THE FAITH I HOLD: ROBERT BLAND.

A WEEKLY REVIEW OF POLITICS, LITERATURE, AND ART Edited by A. R. Orage.

No. 697 [s!ZL.Vol. II. No. 121 SATURDAY, Jan. 18, 1908. ~$~~$,f&f&“*] ONE PENNY CONTENTS. PAGE PAGE NOTES OF THE WEEK ...... “...... 221 PALINODE. By F. S. Flint . .. l ...... 231 A BARREN OUTLOOK ...... - ...... 224 BOOK of the Week : The Literature of Roguery. By Frank LORD CURZON ON IMPERIALISM ...... 225 Holmes . .. .*. . . . .” . . . 233 JAPAN’SROAD TO RUIN ...... 226 REVIEWS: The Claims of French Poetry ...... 233 The Labour PARTY CONFERENCE. By G. R. S. Taylor . . . 227 Ramtanu Lahiri, Brahman and Reformer ...... 234 Baby Toilers ...... 235 CHARLES DICKENS AS A SOCIALIST, By Edwin Pugh ".. 228 ...... THE LEGITIMATE DUMA.By G. R. S. T...... 229 DRAMA: Arms and the Man. By Dr. L. Haden Guest... 235 THE TRIAL OF THE 169. By Aylmer Maude ...... 230 MUSIC: A Lamoureux Concert.. By Herbert Hughes . . . 236 THE Faith I HOLD. By Hubert Bland “...... 231 CORRESPONDENCE ...... 237

NOTICE TO CORRESPONDENTS.-All Business Com- certain that while the Labour Party remains in name munications must BE addressed to Publisher, New Age,” 139, and profession Labour, and not Socialist, out and out Fleet Street, E.C. ; communications for the Editor to 1 & 2, Socialists will hesitate to join its ranks with much Took’s Court, Furnival Street, E.C. publicity. A certain amount of snobbery may be at work in this, or it may be conviction and principle. In any case, only rarely will middle-class and cultured people identify themselves whole-heartedly with the NOTES OF THE WEEK Labour Party of the present moment. On the other THE Labour Party Conference which is to be held at hand, the loss of these intellectuals may be more than Hull on Monday next promises many points of excep- compensated, by the accession of the Trade Unionists, tional interest. an accession that might not have taken place had It is not, even in the Labour Party, Messrs. Hyndman, Shaw, Webb, and others been at an every-day occurrence for an accession of a dozen the head of the Labour Party in place of Messrs. Keir members to take place ; nor is it always likely to be the Hardie, Macdonald, Shackleton and Barnes. These eve of the final absorption of the whole Trade Unionist latter do stand for the principles of the class war much movement in its ranks. The year 1907 has in some more emphatically than even Mr. Hyndman, who for ways been a triumphant year for the Parliamentary all his doctrines to the contrary is quite without real Labour Party. It has made singularly few mistakes, class antagonism.. On the whole we think the Labour Party has been, and for some time will be, wise in while both the other Parties have been blundering refusing to change its name and profession, even for daily. The result is that the Trade Union movement, our name and profession of Socialism. Sooner or that showed at first some natural suspicion of the wild later the time will come when the change must be made blood in the Labour Party, has decided at last that if the Labour Party is to become national in the com- there is more to be hoped for from wild blood than plete sense ; but we agree that the time is not yet. from pale water. In short, the Labour Party has won And perhaps the best thing the Conference can do is to dismiss the resolution on the subject with as brief Trade Unionism from Liberalism. a discussion as possible. + #I + * 4t * It must be frankly admitted that a certain amount of All the more reason exists, however, for preparation policy has been necessary. Everybody knows that the being made for the change when the time is opportune. majority of the Labour Party are Socialists ; everybody Though cool wisdom denies that the moment is ripe for knows that if the Socialists were taken out of the a declaration of Socialism, political foresight demands some intelligent anticipation of future development. Trade Union ranks the movement would resume its Mr. G. R. S. Taylor suggests in another column the ignominious feebleness of thirty or forty years ago. offering of a free-seat to Mr. Hyndman by the Labour On the other hand, the rank and file of an army can Party in recognition of his enormous services to the easily be overmarched ; and it was necessary for the cause. We heartily support the suggestion, and Labour leaders to appear to move only a little ahead would even add the names of other prominent So- of the army they were leading. And this has been on cialists. We have said before that the Labour Party the whole accomplished. Only rarely, for example, is suffered during the last Session from a defective im- agination ; it did not strike the country as it should. the fiction that the Labour Party is not Socialist in And we can conceive nothing better calculated to draw intention allowed to be dropped, even by the ordinary the eyes and minds of the public to the existence of the Press. The secret is well kept by being universally Labour Party than the importation of one or two strik- known and universally feared. The Liberals are slow ing Socialist personalities. Undoubtedly such impor- to name their late allies Socialist ; the Conservatives tations would be difficult to deal with, unaccus- are slow for reasons of Tariff Reform ; and the Labour tomed, as they are, to cast-iron discipline. Yet we people themselves are in a perpetual state of political venture to believe that they would lift the Labour Party swither, sometimes thinking and calling themselves off its knees on to its feet in the House of Commons ; Socialists, sometimes stricken with panic at the idea. and without being too closely identified with its dis- Jc * * cipline, act as admirable intellectual sharpshooters and Now we may as well say that we are quite indifferent intelligence men. No such proposal as is suggested for the present whether the Labour Party accepts or appears, of course, on the Hull Agenda ; but we should rejects -the name and profession of Socialism. It is be glad to see the question raised if only to sound the purely a matter of immediate expediency. It is pretty Labour opinion. . 222 _-. -

Meantime it is obvious that the other Parties are cheaply than white labour, nothing in Liberalism con- having troubles without number. The Conservatives demns the employer who makes use of it. But plainly in particular are more hopelessly divided than ever. It the white labourer is placed in an impossible position. its not strange that Free Trade and Individualism Hence we find the latter passing resolutions at Johan- should go hand in hand, but we confess we see no nesburg in support of the expulsion of their Indian reason for calling the creed Conservative. Lord competitors ; a perfectly natural course, and an inevit- Cromer’s pronouncement in Scotland, for example, was able course so long as economic freedom is denied them. a bit of sheer unadulterated early Victorian Liberalism, * -+ * without the shadow of a Conservative principle, still Mr. Lloyd-George’s wonderful Railway Settlement less of a modern economic principle. And his rallying of the Unionist Free Trade section which had been appears to have settled nothing except (and in a differ- ent sense) the men. Mr. Bell was driven last’ week to temporarily discomfited by Mr. Balfour’s speech at appeal to the President of the Board of Trade against Birmingham, is a disservice to his Party which they We repeat what we have the action of the London and North-Western Railway are not likely to forget. in exercising undue influence on the ballot for the men’s often said, that if Fiscal Reform goes hand in hand with Social Reform, we are prepared to discuss radi- representatives. The appeal, we venture to say, will cal measures. What we cannot tolerate is the absurd be unless. By the terms of the. Settlement, the men attitude of the Unionist Free Traders, who are the are practically pledged not to strike for the next seven Laodiceans of to-day. Yet apparently they are gain- years. In other words, they have submitted to having ing adherents ; and hence the prospect of a strong their teeth drawn. The result is that the Directors Conservative opposition grows fainter, have nothing to fear ; and in the absence of an intelli- . + * * gent public genuinely interested in the matter they can safely- proceed by strategy in technicalities to harass Unfortunately the trade returns for the year give an the men to any extent. The non-recognition of the appearance of support to the Free Traders. We say men’s Union was of more value to the Directors than unfortunately because there is precious little reality in most people suppose. The men can now be dealt with them, Market prices and vital values are so divorced in detail. We should be sorry if Mr. Lloyd-George’s to-day that bounding statistics of the one give no Settlement became the model of future Settlements. certainty of the other. Mr. Strachey, continuing his * * * letters on Socialism, urges that our business is to in- M. Jaurès has, like many Socialists, lain under the crease production and to let distribution take care of imputation of anti-patriotism ; but his article in the itself. Well, it appears we have increased production “ Journal des Débats ” will perhaps have the effect of (at least in figures) enormously, but distribution is rehabilitating his reputation as a statesman. Of growing relatively worse instead of better. The fact is course, we never doubted that he had been deliberately that Trade Returns ought to be read with the returns misunderstood for party purposes, precisely as So- of Pauperism and Unemployment in order to be pro- cialists in England are wilfully misunderstood at elec- perly understood. Read thus, our national position tion times. M. Jaurès makes it plain that he is in affords no room for complacency. favour of an army of citizens for defence only. He * * + opposes the idea of an army created and employed for The agitation against the presence of British In- aggression, aggression being no part of a genuine dians in South Africa reached a climax this week in the patriot’s psychology. Moreover, he expounds at length arrest and sentencing of several Indians, with Mr. and with impressive learning, his scheme of national Gandhi among them. A protest meeting was held in training and defence. The net result of his efforts ap- the Caxton Hall on January 9th, under the presidency pears already to be of immense advantage to the So- of Lord Ampthill, and some excellent resolutions were cialist party in France. passed. We are amazed, however, that on tie whole + + * so little has been said in England on a matter which “ Everybody’s Magazine ” for December contains a presumably occupied men’s minds exclusively only a symposium on “ What is a Good Man? ” From Mr. few years ago. Among the excuses for the Boer War, Wells’s reply to the conundrum we make the following Lord Lansdowne explicitly mentioned the treatment of extract :- Indians by the Boers. But that treatment was not so To describe that ideal modem citizen now is at best to bad as the treatment now meted out to them with the make a guess and a suggestion as to what must be built in The sacrosanctity of the man reality by the efforts of a thousand minds. But he will be approval of Lord Elgin. a very different creature from that indifferent, well-behaved on the spot and the official power is a positive obses- -business man who passes for a good citizen to-day. He will sion of the present Cabinet, which does nothing but be neither under the slave tradition, nor a rebel, nor a shirk Imperial responsibility. Self-government is all vehement elemental man. Essentially he will be aristocratic ; very-well, but in a federated -Empire the good of the aristocratic not in the sense that he has slaves or class in- Empire must sometimes be considered. At this mo- feriors, because probably he will have nothing of the sort, ment, it is Natal that is being allowed to sacrifice the but aristocratic in the sense that he will feel that the state belongs to him and he to the state. He will probably be a Empire to itself from an absurd notion in the mind public servant ; at any rate he will be a man doing some work of the Cabinet that absolute autonomy is a Liberal prin- in the complicated machinery of the modern community for ciple. The incompatibility of Liberalism and Impe- a salary and not for speculative gain. Typically, he will be rialism was never more evident than in Lord Elgin’s a professional man. I do not think the ideal modern citizen imbecile consistency. can be a person living chiefly by buying for as little as he + * 46 can give and selling for as much as he can get; indeed,-most of what we idolise to-day as business enterprise, I think he The “ Daily News,” that harmonium of Liberalism, will regard with very considerable contempt. But then I am is agitated about the rights of the British Indians, but a Socialist and look forward to the time when the economic completely nonplussed by the situation. What to do, machinery of the community will not be a field for private or what even to advise Lord Elgin to do, it does not enrichment but for public service. He will be good to his wife and children as he will be good know. Our proposal to impose a minimum wage and to his friends, but he will be no partisan for wife and family then to leave things to work themselves out irrespec- against the common welfare. His solicitude will be for the tive of race, is obviously beyond the comprehension of welfare of all the children of the community; he will have the “ Daily News ” leader writers. Yet race, we hold, got beyond blind instinct, he will have the intelligence to is almost entirely an economic creation, and can only understand that almost any child in the world may have as be mitigated as a cause of strife by economic means. large a share as his own offspring in the parentage of his great-great-grandchildren. His wife he will treat as his Is the “ Daily News ” prepared to advocate an Im- equal-he will not be “ kind ” to her but fair and frank and perial standard usage, below which no labourer in loving, as one equal should be with another; he will no the Empire shall be allowed to sell himself? All labour more have the impertinence to pet and pamper her, to keep as such being only a superior slavery, our object should painful and laborious things out of her knowledge, to be at least to see that it is paid well. If in the British ‘ shield ” her from the responsibility of political and social dominions efficient native labour can be bought more work, than he will to make a Chinese toy of her and bind her -

feet. He and she will love that they may enlarge and not In England we have no Anti-Semites: we have Zionists in- limit each other. stead ; and I am a known friend of the Zionists. The way to

Consciously and deliberately the good citizen will seek. create interest in a man here is to claim for him that he beauty in himself and in his way of living . He will be tem- is a Jew. On every April 19 our Conservatives; our Imperial- perate rather than harshly abstinent, and he will keep himself : ists, our Court party, make a pilgrimage to the statue of the fit and in training as an elemental duty. He will not be a only Prime Minister of England who was a Jew, and heap its fat man nor an emaciated person. Fat panting men and pedestal with primroses, his favourite flower. The foremost thin enfeebled ones cannot possibly be considered good peers in our House of Lords marry Jewesses and are con- citizens, any more than dirty or verminous people. He will sidered fortunate in their choice. My mention of your race be Just as fine and seemly in his person as he can be, not can do you no harm in Germany because everybody knows from vanity and self-assertion, but to be pleasing and agree- it. It will do you credit in England because everybody able to his fellows. The ugly dress and ugly bearing of the will at once conclude that you are an able man, a rich man,

