What is P.E.N.?

WHAT is P.E.N.? The answer to that question may be of interest to the readers of a literary magazine of world‐wide circulation. For P.E.N.—the initials stand for Poets, Playwrights; Editors, Essayists; Novelists; or, alternatively, for “Paix Entre Nous”—is a world‐wide literary organisation. And not much information about it is to be gleaned from the press, at least the English press, which for the most part has consistently ignored even the not un‐important international congress of P.E.N. Perhaps the reason is the healthy English distaste for internationalism, or for the idea of organisation in connection with so individual a thing as literature. But Britain was the godmother of the League of Nations, and remains its staunchest supporter. And it was in London that the parent P.E.N. club was formed.