PAGE PAGE NOTES OF THE WEEK . .233 READERSAND WRITERS. By P. Selver and E. X. B. 248 CU RR EN T CANTCURRENT . .235 MEMOIRS : X DIALOGUE. By Rudolf Presber FOREIGNAFFAIRS. By S. Verdad . . 236 (translated by P. Selver) . . 250 MILITARYNOTES. By Romney . .237 LETTERSFROM RUSSIA. By C. E. Bechhöfer . 252 LETTERSTO A TRADEUNIONIST-I. By Rowland CURRENTVERSE . .”53 Kenney .237 THE IDEALISTICREACTION AGAINST SCIENCE.By WARAND RELIGION. By DmitriMerezhkovski . 239 CoomaraswamyAnanda . .255 THE CASEOF EGYPT. By MarmadukePickthall . 240 PASTICHE.By P. Selver, H. H., FitzgeraldLane, “THEMENACE OF ENGLISHJUNKERDOM.” By A Arthur F. Thorn . . 256 Publicist . . 241 LETTERSTO THE EDITOR from C. H. Norman, Per GOBINEAUAND CHAMBERLAIN.By Dr.Oscar Levy 242 Sona, X, A. C. Nash,Arthur Kitson, J. M., THE HYPHENATEDSTATES OF AMERICA--I.By E. H. K. C., Harold Lister, Pteleon, For Rich E. A. B. . .“43 and Poor, Millar Dunning, Upton Sinclair, An IMPRESSIONS OF PARIS.By Alice Morning . .245 Admirer of Mosesand Isaiah, Frederick, H. AFFIRMATIONS-I. ARNOLDDOLMETSCH. By Ezra Evans, A. F. T., Fair-to-All, John Duncan, Pound . . 246 M. K. Hull, A Music-hallArtiste . . 258

NOTES OF THE WEEK. Chancellor of the Exchequer, it will be recollected, stated definitely in the House of Commons that the Stock Ex- FROM time to time during the last four or five months change wouldbe opened under such conditions that the Government has relieved public anxiety by denying there could not be a “bear raid’’ on the new loan. plausible rumours of British disasters or defeats on land *** and sea. In recent weeks so relatively many adverse in- cidentshave become known tothe public, andthe Anotherpoint. Great curiosity wasshown as to the Government has shown itself so weakin dealing- with number of small investors in the present subscription; the exaggerated “telegrams” sent by the correspondents and Mr. Lloyd Georgeannounced their number as of the “Daily Mail” and its litter, that official denials 100,000, as comparedwith 25,000 “small” subscribers havelost much of theirformer effect. Still, it is ad- tothe Boer War loan. A small subscriber, however, means a man who has been able to put up not less than mittedthat official commentsare useful; ’ andthe straight hitting of the Foreign Office authorities at the £100; and many of the small subscribers will have in- “Times”last week will probably not be without in- vested tothe extent of severalhundreds. It iscalcu- fluence on Lord Northcliffe’s latest Press weathercock. lated-again we take City plus official figures-that the We think it all the more necessary, therefore, that some amount subscribed by people who could afford anything clear statementshould at once be made by the Chan- from a hundred to six or eight hundred pounds is about cellor of theExchequer regarding the position of our £50,000,000. Inother words, the “great financial in- Funded Loan of £350,000,000, issued a few weeks ago terests”-the phrase includes the English branches of at a price which enables the investor to securea return of one or two American Trusts, by the by-were able to find £300,000,000, as compared with the £50,000,000 four per cent. Of the total sum of £350,000,000 placed, £100,000,000, had been taken up by the bankers at an found by thegeneral public. But, if thebankers had earlier stage, so that the public was called upon to pro- begun by assistingthe Government tothe extent of vide £250,000,000 before the list closed at four o’clock £100,000,000, the Government had extended some re- on November 24. turn to one very important branch of the banking busi- *** ness-not withoutincurring some suspicion of favouritism, as thecase of Mr. Crisp showed.In his It was generally stated in the papers that the issue had speechon November 27, Mr.Lloyd George also an- been largely over-subscribed.Mr. Lloyd George, ina nounced that the total amount of bills discounted by the speech which was postponed two or three times until it Bank of England on behalf of the accepting houses, on was finally delivered on November 27, indicated, though Governmentguarantees, was £120,000,000. “That not, it is held in the City, without some ambiguity, that shows that of the £350,000,000 to £500,000,000 worth the loan had been over-subscribed, thanks to “an appeal of bills which were out at the time, most have been dis- to the public and undoubtedly to the great financial in- posed of in the ordinarycourse. That is very satisfac- terests as ‘well.” The City, on the other hand, declared tory.There are £12,500,000 worth stillrunning, not that the loan had not really been over-subscribed;it had having arrived at maturity.”Mr. Lloyd George further been barely subscribed, and no more. As a proof, City estimated that by theend of the war there would he bankers have been pointing to the unofficial dealings in about £50,000,000 worth of bills in “cold storage.” loan scripbefore the opening of the Stock Exchange. *** For a day or two it was ata premium of about one-half. Then there was a slightdecline, which gradually reached If thefawning financial sycophants who gushover aboutfive-sixteenths under par. The fraction in either the Government’s measures in the City columns of the case is a small one, butit indicates nevertheless that Press tell us that the largeness of the loansubscribed within a few days of their purchase certain speculators fortakes their breath away and leavesthem petrified made up their minds to get rid of their allotment. The with awe at the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s daring, 234 most assuredly the extent to which the Government was and bankers have reached Dutch, Swiss, or English ter- prepared to backup the accepting houses causes even ritory, or other partsof France, in a penniless condition. ourhardened selves toraise our eyebrows, closely The inconvenience which we have suffered here has been though we know the Government will stick to its finan- themerest triflecompared with that which has been cialbackers. Even if weaccept Mr. Lloyd George’s experienced in north-eastern France; and it cannot be statement that the crash caused by the shock to credit if compared at allwith the ruin anddevastation which the Government had not supported the accepting houses have overtaken Belgium. as it had done would have brought about a very serious *** state of things in the industrial world, we must ask why he has not followed his drastic precedent to one or two We shallsurely agree, whenwe remember all this, more of its logical conclusions. We are raising by loan that the complaints of our own wealthy people are un- the sum of £350,000,000 ; we have raised by extra taxa- worthy. Despite the fact that Mr. Lloyd George is rais- tion the sum of £65,550,000,though from this we must ing only £65,000,000 by extrataxation, there are deduct £550,000 for the reduction in the license duty. alreadymurmurs at the increases in the income-tax. This does not take into account the first war credit of Decreases in wages we have already referred to. NearIy £100,000,000. every employer, whether affected by the war or not, has *** taken advantage of the situation to curtail his staff, to add to the normal hours of labour, or to reduce wages. Nowlet us considerone or two, conclusions which As if the infamous National Insurance inquisition were arise from the admitted facts we have given. We may not enough, a tax on wages, we are told, was actually take it for granted that the small investor and the trus- considered by the Cabinet ; and, whether gossip in this tee,anxious to placetheir money safelyat a time of instance was true or not, a tax on wages was certainly unparalleledstress, have already done allthey will be recommended by employers of labour on the plea that able to do towards providing the nation with funds. We direct taxation was becoming too heavy. On this state- mustalso realise that the financiers andbig business ment, which has become fartoo common, and is too houses, largely as they have subscribed to the present easily believed by the average taxpayer, there is a com- loan, will be able to subscribe as largelyto the next. ment to make. It is true that direct taxation has risen. ‘The Government has backed up the banks ; recruiting In 1912 therevenue derived from direct taxation has relieved thewage-bill; and there are manyindus- amounted to £82,432,000, or about 53.4 per cent. of the tries which areworking at highpressure. It must be total tax revenue. In 1913the amount was £83,268,000, remembered thatforeign governments, as well asour representinga percentage of 53.81. In 1871,however, own armyand navy authorities, are buyinglargely in the direct taxpayer’s contribution to revenue was only this country. Russiahas orderedmilitary motors to 30 percent., in 1881 itwas 35.5 percent., in 1891it thevalue of morethan a million sterling ; and many had risen to 43.5 per cent., in 1901it was 48.8 per cent. ; firms which previouslymanufactured touring and and in 1913,as we have said, it was 53.81 per cent. smaller pleasure cars are now turning out motor-omni- *** buses, motor-ambulances, motor-lorries, and motor gun- carriages.France, Russia, and Belgium have been War or nowar, then, for nearlyhalf a century the direct orderingboots from us by the million pairs.Govern- taxpayer has been bearing a greater burden of taxation ment orders for motors of all kinds, boots andshoes, every year, because profits have risen in much greater barbedwire, fencing, hospital beds, cutlery, electrical proportion than taxes, wages, and the cost of luxurious goods, ordnance, small arms, rifles, hosiery, and woollen living. If we wish toknow what direct taxes chiefly goods will alone keep these various tradesworking over- consist of, let the figures for 1912supply the answer : time for months to come. Dundee and the jute districts Income Tax, £44,334,000; Estate Duties, £25,182,000; have enough orders for sacking to keep the mills busy andStamps, £9,564,000. We mightalso mention the forseveral weeks, and the demandis likely togrow. HouseDuty, £2,100,000. Outrageous,say the men Clydeshipbuilders are busierthan they have been for with big incomes. Notat all,say we. WhenPitt years. All Tyneside,with the exception of themining andhis successors wished to finance the Napoleonic districts, is workingovertime. Even thefarmers are wars, whichcost £831,000,000, raisedthey beingencouraged. We do notpretend that trade as a £440,000,000 by loan andas much as £391,000,000 whole is normal, or anything like it ; but we must em- by taxation.The Crimean warcost £67,500,000, of phasise the fact that most of our important industries which Gladstoneraised £32,000,000 by loan and are fully engaged. £35,500,000 by taxation. The first eight months of the *** present war will cost us £339,571,000, of which amount Mr.Lloyd Georgeproposes to raise £65,000,000 by There is noneed for us to remind readers of THENEW taxationand no less than £321,571,000 by loan. As AGE that all this work is not being undertaken without the extra taxation has to be balanced against an esti- the certainty of more than adequate profits. Army con- mated deficit in normal revenue, the actual war charges tractors have never been noted for their patriotism ; and raised by taxation will be only £18,250,000. Ofthe there have been the customary scandals during this war. sum of £65,000,000 thusraised by taxation,the Exceptin those districts where a dearth of men has greatest proportion is represented by the doubling of the sent up their value, wages have been cut down to the Income Tax, which will bring in an estimated increase of lowest minimum and employers are making money. Con- £38,750,000, and by thebeer duty, which means an trast the situation of Belgium, and of the ten or twelve additional £17,600,000. The doubling of the super-tax Departments of Francestill in the occupation of the means only another £6,000,000. enemy. From the official reports of the Germans them- *** selves itis evident that industry has beenall but stopped, and is allowed to continue only when it is to Thesefigures will notdismay even the capitalist, the advantage of the invaders. Most of the coal-mines, however much he may pretend, through the medium of as well as the factories for the production of hardware, his pliable Press, that they will result in nothing short lace, textiles, gloves, and the like, have been shut down ofhis ruin. It has alreadybeen pointed out, in these andthe machinery has been dismantled.A few em- columns and elsewhere, thatthere are, so to say, ployers arestruggling against the adverse conditions counter-figures. Foryears past we have been lending under thesupervision ofGerman officers. Itis esti- money to undevelopedcountries-and, indeed, to de- mated that,at the veryoutside, only twenty-fiveper velopedcountries, too, for thatmatter. So conserva- cent. of the Belgian working classes are at work; and tivean organ as the “Statist” estimates the total theproportion in the occupied parts of Franceis not amount of ourforeign investments at fourthousand much larger. Millionaires in both countries have found millions sterling,a sum bringing us in interestevery themselves ruined in a day ; and wealthy manufacturers year to the amount of two hundred millions. It is true 235 that we receive this amount in goods, not in cash. Or, to be more accurate still, we “clear”the transactions Current Cant. involving both the lending of money and the receiving “Romanceof modern warfare.”--“ Daily Mail.” of goodswith the assistance of those very convenient accepting houses which were so firmly supported by the “Thearrogance of culture.”-VISCOUNT HARBERTON. Government atthe beginning of thewar. In other words, our factories create a surplus every year, which enables us to invest a varying sum abroad-seldom less “Deathis the explanation of Life.”-“Daily Express.” thantwo hundred millions sterling. We do notmake this particular export in the form of goods, but in the “Everyman must be a fighter.”-SIDNEY DARK. form of credit; and it was the maintenance of the credit system which theGovernment was so anxiousabout. ‘‘Socialismand the War.”-H. G. WELLS. Is it reasonable to suggest that for once we should re- frain from investing our surplus of two hundred millions “Mr.H. G. Wellshas been very prolific.”-“Daily or so in the ends of the earth? We think not. Credit, Citizen.” itseems to us, is not an abstraction, but a tangible entity which the Chancellor of the Exchequer can seize “Cantis more venerable than truth.”-DORA MARSDEN. by puttingout his hand. It is only when we come to “HowI made my sweetheart enlist.”-“ Mary Bull.” considerthese figures relating to ourforeign invest- mentsthat we are struck, as nobody can fail tobe “Hopefulnews for the New Year.”-“ Globe.” struck, with the enormous profits which have been made

in thiscountry during recent years. In the time of “Thereis not theslightest doubt thatthe Kaiser is Pitt we had hardly any foreign investments worth talk- the one man who made the War.”-JAMES DOUGLAS. ing about, nor had we many at the time of the Crimean . war.It isonly within recent yearsthat we have “TheStars in their courses have been fighting on the acquired such vast interests abroad. side of the Allies.”-“ Star.” *** “TheWar has brought back to us the brotherhood we The fact is, as everybody in the City knows, money- had forgotten.”-PROFESOR GILBERT MURRAY. i.e., credit-is plentifulin London at present; but the financiers will not invest until they can be sure of safety “Efficiencyisthe hope of democracy. Efficiency meansgreater production with less effort and at less and high rates of interest.They have let us make our cost.”-LOUIS D. BRANDEIS. appeal, and they have subscribed just enough. But the

Government has been warned with sufficient emphasis, “Thenational crisis has given birth to a new spirit from what we may style semi-official financialsources, of civic patriotism.”-REGINALD MCKENNA. that four per cent. is not enough, and that the next war

loan must be issued so as to bring in five and a half or “Greeceand Rome have passed away,but England sixper cent. No doubt if a thirdloan wererequired will endure.She has been trueto herthousand years these conscienceless sharks would demand ten per cent. of heroes. She has used nobly the power that came into Inthe circumstances, we submit that there isone her hands.”-ARTHUR MEE, in “MyMagazine.” remedy forthe Government. In view of Mr.Lloyd George’sthreat to appoint receivers for banks if the “If we use the restoration of Peace to lapse into ease banksrefused to lend money to smallmerchants and and licence, we shallbetray allthe betterpurposes awakened during the time of stress.”-“Times.” tradesmen, we assume that drastic steps havebeen more than oncecontemplated. We recommendnothing so “Wehave been inthe past a careless and casual drastic even as that. We simply point to the fact that nation, a nation of slackers : let us make a resolve for if creditcan ‘be supportedor withheld, it can also be the New Year to have done for ever with our random, seized. If the Government can appoint receivers for the easy-going, happy-go-lucky ways.”-“Weekly Dispatch.” ordinarybanking establishments, it can equally well appoint receivers for the accepting houses and the great “Thepractical point is that to meet huge public ex- creditinstitutions. The Chancellor of theExchequer penditure there must be private economy. In the wealthy classes especially the lesson hasalready been learnt.”- can commandeer credit, with the authorityof the Govern- “ Daily Graphic.” ment and the nation behind him, as easily as any one of

LordKitchener’s representatives can commandeer a “Thecompensations of war are at least as great as its horse. In each case there is a promise to pay. The Ger- horrorsand miseries, and theyare of a kindthat har- mans in Belgium, and in their own country, too, have monise with and illustrate much that is fundamental in not hesitated to seize what they wanted. If we were in the Christian ideal.”-“ Daily Mail.” an equally dire extremity we should not hesitate, either; and credit is as seizable as copper. “A year of consecration. Christmas tip for the Derby. *** SantaClaus in khaki. Will Sir James Barrie’s prophecy be fulfilled?Which village is thebravest? Max Pem- It may be urged that there is no such extremity upon berton describes the week’s fighting.There is only one us. We reply that the extremity was upon us when the cure for stomachand bowel indigestion. Heavenly financiers withheldtheir money-money which the Father, keepus in the beautiful spirit of the season of peace and goodwill. Do you suffer from wind ? A chat nation had allowed them to accumulate-from the war to the children.”--“ WeeklyDispatch.” loan which represented the nation’s need. In spiteof the

rocket-rise of profits between 1860-70 and 1914, our “Theman who has done more than any other Britisher trading classes are greedy formore and ever more alive to see that Britain’s heritage was not sold to Ger- money. We have heard afew patriotic financiers say manyfor a few paltrypolitical pence wasLord North- that they would willingly seetheir income-tax and cliffe. He worked withvigour and inspiration.”- super-taxquintupled for the period of thewar ; and “Daily Mail.” there again is a suggestion for the Treasury. We have “OLord, keep us day by day. Whypay rent?” no compunction in stripping the super-wealthy of a few . . . -“Britishweekly.” thousands a year. But we are concerned to see that no financiershall takeadvantage of thenation’s need to “Selfridge’sseems to have become as characteristic of keephis purse in his pocket while he arranges extor- London as St. Paul’s. . . . The place somehow strikes a tionate rates of interest with a Treasury which is both new note in the progress of the City.”--SELFRIDGE,in the roo lenient and none too well instructed in these matters. “PallMall Gazette.” 236

or threetimes, but not for revolutionary criticism. Foreign Affairs, Again,poor as the German Socialistleaders are, it is By S. Verdad. not altogether fair to them to blame them for “desert- ing” a cause whichthey never supported. Bebel IT isremarkable enough that all theSocialists of the always made it clear that his party would fight if Ger- world have not yet been able to propose a satisfactory many were menaced ; and the German Press was easily settlement of thewar. The “Times” of January I able, by suppressingor distorting facts, to make it quotesfrom the “Labour Leader” specimens of three appearthat the Fatherland was menaced by Russia. or four messages sent by well-known German Socialists Germanworkmen, like British workmen, choose their as New Year greetings;but,although theyall refer ownleaders. This is not the only feature common to to the war, they saynothing practical about it. Herr both,for both are and have always beenImperialistic Herman Müller hopes that, “despitethe interruption in spirit and in action. which theintercourse between the Socialist brother- *** partieshas had to suffer,International Socialism will, I mentionedin THE NEW AGE a fortnight ago that after this war, develop a greater effectiveness and thus International Socialismalways cameto griefbecause secure to the world a really lasting peace.” This, mind there was a discrepancy between the utterances and the you, when theItalian Socialistshave been holding actions of its leaders-because their views did not corre- scores of meetings all over Italy to demand official in- spondwith realities. Themessages to the “Labour tervention by force of arms on behalf of the Allies, so Leader” are full of such empty phrases as I quoted in that the lost Italian provinces may be recovered;when the issue of December 24 from French sources. M. Jean Mr. Crookshas led the singing of “GodSave,” etc., Grave, let me recall, wrote in “La BatailleSyndical- in the House of Commons, and M. Gustave Hervé has iste” an appeal to the Germanpeople concluding with gone to the front !-not to speak of the bellicose spirit thewords : “Help us topave the wayfor thegreat of the German Socialists and Social Democrats. international federation of peopleswhich can alone re- . *** pairthe ruin wrought by hatredand ignorance.” And now we have Franz Mehring saying : “The day is not Dr.Karl Liebknecht-who votedthe war credits in far distant when a return to peace and to the unshaken theReichstag and, with his followers, supportedthe principles of the International will be demanded by the Government all through the initial stages of the war- Germanworking class.” They ask forbread and they says : “It is painful for me to write these lines at a time will get cold steel. The“Herald” and variousFrench when our radiant hope of previousdays, the Socialist Socialist organs continue to insiston the need of an International, lies smashed on the ground with a thou- InternationalHigh Court. sandexpectations ; wheneven many Socialists in the *** belligerent countries-for Germany is not an exception -have in thismost rapacious of all wars of robbery The proposalis not worth serious discussion ; but willingly put on the yoke of the chariot of Imperialism one item in it is. Who is goingto guarantee the in- justwhen the evils of capitalism were becoming more tegrity of an International High Court? Obviously,no apparentthan ever.” The good doctor overlooks the nationcould. An InternationalCourt at TheHague factthat hisfellow-countrymen-Socialists, Junkers would become as liable to influence from outside sources andotherwise-regard thiswar as a holy war--“der as theSupreme Court in theUnited States. I do not mean this to be taken as the only argument against the heilige Krieg” is a frequent reference in German papers of all shades of opinion. Further, a11 theGermans, scheme, because there are others much weightier ; but the point is onewhich is frequentlyoverlooked by the whether engaged on land or on sea, have fought with a advocates of internationalthis and that’s. strikingcourage that springs from fanaticism. “Kul- *** tur” is an idea andhas a meaningfor these people; let there be no doubt about that. Race-feeling is always One more comment on the proposal for the founding thestrongest feelingof a people;religious feeling of a European Federation. If one man in modern times perhaps comes next. But when we find thetwo to- knewmore about federation than another, that man gether, as we find them in the ranks of the greater part was Bismarck;forhe federated the German Empire. of the German army, we mustrecognise that we are Yet he had little confidence even in a complete federa- faced withsomething particularly formidable. The tion of what might legitimately have been regarded as emotionsaroused by the struggle betweencapital and Germanic territory. “One must never forget,” he said, labour are quite subsidiary and are relatively powerless. “that the greater the empire the more difficult it is to That is not a matter of argument, but a matter of fact. maintain,and the more easy to crumble away. For For proof we need only point to the behaviour of the thisreason we did notinfringe on Austrian territory mostembittered Labour leaders and Socialists in Ger- in 1866.” And again : many, Russia, France, Italy, Spain, England, Holland, The German provinces of Austria, except theTyrol and Belgiumsince thewar broke out.Even Mr. Keir andSalzkammergut, both of which are blindly Catholic Hardie himself wrote tothe papers not long ago to andHapsburg, mayexperience a stronggravitation to- wards us; but I assure you, were Upper and Lower explain that, though he objected to the war, he would Austria to be offered me to-morrow, I should refuse them. on no account interfere with recruiting. They are too far off-there are Bohemia, Austrian Silesia, *** and Moravia, withthree-fifths of a Slav population, be- tween us. If thoseprovinces of GermanAustria were RosaLuxemburg writes : “Already,after afew where Bohemia, etc.,are, if Pragueand Vienna could months of war,the jingo intoxication which animated change places, I do not say no. . . . Bohemia, Silesia, the working classes of Germany is passing away, and, etc., would prove a second Poland to us. We should althoughthey have been deserted by theirleaders in have to learn how to manage the Czechs, whereas Austria thisgreat, historic hour, their sense is returning, and has some experience in that task, though I admit it has every day the number of workers who blush with shame been very bad experience. We don’t want Bohemia, and anger at the thought of whatis going on to-day Silesia, Moravia, or any other part of Austria-let her get grows.”Even when we makeallowance for the strong and be our ally, voilà tout. feminine rhetoric of thelast sentence-for German *** workmenblush at nothing-we must hold thatRosa If Bismarck,with his marvellous powers of states- Luxemburghas not provedher argument merely by manship,was sceptical of hisability to federate Ger- stating it. As we knowfrom the reports of neutral manicterritory, I do notthink that the combined observers,there is no lack of recruitsfor the German efforts of variousgroups of ContinentalSocialists army from the working classes;there are no signs of a will lead to a federation of Europe--and Bismarck, re- revolution amongthem ; and they stillrespect the member, referred to federation by peaceful means. Bis- Kaiserand themilitary authorities of thecountry. marckhad unlimitedskill and power. The “interna- “Vorwärts”has been in troublewith the Censor two tionalists” have not even the power of a wrong idea. 237