‘good men ” of to-day will be as incomprehensible to him as, a cultivated man, and a man of pedigree. The only Jew the filth of a paleolithic savage is to us. He will not speak who is despised In England is the Jewwho is ashamed of of his “ frame ” and hang clothes like sacks over it; he will his race. Such men are universally despised whether they are know and feel that he and the people about him have won- Jews or Gentiles. Our Jews are indeed rather apt to err derful and beautiful bodies. in the opposite direction. They boast of their race as I + * 46 boast of being an Irishman. Irving, our famous actor, made the Merchant of Venice " a success by boldly making And-I speak of the ideal common citizen-he will be a Shylock a sympathetic character in spite of Shakespeare’s student and a philosopher. To understand will be one of his necessary duties. His mind, like his body, will be fit and text. Dickens, who made a Jew the villain of one of his well clothed. He will not be too busy to read and think, earlier novels, had to make amends by introducing an im- though he may be too busy to rush about to get ignorantly possibly amiable Jew in a later work. During the Boer war and blatantly rich. It follows that since he will have a mind it was much safer to be a Jew than a typical Englishman. exercised finely and flexible and alert, he will not be a All the typical Englishmen were on the side of the Boers. secretive man. Secretiveness and secret planning are vul- All the Jews were on the side of the British, except the garity, and men and women need to be educated, and he avowedly revolutionary Jews. will be educated out of them, He will be intensely truthful, The fact is, you do not know your people very well. Otherwise you would not have been offended by that “einer not simply in the vulgar sense of not misstating facts when jener ” of which you complain. “ Einer jener kosmopoli- pressed but truthful in the manner of the scientific man or the artist, and as scornful of concealment as they; truthful, tischen Juden, die gegen die moderne Kultur ausziehen.” that is to say, as the expression of a ruling desire to have You are amazed at this. You exclaim (‘ Der gegen die things made plain and clear, because that so they are most moderne Kultur ausziehende kosmopolitische Jude ist also beautiful and life is at its finest. . . . . ein Typus, eine bekannte klassierte Gattung, auf die man And all that I have written of him applies word for word, nur hinzuweisen braucht, damit jeder wisse, was man meint.” with only such changes of gender as are needed, to the IS it possible that you are the only man in Europe who woman citizen also. does not know this? Have you never heard of Karl Marx 46 .u + and Ferdinand Lassalle ? Do you seriously believe that your own gospel of Entartung was received by Europe as a In the “ Daily News ” of January 11 Mr. G. K. dithyramb to modem culture instead of a fierce attack on it? Chesterton makes an impassioned attack on the prose- Why, you actually drove me, a professed Socialist and mal- cution for blasphemy of, Mr. H. Boulter, to which content, to defend Civilization against you. You will tell me we shall refer later. But perhaps the significant para- next that Jeremiah was a Christian courtier and optimist. graph of Mr. Chesterton’s article is his explanation I hope you will now see that I had no intention of dis- paraging you either as a Jew or by my ‘einer jener.“. I (the clearest he has yet achieved) of his view of Demo- had to demolish you, because you were seriously misleading cracy, Readers of his article in THE NEW AGE of England and America; but I demolished you as a dis- January 4th will be glad of the following extract :- tinguished man of letters and a gentleman should be de- Now, if there is anyone who thinks that my distinction molished. You now ask me how it was that you did not between public opinion as a whole and the mere triumphant know you were dead all these twelve years. What a naive majority is a fallacy or a delusion, I am willing to provide question ! My dear Doctor, there is not a country In Europe him with what may be called a working test. If you want in which you will not find dead men-statesmen, men of to know whether a thing is of a mere majority accidentally in science, churchmen, jurists, artists, who have been dead power, or whether it is of the people as a people, simply do longer than you, and have not found it out yet. Ibsen’s last this. . Look at the first man you see in the street, and ask word to the world was “When we dead awaken.” But I yourself how heavily you would bet that he, a man taken at forgot: you do not appreciate Ibsen. random, would support the view in question. Do not judge You say your friends never sent you my essay, though by everybody; judge by anybody. Fix your eye on the man they send you all the trash , that was written about you. who comes first out of Baker Street Station, and think about But my essay was not trash; and your friends would have him. Bimetallism may have won a wild victory at the polls ; been very unfriendly if they had sent you a copy of your but you would not bet that he is a bimetallist. Liberalism death warrant. You also say that as you did not see my may have swept England like a landslide, but you would not essay it cannot have existed. But I assure you many books bet that he is a Liberal. Christianity may be unconquer- exist which you have not read, including, I should guess, ably entrenched and enthroned, it may have its Scriptures most of those of Wagner, Rossetti, and other men whom in all the schools, Its public prayers in all the Parliaments. you have mistaken for lunatics. I sometimes doubt whether But you would not bet a button that that man believes in you have read even “your master Lombroso,” who, though Christianity. But you would bet sixpence-nay, ninepence- he is, like all specialists, in the strictest sense of the word, that he believes in wearing clothes. You would bet that he an idiot, is really not so hopeless an idiot as you suppose believes in preserving- a certain reticence about sex in the him to be. presence of girls or children. Of course, he may happen to However, I am not going to kill you again in England and have a crank on those subjects ; as you tour outside Baker America. My essay will be reprinted there under the title Street Station you may strike the millionth man. If you do of "The Sanity of Art”: the reason you are introduced you may treat him as something more than an exception- in its preface with so much detail is that you have been dead you may feel as if you had forgotten to take your hat off to for twelve years, and the younger generation does not know the Bearded Lady. He is not a minority : he is a monster. you. In Germany it is different. As my essay was not And the only way of keeping this distinction is to keep a translated into German, you are-or were until the other deep and vigilant reverence for Anybody. day-alive in Germany. And you were still at your old + + + work. For example, since you wrote Entartung the world The following letter from Mr. Bernard Shaw appeared has become aware that in the French sculptor Rodin we have alive among us one of those supreme geniuses of whom we in the “ Frankfurter Zeitung “; and fragments have ap- have, not one in every generation’ but barely three In a peared in the “ Jewish World.” thousand years. You duly explain that he also is only a To the Editor of the Frankfurter Zeitung.” degenerate-one of the mangy sheep, as you said of Maeter- AN OPEN REPLY TO DR. MAX NORDAU’S linck. NO doubt you think the same of Richard Strauss, as OPEN LETTER. you can hardly be expected to forgive him for paying even less heed than Wagner did to your very remarkable instructions Dear Dr. Nordau,- The letter you have addressed to me in the art of musical composition. Therefore it has become in the columns of the ‘(Frankfurter Zeitung ” is partly necessary to demolish you in Germany also ; and I am greatly founded on a misunderstanding which has caused me sincere afraid that France also is going to insist on hearing what I regret. When, in introducing you to my readers, I mentioned that you are a Jew, I had no intention of appealing to Anti- have to say about you. SO Semitic prejudice to discredit you. It never occurred to me "Gather ye roses while you may,” that YOU could be otherwise than proud of being a Jew. Doctor; for your days in Paris are numbered. 224

