COMMENT
THE editors of The Dial wish to set on record their gratitude to those readers who have taken the trouble to write letters of criticism to them, and to the far greater number who have silently supported them by plunging for the whole year after the first and second monthly numbers were issued. In the excitement of putting the issues through the press there has been little time for self-analysis; but we are conscious of a certain happiness.
The nicest thing has been the repeated assurance that The Dial is not wholly superfluous in a world which has magazines for collectors of stamps, manufacturers of embalming fluid, and propagandists for more intimate trade relations with Peru. All of these are praiseworthy objects of human endeavour, none of them alien to the inquisitive spirit, but it has not seemed to the editors that others tilled the last far corners of the field of literature and art, and the American weeklies and monthlies have, with a few exceptions, defined the limits of the garden they propose to cultivate.
If a magazine isn't to be simply a waste of good white paper it ought to print, with some regularity, either such work as would otherwise have to wait years for publication, or such as would not be acceptable elsewhere. The inevitable and the "impossible" pieces of work give the special tone to a magazine which must, in the interest of completeness, publish a number of other things which are, in any case, predestined for publication. So we thank our critics for the rebuke that "you are printing things no other magazine would print" as well as for the words of praise that "you are bringing into the light work any publication would be proud of." The Dial hopes always to deserve both comments. It hopes also to deserve the faith of its friends who know that the first three numbers do not represent everything which the editors hope eventually to give in its pages.
"The enlarged programme of the American Library Association points to a time when books will be freely accessible to every man, woman, and child in America." This may not be the moment for adding burdens to the excellent organization which reports that in thirty states, less than half of the population has a library service;