whichwere formerly occupying troops fit for more Military Notes. activework. By Romney. *** The Special Reserve has fulfilled its role in replacing has beenmore remarkablethan the success NOTHING casualties in the Expeditionary Force. There is nothing underthe test of war of thegreat militaryreforms to show that ithas fulfilled thisduty betterthan the associatedwith the name of Haldane. I say“associ- old Militia, which would have volunteered for active atedwith” rather than “originated by,” because it is servicewith the same alacrity as theTerritorials; but notto besupposed thatthe part of thatmost able the liability toforeign service being part of the con- Minister extended further than a general selection from ditions of enlistmentin the Special Reserve-in the and direction of the schemes of others, and, of course, Militia it was not so-the War Office was able to count theacceptance of responsibilityfor the results. The with certainty upon it, whereas in the case of Militia a working of amodern bureaucracy- is so impersonalin great deal would have depended upon the popularity of character and so dependent on the unnumbered and un- thewar, the economiccircumstances of themoment, noticed contributions of subordinatesthat the average and so forth. Such uncertainty adds enormously to the manmay bepardoned for supposing that the part of anxietiesand difficulties of astaff on the eve of war. the chief is that a mere figurehead-until one day he of Whetherthe removal of thisanxiety can be held to arrives himself at the position of chief, and finds him- havecompensated for the loss of traditionand moral self called upon to CHOOSE-to make his mind, per- up involved by the abolition of the “Constitutional Force” haps at shortnotice, between two apparentlyequally it is hard to say. desirable but irreconcilablecourses, which is the great *** burdenof men in power. He will then discover that the men who prepared the rival programmes for his con- All thesereforms weremerely adaptations of older sideration-who have shown themselves so far superior and alreadyexisting bodies to newconditions. More to himself inknowledge of the facts, in industry, in of a novelty has been the Officers Training Corps. There power of expression-who, as he must instinctively feel, are, and always will be, hundreds of men who have not speakslightingly behind his back of thisignoramus, thetime or the money totake a commission inthe this outsider thrust into office over the heads of them, Regular or Auxiliary Forces, but who are quite willing the men who do the work, whowould gladly relieve him to serve insuch corps as the “Inns of Court” or the of nine-tenths of hisjob and perform it in allproba- “Artists” witha view to grounding themselves in the bility better than he could himself, show no anxiety to duties of an officer. It is no exaggerationto say that relieve him of thisone-tenth whichis greaterthan the officers who have come to the Regular and Terri- all the rest-this taking of responsibility for a definite torial Armies from these Training Corps are the cream and final choice. The glibadvisers who amoment of thosewho have recentlyenlisted ; andit is worth before were all agog with importunate suggestions, will while to considerwhether in future commissions in at standaside insilence and reluctance. Theirattitude anyrate the Territorial Armyshould be restricted to will besuddenly cold andformal. “That,” they will those who have done some service in the O.T.C. When say,“is for you to decide, Sir.”He will thenlearn a man has passed a year or two there he has discovered, how painful a job it sometimes is to be a “figurehead.” or had it discovered for him, whether he has any apti- *** tudefor soldiering or not. At presentthis discovery It is thereforejustly that we associate the reforms is frequently made at the expense of a regiment. of 1907 with thename of Haldane,although the idea originated in other brains than his. On the success of Letters to a Trade the Territorial organisation it is unnecessary to dilate. Unionist--I. It has provided us immediately on the outbreak of war DEAR SIR,--It is so long since you and I had our last with a quarter of a million men, of whomseveral drink together as workmates that I am really somewhat divisionswere at once foundworthy to relieve the doubtful as to thebest manner in which to approach Regulargarrisons in Malta,Egypt, and India. It has you. You will, of course,have noticed that already. I alreadycontributed manyunits ta theExpeditionary know you musthave raised an enquiring eyebrow, or Force,and is contributing more. By the vitality of its dropped an apprehensive eyelid, at the opening of this traditionsit has beenable to reattract so many of its letter.Dear Sir is an expression to which neither you past members to the colours that most regiments found nor I had once ever expected to attain. When we were themselvesduplicated with a Reservebattalion within workingfor old Parrot-beakon those slum cottages a month of theoutbreak of war. As Ihave had the hewas throwing up in thatdirty little Lancashire pleasure of remarking already, the many vicious critics colliery town near Wigan, we were “Chummy” to each of the Territorials must now be feeling that they have other; whenwe were onthe barrow-run on that big made asses of themselves. waterworks job in the West Riding (you remember?) it *** was“Matey”; another time it was simply Slen and The CountyAssociations, which were founded to Flannel,and so on.But times have changed so much clothe and equip the Territorial Force in time of peace, since then-or we have changed. We are more formal have continued their functions with success. They have andcautious. We are no longer so reckless as we successfully performed a mass of workwith which the were. We don’tthrow our tools through the office War Office could never have coped. There are but two windowfor fun thesedays, or threaten to chuckthe thingsagainst them. The firstis that, by competing boss in the lime-hole, or begindreaming about a new againstthe War Office aspurchasers in the open track as soon as we’ve settled ourselves with good grub market, they haveoften helped torun upthe price. and got flushed with beer and full of beans after a spell The second is that those who regard the purity of our of roughing it. We don’tconsider it necessary to call administration as of paramountimportance would be each other bloody tailors or sextons if we’ve so far for- happier to see the list of their members free from the gotten ourselves as to stick at one job for over a dozen names of certain contractors who are at the same time weeks. Theroad, although it pullsmost damnably in the enjoyment of contracts from the associations upon when springcomes round, has lost much of its old which they are sitting. appeal. No, we nolonger do those old, mad and, *** alternately, delightful and cursed things ; and we dream The NationalReserve has beenused fortwo pur- quite other, though perhaps madder, if duller, dreams. poses. Firstly,hasit supplied largenumbers of You have settIeddown in Manchester,or Birming- N.C.O’s. and men to“Kitchener’s Army. ” Secondly ham,or some equallyunsightly hell-hole. You are a it has, by organising those ex-soldiers who are too old member of a Trade Union and, I hear, you act as com- or too infirm foractive service, supplied a forceto mittee-man in some society or other, a society formed, I undertake such duties as the guarding of railways, etc., gather,for the purpose of keepingboys and girls on 238 the strict path of total abstinence and general rectitude, of thiscountry, those of uswho stillvalue our and which also cultivates lowly, and therefore perfectly intellectualfreedom and honour, have. scarcely done legitimate, ambitions. (Excuse these smiles, for I quite anythingsince the war started but hammer away understand.)For my part, I alsoam a Trade Union- at the Government,demanding that it shall raise ist,and have afew foolish interests which serve to thepay of soldiers andthe amount of allowances waste many goodhours in this babel of a citywhere forsoldiers’ dependents. We hammered so much, in- Iwork as a casuallabourer in thetrade ofcolumn deed (and all the time felt humiliated and shamed that filling fornewspaper proprietors, We are eachthus yourapathy and weakness should makeit necessary) facinga queerer and aworse world than the one we that a Committe was appointed to consider the matter. fought together;and, naturally, we must feel a little Think of that ! Can you imagine howproud we are strange with each other. In short, we are now respect- of oursuccess? A Committeeappointed to consider able people with domestic ties and responsibilities, and theneeds of ourmates who have gone to fight, and the privilegeof puttingan X tothe name of some their wives and children. And the Committeeis still scamp or fool at election time; consequently it is diffi- laboriously considering, and is likely to continue for a cult to attain to a natural familiarity. And so I ignore longtime yet. Thatiswhat ,Governments appoint your old names of Flannel, and Fencer, and Clock, and Committeesfor so far as you are concerned, to con- thatmore favoured name which I mustnot write for sideryou, and to quiet our clamour. And really, you fear of the police. Neithercan callI you byyour are wellworth it-apparently theGovernment thinks christened name because, so far as I remember, I never you are worth very little more. knew it, and for these reasons I have fallen back on the That, however,is only one of manypoints. You old form of Dear Sir. are a worker, and therefore a potential fighter in time The aboveis a rather long-winded sort of an open- of strife,and it is quite natural that, accepting the ing to a letter, I know, butit has been very neces- State, as you do, you should beasked to defend the saryto me because I am, in a way,groping for State.But have you noticed anything else? Have you a grip of you. Forwe are almost in theposition of pictured the grins on the faces of the manipulators of fighters, and you’ve been under different training since theState machinerywhen they have considered you last we had a twirl-and I’ve been under no training at who did notenlist and leave your wife andfamily to all-so Iwant to get the hang and the set of you.I theirmercy? You havenot? Well, let me assure you want to work my way carefully and cautiously into your thatthe grins werethere. These manipulators first methods of thought, your mode of defence, your favour- appealed to you as a free-bornBriton. They got you ite line of attack. Also, I want to get back thespirit singingabout Britons who will neverbe slaves.They of candourand bluntnessthat characterised our old like you to cherishsuch illusions, so long as allthe world. That deliberate,calm, unswerving loyalty to realitiesmake for their power and comfort. It was certainideals which made us call a liar a liar,and better to enlist as many men as possible by pretending which made us tell a man he was talking rot if we be- that those men were going to fight for their freedom ; lieved hewas talking rot. Because, yousee, I have but when all the men, or nearly all the men, who could certainideas that I want you to consider. I have a be got by that methodhad been raked in, then came desire to argue with you ; to “tell you off,” perhaps ; the baring of fists and the snapping of State teeth. The to state a certain case which you have probably never officials at the War Office knew, if youdid not,that heard about, muchless considered ; andI shall doit they had an instrument of compulsion which could not all thebetter if I canget you rousedinto your old fail if rightly applied. Theyknew that you areabso- lively temper. Thatmeans fight, of course.I know lutely in the power of another class, a class that has the your pig-headedness too well to imagine that I can ram ordering of your destinies almost as completely as the my views downyour throat as weused toram pills captain of a battleship has the ordering of the destinies downthe throats of sickhorses. You will boggleand of thecompany of theship he commands. Nay, it is sniff and, probably, when you begin to feel the points, possible that your controllers may use you in viler ways snarl;but, if once I canget you on thetrack, you thanany naval officer could or would dream of using will at last get a grip of the matter and do things, of his men. TheState servants, having cast their nets that I am confident. And you will not get on the track and got a good haul by merely singing to you sprats, until you have been kickedor hauled out of therut turned to the mackerels and suggested that the mackerels into which you have slipped’, so I am now about to shoulddrive another shoal of sprats along. Inother start on the job. Oh, yes, we shall have a glorious old words, your employers were asked to line you up and up-and-down muzz before we’ve finished, but I hope to hand you over. Proof? Of course I shall givethe down-and-out you so completely that, when we come to proof. Here it is in the form of anadvertisement sent shakehands at the end, you will be asenthusiastic round to the newspapers a few days ago. It is headed about the business as ever you were about anything in “THEWAR : FOURQUESTIONS TO EMPLOYERS,”and your life. the questions are these :- Now, suppose we start with thewar, not with the I. As an employer have you seen that every fit man question of the rights or wrongs of the war-that we underyour control has beengiven every opportunity will leave outside the discussion-but with one or two of enlisting? phases of the war. Let us consider,for instance, 2. Have you encouraged your men to enlist by offer- yourposition in war time. Supposingthat you have ing to keeptheir positions open? felt the bloodin your head and been thrilled with the 3. Have you offered to helpthem in any other way thought of drumsand guns; supposing that the old if they will serve their country? love for the adventure path has flamed up in you, and 4. Have you any men still in your employ who ought you have beentempted to volunteer,what has held to enlist? you back? I know well enoughwhat has kept you Those questions are followed by a short paragraph, away from the camps, pulled they never so hardly ; it thus : “Ourpresent prosperity is largely due to the was a knowledge that the nation could not be trusted to men already in the field, but to maintain it and to end dealhonestly by you. Is itnot so? Didn’t you realise the War we musthave more men. Your country will at once that the State, although it was quite ready to appreciatethe help you give.More men are wanted call upon you to be a patriot and defend “your” coun- to-day. What canyou do?” try,was not ready to shoulder those responsibilities I think that is enough for the moment. Just ponder which you and I and thousands of other men have im- over that advertisementfor a bit,preferably late at posed upon ourselves. Of course,you did. Youmay night as you drink your last gill and smoke your last not haveput your feelings into words, but they pipe before going to bed, and next week we will have were definite enough.Why, some of us who another conk. Yours, fill thecolumns of the daily and weekly Press ROWLANDKENNEY. 239

brave,but that inspite of all attemptsto make them War and Religion. animals they remain human, the image and likeness of By Dmitri. Merezhkovski. God. The ore was covered by the earth, obscured with (Author of ‘‘Christand Anfichrist,” etc,) the rust of centuries. But the sword struck it, and the cleft glows. IF onewakes at nightand suddenly remembers, Cold,gold is theheart of the people ! “War!”a terror rises in the soul. May one fight, how More astonishingis the knowledge that until now can war be justified, what sense is there in war-how- we contemptuously called thetrue Europe the “lower ever we may answer these questions the terror remains classes.” Surely this war is the end of the old order of a terror. ‘‘lower classes,” and the commencement of anew un- Cannibalism long ago seemed natural. Men ate human known. Tobe just, there is grandeur in this end. If fleshwithout considering whether they should eat it; thebeginning of“lower class” Europe in thegreat afterwards they ceased, but also without consideration, revolution was splendid, so, too, its end in the great war simply because the taste of human flesh disgusted them. issplendid. And to him who now would attempt to taste it, there “Gold, gold is the heart of the lower classes!” would happenthe same as to Don Juan’scompanions The end of the lower classes is the end of individual- who, dying of hunger after the shipwreck, killed a man ism ; thefalse anti-religious affirmation of theperson- andate him. In Byron’swords, they “went raging ality. “Nowit is one of twothings : eitherto goto mad.” the war or to go to myself,” said to me one of the last War till now has seemed naturalto men,and they Russian individualists. fight,without considering whetherthey should fight ; That is, of course, self-deception;in yourself you will they will cease,also without consideration, when war not depart from the war, because the war isnot only disguststhem. And thisisbeginning already. For outsideus but also within us. It is precisely now, in Leonardo da Vincicalls war “most brutal madness,” thiswar without names,without leaders, without and Tolstoi has told the truth about war as no one else heroes,without personalities, that morethan ever can ever has. What is in a few great men is in many little be felt the littleness of one and the greatness of all. men : a Russian soldier wounded an Austrian with the Here is thetruth, but there is also falsehood or bayonet,afterwards took himon his shoulders and danger of falsehood. War is the eclipse of personality carried him a long time, tended him, and when he died not only false,but real. From Byron toIbsen, from went mad through pity and terror. Dostoievsky to Nietzsche, lower-class individualism did Our outcry against “German atrocities” is similar to not answerthe religious question of personality, but a commotion amongcannibals that human flesh was put it as it had neverbeen put before. The answer to actually being eaten underdone ! No, better simply eat this question-thatis whatawaits Europe, not from withoutcommotion; the worse it is, the better-the the war, but from what will be, or can be, after the war. sooner will war be disgusting. A man, while he remains And what awaits Russia? a man,already cannot fight; he must become an For Russia there can be two ways out. animal. It issaid that in modernwarfare the horses One is slavery-the victory of brutal nationalism and biteeach other; the men infect the animals with their militarism, which would be more awful than any defeat. ownbrutality. Nearly all that is said and done now is in this direction ; To shut the eyes and turn away the head and depart nearlyall the blood that flows iswater for this mill. from this horror, such is the first movement of a man But if it be so, must one still desire victory? Is not the who understands what war is. But there is nowhere to internal worse than the external enemy? But one can- go ; willy-nilly we all take part in thewar, all, slayer notdesire not to win. If victory cannotbe won with- and slain, eater and eaten, in this Thyestean feast. One outan alliance with the internal enemy, the alliance man alone cannot escape from the war ; all are to blame must be made.At thesame time we must realise the andmust do penance. To go apart, to besqueamish, danger of what is being done. to wash one’s hands of the war ; this is perhaps a greater Theother way out is liberty. We allhope that the crime than to take part in it with all the others. people aregoing into the war although again uncon- sciously or half-consciously, for some truth, and that this St. Kasyan and St. Nicholas came to God in heaven. truth will bethe “freedom” of Russia. The Russian Where have you been, St. Kasyan, asked God. Intelligentsiais the consciousness of Russia. At this I have been on earth ; I happened to pass a peasant moment less than ever must it disown its own spirit. whose load was sunk in the mud ; he asked me to help Who does not believe now in all he desires, sometimes him to pull it out, but I did not wish to soil my heavenly with mad and criminal ease? Belief is cheap, but doubt garments. costly.is Doubt-consciousness-an aerial recon- Well, and you, St. Nicholas, where have you got so naissance over the enemy’s camp ! Let us not be afraid dirty ? of doubt ; let us not fire upon our own aviators. I was on the earth ; I went along the same road and “Waragainst war,” “war for peace,”these are helped the peasant to pull out his load. empty words, worse than empty-false, while there re- Listen, Kasyan,then said God.Because you did not joices nationalism in its animal form. We see it in our help thepeasant, services will beheld for you only enemies, let us see it in ourselves. once every threeyears, but for you, St. Nicholas,be- Theend of war is theend of nationalism. War is cause you helped the peasant to pull out his load, there the limit of violence. Christianity dues not deny will be services twice a year. violence but surmounts it, and it expires. The religious The load of humanity hassunk in mireand blood. antimony of violence, the antimony of war-“one can- We must not pass by, retaining the cleanliness of our not but still must” fight; “one cannot but stillmust” heavenly garments.Let us lift out the load and soil kill-is not soluble in logic. The problem of the Russian ourselves with mire and blood. consciousness, of theRussian Intelligentsia, is con- tained herein-how to transfer the question of war from That there is also something good in war, everyone the rational to the religious plane, where this antimony sees at once. The world is so arranged that at the price dissolves into, “one cannot and therefore must not.” of great evil great good is bought. Unintentionally the If this war is a “war of all the world,” then its end is Devilserves God, but man must choose allthe same peace, the “peace of all the world.’’ between God and the Devil. “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you ; One of the“benefits” of war is realisation of the not as the world giveth, give I unto you.” people. We always believed in the people ; now we do The world wished togive its ownpeace, without not merely believe, but we both see and know. What is Christ,and this is what it gave.Let not this lesson surprising in war is not that the people are generous and go for nothing. 240

The peace of all the world, final peace, is final liberty. were of no use to Egypt or tous. Also, the preservation To explain to the people the liberating religious mean- of the suzerainty appeared essential to the prosecution ing, not of the war (war has no religious meaning) but of Disraeli’s policy of influencing the wholeMuslim of what can or will be after the war, is the task for the worldthrough Turkey. There were obvious difficulties Russian intelligence. in the way of an understanding with the Sultan Abdul Till the thunder rumbles, the peasant does not cross Hamid, but when the Young Turks came to power with himself ! Thethunder of warhas rumbled andthe love for all things British it was otherwise. But by then people have crossed themselves. Let us also cross our- our unknown rulers had made over England’s Turkish selves. The people will not hear us norfollow us until intereststo Russia, as we now perceive.Discarding we do. themore noble policy of civilisation, England now Religion-a “private affair. ” Whitherthis leads, aimed at mere possession of some parts of Turkey. The thisaffirmation of a false religiouspersonality, of re- TurkishEmpire, already divided upon paper, began ligious individualism, we see with our eyes in the awful to be divided up in fact. Soon after the outbreak of the fate of Germany. Let notthis lesson also go for Balkan War a friend of mine who is a member of Par- nothing. No, religion is not a private but a communal liamentinformed me that a group of memberswho affair, the most communal, the most public of all human concern themselves officiously with foreign affairs were affairs. sayingthat it was the moment to annexEgypt. I WhatChristianity is,what Christ is, how the be- exclaimed that that would be dishonourable. My friend ginning of the religiouscommunity is to be-until we smiled down on me. answerthis question, we cannotanswer the question “The men I’mspeaking of,’’ hesaid, “have never what will the war do for Russia? evenheard of such a thingas honour ! Itell them that, if theyannex Egypt, they will havea serious Nationalist movement instead of a ridiculous one.’’ ButEngland was content towait forher allotted The Case of Egypt. share of Turkey until the Young Turks could be posed as heraggressors. She meant totake Egypt and THEanomaly of the British position in Egypt had long muchmore eventually, and would not help the Turks troubledEnglish politicians, who are inherently unable at all. The immenseadvantage whichher hold on to perceive that an anomalous position may, after all, Egyptgave her forinfluencing Turkishcounsels was be a strong one. Egypt was a Turkish province which forgone.She wouldnot use it in thematter of the had won autonomyunder a governor or satrap whose Capitulations,when she might easily have secured Turkish‘neutrality and her treating Egypt, a neutral office hadbecome hereditary. A satrap of Egypt,the State,as a belligerent,while the Turks stilldoubted Khedive Ismaîl wentbankrupt. France and England, which side to embrace, was not, to say the least of it, as his principal creditors, thereupon took charge of the conciliatory. At thesame time, to pave the wayfor finance of Egypt.Ismaîl proved.recalcitrant to this what was coming, the German dream of taking Egypt dualcontrol. France and England made the Porte de- was forged by Britishstatesmen into a definite pose him and place his son Muhammad Tewfik on the Turkish project of invasion. throne. Twoyears later came the Arabist rebellion, History will recordthe treatment which theYoung when the Khedive Tewfik would have been turned out of Turks, withtheir English sympathies and. English Egypt but for the support of England, whose financial notions, gotfrom England. Instead of a rapproche- ment between Egypt and the Porte resulting from the interests in Egyptwere bound up with his dynasty. revolution, asthe East expected,the British Foreign France, though her financial interests in Egypt were as Office ordained a close alliancewith theKhedive ; great as ours, refused to go to war with the Egyptian whichplunged the country back into corruption. nationalists. England reconquered Egypt for the Khedi- Abbâs IIhad no lovefor England,but he hated the vial house, and remained in Egypt afterwards, with an Young Turks. His scheme was to get rid of the Otto- army of occupation,ostensibly as mere adviser to the mansuzerainty by England’s help andafter that, by Egyptian Government, but in reality as sovereign ruler thehelp of allthe Arabs who would fall toEngland when the Turkish Empire was divided, to get rid of us of the country. The purelytemporary nature of the and found an Arab Empire. He managed to indoctrin- occupation has been often and with great solemnity de- ate our statesmen withhis views withouttheir know- clared by Britishstatesmen. But no importance what- ledge. The presentscheme of governmentfor Egypt soever has been given to the declaration except by the is, in essentials,his. Hissympathies were allwith most guileless of Egyptiannationalists; because, for England at the outbreak of the war. The predicament one thing,it was quite indefinite, thetime suggested which lost him thethrone was none of hisseeking. Indeed, his case is quite pathetic. A number of people for the evacuation of Egypt being that when the Egyp- --I myself among them-had been dinninginto the tians should be ready for self-government in England’s Young Turks the danger to the Turkish Empire which estimation;andbecause, from the daywhen thefirst was involved in the Khedive’s intrigues throughout the sand was moved for the Suez Canal, Disraeli, England’s Arab provinces.A few weeks before theoutbreak of greatestforeign statesman, had decided thatEngland theEuropean war, H.H. wasshot and very nearly must thenceforward seek control of Egypt. It was per- killed by one of hisown loving subjects, an Egyptian fectly well known that England would remain in Egypt student, in Constantinople. In consequence of that as long as she remained a Power ; and her keeping up attempt uponhis life ithappened that hewas lying the fiction that she was a mere adviser was regarded by ill in Turkey when thewar broke out. The Young onlookers as astute diplomacy.Still, thoughEgypt Turks then, remembering the warning whichthey had prospered and was well content, the anomalous regime received, kept him practicallya prisoner. Worse still, had certainly its disadvantages for those entrusted with theGerman embassy got hold of him,and wrested the task of ruling Egypt as it were by stealth. Particu- from him statements,even documents, which cut him larlydid itannoy the red-tape bureaucrat at homein off fromevery chance of England’sfavour. Thus it. England, who began to talk of “regularising our posi- happened thatthe greatest schemer in theEast, the tion in Egypt.” Now there were two ways of simplify- founder in great measure of our present Oriental policy, ing that regime : by throwing off the Turkish suzerainty wascheated of the fruit of allhis labours, and con- or by suppressing the Khedivial throne. I, for one, have demned to see a comparativelystupid, therefore unde- alwaysadvocated the latter expedient, if anychange serving relative,proclaimed Sultan of Egypt.Why had absolutely to be made ; because the suzerainty was Sultan? one istempted to inquire. The answer to popular in Egypt, while the Khedivial throne was not, that questionmakes another article. andbecause the Khedive Abbâs II and hisentourage MARMADUKEPICKTHALL. 241