You are, I notice, a little bewildered by the extraordinary suddenness and completeness of your demolition. But the A Barren Outlook. secret of it is very simple. My knowledge of art is derived from the study-and also the production of works of art. You THE approaching opening of the third session of the pre- find this process too tedious : you prefer to go to your master sent Parliament is being awaited by politicians and the Lombroso, and ask his opinion. He, having studied nothing nation generally with feelings of languid interest. The at first hand but criminal lunatics, has made the discovery present Government, elected as it was ‘to resist the that criminal lunatics are human beings. You have made the discovery that men of genius are human beings also. policy of Tariff Reform, never promised anything heroic Therefore, because things that are equal to the same are in the way of legislation; while the composition of the equal to each other, you conclude that men of genius are Cabinet, over-weighted with the iron-bound traditions criminal lunatics. You are so convinced of the soundness and ideals of the old Whigs, precludes the hope of the of your argument that you take it for granted that I apply realisation of any vital reforms We shall deal with the it to yourself as follows. Jesus Christ was murdered by the programme of the coming session in due course ; mean- Jews : Dr. Nordau is one of the Jews : therefore Dr. Nordau IS a God murderer. , You say that I must have meant this while a casual glance at its chief provisions utterly fails when I mentioned that you are a Jew. But why should I not to arouse any enthusiasm in our minds. We do not argue the other way? Jesus Christ was a Jew: he called look during the session for any serious attempt to deal those who disagreed with him Vipers and other hard names: with the pressing question of Unemployment ; a system Dr. Nordau is a Jew: he calls those who disagree with him of Old Age Pensions cannot be inaugurated with the Lieblinge and other hard names: therefore Dr. Nordau is a paltry sum of 2½ millions ; and we may trust the Liberal reincarnation of Christ. I told you In my essay that I could captains of industry to frustrate any legislation that prove you to be an elephant by the same logic that has con- vinced you that Wagner was an inattentive dreamer. I have would relieve the working classes at their expense. been better than my word, and proved you to be the founder Never was there greater need for unremitting vigilance of Christianity instead. and opposition on our part, especially as our policy is This reminds me that you have given up your contention still so ignorantly misinterpreted. We had ventured that Wagner was not a practical man. You admit the force to entertain the hope that our principles were clearly of my contention that he could not have built the Bayreuth understood by our opponents, and that for the future Buhnenfestspielhaushe had been the imbecileif you thought we might therefore fight them fairly and intelligently ; he was.have You therefore completed a new syllogism. Mrs. Eddy built a Cathedral : she is an impostor: therefore but we are still met with the objections which we have builders of Cathedrals are impostors. The Festspielhaus is been combating for at least a decade. Judged by his a Wagnerian Cathedral : Wagner built it: therefore Wagner latest utterances, even Mr. Haldane, probably the most is an impostor. Quod erat demonstrandum. What a brain intellectual of them all, either cannot or will not under- you have, Doctor! stand us : he refuses to see any difference between the Oscar Wilde was a sexual pervert: his Lieblinge were insignificant changes which he calls social reform and necessarily his contemporaries : therefore his contemporaries the immense fundamental change which we call Social- were necessarily sexual perverts: therefore Bernard Shaw, ism. He therefore laments in quite the orthodox style who was a contemporary of Oscar Wilde’s, is a sexual per- that the Labour voters should put back the cause of vert. In fact, the entire population of London during the eighteen-nineties were sexual perverts. How horrible! Well progress by running candidates of their own against may you raise the cry of Entartung. And how fortunate that Liberal and Conservative alike. He has already for- you were not living in Berlin during the recent scandals! gotten the lessons of Jarrow and the Colne Valley. If What might not your own pupils have been led to think by it were not for the fact that while Nero is fiddling Rome the logic you have taught them ! Nay, are you quite sure is burning, nothing could better serve our purpose than that your absence from Berlin really proves your innocence? to witness the conspicuous impotence of our Liberal Oscar Wilde spent a good deal of time in Paris. He died in opponents to justify their existence as the party of pro- Paris. Can it be that you are as guilty as I ? Can we escape from the appalling conclusion that not we two alone, gress. Now that Liberalism has reached the very crisis but the whole world, is implicated in this shocking business ? of its fate, there is an element of tragedy in the fact Think, not only of Wilde, but of Verlaine, of Wainwright that its destinies should be entrusted to the hands of ‘the poisoner. They were both men of letters. They were such reactionaries as Mr. Morley, Mr. Asquith, and both imprisoned for disgraceful crimes. Therefore men of Mr. Herbert Gladstone. letters are imprisoned for disgraceful crimes. But you and I We have frequently commented upon the welcome are men of letters, Doctor. Therefore we have both been imprisoned for disgraceful crimes. Let us, brothers in mis- renascence of the Conservative Party, although our fortune as we are, fall on one another’s necks weeping, and satisfaction would be increased could we be sure that blush for our own depravity. Or would you rather drop the views of such men as Lord Milner were shared by logic and go back to facts and common sense? That is the official leaders, such as Mr. Balfour, Mr. Chamber- what I should like to do, with your permission. lain and Lord Lansdowne. The Conservatives naturally I hope you have not quarrelled with your master Lombroso. possess the tactical advantage of being the attacking *Formerly, when you wanted to study men of genius, you party, and they may be trusted to make the most of went to Lombroso for your information instead of studying our usual winter distress and unemployment. This, of their works as I do. But when you wanted to find out about me, you abandoned Lombroso, and went to a Jap who is course, is one of the rules of the political game as studying the higher mathematics in Paris. We are all played by both parties, and deceives nobody. In spite charmed with the politeness with which this tactful young of a considerable weight of opinion to the contrary, we Oriental, when you told him -that I had demolished you, do not think the Tariff Reformers feel so confident of “hell ausgelacht hat ” You warn me not to reply “Die success as they would have us believe. They are far Japaner sind Wilde: sie verstehen nichts von unserer Kul- from having converted the bulk of the ‘Conservative tur ” ; but why should I make so absurd a remark? Why Party, and we cannot recall anything that has tran- should your Japanese friend not have laughed? I should have laughed myself. When you went on to tell him that spired since their defeat at the polls to indicate that the the Pre-Raphaelite movement consisted of Oscar Wilde and nation ha&hanged its mind. Even so lucid a master “ mich und meine Lieblinge,” I have no doubt he laughed of exposition as Mr. Chamberlain did not succeed in a great deal more. But it was cruel of him to persuade you presenting a workable and consistent policy of Tariff that Debussy’s music is Japanese. Nobody else in the whole Reform, and what proved to be beyond his powers will world would have known so little about music as to believe certainly not be accomplished by any of his disciples. such a piece of impossible nonsense. One may say of that We believe that public opinion is quickly ripening upon mathematical Jap, as Voltaire said of Habbakuk, “ ce gail- lard- lá est capable de tout.” Pay him a surprise visit at his this subject, but not in the direction Tariff Reformers lodgings and you will probably find a complete set of my desire. If such domestic reforms as Old Age Pensions, works on his shelves. better wages, and constant employment, so freely pro- hochachtungsvoll und ergebenst, mised by the Conservatives, can only be secured by G. BERNARD SHAW. means of Tariff Reform, then Tariff Reform will be ultimately accepted by the nation, and the immediate necessity for Socialism will disappear. If we were [The continuation of Mr. Shaw’s “ Driving capital assured that Tariff Reform would not bring in its train Out of the Country” is unavoidably held over till greater evils than those it is intended to cure, we would next week. -- Ed. support it ourselves. But no such assurance is forth- coming. It is the advent of Socialism into politics that the idea of a single sovereign, of ancient lineage and is causing the two orthodox parties to bid against each personal prestige,” and that “ A British Empire that other for popular support, and it is for US to expose the had no visible head but a Prime Minister or even a hollowness of their promises and the impossibility of President of a Republic, would not last for twenty-five witnessing their fulfilment. We notice that timid sug- years,“’ appears to show a curious lack of imagina- gestions are now and again put forward that the Con- tion on the part of a man whose life work has been ’ servatives should endeavour to increase the difficulties inspired by an abstract idea. But here, as elsewhere, of their opponents and rehabilitate themselves in public our objection is not to the idea but only to the par- favour by supporting the Women’s Suffrage movement. ticular form in which it is expressed. For there can Certainly the Liberal outcry against the House of Lords be no doubt that the Empire, like any other great for thwarting the will of the people comes with an ill association of men for a common purpose, does need grace from politicians who, contrary to their promises, some permanent symbol of its traditions that can be- oppose the enfranchisement of the greater half of the come an object of reverence. And if we do not agree with Lord Curzon that a hereditary prince will always nation. Such tactics reveal the explanation of the extreme be necessary for this purpose, the point is not at the present moment worth quarrelling about: barrenness of present-day politics. Both parties are they are merely living from Again, his belief that the Empire is a “ pre-ordained now frankly opportunist : dispensation intended (by Providence) to be a source hand to mouth, with no higher ideal than a common- of strength and discipline to ourselves, and of moral place expediency. In pursuing this policy, even for and material blessing to others,” is, to say the least, their own purposes, we think they are profoundly mis- somewhat old fashioned, and though the idea may be a taken. Whatever their limitations, the British working harmless one when associated with the spirit of ser- classes have never been lacking in chivalry. It was the vice which Lord Curzon preaches, it is dangerously apt working classes, not the well-to-do, who mainly sup- to become, as it has been throughout history, a most ported Gladstonian Home Rule ; it was the working convenient excuse for all sorts of tyranny and oppres- classes, again, who were revolted by the introduction sion. of Chinese labour into South Africa. To preach idealism But where Lord Curzon most conspicuously fails to in politics is still unhappily to preach a hopeless gospel ; maintain his high controversial standard is in attempt- but signs are accumulating that the age of Puritanism ing to justify the existence of the Empire on the ground is passing away, with its grotesque ideas of rewards that “ the national character, without a world to con- and punishments. The enlightened spirit of the time quer or a duty to perform, would rot of atrophy and will no longer consent to the punishment of children for inanition. ” One recognises there the inevitable bias the alleged sins of their fathers ; we have discovered of the real enthusiast who cannot see that there are the cause of our national poverty, and are invoking the duties to perform in internal social reorganisation at powerful aid of the State to bring about its removal. least as worthy as those which lie in the sphere of his We are convinced that the future belongs to the genuine special enthusiasm. Incidentally we may remark that Imperialists, to those politicians of whatever name who it will be a bad look-out for the national character, on are resolved to make the British nation in reality great Lord Curzon’s showing, when there are no more worlds and splendid, even “the joy of the whole earth.” That to conquer. is the only justification for troubling ourselves about These, however, are minor points. The really strik- politics at all, and the ideal will be realised when we ing thing about the article is its insistence on the determine that the claims of property shall no longer be “ moral basis ” of Imperialism, and the identity of this allowed to override the higher claims of human life. with the moral basis of Socialism. According to Lord Expediency has been the rule, and is even now proving Curzon the supreme idea of true Imperialism is the to be the nemesis of the orthodox parties. This indeed idea of duty, the sacrifice of the individual to the constitutes one of the invulnerable arguments for needs of the State. And without this, Imperialism is Socialism. Expediency can produce nothing but con- to him “ as sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal.” fusion, since the institution of private property result- The one thing against which, in his view, Imperialists ing in our system of competition sets the interests of need to be on their guard is commercialism ; as a our class in direct opposition to the interests of another. “ commercial speculation ” the Empire cannot survive. Landlord and tenant, producer and consumer, employer The general view of the Socialist could hardly be better and employed live in a state of continual feud, and what expressed, “but there is more to follow. “ I am not one class gains another loses. If by some miracle, myself a believer in Socialism, though there is much to for example, Mr. Lloyd George could secure justice for attract in the Socialist ideal. But even were I a the railway servants, either the shareholders would Socialist, I can see no reason why my ideas should not suffer or, what is more probable, the companies would be set in the framework of an Empire as well as in that resort to some insidious and indirect method of sweat- of an Industrial Republic. . . . . Empires in the past ing labour, or would raise the rates against the general have been as a rule evolved out of despotic or auto- users of the railways. In a word, a nation divided cratic conceptions. But it is certain that if the Empire against itself cannot stand. If the British nation is to of the future is to continue, it must rest upon a demo- survive in the arduous struggle for existence, our bar- cratic basis, and must satisfy democratic ideals. I barous institutions of private property and competition decline altogether to believe that this is an impossible must give way to an intelligent and socialised system aspiration. . . . Incidentally they (i.e., democracies) of production and distribution. will find it an invaluable antidote to the parochialism which is the bane of domestic politics, and the insu- larity that hampers smalller States.” All this is excellent, and seems to indicate an in- Lord Curzon on Imperialism. sight into modern political tendencies and a sympathy with democratic ideals which we are not wont to expect THE article which Lord Curzon has contributed to the from Imperial ex-Viceroys. Lord Curzon may not be current number of the “ Nineteenth Century ” on “ The a Socialist, but the more people he can inspire with his True Imperialism ” seems to be thoroughly worthy of ideals the better we shall be pleased. For his “ moral the great statesman he is reputed to be. Of his ability basis ” of Imperialism can only lead his disciples one and sincerity there has never been any doubt, but the way. Give a man a high sense of public duty and a present essay, with its breadth of political outlook and truly disinterested regard for the welfare of the State its loftiness of conception, is a welcome indication that as such and he is already more than half a Socialist. he is free from the taint of that school of Imperialist TO complete his conversion is a comparatively easy politicians who regard the Empire as a party asset and matter. The conscious subordination of individual would run it as a commercial speculation. ends to the ideal of national or Imperial efficiency We do not wish to be understood as endorsing necessarily involves a Socialist attitude in domestic Lord Curzon’s view in its entirety. His belief, for politics. example, that “ the British Empire is inseparable from Of course, it may be said that this argument is mere , barren logic, and that Lord Curzon and his school are railroads are being nationalised, the companies having quite capable of thinking in watertight compartment: been bought out at the cost of their construction with a and failing to apply their Imperial morality to home small extra compensation, the shareholders receiving affairs. But we shall remain sanguine, at all events in national stock in exchange. the case of Lord Curzon himself, -until he has been Agriculture remains the crux of Japan’s economic tried and found wanting. In the meantime we wel- difficulties. The area of the country, some 161,000 come him as a true Imperialist and a potential SO- square miles, is no index to the population it can sup- cialist. And this at least we may say for the present port ; at least, not until the present agricultural methods that when Lord Curzon tells us that in the Empire we have been radically changed. About 85 per cent. of the land, including almost the whole of the northern must find l ’ not merely a key to glory and wealth, but the call to duty and the means of service to mankind,’ mountainous island of Yezo, is barren and uncultivated. it is impossible to doubt his sincerity. Dr. Plehn asserts that the Japanese agricultural imple- ments are scarcely to be distinguished from those used by the Egyptians under the Pharaohs. Still geologists Japan’s Road to Ruin. are convinced that there is at least as much land cap- able of bearing produce as is now under cultivation, ‘TIS not in mortals to command SUCCESS, but the but capital and indomitable energy will be required to Japanese Government assuredly think that they at least bring the land fully under culture. Here also we are deserve it. Mr. Haldane has recognised the merit of thoroughgoing believers in Japanese enterprise ; Japan their army organisation by despatching some of our staff We wish he would pre- is making giant strides. The Government is establish- officers to study their system. ing experimental farms, agricultural schools with travel- vail upon the whole Cabinet to take up its residence-fox ling teachers, importing pedigree stock and plants, a year or so in Tokio so as to thoroughly investigate teaching an intensive method of agriculture hitherto’ the business methods of Japan. After Mr. Haldane’s return with his Prime Minister and his Cabinet fortified unknown. We do not forget that its population is in- by some exact knowledge, we would pray him, go to creasing at the rate of 500,000 annually, while the den- They would have learnt that sity is already 300 to the square mile-which means, and do-otherwise. of course, some enormously congested areas. There bounding trade returns may be coincident with a wan- must be an extensive emigration for some years to ing civilisation : they would be convinced that efficiency come, to Korea, to Manchuria, and possibly to some untouched by the democratic spirit of humanity, by parts of Australia. Calgary, Alberta, we are told in a justice, by sympathy with the ineffectuals, the weary cablegram, desires cheap Japanese labour. Our oppo- and the heavy-laden, is but the twentieth century spell- sition to this last requirement, with our general view on ing of tyranny. How clever, the emigration question, was touched upon in these Japan has an efficient Government. columns last week, and we shall make no further refer- subtle and painstaking it is we slow-going Westerners ence here to this subject. hardly vet realise. Japan has accepted from Europe just that material civilisation which we shall require a Judged, then, from the material side, Japan appears revolution-a revolution in ideas-to overthrow. Japan to have nothing in view but boundless prosperity as the has remained untouched by any of that real civilisa- years unroll before her. tion yet to be found in Europe. The pigmy historians We pretend to no special inner knowledge of Japanese of the Victorian age rejected the doctrine of the natu- character, and if we are somewhat chary of accepting ral rights of man. And we of the twentieth century Lafcadio Hearn’s pessimistic judgment, made by an dimly see that if these do not exist we must invent artist-psychologist, on intimate information, we shall them. Without Diderot and Rousseau we should still be so on inadequate apriori grounds. We distrust all be repeating with Locke that where there is no property absolute conclusions about any race or people. We there is no injustice. Japan, unfortunately, has never prefer to assume then that Japanese women are all had an eighteenth century. adorable-some more so-whilst the men are generous TheHeiminshinbun,” current issue of thethe “ So- and mean, sincere and susceptible, heroic and contemp- cialist newspaper which has lately Ire-appeared after its tible, much like ourselves. Nor need we fear that the suppression by the Government, has a cartoon which cultivation of a gross material prosperity as the only exactly depicts our own treatment of our own soldiers. sign of national well-being-the road to ruin-has On the one side we see the smart, active, young, well- hitherto touched more than a mere fringe of the popu- equipped soldier ; the companion drawing presents the lation. ragged, shoeless, diseased, half-starved veteran. Now to present the danger signals. The wealthier Yet the Japanese know how to preserve the health, classes are discarding their native simplicity, high of their people. According to Surgeon-General Koike, philosophy, and joyous conventions for European Director-General of the Japanese Army Medical Ser- ‘ luxuries ” in food, in dress, and in elaborate, mean- vice, while the casualties in the war totalled 220,812, ingless artificialities. Should these habits spread the total sick list was but 236,223. Major Seaman, of Japanese vigour will be as effectively sapped as is our the United States Medical Service, declared that :- own. Is it not significant that Japan finds it neces- “ History will never again furnish a more convincing sary to have a doctor to every school? Worse still, demonstration of the benefit of a medical, sanitary, and German methods of education have been introduced commissary department thoroughly organised, equipped into the country and- fatal symptom- Japan rejoices and empowered to overcome the silent foe.” But the that 96 per cent. of the children attend- the public machines have accomplished their work, and if the schools. “ Heiminshinbun ” may be credited, the exhausted sol- Mr. Colquhoun, a sympathetic critic, does not ques- diers are thrown on the scrap-heap. To medical science tion “ that in artistic lines Japan has degenerated as Japan has contributed some of the most brilliant in- regards quality and design. l . l The days of the old vestigators, and their teaching has been so far fol- leisured art production, when an artist only worked lowed that a medical officer is attached to every school. when he had the inspiration, alas ! those days are If you count civilisation by advancing percentage gone. ’ ’ leaps in the Trade Returns, Japan is the most progres- The Japanese are extremely responsive to suggestion. sive country in the world. Her figures outstrip those The Chauvinistic patriotism of the people is one in- that bring such tidings of glad joy to our Liberal stance of this tendency. Count Okuma’s recent speech Press. In 1891 the value of Japanese exports to China is another. The authorised version, which is favour- were under £60,000 ; in 1904 they were over ably commented upon by the Press, runs : “ India offers £6,000,000. The exports of tobacco to China have ousted those of the United States, and the tobacco trade is LINEN LASTS LONGER, a Government enterprise. The annual revenue from the and will keep much longer clean when soaked and industries carried on by the Government now amounts washed in a foaming lather of HUDSON’S SOAP. HUDSON’S to £8,000,000. Besides tobacco, it controls the cam- will not fray cuffs or jag collars. HUDSON’S always deals phor industry of Formosa, it has a monopoly in salt ; gently with the linen, but firmly with the dirt. A match-manufacturing is coming and perhaps silk. The penny packet will prove this ! -- . us a fine field for trade, and I urge my fellow-country- thinks of the matter as a struggle between a million men openly and consistently to enter that field in fair Trade Unionists and a few thousand Socialists ; his competition with friendly England.” Here is a dramatic sense visualises the situation as a kind of Japanese John Bright in excelsis. Let us offer as prize-fight, in which the stakes are, in some vague way worthier of Japan’s study the words of another John- he does not quite understand, the future of English Milton : “ The fidelity of enemies and allies is frail politics. Of course, this hard division between Trade and perishing, unless it be cemented by the principles of Unionists and Socialists is a fiction of the imagination. justice ; that wealth and those honours which most There is a real division, and a clear-cut one, too, be- covet, readily change masters. If you plunge into the tween those who think that Trade Unionism alone will same depravity, if you imitate their excesses, and solve the social problem of poverty, and those who hanker after the same vanities, you will become think that Socialism alone can solve it. But a man may royalists as well as they, and liable to be subdued by be a sound Socialist and yet cling to his Union as a the same enemies, or by others in your turn.” temporary shelter until Socialism comes. That such is Too zealously has Japan imitated British methods of the attitude of the vast majority of the Trade Unionists colonisation. Soon after its occupation of Formosa it within the Labour Party is proved by the fact that 21 cruelly pursued those of the inhabitants who continued of the 31 elected Members of Parliament are avowed to hold out with a Japanese-like patriotic spirit. Whole Socialists, while of the 13 members of the Labour Party villages were burnt to the ground, the inhabitants, ab- Executive, at least g are Socialists. In the face of solutely innocent, were killed or fled to the mountains. these figures, it is idle to talk of internecine war within Japan’s action in Korea reminds us that there is no im- the party ranks. If the Trade Unionist objected to provement upon the methods of 1896. The story of Socialism, he would not choose his enemies for his Japanese oppression towards that delightful people is leaders ; at least, I hope that is not a rash deduction too recent to need re-stating. Korea is now a part of from the ordinary facts of human psychology. If there Japan, the wishes of the Koreans count for nought, was ever a war on this question, apparently the Social- whilst other foreigners are excluded, much) as Australia ists have won their battle in fact, if not in theory. excludes the Japanese. Nor has Japan learnt the first lesson of a free land- But I do not want to evade the fact that important the necessity for the most liberal and open discussion. issues for Socialists may be decided at this coming Con- We have alluded to the suppression of the Socialist ference. There are on the agenda two resolutions which journal ; books on Socialism are confiscated, Socialist in substance will ask the delegates to say that the ulti- writers and speakers are imprisoned. mate end of their action is to substitute a collectivist social organisation for the present competitive one : These are methods which Japan must change would in other words, they will ask the Conference to declare she not embark upon the road to ruin-the era of tyranny, combined with the worship of cheap and dis- that the aim of the Labour Party is Socialism. Now, the real question at issue is not whether the majority of gusting labour- of a sordid commercialism. The na- tionalisation of industries is well, but without the spirit the affiliated Trade Unions are willing to answer this of Socialism-that blessed trinity of collectivism for the question by a vote in the affirmative. The request does nation, communism for the home, and anarchism for the not seem a very large one to make of men who have individual - Japan will ever rue the day when it already chosen Socialists in an overwhelming majority first made its Satsuma ware into repulsive imitations, to lead them in the House and on their party executive. degraded its Kakemonos by vile reproductions, when it Trade Unionists who have already passed, in their own allowed once delightful dwelling places like Osaka to be Trade Union Congresses, resolutions in favour of the ravished by sooty chimney and grimy furnace. nationalisation of railways, mines, the liquor traffic, “and the whole of the means of production, distribu- We who suffer cry you halt, 0 Japan. You who in a tion, and exchange,” are not the men to be afraid of night put on our modern garb, in the light of day learn the word Socialism. When the Scottish miners last again wisdom and cast it off. Enter among the nations, to teach us and reteach yourselves the aims month were asked to declare in favour of the feeding of that erst made you a gay and light-hearted people. necessitous children by the community, they promptly amended the motion so that it demanded the complete State maintenance of all children. That is the wise way they talk in the S.D.F. There is little doubt that The Labour Party Conference. if the leaders give the word, the resolutions in question will be passed by the Conference at Hull. Will the word THE affiliated associations of Trade Unionists, Social- be given? Here we reach the real issue. Has the ists, and Co-operators, which together make up the moment come when the cause of Socialism, so far as it Labour Party, are about to hold their eighth annual is bound up with the Labour Party, will gain more than Conference at Hull. The delegates who attend this it will lose by a hard and fast committal of the Party ? It is argued that if the lines are meeting will represent about one million members on to academic theory left loose, the weaker members of the Labour move- the rolls of their societies, of whom over 900,000 are ment may come into the fold, and will then quickly be Trade Unionists and about 25,000 are Socialists. The convinced by the sound logic of their Socialist com- common object which binds together this somewhat rades. And, in any case, to detach the Liberal-Labour varied collection of persons, whether gas-workers and members from the Liberal Party is clearly a step in the Fabian lecturers or cotton-spinners and shop-assistants, right direction. On the other hand, it is argued that is the determination to maintain in the House of Com- the declaration of pure Socialism will not frighten away mons a separate political party which will be indepen- anyone worth having ; that it will even gain over sup- dent of the Conservative and the Liberal Parties. This porters whom we would otherwise have to do without. object has attained the substantial numerical success of The problem is not a theoretical one : it is one which 31 members in Parliament. Therefore the decisions of must be decided on the grounds of practical expediency. the delegates are awaited with the interest which natur- The Labour Party’s business is to strengthen its ulti- ally attaches to the determination of the programme of mate position in the House of Commons. That is the the most pregnant party in English politics. Socialism necessary aim of a political organisation. A political has reached the stage in its development when it is the party requires two things ; theories to preach on its most talked-of thing in the land, except horseracing and platforms, votes on election day and in the Division football. A rumour has spread abroad that this Con- Lobby in Parliament. Frankly, the problem at Hull ference will settle the great question whether the Labour will be the balancing of theories with votes. If I were Party is or is not a Socialist Party. The published a delegate I would be guided by these principles--or agenda paper of the forthcoming meeting has been the lack of them. Believing as I do, that the Labour eagerly scanned for indications of the probable course Party is the quickest road to Socialist legislation, my of events. The lay politician, who gets the beginning object would be to strengthen that party. and the end of his information from the daily paper, So much for general principles. Now as to the facts 228 JANUARY18, 1908

