what it is. He only knows that it is. When Mr. Collier took charge of Indian affairs one of his chief ob- Jectives was to restore self-govern- ment to the Indians,'but he realized, more clearly than any of his prede- cessors, that this could not be accom- pished by rule-of-thumb methods. The Indian was not a brown-skinned, beardless white man. His mental | processes—or rather, the structure of | his thinking—were not the same. And Mr. Collier wanted to avoid, above all things, continuation of the | destructive process of changing the | Indian into a white man. That process had gone on too long already. It had resulted in the destruction of | some of the finest human values | the race has known. Yet the red man was living in a white man’s world and the white man showed no great inclination to alter it very much for his red bfother's convenience. There must be some sort of com- | promise whereby the Indian could | continue to live as an Indian in a | native land dominated by the alien | Caucasians. | ‘MR COLLIER turned to anthro- | pologists and ethnologists for help—particularly to the Bureau of American Ethnology. For half a cen- tury they had been studying the Indian as an Indian—not to reform him or conquer him, but only to know him. Whatever was done must be done with the Indian as he was— not as missionaries or Congressmen | imagined he was, or thought he ought to be. Only the ethnologists knew the actual Indian, divested of white rationalizations. The work is now under the direc- | tion of Dr. Duncan Strong of the Bureau of American Ethnology. He detailed aides to make intensive studies of the ways of life of these peoples, that whatever governmental system was adopted might be adapted to those ways of life. That is how the tioshpaiya, which may be the solution of a very important problem, came to be discovered. The Sioux, as is well known, had been a bison-hunting people. They | were continually shifting their camp to keep up with the herds, or, in| later days, to keep away from the soldiers. They were tenacious of their customs and, perhaps more than any other tribe, they made the white man respect them for a time. They were the chief agents in inflicting the most crushing defeat ever suf- ’rer!d by American troops—the battle of the Little Big Horn. Now, during these years of rapid' movements the carips always pre- sented a similar picture. The tents were pitched in a great circle. the middle of the circle was a single large tent occupied by the “dog sol- diers"—essentially the native police— who were members of a certain secret society whose function was to keep | order. This great circle of tents was a very good arrangement for defense, as the white man learned. He supposed that was all there was to it. As a matter of fact, the arrangement had a much deeper significance. The lone buffalo hunter, absent fo- days on the. prairie, might find that in his absence the camp had been moved many miles away. Yet, in spite of all the confusion that had attended | moving, he could go instantly to his | own tepee without asking any ques- tions, find his family just as he had left it, and all his belongings in | almost perfect | order. It was an community arrangement. | To him it seemed perfectly natural that this should be the case. He be- longed to a group—the tioshpaiya— whose position in the tribal circle had been fixed from time immemorial. | Other members saw to it that “home” was just as he had left it. It was the fundamental unit of his society, much as the family might be consid- ered the fundamental unit of white society. It was, or had been in the | beginning, a kinship group within the tribe. It included all kin within a | certan degree of blood relationship. | Later it had become much more com- | plicated. There were members of the | tioshpaiya by birth and members by adoption. It was further involved with all sorts of ceremonial relation- ships. THE white men, except the | trained ethnologist. it was alto- gether incomprehensible. To the In- | dian it was the most fundamental of | all social realities. This the average trader and the Indian agent never | grasped. Some of the more intelli- | gent missionaries comprehended it | vaguely and built upon it. The church has usually been more successful | among the Indians than the govern- ment. The missionaries were not business men nor executives. They were not practical-minded and hence— this is just one of many paradoxes in Indian relations—in the end more practical and more successful. The time came when the Sioux ol F-5§ RARY SPOTLIGHT A NEW DAY FOR THE INDIAN Tioshpaiya, Form of Government Truly Representative of Red Man’s Realities, Taken From Him by Uncompre- hending Whites, to Be Restored in Modified Form. no longer. They gave up their old ways of life and were settled on res- ervations. The attitude of the Gov- ernment was not vindictive. It tried to do well by its wards. It arranged the reservations the best it knew how. The houses were grouped for the greatest convenience of the greatest number in accordance with the loca- tion of good farming land and the location of store, hospital, church and school. The practical executives found, to their dismay. that things didn’t go so well with the Indians as it had in the great circle encampments. There was constant bickering between neigh- bors where before there had been al- most unbroken peace. They would start agricultural societies and school | societies. but couldn't get co-operation | among the people of a neighborhood. They couldn't get the concensus of Indian opinion on anything. Nobody seemed able to talk for anybody else, Something was wrong. The agents never found out what it was. They were too practical. If they ever had heard of the tioshpaiya they had dis- missed it as a matter of no conse- quence. They had, in their bundering way, dispersed the tioshpaiyas, leav- ing the Sioux no fundamental unit to cling to. A family of one tioshpaiya might be entirely surrounded by the | homes of members of two or three | other tioshpaiyas while the nearest members of their own might be 20 miles away. There was simply no basis for co-operation. The break came this summer when Dr. Scudder Mekeel, authority on Sioux social organization, was sent to study the probem by Dr. Strong. Dr. Mekeel knew what the tioshpaiya had been and he knew Indians. He found, to his surprise, that the old social unit stil’ existed. All the ob- stacles thrown ‘n its way had failed to destroy it. ENTIRELY unrecognized by the whites, it still [ormed the basic unit of social relatiors and self gov- ernment. A neighborhooa did not constitute a unit. A man remained far more closely integrated with ane other member of his own tioshpaiya 5 miles away than with his life-long nearest neighbor 50 feet away. Com- mon economic or irade interests did not result in social units. Neither did common religion, or comrmon habits of thought such as might result in politi= cal parties. Of course the Sioux hadn't gotten along together. The units upon which | all “getting along™” must be based had | been submerged It was about as ab- surd to make the neighborhood the basis of representative government among them as it would be, among the whites, to make electoral units out of men with blue eyes or men 6 feet tall. So in the new Sioux constitutions, which must be accepted by the tribes | before they can be put into effect, the | tioshpaiya is revived and representa= tion is based upon it. Such is the concession being made in the new form of gowvernment to the purely Indian. But representative governe ment in itself is largely a white idea, somewhat alien to the Indian concept of things. The tioshpaiya representa- tion is merely the beginning and its success involves some of the deepest probems in political science. The Indian idea of the tioshpaiya and the white idea of government by delegates must be welded together in such a way as to conform with the traditions of the Indian and yet not | to violate the social and economic | structure of the white world. Whatever the outcome, Mr. Collier | believes, this republic of tioshpaiyas | represents the most forward looking | step yet taken to right the wrongs | the Indian has suffered from the white men over five generations. The experiment goes much deeper than the inauguration of a republic of tioshpaiyas to suit the needs of the Sioux. Other tribes have other units, The basic idea is to make the funda- mental unit of government some abso- lute reality to the people governed. It is an experiment, in other words, in bringing government home to the governed. Everywhere, among red men and white men alike, it has been getting farther and farther away from them. THE tioshpaiya itself probably will have to undergo some slight modi- fications to fit entirely into the new system. It was not evolved as a unit of representative government. Right here arise some of the deepest prob- lems that remain to be solved by the (Continued on Eleventh Page) Come to Our Lending Library For all the new fiction, non- fiction, mystery and adventure books. Browse around if you wish or, if you'd rather, we'll help you select a book that fits in with your “reading mood.” Nominal charges. The Palais Royal On the Main Floor. could stand up against the soldiers Sinclair y LEWIS writes a challenging novel of our tmes and the years to come; the furious, inspir ing story of Doremus Jessup, American Ir Can't Havren Here Justout—464 Pages, $2.50 — Doubleday, Doran