haveclipped its more dangerousclaws. It had shown “The Menace of English neither the shrewdness nor the duplicity which enabled ” English Junkerdom so to transform all the machinery of Junkerdom. democracy-Parliament,the universities, the endowed IN the “sober talk about the war” with which Mr. Ger- schools, the Church, the ‘free’ (but plutocratic) Press- nard§haw recently entertained the town he made a as to make that machinery but a means of entrenching reference to ‘‘English Junkers,” but in what he had to itsposition of real domination and control. This, in- saythere was, curiously enough,no reference to the deed, has been the story from the time that the English fact that at least some German Socialists do honestly be- country gentleman of the eighteenth century-true type lievethat English politics in theirinternal realities as of the Junker, though he more than any other ‘ made apartfrom their external forms are, infact, more Englandwhat it is’-created somehow by hisParlia- Junker-ridden than the German ; and still less did Mr. mentaryrhetoric the general impression that he was Shawgive any comparison of English and German dyingon the altar of popularliberties and giving his politicswhich, in the German opinion aforesaid, sup- life for the defence of the nation’s freedom when, as a portsthis view. Such a comparison I heard made on matterof mere fact, he was in reality busily engaged themorrow of thedeclaration of war by aneducated by his Enclosure Acts in robbing the English peasantry Prussian turned Socialist (nothing less!) who had spent of their land and so of their real freedom. During this someyears at an English university. He made it in same period, or a little later, the Prussian Junker, with reply tothe usual English contention that Germany nodemocratic oratory at all, was engaged in turning stood for Nietzscheanism, the philosophy of Power, and serfsinto peasant proprietors; so thatto-day in Ger- thather defeat would involve the definite defeat of many,in oppressed and autocratic Prussia even, most Europeanreaction. As againstthis view my Socialist of the peasantry own their land ; while in Britain, after Prussiansubmitted a casewhich, in so far as itmay so manybrilliant victories €or political freedom, the helpus to understand certain German feeling on this peasant has lost his land. In Germanythe universities matter-and later on when the time comes to deal with andhigher education, the ministry of theChurch are it it will be necessary to understand it in some degree- forall alike, rich and poor ; inEngland the ‘public’ may be worth a little consideration. He put it in about schools, the universities-both established for the poor these terms :- -have been annexed for the exclusive use of the rich; “This fight of thedemocratic elements of Europe and even the ministry of the national church is the pre- against the philosophy of power was, before the war, serve of the Junker class and its protégés. In fact, the goingon all overEurope. It was an uphill fight, but EnglishState is the absolute possession of aclass: had been steadily gaining ground in Germany, and los- allthat it really accords to those outside the Junker ingground in England. In Germany Junkerdomwas paleis to choosebetween two parties in thatclass. a threatened institution, in obvious danger; in England Besidesuch real efficiency in themaintenance of auto- it was not threatened at all, but successfully masked be- cracy, as all this shows, I am obliged to admit that the hindthe form of freedom.In England, Parliamentary Prussian Junker is a simpleton, a country bumpkin. He government had become a brilliant sham, an entertain- shouldcome to England to learn his business. He inghistorical masquerade of political processes and knows nothing of that astute manipulation of the lower methodsthat once represented a means of checking orderswhich obtains the plaudits of thevery men it power, but by an acute transformation have since come robs. All thatthis country-bumpkin of Prussiacan do to mean a method of preserving power in the hands of is toflourish his sword and retain some semblance of a smallclique. A landlesspeasantry, an endowed and authority by retaining the military type of organisation ; established church, the open saleof the seatsof its senate, for this purpose he works the danger of Russian abso- the growth of the caucus, the stiffening of the methods lutism for al! it is worth with the democratic elements, of the party system, the secrecyof its funds, the shaving and the danger of British politico-economic domination down of the privileges of the private member, the poli- withthe middle ,classes, and as the result has enabled tical inefficiency of Labour representation, the increase theEnglish Junker to use the German danger for a ofpower in the Executive, the creation of a Cabinet similar political end in England, it comes about that the within the Cabinet acting in secret, all diplomatic work democracies of the two countries, instead of fighting to- confined toone small social class, the growth of the gether the common enemyof which they are the victims, power of a plutocratically owned press within the hands arein every sense playing the game of thatcommon of two orthree individuals, had practically placed the enemy by fighting one another. government of England, especially in such issues as war “You don’t believe that the English upper, or upper- and peace, within the absolute control of ten or fifteen middle or middle-middle classes have devised a plot to men. In the things that matter, the power of this little deprivethe population of itsproperty and of any real Junta-a form of control, a powerfrightfully difficult control in the government and destinies of his country? to fightbecause so elusive,much more difficult to Neither do I; but it is what has happened. I don’t sup- grapple with than the definite and public position of the pose there was a deliberate plot on the part of the mili- bureaucracy of Germany-was far in excess of that of tarist either in England or in Germany to use the war the Junker party in Germany which for some years had as a meansof strengthening one form of society as beenfighting a losingbattle, retaining those rights against a rivalform. None of us knowsperhaps the which appealed most to its militarist sense of dignity : realnature of the motives he is obeying. We can no the right to push ladies off the pavement and cut open more trace all the operations of mind which produce a the heads of unarmed cripples. Rut it was so obviously given result in conduct and opinion than we can follow threatenedan institution (which English Junkerdom with our eye the passage of a rifle bullet to its mark. obviously was not), that for twenty years the Prussian Our instinct often tells us that our actions are in tune had been steadily yielding very nearly all the points in with our fundamental beliefs when we are quite unable the policy of theparty that opposed him. The Social toexplain the harmony, just as thechild or the un- Democratic Party had got so much farther with its pro- lettered gypsy or negro can detect a false note or rhythm grammethan had the corresponding party in Eng- in a song without knowing that such things as time, or land,that the latter’s most daring social experiments crotchets and quavers exist. Do you suppose the publi- were but clumsy imitations of it. The swaggering, but can, who is almost certain to be a flamboyant jingo, or notvery rich nor powerful Junkerdomhad become theshoemaker a burningRadical, could explainthe cordially detested by the proletariat of the whole of the connection between beer and patriotism or shoe-leather Empire and in all the southern half ofit by the bour- and republicanism? Yet there are quite definite reasons geoisie, the intellectuals and the aristocracy as well. Its for that connection or it would not work out in 99 per position was definitely threatened and it could not much cent. of cases. You remember the ‘Punch’ butler who, longerhave resisted political developments that would in order properly to provide for his master’s clergymen 242

guests,wanted to know their ecclesiasticalcolouring, overthe theft. “Patriots don’t steal,’? as Robespierre because‘the ’ighthey drinks more wine,and the low once said to Fouché, “for everything belongs to them.” they eats more victuals’ ? That butler showed a highly I need hardly say,and--pace “R. H. C.”--I have developed gift forgeneralisation_. It was so correct madeit quite clear in my Introduction, that Gobineau that you could almost write the history of the Reforma- hadnothing to do with these academic, and therefore tion in itsterms. But he could nothave given you a unconscious,thieves and swindlers. “It is a terrible single reason for it or explained it in any way. thing,” says Goethe, “if a greatman fallsinto the “Neither can English Junkerdom explain the connec- hands of little disciples,’’ and if these disciples happen tion between belief in armaments and disbelief in Par- to belearned professors the calamity borders upon liamentary government, or theconnection between the tragedy €or “un sot savant est plus sot qu’un autre.” protection of privilege at homeand the prosecution of Nothing stands in the way of these intellectual aviators aggression abroad ; or what a liking for the House of who, sailing in their metaphysical flying-machines, soar Lords has gotto do with a dislike of foreigners, or highabove the sordid reality of the plainestfacts. No why a man who feels sympathy for the poor should feel protest from below penetrates into their aerial heights, anantipathy to jingoes. Yetthe Junker,English and and no denial of Gobineau could protect him from the Germanalike, knows perfectly well that these ap- love of theGermans. Gobineau, who liked the Ger- parently disconnected things are very intimately related, mans of the Middle Ages, the Franks, the Langobards, as he knows that war and international mistrust are the theMerovingians, dislikedmodern Germany,the out- natural buttresses of reaction and privilege. Neither the come of that (to him, the pagan) detestable Protestant Englishnor the Prussian militarist has concocted any Revolution ; he despised German metaphysics and Ger- plot against the democracy. Both have followed a very manmaterialism, which are likewise children of the sound instinct which leads them to fight democracy by Reformation,and he loathed German democracy and thesame means. And whatever happens, whichever German Socialism, which are no less the ugly offspring side wins, Junkerdom will come out on top.” of “evangelical”freedom. He protestedagainst this My Prussian was quite honest. One wonders whether in all his books,but without success. Awoman bent there is anything in hiscase. “Pour copie conforme,” upon love will loveeven a stockbroker,and a Teuton as theas Frenchjournalists say. A PUBLICIST. bent upon “patriotism” will embrace even a Gobineau. “R. H. C.’’ is therefore mistaken in calling Gobineau “the intellectual advance guard of Prussianism,” for a Gobineau andChamberlain. manmust never be judged by hisdisciples. Christ’s By Dr. Oscar Levy. teachingwas probably quite different from that of St. Paul,and betweenGobineau and themodern German THEancient saying, “Habent sua fata libelli,” ought thereyawns a stillgreater abyss. This abyss, to be translated, “Books sometimeshave thefate of however,has beenadroitly bridged over by a very beinglibelled,” This is, at least, what has happened giftedwriter, an Englishman living inGermany, a to my Essay on Gobineau, which met with the fatality scholarand artist, who has made Gobineaupalatable of being severely misunderstood by your literary critic, to the modern German Imperialist. The scholar’s name “R. H. C.”It is a fatality, no doubt,not to succeed is Houston StewartChamberlain, and his art consists in conveyingyour meaning to such awitty and intel- in the art of compromise. The professors, you see, ligent man (for what will the others be like, if even he are, on the whole,clumsy and honest fellows andnot misunderstands?), a fatality, however, compensated for quiteversed in that valuable art whichnowadays is by theconsideration that itis a blessingnowadays necessaryfor success in literatureas elsewhere.Mr. even to be misunderstood, for there is a worse alterna- Chamberlain possesses it in a high degree, and thus he tive in our age, which is to be ignored. wrote a book,“The Foundations of theNineteenth “R. H. C.”charges me withintellectual sympathy Century,”which compromisesbetween Gobineau and for the Germans, because I am an admirer of Gobineau, modern Germany and likewise bridgesover another whowas introduced into this country under my spon- gulf thatseems almost unbridgeable-that of Chris- sorshipand who now turnsout to be the man “who tianityand Aristocracy (Race).Over this bridge (a brought Germany the bee she has got in her bonnet.” verybridge of sighs for anyonewith an intellectual Now thereis certainly some truth in this, but, as one conscience) has passed the whole of Germany-princes, might say, a truth greatly exaggerated. It is quite true, professors,priests, and populace-into thehappy forinstance, that Gobineauhad the habit of extolling hunting-ground of dreamlandand mysticism. Once the Germanicconqueror tribes of the Middle Ages at landedthere, they immediatelyfelt relieved, for they theexpense of hisdecadent French contemporaries, had satisfiedtheir conscience, which eternally re- much as our own Chestertons and Bellocs have the habit proachesthem with their materialism ; theyhad dead- of contrasting the brilliant Church of the Middle Ages ened itspricks by copious draughtsout of agood againstthe dull Nonconformity of to-day.Gobineau old English whisky bottle. liked thegay, youthful, aristocratic, though somewhat It wasthe great success of Chamberlain’sbook barbarian, splendour of, say, the Merovingian Courts, which, besides personal conversations with my country- which, by the way, such a gifted Englishman as George men,enabled me to diagnose the soul of modernGer- Gissing likewise preferred to the industrial and Social- many, which permittedme to lift the veil fromthe isticgloominess of latter-day civilisation. Thisis all future, which encouraged me, as “R. H. C.” kindly that Gobineaudid, but thisslight and perfectlyjusti- expressesit, “to predict war asthe only means of fied predilection was sufficient to causeone of the settlingthe difference,not of opinion, but of feeling, greatestcalamities in literaryhistory. Gobineau fell betweenGermany andthe rest of theworld.” It was into the hands of the German professors, into the hands Chamberlain,not Gobineau, not even Gobineau mis-. of thosemandarins of culture,who have to provide understood, who put “the bee into the German bonnet” “patriotism” for thebudding youth of Germany. The and which putme into such a rageabout my com- ideas of raceand eugenics were then just started in patriotsand their ready acceptance of nonsense that I Europe, and the professors were looking out for some- jumped into prophecy and began to tell the world what one who stood for the Teutonic variety of the European mightbe expectedfrom and for themodern Teuton. rabble. Theyhit uponGobineau. Theytranslated his “Chamberlain’s Foundations,” I wrote in my introduc- books. Theywrote books onhis books. They skil- tion to Gobineau’s “Renaissance,”pp. 47-49, had a fully exploitedhis ‘‘Germanic” tendencies and applied wonderful success. All the leaders of thought, from the themwith moreenthusiasm than justice from the German Emperor down to the humblest schoolmaster,were overflowing withdelight. The GermanEmperor had a mediæval German to the citizen of the modern Empire. copy of the book sent to every school, and all the school- Gobineau, thatracy, witty, sprightly nobleman, was masters of the Fatherland were busy-with the additional thus commandeered by theGerman patriots, not help of the cane-in impressingupon the minds and one of whom hadthe decency orintelligence to blush bodies of the Germanyouths their heroic descent. What 243 they had long suspected, but did not dare to think, was now proved beyond all doubt; they were a noble, a pure The Hyphenated States of race. Just as Molière’s bourgeois gentilhomme was astonished and delighted when he was told by someone America. that he spoke “prose,” the bourgeois allemand was per- haps less astonished but even more charmed that he was I. himself “poetry” and “culture,” that his very blood was heroicand holy, that he was a member of a race, as a IT is customary to excuse the roughness and the incon- matter of fact, of the noblest race on earth. And out of gruities ofAmerican life byinsisting that the country this race, so Chamberlain had assured him in his book, is“new,” and to emphasise the compensatory factors there would “blossom out a future and harmonious cul- of energy,resourcefulness and enterprise to be found ture such as the world had never seen before, a culture in a “young”community. European critics usually incomparably more beautiful than any of which history succeed in beingcaught on the horns of the dilemma has to tell, a culture in which men would really be better thus presented.They either damn everything as being and happier than they are at present!”God was in His Heaven, all was right with the world, the triumph of the crude, or-as ismore usual of late-they prostrate Teuton assured for ever. Standing upright in his trium- themselves,with abject praise and apology, before the phalcar, with flashing eyes and quivering nostrils, this mechanical gods of Business. It would help us more if grandson of Arminius,captain no more of barbarian we wereallowed to glimpsesome fundamental facts, hordes but of industry and “culture,” was driven up the instead of beingregaled with complaints about ice- Capitoline Hillto receive an enormous, well-deserved water,or cheap enthusiasms oversky-scrapers and laurelwreath for hissquare, capacious, culturedhead. Only one little important figure was missing in this noisy colossalindustries. The plea of youth,for example, procession. In orderto check the hubris of the victorious loses much of its force, and takes on a new significance, conqueror, in order to restrainthat pride which invari- when we find that there exists a permanent check upon ably comes before the fall, the Romansnever forgot to development, which threatensto stunt the growth of employ a slave, who was seen standing next to the hero theinfant nation. The United States are filled with upon the quadriga and heard to whisper into his ear from undigestedchunks of nationality,and unless the pro- time to time the warning, “Remember that thou, too, art cess of assimilation can be accelerated, it is difficult to mortal.” Thisslave was wanting;but, instead of the slave, a herd of slavishand time-serving authors and seehow a truenation is toarise fromthis soil. This critics assured the pure-blooded captain on the triumphal problem has, of course,been raised by afew sociolo- car that Chamberlain’s book was thelast word on the gists, but their remarks have received but little atten- subject,and that in this giftedEnglishman the Teuton tionfrom the majority of theircountrymen. As for Achilles had at last found a heaven-inspired Homer who foreigners, theyhave naturally no means of knowing could do justice to his character and noble achievements howserious the question is, for theirinformants are in past,present andfuture. notconcerned with anything more substantial than I have I quoted atlength in ordertoprove to travellers’gossip. “R. H. C.” thatto beon the side of Gobineaudoes Normally,this absence of homogeneity does not not necessarily mean to be on the side of Chamberlain obtrude itself upon the attention of a public solely con- andthe modern Germans. For once---l amglad to cernedwith themaking of money. The colonies of say--I have the pleasure of swimming with the stream Italians,Russians, Germans and other Europeans and of sharing the prevailing opinion of the hour; but existapart, serving the impressionistic journalist with even here this rare pleasure is disturbed for me by the copy,the profiteers with cheaplabour, or the police factthat my objectionsagainst Germany have other with legitimateand illegitimate revenue. The average causes than those of the great British public. Even here citizenis quite contentto reflect upon thesuperiority I have to plough my lonely furrow, for I am a member andadvantages of theRepublic which sheltersand of thatextinct politicalspecies, of whichonly a few employsthe benighted emigrantsfrom Europe. He petrified specimenshave survived-the species “Tory” doesnot realise his indebtedness to oursystem of -and I can only loatheas such where a Modernist wagery,and considers the unlimited field for exploita- venerates,and I can only venerate where a Modernist tion thuspresented to him as theresult of his own loathes. Modern Europeobjects tothe militarism of philanthropy. His officials atthe variousports of Germany, which is the lesser evil of this country, which entrysift the misery andretain for American con- even is anecessary evil nowadaysand which atleast sumption only what promises to be good wage-earning cultivates virtues of the second order : obedience, effici- material.Uncle Sam, ashe delights to call himself, ency, andself-sacrifice ; while I, as aTory, object to continues to seehis country as a haven of refugefor Germany’sdemocracy and her democratic materialism theoppressed and needy, thanksto that capacityfor and romanticism,which cultivate no virtueswhatever romantic self-deceptionwhich enables him to believe and only lead to uncleanliness in thought and in action. hehas achieveddemocracy. Encouraged by his news- It isthis uncleanliness, this mysticism of German papers, historians and statesmen, who cling desperately thought, that has plunged Europe into war ; but, even to the generalisations of eighteenth century philosophy, if it did, and even if no good European could wish for he rejoicesin the thought that all men are equal,and the victory of the mystic over Europe, German militar- that his laws recognise this interesting fiction, that he ism has succeeded in performinggreata deed. It has swept away all the pomps and servility of monarchi- silenced all thewomen, who during this war gladly calcountries, and conferred the benefits ofliberty, renounced their claims to equality ; it disturbed all the “Idealists,” who before this time were woefully at ease equalityand fraternity upon thedupes of European in Zion ; itwoke up thatmost comfort-loving British aristocracy and absolutism. nation, which is so difficult to rouse ; it has shaken all Such is the Americancitizen, as he views his newly the othernations of Europe out of their humanitarian arrivedbrothers in thebright light of the symbolical andsocialistic, Christianand “progressive” dreams, Statue of Liberty. He is undisturbed by the spectacle dreams which can only lead to the degeneracy of the of continuous immigration and unmoved by its failure human species. toput histheories into practice. Years of familiarity The ball isset rolling, and,though itmay stop for with the negro problem have somewhat dulled the edge a time,it will go on rollingfor generations. It is idle of hissensitiveness tothe clash of theoryand fact. to thinkthat this war will end war: it will, on the The shockexperienced by the foreigner on seeing contrary, only start a new Napoleonic Era of Wars. Italiansclassed withcoloured men as an inferior race Thegamble for the mastership of Europehas begun isnot sensed by theAmericans. They have had no andit will not end until thatmastership has been difficulty in swallowing the gnat of negro segregation, reachedand Europe has become oneand united. and then the camel of more extensiverace differentia- I would consequently advise our children and grand- tion. Racial parvenus, like their social equivalents, are children to be born with the thickest possible skins and naturallymost insistent upondistinctions. Butthe skulls. “goodEuropean” may be pardoned a natural move- 244

ment of indignationwhen he finds some fine, sensitive Americanconviction asto the inferiority of Southern Italian face looking up at him from a gang of negroes Europeans. diggingup the street. One sees these faces often, Nevertheless, thissystem of importingunfortunates beautiful traces of a great race and an old culture ; they whose ignorance of English makes them an easy prey, are invariably bent over the lowest work, that is, work flourishes,and even where its specific aimhas been which has been stigmatised and degraded unnecessarily thwarted,its danger from the national point of view by the“democratic” critics of Europeanservility. The remains.The danger consists in thesegregation in- tragedy and irony of the situation are heightened by a volved. We knowthat wherever there is immigration reference to the faces of those who dominate this hier- foreign colonies exist, but in the States their existence arch.;. The thin, hard mouths and cold, sharp features is based upon something more than the mere desire of en the onehand, and the huge, bull-necked, double- mento live withtheir compatriots. As a result of the chinned, overfed creatures on the other, who represent stigmatisation of manycommon employments certain the majority of any crowd of men, are, to the European work has become the sole opening for certain races. It sense, insultadded to injury. It is positively revolting follows, then, that these people are of necessity .obliged that a countrywhere the physical and physiognomic toherd together. Cut off byindustrial ostracisation levels are so debasedshould despise as inferiors the fromthe general social life ofthe community, having inhabitants of Southern Europe. Whenthe plutocracy little use for the language of the country, they inevit- travels,it professes to appreciate the beauties of Italy ably form a society apart and feel in no way identified or Greece; at home it is blind. with thenational existence of thecountry in which theyreside. When, in addition, their gregariousness The artificial degradation of manual labour is one of and isolationare intensified by their being drafted’ off the most ingenious devices of an essentially anti-demo- to mining camps, the chances of their being assimilated craticcommunity. At thesame time it is a great in- are extremely remote. In the cities the Italian labourer pedimentto the process of nationaldigestion. Once orbootblack may eventually find anopportunity of certainwork is reduced in status no American will beingfused with the national life, but where he is undertake it ; consequently it falls to the coloured people thrownentirely upon thesociety of his fellows he will andthe “Dagos.” The latterbeing ignorant of the diean alien. Indeed, it is not uncommon for immi- trap, poor, and probably without education, take what- grants to spend their lives in the States withoutlearning everwork they can get, only to find thatthey have to speak the language of the country. therebybecome, asit were, a subjectrace. Nobody will pretend that the cleaning of boots is a particularly. It is hardly necessary to state that there is no desire tosuggest that Italians have never been allowed to elevatingoccupation, but the American horror of it is farcical. If one may judge by the preponderance of un- occupypositions of trustor importance in the ‘United brushedboots, those democrats who are unable to States.They have certainly risen frequently above the afford twopence-halfpenny or fivepence-according as “Dago” lev-el, hutthe fact remains that the races so theboots are black or brown-daily, for a “shine,” designated are heavilyhandicapped. The essential prefer to be slovenly to polishing their own boots. This pointis that there is a constantstream of human is the most familiar instance of this typically American materialflowing into the Stateswhich does notmix snobbishness where manual work is concerned. Italians, freelyor rapidly enoughwith the current of national Slavs and Greeks who come to the United States should existence.Intime it mightbeabsorbed, but the be warnedthat their race condemns them to such absorptionis so slowthat coagulation is inevitable. occupationsasare deemed unworthyoffree-born The stagnant waters breed the scum of crime and dis- citizens.In Jamaica a white man may be the servant content which are already a menace to stability. More- sf one who is coloured ; an ignorant white is expected over,even when these unassimilated elements appear to defer to acultured black. Inthe States the most to have mingled with the stream, it is soon found that illiterate,uncouth American, whose appearance would they are only being carried along on the surface of the debar him from the average club in England, is privi- waters : theyare not absorbed. This becomes evident leged to despise and insult any “nigger” or “Dago.” whenever the waters are disturbed by some great crisis. Thenthe heterogeneous bodies are swirled about until The profiteers, of course, have no objection to raise theycoalesce with their own elements massed in the againstthis method of preservingunassimilated stagnantplaces. Thus, in the present war this un- elements.The stigma attaching to manual labour, digestedmaterial within the politic body has made having kept the Americans out of certain employments, itself feltin a mannerwhich not even the most com- Consequentlyreduces the rate of wages paid to those placentcitizen can ignore. The theory of an American who do the work despised. Low status and low wages nation has been badly shaken, for it is evident that the arecomplementary. In theStates, however, there is United States is mainly a congeries of races whose real a nuancenot generally found elsewhere. Instead of allegiance is to their respective nations in Europe. The low status resulting from low wages, low wages are the main stock is pro-English, as one might expect from an result of low status. In other words the predisposition ex-colony,while the remainder of the‘population is againstcertain forms of work is thefruit, not of grouped according to the diplomatic programme of the economic,but of social ideas.This is obviouslyvery countries from which it is drawn. poorground upon which to build anindustrial de- President Wilson at once recognised the significance mocracy. Thecapitalists, needless to say, arenot at of thesedivergencies, and, with touching confidence, all distressed at the prospect. How could they be, seeing appealedtoall true Americans toremain neutral. thatthey are equally indifferent to the welfare of the Those whowould not do so hedubbed “hyphenated nationwhich should be developing- withtheir help? Americans,”and denounced mostbitterly. Unfortun- Inmany cases they are aggravating precisely those ately, for the reasons previously outlined,it is difficult conditionswhich militate against the end in question. to ascertainwhat is precisely a simpleAmerican. Ger- Englishmen, by birth or descent: have been practically man-Americans,Gaelic-Americans, Italian-Americans, driven from the coal mines, and their successors are, of yes, but what is an American, where is he to be found? course,the so-called “inferior races.” Rockefeller As far as one can see this title is reserved to the pro- foundthat Greeks would be a goodinvestment in English majority, but President Wilson would like them Colorado,and imported them accordingly. Knowing tobe discreet enough to restrain their sympathies. little English they were, less likely to be contaminated Somesucceed, either from a wish to substantiatethe by Socialistpropaganda ; being“Dagos” they would President’sillusion, or because more money is to be be paid at the inferior rate suitable to their nationality. madeby trading equally with the Allies andthe Ger- As is still evident in Colorado since the last massacre, mans.The majority fail because they are surrounded theidea did notwork out so well after all. Socialism by theintensely chauvinistic offshoots of thevarious hasan occasional tendency to overridethe respectable Europe. in stemparent E. A. B. 245