in this particular case. The bare facts all seem to com- cerned is entirely bent on cheating and robbing all or pel every Socialist in the Conference to vote for the any of the others if it is barely possible for him to do resolutions we are considering. In this year of grace SO. The whole practice of the law is an exercise in 1908, the Trade Unionist who means business is usually cunning and chicanery. Truth and honour, good faith - a Socialist. Further, there is not a constituency where and charitableness, mercy and kindness : these are the the voters at large would distinguish between a Labour instincts against which it wages unremitting war.. To candidate and a Socialist. The Tory Press has made be generous is to be madly foolish. To be fair-minded that quite clear, and we owe it many thanks. Socialism is to be quixotic. To forego the seizing of any- advan- has no terrors for the Scottish miners, we have seen. tage offered by another’s innocence or ignorance or But if Mr. Shackleton and Mr. Henderson can show oversight is to write yourself down an ass.’ To voice that this proposed amendment of the constitution would scruples against suppressing ugly facts and distorting mean the breaking away of their Unions from the equivocal circumstances is to forfeit the respect of Labour Party, then it is really very doubtful if the your legal advisers. To confound law with equity is to game is worth the candle. One thing is certain ; if the amuse them. Conference swallowed the whole S.D.F. programme it Quitting the fetid atmosphere and beholding two would, unfortunately, make little difference to the work men submitting their differences to the arbitrament of of the party when +it got to the House of Commons. the fist is to enjoy a sensation sweet and refreshing as We have to break up Liberalism and Toryism before the first cool breath of ocean that bathes the brow of we shall get real Socialism. The Socialist in the House the visitor to a stoke-hole on regaining the deck. could ‘draft Bills to nationalise the railways, the land, Dickens’s experience of the law was the one thing and everything else ; but the Liberals would not discuss needed to add to the effect upon his temperament of his them. They would simply vote them down. The sum other varied experiences, just that salutary touch of total is that the Socialists must press their resolutions hard sophistication which conduces to perfect clearness with the utmost force ; stopping short only of a result of vision. Failing it, he might quite conceivably have which would drive an appreciable number of the Trade fallen upon themes overlaid with a sodden sort of senti- Unionists out into the bleak political world, where they mentality and a silly, sickly mawkishness as the most may once more fall a prey to Liberalism from which suitable vehicles for the expression of his peculiar they rescued themselves so cleverly by the formation of genius. His humour that we know as so healthy and the Labour Party. Nevertheless, the temporary loss of robust might have vented itself in such clumsy gambol- some support would be amply compensated by the lings and heavily-arch badinage as one finds in the clarifying of the political atmosphere which would writings of his hosts of imitators. But from these follow the formal acceptance of the Socialist basis. temptations- though it cannot be said that he never in That there is no real ground for a quarrel between the any sense succumbed to them-he is usually delivered two branches of the Labour Party is evident enough ; by his practical knowledge of men and affairs, by his but that is, of course, one reason why they should make unfailing commonsense and stability of judgment, his nice appreciation of the mutations of popular taste their unity clear at the earliest possible moment. The his indomitable instinct for detecting the exact time is a question of fact rather than of law. and opinion, There occurs to me one way of expressing this unity absurd, the grandiose, and the disproportionate, and which would be of very practical value, as well as of by the general heartiness and sanity of his point of symbolical interest. view : all qualities likely to be developed in him by his Why should not the Labour Party traffic with the law and lawyers. place at the disposal of the foremost Socialist in Eng- And it is very possible that Dickens learned all these land, Mr. H. M. Hyndman, the nest available constitu- lessons quite unconsciously and quite without pain- ency under its control ? Not with any restrictions that that was to come afterwards, with reflection ; and with- he must sign the party’s constitution ; but just as an out any sense of the importance or the magnitude of the unfettered acknowledgment that uncompromising facts that he was inspiring through every pore of his Socialism and Labour are firm allies against a common skin. Learned them as a boy learns to run and to fight, enemy. And let every member of the Labour Party never realising the blessedness of his privileges, until break the rules and go down to work for the man who the power to enjoy them is beginning to wane. has done as much for Labour as any man in England. The remainder of that anterior time which preceded That wise act would need no resolution in the Confer- Dickens’s long tenure of fame may be very briefly dis- ence ; and would interfere with no laws of political posed of in the following epitomised extracts from the expediency. G. R. S. TAYLOR. invaluable Forster. It would not be possible (says he) to have better illustrative comment on all these years than is furnished Charles Dickens as a Socialist. by his father’s reply to a friend it was once hoped to interest on his behalf. By Edwin Pugh. ‘ Pray, Mr. Dickens, where was your son educated ?” " Why, indeed, sir-ha ! ha.!- ho may be said to have edu- Part I. Chapter IV. cated himself.” His Schooldays and Youth. Of the two kinds of education which Gibbon says that IF there had ever been any tendency in Dickens’s nature all men who rise above the common level receive-the to associate gentlehood with the class that consists of first, that of his teachers, and the second, more impor- “gentlemen ” and “ladies,” his experiences in Mr. tant and impersonal, his own-Dickens had the full Molloy’s and Mr. Blackmore’s offices must assuredly advantage of the latter. And it sufficed. have dispossessed him of it. One can hardly appre- Very nearly another eighteen months were now to be ciate at its true value the goodness of the Have-Nots spent ‘mainly in practical preparation for what he was at until one has traded in the badness of the Haves. It this time led finally to choose as an employment from may be urged that a lawyer’s experience is confined which a fair income was certain, with such talents as he solely to the worst and not necessarily the most typical possessed. He suddenly determined to qualify himself cases. That notion falls to the ground, however, when thoroughly for what his father was lately become, a one remembers that the whole fabric of the law is built newspaper Parliamentary reporter. He set resolutely upon the principle of mutual mistrust. Every clause, therefore to the study of shorthand ; and for the addi- every article, every stipulation and condition ; every tional help of such general information about books as enactment, rule, and precedent is drafted and re-drafted a fairly educated youth might be expected to have, as and re-drafted again, and rough-copied and fair-copied well as to satisfy some higher personal cravings, he and fair-copied again, is settled and re-settled and became an assiduous attendant at the British Museum copied and re-copied, and settled and yet again re-settled, Reading-Room. He would frequently refer to these and bandied from hand to hand and argued and squab- days-mistakenly, in the present writer’s opinion-as bled and fought over, and finally engrossed and signed decidedly the most useful he had ever spent ; though and sealed and delivered-in every stage of its progress perhaps, in some respects, they may have been SO. No on the frank assumption that either of the parties con- man who knew him in later years and talked to him

. familiarly of books and things would have suspected problem of existence -when they are not singing, they the manner of his education in boyhood, almost entirely are dancing. Did Mr. Pinero or Mr. Shaw ever have self-given as it was. The secret consisted in this, the pluck to give their hero and heroine a pas de deux? that whatever for the time he had to do he lifted him- And how, I ask, can we be expected to understand self, there and then, to the level of ; and at no time character until we know how it will behave in the most disregarded the rules he elsewhere applied to another. vital situation of life. Ibsen, you will remember, gave “Whatever I have tried to do in life, I have tried with Nora a dance in “A Doll’s House ” ; note the result : all my heart to do well. What I have devoted myself the whole of intellectual Europe rose to welcome the to, I have devoted myself to completely. Never to put beginning of a new era in the Drama. And Mr. Collins one hand to anything on which I could throw my whole is the only man who has put his finger on the real spot self, and never to affect depreciation of my work, what. for genius-the dance-while stupid people go on talk- ever it was, I find now to have been my golden rules.” ing about the marriage problem. So the mantle of Of the difficulties that beset his shorthand studies, as Ibsen has fallen on the shoulders of the manager at well as of what first turned his mind to them, he has Drury Lane. The humour of the situation is that told something in “David Copperfield.” He had heard Dr. Guest spends his time hunting for modern plays that many men distinguished in various pursuits had at the Savoy and the Court. How he can take himself begun life by reporting debates in Parliament, and he seriously, week after week, I cannot understand. The was not deterred by a friend’s warning that the mere same old sordid tale at every theatre ; the right man attainment of a mechanical excellence might take some in love with the wrong woman, or the wrong woman years to achieve thoroughly, “a perfect and entire com- in love with the right man, and both afraid of mand of the mystery of writing and reading shorthand their convictions ; their whole comedy or tragedy being about equal in difficulty to the mastery of six turns on paying heed to some ridiculous social languages. Undaunted, he plunged into it, self-teach- convention which no one but a coward or ing in this as in graver things, and having bought Mr. an imbecile would hold for one moment. Do you Gurney’s half-guinea book, worked his way steadily think they would tolerate these lily-livered heroes and through it. heroines at Drury Lane? Certainly not. As a matter And even when he had subdued to his will in marvel- of fact, Robin Hood is in love with Maid Marian all lously quick time this unruly and unaccommodating through the piece ; but had he changed his mind, and servant of stenography, what he most desired was still fancied the chief fairy instead, do you imagine he would not open to him. He had to pass nearly two years as have concealed it through three acts, and perhaps shot a reporter for one of the offices in Doctors’ Commons, himself or the lady in the fourth? No, he would have having made attempts even in the direction of the stage behaved like a man (by the bye, Miss Agnes Fraser to escape such drudgery, before he became a partaker as Robin Hood is an inspiration of grace and brave in Parliamentary toils and triumphs. airs) ; he would have come to the footlights, and an- It was in 1831 that his first ambition was at last nounced the truth to the whole house, and called up a gratified, and he entered the Gallery of the House ; score of fairies to celebrate the great event with dance and what he did there, and how he did it, we know and song. That is the way they do things at Drury sufficiently well already. Lane ; and it’s the right way, while Mr. Grundy and END OF PART I. Mr. Jones and the rest of them are wrong. A few [Part II. of Mr. Pugh’s excellent studies in Dickens must trivial and common sense amendments to the marriage be postponed for their enjoyment in book form. We shall laws, a few grains of moral courage, and their elaborate publish the concluding sections of Part III. in early issues plots of concealment and evasion would collapse like a of THE NEW AGE.-ED.] pack of cards. Give me the brave manners of Robin Hood ; Guest can spend his time investigating musty, family-skeleton heroes, if he please. The Legitimate Drama. If I begin to write of those Babes and their adven- YOU will note the nicety of the Editorial judgment in tures I may get incoherent. It is a tale of endless wit refusing to allow the Drury Lane Pantomime to be dis- and wildest romance and delicious imagination. Mr. It is Walter Passmore as Reggie and Miss Marie George as cussed in the column of ordinary theatrical news. Cissie . . . well, they are indescribably delightful. just as high above the level of the sordid dramas which They are introduced to the Squaggapug, “with a face poor Dr. Haden Guest has to endure every week, as at each end and fireworks in the middle ” : they are Nelson’s hat is higher than the lions in Trafalgar captured by rabbits and put in a cage, where Reggie Square. It was Wagner who saw what a stunted thing repentently vows “I’ll never keep rabbits any more, the modern stage had become, who realised that it is I’11 keep silkworms. ” They tour through Lollipop Land not possible to portray great passions by duologues in and reach the realms of the Demon Indigestion. Fairies and giants drop from every cloud. Any second-rate Belgravian drawing-room scenes. So he built himself dramatist can write of human beings ; it wants imagi- a new drama which was compounded of all the arts, of And the only nation to make fairies and giants and rabbits and Queen speech and song, music and dance. Bees and Squaggapugs talk sense, I can tell you.-Only theatrical manager in England who has taken Wagner’s once did I come back to earth ; it was when the Babes advice is Mr. Arthur Collins, of Drury Lane. He pre- refused to be washed ; but the inevitable had to be, so sents to us the Universe : not the sickly souls with they revenged themselves on Fate by demanding that morbid consciences who are the themes of the hum- drum stage ; but just the big, wide, rollicking universe, Grip should be soaped also. Somehow it reminded me of Mr. Bernard Shaw advising the middle classes of the real thing-to make your sides split. There is a Kensington to drag the millionaires of Park Lane into ridiculous notion that great dramatists should make us the political whirlpool after them. “If we are going to think. There are advanced critics who crow with delight when they get anyone to stage a social problem ; be washed, you shall be washed too.” anything about starvation, or a strike, or a divorce, or Mr. Collins has done it ; he has built us Utopia. If other ugly phases of society. Good heavens! I would it comes to an election, I hope he’ll be made Prime as soon book a seat for an evening in the London Minister. As I stepped out into the street a sadly sewers. There is only one plausible excuse for this shaken but happy man, a youthful wit of the pavement jumble of things called Life : the possibility that it is offered me the choice between “a cab or a dust cart, tending to a time of perpetual laughter. You can have guvner ? ” Dust cart? Oh, yes, of course, I was back four hours and a half of Utopia by going to the Panto- in the land managed by Sir Henry Campbell-Banner- mime at Drury Lane. The authors are Mr. Hickory man and Mr. Balfour. There are only fairies and Wood and Mr. Collins. They have chosen for their laughter in Mr. Collins’s land. You will be wise if you hero and heroine the real superman and superwoman, go there. I was glad to see that it required, on an the Babes in the Wood. The Babes are a prophetic average, three grown-up persons to take each child. forecast of the future people ; they have solved the there is. hope for England. G. R. S. T. ture peasant risings and jacqueries, should be met by The Trial of the 169. an appeal to the people to adopt the optional method of passive resistance. THE trial just concluded of 169 members of the First (3) That whatever was agreed on had better be Russian Duma deserves attention, whether we regard done as unanimously as possible, even if it were not, in it as a tomb-stone commemorating the futile effort to itself, the best possible course. secure a Constitution for Russia, or as a prominent Under these circumstances the deputies who have milestone on that country’s road to freedom. now been tried signed a proclamation “To the People The disasters of the Japanese War brought forth a from the People’s Representatives,” calling on the Rus- persistent demand from all sections of the Russian sian people to pay no taxes and to furnish no recruits people for a change in the bureaucratic system that until a new Duma was called. Having to choose be- was strangling the nation. Many illegal things were or appearing to acquiesce in the done at that time which have not only been condoned, tween signing this, but which admittedly led up to the Imperial Manifesto unconstitutional action of the Government, a number of the deputies signed it who had themselves argued in of 30 October, 1905, granting a Constitution for Rus- sia. That Manifesto begins with the statement that favour of adopting some other course. They all then disturbances throughout Russia had caused the Em- dispersed without having time to discuss how the pro- peror to grant political rights to the nation in order to clamation was to he disseminated ; a work which, to pacify the country ; and in the address submitted by some extent, was done by the newspaper reporters who Count Witte to the Emperor, and published simultane- had followed the deputies to Viborg. The Russian ously with the Manifesto, the causes of these disturb- Government, of course, immediately prohibited the ances are indicated, and it is explained that Russia has publication of the proclamation in the Russian papers. outgrown the clothes in which, she had been confined, A few days later the prosecution of the 169 deputies and now demands new ones. who had signed the document was undertaken, and the By the time the first Duma-assembled, in May, 1906, Public Prosecutor wrote to the Governor of Finland to Goremykin (who had succeeded Witte as Premier) had procure “ the original proclamation, which is essential ” determined to limit its competence and to reduce to the prosecution. Russia’s Parliament to an entirely subordinate role. This essential document, containing the actual signa- The Government neglected to prepare Bills for the con- tures of the 169 deputies, was not forthcoming, nor was sideration of the Duma, and scornfully rejected those there any evidence to show that most of them had ever the Duma itself drew up. So far was this contemptu- had anything to do with its publication. The prosecu- ous treatment pushed that after keeping the Duma tion was therefore in a difficulty which was only waiting for some time, the first Bill presented for the partially overcome some weeks later, when they SUC- consideration of this Parliament which had assembled ceeded in collecting evidence in various parts of from all parts of the Empire to discuss the burning Russia that thirteen deputies had given circulation to needs of a suffering people, was one relating to the the proclamation or had commended its contents to their establishment of laundries at the University of Urief ! constituents. At the same time the Government set its reptile Press The prosecution was kept in suspense for nearly a to work to denounce the Duma’s “ lack of capacity to year and a half, which, from the Government’s point work. ’ ’ After the Duma had existed for ten weeks, of view, had this advantage, namely, the fact that they the friction between it and the Ministry culminated in were being prosecuted deprived these 169 men of their a dissolution under extraordinary circumstances. No political rights, and prevented any of them from being notice of it was given to the deputies, or even to the elected to the Second and Third Dumas. This was in President of the Duma, but one Sunday morning the accord with the customary policy of “withdrawing from streets were placarded with notices that the Duma had circulation ” men of political competence. been dissolved by Imperial Decree. The palace where When I was last in Russia, in October, 1906, I met it had met was closed, and closely guarded by soldiers ; Mouromtsef, President of the First Duma, the leading so also were the Clubs where the Constitutional depu- figure in the present trial ; and learned from him that ties were accustomed to meet to discuss their affairs. the accused would admit having signed the document, A large number of troops had been concentrated in considering it dishonourable to go back on what they Petersburg ; and an exceptional position, answering had done ; though, in the event, it had turned out that approximately to a state of siege, had been proclaimed both they and the Government had misjudged the in the city. situation, no serious insurrections having taken place, To these appearances of a coup d’état were added on the one hand, and no unusually large number of the fact that the decree of dissolution was not people having adopted the passive resistance policy re- countersigned by the Premier, nor was the date of the commended by the Viborg Manifesto, on the other. election of a new Duma fixed, though both these things To return, however, to the story. Not till the Govern- were demanded by the Constitution. More than this, ment, having restricted the franchise, succeeded in ob- the dissolution, and the postponement of any fresh taining a “tame ” Duma, warranted not to run seri- election involved depriving the Duma of its cherished ously counter to the will of the Premier (who was Stoly- privilege, that of criticising, and to some extent modi- pin, Goremykin having gone), did it think proper to fying, the national Budget. bring the 169 to trial. But it is not enough to have a That same Sunday some 200 deputies, being unable tame Duma ; such a Minister as Stolypin needs also to find a meeting place in Petersburg, betook them- tame judges, removable at will. It is, indeed, often selves to Viborg, the nearest town of any size across asked : What does Stolypin or the Tsar need any the Finnish frontier, in order-under the protection of Duma or Judges for at all ? Are they not able to make the Finnish Constitution-to discuss their future plans. any laws they like, and to have any man they choose On the Monday, while still discussing the position in sent to exile or to death by administrative order? The which they found themselves, they learned that the reply is that it is desirable to -keep up appearances. Russian Government demanded that their meeting Foreign opinion has to be considered, for loans are should be stopped, and that the Finnish authorities wanted almost every year. Then there are some Rus- were not in a position to resist this unconstitutional sians who prefer (and rightly enough) to have some demand. Any action the deputies wished to take they semblance of a Constitution and some show of public had therefore to take on the spur of the moment. The justice, even though the real thing be unobtainable. considerations weighing most strongly with them at and, finally, Stolypin himself, and the Emperor behind the time were these :- him, have to reckon with the bureaucracy, which, like (1) That some protest must be made against the coup some Frankenstein monster, or like the machines d’état which had occurred or was impending (the chief ‘eared by Butler’s Erewhonians, is often too strong violation of the Fundamental Laws by a sweeping re- ‘or its masters. As a check on the bureaucracy, a tame striction of the franchise did not follow, as a matter of Duma may some day be of use to Stolypin or to fact, till several months later). Nicholas II. (2) That the danger of an insurrection,. or of prema- But I must tell of the trial itself next week. AYLMERMAUDE, JANUARY 18, 1908 231

