vived and the connoisseur can recognize by the combination of colors, somber or gay, to which one of the provinces it belongs. To-day there is a conscious stressing of the hembygd (local province) idea, and textiles and tapestries are adapted to modern needs.

Thirty years or more ago there was also a flowering of this hembygd note in the field of belles-lettres. It gave distinction to the writers of that period and rose to occasional sublime heights in the verse of Fröding and Karlfeldt. It achieved the widest popularity, which extends to 22 countries, for the friendly province of Värmland through the legends that Selma Lagerlöf gathered into "Gösta Berling" and "Jerusalem," the two supreme achievements of her pen.

Now every novelist and poet is tramping the trails of his hembygd. Time and again I heard Swedish critics say, "We

are waiting for a renaissance, waiting for the clear, strong voice that will rise above the deadly monotony of mediocrity."

ADVANCED SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC
LEGISLATION

Like the rhythm of repeated drumtaps comes this individual note from each province; but the surging undertone of national life wells out of that bond of common origin, language, ideals. Legislators and other leaders of thought concentrate upon constructive measures for the national good; and out of such intensive focusing comes now and then a new social or economic evaluation or advanced legal measure.

The one that has probably attracted the most widespread attention abroad. is Sweden's handling of the problem of liquor control. At the beginning of the 19th century distilling of liquor was a

government monopoly. Among the peasants drinking was actually encouraged as a means of keeping the exchequers of Gustavus III well filled. Drinking became a national habit, a national vice.

The vigorous efforts of Canon Wieselgren, of Göteborg, in the middle of the century, and the later prohibition campaigns effected no real reform; but, after many experiments, Stockholm finally, in 1914, adopted a system of control sponsored by Dr. Ivan Bratt and popularly known as the Bratt System.

Sale of liquor is in the hands of licensed "system companies." The right of purchase of spirits and strong wines containing more than 22 per cent of alcohol is generally limited to a maximum of four liters (about eight liquid pints) a month, and is in the main given only to one member of a family. The limit is lower for unmarried women and for young men.

The purchaser signs one of the requisition forms in his control book and turns

in the form with each purchase he makes. He can buy only at the shop for which the book has been issued.

Another piece of unusual legislation is the new marriage law, the first part of which went into effect in 1917. It makes such slight discrimination between man and woman that the two words are practically omitted from the text, and "mate," denoting common gender, takes their place.

Divorce is obtained on the grounds of mutual consent. If a husband and wife agree to disagree they merely state that fact, and no other, before a representative of the law and are thereby entitled to a probationary separation for one year. At the end of that period a divorce is granted, if desired by one or both of the contracting parties. At no time does the law require them to state the specific grounds for the step, if they are mutually agreed.

Among the Swedes, the general level of training and culture is exceedingly high.

Speak the language of the hotel porter, railway conductor, or school child, and he will divert you with bits of information about the medieval history of his town, the engineering difficulties of the upgrade on which you may happen to be traveling, the varied flora in meadow or on forest edge of the land of Linnæus.

COMPARED TO THE SWEDE, THE ENGLISHMAN IS JOVIAL

Such is the more serious side of Swedish working life to-day. There is a gayer, joyous side, which the stranger comes to know only by degrees.

The Swede possesses an extraordinary amount of reserve. An Englishman is jovial and hail-fellow-well-met by comparison. There is little of the casual giveand-take, no constant rubbing of elbows with foreigners, no quick grasp of alien points of view. Instead, one finds an excessive formality in manners. The one blot on Swedish social life, it seemed to me, was an undignified attention to titles (those not inherited or arising naturally from professional rank, but springing out of "commercial caste"). These ubiquitous titles, together with a serious regard for social position, struck me as antiquated and a bit absurd (see, also, text, page 419).

"Do you really find us so frightfully reserved?" I was frequently asked. At first I dodged, but when I learned to know the hidden sterling qualities of my interlocutors better I began to retort, "Shall I be honest or polite?"

Month after month, in railway compartment or on steamer deck, I faced an uncommunicative native traveling population. Lacking the usual diversions, I had to find my own means of amusement, my favorite being one of drawing up the setting for a little farce comedy on Swedish manners as the stranger sees them.

The first act was always the same: Sweden timidly venturing on a Speak-toStrangers Week. The second act was pervaded with the gloom that is inevitable when mortality figures run high. There was a survival, however. And in my final act those survivors, greatly daring, had launched themselves recklessly on the yet more perilous sea of a Speak-to-FachOther-in-Public Week.

When Charles XII had reached the ripe age of twelve he spoke with the maturity

of a man who had killed his first bear and of one, consequently, who was qualified to outline his ideal of the perfect gentleman: "He ought to be kind, but have a stout heart; grim as a lion to his enemies, but gentle as a lamb to those at home.”

By and large, the Swede is grim to his "enemy," the stranger, but graciousness itself when the stranger becomes the friend whom he welcomes into the glowing radiance of his home.

And the Swedish home is the most complete manifestation of the charm and loveliness of Sweden to-day. In medieval château that has passed through generations of titled heirs, in governor's mansion, in luxurious city or country house, in miner's cottage, in backwoods log cabin, in primitive mountain dairy, I encountered Swedish hospitality.

The tradition of breaking bread is timehonored. It goes back to the centuries that faced the cruel rigors of the northern winter, when comforts were unknown, and to the bleakness of sparsely populated regions. It recalls the traveler's joy when he caught the first gleam of a friendly light in far-off window, as he emerged into a forest clearing or rounded a promontory reaching out into a stormy sea.