world has been but very rarely troubled by this pheno- Impressions of Paris. menon,which implies a shrinking of Naturefrom her THEother night I saw my friend, who is dead. Icannot task to support thesoul of mankind. When Woman, accountfor it. I was notthinking about her. Sud- thenatural conserver, kills, her action symbolises the denly,we were gazing ateach other. She, lovely, annihilation of the race. We do notknow, certainly, lovely as I ever saw her, was in a beautiful place, where whetherthe race is about to be destroyed, but we do sheseemed neither to sit nor stand nor walk, though not feel that it is. The appearance of thisregiment of she moved much-but just to be. I said, “You were an German women is no more than the shadow of a destiny old thing to go and die.” overhanging Germany. The Servians, also,. permitted a “I’m not dead,” she replied. corps of slaying women, and in the fate of that nation Astrip of bluespace separated us, only a step,but will not likely be found much to envy;notwithstanding neither of us dreamed of crossing it. that the position was believed by the women themselves “What do you do there?” I asked her. to be one of defence and not of attack. The quality of “Muchthe same sort of thing.Only more what I reserve,which is intellectual, will notdistinguish the wanted. What we do here is real.” Servians. But rarely from this nation a man of ideas ! “Shall you come back?” No, no; a womanmust never destroy anything. In “No; we can’t come back.” a moment of rage she will destroy things, but such acts “Will you come and see me again?” donein a ragehave very little psychic consequence “Yes.Very often. You ! I am amusedto see you whateverthe physical effects may be. Fromthis doing lots of the things you used to scold me for. And imaginativereasoning, I regardthe Pankhursts, who I used to listen!” attemptedto turn women towards deliberate destroy- We laughedvery much, and she went away, and I ing, as sinister characters. wentto sleep, thinking of allthe questions I had not By way of being very joyful on Christmas Eve, I gave asked ! Until now, I have had a horror of returning to a mad party. It wasn’t meant to be mad, but it went; England,afraid to realise that she had gone. I shall because half the people turned out to hate the other half never feel like that any more. and so everybody had to strive like anything to make thingsgo. We stroveand strove. We playedand sang to each other, we improvised, we dashed out and The war has come home to Montparnasse this week. fetchedguitars, we danced, we offered each other all Mesahas beenkilled. You don’t know him. Hewas the cakes and drinks we had had our own eyes on. And the large, bearded Spaniard, a writer, who used to go at lastthings went. And thenSylvia came in with to the balls as Bacchus and a Sultan, and anything that apologies and that perennially green hat and we lowered such a presencecould carry off likenobody else. He the lights while she recited De Musset’s “Nuit de mai.” engagedin a Frenchregiment, and now he is dead. And Iwept nearly. Rut what a poem ! Theydon’t The last time I saw him was at the Lilas, where he came writelike that now. They don’t believe in theMuses, intoour company, and then se fiché’d un peu de moi these modern poets. And thatis to say that they are because I stutteredover the French. That wasn’t his not poets at all, and know nothing of eternal and uni- fault,but his ignorance. I sympathisedwith him and versalbeauty. smiledadieu. He wasquite a darling,and the balls Think’st thou that I am like the autumn wind will be simply rubbish without him. That breathed up the tears on a tomb, But look at the Boulevard ! There is the war all the Making no more of woe than of the dew? time.Military drivers on half thevehicles ; soldiers To hear the muse speak like this, one must have been coming in and going back ; ambulances and strings of lostupon the mountains, or have lived in lyre-builded freshcavalry horses. A troop of “blues”not yet bap- Thebes. tised under fire swingsalong, and, on the opposite Thismorning is adorablewith a soit, hopefulrain pavement, a troop not even qualified for the young blue, falling. I am so very happy in this draughty studio as keeps,not time, but just an envious little in therear to be able to see and adore the morning-. The space of with eyes over the road. I saw a thing very pathetic- skyin front is wide, and I look out across those red two cripples helping each other along. I ran after them roofsthat were tiled before Paris had gone under to through the dusk, and we had a word. Two fractures in Berlin. Thejournals here frequently fill up a patriotic theleg one, and the other-you couldn’tsay what he cornerwith some horrible example of Berlin architec- had;he laughed it off. ture.But, really, one smiles with the profoundest Soldiers wounded go throughParis with scarcely a irony.For wherever Paris can lay itscommercial penny totheir name. It is disgraceful,isn’t it? I saw handson some low-built house or street of housesto allthat once before during a war. It never does to be pull them down and build sky-scrapers-Paris is doing shy of offeringsomething. Where does onesuppose just this! Ithas done it for years. At every eye-turn theyare going to acquire wealth--on the field? From yousee some colossal blank wall Prussianising over theGovernment ? Fromtheir families? Theirfamilies beautifulhouses, shutting out all light and sun. There are all worse of€ thanbefore the war began. A must he also thousands of flats in Paris the tenants of rumour is goinground that a regimentcomposed of which never get a direct ray of light indoors-and those eight hundred German women is in the trenches. Come, not cheapflats, but madly expensive. Mad, really, is then, Barbarism, I felt inclined to say, like an own babe no exaggeratedword to employ of peoplewho, un- we’ll takethee to our breast. But then I remembered obliged,submit to live so likeunderground creatures. how my grandmother told me that the black “savages” Well, thereare thousands of suchParisians. And inpassing to andfro her house to battleleft her un- their city for spirit-feeding air is the most gifted one in. molested. They wouldn’t condescend to kill a woman ; all the world that I have ever been in, and I have been. and their women never fought. The action of the Ger- inmany. Mad! On the Boulevard Montparnasse, man women cannot be purebarbarism. It is certainly wherethe sun rises at one end and sets at the other, justGerman æsthetic decadence. The whole world for what sun getsthrough between rising and setting is long before the war was corrupted by this German de- due to the few low roofs that are left between the sky- cadence. Here we have the last mad spasm of energy. scrapers.Here and there an obstinate Frenchman re- Butwhatever are our men going to do? We women fusesto sell hishome-house and garden to the cannot advise them deliberately to kill these creatures; builders, and there across his house pours through the the suggestion would re-act €or centuries on the whole glorious sunlight. All the rest is in day-longshadow. lotof us. All thesame they will haveto be killed if Aroundmy studio tower three of thesemonstrous, they come under fire. Let us pray for a merciful mitrail- walls,and except for the war, where I nowadore the leuse to blot them out in five minutes. The psychology skythere would be standing blocks of flatslike those of a femalewho deliberately sets outto shed blood is that are up, where people can all but shake hands across, somethingtoo humanly inimical for investigation.The the lower flats, of course, being in perpetual shade. But 246

for a citythat boasts a -prisonlike La Santé, the Thatstory, perhaps, then gave rise to a weaker copy wickedest building probably in the whole world, an in- of his emotion in others, until there arose a cult, a com- fernal fortress of a prison, fit for guarding Minotaurs, pany of people who could understand each other’s non- perhaps, but not human beings-for the people of this sense about the gods. cityto rebuke the Prussian architecture is an imper- As Isay, these things were afterwards incorporated tinencestark and insensate. Whoever designed La for the condemnable “good of the State,” and what was Santémight have designed hell, and this design was once a species of truth became onlylies and propaganda. accepted by the people of Paris whose fathers razed the And they told horrid tales to little boys in order to make Bastilleto the last stone ! Someday, perhaps, some them be good ; or to the ignorant populace in order to poet will lead the Parisians against La Santé, but they preserve the empire ; andreligion came to an end and will need to borrow the cannon of the “Huns” to make civicscience began tobe studied. Plato saidthat ingress to those devil-conjectured walls. artists ought to be kept out of the ideal republic, and Certainly, it is not entirely bad that the French should the artists swore by their gods that nothing would drag be ridiculing these “magnificent specimens of the heavy theminto it. That is the history of “civilisation,”or German style.” What is entirely bad isthat they will philology or Kultur. certainlycomplete the Germanisation ofParis. Well, When any man is able, by a pattern of notes or by I am glad to have seen it even still somewhat French. an arrangement of planes or colours, to throw us back E would like to be an infant at the present day, so that intothe age of truth, a certain few of us-no, Iam my student time might be passed at the new Louvain- wrong, everyone who has ever been cast back into. the whichGod send they do not build intoo much hurry. age of truth for one instant-gives honour to the spell At least, theworld may fairly reckon on findingno which has worked, to the witch-work or the art-work, Berlindesigns in the new Belgian town. They tell me or to whatever you like to call it. Therefore I say, and thatFlorence has no sky-scrapers.Idon’t believe it stickto it, I saw and heard the God Pan;sh.ortly altogether ; but if it should turn out to be true, my ob- afterwards I sawand heard Mr. Dolmetsch. Mr. jections to taking an insulting passport from anyone will Dolmetsch was talking volubly, and he said something have to be reconsidered. very like what I have said and very different;of music, ALICE MORNING. music when music commanded some 240 (or some such number of) players, and could only be performed in one ortwo capitals ! Pepyswrites, that in the Fire of Affirmations. London, when the people were escaping by boat on the By Ezra Pound. Thames, there was scarcely a boat in which you would not see them taking a pair of virginals as among their I. dearest possessions. Arnold Dolmetsch. The older journalists tell me it is “cold mutton,” that Mr.Dolmetsch was heard of fifteen yearsago. That “I HAVE seenthe God Pan.”“Nonsense.” haveI is a tendency that I have before remarked in a civilisa- seen the God Pan and it was in this manner : I heard a tion which rests upon journalism, and which has only .a bewildering and pervasive music moving from precision sporadiccare for the arts. Everyone in London over to precision withinitself. Then I heard a different forty “has heard of” Mr. DoImetsch, hisinstruments, music,hollow and laughing. Then lookedI up and etc.The generation under thirty may have heard of saw two eyes like the eyes of a wood-creature peering him, but you cannot be sure of it. His topical interest at me over a brown tube of wood. Then someone said : is over. I haveheard of Mr.Dolmetsch for fifteen Yes,once I was playing a fiddle inthe forest and I years, because I am a crank and am interested in such matters.Mr. Dolmetsch has always been in France or walked into a wasp’s nest. America,of somewhere Iwasn’t when he was. Also, Comparing these things with what I can read of the I haveseen broken-down spinets in swank drawing- earliestand best authenticated appearances of Pan, I rooms,Ihave heard harpsichords played in Parisian can but conclude that they relate to similar occurrences. concerts, and they sounded like the scratching of multi- It is true that I found myselflater in a roomcovered tudinoushens, and I did not wonder that pianos had with pictures of what we now call ancient instruments, supersededthem. Also, I have known good musicians and that when I picked up the brown tube of wood I andhave favoured divers sorts of music. And I have supposedthat clavichords werethings you mightown foundthat it had ivory rings upon it. And noproper if you were a millionaire ; and that virginals went with -reedhasivory rings it,on by nature.Also, cithernsand citoles inthe poems ofthe late D. G. they told me it was a ((recorder,” whatever that is. Rossetti. However, our only measure of truth is our own per- So Ihad two sets of adventure.First, I perceived a ception of truth.The undeniable tradition of meta- sound which is undoubtedly derived from the Gods, and morphoses teaches us that things do not remain always then I foundmyself in a reconstructed century-in a thesame. They become other things by swiftand un- century of music, back before Mozart or Purcell, listen- ing to clear music, to tones clear as brown amber And analysable process. Itwas onlywhen men began to this music came indifferently out of the harpsichord or mistrust the myths and to tell nasty lies about the Gods the clavichord or out of virginals or out of odd-shaped for a moralpurpose that these matters became hope- viols, or whatever they may be. There were two small lesslyconfused. When some nasty Semite or Parsee girlsplaying upon them with an exquisite precision: orSyrian began to use myths for social propaganda, with a precision quite unlike anything I have ever heard whenthe myth was degraded into an allegory or a from a Londonorchestra. Then someone said in a fable,that was the beginning of theend. And the tone of authority : “It is nonsense to teachpeople scales. It is rubbish to make them play this (tum, tum, Godsno longer walked in men’s gardens. The first tum, tum tum). They must begin to play music. Three myths arose when a man walked sheer into (‘nonsense,” yearsplaying scales, that is what they tell you. How thatis to say, when some very vivid and un-deniable can they ever be musicians?” adventurebefell him, and he told someone else who It reducesitself toabout this. Once people played calledhim a liar.Thereupon, after bitter experience, music. Itwas gracious, exquisite music, and it was perceiving that no one could understand what he meant playedon instruments which gave out the players’ when he said that he “turned into a tree,” he made a exact mood and personality. “It is beautifuleven if myth-a work of art that is-an impersonal or objective you playit wrong.” The clavichord has the beauty of storywoven out of his own emotion, as thenearest threeor four lutes played together. It has more than equationthat he was capable of puttinginto words. that, but no matter. You haveyour fingers always en 247 rapport with thestrings; it isnot one dab and then As I believe that a certain movement inpainting is either another dab or else nothing, as with the piano; capable of revitalising the instinct of design and creat- themusic is always lyingon your own finger-tips. ing a real interest in the art of painting as opposed to Thismusic was not theatrical. You played it yourself a tolerance of inoffensively prettysimilarities of quite as you reada book of precision. A fewpeople played prettyladies and “The Tate,” the abysmal “Tate” it together. It was not an interruption but a concentra- generally, so I believe thata return, an awakening to tion. the possibilities, not necessarily of “Old” music, but of Now, on theother hand, I remember a healthy pattern music played upon ancient instruments, is, per- concertpianist complaining that you couldn’t “really haps, able to make music again a part of life, not merely give” a big piano concert unless you had the endurance a part of theatricals. ‘The musician,the performing- of an ox;and that “women couldn’t, of course” ; and musician as opposed tothe composer, might again be that graduallythe person with long hands was being aninteresting person, an artist, not merely asort of eliminated from the pianistic world, and that only people manualsaltimbanque or a stage hypnotist. It is, per- with little, short fat fingers could come up to the techni- haps, a question of whether you want music, or whether cal requirements.Whether this is so or not we have you wantto see an obsessed personalitytrying to come tothe pianola, which isvery like professional “dominate” an audience. playing. And one or two people are going infor sheer I have said little that can be called technical criticism. pianola.They havethe right spirit. They cut their I have perhaps implied it. There is precision in the rolls for the pianola itself, and make it play as if with making of ancientinstruments. Men stillmake pass- two dozen fingerswhen necessary. That is better art able violins ; I do not see why the art of beautiful-keyed than making a pianola imitate the music of two hands instruments need be regarded as utterly lost. There has of five fingerseach. But still something is lacking. been precision in Mr. Dolmetsch’s study of ancient texts Orientalmusic is underdebate. We say we “can’t and notation;he has routed out many errors. He has hear it.’’ Impressionism has reduced us to such a even, withcertain help, unravelled the precision of dough-like state of receptivity that we have ceased to ancientdancing. Hehas found a completenotation like concentration. No, ithas not; but it has set a which might not interest uswere it not that this very fashionof passivity thathas held since theromantic dancing forces one to a greater precisionwith the old movement. The old music wentwith the old instru- music. Onefinds, forinstance, that certain tunes ments. Thatwas natural. It is proper to play piano calleddance tunesmust be playeddouble thetime at music on pianos.But in the end you find that it is no which they are modernly taken. use,and that nothing less than a full orchestra is of Oneart interprets the other. It would almosttouch any use. upon theatricals, which I am trying to avoid, if I should That is the whole flaw of impressionistor say that one steps into a past era when one sees all the “emotional” music as opposed topattern music. It otherDolmetsches dancing quaint, ancient steps of is like a drug; you musthave more drug, and more SixteenthCentury dancing. One feels thatthe dance noiseeach time,or this effect, thisimpression which would go oneven if therewere no audience. Thatis worksfrom the outside, in fromthe nerves and wherereal drama begins, and where we leavewhat I sensoriumupon theself--is no use, its effect iscon- have called,with odium, “theatricals.”It is a dance, stantlyweaker and weaker. I do not mean that Bach dancedfor the dance’s sake, to a display. It ismusic is notemotional, but the early music starts with the that exists for the sake of being music, not for the sake mystery of pattern; if you like,with the vortex of of, as they say, producing an impression. pattern; with something which is,first of all,music, Of coursethere are other musiciansworking with and which is capable of being, after that, many things. thissame ideal. Itake Mr.Dolmetsch as perhapsa What I call emotional, or impressionistmusic, starts unique figure, as perhaps the one man who knows most with being emotion or impression and then becomes only definitely whitherhe is going, and why, and who has approximatelymusic. Itis, that is to say, something givenmost time to old music. in the terms of something else. If it produces an effect, They tell me “everyone knows Dolmetsch who knows if fromsounding as musicit moves at all,it can only of old music, but not many people know of it.” Is that recede intothe original emotion orimpression. Pro- sheernonsense, or what is the fragment of truthor gramme music is merely a weaker, more flabby and de- rumour upon whichit is based? Why isit that the scriptive sort of impressionist music, needing, perhaps, fine thingsalways seem to go on in a corner? Is ita a guide and explanation. judgment on democracy? Is it that-what has once been Mr. Dolmetsch was, let us say, enamoured of ancient the pleasure of the many, of the pre-Cromwellian many, music. He foundit misunderstood. Hesaw a beauty has been permanentlyswept out of life? Musical so greatand so various that hestopped composing. England? A wild mancomes into my roomand talks He found thatthe beautywas untranslatable with of piles of turquoises in a boat, a sort of shop-house- modern instruments ; he has repaired and has entirely boateast of Cashmere. His talk is full of the colour remade “ancient instruments.” The comfort is that he ofthe Orient. Then I find he is livingover an old- has done thisnot for a fewrich faddists,as one had clothesshop in Bow. “Andthere they seem to play been led to suppose. He makes his virginals and clavi- all sorts of instruments.” chords for the price of a bad, of a very bad piano. You Is there a popular instinct for anything different from can have a virginal for £25 if you order it when he is what my ex-landlordcalls “the four-hour-touch?” Is making a dozen; and you can have a clavichord for a it that the aristocracy, which ought to set the fashion, fewpounds more, even if heisn’t making more than is too weakenedand too unreal to performthe due one. functions of “the aristocracy’’ ? Is itthat nature can, Because my interest in thesethings is not topical, in fact, only producea certain number of vortices? H do not look upon this article as advertisement writing. Thatthe quattrocento shines out because the vortices Mr. Dolmetsch was a topic some years ago, but you are of powercoincided with thevortices of creativein- not au courant, and you donot much carefor music telligence? And that when these vortices do notcoin- unless you know that a certain sortof verybeautiful cide we have an age of “art in strange corners ” and music isno longer impossible. Itis not necessary to greatdullness among the quite rich? Is it that real wait for a great legacy, or to inhabit a capital city in democracy can only exist under feudal conditions, when order to hear magical voices, in order to hear perfect no manfears to recognise creative skill in hisneigh- music which doesnot depend upon your ability to bour; of are we, as one likes to suppose, on the brink approximate to the pianolaor upon great physical of another really great awakening, when the creative or strength. Of the clavichord, onecan only say, very art vortices shall be strong enough, when the people inexactly, that it is to thepiano whatthe violin is to who care will be well enough organised to set the fine the bass viol. fashion, to impose it, to make the great age? 248

M. Faguet has, I believe, been rebuked as a pedantic Readers and Writers. critic.His views are certainly academic, to say the BY virtue of his name the critic should be, in the first least of it. He gives it quite plainly as his opinion that place, a judge.Actually, of course, he ought, as often Flaubert, as artist and writer,was incomparably as not, to act as counsel for the prosecution or defence Balzac’ssuperior. There is no need to discuss this, as well. I mentionthese obvious facts because our beyond stating that it is essentiallythe judgment of a manyself-styled critics have come to regardthem as man of letters. And this is only another way of saying anamusing superstition, which exists only tobe what M. Faguet himself says : “The influence of Flau- ignored. So regularlydo they ignore it that, far from berthas been exclusively literary, for, indeed,the being even judges, they are now little more than glori- authorwas incapable of generalideas. . . .” Gut if fied toastmasters.You will observethat the word his opinions betray the sympathies of a savant, he does “criticism” itself is passing out of theirvocabularies. not let them weigh down his manner of imparting them. Weare beginning to hear of “appreciations,”and He is,especially in dealingwith Balzac, lively and occasionally,for all the world like so manypaper- amusing. What a contrast to solemn Stefan Zweig on hangersor gasfitters, they label their verdicts “esti- Verhaeren ! mates.”Let me hasten to add that there is little *** difference betweenthe two. Examine the document in “It seems tome that the German’s special forte is either case and you will find it is an illuminated address original work in those fields where some other remark- presented to an industrious clerk on his retirement from able mind has alreadyprepared the way. In other business. words, he possesses, in a superlative degree, the art of *** becoming original by imitation.” I could find no better text than this if I wished to preach about German cul- To balancethese “appreciations” we can do with a ture. The quotation, by theway, is fromLichtenberg, few more “depreciations” (which, by the way, does not and is as true and as current now as the other observa- meandetractions). M. EmileFaguet’s essay on Balzac tions of thatshrewd and criminally neglected thinker. is a classicexercise in this form, and I therefore wel- The art of becoming original by imitation ! No phrase comeits appearance in English,translated by Mr. couldsum up more admirably the lack of initiativein Wilfrid Thorley (Messrs. Constable, 6s. net). “Balzac’s Germanart.Give him models and theGerman works,”says M. Faguetin an excellent chapter on imitatesthem with often excellent results. Thus, the “His Art and its Make-up,” “are like an edition anno- history of modern German literature is largely a history tated by a blundering, vulgar, and garrulous critic who of foreign influences. Ibsen in drama; Zola, Flaubert, has had thehardihood to inserthis notes in the text, and the Scandinavians and Russians in the novel: Ver- and the critic is in this case no other than Balzac him- laine, Whitman and Verhaeren in poetry-these are the self. ” Balzaccomes off better in the chapter on “His main literary preceptors of modern Germany. You will Characters,” which, if anything, is even more interest- seethat the ground covered by these types is fairly ingthan the one before. Butit is whenwriting on wide,and it is therefore natural that the same should Balzac’staste (“He is vulgar,for instance, whenever be true of their imitators. For my own part I acknow- he tries to be witty, for he had no wit whatever”) and ledgethe variety of therecent German authors. They onBalzac’s style (“When he speaks on his own ac- have not studiedtheir models in vain. Yes, there is count . . . it is difficult to say how bad he is. He talks good literature in Germany, but how little good German. like a mischievouswag bent on aping the romantic. literature! . . . Mis metaphorsare bewildering. . . . Hemakes *** most enigmaticdistinctions between the meanings of words. . . . The very meaning of wordsoften escapes Thevery fact, however, that German authors have him, and makes him utter unheard-of things”) that M. comeunder such various influences, implies something Faguetpasses the most severe sentences. I am in- which is to theircredit. They have read widely and clined tothink that M. Faguetsometimes says rather assimilatedtheir reading. And thisimplies yet a morethan he would havedone if hewere not so further fact, to which I have previously drawn attention obviouslyhaving fewa sly digs at M. Ferdinand in these notes : General European literature is far more Brunetière. accessiblein Germany than-well, in England,€or in- *** stance.That is a Germanachievement which (and thisagain I havealready pointed out) should at once M. Faguetargues further that Balzac erred as a beemulated. It is, in fact,one of theconditions €or writer by failingto keep his romantic and realistic thepromised capture of Germantrade. There are in- elementsapart. The point is interesting. I remember dications that the thing is being done in a quiet and un- readingan essay on Balzac by Dr.Max Nordau, in obtrusivemanner. Such series as the“Home Uni- whichBalzac was declared to be no realist at all,but versityLibrary,” €or example, hear a strikingre- a romanticistpure and simple. Dr. Nordauurged that semblanceto the ”Sammlung Göschen” or Teubner’s themanner of Balzac’slife precluded him from the similarcollection. It wouldbe perhaps unpatriotic to experiences apparently necessary to a realist. Wemay insisttoo much on the likeness, but it is therefor all dismiss this theory with the same smile that served us that.The “Sammlung Göschen,” however, runs to as we laid “Degeneration” aside. more than 700 volumes (at less than a shilling each), and *** variesin its subjects from Hieroglyphics to Pharma- ceutical Chemistry, from the Integral Calculus to Roman But M. Faguet’s argument is worth closer considera- Law.Again, Reclam’s famous“Universal bibliothek,” tion,especially as hebases upon it his comparison of inspite of defects, remains an example of the manner Balzac and Flaubert. He elaborates this in his volume in which theGermans reduce knowledge toa system. on Flaubert,which is issued in English by thesame Reclam’slibrary has been successfully imitated by publishers atthe same price. Flaubert,hesays, othernations who certainlycould not be suspected of “filtered” Balzac.Flaubert also contained both prejudice in favour of Germaninstitutions. Thus the romantic and realistic elements, but he was careful not Poleshave a good seriesbased on Reclam, and the tomingle the two currents. “Salammbo” and “The Czechshave an even better one. Some years ago, the Temptation of St.Anthony” were the products of his lateProfessor Morley started CasseIl’s National romanticism,while his realism wasreserved for such Library, avowedly in imitation of the “Universal biblio- a work as “MadameBovary.” It is clear,however, thek.” It has not developed as its founder had hoped. that M. Faguetintends this only as anapproximation Publishers, with their usual perversity, would no doubt to the actual facts of the case, for in his study of Flau- putthe blame for this on thereaders, but I am con- bert he devotes a whole chapter to an investigation of vinced that England contains enough intelligent readers theromantic traits in Flaubert’s realistic works, and (but only just enough) to support a cheap series of this vice versa. sort. I have in mind small volumes (50-100 pages) from 249