1880 came as a staggering and a stunning blow. The Faith I Hold. When it was quickly followed by the surrender at . Majuba and the understanding with the Irish called By Hubert Bland. the treaty of Kilmainham, darkness seemed to cover (Being a paper read beforethe Fabian Society in the political horizon and the end of all things decent to December, 1907.) be near at hand. To our stupefied minds and stricken spirits politics seemed to lose their value. They ap- I REGRET extremely that when I recall to memory those peared a game, a game, too, in which we had been I of my experiences which accompanied my inquiry into, badly beaten ; and in dudgeon and despair we retired and my acceptance of, the Socialist view of life, I am from the table. wholly unable to trace in them that coherent and con- Fortunately for us, there were houses of refuge. The nected movement, that inevitable step-by-measured- early eighties was a period of Movements, of coteries, step forward, in short, that strictly logical progression literary, artistic, social . . . . and of Influences. Now Movements and coteries may be silly, pretentious, which seems to have marked and distinguished the ad- irrelevant, ; but at least they are interesting. It is vance from darkness into light of most of my predeces- gratifying to one’s feeling of self consequence, it en- sors in this course of lectures. genders a satisfying sense of superiority, to shut one’s When, for example, at the first of them, I sat here self up, as it were, in a little mansion of one’s own, and and listened enthralled to Mrs. Sidney Webb, I seemed with a few eclectic spirits to think scorn of the world to be following the progress of some disembodied spirit outside. So it was with some of us. We felt that we moving serenely through an unresistant ether ; some had had the misfortune to be born in a stupid, vulgar, grimy age, an age, too, that was getting stupider, pure intelligence free of all emotions, untrammelled grimier, more vulgar, every day, and so we turned even by the prepossessions and prejudices which away from it to a little world within a world, a world hamper and hinder the development of the ordinary of poetry, of pictures, of music, of old romance, of human intellect. strangely designed wall-papers, and of sad coloured Scarcely less envious was I of the other of my fellow velveteen. Many of us {though I was not one of them) members who followed Mrs. Webb, and who seem to wore velveteen all day. I wore it only in the evening. have been gifted in their cradles by a Fairy Socialist Disgusted with the present, apprehensive of the future, we naturally were amorous of the past. I god-mother with temperaments and intelligences that think on the whole we preferred the thirteenth to any unerringly disposed them to turn from error and to pur- other century. We tried to live the life of a more sue truth, to pursue it without misgivings, without any lovely age. We could not manage it, of course ; but lookings and longings back. Indeed, one effect of this we did our little best when we were alone together, we course of lectures upon me has been to incline me to- of the elect. We called ourselves the elect. I some- wards a belief in the doctrine of Election and Predes- times catch myself doing that even now. I often tination, and to Force upon me the disturbing convic- catch myself thinking it. Our girls found the preva- lent fashions repulsive, so they studied old illustrations tion that I only of the six confessors was born with the and clothed themselves in soft and clinging gowns of usual amount of original sin, and without the more sage green-and of old gold :- than equivalent set-off of divine grace, or whatever may ‘Such as the early Tuscan’s art prefers,” be the neo-theological or Socialist synonym for it. and silver gray, and of the hues of decaying foliage- My own progress to Socialism, then, 25 years ago, and utterly charming they looked . . . and were. was not that of a fair ship sailing before favourable The Burne Jones type was the Ideal. The measure winds, under a cloudless sky, to the Islands of the of our admiration of a woman was the degree of her Blessed. I was shackled and encumbered and inter- resemblance to it. And it is remarkable how many cepted and turned aside by all sorts of obstructions and young women of that time did resemble it. They came impediments that were, alas, parts of my own intel- to resemble it. They began, many of them, by being lectual and moral outfit ; by my inborn temperament, just plump, fresh complexioned, English maidens, and by my acquired character-for one has acquired a sort in next to no time they were “ Damosels,” with pallid of character at 25 -by my tastes, as well as by my cheeks, scarlet lips, sad, earnest eyes, with hair training. I was not “ born ” a Socialist, as Mr. Hob- wondrously attired. Poetry was our daily bread. We son was. I had no moments of mystic illumination read it aloud to each other for glorious hours on end. such as glorified the path of Dr. Coit. Some of us wrote it ; we all of us read it. Mr. Wil- I was never a contented Philistine-let me at least liam Morris was our laureate ; his work our standard. say that for myself- I was never at peace in Gath. He had called himself the idle singer of an empty day ; That city of my birth always irked and often enraged and as such we acclaimed him. His poetry presented me by the barrenness of its ideas, the narrowness of its to us another world, a world that never was on sea or outlook, the stupidity of its judgment, the gloom of its land ; a world of strange beauty and bizarre roman- atmosphere, and the ugliness of its aspect. But on the ticism ; a rococco world wherein brave gentlemen wore other hand, nothing that I saw of the world outside its glittering armour and fair ladies dressed indescribably. tremendous walls attracted me very much more. I can William Morris, the William Morris of the “ Defence of never remember a time when I looked upon the world Guinevere ” and “ The Haystack in the Floods ” was the around me and saw that it was good. On the con- solace of our sedate moods. In our more passionate trary, I saw that it was bad, but I felt that it might, and vibrant moments we turned to Swinburne, the easily, be very much worse. And I saw, or thought I Swinburne of the “ Poems and Ballads,” not of the saw, that the forces which were then making for “ Songs before Sunrise,” for ours was a twilight or a change-the Liberal and the Democratic forces-would, candle-lit day. We revelled in the “ Triumph of Time ” if they triumphed- and their triumph seemed pretty and “ Dolores.” This, for example :- well assured-render the world not only worse, but Thou wert fair in the fearless old fashion positively intolerable. And thy limbs are as melodies get Democracy stood for all that was bumptious, un- And move to the music of passion I idealistic, disloyal, in the deeper sense of the word, With lithe and lascivious regret. anti-national and vulgar ; and Democracy was upon US What ailed us, O gods, to desert you in its square-toed, hob-nailed boots. To many young For creeds that refuse and restrain. men of enthusiastic temperament, in the beginning of Come down and redeem us from virtue, the last quarter of the last century there was little to Our Lady of Pain. evoke their enthusiasm or to extort their admiration, We were greatly ashamed of our austerity, and al- except the personality of the Prime Minister and certain though there was no Sex question to perplex us, aspirations towards the expansion of Empire. Upon and such phrases as “ Sex freedom ” were never on our them the fall of the Beaconsfield administration in lips, we were contemptuous of Virtue, and spoke of THE NEW AGE. JANUARY 18, 1908

her as though she were an aged and acidulous maiden It was in that state of mind that I read for the first aunt. Such was our theory-in point of fact, I believe time the great work of Schopenhauer, and therein found our lives were in every way as correct as those of all that philosophical justification which bad so far been the young Philistine folk outside our coteries. lacking. I shall not spend, or rather waste, many The truth is we, by reason of our aloofness, felt our moments in dissertating upon the philosophy of selves so immeasurably superior in manners, tastes, and Schopenhauer to an audience like this, an audience intelligence to those same Philistines that: we thought every member of which, probably, has- a closer and a a world delivered over to them, and evidently for ever more recent acquaintance with it than I have. I will to be under their dominion, was a world not worth not say every schoolboy, but I will say that- every of us, and we pretended to ourselves that we should be member of the Fabian Nursery knows that Schopen- glad to be rid of it. Mark, we began by pretending hauer is the most attractive because the most lucid and Those of us who had a turn for verse used to write literary of all Teutonic metaphysicians. He has be- sonnets to Death of whom we spoke as of a deeply yond all modern philosophers the magic of an incom- desired and longed for lover. I well remember going parable style. It is not only easy to understand him : to call one afternoon on a young man, who is to-day, I it is impossible to misunderstand him. He has a rich believe, a member of the Fabian Society, at his chambers vein of humour, as broad as Rabelais’, as biting as in an Inn of Court not far from this Hall. He lived on Swift’s, as subtle as Heine’s, and unlike most other the third floor, and when I arrived at his flight of stair: metaphysicians, except Plato, he condescends to fre- I found those stairs carpeted by a number of young quent illustration, metaphor, and simile. As one reads women in greenish and yellowish velvet and silk him one becomes ensorcelled, held as by a wizard’s drapery, all curled up in sinuous poses, and looking for spell. There is no tedious inductive reasoning about all the world like a lot of dear little caterpillars. I Schopenhauer. He marches straight along the “ high mounted no higher . . . for I was told that the rooms priori ” road and drags his disciple with him. For him were full already and that their owner was reading existence is in itself an evil. For every creature that aloud from James Thomson’s “ City of Dreadful feels to live is to will ; to will is to strive ; and to strive Sight. ” The young ladies on the stair were an over- is to be miserable. “ Life,” he says, in So many flow meeting. Now that episode did not strike me as words, “ so far from being a state of enjoyment, is in the least humorous or odd. On the contrary, I went always, and necessarily, one of suffering ; and the away congratulating myself on the thought that there deepest cause of this suffering lies in the Will itself. was still some love of truth and beauty left in Askelon. Life is a struggle for existence with the certainty of Then there happened a strange thing. I said that being vanquished. ” Intelligence, itself a late expres- we affected a disgust with life that we did not alto- sion of the Will, is only an additional burthen to our gether feel; and although it is extraordinarily difficult lot ; for increased intelligence is only increased capacity to reconstitute a mental process after twenty-five years, for pain. The genius IS more unhappy than the aver- I think that that is true. But the pose, if pose it were, age man, the average man more unhappy than the aver- was slowly transformed into a reality. The result of age oyster. If one had to condense the Schopenhauerian this deliberate search, after a sort of esoteric happiness, conclusion into a sentence one could not do much better of this detachment from popular interests and the than slightly to alter a line of Browning’s :- affairs of the workaday world, of this attempt to escape This world’s a blot, a blank. For me it means intensely and from the insistent sordidness, the blatant ugliness of our means ill surroundings, to create as it were, an interior realm of Not even suicide shall save us, for suicide is the very art and poetry, of rehabilitated romance, was a deep strongest act of assertion. Temporary escape can be and a malign pessimism-so far an empirical, not a got only in aesthetic contemplation. Before a great philosophic, pessimism, but a pessimism of conviction work of art we are lifted for a moment out of person- all the same. Not even the robust masculinity of our ality and pettiness, the clamour of desire is hushed, the favourite Browning was potent to help us. We extolled Will itself is quieted. But this is for a moment only. his art, but we flouted his ethic. The poem of James Mankind cannot be always reading poetry, or looking Thomson’s that I have just mentioned, “ The City of at pictures, or listening to music. The hope, if one Dreadful Night, ” was for me a sort of message, an may dare to use such a word, of the race, lies in a evangel of the Real Truth of Things. I do not mean universal act of suppression, of negation of the Will to for a moment that I was always miserable-I do not Live, the fons et origo of all our woe. Only by such an know that I was ever that exactly-there were, of act can the “ blunder of existence ” be corrected. course, purple moments, rose-pink hours, and even the rest of the time was not given to tears and lamenta- (To be continued.) tion. But I felt that I ought, as a reasonable man, to be miserable, that there was nothing in the world to be cheery about. It was just at this time that I had, PALINODE. written in beautiful script, framed in ivy-leaves, decor- ated with a skull, and hung over the mantel-piece of my I have grown tired of the old measures wherein I beat my song, bed-room, these merry lines of Swinburne’s :- And as the sounds on the hill-top where the winds and From too much love of living. From hope and fear set free, sea-birds throng, We thank with brief thanksgiving And the broad and mournful monody of the ever- Whatever gods may be, singing sea, That no life lives for ever; In heart-harped rhythms my song henceforth must well That dead men rise up never; from the soul of me. That even the weariest river Winds somewhere safe to sea. O I have lived in a city, far from the sea-birds keen, I dramatised myself as that “ weariest river.” And herded with the sordid, the low-browed, and the I have said that the pessimism of this period was mean, empirical. That is to say, it was the result of obser- And I have ached with the dreariness of all its poverty, vation. One saw that the&greater part of mankind And longed for the great and broad-browed song of the were, and always had been, wretched, or at any rate ever-singing sea. - that they lived in conditions that, had oneself been in similar conditions, would have rendered one’s own life And I have loved a woman there, in fierce and angry wretched. One looked in vain for any forces at work wise, that promised to improve those conditions. One saw And sang the old measures to her, enchanted with her that the world was bad; one knew of no way of making lies ; it better. One did not realise, as yet, that it was Ah ! let me break from the memory of all she meant to necessarily bad ; that there could in the nature of me, things be no way of making it better. That convic- And beat my verse to the broad-browed song of the tion experience can never give. ever-singing sea. F. S. FLINT, , January 18, 1908 THE- NEW AGE. 233

