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130 THE CRISIS While it breaks, breaks, breaks on the sheltering bars. sings the poet. And The songs of the singer Are tones that repeat The cry of the heart Till it ceases to beat. This verse just quoted is from "The Dreams of the Dreamer," and with the previous quotation tells us that this woman's heart is keyed in the plaintive, knows the sorrowful agents of life and experience which knock and enter at the door of dreams. But women have made the saddest songs of the world, Sappho no less than Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Ruth, the Moabite poetess, gleaning in the field of Boaz, no less than Amy Levy, the Jewess who broke her heart against the London pavements; and no less does sadness echo its tender and appealing sigh in these songs and lyrics of Georgia Douglas Johnson. THE CRISIS, these days, comes in for much comment. John D. Barry writes in the San Francisco, Cal. Bulletin: Do you ever read THE CRISIS? If you don't you miss something. It is one of the most interesting magazines in the world. It gives news and it discusses subjects seldom or never mentioned in most publications. . . . The number I have been reading, dated March, places at the head of the editorial department this significant quotation from Moorfield Storey: "No man who looks down on his fellow man is fit to govern him." The statement is obviously true. It applies to a good many people who consider themselves democrats. Those editorials, by the way, are written with great vigor, evidently by the editor. He does not hesitate to say plainly what he thinks. No one can accuse him of lacking spirit. The New York Evening Post has this bit about Dumas: There are sill alive many men who new Dumas père. R. S. Garnett's translation of one of Dumas's romances, the long one concerning Naples which he published in 1864 under the title of "La San Felice," has recalled to some Englishman the fact that he saw Dumas in the year the work was being published in La Presse. He was travelling from Naples to Marseilles, and he saw a strange group: I remember going on deck and hearing bursts of laughter from a group of travelers partly sitting, partly standing, partly sprawling. In the centre was a kind of Colossus--a man clad in an ample suit of white canvas, bareheaded, and with an air of jovial expansiveness which not only illuminated his broad, smiling, bronzed face, but imparted itself, as it seemed to me, to all his companions. Their very attitudes suggested perfect enjoyment of what he was relating. Again and again came peals of laughter. I stopped a Neapolitan steward who was passing. "Who is that?" I asked. "Allesandro Doumas," he proudly said. "Dumas? The author of 'Monte Cristo'?" "And of 'La San Felice.'" And he showed me the title in large letters in a newspaper he held in his hand. Then going up to the Colossus, he handed him the paper, bowing low. Dumas glanced at it, and his expression changed. He began reading from it aloud. In a few minutes I saw more than one of his listeners brush the tears from their eyes. Presently Dumas threw down the paper, and in passing he almost cannoned against me. Dr. George E. Haynes, of the United States Department of Labor, has published some interesting articles on Negro migration in The Survey. They are strikingly illustrated. APPLAUSE WELL merited and generous applause has greeted the brave deeds of colored soldiers recently reported from France. The Boston, Mass., Post says: "No color line there." In the service of democracy there is no such distinction. General Pershing's late report places on the roll of honor the names of two soldiers of one of our colored regiments, Privates Johnson and Roberts, who while on sentry duty were attacked by a German raiding party of 20 men. They made it a hand-to-hand fight, with rifle, bayonet and knife, and won out of it although not unscathed. . . . This is the true American ideal of service. No matter what the color of the skin, we all recognize it. The Chronicle Telegram, Pittsburgh, Pa., says: "The colored troops fought nobly." That was more than half a century ago. They "fought nobly" on the plains, in the islands of the Pacific and the Atlantic, wherever they have been called upon to fight. . . . And now in France they are living up to the reputation they have won on other, far distant fields. We have been told of the particularly valorous acts of two of them, Henry Johnson of Albany and Needham Roberts of Trenton, N. J. They have been enrolled among the heroes of the world and have been cited for the Croix de Guerre before the French army. Of them the French general, a soldier not accustomed to heroic and skilful military deeds, wrote to his superior: "The American report is too modest. As a result of oral information furnished to me it appears that the blacks were extremely brave, and this little combat does honor to the Americans." The Buffalo Evening News says: The Negroes of America have right and reason to feel proud of the achievements of Private Henry Johnson and Private Needham Roberts, "over there." . . .