threepence to sixpence, the contents to be mainly trans- America ! lations of hitherto inaccessible works or parts of works England’s cheeky kid brother, such as I mentionedlast October. Shall we ever get Who bloodily assaulted your august elder At Bunker Hill and similar places. . . . them ? P. SELVER. *** Thirteen poems were published, and their quality is such as to make me wonder (I) What the other 725 were like; AMERICAN NOTES. (2) How any human being could read them and remain LASTmonth I was unable to define the political attitude sane;(3) By what standard the prize poem was selected of “The NewRepublic.” Inthe interval I have satis- fromthose published. The lady who secured the $100 fied myself that it expressesmore or less the point of for“The MetalChecks” has no claim to distinction view of theProgressive party. The resemblancebe- beyond the fact that her poem is unlike the others, in tween “The New Republic” and “The New Statesman” thatit is cast in dramaticform. The conception of has already been referred to;I need, therefore, only add Death as the Counterwho receives from the Bearer-the that Progressivismtheis Americanequivalent of World-the metal disks for the identification of soldiers Fabianism in order to complete the journalistic picture. slain in battle, is worked out in a manner obviously de- But all values are relative,and in justice to Mr.Lipp- rived fromYeats’s “Countess Kathleen.” Something mann andhis colleagues, I should state that the Pro- more than the banality of Miss Louise Driscoll’s thought, gressive is in the United States to-day what the Fabian andexpression is needed to save such a situation. As was in England some ten or fifteen years ago. indicatingthe presence of the Masefield-Abercrombie *** microbe “TheCamp Follower,” by Mr. MaxwelI Bodenheim isinstructive. Was ever death befouled by It seems to be Miss Rebecca West’s special function such images as : to supply current cant from London to New York. So About us were soldier-hordes of scarlet women, stupidly., far,her contributions to “The New Republic” have Smilingly giving up their bodies been remarkable instances of this business of carrying To a putrid-lipped, chuckling lover-Death ! coals to Newcastle. Ina recent number, she writes of Brothelsand whiteslavery are added to give LIS an Mr. Shaw’s “diverted genius,” the result of a visit to adequate idea of the poet’s mental furniture. some Fabianshrine, where her hero lectured on the *** duty of endowing every citizen at birth with a fixed in- It is a relief toturn to Mr. Joseph Campbell’s con- come. The spectacle of Shawconcerning himself with tribution, “Whence Comes the Stranger.” “R. M. C.” economics outrages the literary soul of Miss West. She hassharply criticised theIrish poets, both in these finds thegathering unworthy of thespeaker, and columnsand elsewhere, but he will agree withme, I laments the absorption of the dramatist by the Fabian am sure, that they are at least free from the vulgarity Society.“Surely he would havewritten more of that andcoarseness of mind of which the lines just quoted poetic drama which is his real medium,” she asks, had are typical. I preferthose imaginary “leprechauns,” he not succumbed tothe wiles ofthe Webbs. The the symbol of his wrath, to theturds, murderers and astonishment of Mr. Shaw on learningthat he has prostitutes of ourpopular poets. Like several of his written poetic drama will be surpassed only by the in- contemporaries in Ireland, Mr. Campbell can dispense dignation of those who, like my friend “R. H. C.,” have with the leprechauns, as on this occasion, where he ha5 preserved a sense of values sufficient to enable them to written with a certain dignity and care which contras.: differentiatebetween Shavianism and literature. with thequalities of hiscompetitors. *** *** Miss West has so effectivelydemonstrated her mis- Someonewrites to “Poetry”protesting against the understanding of Shawthat it ishardly worth while absurd criticismof “Challenge,” which recently asking her what she thinks his work would be, without appearedthere. Mr. Untermeyer was accused of utter- his economic basis-such as it is. Shaw minus Fabian- ing “claptrap,” of being“conventional” (vide the un- ism = o is, I think,the formula. It ismore im- conventional Mr. Bodenheim above mentioned !] and of portant to note that, in attempting to praise, this critic using“worn and tawdry” phrases. The originality of merely succeedsin displaying her incapacity to under- the reviewer’sstyle is apparent ! As hischampion standthe subject. For what else can we call this point out, Mr. Untermeyer can afford to dispense with suggestionthat literature and economics are incom- most of whatpasses for original in “Poetry.”The patible? If Miss West werenot involved in the lines I have quoted from time to time are fair specimens “Blast”-edmuddle of vorticism she mightlearn that of what is meant. My own theory is that Mr. Unter- one’s conception of society (economics) must be defined meyer has committed the offence of beingindependent beforeone canproduce a criticism of life (literature). of the Image and the Vortex ; he has written for “The Her confessed desire to eliminate ideas from literature Masses,” forthe ‘‘Poetry Journal”-the rival of explains much that we have suspected of Miss West and “Poetry”-and, worst of all, for THENEW AGE. her friends. Theyare of theclass which professes to *** see the eclipse of A. E., the poet, in George Russell the As a tribute at once to the literarysnobbishness of Co-operator.But Miss West has evidentlynever heard this country, and to the ignorant superficiality of what of A. E., as witnessthe following : “AnIrishman of Englishreviewers imagine criticism, Mr.Richard the EnglishPale, such as Mr. Shaw,is born without Garnett’sarticle in theDecember “Atlantic Monthly” a nationality or a religion.” If this means anything, it maybe recommended. Mr. Garnettmakes ‘‘Some Re- implies that the Irish Protestant is neither English nor markson American andEnglish Fiction,” which re- Irish. Away, ye atheistic sans-patrie, Standish O’Grady, veal him either as utterly contemptuous of his public or Douglas Hyde, George Russell and W. B. Yeats ! quiteunequipped for his task.That hisarticle should be accepted is proof of the subservience of the American *** editor whenconfronted with an English“name,” It is admitted outside Harmsworthian circles, that the though even then, T doubt if Mr. Garnett is theper- war has not yet produced any English poetry. With the sonage the “Atlantic” would have us believe. Most of exception of A. E.’s “Gods of War,” I have not seen the article is made up of quotations from the excessively any verse on the subject which approximates to litera- commonplace views Mr. Garnetthas expressed from ture. Need sayI that the United States have not time to timeof the excessivelyunimportant American succeededwhere we havefailed? The Chicago maga- novelists whose work he has had to review. His thesis zine “Poetry” offered a prize of $100for the best peace is the perfectly safe one, that American fiction is lacking poem “based on the present European situation” ; seven in artistic quality and literary merit. But when he sets hundred and thirty-eight poems were received, but none out to enumerate our wealth of superior novelists it is of those printed is cheap at $100. Mow expensive some evident that hedoes not know wherein the relative might have been at the price may be judged from Mr. strength and weakness of English and American fiction Richard Aldington’s “War Yawp,” which begins : consist. E. A. B. 250

molaror hard-boiled eggs. Finally, with a beating Memoirs : A Dialogue. heart, the young man has given a bold turn to the con- (Translated from the German by P. SELVER) versation, and it continues to the following effect :- By Rudolf Presber. The Young Man : I have read your memoirs that you lately published. THE VENERABLE OLD MAN. THE YOUNG MAN. TheVenerable Old Manspits attentively into the green spittoon near his chair. THE venerable old man is sittingin a room that is TheYoung Man : It is a splendidbook ! Nowhere, filled withmemories and the smell of fennel-tea. On I consider, can the truth about the world and mankind the walls there are numerous portraits of bearded and be fathomed so well as in the memoirs of great men. clean-shavengentlemen, from whose expressionit is TheVenerable Old Man : Haveyou also readthe evidentthat they desire recognition. For they are all passage where I speak about my canary? famous.Amongst them are portraits of beautiful and The Young Man : Oh, splendid, splendid ! And how, lessbeautiful women, dressed inextremely remote atthe same time, you conjurethe whole magni- fashions,which to-day cause the spectator to feelun- ficence of theCanary Islands ! Howthe ditty of the well. Nearly allthe ladies exhibit that-pensive smile winsomelittle songster in yoursolitude arouses your which women affect whentheir portraits are being memories of thelofty craters of Teneriffe,the leafy paintedand they can think of nothingmore to say to avenuesof the vineyards, the flowery splendour of theartist atthe fifteenth sitting. Their eyeshave eternalspring . . . mostlyreceived a touch of importanceand conscious- The Venerable Old Man : Yes. After soberly settling nessof their worth. For they, too, are famous, the accountswith my old bug-bearLämmermann in the reason being that they, at some time or other, made one previouschapter, I needed something of thatsort. By ofthe gentlemen around them happy or unhappy, or the way, you saw my little friend just now, while you firsthappy, then unhappy-never viceversa. Though were waiting in the sitting-room? thepieces of furniturein the room do not match one TheYoung Man : Yes-that is, I fancied . . . or another,it is obviouson the face of itthat each one perhaps I ammistaken. I fancied it was a bullfinch. has a past.Afuture, in a somewhatless degree. TheVenerable Old Man : Quiteright. A bullfinch. Verycurious things stand and lie ontables and Afemale, by the way;the continual sing-song of the brackets : a huge chunk of rock with an inscription in male disturbs me in my work and makes me nervous. ink,“Lodi, March 3, 1878”;a piece of charred wood A femalebird is lesstroublesome and eats no more. devoid of painting, carving, or any other decoration; it You see, I made a canary of it-goodness me ! green islabelled, “St. Privat? August IO, ’85”; an old pear- or yellowis all alike, because I wantedto talk about shaped mandoline with not a single string left, but dis- theislands. . . . playingthe inscription, “Spring Days in Provence, TheYoung Man : Iunderstand. You spentsome April, ’83”;a clumsylump of earthprecariously held time at Teneriffe-- togetherby silver wire arid bearing a tell-taleticket, TheVenerable Old Man : Notexactly at Teneriffe. “FromVirgil’s Grave, October 15, ’74” ; andmany We oncehad a shortstay at Fuerteventura.Only a othersuch things. The venerable old manhas his fewhours. I saw little of it, as I was thoroughly sea- chairclose tothe fireplace. The room isstill heated, sick.Everything looked green to me then, for days although the finest spring weather prevails out of doors. at a time ; notmerely the islands, which actually are The venerable old man, whose soul glows with love for green.In the memoirs I let Teneriffe serve its turn. theSouth, has a fire keptalight winter and summer, It’sall pretty much the same thing. And Teneriffe is partlybecause he is cold, partly so that he can abuse more interesting to the public. thenorthern summer. Over his very thin legs, around TheYoung Man : Yes,that is so. Hm.Certainly. which a pair of check trousers flap to and fro, he has Pardonme, I find this a littleconfusing now. Was it placed a quilt, patched together from a hundred shreds noton this journey that you met the famous Italian of coloured silk.And eachshred bears a mottofrom lyric poet, Sacranotte ? hisworks, sewn on with gold lettering. This laborious The Venerable Old Man : Quite right;he was specu- piece ofwork has been performed by lady admirers. latingheavily in olive oil atthe time, and had some Beforehim, on a Swedishpeasant’s chair, sits the business to transact on the islands. youngman. Gustav Wasa is supposed to have been TheYoung Man : Whatglorious, unforgettable sitting on this chair when he first saw Katharina Sten- hours they must have been that you spent with him on bock. It is possible,but it does not alter the fact that the voyage through the Straits of Gibraltar and across thechair is veryhard and uncomfortable. The young theblue billows of theMediterranean. mandoes not notice that, or not until later on. He is The Venerable Old Man : Well, you know, I had to too taken up withthe joy of beingallowed to talk to do a bit of retouching there. Readers want to see two the venerable old man, and with the desire not to miss mensuch as Sacranotte and myself in a stronglight, anything that the venerable old man may have to say to don’tthey? Strictly between ourselves, the fellow was him. The connectionbetween the young man and the unbearable. He had lost a lot of money through a bad venerable old man arises, first of all, from the venera- olive harvest ; of course, that was hard luck, but seeing tion of the former for the latter, and then the circum- that he was a partner in a very flourishing cheese export stancethat a greatuncle of theyoung man-on his businessin Palermo . . . mother’s side-was oncein the same class at school The Young Man : Cheese? I thought it was flowers. withthe venerable old manfor six months. Then one Inyour memoirs it says- of them failed to get his remove ; which of the two can The Venerable Old Man : Oh, yes ; I just altered that no longerbe ascertained. The conversation between a little.Magnolias, orange blossoms, and all that-it the venerable old man and the young man has wriggled sounds better in connection with a lyric poet than cacio its way beyond the first formalities and polite nothings. di lattedi capra. Theworthy old man has already confused the young The Young Man : “Cacio”--what is that? man’sgreat-uncle with a horse-dealerin Tilsit and a The VenerableOld Man : Caciodi latte di Capra--- jerry-builderin Thuringia. Then the question of iden- goats’ cheese. Good heavens ! man cannot live by lyric tityhas been settled, whereupon it turnsout that the poetry alone-not even in Palermo.I’m not blaming venerableold man, with his phenomenal memory, can the man for his goats’ cheese. Rut, humanly speaking, still recallthat the young man’s great-uncle had lost hewas an unbearable nuisance. And such a scanty his left molar and was very fond of hard-boiled eggs- concernfor clean linen. You’ve got no idea hou7 long qualitieswhich his grand-nephew can neither corrobo- one collar would last him, not to speak of other things. rate nor dispute, seeing that the great-uncle haslived for And tomake matters worse, he had long hair which twentyyears at BlackHills, in SouthDakota, and in kept on makinghis coat greasy. And never in my his scantycorrespondence has never touched on his life have I seen a waistcoat with fewer buttons ! 251

TheYoung Man : That isall very unpleasant. But there. He couldn’tlook anybody straight in the face. thosedelightful conversations at night, on thedeck- That may have been because he squinted badly- chairs, when the sky, goldenwith stars, bulged above The Young Man : What ! he squinted too? But you the silently gliding ship-how splendidly you have suc- spoke of a lovely child. ceededdepictingin it-that brilliantexchange of The Venerable Old Man : Don’t I tell you the mother thought about the gods of the Greeks and the influence isstill alive? Of course, no good ever came of the of the constellations on the soul of the creative artist- fellow. He’s a joiner’s apprentice or something of that all thatmust have been amplecompensation for such kind now, I believe. trivialitieson the surface. The Young Man : When you talk like that it becomes The VenerableOld Man : Ohyes, it would have. difficult torealise that itwas in that very house you You know,young man, whenwe review our lives we met thetender Mechthildis, whopasses throughall learn to look at things rather as they should have been your works like a fragrant dream with an expression of thanas they were. Whenour goodfriend Sacranotte suffering in herpale andcharming face, and who, as died a few years back-he had overloaded his stomach you so beautifully put it, “seemed already a denizen of a withunripe fig-S--I tookhis books down again,and landabove the ‘cloudsfrom which shehad only been therereally are some fine things in them. Wellthen, dispatched to adorn a poet’s springtide with the flowers you see, I tookquite a different view of ourvoyage of anotherworld,” and whothen closed the magic together. I wasno longer sea-sick the wholetime, depths of her eyes in Davos. and he wore a clean collar, rid his mouth of the tooth- The VenerableOld Man : After what I have said- pick,which I’ll be bound he wasusing inhis dying andthat must, of course,remain between ourselves- moments, stopped scratching his touzledhead continu- it is obvious that I never met this young woman there. ally, and began a conversation which bore some sort of My word, poor old Grünhardt’s vigorous spouse would resemblance to what he wrote at his best. soon have been on our tracks. As a matter of fact, she TheYoung Man : Of course,he sent you allhis mas a governess in my cousin’shouse. A somewhat books ? superior sort of nursemaid, with a good figure and only The VenerableOld Man : No, Ihad to buy them. a slightimpediment in herspeech. Itwas on her There’s only one thing he ever sent me-a price-list of account that I had a falling out with the family. thegoats’ cheese factory, of whichhe was a partner. The Young Man : I thought it was because of politi- Afterall, thoseare little humanwhims, which are no cal differences ? concern of the public. Why if, forexample, I were to The VenerableOld Man : Good heavens, yes. That have told thetruth about the domestic affairs of the wasanother sore point between us. My cousinwas a great Max Joseph Grünhardt, whose mystic dramas are town councillor who had to mind his P’s and Q’S, and all the rage with his fanatical admirers- Ialways thought him a desperate ass. That’s why I The Young Man : Oh,isn’t it true, then, what you laid special stress on his depth of spirit in the Memoirs. sayabout this flawlessly harmoniousnature in the The Young Man : Yes, it is easy to infer that he was delightful chapter, “As guest in a German household” ? possessed of spirit. The Old Man : Gracious ! yes, the woman was very The Venerable Old Man : Lots of spirit.In fact he fond of him,and all that. Too much so, perhaps. wanted to give Mechthildis-that is, her real name was But she was so shockingly jealous. If he wrote a play Julchen Milchmichel-the sack. That’s what caused all with an amiable woman in itshe would ask at once : therow. We then simply cleared off together. Whois the model? For shewas firmly convinced of The Young Man : Andyou were with her in Davos? one thing-it couldn’t be done without a model. The Venerable Old Man : I in Davos?Never. Oh, TheYoung Man : But you sayexpressly in your you meanbecause of that? No, no,she was never in memoirs : In all the female characters which Max Joseph Grünhardt evercreated, he always raised up a Davos, either. monument to the one who fashioned for him that unique The Young Man : Well, where did she die then? and truly German domesticity, from whichhis genius, The Venerable Old Man : Die ! Not a bit of it. She’s as from a stainlessfountain, ever quaffed freshpower alive. Shemarried a provision dealer atKoburg, and and joyfulness for labour. was a grandmotherlong ago. In my Memoirs I let The Venerable Old Man : Well, yes.You must con- her die. That’san unimportant little bit of touching sider that the lady is stillliving. She worriedpoor old up. For,after all, she’s finished with, as faras I’m Grünhardtinto his grave long ago. We musthave concerned. Whether a girl dies, or whether she marries some considerationfor those who are still alive. Am a provisiondealer at Koburg, you will admitthat it’s I to come forward now and say : It was this woman’s merely a matter of degree. fault that Grünhardt kept on repeating the same female TheYoung Man : Butthe poignant. poem that you characterto imbecility? Shall I tellpeople thatthis wrote on herdeath, and that is reprinted in the stupid creature made the most horrible scenes, when the memoirs ? poor fellow wrote a verse in a little girl’s album or on The Venerable Old Man : It was actually produced in her fan, if there happened to be anything about love, or those days when she married the provision dealer. evenabout youth, in it? Am Ito expose herand let The Young Man : Can she ever have heard anything the world know that when I told poor Grünhardt how about it? the wife of a well-known author had run away with a The VenerableOld Man : Certainly.In fact I had painter, he said with a deep sigh : Yes, it’s always the tocorrespond with her about it, because I could not others who have the luck? precisely recollect whether the mole that I was fond of The Young Man:He meant- was on her right or left shoulder. I’m always very exact The VenerableOld Man : His colleague,not the in such matters. All thepleasure I took in the poem painter, you can believe me. would have been downright spoilt if there had been any The Young Man : How sad, how sad ! Well, his boy possibilityof amistake about it. Infact, my young must have made him very happy, at any rate. In your friend, I can tell you only this : Everybody who wishes book he can be fairly seen romping through the rooms to do anything big must train himself in two things- and filling thedelightful little house, tucked away in seriousobservation and truthfulness. Goethe said : the garden, with merriment and all sorts of pranks. “The first and last thing that is demanded of genius is The VenerableOld Man : Hm, pranks-yes. Icer- love of truth.”He was right, as always. Start a tainly did put that in,for, after all, the child couldn’t diary, my young friend, andrecord everysignificant help it; butthere was a certain spitefulness in those thing that cornes your way. And do not consider a too pranks.He did foreverything, pulled flowers out by frivolousthing as insignificant. Andwhen you arrive theroots, carved the furniture about with his pocket- at the years in which the trials of vanity, of pleasure, knife, cutholes in thescreens, drove nails into the and of arrogance are behind you, and your lonely heart cushions. To be honestabout it,he wasn’tquite all gently illumined and still warmed a little by the evening 252 sunshine of famesmilingly reviews all that you have story by Alexander Dumas, I suppose,” saidLord experienced,then youwill reflect thatyour life’s con- Northcliffe’srepresentative. “You mean Cervantes,” fessionmay be a starand a guidingrod perhaps to said my friend, who is punctiliously veracious. “Pos- thousandswho are still wandering in thestruggle. sibly,”replied the correspondent; “perhaps I am con- Then you do as I have done, you write your memoirs. fusing it with somethingsimilar by Dumas!” That is Write them with love for the thing that was, with re- culture,not kultur. spectfor the thing that is, and above all,with truth- ‘The othernight I wentto a swarry. Ali the world fulness ! artistic was there, all at least that is left in Petrograd. The Young Man : My sincere thanks, revered master. England was represented by the president of the Three I will preserveyour teachings, and in fact every word Arts Club, as I am told he was, who, being introduced thatcomes from you, inthe shrine of my heart.And as an English poet, recited, “I am running away from should I everforget their kindly lesson, every female thebattlefield. A sudden thought came into myhead: bullfinch and every piece of goats’ cheese would exhort lastnight. . . . You are my friend’swife, so I am me to remember how memoirs are written ! runningaway. Because, because, I LOVE YOU!”Being encored, he obliged with the story of a music-hall artist, “h FallenStar.” Luckily, nobody understood a word. Letters From Russia. hesaid, so noharm was done. I askedhim how he C. E, Bechhöfer. got along in Russia ; did he speak Russian? “No,” he By replied,“but I speak French.” In his place, I should. THEREis a river called theFountain flowing through say I spoke a little French. the heart of Petrograd, and my window overlooksthe These show the sort of impression of England all the bridgeformed by theNevski Prospect. I seeall the world artistic of Petrograd is likely to get. But, on the sights, by land and ice. Every morning people open up whole, I do notthink it much matters what all the a barge just below, and catch fish in it. As it is usually worldartistic thinks about anything. Witch-ridden as ice-bound,I am reminded of the.miraculous draught. theyare everywhere to-day, heartless and vain, such Overthe bridge goes everything that the heart can youngartists are not the heart of their country. I desire; and the appearance this morning of hundreds of haveheard from afar that there is a Renaissance in sleighshas driven me at last to write my letter. Until Russia.That I havenot met it in twenty days is not to-daythe clerk of theweather had been fiddling dis- remarkable ; it would be almost useless for me to meet mally on twostrings-a degree below zero and a de- itbefore I can speak perfect Russian. I must,there- greeabove zero. Slushy thaws and slippery frosts fore, confine myself for the present to the body and soul alternated. But at last the ice is set firm on the streets of Russia. (I suppose he wore the other string out), and the little I have only one new question to ask about the war-- sleighs are dashing along as smooth as arm-chairs. how will the Christians get on at Bethlehem? You see, A company of military motor-cyclists has just passed the Turkish Government has always had to station two by, off tothe war, all wearing the waterproof wool- soldiers with fixed bayonets beside the Holy Manger in lined uniformthat distinguishes Russian equipment. thelittle Bethlehem church,tokeep the various Think of ourpoor fellows, in their absorbent great- Christian sects from murdering one another. Now that coats and those absurd hats that keep neither the sun the soldiers are mobilised, what, ask, I will the Christians from the eyes nor the cold from the ears ! They are not do? Ah ! you reply, and touch my trembling ears. God so barbaric in Russia. will fight for us againstthe heathen ! Providence, Thereis half an established notion in England that she will provide ! (By the way, I heard of an old lady a town in which snow lies continuously must be semi- who remarked that there was One Above who would se:: barbaric. But unswept snow is the only barbarism to be that even Providence did not go too far!) seen here.Perhaps the Tartar element, of whichwe I cannotspeak of Christianitywithout mentioning hear so much, may be obvious in the south;at Petro- Merezhkowsky, with whom I had a long talk the other grad it is quite hidden away. The people who pass here evening. Hehas the reputation of a mystic of depth forbarbarians are certain correspondents, the Poles unplumbable;nevertheless, he assured me atthe end andthe Jews. Regarding the last, however, Inever that I entirely understood his philosophy;and so I do knew a townwhere their bad elements were less in understandit. To a student of Indianphilosophies, evidence. As for their virtues, I havereceived till now nothingnew comes out of Europe.Secure as an the greatest hospitality from Jews, have heard the only authorised expounder of Merezhkowsky’smysticism, I brilliantcommon-sense from a Jew,and, but for the candeclare, more plainly than he has ever done, that sad news that he is very ill, I should have met Ostro- hiswish is tosee established a newChristian Society, gorsky, who is a Jew. Of Poles I have met but a few, which, to beeffective, must be as complete asthe butI fancy I saw a type in thePolish Café. Aman CatholicChurch, but without its darkness;as spirited entered in a fine showy overcoat, which he doffed with aspaganism, but without its brutality, and, above all, anair. His clothesunderneath were almost in rags. it must be Christian, of Christ. How may one know the He took off an excellent pair of gloves and showed the trueChrist, I asked?He answered, “By careful study filthiest-kept hands I have ever seen. You may imagine of thetestaments and traditions, by seeking out the the contrast between his public and private self ; I spoke Christin oneself, and by prayer.”In a word, by to a Russian of it, who said, “That man is all Poland!” adoration. To him not only is Christ historical, but His To be a stranger in a strange land-a little piece of resurrectionwas an actual occurrence. I mayas well curiosity entirely surrounded by expenses-is almost to point out that Merezhkowsky is a Bhakti. That is the forget the war. In five years or less all the world will name by which in India goes the sect that worships its be as I now find myself, and will picture the war no more godwith love. Iremember my youngBrahmin friend vividly thanthe night before last’s dream. Besides, onthe Holy Hill-the onewho cracked cocoanuts so thanks to the post, my usual English source of news is well;he told me that his religious ideal was to stand, the“Daily Mail,” and one does not read the “Daily when his days on earth were over, with folded hands in Mail” fortrue news, but only in despair of it. When the presence of Lord Krishna. And as sure as Krishna I read the “Daily Mail” and the “Times” and observe is Christ,the Bhaktis are Bacchantes. They adore theirpitiful attempts to be taken as representative of theirgod ; all that is beautifulin the world they love theEnglish people, rememberI what I heard here as the gift of the god. Behold, if you please, the mystic- recently. ism of Merezhkowski! A weekor two ago, an Englishman, the “Daily Inhis novel, “Julianthe Apostate,” an old, and Mail” correspondentin Petrograd, was entering the very, very wise philosopher, Iamblichus, says to Julian : ballet when he met my friend, who remarked to him that “Believe me-Will, Action,Effort are only enfeebled “Don Quixote” was to be presented. “Founded on the and deflected contemplationsof God-so long as Rea-. 253 sonshines and illumines our souls, weremain im- prisoned in ourselves and see not God.” This teaching Current Verse. seems to Julian most wonderful, no less than the mag- Satires of Circumstance. By ThomasHardy. numarcanum. The most extravagant Hindu Bhaktis, (Macmillan. 4s. 6d. net.) as a result, adore Krishna to such an extent of unreason The old manmad about verses determinedly pub- that they dress as women, declare themselves Krishna’s lishes, and either knows not or cares not what anyone concubines,and dance improperly inhis temples. thinks.The gravity of hisoffence is that he probably Merezhkowsky hasnot abandoned the proprieties, ex- compares his work with that of many of the young men ceptto hang a crucifixin his study, which makes a andsays to himself, “There, mine’s no worse than tremendouseffect on his visitors. I think I havefully that!” Pray, Lord, not to outlive our vanity, saith the .declaredhis philosophy-his unplumbable mysticism--- Preacher . . . butbecause he was wise hepublished need I say that he has never read the Mahabharata or nothing more after his best book. the Ramayana? I wager I could find a thousand mystic Merezhkowskiesin a month in India ; but still he isa YOU and I. By Harriet Munroe. (Macmillan. 5s. 6d. lively write;-. As for the petticoats, he assured me that net.) theTheosophical Society in Russia was composed of The publisher’snote on the cover has appropriated “women, hysterical and eager for miracles” ! allthe convenient clichés. Miss Munroehas asure Wediscussed the spirit in which future social pro- judgment, real knowledge of literary values, gives, with gress would be made. In England, said I, by the spirit grace,lyrical expression to her thoughts, has definite of comradeship. “InRussia,” said Merezhkowsky, ideas, amazing variety in theme, movement and stir in “byChrist. He is to beour banner!” I didnot like herlines, as well as theseother qualities which have theimage. everdistinguished her writing. I sawmuch of theGuild spirit and no Christ at all The happy vagueness of the. conclusion to this poem in the very first encounter I had with the Russian people. perhapsleaves some littlething for the critic to say. I was waiting for my trunk at the station, and a porter ‘There is, we find, a quality of the advertisement writer waited also with my hand-lug-gage. Suddenly he looked inthe first horror called “The Hotel.” Never before, atthe clock andrushed outside ,in alarm. He carne perhaps, have theseluring catalogues of our Turkish backwith another long-bearded porter. They looked Room,French Room, English Room, telephonegirls, eachother in the eyes, smiled, embraced. With an our exquisite gesture the first porter handed me over to the waiters in black swallow-tails and white aprons, passing here and there with trays of bottles and glasses. other as the communal victim, and hurried off. Thewhite-tiled, immaculate kitchen . . . spiced and But I must break off-for I see a certain young man flavoured dishes. comingover the bridge, my Russianteacher, no less concludedwith God as supremeattraction; God inside than a general’s son. I have barely, time to mention an of the souls of “the business men in trim and spotless astoundingdiscovery I havemade. The letter “H” is suits, who walk in and out” and so on, very much ad a German spy ! We all know how much at home he is nauseum. in the German language, never at a loss, neverout of Ho-ho tothe night- place, always quite in the swim ; and do we not know, The spangled night that would the noon outstare. from conversations with our own people, how H keeps Mer skirts are fringed with light. . . . sneaking out of his proper place and turning up in the One seems to have seen it all before, but better done. mostunexpected and disconcerted manner? In France Miss Munroe,however, like ourselves, meddles with he is alwayslooking on and listening, unobserved. Scripture. And then,in Greece, he disguises himself as a capital They went down to the sea in ships, “e” ; on my honourhe does ! I wasyoung and inno- In ships they went down to the sea. centwhen I learnedthat, just as beforethe war the Now, which really were the better of these renderings? Harmsworthiesnever knew allabout the German The first has tradition behindit-but what a rollick in the poultry-breedingand soup-serving spies. But now that second ! Thenew mission for old salts appears to be I am old and a man and it is war time, I have found “To find theperfect way.” If Miss Munroe could put H out.He is masquerading in Russia as an “n” ! away pretension and other qualities of vulgarity which Worse than that he has brought a lot of confederates distinguish her writings, she might be sooner perceived with him ; there is the letter CH, and the letter KH, and ashaving written a fewgood lines. The first of her the letter ZH, and the Ietter SH, and, worst of all, there “Love Songs” is altogether charming. The rest of the is theletter SHCH. This last, say the text-books, is volume is not worth anyone’s time to read. as in “fresh cheese.” Will somebody please send me a microscope? TheGerman author of thestandard A Peck Q’ Maut. By P. B. Chalmers. (Maunsel. Russiangrammar announces that the retention of a 3s. 6d. net.) certainmute final lettercosts Russia four million A gracefullittle poem “An Old House”opens this roubles yearly. (I hopethe Censor will passthis.) I volume,deliberately medley volume.Except for fatal rejoice to think that, when I know Russian properly, I facility, Mr. Chalmers might have been a poet. shall be able to work out how much the country pays for Lord God of Battles. A War Anthology. (Cope the upkeep of German H and his relations. German, by and Fenwick. IS.) theway, is forbidden to-dayin Petrograd. There are This will ever remain one of the mysteries of human notices in all the shops, and the women who pester you psychology-thatbad and utterly wickedly bad verse- inthe streets to buy little flags forthe benefit of the writers so oftenelect, by way of accompaniment,to RedCross funds, have just one joke--“No German borrow the golden trumpet of some poet in certainty of spokenand no German money taken.” Whether this drawing condemnation on their own tin whistle. is the request or the order of the police, nobody is sure. O God of Battles ! steel my soldiers’ hearts; We discussthe point heatedly, in German. “Let us Possess them not with fear; take from them now talk a little German,” said a friend of mine, “nowadays The sense of reckoning, if the opposéd numbers it is so delightfullyexotic.” As for H, neveragain ! Plucktheir hearts from them. (Shakespeare.) Neveragain ! We won’t‘ave it, now’ere and no’ow ! Thou careless, awake! Thou peacemaker, fight ! But my teacher knocks. Stand,England, for honour, Justone local detail, which I hadalmost forgot to And God guard the Right ! .mention. Baedeker is, I know, an alien enemy, and I do (Robert Bridges.) notwant to steal his trade. This, however, must be It is simply a yelp. said;one dines at four in the afternoon-roast sucking- Prepare, prepare the iron helm of war, pig and sour cream is a favourite dish-and the demi- Bring forth the lots, cast in the spacious orb ; monde is out already to meet you. The Angel of Fate turns them with mighty hands, 254