has never wanted for rogues althoughwe doubt BOOK OF THE WEEK. whether even now the supply equals the demand. Our The Literature of Roguery. By Frank W. Chandler illustrations represent mere samples from the mine. In 2 vols. (Constable. 12s. net.) The bibliography of the subject is prodigious. Pro- If literature is to fulfil its natural function as a de- fessor Chandler must have devoured whole libraries ; a lineation and criticism of life the rogue must of neces- mere compilation of the books referred to would almost sity fill a not inconspicuous place in it. From the fill an issue of THE NEW AGE. Yet he bears his weight bibulous Knight, who in his last moments babbled of of learning easily, he writes lucidly, and his necessarily green fields, down to the creation of Sherlock Holmes enormous labours have not communicated any impres- the rogue and his anatomy have attracted the genius of sion of weariness to his pages, while his critical sense such dissimilar types as Fielding, Defoe, Smollett is both acute and discriminating. Lever, Dickens, Thackeray, and Reade. Professor FRANK HOLMES. Chandler defines the type as being distinct from that of the villain and habitual criminal. The rogue is hardly REVIEWS. vicious ; he regards rascality with humour, or explains The Claims of French Poetry. By John C. Bailey. it as the result of social environment ; and although no (Constable. 7s. 6d. net.) hard and fast line can be drawn between villainy and Every sincere student and friend of French “belles roguery, to the enlightened the distinction remains lettres ” owes a great debt of gratitude to Mr. Bailey generally perceptible. “ Falstaff is not to be mistaken for the various essays which he has collected in this for Iago, and the contrast between them, as between volume. It represents an impartial criticism as well every rogue and villain, hinges less upon the relative as an eminently straightforward and well-timed attempt venality or atrocity of deed committed than upon the at rehabilitation. rascal’s and author’s point of view.” But the rogue . Without pausing either to consider the beauties of must be defined not only negatively, but positively . the book (which is decidedly a good book, and must be and the representative type is contained in the read) or to compliment Mr. Bailey, who may indeed be picaresque novel, which “ is the comic biography (or proud of his achievement, we would like to bring out a more often the autobiography) of an anti-hero who point which would have served him better in the proving makes his way in the world through the service of of his proposition. We hope at least it was that pro- masters, satirising their personal faults, as well as their position which he set himself to prove and that he did trades and professions. It possesses, therefore, two not simply wish to give his enemy the coup de grace poles of interest, -one, the rogue and his tricks ; the? whilst smothering him with flowers. other, the manners he pillories.” If the author set himself to show that French poetry Historically, the literature of roguery arose in Spain “is not merely rhetoric in verse,” but that both the in the middle of the sixteenth century, and; inspired thinker and the mystic may find pleasure therein, why and assisted by translations, the delineation of the did he not select better examples, examples from poets genre soon made its appearance in France and Eng- who would have completely justified the reproach of in- land. The type is plentifully illustrated in the “ Can- lust Issued. NEW EDITION. REVISED AND MUCH ENLARGED terbury Tales, ” and the legendary rascal makes his Crown 8vo, 64 pp , wrappers. 6d. net. by post 7d. Paper Boards, 1S net, appearance in the history of Robin Hood, Friar Tuck, by post. 1s 1d THE PRODIGY AND FREAK OF NATURE; and Little John. It was left to Shakespeare to take the MAN: or, An Animal Run to Brain. lead in the creation of rogues, as in all else. Low life By KERIDON. is realistically detailed in the two parts of “ Henry ( Well worth reading by all who are interested in mental evolution.“ -West- minster Review. " Its lesson learnt how rapid might man’s advance become ! ” IV. )” and in the “Winter’s Tale,” and roguery is not -Literary World. “A very interesting suggestion, and Keridon’ works out some corollaries of it with clearness and cogency * it IS worth weighing forgotten in his other plays, being exhibited in the two thoroughly.“ -Morning Leader. surpassing types of common rogues, Falstaff and THE SAMURAI PRESS, CRANLEIGH, SURREY. Autolycus. Sir John himself is no threadbare rogue, living at enmity with a world that had used him ill, and that he hoped to requite with interest : he is a SECOND-HANDBOOKS AT HALFPRICES !! I seasoned, leisurely, deliberate rascal, exuding mellow- NEWBOOKS AT 25 PERCENT. DISCOUNT Books on all Subjects and for all Examinations ness and geniality ; a victim to his own gross flesh and (Elementary and Advanced) supplied. appetites if you will, but human, almost lovable even STATEWANTS. SENDFOR LISTS. BOOKSSENT ON APPROVAL. in his decadence and unrepentance. BOOKSBOUGHT. GOODPRICES GIVEN. I

For the most convincing examples of roguery Profes- 135 Charing cross road, London, W.C. sor Chandler naturally turns to our two great sentimen- W.&G. FOYLE tal satirists, Fielding and Thackeray, who employed the same gift of irony in order to make virtues shine HENDERSONS, and vices blush. Although in “ Joseph Andrews ” 66, CHARING CROSS ROAD, LONDON, W.C. Fielding had already formulated his theory of what a ALSO AT 15A, PATERNOSTER Row, E.C. comic epic should be, and although it contains one im- FOR REVOLUTIONARY LITERATURE, mortal figure drawn after the manner of Cervantes, and Socialist, Labour, Rationalist, and all advanced abounds in adventure, it is not ostensibly a study of thought books and periodicals. roguery. It was in “ Tom Jones ” that he fully exem- Publishing Office of “THE DEADLY PARALLEL.” One Penny plified his theory that since vice is one of the ingredients of human nature, it would be impossible to depict life without including it ; the comic spirit here rises to pure BOUGHT, SOLD& EXCHANGED, comedy,- he satirises individuals rather than types, and BOOKSBEST PRICES given for good books. utilises the experiences of his hero for the purpose of enforcing his favourite lessons of sympathy with vir- OBTAINABLE NOW FOR THE FIRST TlMe, tue, contempt for meanness, and indulgence for frailties. AT A POSSIBLE PRICE, Thackeray, while lacking Fielding’s virility and 4 robustness, excels him in delicacy and finesse, and has THE SOUL OF MAN left us two of the most finished types of rogues in UNDER SOCIALISM. literature-Barry Lyndon and Becky Sharp. Abandon- ing his early favourite method of mild satirical persi- By Oscar Wilde. flage, be here boldly effaces-himself and turns to the I Cloth gilt, post free, 3s. 8d, formidable weapon of irony. In these stories there is The most brilliant and beautiful exposition of Social- no comic relief from his rascals, and if a casual person ism ever penned. of virtue slips into his pages it is only by accident, and Other books by the same author always in stock. to throw the wicked into greater contrast. Thackeray never escapes from his obsession of poetic justice, and C. CANNON (successor, D. J. RIDER), none of his villains prosper. Since his time literature 36, St. Martin's Court,Charing Cross Road, BOOKS 234 THE NEW AGE JANUARY 18, 1908 justice which he levels at the a priori detractors of years. And some of them were great men indeed, per- French poetry? Ronsard is quite French, that is true, haps together equal to the leading men of England but there is another side to the French mind. Does not during the same period. Those who still say that India Mr. Bailey ignore somewhat the real importance of the has not produced men fit to rule India had better not mystical and deeply serious tendency of modern French dare to read this book : it might convert them. Mr. poetry under the double influence of Shelley and Emer- John Morley, for instance, if he reads it, will feel some son ? But perhaps we are wrong, and Mr. Bailey is shame, surely, as he recalls the contempt he poured on already at work on his second volume. If so, he would Indian statesmanship this year in our commonplace do well to add an index to it to facilitate reference to House of Commons. And yet these fine men were the charming passages of which his book is full. If he merely “ Reformers,” all of them believers in British is preparing a fresh volume, we feel sure that he will rule ; Liberals, who had no other view of the future include a full dissertation on Corneille, Lamartine, and of their native land beyond that of various quiet, con- especially de Musset, perhaps the most sincere, and stitutional improvements. They and their successors, for many Frenchmen, the most practically human of all. the more determined agitators of to-day, have their Among modern writers, if he will forgive François counterpart in the English Liberals as compared with Coppée for having ever written a line, Mr. Bailey is the new Socialist Party. The parallel is almost exactly well fitted to analyse carefully the new and rich poetry true. Lajpat Rai, Chandra Pal, Surrendra Nath Ban- of Henry de Regnier and also of Sully-Prudhomme, nerji, Tilak of Poona, and the others, are probably as over whose mortal remains the grave has barely closed. able as their Liberal forerunners, but they are controlled Apart from Shakespeare, who is king even for most by a new idea, a new hope, a new inspiration, while French people, and apart from Shelley, whose sincere subjected to that contemporary belittlement so well ideas are perhaps better appreciated by lettered men of understood by the philosophical historian. And so, like Latin race than by the English, the authors we have British Socialists, the new men in India are more mentioned are quite as worthy as those who find a place forceful and independent, more despised and ridiculed, in Mr. Bailey’s book. than the old Liberals of the past century ever were or They arouse the same enthusiasm and are as good as ever will be. Still, we must honour the men of the past, the greater number of the English poets who are revered for they fought well and did much. Most of them by the public here, to whom he wishes to give the palm sprang from poverty to large social positions, some of over the foreigners, without always quite knowing who them lived adventurous,. dramatic lives. A few were these foreigners are. aristocrats, as the Lahiris were, and all of them were But Mr. Bailey says all that. His criticism is as devotees of progress. Some were calm devotees, a few sound as his book is good, not only as regards his re- in youth were rash, and lost their respectability, their marks concerning French men of letters, but also by moderation. Some of the stories of this process are reason of his subtle comparisons with English literature. very amusing. Ramtanu Lahiri himself was a Brahman He says to himself “an Englishman cannot judge of the highest sphere, and his fathers held well-paid from the French point of view.” Perhaps he could, offices under various princes of Bengal. But under the however, push his study deeper and realise that these influence of David Hare, of Calcutta, and later of “ Symbolists ” are French poets and great poets, too, H. L. V. Derozio, a young Eurasian schoolmaster, the all of them-those he has named (especially, perhaps, real hero of the book before us, he became a Reformer, Viélé Griffin, the direct disciple of Walt Whitman, practically a member of the Brahmo Samaj (the New only with a more delicate touch) and those he has not Theology movement of the time, still “ going strong “), mentioned-A. Dorchain, de Bouchard, Richepin, and an advocate of widow marriage and of the abolition of the others. Mr. Bailey has made such a masterly study widow burning, and even became a man bold and bad of Ronsard, Victor Hugo, Le Conte de Lisle, and enough to cast away the sacred thread worn round the Herédia, so that he would do justice to the above. body by all Brahmans. For this crime he suffered great In short, there are no mistakes in this book, only persecution, but he never put on the thread again. His omissions, and any Frenchman will forgive them for life’s work was teaching, and he did his duty in such a the sake of this judgment on “le bon ” La Fontaine : way that he was and is still called the Arnold of Bengal. “His figure is one of the most lovable we know. He is As a schoolmaster, he in his turn influenced scores of his never angry, he is never insincere, he is never prosy, he contemporaries all their lives, and was almost idolised, is never dull. He stands for ever by Molière, as one as young Derozio was, by a large circle of disciples. of the greatest pleasure - givers of all time and all He was really a big man, a great force, though Eng- countries.” land does not know it, and perhaps no country but Ramtanu Lahiri, Brahman and Reformer. A HIS- ours could remain so ignorant of such a man’s work, tory of the Renaissance in Bengal. From the Bengali and that of his clever friends, especially of young of Pandit Sivanath Sastri, M.A., edited by Sir Roper Derozio, the man who insisted upon the free discussion Lethbridge, K.C.I.E. (Sonnenschein. 5s. net.) of ideas, new and old, and taught his Bengali pupils to This is a book of extraordinary value to all who would do the same. watch the development of education and politics in Rantanu Lahiri was born in 1812, when our Glad- India. It has been translated into English by the son stone was three years old, and died in 1898 (Gladstone’s of its subject (Mr. S. K. Lahiri, the well-known Cal- death year). In that time Bengal found herself, but cutta publisher), and it may be said at once that an England does not know it ; and this book is a record unusual feature is that the reader will find it difficult to of the discovery, in English, for an Imperial people to decide whether the appendix is not more interesting read. Will they read it, these Imperialists now pre- than the rest. The appendix is a series of brief lives of vailing? Perhaps the India Office will present copies of Bengali leaders in the nineteenth century who were Lahiri’s life to the public libraries of the Empire. friends of Ramtanu Lahiri, and a wonderful Plutarchian The book is well written, and contains a number of series it is. There are Rammohan Roy, the famous portraits. The translation is excellent. But a book so Tagore family, Pandit Vidyasagar, A. K. Dutt, Keshav full of historical facts and large personalities ought to Chandra Sen, Ishwar Chandra Gupta, Michael Dutt have an index, though without this aid, in one case at (poet and dramatist), Bankim Chandra Chatterjee (Ben- any rate, every line of it has been read with an interest gal’s great historical novelist), and many others : poets, increasing to the end. Of course, the book has its dramatists, novelists, educationists, journalists, lawyers, faults, but we have not noticed them : its excellences politicians, all the intellectuals of Bengal for a hundred are too impressive. - JANUARY 18, 1908 THE NEW AGE 235