HOLIDAY MERRIMENT

The joyous side of Swedish life is accentuated at holiday time. On Walpurgis Eve, our May Day Eve, youth gathers in park or college campus around the Walpurgis fires, built according to well-known traditions. Empty barrels requisitioned for the occasion are perched on high poles, drenched with tar, and set on fire. The flames crackle and leap. The students who have passed examen come out for the first time in their white student caps, and in singing processions they go, like Druids marching around their Beltane fires. And the flickering light follows the rhythm of old folk dances.

At midsummer the peasants go on their annual pilgrimage. By the thousands they flock into the little villages and hill towns of central Sweden. In log cabin fresh birch leaves have been scattered on the pine floors scrubbed to a glistening white. In the main streets of the villages the doorway of every home and shop is outlined with the graceful, white-stemmed branches.

The dancing that begins around the village Midsummer Pole, garlanded with green and topped with the blue and yellow, the national colors, often lasts through the night of mystic half light (see page 473). These artless ceremonies are like a pagan survival of the days when men worshiped the sun.

Christmas encompasses the turn of the year. It begins with the lighting of the candles on December 13 to honor Santa Lucia's Day. There is brewing of the Christmas ale and steeping of the dried lutfisk, a stockfish that suggests kinship with the cod. Days of merriment and feasting follow. The ceremonies, many and long, continue until Hilarymas, when both the Christmas greens and Father Christmas himself are expected to dance nonchalantly out through the door.

ICE AND WATER SPORTS POPULAR

Sport captures much of the zest for life. With the first snows of winter, young and old take to their skis for cross-country runs. Skating, tobogganing, bobsleighing, and ice-yachting are popular. In favorable winds an adept at ice-sailing counts on the invigorating momentum of 50 miles an hour (pages 468, 469).

About an eighth of the total area of Sweden is water. Sweden is water. In addition, the long, indented coastline brings an increasing number of the inhabitants within range of the open seas or their briny inlets. In July the summer season is at its height. Every rocky or sandy beach is gay with lazy bathers and more strenuous divers.

When there is wind, the seaside resorts around Göteborg and Stockholm suggest continuous regattas. One gets the impression that every Swedish family possesses a rowboat, motor launch, or yacht.

Enjoyment of life is an outstanding national virtue. The Swedish people are not boisterous or volatile. They live quietly and contentedly. Suggest prosperity and they will contradict you. For all that, nowhere else in all Europe is the standard of living so high.

Stockholm, the capital, turns away from the West. Sweden faces the Orient. The winds of industrialism coming from the West seem to have been tempered by the restless battling of the North Sea and the lofty protecting ranges of the Norwegian snow-capped fjelds. It is as if Sweden had looked beyond the turbulence of Russia and caught and preserved the spirit of the once serene East.

A

FTER a hard week of mountainous journeying across western Anatolia, I found myself atop the world at Kharput. From that sheer crag, jutting thousands of feet above the vast plain which stretches southward into far Mesopotamia, I anxiously studied the cupping ranges of Taurus and Anti-Taurus, wondering if overnight their resplendent lavender tints might not disappear under travel-forbidding snows.

"Plenty of time!" my American host assured me. "We'll get you to the seaboard, with a party of outgoing relief workers, long before the Kurdistan passes are closed."

So I wandered through the tortuous, high-walled streets of the town-remotely perched among crags, like some dilapidated eagle's nest-its quaint bazaar crammed with tiny open-faced shops. Windowless and doorless, save for the slablike shutters which were slammed to at night, they resembled supersized packing cases, set up on end with the lid off.

A GLIMPSE INTO THE BAZAAR

Within, one glimpsed the leather cutter, squatting at the section of tree trunk which formed his workbench; or the bird seller embowered among caged, red-billed songsters; or the lamp dealer, surrounded by American kerosene tins and suspended clusters of henna-dyed candles. And one must not forget the patriarchal rug merchant, smoking his cigarette in a yard-long holder, while, with a finely feigned indifference to trade, he lounged princelike on heaps of gorgeous Persians and Bokharas.

Under the street canopy of rags stretched on poles passed black-veiled and baggily clothed Turkish hanums, overladen children and donkeys, Kemalist soldiers and fierce-faced, shaggy-haired Kurds, armed to the teeth. The itinerant knife grinder was doing a brisk trade with these Kurdish gentry, who are Anatolia's premier wielders of cold steel.

About the public fountain, upon whose white-tiled structure is graven a greenand-gold inscription of thanks to Allah, the water-giver, swarmed women drawing their household's daily supply.

And if any American girl thinks it's easy to walk with a five-gallon water jar on one's shoulder, while retaining an air of unconscious grace, just let her try it! But the proverb about the pitcher going to the well will soon be meaningless to the Anatolian Rebekah, who nowadays usually

frequents the fountain with an American gasoline container poised on her head.

"Hullo, Johnny! Where you coming?" The speaker, a broadly grinning Turkish soldier, explained to me that he had been "shoemaker in damfine town, Brockton, Mass." (There are hundreds like him in Anatolian towns.) And he went on to say that one of the women water-carriers wanted me to translate the "American prayer" stamped on the side of her gasoline tin. It was a brief prayer, consisting of but one word, a trade name. The best equivalent I could muster up was, "Praise God, from whom oil blessings flow." And the lady retired, convinced that the trademark was an American exorcism directed against the evil eye.

These containers were bringing higher prices than the graceful water jars that the local potter was turning on his primitive lathe. There is no tin plate in Anatolia, and hence these "empties" are eagerly bought up and resmithied into kitchen utensils, stovepipe, and even roofs. Indeed, both at Marsivan and Malatia, one may hear the call to the faithful proceeding from minarets whose "candle-snuffer" peaks are obviously sheathed in the same material stamped with the same "American prayer" (see pages 491, 504).

KHARPUT HAS WATCHED THE TIDE OF
EMPIRES

Magnificently set, Kharput has for ages watched the tide of empires-the Hittite,