And casts them out upon the darkened earth! New Beginnings. By Douglas Cole. (Blackwell,. Prepare, PreparePrepare, ! (Blake.) Oxford. 2s. 6d.) Who carries the gun The “Occasional Diary” includes several lyrics of the A lad from over the Tweed. Then let him go, for well we know quality that a man, who-is not a great poet, may achieve He comes of a soldier breed. once in his lifetime, but no more. Sentiment, and even (Conan Doyle.) the memory of sentiment, calls winged words together. A music-hall song. Mr. Cole hasfound some of thesewords. He isless The glories of our blood and State happy, not at all happy, in the semi-didactic, Browning- Are shadows, notsubstantial things. esque verses which he addresses to his past. He seems (Shirley.) to feel himself not quite a poet here and cautiously drops There’s cannon out in Luxemburg into honest doggerel just when the Icarian wings tempt And gunsin all Lorraine. (H. D. Smith.) him to take a rash flight. When Britain first, at Heaven’s command, Arose from out the azure main. The Country’s Call. Selected by G. B. and M. Sar- (Thomson.) gant. (Macmillan. d.) YOU’boasted the Day, you toasted the Day, This anthology is doubtless the cheapest in England. And now the Day has come. Needless to say the printing is good. (Henry Chappell.) The only modern specimenswith poetical dignity are Children of Love. By Harold Munroe. (ThePoetry Mr. Kipling’s well-known hymn and the lines on “The Bookshop. 6d. net.) FarmHand” by Miss Althea Gyles. More of fantasythan sf fancy in theearly verses; more of things that never were real than of things heard Poems on Life. Selected by R. M. Leonard.(Oxford University Press. 7d. net.) or remembered and idealised ; and nothing of creative An admirable anthology in good print. imagination.The little tale of the children, Jesusand Cupid, addsnothing to our interest in either deity; FightingLines. By Harold Begbie. (Constable. IS.) there is a certain sincere melancholy in the rhythm, how- We begto acknowledge politely the receiptof this ever, which suggests that Mr. Munroe himself was in- work. terested. Ininartistic contrast followdetailed descrip- For Belgium. By Wilfred Blair. (Blackwell, Oxford. tions of London life-all thedisgust of aninveterate IS.) town-dweller grumbling forth into measure and rhyme The verses to M. Maeterlinckrise above the rest of ofsorts. The verses on “Carrion’’are over curious; the volume, which,moreover, is of bettertone than no oneever stood over a soldier’s corpse and watched most of the verse elicited by the war. it in that note-book fashion. “Appointment”is simply a piece of mean vivisection. “Youth in Arms” is better. Poetry. A Magazine of Verse. (Monroe, Chicago. Thenearest approach to poetry in the book is ‘“The 15 cents.) Departure,”though the defiance of God isan almost An issuedevoted toverses on thewar, including a hopelesstheme. Mr. Munroe is so undeniably in love prize-poem won by MissDriscoll. It is afacile piece with poetry that it is a wonder how seldom he “finds” of doggerel, a dialogue between Death and the World. himself.Probably he is what we call a “nature-poet,” TheWorld brings Death a sack of thediscs for the too far out of touchwith Nature. All this eye for de- identification of soldiers : tail which he possesses ought perhaps to be occupied in Hereis a sack, a gunny sack, the fields. A heavysack I bring; Here is toll of many a soul- Oxford Poetry. (Blackwell, Oxford. IS.) But not the soul of a King. Who, after reading this volume of clear, disciplined Something mighthave beenmade of thefantasy, but verse, would believe that we have but just come out of the style actual is simply bad. Most of the contributors one of the most fretful, confused, exotic, sadic periods obviously determine to write better than they ever may ; of Englishliterature? One does not know what to Mr.Richard Aldington triesto write worse than he select for praise where almost all is good. Gone are the may. His“War Yawp” beginning“America ! Eng- old bombast, anarchy and reek of things disastrous and land’s cheeky kid brother,”ends in something very invited.Come are modesty, judgment andsentiment. like a poeticalsigh. Why be pretentious? But one fume of the past arises when a lady poet loves someone so dreadfully thatshe shrieks God ! if she The Convolvulus. By Allen Norton. (Claire Marie, might press his life out in one burning, fierce caress ! New York. $1.25.) Acomedy, mentioning everything modern, but con- This kind of thing is now gravely declared passe‘. Here cluding-“Dear me ! It’s five-fifteen, and they’re beat- is the new form : ing their wives in London now.” This Yankee jest is a You shall not be of those sad folk That harsh winds drive from pole to pole, trifle worn. Cold and bare as the wandering smoke; War Harvest. By Arthur Sabin.(Temple Sheen For when you are dead, I will make you a cloak Press. 6d.) Of my love and my dreams to cover your soul. Another blow struckfor Old England.Mr. Sabin That is by Mr. T. W. Earp, whose “Anthony Heywood’” avenges our woes butconcludes with Peace on Earth. is a fine ballad of a vagabond. But we are being drawn The“barbarian horde” rhymes withsword and the intoparticular criticism, and all we wish to dois to Hun assonantly thunders. recommend readers to order the book at once. To criti- cise would involve quotation half as long as THE NEW Sword Blades and Poppy Seed. By Amy Lowell. AGE. (Macmillan. 5s. 6d.) Oh dear,dear, dear ! “Inthe firstplace I wish to Aetas andIagen. By H. R. Barbor. (Cornish, Birm- state my firm belief that poetry should not try to teach, ingham. IS.) that itshould exist simply because itis a created, Mr. Barbor’spreface, short as it is, is sufficient to beauty.’’One who will teach, however, will do: it in a prejudice any critic. We do not want to know what a prose preface rather than simply or silently exist. poet thinks of his own work or how he came to do it. I walked as though some opiate A manmust be amazingly developed ormature who Had stung and dulled my brain, a state makes a preface. “The artist should tell of real people Acuteand slumbrous. It grew late. faithfully.” Mr. Barborprattles, and you might shut Wonderfulis the power of memory. “Dullopiate” is the book if you were not obliged to read it. said,however, once andfor all. We do notclaim to The Dialogue is very well done, and may be actable; have cut every page of this volume, but went quite far but of course the work is simply a dialogue and not a enough without finding a poem. play, as itis called, at all. The idea isthe eternal 255

struggle between youth and age. In the most naturally ing than to draw out the intelligible meaning of things, goodmanner Mr. Barbor makes a youth and an old and to discover in the unconscious actions of natural man his characters. The speech is simple, vigorous and beingsthose same principles which constitute the sub- stance of our reason. Scientific knowledge teaches us to very often‘poetical. The idea has been well moulded hear the inmost soul of things vibrating in unison with intoits form. Too manycompounds suggest a pitfall our own souls, andit is just this which enables us to forMr. Barbor if hedoes nottake care; compounds understandthem and to absorb into our own Egothe almostalways indicate a certain laziness of thought revelation of their true being. Knowledge is not the pas- whichhides under appearance of double-energy. It is sive reflection of things,a sort of photograph of them, a spiritedlittle piece of work. Whether by design or butthe active elevation of the object to the life of the no,the lotus atmosphere, which comesfor a while to subject. It is commonly said thatthe man of science studies everyone afterthe firstexercise of youthfulcourage, Nature in order to wrest her secrets from her; it would, is suggested in the wording of the final speech. perhaps, be equally true to say that the silent voice of things,speaking to us through experience, asks of our mind the revelation of the end to which their unconscious activity tends. Obscure being would fain rise to the light The IdealisticReaction Against of thought, and the soul of the man of science who listens * tothat voice is not theEgo of the solitary egoist who Science. seeks his own intellectual pleasure, but rather the heroic soul which knows the virtue of sacrifice, and which, filled A CONFLICT of Rationalism and Idealism was in the be- with yearning love for these lowly beings, strives to im- ginning, is now, and ever shall be. It is not, however, part to them a spark of the flame which burns so brightly Professor Aliotta’s purpose to cover the whole ground within itself. historically but to describe and criticise the specialre- We would add that we believe that the ecstasy of the action of the latter part of the nineteenth century-a re- scientificdiscoverer (not he that“discovers” a new action from the specialIntellectualism of ‘‘Modern species or a new mountain, but who perceives intuitively Science.”This reaction against knowledge took two afterlong communionwith nature,whether in the directions : that of thePragmatists (including laboratory or abroad, some general relation, some unity Nietzsche),who are all for action, and that of the In- of purpose or of character) is co-equal and identical with tuitionists,who claim that Love and Beauty (Religion that of the Lover and the Artist, in moments of identity and Art) are fuller revelations of Reality (the innermost or of aesthetic contemplation. being of things, Life, Energy, God) than is attainable in Professor Aliotta, however, developshis theory as a any way by Intellection. Thus Ravaisson claims that definite attack upon idealism, and a defence of theism. “Beauty, and more especially beauty in its most divine “There is no such thing,” he says, “as an unknowable and perfect form, contains the secret of the world” † ; reality.”But here, we think,he is in fact speaking and Baldwin, that in æsthetic contemplationthe “con- only of the Saguna Brahman, who is indeed knowable sciousness has its completest and most direct and final conceptually. His arguments against the existence of a apprehension of what realityis and means”‡;just as Nirguna Brahman are of little weight. He adduces two Hindu theory defines Rasa (aestheticemotion) as considerationsagainst idealism. Ifthe universeis a analogousor identical with the emotion of Atman- purely subjective construction, if plurality is an illusion, intuition. Injust the same way themystics of all thenit should be possiblepractically to eliminate the ages (to whom, however, Professor Aliottamakes no duality of subject and object; in other words, that which reference)proclaim thatthrough Love alone (the we have created we ought still to be able to mould at identity of subject and object) is attained the immediate will ; yet (as Aliottapoints out,and everyoneknows revelation of Reality : thisis the gift of EternalLife from personal experience) the world is not mere “plastic offered by the Saviours. matter which will yield to our every whim” : “the object The æstheticians and mystics are on sure ground in isnot an amorphous flux of sensations which can be claiming that Beautyand Love are modesof our con- segmented and ordered as we please, but is the centre sciousnessfully competent to our final and full illumi- of a system of reactionswhich . . . maysometimes nation. Butthey have sometimes erred (just asthe play us false and despatch us into the other world.” In Rationalistserr inclaiming exclusivevalidity for otherwords, we do not always have our own way. knowledge) in claimingexclusive validity for the This isvery plausible ; but the argument for plurality aesthetic or mystic experience with which they are alone falls to the groundif we begin to consider what is meant familiar. by “whim”and “way.” For if we assume Idealism, ProfessorAliotta very effectively repliesfor Science andregard the seeming plurality of the universe as a against such over-depreciation by the Intuitionists. He contraction and identification into variety (the motif of says that such depreciation could only be well founded if which we need not discuss), then it is only too obvious science bearbitrarily defined as the empiricalanalysis that the separate creature wills of the myriadmonads of the registrateable ; but that in fact science is much thus created cannot satisfy their everywhim, for they more than this. ’The concept is something more than a are but fragments of the greater Will (Energy, Force, mere summary of perceptions ; it is not an abridged ex- God), bywhich theuniverse is created and sustained. perience, but an idealised experience, and its fruitfulness It does not follow that this entity has not the power to lies in its ideal character. Professor Aliotta has a mov- recreate and mould at will its own creation;nor does it ing passage, which may be said to prove from internal follow thatthe creature-will, the“whim” and “way” evidence that science has that spiritual meaning that he that are almost powerless as such, may not be raised to claims for her :- Omnipotence. “Whosohath not escaped from will, The whole complex structure of the mechanical world no will hath he.’’ Natureresists our will only in pro- is but a vast framework erected by the mind of man in portion to, our lack of faith ; “in ages of imagination order to raise experience to the unity of reason, and to understand among the few scattered and fragmentary in- this firm persuasionremoved mountains.” Nature is dications afforded us bynature that Living Thought continuallyplastic tothe will of saintsand avatars ; which finds expression there,as in our own innermost mind, and to our will, in proportion as our will is His. Science, by emphasising the rational unity which gathers Professor Aliotta raises a second objection to Ideal- together thephenomena of ’the universeinto one vast organ- ism in the phrase the inaccessibility of other Egos :- ism, teaches us to understand them truly, since the word “understand” neither has nor can have any other mean- These consciousnesses (hesays) defy allattempts at directpenetration, and remain incommunicable intheir * “The Idealistic Reaction Against Science.” By Pro- intimacy; we canonly reconstruct the subjective life of fessor Aliotta;translated by Agnes McCaskill. (Mac- othersby the help of outwardsigns, whereas . . . from millan. London, 1914. 12s. 6d.) the idealisticpoint of view, which denies the sub- † “La Philosophie en France dans le 19 Siècle,” p. 322. stantiality of the Ego andthe plurality of varioussub- ‡ “Thought and Things,” preface. jects . . . the various consciousnesses . . . should pene- 256 trate one anotheras do differentmoments of thesame spiritual life, and it should be possible for me to read the Pastiche. mind and past or” another as I do my own. Every obstacle tothe intimate communion and fusion of mindsshould WELL ? vanish, and one mind be visible to another without any Sir,--Whydid the penny stamp ? Because thethree- intervening- veil of secretthought and feeling. pennybit. Ho! ho ! Here also wereply that the objection falls to the Thatside-splitting joke belonged tothe period of the ground as contrary to experience ; for nothing is more Bore War. We allhated Bores then.And no wonder, constantlyannounced by lovers throughout the world when the pro-bores fired off witticisms like that at US. I had a friend who loved these jokes. Johnny Garrulous, than the fact of the mutual fusion and transparency of weused to call him. His real name was Ramsbotham. minds, in perfect sympathy;while theinner mind of His mother was the once famous butnow almost forgotten the whole universelies open to the mind cf Saint and epigrammist. Artist, who sees all things in himself and himself in all. He came one day to the office full to bursting with the Thatthis should be so is not contrary to the order of above wonderfuldiscovery. Why did the penny stamp? Nature, but simply the perfection of an experience that hespluttered, holding himself togetherlest he should explodeprematurely. Don’t any of you fellows know? must in some degree have come to everyone;and this Why, because, ho ! ho ! becau-- ho ! ho ! ho ! because experience is our strongestevidence of Unity(which the threepenny. piece ! Ho ! ho ! ho ! ho ! . . . (repeating would,indeed, be disproved were it shownabsolutely decimal,please.) that the subjective life of others cannot be known ex- And we laughed,too. All of us, that is, except ceptthrough outward signs). McAngus,who is a Scotchman. McAngus explained to Thus either argument against the Nirguna Brahman Garrycarefully and at length where he had missed the is countered by our own experience. docs nor, point. This “Bah!’’ saidGarry, in disgust, “I hateyou word- however, imply thatProfessor Aliotta’s argument for splitting philolo-quists; you’d ruin any joke ; you’d spoil theSaguna Brahman (Ishvara) is invalid. This argu- the Ten Commandments even.” And we laughed again- ment is briefly as follows :- all except McAngus, who is a Presbyterian. The rationality which science postulates in nature leads But that was fourteen years ago. us to Divine Consciousness as its necessary epistemologi- I hadn’tseen old Garry €or nearly a decade, until he cal development, because . . . a norm which is not H suddenly turned up at myoffice a day or two ago. norm for any consciousness isa logical absurdity. He (Pleasenote the difference between the office, and my who believes inthe objective value of his science must office. Many changestake place in fourteen years. Old then also believe in God : if an AbsoluteThought does Garry is older, but not much wiser, I fear. He is a pro- not exist,nature cannot be rational, and if there is no German now, and when I tried to give an evasive answer rationalityin things, the reconstruction which we make tohis invitation to dinner,he told me that it was not of them with the categories and principles of our mind is German to the subject.) an arbitraryprojection of no value whatsoever. He who Heburst through the swing-door without beingan- doubtsthe existence of God must doubt theobjective nounced : “How areyou, old chap ? Haven’tseen you value of hiscognition. . . . The scientific manwho sets for years. I say, have you heard the latest? What is the himself tounderstand nature manifests his faithin the difference between fiteing like gentlemen, and wrighting rationality G-F the world by the very act of turning to her like cads?” in theyearning of his soul, and works all unknowingly (Heexplained the humour of spellingto me). “Don’t for the glory of God, even though he may call himself a you know? Why, in the one case, the enemy lays round, materialist. and, in the other case, he sleeps sound. See?” Ho ! ho ! The mentionof faith recalls the definition of Saint Paul: ho!ho! etcetera. is the substance of hoped for, the evidence And as luck would have it, who should come in at that Faith things very moment but McAngus. Coincidence ? No, not at all. of things not seen. And so understood, is not religious Mac is myprincipal clerk. Has been for years. faith identical alike with Art, defined as the imitation of And, of course, he insisted on explaining to Garry, with things as they ought to be andwith Science, defined great care, how he had once more missed the point, the as by ProfessorAliotta in a passagealready quoted? correct answer being that in one case you lay about your We are prepared to maintain that all these are equally enemy soundly, and, in the other case, you lie about your means of apprehension of the Saguna Brahman, and enemy roundly. ButGarry didn’t like it. Hewent off in quite a huff. only partcompany with Professor Aliotta in believing AndI’m afraid he won’tcome tosee me again. And I thatbeyond this Person andincluding Him is the don’t know whether I ought to be grateful to McAngus Undivided. ANANDACOOMARASWAMY. or not. W hat do you think you do What ? H. N. ABALLADE OF LLOYD-ON SUBURBS. Hampstead has sober and sequestered lanes, GOD ANDMAN. Wherein you are entreated not to spit. O home of mortals with immortal brains I dreamed I was God, I mean really God, Who pen the direst trash that e’er was writ. Not the Deity worshipped by folk, At Notting Dale, the noses that they hit Not he who let the Titanic go down Are many, for they love a good old brawl : Because he was powerless to save, But these enticements matter not R bit- Or who launched an iceberg against the ship The Jerry Builder thriveth in them all. To give human pride a check. Neither devil nor idol was I, Camberwell’s much like Hades, when it rains ; Butalmighty and fatherly. The lads of Clapham have a lively wit. I shook not the Earth out of thoughtless might, Putney in summer swarms with ardent swains; RepeatingMessina’s tale, And I am told (I cannot vouch for it) As a giant who stirred in his sleep The togs they wear at Hendon never fit. And smothered ants unawares. Babies of Fulham have the shrillest squall. I left no hero to starve and freeze, Yet mark, though much the gods will not permit- As again men swore by Scott; The Jerry Builder thriveth in them all. I suffered not mortals to roast alive The scriveners of Brixton spare no pains Beneath their wrecked juggernauts. To raise the status of the shilling pit. So swift was my arm to help, At Barking- there is strife about the drains. I caught up airmen at need, Tenants of Peckham often have to quit, While the sea could gather no toll, (Hence their devotion to the midnight flit) Nor that river called after a saint, Poplar is gay with many a cockle-stall. Which boasts of his namesake’s grave. Still, to whatever bower you shift your kit- The Jerry Builder thriveth in them all. The weather itself acknowledged my rule, ENVOI. And favoured both cricket and crops, Hear,THORN, the tragic burthen of my skit. Or if rain was better by day than night, Though Balham and its glories never pall, I prevented picnics betimes, ThoughShepherd’s Bush and Tooting foster grit- And ignored ingratitude. The Jerry Builderthriveth in them all. P. SELVER. I guided folk through malignant germs 257