Baby Toilers. By Olive Christian Malvery. (Hutchinson Compiled by E. G. Howarth, M.A. and Mona Wilson. and Co. 6s.) (Dent. 6s. net.) ’ We should like well to get this book into the hands “American Finance.” By W. R. Lawson. (Wm. Black- wood and Sons. 6s. net.) of materfamilias who lives in that comfortable, spacious, “John Bull and His Schools.” By W. R. Lawson. (Wm. amply - gardened, desirable residence in Putney or Blackwood and Sons. 5S. net.) Sydenham what time she has, one winter evening, de- “ Sheaves.” By E. F. Benson. (Wm. Heinemann. 6s, ) spatched her small fry to some children’s party in all “ The Stage Censor: An Historical Sketch, 1544-1907.” By the glory of snowy frocks and glossy Eton suits, and G. M. G. (Sampson Low, Marston and Co. 1S. 6d. net.) now serenely sits, arm-chaired and cosy, purring over “Handy Atlas to Church and Empire.” By G. H. S. Wal- existence. For Miss Malvery writes of that which she pole, D. D., and Rev. C. Barton, M.A. (Elliot Stock. 1s. 6d. net:) has seen, and her stories burn. She writes of the chil- “ Wild Honey.” By Michael Field. (Fisher Unwin. 5s. net.) dren who have never been children, the children who “The Blue Lagoon.” By H. de Vere Stacpoole. (Fisher help in the “ home-trades ” (save the mark !), in the Unwin. 6s. sweated industries, the children who toil from morning ‘Euphues the Peripatician.” By Parker Woodward. (Gay till night from the age, even, of four onwards, the and Bird. 5s. net.) children whose “real occupation was buying off their “ William Clark: A Collection of his Writings.” Edited by dying day. They had never lived, and they never would Herbert Burrows and J. A. Hobson. (San Sonnen- schein. 7s. 6d.) - live. ” “A Sovereign People.” By Henry Demarest Lloyd. (Double- Artificial flowers, for which a child may earn per- day, Page and Co. $1.50) haps a penny an hour (and out of this money the worker ‘Memories and Music.” Anon. (Elkin Mathews. 3s. 6d. has to provide the gum and paste and the gas for net.) warming her instruments) ; “ erranding,” where we get “The Heir's Comedy.” By Arthur Dillon. Elkin Mathews. the horrible story of a mite of six, “scarcely three feet 3s. 6d. net.) high, bent almost double, carrying on his shoulders a bundle tied in a slate-coloured cloth ” ; and the others “to whom a load of three-quarters of a hundredweight DRAMA. has been allotted . . . children who have been literally “ Arms and the Man.” deformed and twisted out of shape by the loads that The production of “Arms and the Man ” at the Savoy have been laid upon them ” ; those who help in belt inspires me to ask the not altogether irrelevant question, making ; children who “mind ” other babies a year or Why does not Bernard Shaw write a fairy play? ” so younger than themselves, children who clean steps In “Arms and the Man ” all the characters are touched or act as “ slaveys ” in the lowest forms of lodging- up with just that stroke of fantasy which belongs to houses-of them all Miss Malvery has first-hand know- second-sight or the fairy imagination. They are all a ledge, and her report is hardly bearable reading. little more true than real, which is the exact quality Her suggested “ remedies ” are beside the mark. She dividing fairyland from King Edward’s land. And in talks savagely of the Semite in East London as if no this play, too, one of Mr. Shaw’s earlier plays, there is other town had horrors of sweating to offer. She more humanity and less explanation ; indeed, edu- desires a minimum wage enforced by inspectors (yes, cated as we now are by the Vedrenne-Barker manage- perhaps, if you could have an inspector to every ment, we must realise that there is too little explana- house !) ; she imagines a system of apprenticeship could tion. Particularly was this noticeable with regard to abolish casual labour ; she dreams that parents, hope- Major Sergius Saranoff. This soldier, who is six men lessly demoralised from their own birth by just such in one, and who proclaims on “ the higher love ” while conditions as she describes, by drink, and by casual embracing a servant-girl, is one of the most compli- work, could be rendered “responsible ” by judicious cated of Shaw’s characters. There is an almost severity. No ! She is not of much value as a construc- Dostoieffsky touch about him. To a certain extent his tive reformer, but she might rouse even the most ardent actions explain him, to a certain extent he remains in- of us afresh to the insufferable waste of life we are per- mitting. complete ; it is our knowledge of the Shaw psychology of the later plays that enables us to read something into him that is not there. No doubt Shaw saw this as well BOOKS RECEIVED. as we, and made up his mind not to let it occur again. “Royal Guide to London Charities.” Edited by John Lane. Unfortunately, Shaw’s method of correction was to in- (Chatto and Windus. 1S. 6d.) crease the verbal explanation of personality and de- “ Great Musicians. By Ernest Oldmeadow. (E. Grant crease the explanation in action, a method tending to Richards. 3s 6d. net.) produce purely the play of words, the conflict of sen- “Religion add Historic Faiths.” By Otto Pfleiderer, D.D. tences, not persons, of verbal expressions of emotion Translated by D. A. Huebsch, Ph.D. (T. Fisher Un- and not emotions. In this, of course, Shaw follows the win. 5s. net.) “Essentials of Economic Theory.” By J. B. Clark. (The practice of many modern people, who find in the intel- Macmillan Co. 8s. 6d. net.) ligence a mechanism for escaping from reality, instead “Aphorisms and Reflections from the Works of T. H. of coming to closer grips with it. A detailed considera- Huxley.” Selected by Henriette A. Huxley. (Macmillan tion of the most depressing problems of the poor, for and Co. 2s. 6d. net.) instance, may be only a refined method of escaping “Great Buildings and How to Enjoy Them.” By Edith A. from the necessity of tackling one’s own responsibility Browne. A. and C. Black. 3s. 6d. net.) Woman and the Wise." Paragraphs collected by G F. on the matter. As this, however, is a painful subject in Monkshood. (Greening. 3s. 6d. net.) Fabian circles, I am too much of a gentleman to discuss " The Gilly of Christ.” By Seosamh Mac Cathm Naoil. it further. There is in Saranoff the promise of some- (Maunsel, Dublin. IS. net.) thing that Shaw has never justified, the promise of a “ The Awakening. ” By James H. Cousins. (Mausel. IS net.) drama of realism touched by the fantasy of fairyland “ The World and its God.” By Philip Mauro. (Morgan and and brilliantly illuminated by the light of imagination. Scott. 1S.) this drama could only realise itself through a whole “ Wild Earth.” By Padraic Colum. (Maunsel. IS. net ) ‘( John Glayde’s Honour.” By Alfred Sutro. (Samuel series of Saranoffs and super-Saranoffs, men observed French. 2s. 6d. net.) in real life and laboriously re-oriented for the stage. “West Ham. A Study in Social and Industrial Problems ” For this observation Shaw has had neither the taste 236

nor the physical capacity- The present world is a me as a loosely constructed and rather tedious bit of sordid business ; why muddy the intelligence of brilliant work, and I wonder if that is perhaps in some degree- fairyland trying to wash some ore of experience out of the fault of Mr. Tree. It is Mr. Tree’s acting of John its thousands of tons of reiterated sameness? Besides Jasper that makes the play of any interest, and it is which, such observation is painful, and our imagination constructed to give only Mr. Tree any chance of act- cannot be open to the joy of beauty and delight without ing. Is this due to Mr. Tree’s suggestion? But being open to the wounding of everyday ugliness. SO whether or no, this starring of one person defeats its 1 Bernard Shaw has never extended his observations own object. We should be much more interested in _ beyond a very narrow circle ; he has advanced in his John Jasper were we able to be interested at all in plays not by making deeper incursions into life, but Edwin Drood. We should sympathise more with the by making deeper incursions into thoughts about life. alleged “ lava streams ” of John Jasper’s passion for His characters in “ Man and Superman ” talk quite Rosa Budd were Rosa made a credible personality. John as naturally in the Hell which he hath not seen as in the Jasper is a living personality, the other characters are middle-class drawing room which he hath seen. Shaw’s not, and this does not make Jasper shine : only makes people talk of the “ life-force ” and of great principles him *unreal. However, the play is decidedly worth and ideas, but they are not swayed by them. While the going to see as a study in Mr. Tree’s acting. If the thought-rank of Shaw’s plays has been raised im- rest of the play were up to the mark, it would be a mensely above the usual level, the rank of the action great achievement in the art of pourtraying the abnor- remains practically at the present theatrical level. The mal and strange in personality. But one feels all the action of “ Man and Superman ” is quite subsidiary, time it is an outside view of John Jasper we are getting. one hardly considers it ; that Tanner should bolt from Some of the actions of the criminal opium-smoker are Ann to the Mediterranean in a motor-car is in itself shown to us, but we hear nothing of his thoughts. The remotely improbable, but one does not consider it, thought-rank of the play does not come up to even the partly because of the jokes of the new man, “ ‘Enry,” attempted action-rank, and in consequence the action and partly because the art of the dramatist has excited is halting and uncertain ; in a word, conventionalised. our curiosity about the “thought-drama” and put the All this leaves Mr. Tree’s acting untouched (although action on one side altogether. But when the matter is not his judgment as manager, if that had anything to looked at in this light, and one considers, even in dim do with the play in its present form). I doubt very outline, the kind of drama that would be produced by much whether there is anyone who could so well have raising the action-rank of the play to that of its given us an insight into the world of neurosis and pain. thought-rank, the undeveloped possibilities of “ Arms The play as a whole is rather hard on the other actors. and the Man ” become interesting. That such a feat is Miss Constance Collier, for instance, has even less possible Mr. Granville Barker’s own play “Waste ” chance of showing her powers than in the last Dru- gave plain indications, and in another way Dostoieff- riama. The only character besides Mr. Tree that gives sky’s novel “ Crime and Punishment ” does the same any scope at all is that of Durdles, the sexton, who thing. But even Barker is grim and Dostoieffsky was figures in the Druce mystery part of the play, and this very grim;the delight of Shaw is in the brilliant airy type of the Dickens thumb-nail sketch is the only suc- light he throws around his people and to get a cess of its kind. Mr. G. W. Anson made him very fit milieu for an action-drama of this ‘kind it might be convincing. But convincing is the last word with which necessary to put the drama in Utopia. Why not? I should wish to end my review of “ Edwin Drood.” A Meanwhile, as a substitute, I suggest also fairyland. better word would be temptation. Had Mr. Tree in- In this criticism I have, of course, left out any men- sisted on a play with real characters being made out of tion of the great achievement of “Arms and the Man,” the book, instead of a play of lay figures, amongst the character of Bluntschli. He remains there in the play whom John Jasper starred, then “Edwin Drood ” would forever, and I am only sorry that for future generations really have had some importance. And is it really good he cannot remain in the person of Mr. Robert Lor- business for Mr. Tree to star like this? Is business raine. For if in the first act Mr. Lorraine was a shade always on the side of the artistic temptation? too alert and unfatigued, in the rest of the play he was L. HADEN GUEST. that charming soldier more truly than life. But as soon as one comes to a closer analysis of the individual char- MUSIC. acters of the play, it becomes clear that if G. B. S. A Lamoureux Concert. had only been a little less great we should never have I do not know whether it is possible for any of our known how much greater he might become. Major London orchestras to reach the perfection of the Petkoff and his wife, Nicole and Louka, Raina and Lamoureux orchestra in Paris. The wind instruments Bluntschli are people rounded off and symmetrical. It is in our orchestras have a nasty habit of bubbling and Saranoff who gives the game away by letting in a whole gurgling at the most critical moment, rather upsetting new world of disturbing conceptions that will not let one’s mood and, incidentally, libelling the absent com- anything settle and crystallise in peace. One felt at poser. I have never heard the Pastoral Symphony so first inclined to quarrel with Granville Barker’s acting exquisitely played as it was played the other day in of Saranoff. It seemed to have somewhat too much of the Salle Gaveau under the baton of M. Paul Vidal. Not the later Shaw manner about it. But perhaps that was a single note was blurred or played out of tune ; each inevitable : there is a good deal of the later Shaw movement was a triumph of interpretation, and I could about him. For the rest, the acting was almost impos- not resist the obvious comparison. A first performance sibly good, particularly in the case of Michael Sher- brooke as Petkoff, his voice being a perpetual delight. WASH UP! WASH UP! WASH UP ! Why not a fairy play of a Utopian underworld with Wash up the breakfast, dinner and tea services with Sherbrooke as chief gnome? HUDSON’S SOAP. Makes grease fly ! never clogs. To turn from a play of Shaw’s to one of Mr. Comyns Leaves knives, forks, and anything washed with it Carr’s is something of an acrobatic feat. And as I scrupulously clean and sweet. only have one language in which to criticise both, I am TYPEWRITING AND SHORTHAND. compelled to insist on the question of imaginative rank almost to the degree of disrespect. You have been NEAT, ACCURATE, PROMPT. MODERATE CHARGES. present, you are to imagine, at a levee of the great ones of the Earth. G. B. S. has paraded before you Miss ANSELL, 70-72 CHANCERY LANE, LONDON. kingly and imperial ideas, and now the heralds having ZION’S WORKS contain explanations of the Bible, which free mankind from the charge of blared on their brass trumpets, the great ones are gone Sin. Read Vol. V., p. 87, and the “Discourses,” Vol. XII. away. and there comes a great hubbub and shouting, In the principal FREE LIBRARIES. and the commoners come in. That is to say, I begin to UNITARIANISM AN AFFIRMATIVE FAITH,” “ UNITARIAN CHRIS. criticise “ Edwin Drood ‘* at His Majesty’s Theatre. On tianity Explained ” (Armstrong) , ” Eternal Punishment ” (Stopford Brooke), “Atonement ” Page HoPps) given post free.- Miss BARMBY,Mount Pleasant, its own lines it might be a good play ; as it is, it Struck Sldmoutb. JANUARY 18, 1908- . 237

