Haldeman-Julius Quarterly, Vol. 2, No. 2.

HALDEMAN-JULIUS QUARTERLY, Volume 2, Number 2. This was an unusual magazine, it was meant as a guide to give information from the intellectual community to encourage a progressive thought and to advise as to the utility of new ideas and movements. As the magazine says of itself: The Quarterly will not only cry a hearty welcome, but it will try to measure the significance of such new ideas; it will study the American life out of which these new ideas have grown; it will look ahead, strive to foresee what may be the consequences of the virile contemporary movements of thought. (Aside, let us remark that "movements of thought" implies of course new and free and creative thinking -- conservative, conventional thinking does not move.) Those currents of change, of challenge, and of controversy that are in motion anywhere in the land -- whether a broad stream of definitely emergent new life, lesser rivulets or sporadic waterfalls of protest, or the slightest trickle of inquiry -- will be studied at their sources and followed to their farthest leapings or windings by the Quarterly. Haldeman-Julius Quarterly is -- or will try to be -- a friendly critic. It will hold up to the light and pass judgment on American life, with the particular aim to seek out those things in American life that represent a rising degree of civilization and culture. It will report the directions being taken by the intelligent forces in our United States. Above all, the Quarterly will encourage these forces. And it goes on, this description of an new and forward thinking Intellectual magazine, issued only four times a year, so as to measure the steps of progress at intervals of time. These magazines were published in the 1920s and provides a gauge to measure the progress -- or lack of it -- since that time. In many things we will see the progress, but in others we will see that we have made a wrong turn somewhere, and have gone astray into dangerous territories. In those areas where we have lost our way, it might be best to go back and take the right turn. The Haldeman-Julius publications were a powerful liberal guide to America in their day, they need to become an inspiration to us again in our modern world. Emmett F. Fields