To an agile and sweet old age, THE NATIONAL CRISIS. So that doctors went penniless MASTERMINDS OF LEADING PUBLIC MEN. For depending on others’ woes. The papers became too dull to sell, What Sir Thomas Booseier Thinks. So orderly life had grown, There can be no doubt that the nation is involved in While journalists doing their best a very serious commercial warfare for the trade of Ger- Were dubbed worse than perjurers. many. But citizens of my native town need not despair On the contrary, novelists thrived, of our entrance into quarrel with the Nietzschean Hun. Describing the good old days Be of good cheer. . . . If the Russian army cannot manage When tragedies stirred the heart. to reach Paris in, say, five days, it would seem a pity. . . . There was common complaint that souls were starved What Sir James Parasitie Thinks. For want of the gambler’s joy- I can hear the chorus of some popular song ringing in The thrill of the splendid chance- my ears as I lie in my bed every night. For many days That certain commercial gain I wondered where I could possibly have heard it . . . Was a vulgar substitute. then I did remember : it was one late night (before the street lamps were extinguished). A brave young soldier was walking home from his barracks. . . . I can hear the But deprivations much worse were those song even now. . . . There is no doubt that a blanket is Of wretches addicted to vice, very acceptable on a cold night on the trenches. . . . The Both drunkard and prostitute. Allies should make a counter move on the East; at least, They wrung my heart with their baffled looks, I should imagine that such a counter-move would very Then sank on their knees in prayer To the force that balked their desires. materially help the right wing in its circular sweep. . . . I argued against my divinity That song again . . . la, la, te, ta-la, la, la, ra-te, That the good was too far ahead, ta. . . . That the torture exceeded the gain, What Sir Sidenk Garspinn Thinks. Till, sighing with human relief, The seizure of Perrink-how many Londoners have ever I relaxed my restraining hand. heard of this little but extremely popular resort, where The ecstasies of their stinted flesh one can obtain the very choicest of cigars and rare fruit? So excited my fatherhood . . . It seems to me that the Allies should concentrate on That I shed great thunder tears Perrink, for, if the Huns managed to land even a mere As hot as their fevered limbs. handful of men, brave little Perrink would be no more. An outcry was raised by sober old maids I dare not think about it. . . . Lord Kitchener can do That the moral order had failed, a great deal to stay the finger of a horrible and unneces- So to make them understand sary fate from overtaking brave little, charming little How all were sinners or none, Perrink. . . When I think. . . . I raged as far as Malay, What Lord Swindellz Thinks. And destroyed the tea supply. The end of the war should not be delayed much past, let us say, January. . . . I can conceive no more disas- The moment they felt my will was slack, trous culmination to a great and glorious war. . . . With The nations all fought like dogs, the enemy on the run, and with the rival’s booming trade Whom the leash had curbed to no end in our hands, national ardour at its intensest, and with But to madden beyond control. our great population enjoying its usual-nay, more than All lips foamed white with their righteous cause, usual-let us say an abnormal prosperity . . . profit- And bandied my name about. sharing galore . . . National Insurance at its zenith . . . So curious I grew that I stood aloof, who among us shall say that the greatest war the world And feigned to be deaf as Baal, has ever seen ,has been in vain? . . . For myself, I be- For in truth it puzzled me sore lieve that a direct change of military tactics is essential To distinguish just from unjust, at the present crisis . . . the Russians are very good If the conqueror were not he. fellows . . . I remember. . . . From the first I noticed a shameful thing, What Mr. Boredom Sifzedzk Thinks. Which drove me further aloft- Think for a moment. Do not run away with the idea That the beaten called on me most! that soldiers like fighting. If the truth be told, they are Their penalties served to increase their shrieks, much happier at home in the great financial houses, tak- Which surely must melt my heart, ing a very keen delight in the enormous organisation of Though I braced it with stone and steel! their various firms’ headquarters. . . . How romantic is But I sang the unknown heroic deed, trade, how saturated with good-will and joy of life! Pay Whose reward was a happy death, a visit to my great house-once seen, never forgotten. Nor cherished the frantic cry for help . . . What are the Russians doing in Austria? As I read Like a child’s petitioning. my daily paper I am struck by the really extraordinary The brutal pleased me more than the weak, position of the Gerkins. . . . It seems to me that the For wretched in spirit were they, Allies . . why not. . . . Who drew not strength from their wrongs, . Till one man counted as three. What Sir Joseph Lyzonke Thinks. We shall win. (Please put this sentence in big letters.) How can one give in to undue pessimism beats me all My passion left me resigned delight ends up. Is not business as is usual? (Big letters, In a catastrophic world- please.) As I was saying only yesterday, here we have In the clashing of part with part a ninety-nine to one chance. I wouldn’t miss it for To gain a grand consciousness. nothink. So all cheer up at once. No moping in this great Must we worship still in our helplessness City . . . brave John Bull! Let every man do his duty An eternal savagery, and send one of my splendid Easter puddings to the While we strive to give it aim, front . . . the war will not be over before Easter. . . . And lend it divinity? Let the brave Belgians move a little quicker. Why don’t Must we even plunge into wilful strife they? It is so sure that the Germans are too close to the To know whose is the right to live? sea, and our sailors do not seem to realise this. . . . Lord Till men are as like as peas in a pod, Kitchener is doing his very best. . . . Politeness must keep within bounds. What Lady Doodlzk Thinks. Till meteorologists err no more, What can we women do? my husband says . . . so I So long shall the clouds remain sit here in the autumn half-light sewing. . . . I often An outstanding battlement, think strange thoughts as I sit here with my sewing. . . . Where Deity dwells aloof. I wish I had been born a man, then would I be not sitting But Providence hovers above the church here with my sewing, but I would be doing my duty on When lightnings descend perforce the field of the battle . . .. As I sit sewing, I think To illumine Franklin’s face ; strange thoughts. . . . I seem to see the Russians moving God lives in the magic messages along a little faster, and I also think I see the Allies Which flash from the stricken ship ; pressing back upon the Prussian Huns. . . . It is very And more than all in the daily fact dull here in the autumn half-light. . . . I would rather That Life is a gallant game. be in Paris. General French is doing a good work. . . . FITZGERALD LANE. ARTHURF. THORN. 258

correct, or military training and organisation are LETTERS TO THE EDITOR. demonstrablya disadvantage. The little Belgian nation, “THE WAR OF IDEAS.” with a population practically the same as our own young Sir,-I am a little astonished that the editorial writer, Canadian State, has probably lost in casualties more than with all his faith in the cause of Britain, has not dealt the whole British nation, whose stake, in turn, is an Em- with Mr. Bonar Law’s letter, in which he promised the pire covering a fourth of the peoples and territory of the assistance of the Opposition on August 2 in any measures globe. Are we doing our bit? Indeed, are we doing- which the Government might take in support of France are we permitted to do-our best, or what we should and and Russia against Germany. There is not a word there could do? In my opinion, and notwithstanding the about Belgium, or the Treaty of 1839; that was the financial advisers of our politicians and our Press, we are sentimentalpretext by which the British people were to be not. These tell us “we are getting all the men we want.” deluded, at the expense of Belgium. It is not surprising But even now, at this crisis, are the hands of our to read in the “Morning Post” that the high moral tone politicalmasters clean of everything but actual national taken by Britain’s writers and statesmen has caused a interests?Considering our stake, considering the revulsion of feeling against Britain. H. G. Wells, Arnold responsibilitiesthat we have assumed andwhich we insistmust Bennett, Chesterton, Blatchford and Co., will create a remain ours, should we have two million troops in combination against the Allies sooner or later ; the littérateur Europe, facing Germany’s four or five millions, next turned politician is always a disastrous failure. spring? Supposing we had this two millions, and another The following sentence from a most instructive article million in the five States and in the dependencies of India in the current “Saturday Review” on “The Sober Truth and Egypt, even then this would represent less than 5 about the War,” I commend to the attention of S. Verdad per cent. of our national population, as against Germany’s and “Romney” : “Roughly, it may be said that Germany present tax of 8 per cent., and probable recruitment then has secured a definite win in Belgium and a draw in of IO per cent. Your readers, being intelligent patriots, France and in the Eastern theatre of war €or the time should know whether we should, or could, or will, have being.’’ C. H. NORMAN. this host. *** As a matter of fact, we practically are rejecting THE PRESS. hundreds of thousands of recruits. Thirty thousand Sir,-I applaud with all my heart your “Notes of the Canadians are encamped in this country. On a 5 per cent. basis, 400,000 would be Canada’s contribution, for Week,” of December 24. The Press is, in truth, degrading State, national, and imperial defence, English and soiling the nation, and making it ridiculous. One if feels, when reading the papers, something like a panto- Authority could imagine the historic fact of British racial mime super, with a sensitive imagination, might feel and national expansion. when dressed in a hideous mask and exhibited to the “There is no one I know personally in the Canadian laughter of the public, or as a Jew disguised in gaberdine. contingent,” writes a French-Canadian in Quebec, “but a we hear that they have been ill-treated in England at One hopes that the more sensible portion of mankind Salisbury Plain. Of course, there were quite a number of will realise that it is not us that they see, but only a ridi- ‘bad lots’ among them, but also there were many good culous counterfeit, the stage property of ouroppressors. boys of nice families who could not get a commission and But, alas ! Man, in the lump, in spite of his name, is, like had to enlist as privates.” your correspondent, “Canadian X,” an unthinking On the same day that I received the above (this week) animal. And we, on our part, ought in justice to the I chanced to lunch with three senior Canadian officers in German nation, to remember that they are also dressed London. Their natural native enthusiasm had gone. out in Press properties, and that we don’t see them any They were men, not boys, experienced, and keen. All more than they see us. they asked was to be sent to do their bit; not as a Division, And I think it should be explained to “Canadian X” but separately as regimental units and among other that it is not really panic among the people that our Press British troops at the front. They did not complain; but clearly, as after Africa, they will have something to say of Government fears. That is only its pretence. It really “X.” fears lest the fury of the people should be stirred. It English military methods, after the war. dreads the Geni-spirit of hoi polloi, and will do anything *** to keep it corked up in the bottle. Asudden accession THE ATROCITIES. of heat might explode it. That explains the persistent Sir,-My attention has been called to the correspondence call for conscription. They wish to use it as a in your journal over the alleged atrocities cord to bind the Geni before he can shake himself free. committedbythe Germans. That is also the meaning of the irritating restrictions on In his letter published in your issue November 12, Mr. the Volunteer movement. Kitson repeated the incidents related to him by an ex- The Press fears the people-and hates them. Naval captain regarding certain matters of which he was PER SONA. an eye-witness. *** I wish to say that I was present at the interview “BRITONS”-“BRITISH” NATIONALS. mentionedand I heard the said captain make the statements Sir,-Yesterday, no less than the “Post,” the “Times,” as reported by Mr. Kitson. and the latter’s tailings, reiterated the tale that German This gentleman narrated his visit to Belgium, and told casualties number, or have numbered, “at least two us of the evidences of the atrocities which had been committed. millions.” He stated that he had seen the bodies of young To-night, again, the “Evening News” implicitly states children that had been bayonetted to death. that “Germans have lust 600,ooo men in the last seven He also stated that these atrocities had been brought weeks.”This is the boast of England’s most respectable home to him, more particularly since the arrival of his moulders of English public opinion. nephew, an officer in the Hussars, who had been wounded, But if we accept this lie, where does it lead us? and had fallen into the hands of the Germans, who had Germans,we are told, have lost 3 per cent. of their population, destroyed his eyesight, and cut his wrists, so that he yet still have 5 per cent. in the field. These papers could not use his fingers. could not, and do not, claim that we have inflicted this The interview took place at a lunch given by Mr. Kitson loss. Nor can, or do, they claim that Germans are at the George Hotel, Stamford, about the end of cowards, or have lacked intelligent foresight and organi- September. sation and patriotism. German nationals number about I merely wish to corroborate the truth of the report 68,000,000. We have here (above) accounted for 8 per made by Mr. Kitson. The statements were made in the cent., or roughly 5,500,ooo. British nationals number presence of myself, Mr. Kitson, and a third person. about 61,000,000, of whom, perhaps, I per cent. are in the A. C. NASH. field, and less than one-seventh of one per cent. have be- *** come casualties. Sir.,-Absence in the North of Scotland prevented my My purpose is to state true values, relative values. I receiving THE NEW AGE, and only to-day have I been have accepted the crude figures of the above English able to read the further correspondence regarding the authorities and have then shown the percentage as be- alleged atrocities committed by the Germans, in your last tween the two principal nations. It seems that our three issues. “little bit” has been a very little bit. It follows that the My attention has been called particularly to your French, of whom we common people know nothing, must “Notes of the Week” (December IO), in which you say : have lost in casualties certainly not less than a million “Our readers will not be surprised to learn that ‘no such men. That is, their losses are certainly ten times larger person’ as the ‘authority’ recently privately given us for than ours. Either these deductions are approximately the German atrocity story by our correspondent, Mr. 259

Arthur Kitson, ‘can be traced’ by either the War Office ARROGANCE AND CULTURE. or the Admiralty.” Sir,-There is much truth in “Fairplay’s” letter in I do not know what efforts you have made to ascertain your issue of December 31. On all sides is Germany the existence of the person whose name I gave you. being denounced by us, not only for the folly of those Evidently,however, the incident has now developed into one who control and have inspired the direction of that of personal veracity. country’s immediate destinies, but practically for From the tone of your remarks, doubt evidently exists everythingshehas done. We are asked to believe that her as to whether my statement as published in my letter thinkers and her artists are worthless, we are urged was a bona fide report of the statement made to me, or to “capture” her trade and industries; because she has whether it has been hatched in my own imagination. been daring enough to wish to become a world-State, This is rather a serious insinuation, and I have, therefore, she is to be crushed utterly that Britain may become written to-day to the Admiralty Department for the a greater world-State! Is the arrogance on one side information which you have evidently not been able to only? Surely it is obvious that the future will not obtain. I have also written to the ex-naval captain be to the world-State, but to the world-nation, to the himselfasking his permission either to give full names and nation with that intensity of inner life and that dates referred to, or to write direct to THE NEW AGE and intelligencewhich can control its various elements not only corroborate my statement. If he fails to do one or the for its own healthy development, but for its right rela- other, I will authorise you to publish his name and tions with other nations. Each has its own contribu- address in full. tion to make to the world’s welfare, to the true culture I have not taken the trouble hitherto to attempt to of humanity, and it is folly for a large section of the verify the statement made to me by this gentleman, but Press and many public speakers to ask us to imagine I intend to do so now, since the whole matter has been that one nation can be and do everything at the same challenged. I cannot believe that an English gentleman time, and do it well; in developing its own particular who professes an acquaintance with Lord Kitchener and resources, however, no nation need be absolutely blind the President of the French Republic would deliberately to other nations’ activities. invent a story such as the one related to me in the It has been the penalty of our insularity that we have presence of two other persons. so distrusted contact with the thought of Europe, have So far as the main question is concerned, this single by our own suspicion aroused suspicion in others, instance is of no particular account. If the Germans have thinking that all manifestations of some spirit we have not committed atrocities, then the Psalmist is about not understood are dangerous to us. To take examples, correctwhen he says, “All men are Liars,” but it will take we can name outstanding European writers and artists a great deal more than the ravings of your correspondents who have been either totally neglected here or, if -like Herr Fenwick-to convince the public of this fact. studied, have been studied superficially. It may be There is nothing that one can say in reply to such letters said that we are only just beginning to read Dostoieffsky as those which have been written by this violent pro- and therefore have not yet begun to understand his German correspondent. I accomplished what I set out greatness ; the penetration and ecstasy of Nietzsche how to do, namely, to show that the man who signed himself gladly we pass, after scanning his books, now that we “Fairplay” was not the impartial person that he wished can label him “the philosopher who caused the war”; people to believe, and, consequently, his complaint as to Strindberg we dismiss because he is a woman-hater, the one-sidedness of the Press was not justified-in his and D’Annunzio because he is a woman-lover; the Swiss, case, at least. Hodler, a force in contemporary painting we have not I have no intention whatever of challenging Herr troubled about, and the Southern Slav sculptor Mestrovic Fenwickto a contest in which he has chosen the one weapon is only just being spoken of here and there. We are in the use of which he is undoubtedly a pastmaster- still very uneasy about Cézanne, Van Gogh and namely, MUD! Gauguin, we have not understood the intensity of the force Let me assure Mr. E. Wake Cook that Fenwick’s mud (the cosmic consciousness) inspiring their efforts, the has not only failed to “penetrate my vitals,” it was not force which finds further expression in the paintings even sufficiently adhesive to soil my clothes. A residence and writings of Kandinsky, for in our British Post- of nearly twenty years in the States served to familiarise Impressionism is hardly any inner fire, only too often me with the peculiar type to which he belongs. is a posturing in borrowed clothes : “Significant form”is ARTHUR KITSON. all very well, but it should be significant of something [It should be plain to our correspondent that we worth expressing; have we really troubled to examine "insinuated”nothing against his veracity-or, for the matter the poetry of Marinetti and its purpose before laughing of that, against the veracity of his informant either. Our at it? Have we any right indeed with our out-of-date “insinuation” was one of ordinary easy credulity. We criticism to pass judgment at all on composers like are glad, however, to know that he now proposes to make Schönberg and Stravinsky ? the inquiries that should have been made before he There have been, of course, a few discerning ones and publishedhis story.-ED. N. A.] here and there a critic has protested at the general *** attitudeof hostility to everything that seems different from what we have been used to, but stronger and more Sir,--It may be worth while to call your attention to a frequentprotests are necessary to rouse us to a proper sense curious police report in the “Times” of December 18. A of our responsibilities and opportunities, for now our young Belgian woman, who had been in Antwerp during values and our habits of mind are being changed, if the siege and arrived in England utterly destitute, was slowly, and any movement should be taken advantage of charged with attempting to commit suicide, theimmediate in case the patient falls to sleep again, Small things, occasion being an unhappy love affair with a Belgian perhaps, but we may be glad that the conservative Royal officer. The Godalming magistrates, we read, Academy is giving us a more representative exhibition dischargedthe prisoner, “believing she had undergone of modern British art than has ever been seen in Burlington enough suffering.” House before; that the New English Art Club’s This seems to be a remarkable if inadvertent admission present exhibition has so good a war picture as Mr. or implication that the ordinary purpose of our penal Sickert’s “The Soldiers of King Albert the Ready,” from system, as understood by our police courts, is to inflict which all irritating mannerism is absent; and we may he suffering: actually to inflict suffering rather than to glad that amid the welter of war “literature” Romain reformthe unhappy delinquent. Rolland’s “Above the Battlefield” has been published by While I am writing to you, let me say how glad I am “The Heretics”; his words to the leaders of the nations to see that Rowland Kenney, with his usual good sense, should be taken to heart, “was it not your duty to has been writing to you to protest against “atrocity- attempt-you have never attempted it in sincerity-to mongering,” and particularly against the vileness of our settle amicably the questions which divided you-the British Press. I’m sure if only Fleet Street were fighting problemof peoples annexed against their will, the equitable the Kaiser we might all pray for a German victory. Words division of productive labour and the riches of the world? fail me to express my loathing of the bundle of penny Must the stronger for ever darken the others with the and halfpenny rags which befoul English nobility with shadow of his pride, and the others for ever unite to their mean little mafficks, forged “letters from the front,” dissipateit? Is there no end to this bloody and puerile lying head-lines, lying pictures, lying posters : and, sport, in which the partners change about from century crowning impudence, their disingenuous protests against to century-no end, until the whole of humanity is the Censorship. exhaustedthereby?” and only by a scrupulous honesty of If only the military authorities would suppress the purpose in all our actions now may we look forward to whole buck-basket and publish the official news in the that time which I,. Cecil Jane in his courageously “London Gazette,” we might face neutral nations with optimistic “The Nations at War” sees for the future, when greater dignity. J. M. “International sympathy will increase at the expense of 260