was given ‘the same afternoon of a new orchestral loud what I think. If you have never heard “ Phidylé,” suite, “ Funn,” and this was delightful. It is of the go and hear it. I heard it in Manchester a few weeks modern descriptive order, but evidently the work of a ago sung by Mdme. Mellot-Joubert with a pianoforte man who cares little for the bubble reputation of the accompaniment, and I was pleased and charmed. NOW sensationalists. These are the parvenus of music, and I have just heard Mdme. Isnardon sing it in Paris with France is rich in them. English musicians are not, as the Lamoureux orchestra, and the English language a crowd, clever enough to achieve the success of the suddenly becomes lame and effete and ridiculous, and parvenu ; they are merely stupid and bourgeois. But much too sober for any really sensible purpose. even the work of the clever, third-rate French composer HERBERT HUGHES. has a certain fascination, vulgar although it may be. It is like the art of the thimble-rigger of Hampstead Heath or the music-hall juggler, generally exciting and always CORRESPONDENCE. a little amusing, and for the skill and technique of which one has the passive admiration and respect of the accomplished layman who cannot do it. But, as I have Correspondencesintended for publication should be addressed to said, Poneigh cares not for this qualified admiration ; the Editor and written on one side of the paper only. he does not play to the gallery, he does not try to de- THE ROTHSCHILDS. ceive the simple-minded and unwary. He cares for beauty ; he will join the immortals and take his place To THE EDITOR OF “THE NEW AGE.” Mr. Brodzky does not controvert any of my statements: near to César Franck and Vincent D’Indy, and some rather he substantiates some of them. The main charges I little distance away from, Debussy. At first hearing, made were (1) the action of the Rothschilds in plunging this _ and just after the Beethoven symphony and an aria of country into war with Egypt to save their monies’; (2) their Gluck, it sounded dull rather, and conventional. action as citizens of London; (3) the refusal of Lord Roths- Doubtless it was the composer’s purpose to commence child to co-operate with even so mild a committee as the with a prosaic motto. Gradually, however, with the Jewish Board of Deputies in seeking some amelioration in insistence of a little tune, which I am sure the ladies the Aliens Act. It is no answer to these charges to lay me down a course of reading in economics. For Mr. Brodzky’s and gentlemen in Giorgione’s “ Fêtes Champêtres ” are benefit, I may say that I have long ceased to indulge in going to dance to, one is wooed to conviction and merely frivolous literature ; when I wish to understand any charmed by the grace and culture and beauty of the point in banking, I study the poets and the philosophers. In whole thing. There is no charlatanism in Poneigh’s reply to some of Mr. Brodzky’s queries, I should certainly dream-world, no vulgarity; no fashionable heresies, for hold the printer responsible for lead-poisoning among his there is no creed to be disbelieved in ; no fashionable work-people ; I have not invited six million Jews into Eng- excitements, for nobody is ever bored or blasé. And all land. On the contrary, for some two years I have been co- operating in an endeavour to find some neutral territory for who listen to this magical music the development of a free Jewish State. go dancing back to the age of gold, Should Lord Rothschild authorise a denial of my state- where life is beauty and love and grace and exquisite ments, I am quite prepared to supply the name of the Mini- harmony. ster to whom he betrayed a confidential document and the I am afraid I have committed myself to another in- name of the paper whose Editor was admonished because discreet enthusiasm. its tone on the Aliens Act threatened the Rothschilds’ position The circumstances, however, in Society. The position of the Russian Jews is too tragic were enough in themselves to encourage immoderation. for any shuffling; were my protests against England’s late To begin with, the performance of the Pastoral Sym- legislation to foment an Anti-Semitism that should drive phony which I have spoken of was the most perfect me and the rest of my race in this country out into the thing imaginable. Then a lovely singer, Madame wilderness, I could still not keep a cowardly or diplomatic Jacques Isnardon, sang the aria from Gluck’s “ Iphi- silence. Be it noted, however, that there is not a. single genie en Tauride ” in a most charming and intelligent Socialist or Labour Association (I speak not of individuals) way, just as if she believed it was not all nonsense. which endorses the Aliens Act. Every democrat understands that such a measure at this time furnishes Russian autocracy Then the name of M. Jean Poneigh was quite new to with yet another weapon against its people. me. (This is an awful confession, and I am ashamed.) Mr. Brodzky and myself differ as to the meaning of the And when Paul Vidal, with. his magic wand, made us word charity; It happens that in the ‘( Notes of the Week ” he leave the rue de la Boëtie for the dreamland of Jean will find the connotation which I would give to that much- Poneigh I personally was enchanted, and I am sure abused word. (Ruskin’s ‘( Fors,” in one of the early chapters, everybody else’s sense of proportion and perspective IS also to the point.) I should be the last man in the world was disturbed and disarranged, and nobody was re- to deprecate true charity, for I have been too frequently the recipient of it. We do badly want some term other than sponsible for any opinion to be uttered within a year. charity to express the transactions which Mr. Brodzky favours And when, after the sauerkraut and hot sausage of and which I deplore whereby wealth is gathered from Spain Händel (a momentary aberration ; it was only an organ or Portugal to be “given largely to the poor of London.” concerto) one listened to Madame Isnardon sing M. D. EDER. Duparc’s “ Phidylé ” is it little wonder that the colleges c + * and academies, South Kensington and the Albert Hall, ‘THE HISTORY OF SCULPTURE.” Oxford Circus and Bond Street, were forgotten for an To THE EDITOR OF THE NEW AGE.” hour, and Henry J. Wood became a figment of an un- The kindly reviewer who relieves his critical soul at the liberated imagination ? expense of my History of Sculpture ” in your current issue expresseshis final verdict in a misquotation from ” Patience.” Please, dear reader, forgive the intoxication of a I admit I cannot see myself in the part of Bunthome. But neophyte. I am not yet fifty, or even five-and-forty happily your reviewer’s own role is quite obvious. It is that (when it is my waking horror that I may have learned to of Grosvenor, with his I am called ‘ Archibald the All- appreciate Brahms), and I must be permitted to say out Right ‘-for I am infallible.” There is no difficulty in establishing his claim to the part Also, we like to embroider our conversation with appeals “Marked you how grandly-how relentlessly-the damning to the Lords of Haven and Hell. We do so involuntarily Catalogue of crime strode on, till Retribution, like a poised in moments of surprise and anguish It is natural that we, Hawk, came swooping down upon the Wrong Doer? ” with our infinite range of ideas, should feel our fellow crea- Denunciations such as his can invariably be traced to a turesinsufficient audience. We appeal to the invisible with- trivial difference in basic propositions. Your reviewer's whole out really wishing to bring down immutable blessings or mental attitude became plain in his third paragraph. In cursings or anything of a serious nature; but simply as a this he objected to my “examination of the circumstance: meansof casually stretching our imagination. which led up to Phidias and Michael Angelo ” on the ground Above all, we love pretending. We enjoy following out that it detracted from their stupendous mental attitude.” with logical severity one particular mood and making our I cannot regret differing from "atrustee for Beauty ” who friends believe it is our immutable, irrevocable-faith, the holds so extraordinary a view of the relation a genius bears to foundation of all our actions, the source of all our ideas. It his time. Your reviewer would doubtless explain every great makesus feel solid; as if we were really quite tangible and artist by the use of the phrase “he arose. ,, “ Phidias arose.’ worthy of confidence. It gives us the sensation an actor gets “ Michael Angelo arose.,, Such an early-Victorian explan- whenhe has given a good performance. It has been so true ation can be of value to no one except an (‘Apostle of Sim- to nature; it has affected our audience so profoundly. It plicity” Men and women who really feel and think know lay even have turned a friend into an enemy or an enemy that an artist’s power to sum up and express the feelings of into a lover. It is wonderful to think what power a well his age is his finest endowment. The characteristic of the carried out mood can exercise; almost as great a power as most vital art is that it represents no individual experience* a newspaperarticle. It reflects thoughts and feelings which are communal rather Then the awful Nemesis we hate. Our lovely work of art; than personal. The Parthenon can only be understood, in our act of power; our impersonation of a mood has conse- the light of -the historical and social circumstances which quences. We find ourselves involved in some dreadful pro- “led up to Phidias." This is the examination which is re. mise. We find the sincere expression of one mood of our garded as “detracting from the stupendous mental altitude nature IS cutting us off from other moods and other ties. of a great sculptor. Life ceases to be a delightful game, other people make it a In view of this basic difference your reviewer’s opinion of reality. Then we want to do away with promises and com- my treatment of individual sculptors is unimportant. I will pacts,and every kind of obligation. only correct him upon errors of fact. He speaks of my airy I have not time to delve in my own heart for any more of dismissal of Gothic sculpture without stating that I devote: its fundamental wants, but from these cursory observations, a chapter to proving the very point he makes-that Gothic : made in the space of twenty minutes, I should say that a sculpture always occupies a secondary position to Gothic morepopular decalogue than Mr. Chesterton’s would run as architecture. Harry Bates is placed among the dozen lead- follows:-- ing English masters of the last century How much higher . 1. My home is wherever I am at the moment ; could a reasonable judgment set him? 2. My wife is whoever I love at the moment; As to the criticism upon my choice of illustrations I can 3. My food is whatever I fancy at the moment ;‘ only ask you to picture the uplifted palms which would have 4. My funeral doesn’t matter as long as I don’t know the followed the acceptance of your reviewer’s advice. " Has Mr. momentwhen I die ; 2 Short never heard of the ‘ Laocoon Group’ and the ‘ Dying Gaul, ?,’ Of course, in illustrating a History of Art one WEARING WELL AND LOOKING WELL. does not confine one’s choice to one’s personal favourites. Typical examples have- to be found for every school. . CLOTHES washed with HUDSON’S SOAP always look well Finally, your reviewer is in error in his belief that I offered because they are spotlessly clean and sweet when they any apology for Mr. Alfred Gilbert’s work. It needs none. comefrom the washing-tub ; and it goes without saying It received none. A critical comparison with Michael Angelo that they wear all the better for it. is proof of nothing except the- deepest and most sincere regard. ERNEST H. SHORT. Y * + WHY MR. GILBERT CHESTERTON IS NOT A Socialist . To THE EDITOR OF “THE NEW AGE? I have been reading Mr. Gilbert Chesterton’s decalogue of humanity. Put shortly it is- 1. An Englishman’s house is his castle, and he demands ceremonial rites from his guests; ’ _ 2. That marriage is a real bond, and its natural conse- quences are jealousy and revenge; 3. That to eat fruit and sympathise with the pain of an animal is a silly fad; protects against 4. That it is worth insuring one’s life in the hope that the money will be spent on one’s funeral ; 5. That it is better to give people what they like than what they don’t like. (It is probably safer.) Influenza; 6. It is reasonable to be furious with other people’s bru- tality, even if they are in a position of authority; 7. It is allowable to be brutal to your own children, other- wise they are apt to find you out. 8. The working man believes these things; 9. Other people don’t. 10. The working men are absolutely and eternally right. Being a working woman, I was for the moment en- glamoured by Mr. Chesterton’s eloquence. It was delightful to think so many seemingly -benighted sots were ” eternally right. ” But counsel came with thought, and it occurred to me why not be really primal while we are about it? Why stop half way? For instance, we all love work, it delights us as long as we choose it ourselves and do not make our livings from it. We forget our meals and our sweethearts-everything for the pleasure of carrying out our own ideas in our own way. We all love our enemies, the amorous passion is not to be compared with the glow of delight we feel when we are attacked and have the means of retaliation, either in some - heavy object to ‘hurl or, still better, some light -jest to set nerves quivering and inarticulate wrath spluttering curses. We love getting money by any means except by earning it. There is a particular joy in winning money by sheer luck: t a sensation of being the special friend of Providence. TO JU-VISwith valuable - receive a gift of this nature is ten times more blessed than to vegetable receive a gift from a beneficent friend and a million times BEEF TEA additions_ more blessed than to receive a dole called wages from a contemptuous taskmaster. A Breakfast Cup for a ld THE. NEW AGE 239 . 5. My gifts are what I feel like giving; A Penny Monthly Journal for Women. 6. My temper is what I feel like saying or doing; 7. -Other people’s habits are often worse than their crimes ; 8. These things all men and women would like to believe are right - 9. They all do believe in them without knowing it, and just to round off we will say that THEWOMAN WORKER. IO. We are all absolutely and eternally right. Edited by MARY R. MACARTHUR. FLORENCE FARR. + * * MR. G. K. CHESTERTON AND DEMOCRACY. The January Number contains To THE EDITOR OF THE NEW AGE.” Women and Organisation. Mr. Chesterton objects that after his wife and family have . THE BISHOP OF BIRMINGHAM. given him a jolly funeral, they will not, under Socialism, be absolutely homeless and hungry. This objection must have more force in it than Socialists have hitherto. allowed, My Ancoats Tenement. for it is shared by many of the intellectual aristocracy to VICTOR GRAYSON, M.P. which G. K. C. belongs. An artist-slummer protested that The Two Nations. Socialism would abolish all picturesque contrast of rich and THE HON. CHARLES LISTER. poor, hovel and palace ; a bazaar-opener complained that life would be absolutely impossible for her were there no respect. able poor to whom she could minister. Bournville, and its Women Workers. The poor will be in no hurry to check Mr. Chesterton’s WM. C. ANDERSON. - delight in patronising them. It is. so jolly good of him "to believe very strongly in the mass of the common people.” The Story of an Irish Strike, An out of work carpenter to whom I showed the passage MARY GALWAY, assured me he would starve with a light heart after this touching tribute to his class; the starving children doffed Partners. Serial Story. their caps to the gentleman who proposes to fill empty bellies CONSTANCE HINTON SMITH. by. repeating delightful generous remarks, coupled with a universal custom of standing Sam. A PEDLAR’S SON. Character Sketch of Miss Mary Elvery. THE PUBLISHER’S ANNOUNCEMENTS. My Aim Life. PRIZE LETTERS BY WORKING . Out of Print Again; Girls. When I spoke so proudly, last week, concerning the in- Women’s Labour League, Past & Future. crease of our circulation, I certainly did not anticipate, that MARGARET E. MACDONALD. we should go out of print again. Yetso it happened. We . had not a single copy left in the office by midday last Thurs- day in spite of our having largely increased the number of Order from your Newsagent, or direct from The Woman copies printed. Worker ” Office, Club Union Buildings, Clerkenwell Road, I must admit we are not seriously put out about it, but I London. E.C. am sorry that many of our regular readers were unable to obtain copies. Especially was this the case in London, for no sooner were we O.P. than an enterprising London newsagent-who by the way sells nearly 500 copies of THE NEW AGE every week- FACTS- - v, SLANDER, hearing the news went round and bought up copies wherever he *could. Having made a small comer he sold his copies Who is guilty of Spoliation ? for threepence a piece-and sold them readily. See the SOCIALIST ANNUAL for 1908, This is really very flattering to us, nevertheless we would Who undermines the Family? rather be in a position to supply all requirements in the usual See the SOCIALIST ANNUAL for 1908, way. Until a few weeks ago the circulation increased steadily Who destroys the Home ? every-week, and we were thus prepared to cope with the See the SOCIALIST ANNUAL for 1908 demand. But recently the circulation has gone up by leaps Who destroys Individuality ? and bounds and has taken us by surprise. See the SOCIALIST ANNUAL for 1908 Back Numbers. FOR I must apologise to those readers who have not yet received Pauperism I Trade Unionism, The Red copies of January 4 issue. We are filling orders for these as International, The Lord’s Anointed, fast as we can obtain copies, but it is very evident already that the returns of this issue will be very few. Degeneration, Taxation, &c.~ &c., As some of our readers are not quite clear as to the increase SEE THE in price of our back numbers, let me repeat that all the numbers comprised in Volume I. (new series), viz., Nos. I to 26 inclusive, -will in future be charged at twopence each. n The price of numbers of volume two, viz., Nos. 27 and on- SOCIALIST wards, remains as before, though, the supply being very limited, we shall be compelled to raise the price of these shortly, Bound Volumes. ANNUAL l At the request of many readers, we have bound up a few copies of Volume I. Orders should be placed at once. Price 5s., post free. A Reader’s Suggestion. For 1908 . . With regard to my suggestions, last week, for pushing THE NEW AGE, one very kind friend has found another EDITED BY TH. ROTHSTEIN. method, and that is to send a copy of the paper, for six Also ARTICLES, AN HISTORICAL CALENDAR months, to various Reading Rooms, after which, he suggests, and TWO CARTOONS. the frequenters would certainly not allow it to drop out. But our friend is also practical. He recognises that we 64 Pages in Artistic Cover. could not afford to do this very extensively, and he therefore encloses a cheque to pay for six such subscriptions. He Price 3d, thinks his example is certain to be followed by other readers. Post free, 4½d. Stiff boards, 6d., by post,7½d. I accept his suggestion with equanimity and await results. THE PUBLISHER, TWENTIETH CENTURY PRESS 37A,Clerkenwell Green, E.C. BOOKS FOR-MODERN READERS- THE NEW AGE. VOL I. (May-October, 1907). Price 4s. 6d,, by post 5s. NEWAGE. Contains articles by most of the best-known modern Socialist writers, VOL I. The first volume of THE NEW AGE is destined to becomethe bibliomaniacs treasure.” - Only a few on sale. BACKNUMBERS. 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