Of all the questions to which Chernyshevski's tireless pen devoted itself in regard to the United States, the issues of Negro slavery and the American Civil War assumed the greatest magnitude. This was so because to Chernyshevski the American slave system was the one serious blot upon an otherwise unspotted record of democratic achievement. If this blot were removed, European radicals might then look to America with no reservations as source of inspiration for their own democratic (if not socialist) goals. Such an attitude towards American slavery was merely the boldest expression of views typical of many Russian radicals in this period.

THE LAST two weeks that Emperor Alexander spent in Taganrog before his official death have been recorded in the diaries of Empress Elisabeth, Prince Peter Volkonski, Sir James Wyllie, Bt., Doctor Dimitri Tarasov, and in an unsigned manuscript entitled "Official History of the Illness and Death of Emperor Alexander I." We possess also the recollections of some of the Emperor's servants, especially those of his valets Anisimov and Fedorov, but they do not contain a day-by-day record of events and very often give way to the temptation of recalling stories based upon hearsay and therefore of no historical value. Prince Peter Volkonski kept a day-by-day record and his description is the most complete if not always the most accurate. However, as a whole, the four principal witnesses have left us four different stories full of the most obvious contradictions. This state of affairs can be explained only by two suppositions: that they had to write something about Alexander's illness in view of the Emperor's determination to use it as a means of escape and, obviously, did not arrange among themselves all the details of their narratives; and (2) that some of these diaries, and especially Volkonsky's were written post factum.

In the summer of 1812, through the efforts of Bettine Brentano, a meeting took place in Teplitz between Beethoven and Goethe. Beethoven describes it in a letter to Bettine:

Liebe gute Bettine! Könige und Füirsten können wohl Professoren machen und Geheimeräthe &. und Titel und Ordensbänder umhängen, aber groβe Menschen können sie nicht machen, Geister, die über das Weltgeschmeib hervorragen, das müssen sie wohl bleiben lassen zu machen, und damit muβ man sie in Respect halten; wenn so zwei zusammen kommen, wie ich und der Goethe, da müssen auch grobe Herren merken, was bei unser Einem als groβ gelten kann.

To Her Supreme Highness
The Gracious Lady
Marya Alekseyevna Narishkina

No one searching for a link uniting the English-speaking world with the world of Malczewski will have to look either far or long. For both Antoni Malczewski himself and his stirring ballad Marja have often touched our English-American milieu.

To be noted first of all was Malczewski's own meeting face to face with Byron, at Venice in 1818. The conversation the two poets had at that time related to the theme Byron was to employ soon after, in part perhaps as a result of this very conversation, in Mazeppa, a tale of Malczewski's own Borderland. There was also the circumstance of Marja's being the first work in Polish to be printed in the original in England, an event which took place in 1836 when one of the leading Panslavists of the day, Jan Marcin Bansemer (1802–1840), brought out an edition of the poem in an odd, Czechified Polish orthography.

Each Lithuanian surname appears in three different forms, one masculine and two feminine. The masculine form (Klìmas, Vābalas, Žukáuskas, Varkalà, Antanáitis, Variakōjis, Gudāvičius, etc.) is used for all male members of a family without regard of age or marital status. The surname of married women ends always in -ienė ﹛Klìmiene, Vabalíenė, Žukáuskiene, Varkalienė, Antanáitienė, Variakojiene, Gudāvičienė, etc.), while the feminine form of several diminutive suffixes (-aitė, -ytė, -utė, -utė) is used to form the surnames of little girls and unmarried women (Klimáitė,. Vabaláitė, Žukauskiátė, Varkaláitė, Antanaitytė, Variakōjýtė, Gudavičiutė, etc.). In Lithuania these three forms are legally established and it would be unthinkable and utterly ridičulous to use them otherwise than here described.

At the outbreak of World War Two the most startling shortage revealed by our country was of linguists — people who could handle with ease and fluency the numerous tongues required by our war needs. The Intensive Language Program of the American Council of Learned Societies and the Army Specialized Training Program were the solution of the problem, but it was a solution which was not extremely efficient and, above all, anything but prompt.

For the normal, everyday requirements of a global post-war world, as well as for a possible recurrence of the emergency, America needs language specialists. This means not merely people who can handle the four western European languages of the normal high school and college curriculum, French, German, Italian and Spanish.

In the study of American population it is necessary to distinguish two separate scientific concepts:

1. (1) The American of Polish origin,

2. (2) The Polish-American (Polono-Amerykanin)

Individuals of the first category — Americans of “Polish blood” — make up the Polish “Statistical Group.” This group is represented, but only partly and with a high coefficient of error, in the pertinent section of the American census.

Individuals of the second category, which includes the great majority of Americans of Polish origin, are not represented as such in any official statistics. They comprise the Polish “Sociological Group.“ This is the group that calls itself in Polish Polonia.

The great interest in the study of the Russian language which has brought a wave of students to our universities is, in a large measure, due to the achievements of science and technology in the Soviet Union. It is these achievements that created an industry capable of supporting a highly mechanized warfare and successfully trained the personnel for it. It is the recognition now accorded to Russian scientists that is responsible for the fact that scientists all over the world are displaying much interest in the Russian scientific publications, which had been largely neglected previously, and are eager to read them.

In the tumultous years that preceded the first and second World War, Zsigmond Moricz was the Hungarian writer whose approach to the problems of his country was significant because of his realistic attitude and method. Moricz had realistic predecessors, such as Lajos Tolnai, Sandor Brody, Zoltan Thury. But their works were trial balloons of literary realism. Zsigmond Moricz was the first Hungarian writer who, like Frank Norris and Theodore Dreiser in America, de- A'oted his narrative talent to the presentation of individual and collective inconsistencies and sadistic realities caused by a particular social structure. He wrote novels, short stories, plays, and poems. As a poet he was inferior; even as a playwright his works are second-rate compared with his novels and short stories.

Now that the Red Army has driven the last fascist aggressors from our country, the time has come to think of the restoration of those fine monuments of art and antiquity which the German vandals outraged in malicious frenzy. Some few items have already been restored. Of various other monuments which astonished the world by their perfection, nothing is left but their foundations, but we can and must recreate at any cost whatever has in any degree survived. The world has never before witnessed a restoration task of such grandiose dimensions as confronts our country in the next decades.

In its aims, the theory and practice of the modern scientific restoration of artistic monuments is considerably different from the practice of the mid-nineteenth century.

This directory is the result of an inquiry ably undertaken by Dr. Arthur Prudden Coleman, of Columbia University, at the request of the Committee on Slavic Studies, American Council of Learned Societies, and with the encouragement of the Rockefeller Foundation.

Dr. Coleman's compilation shows that, of some 150 institutions of collegiate level in the United States which offer courses dealing with the East European area, 81 also present instruction in Russian and 12 provide training in Polish.

It is obvious from this survey that, apart from the relatively few institutions which have manifested an interest of several decades' standing in the Slavic world, this currently increased attention to the Slavic area is due primarily to recent political events, the impact of World War II, experience in the methods of language-teaching popularized by the A. S. T. program, and the cultural advance of the USSR.