international jealousy. Mankind will realise its common civilisations. Not the people but the politicians and the civilisation more fully;it willappreciate better the divergent pimps it is who become corrupt and drag down all with merits of different races. Energy which has been them. To say, therefore, as M. Faguet says (vide expended upon the perfection of engines of destruction “A. E. R.”), that “France is a nation of Pontius Pilates will be diverted into more beneficial paths. All nations, washing their hands of responsibility and leaving the united in a common brotherhood, will be enabled to labour, direction of their destinies to chance and the sport of each in its own sphere, for the general advancement of circumstance”would imply that the people do, as a body, mankind.” E. H. C. *** R. realise that they are being fooled all the time. Which is absurd. (Moreover, Paris is not France.) DEMOCRACY IN DOUBT. The voice of the people is the voice of God, and in so far Sir,-The point we are too apt to overlook is that as we are a nation acting as d unit we might justly say Government on a democratic basis is not such a formidable that this war is of a biological character. In essence, it is business as the workers imagine. The essential a protest by the plebs and the aristocracy against the thing is to try to forget the existing régime; that is, not tyranny set up by the middle and merchant classes. These to forget that government, as at present constituted, is a last have never understood the English people, and, precariously make-shift, hand-to-mouth affair. The consequently, they stand in panic-fear of them, and do worker has a traditional standard of value, quality, and their utmost to fetter them by all the legislative means at if he adheres to that in his rule of life and thought he will their command. There is no such unsocial distrust of the see that many things are plain which otherwise would people by the aristocracy; and from time immemorial the appear to be obscure. It is to quantity as a ruling factor two have worked side by side, but particularly so in war. in production that we Europeans owe the aimlessness of The damnable detachment of the trading element of our civilisation. necessity lends itself to an inconsequence in word and The most striking character in a possessing class, at all deed utterly foreign to the nature of the English peoples, times, and in all ages, is its cowardice. It is the trading which is trustful and generous to an extreme that is class which has stone-walled any attempt at a home-grown mistaken for weakness by the cosmopolitan crew of philosophy, and because of this negative opposition has “sports” who control the economic factor. relegated philosophy to the stolid Teuton, both at home The people have an age-long fear of a tyranny, and, and abroad. Instead of philosophy propounding now that we cannot get “ten thousand in the market- the gospel of Freedom as the religion of the place,” they are opposing the attempt to enslave them by new age, it has degenerated into a sloppy, half the only means left to them; that is (in times of peace) by mystical, muddy-minded Christianity. Naturally a form of spiritual ju-jitsu. We are now at the cross- enough, the traders think they think, though such roads of Progress and Life, and history will rightly thinking is but the rattle of their machinery. The real proclaimus a decadent people if we allow the great Choice to they can understand. Is it not bounded on the one hand be taken from us. If the merchant princes were blessed by Herbert Spencer’s Unknown, and on the other by with vision they would see in the war a means whereby Darwin’s ever-green Survival of the Fittest And does in compounding with the forces of revolution they would not this mean progress-motor-cars, telephones, and siege- be enabled to save their skins whole. But to do that they guns? Ideas, when they do glimpse them, irritate them. must render, unconditionally, unto Casar the things that The ideal maddens them : it would interfere with production. are Cesar’s. HAROLDLISTER. *** As Nietzsche says, we are a sick people. In other words, it is to the continued way of the system we owe NATIONALIST SCOTTISH NOTES. it that we have become a nation of Doubting Thomases. Sir,--”If the Government has completely suppressed The war may bring new values in place of the many old journalistic sedition in Ireland, it should immediately ones it has destroyed, but at least this much is certain, turn its attention to an outbreak of the same character in the huckstering classes have excelled themselves. For Scotland and put a muzzle on that mature but as yet what they have suffered in anticipation they have repaid ‘unlicked cub’ of the family of Mar, the Honourable themselves a hundredfold in Judas’ own coin. Once It Stuart Ruavaidh Erskine. ‘Rory,’ as he is familiarly was an outcry against Machiavelli, one of the kindliest called behind his back in Celtic circles, to which he has and most honourable men that ever lived;now, the bag- for years contributed Gaelic literature, is, so far as we men are shouting at Nietzsche, the shy and retiring. They know, the only articulate rebel now in Scotland, and as forget in their frenzy that, as Stendhal pointed out, “les such, no time should be lost in exhibiting him in the fripons qu’il a démesqués prétendent que c’est lui qui est pillory for the edification of his countrymen and a salutary un monstre.” And this monstre, Nietzsche, cry all our warning that treason, whether expressed in English, slavering nonconformists, recking little that their Scots, Welsh, Irish, or Scottish Gaelic, is not to be interpretationof the man proclaims them as rank to heaven! toleratedby the peopleof Great Britain.” These lugubrious gabies must be unmasked. Your true The quotation is from a special article in the “Glasgow pessimist is the man who has never suffered a single Evening News,” a contemptible strawberry-coloured rag, misfortune. His consolation is that he might. Not the edited by one of the most despicable cuckoo-Celts (neither man who just makes ends meet is it who cries out. All, flesh, fowl nor good salt-herring), that illegitimate breed all is vanity, was uttered by a surfeited but never by a of the Ossian cult-Mr. Niel Munro. To hell with him sick man. Let democracy at least not fail in anticipation. and his bawbee paper ! And as to the attack on Erskine For that, I take it, is the psychological explanation of our (who has contributed a statement of his political attitude industrial Hamlets’ hesitation. to your columns in a brilliantly written paper on “Saxon The common sense of the matter is that not only is and Celt,” and who is one of the sincerest and most far- government by traditional rather than specious values seeing intellectuals North of the Tweed, and a great not a difficulty, but that a return to a more simplified personalenemy of mine), I may adapt the words of a recent state of life will automatically put an end to many of our correspondent, taking Mr. Hood to task for his childish troubles, the more so in that these are none of our seeking. skit on William Watson’s war-verse, and dismiss the The great return to sanity will put an end to the policing subject by saying that to readers of THE NEW AGEquota- of one half of the people by the other half. In fact, the tion without remark is amply sufficient. We know all crowning irony of the system is its cult of setting a thief about these ha’penny rag sedition-squeals which are just to catch a thief, thus creating into a caste, as it were, an the bastard offspring of spy-scares and lineally descended infernal crew of body-snatchers. The Fabians, the C.O.S., from that Malice which is the step-son of the great god and expert witnesses. Let us not forget, either, that the Funk. The cowardice of the attack on Mr. Erskine, downfall of Napoleon brought very substantial gains to carefullycalculated as it is, to enlist the baser passions the black-coats. If that be again the result accruing from associatedwith patriotism, has that purely damnable character the downfall of Prussianism, then this will be a bloody which is the deplorable peculiarity of much of our latter- war to no purpose. day journalism, in Scotland almost as much as in If only the Germans were not so damnably obedient, or England;but as the article goes on to say, “It is true that our lot so hellishly patient! it is not that democracy Mr. Erskine’s treasonable attacks on this country, hopes fears responsibility-democracy at work means all for her downfall, and glorification of the most fiendish responsibilityand nothanks--as M. Faguet says, rather is it mechanism of the German enemy, attract little attention that the system has brought about such a cleavage in Scotland, where his quarterly Gaelic magazine, ‘The betweenthe “two nations” that the people cannot see law, Voice of the Year,’ is read by a few hundred people at the much less sane order, for legislation. Notthat government most.’’ Then the editor of the “Guth na Bliadhua” (Voice has become “occult,” but that government stinks of the Year) has received a free advertisement which is the offence. The body of a nation is honourable, and should attract to his periodical all decent minds in Scotland. will readily sacrifice itself at need; but of dishonour it I, at least, although I have no use for the review can have no idea. This has been the weak point in all in question (for quite other reasons as shall appear) have 261 sent in my subscription for it. (It may at least come in accountant? To those who have the misfortune to seek useful as showing me what my own enemies are up to- work their most cruel and inquisitive questions are thrust a point so far unthought of). on all who are poor, though that poverty may be of a Continuing, the writer justifies his attack, despite the transient character, and the inquisitor may be young and small Scottish circulation of Erskine’s paper by saying the victim old enough to be her mother, but their presence “but the Germans, who are profound students of the in the Corps gives them, they consider, a position to Gaelic language---!”Mein Gott! One learns attempt the methods of the Inquisition. If the war ends more every day of the amazing versatilities of that io-morrow to what purpose is all this? Will the experi- wonderfulpeople. Enough ? Englishers are naturally at war enced capable agents be allowed to resume their livelihood with profound students of anything. Profundity is if anything is left to them? profoundlyun-British. Tailors cannot get hands, and the Labour Bureau can But the writer errs when he says that Erskine is the one quite well cope with trade fluctuations, and if August was literary renegade yet discovered in Scotland. Or perhaps a slack month and September also, it is so for all seasonal he does not look upon me as literary, or has not perhaps trade each year. come into contact with my propaganda, which is Lowland No : let the Emergency Corps cease their needless Scottish in the same way as Erskine’s is Highland Scottish. interferenceand the authorities awaken to the sense of their But he may hear about it after the war. Nationalismsown responsibility. It is hardly just to demand monetary will, I imagine-and hope-be very much in the prices for licences of the regular agents, and then when air then, and he may be horrified to hear that instead of a their autumn season is all upset, as this has been, for the contentedly-Anglicised Scottish whole, not only is Erskine sake of sentiment close their eyes to a17 that is going on preaching in the North the re-adoption of the. kilt, the and not prosecute these women as they would any other revival of the Gaelic language, the constitution of a (untitled) person placing servants or clerks. It is nothing Gaelic Scottish Parliament, and a disassociation from short of sweating the business, and the agents are fools arrogant England and her Imperial schemes, but that I to put up with it. FORRICH AND POOR. am sending the fiery cross through the old Debateable *** Land of the Raiders and the Reivers, pointing (as our Border streams point) to England as the eternal enemy, and WOMEN AND WAR. awaiting the inevitable day when the heart of the Sir,--I would like to suggest that when at last the Bordererbestirs :- feminists have won their economic and political freedom, “Bestirs and knows the need and how it will then be time for all the forces of intelligence and To carry on the timeless feud virtue to come against them and bring these queer half- That so the heart of Borderland thinking beings to their senses. It becomes ever more Remain for ever unsubdued.” clear that beyond that very small circle, the feminine Not only so : but Mr. Munro seems to be ignorant of the mind, women cannot pierce, and in a universe containing -propaganda, still as pertinacious as ever, of the Jacobite such infinitudes of time and space, their short-sightedness Legitimists. But of allthese things he will learn and is apt to become disastrous. hear more in post-bellum days, but by that time his chameleon No better example will ever be afforded the world than convictions may be showing quite a different political the characteristics of the feminist movement itself, and colour. It is comforting, however, even to a Lowlander the attitude women generally have taken towards this war to whom all things savouring of the “teughter” {Scots -terrible enough in all conscience. But, theoretically, Highlander) are anathema, that chameleons, capable of and too often, too, practically, women are adding the most changing to suit any pure colour upon which they may be distasteful and discordant note of all. Listen where you placed, are apt to burst on tartan. “Wha daur meddle wi’ will and you will hear the unreasoned, the unqualified me?” But I have exhausted my space. More anon of scream-“run no risks, crush them, crush them, though the issue between Scottish Lowland and Highland ideals, you sink your own souls in hell.” Nor do they stop to and I must also postpone some notes, which, I think, may consider the intrusion they make on the free will, the most be of interest, on Guild Socialism from the point of view sacred right of those who would offer themselves for of a Lowland Scot. Suffice it here to say that my sacrifice-to say nothing of the revolting poison that lurks observationsare mainly to be along the lines of “hereditary at the back of Eve’s unmellowed exhortation and bribe. craftsmanship’’ or “blood-aptitudes,”developed by A. M. Ludovici in his NEW AGE articles on “Indian Art,” and And the feminists speak of courage and the courage which amount, not only to a reactionary note against the they themselves have shown, but it has in truth been the present industrial system, but also to a very pertinent” courage of the “animal” at bay, the primal element of criticism, I think, from a “human” point of view of the womanhood in danger, a good case, no doubt, but not in “Guildsmen’s” schemes. PTELEON. this nineteenth century, a noble case. *** There is a guardianship, the object of whose care has WOMEN’S EMERGENCY CORPS. not yet been sighted by womankind. MILLARDUNNING. Sir,-I have read Miss Falk’s letter in your issue of *** December 24. On what date was the Women’s EmergencyCorps licensed, as she states? THE POETRY OF GEORGE STERLING. My information is that the licence has only now been Sir,-There is a poet in the woods alongside our bungalow, applied for and cannot in any case be granted before the hewing at a chestnut-tree; and I open some copies of end of January ! THE NEW AGE, and in one of them find your readers Why is it necessary to collect funds from the public speculating as to whether or not he can be a “Victorian, to do commercial work and for inexperienced titled and and searching for him in reference tomes in the British wealthy women to give their time and untrained energies Museum! No, you have many poets, but this one is in trying to place secretaries, governesses, domestic ours. It will be a trial, I know, to some of your critics servants, etc., depriving the established agencies of their to learn that the maker of these marvellous melodies is an regular business, and creating unemployment and actual American, born on commonplace Long Island, locality of want and distress in their lives? potato-farms and summer-hotels; and that he has never There are at present a large number of vacancies on the been abroad to acquire any refinement. I notice another books of good agents which cannot be filled at all for lack of your correspondents, taking part in the discussion of of applicants, proving there is no necessity to collect the mystery, complaining how hard it is to find out about charitable funds to do this work either now or at ‘any the real writers in America. Might I, without seeming time, nor to seek for free laudatory half columns in the daily papers in order to upset that part of the labour to be nasty, suggest that a part of the difficulty comes world which the war has only affected in a very minor from the ill-reception you give to those who try to tell degree. you about them? I recall years ago some letters from There are fewer domestic workers out of employment Michael Williams, telling that we had some writers here- since last August as compared with other years, George Sterling being in the list. I remember also that and the unfilled vacancies are more numerous in pro- your critics and readers were severe upon Mr. Williams portion. for his presumption. Regarding their methods there are known instances of Sterling is something over forty, and has published persons applying to this said corps for employment, and four small volumes, which I think may be called the most where they were ladies of refinement they were sent on distinguished that we have to send abroad. His work from one committee to another and offered general possesses the qualities of the greatest poetry ; sublimity servants’and charwomen’s work. Is there any business-like of thought, intensity of emotion, enchanting melody, and checked account being kept of all the money given for this severe and reverent workmanship. He is especially uncalled-for meddling, either by the subscribers or the sensitiveto the sensuous elements of life; for instance, no public authorities; is it audited by a paid chartered painter glories more in the magic of colour. But he has 262 also a stern sense of the dignity of his art, and of the more euphonious, has a better flavour than the patois-ish value of his gift; so that the lures of nature have not “offen” or “awfen.” I shall stick to “awf-ten.” proven a snare to his feet. There is almost nothing Where is the difficulty with purpose? If I say, “I of the note of decadence in his work. As it happens, his purpose doing so-and-so,” I feel compelled to say reputation in this country (which, considering the "purpose,”both fully pronounced but with a slight stress on supreme nature of his gift, is astonishingly high) began “pose.” If I say, “I did so-and-so on purpose,” I feel with one poem which hardly does him justice. I refer to equally compelled to say “pur-pus,” not “puss,” as that the “Wine of Wizardry,” which might better have been implies pussy the cat. The two words are essentially entitled the “Wizardry of Wine”-for it is a kind of half different in meaning and use, and should be kept quite sublime and half grotesque elaboration of the ecstasies distinct. which lure poets into the Kingdom of Alcoholia. What What a shock it would be to some of us if we had to is most representative of Sterling’s work is his thrilling submit for half an hour to his boys and their hammer ! sense of the infinite-of the starry spaces, and the equally FREDERICKH. EVANS. vast spaces within the soul of man. “The Testimony of *** the Suns” was the title of his first book; and “Beyond MORE MODERN THEATRE. the Breakers” is his last. He loves the sea with a passion- Sir,-There is an exclusiveness even in the personality ate and almost mystical love; but he loves it from the of the Stage-door. The most loathsome “super” or shore-as one who does not go to sea, and for whom “walking-on” person attempts to appear dignified as he therefore it is one of the symbols of our human limitations. walks past the sad-faced queues which line up in the “The Muse of the Incommunicable” is the title of one of passage that leads to the stage entrance. his greatest sonnets; and I might mention that he is a There is a barren and repulsive atmosphere which chills master of the sonnet-form. He has written some sonnets enthusiasm. To hear a child laugh within the precincts on the war, which he might send you if you asked him for of the theatre makes one shudder. A solid smugness, them; we have had all the best of the English poetry almost non-human in its intensity, makes itself felt from cabled over here, and there has been nothing so fiercely the rise of the curtain to its fall. passionate and at the same time so coldly masterful. Night after night we pass into the vitiated climate There is another aspect of his work, his sense of what until our emotions either collapse into the general death, is vital and of his own time. He is not saying what other or scream inwardly with pain. But to utter one critical poets have taught him to say. He is an ardent Socialist, word in the hearing of any member of the company earning but has only written upon current events when he has over one guinea a week would involve a visit to the found himself able to make great literature out of them. manager-producer’s sanatorium and a fortnight’s notice. Last spring he was one of those who walked up and down A German spy could not gain for himself such hatred before the offices of the Standard Oil Company, and as does the small salaried actor or actress in the West- caused America’s leading philanthropist to run like a end theatre who dares to criticise the management. Our whipped cur. This behaviour on the part of a great poet silence is self-preservative, for the only effective method was a cause of dismay to our literati, who have drawn a of obtaining work is by mental “crawling” and hat- charitable curtain over it. I suspect, however, that there touching. In the struggle for existence upon the stage, have been worse things known about some of the poets intensified out or‘ all decent proportion by competition whom we, nevertheless, manage to read. with wealthy amateurs, abject servility is the only key to the situation. If you are an ambitious small-part or George Sterling’s poetry is published by A. M. Robertson, “walking-on” person, flatter all those members of the of San Francisco, California. I will suggest to this company- who are earning more than yourself; this is publisher that he send the books to THE New AGE, your only chance. hoingthat the editor will put them into the hands of some The exclusiveness ; the smuggery;the vacuous deftness critic who is willing to admit the possibility that great of triumphant mediocrity-the snob-genius in possession literature might be produced in America. contains collectively something more diabolical even than UPTON SINCLAIR. the Selfridge touch. There is no spontaneous enthusiasm *** in the theatre. The play, bad as it usually is (Mr. Hope has touched the spot every time), is not the centre of THE JEWS. gravitation ; nor is the “acting” of the “stars.” Some- Sir,-The seed of Abraham, according to Dr. Levy, are thing pervades the theatre which is the antithesis of like undecorticated cotton seed, partly digestible in the dramatic atmosphere. It exudes from the initial lack of stomach of the Aryan cow, but mostly not, And Dr. histrionic genius in the most powerful members of the Levy urges his compatriots to remain in the husk on company. Mediocre personalities have been pushed up purpose that they should not be digested. Well, it may into the important positions and from their mechanical be good for the seed-it doubtless increases its chance of and spiritless performances is sent forth the chill air propagation-but it certainly is not so for the cow. which freezes both art and joy out of the theatre. These It imposes an unnecessary strain upon her. It surely individuals have no conception of the meaning or purpose is the business of us Gentiles to see that the seed is flayed, of Drama. The possibilities of the theatre have never and the chaff cast out. To praise the Jews for successfylly occurred to them. The Producer, their Deity, haunts insinuating themselves as usurers when honest their consciousnesses hour by hour, night after night trades were closed to them is like praising anyone for throughout the four acts. He flits about scowling in the succeeding as a pimp or procurer when nobody will wings, a monstrosity who never smiles. employhim for any other purpose. It is like praising a We troop up the stairs. The trivial chaft of an old man for being a parasitic pandar, ministering to and actor who has suffered and starved so continuously in the encouraging the vices of his host. Whatever may be the provinces that a perch in the West-end almost paralyses Jew’s own morals, he certainly persistently undermines him with fresh ambitions, is nobly endured by those of us the morals of the race he lives upon. whose hearts are bitter beyond his imagination. Too And Dr. Levy tells us that he does it with the well we know the final disillusion that awaits him, who consciousintention of eventually climbing on his hosts’ would speed the certain hour of his bewildered exist into shoulders and dominating the world. His is the habit of the gutter. We let him talk. He is quite sure that he the New Zealand rata that climbs the trunk of the pine has at last got his old feet firmly planted in a West-end tree and encircles it, gradually squeezing it to death as theatre, and that he is a fixture. The end of the “run” itself swells and gets stronger. draws near; the next production is in hand. Week by week passes, he is not now quite so confident and hangs There is, I believe, only one way to check the Jews and about upon the stage longer than necessary hoping to make them truly serve the welfare of the race they wish catch the stage-manager’s eye. . . . We hear that new to live with-and that is, not to permit them to accumulate people are being engaged for vacancies in the new play. wealth. AN ADMIREROF MOSES AND ISAIAH. The old man is not one of those re-engaged, nor are any *** of us. The distinction between those in the theatre who are re-engaged and those who are not is now added to the DANIELIZING. distinction already existing between “small-part people,” Sir,-My belief in Mr. H. Caldwell Cook’s practical “good part people,” and “stars.” The atmosphere grows wisdom and knowledge received a shock in his last letter. colder and colder, penetrating even into the dressing- Surely “offen” is too dreadfully Cockney and ugly to be room. In a wild moment I blasphemed the management, endured. “Aw-fen” is almost worse, unless the “aw” is an indiscretion which caused the old actor to raise his very short. eyebrowsand mutter something about “dangerous young Why should the ‘‘oft” it is derived from be ignored? men.” The philosophy of the old fool had been busy For myself I prefer to say “awf-ten” with the aw very justifying the management. He has never been able to short; the t is of great accentual value, and to me is far forget the fact that the head of the firm was a millionaire. 263

The honour he felt in being permitted to enter the theatre No, there were no English Futurists in the eighteenth of a millionaire, even for a few weeks, compensated for his century, but I don’t suppose “R. H. C.” ever thought disillusion and disappointment in not being kept on as a there were. Soon after the appearance of this Hottentot permanent man. He will hang about on the last night in story, “Impressionism” was seen in English literature, and order to shake hands with the manager-producer; he will it was in the hands of a man of genius, Sterne; but all tip the stage-door keeper, and toddle out into the long that is on the other side of the universe to our modern passage with as much dignity as possible. A. F. T. Post-Impressionists and Futurists. *** By the way, the “Connoisseur” was edited by Colman and Thornton, and the writer of the tale was the Earl of PATRIOTISM AND MUSIC. Cork. This paper is in Chalmers’ collection of British Si:-,-I expect your article under the above heading was Essayists. JOHN DUNCAN. intended as a closure to the discussion on Mr. Holbrooke’s *** articles. I would, however, like to point out that the real evil is not the non-appreciation of British music as A UNIFORM DECIMAL SYSTEM. Music, but the fact that economics demand that gate- Sir,-The new British Pharmacopœia in force from money shall rule. The public distrusts, and rightly, January I requires the use of the metric system. Does British music; they won’t pay to risk an almost certain this mean that the war has at last awakened the Government disappointment. Elgar, it is true, is British and draws to the urgent need for this reform, and do they mean (or did) ; but he was entirely made by Novello’s booming ; to introduce it piecemeal? In the past, Parliament has they made him the fashion, and he was accepted without several times rejected Bills to introduce the metric system deep inquiry because he “sounded” so well, and we were and decimal coinage, and there have been numerous so really desirous of believing that a British musical Select Committees and Royal Commissions on the subject, genius had arrived at last. all so far to no purpose. I expect Jaeger, of Novello’s, who was mainly responsible As THE NEW AGE so rightly remarked last week, for the booming, has long-since regretted it, now he if we are to capture German trade something more has had a larger experience “on the other side”; he was is necessary than “to clear the seas and send out deaf to all argument here. our commercial travellers.” This is one of the necessary British music rarely convinces one; there is no other things. Most Continental countries have adopted continuityin it; no essential necessitous relation of one part the decimal system-Belgium and Switzerland had to to another; there is no compelling genius in it; Melos, change, therefore, why not England ? Canada adopted divine Melos, seems dead, that is why they profess to decimal coinage in 1858, Newfoundland in 1863, Ceylon despise mere tune; it is all vastly clever, and that’s the in 1872, Egypt in 1885. Englandlags behind her dependencies. end of it. One of the best of them, Delius, never carries you further than the first twenty bars or so; you think The arguments for decimal and metric systems are, of something is really going to happen, it seems so full of course, three :-The simple tables of weights and atmosphere and apparent meaning ; then, somehow, it measures,the accurate correspondence between the units of thins down, peters out, and you forget all about it for weight, length surface, dry and liquid measure, and the ever after. easy decimal system of notation. The first four rules of You may safely trust the British public to recognise arithmetic only are required for the understanding of the the real genius when he arrives, when he has something Decimal System. Long hours of our youth are wasted at really to say and says it strongly and beautifully. Noisy school struggling with British mathematics, time that Holbrooke’s stuff is never endurable a second time. I had could be spent in the study of foreign languages. If the to endure, not long since, his setting of Edgar Poe’s systems were adopted in their entirety they would cause poem, “Annabel Lee.’: It is absolutely wrong in conception general dislocation and disturbance of accounts, but the and meaning from the first bar to the last; and yet war has now accustomed us to changes, and no doubt he played the pianoforte accompaniment himself, and so ways could be found of effecting this reform by degrees. accepted the rendering as good enough. Any composer Land surveyors would have to change their measurements, who could hear that after he had written it, and be engines, dynamos, and tools, even screw-threads contentedto have it published and sung is hopeless and need would have to be altered, but machinery is always being not be attended to further, nor any notice taken of his scrapped in any case. Government offices would be able faulty journalese. to do without numbers of their clerks, chiefly women. Josef is doing more serious harm to the cause of British Our present stupid system requires an adequate supply music than all else together, and he should be suppressed of cheap labour to carry out calculations and keep books, somehow or other. and unfortunately the Government is able to get this Get our Guild Socialism at work, make the arts free labour from women, who are cheap and highly efficient. from the taint of earning a living at them, and then music There are, for instance, Savings Bank interests, National (as all other Art) will only be made because it must, and Insurance contributions,and more recently, the Army will get its due hearing. Perhaps, then, a sort of and Navy allowances. On all these duties hundreds of clearing house will be possible where composers can hear their women are employed as clerks, who should be practising things played over and over again, and so learn their housewifely arts. Is their admirable decimal system one auditory value as against their (apparent) paper value. of the reasons why the French nation is superior in most But all this divine freedom in progress is impossible of the artistic crafts? while we slave under damnable profiteering ; gate-money Mr. Lloyd George should have effected this reform be- rules us, programmes get to a stultifying level, stealing fore he introduced National Insurance; let him see to it even the masterpieces-except the divine Mozart, of before he touches the Land. whom we never get enough. FAIR-TO-ALL. At present public opinion totally ignores the *** subject. There is a Decimal Association, but who ever hears of it? Now that every sick fad and humbug of the TQUASSOUW AND KNONMQUAIHA. day has ceased from troubling, perhaps public opinion Sir,--As a prelude to his extract from this Hottentot will turn its attention to things that matter. Napoleon story, “R. H. C.” presumes that the comic tale might be III, speaking at the close of L’Exposition Industrielle, a parody of some work of an eighteenth century “Blast” November 15, 1855, used these words : school. Although the Hottentot story can serve as a skit “At the present period of civilisation, the successes of upon those jabberers who made loud noise lately, that is armies, however brilliant they may be, are only before the war started, it must be denied, even though temporary,and it is public opinion that always gains the H. C.’s” presumption was not serious, that any such “R. last victory.” M. K. HULL. purpose could be served in the eighteenth century. Why! *** Last Thursday’s Futurists would have a historical basis, and, furthermore, that wonderful century would lose some BUSINESS AS USUAL. credit. This vigorous parody was written at a time when Sir,-Your contributor, Mr. I. J. C. Brown, in his ex- there was a fashion in the magazines for Eastern stories cellent article on the middle-classes,wanders off the map degenerated from Voltaire’s “Zadig,” and, I think, the when he speaks about the theatre and music-hall professions. relation of the love of Tquassouw and Knonmquaiha came I should like to inform him that at several to prick the Asiatic rigmaroles which set European theatres the lowest salaries have been cut down lower “on sentimentsinEastern make-up. This tale has the turn of a account of the War.” At the London Hippodrome, for European love romance, and it would be such were the instance, salaries of thirty shillings have been cut down trappings not so cannibalistic and the finale so comic. to one pound a week-Two “shows” a day! Salaries for This tale ridicules the false, pretty tinting of savage life, the Christmas week were 16s. 4d., two “shows” at IS. 8d. an affectation which Chateaubriand artistically finished being deducted on account of the birth of our Lord. I years afterwards in his “Atala, etc.,” where we find scalp- may mention that the Hippodrome is doing as good, if hunting red-skins of exquisite grace and delicate sentiments. not better, business than hitherto. Prices of some of the seats being raised. A MUSIC-HALLARTISTE. 264

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